History
list | QuAC_dialog_id
stringlengths 36
36
| Question
stringlengths 3
114
| Question_no
int64 1
12
| Rewrite
stringlengths 11
338
| true_page_title
stringlengths 3
42
| true_contexts
stringlengths 1.4k
9.79k
| answer
stringlengths 2
233
| true_contexts_wiki
stringlengths 0
145k
| extractive
bool 2
classes | retrieved_contexts
list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
[
"Richard Francis Burton",
"Early life and education (1821-41)",
"where was burton educated?",
"Burton's early education was provided by various tutors employed by his parents. He first began a formal education in 1829 at a preparatory school on Richmond Green in Richmond,",
"Did Burton attend a University?",
"Burton matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, on 19 November 1840.",
"What did he study there?",
"Burton continued to gratify his love of languages by studying Arabic; he also spent his time learning falconry and fencing."
] |
C_ca2d8e647fb14253bf34f57b5330ba47_1
|
Did he attend any other University?
| 4 |
Did Richard Francis Burton attend any other university in addition to Trinity College, Oxford?
|
Richard Francis Burton
|
Burton was born in Torquay, Devon, at 21:30 on 19 March 1821; in his autobiography, he incorrectly claimed to have been born in the family home at Barham House in Elstree in Hertfordshire. He was baptized on 2 September 1821 at Elstree Church in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. His father, Lt.-Colonel Joseph Netterville Burton, of the 36th Regiment, was an Irish-born British army officer of Anglo-Irish extraction who through his mother's family - the Campbells of Tuam - was a first cousin of Lt.-Colonel Henry Peard Driscoll and Mrs Richard Graves. Richard's mother, Martha Baker, was the daughter and co-heiress of a wealthy English squire, Richard Baker (1762-1824), of Barham House, Hertfordshire, for whom he was named. Burton had two siblings, Maria Katherine Elizabeth Burton (who married Lt.-General Sir Henry William Stisted) and Edward Joseph Netterville Burton, born in 1823 and 1824, respectively. Burton's family travelled considerably during his childhood. In 1825, they moved to Tours, France. Burton's early education was provided by various tutors employed by his parents. He first began a formal education in 1829 at a preparatory school on Richmond Green in Richmond, Surrey, run by Rev. Charles Delafosse. Over the next few years, his family travelled between England, France, and Italy. Burton showed an early gift for languages and quickly learned French, Italian, Neapolitan, and Latin, as well as several dialects. During his youth, he was rumored to have carried on an affair with a young Roma (Gypsy) woman, learning the rudiments of her language, Romani. The peregrinations of his youth may have encouraged Burton to regard himself as an outsider for much of his life. As he put it, "Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause". Burton matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, on 19 November 1840. Before getting a room at the college, he lived for a short time in the house of Dr. William Alexander Greenhill, then physician to the Radcliffe Infirmary. Here, he met John Henry Newman, whose churchwarden was Dr. Greenhill. Despite his intelligence and ability, Burton was antagonised by his teachers and peers. During his first term, he is said to have challenged another student to a duel after the latter mocked Burton's moustache. Burton continued to gratify his love of languages by studying Arabic; he also spent his time learning falconry and fencing. In April 1842, he attended a steeplechase in deliberate violation of college rules and subsequently dared to tell the college authorities that students should be allowed to attend such events. Hoping to be merely "rusticated" - that is, suspended with the possibility of reinstatement, the punishment received by some less provocative students who had also visited the steeplechase - he was instead permanently expelled from Trinity College. CANNOTANSWER
|
- he was instead permanently expelled from Trinity College.
|
Sir Richard Francis Burton (; 19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British explorer, writer, scholar, and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke twenty-nine European, Asian, and African languages.
Burton's best-known achievements include: a well-documented journey to Mecca in disguise, at a time when Europeans were forbidden access on pain of death; an unexpurgated translation of One Thousand and One Nights (commonly called The Arabian Nights in English after early translations of Antoine Galland's French version); the publication of the Kama Sutra in English; a translation of The Perfumed Garden, the "Arab Kama Sutra"; and a journey with John Hanning Speke as the first Europeans to visit the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile.
His works and letters extensively criticised colonial policies of the British Empire, even to the detriment of his career. Although he aborted his university studies, he became a prolific and erudite author and wrote numerous books and scholarly articles about subjects including human behaviour, travel, falconry, fencing, sexual practices, and ethnography. A characteristic feature of his books is the copious footnotes and appendices containing remarkable observations and information. William Henry Wilkins wrote: "So far as I can gather from all I have learned, the chief value of Burton’s version of The Scented Garden lay not so much in his translation of the text, though that of course was admirably done, as in the copious notes and explanations which he had gathered together for the purpose of annotating the book. He had made this subject a study of years. For the notes of the book alone he had been collecting material for thirty years, though his actual translation of it only took him eighteen months."
Burton was a captain in the army of the East India Company, serving in India, and later briefly in the Crimean War. Following this, he was engaged by the Royal Geographical Society to explore the east coast of Africa, where he led an expedition guided by locals and was the first European known to have seen Lake Tanganyika. In later life, he served as British consul in Fernando Pó (now Bioko, Equatorial Guinea), Santos in Brazil, Damascus (now Syria), and finally in Trieste (now Italy). He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and was awarded a knighthood in 1886.
Biography
Early life and education (1821–1841)
Burton was born in Torquay, Devon, at 21:30 on 19 March 1821; in his autobiography, he incorrectly claimed to have been born in the family home at Barham House in Elstree in Hertfordshire. He was baptised on 2 September 1821 at Elstree Church in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. His father, Lt.-Colonel Joseph Netterville Burton, of the 36th Regiment, was an Irish-born British army officer of Anglo-Irish extraction who through his mother's family—the Campbells of Tuam—was a first cousin of Lt.-Colonel Henry Peard Driscoll and Mrs Richard Graves. Richard's mother, Martha Baker, was the daughter and co-heiress of a wealthy English squire, Richard Baker (1762–1824), of Barham House, Hertfordshire, for whom he was named. Burton had two siblings, Maria Katherine Elizabeth Burton (who married Lt.-General Sir Henry William Stisted) and Edward Joseph Netterville Burton, born in 1823 and 1824, respectively.
Burton's family travelled extensively during his childhood and employed various tutors to educate him. In 1825, they moved to Tours in France. In 1829, Burton began a formal education at a preparatory school in Richmond Green in Richmond, Surrey, run by Reverend Charles Delafosse. Over the next few years, his family travelled between England, France, and Italy. Burton showed a talent to learn languages and quickly learned French, Italian, Neapolitan and Latin, as well as several dialects. During his youth, he allegedly had an affair with a Roma girl and learned the rudiments of the Romani language. The peregrinations of his youth may have encouraged Burton to regard himself as an outsider for much of his life. As he put it, "Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause".
Burton matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, on 19 November 1840. Before getting a room at the college, he lived for a short time in the house of William Alexander Greenhill, then doctor at the Radcliffe Infirmary. Here, he met John Henry Newman, whose churchwarden was Greenhill. Despite his intelligence and ability, Burton was antagonised by his teachers and peers. During his first term, he is said to have challenged another student to a duel after the latter mocked Burton's moustache. Burton continued to gratify his love of languages by studying Arabic; he also spent his time learning falconry and fencing. In April 1842, he attended a steeplechase in deliberate violation of college rules and subsequently dared to tell the college authorities that students should be allowed to attend such events. Hoping to be merely "rusticated"—that is, suspended with the possibility of reinstatement, the punishment received by some less provocative students who had also visited the steeplechase—he was instead permanently expelled from Trinity College.
According to Ed Rice, speaking on Burton's university days, "He stirred the bile of the dons by speaking real—that is, Roman—Latin instead of the artificial type peculiar to England, and he spoke Greek Romaically, with the accent of Athens, as he had learned it from a Greek merchant at Marseilles, as well as the classical forms. Such a linguistic feat was a tribute to Burton's remarkable ear and memory, for he was only a teenager when he was in Italy and southern France."
Army career (1842–1853)
In his own words, "fit for nothing but to be shot at for six pence a day", Burton enlisted in the army of the East India Company at the behest of his ex-college classmates who were already members. He hoped to fight in the first Afghan war, but the conflict was over before he arrived in India. He was posted to the 18th Bombay Native Infantry based in Gujarat and under the command of General Charles James Napier. While in India, he became a proficient speaker of Hindustani, Gujarati, Punjabi, Sindhi, Saraiki and Marathi as well as Persian and Arabic. His studies of Hindu culture had progressed to such an extent that "my Hindu teacher officially allowed me to wear the janeo (Brahmanical Thread)". Him Chand, his gotra teacher, a Nagar Brahmin, could have been an apostate. Burton had a documented interest (and actively participated) in the cultures and religions of India. This was one of many peculiar habits that set him apart from other soldiers. While in the army, he kept a large menagerie of tame monkeys in the hopes of learning their language, accumulating sixty "words". He also earned the name "Ruffian Dick" for his "demonic ferocity as a fighter and because he had fought in single combat more enemies than perhaps any other man of his time".
According to Ed Rice, "Burton now regarded the seven years in India as time wasted." Yet, "He had already passed the official examinations in six languages and was studying two more and was eminently qualified." His religious experiences were varied, including attending Catholic services, becoming a Nāgar Brāhmin, adopting Sikhism, conversion to Islam, and undergoing chillá for Qadiri Sufism. Regarding Burton's Muslim beliefs, Ed Rice states, "Thus, he was circumcised, and made a Muslim, and lived like a Muslim and prayed and practiced like one." Furthermore, Burton, "...was entitled to call himself a hāfiz, one who can recite the Qur'ān from memory."
First explorations and journey to Mecca (1851–53)
Burton's pilgrimage to Medina and Mecca in 1853, was his realization of "the plans and hopes of many and many a year...to study thoroughly the inner life of the Moslem." Traveling through Alexandria in April, then Cairo in May, where he stayed in June during Ramadan, Burton first donned the guise of a Persian mirza, then a Sunnī "Shaykh, doctor, magician and dervish. Accompanied by an Indian boy slave called Nūr, Burton further equipped himself with a case for carrying the Qur'ān, but instead had three compartments for his watch and compass, money, and penknife, pencils, and numbered pieces of paper for taking notes. His diary he kept in a break pocket, unseen. Burton traveled onwards with a group of nomads to Suez, sailed to Yambu, and joined a caravan to Medina, where he arrived on 27 July, earning the title Zair. Departing Medina with the Damascus caravan on 31 August, Burton entered Mecca on 11 September. There, he participated in the Tawaf, traveled to Mount Arafat, and participated in the Stoning of the Devil, all the while taking notes on the Kaaba, its Black Stone, and the Zamzam Well. Departing Mecca, he journeyed to Jeddah, back to Cairo, returning to duty in Bombay. In India, Burton wrote his Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah. Of his journey, Burton wrote, "at Mecca there is nothing theatrical, nothing that suggests the opera, but all is simple and impressive...tending, I believe, after its fashion, to good."
Motivated by his love of adventure, Burton got the approval of the Royal Geographical Society for an exploration of the area, and he gained permission from the board of directors of the East India Company to take leave from the army. His seven years in India gave Burton a familiarity with the customs and behaviour of Muslims and prepared him to attempt a Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca and, in this case, Medina). It was this journey, undertaken in 1853, which first made Burton famous. He had planned it whilst travelling disguised among the Muslims of Sindh, and had laboriously prepared for the adventure by study and practice (including undergoing the Muslim tradition of circumcision to further lower the risk of being discovered).
Although Burton was certainly not the first non-Muslim European to make the Hajj (Ludovico di Varthema did this in 1503 and Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1815), his pilgrimage is the most famous and the best documented of the time. He adopted various disguises including that of a Pashtun to account for any oddities in speech, but he still had to demonstrate an understanding of intricate Islamic traditions, and a familiarity with the minutiae of Eastern manners and etiquette. Burton's trek to Mecca was dangerous, and his caravan was attacked by bandits (a common experience at the time). As he put it, though "... neither Koran or Sultan enjoin the death of Jew or Christian intruding within the columns that note the sanctuary limits, nothing could save a European detected by the populace, or one who after pilgrimage declared himself an unbeliever". The pilgrimage entitled him to the title of Hajji and to wear the green head wrap. Burton's own account of his journey is given in A Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah.
Burton sat for the examination as an Arab linguist. The examiner was Robert Lambert Playfair, who disliked Burton. As Professor George Percy Badger knew Arabic well, Playfair asked Badger to oversee the exam. Having been told that Burton could be vindictive, and wishing to avoid any animosity should Burton fail, Badger declined. Playfair conducted the tests; despite Burton's success living as an Arab, Playfair had recommended to the committee that Burton be failed. Badger later told Burton that "After looking [Burton's test] over, I [had] sent them back to [Playfair] with a note eulogising your attainments and ... remarking on the absurdity of the Bombay Committee being made to judge your proficiency inasmuch as I did not believe that any of them possessed a tithe of the knowledge of Arabic you did."
Early explorations (1854–55)
In May 1854, Burton traveled to Aden in preparation for his Somaliland Expedition, supported by the Royal Geographical Society. Other members included G.E. Herne, William Stroyan, and John Hanning Speke. Burton undertook the expedition to Harar, Speke investigated the Wady Nogal, while Herne and Stroyan stayed on at Berbera. According to Burton, "A tradition exists that with the entrance of the first [white] Christian Harar will fall." With Burton's entry, the "Guardian Spell" was broken.
This Somaliland Expedition lasted from 29October 1854 to 9February 1855, with much of the time spent in the port of Zeila, where Burton was a guest of the town's Governor al-Haji Sharmakay bin Ali Salih. Burton, "assuming the disguise of an Arab merchant" called Haji Mirza Abdullah, awaited word that the road to Harar was safe. On 29 December, Burton met with Gerard Adan in the village of Sagharrah, when Burton openly proclaimed himself an English officer with a letter for the Amīr of Harar. On 3 January 1855, Burton made it to Harar, and was graciously met by the Amir. Burton stayed in the city for ten days, officially a guest of the Amir but in reality his prisoner. The journey back was plagued by lack of supplies, and Burton wrote that he would have died of thirst had he not seen desert birds and realized they would be near water. Burton made it back to Berbera on 31 January 1855.
Following this adventure, Burton prepared to set out in search of the source of the Nile, accompanied by Lieutenant Speke, Lieutenant G. E. Herne and Lieutenant William Stroyan and a number of Africans employed as bearers. The schooner delivered them to Berbera on 7 April 1855. While the expedition was camped near Berbera, his party was attacked by a group of Somali waranle ("warriors") belonging to Isaaq clan. The officers estimated the number of attackers at 200. In the ensuing fight, Stroyan was killed and Speke was captured and wounded in eleven places before he managed to escape. Burton was impaled with a javelin, the point entering one cheek and exiting the other. This wound left a notable scar that can be easily seen on portraits and photographs. He was forced to make his escape with the weapon still transfixing his head. It was no surprise then that he found the Somalis to be a "fierce and turbulent race". However, the failure of this expedition was viewed harshly by the authorities, and a two-year investigation was set up to determine to what extent Burton was culpable for this disaster. While he was largely cleared of any blame, this did not help his career. He describes the harrowing attack in First Footsteps in East Africa (1856).
After recovering from his wounds in London, Burton traveled to Constantinople during the Crimean War, seeking a commission. He received one from General W.F. Beatson, as the Chief of staff for "Beatson's Horse", popularly called the Bashi-bazouks, and based in Gallipoli. Burton returned after an incident which disgraced Beatson, and implicated Burton as the instigator of a "mutiny", damaging his reputation.
Exploring the African Great Lakes (1856–1860)
In 1856, the Royal Geographical Society funded another expedition for Burton and Speke, "and exploration of the then utterly unknown Lake regions of Central Africa." They would travel from Zanzibar to Ujiji along a caravan route established in 1825 by an Arab slave and ivory merchant. The Great Journey commenced on 5 June 1857 with their departure from Zanzibar, where they had stayed at the residence of Atkins Hamerton, the British consul, their caravan consisting of Baluchi mercenaries led by Ramji, 36 porters, eventually a total of 132 persons, all led by the caravan leader Said bin Salim. From the beginning, Burton and Speke were hindered by disease, malaria, fevers, and other maladies, at times both having to be carried in a hammock. Pack animals died, and natives deserted, taking supplies with them. Yet, on 7 November 1857, they made it to Kazeh, and departed for Ujij on 14 Dec Speke wanted to head north, sure they would find the source of the Nile at what he later named Victoria Nyanza, but Burton persisted in heading west.
The expedition arrived at Lake Tanganyika on 13 February 1858. Burton was awestruck by the sight of the magnificent lake, but Speke, who had been temporarily blinded, was unable to see the body of water. By this point much of their surveying equipment was lost, ruined, or stolen, and they were unable to complete surveys of the area as well as they wished. Burton was again taken ill on the return journey; Speke continued exploring without him, making a journey to the north and eventually locating the great Lake Victoria, or Victoria Nyanza, on 3 August. Lacking supplies and proper instruments, Speke was unable to survey the area properly but was privately convinced that it was the long-sought source of the Nile. Burton's description of the journey is given in Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa (1860). Speke gave his own account in The Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863).
Burton and Speke made it back to Zanzibar on 4 March 1859, and left on 22 March for Aden. Speke immediately boarded for London, where he gave lectures, and was awarded a second expedition by the Society. Burton arrived London on 21 May, discovering "My companion now stood forth in his new colours, and angry rival." Speke additionally published What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863), while Burton's Zanzibar; City, Island, and Coast was eventually published in 1872.
Burton then departed on a trip to the United States in April 1860, eventually making it to Salt Lake City on 25 August. There he studied Mormonism and met Brigham Young. Burton departed San Francisco on 15 November, for the voyage back to England, where he published The City of the Saints and Across the Rocky Mountains to California.
Burton and Speke
A prolonged public quarrel followed, damaging the reputations of both Burton and Speke. Some biographers have suggested that friends of Speke (particularly Laurence Oliphant) had initially stirred up trouble between the two. Burton's sympathizers contend that Speke resented Burton's leadership role. Tim Jeal, who has accessed Speke's personal papers, suggests that it was more likely the other way around, Burton being jealous and resentful of Speke's determination and success. "As the years went by, [Burton] would neglect no opportunity to deride and undermine Speke's geographical theories and achievements".
Speke had earlier proven his mettle by trekking through the mountains of Tibet, but Burton regarded him as inferior as he did not speak any Arabic or African languages. Despite his fascination with non-European cultures, some have portrayed Burton as an unabashed imperialist convinced of the historical and intellectual superiority of the white race, citing his involvement in the Anthropological Society, an organization that established a doctrine of scientific racism. Speke appears to have been kinder and less intrusive to the Africans they encountered, and reportedly fell in love with an African woman on a future expedition.
The two men travelled home separately. Speke returned to London first and presented a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society, claiming Lake Victoria as the source of the Nile. According to Burton, Speke broke an agreement they had made to give their first public speech together. Apart from Burton's word, there is no proof that such an agreement existed, and most modern researchers doubt that it did. Tim Jeal, evaluating the written evidence, says the odds are "heavily against Speke having made a pledge to his former leader".
Speke undertook a second expedition, along with Captain James Grant and Sidi Mubarak Bombay, to prove that Lake Victoria was the true source of the Nile. Speke, in light of the issues he was having with Burton, had Grant sign a statement saying, among other things, "I renounce all my rights to publishing ... my own account [of the expedition] until approved of by Captain Speke or [the Royal Geographical Society]".
On 16 September 1864, Burton and Speke were scheduled to debate the source of the Nile at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. On the day before the debate, Burton and Speke sat near each other in the lecture hall. According to Burton's wife, Speke stood up, said "I can't stand this any longer," and abruptly left the hall. That afternoon Speke went hunting on the nearby estate of a relative. He was discovered lying near a stone wall, felled by a fatal gunshot wound from his hunting shotgun. Burton learned of Speke's death the following day while waiting for their debate to begin. A jury ruled Speke's death an accident. An obituary surmised that Speke, while climbing over the wall, had carelessly pulled the gun after himself with the muzzle pointing at his chest and shot himself. Alexander Maitland, Speke's only biographer, concurs.
Diplomatic service and scholarship (1861–1890)
On 22 January 1861, Burton and Isabel Arundel married in a quiet Catholic ceremony although he did not adopt the Catholic faith at this time. Shortly after this, the couple were forced to spend some time apart when he formally entered the Diplomatic Service as consul on the island of Fernando Po, now Bioko in Equatorial Guinea. This was not a prestigious appointment; because the climate was considered extremely unhealthy for Europeans, Isabel could not accompany him. Burton spent much of this time exploring the coast of West Africa, documenting his findings in Abeokuta and The Cameroons Mountains: An Exploration (1863), and A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome (1864). He described some of his experiences, including a trip up the Congo River to the Yellala Falls and beyond, in his 1876 book Two trips to gorilla land and the cataracts of the Congo.
The couple were reunited in 1865 when Burton was transferred to Santos in Brazil. Once there, Burton travelled through Brazil's central highlands, canoeing down the São Francisco River from its source to the falls of Paulo Afonso. He documented his experiences in The Highlands of Brazil (1869).
In 1868 and 1869 he made two visits to the war zone of the Paraguayan War, which he described in his Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay (1870).
In 1868 he was appointed as the British consul in Damascus, an ideal post for someone with Burton's knowledge of the region and customs. According to Ed Rice, "England wanted to know what was going on in the Levant," another chapter in The Great Game. Yet, the Turkish governor Mohammed Rashid 'Ali Pasha, feared anti-Turkish activities, and was opposed to Burton's assignment.
In Damascus, Burton made friends with Abdelkader al-Jazairi, while Isabel befriended Jane Digby, calling her "my most intimate friend." Burton also met with Charles Francis Tyrwhitt-Drake and Edward Henry Palmer, collaborating with Drake in writing Unexplored Syria (1872).
However, the area was in some turmoil at the time with considerable tensions between the Christian, Jewish and Muslim populations. Burton did his best to keep the peace and resolve the situation, but this sometimes led him into trouble. On one occasion, he claims to have escaped an attack by hundreds of armed horsemen and camel riders sent by Mohammed Rashid Pasha, the Governor of Syria. He wrote, "I have never been so flattered in my life than to think it would take three hundred men to kill me." Burton eventually suffered the enmity of the Greek Christian and Jewish communities. Then, his involvement with the Sházlis, a group of Muslims Burton called "Secret Christians longing for baptism," which Isabel called "his ruin." He was recalled in August 1871, prompting him to telegram Isabel "I am recalled. Pay, pack, and follow at convenience."
Burton was reassigned in 1872 to the sleepy port city of Trieste in Austria-Hungary. A "broken man", Burton was never particularly content with this post, but it required little work, was far less dangerous than Damascus (as well as less exciting), and allowed him the freedom to write and travel.
In 1863 Burton co-founded the Anthropological Society of London with Dr. James Hunt. In Burton's own words, the main aim of the society (through the publication of the periodical Anthropologia) was "to supply travellers with an organ that would rescue their observations from the outer darkness of manuscript and print their curious information on social and sexual matters". On 13 February 1886, Burton was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) by Queen Victoria.
He wrote a number of travel books in this period that were not particularly well received. His best-known contributions to literature were those considered risqué or even pornographic at the time, which were published under the auspices of the Kama Shastra society. These books include The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (1883) (popularly known as the Kama Sutra), The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885) (popularly known as The Arabian Nights), The Perfumed Garden of the Shaykh Nefzawi (1886) and The Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night (seventeen volumes 1886–98).
Published in this period but composed on his return journey from Mecca, The Kasidah has been cited as evidence of Burton's status as a Bektashi Sufi. Deliberately presented by Burton as a translation, the poem and his notes and commentary on it contain layers of Sufic meaning that seem to have been designed to project Sufi teaching in the West. "Do what thy manhood bids thee do/ from none but self expect applause;/ He noblest lives and noblest dies/ who makes and keeps his self-made laws" is The Kasidahs most-quoted passage. As well as references to many themes from Classical Western myths, the poem contains many laments that are accented with fleeting imagery such as repeated comparisons to "the tinkling of the Camel bell" that becomes inaudible as the animal vanishes in the darkness of the desert.
Other works of note include a collection of Hindu tales, Vikram and the Vampire (1870); and his uncompleted history of swordsmanship, The Book of the Sword (1884). He also translated The Lusiads, the Portuguese national epic by Luís de Camões, in 1880 and, the next year, wrote a sympathetic biography of the poet and adventurer. The book The Jew, the Gipsy and el Islam was published posthumously in 1898 and was controversial for its criticism of Jews and for its assertion of the existence of Jewish human sacrifices. (Burton's investigations into this had provoked hostility from the Jewish population in Damascus (see the Damascus affair). The manuscript of the book included an appendix discussing the topic in more detail, but by the decision of his widow, it was not included in the book when published).
Death
Burton died in Trieste early on the morning of 20 October 1890 of a heart attack. His wife Isabel persuaded a priest to perform the last rites, although Burton was not a Catholic, and this action later caused a rift between Isabel and some of Burton's friends. It has been suggested that the death occurred very late on 19 October and that Burton was already dead by the time the last rites were administered. On his religious views, Burton called himself an atheist, stating he was raised in the Church of England which he said was "officially (his) church".
Isabel never recovered from the loss. After his death she burned many of her husband's papers, including journals and a planned new translation of The Perfumed Garden to be called The Scented Garden, for which she had been offered six thousand guineas and which she regarded as his "magnum opus". She believed she was acting to protect her husband's reputation, and that she had been instructed to burn the manuscript of The Scented Garden by his spirit, but her actions were controversial. However, a substantial quantity of his written materials have survived, and are held by the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, including 21 boxes of his manuscripts, 24 boxes of correspondence, and other material.
Isabel wrote a biography in praise of her husband.
The couple are buried in a tomb in the shape of a Bedouin tent, designed by Isabel, in the cemetery of St Mary Magdalen Roman Catholic Church Mortlake in southwest London. The coffins of Sir Richard and Lady Burton can be seen through a window at the rear of the tent, which can be accessed via a short fixed ladder. Next to the lady chapel in the church there is a memorial stained-glass window to Burton, also erected by Isabel; it depicts Burton as a medieval knight. Burton's personal effects and a collection of paintings, photographs and objects relating to him are in the Burton Collection at Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham.
Kama Shastra Society
Burton had long had an interest in sexuality and some erotic literature. However, the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 had resulted in many jail sentences for publishers, with prosecutions being brought by the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Burton referred to the society and those who shared its views as Mrs Grundy. A way around this was the private circulation of books amongst the members of a society. For this reason Burton, together with Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot, created the Kama Shastra Society to print and circulate books that would be illegal to publish in public.
One of the most celebrated of all his books is his translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (commonly called The Arabian Nights in English after early translations of Antoine Galland's French version) in ten volumes (1885), with seven further volumes being added later. The volumes were printed by the Kama Shastra Society in a subscribers-only edition of one thousand with a guarantee that there would never be a larger printing of the books in this form. The stories collected were often sexual in content and were considered pornography at the time of publication. In particular, the Terminal Essay in volume 10 of the Nights contained a 14,000-word essay entitled "Pederasty" (Volume 10, section IV, D), at the time a synonym for homosexuality (as it still is, in modern French). This was and remained for many years the longest and most explicit discussion of homosexuality in any language. Burton speculated that male homosexuality was prevalent in an area of the southern latitudes named by him the "Sotadic zone".
Perhaps Burton's best-known book is his translation of The Kama Sutra. It is untrue that he was the translator since the original manuscript was in ancient Sanskrit, which he could not read. However, he collaborated with Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot on the work and provided translations from other manuscripts of later translations. The Kama Shastra Society first printed the book in 1883 and numerous editions of the Burton translation are in print to this day.
His English translation from a French edition of the Arabic erotic guide The Perfumed Garden was printed as The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui: A Manual of Arabian Erotology (1886). After Burton's death, Isabel burnt many of his papers, including a manuscript of a subsequent translation, The Scented Garden, containing the final chapter of the work, on pederasty. Burton all along intended for this translation to be published after his death, to provide an income for his widow.
Scandals
Burton's writings are unusually open and frank about his interest in sex and sexuality. His travel writing is often full of details about the sexual lives of the inhabitants of areas he travelled through. Burton's interest in sexuality led him to make measurements of the lengths of the penises of male inhabitants of various regions, which he includes in his travel books. He also describes sexual techniques common in the regions he visited, often hinting that he had participated, hence breaking both sexual and racial taboos of his day. Many people at the time considered the Kama Shastra Society and the books it published scandalous.
Biographers disagree on whether or not Burton ever experienced homosexual sex (he never directly acknowledges it in his writing). Rumours began in his army days when Charles James Napier requested that Burton go undercover to investigate a male brothel reputed to be frequented by British soldiers. It has been suggested that Burton's detailed report on the workings of the brothel led some to believe he had been a customer. There is no documentary evidence that such a report was written or submitted, nor that Napier ordered such research by Burton, and it has been argued that this is one of Burton's embellishments.
A story that haunted Burton up to his death (recounted in some of his obituaries) was that he came close to being discovered one night when he lifted his robe to urinate rather than squatting as an Arab would. It was said that he was seen by an Arab and, to avoid exposure, killed him. Burton denied this, pointing out that killing the boy would almost certainly have led to his being discovered as an impostor. Burton became so tired of denying this accusation that he took to baiting his accusers, although he was said to enjoy the notoriety and even once laughingly claimed to have done it. A doctor once asked him: "How do you feel when you have killed a man?", Burton retorted: "Quite jolly, what about you?". When asked by a priest about the same incident Burton is said to have replied: "Sir, I'm proud to say I have committed every sin in the Decalogue." Stanley Lane-Poole, a Burton detractor, reported that Burton "confessed rather shamefacedly that he had never killed anybody at any time."
These allegations coupled with Burton's often irascible nature were said to have harmed his career and may explain why he was not promoted further, either in army life or in the diplomatic service. As an obituary described: "...he was ill fitted to run in official harness, and he had a Byronic love of shocking people, of telling tales against himself that had no foundation in fact." Ouida reported: "Men at the FO [Foreign Office] ... used to hint dark horrors about Burton, and certainly justly or unjustly he was disliked, feared and suspected ... not for what he had done, but for what he was believed capable of doing."
Sotadic Zone
Burton theorized about the existence of a Sotadic Zone''' in the closing essay of his English translation of The Arabian Nights (1885–1886). Excerpted and reprinted with permission from He asserted that there exists a geographic-climatic zone in which sodomy and pederasty (sexual intimacy between older men and young pubescent/adolescent boys) are endemic, prevalent, and celebrated among the indigenous inhabitants and within their cultures. The name derives from Sotades, a 3rd-century BC Ancient Greek poet who was the chief representative of a group of Ancient Greek writers of obscene, and sometimes pederastic, satirical poetry; these homoerotic verses are preserved in the Greek Anthology, a collection of poems spanning the Classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature.
Burton first advanced his Sotadic Zone concept in the "Terminal Essay", contained in Volume 10 of his English translation of The Arabian Nights, which he called The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, published in England in 1886.
In popular culture
Fiction
In the short story "The Aleph" (1945) by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, a manuscript by Burton is discovered in a library. The manuscript contains a description of a mirror in which the whole universe is reflected.
The Riverworld series of science fiction novels (1971–83) by Philip José Farmer has a fictional and resurrected Burton as a primary character.
William Harrison's Burton and Speke is a 1984 novel about the two friends/rivals.
The World Is Made of Glass: A Novel by Morris West tells the story of Magda Liliane Kardoss von Gamsfeld in consultation with Carl Gustav Jung; Burton is mentioned on pp. 254–7 and again on p. 392.
Der Weltensammler by the Bulgarian-German writer Iliya Troyanov is a fictional reconstruction of three periods of Burton's life, focusing on his time in India, his pilgrimage to Medina and Mecca, and his explorations with Speke.
Burton is the main character in the "Burton and Swinburne" steampunk series by Mark Hodder (2010–2015): The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack; The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man; Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon; The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi; The Return of the Discontinued Man; and The Rise of the Automated Aristocrats. These novels depict an alternate world where Queen Victoria was killed early in her reign due to the inadvertent actions of a time-traveler acting as Spring-Heeled Jack, with a complex constitutional revision making Albert King in her place.
Though not one of the primary characters in the series, Burton plays an important historical role in the Area 51 series of books by Bob Mayer (written under the pen name Robert Doherty).
Burton and his partner Speke are recurrently mentioned in one of Jules Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires, the 1863 novel Five Weeks in a Balloon, as the voyages of Kennedy and Ferguson are attempting to link their expeditions with those of Heinrich Barth in west Africa.
In the novel The Bookman's Promise (2004) by John Dunning, the protagonist buys a signed copy of a rare Burton book, and from there Burton and his work are major elements of the story. A section of the novel also fictionalizes a portion of Burton's life in the form of recollections of one of the characters.
Drama
In the BBC production of The Search for the Nile series (1972), Burton is portrayed by actor Kenneth Haigh.
The film Mountains of the Moon (1990) (starring Patrick Bergin as Burton) relates the story of the Burton-Speke exploration and subsequent controversy over the source of the Nile. The script was based on Harrison's novel.
In the Canadian film Zero Patience (1993), Burton is portrayed by John Robinson as having had "an unfortunate encounter" with the Fountain of Youth and is living in present-day Toronto. Upon discovering the ghost of the famous Patient Zero, Burton attempts to exhibit the finding at his Hall of Contagion at the Museum of Natural History.
In the American TV show The Sentinel, a monograph by Sir Richard Francis Burton is found by one of the main characters, Blair Sandburg, and is the origins for his concept of Sentinels and their roles in their respective tribes.
Chronology
Works and correspondence
Burton published over 40 books and countless articles, monographs and letters. A great number of his journal and magazine pieces have never been catalogued. Over 200 of these have been collected in PDF facsimile format at burtoniana.org.
Brief selections from a variety of Burton's writings are available in Frank McLynn's Of No Country: An Anthology of Richard Burton (1990; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons).
See also
Selim Aga
Mausoleum of Sir Richard and Lady Burton
List of polyglots
References
Sources
Books and articles
Hitchman, Francis (1887), Richard F. Burton, K.C.M.G.: His Early, Private and Public Life with an Account of his Travels and Explorations, Two volumes; London: Sampson and Low.
McDow, Thomas F. 'Trafficking in Persianness: Richard Burton between mimicry and similitude in the Indian Ocean and Persianate worlds'. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 30.3 (2010): 491–511.
Newman, James L. (2009), Paths without Glory: Richard Francis Burton in Africa, Potomac Books, Dulles, Virginia; .
Sparrow-Niang, Jane (2014). Bath and the Nile Explorers: In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Burton and Speke's encounter in Bath, September 1864, and their 'Nile Duel' which never happened. Bath: Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution.
Wisnicki, Adrian S. (2009). "Charting the Frontier: Indigenous Geography, Arab-Nyamwezi Caravans, and the East African Expedition of 1856–59". Victorian Studies 51.1 (Aut.): 103–37.
Film documentaries
Search for the Nile, 1971 BBC mini-series featuring Kenneth Haigh as Burton
In The Victorian Sex Explorer'', Rupert Everett documents Burton's travels. Part of the Channel Four (UK) 'Victorian Passions' season. First Broadcast on 9 June 2008.
External links
Complete Works of Richard Burton at burtoniana.org. Includes over 200 of Burton's journal and magazine pieces.
– index to world holdings of Burton archival materials
The Penetration of Arabia by David George Hogarth (1904) – discusses Burton in the second section, "The Successors"
Capt Sir Richard Burton Museum (sirrichardburtonmuseum.co.uk), "located in a private residence in central St Ives, Cornwall UK"
1821 births
1890 deaths
19th-century British male writers
19th-century English poets
19th-century English writers
19th-century explorers
19th-century linguists
19th-century British translators
Alumni of Trinity College, Oxford
Arabic–English translators
British Arabists
British atheists
British diplomats
British East India Company Army officers
British ethnographers
British ethnologists
British expatriates in the Ottoman Empire
British military personnel of the Crimean War
Burials at St Mary Magdalen Roman Catholic Church Mortlake
English atheists
English cartographers
English explorers
English male poets
English orientalists
English translators
English travel writers
Explorers of Africa
Explorers of Arabia
Explorers of Asia
Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society
Freemasons of the United Grand Lodge of England
Hajj accounts
Knights Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George
People from Elstree
People from Torquay
Portuguese–English translators
Translators of One Thousand and One Nights
| false |
[
"The 2016 World University American Football Championship was an international college American football tournament that was held from June 1 to June 11, 2016 in Monterrey, Mexico, at Estadio Tecnológico. It was the 2nd World University Championship for team American football. The tournament was held in round-robin format, with each team facing each other once.\n\nTeams\n\n (did not attend)\nNote:\nIndia did not attend due to visa issues.\n\nFinal standings\n\nMatches\nGame 1\n\nGame 2\n\nGame 3\n\nGame 4\n\nGame 5\n\nGame 6\n\nGame 7\n\nGame 8\n\nGame 9\n\nGame 10\n\nReferences\nCompetition Results\n\nWorld University American Football Championship\n2016 in Mexican sports\nIFAF\nInternational sports competitions hosted by Mexico\nAmerican",
"Earl Ettenhaus, sometimes spelled Ettenhause (born c. 1902; date of death unknown) was an American football guard who played one game in the American Professional Football Association (APFA) (now National Football League) for the Rochester Jeffersons.\n\nEttenhaus was born in c. 1902 in Perry, New York, and attended Perry High School there. He did not attend college. In 1921, at about 19 years old, he appeared in one game for the Rochester Jeffersons in the American Professional Football Association (APFA), playing the guard position. The Jeffersons finished the season with a record of 2–3, tenth in the league. He did not play in any other professional matchup, finishing his career with just one game played. His date of death is unknown.\n\nReferences\n \n\n1900s births\nYear of death missing\nAmerican football guards\nPeople from Perry, New York\nRochester Jeffersons players"
] |
[
"Jane Roberts",
"Criticism"
] |
C_d6ee55992d1a4dccb608bd6eaee117e5_0
|
What did this do
| 1 |
What did criticism do to Jane Roberts?
|
Jane Roberts
|
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions. Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production--at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency." Seth's teaching of a philosophy far more detailed than and not in keeping with traditional Church-authority, God-separate-from Creation, one-mortal-life, Jesus-centered messages has also received its share of criticism from some Christian believers. Various ministries have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. The Seth Material has been considered in certain circles to be "a book entirely written by a demon. A woman simply wrote it down as it was dictated to her by the demon; and, of course, it just destroys everything that is true in terms of God's revelation," and as evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books - Allowed By The Media protested that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board." Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay." Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts. CANNOTANSWER
|
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community.
|
Dorothy Jane Roberts (May 8, 1929 – September 5, 1984) was an American author, poet, psychic, and spirit medium, who channeled an energy personality who called himself "Seth." Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the Seth Material, established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena.
Early life and career
Roberts was born in Albany, New York and grew up in nearby Saratoga Springs, New York. Her parents, Delmer Hubbell Roberts and Marie Burdo, divorced when she was two years old. With her only child, the young Marie then returned to her own parents, and the home that the family had rented for a number of years: half of a double dwelling in a poor neighborhood. Marie had begun experiencing the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis by 1932 but worked as much as possible. Eventually, Roberts' grandfather, Joseph Burdo, with whom she shared a deep mystical identification, was unable to support two extra people, and the family had to rely upon public assistance. Roberts' grandmother was killed in an automobile accident in 1936.
The next year, her grandfather moved out of the house. By then Marie was partially incapacitated, and the Welfare Department began to furnish mother and daughter with occasional and often unreliable domestic help. When Marie became a bedridden invalid, it was Jane's responsibility to take care of her. This included cooking, cleaning, bringing her the bedpan, and getting up in the middle of the night to refuel the stove. Her embittered mother would tell Jane she was going to turn on the gas jets in the middle of the night and kill them both. When her mother attempted suicide for about the fifth time, she took sleeping pills and was in the hospital. Jane wrote that she went to the welfare worker and said, 'I can't take it anymore. I've just got to leave.'" Over and over Marie told Jane she was no good, that the daughter's birth had caused the mother's illness, and that she was disowned and considered no longer her daughter.
The persistent psychological abuse and mistreatment by her mother resulted in the young girl's deep fear of abandonment. Such situations increased Jane's sense of not being safe, yet also reinforced feelings of independence, for she did not have to feel as dependent upon Marie as she might otherwise.
Well before she was 10 years old Jane had developed persistent symptoms of colitis. By her early teens, she had an overactive thyroid gland. Her vision was poor; she required very strong glasses (which she seldom wore). For most of 1940 and half of 1941, Jane was in a strictly-run Catholic orphanage in Troy, NY while her mother was hospitalized in another city for treatment of her arthritis. Priests came to the house regularly and support was offered to the fatherless family. Jane's initial bonding to the cultural beliefs of religion was very strong to make up for the lack of a loving, nurturing family. For a time she was left between belief systems.
In the summer of 1945, when she was 16 years old, Jane began working at a variety store. It was her first job. That fall she continued on the job after school hours and on an occasional Saturday. After attending public schools she went to Skidmore College from 1947 to 1950 on a poetry scholarship. Roberts' grandfather died when she was age 19. It was a time of severe shock for her. She began to substitute scientific world view for religious belief.
At that time Jane was dating Walt Zeh, a long-time Saratoga Springs friend. Together they went to the west coast by motorcycle to see Jane's father who had also come from a broken home. Jane then married Walt and continued to write while taking a variety of other jobs, including society editor for the Saratoga newspaper, and as a supervisor in a radio factory. Walt and Jane lived together for three years. It was then in February 1954 while "cutting up, dancing, and raisin' hell at a party," that Jane first met the former commercial artist Robert Fabian Butts, Jr. (June 20, 1919 - May 26, 2008). The fourth time they met at another party and Jane 'just looked at him and said, "Look, I'm leaving Walt, and I'm going to live by myself or I'm going to live with you, so just let me know."'" Eventually the two left town together and Jane filed for divorce. Jane and Rob married on December 27, 1954 at the home of his parents in Sayre, PA.
Roberts wrote in a variety of genres: poetry, short stories, children's literature, nonfiction, science fiction, and fantasy, and novels. She was the only woman invited to the first science-fiction writer's conference in 1956 in Milford, PA.
The couple moved to Elmira, NY, in 1960, to find steady part-time work – Rob in the local greeting card company, Jane in an art gallery. Now in her 30s, she and her husband began to record what she said were messages from a personality named "Seth," and she wrote several books about the experience.
Seth Material
On a September evening in 1963, Roberts sat down at her table to work on poetry; Butts was in his back-room studio, painting. "It was very domestic, very normal, very unpsychedelic," she would later remember. And then "Between one normal minute and the next, a fantastic avalanche of radical, new ideas burst into my head with tremendous force ... It was as if the physical world were really tissue-paper-thin, hiding infinite dimensions of reality, and I was flung through the tissue paper with a huge ripping sound." When she "came to," Roberts found herself scrawling the title of this batch of notes: The Physical Universe as Idea Construction.
Before this, though her fiction typically dealt with such themes as clairvoyance and reincarnation, intellectually neither she nor Butts believed in extrasensory abilities. Yet soon after this episode, Roberts suddenly began recalling her dreams, including two that were precognitive. Their curiosity piqued, the couple decided to investigate further, and she managed to land a contract with a New York publisher for a do-it-yourself book on extra-sensory perception.
In late 1963, Roberts and Butts started experimenting with a Ouija board as part of Roberts' research for the book. According to Roberts and Butts, on December 2, 1963, they began to receive coherent messages from a male personality who eventually identified himself as Seth. Soon after, Roberts reported that she was hearing the messages in her head. The first seven sessions were entirely with the Ouija board. The three-hour session on the evening of Jan. 2, 1964 was the first where she began to dictate the messages instead of using the Ouija board. For a while, she still opened her sessions with the board, but finally abandoned it after the 27th session on Feb. 19, 1964.
Roberts described the process of writing the Seth books as entering a trance state. She said Seth would assume control of her body and speak through her, while her husband wrote down the words she spoke. They referred to such episodes as "readings" or "sessions." The 26th session on Feb. 18, 1964, was the first held in the presence of another person—a friend.
On Jan. 17, 1964, Roberts channeled an allegedly recently deceased woman who told Butts that his and his wife's work with Seth was a life-time project, that they would publish his manuscripts, and help spread his ideas. At the 27th session Seth also told the couple how to rearrange the furniture in their apartment which would better suit their energies. Despite feelings of disbelief toward both messages, the couple somewhat reluctantly agreed. Two days afterward they heard from a psychologist interested in reincarnation to whom they had written three weeks earlier with some session copies enclosed. The psychologist told them that the very fluency of the material suggested that it might come from Roberts' subconscious, though it was impossible to tell. He also cautioned that in some circumstances, amateur mediumship could lead to mental problems.
The letter upset her but helped her deal with her doubts. She felt there were no "alarming changes" in her personality. "I was doing twice the creative work I had done earlier. I was satisfied with the quality of the Seth Material; it was far superior to anything I could do on my own. If nothing else, I thought the sessions presented a way of making deeply unconscious knowledge available on a consistent basis."
"Because we were so innocent about psychic literature, we weren't hampered by superstitious fears about such [psychic] phenomena. I didn't believe in gods or demons, so I didn't fear them. I wanted to learn. Rob and I had discovered a whole new world together, and we were going to explore it."
Roberts assumed Seth was a subconscious fantasy, personified because she did not believe in spirits or life after death. She monitored her personality characteristics and went to a psychologist. But she felt that "Seth seemed far more mature and well-balanced than the psychologist, so finally I stopped worrying. This is not to say the experience did not cause certain strains and stresses that could accompany any worthwhile venture in an entirely new field."
Roberts also purportedly channeled the world views of several other people, including the philosopher William James, Rembrandt, and the Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, through a process she described as using a typewriter to write "automatically."
For 21 years until Roberts' death in 1984 (with a one-year hiatus due to her final illness), Roberts held more than 1500 regular or private "ESP class" trance sessions in which she spoke on behalf of Seth. Butts served as the stenographer, taking the messages down in shorthand he had made up, having others on occasion make recording of some sessions. The messages from Seth channeled through Roberts consisted mostly of monologues on a wide variety of topics. They were published by Prentice-Hall under the collective title Seth Material.
Over the years, hundreds of people witnessed Roberts channeling "Seth". Some went to the ESP classes Roberts held (Tuesday and some Thursday nights, Sept. 1967 – Feb. 1975) for an evening, others attended for longer periods. (By this time Jane had given up her gallery work, and was teaching nursery school during part of this time.) Outside of the ESP class structure, Roberts gave many personal Seth sessions to various individuals who had written her, asking for help. She never charged for those sessions; however, at some point, she did charge $2.50 to $3.50 per ESP class of 5 to 40 people. When the books began to sell in sufficient numbers, she dropped that fee. Book sessions were almost always private, held on Monday and Wednesday evenings without witnesses from 1967 through 1982 (except for Tues and Thurs from Aug. to Nov. 1981).
The material through 1969 was published in summary form in The Seth Material, written by Roberts from the output of the channeling sessions. Beginning in January 1970, Roberts wrote books which she described as dictated by Seth. Roberts claimed no authorship of these books beyond her role as a medium. This series of "Seth books" totaled ten volumes. The last two books appear to be incomplete due to Roberts' illness. Butts contributed extensive footnotes, appendices, and other comments to all the Seth books, and thus was a co-author on all of them. These additions describe what was going on in Roberts' and his life at the time of the various sessions, annotated in light of contemporary beliefs and materials he and Roberts were reading, described excerpts from some fan mail and letters from professionals commenting on Seth's material about their fields, and, especially later, provided insight as to the many steps of production of multiple books with the publisher. By February 1982 they were still receiving "from 30 to 50 letters and packages a week" from readers of their various books.
Some of Roberts' earlier and later poetry was occasionally included to show how she had touched upon some of Seth's concepts. Roberts also wrote The Oversoul Seven trilogy to explore via fiction some of Seth's teachings on the concepts of reincarnation and oversouls.
According to Roberts, Seth described himself as an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical matter," and was independent of Roberts' subconscious. Roberts initially expressed skepticism as to Seth's origins, wondering if he was a part of her own personality. While speaking as Seth, Roberts at times appeared stern, jovial, or professorial. "His" voice was deeper and more masculine sounding than Jane's and was possessed of a distinct, although not identifiable, accent. Unlike the psychic Edgar Cayce, whose syntax when speaking in trance was antiquated and convoluted, Roberts' syntax and sentence structures were modern and clear when speaking as Seth. Later books continued to develop but did not contradict the material introduced in earlier works. Some "Practice Elements" were even included on how a few of the concepts could be practically experienced.
A few contemporary world events were commented upon, such as the Jonestown Guyana deaths and the Three Mile Island accident.
Seth also provided an alternative creation myth to that of the Big Bang or Intelligent Design.
Roberts' father died in November 1971 at the age of 68; her mother died six months later at the same age. In early 1982 Roberts spent a month in the hospital for severely underactive thyroid gland, protruding eyes and double vision, an almost total hearing loss, a slight anemia, budding bedsores—and a hospital-caused staph infection. She recovered to an extent, but died two and a half years later in 1984, having been bedridden with severe arthritis-like her mother—for the final year and a half of her life. Roberts had spent 504 consecutive days in a hospital in Elmira, N.Y. The immediate causes of her death were a combination of protein depletion, osteomyelitis, and soft-tissue infections. These conditions arose out of her long-standing rheumatoid arthritis. (Butts believed for some 15 years that in Roberts' case, at least, the young girl's psychological conditioning was far more important—far more damaging, in those terms—than any physical tendency to inherit the disease.) Roberts was cremated the next day, in a process, she and Butts had agreed upon several years earlier.
After Roberts' death, recorded in The Way Toward Health (1997), Butts continued his work as a guardian of the Seth texts and continued to supervise the publication of some of the remaining material, including The Early Sessions, making sure all of the recordings, manuscripts, notes, and drawings would be given to the Yale Library. Butts remarried, and his second wife, Laurel Lee Davies, supported his work during the more than 20 years they were together and helped answer mail and proofread manuscripts. Butts died of cancer on May 26, 2008. Jane Roberts Butts and Robert F. Butts Jr. are interred together in the Wayne County, NY Furnaceville cemetery; however, there is another gravestone with their names on it in the Sunnyside cemetery in Tunkhannock, PA. A number of groups have compiled anthologies of quotes from Seth, summarized sections of his teachings, issued copies of Seth sessions on audio tape, and further relayed the material via classes and conventions.
Reception and influence
Seth's effect upon New Age thinkers has been profound. The title jacket of "The Nature of Personal Reality, A Seth Book," republished in 1994 (Amber-Allen/New World Library), contains testimonials from some of the most notable thinkers and writers within the movement. Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra, Shakti Gawain, Dan Millman, Louise Hay, Richard Bach, and others express the effect the Seth Material had upon their own awakening. In words similar to Williamson's they state: "Seth was one of my first metaphysical teachers. He remains a constant source of knowledge and inspiration in my life." Catherine L. Albanese, professor of religious history at the University of Chicago, stated that in the 1970s the Seth Material "launched an era of nationwide awareness" of the channeling trend. She believes it contributed to the "self-identity of an emergent New Age movement and also augment[ed] its ranks."
John P. Newport, in his study of the impact of New Age beliefs on contemporary culture, described the central focus of the Seth material as the idea that for each individual: "you create your own reality." (Briefly summarized, our beliefs generate emotions that trigger our memories and organize our associations. Eventually, those beliefs become manifested in our physical lives and health.) Newport wrote that this foundational concept of the New Age movement was first developed in the "Seth Material." Historian Robert C. Fuller, a professor of religious studies at Bradley University, wrote that Seth filled the role of guide for what Fuller called "unchurched American spirituality," related to concepts of reincarnation, karma, free will, ancient metaphysical wisdom, and "Christ consciousness."
Some writers noted, "Husband Robert Butts stated that similarities exist between Seth's ideas and those of various religious, philosophical, and mystical doctrines from the Near, Middle, or Far East… and we've done a little reading on Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, and Taoism, for example, not to mention subjects like shamanism, voodooism, and obeah."
New Age writer Michael Talbot wrote, "To my great surprise—and slight annoyance—I found that Seth eloquently and lucidly articulated a view of reality that I had arrived at only after great effort and an extensive study of both paranormal phenomena and quantum physics."
The Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives maintains a collection entitled Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090), which documents the career and personal life of Jane Roberts, including journals, poetry, correspondence, audio, and video recordings, and other materials donated after her death by Roberts' husband and other individuals and organizations. Yale University's collection entitled "Jane Roberts papers" occupies 164.08 linear feet of shelf space and is contained in 498 boxes.
Criticism
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.
Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production—at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency."
Some religious groups have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. John MacArthur, host of a syndicated Christian talk show, considers The Seth Material to be "a book entirely written by a demon.", while the New Age Urantia Foundation considers the book evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books – Allowed By The Media claimed that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board."
Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and
Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay."
Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts.
Complete writings
Books:
Roberts, Jane (1966). How To Develop Your ESP Power. Publisher: Federick Fell. (Later retitled and reprinted as The Coming of Seth.) .
Roberts, Jane (1970). The Seth Material. Reprinted, 2001 by New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1972). Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul. Reprinted 1994 by Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1974). The Nature of Personal Reality. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1976). Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 1. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 2. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1978). The Afterdeath Journal of An American Philosopher: The World View of William James. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). Emir's Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers. Prentice-Hall. . Children's literature.
Roberts, Jane (1979). The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1996, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1981). The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Prentice-Hall, . Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing, .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Oversoul Seven Trilogy. Amber-Allen Publishing. . Edition: Paperback; May 1, 1995 (originally published as three separate books: The Education of Oversoul 7 (1973); The Further Education of Oversoul Seven (1979); Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time (1984)).
Roberts, Jane (1981). The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto. Prentice-Hall. . Reprinted 2000, Moment Point Press. .
Roberts, Jane (1982). If We Live Again, Or, Public Magic and Private Love. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1986). Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment. Prentice-Hall, two volumes, and .
Roberts, Jane (1986). Seth, Dreams and Projections of Consciousness. Stillpoint Publishing.
(1993). A Seth Reader. Vernal Equinox Press. Compendium edited by Richard Roberts. .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Magical Approach : Seth Speaks About the Art of Creative Living. Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1997). The Way Toward Health. Robert F. Butts (Foreword), Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (2006). The World View of Rembrandt. New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1997 and after). The Early Sessions (Sessions 1 through 510 of the Seth Material). New Awareness Network. Edited by Robert Butts. Nine volumes. .
Roberts, Jane (2003). The Personal Sessions. New Awareness Network. Deleted session material. Seven volumes. .
Roberts. Jane. The Early Class Sessions. New Awareness Network. Four volumes.
Short Stories and novellas:
Roberts, Jane. "Prayer of a Wiser People" in Profile, 1950.
Roberts, Jane. "The Red Wagon" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1956 (republished 1993, Reality Change Magazine; anthologized in 1975, Ladies of Fantasy).
Roberts, Jane. "The Canvas Pyramid" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958).
Roberts, Jane. "First Communion" in Fantastic Universe, 1957.
Roberts, Jane. "The Chestnut Beads" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958; anthologized in Triple W: Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves, 1963).
Roberts, Jane. "The Bundu" (novella, sequel to "The Chestnut Beads") in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958.
Roberts, Jane. "A Demon at Devotions" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Winter 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "Nightmare" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959.
Roberts, Jane. "Impasse" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959 (Spanish anthology edition ca. 1960).
Roberts, Jane. "Three Times Around" in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1964 (anthologized in Earth Invaded, 1982).
Roberts, Jane. "The Big Freeze" in Dude, 1965 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Summer 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "The Mission," purchased by Topper magazine in August 1965. (Publication not yet confirmed.)
Poetry Submissions:
"Time" in The Saratogian [Saratoga Springs, NY], 1947 Mar 19.
"Enigma" in The Saratogian, 1947 Mar 19.
"Spring Gaiety" in The Saratogian, 1947 Apr 26.
"Rain" in Profile [Skidmore College literary magazine], December, 1947.
"Pretense" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Code" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Skyscrapers" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Introvert" in Profile, May, 1948.
"Poem" in Profile, May, 1948.
"How Public Like a Frog" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Motorcycle Ride" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Echo" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Death Stood at the Door" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Compromise" in Profile, May, 1949.
"I Shall Die in the Springtime." Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Lyric" Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Matilda" in Quicksilver, Spring, 1960.
"It is Springtime, Grandfather." Epos., v.12, n.3, Spring 1961.
"The Familiar." Bitterroot. v.1, n.2, Winter 1962.
"I Saw a Hand" in Treasures of Parnassus: Best Poems of 1962, Young Publications, 1962 (reprinted in The Elmira Star-Gazette, 1962).
"My Grandfather's World." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Lullaby." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Beware, October." Epos. v.16, n.1, Fall 1964.
"This Wrist, This Hand." Epos. v.16, n.4, Summer 1965.
"The Game." New Lantern Club Review. n.2, Summer 1965.
"The Flowers." Steppenwolf. n.1, Winter 1965–1966.
"Vision." Dust/9. v.3, n.1, Fall 1966.
"Who Whispers Yes." Dust/12. v.3, n.4, Spring 1969.
"Hi, Low, and Psycho." Excerpts published in Reality Change, Third Quarter, 1996.
See also
Stewart Edward White
Modal realism
Counterpart theory
Eternalism
New Thought
References
External links
Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Includes both published and unpublished materials
Seth Center Index to the Early Sessions
Seth Learning Center An overview of titles and related audio clips, New Awareness Network
Nirvikalpa Archive of over 1500 quotations and excerpts from the Seth Material
'The Problem of Seth's Origin: A Case Study of the Trance-Possession Mediumship of Jane Roberts' by Paul Cunningham
List of Seth Sessions by Mary Dillman
Index of Eleven Seth Books by Sue R. Williams
Seth Talk - by Lynda Madden Dahl
1929 births
1984 deaths
20th-century American poets
American children's writers
American motivational writers
Women motivational writers
American psychics
American spiritual mediums
American women poets
Channellers
Consciousness researchers and theorists
Deaths from arthritis
New Age writers
People from Saratoga Springs, New York
Skidmore College alumni
American women children's writers
20th-century American women writers
American women non-fiction writers
Women's page journalists
| true |
[
"\"What Did I Do to You?\" is a song recorded by British singer Lisa Stansfield for her 1989 album, Affection. It was written by Stansfield, Ian Devaney and Andy Morris, and produced by Devaney and Morris. The song was released as the fourth European single on 30 April 1990. It included three previously unreleased songs written by Stansfield, Devaney and Morris: \"My Apple Heart,\" \"Lay Me Down\" and \"Something's Happenin'.\" \"What Did I Do to You?\" was remixed by Mark Saunders and by the Grammy Award-winning American house music DJ and producer, David Morales. The single became a top forty hit in the European countries reaching number eighteen in Finland, number twenty in Ireland and number twenty-five in the United Kingdom. \"What Did I Do to You?\" was also released in Japan.\n\nIn 2014, the remixes of \"What Did I Do to You?\" were included on the deluxe 2CD + DVD re-release of Affection and on People Hold On ... The Remix Anthology. They were also featured on The Collection 1989–2003 box set (2014), including previously unreleased Red Zone Mix by David Morales.\n\nCritical reception\nThe song received positive reviews from music critics. Matthew Hocter from Albumism viewed it as a \"upbeat offering\". David Giles from Music Week said it is \"beautifully performed\" by Stansfield. A reviewer from Reading Eagle wrote that \"What Did I Do to You?\" \"would be right at home on the \"Saturday Night Fever\" soundtrack.\"\n\nMusic video\nA music video was produced to promote the single, directed by Philip Richardson, who had previously directed the videos for \"All Around the World\" and \"Live Together\". It features Stansfield with her kiss curls, dressed in a white outfit and performing with her band on a stage in front of a jumping audience. The video was later published on Stansfield's official YouTube channel in November 2009. It has amassed more than 1,6 million views as of October 2021.\n\nTrack listings\n\n European/UK 7\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK/Japanese CD single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n UK 10\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix) – 5:52\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK 12\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 4:22\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 3:19\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:15\n\n UK 12\" promotional single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Anti Poll Tax Dub) – 6:31\n\n Other remixes\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Red Zone Mix) – 7:45\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nLisa Stansfield songs\n1990 singles\nSongs written by Lisa Stansfield\n1989 songs\nArista Records singles\nSongs written by Ian Devaney\nSongs written by Andy Morris (musician)",
"What Did I Do To Deserve This My Lord!? 2 (formerly known as Holy Invasion Of Privacy, Badman! 2: Time To Tighten Up Security!, known as Yūsha no Kuse ni Namaiki da or2, 勇者のくせになまいきだor2, literally \"For a hero, [you are] quite impudent/cheeky/bold] 2)\" in Japan) is a real-time strategy/god game for the PlayStation Portable, sequel to What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord?.\n\nThe game was released in Japan in 2008, and was announced for a North American release during Tokyo Game Show 2009. This release was delayed until May 4, 2010, due to NIS America changing the game's name from Holy Invasion Of Privacy, Badman! 2: Time to Tighten Up Security! to What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord!? 2 to avoid conflict with the Batman license.. The UMD release includes the first game.\n\nGameplay \nThe gameplay is almost identical to the first game, with a few different additions and changes. These include 'Mutation' (monsters can mutate in three forms: by deformity, by obesity and by gigantism) and 'The Overlord's Chamber', where you can grow monsters and observe their evolution.\nWhat Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!? 2 contains \"4 times more stages, 3.3 times more monsters and 2.3 times more heroes\" than the first game.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Official website\n\n2008 video games\nGod games\nPlayStation Portable games\nPlayStation Portable-only games\nReal-time strategy video games\nSony Interactive Entertainment games\nVideo game sequels\nVideo games developed in Japan"
] |
[
"Jane Roberts",
"Criticism",
"What did this do",
"Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community."
] |
C_d6ee55992d1a4dccb608bd6eaee117e5_0
|
What was the worst part of this
| 2 |
What was the worst part of the critiques against Jane Roberts?
|
Jane Roberts
|
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions. Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production--at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency." Seth's teaching of a philosophy far more detailed than and not in keeping with traditional Church-authority, God-separate-from Creation, one-mortal-life, Jesus-centered messages has also received its share of criticism from some Christian believers. Various ministries have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. The Seth Material has been considered in certain circles to be "a book entirely written by a demon. A woman simply wrote it down as it was dictated to her by the demon; and, of course, it just destroys everything that is true in terms of God's revelation," and as evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books - Allowed By The Media protested that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board." Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay." Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts. CANNOTANSWER
|
The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death.
|
Dorothy Jane Roberts (May 8, 1929 – September 5, 1984) was an American author, poet, psychic, and spirit medium, who channeled an energy personality who called himself "Seth." Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the Seth Material, established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena.
Early life and career
Roberts was born in Albany, New York and grew up in nearby Saratoga Springs, New York. Her parents, Delmer Hubbell Roberts and Marie Burdo, divorced when she was two years old. With her only child, the young Marie then returned to her own parents, and the home that the family had rented for a number of years: half of a double dwelling in a poor neighborhood. Marie had begun experiencing the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis by 1932 but worked as much as possible. Eventually, Roberts' grandfather, Joseph Burdo, with whom she shared a deep mystical identification, was unable to support two extra people, and the family had to rely upon public assistance. Roberts' grandmother was killed in an automobile accident in 1936.
The next year, her grandfather moved out of the house. By then Marie was partially incapacitated, and the Welfare Department began to furnish mother and daughter with occasional and often unreliable domestic help. When Marie became a bedridden invalid, it was Jane's responsibility to take care of her. This included cooking, cleaning, bringing her the bedpan, and getting up in the middle of the night to refuel the stove. Her embittered mother would tell Jane she was going to turn on the gas jets in the middle of the night and kill them both. When her mother attempted suicide for about the fifth time, she took sleeping pills and was in the hospital. Jane wrote that she went to the welfare worker and said, 'I can't take it anymore. I've just got to leave.'" Over and over Marie told Jane she was no good, that the daughter's birth had caused the mother's illness, and that she was disowned and considered no longer her daughter.
The persistent psychological abuse and mistreatment by her mother resulted in the young girl's deep fear of abandonment. Such situations increased Jane's sense of not being safe, yet also reinforced feelings of independence, for she did not have to feel as dependent upon Marie as she might otherwise.
Well before she was 10 years old Jane had developed persistent symptoms of colitis. By her early teens, she had an overactive thyroid gland. Her vision was poor; she required very strong glasses (which she seldom wore). For most of 1940 and half of 1941, Jane was in a strictly-run Catholic orphanage in Troy, NY while her mother was hospitalized in another city for treatment of her arthritis. Priests came to the house regularly and support was offered to the fatherless family. Jane's initial bonding to the cultural beliefs of religion was very strong to make up for the lack of a loving, nurturing family. For a time she was left between belief systems.
In the summer of 1945, when she was 16 years old, Jane began working at a variety store. It was her first job. That fall she continued on the job after school hours and on an occasional Saturday. After attending public schools she went to Skidmore College from 1947 to 1950 on a poetry scholarship. Roberts' grandfather died when she was age 19. It was a time of severe shock for her. She began to substitute scientific world view for religious belief.
At that time Jane was dating Walt Zeh, a long-time Saratoga Springs friend. Together they went to the west coast by motorcycle to see Jane's father who had also come from a broken home. Jane then married Walt and continued to write while taking a variety of other jobs, including society editor for the Saratoga newspaper, and as a supervisor in a radio factory. Walt and Jane lived together for three years. It was then in February 1954 while "cutting up, dancing, and raisin' hell at a party," that Jane first met the former commercial artist Robert Fabian Butts, Jr. (June 20, 1919 - May 26, 2008). The fourth time they met at another party and Jane 'just looked at him and said, "Look, I'm leaving Walt, and I'm going to live by myself or I'm going to live with you, so just let me know."'" Eventually the two left town together and Jane filed for divorce. Jane and Rob married on December 27, 1954 at the home of his parents in Sayre, PA.
Roberts wrote in a variety of genres: poetry, short stories, children's literature, nonfiction, science fiction, and fantasy, and novels. She was the only woman invited to the first science-fiction writer's conference in 1956 in Milford, PA.
The couple moved to Elmira, NY, in 1960, to find steady part-time work – Rob in the local greeting card company, Jane in an art gallery. Now in her 30s, she and her husband began to record what she said were messages from a personality named "Seth," and she wrote several books about the experience.
Seth Material
On a September evening in 1963, Roberts sat down at her table to work on poetry; Butts was in his back-room studio, painting. "It was very domestic, very normal, very unpsychedelic," she would later remember. And then "Between one normal minute and the next, a fantastic avalanche of radical, new ideas burst into my head with tremendous force ... It was as if the physical world were really tissue-paper-thin, hiding infinite dimensions of reality, and I was flung through the tissue paper with a huge ripping sound." When she "came to," Roberts found herself scrawling the title of this batch of notes: The Physical Universe as Idea Construction.
Before this, though her fiction typically dealt with such themes as clairvoyance and reincarnation, intellectually neither she nor Butts believed in extrasensory abilities. Yet soon after this episode, Roberts suddenly began recalling her dreams, including two that were precognitive. Their curiosity piqued, the couple decided to investigate further, and she managed to land a contract with a New York publisher for a do-it-yourself book on extra-sensory perception.
In late 1963, Roberts and Butts started experimenting with a Ouija board as part of Roberts' research for the book. According to Roberts and Butts, on December 2, 1963, they began to receive coherent messages from a male personality who eventually identified himself as Seth. Soon after, Roberts reported that she was hearing the messages in her head. The first seven sessions were entirely with the Ouija board. The three-hour session on the evening of Jan. 2, 1964 was the first where she began to dictate the messages instead of using the Ouija board. For a while, she still opened her sessions with the board, but finally abandoned it after the 27th session on Feb. 19, 1964.
Roberts described the process of writing the Seth books as entering a trance state. She said Seth would assume control of her body and speak through her, while her husband wrote down the words she spoke. They referred to such episodes as "readings" or "sessions." The 26th session on Feb. 18, 1964, was the first held in the presence of another person—a friend.
On Jan. 17, 1964, Roberts channeled an allegedly recently deceased woman who told Butts that his and his wife's work with Seth was a life-time project, that they would publish his manuscripts, and help spread his ideas. At the 27th session Seth also told the couple how to rearrange the furniture in their apartment which would better suit their energies. Despite feelings of disbelief toward both messages, the couple somewhat reluctantly agreed. Two days afterward they heard from a psychologist interested in reincarnation to whom they had written three weeks earlier with some session copies enclosed. The psychologist told them that the very fluency of the material suggested that it might come from Roberts' subconscious, though it was impossible to tell. He also cautioned that in some circumstances, amateur mediumship could lead to mental problems.
The letter upset her but helped her deal with her doubts. She felt there were no "alarming changes" in her personality. "I was doing twice the creative work I had done earlier. I was satisfied with the quality of the Seth Material; it was far superior to anything I could do on my own. If nothing else, I thought the sessions presented a way of making deeply unconscious knowledge available on a consistent basis."
"Because we were so innocent about psychic literature, we weren't hampered by superstitious fears about such [psychic] phenomena. I didn't believe in gods or demons, so I didn't fear them. I wanted to learn. Rob and I had discovered a whole new world together, and we were going to explore it."
Roberts assumed Seth was a subconscious fantasy, personified because she did not believe in spirits or life after death. She monitored her personality characteristics and went to a psychologist. But she felt that "Seth seemed far more mature and well-balanced than the psychologist, so finally I stopped worrying. This is not to say the experience did not cause certain strains and stresses that could accompany any worthwhile venture in an entirely new field."
Roberts also purportedly channeled the world views of several other people, including the philosopher William James, Rembrandt, and the Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, through a process she described as using a typewriter to write "automatically."
For 21 years until Roberts' death in 1984 (with a one-year hiatus due to her final illness), Roberts held more than 1500 regular or private "ESP class" trance sessions in which she spoke on behalf of Seth. Butts served as the stenographer, taking the messages down in shorthand he had made up, having others on occasion make recording of some sessions. The messages from Seth channeled through Roberts consisted mostly of monologues on a wide variety of topics. They were published by Prentice-Hall under the collective title Seth Material.
Over the years, hundreds of people witnessed Roberts channeling "Seth". Some went to the ESP classes Roberts held (Tuesday and some Thursday nights, Sept. 1967 – Feb. 1975) for an evening, others attended for longer periods. (By this time Jane had given up her gallery work, and was teaching nursery school during part of this time.) Outside of the ESP class structure, Roberts gave many personal Seth sessions to various individuals who had written her, asking for help. She never charged for those sessions; however, at some point, she did charge $2.50 to $3.50 per ESP class of 5 to 40 people. When the books began to sell in sufficient numbers, she dropped that fee. Book sessions were almost always private, held on Monday and Wednesday evenings without witnesses from 1967 through 1982 (except for Tues and Thurs from Aug. to Nov. 1981).
The material through 1969 was published in summary form in The Seth Material, written by Roberts from the output of the channeling sessions. Beginning in January 1970, Roberts wrote books which she described as dictated by Seth. Roberts claimed no authorship of these books beyond her role as a medium. This series of "Seth books" totaled ten volumes. The last two books appear to be incomplete due to Roberts' illness. Butts contributed extensive footnotes, appendices, and other comments to all the Seth books, and thus was a co-author on all of them. These additions describe what was going on in Roberts' and his life at the time of the various sessions, annotated in light of contemporary beliefs and materials he and Roberts were reading, described excerpts from some fan mail and letters from professionals commenting on Seth's material about their fields, and, especially later, provided insight as to the many steps of production of multiple books with the publisher. By February 1982 they were still receiving "from 30 to 50 letters and packages a week" from readers of their various books.
Some of Roberts' earlier and later poetry was occasionally included to show how she had touched upon some of Seth's concepts. Roberts also wrote The Oversoul Seven trilogy to explore via fiction some of Seth's teachings on the concepts of reincarnation and oversouls.
According to Roberts, Seth described himself as an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical matter," and was independent of Roberts' subconscious. Roberts initially expressed skepticism as to Seth's origins, wondering if he was a part of her own personality. While speaking as Seth, Roberts at times appeared stern, jovial, or professorial. "His" voice was deeper and more masculine sounding than Jane's and was possessed of a distinct, although not identifiable, accent. Unlike the psychic Edgar Cayce, whose syntax when speaking in trance was antiquated and convoluted, Roberts' syntax and sentence structures were modern and clear when speaking as Seth. Later books continued to develop but did not contradict the material introduced in earlier works. Some "Practice Elements" were even included on how a few of the concepts could be practically experienced.
A few contemporary world events were commented upon, such as the Jonestown Guyana deaths and the Three Mile Island accident.
Seth also provided an alternative creation myth to that of the Big Bang or Intelligent Design.
Roberts' father died in November 1971 at the age of 68; her mother died six months later at the same age. In early 1982 Roberts spent a month in the hospital for severely underactive thyroid gland, protruding eyes and double vision, an almost total hearing loss, a slight anemia, budding bedsores—and a hospital-caused staph infection. She recovered to an extent, but died two and a half years later in 1984, having been bedridden with severe arthritis-like her mother—for the final year and a half of her life. Roberts had spent 504 consecutive days in a hospital in Elmira, N.Y. The immediate causes of her death were a combination of protein depletion, osteomyelitis, and soft-tissue infections. These conditions arose out of her long-standing rheumatoid arthritis. (Butts believed for some 15 years that in Roberts' case, at least, the young girl's psychological conditioning was far more important—far more damaging, in those terms—than any physical tendency to inherit the disease.) Roberts was cremated the next day, in a process, she and Butts had agreed upon several years earlier.
After Roberts' death, recorded in The Way Toward Health (1997), Butts continued his work as a guardian of the Seth texts and continued to supervise the publication of some of the remaining material, including The Early Sessions, making sure all of the recordings, manuscripts, notes, and drawings would be given to the Yale Library. Butts remarried, and his second wife, Laurel Lee Davies, supported his work during the more than 20 years they were together and helped answer mail and proofread manuscripts. Butts died of cancer on May 26, 2008. Jane Roberts Butts and Robert F. Butts Jr. are interred together in the Wayne County, NY Furnaceville cemetery; however, there is another gravestone with their names on it in the Sunnyside cemetery in Tunkhannock, PA. A number of groups have compiled anthologies of quotes from Seth, summarized sections of his teachings, issued copies of Seth sessions on audio tape, and further relayed the material via classes and conventions.
Reception and influence
Seth's effect upon New Age thinkers has been profound. The title jacket of "The Nature of Personal Reality, A Seth Book," republished in 1994 (Amber-Allen/New World Library), contains testimonials from some of the most notable thinkers and writers within the movement. Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra, Shakti Gawain, Dan Millman, Louise Hay, Richard Bach, and others express the effect the Seth Material had upon their own awakening. In words similar to Williamson's they state: "Seth was one of my first metaphysical teachers. He remains a constant source of knowledge and inspiration in my life." Catherine L. Albanese, professor of religious history at the University of Chicago, stated that in the 1970s the Seth Material "launched an era of nationwide awareness" of the channeling trend. She believes it contributed to the "self-identity of an emergent New Age movement and also augment[ed] its ranks."
John P. Newport, in his study of the impact of New Age beliefs on contemporary culture, described the central focus of the Seth material as the idea that for each individual: "you create your own reality." (Briefly summarized, our beliefs generate emotions that trigger our memories and organize our associations. Eventually, those beliefs become manifested in our physical lives and health.) Newport wrote that this foundational concept of the New Age movement was first developed in the "Seth Material." Historian Robert C. Fuller, a professor of religious studies at Bradley University, wrote that Seth filled the role of guide for what Fuller called "unchurched American spirituality," related to concepts of reincarnation, karma, free will, ancient metaphysical wisdom, and "Christ consciousness."
Some writers noted, "Husband Robert Butts stated that similarities exist between Seth's ideas and those of various religious, philosophical, and mystical doctrines from the Near, Middle, or Far East… and we've done a little reading on Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, and Taoism, for example, not to mention subjects like shamanism, voodooism, and obeah."
New Age writer Michael Talbot wrote, "To my great surprise—and slight annoyance—I found that Seth eloquently and lucidly articulated a view of reality that I had arrived at only after great effort and an extensive study of both paranormal phenomena and quantum physics."
The Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives maintains a collection entitled Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090), which documents the career and personal life of Jane Roberts, including journals, poetry, correspondence, audio, and video recordings, and other materials donated after her death by Roberts' husband and other individuals and organizations. Yale University's collection entitled "Jane Roberts papers" occupies 164.08 linear feet of shelf space and is contained in 498 boxes.
Criticism
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.
Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production—at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency."
Some religious groups have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. John MacArthur, host of a syndicated Christian talk show, considers The Seth Material to be "a book entirely written by a demon.", while the New Age Urantia Foundation considers the book evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books – Allowed By The Media claimed that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board."
Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and
Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay."
Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts.
Complete writings
Books:
Roberts, Jane (1966). How To Develop Your ESP Power. Publisher: Federick Fell. (Later retitled and reprinted as The Coming of Seth.) .
Roberts, Jane (1970). The Seth Material. Reprinted, 2001 by New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1972). Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul. Reprinted 1994 by Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1974). The Nature of Personal Reality. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1976). Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 1. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 2. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1978). The Afterdeath Journal of An American Philosopher: The World View of William James. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). Emir's Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers. Prentice-Hall. . Children's literature.
Roberts, Jane (1979). The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1996, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1981). The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Prentice-Hall, . Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing, .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Oversoul Seven Trilogy. Amber-Allen Publishing. . Edition: Paperback; May 1, 1995 (originally published as three separate books: The Education of Oversoul 7 (1973); The Further Education of Oversoul Seven (1979); Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time (1984)).
Roberts, Jane (1981). The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto. Prentice-Hall. . Reprinted 2000, Moment Point Press. .
Roberts, Jane (1982). If We Live Again, Or, Public Magic and Private Love. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1986). Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment. Prentice-Hall, two volumes, and .
Roberts, Jane (1986). Seth, Dreams and Projections of Consciousness. Stillpoint Publishing.
(1993). A Seth Reader. Vernal Equinox Press. Compendium edited by Richard Roberts. .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Magical Approach : Seth Speaks About the Art of Creative Living. Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1997). The Way Toward Health. Robert F. Butts (Foreword), Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (2006). The World View of Rembrandt. New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1997 and after). The Early Sessions (Sessions 1 through 510 of the Seth Material). New Awareness Network. Edited by Robert Butts. Nine volumes. .
Roberts, Jane (2003). The Personal Sessions. New Awareness Network. Deleted session material. Seven volumes. .
Roberts. Jane. The Early Class Sessions. New Awareness Network. Four volumes.
Short Stories and novellas:
Roberts, Jane. "Prayer of a Wiser People" in Profile, 1950.
Roberts, Jane. "The Red Wagon" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1956 (republished 1993, Reality Change Magazine; anthologized in 1975, Ladies of Fantasy).
Roberts, Jane. "The Canvas Pyramid" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958).
Roberts, Jane. "First Communion" in Fantastic Universe, 1957.
Roberts, Jane. "The Chestnut Beads" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958; anthologized in Triple W: Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves, 1963).
Roberts, Jane. "The Bundu" (novella, sequel to "The Chestnut Beads") in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958.
Roberts, Jane. "A Demon at Devotions" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Winter 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "Nightmare" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959.
Roberts, Jane. "Impasse" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959 (Spanish anthology edition ca. 1960).
Roberts, Jane. "Three Times Around" in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1964 (anthologized in Earth Invaded, 1982).
Roberts, Jane. "The Big Freeze" in Dude, 1965 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Summer 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "The Mission," purchased by Topper magazine in August 1965. (Publication not yet confirmed.)
Poetry Submissions:
"Time" in The Saratogian [Saratoga Springs, NY], 1947 Mar 19.
"Enigma" in The Saratogian, 1947 Mar 19.
"Spring Gaiety" in The Saratogian, 1947 Apr 26.
"Rain" in Profile [Skidmore College literary magazine], December, 1947.
"Pretense" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Code" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Skyscrapers" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Introvert" in Profile, May, 1948.
"Poem" in Profile, May, 1948.
"How Public Like a Frog" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Motorcycle Ride" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Echo" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Death Stood at the Door" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Compromise" in Profile, May, 1949.
"I Shall Die in the Springtime." Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Lyric" Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Matilda" in Quicksilver, Spring, 1960.
"It is Springtime, Grandfather." Epos., v.12, n.3, Spring 1961.
"The Familiar." Bitterroot. v.1, n.2, Winter 1962.
"I Saw a Hand" in Treasures of Parnassus: Best Poems of 1962, Young Publications, 1962 (reprinted in The Elmira Star-Gazette, 1962).
"My Grandfather's World." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Lullaby." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Beware, October." Epos. v.16, n.1, Fall 1964.
"This Wrist, This Hand." Epos. v.16, n.4, Summer 1965.
"The Game." New Lantern Club Review. n.2, Summer 1965.
"The Flowers." Steppenwolf. n.1, Winter 1965–1966.
"Vision." Dust/9. v.3, n.1, Fall 1966.
"Who Whispers Yes." Dust/12. v.3, n.4, Spring 1969.
"Hi, Low, and Psycho." Excerpts published in Reality Change, Third Quarter, 1996.
See also
Stewart Edward White
Modal realism
Counterpart theory
Eternalism
New Thought
References
External links
Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Includes both published and unpublished materials
Seth Center Index to the Early Sessions
Seth Learning Center An overview of titles and related audio clips, New Awareness Network
Nirvikalpa Archive of over 1500 quotations and excerpts from the Seth Material
'The Problem of Seth's Origin: A Case Study of the Trance-Possession Mediumship of Jane Roberts' by Paul Cunningham
List of Seth Sessions by Mary Dillman
Index of Eleven Seth Books by Sue R. Williams
Seth Talk - by Lynda Madden Dahl
1929 births
1984 deaths
20th-century American poets
American children's writers
American motivational writers
Women motivational writers
American psychics
American spiritual mediums
American women poets
Channellers
Consciousness researchers and theorists
Deaths from arthritis
New Age writers
People from Saratoga Springs, New York
Skidmore College alumni
American women children's writers
20th-century American women writers
American women non-fiction writers
Women's page journalists
| true |
[
"Best of the Worst is a British panel game television programme, which was broadcast on Channel 4 in 2006. The show was created by Giles Pilbrow and Colin Swash.\n\nHosted by Alexander Armstrong, it featured two teams of two players, one captained by David Mitchell and the other by Johnny Vaughan. The other panellists were either comedians or well known television personalities.\n\nThe show looked at the worst things ever to happen in the world, such as the person with the worst luck, the worst diet, or the worst inventions.\n\nOnly 6 episodes were recorded.\n\nRounds\nBest of the Worst was made up of four rounds.\n\nPick the Worst: Both teams picked the worst out of four options, such as the worst diet out of fast food, fresh air, a car and human flesh. Then, from the two options chosen by each team, the audience voted for which they thought was the worst. The team whose option received the most votes won two points.\nBottom Five: The five worst things related to a subject were given in reverse order, from least bad to the worst. Each team had to try to guess what the thing was via a picture clue. One point was given for each correct answer.\nWhich ends the Worst?: Two video clips were shown, each one ending badly, but stopped before the event. Each team then had to guess which one ended the worst. Two points were given for the right answer.\nWall of Worst: A quick-fire buzzer round, where a subject was given, along with a picture clue related to the worst thing ever to happen related to that subject. Each team had to buzz in with what they thought had happened. One point was awarded for every right answer.\n\nEpisode list\n – indicates David's team won.\n – indicates Johnny's team won.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nlostintv.com Best of the Worst\n4dtv (production company) website: Information and clips\n\n2006 British television series debuts\n2006 British television series endings\nBritish panel games\n2000s British game shows\nChannel 4 comedy\nChannel 4 original programming",
"Best of the Worst is a television program that was hosted by Greg Kinnear and aired by Fox Broadcasting Company as a part of its 1991–92 schedule.\n\nOverview\nBest of the Worst, hosted by Greg Kinnear, was a lighthearted celebration of the worst elements of life—the worst movies, the worst places to get married, the worst museums, the worst airline food, and the worst Elvis impersonators being only a few of the \"worst\" examples. There was even a special correspondent reporting from Japan, David Spector, apparently to prove that North America had no monopoly on life's worst things.\n\nMemorable segments included a wacky “beat poet” duo who sang in gibberish, rent a witch, and a man who collected roadkill.\n\nCancellation\nDue to its Nielsen ratings it was cancelled at midseason. It finished dead last out of 98 shows and only averaged a 4.42 rating.\n\nReferences\n\nLost Media Wiki : The Best of the Worst\n\n1991 American television series debuts\n1992 American television series endings\n1990s American television series\nFox Broadcasting Company original programming\nTelevision series by The Wolper Organization"
] |
[
"Jane Roberts",
"Criticism",
"What did this do",
"Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community.",
"What was the worst part of this",
"The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death."
] |
C_d6ee55992d1a4dccb608bd6eaee117e5_0
|
What did this lead him to try
| 3 |
What did Charles Upton's critique of Jane Roberts lead Roberts to try?
|
Jane Roberts
|
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions. Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production--at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency." Seth's teaching of a philosophy far more detailed than and not in keeping with traditional Church-authority, God-separate-from Creation, one-mortal-life, Jesus-centered messages has also received its share of criticism from some Christian believers. Various ministries have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. The Seth Material has been considered in certain circles to be "a book entirely written by a demon. A woman simply wrote it down as it was dictated to her by the demon; and, of course, it just destroys everything that is true in terms of God's revelation," and as evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books - Allowed By The Media protested that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board." Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay." Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts. CANNOTANSWER
|
His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.
|
Dorothy Jane Roberts (May 8, 1929 – September 5, 1984) was an American author, poet, psychic, and spirit medium, who channeled an energy personality who called himself "Seth." Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the Seth Material, established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena.
Early life and career
Roberts was born in Albany, New York and grew up in nearby Saratoga Springs, New York. Her parents, Delmer Hubbell Roberts and Marie Burdo, divorced when she was two years old. With her only child, the young Marie then returned to her own parents, and the home that the family had rented for a number of years: half of a double dwelling in a poor neighborhood. Marie had begun experiencing the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis by 1932 but worked as much as possible. Eventually, Roberts' grandfather, Joseph Burdo, with whom she shared a deep mystical identification, was unable to support two extra people, and the family had to rely upon public assistance. Roberts' grandmother was killed in an automobile accident in 1936.
The next year, her grandfather moved out of the house. By then Marie was partially incapacitated, and the Welfare Department began to furnish mother and daughter with occasional and often unreliable domestic help. When Marie became a bedridden invalid, it was Jane's responsibility to take care of her. This included cooking, cleaning, bringing her the bedpan, and getting up in the middle of the night to refuel the stove. Her embittered mother would tell Jane she was going to turn on the gas jets in the middle of the night and kill them both. When her mother attempted suicide for about the fifth time, she took sleeping pills and was in the hospital. Jane wrote that she went to the welfare worker and said, 'I can't take it anymore. I've just got to leave.'" Over and over Marie told Jane she was no good, that the daughter's birth had caused the mother's illness, and that she was disowned and considered no longer her daughter.
The persistent psychological abuse and mistreatment by her mother resulted in the young girl's deep fear of abandonment. Such situations increased Jane's sense of not being safe, yet also reinforced feelings of independence, for she did not have to feel as dependent upon Marie as she might otherwise.
Well before she was 10 years old Jane had developed persistent symptoms of colitis. By her early teens, she had an overactive thyroid gland. Her vision was poor; she required very strong glasses (which she seldom wore). For most of 1940 and half of 1941, Jane was in a strictly-run Catholic orphanage in Troy, NY while her mother was hospitalized in another city for treatment of her arthritis. Priests came to the house regularly and support was offered to the fatherless family. Jane's initial bonding to the cultural beliefs of religion was very strong to make up for the lack of a loving, nurturing family. For a time she was left between belief systems.
In the summer of 1945, when she was 16 years old, Jane began working at a variety store. It was her first job. That fall she continued on the job after school hours and on an occasional Saturday. After attending public schools she went to Skidmore College from 1947 to 1950 on a poetry scholarship. Roberts' grandfather died when she was age 19. It was a time of severe shock for her. She began to substitute scientific world view for religious belief.
At that time Jane was dating Walt Zeh, a long-time Saratoga Springs friend. Together they went to the west coast by motorcycle to see Jane's father who had also come from a broken home. Jane then married Walt and continued to write while taking a variety of other jobs, including society editor for the Saratoga newspaper, and as a supervisor in a radio factory. Walt and Jane lived together for three years. It was then in February 1954 while "cutting up, dancing, and raisin' hell at a party," that Jane first met the former commercial artist Robert Fabian Butts, Jr. (June 20, 1919 - May 26, 2008). The fourth time they met at another party and Jane 'just looked at him and said, "Look, I'm leaving Walt, and I'm going to live by myself or I'm going to live with you, so just let me know."'" Eventually the two left town together and Jane filed for divorce. Jane and Rob married on December 27, 1954 at the home of his parents in Sayre, PA.
Roberts wrote in a variety of genres: poetry, short stories, children's literature, nonfiction, science fiction, and fantasy, and novels. She was the only woman invited to the first science-fiction writer's conference in 1956 in Milford, PA.
The couple moved to Elmira, NY, in 1960, to find steady part-time work – Rob in the local greeting card company, Jane in an art gallery. Now in her 30s, she and her husband began to record what she said were messages from a personality named "Seth," and she wrote several books about the experience.
Seth Material
On a September evening in 1963, Roberts sat down at her table to work on poetry; Butts was in his back-room studio, painting. "It was very domestic, very normal, very unpsychedelic," she would later remember. And then "Between one normal minute and the next, a fantastic avalanche of radical, new ideas burst into my head with tremendous force ... It was as if the physical world were really tissue-paper-thin, hiding infinite dimensions of reality, and I was flung through the tissue paper with a huge ripping sound." When she "came to," Roberts found herself scrawling the title of this batch of notes: The Physical Universe as Idea Construction.
Before this, though her fiction typically dealt with such themes as clairvoyance and reincarnation, intellectually neither she nor Butts believed in extrasensory abilities. Yet soon after this episode, Roberts suddenly began recalling her dreams, including two that were precognitive. Their curiosity piqued, the couple decided to investigate further, and she managed to land a contract with a New York publisher for a do-it-yourself book on extra-sensory perception.
In late 1963, Roberts and Butts started experimenting with a Ouija board as part of Roberts' research for the book. According to Roberts and Butts, on December 2, 1963, they began to receive coherent messages from a male personality who eventually identified himself as Seth. Soon after, Roberts reported that she was hearing the messages in her head. The first seven sessions were entirely with the Ouija board. The three-hour session on the evening of Jan. 2, 1964 was the first where she began to dictate the messages instead of using the Ouija board. For a while, she still opened her sessions with the board, but finally abandoned it after the 27th session on Feb. 19, 1964.
Roberts described the process of writing the Seth books as entering a trance state. She said Seth would assume control of her body and speak through her, while her husband wrote down the words she spoke. They referred to such episodes as "readings" or "sessions." The 26th session on Feb. 18, 1964, was the first held in the presence of another person—a friend.
On Jan. 17, 1964, Roberts channeled an allegedly recently deceased woman who told Butts that his and his wife's work with Seth was a life-time project, that they would publish his manuscripts, and help spread his ideas. At the 27th session Seth also told the couple how to rearrange the furniture in their apartment which would better suit their energies. Despite feelings of disbelief toward both messages, the couple somewhat reluctantly agreed. Two days afterward they heard from a psychologist interested in reincarnation to whom they had written three weeks earlier with some session copies enclosed. The psychologist told them that the very fluency of the material suggested that it might come from Roberts' subconscious, though it was impossible to tell. He also cautioned that in some circumstances, amateur mediumship could lead to mental problems.
The letter upset her but helped her deal with her doubts. She felt there were no "alarming changes" in her personality. "I was doing twice the creative work I had done earlier. I was satisfied with the quality of the Seth Material; it was far superior to anything I could do on my own. If nothing else, I thought the sessions presented a way of making deeply unconscious knowledge available on a consistent basis."
"Because we were so innocent about psychic literature, we weren't hampered by superstitious fears about such [psychic] phenomena. I didn't believe in gods or demons, so I didn't fear them. I wanted to learn. Rob and I had discovered a whole new world together, and we were going to explore it."
Roberts assumed Seth was a subconscious fantasy, personified because she did not believe in spirits or life after death. She monitored her personality characteristics and went to a psychologist. But she felt that "Seth seemed far more mature and well-balanced than the psychologist, so finally I stopped worrying. This is not to say the experience did not cause certain strains and stresses that could accompany any worthwhile venture in an entirely new field."
Roberts also purportedly channeled the world views of several other people, including the philosopher William James, Rembrandt, and the Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, through a process she described as using a typewriter to write "automatically."
For 21 years until Roberts' death in 1984 (with a one-year hiatus due to her final illness), Roberts held more than 1500 regular or private "ESP class" trance sessions in which she spoke on behalf of Seth. Butts served as the stenographer, taking the messages down in shorthand he had made up, having others on occasion make recording of some sessions. The messages from Seth channeled through Roberts consisted mostly of monologues on a wide variety of topics. They were published by Prentice-Hall under the collective title Seth Material.
Over the years, hundreds of people witnessed Roberts channeling "Seth". Some went to the ESP classes Roberts held (Tuesday and some Thursday nights, Sept. 1967 – Feb. 1975) for an evening, others attended for longer periods. (By this time Jane had given up her gallery work, and was teaching nursery school during part of this time.) Outside of the ESP class structure, Roberts gave many personal Seth sessions to various individuals who had written her, asking for help. She never charged for those sessions; however, at some point, she did charge $2.50 to $3.50 per ESP class of 5 to 40 people. When the books began to sell in sufficient numbers, she dropped that fee. Book sessions were almost always private, held on Monday and Wednesday evenings without witnesses from 1967 through 1982 (except for Tues and Thurs from Aug. to Nov. 1981).
The material through 1969 was published in summary form in The Seth Material, written by Roberts from the output of the channeling sessions. Beginning in January 1970, Roberts wrote books which she described as dictated by Seth. Roberts claimed no authorship of these books beyond her role as a medium. This series of "Seth books" totaled ten volumes. The last two books appear to be incomplete due to Roberts' illness. Butts contributed extensive footnotes, appendices, and other comments to all the Seth books, and thus was a co-author on all of them. These additions describe what was going on in Roberts' and his life at the time of the various sessions, annotated in light of contemporary beliefs and materials he and Roberts were reading, described excerpts from some fan mail and letters from professionals commenting on Seth's material about their fields, and, especially later, provided insight as to the many steps of production of multiple books with the publisher. By February 1982 they were still receiving "from 30 to 50 letters and packages a week" from readers of their various books.
Some of Roberts' earlier and later poetry was occasionally included to show how she had touched upon some of Seth's concepts. Roberts also wrote The Oversoul Seven trilogy to explore via fiction some of Seth's teachings on the concepts of reincarnation and oversouls.
According to Roberts, Seth described himself as an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical matter," and was independent of Roberts' subconscious. Roberts initially expressed skepticism as to Seth's origins, wondering if he was a part of her own personality. While speaking as Seth, Roberts at times appeared stern, jovial, or professorial. "His" voice was deeper and more masculine sounding than Jane's and was possessed of a distinct, although not identifiable, accent. Unlike the psychic Edgar Cayce, whose syntax when speaking in trance was antiquated and convoluted, Roberts' syntax and sentence structures were modern and clear when speaking as Seth. Later books continued to develop but did not contradict the material introduced in earlier works. Some "Practice Elements" were even included on how a few of the concepts could be practically experienced.
A few contemporary world events were commented upon, such as the Jonestown Guyana deaths and the Three Mile Island accident.
Seth also provided an alternative creation myth to that of the Big Bang or Intelligent Design.
Roberts' father died in November 1971 at the age of 68; her mother died six months later at the same age. In early 1982 Roberts spent a month in the hospital for severely underactive thyroid gland, protruding eyes and double vision, an almost total hearing loss, a slight anemia, budding bedsores—and a hospital-caused staph infection. She recovered to an extent, but died two and a half years later in 1984, having been bedridden with severe arthritis-like her mother—for the final year and a half of her life. Roberts had spent 504 consecutive days in a hospital in Elmira, N.Y. The immediate causes of her death were a combination of protein depletion, osteomyelitis, and soft-tissue infections. These conditions arose out of her long-standing rheumatoid arthritis. (Butts believed for some 15 years that in Roberts' case, at least, the young girl's psychological conditioning was far more important—far more damaging, in those terms—than any physical tendency to inherit the disease.) Roberts was cremated the next day, in a process, she and Butts had agreed upon several years earlier.
After Roberts' death, recorded in The Way Toward Health (1997), Butts continued his work as a guardian of the Seth texts and continued to supervise the publication of some of the remaining material, including The Early Sessions, making sure all of the recordings, manuscripts, notes, and drawings would be given to the Yale Library. Butts remarried, and his second wife, Laurel Lee Davies, supported his work during the more than 20 years they were together and helped answer mail and proofread manuscripts. Butts died of cancer on May 26, 2008. Jane Roberts Butts and Robert F. Butts Jr. are interred together in the Wayne County, NY Furnaceville cemetery; however, there is another gravestone with their names on it in the Sunnyside cemetery in Tunkhannock, PA. A number of groups have compiled anthologies of quotes from Seth, summarized sections of his teachings, issued copies of Seth sessions on audio tape, and further relayed the material via classes and conventions.
Reception and influence
Seth's effect upon New Age thinkers has been profound. The title jacket of "The Nature of Personal Reality, A Seth Book," republished in 1994 (Amber-Allen/New World Library), contains testimonials from some of the most notable thinkers and writers within the movement. Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra, Shakti Gawain, Dan Millman, Louise Hay, Richard Bach, and others express the effect the Seth Material had upon their own awakening. In words similar to Williamson's they state: "Seth was one of my first metaphysical teachers. He remains a constant source of knowledge and inspiration in my life." Catherine L. Albanese, professor of religious history at the University of Chicago, stated that in the 1970s the Seth Material "launched an era of nationwide awareness" of the channeling trend. She believes it contributed to the "self-identity of an emergent New Age movement and also augment[ed] its ranks."
John P. Newport, in his study of the impact of New Age beliefs on contemporary culture, described the central focus of the Seth material as the idea that for each individual: "you create your own reality." (Briefly summarized, our beliefs generate emotions that trigger our memories and organize our associations. Eventually, those beliefs become manifested in our physical lives and health.) Newport wrote that this foundational concept of the New Age movement was first developed in the "Seth Material." Historian Robert C. Fuller, a professor of religious studies at Bradley University, wrote that Seth filled the role of guide for what Fuller called "unchurched American spirituality," related to concepts of reincarnation, karma, free will, ancient metaphysical wisdom, and "Christ consciousness."
Some writers noted, "Husband Robert Butts stated that similarities exist between Seth's ideas and those of various religious, philosophical, and mystical doctrines from the Near, Middle, or Far East… and we've done a little reading on Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, and Taoism, for example, not to mention subjects like shamanism, voodooism, and obeah."
New Age writer Michael Talbot wrote, "To my great surprise—and slight annoyance—I found that Seth eloquently and lucidly articulated a view of reality that I had arrived at only after great effort and an extensive study of both paranormal phenomena and quantum physics."
The Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives maintains a collection entitled Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090), which documents the career and personal life of Jane Roberts, including journals, poetry, correspondence, audio, and video recordings, and other materials donated after her death by Roberts' husband and other individuals and organizations. Yale University's collection entitled "Jane Roberts papers" occupies 164.08 linear feet of shelf space and is contained in 498 boxes.
Criticism
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.
Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production—at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency."
Some religious groups have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. John MacArthur, host of a syndicated Christian talk show, considers The Seth Material to be "a book entirely written by a demon.", while the New Age Urantia Foundation considers the book evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books – Allowed By The Media claimed that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board."
Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and
Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay."
Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts.
Complete writings
Books:
Roberts, Jane (1966). How To Develop Your ESP Power. Publisher: Federick Fell. (Later retitled and reprinted as The Coming of Seth.) .
Roberts, Jane (1970). The Seth Material. Reprinted, 2001 by New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1972). Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul. Reprinted 1994 by Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1974). The Nature of Personal Reality. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1976). Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 1. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 2. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1978). The Afterdeath Journal of An American Philosopher: The World View of William James. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). Emir's Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers. Prentice-Hall. . Children's literature.
Roberts, Jane (1979). The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1996, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1981). The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Prentice-Hall, . Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing, .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Oversoul Seven Trilogy. Amber-Allen Publishing. . Edition: Paperback; May 1, 1995 (originally published as three separate books: The Education of Oversoul 7 (1973); The Further Education of Oversoul Seven (1979); Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time (1984)).
Roberts, Jane (1981). The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto. Prentice-Hall. . Reprinted 2000, Moment Point Press. .
Roberts, Jane (1982). If We Live Again, Or, Public Magic and Private Love. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1986). Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment. Prentice-Hall, two volumes, and .
Roberts, Jane (1986). Seth, Dreams and Projections of Consciousness. Stillpoint Publishing.
(1993). A Seth Reader. Vernal Equinox Press. Compendium edited by Richard Roberts. .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Magical Approach : Seth Speaks About the Art of Creative Living. Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1997). The Way Toward Health. Robert F. Butts (Foreword), Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (2006). The World View of Rembrandt. New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1997 and after). The Early Sessions (Sessions 1 through 510 of the Seth Material). New Awareness Network. Edited by Robert Butts. Nine volumes. .
Roberts, Jane (2003). The Personal Sessions. New Awareness Network. Deleted session material. Seven volumes. .
Roberts. Jane. The Early Class Sessions. New Awareness Network. Four volumes.
Short Stories and novellas:
Roberts, Jane. "Prayer of a Wiser People" in Profile, 1950.
Roberts, Jane. "The Red Wagon" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1956 (republished 1993, Reality Change Magazine; anthologized in 1975, Ladies of Fantasy).
Roberts, Jane. "The Canvas Pyramid" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958).
Roberts, Jane. "First Communion" in Fantastic Universe, 1957.
Roberts, Jane. "The Chestnut Beads" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958; anthologized in Triple W: Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves, 1963).
Roberts, Jane. "The Bundu" (novella, sequel to "The Chestnut Beads") in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958.
Roberts, Jane. "A Demon at Devotions" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Winter 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "Nightmare" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959.
Roberts, Jane. "Impasse" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959 (Spanish anthology edition ca. 1960).
Roberts, Jane. "Three Times Around" in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1964 (anthologized in Earth Invaded, 1982).
Roberts, Jane. "The Big Freeze" in Dude, 1965 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Summer 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "The Mission," purchased by Topper magazine in August 1965. (Publication not yet confirmed.)
Poetry Submissions:
"Time" in The Saratogian [Saratoga Springs, NY], 1947 Mar 19.
"Enigma" in The Saratogian, 1947 Mar 19.
"Spring Gaiety" in The Saratogian, 1947 Apr 26.
"Rain" in Profile [Skidmore College literary magazine], December, 1947.
"Pretense" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Code" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Skyscrapers" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Introvert" in Profile, May, 1948.
"Poem" in Profile, May, 1948.
"How Public Like a Frog" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Motorcycle Ride" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Echo" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Death Stood at the Door" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Compromise" in Profile, May, 1949.
"I Shall Die in the Springtime." Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Lyric" Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Matilda" in Quicksilver, Spring, 1960.
"It is Springtime, Grandfather." Epos., v.12, n.3, Spring 1961.
"The Familiar." Bitterroot. v.1, n.2, Winter 1962.
"I Saw a Hand" in Treasures of Parnassus: Best Poems of 1962, Young Publications, 1962 (reprinted in The Elmira Star-Gazette, 1962).
"My Grandfather's World." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Lullaby." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Beware, October." Epos. v.16, n.1, Fall 1964.
"This Wrist, This Hand." Epos. v.16, n.4, Summer 1965.
"The Game." New Lantern Club Review. n.2, Summer 1965.
"The Flowers." Steppenwolf. n.1, Winter 1965–1966.
"Vision." Dust/9. v.3, n.1, Fall 1966.
"Who Whispers Yes." Dust/12. v.3, n.4, Spring 1969.
"Hi, Low, and Psycho." Excerpts published in Reality Change, Third Quarter, 1996.
See also
Stewart Edward White
Modal realism
Counterpart theory
Eternalism
New Thought
References
External links
Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Includes both published and unpublished materials
Seth Center Index to the Early Sessions
Seth Learning Center An overview of titles and related audio clips, New Awareness Network
Nirvikalpa Archive of over 1500 quotations and excerpts from the Seth Material
'The Problem of Seth's Origin: A Case Study of the Trance-Possession Mediumship of Jane Roberts' by Paul Cunningham
List of Seth Sessions by Mary Dillman
Index of Eleven Seth Books by Sue R. Williams
Seth Talk - by Lynda Madden Dahl
1929 births
1984 deaths
20th-century American poets
American children's writers
American motivational writers
Women motivational writers
American psychics
American spiritual mediums
American women poets
Channellers
Consciousness researchers and theorists
Deaths from arthritis
New Age writers
People from Saratoga Springs, New York
Skidmore College alumni
American women children's writers
20th-century American women writers
American women non-fiction writers
Women's page journalists
| true |
[
"Compliance gaining is a term used in the social sciences that encompasses the intentional act of altering another's behavior. Research in this area originated in the field of social psychology, but communication scholars have also provided ample research in compliance gaining. While persuasion focuses on attitudes and beliefs, compliance gaining focuses on behavior.\n\nOverview\nCompliance gaining occurs whenever a person intentionally induces another person to do something that they might have not done otherwise. Compliance gaining and persuasion are related; however, they are not one and the same. Changes in attitudes and beliefs are often the goal in persuasion; compliance gaining seeks to change the behavior of a target. It is not necessary to change a person's attitude or beliefs to gain compliance. For instance, an automobile driver might have positive attitudes towards driving fast. The threat of a speeding ticket from a police officer positioned in a speed trap may gain compliance from the driver. Conversely, persuading someone to change their attitude or belief will not necessarily gain compliance. A doctor might tell a patient that tobacco use poses a serious threat to a smoker's health. The patient may accept this as a fact and view smoking negatively, but might also continue to use tobacco.\n\nDevelopments\nCompliance gaining research has its roots in social psychology, but overlaps with many other disciplines such as communication and sociology. Compliance gaining can occur via mediated channels, but the research is most associated with interpersonal communication. In 1967, sociologists Marwell and Schmitt attempted to explain how people select compliance gaining messages. The researchers posited that people have a mental bank of strategies that they draw from when selecting a message. Marwell and Schmitt created a typology for compliance gaining techniques: promise, threat, positive expertise, negative expertise, liking, pregiving, aversive stimulation, debt, moral appeal, positive self-feeling, negative self-feeling, positive altercasting, negative altertcasting, altruism, positive esteem, and negative esteem. This study was the catalyst for more interest in compliance gaining from communication scholars.\n\nMiller, Boster, Roloff, and Seibold (1977) as well as Cody and McLaughlin (1980) studied the situational variables that influences compliance gaining strategies. The latter study identified six different typologies of situations that can influence compliance gaining behaviors: personal benefits (how much personal gain an actor can yield from the influencing behavior), dominance (the power relation between the actor and the target), rights (whether the actor has the right to expect compliance), resistance (how easy will the target be influenced), intimacy (whether the relation between actor and target is shallow), and consequences (what sort of effect this situation would have on the relationship between actor and target). Dillard and Burgoon (1985) later investigated the Cody-McLaughlin typologies. They concluded that situational variables, as described by Cody and McLaughlin, did very little to predict compliance gaining strategy selection. As early as 1982, there was already strong criticism about the strength of the relationships between situational variables and compliance gaining message selection.\n\nBy the 1990s, many research efforts attempting to link compliance gaining strategy selection and features of a situation or features of the individual \"failed to coalesce into a coherent body of knowledge\". Situational dimensions and individual differences were not effective in predicting so researchers went into other perspectives in an effort to understand compliance gaining. For instance, Schrader and Dillard (1998) linked primary and secondary goals to compliance gaining strategy. Using the theoretical framework of Goals-Plans-Actions developed by Dillard in 1980, Schrader and Dillard operate from the assumption that individuals possess and act on multiple goals. In any compliance seeking situation, the actor has primary goals that drive the attempt to influence a target. The primary goal is what the interaction is all about. For instance, if an actor wants a target to stop smoking, this is the primary goal and this is what drives the interaction. However, in the course of pursuing that goal, there are \"secondary\" goals to consider. These are goals that limit the behavior of the actor. If getting a target to stop smoking is the primary goal, then a secondary goal might be to maintain a friendly relationship with the target. Dillard specifies five types of secondary goals that temper the compliance gaining behavior: identity goals (morals and personal standards), interaction goals (impression management), relational resource goals (relationship management), personal resource goals (material concerns of the actor), and arousal management goals (efforts to manage anxiety about the compliance gaining attempt).\n\nDespite the charges of individual differences making very little progress in prediction compliance gaining strategies, some researchers in the 2000s have focused their efforts to rectify this weakness in the research to link individual differences with compliance gaining effectiveness. King (2001), acknowledging the paucity of robust situational and trait studies linked to compliance gaining, attempted to isolate one situation as a predictor for compliance gaining message selection. King's research suggested that when target of compliance gaining were perceived to be less resistant to influence attempts, the actors used more compliance gaining tactics. When targets were perceived as strongly resistant, the actors used less tactics. Elias and Loomis (2004) found that gender and race affect an instructor's ability to gain compliance in a college classroom. Punyanunt (2000) found that using humor may enhance the effectiveness of pro-social compliance gaining techniques in the classroom. Remland and Jones (1994) found that vocal intensity and touch also affect compliance gaining. Goei et al. (2003) posited that \"feelings of liking\" between target and actor as well as doing favors for the target lead to liking and obligation, which leads to increased compliance. Pre-giving (giving a target a small gift or favor such as a free sample of food) is positively associated with increased compliance in strangers. \nOne of the major criticisms of examining compliance gaining literature is that very little research studies actual compliance. Filling out a survey and reporting intent to comply with a request is certainly different than actually completing the request. For example, many people might report that they will comply with a doctor's order, but away from the doctor's office, they may ignore medical advice.\n\nApplication\nCompliance gaining research has a fairly diverse background so much of the research uses alternate paradigms and perspectives. As mentioned above, the field of compliance gaining originated in social psychology, but was adopted by many communication scholars as well. Many fields from consumer psychology to primary education pedagogy have taken great interest in compliance gaining.\n\nMedicine \nDoctors have expressed much frustration with compliance resistance from their patients. A reported 50% of patients do not comply with medical advice and prescriptions. Researchers, as well as medical professionals, have a vested interest in learning strategies that can increase compliance in their patients. Many severe and chronic conditions can be avoided if early treatments are followed as prescribed, avoiding death, permanent injury, and costlier medical treatments later on. Researchers in communication have reported some key findings such as: clear and effective communication about a patient's condition or illness increases the likelihood of patient compliance with medical advice; doctors that use humor in their communication with patients have higher satisfaction rates; high satisfaction rates with physicians is highly correlated with patient compliance.\n\nPedagogy \nFor teachers, gaining compliance from students is a must for effective teaching. Studies in compliance gaining have ranged from elementary education all the way to adult and higher education.\n\nSales and consumer psychology \nAdvertising and marketing are tools of persuasion. There is literally centuries' worth of literature available about persuasion. However, changing attitudes and beliefs about a product does not necessarily change behaviors. Purchasing a product is a behavior. Researchers such as Parrish-Sprowl, Carveth, & Senk (1994) have applied compliance gaining research to effective sales.\n\nCompliance\nCompliance gaining was not originally conceived in the field of communication but found its roots in the late 1960s as a result of studies and research by two sociologists, Gerald Marwell and David Schmitt. In 1967, Marwell and Schmitt produced some interesting compliance-gaining tactics concerning the act of getting a teenager to study. The tactics, sixteen in all, are as follows.\n\n Promise: If you comply, I will reward you. For example, you offer to increase Dick's allowance if he studies more.\n Threat: If you do not comply, I will punish you. For example, you threaten to forbid Dick to use the car if he doesn't start studying more.\n Expertise (positive): If you comply, you will be rewarded because of the \"nature of things.\" For example, you tell Dick that if he gets good grades he be able to get into college and get a good job.\n Expertise (negative): If you do not comply, you will be punished because of the \"nature of things.\" For example, you tell Dick that if he does not get good grades he will not be able to get into college or get a good job.\n Liking: Act friendly and helpful to get the person in a \"good frame of mind\" so they comply with the request. For example, you try to be as friendly and pleasant as possible to put Dick in a good mood before asking him to study.\n Pre-giving: Reward the person before requesting compliance. For example, raise Dick's allowance and tell him you now expect him to study.\n Aversive stimulation: Continuously punish the person, making cessation contingent on compliance. For example, you tell Dick he may not use the car until he studies more.\n Debt: You owe me compliance because of past favors. For example, you point out that you have sacrificed and saved to pay for Dick's education and that he owes it to you to get good enough grades to get into a good college.\n Moral appeal: You are immoral if you do not comply. You tell Dick that it is morally wrong for anyone not to get as good grades as possible and that he should study more.\n Self-feeling (positive): You will feel better about yourself if you comply. For example, you tell Dick that he will feel proud if he gets himself to study more.\n Self-feeling (negative): You will feel worse about yourself if you do not comply. For example, you tell Dick that he will feel ashamed of himself if he gets bad grades.\n Altercasting (positive): A person with \"good\" qualities would comply. For example, you tell Dick that because he is a mature and intelligent person he naturally will want to study more and get good grades.\n Altercasting (negative): Only a person with \"bad\" qualities would not comply. For example, you tell Dick that he should study because only someone very childish does not study.\n Altruism: I need your compliance very badly, so do it for me. For example, you tell Dick that you really want very badly for him to get into a good college and that you wish he would study more as a personal favor to you.\n Esteem (positive): People you value will think better of you if you comply. For example, you tell Dick that the whole family will be very proud of him if he gets good grades.\n Esteem (negative): People you value will think the worse of you if you do not comply. For example, you tell Dick that the whole family will be very disappointed in him if he gets poor grades.\n\nIn 1967, Marwell and Schmitt conducted experimental research, using the sixteen compliance gaining tactics and identified five basic compliance-gaining strategies: Rewarding activity, Punishing activity, Expertise, Activation of impersonal commitments, and Activation of personal commitments.\n\nPower\nAnother element of compliance-gaining was produced in the early 1960s, as French and Raven were researching the concepts of power, legitimacy, and politeness. They identified five influential aspects associated with power, which help illustrate elements of the study of compliance. The fives bases of power are as follows:\n\n Reward Power: A person with reward power has control over some valued resource (e.g., promotions and raises).\n Coercive Power: A person with coercive power has the ability to inflict punishments (e.g., fire you).\n Expert Power: Expert power is based on what a person knows (e.g., you may do what a doctor tells you to do because they know more about medicine than you do).\n Legitimate Power: Legitimate power is based on formal rank or position (e.g., you obey someone's commands because they are the vice president in the company for which you work).\n Referent Power: People have referent power when the person they are trying to influence wants to be like them (e.g., a mentor often has this type of power).\n\n(French & Raven, 1960)\n\nTechniques\nThe study of compliance gaining has been central in the development of many commonly used or heard of techniques. The following techniques are a few of what has evolved as a product of the study of compliance gaining strategies. Note, many of these techniques have been empirically documented increasing compliance.\n\nFoot-in-the-door (FITD) \n\nWith research starting in 1966 by Freedman & Fraser, foot-in-the door is one of the earliest and most researched compliance gaining techniques. This technique gains compliance by making a smaller easy request then a larger more difficult request at a later time. The smaller request is usually one that would be widely accepted without scrutiny. The larger request is usually the actual the task or goal wanted to be completed.\n\nEffectivity \nFreedman and Fraser thought that after satisfying the smaller initial request, if the person was not forced to do then they must be \"the type of person who fulfills such requests\".\n\nThe smaller task/request should relate to the larger request and not be trivial. For the foot-in-the-door technique to be successful it must generate the self-aware \"I am the kind of person who fulfills this type of request\" other wise known as the self-perception theory. Other studies found that if the initial request is easy but unusual or bizarre, it would also generate the foot-in-the-door effectiveness. This idea was developed further into the Disrupt-Then-Reframe technique.\n\nThere are other reasons besides the self-perception theory that makes the foot-in-the-door technique successful.\n\nConsistency – Cialdini and Guadagno, Asher, and Demaine believe that what makes people want to fulfill larger request is the need to be consistent.\n\nThe Norm to Help Others – Harris believed that after the first request, the norm to help others becomes clear. It only becomes evident after the person reviews his or her reason why they completed the original request.\n\nSatisfying the First Request – Crano and Sivacek thought what made the technique so effective was personal satisfaction. \"The person learns that the fulfillment of request brings the reward of a positive experience. One may assume that the likelihood that satisfaction of this type appears willi increase if the person has to react to something unusual that awakens his or her mindfulness, and will decrease in situations in which the person reacts automatically and habitually\".\n\nDoor-in-the-face (DITF) \n\nDoor-in-the-face was first introduced in 1975 by Cialdini and colleagues. The opposite of foot-in-the-door, in the door-in-the-face technique, the requestor asks a large objectionable request which is denied by the target instead of gaining compliance by asking a smaller easy request. The requestor seeking compliance ask a smaller more reasonable request.\n\nThere are several theories that explain why door-in-the-face is an effective gaining compliance technique.\n\nSelf-presentation theory – \"that individuals will comply with a second request due to fears one will be perceived negatively by rejecting successive prosocial request for compliance\".\n\nReciprocal concessions – this theory describes the effects of door-in-the-face as a \"process of mutual concessions\". \"The second request represents a concession on the part of the sender (from his or her initial request), and compliance to the second request represents a concession on the part of the receiver (from his or her inclination to not comply with the first request)\".\n\nGuilt – One reason that makes door-in-the-face such an effective technique is people feel guilty for refusing to comply with a request twice.\n\nSocial Responsibility – this theory describes the social repercussions and pressures that occur if an individual declines a request.\n\nAll together the theories propose that a target who declines the first request feel a \"personal or social responsibility\" to comply with the second request. In an effort to avoid feeling guilty or reduce the sense of obligation the target would have.\n\nRecent techniques\n\nDisrupt-then-reframe (DTR) \nDTR was first introduced by Barbara Price Davis and Eric S. Knowles in 1999. This technique states that a person will be more likely to comply with a request if the initial request or pitch is confusing. The pitch is immediately followed by a reframing or a reason to comply with the request.\n\nAn example of this technique is: A waiter states that \"the steak dinner is on special for 800 pennies; it's a really good deal\". Disrupting the couple by saying \"800 pennies\" instead of \"8 dollars\", the waiter is able to increase the likelihood that they will buy the steak dinner.\n\nDTR was found to be a very effective way to gain compliance in non-profit instances such as raising money for charities or asking people to take a survey. DTR was found to be less successful as a sales technique; this may be because the message is more scrutinized, making it harder to confuse the target.\n\nPersistence \nPersistence used as a compliance gaining technique, gets the target to comply by repeating the message. In 1979, Cacioppo and Petty found that repeating the message more than five times lead to decrease in compliance. Success is enhanced if the repetition comes from more than one person and is enhanced further if the message has the same idea or meaning but is not exact.\n\nAn example of this technique would be: \"My wife kept reminding me to take out the trash until I finally did it.\"\n\nDump and chase (DAC) \nPersistence has a high probability of annoying the target and creating a negative interaction which could be viewed as \"nagging\". A way to avoid this would be rejecting the targets objection to your request by asking \"why not?\", then forming another message to overcome the second objection to gain compliance. This technique is called dump and chase.\n\nMechanics of this technique are urgency and guilt. When the repeated message is presented to the target it may be perceived as urgent, thus making it seem more important, and more willing to comply. By creating a sense of obligation in the request, the target may develop guilt if not willing to comply.\n\nJust-One-More (JOM) \nJust-One-More was developed as a way to make a donation seem more important. The use of this technique involves using the language of \"Just-One-More\" to gain compliance. The technique is found to be most useful in instances regarding volunteering and donations. It is seen as \"the last person to help will be more rewarding than being one of the first or those in the middle, due to the expectation that the requestor will appreciate the last person more than any of those who complied previously\".\nFor Example: \"Do you want to buy this car? I need just one more sale to reach my quota this month.\"\n\nIf the target finds that the requestor is lying or being deceptive about being the last one, it will create a negative outlook on the person and the organization that he or she represents. Even though losing some of the effectiveness the requestor could state that they are \"close to their goal\" or \"almost there\".\n\n64 compliance gaining strategies \nIn \"Classifying Compliance Gaining Messages: Taxonomic Disorder and Strategic Confusion\", Kathy Kellermann and Tim Cole put together 64 compliance gaining strategies as an attempt to classify more than 820 previous strategies.\n Actor Takes Responsibility: Try to get others to comply by stating your willingness to help them or even work on the request yourself. That is, try to gain their compliance by offering to do it yourself as a means of getting them to do what you want. Example: \"Is there anything I can do to so you can finish the project on time?\"\n Altercasting (Negative): Try to get others to comply by pointing out that only a bad person would not do what is wanted. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that only a person with negative qualities wouldn't comply. Example: \"You should stop watching these types of television shows as only a disturbed person would like them.\" \n Altercasting (Positive): Try to get others to comply by pointing out that a good person would do what is wanted. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that any person with positive qualities would comply. Example: \"A good boy would eat all his vegetables.\"\n Altruism: Try to get others to comply by asking them to give you a hand out of the goodness of their heart. That is, try to gain their compliance by asking them to be altruistic and just do it for you. Example: \"Could you help me move, I would really appreciate it.\"\n Assertion: Try to get others to comply by asserting (forcefully stating) what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by demanding (commanding) them to comply. Example: \"Go get a bandaid now!\"\n Audience-Use: Try to get others to comply by having a group of other people present when you make your request. That is, try to gain their compliance by asking them in front of other people as a way to back up your request. Example: \"I asked her to go to the prom with me in front of her friends.\" \n Authority Appeal: Try to get others to comply on the basis of the authority that you or other people have. That is, try to gain their compliance by using or relying on a position of power over them to get them do to what you want. Example: \"My boss told me to get him the reports by 10 am so I did.\"\n Aversive Stimulation: Try to get others to comply by doing things they don't like until they agree to comply. That is, try to gain their compliance by bothering them until they do what you want. Example: \"My co-worker kept bothering me to quit smoking until I finally did.\"\n Bargaining: Try to get others to comply by striking a bargain with them. That is, try to gain their compliance by negotiating a deal where you each do something for the other so everyone gets what they want. Example: \"If you help me with the dishes, I will help you with the laundry.\"\n Benefit (Other): Try to get others to comply by telling them people other than themselves would benefit if they do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out how it helps people other than themselves if they comply. Example: \"By donating to our fundraiser, You ensure that everyone will have a coat this winter.\"\nBenefit (Self): Try to get others to comply by telling them you personally would benefit if they do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out how it helps oneself if they comply. Example: \"If you helped me with the yard work, then I won't get a ticket by the city tomorrow.\"\nBenefit (Target): Try to get others to comply by telling them they personally would benefit if they do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out how it helps them if they comply. Example: \"If you go grocery shopping for me tonight then you will have something for lunch tomorrow.\"\nChallenge: Try to get others to comply by challenging them to do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by provoking, stimulating, tempting, goading, and/or galvanizing them to comply. Example: I didn't want to race until his car pulled beside mine and he revved the engine. \nCompliment: Try to get others to comply by complimenting them on their abilities or accomplishments. That is, try to gain their compliance by praising them to get them to do what you want. Example: With that jump shot, you would be really good at basketball. \nCompromise: Try to get others to comply by offering to compromise with them. That is, try to gain their compliance by making a concession to them so they'll make their concession to you and do what you want. Example: \"I will drop you off at the airport if you will go to the dentist with me.\"\n Cooperation: Try to get others to comply by being cooperative and collaborating with them. That is, try to gain their compliance not by telling the other person what to do but by offering to discuss things and work them out together. Example: \"We should get the team together and brainstorm new ideas for this problem.\"\nCriticize: Try to get others to comply by criticizing them. That is, try to gain their compliance by attacking them on a personal level to get them to do what you want. Example: \"It looks like you're really gaining some weight, why don't you go on a run with me.\"\nDebasement: Try to get others to comply by acting pitiful and pleading. That is, try to gain their compliance by debasing, demeaning, degrading, devaluing, humiliating, and/or lowering yourself so as to deprive yourself of esteem or self-worth to get them to do what you want. Example: \"I am so stupid, I can't believe I deleted the report. Can you please go delay the presentation.\" \nDebt: Try to get others to comply by reminding them they are in debt to you because of things you have done for them in the past. That is, try to gain their compliance by indicating that they owe it to you to do what you want. Example: \"You should paid for my lunch, I bought your lunch last time.\"\nDeceit: Try to get others to comply by misleading them. That is, try to gain their compliance by lying to or deceiving them. Example: \"We told them the car was in perfect working order, but the transmission is about to go out.\"\nDirect Request: Try to get others to comply by just making a direct request. That is, try to gain their compliance by simply asking or stating what you want without giving any reasons for them to comply. Example: \"Can I use the computer?\"\nDisclaimer (Norms/Rules): Try to get others to comply by downplaying or disavowing restrictions and constraints that might prevent them from doing what you want them to do. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that otherwise applicable procedures, rules, norms, and/or expectations should be broken in this instance. Example: \"You should drive faster than the speed limit, this is an emergency!\"\nDisclaimer (Other): Try to get others to comply by downplaying or disavowing the ability of anyone else to do so. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that other people can't help you or do what is needed. Example: \"I would ask Ted for his help but we know that he is not good at presentations.\"\nDisclaimer (Self): Try to get others to comply by downplaying or disavowing your reasons for asking. That is, try to gain their compliance by indicating that: (a) you don't want to make a bad impression nor do you have bad intentions, (b) you don't really want to make the request and you are only doing so reluctantly, and/or (c) you simply have no choice but to make the request. Example: \"I'm sorry that I am asking you for money, I'm really not a beggar.\"\nDisclaimer (Target): Try to get others to comply by acknowledging and sympathizing with why they may not want to do so. That is, try to gain their compliance by indicating that: (a) you understand and are aware of their reasons, feelings, and abilities, and/or (b) that you are sensitive to their needs and concerns even though you must ask them to do what you want. Example: \"I know that you're disappointed that you can't go on the trip, but do you mind helping me get the presentation ready?\"\nDisclaimer (Task): Try to get others to comply by downplaying what you are asking them to do. That is, try to gain their compliance by indicating that what you want them to do isn't what they think it is and shouldn't pose a problem; it isn't awful, effortful, difficult, or dumb. Example: \"Updating the database shouldn't take that much time.\"\nDisclaimer (Time): Try to get others to comply by downplaying or disavowing being busy as a reason to refuse your request. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that there is or soon will be enough time for them to do what you want. Example: \"We should go to the store now, you can finish your report later.\"\nDuty: Try to get others to comply by pointing out it is their duty to do so. That is, try to gain their compliance by stating they should fulfill obligations, responsibilities, and commitments that they have. Example: \"Taking out the trash at the end of the day is a part of your job.\"\nEquity: Try to get others to comply on the grounds that it is equitable to do so. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that being fair, just, and impartial means they should do what you want. Example: \"Your brother cleaned the house last time; it's your turn now.\"\nEsteem (Negative) by Others: Try to get others to comply by pointing out that, if they do not do so, other people will think worse of them. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that in the eyes of others they will be viewed more negatively if they don't do what you want. Example: \"If you don't go to that college, other people will think you're going to a party school.\"\nEsteem (Positive) by Others: Try to get others to comply by pointing out that, if they do so, other people will think better of them. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that in the eyes of others they will be viewed more positively if they do what you want. Example: \"If you play football, everyone will think that you're really tough.\"\nEsteem (Negative) by Actor: Try to get others to comply by pointing out that, if they do not do so, you will think worse of them. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that in your eyes they will be viewed more negatively if they don't do what you want. Example: \"I would be really disappointed if you went to the party instead of studying.\"\nEsteem (Positive) by Actor: Try to get others to comply by pointing out that, if they do so, you will think better of them. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that in your eyes they will be viewed more positively if they do what you want. Example: \"If you went to law school, I would have a new level of respect for you.\"\nExpertise (Negative): Try to get others to comply by pointing out that because of the way the world works, unfavorable things will happen if they don't change their behavior. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that in the natural course of things, bad outcomes will occur if they don't do what you want. Example: \"You will get the flu, if you don't get a flu shot.\"\nExpertise (Positive): Try to get others to comply by pointing out that because the way the world works, favorable things will happen if they change their behavior. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that in the natural course of things, good outcomes will occur if they do what you want. Example: \"If you work hard at your job, you're sure to get that promotion.\"\nHinting: Try to get others to comply by hinting around at what you want them to do. That is, try to gain their compliance by indicating indirectly what you want, hoping they will figure it out and comply even though you never come out and really say it. Example: \"I left the trash by the front door, so Dan would take it out.\" \nI Want: Try to get others to comply for no reason other than you want them to. That is, try to gain their compliance by telling them to do what you want because you desire it. Example: \"I want you to go with me to the city.\"\nInvoke Norm: Try to get others to comply by indicating they would be out of step with the norm if they didn't do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by prodding them to conform to what others have, do, or desire. Example: \"Everyone is going to the gym after work.\"\nIt's Up to You: Try to get others to comply by telling them the decision is theirs to make and it's up to them. That is, try to gain their compliance by telling them the choice to comply is up to them. Example: \"It's up to you to save your money, instead of spending it on video games.\"\nLogical Empirical: Try to get others to comply by making logical arguments. That is, try to gain their compliance through the use of reasoning, evidence, facts, and data. Example: \"Statistics show that non-smokers live longer than smokers.\"\nMoral Appeal: Try to get others to comply by appealing to their moral or ethical standards. That is, try to gain their compliance by letting them know what is right and what is wrong. Example: \"Don't buy those shoes they are made using child labor.\"\nMy Concern for You: Try to get others to comply because of your concern for them. That is, try to gain their compliance by referring to your regard for, consideration of, interest in, and feelings for them. Example: \"Please go to the doctor, I'm worried about you.\"\nNature of Situation: Try to get others to comply by being attentive to the situation or circumstances you find yourselves in. That is, try to gain their compliance by taking note of the appropriateness of their behavior to the situation and/or the appropriateness of your request in the situation. Example: \"I told my son that the bed was not a trampoline.\" \nNegative Affect: Try to get others to comply by being really negative: expressing negative emotions, acting really unfriendly, and creating an unappealing impression. That is, try to gain their compliance by acting displeased to get them to do what you want. Example: \"Angrily, I told her to put her phone on silent after it went off in class..\"\nNot Seek Compliance: No attempt is made to get others to do what you want. That is, no compliance is sought. Example: \"I didn't ask if I could go out tonight.\"\nPersistence: Try to get others to comply by being persistent. That is, try to gain their compliance by persevering (continuing) in your attempts to get them to do what you want. Example: \"After asking for over a year, we are finally getting a pool.\"\nPersonal Expertise: Try to get others to comply by referring to your credibility (your personal expertise). That is, try to gain their compliance based on your experience, know-how, trustworthiness, and judgment. Example: \"You should get those shoes, I have them and they feel great when running. \nPositive Affect: Try to get others to comply by being really positive: expressing positive emotions, acting really friendly, and creating an appealing impression. That is, try to gain their compliance by charming them into doing what you want. Example: \"She was really happy, when she asked for a raise.\"\nPre-Giving: Try to get others to comply by doing positive and nice things for them in advance of asking them to do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by giving them things they'd like and then only afterwards making your request. Example: \"I bought my wife flowers, then later asked if I could go fishing this weekend.\"\nPromise: Try to get others to comply by making a promise. That is, try to gain their compliance by offering to give them a reward or something they'd like if they do what is wanted. Example: \"If you behave in the store, I promise that we will stop for ice cream on the way home.\"\nPromote Task: Try to get others to comply by promoting the value and worth of what you want them to do. That is, try to gain their compliance by identifying one or more positive qualities of the thing you are asking them to do (e.g., what you want them to do is important, meaningful, rewarding, enjoyable etc.). Example: \"If you complete this presentation on time, you will be less stressed and will get a good grade.\"\nSelf-Feeling (Negative): Try to get others to comply by stating that not doing so will result in an automatic decrease in their self-worth. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that they will feel worse about themselves if they don't do what you want. Example: \"You will feel bad if you throw all that food away instead of donating it.\"\nSelf-Feeling (Positive): Try to get others to comply by stating that doing so will result in an automatic increase in their self-worth. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that they will feel better about themselves if they do what you want. Example: \"You will feel better if you donate that old coat to charity instead of selling it in the garage sale.\" \nSuggest: Try to get others to comply by offering suggestions about what it is you want them to do. That is, try to gain their compliance by subtly proposing an idea that indirectly points out and describes what it is you want them to do. Example: \"Why don't you try the steak instead of the chicken?\"\nSurveillance: Try to get others to comply by indicating your awareness and observation of what they do. That is, try to gain their compliance by referring to your general vigilance, surveillance, scrutiny, and/or monitoring of their behavior. Example: \"I will find out if you're lying to me about the car accident.\" \nThird Party: Try to get others to comply by having someone else ask them for you. That is, try to gain their compliance by getting someone else to intervene and do it for you. Example: \"Jane don't you think Jim should go on that date with the girl from accounting.\" \nThis Is the Way Things Are: Try to get others to comply by telling them they have to because that is just the way things are. That is, try to gain their compliance by referring to rules, procedures, policies, or customs that require them to comply. Example: \"You should slow down since the speed limit is only 25 mph.\"\nThought Manipulation: Try to get others to comply by convincing them that the request you are making is really their own idea. That is, try to gain their compliance by having them think they were the ones who really wanted to do it in the first place. Example: \"We should go on the roller coaster, since you wanted to come to the fair in the first place.\" \nThreat: Try to get others to comply by threatening them. That is, try to gain their compliance by saying you will punish them if they don't do what you want. Example: \"If you go to the bar again tonight, consider us done.\" \nValue Appeal: Try to get others to comply because of important values that compel action in this instance. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing to central and joint beliefs that should guide what they do. Example: \"Since we both care about the ocean, we should volunteer for the cleanup.\"\nWarning: Try to get others to comply by warning them about what they are doing. That is, try to gain their compliance by alerting them to possible negative consequences of their behavior. Example: \"You might get fired if you stay up all night.\" \nWelfare (Others): Try to get others to comply by telling them how other people would be hurt if they don't do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that the welfare of other people is at stake. Example: \"If you are not going to be in the family photo then we won't take one.\" \nWhy Not?: Try to get others to comply by making them justify why they should not. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out there are no real grounds for not doing so. Example: \"Why wouldn't you help your sister?\"\nYour Concern for Me: Try to get others to comply because of their concern for you. That is, try to gain their compliance by referring to their regard for, consideration of, interest in, and feelings for you. Example: \"If you really cared for me then you would go to the dance recital.\"\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading\n \n Dillard, J.P. (2004). The goals-plans-action model of interpersonal influence. In J. S. Seiter & R. H. Gass (Eds.) Readings in persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining (pp. 185–206). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.\n French, J. P. R., Jr., & Raven, B. (1960). The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright & A. Zander (Eds.), Group dynamics (pp. 607–623). New York: Harper & Row.\n \n \n \n McQuillen, J. S., Higginbotham, D. C., & Cummings, M. C. (1984). Compliance-resisting behaviors: The effects of age, agent, and types of request. In R. N. Bostrom (Ed.), Communication yearbook 8 (pp. 747–762). Beverly Hills: SAGE.\n \n \n Wheeless, L. R., Barraclough, R., & Stewart, R. (1983). Compliance-gaining and power in persuasion. In R. Bostrom (Ed.), Communication yearbook 7 (pp. 105–145). Beverly Hills: Sage.\n\nPersuasion\nAttitude change\nSociological theories",
"...Play Nine Songs with Mr. Quintron is the third studio album by the Oblivians, released in 1997 on Crypt Records. The album features noted Ninth Ward nightclub organist Mr. Quintron playing organ and percussion on a number of tracks.\n\nOverview\nThe album's concept came about in part due to Greg Cartwright's fondness for gospel music: \"Greg had been really into black gospel music, and wanted to try some gospels songs in Oblivians fashion, but only if they were kinda screwed up. We didn't want to try to come off as religious, but we didn't want to make a joke out of the whole thing, either. It was a tribute to the spirit of the music, more the holy ghost than the saviour.\"\n\nThe album was recorded in a single day: \"Quintron took a bus up to Memphis from New Orleans for 8 hours, and we took him to my (Eric \"Oblivian\" Friedl's) house to play him some songs that we were thinking of covering.\" Mr. Quintron began arranging his contributions upon arrival, without any prior knowledge of the content of the album. \"We had sent him a tape of the songs but it never got delivered to him- so he came up not knowing what songs we wanted to do!\" The album was recorded in eight hours, at which point Mr. Quintron returned home via bus to New Orleans. \"He (Quintron) was on a bus for eight hours then in a studio for eight hours and then we took him to the bus the same day, so he had a tough 24 hours.\"\n\nThe dramatic shift in styles between this album and its predecessors was one of the reasons for the eventual break up of the band. As Greg Cartwright once explained, \"this is really why the band ended - the ...Play 9 record sounded more like a Gamblers record than an Oblivians record. I'm not sure Eric was happy with the direction of the band cause he has more of a punk rock aesthetic, but it was a good finale.\"\n\nTrack listing\n\nPersonnel\nGreg Oblivian – Lead and backing vocals, guitar\nEric Oblivian – Lead and backing vocals, guitar\nJack Oblivian – Drums, backing vocals\nMr. Quintron – Organ, percussion\n\nReferences\n\n1997 albums\nOblivians albums\nCrypt Records albums"
] |
[
"Jane Roberts",
"Criticism",
"What did this do",
"Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community.",
"What was the worst part of this",
"The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death.",
"What did this lead him to try",
"His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions."
] |
C_d6ee55992d1a4dccb608bd6eaee117e5_0
|
What did they lead them to do
| 4 |
What did Charles Upton's critique of Jane Roberts lead Roberts to do?
|
Jane Roberts
|
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions. Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production--at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency." Seth's teaching of a philosophy far more detailed than and not in keeping with traditional Church-authority, God-separate-from Creation, one-mortal-life, Jesus-centered messages has also received its share of criticism from some Christian believers. Various ministries have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. The Seth Material has been considered in certain circles to be "a book entirely written by a demon. A woman simply wrote it down as it was dictated to her by the demon; and, of course, it just destroys everything that is true in terms of God's revelation," and as evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books - Allowed By The Media protested that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board." Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay." Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts. CANNOTANSWER
|
His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.
|
Dorothy Jane Roberts (May 8, 1929 – September 5, 1984) was an American author, poet, psychic, and spirit medium, who channeled an energy personality who called himself "Seth." Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the Seth Material, established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena.
Early life and career
Roberts was born in Albany, New York and grew up in nearby Saratoga Springs, New York. Her parents, Delmer Hubbell Roberts and Marie Burdo, divorced when she was two years old. With her only child, the young Marie then returned to her own parents, and the home that the family had rented for a number of years: half of a double dwelling in a poor neighborhood. Marie had begun experiencing the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis by 1932 but worked as much as possible. Eventually, Roberts' grandfather, Joseph Burdo, with whom she shared a deep mystical identification, was unable to support two extra people, and the family had to rely upon public assistance. Roberts' grandmother was killed in an automobile accident in 1936.
The next year, her grandfather moved out of the house. By then Marie was partially incapacitated, and the Welfare Department began to furnish mother and daughter with occasional and often unreliable domestic help. When Marie became a bedridden invalid, it was Jane's responsibility to take care of her. This included cooking, cleaning, bringing her the bedpan, and getting up in the middle of the night to refuel the stove. Her embittered mother would tell Jane she was going to turn on the gas jets in the middle of the night and kill them both. When her mother attempted suicide for about the fifth time, she took sleeping pills and was in the hospital. Jane wrote that she went to the welfare worker and said, 'I can't take it anymore. I've just got to leave.'" Over and over Marie told Jane she was no good, that the daughter's birth had caused the mother's illness, and that she was disowned and considered no longer her daughter.
The persistent psychological abuse and mistreatment by her mother resulted in the young girl's deep fear of abandonment. Such situations increased Jane's sense of not being safe, yet also reinforced feelings of independence, for she did not have to feel as dependent upon Marie as she might otherwise.
Well before she was 10 years old Jane had developed persistent symptoms of colitis. By her early teens, she had an overactive thyroid gland. Her vision was poor; she required very strong glasses (which she seldom wore). For most of 1940 and half of 1941, Jane was in a strictly-run Catholic orphanage in Troy, NY while her mother was hospitalized in another city for treatment of her arthritis. Priests came to the house regularly and support was offered to the fatherless family. Jane's initial bonding to the cultural beliefs of religion was very strong to make up for the lack of a loving, nurturing family. For a time she was left between belief systems.
In the summer of 1945, when she was 16 years old, Jane began working at a variety store. It was her first job. That fall she continued on the job after school hours and on an occasional Saturday. After attending public schools she went to Skidmore College from 1947 to 1950 on a poetry scholarship. Roberts' grandfather died when she was age 19. It was a time of severe shock for her. She began to substitute scientific world view for religious belief.
At that time Jane was dating Walt Zeh, a long-time Saratoga Springs friend. Together they went to the west coast by motorcycle to see Jane's father who had also come from a broken home. Jane then married Walt and continued to write while taking a variety of other jobs, including society editor for the Saratoga newspaper, and as a supervisor in a radio factory. Walt and Jane lived together for three years. It was then in February 1954 while "cutting up, dancing, and raisin' hell at a party," that Jane first met the former commercial artist Robert Fabian Butts, Jr. (June 20, 1919 - May 26, 2008). The fourth time they met at another party and Jane 'just looked at him and said, "Look, I'm leaving Walt, and I'm going to live by myself or I'm going to live with you, so just let me know."'" Eventually the two left town together and Jane filed for divorce. Jane and Rob married on December 27, 1954 at the home of his parents in Sayre, PA.
Roberts wrote in a variety of genres: poetry, short stories, children's literature, nonfiction, science fiction, and fantasy, and novels. She was the only woman invited to the first science-fiction writer's conference in 1956 in Milford, PA.
The couple moved to Elmira, NY, in 1960, to find steady part-time work – Rob in the local greeting card company, Jane in an art gallery. Now in her 30s, she and her husband began to record what she said were messages from a personality named "Seth," and she wrote several books about the experience.
Seth Material
On a September evening in 1963, Roberts sat down at her table to work on poetry; Butts was in his back-room studio, painting. "It was very domestic, very normal, very unpsychedelic," she would later remember. And then "Between one normal minute and the next, a fantastic avalanche of radical, new ideas burst into my head with tremendous force ... It was as if the physical world were really tissue-paper-thin, hiding infinite dimensions of reality, and I was flung through the tissue paper with a huge ripping sound." When she "came to," Roberts found herself scrawling the title of this batch of notes: The Physical Universe as Idea Construction.
Before this, though her fiction typically dealt with such themes as clairvoyance and reincarnation, intellectually neither she nor Butts believed in extrasensory abilities. Yet soon after this episode, Roberts suddenly began recalling her dreams, including two that were precognitive. Their curiosity piqued, the couple decided to investigate further, and she managed to land a contract with a New York publisher for a do-it-yourself book on extra-sensory perception.
In late 1963, Roberts and Butts started experimenting with a Ouija board as part of Roberts' research for the book. According to Roberts and Butts, on December 2, 1963, they began to receive coherent messages from a male personality who eventually identified himself as Seth. Soon after, Roberts reported that she was hearing the messages in her head. The first seven sessions were entirely with the Ouija board. The three-hour session on the evening of Jan. 2, 1964 was the first where she began to dictate the messages instead of using the Ouija board. For a while, she still opened her sessions with the board, but finally abandoned it after the 27th session on Feb. 19, 1964.
Roberts described the process of writing the Seth books as entering a trance state. She said Seth would assume control of her body and speak through her, while her husband wrote down the words she spoke. They referred to such episodes as "readings" or "sessions." The 26th session on Feb. 18, 1964, was the first held in the presence of another person—a friend.
On Jan. 17, 1964, Roberts channeled an allegedly recently deceased woman who told Butts that his and his wife's work with Seth was a life-time project, that they would publish his manuscripts, and help spread his ideas. At the 27th session Seth also told the couple how to rearrange the furniture in their apartment which would better suit their energies. Despite feelings of disbelief toward both messages, the couple somewhat reluctantly agreed. Two days afterward they heard from a psychologist interested in reincarnation to whom they had written three weeks earlier with some session copies enclosed. The psychologist told them that the very fluency of the material suggested that it might come from Roberts' subconscious, though it was impossible to tell. He also cautioned that in some circumstances, amateur mediumship could lead to mental problems.
The letter upset her but helped her deal with her doubts. She felt there were no "alarming changes" in her personality. "I was doing twice the creative work I had done earlier. I was satisfied with the quality of the Seth Material; it was far superior to anything I could do on my own. If nothing else, I thought the sessions presented a way of making deeply unconscious knowledge available on a consistent basis."
"Because we were so innocent about psychic literature, we weren't hampered by superstitious fears about such [psychic] phenomena. I didn't believe in gods or demons, so I didn't fear them. I wanted to learn. Rob and I had discovered a whole new world together, and we were going to explore it."
Roberts assumed Seth was a subconscious fantasy, personified because she did not believe in spirits or life after death. She monitored her personality characteristics and went to a psychologist. But she felt that "Seth seemed far more mature and well-balanced than the psychologist, so finally I stopped worrying. This is not to say the experience did not cause certain strains and stresses that could accompany any worthwhile venture in an entirely new field."
Roberts also purportedly channeled the world views of several other people, including the philosopher William James, Rembrandt, and the Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, through a process she described as using a typewriter to write "automatically."
For 21 years until Roberts' death in 1984 (with a one-year hiatus due to her final illness), Roberts held more than 1500 regular or private "ESP class" trance sessions in which she spoke on behalf of Seth. Butts served as the stenographer, taking the messages down in shorthand he had made up, having others on occasion make recording of some sessions. The messages from Seth channeled through Roberts consisted mostly of monologues on a wide variety of topics. They were published by Prentice-Hall under the collective title Seth Material.
Over the years, hundreds of people witnessed Roberts channeling "Seth". Some went to the ESP classes Roberts held (Tuesday and some Thursday nights, Sept. 1967 – Feb. 1975) for an evening, others attended for longer periods. (By this time Jane had given up her gallery work, and was teaching nursery school during part of this time.) Outside of the ESP class structure, Roberts gave many personal Seth sessions to various individuals who had written her, asking for help. She never charged for those sessions; however, at some point, she did charge $2.50 to $3.50 per ESP class of 5 to 40 people. When the books began to sell in sufficient numbers, she dropped that fee. Book sessions were almost always private, held on Monday and Wednesday evenings without witnesses from 1967 through 1982 (except for Tues and Thurs from Aug. to Nov. 1981).
The material through 1969 was published in summary form in The Seth Material, written by Roberts from the output of the channeling sessions. Beginning in January 1970, Roberts wrote books which she described as dictated by Seth. Roberts claimed no authorship of these books beyond her role as a medium. This series of "Seth books" totaled ten volumes. The last two books appear to be incomplete due to Roberts' illness. Butts contributed extensive footnotes, appendices, and other comments to all the Seth books, and thus was a co-author on all of them. These additions describe what was going on in Roberts' and his life at the time of the various sessions, annotated in light of contemporary beliefs and materials he and Roberts were reading, described excerpts from some fan mail and letters from professionals commenting on Seth's material about their fields, and, especially later, provided insight as to the many steps of production of multiple books with the publisher. By February 1982 they were still receiving "from 30 to 50 letters and packages a week" from readers of their various books.
Some of Roberts' earlier and later poetry was occasionally included to show how she had touched upon some of Seth's concepts. Roberts also wrote The Oversoul Seven trilogy to explore via fiction some of Seth's teachings on the concepts of reincarnation and oversouls.
According to Roberts, Seth described himself as an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical matter," and was independent of Roberts' subconscious. Roberts initially expressed skepticism as to Seth's origins, wondering if he was a part of her own personality. While speaking as Seth, Roberts at times appeared stern, jovial, or professorial. "His" voice was deeper and more masculine sounding than Jane's and was possessed of a distinct, although not identifiable, accent. Unlike the psychic Edgar Cayce, whose syntax when speaking in trance was antiquated and convoluted, Roberts' syntax and sentence structures were modern and clear when speaking as Seth. Later books continued to develop but did not contradict the material introduced in earlier works. Some "Practice Elements" were even included on how a few of the concepts could be practically experienced.
A few contemporary world events were commented upon, such as the Jonestown Guyana deaths and the Three Mile Island accident.
Seth also provided an alternative creation myth to that of the Big Bang or Intelligent Design.
Roberts' father died in November 1971 at the age of 68; her mother died six months later at the same age. In early 1982 Roberts spent a month in the hospital for severely underactive thyroid gland, protruding eyes and double vision, an almost total hearing loss, a slight anemia, budding bedsores—and a hospital-caused staph infection. She recovered to an extent, but died two and a half years later in 1984, having been bedridden with severe arthritis-like her mother—for the final year and a half of her life. Roberts had spent 504 consecutive days in a hospital in Elmira, N.Y. The immediate causes of her death were a combination of protein depletion, osteomyelitis, and soft-tissue infections. These conditions arose out of her long-standing rheumatoid arthritis. (Butts believed for some 15 years that in Roberts' case, at least, the young girl's psychological conditioning was far more important—far more damaging, in those terms—than any physical tendency to inherit the disease.) Roberts was cremated the next day, in a process, she and Butts had agreed upon several years earlier.
After Roberts' death, recorded in The Way Toward Health (1997), Butts continued his work as a guardian of the Seth texts and continued to supervise the publication of some of the remaining material, including The Early Sessions, making sure all of the recordings, manuscripts, notes, and drawings would be given to the Yale Library. Butts remarried, and his second wife, Laurel Lee Davies, supported his work during the more than 20 years they were together and helped answer mail and proofread manuscripts. Butts died of cancer on May 26, 2008. Jane Roberts Butts and Robert F. Butts Jr. are interred together in the Wayne County, NY Furnaceville cemetery; however, there is another gravestone with their names on it in the Sunnyside cemetery in Tunkhannock, PA. A number of groups have compiled anthologies of quotes from Seth, summarized sections of his teachings, issued copies of Seth sessions on audio tape, and further relayed the material via classes and conventions.
Reception and influence
Seth's effect upon New Age thinkers has been profound. The title jacket of "The Nature of Personal Reality, A Seth Book," republished in 1994 (Amber-Allen/New World Library), contains testimonials from some of the most notable thinkers and writers within the movement. Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra, Shakti Gawain, Dan Millman, Louise Hay, Richard Bach, and others express the effect the Seth Material had upon their own awakening. In words similar to Williamson's they state: "Seth was one of my first metaphysical teachers. He remains a constant source of knowledge and inspiration in my life." Catherine L. Albanese, professor of religious history at the University of Chicago, stated that in the 1970s the Seth Material "launched an era of nationwide awareness" of the channeling trend. She believes it contributed to the "self-identity of an emergent New Age movement and also augment[ed] its ranks."
John P. Newport, in his study of the impact of New Age beliefs on contemporary culture, described the central focus of the Seth material as the idea that for each individual: "you create your own reality." (Briefly summarized, our beliefs generate emotions that trigger our memories and organize our associations. Eventually, those beliefs become manifested in our physical lives and health.) Newport wrote that this foundational concept of the New Age movement was first developed in the "Seth Material." Historian Robert C. Fuller, a professor of religious studies at Bradley University, wrote that Seth filled the role of guide for what Fuller called "unchurched American spirituality," related to concepts of reincarnation, karma, free will, ancient metaphysical wisdom, and "Christ consciousness."
Some writers noted, "Husband Robert Butts stated that similarities exist between Seth's ideas and those of various religious, philosophical, and mystical doctrines from the Near, Middle, or Far East… and we've done a little reading on Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, and Taoism, for example, not to mention subjects like shamanism, voodooism, and obeah."
New Age writer Michael Talbot wrote, "To my great surprise—and slight annoyance—I found that Seth eloquently and lucidly articulated a view of reality that I had arrived at only after great effort and an extensive study of both paranormal phenomena and quantum physics."
The Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives maintains a collection entitled Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090), which documents the career and personal life of Jane Roberts, including journals, poetry, correspondence, audio, and video recordings, and other materials donated after her death by Roberts' husband and other individuals and organizations. Yale University's collection entitled "Jane Roberts papers" occupies 164.08 linear feet of shelf space and is contained in 498 boxes.
Criticism
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.
Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production—at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency."
Some religious groups have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. John MacArthur, host of a syndicated Christian talk show, considers The Seth Material to be "a book entirely written by a demon.", while the New Age Urantia Foundation considers the book evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books – Allowed By The Media claimed that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board."
Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and
Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay."
Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts.
Complete writings
Books:
Roberts, Jane (1966). How To Develop Your ESP Power. Publisher: Federick Fell. (Later retitled and reprinted as The Coming of Seth.) .
Roberts, Jane (1970). The Seth Material. Reprinted, 2001 by New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1972). Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul. Reprinted 1994 by Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1974). The Nature of Personal Reality. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1976). Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 1. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 2. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1978). The Afterdeath Journal of An American Philosopher: The World View of William James. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). Emir's Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers. Prentice-Hall. . Children's literature.
Roberts, Jane (1979). The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1996, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1981). The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Prentice-Hall, . Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing, .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Oversoul Seven Trilogy. Amber-Allen Publishing. . Edition: Paperback; May 1, 1995 (originally published as three separate books: The Education of Oversoul 7 (1973); The Further Education of Oversoul Seven (1979); Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time (1984)).
Roberts, Jane (1981). The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto. Prentice-Hall. . Reprinted 2000, Moment Point Press. .
Roberts, Jane (1982). If We Live Again, Or, Public Magic and Private Love. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1986). Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment. Prentice-Hall, two volumes, and .
Roberts, Jane (1986). Seth, Dreams and Projections of Consciousness. Stillpoint Publishing.
(1993). A Seth Reader. Vernal Equinox Press. Compendium edited by Richard Roberts. .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Magical Approach : Seth Speaks About the Art of Creative Living. Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1997). The Way Toward Health. Robert F. Butts (Foreword), Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (2006). The World View of Rembrandt. New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1997 and after). The Early Sessions (Sessions 1 through 510 of the Seth Material). New Awareness Network. Edited by Robert Butts. Nine volumes. .
Roberts, Jane (2003). The Personal Sessions. New Awareness Network. Deleted session material. Seven volumes. .
Roberts. Jane. The Early Class Sessions. New Awareness Network. Four volumes.
Short Stories and novellas:
Roberts, Jane. "Prayer of a Wiser People" in Profile, 1950.
Roberts, Jane. "The Red Wagon" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1956 (republished 1993, Reality Change Magazine; anthologized in 1975, Ladies of Fantasy).
Roberts, Jane. "The Canvas Pyramid" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958).
Roberts, Jane. "First Communion" in Fantastic Universe, 1957.
Roberts, Jane. "The Chestnut Beads" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958; anthologized in Triple W: Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves, 1963).
Roberts, Jane. "The Bundu" (novella, sequel to "The Chestnut Beads") in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958.
Roberts, Jane. "A Demon at Devotions" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Winter 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "Nightmare" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959.
Roberts, Jane. "Impasse" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959 (Spanish anthology edition ca. 1960).
Roberts, Jane. "Three Times Around" in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1964 (anthologized in Earth Invaded, 1982).
Roberts, Jane. "The Big Freeze" in Dude, 1965 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Summer 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "The Mission," purchased by Topper magazine in August 1965. (Publication not yet confirmed.)
Poetry Submissions:
"Time" in The Saratogian [Saratoga Springs, NY], 1947 Mar 19.
"Enigma" in The Saratogian, 1947 Mar 19.
"Spring Gaiety" in The Saratogian, 1947 Apr 26.
"Rain" in Profile [Skidmore College literary magazine], December, 1947.
"Pretense" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Code" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Skyscrapers" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Introvert" in Profile, May, 1948.
"Poem" in Profile, May, 1948.
"How Public Like a Frog" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Motorcycle Ride" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Echo" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Death Stood at the Door" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Compromise" in Profile, May, 1949.
"I Shall Die in the Springtime." Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Lyric" Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Matilda" in Quicksilver, Spring, 1960.
"It is Springtime, Grandfather." Epos., v.12, n.3, Spring 1961.
"The Familiar." Bitterroot. v.1, n.2, Winter 1962.
"I Saw a Hand" in Treasures of Parnassus: Best Poems of 1962, Young Publications, 1962 (reprinted in The Elmira Star-Gazette, 1962).
"My Grandfather's World." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Lullaby." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Beware, October." Epos. v.16, n.1, Fall 1964.
"This Wrist, This Hand." Epos. v.16, n.4, Summer 1965.
"The Game." New Lantern Club Review. n.2, Summer 1965.
"The Flowers." Steppenwolf. n.1, Winter 1965–1966.
"Vision." Dust/9. v.3, n.1, Fall 1966.
"Who Whispers Yes." Dust/12. v.3, n.4, Spring 1969.
"Hi, Low, and Psycho." Excerpts published in Reality Change, Third Quarter, 1996.
See also
Stewart Edward White
Modal realism
Counterpart theory
Eternalism
New Thought
References
External links
Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Includes both published and unpublished materials
Seth Center Index to the Early Sessions
Seth Learning Center An overview of titles and related audio clips, New Awareness Network
Nirvikalpa Archive of over 1500 quotations and excerpts from the Seth Material
'The Problem of Seth's Origin: A Case Study of the Trance-Possession Mediumship of Jane Roberts' by Paul Cunningham
List of Seth Sessions by Mary Dillman
Index of Eleven Seth Books by Sue R. Williams
Seth Talk - by Lynda Madden Dahl
1929 births
1984 deaths
20th-century American poets
American children's writers
American motivational writers
Women motivational writers
American psychics
American spiritual mediums
American women poets
Channellers
Consciousness researchers and theorists
Deaths from arthritis
New Age writers
People from Saratoga Springs, New York
Skidmore College alumni
American women children's writers
20th-century American women writers
American women non-fiction writers
Women's page journalists
| true |
[
"\n\nTrack listing\n Opening Overture\n \"I Get a Kick Out of You\" (Cole Porter)\n \"You Are the Sunshine of My Life\" (Stevie Wonder)\n \"You Will Be My Music\" (Joe Raposo)\n \"Don't Worry 'bout Me\" (Ted Koehler, Rube Bloom)\n \"If\" (David Gates)\n \"Bad, Bad Leroy Brown\" (Jim Croce)\n \"Ol' Man River\" (Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II)\n Famous Monologue\n Saloon Trilogy: \"Last Night When We Were Young\"/\"Violets for Your Furs\"/\"Here's That Rainy Day\" (Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg)/(Matt Dennis, Tom Adair)/(Jimmy Van Heusen, Johnny Burke)\n \"I've Got You Under My Skin\" (Porter)\n \"My Kind of Town\" (Sammy Cahn, Van Heusen)\n \"Let Me Try Again\" (Paul Anka, Cahn, Michel Jourdan)\n \"The Lady Is a Tramp\" (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart)\n \"My Way\" (Anka, Claude Francois, Jacques Revaux, Gilles Thibaut)\n\nFrank Sinatra's Monologue About the Australian Press\nI do believe this is my interval, as we say... We've been having a marvelous time being chased around the country for three days. You know, I think it's worth mentioning because it's so idiotic, it's so ridiculous what's been happening. We came all the way to Australia because I chose to come here. I haven't been here for a long time and I wanted to come back for a few days. Wait now, wait. I'm not buttering anybody at all. I don't have to. I really don't have to. I like coming here. I like the people. I love your attitude. I like the booze and the beer and everything else that comes into the scene. I also like the way the country's growing and it's a swinging place.\n\nSo we come here and what happens? We gotta run all day long because of the parasites who chase us with automobiles. That's dangerous, too, on the road, you know. Might cause an accident. They won't quit. They wonder why I won't talk to them. I wouldn't drink their water, let alone talk to them. And if any of you folks in the press are in the audience, please quote me properly. Don't mix it up, do it exactly as I'm saying it, please. Write it down very clearly. One idiot called me up and he wanted to know what I had for breakfast. What the hell does he care what I had for breakfast? I was about to tell him what I did after breakfast. Oh, boy, they're murder! We have a name in the States for their counterparts: They're called parasites. Because they take and take and take and never give, absolutely, never give. I don't care what you think about any press in the world, I say they're bums and they'll always be bums, everyone of them. There are just a few exceptions to the rule. Some good editorial writers who don't go out in the street and chase people around. Critics don't bother me, because if I do badly, I know I'm bad before they even write it, and if I'm good, I know I'm good before they write it. It's true. I know best about myself. So, a critic is a critic. He doesn't anger me. It's the scandal man who bugs you, drives you crazy. It's the two-bit-type work that they do. They're pimps. They're just crazy, you know. And the broads who work in the press are the hookers of the press. Need I explain that to you? I might offer them a buck and a half... I'm not sure. I once gave a chick in Washington $2 and I overpaid her, I found out. She didn't even bathe. Imagine what that was like, ha, ha.\n\nNow, it's a good thing I'm not angry. Really. It's a good thing I'm not angry. I couldn't care less. The press of the world never made a person a star who was untalented, nor did they ever hurt any artist who was talented. So we, who have God-given talent, say, \"To hell with them.\" It doesn't make any difference, you know. And I want to say one more thing. From what I see what's happened since I was last here... what, 16 years ago? Twelve years ago. From what I've seen to happen with the type of news that they print in this town shocked me. And do you know what is devastating? It's old-fashioned. It was done in America and England twenty years ago. And they're catching up with it now, with the scandal sheet. They're rags, that's what they are. You use them to train your dog and your parrot. What else do I have to say? Oh, I guess that's it. That'll keep them talking to themselves for a while. I think most of them are a bunch of fags anyway. Never did a hard day's work in their life. I love when they say, \"What do you mean, you won't stand still when I take your picture?\" All of a sudden, they're God. We gotta do what they want us to do. It's incredible. A pox on them... Now, let's get down to some serious business here...\n\nSee also\nConcerts of Frank Sinatra\n\nFrank Sinatra",
"\"What Did I Do to You?\" is a song recorded by British singer Lisa Stansfield for her 1989 album, Affection. It was written by Stansfield, Ian Devaney and Andy Morris, and produced by Devaney and Morris. The song was released as the fourth European single on 30 April 1990. It included three previously unreleased songs written by Stansfield, Devaney and Morris: \"My Apple Heart,\" \"Lay Me Down\" and \"Something's Happenin'.\" \"What Did I Do to You?\" was remixed by Mark Saunders and by the Grammy Award-winning American house music DJ and producer, David Morales. The single became a top forty hit in the European countries reaching number eighteen in Finland, number twenty in Ireland and number twenty-five in the United Kingdom. \"What Did I Do to You?\" was also released in Japan.\n\nIn 2014, the remixes of \"What Did I Do to You?\" were included on the deluxe 2CD + DVD re-release of Affection and on People Hold On ... The Remix Anthology. They were also featured on The Collection 1989–2003 box set (2014), including previously unreleased Red Zone Mix by David Morales.\n\nCritical reception\nThe song received positive reviews from music critics. Matthew Hocter from Albumism viewed it as a \"upbeat offering\". David Giles from Music Week said it is \"beautifully performed\" by Stansfield. A reviewer from Reading Eagle wrote that \"What Did I Do to You?\" \"would be right at home on the \"Saturday Night Fever\" soundtrack.\"\n\nMusic video\nA music video was produced to promote the single, directed by Philip Richardson, who had previously directed the videos for \"All Around the World\" and \"Live Together\". It features Stansfield with her kiss curls, dressed in a white outfit and performing with her band on a stage in front of a jumping audience. The video was later published on Stansfield's official YouTube channel in November 2009. It has amassed more than 1,6 million views as of October 2021.\n\nTrack listings\n\n European/UK 7\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK/Japanese CD single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n UK 10\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix) – 5:52\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK 12\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 4:22\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 3:19\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:15\n\n UK 12\" promotional single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Anti Poll Tax Dub) – 6:31\n\n Other remixes\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Red Zone Mix) – 7:45\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nLisa Stansfield songs\n1990 singles\nSongs written by Lisa Stansfield\n1989 songs\nArista Records singles\nSongs written by Ian Devaney\nSongs written by Andy Morris (musician)"
] |
[
"Jane Roberts",
"Criticism",
"What did this do",
"Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community.",
"What was the worst part of this",
"The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death.",
"What did this lead him to try",
"His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.",
"What did they lead them to do",
"His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions."
] |
C_d6ee55992d1a4dccb608bd6eaee117e5_0
|
Why was this so terrible
| 5 |
Why was Jane Roberts' misunderstanding of the Seth texts so terrible?
|
Jane Roberts
|
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions. Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production--at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency." Seth's teaching of a philosophy far more detailed than and not in keeping with traditional Church-authority, God-separate-from Creation, one-mortal-life, Jesus-centered messages has also received its share of criticism from some Christian believers. Various ministries have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. The Seth Material has been considered in certain circles to be "a book entirely written by a demon. A woman simply wrote it down as it was dictated to her by the demon; and, of course, it just destroys everything that is true in terms of God's revelation," and as evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books - Allowed By The Media protested that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board." Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay." Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts. CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
Dorothy Jane Roberts (May 8, 1929 – September 5, 1984) was an American author, poet, psychic, and spirit medium, who channeled an energy personality who called himself "Seth." Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the Seth Material, established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena.
Early life and career
Roberts was born in Albany, New York and grew up in nearby Saratoga Springs, New York. Her parents, Delmer Hubbell Roberts and Marie Burdo, divorced when she was two years old. With her only child, the young Marie then returned to her own parents, and the home that the family had rented for a number of years: half of a double dwelling in a poor neighborhood. Marie had begun experiencing the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis by 1932 but worked as much as possible. Eventually, Roberts' grandfather, Joseph Burdo, with whom she shared a deep mystical identification, was unable to support two extra people, and the family had to rely upon public assistance. Roberts' grandmother was killed in an automobile accident in 1936.
The next year, her grandfather moved out of the house. By then Marie was partially incapacitated, and the Welfare Department began to furnish mother and daughter with occasional and often unreliable domestic help. When Marie became a bedridden invalid, it was Jane's responsibility to take care of her. This included cooking, cleaning, bringing her the bedpan, and getting up in the middle of the night to refuel the stove. Her embittered mother would tell Jane she was going to turn on the gas jets in the middle of the night and kill them both. When her mother attempted suicide for about the fifth time, she took sleeping pills and was in the hospital. Jane wrote that she went to the welfare worker and said, 'I can't take it anymore. I've just got to leave.'" Over and over Marie told Jane she was no good, that the daughter's birth had caused the mother's illness, and that she was disowned and considered no longer her daughter.
The persistent psychological abuse and mistreatment by her mother resulted in the young girl's deep fear of abandonment. Such situations increased Jane's sense of not being safe, yet also reinforced feelings of independence, for she did not have to feel as dependent upon Marie as she might otherwise.
Well before she was 10 years old Jane had developed persistent symptoms of colitis. By her early teens, she had an overactive thyroid gland. Her vision was poor; she required very strong glasses (which she seldom wore). For most of 1940 and half of 1941, Jane was in a strictly-run Catholic orphanage in Troy, NY while her mother was hospitalized in another city for treatment of her arthritis. Priests came to the house regularly and support was offered to the fatherless family. Jane's initial bonding to the cultural beliefs of religion was very strong to make up for the lack of a loving, nurturing family. For a time she was left between belief systems.
In the summer of 1945, when she was 16 years old, Jane began working at a variety store. It was her first job. That fall she continued on the job after school hours and on an occasional Saturday. After attending public schools she went to Skidmore College from 1947 to 1950 on a poetry scholarship. Roberts' grandfather died when she was age 19. It was a time of severe shock for her. She began to substitute scientific world view for religious belief.
At that time Jane was dating Walt Zeh, a long-time Saratoga Springs friend. Together they went to the west coast by motorcycle to see Jane's father who had also come from a broken home. Jane then married Walt and continued to write while taking a variety of other jobs, including society editor for the Saratoga newspaper, and as a supervisor in a radio factory. Walt and Jane lived together for three years. It was then in February 1954 while "cutting up, dancing, and raisin' hell at a party," that Jane first met the former commercial artist Robert Fabian Butts, Jr. (June 20, 1919 - May 26, 2008). The fourth time they met at another party and Jane 'just looked at him and said, "Look, I'm leaving Walt, and I'm going to live by myself or I'm going to live with you, so just let me know."'" Eventually the two left town together and Jane filed for divorce. Jane and Rob married on December 27, 1954 at the home of his parents in Sayre, PA.
Roberts wrote in a variety of genres: poetry, short stories, children's literature, nonfiction, science fiction, and fantasy, and novels. She was the only woman invited to the first science-fiction writer's conference in 1956 in Milford, PA.
The couple moved to Elmira, NY, in 1960, to find steady part-time work – Rob in the local greeting card company, Jane in an art gallery. Now in her 30s, she and her husband began to record what she said were messages from a personality named "Seth," and she wrote several books about the experience.
Seth Material
On a September evening in 1963, Roberts sat down at her table to work on poetry; Butts was in his back-room studio, painting. "It was very domestic, very normal, very unpsychedelic," she would later remember. And then "Between one normal minute and the next, a fantastic avalanche of radical, new ideas burst into my head with tremendous force ... It was as if the physical world were really tissue-paper-thin, hiding infinite dimensions of reality, and I was flung through the tissue paper with a huge ripping sound." When she "came to," Roberts found herself scrawling the title of this batch of notes: The Physical Universe as Idea Construction.
Before this, though her fiction typically dealt with such themes as clairvoyance and reincarnation, intellectually neither she nor Butts believed in extrasensory abilities. Yet soon after this episode, Roberts suddenly began recalling her dreams, including two that were precognitive. Their curiosity piqued, the couple decided to investigate further, and she managed to land a contract with a New York publisher for a do-it-yourself book on extra-sensory perception.
In late 1963, Roberts and Butts started experimenting with a Ouija board as part of Roberts' research for the book. According to Roberts and Butts, on December 2, 1963, they began to receive coherent messages from a male personality who eventually identified himself as Seth. Soon after, Roberts reported that she was hearing the messages in her head. The first seven sessions were entirely with the Ouija board. The three-hour session on the evening of Jan. 2, 1964 was the first where she began to dictate the messages instead of using the Ouija board. For a while, she still opened her sessions with the board, but finally abandoned it after the 27th session on Feb. 19, 1964.
Roberts described the process of writing the Seth books as entering a trance state. She said Seth would assume control of her body and speak through her, while her husband wrote down the words she spoke. They referred to such episodes as "readings" or "sessions." The 26th session on Feb. 18, 1964, was the first held in the presence of another person—a friend.
On Jan. 17, 1964, Roberts channeled an allegedly recently deceased woman who told Butts that his and his wife's work with Seth was a life-time project, that they would publish his manuscripts, and help spread his ideas. At the 27th session Seth also told the couple how to rearrange the furniture in their apartment which would better suit their energies. Despite feelings of disbelief toward both messages, the couple somewhat reluctantly agreed. Two days afterward they heard from a psychologist interested in reincarnation to whom they had written three weeks earlier with some session copies enclosed. The psychologist told them that the very fluency of the material suggested that it might come from Roberts' subconscious, though it was impossible to tell. He also cautioned that in some circumstances, amateur mediumship could lead to mental problems.
The letter upset her but helped her deal with her doubts. She felt there were no "alarming changes" in her personality. "I was doing twice the creative work I had done earlier. I was satisfied with the quality of the Seth Material; it was far superior to anything I could do on my own. If nothing else, I thought the sessions presented a way of making deeply unconscious knowledge available on a consistent basis."
"Because we were so innocent about psychic literature, we weren't hampered by superstitious fears about such [psychic] phenomena. I didn't believe in gods or demons, so I didn't fear them. I wanted to learn. Rob and I had discovered a whole new world together, and we were going to explore it."
Roberts assumed Seth was a subconscious fantasy, personified because she did not believe in spirits or life after death. She monitored her personality characteristics and went to a psychologist. But she felt that "Seth seemed far more mature and well-balanced than the psychologist, so finally I stopped worrying. This is not to say the experience did not cause certain strains and stresses that could accompany any worthwhile venture in an entirely new field."
Roberts also purportedly channeled the world views of several other people, including the philosopher William James, Rembrandt, and the Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, through a process she described as using a typewriter to write "automatically."
For 21 years until Roberts' death in 1984 (with a one-year hiatus due to her final illness), Roberts held more than 1500 regular or private "ESP class" trance sessions in which she spoke on behalf of Seth. Butts served as the stenographer, taking the messages down in shorthand he had made up, having others on occasion make recording of some sessions. The messages from Seth channeled through Roberts consisted mostly of monologues on a wide variety of topics. They were published by Prentice-Hall under the collective title Seth Material.
Over the years, hundreds of people witnessed Roberts channeling "Seth". Some went to the ESP classes Roberts held (Tuesday and some Thursday nights, Sept. 1967 – Feb. 1975) for an evening, others attended for longer periods. (By this time Jane had given up her gallery work, and was teaching nursery school during part of this time.) Outside of the ESP class structure, Roberts gave many personal Seth sessions to various individuals who had written her, asking for help. She never charged for those sessions; however, at some point, she did charge $2.50 to $3.50 per ESP class of 5 to 40 people. When the books began to sell in sufficient numbers, she dropped that fee. Book sessions were almost always private, held on Monday and Wednesday evenings without witnesses from 1967 through 1982 (except for Tues and Thurs from Aug. to Nov. 1981).
The material through 1969 was published in summary form in The Seth Material, written by Roberts from the output of the channeling sessions. Beginning in January 1970, Roberts wrote books which she described as dictated by Seth. Roberts claimed no authorship of these books beyond her role as a medium. This series of "Seth books" totaled ten volumes. The last two books appear to be incomplete due to Roberts' illness. Butts contributed extensive footnotes, appendices, and other comments to all the Seth books, and thus was a co-author on all of them. These additions describe what was going on in Roberts' and his life at the time of the various sessions, annotated in light of contemporary beliefs and materials he and Roberts were reading, described excerpts from some fan mail and letters from professionals commenting on Seth's material about their fields, and, especially later, provided insight as to the many steps of production of multiple books with the publisher. By February 1982 they were still receiving "from 30 to 50 letters and packages a week" from readers of their various books.
Some of Roberts' earlier and later poetry was occasionally included to show how she had touched upon some of Seth's concepts. Roberts also wrote The Oversoul Seven trilogy to explore via fiction some of Seth's teachings on the concepts of reincarnation and oversouls.
According to Roberts, Seth described himself as an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical matter," and was independent of Roberts' subconscious. Roberts initially expressed skepticism as to Seth's origins, wondering if he was a part of her own personality. While speaking as Seth, Roberts at times appeared stern, jovial, or professorial. "His" voice was deeper and more masculine sounding than Jane's and was possessed of a distinct, although not identifiable, accent. Unlike the psychic Edgar Cayce, whose syntax when speaking in trance was antiquated and convoluted, Roberts' syntax and sentence structures were modern and clear when speaking as Seth. Later books continued to develop but did not contradict the material introduced in earlier works. Some "Practice Elements" were even included on how a few of the concepts could be practically experienced.
A few contemporary world events were commented upon, such as the Jonestown Guyana deaths and the Three Mile Island accident.
Seth also provided an alternative creation myth to that of the Big Bang or Intelligent Design.
Roberts' father died in November 1971 at the age of 68; her mother died six months later at the same age. In early 1982 Roberts spent a month in the hospital for severely underactive thyroid gland, protruding eyes and double vision, an almost total hearing loss, a slight anemia, budding bedsores—and a hospital-caused staph infection. She recovered to an extent, but died two and a half years later in 1984, having been bedridden with severe arthritis-like her mother—for the final year and a half of her life. Roberts had spent 504 consecutive days in a hospital in Elmira, N.Y. The immediate causes of her death were a combination of protein depletion, osteomyelitis, and soft-tissue infections. These conditions arose out of her long-standing rheumatoid arthritis. (Butts believed for some 15 years that in Roberts' case, at least, the young girl's psychological conditioning was far more important—far more damaging, in those terms—than any physical tendency to inherit the disease.) Roberts was cremated the next day, in a process, she and Butts had agreed upon several years earlier.
After Roberts' death, recorded in The Way Toward Health (1997), Butts continued his work as a guardian of the Seth texts and continued to supervise the publication of some of the remaining material, including The Early Sessions, making sure all of the recordings, manuscripts, notes, and drawings would be given to the Yale Library. Butts remarried, and his second wife, Laurel Lee Davies, supported his work during the more than 20 years they were together and helped answer mail and proofread manuscripts. Butts died of cancer on May 26, 2008. Jane Roberts Butts and Robert F. Butts Jr. are interred together in the Wayne County, NY Furnaceville cemetery; however, there is another gravestone with their names on it in the Sunnyside cemetery in Tunkhannock, PA. A number of groups have compiled anthologies of quotes from Seth, summarized sections of his teachings, issued copies of Seth sessions on audio tape, and further relayed the material via classes and conventions.
Reception and influence
Seth's effect upon New Age thinkers has been profound. The title jacket of "The Nature of Personal Reality, A Seth Book," republished in 1994 (Amber-Allen/New World Library), contains testimonials from some of the most notable thinkers and writers within the movement. Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra, Shakti Gawain, Dan Millman, Louise Hay, Richard Bach, and others express the effect the Seth Material had upon their own awakening. In words similar to Williamson's they state: "Seth was one of my first metaphysical teachers. He remains a constant source of knowledge and inspiration in my life." Catherine L. Albanese, professor of religious history at the University of Chicago, stated that in the 1970s the Seth Material "launched an era of nationwide awareness" of the channeling trend. She believes it contributed to the "self-identity of an emergent New Age movement and also augment[ed] its ranks."
John P. Newport, in his study of the impact of New Age beliefs on contemporary culture, described the central focus of the Seth material as the idea that for each individual: "you create your own reality." (Briefly summarized, our beliefs generate emotions that trigger our memories and organize our associations. Eventually, those beliefs become manifested in our physical lives and health.) Newport wrote that this foundational concept of the New Age movement was first developed in the "Seth Material." Historian Robert C. Fuller, a professor of religious studies at Bradley University, wrote that Seth filled the role of guide for what Fuller called "unchurched American spirituality," related to concepts of reincarnation, karma, free will, ancient metaphysical wisdom, and "Christ consciousness."
Some writers noted, "Husband Robert Butts stated that similarities exist between Seth's ideas and those of various religious, philosophical, and mystical doctrines from the Near, Middle, or Far East… and we've done a little reading on Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, and Taoism, for example, not to mention subjects like shamanism, voodooism, and obeah."
New Age writer Michael Talbot wrote, "To my great surprise—and slight annoyance—I found that Seth eloquently and lucidly articulated a view of reality that I had arrived at only after great effort and an extensive study of both paranormal phenomena and quantum physics."
The Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives maintains a collection entitled Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090), which documents the career and personal life of Jane Roberts, including journals, poetry, correspondence, audio, and video recordings, and other materials donated after her death by Roberts' husband and other individuals and organizations. Yale University's collection entitled "Jane Roberts papers" occupies 164.08 linear feet of shelf space and is contained in 498 boxes.
Criticism
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.
Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production—at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency."
Some religious groups have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. John MacArthur, host of a syndicated Christian talk show, considers The Seth Material to be "a book entirely written by a demon.", while the New Age Urantia Foundation considers the book evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books – Allowed By The Media claimed that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board."
Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and
Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay."
Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts.
Complete writings
Books:
Roberts, Jane (1966). How To Develop Your ESP Power. Publisher: Federick Fell. (Later retitled and reprinted as The Coming of Seth.) .
Roberts, Jane (1970). The Seth Material. Reprinted, 2001 by New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1972). Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul. Reprinted 1994 by Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1974). The Nature of Personal Reality. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1976). Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 1. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 2. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1978). The Afterdeath Journal of An American Philosopher: The World View of William James. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). Emir's Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers. Prentice-Hall. . Children's literature.
Roberts, Jane (1979). The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1996, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1981). The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Prentice-Hall, . Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing, .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Oversoul Seven Trilogy. Amber-Allen Publishing. . Edition: Paperback; May 1, 1995 (originally published as three separate books: The Education of Oversoul 7 (1973); The Further Education of Oversoul Seven (1979); Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time (1984)).
Roberts, Jane (1981). The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto. Prentice-Hall. . Reprinted 2000, Moment Point Press. .
Roberts, Jane (1982). If We Live Again, Or, Public Magic and Private Love. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1986). Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment. Prentice-Hall, two volumes, and .
Roberts, Jane (1986). Seth, Dreams and Projections of Consciousness. Stillpoint Publishing.
(1993). A Seth Reader. Vernal Equinox Press. Compendium edited by Richard Roberts. .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Magical Approach : Seth Speaks About the Art of Creative Living. Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1997). The Way Toward Health. Robert F. Butts (Foreword), Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (2006). The World View of Rembrandt. New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1997 and after). The Early Sessions (Sessions 1 through 510 of the Seth Material). New Awareness Network. Edited by Robert Butts. Nine volumes. .
Roberts, Jane (2003). The Personal Sessions. New Awareness Network. Deleted session material. Seven volumes. .
Roberts. Jane. The Early Class Sessions. New Awareness Network. Four volumes.
Short Stories and novellas:
Roberts, Jane. "Prayer of a Wiser People" in Profile, 1950.
Roberts, Jane. "The Red Wagon" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1956 (republished 1993, Reality Change Magazine; anthologized in 1975, Ladies of Fantasy).
Roberts, Jane. "The Canvas Pyramid" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958).
Roberts, Jane. "First Communion" in Fantastic Universe, 1957.
Roberts, Jane. "The Chestnut Beads" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958; anthologized in Triple W: Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves, 1963).
Roberts, Jane. "The Bundu" (novella, sequel to "The Chestnut Beads") in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958.
Roberts, Jane. "A Demon at Devotions" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Winter 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "Nightmare" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959.
Roberts, Jane. "Impasse" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959 (Spanish anthology edition ca. 1960).
Roberts, Jane. "Three Times Around" in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1964 (anthologized in Earth Invaded, 1982).
Roberts, Jane. "The Big Freeze" in Dude, 1965 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Summer 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "The Mission," purchased by Topper magazine in August 1965. (Publication not yet confirmed.)
Poetry Submissions:
"Time" in The Saratogian [Saratoga Springs, NY], 1947 Mar 19.
"Enigma" in The Saratogian, 1947 Mar 19.
"Spring Gaiety" in The Saratogian, 1947 Apr 26.
"Rain" in Profile [Skidmore College literary magazine], December, 1947.
"Pretense" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Code" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Skyscrapers" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Introvert" in Profile, May, 1948.
"Poem" in Profile, May, 1948.
"How Public Like a Frog" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Motorcycle Ride" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Echo" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Death Stood at the Door" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Compromise" in Profile, May, 1949.
"I Shall Die in the Springtime." Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Lyric" Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Matilda" in Quicksilver, Spring, 1960.
"It is Springtime, Grandfather." Epos., v.12, n.3, Spring 1961.
"The Familiar." Bitterroot. v.1, n.2, Winter 1962.
"I Saw a Hand" in Treasures of Parnassus: Best Poems of 1962, Young Publications, 1962 (reprinted in The Elmira Star-Gazette, 1962).
"My Grandfather's World." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Lullaby." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Beware, October." Epos. v.16, n.1, Fall 1964.
"This Wrist, This Hand." Epos. v.16, n.4, Summer 1965.
"The Game." New Lantern Club Review. n.2, Summer 1965.
"The Flowers." Steppenwolf. n.1, Winter 1965–1966.
"Vision." Dust/9. v.3, n.1, Fall 1966.
"Who Whispers Yes." Dust/12. v.3, n.4, Spring 1969.
"Hi, Low, and Psycho." Excerpts published in Reality Change, Third Quarter, 1996.
See also
Stewart Edward White
Modal realism
Counterpart theory
Eternalism
New Thought
References
External links
Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Includes both published and unpublished materials
Seth Center Index to the Early Sessions
Seth Learning Center An overview of titles and related audio clips, New Awareness Network
Nirvikalpa Archive of over 1500 quotations and excerpts from the Seth Material
'The Problem of Seth's Origin: A Case Study of the Trance-Possession Mediumship of Jane Roberts' by Paul Cunningham
List of Seth Sessions by Mary Dillman
Index of Eleven Seth Books by Sue R. Williams
Seth Talk - by Lynda Madden Dahl
1929 births
1984 deaths
20th-century American poets
American children's writers
American motivational writers
Women motivational writers
American psychics
American spiritual mediums
American women poets
Channellers
Consciousness researchers and theorists
Deaths from arthritis
New Age writers
People from Saratoga Springs, New York
Skidmore College alumni
American women children's writers
20th-century American women writers
American women non-fiction writers
Women's page journalists
| false |
[
"Terrible Mountain is a summit in Windsor County, Vermont, in the United States. With an elevation of , Terrible Mountain is the 214th highest summit in the state of Vermont.\n\nTerrible Mountain was likely so named by early settlers due to its terrain.\n\nReferences\n\nMountains of Windsor County, Vermont\nMountains of Vermont",
"The Terrible Two books were written by Jory John and Mac Barnett, illustrated by Kevin Cornell, and published by Harry N. Abrams. The series includes four books: The Terrible Two (2015), The Terrible Two Get Worse (2016), The Terrible Two Go Wild (2018), and The Terrible Two's Last Laugh (2018).\n\nThe Terrible Two \nThe Terrible Two received positive reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and The Guardian, as well as the following accolades:\n\n E.B. White Read-Aloud Award Honor Book (2015)\nTexas Bluebonnet Award Nominee (2017)\n Pennsylvania Young Readers' Choice Award Nominee for Grades 3-6 (2017)\n Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award (2017)\nThe Magnolia Award Nominee for 3-5 (2017)\n Bluestem Book Award Nominee (2018)\nThe audiobook, released January 12, 2015 and voiced by Adam Verner, received a starred review from Booklist.\n\nThe Terrible Two Get Worse \nThe Terrible Two Get Worse was published January 11, 2016, and a Spanish-language edition of the book, titled Bromas Pesadas S.A. Aun Peor, was released March 15, 2017. \n\nThe book is a New York Times Bestseller and received positive reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and School Library Journal.\n\nThe Terrible Two Go Wild \nThe Terrible Two Go Wild was published January 8, 2018.\n\nThe Terrible Two's Last Laugh \nThe Terrible Two's Last Laugh was published January 14, 2019.\n\nReferences \n\nSeries of children's books\nAmerican children's book series\nBook series introduced in 2015\nThe New York Times Best Seller list"
] |
[
"Jane Roberts",
"Criticism",
"What did this do",
"Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community.",
"What was the worst part of this",
"The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death.",
"What did this lead him to try",
"His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.",
"What did they lead them to do",
"His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.",
"Why was this so terrible",
"I don't know."
] |
C_d6ee55992d1a4dccb608bd6eaee117e5_0
|
What did this lead him to do
| 6 |
What did Jane Roberts misunderstanding of the Seth texts lead Roberts to do?
|
Jane Roberts
|
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions. Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production--at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency." Seth's teaching of a philosophy far more detailed than and not in keeping with traditional Church-authority, God-separate-from Creation, one-mortal-life, Jesus-centered messages has also received its share of criticism from some Christian believers. Various ministries have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. The Seth Material has been considered in certain circles to be "a book entirely written by a demon. A woman simply wrote it down as it was dictated to her by the demon; and, of course, it just destroys everything that is true in terms of God's revelation," and as evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books - Allowed By The Media protested that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board." Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay." Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts. CANNOTANSWER
|
one-mortal-life, Jesus-centered messages has also received its share of criticism from some Christian believers.
|
Dorothy Jane Roberts (May 8, 1929 – September 5, 1984) was an American author, poet, psychic, and spirit medium, who channeled an energy personality who called himself "Seth." Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the Seth Material, established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena.
Early life and career
Roberts was born in Albany, New York and grew up in nearby Saratoga Springs, New York. Her parents, Delmer Hubbell Roberts and Marie Burdo, divorced when she was two years old. With her only child, the young Marie then returned to her own parents, and the home that the family had rented for a number of years: half of a double dwelling in a poor neighborhood. Marie had begun experiencing the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis by 1932 but worked as much as possible. Eventually, Roberts' grandfather, Joseph Burdo, with whom she shared a deep mystical identification, was unable to support two extra people, and the family had to rely upon public assistance. Roberts' grandmother was killed in an automobile accident in 1936.
The next year, her grandfather moved out of the house. By then Marie was partially incapacitated, and the Welfare Department began to furnish mother and daughter with occasional and often unreliable domestic help. When Marie became a bedridden invalid, it was Jane's responsibility to take care of her. This included cooking, cleaning, bringing her the bedpan, and getting up in the middle of the night to refuel the stove. Her embittered mother would tell Jane she was going to turn on the gas jets in the middle of the night and kill them both. When her mother attempted suicide for about the fifth time, she took sleeping pills and was in the hospital. Jane wrote that she went to the welfare worker and said, 'I can't take it anymore. I've just got to leave.'" Over and over Marie told Jane she was no good, that the daughter's birth had caused the mother's illness, and that she was disowned and considered no longer her daughter.
The persistent psychological abuse and mistreatment by her mother resulted in the young girl's deep fear of abandonment. Such situations increased Jane's sense of not being safe, yet also reinforced feelings of independence, for she did not have to feel as dependent upon Marie as she might otherwise.
Well before she was 10 years old Jane had developed persistent symptoms of colitis. By her early teens, she had an overactive thyroid gland. Her vision was poor; she required very strong glasses (which she seldom wore). For most of 1940 and half of 1941, Jane was in a strictly-run Catholic orphanage in Troy, NY while her mother was hospitalized in another city for treatment of her arthritis. Priests came to the house regularly and support was offered to the fatherless family. Jane's initial bonding to the cultural beliefs of religion was very strong to make up for the lack of a loving, nurturing family. For a time she was left between belief systems.
In the summer of 1945, when she was 16 years old, Jane began working at a variety store. It was her first job. That fall she continued on the job after school hours and on an occasional Saturday. After attending public schools she went to Skidmore College from 1947 to 1950 on a poetry scholarship. Roberts' grandfather died when she was age 19. It was a time of severe shock for her. She began to substitute scientific world view for religious belief.
At that time Jane was dating Walt Zeh, a long-time Saratoga Springs friend. Together they went to the west coast by motorcycle to see Jane's father who had also come from a broken home. Jane then married Walt and continued to write while taking a variety of other jobs, including society editor for the Saratoga newspaper, and as a supervisor in a radio factory. Walt and Jane lived together for three years. It was then in February 1954 while "cutting up, dancing, and raisin' hell at a party," that Jane first met the former commercial artist Robert Fabian Butts, Jr. (June 20, 1919 - May 26, 2008). The fourth time they met at another party and Jane 'just looked at him and said, "Look, I'm leaving Walt, and I'm going to live by myself or I'm going to live with you, so just let me know."'" Eventually the two left town together and Jane filed for divorce. Jane and Rob married on December 27, 1954 at the home of his parents in Sayre, PA.
Roberts wrote in a variety of genres: poetry, short stories, children's literature, nonfiction, science fiction, and fantasy, and novels. She was the only woman invited to the first science-fiction writer's conference in 1956 in Milford, PA.
The couple moved to Elmira, NY, in 1960, to find steady part-time work – Rob in the local greeting card company, Jane in an art gallery. Now in her 30s, she and her husband began to record what she said were messages from a personality named "Seth," and she wrote several books about the experience.
Seth Material
On a September evening in 1963, Roberts sat down at her table to work on poetry; Butts was in his back-room studio, painting. "It was very domestic, very normal, very unpsychedelic," she would later remember. And then "Between one normal minute and the next, a fantastic avalanche of radical, new ideas burst into my head with tremendous force ... It was as if the physical world were really tissue-paper-thin, hiding infinite dimensions of reality, and I was flung through the tissue paper with a huge ripping sound." When she "came to," Roberts found herself scrawling the title of this batch of notes: The Physical Universe as Idea Construction.
Before this, though her fiction typically dealt with such themes as clairvoyance and reincarnation, intellectually neither she nor Butts believed in extrasensory abilities. Yet soon after this episode, Roberts suddenly began recalling her dreams, including two that were precognitive. Their curiosity piqued, the couple decided to investigate further, and she managed to land a contract with a New York publisher for a do-it-yourself book on extra-sensory perception.
In late 1963, Roberts and Butts started experimenting with a Ouija board as part of Roberts' research for the book. According to Roberts and Butts, on December 2, 1963, they began to receive coherent messages from a male personality who eventually identified himself as Seth. Soon after, Roberts reported that she was hearing the messages in her head. The first seven sessions were entirely with the Ouija board. The three-hour session on the evening of Jan. 2, 1964 was the first where she began to dictate the messages instead of using the Ouija board. For a while, she still opened her sessions with the board, but finally abandoned it after the 27th session on Feb. 19, 1964.
Roberts described the process of writing the Seth books as entering a trance state. She said Seth would assume control of her body and speak through her, while her husband wrote down the words she spoke. They referred to such episodes as "readings" or "sessions." The 26th session on Feb. 18, 1964, was the first held in the presence of another person—a friend.
On Jan. 17, 1964, Roberts channeled an allegedly recently deceased woman who told Butts that his and his wife's work with Seth was a life-time project, that they would publish his manuscripts, and help spread his ideas. At the 27th session Seth also told the couple how to rearrange the furniture in their apartment which would better suit their energies. Despite feelings of disbelief toward both messages, the couple somewhat reluctantly agreed. Two days afterward they heard from a psychologist interested in reincarnation to whom they had written three weeks earlier with some session copies enclosed. The psychologist told them that the very fluency of the material suggested that it might come from Roberts' subconscious, though it was impossible to tell. He also cautioned that in some circumstances, amateur mediumship could lead to mental problems.
The letter upset her but helped her deal with her doubts. She felt there were no "alarming changes" in her personality. "I was doing twice the creative work I had done earlier. I was satisfied with the quality of the Seth Material; it was far superior to anything I could do on my own. If nothing else, I thought the sessions presented a way of making deeply unconscious knowledge available on a consistent basis."
"Because we were so innocent about psychic literature, we weren't hampered by superstitious fears about such [psychic] phenomena. I didn't believe in gods or demons, so I didn't fear them. I wanted to learn. Rob and I had discovered a whole new world together, and we were going to explore it."
Roberts assumed Seth was a subconscious fantasy, personified because she did not believe in spirits or life after death. She monitored her personality characteristics and went to a psychologist. But she felt that "Seth seemed far more mature and well-balanced than the psychologist, so finally I stopped worrying. This is not to say the experience did not cause certain strains and stresses that could accompany any worthwhile venture in an entirely new field."
Roberts also purportedly channeled the world views of several other people, including the philosopher William James, Rembrandt, and the Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, through a process she described as using a typewriter to write "automatically."
For 21 years until Roberts' death in 1984 (with a one-year hiatus due to her final illness), Roberts held more than 1500 regular or private "ESP class" trance sessions in which she spoke on behalf of Seth. Butts served as the stenographer, taking the messages down in shorthand he had made up, having others on occasion make recording of some sessions. The messages from Seth channeled through Roberts consisted mostly of monologues on a wide variety of topics. They were published by Prentice-Hall under the collective title Seth Material.
Over the years, hundreds of people witnessed Roberts channeling "Seth". Some went to the ESP classes Roberts held (Tuesday and some Thursday nights, Sept. 1967 – Feb. 1975) for an evening, others attended for longer periods. (By this time Jane had given up her gallery work, and was teaching nursery school during part of this time.) Outside of the ESP class structure, Roberts gave many personal Seth sessions to various individuals who had written her, asking for help. She never charged for those sessions; however, at some point, she did charge $2.50 to $3.50 per ESP class of 5 to 40 people. When the books began to sell in sufficient numbers, she dropped that fee. Book sessions were almost always private, held on Monday and Wednesday evenings without witnesses from 1967 through 1982 (except for Tues and Thurs from Aug. to Nov. 1981).
The material through 1969 was published in summary form in The Seth Material, written by Roberts from the output of the channeling sessions. Beginning in January 1970, Roberts wrote books which she described as dictated by Seth. Roberts claimed no authorship of these books beyond her role as a medium. This series of "Seth books" totaled ten volumes. The last two books appear to be incomplete due to Roberts' illness. Butts contributed extensive footnotes, appendices, and other comments to all the Seth books, and thus was a co-author on all of them. These additions describe what was going on in Roberts' and his life at the time of the various sessions, annotated in light of contemporary beliefs and materials he and Roberts were reading, described excerpts from some fan mail and letters from professionals commenting on Seth's material about their fields, and, especially later, provided insight as to the many steps of production of multiple books with the publisher. By February 1982 they were still receiving "from 30 to 50 letters and packages a week" from readers of their various books.
Some of Roberts' earlier and later poetry was occasionally included to show how she had touched upon some of Seth's concepts. Roberts also wrote The Oversoul Seven trilogy to explore via fiction some of Seth's teachings on the concepts of reincarnation and oversouls.
According to Roberts, Seth described himself as an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical matter," and was independent of Roberts' subconscious. Roberts initially expressed skepticism as to Seth's origins, wondering if he was a part of her own personality. While speaking as Seth, Roberts at times appeared stern, jovial, or professorial. "His" voice was deeper and more masculine sounding than Jane's and was possessed of a distinct, although not identifiable, accent. Unlike the psychic Edgar Cayce, whose syntax when speaking in trance was antiquated and convoluted, Roberts' syntax and sentence structures were modern and clear when speaking as Seth. Later books continued to develop but did not contradict the material introduced in earlier works. Some "Practice Elements" were even included on how a few of the concepts could be practically experienced.
A few contemporary world events were commented upon, such as the Jonestown Guyana deaths and the Three Mile Island accident.
Seth also provided an alternative creation myth to that of the Big Bang or Intelligent Design.
Roberts' father died in November 1971 at the age of 68; her mother died six months later at the same age. In early 1982 Roberts spent a month in the hospital for severely underactive thyroid gland, protruding eyes and double vision, an almost total hearing loss, a slight anemia, budding bedsores—and a hospital-caused staph infection. She recovered to an extent, but died two and a half years later in 1984, having been bedridden with severe arthritis-like her mother—for the final year and a half of her life. Roberts had spent 504 consecutive days in a hospital in Elmira, N.Y. The immediate causes of her death were a combination of protein depletion, osteomyelitis, and soft-tissue infections. These conditions arose out of her long-standing rheumatoid arthritis. (Butts believed for some 15 years that in Roberts' case, at least, the young girl's psychological conditioning was far more important—far more damaging, in those terms—than any physical tendency to inherit the disease.) Roberts was cremated the next day, in a process, she and Butts had agreed upon several years earlier.
After Roberts' death, recorded in The Way Toward Health (1997), Butts continued his work as a guardian of the Seth texts and continued to supervise the publication of some of the remaining material, including The Early Sessions, making sure all of the recordings, manuscripts, notes, and drawings would be given to the Yale Library. Butts remarried, and his second wife, Laurel Lee Davies, supported his work during the more than 20 years they were together and helped answer mail and proofread manuscripts. Butts died of cancer on May 26, 2008. Jane Roberts Butts and Robert F. Butts Jr. are interred together in the Wayne County, NY Furnaceville cemetery; however, there is another gravestone with their names on it in the Sunnyside cemetery in Tunkhannock, PA. A number of groups have compiled anthologies of quotes from Seth, summarized sections of his teachings, issued copies of Seth sessions on audio tape, and further relayed the material via classes and conventions.
Reception and influence
Seth's effect upon New Age thinkers has been profound. The title jacket of "The Nature of Personal Reality, A Seth Book," republished in 1994 (Amber-Allen/New World Library), contains testimonials from some of the most notable thinkers and writers within the movement. Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra, Shakti Gawain, Dan Millman, Louise Hay, Richard Bach, and others express the effect the Seth Material had upon their own awakening. In words similar to Williamson's they state: "Seth was one of my first metaphysical teachers. He remains a constant source of knowledge and inspiration in my life." Catherine L. Albanese, professor of religious history at the University of Chicago, stated that in the 1970s the Seth Material "launched an era of nationwide awareness" of the channeling trend. She believes it contributed to the "self-identity of an emergent New Age movement and also augment[ed] its ranks."
John P. Newport, in his study of the impact of New Age beliefs on contemporary culture, described the central focus of the Seth material as the idea that for each individual: "you create your own reality." (Briefly summarized, our beliefs generate emotions that trigger our memories and organize our associations. Eventually, those beliefs become manifested in our physical lives and health.) Newport wrote that this foundational concept of the New Age movement was first developed in the "Seth Material." Historian Robert C. Fuller, a professor of religious studies at Bradley University, wrote that Seth filled the role of guide for what Fuller called "unchurched American spirituality," related to concepts of reincarnation, karma, free will, ancient metaphysical wisdom, and "Christ consciousness."
Some writers noted, "Husband Robert Butts stated that similarities exist between Seth's ideas and those of various religious, philosophical, and mystical doctrines from the Near, Middle, or Far East… and we've done a little reading on Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, and Taoism, for example, not to mention subjects like shamanism, voodooism, and obeah."
New Age writer Michael Talbot wrote, "To my great surprise—and slight annoyance—I found that Seth eloquently and lucidly articulated a view of reality that I had arrived at only after great effort and an extensive study of both paranormal phenomena and quantum physics."
The Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives maintains a collection entitled Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090), which documents the career and personal life of Jane Roberts, including journals, poetry, correspondence, audio, and video recordings, and other materials donated after her death by Roberts' husband and other individuals and organizations. Yale University's collection entitled "Jane Roberts papers" occupies 164.08 linear feet of shelf space and is contained in 498 boxes.
Criticism
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.
Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production—at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency."
Some religious groups have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. John MacArthur, host of a syndicated Christian talk show, considers The Seth Material to be "a book entirely written by a demon.", while the New Age Urantia Foundation considers the book evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books – Allowed By The Media claimed that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board."
Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and
Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay."
Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts.
Complete writings
Books:
Roberts, Jane (1966). How To Develop Your ESP Power. Publisher: Federick Fell. (Later retitled and reprinted as The Coming of Seth.) .
Roberts, Jane (1970). The Seth Material. Reprinted, 2001 by New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1972). Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul. Reprinted 1994 by Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1974). The Nature of Personal Reality. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1976). Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 1. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 2. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1978). The Afterdeath Journal of An American Philosopher: The World View of William James. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). Emir's Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers. Prentice-Hall. . Children's literature.
Roberts, Jane (1979). The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1996, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1981). The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Prentice-Hall, . Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing, .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Oversoul Seven Trilogy. Amber-Allen Publishing. . Edition: Paperback; May 1, 1995 (originally published as three separate books: The Education of Oversoul 7 (1973); The Further Education of Oversoul Seven (1979); Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time (1984)).
Roberts, Jane (1981). The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto. Prentice-Hall. . Reprinted 2000, Moment Point Press. .
Roberts, Jane (1982). If We Live Again, Or, Public Magic and Private Love. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1986). Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment. Prentice-Hall, two volumes, and .
Roberts, Jane (1986). Seth, Dreams and Projections of Consciousness. Stillpoint Publishing.
(1993). A Seth Reader. Vernal Equinox Press. Compendium edited by Richard Roberts. .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Magical Approach : Seth Speaks About the Art of Creative Living. Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1997). The Way Toward Health. Robert F. Butts (Foreword), Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (2006). The World View of Rembrandt. New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1997 and after). The Early Sessions (Sessions 1 through 510 of the Seth Material). New Awareness Network. Edited by Robert Butts. Nine volumes. .
Roberts, Jane (2003). The Personal Sessions. New Awareness Network. Deleted session material. Seven volumes. .
Roberts. Jane. The Early Class Sessions. New Awareness Network. Four volumes.
Short Stories and novellas:
Roberts, Jane. "Prayer of a Wiser People" in Profile, 1950.
Roberts, Jane. "The Red Wagon" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1956 (republished 1993, Reality Change Magazine; anthologized in 1975, Ladies of Fantasy).
Roberts, Jane. "The Canvas Pyramid" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958).
Roberts, Jane. "First Communion" in Fantastic Universe, 1957.
Roberts, Jane. "The Chestnut Beads" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958; anthologized in Triple W: Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves, 1963).
Roberts, Jane. "The Bundu" (novella, sequel to "The Chestnut Beads") in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958.
Roberts, Jane. "A Demon at Devotions" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Winter 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "Nightmare" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959.
Roberts, Jane. "Impasse" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959 (Spanish anthology edition ca. 1960).
Roberts, Jane. "Three Times Around" in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1964 (anthologized in Earth Invaded, 1982).
Roberts, Jane. "The Big Freeze" in Dude, 1965 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Summer 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "The Mission," purchased by Topper magazine in August 1965. (Publication not yet confirmed.)
Poetry Submissions:
"Time" in The Saratogian [Saratoga Springs, NY], 1947 Mar 19.
"Enigma" in The Saratogian, 1947 Mar 19.
"Spring Gaiety" in The Saratogian, 1947 Apr 26.
"Rain" in Profile [Skidmore College literary magazine], December, 1947.
"Pretense" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Code" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Skyscrapers" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Introvert" in Profile, May, 1948.
"Poem" in Profile, May, 1948.
"How Public Like a Frog" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Motorcycle Ride" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Echo" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Death Stood at the Door" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Compromise" in Profile, May, 1949.
"I Shall Die in the Springtime." Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Lyric" Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Matilda" in Quicksilver, Spring, 1960.
"It is Springtime, Grandfather." Epos., v.12, n.3, Spring 1961.
"The Familiar." Bitterroot. v.1, n.2, Winter 1962.
"I Saw a Hand" in Treasures of Parnassus: Best Poems of 1962, Young Publications, 1962 (reprinted in The Elmira Star-Gazette, 1962).
"My Grandfather's World." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Lullaby." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Beware, October." Epos. v.16, n.1, Fall 1964.
"This Wrist, This Hand." Epos. v.16, n.4, Summer 1965.
"The Game." New Lantern Club Review. n.2, Summer 1965.
"The Flowers." Steppenwolf. n.1, Winter 1965–1966.
"Vision." Dust/9. v.3, n.1, Fall 1966.
"Who Whispers Yes." Dust/12. v.3, n.4, Spring 1969.
"Hi, Low, and Psycho." Excerpts published in Reality Change, Third Quarter, 1996.
See also
Stewart Edward White
Modal realism
Counterpart theory
Eternalism
New Thought
References
External links
Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Includes both published and unpublished materials
Seth Center Index to the Early Sessions
Seth Learning Center An overview of titles and related audio clips, New Awareness Network
Nirvikalpa Archive of over 1500 quotations and excerpts from the Seth Material
'The Problem of Seth's Origin: A Case Study of the Trance-Possession Mediumship of Jane Roberts' by Paul Cunningham
List of Seth Sessions by Mary Dillman
Index of Eleven Seth Books by Sue R. Williams
Seth Talk - by Lynda Madden Dahl
1929 births
1984 deaths
20th-century American poets
American children's writers
American motivational writers
Women motivational writers
American psychics
American spiritual mediums
American women poets
Channellers
Consciousness researchers and theorists
Deaths from arthritis
New Age writers
People from Saratoga Springs, New York
Skidmore College alumni
American women children's writers
20th-century American women writers
American women non-fiction writers
Women's page journalists
| false |
[
"\"What Faith Can Do\" is a song by American Christian rock band Kutless from their 2009 album It Is Well. It was released on September 24, 2009, as the lead single. The song became the group's first Hot Christian Songs No. 1, staying there for eight weeks. It lasted 47 weeks on the overall chart. The song is played in a D major key at 138 beats per minute.\n\nBackground \n\"What Faith Can Do\" was released on September 24, 2009, as the lead single for their sixth studio album It Is Well. The song's purpose is to encourage the listener that God's power is real and what is can do for you. The band's lead singer, Jon Micah Sumrall, told NewReleaseToday more behind the track,\"That song seems to be an example of touching people and us as a band in the 'right place at the right time.' The song is all about putting all of our hope and trust in God, and the song is encouraging to us as a band. We've had some crazy things happen to us this past year, and the song reminds me of that picture of the two sets of footprints in the sand and when there is only one set of footprints, that's when Jesus is carrying us. 'What Can Faith Do' has become an inspirational banner song for anyone who has been struggling with major battles or life issues. It's been a huge success, and we felt very blessed when we heard stories about how the message has impacted people's lives.\" He also included: \"'What Faith Can Do' reminds believers that God is always here. Never forget that. In times of great happiness or great struggle, He remains faithful. Remain faithful to Him. Turn to Him and believe that nothing is impossible with God. That's what faith can do. The take-away message is to know that God cares for you personally and that He wants a personal relationship with each and every one of us. For believers, the song is a reminder about making a faithful commitment to live with the kind of faith that God calls each of us to have.\"\n\nMusic video \nThe music video for the single \"What Faith Can Do\" was released on February 12, 2010.\n\nTrack listing\nCD release\n \"What Faith Can Do\" – 3:58\n \"What Faith Can Do (Medium Key Performance Track with Background Vocals)\" – 3:58\n \"What Faith Can Do (High Key Performance Track / No Background Vocals)\" – 3:58\n \"What Faith Can Do (Medium Key Performance Track / No Background Vocals)\" – 3:58\n \"What Faith Can Do (High Key Performance Track / No Background Vocals)\" – 3:53\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nDecade-end charts\n\nReferences\n\n2009 songs\n2009 singles\nKutless songs\nSongs written by Scott Krippayne",
"is a real-time strategy game for the PlayStation Portable. The game centers on creating mazes and monsters to help defend a demon lord from heroes seeking to capture him.\n\nThe game was released in North America exclusively as a download game on the PlayStation Store, under the title Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This?. However, on February 9, 2010, NIS America revealed it would be changing the game's name to avoid conflict with the Batman franchise. The game was re-released on April 22, 2010 on the PlayStation Network after it was removed to make the changes, while its sequel, What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord? 2, had been delayed to May 4, 2010.\n\nGameplay \nUsing a limited number of \"Dig Power\" and a pickaxe, the player must dig and create a dungeon, and populate it with monsters to defend the demon lord Badman from heroes. More steps are given when a stage is cleared, based on how well the player did. The \"Dig Power\" has another function, however: it is also used to upgrade monsters. The player is given some time to dig out the dungeon and create monsters before a hero comes to capture the demon lord. When the hero is about to enter the dungeon, the player must take Badman and change his location, preferably making it harder for the hero to find him. When the hero gets into the dungeon, he will navigate the dungeon until he finds and captures the demon lord. The hero will fight against any monster that gets in his way.\n\nWhen the hero captures the demon lord, he will retrace the same path, taking the demon lord with him. It is possible to create monsters to save the demon lord during this.\n\nMonsters are created depending on the number of nutrients or mana in the blocks of the dungeon. If the block is covered with moss, and the player uses his pickaxe on this block, a slime will be released. These slimes move around the dungeon, absorbing, and expelling the nutrients from adjacent blocks, creating blocks with more and more nutrients. Once a block obtains enough nutrients, it will change textures depending on just how much is in the block. Stronger, more powerful monsters will be released the more nutrients a block has. The death of monsters or heroes, along with some of the heroes' actions, has varied effects on the surrounding ground. For example, if a hero casts a spell, the surrounding blocks will be filled with mana, which can be used to create different monsters. More so, if that hero dies, the remainder of his mana is expelled onto surrounding blocks.\n\nDevelopment \nThis game is mostly unknown outside Japan and is considered to be a cult hit. A sequel was released entitled Yuusha no Kuse Ni Namaikida or2, which features almost identical gameplay with a few different additions and changes. In April 2009, it was announced that the game was released in North America under the name Holy Invasion Of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This? On February 9, 2010, the name was changed again to What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!?, to avoid infringing upon the Batman IP. A third game, No Heroes Allowed! was released in late 2010.\n\nReception \n\nWith the exception of Japan, Holy Invasion Of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This? received average reviews. \"Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! is an extremely quirky, challenging title that has a few frustrating elements that keep it from being a stellar downloadable,\" IGN said about the game. Game Revolution gave the game a C-, stating, \"A weird and unique freak of nature amongst the mundane shooters and RPGs with their played out themes of morality, but it's trying too hard to be clever.\" The game currently holds 69/100 on Metacritic.\n\nSequels\nThere have been two sequels to What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord? released on PSP: What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord? 2 and No Heroes Allowed!. A third sequel, No Heroes Allowed: No Puzzles Either!, was released in 2014 for PlayStation Vita, with a fourth, No Heroes Allowed! VR, released on October 14 2017 for PlayStation VR.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial website\n\n2007 video games\nGod games\nPlayStation Portable games\nPlayStation Portable-only games\nReal-time strategy video games\nSony Interactive Entertainment games\nVideo games developed in Japan"
] |
[
"Jane Roberts",
"Criticism",
"What did this do",
"Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community.",
"What was the worst part of this",
"The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death.",
"What did this lead him to try",
"His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.",
"What did they lead them to do",
"His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.",
"Why was this so terrible",
"I don't know.",
"What did this lead him to do",
"one-mortal-life, Jesus-centered messages has also received its share of criticism from some Christian believers."
] |
C_d6ee55992d1a4dccb608bd6eaee117e5_0
|
What was this so dumb
| 7 |
Why was the criticism of the Jesus-centered messages of Jane Roberts' so dumb?
|
Jane Roberts
|
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions. Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production--at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency." Seth's teaching of a philosophy far more detailed than and not in keeping with traditional Church-authority, God-separate-from Creation, one-mortal-life, Jesus-centered messages has also received its share of criticism from some Christian believers. Various ministries have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. The Seth Material has been considered in certain circles to be "a book entirely written by a demon. A woman simply wrote it down as it was dictated to her by the demon; and, of course, it just destroys everything that is true in terms of God's revelation," and as evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books - Allowed By The Media protested that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board." Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay." Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts. CANNOTANSWER
|
The Seth Material has been considered in certain circles to be "a book entirely written by a demon.
|
Dorothy Jane Roberts (May 8, 1929 – September 5, 1984) was an American author, poet, psychic, and spirit medium, who channeled an energy personality who called himself "Seth." Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the Seth Material, established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena.
Early life and career
Roberts was born in Albany, New York and grew up in nearby Saratoga Springs, New York. Her parents, Delmer Hubbell Roberts and Marie Burdo, divorced when she was two years old. With her only child, the young Marie then returned to her own parents, and the home that the family had rented for a number of years: half of a double dwelling in a poor neighborhood. Marie had begun experiencing the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis by 1932 but worked as much as possible. Eventually, Roberts' grandfather, Joseph Burdo, with whom she shared a deep mystical identification, was unable to support two extra people, and the family had to rely upon public assistance. Roberts' grandmother was killed in an automobile accident in 1936.
The next year, her grandfather moved out of the house. By then Marie was partially incapacitated, and the Welfare Department began to furnish mother and daughter with occasional and often unreliable domestic help. When Marie became a bedridden invalid, it was Jane's responsibility to take care of her. This included cooking, cleaning, bringing her the bedpan, and getting up in the middle of the night to refuel the stove. Her embittered mother would tell Jane she was going to turn on the gas jets in the middle of the night and kill them both. When her mother attempted suicide for about the fifth time, she took sleeping pills and was in the hospital. Jane wrote that she went to the welfare worker and said, 'I can't take it anymore. I've just got to leave.'" Over and over Marie told Jane she was no good, that the daughter's birth had caused the mother's illness, and that she was disowned and considered no longer her daughter.
The persistent psychological abuse and mistreatment by her mother resulted in the young girl's deep fear of abandonment. Such situations increased Jane's sense of not being safe, yet also reinforced feelings of independence, for she did not have to feel as dependent upon Marie as she might otherwise.
Well before she was 10 years old Jane had developed persistent symptoms of colitis. By her early teens, she had an overactive thyroid gland. Her vision was poor; she required very strong glasses (which she seldom wore). For most of 1940 and half of 1941, Jane was in a strictly-run Catholic orphanage in Troy, NY while her mother was hospitalized in another city for treatment of her arthritis. Priests came to the house regularly and support was offered to the fatherless family. Jane's initial bonding to the cultural beliefs of religion was very strong to make up for the lack of a loving, nurturing family. For a time she was left between belief systems.
In the summer of 1945, when she was 16 years old, Jane began working at a variety store. It was her first job. That fall she continued on the job after school hours and on an occasional Saturday. After attending public schools she went to Skidmore College from 1947 to 1950 on a poetry scholarship. Roberts' grandfather died when she was age 19. It was a time of severe shock for her. She began to substitute scientific world view for religious belief.
At that time Jane was dating Walt Zeh, a long-time Saratoga Springs friend. Together they went to the west coast by motorcycle to see Jane's father who had also come from a broken home. Jane then married Walt and continued to write while taking a variety of other jobs, including society editor for the Saratoga newspaper, and as a supervisor in a radio factory. Walt and Jane lived together for three years. It was then in February 1954 while "cutting up, dancing, and raisin' hell at a party," that Jane first met the former commercial artist Robert Fabian Butts, Jr. (June 20, 1919 - May 26, 2008). The fourth time they met at another party and Jane 'just looked at him and said, "Look, I'm leaving Walt, and I'm going to live by myself or I'm going to live with you, so just let me know."'" Eventually the two left town together and Jane filed for divorce. Jane and Rob married on December 27, 1954 at the home of his parents in Sayre, PA.
Roberts wrote in a variety of genres: poetry, short stories, children's literature, nonfiction, science fiction, and fantasy, and novels. She was the only woman invited to the first science-fiction writer's conference in 1956 in Milford, PA.
The couple moved to Elmira, NY, in 1960, to find steady part-time work – Rob in the local greeting card company, Jane in an art gallery. Now in her 30s, she and her husband began to record what she said were messages from a personality named "Seth," and she wrote several books about the experience.
Seth Material
On a September evening in 1963, Roberts sat down at her table to work on poetry; Butts was in his back-room studio, painting. "It was very domestic, very normal, very unpsychedelic," she would later remember. And then "Between one normal minute and the next, a fantastic avalanche of radical, new ideas burst into my head with tremendous force ... It was as if the physical world were really tissue-paper-thin, hiding infinite dimensions of reality, and I was flung through the tissue paper with a huge ripping sound." When she "came to," Roberts found herself scrawling the title of this batch of notes: The Physical Universe as Idea Construction.
Before this, though her fiction typically dealt with such themes as clairvoyance and reincarnation, intellectually neither she nor Butts believed in extrasensory abilities. Yet soon after this episode, Roberts suddenly began recalling her dreams, including two that were precognitive. Their curiosity piqued, the couple decided to investigate further, and she managed to land a contract with a New York publisher for a do-it-yourself book on extra-sensory perception.
In late 1963, Roberts and Butts started experimenting with a Ouija board as part of Roberts' research for the book. According to Roberts and Butts, on December 2, 1963, they began to receive coherent messages from a male personality who eventually identified himself as Seth. Soon after, Roberts reported that she was hearing the messages in her head. The first seven sessions were entirely with the Ouija board. The three-hour session on the evening of Jan. 2, 1964 was the first where she began to dictate the messages instead of using the Ouija board. For a while, she still opened her sessions with the board, but finally abandoned it after the 27th session on Feb. 19, 1964.
Roberts described the process of writing the Seth books as entering a trance state. She said Seth would assume control of her body and speak through her, while her husband wrote down the words she spoke. They referred to such episodes as "readings" or "sessions." The 26th session on Feb. 18, 1964, was the first held in the presence of another person—a friend.
On Jan. 17, 1964, Roberts channeled an allegedly recently deceased woman who told Butts that his and his wife's work with Seth was a life-time project, that they would publish his manuscripts, and help spread his ideas. At the 27th session Seth also told the couple how to rearrange the furniture in their apartment which would better suit their energies. Despite feelings of disbelief toward both messages, the couple somewhat reluctantly agreed. Two days afterward they heard from a psychologist interested in reincarnation to whom they had written three weeks earlier with some session copies enclosed. The psychologist told them that the very fluency of the material suggested that it might come from Roberts' subconscious, though it was impossible to tell. He also cautioned that in some circumstances, amateur mediumship could lead to mental problems.
The letter upset her but helped her deal with her doubts. She felt there were no "alarming changes" in her personality. "I was doing twice the creative work I had done earlier. I was satisfied with the quality of the Seth Material; it was far superior to anything I could do on my own. If nothing else, I thought the sessions presented a way of making deeply unconscious knowledge available on a consistent basis."
"Because we were so innocent about psychic literature, we weren't hampered by superstitious fears about such [psychic] phenomena. I didn't believe in gods or demons, so I didn't fear them. I wanted to learn. Rob and I had discovered a whole new world together, and we were going to explore it."
Roberts assumed Seth was a subconscious fantasy, personified because she did not believe in spirits or life after death. She monitored her personality characteristics and went to a psychologist. But she felt that "Seth seemed far more mature and well-balanced than the psychologist, so finally I stopped worrying. This is not to say the experience did not cause certain strains and stresses that could accompany any worthwhile venture in an entirely new field."
Roberts also purportedly channeled the world views of several other people, including the philosopher William James, Rembrandt, and the Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, through a process she described as using a typewriter to write "automatically."
For 21 years until Roberts' death in 1984 (with a one-year hiatus due to her final illness), Roberts held more than 1500 regular or private "ESP class" trance sessions in which she spoke on behalf of Seth. Butts served as the stenographer, taking the messages down in shorthand he had made up, having others on occasion make recording of some sessions. The messages from Seth channeled through Roberts consisted mostly of monologues on a wide variety of topics. They were published by Prentice-Hall under the collective title Seth Material.
Over the years, hundreds of people witnessed Roberts channeling "Seth". Some went to the ESP classes Roberts held (Tuesday and some Thursday nights, Sept. 1967 – Feb. 1975) for an evening, others attended for longer periods. (By this time Jane had given up her gallery work, and was teaching nursery school during part of this time.) Outside of the ESP class structure, Roberts gave many personal Seth sessions to various individuals who had written her, asking for help. She never charged for those sessions; however, at some point, she did charge $2.50 to $3.50 per ESP class of 5 to 40 people. When the books began to sell in sufficient numbers, she dropped that fee. Book sessions were almost always private, held on Monday and Wednesday evenings without witnesses from 1967 through 1982 (except for Tues and Thurs from Aug. to Nov. 1981).
The material through 1969 was published in summary form in The Seth Material, written by Roberts from the output of the channeling sessions. Beginning in January 1970, Roberts wrote books which she described as dictated by Seth. Roberts claimed no authorship of these books beyond her role as a medium. This series of "Seth books" totaled ten volumes. The last two books appear to be incomplete due to Roberts' illness. Butts contributed extensive footnotes, appendices, and other comments to all the Seth books, and thus was a co-author on all of them. These additions describe what was going on in Roberts' and his life at the time of the various sessions, annotated in light of contemporary beliefs and materials he and Roberts were reading, described excerpts from some fan mail and letters from professionals commenting on Seth's material about their fields, and, especially later, provided insight as to the many steps of production of multiple books with the publisher. By February 1982 they were still receiving "from 30 to 50 letters and packages a week" from readers of their various books.
Some of Roberts' earlier and later poetry was occasionally included to show how she had touched upon some of Seth's concepts. Roberts also wrote The Oversoul Seven trilogy to explore via fiction some of Seth's teachings on the concepts of reincarnation and oversouls.
According to Roberts, Seth described himself as an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical matter," and was independent of Roberts' subconscious. Roberts initially expressed skepticism as to Seth's origins, wondering if he was a part of her own personality. While speaking as Seth, Roberts at times appeared stern, jovial, or professorial. "His" voice was deeper and more masculine sounding than Jane's and was possessed of a distinct, although not identifiable, accent. Unlike the psychic Edgar Cayce, whose syntax when speaking in trance was antiquated and convoluted, Roberts' syntax and sentence structures were modern and clear when speaking as Seth. Later books continued to develop but did not contradict the material introduced in earlier works. Some "Practice Elements" were even included on how a few of the concepts could be practically experienced.
A few contemporary world events were commented upon, such as the Jonestown Guyana deaths and the Three Mile Island accident.
Seth also provided an alternative creation myth to that of the Big Bang or Intelligent Design.
Roberts' father died in November 1971 at the age of 68; her mother died six months later at the same age. In early 1982 Roberts spent a month in the hospital for severely underactive thyroid gland, protruding eyes and double vision, an almost total hearing loss, a slight anemia, budding bedsores—and a hospital-caused staph infection. She recovered to an extent, but died two and a half years later in 1984, having been bedridden with severe arthritis-like her mother—for the final year and a half of her life. Roberts had spent 504 consecutive days in a hospital in Elmira, N.Y. The immediate causes of her death were a combination of protein depletion, osteomyelitis, and soft-tissue infections. These conditions arose out of her long-standing rheumatoid arthritis. (Butts believed for some 15 years that in Roberts' case, at least, the young girl's psychological conditioning was far more important—far more damaging, in those terms—than any physical tendency to inherit the disease.) Roberts was cremated the next day, in a process, she and Butts had agreed upon several years earlier.
After Roberts' death, recorded in The Way Toward Health (1997), Butts continued his work as a guardian of the Seth texts and continued to supervise the publication of some of the remaining material, including The Early Sessions, making sure all of the recordings, manuscripts, notes, and drawings would be given to the Yale Library. Butts remarried, and his second wife, Laurel Lee Davies, supported his work during the more than 20 years they were together and helped answer mail and proofread manuscripts. Butts died of cancer on May 26, 2008. Jane Roberts Butts and Robert F. Butts Jr. are interred together in the Wayne County, NY Furnaceville cemetery; however, there is another gravestone with their names on it in the Sunnyside cemetery in Tunkhannock, PA. A number of groups have compiled anthologies of quotes from Seth, summarized sections of his teachings, issued copies of Seth sessions on audio tape, and further relayed the material via classes and conventions.
Reception and influence
Seth's effect upon New Age thinkers has been profound. The title jacket of "The Nature of Personal Reality, A Seth Book," republished in 1994 (Amber-Allen/New World Library), contains testimonials from some of the most notable thinkers and writers within the movement. Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra, Shakti Gawain, Dan Millman, Louise Hay, Richard Bach, and others express the effect the Seth Material had upon their own awakening. In words similar to Williamson's they state: "Seth was one of my first metaphysical teachers. He remains a constant source of knowledge and inspiration in my life." Catherine L. Albanese, professor of religious history at the University of Chicago, stated that in the 1970s the Seth Material "launched an era of nationwide awareness" of the channeling trend. She believes it contributed to the "self-identity of an emergent New Age movement and also augment[ed] its ranks."
John P. Newport, in his study of the impact of New Age beliefs on contemporary culture, described the central focus of the Seth material as the idea that for each individual: "you create your own reality." (Briefly summarized, our beliefs generate emotions that trigger our memories and organize our associations. Eventually, those beliefs become manifested in our physical lives and health.) Newport wrote that this foundational concept of the New Age movement was first developed in the "Seth Material." Historian Robert C. Fuller, a professor of religious studies at Bradley University, wrote that Seth filled the role of guide for what Fuller called "unchurched American spirituality," related to concepts of reincarnation, karma, free will, ancient metaphysical wisdom, and "Christ consciousness."
Some writers noted, "Husband Robert Butts stated that similarities exist between Seth's ideas and those of various religious, philosophical, and mystical doctrines from the Near, Middle, or Far East… and we've done a little reading on Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, and Taoism, for example, not to mention subjects like shamanism, voodooism, and obeah."
New Age writer Michael Talbot wrote, "To my great surprise—and slight annoyance—I found that Seth eloquently and lucidly articulated a view of reality that I had arrived at only after great effort and an extensive study of both paranormal phenomena and quantum physics."
The Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives maintains a collection entitled Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090), which documents the career and personal life of Jane Roberts, including journals, poetry, correspondence, audio, and video recordings, and other materials donated after her death by Roberts' husband and other individuals and organizations. Yale University's collection entitled "Jane Roberts papers" occupies 164.08 linear feet of shelf space and is contained in 498 boxes.
Criticism
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.
Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production—at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency."
Some religious groups have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. John MacArthur, host of a syndicated Christian talk show, considers The Seth Material to be "a book entirely written by a demon.", while the New Age Urantia Foundation considers the book evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books – Allowed By The Media claimed that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board."
Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and
Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay."
Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts.
Complete writings
Books:
Roberts, Jane (1966). How To Develop Your ESP Power. Publisher: Federick Fell. (Later retitled and reprinted as The Coming of Seth.) .
Roberts, Jane (1970). The Seth Material. Reprinted, 2001 by New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1972). Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul. Reprinted 1994 by Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1974). The Nature of Personal Reality. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1976). Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 1. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 2. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1978). The Afterdeath Journal of An American Philosopher: The World View of William James. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). Emir's Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers. Prentice-Hall. . Children's literature.
Roberts, Jane (1979). The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1996, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1981). The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Prentice-Hall, . Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing, .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Oversoul Seven Trilogy. Amber-Allen Publishing. . Edition: Paperback; May 1, 1995 (originally published as three separate books: The Education of Oversoul 7 (1973); The Further Education of Oversoul Seven (1979); Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time (1984)).
Roberts, Jane (1981). The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto. Prentice-Hall. . Reprinted 2000, Moment Point Press. .
Roberts, Jane (1982). If We Live Again, Or, Public Magic and Private Love. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1986). Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment. Prentice-Hall, two volumes, and .
Roberts, Jane (1986). Seth, Dreams and Projections of Consciousness. Stillpoint Publishing.
(1993). A Seth Reader. Vernal Equinox Press. Compendium edited by Richard Roberts. .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Magical Approach : Seth Speaks About the Art of Creative Living. Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1997). The Way Toward Health. Robert F. Butts (Foreword), Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (2006). The World View of Rembrandt. New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1997 and after). The Early Sessions (Sessions 1 through 510 of the Seth Material). New Awareness Network. Edited by Robert Butts. Nine volumes. .
Roberts, Jane (2003). The Personal Sessions. New Awareness Network. Deleted session material. Seven volumes. .
Roberts. Jane. The Early Class Sessions. New Awareness Network. Four volumes.
Short Stories and novellas:
Roberts, Jane. "Prayer of a Wiser People" in Profile, 1950.
Roberts, Jane. "The Red Wagon" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1956 (republished 1993, Reality Change Magazine; anthologized in 1975, Ladies of Fantasy).
Roberts, Jane. "The Canvas Pyramid" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958).
Roberts, Jane. "First Communion" in Fantastic Universe, 1957.
Roberts, Jane. "The Chestnut Beads" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958; anthologized in Triple W: Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves, 1963).
Roberts, Jane. "The Bundu" (novella, sequel to "The Chestnut Beads") in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958.
Roberts, Jane. "A Demon at Devotions" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Winter 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "Nightmare" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959.
Roberts, Jane. "Impasse" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959 (Spanish anthology edition ca. 1960).
Roberts, Jane. "Three Times Around" in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1964 (anthologized in Earth Invaded, 1982).
Roberts, Jane. "The Big Freeze" in Dude, 1965 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Summer 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "The Mission," purchased by Topper magazine in August 1965. (Publication not yet confirmed.)
Poetry Submissions:
"Time" in The Saratogian [Saratoga Springs, NY], 1947 Mar 19.
"Enigma" in The Saratogian, 1947 Mar 19.
"Spring Gaiety" in The Saratogian, 1947 Apr 26.
"Rain" in Profile [Skidmore College literary magazine], December, 1947.
"Pretense" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Code" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Skyscrapers" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Introvert" in Profile, May, 1948.
"Poem" in Profile, May, 1948.
"How Public Like a Frog" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Motorcycle Ride" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Echo" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Death Stood at the Door" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Compromise" in Profile, May, 1949.
"I Shall Die in the Springtime." Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Lyric" Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Matilda" in Quicksilver, Spring, 1960.
"It is Springtime, Grandfather." Epos., v.12, n.3, Spring 1961.
"The Familiar." Bitterroot. v.1, n.2, Winter 1962.
"I Saw a Hand" in Treasures of Parnassus: Best Poems of 1962, Young Publications, 1962 (reprinted in The Elmira Star-Gazette, 1962).
"My Grandfather's World." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Lullaby." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Beware, October." Epos. v.16, n.1, Fall 1964.
"This Wrist, This Hand." Epos. v.16, n.4, Summer 1965.
"The Game." New Lantern Club Review. n.2, Summer 1965.
"The Flowers." Steppenwolf. n.1, Winter 1965–1966.
"Vision." Dust/9. v.3, n.1, Fall 1966.
"Who Whispers Yes." Dust/12. v.3, n.4, Spring 1969.
"Hi, Low, and Psycho." Excerpts published in Reality Change, Third Quarter, 1996.
See also
Stewart Edward White
Modal realism
Counterpart theory
Eternalism
New Thought
References
External links
Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Includes both published and unpublished materials
Seth Center Index to the Early Sessions
Seth Learning Center An overview of titles and related audio clips, New Awareness Network
Nirvikalpa Archive of over 1500 quotations and excerpts from the Seth Material
'The Problem of Seth's Origin: A Case Study of the Trance-Possession Mediumship of Jane Roberts' by Paul Cunningham
List of Seth Sessions by Mary Dillman
Index of Eleven Seth Books by Sue R. Williams
Seth Talk - by Lynda Madden Dahl
1929 births
1984 deaths
20th-century American poets
American children's writers
American motivational writers
Women motivational writers
American psychics
American spiritual mediums
American women poets
Channellers
Consciousness researchers and theorists
Deaths from arthritis
New Age writers
People from Saratoga Springs, New York
Skidmore College alumni
American women children's writers
20th-century American women writers
American women non-fiction writers
Women's page journalists
| false |
[
"\"Dumb Dumb\" (stylized in all caps) is a song recorded by Canadian-Dutch-Korean singer and songwriter Jeon Somi. It was released by The Black Label and Interscope Records on August 2, 2021 as a pre-release single from the singer's debut studio album XOXO. The song peaked at number 8 on the Gaon Digital Chart and at number 9 on the K-pop Hot 100, becoming Somi's first top-ten single on both charts.\n\nBackground and release \n\nOn July 14, 2021, The Black Label confirmed that Jeon Somi would make a comeback, though it was unclear whether in what format the comeback would be. Then, they released first promotional poster on July 23, that revealed the format as a single, it also included the song's release date and the title of the single \"Dumb Dumb\". The following day the second promotional poster was released. On July 26, the third promotional poster was released. On July 28, the fourth promotional poster was released. On the next day, they released the fifth promotional poster. On August 1, a credits poster was unveiled revealing the Somi was involved in the songs's writing. On August 2, \"Dumb Dumb\" was released digitally at 18:00 (KST).\n\nThe original lyrics to the hook of the song were \"Imma say it like it is/ cut the bullsh*t/ you dumb dumb\"; in the official version, they have been translated to Korean. Jeon attributed the longer wait between comebacks to this recording process and vouched it makes the result good.\n\nCritical reception\n\nNMEs Rhian Daly gave the song a two-star rating calling it \"frustrating and underwhelming.\" She commented how \"Dumb Dumb\" could be stronger if it was given time to develop \"but at two minutes and 30 seconds, it's over before it really gets going.\" Although reviewing the song negatively she called the \"chorus' dirty bass\" and \"Somi's accompanying shift into her lower register alluring and arresting.\" Yeom Dong-gyo of IZM gave \"Dumb Dumb\" a two and half star rating and said the song \"blends the boldness of \"What You Waiting For\" and the freshness of \"Birthday\".\n\nMusic video \nOn July 30, the music video teaser was released. On August 2, the official music video was released. It features Somi, who appeared as a high school student that falls in love with one of the most handsome members of the sports team at lunchtime, and then goes into operation to get a confession. Turned out, both of them were pretending to play \"dumb\" so they can approached with each other. At the end of the video, Somi looks happy after receiving the man's confession. With some eye-catching animations inserted in the middle, the music video felt like a teen movie. It gained ten million views in just a day.\n\nPromotion \nOn the same day as the song release, an online media showcase was held for Somi to celebrate the release with JooE from Momoland as the MC. Somi also held a comeback live stream on her official TikTok account.\n\nAccolades\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nMonthly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\n2021 songs\n2021 singles\nInterscope Records singles\nSongs written by Teddy Park",
"Dumb Dora was a comic strip published from 1924 to 1936 distributed by King Features Syndicate. The term \"dumb Dora\" was a 1920s American slang term for a foolish woman; the strip helped popularize the term.\n\nPublication history \nDumb Dora was initially drawn by Chic Young (of later Blondie fame). After Young left the strip to create Blondie, Paul Fung took over Dumb Dora. Fung also added a topper strip to Dumb Dora, When Mother was a Girl. Bil Dwyer took over the strip in 1932, until Dumb Dora was discontinued in January 1936.\n\n Chic Young: June 25, 1924 - April 27, 1930\n Paul Fung: April 30, 1930 - Sept 3, 1932\n Bil Dwyer: Sept 5, 1932 - January 1936\n\nStory and characters \nAlthough Young's Dora was uneducated, she was also capable of persuading people around her to let her get her own way. This frequently resulted in the strip ending with a character saying of Dora \"She ain't so dumb!\"\n\nIn popular culture \nAccording to slang glossaries of the early 1920s, the term \"dumb Dora\" referred to any young woman who was scatter-brained or stupid. Flappers of the 1920s were also sometimes likened to dumb Doras.\n\nThe epithet \"Dumb Dora\" became identified with the vaudeville act of George Burns and his wife, Gracie Allen, as did a similar slang expression for a female who was not very bright, but in a charming way: \"dizzy dame.\" In the vaudeville era, as well as during the period from the Golden Age of Radio through the first several decades of television, female comedians were often expected to play a \"Dumb Dora\" or \"Dizzy Dame\" role, even if in real life, they were very intelligent. A good example of this dichotomy was Lucille Ball.\n\nAlthough Dumb Dora comic strip was discontinued in 1935, the TV game show Match Game occasionally alludes to the strip, asking those watching in the studio to shout in unison, \"How dumb is she?\" (borrowing from a routine from The Tonight Show).\n\nReferences\n\n1924 comics debuts\n1935 comics endings\nAmerican comics characters\nAmerican comic strips\nAmerican slang\nComics characters introduced in 1924\nFemale characters in comics\nGag-a-day comics\nWomen-related neologisms\n1920s neologisms"
] |
[
"Jane Roberts",
"Criticism",
"What did this do",
"Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community.",
"What was the worst part of this",
"The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death.",
"What did this lead him to try",
"His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.",
"What did they lead them to do",
"His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.",
"Why was this so terrible",
"I don't know.",
"What did this lead him to do",
"one-mortal-life, Jesus-centered messages has also received its share of criticism from some Christian believers.",
"What was this so dumb",
"The Seth Material has been considered in certain circles to be \"a book entirely written by a demon."
] |
C_d6ee55992d1a4dccb608bd6eaee117e5_0
|
What did this mean for them
| 8 |
What did the Seth Material's interpretation of being entirely written by a demon mean?
|
Jane Roberts
|
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions. Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production--at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency." Seth's teaching of a philosophy far more detailed than and not in keeping with traditional Church-authority, God-separate-from Creation, one-mortal-life, Jesus-centered messages has also received its share of criticism from some Christian believers. Various ministries have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. The Seth Material has been considered in certain circles to be "a book entirely written by a demon. A woman simply wrote it down as it was dictated to her by the demon; and, of course, it just destroys everything that is true in terms of God's revelation," and as evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books - Allowed By The Media protested that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board." Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay." Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts. CANNOTANSWER
|
It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay.
|
Dorothy Jane Roberts (May 8, 1929 – September 5, 1984) was an American author, poet, psychic, and spirit medium, who channeled an energy personality who called himself "Seth." Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the Seth Material, established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena.
Early life and career
Roberts was born in Albany, New York and grew up in nearby Saratoga Springs, New York. Her parents, Delmer Hubbell Roberts and Marie Burdo, divorced when she was two years old. With her only child, the young Marie then returned to her own parents, and the home that the family had rented for a number of years: half of a double dwelling in a poor neighborhood. Marie had begun experiencing the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis by 1932 but worked as much as possible. Eventually, Roberts' grandfather, Joseph Burdo, with whom she shared a deep mystical identification, was unable to support two extra people, and the family had to rely upon public assistance. Roberts' grandmother was killed in an automobile accident in 1936.
The next year, her grandfather moved out of the house. By then Marie was partially incapacitated, and the Welfare Department began to furnish mother and daughter with occasional and often unreliable domestic help. When Marie became a bedridden invalid, it was Jane's responsibility to take care of her. This included cooking, cleaning, bringing her the bedpan, and getting up in the middle of the night to refuel the stove. Her embittered mother would tell Jane she was going to turn on the gas jets in the middle of the night and kill them both. When her mother attempted suicide for about the fifth time, she took sleeping pills and was in the hospital. Jane wrote that she went to the welfare worker and said, 'I can't take it anymore. I've just got to leave.'" Over and over Marie told Jane she was no good, that the daughter's birth had caused the mother's illness, and that she was disowned and considered no longer her daughter.
The persistent psychological abuse and mistreatment by her mother resulted in the young girl's deep fear of abandonment. Such situations increased Jane's sense of not being safe, yet also reinforced feelings of independence, for she did not have to feel as dependent upon Marie as she might otherwise.
Well before she was 10 years old Jane had developed persistent symptoms of colitis. By her early teens, she had an overactive thyroid gland. Her vision was poor; she required very strong glasses (which she seldom wore). For most of 1940 and half of 1941, Jane was in a strictly-run Catholic orphanage in Troy, NY while her mother was hospitalized in another city for treatment of her arthritis. Priests came to the house regularly and support was offered to the fatherless family. Jane's initial bonding to the cultural beliefs of religion was very strong to make up for the lack of a loving, nurturing family. For a time she was left between belief systems.
In the summer of 1945, when she was 16 years old, Jane began working at a variety store. It was her first job. That fall she continued on the job after school hours and on an occasional Saturday. After attending public schools she went to Skidmore College from 1947 to 1950 on a poetry scholarship. Roberts' grandfather died when she was age 19. It was a time of severe shock for her. She began to substitute scientific world view for religious belief.
At that time Jane was dating Walt Zeh, a long-time Saratoga Springs friend. Together they went to the west coast by motorcycle to see Jane's father who had also come from a broken home. Jane then married Walt and continued to write while taking a variety of other jobs, including society editor for the Saratoga newspaper, and as a supervisor in a radio factory. Walt and Jane lived together for three years. It was then in February 1954 while "cutting up, dancing, and raisin' hell at a party," that Jane first met the former commercial artist Robert Fabian Butts, Jr. (June 20, 1919 - May 26, 2008). The fourth time they met at another party and Jane 'just looked at him and said, "Look, I'm leaving Walt, and I'm going to live by myself or I'm going to live with you, so just let me know."'" Eventually the two left town together and Jane filed for divorce. Jane and Rob married on December 27, 1954 at the home of his parents in Sayre, PA.
Roberts wrote in a variety of genres: poetry, short stories, children's literature, nonfiction, science fiction, and fantasy, and novels. She was the only woman invited to the first science-fiction writer's conference in 1956 in Milford, PA.
The couple moved to Elmira, NY, in 1960, to find steady part-time work – Rob in the local greeting card company, Jane in an art gallery. Now in her 30s, she and her husband began to record what she said were messages from a personality named "Seth," and she wrote several books about the experience.
Seth Material
On a September evening in 1963, Roberts sat down at her table to work on poetry; Butts was in his back-room studio, painting. "It was very domestic, very normal, very unpsychedelic," she would later remember. And then "Between one normal minute and the next, a fantastic avalanche of radical, new ideas burst into my head with tremendous force ... It was as if the physical world were really tissue-paper-thin, hiding infinite dimensions of reality, and I was flung through the tissue paper with a huge ripping sound." When she "came to," Roberts found herself scrawling the title of this batch of notes: The Physical Universe as Idea Construction.
Before this, though her fiction typically dealt with such themes as clairvoyance and reincarnation, intellectually neither she nor Butts believed in extrasensory abilities. Yet soon after this episode, Roberts suddenly began recalling her dreams, including two that were precognitive. Their curiosity piqued, the couple decided to investigate further, and she managed to land a contract with a New York publisher for a do-it-yourself book on extra-sensory perception.
In late 1963, Roberts and Butts started experimenting with a Ouija board as part of Roberts' research for the book. According to Roberts and Butts, on December 2, 1963, they began to receive coherent messages from a male personality who eventually identified himself as Seth. Soon after, Roberts reported that she was hearing the messages in her head. The first seven sessions were entirely with the Ouija board. The three-hour session on the evening of Jan. 2, 1964 was the first where she began to dictate the messages instead of using the Ouija board. For a while, she still opened her sessions with the board, but finally abandoned it after the 27th session on Feb. 19, 1964.
Roberts described the process of writing the Seth books as entering a trance state. She said Seth would assume control of her body and speak through her, while her husband wrote down the words she spoke. They referred to such episodes as "readings" or "sessions." The 26th session on Feb. 18, 1964, was the first held in the presence of another person—a friend.
On Jan. 17, 1964, Roberts channeled an allegedly recently deceased woman who told Butts that his and his wife's work with Seth was a life-time project, that they would publish his manuscripts, and help spread his ideas. At the 27th session Seth also told the couple how to rearrange the furniture in their apartment which would better suit their energies. Despite feelings of disbelief toward both messages, the couple somewhat reluctantly agreed. Two days afterward they heard from a psychologist interested in reincarnation to whom they had written three weeks earlier with some session copies enclosed. The psychologist told them that the very fluency of the material suggested that it might come from Roberts' subconscious, though it was impossible to tell. He also cautioned that in some circumstances, amateur mediumship could lead to mental problems.
The letter upset her but helped her deal with her doubts. She felt there were no "alarming changes" in her personality. "I was doing twice the creative work I had done earlier. I was satisfied with the quality of the Seth Material; it was far superior to anything I could do on my own. If nothing else, I thought the sessions presented a way of making deeply unconscious knowledge available on a consistent basis."
"Because we were so innocent about psychic literature, we weren't hampered by superstitious fears about such [psychic] phenomena. I didn't believe in gods or demons, so I didn't fear them. I wanted to learn. Rob and I had discovered a whole new world together, and we were going to explore it."
Roberts assumed Seth was a subconscious fantasy, personified because she did not believe in spirits or life after death. She monitored her personality characteristics and went to a psychologist. But she felt that "Seth seemed far more mature and well-balanced than the psychologist, so finally I stopped worrying. This is not to say the experience did not cause certain strains and stresses that could accompany any worthwhile venture in an entirely new field."
Roberts also purportedly channeled the world views of several other people, including the philosopher William James, Rembrandt, and the Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, through a process she described as using a typewriter to write "automatically."
For 21 years until Roberts' death in 1984 (with a one-year hiatus due to her final illness), Roberts held more than 1500 regular or private "ESP class" trance sessions in which she spoke on behalf of Seth. Butts served as the stenographer, taking the messages down in shorthand he had made up, having others on occasion make recording of some sessions. The messages from Seth channeled through Roberts consisted mostly of monologues on a wide variety of topics. They were published by Prentice-Hall under the collective title Seth Material.
Over the years, hundreds of people witnessed Roberts channeling "Seth". Some went to the ESP classes Roberts held (Tuesday and some Thursday nights, Sept. 1967 – Feb. 1975) for an evening, others attended for longer periods. (By this time Jane had given up her gallery work, and was teaching nursery school during part of this time.) Outside of the ESP class structure, Roberts gave many personal Seth sessions to various individuals who had written her, asking for help. She never charged for those sessions; however, at some point, she did charge $2.50 to $3.50 per ESP class of 5 to 40 people. When the books began to sell in sufficient numbers, she dropped that fee. Book sessions were almost always private, held on Monday and Wednesday evenings without witnesses from 1967 through 1982 (except for Tues and Thurs from Aug. to Nov. 1981).
The material through 1969 was published in summary form in The Seth Material, written by Roberts from the output of the channeling sessions. Beginning in January 1970, Roberts wrote books which she described as dictated by Seth. Roberts claimed no authorship of these books beyond her role as a medium. This series of "Seth books" totaled ten volumes. The last two books appear to be incomplete due to Roberts' illness. Butts contributed extensive footnotes, appendices, and other comments to all the Seth books, and thus was a co-author on all of them. These additions describe what was going on in Roberts' and his life at the time of the various sessions, annotated in light of contemporary beliefs and materials he and Roberts were reading, described excerpts from some fan mail and letters from professionals commenting on Seth's material about their fields, and, especially later, provided insight as to the many steps of production of multiple books with the publisher. By February 1982 they were still receiving "from 30 to 50 letters and packages a week" from readers of their various books.
Some of Roberts' earlier and later poetry was occasionally included to show how she had touched upon some of Seth's concepts. Roberts also wrote The Oversoul Seven trilogy to explore via fiction some of Seth's teachings on the concepts of reincarnation and oversouls.
According to Roberts, Seth described himself as an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical matter," and was independent of Roberts' subconscious. Roberts initially expressed skepticism as to Seth's origins, wondering if he was a part of her own personality. While speaking as Seth, Roberts at times appeared stern, jovial, or professorial. "His" voice was deeper and more masculine sounding than Jane's and was possessed of a distinct, although not identifiable, accent. Unlike the psychic Edgar Cayce, whose syntax when speaking in trance was antiquated and convoluted, Roberts' syntax and sentence structures were modern and clear when speaking as Seth. Later books continued to develop but did not contradict the material introduced in earlier works. Some "Practice Elements" were even included on how a few of the concepts could be practically experienced.
A few contemporary world events were commented upon, such as the Jonestown Guyana deaths and the Three Mile Island accident.
Seth also provided an alternative creation myth to that of the Big Bang or Intelligent Design.
Roberts' father died in November 1971 at the age of 68; her mother died six months later at the same age. In early 1982 Roberts spent a month in the hospital for severely underactive thyroid gland, protruding eyes and double vision, an almost total hearing loss, a slight anemia, budding bedsores—and a hospital-caused staph infection. She recovered to an extent, but died two and a half years later in 1984, having been bedridden with severe arthritis-like her mother—for the final year and a half of her life. Roberts had spent 504 consecutive days in a hospital in Elmira, N.Y. The immediate causes of her death were a combination of protein depletion, osteomyelitis, and soft-tissue infections. These conditions arose out of her long-standing rheumatoid arthritis. (Butts believed for some 15 years that in Roberts' case, at least, the young girl's psychological conditioning was far more important—far more damaging, in those terms—than any physical tendency to inherit the disease.) Roberts was cremated the next day, in a process, she and Butts had agreed upon several years earlier.
After Roberts' death, recorded in The Way Toward Health (1997), Butts continued his work as a guardian of the Seth texts and continued to supervise the publication of some of the remaining material, including The Early Sessions, making sure all of the recordings, manuscripts, notes, and drawings would be given to the Yale Library. Butts remarried, and his second wife, Laurel Lee Davies, supported his work during the more than 20 years they were together and helped answer mail and proofread manuscripts. Butts died of cancer on May 26, 2008. Jane Roberts Butts and Robert F. Butts Jr. are interred together in the Wayne County, NY Furnaceville cemetery; however, there is another gravestone with their names on it in the Sunnyside cemetery in Tunkhannock, PA. A number of groups have compiled anthologies of quotes from Seth, summarized sections of his teachings, issued copies of Seth sessions on audio tape, and further relayed the material via classes and conventions.
Reception and influence
Seth's effect upon New Age thinkers has been profound. The title jacket of "The Nature of Personal Reality, A Seth Book," republished in 1994 (Amber-Allen/New World Library), contains testimonials from some of the most notable thinkers and writers within the movement. Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra, Shakti Gawain, Dan Millman, Louise Hay, Richard Bach, and others express the effect the Seth Material had upon their own awakening. In words similar to Williamson's they state: "Seth was one of my first metaphysical teachers. He remains a constant source of knowledge and inspiration in my life." Catherine L. Albanese, professor of religious history at the University of Chicago, stated that in the 1970s the Seth Material "launched an era of nationwide awareness" of the channeling trend. She believes it contributed to the "self-identity of an emergent New Age movement and also augment[ed] its ranks."
John P. Newport, in his study of the impact of New Age beliefs on contemporary culture, described the central focus of the Seth material as the idea that for each individual: "you create your own reality." (Briefly summarized, our beliefs generate emotions that trigger our memories and organize our associations. Eventually, those beliefs become manifested in our physical lives and health.) Newport wrote that this foundational concept of the New Age movement was first developed in the "Seth Material." Historian Robert C. Fuller, a professor of religious studies at Bradley University, wrote that Seth filled the role of guide for what Fuller called "unchurched American spirituality," related to concepts of reincarnation, karma, free will, ancient metaphysical wisdom, and "Christ consciousness."
Some writers noted, "Husband Robert Butts stated that similarities exist between Seth's ideas and those of various religious, philosophical, and mystical doctrines from the Near, Middle, or Far East… and we've done a little reading on Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, and Taoism, for example, not to mention subjects like shamanism, voodooism, and obeah."
New Age writer Michael Talbot wrote, "To my great surprise—and slight annoyance—I found that Seth eloquently and lucidly articulated a view of reality that I had arrived at only after great effort and an extensive study of both paranormal phenomena and quantum physics."
The Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives maintains a collection entitled Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090), which documents the career and personal life of Jane Roberts, including journals, poetry, correspondence, audio, and video recordings, and other materials donated after her death by Roberts' husband and other individuals and organizations. Yale University's collection entitled "Jane Roberts papers" occupies 164.08 linear feet of shelf space and is contained in 498 boxes.
Criticism
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.
Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production—at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency."
Some religious groups have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. John MacArthur, host of a syndicated Christian talk show, considers The Seth Material to be "a book entirely written by a demon.", while the New Age Urantia Foundation considers the book evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books – Allowed By The Media claimed that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board."
Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and
Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay."
Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts.
Complete writings
Books:
Roberts, Jane (1966). How To Develop Your ESP Power. Publisher: Federick Fell. (Later retitled and reprinted as The Coming of Seth.) .
Roberts, Jane (1970). The Seth Material. Reprinted, 2001 by New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1972). Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul. Reprinted 1994 by Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1974). The Nature of Personal Reality. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1976). Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 1. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 2. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1978). The Afterdeath Journal of An American Philosopher: The World View of William James. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). Emir's Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers. Prentice-Hall. . Children's literature.
Roberts, Jane (1979). The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1996, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1981). The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Prentice-Hall, . Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing, .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Oversoul Seven Trilogy. Amber-Allen Publishing. . Edition: Paperback; May 1, 1995 (originally published as three separate books: The Education of Oversoul 7 (1973); The Further Education of Oversoul Seven (1979); Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time (1984)).
Roberts, Jane (1981). The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto. Prentice-Hall. . Reprinted 2000, Moment Point Press. .
Roberts, Jane (1982). If We Live Again, Or, Public Magic and Private Love. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1986). Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment. Prentice-Hall, two volumes, and .
Roberts, Jane (1986). Seth, Dreams and Projections of Consciousness. Stillpoint Publishing.
(1993). A Seth Reader. Vernal Equinox Press. Compendium edited by Richard Roberts. .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Magical Approach : Seth Speaks About the Art of Creative Living. Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1997). The Way Toward Health. Robert F. Butts (Foreword), Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (2006). The World View of Rembrandt. New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1997 and after). The Early Sessions (Sessions 1 through 510 of the Seth Material). New Awareness Network. Edited by Robert Butts. Nine volumes. .
Roberts, Jane (2003). The Personal Sessions. New Awareness Network. Deleted session material. Seven volumes. .
Roberts. Jane. The Early Class Sessions. New Awareness Network. Four volumes.
Short Stories and novellas:
Roberts, Jane. "Prayer of a Wiser People" in Profile, 1950.
Roberts, Jane. "The Red Wagon" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1956 (republished 1993, Reality Change Magazine; anthologized in 1975, Ladies of Fantasy).
Roberts, Jane. "The Canvas Pyramid" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958).
Roberts, Jane. "First Communion" in Fantastic Universe, 1957.
Roberts, Jane. "The Chestnut Beads" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958; anthologized in Triple W: Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves, 1963).
Roberts, Jane. "The Bundu" (novella, sequel to "The Chestnut Beads") in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958.
Roberts, Jane. "A Demon at Devotions" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Winter 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "Nightmare" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959.
Roberts, Jane. "Impasse" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959 (Spanish anthology edition ca. 1960).
Roberts, Jane. "Three Times Around" in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1964 (anthologized in Earth Invaded, 1982).
Roberts, Jane. "The Big Freeze" in Dude, 1965 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Summer 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "The Mission," purchased by Topper magazine in August 1965. (Publication not yet confirmed.)
Poetry Submissions:
"Time" in The Saratogian [Saratoga Springs, NY], 1947 Mar 19.
"Enigma" in The Saratogian, 1947 Mar 19.
"Spring Gaiety" in The Saratogian, 1947 Apr 26.
"Rain" in Profile [Skidmore College literary magazine], December, 1947.
"Pretense" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Code" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Skyscrapers" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Introvert" in Profile, May, 1948.
"Poem" in Profile, May, 1948.
"How Public Like a Frog" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Motorcycle Ride" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Echo" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Death Stood at the Door" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Compromise" in Profile, May, 1949.
"I Shall Die in the Springtime." Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Lyric" Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Matilda" in Quicksilver, Spring, 1960.
"It is Springtime, Grandfather." Epos., v.12, n.3, Spring 1961.
"The Familiar." Bitterroot. v.1, n.2, Winter 1962.
"I Saw a Hand" in Treasures of Parnassus: Best Poems of 1962, Young Publications, 1962 (reprinted in The Elmira Star-Gazette, 1962).
"My Grandfather's World." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Lullaby." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Beware, October." Epos. v.16, n.1, Fall 1964.
"This Wrist, This Hand." Epos. v.16, n.4, Summer 1965.
"The Game." New Lantern Club Review. n.2, Summer 1965.
"The Flowers." Steppenwolf. n.1, Winter 1965–1966.
"Vision." Dust/9. v.3, n.1, Fall 1966.
"Who Whispers Yes." Dust/12. v.3, n.4, Spring 1969.
"Hi, Low, and Psycho." Excerpts published in Reality Change, Third Quarter, 1996.
See also
Stewart Edward White
Modal realism
Counterpart theory
Eternalism
New Thought
References
External links
Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Includes both published and unpublished materials
Seth Center Index to the Early Sessions
Seth Learning Center An overview of titles and related audio clips, New Awareness Network
Nirvikalpa Archive of over 1500 quotations and excerpts from the Seth Material
'The Problem of Seth's Origin: A Case Study of the Trance-Possession Mediumship of Jane Roberts' by Paul Cunningham
List of Seth Sessions by Mary Dillman
Index of Eleven Seth Books by Sue R. Williams
Seth Talk - by Lynda Madden Dahl
1929 births
1984 deaths
20th-century American poets
American children's writers
American motivational writers
Women motivational writers
American psychics
American spiritual mediums
American women poets
Channellers
Consciousness researchers and theorists
Deaths from arthritis
New Age writers
People from Saratoga Springs, New York
Skidmore College alumni
American women children's writers
20th-century American women writers
American women non-fiction writers
Women's page journalists
| true |
[
"In statistics the assumed mean is a method for calculating the arithmetic mean and standard deviation of a data set. It simplifies calculating accurate values by hand. Its interest today is chiefly historical but it can be used to quickly estimate these statistics.There are other rapid calculation methods which are more suited for computers which also ensure more accurate results than the obvious methods.\n\nExample\n\nFirst:\nThe mean of the following numbers is sought:\n\n 219, 223, 226, 228, 231, 234, 235, 236, 240, 241, 244, 247, 249, 255, 262\n\nSuppose we start with a plausible initial guess that the mean is about 240. Then the deviations from this \"assumed\" mean are the following:\n\n−21, −17, −14, −12, −9, −6, −5, −4, 0, 1, 4, 7, 9, 15, 22\n\nIn adding these up, one finds that:\n 22 and −21 almost cancel, leaving +1,\n 15 and −17 almost cancel, leaving −2,\n 9 and −9 cancel,\n 7 + 4 cancels −6 − 5,\n\nand so on. We are left with a sum of −30. The average of these 15 deviations from the assumed mean is therefore −30/15 = −2. Therefore, that is what we need to add to the assumed mean to get the correct mean:\n\n correct mean = 240 − 2 = 238.\n\nMethod\n\nThe method depends on estimating the mean and rounding to an easy value to calculate with. This value is then subtracted from all the sample values. When the samples are classed into equal size ranges a central class is chosen and the count of ranges from that is used in the calculations. For example, for people's heights a value of 1.75m might be used as the assumed mean.\n\nFor a data set with assumed mean x0 suppose:\n\nThen\n\nor for a sample standard deviation using Bessel's correction:\n\nExample using class ranges\n\nWhere there are a large number of samples a quick reasonable estimate of the mean and standard deviation can be got by grouping the samples into classes using equal size ranges. This introduces a quantization error but is normally accurate enough for most purposes if 10 or more classes are used.\n\nFor instance with the exception, \n\n167.8 175.4 176.1 166 174.7 170.2 178.9 180.4 174.6 174.5 182.4 173.4 167.4 170.7 180.6 169.6 176.2 176.3 175.1 178.7 167.2 180.2 180.3 164.7 167.9 179.6 164.9 173.2 180.3 168 175.5 172.9 182.2 166.7 172.4 181.9 175.9 176.8 179.6 166 171.5 180.6 175.5 173.2 178.8 168.3 170.3 174.2 168 172.6 163.3 172.5 163.4 165.9 178.2 174.6 174.3 170.5 169.7 176.2 175.1 177 173.5 173.6 174.3 174.4 171.1 173.3 164.6 173 177.9 166.5 159.6 170.5 174.7 182 172.7 175.9 171.5 167.1 176.9 181.7 170.7 177.5 170.9 178.1 174.3 173.3 169.2 178.2 179.4 187.6 186.4 178.1 174 177.1 163.3 178.1 179.1 175.6\n\nThe minimum and maximum are 159.6 and 187.6 we can group them as follows rounding the numbers down. The class size (CS) is 3. The assumed mean is the centre of the range from 174 to 177 which is 175.5. The differences are counted in classes.\n\nThe mean is then estimated to be\n\nwhich is very close to the actual mean of 173.846.\n\nThe standard deviation is estimated as\n\nReferences\n\nMeans",
"A standard normal table, also called the unit normal table or Z table, is a mathematical table for the values of Φ, which are the values of the cumulative distribution function of the normal distribution. It is used to find the probability that a statistic is observed below, above, or between values on the standard normal distribution, and by extension, any normal distribution. Since probability tables cannot be printed for every normal distribution, as there are an infinite variety of normal distributions, it is common practice to convert a normal to a standard normal and then use the standard normal table to find probabilities.\n\nNormal and standard normal distribution\nNormal distributions are symmetrical, bell-shaped distributions that are useful in describing real-world data. The standard normal distribution, represented by the letter Z, is the normal distribution having a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1.\n\nConversion\n\nIf X is a random variable from a normal distribution with mean μ and standard deviation σ, its Z-score may be calculated from X by subtracting μ and dividing by the standard deviation:\n\n \nIf is the mean of a sample of size n from some population in which the mean is μ and the standard deviation is σ, the standard error is σ/√n:\n\n \n\nIf is the total of a sample of size n from some population in which the mean is μ and the standard deviation is σ, the expected total is nμ and the standard error is σ √n:\n\nReading a Z table\n\nFormatting / layout\nZ tables are typically composed as follows:\n The label for rows contains the integer part and the first decimal place of Z.\n The label for columns contains the second decimal place of Z.\n The values within the table are the probabilities corresponding to the table type. These probabilities are calculations of the area under the normal curve from the starting point (0 for cumulative from mean, negative infinity for cumulative and positive infinity for complementary cumulative) to Z.\n\nExample: To find 0.69, one would look down the rows to find 0.6 and then across the columns to 0.09 which would yield a probability of 0.25490 for a cumulative from mean table or 0.75490 from a cumulative table.\n\nBecause the normal distribution curve is symmetrical, probabilities for only positive values of Z are typically given. The user has to use a complementary operation on the absolute value of Z, as in the example below.\n\nTypes of tables\nZ tables use at least three different conventions:\n\nCumulative from mean gives a probability that a statistic is between 0 (mean) and Z. Example: \nCumulative gives a probability that a statistic is less than Z. This equates to the area of the distribution below Z. Example: .\nComplementary cumulative gives a probability that a statistic is greater than Z. This equates to the area of the distribution above Z.\nExample: Find Prob(Z ≥ 0.69). Since this is the portion of the area above Z, the proportion that is greater than Z is found by subtracting Z from 1. That is or .\n\nTable examples\n\nCumulative from minus infinity to Z\n\nThis table gives a probability that a statistic is between minus infinity and Z.\n\n \n\nThe values are calculated using the cumulative distribution function of a standard normal distribution with mean of zero and standard deviation of one, usually denoted with the capital Greek letter (phi), is the integral\n\n(z) is related to the error function, or erf(z).\n\n \n\nNote that for z = 1, 2, 3, one obtains (after multiplying by 2 to account for the [−z,z] interval) the results f(z) = 0.6827, 0.9545, 0.9974, \ncharacteristic of the 68–95–99.7 rule.\n\nCumulative(less than Z)\nThis table gives a probability that a statistic is less than Z (i.e. between negative infinity and Z).\n\nComplementary cumulative\nThis table gives a probability that a statistic is greater than Z.\n\nThis table gives a probability that a statistic is greater than Z, for large integer Z values.\n\nExamples of use\n\nA professor's exam scores are approximately distributed normally with mean 80 and standard deviation 5. Only a cumulative from mean table is available.\n\n What is the probability that a student scores an 82 or less? \n What is the probability that a student scores a 90 or more? \n What is the probability that a student scores a 74 or less? Since this table does not include negatives, the process involves the following additional step: \n What is the probability that a student scores between 74 and 82? \n What is the probability that an average of three scores is 82 or less?\n\nSee also\n\n 68–95–99.7 rule\n t-distribution table\n\nReferences\n\nNormal distribution\nMathematical tables"
] |
[
"Jane Roberts",
"Criticism",
"What did this do",
"Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community.",
"What was the worst part of this",
"The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death.",
"What did this lead him to try",
"His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.",
"What did they lead them to do",
"His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.",
"Why was this so terrible",
"I don't know.",
"What did this lead him to do",
"one-mortal-life, Jesus-centered messages has also received its share of criticism from some Christian believers.",
"What was this so dumb",
"The Seth Material has been considered in certain circles to be \"a book entirely written by a demon.",
"What did this mean for them",
"It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay."
] |
C_d6ee55992d1a4dccb608bd6eaee117e5_0
|
Where did this do group
| 9 |
What did the influence of the Seth do to people like Chopra and Hay?
|
Jane Roberts
|
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions. Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production--at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency." Seth's teaching of a philosophy far more detailed than and not in keeping with traditional Church-authority, God-separate-from Creation, one-mortal-life, Jesus-centered messages has also received its share of criticism from some Christian believers. Various ministries have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. The Seth Material has been considered in certain circles to be "a book entirely written by a demon. A woman simply wrote it down as it was dictated to her by the demon; and, of course, it just destroys everything that is true in terms of God's revelation," and as evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books - Allowed By The Media protested that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board." Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay." Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts. CANNOTANSWER
|
Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material."
|
Dorothy Jane Roberts (May 8, 1929 – September 5, 1984) was an American author, poet, psychic, and spirit medium, who channeled an energy personality who called himself "Seth." Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the Seth Material, established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena.
Early life and career
Roberts was born in Albany, New York and grew up in nearby Saratoga Springs, New York. Her parents, Delmer Hubbell Roberts and Marie Burdo, divorced when she was two years old. With her only child, the young Marie then returned to her own parents, and the home that the family had rented for a number of years: half of a double dwelling in a poor neighborhood. Marie had begun experiencing the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis by 1932 but worked as much as possible. Eventually, Roberts' grandfather, Joseph Burdo, with whom she shared a deep mystical identification, was unable to support two extra people, and the family had to rely upon public assistance. Roberts' grandmother was killed in an automobile accident in 1936.
The next year, her grandfather moved out of the house. By then Marie was partially incapacitated, and the Welfare Department began to furnish mother and daughter with occasional and often unreliable domestic help. When Marie became a bedridden invalid, it was Jane's responsibility to take care of her. This included cooking, cleaning, bringing her the bedpan, and getting up in the middle of the night to refuel the stove. Her embittered mother would tell Jane she was going to turn on the gas jets in the middle of the night and kill them both. When her mother attempted suicide for about the fifth time, she took sleeping pills and was in the hospital. Jane wrote that she went to the welfare worker and said, 'I can't take it anymore. I've just got to leave.'" Over and over Marie told Jane she was no good, that the daughter's birth had caused the mother's illness, and that she was disowned and considered no longer her daughter.
The persistent psychological abuse and mistreatment by her mother resulted in the young girl's deep fear of abandonment. Such situations increased Jane's sense of not being safe, yet also reinforced feelings of independence, for she did not have to feel as dependent upon Marie as she might otherwise.
Well before she was 10 years old Jane had developed persistent symptoms of colitis. By her early teens, she had an overactive thyroid gland. Her vision was poor; she required very strong glasses (which she seldom wore). For most of 1940 and half of 1941, Jane was in a strictly-run Catholic orphanage in Troy, NY while her mother was hospitalized in another city for treatment of her arthritis. Priests came to the house regularly and support was offered to the fatherless family. Jane's initial bonding to the cultural beliefs of religion was very strong to make up for the lack of a loving, nurturing family. For a time she was left between belief systems.
In the summer of 1945, when she was 16 years old, Jane began working at a variety store. It was her first job. That fall she continued on the job after school hours and on an occasional Saturday. After attending public schools she went to Skidmore College from 1947 to 1950 on a poetry scholarship. Roberts' grandfather died when she was age 19. It was a time of severe shock for her. She began to substitute scientific world view for religious belief.
At that time Jane was dating Walt Zeh, a long-time Saratoga Springs friend. Together they went to the west coast by motorcycle to see Jane's father who had also come from a broken home. Jane then married Walt and continued to write while taking a variety of other jobs, including society editor for the Saratoga newspaper, and as a supervisor in a radio factory. Walt and Jane lived together for three years. It was then in February 1954 while "cutting up, dancing, and raisin' hell at a party," that Jane first met the former commercial artist Robert Fabian Butts, Jr. (June 20, 1919 - May 26, 2008). The fourth time they met at another party and Jane 'just looked at him and said, "Look, I'm leaving Walt, and I'm going to live by myself or I'm going to live with you, so just let me know."'" Eventually the two left town together and Jane filed for divorce. Jane and Rob married on December 27, 1954 at the home of his parents in Sayre, PA.
Roberts wrote in a variety of genres: poetry, short stories, children's literature, nonfiction, science fiction, and fantasy, and novels. She was the only woman invited to the first science-fiction writer's conference in 1956 in Milford, PA.
The couple moved to Elmira, NY, in 1960, to find steady part-time work – Rob in the local greeting card company, Jane in an art gallery. Now in her 30s, she and her husband began to record what she said were messages from a personality named "Seth," and she wrote several books about the experience.
Seth Material
On a September evening in 1963, Roberts sat down at her table to work on poetry; Butts was in his back-room studio, painting. "It was very domestic, very normal, very unpsychedelic," she would later remember. And then "Between one normal minute and the next, a fantastic avalanche of radical, new ideas burst into my head with tremendous force ... It was as if the physical world were really tissue-paper-thin, hiding infinite dimensions of reality, and I was flung through the tissue paper with a huge ripping sound." When she "came to," Roberts found herself scrawling the title of this batch of notes: The Physical Universe as Idea Construction.
Before this, though her fiction typically dealt with such themes as clairvoyance and reincarnation, intellectually neither she nor Butts believed in extrasensory abilities. Yet soon after this episode, Roberts suddenly began recalling her dreams, including two that were precognitive. Their curiosity piqued, the couple decided to investigate further, and she managed to land a contract with a New York publisher for a do-it-yourself book on extra-sensory perception.
In late 1963, Roberts and Butts started experimenting with a Ouija board as part of Roberts' research for the book. According to Roberts and Butts, on December 2, 1963, they began to receive coherent messages from a male personality who eventually identified himself as Seth. Soon after, Roberts reported that she was hearing the messages in her head. The first seven sessions were entirely with the Ouija board. The three-hour session on the evening of Jan. 2, 1964 was the first where she began to dictate the messages instead of using the Ouija board. For a while, she still opened her sessions with the board, but finally abandoned it after the 27th session on Feb. 19, 1964.
Roberts described the process of writing the Seth books as entering a trance state. She said Seth would assume control of her body and speak through her, while her husband wrote down the words she spoke. They referred to such episodes as "readings" or "sessions." The 26th session on Feb. 18, 1964, was the first held in the presence of another person—a friend.
On Jan. 17, 1964, Roberts channeled an allegedly recently deceased woman who told Butts that his and his wife's work with Seth was a life-time project, that they would publish his manuscripts, and help spread his ideas. At the 27th session Seth also told the couple how to rearrange the furniture in their apartment which would better suit their energies. Despite feelings of disbelief toward both messages, the couple somewhat reluctantly agreed. Two days afterward they heard from a psychologist interested in reincarnation to whom they had written three weeks earlier with some session copies enclosed. The psychologist told them that the very fluency of the material suggested that it might come from Roberts' subconscious, though it was impossible to tell. He also cautioned that in some circumstances, amateur mediumship could lead to mental problems.
The letter upset her but helped her deal with her doubts. She felt there were no "alarming changes" in her personality. "I was doing twice the creative work I had done earlier. I was satisfied with the quality of the Seth Material; it was far superior to anything I could do on my own. If nothing else, I thought the sessions presented a way of making deeply unconscious knowledge available on a consistent basis."
"Because we were so innocent about psychic literature, we weren't hampered by superstitious fears about such [psychic] phenomena. I didn't believe in gods or demons, so I didn't fear them. I wanted to learn. Rob and I had discovered a whole new world together, and we were going to explore it."
Roberts assumed Seth was a subconscious fantasy, personified because she did not believe in spirits or life after death. She monitored her personality characteristics and went to a psychologist. But she felt that "Seth seemed far more mature and well-balanced than the psychologist, so finally I stopped worrying. This is not to say the experience did not cause certain strains and stresses that could accompany any worthwhile venture in an entirely new field."
Roberts also purportedly channeled the world views of several other people, including the philosopher William James, Rembrandt, and the Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, through a process she described as using a typewriter to write "automatically."
For 21 years until Roberts' death in 1984 (with a one-year hiatus due to her final illness), Roberts held more than 1500 regular or private "ESP class" trance sessions in which she spoke on behalf of Seth. Butts served as the stenographer, taking the messages down in shorthand he had made up, having others on occasion make recording of some sessions. The messages from Seth channeled through Roberts consisted mostly of monologues on a wide variety of topics. They were published by Prentice-Hall under the collective title Seth Material.
Over the years, hundreds of people witnessed Roberts channeling "Seth". Some went to the ESP classes Roberts held (Tuesday and some Thursday nights, Sept. 1967 – Feb. 1975) for an evening, others attended for longer periods. (By this time Jane had given up her gallery work, and was teaching nursery school during part of this time.) Outside of the ESP class structure, Roberts gave many personal Seth sessions to various individuals who had written her, asking for help. She never charged for those sessions; however, at some point, she did charge $2.50 to $3.50 per ESP class of 5 to 40 people. When the books began to sell in sufficient numbers, she dropped that fee. Book sessions were almost always private, held on Monday and Wednesday evenings without witnesses from 1967 through 1982 (except for Tues and Thurs from Aug. to Nov. 1981).
The material through 1969 was published in summary form in The Seth Material, written by Roberts from the output of the channeling sessions. Beginning in January 1970, Roberts wrote books which she described as dictated by Seth. Roberts claimed no authorship of these books beyond her role as a medium. This series of "Seth books" totaled ten volumes. The last two books appear to be incomplete due to Roberts' illness. Butts contributed extensive footnotes, appendices, and other comments to all the Seth books, and thus was a co-author on all of them. These additions describe what was going on in Roberts' and his life at the time of the various sessions, annotated in light of contemporary beliefs and materials he and Roberts were reading, described excerpts from some fan mail and letters from professionals commenting on Seth's material about their fields, and, especially later, provided insight as to the many steps of production of multiple books with the publisher. By February 1982 they were still receiving "from 30 to 50 letters and packages a week" from readers of their various books.
Some of Roberts' earlier and later poetry was occasionally included to show how she had touched upon some of Seth's concepts. Roberts also wrote The Oversoul Seven trilogy to explore via fiction some of Seth's teachings on the concepts of reincarnation and oversouls.
According to Roberts, Seth described himself as an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical matter," and was independent of Roberts' subconscious. Roberts initially expressed skepticism as to Seth's origins, wondering if he was a part of her own personality. While speaking as Seth, Roberts at times appeared stern, jovial, or professorial. "His" voice was deeper and more masculine sounding than Jane's and was possessed of a distinct, although not identifiable, accent. Unlike the psychic Edgar Cayce, whose syntax when speaking in trance was antiquated and convoluted, Roberts' syntax and sentence structures were modern and clear when speaking as Seth. Later books continued to develop but did not contradict the material introduced in earlier works. Some "Practice Elements" were even included on how a few of the concepts could be practically experienced.
A few contemporary world events were commented upon, such as the Jonestown Guyana deaths and the Three Mile Island accident.
Seth also provided an alternative creation myth to that of the Big Bang or Intelligent Design.
Roberts' father died in November 1971 at the age of 68; her mother died six months later at the same age. In early 1982 Roberts spent a month in the hospital for severely underactive thyroid gland, protruding eyes and double vision, an almost total hearing loss, a slight anemia, budding bedsores—and a hospital-caused staph infection. She recovered to an extent, but died two and a half years later in 1984, having been bedridden with severe arthritis-like her mother—for the final year and a half of her life. Roberts had spent 504 consecutive days in a hospital in Elmira, N.Y. The immediate causes of her death were a combination of protein depletion, osteomyelitis, and soft-tissue infections. These conditions arose out of her long-standing rheumatoid arthritis. (Butts believed for some 15 years that in Roberts' case, at least, the young girl's psychological conditioning was far more important—far more damaging, in those terms—than any physical tendency to inherit the disease.) Roberts was cremated the next day, in a process, she and Butts had agreed upon several years earlier.
After Roberts' death, recorded in The Way Toward Health (1997), Butts continued his work as a guardian of the Seth texts and continued to supervise the publication of some of the remaining material, including The Early Sessions, making sure all of the recordings, manuscripts, notes, and drawings would be given to the Yale Library. Butts remarried, and his second wife, Laurel Lee Davies, supported his work during the more than 20 years they were together and helped answer mail and proofread manuscripts. Butts died of cancer on May 26, 2008. Jane Roberts Butts and Robert F. Butts Jr. are interred together in the Wayne County, NY Furnaceville cemetery; however, there is another gravestone with their names on it in the Sunnyside cemetery in Tunkhannock, PA. A number of groups have compiled anthologies of quotes from Seth, summarized sections of his teachings, issued copies of Seth sessions on audio tape, and further relayed the material via classes and conventions.
Reception and influence
Seth's effect upon New Age thinkers has been profound. The title jacket of "The Nature of Personal Reality, A Seth Book," republished in 1994 (Amber-Allen/New World Library), contains testimonials from some of the most notable thinkers and writers within the movement. Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra, Shakti Gawain, Dan Millman, Louise Hay, Richard Bach, and others express the effect the Seth Material had upon their own awakening. In words similar to Williamson's they state: "Seth was one of my first metaphysical teachers. He remains a constant source of knowledge and inspiration in my life." Catherine L. Albanese, professor of religious history at the University of Chicago, stated that in the 1970s the Seth Material "launched an era of nationwide awareness" of the channeling trend. She believes it contributed to the "self-identity of an emergent New Age movement and also augment[ed] its ranks."
John P. Newport, in his study of the impact of New Age beliefs on contemporary culture, described the central focus of the Seth material as the idea that for each individual: "you create your own reality." (Briefly summarized, our beliefs generate emotions that trigger our memories and organize our associations. Eventually, those beliefs become manifested in our physical lives and health.) Newport wrote that this foundational concept of the New Age movement was first developed in the "Seth Material." Historian Robert C. Fuller, a professor of religious studies at Bradley University, wrote that Seth filled the role of guide for what Fuller called "unchurched American spirituality," related to concepts of reincarnation, karma, free will, ancient metaphysical wisdom, and "Christ consciousness."
Some writers noted, "Husband Robert Butts stated that similarities exist between Seth's ideas and those of various religious, philosophical, and mystical doctrines from the Near, Middle, or Far East… and we've done a little reading on Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, and Taoism, for example, not to mention subjects like shamanism, voodooism, and obeah."
New Age writer Michael Talbot wrote, "To my great surprise—and slight annoyance—I found that Seth eloquently and lucidly articulated a view of reality that I had arrived at only after great effort and an extensive study of both paranormal phenomena and quantum physics."
The Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives maintains a collection entitled Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090), which documents the career and personal life of Jane Roberts, including journals, poetry, correspondence, audio, and video recordings, and other materials donated after her death by Roberts' husband and other individuals and organizations. Yale University's collection entitled "Jane Roberts papers" occupies 164.08 linear feet of shelf space and is contained in 498 boxes.
Criticism
Roberts and the Seth Material have attracted critiques from outside the paranormal community. The poet Charles Upton, in his collection of essays titled The System of Antichrist, posited that Roberts multiplied the self due to a fear of death. His opinion was that the Seth texts are based on a misunderstanding of both Christianity and of Eastern religions.
Professor of psychology and noted critic of parapsychology James E. Alcock opined, "In light of all this, the Seth materials must surely be viewed as less than ordinary. There certainly was the time and talent for fraud to play a role, but we cannot discriminate between that possibility and the possibility of unconscious production—at any rate, given these circumstances, there seems little need to consider the involvement of any supernatural agency."
Some religious groups have warned their members about the dangers and deceptions of reading channeled messages from Roberts and others. John MacArthur, host of a syndicated Christian talk show, considers The Seth Material to be "a book entirely written by a demon.", while the New Age Urantia Foundation considers the book evidence for "Devil possession." Videos such as Jane Roberts' Seth Speaks is Anti-Catholic Hate Books – Allowed By The Media claimed that Seth was "a demon from hell contacted through a ouija board."
Science writer Karen Stollznow has written that much of Roberts work was "criticized for being a rip-off of Christian and
Eastern philosophy. It comes as no surprise that Seth influenced such authors as Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay."
Since Roberts' death, others have claimed to channel Seth. In the introduction to Seth's first dictated book, Seth Speaks, "he" says, "communications will come exclusively through Ruburt [Seth's name for Jane] at all times, to protect the integrity of the material." In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts wrote: "Several people have told me that Seth communicated with them through automatic writing, but Seth denies any such contacts." At least one person has claimed more recently to channel Roberts.
Complete writings
Books:
Roberts, Jane (1966). How To Develop Your ESP Power. Publisher: Federick Fell. (Later retitled and reprinted as The Coming of Seth.) .
Roberts, Jane (1970). The Seth Material. Reprinted, 2001 by New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1972). Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul. Reprinted 1994 by Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1974). The Nature of Personal Reality. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1975). Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1976). Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 1. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). The "Unknown" Reality Vol. 2. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1977). The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1978). The Afterdeath Journal of An American Philosopher: The World View of William James. Prentice-Hall. .
Roberts, Jane (1979). Emir's Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers. Prentice-Hall. . Children's literature.
Roberts, Jane (1979). The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. Prentice-Hall. Reprinted 1996, Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1981). The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. Prentice-Hall, . Reprinted 1994, Amber-Allen Publishing, .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Oversoul Seven Trilogy. Amber-Allen Publishing. . Edition: Paperback; May 1, 1995 (originally published as three separate books: The Education of Oversoul 7 (1973); The Further Education of Oversoul Seven (1979); Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time (1984)).
Roberts, Jane (1981). The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto. Prentice-Hall. . Reprinted 2000, Moment Point Press. .
Roberts, Jane (1982). If We Live Again, Or, Public Magic and Private Love. Prentice-Hall. . Poetry.
Roberts, Jane (1986). Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment. Prentice-Hall, two volumes, and .
Roberts, Jane (1986). Seth, Dreams and Projections of Consciousness. Stillpoint Publishing.
(1993). A Seth Reader. Vernal Equinox Press. Compendium edited by Richard Roberts. .
Roberts, Jane (1995). The Magical Approach : Seth Speaks About the Art of Creative Living. Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (1997). The Way Toward Health. Robert F. Butts (Foreword), Amber-Allen Publishing. .
Roberts, Jane (2006). The World View of Rembrandt. New Awareness Network. .
Roberts, Jane (1997 and after). The Early Sessions (Sessions 1 through 510 of the Seth Material). New Awareness Network. Edited by Robert Butts. Nine volumes. .
Roberts, Jane (2003). The Personal Sessions. New Awareness Network. Deleted session material. Seven volumes. .
Roberts. Jane. The Early Class Sessions. New Awareness Network. Four volumes.
Short Stories and novellas:
Roberts, Jane. "Prayer of a Wiser People" in Profile, 1950.
Roberts, Jane. "The Red Wagon" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1956 (republished 1993, Reality Change Magazine; anthologized in 1975, Ladies of Fantasy).
Roberts, Jane. "The Canvas Pyramid" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958).
Roberts, Jane. "First Communion" in Fantastic Universe, 1957.
Roberts, Jane. "The Chestnut Beads" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1957 (French edition, 1958; anthologized in Triple W: Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves, 1963).
Roberts, Jane. "The Bundu" (novella, sequel to "The Chestnut Beads") in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958.
Roberts, Jane. "A Demon at Devotions" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1958 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Winter 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "Nightmare" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959.
Roberts, Jane. "Impasse" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1959 (Spanish anthology edition ca. 1960).
Roberts, Jane. "Three Times Around" in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1964 (anthologized in Earth Invaded, 1982).
Roberts, Jane. "The Big Freeze" in Dude, 1965 (reprinted in Reality Change Magazine, Summer 1994).
Roberts, Jane. "The Mission," purchased by Topper magazine in August 1965. (Publication not yet confirmed.)
Poetry Submissions:
"Time" in The Saratogian [Saratoga Springs, NY], 1947 Mar 19.
"Enigma" in The Saratogian, 1947 Mar 19.
"Spring Gaiety" in The Saratogian, 1947 Apr 26.
"Rain" in Profile [Skidmore College literary magazine], December, 1947.
"Pretense" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Code" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Skyscrapers" in Profile, December, 1947.
"Introvert" in Profile, May, 1948.
"Poem" in Profile, May, 1948.
"How Public Like a Frog" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Motorcycle Ride" in Profile, Fall, 1948.
"Echo" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Death Stood at the Door" in Profile, May, 1949.
"Compromise" in Profile, May, 1949.
"I Shall Die in the Springtime." Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Lyric" Patterns. v.1, n.1, October 1954.
"Matilda" in Quicksilver, Spring, 1960.
"It is Springtime, Grandfather." Epos., v.12, n.3, Spring 1961.
"The Familiar." Bitterroot. v.1, n.2, Winter 1962.
"I Saw a Hand" in Treasures of Parnassus: Best Poems of 1962, Young Publications, 1962 (reprinted in The Elmira Star-Gazette, 1962).
"My Grandfather's World." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Lullaby." Epos. v.14, n.3, Spring 1963.
"Beware, October." Epos. v.16, n.1, Fall 1964.
"This Wrist, This Hand." Epos. v.16, n.4, Summer 1965.
"The Game." New Lantern Club Review. n.2, Summer 1965.
"The Flowers." Steppenwolf. n.1, Winter 1965–1966.
"Vision." Dust/9. v.3, n.1, Fall 1966.
"Who Whispers Yes." Dust/12. v.3, n.4, Spring 1969.
"Hi, Low, and Psycho." Excerpts published in Reality Change, Third Quarter, 1996.
See also
Stewart Edward White
Modal realism
Counterpart theory
Eternalism
New Thought
References
External links
Jane Roberts Papers (MS 1090). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Includes both published and unpublished materials
Seth Center Index to the Early Sessions
Seth Learning Center An overview of titles and related audio clips, New Awareness Network
Nirvikalpa Archive of over 1500 quotations and excerpts from the Seth Material
'The Problem of Seth's Origin: A Case Study of the Trance-Possession Mediumship of Jane Roberts' by Paul Cunningham
List of Seth Sessions by Mary Dillman
Index of Eleven Seth Books by Sue R. Williams
Seth Talk - by Lynda Madden Dahl
1929 births
1984 deaths
20th-century American poets
American children's writers
American motivational writers
Women motivational writers
American psychics
American spiritual mediums
American women poets
Channellers
Consciousness researchers and theorists
Deaths from arthritis
New Age writers
People from Saratoga Springs, New York
Skidmore College alumni
American women children's writers
20th-century American women writers
American women non-fiction writers
Women's page journalists
| true |
[
"A-One is a mandopop group created in 2008 under the label Hong Kong Kiss-star entertainment Beijing company (香港Kiss Star娱乐北京有限公司).\n\nNames\nA number of names have been used for this group.\n\n A-One (昆虫一族)\n A-One (昆虫组合)\n A-One (中国昆虫)\n\nCareer\nOriginally Gillian Chung was scheduled to be a performer at the 2008 Summer Olympics opening ceremony. But due to the Edison Chen photo scandal, director Zhang Yimou had replaced Twins with A-One. A-One did not make their international debut on 8 August as part of the ceremony.\n\nAfter 2 years of training the group debuted after Hunan Satellite TV show Happy camp (快乐大本营).\n\nMembers\nThe group members are counted as 3+x where the most popular 3 members are in the group. Sometimes it may have 5 or more members. There had been 10 members in total. The official website describe this fan selection style as democratic (民主) for the 21st century.\n\nAlbum\n Jeet Kune Do (截拳道)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Official site\n Tudou video sample\n Youtube video sample\n\nChinese musical groups",
"Anacoenosis is a figure of speech in which the speaker poses a question to an audience in a way that demonstrates a common interest.\n\nDiscussion\n\nThe term comes from the Greek (anakoinoûn), meaning \"to communicate, impart\".\n\nAnacoenosis typically uses a rhetorical question, where no reply is really sought or required, thus softening what is really a statement or command. \n\nAsking a question that implies one clear answer is to put others in a difficult position. If they disagree with you, then they risk conflict or derision. In particular if you state the question with certainty, then it makes disagreement seem rude.\n\nParticularly when used in a group, this uses social conformance. If there is an implied agreement by all and one person openly disagrees, then they risk isolating themselves from the group, which is a very scary prospect.\n\nIf I am in an audience and the speaker uses anacoenosis and I do not agree yet do not speak up, then I may suffer cognitive dissonance between my thoughts and actions. As a result, I am likely to shift my thinking toward the speaker's views in order to reduce this tension.\n\nExamples\nDo you not think we can do this now?\nNow tell me, given the evidence before us, could you have decided any differently?\nWhat do you think? Are we a bit weary? Shall we stay here for a while?\n\"And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could I have done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?\" Isaiah 5:3-4\nThe entire speech of Marc Anthony in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar forms an extended example of anacoenosis. Marc Anthony begins by building common cause with the audience on stage, addressing them as \"Friends, Romans, countrymen...\" His speech then poses a number of rhetorical questions to them as part of his refutation of Brutus' words: \"Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? / When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: / Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: / Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;/ And Brutus is an honourable man. / You all did see that on the Lupercal / I thrice presented him a kingly crown, / Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?\" (Act 3, Scene 2)\n\nSee also\nRhetorical question\n\nReferences \n\nFigures of speech\nRhetoric"
] |
[
"Robert Mueller",
"Marine Corps service"
] |
C_3533a0e9363848b4b7be6b9884cefa03_1
|
what was his early life like?
| 1 |
What was Robert Mueller's early life like?
|
Robert Mueller
|
Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. In July 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. In December 1968, he earned the Bronze Star with 'V' distinction for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush that saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with three service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge. Mueller eventually became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then-Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report. Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many--many--who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." After returning from Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970. He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004. CANNOTANSWER
|
Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school.
|
Robert Swan Mueller III (; born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2001 to 2013.
A graduate of Princeton University and New York University, Mueller served as a Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War, receiving a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart. He subsequently attended the University of Virginia School of Law. Mueller is a registered Republican in Washington, D.C., and was appointed and reappointed to Senate-confirmed positions by presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
Mueller has served both in government and private practice. He was an assistant United States attorney, a United States attorney, United States assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, a homicide prosecutor in Washington, D.C., acting United States deputy attorney general, partner at D.C. law firm WilmerHale and director of the FBI.
On May 17, 2017, Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel overseeing an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and related matters. He submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019. On April 18, the Department of Justice released it. On May 29, he resigned his post and the Office of the Special Counsel was closed.
Early life and education
Mueller was born on August 7, 1944, at Doctors Hospital in the New York City borough of Manhattan, the first child of Alice C. Truesdale (1920–2007) and Robert Swan Mueller Jr. (1916–2007). He has four younger sisters: Susan, Sandra, Joan, and Patricia. His father was an executive with DuPont who had served as a Navy officer in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters during World War II. His father majored in psychology at Princeton University and played varsity lacrosse, both of which he followed (see below).
Mueller is of German, English, and Scottish descent. His paternal great-grandfather, Gustave A. Mueller, was a prominent doctor in Pittsburgh, whose own father, August C. E. Müller, had immigrated to the United States in 1855 from the Province of Pomerania in the Kingdom of Prussia (a historical territory whose area included land now part of Poland and the north-eastern edge of Germany). On his mother's side, he is a great-grandson of the railroad executive William Truesdale.
Mueller grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where he attended Princeton Country Day School, now known as Princeton Day School. After he completed eighth grade, his family moved to Philadelphia while Mueller himself went on to attend St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire for high school, where he was captain of the soccer, hockey, and lacrosse teams and won the Gordon Medal as the school's top athlete in 1962. A lacrosse teammate and classmate at St. Paul's School was future Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry.
After graduating from St. Paul's, Mueller entered Princeton University, where he continued to play lacrosse, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in politics in 1966 after completing a senior thesis titled "Acceptance of Jurisdiction in the South West Africa Cases." Mueller was a member of University Cottage Club while he was a student at Princeton. Mueller earned a Master of Arts in international relations from New York University in 1967.
In 1968, Mueller joined the United States Marine Corps. After his military service, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law where he served on the Virginia Law Review and graduated in 1973.
United States Marine Corps service
Mueller has cited the combat death of his Princeton lacrosse teammate David Spencer Hackett in the Vietnam War as an influence on his decision to pursue military service. Of his classmate, Mueller has said, "One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton. There were a number of us who felt we should follow his example and at least go into the service. And it flows from there." Hackett was a Marine Corps first lieutenant in the infantry and was killed in 1967 in Quảng Trị Province by small arms fire.
After waiting a year so a knee injury could heal, Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. Of these, he said later that he considered Ranger School the most valuable because he felt "more than anything teaches you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to eat."
In the summer of 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader as a second lieutenant with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. On December 11, 1968, during an engagement in Operation Scotland II, he earned the Bronze Star with "V" device for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush in which he saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with four service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge.
After recuperating at a field hospital near Da Nang, Mueller became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then–Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report.
Mueller had originally considered making the Marines his career, but he explained later that he found non-combat life in the Corps to be unexciting. After returning from South Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970 at the rank of captain.
Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many—many—who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." In 2009, he told a writer that despite his other accomplishments, he was still "most proud the Marine Corps deemed me worthy of leading other Marines."
Career
Private practice and Department of Justice
After receiving his Juris Doctor in 1973 from the University of Virginia School of Law, Mueller worked as a litigator at the firm Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro in San Francisco until 1976. He then served for 12 years in United States Attorney offices. He first worked in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, where he rose to be chief of the criminal division, and in 1982, he moved to Boston to work in the office of the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts as an Assistant United States Attorney, where he investigated and prosecuted major financial fraud, terrorism and public corruption cases, as well as narcotics conspiracies and international money launderers.
After serving as a partner at the Boston law firm of Hill and Barlow, Mueller returned to government service. In 1989, he served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and as acting Deputy Attorney General. James Baker, with whom he worked on national security matters, said he had "an appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law".
In 1990, he became the United States Assistant Attorney General in charge of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division. During his tenure, he oversaw prosecutions including that of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, the Pan Am Flight 103 (Lockerbie bombing) case, and of the Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.
In 1991, he declared the government had been investigating the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) since 1986 in more-than-usual media exposure. Also in 1991, he was elected a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
In 1993, Mueller became a partner at Boston's Hale and Dorr, specializing in white-collar crime litigation. He returned to public service in 1995 as senior litigator in the homicide section of the District of Columbia United States Attorney's Office. In 1998, Mueller was named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California and held that position until 2001.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
President George W. Bush nominated Mueller for the position of FBI director on July 5, 2001. He and two other candidates, Washington lawyer George J. Terwilliger III and veteran Chicago prosecutor and white-collar crime defense lawyer Dan Webb, were up for the job, but Mueller, described at the time as a conservative Republican, was always considered the front-runner. Terwilliger and Webb both pulled out from consideration around mid-June, while confirmation hearings for Mueller before the Senate Judiciary Committee were quickly set for July 30, only three days before his prostate cancer surgery.
The Senate unanimously confirmed Mueller as FBI director on August 2, 2001, voting 98–0 in favor of his appointment. He had previously served as acting deputy attorney general of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) for several months before officially becoming the FBI director on September 4, 2001, one week before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
On February 11, 2003, one month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Mueller gave testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mueller informed the American public that "[s]even countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea—remain active in the United States and continue to support terrorist groups that have targeted Americans. As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material." Highlighting this worry in February 2003, FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley wrote an open letter to Mueller in which she warned that "the bureau will [not] be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq" and encouraged Mueller to "share [her concerns] with the President and Attorney General."
On March 10, 2004, while United States Attorney General John Ashcroft was at the George Washington University Hospital for gallbladder surgery, James Comey, the then deputy attorney general, received a call from Ashcroft's wife informing him that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were about to visit Ashcroft to convince him to renew a program of warrantless wiretapping under the Terrorist Surveillance Program which the DOJ ruled unconstitutional. Ashcroft refused to sign, as he had previously agreed, but the following day the White House renewed the program anyway. Mueller and Comey then threatened to resign. On March 12, 2004, after private, individual meetings with Mueller and Comey at the White House, the president supported changing the program to satisfy the concerns of Mueller, Ashcroft, and Comey.
He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004.
As director, Mueller also barred FBI personnel from participating in enhanced interrogations with the CIA. At a dinner, Mueller defended an attorney (Thomas Wilner) who had been attacked for his role in defending Kuwaiti detainees. Mueller stood up, raised his glass, and said, "I toast Tom Wilner. He's doing what an American should." However, the White House pushed back, encouraging more vigorous methods of pursuing and interrogating terror suspects. When Bush confronted Mueller to ask him to round up more terrorists in the U.S., Mueller responded, saying, "If they [suspects] don't commit a crime, it would be difficult to identify and isolate" them. Vice President Dick Cheney objected by saying, "That's just not good enough. We're hearing this too much from the FBI."
In May 2011, President Barack Obama asked Mueller to continue at the helm of the FBI for two additional years beyond his normal 10-year term, which would have expired on September 4, 2011. The Senate approved this request 100–0 on July 27, 2011. On September 4, 2013, Mueller was replaced by James Comey.
In June 2013, Mueller defended NSA surveillance programs in testimony before a House Judiciary Committee hearing. He said that surveillance programs could have "derailed" the September 11 attacks. Congressman John Conyers disagreed: "I am not persuaded that that makes it OK to collect every call." Mueller also testified that the government's surveillance programs complied "in full with U.S. law and with basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution". He said that "We are taking all necessary steps to hold Edward Snowden responsible for these disclosures."
On June 19, 2017, in the case of Arar v. Ashcroft, Mueller, along with Ashcroft and former Immigration and Naturalization Services Commissioner James W. Ziglar and others, was shielded from civil liability by the Supreme Court for post-9/11 detention of Muslims under policies then brought into place.
Return to private sector
After leaving the FBI in 2013, Mueller served a one-year term as consulting professor and the Arthur and Frank Payne distinguished lecturer at Stanford University, where he focused on issues related to cybersecurity.
In addition to his speaking and teaching roles, Mueller also joined the law firm WilmerHale as a partner in its Washington office in 2014. Among other roles at the firm, he oversaw the independent investigation into the NFL's conduct surrounding the video that appeared to show NFL player Ray Rice assaulting his fiancée. In January 2016, he was appointed as Settlement Master in the U.S. consumer litigation over the Volkswagen emissions scandal; as of May 11, 2017, the scandal has resulted in $11.2billion in customer settlements.
On October 19, 2016, Mueller began an external review of "security, personnel, and management processes and practices" at government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton after Harold T. Martin III was indicted for massive data theft from the National Security Agency. On April 6, 2017, he was appointed as Special Master for disbursement of $850million and $125million for automakers and consumers, respectively, affected by rupture-prone Takata airbags.
Mueller received the 2016 Thayer Award for public service from the United States Military Academy. In June 2017, he received the Baker Award for intelligence and national security contributions from the nonprofit Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
In October 2019, it was announced that Mueller, along with James L. Quarles and Aaron Zebley, would return to WilmerHale to resume private practice. On July 11, 2020, Mueller wrote an op-ed on The Washington Post stating that Roger Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so” after the President of the United States granted Roger Stone clemency and defended his investigation.
Special Counsel for the Department of Justice
On May 16, 2017, Mueller met with President Trump as a courtesy to provide perspectives on the FBI and input on considerations for hiring a new FBI Director. This meeting was initially widely reported to have been an interview to serve again as the FBI Director. President Trump broached resuming the position in their meeting; however, Mueller was ineligible to return as FBI Director due to statutory term limits, and Mueller lacked interest in resuming the position.
The next day, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to serve as special counsel for the United States Department of Justice. In this capacity, Mueller oversaw the investigation into "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation".
Mueller's appointment to oversee the investigation immediately garnered widespread support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and prominent conservative political commentator, stated via Twitter that "Robert Mueller is a superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity." Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said, "Former Director Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for this job. I now have significantly greater confidence that the investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead." Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) stated, "former FBI dir. Mueller is well qualified to oversee this probe". Some, however, pointed out an alleged conflict of interest. "The federal code could not be clearer—Mueller is compromised by his apparent conflict of interest in being close with James Comey," Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), who first called for Mueller to step down over the summer, said in a statement to Fox News. "The appearance of a conflict is enough to put Mueller in violation of the code. … All of the revelations in recent weeks make the case stronger."
Upon his appointment as special counsel, Mueller and two colleagues (former FBI agent Aaron Zebley and former assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force James L. Quarles III) resigned from WilmerHale. On May 23, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice ethics experts announced they had declared Mueller ethically able to function as special counsel. The spokesperson for the special counsel, Peter Carr, told NBC News that Mueller has taken an active role in managing the inquiry. In an interview with the Associated Press, Rosenstein said he would recuse himself from supervision of Mueller if he were to become a subject in the investigation due to his role in the dismissal of James Comey.
On June 14, 2017, The Washington Post reported that Mueller's office is also investigating Trump personally for possible obstruction of justice, in reference to the Russian probe. The report was questioned by Trump's legal team attorney Jay Sekulow, who said on June 18 on NBC's Meet the Press, "The President is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction, period." Due to the central role of the Trump family in the campaign, the transition, and the White House, the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was also reportedly under scrutiny by Mueller. Also in June, Trump allegedly ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, but backed down when then-White House Counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit.
During a discussion about national security at the Aspen security conference on July 21, 2017, former CIA director John Brennan reaffirmed his support for Mueller and called for members of Congress to resist if Trump fires Mueller. He also said it was "the obligation of some executive-branch officials to refuse to carry out some of these orders that, again, are inconsistent with what this country is all about". After Peter Strzok, an investigator for Mueller, was removed from the investigation for alleged partiality, Senator Mark Warner, the Ranking Member of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a speech on December 20, 2017, before the Senate warned of a constitutional crisis if the President fired Mueller. On June 22, 2018, Warner hosted a fundraising party for 100 guests and was quoted there saying, "If you get me one more glass of wine, I'll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know. If you think you've seen wild stuff so far, buckle up. It's going to be a wild couple of months."
On October 30, 2017, Mueller filed charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign co-chairman Rick Gates. The 12 charges include conspiracy to launder money, violations of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, and conspiracy against the United States.
On December 1, 2017, Mueller reached a plea agreement with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to giving false testimony to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. As part of Flynn's negotiations, his son, Michael G. Flynn, was not expected to be charged, and Flynn was prepared to testify that high-level officials on Trump's team directed him to make contact with the Russians. On February 16, 2018, Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and 3 Russian companies for attempting to trick Americans into consuming Russian propaganda that targeted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and later President-elect Donald Trump.
On February 20, 2018, Mueller charged attorney Alex van der Zwaan with making false statements in the Russia probe.
On May 20, 2018, Trump criticized Mueller, tweeting "the World's most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me so now they are looking at the rest of the World!" Mueller started investigating the August 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and an emissary for the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The emissary offered help to the Trump presidential campaign. Mueller was also investigating the Trump campaign's possible ties to Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and China.
On December 18, 2018, The Washington Post published an article concerning a report prepared for the U.S. Senate which stated that Russian disinformation teams had targeted Mueller.
On March 22, 2019, Mueller concluded his investigation and submitted the Special Counsel's final report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Department of Justice official said that the report did not recommend any new indictments. On March 24, Attorney General Barr submitted a summary of findings to the United States Congress. He stated in his letter, "The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russian in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election." Mueller's report also reportedly did not take a stance on whether or not Trump committed obstruction of justice; Barr quoted Mueller as saying "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
On April 18, 2019, the Department of Justice released Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, the special counsel's final report and its conclusions.
On May 29, 2019, Mueller announced that he was retiring as special counsel and that the office would be shut down, and he spoke publicly about the report for the first time. Saying "The report is my testimony," he indicated he would have nothing to say that was not already in the report. On the subject of obstruction of justice, he said, "under long-standing Department [of Justice] policy, a president cannot be charged with a crime while he is in office." He repeated his official conclusion that the report neither accused nor exonerated the president while adding that any potential wrongdoing by a president must be addressed by a "process other than the criminal justice system." Mueller reasserted the involvement of Russian operatives in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak and their parallel efforts to influence American public opinion using social media. Referring to those actions, he declared that "there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American."
Robert Mueller was initially scheduled to publicly testify before two House committees on July 17, 2019, with two hours for lawmakers to ask questions, but the hearing was postponed to July 24 with a third hour added for questions. His verbal testimony was expected to help inform the public—Democrats believe most Americans have not read the report—and to help Democratic leadership finally decide whether or not to impeach the President. In particular, the Democrats aimed to highlight what they consider to be the worst examples of Trump's conduct. Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland said he would use visual aids, such as posters, to help people understand the implications of the Mueller report. Republicans, on the other hand, planned to question Mueller on the origins of this investigation.
On July 24, 2019, Mueller attended both congressional committee hearings and was questioned by members of Congress. His testimony followed the guidelines he had stated would be appropriate regarding his report. In fact, many of his responses were one-word replies. He said he was "not familiar" with Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the Steele dossier. He rejected claims that his investigation was a "witch hunt" or that it totally exonerated the President. He declined to answer questions outside of the scope of his investigation, but reiterated his concern about foreign interference with American elections. He noted that it continues, that he expects it to expand to include other foreign governments as well as the Russians, and that he considers it a great threat to the United States. According to the Nielsen Company, total viewership for the Mueller hearing fell just shy of 13million, significantly lower than other hearings involving the Trump administration, such as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's (20.4million), former FBI director James Comey's (19.5million), and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's (15.8million). Reasons for this comparatively low television rating include the fact that the hearing occurred in July, vacation time for many Americans, and months after the release of the Mueller report. Fox News Channel enjoyed the top rating, with 3.03million views. Subsequently, Mueller's words were distorted and misinterpreted to both defend and condemn the President. Mueller's testimony was criticized by some as uncharacteristically confusing.
In late September 2019, it was reported Trump may have lied to Mueller about his knowledge of his campaign's contacts with WikiLeaks, citing the grand jury redactions in the Mueller report.
Political scientists William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe described Mueller's decision not to take a position on obstruction of justice for Trump – despite "compiling a mountain of incriminating evidence" – as something that "will surely go down as one of the strangest – and most consequential – moves in modern legal history." They added, "in refusing to draw legal conclusions from his evidence, Mueller simply didn't do his job... because he didn't, he failed to carry out his duty to tell the American people what his investigation actually revealed about Trump's lawless behavior, and he failed to draw a bright line that would keep future presidents within legal bounds."
The University of Virginia Law School announced in June 2021 that in the coming fall Mueller would participate in a six-session course called "The Mueller Report and the Role of the Special Counsel," along with three of his colleagues from the investigation.
Personal life
Mueller met his future wife, Ann Cabell Standish, at a high school party when they were 17. Standish attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and Sarah Lawrence College, before working as a special-education teacher for children with learning disabilities. In September 1966, they married at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. They have two daughters and three grandchildren. One of their daughters was born with spina bifida.
In 2001, Mueller's Senate confirmation hearings to head the FBI were delayed several months while he underwent treatment for prostate cancer. He was diagnosed in the fall of 2000, postponing being sworn in as FBI director until he received a good prognosis from his physician.
Although raised Presbyterian, he became an Episcopalian later in life.
Mueller and William Barr—the attorney general who supervised the late stage of Mueller's special counsel investigation—have known each other since the 1980s and have been described as good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr's daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.
Military awards
Mueller received the following military awards and decorations:
References
Further reading
External links
Profile at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and staff
1944 births
20th-century American lawyers
21st-century American lawyers
American Episcopalians
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
American people of Scottish descent
Assistant United States Attorneys
Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Identity theft victims
Lawyers from New York City
Living people
Members of the 2017 Special Counsel investigation team
Military personnel from New York City
New York (state) Republicans
New York University alumni
People from Manhattan
People from Philadelphia
Princeton University alumni
Recipients of the Gallantry Cross (Vietnam)
Special prosecutors
St. Paul's School (New Hampshire) alumni
United States Assistant Attorneys General for the Criminal Division
United States Attorneys for the Northern District of California
United States Marine Corps officers
United States Marine Corps personnel of the Vietnam War
University of Virginia School of Law alumni
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr partners
| true |
[
"\"O What a Savior\" is a Southern gospel song penned by the Free Will Baptist musician Marvin P. Dalton in 1948.\n\nLyrics\nOnce I was straying in sin's dark valley,\nNo hope within could I see,\nHe searched through Heaven, and found a Savior\nTo save a poor lost soul like me.\n\nO what a Savior, O hallelujah!\nHis heart was broken on Calvary,\nHis hands were nail scarred,\nHis side was riven,\nHe gave His life-blood for even me.\n\nHe left the Father with all His riches,\nWith calmness sweet and serene,\nCame down from Heaven and gave His life-blood,\nTo make the vilest sinner clean.\n\nO what a Savior, O hallelujah!\nHis heart was broken on Calvary,\nHis hands were nail scarred,\nHis side was riven,\nHe gave His life-blood for even me.\n\nDeath's chilly waters I'll soon be crossing,\nHis hand will lead me safe o're,\nI'll join the chorus in that bright city,\nAnd sing up there forever more.\n\nO what a Savior, O hallelujah!\nHis heart was broken on Calvary,\nHis hands were nail scarred,\nHis side was riven,\nHe gave His life-blood for even me.\n\nReferences\n O What a Savior as sung by the Cathedrals\n O What a Savior as sung by Ernie Haase & Signature Sound\n\nSouthern gospel songs",
"Si-cology 1 is an autobiography by American television personality Silas Robertson, co-written by Mark Schlabach. It was first published on September 3, 2013 and has already become a bestseller. In this book Si talks about his life. He talks about what life was like for him as a young boy living in Louisiana, how he went overseas to Vietnam as a soldier during the war, to what his life is like being Uncle Si on A&E show Duck Dynasty.\n\nReferences\n\nRobertson, Si\n2013 non-fiction books"
] |
[
"Robert Mueller",
"Marine Corps service",
"what was his early life like?",
"Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school."
] |
C_3533a0e9363848b4b7be6b9884cefa03_1
|
Where was he born?
| 2 |
Where was Robert Mueller born?
|
Robert Mueller
|
Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. In July 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. In December 1968, he earned the Bronze Star with 'V' distinction for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush that saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with three service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge. Mueller eventually became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then-Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report. Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many--many--who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." After returning from Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970. He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004. CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
Robert Swan Mueller III (; born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2001 to 2013.
A graduate of Princeton University and New York University, Mueller served as a Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War, receiving a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart. He subsequently attended the University of Virginia School of Law. Mueller is a registered Republican in Washington, D.C., and was appointed and reappointed to Senate-confirmed positions by presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
Mueller has served both in government and private practice. He was an assistant United States attorney, a United States attorney, United States assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, a homicide prosecutor in Washington, D.C., acting United States deputy attorney general, partner at D.C. law firm WilmerHale and director of the FBI.
On May 17, 2017, Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel overseeing an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and related matters. He submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019. On April 18, the Department of Justice released it. On May 29, he resigned his post and the Office of the Special Counsel was closed.
Early life and education
Mueller was born on August 7, 1944, at Doctors Hospital in the New York City borough of Manhattan, the first child of Alice C. Truesdale (1920–2007) and Robert Swan Mueller Jr. (1916–2007). He has four younger sisters: Susan, Sandra, Joan, and Patricia. His father was an executive with DuPont who had served as a Navy officer in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters during World War II. His father majored in psychology at Princeton University and played varsity lacrosse, both of which he followed (see below).
Mueller is of German, English, and Scottish descent. His paternal great-grandfather, Gustave A. Mueller, was a prominent doctor in Pittsburgh, whose own father, August C. E. Müller, had immigrated to the United States in 1855 from the Province of Pomerania in the Kingdom of Prussia (a historical territory whose area included land now part of Poland and the north-eastern edge of Germany). On his mother's side, he is a great-grandson of the railroad executive William Truesdale.
Mueller grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where he attended Princeton Country Day School, now known as Princeton Day School. After he completed eighth grade, his family moved to Philadelphia while Mueller himself went on to attend St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire for high school, where he was captain of the soccer, hockey, and lacrosse teams and won the Gordon Medal as the school's top athlete in 1962. A lacrosse teammate and classmate at St. Paul's School was future Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry.
After graduating from St. Paul's, Mueller entered Princeton University, where he continued to play lacrosse, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in politics in 1966 after completing a senior thesis titled "Acceptance of Jurisdiction in the South West Africa Cases." Mueller was a member of University Cottage Club while he was a student at Princeton. Mueller earned a Master of Arts in international relations from New York University in 1967.
In 1968, Mueller joined the United States Marine Corps. After his military service, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law where he served on the Virginia Law Review and graduated in 1973.
United States Marine Corps service
Mueller has cited the combat death of his Princeton lacrosse teammate David Spencer Hackett in the Vietnam War as an influence on his decision to pursue military service. Of his classmate, Mueller has said, "One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton. There were a number of us who felt we should follow his example and at least go into the service. And it flows from there." Hackett was a Marine Corps first lieutenant in the infantry and was killed in 1967 in Quảng Trị Province by small arms fire.
After waiting a year so a knee injury could heal, Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. Of these, he said later that he considered Ranger School the most valuable because he felt "more than anything teaches you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to eat."
In the summer of 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader as a second lieutenant with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. On December 11, 1968, during an engagement in Operation Scotland II, he earned the Bronze Star with "V" device for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush in which he saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with four service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge.
After recuperating at a field hospital near Da Nang, Mueller became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then–Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report.
Mueller had originally considered making the Marines his career, but he explained later that he found non-combat life in the Corps to be unexciting. After returning from South Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970 at the rank of captain.
Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many—many—who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." In 2009, he told a writer that despite his other accomplishments, he was still "most proud the Marine Corps deemed me worthy of leading other Marines."
Career
Private practice and Department of Justice
After receiving his Juris Doctor in 1973 from the University of Virginia School of Law, Mueller worked as a litigator at the firm Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro in San Francisco until 1976. He then served for 12 years in United States Attorney offices. He first worked in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, where he rose to be chief of the criminal division, and in 1982, he moved to Boston to work in the office of the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts as an Assistant United States Attorney, where he investigated and prosecuted major financial fraud, terrorism and public corruption cases, as well as narcotics conspiracies and international money launderers.
After serving as a partner at the Boston law firm of Hill and Barlow, Mueller returned to government service. In 1989, he served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and as acting Deputy Attorney General. James Baker, with whom he worked on national security matters, said he had "an appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law".
In 1990, he became the United States Assistant Attorney General in charge of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division. During his tenure, he oversaw prosecutions including that of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, the Pan Am Flight 103 (Lockerbie bombing) case, and of the Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.
In 1991, he declared the government had been investigating the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) since 1986 in more-than-usual media exposure. Also in 1991, he was elected a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
In 1993, Mueller became a partner at Boston's Hale and Dorr, specializing in white-collar crime litigation. He returned to public service in 1995 as senior litigator in the homicide section of the District of Columbia United States Attorney's Office. In 1998, Mueller was named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California and held that position until 2001.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
President George W. Bush nominated Mueller for the position of FBI director on July 5, 2001. He and two other candidates, Washington lawyer George J. Terwilliger III and veteran Chicago prosecutor and white-collar crime defense lawyer Dan Webb, were up for the job, but Mueller, described at the time as a conservative Republican, was always considered the front-runner. Terwilliger and Webb both pulled out from consideration around mid-June, while confirmation hearings for Mueller before the Senate Judiciary Committee were quickly set for July 30, only three days before his prostate cancer surgery.
The Senate unanimously confirmed Mueller as FBI director on August 2, 2001, voting 98–0 in favor of his appointment. He had previously served as acting deputy attorney general of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) for several months before officially becoming the FBI director on September 4, 2001, one week before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
On February 11, 2003, one month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Mueller gave testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mueller informed the American public that "[s]even countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea—remain active in the United States and continue to support terrorist groups that have targeted Americans. As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material." Highlighting this worry in February 2003, FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley wrote an open letter to Mueller in which she warned that "the bureau will [not] be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq" and encouraged Mueller to "share [her concerns] with the President and Attorney General."
On March 10, 2004, while United States Attorney General John Ashcroft was at the George Washington University Hospital for gallbladder surgery, James Comey, the then deputy attorney general, received a call from Ashcroft's wife informing him that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were about to visit Ashcroft to convince him to renew a program of warrantless wiretapping under the Terrorist Surveillance Program which the DOJ ruled unconstitutional. Ashcroft refused to sign, as he had previously agreed, but the following day the White House renewed the program anyway. Mueller and Comey then threatened to resign. On March 12, 2004, after private, individual meetings with Mueller and Comey at the White House, the president supported changing the program to satisfy the concerns of Mueller, Ashcroft, and Comey.
He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004.
As director, Mueller also barred FBI personnel from participating in enhanced interrogations with the CIA. At a dinner, Mueller defended an attorney (Thomas Wilner) who had been attacked for his role in defending Kuwaiti detainees. Mueller stood up, raised his glass, and said, "I toast Tom Wilner. He's doing what an American should." However, the White House pushed back, encouraging more vigorous methods of pursuing and interrogating terror suspects. When Bush confronted Mueller to ask him to round up more terrorists in the U.S., Mueller responded, saying, "If they [suspects] don't commit a crime, it would be difficult to identify and isolate" them. Vice President Dick Cheney objected by saying, "That's just not good enough. We're hearing this too much from the FBI."
In May 2011, President Barack Obama asked Mueller to continue at the helm of the FBI for two additional years beyond his normal 10-year term, which would have expired on September 4, 2011. The Senate approved this request 100–0 on July 27, 2011. On September 4, 2013, Mueller was replaced by James Comey.
In June 2013, Mueller defended NSA surveillance programs in testimony before a House Judiciary Committee hearing. He said that surveillance programs could have "derailed" the September 11 attacks. Congressman John Conyers disagreed: "I am not persuaded that that makes it OK to collect every call." Mueller also testified that the government's surveillance programs complied "in full with U.S. law and with basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution". He said that "We are taking all necessary steps to hold Edward Snowden responsible for these disclosures."
On June 19, 2017, in the case of Arar v. Ashcroft, Mueller, along with Ashcroft and former Immigration and Naturalization Services Commissioner James W. Ziglar and others, was shielded from civil liability by the Supreme Court for post-9/11 detention of Muslims under policies then brought into place.
Return to private sector
After leaving the FBI in 2013, Mueller served a one-year term as consulting professor and the Arthur and Frank Payne distinguished lecturer at Stanford University, where he focused on issues related to cybersecurity.
In addition to his speaking and teaching roles, Mueller also joined the law firm WilmerHale as a partner in its Washington office in 2014. Among other roles at the firm, he oversaw the independent investigation into the NFL's conduct surrounding the video that appeared to show NFL player Ray Rice assaulting his fiancée. In January 2016, he was appointed as Settlement Master in the U.S. consumer litigation over the Volkswagen emissions scandal; as of May 11, 2017, the scandal has resulted in $11.2billion in customer settlements.
On October 19, 2016, Mueller began an external review of "security, personnel, and management processes and practices" at government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton after Harold T. Martin III was indicted for massive data theft from the National Security Agency. On April 6, 2017, he was appointed as Special Master for disbursement of $850million and $125million for automakers and consumers, respectively, affected by rupture-prone Takata airbags.
Mueller received the 2016 Thayer Award for public service from the United States Military Academy. In June 2017, he received the Baker Award for intelligence and national security contributions from the nonprofit Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
In October 2019, it was announced that Mueller, along with James L. Quarles and Aaron Zebley, would return to WilmerHale to resume private practice. On July 11, 2020, Mueller wrote an op-ed on The Washington Post stating that Roger Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so” after the President of the United States granted Roger Stone clemency and defended his investigation.
Special Counsel for the Department of Justice
On May 16, 2017, Mueller met with President Trump as a courtesy to provide perspectives on the FBI and input on considerations for hiring a new FBI Director. This meeting was initially widely reported to have been an interview to serve again as the FBI Director. President Trump broached resuming the position in their meeting; however, Mueller was ineligible to return as FBI Director due to statutory term limits, and Mueller lacked interest in resuming the position.
The next day, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to serve as special counsel for the United States Department of Justice. In this capacity, Mueller oversaw the investigation into "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation".
Mueller's appointment to oversee the investigation immediately garnered widespread support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and prominent conservative political commentator, stated via Twitter that "Robert Mueller is a superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity." Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said, "Former Director Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for this job. I now have significantly greater confidence that the investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead." Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) stated, "former FBI dir. Mueller is well qualified to oversee this probe". Some, however, pointed out an alleged conflict of interest. "The federal code could not be clearer—Mueller is compromised by his apparent conflict of interest in being close with James Comey," Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), who first called for Mueller to step down over the summer, said in a statement to Fox News. "The appearance of a conflict is enough to put Mueller in violation of the code. … All of the revelations in recent weeks make the case stronger."
Upon his appointment as special counsel, Mueller and two colleagues (former FBI agent Aaron Zebley and former assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force James L. Quarles III) resigned from WilmerHale. On May 23, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice ethics experts announced they had declared Mueller ethically able to function as special counsel. The spokesperson for the special counsel, Peter Carr, told NBC News that Mueller has taken an active role in managing the inquiry. In an interview with the Associated Press, Rosenstein said he would recuse himself from supervision of Mueller if he were to become a subject in the investigation due to his role in the dismissal of James Comey.
On June 14, 2017, The Washington Post reported that Mueller's office is also investigating Trump personally for possible obstruction of justice, in reference to the Russian probe. The report was questioned by Trump's legal team attorney Jay Sekulow, who said on June 18 on NBC's Meet the Press, "The President is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction, period." Due to the central role of the Trump family in the campaign, the transition, and the White House, the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was also reportedly under scrutiny by Mueller. Also in June, Trump allegedly ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, but backed down when then-White House Counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit.
During a discussion about national security at the Aspen security conference on July 21, 2017, former CIA director John Brennan reaffirmed his support for Mueller and called for members of Congress to resist if Trump fires Mueller. He also said it was "the obligation of some executive-branch officials to refuse to carry out some of these orders that, again, are inconsistent with what this country is all about". After Peter Strzok, an investigator for Mueller, was removed from the investigation for alleged partiality, Senator Mark Warner, the Ranking Member of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a speech on December 20, 2017, before the Senate warned of a constitutional crisis if the President fired Mueller. On June 22, 2018, Warner hosted a fundraising party for 100 guests and was quoted there saying, "If you get me one more glass of wine, I'll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know. If you think you've seen wild stuff so far, buckle up. It's going to be a wild couple of months."
On October 30, 2017, Mueller filed charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign co-chairman Rick Gates. The 12 charges include conspiracy to launder money, violations of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, and conspiracy against the United States.
On December 1, 2017, Mueller reached a plea agreement with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to giving false testimony to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. As part of Flynn's negotiations, his son, Michael G. Flynn, was not expected to be charged, and Flynn was prepared to testify that high-level officials on Trump's team directed him to make contact with the Russians. On February 16, 2018, Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and 3 Russian companies for attempting to trick Americans into consuming Russian propaganda that targeted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and later President-elect Donald Trump.
On February 20, 2018, Mueller charged attorney Alex van der Zwaan with making false statements in the Russia probe.
On May 20, 2018, Trump criticized Mueller, tweeting "the World's most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me so now they are looking at the rest of the World!" Mueller started investigating the August 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and an emissary for the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The emissary offered help to the Trump presidential campaign. Mueller was also investigating the Trump campaign's possible ties to Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and China.
On December 18, 2018, The Washington Post published an article concerning a report prepared for the U.S. Senate which stated that Russian disinformation teams had targeted Mueller.
On March 22, 2019, Mueller concluded his investigation and submitted the Special Counsel's final report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Department of Justice official said that the report did not recommend any new indictments. On March 24, Attorney General Barr submitted a summary of findings to the United States Congress. He stated in his letter, "The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russian in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election." Mueller's report also reportedly did not take a stance on whether or not Trump committed obstruction of justice; Barr quoted Mueller as saying "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
On April 18, 2019, the Department of Justice released Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, the special counsel's final report and its conclusions.
On May 29, 2019, Mueller announced that he was retiring as special counsel and that the office would be shut down, and he spoke publicly about the report for the first time. Saying "The report is my testimony," he indicated he would have nothing to say that was not already in the report. On the subject of obstruction of justice, he said, "under long-standing Department [of Justice] policy, a president cannot be charged with a crime while he is in office." He repeated his official conclusion that the report neither accused nor exonerated the president while adding that any potential wrongdoing by a president must be addressed by a "process other than the criminal justice system." Mueller reasserted the involvement of Russian operatives in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak and their parallel efforts to influence American public opinion using social media. Referring to those actions, he declared that "there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American."
Robert Mueller was initially scheduled to publicly testify before two House committees on July 17, 2019, with two hours for lawmakers to ask questions, but the hearing was postponed to July 24 with a third hour added for questions. His verbal testimony was expected to help inform the public—Democrats believe most Americans have not read the report—and to help Democratic leadership finally decide whether or not to impeach the President. In particular, the Democrats aimed to highlight what they consider to be the worst examples of Trump's conduct. Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland said he would use visual aids, such as posters, to help people understand the implications of the Mueller report. Republicans, on the other hand, planned to question Mueller on the origins of this investigation.
On July 24, 2019, Mueller attended both congressional committee hearings and was questioned by members of Congress. His testimony followed the guidelines he had stated would be appropriate regarding his report. In fact, many of his responses were one-word replies. He said he was "not familiar" with Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the Steele dossier. He rejected claims that his investigation was a "witch hunt" or that it totally exonerated the President. He declined to answer questions outside of the scope of his investigation, but reiterated his concern about foreign interference with American elections. He noted that it continues, that he expects it to expand to include other foreign governments as well as the Russians, and that he considers it a great threat to the United States. According to the Nielsen Company, total viewership for the Mueller hearing fell just shy of 13million, significantly lower than other hearings involving the Trump administration, such as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's (20.4million), former FBI director James Comey's (19.5million), and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's (15.8million). Reasons for this comparatively low television rating include the fact that the hearing occurred in July, vacation time for many Americans, and months after the release of the Mueller report. Fox News Channel enjoyed the top rating, with 3.03million views. Subsequently, Mueller's words were distorted and misinterpreted to both defend and condemn the President. Mueller's testimony was criticized by some as uncharacteristically confusing.
In late September 2019, it was reported Trump may have lied to Mueller about his knowledge of his campaign's contacts with WikiLeaks, citing the grand jury redactions in the Mueller report.
Political scientists William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe described Mueller's decision not to take a position on obstruction of justice for Trump – despite "compiling a mountain of incriminating evidence" – as something that "will surely go down as one of the strangest – and most consequential – moves in modern legal history." They added, "in refusing to draw legal conclusions from his evidence, Mueller simply didn't do his job... because he didn't, he failed to carry out his duty to tell the American people what his investigation actually revealed about Trump's lawless behavior, and he failed to draw a bright line that would keep future presidents within legal bounds."
The University of Virginia Law School announced in June 2021 that in the coming fall Mueller would participate in a six-session course called "The Mueller Report and the Role of the Special Counsel," along with three of his colleagues from the investigation.
Personal life
Mueller met his future wife, Ann Cabell Standish, at a high school party when they were 17. Standish attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and Sarah Lawrence College, before working as a special-education teacher for children with learning disabilities. In September 1966, they married at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. They have two daughters and three grandchildren. One of their daughters was born with spina bifida.
In 2001, Mueller's Senate confirmation hearings to head the FBI were delayed several months while he underwent treatment for prostate cancer. He was diagnosed in the fall of 2000, postponing being sworn in as FBI director until he received a good prognosis from his physician.
Although raised Presbyterian, he became an Episcopalian later in life.
Mueller and William Barr—the attorney general who supervised the late stage of Mueller's special counsel investigation—have known each other since the 1980s and have been described as good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr's daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.
Military awards
Mueller received the following military awards and decorations:
References
Further reading
External links
Profile at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and staff
1944 births
20th-century American lawyers
21st-century American lawyers
American Episcopalians
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
American people of Scottish descent
Assistant United States Attorneys
Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Identity theft victims
Lawyers from New York City
Living people
Members of the 2017 Special Counsel investigation team
Military personnel from New York City
New York (state) Republicans
New York University alumni
People from Manhattan
People from Philadelphia
Princeton University alumni
Recipients of the Gallantry Cross (Vietnam)
Special prosecutors
St. Paul's School (New Hampshire) alumni
United States Assistant Attorneys General for the Criminal Division
United States Attorneys for the Northern District of California
United States Marine Corps officers
United States Marine Corps personnel of the Vietnam War
University of Virginia School of Law alumni
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr partners
| false |
[
"Miguel Skrobot (Warsaw, 1873 – Curitiba, February 20, 1912) was a businessman Brazilian of Polish origin.\n\nMiguel Skrobot was born in 1873, in Warsaw, Poland, to José Skrobot and Rosa Skrobot. When he was 18 he migrated to Brazil and settled in Curitiba as a merchant.\n\nHe married Maria Pansardi, who was born in Tibagi, Paraná, to Italian immigrants, and she bore him three children. He kept a steam-powered factory where he worked on grinding and toasting coffee beans under the \"Rio Branco\" brand, located on the spot where today stands the square called Praça Zacarias (square located in the center of Curitiba). He also owned a grocery store near Praça Tiradentes (also a square in the center of Curitiba, where the city was born). He died an early death, when he was 39, on February 20, 1912.\n\nReferences\n\n1873 births\n1912 deaths\nBrazilian businesspeople\nPeople from Curitiba\nPolish emigrants to Brazil",
"Adolf von Rauch (22 April 1798 - 12 December 1882) was a German paper manufacturer in Heilbronn, where he was born and died and where he was a major builder of social housing.\n\nPapermakers\n1798 births\n1882 deaths\nPeople from Heilbronn"
] |
[
"Robert Mueller",
"Marine Corps service",
"what was his early life like?",
"Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school.",
"Where was he born?",
"I don't know."
] |
C_3533a0e9363848b4b7be6b9884cefa03_1
|
Did he have any conflicts in his career?
| 3 |
Did Robert Mueller have any conflicts in his career?
|
Robert Mueller
|
Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. In July 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. In December 1968, he earned the Bronze Star with 'V' distinction for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush that saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with three service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge. Mueller eventually became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then-Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report. Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many--many--who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." After returning from Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970. He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004. CANNOTANSWER
|
In July 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam,
|
Robert Swan Mueller III (; born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2001 to 2013.
A graduate of Princeton University and New York University, Mueller served as a Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War, receiving a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart. He subsequently attended the University of Virginia School of Law. Mueller is a registered Republican in Washington, D.C., and was appointed and reappointed to Senate-confirmed positions by presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
Mueller has served both in government and private practice. He was an assistant United States attorney, a United States attorney, United States assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, a homicide prosecutor in Washington, D.C., acting United States deputy attorney general, partner at D.C. law firm WilmerHale and director of the FBI.
On May 17, 2017, Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel overseeing an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and related matters. He submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019. On April 18, the Department of Justice released it. On May 29, he resigned his post and the Office of the Special Counsel was closed.
Early life and education
Mueller was born on August 7, 1944, at Doctors Hospital in the New York City borough of Manhattan, the first child of Alice C. Truesdale (1920–2007) and Robert Swan Mueller Jr. (1916–2007). He has four younger sisters: Susan, Sandra, Joan, and Patricia. His father was an executive with DuPont who had served as a Navy officer in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters during World War II. His father majored in psychology at Princeton University and played varsity lacrosse, both of which he followed (see below).
Mueller is of German, English, and Scottish descent. His paternal great-grandfather, Gustave A. Mueller, was a prominent doctor in Pittsburgh, whose own father, August C. E. Müller, had immigrated to the United States in 1855 from the Province of Pomerania in the Kingdom of Prussia (a historical territory whose area included land now part of Poland and the north-eastern edge of Germany). On his mother's side, he is a great-grandson of the railroad executive William Truesdale.
Mueller grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where he attended Princeton Country Day School, now known as Princeton Day School. After he completed eighth grade, his family moved to Philadelphia while Mueller himself went on to attend St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire for high school, where he was captain of the soccer, hockey, and lacrosse teams and won the Gordon Medal as the school's top athlete in 1962. A lacrosse teammate and classmate at St. Paul's School was future Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry.
After graduating from St. Paul's, Mueller entered Princeton University, where he continued to play lacrosse, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in politics in 1966 after completing a senior thesis titled "Acceptance of Jurisdiction in the South West Africa Cases." Mueller was a member of University Cottage Club while he was a student at Princeton. Mueller earned a Master of Arts in international relations from New York University in 1967.
In 1968, Mueller joined the United States Marine Corps. After his military service, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law where he served on the Virginia Law Review and graduated in 1973.
United States Marine Corps service
Mueller has cited the combat death of his Princeton lacrosse teammate David Spencer Hackett in the Vietnam War as an influence on his decision to pursue military service. Of his classmate, Mueller has said, "One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton. There were a number of us who felt we should follow his example and at least go into the service. And it flows from there." Hackett was a Marine Corps first lieutenant in the infantry and was killed in 1967 in Quảng Trị Province by small arms fire.
After waiting a year so a knee injury could heal, Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. Of these, he said later that he considered Ranger School the most valuable because he felt "more than anything teaches you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to eat."
In the summer of 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader as a second lieutenant with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. On December 11, 1968, during an engagement in Operation Scotland II, he earned the Bronze Star with "V" device for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush in which he saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with four service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge.
After recuperating at a field hospital near Da Nang, Mueller became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then–Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report.
Mueller had originally considered making the Marines his career, but he explained later that he found non-combat life in the Corps to be unexciting. After returning from South Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970 at the rank of captain.
Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many—many—who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." In 2009, he told a writer that despite his other accomplishments, he was still "most proud the Marine Corps deemed me worthy of leading other Marines."
Career
Private practice and Department of Justice
After receiving his Juris Doctor in 1973 from the University of Virginia School of Law, Mueller worked as a litigator at the firm Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro in San Francisco until 1976. He then served for 12 years in United States Attorney offices. He first worked in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, where he rose to be chief of the criminal division, and in 1982, he moved to Boston to work in the office of the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts as an Assistant United States Attorney, where he investigated and prosecuted major financial fraud, terrorism and public corruption cases, as well as narcotics conspiracies and international money launderers.
After serving as a partner at the Boston law firm of Hill and Barlow, Mueller returned to government service. In 1989, he served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and as acting Deputy Attorney General. James Baker, with whom he worked on national security matters, said he had "an appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law".
In 1990, he became the United States Assistant Attorney General in charge of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division. During his tenure, he oversaw prosecutions including that of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, the Pan Am Flight 103 (Lockerbie bombing) case, and of the Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.
In 1991, he declared the government had been investigating the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) since 1986 in more-than-usual media exposure. Also in 1991, he was elected a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
In 1993, Mueller became a partner at Boston's Hale and Dorr, specializing in white-collar crime litigation. He returned to public service in 1995 as senior litigator in the homicide section of the District of Columbia United States Attorney's Office. In 1998, Mueller was named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California and held that position until 2001.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
President George W. Bush nominated Mueller for the position of FBI director on July 5, 2001. He and two other candidates, Washington lawyer George J. Terwilliger III and veteran Chicago prosecutor and white-collar crime defense lawyer Dan Webb, were up for the job, but Mueller, described at the time as a conservative Republican, was always considered the front-runner. Terwilliger and Webb both pulled out from consideration around mid-June, while confirmation hearings for Mueller before the Senate Judiciary Committee were quickly set for July 30, only three days before his prostate cancer surgery.
The Senate unanimously confirmed Mueller as FBI director on August 2, 2001, voting 98–0 in favor of his appointment. He had previously served as acting deputy attorney general of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) for several months before officially becoming the FBI director on September 4, 2001, one week before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
On February 11, 2003, one month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Mueller gave testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mueller informed the American public that "[s]even countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea—remain active in the United States and continue to support terrorist groups that have targeted Americans. As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material." Highlighting this worry in February 2003, FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley wrote an open letter to Mueller in which she warned that "the bureau will [not] be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq" and encouraged Mueller to "share [her concerns] with the President and Attorney General."
On March 10, 2004, while United States Attorney General John Ashcroft was at the George Washington University Hospital for gallbladder surgery, James Comey, the then deputy attorney general, received a call from Ashcroft's wife informing him that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were about to visit Ashcroft to convince him to renew a program of warrantless wiretapping under the Terrorist Surveillance Program which the DOJ ruled unconstitutional. Ashcroft refused to sign, as he had previously agreed, but the following day the White House renewed the program anyway. Mueller and Comey then threatened to resign. On March 12, 2004, after private, individual meetings with Mueller and Comey at the White House, the president supported changing the program to satisfy the concerns of Mueller, Ashcroft, and Comey.
He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004.
As director, Mueller also barred FBI personnel from participating in enhanced interrogations with the CIA. At a dinner, Mueller defended an attorney (Thomas Wilner) who had been attacked for his role in defending Kuwaiti detainees. Mueller stood up, raised his glass, and said, "I toast Tom Wilner. He's doing what an American should." However, the White House pushed back, encouraging more vigorous methods of pursuing and interrogating terror suspects. When Bush confronted Mueller to ask him to round up more terrorists in the U.S., Mueller responded, saying, "If they [suspects] don't commit a crime, it would be difficult to identify and isolate" them. Vice President Dick Cheney objected by saying, "That's just not good enough. We're hearing this too much from the FBI."
In May 2011, President Barack Obama asked Mueller to continue at the helm of the FBI for two additional years beyond his normal 10-year term, which would have expired on September 4, 2011. The Senate approved this request 100–0 on July 27, 2011. On September 4, 2013, Mueller was replaced by James Comey.
In June 2013, Mueller defended NSA surveillance programs in testimony before a House Judiciary Committee hearing. He said that surveillance programs could have "derailed" the September 11 attacks. Congressman John Conyers disagreed: "I am not persuaded that that makes it OK to collect every call." Mueller also testified that the government's surveillance programs complied "in full with U.S. law and with basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution". He said that "We are taking all necessary steps to hold Edward Snowden responsible for these disclosures."
On June 19, 2017, in the case of Arar v. Ashcroft, Mueller, along with Ashcroft and former Immigration and Naturalization Services Commissioner James W. Ziglar and others, was shielded from civil liability by the Supreme Court for post-9/11 detention of Muslims under policies then brought into place.
Return to private sector
After leaving the FBI in 2013, Mueller served a one-year term as consulting professor and the Arthur and Frank Payne distinguished lecturer at Stanford University, where he focused on issues related to cybersecurity.
In addition to his speaking and teaching roles, Mueller also joined the law firm WilmerHale as a partner in its Washington office in 2014. Among other roles at the firm, he oversaw the independent investigation into the NFL's conduct surrounding the video that appeared to show NFL player Ray Rice assaulting his fiancée. In January 2016, he was appointed as Settlement Master in the U.S. consumer litigation over the Volkswagen emissions scandal; as of May 11, 2017, the scandal has resulted in $11.2billion in customer settlements.
On October 19, 2016, Mueller began an external review of "security, personnel, and management processes and practices" at government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton after Harold T. Martin III was indicted for massive data theft from the National Security Agency. On April 6, 2017, he was appointed as Special Master for disbursement of $850million and $125million for automakers and consumers, respectively, affected by rupture-prone Takata airbags.
Mueller received the 2016 Thayer Award for public service from the United States Military Academy. In June 2017, he received the Baker Award for intelligence and national security contributions from the nonprofit Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
In October 2019, it was announced that Mueller, along with James L. Quarles and Aaron Zebley, would return to WilmerHale to resume private practice. On July 11, 2020, Mueller wrote an op-ed on The Washington Post stating that Roger Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so” after the President of the United States granted Roger Stone clemency and defended his investigation.
Special Counsel for the Department of Justice
On May 16, 2017, Mueller met with President Trump as a courtesy to provide perspectives on the FBI and input on considerations for hiring a new FBI Director. This meeting was initially widely reported to have been an interview to serve again as the FBI Director. President Trump broached resuming the position in their meeting; however, Mueller was ineligible to return as FBI Director due to statutory term limits, and Mueller lacked interest in resuming the position.
The next day, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to serve as special counsel for the United States Department of Justice. In this capacity, Mueller oversaw the investigation into "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation".
Mueller's appointment to oversee the investigation immediately garnered widespread support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and prominent conservative political commentator, stated via Twitter that "Robert Mueller is a superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity." Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said, "Former Director Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for this job. I now have significantly greater confidence that the investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead." Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) stated, "former FBI dir. Mueller is well qualified to oversee this probe". Some, however, pointed out an alleged conflict of interest. "The federal code could not be clearer—Mueller is compromised by his apparent conflict of interest in being close with James Comey," Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), who first called for Mueller to step down over the summer, said in a statement to Fox News. "The appearance of a conflict is enough to put Mueller in violation of the code. … All of the revelations in recent weeks make the case stronger."
Upon his appointment as special counsel, Mueller and two colleagues (former FBI agent Aaron Zebley and former assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force James L. Quarles III) resigned from WilmerHale. On May 23, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice ethics experts announced they had declared Mueller ethically able to function as special counsel. The spokesperson for the special counsel, Peter Carr, told NBC News that Mueller has taken an active role in managing the inquiry. In an interview with the Associated Press, Rosenstein said he would recuse himself from supervision of Mueller if he were to become a subject in the investigation due to his role in the dismissal of James Comey.
On June 14, 2017, The Washington Post reported that Mueller's office is also investigating Trump personally for possible obstruction of justice, in reference to the Russian probe. The report was questioned by Trump's legal team attorney Jay Sekulow, who said on June 18 on NBC's Meet the Press, "The President is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction, period." Due to the central role of the Trump family in the campaign, the transition, and the White House, the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was also reportedly under scrutiny by Mueller. Also in June, Trump allegedly ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, but backed down when then-White House Counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit.
During a discussion about national security at the Aspen security conference on July 21, 2017, former CIA director John Brennan reaffirmed his support for Mueller and called for members of Congress to resist if Trump fires Mueller. He also said it was "the obligation of some executive-branch officials to refuse to carry out some of these orders that, again, are inconsistent with what this country is all about". After Peter Strzok, an investigator for Mueller, was removed from the investigation for alleged partiality, Senator Mark Warner, the Ranking Member of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a speech on December 20, 2017, before the Senate warned of a constitutional crisis if the President fired Mueller. On June 22, 2018, Warner hosted a fundraising party for 100 guests and was quoted there saying, "If you get me one more glass of wine, I'll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know. If you think you've seen wild stuff so far, buckle up. It's going to be a wild couple of months."
On October 30, 2017, Mueller filed charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign co-chairman Rick Gates. The 12 charges include conspiracy to launder money, violations of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, and conspiracy against the United States.
On December 1, 2017, Mueller reached a plea agreement with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to giving false testimony to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. As part of Flynn's negotiations, his son, Michael G. Flynn, was not expected to be charged, and Flynn was prepared to testify that high-level officials on Trump's team directed him to make contact with the Russians. On February 16, 2018, Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and 3 Russian companies for attempting to trick Americans into consuming Russian propaganda that targeted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and later President-elect Donald Trump.
On February 20, 2018, Mueller charged attorney Alex van der Zwaan with making false statements in the Russia probe.
On May 20, 2018, Trump criticized Mueller, tweeting "the World's most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me so now they are looking at the rest of the World!" Mueller started investigating the August 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and an emissary for the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The emissary offered help to the Trump presidential campaign. Mueller was also investigating the Trump campaign's possible ties to Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and China.
On December 18, 2018, The Washington Post published an article concerning a report prepared for the U.S. Senate which stated that Russian disinformation teams had targeted Mueller.
On March 22, 2019, Mueller concluded his investigation and submitted the Special Counsel's final report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Department of Justice official said that the report did not recommend any new indictments. On March 24, Attorney General Barr submitted a summary of findings to the United States Congress. He stated in his letter, "The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russian in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election." Mueller's report also reportedly did not take a stance on whether or not Trump committed obstruction of justice; Barr quoted Mueller as saying "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
On April 18, 2019, the Department of Justice released Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, the special counsel's final report and its conclusions.
On May 29, 2019, Mueller announced that he was retiring as special counsel and that the office would be shut down, and he spoke publicly about the report for the first time. Saying "The report is my testimony," he indicated he would have nothing to say that was not already in the report. On the subject of obstruction of justice, he said, "under long-standing Department [of Justice] policy, a president cannot be charged with a crime while he is in office." He repeated his official conclusion that the report neither accused nor exonerated the president while adding that any potential wrongdoing by a president must be addressed by a "process other than the criminal justice system." Mueller reasserted the involvement of Russian operatives in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak and their parallel efforts to influence American public opinion using social media. Referring to those actions, he declared that "there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American."
Robert Mueller was initially scheduled to publicly testify before two House committees on July 17, 2019, with two hours for lawmakers to ask questions, but the hearing was postponed to July 24 with a third hour added for questions. His verbal testimony was expected to help inform the public—Democrats believe most Americans have not read the report—and to help Democratic leadership finally decide whether or not to impeach the President. In particular, the Democrats aimed to highlight what they consider to be the worst examples of Trump's conduct. Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland said he would use visual aids, such as posters, to help people understand the implications of the Mueller report. Republicans, on the other hand, planned to question Mueller on the origins of this investigation.
On July 24, 2019, Mueller attended both congressional committee hearings and was questioned by members of Congress. His testimony followed the guidelines he had stated would be appropriate regarding his report. In fact, many of his responses were one-word replies. He said he was "not familiar" with Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the Steele dossier. He rejected claims that his investigation was a "witch hunt" or that it totally exonerated the President. He declined to answer questions outside of the scope of his investigation, but reiterated his concern about foreign interference with American elections. He noted that it continues, that he expects it to expand to include other foreign governments as well as the Russians, and that he considers it a great threat to the United States. According to the Nielsen Company, total viewership for the Mueller hearing fell just shy of 13million, significantly lower than other hearings involving the Trump administration, such as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's (20.4million), former FBI director James Comey's (19.5million), and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's (15.8million). Reasons for this comparatively low television rating include the fact that the hearing occurred in July, vacation time for many Americans, and months after the release of the Mueller report. Fox News Channel enjoyed the top rating, with 3.03million views. Subsequently, Mueller's words were distorted and misinterpreted to both defend and condemn the President. Mueller's testimony was criticized by some as uncharacteristically confusing.
In late September 2019, it was reported Trump may have lied to Mueller about his knowledge of his campaign's contacts with WikiLeaks, citing the grand jury redactions in the Mueller report.
Political scientists William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe described Mueller's decision not to take a position on obstruction of justice for Trump – despite "compiling a mountain of incriminating evidence" – as something that "will surely go down as one of the strangest – and most consequential – moves in modern legal history." They added, "in refusing to draw legal conclusions from his evidence, Mueller simply didn't do his job... because he didn't, he failed to carry out his duty to tell the American people what his investigation actually revealed about Trump's lawless behavior, and he failed to draw a bright line that would keep future presidents within legal bounds."
The University of Virginia Law School announced in June 2021 that in the coming fall Mueller would participate in a six-session course called "The Mueller Report and the Role of the Special Counsel," along with three of his colleagues from the investigation.
Personal life
Mueller met his future wife, Ann Cabell Standish, at a high school party when they were 17. Standish attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and Sarah Lawrence College, before working as a special-education teacher for children with learning disabilities. In September 1966, they married at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. They have two daughters and three grandchildren. One of their daughters was born with spina bifida.
In 2001, Mueller's Senate confirmation hearings to head the FBI were delayed several months while he underwent treatment for prostate cancer. He was diagnosed in the fall of 2000, postponing being sworn in as FBI director until he received a good prognosis from his physician.
Although raised Presbyterian, he became an Episcopalian later in life.
Mueller and William Barr—the attorney general who supervised the late stage of Mueller's special counsel investigation—have known each other since the 1980s and have been described as good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr's daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.
Military awards
Mueller received the following military awards and decorations:
References
Further reading
External links
Profile at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and staff
1944 births
20th-century American lawyers
21st-century American lawyers
American Episcopalians
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
American people of Scottish descent
Assistant United States Attorneys
Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Identity theft victims
Lawyers from New York City
Living people
Members of the 2017 Special Counsel investigation team
Military personnel from New York City
New York (state) Republicans
New York University alumni
People from Manhattan
People from Philadelphia
Princeton University alumni
Recipients of the Gallantry Cross (Vietnam)
Special prosecutors
St. Paul's School (New Hampshire) alumni
United States Assistant Attorneys General for the Criminal Division
United States Attorneys for the Northern District of California
United States Marine Corps officers
United States Marine Corps personnel of the Vietnam War
University of Virginia School of Law alumni
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr partners
| false |
[
"Communal conflicts in Nigeria can be divided into two broad categories:\n Ethno-religious conflicts, attributed to actors primarily divided by cultural, ethnic, or religious communities and identities, such as instances of religious violence between Christian and Muslim communities.\n Herder–farmer conflicts, typically involving disputes over land and/or cattle between herders (in particular the Fulani and Hausa) and farmers (in particular the Adara, Berom, Tiv and Tarok).\n\nThe most impacted states are those of the Nigerian Middle Belt like Benue, Taraba and Plateau. Violence has reached two peaks in 2004 and 2011 with around 2,000 fatalities those years. It resulted in more than 700 fatalities in 2015 alone.\n\nCauses \nClimate change played a major role in the migration of Fulani herdsmen.\n\nAfrican countries have been affected the most by climate change globally. This notion has contributed to the migration of Fulani Herdsmen from the North towards southwest Nigeria. As observed from a \"Push and pull\" model, desertification, landslides, droughts, pollution, sand storms, and diseases that have all transpired from climatic changes have led Fulani Herdsmen to leave their communities. This is mostly due to droughts which timespans have persisted longer than anticipated, such as the evaporation of Lake Chad. Moreover, diseases have developed from climatic conditions and is killing the animals of these herdsmen. Thus, many Fulani's, also known as \"the Bororos\", are inclined to migrate south where there is improved vegetation, weather conditions, market opportunities, and hopefulness. Hate speeches and lack of understanding of the importance of peace in a society cause conflict.\n\nHerder–farmer conflicts\n\nSince the Fourth Nigerian Republic's founding in 1999, farmer-herder violence has killed thousands of people and displaced tens of thousands more. Insecurity and violence have led many populations to create self-defence forces and ethnic militias, which have engaged in further violence. The majority of farmer–herder clashes have occurred between Muslim Fulani herdsmen and Christian peasants, exacerbating ethnoreligious hostilities. This violence stems from the relationship between the Bororo Fulani and the Yoruba farmers. Prior to this, the Fulani people had migrated into the southwestern Nigeria region centuries ago. In fact, in the 18th century, three different groups of Fulani had migrated to the city of Iseyin. These groups consisted of the Bangu, Sokoto, and Bororo Fulani. Out of these three groups, the Bororo Fulani in particular were the group to separate themselves from the Yoruba farmers. Meanwhile, the Bangu and Sokoto had developed a working relationship with the Yoruba people of Nigeria. Through this bond, they profited off of each other from the by products of their cattle and agriculture. The Fulani people would trade any commodities they extracted from their cattle to the Yoruba's for their crops. However, the migration of the Bororo Fulani shifted this relationship as they were perceived to be more aggressive than the settled Fulani. This difference was further exacerbated as they did not speak the native Yoruba language unlike the settled Fulani people who did. As the Bororo Fulani pastoralists integrated into this region the cattle they owned started damaging Yoruba farmers' crops and plants. This led to friction to become quite common among these two groups. One case that can be observed was when additional wreckage was pressed into farmers in the city of Iseyin after a group of Bororo Fulani were exiled from the city of Oyo and migrated there in 1998.\n\nAnother conflict the Bororo Fulani have been involved with was in 1804 when the Fulani had a Holy War between those who identified as Muslim and resonated with the Hausas and those that were still associated with the Pagan tribes. The war took place in the northern region of Nigeria. This war led to a dichotomy of two groups of the Fulani. One group amalgamated with the Hausa people and are essentially integrated as Hausas while holding positions of wealth and power. The other group kept their pastoral ways intact and did not intermesh with any other tribes. This is what eventually became the Bororo Fulani which means the Bush or Cow Fulani.\n\nCurrently, the conflict between Fulani herders and other Nigerian farmers have intensified. From 2011 to 2016, roughly 2,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced. This is partly due to the rise of jihadist groups, such as Boko Haram. Their presence has jeopardized many herders and farmers that graze in Northern Nigeria. The government has made little efforts to intervene and create schemes to alleviate this conflict. Hence, herders and farmers take it upon themselves to solve the conflicts existing within the community which invigorates conflict.\n\nAbet Fulani Herders \nThe Abet, also known as the Kachichere, are another subgroup of the Fulani. They live in the Abet region of Nigeria after they migrated there in the 18th century. They live in a region for approximately 3 to 5 years before moving another few kilometers within the Abet. Once they establish a homestead, their herds graze within a 3-mile radius. The reason they prefer to graze in the Abet is due to the favorable conditions it holds for their cattle. This stems from the dry season coinciding with the peak of cow fertility and the production of milk. Furthermore, it is easier to herd animals in these open land spaces rather than in condense areas replete of bushes. For land rights in this region, Fulani families may be given rights to parts of the land through customary structures. Thus, land is distributed from Chiefs or those in charge of the villages that these fields reside in.\n\nOther examples\nAdditional instances of ethnic violence in Nigeria exist; these are often urban riots or such, for example the Yoruba-Hausa disturbances in Lagos, the Igbo massacre of 1966 or the clashes between the Itsekiri and the Ijaw in Delta state. Others are land disputes between neighbours, such as clashes between Ile-Ife and Modakeke in the late 1990s and in Ebonyi State in 2011.\n\nSee also\n\n Religious violence in Nigeria\n List of massacres in Nigeria\n Fulani herdsmen\n List of ongoing armed conflicts\n Sudanese nomadic conflicts\n Warri Crisis\n Nigerian bandit conflict\n\nReferences\n\nSuggested reading\n\nExternal links\n Communal conflicts in Nigeria\n Nigeria Security Tracker\n ACLED Data\n Stop this massacre, Agatu Community begs NSA, IG\n\nPolitics of Nigeria\nReligion-based civil wars\nConflicts in 2013\nConflicts in 2014\nConflicts in 2015\nConflicts in 2016\nConflicts in 2017\nConflicts in 2018\nOngoing conflicts\nConflicts in 2022\nReligion-based wars\nConflicts in Nigeria",
"The First Javanese War of Succession was a struggle between Sultan Amangkurat III of Mataram and the Dutch East India Company who supported the claim of the Sultan's uncle, Pangeran Puger to the throne.\n\nAmangkurat II died in 1703 and was briefly succeeded by his son, Amangkurat III. The Dutch believed they had found a more reliable client in his uncle Pangeran Puger. Tensions increased when Amangkurat was accused of giving refuge to the rebel Surapati. Pangeran Puger accused Amangkurat before the Dutch of planning an uprising in East Java. Unlike Pangeran Puger, Amangkurat III inherited blood connection with Surabayan ruler, Jangrana II, from Amangkurat II and this lent credibility to the allegation that he cooperated with the now powerful Untung Surapati in Pasuruan. Panembahan Cakraningrat II of Madura, VOC’s most trusted ally, persuaded the Dutch to support Pangeran Puger. Pangeran Puger took the title of Pakubuwana I upon his accession in June 1704.\n\nTogether with the Dutch, Pakubuwono defeated Amangkurat who fled east and received refuge from Surapati who had set up his own kingdom. The war dragged on for five years before the Dutch managed to install Pakubuwana. In August 1705, Pakubuwono I’s retainers and VOC forces captured Kartasura without resistance from Amangkurat III, whose forces cowardly turned back when the enemy reached Ungaran. Surapati’s forces in Bangil, near Pasuruan, was crushed by the alliance of VOC, Kartasura and Madura in 1706.\n\nJangrana II, who tended to side with Amangkurat III and did not venture any assistance to the capture of Bangil, was called to present himself before Pakubuwana I and murdered there by VOC’s request in the same year. Amangkurat III ran away to Malang with Surapati’s descendants and his remnant forces but Malang was then a no-man’s-land who offered no glory fit for a king. Therefore, though allied operations to the eastern interior of Java in 1706–08 did not gain much success in military terms, the fallen king surrendered in 1708 after being lured with the promises of household (lungguh) and land, but he was banished to Ceylon along with his wives and children.\n\nSee also\n Javanese Wars of Succession\n\nReferences\n\nSources\n\n \n\nJavanese Wars of Succession\nConflicts in 1704\nConflicts in 1705\nConflicts in 1706\nConflicts in 1707\n17th century in Indonesia\nWars involving the Dutch Republic\nWars involving Indonesia\n1704 in Southeast Asia\n1705 in Southeast Asia\n1706 in Southeast Asia\n1707 in Southeast Asia\nMilitary history of the Dutch East India Company"
] |
[
"Robert Mueller",
"Marine Corps service",
"what was his early life like?",
"Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school.",
"Where was he born?",
"I don't know.",
"Did he have any conflicts in his career?",
"In July 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam,"
] |
C_3533a0e9363848b4b7be6b9884cefa03_1
|
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
| 4 |
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article aside from Robert Mueller's military education and deployment to South Vietnam?
|
Robert Mueller
|
Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. In July 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. In December 1968, he earned the Bronze Star with 'V' distinction for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush that saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with three service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge. Mueller eventually became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then-Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report. Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many--many--who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." After returning from Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970. He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004. CANNOTANSWER
|
he earned the Bronze Star with 'V' distinction for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush
|
Robert Swan Mueller III (; born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2001 to 2013.
A graduate of Princeton University and New York University, Mueller served as a Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War, receiving a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart. He subsequently attended the University of Virginia School of Law. Mueller is a registered Republican in Washington, D.C., and was appointed and reappointed to Senate-confirmed positions by presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
Mueller has served both in government and private practice. He was an assistant United States attorney, a United States attorney, United States assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, a homicide prosecutor in Washington, D.C., acting United States deputy attorney general, partner at D.C. law firm WilmerHale and director of the FBI.
On May 17, 2017, Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel overseeing an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and related matters. He submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019. On April 18, the Department of Justice released it. On May 29, he resigned his post and the Office of the Special Counsel was closed.
Early life and education
Mueller was born on August 7, 1944, at Doctors Hospital in the New York City borough of Manhattan, the first child of Alice C. Truesdale (1920–2007) and Robert Swan Mueller Jr. (1916–2007). He has four younger sisters: Susan, Sandra, Joan, and Patricia. His father was an executive with DuPont who had served as a Navy officer in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters during World War II. His father majored in psychology at Princeton University and played varsity lacrosse, both of which he followed (see below).
Mueller is of German, English, and Scottish descent. His paternal great-grandfather, Gustave A. Mueller, was a prominent doctor in Pittsburgh, whose own father, August C. E. Müller, had immigrated to the United States in 1855 from the Province of Pomerania in the Kingdom of Prussia (a historical territory whose area included land now part of Poland and the north-eastern edge of Germany). On his mother's side, he is a great-grandson of the railroad executive William Truesdale.
Mueller grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where he attended Princeton Country Day School, now known as Princeton Day School. After he completed eighth grade, his family moved to Philadelphia while Mueller himself went on to attend St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire for high school, where he was captain of the soccer, hockey, and lacrosse teams and won the Gordon Medal as the school's top athlete in 1962. A lacrosse teammate and classmate at St. Paul's School was future Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry.
After graduating from St. Paul's, Mueller entered Princeton University, where he continued to play lacrosse, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in politics in 1966 after completing a senior thesis titled "Acceptance of Jurisdiction in the South West Africa Cases." Mueller was a member of University Cottage Club while he was a student at Princeton. Mueller earned a Master of Arts in international relations from New York University in 1967.
In 1968, Mueller joined the United States Marine Corps. After his military service, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law where he served on the Virginia Law Review and graduated in 1973.
United States Marine Corps service
Mueller has cited the combat death of his Princeton lacrosse teammate David Spencer Hackett in the Vietnam War as an influence on his decision to pursue military service. Of his classmate, Mueller has said, "One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton. There were a number of us who felt we should follow his example and at least go into the service. And it flows from there." Hackett was a Marine Corps first lieutenant in the infantry and was killed in 1967 in Quảng Trị Province by small arms fire.
After waiting a year so a knee injury could heal, Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. Of these, he said later that he considered Ranger School the most valuable because he felt "more than anything teaches you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to eat."
In the summer of 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader as a second lieutenant with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. On December 11, 1968, during an engagement in Operation Scotland II, he earned the Bronze Star with "V" device for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush in which he saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with four service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge.
After recuperating at a field hospital near Da Nang, Mueller became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then–Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report.
Mueller had originally considered making the Marines his career, but he explained later that he found non-combat life in the Corps to be unexciting. After returning from South Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970 at the rank of captain.
Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many—many—who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." In 2009, he told a writer that despite his other accomplishments, he was still "most proud the Marine Corps deemed me worthy of leading other Marines."
Career
Private practice and Department of Justice
After receiving his Juris Doctor in 1973 from the University of Virginia School of Law, Mueller worked as a litigator at the firm Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro in San Francisco until 1976. He then served for 12 years in United States Attorney offices. He first worked in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, where he rose to be chief of the criminal division, and in 1982, he moved to Boston to work in the office of the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts as an Assistant United States Attorney, where he investigated and prosecuted major financial fraud, terrorism and public corruption cases, as well as narcotics conspiracies and international money launderers.
After serving as a partner at the Boston law firm of Hill and Barlow, Mueller returned to government service. In 1989, he served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and as acting Deputy Attorney General. James Baker, with whom he worked on national security matters, said he had "an appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law".
In 1990, he became the United States Assistant Attorney General in charge of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division. During his tenure, he oversaw prosecutions including that of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, the Pan Am Flight 103 (Lockerbie bombing) case, and of the Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.
In 1991, he declared the government had been investigating the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) since 1986 in more-than-usual media exposure. Also in 1991, he was elected a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
In 1993, Mueller became a partner at Boston's Hale and Dorr, specializing in white-collar crime litigation. He returned to public service in 1995 as senior litigator in the homicide section of the District of Columbia United States Attorney's Office. In 1998, Mueller was named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California and held that position until 2001.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
President George W. Bush nominated Mueller for the position of FBI director on July 5, 2001. He and two other candidates, Washington lawyer George J. Terwilliger III and veteran Chicago prosecutor and white-collar crime defense lawyer Dan Webb, were up for the job, but Mueller, described at the time as a conservative Republican, was always considered the front-runner. Terwilliger and Webb both pulled out from consideration around mid-June, while confirmation hearings for Mueller before the Senate Judiciary Committee were quickly set for July 30, only three days before his prostate cancer surgery.
The Senate unanimously confirmed Mueller as FBI director on August 2, 2001, voting 98–0 in favor of his appointment. He had previously served as acting deputy attorney general of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) for several months before officially becoming the FBI director on September 4, 2001, one week before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
On February 11, 2003, one month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Mueller gave testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mueller informed the American public that "[s]even countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea—remain active in the United States and continue to support terrorist groups that have targeted Americans. As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material." Highlighting this worry in February 2003, FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley wrote an open letter to Mueller in which she warned that "the bureau will [not] be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq" and encouraged Mueller to "share [her concerns] with the President and Attorney General."
On March 10, 2004, while United States Attorney General John Ashcroft was at the George Washington University Hospital for gallbladder surgery, James Comey, the then deputy attorney general, received a call from Ashcroft's wife informing him that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were about to visit Ashcroft to convince him to renew a program of warrantless wiretapping under the Terrorist Surveillance Program which the DOJ ruled unconstitutional. Ashcroft refused to sign, as he had previously agreed, but the following day the White House renewed the program anyway. Mueller and Comey then threatened to resign. On March 12, 2004, after private, individual meetings with Mueller and Comey at the White House, the president supported changing the program to satisfy the concerns of Mueller, Ashcroft, and Comey.
He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004.
As director, Mueller also barred FBI personnel from participating in enhanced interrogations with the CIA. At a dinner, Mueller defended an attorney (Thomas Wilner) who had been attacked for his role in defending Kuwaiti detainees. Mueller stood up, raised his glass, and said, "I toast Tom Wilner. He's doing what an American should." However, the White House pushed back, encouraging more vigorous methods of pursuing and interrogating terror suspects. When Bush confronted Mueller to ask him to round up more terrorists in the U.S., Mueller responded, saying, "If they [suspects] don't commit a crime, it would be difficult to identify and isolate" them. Vice President Dick Cheney objected by saying, "That's just not good enough. We're hearing this too much from the FBI."
In May 2011, President Barack Obama asked Mueller to continue at the helm of the FBI for two additional years beyond his normal 10-year term, which would have expired on September 4, 2011. The Senate approved this request 100–0 on July 27, 2011. On September 4, 2013, Mueller was replaced by James Comey.
In June 2013, Mueller defended NSA surveillance programs in testimony before a House Judiciary Committee hearing. He said that surveillance programs could have "derailed" the September 11 attacks. Congressman John Conyers disagreed: "I am not persuaded that that makes it OK to collect every call." Mueller also testified that the government's surveillance programs complied "in full with U.S. law and with basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution". He said that "We are taking all necessary steps to hold Edward Snowden responsible for these disclosures."
On June 19, 2017, in the case of Arar v. Ashcroft, Mueller, along with Ashcroft and former Immigration and Naturalization Services Commissioner James W. Ziglar and others, was shielded from civil liability by the Supreme Court for post-9/11 detention of Muslims under policies then brought into place.
Return to private sector
After leaving the FBI in 2013, Mueller served a one-year term as consulting professor and the Arthur and Frank Payne distinguished lecturer at Stanford University, where he focused on issues related to cybersecurity.
In addition to his speaking and teaching roles, Mueller also joined the law firm WilmerHale as a partner in its Washington office in 2014. Among other roles at the firm, he oversaw the independent investigation into the NFL's conduct surrounding the video that appeared to show NFL player Ray Rice assaulting his fiancée. In January 2016, he was appointed as Settlement Master in the U.S. consumer litigation over the Volkswagen emissions scandal; as of May 11, 2017, the scandal has resulted in $11.2billion in customer settlements.
On October 19, 2016, Mueller began an external review of "security, personnel, and management processes and practices" at government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton after Harold T. Martin III was indicted for massive data theft from the National Security Agency. On April 6, 2017, he was appointed as Special Master for disbursement of $850million and $125million for automakers and consumers, respectively, affected by rupture-prone Takata airbags.
Mueller received the 2016 Thayer Award for public service from the United States Military Academy. In June 2017, he received the Baker Award for intelligence and national security contributions from the nonprofit Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
In October 2019, it was announced that Mueller, along with James L. Quarles and Aaron Zebley, would return to WilmerHale to resume private practice. On July 11, 2020, Mueller wrote an op-ed on The Washington Post stating that Roger Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so” after the President of the United States granted Roger Stone clemency and defended his investigation.
Special Counsel for the Department of Justice
On May 16, 2017, Mueller met with President Trump as a courtesy to provide perspectives on the FBI and input on considerations for hiring a new FBI Director. This meeting was initially widely reported to have been an interview to serve again as the FBI Director. President Trump broached resuming the position in their meeting; however, Mueller was ineligible to return as FBI Director due to statutory term limits, and Mueller lacked interest in resuming the position.
The next day, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to serve as special counsel for the United States Department of Justice. In this capacity, Mueller oversaw the investigation into "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation".
Mueller's appointment to oversee the investigation immediately garnered widespread support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and prominent conservative political commentator, stated via Twitter that "Robert Mueller is a superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity." Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said, "Former Director Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for this job. I now have significantly greater confidence that the investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead." Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) stated, "former FBI dir. Mueller is well qualified to oversee this probe". Some, however, pointed out an alleged conflict of interest. "The federal code could not be clearer—Mueller is compromised by his apparent conflict of interest in being close with James Comey," Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), who first called for Mueller to step down over the summer, said in a statement to Fox News. "The appearance of a conflict is enough to put Mueller in violation of the code. … All of the revelations in recent weeks make the case stronger."
Upon his appointment as special counsel, Mueller and two colleagues (former FBI agent Aaron Zebley and former assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force James L. Quarles III) resigned from WilmerHale. On May 23, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice ethics experts announced they had declared Mueller ethically able to function as special counsel. The spokesperson for the special counsel, Peter Carr, told NBC News that Mueller has taken an active role in managing the inquiry. In an interview with the Associated Press, Rosenstein said he would recuse himself from supervision of Mueller if he were to become a subject in the investigation due to his role in the dismissal of James Comey.
On June 14, 2017, The Washington Post reported that Mueller's office is also investigating Trump personally for possible obstruction of justice, in reference to the Russian probe. The report was questioned by Trump's legal team attorney Jay Sekulow, who said on June 18 on NBC's Meet the Press, "The President is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction, period." Due to the central role of the Trump family in the campaign, the transition, and the White House, the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was also reportedly under scrutiny by Mueller. Also in June, Trump allegedly ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, but backed down when then-White House Counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit.
During a discussion about national security at the Aspen security conference on July 21, 2017, former CIA director John Brennan reaffirmed his support for Mueller and called for members of Congress to resist if Trump fires Mueller. He also said it was "the obligation of some executive-branch officials to refuse to carry out some of these orders that, again, are inconsistent with what this country is all about". After Peter Strzok, an investigator for Mueller, was removed from the investigation for alleged partiality, Senator Mark Warner, the Ranking Member of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a speech on December 20, 2017, before the Senate warned of a constitutional crisis if the President fired Mueller. On June 22, 2018, Warner hosted a fundraising party for 100 guests and was quoted there saying, "If you get me one more glass of wine, I'll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know. If you think you've seen wild stuff so far, buckle up. It's going to be a wild couple of months."
On October 30, 2017, Mueller filed charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign co-chairman Rick Gates. The 12 charges include conspiracy to launder money, violations of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, and conspiracy against the United States.
On December 1, 2017, Mueller reached a plea agreement with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to giving false testimony to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. As part of Flynn's negotiations, his son, Michael G. Flynn, was not expected to be charged, and Flynn was prepared to testify that high-level officials on Trump's team directed him to make contact with the Russians. On February 16, 2018, Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and 3 Russian companies for attempting to trick Americans into consuming Russian propaganda that targeted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and later President-elect Donald Trump.
On February 20, 2018, Mueller charged attorney Alex van der Zwaan with making false statements in the Russia probe.
On May 20, 2018, Trump criticized Mueller, tweeting "the World's most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me so now they are looking at the rest of the World!" Mueller started investigating the August 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and an emissary for the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The emissary offered help to the Trump presidential campaign. Mueller was also investigating the Trump campaign's possible ties to Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and China.
On December 18, 2018, The Washington Post published an article concerning a report prepared for the U.S. Senate which stated that Russian disinformation teams had targeted Mueller.
On March 22, 2019, Mueller concluded his investigation and submitted the Special Counsel's final report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Department of Justice official said that the report did not recommend any new indictments. On March 24, Attorney General Barr submitted a summary of findings to the United States Congress. He stated in his letter, "The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russian in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election." Mueller's report also reportedly did not take a stance on whether or not Trump committed obstruction of justice; Barr quoted Mueller as saying "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
On April 18, 2019, the Department of Justice released Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, the special counsel's final report and its conclusions.
On May 29, 2019, Mueller announced that he was retiring as special counsel and that the office would be shut down, and he spoke publicly about the report for the first time. Saying "The report is my testimony," he indicated he would have nothing to say that was not already in the report. On the subject of obstruction of justice, he said, "under long-standing Department [of Justice] policy, a president cannot be charged with a crime while he is in office." He repeated his official conclusion that the report neither accused nor exonerated the president while adding that any potential wrongdoing by a president must be addressed by a "process other than the criminal justice system." Mueller reasserted the involvement of Russian operatives in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak and their parallel efforts to influence American public opinion using social media. Referring to those actions, he declared that "there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American."
Robert Mueller was initially scheduled to publicly testify before two House committees on July 17, 2019, with two hours for lawmakers to ask questions, but the hearing was postponed to July 24 with a third hour added for questions. His verbal testimony was expected to help inform the public—Democrats believe most Americans have not read the report—and to help Democratic leadership finally decide whether or not to impeach the President. In particular, the Democrats aimed to highlight what they consider to be the worst examples of Trump's conduct. Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland said he would use visual aids, such as posters, to help people understand the implications of the Mueller report. Republicans, on the other hand, planned to question Mueller on the origins of this investigation.
On July 24, 2019, Mueller attended both congressional committee hearings and was questioned by members of Congress. His testimony followed the guidelines he had stated would be appropriate regarding his report. In fact, many of his responses were one-word replies. He said he was "not familiar" with Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the Steele dossier. He rejected claims that his investigation was a "witch hunt" or that it totally exonerated the President. He declined to answer questions outside of the scope of his investigation, but reiterated his concern about foreign interference with American elections. He noted that it continues, that he expects it to expand to include other foreign governments as well as the Russians, and that he considers it a great threat to the United States. According to the Nielsen Company, total viewership for the Mueller hearing fell just shy of 13million, significantly lower than other hearings involving the Trump administration, such as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's (20.4million), former FBI director James Comey's (19.5million), and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's (15.8million). Reasons for this comparatively low television rating include the fact that the hearing occurred in July, vacation time for many Americans, and months after the release of the Mueller report. Fox News Channel enjoyed the top rating, with 3.03million views. Subsequently, Mueller's words were distorted and misinterpreted to both defend and condemn the President. Mueller's testimony was criticized by some as uncharacteristically confusing.
In late September 2019, it was reported Trump may have lied to Mueller about his knowledge of his campaign's contacts with WikiLeaks, citing the grand jury redactions in the Mueller report.
Political scientists William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe described Mueller's decision not to take a position on obstruction of justice for Trump – despite "compiling a mountain of incriminating evidence" – as something that "will surely go down as one of the strangest – and most consequential – moves in modern legal history." They added, "in refusing to draw legal conclusions from his evidence, Mueller simply didn't do his job... because he didn't, he failed to carry out his duty to tell the American people what his investigation actually revealed about Trump's lawless behavior, and he failed to draw a bright line that would keep future presidents within legal bounds."
The University of Virginia Law School announced in June 2021 that in the coming fall Mueller would participate in a six-session course called "The Mueller Report and the Role of the Special Counsel," along with three of his colleagues from the investigation.
Personal life
Mueller met his future wife, Ann Cabell Standish, at a high school party when they were 17. Standish attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and Sarah Lawrence College, before working as a special-education teacher for children with learning disabilities. In September 1966, they married at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. They have two daughters and three grandchildren. One of their daughters was born with spina bifida.
In 2001, Mueller's Senate confirmation hearings to head the FBI were delayed several months while he underwent treatment for prostate cancer. He was diagnosed in the fall of 2000, postponing being sworn in as FBI director until he received a good prognosis from his physician.
Although raised Presbyterian, he became an Episcopalian later in life.
Mueller and William Barr—the attorney general who supervised the late stage of Mueller's special counsel investigation—have known each other since the 1980s and have been described as good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr's daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.
Military awards
Mueller received the following military awards and decorations:
References
Further reading
External links
Profile at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and staff
1944 births
20th-century American lawyers
21st-century American lawyers
American Episcopalians
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
American people of Scottish descent
Assistant United States Attorneys
Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Identity theft victims
Lawyers from New York City
Living people
Members of the 2017 Special Counsel investigation team
Military personnel from New York City
New York (state) Republicans
New York University alumni
People from Manhattan
People from Philadelphia
Princeton University alumni
Recipients of the Gallantry Cross (Vietnam)
Special prosecutors
St. Paul's School (New Hampshire) alumni
United States Assistant Attorneys General for the Criminal Division
United States Attorneys for the Northern District of California
United States Marine Corps officers
United States Marine Corps personnel of the Vietnam War
University of Virginia School of Law alumni
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr partners
| false |
[
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
] |
[
"Robert Mueller",
"Marine Corps service",
"what was his early life like?",
"Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school.",
"Where was he born?",
"I don't know.",
"Did he have any conflicts in his career?",
"In July 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"he earned the Bronze Star with 'V' distinction for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush"
] |
C_3533a0e9363848b4b7be6b9884cefa03_1
|
What was his personal life like?
| 5 |
What was Robert Mueller personal life like?
|
Robert Mueller
|
Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. In July 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. In December 1968, he earned the Bronze Star with 'V' distinction for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush that saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with three service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge. Mueller eventually became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then-Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report. Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many--many--who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." After returning from Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970. He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004. CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
Robert Swan Mueller III (; born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2001 to 2013.
A graduate of Princeton University and New York University, Mueller served as a Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War, receiving a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart. He subsequently attended the University of Virginia School of Law. Mueller is a registered Republican in Washington, D.C., and was appointed and reappointed to Senate-confirmed positions by presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
Mueller has served both in government and private practice. He was an assistant United States attorney, a United States attorney, United States assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, a homicide prosecutor in Washington, D.C., acting United States deputy attorney general, partner at D.C. law firm WilmerHale and director of the FBI.
On May 17, 2017, Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel overseeing an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and related matters. He submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019. On April 18, the Department of Justice released it. On May 29, he resigned his post and the Office of the Special Counsel was closed.
Early life and education
Mueller was born on August 7, 1944, at Doctors Hospital in the New York City borough of Manhattan, the first child of Alice C. Truesdale (1920–2007) and Robert Swan Mueller Jr. (1916–2007). He has four younger sisters: Susan, Sandra, Joan, and Patricia. His father was an executive with DuPont who had served as a Navy officer in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters during World War II. His father majored in psychology at Princeton University and played varsity lacrosse, both of which he followed (see below).
Mueller is of German, English, and Scottish descent. His paternal great-grandfather, Gustave A. Mueller, was a prominent doctor in Pittsburgh, whose own father, August C. E. Müller, had immigrated to the United States in 1855 from the Province of Pomerania in the Kingdom of Prussia (a historical territory whose area included land now part of Poland and the north-eastern edge of Germany). On his mother's side, he is a great-grandson of the railroad executive William Truesdale.
Mueller grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where he attended Princeton Country Day School, now known as Princeton Day School. After he completed eighth grade, his family moved to Philadelphia while Mueller himself went on to attend St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire for high school, where he was captain of the soccer, hockey, and lacrosse teams and won the Gordon Medal as the school's top athlete in 1962. A lacrosse teammate and classmate at St. Paul's School was future Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry.
After graduating from St. Paul's, Mueller entered Princeton University, where he continued to play lacrosse, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in politics in 1966 after completing a senior thesis titled "Acceptance of Jurisdiction in the South West Africa Cases." Mueller was a member of University Cottage Club while he was a student at Princeton. Mueller earned a Master of Arts in international relations from New York University in 1967.
In 1968, Mueller joined the United States Marine Corps. After his military service, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law where he served on the Virginia Law Review and graduated in 1973.
United States Marine Corps service
Mueller has cited the combat death of his Princeton lacrosse teammate David Spencer Hackett in the Vietnam War as an influence on his decision to pursue military service. Of his classmate, Mueller has said, "One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton. There were a number of us who felt we should follow his example and at least go into the service. And it flows from there." Hackett was a Marine Corps first lieutenant in the infantry and was killed in 1967 in Quảng Trị Province by small arms fire.
After waiting a year so a knee injury could heal, Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. Of these, he said later that he considered Ranger School the most valuable because he felt "more than anything teaches you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to eat."
In the summer of 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader as a second lieutenant with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. On December 11, 1968, during an engagement in Operation Scotland II, he earned the Bronze Star with "V" device for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush in which he saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with four service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge.
After recuperating at a field hospital near Da Nang, Mueller became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then–Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report.
Mueller had originally considered making the Marines his career, but he explained later that he found non-combat life in the Corps to be unexciting. After returning from South Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970 at the rank of captain.
Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many—many—who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." In 2009, he told a writer that despite his other accomplishments, he was still "most proud the Marine Corps deemed me worthy of leading other Marines."
Career
Private practice and Department of Justice
After receiving his Juris Doctor in 1973 from the University of Virginia School of Law, Mueller worked as a litigator at the firm Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro in San Francisco until 1976. He then served for 12 years in United States Attorney offices. He first worked in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, where he rose to be chief of the criminal division, and in 1982, he moved to Boston to work in the office of the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts as an Assistant United States Attorney, where he investigated and prosecuted major financial fraud, terrorism and public corruption cases, as well as narcotics conspiracies and international money launderers.
After serving as a partner at the Boston law firm of Hill and Barlow, Mueller returned to government service. In 1989, he served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and as acting Deputy Attorney General. James Baker, with whom he worked on national security matters, said he had "an appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law".
In 1990, he became the United States Assistant Attorney General in charge of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division. During his tenure, he oversaw prosecutions including that of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, the Pan Am Flight 103 (Lockerbie bombing) case, and of the Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.
In 1991, he declared the government had been investigating the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) since 1986 in more-than-usual media exposure. Also in 1991, he was elected a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
In 1993, Mueller became a partner at Boston's Hale and Dorr, specializing in white-collar crime litigation. He returned to public service in 1995 as senior litigator in the homicide section of the District of Columbia United States Attorney's Office. In 1998, Mueller was named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California and held that position until 2001.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
President George W. Bush nominated Mueller for the position of FBI director on July 5, 2001. He and two other candidates, Washington lawyer George J. Terwilliger III and veteran Chicago prosecutor and white-collar crime defense lawyer Dan Webb, were up for the job, but Mueller, described at the time as a conservative Republican, was always considered the front-runner. Terwilliger and Webb both pulled out from consideration around mid-June, while confirmation hearings for Mueller before the Senate Judiciary Committee were quickly set for July 30, only three days before his prostate cancer surgery.
The Senate unanimously confirmed Mueller as FBI director on August 2, 2001, voting 98–0 in favor of his appointment. He had previously served as acting deputy attorney general of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) for several months before officially becoming the FBI director on September 4, 2001, one week before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
On February 11, 2003, one month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Mueller gave testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mueller informed the American public that "[s]even countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea—remain active in the United States and continue to support terrorist groups that have targeted Americans. As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material." Highlighting this worry in February 2003, FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley wrote an open letter to Mueller in which she warned that "the bureau will [not] be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq" and encouraged Mueller to "share [her concerns] with the President and Attorney General."
On March 10, 2004, while United States Attorney General John Ashcroft was at the George Washington University Hospital for gallbladder surgery, James Comey, the then deputy attorney general, received a call from Ashcroft's wife informing him that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were about to visit Ashcroft to convince him to renew a program of warrantless wiretapping under the Terrorist Surveillance Program which the DOJ ruled unconstitutional. Ashcroft refused to sign, as he had previously agreed, but the following day the White House renewed the program anyway. Mueller and Comey then threatened to resign. On March 12, 2004, after private, individual meetings with Mueller and Comey at the White House, the president supported changing the program to satisfy the concerns of Mueller, Ashcroft, and Comey.
He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004.
As director, Mueller also barred FBI personnel from participating in enhanced interrogations with the CIA. At a dinner, Mueller defended an attorney (Thomas Wilner) who had been attacked for his role in defending Kuwaiti detainees. Mueller stood up, raised his glass, and said, "I toast Tom Wilner. He's doing what an American should." However, the White House pushed back, encouraging more vigorous methods of pursuing and interrogating terror suspects. When Bush confronted Mueller to ask him to round up more terrorists in the U.S., Mueller responded, saying, "If they [suspects] don't commit a crime, it would be difficult to identify and isolate" them. Vice President Dick Cheney objected by saying, "That's just not good enough. We're hearing this too much from the FBI."
In May 2011, President Barack Obama asked Mueller to continue at the helm of the FBI for two additional years beyond his normal 10-year term, which would have expired on September 4, 2011. The Senate approved this request 100–0 on July 27, 2011. On September 4, 2013, Mueller was replaced by James Comey.
In June 2013, Mueller defended NSA surveillance programs in testimony before a House Judiciary Committee hearing. He said that surveillance programs could have "derailed" the September 11 attacks. Congressman John Conyers disagreed: "I am not persuaded that that makes it OK to collect every call." Mueller also testified that the government's surveillance programs complied "in full with U.S. law and with basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution". He said that "We are taking all necessary steps to hold Edward Snowden responsible for these disclosures."
On June 19, 2017, in the case of Arar v. Ashcroft, Mueller, along with Ashcroft and former Immigration and Naturalization Services Commissioner James W. Ziglar and others, was shielded from civil liability by the Supreme Court for post-9/11 detention of Muslims under policies then brought into place.
Return to private sector
After leaving the FBI in 2013, Mueller served a one-year term as consulting professor and the Arthur and Frank Payne distinguished lecturer at Stanford University, where he focused on issues related to cybersecurity.
In addition to his speaking and teaching roles, Mueller also joined the law firm WilmerHale as a partner in its Washington office in 2014. Among other roles at the firm, he oversaw the independent investigation into the NFL's conduct surrounding the video that appeared to show NFL player Ray Rice assaulting his fiancée. In January 2016, he was appointed as Settlement Master in the U.S. consumer litigation over the Volkswagen emissions scandal; as of May 11, 2017, the scandal has resulted in $11.2billion in customer settlements.
On October 19, 2016, Mueller began an external review of "security, personnel, and management processes and practices" at government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton after Harold T. Martin III was indicted for massive data theft from the National Security Agency. On April 6, 2017, he was appointed as Special Master for disbursement of $850million and $125million for automakers and consumers, respectively, affected by rupture-prone Takata airbags.
Mueller received the 2016 Thayer Award for public service from the United States Military Academy. In June 2017, he received the Baker Award for intelligence and national security contributions from the nonprofit Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
In October 2019, it was announced that Mueller, along with James L. Quarles and Aaron Zebley, would return to WilmerHale to resume private practice. On July 11, 2020, Mueller wrote an op-ed on The Washington Post stating that Roger Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so” after the President of the United States granted Roger Stone clemency and defended his investigation.
Special Counsel for the Department of Justice
On May 16, 2017, Mueller met with President Trump as a courtesy to provide perspectives on the FBI and input on considerations for hiring a new FBI Director. This meeting was initially widely reported to have been an interview to serve again as the FBI Director. President Trump broached resuming the position in their meeting; however, Mueller was ineligible to return as FBI Director due to statutory term limits, and Mueller lacked interest in resuming the position.
The next day, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to serve as special counsel for the United States Department of Justice. In this capacity, Mueller oversaw the investigation into "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation".
Mueller's appointment to oversee the investigation immediately garnered widespread support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and prominent conservative political commentator, stated via Twitter that "Robert Mueller is a superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity." Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said, "Former Director Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for this job. I now have significantly greater confidence that the investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead." Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) stated, "former FBI dir. Mueller is well qualified to oversee this probe". Some, however, pointed out an alleged conflict of interest. "The federal code could not be clearer—Mueller is compromised by his apparent conflict of interest in being close with James Comey," Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), who first called for Mueller to step down over the summer, said in a statement to Fox News. "The appearance of a conflict is enough to put Mueller in violation of the code. … All of the revelations in recent weeks make the case stronger."
Upon his appointment as special counsel, Mueller and two colleagues (former FBI agent Aaron Zebley and former assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force James L. Quarles III) resigned from WilmerHale. On May 23, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice ethics experts announced they had declared Mueller ethically able to function as special counsel. The spokesperson for the special counsel, Peter Carr, told NBC News that Mueller has taken an active role in managing the inquiry. In an interview with the Associated Press, Rosenstein said he would recuse himself from supervision of Mueller if he were to become a subject in the investigation due to his role in the dismissal of James Comey.
On June 14, 2017, The Washington Post reported that Mueller's office is also investigating Trump personally for possible obstruction of justice, in reference to the Russian probe. The report was questioned by Trump's legal team attorney Jay Sekulow, who said on June 18 on NBC's Meet the Press, "The President is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction, period." Due to the central role of the Trump family in the campaign, the transition, and the White House, the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was also reportedly under scrutiny by Mueller. Also in June, Trump allegedly ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, but backed down when then-White House Counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit.
During a discussion about national security at the Aspen security conference on July 21, 2017, former CIA director John Brennan reaffirmed his support for Mueller and called for members of Congress to resist if Trump fires Mueller. He also said it was "the obligation of some executive-branch officials to refuse to carry out some of these orders that, again, are inconsistent with what this country is all about". After Peter Strzok, an investigator for Mueller, was removed from the investigation for alleged partiality, Senator Mark Warner, the Ranking Member of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a speech on December 20, 2017, before the Senate warned of a constitutional crisis if the President fired Mueller. On June 22, 2018, Warner hosted a fundraising party for 100 guests and was quoted there saying, "If you get me one more glass of wine, I'll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know. If you think you've seen wild stuff so far, buckle up. It's going to be a wild couple of months."
On October 30, 2017, Mueller filed charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign co-chairman Rick Gates. The 12 charges include conspiracy to launder money, violations of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, and conspiracy against the United States.
On December 1, 2017, Mueller reached a plea agreement with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to giving false testimony to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. As part of Flynn's negotiations, his son, Michael G. Flynn, was not expected to be charged, and Flynn was prepared to testify that high-level officials on Trump's team directed him to make contact with the Russians. On February 16, 2018, Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and 3 Russian companies for attempting to trick Americans into consuming Russian propaganda that targeted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and later President-elect Donald Trump.
On February 20, 2018, Mueller charged attorney Alex van der Zwaan with making false statements in the Russia probe.
On May 20, 2018, Trump criticized Mueller, tweeting "the World's most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me so now they are looking at the rest of the World!" Mueller started investigating the August 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and an emissary for the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The emissary offered help to the Trump presidential campaign. Mueller was also investigating the Trump campaign's possible ties to Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and China.
On December 18, 2018, The Washington Post published an article concerning a report prepared for the U.S. Senate which stated that Russian disinformation teams had targeted Mueller.
On March 22, 2019, Mueller concluded his investigation and submitted the Special Counsel's final report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Department of Justice official said that the report did not recommend any new indictments. On March 24, Attorney General Barr submitted a summary of findings to the United States Congress. He stated in his letter, "The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russian in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election." Mueller's report also reportedly did not take a stance on whether or not Trump committed obstruction of justice; Barr quoted Mueller as saying "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
On April 18, 2019, the Department of Justice released Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, the special counsel's final report and its conclusions.
On May 29, 2019, Mueller announced that he was retiring as special counsel and that the office would be shut down, and he spoke publicly about the report for the first time. Saying "The report is my testimony," he indicated he would have nothing to say that was not already in the report. On the subject of obstruction of justice, he said, "under long-standing Department [of Justice] policy, a president cannot be charged with a crime while he is in office." He repeated his official conclusion that the report neither accused nor exonerated the president while adding that any potential wrongdoing by a president must be addressed by a "process other than the criminal justice system." Mueller reasserted the involvement of Russian operatives in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak and their parallel efforts to influence American public opinion using social media. Referring to those actions, he declared that "there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American."
Robert Mueller was initially scheduled to publicly testify before two House committees on July 17, 2019, with two hours for lawmakers to ask questions, but the hearing was postponed to July 24 with a third hour added for questions. His verbal testimony was expected to help inform the public—Democrats believe most Americans have not read the report—and to help Democratic leadership finally decide whether or not to impeach the President. In particular, the Democrats aimed to highlight what they consider to be the worst examples of Trump's conduct. Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland said he would use visual aids, such as posters, to help people understand the implications of the Mueller report. Republicans, on the other hand, planned to question Mueller on the origins of this investigation.
On July 24, 2019, Mueller attended both congressional committee hearings and was questioned by members of Congress. His testimony followed the guidelines he had stated would be appropriate regarding his report. In fact, many of his responses were one-word replies. He said he was "not familiar" with Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the Steele dossier. He rejected claims that his investigation was a "witch hunt" or that it totally exonerated the President. He declined to answer questions outside of the scope of his investigation, but reiterated his concern about foreign interference with American elections. He noted that it continues, that he expects it to expand to include other foreign governments as well as the Russians, and that he considers it a great threat to the United States. According to the Nielsen Company, total viewership for the Mueller hearing fell just shy of 13million, significantly lower than other hearings involving the Trump administration, such as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's (20.4million), former FBI director James Comey's (19.5million), and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's (15.8million). Reasons for this comparatively low television rating include the fact that the hearing occurred in July, vacation time for many Americans, and months after the release of the Mueller report. Fox News Channel enjoyed the top rating, with 3.03million views. Subsequently, Mueller's words were distorted and misinterpreted to both defend and condemn the President. Mueller's testimony was criticized by some as uncharacteristically confusing.
In late September 2019, it was reported Trump may have lied to Mueller about his knowledge of his campaign's contacts with WikiLeaks, citing the grand jury redactions in the Mueller report.
Political scientists William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe described Mueller's decision not to take a position on obstruction of justice for Trump – despite "compiling a mountain of incriminating evidence" – as something that "will surely go down as one of the strangest – and most consequential – moves in modern legal history." They added, "in refusing to draw legal conclusions from his evidence, Mueller simply didn't do his job... because he didn't, he failed to carry out his duty to tell the American people what his investigation actually revealed about Trump's lawless behavior, and he failed to draw a bright line that would keep future presidents within legal bounds."
The University of Virginia Law School announced in June 2021 that in the coming fall Mueller would participate in a six-session course called "The Mueller Report and the Role of the Special Counsel," along with three of his colleagues from the investigation.
Personal life
Mueller met his future wife, Ann Cabell Standish, at a high school party when they were 17. Standish attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and Sarah Lawrence College, before working as a special-education teacher for children with learning disabilities. In September 1966, they married at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. They have two daughters and three grandchildren. One of their daughters was born with spina bifida.
In 2001, Mueller's Senate confirmation hearings to head the FBI were delayed several months while he underwent treatment for prostate cancer. He was diagnosed in the fall of 2000, postponing being sworn in as FBI director until he received a good prognosis from his physician.
Although raised Presbyterian, he became an Episcopalian later in life.
Mueller and William Barr—the attorney general who supervised the late stage of Mueller's special counsel investigation—have known each other since the 1980s and have been described as good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr's daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.
Military awards
Mueller received the following military awards and decorations:
References
Further reading
External links
Profile at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and staff
1944 births
20th-century American lawyers
21st-century American lawyers
American Episcopalians
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
American people of Scottish descent
Assistant United States Attorneys
Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Identity theft victims
Lawyers from New York City
Living people
Members of the 2017 Special Counsel investigation team
Military personnel from New York City
New York (state) Republicans
New York University alumni
People from Manhattan
People from Philadelphia
Princeton University alumni
Recipients of the Gallantry Cross (Vietnam)
Special prosecutors
St. Paul's School (New Hampshire) alumni
United States Assistant Attorneys General for the Criminal Division
United States Attorneys for the Northern District of California
United States Marine Corps officers
United States Marine Corps personnel of the Vietnam War
University of Virginia School of Law alumni
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr partners
| false |
[
"Taylor Takahashi (born September 7, 1992) is a Japanese American actor and chef and formally a basketball player and personal assistant to Eddie Huang. He made his acting debut in Huang's first directorial effort Boogie.\n\nEarly life and career\nTaylor Takahashi is a yonsei (fourth-generational Japanese-American) and was born and raised in Alameda, California and relocated to Orange County as an adult. In high school he played basketball before becoming a personal trainer. He returned to his roots and joined a recreation league where he discovered that Eddie Huang was one of his teammates. They quickly bonded as Takahashi was a fan of his work and became employed as his personal assistant and worked as a chef in his restaurant, \"I learned so much by being able to observe... he never treated me like, 'I'm your boss and you work for me.' It was always very open... 'If you want to explore relationships with them, my world is your world. And I want you to try to take advantage as much as you can.'\" Huang showed Takahashi the script for the movie he was hoping to direct titled Boogie and continued to assist him on the project by training the actor chosen for the lead role. \"I show up to the office about three and a half weeks into pre-production, and Eddie's standing at the front door... And he's like, 'What’s up? How you doing today? Give me your phone and give me your laptop. No distractions today.' And I was like, 'Am I fired? What happened?'\" Takahashi was soon informed by Huang that the actor chosen was unable to take the role and had decided to cast him instead. Following the release of Boogie, Takahashi stated that he plans to continue acting and has started auditioning and taking acting classes to improve his craft.\n\nFilmography\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nLiving people\n1990s births\n21st-century American actors\nAmerican male film actors\nAmerican male actors of Japanese descent\nAmerican chefs\nMale actors from California\nPeople from Alameda, California",
"\"O What a Savior\" is a Southern gospel song penned by the Free Will Baptist musician Marvin P. Dalton in 1948.\n\nLyrics\nOnce I was straying in sin's dark valley,\nNo hope within could I see,\nHe searched through Heaven, and found a Savior\nTo save a poor lost soul like me.\n\nO what a Savior, O hallelujah!\nHis heart was broken on Calvary,\nHis hands were nail scarred,\nHis side was riven,\nHe gave His life-blood for even me.\n\nHe left the Father with all His riches,\nWith calmness sweet and serene,\nCame down from Heaven and gave His life-blood,\nTo make the vilest sinner clean.\n\nO what a Savior, O hallelujah!\nHis heart was broken on Calvary,\nHis hands were nail scarred,\nHis side was riven,\nHe gave His life-blood for even me.\n\nDeath's chilly waters I'll soon be crossing,\nHis hand will lead me safe o're,\nI'll join the chorus in that bright city,\nAnd sing up there forever more.\n\nO what a Savior, O hallelujah!\nHis heart was broken on Calvary,\nHis hands were nail scarred,\nHis side was riven,\nHe gave His life-blood for even me.\n\nReferences\n O What a Savior as sung by the Cathedrals\n O What a Savior as sung by Ernie Haase & Signature Sound\n\nSouthern gospel songs"
] |
[
"Robert Mueller",
"Marine Corps service",
"what was his early life like?",
"Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school.",
"Where was he born?",
"I don't know.",
"Did he have any conflicts in his career?",
"In July 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"he earned the Bronze Star with 'V' distinction for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush",
"What was his personal life like?",
"I don't know."
] |
C_3533a0e9363848b4b7be6b9884cefa03_1
|
Did he ever retire from any positions?
| 6 |
Did Robert Mueller ever retire from any positions?
|
Robert Mueller
|
Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. In July 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. In December 1968, he earned the Bronze Star with 'V' distinction for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush that saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with three service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge. Mueller eventually became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then-Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report. Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many--many--who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." After returning from Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970. He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004. CANNOTANSWER
|
In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969.
|
Robert Swan Mueller III (; born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2001 to 2013.
A graduate of Princeton University and New York University, Mueller served as a Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War, receiving a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart. He subsequently attended the University of Virginia School of Law. Mueller is a registered Republican in Washington, D.C., and was appointed and reappointed to Senate-confirmed positions by presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
Mueller has served both in government and private practice. He was an assistant United States attorney, a United States attorney, United States assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, a homicide prosecutor in Washington, D.C., acting United States deputy attorney general, partner at D.C. law firm WilmerHale and director of the FBI.
On May 17, 2017, Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel overseeing an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and related matters. He submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019. On April 18, the Department of Justice released it. On May 29, he resigned his post and the Office of the Special Counsel was closed.
Early life and education
Mueller was born on August 7, 1944, at Doctors Hospital in the New York City borough of Manhattan, the first child of Alice C. Truesdale (1920–2007) and Robert Swan Mueller Jr. (1916–2007). He has four younger sisters: Susan, Sandra, Joan, and Patricia. His father was an executive with DuPont who had served as a Navy officer in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters during World War II. His father majored in psychology at Princeton University and played varsity lacrosse, both of which he followed (see below).
Mueller is of German, English, and Scottish descent. His paternal great-grandfather, Gustave A. Mueller, was a prominent doctor in Pittsburgh, whose own father, August C. E. Müller, had immigrated to the United States in 1855 from the Province of Pomerania in the Kingdom of Prussia (a historical territory whose area included land now part of Poland and the north-eastern edge of Germany). On his mother's side, he is a great-grandson of the railroad executive William Truesdale.
Mueller grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where he attended Princeton Country Day School, now known as Princeton Day School. After he completed eighth grade, his family moved to Philadelphia while Mueller himself went on to attend St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire for high school, where he was captain of the soccer, hockey, and lacrosse teams and won the Gordon Medal as the school's top athlete in 1962. A lacrosse teammate and classmate at St. Paul's School was future Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry.
After graduating from St. Paul's, Mueller entered Princeton University, where he continued to play lacrosse, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in politics in 1966 after completing a senior thesis titled "Acceptance of Jurisdiction in the South West Africa Cases." Mueller was a member of University Cottage Club while he was a student at Princeton. Mueller earned a Master of Arts in international relations from New York University in 1967.
In 1968, Mueller joined the United States Marine Corps. After his military service, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law where he served on the Virginia Law Review and graduated in 1973.
United States Marine Corps service
Mueller has cited the combat death of his Princeton lacrosse teammate David Spencer Hackett in the Vietnam War as an influence on his decision to pursue military service. Of his classmate, Mueller has said, "One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton. There were a number of us who felt we should follow his example and at least go into the service. And it flows from there." Hackett was a Marine Corps first lieutenant in the infantry and was killed in 1967 in Quảng Trị Province by small arms fire.
After waiting a year so a knee injury could heal, Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. Of these, he said later that he considered Ranger School the most valuable because he felt "more than anything teaches you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to eat."
In the summer of 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader as a second lieutenant with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. On December 11, 1968, during an engagement in Operation Scotland II, he earned the Bronze Star with "V" device for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush in which he saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with four service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge.
After recuperating at a field hospital near Da Nang, Mueller became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then–Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report.
Mueller had originally considered making the Marines his career, but he explained later that he found non-combat life in the Corps to be unexciting. After returning from South Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970 at the rank of captain.
Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many—many—who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." In 2009, he told a writer that despite his other accomplishments, he was still "most proud the Marine Corps deemed me worthy of leading other Marines."
Career
Private practice and Department of Justice
After receiving his Juris Doctor in 1973 from the University of Virginia School of Law, Mueller worked as a litigator at the firm Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro in San Francisco until 1976. He then served for 12 years in United States Attorney offices. He first worked in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, where he rose to be chief of the criminal division, and in 1982, he moved to Boston to work in the office of the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts as an Assistant United States Attorney, where he investigated and prosecuted major financial fraud, terrorism and public corruption cases, as well as narcotics conspiracies and international money launderers.
After serving as a partner at the Boston law firm of Hill and Barlow, Mueller returned to government service. In 1989, he served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and as acting Deputy Attorney General. James Baker, with whom he worked on national security matters, said he had "an appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law".
In 1990, he became the United States Assistant Attorney General in charge of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division. During his tenure, he oversaw prosecutions including that of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, the Pan Am Flight 103 (Lockerbie bombing) case, and of the Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.
In 1991, he declared the government had been investigating the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) since 1986 in more-than-usual media exposure. Also in 1991, he was elected a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
In 1993, Mueller became a partner at Boston's Hale and Dorr, specializing in white-collar crime litigation. He returned to public service in 1995 as senior litigator in the homicide section of the District of Columbia United States Attorney's Office. In 1998, Mueller was named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California and held that position until 2001.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
President George W. Bush nominated Mueller for the position of FBI director on July 5, 2001. He and two other candidates, Washington lawyer George J. Terwilliger III and veteran Chicago prosecutor and white-collar crime defense lawyer Dan Webb, were up for the job, but Mueller, described at the time as a conservative Republican, was always considered the front-runner. Terwilliger and Webb both pulled out from consideration around mid-June, while confirmation hearings for Mueller before the Senate Judiciary Committee were quickly set for July 30, only three days before his prostate cancer surgery.
The Senate unanimously confirmed Mueller as FBI director on August 2, 2001, voting 98–0 in favor of his appointment. He had previously served as acting deputy attorney general of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) for several months before officially becoming the FBI director on September 4, 2001, one week before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
On February 11, 2003, one month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Mueller gave testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mueller informed the American public that "[s]even countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea—remain active in the United States and continue to support terrorist groups that have targeted Americans. As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material." Highlighting this worry in February 2003, FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley wrote an open letter to Mueller in which she warned that "the bureau will [not] be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq" and encouraged Mueller to "share [her concerns] with the President and Attorney General."
On March 10, 2004, while United States Attorney General John Ashcroft was at the George Washington University Hospital for gallbladder surgery, James Comey, the then deputy attorney general, received a call from Ashcroft's wife informing him that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were about to visit Ashcroft to convince him to renew a program of warrantless wiretapping under the Terrorist Surveillance Program which the DOJ ruled unconstitutional. Ashcroft refused to sign, as he had previously agreed, but the following day the White House renewed the program anyway. Mueller and Comey then threatened to resign. On March 12, 2004, after private, individual meetings with Mueller and Comey at the White House, the president supported changing the program to satisfy the concerns of Mueller, Ashcroft, and Comey.
He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004.
As director, Mueller also barred FBI personnel from participating in enhanced interrogations with the CIA. At a dinner, Mueller defended an attorney (Thomas Wilner) who had been attacked for his role in defending Kuwaiti detainees. Mueller stood up, raised his glass, and said, "I toast Tom Wilner. He's doing what an American should." However, the White House pushed back, encouraging more vigorous methods of pursuing and interrogating terror suspects. When Bush confronted Mueller to ask him to round up more terrorists in the U.S., Mueller responded, saying, "If they [suspects] don't commit a crime, it would be difficult to identify and isolate" them. Vice President Dick Cheney objected by saying, "That's just not good enough. We're hearing this too much from the FBI."
In May 2011, President Barack Obama asked Mueller to continue at the helm of the FBI for two additional years beyond his normal 10-year term, which would have expired on September 4, 2011. The Senate approved this request 100–0 on July 27, 2011. On September 4, 2013, Mueller was replaced by James Comey.
In June 2013, Mueller defended NSA surveillance programs in testimony before a House Judiciary Committee hearing. He said that surveillance programs could have "derailed" the September 11 attacks. Congressman John Conyers disagreed: "I am not persuaded that that makes it OK to collect every call." Mueller also testified that the government's surveillance programs complied "in full with U.S. law and with basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution". He said that "We are taking all necessary steps to hold Edward Snowden responsible for these disclosures."
On June 19, 2017, in the case of Arar v. Ashcroft, Mueller, along with Ashcroft and former Immigration and Naturalization Services Commissioner James W. Ziglar and others, was shielded from civil liability by the Supreme Court for post-9/11 detention of Muslims under policies then brought into place.
Return to private sector
After leaving the FBI in 2013, Mueller served a one-year term as consulting professor and the Arthur and Frank Payne distinguished lecturer at Stanford University, where he focused on issues related to cybersecurity.
In addition to his speaking and teaching roles, Mueller also joined the law firm WilmerHale as a partner in its Washington office in 2014. Among other roles at the firm, he oversaw the independent investigation into the NFL's conduct surrounding the video that appeared to show NFL player Ray Rice assaulting his fiancée. In January 2016, he was appointed as Settlement Master in the U.S. consumer litigation over the Volkswagen emissions scandal; as of May 11, 2017, the scandal has resulted in $11.2billion in customer settlements.
On October 19, 2016, Mueller began an external review of "security, personnel, and management processes and practices" at government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton after Harold T. Martin III was indicted for massive data theft from the National Security Agency. On April 6, 2017, he was appointed as Special Master for disbursement of $850million and $125million for automakers and consumers, respectively, affected by rupture-prone Takata airbags.
Mueller received the 2016 Thayer Award for public service from the United States Military Academy. In June 2017, he received the Baker Award for intelligence and national security contributions from the nonprofit Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
In October 2019, it was announced that Mueller, along with James L. Quarles and Aaron Zebley, would return to WilmerHale to resume private practice. On July 11, 2020, Mueller wrote an op-ed on The Washington Post stating that Roger Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so” after the President of the United States granted Roger Stone clemency and defended his investigation.
Special Counsel for the Department of Justice
On May 16, 2017, Mueller met with President Trump as a courtesy to provide perspectives on the FBI and input on considerations for hiring a new FBI Director. This meeting was initially widely reported to have been an interview to serve again as the FBI Director. President Trump broached resuming the position in their meeting; however, Mueller was ineligible to return as FBI Director due to statutory term limits, and Mueller lacked interest in resuming the position.
The next day, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to serve as special counsel for the United States Department of Justice. In this capacity, Mueller oversaw the investigation into "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation".
Mueller's appointment to oversee the investigation immediately garnered widespread support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and prominent conservative political commentator, stated via Twitter that "Robert Mueller is a superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity." Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said, "Former Director Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for this job. I now have significantly greater confidence that the investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead." Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) stated, "former FBI dir. Mueller is well qualified to oversee this probe". Some, however, pointed out an alleged conflict of interest. "The federal code could not be clearer—Mueller is compromised by his apparent conflict of interest in being close with James Comey," Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), who first called for Mueller to step down over the summer, said in a statement to Fox News. "The appearance of a conflict is enough to put Mueller in violation of the code. … All of the revelations in recent weeks make the case stronger."
Upon his appointment as special counsel, Mueller and two colleagues (former FBI agent Aaron Zebley and former assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force James L. Quarles III) resigned from WilmerHale. On May 23, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice ethics experts announced they had declared Mueller ethically able to function as special counsel. The spokesperson for the special counsel, Peter Carr, told NBC News that Mueller has taken an active role in managing the inquiry. In an interview with the Associated Press, Rosenstein said he would recuse himself from supervision of Mueller if he were to become a subject in the investigation due to his role in the dismissal of James Comey.
On June 14, 2017, The Washington Post reported that Mueller's office is also investigating Trump personally for possible obstruction of justice, in reference to the Russian probe. The report was questioned by Trump's legal team attorney Jay Sekulow, who said on June 18 on NBC's Meet the Press, "The President is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction, period." Due to the central role of the Trump family in the campaign, the transition, and the White House, the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was also reportedly under scrutiny by Mueller. Also in June, Trump allegedly ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, but backed down when then-White House Counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit.
During a discussion about national security at the Aspen security conference on July 21, 2017, former CIA director John Brennan reaffirmed his support for Mueller and called for members of Congress to resist if Trump fires Mueller. He also said it was "the obligation of some executive-branch officials to refuse to carry out some of these orders that, again, are inconsistent with what this country is all about". After Peter Strzok, an investigator for Mueller, was removed from the investigation for alleged partiality, Senator Mark Warner, the Ranking Member of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a speech on December 20, 2017, before the Senate warned of a constitutional crisis if the President fired Mueller. On June 22, 2018, Warner hosted a fundraising party for 100 guests and was quoted there saying, "If you get me one more glass of wine, I'll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know. If you think you've seen wild stuff so far, buckle up. It's going to be a wild couple of months."
On October 30, 2017, Mueller filed charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign co-chairman Rick Gates. The 12 charges include conspiracy to launder money, violations of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, and conspiracy against the United States.
On December 1, 2017, Mueller reached a plea agreement with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to giving false testimony to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. As part of Flynn's negotiations, his son, Michael G. Flynn, was not expected to be charged, and Flynn was prepared to testify that high-level officials on Trump's team directed him to make contact with the Russians. On February 16, 2018, Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and 3 Russian companies for attempting to trick Americans into consuming Russian propaganda that targeted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and later President-elect Donald Trump.
On February 20, 2018, Mueller charged attorney Alex van der Zwaan with making false statements in the Russia probe.
On May 20, 2018, Trump criticized Mueller, tweeting "the World's most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me so now they are looking at the rest of the World!" Mueller started investigating the August 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and an emissary for the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The emissary offered help to the Trump presidential campaign. Mueller was also investigating the Trump campaign's possible ties to Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and China.
On December 18, 2018, The Washington Post published an article concerning a report prepared for the U.S. Senate which stated that Russian disinformation teams had targeted Mueller.
On March 22, 2019, Mueller concluded his investigation and submitted the Special Counsel's final report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Department of Justice official said that the report did not recommend any new indictments. On March 24, Attorney General Barr submitted a summary of findings to the United States Congress. He stated in his letter, "The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russian in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election." Mueller's report also reportedly did not take a stance on whether or not Trump committed obstruction of justice; Barr quoted Mueller as saying "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
On April 18, 2019, the Department of Justice released Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, the special counsel's final report and its conclusions.
On May 29, 2019, Mueller announced that he was retiring as special counsel and that the office would be shut down, and he spoke publicly about the report for the first time. Saying "The report is my testimony," he indicated he would have nothing to say that was not already in the report. On the subject of obstruction of justice, he said, "under long-standing Department [of Justice] policy, a president cannot be charged with a crime while he is in office." He repeated his official conclusion that the report neither accused nor exonerated the president while adding that any potential wrongdoing by a president must be addressed by a "process other than the criminal justice system." Mueller reasserted the involvement of Russian operatives in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak and their parallel efforts to influence American public opinion using social media. Referring to those actions, he declared that "there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American."
Robert Mueller was initially scheduled to publicly testify before two House committees on July 17, 2019, with two hours for lawmakers to ask questions, but the hearing was postponed to July 24 with a third hour added for questions. His verbal testimony was expected to help inform the public—Democrats believe most Americans have not read the report—and to help Democratic leadership finally decide whether or not to impeach the President. In particular, the Democrats aimed to highlight what they consider to be the worst examples of Trump's conduct. Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland said he would use visual aids, such as posters, to help people understand the implications of the Mueller report. Republicans, on the other hand, planned to question Mueller on the origins of this investigation.
On July 24, 2019, Mueller attended both congressional committee hearings and was questioned by members of Congress. His testimony followed the guidelines he had stated would be appropriate regarding his report. In fact, many of his responses were one-word replies. He said he was "not familiar" with Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the Steele dossier. He rejected claims that his investigation was a "witch hunt" or that it totally exonerated the President. He declined to answer questions outside of the scope of his investigation, but reiterated his concern about foreign interference with American elections. He noted that it continues, that he expects it to expand to include other foreign governments as well as the Russians, and that he considers it a great threat to the United States. According to the Nielsen Company, total viewership for the Mueller hearing fell just shy of 13million, significantly lower than other hearings involving the Trump administration, such as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's (20.4million), former FBI director James Comey's (19.5million), and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's (15.8million). Reasons for this comparatively low television rating include the fact that the hearing occurred in July, vacation time for many Americans, and months after the release of the Mueller report. Fox News Channel enjoyed the top rating, with 3.03million views. Subsequently, Mueller's words were distorted and misinterpreted to both defend and condemn the President. Mueller's testimony was criticized by some as uncharacteristically confusing.
In late September 2019, it was reported Trump may have lied to Mueller about his knowledge of his campaign's contacts with WikiLeaks, citing the grand jury redactions in the Mueller report.
Political scientists William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe described Mueller's decision not to take a position on obstruction of justice for Trump – despite "compiling a mountain of incriminating evidence" – as something that "will surely go down as one of the strangest – and most consequential – moves in modern legal history." They added, "in refusing to draw legal conclusions from his evidence, Mueller simply didn't do his job... because he didn't, he failed to carry out his duty to tell the American people what his investigation actually revealed about Trump's lawless behavior, and he failed to draw a bright line that would keep future presidents within legal bounds."
The University of Virginia Law School announced in June 2021 that in the coming fall Mueller would participate in a six-session course called "The Mueller Report and the Role of the Special Counsel," along with three of his colleagues from the investigation.
Personal life
Mueller met his future wife, Ann Cabell Standish, at a high school party when they were 17. Standish attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and Sarah Lawrence College, before working as a special-education teacher for children with learning disabilities. In September 1966, they married at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. They have two daughters and three grandchildren. One of their daughters was born with spina bifida.
In 2001, Mueller's Senate confirmation hearings to head the FBI were delayed several months while he underwent treatment for prostate cancer. He was diagnosed in the fall of 2000, postponing being sworn in as FBI director until he received a good prognosis from his physician.
Although raised Presbyterian, he became an Episcopalian later in life.
Mueller and William Barr—the attorney general who supervised the late stage of Mueller's special counsel investigation—have known each other since the 1980s and have been described as good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr's daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.
Military awards
Mueller received the following military awards and decorations:
References
Further reading
External links
Profile at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and staff
1944 births
20th-century American lawyers
21st-century American lawyers
American Episcopalians
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
American people of Scottish descent
Assistant United States Attorneys
Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Identity theft victims
Lawyers from New York City
Living people
Members of the 2017 Special Counsel investigation team
Military personnel from New York City
New York (state) Republicans
New York University alumni
People from Manhattan
People from Philadelphia
Princeton University alumni
Recipients of the Gallantry Cross (Vietnam)
Special prosecutors
St. Paul's School (New Hampshire) alumni
United States Assistant Attorneys General for the Criminal Division
United States Attorneys for the Northern District of California
United States Marine Corps officers
United States Marine Corps personnel of the Vietnam War
University of Virginia School of Law alumni
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr partners
| true |
[
"Matt McKay (born 21 January 1981) is an English footballer who played as a midfielder in the Football League for Chester City.\n\nMcKay joined Everton from Chester on transfer deadline day on 26 March 1998. He did not make any appearances for the Everton first team and was forced to retire at the early age of 21 due to injury.\n\nReferences\n\nChester City F.C. players\nAssociation football midfielders\nEverton F.C. players\n1981 births\nLiving people\nEnglish footballers\nFootballers from Warrington",
"Claus Marius Neergaard (18 July 1911 – 22 December 1990) was a Norwegian politician for the Labour Party.\n\nHe was born in Kristiansund.\n\nHe was elected to the Norwegian Parliament from Møre og Romsdal in 1961. He was not re-elected in 1965, only serving one term. He did not hold any elected positions in local politics.\n\nReferences\n\n1911 births\n1990 deaths\nPoliticians from Kristiansund\nLabour Party (Norway) politicians\nMembers of the Storting\n20th-century Norwegian politicians"
] |
[
"Robert Mueller",
"Marine Corps service",
"what was his early life like?",
"Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school.",
"Where was he born?",
"I don't know.",
"Did he have any conflicts in his career?",
"In July 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"he earned the Bronze Star with 'V' distinction for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush",
"What was his personal life like?",
"I don't know.",
"Did he ever retire from any positions?",
"In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969."
] |
C_3533a0e9363848b4b7be6b9884cefa03_1
|
what is his current role today?
| 7 |
What is Robert Mueller's current role today?
|
Robert Mueller
|
Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. In July 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. In December 1968, he earned the Bronze Star with 'V' distinction for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush that saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with three service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge. Mueller eventually became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then-Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report. Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many--many--who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." After returning from Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970. He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004. CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
Robert Swan Mueller III (; born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2001 to 2013.
A graduate of Princeton University and New York University, Mueller served as a Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War, receiving a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart. He subsequently attended the University of Virginia School of Law. Mueller is a registered Republican in Washington, D.C., and was appointed and reappointed to Senate-confirmed positions by presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
Mueller has served both in government and private practice. He was an assistant United States attorney, a United States attorney, United States assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, a homicide prosecutor in Washington, D.C., acting United States deputy attorney general, partner at D.C. law firm WilmerHale and director of the FBI.
On May 17, 2017, Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel overseeing an investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and related matters. He submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr on March 22, 2019. On April 18, the Department of Justice released it. On May 29, he resigned his post and the Office of the Special Counsel was closed.
Early life and education
Mueller was born on August 7, 1944, at Doctors Hospital in the New York City borough of Manhattan, the first child of Alice C. Truesdale (1920–2007) and Robert Swan Mueller Jr. (1916–2007). He has four younger sisters: Susan, Sandra, Joan, and Patricia. His father was an executive with DuPont who had served as a Navy officer in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters during World War II. His father majored in psychology at Princeton University and played varsity lacrosse, both of which he followed (see below).
Mueller is of German, English, and Scottish descent. His paternal great-grandfather, Gustave A. Mueller, was a prominent doctor in Pittsburgh, whose own father, August C. E. Müller, had immigrated to the United States in 1855 from the Province of Pomerania in the Kingdom of Prussia (a historical territory whose area included land now part of Poland and the north-eastern edge of Germany). On his mother's side, he is a great-grandson of the railroad executive William Truesdale.
Mueller grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where he attended Princeton Country Day School, now known as Princeton Day School. After he completed eighth grade, his family moved to Philadelphia while Mueller himself went on to attend St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire for high school, where he was captain of the soccer, hockey, and lacrosse teams and won the Gordon Medal as the school's top athlete in 1962. A lacrosse teammate and classmate at St. Paul's School was future Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry.
After graduating from St. Paul's, Mueller entered Princeton University, where he continued to play lacrosse, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in politics in 1966 after completing a senior thesis titled "Acceptance of Jurisdiction in the South West Africa Cases." Mueller was a member of University Cottage Club while he was a student at Princeton. Mueller earned a Master of Arts in international relations from New York University in 1967.
In 1968, Mueller joined the United States Marine Corps. After his military service, he enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law where he served on the Virginia Law Review and graduated in 1973.
United States Marine Corps service
Mueller has cited the combat death of his Princeton lacrosse teammate David Spencer Hackett in the Vietnam War as an influence on his decision to pursue military service. Of his classmate, Mueller has said, "One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton. There were a number of us who felt we should follow his example and at least go into the service. And it flows from there." Hackett was a Marine Corps first lieutenant in the infantry and was killed in 1967 in Quảng Trị Province by small arms fire.
After waiting a year so a knee injury could heal, Mueller was accepted for officer training in the United States Marine Corps in 1968, attending training at Parris Island, Officer Candidate School, Army Ranger School, and Army jump school. Of these, he said later that he considered Ranger School the most valuable because he felt "more than anything teaches you about how you react with no sleep and nothing to eat."
In the summer of 1968, he was sent to South Vietnam, where he served as a rifle platoon leader as a second lieutenant with Second Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. On December 11, 1968, during an engagement in Operation Scotland II, he earned the Bronze Star with "V" device for combat valor for rescuing a wounded Marine under enemy fire during an ambush in which he saw half of his platoon become casualties. In April 1969, he received an enemy gunshot wound in the thigh, recovered, and returned to lead his platoon until June 1969. For his service in and during the Vietnam War, his military decorations and awards include: the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V", Purple Heart Medal, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with Combat "V", Combat Action Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with four service stars, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Parachutist Badge.
After recuperating at a field hospital near Da Nang, Mueller became aide-de-camp to 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, then–Major General William K. Jones, where he "significantly contributed to the rapport" Jones had with other officers, according to one report.
Mueller had originally considered making the Marines his career, but he explained later that he found non-combat life in the Corps to be unexciting. After returning from South Vietnam, Mueller was briefly stationed at Henderson Hall, before leaving active-duty service in August 1970 at the rank of captain.
Reflecting on his service in the Vietnam War, Mueller said, "I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have made it out of Vietnam. There were many—many—who did not. And perhaps because I did survive Vietnam, I have always felt compelled to contribute." In 2009, he told a writer that despite his other accomplishments, he was still "most proud the Marine Corps deemed me worthy of leading other Marines."
Career
Private practice and Department of Justice
After receiving his Juris Doctor in 1973 from the University of Virginia School of Law, Mueller worked as a litigator at the firm Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro in San Francisco until 1976. He then served for 12 years in United States Attorney offices. He first worked in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, where he rose to be chief of the criminal division, and in 1982, he moved to Boston to work in the office of the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts as an Assistant United States Attorney, where he investigated and prosecuted major financial fraud, terrorism and public corruption cases, as well as narcotics conspiracies and international money launderers.
After serving as a partner at the Boston law firm of Hill and Barlow, Mueller returned to government service. In 1989, he served in the United States Department of Justice as an assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and as acting Deputy Attorney General. James Baker, with whom he worked on national security matters, said he had "an appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law".
In 1990, he became the United States Assistant Attorney General in charge of the United States Department of Justice Criminal Division. During his tenure, he oversaw prosecutions including that of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, the Pan Am Flight 103 (Lockerbie bombing) case, and of the Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.
In 1991, he declared the government had been investigating the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) since 1986 in more-than-usual media exposure. Also in 1991, he was elected a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
In 1993, Mueller became a partner at Boston's Hale and Dorr, specializing in white-collar crime litigation. He returned to public service in 1995 as senior litigator in the homicide section of the District of Columbia United States Attorney's Office. In 1998, Mueller was named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California and held that position until 2001.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
President George W. Bush nominated Mueller for the position of FBI director on July 5, 2001. He and two other candidates, Washington lawyer George J. Terwilliger III and veteran Chicago prosecutor and white-collar crime defense lawyer Dan Webb, were up for the job, but Mueller, described at the time as a conservative Republican, was always considered the front-runner. Terwilliger and Webb both pulled out from consideration around mid-June, while confirmation hearings for Mueller before the Senate Judiciary Committee were quickly set for July 30, only three days before his prostate cancer surgery.
The Senate unanimously confirmed Mueller as FBI director on August 2, 2001, voting 98–0 in favor of his appointment. He had previously served as acting deputy attorney general of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) for several months before officially becoming the FBI director on September 4, 2001, one week before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
On February 11, 2003, one month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Mueller gave testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mueller informed the American public that "[s]even countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea—remain active in the United States and continue to support terrorist groups that have targeted Americans. As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material." Highlighting this worry in February 2003, FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley wrote an open letter to Mueller in which she warned that "the bureau will [not] be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq" and encouraged Mueller to "share [her concerns] with the President and Attorney General."
On March 10, 2004, while United States Attorney General John Ashcroft was at the George Washington University Hospital for gallbladder surgery, James Comey, the then deputy attorney general, received a call from Ashcroft's wife informing him that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales were about to visit Ashcroft to convince him to renew a program of warrantless wiretapping under the Terrorist Surveillance Program which the DOJ ruled unconstitutional. Ashcroft refused to sign, as he had previously agreed, but the following day the White House renewed the program anyway. Mueller and Comey then threatened to resign. On March 12, 2004, after private, individual meetings with Mueller and Comey at the White House, the president supported changing the program to satisfy the concerns of Mueller, Ashcroft, and Comey.
He was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in 2004.
As director, Mueller also barred FBI personnel from participating in enhanced interrogations with the CIA. At a dinner, Mueller defended an attorney (Thomas Wilner) who had been attacked for his role in defending Kuwaiti detainees. Mueller stood up, raised his glass, and said, "I toast Tom Wilner. He's doing what an American should." However, the White House pushed back, encouraging more vigorous methods of pursuing and interrogating terror suspects. When Bush confronted Mueller to ask him to round up more terrorists in the U.S., Mueller responded, saying, "If they [suspects] don't commit a crime, it would be difficult to identify and isolate" them. Vice President Dick Cheney objected by saying, "That's just not good enough. We're hearing this too much from the FBI."
In May 2011, President Barack Obama asked Mueller to continue at the helm of the FBI for two additional years beyond his normal 10-year term, which would have expired on September 4, 2011. The Senate approved this request 100–0 on July 27, 2011. On September 4, 2013, Mueller was replaced by James Comey.
In June 2013, Mueller defended NSA surveillance programs in testimony before a House Judiciary Committee hearing. He said that surveillance programs could have "derailed" the September 11 attacks. Congressman John Conyers disagreed: "I am not persuaded that that makes it OK to collect every call." Mueller also testified that the government's surveillance programs complied "in full with U.S. law and with basic rights guaranteed under the Constitution". He said that "We are taking all necessary steps to hold Edward Snowden responsible for these disclosures."
On June 19, 2017, in the case of Arar v. Ashcroft, Mueller, along with Ashcroft and former Immigration and Naturalization Services Commissioner James W. Ziglar and others, was shielded from civil liability by the Supreme Court for post-9/11 detention of Muslims under policies then brought into place.
Return to private sector
After leaving the FBI in 2013, Mueller served a one-year term as consulting professor and the Arthur and Frank Payne distinguished lecturer at Stanford University, where he focused on issues related to cybersecurity.
In addition to his speaking and teaching roles, Mueller also joined the law firm WilmerHale as a partner in its Washington office in 2014. Among other roles at the firm, he oversaw the independent investigation into the NFL's conduct surrounding the video that appeared to show NFL player Ray Rice assaulting his fiancée. In January 2016, he was appointed as Settlement Master in the U.S. consumer litigation over the Volkswagen emissions scandal; as of May 11, 2017, the scandal has resulted in $11.2billion in customer settlements.
On October 19, 2016, Mueller began an external review of "security, personnel, and management processes and practices" at government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton after Harold T. Martin III was indicted for massive data theft from the National Security Agency. On April 6, 2017, he was appointed as Special Master for disbursement of $850million and $125million for automakers and consumers, respectively, affected by rupture-prone Takata airbags.
Mueller received the 2016 Thayer Award for public service from the United States Military Academy. In June 2017, he received the Baker Award for intelligence and national security contributions from the nonprofit Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
In October 2019, it was announced that Mueller, along with James L. Quarles and Aaron Zebley, would return to WilmerHale to resume private practice. On July 11, 2020, Mueller wrote an op-ed on The Washington Post stating that Roger Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly so” after the President of the United States granted Roger Stone clemency and defended his investigation.
Special Counsel for the Department of Justice
On May 16, 2017, Mueller met with President Trump as a courtesy to provide perspectives on the FBI and input on considerations for hiring a new FBI Director. This meeting was initially widely reported to have been an interview to serve again as the FBI Director. President Trump broached resuming the position in their meeting; however, Mueller was ineligible to return as FBI Director due to statutory term limits, and Mueller lacked interest in resuming the position.
The next day, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to serve as special counsel for the United States Department of Justice. In this capacity, Mueller oversaw the investigation into "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation".
Mueller's appointment to oversee the investigation immediately garnered widespread support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives and prominent conservative political commentator, stated via Twitter that "Robert Mueller is a superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity." Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) said, "Former Director Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for this job. I now have significantly greater confidence that the investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead." Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) stated, "former FBI dir. Mueller is well qualified to oversee this probe". Some, however, pointed out an alleged conflict of interest. "The federal code could not be clearer—Mueller is compromised by his apparent conflict of interest in being close with James Comey," Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), who first called for Mueller to step down over the summer, said in a statement to Fox News. "The appearance of a conflict is enough to put Mueller in violation of the code. … All of the revelations in recent weeks make the case stronger."
Upon his appointment as special counsel, Mueller and two colleagues (former FBI agent Aaron Zebley and former assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force James L. Quarles III) resigned from WilmerHale. On May 23, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice ethics experts announced they had declared Mueller ethically able to function as special counsel. The spokesperson for the special counsel, Peter Carr, told NBC News that Mueller has taken an active role in managing the inquiry. In an interview with the Associated Press, Rosenstein said he would recuse himself from supervision of Mueller if he were to become a subject in the investigation due to his role in the dismissal of James Comey.
On June 14, 2017, The Washington Post reported that Mueller's office is also investigating Trump personally for possible obstruction of justice, in reference to the Russian probe. The report was questioned by Trump's legal team attorney Jay Sekulow, who said on June 18 on NBC's Meet the Press, "The President is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction, period." Due to the central role of the Trump family in the campaign, the transition, and the White House, the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was also reportedly under scrutiny by Mueller. Also in June, Trump allegedly ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, but backed down when then-White House Counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit.
During a discussion about national security at the Aspen security conference on July 21, 2017, former CIA director John Brennan reaffirmed his support for Mueller and called for members of Congress to resist if Trump fires Mueller. He also said it was "the obligation of some executive-branch officials to refuse to carry out some of these orders that, again, are inconsistent with what this country is all about". After Peter Strzok, an investigator for Mueller, was removed from the investigation for alleged partiality, Senator Mark Warner, the Ranking Member of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a speech on December 20, 2017, before the Senate warned of a constitutional crisis if the President fired Mueller. On June 22, 2018, Warner hosted a fundraising party for 100 guests and was quoted there saying, "If you get me one more glass of wine, I'll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know. If you think you've seen wild stuff so far, buckle up. It's going to be a wild couple of months."
On October 30, 2017, Mueller filed charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign co-chairman Rick Gates. The 12 charges include conspiracy to launder money, violations of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, and conspiracy against the United States.
On December 1, 2017, Mueller reached a plea agreement with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to giving false testimony to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. As part of Flynn's negotiations, his son, Michael G. Flynn, was not expected to be charged, and Flynn was prepared to testify that high-level officials on Trump's team directed him to make contact with the Russians. On February 16, 2018, Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and 3 Russian companies for attempting to trick Americans into consuming Russian propaganda that targeted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and later President-elect Donald Trump.
On February 20, 2018, Mueller charged attorney Alex van der Zwaan with making false statements in the Russia probe.
On May 20, 2018, Trump criticized Mueller, tweeting "the World's most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me so now they are looking at the rest of the World!" Mueller started investigating the August 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and an emissary for the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The emissary offered help to the Trump presidential campaign. Mueller was also investigating the Trump campaign's possible ties to Turkey, Qatar, Israel, and China.
On December 18, 2018, The Washington Post published an article concerning a report prepared for the U.S. Senate which stated that Russian disinformation teams had targeted Mueller.
On March 22, 2019, Mueller concluded his investigation and submitted the Special Counsel's final report to Attorney General William Barr. A senior Department of Justice official said that the report did not recommend any new indictments. On March 24, Attorney General Barr submitted a summary of findings to the United States Congress. He stated in his letter, "The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russian in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election." Mueller's report also reportedly did not take a stance on whether or not Trump committed obstruction of justice; Barr quoted Mueller as saying "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
On April 18, 2019, the Department of Justice released Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, the special counsel's final report and its conclusions.
On May 29, 2019, Mueller announced that he was retiring as special counsel and that the office would be shut down, and he spoke publicly about the report for the first time. Saying "The report is my testimony," he indicated he would have nothing to say that was not already in the report. On the subject of obstruction of justice, he said, "under long-standing Department [of Justice] policy, a president cannot be charged with a crime while he is in office." He repeated his official conclusion that the report neither accused nor exonerated the president while adding that any potential wrongdoing by a president must be addressed by a "process other than the criminal justice system." Mueller reasserted the involvement of Russian operatives in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak and their parallel efforts to influence American public opinion using social media. Referring to those actions, he declared that "there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American."
Robert Mueller was initially scheduled to publicly testify before two House committees on July 17, 2019, with two hours for lawmakers to ask questions, but the hearing was postponed to July 24 with a third hour added for questions. His verbal testimony was expected to help inform the public—Democrats believe most Americans have not read the report—and to help Democratic leadership finally decide whether or not to impeach the President. In particular, the Democrats aimed to highlight what they consider to be the worst examples of Trump's conduct. Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland said he would use visual aids, such as posters, to help people understand the implications of the Mueller report. Republicans, on the other hand, planned to question Mueller on the origins of this investigation.
On July 24, 2019, Mueller attended both congressional committee hearings and was questioned by members of Congress. His testimony followed the guidelines he had stated would be appropriate regarding his report. In fact, many of his responses were one-word replies. He said he was "not familiar" with Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the Steele dossier. He rejected claims that his investigation was a "witch hunt" or that it totally exonerated the President. He declined to answer questions outside of the scope of his investigation, but reiterated his concern about foreign interference with American elections. He noted that it continues, that he expects it to expand to include other foreign governments as well as the Russians, and that he considers it a great threat to the United States. According to the Nielsen Company, total viewership for the Mueller hearing fell just shy of 13million, significantly lower than other hearings involving the Trump administration, such as Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's (20.4million), former FBI director James Comey's (19.5million), and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's (15.8million). Reasons for this comparatively low television rating include the fact that the hearing occurred in July, vacation time for many Americans, and months after the release of the Mueller report. Fox News Channel enjoyed the top rating, with 3.03million views. Subsequently, Mueller's words were distorted and misinterpreted to both defend and condemn the President. Mueller's testimony was criticized by some as uncharacteristically confusing.
In late September 2019, it was reported Trump may have lied to Mueller about his knowledge of his campaign's contacts with WikiLeaks, citing the grand jury redactions in the Mueller report.
Political scientists William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe described Mueller's decision not to take a position on obstruction of justice for Trump – despite "compiling a mountain of incriminating evidence" – as something that "will surely go down as one of the strangest – and most consequential – moves in modern legal history." They added, "in refusing to draw legal conclusions from his evidence, Mueller simply didn't do his job... because he didn't, he failed to carry out his duty to tell the American people what his investigation actually revealed about Trump's lawless behavior, and he failed to draw a bright line that would keep future presidents within legal bounds."
The University of Virginia Law School announced in June 2021 that in the coming fall Mueller would participate in a six-session course called "The Mueller Report and the Role of the Special Counsel," along with three of his colleagues from the investigation.
Personal life
Mueller met his future wife, Ann Cabell Standish, at a high school party when they were 17. Standish attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and Sarah Lawrence College, before working as a special-education teacher for children with learning disabilities. In September 1966, they married at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. They have two daughters and three grandchildren. One of their daughters was born with spina bifida.
In 2001, Mueller's Senate confirmation hearings to head the FBI were delayed several months while he underwent treatment for prostate cancer. He was diagnosed in the fall of 2000, postponing being sworn in as FBI director until he received a good prognosis from his physician.
Although raised Presbyterian, he became an Episcopalian later in life.
Mueller and William Barr—the attorney general who supervised the late stage of Mueller's special counsel investigation—have known each other since the 1980s and have been described as good friends. Mueller attended the weddings of two of Barr's daughters, and their wives attend Bible study together.
Military awards
Mueller received the following military awards and decorations:
References
Further reading
External links
Profile at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and staff
1944 births
20th-century American lawyers
21st-century American lawyers
American Episcopalians
American people of English descent
American people of German descent
American people of Scottish descent
Assistant United States Attorneys
Directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Identity theft victims
Lawyers from New York City
Living people
Members of the 2017 Special Counsel investigation team
Military personnel from New York City
New York (state) Republicans
New York University alumni
People from Manhattan
People from Philadelphia
Princeton University alumni
Recipients of the Gallantry Cross (Vietnam)
Special prosecutors
St. Paul's School (New Hampshire) alumni
United States Assistant Attorneys General for the Criminal Division
United States Attorneys for the Northern District of California
United States Marine Corps officers
United States Marine Corps personnel of the Vietnam War
University of Virginia School of Law alumni
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr partners
| false |
[
"The diocese of Benepota () is a suppressed and titular see of the Roman Catholic Church.\n\nHistory\nBenepota, in today's Algeria, is an ancient bishopric of the Roman province of Mauretania Caesariensis.\n The location of the see is not currently known, But what is known is that the Bishop of the town attended a meeting of bishops convened in Carthage in 484 by King Huneric the Vandal.\n\nToday Benepota survives as a titular bishopric and the current bishop is Leopold Hermes Garin Bruzzone, of Canelones.\n\nKnown bishops\nHonorius (fl.484 AD)\nFrancisco Rendeiro, (1965–1967) \nJosé Cerviño Cerviño (1968–1976) \nTadeusz Rybak (1977–1992)\nLeopoldo Hermes Garin Bruzzone, (2002–current)\n\nReferences\n\nArchaeological sites in Algeria\nCatholic titular sees in Africa\nRoman towns and cities in Mauretania Caesariensis\nAncient Berber cities",
"Thucca Terebenthina is a titular see of the Roman Catholic Church, in Tunisia.\n\nThe cathedra of the diocese was in a now lost Roman town located in the Roman province of Byzacena and Africa proconsularis in what is today the Sahel region of Northern Tunisia.\nThe current bishop is Anton Žerdín Bukovec of Peru, who replaced Luis Sáinz Hinojosa.\n\nReferences\n\nCatholic titular sees in Africa"
] |
[
"Dan Rather",
"\"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\""
] |
C_7f5b7fac03f240eba4b0cf53ca659b83_0
|
What is Kenneth, what is the frequency?
| 1 |
What is Kenneth, what is the frequency for Dan Rather?
|
Dan Rather
|
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said, "I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea." Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who rescued Rather fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman before their performance of "Crush with Eyeliner". In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12 1/2 -to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said, "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010 and is believed to be living in New York City. CANNOTANSWER
|
Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?"
|
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people.
Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation.
In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes.
Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired.
In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010.
On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel.
Early life
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston.
In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston.
In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process.
Early career
Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell."
He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs.
In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston.
In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years.
On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America.
CBS News
JFK assassination to Watergate
In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote:
“The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.”
In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward.
Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV).
Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position.
In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress.
CBS Evening News anchor
After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News.
Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.”
Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent.
Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff.
In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings.
For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone.
By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted.
Journalistic history and influence
Nixon
During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal.
NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile.
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as:
“star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12.
On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows:
On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch.
Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush
During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions.
Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan.
Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers.
During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying:
“I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment.
Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place.
The Wall Within
On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness.
In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam.
Killian documents
On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times.
Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them.
On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate."
Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.”
Departure from the CBS Evening News
Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006.
Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'”
“What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.”
Ousted from CBS News
In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather."
On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure:
Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network
On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story.
Post-CBS career
Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013.
Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption."
Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable.
On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed.
In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News.
In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects.
In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories.
On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27.
In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career.
On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time.
Personal life
Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York.
Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism.
A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.”
Books
The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. .
The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. .
I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. .
The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. .
, 1999. .
"The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. .
, with Digby Diehl, 2013. .
What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. .
Awards
He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities.
In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
Criticism
As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor.
Claims of bias
Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.”
During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim.
In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect."
In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event.
From Walter Cronkite
During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner.
From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker
In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management.
Incidents and controversies
1968 Democratic convention
During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges.
As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!"
Chicago cab ride
On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.”
By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments."
Galloway lawsuit
In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed.
"Courage"
For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it.
"Kenneth, what is the frequency?"
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events.
The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman.
In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010.
Dead air
On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.”
"Ratherisms"
Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include:
“This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.”
“This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.”
His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”
In popular culture
Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said."
In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State.
In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum."
Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.
A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not."
Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein.
Ratings
Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers.
See also
New Yorkers in journalism
References
Further reading
Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates
Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden.
Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow.
2nd Saddam interview
External links
AXS TV The Big Interview
Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History)
Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
1931 births
Living people
American television reporters and correspondents
American war correspondents
American war correspondents of the Vietnam War
CBS News people
Emmy Award winners
Peabody Award winners
60 Minutes correspondents
Associated Press reporters
Houston Chronicle people
Television anchors from Houston
Journalists from Houston
Killian documents controversy
People from Wharton, Texas
Sam Houston State University alumni
Writers from Texas
American victims of crime
Texas Democrats
The Young Turks people
American male journalists
20th-century American journalists
21st-century American journalists
Journalists from New York City
People from Huntsville, Texas
Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award
Military personnel from Texas
| true |
[
"Kenneth is an English given name and surname. The name is an Anglicised form of two entirely different Gaelic personal names: Cainnech and Cináed. The modern Gaelic form of Cainnech is Coinneach; the name was derived from a byname meaning \"handsome\", \"comely\". A short form of Kenneth is Ken or Kenn. A pet form of Kenneth is Kenny.\n\nEtymology \nThe second part of the name Cinaed is derived either from the Celtic *aidhu, meaning \"fire\", or else Brittonic jʉ:ð meaning \"lord\".\n\nPeople\n(see also Ken (name) and Kenny)\n\nPlaces\nIn the United States:\n Kenneth, Indiana\n Kenneth, Minnesota\n Kenneth City, Florida\nIn Scotland:\n Inch Kenneth, an island off the west coast of the Isle of Mull\n\nOther\n \"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?\", a song by R.E.M.\n Hurricane Kenneth\n Cyclone Kenneth\n\nReferences\n\nEnglish-language masculine given names\nEnglish masculine given names\nScottish masculine given names",
"\"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?\" is a song by American alternative rock band R.E.M. from their ninth studio album, Monster (1994). The song's title refers to an incident in New York City in 1986, when two then-unknown assailants attacked journalist Dan Rather, while repeating \"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"\n\nThe song was the first single taken from the album and was released on September 5, 1994. It peaked at number 21 on the US Billboard Hot 100, number 2 in Canada, number 4 in New Zealand, and number 9 on the UK Singles Chart. In Iceland, it peaked at number 1 for four weeks. It was the first song to debut at number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.\n\n\"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?\" was placed on R.E.M.'s compilation albums In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003 in 2003 and Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982–2011 in 2011, the only track from Monster to feature on either. The song was one of the band's most-played songs at live gigs, and was played at every show on their 2008 Accelerate tour. A live version was released on R.E.M. Live in 2007.\n\nHistory\n\nBackground and recording\nR.E.M. began work on Monster in August 1993 and \"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?\" was realized about two months later in October. This song was written and recorded at Kingsway Studio, New Orleans, where the band also wrote and recorded \"Tongue\" and \"Crush with Eyeliner\". Lead singer Michael Stipe has said in interviews that the lyrics are about the Generation X phenomenon in contemporary mass media, sung in character as an older critic whose information consists exclusively of media products.\n\nGuitarist Peter Buck explained why the song slows towards its conclusion in an interview with Guitar World magazine:\n\nPost-release\n\"What's The Frequency, Kenneth?\" made its first live television debut on November 12, 1994, for Saturday Night Live, recorded at NBC Studios in New York City. The set on the show opened with \"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?\" and was followed by two other songs from the new album, Monster, \"Bang and Blame\" and \"I Don't Sleep, I Dream\". The following year, on June 22, 1995, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, Dan Rather accompanied the band during a soundcheck performance of the song. The clip was shown prior to R.E.M.'s performance of \"Crush with Eyeliner\" on the Late Show with David Letterman the following night.\n\nCritical reception\nMusic & Media wrote, \"Are they losing their religion? Radically breaking with the tradition of their last semi-acoustic CDs, R.E.M. give a first taste of the \"heavy Monstersound\" of the new one.\" Alan Jones of Music Week said, \"Kenneth is the most straightforward rock song the group has done in years, a full-throttle aural assault and very intense. With bonus live tracks, this one will sell.\"\n\nMusic video\nShot in Hollywood, California, in August 1994, the music video was directed by Peter Care, who had previously worked with the band on music videos for \"Drive\" and \"Man on the Moon\" in 1992. It features the band playing along to the song under bright blue, red, yellow and green flashing lights. Michael Stipe appears timid behind the microphone until the first chorus, breaking into an energetic dance. Prominent in the guitar solo, Peter Buck uses Kurt Cobain's Jag-Stang that he received as a gift from Courtney Love after Cobain died; he plays it upside-down as Cobain was left-handed. Singer Stipe's newly shaven head and bassist Mike Mills's new look (long-hair and the use of Nudie suits) prominent on the 1995 Monster world tour, were given wide exposure in this video. The suit seen in the music video was owned by musician Gram Parsons.\n\nThe DVD companion to In Time, entitled In View: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003 (featuring the promotional videos to most of the songs from In Time) included the music video to \"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?\".\n\nTrack listings\nAll songs were written by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe.\n\nUS CD and cassette single\n \"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?\" – 3:59\n \"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?\" (instrumental version) – 3:59\n\nUK 7-inch and cassette single\n \"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?\" – 3:59\n \"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?\" (K version) – 3:59\n\nUK, European, Australian, and Japanese CD single\n \"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?\" – 3:59\n \"Monty's Got a Raw Deal\" (live) – 4:22\n \"Everybody Hurts\" (live) – 5:41\n \"Man on the Moon\" (live) – 5:24\n\nThe live recordings of \"Monty Got a Raw Deal\", \"Everybody Hurts\" and \"Man on the Moon\" were recorded at the 40 Watt Club, Athens, Georgia on November 19, 1992. The performance—a benefit for Greenpeace—was recorded in a solar-powered mobile studio.\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n What's the Frequency, Kenneth?. Songfacts.com.\n\n1994 singles\nR.E.M. songs\nNumber-one singles in Iceland\nSongs written by Bill Berry\nSongs written by Peter Buck\nSongs written by Mike Mills\nSongs written by Michael Stipe\nWarner Records singles\nSongs based on actual events\nSong recordings produced by Scott Litt\nSong recordings produced by Michael Stipe\nSong recordings produced by Mike Mills\nSong recordings produced by Bill Berry\nSong recordings produced by Peter Buck\nGlam rock songs\nGrunge songs\n1994 songs\nGarage rock songs"
] |
[
"Dan Rather",
"\"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"",
"What is Kenneth, what is the frequency?",
"Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know \"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\""
] |
C_7f5b7fac03f240eba4b0cf53ca659b83_0
|
What happened after the attack?
| 2 |
What happened after the attack to Dan Rather?
|
Dan Rather
|
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said, "I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea." Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who rescued Rather fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman before their performance of "Crush with Eyeliner". In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12 1/2 -to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said, "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010 and is believed to be living in New York City. CANNOTANSWER
|
The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture.
|
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people.
Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation.
In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes.
Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired.
In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010.
On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel.
Early life
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston.
In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston.
In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process.
Early career
Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell."
He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs.
In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston.
In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years.
On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America.
CBS News
JFK assassination to Watergate
In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote:
“The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.”
In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward.
Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV).
Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position.
In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress.
CBS Evening News anchor
After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News.
Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.”
Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent.
Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff.
In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings.
For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone.
By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted.
Journalistic history and influence
Nixon
During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal.
NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile.
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as:
“star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12.
On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows:
On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch.
Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush
During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions.
Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan.
Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers.
During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying:
“I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment.
Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place.
The Wall Within
On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness.
In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam.
Killian documents
On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times.
Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them.
On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate."
Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.”
Departure from the CBS Evening News
Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006.
Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'”
“What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.”
Ousted from CBS News
In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather."
On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure:
Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network
On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story.
Post-CBS career
Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013.
Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption."
Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable.
On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed.
In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News.
In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects.
In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories.
On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27.
In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career.
On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time.
Personal life
Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York.
Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism.
A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.”
Books
The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. .
The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. .
I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. .
The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. .
, 1999. .
"The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. .
, with Digby Diehl, 2013. .
What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. .
Awards
He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities.
In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
Criticism
As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor.
Claims of bias
Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.”
During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim.
In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect."
In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event.
From Walter Cronkite
During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner.
From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker
In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management.
Incidents and controversies
1968 Democratic convention
During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges.
As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!"
Chicago cab ride
On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.”
By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments."
Galloway lawsuit
In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed.
"Courage"
For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it.
"Kenneth, what is the frequency?"
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events.
The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman.
In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010.
Dead air
On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.”
"Ratherisms"
Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include:
“This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.”
“This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.”
His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”
In popular culture
Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said."
In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State.
In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum."
Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.
A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not."
Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein.
Ratings
Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers.
See also
New Yorkers in journalism
References
Further reading
Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates
Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden.
Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow.
2nd Saddam interview
External links
AXS TV The Big Interview
Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History)
Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
1931 births
Living people
American television reporters and correspondents
American war correspondents
American war correspondents of the Vietnam War
CBS News people
Emmy Award winners
Peabody Award winners
60 Minutes correspondents
Associated Press reporters
Houston Chronicle people
Television anchors from Houston
Journalists from Houston
Killian documents controversy
People from Wharton, Texas
Sam Houston State University alumni
Writers from Texas
American victims of crime
Texas Democrats
The Young Turks people
American male journalists
20th-century American journalists
21st-century American journalists
Journalists from New York City
People from Huntsville, Texas
Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award
Military personnel from Texas
| true |
[
"The 2019 Tunis bombings occurred on 27 June 2019, when two suicide bombers detonated their explosives in two areas of Tunis, Tunisia, killing a police officer and wounding nine other people. Later in that day, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed responsibility. The attack happened the same day Beji Caid Essebsi was taken to the hospital in critical condition for a serious health condition. The attack also happened the day after a four year anniversary of a mass shooting attack at two Sousse hotels.\n\nAttack\nThe first suicide bombing happened near the French embassy on Charles de Gaulle street in Tunis. The attacker targeted a police patrol killing one officer and injuring four including another officer and three civilians. The second attack happened when the bomber blew up at a national guard base in al-Qarjani district of Tunis.\n\nResponsibility\nMany attacks happened in 2015 in Tunisia, including an attack at a tourist museum in Tunis in March, a tourist resort in June and an attack on a bus carrying presidential guards in November in Tunis. After 2015, major terror attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant did not occur until October 2018, when a female lone wolf wounded 15 in a suicide bombing in Tunis.\n\nSecurity measures\nAs a result of these attacks, on 5 July 2019, Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed has banned the wearing of the niqab – a full-face veil – in public institutions with immediate effect, citing security reasons. The decision, which was reported on state media, comes at a time of heightened security in the country. The attack was the third such incident within a week and came at the peak of tourist season as Tunisia prepared for an autumn parliamentary election.\n\nReferences\n\n2019 in Tunisia\n2019 murders in Africa\n2010s murders in Tunisia\n2019 bombing\nTerrorist incidents in Africa in 2019\nExplosions in Tunisia\nISIL terrorist incidents in Tunisia\nJune 2019 crimes in Africa\nJune 2019 events in Africa\n2019 bombing\nSuicide bombings in Africa\n2019 bombing\nTerrorist incidents in Tunisia in the 2010s",
"The 2017 Dhaka RAB Camp suicide bombing was an attempted suicide attack in the under construction compound of the elite Rapid Action Battalion in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 17 March 2017. The suicide attempt failed to cause any mass casualties, injuries or deaths. Only the lone suicide bomber died.\n\nBackground \nThe Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant had called for suicide attacks in Bangladesh on 15 March 2017. Suicide attacks are rare in Bangladesh.\n\nAttack \nOn 17 March 2017 a suicide bomber the entered under-construction Rapid Action Battalion headquarters in Ashkona, Dhaka, Bangladesh and detonated his vest. The suspected bomber was killed in the explosion and two RAB officers were injured. The injured officers, Lance Corporal Mizan and Constable Arif, were rushed to Dhaka Combined Military Hospital. The incident happened outside a makeshift camp located near the Haji Camp at Ashkona. The assault comes only two days after ISIL called for suicide attacks in Bangladesh, and one day after two militants of New JMB group blew themselves up to evade arrest by the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit during a raid in Chittagong's Sitakunda. The attack happened at Bangladeshi Local time 1:10 P.M. in Uttara, Bangladesh.\n\nThe attack followed what had been a lull in Islamist attacks in Bangladesh.\n\nThe Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed responsibility for this terror attack.\n\nSee also\n July 2016 Dhaka attack\n 2017 South Surma Upazila bombings\n\nReferences\n\nMarch 2017 crimes in Asia\nMurder in Bangladesh\nSuicide bombings in Bangladesh\n2017 in Bangladesh\nTerrorist incidents in Bangladesh in 2017\nISIL terrorist incidents in Bangladesh\n2017 crimes in Bangladesh\n2010s in Dhaka\nCrime in Dhaka\n2017 murders in Asia\n2010s murders in Bangladesh\nExplosions in 2017\nTerrorism in Bangladesh"
] |
[
"Dan Rather",
"\"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"",
"What is Kenneth, what is the frequency?",
"Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know \"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"",
"What happened after the attack?",
"The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture."
] |
C_7f5b7fac03f240eba4b0cf53ca659b83_0
|
Was the attack ever solved?
| 3 |
Was the attack to Dan Rather ever solved?
|
Dan Rather
|
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said, "I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea." Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who rescued Rather fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman before their performance of "Crush with Eyeliner". In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12 1/2 -to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said, "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010 and is believed to be living in New York City. CANNOTANSWER
|
In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager,
|
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people.
Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation.
In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes.
Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired.
In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010.
On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel.
Early life
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston.
In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston.
In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process.
Early career
Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell."
He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs.
In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston.
In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years.
On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America.
CBS News
JFK assassination to Watergate
In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote:
“The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.”
In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward.
Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV).
Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position.
In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress.
CBS Evening News anchor
After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News.
Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.”
Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent.
Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff.
In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings.
For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone.
By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted.
Journalistic history and influence
Nixon
During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal.
NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile.
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as:
“star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12.
On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows:
On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch.
Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush
During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions.
Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan.
Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers.
During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying:
“I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment.
Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place.
The Wall Within
On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness.
In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam.
Killian documents
On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times.
Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them.
On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate."
Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.”
Departure from the CBS Evening News
Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006.
Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'”
“What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.”
Ousted from CBS News
In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather."
On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure:
Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network
On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story.
Post-CBS career
Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013.
Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption."
Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable.
On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed.
In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News.
In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects.
In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories.
On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27.
In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career.
On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time.
Personal life
Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York.
Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism.
A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.”
Books
The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. .
The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. .
I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. .
The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. .
, 1999. .
"The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. .
, with Digby Diehl, 2013. .
What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. .
Awards
He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities.
In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
Criticism
As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor.
Claims of bias
Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.”
During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim.
In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect."
In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event.
From Walter Cronkite
During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner.
From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker
In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management.
Incidents and controversies
1968 Democratic convention
During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges.
As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!"
Chicago cab ride
On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.”
By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments."
Galloway lawsuit
In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed.
"Courage"
For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it.
"Kenneth, what is the frequency?"
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events.
The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman.
In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010.
Dead air
On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.”
"Ratherisms"
Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include:
“This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.”
“This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.”
His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”
In popular culture
Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said."
In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State.
In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum."
Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.
A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not."
Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein.
Ratings
Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers.
See also
New Yorkers in journalism
References
Further reading
Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates
Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden.
Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow.
2nd Saddam interview
External links
AXS TV The Big Interview
Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History)
Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
1931 births
Living people
American television reporters and correspondents
American war correspondents
American war correspondents of the Vietnam War
CBS News people
Emmy Award winners
Peabody Award winners
60 Minutes correspondents
Associated Press reporters
Houston Chronicle people
Television anchors from Houston
Journalists from Houston
Killian documents controversy
People from Wharton, Texas
Sam Houston State University alumni
Writers from Texas
American victims of crime
Texas Democrats
The Young Turks people
American male journalists
20th-century American journalists
21st-century American journalists
Journalists from New York City
People from Huntsville, Texas
Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award
Military personnel from Texas
| true |
[
"The DES Challenges were a series of brute force attack contests created by RSA Security to highlight the lack of security provided by the Data Encryption Standard.\n\nThe Contests\nThe first challenge began in 1997 and was solved in 96 days by the DESCHALL Project.\n\nDES Challenge II-1 was solved by distributed.net in 39 days in early 1998. The plaintext message being solved for was \"The secret message is: Many hands make light work.\"\n\nDES Challenge II-2 was solved in just 56 hours in July 1998, by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), with their purpose-built Deep Crack machine. EFF won $10,000 for their success, although their machine cost $250,000 to build. The contest demonstrated how quickly a rich corporation or government agency, having built a similar machine, could decrypt ciphertext encrypted with DES. The text was revealed to be \"The secret message is: It's time for those 128-, 192-, and 256-bit keys.\"\n\nDES Challenge III was a joint effort between distributed.net and Deep Crack. The key was found in just 22 hours 15 minutes in January 1999, and the plaintext was \"See you in Rome (second AES Conference, March 22-23, 1999)\".\n\nReaction\nAfter the DES had been shown to be breakable, FBI director Louis Freeh told Congress, \"That is not going to make a difference in a kidnapping case. It is not going to make a difference in a national security case. We don't have the technology or the brute force capability to get to this information.\"\n\nIt was not until special purpose hardware brought the time down below 24 hours that both industry and federal authorities had to admit that the DES was no longer viable. Although the National Institute of Standards and Technology started work on what became the Advanced Encryption Standard in 1997, they continued to endorse the DES as late as October 1999, with FIPS 46-3. However, Triple DES was preferred.\n\nSee also\nRSA Factoring Challenge\nRSA Secret-Key Challenge\n\nReferences\n\nCryptography contests\nData Encryption Standard\nRecurring events established in 1997",
"The Curve of the Earth is the second album by Canadian band Attack in Black, released on November 13, 2007. The album was released on one thousand 12\" vinyl records, and was also available for digital download. The album was released on the indie label Dine Alone Records alongside their EP Northern Towns.\n\nRecording \nIn September 2007, the band started recording songs on a two-input tape recorder Daniel Romano had found around his house. All of the members spent two days and two nights in Spencer Burton's sunroom, recording everything they wrote, and contributing to vocals and different instruments. Late into the second day, the band decided to release their recordings, although this was not their original intention.\n\nTrack listing \n \"I'm Going to Forget\" - 4:16\n \"Ever Faster\" - 2:32\n \"Sparrow\" - 2:35\n \"Water Touched My Face\" - 2:28\n \"Now That I'm Dying\" - 3:34\n \"You're Such an Only Child\" - 1:57\n \"Morning Bird / Water Line\" - 2:56\n \"Ever Bright, Ever Blue\" - 2:12\n \"Rope\" - 2:23\n \"Sounds of Dawn and Dusk\" - 4:51\n \"Lady of the Lourdes\" - 1:54\n \"The Curve of the Earth\" - 2:43\n\nReferences \n Attack In Black @ Blogspot\n\nDine Alone Records albums\nAttack in Black albums\n2007 albums"
] |
[
"Dan Rather",
"\"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"",
"What is Kenneth, what is the frequency?",
"Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know \"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"",
"What happened after the attack?",
"The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture.",
"Was the attack ever solved?",
"In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager,"
] |
C_7f5b7fac03f240eba4b0cf53ca659b83_0
|
Was William punished for it?
| 4 |
Was William punished for attacking Rather?
|
Dan Rather
|
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said, "I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea." Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who rescued Rather fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman before their performance of "Crush with Eyeliner". In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12 1/2 -to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said, "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010 and is believed to be living in New York City. CANNOTANSWER
|
William Tager, who received a 12 1/2 -to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994.
|
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people.
Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation.
In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes.
Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired.
In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010.
On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel.
Early life
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston.
In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston.
In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process.
Early career
Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell."
He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs.
In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston.
In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years.
On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America.
CBS News
JFK assassination to Watergate
In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote:
“The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.”
In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward.
Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV).
Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position.
In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress.
CBS Evening News anchor
After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News.
Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.”
Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent.
Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff.
In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings.
For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone.
By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted.
Journalistic history and influence
Nixon
During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal.
NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile.
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as:
“star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12.
On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows:
On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch.
Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush
During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions.
Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan.
Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers.
During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying:
“I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment.
Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place.
The Wall Within
On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness.
In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam.
Killian documents
On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times.
Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them.
On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate."
Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.”
Departure from the CBS Evening News
Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006.
Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'”
“What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.”
Ousted from CBS News
In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather."
On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure:
Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network
On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story.
Post-CBS career
Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013.
Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption."
Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable.
On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed.
In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News.
In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects.
In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories.
On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27.
In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career.
On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time.
Personal life
Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York.
Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism.
A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.”
Books
The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. .
The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. .
I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. .
The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. .
, 1999. .
"The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. .
, with Digby Diehl, 2013. .
What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. .
Awards
He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities.
In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
Criticism
As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor.
Claims of bias
Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.”
During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim.
In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect."
In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event.
From Walter Cronkite
During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner.
From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker
In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management.
Incidents and controversies
1968 Democratic convention
During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges.
As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!"
Chicago cab ride
On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.”
By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments."
Galloway lawsuit
In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed.
"Courage"
For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it.
"Kenneth, what is the frequency?"
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events.
The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman.
In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010.
Dead air
On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.”
"Ratherisms"
Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include:
“This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.”
“This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.”
His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”
In popular culture
Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said."
In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State.
In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum."
Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.
A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not."
Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein.
Ratings
Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers.
See also
New Yorkers in journalism
References
Further reading
Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates
Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden.
Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow.
2nd Saddam interview
External links
AXS TV The Big Interview
Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History)
Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
1931 births
Living people
American television reporters and correspondents
American war correspondents
American war correspondents of the Vietnam War
CBS News people
Emmy Award winners
Peabody Award winners
60 Minutes correspondents
Associated Press reporters
Houston Chronicle people
Television anchors from Houston
Journalists from Houston
Killian documents controversy
People from Wharton, Texas
Sam Houston State University alumni
Writers from Texas
American victims of crime
Texas Democrats
The Young Turks people
American male journalists
20th-century American journalists
21st-century American journalists
Journalists from New York City
People from Huntsville, Texas
Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award
Military personnel from Texas
| false |
[
"Sir William de Paris was a Member of Parliament for Lincolnshire and soldier of the Wars of Scottish Independence.\n\nCareer and Life\nWilliam served in Edward I's invasion of Scotland of 1303 and a year later was rewarded for his service with a pardon for the murder of William de Haceby.\n\nOn 8 Jan 1310 William was accused of being in a gang that hunted deer illegally on Sir Thomas Ludlow's land at Scrivelsby and assaulted his servants. Ludlow retaliated by gathering up a band of men and robbing and maiming William at Morton by Horncastle, Lincolnshire. A warrant for their arrests was issued on 18 Mar 1310.\n\nOn 16 Oct 1313 William was pardoned for his role in the death of Piers Gaveston.\n\nde Paris was summoned to defend the north against the Scots on 30 Jun 1314 shortly after the Battle of Bannockburn.\n\nHe attended Parliament at Westminster as a Knight of the Shire for Lincolnshire on 25 Jan 1315.\n\nIn 1320 William was accused of breaking the parks, with others, of Humphrey de Waleden at Stanford Rivers, Essex.\n\nIn 1321 discontent was once more brewing among the barons and William attended the meeting in Westminster known as the \"Parliament of White Bands\" in which the lords defied the king by wearing martial dress and ignoring the king. This culminated in the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322 at which William de Paris fought on the king's side.\n\nHe attended Parliament at York as a Knight of the Shire for Lincolnshire on 14 Nov 1322 but by 1324 was \"so ill that his life was despaired of\" and did not attend again.\n\nIn 1326 the corrupt and unpopular judge Roger Beler was murdered by Eustace Folville and his Gang. On 1 Mar 1326 a warrant for the arrest of the gang was issued to William de Paris and others. The only member of the gang to ever be punished was Eustace's brother the Rev. Richard Folville, Vicar of Teigh.\n\nIn April 1327 de Paris sued John Marmion, 4th Baron Marmion of Winteringham for the wardship of William, the underage son and heir of the late Leicestershire MP and knight Sir William Marmion (a leading candidate to be the Knight of Norham Castle fame) and his land at Keisby, Lincs. William Marmion is not known to have been a tenant of de Paris so the legitimacy of this claim is dubious.\n\nDuring William De Paris' life he was described as being of Morton by Horncastle but his family also held land at Great Humby and Old Somerby.\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nBibliography\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\nYear of birth unknown\n13th-century English people\nEnglish MPs 1315\nPeople from Lincolnshire\nEnglish MPs 1322",
"The Governors of Plantations Act 1698 or \"An Act to punish Governors of Plantations in this Kingdom for crimes by them committed in the Plantations\" was an English Act of Parliament passed in the reign of William III of England.\n\nIt is the earliest English or British legislation by which Crown servants, including diplomats and governors, could be punished under English law for offences committed abroad. A notable prosecution under the Act was in the case of R v. Wall in which Joseph Wall, the former governor of Gorée, was hanged for causing the death of a soldier following an illegal flogging 20 years previously.\n\nThe Act was repealed by section 1 of, and Part II of Schedule 1 to, the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1995.\n\nReferences\n\nActs of the Parliament of England\n1698 in law\n1698 in England"
] |
[
"Dan Rather",
"\"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"",
"What is Kenneth, what is the frequency?",
"Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know \"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"",
"What happened after the attack?",
"The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture.",
"Was the attack ever solved?",
"In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager,",
"Was William punished for it?",
"William Tager, who received a 12 1/2 -to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994."
] |
C_7f5b7fac03f240eba4b0cf53ca659b83_0
|
Was the frequency ever made reviled?
| 5 |
Was the frequency ever made reviled?
|
Dan Rather
|
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said, "I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea." Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who rescued Rather fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman before their performance of "Crush with Eyeliner". In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12 1/2 -to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said, "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010 and is believed to be living in New York City. CANNOTANSWER
|
" Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain.
|
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people.
Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation.
In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes.
Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired.
In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010.
On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel.
Early life
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston.
In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston.
In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process.
Early career
Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell."
He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs.
In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston.
In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years.
On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America.
CBS News
JFK assassination to Watergate
In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote:
“The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.”
In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward.
Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV).
Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position.
In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress.
CBS Evening News anchor
After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News.
Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.”
Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent.
Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff.
In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings.
For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone.
By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted.
Journalistic history and influence
Nixon
During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal.
NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile.
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as:
“star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12.
On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows:
On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch.
Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush
During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions.
Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan.
Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers.
During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying:
“I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment.
Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place.
The Wall Within
On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness.
In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam.
Killian documents
On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times.
Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them.
On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate."
Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.”
Departure from the CBS Evening News
Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006.
Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'”
“What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.”
Ousted from CBS News
In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather."
On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure:
Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network
On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story.
Post-CBS career
Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013.
Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption."
Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable.
On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed.
In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News.
In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects.
In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories.
On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27.
In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career.
On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time.
Personal life
Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York.
Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism.
A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.”
Books
The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. .
The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. .
I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. .
The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. .
, 1999. .
"The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. .
, with Digby Diehl, 2013. .
What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. .
Awards
He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities.
In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
Criticism
As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor.
Claims of bias
Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.”
During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim.
In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect."
In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event.
From Walter Cronkite
During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner.
From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker
In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management.
Incidents and controversies
1968 Democratic convention
During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges.
As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!"
Chicago cab ride
On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.”
By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments."
Galloway lawsuit
In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed.
"Courage"
For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it.
"Kenneth, what is the frequency?"
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events.
The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman.
In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010.
Dead air
On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.”
"Ratherisms"
Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include:
“This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.”
“This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.”
His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”
In popular culture
Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said."
In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State.
In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum."
Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.
A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not."
Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein.
Ratings
Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers.
See also
New Yorkers in journalism
References
Further reading
Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates
Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden.
Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow.
2nd Saddam interview
External links
AXS TV The Big Interview
Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History)
Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
1931 births
Living people
American television reporters and correspondents
American war correspondents
American war correspondents of the Vietnam War
CBS News people
Emmy Award winners
Peabody Award winners
60 Minutes correspondents
Associated Press reporters
Houston Chronicle people
Television anchors from Houston
Journalists from Houston
Killian documents controversy
People from Wharton, Texas
Sam Houston State University alumni
Writers from Texas
American victims of crime
Texas Democrats
The Young Turks people
American male journalists
20th-century American journalists
21st-century American journalists
Journalists from New York City
People from Huntsville, Texas
Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award
Military personnel from Texas
| true |
[
"Ever Reviled Records was a record label founded by Darren Deicide.\n\nEver Reviled Records was founded in 1998 and has released albums by David Rovics, Darren Deicide, The Old Man and his Po Buckra, Nathan Carpenter, Cuomo!, Hopeless Dregs of Humanity, Give Us Barabbas, Thought Breakers and Rational Solution.\n\nSee also\n List of record labels\n\nReferences\n\nAmerican record labels\nCooperatives in the United States\nAlternative rock record labels\nRecord labels established in 2000",
"Voice of Barbados (VOB) was introduced in 1981 as Barbados' second radio station. Originally located at 790 AM, the station was meant to complement the Redifussion service. In the late 1990s Voice of Barbados (VOB) changed to the FM dial, with 790 AM changing format from general to gospel.\n790 AM was abandoned when the gospel format was moved to 97.5 FM.\n\nVoice of Barbados is now part of the Starcom Network of stations.\n\nAfter One Caribbean Media was unsuccessful at obtaining a fifth radio license in Barbados after already having stations at 92.9, 95.3, 97.5 and 104.1, the company sought to find a way to vacate an existing frequency for the Caribbean Super Station. A decision was made that Gospel FM's frequency at 97.5 was the spectrum to be utilized for that new station and moves were undertaken to find a suitable station which Gospel FM could be merged with.\n\nOn 4 April 2011 the gospel programming of Gospel 97.5FM was merged with that of Voice of Barbados 92.9FM at the latter's frequency. VOB's programming could be heard from midnight to 6.15pm and Gospel programs from 6.15pm to midnight on the VOB frequency. The Gospel FM frequency was occupied by the new Caribbean Super Station radio programme as compensation for the loss of BBC Caribbean.\n\nGospel programming has since returned to 97.5 FM as Life 97.5 FM has since replaced Caribbean Super Station at that frequency.\n\nSee also\nStarcom Network\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nVoice of Barbados' website\nCaribbean SuperStation's website\nVoice of Barbados' live stream [aac+ stream]\nVoice of Barbados' live stream from caribbean-radio.com/\n\nRadio stations established in 1981\nRadio stations in Barbados\nStarcom Network"
] |
[
"Dan Rather",
"\"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"",
"What is Kenneth, what is the frequency?",
"Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know \"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"",
"What happened after the attack?",
"The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture.",
"Was the attack ever solved?",
"In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager,",
"Was William punished for it?",
"William Tager, who received a 12 1/2 -to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994.",
"Was the frequency ever made reviled?",
"\" Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain."
] |
C_7f5b7fac03f240eba4b0cf53ca659b83_0
|
What proof did he have?
| 6 |
What proof did Dan Rather have?
|
Dan Rather
|
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said, "I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea." Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who rescued Rather fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman before their performance of "Crush with Eyeliner". In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12 1/2 -to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said, "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010 and is believed to be living in New York City. CANNOTANSWER
|
" New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said, "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office."
|
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people.
Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation.
In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes.
Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired.
In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010.
On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel.
Early life
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston.
In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston.
In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process.
Early career
Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell."
He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs.
In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston.
In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years.
On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America.
CBS News
JFK assassination to Watergate
In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote:
“The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.”
In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward.
Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV).
Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position.
In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress.
CBS Evening News anchor
After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News.
Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.”
Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent.
Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff.
In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings.
For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone.
By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted.
Journalistic history and influence
Nixon
During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal.
NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile.
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as:
“star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12.
On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows:
On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch.
Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush
During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions.
Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan.
Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers.
During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying:
“I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment.
Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place.
The Wall Within
On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness.
In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam.
Killian documents
On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times.
Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them.
On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate."
Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.”
Departure from the CBS Evening News
Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006.
Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'”
“What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.”
Ousted from CBS News
In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather."
On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure:
Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network
On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story.
Post-CBS career
Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013.
Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption."
Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable.
On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed.
In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News.
In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects.
In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories.
On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27.
In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career.
On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time.
Personal life
Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York.
Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism.
A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.”
Books
The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. .
The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. .
I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. .
The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. .
, 1999. .
"The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. .
, with Digby Diehl, 2013. .
What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. .
Awards
He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities.
In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
Criticism
As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor.
Claims of bias
Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.”
During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim.
In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect."
In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event.
From Walter Cronkite
During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner.
From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker
In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management.
Incidents and controversies
1968 Democratic convention
During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges.
As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!"
Chicago cab ride
On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.”
By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments."
Galloway lawsuit
In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed.
"Courage"
For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it.
"Kenneth, what is the frequency?"
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events.
The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman.
In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010.
Dead air
On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.”
"Ratherisms"
Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include:
“This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.”
“This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.”
His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”
In popular culture
Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said."
In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State.
In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum."
Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.
A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not."
Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein.
Ratings
Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers.
See also
New Yorkers in journalism
References
Further reading
Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates
Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden.
Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow.
2nd Saddam interview
External links
AXS TV The Big Interview
Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History)
Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
1931 births
Living people
American television reporters and correspondents
American war correspondents
American war correspondents of the Vietnam War
CBS News people
Emmy Award winners
Peabody Award winners
60 Minutes correspondents
Associated Press reporters
Houston Chronicle people
Television anchors from Houston
Journalists from Houston
Killian documents controversy
People from Wharton, Texas
Sam Houston State University alumni
Writers from Texas
American victims of crime
Texas Democrats
The Young Turks people
American male journalists
20th-century American journalists
21st-century American journalists
Journalists from New York City
People from Huntsville, Texas
Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award
Military personnel from Texas
| false |
[
"In mathematical logic, the Brouwer–Heyting–Kolmogorov interpretation, or BHK interpretation, of intuitionistic logic was proposed by L. E. J. Brouwer and Arend Heyting, and independently by Andrey Kolmogorov. It is also sometimes called the realizability interpretation, because of the connection with the realizability theory of Stephen Kleene. It is the standard explanation of intuitionistic logic.\n\nThe interpretation \n\nThe interpretation states what is intended to be a proof of a given formula. This is specified by induction on the structure of that formula:\n\nA proof of is a pair where is a proof of and is a proof of .\nA proof of is either where is a proof of or where is a proof of .\nA proof of is a function that converts a proof of into a proof of .\nA proof of is a pair where is an element of and is a proof of .\nA proof of is a function that converts an element of into a proof of .\nThe formula is defined as , so a proof of it is a function that converts a proof of into a proof of .\nThere is no proof of , the absurdity or bottom type (nontermination in some programming languages).\n\nThe interpretation of a primitive proposition is supposed to be known from context. In the context of arithmetic, a proof of the formula is a computation reducing the two terms to the same numeral.\n\nKolmogorov followed the same lines but phrased his interpretation in terms of problems and solutions. To assert a formula is to claim to know a solution to the problem represented by that formula. For instance is the problem of reducing to ; to solve it requires a method to solve problem given a solution to problem .\n\nExamples \n\nThe identity function is a proof of the formula , no matter what P is.\n\nThe law of non-contradiction expands to :\n A proof of is a function that converts a proof of into a proof of .\n A proof of is a pair of proofs <a, b>, where is a proof of P, and is a proof of .\n A proof of is a function that converts a proof of P into a proof of .\nPutting it all together, a proof of is a function that converts a pair <a, b> – where is a proof of P, and is a function that converts a proof of P into a proof of – into a proof of .\nThere is a function that does this, where , proving the law of non-contradiction, no matter what P is.\n\nIndeed, the same line of thought provides a proof for as well, where is any proposition.\n\nOn the other hand, the law of excluded middle expands to , and in general has no proof. According to the interpretation, a proof of is a pair <a, b> where a is 0 and b is a proof of P, or a is 1 and b is a proof of . Thus if neither P nor is provable then neither is .\n\nWhat is absurdity? \n\nIt is not, in general, possible for a logical system to have a formal negation operator such that there is a proof of \"not\" exactly when there isn't a proof of ; see Gödel's incompleteness theorems. The BHK interpretation instead takes \"not\" to mean that leads to absurdity, designated , so that a proof of is a function converting a proof of into a proof of absurdity.\n\nA standard example of absurdity is found in dealing with arithmetic. Assume that 0 = 1, and proceed by mathematical induction: 0 = 0 by the axiom of equality. Now (induction hypothesis), if 0 were equal to a certain natural number n, then 1 would be equal to n + 1, (Peano axiom: Sm = Sn if and only if m = n), but since 0 = 1, therefore 0 would also be equal to n + 1. By induction, 0 is equal to all numbers, and therefore any two natural numbers become equal.\n\nTherefore, there is a way to go from a proof of 0 = 1 to a proof of any basic arithmetic equality, and thus to a proof of any complex arithmetic proposition. Furthermore, to get this result it was not necessary to invoke the Peano axiom that states that 0 is \"not\" the successor of any natural number. This makes 0 = 1 suitable as in Heyting arithmetic (and the Peano axiom is rewritten 0 = Sn → 0 = S0). This use of 0 = 1 validates the principle of explosion.\n\nWhat is a function? \n\nThe BHK interpretation will depend on the view taken about what constitutes a function that converts one proof to another, or that converts an element of a domain to a proof. Different versions of constructivism will diverge on this point.\n\nKleene's realizability theory identifies the functions with the computable functions. It deals with Heyting arithmetic, where the domain of quantification is the natural numbers and the primitive propositions are of the form x = y. A proof of x = y is simply the trivial algorithm if x evaluates to the same number that y does (which is always decidable for natural numbers), otherwise there is no proof. These are then built up by induction into more complex algorithms.\n\nIf one takes lambda calculus as defining the notion of a function, then the BHK interpretation describes the correspondence between natural deduction and functions.\n\nReferences \n\nDependently typed programming\nFunctional programming\nConstructivism (mathematics)",
"A recession-proof job is a job that one is likely to be able to find even during hard economic times. Though these jobs are not truly \"recession-proof,\" they have a continual demand for workers, thereby increasing the chances that one who has the skills will be likely to find employment.\n\nWhat makes a job so-called recession-proof is society's perpetual need and heavy demand for the service related jobs. Certain fields, such as health care, education, law enforcement, and various computer-related occupations are thereby always in demand. But as to which specific jobs are the most recession-proof, this varies in different eras, as the times change, and each recession differs. Also, the geographic locality may make a difference.\n\nWhen a recession occurs, many people, especially those who have lost their jobs, those whose jobs have been threatened, or those who fear losing their jobs are motivated to seek education to be able to obtain recession-proof employment in their future.\n\nExternal links\nList of the 150 most recession-proof jobs from Time Magazine\n\nReferences\n\nRecruitment\nUnemployment"
] |
[
"Dan Rather",
"\"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"",
"What is Kenneth, what is the frequency?",
"Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know \"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"",
"What happened after the attack?",
"The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture.",
"Was the attack ever solved?",
"In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager,",
"Was William punished for it?",
"William Tager, who received a 12 1/2 -to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994.",
"Was the frequency ever made reviled?",
"\" Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain.",
"What proof did he have?",
"\" New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said, \"William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office.\""
] |
C_7f5b7fac03f240eba4b0cf53ca659b83_0
|
Did you learn anything else interesting in the article?
| 7 |
Did you learn anything else interesting in Kenneth, what is the frequency in addition to the attack?
|
Dan Rather
|
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said, "I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea." Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who rescued Rather fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman before their performance of "Crush with Eyeliner". In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12 1/2 -to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said, "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010 and is believed to be living in New York City. CANNOTANSWER
|
In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster.
|
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people.
Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation.
In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes.
Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired.
In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010.
On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel.
Early life
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston.
In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston.
In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process.
Early career
Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell."
He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs.
In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston.
In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years.
On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America.
CBS News
JFK assassination to Watergate
In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote:
“The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.”
In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward.
Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV).
Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position.
In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress.
CBS Evening News anchor
After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News.
Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.”
Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent.
Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff.
In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings.
For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone.
By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted.
Journalistic history and influence
Nixon
During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal.
NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile.
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as:
“star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12.
On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows:
On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch.
Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush
During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions.
Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan.
Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers.
During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying:
“I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment.
Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place.
The Wall Within
On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness.
In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam.
Killian documents
On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times.
Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them.
On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate."
Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.”
Departure from the CBS Evening News
Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006.
Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'”
“What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.”
Ousted from CBS News
In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather."
On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure:
Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network
On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story.
Post-CBS career
Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013.
Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption."
Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable.
On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed.
In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News.
In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects.
In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories.
On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27.
In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career.
On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time.
Personal life
Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York.
Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism.
A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.”
Books
The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. .
The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. .
I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. .
The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. .
, 1999. .
"The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. .
, with Digby Diehl, 2013. .
What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. .
Awards
He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities.
In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
Criticism
As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor.
Claims of bias
Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.”
During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim.
In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect."
In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event.
From Walter Cronkite
During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner.
From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker
In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management.
Incidents and controversies
1968 Democratic convention
During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges.
As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!"
Chicago cab ride
On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.”
By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments."
Galloway lawsuit
In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed.
"Courage"
For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it.
"Kenneth, what is the frequency?"
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events.
The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman.
In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010.
Dead air
On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.”
"Ratherisms"
Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include:
“This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.”
“This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.”
His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”
In popular culture
Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said."
In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State.
In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum."
Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.
A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not."
Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein.
Ratings
Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers.
See also
New Yorkers in journalism
References
Further reading
Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates
Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden.
Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow.
2nd Saddam interview
External links
AXS TV The Big Interview
Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History)
Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
1931 births
Living people
American television reporters and correspondents
American war correspondents
American war correspondents of the Vietnam War
CBS News people
Emmy Award winners
Peabody Award winners
60 Minutes correspondents
Associated Press reporters
Houston Chronicle people
Television anchors from Houston
Journalists from Houston
Killian documents controversy
People from Wharton, Texas
Sam Houston State University alumni
Writers from Texas
American victims of crime
Texas Democrats
The Young Turks people
American male journalists
20th-century American journalists
21st-century American journalists
Journalists from New York City
People from Huntsville, Texas
Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award
Military personnel from Texas
| true |
[
"\"If You Can Do Anything Else\" is a song written by Billy Livsey and Don Schlitz, and recorded by American country music artist George Strait. It was released in February 2001 as the third and final single from his self-titled album. The song reached number 5 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart in July 2001. It also peaked at number 51 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.\n\nContent\nThe song is about man who is giving his woman the option to leave him. He gives her many different options for all the things she can do. At the end he gives her the option to stay with him if she really can’t find anything else to do. He says he will be alright if she leaves, but really it seems he wants her to stay.\n\nChart performance\n\"If You Can Do Anything Else\" debuted at number 60 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks for the week of March 3, 2001.\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences\n\n2001 singles\n2000 songs\nGeorge Strait songs\nSongs written by Billy Livsey\nSongs written by Don Schlitz\nSong recordings produced by Tony Brown (record producer)\nMCA Nashville Records singles",
"Joe Public is the self-titled debut album of American new jack swing group Joe Public. Released in 1992, it was their first album after signing with Columbia Records.\n\nIt features their hit single \"Live and Learn\", as well as the singles \"Do You Everynite\", \"I Miss You\" and \"I've Been Watchin'\".\n\nTrack listing\n\"Live and Learn\"\n\"I've Been Watchin\"\n\"I Miss You\"\n\"I Gotta Thang\"\n\"Anything\"\n\"This One's for You\"\n\"I Like It\"\n\"Touch You\"\n\"Do You Everynite\"\n\"When I Look in Your Eyes\"\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nReferences\n\n1992 debut albums\nColumbia Records albums"
] |
[
"Dan Rather",
"\"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"",
"What is Kenneth, what is the frequency?",
"Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know \"Kenneth, what is the frequency?\"",
"What happened after the attack?",
"The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture.",
"Was the attack ever solved?",
"In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager,",
"Was William punished for it?",
"William Tager, who received a 12 1/2 -to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994.",
"Was the frequency ever made reviled?",
"\" Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain.",
"What proof did he have?",
"\" New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said, \"William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office.\"",
"Did you learn anything else interesting in the article?",
"In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song \"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?\" on their album Monster."
] |
C_7f5b7fac03f240eba4b0cf53ca659b83_0
|
Did the song win any awards?
| 8 |
Did Kenneth, what is the frequency win any awards?
|
Dan Rather
|
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said, "I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea." Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who rescued Rather fully confirmed his version of events. The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman before their performance of "Crush with Eyeliner". In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12 1/2 -to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said, "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010 and is believed to be living in New York City. CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. (; born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist and former national evening news anchor. Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people.
Rather reported from Dallas in November 1963 at the time that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Based on his reporting, he was promoted at CBS News, where he served as White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position. He covered the presidency of Richard Nixon, including Nixon's trip to China, the Watergate scandal, and the president's resignation.
In 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years. Along with Peter Jennings at ABC News and Tom Brokaw at NBC News, he was one of the "Big Three" nightly news anchors in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2000s. He frequently contributed to CBS's weekly news magazine, 60 Minutes.
Rather left the anchor desk in 2005 following the Killian documents controversy, in which he presented unauthenticated documents in a news report on President George W. Bush's Vietnam War–era service in the National Guard. He continued to work with CBS until 2006, when he was abruptly fired.
In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company Viacom. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. An intermediate New York state appeals court dismissed the lawsuit in September 2009, and the New York Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it in January 2010.
On the cable channel AXS TV (then called HDNet), Rather hosted Dan Rather Reports, a 60 Minutes–style investigative news program, from 2006 to 2013. He also hosts several other projects for AXS TV, including Dan Rather Presents, which provides in-depth reporting on broad topics such as mental health care or adoption, and The Big Interview with Dan Rather, in which he conducts long-form interviews with musicians and other entertainers. In January 2018, he began hosting an online newscast called The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks' YouTube channel.
Early life
Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, the son of Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and the former Byrl Veda Page. The Rathers moved to Houston when he was a child, where Dan attended Lovett Elementary School and Hamilton Middle School. He graduated in 1950 from John H. Reagan High School in Houston.
In 1953, Rather earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Houstonian. He was also a member of the Caballeros, the founding organization of the Epsilon Psi chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity. While in college, Rather worked for KSAM-FM radio in Huntsville, calling junior high, high school, and Sam Houston State football games. After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Rather briefly attended South Texas College of Law in Houston.
In January 1954, Rather enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He was soon discharged, however, because he was found to have had rheumatic fever as a child, a fact he had omitted during the enlistment process.
Early career
Rather began his journalism career in 1950 as an Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas. Later, he was a reporter for United Press (1950–1952), several Texas radio stations, and the Houston Chronicle (1954–1955). Around 1955, Rather wrote a piece on heroin. Under the auspices of the Houston Police, he tried a dose of the drug, which he characterized as "a special kind of hell."
He worked for four seasons as the play-by-play announcer for the University of Houston football team. During the 1959 minor league baseball season, Rather was the play-by-play radio announcer for the Texas League Houston Buffs.
In 1959, Rather began his television career as a reporter for KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston. He was subsequently promoted to the director of news for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston.
In September 1961, Rather covered Hurricane Carla for KHOU-TV, broadcasting from the then National Weather Center in Galveston. He is noted for showing the first radar image of a hurricane on TV. He conceived of overlaying a transparent map over the radar screen, in order to show the size of Hurricane Carla to the audience. Convinced of the threat, more than 350,000 people evacuated from the area, the largest known evacuation to that time. Their actions are believed to have saved thousands of lives compared to the previous hurricane, which had killed 6,000 to 12,000 people. Rather's live coverage of Carla was broadcast by New York and national stations. Ray Miller, news director of KPRC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Houston, also mentored Rather in the early years.
On February 28, 1962, Rather left Houston for New York City for a six-month trial initiation at CBS. Rather did not fit in easily on the East Coast. His first reports for CBS included coverage of the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Jamaica Bay, and a report on the suffocation of children at a hospital in Binghamton, New York. Shortly after, Rather was made chief of CBS's Southwest bureau in Dallas. In August 1963, he was appointed chief of the Southern bureau in New Orleans, responsible for coverage of news events in the South, Southwest, Mexico and Central America.
CBS News
JFK assassination to Watergate
In his autobiography, Rather noted that he was in Dallas in November 1963 to return film from an interview in Uvalde at the ranch of former Vice President John Nance Garner, who celebrated his 95th birthday on November 22. He happened to be "on the other side of the railroad tracks, beyond the triple underpass, thirty yards from a grassy knoll that would later figure in so many conspiracy theories." His job was to fetch a film drop from a camera truck at that location, and take it to the station for editing. He did not witness the shooting of Kennedy, and knew nothing of the events until he reached KRLD, having run through Dealey Plaza. He later wrote:
“The moment I cleared the railroad tracks I saw a scene I will never forget. Some people were lying on the grass, some screaming, some running, some pointing. Policemen swarmed everywhere and distinctly above the din, I heard one shout, 'DON'T ANYBODY PANIC.' And of course, there was nothing but panic wherever you looked.”
In his autobiography, Rather said he was one of the first to view the Zapruder film showing the assassination, and the first to describe it on television. Rather reported the fatal headshot as forcing Kennedy's head forward, but it was thrown backward.
Later, he reported that some Dallas schoolchildren had applauded when they were notified of the president's death. Administrators said they had announced that school was to be dismissed early, and did not mention the assassination. However, teacher Joanna Morgan confirmed that students had cheered at the news that Kennedy was shot. This story infuriated local journalists at then-CBS affiliate KRLD-TV (now Fox-owned-and-operated KDFW-TV).
Rather's reporting during the national mourning period following the Kennedy assassination and subsequent events impressed CBS News management. In 1964, they selected him for the network's White House correspondent position.
In 1965, Rather served as a foreign correspondent for CBS in London, and in 1966 in Vietnam. He served again as White House correspondent during the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1970, he was also assigned as anchor for the CBS Sunday Night News (1970–73; 1974–75), and later for the CBS Saturday Evening News (1973–76). Rather was among those journalists who accompanied Nixon to China. He later covered the Watergate investigation, as well as the impeachment proceedings against Nixon in Congress.
CBS Evening News anchor
After President Nixon's resignation in 1974, Rather became chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports. In December 1975, he became a correspondent of the long-running Sunday night news show 60 Minutes—at the time the program was moved from a Sunday afternoon time-slot to primetime. Success there helped Rather pull ahead of longtime correspondent Roger Mudd, who was in line to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor and Managing Editor of The CBS Evening News.
Rather succeeded to the news anchor position after Cronkite's retirement, making his first broadcast on March 9, 1981. Rather had a significantly different style of reporting the news. In contrast to the avuncular Cronkite, who ended his newscast with “That's the way it is,” Rather searched to find a broadcast ending more suitable to his tastes. For one week in September 1986, with CBS the target of potentially hostile new ownership, Rather tried ending his broadcasts with the word "courage," and was roundly ridiculed for it. For nearly two decades, Rather ended the show with: “That's part of our world tonight.”
Rather also held other positions during his time as anchor. In January 1988, he became host of the newly created 48 Hours, and in January 1999, Rather joined the new 60 Minutes II as a correspondent.
Ratings for the Evening News with Rather at the helm fluctuated wildly, at a time when more alternatives to TV news were developing. After a dip to second place, Rather regained the top spot in 1985 until 1989, when he ceded the ratings peak to rival Peter Jennings at ABC's World News Tonight. By 1992, however, the Evening News had fallen to third place of the three major networks. It rose in rankings in 2005, when Bob Schieffer became the interim anchor between Rather and Katie Couric. It briefly moved ahead of ABC World News Tonight in the wake of the death of Peter Jennings, but remained behind NBC Nightly News. Rather was a frequent collaborator with CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky, a leading member of the news division's staff.
In 1987, new CBS owner Laurence Tisch oversaw layoffs of hundreds of CBS News employees, in a major shake-up of the network. Among those to go were correspondents such as David Andelman, Fred Graham, Morton Dean, and Ike Pappas. Fewer videotape crews were dispatched to cover stories, and numerous bureaus were closed. Critics cited the cutbacks as a major factor in CBS News' fall into third place in the ratings.
For a short time from 1993 to 1995, Rather co-anchored the evening news with Connie Chung. Chung had been a Washington, DC correspondent for CBS News, and anchored short news updates on the West Coast. On joining the CBS Evening News, she reported "pop news" stories. In one widely cited case, she aggressively pursued Tonya Harding, who was accused of a plot to injure fellow Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan. After Chung left the network, Rather went back to doing the newscast alone.
By the 2005–06 season, the end of Rather's time as anchor, CBS Evening News lagged behind NBC Nightly News and ABC World News Tonight in the ratings. But it still drew approximately 5.5 million viewers a night. Criticism of Rather reached a fever pitch after 60 Minutes II ran his 2004 report about President Bush's military record. Numerous critics questioned the authenticity of the documents upon which the report was based. Rather subsequently admitted on the air that the documents' authenticity could not be proven. In the aftermath, CBS fired several members of CBS News staff but temporarily retained Rather, until his contract was up for renewal the following year, whereupon he was completely ousted.
Journalistic history and influence
Nixon
During Richard Nixon's presidency, critics accused Rather of biased coverage against him. At a Houston news conference in March 1974, Nixon fielded a question from Rather, still CBS's White House correspondent, who said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Dan Rather, of CBS News.” The room filled with jeers and applause, prompting Nixon to joke, “Are you running for something?” Rather replied, “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?” He questioned whether Nixon was cooperating with the grand jury investigation and House Judiciary Committee in relation to the Watergate scandal.
NBC's Tom Brokaw has said the network considered hiring him to replace Rather as its White House correspondent, but dropped it after word was leaked to the press. Rather was believed to have provided tough coverage of the Watergate scandal, raising his profile.
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
In January 1986, NASA faced repeated delays in the preparations to launch the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger in close sequence. Rather described the January 10 delay of Columbia as:
“star-crossed space shuttle Columbia stood ready for launch again today, and once more, the launch was scrubbed. Heavy rain was the cause this time. The launch has been postponed so often since its original date, December 18, that it's now known as mission impossible.”This was considered an example of the "biting sarcasm" the media used related to NASA's scheduling. Columbia launched on January 12.
On January 27, Rather's reporting of the expected Challenger launch began as follows:
On January 28, Challenger'''s explosion and destruction occurred 73 seconds after launch.
Afghanistan, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush
During the Soviet–Afghan War, Rather was filmed reporting near the front lines while wearing a traditional mujahideen headdress and garments. Rather attracted an Evening News audience (and was nicknamed "Gunga Dan"). The American comic strip Doonesbury spoofed his actions.
Rather's reports were later revealed to have been influential to Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas), who led an effort to help the struggling mujahideen. The CIA developed its largest covert operation to supply aid and advanced arms to the mujahideen. The Soviets eventually quit Afghanistan.
Rather gained the anchor spot on the Evening News. He was competing with Roger Mudd, a more senior correspondent and a frequent substitute anchor for Walter Cronkite on Evening News. Mudd had also anchored the Sunday evening broadcast, but Rather traveled through Afghanistan when news led there. A few years into his service as anchor, Rather began wearing sweaters beneath his suit jacket to soften his on-air appearance for viewers.
During the 1980s, Rather gained further renown for his forceful and skeptical reporting on the Iran–Contra affair. He eventually confronted Vice President George H. W. Bush in an on-air interview during the latter's presidential campaign. Bush referred to Rather's "dead air incident" saying:
“I want to talk about why I want to be President, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”Rather ignored Bush's comment.
Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait, Rather secured an interview with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
On February 24, 2003, Rather conducted another interview with Hussein before the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the interview, Hussein invited Rather to be the moderator of a live television debate between him and George W. Bush. The debate never took place.
The Wall Within
On June 2, 1988, Rather hosted a CBS News special, The Wall Within. In it, he interviewed six veterans, each of whom said he had witnessed horrible acts in Vietnam. Two of the men said that they had killed civilians, and two others said that they had seen friends die. Each talked about the effects the war had upon their lives—including depression, unemployment, drug use, and homelessness.
In 2004, National Review ran an article by Anne Morse entitled "The First Rathergate." She said that almost nothing claimed by participants in The Wall Within was true. Citing the self-published book Stolen Valor (1998) by veteran B. G. Burkett, and investigative journalist Glenna Whitley, Morse said that military records revealed that the six former servicemen had lied about their experiences. Only one served in combat, and two had never been in Vietnam.
Killian documents
On September 8, 2004, Rather reported on 60 Minutes Wednesday that a series of memos critical of President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service record had been discovered in the personal files of Lt. Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. Once copies of the documents were made available on the Internet, their authenticity was quickly called into question. Much of this was based on the fact that the documents were proportionally printed and displayed using other modern typographic conventions usually unavailable on military typewriters of the 1970s. The font used on the documents has characteristics that exactly or almost exactly match standard font features of Microsoft Word. This led to claims that the memos were forgeries. The accusations then spread over the following days into mainstream media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Chicago Sun-Times.
Rather and CBS initially defended the story, insisting that the documents had been authenticated by experts. CBS was contradicted by some of the experts it originally cited, and later reported that its source for the documents—former Texas Army National Guard officer Lt. Col. Bill Burkett—had misled the network about how he had obtained them.
On September 20, 2004, CBS retracted the story. Rather stated, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.” The controversy has been referred to by some as "Memogate" and "Rathergate."
Following an investigation commissioned by CBS, CBS fired story producer Mary Mapes, and asked three other producers connected with the story to resign. Many believe Rather's retirement was hastened by this incident. On September 20, 2007, Rather was interviewed on Larry King Live commenting, “Nobody has proved that they were fraudulent, much less a forgery. ... The truth of this story stands up to this day.”
Departure from the CBS Evening News
Rather retired as the anchorman and Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005; his last broadcast was Wednesday, March 9, 2005. He had worked as the anchorman for 24 full years, the longest tenure of anyone in American television history, and for a short time, continued to work as a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Bob Schieffer, a fellow Texan and host of Face the Nation, took over Rather's position on an interim basis, with Katie Couric replacing Schieffer in 2006.
Since retiring, Rather has spoken out about what he perceives as a lack of courage by American journalists. On January 24, 2006, Rather spoke to a Seattle audience. Before the speaking engagement, he told a newspaper reporter, “In many ways on many days, [reporters] have sort of adopted the attitude of 'go along, get along.'”
“What many of us need is a spine transplant,” Rather added. “Whether it's City Hall, the State House, or the White House, part of our job is to speak truth to power.”
Ousted from CBS News
In June 2006, reports surfaced that CBS News would most likely not renew Dan Rather's contract. According to a Washington Post article, sources from CBS said that executives at the network decided "there is no future role for Rather."
On June 20, 2006, CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus announced that Rather would leave the network after 44 years. Rather issued a separate statement which accompanied the news of the departure:
Lawsuit over ouster from CBS Network
On September 19, 2007, Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, its former parent company Viacom; CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves; Sumner Redstone, chairman of both Viacom and CBS; and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. Rather accused the network and its ownership and management of making him a "scapegoat" in the Killian story. A CBS spokesman claimed that the lawsuit was "old news" and "without merit." On September 21, 2009, Rather's lawyers claimed that Bush's military service would be proven to be a sham, and Rather would be vindicated. On September 29, 2009, a New York state appeals court dismissed Rather's lawsuit against CBS. On January 12, 2010, New York's top court refused to reinstate Rather's $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. In his book titled Rather Outspoken, Rather claims that the lawsuit “took a big whack out of my time, my psyche and my bank balance, but even so, it was worth it.” On May 18, 2012, Rather appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher, and claimed he had been fired for reporting a story about George W. Bush's year of absence from the reserve unit he served with, and that the news corporations had been "very uncomfortable" with running the story.
Post-CBS career
Following his departure from CBS, Dan Rather joined Mark Cuban's cable network AXS TV (then called HDNet) to host and produce the weekly one-hour news show Dan Rather Reports from 2006 until 2013.
Since 2013, Rather has hosted and produced the hour-long series The Big Interview with Dan Rather on AXS TV, where he sits down for in-depth interviews with influential figures in music and entertainment, such as: John Fogerty, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Cowell, Aaron Sorkin, and Sammy Hagar. He has also produced several documentary specials for the network under the banner Dan Rather Presents, including specials about "America's Mental Health Crisis," the United States Secret Service, and "The Shameful Side of International Adoption."
Rather also appears frequently on a number of news shows, including MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and on CNN. He has also written for The Huffington Post and Mashable.
On May 28, 2007, Rather compared historical events to events in the Star Wars films in the History Channel special titled Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed.
In 2012, Rather published an autobiography titled Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News.
In 2015, Rather launched an independent production company called News and Guts Media, through which he produces The Big Interview among other projects.
In 2015, Rather also began actively posting on Facebook. He credits young staffers at News and Guts Media with pushing him to try social media. While his posts were considerably longer than typical social media posts, they resonated with the audience, which soon grew to more than two million followers. Even late night TV noticed Rather's unusual but effective Facebook presence. Subject matter has covered a range of topics, including: current political events, journalism, and childhood memories.
On September 23, 2016, SiriusXM Radio announced a new hour-long weekly program, "Dan Rather's America," airing Tuesday mornings at 10am Eastern on Radio Andy channel 102, debuting on September 27.
In the fall of 2017, the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas completed a digital humanities project dedicated to the long career of the journalist that was titled Dan Rather: American Journalist. The culmination of three years of research conducted at the Briscoe Center, the site uses materials from a dozen archives and libraries, and draws from over 25 of the Briscoe Center for American History's news media and photojournalism collections. The website features over 2,000 digitized documents, 300 excerpts from twelve oral history interviews, and 1000 video clips, enabling visitors to dive deep into the history of the last 60 years through the lens of Dan Rather's career.
On January 21, 2018, it was announced that Rather would be launching a weekly 30-minute newscast on The Young Turks. Titled The News with Dan Rather, it airs on Mondays at 5:30pm Eastern Time.
Personal life
Rather married Jean Goebel in 1957. They have a son and daughter, and maintain homes in New York City and Austin, Texas. Their daughter Robin is an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, Texas. Their son Dan is an assistant district attorney in the District Attorney's office in Manhattan, New York.
Sam Houston State University renamed its mass communications building after Rather in 1994. The building houses The Houstonian and KSHU, the student-run radio and television stations. In May 2007, Rather received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, New York, for his lifetime contributions to journalism.
A columnist whose work is distributed by King Features Syndicate, Rather continues to speak out against alleged influence in journalism by corporations and governments. At a 2008 conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the group Free Press, Rather criticized both local and national news organizations, stating—according to reports—that there is no longer incentive to do “good and valuable news.”
Books
The Palace Guard, with Gary Paul Gates, 1974. .
The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1977. .
I Remember, with Peter Wyden, 1991. .
The Camera Never Blinks Twice: The Further Adventures of a Television Journalist, with Mickey Herskowitz, 1994. .
, 1999. .
"The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of Our Nation", 2001. .
, with Digby Diehl, 2013. .
What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, with Elliot Kirschner, 2017. .What Unites Us: The Graphic Novel, with Elliot Kirschner, illustrated by Tim Foley, 2021. .
Awards
He has received numerous Emmy Awards, several Peabody Awards, and various honorary degrees from universities.
In addition to these awards, Rather was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2001, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
Criticism
As one of the last broadcast news journalists from the era of the "Big Three" network news primacy, Rather was generally regarded highly within his profession by long-serving journalists. Rather has been accused of having a liberal bias."Dan Rather: a pioneer and a lightning rod" at The Christian Science Monitor.
Claims of bias
Rather's on-screen comments and election-night reporting have come under attack dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency. In a June 2002 interview with Larry King, his long-time co-worker (and self-described liberal), Andy Rooney stated that Rather is “transparently liberal.”
During the weeks following the Killian documents stories, Rather received widespread criticism from other journalists and historians. In an interview with commentator Bill Maher, Rather accused Fox News Channel of receiving "talking points" from the Republican-controlled White House. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, who had defended Rather during the Killian documents incident, criticized Rather for not offering any evidence to support the claim.
In 2002, Bernard Goldberg published a book with the title Bias, alleging a liberal bias in print and broadcast news organizations. In the book, Goldberg used Dan Rather as a primary example of a news anchorman with a liberal bias. He also criticized the anchor for his criticisms of President George W. Bush's and Vice President Dan Quayle's service in the National Guard, rather than the Active Duty military during the Vietnam War, and questioned Rather's own service.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has accused Rather of having "an unwillingness to challenge official power and policy" in his reporting. Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard characterized Rather as a "stern anti-Communist" during the Reagan administration, for allegedly having "reported the pronouncements of public officials with considerable respect."
In April 2001, according to a front-page story in The Washington Post, Rather spoke at a Democratic party fundraiser in Austin, Texas, where he was the featured speaker. One of the official hosts for the fundraiser was Rather's daughter, Robin Rather; Rather said that he did not realize that his daughter was a host of the fundraiser. Rather also said that he did not realize that the event was a partisan fundraiser, although he did realize that after he arrived at the event.
From Walter Cronkite
During an appearance on CNN's American Morning in 2005, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said about Rather: “It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long.” Cronkite also said that he would like to have seen Bob Schieffer in Rather's position sooner.
From Dallas CBS news director Eddie Barker
In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination while Rather was a Dallas reporter, he interviewed a minister, who said some local schoolchildren had cheered upon learning of the President's shooting. The Associated Press later confirmed the story. A teacher at the school backed up the Rather story, confirming that some students at the school had cheered at the principal's news about Kennedy. Eddie Barker, local Dallas-area news director for CBS, said that Rather had in fact been aware that the children were merely happy about being sent home early, and they had not been given a reason for early school closure (Barker's children attended the school, as he informed Rather). He stated that Rather had deliberately misrepresented the facts by indicating that the children were happy about the shooting. Barker attempted to fire Rather, but was overruled by the national CBS News management.
Incidents and controversies
1968 Democratic convention
During live coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Rather attempted to interview a delegate from Georgia who appeared as though he was being forcibly removed by men without identification badges.
As Rather approached the delegate to question the apparent strong-arm tactics of the Chicago political machine under Mayor Daley, he was punched in the stomach by one of the men, knocking him to the ground. “He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me ... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged.” Walter Cronkite, after being told by Rather what happened, added on-air, "I think we got a bunch of thugs here Dan!"
Chicago cab ride
On November 10, 1980, Rather landed at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and got into a cab. He asked the cab driver to take him to the home of writer Studs Terkel, whom he was interviewing for 60 Minutes. A police spokesman said that the cab driver refused to go to the address and instead "wildly drove through the city streets," with Rather shouting out the window asking for help. The driver was charged with disorderly conduct. Rather called the incident “a rather minor thing.”
By the time the case was about to come to trial, he was about to add anchoring the CBS Evening News to his 60 Minutes role at CBS News. Rather declined to press charges, citing a "mounting schedule of reporting assignments."
Galloway lawsuit
In 1980, Rather and CBS were taken to court when Carl Galloway, a California doctor, claimed that a report on 60 Minutes wrongfully implicated him in an insurance fraud scheme. CBS stated Galloway had signed the bogus report, and was suing Rather because he was upset at being caught. The jury sided with CBS and Rather, and they won the case. During the trial, Galloway's side used outtakes from the TV report showing that one interview was rehearsed.
"Courage"
For one week in September 1986, Rather signed off his broadcasts to CBS with the word "courage." He said that it was just a signature line, and had nothing to do with the news at the time. Other newscasters ridiculed and parodied Rather, and he dropped it.
"Kenneth, what is the frequency?"
On October 4, 1986, while walking along Park Avenue to his apartment in Manhattan, Rather was attacked and punched from behind by a man who demanded to know "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" while a second assailant chased and beat him. As the assailant pummeled and kicked Rather, he kept repeating the question. In describing the incident, Rather said “I got mugged. Who understands these things? I didn't and I don't now. I didn't make a lot of it at the time and I don't now. I wish I knew who did it and why, but I have no idea.” Until the crime was resolved years later, Rather's description of the bizarre crime led some to doubt the veracity of his account, although the doorman and building supervisor who came to Rather's aid fully confirmed his version of events.
The assault remained unsolved for some time, and was referenced multiple times in popular culture. The phrase "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" became a popular-culture reference over the years, such as in a scene in the graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. The opening track of the 1987 album Lolita Nation by California power pop group Game Theory is titled "Kenneth, What's the Frequency?" In 1994, the band R.E.M. released the song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" on their album Monster. Rather later sang with R.E.M. during a sound check prior to a gig at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was shown the following night on the Late Show with David Letterman.
In 1997, a TV critic writing in the New York Daily News solved the mystery, publishing a photo of the alleged assailant, William Tager, who received a 12.5-to-25-year prison sentence for killing NBC stagehand Campbell Montgomery outside The Today Show studio in 1994. Rather confirmed the story: "There's no doubt in my mind that this is the person." New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said "William Tager's identity as the man who attacked Mr. Rather was established in the course of an investigation by my office." Tager claimed he thought television networks were beaming signals into his brain. When he murdered the stagehand, Tager was trying to force his way into an NBC studio with a weapon, in order to find out the frequency the networks were using to attack him, so that he could block it. Tager was paroled in October 2010.
Dead air
On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department, and made it clear that if the newscast did not start on time, then CBS Sports should fill the half hour. The Steffi Graf–Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Thus, over 100 affiliates were forced to broadcast six minutes of dead air. Some stations were forced to air a slot of syndicated programming such as a rerun of a game show or a sitcom, and other stations were forced to pull out a technical difficulty telop graphic. Phil Jones, the chairman of the CBS affiliation board and general manager of Kansas City's KCTV (which the station placed a technical difficulty graphic during dead air) wanted an apology from Rather. Meanwhile in Miami, the city's CBS affiliate WTVJ was forced to drop the episode entirely, which ended up airing a syndicated rerun of a game show to fill the station's schedule. The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk. The following year, when Rather asked then Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran–Contra affair during a live interview, Bush responded by saying, “Dan, how would you like it if I judged your entire career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Roger Ailes had a “mole” at CBS, who alerted him that the goal was to “take Bush out of the race” with a tough interview on Iran-Contra. Ailes alerted Bush on the cab ride over, and fed him the seven minutes retort. The aftermath of the interview showed the episode was a boost for Bush. “The vice president's poll ratings in Iowa and New Hampshire bumped visibly upward.”
"Ratherisms"
Rather is known for his many colorful analogies and descriptions during live broadcasts. Similar to those used by baseball announcer Red Barber, cycling commentator Phil Liggett, and Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker, these "Ratherisms" are also called "Texanisms" or "Danisms" by some. A few of the more colorful ones, several of which were used throughout the 2008 HBO made-for-TV movie Recount about the 2000 Election, include:
“This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.”
“This thing is as tight as the rusted lugnuts on a '55 Ford.”
His characterization of the Republican Party's assessment of President Obama: “[He] couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.”
In popular culture
Rather has been referenced in the television shows Saturday Night Live and Family Guy and many films. An animated caricature of him made a cameo appearance in the JibJab political cartoon, Good to Be in D.C. In 1971, he had a cameo in an episode of the number one hit comedy series All in the Family. Entitled The Man in the Street, series star Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker character excitedly awaits the viewing of a videotaped interview he gave earlier that day for the CBS Evening News. At the last minute, to his dismay, the segment is preempted by the telecast of a Richard Nixon presidential address from the Oval Office. Rather appears, as himself, delivering post-speech analysis from actual news footage. Jean Stapleton, as Archie's scatterbrained wife Edith Bunker, says of Rather how he's there to "...tell us what Mr. Nixon just said."
In 2004, he was featured in the documentary film Barbecue: A Texas Love Story by Austin-based director Chris Elley. Two years later, Rather and Elley educated a group of New Yorkers in Madison Square Park about the true meaning of BBQ, and its significance to the identity of the Lone Star State.
In the 2006–07 graphic novel Shooting War, which is set in the year 2011, an 80-year-old Dan Rather is shown to be one of the last journalists still reporting from Iraq. He had a cameo in the premiere of the Fall 2007 drama Dirty Sexy Money on ABC television. He guest-starred as himself in The Simpsons episode, "E Pluribus Wiggum."
Rather appeared on The Daily Show in May 2009, wearing an Afro wig and mutton-chop sideburns to narrate a segment about the late former President Nixon eating a burrito, as a parody of MSNBC's extensive coverage of President Obama and Vice President Biden's hamburger lunch. He appears in the 2008 award-winning documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.
A skit on the 38th season of Sesame Street featured Anderson Cooper interviewing two grouches, "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather Not," who, when asked to answer questions, demurred with the phrase "I'd rather not."
Robert Redford portrayed Rather in the 2015 film Truth. Rather appeared in the docudrama Facing Saddam providing his views on Saddam Hussein.
Ratings
Under Rather's predecessor, Walter Cronkite, the CBS Evening News was a strong #1 in the ratings, which Rather maintained through much of the 1980s. However, Tom Brokaw and his NBC Nightly News, and Peter Jennings of ABC News' World News Tonight, increasing in popularity, eventually cut deep into the Rather broadcast's numbers.
See also
New Yorkers in journalism
References
Further reading
Dan Rather & Elliot Kirschner (2017). What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Rather, Dan. The Palace Guard, with Gary Gates
Rather, Dan. I Remember, with Peter Wyden.
Rather, Dan with Herskowitz, Mickey. The Camera Never Blinks Twice''. 1995. William Morrow.
2nd Saddam interview
External links
AXS TV The Big Interview
Dan Rather: American Journalist (Briscoe Center for American History)
Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
1931 births
Living people
American television reporters and correspondents
American war correspondents
American war correspondents of the Vietnam War
CBS News people
Emmy Award winners
Peabody Award winners
60 Minutes correspondents
Associated Press reporters
Houston Chronicle people
Television anchors from Houston
Journalists from Houston
Killian documents controversy
People from Wharton, Texas
Sam Houston State University alumni
Writers from Texas
American victims of crime
Texas Democrats
The Young Turks people
American male journalists
20th-century American journalists
21st-century American journalists
Journalists from New York City
People from Huntsville, Texas
Recipients of the Four Freedoms Award
Military personnel from Texas
| false |
[
"\"Wasn't It Good\" is a song by Tina Arena from her 1994 album Don't Ask. Arena co-wrote the song along with Heather Field and Robert Parde, and it was produced by David Tyson. The song peaked at number 11 in Australia and received four nominations at the prestigious ARIA Awards in 1996. Upon release as a single, the title was rendered with an ellipsis (\"Wasn't It Good...\").\n\nArena has performed the song on most tours, including her 2004 Greatest Hits tour and 2012 Australian tour. It is track four on her 2004 Greatest Hits compilation.\n\nMusical and lyrical content\n\"Wasn't It Good\" was composed in the key of G, while the lyrics lament a past friendship that did not turn into a romantic relationship.\n\nTrack listing\nA five-track single was released through Columbia Records; it contained both the single edit and original album version of \"Wasn't It Good\", as well as live versions of three other tracks from Don't Ask.\n\n \"Wasn't It Good\" (single version)\n \"Greatest Gift\" (live)\n \"Love Is the Answer\" (live)\n \"Message\" (live)\n \"Wasn't It Good\" (album version)\n\nChart\n\"Wasn't It Good\" was released on 18 September and debuted at #42 on the ARIA singles chart, eventually peaking at #11 on 19 November 1995.\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nCertification\n\nAward nominations\n\nARIA Awards\nThe ARIA Awards are presented annually from 1987 by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). \"Wasn't It Good\" was nominated in four categories, including Single of the Year. It did not win any awards.\n\n|-\n| rowspan=\"4\"| 1996 || \"Wasn't It Good\" || Best Female Artist || \n|-\n| \"Wasn't It Good\" || Best Pop Release || \n|-\n| \"Wasn't It Good\" || Single of the Year || \n|-\n| \"Wasn't It Good\" || Song of the Year || \n|-\n\nAPRA Awards\nThe Australasian Performing Right Association have presented the APRA Awards annually from 1982; \"Wasn't It Good\" was nominated in 1996 and won the Song of the Year.\n\n|-\n| 1996 || \"Wasn't It Good\" || Song of the Year || \n|-\n\nReferences\n\n1995 singles\nAPRA Award winners\nTina Arena songs\nColumbia Records singles\nSongs written by Tina Arena\n1994 songs\nPop ballads",
"The Outlander () is a Canadian drama film from Quebec, directed by Érik Canuel and released in 2005. An adaptation of Germaine Guèvremont's novel Le Survenant, the film stars Jean-Nicolas Verreault as the title character, a mysterious stranger whose arrival in the small town of Chénal-du-Moine significantly shakes up the community.\n\nAwards\nThe film received five Genie Award nominations at the 26th Genie Awards:\nBest Adapted Screenplay: Diane Cailhier\nBest Cinematography: Bernard Couture\nBest Costume Design: Francesca Chamberland\nBest Sound Editing: Alice Wright, Valéry Dufort-Boucher, Alexis Farand, Jacques Plante and Christian Rivest\nBest Original Song: Sylvain Cossette, Michel Corriveau and Robert Marchand, \"Comme une plume au vent\"\nIt did not win any of the awards.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n2005 films\nCanadian drama films\nFilms directed by Érik Canuel\nCanadian films"
] |
[
"Disc jockey",
"Women DJs"
] |
C_1762e25366d14047a4e7c4663b4ca92f_0
|
What can you tell me about women DJs
| 1 |
What can you tell me about women DJs in Disk jockey?
|
Disc jockey
|
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare. In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field ... is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles." Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJ-ing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent." CANNOTANSWER
|
A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male,
|
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile DJs (who are hired to work at public and private events such as weddings, parties, or festivals), and turntablists (who use record players, usually turntables, to manipulate sounds on phonograph records). Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.
DJs commonly use audio equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously. This enables them to blend tracks together to create transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs. This can involve aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms and tempos do not clash when played together and to enable a smooth transition from one song to another. DJs often use specialized DJ mixers, small audio mixers with crossfader and cue functions to blend or transition from one song to another. Mixers are also used to pre-listen to sources of recorded music in headphones and adjust upcoming tracks to mix with currently playing music. DJ software can be used with a DJ controller device to mix audio files on a computer instead of a console mixer. DJs may also use a microphone to speak to the audience; effects units such as reverb to create sound effects and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
Role
Originally, the word "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to gramophone records, but now "DJ" is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, or digital audio files stored on USB stick or laptop. DJs typically perform for a live audience in a nightclub or dance club or a TV, radio broadcast audience, or an online radio audience. DJs also create mixes, remixes and tracks that are recorded for later sale and distribution. In hip hop music, DJs may create beats, using percussion breaks, basslines and other musical content sampled from pre-existing records. In hip hop, rappers and MCs use these beats to rap over. Some DJs adopt the title "DJ" as part of their names (e.g., DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Qbert, DJ Shadow and DJ Yoda). Professional DJs often specialize in a specific genre of music, such as techno, house or hip hop music. DJs typically have an extensive knowledge about the music they specialize in. Many DJs are avid music collectors of vintage, rare or obscure tracks and records.
Types
Club DJs
Club DJs, commonly referred as DJs in general, play music at musical events, such as parties at music venues or bars, music festivals, corporate and private events. Typically, club DJs mix music recordings from two or more sources using different mixing techniques to produce non-stopping flow of music.
One key technique used for seamlessly transitioning from one song to another is beatmatching. A DJ who mostly plays and mixes one specific music genre is often given the title of that genre; for example, a DJ who plays hip hop music is called a hip hop DJ, a DJ who plays house music is a house DJ, a DJ who plays techno is called a techno DJ, and so on.
The quality of a DJ performance (often called a DJ mix or DJ set) consists of two main features: technical skills, or how well the DJ can operate the equipment and produce smooth transitions between two or more recordings and a playlist; and the ability of a DJ to select the most suitable recordings, also known as "reading the crowd".
Hip hop DJs
DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa were members of a block party at South Bronx. Kool Herc played records such as James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose", Jimmy Castor's "It's Just Begun", Booker T. & the M.G.'s' "Melting Pot", Incredible Bongo Band's "Bongo Rock" and "Apache", and UK rock band Babe Ruth's "The Mexican". With Bronx clubs struggling with street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to a demographic distinct from teenagers in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience.
DJ Kool Herc developed the style that was the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc used the record to focus on a short, heavily percussive part in it: the "break". Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated the break and prolonged it by changing between two record players. As one record reached the end of the break, he cued a second record back to the beginning of the break, which allowed him to extend a relatively short section of music into a "five-minute loop of fury". This innovation had its roots in what Herc called "The Merry-Go-Round", a technique by which the deejay switched from break to break at the height of the party. This technique is specifically called "The Merry-Go-Round" because according to Herc, it takes one "back and forth with no slack."
Radio DJs
Radio DJs or radio personalities introduce and play music broadcast on AM, FM, digital or Internet radio stations.
Dancehall/reggae deejays
In Jamaican music, a deejay (DJ) is a reggae or dancehall musician who sings and "toasts" (raps) to an instrumental riddim. Deejays are not to be confused with DJs from other music genres like hip hop, where they select and play music. Dancehall/reggae DJs who select riddims to play are called selectors. Deejays whose style is nearer to singing are sometimes called singjays.
The term deejay originated in the 1960s and 1970s when performers such as U-Roy or King Stitt toasted over the instrumental (dub music) versions of popular records. These versions were often released on the flip side to the song's 45 record. This gave the deejays the chance to create on-the-fly lyrics to the music. Big Youth, and I Roy were famous deejays in Jamaica.
Turntablists
Turntablists, also called battle DJs, use turntables and DJ mixer to manipulate recorded sounds to produce new music. In essence, they use DJ equipment as a musical instrument. Perhaps the best known turntablist technique is scratching. Turntablists often participate in DJ contests like DMC World DJ Championships and Red Bull 3Style.
Residents
A resident DJ performs at a venue on a regular basis or permanently. They would perform regularly (typically under an agreement) in a particular discotheque, a particular club, a particular event, or a particular broadcasting station. Residents have a decisive influence on the club or a series of events. Per agreement with the management or company, the DJ would have to perform under agreed times and dates. Typically, DJs perform as residents for two or three times in a week, for example, on Friday and Saturday. DJs who make a steady income from a venue are also considered resident DJs.
Examples for resident DJs are:
Alfredo Fiorito, Richie Hawtin, Sven Väth — Amnesia, Ibiza, Spain
Martin Garrix — Hï Ibiza, Ibiza, Spain
Larry Levan — Paradise Garage, New York City, USA
David Mancuso — The Loft, New York City
Tiësto, Deadmau5, Calvin Harris — Hakkasan, Las Vegas, USA
Kaskade — Encore Beach Club, Las Vegas, USA
Dom Chung — UK
Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann, Tama Sumo — Berghain, Berlin, Germany
Fish Go Deep — Cork, Ireland
Djsky — Ghana, West Africa
Other types
Mobile DJs — DJs with their own portable audio sound systems who specialize in performing at gatherings such as block parties, street fairs, taverns, weddings, birthdays, school and corporate events. Mobile DJs may also offer lighting packages and video systems.
Producer DJs — DJs who create remixes of popular club hits, completely original tracks, or transition friendly versions of tracks which extend the start and end of a song. Producer DJ often have their work featured on online DJ record pools.
DJanes — a term describing female DJs used in countries such as Germany that employ grammatical gender in their languages.
Celebrity DJs — widely known celebrities performing as DJs.
Bedroom DJs — a general term for DJs performing at home, usually recording their sets and posting them online.
Equipment
DJs use equipment that enables them to play multiple sources of recorded music and mix them to create seamless transitions and unique arrangements of songs. An important tool for DJs is the specialized DJ mixer, a small audio mixer with a crossfader and cue functions. The crossfader enables the DJ to blend or transition from one song to another. The cue knobs or switches allow the DJ to "listen" to a source of recorded music in headphones before playing it for the live club or broadcast audience. Previewing the music in headphones helps the DJ pick the next track they want to play, cue up the track to the desired starting location, and align the two tracks' beats in traditional situations where auto sync technology is not being used. This process ensures that the selected song will mix well with the currently playing music. DJs may align the beats of the music sources so their rhythms do not clash when they are played together to help create a smooth transition from one song to another. Other equipment may include a microphone, effects units such as reverb, and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
As music technology has progressed, DJs have adopted different types of equipment to play and mix music, all of which are still commonly used. Traditionally, DJs used two turntables plugged into a DJ mixer to mix music on vinyl records. As compact discs became popular media for publishing music, specialized high quality CD players known as CDJs were developed for DJs. CDJs can take the place of turntables or be used together with turntables. Many CDJs can now play digital music files from USB flash drives or SD cards in addition to CDs. With the spread of portable laptop, tablet, and smartphone computers, DJs began using software together with specialized sound cards and DJ controller hardware. DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer or be used instead of a hardware mixer.
Turntables
Turntables allow DJs to play vinyl records. By adjusting the playback speed of the turntable, either by adjusting the speed knob, or by manipulating the platter (e.g., by slowing down the platter by putting a finger gently along the side), DJs can match the tempos of different records so their rhythms can be played together at the same time without clashing or make a smooth, seamless transition from one song to another. This technique is known as beatmatching. DJs typically replace the rubber mat on turntables that keeps the record moving in sync with the turntable with a slipmat that facilitates manipulating the playback of the record by hand. With the slipmat, the DJ can stop or slow down the record while the turntable is still spinning. Direct-drive turntables are the type preferred by DJs. Belt-drive turntables are less expensive, but they are not suitable for turntablism and DJing, because the belt-drive motor can be damaged by this type of manipulation. Some DJs, most commonly those who play hip hop music, go beyond merely mixing records and use turntables as musical instruments for scratching, beat juggling, and other turntablism techniques.
CDJs/media players
CDJs / media players are high quality digital media players made for DJing. They often have large jog wheels and pitch controls to allow DJs to manipulate the playback of digital files for beatmatching similar to how DJs manipulate vinyl records on turntables. CDJs often have features such as loops and waveform displays similar to DJ software. Originally designed to play music from compact discs, they now can play digital music files stored on USB flash drives and SD cards. Some CDJs can also connect to a computer running DJ software to act as a DJ controller. Modern media players have the ability to stream music from online music providers such as Beatport, Beatsource, Tidal and Soundcloud GO.
DJ mixers
DJ mixers are small audio mixing consoles specialized for DJing. Most DJ mixers have far fewer channels than a mixer used by a record producer or audio engineer; whereas standard live sound mixers in small venues have 12 to 24 channels, and standard recording studio mixers have even more (as many as 72 on large boards), basic DJ mixers may have only two channels. While DJ mixers have many of the same features found on larger mixers (faders, equalization knobs, gain knobs, effects units, etc.), DJ mixers have a feature that is usually only found on DJ mixers: the crossfader. The crossfader is a type of fader that is mounted horizontally. DJs used the crossfader to mix two or more sound sources. The midpoint of the crossfader's travel is a 50/50 mix of the two channels (on a two channel mixer). The far left side of the crossfader provides only the channel A sound source. The far right side provides only the channel B sound source (e.g., record player number 2). Positions in between the two extremes provide different mixes of the two channels. Some DJs use a computer with DJ software and a DJ controller instead of an analog DJ mixer to mix music, although DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer.
Headphones
DJs generally use higher quality headphones than those designed for music consumers. DJ headphones have other properties useful for DJs, such as designs that acoustically isolate the sounds of the headphones from the outside environment (hard shell headphones), flexible headbands and pivot joints to allow DJs to listen to one side of the headphones, while turning the other headphone away (so they can monitor the mix in the club), and replaceable cables. Replaceable cables enables DJs to buy new cables if a cable becomes frayed, worn, or damaged, or if a cable is accidentally cut.
Closed-back headphones are highly recommended for DJs to block outside noise as the environment of DJ usually tend to be very noisy. Standard headphones have 3.5mm jack but DJ equipment usually requires ¼ inch jack. Most of specialized DJ Headphones have an adapter to switch between 3.5mm jack and ¼ inch jack. Detachable coiled cables are perfect for DJ Headphones.
Software
DJs have changed their equipment as new technologies are introduced. The earliest DJs in pop music, in 1970s discos, used record turntables, vinyl records and audio consoles. In the 1970s, DJs would have to lug heavy direct drive turntables and crates of records to clubs and shows. In the 1980s, many DJs transitioned to compact cassettes. In the 1990s and 2000s, many DJs switched to using digital audio such as CDs and MP3 files. As technological advances made it practical to store large collections of digital music files on a laptop computer, DJ software was developed so DJs could use a laptop as a source of music instead of transporting CDs or vinyl records to gigs. Unlike most music player software designed for regular consumers, DJ software can play at least two audio files simultaneously, display the waveforms of the files on screen and enable the DJ to listen to either source.
The waveforms allow the DJ see what is coming next in the music and how the playback of different files is aligned. The software analyzes music files to identify their tempo and where the beats are. The analyzed information can be used by the DJ to help manually beatmatch like with vinyl records or the software can automatically synchronize the beats. Digital signal processing algorithms in software allow DJs to adjust the tempo of recordings independently of their pitch (and musical key, a feature known as "keylock". Some software analyzes the loudness of the music for automatic normalization with ReplayGain and detects the musical key. Additionally, DJ software can store cue points, set loops, and apply effects.
As tablet computers and smartphones became widespread, DJ software was written to run on these devices in addition to laptops.
DJ software requires specialized hardware in addition to a computer to fully take advantage of its features. The consumer grade, regular sound card integrated into most computer motherboards can only output two channels (one stereo pair). However, DJs need to be able to output at least four channels (two stereo pairs, thus Left and Right for input 1 and Left and Right for input 2), either unmixed signals to send to a DJ mixer or a main output plus a headphone output. Additionally, DJ sound cards output higher quality signals than the sound cards built into consumer-grade computer motherboards.
Timecode
Special vinyl records (or CDs/digital files played with CDJs) can be used with DJ software to play digital music files with DJ software as if they were pressed onto vinyl, allowing turntablism techniques to be used with digital files. These vinyl records do not have music recordings pressed on to them. Instead, they are pressed with a special signal, referred to as "timecode", to control DJ software. The DJ software interprets changes in the playback speed, direction, and position of the timecode signal and manipulates the digital files it is playing in the same way that the turntable manipulates the timecode record.
This requires a specialized DJ sound card with at least 4 channels (2 stereo pairs) of inputs and outputs. With this setup, the DJ software typically outputs unmixed signals from the music files to an external hardware DJ mixer. Some DJ mixers have integrated USB sound cards that allow DJ software to connect directly to the mixer without requiring a separate sound card.
DJ controllers
A DJ software can be used to mix audio files on the computer instead of a separate hardware mixer. When mixing on a computer, DJs often use a DJ controller device that mimics the layout of two turntables plus a DJ mixer to control the software rather than the computer keyboard & touchpad on a laptop, or the touchscreen on a tablet computer or smartphone. Many DJ controllers have an integrated sound card with 4 output channels (2 stereo pairs) that allows the DJ to use headphones to preview music before playing it on the main output.
Other equipment
A microphone, so that the DJ can introduce songs and speak to the audience over the sound system.
Electronic effects units such as delay, reverb, octave, equalizer, chorus, etc.
Multi-stylus head shells, which allow a DJ to play different grooves of the same record at the same time.
Samplers, sequencers, electronic musical keyboards (synthesizers), effects pedals (effects unit) or drum machines.
PA system or sound reinforcement system (power amplifiers and speaker enclosures), typically including subwoofer cabinets for deep bass (or, if a DJ is broadcasting and/or recording a set, broadcasting equipment or recording gear)
Monitor speakers, for listening to the "house mix" that is playing over the main speakers
Techniques
Several techniques are used by DJs as a means to better mix and blend recorded music. These techniques primarily include the cueing, equalization and audio mixing of two or more sound sources. The complexity and frequency of special techniques depends largely on the setting in which a DJ is working. Radio DJs are less likely to focus on advanced music-mixing procedures than club DJs, who rely on a smooth transition between songs using a range of techniques. However, some radio DJs are experienced club DJs, so they use the same sophisticated mixing techniques.
Club DJ turntable techniques include beatmatching, phrasing and slip-cueing to preserve energy on a dance floor. Turntablism embodies the art of cutting, beat juggling, scratching, needle drops, phase shifting, back spinning and more to perform the transitions and overdubs of samples in a more creative manner (although turntablism is often considered a use of the turntable as a musical instrument rather than a tool for blending recorded music). Professional DJs may use harmonic mixing to choose songs that are in compatible musical keys. Other techniques include chopping, screwing and looping.
Recent advances in technology in both DJ hardware and software can provide assisted or automatic completion of some traditional DJ techniques and skills. Examples include phrasing and beatmatching, which can be partially or completely automated by using DJ software that performs automatic synchronization of sound recordings, a feature commonly labelled "sync". Most DJ mixers now include a beat-counter which analyzes the tempo of an incoming sound source and displays its tempo in beats per minute (BPM), which may assist with beatmatching analog sound sources.
In the past, being a DJ has largely been a self-taught craft but with the complexities of new technologies and the convergence with music production methods, there are a growing number of schools and organizations that offer instruction on the techniques.
Miming
In DJ culture, miming refers to the practice of DJ's pantomiming the actions of live-mixing a set on stage while a pre-recorded mix plays over the sound system. Miming mixing in a live performance is considered to be controversial within DJ culture. Some within the DJ community say that miming is increasingly used as a technique by celebrity model DJs who may lack mixing skills, but can draw big crowds to a venue.
During a DJ tour for the release of the French group Justice's A Cross the Universe in November 2008, controversy arose when a photograph of Augé DJing with an unplugged Akai MPD24 surfaced. The photograph sparked accusations that Justice's live sets were faked. Augé has since said that the equipment was unplugged very briefly before being reattached and the band put a three-photo set of the incident on their MySpace page. After a 2013 Disclosure concert, the duo was criticized for pretending to live mix to a playback of a pre-recorded track. Disclosure's Guy Lawrence said they did not deliberately intend to mislead their audience, and cited miming by other DJs such as David Guetta.
History
The term "disc jockey" was ostensibly coined by radio gossip commentator Walter Winchell in 1935, and the phrase first appeared in print in a 1941 Variety magazine, used to describe radio personalities who introduced phonograph records on the air. Playing recorded music for dancing and parties rose with the mass marketing of home phonographs in the late 19th century. British radio disc jockey Jimmy Savile hosted his first live dance party in 1943 using a single turntable and a makeshift sound system. Four years later, Savile began using two turntables welded together to form a single DJ console. In 1947, the Whiskey A Go-Go opened in Paris as the first discotheque. In the 1960s, Rudy Bozak began making the first DJ mixers, mixing consoles specialized for DJing.
In the late 1960s to early 1970s Jamaican sound system culture, producer and sound system operator (DJ), (Jamaican) King Tubby and producer Lee "Scratch" Perry were pioneers of the genre known as dub music. They experimented with tape-based composition; emphasized repetitive rhythmic structures (often stripped of their harmonic elements); electronically manipulated spatiality; sonically manipulated pre-recorded musical materials from mass media; and remixed music among other innovative techniques. It is widely known that the Jamaican dancehall culture has had and continues to have a significant impact on the American hip hop culture.
DJ turntablism has origins in the invention of direct-drive turntables. Early belt-drive turntables were unsuitable for turntablism and mixing, since they had a slow start-up time, and they were prone to wear-and-tear and breakage, as the belt would break from backspinning or scratching. The first direct-drive turntable was invented by engineer Shuichi Obata at Matsushita (now Panasonic), based in Osaka, Japan. It eliminated belts, and instead employed a motor to directly drive a platter on which a vinyl record rests. In 1969, Matsushita released it as the SP-10, the first direct-drive turntable on the market, and the first in their influential Technics series of turntables.
In 1972, Technics started making their SL-1200 turntable, featuring high torque direct drive design. The SL-1200 had a rapid start and its durable direct drive enabled DJs to manipulate the platter, as with scratching techniques. Hip hop DJs began using the Technics SL-1200s as musical instruments to manipulate records with turntablism techniques such as scratching and beat juggling rather than merely mixing records. These techniques were developed in the 1970s by DJ Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Afrika Bambaataa, as they experimented with Technics direct-drive decks, finding that the motor would continue to spin at the correct RPM even if the DJ wiggled the record back and forth on the platter.
In 1980, Japanese company Roland released the TR-808, an analog rhythm/drum machine, which has unique artificial sounds, such as its booming bass and sharp snare, and a metronome-like rhythm. Yellow Magic Orchestra's use of the instrument in 1980 influenced hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, after which the TR-808 would be widely adopted by hip hop DJs, with 808 sounds remaining central to hip-hop music ever since. The Roland TB-303, a bass synthesizer released in 1981, had a similar impact on electronic dance music genres such as techno and house music, along with Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines.
In 1982, the Compact Disc (CD) format was released, popularizing digital audio. In 1998, the first MP3 digital audio player, the Eiger Labs MPMan F10, was introduced. In January of that same year at the BeOS Developer Conference, N2IT demonstrated FinalScratch, the first digital DJ system to allow DJs control of MP3 files through special time-coded vinyl records or CDs. While it would take some time for this novel concept to catch on with the "die-hard Vinyl DJs," this would become the first step in the Digital DJ revolution. Manufacturers joined with computer DJing pioneers to offer professional endorsements, the first being Professor Jam (a.k.a. William P. Rader), who went on to develop the industry's first dedicated computer DJ convention and learning program, the "CPS (Computerized Performance System) DJ Summit", to help spread the word about the advantages of this emerging technology.
In 2001, Pioneer DJ began producing the CDJ-1000 CD player, making the use of digital music recordings with traditional DJ techniques practical for the first time. As the 2000s progressed, laptop computers became more powerful and affordable. DJ software, specialized DJ sound cards, and DJ controllers were developed for DJs to use laptops as a source of music rather than turntables or CDJs. In the 2010s, like laptops before them, tablet computers and smartphones became more powerful & affordable. DJ software was written to run on these more portable devices instead of laptops, although laptops remain the more common type of computer for DJing.
Female DJs
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare.
In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field … is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles."
Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. Two years later, another article brings out a list with world-famous female DJs including Nastia, tINY, Nora En Pure, Anja Schneider, Peggy Gou, Maya Jane Coles, and Eli & Fur.
Female DJ The Black Madonna has been called "one of the world’s most exciting turntablists." Her stage name The Black Madonna is a tribute to her mother's favorite Catholic saint. In 2018, The Black Madonna played herself as an in-residence DJ for the video game Grand Theft Auto Online, as part of the After Hours DLC.
There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent."
In Japan, the newest Bushiroad franchise: D4DJ focuses all-female DJ unit.
Health
The risk of DJs working in nightclubs with loud music includes noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus. Nightclubs constantly exceed safe levels of noise exposure with average sound levels ranging from 93.2 to 109.7 dB. Constant music exposure creates temporary and permanent auditory dysfunction for professional DJs with average levels at 96dB being above the recommended level, at which ear protection is mandatory for industry. Three quarters of DJs have tinnitus and are at risk of tenosynovitis in the wrists and other limbs. Tenosynovitis results from staying in the same position over multiple gigs for scratching motion and cueing, this would be related to a repetitive strain injury. Gigs can last 4-5 hours in nightlife and the hospitality industry, as a result there are potential complications of prolonged standing which include slouching, varicose veins, cardiovascular disorders, joint compression, and muscle fatigue. This is common for other staff to experience as well including bartenders and security staff for example.
In film
Berlin Calling – a German film about fictional DJ and producer Ickarus (Paul Kalkbrenner), who is struggling with drug abuse
Speaking in Code – an American documentary film about techno artists Modeselektor, Wighnomy Brothers, Philip Sherburne, Monolake and David Day
Kvadrat – a French and Russian documentary film about the realities of techno DJing, using the example of DJ Andrey Pushkarev
It's All Gone Pete Tong – a fictional mockumentary British movie about Frankie Wilde, a DJ who gradually becomes deaf due to drug abuse and an unhealthy lifestyle
We Are Your Friends – an American fiction film about a college DJ trying to make it in the DJing scene with "one hit song", starring Zac Efron
Scratch – a documentary about the hip-hop DJ and the 2000-era turntablist movement
Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou – a Japanese anime, originally a manga, about a fictional character named Agetarou who aspires to be a DJ master with the help of his friends and mentor, Big Master Fry.
24 Hour Party People – about the UK music scene from the late 1970s to the "Madchester" scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Human Traffic – about early UK rave counter-culture featuring music and performances by celebrated DJs Fatboy Slim, CJ Bolland, Carl Cox, and Mad Doctor X.
Turn Up Charlie – a 2019 series about a struggling DJ, played by Idris Elba, who is also a bachelor trying to make it again after a one hit back in the 1990s
Avicii: True Stories – a documentary film about Avicii
See also
Digital DJ licensing
List of club DJs
List of music software#DJ software
Live PA
DJ mix
Record collecting
Spelling of disc
Stage lighting
VJ (media personality)
References
Notes
Assef, Claudia (2000). Todo DJ Já Sambou: A História do Disc-Jóquei no Brasil. São Paulo: Conrad Editora do Brasil. .
Brewster, Bill, and Frank Broughton (2000). Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. New York: Grove Press. (North American edition). London: Headline. (UK edition).
Broughton, Frank, and Bill Brewster. How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records. New York: Grove Press, 2003.
Graudins, Charles A. How to Be a DJ. Boston: Course Technology PTR, 2004.
Lawrence, Tim (2004). Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 . Duke University Press. .
Miller, Paul D. a.k.a. DJ Spooky, Sound Unbound: Writings on DJ Culture and Electronic Music, MIT Press 2008. .
Poschardt, Ulf (1998). DJ Culture. London: Quartet Books. .
Zemon, Stacy. The Mobile DJ Handbook: How to Start & Run a Profitable Mobile Disc Jockey Service, Second Edition. St. Louis: Focal Press, 2002.
External links
Audio mixing
Broadcasting occupations
Disco
Mass media occupations
Occupations in music
Hip hop production
Turntablism
Underground culture
Electronic dance music
1930s neologisms
Articles containing video clips
| true |
[
"Kaajal Bakrania (born 6 August 1983), better known by her stage name Kayper, is a DJ, producer and radio presenter from the United Kingdom.\n\n2011–present\nIn 2011, Kayper won \"Best Club DJ\" at the Brit Asia TV Music Awards.\n\nOn 30 December 2015, Kayper released her single \"What You Say\" on Eton Messy Records.\n\nDiscography\n\nSingles and EPs\n \"Gimme Some\" – Mad Decent (2011)\n \"Magic Faces\" – Futurebox Records (2013)\n \"Out My Mind\" – Main Course (2013)\n \"Someone\" – Spinnin' Deep (2014)\n Terminal EP – Eton Messy Records (2015)\n \"What You Say\" – Eton Messy Records (2015)\n\nRemixes\n \"Reach Out To Me\" – Hard Times (2014)\n \"Next Lifetime\" (Erykah Badu remix) – Kayper (2015)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1983 births\nBBC Asian Network presenters\nBritish people of Indian descent\nBritish radio presenters\nBritish record producers\nClub DJs\nBritish hip hop DJs\nWomen DJs\nLiving people\nDJs from London\nGujarati people\n21st-century women musicians\nBritish women record producers\nWomen radio presenters",
"\"Tell Me What You Want Me to Do\" is the title of a number-one R&B single by singer Tevin Campbell. To date, the single is Campbell's biggest hit peaking at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spending one week at number-one on the US R&B chart. The hit song is also Tevin's one and only Adult Contemporary hit, where it peaked at number 43. The song showcases Campbell's four-octave vocal range from a low note of E2 to a D#6 during the bridge of the song.\n\nTrack listings\nUS 7\" vinyl\nA \"Tell Me What You Want Me to Do\" (edit) – 4:16\t\nB \"Tell Me What You Want Me to Do\" (instrumental) – 5:00\n\n12\" vinyl\nA \"Tell Me What You Want Me to Do\" (edit) – 4:16\t\nB \"Tell Me What You Want Me to Do\" (album version) – 5:02\n\nUK CD\n \"Tell Me What You Want Me to Do\" – 4:16\n \"Goodbye\" (7\" Remix Edit) – 3:48\n \"Goodbye\" (Sidub and Listen) – 4:58\n \"Goodbye\" (Tevin's Dub Pt 1 & 2) – 6:53\n\nJapan CD\n \"Tell Me What You Want Me to Do\" – 4:10\n \"Tell Me What You Want Me to Do\" (instrumental version) – 4:10\n\nGermany CD\n \"Tell Me What You Want Me to Do\" (edit) – 4:10\n \"Just Ask Me\" (featuring Chubb Rock) – 4:07\n \"Tomorrow\" (A Better You, Better Me) – 4:46\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nSee also\nList of number-one R&B singles of 1992 (U.S.)\n\nReferences\n\nTevin Campbell songs\n1991 singles\n1991 songs\nSongs written by Tevin Campbell\nSongs written by Narada Michael Walden\nSong recordings produced by Narada Michael Walden\nWarner Records singles\nContemporary R&B ballads\nPop ballads\nSoul ballads\n1990s ballads"
] |
[
"Disc jockey",
"Women DJs",
"What can you tell me about women DJs",
"A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are \"...few women in record production and sound engineering.\" Ncube states that \"[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male,"
] |
C_1762e25366d14047a4e7c4663b4ca92f_0
|
Can you tell me the names of some women Djs
| 2 |
Can you tell me the names of some women Djs in Disk jockey?
|
Disc jockey
|
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare. In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field ... is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles." Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJ-ing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent." CANNOTANSWER
|
Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac.
|
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile DJs (who are hired to work at public and private events such as weddings, parties, or festivals), and turntablists (who use record players, usually turntables, to manipulate sounds on phonograph records). Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.
DJs commonly use audio equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously. This enables them to blend tracks together to create transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs. This can involve aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms and tempos do not clash when played together and to enable a smooth transition from one song to another. DJs often use specialized DJ mixers, small audio mixers with crossfader and cue functions to blend or transition from one song to another. Mixers are also used to pre-listen to sources of recorded music in headphones and adjust upcoming tracks to mix with currently playing music. DJ software can be used with a DJ controller device to mix audio files on a computer instead of a console mixer. DJs may also use a microphone to speak to the audience; effects units such as reverb to create sound effects and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
Role
Originally, the word "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to gramophone records, but now "DJ" is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, or digital audio files stored on USB stick or laptop. DJs typically perform for a live audience in a nightclub or dance club or a TV, radio broadcast audience, or an online radio audience. DJs also create mixes, remixes and tracks that are recorded for later sale and distribution. In hip hop music, DJs may create beats, using percussion breaks, basslines and other musical content sampled from pre-existing records. In hip hop, rappers and MCs use these beats to rap over. Some DJs adopt the title "DJ" as part of their names (e.g., DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Qbert, DJ Shadow and DJ Yoda). Professional DJs often specialize in a specific genre of music, such as techno, house or hip hop music. DJs typically have an extensive knowledge about the music they specialize in. Many DJs are avid music collectors of vintage, rare or obscure tracks and records.
Types
Club DJs
Club DJs, commonly referred as DJs in general, play music at musical events, such as parties at music venues or bars, music festivals, corporate and private events. Typically, club DJs mix music recordings from two or more sources using different mixing techniques to produce non-stopping flow of music.
One key technique used for seamlessly transitioning from one song to another is beatmatching. A DJ who mostly plays and mixes one specific music genre is often given the title of that genre; for example, a DJ who plays hip hop music is called a hip hop DJ, a DJ who plays house music is a house DJ, a DJ who plays techno is called a techno DJ, and so on.
The quality of a DJ performance (often called a DJ mix or DJ set) consists of two main features: technical skills, or how well the DJ can operate the equipment and produce smooth transitions between two or more recordings and a playlist; and the ability of a DJ to select the most suitable recordings, also known as "reading the crowd".
Hip hop DJs
DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa were members of a block party at South Bronx. Kool Herc played records such as James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose", Jimmy Castor's "It's Just Begun", Booker T. & the M.G.'s' "Melting Pot", Incredible Bongo Band's "Bongo Rock" and "Apache", and UK rock band Babe Ruth's "The Mexican". With Bronx clubs struggling with street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to a demographic distinct from teenagers in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience.
DJ Kool Herc developed the style that was the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc used the record to focus on a short, heavily percussive part in it: the "break". Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated the break and prolonged it by changing between two record players. As one record reached the end of the break, he cued a second record back to the beginning of the break, which allowed him to extend a relatively short section of music into a "five-minute loop of fury". This innovation had its roots in what Herc called "The Merry-Go-Round", a technique by which the deejay switched from break to break at the height of the party. This technique is specifically called "The Merry-Go-Round" because according to Herc, it takes one "back and forth with no slack."
Radio DJs
Radio DJs or radio personalities introduce and play music broadcast on AM, FM, digital or Internet radio stations.
Dancehall/reggae deejays
In Jamaican music, a deejay (DJ) is a reggae or dancehall musician who sings and "toasts" (raps) to an instrumental riddim. Deejays are not to be confused with DJs from other music genres like hip hop, where they select and play music. Dancehall/reggae DJs who select riddims to play are called selectors. Deejays whose style is nearer to singing are sometimes called singjays.
The term deejay originated in the 1960s and 1970s when performers such as U-Roy or King Stitt toasted over the instrumental (dub music) versions of popular records. These versions were often released on the flip side to the song's 45 record. This gave the deejays the chance to create on-the-fly lyrics to the music. Big Youth, and I Roy were famous deejays in Jamaica.
Turntablists
Turntablists, also called battle DJs, use turntables and DJ mixer to manipulate recorded sounds to produce new music. In essence, they use DJ equipment as a musical instrument. Perhaps the best known turntablist technique is scratching. Turntablists often participate in DJ contests like DMC World DJ Championships and Red Bull 3Style.
Residents
A resident DJ performs at a venue on a regular basis or permanently. They would perform regularly (typically under an agreement) in a particular discotheque, a particular club, a particular event, or a particular broadcasting station. Residents have a decisive influence on the club or a series of events. Per agreement with the management or company, the DJ would have to perform under agreed times and dates. Typically, DJs perform as residents for two or three times in a week, for example, on Friday and Saturday. DJs who make a steady income from a venue are also considered resident DJs.
Examples for resident DJs are:
Alfredo Fiorito, Richie Hawtin, Sven Väth — Amnesia, Ibiza, Spain
Martin Garrix — Hï Ibiza, Ibiza, Spain
Larry Levan — Paradise Garage, New York City, USA
David Mancuso — The Loft, New York City
Tiësto, Deadmau5, Calvin Harris — Hakkasan, Las Vegas, USA
Kaskade — Encore Beach Club, Las Vegas, USA
Dom Chung — UK
Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann, Tama Sumo — Berghain, Berlin, Germany
Fish Go Deep — Cork, Ireland
Djsky — Ghana, West Africa
Other types
Mobile DJs — DJs with their own portable audio sound systems who specialize in performing at gatherings such as block parties, street fairs, taverns, weddings, birthdays, school and corporate events. Mobile DJs may also offer lighting packages and video systems.
Producer DJs — DJs who create remixes of popular club hits, completely original tracks, or transition friendly versions of tracks which extend the start and end of a song. Producer DJ often have their work featured on online DJ record pools.
DJanes — a term describing female DJs used in countries such as Germany that employ grammatical gender in their languages.
Celebrity DJs — widely known celebrities performing as DJs.
Bedroom DJs — a general term for DJs performing at home, usually recording their sets and posting them online.
Equipment
DJs use equipment that enables them to play multiple sources of recorded music and mix them to create seamless transitions and unique arrangements of songs. An important tool for DJs is the specialized DJ mixer, a small audio mixer with a crossfader and cue functions. The crossfader enables the DJ to blend or transition from one song to another. The cue knobs or switches allow the DJ to "listen" to a source of recorded music in headphones before playing it for the live club or broadcast audience. Previewing the music in headphones helps the DJ pick the next track they want to play, cue up the track to the desired starting location, and align the two tracks' beats in traditional situations where auto sync technology is not being used. This process ensures that the selected song will mix well with the currently playing music. DJs may align the beats of the music sources so their rhythms do not clash when they are played together to help create a smooth transition from one song to another. Other equipment may include a microphone, effects units such as reverb, and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
As music technology has progressed, DJs have adopted different types of equipment to play and mix music, all of which are still commonly used. Traditionally, DJs used two turntables plugged into a DJ mixer to mix music on vinyl records. As compact discs became popular media for publishing music, specialized high quality CD players known as CDJs were developed for DJs. CDJs can take the place of turntables or be used together with turntables. Many CDJs can now play digital music files from USB flash drives or SD cards in addition to CDs. With the spread of portable laptop, tablet, and smartphone computers, DJs began using software together with specialized sound cards and DJ controller hardware. DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer or be used instead of a hardware mixer.
Turntables
Turntables allow DJs to play vinyl records. By adjusting the playback speed of the turntable, either by adjusting the speed knob, or by manipulating the platter (e.g., by slowing down the platter by putting a finger gently along the side), DJs can match the tempos of different records so their rhythms can be played together at the same time without clashing or make a smooth, seamless transition from one song to another. This technique is known as beatmatching. DJs typically replace the rubber mat on turntables that keeps the record moving in sync with the turntable with a slipmat that facilitates manipulating the playback of the record by hand. With the slipmat, the DJ can stop or slow down the record while the turntable is still spinning. Direct-drive turntables are the type preferred by DJs. Belt-drive turntables are less expensive, but they are not suitable for turntablism and DJing, because the belt-drive motor can be damaged by this type of manipulation. Some DJs, most commonly those who play hip hop music, go beyond merely mixing records and use turntables as musical instruments for scratching, beat juggling, and other turntablism techniques.
CDJs/media players
CDJs / media players are high quality digital media players made for DJing. They often have large jog wheels and pitch controls to allow DJs to manipulate the playback of digital files for beatmatching similar to how DJs manipulate vinyl records on turntables. CDJs often have features such as loops and waveform displays similar to DJ software. Originally designed to play music from compact discs, they now can play digital music files stored on USB flash drives and SD cards. Some CDJs can also connect to a computer running DJ software to act as a DJ controller. Modern media players have the ability to stream music from online music providers such as Beatport, Beatsource, Tidal and Soundcloud GO.
DJ mixers
DJ mixers are small audio mixing consoles specialized for DJing. Most DJ mixers have far fewer channels than a mixer used by a record producer or audio engineer; whereas standard live sound mixers in small venues have 12 to 24 channels, and standard recording studio mixers have even more (as many as 72 on large boards), basic DJ mixers may have only two channels. While DJ mixers have many of the same features found on larger mixers (faders, equalization knobs, gain knobs, effects units, etc.), DJ mixers have a feature that is usually only found on DJ mixers: the crossfader. The crossfader is a type of fader that is mounted horizontally. DJs used the crossfader to mix two or more sound sources. The midpoint of the crossfader's travel is a 50/50 mix of the two channels (on a two channel mixer). The far left side of the crossfader provides only the channel A sound source. The far right side provides only the channel B sound source (e.g., record player number 2). Positions in between the two extremes provide different mixes of the two channels. Some DJs use a computer with DJ software and a DJ controller instead of an analog DJ mixer to mix music, although DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer.
Headphones
DJs generally use higher quality headphones than those designed for music consumers. DJ headphones have other properties useful for DJs, such as designs that acoustically isolate the sounds of the headphones from the outside environment (hard shell headphones), flexible headbands and pivot joints to allow DJs to listen to one side of the headphones, while turning the other headphone away (so they can monitor the mix in the club), and replaceable cables. Replaceable cables enables DJs to buy new cables if a cable becomes frayed, worn, or damaged, or if a cable is accidentally cut.
Closed-back headphones are highly recommended for DJs to block outside noise as the environment of DJ usually tend to be very noisy. Standard headphones have 3.5mm jack but DJ equipment usually requires ¼ inch jack. Most of specialized DJ Headphones have an adapter to switch between 3.5mm jack and ¼ inch jack. Detachable coiled cables are perfect for DJ Headphones.
Software
DJs have changed their equipment as new technologies are introduced. The earliest DJs in pop music, in 1970s discos, used record turntables, vinyl records and audio consoles. In the 1970s, DJs would have to lug heavy direct drive turntables and crates of records to clubs and shows. In the 1980s, many DJs transitioned to compact cassettes. In the 1990s and 2000s, many DJs switched to using digital audio such as CDs and MP3 files. As technological advances made it practical to store large collections of digital music files on a laptop computer, DJ software was developed so DJs could use a laptop as a source of music instead of transporting CDs or vinyl records to gigs. Unlike most music player software designed for regular consumers, DJ software can play at least two audio files simultaneously, display the waveforms of the files on screen and enable the DJ to listen to either source.
The waveforms allow the DJ see what is coming next in the music and how the playback of different files is aligned. The software analyzes music files to identify their tempo and where the beats are. The analyzed information can be used by the DJ to help manually beatmatch like with vinyl records or the software can automatically synchronize the beats. Digital signal processing algorithms in software allow DJs to adjust the tempo of recordings independently of their pitch (and musical key, a feature known as "keylock". Some software analyzes the loudness of the music for automatic normalization with ReplayGain and detects the musical key. Additionally, DJ software can store cue points, set loops, and apply effects.
As tablet computers and smartphones became widespread, DJ software was written to run on these devices in addition to laptops.
DJ software requires specialized hardware in addition to a computer to fully take advantage of its features. The consumer grade, regular sound card integrated into most computer motherboards can only output two channels (one stereo pair). However, DJs need to be able to output at least four channels (two stereo pairs, thus Left and Right for input 1 and Left and Right for input 2), either unmixed signals to send to a DJ mixer or a main output plus a headphone output. Additionally, DJ sound cards output higher quality signals than the sound cards built into consumer-grade computer motherboards.
Timecode
Special vinyl records (or CDs/digital files played with CDJs) can be used with DJ software to play digital music files with DJ software as if they were pressed onto vinyl, allowing turntablism techniques to be used with digital files. These vinyl records do not have music recordings pressed on to them. Instead, they are pressed with a special signal, referred to as "timecode", to control DJ software. The DJ software interprets changes in the playback speed, direction, and position of the timecode signal and manipulates the digital files it is playing in the same way that the turntable manipulates the timecode record.
This requires a specialized DJ sound card with at least 4 channels (2 stereo pairs) of inputs and outputs. With this setup, the DJ software typically outputs unmixed signals from the music files to an external hardware DJ mixer. Some DJ mixers have integrated USB sound cards that allow DJ software to connect directly to the mixer without requiring a separate sound card.
DJ controllers
A DJ software can be used to mix audio files on the computer instead of a separate hardware mixer. When mixing on a computer, DJs often use a DJ controller device that mimics the layout of two turntables plus a DJ mixer to control the software rather than the computer keyboard & touchpad on a laptop, or the touchscreen on a tablet computer or smartphone. Many DJ controllers have an integrated sound card with 4 output channels (2 stereo pairs) that allows the DJ to use headphones to preview music before playing it on the main output.
Other equipment
A microphone, so that the DJ can introduce songs and speak to the audience over the sound system.
Electronic effects units such as delay, reverb, octave, equalizer, chorus, etc.
Multi-stylus head shells, which allow a DJ to play different grooves of the same record at the same time.
Samplers, sequencers, electronic musical keyboards (synthesizers), effects pedals (effects unit) or drum machines.
PA system or sound reinforcement system (power amplifiers and speaker enclosures), typically including subwoofer cabinets for deep bass (or, if a DJ is broadcasting and/or recording a set, broadcasting equipment or recording gear)
Monitor speakers, for listening to the "house mix" that is playing over the main speakers
Techniques
Several techniques are used by DJs as a means to better mix and blend recorded music. These techniques primarily include the cueing, equalization and audio mixing of two or more sound sources. The complexity and frequency of special techniques depends largely on the setting in which a DJ is working. Radio DJs are less likely to focus on advanced music-mixing procedures than club DJs, who rely on a smooth transition between songs using a range of techniques. However, some radio DJs are experienced club DJs, so they use the same sophisticated mixing techniques.
Club DJ turntable techniques include beatmatching, phrasing and slip-cueing to preserve energy on a dance floor. Turntablism embodies the art of cutting, beat juggling, scratching, needle drops, phase shifting, back spinning and more to perform the transitions and overdubs of samples in a more creative manner (although turntablism is often considered a use of the turntable as a musical instrument rather than a tool for blending recorded music). Professional DJs may use harmonic mixing to choose songs that are in compatible musical keys. Other techniques include chopping, screwing and looping.
Recent advances in technology in both DJ hardware and software can provide assisted or automatic completion of some traditional DJ techniques and skills. Examples include phrasing and beatmatching, which can be partially or completely automated by using DJ software that performs automatic synchronization of sound recordings, a feature commonly labelled "sync". Most DJ mixers now include a beat-counter which analyzes the tempo of an incoming sound source and displays its tempo in beats per minute (BPM), which may assist with beatmatching analog sound sources.
In the past, being a DJ has largely been a self-taught craft but with the complexities of new technologies and the convergence with music production methods, there are a growing number of schools and organizations that offer instruction on the techniques.
Miming
In DJ culture, miming refers to the practice of DJ's pantomiming the actions of live-mixing a set on stage while a pre-recorded mix plays over the sound system. Miming mixing in a live performance is considered to be controversial within DJ culture. Some within the DJ community say that miming is increasingly used as a technique by celebrity model DJs who may lack mixing skills, but can draw big crowds to a venue.
During a DJ tour for the release of the French group Justice's A Cross the Universe in November 2008, controversy arose when a photograph of Augé DJing with an unplugged Akai MPD24 surfaced. The photograph sparked accusations that Justice's live sets were faked. Augé has since said that the equipment was unplugged very briefly before being reattached and the band put a three-photo set of the incident on their MySpace page. After a 2013 Disclosure concert, the duo was criticized for pretending to live mix to a playback of a pre-recorded track. Disclosure's Guy Lawrence said they did not deliberately intend to mislead their audience, and cited miming by other DJs such as David Guetta.
History
The term "disc jockey" was ostensibly coined by radio gossip commentator Walter Winchell in 1935, and the phrase first appeared in print in a 1941 Variety magazine, used to describe radio personalities who introduced phonograph records on the air. Playing recorded music for dancing and parties rose with the mass marketing of home phonographs in the late 19th century. British radio disc jockey Jimmy Savile hosted his first live dance party in 1943 using a single turntable and a makeshift sound system. Four years later, Savile began using two turntables welded together to form a single DJ console. In 1947, the Whiskey A Go-Go opened in Paris as the first discotheque. In the 1960s, Rudy Bozak began making the first DJ mixers, mixing consoles specialized for DJing.
In the late 1960s to early 1970s Jamaican sound system culture, producer and sound system operator (DJ), (Jamaican) King Tubby and producer Lee "Scratch" Perry were pioneers of the genre known as dub music. They experimented with tape-based composition; emphasized repetitive rhythmic structures (often stripped of their harmonic elements); electronically manipulated spatiality; sonically manipulated pre-recorded musical materials from mass media; and remixed music among other innovative techniques. It is widely known that the Jamaican dancehall culture has had and continues to have a significant impact on the American hip hop culture.
DJ turntablism has origins in the invention of direct-drive turntables. Early belt-drive turntables were unsuitable for turntablism and mixing, since they had a slow start-up time, and they were prone to wear-and-tear and breakage, as the belt would break from backspinning or scratching. The first direct-drive turntable was invented by engineer Shuichi Obata at Matsushita (now Panasonic), based in Osaka, Japan. It eliminated belts, and instead employed a motor to directly drive a platter on which a vinyl record rests. In 1969, Matsushita released it as the SP-10, the first direct-drive turntable on the market, and the first in their influential Technics series of turntables.
In 1972, Technics started making their SL-1200 turntable, featuring high torque direct drive design. The SL-1200 had a rapid start and its durable direct drive enabled DJs to manipulate the platter, as with scratching techniques. Hip hop DJs began using the Technics SL-1200s as musical instruments to manipulate records with turntablism techniques such as scratching and beat juggling rather than merely mixing records. These techniques were developed in the 1970s by DJ Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Afrika Bambaataa, as they experimented with Technics direct-drive decks, finding that the motor would continue to spin at the correct RPM even if the DJ wiggled the record back and forth on the platter.
In 1980, Japanese company Roland released the TR-808, an analog rhythm/drum machine, which has unique artificial sounds, such as its booming bass and sharp snare, and a metronome-like rhythm. Yellow Magic Orchestra's use of the instrument in 1980 influenced hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, after which the TR-808 would be widely adopted by hip hop DJs, with 808 sounds remaining central to hip-hop music ever since. The Roland TB-303, a bass synthesizer released in 1981, had a similar impact on electronic dance music genres such as techno and house music, along with Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines.
In 1982, the Compact Disc (CD) format was released, popularizing digital audio. In 1998, the first MP3 digital audio player, the Eiger Labs MPMan F10, was introduced. In January of that same year at the BeOS Developer Conference, N2IT demonstrated FinalScratch, the first digital DJ system to allow DJs control of MP3 files through special time-coded vinyl records or CDs. While it would take some time for this novel concept to catch on with the "die-hard Vinyl DJs," this would become the first step in the Digital DJ revolution. Manufacturers joined with computer DJing pioneers to offer professional endorsements, the first being Professor Jam (a.k.a. William P. Rader), who went on to develop the industry's first dedicated computer DJ convention and learning program, the "CPS (Computerized Performance System) DJ Summit", to help spread the word about the advantages of this emerging technology.
In 2001, Pioneer DJ began producing the CDJ-1000 CD player, making the use of digital music recordings with traditional DJ techniques practical for the first time. As the 2000s progressed, laptop computers became more powerful and affordable. DJ software, specialized DJ sound cards, and DJ controllers were developed for DJs to use laptops as a source of music rather than turntables or CDJs. In the 2010s, like laptops before them, tablet computers and smartphones became more powerful & affordable. DJ software was written to run on these more portable devices instead of laptops, although laptops remain the more common type of computer for DJing.
Female DJs
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare.
In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field … is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles."
Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. Two years later, another article brings out a list with world-famous female DJs including Nastia, tINY, Nora En Pure, Anja Schneider, Peggy Gou, Maya Jane Coles, and Eli & Fur.
Female DJ The Black Madonna has been called "one of the world’s most exciting turntablists." Her stage name The Black Madonna is a tribute to her mother's favorite Catholic saint. In 2018, The Black Madonna played herself as an in-residence DJ for the video game Grand Theft Auto Online, as part of the After Hours DLC.
There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent."
In Japan, the newest Bushiroad franchise: D4DJ focuses all-female DJ unit.
Health
The risk of DJs working in nightclubs with loud music includes noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus. Nightclubs constantly exceed safe levels of noise exposure with average sound levels ranging from 93.2 to 109.7 dB. Constant music exposure creates temporary and permanent auditory dysfunction for professional DJs with average levels at 96dB being above the recommended level, at which ear protection is mandatory for industry. Three quarters of DJs have tinnitus and are at risk of tenosynovitis in the wrists and other limbs. Tenosynovitis results from staying in the same position over multiple gigs for scratching motion and cueing, this would be related to a repetitive strain injury. Gigs can last 4-5 hours in nightlife and the hospitality industry, as a result there are potential complications of prolonged standing which include slouching, varicose veins, cardiovascular disorders, joint compression, and muscle fatigue. This is common for other staff to experience as well including bartenders and security staff for example.
In film
Berlin Calling – a German film about fictional DJ and producer Ickarus (Paul Kalkbrenner), who is struggling with drug abuse
Speaking in Code – an American documentary film about techno artists Modeselektor, Wighnomy Brothers, Philip Sherburne, Monolake and David Day
Kvadrat – a French and Russian documentary film about the realities of techno DJing, using the example of DJ Andrey Pushkarev
It's All Gone Pete Tong – a fictional mockumentary British movie about Frankie Wilde, a DJ who gradually becomes deaf due to drug abuse and an unhealthy lifestyle
We Are Your Friends – an American fiction film about a college DJ trying to make it in the DJing scene with "one hit song", starring Zac Efron
Scratch – a documentary about the hip-hop DJ and the 2000-era turntablist movement
Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou – a Japanese anime, originally a manga, about a fictional character named Agetarou who aspires to be a DJ master with the help of his friends and mentor, Big Master Fry.
24 Hour Party People – about the UK music scene from the late 1970s to the "Madchester" scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Human Traffic – about early UK rave counter-culture featuring music and performances by celebrated DJs Fatboy Slim, CJ Bolland, Carl Cox, and Mad Doctor X.
Turn Up Charlie – a 2019 series about a struggling DJ, played by Idris Elba, who is also a bachelor trying to make it again after a one hit back in the 1990s
Avicii: True Stories – a documentary film about Avicii
See also
Digital DJ licensing
List of club DJs
List of music software#DJ software
Live PA
DJ mix
Record collecting
Spelling of disc
Stage lighting
VJ (media personality)
References
Notes
Assef, Claudia (2000). Todo DJ Já Sambou: A História do Disc-Jóquei no Brasil. São Paulo: Conrad Editora do Brasil. .
Brewster, Bill, and Frank Broughton (2000). Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. New York: Grove Press. (North American edition). London: Headline. (UK edition).
Broughton, Frank, and Bill Brewster. How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records. New York: Grove Press, 2003.
Graudins, Charles A. How to Be a DJ. Boston: Course Technology PTR, 2004.
Lawrence, Tim (2004). Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 . Duke University Press. .
Miller, Paul D. a.k.a. DJ Spooky, Sound Unbound: Writings on DJ Culture and Electronic Music, MIT Press 2008. .
Poschardt, Ulf (1998). DJ Culture. London: Quartet Books. .
Zemon, Stacy. The Mobile DJ Handbook: How to Start & Run a Profitable Mobile Disc Jockey Service, Second Edition. St. Louis: Focal Press, 2002.
External links
Audio mixing
Broadcasting occupations
Disco
Mass media occupations
Occupations in music
Hip hop production
Turntablism
Underground culture
Electronic dance music
1930s neologisms
Articles containing video clips
| true |
[
"Video Hits Volume I is a collection of various Van Halen video hits. The DVD version - released in November 1999 - has the same videos as the VHS but also includes the video for \"Without You\" (Van Halen III). Some songs (\"Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do)\", \"Humans Being\" and \"Without You\") are the edited/single versions and not the unedited/album versions. Quite a few of the group's earliest videos are absent as well, such as \"Runnin' with the Devil\" and \"You Really Got Me\".\n\nTrack listing\n\"Jump\"\n\"Panama\"\n\"Hot for Teacher\"\n\"When It's Love\"\n\"Finish What Ya Started\"\n\"Poundcake\"\n\"Runaround\"\n\"Right Now\"\n\"Dreams\"\n\"Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do)\"\n\"Can't Stop Lovin' You\"\n\"Not Enough\"\n\"Humans Being\"\n\"Without You\"\n\nExcluded music videos\n\"Runnin' with the Devil\"\n\"You Really Got Me\"\n\"Jamie's Cryin'\"\n\"Dance the Night Away\"\n\"Loss of Control\"\n\"Hear About It Later\"\n\"Unchained\"\n\"So This Is Love?\"\n\"(Oh) Pretty Woman\"\n\"Dreams\" (Blue Angels version)\n\"Feels So Good\"\n\"Top of the World\"\n\"Amsterdam\"\n\"Fire in the Hole\"\n\nCertifications\n\nReferences\n\n1996 video albums\nVan Halen video albums\nMusic video compilation albums\n1996 compilation albums\nVan Halen compilation albums",
"\"Only Tongue Can Tell\" is a song by Scottish band The Trash Can Sinatras, which was released in 1990 as the second single from their debut studio album Cake. The song was written and produced by all five band members. \"Only Tongue Can Tell\" reached No. 77 in the UK Singles Chart and No. 8 in the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.\n\nMusic video\nThe song's music video was directed by Mike Bell and produced by Grace Wells. It achieved breakout rotation on MTV.\n\nCritical reception\nOn its release, Penny Kiley of the Liverpool Echo considered the song a \"fine follow up\" to \"Obscurity Knocks\". She praised the \"good songwriting\", \"catchy guitars\", \"attractive harmonies\" and \"son-of-Morrissey vocals\". In a review of Cake, Brent Ainsworth of the Santa Cruz Sentinel described \"Only Tongue Can Tell\" as a \"playful romp through a green pasture of tinny guitar on a fresh-air keyboard backdrop\".\n\nTrack listing\n7-inch and cassette single\n \"Only Tongue Can Tell\" – 3:45\n \"Useless\" – 4:32\n\n12-inch and CD single\n \"Only Tongue Can Tell\" – 3:45\n \"Useless\" – 4:32\n \"Tonight You Belong to Me\" – 2:38\n\nPersonnel\nCredits are adapted from the UK CD single liner notes and the Cake booklet.\n\nThe Trash Can Sinatras\n Frank Reader – vocals\n Paul Livingston – lead guitar\n John Douglas – rhythm guitar\n George McDaid – bass\n Stephen Douglas – drums\n\nAdditional musicians\n Clark Sorley – keyboards on \"Only Tongue Can Tell\"\n\nProduction\n The Trash Can Sinatras – producers of \"Only Tongue Can Tell\" and \"Tonight You Belong to Me\"\n Roger Béchirian – producer of \"Useless\"\n Tony Harris – mixing on \"Only Tongue Can Tell\" and \"Tonight You Belong to Me\"\n John Leckie – mixing on \"Useless\"\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n1990 songs\n1990 singles\nGo! Discs singles"
] |
[
"Disc jockey",
"Women DJs",
"What can you tell me about women DJs",
"A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are \"...few women in record production and sound engineering.\" Ncube states that \"[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male,",
"Can you tell me the names of some women Djs",
"Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac."
] |
C_1762e25366d14047a4e7c4663b4ca92f_0
|
What is the most known DJ
| 3 |
What is the most known Woman DJ?
|
Disc jockey
|
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare. In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field ... is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles." Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJ-ing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent." CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile DJs (who are hired to work at public and private events such as weddings, parties, or festivals), and turntablists (who use record players, usually turntables, to manipulate sounds on phonograph records). Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.
DJs commonly use audio equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously. This enables them to blend tracks together to create transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs. This can involve aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms and tempos do not clash when played together and to enable a smooth transition from one song to another. DJs often use specialized DJ mixers, small audio mixers with crossfader and cue functions to blend or transition from one song to another. Mixers are also used to pre-listen to sources of recorded music in headphones and adjust upcoming tracks to mix with currently playing music. DJ software can be used with a DJ controller device to mix audio files on a computer instead of a console mixer. DJs may also use a microphone to speak to the audience; effects units such as reverb to create sound effects and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
Role
Originally, the word "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to gramophone records, but now "DJ" is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, or digital audio files stored on USB stick or laptop. DJs typically perform for a live audience in a nightclub or dance club or a TV, radio broadcast audience, or an online radio audience. DJs also create mixes, remixes and tracks that are recorded for later sale and distribution. In hip hop music, DJs may create beats, using percussion breaks, basslines and other musical content sampled from pre-existing records. In hip hop, rappers and MCs use these beats to rap over. Some DJs adopt the title "DJ" as part of their names (e.g., DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Qbert, DJ Shadow and DJ Yoda). Professional DJs often specialize in a specific genre of music, such as techno, house or hip hop music. DJs typically have an extensive knowledge about the music they specialize in. Many DJs are avid music collectors of vintage, rare or obscure tracks and records.
Types
Club DJs
Club DJs, commonly referred as DJs in general, play music at musical events, such as parties at music venues or bars, music festivals, corporate and private events. Typically, club DJs mix music recordings from two or more sources using different mixing techniques to produce non-stopping flow of music.
One key technique used for seamlessly transitioning from one song to another is beatmatching. A DJ who mostly plays and mixes one specific music genre is often given the title of that genre; for example, a DJ who plays hip hop music is called a hip hop DJ, a DJ who plays house music is a house DJ, a DJ who plays techno is called a techno DJ, and so on.
The quality of a DJ performance (often called a DJ mix or DJ set) consists of two main features: technical skills, or how well the DJ can operate the equipment and produce smooth transitions between two or more recordings and a playlist; and the ability of a DJ to select the most suitable recordings, also known as "reading the crowd".
Hip hop DJs
DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa were members of a block party at South Bronx. Kool Herc played records such as James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose", Jimmy Castor's "It's Just Begun", Booker T. & the M.G.'s' "Melting Pot", Incredible Bongo Band's "Bongo Rock" and "Apache", and UK rock band Babe Ruth's "The Mexican". With Bronx clubs struggling with street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to a demographic distinct from teenagers in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience.
DJ Kool Herc developed the style that was the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc used the record to focus on a short, heavily percussive part in it: the "break". Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated the break and prolonged it by changing between two record players. As one record reached the end of the break, he cued a second record back to the beginning of the break, which allowed him to extend a relatively short section of music into a "five-minute loop of fury". This innovation had its roots in what Herc called "The Merry-Go-Round", a technique by which the deejay switched from break to break at the height of the party. This technique is specifically called "The Merry-Go-Round" because according to Herc, it takes one "back and forth with no slack."
Radio DJs
Radio DJs or radio personalities introduce and play music broadcast on AM, FM, digital or Internet radio stations.
Dancehall/reggae deejays
In Jamaican music, a deejay (DJ) is a reggae or dancehall musician who sings and "toasts" (raps) to an instrumental riddim. Deejays are not to be confused with DJs from other music genres like hip hop, where they select and play music. Dancehall/reggae DJs who select riddims to play are called selectors. Deejays whose style is nearer to singing are sometimes called singjays.
The term deejay originated in the 1960s and 1970s when performers such as U-Roy or King Stitt toasted over the instrumental (dub music) versions of popular records. These versions were often released on the flip side to the song's 45 record. This gave the deejays the chance to create on-the-fly lyrics to the music. Big Youth, and I Roy were famous deejays in Jamaica.
Turntablists
Turntablists, also called battle DJs, use turntables and DJ mixer to manipulate recorded sounds to produce new music. In essence, they use DJ equipment as a musical instrument. Perhaps the best known turntablist technique is scratching. Turntablists often participate in DJ contests like DMC World DJ Championships and Red Bull 3Style.
Residents
A resident DJ performs at a venue on a regular basis or permanently. They would perform regularly (typically under an agreement) in a particular discotheque, a particular club, a particular event, or a particular broadcasting station. Residents have a decisive influence on the club or a series of events. Per agreement with the management or company, the DJ would have to perform under agreed times and dates. Typically, DJs perform as residents for two or three times in a week, for example, on Friday and Saturday. DJs who make a steady income from a venue are also considered resident DJs.
Examples for resident DJs are:
Alfredo Fiorito, Richie Hawtin, Sven Väth — Amnesia, Ibiza, Spain
Martin Garrix — Hï Ibiza, Ibiza, Spain
Larry Levan — Paradise Garage, New York City, USA
David Mancuso — The Loft, New York City
Tiësto, Deadmau5, Calvin Harris — Hakkasan, Las Vegas, USA
Kaskade — Encore Beach Club, Las Vegas, USA
Dom Chung — UK
Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann, Tama Sumo — Berghain, Berlin, Germany
Fish Go Deep — Cork, Ireland
Djsky — Ghana, West Africa
Other types
Mobile DJs — DJs with their own portable audio sound systems who specialize in performing at gatherings such as block parties, street fairs, taverns, weddings, birthdays, school and corporate events. Mobile DJs may also offer lighting packages and video systems.
Producer DJs — DJs who create remixes of popular club hits, completely original tracks, or transition friendly versions of tracks which extend the start and end of a song. Producer DJ often have their work featured on online DJ record pools.
DJanes — a term describing female DJs used in countries such as Germany that employ grammatical gender in their languages.
Celebrity DJs — widely known celebrities performing as DJs.
Bedroom DJs — a general term for DJs performing at home, usually recording their sets and posting them online.
Equipment
DJs use equipment that enables them to play multiple sources of recorded music and mix them to create seamless transitions and unique arrangements of songs. An important tool for DJs is the specialized DJ mixer, a small audio mixer with a crossfader and cue functions. The crossfader enables the DJ to blend or transition from one song to another. The cue knobs or switches allow the DJ to "listen" to a source of recorded music in headphones before playing it for the live club or broadcast audience. Previewing the music in headphones helps the DJ pick the next track they want to play, cue up the track to the desired starting location, and align the two tracks' beats in traditional situations where auto sync technology is not being used. This process ensures that the selected song will mix well with the currently playing music. DJs may align the beats of the music sources so their rhythms do not clash when they are played together to help create a smooth transition from one song to another. Other equipment may include a microphone, effects units such as reverb, and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
As music technology has progressed, DJs have adopted different types of equipment to play and mix music, all of which are still commonly used. Traditionally, DJs used two turntables plugged into a DJ mixer to mix music on vinyl records. As compact discs became popular media for publishing music, specialized high quality CD players known as CDJs were developed for DJs. CDJs can take the place of turntables or be used together with turntables. Many CDJs can now play digital music files from USB flash drives or SD cards in addition to CDs. With the spread of portable laptop, tablet, and smartphone computers, DJs began using software together with specialized sound cards and DJ controller hardware. DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer or be used instead of a hardware mixer.
Turntables
Turntables allow DJs to play vinyl records. By adjusting the playback speed of the turntable, either by adjusting the speed knob, or by manipulating the platter (e.g., by slowing down the platter by putting a finger gently along the side), DJs can match the tempos of different records so their rhythms can be played together at the same time without clashing or make a smooth, seamless transition from one song to another. This technique is known as beatmatching. DJs typically replace the rubber mat on turntables that keeps the record moving in sync with the turntable with a slipmat that facilitates manipulating the playback of the record by hand. With the slipmat, the DJ can stop or slow down the record while the turntable is still spinning. Direct-drive turntables are the type preferred by DJs. Belt-drive turntables are less expensive, but they are not suitable for turntablism and DJing, because the belt-drive motor can be damaged by this type of manipulation. Some DJs, most commonly those who play hip hop music, go beyond merely mixing records and use turntables as musical instruments for scratching, beat juggling, and other turntablism techniques.
CDJs/media players
CDJs / media players are high quality digital media players made for DJing. They often have large jog wheels and pitch controls to allow DJs to manipulate the playback of digital files for beatmatching similar to how DJs manipulate vinyl records on turntables. CDJs often have features such as loops and waveform displays similar to DJ software. Originally designed to play music from compact discs, they now can play digital music files stored on USB flash drives and SD cards. Some CDJs can also connect to a computer running DJ software to act as a DJ controller. Modern media players have the ability to stream music from online music providers such as Beatport, Beatsource, Tidal and Soundcloud GO.
DJ mixers
DJ mixers are small audio mixing consoles specialized for DJing. Most DJ mixers have far fewer channels than a mixer used by a record producer or audio engineer; whereas standard live sound mixers in small venues have 12 to 24 channels, and standard recording studio mixers have even more (as many as 72 on large boards), basic DJ mixers may have only two channels. While DJ mixers have many of the same features found on larger mixers (faders, equalization knobs, gain knobs, effects units, etc.), DJ mixers have a feature that is usually only found on DJ mixers: the crossfader. The crossfader is a type of fader that is mounted horizontally. DJs used the crossfader to mix two or more sound sources. The midpoint of the crossfader's travel is a 50/50 mix of the two channels (on a two channel mixer). The far left side of the crossfader provides only the channel A sound source. The far right side provides only the channel B sound source (e.g., record player number 2). Positions in between the two extremes provide different mixes of the two channels. Some DJs use a computer with DJ software and a DJ controller instead of an analog DJ mixer to mix music, although DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer.
Headphones
DJs generally use higher quality headphones than those designed for music consumers. DJ headphones have other properties useful for DJs, such as designs that acoustically isolate the sounds of the headphones from the outside environment (hard shell headphones), flexible headbands and pivot joints to allow DJs to listen to one side of the headphones, while turning the other headphone away (so they can monitor the mix in the club), and replaceable cables. Replaceable cables enables DJs to buy new cables if a cable becomes frayed, worn, or damaged, or if a cable is accidentally cut.
Closed-back headphones are highly recommended for DJs to block outside noise as the environment of DJ usually tend to be very noisy. Standard headphones have 3.5mm jack but DJ equipment usually requires ¼ inch jack. Most of specialized DJ Headphones have an adapter to switch between 3.5mm jack and ¼ inch jack. Detachable coiled cables are perfect for DJ Headphones.
Software
DJs have changed their equipment as new technologies are introduced. The earliest DJs in pop music, in 1970s discos, used record turntables, vinyl records and audio consoles. In the 1970s, DJs would have to lug heavy direct drive turntables and crates of records to clubs and shows. In the 1980s, many DJs transitioned to compact cassettes. In the 1990s and 2000s, many DJs switched to using digital audio such as CDs and MP3 files. As technological advances made it practical to store large collections of digital music files on a laptop computer, DJ software was developed so DJs could use a laptop as a source of music instead of transporting CDs or vinyl records to gigs. Unlike most music player software designed for regular consumers, DJ software can play at least two audio files simultaneously, display the waveforms of the files on screen and enable the DJ to listen to either source.
The waveforms allow the DJ see what is coming next in the music and how the playback of different files is aligned. The software analyzes music files to identify their tempo and where the beats are. The analyzed information can be used by the DJ to help manually beatmatch like with vinyl records or the software can automatically synchronize the beats. Digital signal processing algorithms in software allow DJs to adjust the tempo of recordings independently of their pitch (and musical key, a feature known as "keylock". Some software analyzes the loudness of the music for automatic normalization with ReplayGain and detects the musical key. Additionally, DJ software can store cue points, set loops, and apply effects.
As tablet computers and smartphones became widespread, DJ software was written to run on these devices in addition to laptops.
DJ software requires specialized hardware in addition to a computer to fully take advantage of its features. The consumer grade, regular sound card integrated into most computer motherboards can only output two channels (one stereo pair). However, DJs need to be able to output at least four channels (two stereo pairs, thus Left and Right for input 1 and Left and Right for input 2), either unmixed signals to send to a DJ mixer or a main output plus a headphone output. Additionally, DJ sound cards output higher quality signals than the sound cards built into consumer-grade computer motherboards.
Timecode
Special vinyl records (or CDs/digital files played with CDJs) can be used with DJ software to play digital music files with DJ software as if they were pressed onto vinyl, allowing turntablism techniques to be used with digital files. These vinyl records do not have music recordings pressed on to them. Instead, they are pressed with a special signal, referred to as "timecode", to control DJ software. The DJ software interprets changes in the playback speed, direction, and position of the timecode signal and manipulates the digital files it is playing in the same way that the turntable manipulates the timecode record.
This requires a specialized DJ sound card with at least 4 channels (2 stereo pairs) of inputs and outputs. With this setup, the DJ software typically outputs unmixed signals from the music files to an external hardware DJ mixer. Some DJ mixers have integrated USB sound cards that allow DJ software to connect directly to the mixer without requiring a separate sound card.
DJ controllers
A DJ software can be used to mix audio files on the computer instead of a separate hardware mixer. When mixing on a computer, DJs often use a DJ controller device that mimics the layout of two turntables plus a DJ mixer to control the software rather than the computer keyboard & touchpad on a laptop, or the touchscreen on a tablet computer or smartphone. Many DJ controllers have an integrated sound card with 4 output channels (2 stereo pairs) that allows the DJ to use headphones to preview music before playing it on the main output.
Other equipment
A microphone, so that the DJ can introduce songs and speak to the audience over the sound system.
Electronic effects units such as delay, reverb, octave, equalizer, chorus, etc.
Multi-stylus head shells, which allow a DJ to play different grooves of the same record at the same time.
Samplers, sequencers, electronic musical keyboards (synthesizers), effects pedals (effects unit) or drum machines.
PA system or sound reinforcement system (power amplifiers and speaker enclosures), typically including subwoofer cabinets for deep bass (or, if a DJ is broadcasting and/or recording a set, broadcasting equipment or recording gear)
Monitor speakers, for listening to the "house mix" that is playing over the main speakers
Techniques
Several techniques are used by DJs as a means to better mix and blend recorded music. These techniques primarily include the cueing, equalization and audio mixing of two or more sound sources. The complexity and frequency of special techniques depends largely on the setting in which a DJ is working. Radio DJs are less likely to focus on advanced music-mixing procedures than club DJs, who rely on a smooth transition between songs using a range of techniques. However, some radio DJs are experienced club DJs, so they use the same sophisticated mixing techniques.
Club DJ turntable techniques include beatmatching, phrasing and slip-cueing to preserve energy on a dance floor. Turntablism embodies the art of cutting, beat juggling, scratching, needle drops, phase shifting, back spinning and more to perform the transitions and overdubs of samples in a more creative manner (although turntablism is often considered a use of the turntable as a musical instrument rather than a tool for blending recorded music). Professional DJs may use harmonic mixing to choose songs that are in compatible musical keys. Other techniques include chopping, screwing and looping.
Recent advances in technology in both DJ hardware and software can provide assisted or automatic completion of some traditional DJ techniques and skills. Examples include phrasing and beatmatching, which can be partially or completely automated by using DJ software that performs automatic synchronization of sound recordings, a feature commonly labelled "sync". Most DJ mixers now include a beat-counter which analyzes the tempo of an incoming sound source and displays its tempo in beats per minute (BPM), which may assist with beatmatching analog sound sources.
In the past, being a DJ has largely been a self-taught craft but with the complexities of new technologies and the convergence with music production methods, there are a growing number of schools and organizations that offer instruction on the techniques.
Miming
In DJ culture, miming refers to the practice of DJ's pantomiming the actions of live-mixing a set on stage while a pre-recorded mix plays over the sound system. Miming mixing in a live performance is considered to be controversial within DJ culture. Some within the DJ community say that miming is increasingly used as a technique by celebrity model DJs who may lack mixing skills, but can draw big crowds to a venue.
During a DJ tour for the release of the French group Justice's A Cross the Universe in November 2008, controversy arose when a photograph of Augé DJing with an unplugged Akai MPD24 surfaced. The photograph sparked accusations that Justice's live sets were faked. Augé has since said that the equipment was unplugged very briefly before being reattached and the band put a three-photo set of the incident on their MySpace page. After a 2013 Disclosure concert, the duo was criticized for pretending to live mix to a playback of a pre-recorded track. Disclosure's Guy Lawrence said they did not deliberately intend to mislead their audience, and cited miming by other DJs such as David Guetta.
History
The term "disc jockey" was ostensibly coined by radio gossip commentator Walter Winchell in 1935, and the phrase first appeared in print in a 1941 Variety magazine, used to describe radio personalities who introduced phonograph records on the air. Playing recorded music for dancing and parties rose with the mass marketing of home phonographs in the late 19th century. British radio disc jockey Jimmy Savile hosted his first live dance party in 1943 using a single turntable and a makeshift sound system. Four years later, Savile began using two turntables welded together to form a single DJ console. In 1947, the Whiskey A Go-Go opened in Paris as the first discotheque. In the 1960s, Rudy Bozak began making the first DJ mixers, mixing consoles specialized for DJing.
In the late 1960s to early 1970s Jamaican sound system culture, producer and sound system operator (DJ), (Jamaican) King Tubby and producer Lee "Scratch" Perry were pioneers of the genre known as dub music. They experimented with tape-based composition; emphasized repetitive rhythmic structures (often stripped of their harmonic elements); electronically manipulated spatiality; sonically manipulated pre-recorded musical materials from mass media; and remixed music among other innovative techniques. It is widely known that the Jamaican dancehall culture has had and continues to have a significant impact on the American hip hop culture.
DJ turntablism has origins in the invention of direct-drive turntables. Early belt-drive turntables were unsuitable for turntablism and mixing, since they had a slow start-up time, and they were prone to wear-and-tear and breakage, as the belt would break from backspinning or scratching. The first direct-drive turntable was invented by engineer Shuichi Obata at Matsushita (now Panasonic), based in Osaka, Japan. It eliminated belts, and instead employed a motor to directly drive a platter on which a vinyl record rests. In 1969, Matsushita released it as the SP-10, the first direct-drive turntable on the market, and the first in their influential Technics series of turntables.
In 1972, Technics started making their SL-1200 turntable, featuring high torque direct drive design. The SL-1200 had a rapid start and its durable direct drive enabled DJs to manipulate the platter, as with scratching techniques. Hip hop DJs began using the Technics SL-1200s as musical instruments to manipulate records with turntablism techniques such as scratching and beat juggling rather than merely mixing records. These techniques were developed in the 1970s by DJ Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Afrika Bambaataa, as they experimented with Technics direct-drive decks, finding that the motor would continue to spin at the correct RPM even if the DJ wiggled the record back and forth on the platter.
In 1980, Japanese company Roland released the TR-808, an analog rhythm/drum machine, which has unique artificial sounds, such as its booming bass and sharp snare, and a metronome-like rhythm. Yellow Magic Orchestra's use of the instrument in 1980 influenced hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, after which the TR-808 would be widely adopted by hip hop DJs, with 808 sounds remaining central to hip-hop music ever since. The Roland TB-303, a bass synthesizer released in 1981, had a similar impact on electronic dance music genres such as techno and house music, along with Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines.
In 1982, the Compact Disc (CD) format was released, popularizing digital audio. In 1998, the first MP3 digital audio player, the Eiger Labs MPMan F10, was introduced. In January of that same year at the BeOS Developer Conference, N2IT demonstrated FinalScratch, the first digital DJ system to allow DJs control of MP3 files through special time-coded vinyl records or CDs. While it would take some time for this novel concept to catch on with the "die-hard Vinyl DJs," this would become the first step in the Digital DJ revolution. Manufacturers joined with computer DJing pioneers to offer professional endorsements, the first being Professor Jam (a.k.a. William P. Rader), who went on to develop the industry's first dedicated computer DJ convention and learning program, the "CPS (Computerized Performance System) DJ Summit", to help spread the word about the advantages of this emerging technology.
In 2001, Pioneer DJ began producing the CDJ-1000 CD player, making the use of digital music recordings with traditional DJ techniques practical for the first time. As the 2000s progressed, laptop computers became more powerful and affordable. DJ software, specialized DJ sound cards, and DJ controllers were developed for DJs to use laptops as a source of music rather than turntables or CDJs. In the 2010s, like laptops before them, tablet computers and smartphones became more powerful & affordable. DJ software was written to run on these more portable devices instead of laptops, although laptops remain the more common type of computer for DJing.
Female DJs
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare.
In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field … is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles."
Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. Two years later, another article brings out a list with world-famous female DJs including Nastia, tINY, Nora En Pure, Anja Schneider, Peggy Gou, Maya Jane Coles, and Eli & Fur.
Female DJ The Black Madonna has been called "one of the world’s most exciting turntablists." Her stage name The Black Madonna is a tribute to her mother's favorite Catholic saint. In 2018, The Black Madonna played herself as an in-residence DJ for the video game Grand Theft Auto Online, as part of the After Hours DLC.
There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent."
In Japan, the newest Bushiroad franchise: D4DJ focuses all-female DJ unit.
Health
The risk of DJs working in nightclubs with loud music includes noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus. Nightclubs constantly exceed safe levels of noise exposure with average sound levels ranging from 93.2 to 109.7 dB. Constant music exposure creates temporary and permanent auditory dysfunction for professional DJs with average levels at 96dB being above the recommended level, at which ear protection is mandatory for industry. Three quarters of DJs have tinnitus and are at risk of tenosynovitis in the wrists and other limbs. Tenosynovitis results from staying in the same position over multiple gigs for scratching motion and cueing, this would be related to a repetitive strain injury. Gigs can last 4-5 hours in nightlife and the hospitality industry, as a result there are potential complications of prolonged standing which include slouching, varicose veins, cardiovascular disorders, joint compression, and muscle fatigue. This is common for other staff to experience as well including bartenders and security staff for example.
In film
Berlin Calling – a German film about fictional DJ and producer Ickarus (Paul Kalkbrenner), who is struggling with drug abuse
Speaking in Code – an American documentary film about techno artists Modeselektor, Wighnomy Brothers, Philip Sherburne, Monolake and David Day
Kvadrat – a French and Russian documentary film about the realities of techno DJing, using the example of DJ Andrey Pushkarev
It's All Gone Pete Tong – a fictional mockumentary British movie about Frankie Wilde, a DJ who gradually becomes deaf due to drug abuse and an unhealthy lifestyle
We Are Your Friends – an American fiction film about a college DJ trying to make it in the DJing scene with "one hit song", starring Zac Efron
Scratch – a documentary about the hip-hop DJ and the 2000-era turntablist movement
Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou – a Japanese anime, originally a manga, about a fictional character named Agetarou who aspires to be a DJ master with the help of his friends and mentor, Big Master Fry.
24 Hour Party People – about the UK music scene from the late 1970s to the "Madchester" scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Human Traffic – about early UK rave counter-culture featuring music and performances by celebrated DJs Fatboy Slim, CJ Bolland, Carl Cox, and Mad Doctor X.
Turn Up Charlie – a 2019 series about a struggling DJ, played by Idris Elba, who is also a bachelor trying to make it again after a one hit back in the 1990s
Avicii: True Stories – a documentary film about Avicii
See also
Digital DJ licensing
List of club DJs
List of music software#DJ software
Live PA
DJ mix
Record collecting
Spelling of disc
Stage lighting
VJ (media personality)
References
Notes
Assef, Claudia (2000). Todo DJ Já Sambou: A História do Disc-Jóquei no Brasil. São Paulo: Conrad Editora do Brasil. .
Brewster, Bill, and Frank Broughton (2000). Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. New York: Grove Press. (North American edition). London: Headline. (UK edition).
Broughton, Frank, and Bill Brewster. How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records. New York: Grove Press, 2003.
Graudins, Charles A. How to Be a DJ. Boston: Course Technology PTR, 2004.
Lawrence, Tim (2004). Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 . Duke University Press. .
Miller, Paul D. a.k.a. DJ Spooky, Sound Unbound: Writings on DJ Culture and Electronic Music, MIT Press 2008. .
Poschardt, Ulf (1998). DJ Culture. London: Quartet Books. .
Zemon, Stacy. The Mobile DJ Handbook: How to Start & Run a Profitable Mobile Disc Jockey Service, Second Edition. St. Louis: Focal Press, 2002.
External links
Audio mixing
Broadcasting occupations
Disco
Mass media occupations
Occupations in music
Hip hop production
Turntablism
Underground culture
Electronic dance music
1930s neologisms
Articles containing video clips
| false |
[
"\"God Is a DJ\" is a song by American singer Pink from her third album, Try This (2003). It was released as the album's second single on November 17, 2003. It is about letting go, loving life and living it to the fullest. It peaked at number six in the Dutch Top 40 and number eleven on the UK Singles Chart. The song appears on the soundtrack of the 2004 film Mean Girls.\n\nCritical response\n\nAllMusic highlighted the song and added that \"the echoes of Blur's 'Pressure on Julian' on 'God Is a DJ' are surely coincidental.\" David Browne was not positive: \"we could have done without the dreadful dance-rock cheeseball God Is a DJ.\" Rolling Stone was not either: \"rehashes familiar (Trouble's) themes in 'God Is a DJ': 'I've been the girl, middle finger in the air.' Tell us something we don't know, Pink.\" Sal Cinquemani was positive: \"The shoulda-been first single, 'God Is A DJ,' is filled with the kind of life-affirming dancefloor metaphors that helped send Madge's 'Vogue,' 'Music' and even Pink's own 'Get The Party Started' straight up the charts: 'If God is a DJ/If life is a dancefloor/Love is a rhythm/You are the music.'\" Clem Bastow panned the song by noting that \"God Is a DJ\" is an attempt, unsuccessfully, to recapture some of \"P!nk's early-career spunk.\"\n\nThe Village Voice praised the song: \"If God were a DJ, which DJ would he be? Paul Oakenfold? Sasha and/or Digweed? No—Larry Levan. They didn't call it the Paradise Garage for nothin'. I ask because 'God Is a DJ,' the obvious and at one time actual choice for lead single off Pink's third album, Try This, goes: 'If God is a DJ/Life is a dance floor/Love is a rhythm/You are the music!' Grandiosity aside—what's Art, then, waving glow sticks?—'God Is a DJ' provides excellent philosophical underpinning for Pink's greatest hit, 'Get the Party Started.'\" The same critic added: \"Pink revisits her recent career in 'God Is a DJ,' a big-chorused, fast-funk bass-lined spaz-out not written with Armstrong. Loving Mom, hating Dad, pulling her skirt up, sticking her tongue out—it's all here. And it winds up with, 'Look for nirvana/Under the strobe light.' No, not Nirvana, though that comparison flashed before my eyes—before the new Hole was pushed back past Courtney's next court date, I intended to review the two albums together. But it was another major rock chick, Tim Armstrong ex Brody Dalle, who put out the grunge-punk disc of the year, the Distillers' Coral Fang.\" Dan Leroy was favorable as well: \"But if 'God Is A DJ,' he'll put that piece of punky disco perfection, and several other tunes here, in heavy rotation immediately.\"\n\nMusic video\nThe music video for this song features scenes of Pink and others (assumed to be her roommates) getting dressed, having fun on a subway, and going to a nightclub. Pink then continues to bribe the bouncer (dressed in eccentric drag clothing) to enter the nightclub ahead of the queue.\n\nThe video debuted on MTV's Total Request Live at number ten on January 22, 2004, and peaked at number six.\n\nTrack listings\n\nUK CD1\n \"God Is a DJ\" – 3:43\n \"Trouble\" (Hyper Remix edit) – 3:50\n\nUK CD2 \n \"God Is a DJ\" – 3:43\n \"Trouble\" (acoustic version) – 3:01\n \"God Is a DJ\" (D-Bop Vocal Remix) – 6:36\n \"God Is a DJ\" (music video) – 3:59European CD1 \"God Is a DJ\" – 3:43\n \"Trouble\" (acoustic version) – 3:01European CD2 \"God Is a DJ\" – 3:43\n \"Trouble\" (acoustic version) – 3:01\n \"God Is a DJ\" (D-Bop vocal remix) – 6:36\n \"God Is a DJ\" (Spider Remix)\n \"God Is a DJ\" (music video) – 3:59Australian CD \"God Is a DJ\" – 3:43\n \"Trouble\" (acoustic version) – 3:01\n \"God Is a DJ\" (D-Bop vocal remix) – 6:36\n \"God Is a DJ\" (Spider Remix)iTunes EP'''\n \"God Is a DJ\" (Spider Dub)\n \"God Is a DJ\" (D-Bop Remix)\n \"God Is a DJ\" (Spider Remix)\n \"God Is a DJ\" (Electroheadz Remix)\n Remixes from Robbie Rivera (Main Vocal Mix, 6:42 & Juicy After Hour Dub Mix, 6:38) and DJ Hyper (7:25) appear on the \"Last to Know\" single.\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly charts\n\nYear-end charts\n\nRelease history\n\nReferences\n\nSongs about disc jockeys\n2004 singles\nPink (singer) songs\nSongs written by Pink (singer)\nSongs written by Billy Mann\n2003 songs\nArista Records singles\nDance-rock songs\n2003 singles",
"Success-n-Effect was an Atlanta-based hip hop group, known for their controversial 1989 single, \"Roll It Up My Nigga\". The group started out as part of a mixed tape crew named Edward J & the J Team. King Edward J as he is referred to now, is credited as being the original mixed tape king in Atlanta, Georgia. King Edward J is responsible for the first generation of the J Team that included Edward J, Lady DJ, Dangerous D, MC Shy D, DJ Man, DJ Len, and Professor Lazy Rock. The second generation formed after DJ Len and Professor Lazy Rock signed their recording contract, and included King Edward J, DJ Kizzy Rock, MC Jamm, Magic Mark, Playa Poncho, DJ Smurf A.K.A. (Mr. Collipark), Dee Most Def, Erica D, China, DJ Majesty, DJ Dlx, DJ T-Bone, DJ Jaycee (Ludacris' official DJ), and Tre Luv. Success-n-Effect's hit song used extreme racial language but ends on a positive anti-drug, pro-education message. The group is considered one of the more well known early political hip hop groups. DJ Len and Professor Lazy Rock were among its core members. They released two of their three albums on Ichiban Records.\n\nDiscography\n1989: In the Hood\n1991: Back-n-Effect\n1993: Drive-by of Uh Revolutionist\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n Success-n-Effect - \"Roll It Up\" listing at Discogs.com\n\nAmerican hip hop groups\nAmerican musical trios\nSouthern hip hop groups\nMusical groups from Atlanta"
] |
[
"Disc jockey",
"Women DJs",
"What can you tell me about women DJs",
"A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are \"...few women in record production and sound engineering.\" Ncube states that \"[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male,",
"Can you tell me the names of some women Djs",
"Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac.",
"What is the most known DJ",
"I don't know."
] |
C_1762e25366d14047a4e7c4663b4ca92f_0
|
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
| 4 |
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article other than women DJs ?
|
Disc jockey
|
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare. In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field ... is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles." Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJ-ing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent." CANNOTANSWER
|
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs
|
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile DJs (who are hired to work at public and private events such as weddings, parties, or festivals), and turntablists (who use record players, usually turntables, to manipulate sounds on phonograph records). Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.
DJs commonly use audio equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously. This enables them to blend tracks together to create transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs. This can involve aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms and tempos do not clash when played together and to enable a smooth transition from one song to another. DJs often use specialized DJ mixers, small audio mixers with crossfader and cue functions to blend or transition from one song to another. Mixers are also used to pre-listen to sources of recorded music in headphones and adjust upcoming tracks to mix with currently playing music. DJ software can be used with a DJ controller device to mix audio files on a computer instead of a console mixer. DJs may also use a microphone to speak to the audience; effects units such as reverb to create sound effects and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
Role
Originally, the word "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to gramophone records, but now "DJ" is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, or digital audio files stored on USB stick or laptop. DJs typically perform for a live audience in a nightclub or dance club or a TV, radio broadcast audience, or an online radio audience. DJs also create mixes, remixes and tracks that are recorded for later sale and distribution. In hip hop music, DJs may create beats, using percussion breaks, basslines and other musical content sampled from pre-existing records. In hip hop, rappers and MCs use these beats to rap over. Some DJs adopt the title "DJ" as part of their names (e.g., DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Qbert, DJ Shadow and DJ Yoda). Professional DJs often specialize in a specific genre of music, such as techno, house or hip hop music. DJs typically have an extensive knowledge about the music they specialize in. Many DJs are avid music collectors of vintage, rare or obscure tracks and records.
Types
Club DJs
Club DJs, commonly referred as DJs in general, play music at musical events, such as parties at music venues or bars, music festivals, corporate and private events. Typically, club DJs mix music recordings from two or more sources using different mixing techniques to produce non-stopping flow of music.
One key technique used for seamlessly transitioning from one song to another is beatmatching. A DJ who mostly plays and mixes one specific music genre is often given the title of that genre; for example, a DJ who plays hip hop music is called a hip hop DJ, a DJ who plays house music is a house DJ, a DJ who plays techno is called a techno DJ, and so on.
The quality of a DJ performance (often called a DJ mix or DJ set) consists of two main features: technical skills, or how well the DJ can operate the equipment and produce smooth transitions between two or more recordings and a playlist; and the ability of a DJ to select the most suitable recordings, also known as "reading the crowd".
Hip hop DJs
DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa were members of a block party at South Bronx. Kool Herc played records such as James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose", Jimmy Castor's "It's Just Begun", Booker T. & the M.G.'s' "Melting Pot", Incredible Bongo Band's "Bongo Rock" and "Apache", and UK rock band Babe Ruth's "The Mexican". With Bronx clubs struggling with street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to a demographic distinct from teenagers in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience.
DJ Kool Herc developed the style that was the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc used the record to focus on a short, heavily percussive part in it: the "break". Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated the break and prolonged it by changing between two record players. As one record reached the end of the break, he cued a second record back to the beginning of the break, which allowed him to extend a relatively short section of music into a "five-minute loop of fury". This innovation had its roots in what Herc called "The Merry-Go-Round", a technique by which the deejay switched from break to break at the height of the party. This technique is specifically called "The Merry-Go-Round" because according to Herc, it takes one "back and forth with no slack."
Radio DJs
Radio DJs or radio personalities introduce and play music broadcast on AM, FM, digital or Internet radio stations.
Dancehall/reggae deejays
In Jamaican music, a deejay (DJ) is a reggae or dancehall musician who sings and "toasts" (raps) to an instrumental riddim. Deejays are not to be confused with DJs from other music genres like hip hop, where they select and play music. Dancehall/reggae DJs who select riddims to play are called selectors. Deejays whose style is nearer to singing are sometimes called singjays.
The term deejay originated in the 1960s and 1970s when performers such as U-Roy or King Stitt toasted over the instrumental (dub music) versions of popular records. These versions were often released on the flip side to the song's 45 record. This gave the deejays the chance to create on-the-fly lyrics to the music. Big Youth, and I Roy were famous deejays in Jamaica.
Turntablists
Turntablists, also called battle DJs, use turntables and DJ mixer to manipulate recorded sounds to produce new music. In essence, they use DJ equipment as a musical instrument. Perhaps the best known turntablist technique is scratching. Turntablists often participate in DJ contests like DMC World DJ Championships and Red Bull 3Style.
Residents
A resident DJ performs at a venue on a regular basis or permanently. They would perform regularly (typically under an agreement) in a particular discotheque, a particular club, a particular event, or a particular broadcasting station. Residents have a decisive influence on the club or a series of events. Per agreement with the management or company, the DJ would have to perform under agreed times and dates. Typically, DJs perform as residents for two or three times in a week, for example, on Friday and Saturday. DJs who make a steady income from a venue are also considered resident DJs.
Examples for resident DJs are:
Alfredo Fiorito, Richie Hawtin, Sven Väth — Amnesia, Ibiza, Spain
Martin Garrix — Hï Ibiza, Ibiza, Spain
Larry Levan — Paradise Garage, New York City, USA
David Mancuso — The Loft, New York City
Tiësto, Deadmau5, Calvin Harris — Hakkasan, Las Vegas, USA
Kaskade — Encore Beach Club, Las Vegas, USA
Dom Chung — UK
Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann, Tama Sumo — Berghain, Berlin, Germany
Fish Go Deep — Cork, Ireland
Djsky — Ghana, West Africa
Other types
Mobile DJs — DJs with their own portable audio sound systems who specialize in performing at gatherings such as block parties, street fairs, taverns, weddings, birthdays, school and corporate events. Mobile DJs may also offer lighting packages and video systems.
Producer DJs — DJs who create remixes of popular club hits, completely original tracks, or transition friendly versions of tracks which extend the start and end of a song. Producer DJ often have their work featured on online DJ record pools.
DJanes — a term describing female DJs used in countries such as Germany that employ grammatical gender in their languages.
Celebrity DJs — widely known celebrities performing as DJs.
Bedroom DJs — a general term for DJs performing at home, usually recording their sets and posting them online.
Equipment
DJs use equipment that enables them to play multiple sources of recorded music and mix them to create seamless transitions and unique arrangements of songs. An important tool for DJs is the specialized DJ mixer, a small audio mixer with a crossfader and cue functions. The crossfader enables the DJ to blend or transition from one song to another. The cue knobs or switches allow the DJ to "listen" to a source of recorded music in headphones before playing it for the live club or broadcast audience. Previewing the music in headphones helps the DJ pick the next track they want to play, cue up the track to the desired starting location, and align the two tracks' beats in traditional situations where auto sync technology is not being used. This process ensures that the selected song will mix well with the currently playing music. DJs may align the beats of the music sources so their rhythms do not clash when they are played together to help create a smooth transition from one song to another. Other equipment may include a microphone, effects units such as reverb, and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
As music technology has progressed, DJs have adopted different types of equipment to play and mix music, all of which are still commonly used. Traditionally, DJs used two turntables plugged into a DJ mixer to mix music on vinyl records. As compact discs became popular media for publishing music, specialized high quality CD players known as CDJs were developed for DJs. CDJs can take the place of turntables or be used together with turntables. Many CDJs can now play digital music files from USB flash drives or SD cards in addition to CDs. With the spread of portable laptop, tablet, and smartphone computers, DJs began using software together with specialized sound cards and DJ controller hardware. DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer or be used instead of a hardware mixer.
Turntables
Turntables allow DJs to play vinyl records. By adjusting the playback speed of the turntable, either by adjusting the speed knob, or by manipulating the platter (e.g., by slowing down the platter by putting a finger gently along the side), DJs can match the tempos of different records so their rhythms can be played together at the same time without clashing or make a smooth, seamless transition from one song to another. This technique is known as beatmatching. DJs typically replace the rubber mat on turntables that keeps the record moving in sync with the turntable with a slipmat that facilitates manipulating the playback of the record by hand. With the slipmat, the DJ can stop or slow down the record while the turntable is still spinning. Direct-drive turntables are the type preferred by DJs. Belt-drive turntables are less expensive, but they are not suitable for turntablism and DJing, because the belt-drive motor can be damaged by this type of manipulation. Some DJs, most commonly those who play hip hop music, go beyond merely mixing records and use turntables as musical instruments for scratching, beat juggling, and other turntablism techniques.
CDJs/media players
CDJs / media players are high quality digital media players made for DJing. They often have large jog wheels and pitch controls to allow DJs to manipulate the playback of digital files for beatmatching similar to how DJs manipulate vinyl records on turntables. CDJs often have features such as loops and waveform displays similar to DJ software. Originally designed to play music from compact discs, they now can play digital music files stored on USB flash drives and SD cards. Some CDJs can also connect to a computer running DJ software to act as a DJ controller. Modern media players have the ability to stream music from online music providers such as Beatport, Beatsource, Tidal and Soundcloud GO.
DJ mixers
DJ mixers are small audio mixing consoles specialized for DJing. Most DJ mixers have far fewer channels than a mixer used by a record producer or audio engineer; whereas standard live sound mixers in small venues have 12 to 24 channels, and standard recording studio mixers have even more (as many as 72 on large boards), basic DJ mixers may have only two channels. While DJ mixers have many of the same features found on larger mixers (faders, equalization knobs, gain knobs, effects units, etc.), DJ mixers have a feature that is usually only found on DJ mixers: the crossfader. The crossfader is a type of fader that is mounted horizontally. DJs used the crossfader to mix two or more sound sources. The midpoint of the crossfader's travel is a 50/50 mix of the two channels (on a two channel mixer). The far left side of the crossfader provides only the channel A sound source. The far right side provides only the channel B sound source (e.g., record player number 2). Positions in between the two extremes provide different mixes of the two channels. Some DJs use a computer with DJ software and a DJ controller instead of an analog DJ mixer to mix music, although DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer.
Headphones
DJs generally use higher quality headphones than those designed for music consumers. DJ headphones have other properties useful for DJs, such as designs that acoustically isolate the sounds of the headphones from the outside environment (hard shell headphones), flexible headbands and pivot joints to allow DJs to listen to one side of the headphones, while turning the other headphone away (so they can monitor the mix in the club), and replaceable cables. Replaceable cables enables DJs to buy new cables if a cable becomes frayed, worn, or damaged, or if a cable is accidentally cut.
Closed-back headphones are highly recommended for DJs to block outside noise as the environment of DJ usually tend to be very noisy. Standard headphones have 3.5mm jack but DJ equipment usually requires ¼ inch jack. Most of specialized DJ Headphones have an adapter to switch between 3.5mm jack and ¼ inch jack. Detachable coiled cables are perfect for DJ Headphones.
Software
DJs have changed their equipment as new technologies are introduced. The earliest DJs in pop music, in 1970s discos, used record turntables, vinyl records and audio consoles. In the 1970s, DJs would have to lug heavy direct drive turntables and crates of records to clubs and shows. In the 1980s, many DJs transitioned to compact cassettes. In the 1990s and 2000s, many DJs switched to using digital audio such as CDs and MP3 files. As technological advances made it practical to store large collections of digital music files on a laptop computer, DJ software was developed so DJs could use a laptop as a source of music instead of transporting CDs or vinyl records to gigs. Unlike most music player software designed for regular consumers, DJ software can play at least two audio files simultaneously, display the waveforms of the files on screen and enable the DJ to listen to either source.
The waveforms allow the DJ see what is coming next in the music and how the playback of different files is aligned. The software analyzes music files to identify their tempo and where the beats are. The analyzed information can be used by the DJ to help manually beatmatch like with vinyl records or the software can automatically synchronize the beats. Digital signal processing algorithms in software allow DJs to adjust the tempo of recordings independently of their pitch (and musical key, a feature known as "keylock". Some software analyzes the loudness of the music for automatic normalization with ReplayGain and detects the musical key. Additionally, DJ software can store cue points, set loops, and apply effects.
As tablet computers and smartphones became widespread, DJ software was written to run on these devices in addition to laptops.
DJ software requires specialized hardware in addition to a computer to fully take advantage of its features. The consumer grade, regular sound card integrated into most computer motherboards can only output two channels (one stereo pair). However, DJs need to be able to output at least four channels (two stereo pairs, thus Left and Right for input 1 and Left and Right for input 2), either unmixed signals to send to a DJ mixer or a main output plus a headphone output. Additionally, DJ sound cards output higher quality signals than the sound cards built into consumer-grade computer motherboards.
Timecode
Special vinyl records (or CDs/digital files played with CDJs) can be used with DJ software to play digital music files with DJ software as if they were pressed onto vinyl, allowing turntablism techniques to be used with digital files. These vinyl records do not have music recordings pressed on to them. Instead, they are pressed with a special signal, referred to as "timecode", to control DJ software. The DJ software interprets changes in the playback speed, direction, and position of the timecode signal and manipulates the digital files it is playing in the same way that the turntable manipulates the timecode record.
This requires a specialized DJ sound card with at least 4 channels (2 stereo pairs) of inputs and outputs. With this setup, the DJ software typically outputs unmixed signals from the music files to an external hardware DJ mixer. Some DJ mixers have integrated USB sound cards that allow DJ software to connect directly to the mixer without requiring a separate sound card.
DJ controllers
A DJ software can be used to mix audio files on the computer instead of a separate hardware mixer. When mixing on a computer, DJs often use a DJ controller device that mimics the layout of two turntables plus a DJ mixer to control the software rather than the computer keyboard & touchpad on a laptop, or the touchscreen on a tablet computer or smartphone. Many DJ controllers have an integrated sound card with 4 output channels (2 stereo pairs) that allows the DJ to use headphones to preview music before playing it on the main output.
Other equipment
A microphone, so that the DJ can introduce songs and speak to the audience over the sound system.
Electronic effects units such as delay, reverb, octave, equalizer, chorus, etc.
Multi-stylus head shells, which allow a DJ to play different grooves of the same record at the same time.
Samplers, sequencers, electronic musical keyboards (synthesizers), effects pedals (effects unit) or drum machines.
PA system or sound reinforcement system (power amplifiers and speaker enclosures), typically including subwoofer cabinets for deep bass (or, if a DJ is broadcasting and/or recording a set, broadcasting equipment or recording gear)
Monitor speakers, for listening to the "house mix" that is playing over the main speakers
Techniques
Several techniques are used by DJs as a means to better mix and blend recorded music. These techniques primarily include the cueing, equalization and audio mixing of two or more sound sources. The complexity and frequency of special techniques depends largely on the setting in which a DJ is working. Radio DJs are less likely to focus on advanced music-mixing procedures than club DJs, who rely on a smooth transition between songs using a range of techniques. However, some radio DJs are experienced club DJs, so they use the same sophisticated mixing techniques.
Club DJ turntable techniques include beatmatching, phrasing and slip-cueing to preserve energy on a dance floor. Turntablism embodies the art of cutting, beat juggling, scratching, needle drops, phase shifting, back spinning and more to perform the transitions and overdubs of samples in a more creative manner (although turntablism is often considered a use of the turntable as a musical instrument rather than a tool for blending recorded music). Professional DJs may use harmonic mixing to choose songs that are in compatible musical keys. Other techniques include chopping, screwing and looping.
Recent advances in technology in both DJ hardware and software can provide assisted or automatic completion of some traditional DJ techniques and skills. Examples include phrasing and beatmatching, which can be partially or completely automated by using DJ software that performs automatic synchronization of sound recordings, a feature commonly labelled "sync". Most DJ mixers now include a beat-counter which analyzes the tempo of an incoming sound source and displays its tempo in beats per minute (BPM), which may assist with beatmatching analog sound sources.
In the past, being a DJ has largely been a self-taught craft but with the complexities of new technologies and the convergence with music production methods, there are a growing number of schools and organizations that offer instruction on the techniques.
Miming
In DJ culture, miming refers to the practice of DJ's pantomiming the actions of live-mixing a set on stage while a pre-recorded mix plays over the sound system. Miming mixing in a live performance is considered to be controversial within DJ culture. Some within the DJ community say that miming is increasingly used as a technique by celebrity model DJs who may lack mixing skills, but can draw big crowds to a venue.
During a DJ tour for the release of the French group Justice's A Cross the Universe in November 2008, controversy arose when a photograph of Augé DJing with an unplugged Akai MPD24 surfaced. The photograph sparked accusations that Justice's live sets were faked. Augé has since said that the equipment was unplugged very briefly before being reattached and the band put a three-photo set of the incident on their MySpace page. After a 2013 Disclosure concert, the duo was criticized for pretending to live mix to a playback of a pre-recorded track. Disclosure's Guy Lawrence said they did not deliberately intend to mislead their audience, and cited miming by other DJs such as David Guetta.
History
The term "disc jockey" was ostensibly coined by radio gossip commentator Walter Winchell in 1935, and the phrase first appeared in print in a 1941 Variety magazine, used to describe radio personalities who introduced phonograph records on the air. Playing recorded music for dancing and parties rose with the mass marketing of home phonographs in the late 19th century. British radio disc jockey Jimmy Savile hosted his first live dance party in 1943 using a single turntable and a makeshift sound system. Four years later, Savile began using two turntables welded together to form a single DJ console. In 1947, the Whiskey A Go-Go opened in Paris as the first discotheque. In the 1960s, Rudy Bozak began making the first DJ mixers, mixing consoles specialized for DJing.
In the late 1960s to early 1970s Jamaican sound system culture, producer and sound system operator (DJ), (Jamaican) King Tubby and producer Lee "Scratch" Perry were pioneers of the genre known as dub music. They experimented with tape-based composition; emphasized repetitive rhythmic structures (often stripped of their harmonic elements); electronically manipulated spatiality; sonically manipulated pre-recorded musical materials from mass media; and remixed music among other innovative techniques. It is widely known that the Jamaican dancehall culture has had and continues to have a significant impact on the American hip hop culture.
DJ turntablism has origins in the invention of direct-drive turntables. Early belt-drive turntables were unsuitable for turntablism and mixing, since they had a slow start-up time, and they were prone to wear-and-tear and breakage, as the belt would break from backspinning or scratching. The first direct-drive turntable was invented by engineer Shuichi Obata at Matsushita (now Panasonic), based in Osaka, Japan. It eliminated belts, and instead employed a motor to directly drive a platter on which a vinyl record rests. In 1969, Matsushita released it as the SP-10, the first direct-drive turntable on the market, and the first in their influential Technics series of turntables.
In 1972, Technics started making their SL-1200 turntable, featuring high torque direct drive design. The SL-1200 had a rapid start and its durable direct drive enabled DJs to manipulate the platter, as with scratching techniques. Hip hop DJs began using the Technics SL-1200s as musical instruments to manipulate records with turntablism techniques such as scratching and beat juggling rather than merely mixing records. These techniques were developed in the 1970s by DJ Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Afrika Bambaataa, as they experimented with Technics direct-drive decks, finding that the motor would continue to spin at the correct RPM even if the DJ wiggled the record back and forth on the platter.
In 1980, Japanese company Roland released the TR-808, an analog rhythm/drum machine, which has unique artificial sounds, such as its booming bass and sharp snare, and a metronome-like rhythm. Yellow Magic Orchestra's use of the instrument in 1980 influenced hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, after which the TR-808 would be widely adopted by hip hop DJs, with 808 sounds remaining central to hip-hop music ever since. The Roland TB-303, a bass synthesizer released in 1981, had a similar impact on electronic dance music genres such as techno and house music, along with Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines.
In 1982, the Compact Disc (CD) format was released, popularizing digital audio. In 1998, the first MP3 digital audio player, the Eiger Labs MPMan F10, was introduced. In January of that same year at the BeOS Developer Conference, N2IT demonstrated FinalScratch, the first digital DJ system to allow DJs control of MP3 files through special time-coded vinyl records or CDs. While it would take some time for this novel concept to catch on with the "die-hard Vinyl DJs," this would become the first step in the Digital DJ revolution. Manufacturers joined with computer DJing pioneers to offer professional endorsements, the first being Professor Jam (a.k.a. William P. Rader), who went on to develop the industry's first dedicated computer DJ convention and learning program, the "CPS (Computerized Performance System) DJ Summit", to help spread the word about the advantages of this emerging technology.
In 2001, Pioneer DJ began producing the CDJ-1000 CD player, making the use of digital music recordings with traditional DJ techniques practical for the first time. As the 2000s progressed, laptop computers became more powerful and affordable. DJ software, specialized DJ sound cards, and DJ controllers were developed for DJs to use laptops as a source of music rather than turntables or CDJs. In the 2010s, like laptops before them, tablet computers and smartphones became more powerful & affordable. DJ software was written to run on these more portable devices instead of laptops, although laptops remain the more common type of computer for DJing.
Female DJs
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare.
In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field … is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles."
Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. Two years later, another article brings out a list with world-famous female DJs including Nastia, tINY, Nora En Pure, Anja Schneider, Peggy Gou, Maya Jane Coles, and Eli & Fur.
Female DJ The Black Madonna has been called "one of the world’s most exciting turntablists." Her stage name The Black Madonna is a tribute to her mother's favorite Catholic saint. In 2018, The Black Madonna played herself as an in-residence DJ for the video game Grand Theft Auto Online, as part of the After Hours DLC.
There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent."
In Japan, the newest Bushiroad franchise: D4DJ focuses all-female DJ unit.
Health
The risk of DJs working in nightclubs with loud music includes noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus. Nightclubs constantly exceed safe levels of noise exposure with average sound levels ranging from 93.2 to 109.7 dB. Constant music exposure creates temporary and permanent auditory dysfunction for professional DJs with average levels at 96dB being above the recommended level, at which ear protection is mandatory for industry. Three quarters of DJs have tinnitus and are at risk of tenosynovitis in the wrists and other limbs. Tenosynovitis results from staying in the same position over multiple gigs for scratching motion and cueing, this would be related to a repetitive strain injury. Gigs can last 4-5 hours in nightlife and the hospitality industry, as a result there are potential complications of prolonged standing which include slouching, varicose veins, cardiovascular disorders, joint compression, and muscle fatigue. This is common for other staff to experience as well including bartenders and security staff for example.
In film
Berlin Calling – a German film about fictional DJ and producer Ickarus (Paul Kalkbrenner), who is struggling with drug abuse
Speaking in Code – an American documentary film about techno artists Modeselektor, Wighnomy Brothers, Philip Sherburne, Monolake and David Day
Kvadrat – a French and Russian documentary film about the realities of techno DJing, using the example of DJ Andrey Pushkarev
It's All Gone Pete Tong – a fictional mockumentary British movie about Frankie Wilde, a DJ who gradually becomes deaf due to drug abuse and an unhealthy lifestyle
We Are Your Friends – an American fiction film about a college DJ trying to make it in the DJing scene with "one hit song", starring Zac Efron
Scratch – a documentary about the hip-hop DJ and the 2000-era turntablist movement
Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou – a Japanese anime, originally a manga, about a fictional character named Agetarou who aspires to be a DJ master with the help of his friends and mentor, Big Master Fry.
24 Hour Party People – about the UK music scene from the late 1970s to the "Madchester" scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Human Traffic – about early UK rave counter-culture featuring music and performances by celebrated DJs Fatboy Slim, CJ Bolland, Carl Cox, and Mad Doctor X.
Turn Up Charlie – a 2019 series about a struggling DJ, played by Idris Elba, who is also a bachelor trying to make it again after a one hit back in the 1990s
Avicii: True Stories – a documentary film about Avicii
See also
Digital DJ licensing
List of club DJs
List of music software#DJ software
Live PA
DJ mix
Record collecting
Spelling of disc
Stage lighting
VJ (media personality)
References
Notes
Assef, Claudia (2000). Todo DJ Já Sambou: A História do Disc-Jóquei no Brasil. São Paulo: Conrad Editora do Brasil. .
Brewster, Bill, and Frank Broughton (2000). Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. New York: Grove Press. (North American edition). London: Headline. (UK edition).
Broughton, Frank, and Bill Brewster. How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records. New York: Grove Press, 2003.
Graudins, Charles A. How to Be a DJ. Boston: Course Technology PTR, 2004.
Lawrence, Tim (2004). Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 . Duke University Press. .
Miller, Paul D. a.k.a. DJ Spooky, Sound Unbound: Writings on DJ Culture and Electronic Music, MIT Press 2008. .
Poschardt, Ulf (1998). DJ Culture. London: Quartet Books. .
Zemon, Stacy. The Mobile DJ Handbook: How to Start & Run a Profitable Mobile Disc Jockey Service, Second Edition. St. Louis: Focal Press, 2002.
External links
Audio mixing
Broadcasting occupations
Disco
Mass media occupations
Occupations in music
Hip hop production
Turntablism
Underground culture
Electronic dance music
1930s neologisms
Articles containing video clips
| true |
[
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
] |
[
"Disc jockey",
"Women DJs",
"What can you tell me about women DJs",
"A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are \"...few women in record production and sound engineering.\" Ncube states that \"[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male,",
"Can you tell me the names of some women Djs",
"Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac.",
"What is the most known DJ",
"I don't know.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs"
] |
C_1762e25366d14047a4e7c4663b4ca92f_0
|
Why are there fewer women DJs
| 5 |
Why are there fewer women DJs in Disk jockey?
|
Disc jockey
|
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare. In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field ... is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles." Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJ-ing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent." CANNOTANSWER
|
Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs.
|
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile DJs (who are hired to work at public and private events such as weddings, parties, or festivals), and turntablists (who use record players, usually turntables, to manipulate sounds on phonograph records). Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.
DJs commonly use audio equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously. This enables them to blend tracks together to create transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs. This can involve aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms and tempos do not clash when played together and to enable a smooth transition from one song to another. DJs often use specialized DJ mixers, small audio mixers with crossfader and cue functions to blend or transition from one song to another. Mixers are also used to pre-listen to sources of recorded music in headphones and adjust upcoming tracks to mix with currently playing music. DJ software can be used with a DJ controller device to mix audio files on a computer instead of a console mixer. DJs may also use a microphone to speak to the audience; effects units such as reverb to create sound effects and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
Role
Originally, the word "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to gramophone records, but now "DJ" is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, or digital audio files stored on USB stick or laptop. DJs typically perform for a live audience in a nightclub or dance club or a TV, radio broadcast audience, or an online radio audience. DJs also create mixes, remixes and tracks that are recorded for later sale and distribution. In hip hop music, DJs may create beats, using percussion breaks, basslines and other musical content sampled from pre-existing records. In hip hop, rappers and MCs use these beats to rap over. Some DJs adopt the title "DJ" as part of their names (e.g., DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Qbert, DJ Shadow and DJ Yoda). Professional DJs often specialize in a specific genre of music, such as techno, house or hip hop music. DJs typically have an extensive knowledge about the music they specialize in. Many DJs are avid music collectors of vintage, rare or obscure tracks and records.
Types
Club DJs
Club DJs, commonly referred as DJs in general, play music at musical events, such as parties at music venues or bars, music festivals, corporate and private events. Typically, club DJs mix music recordings from two or more sources using different mixing techniques to produce non-stopping flow of music.
One key technique used for seamlessly transitioning from one song to another is beatmatching. A DJ who mostly plays and mixes one specific music genre is often given the title of that genre; for example, a DJ who plays hip hop music is called a hip hop DJ, a DJ who plays house music is a house DJ, a DJ who plays techno is called a techno DJ, and so on.
The quality of a DJ performance (often called a DJ mix or DJ set) consists of two main features: technical skills, or how well the DJ can operate the equipment and produce smooth transitions between two or more recordings and a playlist; and the ability of a DJ to select the most suitable recordings, also known as "reading the crowd".
Hip hop DJs
DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa were members of a block party at South Bronx. Kool Herc played records such as James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose", Jimmy Castor's "It's Just Begun", Booker T. & the M.G.'s' "Melting Pot", Incredible Bongo Band's "Bongo Rock" and "Apache", and UK rock band Babe Ruth's "The Mexican". With Bronx clubs struggling with street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to a demographic distinct from teenagers in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience.
DJ Kool Herc developed the style that was the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc used the record to focus on a short, heavily percussive part in it: the "break". Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated the break and prolonged it by changing between two record players. As one record reached the end of the break, he cued a second record back to the beginning of the break, which allowed him to extend a relatively short section of music into a "five-minute loop of fury". This innovation had its roots in what Herc called "The Merry-Go-Round", a technique by which the deejay switched from break to break at the height of the party. This technique is specifically called "The Merry-Go-Round" because according to Herc, it takes one "back and forth with no slack."
Radio DJs
Radio DJs or radio personalities introduce and play music broadcast on AM, FM, digital or Internet radio stations.
Dancehall/reggae deejays
In Jamaican music, a deejay (DJ) is a reggae or dancehall musician who sings and "toasts" (raps) to an instrumental riddim. Deejays are not to be confused with DJs from other music genres like hip hop, where they select and play music. Dancehall/reggae DJs who select riddims to play are called selectors. Deejays whose style is nearer to singing are sometimes called singjays.
The term deejay originated in the 1960s and 1970s when performers such as U-Roy or King Stitt toasted over the instrumental (dub music) versions of popular records. These versions were often released on the flip side to the song's 45 record. This gave the deejays the chance to create on-the-fly lyrics to the music. Big Youth, and I Roy were famous deejays in Jamaica.
Turntablists
Turntablists, also called battle DJs, use turntables and DJ mixer to manipulate recorded sounds to produce new music. In essence, they use DJ equipment as a musical instrument. Perhaps the best known turntablist technique is scratching. Turntablists often participate in DJ contests like DMC World DJ Championships and Red Bull 3Style.
Residents
A resident DJ performs at a venue on a regular basis or permanently. They would perform regularly (typically under an agreement) in a particular discotheque, a particular club, a particular event, or a particular broadcasting station. Residents have a decisive influence on the club or a series of events. Per agreement with the management or company, the DJ would have to perform under agreed times and dates. Typically, DJs perform as residents for two or three times in a week, for example, on Friday and Saturday. DJs who make a steady income from a venue are also considered resident DJs.
Examples for resident DJs are:
Alfredo Fiorito, Richie Hawtin, Sven Väth — Amnesia, Ibiza, Spain
Martin Garrix — Hï Ibiza, Ibiza, Spain
Larry Levan — Paradise Garage, New York City, USA
David Mancuso — The Loft, New York City
Tiësto, Deadmau5, Calvin Harris — Hakkasan, Las Vegas, USA
Kaskade — Encore Beach Club, Las Vegas, USA
Dom Chung — UK
Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann, Tama Sumo — Berghain, Berlin, Germany
Fish Go Deep — Cork, Ireland
Djsky — Ghana, West Africa
Other types
Mobile DJs — DJs with their own portable audio sound systems who specialize in performing at gatherings such as block parties, street fairs, taverns, weddings, birthdays, school and corporate events. Mobile DJs may also offer lighting packages and video systems.
Producer DJs — DJs who create remixes of popular club hits, completely original tracks, or transition friendly versions of tracks which extend the start and end of a song. Producer DJ often have their work featured on online DJ record pools.
DJanes — a term describing female DJs used in countries such as Germany that employ grammatical gender in their languages.
Celebrity DJs — widely known celebrities performing as DJs.
Bedroom DJs — a general term for DJs performing at home, usually recording their sets and posting them online.
Equipment
DJs use equipment that enables them to play multiple sources of recorded music and mix them to create seamless transitions and unique arrangements of songs. An important tool for DJs is the specialized DJ mixer, a small audio mixer with a crossfader and cue functions. The crossfader enables the DJ to blend or transition from one song to another. The cue knobs or switches allow the DJ to "listen" to a source of recorded music in headphones before playing it for the live club or broadcast audience. Previewing the music in headphones helps the DJ pick the next track they want to play, cue up the track to the desired starting location, and align the two tracks' beats in traditional situations where auto sync technology is not being used. This process ensures that the selected song will mix well with the currently playing music. DJs may align the beats of the music sources so their rhythms do not clash when they are played together to help create a smooth transition from one song to another. Other equipment may include a microphone, effects units such as reverb, and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
As music technology has progressed, DJs have adopted different types of equipment to play and mix music, all of which are still commonly used. Traditionally, DJs used two turntables plugged into a DJ mixer to mix music on vinyl records. As compact discs became popular media for publishing music, specialized high quality CD players known as CDJs were developed for DJs. CDJs can take the place of turntables or be used together with turntables. Many CDJs can now play digital music files from USB flash drives or SD cards in addition to CDs. With the spread of portable laptop, tablet, and smartphone computers, DJs began using software together with specialized sound cards and DJ controller hardware. DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer or be used instead of a hardware mixer.
Turntables
Turntables allow DJs to play vinyl records. By adjusting the playback speed of the turntable, either by adjusting the speed knob, or by manipulating the platter (e.g., by slowing down the platter by putting a finger gently along the side), DJs can match the tempos of different records so their rhythms can be played together at the same time without clashing or make a smooth, seamless transition from one song to another. This technique is known as beatmatching. DJs typically replace the rubber mat on turntables that keeps the record moving in sync with the turntable with a slipmat that facilitates manipulating the playback of the record by hand. With the slipmat, the DJ can stop or slow down the record while the turntable is still spinning. Direct-drive turntables are the type preferred by DJs. Belt-drive turntables are less expensive, but they are not suitable for turntablism and DJing, because the belt-drive motor can be damaged by this type of manipulation. Some DJs, most commonly those who play hip hop music, go beyond merely mixing records and use turntables as musical instruments for scratching, beat juggling, and other turntablism techniques.
CDJs/media players
CDJs / media players are high quality digital media players made for DJing. They often have large jog wheels and pitch controls to allow DJs to manipulate the playback of digital files for beatmatching similar to how DJs manipulate vinyl records on turntables. CDJs often have features such as loops and waveform displays similar to DJ software. Originally designed to play music from compact discs, they now can play digital music files stored on USB flash drives and SD cards. Some CDJs can also connect to a computer running DJ software to act as a DJ controller. Modern media players have the ability to stream music from online music providers such as Beatport, Beatsource, Tidal and Soundcloud GO.
DJ mixers
DJ mixers are small audio mixing consoles specialized for DJing. Most DJ mixers have far fewer channels than a mixer used by a record producer or audio engineer; whereas standard live sound mixers in small venues have 12 to 24 channels, and standard recording studio mixers have even more (as many as 72 on large boards), basic DJ mixers may have only two channels. While DJ mixers have many of the same features found on larger mixers (faders, equalization knobs, gain knobs, effects units, etc.), DJ mixers have a feature that is usually only found on DJ mixers: the crossfader. The crossfader is a type of fader that is mounted horizontally. DJs used the crossfader to mix two or more sound sources. The midpoint of the crossfader's travel is a 50/50 mix of the two channels (on a two channel mixer). The far left side of the crossfader provides only the channel A sound source. The far right side provides only the channel B sound source (e.g., record player number 2). Positions in between the two extremes provide different mixes of the two channels. Some DJs use a computer with DJ software and a DJ controller instead of an analog DJ mixer to mix music, although DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer.
Headphones
DJs generally use higher quality headphones than those designed for music consumers. DJ headphones have other properties useful for DJs, such as designs that acoustically isolate the sounds of the headphones from the outside environment (hard shell headphones), flexible headbands and pivot joints to allow DJs to listen to one side of the headphones, while turning the other headphone away (so they can monitor the mix in the club), and replaceable cables. Replaceable cables enables DJs to buy new cables if a cable becomes frayed, worn, or damaged, or if a cable is accidentally cut.
Closed-back headphones are highly recommended for DJs to block outside noise as the environment of DJ usually tend to be very noisy. Standard headphones have 3.5mm jack but DJ equipment usually requires ¼ inch jack. Most of specialized DJ Headphones have an adapter to switch between 3.5mm jack and ¼ inch jack. Detachable coiled cables are perfect for DJ Headphones.
Software
DJs have changed their equipment as new technologies are introduced. The earliest DJs in pop music, in 1970s discos, used record turntables, vinyl records and audio consoles. In the 1970s, DJs would have to lug heavy direct drive turntables and crates of records to clubs and shows. In the 1980s, many DJs transitioned to compact cassettes. In the 1990s and 2000s, many DJs switched to using digital audio such as CDs and MP3 files. As technological advances made it practical to store large collections of digital music files on a laptop computer, DJ software was developed so DJs could use a laptop as a source of music instead of transporting CDs or vinyl records to gigs. Unlike most music player software designed for regular consumers, DJ software can play at least two audio files simultaneously, display the waveforms of the files on screen and enable the DJ to listen to either source.
The waveforms allow the DJ see what is coming next in the music and how the playback of different files is aligned. The software analyzes music files to identify their tempo and where the beats are. The analyzed information can be used by the DJ to help manually beatmatch like with vinyl records or the software can automatically synchronize the beats. Digital signal processing algorithms in software allow DJs to adjust the tempo of recordings independently of their pitch (and musical key, a feature known as "keylock". Some software analyzes the loudness of the music for automatic normalization with ReplayGain and detects the musical key. Additionally, DJ software can store cue points, set loops, and apply effects.
As tablet computers and smartphones became widespread, DJ software was written to run on these devices in addition to laptops.
DJ software requires specialized hardware in addition to a computer to fully take advantage of its features. The consumer grade, regular sound card integrated into most computer motherboards can only output two channels (one stereo pair). However, DJs need to be able to output at least four channels (two stereo pairs, thus Left and Right for input 1 and Left and Right for input 2), either unmixed signals to send to a DJ mixer or a main output plus a headphone output. Additionally, DJ sound cards output higher quality signals than the sound cards built into consumer-grade computer motherboards.
Timecode
Special vinyl records (or CDs/digital files played with CDJs) can be used with DJ software to play digital music files with DJ software as if they were pressed onto vinyl, allowing turntablism techniques to be used with digital files. These vinyl records do not have music recordings pressed on to them. Instead, they are pressed with a special signal, referred to as "timecode", to control DJ software. The DJ software interprets changes in the playback speed, direction, and position of the timecode signal and manipulates the digital files it is playing in the same way that the turntable manipulates the timecode record.
This requires a specialized DJ sound card with at least 4 channels (2 stereo pairs) of inputs and outputs. With this setup, the DJ software typically outputs unmixed signals from the music files to an external hardware DJ mixer. Some DJ mixers have integrated USB sound cards that allow DJ software to connect directly to the mixer without requiring a separate sound card.
DJ controllers
A DJ software can be used to mix audio files on the computer instead of a separate hardware mixer. When mixing on a computer, DJs often use a DJ controller device that mimics the layout of two turntables plus a DJ mixer to control the software rather than the computer keyboard & touchpad on a laptop, or the touchscreen on a tablet computer or smartphone. Many DJ controllers have an integrated sound card with 4 output channels (2 stereo pairs) that allows the DJ to use headphones to preview music before playing it on the main output.
Other equipment
A microphone, so that the DJ can introduce songs and speak to the audience over the sound system.
Electronic effects units such as delay, reverb, octave, equalizer, chorus, etc.
Multi-stylus head shells, which allow a DJ to play different grooves of the same record at the same time.
Samplers, sequencers, electronic musical keyboards (synthesizers), effects pedals (effects unit) or drum machines.
PA system or sound reinforcement system (power amplifiers and speaker enclosures), typically including subwoofer cabinets for deep bass (or, if a DJ is broadcasting and/or recording a set, broadcasting equipment or recording gear)
Monitor speakers, for listening to the "house mix" that is playing over the main speakers
Techniques
Several techniques are used by DJs as a means to better mix and blend recorded music. These techniques primarily include the cueing, equalization and audio mixing of two or more sound sources. The complexity and frequency of special techniques depends largely on the setting in which a DJ is working. Radio DJs are less likely to focus on advanced music-mixing procedures than club DJs, who rely on a smooth transition between songs using a range of techniques. However, some radio DJs are experienced club DJs, so they use the same sophisticated mixing techniques.
Club DJ turntable techniques include beatmatching, phrasing and slip-cueing to preserve energy on a dance floor. Turntablism embodies the art of cutting, beat juggling, scratching, needle drops, phase shifting, back spinning and more to perform the transitions and overdubs of samples in a more creative manner (although turntablism is often considered a use of the turntable as a musical instrument rather than a tool for blending recorded music). Professional DJs may use harmonic mixing to choose songs that are in compatible musical keys. Other techniques include chopping, screwing and looping.
Recent advances in technology in both DJ hardware and software can provide assisted or automatic completion of some traditional DJ techniques and skills. Examples include phrasing and beatmatching, which can be partially or completely automated by using DJ software that performs automatic synchronization of sound recordings, a feature commonly labelled "sync". Most DJ mixers now include a beat-counter which analyzes the tempo of an incoming sound source and displays its tempo in beats per minute (BPM), which may assist with beatmatching analog sound sources.
In the past, being a DJ has largely been a self-taught craft but with the complexities of new technologies and the convergence with music production methods, there are a growing number of schools and organizations that offer instruction on the techniques.
Miming
In DJ culture, miming refers to the practice of DJ's pantomiming the actions of live-mixing a set on stage while a pre-recorded mix plays over the sound system. Miming mixing in a live performance is considered to be controversial within DJ culture. Some within the DJ community say that miming is increasingly used as a technique by celebrity model DJs who may lack mixing skills, but can draw big crowds to a venue.
During a DJ tour for the release of the French group Justice's A Cross the Universe in November 2008, controversy arose when a photograph of Augé DJing with an unplugged Akai MPD24 surfaced. The photograph sparked accusations that Justice's live sets were faked. Augé has since said that the equipment was unplugged very briefly before being reattached and the band put a three-photo set of the incident on their MySpace page. After a 2013 Disclosure concert, the duo was criticized for pretending to live mix to a playback of a pre-recorded track. Disclosure's Guy Lawrence said they did not deliberately intend to mislead their audience, and cited miming by other DJs such as David Guetta.
History
The term "disc jockey" was ostensibly coined by radio gossip commentator Walter Winchell in 1935, and the phrase first appeared in print in a 1941 Variety magazine, used to describe radio personalities who introduced phonograph records on the air. Playing recorded music for dancing and parties rose with the mass marketing of home phonographs in the late 19th century. British radio disc jockey Jimmy Savile hosted his first live dance party in 1943 using a single turntable and a makeshift sound system. Four years later, Savile began using two turntables welded together to form a single DJ console. In 1947, the Whiskey A Go-Go opened in Paris as the first discotheque. In the 1960s, Rudy Bozak began making the first DJ mixers, mixing consoles specialized for DJing.
In the late 1960s to early 1970s Jamaican sound system culture, producer and sound system operator (DJ), (Jamaican) King Tubby and producer Lee "Scratch" Perry were pioneers of the genre known as dub music. They experimented with tape-based composition; emphasized repetitive rhythmic structures (often stripped of their harmonic elements); electronically manipulated spatiality; sonically manipulated pre-recorded musical materials from mass media; and remixed music among other innovative techniques. It is widely known that the Jamaican dancehall culture has had and continues to have a significant impact on the American hip hop culture.
DJ turntablism has origins in the invention of direct-drive turntables. Early belt-drive turntables were unsuitable for turntablism and mixing, since they had a slow start-up time, and they were prone to wear-and-tear and breakage, as the belt would break from backspinning or scratching. The first direct-drive turntable was invented by engineer Shuichi Obata at Matsushita (now Panasonic), based in Osaka, Japan. It eliminated belts, and instead employed a motor to directly drive a platter on which a vinyl record rests. In 1969, Matsushita released it as the SP-10, the first direct-drive turntable on the market, and the first in their influential Technics series of turntables.
In 1972, Technics started making their SL-1200 turntable, featuring high torque direct drive design. The SL-1200 had a rapid start and its durable direct drive enabled DJs to manipulate the platter, as with scratching techniques. Hip hop DJs began using the Technics SL-1200s as musical instruments to manipulate records with turntablism techniques such as scratching and beat juggling rather than merely mixing records. These techniques were developed in the 1970s by DJ Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Afrika Bambaataa, as they experimented with Technics direct-drive decks, finding that the motor would continue to spin at the correct RPM even if the DJ wiggled the record back and forth on the platter.
In 1980, Japanese company Roland released the TR-808, an analog rhythm/drum machine, which has unique artificial sounds, such as its booming bass and sharp snare, and a metronome-like rhythm. Yellow Magic Orchestra's use of the instrument in 1980 influenced hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, after which the TR-808 would be widely adopted by hip hop DJs, with 808 sounds remaining central to hip-hop music ever since. The Roland TB-303, a bass synthesizer released in 1981, had a similar impact on electronic dance music genres such as techno and house music, along with Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines.
In 1982, the Compact Disc (CD) format was released, popularizing digital audio. In 1998, the first MP3 digital audio player, the Eiger Labs MPMan F10, was introduced. In January of that same year at the BeOS Developer Conference, N2IT demonstrated FinalScratch, the first digital DJ system to allow DJs control of MP3 files through special time-coded vinyl records or CDs. While it would take some time for this novel concept to catch on with the "die-hard Vinyl DJs," this would become the first step in the Digital DJ revolution. Manufacturers joined with computer DJing pioneers to offer professional endorsements, the first being Professor Jam (a.k.a. William P. Rader), who went on to develop the industry's first dedicated computer DJ convention and learning program, the "CPS (Computerized Performance System) DJ Summit", to help spread the word about the advantages of this emerging technology.
In 2001, Pioneer DJ began producing the CDJ-1000 CD player, making the use of digital music recordings with traditional DJ techniques practical for the first time. As the 2000s progressed, laptop computers became more powerful and affordable. DJ software, specialized DJ sound cards, and DJ controllers were developed for DJs to use laptops as a source of music rather than turntables or CDJs. In the 2010s, like laptops before them, tablet computers and smartphones became more powerful & affordable. DJ software was written to run on these more portable devices instead of laptops, although laptops remain the more common type of computer for DJing.
Female DJs
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare.
In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field … is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles."
Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. Two years later, another article brings out a list with world-famous female DJs including Nastia, tINY, Nora En Pure, Anja Schneider, Peggy Gou, Maya Jane Coles, and Eli & Fur.
Female DJ The Black Madonna has been called "one of the world’s most exciting turntablists." Her stage name The Black Madonna is a tribute to her mother's favorite Catholic saint. In 2018, The Black Madonna played herself as an in-residence DJ for the video game Grand Theft Auto Online, as part of the After Hours DLC.
There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent."
In Japan, the newest Bushiroad franchise: D4DJ focuses all-female DJ unit.
Health
The risk of DJs working in nightclubs with loud music includes noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus. Nightclubs constantly exceed safe levels of noise exposure with average sound levels ranging from 93.2 to 109.7 dB. Constant music exposure creates temporary and permanent auditory dysfunction for professional DJs with average levels at 96dB being above the recommended level, at which ear protection is mandatory for industry. Three quarters of DJs have tinnitus and are at risk of tenosynovitis in the wrists and other limbs. Tenosynovitis results from staying in the same position over multiple gigs for scratching motion and cueing, this would be related to a repetitive strain injury. Gigs can last 4-5 hours in nightlife and the hospitality industry, as a result there are potential complications of prolonged standing which include slouching, varicose veins, cardiovascular disorders, joint compression, and muscle fatigue. This is common for other staff to experience as well including bartenders and security staff for example.
In film
Berlin Calling – a German film about fictional DJ and producer Ickarus (Paul Kalkbrenner), who is struggling with drug abuse
Speaking in Code – an American documentary film about techno artists Modeselektor, Wighnomy Brothers, Philip Sherburne, Monolake and David Day
Kvadrat – a French and Russian documentary film about the realities of techno DJing, using the example of DJ Andrey Pushkarev
It's All Gone Pete Tong – a fictional mockumentary British movie about Frankie Wilde, a DJ who gradually becomes deaf due to drug abuse and an unhealthy lifestyle
We Are Your Friends – an American fiction film about a college DJ trying to make it in the DJing scene with "one hit song", starring Zac Efron
Scratch – a documentary about the hip-hop DJ and the 2000-era turntablist movement
Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou – a Japanese anime, originally a manga, about a fictional character named Agetarou who aspires to be a DJ master with the help of his friends and mentor, Big Master Fry.
24 Hour Party People – about the UK music scene from the late 1970s to the "Madchester" scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Human Traffic – about early UK rave counter-culture featuring music and performances by celebrated DJs Fatboy Slim, CJ Bolland, Carl Cox, and Mad Doctor X.
Turn Up Charlie – a 2019 series about a struggling DJ, played by Idris Elba, who is also a bachelor trying to make it again after a one hit back in the 1990s
Avicii: True Stories – a documentary film about Avicii
See also
Digital DJ licensing
List of club DJs
List of music software#DJ software
Live PA
DJ mix
Record collecting
Spelling of disc
Stage lighting
VJ (media personality)
References
Notes
Assef, Claudia (2000). Todo DJ Já Sambou: A História do Disc-Jóquei no Brasil. São Paulo: Conrad Editora do Brasil. .
Brewster, Bill, and Frank Broughton (2000). Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. New York: Grove Press. (North American edition). London: Headline. (UK edition).
Broughton, Frank, and Bill Brewster. How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records. New York: Grove Press, 2003.
Graudins, Charles A. How to Be a DJ. Boston: Course Technology PTR, 2004.
Lawrence, Tim (2004). Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 . Duke University Press. .
Miller, Paul D. a.k.a. DJ Spooky, Sound Unbound: Writings on DJ Culture and Electronic Music, MIT Press 2008. .
Poschardt, Ulf (1998). DJ Culture. London: Quartet Books. .
Zemon, Stacy. The Mobile DJ Handbook: How to Start & Run a Profitable Mobile Disc Jockey Service, Second Edition. St. Louis: Focal Press, 2002.
External links
Audio mixing
Broadcasting occupations
Disco
Mass media occupations
Occupations in music
Hip hop production
Turntablism
Underground culture
Electronic dance music
1930s neologisms
Articles containing video clips
| true |
[
"Ericka Campbell (born April 4, 1972), better known as Sundance, is an American rapper, DJ and radio personality.\n\nBiography\n\nMany details surrounding Ericka Campbell's birth and upbringing are unknown. Ericka's biological grandfather, Ethell Day Sr., was awarded custody of her just three months after her birth and remained in his custody until she was twelve years old. It is unclear why. She then moved briefly to Inglewood, California with her mother and stepfather but soon moved back to Chicago to live with her grandparents. Campbell attended Melody Elementary School and graduated from Maria Regina Catholic School in Gardena, California, a private elementary school. She then attended Morningside High School in Inglewood, California but upon returning to Chicago, she enrolled and graduated from Austin Community Academy High School on the West side of the city.\n\nShe took up DJing with a relative, and in the late 1980s recorded a house record with Fast Eddie, \"Git On Up\", that was certified Gold by RIAA and Billboard.\n\nAfterwards, she went to cosmetology school and became a hairstylist.\n\nIn 1999, she pursued radio and landed a job at one of Clear Channel's urban stations in Chicago and was there for seven years. She is currently still DJing.\n\nSee also\n\nList of number-one dance hits (United States)\nList of artists who reached number one on the US Dance chart\n\nReferences\n\n1972 births\nAmerican dance musicians\nAmerican house musicians\nAmerican DJs\nAmerican women DJs\nAfrican-American rappers\nAmerican women rappers\nHip house musicians\nRappers from Chicago\nLiving people\nElectronic dance music DJs\n21st-century American rappers\n21st-century American women musicians\n21st-century women rappers\nAmerican women in electronic music\nAmerican female hip hop musicians\n21st-century African-American women\n21st-century African-American musicians\n20th-century African-American people\n20th-century African-American women",
"Junge Junge is a German producer duo made up of DJs Michael Noack and Rochus Grolle. Mainly producing electronic dance music since 2006, they are signed to Universal Music Sweden and Island Records releasing their EP Beautiful Girl on July 15, 2016.\n\nDiscography\n\nEPs\n2016: Beautiful Girl\n\nSingles\n2013: \"Why\" (Rochus Grolle & Michael Noack feat. Alex Landon)\n2015: \"Beautiful Girl\" \n2016: \"Run Run Run\" \n2017: \"I Don't Love You (I'm Just Lonely)\"\n2017: \"I'm The One\"\n2018: \"Catch 22\" (feat. Valentijn)\n2018: \"Make You Feel Like\" \nRemixes\n2015: Charlie Puth - \"One Call Away\"\n2016: Aka Aka & Thalstroem feat. Chasing Kurt - \"True\"\n2016: Charlie Puth feat. Selena Gomez - \"We Don't Talk Anymore\"\n2017: Kyle Pierce - \"Tick Tock\"\n2018: Vargas & Lagola - \"Roads\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial website\nFacebook\n\nGerman DJs\nGerman record producers\nElectronic dance music DJs"
] |
[
"Disc jockey",
"Women DJs",
"What can you tell me about women DJs",
"A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are \"...few women in record production and sound engineering.\" Ncube states that \"[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male,",
"Can you tell me the names of some women Djs",
"Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac.",
"What is the most known DJ",
"I don't know.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs",
"Why are there fewer women DJs",
"Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs."
] |
C_1762e25366d14047a4e7c4663b4ca92f_0
|
do DJs start in audio technology related jobs
| 6 |
do DJs start in audio technology related jobs?
|
Disc jockey
|
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare. In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field ... is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles." Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJ-ing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent." CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile DJs (who are hired to work at public and private events such as weddings, parties, or festivals), and turntablists (who use record players, usually turntables, to manipulate sounds on phonograph records). Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.
DJs commonly use audio equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously. This enables them to blend tracks together to create transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs. This can involve aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms and tempos do not clash when played together and to enable a smooth transition from one song to another. DJs often use specialized DJ mixers, small audio mixers with crossfader and cue functions to blend or transition from one song to another. Mixers are also used to pre-listen to sources of recorded music in headphones and adjust upcoming tracks to mix with currently playing music. DJ software can be used with a DJ controller device to mix audio files on a computer instead of a console mixer. DJs may also use a microphone to speak to the audience; effects units such as reverb to create sound effects and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
Role
Originally, the word "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to gramophone records, but now "DJ" is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, or digital audio files stored on USB stick or laptop. DJs typically perform for a live audience in a nightclub or dance club or a TV, radio broadcast audience, or an online radio audience. DJs also create mixes, remixes and tracks that are recorded for later sale and distribution. In hip hop music, DJs may create beats, using percussion breaks, basslines and other musical content sampled from pre-existing records. In hip hop, rappers and MCs use these beats to rap over. Some DJs adopt the title "DJ" as part of their names (e.g., DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Qbert, DJ Shadow and DJ Yoda). Professional DJs often specialize in a specific genre of music, such as techno, house or hip hop music. DJs typically have an extensive knowledge about the music they specialize in. Many DJs are avid music collectors of vintage, rare or obscure tracks and records.
Types
Club DJs
Club DJs, commonly referred as DJs in general, play music at musical events, such as parties at music venues or bars, music festivals, corporate and private events. Typically, club DJs mix music recordings from two or more sources using different mixing techniques to produce non-stopping flow of music.
One key technique used for seamlessly transitioning from one song to another is beatmatching. A DJ who mostly plays and mixes one specific music genre is often given the title of that genre; for example, a DJ who plays hip hop music is called a hip hop DJ, a DJ who plays house music is a house DJ, a DJ who plays techno is called a techno DJ, and so on.
The quality of a DJ performance (often called a DJ mix or DJ set) consists of two main features: technical skills, or how well the DJ can operate the equipment and produce smooth transitions between two or more recordings and a playlist; and the ability of a DJ to select the most suitable recordings, also known as "reading the crowd".
Hip hop DJs
DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa were members of a block party at South Bronx. Kool Herc played records such as James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose", Jimmy Castor's "It's Just Begun", Booker T. & the M.G.'s' "Melting Pot", Incredible Bongo Band's "Bongo Rock" and "Apache", and UK rock band Babe Ruth's "The Mexican". With Bronx clubs struggling with street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to a demographic distinct from teenagers in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience.
DJ Kool Herc developed the style that was the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc used the record to focus on a short, heavily percussive part in it: the "break". Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated the break and prolonged it by changing between two record players. As one record reached the end of the break, he cued a second record back to the beginning of the break, which allowed him to extend a relatively short section of music into a "five-minute loop of fury". This innovation had its roots in what Herc called "The Merry-Go-Round", a technique by which the deejay switched from break to break at the height of the party. This technique is specifically called "The Merry-Go-Round" because according to Herc, it takes one "back and forth with no slack."
Radio DJs
Radio DJs or radio personalities introduce and play music broadcast on AM, FM, digital or Internet radio stations.
Dancehall/reggae deejays
In Jamaican music, a deejay (DJ) is a reggae or dancehall musician who sings and "toasts" (raps) to an instrumental riddim. Deejays are not to be confused with DJs from other music genres like hip hop, where they select and play music. Dancehall/reggae DJs who select riddims to play are called selectors. Deejays whose style is nearer to singing are sometimes called singjays.
The term deejay originated in the 1960s and 1970s when performers such as U-Roy or King Stitt toasted over the instrumental (dub music) versions of popular records. These versions were often released on the flip side to the song's 45 record. This gave the deejays the chance to create on-the-fly lyrics to the music. Big Youth, and I Roy were famous deejays in Jamaica.
Turntablists
Turntablists, also called battle DJs, use turntables and DJ mixer to manipulate recorded sounds to produce new music. In essence, they use DJ equipment as a musical instrument. Perhaps the best known turntablist technique is scratching. Turntablists often participate in DJ contests like DMC World DJ Championships and Red Bull 3Style.
Residents
A resident DJ performs at a venue on a regular basis or permanently. They would perform regularly (typically under an agreement) in a particular discotheque, a particular club, a particular event, or a particular broadcasting station. Residents have a decisive influence on the club or a series of events. Per agreement with the management or company, the DJ would have to perform under agreed times and dates. Typically, DJs perform as residents for two or three times in a week, for example, on Friday and Saturday. DJs who make a steady income from a venue are also considered resident DJs.
Examples for resident DJs are:
Alfredo Fiorito, Richie Hawtin, Sven Väth — Amnesia, Ibiza, Spain
Martin Garrix — Hï Ibiza, Ibiza, Spain
Larry Levan — Paradise Garage, New York City, USA
David Mancuso — The Loft, New York City
Tiësto, Deadmau5, Calvin Harris — Hakkasan, Las Vegas, USA
Kaskade — Encore Beach Club, Las Vegas, USA
Dom Chung — UK
Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann, Tama Sumo — Berghain, Berlin, Germany
Fish Go Deep — Cork, Ireland
Djsky — Ghana, West Africa
Other types
Mobile DJs — DJs with their own portable audio sound systems who specialize in performing at gatherings such as block parties, street fairs, taverns, weddings, birthdays, school and corporate events. Mobile DJs may also offer lighting packages and video systems.
Producer DJs — DJs who create remixes of popular club hits, completely original tracks, or transition friendly versions of tracks which extend the start and end of a song. Producer DJ often have their work featured on online DJ record pools.
DJanes — a term describing female DJs used in countries such as Germany that employ grammatical gender in their languages.
Celebrity DJs — widely known celebrities performing as DJs.
Bedroom DJs — a general term for DJs performing at home, usually recording their sets and posting them online.
Equipment
DJs use equipment that enables them to play multiple sources of recorded music and mix them to create seamless transitions and unique arrangements of songs. An important tool for DJs is the specialized DJ mixer, a small audio mixer with a crossfader and cue functions. The crossfader enables the DJ to blend or transition from one song to another. The cue knobs or switches allow the DJ to "listen" to a source of recorded music in headphones before playing it for the live club or broadcast audience. Previewing the music in headphones helps the DJ pick the next track they want to play, cue up the track to the desired starting location, and align the two tracks' beats in traditional situations where auto sync technology is not being used. This process ensures that the selected song will mix well with the currently playing music. DJs may align the beats of the music sources so their rhythms do not clash when they are played together to help create a smooth transition from one song to another. Other equipment may include a microphone, effects units such as reverb, and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
As music technology has progressed, DJs have adopted different types of equipment to play and mix music, all of which are still commonly used. Traditionally, DJs used two turntables plugged into a DJ mixer to mix music on vinyl records. As compact discs became popular media for publishing music, specialized high quality CD players known as CDJs were developed for DJs. CDJs can take the place of turntables or be used together with turntables. Many CDJs can now play digital music files from USB flash drives or SD cards in addition to CDs. With the spread of portable laptop, tablet, and smartphone computers, DJs began using software together with specialized sound cards and DJ controller hardware. DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer or be used instead of a hardware mixer.
Turntables
Turntables allow DJs to play vinyl records. By adjusting the playback speed of the turntable, either by adjusting the speed knob, or by manipulating the platter (e.g., by slowing down the platter by putting a finger gently along the side), DJs can match the tempos of different records so their rhythms can be played together at the same time without clashing or make a smooth, seamless transition from one song to another. This technique is known as beatmatching. DJs typically replace the rubber mat on turntables that keeps the record moving in sync with the turntable with a slipmat that facilitates manipulating the playback of the record by hand. With the slipmat, the DJ can stop or slow down the record while the turntable is still spinning. Direct-drive turntables are the type preferred by DJs. Belt-drive turntables are less expensive, but they are not suitable for turntablism and DJing, because the belt-drive motor can be damaged by this type of manipulation. Some DJs, most commonly those who play hip hop music, go beyond merely mixing records and use turntables as musical instruments for scratching, beat juggling, and other turntablism techniques.
CDJs/media players
CDJs / media players are high quality digital media players made for DJing. They often have large jog wheels and pitch controls to allow DJs to manipulate the playback of digital files for beatmatching similar to how DJs manipulate vinyl records on turntables. CDJs often have features such as loops and waveform displays similar to DJ software. Originally designed to play music from compact discs, they now can play digital music files stored on USB flash drives and SD cards. Some CDJs can also connect to a computer running DJ software to act as a DJ controller. Modern media players have the ability to stream music from online music providers such as Beatport, Beatsource, Tidal and Soundcloud GO.
DJ mixers
DJ mixers are small audio mixing consoles specialized for DJing. Most DJ mixers have far fewer channels than a mixer used by a record producer or audio engineer; whereas standard live sound mixers in small venues have 12 to 24 channels, and standard recording studio mixers have even more (as many as 72 on large boards), basic DJ mixers may have only two channels. While DJ mixers have many of the same features found on larger mixers (faders, equalization knobs, gain knobs, effects units, etc.), DJ mixers have a feature that is usually only found on DJ mixers: the crossfader. The crossfader is a type of fader that is mounted horizontally. DJs used the crossfader to mix two or more sound sources. The midpoint of the crossfader's travel is a 50/50 mix of the two channels (on a two channel mixer). The far left side of the crossfader provides only the channel A sound source. The far right side provides only the channel B sound source (e.g., record player number 2). Positions in between the two extremes provide different mixes of the two channels. Some DJs use a computer with DJ software and a DJ controller instead of an analog DJ mixer to mix music, although DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer.
Headphones
DJs generally use higher quality headphones than those designed for music consumers. DJ headphones have other properties useful for DJs, such as designs that acoustically isolate the sounds of the headphones from the outside environment (hard shell headphones), flexible headbands and pivot joints to allow DJs to listen to one side of the headphones, while turning the other headphone away (so they can monitor the mix in the club), and replaceable cables. Replaceable cables enables DJs to buy new cables if a cable becomes frayed, worn, or damaged, or if a cable is accidentally cut.
Closed-back headphones are highly recommended for DJs to block outside noise as the environment of DJ usually tend to be very noisy. Standard headphones have 3.5mm jack but DJ equipment usually requires ¼ inch jack. Most of specialized DJ Headphones have an adapter to switch between 3.5mm jack and ¼ inch jack. Detachable coiled cables are perfect for DJ Headphones.
Software
DJs have changed their equipment as new technologies are introduced. The earliest DJs in pop music, in 1970s discos, used record turntables, vinyl records and audio consoles. In the 1970s, DJs would have to lug heavy direct drive turntables and crates of records to clubs and shows. In the 1980s, many DJs transitioned to compact cassettes. In the 1990s and 2000s, many DJs switched to using digital audio such as CDs and MP3 files. As technological advances made it practical to store large collections of digital music files on a laptop computer, DJ software was developed so DJs could use a laptop as a source of music instead of transporting CDs or vinyl records to gigs. Unlike most music player software designed for regular consumers, DJ software can play at least two audio files simultaneously, display the waveforms of the files on screen and enable the DJ to listen to either source.
The waveforms allow the DJ see what is coming next in the music and how the playback of different files is aligned. The software analyzes music files to identify their tempo and where the beats are. The analyzed information can be used by the DJ to help manually beatmatch like with vinyl records or the software can automatically synchronize the beats. Digital signal processing algorithms in software allow DJs to adjust the tempo of recordings independently of their pitch (and musical key, a feature known as "keylock". Some software analyzes the loudness of the music for automatic normalization with ReplayGain and detects the musical key. Additionally, DJ software can store cue points, set loops, and apply effects.
As tablet computers and smartphones became widespread, DJ software was written to run on these devices in addition to laptops.
DJ software requires specialized hardware in addition to a computer to fully take advantage of its features. The consumer grade, regular sound card integrated into most computer motherboards can only output two channels (one stereo pair). However, DJs need to be able to output at least four channels (two stereo pairs, thus Left and Right for input 1 and Left and Right for input 2), either unmixed signals to send to a DJ mixer or a main output plus a headphone output. Additionally, DJ sound cards output higher quality signals than the sound cards built into consumer-grade computer motherboards.
Timecode
Special vinyl records (or CDs/digital files played with CDJs) can be used with DJ software to play digital music files with DJ software as if they were pressed onto vinyl, allowing turntablism techniques to be used with digital files. These vinyl records do not have music recordings pressed on to them. Instead, they are pressed with a special signal, referred to as "timecode", to control DJ software. The DJ software interprets changes in the playback speed, direction, and position of the timecode signal and manipulates the digital files it is playing in the same way that the turntable manipulates the timecode record.
This requires a specialized DJ sound card with at least 4 channels (2 stereo pairs) of inputs and outputs. With this setup, the DJ software typically outputs unmixed signals from the music files to an external hardware DJ mixer. Some DJ mixers have integrated USB sound cards that allow DJ software to connect directly to the mixer without requiring a separate sound card.
DJ controllers
A DJ software can be used to mix audio files on the computer instead of a separate hardware mixer. When mixing on a computer, DJs often use a DJ controller device that mimics the layout of two turntables plus a DJ mixer to control the software rather than the computer keyboard & touchpad on a laptop, or the touchscreen on a tablet computer or smartphone. Many DJ controllers have an integrated sound card with 4 output channels (2 stereo pairs) that allows the DJ to use headphones to preview music before playing it on the main output.
Other equipment
A microphone, so that the DJ can introduce songs and speak to the audience over the sound system.
Electronic effects units such as delay, reverb, octave, equalizer, chorus, etc.
Multi-stylus head shells, which allow a DJ to play different grooves of the same record at the same time.
Samplers, sequencers, electronic musical keyboards (synthesizers), effects pedals (effects unit) or drum machines.
PA system or sound reinforcement system (power amplifiers and speaker enclosures), typically including subwoofer cabinets for deep bass (or, if a DJ is broadcasting and/or recording a set, broadcasting equipment or recording gear)
Monitor speakers, for listening to the "house mix" that is playing over the main speakers
Techniques
Several techniques are used by DJs as a means to better mix and blend recorded music. These techniques primarily include the cueing, equalization and audio mixing of two or more sound sources. The complexity and frequency of special techniques depends largely on the setting in which a DJ is working. Radio DJs are less likely to focus on advanced music-mixing procedures than club DJs, who rely on a smooth transition between songs using a range of techniques. However, some radio DJs are experienced club DJs, so they use the same sophisticated mixing techniques.
Club DJ turntable techniques include beatmatching, phrasing and slip-cueing to preserve energy on a dance floor. Turntablism embodies the art of cutting, beat juggling, scratching, needle drops, phase shifting, back spinning and more to perform the transitions and overdubs of samples in a more creative manner (although turntablism is often considered a use of the turntable as a musical instrument rather than a tool for blending recorded music). Professional DJs may use harmonic mixing to choose songs that are in compatible musical keys. Other techniques include chopping, screwing and looping.
Recent advances in technology in both DJ hardware and software can provide assisted or automatic completion of some traditional DJ techniques and skills. Examples include phrasing and beatmatching, which can be partially or completely automated by using DJ software that performs automatic synchronization of sound recordings, a feature commonly labelled "sync". Most DJ mixers now include a beat-counter which analyzes the tempo of an incoming sound source and displays its tempo in beats per minute (BPM), which may assist with beatmatching analog sound sources.
In the past, being a DJ has largely been a self-taught craft but with the complexities of new technologies and the convergence with music production methods, there are a growing number of schools and organizations that offer instruction on the techniques.
Miming
In DJ culture, miming refers to the practice of DJ's pantomiming the actions of live-mixing a set on stage while a pre-recorded mix plays over the sound system. Miming mixing in a live performance is considered to be controversial within DJ culture. Some within the DJ community say that miming is increasingly used as a technique by celebrity model DJs who may lack mixing skills, but can draw big crowds to a venue.
During a DJ tour for the release of the French group Justice's A Cross the Universe in November 2008, controversy arose when a photograph of Augé DJing with an unplugged Akai MPD24 surfaced. The photograph sparked accusations that Justice's live sets were faked. Augé has since said that the equipment was unplugged very briefly before being reattached and the band put a three-photo set of the incident on their MySpace page. After a 2013 Disclosure concert, the duo was criticized for pretending to live mix to a playback of a pre-recorded track. Disclosure's Guy Lawrence said they did not deliberately intend to mislead their audience, and cited miming by other DJs such as David Guetta.
History
The term "disc jockey" was ostensibly coined by radio gossip commentator Walter Winchell in 1935, and the phrase first appeared in print in a 1941 Variety magazine, used to describe radio personalities who introduced phonograph records on the air. Playing recorded music for dancing and parties rose with the mass marketing of home phonographs in the late 19th century. British radio disc jockey Jimmy Savile hosted his first live dance party in 1943 using a single turntable and a makeshift sound system. Four years later, Savile began using two turntables welded together to form a single DJ console. In 1947, the Whiskey A Go-Go opened in Paris as the first discotheque. In the 1960s, Rudy Bozak began making the first DJ mixers, mixing consoles specialized for DJing.
In the late 1960s to early 1970s Jamaican sound system culture, producer and sound system operator (DJ), (Jamaican) King Tubby and producer Lee "Scratch" Perry were pioneers of the genre known as dub music. They experimented with tape-based composition; emphasized repetitive rhythmic structures (often stripped of their harmonic elements); electronically manipulated spatiality; sonically manipulated pre-recorded musical materials from mass media; and remixed music among other innovative techniques. It is widely known that the Jamaican dancehall culture has had and continues to have a significant impact on the American hip hop culture.
DJ turntablism has origins in the invention of direct-drive turntables. Early belt-drive turntables were unsuitable for turntablism and mixing, since they had a slow start-up time, and they were prone to wear-and-tear and breakage, as the belt would break from backspinning or scratching. The first direct-drive turntable was invented by engineer Shuichi Obata at Matsushita (now Panasonic), based in Osaka, Japan. It eliminated belts, and instead employed a motor to directly drive a platter on which a vinyl record rests. In 1969, Matsushita released it as the SP-10, the first direct-drive turntable on the market, and the first in their influential Technics series of turntables.
In 1972, Technics started making their SL-1200 turntable, featuring high torque direct drive design. The SL-1200 had a rapid start and its durable direct drive enabled DJs to manipulate the platter, as with scratching techniques. Hip hop DJs began using the Technics SL-1200s as musical instruments to manipulate records with turntablism techniques such as scratching and beat juggling rather than merely mixing records. These techniques were developed in the 1970s by DJ Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Afrika Bambaataa, as they experimented with Technics direct-drive decks, finding that the motor would continue to spin at the correct RPM even if the DJ wiggled the record back and forth on the platter.
In 1980, Japanese company Roland released the TR-808, an analog rhythm/drum machine, which has unique artificial sounds, such as its booming bass and sharp snare, and a metronome-like rhythm. Yellow Magic Orchestra's use of the instrument in 1980 influenced hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, after which the TR-808 would be widely adopted by hip hop DJs, with 808 sounds remaining central to hip-hop music ever since. The Roland TB-303, a bass synthesizer released in 1981, had a similar impact on electronic dance music genres such as techno and house music, along with Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines.
In 1982, the Compact Disc (CD) format was released, popularizing digital audio. In 1998, the first MP3 digital audio player, the Eiger Labs MPMan F10, was introduced. In January of that same year at the BeOS Developer Conference, N2IT demonstrated FinalScratch, the first digital DJ system to allow DJs control of MP3 files through special time-coded vinyl records or CDs. While it would take some time for this novel concept to catch on with the "die-hard Vinyl DJs," this would become the first step in the Digital DJ revolution. Manufacturers joined with computer DJing pioneers to offer professional endorsements, the first being Professor Jam (a.k.a. William P. Rader), who went on to develop the industry's first dedicated computer DJ convention and learning program, the "CPS (Computerized Performance System) DJ Summit", to help spread the word about the advantages of this emerging technology.
In 2001, Pioneer DJ began producing the CDJ-1000 CD player, making the use of digital music recordings with traditional DJ techniques practical for the first time. As the 2000s progressed, laptop computers became more powerful and affordable. DJ software, specialized DJ sound cards, and DJ controllers were developed for DJs to use laptops as a source of music rather than turntables or CDJs. In the 2010s, like laptops before them, tablet computers and smartphones became more powerful & affordable. DJ software was written to run on these more portable devices instead of laptops, although laptops remain the more common type of computer for DJing.
Female DJs
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare.
In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field … is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles."
Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. Two years later, another article brings out a list with world-famous female DJs including Nastia, tINY, Nora En Pure, Anja Schneider, Peggy Gou, Maya Jane Coles, and Eli & Fur.
Female DJ The Black Madonna has been called "one of the world’s most exciting turntablists." Her stage name The Black Madonna is a tribute to her mother's favorite Catholic saint. In 2018, The Black Madonna played herself as an in-residence DJ for the video game Grand Theft Auto Online, as part of the After Hours DLC.
There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent."
In Japan, the newest Bushiroad franchise: D4DJ focuses all-female DJ unit.
Health
The risk of DJs working in nightclubs with loud music includes noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus. Nightclubs constantly exceed safe levels of noise exposure with average sound levels ranging from 93.2 to 109.7 dB. Constant music exposure creates temporary and permanent auditory dysfunction for professional DJs with average levels at 96dB being above the recommended level, at which ear protection is mandatory for industry. Three quarters of DJs have tinnitus and are at risk of tenosynovitis in the wrists and other limbs. Tenosynovitis results from staying in the same position over multiple gigs for scratching motion and cueing, this would be related to a repetitive strain injury. Gigs can last 4-5 hours in nightlife and the hospitality industry, as a result there are potential complications of prolonged standing which include slouching, varicose veins, cardiovascular disorders, joint compression, and muscle fatigue. This is common for other staff to experience as well including bartenders and security staff for example.
In film
Berlin Calling – a German film about fictional DJ and producer Ickarus (Paul Kalkbrenner), who is struggling with drug abuse
Speaking in Code – an American documentary film about techno artists Modeselektor, Wighnomy Brothers, Philip Sherburne, Monolake and David Day
Kvadrat – a French and Russian documentary film about the realities of techno DJing, using the example of DJ Andrey Pushkarev
It's All Gone Pete Tong – a fictional mockumentary British movie about Frankie Wilde, a DJ who gradually becomes deaf due to drug abuse and an unhealthy lifestyle
We Are Your Friends – an American fiction film about a college DJ trying to make it in the DJing scene with "one hit song", starring Zac Efron
Scratch – a documentary about the hip-hop DJ and the 2000-era turntablist movement
Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou – a Japanese anime, originally a manga, about a fictional character named Agetarou who aspires to be a DJ master with the help of his friends and mentor, Big Master Fry.
24 Hour Party People – about the UK music scene from the late 1970s to the "Madchester" scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Human Traffic – about early UK rave counter-culture featuring music and performances by celebrated DJs Fatboy Slim, CJ Bolland, Carl Cox, and Mad Doctor X.
Turn Up Charlie – a 2019 series about a struggling DJ, played by Idris Elba, who is also a bachelor trying to make it again after a one hit back in the 1990s
Avicii: True Stories – a documentary film about Avicii
See also
Digital DJ licensing
List of club DJs
List of music software#DJ software
Live PA
DJ mix
Record collecting
Spelling of disc
Stage lighting
VJ (media personality)
References
Notes
Assef, Claudia (2000). Todo DJ Já Sambou: A História do Disc-Jóquei no Brasil. São Paulo: Conrad Editora do Brasil. .
Brewster, Bill, and Frank Broughton (2000). Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. New York: Grove Press. (North American edition). London: Headline. (UK edition).
Broughton, Frank, and Bill Brewster. How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records. New York: Grove Press, 2003.
Graudins, Charles A. How to Be a DJ. Boston: Course Technology PTR, 2004.
Lawrence, Tim (2004). Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 . Duke University Press. .
Miller, Paul D. a.k.a. DJ Spooky, Sound Unbound: Writings on DJ Culture and Electronic Music, MIT Press 2008. .
Poschardt, Ulf (1998). DJ Culture. London: Quartet Books. .
Zemon, Stacy. The Mobile DJ Handbook: How to Start & Run a Profitable Mobile Disc Jockey Service, Second Edition. St. Louis: Focal Press, 2002.
External links
Audio mixing
Broadcasting occupations
Disco
Mass media occupations
Occupations in music
Hip hop production
Turntablism
Underground culture
Electronic dance music
1930s neologisms
Articles containing video clips
| false |
[
"To cue audio is to determine the desired initial playback point in a piece of recorded music. It is a technique often used in radio broadcasting and DJing. One dictionary definition is to \"Set a piece of audio or video equipment in readiness to play (a particular part of the recorded material).\"\n\nProcess \nDJs typically find the desired start place on a record, tape, CD, or other media by listening to the recording with headphones and manipulating the turntable or other playback controls. Some DJs mark parts of a record with stickers to make it easier to find parts of record tracks. \n\nDJs use headphones to cue up the start point; this means that the audience cannot hear the playback until the DJ wants them to. Once the recording is cued up to the desired start point, the DJ can then commence the playback of the recording at the desired moment. The goal of cueing is to avoid \"dead air\", that is, silence.\n\nSlip cue \nA subtype of cueing is slip cueing. To slip cue a record, there has to be a felt mat under the record. The DJ finds the desired start point then leaves the stylus at the start point while holding the side of the record, with the turntable spinning. The DJ can then release the record and the music will start immediately.\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading\n\nAudio mixing\nDJing",
"A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile DJs (who are hired to work at public and private events such as weddings, parties, or festivals), and turntablists (who use record players, usually turntables, to manipulate sounds on phonograph records). Originally, the \"disc\" in \"disc jockey\" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title \"DJ\" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.\n\nDJs commonly use audio equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously. This enables them to blend tracks together to create transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs. This can involve aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms and tempos do not clash when played together and to enable a smooth transition from one song to another. DJs often use specialized DJ mixers, small audio mixers with crossfader and cue functions to blend or transition from one song to another. Mixers are also used to pre-listen to sources of recorded music in headphones and adjust upcoming tracks to mix with currently playing music. DJ software can be used with a DJ controller device to mix audio files on a computer instead of a console mixer. DJs may also use a microphone to speak to the audience; effects units such as reverb to create sound effects and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.\n\nRole\nOriginally, the word \"disc\" in \"disc jockey\" referred to gramophone records, but now \"DJ\" is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, or digital audio files stored on USB stick or laptop. DJs typically perform for a live audience in a nightclub or dance club or a TV, radio broadcast audience, or an online radio audience. DJs also create mixes, remixes and tracks that are recorded for later sale and distribution. In hip hop music, DJs may create beats, using percussion breaks, basslines and other musical content sampled from pre-existing records. In hip hop, rappers and MCs use these beats to rap over. Some DJs adopt the title \"DJ\" as part of their names (e.g., DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Qbert, DJ Shadow and DJ Yoda). Professional DJs often specialize in a specific genre of music, such as techno, house or hip hop music. DJs typically have an extensive knowledge about the music they specialize in. Many DJs are avid music collectors of vintage, rare or obscure tracks and records.\n\nTypes\n\nClub DJs\n\nClub DJs, commonly referred as DJs in general, play music at musical events, such as parties at music venues or bars, music festivals, corporate and private events. Typically, club DJs mix music recordings from two or more sources using different mixing techniques to produce non-stopping flow of music. \n\nOne key technique used for seamlessly transitioning from one song to another is beatmatching. A DJ who mostly plays and mixes one specific music genre is often given the title of that genre; for example, a DJ who plays hip hop music is called a hip hop DJ, a DJ who plays house music is a house DJ, a DJ who plays techno is called a techno DJ, and so on. \n\nThe quality of a DJ performance (often called a DJ mix or DJ set) consists of two main features: technical skills, or how well the DJ can operate the equipment and produce smooth transitions between two or more recordings and a playlist; and the ability of a DJ to select the most suitable recordings, also known as \"reading the crowd\".\n\nHip hop DJs\nDJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa were members of a block party at South Bronx. Kool Herc played records such as James Brown's \"Give It Up or Turnit a Loose\", Jimmy Castor's \"It's Just Begun\", Booker T. & the M.G.'s' \"Melting Pot\", Incredible Bongo Band's \"Bongo Rock\" and \"Apache\", and UK rock band Babe Ruth's \"The Mexican\". With Bronx clubs struggling with street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to a demographic distinct from teenagers in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience.\n\nDJ Kool Herc developed the style that was the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc used the record to focus on a short, heavily percussive part in it: the \"break\". Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated the break and prolonged it by changing between two record players. As one record reached the end of the break, he cued a second record back to the beginning of the break, which allowed him to extend a relatively short section of music into a \"five-minute loop of fury\". This innovation had its roots in what Herc called \"The Merry-Go-Round\", a technique by which the deejay switched from break to break at the height of the party. This technique is specifically called \"The Merry-Go-Round\" because according to Herc, it takes one \"back and forth with no slack.\"\n\nRadio DJs\n\nRadio DJs or radio personalities introduce and play music broadcast on AM, FM, digital or Internet radio stations.\n\nDancehall/reggae deejays\n\nIn Jamaican music, a deejay (DJ) is a reggae or dancehall musician who sings and \"toasts\" (raps) to an instrumental riddim. Deejays are not to be confused with DJs from other music genres like hip hop, where they select and play music. Dancehall/reggae DJs who select riddims to play are called selectors. Deejays whose style is nearer to singing are sometimes called singjays.\n\nThe term deejay originated in the 1960s and 1970s when performers such as U-Roy or King Stitt toasted over the instrumental (dub music) versions of popular records. These versions were often released on the flip side to the song's 45 record. This gave the deejays the chance to create on-the-fly lyrics to the music. Big Youth, and I Roy were famous deejays in Jamaica.\n\nTurntablists\n\nTurntablists, also called battle DJs, use turntables and DJ mixer to manipulate recorded sounds to produce new music. In essence, they use DJ equipment as a musical instrument. Perhaps the best known turntablist technique is scratching. Turntablists often participate in DJ contests like DMC World DJ Championships and Red Bull 3Style.\n\nResidents \n\nA resident DJ performs at a venue on a regular basis or permanently. They would perform regularly (typically under an agreement) in a particular discotheque, a particular club, a particular event, or a particular broadcasting station. Residents have a decisive influence on the club or a series of events. Per agreement with the management or company, the DJ would have to perform under agreed times and dates. Typically, DJs perform as residents for two or three times in a week, for example, on Friday and Saturday. DJs who make a steady income from a venue are also considered resident DJs.\n\nExamples for resident DJs are:\n\n Alfredo Fiorito, Richie Hawtin, Sven Väth — Amnesia, Ibiza, Spain\n Martin Garrix — Hï Ibiza, Ibiza, Spain\n Larry Levan — Paradise Garage, New York City, USA\n David Mancuso — The Loft, New York City\n Tiësto, Deadmau5, Calvin Harris — Hakkasan, Las Vegas, USA\n Kaskade — Encore Beach Club, Las Vegas, USA\n Dom Chung — UK\n Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann, Tama Sumo — Berghain, Berlin, Germany\n Fish Go Deep — Cork, Ireland\n Djsky — Ghana, West Africa\n\nOther types\n Mobile DJs — DJs with their own portable audio sound systems who specialize in performing at gatherings such as block parties, street fairs, taverns, weddings, birthdays, school and corporate events. Mobile DJs may also offer lighting packages and video systems.\nProducer DJs — DJs who create remixes of popular club hits, completely original tracks, or transition friendly versions of tracks which extend the start and end of a song. Producer DJ often have their work featured on online DJ record pools. \n DJanes — a term describing female DJs used in countries such as Germany that employ grammatical gender in their languages.\n Celebrity DJs — widely known celebrities performing as DJs.\n Bedroom DJs — a general term for DJs performing at home, usually recording their sets and posting them online.\n\nEquipment\nDJs use equipment that enables them to play multiple sources of recorded music and mix them to create seamless transitions and unique arrangements of songs. An important tool for DJs is the specialized DJ mixer, a small audio mixer with a crossfader and cue functions. The crossfader enables the DJ to blend or transition from one song to another. The cue knobs or switches allow the DJ to \"listen\" to a source of recorded music in headphones before playing it for the live club or broadcast audience. Previewing the music in headphones helps the DJ pick the next track they want to play, cue up the track to the desired starting location, and align the two tracks' beats in traditional situations where auto sync technology is not being used. This process ensures that the selected song will mix well with the currently playing music. DJs may align the beats of the music sources so their rhythms do not clash when they are played together to help create a smooth transition from one song to another. Other equipment may include a microphone, effects units such as reverb, and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.\n\nAs music technology has progressed, DJs have adopted different types of equipment to play and mix music, all of which are still commonly used. Traditionally, DJs used two turntables plugged into a DJ mixer to mix music on vinyl records. As compact discs became popular media for publishing music, specialized high quality CD players known as CDJs were developed for DJs. CDJs can take the place of turntables or be used together with turntables. Many CDJs can now play digital music files from USB flash drives or SD cards in addition to CDs. With the spread of portable laptop, tablet, and smartphone computers, DJs began using software together with specialized sound cards and DJ controller hardware. DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer or be used instead of a hardware mixer.\n\nTurntables\n\nTurntables allow DJs to play vinyl records. By adjusting the playback speed of the turntable, either by adjusting the speed knob, or by manipulating the platter (e.g., by slowing down the platter by putting a finger gently along the side), DJs can match the tempos of different records so their rhythms can be played together at the same time without clashing or make a smooth, seamless transition from one song to another. This technique is known as beatmatching. DJs typically replace the rubber mat on turntables that keeps the record moving in sync with the turntable with a slipmat that facilitates manipulating the playback of the record by hand. With the slipmat, the DJ can stop or slow down the record while the turntable is still spinning. Direct-drive turntables are the type preferred by DJs. Belt-drive turntables are less expensive, but they are not suitable for turntablism and DJing, because the belt-drive motor can be damaged by this type of manipulation. Some DJs, most commonly those who play hip hop music, go beyond merely mixing records and use turntables as musical instruments for scratching, beat juggling, and other turntablism techniques.\n\nCDJs/media players\n\nCDJs / media players are high quality digital media players made for DJing. They often have large jog wheels and pitch controls to allow DJs to manipulate the playback of digital files for beatmatching similar to how DJs manipulate vinyl records on turntables. CDJs often have features such as loops and waveform displays similar to DJ software. Originally designed to play music from compact discs, they now can play digital music files stored on USB flash drives and SD cards. Some CDJs can also connect to a computer running DJ software to act as a DJ controller. Modern media players have the ability to stream music from online music providers such as Beatport, Beatsource, Tidal and Soundcloud GO.\n\nDJ mixers\n\nDJ mixers are small audio mixing consoles specialized for DJing. Most DJ mixers have far fewer channels than a mixer used by a record producer or audio engineer; whereas standard live sound mixers in small venues have 12 to 24 channels, and standard recording studio mixers have even more (as many as 72 on large boards), basic DJ mixers may have only two channels. While DJ mixers have many of the same features found on larger mixers (faders, equalization knobs, gain knobs, effects units, etc.), DJ mixers have a feature that is usually only found on DJ mixers: the crossfader. The crossfader is a type of fader that is mounted horizontally. DJs used the crossfader to mix two or more sound sources. The midpoint of the crossfader's travel is a 50/50 mix of the two channels (on a two channel mixer). The far left side of the crossfader provides only the channel A sound source. The far right side provides only the channel B sound source (e.g., record player number 2). Positions in between the two extremes provide different mixes of the two channels. Some DJs use a computer with DJ software and a DJ controller instead of an analog DJ mixer to mix music, although DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer.\n\nHeadphones\n\nDJs generally use higher quality headphones than those designed for music consumers. DJ headphones have other properties useful for DJs, such as designs that acoustically isolate the sounds of the headphones from the outside environment (hard shell headphones), flexible headbands and pivot joints to allow DJs to listen to one side of the headphones, while turning the other headphone away (so they can monitor the mix in the club), and replaceable cables. Replaceable cables enables DJs to buy new cables if a cable becomes frayed, worn, or damaged, or if a cable is accidentally cut.\n\nClosed-back headphones are highly recommended for DJs to block outside noise as the environment of DJ usually tend to be very noisy. Standard headphones have 3.5mm jack but DJ equipment usually requires ¼ inch jack. Most of specialized DJ Headphones have an adapter to switch between 3.5mm jack and ¼ inch jack. Detachable coiled cables are perfect for DJ Headphones.\n\nSoftware\n\nDJs have changed their equipment as new technologies are introduced. The earliest DJs in pop music, in 1970s discos, used record turntables, vinyl records and audio consoles. In the 1970s, DJs would have to lug heavy direct drive turntables and crates of records to clubs and shows. In the 1980s, many DJs transitioned to compact cassettes. In the 1990s and 2000s, many DJs switched to using digital audio such as CDs and MP3 files. As technological advances made it practical to store large collections of digital music files on a laptop computer, DJ software was developed so DJs could use a laptop as a source of music instead of transporting CDs or vinyl records to gigs. Unlike most music player software designed for regular consumers, DJ software can play at least two audio files simultaneously, display the waveforms of the files on screen and enable the DJ to listen to either source.\n\nThe waveforms allow the DJ see what is coming next in the music and how the playback of different files is aligned. The software analyzes music files to identify their tempo and where the beats are. The analyzed information can be used by the DJ to help manually beatmatch like with vinyl records or the software can automatically synchronize the beats. Digital signal processing algorithms in software allow DJs to adjust the tempo of recordings independently of their pitch (and musical key, a feature known as \"keylock\". Some software analyzes the loudness of the music for automatic normalization with ReplayGain and detects the musical key. Additionally, DJ software can store cue points, set loops, and apply effects.\n\nAs tablet computers and smartphones became widespread, DJ software was written to run on these devices in addition to laptops.\nDJ software requires specialized hardware in addition to a computer to fully take advantage of its features. The consumer grade, regular sound card integrated into most computer motherboards can only output two channels (one stereo pair). However, DJs need to be able to output at least four channels (two stereo pairs, thus Left and Right for input 1 and Left and Right for input 2), either unmixed signals to send to a DJ mixer or a main output plus a headphone output. Additionally, DJ sound cards output higher quality signals than the sound cards built into consumer-grade computer motherboards.\n\nTimecode\nSpecial vinyl records (or CDs/digital files played with CDJs) can be used with DJ software to play digital music files with DJ software as if they were pressed onto vinyl, allowing turntablism techniques to be used with digital files. These vinyl records do not have music recordings pressed on to them. Instead, they are pressed with a special signal, referred to as \"timecode\", to control DJ software. The DJ software interprets changes in the playback speed, direction, and position of the timecode signal and manipulates the digital files it is playing in the same way that the turntable manipulates the timecode record.\n\nThis requires a specialized DJ sound card with at least 4 channels (2 stereo pairs) of inputs and outputs. With this setup, the DJ software typically outputs unmixed signals from the music files to an external hardware DJ mixer. Some DJ mixers have integrated USB sound cards that allow DJ software to connect directly to the mixer without requiring a separate sound card.\n\nDJ controllers\n\nA DJ software can be used to mix audio files on the computer instead of a separate hardware mixer. When mixing on a computer, DJs often use a DJ controller device that mimics the layout of two turntables plus a DJ mixer to control the software rather than the computer keyboard & touchpad on a laptop, or the touchscreen on a tablet computer or smartphone. Many DJ controllers have an integrated sound card with 4 output channels (2 stereo pairs) that allows the DJ to use headphones to preview music before playing it on the main output.\n\nOther equipment\n A microphone, so that the DJ can introduce songs and speak to the audience over the sound system.\n Electronic effects units such as delay, reverb, octave, equalizer, chorus, etc.\n Multi-stylus head shells, which allow a DJ to play different grooves of the same record at the same time.\n Samplers, sequencers, electronic musical keyboards (synthesizers), effects pedals (effects unit) or drum machines.\n PA system or sound reinforcement system (power amplifiers and speaker enclosures), typically including subwoofer cabinets for deep bass (or, if a DJ is broadcasting and/or recording a set, broadcasting equipment or recording gear)\nMonitor speakers, for listening to the \"house mix\" that is playing over the main speakers\n\nTechniques\n\nSeveral techniques are used by DJs as a means to better mix and blend recorded music. These techniques primarily include the cueing, equalization and audio mixing of two or more sound sources. The complexity and frequency of special techniques depends largely on the setting in which a DJ is working. Radio DJs are less likely to focus on advanced music-mixing procedures than club DJs, who rely on a smooth transition between songs using a range of techniques. However, some radio DJs are experienced club DJs, so they use the same sophisticated mixing techniques.\n\nClub DJ turntable techniques include beatmatching, phrasing and slip-cueing to preserve energy on a dance floor. Turntablism embodies the art of cutting, beat juggling, scratching, needle drops, phase shifting, back spinning and more to perform the transitions and overdubs of samples in a more creative manner (although turntablism is often considered a use of the turntable as a musical instrument rather than a tool for blending recorded music). Professional DJs may use harmonic mixing to choose songs that are in compatible musical keys. Other techniques include chopping, screwing and looping.\n\nRecent advances in technology in both DJ hardware and software can provide assisted or automatic completion of some traditional DJ techniques and skills. Examples include phrasing and beatmatching, which can be partially or completely automated by using DJ software that performs automatic synchronization of sound recordings, a feature commonly labelled \"sync\". Most DJ mixers now include a beat-counter which analyzes the tempo of an incoming sound source and displays its tempo in beats per minute (BPM), which may assist with beatmatching analog sound sources.\n\nIn the past, being a DJ has largely been a self-taught craft but with the complexities of new technologies and the convergence with music production methods, there are a growing number of schools and organizations that offer instruction on the techniques.\n\nMiming\nIn DJ culture, miming refers to the practice of DJ's pantomiming the actions of live-mixing a set on stage while a pre-recorded mix plays over the sound system. Miming mixing in a live performance is considered to be controversial within DJ culture. Some within the DJ community say that miming is increasingly used as a technique by celebrity model DJs who may lack mixing skills, but can draw big crowds to a venue.\n\nDuring a DJ tour for the release of the French group Justice's A Cross the Universe in November 2008, controversy arose when a photograph of Augé DJing with an unplugged Akai MPD24 surfaced. The photograph sparked accusations that Justice's live sets were faked. Augé has since said that the equipment was unplugged very briefly before being reattached and the band put a three-photo set of the incident on their MySpace page. After a 2013 Disclosure concert, the duo was criticized for pretending to live mix to a playback of a pre-recorded track. Disclosure's Guy Lawrence said they did not deliberately intend to mislead their audience, and cited miming by other DJs such as David Guetta.\n\nHistory\n\nThe term \"disc jockey\" was ostensibly coined by radio gossip commentator Walter Winchell in 1935, and the phrase first appeared in print in a 1941 Variety magazine, used to describe radio personalities who introduced phonograph records on the air. Playing recorded music for dancing and parties rose with the mass marketing of home phonographs in the late 19th century. British radio disc jockey Jimmy Savile hosted his first live dance party in 1943 using a single turntable and a makeshift sound system. Four years later, Savile began using two turntables welded together to form a single DJ console. In 1947, the Whiskey A Go-Go opened in Paris as the first discotheque. In the 1960s, Rudy Bozak began making the first DJ mixers, mixing consoles specialized for DJing.\n\nIn the late 1960s to early 1970s Jamaican sound system culture, producer and sound system operator (DJ), (Jamaican) King Tubby and producer Lee \"Scratch\" Perry were pioneers of the genre known as dub music. They experimented with tape-based composition; emphasized repetitive rhythmic structures (often stripped of their harmonic elements); electronically manipulated spatiality; sonically manipulated pre-recorded musical materials from mass media; and remixed music among other innovative techniques. It is widely known that the Jamaican dancehall culture has had and continues to have a significant impact on the American hip hop culture.\n\nDJ turntablism has origins in the invention of direct-drive turntables. Early belt-drive turntables were unsuitable for turntablism and mixing, since they had a slow start-up time, and they were prone to wear-and-tear and breakage, as the belt would break from backspinning or scratching. The first direct-drive turntable was invented by engineer Shuichi Obata at Matsushita (now Panasonic), based in Osaka, Japan. It eliminated belts, and instead employed a motor to directly drive a platter on which a vinyl record rests. In 1969, Matsushita released it as the SP-10, the first direct-drive turntable on the market, and the first in their influential Technics series of turntables.\n\nIn 1972, Technics started making their SL-1200 turntable, featuring high torque direct drive design. The SL-1200 had a rapid start and its durable direct drive enabled DJs to manipulate the platter, as with scratching techniques. Hip hop DJs began using the Technics SL-1200s as musical instruments to manipulate records with turntablism techniques such as scratching and beat juggling rather than merely mixing records. These techniques were developed in the 1970s by DJ Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Afrika Bambaataa, as they experimented with Technics direct-drive decks, finding that the motor would continue to spin at the correct RPM even if the DJ wiggled the record back and forth on the platter. \n\nIn 1980, Japanese company Roland released the TR-808, an analog rhythm/drum machine, which has unique artificial sounds, such as its booming bass and sharp snare, and a metronome-like rhythm. Yellow Magic Orchestra's use of the instrument in 1980 influenced hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, after which the TR-808 would be widely adopted by hip hop DJs, with 808 sounds remaining central to hip-hop music ever since. The Roland TB-303, a bass synthesizer released in 1981, had a similar impact on electronic dance music genres such as techno and house music, along with Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines.\n\nIn 1982, the Compact Disc (CD) format was released, popularizing digital audio. In 1998, the first MP3 digital audio player, the Eiger Labs MPMan F10, was introduced. In January of that same year at the BeOS Developer Conference, N2IT demonstrated FinalScratch, the first digital DJ system to allow DJs control of MP3 files through special time-coded vinyl records or CDs. While it would take some time for this novel concept to catch on with the \"die-hard Vinyl DJs,\" this would become the first step in the Digital DJ revolution. Manufacturers joined with computer DJing pioneers to offer professional endorsements, the first being Professor Jam (a.k.a. William P. Rader), who went on to develop the industry's first dedicated computer DJ convention and learning program, the \"CPS (Computerized Performance System) DJ Summit\", to help spread the word about the advantages of this emerging technology.\n\nIn 2001, Pioneer DJ began producing the CDJ-1000 CD player, making the use of digital music recordings with traditional DJ techniques practical for the first time. As the 2000s progressed, laptop computers became more powerful and affordable. DJ software, specialized DJ sound cards, and DJ controllers were developed for DJs to use laptops as a source of music rather than turntables or CDJs. In the 2010s, like laptops before them, tablet computers and smartphones became more powerful & affordable. DJ software was written to run on these more portable devices instead of laptops, although laptops remain the more common type of computer for DJing.\n\nFemale DJs \nIn Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are \"...few women in record production and sound engineering.\" Ncube states that \"[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts.\" The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare. \n\nIn 2007 Mark Katz's article \"Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle,\" stated that \"very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years.\" In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states \"the male-centricity of EDM culture\" contributes to \"a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces.\" While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as \"male technophilia.\" Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: \"an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field … is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles.\"\n\nLucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from \"areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJing, sound engineering and producing\" are \"not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations.\" Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and \"carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture\". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. Two years later, another article brings out a list with world-famous female DJs including Nastia, tINY, Nora En Pure, Anja Schneider, Peggy Gou, Maya Jane Coles, and Eli & Fur.\n\nFemale DJ The Black Madonna has been called \"one of the world’s most exciting turntablists.\" Her stage name The Black Madonna is a tribute to her mother's favorite Catholic saint. In 2018, The Black Madonna played herself as an in-residence DJ for the video game Grand Theft Auto Online, as part of the After Hours DLC.\n\nThere are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as \"representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent.\"\n\nIn Japan, the newest Bushiroad franchise: D4DJ focuses all-female DJ unit.\n\nHealth\n\nThe risk of DJs working in nightclubs with loud music includes noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus. Nightclubs constantly exceed safe levels of noise exposure with average sound levels ranging from 93.2 to 109.7 dB. Constant music exposure creates temporary and permanent auditory dysfunction for professional DJs with average levels at 96dB being above the recommended level, at which ear protection is mandatory for industry. Three quarters of DJs have tinnitus and are at risk of tenosynovitis in the wrists and other limbs. Tenosynovitis results from staying in the same position over multiple gigs for scratching motion and cueing, this would be related to a repetitive strain injury. Gigs can last 4-5 hours in nightlife and the hospitality industry, as a result there are potential complications of prolonged standing which include slouching, varicose veins, cardiovascular disorders, joint compression, and muscle fatigue. This is common for other staff to experience as well including bartenders and security staff for example.\n\nIn film\n Berlin Calling – a German film about fictional DJ and producer Ickarus (Paul Kalkbrenner), who is struggling with drug abuse\n Speaking in Code – an American documentary film about techno artists Modeselektor, Wighnomy Brothers, Philip Sherburne, Monolake and David Day\n Kvadrat – a French and Russian documentary film about the realities of techno DJing, using the example of DJ Andrey Pushkarev\n It's All Gone Pete Tong – a fictional mockumentary British movie about Frankie Wilde, a DJ who gradually becomes deaf due to drug abuse and an unhealthy lifestyle\n We Are Your Friends – an American fiction film about a college DJ trying to make it in the DJing scene with \"one hit song\", starring Zac Efron\n Scratch – a documentary about the hip-hop DJ and the 2000-era turntablist movement\n Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou – a Japanese anime, originally a manga, about a fictional character named Agetarou who aspires to be a DJ master with the help of his friends and mentor, Big Master Fry.\n24 Hour Party People – about the UK music scene from the late 1970s to the \"Madchester\" scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.\nHuman Traffic – about early UK rave counter-culture featuring music and performances by celebrated DJs Fatboy Slim, CJ Bolland, Carl Cox, and Mad Doctor X.\nTurn Up Charlie – a 2019 series about a struggling DJ, played by Idris Elba, who is also a bachelor trying to make it again after a one hit back in the 1990s\n Avicii: True Stories – a documentary film about Avicii\n\nSee also\n\n Digital DJ licensing\n List of club DJs\n List of music software#DJ software\n Live PA\n DJ mix\n Record collecting\n Spelling of disc\n Stage lighting\n VJ (media personality)\n\nReferences\n\nNotes\n Assef, Claudia (2000). Todo DJ Já Sambou: A História do Disc-Jóquei no Brasil. São Paulo: Conrad Editora do Brasil. .\n Brewster, Bill, and Frank Broughton (2000). Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. New York: Grove Press. (North American edition). London: Headline. (UK edition).\n Broughton, Frank, and Bill Brewster. How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records. New York: Grove Press, 2003.\n Graudins, Charles A. How to Be a DJ. Boston: Course Technology PTR, 2004.\n Lawrence, Tim (2004). Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 . Duke University Press. .\n Miller, Paul D. a.k.a. DJ Spooky, Sound Unbound: Writings on DJ Culture and Electronic Music, MIT Press 2008. .\n Poschardt, Ulf (1998). DJ Culture. London: Quartet Books. .\n Zemon, Stacy. The Mobile DJ Handbook: How to Start & Run a Profitable Mobile Disc Jockey Service, Second Edition. St. Louis: Focal Press, 2002.\n\nExternal links\n\n \n\nAudio mixing\nBroadcasting occupations\nDisco\n \nMass media occupations\nOccupations in music\n \nHip hop production\nTurntablism\nUnderground culture\nElectronic dance music\n1930s neologisms\nArticles containing video clips"
] |
[
"Disc jockey",
"Women DJs",
"What can you tell me about women DJs",
"A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are \"...few women in record production and sound engineering.\" Ncube states that \"[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male,",
"Can you tell me the names of some women Djs",
"Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac.",
"What is the most known DJ",
"I don't know.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs",
"Why are there fewer women DJs",
"Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs.",
"do DJs start in audio technology related jobs",
"I don't know."
] |
C_1762e25366d14047a4e7c4663b4ca92f_0
|
who was the first female DJ
| 7 |
who was the first female DJ in Disk jockey?
|
Disc jockey
|
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare. In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field ... is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles." Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJ-ing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent." CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile DJs (who are hired to work at public and private events such as weddings, parties, or festivals), and turntablists (who use record players, usually turntables, to manipulate sounds on phonograph records). Originally, the "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to shellac and later vinyl records, but nowadays DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to also describe persons who mix music from other recording media such as cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ, controller, or even a laptop. DJs may adopt the title "DJ" in front of their real names, adopted pseudonyms, or stage names.
DJs commonly use audio equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously. This enables them to blend tracks together to create transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs. This can involve aligning the beats of the music sources so their rhythms and tempos do not clash when played together and to enable a smooth transition from one song to another. DJs often use specialized DJ mixers, small audio mixers with crossfader and cue functions to blend or transition from one song to another. Mixers are also used to pre-listen to sources of recorded music in headphones and adjust upcoming tracks to mix with currently playing music. DJ software can be used with a DJ controller device to mix audio files on a computer instead of a console mixer. DJs may also use a microphone to speak to the audience; effects units such as reverb to create sound effects and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
Role
Originally, the word "disc" in "disc jockey" referred to gramophone records, but now "DJ" is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, or digital audio files stored on USB stick or laptop. DJs typically perform for a live audience in a nightclub or dance club or a TV, radio broadcast audience, or an online radio audience. DJs also create mixes, remixes and tracks that are recorded for later sale and distribution. In hip hop music, DJs may create beats, using percussion breaks, basslines and other musical content sampled from pre-existing records. In hip hop, rappers and MCs use these beats to rap over. Some DJs adopt the title "DJ" as part of their names (e.g., DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Qbert, DJ Shadow and DJ Yoda). Professional DJs often specialize in a specific genre of music, such as techno, house or hip hop music. DJs typically have an extensive knowledge about the music they specialize in. Many DJs are avid music collectors of vintage, rare or obscure tracks and records.
Types
Club DJs
Club DJs, commonly referred as DJs in general, play music at musical events, such as parties at music venues or bars, music festivals, corporate and private events. Typically, club DJs mix music recordings from two or more sources using different mixing techniques to produce non-stopping flow of music.
One key technique used for seamlessly transitioning from one song to another is beatmatching. A DJ who mostly plays and mixes one specific music genre is often given the title of that genre; for example, a DJ who plays hip hop music is called a hip hop DJ, a DJ who plays house music is a house DJ, a DJ who plays techno is called a techno DJ, and so on.
The quality of a DJ performance (often called a DJ mix or DJ set) consists of two main features: technical skills, or how well the DJ can operate the equipment and produce smooth transitions between two or more recordings and a playlist; and the ability of a DJ to select the most suitable recordings, also known as "reading the crowd".
Hip hop DJs
DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa were members of a block party at South Bronx. Kool Herc played records such as James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose", Jimmy Castor's "It's Just Begun", Booker T. & the M.G.'s' "Melting Pot", Incredible Bongo Band's "Bongo Rock" and "Apache", and UK rock band Babe Ruth's "The Mexican". With Bronx clubs struggling with street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, and commercial radio also catering to a demographic distinct from teenagers in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience.
DJ Kool Herc developed the style that was the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc used the record to focus on a short, heavily percussive part in it: the "break". Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated the break and prolonged it by changing between two record players. As one record reached the end of the break, he cued a second record back to the beginning of the break, which allowed him to extend a relatively short section of music into a "five-minute loop of fury". This innovation had its roots in what Herc called "The Merry-Go-Round", a technique by which the deejay switched from break to break at the height of the party. This technique is specifically called "The Merry-Go-Round" because according to Herc, it takes one "back and forth with no slack."
Radio DJs
Radio DJs or radio personalities introduce and play music broadcast on AM, FM, digital or Internet radio stations.
Dancehall/reggae deejays
In Jamaican music, a deejay (DJ) is a reggae or dancehall musician who sings and "toasts" (raps) to an instrumental riddim. Deejays are not to be confused with DJs from other music genres like hip hop, where they select and play music. Dancehall/reggae DJs who select riddims to play are called selectors. Deejays whose style is nearer to singing are sometimes called singjays.
The term deejay originated in the 1960s and 1970s when performers such as U-Roy or King Stitt toasted over the instrumental (dub music) versions of popular records. These versions were often released on the flip side to the song's 45 record. This gave the deejays the chance to create on-the-fly lyrics to the music. Big Youth, and I Roy were famous deejays in Jamaica.
Turntablists
Turntablists, also called battle DJs, use turntables and DJ mixer to manipulate recorded sounds to produce new music. In essence, they use DJ equipment as a musical instrument. Perhaps the best known turntablist technique is scratching. Turntablists often participate in DJ contests like DMC World DJ Championships and Red Bull 3Style.
Residents
A resident DJ performs at a venue on a regular basis or permanently. They would perform regularly (typically under an agreement) in a particular discotheque, a particular club, a particular event, or a particular broadcasting station. Residents have a decisive influence on the club or a series of events. Per agreement with the management or company, the DJ would have to perform under agreed times and dates. Typically, DJs perform as residents for two or three times in a week, for example, on Friday and Saturday. DJs who make a steady income from a venue are also considered resident DJs.
Examples for resident DJs are:
Alfredo Fiorito, Richie Hawtin, Sven Väth — Amnesia, Ibiza, Spain
Martin Garrix — Hï Ibiza, Ibiza, Spain
Larry Levan — Paradise Garage, New York City, USA
David Mancuso — The Loft, New York City
Tiësto, Deadmau5, Calvin Harris — Hakkasan, Las Vegas, USA
Kaskade — Encore Beach Club, Las Vegas, USA
Dom Chung — UK
Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann, Tama Sumo — Berghain, Berlin, Germany
Fish Go Deep — Cork, Ireland
Djsky — Ghana, West Africa
Other types
Mobile DJs — DJs with their own portable audio sound systems who specialize in performing at gatherings such as block parties, street fairs, taverns, weddings, birthdays, school and corporate events. Mobile DJs may also offer lighting packages and video systems.
Producer DJs — DJs who create remixes of popular club hits, completely original tracks, or transition friendly versions of tracks which extend the start and end of a song. Producer DJ often have their work featured on online DJ record pools.
DJanes — a term describing female DJs used in countries such as Germany that employ grammatical gender in their languages.
Celebrity DJs — widely known celebrities performing as DJs.
Bedroom DJs — a general term for DJs performing at home, usually recording their sets and posting them online.
Equipment
DJs use equipment that enables them to play multiple sources of recorded music and mix them to create seamless transitions and unique arrangements of songs. An important tool for DJs is the specialized DJ mixer, a small audio mixer with a crossfader and cue functions. The crossfader enables the DJ to blend or transition from one song to another. The cue knobs or switches allow the DJ to "listen" to a source of recorded music in headphones before playing it for the live club or broadcast audience. Previewing the music in headphones helps the DJ pick the next track they want to play, cue up the track to the desired starting location, and align the two tracks' beats in traditional situations where auto sync technology is not being used. This process ensures that the selected song will mix well with the currently playing music. DJs may align the beats of the music sources so their rhythms do not clash when they are played together to help create a smooth transition from one song to another. Other equipment may include a microphone, effects units such as reverb, and electronic musical instruments such as drum machines and synthesizers.
As music technology has progressed, DJs have adopted different types of equipment to play and mix music, all of which are still commonly used. Traditionally, DJs used two turntables plugged into a DJ mixer to mix music on vinyl records. As compact discs became popular media for publishing music, specialized high quality CD players known as CDJs were developed for DJs. CDJs can take the place of turntables or be used together with turntables. Many CDJs can now play digital music files from USB flash drives or SD cards in addition to CDs. With the spread of portable laptop, tablet, and smartphone computers, DJs began using software together with specialized sound cards and DJ controller hardware. DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer or be used instead of a hardware mixer.
Turntables
Turntables allow DJs to play vinyl records. By adjusting the playback speed of the turntable, either by adjusting the speed knob, or by manipulating the platter (e.g., by slowing down the platter by putting a finger gently along the side), DJs can match the tempos of different records so their rhythms can be played together at the same time without clashing or make a smooth, seamless transition from one song to another. This technique is known as beatmatching. DJs typically replace the rubber mat on turntables that keeps the record moving in sync with the turntable with a slipmat that facilitates manipulating the playback of the record by hand. With the slipmat, the DJ can stop or slow down the record while the turntable is still spinning. Direct-drive turntables are the type preferred by DJs. Belt-drive turntables are less expensive, but they are not suitable for turntablism and DJing, because the belt-drive motor can be damaged by this type of manipulation. Some DJs, most commonly those who play hip hop music, go beyond merely mixing records and use turntables as musical instruments for scratching, beat juggling, and other turntablism techniques.
CDJs/media players
CDJs / media players are high quality digital media players made for DJing. They often have large jog wheels and pitch controls to allow DJs to manipulate the playback of digital files for beatmatching similar to how DJs manipulate vinyl records on turntables. CDJs often have features such as loops and waveform displays similar to DJ software. Originally designed to play music from compact discs, they now can play digital music files stored on USB flash drives and SD cards. Some CDJs can also connect to a computer running DJ software to act as a DJ controller. Modern media players have the ability to stream music from online music providers such as Beatport, Beatsource, Tidal and Soundcloud GO.
DJ mixers
DJ mixers are small audio mixing consoles specialized for DJing. Most DJ mixers have far fewer channels than a mixer used by a record producer or audio engineer; whereas standard live sound mixers in small venues have 12 to 24 channels, and standard recording studio mixers have even more (as many as 72 on large boards), basic DJ mixers may have only two channels. While DJ mixers have many of the same features found on larger mixers (faders, equalization knobs, gain knobs, effects units, etc.), DJ mixers have a feature that is usually only found on DJ mixers: the crossfader. The crossfader is a type of fader that is mounted horizontally. DJs used the crossfader to mix two or more sound sources. The midpoint of the crossfader's travel is a 50/50 mix of the two channels (on a two channel mixer). The far left side of the crossfader provides only the channel A sound source. The far right side provides only the channel B sound source (e.g., record player number 2). Positions in between the two extremes provide different mixes of the two channels. Some DJs use a computer with DJ software and a DJ controller instead of an analog DJ mixer to mix music, although DJ software can be used in conjunction with a hardware DJ mixer.
Headphones
DJs generally use higher quality headphones than those designed for music consumers. DJ headphones have other properties useful for DJs, such as designs that acoustically isolate the sounds of the headphones from the outside environment (hard shell headphones), flexible headbands and pivot joints to allow DJs to listen to one side of the headphones, while turning the other headphone away (so they can monitor the mix in the club), and replaceable cables. Replaceable cables enables DJs to buy new cables if a cable becomes frayed, worn, or damaged, or if a cable is accidentally cut.
Closed-back headphones are highly recommended for DJs to block outside noise as the environment of DJ usually tend to be very noisy. Standard headphones have 3.5mm jack but DJ equipment usually requires ¼ inch jack. Most of specialized DJ Headphones have an adapter to switch between 3.5mm jack and ¼ inch jack. Detachable coiled cables are perfect for DJ Headphones.
Software
DJs have changed their equipment as new technologies are introduced. The earliest DJs in pop music, in 1970s discos, used record turntables, vinyl records and audio consoles. In the 1970s, DJs would have to lug heavy direct drive turntables and crates of records to clubs and shows. In the 1980s, many DJs transitioned to compact cassettes. In the 1990s and 2000s, many DJs switched to using digital audio such as CDs and MP3 files. As technological advances made it practical to store large collections of digital music files on a laptop computer, DJ software was developed so DJs could use a laptop as a source of music instead of transporting CDs or vinyl records to gigs. Unlike most music player software designed for regular consumers, DJ software can play at least two audio files simultaneously, display the waveforms of the files on screen and enable the DJ to listen to either source.
The waveforms allow the DJ see what is coming next in the music and how the playback of different files is aligned. The software analyzes music files to identify their tempo and where the beats are. The analyzed information can be used by the DJ to help manually beatmatch like with vinyl records or the software can automatically synchronize the beats. Digital signal processing algorithms in software allow DJs to adjust the tempo of recordings independently of their pitch (and musical key, a feature known as "keylock". Some software analyzes the loudness of the music for automatic normalization with ReplayGain and detects the musical key. Additionally, DJ software can store cue points, set loops, and apply effects.
As tablet computers and smartphones became widespread, DJ software was written to run on these devices in addition to laptops.
DJ software requires specialized hardware in addition to a computer to fully take advantage of its features. The consumer grade, regular sound card integrated into most computer motherboards can only output two channels (one stereo pair). However, DJs need to be able to output at least four channels (two stereo pairs, thus Left and Right for input 1 and Left and Right for input 2), either unmixed signals to send to a DJ mixer or a main output plus a headphone output. Additionally, DJ sound cards output higher quality signals than the sound cards built into consumer-grade computer motherboards.
Timecode
Special vinyl records (or CDs/digital files played with CDJs) can be used with DJ software to play digital music files with DJ software as if they were pressed onto vinyl, allowing turntablism techniques to be used with digital files. These vinyl records do not have music recordings pressed on to them. Instead, they are pressed with a special signal, referred to as "timecode", to control DJ software. The DJ software interprets changes in the playback speed, direction, and position of the timecode signal and manipulates the digital files it is playing in the same way that the turntable manipulates the timecode record.
This requires a specialized DJ sound card with at least 4 channels (2 stereo pairs) of inputs and outputs. With this setup, the DJ software typically outputs unmixed signals from the music files to an external hardware DJ mixer. Some DJ mixers have integrated USB sound cards that allow DJ software to connect directly to the mixer without requiring a separate sound card.
DJ controllers
A DJ software can be used to mix audio files on the computer instead of a separate hardware mixer. When mixing on a computer, DJs often use a DJ controller device that mimics the layout of two turntables plus a DJ mixer to control the software rather than the computer keyboard & touchpad on a laptop, or the touchscreen on a tablet computer or smartphone. Many DJ controllers have an integrated sound card with 4 output channels (2 stereo pairs) that allows the DJ to use headphones to preview music before playing it on the main output.
Other equipment
A microphone, so that the DJ can introduce songs and speak to the audience over the sound system.
Electronic effects units such as delay, reverb, octave, equalizer, chorus, etc.
Multi-stylus head shells, which allow a DJ to play different grooves of the same record at the same time.
Samplers, sequencers, electronic musical keyboards (synthesizers), effects pedals (effects unit) or drum machines.
PA system or sound reinforcement system (power amplifiers and speaker enclosures), typically including subwoofer cabinets for deep bass (or, if a DJ is broadcasting and/or recording a set, broadcasting equipment or recording gear)
Monitor speakers, for listening to the "house mix" that is playing over the main speakers
Techniques
Several techniques are used by DJs as a means to better mix and blend recorded music. These techniques primarily include the cueing, equalization and audio mixing of two or more sound sources. The complexity and frequency of special techniques depends largely on the setting in which a DJ is working. Radio DJs are less likely to focus on advanced music-mixing procedures than club DJs, who rely on a smooth transition between songs using a range of techniques. However, some radio DJs are experienced club DJs, so they use the same sophisticated mixing techniques.
Club DJ turntable techniques include beatmatching, phrasing and slip-cueing to preserve energy on a dance floor. Turntablism embodies the art of cutting, beat juggling, scratching, needle drops, phase shifting, back spinning and more to perform the transitions and overdubs of samples in a more creative manner (although turntablism is often considered a use of the turntable as a musical instrument rather than a tool for blending recorded music). Professional DJs may use harmonic mixing to choose songs that are in compatible musical keys. Other techniques include chopping, screwing and looping.
Recent advances in technology in both DJ hardware and software can provide assisted or automatic completion of some traditional DJ techniques and skills. Examples include phrasing and beatmatching, which can be partially or completely automated by using DJ software that performs automatic synchronization of sound recordings, a feature commonly labelled "sync". Most DJ mixers now include a beat-counter which analyzes the tempo of an incoming sound source and displays its tempo in beats per minute (BPM), which may assist with beatmatching analog sound sources.
In the past, being a DJ has largely been a self-taught craft but with the complexities of new technologies and the convergence with music production methods, there are a growing number of schools and organizations that offer instruction on the techniques.
Miming
In DJ culture, miming refers to the practice of DJ's pantomiming the actions of live-mixing a set on stage while a pre-recorded mix plays over the sound system. Miming mixing in a live performance is considered to be controversial within DJ culture. Some within the DJ community say that miming is increasingly used as a technique by celebrity model DJs who may lack mixing skills, but can draw big crowds to a venue.
During a DJ tour for the release of the French group Justice's A Cross the Universe in November 2008, controversy arose when a photograph of Augé DJing with an unplugged Akai MPD24 surfaced. The photograph sparked accusations that Justice's live sets were faked. Augé has since said that the equipment was unplugged very briefly before being reattached and the band put a three-photo set of the incident on their MySpace page. After a 2013 Disclosure concert, the duo was criticized for pretending to live mix to a playback of a pre-recorded track. Disclosure's Guy Lawrence said they did not deliberately intend to mislead their audience, and cited miming by other DJs such as David Guetta.
History
The term "disc jockey" was ostensibly coined by radio gossip commentator Walter Winchell in 1935, and the phrase first appeared in print in a 1941 Variety magazine, used to describe radio personalities who introduced phonograph records on the air. Playing recorded music for dancing and parties rose with the mass marketing of home phonographs in the late 19th century. British radio disc jockey Jimmy Savile hosted his first live dance party in 1943 using a single turntable and a makeshift sound system. Four years later, Savile began using two turntables welded together to form a single DJ console. In 1947, the Whiskey A Go-Go opened in Paris as the first discotheque. In the 1960s, Rudy Bozak began making the first DJ mixers, mixing consoles specialized for DJing.
In the late 1960s to early 1970s Jamaican sound system culture, producer and sound system operator (DJ), (Jamaican) King Tubby and producer Lee "Scratch" Perry were pioneers of the genre known as dub music. They experimented with tape-based composition; emphasized repetitive rhythmic structures (often stripped of their harmonic elements); electronically manipulated spatiality; sonically manipulated pre-recorded musical materials from mass media; and remixed music among other innovative techniques. It is widely known that the Jamaican dancehall culture has had and continues to have a significant impact on the American hip hop culture.
DJ turntablism has origins in the invention of direct-drive turntables. Early belt-drive turntables were unsuitable for turntablism and mixing, since they had a slow start-up time, and they were prone to wear-and-tear and breakage, as the belt would break from backspinning or scratching. The first direct-drive turntable was invented by engineer Shuichi Obata at Matsushita (now Panasonic), based in Osaka, Japan. It eliminated belts, and instead employed a motor to directly drive a platter on which a vinyl record rests. In 1969, Matsushita released it as the SP-10, the first direct-drive turntable on the market, and the first in their influential Technics series of turntables.
In 1972, Technics started making their SL-1200 turntable, featuring high torque direct drive design. The SL-1200 had a rapid start and its durable direct drive enabled DJs to manipulate the platter, as with scratching techniques. Hip hop DJs began using the Technics SL-1200s as musical instruments to manipulate records with turntablism techniques such as scratching and beat juggling rather than merely mixing records. These techniques were developed in the 1970s by DJ Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, and Afrika Bambaataa, as they experimented with Technics direct-drive decks, finding that the motor would continue to spin at the correct RPM even if the DJ wiggled the record back and forth on the platter.
In 1980, Japanese company Roland released the TR-808, an analog rhythm/drum machine, which has unique artificial sounds, such as its booming bass and sharp snare, and a metronome-like rhythm. Yellow Magic Orchestra's use of the instrument in 1980 influenced hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, after which the TR-808 would be widely adopted by hip hop DJs, with 808 sounds remaining central to hip-hop music ever since. The Roland TB-303, a bass synthesizer released in 1981, had a similar impact on electronic dance music genres such as techno and house music, along with Roland's TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines.
In 1982, the Compact Disc (CD) format was released, popularizing digital audio. In 1998, the first MP3 digital audio player, the Eiger Labs MPMan F10, was introduced. In January of that same year at the BeOS Developer Conference, N2IT demonstrated FinalScratch, the first digital DJ system to allow DJs control of MP3 files through special time-coded vinyl records or CDs. While it would take some time for this novel concept to catch on with the "die-hard Vinyl DJs," this would become the first step in the Digital DJ revolution. Manufacturers joined with computer DJing pioneers to offer professional endorsements, the first being Professor Jam (a.k.a. William P. Rader), who went on to develop the industry's first dedicated computer DJ convention and learning program, the "CPS (Computerized Performance System) DJ Summit", to help spread the word about the advantages of this emerging technology.
In 2001, Pioneer DJ began producing the CDJ-1000 CD player, making the use of digital music recordings with traditional DJ techniques practical for the first time. As the 2000s progressed, laptop computers became more powerful and affordable. DJ software, specialized DJ sound cards, and DJ controllers were developed for DJs to use laptops as a source of music rather than turntables or CDJs. In the 2010s, like laptops before them, tablet computers and smartphones became more powerful & affordable. DJ software was written to run on these more portable devices instead of laptops, although laptops remain the more common type of computer for DJing.
Female DJs
In Western popular music, women musicians have achieved great success in singing and songwriting roles, however, there are relatively few women DJs or turntablists. Part of this may stem from a general low percentage of women in audio technology-related jobs. A 2013 Sound on Sound article stated that there are "...few women in record production and sound engineering." Ncube states that "[n]inety-five percent of music producers are male, and although there are female producers achieving great things in music, they are less well-known than their male counterparts." The vast majority of students in music technology programs are male. In hip hop music, the low percentage of women DJs and turntablists may stem from the overall male domination of the entire hip hop music industry. Most of the top rappers, MCs, DJs, record producers and music executives are men. There are a small number of high-profile women, but they are rare.
In 2007 Mark Katz's article "Men, Women, and Turntables: Gender and the DJ Battle," stated that "very few women [do turntablism] battle[s]; the matter has been a topic of conversation among hip-hop DJs for years." In 2010 Rebekah Farrugia states "the male-centricity of EDM culture" contributes to "a marginalisation of women in these [EDM] spaces." While turntablism and broader DJ practices should not be conflated, Katz suggests use or lack of use of the turntable broadly by women across genres and disciplines is impacted upon by what he defines as "male technophilia." Historian Ruth Oldenziel concurs in her writing on engineering with this idea of socialization as a central factor in the lack of engagement with technology. She explains: "an exclusive focus on women's supposed failure to enter the field … is insufficient for understanding how our stereotypical notions have come into being; it tends to put the burden of proof entirely on women and to blame them for their supposedly inadequate socialization, their lack of aspiration, and their want of masculine values. An equally challenging question is why and how boys have come to love things technical, how boys have historically been socialized as technophiles."
Lucy Green has focused on gender in relation to musical performers and creators, and specifically on educational frameworks as they relate to both. She suggests that women's alienation from "areas that have a strong technological tendency such as DJing, sound engineering and producing" are "not necessarily about her dislike of these instruments but relates to the interrupting effect of their dominantly masculine delineations." Despite this, women and girls do increasingly engage in turntable and DJ practices, individually and collectively, and "carve out spaces for themselves in EDM and DJ Culture". A 2015 article cited a number of prominent female DJs: Hannah Wants, Ellen Allien, Miss Kittin, Monika Kruse, Nicole Moudaber, B.Traits, Magda, Nina Kraviz, Nervo, and Annie Mac. Two years later, another article brings out a list with world-famous female DJs including Nastia, tINY, Nora En Pure, Anja Schneider, Peggy Gou, Maya Jane Coles, and Eli & Fur.
Female DJ The Black Madonna has been called "one of the world’s most exciting turntablists." Her stage name The Black Madonna is a tribute to her mother's favorite Catholic saint. In 2018, The Black Madonna played herself as an in-residence DJ for the video game Grand Theft Auto Online, as part of the After Hours DLC.
There are various projects dedicated to the promotion and support of these practices such as Female DJs London. Some artists and collectives go beyond these practices to be more gender inclusive. For example, Discwoman, a New York-based collective and booking agency, describe themselves as "representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent."
In Japan, the newest Bushiroad franchise: D4DJ focuses all-female DJ unit.
Health
The risk of DJs working in nightclubs with loud music includes noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus. Nightclubs constantly exceed safe levels of noise exposure with average sound levels ranging from 93.2 to 109.7 dB. Constant music exposure creates temporary and permanent auditory dysfunction for professional DJs with average levels at 96dB being above the recommended level, at which ear protection is mandatory for industry. Three quarters of DJs have tinnitus and are at risk of tenosynovitis in the wrists and other limbs. Tenosynovitis results from staying in the same position over multiple gigs for scratching motion and cueing, this would be related to a repetitive strain injury. Gigs can last 4-5 hours in nightlife and the hospitality industry, as a result there are potential complications of prolonged standing which include slouching, varicose veins, cardiovascular disorders, joint compression, and muscle fatigue. This is common for other staff to experience as well including bartenders and security staff for example.
In film
Berlin Calling – a German film about fictional DJ and producer Ickarus (Paul Kalkbrenner), who is struggling with drug abuse
Speaking in Code – an American documentary film about techno artists Modeselektor, Wighnomy Brothers, Philip Sherburne, Monolake and David Day
Kvadrat – a French and Russian documentary film about the realities of techno DJing, using the example of DJ Andrey Pushkarev
It's All Gone Pete Tong – a fictional mockumentary British movie about Frankie Wilde, a DJ who gradually becomes deaf due to drug abuse and an unhealthy lifestyle
We Are Your Friends – an American fiction film about a college DJ trying to make it in the DJing scene with "one hit song", starring Zac Efron
Scratch – a documentary about the hip-hop DJ and the 2000-era turntablist movement
Tonkatsu DJ Agetarou – a Japanese anime, originally a manga, about a fictional character named Agetarou who aspires to be a DJ master with the help of his friends and mentor, Big Master Fry.
24 Hour Party People – about the UK music scene from the late 1970s to the "Madchester" scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Human Traffic – about early UK rave counter-culture featuring music and performances by celebrated DJs Fatboy Slim, CJ Bolland, Carl Cox, and Mad Doctor X.
Turn Up Charlie – a 2019 series about a struggling DJ, played by Idris Elba, who is also a bachelor trying to make it again after a one hit back in the 1990s
Avicii: True Stories – a documentary film about Avicii
See also
Digital DJ licensing
List of club DJs
List of music software#DJ software
Live PA
DJ mix
Record collecting
Spelling of disc
Stage lighting
VJ (media personality)
References
Notes
Assef, Claudia (2000). Todo DJ Já Sambou: A História do Disc-Jóquei no Brasil. São Paulo: Conrad Editora do Brasil. .
Brewster, Bill, and Frank Broughton (2000). Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. New York: Grove Press. (North American edition). London: Headline. (UK edition).
Broughton, Frank, and Bill Brewster. How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records. New York: Grove Press, 2003.
Graudins, Charles A. How to Be a DJ. Boston: Course Technology PTR, 2004.
Lawrence, Tim (2004). Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 . Duke University Press. .
Miller, Paul D. a.k.a. DJ Spooky, Sound Unbound: Writings on DJ Culture and Electronic Music, MIT Press 2008. .
Poschardt, Ulf (1998). DJ Culture. London: Quartet Books. .
Zemon, Stacy. The Mobile DJ Handbook: How to Start & Run a Profitable Mobile Disc Jockey Service, Second Edition. St. Louis: Focal Press, 2002.
External links
Audio mixing
Broadcasting occupations
Disco
Mass media occupations
Occupations in music
Hip hop production
Turntablism
Underground culture
Electronic dance music
1930s neologisms
Articles containing video clips
| false |
[
"Cocoa Chanelle is an American DJ and recording artist. She has worked as an on-air personality and mix show DJ on New York City's Hip Hop radio station HOT 97 and Kiss FM. She has worked in television, being the first DJ to be employed by BET Networks for the weekly teen talk show \"Teen Summit.\"\n\nEarly life \n\nChanelle was born in Brooklyn, New York. At age seven, she was raised by her grandmother in West Virginia following the death of both parents to alcoholism. She started as a MC at the age of twelve, and was later put on the turntables by age thirteen by her brother Andre who was shot and killed in New Jersey three months before Cocoa was hired as a DJ on HOT 97.\n\nCareer\nAt a young age, Cocoa entered local talent shows rapping and Djing. By age 16, while visiting family, Cocoa was asked by Houston, Texas DJ Walter D to make a guest DJ appearance on the popular radio station Magic 102. Immediately following high school graduation, Cocoa began her DJ career on a professional level in her hometown New York City as the DJ for hip-hop duo Kings of Swing. Her big break came when she landed a weekly spot on BET's teen talk show Teen Summit as the first-ever BET resident DJ, a spot she held for over six years. She has also worked on MTV's Spring Break. and made several guest appearances on BET's Rap City and 106 & Park.\n\nShe had a 16-year radio career in New York City on HOT 97 which began after making several guests mixing appearances on Hot 97's \"Morning Show\", hosted by Ed Lover, she was recommended to the stations program director and as a result, the morning show producer created the idea for \"Ladies Night,\" which consisted of Angie Martinez, DJ Jazzy Joyce & Chanelle.\n\nShe was also listed in Vibe Magazine as one of the TOP 17 DJ's in the United States, honored by BET for Black History Month and received a Black Girls Rock! award. Aside from djing in nightclubs around the world, Cocoa has performed at Madison Square Garden as the DJ for the New York Knicks half time show. She was also honored at the industry event for Radio Mixshow DJ's Mixshow Power Summit conference, where she received the award for \"Best Female Mixshow DJ of the Year.\" \n\nIn 2019, Cocoa became the official touring DJ for the female rap group Salt N Pepa.\n\nDiscography\n\nProduction\n2003: \"Ok\" – Sheek Louch\n2005: \"Pressure\" – Sheek Louch\n2006: \"Pain in My Life\" – Saigon\n\nStudio album\nWith Kings of Swing\n1990 Strategy (Virgin, 1990)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n DJ Cocoa Chanelle discography at Discogs\n \n\nAmerican hip hop record producers\nWomen DJs\nAmerican hip hop DJs\nLiving people\nMixtape DJs\nNightlife in New York City\nPeople from Bluefield, West Virginia\nRappers from Brooklyn\nRappers from West Virginia\n1971 births\n21st-century American rappers\n21st-century American women musicians",
"Olawunmi Okerayi, known by her stage name DJ Lambo, is a Nigerian disc jockey. Her song \"Drank\" was produced by Reinhard and received positive critical reviews and extensive airplay. She was signed to Loopy Music in 2013 before its merge with Chocolate City in 2015. She won DJ of the Year (Female) at the 2016 City People Entertainment Awards.\nNigerian Entertainment Today (NET) listed her as one of top five Nigerian DJs to watch out for in 2015.\n\nIn 2017, DJ Lambo was among the few DJs selected to play at Big Brother Nigeria's season 2 Saturday party of the Big Brother Naija reality game show.\n\nEarly life and music career\n\nEarly life\nDJ Lambo grew up with four brothers in Nigeria. Her father, DJ Tony Lewis influenced her career as a disc jockey. She started her professional career in 2008–2009 as a Radio personality|(OAP) on Raypower 100.5 FM, Rhythm FM 94.7 Abuja, and Love 104.5 FM Abuja.\n\nArtistry\nDJ Lambo describes her sound as a fusion of house music, techno, afropop and hip hop. Her song \"Drank\" was produced by Reinhard and received positive critical reviews and extensive airplay. She was signed to Loopy Music in 2013 before its merge with Chocolate City in 2015.\n\nSmirnoff Equalizing Music\nOn March 8, 2017, Smirnoff launched the Equalizing Music initiative on behalf of the International Women's Day to celebrate female DJs around the world. DJ Lambo was ranked number 18 on the Smirnoff Top Women Electronic Artists playlist with her single \"Motion\".\n\nOn March 20, 2017, Smirnoff Nigeria also celebrated International Women's Day at Crest Hotels and Garden Jos with the top three finalists of the Smirnoff X1 Female DJ contestants alongside DJ Lambo and DJ Spinall at the event.\n\nChoc Boi Nation President\nOn 14 June 2017, she was named the head and president of Choc Boi Nation (CBN), an record imprint of Chocolate City Music. With this announcement she became one of the major female record label executives in the music industry in Nigeria. The press conference, held in Lagos, was attended by co-label mates MI Abaga, Dice Ailes, Koker and Loose Kaynon\n\nEducational background\nDJ Lambo has a degree in English and Literature from the University of Abuja.\n\nNotable performances\nShe has performed at several popular events and shows since her rise to stardom, including:\n\nDiscography\n\nSingles\n\nAs featured artist\n\nCompilation singles\n\nCompilation albums\n\nMixtape album\n\nAwards and nominations\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n DJ Lambo\n\nLiving people\n21st-century Nigerian musicians\nMusicians from Lagos State\nNigerian hip hop DJs\nNigerian radio personalities\nYear of birth missing (living people)"
] |
[
"Sanjay Dutt",
"2007-2009"
] |
C_fb08846ee7bc41a9957c91b5b5989fe5_0
|
What did Dutt do in 2007?
| 1 |
What did Sanjay Dutt do in 2007?
|
Sanjay Dutt
|
Abdul Qayyum Abdul Karim Shaikh, who was thought to be a close aide of the terrorists' ringleader, Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested. Dutt had given Qayuum's name to the police when confessing to arms possession, saying that in September 1992 he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai. On 31 July 2007, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons and cleared him of charges relating to the Mumbai blasts. According to The Guardian, "The actor claimed he feared for his life after the notorious "Black Friday" bombings, which were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly Hindu-Muslim clashes a few months earlier. But the judge rejected this defence and also refused bail." Dutt was returned to jail at Arthur Road and soon after moved to the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune. Dutt appealed against the sentence and was granted interim bail on 20 August 2007 until such time as the TADA court provided him with a copy of its judgement. On 22 October 2007 Dutt was back in jail but again applied for bail. On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court. On 21 March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of the TADA court but shortened the sentence to five years' imprisonment. Dutt was given a month to surrender before the authorities. Dutt has said that "I am not a politician but I belong to a political family." He was persuaded by a close friend to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party but withdrew when the court refused to suspend his conviction. He was then appointed General Secretary of the party, leaving that post in December 2010. CANNOTANSWER
|
On 31 July 2007, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons and cleared him of charges relating to the Mumbai blasts.
|
Sanjay Balraj Dutt (born 29 July 1959) is an Indian actor who works in Hindi films. He is the recipient of several awards, including two Filmfare Awards and three Screen Awards. Dutt acted in 187 films, ranging from romance to comedy genres, but is usually typecast in action genres, and established himself as one of the most popular Hindi film actors of the later 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s.
The son of actors Sunil Dutt and Nargis, Dutt made his acting debut in Rocky (1981), which was directed by his father. The crime thriller Naam (1985) proved to be a turning point in his career, which was followed by a series of commercially successful films in that decade, including Jeete Hain Shaan Se (1988), Mardon Wali Baat (1988), Ilaaka (1989), Hum Bhi Insaan Hain (1989) and Kanoon Apna Apna (1989). He earned nominations for the Filmfare Award for Best Actor for Saajan (1991) and Khalnayak (1993). Dutt earned his first Best Actor at the ceremony for playing a common man-turned-gangster in Vaastav: The Reality (1999). Along with Vaastav: The Reality, he also won accolades for playing an army officer in Mission Kashmir (2001), a soft-hearted goofy gangster in Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003) and its sequel Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006).
Dutt was arrested under the TADA and the Arms Act in April 1993 and was convicted for violation of Arms Act for possession of illegal weapons procured from other accused in the 1993 Bombay bombings. After serving his sentence, he was released in 2016. Dutt's life receives considerable media coverage in India, and in 2018, Sanju, a biopic based on his life (which also saw a special appearance by him), was released to positive reviews and emerged as one of the highest-grossers of Indian cinema.
Early life
Dutt was born on 29th July, 1959 in Bombay to noted cinema actors Sunil Dutt and Nargis. He has two sisters, Priya Dutt and Namrata Dutt. Sanjay's name was chosen by crowdsourcing via the Urdu language film magazine Shama. His mother died in 1981, shortly before his debut film's premiere; her death is cited as the instigator of his drug abuse. As a child actor, Dutt appeared briefly as a qawali singer in the 1972 film Reshma Aur Shera, which starred his father.
Career
Early career and breakthrough (1981–1993)
Dutt made his Bollywood movie debut with the box-office super hit Rocky in 1981. Dutt then went on to star in Vidhaata, the highest-grossing Hindi film of 1982, along with film veterans Dilip Kumar, Shammi Kapoor and Sanjeev Kumar. He also starred in movies like Main Awara Hoon (1983). In 1985 he shot Jaan Ki Baazi, his first film in two years.
The 1986 film Naam was a turning point in Dutt's career, it was a major commercial and critical success. Dutt appeared in successful films throughout the '80s such as Imaandaar, Inaam Dus Hazaar, Jeete Hain Shaan Se (1988), Mardon Wali Baat (1988), Ilaaka (1989), Hum Bhi Insaan Hain (1989), Kanoon Apna Apna (1989) and Taaqatwar.
His performances in both Kabzaa (1988) and J. P. Dutta's 1989 Hathyar were both well received by critics although both films only managed average collections at the box office. In the late 1980s he was seen in a number of multi-starrers alongside leading actors like Govinda, Mithun, Dharmendra, Jackie Shroff and Sunny Deol.
His successes continued in the 1990s, with films that include Tejaa, Khatarnaak, Zahreelay, Thanedaar, Khoon Ka Karz, Yalgaar, Gumrah, Sahibaan and Aatish: Feel the Fire. He went on to star in some of the most era-defining Indian films of the early 1990s such as Sadak, Saajan (for which he was nominated for the Filmfare Best Actor Award) and Khalnayak, for which he earned his second Filmfare Best Actor Award nomination.
The Hindu wrote that "Sanjay's earlier films (like Naam and Sadak) got him a lot of favourable attention." and "Saajan established Sanjay Dutt as the conventional soft hero."Saajan was the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 1991, and Sadak was the fifth highest grosser of 1991. Khalnayak became a blockbuster and was the second-highest grosser of 1993. This was followed by another box office success Gumrah, this was Dutt's second consecutive hit of the year.
Arrest due to involvement in 1993 serial bombings, films after arrest (1993 - 1999)
Bombay (now Mumbai) suffered a series of serial bombings in 1993. Dutt was among several people associated with Bollywood who were accused of involvement. It was alleged that Dutt accepted a delivery of weapons at his house from Abu Salem and co-accused Riyaz Siddiqui, who had also been implicated in relation to the Mumbai blasts. It was claimed that the weapons formed a part of a large consignment of arms connected to the terrorists. Dutt, however, in his confession stated that he took only one Type-56 from the producers of his movie Sanam, for his own family protection. It has also been reported that Sanjay Dutt's father Sunil Dutt's political rivalry caused Sanjay Dutt's conviction.. Dutt's first film after his 1993 arrest was Daud (1997). It did average business at the box office despite getting a lot of publicity. This was followed by Dushman which did well financially.
Comeback (1999 – 2003)
1999 was an excellent year for Dutt and one that is regarded as his comeback, with all of his five releases being amongst the highest-grossing films of that year. He began it by starring in the Mahesh Bhatt-directed film Kartoos, followed by Khoobsurat, Haseena Maan Jaayegi, Daag: The Fire and Vaastav: The Reality, for which he won many awards, including his first Filmfare Best Actor Award. His role in 2000's Mission Kashmir won him critical acclaim and a number of awards and nominations. Dutt was also invited by the President of India to Rashtrapati Bhavan for his performance in the movie.
Breakthrough with Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., prolonged success (2003 - present)
As the decade went on, he continued to play lead roles in popular and critical successes such as Jodi No.1 (2001), Pitaah (2002), Kaante (2002) and the National Award-winning film Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003), which garnered him several awards. At the box office Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. achieved a silver jubilee status (25-week run) being one of only eight films to have achieved this status since the year 2000. In its 26th week of release, the film could still be found playing on 257 screens throughout India. Later successes came with Musafir (2004), Plan (2004), Parineeta (2005) and Dus (2005). He won critical acclaim for his performances in Shabd (2005) and Zinda.
The sequel of Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., Lage Raho Munna Bhai was released in late 2006. Dutt received a number of awards for his performance in the film, along with an award from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his work in the Munna bhai series. NDTV India counted the character Munna Bhai as one of top 20 fictional characters in Bollywood. Later Dutt starred in movies like Dhamaal (2007), Shootout at Lokhandwala (2007), All the Best (2009), Double Dhamaal (2011), Son of Sardaar (2012) Agneepath (2012) and PK.
In January 2008, the Indian film Institute Filmfare listed 12 films featuring Dutt in its list of top 100 highest-grossing movies of all time. In its May 2013 edition "100 years of Indian cinema" Filmfare listed three films featuring Dutt in its top 20 list of highest-grossing Hindi films of all time, adjusted for inflation these films were Lage Raho Munna Bhai, Khalnayak and Saajan.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra on 29 September 2016 announced that the third part of Munna Bhai series, starring Dutt in the title role, would begin soon. In 2017, Dutt appeared as the lead in Bhoomi, directed by Omung Kumar. In 2018, he starred in Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster 3. In 2018, it was also announced that Dutt would feature alongside Ranbir Kapoor and Vaani Kapoor in Shamshera, which will release on 31 July 2020. On 29 June 2018, his biopic Sanju released in which he made a special appearance. Dutt and Alia Bhatt are currently shooting for Sadak 2. In 2019, he joined the cast of historical film Bhuj: The Pride of India, which will feature an ensemble cast consisting of Ajay Devgn, Sonakshi Sinha and Parineeti Chopra. He was seen in the film Prassthanam on 20 September 2019.
Dutt is currently working as the main antagonist on K.G.F: Chapter 2, the sequel to the blockbuster Kannada film, K.G.F: Chapter 1, marking his debut in Kannada cinema. Sanjay Dutt will now appear in films like Shamshera, RRR and Prithviraj.
Off-screen work
Dutt co-hosted the fifth season of the Indian reality show Bigg Boss along with Salman Khan. The show aired on Colors television from 2 October 2011 to 7 January 2012. Dutt later said it was Khan who persuaded him to co-host the show. Dutt and entrepreneur Indian Premier League cricket team owner Raj Kundra together launched India's first professionally organised mixed martial arts league—the Super Fight League—on 16 January 2012.
Personal life and media image
In the early 1980s, Dutt had a relationship with his co-star from his first film, Tina Munim. After this relationship ended, Dutt married actress Richa Sharma in 1987. She died of a brain tumour in 1996. The couple have a daughter, Trishala Dutt, born in 1988, who lives in the United States with her maternal grandparents.
Dutt's second marriage was to air-hostess-turned-model Rhea Pillai in February 1998. The divorce finalised in 2008. Dutt married Manyata (born Dilnawaz Sheikh) first registered in Goa in 2008 and then, in a Hindu ceremony in Mumbai, after two years of dating. On 21 October 2010, he became a father to twins, a boy and a girl.
He is a devout Shaiva Hindu who has read holy scriptures and theological works.
Bombay (now Mumbai) suffered a series of serial bombings in 1993. Dutt was among several people associated with Bollywood who were accused of involvement. It was alleged that Dutt accepted a delivery of weapons at his house from Abu Salem and co-accused Riyaz Siddiqui, who had also been implicated in relation to the Mumbai blasts. It was claimed that the weapons formed a part of a large consignment of arms connected to the terrorists. Dutt, however, in his confession stated that he took only one Type-56 from the producers of his movie Sanam, for his own family protection. It has also been reported that Sanjay Dutt's father Sunil Dutt's political rivalry caused Sanjay Dutt's conviction.
In April 1993, after initial reporting by Baljeet Parmar on Dutt's possession of the AK-56, he was arrested under the provisions of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court of India on 5 May 1993; however, on 4 July 1994 his bail was cancelled and he was re-arrested. On 16 October 1995 he was granted bail. Abdul Qayyum Abdul Karim Shaikh, who was thought to be a close aide of the terrorists' ringleader, Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested. Dutt had given Qayuum's name to the police when confessing to arms possession, saying that in September 1992 he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai. His arrest coincided with the release of his film, Khalnayak, in which he played a wanted criminal. The film's major success was in part due to Dutt's off-screen legal controversy.
On 31 July 2007, Dutt was cleared of the charges relating to the Mumbai blast; however, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment under Arms act for illegal possession of weapons. According to The Guardian, "The actor claimed he feared for his life after the notorious 'Black Friday' bombings, which were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly Hindu-Muslim clashes a few months earlier. But the judge rejected this defence and also refused bail." Dutt was returned to at the Arthur Road Jail and soon after moved to the Yerawada Central Jail in Pune. Dutt appealed against the sentence and was granted interim bail on 20 August 2007 until such time as the TADA court provided him with a copy of its judgement. On 22 October 2007 Dutt was back in jail but again applied for bail. On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court. On 21 March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict but shortened the sentence to five years' imprisonment. Dutt was given a month to surrender before the authorities.
Dutt has said that "I am not a politician but I belong to a political family." He was persuaded by a close friend to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party, but withdrew when the court refused to suspend his conviction. He was then appointed General Secretary of the Samajwadi Party, leaving that post in December 2010. In March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld Dutt's five-year sentence, 18 months of which he already spent in jail during the trial. He was given four weeks to surrender to the authorities, the court having refused to release him on probation due to the severity of the offence.
On 10 May, the Supreme Court rejected Dutt's review petition for the reconsideration of his conviction and asked him to surrender on the stipulated date. on 14 May, Dutt withdrew the mercy plea and surrendered to the Mumbai Police on 16 May 2013. Just before the surrender, the Mumbai jail authority got an anonymous letter threatening Dutt's life. Dutt filed an appeal to allow him to surrender before entering Yerwada Central Jail. Later, Dutt withdrew this request too. He was paroled from 21 December 2013. The parole was extended three times until March 2014, raising concern in Bombay High Court and a proposal from the Government of Maharashtra to amend the law of parole. He returned to Yerwada Central Jail after his parole ended. Dutt was out on a two weeks' furlough granted by the Yerwada Central Jail authorities on 24 December. He was subsequently incarcerated in Yerwada Central Jail, to complete his jail term. He was released from there on 25 February 2016 after serving his sentence.
Health issues
Dutt was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer in August 2020. He did his treatment in Mumbai and now recovered from lung cancer.
In popular culture
The author Yasser Usman published a biographical book on Dutt, titled Sanjay Dutt: The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood's Bad Boy, in 2018.
A film based on his life, Sanju, in which Ranbir Kapoor portrays the role of Dutt.
In 2021, Punjabi Singer from Brampton, Sidhu Moose Wala had also made a song Sanju, comparing his AK-47 possession and firing case with Sanjay Dutt.
Bibliography
References
External links
Male actors in Hindi cinema
Living people
1959 births
Filmfare Awards winners
Indian male child actors
Indian male singers
Lawrence School, Sanawar alumni
Politicians from Mumbai
Samajwadi Party politicians
Male actors from Mumbai
Film producers from Mumbai
Indian actor-politicians
Bigg Boss
Indian game show hosts
Punjabi people
20th-century Indian male actors
21st-century Indian male actors
Indian male comedians
Hindi film producers
Indian criminals
Indian Hindus
| false |
[
"Ritika Dutt is a Canadian entrepreneur. She is the CEO and co-founder of the legal artificial intelligence company Botler AI. In December 2019, Dutt was named as the only Canadian in the Forbes' 30 Under 30 2020 Law and Policy List.\n\nEarly life and education \nDutt was born in India, spent her childhood in Hong Kong and her teenage years in Singapore. In 2009, she moved to Montréal, Canada to attend McGill University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Economics and Political Science in 2013.\n\nEarly career \nAfter graduating from McGill, Dutt headed the marketing department of a Y Combinator startup. She then took over the internal operations of Notman House, Montreal's Google for Entrepreneurs tech hub, where she fostered the local startup community by supporting and promoting innovative ventures and initiatives.\n\nUsing her background in economics and innovation, Dutt then co-founded Botler AI in 2017 to enhance accessibility to the legal system, through artificial intelligence.\n\nExperience with workplace sexual harassment \nPrior to co-founding Botler, Dutt found herself faced with a stalker during a terrifying, months-long ordeal. The man showed up at her workplace everyday, stalked her on social media to learn of her location, and even followed her to her home. Though fearful, Dutt found herself making excuses thinking \"It’s all in my head\" or \"I don't know if something is really wrong or if I'm too sensitive\". She didn't know what her rights were, what she should do, or if the man's actions were illegal. The experience left her feeling trapped and Dutt struggled to call it what it was: stalking, or criminal harassment in Canadian law.\n\nMonths later, after the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations and ensuing spread of the #MeToo movement, Dutt started researching the relevant legal codes and learned what had happened to her was a crime. She gained confidence from learning there was a legal basis to what she had felt and that she had been justified with her discomfort.\n\nDutt realized that sexual harassment was a far bigger issue than imagined and found herself angered thinking “How many people think they can do this and get away with it?\".\n\nBotler AI \nIn December 2017, motivated to take action by her personal experiences, Dutt led Botler AI to launch a free tool to help survivors of sexual harassment determine whether their rights had been violated. The tool was aimed as an impartial resource to empower the average person through information and education, without fear of judgment.\n\nDutt's premise was that, unlike humans, a robot has no prejudice of race, gender, sexual orientation or socio-economic background, would never ask “What were you wearing?” or “How many drinks did you have?”, and therefore provided an emotion- and judgement-free neutral tool to complainants. The Artificial Intelligence system, which also used deep learning, was trained using over 300,000 court documents from Canada and the United States. Natural language processing was used to determine whether an incident described by the user could be classified as sexual harassment.\n\nThe user was provided with a summary of the relevant legal codes, based on their jurisdiction, and a detailed report of the incident which could be handed over to the relevant authorities, from HR to the police, if desired. The goal was not to let the user know whether they could win a case in court, but rather to empower them with confidence grounded in legal doctrine. Dutt stressed, “Once people have the information then it’s up to them what they want to do with it... maybe they feel comfortable to approach somebody like HR…or maybe it makes them feel better that it’s not just in my head, and I have the right to stand up to my abuser because I have rights in this situation.”\n\nDutt also commented “This is just the first step” and revealed plans to expand Botler to connect users with resources appropriate with their situation, including legal representation.\n\nSee also \n\n Yoshua Bengio\nList of notable McGill University alumni\n Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA)\n\nReferences \n\n1991 births\nLiving people\nCanadian technology company founders\nMcGill University alumni",
"Guru Dutt: A Life in Cinema is a 1996 biography written by the British author and television documentary producer Nasreen Munni Kabir, detailing the life and career of the Indian actor-cum-filmmaker Guru Dutt. The book chronicles Dutt's birth in Panambur in 1925, his 18-year-long film career, his marriage to the playback singer Geeta Dutt, with whom he had three children, and his death in 1964.\n\nSummary and release \nThe book chronicles the Indian actor and filmmaker Guru Dutt's birth in Panambur on 9 July 1925. He made his acting debut with Baazi in 1951, and details his commercially successful films, including the comedies Aar Paar (1954) and Mr. & Mrs. '55 (1955), the thriller C.I.D (1956), and the social film Chaudhvin Ka Chand (1960). It also discusses his marriage in 1953 to the playback singer Geeta Dutt, with whom he had three children, and his suicidal death on 10 October 1964.\n\nThe book was the British author and television documentary producer Nasreen Munni Kabir's second work about Dutt, after a documentary titled In Search of Guru Dutt (1989). Since the late 1970s, Kabir has become of his fan after programming his films for film festivals and television channels in Europe. For her research, she met Dutt's family members, including the son Tarun, whom she met in 1982 and once again during the production of her documentary Movie Mahal in 1987.:5 She also collected Dutt's magazine interviews (such as those from Filmfare) which are available in print edition at the National Film Archive of India in Pune.:9\n\nThe book was published by Oxford University Press in 1996. Amit Agarwal of India Today wrote, \"The trouble with this book is that it doesn't go much farther than a three-part documentary on Dutt ... For those who have seen the documentary on Indian television, the book doesn't have much that's new to offer. [Kabir] also fails to provide definitive answers to many of the questions attached to Dutt's life: What exactly tormented him? What led to his several suicide attempts? Why did he end up living a life of isolation?\" Another edition was published on 11 December 1997. Comparing it with Yasser Usman's Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story (2021), Partha Chatterjee from the Deccan Chronicle said that the latter one is better as the former's contents mostly talk about Dutt's films only.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\n1996 non-fiction books\nBooks about Guru Dutt\nBiographies about actors\nIndian biographies\nIndian non-fiction books\nOxford University Press books"
] |
[
"Sanjay Dutt",
"2007-2009",
"What did Dutt do in 2007?",
"On 31 July 2007, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons and cleared him of charges relating to the Mumbai blasts."
] |
C_fb08846ee7bc41a9957c91b5b5989fe5_0
|
What weapons was he in possession of?
| 2 |
What weapons was Sanjay Dutt in possession of?
|
Sanjay Dutt
|
Abdul Qayyum Abdul Karim Shaikh, who was thought to be a close aide of the terrorists' ringleader, Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested. Dutt had given Qayuum's name to the police when confessing to arms possession, saying that in September 1992 he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai. On 31 July 2007, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons and cleared him of charges relating to the Mumbai blasts. According to The Guardian, "The actor claimed he feared for his life after the notorious "Black Friday" bombings, which were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly Hindu-Muslim clashes a few months earlier. But the judge rejected this defence and also refused bail." Dutt was returned to jail at Arthur Road and soon after moved to the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune. Dutt appealed against the sentence and was granted interim bail on 20 August 2007 until such time as the TADA court provided him with a copy of its judgement. On 22 October 2007 Dutt was back in jail but again applied for bail. On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court. On 21 March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of the TADA court but shortened the sentence to five years' imprisonment. Dutt was given a month to surrender before the authorities. Dutt has said that "I am not a politician but I belong to a political family." He was persuaded by a close friend to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party but withdrew when the court refused to suspend his conviction. He was then appointed General Secretary of the party, leaving that post in December 2010. CANNOTANSWER
|
he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai.
|
Sanjay Balraj Dutt (born 29 July 1959) is an Indian actor who works in Hindi films. He is the recipient of several awards, including two Filmfare Awards and three Screen Awards. Dutt acted in 187 films, ranging from romance to comedy genres, but is usually typecast in action genres, and established himself as one of the most popular Hindi film actors of the later 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s.
The son of actors Sunil Dutt and Nargis, Dutt made his acting debut in Rocky (1981), which was directed by his father. The crime thriller Naam (1985) proved to be a turning point in his career, which was followed by a series of commercially successful films in that decade, including Jeete Hain Shaan Se (1988), Mardon Wali Baat (1988), Ilaaka (1989), Hum Bhi Insaan Hain (1989) and Kanoon Apna Apna (1989). He earned nominations for the Filmfare Award for Best Actor for Saajan (1991) and Khalnayak (1993). Dutt earned his first Best Actor at the ceremony for playing a common man-turned-gangster in Vaastav: The Reality (1999). Along with Vaastav: The Reality, he also won accolades for playing an army officer in Mission Kashmir (2001), a soft-hearted goofy gangster in Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003) and its sequel Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006).
Dutt was arrested under the TADA and the Arms Act in April 1993 and was convicted for violation of Arms Act for possession of illegal weapons procured from other accused in the 1993 Bombay bombings. After serving his sentence, he was released in 2016. Dutt's life receives considerable media coverage in India, and in 2018, Sanju, a biopic based on his life (which also saw a special appearance by him), was released to positive reviews and emerged as one of the highest-grossers of Indian cinema.
Early life
Dutt was born on 29th July, 1959 in Bombay to noted cinema actors Sunil Dutt and Nargis. He has two sisters, Priya Dutt and Namrata Dutt. Sanjay's name was chosen by crowdsourcing via the Urdu language film magazine Shama. His mother died in 1981, shortly before his debut film's premiere; her death is cited as the instigator of his drug abuse. As a child actor, Dutt appeared briefly as a qawali singer in the 1972 film Reshma Aur Shera, which starred his father.
Career
Early career and breakthrough (1981–1993)
Dutt made his Bollywood movie debut with the box-office super hit Rocky in 1981. Dutt then went on to star in Vidhaata, the highest-grossing Hindi film of 1982, along with film veterans Dilip Kumar, Shammi Kapoor and Sanjeev Kumar. He also starred in movies like Main Awara Hoon (1983). In 1985 he shot Jaan Ki Baazi, his first film in two years.
The 1986 film Naam was a turning point in Dutt's career, it was a major commercial and critical success. Dutt appeared in successful films throughout the '80s such as Imaandaar, Inaam Dus Hazaar, Jeete Hain Shaan Se (1988), Mardon Wali Baat (1988), Ilaaka (1989), Hum Bhi Insaan Hain (1989), Kanoon Apna Apna (1989) and Taaqatwar.
His performances in both Kabzaa (1988) and J. P. Dutta's 1989 Hathyar were both well received by critics although both films only managed average collections at the box office. In the late 1980s he was seen in a number of multi-starrers alongside leading actors like Govinda, Mithun, Dharmendra, Jackie Shroff and Sunny Deol.
His successes continued in the 1990s, with films that include Tejaa, Khatarnaak, Zahreelay, Thanedaar, Khoon Ka Karz, Yalgaar, Gumrah, Sahibaan and Aatish: Feel the Fire. He went on to star in some of the most era-defining Indian films of the early 1990s such as Sadak, Saajan (for which he was nominated for the Filmfare Best Actor Award) and Khalnayak, for which he earned his second Filmfare Best Actor Award nomination.
The Hindu wrote that "Sanjay's earlier films (like Naam and Sadak) got him a lot of favourable attention." and "Saajan established Sanjay Dutt as the conventional soft hero."Saajan was the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 1991, and Sadak was the fifth highest grosser of 1991. Khalnayak became a blockbuster and was the second-highest grosser of 1993. This was followed by another box office success Gumrah, this was Dutt's second consecutive hit of the year.
Arrest due to involvement in 1993 serial bombings, films after arrest (1993 - 1999)
Bombay (now Mumbai) suffered a series of serial bombings in 1993. Dutt was among several people associated with Bollywood who were accused of involvement. It was alleged that Dutt accepted a delivery of weapons at his house from Abu Salem and co-accused Riyaz Siddiqui, who had also been implicated in relation to the Mumbai blasts. It was claimed that the weapons formed a part of a large consignment of arms connected to the terrorists. Dutt, however, in his confession stated that he took only one Type-56 from the producers of his movie Sanam, for his own family protection. It has also been reported that Sanjay Dutt's father Sunil Dutt's political rivalry caused Sanjay Dutt's conviction.. Dutt's first film after his 1993 arrest was Daud (1997). It did average business at the box office despite getting a lot of publicity. This was followed by Dushman which did well financially.
Comeback (1999 – 2003)
1999 was an excellent year for Dutt and one that is regarded as his comeback, with all of his five releases being amongst the highest-grossing films of that year. He began it by starring in the Mahesh Bhatt-directed film Kartoos, followed by Khoobsurat, Haseena Maan Jaayegi, Daag: The Fire and Vaastav: The Reality, for which he won many awards, including his first Filmfare Best Actor Award. His role in 2000's Mission Kashmir won him critical acclaim and a number of awards and nominations. Dutt was also invited by the President of India to Rashtrapati Bhavan for his performance in the movie.
Breakthrough with Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., prolonged success (2003 - present)
As the decade went on, he continued to play lead roles in popular and critical successes such as Jodi No.1 (2001), Pitaah (2002), Kaante (2002) and the National Award-winning film Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003), which garnered him several awards. At the box office Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. achieved a silver jubilee status (25-week run) being one of only eight films to have achieved this status since the year 2000. In its 26th week of release, the film could still be found playing on 257 screens throughout India. Later successes came with Musafir (2004), Plan (2004), Parineeta (2005) and Dus (2005). He won critical acclaim for his performances in Shabd (2005) and Zinda.
The sequel of Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., Lage Raho Munna Bhai was released in late 2006. Dutt received a number of awards for his performance in the film, along with an award from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his work in the Munna bhai series. NDTV India counted the character Munna Bhai as one of top 20 fictional characters in Bollywood. Later Dutt starred in movies like Dhamaal (2007), Shootout at Lokhandwala (2007), All the Best (2009), Double Dhamaal (2011), Son of Sardaar (2012) Agneepath (2012) and PK.
In January 2008, the Indian film Institute Filmfare listed 12 films featuring Dutt in its list of top 100 highest-grossing movies of all time. In its May 2013 edition "100 years of Indian cinema" Filmfare listed three films featuring Dutt in its top 20 list of highest-grossing Hindi films of all time, adjusted for inflation these films were Lage Raho Munna Bhai, Khalnayak and Saajan.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra on 29 September 2016 announced that the third part of Munna Bhai series, starring Dutt in the title role, would begin soon. In 2017, Dutt appeared as the lead in Bhoomi, directed by Omung Kumar. In 2018, he starred in Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster 3. In 2018, it was also announced that Dutt would feature alongside Ranbir Kapoor and Vaani Kapoor in Shamshera, which will release on 31 July 2020. On 29 June 2018, his biopic Sanju released in which he made a special appearance. Dutt and Alia Bhatt are currently shooting for Sadak 2. In 2019, he joined the cast of historical film Bhuj: The Pride of India, which will feature an ensemble cast consisting of Ajay Devgn, Sonakshi Sinha and Parineeti Chopra. He was seen in the film Prassthanam on 20 September 2019.
Dutt is currently working as the main antagonist on K.G.F: Chapter 2, the sequel to the blockbuster Kannada film, K.G.F: Chapter 1, marking his debut in Kannada cinema. Sanjay Dutt will now appear in films like Shamshera, RRR and Prithviraj.
Off-screen work
Dutt co-hosted the fifth season of the Indian reality show Bigg Boss along with Salman Khan. The show aired on Colors television from 2 October 2011 to 7 January 2012. Dutt later said it was Khan who persuaded him to co-host the show. Dutt and entrepreneur Indian Premier League cricket team owner Raj Kundra together launched India's first professionally organised mixed martial arts league—the Super Fight League—on 16 January 2012.
Personal life and media image
In the early 1980s, Dutt had a relationship with his co-star from his first film, Tina Munim. After this relationship ended, Dutt married actress Richa Sharma in 1987. She died of a brain tumour in 1996. The couple have a daughter, Trishala Dutt, born in 1988, who lives in the United States with her maternal grandparents.
Dutt's second marriage was to air-hostess-turned-model Rhea Pillai in February 1998. The divorce finalised in 2008. Dutt married Manyata (born Dilnawaz Sheikh) first registered in Goa in 2008 and then, in a Hindu ceremony in Mumbai, after two years of dating. On 21 October 2010, he became a father to twins, a boy and a girl.
He is a devout Shaiva Hindu who has read holy scriptures and theological works.
Bombay (now Mumbai) suffered a series of serial bombings in 1993. Dutt was among several people associated with Bollywood who were accused of involvement. It was alleged that Dutt accepted a delivery of weapons at his house from Abu Salem and co-accused Riyaz Siddiqui, who had also been implicated in relation to the Mumbai blasts. It was claimed that the weapons formed a part of a large consignment of arms connected to the terrorists. Dutt, however, in his confession stated that he took only one Type-56 from the producers of his movie Sanam, for his own family protection. It has also been reported that Sanjay Dutt's father Sunil Dutt's political rivalry caused Sanjay Dutt's conviction.
In April 1993, after initial reporting by Baljeet Parmar on Dutt's possession of the AK-56, he was arrested under the provisions of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court of India on 5 May 1993; however, on 4 July 1994 his bail was cancelled and he was re-arrested. On 16 October 1995 he was granted bail. Abdul Qayyum Abdul Karim Shaikh, who was thought to be a close aide of the terrorists' ringleader, Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested. Dutt had given Qayuum's name to the police when confessing to arms possession, saying that in September 1992 he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai. His arrest coincided with the release of his film, Khalnayak, in which he played a wanted criminal. The film's major success was in part due to Dutt's off-screen legal controversy.
On 31 July 2007, Dutt was cleared of the charges relating to the Mumbai blast; however, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment under Arms act for illegal possession of weapons. According to The Guardian, "The actor claimed he feared for his life after the notorious 'Black Friday' bombings, which were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly Hindu-Muslim clashes a few months earlier. But the judge rejected this defence and also refused bail." Dutt was returned to at the Arthur Road Jail and soon after moved to the Yerawada Central Jail in Pune. Dutt appealed against the sentence and was granted interim bail on 20 August 2007 until such time as the TADA court provided him with a copy of its judgement. On 22 October 2007 Dutt was back in jail but again applied for bail. On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court. On 21 March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict but shortened the sentence to five years' imprisonment. Dutt was given a month to surrender before the authorities.
Dutt has said that "I am not a politician but I belong to a political family." He was persuaded by a close friend to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party, but withdrew when the court refused to suspend his conviction. He was then appointed General Secretary of the Samajwadi Party, leaving that post in December 2010. In March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld Dutt's five-year sentence, 18 months of which he already spent in jail during the trial. He was given four weeks to surrender to the authorities, the court having refused to release him on probation due to the severity of the offence.
On 10 May, the Supreme Court rejected Dutt's review petition for the reconsideration of his conviction and asked him to surrender on the stipulated date. on 14 May, Dutt withdrew the mercy plea and surrendered to the Mumbai Police on 16 May 2013. Just before the surrender, the Mumbai jail authority got an anonymous letter threatening Dutt's life. Dutt filed an appeal to allow him to surrender before entering Yerwada Central Jail. Later, Dutt withdrew this request too. He was paroled from 21 December 2013. The parole was extended three times until March 2014, raising concern in Bombay High Court and a proposal from the Government of Maharashtra to amend the law of parole. He returned to Yerwada Central Jail after his parole ended. Dutt was out on a two weeks' furlough granted by the Yerwada Central Jail authorities on 24 December. He was subsequently incarcerated in Yerwada Central Jail, to complete his jail term. He was released from there on 25 February 2016 after serving his sentence.
Health issues
Dutt was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer in August 2020. He did his treatment in Mumbai and now recovered from lung cancer.
In popular culture
The author Yasser Usman published a biographical book on Dutt, titled Sanjay Dutt: The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood's Bad Boy, in 2018.
A film based on his life, Sanju, in which Ranbir Kapoor portrays the role of Dutt.
In 2021, Punjabi Singer from Brampton, Sidhu Moose Wala had also made a song Sanju, comparing his AK-47 possession and firing case with Sanjay Dutt.
Bibliography
References
External links
Male actors in Hindi cinema
Living people
1959 births
Filmfare Awards winners
Indian male child actors
Indian male singers
Lawrence School, Sanawar alumni
Politicians from Mumbai
Samajwadi Party politicians
Male actors from Mumbai
Film producers from Mumbai
Indian actor-politicians
Bigg Boss
Indian game show hosts
Punjabi people
20th-century Indian male actors
21st-century Indian male actors
Indian male comedians
Hindi film producers
Indian criminals
Indian Hindus
| true |
[
"During the Russian Civil War, the Soviet government allowed a variety of small arms and bladed weapons. Afterwards, the government made immediate alterations for those on whom it did not rely. The government had made it a point to \"arm the working people\" in the Declaration of the Rights of Working and Exploited People in January 1918. The December decree of the CPC of 1918, \"On the surrender of weapons\", ordered people to surrender any firearms, swords, bayonets and bombs, regardless of the degree of serviceability. The penalty for not doing so was ten years' imprisonment. Members of the Communist Party were allowed to have a single weapon (a pistol or a rifle) and possession of the weapon was recorded in the party membership book. The assassination of Stalin's ally Sergey Kirov by Leonid Nikolaev in 1934 was possible because of this, as Nikolaev was allowed to have a revolver.\n\nOn December 12, 1924, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR promulgated its degree \"On the procedure of production, trade, storage, use, keeping and carrying firearms, firearm ammunition, explosive projectiles and explosives\", all weapons were classified and divided into categories. Now the weapons permitted for personal possession by ordinary citizens could only be smoothbore hunting shotguns. The other category of weapons were only possessed by those who were put on duty by the Soviet state; for all others, access to these weapons was restricted to within state-regulated shooting ranges. Illegal gun possession was severely punished. Since March 1933 the manufacture, possession, purchase, sale of firearms (except for smoothbore) hunting weapons without proper authorization was punishable by up to five years in prison. In 1935, the same penalty was imposed for possession of knives. During the Great Patriotic War, the civilian population had to hand over all the personal hunting weapons to the Red Army for defence against the German invasion. The same was true for weapons left by retreating German invaders in the war. They were to be surrendered to Red Army troops, the NKVD or local Soviet authorities within 24 hours. Cases of stolen weapons were also brought to criminal justice.\n\nAfter the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, the USSR saw a small wave of liberalisations for civilian gun ownership. Soviet civilians were allowed to purchase smoothbore hunting shotguns again, even without mandatory submission of hunting licenses. However, this lasted for not more than six years. The buyer again had to pre-register in the Soviet Society of Hunters since 1959. With the introduction of the new Criminal Code in 1960, penalties were softened significantly for illegal possession of firearms to only up to two years of imprisonment, while the possession of melee weapons was no longer prohibited in the Soviet Union. \n\nFourteen years later the punishment for illegal purchase, keeping and carrying of weapons was increased again to five years' imprisonment. However, voluntarily surrendered unregistered rifles were met without responsibility or punishment.\n\nSee also\nGun control in Russia\n\nReferences\n\nSources\n \n \n\nSoviet Union\nSoviet law",
"The disarmament of the German Jews started in 1933, initially limited to local areas. A major target was Berlin, where large-scale raids in search for weaponry took place. Starting in 1936, the Gestapo prohibited German police officers from giving firearms licenses to Jews. In November 1938, the Verordnung gegen den Waffenbesitz der Juden prohibited the possession of firearms and bladed weapons by Jews.\n\nA fringe theory, the Nazi gun control argument, posits that gun regulation led to the disarmament of German Jews, in turn substantively contributing to the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust; fact-checkers have described this theory as \"false\" or \"debunked\".\n\nWeimar Republic \nThe legal foundations that the Nazi Party later used for the purpose of disarming the Jews were already laid during the Weimar Republic. Starting with the Reichsgesetz über Schusswaffen und Munition (Reich law on firearms and ammunition), enacted on 12 April 1928, weapon purchase permits were introduced, which only allowed \"authorized persons\" the purchase and possession of firearms. Mandatory registration of weapons was introduced, which gave the government the opportunity of accessing weapon owner and their weapons at any given time. Manufacture and sale of weapons was only permitted if authorized so. The purpose was to ensure that firearms were only issued to \"reliable individuals\". Starting in 1930, bladed weapons were also regulated. The carrying of weapons in public now required a weapons permit.\n\nTakeover by the Nazi Party \n\nImmediately following the \"Machtergreifung\" in 1933, the weapon laws of the Weimar Republic were used to disarm Jews, or to use the excuse of \"searching for weapons\" as a justification for raids and searches of homes. Because the weapons law of 1928 gave the police the authority to issue or withdraw weapon permits, Jewish weapon owners were disarmed through warrants issued by the police. For instance, the president of the police of Breslau enacted an order on 21 April 1933 which stated that Jews had to give their weapons and shooting permits to the police immediately. After the Jewish population was judged as not to be trusted, no weapon permits were issued to them.\n\nThe weapons law was also used for searches of homes and raids. The preface for that was the allegation that the victims of these searches stored large amounts of weapons and ammunition. A prominent example is Albert Einstein, whose summer residence in Caputh, near the Schwielowsee was searched in spring 1933. The only item found there was a bread knife. Raids, for instance on 4 April 1933 at the Scheunenviertel in Berlin, also took place. Not only many weapons were found, but also a lot of publications that included criticism of Nazi Germany. Sometimes, Jews without residence permits were also found and arrested.\n\nStarting in 1935, the Gestapo prevented the issue of weapon permits and weapon purchase permits to Jews. The police authorities were the executing authorities, and had to comply with the orders issued by the Gestapo. The self-defense of Jews was abolished and they were subjected to the arbitrariness and terror of the police authorities, without the need to introduce a new law for this.\n\nWeapons law and act of 1938 \nIn 1938, the Nazi Party reformed weapons law thoroughly. Today, the Waffengesetz of 18 March 1938 (RGBl I, 265) is sometimes seen as a relaxation of existing regulations, even though it solely benefited privileged members of the NSDAP and its associated organizations. The law stated that certain groups of NSDAP officials did not need any permit anymore for weapons possession. Amongst them were Unterführer of the NSDAP, starting from Ortsgruppenleiter, the Sturmabteilung, the Schutzstaffel, the National Socialist Motor Corps and also the Hitler youth, starting at Bannführer. The new weapons law also prohibited the possession of any weapons to certain groups of people, namely Gypsies and all individuals who lost their \"Civil Honors\" or who were under supervision of the police. The latter also included people convicted due to homosexuality.\n\nDirectly after the Kristallnacht, the possession of any weapons by Jews was prohibited through the Verordnung gegen den Waffenbesitz der Juden, enacted on 11 November 1938 (RGBl. I, 1573).\n\nA contemporary report of the apostolic nuntius of Berlin to Eugenio Pacelli about the Kristallnacht stated: „Also, all weapons were taken from the Jews; and even though the purpose of that was altogether different, it was good, because the ideation of suicide must have been enormous in some.“\n\nContemporary US discourse on gun control\n\nGun laws in Nazi Germany have been the subject of debate in the United States over gun regulations, with various opponents of gun regulation arguing that Nazi Germany's restrictions on gun ownership allowed them to cement power or to implement the Holocaust. Fact-checkers have described these claims or theories as \"false\" or \"debunked\". On the whole, gun laws were actually made less stringent for most non-Jewish German citizens during Nazi rule. While Jews were subject to having their guns seized, the gun registry was so incomplete that many Jews retained their guns. In October of 2015, responding to statements made by Ben Carson, history professor Alan E. Steinweis wrote in a New York Times piece:The Jews of Germany constituted less than 1 percent of the country's population. It is preposterous to argue that the possession of firearms would have enabled them to mount resistance against a systematic program of persecution implemented by a modern bureaucracy, enforced by a well-armed police state, and either supported or tolerated by the majority of the German population. Mr. Carson's suggestion that ordinary Germans, had they had guns, would have risked their lives in armed resistance against the regime simply does not comport with the regrettable historical reality of a regime that was quite popular at home. Inside Germany, only the army possessed the physical force necessary for defying or overthrowing the Nazis, but the generals had thrown in their lot with Hitler early on.\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading \n Stephen P. Halbrook: Nazi Firearms Law and the Disarming of the German Jews, in: Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, No. 3, 2000, pp. 483–535 (PDF, 153 kB, English)\n\nExternal links \n Waffengesetz vom 18. März 1938 (RGBl I, 265)\n Verordnung gegen den Waffenbesitz der Juden vom 11. November 1938 (RGBl I, 1573)\n\nThe Holocaust in Germany\nLaw in Nazi Germany\nAntisemitism in Germany\nFirearm laws\nJewish military history\nHolocaust racial laws"
] |
[
"Sanjay Dutt",
"2007-2009",
"What did Dutt do in 2007?",
"On 31 July 2007, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons and cleared him of charges relating to the Mumbai blasts.",
"What weapons was he in possession of?",
"he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai."
] |
C_fb08846ee7bc41a9957c91b5b5989fe5_0
|
Where did he serve his prison sentence?
| 3 |
Where did Sanjay Dutt serve his prison sentence?
|
Sanjay Dutt
|
Abdul Qayyum Abdul Karim Shaikh, who was thought to be a close aide of the terrorists' ringleader, Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested. Dutt had given Qayuum's name to the police when confessing to arms possession, saying that in September 1992 he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai. On 31 July 2007, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons and cleared him of charges relating to the Mumbai blasts. According to The Guardian, "The actor claimed he feared for his life after the notorious "Black Friday" bombings, which were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly Hindu-Muslim clashes a few months earlier. But the judge rejected this defence and also refused bail." Dutt was returned to jail at Arthur Road and soon after moved to the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune. Dutt appealed against the sentence and was granted interim bail on 20 August 2007 until such time as the TADA court provided him with a copy of its judgement. On 22 October 2007 Dutt was back in jail but again applied for bail. On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court. On 21 March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of the TADA court but shortened the sentence to five years' imprisonment. Dutt was given a month to surrender before the authorities. Dutt has said that "I am not a politician but I belong to a political family." He was persuaded by a close friend to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party but withdrew when the court refused to suspend his conviction. He was then appointed General Secretary of the party, leaving that post in December 2010. CANNOTANSWER
|
" Dutt was returned to jail at Arthur Road and soon after moved to the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune.
|
Sanjay Balraj Dutt (born 29 July 1959) is an Indian actor who works in Hindi films. He is the recipient of several awards, including two Filmfare Awards and three Screen Awards. Dutt acted in 187 films, ranging from romance to comedy genres, but is usually typecast in action genres, and established himself as one of the most popular Hindi film actors of the later 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s.
The son of actors Sunil Dutt and Nargis, Dutt made his acting debut in Rocky (1981), which was directed by his father. The crime thriller Naam (1985) proved to be a turning point in his career, which was followed by a series of commercially successful films in that decade, including Jeete Hain Shaan Se (1988), Mardon Wali Baat (1988), Ilaaka (1989), Hum Bhi Insaan Hain (1989) and Kanoon Apna Apna (1989). He earned nominations for the Filmfare Award for Best Actor for Saajan (1991) and Khalnayak (1993). Dutt earned his first Best Actor at the ceremony for playing a common man-turned-gangster in Vaastav: The Reality (1999). Along with Vaastav: The Reality, he also won accolades for playing an army officer in Mission Kashmir (2001), a soft-hearted goofy gangster in Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003) and its sequel Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006).
Dutt was arrested under the TADA and the Arms Act in April 1993 and was convicted for violation of Arms Act for possession of illegal weapons procured from other accused in the 1993 Bombay bombings. After serving his sentence, he was released in 2016. Dutt's life receives considerable media coverage in India, and in 2018, Sanju, a biopic based on his life (which also saw a special appearance by him), was released to positive reviews and emerged as one of the highest-grossers of Indian cinema.
Early life
Dutt was born on 29th July, 1959 in Bombay to noted cinema actors Sunil Dutt and Nargis. He has two sisters, Priya Dutt and Namrata Dutt. Sanjay's name was chosen by crowdsourcing via the Urdu language film magazine Shama. His mother died in 1981, shortly before his debut film's premiere; her death is cited as the instigator of his drug abuse. As a child actor, Dutt appeared briefly as a qawali singer in the 1972 film Reshma Aur Shera, which starred his father.
Career
Early career and breakthrough (1981–1993)
Dutt made his Bollywood movie debut with the box-office super hit Rocky in 1981. Dutt then went on to star in Vidhaata, the highest-grossing Hindi film of 1982, along with film veterans Dilip Kumar, Shammi Kapoor and Sanjeev Kumar. He also starred in movies like Main Awara Hoon (1983). In 1985 he shot Jaan Ki Baazi, his first film in two years.
The 1986 film Naam was a turning point in Dutt's career, it was a major commercial and critical success. Dutt appeared in successful films throughout the '80s such as Imaandaar, Inaam Dus Hazaar, Jeete Hain Shaan Se (1988), Mardon Wali Baat (1988), Ilaaka (1989), Hum Bhi Insaan Hain (1989), Kanoon Apna Apna (1989) and Taaqatwar.
His performances in both Kabzaa (1988) and J. P. Dutta's 1989 Hathyar were both well received by critics although both films only managed average collections at the box office. In the late 1980s he was seen in a number of multi-starrers alongside leading actors like Govinda, Mithun, Dharmendra, Jackie Shroff and Sunny Deol.
His successes continued in the 1990s, with films that include Tejaa, Khatarnaak, Zahreelay, Thanedaar, Khoon Ka Karz, Yalgaar, Gumrah, Sahibaan and Aatish: Feel the Fire. He went on to star in some of the most era-defining Indian films of the early 1990s such as Sadak, Saajan (for which he was nominated for the Filmfare Best Actor Award) and Khalnayak, for which he earned his second Filmfare Best Actor Award nomination.
The Hindu wrote that "Sanjay's earlier films (like Naam and Sadak) got him a lot of favourable attention." and "Saajan established Sanjay Dutt as the conventional soft hero."Saajan was the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 1991, and Sadak was the fifth highest grosser of 1991. Khalnayak became a blockbuster and was the second-highest grosser of 1993. This was followed by another box office success Gumrah, this was Dutt's second consecutive hit of the year.
Arrest due to involvement in 1993 serial bombings, films after arrest (1993 - 1999)
Bombay (now Mumbai) suffered a series of serial bombings in 1993. Dutt was among several people associated with Bollywood who were accused of involvement. It was alleged that Dutt accepted a delivery of weapons at his house from Abu Salem and co-accused Riyaz Siddiqui, who had also been implicated in relation to the Mumbai blasts. It was claimed that the weapons formed a part of a large consignment of arms connected to the terrorists. Dutt, however, in his confession stated that he took only one Type-56 from the producers of his movie Sanam, for his own family protection. It has also been reported that Sanjay Dutt's father Sunil Dutt's political rivalry caused Sanjay Dutt's conviction.. Dutt's first film after his 1993 arrest was Daud (1997). It did average business at the box office despite getting a lot of publicity. This was followed by Dushman which did well financially.
Comeback (1999 – 2003)
1999 was an excellent year for Dutt and one that is regarded as his comeback, with all of his five releases being amongst the highest-grossing films of that year. He began it by starring in the Mahesh Bhatt-directed film Kartoos, followed by Khoobsurat, Haseena Maan Jaayegi, Daag: The Fire and Vaastav: The Reality, for which he won many awards, including his first Filmfare Best Actor Award. His role in 2000's Mission Kashmir won him critical acclaim and a number of awards and nominations. Dutt was also invited by the President of India to Rashtrapati Bhavan for his performance in the movie.
Breakthrough with Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., prolonged success (2003 - present)
As the decade went on, he continued to play lead roles in popular and critical successes such as Jodi No.1 (2001), Pitaah (2002), Kaante (2002) and the National Award-winning film Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003), which garnered him several awards. At the box office Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. achieved a silver jubilee status (25-week run) being one of only eight films to have achieved this status since the year 2000. In its 26th week of release, the film could still be found playing on 257 screens throughout India. Later successes came with Musafir (2004), Plan (2004), Parineeta (2005) and Dus (2005). He won critical acclaim for his performances in Shabd (2005) and Zinda.
The sequel of Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., Lage Raho Munna Bhai was released in late 2006. Dutt received a number of awards for his performance in the film, along with an award from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his work in the Munna bhai series. NDTV India counted the character Munna Bhai as one of top 20 fictional characters in Bollywood. Later Dutt starred in movies like Dhamaal (2007), Shootout at Lokhandwala (2007), All the Best (2009), Double Dhamaal (2011), Son of Sardaar (2012) Agneepath (2012) and PK.
In January 2008, the Indian film Institute Filmfare listed 12 films featuring Dutt in its list of top 100 highest-grossing movies of all time. In its May 2013 edition "100 years of Indian cinema" Filmfare listed three films featuring Dutt in its top 20 list of highest-grossing Hindi films of all time, adjusted for inflation these films were Lage Raho Munna Bhai, Khalnayak and Saajan.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra on 29 September 2016 announced that the third part of Munna Bhai series, starring Dutt in the title role, would begin soon. In 2017, Dutt appeared as the lead in Bhoomi, directed by Omung Kumar. In 2018, he starred in Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster 3. In 2018, it was also announced that Dutt would feature alongside Ranbir Kapoor and Vaani Kapoor in Shamshera, which will release on 31 July 2020. On 29 June 2018, his biopic Sanju released in which he made a special appearance. Dutt and Alia Bhatt are currently shooting for Sadak 2. In 2019, he joined the cast of historical film Bhuj: The Pride of India, which will feature an ensemble cast consisting of Ajay Devgn, Sonakshi Sinha and Parineeti Chopra. He was seen in the film Prassthanam on 20 September 2019.
Dutt is currently working as the main antagonist on K.G.F: Chapter 2, the sequel to the blockbuster Kannada film, K.G.F: Chapter 1, marking his debut in Kannada cinema. Sanjay Dutt will now appear in films like Shamshera, RRR and Prithviraj.
Off-screen work
Dutt co-hosted the fifth season of the Indian reality show Bigg Boss along with Salman Khan. The show aired on Colors television from 2 October 2011 to 7 January 2012. Dutt later said it was Khan who persuaded him to co-host the show. Dutt and entrepreneur Indian Premier League cricket team owner Raj Kundra together launched India's first professionally organised mixed martial arts league—the Super Fight League—on 16 January 2012.
Personal life and media image
In the early 1980s, Dutt had a relationship with his co-star from his first film, Tina Munim. After this relationship ended, Dutt married actress Richa Sharma in 1987. She died of a brain tumour in 1996. The couple have a daughter, Trishala Dutt, born in 1988, who lives in the United States with her maternal grandparents.
Dutt's second marriage was to air-hostess-turned-model Rhea Pillai in February 1998. The divorce finalised in 2008. Dutt married Manyata (born Dilnawaz Sheikh) first registered in Goa in 2008 and then, in a Hindu ceremony in Mumbai, after two years of dating. On 21 October 2010, he became a father to twins, a boy and a girl.
He is a devout Shaiva Hindu who has read holy scriptures and theological works.
Bombay (now Mumbai) suffered a series of serial bombings in 1993. Dutt was among several people associated with Bollywood who were accused of involvement. It was alleged that Dutt accepted a delivery of weapons at his house from Abu Salem and co-accused Riyaz Siddiqui, who had also been implicated in relation to the Mumbai blasts. It was claimed that the weapons formed a part of a large consignment of arms connected to the terrorists. Dutt, however, in his confession stated that he took only one Type-56 from the producers of his movie Sanam, for his own family protection. It has also been reported that Sanjay Dutt's father Sunil Dutt's political rivalry caused Sanjay Dutt's conviction.
In April 1993, after initial reporting by Baljeet Parmar on Dutt's possession of the AK-56, he was arrested under the provisions of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court of India on 5 May 1993; however, on 4 July 1994 his bail was cancelled and he was re-arrested. On 16 October 1995 he was granted bail. Abdul Qayyum Abdul Karim Shaikh, who was thought to be a close aide of the terrorists' ringleader, Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested. Dutt had given Qayuum's name to the police when confessing to arms possession, saying that in September 1992 he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai. His arrest coincided with the release of his film, Khalnayak, in which he played a wanted criminal. The film's major success was in part due to Dutt's off-screen legal controversy.
On 31 July 2007, Dutt was cleared of the charges relating to the Mumbai blast; however, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment under Arms act for illegal possession of weapons. According to The Guardian, "The actor claimed he feared for his life after the notorious 'Black Friday' bombings, which were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly Hindu-Muslim clashes a few months earlier. But the judge rejected this defence and also refused bail." Dutt was returned to at the Arthur Road Jail and soon after moved to the Yerawada Central Jail in Pune. Dutt appealed against the sentence and was granted interim bail on 20 August 2007 until such time as the TADA court provided him with a copy of its judgement. On 22 October 2007 Dutt was back in jail but again applied for bail. On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court. On 21 March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict but shortened the sentence to five years' imprisonment. Dutt was given a month to surrender before the authorities.
Dutt has said that "I am not a politician but I belong to a political family." He was persuaded by a close friend to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party, but withdrew when the court refused to suspend his conviction. He was then appointed General Secretary of the Samajwadi Party, leaving that post in December 2010. In March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld Dutt's five-year sentence, 18 months of which he already spent in jail during the trial. He was given four weeks to surrender to the authorities, the court having refused to release him on probation due to the severity of the offence.
On 10 May, the Supreme Court rejected Dutt's review petition for the reconsideration of his conviction and asked him to surrender on the stipulated date. on 14 May, Dutt withdrew the mercy plea and surrendered to the Mumbai Police on 16 May 2013. Just before the surrender, the Mumbai jail authority got an anonymous letter threatening Dutt's life. Dutt filed an appeal to allow him to surrender before entering Yerwada Central Jail. Later, Dutt withdrew this request too. He was paroled from 21 December 2013. The parole was extended three times until March 2014, raising concern in Bombay High Court and a proposal from the Government of Maharashtra to amend the law of parole. He returned to Yerwada Central Jail after his parole ended. Dutt was out on a two weeks' furlough granted by the Yerwada Central Jail authorities on 24 December. He was subsequently incarcerated in Yerwada Central Jail, to complete his jail term. He was released from there on 25 February 2016 after serving his sentence.
Health issues
Dutt was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer in August 2020. He did his treatment in Mumbai and now recovered from lung cancer.
In popular culture
The author Yasser Usman published a biographical book on Dutt, titled Sanjay Dutt: The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood's Bad Boy, in 2018.
A film based on his life, Sanju, in which Ranbir Kapoor portrays the role of Dutt.
In 2021, Punjabi Singer from Brampton, Sidhu Moose Wala had also made a song Sanju, comparing his AK-47 possession and firing case with Sanjay Dutt.
Bibliography
References
External links
Male actors in Hindi cinema
Living people
1959 births
Filmfare Awards winners
Indian male child actors
Indian male singers
Lawrence School, Sanawar alumni
Politicians from Mumbai
Samajwadi Party politicians
Male actors from Mumbai
Film producers from Mumbai
Indian actor-politicians
Bigg Boss
Indian game show hosts
Punjabi people
20th-century Indian male actors
21st-century Indian male actors
Indian male comedians
Hindi film producers
Indian criminals
Indian Hindus
| false |
[
"Bekim Halilaj is the majority shareholder and president of Albanian football club Luftëtari.\n\nEarly life\nHalilaj was convicted of fraud in Albania in 1996 and was sentenced to five years in prison, but he did not serve any prison time as he moved to Greece shortly after the conviction. He settled in Thessaloniki where he lived for over a decade before his sentence was pardoned and he was able to return to Albania.\n\nReferences\n\nLiving people\n20th-century Albanian people\n21st-century Albanian people\nAlbanian businesspeople\nYear of birth missing (living people)",
"\nIn Denmark, a life sentence () is the most severe punishment available under the Penal Code, and is reserved for the most serious crimes. The sentence is of indeterminate length. Those under a life sentence in Denmark can request a pardon hearing after 12 years. If the petition is granted, the Justice Minister or his designee issues a pardon, subject to a parole period of up to 5 years.\n\nPrisoners sentenced to life imprisonment serve an average of 17 years. A person with a life sentence will not be released if it is considered likely that he will recidivate. This means some offenders have served a considerably longer time than the average. In recent times, there have been four convicts who have served greater than 30 years: (34 years as of 2018, still incarcerated in the closed unit of Sankt Hans Hospital), Palle Sørensen (33 years, released in 1998), Seth Sethsen (32 years as of 2018, still incarcerated) and (32 years, released in 1978).\n\nMurderers may receive a life sentence, but such a sentence is handed down only when the person has a previous history of committing serious crimes, or if a murder is considered particularly horrendous. Otherwise, a murderer will typically receive a time-limited sentence, which can be up to 20 years in Denmark. In recent times, all receiving a life sentence have been murderers; however, a person who commits treason, uses force against the Danish Parliament, commits espionage during wartime, engages in terrorism, commits arson under circumstances that are life-threatening, hijacks a vehicle under aggravated circumstances, or willfully releases nuclear substances is eligible for a life sentence.\n\nOn average, slightly more than one person receives a life sentence each year in Denmark (14 from 2006 to 2018), and in 2015 there were a total of 21 people serving life.\n\n\"Custody sentence\" and \"placement sentence\"\nCriminals considered dangerous may receive a \"custody sentence\" () instead of a life sentence. This can also be handed down for certain crimes where a life sentence is not possible, such as rape and aggravated robbery. It is often used for people with deviant personalities (for example, antisocial personality disorder), and is typically served in the Herstedvester Prison. It differs from a \"placement sentence\" (), which is reserved for mentally ill people who are ineligible for a normal prison sentence. These inmates serve their sentence in the closed unit of a psychiatric hospital. A custody sentence always lacks a time limit, and a placement sentence often does, but both are subject to periodic pardon hearings. A review covering 1990–2011 showed that, on average, a person with a custody sentence was released after 14 years and 7 months.\n\nMinors\nA person 15 to 18 years old at the time of their crime can not receive a life sentence, but is eligible for all other penalties in the Penal Code. Until 2010, these persons' maximum sentence was 8 years, or consisted of a \"custody sentence\". A person under the age of 15 is below the age of accountability, and cannot receive a prison sentence.\n\nSee also\n Capital punishment in Denmark, abolished in 1930 but briefly restored for a period after World War II\n\nReferences\n\nDenmark\nDanish law"
] |
[
"Sanjay Dutt",
"2007-2009",
"What did Dutt do in 2007?",
"On 31 July 2007, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons and cleared him of charges relating to the Mumbai blasts.",
"What weapons was he in possession of?",
"he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai.",
"Where did he serve his prison sentence?",
"\" Dutt was returned to jail at Arthur Road and soon after moved to the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune."
] |
C_fb08846ee7bc41a9957c91b5b5989fe5_0
|
When was he released from jail?
| 4 |
When was Sanjay Dutt released from jail?
|
Sanjay Dutt
|
Abdul Qayyum Abdul Karim Shaikh, who was thought to be a close aide of the terrorists' ringleader, Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested. Dutt had given Qayuum's name to the police when confessing to arms possession, saying that in September 1992 he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai. On 31 July 2007, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons and cleared him of charges relating to the Mumbai blasts. According to The Guardian, "The actor claimed he feared for his life after the notorious "Black Friday" bombings, which were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly Hindu-Muslim clashes a few months earlier. But the judge rejected this defence and also refused bail." Dutt was returned to jail at Arthur Road and soon after moved to the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune. Dutt appealed against the sentence and was granted interim bail on 20 August 2007 until such time as the TADA court provided him with a copy of its judgement. On 22 October 2007 Dutt was back in jail but again applied for bail. On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court. On 21 March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of the TADA court but shortened the sentence to five years' imprisonment. Dutt was given a month to surrender before the authorities. Dutt has said that "I am not a politician but I belong to a political family." He was persuaded by a close friend to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party but withdrew when the court refused to suspend his conviction. He was then appointed General Secretary of the party, leaving that post in December 2010. CANNOTANSWER
|
On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court.
|
Sanjay Balraj Dutt (born 29 July 1959) is an Indian actor who works in Hindi films. He is the recipient of several awards, including two Filmfare Awards and three Screen Awards. Dutt acted in 187 films, ranging from romance to comedy genres, but is usually typecast in action genres, and established himself as one of the most popular Hindi film actors of the later 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s.
The son of actors Sunil Dutt and Nargis, Dutt made his acting debut in Rocky (1981), which was directed by his father. The crime thriller Naam (1985) proved to be a turning point in his career, which was followed by a series of commercially successful films in that decade, including Jeete Hain Shaan Se (1988), Mardon Wali Baat (1988), Ilaaka (1989), Hum Bhi Insaan Hain (1989) and Kanoon Apna Apna (1989). He earned nominations for the Filmfare Award for Best Actor for Saajan (1991) and Khalnayak (1993). Dutt earned his first Best Actor at the ceremony for playing a common man-turned-gangster in Vaastav: The Reality (1999). Along with Vaastav: The Reality, he also won accolades for playing an army officer in Mission Kashmir (2001), a soft-hearted goofy gangster in Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003) and its sequel Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006).
Dutt was arrested under the TADA and the Arms Act in April 1993 and was convicted for violation of Arms Act for possession of illegal weapons procured from other accused in the 1993 Bombay bombings. After serving his sentence, he was released in 2016. Dutt's life receives considerable media coverage in India, and in 2018, Sanju, a biopic based on his life (which also saw a special appearance by him), was released to positive reviews and emerged as one of the highest-grossers of Indian cinema.
Early life
Dutt was born on 29th July, 1959 in Bombay to noted cinema actors Sunil Dutt and Nargis. He has two sisters, Priya Dutt and Namrata Dutt. Sanjay's name was chosen by crowdsourcing via the Urdu language film magazine Shama. His mother died in 1981, shortly before his debut film's premiere; her death is cited as the instigator of his drug abuse. As a child actor, Dutt appeared briefly as a qawali singer in the 1972 film Reshma Aur Shera, which starred his father.
Career
Early career and breakthrough (1981–1993)
Dutt made his Bollywood movie debut with the box-office super hit Rocky in 1981. Dutt then went on to star in Vidhaata, the highest-grossing Hindi film of 1982, along with film veterans Dilip Kumar, Shammi Kapoor and Sanjeev Kumar. He also starred in movies like Main Awara Hoon (1983). In 1985 he shot Jaan Ki Baazi, his first film in two years.
The 1986 film Naam was a turning point in Dutt's career, it was a major commercial and critical success. Dutt appeared in successful films throughout the '80s such as Imaandaar, Inaam Dus Hazaar, Jeete Hain Shaan Se (1988), Mardon Wali Baat (1988), Ilaaka (1989), Hum Bhi Insaan Hain (1989), Kanoon Apna Apna (1989) and Taaqatwar.
His performances in both Kabzaa (1988) and J. P. Dutta's 1989 Hathyar were both well received by critics although both films only managed average collections at the box office. In the late 1980s he was seen in a number of multi-starrers alongside leading actors like Govinda, Mithun, Dharmendra, Jackie Shroff and Sunny Deol.
His successes continued in the 1990s, with films that include Tejaa, Khatarnaak, Zahreelay, Thanedaar, Khoon Ka Karz, Yalgaar, Gumrah, Sahibaan and Aatish: Feel the Fire. He went on to star in some of the most era-defining Indian films of the early 1990s such as Sadak, Saajan (for which he was nominated for the Filmfare Best Actor Award) and Khalnayak, for which he earned his second Filmfare Best Actor Award nomination.
The Hindu wrote that "Sanjay's earlier films (like Naam and Sadak) got him a lot of favourable attention." and "Saajan established Sanjay Dutt as the conventional soft hero."Saajan was the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 1991, and Sadak was the fifth highest grosser of 1991. Khalnayak became a blockbuster and was the second-highest grosser of 1993. This was followed by another box office success Gumrah, this was Dutt's second consecutive hit of the year.
Arrest due to involvement in 1993 serial bombings, films after arrest (1993 - 1999)
Bombay (now Mumbai) suffered a series of serial bombings in 1993. Dutt was among several people associated with Bollywood who were accused of involvement. It was alleged that Dutt accepted a delivery of weapons at his house from Abu Salem and co-accused Riyaz Siddiqui, who had also been implicated in relation to the Mumbai blasts. It was claimed that the weapons formed a part of a large consignment of arms connected to the terrorists. Dutt, however, in his confession stated that he took only one Type-56 from the producers of his movie Sanam, for his own family protection. It has also been reported that Sanjay Dutt's father Sunil Dutt's political rivalry caused Sanjay Dutt's conviction.. Dutt's first film after his 1993 arrest was Daud (1997). It did average business at the box office despite getting a lot of publicity. This was followed by Dushman which did well financially.
Comeback (1999 – 2003)
1999 was an excellent year for Dutt and one that is regarded as his comeback, with all of his five releases being amongst the highest-grossing films of that year. He began it by starring in the Mahesh Bhatt-directed film Kartoos, followed by Khoobsurat, Haseena Maan Jaayegi, Daag: The Fire and Vaastav: The Reality, for which he won many awards, including his first Filmfare Best Actor Award. His role in 2000's Mission Kashmir won him critical acclaim and a number of awards and nominations. Dutt was also invited by the President of India to Rashtrapati Bhavan for his performance in the movie.
Breakthrough with Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., prolonged success (2003 - present)
As the decade went on, he continued to play lead roles in popular and critical successes such as Jodi No.1 (2001), Pitaah (2002), Kaante (2002) and the National Award-winning film Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003), which garnered him several awards. At the box office Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. achieved a silver jubilee status (25-week run) being one of only eight films to have achieved this status since the year 2000. In its 26th week of release, the film could still be found playing on 257 screens throughout India. Later successes came with Musafir (2004), Plan (2004), Parineeta (2005) and Dus (2005). He won critical acclaim for his performances in Shabd (2005) and Zinda.
The sequel of Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., Lage Raho Munna Bhai was released in late 2006. Dutt received a number of awards for his performance in the film, along with an award from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his work in the Munna bhai series. NDTV India counted the character Munna Bhai as one of top 20 fictional characters in Bollywood. Later Dutt starred in movies like Dhamaal (2007), Shootout at Lokhandwala (2007), All the Best (2009), Double Dhamaal (2011), Son of Sardaar (2012) Agneepath (2012) and PK.
In January 2008, the Indian film Institute Filmfare listed 12 films featuring Dutt in its list of top 100 highest-grossing movies of all time. In its May 2013 edition "100 years of Indian cinema" Filmfare listed three films featuring Dutt in its top 20 list of highest-grossing Hindi films of all time, adjusted for inflation these films were Lage Raho Munna Bhai, Khalnayak and Saajan.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra on 29 September 2016 announced that the third part of Munna Bhai series, starring Dutt in the title role, would begin soon. In 2017, Dutt appeared as the lead in Bhoomi, directed by Omung Kumar. In 2018, he starred in Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster 3. In 2018, it was also announced that Dutt would feature alongside Ranbir Kapoor and Vaani Kapoor in Shamshera, which will release on 31 July 2020. On 29 June 2018, his biopic Sanju released in which he made a special appearance. Dutt and Alia Bhatt are currently shooting for Sadak 2. In 2019, he joined the cast of historical film Bhuj: The Pride of India, which will feature an ensemble cast consisting of Ajay Devgn, Sonakshi Sinha and Parineeti Chopra. He was seen in the film Prassthanam on 20 September 2019.
Dutt is currently working as the main antagonist on K.G.F: Chapter 2, the sequel to the blockbuster Kannada film, K.G.F: Chapter 1, marking his debut in Kannada cinema. Sanjay Dutt will now appear in films like Shamshera, RRR and Prithviraj.
Off-screen work
Dutt co-hosted the fifth season of the Indian reality show Bigg Boss along with Salman Khan. The show aired on Colors television from 2 October 2011 to 7 January 2012. Dutt later said it was Khan who persuaded him to co-host the show. Dutt and entrepreneur Indian Premier League cricket team owner Raj Kundra together launched India's first professionally organised mixed martial arts league—the Super Fight League—on 16 January 2012.
Personal life and media image
In the early 1980s, Dutt had a relationship with his co-star from his first film, Tina Munim. After this relationship ended, Dutt married actress Richa Sharma in 1987. She died of a brain tumour in 1996. The couple have a daughter, Trishala Dutt, born in 1988, who lives in the United States with her maternal grandparents.
Dutt's second marriage was to air-hostess-turned-model Rhea Pillai in February 1998. The divorce finalised in 2008. Dutt married Manyata (born Dilnawaz Sheikh) first registered in Goa in 2008 and then, in a Hindu ceremony in Mumbai, after two years of dating. On 21 October 2010, he became a father to twins, a boy and a girl.
He is a devout Shaiva Hindu who has read holy scriptures and theological works.
Bombay (now Mumbai) suffered a series of serial bombings in 1993. Dutt was among several people associated with Bollywood who were accused of involvement. It was alleged that Dutt accepted a delivery of weapons at his house from Abu Salem and co-accused Riyaz Siddiqui, who had also been implicated in relation to the Mumbai blasts. It was claimed that the weapons formed a part of a large consignment of arms connected to the terrorists. Dutt, however, in his confession stated that he took only one Type-56 from the producers of his movie Sanam, for his own family protection. It has also been reported that Sanjay Dutt's father Sunil Dutt's political rivalry caused Sanjay Dutt's conviction.
In April 1993, after initial reporting by Baljeet Parmar on Dutt's possession of the AK-56, he was arrested under the provisions of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court of India on 5 May 1993; however, on 4 July 1994 his bail was cancelled and he was re-arrested. On 16 October 1995 he was granted bail. Abdul Qayyum Abdul Karim Shaikh, who was thought to be a close aide of the terrorists' ringleader, Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested. Dutt had given Qayuum's name to the police when confessing to arms possession, saying that in September 1992 he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai. His arrest coincided with the release of his film, Khalnayak, in which he played a wanted criminal. The film's major success was in part due to Dutt's off-screen legal controversy.
On 31 July 2007, Dutt was cleared of the charges relating to the Mumbai blast; however, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment under Arms act for illegal possession of weapons. According to The Guardian, "The actor claimed he feared for his life after the notorious 'Black Friday' bombings, which were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly Hindu-Muslim clashes a few months earlier. But the judge rejected this defence and also refused bail." Dutt was returned to at the Arthur Road Jail and soon after moved to the Yerawada Central Jail in Pune. Dutt appealed against the sentence and was granted interim bail on 20 August 2007 until such time as the TADA court provided him with a copy of its judgement. On 22 October 2007 Dutt was back in jail but again applied for bail. On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court. On 21 March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict but shortened the sentence to five years' imprisonment. Dutt was given a month to surrender before the authorities.
Dutt has said that "I am not a politician but I belong to a political family." He was persuaded by a close friend to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party, but withdrew when the court refused to suspend his conviction. He was then appointed General Secretary of the Samajwadi Party, leaving that post in December 2010. In March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld Dutt's five-year sentence, 18 months of which he already spent in jail during the trial. He was given four weeks to surrender to the authorities, the court having refused to release him on probation due to the severity of the offence.
On 10 May, the Supreme Court rejected Dutt's review petition for the reconsideration of his conviction and asked him to surrender on the stipulated date. on 14 May, Dutt withdrew the mercy plea and surrendered to the Mumbai Police on 16 May 2013. Just before the surrender, the Mumbai jail authority got an anonymous letter threatening Dutt's life. Dutt filed an appeal to allow him to surrender before entering Yerwada Central Jail. Later, Dutt withdrew this request too. He was paroled from 21 December 2013. The parole was extended three times until March 2014, raising concern in Bombay High Court and a proposal from the Government of Maharashtra to amend the law of parole. He returned to Yerwada Central Jail after his parole ended. Dutt was out on a two weeks' furlough granted by the Yerwada Central Jail authorities on 24 December. He was subsequently incarcerated in Yerwada Central Jail, to complete his jail term. He was released from there on 25 February 2016 after serving his sentence.
Health issues
Dutt was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer in August 2020. He did his treatment in Mumbai and now recovered from lung cancer.
In popular culture
The author Yasser Usman published a biographical book on Dutt, titled Sanjay Dutt: The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood's Bad Boy, in 2018.
A film based on his life, Sanju, in which Ranbir Kapoor portrays the role of Dutt.
In 2021, Punjabi Singer from Brampton, Sidhu Moose Wala had also made a song Sanju, comparing his AK-47 possession and firing case with Sanjay Dutt.
Bibliography
References
External links
Male actors in Hindi cinema
Living people
1959 births
Filmfare Awards winners
Indian male child actors
Indian male singers
Lawrence School, Sanawar alumni
Politicians from Mumbai
Samajwadi Party politicians
Male actors from Mumbai
Film producers from Mumbai
Indian actor-politicians
Bigg Boss
Indian game show hosts
Punjabi people
20th-century Indian male actors
21st-century Indian male actors
Indian male comedians
Hindi film producers
Indian criminals
Indian Hindus
| true |
[
"Pandit Ramnandan Mishra (1905–1989) was an Indian nationalist who fought for India's freedom from British rule.\n\nLife\nRamnandan Mishra was born in Darbhanga in 1905. He was a member of Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee from 1927–1934. He participated in the Civil Disobedience Movement and was imprisoned between 1930–31. He was a founding member of the Congress Socialist Party from 1934–47 and then the Socialist Party from 1947–52. He was arrested for anti-war propaganda in 1940. He participated in the Quit India Movement and organized secret revolutionary centres and while visiting Madras, was arrested in Cuttack on 23 August 1942. He was lodged in Cuttack jail, then in Behrampur jail. When he tried to escape, he was transferred to Hazaribagh Central Jail in the last week of October, 1942. He escaped from Hazaribagh Central Jail along with Yogendra Shukla, Jayaprakash Narayan and others during November, 1942.\n\nHe was in charge of the revolutionary movement in Punjab where he was rearrested on 22 February 1943 and released only in 1946. He was General Secretary of the Hind Kisan Panchayat, Bihar from 1949–52 and became a member of the National Executive of the Socialist Party in 1949.\n\nHe left politics for spiritual pursuits in 1952 and became a devotee of Lord Jagannath. He died on 28 August 1989.\n\nReferences\n\n1905 births\n1989 deaths\nPeople from Bihar\nRevolutionary movement for Indian independence\nIndian revolutionaries\nIndian socialists\nIndian anarchists\nPeople from Darbhanga\nIndian prisoners and detainees\nPrisoners and detainees of British India",
"Mohammad Reza Pourshajari is an Iranian blogger, also called Siamak Mehr, who was released from jail on 23 August 2014 after spending four years in prison. He was arrested on September 12, 2010 at his home in Karaj and was sentenced to three years in prison on charges of \"insulting the Supreme Leader\" and of propaganda against the regime. In April 2012, he was sentenced to another year by the Karaj Revolutionary Court on blasphemy charges. He suffered a non-fatal heart attack in 2012, in prison and also suffered from diabetes.\n\nAt the end of his four year term, Pourshajari was released from jail. He was then rearrested, however, 38 days later and retried on March 11, 2014 and sentenced to a year in jail and two years in exile in Tabas.\n\nReferences\n\nLiving people\nIranian bloggers\nYear of birth missing (living people)"
] |
[
"Sanjay Dutt",
"2007-2009",
"What did Dutt do in 2007?",
"On 31 July 2007, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons and cleared him of charges relating to the Mumbai blasts.",
"What weapons was he in possession of?",
"he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai.",
"Where did he serve his prison sentence?",
"\" Dutt was returned to jail at Arthur Road and soon after moved to the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune.",
"When was he released from jail?",
"On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court."
] |
C_fb08846ee7bc41a9957c91b5b5989fe5_0
|
What happened in 2008?
| 5 |
What happened to Sanjay Dutt in 2008?
|
Sanjay Dutt
|
Abdul Qayyum Abdul Karim Shaikh, who was thought to be a close aide of the terrorists' ringleader, Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested. Dutt had given Qayuum's name to the police when confessing to arms possession, saying that in September 1992 he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai. On 31 July 2007, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons and cleared him of charges relating to the Mumbai blasts. According to The Guardian, "The actor claimed he feared for his life after the notorious "Black Friday" bombings, which were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly Hindu-Muslim clashes a few months earlier. But the judge rejected this defence and also refused bail." Dutt was returned to jail at Arthur Road and soon after moved to the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune. Dutt appealed against the sentence and was granted interim bail on 20 August 2007 until such time as the TADA court provided him with a copy of its judgement. On 22 October 2007 Dutt was back in jail but again applied for bail. On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court. On 21 March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of the TADA court but shortened the sentence to five years' imprisonment. Dutt was given a month to surrender before the authorities. Dutt has said that "I am not a politician but I belong to a political family." He was persuaded by a close friend to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party but withdrew when the court refused to suspend his conviction. He was then appointed General Secretary of the party, leaving that post in December 2010. CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
Sanjay Balraj Dutt (born 29 July 1959) is an Indian actor who works in Hindi films. He is the recipient of several awards, including two Filmfare Awards and three Screen Awards. Dutt acted in 187 films, ranging from romance to comedy genres, but is usually typecast in action genres, and established himself as one of the most popular Hindi film actors of the later 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s.
The son of actors Sunil Dutt and Nargis, Dutt made his acting debut in Rocky (1981), which was directed by his father. The crime thriller Naam (1985) proved to be a turning point in his career, which was followed by a series of commercially successful films in that decade, including Jeete Hain Shaan Se (1988), Mardon Wali Baat (1988), Ilaaka (1989), Hum Bhi Insaan Hain (1989) and Kanoon Apna Apna (1989). He earned nominations for the Filmfare Award for Best Actor for Saajan (1991) and Khalnayak (1993). Dutt earned his first Best Actor at the ceremony for playing a common man-turned-gangster in Vaastav: The Reality (1999). Along with Vaastav: The Reality, he also won accolades for playing an army officer in Mission Kashmir (2001), a soft-hearted goofy gangster in Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003) and its sequel Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006).
Dutt was arrested under the TADA and the Arms Act in April 1993 and was convicted for violation of Arms Act for possession of illegal weapons procured from other accused in the 1993 Bombay bombings. After serving his sentence, he was released in 2016. Dutt's life receives considerable media coverage in India, and in 2018, Sanju, a biopic based on his life (which also saw a special appearance by him), was released to positive reviews and emerged as one of the highest-grossers of Indian cinema.
Early life
Dutt was born on 29th July, 1959 in Bombay to noted cinema actors Sunil Dutt and Nargis. He has two sisters, Priya Dutt and Namrata Dutt. Sanjay's name was chosen by crowdsourcing via the Urdu language film magazine Shama. His mother died in 1981, shortly before his debut film's premiere; her death is cited as the instigator of his drug abuse. As a child actor, Dutt appeared briefly as a qawali singer in the 1972 film Reshma Aur Shera, which starred his father.
Career
Early career and breakthrough (1981–1993)
Dutt made his Bollywood movie debut with the box-office super hit Rocky in 1981. Dutt then went on to star in Vidhaata, the highest-grossing Hindi film of 1982, along with film veterans Dilip Kumar, Shammi Kapoor and Sanjeev Kumar. He also starred in movies like Main Awara Hoon (1983). In 1985 he shot Jaan Ki Baazi, his first film in two years.
The 1986 film Naam was a turning point in Dutt's career, it was a major commercial and critical success. Dutt appeared in successful films throughout the '80s such as Imaandaar, Inaam Dus Hazaar, Jeete Hain Shaan Se (1988), Mardon Wali Baat (1988), Ilaaka (1989), Hum Bhi Insaan Hain (1989), Kanoon Apna Apna (1989) and Taaqatwar.
His performances in both Kabzaa (1988) and J. P. Dutta's 1989 Hathyar were both well received by critics although both films only managed average collections at the box office. In the late 1980s he was seen in a number of multi-starrers alongside leading actors like Govinda, Mithun, Dharmendra, Jackie Shroff and Sunny Deol.
His successes continued in the 1990s, with films that include Tejaa, Khatarnaak, Zahreelay, Thanedaar, Khoon Ka Karz, Yalgaar, Gumrah, Sahibaan and Aatish: Feel the Fire. He went on to star in some of the most era-defining Indian films of the early 1990s such as Sadak, Saajan (for which he was nominated for the Filmfare Best Actor Award) and Khalnayak, for which he earned his second Filmfare Best Actor Award nomination.
The Hindu wrote that "Sanjay's earlier films (like Naam and Sadak) got him a lot of favourable attention." and "Saajan established Sanjay Dutt as the conventional soft hero."Saajan was the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 1991, and Sadak was the fifth highest grosser of 1991. Khalnayak became a blockbuster and was the second-highest grosser of 1993. This was followed by another box office success Gumrah, this was Dutt's second consecutive hit of the year.
Arrest due to involvement in 1993 serial bombings, films after arrest (1993 - 1999)
Bombay (now Mumbai) suffered a series of serial bombings in 1993. Dutt was among several people associated with Bollywood who were accused of involvement. It was alleged that Dutt accepted a delivery of weapons at his house from Abu Salem and co-accused Riyaz Siddiqui, who had also been implicated in relation to the Mumbai blasts. It was claimed that the weapons formed a part of a large consignment of arms connected to the terrorists. Dutt, however, in his confession stated that he took only one Type-56 from the producers of his movie Sanam, for his own family protection. It has also been reported that Sanjay Dutt's father Sunil Dutt's political rivalry caused Sanjay Dutt's conviction.. Dutt's first film after his 1993 arrest was Daud (1997). It did average business at the box office despite getting a lot of publicity. This was followed by Dushman which did well financially.
Comeback (1999 – 2003)
1999 was an excellent year for Dutt and one that is regarded as his comeback, with all of his five releases being amongst the highest-grossing films of that year. He began it by starring in the Mahesh Bhatt-directed film Kartoos, followed by Khoobsurat, Haseena Maan Jaayegi, Daag: The Fire and Vaastav: The Reality, for which he won many awards, including his first Filmfare Best Actor Award. His role in 2000's Mission Kashmir won him critical acclaim and a number of awards and nominations. Dutt was also invited by the President of India to Rashtrapati Bhavan for his performance in the movie.
Breakthrough with Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., prolonged success (2003 - present)
As the decade went on, he continued to play lead roles in popular and critical successes such as Jodi No.1 (2001), Pitaah (2002), Kaante (2002) and the National Award-winning film Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003), which garnered him several awards. At the box office Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. achieved a silver jubilee status (25-week run) being one of only eight films to have achieved this status since the year 2000. In its 26th week of release, the film could still be found playing on 257 screens throughout India. Later successes came with Musafir (2004), Plan (2004), Parineeta (2005) and Dus (2005). He won critical acclaim for his performances in Shabd (2005) and Zinda.
The sequel of Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., Lage Raho Munna Bhai was released in late 2006. Dutt received a number of awards for his performance in the film, along with an award from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his work in the Munna bhai series. NDTV India counted the character Munna Bhai as one of top 20 fictional characters in Bollywood. Later Dutt starred in movies like Dhamaal (2007), Shootout at Lokhandwala (2007), All the Best (2009), Double Dhamaal (2011), Son of Sardaar (2012) Agneepath (2012) and PK.
In January 2008, the Indian film Institute Filmfare listed 12 films featuring Dutt in its list of top 100 highest-grossing movies of all time. In its May 2013 edition "100 years of Indian cinema" Filmfare listed three films featuring Dutt in its top 20 list of highest-grossing Hindi films of all time, adjusted for inflation these films were Lage Raho Munna Bhai, Khalnayak and Saajan.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra on 29 September 2016 announced that the third part of Munna Bhai series, starring Dutt in the title role, would begin soon. In 2017, Dutt appeared as the lead in Bhoomi, directed by Omung Kumar. In 2018, he starred in Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster 3. In 2018, it was also announced that Dutt would feature alongside Ranbir Kapoor and Vaani Kapoor in Shamshera, which will release on 31 July 2020. On 29 June 2018, his biopic Sanju released in which he made a special appearance. Dutt and Alia Bhatt are currently shooting for Sadak 2. In 2019, he joined the cast of historical film Bhuj: The Pride of India, which will feature an ensemble cast consisting of Ajay Devgn, Sonakshi Sinha and Parineeti Chopra. He was seen in the film Prassthanam on 20 September 2019.
Dutt is currently working as the main antagonist on K.G.F: Chapter 2, the sequel to the blockbuster Kannada film, K.G.F: Chapter 1, marking his debut in Kannada cinema. Sanjay Dutt will now appear in films like Shamshera, RRR and Prithviraj.
Off-screen work
Dutt co-hosted the fifth season of the Indian reality show Bigg Boss along with Salman Khan. The show aired on Colors television from 2 October 2011 to 7 January 2012. Dutt later said it was Khan who persuaded him to co-host the show. Dutt and entrepreneur Indian Premier League cricket team owner Raj Kundra together launched India's first professionally organised mixed martial arts league—the Super Fight League—on 16 January 2012.
Personal life and media image
In the early 1980s, Dutt had a relationship with his co-star from his first film, Tina Munim. After this relationship ended, Dutt married actress Richa Sharma in 1987. She died of a brain tumour in 1996. The couple have a daughter, Trishala Dutt, born in 1988, who lives in the United States with her maternal grandparents.
Dutt's second marriage was to air-hostess-turned-model Rhea Pillai in February 1998. The divorce finalised in 2008. Dutt married Manyata (born Dilnawaz Sheikh) first registered in Goa in 2008 and then, in a Hindu ceremony in Mumbai, after two years of dating. On 21 October 2010, he became a father to twins, a boy and a girl.
He is a devout Shaiva Hindu who has read holy scriptures and theological works.
Bombay (now Mumbai) suffered a series of serial bombings in 1993. Dutt was among several people associated with Bollywood who were accused of involvement. It was alleged that Dutt accepted a delivery of weapons at his house from Abu Salem and co-accused Riyaz Siddiqui, who had also been implicated in relation to the Mumbai blasts. It was claimed that the weapons formed a part of a large consignment of arms connected to the terrorists. Dutt, however, in his confession stated that he took only one Type-56 from the producers of his movie Sanam, for his own family protection. It has also been reported that Sanjay Dutt's father Sunil Dutt's political rivalry caused Sanjay Dutt's conviction.
In April 1993, after initial reporting by Baljeet Parmar on Dutt's possession of the AK-56, he was arrested under the provisions of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court of India on 5 May 1993; however, on 4 July 1994 his bail was cancelled and he was re-arrested. On 16 October 1995 he was granted bail. Abdul Qayyum Abdul Karim Shaikh, who was thought to be a close aide of the terrorists' ringleader, Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested. Dutt had given Qayuum's name to the police when confessing to arms possession, saying that in September 1992 he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai. His arrest coincided with the release of his film, Khalnayak, in which he played a wanted criminal. The film's major success was in part due to Dutt's off-screen legal controversy.
On 31 July 2007, Dutt was cleared of the charges relating to the Mumbai blast; however, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment under Arms act for illegal possession of weapons. According to The Guardian, "The actor claimed he feared for his life after the notorious 'Black Friday' bombings, which were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly Hindu-Muslim clashes a few months earlier. But the judge rejected this defence and also refused bail." Dutt was returned to at the Arthur Road Jail and soon after moved to the Yerawada Central Jail in Pune. Dutt appealed against the sentence and was granted interim bail on 20 August 2007 until such time as the TADA court provided him with a copy of its judgement. On 22 October 2007 Dutt was back in jail but again applied for bail. On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court. On 21 March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict but shortened the sentence to five years' imprisonment. Dutt was given a month to surrender before the authorities.
Dutt has said that "I am not a politician but I belong to a political family." He was persuaded by a close friend to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party, but withdrew when the court refused to suspend his conviction. He was then appointed General Secretary of the Samajwadi Party, leaving that post in December 2010. In March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld Dutt's five-year sentence, 18 months of which he already spent in jail during the trial. He was given four weeks to surrender to the authorities, the court having refused to release him on probation due to the severity of the offence.
On 10 May, the Supreme Court rejected Dutt's review petition for the reconsideration of his conviction and asked him to surrender on the stipulated date. on 14 May, Dutt withdrew the mercy plea and surrendered to the Mumbai Police on 16 May 2013. Just before the surrender, the Mumbai jail authority got an anonymous letter threatening Dutt's life. Dutt filed an appeal to allow him to surrender before entering Yerwada Central Jail. Later, Dutt withdrew this request too. He was paroled from 21 December 2013. The parole was extended three times until March 2014, raising concern in Bombay High Court and a proposal from the Government of Maharashtra to amend the law of parole. He returned to Yerwada Central Jail after his parole ended. Dutt was out on a two weeks' furlough granted by the Yerwada Central Jail authorities on 24 December. He was subsequently incarcerated in Yerwada Central Jail, to complete his jail term. He was released from there on 25 February 2016 after serving his sentence.
Health issues
Dutt was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer in August 2020. He did his treatment in Mumbai and now recovered from lung cancer.
In popular culture
The author Yasser Usman published a biographical book on Dutt, titled Sanjay Dutt: The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood's Bad Boy, in 2018.
A film based on his life, Sanju, in which Ranbir Kapoor portrays the role of Dutt.
In 2021, Punjabi Singer from Brampton, Sidhu Moose Wala had also made a song Sanju, comparing his AK-47 possession and firing case with Sanjay Dutt.
Bibliography
References
External links
Male actors in Hindi cinema
Living people
1959 births
Filmfare Awards winners
Indian male child actors
Indian male singers
Lawrence School, Sanawar alumni
Politicians from Mumbai
Samajwadi Party politicians
Male actors from Mumbai
Film producers from Mumbai
Indian actor-politicians
Bigg Boss
Indian game show hosts
Punjabi people
20th-century Indian male actors
21st-century Indian male actors
Indian male comedians
Hindi film producers
Indian criminals
Indian Hindus
| false |
[
"Don Juan Manuel's Tales of Count Lucanor, in Spanish Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio (Book of the Examples of Count Lucanor and of Patronio), also commonly known as El Conde Lucanor, Libro de Patronio, or Libro de los ejemplos (original Old Castilian: Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor et de Patronio), is one of the earliest works of prose in Castilian Spanish. It was first written in 1335.\n\nThe book is divided into four parts. The first and most well-known part is a series of 51 short stories (some no more than a page or two) drawn from various sources, such as Aesop and other classical writers, and Arabic folktales.\n\nTales of Count Lucanor was first printed in 1575 when it was published at Seville under the auspices of Argote de Molina. It was again printed at Madrid in 1642, after which it lay forgotten for nearly two centuries.\n\nPurpose and structure\n\nA didactic, moralistic purpose, which would color so much of the Spanish literature to follow (see Novela picaresca), is the mark of this book. Count Lucanor engages in conversation with his advisor Patronio, putting to him a problem (\"Some man has made me a proposition...\" or \"I fear that such and such person intends to...\") and asking for advice. Patronio responds always with the greatest humility, claiming not to wish to offer advice to so illustrious a person as the Count, but offering to tell him a story of which the Count's problem reminds him. (Thus, the stories are \"examples\" [ejemplos] of wise action.) At the end he advises the Count to do as the protagonist of his story did.\n\nEach chapter ends in more or less the same way, with slight variations on: \"And this pleased the Count greatly and he did just so, and found it well. And Don Johán (Juan) saw that this example was very good, and had it written in this book, and composed the following verses.\" A rhymed couplet closes, giving the moral of the story.\n\nOrigin of stories and influence on later literature\nMany of the stories written in the book are the first examples written in a modern European language of various stories, which many other writers would use in the proceeding centuries. Many of the stories he included were themselves derived from other stories, coming from western and Arab sources.\n\nShakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew has the basic elements of Tale 35, \"What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\".\n\nTale 32, \"What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth\" tells the story that Hans Christian Andersen made popular as The Emperor's New Clothes.\n\nStory 7, \"What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana\", a version of Aesop's The Milkmaid and Her Pail, was claimed by Max Müller to originate in the Hindu cycle Panchatantra.\n\nTale 2, \"What happened to a good Man and his Son, leading a beast to market,\" is the familiar fable The miller, his son and the donkey.\n\nIn 2016, Baroque Decay released a game under the name \"The Count Lucanor\". As well as some protagonists' names, certain events from the books inspired past events in the game.\n\nThe stories\n\nThe book opens with a prologue which introduces the characters of the Count and Patronio. The titles in the following list are those given in Keller and Keating's 1977 translation into English. James York's 1868 translation into English gives a significantly different ordering of the stories and omits the fifty-first.\n\n What Happened to a King and His Favorite \n What Happened to a Good Man and His Son \n How King Richard of England Leapt into the Sea against the Moors\n What a Genoese Said to His Soul When He Was about to Die \n What Happened to a Fox and a Crow Who Had a Piece of Cheese in His Beak\n How the Swallow Warned the Other Birds When She Saw Flax Being Sown \n What Happened to a Woman Named Truhana \n What Happened to a Man Whose Liver Had to Be Washed \n What Happened to Two Horses Which Were Thrown to the Lion \n What Happened to a Man Who on Account of Poverty and Lack of Other Food Was Eating Bitter Lentils \n What Happened to a Dean of Santiago de Compostela and Don Yllán, the Grand Master of Toledo\n What Happened to the Fox and the Rooster \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Hunting Partridges \n The Miracle of Saint Dominick When He Preached against the Usurer \n What Happened to Lorenzo Suárez at the Siege of Seville \n The Reply that count Fernán González Gave to His Relative Núño Laynes \n What Happened to a Very Hungry Man Who Was Half-heartedly Invited to Dinner \n What Happened to Pero Meléndez de Valdés When He Broke His Leg \n What Happened to the Crows and the Owls \n What Happened to a King for Whom a Man Promised to Perform Alchemy \n What Happened to a Young King and a Philosopher to Whom his Father Commended Him \n What Happened to the Lion and the Bull \n How the Ants Provide for Themselves \n What Happened to the King Who Wanted to Test His Three Sons \n What Happened to the Count of Provence and How He Was Freed from Prison by the Advice of Saladin\n What Happened to the Tree of Lies \n What Happened to an Emperor and to Don Alvarfáñez Minaya and Their Wives \n What Happened in Granada to Don Lorenzo Suárez Gallinato When He Beheaded the Renegade Chaplain \n What Happened to a Fox Who Lay down in the Street to Play Dead \n What Happened to King Abenabet of Seville and Ramayquía His Wife \n How a Cardinal Judged between the Canons of Paris and the Friars Minor \n What Happened to the King and the Tricksters Who Made Cloth \n What Happened to Don Juan Manuel's Saker Falcon and an Eagle and a Heron \n What Happened to a Blind Man Who Was Leading Another \n What Happened to a Young Man Who Married a Strong and Ill-tempered Woman\n What Happened to a Merchant When He Found His Son and His Wife Sleeping Together \n What Happened to Count Fernán González with His Men after He Had Won the Battle of Hacinas \n What Happened to a Man Who Was Loaded down with Precious Stones and Drowned in the River \n What Happened to a Man and a Swallow and a Sparrow \n Why the Seneschal of Carcassonne Lost His Soul \n What Happened to a King of Córdova Named Al-Haquem \n What Happened to a Woman of Sham Piety \n What Happened to Good and Evil and the Wise Man and the Madman \n What Happened to Don Pero Núñez the Loyal, to Don Ruy González de Zavallos, and to Don Gutier Roiz de Blaguiello with Don Rodrigo the Generous \n What Happened to a Man Who Became the Devil's Friend and Vassal \n What Happened to a Philosopher who by Accident Went down a Street Where Prostitutes Lived \n What Befell a Moor and His Sister Who Pretended That She Was Timid \n What Happened to a Man Who Tested His Friends \n What Happened to the Man Whom They Cast out Naked on an Island When They Took away from Him the Kingdom He Ruled \n What Happened to Saladin and a Lady, the Wife of a Knight Who Was His Vassal \n What Happened to a Christian King Who Was Very Powerful and Haughty\n\nReferences\n\nNotes\n\nBibliography\n\n Sturm, Harlan\n\n Wacks, David\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Internet Archive provides free access to the 1868 translation by James York.\nJSTOR has the to the 1977 translation by Keller and Keating.\nSelections in English and Spanish (pedagogical edition) with introduction, notes, and bibliography in Open Iberia/América (open access teaching anthology)\n\n14th-century books\nSpanish literature\n1335 books",
"\"What Happened to Us\" is a song by Australian recording artist Jessica Mauboy, featuring English recording artist Jay Sean. It was written by Sean, Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim and Israel Cruz. \"What Happened to Us\" was leaked online in October 2010, and was released on 10 March 2011, as the third single from Mauboy's second studio album, Get 'Em Girls (2010). The song received positive reviews from critics.\n\nA remix of \"What Happened to Us\" made by production team OFM, was released on 11 April 2011. A different version of the song which features Stan Walker, was released on 29 May 2011. \"What Happened to Us\" charted on the ARIA Singles Chart at number 14 and was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA). An accompanying music video was directed by Mark Alston, and reminisces on a former relationship between Mauboy and Sean.\n\nProduction and release\n\n\"What Happened to Us\" was written by Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz and Jay Sean. It was produced by Skaller, Cruz, Rohaim and Bobby Bass. The song uses C, D, and B minor chords in the chorus. \"What Happened to Us\" was sent to contemporary hit radio in Australia on 14 February 2011. The cover art for the song was revealed on 22 February on Mauboy's official Facebook page. A CD release was available for purchase via her official website on 10 March, for one week only. It was released digitally the following day.\n\nReception\nMajhid Heath from ABC Online Indigenous called the song a \"Jordin Sparks-esque duet\", and wrote that it \"has a nice innocence to it that rings true to the experience of losing a first love.\" Chris Urankar from Nine to Five wrote that it as a \"mid-tempo duet ballad\" which signifies Mauboy's strength as a global player. On 21 March 2011, \"What Happened to Us\" debuted at number 30 on the ARIA Singles Chart, and peaked at number 14 the following week. The song was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), for selling 70,000 copies. \"What Happened to Us\" spent a total of ten weeks in the ARIA top fifty.\n\nMusic video\n\nBackground\nThe music video for the song was shot in the Elizabeth Bay House in Sydney on 26 November 2010. The video was shot during Sean's visit to Australia for the Summerbeatz tour. During an interview with The Daily Telegraph while on the set of the video, Sean said \"the song is sick! ... Jessica's voice is amazing and we're shooting [the video] in this ridiculously beautiful mansion overlooking the harbour.\" The video was directed by Mark Alston, who had previously directed the video for Mauboy's single \"Let Me Be Me\" (2009). It premiered on YouTube on 10 February 2011.\n\nSynopsis and reception\nThe video begins showing Mauboy who appears to be sitting on a yellow antique couch in a mansion, wearing a purple dress. As the video progresses, scenes of memories are displayed of Mauboy and her love interest, played by Sean, spending time there previously. It then cuts to the scenes where Sean appears in the main entrance room of the mansion. The final scene shows Mauboy outdoors in a gold dress, surrounded by green grass and trees. She is later joined by Sean who appears in a black suit and a white shirt, and together they sing the chorus of the song to each other. David Lim of Feed Limmy wrote that the video is \"easily the best thing our R&B princess has committed to film – ever\" and praised the \"mansion and wondrous interior décor\". He also commended Mauboy for choosing Australian talent to direct the video instead of American directors, which she had used for her previous two music videos. Since its release, the video has received over two million views on Vevo.\n\nLive performances\nMauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" live for the first time during her YouTube Live Sessions program on 4 December 2010. She also appeared on Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight on 23 February 2011 for an interview and later performed the song. On 15 March 2011, Mauboy performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Sunrise. She also performed the song with Stan Walker during the Australian leg of Chris Brown's F.A.M.E. Tour in April 2011. Mauboy and Walker later performed \"What Happened to Us\" on Dancing with the Stars Australia on 29 May 2011. From November 2013 to February 2014, \"What Happened to Us\" was part of the set list of the To the End of the Earth Tour, Mauboy's second headlining tour of Australia, with Nathaniel Willemse singing Sean's part.\n\nTrack listing\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Just Witness Remix) – 3:45\n\nCD single\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Album Version) – 3:19\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (Sgt Slick Remix) – 6:33\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:39\n\nDigital download – Remix\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Jay Sean (OFM Remix) – 3:38\n\nDigital download\n \"What Happened to Us\" featuring Stan Walker – 3:20\n\nPersonnel\nSongwriting – Josh Alexander, Billy Steinberg, Jeremy Skaller, Rob Larow, Khaled Rohaim, Israel Cruz, Jay Sean\nProduction – Jeremy Skaller, Bobby Bass\nAdditional production – Israel Cruz, Khaled Rohaim\nLead vocals – Jessica Mauboy, Jay Sean\nMixing – Phil Tan\nAdditional mixing – Damien Lewis\nMastering – Tom Coyne \nSource:\n\nCharts\n\nWeekly chart\n\nYear-end chart\n\nCertification\n\nRadio dates and release history\n\nReferences\n\n2010 songs\n2011 singles\nJessica Mauboy songs\nJay Sean songs\nSongs written by Billy Steinberg\nSongs written by Jay Sean\nSongs written by Josh Alexander\nSongs written by Israel Cruz\nVocal duets\nSony Music Australia singles\nSongs written by Khaled Rohaim"
] |
[
"Sanjay Dutt",
"2007-2009",
"What did Dutt do in 2007?",
"On 31 July 2007, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons and cleared him of charges relating to the Mumbai blasts.",
"What weapons was he in possession of?",
"he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai.",
"Where did he serve his prison sentence?",
"\" Dutt was returned to jail at Arthur Road and soon after moved to the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune.",
"When was he released from jail?",
"On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court.",
"What happened in 2008?",
"I don't know."
] |
C_fb08846ee7bc41a9957c91b5b5989fe5_0
|
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
| 6 |
Besides being moved to the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune, are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
|
Sanjay Dutt
|
Abdul Qayyum Abdul Karim Shaikh, who was thought to be a close aide of the terrorists' ringleader, Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested. Dutt had given Qayuum's name to the police when confessing to arms possession, saying that in September 1992 he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai. On 31 July 2007, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of weapons and cleared him of charges relating to the Mumbai blasts. According to The Guardian, "The actor claimed he feared for his life after the notorious "Black Friday" bombings, which were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly Hindu-Muslim clashes a few months earlier. But the judge rejected this defence and also refused bail." Dutt was returned to jail at Arthur Road and soon after moved to the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune. Dutt appealed against the sentence and was granted interim bail on 20 August 2007 until such time as the TADA court provided him with a copy of its judgement. On 22 October 2007 Dutt was back in jail but again applied for bail. On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court. On 21 March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict of the TADA court but shortened the sentence to five years' imprisonment. Dutt was given a month to surrender before the authorities. Dutt has said that "I am not a politician but I belong to a political family." He was persuaded by a close friend to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party but withdrew when the court refused to suspend his conviction. He was then appointed General Secretary of the party, leaving that post in December 2010. CANNOTANSWER
|
to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party but withdrew when the court refused to suspend his conviction.
|
Sanjay Balraj Dutt (born 29 July 1959) is an Indian actor who works in Hindi films. He is the recipient of several awards, including two Filmfare Awards and three Screen Awards. Dutt acted in 187 films, ranging from romance to comedy genres, but is usually typecast in action genres, and established himself as one of the most popular Hindi film actors of the later 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s.
The son of actors Sunil Dutt and Nargis, Dutt made his acting debut in Rocky (1981), which was directed by his father. The crime thriller Naam (1985) proved to be a turning point in his career, which was followed by a series of commercially successful films in that decade, including Jeete Hain Shaan Se (1988), Mardon Wali Baat (1988), Ilaaka (1989), Hum Bhi Insaan Hain (1989) and Kanoon Apna Apna (1989). He earned nominations for the Filmfare Award for Best Actor for Saajan (1991) and Khalnayak (1993). Dutt earned his first Best Actor at the ceremony for playing a common man-turned-gangster in Vaastav: The Reality (1999). Along with Vaastav: The Reality, he also won accolades for playing an army officer in Mission Kashmir (2001), a soft-hearted goofy gangster in Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003) and its sequel Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006).
Dutt was arrested under the TADA and the Arms Act in April 1993 and was convicted for violation of Arms Act for possession of illegal weapons procured from other accused in the 1993 Bombay bombings. After serving his sentence, he was released in 2016. Dutt's life receives considerable media coverage in India, and in 2018, Sanju, a biopic based on his life (which also saw a special appearance by him), was released to positive reviews and emerged as one of the highest-grossers of Indian cinema.
Early life
Dutt was born on 29th July, 1959 in Bombay to noted cinema actors Sunil Dutt and Nargis. He has two sisters, Priya Dutt and Namrata Dutt. Sanjay's name was chosen by crowdsourcing via the Urdu language film magazine Shama. His mother died in 1981, shortly before his debut film's premiere; her death is cited as the instigator of his drug abuse. As a child actor, Dutt appeared briefly as a qawali singer in the 1972 film Reshma Aur Shera, which starred his father.
Career
Early career and breakthrough (1981–1993)
Dutt made his Bollywood movie debut with the box-office super hit Rocky in 1981. Dutt then went on to star in Vidhaata, the highest-grossing Hindi film of 1982, along with film veterans Dilip Kumar, Shammi Kapoor and Sanjeev Kumar. He also starred in movies like Main Awara Hoon (1983). In 1985 he shot Jaan Ki Baazi, his first film in two years.
The 1986 film Naam was a turning point in Dutt's career, it was a major commercial and critical success. Dutt appeared in successful films throughout the '80s such as Imaandaar, Inaam Dus Hazaar, Jeete Hain Shaan Se (1988), Mardon Wali Baat (1988), Ilaaka (1989), Hum Bhi Insaan Hain (1989), Kanoon Apna Apna (1989) and Taaqatwar.
His performances in both Kabzaa (1988) and J. P. Dutta's 1989 Hathyar were both well received by critics although both films only managed average collections at the box office. In the late 1980s he was seen in a number of multi-starrers alongside leading actors like Govinda, Mithun, Dharmendra, Jackie Shroff and Sunny Deol.
His successes continued in the 1990s, with films that include Tejaa, Khatarnaak, Zahreelay, Thanedaar, Khoon Ka Karz, Yalgaar, Gumrah, Sahibaan and Aatish: Feel the Fire. He went on to star in some of the most era-defining Indian films of the early 1990s such as Sadak, Saajan (for which he was nominated for the Filmfare Best Actor Award) and Khalnayak, for which he earned his second Filmfare Best Actor Award nomination.
The Hindu wrote that "Sanjay's earlier films (like Naam and Sadak) got him a lot of favourable attention." and "Saajan established Sanjay Dutt as the conventional soft hero."Saajan was the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 1991, and Sadak was the fifth highest grosser of 1991. Khalnayak became a blockbuster and was the second-highest grosser of 1993. This was followed by another box office success Gumrah, this was Dutt's second consecutive hit of the year.
Arrest due to involvement in 1993 serial bombings, films after arrest (1993 - 1999)
Bombay (now Mumbai) suffered a series of serial bombings in 1993. Dutt was among several people associated with Bollywood who were accused of involvement. It was alleged that Dutt accepted a delivery of weapons at his house from Abu Salem and co-accused Riyaz Siddiqui, who had also been implicated in relation to the Mumbai blasts. It was claimed that the weapons formed a part of a large consignment of arms connected to the terrorists. Dutt, however, in his confession stated that he took only one Type-56 from the producers of his movie Sanam, for his own family protection. It has also been reported that Sanjay Dutt's father Sunil Dutt's political rivalry caused Sanjay Dutt's conviction.. Dutt's first film after his 1993 arrest was Daud (1997). It did average business at the box office despite getting a lot of publicity. This was followed by Dushman which did well financially.
Comeback (1999 – 2003)
1999 was an excellent year for Dutt and one that is regarded as his comeback, with all of his five releases being amongst the highest-grossing films of that year. He began it by starring in the Mahesh Bhatt-directed film Kartoos, followed by Khoobsurat, Haseena Maan Jaayegi, Daag: The Fire and Vaastav: The Reality, for which he won many awards, including his first Filmfare Best Actor Award. His role in 2000's Mission Kashmir won him critical acclaim and a number of awards and nominations. Dutt was also invited by the President of India to Rashtrapati Bhavan for his performance in the movie.
Breakthrough with Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., prolonged success (2003 - present)
As the decade went on, he continued to play lead roles in popular and critical successes such as Jodi No.1 (2001), Pitaah (2002), Kaante (2002) and the National Award-winning film Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003), which garnered him several awards. At the box office Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. achieved a silver jubilee status (25-week run) being one of only eight films to have achieved this status since the year 2000. In its 26th week of release, the film could still be found playing on 257 screens throughout India. Later successes came with Musafir (2004), Plan (2004), Parineeta (2005) and Dus (2005). He won critical acclaim for his performances in Shabd (2005) and Zinda.
The sequel of Munna Bhai M.B.B.S., Lage Raho Munna Bhai was released in late 2006. Dutt received a number of awards for his performance in the film, along with an award from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his work in the Munna bhai series. NDTV India counted the character Munna Bhai as one of top 20 fictional characters in Bollywood. Later Dutt starred in movies like Dhamaal (2007), Shootout at Lokhandwala (2007), All the Best (2009), Double Dhamaal (2011), Son of Sardaar (2012) Agneepath (2012) and PK.
In January 2008, the Indian film Institute Filmfare listed 12 films featuring Dutt in its list of top 100 highest-grossing movies of all time. In its May 2013 edition "100 years of Indian cinema" Filmfare listed three films featuring Dutt in its top 20 list of highest-grossing Hindi films of all time, adjusted for inflation these films were Lage Raho Munna Bhai, Khalnayak and Saajan.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra on 29 September 2016 announced that the third part of Munna Bhai series, starring Dutt in the title role, would begin soon. In 2017, Dutt appeared as the lead in Bhoomi, directed by Omung Kumar. In 2018, he starred in Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster 3. In 2018, it was also announced that Dutt would feature alongside Ranbir Kapoor and Vaani Kapoor in Shamshera, which will release on 31 July 2020. On 29 June 2018, his biopic Sanju released in which he made a special appearance. Dutt and Alia Bhatt are currently shooting for Sadak 2. In 2019, he joined the cast of historical film Bhuj: The Pride of India, which will feature an ensemble cast consisting of Ajay Devgn, Sonakshi Sinha and Parineeti Chopra. He was seen in the film Prassthanam on 20 September 2019.
Dutt is currently working as the main antagonist on K.G.F: Chapter 2, the sequel to the blockbuster Kannada film, K.G.F: Chapter 1, marking his debut in Kannada cinema. Sanjay Dutt will now appear in films like Shamshera, RRR and Prithviraj.
Off-screen work
Dutt co-hosted the fifth season of the Indian reality show Bigg Boss along with Salman Khan. The show aired on Colors television from 2 October 2011 to 7 January 2012. Dutt later said it was Khan who persuaded him to co-host the show. Dutt and entrepreneur Indian Premier League cricket team owner Raj Kundra together launched India's first professionally organised mixed martial arts league—the Super Fight League—on 16 January 2012.
Personal life and media image
In the early 1980s, Dutt had a relationship with his co-star from his first film, Tina Munim. After this relationship ended, Dutt married actress Richa Sharma in 1987. She died of a brain tumour in 1996. The couple have a daughter, Trishala Dutt, born in 1988, who lives in the United States with her maternal grandparents.
Dutt's second marriage was to air-hostess-turned-model Rhea Pillai in February 1998. The divorce finalised in 2008. Dutt married Manyata (born Dilnawaz Sheikh) first registered in Goa in 2008 and then, in a Hindu ceremony in Mumbai, after two years of dating. On 21 October 2010, he became a father to twins, a boy and a girl.
He is a devout Shaiva Hindu who has read holy scriptures and theological works.
Bombay (now Mumbai) suffered a series of serial bombings in 1993. Dutt was among several people associated with Bollywood who were accused of involvement. It was alleged that Dutt accepted a delivery of weapons at his house from Abu Salem and co-accused Riyaz Siddiqui, who had also been implicated in relation to the Mumbai blasts. It was claimed that the weapons formed a part of a large consignment of arms connected to the terrorists. Dutt, however, in his confession stated that he took only one Type-56 from the producers of his movie Sanam, for his own family protection. It has also been reported that Sanjay Dutt's father Sunil Dutt's political rivalry caused Sanjay Dutt's conviction.
In April 1993, after initial reporting by Baljeet Parmar on Dutt's possession of the AK-56, he was arrested under the provisions of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court of India on 5 May 1993; however, on 4 July 1994 his bail was cancelled and he was re-arrested. On 16 October 1995 he was granted bail. Abdul Qayyum Abdul Karim Shaikh, who was thought to be a close aide of the terrorists' ringleader, Dawood Ibrahim, was arrested. Dutt had given Qayuum's name to the police when confessing to arms possession, saying that in September 1992 he had bought a pistol from Qayuum in Dubai. His arrest coincided with the release of his film, Khalnayak, in which he played a wanted criminal. The film's major success was in part due to Dutt's off-screen legal controversy.
On 31 July 2007, Dutt was cleared of the charges relating to the Mumbai blast; however, the TADA court sentenced Dutt to six years' rigorous imprisonment under Arms act for illegal possession of weapons. According to The Guardian, "The actor claimed he feared for his life after the notorious 'Black Friday' bombings, which were allegedly staged by Mumbai's Muslim-dominated mafia in retaliation for deadly Hindu-Muslim clashes a few months earlier. But the judge rejected this defence and also refused bail." Dutt was returned to at the Arthur Road Jail and soon after moved to the Yerawada Central Jail in Pune. Dutt appealed against the sentence and was granted interim bail on 20 August 2007 until such time as the TADA court provided him with a copy of its judgement. On 22 October 2007 Dutt was back in jail but again applied for bail. On 27 November 2007, Dutt was granted bail by the Supreme Court. On 21 March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld the verdict but shortened the sentence to five years' imprisonment. Dutt was given a month to surrender before the authorities.
Dutt has said that "I am not a politician but I belong to a political family." He was persuaded by a close friend to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha elections as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party, but withdrew when the court refused to suspend his conviction. He was then appointed General Secretary of the Samajwadi Party, leaving that post in December 2010. In March 2013 the Supreme Court upheld Dutt's five-year sentence, 18 months of which he already spent in jail during the trial. He was given four weeks to surrender to the authorities, the court having refused to release him on probation due to the severity of the offence.
On 10 May, the Supreme Court rejected Dutt's review petition for the reconsideration of his conviction and asked him to surrender on the stipulated date. on 14 May, Dutt withdrew the mercy plea and surrendered to the Mumbai Police on 16 May 2013. Just before the surrender, the Mumbai jail authority got an anonymous letter threatening Dutt's life. Dutt filed an appeal to allow him to surrender before entering Yerwada Central Jail. Later, Dutt withdrew this request too. He was paroled from 21 December 2013. The parole was extended three times until March 2014, raising concern in Bombay High Court and a proposal from the Government of Maharashtra to amend the law of parole. He returned to Yerwada Central Jail after his parole ended. Dutt was out on a two weeks' furlough granted by the Yerwada Central Jail authorities on 24 December. He was subsequently incarcerated in Yerwada Central Jail, to complete his jail term. He was released from there on 25 February 2016 after serving his sentence.
Health issues
Dutt was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer in August 2020. He did his treatment in Mumbai and now recovered from lung cancer.
In popular culture
The author Yasser Usman published a biographical book on Dutt, titled Sanjay Dutt: The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood's Bad Boy, in 2018.
A film based on his life, Sanju, in which Ranbir Kapoor portrays the role of Dutt.
In 2021, Punjabi Singer from Brampton, Sidhu Moose Wala had also made a song Sanju, comparing his AK-47 possession and firing case with Sanjay Dutt.
Bibliography
References
External links
Male actors in Hindi cinema
Living people
1959 births
Filmfare Awards winners
Indian male child actors
Indian male singers
Lawrence School, Sanawar alumni
Politicians from Mumbai
Samajwadi Party politicians
Male actors from Mumbai
Film producers from Mumbai
Indian actor-politicians
Bigg Boss
Indian game show hosts
Punjabi people
20th-century Indian male actors
21st-century Indian male actors
Indian male comedians
Hindi film producers
Indian criminals
Indian Hindus
| false |
[
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
] |
[
"Isaac Asimov",
"Education and career"
] |
C_4faa5e824b8a43099cb7ba91fcdaf534_0
|
Where did he go to school?
| 1 |
Where did Isaac Asimov go to school?
|
Isaac Asimov
|
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then the institution's primary undergraduate school for men with quotas on the number of admissions from those ethnic groups. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939. After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov in 1939 applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia; initially rejected and then accepted only on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948. In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11. After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary, with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university. The difference grew, and in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955), and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb. In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively. CANNOTANSWER
|
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15,
|
Isaac Asimov (; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction.
Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories. He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.
He was president of the American Humanist Association. Several entities have been named in his honor, including the asteroid (5020) Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, and four literary awards.
Surname
Asimov's family name derives from the first part of ozímyj khleb (озимый хлеб), meaning the winter grain (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending -ov added. Azimov is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov's father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov. This later inspired one of Asimov's short stories, "Spell My Name with an S".
Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that "Isaac Asimov" was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name.
Biography
Early life
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian-Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me".
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya; June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011), and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the Long Island Newsday.
Asimov's family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on February 3, 1923 when he was three years old. Since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English with him, he never learned Russian, but he remained fluent in both. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade). His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919. In third grade he learned about the "error" and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight.
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, a fact that Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time when the genre was becoming more science-centered.
Education and career
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then, the institution's primary undergraduate school for men. Jewish and Italian-American students, even of outstanding academic caliber, were often deliberately barred from Columbia College proper because of the then-popular practice of imposing unwritten ethnic admission quotas. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester because he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1936, Asimov finished his Bachelor of Science degree at Morningside Heights campus (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.
After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German.
In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11.
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949, teaching biochemistry with a $5,000 salary (), with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students. In 1955, he was promoted to associate professor, which gave him tenure. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title, he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class, and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb.
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26 the same year. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956. They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He immediately began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship. On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2. He sailed to England in June 1974 on the SS France for a trip mostly devoted to events in London and Birmingham, though he also found time to visit Stonehenge.
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly paid to give talks about science. He was a frequent fixture at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties. His physical dexterity was very poor. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle; however, he did learn to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".
Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe Pack, a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan. He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society, for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty's work "The Dynamics of An Asteroid" involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. He later used his essay on Moriarty's work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, "The Ultimate Crime", which appeared in More Tales of the Black Widowers.
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.
Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics. In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was "a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then." He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP "gave it immense status and authority" in his eyes.
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs".
After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.
Illness and death
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members.
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It's Been a Good Life.
Writings
Overview
Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, while writing over 120 nonfiction books. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories. Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series. Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".
Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology. Although Asimov did write several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982), which were classified in the 100s category, none of his own books were classified in that category.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.
Science fiction
Asimov became a science fiction fan in 1929, when he began reading the pulp magazines sold in his family's candy store. At first his father forbade reading pulps as he considered them to be trash, until Asimov persuaded him that because the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, they must be educational. At age 18 he joined the Futurians science fiction fan club, where he made friends who went on to become science fiction writers or editors.
Asimov began writing at the age of 11, imitating The Rover Boys with eight chapters of The Greenville Chums at College. His father bought Asimov a used typewriter at age 16. His first published work was a humorous item on the birth of his brother for Boys High School's literary journal in 1934. In May 1937 he first thought of writing professionally, and began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew" (now lost), that year. On May 17, 1938, puzzled by a change in the schedule of Astounding Science Fiction, Asimov visited its publisher Street & Smith Publications. Inspired by the visit, he finished the story on June 19, 1938, and personally submitted it to Astounding editor John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell met with Asimov for more than an hour and promised to read the story himself. Two days later he received a rejection letter explaining why in detail. This was the first of what became almost weekly meetings with the editor while Asimov lived in New York, until moving to Boston in 1949; Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and became a personal friend.
By the end of the month, Asimov completed a second story, "Stowaway". Campbell rejected it on July 22 but—in "the nicest possible letter you could imagine"—encouraged him to continue writing, promising that Asimov might sell his work after another year and a dozen stories of practice. On October 21, 1938, he sold the third story he finished, "Marooned Off Vesta", to Amazing Stories, edited by Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. Asimov was paid $64 (), or one cent a word. Two more stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May Amazing and "Trends" in the July Astounding, the issue fans later selected as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. For 1940, ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in Astounding. His earnings became enough to pay for his education, but not yet enough for him to become a full-time writer.
Asimov later said that unlike other top Golden Age writers Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt—also first published in 1939, and whose talent and stardom were immediately obvious—he "(this is not false modesty) came up only gradually". Through July 29, 1940, Asimov wrote 22 stories in 25 months, of which 13 were published; he wrote in 1972 that from that date he never wrote a science fiction story that was not published (except for two "special cases"). He was famous enough that Donald Wollheim told Asimov that he purchased "The Secret Sense" for a new magazine only because of his name, and the December 1940 issue of Astonishing—featuring Asimov's name in bold—was the first magazine to base cover art on his work, but Asimov later said that neither he himself nor anyone else—except perhaps Campbell—considered him better than an often published "third rater".
Based on a conversation with Campbell, Asimov wrote "Nightfall", his 32nd story, in March and April 1941, and Astounding published it in September 1941. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written. In Nightfall and Other Stories Asimov wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." "Nightfall" is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.
After writing "Victory Unintentional" in January and February 1942, Asimov did not write another story for a year. Asimov expected to make chemistry his career, and was paid $2,600 annually at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, enough to marry his girlfriend; he did not expect to make much more from writing than the $1,788.50 he had earned from 28 stories sold over four years. Asimov left science fiction fandom and no longer read new magazines, and might have left the industry had not Heinlein and de Camp been coworkers and previously sold stories continued to appear. In 1942, Asimov published the first of his Foundation stories—later collected in the Foundation trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). The books recount the fall of a vast interstellar empire and the establishment of its eventual successor. They also feature his fictional science of psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted. The trilogy and Robot series are his most famous science fiction. In 1966 they won the Hugo Award for the all-time best series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Campbell raised his rate per word, Orson Welles purchased rights to "Evidence", and anthologies reprinted his stories. By the end of the war Asimov was earning as a writer an amount equal to half of his Navy Yard salary, even after a raise, but Asimov still did not believe that writing could support him, his wife, and future children.
His "positronic" robot stories—many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in his introduction to the short story collection The Complete Robot (1982) that he was largely inspired by the almost relentless tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators.
The robot series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977, Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of I, Robot that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by Jeff Vintar titled Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired. (The title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for a story by Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel The Positronic Man by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.
Besides movies, his Foundation and Robot stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Donald Kingsbury. At least some of these appear to have been done with the blessing of, or at the request of, Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov.
In 1948, he also wrote a spoof chemistry article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he would receive at his oral examination, in case the examiners thought he wasn't taking science seriously. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". Laughing hysterically with relief, Asimov had to be led out of the room. After a five-minute wait, he was summoned back into the room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov".
Demand for science fiction greatly increased during the 1950s. It became possible for a genre author to write full-time. In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished "Grow Old with Me" (40,000 words), but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of Pebble in the Sky. Doubleday published five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome Press publish one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as I, Robot and his Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the Foundation trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as The Rest of the Robots.
Books and the magazines Galaxy, and Fantasy & Science Fiction ended Asimov's dependence on Astounding. He later described the era as his "'mature' period". Asimov's "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy, was his personal favorite story.
In 1972, his novel The Gods Themselves (which was not part of a series) was published to general acclaim, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Novel.
In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue. McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
Asimov said in 1969 that he had "the happiest of all my associations with science fiction magazines" with Fantasy & Science Fiction; "I have no complaints about Astounding, Galaxy, or any of the rest, heaven knows, but F&SF has become something special to me". Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines "anthologies").
Due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another book in his Foundation series, he did so with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992), his last novel.
Popular science
Asimov and two colleagues published a textbook in 1949, with two more editions by 1969. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's The Naked Sun and 1982's Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). He greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap". Asimov explained in The Rest of the Robots that he had been unable to write substantial fiction since the summer of 1958, and observers understood him as saying that his fiction career had ended, or was permanently interrupted. Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason".
Fantasy and Science Fiction invited Asimov to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine. The first of 399 monthly F&SF columns appeared in November 1958 and they continued until his terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by Doubleday, gave Asimov a reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science; he described them as his only popular science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects on the part of his readers. The column was ostensibly dedicated to popular science but Asimov had complete editorial freedom, and wrote about contemporary social issues in essays such as "Thinking About Thinking" and "Knock Plastic!". In 1975 he wrote of these essays: "I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment."
Asimov's first wide-ranging reference work, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960), was nominated for a National Book Award, and in 1963 he won a Hugo Award—his first—for his essays for F&SF. The popularity of his science books and the income he derived from them allowed him to give up most academic responsibilities and become a full-time freelance writer. He encouraged other science fiction writers to write popular science, stating in 1967 that "the knowledgeable, skillful science writer is worth his weight in contracts", with "twice as much work as he can possibly handle".
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience: "Uneasy". Floyd C. Gale said that "Asimov has a rare talent. He can make your mental mouth water over dry facts", and "science fiction's loss has been science popularization's gain". Asimov said that "Of all the writing I do, fiction, non-fiction, adult, or juvenile, these F & SF articles are by far the most fun". He regretted, however, that he had less time for fiction—causing dissatisfied readers to send him letters of complaint—stating in 1969 that "In the last ten years, I've done a couple of novels, some collections, a dozen or so stories, but that's nothing".
In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read the word "unionized" as un-ion-ized (pronounced "un-EYE-en-ized"), meaning "(a chemical species) being in an electrically neutral state, as opposed to being an ion", while non-chemists will read the word as union-ized (pronounced "YOU-nien-ized"), meaning "(a worker or organization) belonging to or possessing a trade union".
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term "robotics" in his 1941 story "Liar!", though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in Gold ("The Robot Chronicles"). While acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one third of the way down the first column of page 100, Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942 printing of his short story "Runaround".
In the same story, Asimov also coined the term "positronic" (the counterpart to "electronic" for positrons).
Asimov coined the term "psychohistory" in his Foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. Asimov said later that he should have called it psychosociology. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 fix-up novel Foundation. Somewhat later, the term "psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.
Other writings
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, including The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966), The Roman Empire (1967), The Egyptians (1967) The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968), and Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991).
He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes—covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), Asimov's Annotated Don Juan (1972), Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He published two full-length mystery novels, and wrote 66 stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders, and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, who he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends. A parody of the Black Widowers, "An Evening with the White Divorcés," was written by author, critic, and librarian Jon L. Breen. Asimov joked, "all I can do ... is to wait until I catch him in a dark alley, someday."
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks. Asimov featured Yiddish humor in Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, some of Asimov's behavior towards women was described as sexual harassment and cited as an example of historically problematic behavior by men in science fiction communities.
Asimov published three volumes of autobiography. In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980) cover his life up to 1978. The third volume, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), covered his whole life (rather than following on from where the second volume left off). The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov after his death. The book won a Hugo Award in 1995. Janet Asimov edited It's Been a Good Life (2002), a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Treks initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on Star Treks scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming that despite its inaccuracies, Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.
Awards and recognition
Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half-dozen lifetime awards.
He also received 14 honorary doctorate degrees from universities.
1955 – Guest of Honor at the 13th World Science Fiction Convention
1957 – Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award for best science book for youth, for Building Blocks of the Universe
1960 – Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
1962 – Boston University's Publication Merit Award
1963 – A special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction," for essays published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
1963 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1964 – The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" (1941) the all-time best science fiction short story
1965 – James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
1966 – Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation trilogy
1967 – Edward E. Smith Memorial Award
1967 – AAAS-Westinghouse Science Writing Award for Magazine Writing, for essay "Over the Edge of the Universe" (in the March 1967 Harper's Magazine)
1972 – Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Locus Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1975 – Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
1975 – Klumpke-Roberts Award "for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy"
1975 – Locus Award for Best Reprint Anthology for Before the Golden Age
1977 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Locus Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1981 – An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
1981 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978
1983 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
1983 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge
1984 – Humanist of the Year
1986 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him its 8th SFWA Grand Master (presented in 1987).
1987 – Locus Award for Best Short Story for "Robot Dreams"
1992 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Gold"
1995 – Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1995 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1996 – A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon for "The Mule", the 7th Foundation story, published in Astounding Science Fiction
1997 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Asimov in its second class of two deceased and two living persons, along with H. G. Wells.
2000 – Asimov was featured on a stamp in Israel
2001 – The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debates at the Hayden Planetarium in New York were inaugurated
2009 – A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov, was named in his honor
2010 – In the US Congress bill about the designation of the National Robotics Week as an annual event, a tribute to Isaac Asimov is as follows:
"Whereas the second week in April each year is designated as 'National Robotics Week', recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April 1992: Now, therefore, be it resolved ..."
2015 – Selected as a member of the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
2016 – A 1941 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1940 was given at the 2016 WorldCon for Robbie, his first positronic robot story, published in Super Science Stories, September 1940
2018 – A 1943 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1942 was given at the 2018 WorldCon for Foundation, published in Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942
Writing style
Asimov was his own secretary, typist, indexer, proofreader, and literary agent. He wrote a typed first draft composed at the keyboard at 90 words per minute; he imagined an ending first, then a beginning, then "let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it". (Asimov only used an outline once, later describing it as "like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket".) After correcting a draft by hand, he retyped the document as the final copy and only made one revision with minor editor-requested changes; a word processor did not save him much time, Asimov said, because 95% of the first draft was unchanged.
After disliking making multiple revisions of "Black Friar of the Flame", Asimov refused to make major, second, or non-editorial revisions ("like chewing used gum"), stating that "too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process". He submitted "failures" to another editor.
One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Robot:
Asimov addressed such criticism in 1989 at the beginning of Nemesis:
Gunn cited examples of a more complex style, such as the climax of "Liar!". Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", Arkady Darell in Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel, and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels.
Other than books by Gunn and Joseph Patrouch, a relative dearth of "literary" criticism exists on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:
Gunn's and Patrouch's respective studies of Asimov both state that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book comments in detail on each of Asimov's novels. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but calls some passages in The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".
Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), and said in 1973 that his style had not changed, Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in nonchronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material. (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "Reason", one of the early Robot stories). Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of The Currents of Space did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-kyrt Asimov fan" could enjoy it. In his later novel Nemesis one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.
Alien life
Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when Astoundings editor John Campbell rejected one of his science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. The nature of the rejection led him to believe that Campbell may have based his bias towards humans in stories on a real-world racial bias. Unwilling to write only weak alien races, and concerned that a confrontation would jeopardize his and Campbell's friendship, he decided he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms, he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens and alien sex. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of The Gods Themselves, the part that deals with those themes.
In the Hugo Award-winning novelette "Gold", Asimov describes an author, clearly based on himself, who has one of his books (The Gods Themselves) adapted into a "compu-drama", essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for having an extremely nonvisual style, making it difficult to adapt his work, and the author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across.
Romance and women
In the early days of science fiction some authors and critics felt that the romantic elements were inappropriate in science fiction stories, which were supposedly to be focused on science and technology. Isaac Asimov was a prominent supporter of this point of view, expressed in his 1938-1939 letters to Astounding, where he described such elements as "mush" and "slop". However, to his dismay, these letters were met with a strong opposition.
Asimov attributed the lack of romance and sex in his fiction to the "early imprinting" from starting his writing career when he had never been on a date and "didn't know anything about girls". He was sometimes criticized for the general absence of sex (and of extraterrestrial life) in his science fiction. He claimed he wrote The Gods Themselves to respond to these criticisms, which often came from New Wave science fiction (and often British) writers. The second part (of three) of the novel is set on an alien world with three sexes, and the sexual behavior of these creatures is extensively depicted.
Asimov was also criticized for a lack of strong female characters in his early work. However, some of his robot stories, including the earliest ones, featured the character Susan Calvin, a forceful and intelligent woman who regularly out-performed her male colleagues.
In his autobiographical writings, such as Gold ("Women and Science Fiction"), he acknowledges this complaint has merit and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early science-fiction stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. The Washington Post's "Book World" section reports of Robots and Empire opined "In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are."
Views
Religion
Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed the traditions of Orthodox Judaism, though not as stringently as they had in Petrovichi; they did not, however, force their beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus, he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the Torah represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that the Iliad recorded Greek mythology. When he was 13, he chose not to have a bar mitzvah. As his books Treasury of Humor and Asimov Laughs Again record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar" versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, an analysis of the historic foundations for both the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "humanist" and considered that term more practical. Asimov did, however, continue to identify himself as a secular Jew, as stated in his introduction to Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction, Wandering Stars: "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the Bar Mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."
When asked in an interview in 1982 if he was an atheist, Asimov replied,
Likewise, he said about religious education: "I would not be satisfied to have my kids choose to be religious without trying to argue them out of it, just as I would not be satisfied to have them decide to smoke regularly or engage in any other practice I consider detrimental to mind or body."
In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote,
The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".
Asimov said about using religious motifs in his writing:
Politics
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal, and thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography, In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman. Asimov's impression was that the 1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.
Asimov vehemently opposed Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He closely followed Watergate, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign. Asimov was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."
After Asimov's name appeared in the mid-1960s on a list of people the Communist Party USA "considered amenable" to its goals, the FBI investigated him. Because of his academic background, the bureau briefly considered Asimov as a possible candidate for known Soviet spy ROBPROF, but found nothing suspicious in his life or background.
Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though insisting that he was not a Zionist. In his third autobiography, Asimov stated his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he was opposed to having nation-states in general, and supported the notion of a single humanity. Asimov especially worried about the safety of Israel given that it had been created among hostile Muslim neighbors, and said that Jews had merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".
Social issues
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
In a 1988 interview by Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested. He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace. Asimov thought that people would live in space by the year 2019.
In 1983 Asimov wrote:
He continues on education:
Sexual harassment
Asimov would often fondle, kiss and pinch women at conventions and elsewhere without regard for their consent. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, author of an Asimov biography and writer on the history of science fiction, he often defended himself by saying that far from showing objections, these women cooperated. In the 1971 satirical piece, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, he wrote, "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched."
According to Nevala-Lee, however, "many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual." He wrote that Asimov's behaviour, as a leading science-fiction author and personality, contributed to an undesirable atmosphere for women in the male-dominated science fiction community. In support of this, he quoted some of Asimov's contemporary fellow-authors such as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison and Frederik Pohl, as well as editors such as Timothy Seldes. Specific incidents were reported by other people including Edward L. Ferman, long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction who wrote "... instead of shaking my date's hand, he shook her left breast".
Environment and population
Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the Bhopal disaster.
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:
Other authors
Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and in fact even used The Lord of the Rings as a plot point in a Black Widowers story, titled Nothing like Murder. In the essay All or Nothing (for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1981), Asimov revealed that he admires Tolkien and that he had read The Lord of the Rings five times. (The feelings were mutual, with Tolkien himself revealing that he had enjoyed Asimov's science fiction. This would make Asimov an exception to Tolkien's earlier claim that he rarely found "any modern books" that were interesting to him.)
He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, however, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction".
The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Asimov became a fan of mystery stories at the same time as science fiction. He preferred to read the former to latter because "I read every [science fiction] story keenly aware that it might be worse than mine, in which case I had no patience with it, or that it might be better, in which case I felt miserable". Asimov wrote "I make no secret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Christie as my model. In my opinion, her mysteries are the best ever written, far better than the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Hercule Poirot is the best detective fiction has seen. Why should I not use as my model what I consider the best?" He enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but considered Arthur Conan Doyle to be "a slapdash and sloppy writer."
Asimov also enjoyed humorous stories, particularly those of P. G. Wodehouse.
In non-fiction writing, Asimov particularly admired the writing style of Martin Gardner, and tried to emulate it in his own science books. On meeting Gardner for the first time in 1965, Asimov told him this, to which Gardner answered that he had based his own style on Asimov's.
Influence
Paul Krugman, holder of a Nobel Prize in Economics, stated Asimov's concept of psychohistory has inspired him to become an economist.
John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed, "It has been pointed out that most science fiction writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style." Along with such figures as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, Asimov left his mark as one of the most distinguished interdisciplinarians of the 20th century. "Few individuals", writes James L. Christian, "understood better than Isaac Asimov what synoptic thinking is all about. His almost 500 books—which he wrote as a specialist, a knowledgeable authority, or just an excited layman—range over almost all conceivable subjects: the sciences, history, literature, religion, and of course, science fiction."
Bibliography
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books (based on his personal count), Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing. An extensive bibliography of Isaac Asimov's works has been compiled by Ed Seiler. He published enough that his book writing rate could be analysed, showing that the writing became faster as he wrote more.
An online exhibit in West Virginia University Libraries' virtually complete Asimov Collection displays features, visuals, and descriptions of some of his over 600 books, games, audio recordings, videos, and wall charts. Many first, rare, and autographed editions are in the Libraries' Rare Book Room. Book jackets and autographs are presented online along with descriptions and images of children's books, science fiction art, multimedia, and other materials in the collection.
Science fiction
"Greater Foundation" series
The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series. The Galactic Empire novels were published as independent stories, set earlier in the same future as Foundation. Later in life, Asimov synthesized the Robot series into a single coherent "history" that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series.
All of these books were published by Doubleday & Co, except the original Foundation trilogy which was originally published by Gnome Books before being bought and republished by Doubleday.
The Robot series:
(first Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(second Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(third Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(sequel to the Elijah Baley trilogy)
Galactic Empire novels:
(early Galactic Empire)
(long before the Empire)
(Republic of Trantor still expanding)
Foundation prequels:
Original Foundation trilogy:
(also published with the title 'The Man Who Upset the Universe' as a 35¢ Ace paperback, D-125, in about 1952)
Extended Foundation series:
Lucky Starr series (as Paul French)
All published by Doubleday & Co
David Starr, Space Ranger (1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)
Norby Chronicles (with Janet Asimov)
All published by Walker & Company
Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983)
Norby's Other Secret (1984)
Norby and the Lost Princess (1985)
Norby and the Invaders (1985)
Norby and the Queen's Necklace (1986)
Norby Finds a Villain (1987)
Norby Down to Earth (1988)
Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure (1989)
Norby and the Oldest Dragon (1990)
Norby and the Court Jester (1991)
Novels not part of a series
Novels marked with an asterisk (*) have minor connections to Foundation universe.
The End of Eternity (1955), Doubleday (*)
Fantastic Voyage (1966), Bantam Books (paperback) and Houghton Mifflin (hardback) (a novelization of the movie)
The Gods Themselves (1972), Doubleday
Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), Doubleday (not a sequel to Fantastic Voyage, but a similar, independent story)
Nemesis (1989), Bantam Doubleday Dell (*)
Nightfall (1990), Doubleday, with Robert Silverberg (based on "Nightfall", a 1941 short story written by Asimov)
Child of Time (1992), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (based on "The Ugly Little Boy", a 1958 short story written by Asimov)
The Positronic Man (1993), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (*) (based on The Bicentennial Man, a 1976 novella written by Asimov)
Short-story collections
Mysteries
Novels
The Death Dealers (1958), Avon Books, republished as A Whiff of Death by Walker & Company
Murder at the ABA (1976), Doubleday, also published as Authorized Murder
Short-story collections
Black Widowers series
Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), Doubleday
More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976), Doubleday
Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), Doubleday
Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), Doubleday
Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), Doubleday
The Return of the Black Widowers (2003), Carroll & Graf
Other mysteries
Asimov's Mysteries (1968), Doubleday
The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977), Walker
The Union Club Mysteries (1983), Doubleday
The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries (1985), Walker
The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986), Doubleday
Nonfiction
Popular science
Collections of Asimov's essays for F&SF
The following books collected essays which were originally published as monthly columns in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected by Doubleday & Co
Fact and Fancy (1962)
View from a Height (1963)
Adding a Dimension (1964)
Of Time and Space and Other Things (1965)
From Earth to Heaven (1966)
Science, Numbers, and I (1968)
The Solar System and Back (1970)
The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
The Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
Asimov On Astronomy (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Asimov On Chemistry (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Of Matters Great and Small (1975)
Asimov On Physics (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
Asimov On Numbers (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
The Road to Infinity (1979)
The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
Counting the Eons (1983)
X Stands for Unknown (1984)
The Subatomic Monster (1985)
Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
Asimov on Science: A 30 Year Retrospective 1959–1989 (1989) (features the first essay in the introduction)
Out of the Everywhere (1990)
The Secret of the Universe (1991)
Other general science essay collections
Only a Trillion (1957), Abelard-Schuman,
Is Anyone There? (1967), Doubleday, (which includes the article in which he coined the term "spome")
Today and Tomorrow and— (1973), Doubleday
Science Past, Science Future (1975), Doubleday,
Please Explain (1975), Houghton Mifflin,
Life and Time (1978), Doubleday
The Roving Mind (1983), Prometheus Books, new edition 1997,
The Dangers of Intelligence (1986), Houghton Mifflin
Past, Present and Future (1987), Prometheus Books,
The Tyrannosaurus Prescription (1989), Prometheus Books
Frontiers (1990), Dutton
Frontiers II (1993), Dutton
Other science books by Asimov
The Chemicals of Life (1954), Abelard-Schuman
Inside the Atom (1956), Abelard-Schuman,
Building Blocks of the Universe (1957; revised 1974), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Carbon (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Nitrogen (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
Words of Science and the History Behind Them (1959), Houghton Mifflin
The Clock We Live On (1959), Abelard-Schuman,
Breakthroughs in Science (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Numbers (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Measure (1960), Houghton Mifflin
The Wellsprings of Life (1960), Abelard-Schuman,
Life and Energy (1962), Doubleday,
The Genetic Code (1962), The Orion Press
The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation (1963), Houghton Mifflin, , (revised)
The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions (1963), Houghton Mifflin,
Planets for Man (with Stephen H. Dole) (1964), Random House, reprinted by RAND in 2007
An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule (1965), Houghton Mifflin,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Basic Books
The title varied with each of the four editions, the last being Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984)
The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1966), Walker,
The Neutrino (1966), Doubleday, ASIN B002JK525W
Understanding Physics Vol. I, Motion, Sound, and Heat (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. II, Light, Magnetism, and Electricity (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. III, The Electron, Proton, and Neutron (1966), Walker,
Photosynthesis (1969), Basic Books,
Our World in Space (1974), New York Graphic,
Eyes on the Universe: A History of the Telescope (1976), Andre Deutsch Limited,
The Collapsing Universe (1977), Walker,
Extraterrestrial Civilizations (1979), Crown,
Visions of the Universe with illustrations by Kazuaki Iwasaki (1981), Cosmos Store,
Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), Crown,
The Measure of the Universe (1983), Harper & Row
Think About Space: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going? with co-author Frank White (1989), Walker
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery (1989), Harper & Row, second edition adds content thru 1993,
Beginnings: The Story of Origins (1989), Walker
Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (1991), Random House,
Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos (1991), Dutton,
Mysteries of Deep Space: Quasars, Pulsars and Black Holes (1994)
Earth's Moon (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Sun (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Earth (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Jupiter (1989), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Venus (1990), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Literary works
All published by Doubleday
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970),
Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" (1972)
Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost" (1974)
Familiar Poems, Annotated (1976)
Asimov's The Annotated "Gulliver's Travels" (1980)
Asimov's Annotated "Gilbert and Sullivan" (1988)
The Bible
Words from Genesis (1962), Houghton Mifflin
Words from the Exodus (1963), Houghton Mifflin
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vols I and II (1967 and 1969, one-volume ed. 1981), Doubleday,
The Story of Ruth (1972), Doubleday,
In the Beginning (1981), Crown
Autobiography
In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920–1954 (1979, Doubleday)
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 (1980, Doubleday)
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994, Doubleday)
It's Been a Good Life (2002, Prometheus Books), condensation of Asimov's three volumes of autobiography, edited by his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov
History
All published by Houghton Mifflin except where otherwise stated
The Kite That Won the Revolution (1963),
The Greeks (1965)
The Roman Republic (1966)
The Roman Empire (1967)
The Egyptians (1967)
The Near East (1968)
The Dark Ages (1968)
Words from History (1968)
The Shaping of England (1969)
Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)
The Land of Canaan (1971)
The Shaping of France (1972)
The Shaping of North America: From Earliest Times to 1763 (1973)
The Birth of the United States: 1763–1816 (1974)
Our Federal Union: The United States from 1816 to 1865 (1975),
The Golden Door: The United States from 1865 to 1918 (1977)
Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991), HarperCollins,
The March of the Millennia (1991), with co-author Frank White, Walker & Company,
Humor
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (1971) (As Dr. A), Walker & Company,
Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), Houghton Mifflin
Lecherous Limericks (1975), Walker,
More Lecherous Limericks (1976), Walker,
Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977), Walker,
Limericks, Two Gross, with John Ciardi (1978), Norton,
A Grossery of Limericks, with John Ciardi (1981), Norton,
Limericks for Children (1984), Caedmon
Asimov Laughs Again (1992), HarperCollins
On writing science fiction
Asimov on Science Fiction (1981), Doubleday
Asimov's Galaxy (1989), Doubleday
Other nonfiction
Opus 100 (1969), Houghton Mifflin,
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964), Doubleday (revised edition 1972, )
Opus 200 (1979), Houghton Mifflin,
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1979), Grosset & Dunlap,
Opus 300 (1984), Houghton Mifflin,
Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991), with co-author Frederik Pohl, Tor, .
Television, music, and film appearances
I Robot, a concept album by the Alan Parsons Project that examined some of Asimov's work
The Last Word (1959)
The Dick Cavett Show, four appearances 1968–71
The Nature of Things (1969)
ABC News coverage of Apollo 11, 1969, with Fred Pohl, interviewed by Rod Serling
David Frost interview program, August 1969. Frost asked Asimov if he had ever tried to find God and, after some initial evasion, Asimov answered, "God is much more intelligent than I am—let him try to find me."
BBC Horizon "It's About Time" (1979), show hosted by Dudley Moore
Target ... Earth? (1980)
The David Letterman Show (1980)
NBC TV Speaking Freely, interviewed by Edwin Newman (1982)
ARTS Network talk show hosted by Studs Terkel and Calvin Trillin, approximately (1982)
Oltre New York (1986)
Voyage to the Outer Planets and Beyond (1986)
Gandahar (1987), a French animated science-fiction film by René Laloux. Asimov wrote the English translation for the film.
Bill Moyers interview (1988)
Stranieri in America (1988)
Adaptations
El robot embustero (1966), short film directed by Antonio Lara de Gavilán, based on short story "Liar!"
A halhatatlanság halála (1977), TV movie directed by András Rajnai, based on novel The End of Eternity
The Ugly Little Boy (1977), short film directed by Barry Morse and Donald W. Thompson, based on novelette The Ugly Little Boy
All the Troubles of the World (1978), short film directed by Dianne Haak-Edson, based on short story "All the Troubles of the World"
The End of Eternity (1987), film directed by Andrei Yermash, based on novel The End of Eternity
Nightfall (1988), film directed by Paul Mayersberg, based on novelette "Nightfall"
Robots (1988), film directed by Doug Smith and Kim Takal, based on the Robot series
Feeling 109 (1988), short film directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov
Teach 109 (1989), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as The Android Affair)
The Android Affair (1995), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as Teach 109)
Bicentennial Man (1999), film directed by Chris Columbus, based on novelette "The Bicentennial Man" and on novel The Positronic Man
Nightfall (2000), film directed by Gwyneth Gibby, based on novelette "Nightfall"
I, Robot (2004), film directed by Alex Proyas, based on ideas of short stories of the Robot series
Formula of Death (2012), TV movie directed by Behdad Avand Amini, based on novel The Death Dealers
Spell My Name with an S (2014), short film directed by Samuel Ali, based on short story "Spell My Name with an S"
Foundation (2021), series created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, based on the Foundation series
Novelizations
Novel Fantastic Voyage, novelization of film Fantastic Voyage (1966)
References
Footnotes
Notes
Sources
Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green (1979), New York: Avon, .
In Joy Still Felt (1980), New York: Avon .
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), (hc), (pb).
Yours, Isaac Asimov (1996), edited by Stanley Asimov. New York: Doubleday .
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet Asimov. .
Goldman, Stephen H., "Isaac Asimov", in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 8, Cowart and Wymer eds. (Gale Research, 1981), pp. 15–29.
Gunn, James. "On Variations on a Robot", IASFM, July 1980, pp. 56–81.
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982). .
The Science of Science-Fiction Writing (2000). .
Further reading
External links
Asimov Online, a vast repository of information about Asimov, maintained by Asimov enthusiast Edward Seiler
Jenkins' Spoiler-Laden Guide to Isaac Asimov, reviews of all of Asimov's books
20th-century births
1992 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American male writers
AIDS-related deaths in New York (state)
American alternate history writers
Jewish American atheists
American biochemists
American essayists
American humanists
American humorists
American male novelists
20th-century American memoirists
United States Army non-commissioned officers
American mystery writers
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American science fiction writers
American science writers
American skeptics
American writers of Russian descent
Asimov's Science Fiction people
Bible commentators
Boston University faculty
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
Critics of religions
Date of birth unknown
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Futurians
Historians of astronomy
American historians of science
Hugo Award-winning writers
Humor researchers
Jewish American novelists
Jewish American short story writers
Jewish feminists
Jewish skeptics
American male essayists
Male feminists
American male short story writers
American short story writers
Mensans
Nebula Award winners
New York (state) Democrats
People from Shumyachsky District
Naturalized citizens of the United States
United States Navy civilians
Science fiction fans
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
SFWA Grand Masters
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Writers from Brooklyn
Yiddish-speaking people
Boys High School (Brooklyn) alumni
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New York (state)
Scientists from New York City
20th-century essayists
20th-century atheists
People from the Upper West Side
Pulp fiction writers
Writers about religion and science
Atheist feminists
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
| false |
[
"Where Did We Go Wrong may refer to:\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\" (Dondria song), 2010\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\" (Toni Braxton and Babyface song), 2013\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\", a song by Petula Clark from the album My Love\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\", a song by Diana Ross from the album Ross\n \"Where Did We Go Wrong\", a 1980 song by Frankie Valli",
"California Concordia College existed in Oakland, California, United States from 1906 until 1973.\n\nAmong the presidents of California Concordia College was Johann Theodore Gotthold Brohm Jr.\n\nCalifornia Concordia College and the Academy of California College were located at 2365 Camden Street, Oakland, California. Some of the school buildings still exist at this location, but older buildings that housed the earlier classrooms and later the dormitories are gone. The site is now the location of the Spectrum Center Camden Campus, a provider of special education services.\n\nThe \"Academy\" was the official name for the high school. California Concordia was a six-year institution patterned after the German gymnasium. This provided four years of high school, plus two years of junior college. Years in the school took their names from Latin numbers and referred to the years to go before graduation. The classes were named:\n\n Sexta - 6 years to go; high school freshman\n Qunita - 5 years to go; high school sophomore\n Quarta - 4 years to go; high school junior\n Tertia - 3 years to go; high school senior\n Secunda - 2 years to go; college freshman\n Prima - 1 year to go; college sophomore\n\nThose in Sexta were usually hazed in a mild way by upperclassmen. In addition, those in Sexta were required to do a certain amount of clean-up work around the school, such as picking up trash.\n\nMost students, even high school freshmen, lived in dormitories. High school students were supervised by \"proctors\" (selected high school seniors in Tertia). High school students were required to study for two hours each night in their study rooms from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. Students could not leave their rooms for any reason without permission. This requirement came as quite a shock to those in Sexta (freshmen) on their first night, when they were caught and scolded by a proctor when they left their study room to go to the bathroom without permission. Seniors (those in Tertia) were allowed one night off where they did not need to be in their study hall.\n\nFrom 9:00 to 9:30 pm all students gathered for a chapel service. From 9:30 to 10 pm, high school students were free to roam, and sometimes went to the local Lucky Supermarket to purchase snacks. All high school students were required to be in bed with lights out by 10:00 pm. There were generally five students in each dormitory room. The room had two sections: a bedroom area and (across the hallway) another room for studying. Four beds, including at least one bunk bed, were in the bedroom, and four or five desks were in the study room\n\nA few interesting words used by Concordia students were \"fink\" and \"rack.\" To \"fink\" meant to \"sing like a canary\" or \"squeal.\" A student who finked told everything he knew about a misbehavior committed by another student. \"Rack\" was actually an official term used by proctors and administrators who lived on campus in the dormitories with students. When students misbehaved they were racked (punished). Proctors held a meeting once a week and decided which students, if any, deserved to be racked. If a student were racked, he might be forbidden from leaving the campus grounds, even during normal free time School hours were from 7:30 am to 3:30 pm. After 3:30 pm and until 7:00 pm, students could normally explore the local area surrounding the school, for example, to go to a local store to buy a snack. However, if a student were racked for the week, he could not do so.\n\nProctors made their rounds in the morning to make sure beds were made and inspected rooms in the evening to ensure that students were in bed by 10:00 pm. Often after the proctors left a room at night, the room lights would go back on and students enjoyed studying their National Geographic magazines. Student might be racked if they failed to make their beds or did not make them neatly enough.\n\nAlthough California Concordia College no longer exists, it does receive some recognition by Concordia University Irvine. This is also the location of its old academic records.\n\nSources\n\nExternal links \n Photos of old campus\n\nEducational institutions disestablished in 1973\nDefunct private universities and colleges in California\nEducational institutions established in 1906\n1906 establishments in California\n1973 disestablishments in California\nUniversities and colleges affiliated with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod"
] |
[
"Isaac Asimov",
"Education and career",
"Where did he go to school?",
"Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15,"
] |
C_4faa5e824b8a43099cb7ba91fcdaf534_0
|
Did he further his education?
| 2 |
Did Asimov further his education?
|
Isaac Asimov
|
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then the institution's primary undergraduate school for men with quotas on the number of admissions from those ethnic groups. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939. After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov in 1939 applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia; initially rejected and then accepted only on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948. In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11. After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary, with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university. The difference grew, and in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955), and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb. In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively. CANNOTANSWER
|
he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students
|
Isaac Asimov (; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction.
Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories. He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.
He was president of the American Humanist Association. Several entities have been named in his honor, including the asteroid (5020) Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, and four literary awards.
Surname
Asimov's family name derives from the first part of ozímyj khleb (озимый хлеб), meaning the winter grain (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending -ov added. Azimov is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov's father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov. This later inspired one of Asimov's short stories, "Spell My Name with an S".
Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that "Isaac Asimov" was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name.
Biography
Early life
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian-Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me".
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya; June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011), and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the Long Island Newsday.
Asimov's family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on February 3, 1923 when he was three years old. Since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English with him, he never learned Russian, but he remained fluent in both. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade). His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919. In third grade he learned about the "error" and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight.
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, a fact that Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time when the genre was becoming more science-centered.
Education and career
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then, the institution's primary undergraduate school for men. Jewish and Italian-American students, even of outstanding academic caliber, were often deliberately barred from Columbia College proper because of the then-popular practice of imposing unwritten ethnic admission quotas. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester because he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1936, Asimov finished his Bachelor of Science degree at Morningside Heights campus (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.
After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German.
In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11.
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949, teaching biochemistry with a $5,000 salary (), with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students. In 1955, he was promoted to associate professor, which gave him tenure. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title, he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class, and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb.
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26 the same year. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956. They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He immediately began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship. On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2. He sailed to England in June 1974 on the SS France for a trip mostly devoted to events in London and Birmingham, though he also found time to visit Stonehenge.
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly paid to give talks about science. He was a frequent fixture at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties. His physical dexterity was very poor. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle; however, he did learn to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".
Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe Pack, a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan. He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society, for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty's work "The Dynamics of An Asteroid" involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. He later used his essay on Moriarty's work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, "The Ultimate Crime", which appeared in More Tales of the Black Widowers.
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.
Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics. In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was "a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then." He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP "gave it immense status and authority" in his eyes.
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs".
After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.
Illness and death
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members.
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It's Been a Good Life.
Writings
Overview
Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, while writing over 120 nonfiction books. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories. Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series. Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".
Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology. Although Asimov did write several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982), which were classified in the 100s category, none of his own books were classified in that category.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.
Science fiction
Asimov became a science fiction fan in 1929, when he began reading the pulp magazines sold in his family's candy store. At first his father forbade reading pulps as he considered them to be trash, until Asimov persuaded him that because the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, they must be educational. At age 18 he joined the Futurians science fiction fan club, where he made friends who went on to become science fiction writers or editors.
Asimov began writing at the age of 11, imitating The Rover Boys with eight chapters of The Greenville Chums at College. His father bought Asimov a used typewriter at age 16. His first published work was a humorous item on the birth of his brother for Boys High School's literary journal in 1934. In May 1937 he first thought of writing professionally, and began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew" (now lost), that year. On May 17, 1938, puzzled by a change in the schedule of Astounding Science Fiction, Asimov visited its publisher Street & Smith Publications. Inspired by the visit, he finished the story on June 19, 1938, and personally submitted it to Astounding editor John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell met with Asimov for more than an hour and promised to read the story himself. Two days later he received a rejection letter explaining why in detail. This was the first of what became almost weekly meetings with the editor while Asimov lived in New York, until moving to Boston in 1949; Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and became a personal friend.
By the end of the month, Asimov completed a second story, "Stowaway". Campbell rejected it on July 22 but—in "the nicest possible letter you could imagine"—encouraged him to continue writing, promising that Asimov might sell his work after another year and a dozen stories of practice. On October 21, 1938, he sold the third story he finished, "Marooned Off Vesta", to Amazing Stories, edited by Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. Asimov was paid $64 (), or one cent a word. Two more stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May Amazing and "Trends" in the July Astounding, the issue fans later selected as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. For 1940, ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in Astounding. His earnings became enough to pay for his education, but not yet enough for him to become a full-time writer.
Asimov later said that unlike other top Golden Age writers Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt—also first published in 1939, and whose talent and stardom were immediately obvious—he "(this is not false modesty) came up only gradually". Through July 29, 1940, Asimov wrote 22 stories in 25 months, of which 13 were published; he wrote in 1972 that from that date he never wrote a science fiction story that was not published (except for two "special cases"). He was famous enough that Donald Wollheim told Asimov that he purchased "The Secret Sense" for a new magazine only because of his name, and the December 1940 issue of Astonishing—featuring Asimov's name in bold—was the first magazine to base cover art on his work, but Asimov later said that neither he himself nor anyone else—except perhaps Campbell—considered him better than an often published "third rater".
Based on a conversation with Campbell, Asimov wrote "Nightfall", his 32nd story, in March and April 1941, and Astounding published it in September 1941. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written. In Nightfall and Other Stories Asimov wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." "Nightfall" is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.
After writing "Victory Unintentional" in January and February 1942, Asimov did not write another story for a year. Asimov expected to make chemistry his career, and was paid $2,600 annually at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, enough to marry his girlfriend; he did not expect to make much more from writing than the $1,788.50 he had earned from 28 stories sold over four years. Asimov left science fiction fandom and no longer read new magazines, and might have left the industry had not Heinlein and de Camp been coworkers and previously sold stories continued to appear. In 1942, Asimov published the first of his Foundation stories—later collected in the Foundation trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). The books recount the fall of a vast interstellar empire and the establishment of its eventual successor. They also feature his fictional science of psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted. The trilogy and Robot series are his most famous science fiction. In 1966 they won the Hugo Award for the all-time best series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Campbell raised his rate per word, Orson Welles purchased rights to "Evidence", and anthologies reprinted his stories. By the end of the war Asimov was earning as a writer an amount equal to half of his Navy Yard salary, even after a raise, but Asimov still did not believe that writing could support him, his wife, and future children.
His "positronic" robot stories—many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in his introduction to the short story collection The Complete Robot (1982) that he was largely inspired by the almost relentless tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators.
The robot series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977, Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of I, Robot that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by Jeff Vintar titled Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired. (The title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for a story by Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel The Positronic Man by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.
Besides movies, his Foundation and Robot stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Donald Kingsbury. At least some of these appear to have been done with the blessing of, or at the request of, Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov.
In 1948, he also wrote a spoof chemistry article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he would receive at his oral examination, in case the examiners thought he wasn't taking science seriously. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". Laughing hysterically with relief, Asimov had to be led out of the room. After a five-minute wait, he was summoned back into the room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov".
Demand for science fiction greatly increased during the 1950s. It became possible for a genre author to write full-time. In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished "Grow Old with Me" (40,000 words), but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of Pebble in the Sky. Doubleday published five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome Press publish one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as I, Robot and his Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the Foundation trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as The Rest of the Robots.
Books and the magazines Galaxy, and Fantasy & Science Fiction ended Asimov's dependence on Astounding. He later described the era as his "'mature' period". Asimov's "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy, was his personal favorite story.
In 1972, his novel The Gods Themselves (which was not part of a series) was published to general acclaim, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Novel.
In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue. McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
Asimov said in 1969 that he had "the happiest of all my associations with science fiction magazines" with Fantasy & Science Fiction; "I have no complaints about Astounding, Galaxy, or any of the rest, heaven knows, but F&SF has become something special to me". Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines "anthologies").
Due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another book in his Foundation series, he did so with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992), his last novel.
Popular science
Asimov and two colleagues published a textbook in 1949, with two more editions by 1969. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's The Naked Sun and 1982's Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). He greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap". Asimov explained in The Rest of the Robots that he had been unable to write substantial fiction since the summer of 1958, and observers understood him as saying that his fiction career had ended, or was permanently interrupted. Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason".
Fantasy and Science Fiction invited Asimov to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine. The first of 399 monthly F&SF columns appeared in November 1958 and they continued until his terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by Doubleday, gave Asimov a reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science; he described them as his only popular science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects on the part of his readers. The column was ostensibly dedicated to popular science but Asimov had complete editorial freedom, and wrote about contemporary social issues in essays such as "Thinking About Thinking" and "Knock Plastic!". In 1975 he wrote of these essays: "I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment."
Asimov's first wide-ranging reference work, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960), was nominated for a National Book Award, and in 1963 he won a Hugo Award—his first—for his essays for F&SF. The popularity of his science books and the income he derived from them allowed him to give up most academic responsibilities and become a full-time freelance writer. He encouraged other science fiction writers to write popular science, stating in 1967 that "the knowledgeable, skillful science writer is worth his weight in contracts", with "twice as much work as he can possibly handle".
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience: "Uneasy". Floyd C. Gale said that "Asimov has a rare talent. He can make your mental mouth water over dry facts", and "science fiction's loss has been science popularization's gain". Asimov said that "Of all the writing I do, fiction, non-fiction, adult, or juvenile, these F & SF articles are by far the most fun". He regretted, however, that he had less time for fiction—causing dissatisfied readers to send him letters of complaint—stating in 1969 that "In the last ten years, I've done a couple of novels, some collections, a dozen or so stories, but that's nothing".
In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read the word "unionized" as un-ion-ized (pronounced "un-EYE-en-ized"), meaning "(a chemical species) being in an electrically neutral state, as opposed to being an ion", while non-chemists will read the word as union-ized (pronounced "YOU-nien-ized"), meaning "(a worker or organization) belonging to or possessing a trade union".
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term "robotics" in his 1941 story "Liar!", though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in Gold ("The Robot Chronicles"). While acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one third of the way down the first column of page 100, Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942 printing of his short story "Runaround".
In the same story, Asimov also coined the term "positronic" (the counterpart to "electronic" for positrons).
Asimov coined the term "psychohistory" in his Foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. Asimov said later that he should have called it psychosociology. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 fix-up novel Foundation. Somewhat later, the term "psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.
Other writings
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, including The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966), The Roman Empire (1967), The Egyptians (1967) The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968), and Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991).
He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes—covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), Asimov's Annotated Don Juan (1972), Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He published two full-length mystery novels, and wrote 66 stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders, and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, who he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends. A parody of the Black Widowers, "An Evening with the White Divorcés," was written by author, critic, and librarian Jon L. Breen. Asimov joked, "all I can do ... is to wait until I catch him in a dark alley, someday."
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks. Asimov featured Yiddish humor in Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, some of Asimov's behavior towards women was described as sexual harassment and cited as an example of historically problematic behavior by men in science fiction communities.
Asimov published three volumes of autobiography. In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980) cover his life up to 1978. The third volume, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), covered his whole life (rather than following on from where the second volume left off). The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov after his death. The book won a Hugo Award in 1995. Janet Asimov edited It's Been a Good Life (2002), a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Treks initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on Star Treks scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming that despite its inaccuracies, Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.
Awards and recognition
Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half-dozen lifetime awards.
He also received 14 honorary doctorate degrees from universities.
1955 – Guest of Honor at the 13th World Science Fiction Convention
1957 – Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award for best science book for youth, for Building Blocks of the Universe
1960 – Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
1962 – Boston University's Publication Merit Award
1963 – A special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction," for essays published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
1963 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1964 – The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" (1941) the all-time best science fiction short story
1965 – James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
1966 – Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation trilogy
1967 – Edward E. Smith Memorial Award
1967 – AAAS-Westinghouse Science Writing Award for Magazine Writing, for essay "Over the Edge of the Universe" (in the March 1967 Harper's Magazine)
1972 – Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Locus Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1975 – Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
1975 – Klumpke-Roberts Award "for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy"
1975 – Locus Award for Best Reprint Anthology for Before the Golden Age
1977 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Locus Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1981 – An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
1981 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978
1983 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
1983 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge
1984 – Humanist of the Year
1986 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him its 8th SFWA Grand Master (presented in 1987).
1987 – Locus Award for Best Short Story for "Robot Dreams"
1992 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Gold"
1995 – Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1995 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1996 – A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon for "The Mule", the 7th Foundation story, published in Astounding Science Fiction
1997 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Asimov in its second class of two deceased and two living persons, along with H. G. Wells.
2000 – Asimov was featured on a stamp in Israel
2001 – The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debates at the Hayden Planetarium in New York were inaugurated
2009 – A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov, was named in his honor
2010 – In the US Congress bill about the designation of the National Robotics Week as an annual event, a tribute to Isaac Asimov is as follows:
"Whereas the second week in April each year is designated as 'National Robotics Week', recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April 1992: Now, therefore, be it resolved ..."
2015 – Selected as a member of the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
2016 – A 1941 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1940 was given at the 2016 WorldCon for Robbie, his first positronic robot story, published in Super Science Stories, September 1940
2018 – A 1943 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1942 was given at the 2018 WorldCon for Foundation, published in Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942
Writing style
Asimov was his own secretary, typist, indexer, proofreader, and literary agent. He wrote a typed first draft composed at the keyboard at 90 words per minute; he imagined an ending first, then a beginning, then "let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it". (Asimov only used an outline once, later describing it as "like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket".) After correcting a draft by hand, he retyped the document as the final copy and only made one revision with minor editor-requested changes; a word processor did not save him much time, Asimov said, because 95% of the first draft was unchanged.
After disliking making multiple revisions of "Black Friar of the Flame", Asimov refused to make major, second, or non-editorial revisions ("like chewing used gum"), stating that "too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process". He submitted "failures" to another editor.
One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Robot:
Asimov addressed such criticism in 1989 at the beginning of Nemesis:
Gunn cited examples of a more complex style, such as the climax of "Liar!". Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", Arkady Darell in Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel, and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels.
Other than books by Gunn and Joseph Patrouch, a relative dearth of "literary" criticism exists on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:
Gunn's and Patrouch's respective studies of Asimov both state that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book comments in detail on each of Asimov's novels. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but calls some passages in The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".
Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), and said in 1973 that his style had not changed, Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in nonchronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material. (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "Reason", one of the early Robot stories). Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of The Currents of Space did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-kyrt Asimov fan" could enjoy it. In his later novel Nemesis one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.
Alien life
Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when Astoundings editor John Campbell rejected one of his science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. The nature of the rejection led him to believe that Campbell may have based his bias towards humans in stories on a real-world racial bias. Unwilling to write only weak alien races, and concerned that a confrontation would jeopardize his and Campbell's friendship, he decided he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms, he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens and alien sex. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of The Gods Themselves, the part that deals with those themes.
In the Hugo Award-winning novelette "Gold", Asimov describes an author, clearly based on himself, who has one of his books (The Gods Themselves) adapted into a "compu-drama", essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for having an extremely nonvisual style, making it difficult to adapt his work, and the author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across.
Romance and women
In the early days of science fiction some authors and critics felt that the romantic elements were inappropriate in science fiction stories, which were supposedly to be focused on science and technology. Isaac Asimov was a prominent supporter of this point of view, expressed in his 1938-1939 letters to Astounding, where he described such elements as "mush" and "slop". However, to his dismay, these letters were met with a strong opposition.
Asimov attributed the lack of romance and sex in his fiction to the "early imprinting" from starting his writing career when he had never been on a date and "didn't know anything about girls". He was sometimes criticized for the general absence of sex (and of extraterrestrial life) in his science fiction. He claimed he wrote The Gods Themselves to respond to these criticisms, which often came from New Wave science fiction (and often British) writers. The second part (of three) of the novel is set on an alien world with three sexes, and the sexual behavior of these creatures is extensively depicted.
Asimov was also criticized for a lack of strong female characters in his early work. However, some of his robot stories, including the earliest ones, featured the character Susan Calvin, a forceful and intelligent woman who regularly out-performed her male colleagues.
In his autobiographical writings, such as Gold ("Women and Science Fiction"), he acknowledges this complaint has merit and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early science-fiction stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. The Washington Post's "Book World" section reports of Robots and Empire opined "In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are."
Views
Religion
Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed the traditions of Orthodox Judaism, though not as stringently as they had in Petrovichi; they did not, however, force their beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus, he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the Torah represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that the Iliad recorded Greek mythology. When he was 13, he chose not to have a bar mitzvah. As his books Treasury of Humor and Asimov Laughs Again record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar" versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, an analysis of the historic foundations for both the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "humanist" and considered that term more practical. Asimov did, however, continue to identify himself as a secular Jew, as stated in his introduction to Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction, Wandering Stars: "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the Bar Mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."
When asked in an interview in 1982 if he was an atheist, Asimov replied,
Likewise, he said about religious education: "I would not be satisfied to have my kids choose to be religious without trying to argue them out of it, just as I would not be satisfied to have them decide to smoke regularly or engage in any other practice I consider detrimental to mind or body."
In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote,
The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".
Asimov said about using religious motifs in his writing:
Politics
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal, and thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography, In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman. Asimov's impression was that the 1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.
Asimov vehemently opposed Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He closely followed Watergate, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign. Asimov was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."
After Asimov's name appeared in the mid-1960s on a list of people the Communist Party USA "considered amenable" to its goals, the FBI investigated him. Because of his academic background, the bureau briefly considered Asimov as a possible candidate for known Soviet spy ROBPROF, but found nothing suspicious in his life or background.
Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though insisting that he was not a Zionist. In his third autobiography, Asimov stated his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he was opposed to having nation-states in general, and supported the notion of a single humanity. Asimov especially worried about the safety of Israel given that it had been created among hostile Muslim neighbors, and said that Jews had merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".
Social issues
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
In a 1988 interview by Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested. He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace. Asimov thought that people would live in space by the year 2019.
In 1983 Asimov wrote:
He continues on education:
Sexual harassment
Asimov would often fondle, kiss and pinch women at conventions and elsewhere without regard for their consent. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, author of an Asimov biography and writer on the history of science fiction, he often defended himself by saying that far from showing objections, these women cooperated. In the 1971 satirical piece, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, he wrote, "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched."
According to Nevala-Lee, however, "many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual." He wrote that Asimov's behaviour, as a leading science-fiction author and personality, contributed to an undesirable atmosphere for women in the male-dominated science fiction community. In support of this, he quoted some of Asimov's contemporary fellow-authors such as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison and Frederik Pohl, as well as editors such as Timothy Seldes. Specific incidents were reported by other people including Edward L. Ferman, long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction who wrote "... instead of shaking my date's hand, he shook her left breast".
Environment and population
Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the Bhopal disaster.
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:
Other authors
Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and in fact even used The Lord of the Rings as a plot point in a Black Widowers story, titled Nothing like Murder. In the essay All or Nothing (for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1981), Asimov revealed that he admires Tolkien and that he had read The Lord of the Rings five times. (The feelings were mutual, with Tolkien himself revealing that he had enjoyed Asimov's science fiction. This would make Asimov an exception to Tolkien's earlier claim that he rarely found "any modern books" that were interesting to him.)
He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, however, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction".
The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Asimov became a fan of mystery stories at the same time as science fiction. He preferred to read the former to latter because "I read every [science fiction] story keenly aware that it might be worse than mine, in which case I had no patience with it, or that it might be better, in which case I felt miserable". Asimov wrote "I make no secret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Christie as my model. In my opinion, her mysteries are the best ever written, far better than the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Hercule Poirot is the best detective fiction has seen. Why should I not use as my model what I consider the best?" He enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but considered Arthur Conan Doyle to be "a slapdash and sloppy writer."
Asimov also enjoyed humorous stories, particularly those of P. G. Wodehouse.
In non-fiction writing, Asimov particularly admired the writing style of Martin Gardner, and tried to emulate it in his own science books. On meeting Gardner for the first time in 1965, Asimov told him this, to which Gardner answered that he had based his own style on Asimov's.
Influence
Paul Krugman, holder of a Nobel Prize in Economics, stated Asimov's concept of psychohistory has inspired him to become an economist.
John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed, "It has been pointed out that most science fiction writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style." Along with such figures as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, Asimov left his mark as one of the most distinguished interdisciplinarians of the 20th century. "Few individuals", writes James L. Christian, "understood better than Isaac Asimov what synoptic thinking is all about. His almost 500 books—which he wrote as a specialist, a knowledgeable authority, or just an excited layman—range over almost all conceivable subjects: the sciences, history, literature, religion, and of course, science fiction."
Bibliography
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books (based on his personal count), Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing. An extensive bibliography of Isaac Asimov's works has been compiled by Ed Seiler. He published enough that his book writing rate could be analysed, showing that the writing became faster as he wrote more.
An online exhibit in West Virginia University Libraries' virtually complete Asimov Collection displays features, visuals, and descriptions of some of his over 600 books, games, audio recordings, videos, and wall charts. Many first, rare, and autographed editions are in the Libraries' Rare Book Room. Book jackets and autographs are presented online along with descriptions and images of children's books, science fiction art, multimedia, and other materials in the collection.
Science fiction
"Greater Foundation" series
The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series. The Galactic Empire novels were published as independent stories, set earlier in the same future as Foundation. Later in life, Asimov synthesized the Robot series into a single coherent "history" that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series.
All of these books were published by Doubleday & Co, except the original Foundation trilogy which was originally published by Gnome Books before being bought and republished by Doubleday.
The Robot series:
(first Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(second Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(third Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(sequel to the Elijah Baley trilogy)
Galactic Empire novels:
(early Galactic Empire)
(long before the Empire)
(Republic of Trantor still expanding)
Foundation prequels:
Original Foundation trilogy:
(also published with the title 'The Man Who Upset the Universe' as a 35¢ Ace paperback, D-125, in about 1952)
Extended Foundation series:
Lucky Starr series (as Paul French)
All published by Doubleday & Co
David Starr, Space Ranger (1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)
Norby Chronicles (with Janet Asimov)
All published by Walker & Company
Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983)
Norby's Other Secret (1984)
Norby and the Lost Princess (1985)
Norby and the Invaders (1985)
Norby and the Queen's Necklace (1986)
Norby Finds a Villain (1987)
Norby Down to Earth (1988)
Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure (1989)
Norby and the Oldest Dragon (1990)
Norby and the Court Jester (1991)
Novels not part of a series
Novels marked with an asterisk (*) have minor connections to Foundation universe.
The End of Eternity (1955), Doubleday (*)
Fantastic Voyage (1966), Bantam Books (paperback) and Houghton Mifflin (hardback) (a novelization of the movie)
The Gods Themselves (1972), Doubleday
Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), Doubleday (not a sequel to Fantastic Voyage, but a similar, independent story)
Nemesis (1989), Bantam Doubleday Dell (*)
Nightfall (1990), Doubleday, with Robert Silverberg (based on "Nightfall", a 1941 short story written by Asimov)
Child of Time (1992), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (based on "The Ugly Little Boy", a 1958 short story written by Asimov)
The Positronic Man (1993), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (*) (based on The Bicentennial Man, a 1976 novella written by Asimov)
Short-story collections
Mysteries
Novels
The Death Dealers (1958), Avon Books, republished as A Whiff of Death by Walker & Company
Murder at the ABA (1976), Doubleday, also published as Authorized Murder
Short-story collections
Black Widowers series
Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), Doubleday
More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976), Doubleday
Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), Doubleday
Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), Doubleday
Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), Doubleday
The Return of the Black Widowers (2003), Carroll & Graf
Other mysteries
Asimov's Mysteries (1968), Doubleday
The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977), Walker
The Union Club Mysteries (1983), Doubleday
The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries (1985), Walker
The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986), Doubleday
Nonfiction
Popular science
Collections of Asimov's essays for F&SF
The following books collected essays which were originally published as monthly columns in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected by Doubleday & Co
Fact and Fancy (1962)
View from a Height (1963)
Adding a Dimension (1964)
Of Time and Space and Other Things (1965)
From Earth to Heaven (1966)
Science, Numbers, and I (1968)
The Solar System and Back (1970)
The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
The Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
Asimov On Astronomy (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Asimov On Chemistry (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Of Matters Great and Small (1975)
Asimov On Physics (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
Asimov On Numbers (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
The Road to Infinity (1979)
The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
Counting the Eons (1983)
X Stands for Unknown (1984)
The Subatomic Monster (1985)
Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
Asimov on Science: A 30 Year Retrospective 1959–1989 (1989) (features the first essay in the introduction)
Out of the Everywhere (1990)
The Secret of the Universe (1991)
Other general science essay collections
Only a Trillion (1957), Abelard-Schuman,
Is Anyone There? (1967), Doubleday, (which includes the article in which he coined the term "spome")
Today and Tomorrow and— (1973), Doubleday
Science Past, Science Future (1975), Doubleday,
Please Explain (1975), Houghton Mifflin,
Life and Time (1978), Doubleday
The Roving Mind (1983), Prometheus Books, new edition 1997,
The Dangers of Intelligence (1986), Houghton Mifflin
Past, Present and Future (1987), Prometheus Books,
The Tyrannosaurus Prescription (1989), Prometheus Books
Frontiers (1990), Dutton
Frontiers II (1993), Dutton
Other science books by Asimov
The Chemicals of Life (1954), Abelard-Schuman
Inside the Atom (1956), Abelard-Schuman,
Building Blocks of the Universe (1957; revised 1974), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Carbon (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Nitrogen (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
Words of Science and the History Behind Them (1959), Houghton Mifflin
The Clock We Live On (1959), Abelard-Schuman,
Breakthroughs in Science (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Numbers (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Measure (1960), Houghton Mifflin
The Wellsprings of Life (1960), Abelard-Schuman,
Life and Energy (1962), Doubleday,
The Genetic Code (1962), The Orion Press
The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation (1963), Houghton Mifflin, , (revised)
The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions (1963), Houghton Mifflin,
Planets for Man (with Stephen H. Dole) (1964), Random House, reprinted by RAND in 2007
An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule (1965), Houghton Mifflin,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Basic Books
The title varied with each of the four editions, the last being Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984)
The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1966), Walker,
The Neutrino (1966), Doubleday, ASIN B002JK525W
Understanding Physics Vol. I, Motion, Sound, and Heat (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. II, Light, Magnetism, and Electricity (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. III, The Electron, Proton, and Neutron (1966), Walker,
Photosynthesis (1969), Basic Books,
Our World in Space (1974), New York Graphic,
Eyes on the Universe: A History of the Telescope (1976), Andre Deutsch Limited,
The Collapsing Universe (1977), Walker,
Extraterrestrial Civilizations (1979), Crown,
Visions of the Universe with illustrations by Kazuaki Iwasaki (1981), Cosmos Store,
Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), Crown,
The Measure of the Universe (1983), Harper & Row
Think About Space: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going? with co-author Frank White (1989), Walker
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery (1989), Harper & Row, second edition adds content thru 1993,
Beginnings: The Story of Origins (1989), Walker
Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (1991), Random House,
Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos (1991), Dutton,
Mysteries of Deep Space: Quasars, Pulsars and Black Holes (1994)
Earth's Moon (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Sun (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Earth (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Jupiter (1989), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Venus (1990), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Literary works
All published by Doubleday
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970),
Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" (1972)
Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost" (1974)
Familiar Poems, Annotated (1976)
Asimov's The Annotated "Gulliver's Travels" (1980)
Asimov's Annotated "Gilbert and Sullivan" (1988)
The Bible
Words from Genesis (1962), Houghton Mifflin
Words from the Exodus (1963), Houghton Mifflin
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vols I and II (1967 and 1969, one-volume ed. 1981), Doubleday,
The Story of Ruth (1972), Doubleday,
In the Beginning (1981), Crown
Autobiography
In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920–1954 (1979, Doubleday)
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 (1980, Doubleday)
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994, Doubleday)
It's Been a Good Life (2002, Prometheus Books), condensation of Asimov's three volumes of autobiography, edited by his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov
History
All published by Houghton Mifflin except where otherwise stated
The Kite That Won the Revolution (1963),
The Greeks (1965)
The Roman Republic (1966)
The Roman Empire (1967)
The Egyptians (1967)
The Near East (1968)
The Dark Ages (1968)
Words from History (1968)
The Shaping of England (1969)
Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)
The Land of Canaan (1971)
The Shaping of France (1972)
The Shaping of North America: From Earliest Times to 1763 (1973)
The Birth of the United States: 1763–1816 (1974)
Our Federal Union: The United States from 1816 to 1865 (1975),
The Golden Door: The United States from 1865 to 1918 (1977)
Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991), HarperCollins,
The March of the Millennia (1991), with co-author Frank White, Walker & Company,
Humor
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (1971) (As Dr. A), Walker & Company,
Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), Houghton Mifflin
Lecherous Limericks (1975), Walker,
More Lecherous Limericks (1976), Walker,
Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977), Walker,
Limericks, Two Gross, with John Ciardi (1978), Norton,
A Grossery of Limericks, with John Ciardi (1981), Norton,
Limericks for Children (1984), Caedmon
Asimov Laughs Again (1992), HarperCollins
On writing science fiction
Asimov on Science Fiction (1981), Doubleday
Asimov's Galaxy (1989), Doubleday
Other nonfiction
Opus 100 (1969), Houghton Mifflin,
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964), Doubleday (revised edition 1972, )
Opus 200 (1979), Houghton Mifflin,
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1979), Grosset & Dunlap,
Opus 300 (1984), Houghton Mifflin,
Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991), with co-author Frederik Pohl, Tor, .
Television, music, and film appearances
I Robot, a concept album by the Alan Parsons Project that examined some of Asimov's work
The Last Word (1959)
The Dick Cavett Show, four appearances 1968–71
The Nature of Things (1969)
ABC News coverage of Apollo 11, 1969, with Fred Pohl, interviewed by Rod Serling
David Frost interview program, August 1969. Frost asked Asimov if he had ever tried to find God and, after some initial evasion, Asimov answered, "God is much more intelligent than I am—let him try to find me."
BBC Horizon "It's About Time" (1979), show hosted by Dudley Moore
Target ... Earth? (1980)
The David Letterman Show (1980)
NBC TV Speaking Freely, interviewed by Edwin Newman (1982)
ARTS Network talk show hosted by Studs Terkel and Calvin Trillin, approximately (1982)
Oltre New York (1986)
Voyage to the Outer Planets and Beyond (1986)
Gandahar (1987), a French animated science-fiction film by René Laloux. Asimov wrote the English translation for the film.
Bill Moyers interview (1988)
Stranieri in America (1988)
Adaptations
El robot embustero (1966), short film directed by Antonio Lara de Gavilán, based on short story "Liar!"
A halhatatlanság halála (1977), TV movie directed by András Rajnai, based on novel The End of Eternity
The Ugly Little Boy (1977), short film directed by Barry Morse and Donald W. Thompson, based on novelette The Ugly Little Boy
All the Troubles of the World (1978), short film directed by Dianne Haak-Edson, based on short story "All the Troubles of the World"
The End of Eternity (1987), film directed by Andrei Yermash, based on novel The End of Eternity
Nightfall (1988), film directed by Paul Mayersberg, based on novelette "Nightfall"
Robots (1988), film directed by Doug Smith and Kim Takal, based on the Robot series
Feeling 109 (1988), short film directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov
Teach 109 (1989), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as The Android Affair)
The Android Affair (1995), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as Teach 109)
Bicentennial Man (1999), film directed by Chris Columbus, based on novelette "The Bicentennial Man" and on novel The Positronic Man
Nightfall (2000), film directed by Gwyneth Gibby, based on novelette "Nightfall"
I, Robot (2004), film directed by Alex Proyas, based on ideas of short stories of the Robot series
Formula of Death (2012), TV movie directed by Behdad Avand Amini, based on novel The Death Dealers
Spell My Name with an S (2014), short film directed by Samuel Ali, based on short story "Spell My Name with an S"
Foundation (2021), series created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, based on the Foundation series
Novelizations
Novel Fantastic Voyage, novelization of film Fantastic Voyage (1966)
References
Footnotes
Notes
Sources
Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green (1979), New York: Avon, .
In Joy Still Felt (1980), New York: Avon .
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), (hc), (pb).
Yours, Isaac Asimov (1996), edited by Stanley Asimov. New York: Doubleday .
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet Asimov. .
Goldman, Stephen H., "Isaac Asimov", in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 8, Cowart and Wymer eds. (Gale Research, 1981), pp. 15–29.
Gunn, James. "On Variations on a Robot", IASFM, July 1980, pp. 56–81.
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982). .
The Science of Science-Fiction Writing (2000). .
Further reading
External links
Asimov Online, a vast repository of information about Asimov, maintained by Asimov enthusiast Edward Seiler
Jenkins' Spoiler-Laden Guide to Isaac Asimov, reviews of all of Asimov's books
20th-century births
1992 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American male writers
AIDS-related deaths in New York (state)
American alternate history writers
Jewish American atheists
American biochemists
American essayists
American humanists
American humorists
American male novelists
20th-century American memoirists
United States Army non-commissioned officers
American mystery writers
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American science fiction writers
American science writers
American skeptics
American writers of Russian descent
Asimov's Science Fiction people
Bible commentators
Boston University faculty
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
Critics of religions
Date of birth unknown
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Futurians
Historians of astronomy
American historians of science
Hugo Award-winning writers
Humor researchers
Jewish American novelists
Jewish American short story writers
Jewish feminists
Jewish skeptics
American male essayists
Male feminists
American male short story writers
American short story writers
Mensans
Nebula Award winners
New York (state) Democrats
People from Shumyachsky District
Naturalized citizens of the United States
United States Navy civilians
Science fiction fans
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
SFWA Grand Masters
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Writers from Brooklyn
Yiddish-speaking people
Boys High School (Brooklyn) alumni
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New York (state)
Scientists from New York City
20th-century essayists
20th-century atheists
People from the Upper West Side
Pulp fiction writers
Writers about religion and science
Atheist feminists
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
| false |
[
"Partha Sarathi Kar (born December 20th 1973) is a British Indian doctor and Consultant in diabetes and endocrinology at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust. He did his school education in Don Bosco School, Park Circus , Kolkata, India and further did his medical education in Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital \n\nHe is National Specialty Advisor for Diabetes with NHS England. Professor Kar works under the National Clinical Director for Diabetes, Professor Jonathan Valabhji in the NHS England Diabetes team. He also holds the role of co-lead of the GIRFT (Getting It Right First Time) Diabetes programme-alongside Professor Gerry Rayman.\n\nReferences \n\n21st-century British medical doctors\nBritish endocrinologists\nLiving people\nOfficers of the Order of the British Empire\n1973 births",
"P.S. Ramalingam (1945–2013) was a Tamil Nadu politician.\n\nFamily and early life\nP.S. Ramalingam was born in a small village called Pethikuttai in the state of Tamil Nadu, India in the year 1945. The only son of Subbayya Gowder and Chinnathai a farming family he was raised by his parents until he moved to other cities for higher education. Ramalingam did his schooling in the village and a nearby town Gobichettipalayam. He is married to Jothi and has 4 children.\n\nEducation\n\nRamalingam did his Bachelor of Commerce (B.com) in Government Arts College Coimbatore between the years and further he did his Bachelor of Law in Law College Chennai between the years \"\" Hailing from a small farmers family he was always reminded about the importance of education by his father.\n\nProfessional life\n\nRamalingam is a practicing lawyer and started practicing criminal law in the Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu courts.\n\nPolitical career\nHe was always interested in the Dravidian cause and was involved in the Dravidian movement from his student life. A staunch supporter and follower of Periyar and his ideology, Mr.Ramalingam joined the AIADMK and became a full-time activist. His mentor Dr.M.G.Ramachandran gave him an opportunity to represent the Nilgiri's parliamentary constitution in the year 1977, and he was a member of the 6th Lok Sabha.\n\nIn the year 1996 he became the Chairman for Mettupalayam Municipality and was influential in bringing and completing a water scheme that proved quite successful among many other development projects.\n\nHe died of a lung ailment on 17 January 2013.\n\nReferences \n\nTamil Nadu politicians"
] |
[
"Isaac Asimov",
"Education and career",
"Where did he go to school?",
"Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15,",
"Did he further his education?",
"he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students"
] |
C_4faa5e824b8a43099cb7ba91fcdaf534_0
|
What did he study there?
| 3 |
What did Asimov study there?
|
Isaac Asimov
|
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then the institution's primary undergraduate school for men with quotas on the number of admissions from those ethnic groups. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939. After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov in 1939 applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia; initially rejected and then accepted only on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948. In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11. After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary, with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university. The difference grew, and in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955), and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb. In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively. CANNOTANSWER
|
Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat".
|
Isaac Asimov (; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction.
Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories. He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.
He was president of the American Humanist Association. Several entities have been named in his honor, including the asteroid (5020) Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, and four literary awards.
Surname
Asimov's family name derives from the first part of ozímyj khleb (озимый хлеб), meaning the winter grain (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending -ov added. Azimov is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov's father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov. This later inspired one of Asimov's short stories, "Spell My Name with an S".
Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that "Isaac Asimov" was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name.
Biography
Early life
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian-Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me".
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya; June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011), and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the Long Island Newsday.
Asimov's family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on February 3, 1923 when he was three years old. Since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English with him, he never learned Russian, but he remained fluent in both. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade). His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919. In third grade he learned about the "error" and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight.
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, a fact that Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time when the genre was becoming more science-centered.
Education and career
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then, the institution's primary undergraduate school for men. Jewish and Italian-American students, even of outstanding academic caliber, were often deliberately barred from Columbia College proper because of the then-popular practice of imposing unwritten ethnic admission quotas. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester because he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1936, Asimov finished his Bachelor of Science degree at Morningside Heights campus (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.
After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German.
In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11.
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949, teaching biochemistry with a $5,000 salary (), with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students. In 1955, he was promoted to associate professor, which gave him tenure. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title, he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class, and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb.
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26 the same year. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956. They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He immediately began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship. On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2. He sailed to England in June 1974 on the SS France for a trip mostly devoted to events in London and Birmingham, though he also found time to visit Stonehenge.
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly paid to give talks about science. He was a frequent fixture at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties. His physical dexterity was very poor. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle; however, he did learn to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".
Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe Pack, a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan. He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society, for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty's work "The Dynamics of An Asteroid" involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. He later used his essay on Moriarty's work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, "The Ultimate Crime", which appeared in More Tales of the Black Widowers.
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.
Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics. In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was "a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then." He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP "gave it immense status and authority" in his eyes.
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs".
After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.
Illness and death
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members.
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It's Been a Good Life.
Writings
Overview
Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, while writing over 120 nonfiction books. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories. Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series. Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".
Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology. Although Asimov did write several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982), which were classified in the 100s category, none of his own books were classified in that category.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.
Science fiction
Asimov became a science fiction fan in 1929, when he began reading the pulp magazines sold in his family's candy store. At first his father forbade reading pulps as he considered them to be trash, until Asimov persuaded him that because the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, they must be educational. At age 18 he joined the Futurians science fiction fan club, where he made friends who went on to become science fiction writers or editors.
Asimov began writing at the age of 11, imitating The Rover Boys with eight chapters of The Greenville Chums at College. His father bought Asimov a used typewriter at age 16. His first published work was a humorous item on the birth of his brother for Boys High School's literary journal in 1934. In May 1937 he first thought of writing professionally, and began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew" (now lost), that year. On May 17, 1938, puzzled by a change in the schedule of Astounding Science Fiction, Asimov visited its publisher Street & Smith Publications. Inspired by the visit, he finished the story on June 19, 1938, and personally submitted it to Astounding editor John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell met with Asimov for more than an hour and promised to read the story himself. Two days later he received a rejection letter explaining why in detail. This was the first of what became almost weekly meetings with the editor while Asimov lived in New York, until moving to Boston in 1949; Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and became a personal friend.
By the end of the month, Asimov completed a second story, "Stowaway". Campbell rejected it on July 22 but—in "the nicest possible letter you could imagine"—encouraged him to continue writing, promising that Asimov might sell his work after another year and a dozen stories of practice. On October 21, 1938, he sold the third story he finished, "Marooned Off Vesta", to Amazing Stories, edited by Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. Asimov was paid $64 (), or one cent a word. Two more stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May Amazing and "Trends" in the July Astounding, the issue fans later selected as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. For 1940, ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in Astounding. His earnings became enough to pay for his education, but not yet enough for him to become a full-time writer.
Asimov later said that unlike other top Golden Age writers Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt—also first published in 1939, and whose talent and stardom were immediately obvious—he "(this is not false modesty) came up only gradually". Through July 29, 1940, Asimov wrote 22 stories in 25 months, of which 13 were published; he wrote in 1972 that from that date he never wrote a science fiction story that was not published (except for two "special cases"). He was famous enough that Donald Wollheim told Asimov that he purchased "The Secret Sense" for a new magazine only because of his name, and the December 1940 issue of Astonishing—featuring Asimov's name in bold—was the first magazine to base cover art on his work, but Asimov later said that neither he himself nor anyone else—except perhaps Campbell—considered him better than an often published "third rater".
Based on a conversation with Campbell, Asimov wrote "Nightfall", his 32nd story, in March and April 1941, and Astounding published it in September 1941. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written. In Nightfall and Other Stories Asimov wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." "Nightfall" is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.
After writing "Victory Unintentional" in January and February 1942, Asimov did not write another story for a year. Asimov expected to make chemistry his career, and was paid $2,600 annually at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, enough to marry his girlfriend; he did not expect to make much more from writing than the $1,788.50 he had earned from 28 stories sold over four years. Asimov left science fiction fandom and no longer read new magazines, and might have left the industry had not Heinlein and de Camp been coworkers and previously sold stories continued to appear. In 1942, Asimov published the first of his Foundation stories—later collected in the Foundation trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). The books recount the fall of a vast interstellar empire and the establishment of its eventual successor. They also feature his fictional science of psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted. The trilogy and Robot series are his most famous science fiction. In 1966 they won the Hugo Award for the all-time best series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Campbell raised his rate per word, Orson Welles purchased rights to "Evidence", and anthologies reprinted his stories. By the end of the war Asimov was earning as a writer an amount equal to half of his Navy Yard salary, even after a raise, but Asimov still did not believe that writing could support him, his wife, and future children.
His "positronic" robot stories—many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in his introduction to the short story collection The Complete Robot (1982) that he was largely inspired by the almost relentless tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators.
The robot series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977, Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of I, Robot that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by Jeff Vintar titled Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired. (The title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for a story by Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel The Positronic Man by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.
Besides movies, his Foundation and Robot stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Donald Kingsbury. At least some of these appear to have been done with the blessing of, or at the request of, Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov.
In 1948, he also wrote a spoof chemistry article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he would receive at his oral examination, in case the examiners thought he wasn't taking science seriously. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". Laughing hysterically with relief, Asimov had to be led out of the room. After a five-minute wait, he was summoned back into the room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov".
Demand for science fiction greatly increased during the 1950s. It became possible for a genre author to write full-time. In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished "Grow Old with Me" (40,000 words), but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of Pebble in the Sky. Doubleday published five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome Press publish one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as I, Robot and his Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the Foundation trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as The Rest of the Robots.
Books and the magazines Galaxy, and Fantasy & Science Fiction ended Asimov's dependence on Astounding. He later described the era as his "'mature' period". Asimov's "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy, was his personal favorite story.
In 1972, his novel The Gods Themselves (which was not part of a series) was published to general acclaim, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Novel.
In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue. McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
Asimov said in 1969 that he had "the happiest of all my associations with science fiction magazines" with Fantasy & Science Fiction; "I have no complaints about Astounding, Galaxy, or any of the rest, heaven knows, but F&SF has become something special to me". Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines "anthologies").
Due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another book in his Foundation series, he did so with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992), his last novel.
Popular science
Asimov and two colleagues published a textbook in 1949, with two more editions by 1969. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's The Naked Sun and 1982's Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). He greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap". Asimov explained in The Rest of the Robots that he had been unable to write substantial fiction since the summer of 1958, and observers understood him as saying that his fiction career had ended, or was permanently interrupted. Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason".
Fantasy and Science Fiction invited Asimov to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine. The first of 399 monthly F&SF columns appeared in November 1958 and they continued until his terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by Doubleday, gave Asimov a reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science; he described them as his only popular science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects on the part of his readers. The column was ostensibly dedicated to popular science but Asimov had complete editorial freedom, and wrote about contemporary social issues in essays such as "Thinking About Thinking" and "Knock Plastic!". In 1975 he wrote of these essays: "I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment."
Asimov's first wide-ranging reference work, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960), was nominated for a National Book Award, and in 1963 he won a Hugo Award—his first—for his essays for F&SF. The popularity of his science books and the income he derived from them allowed him to give up most academic responsibilities and become a full-time freelance writer. He encouraged other science fiction writers to write popular science, stating in 1967 that "the knowledgeable, skillful science writer is worth his weight in contracts", with "twice as much work as he can possibly handle".
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience: "Uneasy". Floyd C. Gale said that "Asimov has a rare talent. He can make your mental mouth water over dry facts", and "science fiction's loss has been science popularization's gain". Asimov said that "Of all the writing I do, fiction, non-fiction, adult, or juvenile, these F & SF articles are by far the most fun". He regretted, however, that he had less time for fiction—causing dissatisfied readers to send him letters of complaint—stating in 1969 that "In the last ten years, I've done a couple of novels, some collections, a dozen or so stories, but that's nothing".
In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read the word "unionized" as un-ion-ized (pronounced "un-EYE-en-ized"), meaning "(a chemical species) being in an electrically neutral state, as opposed to being an ion", while non-chemists will read the word as union-ized (pronounced "YOU-nien-ized"), meaning "(a worker or organization) belonging to or possessing a trade union".
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term "robotics" in his 1941 story "Liar!", though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in Gold ("The Robot Chronicles"). While acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one third of the way down the first column of page 100, Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942 printing of his short story "Runaround".
In the same story, Asimov also coined the term "positronic" (the counterpart to "electronic" for positrons).
Asimov coined the term "psychohistory" in his Foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. Asimov said later that he should have called it psychosociology. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 fix-up novel Foundation. Somewhat later, the term "psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.
Other writings
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, including The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966), The Roman Empire (1967), The Egyptians (1967) The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968), and Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991).
He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes—covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), Asimov's Annotated Don Juan (1972), Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He published two full-length mystery novels, and wrote 66 stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders, and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, who he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends. A parody of the Black Widowers, "An Evening with the White Divorcés," was written by author, critic, and librarian Jon L. Breen. Asimov joked, "all I can do ... is to wait until I catch him in a dark alley, someday."
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks. Asimov featured Yiddish humor in Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, some of Asimov's behavior towards women was described as sexual harassment and cited as an example of historically problematic behavior by men in science fiction communities.
Asimov published three volumes of autobiography. In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980) cover his life up to 1978. The third volume, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), covered his whole life (rather than following on from where the second volume left off). The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov after his death. The book won a Hugo Award in 1995. Janet Asimov edited It's Been a Good Life (2002), a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Treks initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on Star Treks scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming that despite its inaccuracies, Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.
Awards and recognition
Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half-dozen lifetime awards.
He also received 14 honorary doctorate degrees from universities.
1955 – Guest of Honor at the 13th World Science Fiction Convention
1957 – Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award for best science book for youth, for Building Blocks of the Universe
1960 – Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
1962 – Boston University's Publication Merit Award
1963 – A special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction," for essays published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
1963 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1964 – The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" (1941) the all-time best science fiction short story
1965 – James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
1966 – Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation trilogy
1967 – Edward E. Smith Memorial Award
1967 – AAAS-Westinghouse Science Writing Award for Magazine Writing, for essay "Over the Edge of the Universe" (in the March 1967 Harper's Magazine)
1972 – Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Locus Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1975 – Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
1975 – Klumpke-Roberts Award "for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy"
1975 – Locus Award for Best Reprint Anthology for Before the Golden Age
1977 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Locus Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1981 – An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
1981 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978
1983 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
1983 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge
1984 – Humanist of the Year
1986 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him its 8th SFWA Grand Master (presented in 1987).
1987 – Locus Award for Best Short Story for "Robot Dreams"
1992 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Gold"
1995 – Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1995 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1996 – A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon for "The Mule", the 7th Foundation story, published in Astounding Science Fiction
1997 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Asimov in its second class of two deceased and two living persons, along with H. G. Wells.
2000 – Asimov was featured on a stamp in Israel
2001 – The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debates at the Hayden Planetarium in New York were inaugurated
2009 – A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov, was named in his honor
2010 – In the US Congress bill about the designation of the National Robotics Week as an annual event, a tribute to Isaac Asimov is as follows:
"Whereas the second week in April each year is designated as 'National Robotics Week', recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April 1992: Now, therefore, be it resolved ..."
2015 – Selected as a member of the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
2016 – A 1941 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1940 was given at the 2016 WorldCon for Robbie, his first positronic robot story, published in Super Science Stories, September 1940
2018 – A 1943 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1942 was given at the 2018 WorldCon for Foundation, published in Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942
Writing style
Asimov was his own secretary, typist, indexer, proofreader, and literary agent. He wrote a typed first draft composed at the keyboard at 90 words per minute; he imagined an ending first, then a beginning, then "let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it". (Asimov only used an outline once, later describing it as "like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket".) After correcting a draft by hand, he retyped the document as the final copy and only made one revision with minor editor-requested changes; a word processor did not save him much time, Asimov said, because 95% of the first draft was unchanged.
After disliking making multiple revisions of "Black Friar of the Flame", Asimov refused to make major, second, or non-editorial revisions ("like chewing used gum"), stating that "too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process". He submitted "failures" to another editor.
One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Robot:
Asimov addressed such criticism in 1989 at the beginning of Nemesis:
Gunn cited examples of a more complex style, such as the climax of "Liar!". Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", Arkady Darell in Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel, and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels.
Other than books by Gunn and Joseph Patrouch, a relative dearth of "literary" criticism exists on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:
Gunn's and Patrouch's respective studies of Asimov both state that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book comments in detail on each of Asimov's novels. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but calls some passages in The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".
Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), and said in 1973 that his style had not changed, Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in nonchronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material. (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "Reason", one of the early Robot stories). Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of The Currents of Space did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-kyrt Asimov fan" could enjoy it. In his later novel Nemesis one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.
Alien life
Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when Astoundings editor John Campbell rejected one of his science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. The nature of the rejection led him to believe that Campbell may have based his bias towards humans in stories on a real-world racial bias. Unwilling to write only weak alien races, and concerned that a confrontation would jeopardize his and Campbell's friendship, he decided he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms, he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens and alien sex. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of The Gods Themselves, the part that deals with those themes.
In the Hugo Award-winning novelette "Gold", Asimov describes an author, clearly based on himself, who has one of his books (The Gods Themselves) adapted into a "compu-drama", essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for having an extremely nonvisual style, making it difficult to adapt his work, and the author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across.
Romance and women
In the early days of science fiction some authors and critics felt that the romantic elements were inappropriate in science fiction stories, which were supposedly to be focused on science and technology. Isaac Asimov was a prominent supporter of this point of view, expressed in his 1938-1939 letters to Astounding, where he described such elements as "mush" and "slop". However, to his dismay, these letters were met with a strong opposition.
Asimov attributed the lack of romance and sex in his fiction to the "early imprinting" from starting his writing career when he had never been on a date and "didn't know anything about girls". He was sometimes criticized for the general absence of sex (and of extraterrestrial life) in his science fiction. He claimed he wrote The Gods Themselves to respond to these criticisms, which often came from New Wave science fiction (and often British) writers. The second part (of three) of the novel is set on an alien world with three sexes, and the sexual behavior of these creatures is extensively depicted.
Asimov was also criticized for a lack of strong female characters in his early work. However, some of his robot stories, including the earliest ones, featured the character Susan Calvin, a forceful and intelligent woman who regularly out-performed her male colleagues.
In his autobiographical writings, such as Gold ("Women and Science Fiction"), he acknowledges this complaint has merit and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early science-fiction stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. The Washington Post's "Book World" section reports of Robots and Empire opined "In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are."
Views
Religion
Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed the traditions of Orthodox Judaism, though not as stringently as they had in Petrovichi; they did not, however, force their beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus, he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the Torah represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that the Iliad recorded Greek mythology. When he was 13, he chose not to have a bar mitzvah. As his books Treasury of Humor and Asimov Laughs Again record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar" versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, an analysis of the historic foundations for both the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "humanist" and considered that term more practical. Asimov did, however, continue to identify himself as a secular Jew, as stated in his introduction to Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction, Wandering Stars: "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the Bar Mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."
When asked in an interview in 1982 if he was an atheist, Asimov replied,
Likewise, he said about religious education: "I would not be satisfied to have my kids choose to be religious without trying to argue them out of it, just as I would not be satisfied to have them decide to smoke regularly or engage in any other practice I consider detrimental to mind or body."
In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote,
The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".
Asimov said about using religious motifs in his writing:
Politics
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal, and thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography, In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman. Asimov's impression was that the 1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.
Asimov vehemently opposed Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He closely followed Watergate, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign. Asimov was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."
After Asimov's name appeared in the mid-1960s on a list of people the Communist Party USA "considered amenable" to its goals, the FBI investigated him. Because of his academic background, the bureau briefly considered Asimov as a possible candidate for known Soviet spy ROBPROF, but found nothing suspicious in his life or background.
Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though insisting that he was not a Zionist. In his third autobiography, Asimov stated his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he was opposed to having nation-states in general, and supported the notion of a single humanity. Asimov especially worried about the safety of Israel given that it had been created among hostile Muslim neighbors, and said that Jews had merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".
Social issues
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
In a 1988 interview by Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested. He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace. Asimov thought that people would live in space by the year 2019.
In 1983 Asimov wrote:
He continues on education:
Sexual harassment
Asimov would often fondle, kiss and pinch women at conventions and elsewhere without regard for their consent. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, author of an Asimov biography and writer on the history of science fiction, he often defended himself by saying that far from showing objections, these women cooperated. In the 1971 satirical piece, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, he wrote, "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched."
According to Nevala-Lee, however, "many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual." He wrote that Asimov's behaviour, as a leading science-fiction author and personality, contributed to an undesirable atmosphere for women in the male-dominated science fiction community. In support of this, he quoted some of Asimov's contemporary fellow-authors such as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison and Frederik Pohl, as well as editors such as Timothy Seldes. Specific incidents were reported by other people including Edward L. Ferman, long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction who wrote "... instead of shaking my date's hand, he shook her left breast".
Environment and population
Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the Bhopal disaster.
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:
Other authors
Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and in fact even used The Lord of the Rings as a plot point in a Black Widowers story, titled Nothing like Murder. In the essay All or Nothing (for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1981), Asimov revealed that he admires Tolkien and that he had read The Lord of the Rings five times. (The feelings were mutual, with Tolkien himself revealing that he had enjoyed Asimov's science fiction. This would make Asimov an exception to Tolkien's earlier claim that he rarely found "any modern books" that were interesting to him.)
He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, however, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction".
The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Asimov became a fan of mystery stories at the same time as science fiction. He preferred to read the former to latter because "I read every [science fiction] story keenly aware that it might be worse than mine, in which case I had no patience with it, or that it might be better, in which case I felt miserable". Asimov wrote "I make no secret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Christie as my model. In my opinion, her mysteries are the best ever written, far better than the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Hercule Poirot is the best detective fiction has seen. Why should I not use as my model what I consider the best?" He enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but considered Arthur Conan Doyle to be "a slapdash and sloppy writer."
Asimov also enjoyed humorous stories, particularly those of P. G. Wodehouse.
In non-fiction writing, Asimov particularly admired the writing style of Martin Gardner, and tried to emulate it in his own science books. On meeting Gardner for the first time in 1965, Asimov told him this, to which Gardner answered that he had based his own style on Asimov's.
Influence
Paul Krugman, holder of a Nobel Prize in Economics, stated Asimov's concept of psychohistory has inspired him to become an economist.
John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed, "It has been pointed out that most science fiction writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style." Along with such figures as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, Asimov left his mark as one of the most distinguished interdisciplinarians of the 20th century. "Few individuals", writes James L. Christian, "understood better than Isaac Asimov what synoptic thinking is all about. His almost 500 books—which he wrote as a specialist, a knowledgeable authority, or just an excited layman—range over almost all conceivable subjects: the sciences, history, literature, religion, and of course, science fiction."
Bibliography
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books (based on his personal count), Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing. An extensive bibliography of Isaac Asimov's works has been compiled by Ed Seiler. He published enough that his book writing rate could be analysed, showing that the writing became faster as he wrote more.
An online exhibit in West Virginia University Libraries' virtually complete Asimov Collection displays features, visuals, and descriptions of some of his over 600 books, games, audio recordings, videos, and wall charts. Many first, rare, and autographed editions are in the Libraries' Rare Book Room. Book jackets and autographs are presented online along with descriptions and images of children's books, science fiction art, multimedia, and other materials in the collection.
Science fiction
"Greater Foundation" series
The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series. The Galactic Empire novels were published as independent stories, set earlier in the same future as Foundation. Later in life, Asimov synthesized the Robot series into a single coherent "history" that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series.
All of these books were published by Doubleday & Co, except the original Foundation trilogy which was originally published by Gnome Books before being bought and republished by Doubleday.
The Robot series:
(first Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(second Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(third Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(sequel to the Elijah Baley trilogy)
Galactic Empire novels:
(early Galactic Empire)
(long before the Empire)
(Republic of Trantor still expanding)
Foundation prequels:
Original Foundation trilogy:
(also published with the title 'The Man Who Upset the Universe' as a 35¢ Ace paperback, D-125, in about 1952)
Extended Foundation series:
Lucky Starr series (as Paul French)
All published by Doubleday & Co
David Starr, Space Ranger (1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)
Norby Chronicles (with Janet Asimov)
All published by Walker & Company
Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983)
Norby's Other Secret (1984)
Norby and the Lost Princess (1985)
Norby and the Invaders (1985)
Norby and the Queen's Necklace (1986)
Norby Finds a Villain (1987)
Norby Down to Earth (1988)
Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure (1989)
Norby and the Oldest Dragon (1990)
Norby and the Court Jester (1991)
Novels not part of a series
Novels marked with an asterisk (*) have minor connections to Foundation universe.
The End of Eternity (1955), Doubleday (*)
Fantastic Voyage (1966), Bantam Books (paperback) and Houghton Mifflin (hardback) (a novelization of the movie)
The Gods Themselves (1972), Doubleday
Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), Doubleday (not a sequel to Fantastic Voyage, but a similar, independent story)
Nemesis (1989), Bantam Doubleday Dell (*)
Nightfall (1990), Doubleday, with Robert Silverberg (based on "Nightfall", a 1941 short story written by Asimov)
Child of Time (1992), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (based on "The Ugly Little Boy", a 1958 short story written by Asimov)
The Positronic Man (1993), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (*) (based on The Bicentennial Man, a 1976 novella written by Asimov)
Short-story collections
Mysteries
Novels
The Death Dealers (1958), Avon Books, republished as A Whiff of Death by Walker & Company
Murder at the ABA (1976), Doubleday, also published as Authorized Murder
Short-story collections
Black Widowers series
Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), Doubleday
More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976), Doubleday
Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), Doubleday
Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), Doubleday
Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), Doubleday
The Return of the Black Widowers (2003), Carroll & Graf
Other mysteries
Asimov's Mysteries (1968), Doubleday
The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977), Walker
The Union Club Mysteries (1983), Doubleday
The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries (1985), Walker
The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986), Doubleday
Nonfiction
Popular science
Collections of Asimov's essays for F&SF
The following books collected essays which were originally published as monthly columns in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected by Doubleday & Co
Fact and Fancy (1962)
View from a Height (1963)
Adding a Dimension (1964)
Of Time and Space and Other Things (1965)
From Earth to Heaven (1966)
Science, Numbers, and I (1968)
The Solar System and Back (1970)
The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
The Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
Asimov On Astronomy (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Asimov On Chemistry (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Of Matters Great and Small (1975)
Asimov On Physics (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
Asimov On Numbers (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
The Road to Infinity (1979)
The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
Counting the Eons (1983)
X Stands for Unknown (1984)
The Subatomic Monster (1985)
Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
Asimov on Science: A 30 Year Retrospective 1959–1989 (1989) (features the first essay in the introduction)
Out of the Everywhere (1990)
The Secret of the Universe (1991)
Other general science essay collections
Only a Trillion (1957), Abelard-Schuman,
Is Anyone There? (1967), Doubleday, (which includes the article in which he coined the term "spome")
Today and Tomorrow and— (1973), Doubleday
Science Past, Science Future (1975), Doubleday,
Please Explain (1975), Houghton Mifflin,
Life and Time (1978), Doubleday
The Roving Mind (1983), Prometheus Books, new edition 1997,
The Dangers of Intelligence (1986), Houghton Mifflin
Past, Present and Future (1987), Prometheus Books,
The Tyrannosaurus Prescription (1989), Prometheus Books
Frontiers (1990), Dutton
Frontiers II (1993), Dutton
Other science books by Asimov
The Chemicals of Life (1954), Abelard-Schuman
Inside the Atom (1956), Abelard-Schuman,
Building Blocks of the Universe (1957; revised 1974), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Carbon (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Nitrogen (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
Words of Science and the History Behind Them (1959), Houghton Mifflin
The Clock We Live On (1959), Abelard-Schuman,
Breakthroughs in Science (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Numbers (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Measure (1960), Houghton Mifflin
The Wellsprings of Life (1960), Abelard-Schuman,
Life and Energy (1962), Doubleday,
The Genetic Code (1962), The Orion Press
The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation (1963), Houghton Mifflin, , (revised)
The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions (1963), Houghton Mifflin,
Planets for Man (with Stephen H. Dole) (1964), Random House, reprinted by RAND in 2007
An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule (1965), Houghton Mifflin,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Basic Books
The title varied with each of the four editions, the last being Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984)
The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1966), Walker,
The Neutrino (1966), Doubleday, ASIN B002JK525W
Understanding Physics Vol. I, Motion, Sound, and Heat (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. II, Light, Magnetism, and Electricity (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. III, The Electron, Proton, and Neutron (1966), Walker,
Photosynthesis (1969), Basic Books,
Our World in Space (1974), New York Graphic,
Eyes on the Universe: A History of the Telescope (1976), Andre Deutsch Limited,
The Collapsing Universe (1977), Walker,
Extraterrestrial Civilizations (1979), Crown,
Visions of the Universe with illustrations by Kazuaki Iwasaki (1981), Cosmos Store,
Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), Crown,
The Measure of the Universe (1983), Harper & Row
Think About Space: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going? with co-author Frank White (1989), Walker
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery (1989), Harper & Row, second edition adds content thru 1993,
Beginnings: The Story of Origins (1989), Walker
Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (1991), Random House,
Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos (1991), Dutton,
Mysteries of Deep Space: Quasars, Pulsars and Black Holes (1994)
Earth's Moon (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Sun (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Earth (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Jupiter (1989), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Venus (1990), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Literary works
All published by Doubleday
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970),
Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" (1972)
Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost" (1974)
Familiar Poems, Annotated (1976)
Asimov's The Annotated "Gulliver's Travels" (1980)
Asimov's Annotated "Gilbert and Sullivan" (1988)
The Bible
Words from Genesis (1962), Houghton Mifflin
Words from the Exodus (1963), Houghton Mifflin
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vols I and II (1967 and 1969, one-volume ed. 1981), Doubleday,
The Story of Ruth (1972), Doubleday,
In the Beginning (1981), Crown
Autobiography
In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920–1954 (1979, Doubleday)
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 (1980, Doubleday)
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994, Doubleday)
It's Been a Good Life (2002, Prometheus Books), condensation of Asimov's three volumes of autobiography, edited by his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov
History
All published by Houghton Mifflin except where otherwise stated
The Kite That Won the Revolution (1963),
The Greeks (1965)
The Roman Republic (1966)
The Roman Empire (1967)
The Egyptians (1967)
The Near East (1968)
The Dark Ages (1968)
Words from History (1968)
The Shaping of England (1969)
Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)
The Land of Canaan (1971)
The Shaping of France (1972)
The Shaping of North America: From Earliest Times to 1763 (1973)
The Birth of the United States: 1763–1816 (1974)
Our Federal Union: The United States from 1816 to 1865 (1975),
The Golden Door: The United States from 1865 to 1918 (1977)
Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991), HarperCollins,
The March of the Millennia (1991), with co-author Frank White, Walker & Company,
Humor
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (1971) (As Dr. A), Walker & Company,
Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), Houghton Mifflin
Lecherous Limericks (1975), Walker,
More Lecherous Limericks (1976), Walker,
Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977), Walker,
Limericks, Two Gross, with John Ciardi (1978), Norton,
A Grossery of Limericks, with John Ciardi (1981), Norton,
Limericks for Children (1984), Caedmon
Asimov Laughs Again (1992), HarperCollins
On writing science fiction
Asimov on Science Fiction (1981), Doubleday
Asimov's Galaxy (1989), Doubleday
Other nonfiction
Opus 100 (1969), Houghton Mifflin,
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964), Doubleday (revised edition 1972, )
Opus 200 (1979), Houghton Mifflin,
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1979), Grosset & Dunlap,
Opus 300 (1984), Houghton Mifflin,
Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991), with co-author Frederik Pohl, Tor, .
Television, music, and film appearances
I Robot, a concept album by the Alan Parsons Project that examined some of Asimov's work
The Last Word (1959)
The Dick Cavett Show, four appearances 1968–71
The Nature of Things (1969)
ABC News coverage of Apollo 11, 1969, with Fred Pohl, interviewed by Rod Serling
David Frost interview program, August 1969. Frost asked Asimov if he had ever tried to find God and, after some initial evasion, Asimov answered, "God is much more intelligent than I am—let him try to find me."
BBC Horizon "It's About Time" (1979), show hosted by Dudley Moore
Target ... Earth? (1980)
The David Letterman Show (1980)
NBC TV Speaking Freely, interviewed by Edwin Newman (1982)
ARTS Network talk show hosted by Studs Terkel and Calvin Trillin, approximately (1982)
Oltre New York (1986)
Voyage to the Outer Planets and Beyond (1986)
Gandahar (1987), a French animated science-fiction film by René Laloux. Asimov wrote the English translation for the film.
Bill Moyers interview (1988)
Stranieri in America (1988)
Adaptations
El robot embustero (1966), short film directed by Antonio Lara de Gavilán, based on short story "Liar!"
A halhatatlanság halála (1977), TV movie directed by András Rajnai, based on novel The End of Eternity
The Ugly Little Boy (1977), short film directed by Barry Morse and Donald W. Thompson, based on novelette The Ugly Little Boy
All the Troubles of the World (1978), short film directed by Dianne Haak-Edson, based on short story "All the Troubles of the World"
The End of Eternity (1987), film directed by Andrei Yermash, based on novel The End of Eternity
Nightfall (1988), film directed by Paul Mayersberg, based on novelette "Nightfall"
Robots (1988), film directed by Doug Smith and Kim Takal, based on the Robot series
Feeling 109 (1988), short film directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov
Teach 109 (1989), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as The Android Affair)
The Android Affair (1995), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as Teach 109)
Bicentennial Man (1999), film directed by Chris Columbus, based on novelette "The Bicentennial Man" and on novel The Positronic Man
Nightfall (2000), film directed by Gwyneth Gibby, based on novelette "Nightfall"
I, Robot (2004), film directed by Alex Proyas, based on ideas of short stories of the Robot series
Formula of Death (2012), TV movie directed by Behdad Avand Amini, based on novel The Death Dealers
Spell My Name with an S (2014), short film directed by Samuel Ali, based on short story "Spell My Name with an S"
Foundation (2021), series created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, based on the Foundation series
Novelizations
Novel Fantastic Voyage, novelization of film Fantastic Voyage (1966)
References
Footnotes
Notes
Sources
Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green (1979), New York: Avon, .
In Joy Still Felt (1980), New York: Avon .
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), (hc), (pb).
Yours, Isaac Asimov (1996), edited by Stanley Asimov. New York: Doubleday .
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet Asimov. .
Goldman, Stephen H., "Isaac Asimov", in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 8, Cowart and Wymer eds. (Gale Research, 1981), pp. 15–29.
Gunn, James. "On Variations on a Robot", IASFM, July 1980, pp. 56–81.
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982). .
The Science of Science-Fiction Writing (2000). .
Further reading
External links
Asimov Online, a vast repository of information about Asimov, maintained by Asimov enthusiast Edward Seiler
Jenkins' Spoiler-Laden Guide to Isaac Asimov, reviews of all of Asimov's books
20th-century births
1992 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American male writers
AIDS-related deaths in New York (state)
American alternate history writers
Jewish American atheists
American biochemists
American essayists
American humanists
American humorists
American male novelists
20th-century American memoirists
United States Army non-commissioned officers
American mystery writers
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American science fiction writers
American science writers
American skeptics
American writers of Russian descent
Asimov's Science Fiction people
Bible commentators
Boston University faculty
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
Critics of religions
Date of birth unknown
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Futurians
Historians of astronomy
American historians of science
Hugo Award-winning writers
Humor researchers
Jewish American novelists
Jewish American short story writers
Jewish feminists
Jewish skeptics
American male essayists
Male feminists
American male short story writers
American short story writers
Mensans
Nebula Award winners
New York (state) Democrats
People from Shumyachsky District
Naturalized citizens of the United States
United States Navy civilians
Science fiction fans
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
SFWA Grand Masters
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Writers from Brooklyn
Yiddish-speaking people
Boys High School (Brooklyn) alumni
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New York (state)
Scientists from New York City
20th-century essayists
20th-century atheists
People from the Upper West Side
Pulp fiction writers
Writers about religion and science
Atheist feminists
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
| false |
[
"Robert Storms Van Howe is an American pediatrician and circumcision researcher from Marquette, Michigan. He was a professor of pediatrics at Central Michigan University College of Medicine at its founding, where he was the Chief of Pediatrics until 2017. He holds a masters' degree in biostatistics and previously taught pediatrics at Michigan State University.\n\nResearch\nVan Howe's research includes a study published in 2007 in BJU International. The study reported that the five most sensitive points on the human penis were all in areas of it that are removed by circumcision and that uncircumcised men's penises were four times more sensitive, on average, than were those of circumcised men. Critics of this study have noted that it was funded by the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC), an anti-circumcision activist group. Van Howe maintains that this funding did not bias his study, telling ABC News, \"The study was based on an objective finding\" and \"There's no way you can change what a person felt or didn't feel.\"\n\nViews on circumcision\nVan Howe has said that \"Circumcision is as harmful as it is unnecessary\".\n\nReferences\n\nLiving people\nCentral Michigan University faculty\nMichigan State University faculty\nAmerican pediatricians\nPeople from Marquette, Michigan\nGenital integrity activists\nAmerican health activists\nYear of birth missing (living people)",
"The Predator is the third EP by American metalcore band Ice Nine Kills and was self-released by the band on January 15, 2013. The EP debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart.\n\nIt is the only album to feature Steve Koch as bassist and backup singer after his departure in 2013, and the last album to feature Justin Morrow as rhythm guitarist; he would switch to bass guitar and backing vocals (on live performance only) while still playing rhythm guitar in studio in 2013.\n\nThe tracks \"The Coffin Is Moving\" and \"What I Never Learned in Study Hall\" later would be featured on the band's 2014 album The Predator Becomes the Prey.\n\nThe track \"What I Never Learned in Study Hall\" was later re-recorded acoustically for Take Action. Vol. 11 making it similar to the song's predecessors \"What I Really Learned in Study Hall\" and \"What I Should Have Learned in Study Hall\". Unlike the original version, the acoustic version did not feature Tyler Carter as guest vocalist, but instead featured former Kid's Jackson Summer vocalist Kate Ellen Dean.\n\nTrack listing\n\nPersonnel \n Spencer Charnas - lead vocals, piano on \"A Reptile's Dysfunction\"\n Justin \"JD\" DeBlieck - lead guitar, lead vocals\n Justin Morrow - rhythm guitar\n Steve Koch - bass guitar, backing vocals\n Connor Sullivan - drums\n Steve Sopchak - producer, engineer, mixing\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2013 EPs\nIce Nine Kills EPs\nSelf-released EPs"
] |
[
"Isaac Asimov",
"Education and career",
"Where did he go to school?",
"Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15,",
"Did he further his education?",
"he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students",
"What did he study there?",
"Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of \"dissecting an alley cat\"."
] |
C_4faa5e824b8a43099cb7ba91fcdaf534_0
|
Where else did he go to school?
| 4 |
Besides Seth Low Junior College, where else did Isasc Asimov go to school?
|
Isaac Asimov
|
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then the institution's primary undergraduate school for men with quotas on the number of admissions from those ethnic groups. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939. After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov in 1939 applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia; initially rejected and then accepted only on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948. In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11. After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary, with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university. The difference grew, and in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955), and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb. In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively. CANNOTANSWER
|
After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.
|
Isaac Asimov (; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction.
Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories. He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.
He was president of the American Humanist Association. Several entities have been named in his honor, including the asteroid (5020) Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, and four literary awards.
Surname
Asimov's family name derives from the first part of ozímyj khleb (озимый хлеб), meaning the winter grain (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending -ov added. Azimov is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov's father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov. This later inspired one of Asimov's short stories, "Spell My Name with an S".
Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that "Isaac Asimov" was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name.
Biography
Early life
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian-Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me".
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya; June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011), and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the Long Island Newsday.
Asimov's family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on February 3, 1923 when he was three years old. Since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English with him, he never learned Russian, but he remained fluent in both. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade). His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919. In third grade he learned about the "error" and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight.
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, a fact that Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time when the genre was becoming more science-centered.
Education and career
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then, the institution's primary undergraduate school for men. Jewish and Italian-American students, even of outstanding academic caliber, were often deliberately barred from Columbia College proper because of the then-popular practice of imposing unwritten ethnic admission quotas. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester because he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1936, Asimov finished his Bachelor of Science degree at Morningside Heights campus (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.
After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German.
In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11.
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949, teaching biochemistry with a $5,000 salary (), with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students. In 1955, he was promoted to associate professor, which gave him tenure. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title, he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class, and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb.
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26 the same year. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956. They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He immediately began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship. On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2. He sailed to England in June 1974 on the SS France for a trip mostly devoted to events in London and Birmingham, though he also found time to visit Stonehenge.
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly paid to give talks about science. He was a frequent fixture at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties. His physical dexterity was very poor. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle; however, he did learn to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".
Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe Pack, a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan. He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society, for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty's work "The Dynamics of An Asteroid" involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. He later used his essay on Moriarty's work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, "The Ultimate Crime", which appeared in More Tales of the Black Widowers.
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.
Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics. In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was "a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then." He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP "gave it immense status and authority" in his eyes.
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs".
After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.
Illness and death
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members.
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It's Been a Good Life.
Writings
Overview
Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, while writing over 120 nonfiction books. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories. Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series. Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".
Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology. Although Asimov did write several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982), which were classified in the 100s category, none of his own books were classified in that category.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.
Science fiction
Asimov became a science fiction fan in 1929, when he began reading the pulp magazines sold in his family's candy store. At first his father forbade reading pulps as he considered them to be trash, until Asimov persuaded him that because the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, they must be educational. At age 18 he joined the Futurians science fiction fan club, where he made friends who went on to become science fiction writers or editors.
Asimov began writing at the age of 11, imitating The Rover Boys with eight chapters of The Greenville Chums at College. His father bought Asimov a used typewriter at age 16. His first published work was a humorous item on the birth of his brother for Boys High School's literary journal in 1934. In May 1937 he first thought of writing professionally, and began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew" (now lost), that year. On May 17, 1938, puzzled by a change in the schedule of Astounding Science Fiction, Asimov visited its publisher Street & Smith Publications. Inspired by the visit, he finished the story on June 19, 1938, and personally submitted it to Astounding editor John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell met with Asimov for more than an hour and promised to read the story himself. Two days later he received a rejection letter explaining why in detail. This was the first of what became almost weekly meetings with the editor while Asimov lived in New York, until moving to Boston in 1949; Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and became a personal friend.
By the end of the month, Asimov completed a second story, "Stowaway". Campbell rejected it on July 22 but—in "the nicest possible letter you could imagine"—encouraged him to continue writing, promising that Asimov might sell his work after another year and a dozen stories of practice. On October 21, 1938, he sold the third story he finished, "Marooned Off Vesta", to Amazing Stories, edited by Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. Asimov was paid $64 (), or one cent a word. Two more stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May Amazing and "Trends" in the July Astounding, the issue fans later selected as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. For 1940, ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in Astounding. His earnings became enough to pay for his education, but not yet enough for him to become a full-time writer.
Asimov later said that unlike other top Golden Age writers Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt—also first published in 1939, and whose talent and stardom were immediately obvious—he "(this is not false modesty) came up only gradually". Through July 29, 1940, Asimov wrote 22 stories in 25 months, of which 13 were published; he wrote in 1972 that from that date he never wrote a science fiction story that was not published (except for two "special cases"). He was famous enough that Donald Wollheim told Asimov that he purchased "The Secret Sense" for a new magazine only because of his name, and the December 1940 issue of Astonishing—featuring Asimov's name in bold—was the first magazine to base cover art on his work, but Asimov later said that neither he himself nor anyone else—except perhaps Campbell—considered him better than an often published "third rater".
Based on a conversation with Campbell, Asimov wrote "Nightfall", his 32nd story, in March and April 1941, and Astounding published it in September 1941. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written. In Nightfall and Other Stories Asimov wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." "Nightfall" is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.
After writing "Victory Unintentional" in January and February 1942, Asimov did not write another story for a year. Asimov expected to make chemistry his career, and was paid $2,600 annually at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, enough to marry his girlfriend; he did not expect to make much more from writing than the $1,788.50 he had earned from 28 stories sold over four years. Asimov left science fiction fandom and no longer read new magazines, and might have left the industry had not Heinlein and de Camp been coworkers and previously sold stories continued to appear. In 1942, Asimov published the first of his Foundation stories—later collected in the Foundation trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). The books recount the fall of a vast interstellar empire and the establishment of its eventual successor. They also feature his fictional science of psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted. The trilogy and Robot series are his most famous science fiction. In 1966 they won the Hugo Award for the all-time best series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Campbell raised his rate per word, Orson Welles purchased rights to "Evidence", and anthologies reprinted his stories. By the end of the war Asimov was earning as a writer an amount equal to half of his Navy Yard salary, even after a raise, but Asimov still did not believe that writing could support him, his wife, and future children.
His "positronic" robot stories—many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in his introduction to the short story collection The Complete Robot (1982) that he was largely inspired by the almost relentless tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators.
The robot series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977, Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of I, Robot that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by Jeff Vintar titled Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired. (The title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for a story by Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel The Positronic Man by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.
Besides movies, his Foundation and Robot stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Donald Kingsbury. At least some of these appear to have been done with the blessing of, or at the request of, Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov.
In 1948, he also wrote a spoof chemistry article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he would receive at his oral examination, in case the examiners thought he wasn't taking science seriously. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". Laughing hysterically with relief, Asimov had to be led out of the room. After a five-minute wait, he was summoned back into the room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov".
Demand for science fiction greatly increased during the 1950s. It became possible for a genre author to write full-time. In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished "Grow Old with Me" (40,000 words), but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of Pebble in the Sky. Doubleday published five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome Press publish one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as I, Robot and his Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the Foundation trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as The Rest of the Robots.
Books and the magazines Galaxy, and Fantasy & Science Fiction ended Asimov's dependence on Astounding. He later described the era as his "'mature' period". Asimov's "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy, was his personal favorite story.
In 1972, his novel The Gods Themselves (which was not part of a series) was published to general acclaim, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Novel.
In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue. McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
Asimov said in 1969 that he had "the happiest of all my associations with science fiction magazines" with Fantasy & Science Fiction; "I have no complaints about Astounding, Galaxy, or any of the rest, heaven knows, but F&SF has become something special to me". Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines "anthologies").
Due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another book in his Foundation series, he did so with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992), his last novel.
Popular science
Asimov and two colleagues published a textbook in 1949, with two more editions by 1969. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's The Naked Sun and 1982's Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). He greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap". Asimov explained in The Rest of the Robots that he had been unable to write substantial fiction since the summer of 1958, and observers understood him as saying that his fiction career had ended, or was permanently interrupted. Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason".
Fantasy and Science Fiction invited Asimov to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine. The first of 399 monthly F&SF columns appeared in November 1958 and they continued until his terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by Doubleday, gave Asimov a reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science; he described them as his only popular science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects on the part of his readers. The column was ostensibly dedicated to popular science but Asimov had complete editorial freedom, and wrote about contemporary social issues in essays such as "Thinking About Thinking" and "Knock Plastic!". In 1975 he wrote of these essays: "I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment."
Asimov's first wide-ranging reference work, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960), was nominated for a National Book Award, and in 1963 he won a Hugo Award—his first—for his essays for F&SF. The popularity of his science books and the income he derived from them allowed him to give up most academic responsibilities and become a full-time freelance writer. He encouraged other science fiction writers to write popular science, stating in 1967 that "the knowledgeable, skillful science writer is worth his weight in contracts", with "twice as much work as he can possibly handle".
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience: "Uneasy". Floyd C. Gale said that "Asimov has a rare talent. He can make your mental mouth water over dry facts", and "science fiction's loss has been science popularization's gain". Asimov said that "Of all the writing I do, fiction, non-fiction, adult, or juvenile, these F & SF articles are by far the most fun". He regretted, however, that he had less time for fiction—causing dissatisfied readers to send him letters of complaint—stating in 1969 that "In the last ten years, I've done a couple of novels, some collections, a dozen or so stories, but that's nothing".
In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read the word "unionized" as un-ion-ized (pronounced "un-EYE-en-ized"), meaning "(a chemical species) being in an electrically neutral state, as opposed to being an ion", while non-chemists will read the word as union-ized (pronounced "YOU-nien-ized"), meaning "(a worker or organization) belonging to or possessing a trade union".
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term "robotics" in his 1941 story "Liar!", though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in Gold ("The Robot Chronicles"). While acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one third of the way down the first column of page 100, Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942 printing of his short story "Runaround".
In the same story, Asimov also coined the term "positronic" (the counterpart to "electronic" for positrons).
Asimov coined the term "psychohistory" in his Foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. Asimov said later that he should have called it psychosociology. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 fix-up novel Foundation. Somewhat later, the term "psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.
Other writings
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, including The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966), The Roman Empire (1967), The Egyptians (1967) The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968), and Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991).
He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes—covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), Asimov's Annotated Don Juan (1972), Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He published two full-length mystery novels, and wrote 66 stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders, and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, who he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends. A parody of the Black Widowers, "An Evening with the White Divorcés," was written by author, critic, and librarian Jon L. Breen. Asimov joked, "all I can do ... is to wait until I catch him in a dark alley, someday."
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks. Asimov featured Yiddish humor in Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, some of Asimov's behavior towards women was described as sexual harassment and cited as an example of historically problematic behavior by men in science fiction communities.
Asimov published three volumes of autobiography. In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980) cover his life up to 1978. The third volume, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), covered his whole life (rather than following on from where the second volume left off). The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov after his death. The book won a Hugo Award in 1995. Janet Asimov edited It's Been a Good Life (2002), a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Treks initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on Star Treks scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming that despite its inaccuracies, Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.
Awards and recognition
Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half-dozen lifetime awards.
He also received 14 honorary doctorate degrees from universities.
1955 – Guest of Honor at the 13th World Science Fiction Convention
1957 – Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award for best science book for youth, for Building Blocks of the Universe
1960 – Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
1962 – Boston University's Publication Merit Award
1963 – A special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction," for essays published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
1963 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1964 – The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" (1941) the all-time best science fiction short story
1965 – James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
1966 – Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation trilogy
1967 – Edward E. Smith Memorial Award
1967 – AAAS-Westinghouse Science Writing Award for Magazine Writing, for essay "Over the Edge of the Universe" (in the March 1967 Harper's Magazine)
1972 – Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Locus Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1975 – Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
1975 – Klumpke-Roberts Award "for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy"
1975 – Locus Award for Best Reprint Anthology for Before the Golden Age
1977 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Locus Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1981 – An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
1981 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978
1983 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
1983 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge
1984 – Humanist of the Year
1986 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him its 8th SFWA Grand Master (presented in 1987).
1987 – Locus Award for Best Short Story for "Robot Dreams"
1992 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Gold"
1995 – Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1995 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1996 – A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon for "The Mule", the 7th Foundation story, published in Astounding Science Fiction
1997 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Asimov in its second class of two deceased and two living persons, along with H. G. Wells.
2000 – Asimov was featured on a stamp in Israel
2001 – The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debates at the Hayden Planetarium in New York were inaugurated
2009 – A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov, was named in his honor
2010 – In the US Congress bill about the designation of the National Robotics Week as an annual event, a tribute to Isaac Asimov is as follows:
"Whereas the second week in April each year is designated as 'National Robotics Week', recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April 1992: Now, therefore, be it resolved ..."
2015 – Selected as a member of the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
2016 – A 1941 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1940 was given at the 2016 WorldCon for Robbie, his first positronic robot story, published in Super Science Stories, September 1940
2018 – A 1943 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1942 was given at the 2018 WorldCon for Foundation, published in Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942
Writing style
Asimov was his own secretary, typist, indexer, proofreader, and literary agent. He wrote a typed first draft composed at the keyboard at 90 words per minute; he imagined an ending first, then a beginning, then "let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it". (Asimov only used an outline once, later describing it as "like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket".) After correcting a draft by hand, he retyped the document as the final copy and only made one revision with minor editor-requested changes; a word processor did not save him much time, Asimov said, because 95% of the first draft was unchanged.
After disliking making multiple revisions of "Black Friar of the Flame", Asimov refused to make major, second, or non-editorial revisions ("like chewing used gum"), stating that "too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process". He submitted "failures" to another editor.
One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Robot:
Asimov addressed such criticism in 1989 at the beginning of Nemesis:
Gunn cited examples of a more complex style, such as the climax of "Liar!". Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", Arkady Darell in Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel, and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels.
Other than books by Gunn and Joseph Patrouch, a relative dearth of "literary" criticism exists on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:
Gunn's and Patrouch's respective studies of Asimov both state that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book comments in detail on each of Asimov's novels. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but calls some passages in The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".
Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), and said in 1973 that his style had not changed, Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in nonchronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material. (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "Reason", one of the early Robot stories). Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of The Currents of Space did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-kyrt Asimov fan" could enjoy it. In his later novel Nemesis one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.
Alien life
Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when Astoundings editor John Campbell rejected one of his science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. The nature of the rejection led him to believe that Campbell may have based his bias towards humans in stories on a real-world racial bias. Unwilling to write only weak alien races, and concerned that a confrontation would jeopardize his and Campbell's friendship, he decided he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms, he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens and alien sex. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of The Gods Themselves, the part that deals with those themes.
In the Hugo Award-winning novelette "Gold", Asimov describes an author, clearly based on himself, who has one of his books (The Gods Themselves) adapted into a "compu-drama", essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for having an extremely nonvisual style, making it difficult to adapt his work, and the author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across.
Romance and women
In the early days of science fiction some authors and critics felt that the romantic elements were inappropriate in science fiction stories, which were supposedly to be focused on science and technology. Isaac Asimov was a prominent supporter of this point of view, expressed in his 1938-1939 letters to Astounding, where he described such elements as "mush" and "slop". However, to his dismay, these letters were met with a strong opposition.
Asimov attributed the lack of romance and sex in his fiction to the "early imprinting" from starting his writing career when he had never been on a date and "didn't know anything about girls". He was sometimes criticized for the general absence of sex (and of extraterrestrial life) in his science fiction. He claimed he wrote The Gods Themselves to respond to these criticisms, which often came from New Wave science fiction (and often British) writers. The second part (of three) of the novel is set on an alien world with three sexes, and the sexual behavior of these creatures is extensively depicted.
Asimov was also criticized for a lack of strong female characters in his early work. However, some of his robot stories, including the earliest ones, featured the character Susan Calvin, a forceful and intelligent woman who regularly out-performed her male colleagues.
In his autobiographical writings, such as Gold ("Women and Science Fiction"), he acknowledges this complaint has merit and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early science-fiction stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. The Washington Post's "Book World" section reports of Robots and Empire opined "In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are."
Views
Religion
Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed the traditions of Orthodox Judaism, though not as stringently as they had in Petrovichi; they did not, however, force their beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus, he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the Torah represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that the Iliad recorded Greek mythology. When he was 13, he chose not to have a bar mitzvah. As his books Treasury of Humor and Asimov Laughs Again record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar" versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, an analysis of the historic foundations for both the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "humanist" and considered that term more practical. Asimov did, however, continue to identify himself as a secular Jew, as stated in his introduction to Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction, Wandering Stars: "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the Bar Mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."
When asked in an interview in 1982 if he was an atheist, Asimov replied,
Likewise, he said about religious education: "I would not be satisfied to have my kids choose to be religious without trying to argue them out of it, just as I would not be satisfied to have them decide to smoke regularly or engage in any other practice I consider detrimental to mind or body."
In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote,
The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".
Asimov said about using religious motifs in his writing:
Politics
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal, and thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography, In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman. Asimov's impression was that the 1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.
Asimov vehemently opposed Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He closely followed Watergate, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign. Asimov was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."
After Asimov's name appeared in the mid-1960s on a list of people the Communist Party USA "considered amenable" to its goals, the FBI investigated him. Because of his academic background, the bureau briefly considered Asimov as a possible candidate for known Soviet spy ROBPROF, but found nothing suspicious in his life or background.
Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though insisting that he was not a Zionist. In his third autobiography, Asimov stated his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he was opposed to having nation-states in general, and supported the notion of a single humanity. Asimov especially worried about the safety of Israel given that it had been created among hostile Muslim neighbors, and said that Jews had merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".
Social issues
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
In a 1988 interview by Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested. He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace. Asimov thought that people would live in space by the year 2019.
In 1983 Asimov wrote:
He continues on education:
Sexual harassment
Asimov would often fondle, kiss and pinch women at conventions and elsewhere without regard for their consent. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, author of an Asimov biography and writer on the history of science fiction, he often defended himself by saying that far from showing objections, these women cooperated. In the 1971 satirical piece, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, he wrote, "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched."
According to Nevala-Lee, however, "many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual." He wrote that Asimov's behaviour, as a leading science-fiction author and personality, contributed to an undesirable atmosphere for women in the male-dominated science fiction community. In support of this, he quoted some of Asimov's contemporary fellow-authors such as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison and Frederik Pohl, as well as editors such as Timothy Seldes. Specific incidents were reported by other people including Edward L. Ferman, long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction who wrote "... instead of shaking my date's hand, he shook her left breast".
Environment and population
Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the Bhopal disaster.
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:
Other authors
Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and in fact even used The Lord of the Rings as a plot point in a Black Widowers story, titled Nothing like Murder. In the essay All or Nothing (for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1981), Asimov revealed that he admires Tolkien and that he had read The Lord of the Rings five times. (The feelings were mutual, with Tolkien himself revealing that he had enjoyed Asimov's science fiction. This would make Asimov an exception to Tolkien's earlier claim that he rarely found "any modern books" that were interesting to him.)
He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, however, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction".
The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Asimov became a fan of mystery stories at the same time as science fiction. He preferred to read the former to latter because "I read every [science fiction] story keenly aware that it might be worse than mine, in which case I had no patience with it, or that it might be better, in which case I felt miserable". Asimov wrote "I make no secret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Christie as my model. In my opinion, her mysteries are the best ever written, far better than the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Hercule Poirot is the best detective fiction has seen. Why should I not use as my model what I consider the best?" He enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but considered Arthur Conan Doyle to be "a slapdash and sloppy writer."
Asimov also enjoyed humorous stories, particularly those of P. G. Wodehouse.
In non-fiction writing, Asimov particularly admired the writing style of Martin Gardner, and tried to emulate it in his own science books. On meeting Gardner for the first time in 1965, Asimov told him this, to which Gardner answered that he had based his own style on Asimov's.
Influence
Paul Krugman, holder of a Nobel Prize in Economics, stated Asimov's concept of psychohistory has inspired him to become an economist.
John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed, "It has been pointed out that most science fiction writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style." Along with such figures as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, Asimov left his mark as one of the most distinguished interdisciplinarians of the 20th century. "Few individuals", writes James L. Christian, "understood better than Isaac Asimov what synoptic thinking is all about. His almost 500 books—which he wrote as a specialist, a knowledgeable authority, or just an excited layman—range over almost all conceivable subjects: the sciences, history, literature, religion, and of course, science fiction."
Bibliography
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books (based on his personal count), Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing. An extensive bibliography of Isaac Asimov's works has been compiled by Ed Seiler. He published enough that his book writing rate could be analysed, showing that the writing became faster as he wrote more.
An online exhibit in West Virginia University Libraries' virtually complete Asimov Collection displays features, visuals, and descriptions of some of his over 600 books, games, audio recordings, videos, and wall charts. Many first, rare, and autographed editions are in the Libraries' Rare Book Room. Book jackets and autographs are presented online along with descriptions and images of children's books, science fiction art, multimedia, and other materials in the collection.
Science fiction
"Greater Foundation" series
The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series. The Galactic Empire novels were published as independent stories, set earlier in the same future as Foundation. Later in life, Asimov synthesized the Robot series into a single coherent "history" that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series.
All of these books were published by Doubleday & Co, except the original Foundation trilogy which was originally published by Gnome Books before being bought and republished by Doubleday.
The Robot series:
(first Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(second Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(third Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(sequel to the Elijah Baley trilogy)
Galactic Empire novels:
(early Galactic Empire)
(long before the Empire)
(Republic of Trantor still expanding)
Foundation prequels:
Original Foundation trilogy:
(also published with the title 'The Man Who Upset the Universe' as a 35¢ Ace paperback, D-125, in about 1952)
Extended Foundation series:
Lucky Starr series (as Paul French)
All published by Doubleday & Co
David Starr, Space Ranger (1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)
Norby Chronicles (with Janet Asimov)
All published by Walker & Company
Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983)
Norby's Other Secret (1984)
Norby and the Lost Princess (1985)
Norby and the Invaders (1985)
Norby and the Queen's Necklace (1986)
Norby Finds a Villain (1987)
Norby Down to Earth (1988)
Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure (1989)
Norby and the Oldest Dragon (1990)
Norby and the Court Jester (1991)
Novels not part of a series
Novels marked with an asterisk (*) have minor connections to Foundation universe.
The End of Eternity (1955), Doubleday (*)
Fantastic Voyage (1966), Bantam Books (paperback) and Houghton Mifflin (hardback) (a novelization of the movie)
The Gods Themselves (1972), Doubleday
Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), Doubleday (not a sequel to Fantastic Voyage, but a similar, independent story)
Nemesis (1989), Bantam Doubleday Dell (*)
Nightfall (1990), Doubleday, with Robert Silverberg (based on "Nightfall", a 1941 short story written by Asimov)
Child of Time (1992), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (based on "The Ugly Little Boy", a 1958 short story written by Asimov)
The Positronic Man (1993), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (*) (based on The Bicentennial Man, a 1976 novella written by Asimov)
Short-story collections
Mysteries
Novels
The Death Dealers (1958), Avon Books, republished as A Whiff of Death by Walker & Company
Murder at the ABA (1976), Doubleday, also published as Authorized Murder
Short-story collections
Black Widowers series
Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), Doubleday
More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976), Doubleday
Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), Doubleday
Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), Doubleday
Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), Doubleday
The Return of the Black Widowers (2003), Carroll & Graf
Other mysteries
Asimov's Mysteries (1968), Doubleday
The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977), Walker
The Union Club Mysteries (1983), Doubleday
The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries (1985), Walker
The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986), Doubleday
Nonfiction
Popular science
Collections of Asimov's essays for F&SF
The following books collected essays which were originally published as monthly columns in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected by Doubleday & Co
Fact and Fancy (1962)
View from a Height (1963)
Adding a Dimension (1964)
Of Time and Space and Other Things (1965)
From Earth to Heaven (1966)
Science, Numbers, and I (1968)
The Solar System and Back (1970)
The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
The Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
Asimov On Astronomy (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Asimov On Chemistry (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Of Matters Great and Small (1975)
Asimov On Physics (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
Asimov On Numbers (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
The Road to Infinity (1979)
The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
Counting the Eons (1983)
X Stands for Unknown (1984)
The Subatomic Monster (1985)
Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
Asimov on Science: A 30 Year Retrospective 1959–1989 (1989) (features the first essay in the introduction)
Out of the Everywhere (1990)
The Secret of the Universe (1991)
Other general science essay collections
Only a Trillion (1957), Abelard-Schuman,
Is Anyone There? (1967), Doubleday, (which includes the article in which he coined the term "spome")
Today and Tomorrow and— (1973), Doubleday
Science Past, Science Future (1975), Doubleday,
Please Explain (1975), Houghton Mifflin,
Life and Time (1978), Doubleday
The Roving Mind (1983), Prometheus Books, new edition 1997,
The Dangers of Intelligence (1986), Houghton Mifflin
Past, Present and Future (1987), Prometheus Books,
The Tyrannosaurus Prescription (1989), Prometheus Books
Frontiers (1990), Dutton
Frontiers II (1993), Dutton
Other science books by Asimov
The Chemicals of Life (1954), Abelard-Schuman
Inside the Atom (1956), Abelard-Schuman,
Building Blocks of the Universe (1957; revised 1974), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Carbon (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Nitrogen (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
Words of Science and the History Behind Them (1959), Houghton Mifflin
The Clock We Live On (1959), Abelard-Schuman,
Breakthroughs in Science (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Numbers (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Measure (1960), Houghton Mifflin
The Wellsprings of Life (1960), Abelard-Schuman,
Life and Energy (1962), Doubleday,
The Genetic Code (1962), The Orion Press
The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation (1963), Houghton Mifflin, , (revised)
The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions (1963), Houghton Mifflin,
Planets for Man (with Stephen H. Dole) (1964), Random House, reprinted by RAND in 2007
An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule (1965), Houghton Mifflin,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Basic Books
The title varied with each of the four editions, the last being Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984)
The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1966), Walker,
The Neutrino (1966), Doubleday, ASIN B002JK525W
Understanding Physics Vol. I, Motion, Sound, and Heat (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. II, Light, Magnetism, and Electricity (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. III, The Electron, Proton, and Neutron (1966), Walker,
Photosynthesis (1969), Basic Books,
Our World in Space (1974), New York Graphic,
Eyes on the Universe: A History of the Telescope (1976), Andre Deutsch Limited,
The Collapsing Universe (1977), Walker,
Extraterrestrial Civilizations (1979), Crown,
Visions of the Universe with illustrations by Kazuaki Iwasaki (1981), Cosmos Store,
Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), Crown,
The Measure of the Universe (1983), Harper & Row
Think About Space: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going? with co-author Frank White (1989), Walker
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery (1989), Harper & Row, second edition adds content thru 1993,
Beginnings: The Story of Origins (1989), Walker
Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (1991), Random House,
Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos (1991), Dutton,
Mysteries of Deep Space: Quasars, Pulsars and Black Holes (1994)
Earth's Moon (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Sun (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Earth (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Jupiter (1989), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Venus (1990), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Literary works
All published by Doubleday
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970),
Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" (1972)
Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost" (1974)
Familiar Poems, Annotated (1976)
Asimov's The Annotated "Gulliver's Travels" (1980)
Asimov's Annotated "Gilbert and Sullivan" (1988)
The Bible
Words from Genesis (1962), Houghton Mifflin
Words from the Exodus (1963), Houghton Mifflin
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vols I and II (1967 and 1969, one-volume ed. 1981), Doubleday,
The Story of Ruth (1972), Doubleday,
In the Beginning (1981), Crown
Autobiography
In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920–1954 (1979, Doubleday)
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 (1980, Doubleday)
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994, Doubleday)
It's Been a Good Life (2002, Prometheus Books), condensation of Asimov's three volumes of autobiography, edited by his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov
History
All published by Houghton Mifflin except where otherwise stated
The Kite That Won the Revolution (1963),
The Greeks (1965)
The Roman Republic (1966)
The Roman Empire (1967)
The Egyptians (1967)
The Near East (1968)
The Dark Ages (1968)
Words from History (1968)
The Shaping of England (1969)
Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)
The Land of Canaan (1971)
The Shaping of France (1972)
The Shaping of North America: From Earliest Times to 1763 (1973)
The Birth of the United States: 1763–1816 (1974)
Our Federal Union: The United States from 1816 to 1865 (1975),
The Golden Door: The United States from 1865 to 1918 (1977)
Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991), HarperCollins,
The March of the Millennia (1991), with co-author Frank White, Walker & Company,
Humor
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (1971) (As Dr. A), Walker & Company,
Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), Houghton Mifflin
Lecherous Limericks (1975), Walker,
More Lecherous Limericks (1976), Walker,
Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977), Walker,
Limericks, Two Gross, with John Ciardi (1978), Norton,
A Grossery of Limericks, with John Ciardi (1981), Norton,
Limericks for Children (1984), Caedmon
Asimov Laughs Again (1992), HarperCollins
On writing science fiction
Asimov on Science Fiction (1981), Doubleday
Asimov's Galaxy (1989), Doubleday
Other nonfiction
Opus 100 (1969), Houghton Mifflin,
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964), Doubleday (revised edition 1972, )
Opus 200 (1979), Houghton Mifflin,
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1979), Grosset & Dunlap,
Opus 300 (1984), Houghton Mifflin,
Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991), with co-author Frederik Pohl, Tor, .
Television, music, and film appearances
I Robot, a concept album by the Alan Parsons Project that examined some of Asimov's work
The Last Word (1959)
The Dick Cavett Show, four appearances 1968–71
The Nature of Things (1969)
ABC News coverage of Apollo 11, 1969, with Fred Pohl, interviewed by Rod Serling
David Frost interview program, August 1969. Frost asked Asimov if he had ever tried to find God and, after some initial evasion, Asimov answered, "God is much more intelligent than I am—let him try to find me."
BBC Horizon "It's About Time" (1979), show hosted by Dudley Moore
Target ... Earth? (1980)
The David Letterman Show (1980)
NBC TV Speaking Freely, interviewed by Edwin Newman (1982)
ARTS Network talk show hosted by Studs Terkel and Calvin Trillin, approximately (1982)
Oltre New York (1986)
Voyage to the Outer Planets and Beyond (1986)
Gandahar (1987), a French animated science-fiction film by René Laloux. Asimov wrote the English translation for the film.
Bill Moyers interview (1988)
Stranieri in America (1988)
Adaptations
El robot embustero (1966), short film directed by Antonio Lara de Gavilán, based on short story "Liar!"
A halhatatlanság halála (1977), TV movie directed by András Rajnai, based on novel The End of Eternity
The Ugly Little Boy (1977), short film directed by Barry Morse and Donald W. Thompson, based on novelette The Ugly Little Boy
All the Troubles of the World (1978), short film directed by Dianne Haak-Edson, based on short story "All the Troubles of the World"
The End of Eternity (1987), film directed by Andrei Yermash, based on novel The End of Eternity
Nightfall (1988), film directed by Paul Mayersberg, based on novelette "Nightfall"
Robots (1988), film directed by Doug Smith and Kim Takal, based on the Robot series
Feeling 109 (1988), short film directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov
Teach 109 (1989), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as The Android Affair)
The Android Affair (1995), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as Teach 109)
Bicentennial Man (1999), film directed by Chris Columbus, based on novelette "The Bicentennial Man" and on novel The Positronic Man
Nightfall (2000), film directed by Gwyneth Gibby, based on novelette "Nightfall"
I, Robot (2004), film directed by Alex Proyas, based on ideas of short stories of the Robot series
Formula of Death (2012), TV movie directed by Behdad Avand Amini, based on novel The Death Dealers
Spell My Name with an S (2014), short film directed by Samuel Ali, based on short story "Spell My Name with an S"
Foundation (2021), series created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, based on the Foundation series
Novelizations
Novel Fantastic Voyage, novelization of film Fantastic Voyage (1966)
References
Footnotes
Notes
Sources
Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green (1979), New York: Avon, .
In Joy Still Felt (1980), New York: Avon .
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), (hc), (pb).
Yours, Isaac Asimov (1996), edited by Stanley Asimov. New York: Doubleday .
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet Asimov. .
Goldman, Stephen H., "Isaac Asimov", in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 8, Cowart and Wymer eds. (Gale Research, 1981), pp. 15–29.
Gunn, James. "On Variations on a Robot", IASFM, July 1980, pp. 56–81.
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982). .
The Science of Science-Fiction Writing (2000). .
Further reading
External links
Asimov Online, a vast repository of information about Asimov, maintained by Asimov enthusiast Edward Seiler
Jenkins' Spoiler-Laden Guide to Isaac Asimov, reviews of all of Asimov's books
20th-century births
1992 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American male writers
AIDS-related deaths in New York (state)
American alternate history writers
Jewish American atheists
American biochemists
American essayists
American humanists
American humorists
American male novelists
20th-century American memoirists
United States Army non-commissioned officers
American mystery writers
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American science fiction writers
American science writers
American skeptics
American writers of Russian descent
Asimov's Science Fiction people
Bible commentators
Boston University faculty
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
Critics of religions
Date of birth unknown
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Futurians
Historians of astronomy
American historians of science
Hugo Award-winning writers
Humor researchers
Jewish American novelists
Jewish American short story writers
Jewish feminists
Jewish skeptics
American male essayists
Male feminists
American male short story writers
American short story writers
Mensans
Nebula Award winners
New York (state) Democrats
People from Shumyachsky District
Naturalized citizens of the United States
United States Navy civilians
Science fiction fans
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
SFWA Grand Masters
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Writers from Brooklyn
Yiddish-speaking people
Boys High School (Brooklyn) alumni
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New York (state)
Scientists from New York City
20th-century essayists
20th-century atheists
People from the Upper West Side
Pulp fiction writers
Writers about religion and science
Atheist feminists
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
| false |
[
"Samuel Leser Schwarz, known as Mommie (28 July 1876 – 19 November 1942) was a Dutch Jewish painter and graphic artist. He also worked as a designer of book covers.\n\nIn 1920, he married Else Berg. Together they became an artistic couple and were part of the Bergen School of painters. Schwarz and Berg were both murdered at Auschwitz in 1942.\n\nLife \nSchwarz was the tenth child of Leser Schwarz and Julie Winter. The family had eleven children. In 1897 he went with his brother Julius to New York City. In 1902 Mommie Schwarz returns to Europa and registered at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp for the evening class of 1902-1903. On 26 March 1903 he unsubscribed at the Academy and returned to New York where he arrived on 11 August 1903. In 1908 or 1909 Mommie left New York for Europe. Shortly afterwards he traveled to Berlin to visit his nephew Erich and his niece Else Berg. Subsequently Else and Mommie traveled to Paris. In 1909 or 1910 he settled with Berg in the Netherlands. In 1915 they moved to the town of Schoorl, where they established close ties with Leo Gestel and other artists from the Bergen School. The couple married in 1920 and moved to Amsterdam. From 1927 they lived adjacent to Amsterdam's Sarphatipark. By this time, Schwarz had cut all ties with Judaism. The couple traveled extensively, including trips to Mallorca, the former Yugoslavia, Turkey and Spain. After the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, they refused to go into hiding or to wear the Star of David. On 12 November 1942, they were arrested by the Germans and deported via the Westerbork transit camp to Auschwitz, where they were murdered immediately upon arrival on 19 November 1942.\n\nWork \n\nSchwarz belonged to the Bergen School of painters and was influenced by such painters as Leo Gestel and Charley Toorop. The works of the Bergen School are characterized by Cubist figuration and expressionist influences in dark shades, which also applies to much of Schwarz's work.\n\nSchwarz is especially known for his harbor scenes, landscapes, portraits and still lifes.\n\nHe also worked as an illustrator and designed book covers and posters, including illustrations for the Dutch art magazine Wendingen.\n\nPublic collections \n\n Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam\n Museum Kranenburgh in Bergen (North Holland)\n The Wieger Museum in Deurne, North Brabant\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nArtNet: More works by Schwarz.\n\n1876 births\n1942 deaths\nDutch Jews who died in the Holocaust\nDutch male painters\nPeople from Zutphen\nDutch people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp\nJewish painters",
"Fredrick Else (31 March 193320 July 2015) was an English footballer, who played as a goalkeeper. Else gained over 600 professional appearances in his career playing for three clubs, Preston North End, Blackburn Rovers and Barrow.\n\nClub career\nElse was born in Golborne near Wigan on 31 March 1933. Whilst on national service in the north-east he played for amateur club Axwell Park Colliery Welfare in the Derwent Valley League. He attracted the attention of Football League teams and signed as a junior for Preston North End in 1951, and as a professional in 1953. He made his debut for Preston against Manchester City in 1954, but was restricted to 14 appearances over his first three seasons. He eventually became first choice, displacing George Thompson, and played 238 times for North End. During this time Preston's most successful season came in 1957–58, when the club finished as runners up in Division One.\n\nThe 1960–61 season ended in relegation for Preston and Else was sold to neighbours Blackburn Rovers for £20,000. Else became a first choice for Blackburn straight away and played 221 times for the club. A collarbone injury in 1964–65 resulted in a period out of the game, though Else returned to regain the goalkeeper's jersey at Blackburn. Nonetheless the team were relegated the following season and Else was released. During the summer of 1966 Else signed with Barrow of the Fourth Division. Else became part of Barrow's most successful team, with the side winning promotion to the Third Division in his first season there. Else was Barrow's first choice keeper for the entire period that they were in the third division, and played 148 league matches for the club. He retired from football after Barrow's relegation in 1970 following a leg infection. His final season included a brief stint as caretaker manager at Barrow.\n\nHonours\n Football League Division One Runner-up 1957–1958\n Football League Division Four Promotion 1966–1967\n\nInternational career\nElse has been described by fans of the clubs that he played for as one of the best English goalkeepers never to win a full international cap. He did, however, make one appearance for the England B team in 1957 against Scotland B, as well as participating in a Football Association touring side of 1961.\n\nPersonal life and death\nElse met his wife Marjorie in 1949 in Douglas on the Isle of Man. They married when Else was 22 and Marjorie 20, on 29 October 1955, a Saturday morning. The wedding was held in Marjorie's home town of Blackpool and the date was chosen so that the couple could marry in the morning and Else could then travel either to Deepdale, to play for Preston North End's reserve team, or to Bloomfield Road where Preston's first team was due to be playing Blackpool F.C. In the event Else was selected for the reserves and the couple had to travel by bus to Preston.\n\nAfter retiring from football, Else remained in Barrow-in-Furness, becoming a geography and maths teacher at a local secondary school. He retired from teaching in 1999 and moved to Cyprus, though still attended some Barrow matches. Else died in Barrow-in-Furness on 20 July 2015, aged 82.\n\nReferences\n\n2015 deaths\n1933 births\nBarrow A.F.C. managers\nBarrow A.F.C. players\nBlackburn Rovers F.C. players\nPreston North End F.C. players\nPeople from Golborne\nEnglish footballers\nAssociation football goalkeepers\nSchoolteachers from Cumbria\nEnglish Football League players\nEngland B international footballers\nEnglish football managers"
] |
[
"Isaac Asimov",
"Education and career",
"Where did he go to school?",
"Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15,",
"Did he further his education?",
"he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students",
"What did he study there?",
"Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of \"dissecting an alley cat\".",
"Where else did he go to school?",
"After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939."
] |
C_4faa5e824b8a43099cb7ba91fcdaf534_0
|
What did he get a bachelors in?
| 5 |
What did Asimov get a bachelors in?
|
Isaac Asimov
|
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then the institution's primary undergraduate school for men with quotas on the number of admissions from those ethnic groups. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939. After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov in 1939 applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia; initially rejected and then accepted only on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948. In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11. After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary, with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university. The difference grew, and in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955), and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb. In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively. CANNOTANSWER
|
he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948.
|
Isaac Asimov (; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction.
Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories. He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.
He was president of the American Humanist Association. Several entities have been named in his honor, including the asteroid (5020) Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, and four literary awards.
Surname
Asimov's family name derives from the first part of ozímyj khleb (озимый хлеб), meaning the winter grain (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending -ov added. Azimov is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov's father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov. This later inspired one of Asimov's short stories, "Spell My Name with an S".
Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that "Isaac Asimov" was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name.
Biography
Early life
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian-Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me".
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya; June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011), and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the Long Island Newsday.
Asimov's family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on February 3, 1923 when he was three years old. Since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English with him, he never learned Russian, but he remained fluent in both. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade). His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919. In third grade he learned about the "error" and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight.
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, a fact that Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time when the genre was becoming more science-centered.
Education and career
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then, the institution's primary undergraduate school for men. Jewish and Italian-American students, even of outstanding academic caliber, were often deliberately barred from Columbia College proper because of the then-popular practice of imposing unwritten ethnic admission quotas. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester because he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1936, Asimov finished his Bachelor of Science degree at Morningside Heights campus (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.
After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German.
In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11.
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949, teaching biochemistry with a $5,000 salary (), with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students. In 1955, he was promoted to associate professor, which gave him tenure. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title, he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class, and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb.
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26 the same year. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956. They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He immediately began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship. On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2. He sailed to England in June 1974 on the SS France for a trip mostly devoted to events in London and Birmingham, though he also found time to visit Stonehenge.
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly paid to give talks about science. He was a frequent fixture at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties. His physical dexterity was very poor. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle; however, he did learn to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".
Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe Pack, a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan. He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society, for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty's work "The Dynamics of An Asteroid" involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. He later used his essay on Moriarty's work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, "The Ultimate Crime", which appeared in More Tales of the Black Widowers.
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.
Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics. In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was "a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then." He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP "gave it immense status and authority" in his eyes.
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs".
After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.
Illness and death
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members.
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It's Been a Good Life.
Writings
Overview
Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, while writing over 120 nonfiction books. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories. Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series. Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".
Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology. Although Asimov did write several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982), which were classified in the 100s category, none of his own books were classified in that category.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.
Science fiction
Asimov became a science fiction fan in 1929, when he began reading the pulp magazines sold in his family's candy store. At first his father forbade reading pulps as he considered them to be trash, until Asimov persuaded him that because the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, they must be educational. At age 18 he joined the Futurians science fiction fan club, where he made friends who went on to become science fiction writers or editors.
Asimov began writing at the age of 11, imitating The Rover Boys with eight chapters of The Greenville Chums at College. His father bought Asimov a used typewriter at age 16. His first published work was a humorous item on the birth of his brother for Boys High School's literary journal in 1934. In May 1937 he first thought of writing professionally, and began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew" (now lost), that year. On May 17, 1938, puzzled by a change in the schedule of Astounding Science Fiction, Asimov visited its publisher Street & Smith Publications. Inspired by the visit, he finished the story on June 19, 1938, and personally submitted it to Astounding editor John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell met with Asimov for more than an hour and promised to read the story himself. Two days later he received a rejection letter explaining why in detail. This was the first of what became almost weekly meetings with the editor while Asimov lived in New York, until moving to Boston in 1949; Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and became a personal friend.
By the end of the month, Asimov completed a second story, "Stowaway". Campbell rejected it on July 22 but—in "the nicest possible letter you could imagine"—encouraged him to continue writing, promising that Asimov might sell his work after another year and a dozen stories of practice. On October 21, 1938, he sold the third story he finished, "Marooned Off Vesta", to Amazing Stories, edited by Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. Asimov was paid $64 (), or one cent a word. Two more stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May Amazing and "Trends" in the July Astounding, the issue fans later selected as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. For 1940, ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in Astounding. His earnings became enough to pay for his education, but not yet enough for him to become a full-time writer.
Asimov later said that unlike other top Golden Age writers Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt—also first published in 1939, and whose talent and stardom were immediately obvious—he "(this is not false modesty) came up only gradually". Through July 29, 1940, Asimov wrote 22 stories in 25 months, of which 13 were published; he wrote in 1972 that from that date he never wrote a science fiction story that was not published (except for two "special cases"). He was famous enough that Donald Wollheim told Asimov that he purchased "The Secret Sense" for a new magazine only because of his name, and the December 1940 issue of Astonishing—featuring Asimov's name in bold—was the first magazine to base cover art on his work, but Asimov later said that neither he himself nor anyone else—except perhaps Campbell—considered him better than an often published "third rater".
Based on a conversation with Campbell, Asimov wrote "Nightfall", his 32nd story, in March and April 1941, and Astounding published it in September 1941. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written. In Nightfall and Other Stories Asimov wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." "Nightfall" is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.
After writing "Victory Unintentional" in January and February 1942, Asimov did not write another story for a year. Asimov expected to make chemistry his career, and was paid $2,600 annually at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, enough to marry his girlfriend; he did not expect to make much more from writing than the $1,788.50 he had earned from 28 stories sold over four years. Asimov left science fiction fandom and no longer read new magazines, and might have left the industry had not Heinlein and de Camp been coworkers and previously sold stories continued to appear. In 1942, Asimov published the first of his Foundation stories—later collected in the Foundation trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). The books recount the fall of a vast interstellar empire and the establishment of its eventual successor. They also feature his fictional science of psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted. The trilogy and Robot series are his most famous science fiction. In 1966 they won the Hugo Award for the all-time best series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Campbell raised his rate per word, Orson Welles purchased rights to "Evidence", and anthologies reprinted his stories. By the end of the war Asimov was earning as a writer an amount equal to half of his Navy Yard salary, even after a raise, but Asimov still did not believe that writing could support him, his wife, and future children.
His "positronic" robot stories—many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in his introduction to the short story collection The Complete Robot (1982) that he was largely inspired by the almost relentless tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators.
The robot series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977, Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of I, Robot that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by Jeff Vintar titled Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired. (The title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for a story by Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel The Positronic Man by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.
Besides movies, his Foundation and Robot stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Donald Kingsbury. At least some of these appear to have been done with the blessing of, or at the request of, Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov.
In 1948, he also wrote a spoof chemistry article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he would receive at his oral examination, in case the examiners thought he wasn't taking science seriously. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". Laughing hysterically with relief, Asimov had to be led out of the room. After a five-minute wait, he was summoned back into the room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov".
Demand for science fiction greatly increased during the 1950s. It became possible for a genre author to write full-time. In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished "Grow Old with Me" (40,000 words), but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of Pebble in the Sky. Doubleday published five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome Press publish one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as I, Robot and his Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the Foundation trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as The Rest of the Robots.
Books and the magazines Galaxy, and Fantasy & Science Fiction ended Asimov's dependence on Astounding. He later described the era as his "'mature' period". Asimov's "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy, was his personal favorite story.
In 1972, his novel The Gods Themselves (which was not part of a series) was published to general acclaim, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Novel.
In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue. McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
Asimov said in 1969 that he had "the happiest of all my associations with science fiction magazines" with Fantasy & Science Fiction; "I have no complaints about Astounding, Galaxy, or any of the rest, heaven knows, but F&SF has become something special to me". Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines "anthologies").
Due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another book in his Foundation series, he did so with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992), his last novel.
Popular science
Asimov and two colleagues published a textbook in 1949, with two more editions by 1969. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's The Naked Sun and 1982's Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). He greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap". Asimov explained in The Rest of the Robots that he had been unable to write substantial fiction since the summer of 1958, and observers understood him as saying that his fiction career had ended, or was permanently interrupted. Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason".
Fantasy and Science Fiction invited Asimov to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine. The first of 399 monthly F&SF columns appeared in November 1958 and they continued until his terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by Doubleday, gave Asimov a reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science; he described them as his only popular science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects on the part of his readers. The column was ostensibly dedicated to popular science but Asimov had complete editorial freedom, and wrote about contemporary social issues in essays such as "Thinking About Thinking" and "Knock Plastic!". In 1975 he wrote of these essays: "I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment."
Asimov's first wide-ranging reference work, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960), was nominated for a National Book Award, and in 1963 he won a Hugo Award—his first—for his essays for F&SF. The popularity of his science books and the income he derived from them allowed him to give up most academic responsibilities and become a full-time freelance writer. He encouraged other science fiction writers to write popular science, stating in 1967 that "the knowledgeable, skillful science writer is worth his weight in contracts", with "twice as much work as he can possibly handle".
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience: "Uneasy". Floyd C. Gale said that "Asimov has a rare talent. He can make your mental mouth water over dry facts", and "science fiction's loss has been science popularization's gain". Asimov said that "Of all the writing I do, fiction, non-fiction, adult, or juvenile, these F & SF articles are by far the most fun". He regretted, however, that he had less time for fiction—causing dissatisfied readers to send him letters of complaint—stating in 1969 that "In the last ten years, I've done a couple of novels, some collections, a dozen or so stories, but that's nothing".
In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read the word "unionized" as un-ion-ized (pronounced "un-EYE-en-ized"), meaning "(a chemical species) being in an electrically neutral state, as opposed to being an ion", while non-chemists will read the word as union-ized (pronounced "YOU-nien-ized"), meaning "(a worker or organization) belonging to or possessing a trade union".
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term "robotics" in his 1941 story "Liar!", though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in Gold ("The Robot Chronicles"). While acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one third of the way down the first column of page 100, Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942 printing of his short story "Runaround".
In the same story, Asimov also coined the term "positronic" (the counterpart to "electronic" for positrons).
Asimov coined the term "psychohistory" in his Foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. Asimov said later that he should have called it psychosociology. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 fix-up novel Foundation. Somewhat later, the term "psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.
Other writings
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, including The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966), The Roman Empire (1967), The Egyptians (1967) The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968), and Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991).
He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes—covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), Asimov's Annotated Don Juan (1972), Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He published two full-length mystery novels, and wrote 66 stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders, and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, who he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends. A parody of the Black Widowers, "An Evening with the White Divorcés," was written by author, critic, and librarian Jon L. Breen. Asimov joked, "all I can do ... is to wait until I catch him in a dark alley, someday."
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks. Asimov featured Yiddish humor in Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, some of Asimov's behavior towards women was described as sexual harassment and cited as an example of historically problematic behavior by men in science fiction communities.
Asimov published three volumes of autobiography. In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980) cover his life up to 1978. The third volume, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), covered his whole life (rather than following on from where the second volume left off). The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov after his death. The book won a Hugo Award in 1995. Janet Asimov edited It's Been a Good Life (2002), a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Treks initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on Star Treks scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming that despite its inaccuracies, Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.
Awards and recognition
Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half-dozen lifetime awards.
He also received 14 honorary doctorate degrees from universities.
1955 – Guest of Honor at the 13th World Science Fiction Convention
1957 – Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award for best science book for youth, for Building Blocks of the Universe
1960 – Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
1962 – Boston University's Publication Merit Award
1963 – A special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction," for essays published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
1963 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1964 – The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" (1941) the all-time best science fiction short story
1965 – James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
1966 – Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation trilogy
1967 – Edward E. Smith Memorial Award
1967 – AAAS-Westinghouse Science Writing Award for Magazine Writing, for essay "Over the Edge of the Universe" (in the March 1967 Harper's Magazine)
1972 – Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Locus Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1975 – Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
1975 – Klumpke-Roberts Award "for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy"
1975 – Locus Award for Best Reprint Anthology for Before the Golden Age
1977 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Locus Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1981 – An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
1981 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978
1983 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
1983 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge
1984 – Humanist of the Year
1986 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him its 8th SFWA Grand Master (presented in 1987).
1987 – Locus Award for Best Short Story for "Robot Dreams"
1992 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Gold"
1995 – Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1995 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1996 – A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon for "The Mule", the 7th Foundation story, published in Astounding Science Fiction
1997 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Asimov in its second class of two deceased and two living persons, along with H. G. Wells.
2000 – Asimov was featured on a stamp in Israel
2001 – The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debates at the Hayden Planetarium in New York were inaugurated
2009 – A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov, was named in his honor
2010 – In the US Congress bill about the designation of the National Robotics Week as an annual event, a tribute to Isaac Asimov is as follows:
"Whereas the second week in April each year is designated as 'National Robotics Week', recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April 1992: Now, therefore, be it resolved ..."
2015 – Selected as a member of the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
2016 – A 1941 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1940 was given at the 2016 WorldCon for Robbie, his first positronic robot story, published in Super Science Stories, September 1940
2018 – A 1943 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1942 was given at the 2018 WorldCon for Foundation, published in Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942
Writing style
Asimov was his own secretary, typist, indexer, proofreader, and literary agent. He wrote a typed first draft composed at the keyboard at 90 words per minute; he imagined an ending first, then a beginning, then "let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it". (Asimov only used an outline once, later describing it as "like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket".) After correcting a draft by hand, he retyped the document as the final copy and only made one revision with minor editor-requested changes; a word processor did not save him much time, Asimov said, because 95% of the first draft was unchanged.
After disliking making multiple revisions of "Black Friar of the Flame", Asimov refused to make major, second, or non-editorial revisions ("like chewing used gum"), stating that "too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process". He submitted "failures" to another editor.
One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Robot:
Asimov addressed such criticism in 1989 at the beginning of Nemesis:
Gunn cited examples of a more complex style, such as the climax of "Liar!". Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", Arkady Darell in Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel, and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels.
Other than books by Gunn and Joseph Patrouch, a relative dearth of "literary" criticism exists on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:
Gunn's and Patrouch's respective studies of Asimov both state that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book comments in detail on each of Asimov's novels. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but calls some passages in The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".
Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), and said in 1973 that his style had not changed, Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in nonchronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material. (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "Reason", one of the early Robot stories). Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of The Currents of Space did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-kyrt Asimov fan" could enjoy it. In his later novel Nemesis one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.
Alien life
Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when Astoundings editor John Campbell rejected one of his science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. The nature of the rejection led him to believe that Campbell may have based his bias towards humans in stories on a real-world racial bias. Unwilling to write only weak alien races, and concerned that a confrontation would jeopardize his and Campbell's friendship, he decided he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms, he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens and alien sex. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of The Gods Themselves, the part that deals with those themes.
In the Hugo Award-winning novelette "Gold", Asimov describes an author, clearly based on himself, who has one of his books (The Gods Themselves) adapted into a "compu-drama", essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for having an extremely nonvisual style, making it difficult to adapt his work, and the author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across.
Romance and women
In the early days of science fiction some authors and critics felt that the romantic elements were inappropriate in science fiction stories, which were supposedly to be focused on science and technology. Isaac Asimov was a prominent supporter of this point of view, expressed in his 1938-1939 letters to Astounding, where he described such elements as "mush" and "slop". However, to his dismay, these letters were met with a strong opposition.
Asimov attributed the lack of romance and sex in his fiction to the "early imprinting" from starting his writing career when he had never been on a date and "didn't know anything about girls". He was sometimes criticized for the general absence of sex (and of extraterrestrial life) in his science fiction. He claimed he wrote The Gods Themselves to respond to these criticisms, which often came from New Wave science fiction (and often British) writers. The second part (of three) of the novel is set on an alien world with three sexes, and the sexual behavior of these creatures is extensively depicted.
Asimov was also criticized for a lack of strong female characters in his early work. However, some of his robot stories, including the earliest ones, featured the character Susan Calvin, a forceful and intelligent woman who regularly out-performed her male colleagues.
In his autobiographical writings, such as Gold ("Women and Science Fiction"), he acknowledges this complaint has merit and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early science-fiction stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. The Washington Post's "Book World" section reports of Robots and Empire opined "In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are."
Views
Religion
Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed the traditions of Orthodox Judaism, though not as stringently as they had in Petrovichi; they did not, however, force their beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus, he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the Torah represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that the Iliad recorded Greek mythology. When he was 13, he chose not to have a bar mitzvah. As his books Treasury of Humor and Asimov Laughs Again record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar" versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, an analysis of the historic foundations for both the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "humanist" and considered that term more practical. Asimov did, however, continue to identify himself as a secular Jew, as stated in his introduction to Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction, Wandering Stars: "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the Bar Mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."
When asked in an interview in 1982 if he was an atheist, Asimov replied,
Likewise, he said about religious education: "I would not be satisfied to have my kids choose to be religious without trying to argue them out of it, just as I would not be satisfied to have them decide to smoke regularly or engage in any other practice I consider detrimental to mind or body."
In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote,
The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".
Asimov said about using religious motifs in his writing:
Politics
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal, and thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography, In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman. Asimov's impression was that the 1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.
Asimov vehemently opposed Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He closely followed Watergate, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign. Asimov was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."
After Asimov's name appeared in the mid-1960s on a list of people the Communist Party USA "considered amenable" to its goals, the FBI investigated him. Because of his academic background, the bureau briefly considered Asimov as a possible candidate for known Soviet spy ROBPROF, but found nothing suspicious in his life or background.
Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though insisting that he was not a Zionist. In his third autobiography, Asimov stated his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he was opposed to having nation-states in general, and supported the notion of a single humanity. Asimov especially worried about the safety of Israel given that it had been created among hostile Muslim neighbors, and said that Jews had merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".
Social issues
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
In a 1988 interview by Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested. He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace. Asimov thought that people would live in space by the year 2019.
In 1983 Asimov wrote:
He continues on education:
Sexual harassment
Asimov would often fondle, kiss and pinch women at conventions and elsewhere without regard for their consent. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, author of an Asimov biography and writer on the history of science fiction, he often defended himself by saying that far from showing objections, these women cooperated. In the 1971 satirical piece, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, he wrote, "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched."
According to Nevala-Lee, however, "many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual." He wrote that Asimov's behaviour, as a leading science-fiction author and personality, contributed to an undesirable atmosphere for women in the male-dominated science fiction community. In support of this, he quoted some of Asimov's contemporary fellow-authors such as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison and Frederik Pohl, as well as editors such as Timothy Seldes. Specific incidents were reported by other people including Edward L. Ferman, long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction who wrote "... instead of shaking my date's hand, he shook her left breast".
Environment and population
Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the Bhopal disaster.
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:
Other authors
Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and in fact even used The Lord of the Rings as a plot point in a Black Widowers story, titled Nothing like Murder. In the essay All or Nothing (for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1981), Asimov revealed that he admires Tolkien and that he had read The Lord of the Rings five times. (The feelings were mutual, with Tolkien himself revealing that he had enjoyed Asimov's science fiction. This would make Asimov an exception to Tolkien's earlier claim that he rarely found "any modern books" that were interesting to him.)
He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, however, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction".
The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Asimov became a fan of mystery stories at the same time as science fiction. He preferred to read the former to latter because "I read every [science fiction] story keenly aware that it might be worse than mine, in which case I had no patience with it, or that it might be better, in which case I felt miserable". Asimov wrote "I make no secret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Christie as my model. In my opinion, her mysteries are the best ever written, far better than the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Hercule Poirot is the best detective fiction has seen. Why should I not use as my model what I consider the best?" He enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but considered Arthur Conan Doyle to be "a slapdash and sloppy writer."
Asimov also enjoyed humorous stories, particularly those of P. G. Wodehouse.
In non-fiction writing, Asimov particularly admired the writing style of Martin Gardner, and tried to emulate it in his own science books. On meeting Gardner for the first time in 1965, Asimov told him this, to which Gardner answered that he had based his own style on Asimov's.
Influence
Paul Krugman, holder of a Nobel Prize in Economics, stated Asimov's concept of psychohistory has inspired him to become an economist.
John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed, "It has been pointed out that most science fiction writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style." Along with such figures as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, Asimov left his mark as one of the most distinguished interdisciplinarians of the 20th century. "Few individuals", writes James L. Christian, "understood better than Isaac Asimov what synoptic thinking is all about. His almost 500 books—which he wrote as a specialist, a knowledgeable authority, or just an excited layman—range over almost all conceivable subjects: the sciences, history, literature, religion, and of course, science fiction."
Bibliography
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books (based on his personal count), Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing. An extensive bibliography of Isaac Asimov's works has been compiled by Ed Seiler. He published enough that his book writing rate could be analysed, showing that the writing became faster as he wrote more.
An online exhibit in West Virginia University Libraries' virtually complete Asimov Collection displays features, visuals, and descriptions of some of his over 600 books, games, audio recordings, videos, and wall charts. Many first, rare, and autographed editions are in the Libraries' Rare Book Room. Book jackets and autographs are presented online along with descriptions and images of children's books, science fiction art, multimedia, and other materials in the collection.
Science fiction
"Greater Foundation" series
The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series. The Galactic Empire novels were published as independent stories, set earlier in the same future as Foundation. Later in life, Asimov synthesized the Robot series into a single coherent "history" that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series.
All of these books were published by Doubleday & Co, except the original Foundation trilogy which was originally published by Gnome Books before being bought and republished by Doubleday.
The Robot series:
(first Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(second Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(third Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(sequel to the Elijah Baley trilogy)
Galactic Empire novels:
(early Galactic Empire)
(long before the Empire)
(Republic of Trantor still expanding)
Foundation prequels:
Original Foundation trilogy:
(also published with the title 'The Man Who Upset the Universe' as a 35¢ Ace paperback, D-125, in about 1952)
Extended Foundation series:
Lucky Starr series (as Paul French)
All published by Doubleday & Co
David Starr, Space Ranger (1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)
Norby Chronicles (with Janet Asimov)
All published by Walker & Company
Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983)
Norby's Other Secret (1984)
Norby and the Lost Princess (1985)
Norby and the Invaders (1985)
Norby and the Queen's Necklace (1986)
Norby Finds a Villain (1987)
Norby Down to Earth (1988)
Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure (1989)
Norby and the Oldest Dragon (1990)
Norby and the Court Jester (1991)
Novels not part of a series
Novels marked with an asterisk (*) have minor connections to Foundation universe.
The End of Eternity (1955), Doubleday (*)
Fantastic Voyage (1966), Bantam Books (paperback) and Houghton Mifflin (hardback) (a novelization of the movie)
The Gods Themselves (1972), Doubleday
Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), Doubleday (not a sequel to Fantastic Voyage, but a similar, independent story)
Nemesis (1989), Bantam Doubleday Dell (*)
Nightfall (1990), Doubleday, with Robert Silverberg (based on "Nightfall", a 1941 short story written by Asimov)
Child of Time (1992), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (based on "The Ugly Little Boy", a 1958 short story written by Asimov)
The Positronic Man (1993), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (*) (based on The Bicentennial Man, a 1976 novella written by Asimov)
Short-story collections
Mysteries
Novels
The Death Dealers (1958), Avon Books, republished as A Whiff of Death by Walker & Company
Murder at the ABA (1976), Doubleday, also published as Authorized Murder
Short-story collections
Black Widowers series
Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), Doubleday
More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976), Doubleday
Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), Doubleday
Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), Doubleday
Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), Doubleday
The Return of the Black Widowers (2003), Carroll & Graf
Other mysteries
Asimov's Mysteries (1968), Doubleday
The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977), Walker
The Union Club Mysteries (1983), Doubleday
The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries (1985), Walker
The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986), Doubleday
Nonfiction
Popular science
Collections of Asimov's essays for F&SF
The following books collected essays which were originally published as monthly columns in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected by Doubleday & Co
Fact and Fancy (1962)
View from a Height (1963)
Adding a Dimension (1964)
Of Time and Space and Other Things (1965)
From Earth to Heaven (1966)
Science, Numbers, and I (1968)
The Solar System and Back (1970)
The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
The Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
Asimov On Astronomy (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Asimov On Chemistry (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Of Matters Great and Small (1975)
Asimov On Physics (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
Asimov On Numbers (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
The Road to Infinity (1979)
The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
Counting the Eons (1983)
X Stands for Unknown (1984)
The Subatomic Monster (1985)
Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
Asimov on Science: A 30 Year Retrospective 1959–1989 (1989) (features the first essay in the introduction)
Out of the Everywhere (1990)
The Secret of the Universe (1991)
Other general science essay collections
Only a Trillion (1957), Abelard-Schuman,
Is Anyone There? (1967), Doubleday, (which includes the article in which he coined the term "spome")
Today and Tomorrow and— (1973), Doubleday
Science Past, Science Future (1975), Doubleday,
Please Explain (1975), Houghton Mifflin,
Life and Time (1978), Doubleday
The Roving Mind (1983), Prometheus Books, new edition 1997,
The Dangers of Intelligence (1986), Houghton Mifflin
Past, Present and Future (1987), Prometheus Books,
The Tyrannosaurus Prescription (1989), Prometheus Books
Frontiers (1990), Dutton
Frontiers II (1993), Dutton
Other science books by Asimov
The Chemicals of Life (1954), Abelard-Schuman
Inside the Atom (1956), Abelard-Schuman,
Building Blocks of the Universe (1957; revised 1974), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Carbon (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Nitrogen (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
Words of Science and the History Behind Them (1959), Houghton Mifflin
The Clock We Live On (1959), Abelard-Schuman,
Breakthroughs in Science (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Numbers (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Measure (1960), Houghton Mifflin
The Wellsprings of Life (1960), Abelard-Schuman,
Life and Energy (1962), Doubleday,
The Genetic Code (1962), The Orion Press
The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation (1963), Houghton Mifflin, , (revised)
The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions (1963), Houghton Mifflin,
Planets for Man (with Stephen H. Dole) (1964), Random House, reprinted by RAND in 2007
An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule (1965), Houghton Mifflin,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Basic Books
The title varied with each of the four editions, the last being Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984)
The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1966), Walker,
The Neutrino (1966), Doubleday, ASIN B002JK525W
Understanding Physics Vol. I, Motion, Sound, and Heat (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. II, Light, Magnetism, and Electricity (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. III, The Electron, Proton, and Neutron (1966), Walker,
Photosynthesis (1969), Basic Books,
Our World in Space (1974), New York Graphic,
Eyes on the Universe: A History of the Telescope (1976), Andre Deutsch Limited,
The Collapsing Universe (1977), Walker,
Extraterrestrial Civilizations (1979), Crown,
Visions of the Universe with illustrations by Kazuaki Iwasaki (1981), Cosmos Store,
Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), Crown,
The Measure of the Universe (1983), Harper & Row
Think About Space: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going? with co-author Frank White (1989), Walker
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery (1989), Harper & Row, second edition adds content thru 1993,
Beginnings: The Story of Origins (1989), Walker
Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (1991), Random House,
Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos (1991), Dutton,
Mysteries of Deep Space: Quasars, Pulsars and Black Holes (1994)
Earth's Moon (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Sun (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Earth (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Jupiter (1989), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Venus (1990), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Literary works
All published by Doubleday
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970),
Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" (1972)
Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost" (1974)
Familiar Poems, Annotated (1976)
Asimov's The Annotated "Gulliver's Travels" (1980)
Asimov's Annotated "Gilbert and Sullivan" (1988)
The Bible
Words from Genesis (1962), Houghton Mifflin
Words from the Exodus (1963), Houghton Mifflin
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vols I and II (1967 and 1969, one-volume ed. 1981), Doubleday,
The Story of Ruth (1972), Doubleday,
In the Beginning (1981), Crown
Autobiography
In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920–1954 (1979, Doubleday)
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 (1980, Doubleday)
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994, Doubleday)
It's Been a Good Life (2002, Prometheus Books), condensation of Asimov's three volumes of autobiography, edited by his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov
History
All published by Houghton Mifflin except where otherwise stated
The Kite That Won the Revolution (1963),
The Greeks (1965)
The Roman Republic (1966)
The Roman Empire (1967)
The Egyptians (1967)
The Near East (1968)
The Dark Ages (1968)
Words from History (1968)
The Shaping of England (1969)
Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)
The Land of Canaan (1971)
The Shaping of France (1972)
The Shaping of North America: From Earliest Times to 1763 (1973)
The Birth of the United States: 1763–1816 (1974)
Our Federal Union: The United States from 1816 to 1865 (1975),
The Golden Door: The United States from 1865 to 1918 (1977)
Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991), HarperCollins,
The March of the Millennia (1991), with co-author Frank White, Walker & Company,
Humor
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (1971) (As Dr. A), Walker & Company,
Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), Houghton Mifflin
Lecherous Limericks (1975), Walker,
More Lecherous Limericks (1976), Walker,
Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977), Walker,
Limericks, Two Gross, with John Ciardi (1978), Norton,
A Grossery of Limericks, with John Ciardi (1981), Norton,
Limericks for Children (1984), Caedmon
Asimov Laughs Again (1992), HarperCollins
On writing science fiction
Asimov on Science Fiction (1981), Doubleday
Asimov's Galaxy (1989), Doubleday
Other nonfiction
Opus 100 (1969), Houghton Mifflin,
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964), Doubleday (revised edition 1972, )
Opus 200 (1979), Houghton Mifflin,
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1979), Grosset & Dunlap,
Opus 300 (1984), Houghton Mifflin,
Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991), with co-author Frederik Pohl, Tor, .
Television, music, and film appearances
I Robot, a concept album by the Alan Parsons Project that examined some of Asimov's work
The Last Word (1959)
The Dick Cavett Show, four appearances 1968–71
The Nature of Things (1969)
ABC News coverage of Apollo 11, 1969, with Fred Pohl, interviewed by Rod Serling
David Frost interview program, August 1969. Frost asked Asimov if he had ever tried to find God and, after some initial evasion, Asimov answered, "God is much more intelligent than I am—let him try to find me."
BBC Horizon "It's About Time" (1979), show hosted by Dudley Moore
Target ... Earth? (1980)
The David Letterman Show (1980)
NBC TV Speaking Freely, interviewed by Edwin Newman (1982)
ARTS Network talk show hosted by Studs Terkel and Calvin Trillin, approximately (1982)
Oltre New York (1986)
Voyage to the Outer Planets and Beyond (1986)
Gandahar (1987), a French animated science-fiction film by René Laloux. Asimov wrote the English translation for the film.
Bill Moyers interview (1988)
Stranieri in America (1988)
Adaptations
El robot embustero (1966), short film directed by Antonio Lara de Gavilán, based on short story "Liar!"
A halhatatlanság halála (1977), TV movie directed by András Rajnai, based on novel The End of Eternity
The Ugly Little Boy (1977), short film directed by Barry Morse and Donald W. Thompson, based on novelette The Ugly Little Boy
All the Troubles of the World (1978), short film directed by Dianne Haak-Edson, based on short story "All the Troubles of the World"
The End of Eternity (1987), film directed by Andrei Yermash, based on novel The End of Eternity
Nightfall (1988), film directed by Paul Mayersberg, based on novelette "Nightfall"
Robots (1988), film directed by Doug Smith and Kim Takal, based on the Robot series
Feeling 109 (1988), short film directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov
Teach 109 (1989), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as The Android Affair)
The Android Affair (1995), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as Teach 109)
Bicentennial Man (1999), film directed by Chris Columbus, based on novelette "The Bicentennial Man" and on novel The Positronic Man
Nightfall (2000), film directed by Gwyneth Gibby, based on novelette "Nightfall"
I, Robot (2004), film directed by Alex Proyas, based on ideas of short stories of the Robot series
Formula of Death (2012), TV movie directed by Behdad Avand Amini, based on novel The Death Dealers
Spell My Name with an S (2014), short film directed by Samuel Ali, based on short story "Spell My Name with an S"
Foundation (2021), series created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, based on the Foundation series
Novelizations
Novel Fantastic Voyage, novelization of film Fantastic Voyage (1966)
References
Footnotes
Notes
Sources
Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green (1979), New York: Avon, .
In Joy Still Felt (1980), New York: Avon .
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), (hc), (pb).
Yours, Isaac Asimov (1996), edited by Stanley Asimov. New York: Doubleday .
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet Asimov. .
Goldman, Stephen H., "Isaac Asimov", in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 8, Cowart and Wymer eds. (Gale Research, 1981), pp. 15–29.
Gunn, James. "On Variations on a Robot", IASFM, July 1980, pp. 56–81.
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982). .
The Science of Science-Fiction Writing (2000). .
Further reading
External links
Asimov Online, a vast repository of information about Asimov, maintained by Asimov enthusiast Edward Seiler
Jenkins' Spoiler-Laden Guide to Isaac Asimov, reviews of all of Asimov's books
20th-century births
1992 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American male writers
AIDS-related deaths in New York (state)
American alternate history writers
Jewish American atheists
American biochemists
American essayists
American humanists
American humorists
American male novelists
20th-century American memoirists
United States Army non-commissioned officers
American mystery writers
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American science fiction writers
American science writers
American skeptics
American writers of Russian descent
Asimov's Science Fiction people
Bible commentators
Boston University faculty
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
Critics of religions
Date of birth unknown
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Futurians
Historians of astronomy
American historians of science
Hugo Award-winning writers
Humor researchers
Jewish American novelists
Jewish American short story writers
Jewish feminists
Jewish skeptics
American male essayists
Male feminists
American male short story writers
American short story writers
Mensans
Nebula Award winners
New York (state) Democrats
People from Shumyachsky District
Naturalized citizens of the United States
United States Navy civilians
Science fiction fans
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
SFWA Grand Masters
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Writers from Brooklyn
Yiddish-speaking people
Boys High School (Brooklyn) alumni
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New York (state)
Scientists from New York City
20th-century essayists
20th-century atheists
People from the Upper West Side
Pulp fiction writers
Writers about religion and science
Atheist feminists
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
| false |
[
"Prasana Kumar (abbreviated P K) Roy Memorial College, Dhanbad is a constituent college of Binod Bihari Mahto Koyalanchal University in Dhanbad, in the Indian state of Jharkhand. It offers courses of Intermediate, Under-Graduate and Post Graduate level in various subjects.\n\nHistory\nCollege was started by Sh. B K Roy of Katrasgarh in the name of his father Late Sh. Prasanna Kumar Roy. In 1977 it got the status of a constituent college under Ranchi University, Ranchi.\n\nCourses Offered\nCollege offers following courses\n\n Intermediate in Science (I.Sc.) \n Intermediate in Arts (I.A) \n Intermediate in Commerce (I.Com) \n Bachelors in Physics (B.Sc.) \n Bachelors in Chemistry (B.Sc.) \n Bachelors in Mathematics (B.Sc.) \n Bachelors in Botany (B.Sc.) \n Bachelors in Zoology (B.Sc.) \n Bachelors in Geology (B.Sc.) \n Bachelors in History (B.A.) \n Bachelors in Economics (B.A.) \n Post Graduate Courses in Arts, Science and Commerce (M.Sc. / M.Com / M.A.) \n Vocational Courses - Bachelor in Biotechnology (B.Sc.), Bachelor in Environment Science (B.Sc.).\n\nLocation \nP. K. Roy Memorial College, Dhanbad is located at Main Road NH 18, Saraidhela, Dhanbad.\n\nFaculty\nMathematics department -Md. Nasim Ansari\n\nAlumni\nBinod Bihari Mahato (Founder Jharkhand Mukti Morcha), Dr. R. N. Bhattacharya (Neuro Surgeon, AMRI Kolkata), Prof. (Dr.) S.N. Singh (Vice Chancellor, NPU, Medininagar), Reena Jamil are some of the notable alumni who have made significant contribution on global arena.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nBBMKU's Official Website\n\nColleges affiliated to Binod Bihari Mahto Koyalanchal University\nUniversities and colleges in Jharkhand\nEducation in Dhanbad",
"The Bachelors are an Irish music group formed in 1957.\n\nThe Bachelors may also refer to:\n\n The Bachelors (novel), a 1960 novel by Muriel Spark\n The Bachelors (1953 film), a Mexican musical comedy film\n The Bachelors (2017 film), a 2017 American film\n It's a Great Life (TV series), a 1950s American sitcom that aired in syndication as The Bachelors\n\nSee also\n Bachelor (disambiguation)\n Batchelors, a soup company"
] |
[
"Isaac Asimov",
"Education and career",
"Where did he go to school?",
"Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15,",
"Did he further his education?",
"he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students",
"What did he study there?",
"Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of \"dissecting an alley cat\".",
"Where else did he go to school?",
"After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.",
"What did he get a bachelors in?",
"he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948."
] |
C_4faa5e824b8a43099cb7ba91fcdaf534_0
|
Was he done with schooling after that?
| 6 |
Was Isaac Asimov done with schooling after his Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry?t?
|
Isaac Asimov
|
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then the institution's primary undergraduate school for men with quotas on the number of admissions from those ethnic groups. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939. After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov in 1939 applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia; initially rejected and then accepted only on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948. In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11. After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary, with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university. The difference grew, and in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955), and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb. In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively. CANNOTANSWER
|
In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station,
|
Isaac Asimov (; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction.
Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories. He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.
He was president of the American Humanist Association. Several entities have been named in his honor, including the asteroid (5020) Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, and four literary awards.
Surname
Asimov's family name derives from the first part of ozímyj khleb (озимый хлеб), meaning the winter grain (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending -ov added. Azimov is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov's father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov. This later inspired one of Asimov's short stories, "Spell My Name with an S".
Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that "Isaac Asimov" was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name.
Biography
Early life
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian-Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me".
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya; June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011), and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the Long Island Newsday.
Asimov's family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on February 3, 1923 when he was three years old. Since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English with him, he never learned Russian, but he remained fluent in both. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade). His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919. In third grade he learned about the "error" and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight.
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, a fact that Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time when the genre was becoming more science-centered.
Education and career
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then, the institution's primary undergraduate school for men. Jewish and Italian-American students, even of outstanding academic caliber, were often deliberately barred from Columbia College proper because of the then-popular practice of imposing unwritten ethnic admission quotas. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester because he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1936, Asimov finished his Bachelor of Science degree at Morningside Heights campus (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.
After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German.
In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11.
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949, teaching biochemistry with a $5,000 salary (), with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students. In 1955, he was promoted to associate professor, which gave him tenure. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title, he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class, and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb.
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26 the same year. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956. They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He immediately began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship. On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2. He sailed to England in June 1974 on the SS France for a trip mostly devoted to events in London and Birmingham, though he also found time to visit Stonehenge.
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly paid to give talks about science. He was a frequent fixture at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties. His physical dexterity was very poor. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle; however, he did learn to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".
Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe Pack, a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan. He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society, for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty's work "The Dynamics of An Asteroid" involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. He later used his essay on Moriarty's work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, "The Ultimate Crime", which appeared in More Tales of the Black Widowers.
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.
Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics. In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was "a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then." He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP "gave it immense status and authority" in his eyes.
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs".
After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.
Illness and death
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members.
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It's Been a Good Life.
Writings
Overview
Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, while writing over 120 nonfiction books. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories. Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series. Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".
Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology. Although Asimov did write several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982), which were classified in the 100s category, none of his own books were classified in that category.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.
Science fiction
Asimov became a science fiction fan in 1929, when he began reading the pulp magazines sold in his family's candy store. At first his father forbade reading pulps as he considered them to be trash, until Asimov persuaded him that because the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, they must be educational. At age 18 he joined the Futurians science fiction fan club, where he made friends who went on to become science fiction writers or editors.
Asimov began writing at the age of 11, imitating The Rover Boys with eight chapters of The Greenville Chums at College. His father bought Asimov a used typewriter at age 16. His first published work was a humorous item on the birth of his brother for Boys High School's literary journal in 1934. In May 1937 he first thought of writing professionally, and began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew" (now lost), that year. On May 17, 1938, puzzled by a change in the schedule of Astounding Science Fiction, Asimov visited its publisher Street & Smith Publications. Inspired by the visit, he finished the story on June 19, 1938, and personally submitted it to Astounding editor John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell met with Asimov for more than an hour and promised to read the story himself. Two days later he received a rejection letter explaining why in detail. This was the first of what became almost weekly meetings with the editor while Asimov lived in New York, until moving to Boston in 1949; Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and became a personal friend.
By the end of the month, Asimov completed a second story, "Stowaway". Campbell rejected it on July 22 but—in "the nicest possible letter you could imagine"—encouraged him to continue writing, promising that Asimov might sell his work after another year and a dozen stories of practice. On October 21, 1938, he sold the third story he finished, "Marooned Off Vesta", to Amazing Stories, edited by Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. Asimov was paid $64 (), or one cent a word. Two more stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May Amazing and "Trends" in the July Astounding, the issue fans later selected as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. For 1940, ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in Astounding. His earnings became enough to pay for his education, but not yet enough for him to become a full-time writer.
Asimov later said that unlike other top Golden Age writers Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt—also first published in 1939, and whose talent and stardom were immediately obvious—he "(this is not false modesty) came up only gradually". Through July 29, 1940, Asimov wrote 22 stories in 25 months, of which 13 were published; he wrote in 1972 that from that date he never wrote a science fiction story that was not published (except for two "special cases"). He was famous enough that Donald Wollheim told Asimov that he purchased "The Secret Sense" for a new magazine only because of his name, and the December 1940 issue of Astonishing—featuring Asimov's name in bold—was the first magazine to base cover art on his work, but Asimov later said that neither he himself nor anyone else—except perhaps Campbell—considered him better than an often published "third rater".
Based on a conversation with Campbell, Asimov wrote "Nightfall", his 32nd story, in March and April 1941, and Astounding published it in September 1941. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written. In Nightfall and Other Stories Asimov wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." "Nightfall" is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.
After writing "Victory Unintentional" in January and February 1942, Asimov did not write another story for a year. Asimov expected to make chemistry his career, and was paid $2,600 annually at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, enough to marry his girlfriend; he did not expect to make much more from writing than the $1,788.50 he had earned from 28 stories sold over four years. Asimov left science fiction fandom and no longer read new magazines, and might have left the industry had not Heinlein and de Camp been coworkers and previously sold stories continued to appear. In 1942, Asimov published the first of his Foundation stories—later collected in the Foundation trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). The books recount the fall of a vast interstellar empire and the establishment of its eventual successor. They also feature his fictional science of psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted. The trilogy and Robot series are his most famous science fiction. In 1966 they won the Hugo Award for the all-time best series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Campbell raised his rate per word, Orson Welles purchased rights to "Evidence", and anthologies reprinted his stories. By the end of the war Asimov was earning as a writer an amount equal to half of his Navy Yard salary, even after a raise, but Asimov still did not believe that writing could support him, his wife, and future children.
His "positronic" robot stories—many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in his introduction to the short story collection The Complete Robot (1982) that he was largely inspired by the almost relentless tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators.
The robot series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977, Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of I, Robot that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by Jeff Vintar titled Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired. (The title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for a story by Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel The Positronic Man by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.
Besides movies, his Foundation and Robot stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Donald Kingsbury. At least some of these appear to have been done with the blessing of, or at the request of, Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov.
In 1948, he also wrote a spoof chemistry article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he would receive at his oral examination, in case the examiners thought he wasn't taking science seriously. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". Laughing hysterically with relief, Asimov had to be led out of the room. After a five-minute wait, he was summoned back into the room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov".
Demand for science fiction greatly increased during the 1950s. It became possible for a genre author to write full-time. In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished "Grow Old with Me" (40,000 words), but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of Pebble in the Sky. Doubleday published five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome Press publish one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as I, Robot and his Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the Foundation trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as The Rest of the Robots.
Books and the magazines Galaxy, and Fantasy & Science Fiction ended Asimov's dependence on Astounding. He later described the era as his "'mature' period". Asimov's "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy, was his personal favorite story.
In 1972, his novel The Gods Themselves (which was not part of a series) was published to general acclaim, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Novel.
In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue. McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
Asimov said in 1969 that he had "the happiest of all my associations with science fiction magazines" with Fantasy & Science Fiction; "I have no complaints about Astounding, Galaxy, or any of the rest, heaven knows, but F&SF has become something special to me". Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines "anthologies").
Due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another book in his Foundation series, he did so with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992), his last novel.
Popular science
Asimov and two colleagues published a textbook in 1949, with two more editions by 1969. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's The Naked Sun and 1982's Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). He greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap". Asimov explained in The Rest of the Robots that he had been unable to write substantial fiction since the summer of 1958, and observers understood him as saying that his fiction career had ended, or was permanently interrupted. Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason".
Fantasy and Science Fiction invited Asimov to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine. The first of 399 monthly F&SF columns appeared in November 1958 and they continued until his terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by Doubleday, gave Asimov a reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science; he described them as his only popular science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects on the part of his readers. The column was ostensibly dedicated to popular science but Asimov had complete editorial freedom, and wrote about contemporary social issues in essays such as "Thinking About Thinking" and "Knock Plastic!". In 1975 he wrote of these essays: "I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment."
Asimov's first wide-ranging reference work, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960), was nominated for a National Book Award, and in 1963 he won a Hugo Award—his first—for his essays for F&SF. The popularity of his science books and the income he derived from them allowed him to give up most academic responsibilities and become a full-time freelance writer. He encouraged other science fiction writers to write popular science, stating in 1967 that "the knowledgeable, skillful science writer is worth his weight in contracts", with "twice as much work as he can possibly handle".
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience: "Uneasy". Floyd C. Gale said that "Asimov has a rare talent. He can make your mental mouth water over dry facts", and "science fiction's loss has been science popularization's gain". Asimov said that "Of all the writing I do, fiction, non-fiction, adult, or juvenile, these F & SF articles are by far the most fun". He regretted, however, that he had less time for fiction—causing dissatisfied readers to send him letters of complaint—stating in 1969 that "In the last ten years, I've done a couple of novels, some collections, a dozen or so stories, but that's nothing".
In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read the word "unionized" as un-ion-ized (pronounced "un-EYE-en-ized"), meaning "(a chemical species) being in an electrically neutral state, as opposed to being an ion", while non-chemists will read the word as union-ized (pronounced "YOU-nien-ized"), meaning "(a worker or organization) belonging to or possessing a trade union".
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term "robotics" in his 1941 story "Liar!", though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in Gold ("The Robot Chronicles"). While acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one third of the way down the first column of page 100, Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942 printing of his short story "Runaround".
In the same story, Asimov also coined the term "positronic" (the counterpart to "electronic" for positrons).
Asimov coined the term "psychohistory" in his Foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. Asimov said later that he should have called it psychosociology. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 fix-up novel Foundation. Somewhat later, the term "psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.
Other writings
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, including The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966), The Roman Empire (1967), The Egyptians (1967) The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968), and Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991).
He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes—covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), Asimov's Annotated Don Juan (1972), Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He published two full-length mystery novels, and wrote 66 stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders, and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, who he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends. A parody of the Black Widowers, "An Evening with the White Divorcés," was written by author, critic, and librarian Jon L. Breen. Asimov joked, "all I can do ... is to wait until I catch him in a dark alley, someday."
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks. Asimov featured Yiddish humor in Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, some of Asimov's behavior towards women was described as sexual harassment and cited as an example of historically problematic behavior by men in science fiction communities.
Asimov published three volumes of autobiography. In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980) cover his life up to 1978. The third volume, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), covered his whole life (rather than following on from where the second volume left off). The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov after his death. The book won a Hugo Award in 1995. Janet Asimov edited It's Been a Good Life (2002), a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Treks initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on Star Treks scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming that despite its inaccuracies, Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.
Awards and recognition
Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half-dozen lifetime awards.
He also received 14 honorary doctorate degrees from universities.
1955 – Guest of Honor at the 13th World Science Fiction Convention
1957 – Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award for best science book for youth, for Building Blocks of the Universe
1960 – Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
1962 – Boston University's Publication Merit Award
1963 – A special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction," for essays published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
1963 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1964 – The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" (1941) the all-time best science fiction short story
1965 – James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
1966 – Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation trilogy
1967 – Edward E. Smith Memorial Award
1967 – AAAS-Westinghouse Science Writing Award for Magazine Writing, for essay "Over the Edge of the Universe" (in the March 1967 Harper's Magazine)
1972 – Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Locus Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1975 – Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
1975 – Klumpke-Roberts Award "for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy"
1975 – Locus Award for Best Reprint Anthology for Before the Golden Age
1977 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Locus Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1981 – An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
1981 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978
1983 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
1983 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge
1984 – Humanist of the Year
1986 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him its 8th SFWA Grand Master (presented in 1987).
1987 – Locus Award for Best Short Story for "Robot Dreams"
1992 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Gold"
1995 – Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1995 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1996 – A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon for "The Mule", the 7th Foundation story, published in Astounding Science Fiction
1997 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Asimov in its second class of two deceased and two living persons, along with H. G. Wells.
2000 – Asimov was featured on a stamp in Israel
2001 – The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debates at the Hayden Planetarium in New York were inaugurated
2009 – A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov, was named in his honor
2010 – In the US Congress bill about the designation of the National Robotics Week as an annual event, a tribute to Isaac Asimov is as follows:
"Whereas the second week in April each year is designated as 'National Robotics Week', recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April 1992: Now, therefore, be it resolved ..."
2015 – Selected as a member of the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
2016 – A 1941 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1940 was given at the 2016 WorldCon for Robbie, his first positronic robot story, published in Super Science Stories, September 1940
2018 – A 1943 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1942 was given at the 2018 WorldCon for Foundation, published in Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942
Writing style
Asimov was his own secretary, typist, indexer, proofreader, and literary agent. He wrote a typed first draft composed at the keyboard at 90 words per minute; he imagined an ending first, then a beginning, then "let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it". (Asimov only used an outline once, later describing it as "like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket".) After correcting a draft by hand, he retyped the document as the final copy and only made one revision with minor editor-requested changes; a word processor did not save him much time, Asimov said, because 95% of the first draft was unchanged.
After disliking making multiple revisions of "Black Friar of the Flame", Asimov refused to make major, second, or non-editorial revisions ("like chewing used gum"), stating that "too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process". He submitted "failures" to another editor.
One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Robot:
Asimov addressed such criticism in 1989 at the beginning of Nemesis:
Gunn cited examples of a more complex style, such as the climax of "Liar!". Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", Arkady Darell in Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel, and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels.
Other than books by Gunn and Joseph Patrouch, a relative dearth of "literary" criticism exists on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:
Gunn's and Patrouch's respective studies of Asimov both state that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book comments in detail on each of Asimov's novels. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but calls some passages in The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".
Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), and said in 1973 that his style had not changed, Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in nonchronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material. (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "Reason", one of the early Robot stories). Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of The Currents of Space did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-kyrt Asimov fan" could enjoy it. In his later novel Nemesis one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.
Alien life
Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when Astoundings editor John Campbell rejected one of his science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. The nature of the rejection led him to believe that Campbell may have based his bias towards humans in stories on a real-world racial bias. Unwilling to write only weak alien races, and concerned that a confrontation would jeopardize his and Campbell's friendship, he decided he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms, he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens and alien sex. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of The Gods Themselves, the part that deals with those themes.
In the Hugo Award-winning novelette "Gold", Asimov describes an author, clearly based on himself, who has one of his books (The Gods Themselves) adapted into a "compu-drama", essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for having an extremely nonvisual style, making it difficult to adapt his work, and the author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across.
Romance and women
In the early days of science fiction some authors and critics felt that the romantic elements were inappropriate in science fiction stories, which were supposedly to be focused on science and technology. Isaac Asimov was a prominent supporter of this point of view, expressed in his 1938-1939 letters to Astounding, where he described such elements as "mush" and "slop". However, to his dismay, these letters were met with a strong opposition.
Asimov attributed the lack of romance and sex in his fiction to the "early imprinting" from starting his writing career when he had never been on a date and "didn't know anything about girls". He was sometimes criticized for the general absence of sex (and of extraterrestrial life) in his science fiction. He claimed he wrote The Gods Themselves to respond to these criticisms, which often came from New Wave science fiction (and often British) writers. The second part (of three) of the novel is set on an alien world with three sexes, and the sexual behavior of these creatures is extensively depicted.
Asimov was also criticized for a lack of strong female characters in his early work. However, some of his robot stories, including the earliest ones, featured the character Susan Calvin, a forceful and intelligent woman who regularly out-performed her male colleagues.
In his autobiographical writings, such as Gold ("Women and Science Fiction"), he acknowledges this complaint has merit and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early science-fiction stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. The Washington Post's "Book World" section reports of Robots and Empire opined "In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are."
Views
Religion
Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed the traditions of Orthodox Judaism, though not as stringently as they had in Petrovichi; they did not, however, force their beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus, he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the Torah represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that the Iliad recorded Greek mythology. When he was 13, he chose not to have a bar mitzvah. As his books Treasury of Humor and Asimov Laughs Again record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar" versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, an analysis of the historic foundations for both the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "humanist" and considered that term more practical. Asimov did, however, continue to identify himself as a secular Jew, as stated in his introduction to Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction, Wandering Stars: "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the Bar Mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."
When asked in an interview in 1982 if he was an atheist, Asimov replied,
Likewise, he said about religious education: "I would not be satisfied to have my kids choose to be religious without trying to argue them out of it, just as I would not be satisfied to have them decide to smoke regularly or engage in any other practice I consider detrimental to mind or body."
In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote,
The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".
Asimov said about using religious motifs in his writing:
Politics
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal, and thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography, In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman. Asimov's impression was that the 1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.
Asimov vehemently opposed Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He closely followed Watergate, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign. Asimov was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."
After Asimov's name appeared in the mid-1960s on a list of people the Communist Party USA "considered amenable" to its goals, the FBI investigated him. Because of his academic background, the bureau briefly considered Asimov as a possible candidate for known Soviet spy ROBPROF, but found nothing suspicious in his life or background.
Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though insisting that he was not a Zionist. In his third autobiography, Asimov stated his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he was opposed to having nation-states in general, and supported the notion of a single humanity. Asimov especially worried about the safety of Israel given that it had been created among hostile Muslim neighbors, and said that Jews had merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".
Social issues
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
In a 1988 interview by Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested. He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace. Asimov thought that people would live in space by the year 2019.
In 1983 Asimov wrote:
He continues on education:
Sexual harassment
Asimov would often fondle, kiss and pinch women at conventions and elsewhere without regard for their consent. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, author of an Asimov biography and writer on the history of science fiction, he often defended himself by saying that far from showing objections, these women cooperated. In the 1971 satirical piece, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, he wrote, "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched."
According to Nevala-Lee, however, "many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual." He wrote that Asimov's behaviour, as a leading science-fiction author and personality, contributed to an undesirable atmosphere for women in the male-dominated science fiction community. In support of this, he quoted some of Asimov's contemporary fellow-authors such as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison and Frederik Pohl, as well as editors such as Timothy Seldes. Specific incidents were reported by other people including Edward L. Ferman, long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction who wrote "... instead of shaking my date's hand, he shook her left breast".
Environment and population
Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the Bhopal disaster.
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:
Other authors
Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and in fact even used The Lord of the Rings as a plot point in a Black Widowers story, titled Nothing like Murder. In the essay All or Nothing (for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1981), Asimov revealed that he admires Tolkien and that he had read The Lord of the Rings five times. (The feelings were mutual, with Tolkien himself revealing that he had enjoyed Asimov's science fiction. This would make Asimov an exception to Tolkien's earlier claim that he rarely found "any modern books" that were interesting to him.)
He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, however, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction".
The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Asimov became a fan of mystery stories at the same time as science fiction. He preferred to read the former to latter because "I read every [science fiction] story keenly aware that it might be worse than mine, in which case I had no patience with it, or that it might be better, in which case I felt miserable". Asimov wrote "I make no secret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Christie as my model. In my opinion, her mysteries are the best ever written, far better than the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Hercule Poirot is the best detective fiction has seen. Why should I not use as my model what I consider the best?" He enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but considered Arthur Conan Doyle to be "a slapdash and sloppy writer."
Asimov also enjoyed humorous stories, particularly those of P. G. Wodehouse.
In non-fiction writing, Asimov particularly admired the writing style of Martin Gardner, and tried to emulate it in his own science books. On meeting Gardner for the first time in 1965, Asimov told him this, to which Gardner answered that he had based his own style on Asimov's.
Influence
Paul Krugman, holder of a Nobel Prize in Economics, stated Asimov's concept of psychohistory has inspired him to become an economist.
John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed, "It has been pointed out that most science fiction writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style." Along with such figures as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, Asimov left his mark as one of the most distinguished interdisciplinarians of the 20th century. "Few individuals", writes James L. Christian, "understood better than Isaac Asimov what synoptic thinking is all about. His almost 500 books—which he wrote as a specialist, a knowledgeable authority, or just an excited layman—range over almost all conceivable subjects: the sciences, history, literature, religion, and of course, science fiction."
Bibliography
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books (based on his personal count), Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing. An extensive bibliography of Isaac Asimov's works has been compiled by Ed Seiler. He published enough that his book writing rate could be analysed, showing that the writing became faster as he wrote more.
An online exhibit in West Virginia University Libraries' virtually complete Asimov Collection displays features, visuals, and descriptions of some of his over 600 books, games, audio recordings, videos, and wall charts. Many first, rare, and autographed editions are in the Libraries' Rare Book Room. Book jackets and autographs are presented online along with descriptions and images of children's books, science fiction art, multimedia, and other materials in the collection.
Science fiction
"Greater Foundation" series
The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series. The Galactic Empire novels were published as independent stories, set earlier in the same future as Foundation. Later in life, Asimov synthesized the Robot series into a single coherent "history" that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series.
All of these books were published by Doubleday & Co, except the original Foundation trilogy which was originally published by Gnome Books before being bought and republished by Doubleday.
The Robot series:
(first Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(second Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(third Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(sequel to the Elijah Baley trilogy)
Galactic Empire novels:
(early Galactic Empire)
(long before the Empire)
(Republic of Trantor still expanding)
Foundation prequels:
Original Foundation trilogy:
(also published with the title 'The Man Who Upset the Universe' as a 35¢ Ace paperback, D-125, in about 1952)
Extended Foundation series:
Lucky Starr series (as Paul French)
All published by Doubleday & Co
David Starr, Space Ranger (1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)
Norby Chronicles (with Janet Asimov)
All published by Walker & Company
Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983)
Norby's Other Secret (1984)
Norby and the Lost Princess (1985)
Norby and the Invaders (1985)
Norby and the Queen's Necklace (1986)
Norby Finds a Villain (1987)
Norby Down to Earth (1988)
Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure (1989)
Norby and the Oldest Dragon (1990)
Norby and the Court Jester (1991)
Novels not part of a series
Novels marked with an asterisk (*) have minor connections to Foundation universe.
The End of Eternity (1955), Doubleday (*)
Fantastic Voyage (1966), Bantam Books (paperback) and Houghton Mifflin (hardback) (a novelization of the movie)
The Gods Themselves (1972), Doubleday
Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), Doubleday (not a sequel to Fantastic Voyage, but a similar, independent story)
Nemesis (1989), Bantam Doubleday Dell (*)
Nightfall (1990), Doubleday, with Robert Silverberg (based on "Nightfall", a 1941 short story written by Asimov)
Child of Time (1992), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (based on "The Ugly Little Boy", a 1958 short story written by Asimov)
The Positronic Man (1993), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (*) (based on The Bicentennial Man, a 1976 novella written by Asimov)
Short-story collections
Mysteries
Novels
The Death Dealers (1958), Avon Books, republished as A Whiff of Death by Walker & Company
Murder at the ABA (1976), Doubleday, also published as Authorized Murder
Short-story collections
Black Widowers series
Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), Doubleday
More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976), Doubleday
Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), Doubleday
Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), Doubleday
Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), Doubleday
The Return of the Black Widowers (2003), Carroll & Graf
Other mysteries
Asimov's Mysteries (1968), Doubleday
The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977), Walker
The Union Club Mysteries (1983), Doubleday
The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries (1985), Walker
The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986), Doubleday
Nonfiction
Popular science
Collections of Asimov's essays for F&SF
The following books collected essays which were originally published as monthly columns in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected by Doubleday & Co
Fact and Fancy (1962)
View from a Height (1963)
Adding a Dimension (1964)
Of Time and Space and Other Things (1965)
From Earth to Heaven (1966)
Science, Numbers, and I (1968)
The Solar System and Back (1970)
The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
The Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
Asimov On Astronomy (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Asimov On Chemistry (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Of Matters Great and Small (1975)
Asimov On Physics (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
Asimov On Numbers (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
The Road to Infinity (1979)
The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
Counting the Eons (1983)
X Stands for Unknown (1984)
The Subatomic Monster (1985)
Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
Asimov on Science: A 30 Year Retrospective 1959–1989 (1989) (features the first essay in the introduction)
Out of the Everywhere (1990)
The Secret of the Universe (1991)
Other general science essay collections
Only a Trillion (1957), Abelard-Schuman,
Is Anyone There? (1967), Doubleday, (which includes the article in which he coined the term "spome")
Today and Tomorrow and— (1973), Doubleday
Science Past, Science Future (1975), Doubleday,
Please Explain (1975), Houghton Mifflin,
Life and Time (1978), Doubleday
The Roving Mind (1983), Prometheus Books, new edition 1997,
The Dangers of Intelligence (1986), Houghton Mifflin
Past, Present and Future (1987), Prometheus Books,
The Tyrannosaurus Prescription (1989), Prometheus Books
Frontiers (1990), Dutton
Frontiers II (1993), Dutton
Other science books by Asimov
The Chemicals of Life (1954), Abelard-Schuman
Inside the Atom (1956), Abelard-Schuman,
Building Blocks of the Universe (1957; revised 1974), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Carbon (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Nitrogen (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
Words of Science and the History Behind Them (1959), Houghton Mifflin
The Clock We Live On (1959), Abelard-Schuman,
Breakthroughs in Science (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Numbers (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Measure (1960), Houghton Mifflin
The Wellsprings of Life (1960), Abelard-Schuman,
Life and Energy (1962), Doubleday,
The Genetic Code (1962), The Orion Press
The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation (1963), Houghton Mifflin, , (revised)
The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions (1963), Houghton Mifflin,
Planets for Man (with Stephen H. Dole) (1964), Random House, reprinted by RAND in 2007
An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule (1965), Houghton Mifflin,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Basic Books
The title varied with each of the four editions, the last being Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984)
The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1966), Walker,
The Neutrino (1966), Doubleday, ASIN B002JK525W
Understanding Physics Vol. I, Motion, Sound, and Heat (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. II, Light, Magnetism, and Electricity (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. III, The Electron, Proton, and Neutron (1966), Walker,
Photosynthesis (1969), Basic Books,
Our World in Space (1974), New York Graphic,
Eyes on the Universe: A History of the Telescope (1976), Andre Deutsch Limited,
The Collapsing Universe (1977), Walker,
Extraterrestrial Civilizations (1979), Crown,
Visions of the Universe with illustrations by Kazuaki Iwasaki (1981), Cosmos Store,
Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), Crown,
The Measure of the Universe (1983), Harper & Row
Think About Space: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going? with co-author Frank White (1989), Walker
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery (1989), Harper & Row, second edition adds content thru 1993,
Beginnings: The Story of Origins (1989), Walker
Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (1991), Random House,
Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos (1991), Dutton,
Mysteries of Deep Space: Quasars, Pulsars and Black Holes (1994)
Earth's Moon (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Sun (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Earth (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Jupiter (1989), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Venus (1990), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Literary works
All published by Doubleday
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970),
Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" (1972)
Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost" (1974)
Familiar Poems, Annotated (1976)
Asimov's The Annotated "Gulliver's Travels" (1980)
Asimov's Annotated "Gilbert and Sullivan" (1988)
The Bible
Words from Genesis (1962), Houghton Mifflin
Words from the Exodus (1963), Houghton Mifflin
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vols I and II (1967 and 1969, one-volume ed. 1981), Doubleday,
The Story of Ruth (1972), Doubleday,
In the Beginning (1981), Crown
Autobiography
In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920–1954 (1979, Doubleday)
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 (1980, Doubleday)
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994, Doubleday)
It's Been a Good Life (2002, Prometheus Books), condensation of Asimov's three volumes of autobiography, edited by his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov
History
All published by Houghton Mifflin except where otherwise stated
The Kite That Won the Revolution (1963),
The Greeks (1965)
The Roman Republic (1966)
The Roman Empire (1967)
The Egyptians (1967)
The Near East (1968)
The Dark Ages (1968)
Words from History (1968)
The Shaping of England (1969)
Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)
The Land of Canaan (1971)
The Shaping of France (1972)
The Shaping of North America: From Earliest Times to 1763 (1973)
The Birth of the United States: 1763–1816 (1974)
Our Federal Union: The United States from 1816 to 1865 (1975),
The Golden Door: The United States from 1865 to 1918 (1977)
Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991), HarperCollins,
The March of the Millennia (1991), with co-author Frank White, Walker & Company,
Humor
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (1971) (As Dr. A), Walker & Company,
Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), Houghton Mifflin
Lecherous Limericks (1975), Walker,
More Lecherous Limericks (1976), Walker,
Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977), Walker,
Limericks, Two Gross, with John Ciardi (1978), Norton,
A Grossery of Limericks, with John Ciardi (1981), Norton,
Limericks for Children (1984), Caedmon
Asimov Laughs Again (1992), HarperCollins
On writing science fiction
Asimov on Science Fiction (1981), Doubleday
Asimov's Galaxy (1989), Doubleday
Other nonfiction
Opus 100 (1969), Houghton Mifflin,
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964), Doubleday (revised edition 1972, )
Opus 200 (1979), Houghton Mifflin,
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1979), Grosset & Dunlap,
Opus 300 (1984), Houghton Mifflin,
Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991), with co-author Frederik Pohl, Tor, .
Television, music, and film appearances
I Robot, a concept album by the Alan Parsons Project that examined some of Asimov's work
The Last Word (1959)
The Dick Cavett Show, four appearances 1968–71
The Nature of Things (1969)
ABC News coverage of Apollo 11, 1969, with Fred Pohl, interviewed by Rod Serling
David Frost interview program, August 1969. Frost asked Asimov if he had ever tried to find God and, after some initial evasion, Asimov answered, "God is much more intelligent than I am—let him try to find me."
BBC Horizon "It's About Time" (1979), show hosted by Dudley Moore
Target ... Earth? (1980)
The David Letterman Show (1980)
NBC TV Speaking Freely, interviewed by Edwin Newman (1982)
ARTS Network talk show hosted by Studs Terkel and Calvin Trillin, approximately (1982)
Oltre New York (1986)
Voyage to the Outer Planets and Beyond (1986)
Gandahar (1987), a French animated science-fiction film by René Laloux. Asimov wrote the English translation for the film.
Bill Moyers interview (1988)
Stranieri in America (1988)
Adaptations
El robot embustero (1966), short film directed by Antonio Lara de Gavilán, based on short story "Liar!"
A halhatatlanság halála (1977), TV movie directed by András Rajnai, based on novel The End of Eternity
The Ugly Little Boy (1977), short film directed by Barry Morse and Donald W. Thompson, based on novelette The Ugly Little Boy
All the Troubles of the World (1978), short film directed by Dianne Haak-Edson, based on short story "All the Troubles of the World"
The End of Eternity (1987), film directed by Andrei Yermash, based on novel The End of Eternity
Nightfall (1988), film directed by Paul Mayersberg, based on novelette "Nightfall"
Robots (1988), film directed by Doug Smith and Kim Takal, based on the Robot series
Feeling 109 (1988), short film directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov
Teach 109 (1989), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as The Android Affair)
The Android Affair (1995), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as Teach 109)
Bicentennial Man (1999), film directed by Chris Columbus, based on novelette "The Bicentennial Man" and on novel The Positronic Man
Nightfall (2000), film directed by Gwyneth Gibby, based on novelette "Nightfall"
I, Robot (2004), film directed by Alex Proyas, based on ideas of short stories of the Robot series
Formula of Death (2012), TV movie directed by Behdad Avand Amini, based on novel The Death Dealers
Spell My Name with an S (2014), short film directed by Samuel Ali, based on short story "Spell My Name with an S"
Foundation (2021), series created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, based on the Foundation series
Novelizations
Novel Fantastic Voyage, novelization of film Fantastic Voyage (1966)
References
Footnotes
Notes
Sources
Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green (1979), New York: Avon, .
In Joy Still Felt (1980), New York: Avon .
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), (hc), (pb).
Yours, Isaac Asimov (1996), edited by Stanley Asimov. New York: Doubleday .
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet Asimov. .
Goldman, Stephen H., "Isaac Asimov", in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 8, Cowart and Wymer eds. (Gale Research, 1981), pp. 15–29.
Gunn, James. "On Variations on a Robot", IASFM, July 1980, pp. 56–81.
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982). .
The Science of Science-Fiction Writing (2000). .
Further reading
External links
Asimov Online, a vast repository of information about Asimov, maintained by Asimov enthusiast Edward Seiler
Jenkins' Spoiler-Laden Guide to Isaac Asimov, reviews of all of Asimov's books
20th-century births
1992 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American male writers
AIDS-related deaths in New York (state)
American alternate history writers
Jewish American atheists
American biochemists
American essayists
American humanists
American humorists
American male novelists
20th-century American memoirists
United States Army non-commissioned officers
American mystery writers
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American science fiction writers
American science writers
American skeptics
American writers of Russian descent
Asimov's Science Fiction people
Bible commentators
Boston University faculty
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
Critics of religions
Date of birth unknown
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Futurians
Historians of astronomy
American historians of science
Hugo Award-winning writers
Humor researchers
Jewish American novelists
Jewish American short story writers
Jewish feminists
Jewish skeptics
American male essayists
Male feminists
American male short story writers
American short story writers
Mensans
Nebula Award winners
New York (state) Democrats
People from Shumyachsky District
Naturalized citizens of the United States
United States Navy civilians
Science fiction fans
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
SFWA Grand Masters
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Writers from Brooklyn
Yiddish-speaking people
Boys High School (Brooklyn) alumni
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New York (state)
Scientists from New York City
20th-century essayists
20th-century atheists
People from the Upper West Side
Pulp fiction writers
Writers about religion and science
Atheist feminists
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
| false |
[
"Anubhav Singh Bassi is an Indian comedian. Bassi was born in Parikshitgarh, Meerut. He is 31 years old (2022). He specializes in anecdotal comedy. His career as a standup comic started after an open mic in 2017. Bassi's YouTube videos have got 200 million+ views and he has over 3 million subscribers along with 1 million+ followers on Instagram. \n\nAlong with this, he has done a monologue for Amazon Funnies. and a cameo in Zee5's Comedy Couple. He has done his show tour Bas Kar Bassi in more than 35 cities across India. He also delivered a TED talk with great panache about his struggles. Bassi was awarded 'Youth Icon of the Year' by Golden Glory Awards (2021).\n\nEarly life and family\nBassi was born on 9 January, 1991 in a Hindu, Jat family in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. He completed his schooling from Dewan Public School, where he was the head boy. He graduated with a BA LLB degree from NLU-Lucknow in 2015. Bassi has also been an UPSC aspirant and an entrepreneur, before entering into standup.\n\nReferences \n\nIndian stand-up comedians\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nLiving people",
"Joseph Isaac Schooling (born 16 June 1995) is a Singaporean competitive swimmer. He was the gold medalist in the 100m butterfly at the 2016 Olympics, achieving Singapore's first ever Olympic gold medal. His winning time of 50.39 seconds broke multiple records at National, Southeast Asian, Asian and Olympic level.\n\nHe graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a member of the Texas Longhorns swimming team, one of the top collegiate swim programmes under two-time United States Olympic men's head coach Eddie Reese. He first qualified for the Olympics in 2012 after winning the 200m butterfly at the 2011 SEA Games.\n\nPersonal life and family\nJoseph Schooling was born and raised in Singapore, being a fourth-generation Singaporean. Joseph Schooling is the only child of May and Colin Schooling, and is of Eurasian ethnicity. May is a Malaysian Chinese and a Singapore Permanent Resident who had represented the Malaysian state of Perak in tennis; while Colin, a businessman born in Singapore and educated at Raffles Institution, was a hurdler and water polo player who represented Singapore in softball. His great-uncle, Lloyd Valberg, was Singapore's first Olympian in the 1948 Summer Olympics. He was the one who inspired Schooling to participate in the Olympics. Schooling's great-grandfather was a British military officer who married a Portuguese-Eurasian in Singapore.\n\nSchooling's early years of education were spent at the Anglo-Chinese School (Junior) in Singapore. He next attended Anglo-Chinese School (Independent), but left for the United States in 2009 when he was 13 years old to attend Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida. In 2010, Schooling started training under Sergio Lopez Miro, who later on in 2015 would become Singapore's national head coach. In 2014, after completing high school, he enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin.\n\nIn August 2016, Schooling had his National Service deferred until after the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. The Armed Forces Council had approved Schooling's request to extend his deferment, as he had been exemplary in fulfilling the “raison detre” for his deferment from 2013 Winter Olympics to the 2016 Summer Olympics. Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen had said then that NS deferment \"may be granted in exceptional circumstances to individual sportsmen, who are assessed to be potential medal winners at international competitions like the Olympic Games and bring national pride for the country.\n\nIn October 2016, Schooling received the Pingat Jasa Gemilang (Meritorious Service Medal) for his exceptional achievements at the Rio Olympics 2016 by winning Singapore's first ever Olympic gold medal in the men's 100m butterfly.\n\nOn 7 August 2017, an Orchid was named after Schooling; Dendrobium Joseph Schooling is a \"vigorous and free flowering\" hybrid with yellow and slightly twisted petals.\n\nOn 27 June 2018, Schooling launched his swimming school called Swim Schooling. The school is managed by his mother, May Schooling.\n\nIn 2020, Schooling and fellow national swimmer Quah Zheng Wen applied to further extend their National Service deferment, given the postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics due to the COVID-19 situation. Following Schooling and Quah's performance in the Tokyo Olympics, netizens quipped that both, who had been granted full-time National Service deferments, should now go, \"From Tokyo to Tekong\", citing the island where new recruits are trained. Schooling enlisted for National Service on 3 January 2022.\n\nJoseph Schooling's father Colin Schooling died on 18 November 2021 at the age of 73. He had been undergoing treatment for cancer since June of 2021.\n\nCollegiate career\n\n2015 NCAA\nSchooling won two individual titles (100 & 200-yard butterfly) at the 2015 NCAA Division I Men's Swimming and Diving Championships. His other title came from the 400-yard medley relay. He teamed up with Kip Darmody, Will Licon and Jack Conger to break the NCAA and US Open records. In the 200-yard medley relay, he was a member of the Texas team that finished third. Schooling also swam in the 200-yard medley consolation final (finishing first) and the 400-yard freestyle relay where Texas finished fourth.\n\n2016 NCAA\nSchooling successfully defended his butterfly titles, setting both NCAA and US open records of 44.01 in the 100-yard butterfly and 1:37.97 in the 200-yard butterfly at the 2016 NCAA Division I Men's Swimming and Diving Championships. He also won golds as a member of the 200 and 800-yard freestyle relays and the 400-yard medley relay. His silver came from the 400-yard freestyle relay and bronze from the 200-yard medley relay.\n\n2017 NCAA\nSchooling obtained four gold medals, a silver and a bronze medal at the 2017 NCAA Division I Men's Swimming and Diving Championships. His gold medals came from the 200 and 400-yard medley relays and the 200 and 400-yard freestyle relays. Texas set new NCAA and US open records in all of the relays he was involved except for the 200-yard medley relay.\n\nSchooling started off his individual campaign with a bronze in the 50-yard freestyle in 18.79 behind Caeleb Dressel and Ryan Held. He was unable to defend his butterfly titles, finishing behind Dressel in the 100-yard butterfly in 43.75 (2nd man fastest all-time). In the 200-yard butterfly, he failed to make the finals, finishing 37th overall.\n\nSchooling ended his collegiate career at the University of Texas with 12 NCAA titles (4 individuals & 8 relays).\n\nInternational career\nIn the early part of his career, Schooling was trained by coaches and swimmers of Australia under the monitoring of Monash University in a Singapore Sports Council programme.\n\nAt the 2011 Southeast Asian Games, Schooling's 1:56.67 winning time in the 200 fly met the \"A\" qualifying mark for the 2012 London Olympics. Unfortunately, he did not qualify for the semi-finals after finishing poorly in his heats where swimming officials disallowed the use of his swimming cap and goggles, causing him to have to search for new ones just minutes before the competition, affecting his state of mind.\n\nSchooling is the first Singaporean to win a swimming medal at the Commonwealth Games, taking silver in the 100 m butterfly at the 2014 games in Glasgow.\n\n2014 Asian Games\nSchooling's major breakthrough finally came during the Asian Games, where he clocked 51.76 seconds in the 100 m butterfly finals. Schooling's timing of 51.76 seconds was a new Asian Games record. It was Singapore's first Asian Games gold in the men's category since 1982. Schooling had earlier won a bronze for the 200 m butterfly event, ending a 24-year medal drought for Singapore's male swimming event. He followed that by winning a silver in the 50 m butterfly event.\n\n2015 SEA Games\nAt the 2015 SEA Games held in Singapore, Schooling took part in nine events, achieving gold and breaking Games records in all of them. Schooling's time of 22.47 seconds in the 50 m freestyle broke a 33-year national record (22.69 s) that was held by Ang Peng Siong, who had set it at the 1982 U.S. Swimming Championships.\n\n2015 FINA World Championships\n\nSchooling continued with his streak of achievements in the 2015 World Aquatics Championships. He advanced to the 50 m and 100 m butterfly finals, breaking the National Records for both events. In the 50 m butterfly event, he broke the Asian Record in the semi-finals before breaking it again in the finals with a time of 23.25 seconds, while in the 100 m butterfly event, he broke the Asian Record in the finals, with a time of 50.96 seconds. His bronze medal was Singapore's first ever medal at the FINA World Aquatics Championships.\n\n2016 Olympics\nOn 12 August 2016, in Rio de Janeiro, Schooling won a gold medal in the 100 m butterfly with a time of 50.39 seconds, the first Olympic gold medal won by Singapore. The time set a new Olympic record, beating Phelps' record of 50.58 seconds at the 2008 Summer Olympics.\n\nIn the semi-finals on 11 August 2016, Schooling swam 50.83 seconds as the fastest qualifier for the final. The time was a personal best, a national record, an Asian record, and the fastest time then-recorded in 2016 for the event, but only for a day as Schooling improved his time in the final.\n\nThe Singapore National Olympic Council awarded Schooling S$1 million (about US$740,000) under the Multi-Million Dollar Award Programme (MAP), 20% of which had to be ploughed back to the Singapore Swimming Association for future training and development. Singapore's unique \"rewards for sports excellence\" is deemed to be the world's largest Olympic cash prize. As a University of Texas collegiate swimmer, Schooling was subject to the NCAA's strict rules against college athletes accepting prize money. However, Schooling received his country's award as it fell within the NCAA exception of awards to foreign students.\n\nTo mark Schooling's historic gold medal, a victory parade was held in Singapore.\n\nSchooling's performance in Rio was listed in swimming magazine Swim Swam's Top 10 Swims Of 2016. He came in at No. 4, after Hungarian Katinka Hosszú (400 IM, Rio Olympics), American Katie Ledecky (800 m freestyle, Rio Olympics), Briton Adam Peaty (100 m breaststroke, Rio Olympics).\n\n2017 FINA World Championships\n\nSchooling swam 3 events (50 m, 100 m butterfly and 100 m freestyle) in Budapest. He broke his own Asian record twice in the 50 m butterfly heats (23.05 sec) and semi-finals (22.93 sec). He clocked 22.95 sec in the finals to finish 5th. He missed out on 100 m freestyle semi-final after finishing 17th in the heats. In the 100m butterfly finals, Olympic Champion Schooling was the favourite to win the event but Caeleb Dressel was too dominant from the heats to the finals. Dressel clocked 49.86 sec in the final to eclipse Schooling's world textile best time of 50.39 sec, set in Rio Olympics. Caeleb's time was 0.04 sec shy of Michael Phelps supersuit World Record. Schooling obtained a joint-Bronze medal with Briton James Guy with a time of 50.83 sec.\n\n2017 SEA Games\nSchooling swam six events at the 29th SEA Games held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He won all his events and broke four South-east Asian records (50 m, 100 m butterfly, 4 × 100 m freestyle relay & 4 × 100 m medley relay).\n\n2018 Asian Games\nSchooling participated in 3 individual events (50 m freestyle, 50 m, and 100 m butterfly) and 3 relays (4 × 100 m freestyle, 4 × 200 m freestyle & 4 × 100 m medley). He successfully defended his 100 m butterfly Gold with a new Asian Games record of 51.04 seconds. He later won Singapore's second Gold in the 50 m butterfly. He also contributed to the bronze medal winning relays (4 × 100 m freestyle & 4 × 200 m freestyle) and was 4th in 4 × 100 m medley relay. Both the 4 × 100 m and 4 × 200 m freestyle relays set a new national record.\n\n2019 FINA World Championships\n\nSchooling swam 3 events (50 m, 100 m butterfly and 4×100 m freestyle relay) in Gwangju. He did not qualify for the semi-finals for all his events.\n\n2019 SEA Games\n\nSchooling swam six events at the 30th SEA Games held in the Philippines. He obtained four gold and two silver medals. He lost the 50 m butterfly to Teong Tzen Wei and the 100m freestyle to Darren Chua.\n\n2020 Olympics\n\nSchooling did not defend his 100m butterfly title at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after failing to qualify for the semi-finals finishing 8th in his Heat. He placed 44th overall with a time of 53.12 seconds. Schooling also failed to qualify for the 100m freestyle semi-finals after finishing 6th in his Heat and 39th overall with a time of 49.84 seconds.\n\nAs champion of the 100m butterfly event at the previous Olympics, Schooling's failure to defend his title resulted in criticism of both him and Quah Zheng Wen in Singapore, which prompted President of Singapore Halimah Yacob to call on Singaporeans to be kinder and show their support for the athletes.\n\nAccolades\nThe Straits Times Singaporean of the Year, 2016\nThe Straits Times Athlete of the Year (2014, 2016)\n Sportsman of the Year (2012, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1995 births\nLiving people\nSingaporean sportspeople of Chinese descent\nSingaporean people of English descent\nSingaporean people of Kristang descent\nSingaporean Roman Catholics\nSingaporean male butterfly swimmers\nSingaporean male freestyle swimmers\nSwimmers at the 2012 Summer Olympics\nSwimmers at the 2016 Summer Olympics\nSwimmers at the 2020 Summer Olympics\nMedalists at the 2016 Summer Olympics\nOlympic swimmers of Singapore\nOlympic gold medalists for Singapore\nOlympic gold medalists in swimming\nSwimmers at the 2014 Asian Games\nSwimmers at the 2018 Asian Games\nAsian Games gold medalists for Singapore\nAsian Games silver medalists for Singapore\nAsian Games bronze medalists for Singapore\nAsian Games medalists in swimming\nMedalists at the 2014 Asian Games\nMedalists at the 2018 Asian Games\nWorld Aquatics Championships medalists in swimming\nSwimmers at the 2014 Commonwealth Games\nCommonwealth Games silver medallists for Singapore\nCommonwealth Games medallists in swimming\nSoutheast Asian Games gold medalists for Singapore\nSoutheast Asian Games silver medalists for Singapore\nSoutheast Asian Games bronze medalists for Singapore\nSoutheast Asian Games medalists in swimming\nTexas Longhorns men's swimmers\nBolles School alumni\nRecipients of the Pingat Jasa Gemilang\nCompetitors at the 2011 Southeast Asian Games\nCompetitors at the 2013 Southeast Asian Games\nCompetitors at the 2015 Southeast Asian Games\nCompetitors at the 2017 Southeast Asian Games\nCompetitors at the 2019 Southeast Asian Games"
] |
[
"Isaac Asimov",
"Education and career",
"Where did he go to school?",
"Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15,",
"Did he further his education?",
"he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students",
"What did he study there?",
"Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of \"dissecting an alley cat\".",
"Where else did he go to school?",
"After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.",
"What did he get a bachelors in?",
"he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948.",
"Was he done with schooling after that?",
"In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station,"
] |
C_4faa5e824b8a43099cb7ba91fcdaf534_0
|
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
| 7 |
Besides Isaac Asimovs life, are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
|
Isaac Asimov
|
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then the institution's primary undergraduate school for men with quotas on the number of admissions from those ethnic groups. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939. After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov in 1939 applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia; initially rejected and then accepted only on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948. In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11. After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary, with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university. The difference grew, and in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955), and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb. In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively. CANNOTANSWER
|
In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible.
|
Isaac Asimov (; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction.
Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories. He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.
He was president of the American Humanist Association. Several entities have been named in his honor, including the asteroid (5020) Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, and four literary awards.
Surname
Asimov's family name derives from the first part of ozímyj khleb (озимый хлеб), meaning the winter grain (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending -ov added. Azimov is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov's father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov. This later inspired one of Asimov's short stories, "Spell My Name with an S".
Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that "Isaac Asimov" was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name.
Biography
Early life
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian-Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me".
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya; June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011), and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the Long Island Newsday.
Asimov's family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on February 3, 1923 when he was three years old. Since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English with him, he never learned Russian, but he remained fluent in both. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade). His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919. In third grade he learned about the "error" and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight.
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, a fact that Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time when the genre was becoming more science-centered.
Education and career
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then, the institution's primary undergraduate school for men. Jewish and Italian-American students, even of outstanding academic caliber, were often deliberately barred from Columbia College proper because of the then-popular practice of imposing unwritten ethnic admission quotas. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester because he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1936, Asimov finished his Bachelor of Science degree at Morningside Heights campus (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.
After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German.
In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11.
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949, teaching biochemistry with a $5,000 salary (), with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students. In 1955, he was promoted to associate professor, which gave him tenure. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title, he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class, and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb.
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26 the same year. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956. They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He immediately began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship. On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2. He sailed to England in June 1974 on the SS France for a trip mostly devoted to events in London and Birmingham, though he also found time to visit Stonehenge.
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly paid to give talks about science. He was a frequent fixture at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties. His physical dexterity was very poor. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle; however, he did learn to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".
Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe Pack, a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan. He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society, for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty's work "The Dynamics of An Asteroid" involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. He later used his essay on Moriarty's work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, "The Ultimate Crime", which appeared in More Tales of the Black Widowers.
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.
Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics. In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was "a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then." He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP "gave it immense status and authority" in his eyes.
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs".
After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.
Illness and death
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members.
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It's Been a Good Life.
Writings
Overview
Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, while writing over 120 nonfiction books. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories. Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series. Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".
Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology. Although Asimov did write several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982), which were classified in the 100s category, none of his own books were classified in that category.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.
Science fiction
Asimov became a science fiction fan in 1929, when he began reading the pulp magazines sold in his family's candy store. At first his father forbade reading pulps as he considered them to be trash, until Asimov persuaded him that because the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, they must be educational. At age 18 he joined the Futurians science fiction fan club, where he made friends who went on to become science fiction writers or editors.
Asimov began writing at the age of 11, imitating The Rover Boys with eight chapters of The Greenville Chums at College. His father bought Asimov a used typewriter at age 16. His first published work was a humorous item on the birth of his brother for Boys High School's literary journal in 1934. In May 1937 he first thought of writing professionally, and began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew" (now lost), that year. On May 17, 1938, puzzled by a change in the schedule of Astounding Science Fiction, Asimov visited its publisher Street & Smith Publications. Inspired by the visit, he finished the story on June 19, 1938, and personally submitted it to Astounding editor John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell met with Asimov for more than an hour and promised to read the story himself. Two days later he received a rejection letter explaining why in detail. This was the first of what became almost weekly meetings with the editor while Asimov lived in New York, until moving to Boston in 1949; Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and became a personal friend.
By the end of the month, Asimov completed a second story, "Stowaway". Campbell rejected it on July 22 but—in "the nicest possible letter you could imagine"—encouraged him to continue writing, promising that Asimov might sell his work after another year and a dozen stories of practice. On October 21, 1938, he sold the third story he finished, "Marooned Off Vesta", to Amazing Stories, edited by Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. Asimov was paid $64 (), or one cent a word. Two more stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May Amazing and "Trends" in the July Astounding, the issue fans later selected as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. For 1940, ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in Astounding. His earnings became enough to pay for his education, but not yet enough for him to become a full-time writer.
Asimov later said that unlike other top Golden Age writers Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt—also first published in 1939, and whose talent and stardom were immediately obvious—he "(this is not false modesty) came up only gradually". Through July 29, 1940, Asimov wrote 22 stories in 25 months, of which 13 were published; he wrote in 1972 that from that date he never wrote a science fiction story that was not published (except for two "special cases"). He was famous enough that Donald Wollheim told Asimov that he purchased "The Secret Sense" for a new magazine only because of his name, and the December 1940 issue of Astonishing—featuring Asimov's name in bold—was the first magazine to base cover art on his work, but Asimov later said that neither he himself nor anyone else—except perhaps Campbell—considered him better than an often published "third rater".
Based on a conversation with Campbell, Asimov wrote "Nightfall", his 32nd story, in March and April 1941, and Astounding published it in September 1941. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written. In Nightfall and Other Stories Asimov wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." "Nightfall" is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.
After writing "Victory Unintentional" in January and February 1942, Asimov did not write another story for a year. Asimov expected to make chemistry his career, and was paid $2,600 annually at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, enough to marry his girlfriend; he did not expect to make much more from writing than the $1,788.50 he had earned from 28 stories sold over four years. Asimov left science fiction fandom and no longer read new magazines, and might have left the industry had not Heinlein and de Camp been coworkers and previously sold stories continued to appear. In 1942, Asimov published the first of his Foundation stories—later collected in the Foundation trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). The books recount the fall of a vast interstellar empire and the establishment of its eventual successor. They also feature his fictional science of psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted. The trilogy and Robot series are his most famous science fiction. In 1966 they won the Hugo Award for the all-time best series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Campbell raised his rate per word, Orson Welles purchased rights to "Evidence", and anthologies reprinted his stories. By the end of the war Asimov was earning as a writer an amount equal to half of his Navy Yard salary, even after a raise, but Asimov still did not believe that writing could support him, his wife, and future children.
His "positronic" robot stories—many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in his introduction to the short story collection The Complete Robot (1982) that he was largely inspired by the almost relentless tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators.
The robot series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977, Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of I, Robot that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by Jeff Vintar titled Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired. (The title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for a story by Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel The Positronic Man by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.
Besides movies, his Foundation and Robot stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Donald Kingsbury. At least some of these appear to have been done with the blessing of, or at the request of, Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov.
In 1948, he also wrote a spoof chemistry article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he would receive at his oral examination, in case the examiners thought he wasn't taking science seriously. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". Laughing hysterically with relief, Asimov had to be led out of the room. After a five-minute wait, he was summoned back into the room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov".
Demand for science fiction greatly increased during the 1950s. It became possible for a genre author to write full-time. In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished "Grow Old with Me" (40,000 words), but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of Pebble in the Sky. Doubleday published five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome Press publish one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as I, Robot and his Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the Foundation trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as The Rest of the Robots.
Books and the magazines Galaxy, and Fantasy & Science Fiction ended Asimov's dependence on Astounding. He later described the era as his "'mature' period". Asimov's "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy, was his personal favorite story.
In 1972, his novel The Gods Themselves (which was not part of a series) was published to general acclaim, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Novel.
In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue. McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
Asimov said in 1969 that he had "the happiest of all my associations with science fiction magazines" with Fantasy & Science Fiction; "I have no complaints about Astounding, Galaxy, or any of the rest, heaven knows, but F&SF has become something special to me". Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines "anthologies").
Due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another book in his Foundation series, he did so with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992), his last novel.
Popular science
Asimov and two colleagues published a textbook in 1949, with two more editions by 1969. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's The Naked Sun and 1982's Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). He greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap". Asimov explained in The Rest of the Robots that he had been unable to write substantial fiction since the summer of 1958, and observers understood him as saying that his fiction career had ended, or was permanently interrupted. Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason".
Fantasy and Science Fiction invited Asimov to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine. The first of 399 monthly F&SF columns appeared in November 1958 and they continued until his terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by Doubleday, gave Asimov a reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science; he described them as his only popular science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects on the part of his readers. The column was ostensibly dedicated to popular science but Asimov had complete editorial freedom, and wrote about contemporary social issues in essays such as "Thinking About Thinking" and "Knock Plastic!". In 1975 he wrote of these essays: "I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment."
Asimov's first wide-ranging reference work, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960), was nominated for a National Book Award, and in 1963 he won a Hugo Award—his first—for his essays for F&SF. The popularity of his science books and the income he derived from them allowed him to give up most academic responsibilities and become a full-time freelance writer. He encouraged other science fiction writers to write popular science, stating in 1967 that "the knowledgeable, skillful science writer is worth his weight in contracts", with "twice as much work as he can possibly handle".
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience: "Uneasy". Floyd C. Gale said that "Asimov has a rare talent. He can make your mental mouth water over dry facts", and "science fiction's loss has been science popularization's gain". Asimov said that "Of all the writing I do, fiction, non-fiction, adult, or juvenile, these F & SF articles are by far the most fun". He regretted, however, that he had less time for fiction—causing dissatisfied readers to send him letters of complaint—stating in 1969 that "In the last ten years, I've done a couple of novels, some collections, a dozen or so stories, but that's nothing".
In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read the word "unionized" as un-ion-ized (pronounced "un-EYE-en-ized"), meaning "(a chemical species) being in an electrically neutral state, as opposed to being an ion", while non-chemists will read the word as union-ized (pronounced "YOU-nien-ized"), meaning "(a worker or organization) belonging to or possessing a trade union".
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term "robotics" in his 1941 story "Liar!", though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in Gold ("The Robot Chronicles"). While acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one third of the way down the first column of page 100, Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942 printing of his short story "Runaround".
In the same story, Asimov also coined the term "positronic" (the counterpart to "electronic" for positrons).
Asimov coined the term "psychohistory" in his Foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. Asimov said later that he should have called it psychosociology. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 fix-up novel Foundation. Somewhat later, the term "psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.
Other writings
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, including The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966), The Roman Empire (1967), The Egyptians (1967) The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968), and Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991).
He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes—covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), Asimov's Annotated Don Juan (1972), Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He published two full-length mystery novels, and wrote 66 stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders, and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, who he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends. A parody of the Black Widowers, "An Evening with the White Divorcés," was written by author, critic, and librarian Jon L. Breen. Asimov joked, "all I can do ... is to wait until I catch him in a dark alley, someday."
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks. Asimov featured Yiddish humor in Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, some of Asimov's behavior towards women was described as sexual harassment and cited as an example of historically problematic behavior by men in science fiction communities.
Asimov published three volumes of autobiography. In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980) cover his life up to 1978. The third volume, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), covered his whole life (rather than following on from where the second volume left off). The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov after his death. The book won a Hugo Award in 1995. Janet Asimov edited It's Been a Good Life (2002), a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Treks initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on Star Treks scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming that despite its inaccuracies, Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.
Awards and recognition
Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half-dozen lifetime awards.
He also received 14 honorary doctorate degrees from universities.
1955 – Guest of Honor at the 13th World Science Fiction Convention
1957 – Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award for best science book for youth, for Building Blocks of the Universe
1960 – Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
1962 – Boston University's Publication Merit Award
1963 – A special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction," for essays published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
1963 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1964 – The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" (1941) the all-time best science fiction short story
1965 – James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
1966 – Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation trilogy
1967 – Edward E. Smith Memorial Award
1967 – AAAS-Westinghouse Science Writing Award for Magazine Writing, for essay "Over the Edge of the Universe" (in the March 1967 Harper's Magazine)
1972 – Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Locus Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1975 – Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
1975 – Klumpke-Roberts Award "for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy"
1975 – Locus Award for Best Reprint Anthology for Before the Golden Age
1977 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Locus Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1981 – An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
1981 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978
1983 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
1983 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge
1984 – Humanist of the Year
1986 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him its 8th SFWA Grand Master (presented in 1987).
1987 – Locus Award for Best Short Story for "Robot Dreams"
1992 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Gold"
1995 – Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1995 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1996 – A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon for "The Mule", the 7th Foundation story, published in Astounding Science Fiction
1997 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Asimov in its second class of two deceased and two living persons, along with H. G. Wells.
2000 – Asimov was featured on a stamp in Israel
2001 – The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debates at the Hayden Planetarium in New York were inaugurated
2009 – A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov, was named in his honor
2010 – In the US Congress bill about the designation of the National Robotics Week as an annual event, a tribute to Isaac Asimov is as follows:
"Whereas the second week in April each year is designated as 'National Robotics Week', recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April 1992: Now, therefore, be it resolved ..."
2015 – Selected as a member of the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
2016 – A 1941 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1940 was given at the 2016 WorldCon for Robbie, his first positronic robot story, published in Super Science Stories, September 1940
2018 – A 1943 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1942 was given at the 2018 WorldCon for Foundation, published in Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942
Writing style
Asimov was his own secretary, typist, indexer, proofreader, and literary agent. He wrote a typed first draft composed at the keyboard at 90 words per minute; he imagined an ending first, then a beginning, then "let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it". (Asimov only used an outline once, later describing it as "like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket".) After correcting a draft by hand, he retyped the document as the final copy and only made one revision with minor editor-requested changes; a word processor did not save him much time, Asimov said, because 95% of the first draft was unchanged.
After disliking making multiple revisions of "Black Friar of the Flame", Asimov refused to make major, second, or non-editorial revisions ("like chewing used gum"), stating that "too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process". He submitted "failures" to another editor.
One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Robot:
Asimov addressed such criticism in 1989 at the beginning of Nemesis:
Gunn cited examples of a more complex style, such as the climax of "Liar!". Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", Arkady Darell in Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel, and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels.
Other than books by Gunn and Joseph Patrouch, a relative dearth of "literary" criticism exists on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:
Gunn's and Patrouch's respective studies of Asimov both state that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book comments in detail on each of Asimov's novels. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but calls some passages in The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".
Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), and said in 1973 that his style had not changed, Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in nonchronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material. (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "Reason", one of the early Robot stories). Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of The Currents of Space did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-kyrt Asimov fan" could enjoy it. In his later novel Nemesis one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.
Alien life
Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when Astoundings editor John Campbell rejected one of his science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. The nature of the rejection led him to believe that Campbell may have based his bias towards humans in stories on a real-world racial bias. Unwilling to write only weak alien races, and concerned that a confrontation would jeopardize his and Campbell's friendship, he decided he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms, he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens and alien sex. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of The Gods Themselves, the part that deals with those themes.
In the Hugo Award-winning novelette "Gold", Asimov describes an author, clearly based on himself, who has one of his books (The Gods Themselves) adapted into a "compu-drama", essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for having an extremely nonvisual style, making it difficult to adapt his work, and the author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across.
Romance and women
In the early days of science fiction some authors and critics felt that the romantic elements were inappropriate in science fiction stories, which were supposedly to be focused on science and technology. Isaac Asimov was a prominent supporter of this point of view, expressed in his 1938-1939 letters to Astounding, where he described such elements as "mush" and "slop". However, to his dismay, these letters were met with a strong opposition.
Asimov attributed the lack of romance and sex in his fiction to the "early imprinting" from starting his writing career when he had never been on a date and "didn't know anything about girls". He was sometimes criticized for the general absence of sex (and of extraterrestrial life) in his science fiction. He claimed he wrote The Gods Themselves to respond to these criticisms, which often came from New Wave science fiction (and often British) writers. The second part (of three) of the novel is set on an alien world with three sexes, and the sexual behavior of these creatures is extensively depicted.
Asimov was also criticized for a lack of strong female characters in his early work. However, some of his robot stories, including the earliest ones, featured the character Susan Calvin, a forceful and intelligent woman who regularly out-performed her male colleagues.
In his autobiographical writings, such as Gold ("Women and Science Fiction"), he acknowledges this complaint has merit and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early science-fiction stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. The Washington Post's "Book World" section reports of Robots and Empire opined "In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are."
Views
Religion
Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed the traditions of Orthodox Judaism, though not as stringently as they had in Petrovichi; they did not, however, force their beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus, he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the Torah represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that the Iliad recorded Greek mythology. When he was 13, he chose not to have a bar mitzvah. As his books Treasury of Humor and Asimov Laughs Again record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar" versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, an analysis of the historic foundations for both the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "humanist" and considered that term more practical. Asimov did, however, continue to identify himself as a secular Jew, as stated in his introduction to Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction, Wandering Stars: "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the Bar Mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."
When asked in an interview in 1982 if he was an atheist, Asimov replied,
Likewise, he said about religious education: "I would not be satisfied to have my kids choose to be religious without trying to argue them out of it, just as I would not be satisfied to have them decide to smoke regularly or engage in any other practice I consider detrimental to mind or body."
In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote,
The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".
Asimov said about using religious motifs in his writing:
Politics
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal, and thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography, In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman. Asimov's impression was that the 1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.
Asimov vehemently opposed Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He closely followed Watergate, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign. Asimov was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."
After Asimov's name appeared in the mid-1960s on a list of people the Communist Party USA "considered amenable" to its goals, the FBI investigated him. Because of his academic background, the bureau briefly considered Asimov as a possible candidate for known Soviet spy ROBPROF, but found nothing suspicious in his life or background.
Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though insisting that he was not a Zionist. In his third autobiography, Asimov stated his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he was opposed to having nation-states in general, and supported the notion of a single humanity. Asimov especially worried about the safety of Israel given that it had been created among hostile Muslim neighbors, and said that Jews had merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".
Social issues
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
In a 1988 interview by Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested. He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace. Asimov thought that people would live in space by the year 2019.
In 1983 Asimov wrote:
He continues on education:
Sexual harassment
Asimov would often fondle, kiss and pinch women at conventions and elsewhere without regard for their consent. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, author of an Asimov biography and writer on the history of science fiction, he often defended himself by saying that far from showing objections, these women cooperated. In the 1971 satirical piece, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, he wrote, "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched."
According to Nevala-Lee, however, "many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual." He wrote that Asimov's behaviour, as a leading science-fiction author and personality, contributed to an undesirable atmosphere for women in the male-dominated science fiction community. In support of this, he quoted some of Asimov's contemporary fellow-authors such as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison and Frederik Pohl, as well as editors such as Timothy Seldes. Specific incidents were reported by other people including Edward L. Ferman, long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction who wrote "... instead of shaking my date's hand, he shook her left breast".
Environment and population
Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the Bhopal disaster.
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:
Other authors
Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and in fact even used The Lord of the Rings as a plot point in a Black Widowers story, titled Nothing like Murder. In the essay All or Nothing (for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1981), Asimov revealed that he admires Tolkien and that he had read The Lord of the Rings five times. (The feelings were mutual, with Tolkien himself revealing that he had enjoyed Asimov's science fiction. This would make Asimov an exception to Tolkien's earlier claim that he rarely found "any modern books" that were interesting to him.)
He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, however, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction".
The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Asimov became a fan of mystery stories at the same time as science fiction. He preferred to read the former to latter because "I read every [science fiction] story keenly aware that it might be worse than mine, in which case I had no patience with it, or that it might be better, in which case I felt miserable". Asimov wrote "I make no secret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Christie as my model. In my opinion, her mysteries are the best ever written, far better than the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Hercule Poirot is the best detective fiction has seen. Why should I not use as my model what I consider the best?" He enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but considered Arthur Conan Doyle to be "a slapdash and sloppy writer."
Asimov also enjoyed humorous stories, particularly those of P. G. Wodehouse.
In non-fiction writing, Asimov particularly admired the writing style of Martin Gardner, and tried to emulate it in his own science books. On meeting Gardner for the first time in 1965, Asimov told him this, to which Gardner answered that he had based his own style on Asimov's.
Influence
Paul Krugman, holder of a Nobel Prize in Economics, stated Asimov's concept of psychohistory has inspired him to become an economist.
John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed, "It has been pointed out that most science fiction writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style." Along with such figures as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, Asimov left his mark as one of the most distinguished interdisciplinarians of the 20th century. "Few individuals", writes James L. Christian, "understood better than Isaac Asimov what synoptic thinking is all about. His almost 500 books—which he wrote as a specialist, a knowledgeable authority, or just an excited layman—range over almost all conceivable subjects: the sciences, history, literature, religion, and of course, science fiction."
Bibliography
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books (based on his personal count), Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing. An extensive bibliography of Isaac Asimov's works has been compiled by Ed Seiler. He published enough that his book writing rate could be analysed, showing that the writing became faster as he wrote more.
An online exhibit in West Virginia University Libraries' virtually complete Asimov Collection displays features, visuals, and descriptions of some of his over 600 books, games, audio recordings, videos, and wall charts. Many first, rare, and autographed editions are in the Libraries' Rare Book Room. Book jackets and autographs are presented online along with descriptions and images of children's books, science fiction art, multimedia, and other materials in the collection.
Science fiction
"Greater Foundation" series
The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series. The Galactic Empire novels were published as independent stories, set earlier in the same future as Foundation. Later in life, Asimov synthesized the Robot series into a single coherent "history" that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series.
All of these books were published by Doubleday & Co, except the original Foundation trilogy which was originally published by Gnome Books before being bought and republished by Doubleday.
The Robot series:
(first Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(second Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(third Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(sequel to the Elijah Baley trilogy)
Galactic Empire novels:
(early Galactic Empire)
(long before the Empire)
(Republic of Trantor still expanding)
Foundation prequels:
Original Foundation trilogy:
(also published with the title 'The Man Who Upset the Universe' as a 35¢ Ace paperback, D-125, in about 1952)
Extended Foundation series:
Lucky Starr series (as Paul French)
All published by Doubleday & Co
David Starr, Space Ranger (1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)
Norby Chronicles (with Janet Asimov)
All published by Walker & Company
Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983)
Norby's Other Secret (1984)
Norby and the Lost Princess (1985)
Norby and the Invaders (1985)
Norby and the Queen's Necklace (1986)
Norby Finds a Villain (1987)
Norby Down to Earth (1988)
Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure (1989)
Norby and the Oldest Dragon (1990)
Norby and the Court Jester (1991)
Novels not part of a series
Novels marked with an asterisk (*) have minor connections to Foundation universe.
The End of Eternity (1955), Doubleday (*)
Fantastic Voyage (1966), Bantam Books (paperback) and Houghton Mifflin (hardback) (a novelization of the movie)
The Gods Themselves (1972), Doubleday
Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), Doubleday (not a sequel to Fantastic Voyage, but a similar, independent story)
Nemesis (1989), Bantam Doubleday Dell (*)
Nightfall (1990), Doubleday, with Robert Silverberg (based on "Nightfall", a 1941 short story written by Asimov)
Child of Time (1992), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (based on "The Ugly Little Boy", a 1958 short story written by Asimov)
The Positronic Man (1993), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (*) (based on The Bicentennial Man, a 1976 novella written by Asimov)
Short-story collections
Mysteries
Novels
The Death Dealers (1958), Avon Books, republished as A Whiff of Death by Walker & Company
Murder at the ABA (1976), Doubleday, also published as Authorized Murder
Short-story collections
Black Widowers series
Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), Doubleday
More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976), Doubleday
Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), Doubleday
Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), Doubleday
Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), Doubleday
The Return of the Black Widowers (2003), Carroll & Graf
Other mysteries
Asimov's Mysteries (1968), Doubleday
The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977), Walker
The Union Club Mysteries (1983), Doubleday
The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries (1985), Walker
The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986), Doubleday
Nonfiction
Popular science
Collections of Asimov's essays for F&SF
The following books collected essays which were originally published as monthly columns in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected by Doubleday & Co
Fact and Fancy (1962)
View from a Height (1963)
Adding a Dimension (1964)
Of Time and Space and Other Things (1965)
From Earth to Heaven (1966)
Science, Numbers, and I (1968)
The Solar System and Back (1970)
The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
The Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
Asimov On Astronomy (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Asimov On Chemistry (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Of Matters Great and Small (1975)
Asimov On Physics (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
Asimov On Numbers (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
The Road to Infinity (1979)
The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
Counting the Eons (1983)
X Stands for Unknown (1984)
The Subatomic Monster (1985)
Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
Asimov on Science: A 30 Year Retrospective 1959–1989 (1989) (features the first essay in the introduction)
Out of the Everywhere (1990)
The Secret of the Universe (1991)
Other general science essay collections
Only a Trillion (1957), Abelard-Schuman,
Is Anyone There? (1967), Doubleday, (which includes the article in which he coined the term "spome")
Today and Tomorrow and— (1973), Doubleday
Science Past, Science Future (1975), Doubleday,
Please Explain (1975), Houghton Mifflin,
Life and Time (1978), Doubleday
The Roving Mind (1983), Prometheus Books, new edition 1997,
The Dangers of Intelligence (1986), Houghton Mifflin
Past, Present and Future (1987), Prometheus Books,
The Tyrannosaurus Prescription (1989), Prometheus Books
Frontiers (1990), Dutton
Frontiers II (1993), Dutton
Other science books by Asimov
The Chemicals of Life (1954), Abelard-Schuman
Inside the Atom (1956), Abelard-Schuman,
Building Blocks of the Universe (1957; revised 1974), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Carbon (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Nitrogen (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
Words of Science and the History Behind Them (1959), Houghton Mifflin
The Clock We Live On (1959), Abelard-Schuman,
Breakthroughs in Science (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Numbers (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Measure (1960), Houghton Mifflin
The Wellsprings of Life (1960), Abelard-Schuman,
Life and Energy (1962), Doubleday,
The Genetic Code (1962), The Orion Press
The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation (1963), Houghton Mifflin, , (revised)
The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions (1963), Houghton Mifflin,
Planets for Man (with Stephen H. Dole) (1964), Random House, reprinted by RAND in 2007
An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule (1965), Houghton Mifflin,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Basic Books
The title varied with each of the four editions, the last being Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984)
The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1966), Walker,
The Neutrino (1966), Doubleday, ASIN B002JK525W
Understanding Physics Vol. I, Motion, Sound, and Heat (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. II, Light, Magnetism, and Electricity (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. III, The Electron, Proton, and Neutron (1966), Walker,
Photosynthesis (1969), Basic Books,
Our World in Space (1974), New York Graphic,
Eyes on the Universe: A History of the Telescope (1976), Andre Deutsch Limited,
The Collapsing Universe (1977), Walker,
Extraterrestrial Civilizations (1979), Crown,
Visions of the Universe with illustrations by Kazuaki Iwasaki (1981), Cosmos Store,
Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), Crown,
The Measure of the Universe (1983), Harper & Row
Think About Space: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going? with co-author Frank White (1989), Walker
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery (1989), Harper & Row, second edition adds content thru 1993,
Beginnings: The Story of Origins (1989), Walker
Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (1991), Random House,
Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos (1991), Dutton,
Mysteries of Deep Space: Quasars, Pulsars and Black Holes (1994)
Earth's Moon (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Sun (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Earth (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Jupiter (1989), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Venus (1990), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Literary works
All published by Doubleday
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970),
Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" (1972)
Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost" (1974)
Familiar Poems, Annotated (1976)
Asimov's The Annotated "Gulliver's Travels" (1980)
Asimov's Annotated "Gilbert and Sullivan" (1988)
The Bible
Words from Genesis (1962), Houghton Mifflin
Words from the Exodus (1963), Houghton Mifflin
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vols I and II (1967 and 1969, one-volume ed. 1981), Doubleday,
The Story of Ruth (1972), Doubleday,
In the Beginning (1981), Crown
Autobiography
In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920–1954 (1979, Doubleday)
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 (1980, Doubleday)
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994, Doubleday)
It's Been a Good Life (2002, Prometheus Books), condensation of Asimov's three volumes of autobiography, edited by his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov
History
All published by Houghton Mifflin except where otherwise stated
The Kite That Won the Revolution (1963),
The Greeks (1965)
The Roman Republic (1966)
The Roman Empire (1967)
The Egyptians (1967)
The Near East (1968)
The Dark Ages (1968)
Words from History (1968)
The Shaping of England (1969)
Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)
The Land of Canaan (1971)
The Shaping of France (1972)
The Shaping of North America: From Earliest Times to 1763 (1973)
The Birth of the United States: 1763–1816 (1974)
Our Federal Union: The United States from 1816 to 1865 (1975),
The Golden Door: The United States from 1865 to 1918 (1977)
Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991), HarperCollins,
The March of the Millennia (1991), with co-author Frank White, Walker & Company,
Humor
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (1971) (As Dr. A), Walker & Company,
Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), Houghton Mifflin
Lecherous Limericks (1975), Walker,
More Lecherous Limericks (1976), Walker,
Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977), Walker,
Limericks, Two Gross, with John Ciardi (1978), Norton,
A Grossery of Limericks, with John Ciardi (1981), Norton,
Limericks for Children (1984), Caedmon
Asimov Laughs Again (1992), HarperCollins
On writing science fiction
Asimov on Science Fiction (1981), Doubleday
Asimov's Galaxy (1989), Doubleday
Other nonfiction
Opus 100 (1969), Houghton Mifflin,
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964), Doubleday (revised edition 1972, )
Opus 200 (1979), Houghton Mifflin,
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1979), Grosset & Dunlap,
Opus 300 (1984), Houghton Mifflin,
Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991), with co-author Frederik Pohl, Tor, .
Television, music, and film appearances
I Robot, a concept album by the Alan Parsons Project that examined some of Asimov's work
The Last Word (1959)
The Dick Cavett Show, four appearances 1968–71
The Nature of Things (1969)
ABC News coverage of Apollo 11, 1969, with Fred Pohl, interviewed by Rod Serling
David Frost interview program, August 1969. Frost asked Asimov if he had ever tried to find God and, after some initial evasion, Asimov answered, "God is much more intelligent than I am—let him try to find me."
BBC Horizon "It's About Time" (1979), show hosted by Dudley Moore
Target ... Earth? (1980)
The David Letterman Show (1980)
NBC TV Speaking Freely, interviewed by Edwin Newman (1982)
ARTS Network talk show hosted by Studs Terkel and Calvin Trillin, approximately (1982)
Oltre New York (1986)
Voyage to the Outer Planets and Beyond (1986)
Gandahar (1987), a French animated science-fiction film by René Laloux. Asimov wrote the English translation for the film.
Bill Moyers interview (1988)
Stranieri in America (1988)
Adaptations
El robot embustero (1966), short film directed by Antonio Lara de Gavilán, based on short story "Liar!"
A halhatatlanság halála (1977), TV movie directed by András Rajnai, based on novel The End of Eternity
The Ugly Little Boy (1977), short film directed by Barry Morse and Donald W. Thompson, based on novelette The Ugly Little Boy
All the Troubles of the World (1978), short film directed by Dianne Haak-Edson, based on short story "All the Troubles of the World"
The End of Eternity (1987), film directed by Andrei Yermash, based on novel The End of Eternity
Nightfall (1988), film directed by Paul Mayersberg, based on novelette "Nightfall"
Robots (1988), film directed by Doug Smith and Kim Takal, based on the Robot series
Feeling 109 (1988), short film directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov
Teach 109 (1989), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as The Android Affair)
The Android Affair (1995), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as Teach 109)
Bicentennial Man (1999), film directed by Chris Columbus, based on novelette "The Bicentennial Man" and on novel The Positronic Man
Nightfall (2000), film directed by Gwyneth Gibby, based on novelette "Nightfall"
I, Robot (2004), film directed by Alex Proyas, based on ideas of short stories of the Robot series
Formula of Death (2012), TV movie directed by Behdad Avand Amini, based on novel The Death Dealers
Spell My Name with an S (2014), short film directed by Samuel Ali, based on short story "Spell My Name with an S"
Foundation (2021), series created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, based on the Foundation series
Novelizations
Novel Fantastic Voyage, novelization of film Fantastic Voyage (1966)
References
Footnotes
Notes
Sources
Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green (1979), New York: Avon, .
In Joy Still Felt (1980), New York: Avon .
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), (hc), (pb).
Yours, Isaac Asimov (1996), edited by Stanley Asimov. New York: Doubleday .
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet Asimov. .
Goldman, Stephen H., "Isaac Asimov", in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 8, Cowart and Wymer eds. (Gale Research, 1981), pp. 15–29.
Gunn, James. "On Variations on a Robot", IASFM, July 1980, pp. 56–81.
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982). .
The Science of Science-Fiction Writing (2000). .
Further reading
External links
Asimov Online, a vast repository of information about Asimov, maintained by Asimov enthusiast Edward Seiler
Jenkins' Spoiler-Laden Guide to Isaac Asimov, reviews of all of Asimov's books
20th-century births
1992 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American male writers
AIDS-related deaths in New York (state)
American alternate history writers
Jewish American atheists
American biochemists
American essayists
American humanists
American humorists
American male novelists
20th-century American memoirists
United States Army non-commissioned officers
American mystery writers
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American science fiction writers
American science writers
American skeptics
American writers of Russian descent
Asimov's Science Fiction people
Bible commentators
Boston University faculty
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
Critics of religions
Date of birth unknown
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Futurians
Historians of astronomy
American historians of science
Hugo Award-winning writers
Humor researchers
Jewish American novelists
Jewish American short story writers
Jewish feminists
Jewish skeptics
American male essayists
Male feminists
American male short story writers
American short story writers
Mensans
Nebula Award winners
New York (state) Democrats
People from Shumyachsky District
Naturalized citizens of the United States
United States Navy civilians
Science fiction fans
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
SFWA Grand Masters
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Writers from Brooklyn
Yiddish-speaking people
Boys High School (Brooklyn) alumni
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New York (state)
Scientists from New York City
20th-century essayists
20th-century atheists
People from the Upper West Side
Pulp fiction writers
Writers about religion and science
Atheist feminists
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
| false |
[
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
] |
[
"Isaac Asimov",
"Education and career",
"Where did he go to school?",
"Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15,",
"Did he further his education?",
"he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students",
"What did he study there?",
"Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of \"dissecting an alley cat\".",
"Where else did he go to school?",
"After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.",
"What did he get a bachelors in?",
"he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948.",
"Was he done with schooling after that?",
"In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible."
] |
C_4faa5e824b8a43099cb7ba91fcdaf534_0
|
Where did he work?
| 8 |
Where did Isaac Asimovs work?
|
Isaac Asimov
|
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then the institution's primary undergraduate school for men with quotas on the number of admissions from those ethnic groups. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939. After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov in 1939 applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia; initially rejected and then accepted only on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948. In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11. After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary, with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university. The difference grew, and in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955), and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb. In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively. CANNOTANSWER
|
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary,
|
Isaac Asimov (; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction.
Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories. He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.
He was president of the American Humanist Association. Several entities have been named in his honor, including the asteroid (5020) Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, and four literary awards.
Surname
Asimov's family name derives from the first part of ozímyj khleb (озимый хлеб), meaning the winter grain (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending -ov added. Azimov is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov's father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov. This later inspired one of Asimov's short stories, "Spell My Name with an S".
Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that "Isaac Asimov" was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name.
Biography
Early life
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian-Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me".
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya; June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011), and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the Long Island Newsday.
Asimov's family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on February 3, 1923 when he was three years old. Since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English with him, he never learned Russian, but he remained fluent in both. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade). His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919. In third grade he learned about the "error" and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight.
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, a fact that Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time when the genre was becoming more science-centered.
Education and career
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then, the institution's primary undergraduate school for men. Jewish and Italian-American students, even of outstanding academic caliber, were often deliberately barred from Columbia College proper because of the then-popular practice of imposing unwritten ethnic admission quotas. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester because he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1936, Asimov finished his Bachelor of Science degree at Morningside Heights campus (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.
After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German.
In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11.
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949, teaching biochemistry with a $5,000 salary (), with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students. In 1955, he was promoted to associate professor, which gave him tenure. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title, he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class, and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb.
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26 the same year. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956. They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He immediately began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship. On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2. He sailed to England in June 1974 on the SS France for a trip mostly devoted to events in London and Birmingham, though he also found time to visit Stonehenge.
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly paid to give talks about science. He was a frequent fixture at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties. His physical dexterity was very poor. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle; however, he did learn to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".
Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe Pack, a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan. He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society, for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty's work "The Dynamics of An Asteroid" involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. He later used his essay on Moriarty's work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, "The Ultimate Crime", which appeared in More Tales of the Black Widowers.
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.
Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics. In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was "a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then." He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP "gave it immense status and authority" in his eyes.
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs".
After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.
Illness and death
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members.
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It's Been a Good Life.
Writings
Overview
Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, while writing over 120 nonfiction books. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories. Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series. Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".
Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology. Although Asimov did write several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982), which were classified in the 100s category, none of his own books were classified in that category.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.
Science fiction
Asimov became a science fiction fan in 1929, when he began reading the pulp magazines sold in his family's candy store. At first his father forbade reading pulps as he considered them to be trash, until Asimov persuaded him that because the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, they must be educational. At age 18 he joined the Futurians science fiction fan club, where he made friends who went on to become science fiction writers or editors.
Asimov began writing at the age of 11, imitating The Rover Boys with eight chapters of The Greenville Chums at College. His father bought Asimov a used typewriter at age 16. His first published work was a humorous item on the birth of his brother for Boys High School's literary journal in 1934. In May 1937 he first thought of writing professionally, and began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew" (now lost), that year. On May 17, 1938, puzzled by a change in the schedule of Astounding Science Fiction, Asimov visited its publisher Street & Smith Publications. Inspired by the visit, he finished the story on June 19, 1938, and personally submitted it to Astounding editor John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell met with Asimov for more than an hour and promised to read the story himself. Two days later he received a rejection letter explaining why in detail. This was the first of what became almost weekly meetings with the editor while Asimov lived in New York, until moving to Boston in 1949; Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and became a personal friend.
By the end of the month, Asimov completed a second story, "Stowaway". Campbell rejected it on July 22 but—in "the nicest possible letter you could imagine"—encouraged him to continue writing, promising that Asimov might sell his work after another year and a dozen stories of practice. On October 21, 1938, he sold the third story he finished, "Marooned Off Vesta", to Amazing Stories, edited by Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. Asimov was paid $64 (), or one cent a word. Two more stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May Amazing and "Trends" in the July Astounding, the issue fans later selected as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. For 1940, ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in Astounding. His earnings became enough to pay for his education, but not yet enough for him to become a full-time writer.
Asimov later said that unlike other top Golden Age writers Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt—also first published in 1939, and whose talent and stardom were immediately obvious—he "(this is not false modesty) came up only gradually". Through July 29, 1940, Asimov wrote 22 stories in 25 months, of which 13 were published; he wrote in 1972 that from that date he never wrote a science fiction story that was not published (except for two "special cases"). He was famous enough that Donald Wollheim told Asimov that he purchased "The Secret Sense" for a new magazine only because of his name, and the December 1940 issue of Astonishing—featuring Asimov's name in bold—was the first magazine to base cover art on his work, but Asimov later said that neither he himself nor anyone else—except perhaps Campbell—considered him better than an often published "third rater".
Based on a conversation with Campbell, Asimov wrote "Nightfall", his 32nd story, in March and April 1941, and Astounding published it in September 1941. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written. In Nightfall and Other Stories Asimov wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." "Nightfall" is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.
After writing "Victory Unintentional" in January and February 1942, Asimov did not write another story for a year. Asimov expected to make chemistry his career, and was paid $2,600 annually at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, enough to marry his girlfriend; he did not expect to make much more from writing than the $1,788.50 he had earned from 28 stories sold over four years. Asimov left science fiction fandom and no longer read new magazines, and might have left the industry had not Heinlein and de Camp been coworkers and previously sold stories continued to appear. In 1942, Asimov published the first of his Foundation stories—later collected in the Foundation trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). The books recount the fall of a vast interstellar empire and the establishment of its eventual successor. They also feature his fictional science of psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted. The trilogy and Robot series are his most famous science fiction. In 1966 they won the Hugo Award for the all-time best series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Campbell raised his rate per word, Orson Welles purchased rights to "Evidence", and anthologies reprinted his stories. By the end of the war Asimov was earning as a writer an amount equal to half of his Navy Yard salary, even after a raise, but Asimov still did not believe that writing could support him, his wife, and future children.
His "positronic" robot stories—many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in his introduction to the short story collection The Complete Robot (1982) that he was largely inspired by the almost relentless tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators.
The robot series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977, Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of I, Robot that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by Jeff Vintar titled Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired. (The title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for a story by Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel The Positronic Man by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.
Besides movies, his Foundation and Robot stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Donald Kingsbury. At least some of these appear to have been done with the blessing of, or at the request of, Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov.
In 1948, he also wrote a spoof chemistry article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he would receive at his oral examination, in case the examiners thought he wasn't taking science seriously. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". Laughing hysterically with relief, Asimov had to be led out of the room. After a five-minute wait, he was summoned back into the room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov".
Demand for science fiction greatly increased during the 1950s. It became possible for a genre author to write full-time. In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished "Grow Old with Me" (40,000 words), but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of Pebble in the Sky. Doubleday published five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome Press publish one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as I, Robot and his Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the Foundation trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as The Rest of the Robots.
Books and the magazines Galaxy, and Fantasy & Science Fiction ended Asimov's dependence on Astounding. He later described the era as his "'mature' period". Asimov's "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy, was his personal favorite story.
In 1972, his novel The Gods Themselves (which was not part of a series) was published to general acclaim, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Novel.
In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue. McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
Asimov said in 1969 that he had "the happiest of all my associations with science fiction magazines" with Fantasy & Science Fiction; "I have no complaints about Astounding, Galaxy, or any of the rest, heaven knows, but F&SF has become something special to me". Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines "anthologies").
Due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another book in his Foundation series, he did so with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992), his last novel.
Popular science
Asimov and two colleagues published a textbook in 1949, with two more editions by 1969. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's The Naked Sun and 1982's Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). He greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap". Asimov explained in The Rest of the Robots that he had been unable to write substantial fiction since the summer of 1958, and observers understood him as saying that his fiction career had ended, or was permanently interrupted. Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason".
Fantasy and Science Fiction invited Asimov to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine. The first of 399 monthly F&SF columns appeared in November 1958 and they continued until his terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by Doubleday, gave Asimov a reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science; he described them as his only popular science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects on the part of his readers. The column was ostensibly dedicated to popular science but Asimov had complete editorial freedom, and wrote about contemporary social issues in essays such as "Thinking About Thinking" and "Knock Plastic!". In 1975 he wrote of these essays: "I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment."
Asimov's first wide-ranging reference work, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960), was nominated for a National Book Award, and in 1963 he won a Hugo Award—his first—for his essays for F&SF. The popularity of his science books and the income he derived from them allowed him to give up most academic responsibilities and become a full-time freelance writer. He encouraged other science fiction writers to write popular science, stating in 1967 that "the knowledgeable, skillful science writer is worth his weight in contracts", with "twice as much work as he can possibly handle".
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience: "Uneasy". Floyd C. Gale said that "Asimov has a rare talent. He can make your mental mouth water over dry facts", and "science fiction's loss has been science popularization's gain". Asimov said that "Of all the writing I do, fiction, non-fiction, adult, or juvenile, these F & SF articles are by far the most fun". He regretted, however, that he had less time for fiction—causing dissatisfied readers to send him letters of complaint—stating in 1969 that "In the last ten years, I've done a couple of novels, some collections, a dozen or so stories, but that's nothing".
In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read the word "unionized" as un-ion-ized (pronounced "un-EYE-en-ized"), meaning "(a chemical species) being in an electrically neutral state, as opposed to being an ion", while non-chemists will read the word as union-ized (pronounced "YOU-nien-ized"), meaning "(a worker or organization) belonging to or possessing a trade union".
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term "robotics" in his 1941 story "Liar!", though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in Gold ("The Robot Chronicles"). While acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one third of the way down the first column of page 100, Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942 printing of his short story "Runaround".
In the same story, Asimov also coined the term "positronic" (the counterpart to "electronic" for positrons).
Asimov coined the term "psychohistory" in his Foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. Asimov said later that he should have called it psychosociology. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 fix-up novel Foundation. Somewhat later, the term "psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.
Other writings
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, including The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966), The Roman Empire (1967), The Egyptians (1967) The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968), and Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991).
He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes—covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), Asimov's Annotated Don Juan (1972), Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He published two full-length mystery novels, and wrote 66 stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders, and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, who he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends. A parody of the Black Widowers, "An Evening with the White Divorcés," was written by author, critic, and librarian Jon L. Breen. Asimov joked, "all I can do ... is to wait until I catch him in a dark alley, someday."
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks. Asimov featured Yiddish humor in Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, some of Asimov's behavior towards women was described as sexual harassment and cited as an example of historically problematic behavior by men in science fiction communities.
Asimov published three volumes of autobiography. In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980) cover his life up to 1978. The third volume, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), covered his whole life (rather than following on from where the second volume left off). The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov after his death. The book won a Hugo Award in 1995. Janet Asimov edited It's Been a Good Life (2002), a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Treks initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on Star Treks scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming that despite its inaccuracies, Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.
Awards and recognition
Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half-dozen lifetime awards.
He also received 14 honorary doctorate degrees from universities.
1955 – Guest of Honor at the 13th World Science Fiction Convention
1957 – Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award for best science book for youth, for Building Blocks of the Universe
1960 – Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
1962 – Boston University's Publication Merit Award
1963 – A special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction," for essays published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
1963 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1964 – The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" (1941) the all-time best science fiction short story
1965 – James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
1966 – Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation trilogy
1967 – Edward E. Smith Memorial Award
1967 – AAAS-Westinghouse Science Writing Award for Magazine Writing, for essay "Over the Edge of the Universe" (in the March 1967 Harper's Magazine)
1972 – Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Locus Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1975 – Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
1975 – Klumpke-Roberts Award "for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy"
1975 – Locus Award for Best Reprint Anthology for Before the Golden Age
1977 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Locus Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1981 – An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
1981 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978
1983 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
1983 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge
1984 – Humanist of the Year
1986 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him its 8th SFWA Grand Master (presented in 1987).
1987 – Locus Award for Best Short Story for "Robot Dreams"
1992 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Gold"
1995 – Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1995 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1996 – A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon for "The Mule", the 7th Foundation story, published in Astounding Science Fiction
1997 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Asimov in its second class of two deceased and two living persons, along with H. G. Wells.
2000 – Asimov was featured on a stamp in Israel
2001 – The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debates at the Hayden Planetarium in New York were inaugurated
2009 – A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov, was named in his honor
2010 – In the US Congress bill about the designation of the National Robotics Week as an annual event, a tribute to Isaac Asimov is as follows:
"Whereas the second week in April each year is designated as 'National Robotics Week', recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April 1992: Now, therefore, be it resolved ..."
2015 – Selected as a member of the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
2016 – A 1941 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1940 was given at the 2016 WorldCon for Robbie, his first positronic robot story, published in Super Science Stories, September 1940
2018 – A 1943 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1942 was given at the 2018 WorldCon for Foundation, published in Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942
Writing style
Asimov was his own secretary, typist, indexer, proofreader, and literary agent. He wrote a typed first draft composed at the keyboard at 90 words per minute; he imagined an ending first, then a beginning, then "let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it". (Asimov only used an outline once, later describing it as "like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket".) After correcting a draft by hand, he retyped the document as the final copy and only made one revision with minor editor-requested changes; a word processor did not save him much time, Asimov said, because 95% of the first draft was unchanged.
After disliking making multiple revisions of "Black Friar of the Flame", Asimov refused to make major, second, or non-editorial revisions ("like chewing used gum"), stating that "too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process". He submitted "failures" to another editor.
One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Robot:
Asimov addressed such criticism in 1989 at the beginning of Nemesis:
Gunn cited examples of a more complex style, such as the climax of "Liar!". Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", Arkady Darell in Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel, and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels.
Other than books by Gunn and Joseph Patrouch, a relative dearth of "literary" criticism exists on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:
Gunn's and Patrouch's respective studies of Asimov both state that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book comments in detail on each of Asimov's novels. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but calls some passages in The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".
Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), and said in 1973 that his style had not changed, Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in nonchronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material. (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "Reason", one of the early Robot stories). Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of The Currents of Space did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-kyrt Asimov fan" could enjoy it. In his later novel Nemesis one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.
Alien life
Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when Astoundings editor John Campbell rejected one of his science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. The nature of the rejection led him to believe that Campbell may have based his bias towards humans in stories on a real-world racial bias. Unwilling to write only weak alien races, and concerned that a confrontation would jeopardize his and Campbell's friendship, he decided he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms, he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens and alien sex. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of The Gods Themselves, the part that deals with those themes.
In the Hugo Award-winning novelette "Gold", Asimov describes an author, clearly based on himself, who has one of his books (The Gods Themselves) adapted into a "compu-drama", essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for having an extremely nonvisual style, making it difficult to adapt his work, and the author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across.
Romance and women
In the early days of science fiction some authors and critics felt that the romantic elements were inappropriate in science fiction stories, which were supposedly to be focused on science and technology. Isaac Asimov was a prominent supporter of this point of view, expressed in his 1938-1939 letters to Astounding, where he described such elements as "mush" and "slop". However, to his dismay, these letters were met with a strong opposition.
Asimov attributed the lack of romance and sex in his fiction to the "early imprinting" from starting his writing career when he had never been on a date and "didn't know anything about girls". He was sometimes criticized for the general absence of sex (and of extraterrestrial life) in his science fiction. He claimed he wrote The Gods Themselves to respond to these criticisms, which often came from New Wave science fiction (and often British) writers. The second part (of three) of the novel is set on an alien world with three sexes, and the sexual behavior of these creatures is extensively depicted.
Asimov was also criticized for a lack of strong female characters in his early work. However, some of his robot stories, including the earliest ones, featured the character Susan Calvin, a forceful and intelligent woman who regularly out-performed her male colleagues.
In his autobiographical writings, such as Gold ("Women and Science Fiction"), he acknowledges this complaint has merit and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early science-fiction stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. The Washington Post's "Book World" section reports of Robots and Empire opined "In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are."
Views
Religion
Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed the traditions of Orthodox Judaism, though not as stringently as they had in Petrovichi; they did not, however, force their beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus, he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the Torah represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that the Iliad recorded Greek mythology. When he was 13, he chose not to have a bar mitzvah. As his books Treasury of Humor and Asimov Laughs Again record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar" versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, an analysis of the historic foundations for both the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "humanist" and considered that term more practical. Asimov did, however, continue to identify himself as a secular Jew, as stated in his introduction to Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction, Wandering Stars: "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the Bar Mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."
When asked in an interview in 1982 if he was an atheist, Asimov replied,
Likewise, he said about religious education: "I would not be satisfied to have my kids choose to be religious without trying to argue them out of it, just as I would not be satisfied to have them decide to smoke regularly or engage in any other practice I consider detrimental to mind or body."
In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote,
The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".
Asimov said about using religious motifs in his writing:
Politics
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal, and thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography, In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman. Asimov's impression was that the 1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.
Asimov vehemently opposed Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He closely followed Watergate, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign. Asimov was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."
After Asimov's name appeared in the mid-1960s on a list of people the Communist Party USA "considered amenable" to its goals, the FBI investigated him. Because of his academic background, the bureau briefly considered Asimov as a possible candidate for known Soviet spy ROBPROF, but found nothing suspicious in his life or background.
Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though insisting that he was not a Zionist. In his third autobiography, Asimov stated his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he was opposed to having nation-states in general, and supported the notion of a single humanity. Asimov especially worried about the safety of Israel given that it had been created among hostile Muslim neighbors, and said that Jews had merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".
Social issues
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
In a 1988 interview by Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested. He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace. Asimov thought that people would live in space by the year 2019.
In 1983 Asimov wrote:
He continues on education:
Sexual harassment
Asimov would often fondle, kiss and pinch women at conventions and elsewhere without regard for their consent. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, author of an Asimov biography and writer on the history of science fiction, he often defended himself by saying that far from showing objections, these women cooperated. In the 1971 satirical piece, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, he wrote, "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched."
According to Nevala-Lee, however, "many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual." He wrote that Asimov's behaviour, as a leading science-fiction author and personality, contributed to an undesirable atmosphere for women in the male-dominated science fiction community. In support of this, he quoted some of Asimov's contemporary fellow-authors such as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison and Frederik Pohl, as well as editors such as Timothy Seldes. Specific incidents were reported by other people including Edward L. Ferman, long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction who wrote "... instead of shaking my date's hand, he shook her left breast".
Environment and population
Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the Bhopal disaster.
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:
Other authors
Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and in fact even used The Lord of the Rings as a plot point in a Black Widowers story, titled Nothing like Murder. In the essay All or Nothing (for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1981), Asimov revealed that he admires Tolkien and that he had read The Lord of the Rings five times. (The feelings were mutual, with Tolkien himself revealing that he had enjoyed Asimov's science fiction. This would make Asimov an exception to Tolkien's earlier claim that he rarely found "any modern books" that were interesting to him.)
He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, however, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction".
The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Asimov became a fan of mystery stories at the same time as science fiction. He preferred to read the former to latter because "I read every [science fiction] story keenly aware that it might be worse than mine, in which case I had no patience with it, or that it might be better, in which case I felt miserable". Asimov wrote "I make no secret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Christie as my model. In my opinion, her mysteries are the best ever written, far better than the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Hercule Poirot is the best detective fiction has seen. Why should I not use as my model what I consider the best?" He enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but considered Arthur Conan Doyle to be "a slapdash and sloppy writer."
Asimov also enjoyed humorous stories, particularly those of P. G. Wodehouse.
In non-fiction writing, Asimov particularly admired the writing style of Martin Gardner, and tried to emulate it in his own science books. On meeting Gardner for the first time in 1965, Asimov told him this, to which Gardner answered that he had based his own style on Asimov's.
Influence
Paul Krugman, holder of a Nobel Prize in Economics, stated Asimov's concept of psychohistory has inspired him to become an economist.
John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed, "It has been pointed out that most science fiction writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style." Along with such figures as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, Asimov left his mark as one of the most distinguished interdisciplinarians of the 20th century. "Few individuals", writes James L. Christian, "understood better than Isaac Asimov what synoptic thinking is all about. His almost 500 books—which he wrote as a specialist, a knowledgeable authority, or just an excited layman—range over almost all conceivable subjects: the sciences, history, literature, religion, and of course, science fiction."
Bibliography
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books (based on his personal count), Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing. An extensive bibliography of Isaac Asimov's works has been compiled by Ed Seiler. He published enough that his book writing rate could be analysed, showing that the writing became faster as he wrote more.
An online exhibit in West Virginia University Libraries' virtually complete Asimov Collection displays features, visuals, and descriptions of some of his over 600 books, games, audio recordings, videos, and wall charts. Many first, rare, and autographed editions are in the Libraries' Rare Book Room. Book jackets and autographs are presented online along with descriptions and images of children's books, science fiction art, multimedia, and other materials in the collection.
Science fiction
"Greater Foundation" series
The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series. The Galactic Empire novels were published as independent stories, set earlier in the same future as Foundation. Later in life, Asimov synthesized the Robot series into a single coherent "history" that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series.
All of these books were published by Doubleday & Co, except the original Foundation trilogy which was originally published by Gnome Books before being bought and republished by Doubleday.
The Robot series:
(first Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(second Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(third Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(sequel to the Elijah Baley trilogy)
Galactic Empire novels:
(early Galactic Empire)
(long before the Empire)
(Republic of Trantor still expanding)
Foundation prequels:
Original Foundation trilogy:
(also published with the title 'The Man Who Upset the Universe' as a 35¢ Ace paperback, D-125, in about 1952)
Extended Foundation series:
Lucky Starr series (as Paul French)
All published by Doubleday & Co
David Starr, Space Ranger (1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)
Norby Chronicles (with Janet Asimov)
All published by Walker & Company
Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983)
Norby's Other Secret (1984)
Norby and the Lost Princess (1985)
Norby and the Invaders (1985)
Norby and the Queen's Necklace (1986)
Norby Finds a Villain (1987)
Norby Down to Earth (1988)
Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure (1989)
Norby and the Oldest Dragon (1990)
Norby and the Court Jester (1991)
Novels not part of a series
Novels marked with an asterisk (*) have minor connections to Foundation universe.
The End of Eternity (1955), Doubleday (*)
Fantastic Voyage (1966), Bantam Books (paperback) and Houghton Mifflin (hardback) (a novelization of the movie)
The Gods Themselves (1972), Doubleday
Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), Doubleday (not a sequel to Fantastic Voyage, but a similar, independent story)
Nemesis (1989), Bantam Doubleday Dell (*)
Nightfall (1990), Doubleday, with Robert Silverberg (based on "Nightfall", a 1941 short story written by Asimov)
Child of Time (1992), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (based on "The Ugly Little Boy", a 1958 short story written by Asimov)
The Positronic Man (1993), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (*) (based on The Bicentennial Man, a 1976 novella written by Asimov)
Short-story collections
Mysteries
Novels
The Death Dealers (1958), Avon Books, republished as A Whiff of Death by Walker & Company
Murder at the ABA (1976), Doubleday, also published as Authorized Murder
Short-story collections
Black Widowers series
Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), Doubleday
More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976), Doubleday
Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), Doubleday
Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), Doubleday
Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), Doubleday
The Return of the Black Widowers (2003), Carroll & Graf
Other mysteries
Asimov's Mysteries (1968), Doubleday
The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977), Walker
The Union Club Mysteries (1983), Doubleday
The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries (1985), Walker
The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986), Doubleday
Nonfiction
Popular science
Collections of Asimov's essays for F&SF
The following books collected essays which were originally published as monthly columns in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected by Doubleday & Co
Fact and Fancy (1962)
View from a Height (1963)
Adding a Dimension (1964)
Of Time and Space and Other Things (1965)
From Earth to Heaven (1966)
Science, Numbers, and I (1968)
The Solar System and Back (1970)
The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
The Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
Asimov On Astronomy (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Asimov On Chemistry (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Of Matters Great and Small (1975)
Asimov On Physics (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
Asimov On Numbers (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
The Road to Infinity (1979)
The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
Counting the Eons (1983)
X Stands for Unknown (1984)
The Subatomic Monster (1985)
Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
Asimov on Science: A 30 Year Retrospective 1959–1989 (1989) (features the first essay in the introduction)
Out of the Everywhere (1990)
The Secret of the Universe (1991)
Other general science essay collections
Only a Trillion (1957), Abelard-Schuman,
Is Anyone There? (1967), Doubleday, (which includes the article in which he coined the term "spome")
Today and Tomorrow and— (1973), Doubleday
Science Past, Science Future (1975), Doubleday,
Please Explain (1975), Houghton Mifflin,
Life and Time (1978), Doubleday
The Roving Mind (1983), Prometheus Books, new edition 1997,
The Dangers of Intelligence (1986), Houghton Mifflin
Past, Present and Future (1987), Prometheus Books,
The Tyrannosaurus Prescription (1989), Prometheus Books
Frontiers (1990), Dutton
Frontiers II (1993), Dutton
Other science books by Asimov
The Chemicals of Life (1954), Abelard-Schuman
Inside the Atom (1956), Abelard-Schuman,
Building Blocks of the Universe (1957; revised 1974), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Carbon (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Nitrogen (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
Words of Science and the History Behind Them (1959), Houghton Mifflin
The Clock We Live On (1959), Abelard-Schuman,
Breakthroughs in Science (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Numbers (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Measure (1960), Houghton Mifflin
The Wellsprings of Life (1960), Abelard-Schuman,
Life and Energy (1962), Doubleday,
The Genetic Code (1962), The Orion Press
The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation (1963), Houghton Mifflin, , (revised)
The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions (1963), Houghton Mifflin,
Planets for Man (with Stephen H. Dole) (1964), Random House, reprinted by RAND in 2007
An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule (1965), Houghton Mifflin,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Basic Books
The title varied with each of the four editions, the last being Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984)
The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1966), Walker,
The Neutrino (1966), Doubleday, ASIN B002JK525W
Understanding Physics Vol. I, Motion, Sound, and Heat (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. II, Light, Magnetism, and Electricity (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. III, The Electron, Proton, and Neutron (1966), Walker,
Photosynthesis (1969), Basic Books,
Our World in Space (1974), New York Graphic,
Eyes on the Universe: A History of the Telescope (1976), Andre Deutsch Limited,
The Collapsing Universe (1977), Walker,
Extraterrestrial Civilizations (1979), Crown,
Visions of the Universe with illustrations by Kazuaki Iwasaki (1981), Cosmos Store,
Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), Crown,
The Measure of the Universe (1983), Harper & Row
Think About Space: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going? with co-author Frank White (1989), Walker
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery (1989), Harper & Row, second edition adds content thru 1993,
Beginnings: The Story of Origins (1989), Walker
Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (1991), Random House,
Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos (1991), Dutton,
Mysteries of Deep Space: Quasars, Pulsars and Black Holes (1994)
Earth's Moon (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Sun (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Earth (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Jupiter (1989), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Venus (1990), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Literary works
All published by Doubleday
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970),
Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" (1972)
Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost" (1974)
Familiar Poems, Annotated (1976)
Asimov's The Annotated "Gulliver's Travels" (1980)
Asimov's Annotated "Gilbert and Sullivan" (1988)
The Bible
Words from Genesis (1962), Houghton Mifflin
Words from the Exodus (1963), Houghton Mifflin
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vols I and II (1967 and 1969, one-volume ed. 1981), Doubleday,
The Story of Ruth (1972), Doubleday,
In the Beginning (1981), Crown
Autobiography
In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920–1954 (1979, Doubleday)
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 (1980, Doubleday)
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994, Doubleday)
It's Been a Good Life (2002, Prometheus Books), condensation of Asimov's three volumes of autobiography, edited by his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov
History
All published by Houghton Mifflin except where otherwise stated
The Kite That Won the Revolution (1963),
The Greeks (1965)
The Roman Republic (1966)
The Roman Empire (1967)
The Egyptians (1967)
The Near East (1968)
The Dark Ages (1968)
Words from History (1968)
The Shaping of England (1969)
Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)
The Land of Canaan (1971)
The Shaping of France (1972)
The Shaping of North America: From Earliest Times to 1763 (1973)
The Birth of the United States: 1763–1816 (1974)
Our Federal Union: The United States from 1816 to 1865 (1975),
The Golden Door: The United States from 1865 to 1918 (1977)
Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991), HarperCollins,
The March of the Millennia (1991), with co-author Frank White, Walker & Company,
Humor
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (1971) (As Dr. A), Walker & Company,
Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), Houghton Mifflin
Lecherous Limericks (1975), Walker,
More Lecherous Limericks (1976), Walker,
Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977), Walker,
Limericks, Two Gross, with John Ciardi (1978), Norton,
A Grossery of Limericks, with John Ciardi (1981), Norton,
Limericks for Children (1984), Caedmon
Asimov Laughs Again (1992), HarperCollins
On writing science fiction
Asimov on Science Fiction (1981), Doubleday
Asimov's Galaxy (1989), Doubleday
Other nonfiction
Opus 100 (1969), Houghton Mifflin,
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964), Doubleday (revised edition 1972, )
Opus 200 (1979), Houghton Mifflin,
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1979), Grosset & Dunlap,
Opus 300 (1984), Houghton Mifflin,
Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991), with co-author Frederik Pohl, Tor, .
Television, music, and film appearances
I Robot, a concept album by the Alan Parsons Project that examined some of Asimov's work
The Last Word (1959)
The Dick Cavett Show, four appearances 1968–71
The Nature of Things (1969)
ABC News coverage of Apollo 11, 1969, with Fred Pohl, interviewed by Rod Serling
David Frost interview program, August 1969. Frost asked Asimov if he had ever tried to find God and, after some initial evasion, Asimov answered, "God is much more intelligent than I am—let him try to find me."
BBC Horizon "It's About Time" (1979), show hosted by Dudley Moore
Target ... Earth? (1980)
The David Letterman Show (1980)
NBC TV Speaking Freely, interviewed by Edwin Newman (1982)
ARTS Network talk show hosted by Studs Terkel and Calvin Trillin, approximately (1982)
Oltre New York (1986)
Voyage to the Outer Planets and Beyond (1986)
Gandahar (1987), a French animated science-fiction film by René Laloux. Asimov wrote the English translation for the film.
Bill Moyers interview (1988)
Stranieri in America (1988)
Adaptations
El robot embustero (1966), short film directed by Antonio Lara de Gavilán, based on short story "Liar!"
A halhatatlanság halála (1977), TV movie directed by András Rajnai, based on novel The End of Eternity
The Ugly Little Boy (1977), short film directed by Barry Morse and Donald W. Thompson, based on novelette The Ugly Little Boy
All the Troubles of the World (1978), short film directed by Dianne Haak-Edson, based on short story "All the Troubles of the World"
The End of Eternity (1987), film directed by Andrei Yermash, based on novel The End of Eternity
Nightfall (1988), film directed by Paul Mayersberg, based on novelette "Nightfall"
Robots (1988), film directed by Doug Smith and Kim Takal, based on the Robot series
Feeling 109 (1988), short film directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov
Teach 109 (1989), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as The Android Affair)
The Android Affair (1995), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as Teach 109)
Bicentennial Man (1999), film directed by Chris Columbus, based on novelette "The Bicentennial Man" and on novel The Positronic Man
Nightfall (2000), film directed by Gwyneth Gibby, based on novelette "Nightfall"
I, Robot (2004), film directed by Alex Proyas, based on ideas of short stories of the Robot series
Formula of Death (2012), TV movie directed by Behdad Avand Amini, based on novel The Death Dealers
Spell My Name with an S (2014), short film directed by Samuel Ali, based on short story "Spell My Name with an S"
Foundation (2021), series created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, based on the Foundation series
Novelizations
Novel Fantastic Voyage, novelization of film Fantastic Voyage (1966)
References
Footnotes
Notes
Sources
Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green (1979), New York: Avon, .
In Joy Still Felt (1980), New York: Avon .
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), (hc), (pb).
Yours, Isaac Asimov (1996), edited by Stanley Asimov. New York: Doubleday .
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet Asimov. .
Goldman, Stephen H., "Isaac Asimov", in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 8, Cowart and Wymer eds. (Gale Research, 1981), pp. 15–29.
Gunn, James. "On Variations on a Robot", IASFM, July 1980, pp. 56–81.
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982). .
The Science of Science-Fiction Writing (2000). .
Further reading
External links
Asimov Online, a vast repository of information about Asimov, maintained by Asimov enthusiast Edward Seiler
Jenkins' Spoiler-Laden Guide to Isaac Asimov, reviews of all of Asimov's books
20th-century births
1992 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American male writers
AIDS-related deaths in New York (state)
American alternate history writers
Jewish American atheists
American biochemists
American essayists
American humanists
American humorists
American male novelists
20th-century American memoirists
United States Army non-commissioned officers
American mystery writers
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American science fiction writers
American science writers
American skeptics
American writers of Russian descent
Asimov's Science Fiction people
Bible commentators
Boston University faculty
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
Critics of religions
Date of birth unknown
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Futurians
Historians of astronomy
American historians of science
Hugo Award-winning writers
Humor researchers
Jewish American novelists
Jewish American short story writers
Jewish feminists
Jewish skeptics
American male essayists
Male feminists
American male short story writers
American short story writers
Mensans
Nebula Award winners
New York (state) Democrats
People from Shumyachsky District
Naturalized citizens of the United States
United States Navy civilians
Science fiction fans
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
SFWA Grand Masters
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Writers from Brooklyn
Yiddish-speaking people
Boys High School (Brooklyn) alumni
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New York (state)
Scientists from New York City
20th-century essayists
20th-century atheists
People from the Upper West Side
Pulp fiction writers
Writers about religion and science
Atheist feminists
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
| false |
[
"Knut Guttormsen (1830—1900) was a Norwegian builder and architect. He is most famous for the many churches he built and renovated.\n\nKnut Guttormsen was married to Sara Sofie Andersdtter Haugaskjæret and together they had five children: Sofus Emil Guttormsen, Richard Gotfred Guttormsen, Olav Guttormsen, Karl Guttormsen, and Olaf Marinius Guttormsen.\n\nKnut Guttormsen was born on the homestead Sigurdstøyl in Morgedal in Telemark county. He was confirmed at the Kviteseid Church in 1845. The same year he traveled to Christiania where an older half-brother had settled earlier. He became a stonemason, bricklayer, and builder. He helped build a bridge over Sarpsfossen in Sarpsborg. While in Sarpsborg, he met Sofie Andersdatter Haugaskjæret from Time in Østfold. For a time he also did work on the Gamle Aker Church.\n\nThe family moved to Trondheim in the 1860s where he received several large construction assignments. Eventually, Knut Guttormsen was appointed construction manager for the restoration work at Nidaros Cathedral. He also did work on many churches including Åfjord Church, Rissa Church, Melhus Church, and Ytterøy Church.\n\nReferences\n\n1830 births\n1900 deaths\n\nNorwegian architects",
"Simone Zaggia is an Italian astronomer. He was born in 1965 and did undergraduate work at the \nUniversity of Padua, where he also received his Ph.D. in 1996. He has done post-doctoral work at the\nEuropean Southern Observatory and the Capodimonte Observatory, he worked at Trieste Observatory and currently (2007) works at Padua Observatory.\nZaggia's research interest include the dynamics of dwarf galaxies and globular clusters.\n\nSee also\nList of Italian scientists\n\nReferences\n\n1965 births\n21st-century Italian astronomers\nPeople from the Province of Padua\nLiving people"
] |
[
"Isaac Asimov",
"Education and career",
"Where did he go to school?",
"Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15,",
"Did he further his education?",
"he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students",
"What did he study there?",
"Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of \"dissecting an alley cat\".",
"Where else did he go to school?",
"After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.",
"What did he get a bachelors in?",
"he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948.",
"Was he done with schooling after that?",
"In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible.",
"Where did he work?",
"After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary,"
] |
C_4faa5e824b8a43099cb7ba91fcdaf534_0
|
How long did he stay there?
| 9 |
How long did Isaac Asimovs stay at Boston University School of Medicine?
|
Isaac Asimov
|
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then the institution's primary undergraduate school for men with quotas on the number of admissions from those ethnic groups. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939. After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov in 1939 applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia; initially rejected and then accepted only on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948. In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11. After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary, with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university. The difference grew, and in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955), and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb. In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively. CANNOTANSWER
|
in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955),
|
Isaac Asimov (; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction.
Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories. He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.
He was president of the American Humanist Association. Several entities have been named in his honor, including the asteroid (5020) Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, and four literary awards.
Surname
Asimov's family name derives from the first part of ozímyj khleb (озимый хлеб), meaning the winter grain (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending -ov added. Azimov is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov's father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov. This later inspired one of Asimov's short stories, "Spell My Name with an S".
Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that "Isaac Asimov" was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name.
Biography
Early life
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian-Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me".
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya; June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011), and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the Long Island Newsday.
Asimov's family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on February 3, 1923 when he was three years old. Since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English with him, he never learned Russian, but he remained fluent in both. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade). His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919. In third grade he learned about the "error" and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight.
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, a fact that Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time when the genre was becoming more science-centered.
Education and career
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then, the institution's primary undergraduate school for men. Jewish and Italian-American students, even of outstanding academic caliber, were often deliberately barred from Columbia College proper because of the then-popular practice of imposing unwritten ethnic admission quotas. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester because he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1936, Asimov finished his Bachelor of Science degree at Morningside Heights campus (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.
After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German.
In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11.
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949, teaching biochemistry with a $5,000 salary (), with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students. In 1955, he was promoted to associate professor, which gave him tenure. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title, he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class, and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb.
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26 the same year. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956. They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He immediately began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship. On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2. He sailed to England in June 1974 on the SS France for a trip mostly devoted to events in London and Birmingham, though he also found time to visit Stonehenge.
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly paid to give talks about science. He was a frequent fixture at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties. His physical dexterity was very poor. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle; however, he did learn to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".
Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe Pack, a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan. He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society, for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty's work "The Dynamics of An Asteroid" involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. He later used his essay on Moriarty's work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, "The Ultimate Crime", which appeared in More Tales of the Black Widowers.
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.
Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics. In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was "a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then." He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP "gave it immense status and authority" in his eyes.
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs".
After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.
Illness and death
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members.
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It's Been a Good Life.
Writings
Overview
Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, while writing over 120 nonfiction books. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories. Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series. Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".
Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology. Although Asimov did write several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982), which were classified in the 100s category, none of his own books were classified in that category.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.
Science fiction
Asimov became a science fiction fan in 1929, when he began reading the pulp magazines sold in his family's candy store. At first his father forbade reading pulps as he considered them to be trash, until Asimov persuaded him that because the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, they must be educational. At age 18 he joined the Futurians science fiction fan club, where he made friends who went on to become science fiction writers or editors.
Asimov began writing at the age of 11, imitating The Rover Boys with eight chapters of The Greenville Chums at College. His father bought Asimov a used typewriter at age 16. His first published work was a humorous item on the birth of his brother for Boys High School's literary journal in 1934. In May 1937 he first thought of writing professionally, and began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew" (now lost), that year. On May 17, 1938, puzzled by a change in the schedule of Astounding Science Fiction, Asimov visited its publisher Street & Smith Publications. Inspired by the visit, he finished the story on June 19, 1938, and personally submitted it to Astounding editor John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell met with Asimov for more than an hour and promised to read the story himself. Two days later he received a rejection letter explaining why in detail. This was the first of what became almost weekly meetings with the editor while Asimov lived in New York, until moving to Boston in 1949; Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and became a personal friend.
By the end of the month, Asimov completed a second story, "Stowaway". Campbell rejected it on July 22 but—in "the nicest possible letter you could imagine"—encouraged him to continue writing, promising that Asimov might sell his work after another year and a dozen stories of practice. On October 21, 1938, he sold the third story he finished, "Marooned Off Vesta", to Amazing Stories, edited by Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. Asimov was paid $64 (), or one cent a word. Two more stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May Amazing and "Trends" in the July Astounding, the issue fans later selected as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. For 1940, ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in Astounding. His earnings became enough to pay for his education, but not yet enough for him to become a full-time writer.
Asimov later said that unlike other top Golden Age writers Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt—also first published in 1939, and whose talent and stardom were immediately obvious—he "(this is not false modesty) came up only gradually". Through July 29, 1940, Asimov wrote 22 stories in 25 months, of which 13 were published; he wrote in 1972 that from that date he never wrote a science fiction story that was not published (except for two "special cases"). He was famous enough that Donald Wollheim told Asimov that he purchased "The Secret Sense" for a new magazine only because of his name, and the December 1940 issue of Astonishing—featuring Asimov's name in bold—was the first magazine to base cover art on his work, but Asimov later said that neither he himself nor anyone else—except perhaps Campbell—considered him better than an often published "third rater".
Based on a conversation with Campbell, Asimov wrote "Nightfall", his 32nd story, in March and April 1941, and Astounding published it in September 1941. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written. In Nightfall and Other Stories Asimov wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." "Nightfall" is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.
After writing "Victory Unintentional" in January and February 1942, Asimov did not write another story for a year. Asimov expected to make chemistry his career, and was paid $2,600 annually at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, enough to marry his girlfriend; he did not expect to make much more from writing than the $1,788.50 he had earned from 28 stories sold over four years. Asimov left science fiction fandom and no longer read new magazines, and might have left the industry had not Heinlein and de Camp been coworkers and previously sold stories continued to appear. In 1942, Asimov published the first of his Foundation stories—later collected in the Foundation trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). The books recount the fall of a vast interstellar empire and the establishment of its eventual successor. They also feature his fictional science of psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted. The trilogy and Robot series are his most famous science fiction. In 1966 they won the Hugo Award for the all-time best series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Campbell raised his rate per word, Orson Welles purchased rights to "Evidence", and anthologies reprinted his stories. By the end of the war Asimov was earning as a writer an amount equal to half of his Navy Yard salary, even after a raise, but Asimov still did not believe that writing could support him, his wife, and future children.
His "positronic" robot stories—many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in his introduction to the short story collection The Complete Robot (1982) that he was largely inspired by the almost relentless tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators.
The robot series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977, Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of I, Robot that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by Jeff Vintar titled Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired. (The title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for a story by Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel The Positronic Man by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.
Besides movies, his Foundation and Robot stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Donald Kingsbury. At least some of these appear to have been done with the blessing of, or at the request of, Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov.
In 1948, he also wrote a spoof chemistry article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he would receive at his oral examination, in case the examiners thought he wasn't taking science seriously. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". Laughing hysterically with relief, Asimov had to be led out of the room. After a five-minute wait, he was summoned back into the room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov".
Demand for science fiction greatly increased during the 1950s. It became possible for a genre author to write full-time. In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished "Grow Old with Me" (40,000 words), but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of Pebble in the Sky. Doubleday published five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome Press publish one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as I, Robot and his Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the Foundation trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as The Rest of the Robots.
Books and the magazines Galaxy, and Fantasy & Science Fiction ended Asimov's dependence on Astounding. He later described the era as his "'mature' period". Asimov's "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy, was his personal favorite story.
In 1972, his novel The Gods Themselves (which was not part of a series) was published to general acclaim, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Novel.
In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue. McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
Asimov said in 1969 that he had "the happiest of all my associations with science fiction magazines" with Fantasy & Science Fiction; "I have no complaints about Astounding, Galaxy, or any of the rest, heaven knows, but F&SF has become something special to me". Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines "anthologies").
Due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another book in his Foundation series, he did so with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992), his last novel.
Popular science
Asimov and two colleagues published a textbook in 1949, with two more editions by 1969. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's The Naked Sun and 1982's Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). He greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap". Asimov explained in The Rest of the Robots that he had been unable to write substantial fiction since the summer of 1958, and observers understood him as saying that his fiction career had ended, or was permanently interrupted. Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason".
Fantasy and Science Fiction invited Asimov to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine. The first of 399 monthly F&SF columns appeared in November 1958 and they continued until his terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by Doubleday, gave Asimov a reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science; he described them as his only popular science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects on the part of his readers. The column was ostensibly dedicated to popular science but Asimov had complete editorial freedom, and wrote about contemporary social issues in essays such as "Thinking About Thinking" and "Knock Plastic!". In 1975 he wrote of these essays: "I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment."
Asimov's first wide-ranging reference work, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960), was nominated for a National Book Award, and in 1963 he won a Hugo Award—his first—for his essays for F&SF. The popularity of his science books and the income he derived from them allowed him to give up most academic responsibilities and become a full-time freelance writer. He encouraged other science fiction writers to write popular science, stating in 1967 that "the knowledgeable, skillful science writer is worth his weight in contracts", with "twice as much work as he can possibly handle".
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience: "Uneasy". Floyd C. Gale said that "Asimov has a rare talent. He can make your mental mouth water over dry facts", and "science fiction's loss has been science popularization's gain". Asimov said that "Of all the writing I do, fiction, non-fiction, adult, or juvenile, these F & SF articles are by far the most fun". He regretted, however, that he had less time for fiction—causing dissatisfied readers to send him letters of complaint—stating in 1969 that "In the last ten years, I've done a couple of novels, some collections, a dozen or so stories, but that's nothing".
In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read the word "unionized" as un-ion-ized (pronounced "un-EYE-en-ized"), meaning "(a chemical species) being in an electrically neutral state, as opposed to being an ion", while non-chemists will read the word as union-ized (pronounced "YOU-nien-ized"), meaning "(a worker or organization) belonging to or possessing a trade union".
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term "robotics" in his 1941 story "Liar!", though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in Gold ("The Robot Chronicles"). While acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one third of the way down the first column of page 100, Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942 printing of his short story "Runaround".
In the same story, Asimov also coined the term "positronic" (the counterpart to "electronic" for positrons).
Asimov coined the term "psychohistory" in his Foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. Asimov said later that he should have called it psychosociology. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 fix-up novel Foundation. Somewhat later, the term "psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.
Other writings
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, including The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966), The Roman Empire (1967), The Egyptians (1967) The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968), and Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991).
He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes—covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), Asimov's Annotated Don Juan (1972), Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He published two full-length mystery novels, and wrote 66 stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders, and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, who he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends. A parody of the Black Widowers, "An Evening with the White Divorcés," was written by author, critic, and librarian Jon L. Breen. Asimov joked, "all I can do ... is to wait until I catch him in a dark alley, someday."
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks. Asimov featured Yiddish humor in Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, some of Asimov's behavior towards women was described as sexual harassment and cited as an example of historically problematic behavior by men in science fiction communities.
Asimov published three volumes of autobiography. In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980) cover his life up to 1978. The third volume, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), covered his whole life (rather than following on from where the second volume left off). The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov after his death. The book won a Hugo Award in 1995. Janet Asimov edited It's Been a Good Life (2002), a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Treks initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on Star Treks scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming that despite its inaccuracies, Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.
Awards and recognition
Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half-dozen lifetime awards.
He also received 14 honorary doctorate degrees from universities.
1955 – Guest of Honor at the 13th World Science Fiction Convention
1957 – Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award for best science book for youth, for Building Blocks of the Universe
1960 – Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
1962 – Boston University's Publication Merit Award
1963 – A special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction," for essays published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
1963 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1964 – The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" (1941) the all-time best science fiction short story
1965 – James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
1966 – Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation trilogy
1967 – Edward E. Smith Memorial Award
1967 – AAAS-Westinghouse Science Writing Award for Magazine Writing, for essay "Over the Edge of the Universe" (in the March 1967 Harper's Magazine)
1972 – Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Locus Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1975 – Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
1975 – Klumpke-Roberts Award "for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy"
1975 – Locus Award for Best Reprint Anthology for Before the Golden Age
1977 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Locus Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1981 – An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
1981 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978
1983 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
1983 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge
1984 – Humanist of the Year
1986 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him its 8th SFWA Grand Master (presented in 1987).
1987 – Locus Award for Best Short Story for "Robot Dreams"
1992 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Gold"
1995 – Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1995 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1996 – A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon for "The Mule", the 7th Foundation story, published in Astounding Science Fiction
1997 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Asimov in its second class of two deceased and two living persons, along with H. G. Wells.
2000 – Asimov was featured on a stamp in Israel
2001 – The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debates at the Hayden Planetarium in New York were inaugurated
2009 – A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov, was named in his honor
2010 – In the US Congress bill about the designation of the National Robotics Week as an annual event, a tribute to Isaac Asimov is as follows:
"Whereas the second week in April each year is designated as 'National Robotics Week', recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April 1992: Now, therefore, be it resolved ..."
2015 – Selected as a member of the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
2016 – A 1941 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1940 was given at the 2016 WorldCon for Robbie, his first positronic robot story, published in Super Science Stories, September 1940
2018 – A 1943 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1942 was given at the 2018 WorldCon for Foundation, published in Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942
Writing style
Asimov was his own secretary, typist, indexer, proofreader, and literary agent. He wrote a typed first draft composed at the keyboard at 90 words per minute; he imagined an ending first, then a beginning, then "let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it". (Asimov only used an outline once, later describing it as "like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket".) After correcting a draft by hand, he retyped the document as the final copy and only made one revision with minor editor-requested changes; a word processor did not save him much time, Asimov said, because 95% of the first draft was unchanged.
After disliking making multiple revisions of "Black Friar of the Flame", Asimov refused to make major, second, or non-editorial revisions ("like chewing used gum"), stating that "too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process". He submitted "failures" to another editor.
One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Robot:
Asimov addressed such criticism in 1989 at the beginning of Nemesis:
Gunn cited examples of a more complex style, such as the climax of "Liar!". Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", Arkady Darell in Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel, and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels.
Other than books by Gunn and Joseph Patrouch, a relative dearth of "literary" criticism exists on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:
Gunn's and Patrouch's respective studies of Asimov both state that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book comments in detail on each of Asimov's novels. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but calls some passages in The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".
Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), and said in 1973 that his style had not changed, Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in nonchronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material. (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "Reason", one of the early Robot stories). Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of The Currents of Space did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-kyrt Asimov fan" could enjoy it. In his later novel Nemesis one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.
Alien life
Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when Astoundings editor John Campbell rejected one of his science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. The nature of the rejection led him to believe that Campbell may have based his bias towards humans in stories on a real-world racial bias. Unwilling to write only weak alien races, and concerned that a confrontation would jeopardize his and Campbell's friendship, he decided he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms, he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens and alien sex. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of The Gods Themselves, the part that deals with those themes.
In the Hugo Award-winning novelette "Gold", Asimov describes an author, clearly based on himself, who has one of his books (The Gods Themselves) adapted into a "compu-drama", essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for having an extremely nonvisual style, making it difficult to adapt his work, and the author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across.
Romance and women
In the early days of science fiction some authors and critics felt that the romantic elements were inappropriate in science fiction stories, which were supposedly to be focused on science and technology. Isaac Asimov was a prominent supporter of this point of view, expressed in his 1938-1939 letters to Astounding, where he described such elements as "mush" and "slop". However, to his dismay, these letters were met with a strong opposition.
Asimov attributed the lack of romance and sex in his fiction to the "early imprinting" from starting his writing career when he had never been on a date and "didn't know anything about girls". He was sometimes criticized for the general absence of sex (and of extraterrestrial life) in his science fiction. He claimed he wrote The Gods Themselves to respond to these criticisms, which often came from New Wave science fiction (and often British) writers. The second part (of three) of the novel is set on an alien world with three sexes, and the sexual behavior of these creatures is extensively depicted.
Asimov was also criticized for a lack of strong female characters in his early work. However, some of his robot stories, including the earliest ones, featured the character Susan Calvin, a forceful and intelligent woman who regularly out-performed her male colleagues.
In his autobiographical writings, such as Gold ("Women and Science Fiction"), he acknowledges this complaint has merit and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early science-fiction stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. The Washington Post's "Book World" section reports of Robots and Empire opined "In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are."
Views
Religion
Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed the traditions of Orthodox Judaism, though not as stringently as they had in Petrovichi; they did not, however, force their beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus, he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the Torah represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that the Iliad recorded Greek mythology. When he was 13, he chose not to have a bar mitzvah. As his books Treasury of Humor and Asimov Laughs Again record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar" versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, an analysis of the historic foundations for both the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "humanist" and considered that term more practical. Asimov did, however, continue to identify himself as a secular Jew, as stated in his introduction to Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction, Wandering Stars: "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the Bar Mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."
When asked in an interview in 1982 if he was an atheist, Asimov replied,
Likewise, he said about religious education: "I would not be satisfied to have my kids choose to be religious without trying to argue them out of it, just as I would not be satisfied to have them decide to smoke regularly or engage in any other practice I consider detrimental to mind or body."
In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote,
The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".
Asimov said about using religious motifs in his writing:
Politics
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal, and thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography, In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman. Asimov's impression was that the 1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.
Asimov vehemently opposed Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He closely followed Watergate, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign. Asimov was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."
After Asimov's name appeared in the mid-1960s on a list of people the Communist Party USA "considered amenable" to its goals, the FBI investigated him. Because of his academic background, the bureau briefly considered Asimov as a possible candidate for known Soviet spy ROBPROF, but found nothing suspicious in his life or background.
Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though insisting that he was not a Zionist. In his third autobiography, Asimov stated his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he was opposed to having nation-states in general, and supported the notion of a single humanity. Asimov especially worried about the safety of Israel given that it had been created among hostile Muslim neighbors, and said that Jews had merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".
Social issues
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
In a 1988 interview by Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested. He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace. Asimov thought that people would live in space by the year 2019.
In 1983 Asimov wrote:
He continues on education:
Sexual harassment
Asimov would often fondle, kiss and pinch women at conventions and elsewhere without regard for their consent. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, author of an Asimov biography and writer on the history of science fiction, he often defended himself by saying that far from showing objections, these women cooperated. In the 1971 satirical piece, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, he wrote, "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched."
According to Nevala-Lee, however, "many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual." He wrote that Asimov's behaviour, as a leading science-fiction author and personality, contributed to an undesirable atmosphere for women in the male-dominated science fiction community. In support of this, he quoted some of Asimov's contemporary fellow-authors such as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison and Frederik Pohl, as well as editors such as Timothy Seldes. Specific incidents were reported by other people including Edward L. Ferman, long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction who wrote "... instead of shaking my date's hand, he shook her left breast".
Environment and population
Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the Bhopal disaster.
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:
Other authors
Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and in fact even used The Lord of the Rings as a plot point in a Black Widowers story, titled Nothing like Murder. In the essay All or Nothing (for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1981), Asimov revealed that he admires Tolkien and that he had read The Lord of the Rings five times. (The feelings were mutual, with Tolkien himself revealing that he had enjoyed Asimov's science fiction. This would make Asimov an exception to Tolkien's earlier claim that he rarely found "any modern books" that were interesting to him.)
He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, however, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction".
The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Asimov became a fan of mystery stories at the same time as science fiction. He preferred to read the former to latter because "I read every [science fiction] story keenly aware that it might be worse than mine, in which case I had no patience with it, or that it might be better, in which case I felt miserable". Asimov wrote "I make no secret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Christie as my model. In my opinion, her mysteries are the best ever written, far better than the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Hercule Poirot is the best detective fiction has seen. Why should I not use as my model what I consider the best?" He enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but considered Arthur Conan Doyle to be "a slapdash and sloppy writer."
Asimov also enjoyed humorous stories, particularly those of P. G. Wodehouse.
In non-fiction writing, Asimov particularly admired the writing style of Martin Gardner, and tried to emulate it in his own science books. On meeting Gardner for the first time in 1965, Asimov told him this, to which Gardner answered that he had based his own style on Asimov's.
Influence
Paul Krugman, holder of a Nobel Prize in Economics, stated Asimov's concept of psychohistory has inspired him to become an economist.
John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed, "It has been pointed out that most science fiction writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style." Along with such figures as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, Asimov left his mark as one of the most distinguished interdisciplinarians of the 20th century. "Few individuals", writes James L. Christian, "understood better than Isaac Asimov what synoptic thinking is all about. His almost 500 books—which he wrote as a specialist, a knowledgeable authority, or just an excited layman—range over almost all conceivable subjects: the sciences, history, literature, religion, and of course, science fiction."
Bibliography
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books (based on his personal count), Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing. An extensive bibliography of Isaac Asimov's works has been compiled by Ed Seiler. He published enough that his book writing rate could be analysed, showing that the writing became faster as he wrote more.
An online exhibit in West Virginia University Libraries' virtually complete Asimov Collection displays features, visuals, and descriptions of some of his over 600 books, games, audio recordings, videos, and wall charts. Many first, rare, and autographed editions are in the Libraries' Rare Book Room. Book jackets and autographs are presented online along with descriptions and images of children's books, science fiction art, multimedia, and other materials in the collection.
Science fiction
"Greater Foundation" series
The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series. The Galactic Empire novels were published as independent stories, set earlier in the same future as Foundation. Later in life, Asimov synthesized the Robot series into a single coherent "history" that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series.
All of these books were published by Doubleday & Co, except the original Foundation trilogy which was originally published by Gnome Books before being bought and republished by Doubleday.
The Robot series:
(first Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(second Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(third Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(sequel to the Elijah Baley trilogy)
Galactic Empire novels:
(early Galactic Empire)
(long before the Empire)
(Republic of Trantor still expanding)
Foundation prequels:
Original Foundation trilogy:
(also published with the title 'The Man Who Upset the Universe' as a 35¢ Ace paperback, D-125, in about 1952)
Extended Foundation series:
Lucky Starr series (as Paul French)
All published by Doubleday & Co
David Starr, Space Ranger (1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)
Norby Chronicles (with Janet Asimov)
All published by Walker & Company
Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983)
Norby's Other Secret (1984)
Norby and the Lost Princess (1985)
Norby and the Invaders (1985)
Norby and the Queen's Necklace (1986)
Norby Finds a Villain (1987)
Norby Down to Earth (1988)
Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure (1989)
Norby and the Oldest Dragon (1990)
Norby and the Court Jester (1991)
Novels not part of a series
Novels marked with an asterisk (*) have minor connections to Foundation universe.
The End of Eternity (1955), Doubleday (*)
Fantastic Voyage (1966), Bantam Books (paperback) and Houghton Mifflin (hardback) (a novelization of the movie)
The Gods Themselves (1972), Doubleday
Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), Doubleday (not a sequel to Fantastic Voyage, but a similar, independent story)
Nemesis (1989), Bantam Doubleday Dell (*)
Nightfall (1990), Doubleday, with Robert Silverberg (based on "Nightfall", a 1941 short story written by Asimov)
Child of Time (1992), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (based on "The Ugly Little Boy", a 1958 short story written by Asimov)
The Positronic Man (1993), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (*) (based on The Bicentennial Man, a 1976 novella written by Asimov)
Short-story collections
Mysteries
Novels
The Death Dealers (1958), Avon Books, republished as A Whiff of Death by Walker & Company
Murder at the ABA (1976), Doubleday, also published as Authorized Murder
Short-story collections
Black Widowers series
Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), Doubleday
More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976), Doubleday
Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), Doubleday
Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), Doubleday
Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), Doubleday
The Return of the Black Widowers (2003), Carroll & Graf
Other mysteries
Asimov's Mysteries (1968), Doubleday
The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977), Walker
The Union Club Mysteries (1983), Doubleday
The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries (1985), Walker
The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986), Doubleday
Nonfiction
Popular science
Collections of Asimov's essays for F&SF
The following books collected essays which were originally published as monthly columns in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected by Doubleday & Co
Fact and Fancy (1962)
View from a Height (1963)
Adding a Dimension (1964)
Of Time and Space and Other Things (1965)
From Earth to Heaven (1966)
Science, Numbers, and I (1968)
The Solar System and Back (1970)
The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
The Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
Asimov On Astronomy (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Asimov On Chemistry (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Of Matters Great and Small (1975)
Asimov On Physics (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
Asimov On Numbers (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
The Road to Infinity (1979)
The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
Counting the Eons (1983)
X Stands for Unknown (1984)
The Subatomic Monster (1985)
Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
Asimov on Science: A 30 Year Retrospective 1959–1989 (1989) (features the first essay in the introduction)
Out of the Everywhere (1990)
The Secret of the Universe (1991)
Other general science essay collections
Only a Trillion (1957), Abelard-Schuman,
Is Anyone There? (1967), Doubleday, (which includes the article in which he coined the term "spome")
Today and Tomorrow and— (1973), Doubleday
Science Past, Science Future (1975), Doubleday,
Please Explain (1975), Houghton Mifflin,
Life and Time (1978), Doubleday
The Roving Mind (1983), Prometheus Books, new edition 1997,
The Dangers of Intelligence (1986), Houghton Mifflin
Past, Present and Future (1987), Prometheus Books,
The Tyrannosaurus Prescription (1989), Prometheus Books
Frontiers (1990), Dutton
Frontiers II (1993), Dutton
Other science books by Asimov
The Chemicals of Life (1954), Abelard-Schuman
Inside the Atom (1956), Abelard-Schuman,
Building Blocks of the Universe (1957; revised 1974), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Carbon (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Nitrogen (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
Words of Science and the History Behind Them (1959), Houghton Mifflin
The Clock We Live On (1959), Abelard-Schuman,
Breakthroughs in Science (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Numbers (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Measure (1960), Houghton Mifflin
The Wellsprings of Life (1960), Abelard-Schuman,
Life and Energy (1962), Doubleday,
The Genetic Code (1962), The Orion Press
The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation (1963), Houghton Mifflin, , (revised)
The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions (1963), Houghton Mifflin,
Planets for Man (with Stephen H. Dole) (1964), Random House, reprinted by RAND in 2007
An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule (1965), Houghton Mifflin,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Basic Books
The title varied with each of the four editions, the last being Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984)
The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1966), Walker,
The Neutrino (1966), Doubleday, ASIN B002JK525W
Understanding Physics Vol. I, Motion, Sound, and Heat (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. II, Light, Magnetism, and Electricity (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. III, The Electron, Proton, and Neutron (1966), Walker,
Photosynthesis (1969), Basic Books,
Our World in Space (1974), New York Graphic,
Eyes on the Universe: A History of the Telescope (1976), Andre Deutsch Limited,
The Collapsing Universe (1977), Walker,
Extraterrestrial Civilizations (1979), Crown,
Visions of the Universe with illustrations by Kazuaki Iwasaki (1981), Cosmos Store,
Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), Crown,
The Measure of the Universe (1983), Harper & Row
Think About Space: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going? with co-author Frank White (1989), Walker
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery (1989), Harper & Row, second edition adds content thru 1993,
Beginnings: The Story of Origins (1989), Walker
Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (1991), Random House,
Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos (1991), Dutton,
Mysteries of Deep Space: Quasars, Pulsars and Black Holes (1994)
Earth's Moon (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Sun (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Earth (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Jupiter (1989), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Venus (1990), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Literary works
All published by Doubleday
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970),
Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" (1972)
Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost" (1974)
Familiar Poems, Annotated (1976)
Asimov's The Annotated "Gulliver's Travels" (1980)
Asimov's Annotated "Gilbert and Sullivan" (1988)
The Bible
Words from Genesis (1962), Houghton Mifflin
Words from the Exodus (1963), Houghton Mifflin
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vols I and II (1967 and 1969, one-volume ed. 1981), Doubleday,
The Story of Ruth (1972), Doubleday,
In the Beginning (1981), Crown
Autobiography
In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920–1954 (1979, Doubleday)
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 (1980, Doubleday)
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994, Doubleday)
It's Been a Good Life (2002, Prometheus Books), condensation of Asimov's three volumes of autobiography, edited by his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov
History
All published by Houghton Mifflin except where otherwise stated
The Kite That Won the Revolution (1963),
The Greeks (1965)
The Roman Republic (1966)
The Roman Empire (1967)
The Egyptians (1967)
The Near East (1968)
The Dark Ages (1968)
Words from History (1968)
The Shaping of England (1969)
Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)
The Land of Canaan (1971)
The Shaping of France (1972)
The Shaping of North America: From Earliest Times to 1763 (1973)
The Birth of the United States: 1763–1816 (1974)
Our Federal Union: The United States from 1816 to 1865 (1975),
The Golden Door: The United States from 1865 to 1918 (1977)
Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991), HarperCollins,
The March of the Millennia (1991), with co-author Frank White, Walker & Company,
Humor
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (1971) (As Dr. A), Walker & Company,
Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), Houghton Mifflin
Lecherous Limericks (1975), Walker,
More Lecherous Limericks (1976), Walker,
Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977), Walker,
Limericks, Two Gross, with John Ciardi (1978), Norton,
A Grossery of Limericks, with John Ciardi (1981), Norton,
Limericks for Children (1984), Caedmon
Asimov Laughs Again (1992), HarperCollins
On writing science fiction
Asimov on Science Fiction (1981), Doubleday
Asimov's Galaxy (1989), Doubleday
Other nonfiction
Opus 100 (1969), Houghton Mifflin,
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964), Doubleday (revised edition 1972, )
Opus 200 (1979), Houghton Mifflin,
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1979), Grosset & Dunlap,
Opus 300 (1984), Houghton Mifflin,
Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991), with co-author Frederik Pohl, Tor, .
Television, music, and film appearances
I Robot, a concept album by the Alan Parsons Project that examined some of Asimov's work
The Last Word (1959)
The Dick Cavett Show, four appearances 1968–71
The Nature of Things (1969)
ABC News coverage of Apollo 11, 1969, with Fred Pohl, interviewed by Rod Serling
David Frost interview program, August 1969. Frost asked Asimov if he had ever tried to find God and, after some initial evasion, Asimov answered, "God is much more intelligent than I am—let him try to find me."
BBC Horizon "It's About Time" (1979), show hosted by Dudley Moore
Target ... Earth? (1980)
The David Letterman Show (1980)
NBC TV Speaking Freely, interviewed by Edwin Newman (1982)
ARTS Network talk show hosted by Studs Terkel and Calvin Trillin, approximately (1982)
Oltre New York (1986)
Voyage to the Outer Planets and Beyond (1986)
Gandahar (1987), a French animated science-fiction film by René Laloux. Asimov wrote the English translation for the film.
Bill Moyers interview (1988)
Stranieri in America (1988)
Adaptations
El robot embustero (1966), short film directed by Antonio Lara de Gavilán, based on short story "Liar!"
A halhatatlanság halála (1977), TV movie directed by András Rajnai, based on novel The End of Eternity
The Ugly Little Boy (1977), short film directed by Barry Morse and Donald W. Thompson, based on novelette The Ugly Little Boy
All the Troubles of the World (1978), short film directed by Dianne Haak-Edson, based on short story "All the Troubles of the World"
The End of Eternity (1987), film directed by Andrei Yermash, based on novel The End of Eternity
Nightfall (1988), film directed by Paul Mayersberg, based on novelette "Nightfall"
Robots (1988), film directed by Doug Smith and Kim Takal, based on the Robot series
Feeling 109 (1988), short film directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov
Teach 109 (1989), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as The Android Affair)
The Android Affair (1995), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as Teach 109)
Bicentennial Man (1999), film directed by Chris Columbus, based on novelette "The Bicentennial Man" and on novel The Positronic Man
Nightfall (2000), film directed by Gwyneth Gibby, based on novelette "Nightfall"
I, Robot (2004), film directed by Alex Proyas, based on ideas of short stories of the Robot series
Formula of Death (2012), TV movie directed by Behdad Avand Amini, based on novel The Death Dealers
Spell My Name with an S (2014), short film directed by Samuel Ali, based on short story "Spell My Name with an S"
Foundation (2021), series created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, based on the Foundation series
Novelizations
Novel Fantastic Voyage, novelization of film Fantastic Voyage (1966)
References
Footnotes
Notes
Sources
Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green (1979), New York: Avon, .
In Joy Still Felt (1980), New York: Avon .
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), (hc), (pb).
Yours, Isaac Asimov (1996), edited by Stanley Asimov. New York: Doubleday .
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet Asimov. .
Goldman, Stephen H., "Isaac Asimov", in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 8, Cowart and Wymer eds. (Gale Research, 1981), pp. 15–29.
Gunn, James. "On Variations on a Robot", IASFM, July 1980, pp. 56–81.
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982). .
The Science of Science-Fiction Writing (2000). .
Further reading
External links
Asimov Online, a vast repository of information about Asimov, maintained by Asimov enthusiast Edward Seiler
Jenkins' Spoiler-Laden Guide to Isaac Asimov, reviews of all of Asimov's books
20th-century births
1992 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American male writers
AIDS-related deaths in New York (state)
American alternate history writers
Jewish American atheists
American biochemists
American essayists
American humanists
American humorists
American male novelists
20th-century American memoirists
United States Army non-commissioned officers
American mystery writers
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American science fiction writers
American science writers
American skeptics
American writers of Russian descent
Asimov's Science Fiction people
Bible commentators
Boston University faculty
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
Critics of religions
Date of birth unknown
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Futurians
Historians of astronomy
American historians of science
Hugo Award-winning writers
Humor researchers
Jewish American novelists
Jewish American short story writers
Jewish feminists
Jewish skeptics
American male essayists
Male feminists
American male short story writers
American short story writers
Mensans
Nebula Award winners
New York (state) Democrats
People from Shumyachsky District
Naturalized citizens of the United States
United States Navy civilians
Science fiction fans
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
SFWA Grand Masters
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Writers from Brooklyn
Yiddish-speaking people
Boys High School (Brooklyn) alumni
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New York (state)
Scientists from New York City
20th-century essayists
20th-century atheists
People from the Upper West Side
Pulp fiction writers
Writers about religion and science
Atheist feminists
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
| false |
[
"\"Stay Out of My Life\" is a 1987 hit single by British pop group Five Star. It was the fifth release from their number one selling LP Silk & Steel, and reached no.9 in the UK singles chart.\n\nThe song's B-side, \"How Dare You (Stay Out of My Life)\", was used as the theme tune to the 1980s children's television series made by Tyne Tees TV called How Dare You, presented by Carrie Grant.\n\nTrack listings\n7” Single:\n\n1. \"Stay Out of My Life\"\n\n2. \"(How Dare You) Stay Out of My Life\" **\n\n12” Single:\n\n1. \"Stay Out of My Life\" (Extended Version) *\n\n2. \"If I Say Yes\" (Lew Hahn U.S. Dub Remix)\n\n3. \"(How Dare You) Stay Out of My Life\" **\n\n* Available on CD on the cd single of There's A Brand New World PD42236\n\n** Released in CD format on the Cherry Pop 2012 reissue of Five Star's 1987 Between the Lines album.\n\nReferences\n\nFive Star songs\n1987 singles\nSongs written by Denise Pearson",
"\"Llangollen Market\" is a song from early 19th century Wales. It is known to have been performed at an eisteddfod at Llangollen in 1858.\n\nThe text of the song survives in a manuscript held by the National Museum of Wales, which came into the possession of singer Mary Davies, a co-founder of the Welsh Folk-Song Society.\n\nThe song tells the tale of a young man from the Llangollen area going off to war and leaving behind his broken-hearted girlfriend. Originally written in English, the song has been translated into Welsh and recorded by several artists such as Siân James, Siobhan Owen, Calennig and Siwsann George.\n\nLyrics\nIt’s far beyond the mountains that look so distant here,\nTo fight his country’s battles, last Mayday went my dear;\nAh, well shall I remember with bitter sighs the day,\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me? At home why did I stay?\n\nAh, cruel was my father that did my flight restrain,\nAnd I was cruel-hearted that did at home remain,\nWith you, my love, contented, I’d journey far away;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me? At home why did I stay?\n\nWhile thinking of my Owen, my eyes with tears do fill,\nAnd then my mother chides me because my wheel stands still,\nBut how can I think of spinning when my Owen’s far away;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me? At home why did I stay?\n\nTo market at Llangollen each morning do I go,\nBut how to strike a bargain no longer do I know;\nMy father chides at evening, my mother all the day;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me, at home why did I stay?\n\nOh, would it please kind heaven to shield my love from harm,\nTo clasp him to my bosom would every care disarm,\nBut alas, I fear, 'tis distant - that happy, happy day;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me, at home why did stay?\n\nReferences\n\nWelsh folk songs"
] |
[
"Isaac Asimov",
"Education and career",
"Where did he go to school?",
"Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15,",
"Did he further his education?",
"he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students",
"What did he study there?",
"Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of \"dissecting an alley cat\".",
"Where else did he go to school?",
"After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.",
"What did he get a bachelors in?",
"he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948.",
"Was he done with schooling after that?",
"In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible.",
"Where did he work?",
"After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary,",
"How long did he stay there?",
"in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955),"
] |
C_4faa5e824b8a43099cb7ba91fcdaf534_0
|
What did he write?
| 10 |
What did Isaac Asimov write?
|
Isaac Asimov
|
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then the institution's primary undergraduate school for men with quotas on the number of admissions from those ethnic groups. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939. After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov in 1939 applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia; initially rejected and then accepted only on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948. In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11. After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary, with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university. The difference grew, and in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955), and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb. In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively. CANNOTANSWER
|
he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
|
Isaac Asimov (; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction.
Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories. He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.
He was president of the American Humanist Association. Several entities have been named in his honor, including the asteroid (5020) Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, and four literary awards.
Surname
Asimov's family name derives from the first part of ozímyj khleb (озимый хлеб), meaning the winter grain (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending -ov added. Azimov is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov's father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov. This later inspired one of Asimov's short stories, "Spell My Name with an S".
Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that "Isaac Asimov" was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name.
Biography
Early life
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian-Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me".
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya; June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011), and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the Long Island Newsday.
Asimov's family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on February 3, 1923 when he was three years old. Since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English with him, he never learned Russian, but he remained fluent in both. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade). His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919. In third grade he learned about the "error" and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight.
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, a fact that Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time when the genre was becoming more science-centered.
Education and career
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then, the institution's primary undergraduate school for men. Jewish and Italian-American students, even of outstanding academic caliber, were often deliberately barred from Columbia College proper because of the then-popular practice of imposing unwritten ethnic admission quotas. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester because he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1936, Asimov finished his Bachelor of Science degree at Morningside Heights campus (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.
After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German.
In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11.
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949, teaching biochemistry with a $5,000 salary (), with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students. In 1955, he was promoted to associate professor, which gave him tenure. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title, he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class, and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb.
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26 the same year. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956. They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He immediately began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship. On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2. He sailed to England in June 1974 on the SS France for a trip mostly devoted to events in London and Birmingham, though he also found time to visit Stonehenge.
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly paid to give talks about science. He was a frequent fixture at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties. His physical dexterity was very poor. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle; however, he did learn to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".
Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe Pack, a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan. He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society, for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty's work "The Dynamics of An Asteroid" involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. He later used his essay on Moriarty's work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, "The Ultimate Crime", which appeared in More Tales of the Black Widowers.
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.
Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics. In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was "a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then." He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP "gave it immense status and authority" in his eyes.
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs".
After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.
Illness and death
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members.
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It's Been a Good Life.
Writings
Overview
Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, while writing over 120 nonfiction books. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories. Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series. Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".
Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology. Although Asimov did write several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982), which were classified in the 100s category, none of his own books were classified in that category.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.
Science fiction
Asimov became a science fiction fan in 1929, when he began reading the pulp magazines sold in his family's candy store. At first his father forbade reading pulps as he considered them to be trash, until Asimov persuaded him that because the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, they must be educational. At age 18 he joined the Futurians science fiction fan club, where he made friends who went on to become science fiction writers or editors.
Asimov began writing at the age of 11, imitating The Rover Boys with eight chapters of The Greenville Chums at College. His father bought Asimov a used typewriter at age 16. His first published work was a humorous item on the birth of his brother for Boys High School's literary journal in 1934. In May 1937 he first thought of writing professionally, and began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew" (now lost), that year. On May 17, 1938, puzzled by a change in the schedule of Astounding Science Fiction, Asimov visited its publisher Street & Smith Publications. Inspired by the visit, he finished the story on June 19, 1938, and personally submitted it to Astounding editor John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell met with Asimov for more than an hour and promised to read the story himself. Two days later he received a rejection letter explaining why in detail. This was the first of what became almost weekly meetings with the editor while Asimov lived in New York, until moving to Boston in 1949; Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and became a personal friend.
By the end of the month, Asimov completed a second story, "Stowaway". Campbell rejected it on July 22 but—in "the nicest possible letter you could imagine"—encouraged him to continue writing, promising that Asimov might sell his work after another year and a dozen stories of practice. On October 21, 1938, he sold the third story he finished, "Marooned Off Vesta", to Amazing Stories, edited by Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. Asimov was paid $64 (), or one cent a word. Two more stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May Amazing and "Trends" in the July Astounding, the issue fans later selected as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. For 1940, ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in Astounding. His earnings became enough to pay for his education, but not yet enough for him to become a full-time writer.
Asimov later said that unlike other top Golden Age writers Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt—also first published in 1939, and whose talent and stardom were immediately obvious—he "(this is not false modesty) came up only gradually". Through July 29, 1940, Asimov wrote 22 stories in 25 months, of which 13 were published; he wrote in 1972 that from that date he never wrote a science fiction story that was not published (except for two "special cases"). He was famous enough that Donald Wollheim told Asimov that he purchased "The Secret Sense" for a new magazine only because of his name, and the December 1940 issue of Astonishing—featuring Asimov's name in bold—was the first magazine to base cover art on his work, but Asimov later said that neither he himself nor anyone else—except perhaps Campbell—considered him better than an often published "third rater".
Based on a conversation with Campbell, Asimov wrote "Nightfall", his 32nd story, in March and April 1941, and Astounding published it in September 1941. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written. In Nightfall and Other Stories Asimov wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." "Nightfall" is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.
After writing "Victory Unintentional" in January and February 1942, Asimov did not write another story for a year. Asimov expected to make chemistry his career, and was paid $2,600 annually at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, enough to marry his girlfriend; he did not expect to make much more from writing than the $1,788.50 he had earned from 28 stories sold over four years. Asimov left science fiction fandom and no longer read new magazines, and might have left the industry had not Heinlein and de Camp been coworkers and previously sold stories continued to appear. In 1942, Asimov published the first of his Foundation stories—later collected in the Foundation trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). The books recount the fall of a vast interstellar empire and the establishment of its eventual successor. They also feature his fictional science of psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted. The trilogy and Robot series are his most famous science fiction. In 1966 they won the Hugo Award for the all-time best series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Campbell raised his rate per word, Orson Welles purchased rights to "Evidence", and anthologies reprinted his stories. By the end of the war Asimov was earning as a writer an amount equal to half of his Navy Yard salary, even after a raise, but Asimov still did not believe that writing could support him, his wife, and future children.
His "positronic" robot stories—many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in his introduction to the short story collection The Complete Robot (1982) that he was largely inspired by the almost relentless tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators.
The robot series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977, Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of I, Robot that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by Jeff Vintar titled Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired. (The title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for a story by Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel The Positronic Man by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.
Besides movies, his Foundation and Robot stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Donald Kingsbury. At least some of these appear to have been done with the blessing of, or at the request of, Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov.
In 1948, he also wrote a spoof chemistry article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he would receive at his oral examination, in case the examiners thought he wasn't taking science seriously. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". Laughing hysterically with relief, Asimov had to be led out of the room. After a five-minute wait, he was summoned back into the room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov".
Demand for science fiction greatly increased during the 1950s. It became possible for a genre author to write full-time. In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished "Grow Old with Me" (40,000 words), but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of Pebble in the Sky. Doubleday published five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome Press publish one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as I, Robot and his Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the Foundation trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as The Rest of the Robots.
Books and the magazines Galaxy, and Fantasy & Science Fiction ended Asimov's dependence on Astounding. He later described the era as his "'mature' period". Asimov's "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy, was his personal favorite story.
In 1972, his novel The Gods Themselves (which was not part of a series) was published to general acclaim, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Novel.
In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue. McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
Asimov said in 1969 that he had "the happiest of all my associations with science fiction magazines" with Fantasy & Science Fiction; "I have no complaints about Astounding, Galaxy, or any of the rest, heaven knows, but F&SF has become something special to me". Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines "anthologies").
Due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another book in his Foundation series, he did so with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992), his last novel.
Popular science
Asimov and two colleagues published a textbook in 1949, with two more editions by 1969. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's The Naked Sun and 1982's Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). He greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap". Asimov explained in The Rest of the Robots that he had been unable to write substantial fiction since the summer of 1958, and observers understood him as saying that his fiction career had ended, or was permanently interrupted. Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason".
Fantasy and Science Fiction invited Asimov to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine. The first of 399 monthly F&SF columns appeared in November 1958 and they continued until his terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by Doubleday, gave Asimov a reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science; he described them as his only popular science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects on the part of his readers. The column was ostensibly dedicated to popular science but Asimov had complete editorial freedom, and wrote about contemporary social issues in essays such as "Thinking About Thinking" and "Knock Plastic!". In 1975 he wrote of these essays: "I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment."
Asimov's first wide-ranging reference work, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960), was nominated for a National Book Award, and in 1963 he won a Hugo Award—his first—for his essays for F&SF. The popularity of his science books and the income he derived from them allowed him to give up most academic responsibilities and become a full-time freelance writer. He encouraged other science fiction writers to write popular science, stating in 1967 that "the knowledgeable, skillful science writer is worth his weight in contracts", with "twice as much work as he can possibly handle".
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience: "Uneasy". Floyd C. Gale said that "Asimov has a rare talent. He can make your mental mouth water over dry facts", and "science fiction's loss has been science popularization's gain". Asimov said that "Of all the writing I do, fiction, non-fiction, adult, or juvenile, these F & SF articles are by far the most fun". He regretted, however, that he had less time for fiction—causing dissatisfied readers to send him letters of complaint—stating in 1969 that "In the last ten years, I've done a couple of novels, some collections, a dozen or so stories, but that's nothing".
In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read the word "unionized" as un-ion-ized (pronounced "un-EYE-en-ized"), meaning "(a chemical species) being in an electrically neutral state, as opposed to being an ion", while non-chemists will read the word as union-ized (pronounced "YOU-nien-ized"), meaning "(a worker or organization) belonging to or possessing a trade union".
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term "robotics" in his 1941 story "Liar!", though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in Gold ("The Robot Chronicles"). While acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one third of the way down the first column of page 100, Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942 printing of his short story "Runaround".
In the same story, Asimov also coined the term "positronic" (the counterpart to "electronic" for positrons).
Asimov coined the term "psychohistory" in his Foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. Asimov said later that he should have called it psychosociology. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 fix-up novel Foundation. Somewhat later, the term "psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.
Other writings
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, including The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966), The Roman Empire (1967), The Egyptians (1967) The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968), and Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991).
He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes—covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), Asimov's Annotated Don Juan (1972), Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He published two full-length mystery novels, and wrote 66 stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders, and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, who he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends. A parody of the Black Widowers, "An Evening with the White Divorcés," was written by author, critic, and librarian Jon L. Breen. Asimov joked, "all I can do ... is to wait until I catch him in a dark alley, someday."
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks. Asimov featured Yiddish humor in Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, some of Asimov's behavior towards women was described as sexual harassment and cited as an example of historically problematic behavior by men in science fiction communities.
Asimov published three volumes of autobiography. In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980) cover his life up to 1978. The third volume, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), covered his whole life (rather than following on from where the second volume left off). The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov after his death. The book won a Hugo Award in 1995. Janet Asimov edited It's Been a Good Life (2002), a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Treks initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on Star Treks scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming that despite its inaccuracies, Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.
Awards and recognition
Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half-dozen lifetime awards.
He also received 14 honorary doctorate degrees from universities.
1955 – Guest of Honor at the 13th World Science Fiction Convention
1957 – Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award for best science book for youth, for Building Blocks of the Universe
1960 – Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
1962 – Boston University's Publication Merit Award
1963 – A special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction," for essays published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
1963 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1964 – The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" (1941) the all-time best science fiction short story
1965 – James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
1966 – Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation trilogy
1967 – Edward E. Smith Memorial Award
1967 – AAAS-Westinghouse Science Writing Award for Magazine Writing, for essay "Over the Edge of the Universe" (in the March 1967 Harper's Magazine)
1972 – Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Locus Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1975 – Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
1975 – Klumpke-Roberts Award "for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy"
1975 – Locus Award for Best Reprint Anthology for Before the Golden Age
1977 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Locus Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1981 – An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
1981 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978
1983 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
1983 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge
1984 – Humanist of the Year
1986 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him its 8th SFWA Grand Master (presented in 1987).
1987 – Locus Award for Best Short Story for "Robot Dreams"
1992 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Gold"
1995 – Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1995 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1996 – A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon for "The Mule", the 7th Foundation story, published in Astounding Science Fiction
1997 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Asimov in its second class of two deceased and two living persons, along with H. G. Wells.
2000 – Asimov was featured on a stamp in Israel
2001 – The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debates at the Hayden Planetarium in New York were inaugurated
2009 – A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov, was named in his honor
2010 – In the US Congress bill about the designation of the National Robotics Week as an annual event, a tribute to Isaac Asimov is as follows:
"Whereas the second week in April each year is designated as 'National Robotics Week', recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April 1992: Now, therefore, be it resolved ..."
2015 – Selected as a member of the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
2016 – A 1941 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1940 was given at the 2016 WorldCon for Robbie, his first positronic robot story, published in Super Science Stories, September 1940
2018 – A 1943 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1942 was given at the 2018 WorldCon for Foundation, published in Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942
Writing style
Asimov was his own secretary, typist, indexer, proofreader, and literary agent. He wrote a typed first draft composed at the keyboard at 90 words per minute; he imagined an ending first, then a beginning, then "let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it". (Asimov only used an outline once, later describing it as "like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket".) After correcting a draft by hand, he retyped the document as the final copy and only made one revision with minor editor-requested changes; a word processor did not save him much time, Asimov said, because 95% of the first draft was unchanged.
After disliking making multiple revisions of "Black Friar of the Flame", Asimov refused to make major, second, or non-editorial revisions ("like chewing used gum"), stating that "too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process". He submitted "failures" to another editor.
One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Robot:
Asimov addressed such criticism in 1989 at the beginning of Nemesis:
Gunn cited examples of a more complex style, such as the climax of "Liar!". Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", Arkady Darell in Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel, and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels.
Other than books by Gunn and Joseph Patrouch, a relative dearth of "literary" criticism exists on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:
Gunn's and Patrouch's respective studies of Asimov both state that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book comments in detail on each of Asimov's novels. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but calls some passages in The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".
Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), and said in 1973 that his style had not changed, Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in nonchronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material. (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "Reason", one of the early Robot stories). Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of The Currents of Space did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-kyrt Asimov fan" could enjoy it. In his later novel Nemesis one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.
Alien life
Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when Astoundings editor John Campbell rejected one of his science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. The nature of the rejection led him to believe that Campbell may have based his bias towards humans in stories on a real-world racial bias. Unwilling to write only weak alien races, and concerned that a confrontation would jeopardize his and Campbell's friendship, he decided he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms, he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens and alien sex. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of The Gods Themselves, the part that deals with those themes.
In the Hugo Award-winning novelette "Gold", Asimov describes an author, clearly based on himself, who has one of his books (The Gods Themselves) adapted into a "compu-drama", essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for having an extremely nonvisual style, making it difficult to adapt his work, and the author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across.
Romance and women
In the early days of science fiction some authors and critics felt that the romantic elements were inappropriate in science fiction stories, which were supposedly to be focused on science and technology. Isaac Asimov was a prominent supporter of this point of view, expressed in his 1938-1939 letters to Astounding, where he described such elements as "mush" and "slop". However, to his dismay, these letters were met with a strong opposition.
Asimov attributed the lack of romance and sex in his fiction to the "early imprinting" from starting his writing career when he had never been on a date and "didn't know anything about girls". He was sometimes criticized for the general absence of sex (and of extraterrestrial life) in his science fiction. He claimed he wrote The Gods Themselves to respond to these criticisms, which often came from New Wave science fiction (and often British) writers. The second part (of three) of the novel is set on an alien world with three sexes, and the sexual behavior of these creatures is extensively depicted.
Asimov was also criticized for a lack of strong female characters in his early work. However, some of his robot stories, including the earliest ones, featured the character Susan Calvin, a forceful and intelligent woman who regularly out-performed her male colleagues.
In his autobiographical writings, such as Gold ("Women and Science Fiction"), he acknowledges this complaint has merit and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early science-fiction stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. The Washington Post's "Book World" section reports of Robots and Empire opined "In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are."
Views
Religion
Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed the traditions of Orthodox Judaism, though not as stringently as they had in Petrovichi; they did not, however, force their beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus, he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the Torah represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that the Iliad recorded Greek mythology. When he was 13, he chose not to have a bar mitzvah. As his books Treasury of Humor and Asimov Laughs Again record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar" versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, an analysis of the historic foundations for both the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "humanist" and considered that term more practical. Asimov did, however, continue to identify himself as a secular Jew, as stated in his introduction to Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction, Wandering Stars: "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the Bar Mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."
When asked in an interview in 1982 if he was an atheist, Asimov replied,
Likewise, he said about religious education: "I would not be satisfied to have my kids choose to be religious without trying to argue them out of it, just as I would not be satisfied to have them decide to smoke regularly or engage in any other practice I consider detrimental to mind or body."
In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote,
The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".
Asimov said about using religious motifs in his writing:
Politics
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal, and thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography, In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman. Asimov's impression was that the 1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.
Asimov vehemently opposed Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He closely followed Watergate, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign. Asimov was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."
After Asimov's name appeared in the mid-1960s on a list of people the Communist Party USA "considered amenable" to its goals, the FBI investigated him. Because of his academic background, the bureau briefly considered Asimov as a possible candidate for known Soviet spy ROBPROF, but found nothing suspicious in his life or background.
Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though insisting that he was not a Zionist. In his third autobiography, Asimov stated his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he was opposed to having nation-states in general, and supported the notion of a single humanity. Asimov especially worried about the safety of Israel given that it had been created among hostile Muslim neighbors, and said that Jews had merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".
Social issues
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
In a 1988 interview by Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested. He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace. Asimov thought that people would live in space by the year 2019.
In 1983 Asimov wrote:
He continues on education:
Sexual harassment
Asimov would often fondle, kiss and pinch women at conventions and elsewhere without regard for their consent. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, author of an Asimov biography and writer on the history of science fiction, he often defended himself by saying that far from showing objections, these women cooperated. In the 1971 satirical piece, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, he wrote, "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched."
According to Nevala-Lee, however, "many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual." He wrote that Asimov's behaviour, as a leading science-fiction author and personality, contributed to an undesirable atmosphere for women in the male-dominated science fiction community. In support of this, he quoted some of Asimov's contemporary fellow-authors such as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison and Frederik Pohl, as well as editors such as Timothy Seldes. Specific incidents were reported by other people including Edward L. Ferman, long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction who wrote "... instead of shaking my date's hand, he shook her left breast".
Environment and population
Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the Bhopal disaster.
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:
Other authors
Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and in fact even used The Lord of the Rings as a plot point in a Black Widowers story, titled Nothing like Murder. In the essay All or Nothing (for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1981), Asimov revealed that he admires Tolkien and that he had read The Lord of the Rings five times. (The feelings were mutual, with Tolkien himself revealing that he had enjoyed Asimov's science fiction. This would make Asimov an exception to Tolkien's earlier claim that he rarely found "any modern books" that were interesting to him.)
He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, however, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction".
The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Asimov became a fan of mystery stories at the same time as science fiction. He preferred to read the former to latter because "I read every [science fiction] story keenly aware that it might be worse than mine, in which case I had no patience with it, or that it might be better, in which case I felt miserable". Asimov wrote "I make no secret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Christie as my model. In my opinion, her mysteries are the best ever written, far better than the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Hercule Poirot is the best detective fiction has seen. Why should I not use as my model what I consider the best?" He enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but considered Arthur Conan Doyle to be "a slapdash and sloppy writer."
Asimov also enjoyed humorous stories, particularly those of P. G. Wodehouse.
In non-fiction writing, Asimov particularly admired the writing style of Martin Gardner, and tried to emulate it in his own science books. On meeting Gardner for the first time in 1965, Asimov told him this, to which Gardner answered that he had based his own style on Asimov's.
Influence
Paul Krugman, holder of a Nobel Prize in Economics, stated Asimov's concept of psychohistory has inspired him to become an economist.
John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed, "It has been pointed out that most science fiction writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style." Along with such figures as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, Asimov left his mark as one of the most distinguished interdisciplinarians of the 20th century. "Few individuals", writes James L. Christian, "understood better than Isaac Asimov what synoptic thinking is all about. His almost 500 books—which he wrote as a specialist, a knowledgeable authority, or just an excited layman—range over almost all conceivable subjects: the sciences, history, literature, religion, and of course, science fiction."
Bibliography
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books (based on his personal count), Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing. An extensive bibliography of Isaac Asimov's works has been compiled by Ed Seiler. He published enough that his book writing rate could be analysed, showing that the writing became faster as he wrote more.
An online exhibit in West Virginia University Libraries' virtually complete Asimov Collection displays features, visuals, and descriptions of some of his over 600 books, games, audio recordings, videos, and wall charts. Many first, rare, and autographed editions are in the Libraries' Rare Book Room. Book jackets and autographs are presented online along with descriptions and images of children's books, science fiction art, multimedia, and other materials in the collection.
Science fiction
"Greater Foundation" series
The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series. The Galactic Empire novels were published as independent stories, set earlier in the same future as Foundation. Later in life, Asimov synthesized the Robot series into a single coherent "history" that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series.
All of these books were published by Doubleday & Co, except the original Foundation trilogy which was originally published by Gnome Books before being bought and republished by Doubleday.
The Robot series:
(first Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(second Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(third Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(sequel to the Elijah Baley trilogy)
Galactic Empire novels:
(early Galactic Empire)
(long before the Empire)
(Republic of Trantor still expanding)
Foundation prequels:
Original Foundation trilogy:
(also published with the title 'The Man Who Upset the Universe' as a 35¢ Ace paperback, D-125, in about 1952)
Extended Foundation series:
Lucky Starr series (as Paul French)
All published by Doubleday & Co
David Starr, Space Ranger (1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)
Norby Chronicles (with Janet Asimov)
All published by Walker & Company
Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983)
Norby's Other Secret (1984)
Norby and the Lost Princess (1985)
Norby and the Invaders (1985)
Norby and the Queen's Necklace (1986)
Norby Finds a Villain (1987)
Norby Down to Earth (1988)
Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure (1989)
Norby and the Oldest Dragon (1990)
Norby and the Court Jester (1991)
Novels not part of a series
Novels marked with an asterisk (*) have minor connections to Foundation universe.
The End of Eternity (1955), Doubleday (*)
Fantastic Voyage (1966), Bantam Books (paperback) and Houghton Mifflin (hardback) (a novelization of the movie)
The Gods Themselves (1972), Doubleday
Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), Doubleday (not a sequel to Fantastic Voyage, but a similar, independent story)
Nemesis (1989), Bantam Doubleday Dell (*)
Nightfall (1990), Doubleday, with Robert Silverberg (based on "Nightfall", a 1941 short story written by Asimov)
Child of Time (1992), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (based on "The Ugly Little Boy", a 1958 short story written by Asimov)
The Positronic Man (1993), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (*) (based on The Bicentennial Man, a 1976 novella written by Asimov)
Short-story collections
Mysteries
Novels
The Death Dealers (1958), Avon Books, republished as A Whiff of Death by Walker & Company
Murder at the ABA (1976), Doubleday, also published as Authorized Murder
Short-story collections
Black Widowers series
Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), Doubleday
More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976), Doubleday
Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), Doubleday
Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), Doubleday
Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), Doubleday
The Return of the Black Widowers (2003), Carroll & Graf
Other mysteries
Asimov's Mysteries (1968), Doubleday
The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977), Walker
The Union Club Mysteries (1983), Doubleday
The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries (1985), Walker
The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986), Doubleday
Nonfiction
Popular science
Collections of Asimov's essays for F&SF
The following books collected essays which were originally published as monthly columns in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected by Doubleday & Co
Fact and Fancy (1962)
View from a Height (1963)
Adding a Dimension (1964)
Of Time and Space and Other Things (1965)
From Earth to Heaven (1966)
Science, Numbers, and I (1968)
The Solar System and Back (1970)
The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
The Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
Asimov On Astronomy (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Asimov On Chemistry (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Of Matters Great and Small (1975)
Asimov On Physics (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
Asimov On Numbers (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
The Road to Infinity (1979)
The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
Counting the Eons (1983)
X Stands for Unknown (1984)
The Subatomic Monster (1985)
Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
Asimov on Science: A 30 Year Retrospective 1959–1989 (1989) (features the first essay in the introduction)
Out of the Everywhere (1990)
The Secret of the Universe (1991)
Other general science essay collections
Only a Trillion (1957), Abelard-Schuman,
Is Anyone There? (1967), Doubleday, (which includes the article in which he coined the term "spome")
Today and Tomorrow and— (1973), Doubleday
Science Past, Science Future (1975), Doubleday,
Please Explain (1975), Houghton Mifflin,
Life and Time (1978), Doubleday
The Roving Mind (1983), Prometheus Books, new edition 1997,
The Dangers of Intelligence (1986), Houghton Mifflin
Past, Present and Future (1987), Prometheus Books,
The Tyrannosaurus Prescription (1989), Prometheus Books
Frontiers (1990), Dutton
Frontiers II (1993), Dutton
Other science books by Asimov
The Chemicals of Life (1954), Abelard-Schuman
Inside the Atom (1956), Abelard-Schuman,
Building Blocks of the Universe (1957; revised 1974), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Carbon (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Nitrogen (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
Words of Science and the History Behind Them (1959), Houghton Mifflin
The Clock We Live On (1959), Abelard-Schuman,
Breakthroughs in Science (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Numbers (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Measure (1960), Houghton Mifflin
The Wellsprings of Life (1960), Abelard-Schuman,
Life and Energy (1962), Doubleday,
The Genetic Code (1962), The Orion Press
The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation (1963), Houghton Mifflin, , (revised)
The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions (1963), Houghton Mifflin,
Planets for Man (with Stephen H. Dole) (1964), Random House, reprinted by RAND in 2007
An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule (1965), Houghton Mifflin,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Basic Books
The title varied with each of the four editions, the last being Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984)
The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1966), Walker,
The Neutrino (1966), Doubleday, ASIN B002JK525W
Understanding Physics Vol. I, Motion, Sound, and Heat (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. II, Light, Magnetism, and Electricity (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. III, The Electron, Proton, and Neutron (1966), Walker,
Photosynthesis (1969), Basic Books,
Our World in Space (1974), New York Graphic,
Eyes on the Universe: A History of the Telescope (1976), Andre Deutsch Limited,
The Collapsing Universe (1977), Walker,
Extraterrestrial Civilizations (1979), Crown,
Visions of the Universe with illustrations by Kazuaki Iwasaki (1981), Cosmos Store,
Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), Crown,
The Measure of the Universe (1983), Harper & Row
Think About Space: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going? with co-author Frank White (1989), Walker
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery (1989), Harper & Row, second edition adds content thru 1993,
Beginnings: The Story of Origins (1989), Walker
Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (1991), Random House,
Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos (1991), Dutton,
Mysteries of Deep Space: Quasars, Pulsars and Black Holes (1994)
Earth's Moon (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Sun (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Earth (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Jupiter (1989), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Venus (1990), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Literary works
All published by Doubleday
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970),
Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" (1972)
Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost" (1974)
Familiar Poems, Annotated (1976)
Asimov's The Annotated "Gulliver's Travels" (1980)
Asimov's Annotated "Gilbert and Sullivan" (1988)
The Bible
Words from Genesis (1962), Houghton Mifflin
Words from the Exodus (1963), Houghton Mifflin
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vols I and II (1967 and 1969, one-volume ed. 1981), Doubleday,
The Story of Ruth (1972), Doubleday,
In the Beginning (1981), Crown
Autobiography
In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920–1954 (1979, Doubleday)
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 (1980, Doubleday)
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994, Doubleday)
It's Been a Good Life (2002, Prometheus Books), condensation of Asimov's three volumes of autobiography, edited by his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov
History
All published by Houghton Mifflin except where otherwise stated
The Kite That Won the Revolution (1963),
The Greeks (1965)
The Roman Republic (1966)
The Roman Empire (1967)
The Egyptians (1967)
The Near East (1968)
The Dark Ages (1968)
Words from History (1968)
The Shaping of England (1969)
Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)
The Land of Canaan (1971)
The Shaping of France (1972)
The Shaping of North America: From Earliest Times to 1763 (1973)
The Birth of the United States: 1763–1816 (1974)
Our Federal Union: The United States from 1816 to 1865 (1975),
The Golden Door: The United States from 1865 to 1918 (1977)
Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991), HarperCollins,
The March of the Millennia (1991), with co-author Frank White, Walker & Company,
Humor
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (1971) (As Dr. A), Walker & Company,
Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), Houghton Mifflin
Lecherous Limericks (1975), Walker,
More Lecherous Limericks (1976), Walker,
Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977), Walker,
Limericks, Two Gross, with John Ciardi (1978), Norton,
A Grossery of Limericks, with John Ciardi (1981), Norton,
Limericks for Children (1984), Caedmon
Asimov Laughs Again (1992), HarperCollins
On writing science fiction
Asimov on Science Fiction (1981), Doubleday
Asimov's Galaxy (1989), Doubleday
Other nonfiction
Opus 100 (1969), Houghton Mifflin,
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964), Doubleday (revised edition 1972, )
Opus 200 (1979), Houghton Mifflin,
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1979), Grosset & Dunlap,
Opus 300 (1984), Houghton Mifflin,
Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991), with co-author Frederik Pohl, Tor, .
Television, music, and film appearances
I Robot, a concept album by the Alan Parsons Project that examined some of Asimov's work
The Last Word (1959)
The Dick Cavett Show, four appearances 1968–71
The Nature of Things (1969)
ABC News coverage of Apollo 11, 1969, with Fred Pohl, interviewed by Rod Serling
David Frost interview program, August 1969. Frost asked Asimov if he had ever tried to find God and, after some initial evasion, Asimov answered, "God is much more intelligent than I am—let him try to find me."
BBC Horizon "It's About Time" (1979), show hosted by Dudley Moore
Target ... Earth? (1980)
The David Letterman Show (1980)
NBC TV Speaking Freely, interviewed by Edwin Newman (1982)
ARTS Network talk show hosted by Studs Terkel and Calvin Trillin, approximately (1982)
Oltre New York (1986)
Voyage to the Outer Planets and Beyond (1986)
Gandahar (1987), a French animated science-fiction film by René Laloux. Asimov wrote the English translation for the film.
Bill Moyers interview (1988)
Stranieri in America (1988)
Adaptations
El robot embustero (1966), short film directed by Antonio Lara de Gavilán, based on short story "Liar!"
A halhatatlanság halála (1977), TV movie directed by András Rajnai, based on novel The End of Eternity
The Ugly Little Boy (1977), short film directed by Barry Morse and Donald W. Thompson, based on novelette The Ugly Little Boy
All the Troubles of the World (1978), short film directed by Dianne Haak-Edson, based on short story "All the Troubles of the World"
The End of Eternity (1987), film directed by Andrei Yermash, based on novel The End of Eternity
Nightfall (1988), film directed by Paul Mayersberg, based on novelette "Nightfall"
Robots (1988), film directed by Doug Smith and Kim Takal, based on the Robot series
Feeling 109 (1988), short film directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov
Teach 109 (1989), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as The Android Affair)
The Android Affair (1995), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as Teach 109)
Bicentennial Man (1999), film directed by Chris Columbus, based on novelette "The Bicentennial Man" and on novel The Positronic Man
Nightfall (2000), film directed by Gwyneth Gibby, based on novelette "Nightfall"
I, Robot (2004), film directed by Alex Proyas, based on ideas of short stories of the Robot series
Formula of Death (2012), TV movie directed by Behdad Avand Amini, based on novel The Death Dealers
Spell My Name with an S (2014), short film directed by Samuel Ali, based on short story "Spell My Name with an S"
Foundation (2021), series created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, based on the Foundation series
Novelizations
Novel Fantastic Voyage, novelization of film Fantastic Voyage (1966)
References
Footnotes
Notes
Sources
Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green (1979), New York: Avon, .
In Joy Still Felt (1980), New York: Avon .
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), (hc), (pb).
Yours, Isaac Asimov (1996), edited by Stanley Asimov. New York: Doubleday .
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet Asimov. .
Goldman, Stephen H., "Isaac Asimov", in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 8, Cowart and Wymer eds. (Gale Research, 1981), pp. 15–29.
Gunn, James. "On Variations on a Robot", IASFM, July 1980, pp. 56–81.
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982). .
The Science of Science-Fiction Writing (2000). .
Further reading
External links
Asimov Online, a vast repository of information about Asimov, maintained by Asimov enthusiast Edward Seiler
Jenkins' Spoiler-Laden Guide to Isaac Asimov, reviews of all of Asimov's books
20th-century births
1992 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American male writers
AIDS-related deaths in New York (state)
American alternate history writers
Jewish American atheists
American biochemists
American essayists
American humanists
American humorists
American male novelists
20th-century American memoirists
United States Army non-commissioned officers
American mystery writers
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American science fiction writers
American science writers
American skeptics
American writers of Russian descent
Asimov's Science Fiction people
Bible commentators
Boston University faculty
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
Critics of religions
Date of birth unknown
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Futurians
Historians of astronomy
American historians of science
Hugo Award-winning writers
Humor researchers
Jewish American novelists
Jewish American short story writers
Jewish feminists
Jewish skeptics
American male essayists
Male feminists
American male short story writers
American short story writers
Mensans
Nebula Award winners
New York (state) Democrats
People from Shumyachsky District
Naturalized citizens of the United States
United States Navy civilians
Science fiction fans
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
SFWA Grand Masters
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Writers from Brooklyn
Yiddish-speaking people
Boys High School (Brooklyn) alumni
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New York (state)
Scientists from New York City
20th-century essayists
20th-century atheists
People from the Upper West Side
Pulp fiction writers
Writers about religion and science
Atheist feminists
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
| true |
[
"This Type of Thinking (Could Do Us In) is the third studio album by American rock band Chevelle. Debuting at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 based on nearly 90,000 copies sold in its first week, it charted higher than its predecessor, Wonder What's Next but did not exceed its debut position. The album did not manage to match its predecessor's commercial success, but was certified platinum. This Type of Thinking follows generally the same heavy style as Wonder What's Next with popular singles like \"Vitamin R\" and \"The Clincher\". It would be the first of two records produced by Michael \"Elvis\" Baskette. This was also the final album featuring bassist Joe Loeffler, who departed from the band in 2005.\n\nBackground and recording\nComing off a highly successful major label debut, Chevelle finishing touring on December 17, 2003. They set out to write a follow-up album from scratch at the onset of the following year in what drummer Sam Loeffler described as a different approach to writing. He also noted how the band felt significant pressure from their label to not simply match but topple the platinum success of Wonder What's Next. In a 2004 interview, Loeffler described the process of approaching This Type of Thinking:\n\"We went home for Christmas and after New Year's we went into the studio and we said, 'All right, we have to write a whole record in basically four months.' We had no songs, so we had to write that whole record and we ended up taking five months. We wanted to go heavy, we wanted to do a lot of double-bass drum, kind of syncopated rhythms, and we wanted to basically write songs that we could bob our heads to. That was sort of where we started. We're a heavy melodic rock band, that's what we like to write, and that's what we like to play. And that's what we did.\"\n\nThis time around, Chevelle opted to produce their own album with the help of Michael \"Elvis\" Baskette. This Type of Thinking would continue the balance of melody and heaviness of its predecessor. And much like the final track on Wonder What's Next, \"Bend the Bracket\" would be recorded simply as an acoustic demo for its unpolished presentation.\n\nCritical reception\n\nAllMusic editor Johnny Loftus observes the album as \"...flatly mixed, lost in depression, and obsessed with rewriting \"Sober\" for a new generation of lank-haired misunderstoods.\"\n\nMelodic calls it \"...a real quality album that you will never get bored of.\", praising the songs \"The Clincher\", \"Vitamin R (Leading Us Along)\" and \"Another Know It All\".\n\nTrack listing\n\nPersonnel\nChevelle\n Pete Loeffler – guitar, vocals\n Joe Loeffler – bass, backing vocals\n Sam Loeffler – drums\n\nTechnical personnel\n Andy Wallace – mixing\n Ben Goldman – A&R\n Christian Lantry – photography\n Dave Holdredge – digital editing, drum programming, engineer\n Eddy Schreyer – mastering\n Farra Mathews – A&R\n Jef Moll – assistant\n Josh Wilbur – digital editing\n Katharina Fritsch – cover sculpture\n Kevin Dean – assistant\n Michael \"Elvis\" Baskette – engineer, producer\n Sean Evans – art direction\n Steve Sisco – assistant\n\nCharts\n\nCertifications\n\nReferences\n\n2004 albums\nAlbums produced by Michael Baskette\nChevelle (band) albums\nEpic Records albums",
"I Write What I Like (full name I Write What I Like: Selected Writings by Steve Biko) is a compilation of writings from anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko.\n\nI Write What I Like contains a selection of Biko's writings from 1969, when he became the president of the South African Student Organisation, to 1972, when he was prohibited from publishing. Originally published in 1978, the book was republished in 1987 and April 2002. The book's title was taken from the title under which he had published his writings in the SASO newsletter under the pseudonym Frank Talk.\n\nI Write What I Like reflects Biko's conviction that black people in South Africa could not be liberated until they united to break their chains of servitude, a key tenet of the Black Consciousness Movement that he helped found.\n\nThe collection was edited by Aelred Stubbs. The book includes a preface by Archbishop Desmond Tutu; an introduction by Malusi and Thoko Mpumlwana, who were both involved with Biko in the Black Consciousness Movement; a memoir of Biko by Father Aelred Stubbs, his longtime pastor and friend; and a new foreword by Professor Lewis Gordon.\n\nReferences\n\n1978 non-fiction books\n2002 non-fiction books\nBooks about apartheid\nPolitical books\nSouth African non-fiction books"
] |
[
"Isaac Asimov",
"Education and career",
"Where did he go to school?",
"Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15,",
"Did he further his education?",
"he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students",
"What did he study there?",
"Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of \"dissecting an alley cat\".",
"Where else did he go to school?",
"After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.",
"What did he get a bachelors in?",
"he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948.",
"Was he done with schooling after that?",
"In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible.",
"Where did he work?",
"After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary,",
"How long did he stay there?",
"in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955),",
"What did he write?",
"he did submit a paper to DARPA titled \"On Creativity\" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively."
] |
C_4faa5e824b8a43099cb7ba91fcdaf534_0
|
What was his last job?
| 11 |
What was Isaac Asimovs last job?
|
Isaac Asimov
|
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then the institution's primary undergraduate school for men with quotas on the number of admissions from those ethnic groups. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939. After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov in 1939 applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia; initially rejected and then accepted only on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948. In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11. After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary, with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university. The difference grew, and in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955), and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb. In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively. CANNOTANSWER
|
and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry.
|
Isaac Asimov (; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction.
Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories. He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.
He was president of the American Humanist Association. Several entities have been named in his honor, including the asteroid (5020) Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, and four literary awards.
Surname
Asimov's family name derives from the first part of ozímyj khleb (озимый хлеб), meaning the winter grain (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending -ov added. Azimov is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov's father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov. This later inspired one of Asimov's short stories, "Spell My Name with an S".
Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that "Isaac Asimov" was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name.
Biography
Early life
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian-Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me".
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya; June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011), and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the Long Island Newsday.
Asimov's family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on February 3, 1923 when he was three years old. Since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English with him, he never learned Russian, but he remained fluent in both. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade). His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919. In third grade he learned about the "error" and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight.
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, a fact that Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time when the genre was becoming more science-centered.
Education and career
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then, the institution's primary undergraduate school for men. Jewish and Italian-American students, even of outstanding academic caliber, were often deliberately barred from Columbia College proper because of the then-popular practice of imposing unwritten ethnic admission quotas. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester because he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1936, Asimov finished his Bachelor of Science degree at Morningside Heights campus (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.
After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German.
In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11.
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949, teaching biochemistry with a $5,000 salary (), with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students. In 1955, he was promoted to associate professor, which gave him tenure. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title, he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class, and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb.
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26 the same year. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956. They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He immediately began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship. On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2. He sailed to England in June 1974 on the SS France for a trip mostly devoted to events in London and Birmingham, though he also found time to visit Stonehenge.
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly paid to give talks about science. He was a frequent fixture at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties. His physical dexterity was very poor. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle; however, he did learn to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".
Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe Pack, a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan. He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society, for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty's work "The Dynamics of An Asteroid" involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. He later used his essay on Moriarty's work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, "The Ultimate Crime", which appeared in More Tales of the Black Widowers.
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.
Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics. In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was "a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then." He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP "gave it immense status and authority" in his eyes.
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs".
After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.
Illness and death
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members.
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It's Been a Good Life.
Writings
Overview
Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, while writing over 120 nonfiction books. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories. Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series. Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".
Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology. Although Asimov did write several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982), which were classified in the 100s category, none of his own books were classified in that category.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.
Science fiction
Asimov became a science fiction fan in 1929, when he began reading the pulp magazines sold in his family's candy store. At first his father forbade reading pulps as he considered them to be trash, until Asimov persuaded him that because the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, they must be educational. At age 18 he joined the Futurians science fiction fan club, where he made friends who went on to become science fiction writers or editors.
Asimov began writing at the age of 11, imitating The Rover Boys with eight chapters of The Greenville Chums at College. His father bought Asimov a used typewriter at age 16. His first published work was a humorous item on the birth of his brother for Boys High School's literary journal in 1934. In May 1937 he first thought of writing professionally, and began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew" (now lost), that year. On May 17, 1938, puzzled by a change in the schedule of Astounding Science Fiction, Asimov visited its publisher Street & Smith Publications. Inspired by the visit, he finished the story on June 19, 1938, and personally submitted it to Astounding editor John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell met with Asimov for more than an hour and promised to read the story himself. Two days later he received a rejection letter explaining why in detail. This was the first of what became almost weekly meetings with the editor while Asimov lived in New York, until moving to Boston in 1949; Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and became a personal friend.
By the end of the month, Asimov completed a second story, "Stowaway". Campbell rejected it on July 22 but—in "the nicest possible letter you could imagine"—encouraged him to continue writing, promising that Asimov might sell his work after another year and a dozen stories of practice. On October 21, 1938, he sold the third story he finished, "Marooned Off Vesta", to Amazing Stories, edited by Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. Asimov was paid $64 (), or one cent a word. Two more stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May Amazing and "Trends" in the July Astounding, the issue fans later selected as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. For 1940, ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in Astounding. His earnings became enough to pay for his education, but not yet enough for him to become a full-time writer.
Asimov later said that unlike other top Golden Age writers Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt—also first published in 1939, and whose talent and stardom were immediately obvious—he "(this is not false modesty) came up only gradually". Through July 29, 1940, Asimov wrote 22 stories in 25 months, of which 13 were published; he wrote in 1972 that from that date he never wrote a science fiction story that was not published (except for two "special cases"). He was famous enough that Donald Wollheim told Asimov that he purchased "The Secret Sense" for a new magazine only because of his name, and the December 1940 issue of Astonishing—featuring Asimov's name in bold—was the first magazine to base cover art on his work, but Asimov later said that neither he himself nor anyone else—except perhaps Campbell—considered him better than an often published "third rater".
Based on a conversation with Campbell, Asimov wrote "Nightfall", his 32nd story, in March and April 1941, and Astounding published it in September 1941. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written. In Nightfall and Other Stories Asimov wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." "Nightfall" is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.
After writing "Victory Unintentional" in January and February 1942, Asimov did not write another story for a year. Asimov expected to make chemistry his career, and was paid $2,600 annually at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, enough to marry his girlfriend; he did not expect to make much more from writing than the $1,788.50 he had earned from 28 stories sold over four years. Asimov left science fiction fandom and no longer read new magazines, and might have left the industry had not Heinlein and de Camp been coworkers and previously sold stories continued to appear. In 1942, Asimov published the first of his Foundation stories—later collected in the Foundation trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). The books recount the fall of a vast interstellar empire and the establishment of its eventual successor. They also feature his fictional science of psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted. The trilogy and Robot series are his most famous science fiction. In 1966 they won the Hugo Award for the all-time best series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Campbell raised his rate per word, Orson Welles purchased rights to "Evidence", and anthologies reprinted his stories. By the end of the war Asimov was earning as a writer an amount equal to half of his Navy Yard salary, even after a raise, but Asimov still did not believe that writing could support him, his wife, and future children.
His "positronic" robot stories—many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in his introduction to the short story collection The Complete Robot (1982) that he was largely inspired by the almost relentless tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators.
The robot series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977, Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of I, Robot that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by Jeff Vintar titled Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired. (The title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for a story by Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel The Positronic Man by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.
Besides movies, his Foundation and Robot stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Donald Kingsbury. At least some of these appear to have been done with the blessing of, or at the request of, Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov.
In 1948, he also wrote a spoof chemistry article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he would receive at his oral examination, in case the examiners thought he wasn't taking science seriously. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". Laughing hysterically with relief, Asimov had to be led out of the room. After a five-minute wait, he was summoned back into the room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov".
Demand for science fiction greatly increased during the 1950s. It became possible for a genre author to write full-time. In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished "Grow Old with Me" (40,000 words), but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of Pebble in the Sky. Doubleday published five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome Press publish one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as I, Robot and his Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the Foundation trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as The Rest of the Robots.
Books and the magazines Galaxy, and Fantasy & Science Fiction ended Asimov's dependence on Astounding. He later described the era as his "'mature' period". Asimov's "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy, was his personal favorite story.
In 1972, his novel The Gods Themselves (which was not part of a series) was published to general acclaim, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Novel.
In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue. McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
Asimov said in 1969 that he had "the happiest of all my associations with science fiction magazines" with Fantasy & Science Fiction; "I have no complaints about Astounding, Galaxy, or any of the rest, heaven knows, but F&SF has become something special to me". Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines "anthologies").
Due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another book in his Foundation series, he did so with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992), his last novel.
Popular science
Asimov and two colleagues published a textbook in 1949, with two more editions by 1969. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's The Naked Sun and 1982's Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). He greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap". Asimov explained in The Rest of the Robots that he had been unable to write substantial fiction since the summer of 1958, and observers understood him as saying that his fiction career had ended, or was permanently interrupted. Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason".
Fantasy and Science Fiction invited Asimov to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine. The first of 399 monthly F&SF columns appeared in November 1958 and they continued until his terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by Doubleday, gave Asimov a reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science; he described them as his only popular science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects on the part of his readers. The column was ostensibly dedicated to popular science but Asimov had complete editorial freedom, and wrote about contemporary social issues in essays such as "Thinking About Thinking" and "Knock Plastic!". In 1975 he wrote of these essays: "I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment."
Asimov's first wide-ranging reference work, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960), was nominated for a National Book Award, and in 1963 he won a Hugo Award—his first—for his essays for F&SF. The popularity of his science books and the income he derived from them allowed him to give up most academic responsibilities and become a full-time freelance writer. He encouraged other science fiction writers to write popular science, stating in 1967 that "the knowledgeable, skillful science writer is worth his weight in contracts", with "twice as much work as he can possibly handle".
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience: "Uneasy". Floyd C. Gale said that "Asimov has a rare talent. He can make your mental mouth water over dry facts", and "science fiction's loss has been science popularization's gain". Asimov said that "Of all the writing I do, fiction, non-fiction, adult, or juvenile, these F & SF articles are by far the most fun". He regretted, however, that he had less time for fiction—causing dissatisfied readers to send him letters of complaint—stating in 1969 that "In the last ten years, I've done a couple of novels, some collections, a dozen or so stories, but that's nothing".
In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read the word "unionized" as un-ion-ized (pronounced "un-EYE-en-ized"), meaning "(a chemical species) being in an electrically neutral state, as opposed to being an ion", while non-chemists will read the word as union-ized (pronounced "YOU-nien-ized"), meaning "(a worker or organization) belonging to or possessing a trade union".
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term "robotics" in his 1941 story "Liar!", though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in Gold ("The Robot Chronicles"). While acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one third of the way down the first column of page 100, Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942 printing of his short story "Runaround".
In the same story, Asimov also coined the term "positronic" (the counterpart to "electronic" for positrons).
Asimov coined the term "psychohistory" in his Foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. Asimov said later that he should have called it psychosociology. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 fix-up novel Foundation. Somewhat later, the term "psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.
Other writings
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, including The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966), The Roman Empire (1967), The Egyptians (1967) The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968), and Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991).
He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes—covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), Asimov's Annotated Don Juan (1972), Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He published two full-length mystery novels, and wrote 66 stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders, and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, who he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends. A parody of the Black Widowers, "An Evening with the White Divorcés," was written by author, critic, and librarian Jon L. Breen. Asimov joked, "all I can do ... is to wait until I catch him in a dark alley, someday."
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks. Asimov featured Yiddish humor in Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, some of Asimov's behavior towards women was described as sexual harassment and cited as an example of historically problematic behavior by men in science fiction communities.
Asimov published three volumes of autobiography. In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980) cover his life up to 1978. The third volume, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), covered his whole life (rather than following on from where the second volume left off). The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov after his death. The book won a Hugo Award in 1995. Janet Asimov edited It's Been a Good Life (2002), a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Treks initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on Star Treks scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming that despite its inaccuracies, Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.
Awards and recognition
Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half-dozen lifetime awards.
He also received 14 honorary doctorate degrees from universities.
1955 – Guest of Honor at the 13th World Science Fiction Convention
1957 – Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award for best science book for youth, for Building Blocks of the Universe
1960 – Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
1962 – Boston University's Publication Merit Award
1963 – A special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction," for essays published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
1963 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1964 – The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" (1941) the all-time best science fiction short story
1965 – James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
1966 – Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation trilogy
1967 – Edward E. Smith Memorial Award
1967 – AAAS-Westinghouse Science Writing Award for Magazine Writing, for essay "Over the Edge of the Universe" (in the March 1967 Harper's Magazine)
1972 – Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Locus Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1975 – Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
1975 – Klumpke-Roberts Award "for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy"
1975 – Locus Award for Best Reprint Anthology for Before the Golden Age
1977 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Locus Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1981 – An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
1981 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978
1983 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
1983 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge
1984 – Humanist of the Year
1986 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him its 8th SFWA Grand Master (presented in 1987).
1987 – Locus Award for Best Short Story for "Robot Dreams"
1992 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Gold"
1995 – Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1995 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1996 – A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon for "The Mule", the 7th Foundation story, published in Astounding Science Fiction
1997 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Asimov in its second class of two deceased and two living persons, along with H. G. Wells.
2000 – Asimov was featured on a stamp in Israel
2001 – The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debates at the Hayden Planetarium in New York were inaugurated
2009 – A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov, was named in his honor
2010 – In the US Congress bill about the designation of the National Robotics Week as an annual event, a tribute to Isaac Asimov is as follows:
"Whereas the second week in April each year is designated as 'National Robotics Week', recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April 1992: Now, therefore, be it resolved ..."
2015 – Selected as a member of the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
2016 – A 1941 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1940 was given at the 2016 WorldCon for Robbie, his first positronic robot story, published in Super Science Stories, September 1940
2018 – A 1943 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1942 was given at the 2018 WorldCon for Foundation, published in Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942
Writing style
Asimov was his own secretary, typist, indexer, proofreader, and literary agent. He wrote a typed first draft composed at the keyboard at 90 words per minute; he imagined an ending first, then a beginning, then "let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it". (Asimov only used an outline once, later describing it as "like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket".) After correcting a draft by hand, he retyped the document as the final copy and only made one revision with minor editor-requested changes; a word processor did not save him much time, Asimov said, because 95% of the first draft was unchanged.
After disliking making multiple revisions of "Black Friar of the Flame", Asimov refused to make major, second, or non-editorial revisions ("like chewing used gum"), stating that "too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process". He submitted "failures" to another editor.
One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Robot:
Asimov addressed such criticism in 1989 at the beginning of Nemesis:
Gunn cited examples of a more complex style, such as the climax of "Liar!". Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", Arkady Darell in Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel, and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels.
Other than books by Gunn and Joseph Patrouch, a relative dearth of "literary" criticism exists on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:
Gunn's and Patrouch's respective studies of Asimov both state that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book comments in detail on each of Asimov's novels. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but calls some passages in The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".
Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), and said in 1973 that his style had not changed, Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in nonchronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material. (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "Reason", one of the early Robot stories). Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of The Currents of Space did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-kyrt Asimov fan" could enjoy it. In his later novel Nemesis one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.
Alien life
Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when Astoundings editor John Campbell rejected one of his science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. The nature of the rejection led him to believe that Campbell may have based his bias towards humans in stories on a real-world racial bias. Unwilling to write only weak alien races, and concerned that a confrontation would jeopardize his and Campbell's friendship, he decided he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms, he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens and alien sex. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of The Gods Themselves, the part that deals with those themes.
In the Hugo Award-winning novelette "Gold", Asimov describes an author, clearly based on himself, who has one of his books (The Gods Themselves) adapted into a "compu-drama", essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for having an extremely nonvisual style, making it difficult to adapt his work, and the author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across.
Romance and women
In the early days of science fiction some authors and critics felt that the romantic elements were inappropriate in science fiction stories, which were supposedly to be focused on science and technology. Isaac Asimov was a prominent supporter of this point of view, expressed in his 1938-1939 letters to Astounding, where he described such elements as "mush" and "slop". However, to his dismay, these letters were met with a strong opposition.
Asimov attributed the lack of romance and sex in his fiction to the "early imprinting" from starting his writing career when he had never been on a date and "didn't know anything about girls". He was sometimes criticized for the general absence of sex (and of extraterrestrial life) in his science fiction. He claimed he wrote The Gods Themselves to respond to these criticisms, which often came from New Wave science fiction (and often British) writers. The second part (of three) of the novel is set on an alien world with three sexes, and the sexual behavior of these creatures is extensively depicted.
Asimov was also criticized for a lack of strong female characters in his early work. However, some of his robot stories, including the earliest ones, featured the character Susan Calvin, a forceful and intelligent woman who regularly out-performed her male colleagues.
In his autobiographical writings, such as Gold ("Women and Science Fiction"), he acknowledges this complaint has merit and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early science-fiction stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. The Washington Post's "Book World" section reports of Robots and Empire opined "In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are."
Views
Religion
Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed the traditions of Orthodox Judaism, though not as stringently as they had in Petrovichi; they did not, however, force their beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus, he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the Torah represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that the Iliad recorded Greek mythology. When he was 13, he chose not to have a bar mitzvah. As his books Treasury of Humor and Asimov Laughs Again record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar" versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, an analysis of the historic foundations for both the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "humanist" and considered that term more practical. Asimov did, however, continue to identify himself as a secular Jew, as stated in his introduction to Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction, Wandering Stars: "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the Bar Mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."
When asked in an interview in 1982 if he was an atheist, Asimov replied,
Likewise, he said about religious education: "I would not be satisfied to have my kids choose to be religious without trying to argue them out of it, just as I would not be satisfied to have them decide to smoke regularly or engage in any other practice I consider detrimental to mind or body."
In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote,
The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".
Asimov said about using religious motifs in his writing:
Politics
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal, and thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography, In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman. Asimov's impression was that the 1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.
Asimov vehemently opposed Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He closely followed Watergate, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign. Asimov was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."
After Asimov's name appeared in the mid-1960s on a list of people the Communist Party USA "considered amenable" to its goals, the FBI investigated him. Because of his academic background, the bureau briefly considered Asimov as a possible candidate for known Soviet spy ROBPROF, but found nothing suspicious in his life or background.
Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though insisting that he was not a Zionist. In his third autobiography, Asimov stated his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he was opposed to having nation-states in general, and supported the notion of a single humanity. Asimov especially worried about the safety of Israel given that it had been created among hostile Muslim neighbors, and said that Jews had merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".
Social issues
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
In a 1988 interview by Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested. He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace. Asimov thought that people would live in space by the year 2019.
In 1983 Asimov wrote:
He continues on education:
Sexual harassment
Asimov would often fondle, kiss and pinch women at conventions and elsewhere without regard for their consent. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, author of an Asimov biography and writer on the history of science fiction, he often defended himself by saying that far from showing objections, these women cooperated. In the 1971 satirical piece, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, he wrote, "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched."
According to Nevala-Lee, however, "many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual." He wrote that Asimov's behaviour, as a leading science-fiction author and personality, contributed to an undesirable atmosphere for women in the male-dominated science fiction community. In support of this, he quoted some of Asimov's contemporary fellow-authors such as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison and Frederik Pohl, as well as editors such as Timothy Seldes. Specific incidents were reported by other people including Edward L. Ferman, long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction who wrote "... instead of shaking my date's hand, he shook her left breast".
Environment and population
Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the Bhopal disaster.
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:
Other authors
Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and in fact even used The Lord of the Rings as a plot point in a Black Widowers story, titled Nothing like Murder. In the essay All or Nothing (for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1981), Asimov revealed that he admires Tolkien and that he had read The Lord of the Rings five times. (The feelings were mutual, with Tolkien himself revealing that he had enjoyed Asimov's science fiction. This would make Asimov an exception to Tolkien's earlier claim that he rarely found "any modern books" that were interesting to him.)
He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, however, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction".
The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Asimov became a fan of mystery stories at the same time as science fiction. He preferred to read the former to latter because "I read every [science fiction] story keenly aware that it might be worse than mine, in which case I had no patience with it, or that it might be better, in which case I felt miserable". Asimov wrote "I make no secret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Christie as my model. In my opinion, her mysteries are the best ever written, far better than the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Hercule Poirot is the best detective fiction has seen. Why should I not use as my model what I consider the best?" He enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but considered Arthur Conan Doyle to be "a slapdash and sloppy writer."
Asimov also enjoyed humorous stories, particularly those of P. G. Wodehouse.
In non-fiction writing, Asimov particularly admired the writing style of Martin Gardner, and tried to emulate it in his own science books. On meeting Gardner for the first time in 1965, Asimov told him this, to which Gardner answered that he had based his own style on Asimov's.
Influence
Paul Krugman, holder of a Nobel Prize in Economics, stated Asimov's concept of psychohistory has inspired him to become an economist.
John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed, "It has been pointed out that most science fiction writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style." Along with such figures as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, Asimov left his mark as one of the most distinguished interdisciplinarians of the 20th century. "Few individuals", writes James L. Christian, "understood better than Isaac Asimov what synoptic thinking is all about. His almost 500 books—which he wrote as a specialist, a knowledgeable authority, or just an excited layman—range over almost all conceivable subjects: the sciences, history, literature, religion, and of course, science fiction."
Bibliography
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books (based on his personal count), Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing. An extensive bibliography of Isaac Asimov's works has been compiled by Ed Seiler. He published enough that his book writing rate could be analysed, showing that the writing became faster as he wrote more.
An online exhibit in West Virginia University Libraries' virtually complete Asimov Collection displays features, visuals, and descriptions of some of his over 600 books, games, audio recordings, videos, and wall charts. Many first, rare, and autographed editions are in the Libraries' Rare Book Room. Book jackets and autographs are presented online along with descriptions and images of children's books, science fiction art, multimedia, and other materials in the collection.
Science fiction
"Greater Foundation" series
The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series. The Galactic Empire novels were published as independent stories, set earlier in the same future as Foundation. Later in life, Asimov synthesized the Robot series into a single coherent "history" that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series.
All of these books were published by Doubleday & Co, except the original Foundation trilogy which was originally published by Gnome Books before being bought and republished by Doubleday.
The Robot series:
(first Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(second Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(third Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(sequel to the Elijah Baley trilogy)
Galactic Empire novels:
(early Galactic Empire)
(long before the Empire)
(Republic of Trantor still expanding)
Foundation prequels:
Original Foundation trilogy:
(also published with the title 'The Man Who Upset the Universe' as a 35¢ Ace paperback, D-125, in about 1952)
Extended Foundation series:
Lucky Starr series (as Paul French)
All published by Doubleday & Co
David Starr, Space Ranger (1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)
Norby Chronicles (with Janet Asimov)
All published by Walker & Company
Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983)
Norby's Other Secret (1984)
Norby and the Lost Princess (1985)
Norby and the Invaders (1985)
Norby and the Queen's Necklace (1986)
Norby Finds a Villain (1987)
Norby Down to Earth (1988)
Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure (1989)
Norby and the Oldest Dragon (1990)
Norby and the Court Jester (1991)
Novels not part of a series
Novels marked with an asterisk (*) have minor connections to Foundation universe.
The End of Eternity (1955), Doubleday (*)
Fantastic Voyage (1966), Bantam Books (paperback) and Houghton Mifflin (hardback) (a novelization of the movie)
The Gods Themselves (1972), Doubleday
Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), Doubleday (not a sequel to Fantastic Voyage, but a similar, independent story)
Nemesis (1989), Bantam Doubleday Dell (*)
Nightfall (1990), Doubleday, with Robert Silverberg (based on "Nightfall", a 1941 short story written by Asimov)
Child of Time (1992), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (based on "The Ugly Little Boy", a 1958 short story written by Asimov)
The Positronic Man (1993), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (*) (based on The Bicentennial Man, a 1976 novella written by Asimov)
Short-story collections
Mysteries
Novels
The Death Dealers (1958), Avon Books, republished as A Whiff of Death by Walker & Company
Murder at the ABA (1976), Doubleday, also published as Authorized Murder
Short-story collections
Black Widowers series
Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), Doubleday
More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976), Doubleday
Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), Doubleday
Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), Doubleday
Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), Doubleday
The Return of the Black Widowers (2003), Carroll & Graf
Other mysteries
Asimov's Mysteries (1968), Doubleday
The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977), Walker
The Union Club Mysteries (1983), Doubleday
The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries (1985), Walker
The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986), Doubleday
Nonfiction
Popular science
Collections of Asimov's essays for F&SF
The following books collected essays which were originally published as monthly columns in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected by Doubleday & Co
Fact and Fancy (1962)
View from a Height (1963)
Adding a Dimension (1964)
Of Time and Space and Other Things (1965)
From Earth to Heaven (1966)
Science, Numbers, and I (1968)
The Solar System and Back (1970)
The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
The Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
Asimov On Astronomy (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Asimov On Chemistry (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Of Matters Great and Small (1975)
Asimov On Physics (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
Asimov On Numbers (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
The Road to Infinity (1979)
The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
Counting the Eons (1983)
X Stands for Unknown (1984)
The Subatomic Monster (1985)
Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
Asimov on Science: A 30 Year Retrospective 1959–1989 (1989) (features the first essay in the introduction)
Out of the Everywhere (1990)
The Secret of the Universe (1991)
Other general science essay collections
Only a Trillion (1957), Abelard-Schuman,
Is Anyone There? (1967), Doubleday, (which includes the article in which he coined the term "spome")
Today and Tomorrow and— (1973), Doubleday
Science Past, Science Future (1975), Doubleday,
Please Explain (1975), Houghton Mifflin,
Life and Time (1978), Doubleday
The Roving Mind (1983), Prometheus Books, new edition 1997,
The Dangers of Intelligence (1986), Houghton Mifflin
Past, Present and Future (1987), Prometheus Books,
The Tyrannosaurus Prescription (1989), Prometheus Books
Frontiers (1990), Dutton
Frontiers II (1993), Dutton
Other science books by Asimov
The Chemicals of Life (1954), Abelard-Schuman
Inside the Atom (1956), Abelard-Schuman,
Building Blocks of the Universe (1957; revised 1974), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Carbon (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Nitrogen (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
Words of Science and the History Behind Them (1959), Houghton Mifflin
The Clock We Live On (1959), Abelard-Schuman,
Breakthroughs in Science (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Numbers (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Measure (1960), Houghton Mifflin
The Wellsprings of Life (1960), Abelard-Schuman,
Life and Energy (1962), Doubleday,
The Genetic Code (1962), The Orion Press
The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation (1963), Houghton Mifflin, , (revised)
The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions (1963), Houghton Mifflin,
Planets for Man (with Stephen H. Dole) (1964), Random House, reprinted by RAND in 2007
An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule (1965), Houghton Mifflin,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Basic Books
The title varied with each of the four editions, the last being Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984)
The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1966), Walker,
The Neutrino (1966), Doubleday, ASIN B002JK525W
Understanding Physics Vol. I, Motion, Sound, and Heat (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. II, Light, Magnetism, and Electricity (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. III, The Electron, Proton, and Neutron (1966), Walker,
Photosynthesis (1969), Basic Books,
Our World in Space (1974), New York Graphic,
Eyes on the Universe: A History of the Telescope (1976), Andre Deutsch Limited,
The Collapsing Universe (1977), Walker,
Extraterrestrial Civilizations (1979), Crown,
Visions of the Universe with illustrations by Kazuaki Iwasaki (1981), Cosmos Store,
Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), Crown,
The Measure of the Universe (1983), Harper & Row
Think About Space: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going? with co-author Frank White (1989), Walker
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery (1989), Harper & Row, second edition adds content thru 1993,
Beginnings: The Story of Origins (1989), Walker
Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (1991), Random House,
Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos (1991), Dutton,
Mysteries of Deep Space: Quasars, Pulsars and Black Holes (1994)
Earth's Moon (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Sun (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Earth (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Jupiter (1989), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Venus (1990), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Literary works
All published by Doubleday
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970),
Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" (1972)
Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost" (1974)
Familiar Poems, Annotated (1976)
Asimov's The Annotated "Gulliver's Travels" (1980)
Asimov's Annotated "Gilbert and Sullivan" (1988)
The Bible
Words from Genesis (1962), Houghton Mifflin
Words from the Exodus (1963), Houghton Mifflin
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vols I and II (1967 and 1969, one-volume ed. 1981), Doubleday,
The Story of Ruth (1972), Doubleday,
In the Beginning (1981), Crown
Autobiography
In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920–1954 (1979, Doubleday)
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 (1980, Doubleday)
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994, Doubleday)
It's Been a Good Life (2002, Prometheus Books), condensation of Asimov's three volumes of autobiography, edited by his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov
History
All published by Houghton Mifflin except where otherwise stated
The Kite That Won the Revolution (1963),
The Greeks (1965)
The Roman Republic (1966)
The Roman Empire (1967)
The Egyptians (1967)
The Near East (1968)
The Dark Ages (1968)
Words from History (1968)
The Shaping of England (1969)
Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)
The Land of Canaan (1971)
The Shaping of France (1972)
The Shaping of North America: From Earliest Times to 1763 (1973)
The Birth of the United States: 1763–1816 (1974)
Our Federal Union: The United States from 1816 to 1865 (1975),
The Golden Door: The United States from 1865 to 1918 (1977)
Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991), HarperCollins,
The March of the Millennia (1991), with co-author Frank White, Walker & Company,
Humor
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (1971) (As Dr. A), Walker & Company,
Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), Houghton Mifflin
Lecherous Limericks (1975), Walker,
More Lecherous Limericks (1976), Walker,
Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977), Walker,
Limericks, Two Gross, with John Ciardi (1978), Norton,
A Grossery of Limericks, with John Ciardi (1981), Norton,
Limericks for Children (1984), Caedmon
Asimov Laughs Again (1992), HarperCollins
On writing science fiction
Asimov on Science Fiction (1981), Doubleday
Asimov's Galaxy (1989), Doubleday
Other nonfiction
Opus 100 (1969), Houghton Mifflin,
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964), Doubleday (revised edition 1972, )
Opus 200 (1979), Houghton Mifflin,
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1979), Grosset & Dunlap,
Opus 300 (1984), Houghton Mifflin,
Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991), with co-author Frederik Pohl, Tor, .
Television, music, and film appearances
I Robot, a concept album by the Alan Parsons Project that examined some of Asimov's work
The Last Word (1959)
The Dick Cavett Show, four appearances 1968–71
The Nature of Things (1969)
ABC News coverage of Apollo 11, 1969, with Fred Pohl, interviewed by Rod Serling
David Frost interview program, August 1969. Frost asked Asimov if he had ever tried to find God and, after some initial evasion, Asimov answered, "God is much more intelligent than I am—let him try to find me."
BBC Horizon "It's About Time" (1979), show hosted by Dudley Moore
Target ... Earth? (1980)
The David Letterman Show (1980)
NBC TV Speaking Freely, interviewed by Edwin Newman (1982)
ARTS Network talk show hosted by Studs Terkel and Calvin Trillin, approximately (1982)
Oltre New York (1986)
Voyage to the Outer Planets and Beyond (1986)
Gandahar (1987), a French animated science-fiction film by René Laloux. Asimov wrote the English translation for the film.
Bill Moyers interview (1988)
Stranieri in America (1988)
Adaptations
El robot embustero (1966), short film directed by Antonio Lara de Gavilán, based on short story "Liar!"
A halhatatlanság halála (1977), TV movie directed by András Rajnai, based on novel The End of Eternity
The Ugly Little Boy (1977), short film directed by Barry Morse and Donald W. Thompson, based on novelette The Ugly Little Boy
All the Troubles of the World (1978), short film directed by Dianne Haak-Edson, based on short story "All the Troubles of the World"
The End of Eternity (1987), film directed by Andrei Yermash, based on novel The End of Eternity
Nightfall (1988), film directed by Paul Mayersberg, based on novelette "Nightfall"
Robots (1988), film directed by Doug Smith and Kim Takal, based on the Robot series
Feeling 109 (1988), short film directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov
Teach 109 (1989), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as The Android Affair)
The Android Affair (1995), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as Teach 109)
Bicentennial Man (1999), film directed by Chris Columbus, based on novelette "The Bicentennial Man" and on novel The Positronic Man
Nightfall (2000), film directed by Gwyneth Gibby, based on novelette "Nightfall"
I, Robot (2004), film directed by Alex Proyas, based on ideas of short stories of the Robot series
Formula of Death (2012), TV movie directed by Behdad Avand Amini, based on novel The Death Dealers
Spell My Name with an S (2014), short film directed by Samuel Ali, based on short story "Spell My Name with an S"
Foundation (2021), series created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, based on the Foundation series
Novelizations
Novel Fantastic Voyage, novelization of film Fantastic Voyage (1966)
References
Footnotes
Notes
Sources
Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green (1979), New York: Avon, .
In Joy Still Felt (1980), New York: Avon .
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), (hc), (pb).
Yours, Isaac Asimov (1996), edited by Stanley Asimov. New York: Doubleday .
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet Asimov. .
Goldman, Stephen H., "Isaac Asimov", in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 8, Cowart and Wymer eds. (Gale Research, 1981), pp. 15–29.
Gunn, James. "On Variations on a Robot", IASFM, July 1980, pp. 56–81.
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982). .
The Science of Science-Fiction Writing (2000). .
Further reading
External links
Asimov Online, a vast repository of information about Asimov, maintained by Asimov enthusiast Edward Seiler
Jenkins' Spoiler-Laden Guide to Isaac Asimov, reviews of all of Asimov's books
20th-century births
1992 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American male writers
AIDS-related deaths in New York (state)
American alternate history writers
Jewish American atheists
American biochemists
American essayists
American humanists
American humorists
American male novelists
20th-century American memoirists
United States Army non-commissioned officers
American mystery writers
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American science fiction writers
American science writers
American skeptics
American writers of Russian descent
Asimov's Science Fiction people
Bible commentators
Boston University faculty
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
Critics of religions
Date of birth unknown
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Futurians
Historians of astronomy
American historians of science
Hugo Award-winning writers
Humor researchers
Jewish American novelists
Jewish American short story writers
Jewish feminists
Jewish skeptics
American male essayists
Male feminists
American male short story writers
American short story writers
Mensans
Nebula Award winners
New York (state) Democrats
People from Shumyachsky District
Naturalized citizens of the United States
United States Navy civilians
Science fiction fans
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
SFWA Grand Masters
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Writers from Brooklyn
Yiddish-speaking people
Boys High School (Brooklyn) alumni
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New York (state)
Scientists from New York City
20th-century essayists
20th-century atheists
People from the Upper West Side
Pulp fiction writers
Writers about religion and science
Atheist feminists
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
| false |
[
"Bildad ( Bildaḏ), the Shuhite, was one of Job's three friends who visited the patriarch in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Job. He was a descendant of Shuah, son of Abraham and Keturah (Genesis 25:1 - 25:2), whose family lived in the deserts of Arabia, or a resident of the district. In speaking with Job, his intent was consolation, but he became an accuser, asking Job what he has done to deserve God's wrath.\n\nSpeeches\nThe three speeches of Bildad are contained in Job 8, Job 18 and Job 25. In substance, they were largely an echo of what had been maintained by Eliphaz the Temanite, the first of Job's friends to speak, but charged with somewhat increased vehemence because he deemed Job's words so impious and wrathful. Bildad was the first to attribute Job's calamity to actual wickedness, albeit indirectly, by accusing his children (who were destroyed, Job 1:19) of sin to warrant their punishment (Job 8:4). His brief third speech, just five verses in length, marked the silencing of the friends.\n\nSee also \nEliphaz\nZophar\n Elihu\n Bildad is also the name of one of the owners of the Pequod in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nHebrew Bible people\nBook of Job",
"The One Week Job project was launched in February 2007 when 25-year-old college graduate Sean Aiken worked 52 jobs in 52 weeks to find his passion.\nThe idea to try out a new job each week came to Aiken when he realized he was unsure of what career to pursue after completing a business degree.\n\nIn lieu of wages, Aiken asked his “employers” to donate to Make Poverty History, and raised $20,401.60 for the campaign. To support his travels and basic living expenses during the project, Aiken was sponsored by NiceJob.ca, a Canadian job search engine.\n\nOver the course of the year, Aiken tried out a variety of job roles across Canada and the United States, including preschool teacher, firefighter, fashion buyer, cowboy, NHL mascot, and stock trader.\n\nWith his project ending in March 2008, Aiken wrote a book about his adventure, titled The One-Week Job Project, published in 2010 by Penguin Canada and Random House Publishing Group in the United States.\n\nAbout Sean Aiken \n\nIn 2005, Sean Aiken graduated from Capilano University in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with a degree in business administration. He had a 4.0 GPA and was voted class valedictorian. After graduating, he travelled around the world for a year-and-a-half before returning to live with his parents in British Columbia. At this point, he was still unsure of what to do with his life.\n\nOne day, during a family dinner, Aiken's father told him, “Sean, it doesn’t matter what you do, just make sure it’s something you’re passionate about.” Shortly after, Aiken started his 52-week journey.\n\nSean Aiken currently lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. He continues to encourage people to find their passion through his speaking engagements at schools and colleges around North America.\n\nDocumentary \n\nSean Aiken's best friend, filmmaker Ian MacKenzie, travelled with Aiken for much of his original 52-week journey and documented the details of the experience on film. In the summer of 2010, the documentary The One-Week Job Project premiered at HATCHfest in the United States.\n\nSummer Program \n\nIn the summer of 2010, three program participants were selected for the inaugural One Week Job Program. Spots for the program were awarded based on public votes during an online competition. The first three participants were from Toronto, Texas and Tennessee. Each participant was awarded a scholarship of $3,000 (CDN) and given eight weeks to try eight different jobs.\n\nBibliography \n\n Aiken, Sean (2010) The One-Week Job Project. Penguin Books\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official Website\n One Week Job book site\n Documentary film listing\n One Week Job Documentary site\n\nFundraising"
] |
[
"Isaac Asimov",
"Education and career",
"Where did he go to school?",
"Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15,",
"Did he further his education?",
"he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students",
"What did he study there?",
"Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of \"dissecting an alley cat\".",
"Where else did he go to school?",
"After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.",
"What did he get a bachelors in?",
"he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948.",
"Was he done with schooling after that?",
"In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station,",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible.",
"Where did he work?",
"After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary,",
"How long did he stay there?",
"in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955),",
"What did he write?",
"he did submit a paper to DARPA titled \"On Creativity\" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.",
"What was his last job?",
"and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry."
] |
C_4faa5e824b8a43099cb7ba91fcdaf534_0
|
How long did he stay there?
| 12 |
How long did Asimovs stay there?
|
Isaac Asimov
|
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age 5, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he went on to Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then the institution's primary undergraduate school for men with quotas on the number of admissions from those ethnic groups. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester as he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1938, Asimov finished his BS degree at University Extension (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939. After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov in 1939 applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia; initially rejected and then accepted only on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry in 1948. In between earning these two degrees, he spent three years during World War II working as a civilian at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11. After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949 with a $5,000 (equivalent to $51,427 in 2017) salary, with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university. The difference grew, and in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955), and in 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb. In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively. CANNOTANSWER
|
in 1958 Asimov stopped teaching to become a full-time writer. Being tenured, he retained the title of associate professor (which he had held since 1955),
|
Isaac Asimov (; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much nonfiction.
Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the Galactic Empire series and the Robot series. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of the same fictional universe as the Foundation series. Later, with Foundation and Earth (1986), he linked this distant future to the Robot stories, creating a unified "future history" for his stories. He also wrote over 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall," which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Asimov wrote the Lucky Starr series of juvenile science-fiction novels using the pen name Paul French. Most of his popular science books explain concepts in a historical way, going as far back as possible to a time when the science in question was at its simplest stage. Examples include Guide to Science, the three-volume set Understanding Physics, and Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. He wrote on numerous other scientific and non-scientific topics, such as chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, history, biblical exegesis, and literary criticism.
He was president of the American Humanist Association. Several entities have been named in his honor, including the asteroid (5020) Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school, Honda's humanoid robot, ASIMO, and four literary awards.
Surname
Asimov's family name derives from the first part of ozímyj khleb (озимый хлеб), meaning the winter grain (specifically rye) in which his great-great-great-grandfather dealt, with the Russian patronymic ending -ov added. Azimov is spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet. When the family arrived in the United States in 1923 and their name had to be spelled in the Latin alphabet, Asimov's father spelled it with an S, believing this letter to be pronounced like Z (as in German), and so it became Asimov. This later inspired one of Asimov's short stories, "Spell My Name with an S".
Asimov refused early suggestions of using a more common name as a pseudonym, and believed that its recognizability helped his career. After becoming famous, he often met readers who believed that "Isaac Asimov" was a distinctive pseudonym created by an author with a common name.
Biography
Early life
Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
Asimov's parents were Anna Rachel (née Berman) and Judah Asimov, a family of Russian-Jewish millers. He was named Isaac after his mother's father, Isaac Berman. Asimov wrote of his father, "My father, for all his education as an Orthodox Jew, was not Orthodox in his heart", noting that "he didn't recite the myriad prayers prescribed for every action, and he never made any attempt to teach them to me".
In 1921, Asimov and 16 other children in Petrovichi developed double pneumonia. Only Asimov survived. He later had two younger siblings: a sister, Marcia (born Manya; June 17, 1922 – April 2, 2011), and a brother, Stanley (July 25, 1929 – August 16, 1995), who was vice-president of the Long Island Newsday.
Asimov's family travelled to the United States via Liverpool on the RMS Baltic, arriving on February 3, 1923 when he was three years old. Since his parents always spoke Yiddish and English with him, he never learned Russian, but he remained fluent in both. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Asimov taught himself to read at the age of five (and later taught his sister to read as well, enabling her to enter school in the second grade). His mother got him into first grade a year early by claiming he was born on September 7, 1919. In third grade he learned about the "error" and insisted on an official correction of the date to January 2. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1928 at the age of eight.
After becoming established in the U.S., his parents owned a succession of candy stores in which everyone in the family was expected to work. The candy stores sold newspapers and magazines, a fact that Asimov credited as a major influence in his lifelong love of the written word, as it presented him with an unending supply of new reading material (including pulp science fiction magazines) as a child that he could not have otherwise afforded. Asimov began reading science fiction at age nine, at the time when the genre was becoming more science-centered.
Education and career
Asimov attended New York City public schools from age five, including Boys High School in Brooklyn. Graduating at 15, he attended the City College of New York for several days before accepting a scholarship at Seth Low Junior College, a branch of Columbia University in Downtown Brooklyn designed to absorb some of the Jewish and Italian-American students who applied to Columbia College, then, the institution's primary undergraduate school for men. Jewish and Italian-American students, even of outstanding academic caliber, were often deliberately barred from Columbia College proper because of the then-popular practice of imposing unwritten ethnic admission quotas. Originally a zoology major, Asimov switched to chemistry after his first semester because he disapproved of "dissecting an alley cat". After Seth Low Junior College closed in 1936, Asimov finished his Bachelor of Science degree at Morningside Heights campus (later the Columbia University School of General Studies) in 1939.
After two rounds of rejections by medical schools, Asimov applied to the graduate program in chemistry at Columbia in 1939; initially he was rejected and then only accepted on a probationary basis, he completed his Master of Arts degree in chemistry in 1941 and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. During his chemistry studies, he also learned French and German.
In between earning these two degrees, Asimov spent three years during World War II working as a civilian chemist at the Philadelphia Navy Yard's Naval Air Experimental Station, living in the Walnut Hill section of West Philadelphia from 1942 to 1945. In September 1945, he was drafted into the U.S. Army; if he had not had his birth date corrected while at school, he would have been officially 26 years old and ineligible. In 1946, a bureaucratic error caused his military allotment to be stopped, and he was removed from a task force days before it sailed to participate in Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. He served for almost nine months before receiving an honorable discharge on July 26, 1946. He had been promoted to corporal on July 11.
After completing his doctorate and a postdoc year, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine in 1949, teaching biochemistry with a $5,000 salary (), with which he remained associated thereafter. By 1952, however, he was making more money as a writer than from the university, and he eventually stopped doing research, confining his university role to lecturing students. In 1955, he was promoted to associate professor, which gave him tenure. In December 1957, Asimov was dismissed from his teaching post, with effect from June 30, 1958, because he had stopped doing research. After a struggle which lasted for two years, he kept his title, he gave the opening lecture each year for a biochemistry class, and on October 18, 1979, the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gotlieb.
In 1959, after a recommendation from Arthur Obermayer, Asimov's friend and a scientist on the U.S. missile protection project, Asimov was approached by DARPA to join Obermayer's team. Asimov declined on the grounds that his ability to write freely would be impaired should he receive classified information. However, he did submit a paper to DARPA titled "On Creativity" containing ideas on how government-based science projects could encourage team members to think more creatively.
Personal life
Asimov met his first wife, Gertrude Blugerman (1917, Toronto, Canada – 1990, Boston, U.S.), on a blind date on February 14, 1942, and married her on July 26 the same year. The couple lived in an apartment in West Philadelphia while Asimov was employed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (where two of his co-workers were L. Sprague de Camp and Robert A. Heinlein). Gertrude returned to Brooklyn while he was in the army, and they both lived there from July 1946 before moving to Stuyvesant Town, Manhattan, in July 1948. They moved to Boston in May 1949, then to nearby suburbs Somerville in July 1949, Waltham in May 1951, and, finally, West Newton in 1956. They had two children, David (born 1951) and Robyn Joan (born 1955). In 1970, they separated and Asimov moved back to New York, this time to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he lived for the rest of his life. He immediately began seeing Janet O. Jeppson, a psychiatrist and science-fiction writer, and married her on November 30, 1973, two weeks after his divorce from Gertrude.
Asimov was a claustrophile: he enjoyed small, enclosed spaces. In the third volume of his autobiography, he recalls a childhood desire to own a magazine stand in a New York City Subway station, within which he could enclose himself and listen to the rumble of passing trains while reading.
Asimov was afraid of flying, doing so only twice: once in the course of his work at the Naval Air Experimental Station and once returning home from Oahu in 1946. Consequently, he seldom traveled great distances. This phobia influenced several of his fiction works, such as the Wendell Urth mystery stories and the Robot novels featuring Elijah Baley. In his later years, Asimov found enjoyment traveling on cruise ships, beginning in 1972 when he viewed the Apollo 17 launch from a cruise ship. On several cruises, he was part of the entertainment program, giving science-themed talks aboard ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2. He sailed to England in June 1974 on the SS France for a trip mostly devoted to events in London and Birmingham, though he also found time to visit Stonehenge.
Asimov was an able public speaker and was regularly paid to give talks about science. He was a frequent fixture at science fiction conventions, where he was friendly and approachable. He patiently answered tens of thousands of questions and other mail with postcards and was pleased to give autographs. He was of medium height (), stocky, with—in his later years—"mutton-chop" sideburns, and a distinct New York accent. He took to wearing bolo ties after his wife Janet objected to his clip-on bow ties. His physical dexterity was very poor. He never learned to swim or ride a bicycle; however, he did learn to drive a car after he moved to Boston. In his humor book Asimov Laughs Again, he describes Boston driving as "anarchy on wheels".
Asimov's wide interests included his participation in his later years in organizations devoted to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan and in The Wolfe Pack, a group of devotees of the Nero Wolfe mysteries written by Rex Stout. Many of his short stories mention or quote Gilbert and Sullivan. He was a prominent member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the leading Sherlock Holmes society, for whom he wrote an essay arguing that Professor Moriarty's work "The Dynamics of An Asteroid" involved the willful destruction of an ancient, civilized planet. He was also a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. He later used his essay on Moriarty's work as the basis for a Black Widowers story, "The Ultimate Crime", which appeared in More Tales of the Black Widowers.
In 1984, the American Humanist Association (AHA) named him the Humanist of the Year. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. From 1985 until his death in 1992, he served as president of the AHA, an honorary appointment. His successor was his friend and fellow writer Kurt Vonnegut. He was also a close friend of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and earned a screen credit as "special science consultant" on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for advice he gave during production.
Asimov was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and is listed in its Pantheon of Skeptics. In a discussion with James Randi at CSICon 2016 regarding the founding of CSICOP, Kendrick Frazier said that Asimov was "a key figure in the Skeptical movement who is less well known and appreciated today, but was very much in the public eye back then." He said that Asimov being associated with CSICOP "gave it immense status and authority" in his eyes.
Asimov described Carl Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Asimov was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International, albeit reluctantly; he described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs".
After his father died in 1969, Asimov annually contributed to a Judah Asimov Scholarship Fund at Brandeis University.
Illness and death
In 1977, Asimov suffered a heart attack. In December 1983, he had triple bypass surgery at NYU Medical Center, during which he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. His HIV status was kept secret out of concern that the anti-AIDS prejudice might extend to his family members.
He died in Manhattan on April 6, 1992, and was cremated. The cause of death was reported as heart and kidney failure. Ten years following Asimov's death, Janet and Robyn Asimov agreed that the HIV story should be made public; Janet revealed it in her edition of his autobiography, It's Been a Good Life.
Writings
Overview
Asimov's career can be divided into several periods. His early career, dominated by science fiction, began with short stories in 1939 and novels in 1950. This lasted until about 1958, all but ending after publication of The Naked Sun (1957). He began publishing nonfiction as co-author of a college-level textbook called Biochemistry and Human Metabolism. Following the brief orbit of the first man-made satellite Sputnik I by the USSR in 1957, his production of nonfiction, particularly popular science books, greatly increased, with a consequent drop in his science fiction output. Over the next quarter century, he wrote only four science fiction novels, while writing over 120 nonfiction books. Starting in 1982, the second half of his science fiction career began with the publication of Foundation's Edge. From then until his death, Asimov published several more sequels and prequels to his existing novels, tying them together in a way he had not originally anticipated, making a unified series. There are, however, many inconsistencies in this unification, especially in his earlier stories. Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin published about 60% of his work as of 1969, Asimov stating that "both represent a father image".
Asimov believed his most enduring contributions would be his "Three Laws of Robotics" and the Foundation series. Furthermore, the Oxford English Dictionary credits his science fiction for introducing into the English language the words "robotics", "positronic" (an entirely fictional technology), and "psychohistory" (which is also used for a different study on historical motivations). Asimov coined the term "robotics" without suspecting that it might be an original word; at the time, he believed it was simply the natural analogue of words such as mechanics and hydraulics, but for robots. Unlike his word "psychohistory", the word "robotics" continues in mainstream technical use with Asimov's original definition. Star Trek: The Next Generation featured androids with "positronic brains" and the first-season episode "Datalore" called the positronic brain "Asimov's dream".
Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology. Although Asimov did write several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books The Humanist Way (1988) and In Pursuit of Truth (1982), which were classified in the 100s category, none of his own books were classified in that category.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum database, Asimov is the world's 24th-most-translated author.
Science fiction
Asimov became a science fiction fan in 1929, when he began reading the pulp magazines sold in his family's candy store. At first his father forbade reading pulps as he considered them to be trash, until Asimov persuaded him that because the science fiction magazines had "Science" in the title, they must be educational. At age 18 he joined the Futurians science fiction fan club, where he made friends who went on to become science fiction writers or editors.
Asimov began writing at the age of 11, imitating The Rover Boys with eight chapters of The Greenville Chums at College. His father bought Asimov a used typewriter at age 16. His first published work was a humorous item on the birth of his brother for Boys High School's literary journal in 1934. In May 1937 he first thought of writing professionally, and began writing his first science fiction story, "Cosmic Corkscrew" (now lost), that year. On May 17, 1938, puzzled by a change in the schedule of Astounding Science Fiction, Asimov visited its publisher Street & Smith Publications. Inspired by the visit, he finished the story on June 19, 1938, and personally submitted it to Astounding editor John W. Campbell two days later. Campbell met with Asimov for more than an hour and promised to read the story himself. Two days later he received a rejection letter explaining why in detail. This was the first of what became almost weekly meetings with the editor while Asimov lived in New York, until moving to Boston in 1949; Campbell had a strong formative influence on Asimov and became a personal friend.
By the end of the month, Asimov completed a second story, "Stowaway". Campbell rejected it on July 22 but—in "the nicest possible letter you could imagine"—encouraged him to continue writing, promising that Asimov might sell his work after another year and a dozen stories of practice. On October 21, 1938, he sold the third story he finished, "Marooned Off Vesta", to Amazing Stories, edited by Raymond A. Palmer, and it appeared in the March 1939 issue. Asimov was paid $64 (), or one cent a word. Two more stories appeared that year, "The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use" in the May Amazing and "Trends" in the July Astounding, the issue fans later selected as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. For 1940, ISFDB catalogs seven stories in four different pulp magazines, including one in Astounding. His earnings became enough to pay for his education, but not yet enough for him to become a full-time writer.
Asimov later said that unlike other top Golden Age writers Robert Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt—also first published in 1939, and whose talent and stardom were immediately obvious—he "(this is not false modesty) came up only gradually". Through July 29, 1940, Asimov wrote 22 stories in 25 months, of which 13 were published; he wrote in 1972 that from that date he never wrote a science fiction story that was not published (except for two "special cases"). He was famous enough that Donald Wollheim told Asimov that he purchased "The Secret Sense" for a new magazine only because of his name, and the December 1940 issue of Astonishing—featuring Asimov's name in bold—was the first magazine to base cover art on his work, but Asimov later said that neither he himself nor anyone else—except perhaps Campbell—considered him better than an often published "third rater".
Based on a conversation with Campbell, Asimov wrote "Nightfall", his 32nd story, in March and April 1941, and Astounding published it in September 1941. In 1968 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the best science fiction short story ever written. In Nightfall and Other Stories Asimov wrote, "The writing of 'Nightfall' was a watershed in my professional career ... I was suddenly taken seriously and the world of science fiction became aware that I existed. As the years passed, in fact, it became evident that I had written a 'classic'." "Nightfall" is an archetypal example of social science fiction, a term he created to describe a new trend in the 1940s, led by authors including him and Heinlein, away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition.
After writing "Victory Unintentional" in January and February 1942, Asimov did not write another story for a year. Asimov expected to make chemistry his career, and was paid $2,600 annually at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, enough to marry his girlfriend; he did not expect to make much more from writing than the $1,788.50 he had earned from 28 stories sold over four years. Asimov left science fiction fandom and no longer read new magazines, and might have left the industry had not Heinlein and de Camp been coworkers and previously sold stories continued to appear. In 1942, Asimov published the first of his Foundation stories—later collected in the Foundation trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). The books recount the fall of a vast interstellar empire and the establishment of its eventual successor. They also feature his fictional science of psychohistory, in which the future course of the history of large populations can be predicted. The trilogy and Robot series are his most famous science fiction. In 1966 they won the Hugo Award for the all-time best series of science fiction and fantasy novels. Campbell raised his rate per word, Orson Welles purchased rights to "Evidence", and anthologies reprinted his stories. By the end of the war Asimov was earning as a writer an amount equal to half of his Navy Yard salary, even after a raise, but Asimov still did not believe that writing could support him, his wife, and future children.
His "positronic" robot stories—many of which were collected in I, Robot (1950)—were begun at about the same time. They promulgated a set of rules of ethics for robots (see Three Laws of Robotics) and intelligent machines that greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject. Asimov notes in his introduction to the short story collection The Complete Robot (1982) that he was largely inspired by the almost relentless tendency of robots up to that time to fall consistently into a Frankenstein plot in which they destroyed their creators.
The robot series has led to film adaptations. With Asimov's collaboration, in about 1977, Harlan Ellison wrote a screenplay of I, Robot that Asimov hoped would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction film ever made". The screenplay has never been filmed and was eventually published in book form in 1994. The 2004 movie I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was based on an unrelated script by Jeff Vintar titled Hardwired, with Asimov's ideas incorporated later after the rights to Asimov's title were acquired. (The title was not original to Asimov but had previously been used for a story by Eando Binder.) Also, one of Asimov's robot short stories, "The Bicentennial Man", was expanded into a novel The Positronic Man by Asimov and Robert Silverberg, and this was adapted into the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.
Besides movies, his Foundation and Robot stories have inspired other derivative works of science fiction literature, many by well-known and established authors such as Roger MacBride Allen, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Donald Kingsbury. At least some of these appear to have been done with the blessing of, or at the request of, Asimov's widow, Janet Asimov.
In 1948, he also wrote a spoof chemistry article, "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline". At the time, Asimov was preparing his own doctoral dissertation, and for the oral examination to follow that. Fearing a prejudicial reaction from his graduate school evaluation board at Columbia University, Asimov asked his editor that it be released under a pseudonym, yet it appeared under his own name. Asimov grew concerned at the scrutiny he would receive at his oral examination, in case the examiners thought he wasn't taking science seriously. At the end of the examination, one evaluator turned to him, smiling, and said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoline". Laughing hysterically with relief, Asimov had to be led out of the room. After a five-minute wait, he was summoned back into the room and congratulated as "Dr. Asimov".
Demand for science fiction greatly increased during the 1950s. It became possible for a genre author to write full-time. In 1949, book publisher Doubleday's science fiction editor Walter I. Bradbury accepted Asimov's unpublished "Grow Old with Me" (40,000 words), but requested that it be extended to a full novel of 70,000 words. The book appeared under the Doubleday imprint in January 1950 with the title of Pebble in the Sky. Doubleday published five more original science fiction novels by Asimov in the 1950s, along with the six juvenile Lucky Starr novels, the latter under the pseudonym of "Paul French". Doubleday also published collections of Asimov's short stories, beginning with The Martian Way and Other Stories in 1955. The early 1950s also saw Gnome Press publish one collection of Asimov's positronic robot stories as I, Robot and his Foundation stories and novelettes as the three books of the Foundation trilogy. More positronic robot stories were republished in book form as The Rest of the Robots.
Books and the magazines Galaxy, and Fantasy & Science Fiction ended Asimov's dependence on Astounding. He later described the era as his "'mature' period". Asimov's "The Last Question" (1956), on the ability of humankind to cope with and potentially reverse the process of entropy, was his personal favorite story.
In 1972, his novel The Gods Themselves (which was not part of a series) was published to general acclaim, and it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the Locus Award for Best Novel.
In December 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney approached Asimov and asked him if he could write the screenplay for a science-fiction movie musical. McCartney had a vague idea for the plot and a small scrap of dialogue; he wished to make a film about a rock band whose members discover they are being impersonated by a group of extraterrestrials. The band and their impostors would likely be played by McCartney's group Wings, then at the height of their career. Intrigued by the idea, although he was not generally a fan of rock music, Asimov quickly produced a "treatment" or brief outline of the story. He adhered to McCartney's overall idea, producing a story he felt to be moving and dramatic. However, he did not make use of McCartney's brief scrap of dialogue. McCartney rejected the story. The treatment now exists only in the Boston University archives.
Asimov said in 1969 that he had "the happiest of all my associations with science fiction magazines" with Fantasy & Science Fiction; "I have no complaints about Astounding, Galaxy, or any of the rest, heaven knows, but F&SF has become something special to me". Beginning in 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (now Asimov's Science Fiction) and penned an editorial for each issue. There was also a short-lived Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine and a companion Asimov's Science Fiction Anthology reprint series, published as magazines (in the same manner as the stablemates Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines "anthologies").
Due to pressure by fans on Asimov to write another book in his Foundation series, he did so with Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), and then went back to before the original trilogy with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992), his last novel.
Popular science
Asimov and two colleagues published a textbook in 1949, with two more editions by 1969. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Asimov substantially decreased his fiction output (he published only four adult novels between 1957's The Naked Sun and 1982's Foundation's Edge, two of which were mysteries). He greatly increased his nonfiction production, writing mostly on science topics; the launch of Sputnik in 1957 engendered public concern over a "science gap". Asimov explained in The Rest of the Robots that he had been unable to write substantial fiction since the summer of 1958, and observers understood him as saying that his fiction career had ended, or was permanently interrupted. Asimov recalled in 1969 that "the United States went into a kind of tizzy, and so did I. I was overcome by the ardent desire to write popular science for an America that might be in great danger through its neglect of science, and a number of publishers got an equally ardent desire to publish popular science for the same reason".
Fantasy and Science Fiction invited Asimov to continue his regular nonfiction column, begun in the now-folded bimonthly companion magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine. The first of 399 monthly F&SF columns appeared in November 1958 and they continued until his terminal illness. These columns, periodically collected into books by Doubleday, gave Asimov a reputation as a "Great Explainer" of science; he described them as his only popular science writing in which he never had to assume complete ignorance of the subjects on the part of his readers. The column was ostensibly dedicated to popular science but Asimov had complete editorial freedom, and wrote about contemporary social issues in essays such as "Thinking About Thinking" and "Knock Plastic!". In 1975 he wrote of these essays: "I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment."
Asimov's first wide-ranging reference work, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1960), was nominated for a National Book Award, and in 1963 he won a Hugo Award—his first—for his essays for F&SF. The popularity of his science books and the income he derived from them allowed him to give up most academic responsibilities and become a full-time freelance writer. He encouraged other science fiction writers to write popular science, stating in 1967 that "the knowledgeable, skillful science writer is worth his weight in contracts", with "twice as much work as he can possibly handle".
The great variety of information covered in Asimov's writings prompted Kurt Vonnegut to ask, "How does it feel to know everything?" Asimov replied that he only knew how it felt to have the 'reputation' of omniscience: "Uneasy". Floyd C. Gale said that "Asimov has a rare talent. He can make your mental mouth water over dry facts", and "science fiction's loss has been science popularization's gain". Asimov said that "Of all the writing I do, fiction, non-fiction, adult, or juvenile, these F & SF articles are by far the most fun". He regretted, however, that he had less time for fiction—causing dissatisfied readers to send him letters of complaint—stating in 1969 that "In the last ten years, I've done a couple of novels, some collections, a dozen or so stories, but that's nothing".
In his essay "To Tell a Chemist" (1965), Asimov proposed a simple shibboleth for distinguishing chemists from non-chemists: ask the person to read the word "unionized". Chemists, he noted, will read the word "unionized" as un-ion-ized (pronounced "un-EYE-en-ized"), meaning "(a chemical species) being in an electrically neutral state, as opposed to being an ion", while non-chemists will read the word as union-ized (pronounced "YOU-nien-ized"), meaning "(a worker or organization) belonging to or possessing a trade union".
Coined terms
Asimov coined the term "robotics" in his 1941 story "Liar!", though he later remarked that he believed then that he was merely using an existing word, as he stated in Gold ("The Robot Chronicles"). While acknowledging the Oxford Dictionary reference, he incorrectly states that the word was first printed about one third of the way down the first column of page 100, Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942 printing of his short story "Runaround".
In the same story, Asimov also coined the term "positronic" (the counterpart to "electronic" for positrons).
Asimov coined the term "psychohistory" in his Foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. Asimov said later that he should have called it psychosociology. It was first introduced in the five short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 fix-up novel Foundation. Somewhat later, the term "psychohistory" was applied by others to research of the effects of psychology on history.
Other writings
In addition to his interest in science, Asimov was interested in history. Starting in the 1960s, he wrote 14 popular history books, including The Greeks: A Great Adventure (1965), The Roman Republic (1966), The Roman Empire (1967), The Egyptians (1967) The Near East: 10,000 Years of History (1968), and Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991).
He published Asimov's Guide to the Bible in two volumes—covering the Old Testament in 1967 and the New Testament in 1969—and then combined them into one 1,300-page volume in 1981. Complete with maps and tables, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in order, explaining the history of each one and the political influences that affected it, as well as biographical information about the important characters. His interest in literature manifested itself in several annotations of literary works, including Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (1970), Asimov's Annotated Don Juan (1972), Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost (1974), and The Annotated Gulliver's Travels (1980).
Asimov was also a noted mystery author and a frequent contributor to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He began by writing science fiction mysteries such as his Wendell Urth stories, but soon moved on to writing "pure" mysteries. He published two full-length mystery novels, and wrote 66 stories about the Black Widowers, a group of men who met monthly for dinner, conversation, and a puzzle. He got the idea for the Widowers from his own association in a stag group called the Trap Door Spiders, and all of the main characters (with the exception of the waiter, Henry, who he admitted resembled Wodehouse's Jeeves) were modeled after his closest friends. A parody of the Black Widowers, "An Evening with the White Divorcés," was written by author, critic, and librarian Jon L. Breen. Asimov joked, "all I can do ... is to wait until I catch him in a dark alley, someday."
Toward the end of his life, Asimov published a series of collections of limericks, mostly written by himself, starting with Lecherous Limericks, which appeared in 1975. Limericks: Too Gross, whose title displays Asimov's love of puns, contains 144 limericks by Asimov and an equal number by John Ciardi. He even created a slim volume of Sherlockian limericks. Asimov featured Yiddish humor in Azazel, The Two Centimeter Demon. The two main characters, both Jewish, talk over dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, about anecdotes of "George" and his friend Azazel. Asimov's Treasury of Humor is both a working joke book and a treatise propounding his views on humor theory. According to Asimov, the most essential element of humor is an abrupt change in point of view, one that suddenly shifts focus from the important to the trivial, or from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Particularly in his later years, Asimov to some extent cultivated an image of himself as an amiable lecher. In 1971, as a response to the popularity of sexual guidebooks such as The Sensuous Woman (by "J") and The Sensuous Man (by "M"), Asimov published The Sensuous Dirty Old Man under the byline "Dr. 'A (although his full name was printed on the paperback edition, first published 1972). However, by 2016, some of Asimov's behavior towards women was described as sexual harassment and cited as an example of historically problematic behavior by men in science fiction communities.
Asimov published three volumes of autobiography. In Memory Yet Green (1979) and In Joy Still Felt (1980) cover his life up to 1978. The third volume, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), covered his whole life (rather than following on from where the second volume left off). The epilogue was written by his widow Janet Asimov after his death. The book won a Hugo Award in 1995. Janet Asimov edited It's Been a Good Life (2002), a condensed version of his three autobiographies. He also published three volumes of retrospectives of his writing, Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984).
In 1987, the Asimovs co-wrote How to Enjoy Writing: A Book of Aid and Comfort. In it they offer advice on how to maintain a positive attitude and stay productive when dealing with discouragement, distractions, rejection, and thick-headed editors. The book includes many quotations, essays, anecdotes, and husband-wife dialogues about the ups and downs of being an author.
Asimov and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry developed a unique relationship during Star Treks initial launch in the late 1960s. Asimov wrote a critical essay on Star Treks scientific accuracy for TV Guide magazine. Roddenberry retorted respectfully with a personal letter explaining the limitations of accuracy when writing a weekly series. Asimov corrected himself with a follow-up essay to TV Guide claiming that despite its inaccuracies, Star Trek was a fresh and intellectually challenging science fiction television show. The two remained friends to the point where Asimov even served as an advisor on a number of Star Trek projects.
In 1973, Asimov published a proposal for calendar reform, called the World Season Calendar. It divides the year into four seasons (named A–D) of 13 weeks (91 days) each. This allows days to be named, e.g., "D-73" instead of December 1 (due to December 1 being the 73rd day of the 4th quarter). An extra 'year day' is added for a total of 365 days.
Awards and recognition
Asimov won more than a dozen annual awards for particular works of science fiction and a half-dozen lifetime awards.
He also received 14 honorary doctorate degrees from universities.
1955 – Guest of Honor at the 13th World Science Fiction Convention
1957 – Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award for best science book for youth, for Building Blocks of the Universe
1960 – Howard W. Blakeslee Award from the American Heart Association for The Living River
1962 – Boston University's Publication Merit Award
1963 – A special Hugo Award for "adding science to science fiction," for essays published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
1963 – Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1964 – The Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" (1941) the all-time best science fiction short story
1965 – James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society (now called the James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry)
1966 – Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award for the Foundation trilogy
1967 – Edward E. Smith Memorial Award
1967 – AAAS-Westinghouse Science Writing Award for Magazine Writing, for essay "Over the Edge of the Universe" (in the March 1967 Harper's Magazine)
1972 – Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1973 – Locus Award for Best Novel for The Gods Themselves
1975 – Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
1975 – Klumpke-Roberts Award "for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy"
1975 – Locus Award for Best Reprint Anthology for Before the Golden Age
1977 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Nebula Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1977 – Locus Award for Best Novelette for The Bicentennial Man
1981 – An asteroid, 5020 Asimov, was named in his honor
1981 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978
1983 – Hugo Award for Best Novel for Foundation's Edge
1983 – Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel for Foundation's Edge
1984 – Humanist of the Year
1986 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him its 8th SFWA Grand Master (presented in 1987).
1987 – Locus Award for Best Short Story for "Robot Dreams"
1992 – Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Gold"
1995 – Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1995 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction Book for I. Asimov: A Memoir
1996 – A 1946 Retro-Hugo for Best Novel of 1945 was given at the 1996 WorldCon for "The Mule", the 7th Foundation story, published in Astounding Science Fiction
1997 – The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Asimov in its second class of two deceased and two living persons, along with H. G. Wells.
2000 – Asimov was featured on a stamp in Israel
2001 – The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debates at the Hayden Planetarium in New York were inaugurated
2009 – A crater on the planet Mars, Asimov, was named in his honor
2010 – In the US Congress bill about the designation of the National Robotics Week as an annual event, a tribute to Isaac Asimov is as follows:
"Whereas the second week in April each year is designated as 'National Robotics Week', recognizing the accomplishments of Isaac Asimov, who immigrated to America, taught science, wrote science books for children and adults, first used the term robotics, developed the Three Laws of Robotics, and died in April 1992: Now, therefore, be it resolved ..."
2015 – Selected as a member of the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
2016 – A 1941 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1940 was given at the 2016 WorldCon for Robbie, his first positronic robot story, published in Super Science Stories, September 1940
2018 – A 1943 Retro-Hugo for Best Short Story of 1942 was given at the 2018 WorldCon for Foundation, published in Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942
Writing style
Asimov was his own secretary, typist, indexer, proofreader, and literary agent. He wrote a typed first draft composed at the keyboard at 90 words per minute; he imagined an ending first, then a beginning, then "let everything in-between work itself out as I come to it". (Asimov only used an outline once, later describing it as "like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket".) After correcting a draft by hand, he retyped the document as the final copy and only made one revision with minor editor-requested changes; a word processor did not save him much time, Asimov said, because 95% of the first draft was unchanged.
After disliking making multiple revisions of "Black Friar of the Flame", Asimov refused to make major, second, or non-editorial revisions ("like chewing used gum"), stating that "too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process". He submitted "failures" to another editor.
One of the most common impressions of Asimov's fiction work is that his writing style is extremely unornamented. In 1980, science fiction scholar James Gunn wrote of I, Robot:
Asimov addressed such criticism in 1989 at the beginning of Nemesis:
Gunn cited examples of a more complex style, such as the climax of "Liar!". Sharply drawn characters occur at key junctures of his storylines: Susan Calvin in "Liar!" and "Evidence", Arkady Darell in Second Foundation, Elijah Baley in The Caves of Steel, and Hari Seldon in the Foundation prequels.
Other than books by Gunn and Joseph Patrouch, a relative dearth of "literary" criticism exists on Asimov (particularly when compared to the sheer volume of his output). Cowart and Wymer's Dictionary of Literary Biography (1981) gives a possible reason:
Gunn's and Patrouch's respective studies of Asimov both state that a clear, direct prose style is still a style. Gunn's 1982 book comments in detail on each of Asimov's novels. He does not praise all of Asimov's fiction (nor does Patrouch), but calls some passages in The Caves of Steel "reminiscent of Proust". When discussing how that novel depicts night falling over futuristic New York City, Gunn says that Asimov's prose "need not be ashamed anywhere in literary society".
Although he prided himself on his unornamented prose style (for which he credited Clifford D. Simak as an early influence), and said in 1973 that his style had not changed, Asimov also enjoyed giving his longer stories complicated narrative structures, often by arranging chapters in nonchronological ways. Some readers have been put off by this, complaining that the nonlinearity is not worth the trouble and adversely affects the clarity of the story. For example, the first third of The Gods Themselves begins with Chapter 6, then backtracks to fill in earlier material. (John Campbell advised Asimov to begin his stories as late in the plot as possible. This advice helped Asimov create "Reason", one of the early Robot stories). Patrouch found that the interwoven and nested flashbacks of The Currents of Space did serious harm to that novel, to such an extent that only a "dyed-in-the-kyrt Asimov fan" could enjoy it. In his later novel Nemesis one group of characters lives in the "present" and another group starts in the "past", beginning 15 years earlier and gradually moving toward the time period of the first group.
Alien life
Asimov once explained that his reluctance to write about aliens came from an incident early in his career when Astoundings editor John Campbell rejected one of his science fiction stories because the alien characters were portrayed as superior to the humans. The nature of the rejection led him to believe that Campbell may have based his bias towards humans in stories on a real-world racial bias. Unwilling to write only weak alien races, and concerned that a confrontation would jeopardize his and Campbell's friendship, he decided he would not write about aliens at all. Nevertheless, in response to these criticisms, he wrote The Gods Themselves, which contains aliens and alien sex. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973. Asimov said that of all his writings, he was most proud of the middle section of The Gods Themselves, the part that deals with those themes.
In the Hugo Award-winning novelette "Gold", Asimov describes an author, clearly based on himself, who has one of his books (The Gods Themselves) adapted into a "compu-drama", essentially photo-realistic computer animation. The director criticizes the fictionalized Asimov ("Gregory Laborian") for having an extremely nonvisual style, making it difficult to adapt his work, and the author explains that he relies on ideas and dialogue rather than description to get his points across.
Romance and women
In the early days of science fiction some authors and critics felt that the romantic elements were inappropriate in science fiction stories, which were supposedly to be focused on science and technology. Isaac Asimov was a prominent supporter of this point of view, expressed in his 1938-1939 letters to Astounding, where he described such elements as "mush" and "slop". However, to his dismay, these letters were met with a strong opposition.
Asimov attributed the lack of romance and sex in his fiction to the "early imprinting" from starting his writing career when he had never been on a date and "didn't know anything about girls". He was sometimes criticized for the general absence of sex (and of extraterrestrial life) in his science fiction. He claimed he wrote The Gods Themselves to respond to these criticisms, which often came from New Wave science fiction (and often British) writers. The second part (of three) of the novel is set on an alien world with three sexes, and the sexual behavior of these creatures is extensively depicted.
Asimov was also criticized for a lack of strong female characters in his early work. However, some of his robot stories, including the earliest ones, featured the character Susan Calvin, a forceful and intelligent woman who regularly out-performed her male colleagues.
In his autobiographical writings, such as Gold ("Women and Science Fiction"), he acknowledges this complaint has merit and responds by pointing to inexperience. His later novels, written with more female characters but in essentially the same prose style as his early science-fiction stories, brought this matter to a wider audience. The Washington Post's "Book World" section reports of Robots and Empire opined "In 1940, Asimov's humans were stripped-down masculine portraits of Americans from 1940, and they still are."
Views
Religion
Asimov was an atheist, a humanist, and a rationalist. He did not oppose religious conviction in others, but he frequently railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science. During his childhood, his father and mother observed the traditions of Orthodox Judaism, though not as stringently as they had in Petrovichi; they did not, however, force their beliefs upon young Isaac. Thus, he grew up without strong religious influences, coming to believe that the Torah represented Hebrew mythology in the same way that the Iliad recorded Greek mythology. When he was 13, he chose not to have a bar mitzvah. As his books Treasury of Humor and Asimov Laughs Again record, Asimov was willing to tell jokes involving God, Satan, the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other religious topics, expressing the viewpoint that a good joke can do more to provoke thought than hours of philosophical discussion.
For a brief while, his father worked in the local synagogue to enjoy the familiar surroundings and, as Isaac put it, "shine as a learned scholar" versed in the sacred writings. This scholarship was a seed for his later authorship and publication of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, an analysis of the historic foundations for both the Old and New Testaments. For many years, Asimov called himself an atheist; however, he considered the term somewhat inadequate, as it described what he did not believe rather than what he did. Eventually, he described himself as a "humanist" and considered that term more practical. Asimov did, however, continue to identify himself as a secular Jew, as stated in his introduction to Jack Dann's anthology of Jewish science fiction, Wandering Stars: "I attend no services and follow no ritual and have never undergone that curious puberty rite, the Bar Mitzvah. It doesn't matter. I am Jewish."
When asked in an interview in 1982 if he was an atheist, Asimov replied,
Likewise, he said about religious education: "I would not be satisfied to have my kids choose to be religious without trying to argue them out of it, just as I would not be satisfied to have them decide to smoke regularly or engage in any other practice I consider detrimental to mind or body."
In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote,
The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".
Asimov said about using religious motifs in his writing:
Politics
Asimov became a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party during the New Deal, and thereafter remained a political liberal. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and in a television interview during the early 1970s he publicly endorsed George McGovern. He was unhappy about what he considered an "irrationalist" viewpoint taken by many radical political activists from the late 1960s and onwards. In his second volume of autobiography, In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recalled meeting the counterculture figure Abbie Hoffman. Asimov's impression was that the 1960s' counterculture heroes had ridden an emotional wave which, in the end, left them stranded in a "no-man's land of the spirit" from which he wondered if they would ever return.
Asimov vehemently opposed Richard Nixon, considering him "a crook and a liar". He closely followed Watergate, and was pleased when the president was forced to resign. Asimov was dismayed over the pardon extended to Nixon by his successor: "I was not impressed by the argument that it has spared the nation an ordeal. To my way of thinking, the ordeal was necessary to make certain it would never happen again."
After Asimov's name appeared in the mid-1960s on a list of people the Communist Party USA "considered amenable" to its goals, the FBI investigated him. Because of his academic background, the bureau briefly considered Asimov as a possible candidate for known Soviet spy ROBPROF, but found nothing suspicious in his life or background.
Asimov appeared to hold an equivocal attitude towards Israel. In his first autobiography, he indicates his support for the safety of Israel, though insisting that he was not a Zionist. In his third autobiography, Asimov stated his opposition to the creation of a Jewish state, on the grounds that he was opposed to having nation-states in general, and supported the notion of a single humanity. Asimov especially worried about the safety of Israel given that it had been created among hostile Muslim neighbors, and said that Jews had merely created for themselves another "Jewish ghetto".
Social issues
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
In a 1988 interview by Bill Moyers, Asimov proposed computer-aided learning, where people would use computers to find information on subjects in which they were interested. He thought this would make learning more interesting, since people would have the freedom to choose what to learn, and would help spread knowledge around the world. Also, the one-to-one model would let students learn at their own pace. Asimov thought that people would live in space by the year 2019.
In 1983 Asimov wrote:
He continues on education:
Sexual harassment
Asimov would often fondle, kiss and pinch women at conventions and elsewhere without regard for their consent. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, author of an Asimov biography and writer on the history of science fiction, he often defended himself by saying that far from showing objections, these women cooperated. In the 1971 satirical piece, The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, he wrote, "The question then is not whether or not a girl should be touched. The question is merely where, when, and how she should be touched."
According to Nevala-Lee, however, "many of these encounters were clearly nonconsensual." He wrote that Asimov's behaviour, as a leading science-fiction author and personality, contributed to an undesirable atmosphere for women in the male-dominated science fiction community. In support of this, he quoted some of Asimov's contemporary fellow-authors such as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison and Frederik Pohl, as well as editors such as Timothy Seldes. Specific incidents were reported by other people including Edward L. Ferman, long-time editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction who wrote "... instead of shaking my date's hand, he shook her left breast".
Environment and population
Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the Bhopal disaster.
In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with his long-time friend, science fiction author Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:
Other authors
Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, and in fact even used The Lord of the Rings as a plot point in a Black Widowers story, titled Nothing like Murder. In the essay All or Nothing (for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan 1981), Asimov revealed that he admires Tolkien and that he had read The Lord of the Rings five times. (The feelings were mutual, with Tolkien himself revealing that he had enjoyed Asimov's science fiction. This would make Asimov an exception to Tolkien's earlier claim that he rarely found "any modern books" that were interesting to him.)
He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, however, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction".
The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book Report on Planet Three (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Asimov became a fan of mystery stories at the same time as science fiction. He preferred to read the former to latter because "I read every [science fiction] story keenly aware that it might be worse than mine, in which case I had no patience with it, or that it might be better, in which case I felt miserable". Asimov wrote "I make no secret of the fact that in my mysteries I use Agatha Christie as my model. In my opinion, her mysteries are the best ever written, far better than the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Hercule Poirot is the best detective fiction has seen. Why should I not use as my model what I consider the best?" He enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but considered Arthur Conan Doyle to be "a slapdash and sloppy writer."
Asimov also enjoyed humorous stories, particularly those of P. G. Wodehouse.
In non-fiction writing, Asimov particularly admired the writing style of Martin Gardner, and tried to emulate it in his own science books. On meeting Gardner for the first time in 1965, Asimov told him this, to which Gardner answered that he had based his own style on Asimov's.
Influence
Paul Krugman, holder of a Nobel Prize in Economics, stated Asimov's concept of psychohistory has inspired him to become an economist.
John Jenkins, who has reviewed the vast majority of Asimov's written output, once observed, "It has been pointed out that most science fiction writers since the 1950s have been affected by Asimov, either modeling their style on his or deliberately avoiding anything like his style." Along with such figures as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper, Asimov left his mark as one of the most distinguished interdisciplinarians of the 20th century. "Few individuals", writes James L. Christian, "understood better than Isaac Asimov what synoptic thinking is all about. His almost 500 books—which he wrote as a specialist, a knowledgeable authority, or just an excited layman—range over almost all conceivable subjects: the sciences, history, literature, religion, and of course, science fiction."
Bibliography
Depending on the counting convention used, and including all titles, charts, and edited collections, there may be currently over 500 books in Asimov's bibliography—as well as his individual short stories, individual essays, and criticism. For his 100th, 200th, and 300th books (based on his personal count), Asimov published Opus 100 (1969), Opus 200 (1979), and Opus 300 (1984), celebrating his writing. An extensive bibliography of Isaac Asimov's works has been compiled by Ed Seiler. He published enough that his book writing rate could be analysed, showing that the writing became faster as he wrote more.
An online exhibit in West Virginia University Libraries' virtually complete Asimov Collection displays features, visuals, and descriptions of some of his over 600 books, games, audio recordings, videos, and wall charts. Many first, rare, and autographed editions are in the Libraries' Rare Book Room. Book jackets and autographs are presented online along with descriptions and images of children's books, science fiction art, multimedia, and other materials in the collection.
Science fiction
"Greater Foundation" series
The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation series. The Galactic Empire novels were published as independent stories, set earlier in the same future as Foundation. Later in life, Asimov synthesized the Robot series into a single coherent "history" that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series.
All of these books were published by Doubleday & Co, except the original Foundation trilogy which was originally published by Gnome Books before being bought and republished by Doubleday.
The Robot series:
(first Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(second Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(third Elijah Baley SF-crime novel)
(sequel to the Elijah Baley trilogy)
Galactic Empire novels:
(early Galactic Empire)
(long before the Empire)
(Republic of Trantor still expanding)
Foundation prequels:
Original Foundation trilogy:
(also published with the title 'The Man Who Upset the Universe' as a 35¢ Ace paperback, D-125, in about 1952)
Extended Foundation series:
Lucky Starr series (as Paul French)
All published by Doubleday & Co
David Starr, Space Ranger (1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (1958)
Norby Chronicles (with Janet Asimov)
All published by Walker & Company
Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983)
Norby's Other Secret (1984)
Norby and the Lost Princess (1985)
Norby and the Invaders (1985)
Norby and the Queen's Necklace (1986)
Norby Finds a Villain (1987)
Norby Down to Earth (1988)
Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure (1989)
Norby and the Oldest Dragon (1990)
Norby and the Court Jester (1991)
Novels not part of a series
Novels marked with an asterisk (*) have minor connections to Foundation universe.
The End of Eternity (1955), Doubleday (*)
Fantastic Voyage (1966), Bantam Books (paperback) and Houghton Mifflin (hardback) (a novelization of the movie)
The Gods Themselves (1972), Doubleday
Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain (1987), Doubleday (not a sequel to Fantastic Voyage, but a similar, independent story)
Nemesis (1989), Bantam Doubleday Dell (*)
Nightfall (1990), Doubleday, with Robert Silverberg (based on "Nightfall", a 1941 short story written by Asimov)
Child of Time (1992), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (based on "The Ugly Little Boy", a 1958 short story written by Asimov)
The Positronic Man (1993), Bantam Doubleday Dell, with Robert Silverberg (*) (based on The Bicentennial Man, a 1976 novella written by Asimov)
Short-story collections
Mysteries
Novels
The Death Dealers (1958), Avon Books, republished as A Whiff of Death by Walker & Company
Murder at the ABA (1976), Doubleday, also published as Authorized Murder
Short-story collections
Black Widowers series
Tales of the Black Widowers (1974), Doubleday
More Tales of the Black Widowers (1976), Doubleday
Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), Doubleday
Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), Doubleday
Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), Doubleday
The Return of the Black Widowers (2003), Carroll & Graf
Other mysteries
Asimov's Mysteries (1968), Doubleday
The Key Word and Other Mysteries (1977), Walker
The Union Club Mysteries (1983), Doubleday
The Disappearing Man and Other Mysteries (1985), Walker
The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov (1986), Doubleday
Nonfiction
Popular science
Collections of Asimov's essays for F&SF
The following books collected essays which were originally published as monthly columns in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected by Doubleday & Co
Fact and Fancy (1962)
View from a Height (1963)
Adding a Dimension (1964)
Of Time and Space and Other Things (1965)
From Earth to Heaven (1966)
Science, Numbers, and I (1968)
The Solar System and Back (1970)
The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
The Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
Asimov On Astronomy (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Asimov On Chemistry (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1974)
Of Matters Great and Small (1975)
Asimov On Physics (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
Asimov On Numbers (updated version of essays in previous collections) (1976)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
The Road to Infinity (1979)
The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
Counting the Eons (1983)
X Stands for Unknown (1984)
The Subatomic Monster (1985)
Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
Asimov on Science: A 30 Year Retrospective 1959–1989 (1989) (features the first essay in the introduction)
Out of the Everywhere (1990)
The Secret of the Universe (1991)
Other general science essay collections
Only a Trillion (1957), Abelard-Schuman,
Is Anyone There? (1967), Doubleday, (which includes the article in which he coined the term "spome")
Today and Tomorrow and— (1973), Doubleday
Science Past, Science Future (1975), Doubleday,
Please Explain (1975), Houghton Mifflin,
Life and Time (1978), Doubleday
The Roving Mind (1983), Prometheus Books, new edition 1997,
The Dangers of Intelligence (1986), Houghton Mifflin
Past, Present and Future (1987), Prometheus Books,
The Tyrannosaurus Prescription (1989), Prometheus Books
Frontiers (1990), Dutton
Frontiers II (1993), Dutton
Other science books by Asimov
The Chemicals of Life (1954), Abelard-Schuman
Inside the Atom (1956), Abelard-Schuman,
Building Blocks of the Universe (1957; revised 1974), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Carbon (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
The World of Nitrogen (1958), Abelard-Schuman,
Words of Science and the History Behind Them (1959), Houghton Mifflin
The Clock We Live On (1959), Abelard-Schuman,
Breakthroughs in Science (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Numbers (1959), Houghton Mifflin,
Realm of Measure (1960), Houghton Mifflin
The Wellsprings of Life (1960), Abelard-Schuman,
Life and Energy (1962), Doubleday,
The Genetic Code (1962), The Orion Press
The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation (1963), Houghton Mifflin, , (revised)
The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions (1963), Houghton Mifflin,
Planets for Man (with Stephen H. Dole) (1964), Random House, reprinted by RAND in 2007
An Easy Introduction to the Slide Rule (1965), Houghton Mifflin,
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Basic Books
The title varied with each of the four editions, the last being Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984)
The Universe: From Flat Earth to Quasar (1966), Walker,
The Neutrino (1966), Doubleday, ASIN B002JK525W
Understanding Physics Vol. I, Motion, Sound, and Heat (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. II, Light, Magnetism, and Electricity (1966), Walker,
Understanding Physics Vol. III, The Electron, Proton, and Neutron (1966), Walker,
Photosynthesis (1969), Basic Books,
Our World in Space (1974), New York Graphic,
Eyes on the Universe: A History of the Telescope (1976), Andre Deutsch Limited,
The Collapsing Universe (1977), Walker,
Extraterrestrial Civilizations (1979), Crown,
Visions of the Universe with illustrations by Kazuaki Iwasaki (1981), Cosmos Store,
Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos (1982), Crown,
The Measure of the Universe (1983), Harper & Row
Think About Space: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going? with co-author Frank White (1989), Walker
Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery (1989), Harper & Row, second edition adds content thru 1993,
Beginnings: The Story of Origins (1989), Walker
Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (1991), Random House,
Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos (1991), Dutton,
Mysteries of Deep Space: Quasars, Pulsars and Black Holes (1994)
Earth's Moon (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Sun (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2003 by Richard Hantula
The Earth (1988), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Jupiter (1989), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Venus (1990), Gareth Stevens, revised in 2004 by Richard Hantula
Literary works
All published by Doubleday
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, vols I and II (1970),
Asimov's Annotated "Don Juan" (1972)
Asimov's Annotated "Paradise Lost" (1974)
Familiar Poems, Annotated (1976)
Asimov's The Annotated "Gulliver's Travels" (1980)
Asimov's Annotated "Gilbert and Sullivan" (1988)
The Bible
Words from Genesis (1962), Houghton Mifflin
Words from the Exodus (1963), Houghton Mifflin
Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vols I and II (1967 and 1969, one-volume ed. 1981), Doubleday,
The Story of Ruth (1972), Doubleday,
In the Beginning (1981), Crown
Autobiography
In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920–1954 (1979, Doubleday)
In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 (1980, Doubleday)
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994, Doubleday)
It's Been a Good Life (2002, Prometheus Books), condensation of Asimov's three volumes of autobiography, edited by his widow, Janet Jeppson Asimov
History
All published by Houghton Mifflin except where otherwise stated
The Kite That Won the Revolution (1963),
The Greeks (1965)
The Roman Republic (1966)
The Roman Empire (1967)
The Egyptians (1967)
The Near East (1968)
The Dark Ages (1968)
Words from History (1968)
The Shaping of England (1969)
Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)
The Land of Canaan (1971)
The Shaping of France (1972)
The Shaping of North America: From Earliest Times to 1763 (1973)
The Birth of the United States: 1763–1816 (1974)
Our Federal Union: The United States from 1816 to 1865 (1975),
The Golden Door: The United States from 1865 to 1918 (1977)
Asimov's Chronology of the World (1991), HarperCollins,
The March of the Millennia (1991), with co-author Frank White, Walker & Company,
Humor
The Sensuous Dirty Old Man (1971) (As Dr. A), Walker & Company,
Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor (1971), Houghton Mifflin
Lecherous Limericks (1975), Walker,
More Lecherous Limericks (1976), Walker,
Still More Lecherous Limericks (1977), Walker,
Limericks, Two Gross, with John Ciardi (1978), Norton,
A Grossery of Limericks, with John Ciardi (1981), Norton,
Limericks for Children (1984), Caedmon
Asimov Laughs Again (1992), HarperCollins
On writing science fiction
Asimov on Science Fiction (1981), Doubleday
Asimov's Galaxy (1989), Doubleday
Other nonfiction
Opus 100 (1969), Houghton Mifflin,
Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (1964), Doubleday (revised edition 1972, )
Opus 200 (1979), Houghton Mifflin,
Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts (1979), Grosset & Dunlap,
Opus 300 (1984), Houghton Mifflin,
Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (1991), with co-author Frederik Pohl, Tor, .
Television, music, and film appearances
I Robot, a concept album by the Alan Parsons Project that examined some of Asimov's work
The Last Word (1959)
The Dick Cavett Show, four appearances 1968–71
The Nature of Things (1969)
ABC News coverage of Apollo 11, 1969, with Fred Pohl, interviewed by Rod Serling
David Frost interview program, August 1969. Frost asked Asimov if he had ever tried to find God and, after some initial evasion, Asimov answered, "God is much more intelligent than I am—let him try to find me."
BBC Horizon "It's About Time" (1979), show hosted by Dudley Moore
Target ... Earth? (1980)
The David Letterman Show (1980)
NBC TV Speaking Freely, interviewed by Edwin Newman (1982)
ARTS Network talk show hosted by Studs Terkel and Calvin Trillin, approximately (1982)
Oltre New York (1986)
Voyage to the Outer Planets and Beyond (1986)
Gandahar (1987), a French animated science-fiction film by René Laloux. Asimov wrote the English translation for the film.
Bill Moyers interview (1988)
Stranieri in America (1988)
Adaptations
El robot embustero (1966), short film directed by Antonio Lara de Gavilán, based on short story "Liar!"
A halhatatlanság halála (1977), TV movie directed by András Rajnai, based on novel The End of Eternity
The Ugly Little Boy (1977), short film directed by Barry Morse and Donald W. Thompson, based on novelette The Ugly Little Boy
All the Troubles of the World (1978), short film directed by Dianne Haak-Edson, based on short story "All the Troubles of the World"
The End of Eternity (1987), film directed by Andrei Yermash, based on novel The End of Eternity
Nightfall (1988), film directed by Paul Mayersberg, based on novelette "Nightfall"
Robots (1988), film directed by Doug Smith and Kim Takal, based on the Robot series
Feeling 109 (1988), short film directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov
Teach 109 (1989), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as The Android Affair)
The Android Affair (1995), TV movie directed by Richard Kletter, based on a story of Asimov (the same as Teach 109)
Bicentennial Man (1999), film directed by Chris Columbus, based on novelette "The Bicentennial Man" and on novel The Positronic Man
Nightfall (2000), film directed by Gwyneth Gibby, based on novelette "Nightfall"
I, Robot (2004), film directed by Alex Proyas, based on ideas of short stories of the Robot series
Formula of Death (2012), TV movie directed by Behdad Avand Amini, based on novel The Death Dealers
Spell My Name with an S (2014), short film directed by Samuel Ali, based on short story "Spell My Name with an S"
Foundation (2021), series created by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman, based on the Foundation series
Novelizations
Novel Fantastic Voyage, novelization of film Fantastic Voyage (1966)
References
Footnotes
Notes
Sources
Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green (1979), New York: Avon, .
In Joy Still Felt (1980), New York: Avon .
I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994), (hc), (pb).
Yours, Isaac Asimov (1996), edited by Stanley Asimov. New York: Doubleday .
It's Been a Good Life (2002), edited by Janet Asimov. .
Goldman, Stephen H., "Isaac Asimov", in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 8, Cowart and Wymer eds. (Gale Research, 1981), pp. 15–29.
Gunn, James. "On Variations on a Robot", IASFM, July 1980, pp. 56–81.
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982). .
The Science of Science-Fiction Writing (2000). .
Further reading
External links
Asimov Online, a vast repository of information about Asimov, maintained by Asimov enthusiast Edward Seiler
Jenkins' Spoiler-Laden Guide to Isaac Asimov, reviews of all of Asimov's books
20th-century births
1992 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American male writers
AIDS-related deaths in New York (state)
American alternate history writers
Jewish American atheists
American biochemists
American essayists
American humanists
American humorists
American male novelists
20th-century American memoirists
United States Army non-commissioned officers
American mystery writers
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American science fiction writers
American science writers
American skeptics
American writers of Russian descent
Asimov's Science Fiction people
Bible commentators
Boston University faculty
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
Critics of religions
Date of birth unknown
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Futurians
Historians of astronomy
American historians of science
Hugo Award-winning writers
Humor researchers
Jewish American novelists
Jewish American short story writers
Jewish feminists
Jewish skeptics
American male essayists
Male feminists
American male short story writers
American short story writers
Mensans
Nebula Award winners
New York (state) Democrats
People from Shumyachsky District
Naturalized citizens of the United States
United States Navy civilians
Science fiction fans
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
SFWA Grand Masters
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Writers from Brooklyn
Yiddish-speaking people
Boys High School (Brooklyn) alumni
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New York (state)
Scientists from New York City
20th-century essayists
20th-century atheists
People from the Upper West Side
Pulp fiction writers
Writers about religion and science
Atheist feminists
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
| false |
[
"\"Stay Out of My Life\" is a 1987 hit single by British pop group Five Star. It was the fifth release from their number one selling LP Silk & Steel, and reached no.9 in the UK singles chart.\n\nThe song's B-side, \"How Dare You (Stay Out of My Life)\", was used as the theme tune to the 1980s children's television series made by Tyne Tees TV called How Dare You, presented by Carrie Grant.\n\nTrack listings\n7” Single:\n\n1. \"Stay Out of My Life\"\n\n2. \"(How Dare You) Stay Out of My Life\" **\n\n12” Single:\n\n1. \"Stay Out of My Life\" (Extended Version) *\n\n2. \"If I Say Yes\" (Lew Hahn U.S. Dub Remix)\n\n3. \"(How Dare You) Stay Out of My Life\" **\n\n* Available on CD on the cd single of There's A Brand New World PD42236\n\n** Released in CD format on the Cherry Pop 2012 reissue of Five Star's 1987 Between the Lines album.\n\nReferences\n\nFive Star songs\n1987 singles\nSongs written by Denise Pearson",
"\"Llangollen Market\" is a song from early 19th century Wales. It is known to have been performed at an eisteddfod at Llangollen in 1858.\n\nThe text of the song survives in a manuscript held by the National Museum of Wales, which came into the possession of singer Mary Davies, a co-founder of the Welsh Folk-Song Society.\n\nThe song tells the tale of a young man from the Llangollen area going off to war and leaving behind his broken-hearted girlfriend. Originally written in English, the song has been translated into Welsh and recorded by several artists such as Siân James, Siobhan Owen, Calennig and Siwsann George.\n\nLyrics\nIt’s far beyond the mountains that look so distant here,\nTo fight his country’s battles, last Mayday went my dear;\nAh, well shall I remember with bitter sighs the day,\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me? At home why did I stay?\n\nAh, cruel was my father that did my flight restrain,\nAnd I was cruel-hearted that did at home remain,\nWith you, my love, contented, I’d journey far away;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me? At home why did I stay?\n\nWhile thinking of my Owen, my eyes with tears do fill,\nAnd then my mother chides me because my wheel stands still,\nBut how can I think of spinning when my Owen’s far away;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me? At home why did I stay?\n\nTo market at Llangollen each morning do I go,\nBut how to strike a bargain no longer do I know;\nMy father chides at evening, my mother all the day;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me, at home why did I stay?\n\nOh, would it please kind heaven to shield my love from harm,\nTo clasp him to my bosom would every care disarm,\nBut alas, I fear, 'tis distant - that happy, happy day;\nWhy, Owen, did you leave me, at home why did stay?\n\nReferences\n\nWelsh folk songs"
] |
[
"Charles Willson Peale",
"American Revolution"
] |
C_18f3559c460e408cbb42afcd11988aaf_1
|
What was Peale's role in the American Revolution?
| 1 |
What was Charles Willson Peale's role in the American Revolution?
|
Charles Willson Peale
|
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. CANNOTANSWER
|
He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776,
|
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, and for establishing one of the first museums in the United States.
Early life
Peale was born in 1741 between modern-day Queenstown and Centreville, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. He had a younger brother, James Peale (1749–1831). He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation.
Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was fourteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop and joined the Sons of Liberty. However, he was unsuccessful in saddle making. He then tried fixing clocks and working with metals, but both of these endeavors failed as well. He then took up painting.
Career as a painter
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.
American Revolution
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.
Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.
One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe-l'œil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Peale Museum
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, later known as Peale's American Museum. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. In 1786, Peale was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and in many instances mounted, having taught himself taxidermy. In 1792, Peale initiated a correspondence with Thomas Hall, of the Finsbury Museum, City Road, Finsbury, London proposing to purchase British stuffed items for his museum. Eventually, an exchange system was established between the two, whereby Peale sent American birds to Hall in exchange for an equal number of British birds. This arrangement continued until the end of the century. The Peale Museum was the first to display a mastodon skeleton (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today) that Peale found in New York State. Peale worked with his son to mount the skeleton for display.
The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long-standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.
The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.
The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.
The museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.
Personal life
In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children, most of them named for Peale's favorite artists, male and female. Among their sons and daughters, some of whom he taught to paint, were:
Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), who some consider to be the first professional American painter of still-life.
Angelica Kauffman Peale (1775–1853), who was named for Angelica Kauffman (Peale's favorite female painter) and who married Alexander Robinson.
Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), portrait painter, inventor, businessman, museum owner/operator in Baltimore. He founded the "Gas Light Company of Baltimore" in 1817, now Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE). He was the father of artist Rosalba Carriera Peale.
Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780–1798), ornithologist. He died at age of 18.
Rubens Peale (1784–1865), museum administrator and artist.
Sophonisba Angusciola Peale (1786–1859), ornithologist. She married Coleman Sellers (1781–1834) in 1805. She was the mother of Coleman Sellers II.
After Rachel's death in 1790, Peale married Elizabeth de Peyster (1765–1804), a descendant of Johannes de Peyster, the next year. With his second wife, he had six additional children, including:
Charles Linnaeus Peale (1794–1832), who was named for Charles Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and zoologist.
Franklin Peale (1795–1870), who became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint.
Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799–1885), explorer, ornithologist, scientific illustrator, and photographer.
Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–1857), who married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.
Hannah Moore, a Quaker from Philadelphia, married Peale in 1805, becoming his third wife. She helped to raise the younger children from his previous two marriages.
Peale's slave, Moses Williams, was also trained in the arts while growing up in the Peale household and later became a professional silhouette artist.
In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown, where he intended to retire. He named this estate "Belfield" and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826. Peale died on February 22, 1827, and was buried at the Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia alongside his wife Elizabeth DePeyster.
Expertise
A Renaissance man, Peale had expertise not only in painting but also in many diverse fields, including carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing is now held with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.
Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.
Peale wrote several books. Two of these were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803).
Legacy and honors
Three of his sons, Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale, became noted artists.
The World War II cargo Liberty Ship S.S. Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.
Notable works
See also
Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site
George Escol Sellers, grandson who was an inventor
References
Sources
Lily Bita, Charles Willson Peale, the patriarch "Apodemon Epos" Magazine of European Art Center (EUARCE) of Greece, 2st issue 1997 p. 3
Further reading
Ward, David C. 2004 Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic Berkley, California : University of California Press
External links
Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson, 1795
Charles Willson Peale and His World from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Peale-Sellers Family Collection at the American Philosophical Society
Portrait of General David Foreman, Berkshire Museum
The Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on Charles Willson Peale.
History of Peale at Belfield, now the grounds of La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Charles Willson Peale. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
James Madison, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the *Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
Catherine "Kitty" Floyd, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
1741 births
1827 deaths
18th-century American painters
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American slave owners
American people of English descent
American portrait painters
Trompe-l'œil artists
Museum founders
Pennsylvania militiamen in the American Revolution
People from Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Charles
Sibling artists
People of colonial Maryland
Burials at St. Peter's churchyard, Philadelphia
19th-century male artists
Members of the American Philosophical Society
| true |
[
"James Peale (1749 – May 24, 1831) was an American painter, best known for his miniature and still life paintings, and a younger brother of noted painter Charles Willson Peale.\n\nEarly life\n\nPeale was born in Chestertown, Maryland, the second child, after Charles, of Charles Peale (1709–1750) and Margaret Triggs (1709–1791). His father died when he was an infant, and the family moved to Annapolis.\n\nIn 1762, he began to serve apprenticeships there, first in a saddlery and later in a cabinetmaking shop. After his brother Charles returned from London in 1769, where he had studied with Benjamin West, Peale served as his assistant and learned how to paint.\n\nCareer\n\nPeale worked in his brother's studio until January 14, 1776, when he accepted a commission in the Continental Army as an ensign in William Smallwood's regiment. Within three months he was promoted to captain, and during the next three years fought in the battles of Long Island, White Plains, Trenton, Brandywine, Germantown, Princeton, and Monmouth. He resigned his army commission in 1779, and moved to Philadelphia to live with his brother. (One notable later collaboration, however, was in 1788 to make floats for Philadelphia's Federal Procession in honor of the newly drafted United States Constitution).\n\nAt the conclusion of the Revolutionary War Peale was admitted as an original member of The Society of the Cincinnati in the state of Maryland when it was established in 1783.\n\nAt the outset of his painting career Peale painted portraits and still-life, and by the mid-1780s had established his reputation. At about this time, however, Charles turned over his own miniature portrait practice to him, and throughout the 1790s and early 19th century Peale devoted himself to miniature painting. Much of this work was watercolor on ivory. In 1795 Peale exhibited a still life of fruit along with nine miniatures and his family portrait at the Columbianum, a short-lived art academy in Philadelphia. Around 1810, as Peale's eyesight began to weaken, he gave up painting miniatures to turn to large portraits and still-life subjects that were greatly admired and widely exhibited in Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore.\n\nThe total number of Peale's landscape paintings remains unknown, but he executed more than 200 watercolor miniatures on ivory, perhaps 100 still-life paintings, fewer than 70 oil portraits, and at least 8 history paintings.\n\nPersonal life\n\nIn 1782 he married Mary Claypoole (1753-1828), a daughter of James Claypoole and sister of portrait painter James Claypoole Jr., after which he established his own household and artistic career. Together, Mary and James were the parents of seven children, three of whom became accomplished painters in their own right, including:\n\n Maria Claypoole Peale (1787–1866) also became a painter of still lifes, though of less distinction than her sisters.\n James Peale Jr. (1789–1876), who married his cousin, Sophonisba Peale (1801–1878), daughter of Raphaelle Peale.\n Anna Claypoole Peale (1791–1878), a miniaturist and still-life painter\n Margaretta Angelica Peale (1796–1882), painter of trompe l’oeil subjects and tabletop fruit\n Sarah Miriam Peale (1800–1885), a portraitist and still-life painter\n Jane Ramsay Peale\n Eleanor Peale.\n\nPeale died in Philadelphia on May 24, 1831 and is buried at Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church cemetery along with this wife and six children.\n\nGallery\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nAmerican paintings & historical prints from the Middendorf collection, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Peale (no. 6)\nUnion List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for James Peale, Sr. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.\n The Society of the Cincinnati\n The American Revolution Institute\n\n1749 births\n1831 deaths\n18th-century American painters\nAmerican male painters\n19th-century American painters\n19th-century male artists\nContinental Army officers from Maryland\nJames\nSibling artists\nPeople from Chestertown, Maryland\nPainters from Maryland\nPeople of colonial Maryland\nBurials at Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church",
"Rembrandt Peale (February 22, 1778 – October 3, 1860) was an American artist and museum keeper. A prolific portrait painter, he was especially acclaimed for his likenesses of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Peale's style was influenced by French Neoclassicism after a stay in Paris in his early thirties.\n\nBiography\n\nRembrandt Peale was born the third of six surviving children (11 had died) to his mother, Rachel Brewer, and father, Charles Willson Peale, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on February 22, 1778. The father, Charles, also a notable artist, named him after the noted 17th-century Dutch painter and engraver Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. His father also taught all of his children, including Raphaelle Peale, Rubens Peale and Titian Peale, to paint scenery and portraiture, and tutored Rembrandt in the arts and sciences. Rembrandt began drawing at the age of eight. A year after his mother's death and the remarriage of his father, Peale left the school of the arts, and completed his first self-portrait at the age of 13. The canvas displays the young artist's early mastery. The clothes, however, give the notion that Peale exaggerated what a 13-year-old would look like, and Peale's hair curls like the hair of a Renaissance angel. Later in his life, Peale \"often showed this painting to young beginners, to encourage them to go from 'bad' to better...\"\n\nIn July 1787, Charles Willson Peale introduced his son Rembrandt to George Washington, and the young aspirant artist watched his father paint the future president. In 1795, at the age of 17, Rembrandt painted an aging Washington, making him appear far more aged than in reality. The portrait was well received, and Rembrandt had made his debut.\n\nAt the age of 20, Peale married 22-year-old Eleanor May Short (1776–1836) at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Philadelphia. During their marriage, Peale and Short had nine children: Rosalba, Eleanor, Michael Angelo, Angelica, and Emma Clara among them. In 1840, he married Harriet Cany (1799–1869), one of his pupils and an artist in her own right.\n\nIn 1822, Peale moved to New York City, where he embarked on an attempt to paint what he hoped would become the \"standard likeness\" of Washington. He studied portraits by other artists including John Trumbull, Gilbert Stuart and his own father, as well as his own 1795 picture which had never truly satisfied him. His resulting work Patriae Pater, completed in 1824, depicts Washington through an oval window, and is considered by many to be second only to Gilbert Stuart's iconic Athenaeum painting of the first president. Peale subsequently attempted to capitalize on the success of what quickly became known as his \"Porthole\" picture. Patriae Pater (Latin for \"Father of Our Country\") was purchased by Congress in 1832 for $2,000. It currently hangs in the Old Senate Chamber.\n\nIn 1826 he helped found the National Academy of Design in New York City.\n\nPeale went on to create over 70 detailed replicas, including one of Washington in full military uniform that currently hangs in the Oval Office. Peale continued to paint other noted portraits, such as those of the third president Thomas Jefferson while he was in office (1805), and later on a portrait of Chief Justice John Marshall.\n\nTravels\n\nNoted for his \"itinerant\" nature, Peale visited Europe several times to study art (Ward). Throughout his life, Peale traveled across the western hemisphere in search of inspiration and opportunities as an artist. His father helped pay his way to Paris, where he stayed from June to September 1808, and again from October 1809 to November 1810. In Paris, Peale studied the works of Jacques-Louis David, which influenced him to paint in the Neoclassical style. He painted the famous explorer Alexander von Humboldt and several other noted patrons such as Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and François André Michaux. After his successes in France, Peale returned to Philadelphia in 1810.\n\nHis efforts to establish his knowledge and mastery of art were displayed in his painting The Roman Daughter (1811). The painting depicts a young girl shielding her father, a prisoner in chains, and feeding him from her breast, the emblem of \"Roman Charity\" reported in the pages of Pliny. It was deemed too \"sensational\" by the people of Philadelphia, who were unsympathetic to his endeavors toward \"improving the state of fine arts in America\" in the 19th century. Amid the economic hardship of the War of 1812, President Jefferson—who promised to buy the 1795 portrait of Washington, but could not keep his promise—instead encouraged Peale to go to Europe, as \"we have genius among us but no unemployed wealth to reward it\".\n\nPeale's Baltimore Museum\n\nMotivated by his father's establishment of the American Museum of Philadelphia (1786) and having been unsuccessful in Philadelphia, Rembrandt Peale assumed his father's role in another city. On August 15, 1814, Peale launched his first museum as soon as he arrived in the municipality of Baltimore, Maryland on Holliday Street between East Saratoga and Lexington Streets, the first building constructed in America to serve as a museum. It later served as the second Baltimore City Hall, 1830–1875; a \"Colored\" primary, grammar, and high school, part of Baltimore's segregated public school system, 1878–1889; and was restored in 1931 as the Municipal Museum of the City of Baltimore. Renovated and restored again in 1981, it reopened with a groundbreaking interpretive history exhibition, \"Rowhouse: A Baltimore Style of Living.\" In 1985, the Municipal Museum, which had grown to five sites (Peale Museum, Carroll Mansion, 1840 House, Baltimore Center for Urban Archaeology, and H.L. Mencken House) was renamed Baltimore City Life Museums. It closed in 1997, a year after opening a new 30,000sf exhibition center.\n\nThe museum was elaborately illuminated by gas light, following the example of his brother Rubens in Philadelphia. This innovation made a great impression. Peale had acquired an important gas lighting patent, and with some associates founded the successful Gas Light Company of Baltimore. Having poor business sense, though, he did little to manage the company and was forced out after a few years due to the War of 1812.\n\nIn 1828, an ambitious Peale raised funds and tried earning money for his previous paintings, in order to travel to Rome. He took along his 15-year-old son, Michael Angelo, a determined young artist who copied his father's paintings in admiration. Peale successfully displayed portraits of Horatio Greenough and Washington as Patriæ Pater in the Florentine academy.\n\nPeale died June 12, 1860, in Philadelphia and is buried at Woodlands Cemetery in West Philadelphia.\n\nWorks\n\nExhibited and discussed in \"In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale 1778–1860,\" Washington D.C., National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian institution, 1992–93, The portrait of Margaret Irvine Miller exemplifies Peale's ability to convey a story and capture character through taking liberty with the way in which he portrayed his sitters. Mrs. Miller, by birth working-class, later raised her position in Philadelphia society. Though her clothing is aristocratic, Mrs. Miller's pose and gaze are those of a straightforward, working-class woman. The subtle juxtaposition is masterfully captured in the finest of terms.\n\nIn 1801, Peale painted a portrait of his brother Rubens, youngest of the six Peale children, who always had an admiration for gardening and tending to natural life. Peale seated his brother next to a geranium. The painting signifies the artist's admiration for a sibling's love of nature, and may have been inspired by the Dutch 17th-century artist, David Teniers the Younger, who had painted a series of oil-on-copper paintings representing the five senses. His painting, Smell is quite similar to Rembrandt Peale's. Rembrandt's piece captures the essence of a young gardener/artist's peace of mind, gracefully looking out, a posture of wonder and calmness.\n\nIn 1824, Peale painted the Patriæ Pater, in which a rectangle supporting an oval wreath surrounds the eye-catching image of George Washington. The most successful painting of Peale's 50-year career, it inspired John Marshall to have his portrait done by Peale in the same fashion. The painting was criticized as lacking authenticity, as it was not completed until after Washington's death (1799). Nonetheless, Peale received commendations for his portrait by many noted politicians such as Washington's nephew, Judge Bushrod Washington, who was an associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice, and Marshall.\n\nPeale's neoclassical painting The Roman Daughter demonstrates compassion and graceful defense; his copy of Correggio's Angel, and his immense allegorical painting, Court of Death (1820), reveal the same artistic style.\n\nLegacy\n\nRembrandt Peale completed more than 600 paintings. He painted portraits of many notable people, including American presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Chief Justice John Marshall, and John C. Calhoun. His paintings are in many public collections.\n\nCollections\n\nThe following is a partial list of collections holding works by Rembrandt Peale:\n\nWashington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art and National Portrait Gallery, The Smithsonian Institution\nBaltimore, Maryland: The Peale Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland Historical Society, Walters Art Museum\nPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Atwater Kent Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts\nDetroit, Michigan: Detroit Institute of Arts\nColumbus, Georgia: The Columbus Museum\nBirmingham, Alabama: Birmingham Museum of Art\nNew York: Brooklyn Museum, The Peale Museum of New York\nNew London, Connecticut: Lyman Allyn Art Museum\nDallas, Texas: The Dallas Museum of Art Modern American Collection\nPittsfield, Massachusetts: Berkshire Museum\nPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania: La Salle University Art Museum\nWilmington, Delaware: Hagley Museum and Library\n\nOther notable paintings\n Charles Willson Peale, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1812\n Washington Before Yorktown, Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1824\n John C. Calhoun, Gibbes Museum of Art, 1834\n The Sisters, Eleanor and Rosalba Peale, A. Augustus Healy Fund, Brooklyn Museum, 1826\n General Thomas Sumter, Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, 1796\n Mrs. Marbury, Private Collection, 1797\n Sculpture, Atwater Kent Museum, Philadelphia, c. 1812\n DeWitt Clinton, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1823\n Mary Jane Peale, Elise Peale Patterson de Golpi-Toro, New York, 1835\n Eleanor May Short Peale, Private Collection, 1836\n William Henry Harrison, Grouseland (William Henry Harrison House), Vincennes, IN\n\nA portrait identified\nA painting of a comedian who was an acquaintance of the British painter George Clint—an artist whose style resembled Peale's, and who claimed the picture as his own—was examined by the National Portrait Gallery of London in 1914. It was initially confirmed as Clint's artwork. Later, the gallery further examined the history behind the painting: the English comedian, Charles Mathews, had arrived in New York in 1822, and left shortly after Peale had welcomed him for a portrait painting.\n\nGallery\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\nHunter, Jr., Wilbur H. \"Peale's Baltimore Museum.\" College Art Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Autumn, 1952), pp. 31–36\nMahey, John A. \"The Studio of Rembrandt Peale.\" American Art Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2. (Autumn, 1969), pp. 20–40.\nMeschutt, David.\" \"Rembrandt Peale's Portrait of Charles Mathews, British Comedian, Identified.\" American Art Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3. (1989), pp. 74–79.\nMiller, Lillian B. Rembrandt Peale: A Life in the Arts: 1778–1860. The Historical Society of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, 1985\nSoltis, Carol Eaton. \"Rembrandt Peale's Rubens Peale with a Geranium: A Possible Source in David Teniers the Younger\". American Art Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1/2. (2002), pp. 4–19\nWard, David C. \"Celebration of Self: The Portraiture of Charles Willson Peale and Rembrandt Peale, 1822–27.\" American Art, Vol. 7, No. 1. (Winter, 1993), pp. 8–27.\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Rembrandt And Harriet Peale Papers, 1824–1932 have been digitized and posted online by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.\nRembrandt Peale on Artcyclopedia.com\n\nRembrandt Peale Gallery\n\n1778 births\n1860 deaths\n18th-century American painters\nAmerican male painters\n19th-century American painters\n19th-century male artists\nAmerican neoclassical painters\nAmerican portrait painters\nPeople from Bucks County, Pennsylvania\nRembrandt\nSibling artists\nArtists from Philadelphia\nAmerican curators\nDirectors of museums in the United States\nBurials at The Woodlands Cemetery"
] |
[
"Charles Willson Peale",
"American Revolution",
"What was Peale's role in the American Revolution?",
"He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776,"
] |
C_18f3559c460e408cbb42afcd11988aaf_1
|
What military achievements did he have?
| 2 |
What military achievements did Charles Willson Peale have?
|
Charles Willson Peale
|
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. CANNOTANSWER
|
he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas.
|
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, and for establishing one of the first museums in the United States.
Early life
Peale was born in 1741 between modern-day Queenstown and Centreville, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. He had a younger brother, James Peale (1749–1831). He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation.
Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was fourteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop and joined the Sons of Liberty. However, he was unsuccessful in saddle making. He then tried fixing clocks and working with metals, but both of these endeavors failed as well. He then took up painting.
Career as a painter
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.
American Revolution
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.
Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.
One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe-l'œil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Peale Museum
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, later known as Peale's American Museum. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. In 1786, Peale was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and in many instances mounted, having taught himself taxidermy. In 1792, Peale initiated a correspondence with Thomas Hall, of the Finsbury Museum, City Road, Finsbury, London proposing to purchase British stuffed items for his museum. Eventually, an exchange system was established between the two, whereby Peale sent American birds to Hall in exchange for an equal number of British birds. This arrangement continued until the end of the century. The Peale Museum was the first to display a mastodon skeleton (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today) that Peale found in New York State. Peale worked with his son to mount the skeleton for display.
The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long-standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.
The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.
The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.
The museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.
Personal life
In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children, most of them named for Peale's favorite artists, male and female. Among their sons and daughters, some of whom he taught to paint, were:
Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), who some consider to be the first professional American painter of still-life.
Angelica Kauffman Peale (1775–1853), who was named for Angelica Kauffman (Peale's favorite female painter) and who married Alexander Robinson.
Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), portrait painter, inventor, businessman, museum owner/operator in Baltimore. He founded the "Gas Light Company of Baltimore" in 1817, now Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE). He was the father of artist Rosalba Carriera Peale.
Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780–1798), ornithologist. He died at age of 18.
Rubens Peale (1784–1865), museum administrator and artist.
Sophonisba Angusciola Peale (1786–1859), ornithologist. She married Coleman Sellers (1781–1834) in 1805. She was the mother of Coleman Sellers II.
After Rachel's death in 1790, Peale married Elizabeth de Peyster (1765–1804), a descendant of Johannes de Peyster, the next year. With his second wife, he had six additional children, including:
Charles Linnaeus Peale (1794–1832), who was named for Charles Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and zoologist.
Franklin Peale (1795–1870), who became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint.
Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799–1885), explorer, ornithologist, scientific illustrator, and photographer.
Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–1857), who married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.
Hannah Moore, a Quaker from Philadelphia, married Peale in 1805, becoming his third wife. She helped to raise the younger children from his previous two marriages.
Peale's slave, Moses Williams, was also trained in the arts while growing up in the Peale household and later became a professional silhouette artist.
In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown, where he intended to retire. He named this estate "Belfield" and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826. Peale died on February 22, 1827, and was buried at the Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia alongside his wife Elizabeth DePeyster.
Expertise
A Renaissance man, Peale had expertise not only in painting but also in many diverse fields, including carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing is now held with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.
Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.
Peale wrote several books. Two of these were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803).
Legacy and honors
Three of his sons, Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale, became noted artists.
The World War II cargo Liberty Ship S.S. Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.
Notable works
See also
Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site
George Escol Sellers, grandson who was an inventor
References
Sources
Lily Bita, Charles Willson Peale, the patriarch "Apodemon Epos" Magazine of European Art Center (EUARCE) of Greece, 2st issue 1997 p. 3
Further reading
Ward, David C. 2004 Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic Berkley, California : University of California Press
External links
Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson, 1795
Charles Willson Peale and His World from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Peale-Sellers Family Collection at the American Philosophical Society
Portrait of General David Foreman, Berkshire Museum
The Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on Charles Willson Peale.
History of Peale at Belfield, now the grounds of La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Charles Willson Peale. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
James Madison, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the *Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
Catherine "Kitty" Floyd, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
1741 births
1827 deaths
18th-century American painters
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American slave owners
American people of English descent
American portrait painters
Trompe-l'œil artists
Museum founders
Pennsylvania militiamen in the American Revolution
People from Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Charles
Sibling artists
People of colonial Maryland
Burials at St. Peter's churchyard, Philadelphia
19th-century male artists
Members of the American Philosophical Society
| true |
[
"Nikolai Ivanovich Galushkin (; 22 January 1922 — 18 May 2007) was one of the top Soviet snipers during World War II. Despite tallying 418 kills during the war and being nominated for the title Hero of the Soviet Union on two occasions, he did not receive the title, and was instead awarded the Order of Lenin for his achievements as a sniper until being awarded the title Hero of the Russian Federation on 21 June 1995.\n\nFootnotes\n\nReferences \n\n1922 births\n2007 deaths\nHeroes of the Russian Federation\nPeople nominated for the title Hero of the Soviet Union\nRecipients of the Order of Lenin\nRecipients of the Order of the Red Banner\nSoviet military snipers\nSoviet military personnel of World War II",
"Ayusi (; ) was a Dzungar officer of the Qing dynasty. He is best known for his achievements against the Dzungar Khanate. His achievements allowed the Qing dynasty to pacify northern Xinjiang.\n\nReferences\n\nQing dynasty politicians from Xinjiang\nQing dynasty military personnel\n18th-century Chinese people\nChinese people of Mongolian descent"
] |
[
"Charles Willson Peale",
"American Revolution",
"What was Peale's role in the American Revolution?",
"He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776,",
"What military achievements did he have?",
"he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas."
] |
C_18f3559c460e408cbb42afcd11988aaf_1
|
What else did Peale do during this war?
| 3 |
Besides painting portraits of American notables and overseas visitors, what else did Peale do during the War of Independence?
|
Charles Willson Peale
|
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. CANNOTANSWER
|
While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army.
|
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, and for establishing one of the first museums in the United States.
Early life
Peale was born in 1741 between modern-day Queenstown and Centreville, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. He had a younger brother, James Peale (1749–1831). He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation.
Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was fourteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop and joined the Sons of Liberty. However, he was unsuccessful in saddle making. He then tried fixing clocks and working with metals, but both of these endeavors failed as well. He then took up painting.
Career as a painter
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.
American Revolution
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.
Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.
One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe-l'œil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Peale Museum
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, later known as Peale's American Museum. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. In 1786, Peale was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and in many instances mounted, having taught himself taxidermy. In 1792, Peale initiated a correspondence with Thomas Hall, of the Finsbury Museum, City Road, Finsbury, London proposing to purchase British stuffed items for his museum. Eventually, an exchange system was established between the two, whereby Peale sent American birds to Hall in exchange for an equal number of British birds. This arrangement continued until the end of the century. The Peale Museum was the first to display a mastodon skeleton (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today) that Peale found in New York State. Peale worked with his son to mount the skeleton for display.
The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long-standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.
The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.
The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.
The museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.
Personal life
In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children, most of them named for Peale's favorite artists, male and female. Among their sons and daughters, some of whom he taught to paint, were:
Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), who some consider to be the first professional American painter of still-life.
Angelica Kauffman Peale (1775–1853), who was named for Angelica Kauffman (Peale's favorite female painter) and who married Alexander Robinson.
Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), portrait painter, inventor, businessman, museum owner/operator in Baltimore. He founded the "Gas Light Company of Baltimore" in 1817, now Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE). He was the father of artist Rosalba Carriera Peale.
Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780–1798), ornithologist. He died at age of 18.
Rubens Peale (1784–1865), museum administrator and artist.
Sophonisba Angusciola Peale (1786–1859), ornithologist. She married Coleman Sellers (1781–1834) in 1805. She was the mother of Coleman Sellers II.
After Rachel's death in 1790, Peale married Elizabeth de Peyster (1765–1804), a descendant of Johannes de Peyster, the next year. With his second wife, he had six additional children, including:
Charles Linnaeus Peale (1794–1832), who was named for Charles Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and zoologist.
Franklin Peale (1795–1870), who became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint.
Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799–1885), explorer, ornithologist, scientific illustrator, and photographer.
Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–1857), who married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.
Hannah Moore, a Quaker from Philadelphia, married Peale in 1805, becoming his third wife. She helped to raise the younger children from his previous two marriages.
Peale's slave, Moses Williams, was also trained in the arts while growing up in the Peale household and later became a professional silhouette artist.
In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown, where he intended to retire. He named this estate "Belfield" and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826. Peale died on February 22, 1827, and was buried at the Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia alongside his wife Elizabeth DePeyster.
Expertise
A Renaissance man, Peale had expertise not only in painting but also in many diverse fields, including carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing is now held with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.
Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.
Peale wrote several books. Two of these were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803).
Legacy and honors
Three of his sons, Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale, became noted artists.
The World War II cargo Liberty Ship S.S. Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.
Notable works
See also
Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site
George Escol Sellers, grandson who was an inventor
References
Sources
Lily Bita, Charles Willson Peale, the patriarch "Apodemon Epos" Magazine of European Art Center (EUARCE) of Greece, 2st issue 1997 p. 3
Further reading
Ward, David C. 2004 Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic Berkley, California : University of California Press
External links
Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson, 1795
Charles Willson Peale and His World from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Peale-Sellers Family Collection at the American Philosophical Society
Portrait of General David Foreman, Berkshire Museum
The Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on Charles Willson Peale.
History of Peale at Belfield, now the grounds of La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Charles Willson Peale. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
James Madison, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the *Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
Catherine "Kitty" Floyd, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
1741 births
1827 deaths
18th-century American painters
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American slave owners
American people of English descent
American portrait painters
Trompe-l'œil artists
Museum founders
Pennsylvania militiamen in the American Revolution
People from Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Charles
Sibling artists
People of colonial Maryland
Burials at St. Peter's churchyard, Philadelphia
19th-century male artists
Members of the American Philosophical Society
| true |
[
"Rubens Peale (May 4, 1784 – July 17, 1865) was an American museum administrator and artist. Born in Philadelphia, he was the son of artist-naturalist Charles Willson Peale. Due to his weak eyesight, he did not practice painting seriously until the last decade of his life, when he painted still life.\n\nEarly life and education\nHe was the fourth son of Charles Willson Peale. Rubens had weak eyes and, unlike most of his siblings, did not set out to be an artist. He traveled with the family in 1802 to the United Kingdom, but was unable to travel on the continent with the resumption of war after the Peace of Amiens. In 1803 he attended classes at the University of Pennsylvania.\nHe was director of his father's museum in Philadelphia from 1810 to 1821, and then of the Peale Museum in Baltimore, which he ran with his brother, Rembrandt Peale. To promote the museum, he installed gas lighting illumination in the museum.\n\nCareer\nPeale opened his own museum in New York on October 26, 1825. The Panic of 1837 sent his museum into debt. By 1840, Peale changed the name to the New York Museum of Natural History and Science, and competed with the American Museum, of P.T. Barnum. Rubens had to sell his entire collection to Barnum in 1843. He moved to Pottstown, Pennsylvania. In 1837, he retired to the estate of his father-in-law, George Patterson, near Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, and lived as a country gentleman, at Woodland Farm. He experimented with mesmerism, and wrote to his brother Rembrandt about it.\n\nIn October 1855, he began keeping a journal, and he turned to still life painting, as an extension of his interest in natural history. In 1864, he returned to Philadelphia, and studied landscape painting with Edward Moran. In the last ten years of his life, he produced 130 paintings.\n\nDiary entries on the death of Abraham Lincoln\n\nApril 15, 1865:\nsad news of the murder of President Lincon , he was shot while attending a performance at Fords' Theater last night in Washington. The assassin entered his private box and shot him in back of his head and then escaped, the assassin's name is __,\n\nApril the 22nd:\nThe corpse arrived this afternoon from Harrisburg and it was dark, and although the square was brilliantly illuminated with greek lights each side of the great walk Red, Blue & White, which made a most brilliant appearance and lighted up the wholes square & streets yet much of the procession near lost to us. The crowd was so dense in Walnut Street that police could scarcely keep the crowd back.\n\nApril the 23rd:\na fine opportunity of viewing the corpse and decorations of the hall, which was totally covered with black cloth except for the statue & portraits of General Washington & wife. I staid one hour and left Mary gazing on the corpse, she intending to paint a portrait of him ...\n\nPersonal life\nOn March 6, 1820, he married Eliza Burd Patterson (December 6, 1795 – 1864) and they had children Charles Willson, George Patterson, William, Mary Jane (1826–1902) (who also was a painter), James Burd, and Edward Burd. Charles Willson Peale (Feb 15, 1821 – Sept 30, 1871) married Harriet Friel (b. Aug 11, 1830); their son Albert Charles Peale (1849-1914) became a geologist with the US Geological Survey.\n\nLegacy\n\nIn 1985, the National Gallery of Art paid $4.07 million for Rubens Peale with a Geranium, an 1801 portrait by his brother Rembrandt Peale. This set a record for an American work of art sold at auction.\n\nIn 2007, Princeton University Art Museum bought Rubens Peale's Still Life With Watermelon, in honor of John Wilmerding.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nPeale, Rubens, Papers. 1802-03., Originals and microfiche in The Collected Letters of Charles Willson Peale and His Family. Lillian B. Miller, ed. Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Microform, 1980. England.\nPEALE COLLECTION, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY\nMary Jane Peale and Peale family selected papers, (ca. 1815)-1897, Smithsonian Archives of American Art\n\nArt\nRubens Peale, Smithsonian American Art Museum\nRubens Peale, The Athenaeum \nPeale Family Collection, The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, The Winterthur Library\nRembrandt Peale (artist), 1778-1860, Rubens Peale with a Geranium\nRubens Peale, ca. 1800, Raphaelle Peale, Smithsonian American Art Museum\nRubens Peale (1784–1865), Still Life with Watermelon, 1865\n\n1784 births\n1865 deaths\n19th-century American painters\n19th-century male artists\nAmerican male painters\nRubens\nSibling artists\nUniversity of Pennsylvania alumni\nAmerican naturalists\nDirectors of museums in the United States\nAmerican curators\nArtists from Philadelphia\nAmerican still life painters",
"Rembrandt Peale (February 22, 1778 – October 3, 1860) was an American artist and museum keeper. A prolific portrait painter, he was especially acclaimed for his likenesses of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Peale's style was influenced by French Neoclassicism after a stay in Paris in his early thirties.\n\nBiography\n\nRembrandt Peale was born the third of six surviving children (11 had died) to his mother, Rachel Brewer, and father, Charles Willson Peale, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on February 22, 1778. The father, Charles, also a notable artist, named him after the noted 17th-century Dutch painter and engraver Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. His father also taught all of his children, including Raphaelle Peale, Rubens Peale and Titian Peale, to paint scenery and portraiture, and tutored Rembrandt in the arts and sciences. Rembrandt began drawing at the age of eight. A year after his mother's death and the remarriage of his father, Peale left the school of the arts, and completed his first self-portrait at the age of 13. The canvas displays the young artist's early mastery. The clothes, however, give the notion that Peale exaggerated what a 13-year-old would look like, and Peale's hair curls like the hair of a Renaissance angel. Later in his life, Peale \"often showed this painting to young beginners, to encourage them to go from 'bad' to better...\"\n\nIn July 1787, Charles Willson Peale introduced his son Rembrandt to George Washington, and the young aspirant artist watched his father paint the future president. In 1795, at the age of 17, Rembrandt painted an aging Washington, making him appear far more aged than in reality. The portrait was well received, and Rembrandt had made his debut.\n\nAt the age of 20, Peale married 22-year-old Eleanor May Short (1776–1836) at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Philadelphia. During their marriage, Peale and Short had nine children: Rosalba, Eleanor, Michael Angelo, Angelica, and Emma Clara among them. In 1840, he married Harriet Cany (1799–1869), one of his pupils and an artist in her own right.\n\nIn 1822, Peale moved to New York City, where he embarked on an attempt to paint what he hoped would become the \"standard likeness\" of Washington. He studied portraits by other artists including John Trumbull, Gilbert Stuart and his own father, as well as his own 1795 picture which had never truly satisfied him. His resulting work Patriae Pater, completed in 1824, depicts Washington through an oval window, and is considered by many to be second only to Gilbert Stuart's iconic Athenaeum painting of the first president. Peale subsequently attempted to capitalize on the success of what quickly became known as his \"Porthole\" picture. Patriae Pater (Latin for \"Father of Our Country\") was purchased by Congress in 1832 for $2,000. It currently hangs in the Old Senate Chamber.\n\nIn 1826 he helped found the National Academy of Design in New York City.\n\nPeale went on to create over 70 detailed replicas, including one of Washington in full military uniform that currently hangs in the Oval Office. Peale continued to paint other noted portraits, such as those of the third president Thomas Jefferson while he was in office (1805), and later on a portrait of Chief Justice John Marshall.\n\nTravels\n\nNoted for his \"itinerant\" nature, Peale visited Europe several times to study art (Ward). Throughout his life, Peale traveled across the western hemisphere in search of inspiration and opportunities as an artist. His father helped pay his way to Paris, where he stayed from June to September 1808, and again from October 1809 to November 1810. In Paris, Peale studied the works of Jacques-Louis David, which influenced him to paint in the Neoclassical style. He painted the famous explorer Alexander von Humboldt and several other noted patrons such as Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and François André Michaux. After his successes in France, Peale returned to Philadelphia in 1810.\n\nHis efforts to establish his knowledge and mastery of art were displayed in his painting The Roman Daughter (1811). The painting depicts a young girl shielding her father, a prisoner in chains, and feeding him from her breast, the emblem of \"Roman Charity\" reported in the pages of Pliny. It was deemed too \"sensational\" by the people of Philadelphia, who were unsympathetic to his endeavors toward \"improving the state of fine arts in America\" in the 19th century. Amid the economic hardship of the War of 1812, President Jefferson—who promised to buy the 1795 portrait of Washington, but could not keep his promise—instead encouraged Peale to go to Europe, as \"we have genius among us but no unemployed wealth to reward it\".\n\nPeale's Baltimore Museum\n\nMotivated by his father's establishment of the American Museum of Philadelphia (1786) and having been unsuccessful in Philadelphia, Rembrandt Peale assumed his father's role in another city. On August 15, 1814, Peale launched his first museum as soon as he arrived in the municipality of Baltimore, Maryland on Holliday Street between East Saratoga and Lexington Streets, the first building constructed in America to serve as a museum. It later served as the second Baltimore City Hall, 1830–1875; a \"Colored\" primary, grammar, and high school, part of Baltimore's segregated public school system, 1878–1889; and was restored in 1931 as the Municipal Museum of the City of Baltimore. Renovated and restored again in 1981, it reopened with a groundbreaking interpretive history exhibition, \"Rowhouse: A Baltimore Style of Living.\" In 1985, the Municipal Museum, which had grown to five sites (Peale Museum, Carroll Mansion, 1840 House, Baltimore Center for Urban Archaeology, and H.L. Mencken House) was renamed Baltimore City Life Museums. It closed in 1997, a year after opening a new 30,000sf exhibition center.\n\nThe museum was elaborately illuminated by gas light, following the example of his brother Rubens in Philadelphia. This innovation made a great impression. Peale had acquired an important gas lighting patent, and with some associates founded the successful Gas Light Company of Baltimore. Having poor business sense, though, he did little to manage the company and was forced out after a few years due to the War of 1812.\n\nIn 1828, an ambitious Peale raised funds and tried earning money for his previous paintings, in order to travel to Rome. He took along his 15-year-old son, Michael Angelo, a determined young artist who copied his father's paintings in admiration. Peale successfully displayed portraits of Horatio Greenough and Washington as Patriæ Pater in the Florentine academy.\n\nPeale died June 12, 1860, in Philadelphia and is buried at Woodlands Cemetery in West Philadelphia.\n\nWorks\n\nExhibited and discussed in \"In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale 1778–1860,\" Washington D.C., National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian institution, 1992–93, The portrait of Margaret Irvine Miller exemplifies Peale's ability to convey a story and capture character through taking liberty with the way in which he portrayed his sitters. Mrs. Miller, by birth working-class, later raised her position in Philadelphia society. Though her clothing is aristocratic, Mrs. Miller's pose and gaze are those of a straightforward, working-class woman. The subtle juxtaposition is masterfully captured in the finest of terms.\n\nIn 1801, Peale painted a portrait of his brother Rubens, youngest of the six Peale children, who always had an admiration for gardening and tending to natural life. Peale seated his brother next to a geranium. The painting signifies the artist's admiration for a sibling's love of nature, and may have been inspired by the Dutch 17th-century artist, David Teniers the Younger, who had painted a series of oil-on-copper paintings representing the five senses. His painting, Smell is quite similar to Rembrandt Peale's. Rembrandt's piece captures the essence of a young gardener/artist's peace of mind, gracefully looking out, a posture of wonder and calmness.\n\nIn 1824, Peale painted the Patriæ Pater, in which a rectangle supporting an oval wreath surrounds the eye-catching image of George Washington. The most successful painting of Peale's 50-year career, it inspired John Marshall to have his portrait done by Peale in the same fashion. The painting was criticized as lacking authenticity, as it was not completed until after Washington's death (1799). Nonetheless, Peale received commendations for his portrait by many noted politicians such as Washington's nephew, Judge Bushrod Washington, who was an associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice, and Marshall.\n\nPeale's neoclassical painting The Roman Daughter demonstrates compassion and graceful defense; his copy of Correggio's Angel, and his immense allegorical painting, Court of Death (1820), reveal the same artistic style.\n\nLegacy\n\nRembrandt Peale completed more than 600 paintings. He painted portraits of many notable people, including American presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Chief Justice John Marshall, and John C. Calhoun. His paintings are in many public collections.\n\nCollections\n\nThe following is a partial list of collections holding works by Rembrandt Peale:\n\nWashington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art and National Portrait Gallery, The Smithsonian Institution\nBaltimore, Maryland: The Peale Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland Historical Society, Walters Art Museum\nPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Atwater Kent Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts\nDetroit, Michigan: Detroit Institute of Arts\nColumbus, Georgia: The Columbus Museum\nBirmingham, Alabama: Birmingham Museum of Art\nNew York: Brooklyn Museum, The Peale Museum of New York\nNew London, Connecticut: Lyman Allyn Art Museum\nDallas, Texas: The Dallas Museum of Art Modern American Collection\nPittsfield, Massachusetts: Berkshire Museum\nPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania: La Salle University Art Museum\nWilmington, Delaware: Hagley Museum and Library\n\nOther notable paintings\n Charles Willson Peale, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1812\n Washington Before Yorktown, Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1824\n John C. Calhoun, Gibbes Museum of Art, 1834\n The Sisters, Eleanor and Rosalba Peale, A. Augustus Healy Fund, Brooklyn Museum, 1826\n General Thomas Sumter, Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, 1796\n Mrs. Marbury, Private Collection, 1797\n Sculpture, Atwater Kent Museum, Philadelphia, c. 1812\n DeWitt Clinton, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1823\n Mary Jane Peale, Elise Peale Patterson de Golpi-Toro, New York, 1835\n Eleanor May Short Peale, Private Collection, 1836\n William Henry Harrison, Grouseland (William Henry Harrison House), Vincennes, IN\n\nA portrait identified\nA painting of a comedian who was an acquaintance of the British painter George Clint—an artist whose style resembled Peale's, and who claimed the picture as his own—was examined by the National Portrait Gallery of London in 1914. It was initially confirmed as Clint's artwork. Later, the gallery further examined the history behind the painting: the English comedian, Charles Mathews, had arrived in New York in 1822, and left shortly after Peale had welcomed him for a portrait painting.\n\nGallery\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\nHunter, Jr., Wilbur H. \"Peale's Baltimore Museum.\" College Art Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Autumn, 1952), pp. 31–36\nMahey, John A. \"The Studio of Rembrandt Peale.\" American Art Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2. (Autumn, 1969), pp. 20–40.\nMeschutt, David.\" \"Rembrandt Peale's Portrait of Charles Mathews, British Comedian, Identified.\" American Art Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3. (1989), pp. 74–79.\nMiller, Lillian B. Rembrandt Peale: A Life in the Arts: 1778–1860. The Historical Society of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, 1985\nSoltis, Carol Eaton. \"Rembrandt Peale's Rubens Peale with a Geranium: A Possible Source in David Teniers the Younger\". American Art Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1/2. (2002), pp. 4–19\nWard, David C. \"Celebration of Self: The Portraiture of Charles Willson Peale and Rembrandt Peale, 1822–27.\" American Art, Vol. 7, No. 1. (Winter, 1993), pp. 8–27.\n\nExternal links\n\nThe Rembrandt And Harriet Peale Papers, 1824–1932 have been digitized and posted online by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.\nRembrandt Peale on Artcyclopedia.com\n\nRembrandt Peale Gallery\n\n1778 births\n1860 deaths\n18th-century American painters\nAmerican male painters\n19th-century American painters\n19th-century male artists\nAmerican neoclassical painters\nAmerican portrait painters\nPeople from Bucks County, Pennsylvania\nRembrandt\nSibling artists\nArtists from Philadelphia\nAmerican curators\nDirectors of museums in the United States\nBurials at The Woodlands Cemetery"
] |
[
"Charles Willson Peale",
"American Revolution",
"What was Peale's role in the American Revolution?",
"He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776,",
"What military achievements did he have?",
"he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas.",
"What else did Peale do during this war?",
"While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army."
] |
C_18f3559c460e408cbb42afcd11988aaf_1
|
Were these popular?
| 4 |
Were the miniature portrait paintings that Charles Willson Peale painted popular?
|
Charles Willson Peale
|
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. CANNOTANSWER
|
He produced enlarged versions of these in later years.
|
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, and for establishing one of the first museums in the United States.
Early life
Peale was born in 1741 between modern-day Queenstown and Centreville, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. He had a younger brother, James Peale (1749–1831). He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation.
Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was fourteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop and joined the Sons of Liberty. However, he was unsuccessful in saddle making. He then tried fixing clocks and working with metals, but both of these endeavors failed as well. He then took up painting.
Career as a painter
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.
American Revolution
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.
Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.
One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe-l'œil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Peale Museum
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, later known as Peale's American Museum. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. In 1786, Peale was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and in many instances mounted, having taught himself taxidermy. In 1792, Peale initiated a correspondence with Thomas Hall, of the Finsbury Museum, City Road, Finsbury, London proposing to purchase British stuffed items for his museum. Eventually, an exchange system was established between the two, whereby Peale sent American birds to Hall in exchange for an equal number of British birds. This arrangement continued until the end of the century. The Peale Museum was the first to display a mastodon skeleton (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today) that Peale found in New York State. Peale worked with his son to mount the skeleton for display.
The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long-standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.
The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.
The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.
The museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.
Personal life
In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children, most of them named for Peale's favorite artists, male and female. Among their sons and daughters, some of whom he taught to paint, were:
Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), who some consider to be the first professional American painter of still-life.
Angelica Kauffman Peale (1775–1853), who was named for Angelica Kauffman (Peale's favorite female painter) and who married Alexander Robinson.
Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), portrait painter, inventor, businessman, museum owner/operator in Baltimore. He founded the "Gas Light Company of Baltimore" in 1817, now Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE). He was the father of artist Rosalba Carriera Peale.
Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780–1798), ornithologist. He died at age of 18.
Rubens Peale (1784–1865), museum administrator and artist.
Sophonisba Angusciola Peale (1786–1859), ornithologist. She married Coleman Sellers (1781–1834) in 1805. She was the mother of Coleman Sellers II.
After Rachel's death in 1790, Peale married Elizabeth de Peyster (1765–1804), a descendant of Johannes de Peyster, the next year. With his second wife, he had six additional children, including:
Charles Linnaeus Peale (1794–1832), who was named for Charles Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and zoologist.
Franklin Peale (1795–1870), who became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint.
Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799–1885), explorer, ornithologist, scientific illustrator, and photographer.
Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–1857), who married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.
Hannah Moore, a Quaker from Philadelphia, married Peale in 1805, becoming his third wife. She helped to raise the younger children from his previous two marriages.
Peale's slave, Moses Williams, was also trained in the arts while growing up in the Peale household and later became a professional silhouette artist.
In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown, where he intended to retire. He named this estate "Belfield" and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826. Peale died on February 22, 1827, and was buried at the Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia alongside his wife Elizabeth DePeyster.
Expertise
A Renaissance man, Peale had expertise not only in painting but also in many diverse fields, including carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing is now held with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.
Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.
Peale wrote several books. Two of these were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803).
Legacy and honors
Three of his sons, Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale, became noted artists.
The World War II cargo Liberty Ship S.S. Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.
Notable works
See also
Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site
George Escol Sellers, grandson who was an inventor
References
Sources
Lily Bita, Charles Willson Peale, the patriarch "Apodemon Epos" Magazine of European Art Center (EUARCE) of Greece, 2st issue 1997 p. 3
Further reading
Ward, David C. 2004 Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic Berkley, California : University of California Press
External links
Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson, 1795
Charles Willson Peale and His World from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Peale-Sellers Family Collection at the American Philosophical Society
Portrait of General David Foreman, Berkshire Museum
The Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on Charles Willson Peale.
History of Peale at Belfield, now the grounds of La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Charles Willson Peale. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
James Madison, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the *Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
Catherine "Kitty" Floyd, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
1741 births
1827 deaths
18th-century American painters
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American slave owners
American people of English descent
American portrait painters
Trompe-l'œil artists
Museum founders
Pennsylvania militiamen in the American Revolution
People from Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Charles
Sibling artists
People of colonial Maryland
Burials at St. Peter's churchyard, Philadelphia
19th-century male artists
Members of the American Philosophical Society
| true |
[
"These are the Billboard magazine number-one albums of 1956. These albums were the number-one albums on the Best-Selling Popular Record Albums chart. On March 24, 1956, the name of the chart was changed to Best-Selling Popular Albums. On July 7, 1956, the name was changed again to Best-Selling Pop Albums.\n\nChart history\n\nSee also\n1956 in music\nList of number-one albums (United States)\n\nReferences\n\n1956\nUnited States Albums",
"The Spanish Civil War, fought between 1936–1939, provided an opportunity for many European countries to evaluate new technologies and tactics, including armored warfare. At the beginning of the war, the Nationalist and Popular Fronts each possessed only five World War I-era-design Renault FT light tanks, although these were soon reinforced with imported materiel. Italy began supplying Nationalist Spain with L3/35 tankettes in August 1936. The Soviet Union soon followed suit by supplying the Popular Front with T-26 light tanks in October 1936. Germany sent its first shipments of Panzer I light tanks to the Nationalist Front in September 1936. During the war, France and Poland provided the Popular Front with a number of additional FT light tanks. A considerable number of tanks delivered to the Popular Front were subsequently captured; many of these were put into service against their former owners.\n\nThe Nationalist and Popular armies also designed and manufactured a number of their own tanks. The Nationalists, for example, began the war with three Trubia A4 prototypes, manufactured before the beginning of the conflict. They also completed the first prototype of the Verdeja light tank. This was designed to overcome the shortcomings of tanks provided by the Germans and the Italians, as well as Soviet tanks captured from the Popular Front. Popular Front production of armored vehicles was segmented throughout different areas of Spain. In the north, between 15 and 20 Carro Trubia-Naval tanks were manufactured at the factory in Sestao, conversely the Trubia factory had built only a single model Landesa tank. In Catalonia, two tanks were produced by the Maquinaría Moderna factory in Sant Sadurní d'Anoia. Though the Popular Front designed and manufactured many more armored fighting vehicles than the Nationalists, this ultimately worked in the Nationalists favor as the factories and their production lines were captured intact during the war.\n\nTanks in service at the beginning\n\nManufactured in Spain\n\nProduced and deployed by the Nationalists\n\nProduced and deployed by the Popular Front\n\nTanks supplied by foreign powers\n\nTanks captured by the Nationalists\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\n \n \n\n \n \n \n \n\nCivil War\nSpanish Civil War-related lists"
] |
[
"Charles Willson Peale",
"American Revolution",
"What was Peale's role in the American Revolution?",
"He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776,",
"What military achievements did he have?",
"he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas.",
"What else did Peale do during this war?",
"While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army.",
"Were these popular?",
"He produced enlarged versions of these in later years."
] |
C_18f3559c460e408cbb42afcd11988aaf_1
|
What was his famous piece?
| 5 |
What was the famous piece painted by Charles Willson Peale?
|
Charles Willson Peale
|
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. CANNOTANSWER
|
he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington.
|
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, and for establishing one of the first museums in the United States.
Early life
Peale was born in 1741 between modern-day Queenstown and Centreville, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. He had a younger brother, James Peale (1749–1831). He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation.
Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was fourteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop and joined the Sons of Liberty. However, he was unsuccessful in saddle making. He then tried fixing clocks and working with metals, but both of these endeavors failed as well. He then took up painting.
Career as a painter
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.
American Revolution
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.
Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.
One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe-l'œil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Peale Museum
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, later known as Peale's American Museum. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. In 1786, Peale was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and in many instances mounted, having taught himself taxidermy. In 1792, Peale initiated a correspondence with Thomas Hall, of the Finsbury Museum, City Road, Finsbury, London proposing to purchase British stuffed items for his museum. Eventually, an exchange system was established between the two, whereby Peale sent American birds to Hall in exchange for an equal number of British birds. This arrangement continued until the end of the century. The Peale Museum was the first to display a mastodon skeleton (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today) that Peale found in New York State. Peale worked with his son to mount the skeleton for display.
The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long-standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.
The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.
The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.
The museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.
Personal life
In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children, most of them named for Peale's favorite artists, male and female. Among their sons and daughters, some of whom he taught to paint, were:
Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), who some consider to be the first professional American painter of still-life.
Angelica Kauffman Peale (1775–1853), who was named for Angelica Kauffman (Peale's favorite female painter) and who married Alexander Robinson.
Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), portrait painter, inventor, businessman, museum owner/operator in Baltimore. He founded the "Gas Light Company of Baltimore" in 1817, now Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE). He was the father of artist Rosalba Carriera Peale.
Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780–1798), ornithologist. He died at age of 18.
Rubens Peale (1784–1865), museum administrator and artist.
Sophonisba Angusciola Peale (1786–1859), ornithologist. She married Coleman Sellers (1781–1834) in 1805. She was the mother of Coleman Sellers II.
After Rachel's death in 1790, Peale married Elizabeth de Peyster (1765–1804), a descendant of Johannes de Peyster, the next year. With his second wife, he had six additional children, including:
Charles Linnaeus Peale (1794–1832), who was named for Charles Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and zoologist.
Franklin Peale (1795–1870), who became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint.
Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799–1885), explorer, ornithologist, scientific illustrator, and photographer.
Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–1857), who married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.
Hannah Moore, a Quaker from Philadelphia, married Peale in 1805, becoming his third wife. She helped to raise the younger children from his previous two marriages.
Peale's slave, Moses Williams, was also trained in the arts while growing up in the Peale household and later became a professional silhouette artist.
In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown, where he intended to retire. He named this estate "Belfield" and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826. Peale died on February 22, 1827, and was buried at the Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia alongside his wife Elizabeth DePeyster.
Expertise
A Renaissance man, Peale had expertise not only in painting but also in many diverse fields, including carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing is now held with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.
Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.
Peale wrote several books. Two of these were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803).
Legacy and honors
Three of his sons, Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale, became noted artists.
The World War II cargo Liberty Ship S.S. Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.
Notable works
See also
Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site
George Escol Sellers, grandson who was an inventor
References
Sources
Lily Bita, Charles Willson Peale, the patriarch "Apodemon Epos" Magazine of European Art Center (EUARCE) of Greece, 2st issue 1997 p. 3
Further reading
Ward, David C. 2004 Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic Berkley, California : University of California Press
External links
Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson, 1795
Charles Willson Peale and His World from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Peale-Sellers Family Collection at the American Philosophical Society
Portrait of General David Foreman, Berkshire Museum
The Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on Charles Willson Peale.
History of Peale at Belfield, now the grounds of La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Charles Willson Peale. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
James Madison, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the *Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
Catherine "Kitty" Floyd, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
1741 births
1827 deaths
18th-century American painters
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American slave owners
American people of English descent
American portrait painters
Trompe-l'œil artists
Museum founders
Pennsylvania militiamen in the American Revolution
People from Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Charles
Sibling artists
People of colonial Maryland
Burials at St. Peter's churchyard, Philadelphia
19th-century male artists
Members of the American Philosophical Society
| true |
[
"The Other Half of Letting Go... is the fourth official mixtape from Milwaukee, Wisconsin rapper Gerald Walker. The mixtape was released on September 20, 2011, through One Step at a Time Music. The mixtape is named after American painter Esao Andrews' piece also titled \"The Other Half of Letting Go.\" The mixtape's lead single, \"The Missing Piece\" is produced by Chemist. The second single, \"Shackles\" was produced by J.LBS. The mixtape was originally scheduled to be released by Grand Hustle Records, however Walker announced his intention to self-publish: \"No Grand Hustle, we're gonna do this ourselves.\" with a September 20 release date.\n\nBackground\nGerald Walker said he began working on the mixtape immediately after I Remember When This All Meant Something...[.] However, he halted production while working on his collaborative debut effort, On Your Side, with Taylor Gang producer, Cardo. The mixtape serves as Walker's second release in 2011.\n\nTrack listing\n\nSingles\nThe mixtape's first single was \"The Missing Piece.\" A music video was shot and released through One Step at a Time's official website on August 18, 2011. The video was filmed, directed and edited by Xavier Ruffin. The second single \"Shackles\" was released on June 8, 2011 via BlogOrDiePGH.com via Twitter.\n\nSong notes\n A typical Gerald Walker release which feature his now signature ellipsis mark indicate's that it was inspired from another source.\n The song titled \"The Things We Think and Do Not Say...\" is inspired by the 1995 feature film Jerry Maguire. In the movie Maguire distributes copies of his mission statement, entitled \"The Things We Think and Do Not Say: The Future of Our Business\".\n Gerald Walker's song \"Take This To Your Heart...\" is inspired by American rock band Mayday Parade's song of the same title, \"Take This To Your Heart\" from their debut album \"A Lesson in Romantics.\n Walker tweeted \"It's All Real\" was dedicated to one of his favorite rappers, Krayzie Bone.The song contains interpolation of \"It's All Real\" by Bone Thugs N Harmony from their album \"The Art of War.\"\n \"The Missing Piece...\" was originally released as a demo and not slated for the recording, however, due to popularity it was later re-recorded and released as the lead single.\n \"The Missing Piece...\" was inspired by Shel Silverstein's popular 1976 picture book, The Missing Piece.\n The song titled \"Living Well Is The Best Form of Revenge\" is inspired by pop punk band, Midtown's, sophomore album \"Living Well Is the Best Revenge. \n The song \"Ran That Scam\" was inspired by San Francisco punk rock band Dead to Me's song \"Ran That Scam\" and features the same lyrics during the chorus: \"I must've ran this scam a million times.\"\n It is believed that \"What Made Milwaukee Famous…\" is taken from the Milwaukee-based brewing company, Shlitz's, slogan \"The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous\"\n\nReferences \n\n2011 mixtape albums\nGerald Walker albums\nAlbums produced by Cardo",
"Ohno Bakufu (Japanese: 大野麦風, 1888–1976) was a Japanese painter and printmaker.\n\nHe was born in Tokyo, Japan. Over his lifetime he created over seventy designs. His best known piece is the Japanese Fish Picture Collection (Dai Nihon gyorui gashu). Although this is his most famous piece of work, he also created many landscapes and a few still lives. After 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, he moved to Kansai. He was an honorary member of the Hyogo Prefecture Academy of Fine Arts, and a member of Taiheiyogakai.\n\n1976 deaths\n1888 births\n20th-century Japanese painters"
] |
[
"Charles Willson Peale",
"American Revolution",
"What was Peale's role in the American Revolution?",
"He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776,",
"What military achievements did he have?",
"he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas.",
"What else did Peale do during this war?",
"While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army.",
"Were these popular?",
"He produced enlarged versions of these in later years.",
"What was his famous piece?",
"he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington."
] |
C_18f3559c460e408cbb42afcd11988aaf_1
|
Where were these displayed?
| 6 |
Where were Charles Willson Peale's portraits of George Washington displayed?
|
Charles Willson Peale
|
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. CANNOTANSWER
|
It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
|
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, and for establishing one of the first museums in the United States.
Early life
Peale was born in 1741 between modern-day Queenstown and Centreville, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. He had a younger brother, James Peale (1749–1831). He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation.
Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was fourteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop and joined the Sons of Liberty. However, he was unsuccessful in saddle making. He then tried fixing clocks and working with metals, but both of these endeavors failed as well. He then took up painting.
Career as a painter
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.
American Revolution
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.
Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.
One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe-l'œil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Peale Museum
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, later known as Peale's American Museum. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. In 1786, Peale was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and in many instances mounted, having taught himself taxidermy. In 1792, Peale initiated a correspondence with Thomas Hall, of the Finsbury Museum, City Road, Finsbury, London proposing to purchase British stuffed items for his museum. Eventually, an exchange system was established between the two, whereby Peale sent American birds to Hall in exchange for an equal number of British birds. This arrangement continued until the end of the century. The Peale Museum was the first to display a mastodon skeleton (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today) that Peale found in New York State. Peale worked with his son to mount the skeleton for display.
The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long-standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.
The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.
The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.
The museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.
Personal life
In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children, most of them named for Peale's favorite artists, male and female. Among their sons and daughters, some of whom he taught to paint, were:
Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), who some consider to be the first professional American painter of still-life.
Angelica Kauffman Peale (1775–1853), who was named for Angelica Kauffman (Peale's favorite female painter) and who married Alexander Robinson.
Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), portrait painter, inventor, businessman, museum owner/operator in Baltimore. He founded the "Gas Light Company of Baltimore" in 1817, now Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE). He was the father of artist Rosalba Carriera Peale.
Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780–1798), ornithologist. He died at age of 18.
Rubens Peale (1784–1865), museum administrator and artist.
Sophonisba Angusciola Peale (1786–1859), ornithologist. She married Coleman Sellers (1781–1834) in 1805. She was the mother of Coleman Sellers II.
After Rachel's death in 1790, Peale married Elizabeth de Peyster (1765–1804), a descendant of Johannes de Peyster, the next year. With his second wife, he had six additional children, including:
Charles Linnaeus Peale (1794–1832), who was named for Charles Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and zoologist.
Franklin Peale (1795–1870), who became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint.
Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799–1885), explorer, ornithologist, scientific illustrator, and photographer.
Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–1857), who married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.
Hannah Moore, a Quaker from Philadelphia, married Peale in 1805, becoming his third wife. She helped to raise the younger children from his previous two marriages.
Peale's slave, Moses Williams, was also trained in the arts while growing up in the Peale household and later became a professional silhouette artist.
In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown, where he intended to retire. He named this estate "Belfield" and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826. Peale died on February 22, 1827, and was buried at the Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia alongside his wife Elizabeth DePeyster.
Expertise
A Renaissance man, Peale had expertise not only in painting but also in many diverse fields, including carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing is now held with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.
Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.
Peale wrote several books. Two of these were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803).
Legacy and honors
Three of his sons, Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale, became noted artists.
The World War II cargo Liberty Ship S.S. Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.
Notable works
See also
Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site
George Escol Sellers, grandson who was an inventor
References
Sources
Lily Bita, Charles Willson Peale, the patriarch "Apodemon Epos" Magazine of European Art Center (EUARCE) of Greece, 2st issue 1997 p. 3
Further reading
Ward, David C. 2004 Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic Berkley, California : University of California Press
External links
Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson, 1795
Charles Willson Peale and His World from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Peale-Sellers Family Collection at the American Philosophical Society
Portrait of General David Foreman, Berkshire Museum
The Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on Charles Willson Peale.
History of Peale at Belfield, now the grounds of La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Charles Willson Peale. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
James Madison, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the *Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
Catherine "Kitty" Floyd, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
1741 births
1827 deaths
18th-century American painters
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American slave owners
American people of English descent
American portrait painters
Trompe-l'œil artists
Museum founders
Pennsylvania militiamen in the American Revolution
People from Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Charles
Sibling artists
People of colonial Maryland
Burials at St. Peter's churchyard, Philadelphia
19th-century male artists
Members of the American Philosophical Society
| true |
[
"Below are the names and numbers of the 40 SR V \"Schools\" class locomotives designed by Richard Maunsell. Another successful publicity campaign by the Southern Railway when named from 1930 onwards, they represented the public schools of England, initially due to their proximity to the railway that served them, but not all from the SR area. The class naming process consisted of pupils attending these schools visiting \"their\" engine during the naming ceremonies.\n\nRemaining artefacts of other class members\n\nWhen the locomotives were withdrawn from service, BR presented their nameplates to the appropriate schools:\n\nA nameplate from 900, Eton, is now displayed in the School of Mechanics within Eton College.\nA nameplate from 901, Winchester, is now displayed in the school's Design & Technology Centre, The Mill. \nA nameplate from 903, Charterhouse, was displayed in Charterhouse School's museum until auctioned by the school for £26,000 in 2002. The other nameplate is now displayed in the school's admissions office.\nA nameplate from 905, Tonbridge, is displayed in the Physics Department of Tonbridge School.\nA nameplate from 906, Sherborne, is now displayed in the day-room of one of the boarding houses of Sherborne School.\nA nameplate from 907, Dulwich, is now displayed in Dulwich College by the college's Model Railway Society.\nA nameplate from 908, Westminster, is now displayed in the science block of Westminster School.\nA nameplate from 910, Merchant Taylors''', is now displayed outside the sixth form common room of Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood.\nA nameplate from 911, Dover, is now displayed outside the Headmaster's Office at Dover College.\nA nameplate from 912, Downside, is now displayed in Downside School.\nA nameplate from 913 Christ's Hospital, is now displayed in the Model Railway Club at Christ's Hospital.\nA nameplate from 914, Eastbourne, is now displayed in the big school theatre foyer of Eastbourne College.\nA nameplate from 915, Brighton, is now displayed in the DT workshops of Brighton College.\nA nameplate from 916, Whitgift, is now displayed in the Raeburn library at Whitgift School.\nA nameplate from 917, Ardingly, is now displayed in the staff common room of Ardingly College.\nA nameplate from 918, Hurstpierpoint, is now displayed in the science block of Hurstpierpoint College.\nA nameplate from 923, originally named Uppingham, is now displayed in the Undercroft under the great hall of Uppingham School.\nA nameplate from 923, Bradfield, is now displayed in the entrance corridor of the teachers' common room of Bradfield College.\nThe nameplates from 924, Haileybury, are now displayed in Haileybury and Imperial Service College Library above a photograph of the locomotive, and in the Archives in Clock House, Haileybury.\nThe nameplates from 929, Malvern, are now displayed in Malvern College Memorial Library below a photograph of the locomotive.\nThe tender from 929, Malvern, was converted to a snow plough, and was sold by the Maunsell Locomotive Society along with S15 locomotive 830 (to raise money to enable the purchase of 928 Stowe) and both were moved to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.\nA nameplate from 930, Radley, is now displayed in the stationery department of Radley College's school shop.\nA nameplate from 931, King's - Wimbledon, is now displayed above the door of King's College School gymnasium.\nThe nameplate from 932, Blundell's, is now displayed in the History department of Blundell's School.\nA nameplate from 933, Kings Canterbury, is currently displayed in the dining room of The King's School, Canterbury.\nThe tender from 934, St Lawrence, was converted to a snow plough, and the frames have been modified to run behind U-class No.1638 on the Bluebell Railway.\nA nameplate from 935, Sevenoaks, is currently displayed in the Science and Technology Centre of Sevenoaks School with a scale model of the locomotive and photographs of Sevenoaks schoolboys 'inspecting' the new loco in 1935. The other nameplate is currently displayed in Arch Three of the Brighton Toy and Model Museum.\nA nameplate from 936, Cranleigh, is currently displayed in the entry lobby of the Headmaster's Office of Cranleigh School.\nA nameplate from 937, Epsom, was displayed in the Library of Epsom College.\nA nameplate from 938, St Olaves, is displayed in the foyer of St Olave's Grammar School.\nA nameplate from 939, Leatherhead'', was displayed along with a OO gauge model of the locomotive at St John's School, Leatherhead but has now been sold in Auction at Great Central Railwayana Auctions, Stoneleigh for £8000 in April 2013.\n\nReferences \n\n4-4-0 locomotives\nV \"Schools\" class\nRailway locomotives introduced in 1930\nBritish railway-related lists",
"The Quadroni of St. Charles are two cycles of paintings depicting the life and miracles of St. Charles Borromeo, the first Saint of the Counter-Reformation. These very large paintings (quadroni), approximately five by six metres each, are displayed each November in the Milan Cathedral in honor of St. Charles' name day on November 4. They were also exhibited continuously from November 4, 1999 to November 4, 2000 in honor of the Catholic Jubilee celebrations.\n\nThe first cycle was begun in 1602, 26 years after Charles' death, and is the larger of the two. It is known as I fatti della vita del beato Carlo (\"The Facts of the Life of Blessed Charles\"). It consists of 28 paintings depicting his life, concentrating upon his tenure as Archbishop of Milan. Work on this cycle continued into the late 18th century. The first twenty large paintings, all tempera on canvas, were painted by Il Cerano (4 paintings), Giovanni Mauro della Rovere (Il Fiammenghino) (3), Il Duchino (7), Procaccini (1), Carlo Buzzi (2), Domenico Pellegrini (1), and Morazzone.\n\nThe second cycle, I miracoli di San Carlo (\"The Miracles of St. Charles\"), consists of 24 paintings of Charles' miraculous works and healings. These paintings are smaller than the first set, measuring about 2.4 by 4.4 metres. They were all painted between December 1609 and November 1, 1610, when St. Charles was canonized. These paintings were displayed together with the first cycle for the first time on November 4, 1610 in the Milan Cathedral; the paintings of his miracles could not be displayed until he had been declared a Saint.\n\nGallery of Selected Works\n\nReferences \n\n Ernesto Brivio. Vita e miracoli di S. Carlo Borromeo \n\n1600s paintings\nItalian paintings\nPaintings in Milan"
] |
[
"Charles Willson Peale",
"American Revolution",
"What was Peale's role in the American Revolution?",
"He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776,",
"What military achievements did he have?",
"he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas.",
"What else did Peale do during this war?",
"While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army.",
"Were these popular?",
"He produced enlarged versions of these in later years.",
"What was his famous piece?",
"he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington.",
"Where were these displayed?",
"It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art."
] |
C_18f3559c460e408cbb42afcd11988aaf_1
|
Does he have any other famous pieces?
| 7 |
Aside from the portraits of George Washington, does Charles Willson Peale have any other famous pieces?
|
Charles Willson Peale
|
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. CANNOTANSWER
|
he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton),
|
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, and for establishing one of the first museums in the United States.
Early life
Peale was born in 1741 between modern-day Queenstown and Centreville, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. He had a younger brother, James Peale (1749–1831). He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation.
Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was fourteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop and joined the Sons of Liberty. However, he was unsuccessful in saddle making. He then tried fixing clocks and working with metals, but both of these endeavors failed as well. He then took up painting.
Career as a painter
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.
American Revolution
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.
Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.
One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe-l'œil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Peale Museum
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, later known as Peale's American Museum. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. In 1786, Peale was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and in many instances mounted, having taught himself taxidermy. In 1792, Peale initiated a correspondence with Thomas Hall, of the Finsbury Museum, City Road, Finsbury, London proposing to purchase British stuffed items for his museum. Eventually, an exchange system was established between the two, whereby Peale sent American birds to Hall in exchange for an equal number of British birds. This arrangement continued until the end of the century. The Peale Museum was the first to display a mastodon skeleton (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today) that Peale found in New York State. Peale worked with his son to mount the skeleton for display.
The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long-standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.
The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.
The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.
The museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.
Personal life
In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children, most of them named for Peale's favorite artists, male and female. Among their sons and daughters, some of whom he taught to paint, were:
Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), who some consider to be the first professional American painter of still-life.
Angelica Kauffman Peale (1775–1853), who was named for Angelica Kauffman (Peale's favorite female painter) and who married Alexander Robinson.
Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), portrait painter, inventor, businessman, museum owner/operator in Baltimore. He founded the "Gas Light Company of Baltimore" in 1817, now Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE). He was the father of artist Rosalba Carriera Peale.
Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780–1798), ornithologist. He died at age of 18.
Rubens Peale (1784–1865), museum administrator and artist.
Sophonisba Angusciola Peale (1786–1859), ornithologist. She married Coleman Sellers (1781–1834) in 1805. She was the mother of Coleman Sellers II.
After Rachel's death in 1790, Peale married Elizabeth de Peyster (1765–1804), a descendant of Johannes de Peyster, the next year. With his second wife, he had six additional children, including:
Charles Linnaeus Peale (1794–1832), who was named for Charles Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and zoologist.
Franklin Peale (1795–1870), who became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint.
Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799–1885), explorer, ornithologist, scientific illustrator, and photographer.
Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–1857), who married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.
Hannah Moore, a Quaker from Philadelphia, married Peale in 1805, becoming his third wife. She helped to raise the younger children from his previous two marriages.
Peale's slave, Moses Williams, was also trained in the arts while growing up in the Peale household and later became a professional silhouette artist.
In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown, where he intended to retire. He named this estate "Belfield" and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826. Peale died on February 22, 1827, and was buried at the Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia alongside his wife Elizabeth DePeyster.
Expertise
A Renaissance man, Peale had expertise not only in painting but also in many diverse fields, including carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing is now held with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.
Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.
Peale wrote several books. Two of these were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803).
Legacy and honors
Three of his sons, Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale, became noted artists.
The World War II cargo Liberty Ship S.S. Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.
Notable works
See also
Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site
George Escol Sellers, grandson who was an inventor
References
Sources
Lily Bita, Charles Willson Peale, the patriarch "Apodemon Epos" Magazine of European Art Center (EUARCE) of Greece, 2st issue 1997 p. 3
Further reading
Ward, David C. 2004 Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic Berkley, California : University of California Press
External links
Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson, 1795
Charles Willson Peale and His World from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Peale-Sellers Family Collection at the American Philosophical Society
Portrait of General David Foreman, Berkshire Museum
The Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on Charles Willson Peale.
History of Peale at Belfield, now the grounds of La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Charles Willson Peale. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
James Madison, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the *Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
Catherine "Kitty" Floyd, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
1741 births
1827 deaths
18th-century American painters
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American slave owners
American people of English descent
American portrait painters
Trompe-l'œil artists
Museum founders
Pennsylvania militiamen in the American Revolution
People from Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Charles
Sibling artists
People of colonial Maryland
Burials at St. Peter's churchyard, Philadelphia
19th-century male artists
Members of the American Philosophical Society
| true |
[
"A hinged dissection, also known as a swing-hinged dissection or Dudeney dissection, is a kind of geometric dissection in which all of the pieces are connected into a chain by \"hinged\" points, such that the rearrangement from one figure to another can be carried out by swinging the chain continuously, without severing any of the connections. Typically, it is assumed that the pieces are allowed to overlap in the folding and unfolding process; this is sometimes called the \"wobbly-hinged\" model of hinged dissection.\n\nHistory\n\nThe concept of hinged dissections was popularised by the author of mathematical puzzles, Henry Dudeney. He introduced the famous hinged dissection of a square into a triangle (pictured) in his 1907 book The Canterbury Puzzles. The Wallace–Bolyai–Gerwien theorem, first proven in 1807, states that any two equal-area polygons must have a common dissection. However, the question of whether two such polygons must also share a hinged dissection remained open until 2007, when Erik Demaine et al. proved that there must always exist such a hinged dissection, and provided a constructive algorithm to produce them. This proof holds even under the assumption that the pieces may not overlap while swinging, and can be generalised to any pair of three-dimensional figures which have a common dissection (see Hilbert's third problem). In three dimensions, however, the pieces are not guaranteed to swing without overlap.\n\nOther hinges\nOther types of \"hinges\" have been considered in the context of dissections. A twist-hinge dissection is one which use a three-dimensional \"hinge\" which is placed on the edges of pieces rather than their vertices, allowing them to be \"flipped\" three-dimensionally. As of 2002, the question of whether any two polygons must have a common twist-hinged dissection remains unsolved.\n\nReferences\n\nBibliography\n\nExternal links\nAn applet demonstrating Dudeney's hinged square-triangle dissection\nA gallery of hinged dissections\n\nGeometric dissection\nRecreational mathematics\nDiscrete geometry\nEuclidean plane geometry",
"Ming Mang () is a two-player abstract strategy board game from Tibet. Ming Mang is also a general term for the word \"boardgame\" in Tibet. The correct name and spelling of the game may actually be Mig Mang(s) (or Mig-Mang(s)), but pronounced Ming Mang or Mi Mang. The term Mig Mang is also applied to Tibetan Go with both games using exactly the same board which is a 17 x 17 square board, and black and white pieces. Mig is in reference to the chart (the pattern of horizontal and vertical lines) of the board, and Mangs refers to the notion that the more charts are used on the board, the more pieces are needed to play the game, but some state that it means \"many eyes\". The game may also be known as Gundru (or Gun-dru). The game was popular among some Tibetan monks before the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, and the uprising in 1959, and among aristocratic families.\n\nTibetans in their diaspora have had to make use of whatever board was available be it a 19 x 19 Go board, or an 8 x 8 checkered board from draughts or checkers and orthodox chess. It is also played on other sized square boards.\n\nMig Mang utilizes custodian capture of enemy pieces or a line of enemy pieces, and the captured pieces are replaced with the pieces of the player performing the capture(s); it thus resembles the games of Reversi and Othello in these respects. Each player's pieces are initially situated on two adjacent sides of the board (see diagram), and move orthogonally any number of unoccupied spaces like the rook in chess. It is an elimination game, as the objective is to capture all of the opponent's pieces. As such the game resembles Jul-Gonu, Hasami shogi, Dai hasami shogi, Mak-yek, Apit-sodok, Rek (Game), Seega, Ludus latrunculorum, and Petteia. The game also bears some resemblance to Go, Baduk, and Weiqi since Mig Mang uses the same 17 x 17 square board as Tibetan Go which is related to the other three games, and Mig Mang is often played with Go's 19 x 19 square board [Confusing since picture below shows an 8 x 8 board]; custodian capture is somewhat related to the capture method in Go, as both methods surround or outflank enemy pieces in capturing them. Other games that might be comparable are Ataxx and its variant Hexxagōn, as these two games capture enemy pieces by placing pieces adjacent to them and converting them into their own pieces.\n\nA work by a Tibetan woman, Rin-chen Lha-mo, We Tibetans (1926) describes a possible variation of the Mig-Mang rules which have been interpreted to include captures of a piece or a group of pieces that turn perpendicularly such as around corners of the board, which are generally difficult to capture using the regular custodian method; moreover, she states that when one of the players has only one piece left, it develops the additional power to leap over the other player's pieces and capture them as in draughts or Alquerque.\n\nSetup \n\nThe game is played on an n x n square board, but traditionally it was played on a 17×17 square board. But varying board sizes are played with including the 8×8 square board depicted in the diagram, and it's this 8×8 square board that will be described here-in-forth with respect to the setup and rules. To start the game, each player needs 14 pieces on the board. However, each player has an additional 14 pieces in order to replace captured enemy pieces on the board. One player plays the white pieces and the other plays the black pieces, however, any two colors are appropriate.\n\nInstead of an additional 14 pieces per player, pieces with one side white and the other side black can be used similar to those used in Reversi and Othello, that way captured pieces are simply turned over to the colors of the player who performed the capture.\n\nPlayers decide what colored pieces to play, and who will start first.\n\nThe game starts with each player's 14 pieces lined up on two adjacent sides of the board as depicted on the diagram. Each player's remaining 14 pieces are set beside the board as their respective stockpile.\n\nRules \n\n Players alternate their turns. Each player moves only one piece per turn.\n A piece is moved orthogonally any number of unoccupied spaces. The moves are identical to the rook in chess or the pieces in Tafl. \n A player is not allowed to move a piece that brings the game back to a previous position. \n Capture of an enemy piece or a line of enemy pieces is done by the custodian method (also known as interception), and this must be created by the player performing the capture on his or her turn. The player's piece moves adjacently next to an enemy piece or line of enemy pieces that are already flanked on the other side by a friendly piece. All these pieces must be in the same row or column with no vacant space between any of them.\n Captured enemy pieces are removed at the end of the turn, and immediately replaced by one of the captor's pieces from their stock pile.\n A player is allowed to move a piece between two of the enemy's pieces on a row or column (with no vacant space between any of them) without being captured, since the enemy did not create the custodian capture on their turn. One of the enemy pieces must move away, and then return to the same position to capture the sandwiched piece if the opportunity is still available.\n Similarly, a player is allowed to move a piece next to a line of friendly pieces which together as a group are flanked on two opposite sides by enemy pieces on a row or column (with no vacant space between any of them) without any of them being captured, since the enemy did not create the custodian capture on their turn. One of the enemy pieces must move away, and then return to the same position to capture the sandwiched pieces if the opportunity is still available. \n Multiple custodian captures can be performed in one turn. There are three general cases that exist:\n A player moves their piece between two enemy pieces (or between two lines of enemy pieces) which are flanked on their respective opposite sides by a friendly piece (all of these pieces being on the same row or column with no space between any of them), this is cause for the capture of the enemy pieces. In this case, two custodian captures were performed but on one row or column only.\n A player moves their piece between two enemy pieces (or between two lines of enemy pieces) in such a way that one of the enemy pieces (or one of the lines of enemy pieces) is on the same row, and the other enemy piece (or the other line of enemy pieces) is on the same column, and that each enemy piece (or each of the two lines of enemy pieces) is flanked on the other side by a friendly piece of the same row or column respectively (with no vacant space between any of them), this is cause for the capture of the two enemy pieces (or of the two lines of enemy pieces). In this case, two custodian captures were performed but one was on a row, and the other was on a column. \n A player moves their piece between three enemy pieces (or between three lines of enemy pieces) in such a way that two of the enemy pieces (or two lines of enemy pieces) are on the same row (or column), and the third enemy piece (or third line of enemy pieces) is on the same column (or row), and that each enemy piece (each of the three lines of enemy pieces) is flanked on the other side by a friendly piece of the same row or column respectively (with no vacant space between any of them), this is cause for the capture of the three enemy pieces (or of the three lines of enemy pieces). In this case, three custodian captures were performed but two were on a row (or column), and the other was on a column (or row).\n A player wins if he or she captures all of their opponent's pieces, or stalemates their opponent's pieces by not allowing them to move on their turn.\n\nOther Rules \n In Rin-chen Lha-mo's work We Tibetans (1926), she states that \"The longer the sequence you can [capture] . . . the better and the sequence is not broken by going around a corner, thus:\". This has been interpreted to mean that it may be possible to capture a corner piece, or a line(s) of pieces that occupy a portion of two adjacent sides of the board (hence at most one corner piece) by flanking them on two opposite ends provided there is no vacant space between any of the pieces, and Rin-cen Lha-mo actually provides an illustration showing just that. This rule is useful because it's generally difficult to perform these types of captures using the regular custodian method. However, some critics have debated whether this rule can be applied to any position on the board, or just with corner pieces. Rin-chen Lha-mo does however specifically state \"...going around a corner...\", and provides an illustrative example of pieces strictly going around a corner of the board. Lastly, Rin-chen Lha-mo does not specify whether or not the two pieces used to flank the captured pieces must occupy the same two adjacent sides that the captured pieces are occupying, although based upon the illustrative example she gave, she may have been attempting to suggest that. For example, in the beginning of the game, can one player attempt to capture the other player's 14 pieces as it is initially laid out using this modified custodian method? She also does not specify if (any of) the two pieces can be corner pieces (but opposite one another on the board if both are corner pieces) since these two corner pieces would not only occupy the same adjacent sides of the captured pieces, but also the remaining two other sides.\nRin-chen Lha-mo also states that when a player has only one piece left, then \". . . this acquires the additional power of taking pieces by hopping as in draughts, so that, to prevent this, it has to be closed in on each side by two pieces instead of one: it is thus possible to win, even when reduced to this desperate position, but of course most unlikely.\" The piece likely can perform captures using the short leap along an orthogonal direction, although she does not clarify if captures are compulsory or if multiple leaps and captures can be performed in a single turn.\n\nStrategy and Concepts \n\nAs a player continues to capture more enemy pieces, he or she is also amassing more pieces (that he or she can use) since captured enemy pieces are replaced with the player's pieces from their stockpile.\n\nSee also \nJul-Gonu,\nHasami shogi,\nDai hasami shogi,\nMak-yek,\nApit-sodok,\nRek (Game)\nLudus latrunculorum, and Petteia\nReversi and Othello\nGo, Baduk, Weiqi\n Ataxx and its variant Hexxagōn\n\nExternal links \n http://members.tripod.com/Mongolian_Page/games/mingmang.html\n http://homepages.di.fc.ul.pt/~jpn/gv/mingmang.htm\n\nReferences \n\nAbstract strategy games\nTraditional board games"
] |
[
"Charles Willson Peale",
"American Revolution",
"What was Peale's role in the American Revolution?",
"He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776,",
"What military achievements did he have?",
"he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas.",
"What else did Peale do during this war?",
"While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army.",
"Were these popular?",
"He produced enlarged versions of these in later years.",
"What was his famous piece?",
"he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington.",
"Where were these displayed?",
"It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.",
"Does he have any other famous pieces?",
"he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton),"
] |
C_18f3559c460e408cbb42afcd11988aaf_1
|
Did he paint anything other than historic figures?
| 8 |
In addition to historic figures, did Charles Willson Peale paint anything else?
|
Charles Willson Peale
|
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. CANNOTANSWER
|
Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington.
|
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, and for establishing one of the first museums in the United States.
Early life
Peale was born in 1741 between modern-day Queenstown and Centreville, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. He had a younger brother, James Peale (1749–1831). He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation.
Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was fourteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop and joined the Sons of Liberty. However, he was unsuccessful in saddle making. He then tried fixing clocks and working with metals, but both of these endeavors failed as well. He then took up painting.
Career as a painter
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.
American Revolution
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.
Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.
One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe-l'œil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Peale Museum
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, later known as Peale's American Museum. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. In 1786, Peale was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and in many instances mounted, having taught himself taxidermy. In 1792, Peale initiated a correspondence with Thomas Hall, of the Finsbury Museum, City Road, Finsbury, London proposing to purchase British stuffed items for his museum. Eventually, an exchange system was established between the two, whereby Peale sent American birds to Hall in exchange for an equal number of British birds. This arrangement continued until the end of the century. The Peale Museum was the first to display a mastodon skeleton (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today) that Peale found in New York State. Peale worked with his son to mount the skeleton for display.
The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long-standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.
The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.
The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.
The museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.
Personal life
In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children, most of them named for Peale's favorite artists, male and female. Among their sons and daughters, some of whom he taught to paint, were:
Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), who some consider to be the first professional American painter of still-life.
Angelica Kauffman Peale (1775–1853), who was named for Angelica Kauffman (Peale's favorite female painter) and who married Alexander Robinson.
Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), portrait painter, inventor, businessman, museum owner/operator in Baltimore. He founded the "Gas Light Company of Baltimore" in 1817, now Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE). He was the father of artist Rosalba Carriera Peale.
Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780–1798), ornithologist. He died at age of 18.
Rubens Peale (1784–1865), museum administrator and artist.
Sophonisba Angusciola Peale (1786–1859), ornithologist. She married Coleman Sellers (1781–1834) in 1805. She was the mother of Coleman Sellers II.
After Rachel's death in 1790, Peale married Elizabeth de Peyster (1765–1804), a descendant of Johannes de Peyster, the next year. With his second wife, he had six additional children, including:
Charles Linnaeus Peale (1794–1832), who was named for Charles Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and zoologist.
Franklin Peale (1795–1870), who became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint.
Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799–1885), explorer, ornithologist, scientific illustrator, and photographer.
Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–1857), who married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.
Hannah Moore, a Quaker from Philadelphia, married Peale in 1805, becoming his third wife. She helped to raise the younger children from his previous two marriages.
Peale's slave, Moses Williams, was also trained in the arts while growing up in the Peale household and later became a professional silhouette artist.
In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown, where he intended to retire. He named this estate "Belfield" and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826. Peale died on February 22, 1827, and was buried at the Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia alongside his wife Elizabeth DePeyster.
Expertise
A Renaissance man, Peale had expertise not only in painting but also in many diverse fields, including carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing is now held with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.
Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.
Peale wrote several books. Two of these were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803).
Legacy and honors
Three of his sons, Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale, became noted artists.
The World War II cargo Liberty Ship S.S. Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.
Notable works
See also
Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site
George Escol Sellers, grandson who was an inventor
References
Sources
Lily Bita, Charles Willson Peale, the patriarch "Apodemon Epos" Magazine of European Art Center (EUARCE) of Greece, 2st issue 1997 p. 3
Further reading
Ward, David C. 2004 Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic Berkley, California : University of California Press
External links
Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson, 1795
Charles Willson Peale and His World from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Peale-Sellers Family Collection at the American Philosophical Society
Portrait of General David Foreman, Berkshire Museum
The Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on Charles Willson Peale.
History of Peale at Belfield, now the grounds of La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Charles Willson Peale. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
James Madison, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the *Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
Catherine "Kitty" Floyd, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
1741 births
1827 deaths
18th-century American painters
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American slave owners
American people of English descent
American portrait painters
Trompe-l'œil artists
Museum founders
Pennsylvania militiamen in the American Revolution
People from Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Charles
Sibling artists
People of colonial Maryland
Burials at St. Peter's churchyard, Philadelphia
19th-century male artists
Members of the American Philosophical Society
| true |
[
"The Big \"O\" is a hillside letter representing the University of Oregon, located at Skinner Butte in Eugene, Oregon. Built in 1958, the sign was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 23, 2010. Every year, members of the university community hike up the butte to give the sign a fresh coat of paint.\n\nSee also\n National Register of Historic Places listings in Lane County, Oregon\n O (gesture)\n\nReferences\n\n1958 establishments in Oregon\nHill figures in the United States\nNational Register of Historic Places in Lane County, Oregon\nUniversity of Oregon",
"Indian Paintings is a historic archaeological site located near Maiden Spring, Tazewell County, Virginia. These pictographs are on a rock face high on Paint Lick Mountain. Stretched in a horizontal line along the irregular exposure is a series of simple images representing thunderbirds, human figures, deer, arrows, trees, and the sun, all painted in a red medium using iron oxide.\n\nIt was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nImage of one pictograph\n\nArchaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia\nNational Register of Historic Places in Tazewell County, Virginia\nRock art in North America"
] |
[
"Charles Willson Peale",
"American Revolution",
"What was Peale's role in the American Revolution?",
"He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776,",
"What military achievements did he have?",
"he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas.",
"What else did Peale do during this war?",
"While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army.",
"Were these popular?",
"He produced enlarged versions of these in later years.",
"What was his famous piece?",
"he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington.",
"Where were these displayed?",
"It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.",
"Does he have any other famous pieces?",
"he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton),",
"Did he paint anything other than historic figures?",
"Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington."
] |
C_18f3559c460e408cbb42afcd11988aaf_1
|
Did Washington like the paintings?
| 9 |
Did Washington like the portrait paintings of him by Charles Willson Peale?
|
Charles Willson Peale
|
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. CANNOTANSWER
|
In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.
|
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, and for establishing one of the first museums in the United States.
Early life
Peale was born in 1741 between modern-day Queenstown and Centreville, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. He had a younger brother, James Peale (1749–1831). He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation.
Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was fourteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop and joined the Sons of Liberty. However, he was unsuccessful in saddle making. He then tried fixing clocks and working with metals, but both of these endeavors failed as well. He then took up painting.
Career as a painter
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.
American Revolution
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.
Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.
One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe-l'œil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Peale Museum
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, later known as Peale's American Museum. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. In 1786, Peale was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and in many instances mounted, having taught himself taxidermy. In 1792, Peale initiated a correspondence with Thomas Hall, of the Finsbury Museum, City Road, Finsbury, London proposing to purchase British stuffed items for his museum. Eventually, an exchange system was established between the two, whereby Peale sent American birds to Hall in exchange for an equal number of British birds. This arrangement continued until the end of the century. The Peale Museum was the first to display a mastodon skeleton (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today) that Peale found in New York State. Peale worked with his son to mount the skeleton for display.
The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long-standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.
The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.
The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.
The museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.
Personal life
In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children, most of them named for Peale's favorite artists, male and female. Among their sons and daughters, some of whom he taught to paint, were:
Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), who some consider to be the first professional American painter of still-life.
Angelica Kauffman Peale (1775–1853), who was named for Angelica Kauffman (Peale's favorite female painter) and who married Alexander Robinson.
Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), portrait painter, inventor, businessman, museum owner/operator in Baltimore. He founded the "Gas Light Company of Baltimore" in 1817, now Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE). He was the father of artist Rosalba Carriera Peale.
Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780–1798), ornithologist. He died at age of 18.
Rubens Peale (1784–1865), museum administrator and artist.
Sophonisba Angusciola Peale (1786–1859), ornithologist. She married Coleman Sellers (1781–1834) in 1805. She was the mother of Coleman Sellers II.
After Rachel's death in 1790, Peale married Elizabeth de Peyster (1765–1804), a descendant of Johannes de Peyster, the next year. With his second wife, he had six additional children, including:
Charles Linnaeus Peale (1794–1832), who was named for Charles Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and zoologist.
Franklin Peale (1795–1870), who became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint.
Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799–1885), explorer, ornithologist, scientific illustrator, and photographer.
Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–1857), who married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.
Hannah Moore, a Quaker from Philadelphia, married Peale in 1805, becoming his third wife. She helped to raise the younger children from his previous two marriages.
Peale's slave, Moses Williams, was also trained in the arts while growing up in the Peale household and later became a professional silhouette artist.
In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown, where he intended to retire. He named this estate "Belfield" and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826. Peale died on February 22, 1827, and was buried at the Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia alongside his wife Elizabeth DePeyster.
Expertise
A Renaissance man, Peale had expertise not only in painting but also in many diverse fields, including carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing is now held with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.
Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.
Peale wrote several books. Two of these were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803).
Legacy and honors
Three of his sons, Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale, became noted artists.
The World War II cargo Liberty Ship S.S. Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.
Notable works
See also
Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site
George Escol Sellers, grandson who was an inventor
References
Sources
Lily Bita, Charles Willson Peale, the patriarch "Apodemon Epos" Magazine of European Art Center (EUARCE) of Greece, 2st issue 1997 p. 3
Further reading
Ward, David C. 2004 Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic Berkley, California : University of California Press
External links
Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson, 1795
Charles Willson Peale and His World from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Peale-Sellers Family Collection at the American Philosophical Society
Portrait of General David Foreman, Berkshire Museum
The Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on Charles Willson Peale.
History of Peale at Belfield, now the grounds of La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Charles Willson Peale. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
James Madison, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the *Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
Catherine "Kitty" Floyd, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
1741 births
1827 deaths
18th-century American painters
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American slave owners
American people of English descent
American portrait painters
Trompe-l'œil artists
Museum founders
Pennsylvania militiamen in the American Revolution
People from Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Charles
Sibling artists
People of colonial Maryland
Burials at St. Peter's churchyard, Philadelphia
19th-century male artists
Members of the American Philosophical Society
| true |
[
"The Capture of the Hessians at Trenton, December 26, 1776 is the title of an oil painting by the American artist John Trumbull depicting the capture of the Hessian soldiers at the Battle of Trenton on the morning of Thursday, December 26, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War. The focus is on General George Washington aiding the mortally wounded Hessian Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall. Nearly 900 Hessians were captured at the battle. It is one of Trumbull's series of historical paintings on the war, which also includes the Declaration of Independence and The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton, January 3, 1777. The painting is on view at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut.\n\nThe artist intended to show the compassion of General George Washington in this painting, as he wrote in the catalogue for his exhibited works at Yale University in 1835:\n\nHistory\nStarting in 1775, Trumbull himself served in the war, having been appointed second aide-de-camp to Washington. He later resigned from the army in 1777. The study for this painting was begun in London in November, 1786. In the study, Washington enters from the left to order that Rall, upheld by two officers, be cared for respectfully. Trumbull returned to New York on November 26, 1789, to continue work on the painting by making portraits of Washington. He continued making changes on the painting until its completion in 1828.\n\nDescription\nIn the center of the painting, American General George Washington is focusing his attention on the needs of the mortally wounded Hessian Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall. Rall is being helped by American Major William Stephens Smith, aide-de-camp to General John Sullivan. Washington orders Smith to \"call our best surgeons to his assistance, and let us save his life if possible.\" During the battle, Rall had been shot twice and needed to be carried into his headquarters, where he died that night. Behind Washington, on horseback, are his aides, Colonel Robert Hanson Harrison and Captain Tench Tilghman.\n\nTo the left and behind Rall, severely wounded American Lieutenant James Monroe is attended to by Dr. John Riker. He saved Monroe's life by quickly clamping the damaged artery to stop the heavy bleeding. On the far left, dressed in white, is American Colonel Josiah Parker. He had the honor to receive Rall's sword of surrender and he alone holds a sword in the painting. Next to him are Colonels Edward Wigglesworth and William Shepard.\n\nAmerican Major General Nathanael Greene is shown on the right on a light-colored horse, facing Washington. Behind Greene are American Generals John Sullivan, Henry Knox, Philemon Dickinson, John Glover, and George Weedon. Standing to the right of Greene is Captain William Washington, who was wounded in his hand during the battle.\n\nIn the foreground, a fallen Hessian flag is shown. Washington was later presented one as a war trophy.\n\nOther versions\nA large scale version ( × ), finished in 1831, is owned by the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut.\n\nCritical reception\nTrumbull did not use the prelude to the capture, namely the crossing of the Delaware River, as a subject. Artists did not paint that until 1819 by Thomas Sully and then notably by Emanuel Leutze. Trumbull's work drew criticism from historian and painter William Dunlap after he viewed it in the Trumbull Gallery at Yale in 1834:\n\nGallery\n\nSee also\n General George Washington at Trenton – Portrait after the Second Battle of Trenton and before the Battle of Princeton\n Battle of Princeton\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n Owner: Yale University Art Gallery\n – Romania Postage Stamp, for the American Bicentennial\n\nPaintings by John Trumbull\nPaintings about the American Revolution\nWar paintings\n1828 paintings\nNew Jersey in the American Revolution\nPaintings in the Yale University Art Gallery\nHistory paintings\nGeorge Washington in art\nEquestrian portraits\nFlags in art\nMusical instruments in art\n19th-century paintings",
"Olaf C. Seltzer (August 27, 1877 - December 16, 1957) was a Danish-born American painter and illustrator from Great Falls, Montana. He did over 2,500 paintings and illustrations of the American West, including cowboys.\n\nEarly life\nSeltzer was born on August 27, 1877 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He emigrated to the United States with his mother after his father died, and settled in Great Falls, where his uncle lived. He did not speak English when he arrived.\n\nCareer\nSeltzer worked as a machinist for the Great Northern Railway (U.S.). In 1897, he began painting alongside Charles M. Russell. Seltzer decided to paint independently from 1921 onward. He worked as an illustrator for The New York Tribune in 1934, and he exhibited his work in Seattle in 1936. He did 275 paintings for physician Philip G. Cole. He did over 2,500 paintings and illustrations over the course of his career.\n\nSeltzer did both watercolor and oil paintings, and he depicted life in the American West, including animals, cowboys and historical events. He also painted pioneers like Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Seltzer did a painting for the Grand Masonic Library in Helena. President Harry Truman received one of his paintings as a gift on his 1950 visit to Montana. His work was exhibited at the Gilcrease Museum in Oklahoma in 1957.\n\nPersonal life, death and legacy\nSeltzer married Mabel L. Cleeland in 1903. They had two sons, Carl and Walter, and they resided in Great Falls.\n\nSeltzer died on December 16, 1957 in Great Falls, Montana. Some of his work is in the permanent collection of the C. M. Russell Museum Complex in Great Falls, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Gilcrease Museum in Oklahoma, and the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, Washington. His papers are at the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art.\n\nHis grandson, Steve Seltzer, is a painter.\n\nWorks\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOlaf Carl Seltzer on the American Art Collaborative\nOlaf Carl Seltzer on Find a Grave\n\n1877 births\n1957 deaths\nDanish emigrants to the United States\nPeople from Great Falls, Montana\n20th-century American painters\nAmerican male painters\nAmerican magazine illustrators\nArtists from Montana\nArtists of the American West"
] |
[
"Charles Willson Peale",
"American Revolution",
"What was Peale's role in the American Revolution?",
"He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776,",
"What military achievements did he have?",
"he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas.",
"What else did Peale do during this war?",
"While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army.",
"Were these popular?",
"He produced enlarged versions of these in later years.",
"What was his famous piece?",
"he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington.",
"Where were these displayed?",
"It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.",
"Does he have any other famous pieces?",
"he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton),",
"Did he paint anything other than historic figures?",
"Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington.",
"Did Washington like the paintings?",
"In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait."
] |
C_18f3559c460e408cbb42afcd11988aaf_1
|
What else is significant about his painting career?
| 10 |
In addition to setting the record for the highest price paid for an American portrait, what else is significant about Peale's painting career?
|
Charles Willson Peale
|
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. CANNOTANSWER
|
One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style.
|
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, and for establishing one of the first museums in the United States.
Early life
Peale was born in 1741 between modern-day Queenstown and Centreville, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. He had a younger brother, James Peale (1749–1831). He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation.
Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was fourteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop and joined the Sons of Liberty. However, he was unsuccessful in saddle making. He then tried fixing clocks and working with metals, but both of these endeavors failed as well. He then took up painting.
Career as a painter
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.
American Revolution
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.
Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.
One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe-l'œil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Peale Museum
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, later known as Peale's American Museum. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. In 1786, Peale was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and in many instances mounted, having taught himself taxidermy. In 1792, Peale initiated a correspondence with Thomas Hall, of the Finsbury Museum, City Road, Finsbury, London proposing to purchase British stuffed items for his museum. Eventually, an exchange system was established between the two, whereby Peale sent American birds to Hall in exchange for an equal number of British birds. This arrangement continued until the end of the century. The Peale Museum was the first to display a mastodon skeleton (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today) that Peale found in New York State. Peale worked with his son to mount the skeleton for display.
The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long-standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.
The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.
The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.
The museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.
Personal life
In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children, most of them named for Peale's favorite artists, male and female. Among their sons and daughters, some of whom he taught to paint, were:
Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), who some consider to be the first professional American painter of still-life.
Angelica Kauffman Peale (1775–1853), who was named for Angelica Kauffman (Peale's favorite female painter) and who married Alexander Robinson.
Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), portrait painter, inventor, businessman, museum owner/operator in Baltimore. He founded the "Gas Light Company of Baltimore" in 1817, now Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE). He was the father of artist Rosalba Carriera Peale.
Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780–1798), ornithologist. He died at age of 18.
Rubens Peale (1784–1865), museum administrator and artist.
Sophonisba Angusciola Peale (1786–1859), ornithologist. She married Coleman Sellers (1781–1834) in 1805. She was the mother of Coleman Sellers II.
After Rachel's death in 1790, Peale married Elizabeth de Peyster (1765–1804), a descendant of Johannes de Peyster, the next year. With his second wife, he had six additional children, including:
Charles Linnaeus Peale (1794–1832), who was named for Charles Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and zoologist.
Franklin Peale (1795–1870), who became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint.
Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799–1885), explorer, ornithologist, scientific illustrator, and photographer.
Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–1857), who married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.
Hannah Moore, a Quaker from Philadelphia, married Peale in 1805, becoming his third wife. She helped to raise the younger children from his previous two marriages.
Peale's slave, Moses Williams, was also trained in the arts while growing up in the Peale household and later became a professional silhouette artist.
In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown, where he intended to retire. He named this estate "Belfield" and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826. Peale died on February 22, 1827, and was buried at the Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia alongside his wife Elizabeth DePeyster.
Expertise
A Renaissance man, Peale had expertise not only in painting but also in many diverse fields, including carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing is now held with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.
Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.
Peale wrote several books. Two of these were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803).
Legacy and honors
Three of his sons, Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale, became noted artists.
The World War II cargo Liberty Ship S.S. Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.
Notable works
See also
Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site
George Escol Sellers, grandson who was an inventor
References
Sources
Lily Bita, Charles Willson Peale, the patriarch "Apodemon Epos" Magazine of European Art Center (EUARCE) of Greece, 2st issue 1997 p. 3
Further reading
Ward, David C. 2004 Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic Berkley, California : University of California Press
External links
Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson, 1795
Charles Willson Peale and His World from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Peale-Sellers Family Collection at the American Philosophical Society
Portrait of General David Foreman, Berkshire Museum
The Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on Charles Willson Peale.
History of Peale at Belfield, now the grounds of La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Charles Willson Peale. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
James Madison, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the *Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
Catherine "Kitty" Floyd, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
1741 births
1827 deaths
18th-century American painters
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American slave owners
American people of English descent
American portrait painters
Trompe-l'œil artists
Museum founders
Pennsylvania militiamen in the American Revolution
People from Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Charles
Sibling artists
People of colonial Maryland
Burials at St. Peter's churchyard, Philadelphia
19th-century male artists
Members of the American Philosophical Society
| false |
[
"Jean Berger ( – after 1709), was a soldier from France who is known to have been in Lower Canada from about 1700 to 1709. He seems to have spent a significant portion of that time dealing with problems with the law.\n\nHis importance to Canadian history lies in his painting career. It is certain that he produced important Religious painting: a 1706 he painted an altar frontal for the church of La Sainte-Famille on Île d’Orléans is confirmed. A number of important portraits are generally ascribed to him. Two are in the McCord Museum of Canadian History at McGill University including one of Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville.\n\nReferences \n \n\nBerger, Jean\nBerger, Jean\nBerger, Jean",
"\"What Else Is There?\" is the third single from the Norwegian duo Röyksopp's second album The Understanding. It features the vocals of Karin Dreijer from the Swedish electronica duo The Knife. The album was released in the UK with the help of Astralwerks.\n\nThe single was used in an O2 television advertisement in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia during 2008. It was also used in the 2006 film Cashback and the 2007 film, Meet Bill. Trentemøller's remix of \"What Else is There?\" was featured in an episode of the HBO show Entourage.\n\nThe song was covered by extreme metal band Enslaved as a bonus track for their album E.\n\nThe song was listed as the 375th best song of the 2000s by Pitchfork Media.\n\nOfficial versions\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Album Version) – 5:17\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Radio Edit) – 3:38\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Jacques Lu Cont Radio Mix) – 3:46\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Vocal Version) – 8:03\n\"What Else Is There?\" (The Emperor Machine Dub Version) – 7:51\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Mix) – 8:25\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Edit) – 4:50\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Thin White Duke Remix) (Radio Edit) – 3:06\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Trentemøller Remix) – 7:42\n\"What Else Is There?\" (Vitalic Remix) – 5:14\n\nResponse\nThe single was officially released on 5 December 2005 in the UK. The single had a limited release on 21 November 2005 to promote the upcoming album. On the UK Singles Chart, it peaked at number 32, while on the UK Dance Chart, it reached number one.\n\nMusic video\nThe music video was directed by Martin de Thurah. It features Norwegian model Marianne Schröder who is shown lip-syncing Dreijer's voice. Schröder is depicted as a floating woman traveling across stormy landscapes and within empty houses. Dreijer makes a cameo appearance as a woman wearing an Elizabethan ruff while dining alone at a festive table.\n\nMovie spots\n\nThe song is also featured in the movie Meet Bill as characters played by Jessica Alba and Aaron Eckhart smoke marijuana while listening to it. It is also part of the end credits music of the film Cashback.\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\n2005 singles\nRöyksopp songs\nAstralwerks singles\nSongs written by Svein Berge\nSongs written by Torbjørn Brundtland\n2004 songs\nSongs written by Roger Greenaway\nSongs written by Olof Dreijer\nSongs written by Karin Dreijer"
] |
[
"Charles Willson Peale",
"American Revolution",
"What was Peale's role in the American Revolution?",
"He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776,",
"What military achievements did he have?",
"he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas.",
"What else did Peale do during this war?",
"While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army.",
"Were these popular?",
"He produced enlarged versions of these in later years.",
"What was his famous piece?",
"he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington.",
"Where were these displayed?",
"It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.",
"Does he have any other famous pieces?",
"he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton),",
"Did he paint anything other than historic figures?",
"Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington.",
"Did Washington like the paintings?",
"In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.",
"What else is significant about his painting career?",
"One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style."
] |
C_18f3559c460e408cbb42afcd11988aaf_1
|
Where are his works on display?
| 11 |
Where are Charles Willson Peale's works on display?
|
Charles Willson Peale
|
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. CANNOTANSWER
|
Philadelphia Museum of Art.
|
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, and for establishing one of the first museums in the United States.
Early life
Peale was born in 1741 between modern-day Queenstown and Centreville, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. He had a younger brother, James Peale (1749–1831). He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation.
Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was fourteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop and joined the Sons of Liberty. However, he was unsuccessful in saddle making. He then tried fixing clocks and working with metals, but both of these endeavors failed as well. He then took up painting.
Career as a painter
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.
American Revolution
Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1776, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.
Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and they had six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full-length portrait of Washington at Princeton from 1779 sold for $21.3 million, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.
One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian, painted in the trompe-l'œil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Peale Museum
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, later known as Peale's American Museum. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. In 1786, Peale was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and in many instances mounted, having taught himself taxidermy. In 1792, Peale initiated a correspondence with Thomas Hall, of the Finsbury Museum, City Road, Finsbury, London proposing to purchase British stuffed items for his museum. Eventually, an exchange system was established between the two, whereby Peale sent American birds to Hall in exchange for an equal number of British birds. This arrangement continued until the end of the century. The Peale Museum was the first to display a mastodon skeleton (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today) that Peale found in New York State. Peale worked with his son to mount the skeleton for display.
The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long-standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.
The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.
The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.
The museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.
Personal life
In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children, most of them named for Peale's favorite artists, male and female. Among their sons and daughters, some of whom he taught to paint, were:
Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), who some consider to be the first professional American painter of still-life.
Angelica Kauffman Peale (1775–1853), who was named for Angelica Kauffman (Peale's favorite female painter) and who married Alexander Robinson.
Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), portrait painter, inventor, businessman, museum owner/operator in Baltimore. He founded the "Gas Light Company of Baltimore" in 1817, now Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE). He was the father of artist Rosalba Carriera Peale.
Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780–1798), ornithologist. He died at age of 18.
Rubens Peale (1784–1865), museum administrator and artist.
Sophonisba Angusciola Peale (1786–1859), ornithologist. She married Coleman Sellers (1781–1834) in 1805. She was the mother of Coleman Sellers II.
After Rachel's death in 1790, Peale married Elizabeth de Peyster (1765–1804), a descendant of Johannes de Peyster, the next year. With his second wife, he had six additional children, including:
Charles Linnaeus Peale (1794–1832), who was named for Charles Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and zoologist.
Franklin Peale (1795–1870), who became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint.
Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799–1885), explorer, ornithologist, scientific illustrator, and photographer.
Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–1857), who married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.
Hannah Moore, a Quaker from Philadelphia, married Peale in 1805, becoming his third wife. She helped to raise the younger children from his previous two marriages.
Peale's slave, Moses Williams, was also trained in the arts while growing up in the Peale household and later became a professional silhouette artist.
In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown, where he intended to retire. He named this estate "Belfield" and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826. Peale died on February 22, 1827, and was buried at the Saint Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia alongside his wife Elizabeth DePeyster.
Expertise
A Renaissance man, Peale had expertise not only in painting but also in many diverse fields, including carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing is now held with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.
Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.
Peale wrote several books. Two of these were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803).
Legacy and honors
Three of his sons, Rembrandt Peale, Raphaelle Peale, and Titian Ramsay Peale, became noted artists.
The World War II cargo Liberty Ship S.S. Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.
Notable works
See also
Peale's Barber Farm Mastodon Exhumation Site
George Escol Sellers, grandson who was an inventor
References
Sources
Lily Bita, Charles Willson Peale, the patriarch "Apodemon Epos" Magazine of European Art Center (EUARCE) of Greece, 2st issue 1997 p. 3
Further reading
Ward, David C. 2004 Charles Willson Peale: Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic Berkley, California : University of California Press
External links
Reynolda House Museum of American Art: Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robinson, 1795
Charles Willson Peale and His World from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Peale-Sellers Family Collection at the American Philosophical Society
Portrait of General David Foreman, Berkshire Museum
The Winterthur Library Overview of an archival collection on Charles Willson Peale.
History of Peale at Belfield, now the grounds of La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA
Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Charles Willson Peale. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.
James Madison, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the *Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
Catherine "Kitty" Floyd, Bust Portrait Miniature by Peale from the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at The Library of Congress
1741 births
1827 deaths
18th-century American painters
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American slave owners
American people of English descent
American portrait painters
Trompe-l'œil artists
Museum founders
Pennsylvania militiamen in the American Revolution
People from Queen Anne's County, Maryland
Charles
Sibling artists
People of colonial Maryland
Burials at St. Peter's churchyard, Philadelphia
19th-century male artists
Members of the American Philosophical Society
| true |
[
"The Rembrandt House Museum () is a historic house and art museum in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Painter Rembrandt lived and worked in the house between 1639 and 1656. The 17th-century interior has been reconstructed. The collection contains Rembrandt's etchings and paintings of his contemporaries. The museum had in 2014.\n\nRembrandt's house \nThe house is located in the Jodenbreestraat in Amsterdam, where Rembrandt lived and painted for a number of years, not far from the present-day city hall.\n\nRembrandt purchased the house in 1639 and lived there until he went bankrupt in 1656, when all his belongings went on auction. The auction list enabled the reconstructions of all his belongings which are also on display in the house. None of his possessions were in the house thereafter.\n\nInterior and collection \nA few years ago the house was thoroughly reconstructed on the inside to show how the house would have looked in Rembrandt's days. Adjoining (and linked to) the house is a modern building where works by Rembrandt are on display. The museum has a good collection of his etchings, with rotating selections on display. The collection of paintings is mostly by other Dutch Golden Age painters, especially works from the early period of his career, working in similar styles to Rembrandt first paintings. The collection of objects from all over the world, much displayed in his studio, is based on his house sale catalogue, and objects featuring in his art or that of his students. The furniture collection has been assembled on the same principle.\n\nAdministration \n\nMichael Huijser is the museum director and David de Witt is the curator.\n\nSince 2008, the museum had around 200,000 visitors per year, with a record number of 237,383 visitors in 2014.\n\nSee also\n List of single-artist museums\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\n Rembrandt House Museum, official website\n\n1911 establishments in the Netherlands\nArt museums and galleries in the Netherlands\nArt museums established in 1911\nBiographical museums in the Netherlands\nHistoric house museums in the Netherlands\nHouses completed in 1607\nMuseums devoted to one artist\nMuseums in Amsterdam\nRembrandt\nRijksmonuments in Amsterdam",
"Jumber Jikia (; b. 1950) is a sculptor from Georgia.\n\nJikia was born on 12 October 1950. He studied at Tbilisi School of Art, and then Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, where he was later a lecturer.\n\nHis public works in Tbilisi include a statue of Oliver and Marjory Wardrop, unveiled on 18 October 2015, during the Tbilisoba festival, in Tbilisi's Oliver Wardrop Square; and one of Václav Havel unveiled on 22 June 2017 by President of Georgia Giorgi Margvelashvili and Czech Defense Minister Martin Stropnicky.\n\nTwo of his Horses of the Wind are in Rustavi.\n\nOutside Georgia, his works are on public display in Egypt (History Steps 2008), and Cappadocia, Turkey (History Steps 2009). \n\nHe also sculpted a 22m tall, 60 ton, colossal steel-framed copper statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk for the Assembly Hall at Artvin in Turkey.\n\nDying Centaur is in the collection of the Polish Sculpture Center.\n\nAwards\n\nReferences \n\n1950 births\nPlace of birth missing (living people)\n21st-century sculptors\nSculptors from Georgia (country)\nLiving people"
] |
[
"Lord Voldemort",
"Character development"
] |
C_e1dce95f334b494096220fc2c296fae0_1
|
in what way was his character developed?
| 1 |
In what way was Lord Voldemort's character developed?
|
Lord Voldemort
|
In a 2001 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter (the protagonist of the novels), and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry--he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And--so--but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since." In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death." Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. Some literary analysts have considered possible meanings in the name: Philip Nel states that Voldemort is derived from the French for "flight of death", and in a 2002 paper, Nilsen and Nilsen suggest that readers get a "creepy feeling" from the name Voldemort, because of the French word "mort" ("death") within it and that word's association with cognate English words derived from the Latin mors. CANNOTANSWER
|
Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter
|
Lord Voldemort (, in the films) is a sobriquet for Tom Marvolo Riddle, a character and the main antagonist in J. K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels. The character first appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was published in 1997, and returned either in person or in flashbacks in each book and its film adaptation in the series except the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which he is only mentioned.
Voldemort is the archenemy of Harry Potter, who according to a prophecy has "the power to vanquish the Dark Lord". He attempts to murder the boy, but instead kills his parents, Lily and James Potter, and leaves Harry with a scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. Nearly every witch or wizard dares not utter his name and refers to him instead with such monikers as "You-Know-Who", "He Who Must Not Be Named", or "the Dark Lord". Voldemort's obsession with blood purity signifies his aim to rid the wizarding world of Muggle (non-magical) heritage and to conquer both worlds, Muggle and wizarding, to achieve pure-blood dominance. Through his mother's family, he is the last descendant of the wizard Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is the leader of the Death Eaters, a group of evil wizards and witches dedicated to ridding the Wizarding World of Muggles and establishing Voldemort as its supreme ruler.
Character development
In a 1999 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter, and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry—he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And—so—but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since."
In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death."
Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. The name Voldemort is derived from the French vol de mort which means "flight of death" or "theft of death".
Appearances
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Voldemort makes his debut in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In this story, Rowling introduces him as the Dark Lord who tried to kill Harry Potter because the boy was prophesied to destroy him. Voldemort murdered Harry's parents, James and Lily, but as a result of his mother's love and willingness to sacrifice herself for him, baby Harry survived when Voldemort tried to murder him with a Killing Curse. Voldemort was disembodied, and Harry was left with a mysterious, lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead as a result.
In the book, Voldemort unsuccessfully tries to regain his dissolved body by stealing the titular Philosopher's Stone. To achieve his objective, Voldemort uses Professor Quirrell's aid by latching onto the back of the latter's head. However, at the climax of the book, Harry manages to prevent Voldemort from stealing the stone.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
In the second instalment, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling introduces Tom Marvolo Riddle, a manifestation of a teenage Voldemort that resides inside a magical diary found by Ginny Weasley. In this book, Ginny is written as a shy girl with a crush on Harry. Feeling anxious and lonely, she begins to write into the diary and shares her deepest fears with the sympathetic Tom. However, at the climax of the story, when Riddle rearranges the letters in his name to write "I am Lord Voldemort", Riddle is revealed as a magical manifestation of the boy who would later grow up to become the Dark Lord. Riddle states he has grown strong on Ginny's fears and eventually possesses her, using her as a pawn to unlock the Chamber of Secrets, whence a basilisk is set free and petrifies several Hogwarts students. Harry defeats the manifestation of Riddle from the diary and the basilisk. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Albus Dumbledore reveals to Harry that the diary was one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Voldemort does not appear in the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, either in person or as a magical manifestation. He is, however, heard when Harry passes out from the harsh effects of a Dementor. Towards the end of the story, Sybill Trelawney, the Divination professor, makes a rare genuine prophecy: "The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight, the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever before. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master..." Though it is initially implied that the prophecy refers to Sirius Black, the book's ostensible antagonist, the servant is eventually revealed to be Peter Pettigrew, who, for the 12 years since Voldemort's fall, has been disguised as Ron's pet rat, Scabbers.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
In the fourth instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort reappears at the start and the climax of the book. Rowling lets many seemingly unrelated plot elements fall into order. It is revealed that Voldemort's minion Barty Crouch Jr, disguised as Hogwarts professor Mad-Eye Moody, has manipulated the events of the Triwizard Tournament in Harry's favour. Voldemort's goal is to teleport Harry under Dumbledore's watch as a reluctant participant to the Little Hangleton graveyard, where the Riddle family is buried. Harry is captured and, after Pettigrew uses Harry's blood to fulfil a gruesome magical ritual, Voldemort regains his body and is restored to his full power. For the first time in the series, Rowling describes his appearance: "tall and skeletally thin", with a face "whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils". Rowling writes that his "hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat's, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness". It was revealed that, while in Albania, Pettigrew had captured the Ministry of Magic official Bertha Jorkins, who was tortured for information about the Ministry. After they learned that Barty Crouch Jr, a faithful Death Eater, had been smuggled out of Azkaban and was privately confined at his father's house, they killed her. With Pettigrew's help, Voldemort creates a small, rudimentary body, corporeal enough to travel and perform magic, and formulated a plan to restore his own body by capturing Harry. A portion of the plan had been overheard by Frank Bryce, a gardener, whom Voldemort then killed. Voldemort then completes his plan and returns to life in his full body as a result of the ritual with Harry's blood. He then summons his Death Eaters to the graveyard to witness the death of Harry as he challenges Harry to a duel. However, when Voldemort duels Harry, their wands become magically locked together due to the twin Phoenix feather cores of the wands. Because of a phenomenon later revealed as Priori Incantatem, ghost-like manifestations of Voldemort's most recent victims (including Harry's parents) then appear and distract Voldemort, allowing Harry just enough time to escape via Portkey with the body of fellow-student, Cedric Diggory, who was murdered by Pettigrew on Voldemort's orders.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Voldemort appears at the climax of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, having again plotted against Harry. In this book, Harry goes through extreme emotional stress, and according to Rowling, it was necessary to prove that Harry is emotionally vulnerable and thus human, in contrast to his nemesis Voldemort, who is emotionally invulnerable and thus inhuman: "[Harry is] a very human hero, and this is, obviously, there's a contrast, between him, as a very human hero, and Voldemort, who has deliberately dehumanised himself. […] and Harry, therefore, did have to reach a point where he did almost break down." In this book, Voldemort makes liberal use of the Ministry of Magic's refusal to believe that he has returned. Voldemort engineers a plot to free Bellatrix Lestrange and other Death Eaters from Azkaban and then embarks on a scheme to retrieve the full record of a prophecy stored in the Department of Mysteries regarding Harry and himself. He sends a group of Death Eaters to retrieve the prophecy, where the Order of the Phoenix meets them. All but Bellatrix are captured, and Voldemort engages in a ferocious duel with Dumbledore. When Dumbledore gets the upper hand, Voldemort attempts to possess Harry but finds that he cannot; Harry is too full of that which Voldemort finds incomprehensible, and which he detests as weakness: love. Sensing that Dumbledore could win, Voldemort disapparates, but not before the Minister for Magic sees him in person, making his return to life public knowledge in the next book.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Voldemort does not appear in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, although his presence and actions are felt: he once again declares war, and begins to rise to power once more. He murders Amelia Bones of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and begins to target members of the Order of the Phoenix, including Emmeline Vance.
Rowling uses several chapters as exposition to establish Voldemort's backstory. In a series of flashbacks, using the pensieve as a plot device, she reveals that Voldemort was the son of the witch Merope Gaunt and a Muggle called Tom Riddle. Riddle abandoned Merope before their child's birth, soon after which Merope died. After living in an orphanage, young Riddle met Dumbledore, who told him he was a wizard and arranged for him to attend Hogwarts. Riddle was outwardly a model student, but was in reality a psychopath who took sadistic pleasure in using his powers to harm and control people. He eventually murdered his father and grandparents as revenge for abandoning him. The book also discusses Riddle's hatred of Muggles, his obsession with Horcruxes, and his desire to split his soul to achieve immortality. Rowling stated Voldemort's conception under the influence of a love potion symbolises the coercive circumstances under which he was brought into the world.
In the main plot of the book, Voldemort's next step is to engineer an assault on Hogwarts, and to kill Dumbledore. This is accomplished by Draco Malfoy, who arranges transportation of Death Eaters into Hogwarts by a pair of Vanishing Cabinets, which bypass the extensive protective enchantments placed around the school. The cabinets allow Voldemort's Death Eaters to enter Hogwarts, where battle commences and Dumbledore is cornered. Hogwarts professor (and re-doubled agent) Severus Snape uses the Killing Curse against Dumbledore when Draco could not force himself to do so.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort furthers his quest for ultimate power. He disposes of the Minister for Magic and replaces him with Pius Thicknesse, who is under the Imperius Curse. Establishing a totalitarian police state, he has Muggle-borns persecuted and arrested for "stealing magic" from the "pure blood" wizards. After failing to kill Harry with Draco's father Lucius Malfoy's borrowed wand (to avoid the effect of Priori Incantatem), he goes on a murderous search for the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand ever created, seeing it as the weapon he needs to overcome Harry's wand and make him truly invincible. He goes on a quest that takes him out of the country to Gregorovitch's wand shop, where he kills the old wandmaker. His journey also takes him to Nurmengard, the prison where Gellert Grindelwald is kept, and he kills Grindelwald as well. He finally locates the Elder Wand and steals it from Dumbledore's tomb.
Later, Voldemort finds out that Harry and his friends are hunting and destroying his Horcruxes when informed of their heist on the Lestranges' vault at Gringotts in search for Hufflepuff's Cup. After offering the occupants of Hogwarts mercy if they give up Harry, he assembles a large army and launches an invasion of the castle, where Harry is searching for Ravenclaw's Diadem. Voldemort orders his pet snake Nagini to execute Snape, believing it would make him the true master of the Elder Wand, since Snape killed Dumbledore. He then calls an hour's armistice, in exchange for Harry. When Harry willingly walks into Voldemort's camp in the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort strikes him down with the Elder Wand. However, the use of Harry's blood to resurrect Voldemort's body proves to be a major setback: while Harry's blood runs in Voldemort's veins, Harry cannot be killed as his mother's protection lives on now in Voldemort too. Instead, Voldemort destroys the part of his own soul that resides in Harry's body. Voldemort forces Rubeus Hagrid to carry Harry's apparently lifeless body back to the castle as a trophy, sparking another battle during which Nagini, his last Horcrux, is destroyed by Neville Longbottom. The battle then moves into the Great Hall, where Voldemort fights Minerva McGonagall, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Horace Slughorn simultaneously. Harry then reveals himself and explains to Voldemort that Draco became the true master of the Elder Wand when he disarmed Dumbledore; Harry, in turn, won the wand's allegiance when he took Draco's wand. Refusing to believe this, Voldemort casts the Killing Curse with the Elder Wand while Harry uses a Disarming Charm with Draco's, but the Elder Wand refuses to kill its master and the spell rebounds on Voldemort who, with all of his Horcruxes destroyed, finally dies. His body is laid in a different chamber from all the others who died battling him.
Rowling stated that after his death, Voldemort is forced to exist in the stunted infant-like form that Harry sees in the King's Cross-like Limbo after his confrontation with Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest. Rowling also mentioned that, despite his extreme fear of death, he cannot become a ghost.
Appearances in other material
In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, it is revealed that Bellatrix gave birth to Voldemort's daughter Delphi in Malfoy Manor before the Battle of Hogwarts. Twenty-two years later, Delphi poses as Cedric's cousin and manipulates Harry and Ginny's second son Albus Severus Potter and his friend, Draco and Astoria Greengrass's son Scorpius Malfoy, into stealing a prototype Time Turner with which she hopes to resurrect her father. Using the Time Turner, Scorpius accidentally creates an alternative timeline where Voldemort killed Harry at the battle and now rules the wizarding world. In an attempt to achieve this future, Delphi travels to Godric's Hollow on the night Voldemort killed Harry's parents, hoping to avert the prophecy that led to her father's downfall. After receiving a message from his son, Harry, together with Ron, Hermione and Draco (who by now has become friends with Harry after they join forces to save their respective sons) transfigures himself into Voldemort so that he can distract Delphi, allowing them to overpower her. The real Voldemort kills Harry's parents as prophesied, and Delphi is sent to Azkaban.
Portrayals within films
Voldemort appears in every Harry Potter film, with the exception of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Several actors have portrayed him in his varying incarnations and ages.
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Voldemort's manifestation is as a face on the back of Quirrell's head, an effect achieved by computer generated imagery. Ian Hart, the actor who played Quirrell in the same film, provided the voice and the facial source for this character. Voldemort also appears in a scene in the Forbidden Forest where he is seen drinking the blood of a unicorn. As Voldemort's face was altered enough by CG work, and Hart's voice was affected enough, there was no confusion by Hart's playing of the two roles. In that film, he was also shown in a flashback sequence when he arrived at the home of James and Lily Potter to kill them. In this scene Voldemort is played by Richard Bremmer, though his face is never seen. His next appearance would be in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as the 16-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle (portrayed by Christian Coulson).
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort is initially only heard, possessing the scratchy, weak voice heard in the first film. By the film's climax, however, he appears in his physical form for the first time, played by Ralph Fiennes. As in the book, Voldemort is shown clad in dark black robes, being tall and emaciated, with no hair and yellowish teeth; his wand has a white tone and the handle appears to be made of bone; his finger nails are long and pale blue while his toe nails appear to be infected. Unlike in the book, his pupils are not cat-like and his eyes are blue, because producer David Heyman felt that his evil would not be able to be seen and would not fill the audience with fear (his eyes do briefly take on a snake-like appearance when he opens them after turning human, but quickly turn normal). As in the book, the film version of Voldemort has snake-like slit nostrils with the flesh of his nose significantly pressed back. Ralph Fiennes' nose was not covered in makeup on the set, but was digitally removed in post-production. In this first appearance, Voldemort also has a forked tongue, but this element was removed for the subsequent films.
Fiennes stated that he had two weeks to shoot the climactic showdown scene where he is gloating over a terrified Harry, played by Daniel Radcliffe. Fiennes said with a chuckle: "I have no doubt children will be afraid of me now if they weren't before." In preparation, he read the novel Goblet of Fire, but jokingly conceded: "I was only interested in my scene, and I had to go through thousands and thousands of other scenes which I did, dutifully, until I got to my scene and I read it many, many, many, many, many times and that was my research." Fiennes reprised his role as Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2.
Fiennes's nephew, Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, portrayed Tom Riddle as a child in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. By the time filming arrived Christian Coulson was 29, and not considered suitable to return as the adolescent Riddle. Thomas James Longley was originally scheduled to take over the role, but last minute renegotiations saw Frank Dillane cast instead.
Characterisation
Outward appearance
After he regains his body in the fourth book, Rowling describes Voldemort as having pale skin, a chalk-white, skull-like face, snake-like slits for nostrils, red eyes and cat-like slits for pupils, a skeletally thin body and long, thin hands with unnaturally long fingers. As mentioned in the first chapter of the seventh book, he also has no hair or lips. Earlier in life, as seen through flashbacks contained in the second and sixth books, Tom Marvolo Riddle was handsome and tall with pale skin, jet black hair, and dark brown eyes. He could charm many people with his looks. The transformation into his monstrous state is believed to have been the result of creating his Horcruxes and becoming less human as he continued to divide his soul. In the films, Voldemort's eyes are blue with round pupils.
Personality
Rowling described Voldemort as "the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years". She elaborated that he is a "raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering", and whose only ambition in life is to become all-powerful and immortal. He is also a sadist who hurts and murders people—especially Muggles—for his own amusement. He has no conscience, feels no remorse or empathy, and does not recognise the worth and humanity of anybody except himself.
He feels no need for human companionship or friendship, and cannot comprehend love or affection for another. He believes he is superior to everyone around him, to the point that he frequently refers to himself in the third person as "Lord Voldemort". Rowling also stated that Voldemort is "incredibly power hungry. Racist, really", and that if Voldemort were to look into the Mirror of Erised, in which one sees one's greatest desire, he would see "Himself, all-powerful and eternal. That's what he wants."
Rowling also stated that Voldemort's conception by influence of Amortentia—a love potion administered by his mother, a witch named Merope Gaunt, to the Muggle Tom Riddle—is related to his inability to understand love; it is "a symbolic way of showing that he came from a loveless union—but of course, everything would have changed if Merope had survived and raised him herself and loved him. The enchantment under which Tom Riddle fathered Voldemort is important because it shows coercion, and there can't be many more prejudicial ways to enter the world than as the result of such a union".
Like most archetypical villains, Voldemort's arrogance leads to his downfall. He also suffers from a pathological fear of death, which he regards as a shameful and ignominious human weakness. According to Rowling, his Boggart would be his own corpse. Rowling also said that the difference between Harry and Voldemort is that Harry accepts mortality, and thus Harry is, in the end, stronger than his nemesis.
Magical abilities and skills
Rowling establishes Voldemort throughout the series as an extremely powerful, intelligent, and ruthless dark wizard, described as the greatest and most powerful Dark Wizard of all time. He is known as one of the greatest Legilimens in the world and a highly accomplished Occlumens; he can read minds and shield his own from penetration. Besides Dumbledore, he is also the only wizard ever known to be able to apparate silently. Voldemort was also said to fear one wizard alone, Dumbledore.
In the final book, Voldemort flies unsupported, something that amazes those who see it. Voldemort, like his ancestral family, the Gaunts, is a Parselmouth, meaning he can converse with serpents. This skill was inherited from his ancestor, Salazar Slytherin. The Gaunt family speak Parseltongue among themselves. This highly unusual trait may be preserved through inbreeding, a practice employed by the Gaunt Family to maintain their blood's purity. When Voldemort attempts to kill Harry his ability to speak Parseltongue is passed to Harry through the small bit of the former's soul. After that bit of soul is destroyed, Harry loses this ability. In a flashback in the sixth novel, Voldemort boasts to Dumbledore during a job interview that he has "pushed the boundaries of magic farther than they had ever before". Dumbledore states that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is more extensive than any wizard alive and that even Dumbledore's most powerful protective spells and charms would likely be insufficient if Voldemort returned to full power. Dumbledore also said that Voldemort was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen. Although Voldemort remains highly accomplished and prodigious in skill, he is enormously lacking and highly inept in the most powerful magic, love. This inability to love and trust others proves to be Voldemort's greatest weakness in the series. Voldemort initially voices scepticism that his own magic might not be the most powerful, but upon returning to power, he admits to his Death Eaters that he had overlooked the ancient and powerful magic which Lily Potter invoked and that would protect Harry from harm.
On her website, Rowling wrote that Voldemort's wand is made of yew, whose sap is poisonous and which symbolises death. It forms a deliberate contrast to Harry's wand, which is made of holly, which she chose because holly is alleged to repel evil.
Rowling establishes in the books that Voldemort is magically connected to Harry via Harry's forehead scar. He disembodies himself when his Killing Curse targeting Harry rebounds on him, leaving the scar on Harry's forehead. In the books, and to a lesser extent in the films, Harry's scar serves as an indicator of Voldemort's presence: it burns when the Dark Lord is near or when Voldemort is feeling murderous or exultant. According to Rowling, by attacking Harry when he was a baby Voldemort gave him "tools [that] no other wizard possessed—the scar and the ability it conferred, a magical window into Voldemort's mind".
Family
Notes: The names 'Thomas' and 'Mary' Riddle are taken from the films. The Potter Family is not shown.
Riddle family
The Riddle family, an old gentry family, consisted of Thomas and Mary Riddle and their son, Tom Riddle, Esq. They owned over half of the valley that the town of Little Hangleton lay in, and Thomas was the most prominent inhabitant of that town. They lived in a large house with fine gardens, but were unpopular amongst the local residents due to their snobbish attitudes. Tom, the only child of Thomas and Mary, was known as a playboy, his main interests being womanizing and horse-riding.
Rowling revealed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that young Merope Gaunt fell in love with Riddle, peering at him through the windows and bushes at every opportunity. Merope's brother Morfin disapproved of his sister's affection for Tom and hexed him as he rode by, covering him in hives. This breach of wizarding law, and the ensuing violent struggle with Ministry of Magic officials, led to Marvolo and Morfin being imprisoned in Azkaban. As surmised by Dumbledore, once Merope was alone and no longer dominated by her father, she could make her move for Tom. She offered him a drink laced with a love potion, and he became infatuated with her; they soon eloped and, within three months of the marriage, Merope became pregnant. Merope decided to stop giving Tom the love potion, having come to the belief such enchantment of a man was tantamount to slavery. She also revealed her witch status to Tom, believing either that he had fallen in love with her on his own or he would at least stay for their unborn child. She was wrong, and Tom quickly left his pregnant wife and went home to his parents, claiming to have been "hoodwinked" and tricked into marrying Merope. Tom Marvolo Riddle, their son, was born on 31 December 1926 Merope died in childbirth, leaving the baby to grow up alone in an orphanage.
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it is revealed that Voldemort murdered his father and grandparents, leaving himself the only surviving member of the Riddle family.
House of Gaunt
Most of the exposition of the House of Gaunts background occurs in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, through the medium of Dumbledore's Pensieve. The Gaunts were once a powerful and influential family, and are the last known descendants of Salazar Slytherin. However, a vein of mental instability and violence within the family, reinforced through cousin marriages intended to preserve the pureblood line, had reduced them to poverty and squalor, as shown in the Pensieve's "memory" that Harry and Dumbledore witnessed. Like Salazar Slytherin, the Gaunts spoke Parseltongue. At the time of the story, the Gaunts' only material asset is a ramshackle shanty in Little Hangleton, that stood in a thicket in a valley opposite the Riddle House. Like the Riddles, the Gaunts were also unpopular with the local residents, with a reputation for being vulgar and intimidating.
Marvolo Gaunt was the last family patriarch. He was sentenced to a short term in Azkaban for his and his son's assault upon a Ministry of Magic official; this affected his health and he died soon after returning home. His signet ring passed to his son, Morfin Gaunt, who was convicted of assaulting a Muggle, and later died in Azkaban, convicted this time as a party to the murder of Tom Riddle Jr. and Riddle's parents.
Dumbledore discovers the real culprit while visiting Morfin in Azkaban to gather information about Voldemort. After Dumbledore successfully extracts Morfin's memory of his encounter with his nephew, he tries to use the evidence to have Morfin released, but Morfin dies before the decision can be made. The House of Gaunt ended with Morfin's death.
Merope Gaunt () was the daughter of Marvolo, and sister of Morfin. Harry's first impression of her was that she looked "like the most defeated person he had ever seen". She married Tom Riddle Jr and became pregnant within three months of the wedding. It is suggested that she tricked her husband into loving her by using a love potion, but when she became pregnant, she chose to stop administering the potion. It is implied that Merope had grown tired of living the lie and thought that her husband might have grown to love her, or that he might have stayed for the sake of their unborn child; however, he left her. Desperate, Merope wandered through the streets of London. The only thing she had left was the heavy gold locket that had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin, one of her family's most treasured items, which she sold for a small amount. When she was due to give birth, she stumbled into a Muggle orphanage, where she gave birth to her only son. She died within the next hour.
Gormlaith Gaunt was a 17th-century descendant of Salazar Slytherin, and like Salazar, a Parselmouth. Her wand was that which once belonged to Salazar himself. Educated at Hogwarts, Gormlaith lived in Ireland in the early 1600s. In about 1608, Gormlaith killed her estranged unnamed sister, and her sister's husband, William Sayre (a descendant of the Irish witch Morrigan), and kidnapped their five-year-old daughter, Isolt Sayre, raising her in the neighbouring valley of Coomcallee, or "Hag's Glen", because she felt that her parents' association with Muggles would badly influence Isolt. Fanatical and cruel, Gormlaith used Dark magic to isolate Isolt from others, forbade her a wand, and did not allow her to attend Hogwarts as she herself had, disgusted that it was now filled with Muggle-borns. After twelve years with Gormlaith, Isolt stole Gormlaith's wand and fled to the Colonies and settled in Massachusetts, where she founded the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When Gormlaith learned of the school, she pursued her niece in Massachusetts, where she was killed by Isolt's friend, William the Pukwudgie, with a venom-tipped arrow.
The Gaunts, including Voldemort, are distantly related to Harry because they are descendants of the Peverell brothers.
Reception
Several people have drawn a parallel between Voldemort and some politicians. Rowling has said that Voldemort was "a sort of" Adolf Hitler, and that there is some parallel with Nazism in her books. Rowling also compared Voldemort to Joseph Stalin. Alfonso Cuarón, director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban compared Voldemort to George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, who he said "...have selfish interests and are very much in love with power. Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people." Andrew Slack and the Harry Potter Alliance compare media consolidation in the US to Voldemort's regime in Deathly Hallows and its control over the Daily Prophet and other media saying that "Once Voldemort took over every form of media in the wizarding world, Dumbledore's Army and the Order of the Phoenix formed an independent media movement called 'Potterwatch'. Now the HP Alliance and Wizard Rock have come together to fight for a Potterwatch movement in the real world to fight back against Big VoldeMedia from further pushing out local and foreign news, minority representation, and the right to a Free Press." Julia Turner of Slate Magazine also noted similarities between the events of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the War on Terror. She said that Voldemort commits acts of terrorism such as destroying bridges, murdering innocents, and forcing children to kill their elders.
Voldemort has also been compared with other characters within fiction, for example Sauron from The Lord of the Rings; they are, during the time when the main plot takes place, seeking to recover their lost power after having been considered dead or at least no longer a threat, and are also so feared that they are sometimes unnamed.
IGN listed Voldemort as their seventh favourite Harry Potter character, calling him "truly frightening".
In popular culture
Several campaigns have used Voldemort to compare his evil to the influence of politicians, large media and corporations. "Lord Voldemort" is a nickname sometimes used for Peter Mandelson. Voldemort is also a recurring theme among wizard rock bands. Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock! is the second album from Harry and the Potters, and the character is mentioned in songs such as "The Dark Lord Lament" and "Flesh, Blood, and Bone".
Voldemort has been parodied in various venues. In The Simpsons 13th season's premiere, "Treehouse of Horror XII", Montgomery Burns appears as "Lord Montymort". A parody of Voldemort appears in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy as "Lord Moldybutt", an enemy of Nigel Planter (a parody of Harry). Voldemort also appears in the Potter Puppet Pals sketches by Neil Cicierega. One of the episodes including him was the seventeenth most viewed video of all time as of 2008 and the winner for "Best Comedy" of the year 2007 at YouTube.
"Continuing the Magic", an article in the 21 May 2007 issue of Time, includes mock book covers designed by author Lon Tweeten, laced with pop culture references. One of them, the "Dark Lord of the Dance", shows Voldemort teaming up with Harry on Broadway. In the MAD Magazine parodies of the films, the character is called Lord Druckermort, a backwards reference to the magazine's longtime caricaturist Mort Drucker. In Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1969, a young Tom Marvolo Riddle (introduced as "Tom", whose middle name is a "marvel" and last name is a "conundrum") appears, and becomes the new avatar of Oliver Haddo at the story's conclusion. In A Very Potter Musical, Voldemort is played by actor Joe Walker.
In a segment celebrating British children's literature at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London, an inflatable Voldemort appeared alongside other villains, The Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Cruella de Vil, to haunt children's dreams, before the arrival of a group of over thirty Mary Poppins who descended with their umbrellas to defeat them.
During the 2016 United States elections, Daniel Radcliffe was asked by Sky News journalist Craig Dillon if he would compare Donald Trump to Lord Voldemort; Radcliffe responded, "Trump is worse".
Voldemort appears in The Lego Batman Movie as one of the prisoners in the Phantom Zone that Joker recruits to take over Gotham City. Though Ralph Fiennes is featured in this movie as the voice of the British butler Alfred Pennyworth, he does not reprise his role as Voldemort. Instead, Voldemort is voiced by Eddie Izzard.
Outside of the Harry Potter video games, Voldemort is also a playable character in Lego Dimensions, with archive audio of Fiennes' portrayal in the films used for his voiceovers.
A 2018 Italian fan film titled Voldemort: Origins of the Heir depicts the story of Tom Riddle's rise to power.
Voldemort appears in Space Jam: A New Legacy, in the crowd for the game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad.
An upcoming French fan-made short-film titled The House of Gaunt - Lord Voldemort Origins explores the origin story of Voldemort and The Gaunt family.
Notes
References
External links
Lord Voldemort at Harry Potter Lexicon
Fictional characters with disfigurements
Fictional characters with immortality
Fictional characters with spirit possession or body swapping abilities
Fictional dictators
Fictional English people
Fictional hypnotists and indoctrinators
Fictional illeists
Fictional mass murderers
Fictional necromancers
Fictional offspring of rape
Fictional patricides
Fictional terrorists
Fictional torturers
Harry Potter characters
Literary characters introduced in 1997
Male film villains
Male literary villains
Orphan characters in film
Orphan characters in literature
Psychopathy in fiction
Film supervillains
| true |
[
"is a Japanese video game developer and publisher, mainly known for their Tenchu and Way of the Samurai series. Acquire was founded on December 6, 1994, and in 1998 developed Tenchu: Stealth Assassins for the PlayStation, which turned into a franchise. The developer pushed for a more sandox approach to the level design, which found its way in other Acquire titles like Way of the Samurai and Shinobido: Way of the Ninja. In 2011, the company was acquired by GungHo Online Entertainment. Acquire co-developed Octopath Traveler with Square Enix, releasing in 2018. Acquire was chosen as development partner for the game based on their affinity with pixel-art and prior work on the What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord? series. Acquire developed Katana Kami: A Way of the Samurai Story, which released in 2020, following the cancellation of a fifth Way of the Samurai entry.\n\nGames developed\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nOfficial website \nOfficial website (in English)\n\nVideo game publishers\nGungHo Online Entertainment\nVideo game companies of Japan\nVideo game development companies\nVideo game companies established in 1994\nJapanese companies established in 1994\nSoftware companies based in Tokyo",
"Hugh Culber is a fictional character in the Star Trek franchise. He appears in the television series Star Trek: Discovery. Culber is portrayed by actor Wilson Cruz. Originally introduced as a recurring character in the first season of the series, Culber is promoted to a main character in the second season. Within Discoverys narrative, he is the ship's senior medical doctor and partner to its engineer Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp).\n\nConcept and casting \nIn July 2016, Wilson Cruz was cast as Culber, Paul Stamets' love interest, after having previously worked with Anthony Rapp on the musical Rent. Cruz was revealed to be reprising his role of Culber for the series' second season, as well as being promoted to the main cast, in July 23, 2018. The character's appearance in the third season was confirmed in October 2019, a year before its premiere. In October 2020, just prior to the third season's premiere, Culber's role in the fourth season was confirmed, when it was announced that the series was renewed.\n\nCharacterization \nAbout the character in an interview about being promoted to the main cast in season two with Anthony Pascale, Cruz said: \"this season for this couple [Culber and Stamets] is really about deepening them individually. We get to find out a lot about Culber–who he is, what he wants, what makes him tick, what his ambitions are–separate and apart from this relationship. But we get to learn a lot about this relationship and it is put through the test.\" Cruz also confirmed that the reason he was only in the recurring cast because he was in 13 Reasons Why at the same time.\n\nCulber is one-half of the first openly gay regular character couple in a Star Trek television series. On creating the first gay couple in a Star Trek series, Cruz said he \"felt like it was a long time coming ... What's great about the way that the show is handling it is it's not like we are having a special two-hour episode about gay relationships in space. It's not that. They just happen to be in love, and they happen to be coworkers. And, I hope by the time we get to [the 23rd] century that it will be exactly like that.\" In the season three episode \"Su'Kal\", Culber appears a member of the Bajoran alien race briefly in a hologram simulation.\n\nTalking toward the fourth season, Michelle Paradise noted that Stamets and Culber would form a \"really lovely\" family unit with the non-binary Adira Tal, who was introduced in the previous season, and their transgender boyfriend Gray.\n\nFictional biography\nIn the first season, Culber treats Ash Tyler, who is struggling to contain his alternate Klingon personality, but is later killed by his patient. In the second season, Stamets travels into the mycelium to find a copy of Culber, and brings him back to life.\n\nReception \nVarious publications described how the character set a precedent in both the Star Trek world and generally in media as a depiction of a gay character. In 2019, Hugh Culber was ranked the 10th-sexiest Star Trek character by Syfy.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nFictional characters displaced in time\nFictional LGBT characters in television\nFictional lieutenant commanders\nFictional scientists\nLGBT Star Trek characters\nStar Trek: Discovery characters\nTelevision characters introduced in 2017\nTime travelers\nStarfleet medical personnel"
] |
[
"Lord Voldemort",
"Character development",
"in what way was his character developed?",
"Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter"
] |
C_e1dce95f334b494096220fc2c296fae0_1
|
what was his character like?
| 2 |
what was Lord Voldemort's character like?
|
Lord Voldemort
|
In a 2001 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter (the protagonist of the novels), and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry--he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And--so--but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since." In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death." Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. Some literary analysts have considered possible meanings in the name: Philip Nel states that Voldemort is derived from the French for "flight of death", and in a 2002 paper, Nilsen and Nilsen suggest that readers get a "creepy feeling" from the name Voldemort, because of the French word "mort" ("death") within it and that word's association with cognate English words derived from the Latin mors. CANNOTANSWER
|
he was a wizard ...
|
Lord Voldemort (, in the films) is a sobriquet for Tom Marvolo Riddle, a character and the main antagonist in J. K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels. The character first appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was published in 1997, and returned either in person or in flashbacks in each book and its film adaptation in the series except the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which he is only mentioned.
Voldemort is the archenemy of Harry Potter, who according to a prophecy has "the power to vanquish the Dark Lord". He attempts to murder the boy, but instead kills his parents, Lily and James Potter, and leaves Harry with a scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. Nearly every witch or wizard dares not utter his name and refers to him instead with such monikers as "You-Know-Who", "He Who Must Not Be Named", or "the Dark Lord". Voldemort's obsession with blood purity signifies his aim to rid the wizarding world of Muggle (non-magical) heritage and to conquer both worlds, Muggle and wizarding, to achieve pure-blood dominance. Through his mother's family, he is the last descendant of the wizard Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is the leader of the Death Eaters, a group of evil wizards and witches dedicated to ridding the Wizarding World of Muggles and establishing Voldemort as its supreme ruler.
Character development
In a 1999 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter, and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry—he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And—so—but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since."
In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death."
Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. The name Voldemort is derived from the French vol de mort which means "flight of death" or "theft of death".
Appearances
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Voldemort makes his debut in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In this story, Rowling introduces him as the Dark Lord who tried to kill Harry Potter because the boy was prophesied to destroy him. Voldemort murdered Harry's parents, James and Lily, but as a result of his mother's love and willingness to sacrifice herself for him, baby Harry survived when Voldemort tried to murder him with a Killing Curse. Voldemort was disembodied, and Harry was left with a mysterious, lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead as a result.
In the book, Voldemort unsuccessfully tries to regain his dissolved body by stealing the titular Philosopher's Stone. To achieve his objective, Voldemort uses Professor Quirrell's aid by latching onto the back of the latter's head. However, at the climax of the book, Harry manages to prevent Voldemort from stealing the stone.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
In the second instalment, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling introduces Tom Marvolo Riddle, a manifestation of a teenage Voldemort that resides inside a magical diary found by Ginny Weasley. In this book, Ginny is written as a shy girl with a crush on Harry. Feeling anxious and lonely, she begins to write into the diary and shares her deepest fears with the sympathetic Tom. However, at the climax of the story, when Riddle rearranges the letters in his name to write "I am Lord Voldemort", Riddle is revealed as a magical manifestation of the boy who would later grow up to become the Dark Lord. Riddle states he has grown strong on Ginny's fears and eventually possesses her, using her as a pawn to unlock the Chamber of Secrets, whence a basilisk is set free and petrifies several Hogwarts students. Harry defeats the manifestation of Riddle from the diary and the basilisk. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Albus Dumbledore reveals to Harry that the diary was one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Voldemort does not appear in the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, either in person or as a magical manifestation. He is, however, heard when Harry passes out from the harsh effects of a Dementor. Towards the end of the story, Sybill Trelawney, the Divination professor, makes a rare genuine prophecy: "The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight, the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever before. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master..." Though it is initially implied that the prophecy refers to Sirius Black, the book's ostensible antagonist, the servant is eventually revealed to be Peter Pettigrew, who, for the 12 years since Voldemort's fall, has been disguised as Ron's pet rat, Scabbers.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
In the fourth instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort reappears at the start and the climax of the book. Rowling lets many seemingly unrelated plot elements fall into order. It is revealed that Voldemort's minion Barty Crouch Jr, disguised as Hogwarts professor Mad-Eye Moody, has manipulated the events of the Triwizard Tournament in Harry's favour. Voldemort's goal is to teleport Harry under Dumbledore's watch as a reluctant participant to the Little Hangleton graveyard, where the Riddle family is buried. Harry is captured and, after Pettigrew uses Harry's blood to fulfil a gruesome magical ritual, Voldemort regains his body and is restored to his full power. For the first time in the series, Rowling describes his appearance: "tall and skeletally thin", with a face "whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils". Rowling writes that his "hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat's, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness". It was revealed that, while in Albania, Pettigrew had captured the Ministry of Magic official Bertha Jorkins, who was tortured for information about the Ministry. After they learned that Barty Crouch Jr, a faithful Death Eater, had been smuggled out of Azkaban and was privately confined at his father's house, they killed her. With Pettigrew's help, Voldemort creates a small, rudimentary body, corporeal enough to travel and perform magic, and formulated a plan to restore his own body by capturing Harry. A portion of the plan had been overheard by Frank Bryce, a gardener, whom Voldemort then killed. Voldemort then completes his plan and returns to life in his full body as a result of the ritual with Harry's blood. He then summons his Death Eaters to the graveyard to witness the death of Harry as he challenges Harry to a duel. However, when Voldemort duels Harry, their wands become magically locked together due to the twin Phoenix feather cores of the wands. Because of a phenomenon later revealed as Priori Incantatem, ghost-like manifestations of Voldemort's most recent victims (including Harry's parents) then appear and distract Voldemort, allowing Harry just enough time to escape via Portkey with the body of fellow-student, Cedric Diggory, who was murdered by Pettigrew on Voldemort's orders.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Voldemort appears at the climax of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, having again plotted against Harry. In this book, Harry goes through extreme emotional stress, and according to Rowling, it was necessary to prove that Harry is emotionally vulnerable and thus human, in contrast to his nemesis Voldemort, who is emotionally invulnerable and thus inhuman: "[Harry is] a very human hero, and this is, obviously, there's a contrast, between him, as a very human hero, and Voldemort, who has deliberately dehumanised himself. […] and Harry, therefore, did have to reach a point where he did almost break down." In this book, Voldemort makes liberal use of the Ministry of Magic's refusal to believe that he has returned. Voldemort engineers a plot to free Bellatrix Lestrange and other Death Eaters from Azkaban and then embarks on a scheme to retrieve the full record of a prophecy stored in the Department of Mysteries regarding Harry and himself. He sends a group of Death Eaters to retrieve the prophecy, where the Order of the Phoenix meets them. All but Bellatrix are captured, and Voldemort engages in a ferocious duel with Dumbledore. When Dumbledore gets the upper hand, Voldemort attempts to possess Harry but finds that he cannot; Harry is too full of that which Voldemort finds incomprehensible, and which he detests as weakness: love. Sensing that Dumbledore could win, Voldemort disapparates, but not before the Minister for Magic sees him in person, making his return to life public knowledge in the next book.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Voldemort does not appear in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, although his presence and actions are felt: he once again declares war, and begins to rise to power once more. He murders Amelia Bones of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and begins to target members of the Order of the Phoenix, including Emmeline Vance.
Rowling uses several chapters as exposition to establish Voldemort's backstory. In a series of flashbacks, using the pensieve as a plot device, she reveals that Voldemort was the son of the witch Merope Gaunt and a Muggle called Tom Riddle. Riddle abandoned Merope before their child's birth, soon after which Merope died. After living in an orphanage, young Riddle met Dumbledore, who told him he was a wizard and arranged for him to attend Hogwarts. Riddle was outwardly a model student, but was in reality a psychopath who took sadistic pleasure in using his powers to harm and control people. He eventually murdered his father and grandparents as revenge for abandoning him. The book also discusses Riddle's hatred of Muggles, his obsession with Horcruxes, and his desire to split his soul to achieve immortality. Rowling stated Voldemort's conception under the influence of a love potion symbolises the coercive circumstances under which he was brought into the world.
In the main plot of the book, Voldemort's next step is to engineer an assault on Hogwarts, and to kill Dumbledore. This is accomplished by Draco Malfoy, who arranges transportation of Death Eaters into Hogwarts by a pair of Vanishing Cabinets, which bypass the extensive protective enchantments placed around the school. The cabinets allow Voldemort's Death Eaters to enter Hogwarts, where battle commences and Dumbledore is cornered. Hogwarts professor (and re-doubled agent) Severus Snape uses the Killing Curse against Dumbledore when Draco could not force himself to do so.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort furthers his quest for ultimate power. He disposes of the Minister for Magic and replaces him with Pius Thicknesse, who is under the Imperius Curse. Establishing a totalitarian police state, he has Muggle-borns persecuted and arrested for "stealing magic" from the "pure blood" wizards. After failing to kill Harry with Draco's father Lucius Malfoy's borrowed wand (to avoid the effect of Priori Incantatem), he goes on a murderous search for the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand ever created, seeing it as the weapon he needs to overcome Harry's wand and make him truly invincible. He goes on a quest that takes him out of the country to Gregorovitch's wand shop, where he kills the old wandmaker. His journey also takes him to Nurmengard, the prison where Gellert Grindelwald is kept, and he kills Grindelwald as well. He finally locates the Elder Wand and steals it from Dumbledore's tomb.
Later, Voldemort finds out that Harry and his friends are hunting and destroying his Horcruxes when informed of their heist on the Lestranges' vault at Gringotts in search for Hufflepuff's Cup. After offering the occupants of Hogwarts mercy if they give up Harry, he assembles a large army and launches an invasion of the castle, where Harry is searching for Ravenclaw's Diadem. Voldemort orders his pet snake Nagini to execute Snape, believing it would make him the true master of the Elder Wand, since Snape killed Dumbledore. He then calls an hour's armistice, in exchange for Harry. When Harry willingly walks into Voldemort's camp in the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort strikes him down with the Elder Wand. However, the use of Harry's blood to resurrect Voldemort's body proves to be a major setback: while Harry's blood runs in Voldemort's veins, Harry cannot be killed as his mother's protection lives on now in Voldemort too. Instead, Voldemort destroys the part of his own soul that resides in Harry's body. Voldemort forces Rubeus Hagrid to carry Harry's apparently lifeless body back to the castle as a trophy, sparking another battle during which Nagini, his last Horcrux, is destroyed by Neville Longbottom. The battle then moves into the Great Hall, where Voldemort fights Minerva McGonagall, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Horace Slughorn simultaneously. Harry then reveals himself and explains to Voldemort that Draco became the true master of the Elder Wand when he disarmed Dumbledore; Harry, in turn, won the wand's allegiance when he took Draco's wand. Refusing to believe this, Voldemort casts the Killing Curse with the Elder Wand while Harry uses a Disarming Charm with Draco's, but the Elder Wand refuses to kill its master and the spell rebounds on Voldemort who, with all of his Horcruxes destroyed, finally dies. His body is laid in a different chamber from all the others who died battling him.
Rowling stated that after his death, Voldemort is forced to exist in the stunted infant-like form that Harry sees in the King's Cross-like Limbo after his confrontation with Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest. Rowling also mentioned that, despite his extreme fear of death, he cannot become a ghost.
Appearances in other material
In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, it is revealed that Bellatrix gave birth to Voldemort's daughter Delphi in Malfoy Manor before the Battle of Hogwarts. Twenty-two years later, Delphi poses as Cedric's cousin and manipulates Harry and Ginny's second son Albus Severus Potter and his friend, Draco and Astoria Greengrass's son Scorpius Malfoy, into stealing a prototype Time Turner with which she hopes to resurrect her father. Using the Time Turner, Scorpius accidentally creates an alternative timeline where Voldemort killed Harry at the battle and now rules the wizarding world. In an attempt to achieve this future, Delphi travels to Godric's Hollow on the night Voldemort killed Harry's parents, hoping to avert the prophecy that led to her father's downfall. After receiving a message from his son, Harry, together with Ron, Hermione and Draco (who by now has become friends with Harry after they join forces to save their respective sons) transfigures himself into Voldemort so that he can distract Delphi, allowing them to overpower her. The real Voldemort kills Harry's parents as prophesied, and Delphi is sent to Azkaban.
Portrayals within films
Voldemort appears in every Harry Potter film, with the exception of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Several actors have portrayed him in his varying incarnations and ages.
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Voldemort's manifestation is as a face on the back of Quirrell's head, an effect achieved by computer generated imagery. Ian Hart, the actor who played Quirrell in the same film, provided the voice and the facial source for this character. Voldemort also appears in a scene in the Forbidden Forest where he is seen drinking the blood of a unicorn. As Voldemort's face was altered enough by CG work, and Hart's voice was affected enough, there was no confusion by Hart's playing of the two roles. In that film, he was also shown in a flashback sequence when he arrived at the home of James and Lily Potter to kill them. In this scene Voldemort is played by Richard Bremmer, though his face is never seen. His next appearance would be in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as the 16-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle (portrayed by Christian Coulson).
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort is initially only heard, possessing the scratchy, weak voice heard in the first film. By the film's climax, however, he appears in his physical form for the first time, played by Ralph Fiennes. As in the book, Voldemort is shown clad in dark black robes, being tall and emaciated, with no hair and yellowish teeth; his wand has a white tone and the handle appears to be made of bone; his finger nails are long and pale blue while his toe nails appear to be infected. Unlike in the book, his pupils are not cat-like and his eyes are blue, because producer David Heyman felt that his evil would not be able to be seen and would not fill the audience with fear (his eyes do briefly take on a snake-like appearance when he opens them after turning human, but quickly turn normal). As in the book, the film version of Voldemort has snake-like slit nostrils with the flesh of his nose significantly pressed back. Ralph Fiennes' nose was not covered in makeup on the set, but was digitally removed in post-production. In this first appearance, Voldemort also has a forked tongue, but this element was removed for the subsequent films.
Fiennes stated that he had two weeks to shoot the climactic showdown scene where he is gloating over a terrified Harry, played by Daniel Radcliffe. Fiennes said with a chuckle: "I have no doubt children will be afraid of me now if they weren't before." In preparation, he read the novel Goblet of Fire, but jokingly conceded: "I was only interested in my scene, and I had to go through thousands and thousands of other scenes which I did, dutifully, until I got to my scene and I read it many, many, many, many, many times and that was my research." Fiennes reprised his role as Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2.
Fiennes's nephew, Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, portrayed Tom Riddle as a child in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. By the time filming arrived Christian Coulson was 29, and not considered suitable to return as the adolescent Riddle. Thomas James Longley was originally scheduled to take over the role, but last minute renegotiations saw Frank Dillane cast instead.
Characterisation
Outward appearance
After he regains his body in the fourth book, Rowling describes Voldemort as having pale skin, a chalk-white, skull-like face, snake-like slits for nostrils, red eyes and cat-like slits for pupils, a skeletally thin body and long, thin hands with unnaturally long fingers. As mentioned in the first chapter of the seventh book, he also has no hair or lips. Earlier in life, as seen through flashbacks contained in the second and sixth books, Tom Marvolo Riddle was handsome and tall with pale skin, jet black hair, and dark brown eyes. He could charm many people with his looks. The transformation into his monstrous state is believed to have been the result of creating his Horcruxes and becoming less human as he continued to divide his soul. In the films, Voldemort's eyes are blue with round pupils.
Personality
Rowling described Voldemort as "the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years". She elaborated that he is a "raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering", and whose only ambition in life is to become all-powerful and immortal. He is also a sadist who hurts and murders people—especially Muggles—for his own amusement. He has no conscience, feels no remorse or empathy, and does not recognise the worth and humanity of anybody except himself.
He feels no need for human companionship or friendship, and cannot comprehend love or affection for another. He believes he is superior to everyone around him, to the point that he frequently refers to himself in the third person as "Lord Voldemort". Rowling also stated that Voldemort is "incredibly power hungry. Racist, really", and that if Voldemort were to look into the Mirror of Erised, in which one sees one's greatest desire, he would see "Himself, all-powerful and eternal. That's what he wants."
Rowling also stated that Voldemort's conception by influence of Amortentia—a love potion administered by his mother, a witch named Merope Gaunt, to the Muggle Tom Riddle—is related to his inability to understand love; it is "a symbolic way of showing that he came from a loveless union—but of course, everything would have changed if Merope had survived and raised him herself and loved him. The enchantment under which Tom Riddle fathered Voldemort is important because it shows coercion, and there can't be many more prejudicial ways to enter the world than as the result of such a union".
Like most archetypical villains, Voldemort's arrogance leads to his downfall. He also suffers from a pathological fear of death, which he regards as a shameful and ignominious human weakness. According to Rowling, his Boggart would be his own corpse. Rowling also said that the difference between Harry and Voldemort is that Harry accepts mortality, and thus Harry is, in the end, stronger than his nemesis.
Magical abilities and skills
Rowling establishes Voldemort throughout the series as an extremely powerful, intelligent, and ruthless dark wizard, described as the greatest and most powerful Dark Wizard of all time. He is known as one of the greatest Legilimens in the world and a highly accomplished Occlumens; he can read minds and shield his own from penetration. Besides Dumbledore, he is also the only wizard ever known to be able to apparate silently. Voldemort was also said to fear one wizard alone, Dumbledore.
In the final book, Voldemort flies unsupported, something that amazes those who see it. Voldemort, like his ancestral family, the Gaunts, is a Parselmouth, meaning he can converse with serpents. This skill was inherited from his ancestor, Salazar Slytherin. The Gaunt family speak Parseltongue among themselves. This highly unusual trait may be preserved through inbreeding, a practice employed by the Gaunt Family to maintain their blood's purity. When Voldemort attempts to kill Harry his ability to speak Parseltongue is passed to Harry through the small bit of the former's soul. After that bit of soul is destroyed, Harry loses this ability. In a flashback in the sixth novel, Voldemort boasts to Dumbledore during a job interview that he has "pushed the boundaries of magic farther than they had ever before". Dumbledore states that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is more extensive than any wizard alive and that even Dumbledore's most powerful protective spells and charms would likely be insufficient if Voldemort returned to full power. Dumbledore also said that Voldemort was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen. Although Voldemort remains highly accomplished and prodigious in skill, he is enormously lacking and highly inept in the most powerful magic, love. This inability to love and trust others proves to be Voldemort's greatest weakness in the series. Voldemort initially voices scepticism that his own magic might not be the most powerful, but upon returning to power, he admits to his Death Eaters that he had overlooked the ancient and powerful magic which Lily Potter invoked and that would protect Harry from harm.
On her website, Rowling wrote that Voldemort's wand is made of yew, whose sap is poisonous and which symbolises death. It forms a deliberate contrast to Harry's wand, which is made of holly, which she chose because holly is alleged to repel evil.
Rowling establishes in the books that Voldemort is magically connected to Harry via Harry's forehead scar. He disembodies himself when his Killing Curse targeting Harry rebounds on him, leaving the scar on Harry's forehead. In the books, and to a lesser extent in the films, Harry's scar serves as an indicator of Voldemort's presence: it burns when the Dark Lord is near or when Voldemort is feeling murderous or exultant. According to Rowling, by attacking Harry when he was a baby Voldemort gave him "tools [that] no other wizard possessed—the scar and the ability it conferred, a magical window into Voldemort's mind".
Family
Notes: The names 'Thomas' and 'Mary' Riddle are taken from the films. The Potter Family is not shown.
Riddle family
The Riddle family, an old gentry family, consisted of Thomas and Mary Riddle and their son, Tom Riddle, Esq. They owned over half of the valley that the town of Little Hangleton lay in, and Thomas was the most prominent inhabitant of that town. They lived in a large house with fine gardens, but were unpopular amongst the local residents due to their snobbish attitudes. Tom, the only child of Thomas and Mary, was known as a playboy, his main interests being womanizing and horse-riding.
Rowling revealed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that young Merope Gaunt fell in love with Riddle, peering at him through the windows and bushes at every opportunity. Merope's brother Morfin disapproved of his sister's affection for Tom and hexed him as he rode by, covering him in hives. This breach of wizarding law, and the ensuing violent struggle with Ministry of Magic officials, led to Marvolo and Morfin being imprisoned in Azkaban. As surmised by Dumbledore, once Merope was alone and no longer dominated by her father, she could make her move for Tom. She offered him a drink laced with a love potion, and he became infatuated with her; they soon eloped and, within three months of the marriage, Merope became pregnant. Merope decided to stop giving Tom the love potion, having come to the belief such enchantment of a man was tantamount to slavery. She also revealed her witch status to Tom, believing either that he had fallen in love with her on his own or he would at least stay for their unborn child. She was wrong, and Tom quickly left his pregnant wife and went home to his parents, claiming to have been "hoodwinked" and tricked into marrying Merope. Tom Marvolo Riddle, their son, was born on 31 December 1926 Merope died in childbirth, leaving the baby to grow up alone in an orphanage.
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it is revealed that Voldemort murdered his father and grandparents, leaving himself the only surviving member of the Riddle family.
House of Gaunt
Most of the exposition of the House of Gaunts background occurs in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, through the medium of Dumbledore's Pensieve. The Gaunts were once a powerful and influential family, and are the last known descendants of Salazar Slytherin. However, a vein of mental instability and violence within the family, reinforced through cousin marriages intended to preserve the pureblood line, had reduced them to poverty and squalor, as shown in the Pensieve's "memory" that Harry and Dumbledore witnessed. Like Salazar Slytherin, the Gaunts spoke Parseltongue. At the time of the story, the Gaunts' only material asset is a ramshackle shanty in Little Hangleton, that stood in a thicket in a valley opposite the Riddle House. Like the Riddles, the Gaunts were also unpopular with the local residents, with a reputation for being vulgar and intimidating.
Marvolo Gaunt was the last family patriarch. He was sentenced to a short term in Azkaban for his and his son's assault upon a Ministry of Magic official; this affected his health and he died soon after returning home. His signet ring passed to his son, Morfin Gaunt, who was convicted of assaulting a Muggle, and later died in Azkaban, convicted this time as a party to the murder of Tom Riddle Jr. and Riddle's parents.
Dumbledore discovers the real culprit while visiting Morfin in Azkaban to gather information about Voldemort. After Dumbledore successfully extracts Morfin's memory of his encounter with his nephew, he tries to use the evidence to have Morfin released, but Morfin dies before the decision can be made. The House of Gaunt ended with Morfin's death.
Merope Gaunt () was the daughter of Marvolo, and sister of Morfin. Harry's first impression of her was that she looked "like the most defeated person he had ever seen". She married Tom Riddle Jr and became pregnant within three months of the wedding. It is suggested that she tricked her husband into loving her by using a love potion, but when she became pregnant, she chose to stop administering the potion. It is implied that Merope had grown tired of living the lie and thought that her husband might have grown to love her, or that he might have stayed for the sake of their unborn child; however, he left her. Desperate, Merope wandered through the streets of London. The only thing she had left was the heavy gold locket that had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin, one of her family's most treasured items, which she sold for a small amount. When she was due to give birth, she stumbled into a Muggle orphanage, where she gave birth to her only son. She died within the next hour.
Gormlaith Gaunt was a 17th-century descendant of Salazar Slytherin, and like Salazar, a Parselmouth. Her wand was that which once belonged to Salazar himself. Educated at Hogwarts, Gormlaith lived in Ireland in the early 1600s. In about 1608, Gormlaith killed her estranged unnamed sister, and her sister's husband, William Sayre (a descendant of the Irish witch Morrigan), and kidnapped their five-year-old daughter, Isolt Sayre, raising her in the neighbouring valley of Coomcallee, or "Hag's Glen", because she felt that her parents' association with Muggles would badly influence Isolt. Fanatical and cruel, Gormlaith used Dark magic to isolate Isolt from others, forbade her a wand, and did not allow her to attend Hogwarts as she herself had, disgusted that it was now filled with Muggle-borns. After twelve years with Gormlaith, Isolt stole Gormlaith's wand and fled to the Colonies and settled in Massachusetts, where she founded the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When Gormlaith learned of the school, she pursued her niece in Massachusetts, where she was killed by Isolt's friend, William the Pukwudgie, with a venom-tipped arrow.
The Gaunts, including Voldemort, are distantly related to Harry because they are descendants of the Peverell brothers.
Reception
Several people have drawn a parallel between Voldemort and some politicians. Rowling has said that Voldemort was "a sort of" Adolf Hitler, and that there is some parallel with Nazism in her books. Rowling also compared Voldemort to Joseph Stalin. Alfonso Cuarón, director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban compared Voldemort to George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, who he said "...have selfish interests and are very much in love with power. Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people." Andrew Slack and the Harry Potter Alliance compare media consolidation in the US to Voldemort's regime in Deathly Hallows and its control over the Daily Prophet and other media saying that "Once Voldemort took over every form of media in the wizarding world, Dumbledore's Army and the Order of the Phoenix formed an independent media movement called 'Potterwatch'. Now the HP Alliance and Wizard Rock have come together to fight for a Potterwatch movement in the real world to fight back against Big VoldeMedia from further pushing out local and foreign news, minority representation, and the right to a Free Press." Julia Turner of Slate Magazine also noted similarities between the events of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the War on Terror. She said that Voldemort commits acts of terrorism such as destroying bridges, murdering innocents, and forcing children to kill their elders.
Voldemort has also been compared with other characters within fiction, for example Sauron from The Lord of the Rings; they are, during the time when the main plot takes place, seeking to recover their lost power after having been considered dead or at least no longer a threat, and are also so feared that they are sometimes unnamed.
IGN listed Voldemort as their seventh favourite Harry Potter character, calling him "truly frightening".
In popular culture
Several campaigns have used Voldemort to compare his evil to the influence of politicians, large media and corporations. "Lord Voldemort" is a nickname sometimes used for Peter Mandelson. Voldemort is also a recurring theme among wizard rock bands. Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock! is the second album from Harry and the Potters, and the character is mentioned in songs such as "The Dark Lord Lament" and "Flesh, Blood, and Bone".
Voldemort has been parodied in various venues. In The Simpsons 13th season's premiere, "Treehouse of Horror XII", Montgomery Burns appears as "Lord Montymort". A parody of Voldemort appears in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy as "Lord Moldybutt", an enemy of Nigel Planter (a parody of Harry). Voldemort also appears in the Potter Puppet Pals sketches by Neil Cicierega. One of the episodes including him was the seventeenth most viewed video of all time as of 2008 and the winner for "Best Comedy" of the year 2007 at YouTube.
"Continuing the Magic", an article in the 21 May 2007 issue of Time, includes mock book covers designed by author Lon Tweeten, laced with pop culture references. One of them, the "Dark Lord of the Dance", shows Voldemort teaming up with Harry on Broadway. In the MAD Magazine parodies of the films, the character is called Lord Druckermort, a backwards reference to the magazine's longtime caricaturist Mort Drucker. In Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1969, a young Tom Marvolo Riddle (introduced as "Tom", whose middle name is a "marvel" and last name is a "conundrum") appears, and becomes the new avatar of Oliver Haddo at the story's conclusion. In A Very Potter Musical, Voldemort is played by actor Joe Walker.
In a segment celebrating British children's literature at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London, an inflatable Voldemort appeared alongside other villains, The Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Cruella de Vil, to haunt children's dreams, before the arrival of a group of over thirty Mary Poppins who descended with their umbrellas to defeat them.
During the 2016 United States elections, Daniel Radcliffe was asked by Sky News journalist Craig Dillon if he would compare Donald Trump to Lord Voldemort; Radcliffe responded, "Trump is worse".
Voldemort appears in The Lego Batman Movie as one of the prisoners in the Phantom Zone that Joker recruits to take over Gotham City. Though Ralph Fiennes is featured in this movie as the voice of the British butler Alfred Pennyworth, he does not reprise his role as Voldemort. Instead, Voldemort is voiced by Eddie Izzard.
Outside of the Harry Potter video games, Voldemort is also a playable character in Lego Dimensions, with archive audio of Fiennes' portrayal in the films used for his voiceovers.
A 2018 Italian fan film titled Voldemort: Origins of the Heir depicts the story of Tom Riddle's rise to power.
Voldemort appears in Space Jam: A New Legacy, in the crowd for the game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad.
An upcoming French fan-made short-film titled The House of Gaunt - Lord Voldemort Origins explores the origin story of Voldemort and The Gaunt family.
Notes
References
External links
Lord Voldemort at Harry Potter Lexicon
Fictional characters with disfigurements
Fictional characters with immortality
Fictional characters with spirit possession or body swapping abilities
Fictional dictators
Fictional English people
Fictional hypnotists and indoctrinators
Fictional illeists
Fictional mass murderers
Fictional necromancers
Fictional offspring of rape
Fictional patricides
Fictional terrorists
Fictional torturers
Harry Potter characters
Literary characters introduced in 1997
Male film villains
Male literary villains
Orphan characters in film
Orphan characters in literature
Psychopathy in fiction
Film supervillains
| true |
[
"Hugh Culber is a fictional character in the Star Trek franchise. He appears in the television series Star Trek: Discovery. Culber is portrayed by actor Wilson Cruz. Originally introduced as a recurring character in the first season of the series, Culber is promoted to a main character in the second season. Within Discoverys narrative, he is the ship's senior medical doctor and partner to its engineer Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp).\n\nConcept and casting \nIn July 2016, Wilson Cruz was cast as Culber, Paul Stamets' love interest, after having previously worked with Anthony Rapp on the musical Rent. Cruz was revealed to be reprising his role of Culber for the series' second season, as well as being promoted to the main cast, in July 23, 2018. The character's appearance in the third season was confirmed in October 2019, a year before its premiere. In October 2020, just prior to the third season's premiere, Culber's role in the fourth season was confirmed, when it was announced that the series was renewed.\n\nCharacterization \nAbout the character in an interview about being promoted to the main cast in season two with Anthony Pascale, Cruz said: \"this season for this couple [Culber and Stamets] is really about deepening them individually. We get to find out a lot about Culber–who he is, what he wants, what makes him tick, what his ambitions are–separate and apart from this relationship. But we get to learn a lot about this relationship and it is put through the test.\" Cruz also confirmed that the reason he was only in the recurring cast because he was in 13 Reasons Why at the same time.\n\nCulber is one-half of the first openly gay regular character couple in a Star Trek television series. On creating the first gay couple in a Star Trek series, Cruz said he \"felt like it was a long time coming ... What's great about the way that the show is handling it is it's not like we are having a special two-hour episode about gay relationships in space. It's not that. They just happen to be in love, and they happen to be coworkers. And, I hope by the time we get to [the 23rd] century that it will be exactly like that.\" In the season three episode \"Su'Kal\", Culber appears a member of the Bajoran alien race briefly in a hologram simulation.\n\nTalking toward the fourth season, Michelle Paradise noted that Stamets and Culber would form a \"really lovely\" family unit with the non-binary Adira Tal, who was introduced in the previous season, and their transgender boyfriend Gray.\n\nFictional biography\nIn the first season, Culber treats Ash Tyler, who is struggling to contain his alternate Klingon personality, but is later killed by his patient. In the second season, Stamets travels into the mycelium to find a copy of Culber, and brings him back to life.\n\nReception \nVarious publications described how the character set a precedent in both the Star Trek world and generally in media as a depiction of a gay character. In 2019, Hugh Culber was ranked the 10th-sexiest Star Trek character by Syfy.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nFictional characters displaced in time\nFictional LGBT characters in television\nFictional lieutenant commanders\nFictional scientists\nLGBT Star Trek characters\nStar Trek: Discovery characters\nTelevision characters introduced in 2017\nTime travelers\nStarfleet medical personnel",
"Fofão is a fictional character from the Brazilian children's TV series Balão Mágico and TV Fofão. He was portrayed by the Brazilian actor and humorist Orival Pessini. He became a hit amongst Brazilian kids in the early 1980s, having his own TV show, discs, dolls and many licensed products.\n\nThe character's first appearance was in the morning children's television program Balão Mágico in 1983, as a supporting character to the children's musical group. However, the character became very popular, arriving to become one of the icons of Brazilian media during the 80s, mainly due to high sales of a plush toy based on the character. After the end of the original program in 1986, the character won a solo program in the same year, broadcast by Rede Bandeirantes until 1989, called TV Fofão (with a return between 1994–1996). The last appearance of the character on television was in 1998 by the channel CNT Gazeta.\n\nIn 1989 the character starred in a theatrical movie titled . The character has also led to several other licensed products and sold numerous albums of children's songs during the 80s and 90s.\n\nCreation\nAccording to Orival Pessini, Fofão was created at the request of TV Globo director José Bonifácio de Oliveira Sobrinho (a.k.a. Boni), who needed a child character for the program Balão Mágico, which would debut in a few months, and any character that was created would go on the air. Orival had never worked with children and had no idea what to create, imagined various possibilities, such as a dog, a pig, a clown, a teddy bear, an extraterrestrial or a human being, after thinking he decided to mix all the imagined alternatives, resulting in Fofão. Other inspiration that Orival had to create Fofão was Steven Spielberg's E.T, which according him \"was very ugly, with disgusting appearance and his head looked like as inverted foot, but he had a great heart and was very charismatic\", so decided to create a similar character.\n\nControversy and legacy\nAt the end of the 1980s an urban legend about the plush toy of the character became quite controversial. The legend claimed that the doll had a knife inside of its body, supposedly meant for evil rituals and killing children. The doll has even been compared to Chucky from Child's Play horror film series. In recent years the mystery was partially confirmed when it was revealed that the doll had a pointed hard plastic object as its spinal chord.\n\nIn 2016, Fofão was again popular on the internet, when a group of street performers titled “Carreta Furacão” became a popular meme in Brazil. The group features several amateur artists, dressed up as fictional characters of popular culture, like Popeye, Captain America, Mickey Mouse, Fofão himself, and a generic clown. Videos of the artists dancing and performing acrobatics on the streets were popular on YouTube and became a meme on the internet. Fofão was considered the most prominent character to be used by the artists like a leader; however, Orival Pessini made a protest against the group, prohibiting the use of his character in political affairs. Some changes were then made to the generic character from the group.\n\nOn October 14, 2016, Fofão creator Orival Pessini died of spleen cancer, aged 72.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\nTelevision characters introduced in 1983\nFictional Brazilian people\nBrazilian clowns\nChildren's music\nStuffed toys\nFictional hybrid life forms\nFictional extraterrestrial characters"
] |
[
"Lord Voldemort",
"Character development",
"in what way was his character developed?",
"Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter",
"what was his character like?",
"he was a wizard ..."
] |
C_e1dce95f334b494096220fc2c296fae0_1
|
did he use magic?
| 3 |
did Lord Voldemort's character use magic?
|
Lord Voldemort
|
In a 2001 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter (the protagonist of the novels), and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry--he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And--so--but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since." In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death." Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. Some literary analysts have considered possible meanings in the name: Philip Nel states that Voldemort is derived from the French for "flight of death", and in a 2002 paper, Nilsen and Nilsen suggest that readers get a "creepy feeling" from the name Voldemort, because of the French word "mort" ("death") within it and that word's association with cognate English words derived from the Latin mors. CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
Lord Voldemort (, in the films) is a sobriquet for Tom Marvolo Riddle, a character and the main antagonist in J. K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels. The character first appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was published in 1997, and returned either in person or in flashbacks in each book and its film adaptation in the series except the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which he is only mentioned.
Voldemort is the archenemy of Harry Potter, who according to a prophecy has "the power to vanquish the Dark Lord". He attempts to murder the boy, but instead kills his parents, Lily and James Potter, and leaves Harry with a scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. Nearly every witch or wizard dares not utter his name and refers to him instead with such monikers as "You-Know-Who", "He Who Must Not Be Named", or "the Dark Lord". Voldemort's obsession with blood purity signifies his aim to rid the wizarding world of Muggle (non-magical) heritage and to conquer both worlds, Muggle and wizarding, to achieve pure-blood dominance. Through his mother's family, he is the last descendant of the wizard Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is the leader of the Death Eaters, a group of evil wizards and witches dedicated to ridding the Wizarding World of Muggles and establishing Voldemort as its supreme ruler.
Character development
In a 1999 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter, and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry—he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And—so—but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since."
In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death."
Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. The name Voldemort is derived from the French vol de mort which means "flight of death" or "theft of death".
Appearances
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Voldemort makes his debut in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In this story, Rowling introduces him as the Dark Lord who tried to kill Harry Potter because the boy was prophesied to destroy him. Voldemort murdered Harry's parents, James and Lily, but as a result of his mother's love and willingness to sacrifice herself for him, baby Harry survived when Voldemort tried to murder him with a Killing Curse. Voldemort was disembodied, and Harry was left with a mysterious, lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead as a result.
In the book, Voldemort unsuccessfully tries to regain his dissolved body by stealing the titular Philosopher's Stone. To achieve his objective, Voldemort uses Professor Quirrell's aid by latching onto the back of the latter's head. However, at the climax of the book, Harry manages to prevent Voldemort from stealing the stone.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
In the second instalment, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling introduces Tom Marvolo Riddle, a manifestation of a teenage Voldemort that resides inside a magical diary found by Ginny Weasley. In this book, Ginny is written as a shy girl with a crush on Harry. Feeling anxious and lonely, she begins to write into the diary and shares her deepest fears with the sympathetic Tom. However, at the climax of the story, when Riddle rearranges the letters in his name to write "I am Lord Voldemort", Riddle is revealed as a magical manifestation of the boy who would later grow up to become the Dark Lord. Riddle states he has grown strong on Ginny's fears and eventually possesses her, using her as a pawn to unlock the Chamber of Secrets, whence a basilisk is set free and petrifies several Hogwarts students. Harry defeats the manifestation of Riddle from the diary and the basilisk. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Albus Dumbledore reveals to Harry that the diary was one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Voldemort does not appear in the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, either in person or as a magical manifestation. He is, however, heard when Harry passes out from the harsh effects of a Dementor. Towards the end of the story, Sybill Trelawney, the Divination professor, makes a rare genuine prophecy: "The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight, the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever before. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master..." Though it is initially implied that the prophecy refers to Sirius Black, the book's ostensible antagonist, the servant is eventually revealed to be Peter Pettigrew, who, for the 12 years since Voldemort's fall, has been disguised as Ron's pet rat, Scabbers.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
In the fourth instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort reappears at the start and the climax of the book. Rowling lets many seemingly unrelated plot elements fall into order. It is revealed that Voldemort's minion Barty Crouch Jr, disguised as Hogwarts professor Mad-Eye Moody, has manipulated the events of the Triwizard Tournament in Harry's favour. Voldemort's goal is to teleport Harry under Dumbledore's watch as a reluctant participant to the Little Hangleton graveyard, where the Riddle family is buried. Harry is captured and, after Pettigrew uses Harry's blood to fulfil a gruesome magical ritual, Voldemort regains his body and is restored to his full power. For the first time in the series, Rowling describes his appearance: "tall and skeletally thin", with a face "whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils". Rowling writes that his "hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat's, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness". It was revealed that, while in Albania, Pettigrew had captured the Ministry of Magic official Bertha Jorkins, who was tortured for information about the Ministry. After they learned that Barty Crouch Jr, a faithful Death Eater, had been smuggled out of Azkaban and was privately confined at his father's house, they killed her. With Pettigrew's help, Voldemort creates a small, rudimentary body, corporeal enough to travel and perform magic, and formulated a plan to restore his own body by capturing Harry. A portion of the plan had been overheard by Frank Bryce, a gardener, whom Voldemort then killed. Voldemort then completes his plan and returns to life in his full body as a result of the ritual with Harry's blood. He then summons his Death Eaters to the graveyard to witness the death of Harry as he challenges Harry to a duel. However, when Voldemort duels Harry, their wands become magically locked together due to the twin Phoenix feather cores of the wands. Because of a phenomenon later revealed as Priori Incantatem, ghost-like manifestations of Voldemort's most recent victims (including Harry's parents) then appear and distract Voldemort, allowing Harry just enough time to escape via Portkey with the body of fellow-student, Cedric Diggory, who was murdered by Pettigrew on Voldemort's orders.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Voldemort appears at the climax of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, having again plotted against Harry. In this book, Harry goes through extreme emotional stress, and according to Rowling, it was necessary to prove that Harry is emotionally vulnerable and thus human, in contrast to his nemesis Voldemort, who is emotionally invulnerable and thus inhuman: "[Harry is] a very human hero, and this is, obviously, there's a contrast, between him, as a very human hero, and Voldemort, who has deliberately dehumanised himself. […] and Harry, therefore, did have to reach a point where he did almost break down." In this book, Voldemort makes liberal use of the Ministry of Magic's refusal to believe that he has returned. Voldemort engineers a plot to free Bellatrix Lestrange and other Death Eaters from Azkaban and then embarks on a scheme to retrieve the full record of a prophecy stored in the Department of Mysteries regarding Harry and himself. He sends a group of Death Eaters to retrieve the prophecy, where the Order of the Phoenix meets them. All but Bellatrix are captured, and Voldemort engages in a ferocious duel with Dumbledore. When Dumbledore gets the upper hand, Voldemort attempts to possess Harry but finds that he cannot; Harry is too full of that which Voldemort finds incomprehensible, and which he detests as weakness: love. Sensing that Dumbledore could win, Voldemort disapparates, but not before the Minister for Magic sees him in person, making his return to life public knowledge in the next book.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Voldemort does not appear in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, although his presence and actions are felt: he once again declares war, and begins to rise to power once more. He murders Amelia Bones of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and begins to target members of the Order of the Phoenix, including Emmeline Vance.
Rowling uses several chapters as exposition to establish Voldemort's backstory. In a series of flashbacks, using the pensieve as a plot device, she reveals that Voldemort was the son of the witch Merope Gaunt and a Muggle called Tom Riddle. Riddle abandoned Merope before their child's birth, soon after which Merope died. After living in an orphanage, young Riddle met Dumbledore, who told him he was a wizard and arranged for him to attend Hogwarts. Riddle was outwardly a model student, but was in reality a psychopath who took sadistic pleasure in using his powers to harm and control people. He eventually murdered his father and grandparents as revenge for abandoning him. The book also discusses Riddle's hatred of Muggles, his obsession with Horcruxes, and his desire to split his soul to achieve immortality. Rowling stated Voldemort's conception under the influence of a love potion symbolises the coercive circumstances under which he was brought into the world.
In the main plot of the book, Voldemort's next step is to engineer an assault on Hogwarts, and to kill Dumbledore. This is accomplished by Draco Malfoy, who arranges transportation of Death Eaters into Hogwarts by a pair of Vanishing Cabinets, which bypass the extensive protective enchantments placed around the school. The cabinets allow Voldemort's Death Eaters to enter Hogwarts, where battle commences and Dumbledore is cornered. Hogwarts professor (and re-doubled agent) Severus Snape uses the Killing Curse against Dumbledore when Draco could not force himself to do so.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort furthers his quest for ultimate power. He disposes of the Minister for Magic and replaces him with Pius Thicknesse, who is under the Imperius Curse. Establishing a totalitarian police state, he has Muggle-borns persecuted and arrested for "stealing magic" from the "pure blood" wizards. After failing to kill Harry with Draco's father Lucius Malfoy's borrowed wand (to avoid the effect of Priori Incantatem), he goes on a murderous search for the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand ever created, seeing it as the weapon he needs to overcome Harry's wand and make him truly invincible. He goes on a quest that takes him out of the country to Gregorovitch's wand shop, where he kills the old wandmaker. His journey also takes him to Nurmengard, the prison where Gellert Grindelwald is kept, and he kills Grindelwald as well. He finally locates the Elder Wand and steals it from Dumbledore's tomb.
Later, Voldemort finds out that Harry and his friends are hunting and destroying his Horcruxes when informed of their heist on the Lestranges' vault at Gringotts in search for Hufflepuff's Cup. After offering the occupants of Hogwarts mercy if they give up Harry, he assembles a large army and launches an invasion of the castle, where Harry is searching for Ravenclaw's Diadem. Voldemort orders his pet snake Nagini to execute Snape, believing it would make him the true master of the Elder Wand, since Snape killed Dumbledore. He then calls an hour's armistice, in exchange for Harry. When Harry willingly walks into Voldemort's camp in the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort strikes him down with the Elder Wand. However, the use of Harry's blood to resurrect Voldemort's body proves to be a major setback: while Harry's blood runs in Voldemort's veins, Harry cannot be killed as his mother's protection lives on now in Voldemort too. Instead, Voldemort destroys the part of his own soul that resides in Harry's body. Voldemort forces Rubeus Hagrid to carry Harry's apparently lifeless body back to the castle as a trophy, sparking another battle during which Nagini, his last Horcrux, is destroyed by Neville Longbottom. The battle then moves into the Great Hall, where Voldemort fights Minerva McGonagall, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Horace Slughorn simultaneously. Harry then reveals himself and explains to Voldemort that Draco became the true master of the Elder Wand when he disarmed Dumbledore; Harry, in turn, won the wand's allegiance when he took Draco's wand. Refusing to believe this, Voldemort casts the Killing Curse with the Elder Wand while Harry uses a Disarming Charm with Draco's, but the Elder Wand refuses to kill its master and the spell rebounds on Voldemort who, with all of his Horcruxes destroyed, finally dies. His body is laid in a different chamber from all the others who died battling him.
Rowling stated that after his death, Voldemort is forced to exist in the stunted infant-like form that Harry sees in the King's Cross-like Limbo after his confrontation with Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest. Rowling also mentioned that, despite his extreme fear of death, he cannot become a ghost.
Appearances in other material
In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, it is revealed that Bellatrix gave birth to Voldemort's daughter Delphi in Malfoy Manor before the Battle of Hogwarts. Twenty-two years later, Delphi poses as Cedric's cousin and manipulates Harry and Ginny's second son Albus Severus Potter and his friend, Draco and Astoria Greengrass's son Scorpius Malfoy, into stealing a prototype Time Turner with which she hopes to resurrect her father. Using the Time Turner, Scorpius accidentally creates an alternative timeline where Voldemort killed Harry at the battle and now rules the wizarding world. In an attempt to achieve this future, Delphi travels to Godric's Hollow on the night Voldemort killed Harry's parents, hoping to avert the prophecy that led to her father's downfall. After receiving a message from his son, Harry, together with Ron, Hermione and Draco (who by now has become friends with Harry after they join forces to save their respective sons) transfigures himself into Voldemort so that he can distract Delphi, allowing them to overpower her. The real Voldemort kills Harry's parents as prophesied, and Delphi is sent to Azkaban.
Portrayals within films
Voldemort appears in every Harry Potter film, with the exception of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Several actors have portrayed him in his varying incarnations and ages.
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Voldemort's manifestation is as a face on the back of Quirrell's head, an effect achieved by computer generated imagery. Ian Hart, the actor who played Quirrell in the same film, provided the voice and the facial source for this character. Voldemort also appears in a scene in the Forbidden Forest where he is seen drinking the blood of a unicorn. As Voldemort's face was altered enough by CG work, and Hart's voice was affected enough, there was no confusion by Hart's playing of the two roles. In that film, he was also shown in a flashback sequence when he arrived at the home of James and Lily Potter to kill them. In this scene Voldemort is played by Richard Bremmer, though his face is never seen. His next appearance would be in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as the 16-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle (portrayed by Christian Coulson).
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort is initially only heard, possessing the scratchy, weak voice heard in the first film. By the film's climax, however, he appears in his physical form for the first time, played by Ralph Fiennes. As in the book, Voldemort is shown clad in dark black robes, being tall and emaciated, with no hair and yellowish teeth; his wand has a white tone and the handle appears to be made of bone; his finger nails are long and pale blue while his toe nails appear to be infected. Unlike in the book, his pupils are not cat-like and his eyes are blue, because producer David Heyman felt that his evil would not be able to be seen and would not fill the audience with fear (his eyes do briefly take on a snake-like appearance when he opens them after turning human, but quickly turn normal). As in the book, the film version of Voldemort has snake-like slit nostrils with the flesh of his nose significantly pressed back. Ralph Fiennes' nose was not covered in makeup on the set, but was digitally removed in post-production. In this first appearance, Voldemort also has a forked tongue, but this element was removed for the subsequent films.
Fiennes stated that he had two weeks to shoot the climactic showdown scene where he is gloating over a terrified Harry, played by Daniel Radcliffe. Fiennes said with a chuckle: "I have no doubt children will be afraid of me now if they weren't before." In preparation, he read the novel Goblet of Fire, but jokingly conceded: "I was only interested in my scene, and I had to go through thousands and thousands of other scenes which I did, dutifully, until I got to my scene and I read it many, many, many, many, many times and that was my research." Fiennes reprised his role as Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2.
Fiennes's nephew, Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, portrayed Tom Riddle as a child in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. By the time filming arrived Christian Coulson was 29, and not considered suitable to return as the adolescent Riddle. Thomas James Longley was originally scheduled to take over the role, but last minute renegotiations saw Frank Dillane cast instead.
Characterisation
Outward appearance
After he regains his body in the fourth book, Rowling describes Voldemort as having pale skin, a chalk-white, skull-like face, snake-like slits for nostrils, red eyes and cat-like slits for pupils, a skeletally thin body and long, thin hands with unnaturally long fingers. As mentioned in the first chapter of the seventh book, he also has no hair or lips. Earlier in life, as seen through flashbacks contained in the second and sixth books, Tom Marvolo Riddle was handsome and tall with pale skin, jet black hair, and dark brown eyes. He could charm many people with his looks. The transformation into his monstrous state is believed to have been the result of creating his Horcruxes and becoming less human as he continued to divide his soul. In the films, Voldemort's eyes are blue with round pupils.
Personality
Rowling described Voldemort as "the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years". She elaborated that he is a "raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering", and whose only ambition in life is to become all-powerful and immortal. He is also a sadist who hurts and murders people—especially Muggles—for his own amusement. He has no conscience, feels no remorse or empathy, and does not recognise the worth and humanity of anybody except himself.
He feels no need for human companionship or friendship, and cannot comprehend love or affection for another. He believes he is superior to everyone around him, to the point that he frequently refers to himself in the third person as "Lord Voldemort". Rowling also stated that Voldemort is "incredibly power hungry. Racist, really", and that if Voldemort were to look into the Mirror of Erised, in which one sees one's greatest desire, he would see "Himself, all-powerful and eternal. That's what he wants."
Rowling also stated that Voldemort's conception by influence of Amortentia—a love potion administered by his mother, a witch named Merope Gaunt, to the Muggle Tom Riddle—is related to his inability to understand love; it is "a symbolic way of showing that he came from a loveless union—but of course, everything would have changed if Merope had survived and raised him herself and loved him. The enchantment under which Tom Riddle fathered Voldemort is important because it shows coercion, and there can't be many more prejudicial ways to enter the world than as the result of such a union".
Like most archetypical villains, Voldemort's arrogance leads to his downfall. He also suffers from a pathological fear of death, which he regards as a shameful and ignominious human weakness. According to Rowling, his Boggart would be his own corpse. Rowling also said that the difference between Harry and Voldemort is that Harry accepts mortality, and thus Harry is, in the end, stronger than his nemesis.
Magical abilities and skills
Rowling establishes Voldemort throughout the series as an extremely powerful, intelligent, and ruthless dark wizard, described as the greatest and most powerful Dark Wizard of all time. He is known as one of the greatest Legilimens in the world and a highly accomplished Occlumens; he can read minds and shield his own from penetration. Besides Dumbledore, he is also the only wizard ever known to be able to apparate silently. Voldemort was also said to fear one wizard alone, Dumbledore.
In the final book, Voldemort flies unsupported, something that amazes those who see it. Voldemort, like his ancestral family, the Gaunts, is a Parselmouth, meaning he can converse with serpents. This skill was inherited from his ancestor, Salazar Slytherin. The Gaunt family speak Parseltongue among themselves. This highly unusual trait may be preserved through inbreeding, a practice employed by the Gaunt Family to maintain their blood's purity. When Voldemort attempts to kill Harry his ability to speak Parseltongue is passed to Harry through the small bit of the former's soul. After that bit of soul is destroyed, Harry loses this ability. In a flashback in the sixth novel, Voldemort boasts to Dumbledore during a job interview that he has "pushed the boundaries of magic farther than they had ever before". Dumbledore states that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is more extensive than any wizard alive and that even Dumbledore's most powerful protective spells and charms would likely be insufficient if Voldemort returned to full power. Dumbledore also said that Voldemort was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen. Although Voldemort remains highly accomplished and prodigious in skill, he is enormously lacking and highly inept in the most powerful magic, love. This inability to love and trust others proves to be Voldemort's greatest weakness in the series. Voldemort initially voices scepticism that his own magic might not be the most powerful, but upon returning to power, he admits to his Death Eaters that he had overlooked the ancient and powerful magic which Lily Potter invoked and that would protect Harry from harm.
On her website, Rowling wrote that Voldemort's wand is made of yew, whose sap is poisonous and which symbolises death. It forms a deliberate contrast to Harry's wand, which is made of holly, which she chose because holly is alleged to repel evil.
Rowling establishes in the books that Voldemort is magically connected to Harry via Harry's forehead scar. He disembodies himself when his Killing Curse targeting Harry rebounds on him, leaving the scar on Harry's forehead. In the books, and to a lesser extent in the films, Harry's scar serves as an indicator of Voldemort's presence: it burns when the Dark Lord is near or when Voldemort is feeling murderous or exultant. According to Rowling, by attacking Harry when he was a baby Voldemort gave him "tools [that] no other wizard possessed—the scar and the ability it conferred, a magical window into Voldemort's mind".
Family
Notes: The names 'Thomas' and 'Mary' Riddle are taken from the films. The Potter Family is not shown.
Riddle family
The Riddle family, an old gentry family, consisted of Thomas and Mary Riddle and their son, Tom Riddle, Esq. They owned over half of the valley that the town of Little Hangleton lay in, and Thomas was the most prominent inhabitant of that town. They lived in a large house with fine gardens, but were unpopular amongst the local residents due to their snobbish attitudes. Tom, the only child of Thomas and Mary, was known as a playboy, his main interests being womanizing and horse-riding.
Rowling revealed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that young Merope Gaunt fell in love with Riddle, peering at him through the windows and bushes at every opportunity. Merope's brother Morfin disapproved of his sister's affection for Tom and hexed him as he rode by, covering him in hives. This breach of wizarding law, and the ensuing violent struggle with Ministry of Magic officials, led to Marvolo and Morfin being imprisoned in Azkaban. As surmised by Dumbledore, once Merope was alone and no longer dominated by her father, she could make her move for Tom. She offered him a drink laced with a love potion, and he became infatuated with her; they soon eloped and, within three months of the marriage, Merope became pregnant. Merope decided to stop giving Tom the love potion, having come to the belief such enchantment of a man was tantamount to slavery. She also revealed her witch status to Tom, believing either that he had fallen in love with her on his own or he would at least stay for their unborn child. She was wrong, and Tom quickly left his pregnant wife and went home to his parents, claiming to have been "hoodwinked" and tricked into marrying Merope. Tom Marvolo Riddle, their son, was born on 31 December 1926 Merope died in childbirth, leaving the baby to grow up alone in an orphanage.
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it is revealed that Voldemort murdered his father and grandparents, leaving himself the only surviving member of the Riddle family.
House of Gaunt
Most of the exposition of the House of Gaunts background occurs in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, through the medium of Dumbledore's Pensieve. The Gaunts were once a powerful and influential family, and are the last known descendants of Salazar Slytherin. However, a vein of mental instability and violence within the family, reinforced through cousin marriages intended to preserve the pureblood line, had reduced them to poverty and squalor, as shown in the Pensieve's "memory" that Harry and Dumbledore witnessed. Like Salazar Slytherin, the Gaunts spoke Parseltongue. At the time of the story, the Gaunts' only material asset is a ramshackle shanty in Little Hangleton, that stood in a thicket in a valley opposite the Riddle House. Like the Riddles, the Gaunts were also unpopular with the local residents, with a reputation for being vulgar and intimidating.
Marvolo Gaunt was the last family patriarch. He was sentenced to a short term in Azkaban for his and his son's assault upon a Ministry of Magic official; this affected his health and he died soon after returning home. His signet ring passed to his son, Morfin Gaunt, who was convicted of assaulting a Muggle, and later died in Azkaban, convicted this time as a party to the murder of Tom Riddle Jr. and Riddle's parents.
Dumbledore discovers the real culprit while visiting Morfin in Azkaban to gather information about Voldemort. After Dumbledore successfully extracts Morfin's memory of his encounter with his nephew, he tries to use the evidence to have Morfin released, but Morfin dies before the decision can be made. The House of Gaunt ended with Morfin's death.
Merope Gaunt () was the daughter of Marvolo, and sister of Morfin. Harry's first impression of her was that she looked "like the most defeated person he had ever seen". She married Tom Riddle Jr and became pregnant within three months of the wedding. It is suggested that she tricked her husband into loving her by using a love potion, but when she became pregnant, she chose to stop administering the potion. It is implied that Merope had grown tired of living the lie and thought that her husband might have grown to love her, or that he might have stayed for the sake of their unborn child; however, he left her. Desperate, Merope wandered through the streets of London. The only thing she had left was the heavy gold locket that had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin, one of her family's most treasured items, which she sold for a small amount. When she was due to give birth, she stumbled into a Muggle orphanage, where she gave birth to her only son. She died within the next hour.
Gormlaith Gaunt was a 17th-century descendant of Salazar Slytherin, and like Salazar, a Parselmouth. Her wand was that which once belonged to Salazar himself. Educated at Hogwarts, Gormlaith lived in Ireland in the early 1600s. In about 1608, Gormlaith killed her estranged unnamed sister, and her sister's husband, William Sayre (a descendant of the Irish witch Morrigan), and kidnapped their five-year-old daughter, Isolt Sayre, raising her in the neighbouring valley of Coomcallee, or "Hag's Glen", because she felt that her parents' association with Muggles would badly influence Isolt. Fanatical and cruel, Gormlaith used Dark magic to isolate Isolt from others, forbade her a wand, and did not allow her to attend Hogwarts as she herself had, disgusted that it was now filled with Muggle-borns. After twelve years with Gormlaith, Isolt stole Gormlaith's wand and fled to the Colonies and settled in Massachusetts, where she founded the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When Gormlaith learned of the school, she pursued her niece in Massachusetts, where she was killed by Isolt's friend, William the Pukwudgie, with a venom-tipped arrow.
The Gaunts, including Voldemort, are distantly related to Harry because they are descendants of the Peverell brothers.
Reception
Several people have drawn a parallel between Voldemort and some politicians. Rowling has said that Voldemort was "a sort of" Adolf Hitler, and that there is some parallel with Nazism in her books. Rowling also compared Voldemort to Joseph Stalin. Alfonso Cuarón, director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban compared Voldemort to George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, who he said "...have selfish interests and are very much in love with power. Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people." Andrew Slack and the Harry Potter Alliance compare media consolidation in the US to Voldemort's regime in Deathly Hallows and its control over the Daily Prophet and other media saying that "Once Voldemort took over every form of media in the wizarding world, Dumbledore's Army and the Order of the Phoenix formed an independent media movement called 'Potterwatch'. Now the HP Alliance and Wizard Rock have come together to fight for a Potterwatch movement in the real world to fight back against Big VoldeMedia from further pushing out local and foreign news, minority representation, and the right to a Free Press." Julia Turner of Slate Magazine also noted similarities between the events of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the War on Terror. She said that Voldemort commits acts of terrorism such as destroying bridges, murdering innocents, and forcing children to kill their elders.
Voldemort has also been compared with other characters within fiction, for example Sauron from The Lord of the Rings; they are, during the time when the main plot takes place, seeking to recover their lost power after having been considered dead or at least no longer a threat, and are also so feared that they are sometimes unnamed.
IGN listed Voldemort as their seventh favourite Harry Potter character, calling him "truly frightening".
In popular culture
Several campaigns have used Voldemort to compare his evil to the influence of politicians, large media and corporations. "Lord Voldemort" is a nickname sometimes used for Peter Mandelson. Voldemort is also a recurring theme among wizard rock bands. Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock! is the second album from Harry and the Potters, and the character is mentioned in songs such as "The Dark Lord Lament" and "Flesh, Blood, and Bone".
Voldemort has been parodied in various venues. In The Simpsons 13th season's premiere, "Treehouse of Horror XII", Montgomery Burns appears as "Lord Montymort". A parody of Voldemort appears in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy as "Lord Moldybutt", an enemy of Nigel Planter (a parody of Harry). Voldemort also appears in the Potter Puppet Pals sketches by Neil Cicierega. One of the episodes including him was the seventeenth most viewed video of all time as of 2008 and the winner for "Best Comedy" of the year 2007 at YouTube.
"Continuing the Magic", an article in the 21 May 2007 issue of Time, includes mock book covers designed by author Lon Tweeten, laced with pop culture references. One of them, the "Dark Lord of the Dance", shows Voldemort teaming up with Harry on Broadway. In the MAD Magazine parodies of the films, the character is called Lord Druckermort, a backwards reference to the magazine's longtime caricaturist Mort Drucker. In Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1969, a young Tom Marvolo Riddle (introduced as "Tom", whose middle name is a "marvel" and last name is a "conundrum") appears, and becomes the new avatar of Oliver Haddo at the story's conclusion. In A Very Potter Musical, Voldemort is played by actor Joe Walker.
In a segment celebrating British children's literature at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London, an inflatable Voldemort appeared alongside other villains, The Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Cruella de Vil, to haunt children's dreams, before the arrival of a group of over thirty Mary Poppins who descended with their umbrellas to defeat them.
During the 2016 United States elections, Daniel Radcliffe was asked by Sky News journalist Craig Dillon if he would compare Donald Trump to Lord Voldemort; Radcliffe responded, "Trump is worse".
Voldemort appears in The Lego Batman Movie as one of the prisoners in the Phantom Zone that Joker recruits to take over Gotham City. Though Ralph Fiennes is featured in this movie as the voice of the British butler Alfred Pennyworth, he does not reprise his role as Voldemort. Instead, Voldemort is voiced by Eddie Izzard.
Outside of the Harry Potter video games, Voldemort is also a playable character in Lego Dimensions, with archive audio of Fiennes' portrayal in the films used for his voiceovers.
A 2018 Italian fan film titled Voldemort: Origins of the Heir depicts the story of Tom Riddle's rise to power.
Voldemort appears in Space Jam: A New Legacy, in the crowd for the game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad.
An upcoming French fan-made short-film titled The House of Gaunt - Lord Voldemort Origins explores the origin story of Voldemort and The Gaunt family.
Notes
References
External links
Lord Voldemort at Harry Potter Lexicon
Fictional characters with disfigurements
Fictional characters with immortality
Fictional characters with spirit possession or body swapping abilities
Fictional dictators
Fictional English people
Fictional hypnotists and indoctrinators
Fictional illeists
Fictional mass murderers
Fictional necromancers
Fictional offspring of rape
Fictional patricides
Fictional terrorists
Fictional torturers
Harry Potter characters
Literary characters introduced in 1997
Male film villains
Male literary villains
Orphan characters in film
Orphan characters in literature
Psychopathy in fiction
Film supervillains
| false |
[
"Odie Payne (August 27, 1926 – March 1, 1989) was an American Chicago blues drummer. Over his long career he worked with a range of musicians, including Sonny Boy Williamson II, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Eddie Taylor, Little Johnny Jones, Tampa Red, Otis Rush, Yank Rachell, Sleepy John Estes, Little Brother Montgomery, Memphis Minnie, Magic Sam, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Guy.\n\nBiography\nBorn Odie Payne Jr. in Chicago, Illinois, he was interested in music from an early age and did not limit himself to a narrow musical genre. He studied music in high school. He was drafted into the U.S. Army, and after his discharge he graduated from the Roy C. Knapp School of Percussion. By 1949, Payne was playing with the pianist Little Johnny Jones, before meeting Tampa Red and joining his band. The association lasted for around three years. In 1952, Payne and Jones joined Elmore James's band, the Broomdusters.\n\nPayne played with the Broomdusters for another three years, but his recording association with them lasted until 1959. In total he recorded thirty-one singles with them, including \"The Sky Is Crying\". By this time Payne had become a favored session musician, playing through that decade with Otis Rush, Magic Sam, and Buddy Guy for Cobra Records. He also played on various records released by Chess Records, including Chuck Berry's hit singles \"Nadine\", \"You Never Can Tell\", \"Promised Land\" and \"No Particular Place to Go\" (1964) All appeared on the Berry's 1982 compilation album, The Great Twenty-Eight.\n\nNoted for his use of the cowbell, bass drum pedal, and extended cymbal and drum rolls, Payne's double-shuffle drumming technique was much copied and was used by Fred Below and Sam Lay. The technique called for Payne to use both hands to produce the shuffle effect.\n\nPayne appears to have had a songwriting credit for the song \"Say Man,\" which was recorded by both Bo Diddley and Willie Mabon, although Payne's name did not appear on every version published.\n\nPayne died in Chicago on March 1, 1989, at the age of 62.\n\nDiscography\n\nWith Magic Sam\nWest Side Soul (Delmark, 1967)\nBlack Magic (Delmark, 1968)\nMagic Touch (Black Magic, 1966 [1983]) with Shakey Jake\nThe Magic Sam Legacy (Delmark, 1967/68 [1989])\nRockin' Wild in Chicago (Delmark, 1963/64/66/68 [2002])\n\nSee also\nList of Chicago blues musicians\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nPayne images at Earwigmusic.com\n\n1926 births\n1989 deaths\nAmerican blues drummers\nAmerican session musicians\nRhythm and blues drummers\nChicago blues musicians\nMusicians from Chicago\n20th-century American musicians\nBlues musicians from Illinois",
"Paul LePaul (August 2, 1900 – June 8, 1958) was an American magician.\n\nCareer\n\nLePaul was born Paul Shields Braden in Olney, Illinois. He grew up in St. Louis, Mo. He started his professional career around 1920, doing a manipulative act entirely with playing cards. He adopted the name LePaul around 1927. LePaul made his New York City vaudeville appearance in July 1928 at the Fifth Avenue Theater. He worked in vaudeville and later appeared in the top night clubs and hotels. He also played on Broadway in Earl Carrolls' Vanities.\n\nHe was a technical adviser for movies, including Eternally Yours (film) starring David Niven (1939). In a brief cameo he is seen doing card flourishes. In that same year, Paul LePaul was also credited for being part of the miscellaneous crew on the film Miracles for Sale.\n\nDuring World War II, he performed tours with the USO.\n\n\"LePaul is one of the greatest manipulative magicians ever to practice the art of pleasant deception.\" - John Mulholland\n\nLePaul was one of the first to use to the split-fan production in a professional act. At one time he also used the glass vanish under the newspaper, and may have been the first magician to use this as a stage trick. He appears to have started the Card to Wallet fad among magicians which was based on the routine he published as \"Cards in Sealed Envelope\" in the late 1940s. (Wallets did not become a common item until after the 1950s).\n\nPublished works\n The Card Magic of LePaul (1949)\n The Card Magic of Brother John Hamman (written and edited by LePaul) (1959)\n\nSee also\n List of magicians\n Card magic\n Sleight of hand\n Card flourish\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n Paul LePaul who's who\n Paul LePaul exhibition\n Table of contents for the Magic of Paul LePaul\n \n IMDB Bio information on Paul LePaul\n\n1900 births\n1958 deaths\nAmerican magicians\nCard magic\nCoin magic\nSleight of hand\nVaudeville performers\nPeople from Olney, Illinois"
] |
[
"Lord Voldemort",
"Character development",
"in what way was his character developed?",
"Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter",
"what was his character like?",
"he was a wizard ...",
"did he use magic?",
"I don't know."
] |
C_e1dce95f334b494096220fc2c296fae0_1
|
did he ever cause any harm to Harry Potter?
| 4 |
Did Lord Voldemort's character ever cause any harm to Harry Potter?
|
Lord Voldemort
|
In a 2001 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter (the protagonist of the novels), and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry--he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And--so--but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since." In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death." Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. Some literary analysts have considered possible meanings in the name: Philip Nel states that Voldemort is derived from the French for "flight of death", and in a 2002 paper, Nilsen and Nilsen suggest that readers get a "creepy feeling" from the name Voldemort, because of the French word "mort" ("death") within it and that word's association with cognate English words derived from the Latin mors. CANNOTANSWER
|
Harry has to find out, before we find out. And--so--but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry.
|
Lord Voldemort (, in the films) is a sobriquet for Tom Marvolo Riddle, a character and the main antagonist in J. K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels. The character first appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was published in 1997, and returned either in person or in flashbacks in each book and its film adaptation in the series except the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which he is only mentioned.
Voldemort is the archenemy of Harry Potter, who according to a prophecy has "the power to vanquish the Dark Lord". He attempts to murder the boy, but instead kills his parents, Lily and James Potter, and leaves Harry with a scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. Nearly every witch or wizard dares not utter his name and refers to him instead with such monikers as "You-Know-Who", "He Who Must Not Be Named", or "the Dark Lord". Voldemort's obsession with blood purity signifies his aim to rid the wizarding world of Muggle (non-magical) heritage and to conquer both worlds, Muggle and wizarding, to achieve pure-blood dominance. Through his mother's family, he is the last descendant of the wizard Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is the leader of the Death Eaters, a group of evil wizards and witches dedicated to ridding the Wizarding World of Muggles and establishing Voldemort as its supreme ruler.
Character development
In a 1999 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter, and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry—he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And—so—but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since."
In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death."
Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. The name Voldemort is derived from the French vol de mort which means "flight of death" or "theft of death".
Appearances
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Voldemort makes his debut in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In this story, Rowling introduces him as the Dark Lord who tried to kill Harry Potter because the boy was prophesied to destroy him. Voldemort murdered Harry's parents, James and Lily, but as a result of his mother's love and willingness to sacrifice herself for him, baby Harry survived when Voldemort tried to murder him with a Killing Curse. Voldemort was disembodied, and Harry was left with a mysterious, lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead as a result.
In the book, Voldemort unsuccessfully tries to regain his dissolved body by stealing the titular Philosopher's Stone. To achieve his objective, Voldemort uses Professor Quirrell's aid by latching onto the back of the latter's head. However, at the climax of the book, Harry manages to prevent Voldemort from stealing the stone.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
In the second instalment, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling introduces Tom Marvolo Riddle, a manifestation of a teenage Voldemort that resides inside a magical diary found by Ginny Weasley. In this book, Ginny is written as a shy girl with a crush on Harry. Feeling anxious and lonely, she begins to write into the diary and shares her deepest fears with the sympathetic Tom. However, at the climax of the story, when Riddle rearranges the letters in his name to write "I am Lord Voldemort", Riddle is revealed as a magical manifestation of the boy who would later grow up to become the Dark Lord. Riddle states he has grown strong on Ginny's fears and eventually possesses her, using her as a pawn to unlock the Chamber of Secrets, whence a basilisk is set free and petrifies several Hogwarts students. Harry defeats the manifestation of Riddle from the diary and the basilisk. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Albus Dumbledore reveals to Harry that the diary was one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Voldemort does not appear in the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, either in person or as a magical manifestation. He is, however, heard when Harry passes out from the harsh effects of a Dementor. Towards the end of the story, Sybill Trelawney, the Divination professor, makes a rare genuine prophecy: "The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight, the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever before. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master..." Though it is initially implied that the prophecy refers to Sirius Black, the book's ostensible antagonist, the servant is eventually revealed to be Peter Pettigrew, who, for the 12 years since Voldemort's fall, has been disguised as Ron's pet rat, Scabbers.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
In the fourth instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort reappears at the start and the climax of the book. Rowling lets many seemingly unrelated plot elements fall into order. It is revealed that Voldemort's minion Barty Crouch Jr, disguised as Hogwarts professor Mad-Eye Moody, has manipulated the events of the Triwizard Tournament in Harry's favour. Voldemort's goal is to teleport Harry under Dumbledore's watch as a reluctant participant to the Little Hangleton graveyard, where the Riddle family is buried. Harry is captured and, after Pettigrew uses Harry's blood to fulfil a gruesome magical ritual, Voldemort regains his body and is restored to his full power. For the first time in the series, Rowling describes his appearance: "tall and skeletally thin", with a face "whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils". Rowling writes that his "hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat's, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness". It was revealed that, while in Albania, Pettigrew had captured the Ministry of Magic official Bertha Jorkins, who was tortured for information about the Ministry. After they learned that Barty Crouch Jr, a faithful Death Eater, had been smuggled out of Azkaban and was privately confined at his father's house, they killed her. With Pettigrew's help, Voldemort creates a small, rudimentary body, corporeal enough to travel and perform magic, and formulated a plan to restore his own body by capturing Harry. A portion of the plan had been overheard by Frank Bryce, a gardener, whom Voldemort then killed. Voldemort then completes his plan and returns to life in his full body as a result of the ritual with Harry's blood. He then summons his Death Eaters to the graveyard to witness the death of Harry as he challenges Harry to a duel. However, when Voldemort duels Harry, their wands become magically locked together due to the twin Phoenix feather cores of the wands. Because of a phenomenon later revealed as Priori Incantatem, ghost-like manifestations of Voldemort's most recent victims (including Harry's parents) then appear and distract Voldemort, allowing Harry just enough time to escape via Portkey with the body of fellow-student, Cedric Diggory, who was murdered by Pettigrew on Voldemort's orders.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Voldemort appears at the climax of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, having again plotted against Harry. In this book, Harry goes through extreme emotional stress, and according to Rowling, it was necessary to prove that Harry is emotionally vulnerable and thus human, in contrast to his nemesis Voldemort, who is emotionally invulnerable and thus inhuman: "[Harry is] a very human hero, and this is, obviously, there's a contrast, between him, as a very human hero, and Voldemort, who has deliberately dehumanised himself. […] and Harry, therefore, did have to reach a point where he did almost break down." In this book, Voldemort makes liberal use of the Ministry of Magic's refusal to believe that he has returned. Voldemort engineers a plot to free Bellatrix Lestrange and other Death Eaters from Azkaban and then embarks on a scheme to retrieve the full record of a prophecy stored in the Department of Mysteries regarding Harry and himself. He sends a group of Death Eaters to retrieve the prophecy, where the Order of the Phoenix meets them. All but Bellatrix are captured, and Voldemort engages in a ferocious duel with Dumbledore. When Dumbledore gets the upper hand, Voldemort attempts to possess Harry but finds that he cannot; Harry is too full of that which Voldemort finds incomprehensible, and which he detests as weakness: love. Sensing that Dumbledore could win, Voldemort disapparates, but not before the Minister for Magic sees him in person, making his return to life public knowledge in the next book.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Voldemort does not appear in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, although his presence and actions are felt: he once again declares war, and begins to rise to power once more. He murders Amelia Bones of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and begins to target members of the Order of the Phoenix, including Emmeline Vance.
Rowling uses several chapters as exposition to establish Voldemort's backstory. In a series of flashbacks, using the pensieve as a plot device, she reveals that Voldemort was the son of the witch Merope Gaunt and a Muggle called Tom Riddle. Riddle abandoned Merope before their child's birth, soon after which Merope died. After living in an orphanage, young Riddle met Dumbledore, who told him he was a wizard and arranged for him to attend Hogwarts. Riddle was outwardly a model student, but was in reality a psychopath who took sadistic pleasure in using his powers to harm and control people. He eventually murdered his father and grandparents as revenge for abandoning him. The book also discusses Riddle's hatred of Muggles, his obsession with Horcruxes, and his desire to split his soul to achieve immortality. Rowling stated Voldemort's conception under the influence of a love potion symbolises the coercive circumstances under which he was brought into the world.
In the main plot of the book, Voldemort's next step is to engineer an assault on Hogwarts, and to kill Dumbledore. This is accomplished by Draco Malfoy, who arranges transportation of Death Eaters into Hogwarts by a pair of Vanishing Cabinets, which bypass the extensive protective enchantments placed around the school. The cabinets allow Voldemort's Death Eaters to enter Hogwarts, where battle commences and Dumbledore is cornered. Hogwarts professor (and re-doubled agent) Severus Snape uses the Killing Curse against Dumbledore when Draco could not force himself to do so.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort furthers his quest for ultimate power. He disposes of the Minister for Magic and replaces him with Pius Thicknesse, who is under the Imperius Curse. Establishing a totalitarian police state, he has Muggle-borns persecuted and arrested for "stealing magic" from the "pure blood" wizards. After failing to kill Harry with Draco's father Lucius Malfoy's borrowed wand (to avoid the effect of Priori Incantatem), he goes on a murderous search for the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand ever created, seeing it as the weapon he needs to overcome Harry's wand and make him truly invincible. He goes on a quest that takes him out of the country to Gregorovitch's wand shop, where he kills the old wandmaker. His journey also takes him to Nurmengard, the prison where Gellert Grindelwald is kept, and he kills Grindelwald as well. He finally locates the Elder Wand and steals it from Dumbledore's tomb.
Later, Voldemort finds out that Harry and his friends are hunting and destroying his Horcruxes when informed of their heist on the Lestranges' vault at Gringotts in search for Hufflepuff's Cup. After offering the occupants of Hogwarts mercy if they give up Harry, he assembles a large army and launches an invasion of the castle, where Harry is searching for Ravenclaw's Diadem. Voldemort orders his pet snake Nagini to execute Snape, believing it would make him the true master of the Elder Wand, since Snape killed Dumbledore. He then calls an hour's armistice, in exchange for Harry. When Harry willingly walks into Voldemort's camp in the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort strikes him down with the Elder Wand. However, the use of Harry's blood to resurrect Voldemort's body proves to be a major setback: while Harry's blood runs in Voldemort's veins, Harry cannot be killed as his mother's protection lives on now in Voldemort too. Instead, Voldemort destroys the part of his own soul that resides in Harry's body. Voldemort forces Rubeus Hagrid to carry Harry's apparently lifeless body back to the castle as a trophy, sparking another battle during which Nagini, his last Horcrux, is destroyed by Neville Longbottom. The battle then moves into the Great Hall, where Voldemort fights Minerva McGonagall, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Horace Slughorn simultaneously. Harry then reveals himself and explains to Voldemort that Draco became the true master of the Elder Wand when he disarmed Dumbledore; Harry, in turn, won the wand's allegiance when he took Draco's wand. Refusing to believe this, Voldemort casts the Killing Curse with the Elder Wand while Harry uses a Disarming Charm with Draco's, but the Elder Wand refuses to kill its master and the spell rebounds on Voldemort who, with all of his Horcruxes destroyed, finally dies. His body is laid in a different chamber from all the others who died battling him.
Rowling stated that after his death, Voldemort is forced to exist in the stunted infant-like form that Harry sees in the King's Cross-like Limbo after his confrontation with Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest. Rowling also mentioned that, despite his extreme fear of death, he cannot become a ghost.
Appearances in other material
In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, it is revealed that Bellatrix gave birth to Voldemort's daughter Delphi in Malfoy Manor before the Battle of Hogwarts. Twenty-two years later, Delphi poses as Cedric's cousin and manipulates Harry and Ginny's second son Albus Severus Potter and his friend, Draco and Astoria Greengrass's son Scorpius Malfoy, into stealing a prototype Time Turner with which she hopes to resurrect her father. Using the Time Turner, Scorpius accidentally creates an alternative timeline where Voldemort killed Harry at the battle and now rules the wizarding world. In an attempt to achieve this future, Delphi travels to Godric's Hollow on the night Voldemort killed Harry's parents, hoping to avert the prophecy that led to her father's downfall. After receiving a message from his son, Harry, together with Ron, Hermione and Draco (who by now has become friends with Harry after they join forces to save their respective sons) transfigures himself into Voldemort so that he can distract Delphi, allowing them to overpower her. The real Voldemort kills Harry's parents as prophesied, and Delphi is sent to Azkaban.
Portrayals within films
Voldemort appears in every Harry Potter film, with the exception of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Several actors have portrayed him in his varying incarnations and ages.
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Voldemort's manifestation is as a face on the back of Quirrell's head, an effect achieved by computer generated imagery. Ian Hart, the actor who played Quirrell in the same film, provided the voice and the facial source for this character. Voldemort also appears in a scene in the Forbidden Forest where he is seen drinking the blood of a unicorn. As Voldemort's face was altered enough by CG work, and Hart's voice was affected enough, there was no confusion by Hart's playing of the two roles. In that film, he was also shown in a flashback sequence when he arrived at the home of James and Lily Potter to kill them. In this scene Voldemort is played by Richard Bremmer, though his face is never seen. His next appearance would be in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as the 16-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle (portrayed by Christian Coulson).
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort is initially only heard, possessing the scratchy, weak voice heard in the first film. By the film's climax, however, he appears in his physical form for the first time, played by Ralph Fiennes. As in the book, Voldemort is shown clad in dark black robes, being tall and emaciated, with no hair and yellowish teeth; his wand has a white tone and the handle appears to be made of bone; his finger nails are long and pale blue while his toe nails appear to be infected. Unlike in the book, his pupils are not cat-like and his eyes are blue, because producer David Heyman felt that his evil would not be able to be seen and would not fill the audience with fear (his eyes do briefly take on a snake-like appearance when he opens them after turning human, but quickly turn normal). As in the book, the film version of Voldemort has snake-like slit nostrils with the flesh of his nose significantly pressed back. Ralph Fiennes' nose was not covered in makeup on the set, but was digitally removed in post-production. In this first appearance, Voldemort also has a forked tongue, but this element was removed for the subsequent films.
Fiennes stated that he had two weeks to shoot the climactic showdown scene where he is gloating over a terrified Harry, played by Daniel Radcliffe. Fiennes said with a chuckle: "I have no doubt children will be afraid of me now if they weren't before." In preparation, he read the novel Goblet of Fire, but jokingly conceded: "I was only interested in my scene, and I had to go through thousands and thousands of other scenes which I did, dutifully, until I got to my scene and I read it many, many, many, many, many times and that was my research." Fiennes reprised his role as Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2.
Fiennes's nephew, Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, portrayed Tom Riddle as a child in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. By the time filming arrived Christian Coulson was 29, and not considered suitable to return as the adolescent Riddle. Thomas James Longley was originally scheduled to take over the role, but last minute renegotiations saw Frank Dillane cast instead.
Characterisation
Outward appearance
After he regains his body in the fourth book, Rowling describes Voldemort as having pale skin, a chalk-white, skull-like face, snake-like slits for nostrils, red eyes and cat-like slits for pupils, a skeletally thin body and long, thin hands with unnaturally long fingers. As mentioned in the first chapter of the seventh book, he also has no hair or lips. Earlier in life, as seen through flashbacks contained in the second and sixth books, Tom Marvolo Riddle was handsome and tall with pale skin, jet black hair, and dark brown eyes. He could charm many people with his looks. The transformation into his monstrous state is believed to have been the result of creating his Horcruxes and becoming less human as he continued to divide his soul. In the films, Voldemort's eyes are blue with round pupils.
Personality
Rowling described Voldemort as "the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years". She elaborated that he is a "raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering", and whose only ambition in life is to become all-powerful and immortal. He is also a sadist who hurts and murders people—especially Muggles—for his own amusement. He has no conscience, feels no remorse or empathy, and does not recognise the worth and humanity of anybody except himself.
He feels no need for human companionship or friendship, and cannot comprehend love or affection for another. He believes he is superior to everyone around him, to the point that he frequently refers to himself in the third person as "Lord Voldemort". Rowling also stated that Voldemort is "incredibly power hungry. Racist, really", and that if Voldemort were to look into the Mirror of Erised, in which one sees one's greatest desire, he would see "Himself, all-powerful and eternal. That's what he wants."
Rowling also stated that Voldemort's conception by influence of Amortentia—a love potion administered by his mother, a witch named Merope Gaunt, to the Muggle Tom Riddle—is related to his inability to understand love; it is "a symbolic way of showing that he came from a loveless union—but of course, everything would have changed if Merope had survived and raised him herself and loved him. The enchantment under which Tom Riddle fathered Voldemort is important because it shows coercion, and there can't be many more prejudicial ways to enter the world than as the result of such a union".
Like most archetypical villains, Voldemort's arrogance leads to his downfall. He also suffers from a pathological fear of death, which he regards as a shameful and ignominious human weakness. According to Rowling, his Boggart would be his own corpse. Rowling also said that the difference between Harry and Voldemort is that Harry accepts mortality, and thus Harry is, in the end, stronger than his nemesis.
Magical abilities and skills
Rowling establishes Voldemort throughout the series as an extremely powerful, intelligent, and ruthless dark wizard, described as the greatest and most powerful Dark Wizard of all time. He is known as one of the greatest Legilimens in the world and a highly accomplished Occlumens; he can read minds and shield his own from penetration. Besides Dumbledore, he is also the only wizard ever known to be able to apparate silently. Voldemort was also said to fear one wizard alone, Dumbledore.
In the final book, Voldemort flies unsupported, something that amazes those who see it. Voldemort, like his ancestral family, the Gaunts, is a Parselmouth, meaning he can converse with serpents. This skill was inherited from his ancestor, Salazar Slytherin. The Gaunt family speak Parseltongue among themselves. This highly unusual trait may be preserved through inbreeding, a practice employed by the Gaunt Family to maintain their blood's purity. When Voldemort attempts to kill Harry his ability to speak Parseltongue is passed to Harry through the small bit of the former's soul. After that bit of soul is destroyed, Harry loses this ability. In a flashback in the sixth novel, Voldemort boasts to Dumbledore during a job interview that he has "pushed the boundaries of magic farther than they had ever before". Dumbledore states that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is more extensive than any wizard alive and that even Dumbledore's most powerful protective spells and charms would likely be insufficient if Voldemort returned to full power. Dumbledore also said that Voldemort was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen. Although Voldemort remains highly accomplished and prodigious in skill, he is enormously lacking and highly inept in the most powerful magic, love. This inability to love and trust others proves to be Voldemort's greatest weakness in the series. Voldemort initially voices scepticism that his own magic might not be the most powerful, but upon returning to power, he admits to his Death Eaters that he had overlooked the ancient and powerful magic which Lily Potter invoked and that would protect Harry from harm.
On her website, Rowling wrote that Voldemort's wand is made of yew, whose sap is poisonous and which symbolises death. It forms a deliberate contrast to Harry's wand, which is made of holly, which she chose because holly is alleged to repel evil.
Rowling establishes in the books that Voldemort is magically connected to Harry via Harry's forehead scar. He disembodies himself when his Killing Curse targeting Harry rebounds on him, leaving the scar on Harry's forehead. In the books, and to a lesser extent in the films, Harry's scar serves as an indicator of Voldemort's presence: it burns when the Dark Lord is near or when Voldemort is feeling murderous or exultant. According to Rowling, by attacking Harry when he was a baby Voldemort gave him "tools [that] no other wizard possessed—the scar and the ability it conferred, a magical window into Voldemort's mind".
Family
Notes: The names 'Thomas' and 'Mary' Riddle are taken from the films. The Potter Family is not shown.
Riddle family
The Riddle family, an old gentry family, consisted of Thomas and Mary Riddle and their son, Tom Riddle, Esq. They owned over half of the valley that the town of Little Hangleton lay in, and Thomas was the most prominent inhabitant of that town. They lived in a large house with fine gardens, but were unpopular amongst the local residents due to their snobbish attitudes. Tom, the only child of Thomas and Mary, was known as a playboy, his main interests being womanizing and horse-riding.
Rowling revealed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that young Merope Gaunt fell in love with Riddle, peering at him through the windows and bushes at every opportunity. Merope's brother Morfin disapproved of his sister's affection for Tom and hexed him as he rode by, covering him in hives. This breach of wizarding law, and the ensuing violent struggle with Ministry of Magic officials, led to Marvolo and Morfin being imprisoned in Azkaban. As surmised by Dumbledore, once Merope was alone and no longer dominated by her father, she could make her move for Tom. She offered him a drink laced with a love potion, and he became infatuated with her; they soon eloped and, within three months of the marriage, Merope became pregnant. Merope decided to stop giving Tom the love potion, having come to the belief such enchantment of a man was tantamount to slavery. She also revealed her witch status to Tom, believing either that he had fallen in love with her on his own or he would at least stay for their unborn child. She was wrong, and Tom quickly left his pregnant wife and went home to his parents, claiming to have been "hoodwinked" and tricked into marrying Merope. Tom Marvolo Riddle, their son, was born on 31 December 1926 Merope died in childbirth, leaving the baby to grow up alone in an orphanage.
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it is revealed that Voldemort murdered his father and grandparents, leaving himself the only surviving member of the Riddle family.
House of Gaunt
Most of the exposition of the House of Gaunts background occurs in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, through the medium of Dumbledore's Pensieve. The Gaunts were once a powerful and influential family, and are the last known descendants of Salazar Slytherin. However, a vein of mental instability and violence within the family, reinforced through cousin marriages intended to preserve the pureblood line, had reduced them to poverty and squalor, as shown in the Pensieve's "memory" that Harry and Dumbledore witnessed. Like Salazar Slytherin, the Gaunts spoke Parseltongue. At the time of the story, the Gaunts' only material asset is a ramshackle shanty in Little Hangleton, that stood in a thicket in a valley opposite the Riddle House. Like the Riddles, the Gaunts were also unpopular with the local residents, with a reputation for being vulgar and intimidating.
Marvolo Gaunt was the last family patriarch. He was sentenced to a short term in Azkaban for his and his son's assault upon a Ministry of Magic official; this affected his health and he died soon after returning home. His signet ring passed to his son, Morfin Gaunt, who was convicted of assaulting a Muggle, and later died in Azkaban, convicted this time as a party to the murder of Tom Riddle Jr. and Riddle's parents.
Dumbledore discovers the real culprit while visiting Morfin in Azkaban to gather information about Voldemort. After Dumbledore successfully extracts Morfin's memory of his encounter with his nephew, he tries to use the evidence to have Morfin released, but Morfin dies before the decision can be made. The House of Gaunt ended with Morfin's death.
Merope Gaunt () was the daughter of Marvolo, and sister of Morfin. Harry's first impression of her was that she looked "like the most defeated person he had ever seen". She married Tom Riddle Jr and became pregnant within three months of the wedding. It is suggested that she tricked her husband into loving her by using a love potion, but when she became pregnant, she chose to stop administering the potion. It is implied that Merope had grown tired of living the lie and thought that her husband might have grown to love her, or that he might have stayed for the sake of their unborn child; however, he left her. Desperate, Merope wandered through the streets of London. The only thing she had left was the heavy gold locket that had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin, one of her family's most treasured items, which she sold for a small amount. When she was due to give birth, she stumbled into a Muggle orphanage, where she gave birth to her only son. She died within the next hour.
Gormlaith Gaunt was a 17th-century descendant of Salazar Slytherin, and like Salazar, a Parselmouth. Her wand was that which once belonged to Salazar himself. Educated at Hogwarts, Gormlaith lived in Ireland in the early 1600s. In about 1608, Gormlaith killed her estranged unnamed sister, and her sister's husband, William Sayre (a descendant of the Irish witch Morrigan), and kidnapped their five-year-old daughter, Isolt Sayre, raising her in the neighbouring valley of Coomcallee, or "Hag's Glen", because she felt that her parents' association with Muggles would badly influence Isolt. Fanatical and cruel, Gormlaith used Dark magic to isolate Isolt from others, forbade her a wand, and did not allow her to attend Hogwarts as she herself had, disgusted that it was now filled with Muggle-borns. After twelve years with Gormlaith, Isolt stole Gormlaith's wand and fled to the Colonies and settled in Massachusetts, where she founded the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When Gormlaith learned of the school, she pursued her niece in Massachusetts, where she was killed by Isolt's friend, William the Pukwudgie, with a venom-tipped arrow.
The Gaunts, including Voldemort, are distantly related to Harry because they are descendants of the Peverell brothers.
Reception
Several people have drawn a parallel between Voldemort and some politicians. Rowling has said that Voldemort was "a sort of" Adolf Hitler, and that there is some parallel with Nazism in her books. Rowling also compared Voldemort to Joseph Stalin. Alfonso Cuarón, director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban compared Voldemort to George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, who he said "...have selfish interests and are very much in love with power. Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people." Andrew Slack and the Harry Potter Alliance compare media consolidation in the US to Voldemort's regime in Deathly Hallows and its control over the Daily Prophet and other media saying that "Once Voldemort took over every form of media in the wizarding world, Dumbledore's Army and the Order of the Phoenix formed an independent media movement called 'Potterwatch'. Now the HP Alliance and Wizard Rock have come together to fight for a Potterwatch movement in the real world to fight back against Big VoldeMedia from further pushing out local and foreign news, minority representation, and the right to a Free Press." Julia Turner of Slate Magazine also noted similarities between the events of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the War on Terror. She said that Voldemort commits acts of terrorism such as destroying bridges, murdering innocents, and forcing children to kill their elders.
Voldemort has also been compared with other characters within fiction, for example Sauron from The Lord of the Rings; they are, during the time when the main plot takes place, seeking to recover their lost power after having been considered dead or at least no longer a threat, and are also so feared that they are sometimes unnamed.
IGN listed Voldemort as their seventh favourite Harry Potter character, calling him "truly frightening".
In popular culture
Several campaigns have used Voldemort to compare his evil to the influence of politicians, large media and corporations. "Lord Voldemort" is a nickname sometimes used for Peter Mandelson. Voldemort is also a recurring theme among wizard rock bands. Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock! is the second album from Harry and the Potters, and the character is mentioned in songs such as "The Dark Lord Lament" and "Flesh, Blood, and Bone".
Voldemort has been parodied in various venues. In The Simpsons 13th season's premiere, "Treehouse of Horror XII", Montgomery Burns appears as "Lord Montymort". A parody of Voldemort appears in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy as "Lord Moldybutt", an enemy of Nigel Planter (a parody of Harry). Voldemort also appears in the Potter Puppet Pals sketches by Neil Cicierega. One of the episodes including him was the seventeenth most viewed video of all time as of 2008 and the winner for "Best Comedy" of the year 2007 at YouTube.
"Continuing the Magic", an article in the 21 May 2007 issue of Time, includes mock book covers designed by author Lon Tweeten, laced with pop culture references. One of them, the "Dark Lord of the Dance", shows Voldemort teaming up with Harry on Broadway. In the MAD Magazine parodies of the films, the character is called Lord Druckermort, a backwards reference to the magazine's longtime caricaturist Mort Drucker. In Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1969, a young Tom Marvolo Riddle (introduced as "Tom", whose middle name is a "marvel" and last name is a "conundrum") appears, and becomes the new avatar of Oliver Haddo at the story's conclusion. In A Very Potter Musical, Voldemort is played by actor Joe Walker.
In a segment celebrating British children's literature at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London, an inflatable Voldemort appeared alongside other villains, The Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Cruella de Vil, to haunt children's dreams, before the arrival of a group of over thirty Mary Poppins who descended with their umbrellas to defeat them.
During the 2016 United States elections, Daniel Radcliffe was asked by Sky News journalist Craig Dillon if he would compare Donald Trump to Lord Voldemort; Radcliffe responded, "Trump is worse".
Voldemort appears in The Lego Batman Movie as one of the prisoners in the Phantom Zone that Joker recruits to take over Gotham City. Though Ralph Fiennes is featured in this movie as the voice of the British butler Alfred Pennyworth, he does not reprise his role as Voldemort. Instead, Voldemort is voiced by Eddie Izzard.
Outside of the Harry Potter video games, Voldemort is also a playable character in Lego Dimensions, with archive audio of Fiennes' portrayal in the films used for his voiceovers.
A 2018 Italian fan film titled Voldemort: Origins of the Heir depicts the story of Tom Riddle's rise to power.
Voldemort appears in Space Jam: A New Legacy, in the crowd for the game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad.
An upcoming French fan-made short-film titled The House of Gaunt - Lord Voldemort Origins explores the origin story of Voldemort and The Gaunt family.
Notes
References
External links
Lord Voldemort at Harry Potter Lexicon
Fictional characters with disfigurements
Fictional characters with immortality
Fictional characters with spirit possession or body swapping abilities
Fictional dictators
Fictional English people
Fictional hypnotists and indoctrinators
Fictional illeists
Fictional mass murderers
Fictional necromancers
Fictional offspring of rape
Fictional patricides
Fictional terrorists
Fictional torturers
Harry Potter characters
Literary characters introduced in 1997
Male film villains
Male literary villains
Orphan characters in film
Orphan characters in literature
Psychopathy in fiction
Film supervillains
| false |
[
"The Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator, or HPANA, as it is better known, is a Harry Potter fansite created in 2002 to monitor news on the Internet about J. K. Rowling's series of novels about the eponymous wizard.\n\nHistory\nHPANA is operated by its founder, software developer Jeff Guillaume, and a volunteer staff who monitor and post news items, attend events in order to cover them for the site, and moderate the forums. Like other Harry Potter fan sites, HPANA's representatives have been invited to Leavesden Film Studios, the permanent set outside London on which the Warner Bros. movie adaptations are created, as well as the majority of the films' red carpet premieres around the world. The site was invited in 2007 to an exclusive web cast during which the studio, along with Universal Orlando Resort, revealed their intentions to build The Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park, which opened in 2010.\n\nThe site began working with a travel company in 2003 to offer tours of the United Kingdom with a Harry Potter focus, dubbed HP Fan Trips. Over 100 people joined its initial trip in 2004 and hundreds more in the years since. A staple of these trips is a ride on steam locomotive #5972 Olton Hall, the train used in the Harry Potter films as the Hogwarts Express.\n\nIn July 2005, HPANA and MuggleNet along with publisher Wizarding World Press held Spellbound! 2005, an event to celebrate the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in Mt. Prospect, Illinois. More than 10,000 people attended the free event, played games and watched live stage performances while they waited for the midnight book debut.\n\nRowling in 2011 introduced a companion web site to her books, Pottermore, by working with HPANA and other fan sites to release clues for fans to discover the name of the new project. In November 2011, HPANA went offline due to lack of funding. Three years later, the site returned in limited form with access to its news archive.\n\nPodcast\nThe site began featuring Hogwarts Radio as its official podcast in January 2009, featuring news, analysis and editorial content.\n\nAwards\nJ.K. Rowling, upon giving HPANA her \"Fan Site Award\" in December 2004, said it was the first Harry Potter fan site she ever visited. \"A fantastically user-friendly fansite,\" Rowling remarked, \"faster off the mark with Harry Potter news than any other site I know, and with all kinds of brilliantly inventive touches.\" HPANA was featured on USA Today's \"Hot Sites\" list on November 2, 2004.\n\nSee also\n\n Harry Potter fandom\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n HPANA\n Hogwarts Radio\n HP Fan Trips\n Twitter feed\n\nHarry Potter websites",
"Harry James Potter is a fictional character and the titular protagonist in J. K. Rowling's series of eponymous novels. The majority of the books' plot covers seven years in the life of the orphan Harry, who, on his eleventh birthday, learns he is a wizard. Thus, he attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to practise magic under the guidance of the kindly headmaster Albus Dumbledore and other school professors along with his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Harry also discovers that he is already famous throughout the novel's magical community, and that his fate is tied with that of Lord Voldemort – the internationally feared Dark Wizard and murderer of his parents, Lily and James. The book and film series revolve around Harry's struggle to adapt to the wizarding world and defeat Voldemort.\n\nHarry is regarded as a fictional icon and has been described by many critics, readers, and audiences as one of the greatest literary and film characters of all time. He is portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe in all eight Harry Potter films from Philosopher's Stone (2001) to Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011).\n\nConcept and creation\nAccording to Rowling, the idea for both the Harry Potter books and its eponymous character came while waiting for a delayed train from Manchester, England to London in 1990. She stated that the idea of \"this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard became more and more real to me\". While developing the ideas for her book, she also decided to make Harry an orphan who attended a boarding school called Hogwarts. She explained in a 1999 interview with The Guardian: \"Harry had to be an orphan—so that he's a free agent, with no fear of letting down his parents, disappointing them ... Hogwarts has to be a boarding school—half the important stuff happens at night! Then there's the security. Having a child of my own reinforces my belief that children above all want security, and that's what Hogwarts offers Harry.\"\n\nHer own mother's death on 30 December 1990 inspired Rowling to write Harry as a boy longing for his dead parents, his anguish becoming \"much deeper, much more real\" than in earlier drafts because she related to it herself. In a 2000 interview with The Guardian, Rowling also established that the character of Wart in T. H. White's novel The Once and Future King is \"Harry's spiritual ancestor.\" Finally, she established Harry's birth date as 31 July, the same as her own. However, she maintained that Harry was not directly based on any real-life person: \"he came just out of a part of me\".\n\nRowling has also maintained that Harry is a suitable real-life role model for children. \"The advantage of a fictional hero or heroine is that you can know them better than you can know a living hero, many of whom you would never meet [...] if people like Harry and identify with him, I am pleased, because I think he is very likeable.\"\n\nAppearances\n\nHarry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone \nHarry first appears in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Starting in 1981, when Harry was just one year old, his parents, James and Lily, were murdered by the most powerful Dark Wizard, Lord Voldemort (subsequently called \"You-Know-Who\" and \"He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named\" by those too superstitious to use his actual name). He attempted to kill Harry too, but was unsuccessful and only left a lightning bolt shaped scar on Harry's forehead. Voldemort's body was destroyed, but his soul was not. Harry later learns that the reason why he survived was that his mother sacrificed herself for him, and her love was something that Voldemort could not destroy.\n\nAccording to Rowling, fleshing out this back story was a matter of reverse planning: \"The basic idea [is that] Harry ... didn't know he was a wizard ... and so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was... That's... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry—he tried to curse him.... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And for some mysterious reason, the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead, and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard who has been in hiding ever since\".\n\nAs a result, Harry is written as an orphan living with his only remaining family, the Dursleys, who are neglectful and abusive. On his eleventh birthday in 1991, Harry learns he is a wizard when Rubeus Hagrid arrives to tell him that he is to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There he learns about the wizarding world, his parents, and his connection to the Dark Lord. After begging the Sorting Hat not to put him in Slytherin House, Harry is sorted into Gryffindor House where he becomes fast friends with classmates Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. He finds mentors in his professor Minerva McGonagall and headmaster Albus Dumbledore and foils Voldemort's attempt to steal the Philosopher's Stone. Harry also forms a rivalry with characters Draco Malfoy, a classmate from an elitist wizarding family, and the cold, condescending Potions master, Severus Snape, Draco's mentor and the head of Slytherin House. Both feuds continue throughout the series and are settled at the series's end (Draco's in the Weet End play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Snape's on his deathbed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). In a 1999 interview, Rowling stated that Draco is based on several prototypical schoolyard bullies she encountered and Snape on a sadistic teacher of hers who abused his power.\n\nRowling has stated that the \"Mirror of Erised\" chapter in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is her favourite; the mirror reflects Harry's deepest desire, namely to see his dead parents and family. Her favourite funny scene is when Harry inadvertently sets a boa constrictor free from the zoo in the horrified Dursleys' presence.\n\nHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets \nIn the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling pits Harry against Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort's \"memory\" within a secret diary which has possessed Ron's younger sister Ginny. When Muggle-born students are suddenly being Petrified, many suspect that Harry may be behind the attacks, further alienating him from his peers. Furthermore, Harry begins to doubt his worthiness for House of Gryffindor, particularly considering he discovers he shares Lord Voldemort's ability to communicate with snakes via Parseltongue. In the climax, Ginny disappears. To rescue her, Harry battles Riddle and the monster he controls that is hidden in the Chamber of Secrets. To defeat the monster, Harry summons the Sword of Godric Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat supplied by Dumbledore's pet phoenix, Fawkes. In doing so, Dumbledore later restores Harry's self-esteem by explaining that that feat is clear proof of his worthiness of his present house.\n\nHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban \nIn the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Rowling uses a time travel premise. Harry learns that his parents were betrayed to Voldemort by their friend Peter Pettigrew, who framed Harry's godfather Sirius Black for the crimes, condemning him to Azkaban, the wizard prison. When Sirius escapes to find Harry, Harry and Hermione use a Time Turner to save him and a hippogriff named Buckbeak. When Pettigrew escapes, an innocent Sirius becomes a hunted fugitive once again. Harry learns how to create a Patronus, which takes the form of a stag, the same as his late father's.\n\nHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire \nIn the previous books, Harry is written as a child, but Rowling states that in the fourth novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, \"Harry's horizons are literally and metaphorically widening as he grows older.\" Harry's developing maturity becomes apparent when he becomes romantically interested in Cho Chang, a student in Ravenclaw house. Tension mounts, however, when Harry is mysteriously chosen by the Goblet of Fire to compete in the dangerous Triwizard Tournament, even though another Hogwarts champion, Cedric Diggory, has already been selected. Voldemort uses the Tournament for an elaborate scheme to lure Harry into a deadly trap. During the Tournament's final challenge, Harry and Cedric are transported to a graveyard, using a portkey, where Cedric is killed by Peter Pettigrew, and Voldemort, aided by Pettigrew, uses Harry's blood in a gruesome ritual to resurrect his body. When Harry duels Voldemort, their wands' magical streams connect, forcing the spirit echoes of Voldemort's victims, including Cedric and James and Lily Potter, to be expelled from his wand. The spirits briefly protect Harry as he escapes to Hogwarts with Cedric's body. For Rowling, this scene is important because it shows Harry's bravery, and by retrieving Cedric's corpse, he demonstrates selflessness and compassion. Says Rowling, \"He wants to save Cedric's parents additional pain.\" She added that preventing Cedric's body from falling into Voldemort's hands is based on the classic scene in the Iliad where Achilles retrieves the body of his best friend Patroclus from the hands of Hector. Rowling also mentioned that book four rounds off an era in Harry's life, and the remaining three books are another, \"He's no longer protected. He's been very protected until now. But he's very young to have that experience. Most of us don't get that until a bit later in life. He's only just coming up to 15 and that's it now.\"\n\nHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix \nIn the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the Ministry of Magic has been waging a smear campaign against Harry and Dumbledore, disputing their claims that Voldemort has returned. Harry is made to look like an attention-seeking liar, and Dumbledore a trouble-maker. A new character is introduced when the Ministry of Magic appoints Dolores Umbridge as the latest Hogwarts' Defence Against the Dark Arts instructor (and Ministry spy). Because the paranoid Ministry suspects that Dumbledore is building a wizard army to overthrow them, Umbridge refuses to teach students real defensive magic. She gradually gains more power, eventually ousting Dumbledore and seizing control of the school. As a result, Harry's increasingly angry and erratic behaviour nearly estranges him from Ron and Hermione.\n\nRowling says she put Harry through extreme emotional stress to show his emotional vulnerability and humanity—a contrast to his nemesis, Voldemort. \"[Harry is] a very human hero, and this is, obviously, a contrast, between him, as a very human hero, and Voldemort, who has deliberately dehumanised himself. And Harry, therefore, did have to reach a point where he did almost break down, and say he didn't want to play any more, he didn't want to be the hero any more – and he'd lost too much. And he didn't want to lose anything else. So that – Phoenix was the point at which I decided he would have his breakdown.\"\n\nAt Hermione's urging, Harry forms a secret student organisation called Dumbledore's Army to teach more meaningful defence against the dark arts as Professor Umbridge is making them read off a textbook. Their plan is thwarted, however, when a Dumbledore's Army member, Marietta Edgecombe, betrays them and informs Umbridge about the D.A., causing Dumbledore to be ousted as Headmaster. Harry suffers another emotional blow, when his beloved godfather, Sirius, is killed during a duel with Sirius' cousin, the Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange, at the Department of Mysteries, but Harry ultimately defeats Voldemort's plan to steal an important prophecy. Rowling stated: \"And now he [Harry] will rise from the ashes strengthened.\" A side plot of Order of the Phoenix involves Harry's romance with Cho Chang, but the relationship quickly unravels. Says Rowling: \"They were never going to be happy, it was better that it ended early!\"\n\nHarry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince \nIn the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry enters a tumultuous puberty that, Rowling says, is based on her and her younger sister's own difficult teenage years. Rowling also made an intimate statement about Harry's personal life: \"Because of the demands of the adventure that Harry is following, he has had less sexual experience than boys of his age might have had.\" This inexperience with romance was a factor in Harry's failed relationship with Cho. Now his thoughts concern Ginny, and a vital plot point in the last chapter includes Harry ending their budding romance to protect her from Voldemort.\n\nA new character appears when former Hogwarts Potions master Horace Slughorn replaces Snape, who assumes the Defence Against the Dark Arts post. Harry suddenly excels in Potions, using an old textbook once belonging to a talented student known only as \"The Half-Blood Prince.\" The book contains many handwritten notes, revisions, and new spells; Hermione, however, believes Harry's use of it is cheating. Through private meetings with Dumbledore, Harry learns about Voldemort's orphaned youth, his rise to power, and how he splintered his soul into Horcruxes to achieve immortality. Two Horcruxes have been destroyed—the diary and a ring; and Harry and Dumbledore locate another, although it is a fake. When Death Eaters invade Hogwarts, Snape kills Dumbledore. As Snape escapes, he proclaims that he is the Half-Blood Prince (being the son of a muggle father and the pure-blood Eileen Prince). It now falls upon Harry to find and destroy Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes and to avenge Dumbledore's death. In a 2005 interview, Rowling stated that [after the events in the sixth book] Harry has, \"taken the view that they are now at war. He does become more battle-hardened. He's now ready to go out fighting. And he's after revenge [against Voldemort and Snape].\"\n\nThis book also focuses on the mysterious activities of Harry's rival Draco Malfoy. Voldemort has coerced a frightened Malfoy into attempting to kill Dumbledore. During a duel in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, Harry uses the Half-Blood Prince's spell, Sectumsempra, on Malfoy, who suffers near-fatal injuries as a result. Harry is horrified by what he has done and also comes to feel sympathy for Draco, after learning he was forced to do Voldemort's bidding under the threat of his and his parents' deaths.\n\nHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows \nIn Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry, Ron, and Hermione leave Hogwarts to complete Dumbledore's task: to search for and destroy Voldemort's remaining four Horcruxes, then find and kill the Dark Lord. The three pit themselves against Voldemort's newly formed totalitarian police state, an action that tests Harry's courage and moral character. Voldemort's seizure of the Ministry of Magic leads to discriminatory and genocidal policies against Muggle-borns, fuelled by propaganda and fear. According to J. K. Rowling, telling scenes are when Harry uses Cruciatus Curse and Imperius Curse, unforgivable curses for torture and mind-control, on Voldemort's servants, and also when he casts Sectumsempra on Draco Malfoy during the bathroom fight in the sixth book. Each time shows a \"flawed and mortal\" side to Harry. However, she explains, \"He is also in an extreme situation and attempting to defend somebody very good against a violent and murderous opponent.\"\n\nHarry experiences occasional disturbing visions of Draco being forced to perform the Death Eaters' bidding and feels \"...sickened...by the use to which Draco was now being put by Voldemort,\" again showing his compassion for an enemy.\n\nEach Horcrux Harry must defeat cannot be destroyed easily. They must be destroyed with basilisk venom, Godric Gryffindor's sword, or some other destructive substance. In Book Two, Harry destroys the first horcrux, Tom Riddle's diary, with a basilisk fang, and in Book Six Dumbledore destroys the ring with Gryffindor's sword. Ron destroys Slytherin's locket with the sword, Hermione destroys Hufflepuff's cup with a basilisk fang, and Crabbe destroys Ravenclaw's diadem with Fiendfyre (cursed flame). Neville kills the snake Nagini with the sword, and Voldemort destroys the final accidental Horcrux: a fragment of soul embedded in Harry's scar.\n\nHarry comes to recognise that his own single-mindedness makes him predictable to his enemies and often clouds his perceptions. When Voldemort kills Snape later in the story, Harry discovers that Snape was not the traitorous murderer he believed him to be, but a tragic antihero who was loyal to Dumbledore. In Chapter 33 ('The Prince's Tale') Snape's memories reveal that he loved Harry's mother Lily, but their friendship ended over his association with future Death Eaters and his \"blood purity\" beliefs. When Voldemort murdered the Potters, a grieving Snape vowed to protect Lily's child, although he loathed young Harry for being James Potter's son. The memories also reveal that Snape did not murder Dumbledore, but carried out Dumbledore's prearranged plan. Dumbledore, dying from a slow-spreading curse, wanted to protect Snape's position within the Death Eaters and to spare Draco from completing Voldemort's task of murdering him.\n\nTo defeat Harry, Voldemort steals the most powerful wand ever created, the Elder Wand, from Dumbledore's tomb and twice casts the Killing Curse on Harry with it. The first attempt merely stuns Harry into a deathlike state; the murder attempt fails because Voldemort used Harry's blood in his resurrection during book four. The protection that his mother gave Harry with her sacrifice tethers Harry to life, as long as his blood and her sacrifice run in the veins of Voldemort. In the chapter \"King's Cross,\" Dumbledore's spirit talks to Harry whilst in this deathlike state. Dumbledore informs Harry that when Voldemort disembodied himself during his failed attempt to kill Harry as a baby, Harry became an unintentional Horcrux; Harry could not kill Voldemort while the Dark Lord's soul shard remained within Harry's body. The piece of Voldemort's soul within Harry was destroyed through Voldemort's first killing curse with the Elder Wand because Harry willingly faced death, which cast a sacrificial protection on the defenders of Hogwarts.\n\nIn the book's climax, Voldemort's second Killing Curse hurled at Harry also fails and rebounds upon Voldemort, finally killing him. The spell fails because Harry, not Voldemort, had become the Elder Wand's true master and the wand could not harm its own master. Harry has each of the Hallows (the Invisibility Cloak, the Resurrection Stone, and the Elder Wand) at some point in the story but never unites them. However, J. K. Rowling said the difference between Harry and Voldemort is that Harry willingly accepts mortality, making him stronger than his nemesis. \"The real master of Death accepts that he must die, and that there are much worse things in the world of the living.\" At the very end, Harry decides to leave the Elder Wand in Dumbledore's tomb and the Resurrection Stone hidden in the forest, but he keeps the Invisibility Cloak because it had belonged to his father.\n\nIn the epilogue of Deathly Hallows, which is set 19 years after Voldemort's death, Harry and Ginny are a couple and have three children: James Sirius Potter, who has already been at Hogwarts for at least one year, Albus Severus Potter, who is starting his first year there, and Lily Luna Potter, who is two years away from her first year at the school. According to Rowling, after Voldemort's defeat, Harry joins the \"reshuffled\" Auror Department under Kingsley Shacklebolt's mentoring, and ends up eventually rising to become Head of said department in 2007. Rowling said that his old rival Draco has a grudging gratitude towards Harry for saving his life in the final battle, but the two are not friends.\n\nFilm appearances\nIn the eight Harry Potter films screened from 2001 to 2011, Harry Potter has been portrayed by British actor Daniel Radcliffe. Radcliffe was asked to audition for the role of Harry in 2000 by producer David Heyman, while in attendance at a play titled Stones in His Pockets in London.\n\nIn a 2007 interview with MTV, Radcliffe stated that, for him, Harry is a classic coming of age character: \"That's what the films are about for me: a loss of innocence, going from being a young kid in awe of the world around him, to someone who is more battle-hardened by the end of it.\" He also said that for him, important factors in Harry's psyche are his survivor's guilt in regard to his dead parents and his lingering loneliness. Because of this, Radcliffe talked to a bereavement counsellor to help him prepare for the role. Radcliffe was quoted as saying that he wished for Harry to die in the books, but he clarified that he \"can't imagine any other way they can be concluded.\" After reading the last book, where Harry and his friends do indeed survive and have children, Radcliffe stated he was glad about the ending and lauded Rowling for the conclusion of the story. Radcliffe stated that the most repeated question he has been asked is how Harry Potter has influenced his own life, to which he regularly answers it has been \"fine,\" and that he did not feel pigeonholed by the role, but rather sees it as a huge privilege to portray Harry.\n\nRadcliffe's Harry was named the 36th greatest movie character of all time in 2011, and 67th in 2018 by Empire.\n\nAppearance in other material\nIn Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Harry appears again with his son Albus Severus, who was one of the two main protagonists of the series with Draco's son Scorpius.\n\nCharacterisation\n\nOutward appearance\nThroughout the series, Harry is described as having his father's perpetually untidy black hair, his mother's bright green eyes, and a lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. He is further described as \"small and skinny for his age\" with \"a thin face\" and \"knobbly knees\", and he wears Windsor glasses. In the first book, his scar is described as \"the only thing Harry liked about his own appearance\". When asked about the meaning behind Harry's lightning bolt scar, Rowling said, \"I wanted him to be physically marked by what he has been through. It was an outward expression of what he has been through inside... It is almost like being the chosen one or the cursed one, in a sense.\"\nRowling has also stated that Harry inherited his parents' good looks. In the later part of the series Harry grows taller, and by the seventh book is said to be 'almost' the height of his father, and 'tall' by other characters.\n\nRowling explained that Harry's image came to her when she first thought up Harry Potter, seeing him as a \"scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy\". She also mentioned that she thinks Harry's glasses are the clue to his vulnerability.\n\nPersonality\nAccording to Rowling, Harry is strongly guided by his own conscience, and has a keen feeling of what is right and wrong. Having \"very limited access to truly caring adults\", Rowling said, Harry \"is forced to make his own decisions from an early age on.\" He \"does make mistakes\", she conceded, but in the end, he does what his conscience tells him to do. According to Rowling, one of Harry's pivotal scenes came in the fourth book when he protects his dead schoolmate Cedric Diggory's body from Voldemort, because it shows he is brave and selfless.\n\nRowling has stated that Harry's character flaws include anger and impulsiveness; however, Harry is also innately honourable. \"He's not a cruel boy. He's competitive, and he's a fighter. He doesn't just lie down and take abuse. But he does have native integrity, which makes him a hero to me. He's a normal boy but with those qualities most of us really admire.\" For the most part, Harry shows humility and modesty, often downplaying his achievements; though he uses a litany of his adventures as examples of his maturity early in the fifth book. However, these very same accomplishments are later employed to explain why he should lead Dumbledore's Army, at which point he asserts them as having just been luck, and denies that they make him worthy of authority. After the seventh book, Rowling commented that Harry has the ultimate character strength, which not even Voldemort possesses: the acceptance of the inevitability of death.\n\nMagical abilities and skills\n\nThroughout the series, Harry Potter is described as a gifted wizard apprentice. He has a particular talent for flying, which manifests itself in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone the first time he tries it, and gets him a place on a Quidditch team one year before the normal minimum joining age. He captains it in his sixth year. In his fourth year (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), Harry is able to confront a dragon on his broomstick.\n\nHarry is also gifted in Defence Against the Dark Arts, in which he becomes proficient due to his repeated encounters with Voldemort and various monsters. In his third year, Harry becomes able to cast the very advanced Patronus Charm, and by his fifth year he has become so talented at the subject that he is able to teach his fellow students in Dumbledore's Army, some even older than him how to defend themselves against Dark Magic. At the end of that year, he achieves an 'Outstanding' Defence Against the Dark Arts O.W.L., something that not even Hermione achieved. He is a skilled duellist, the only one of the six Dumbledore's Army members to be neither injured nor incapacitated during the battle with Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. He also fends off numerous Death Eaters during his flight to the Burrow at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.\n\nHarry also had the unusual ability to speak and understand \"Parseltongue\", a language associated with Dark Magic. This, it transpires, is because he harbours a piece of Voldemort's soul. He loses this ability after the part of Voldemort's soul inside him is destroyed at the end of The Deathly Hallows. However, in the events of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, it was revealed that he had not lost the ability to recognise or speak the language when he encountered Delphini, Voldemort's daughter, who was trying to use his son and Draco Malfoy's son Scorpius to fulfill a prophecy that could guarantee the return of Voldemort by changing time.\n\nPossessions\nHarry's parents left behind a somewhat large pile of wizard's gold, used as currency in the world of magic, in a vault in the wizarding bank, Gringotts. After Sirius' death later in the series, all of his remaining possessions are also passed along to Harry, including Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, and Sirius's vast amount of gold were transferred into Harry's account at Gringotts. Rowling noted that \"Harry's money never really is that important in the books, except that he can afford his books and uniforms and so on.\"\n\nAmong the school items Harry purchases in Diagon Alley after discovering his gold inheritance is his first wand, an 11-inch-long holly and phoenix feather model that he learns is the twin of Voldemort's wand, as the feathers that both wands contain as their cores both comes from Fawkes, the phoenix that Dumbledore keeps as a pet in his office until his death in Half-Blood Prince. Harry's wand is broken in Deathly Hallows. For a time, he borrows Hermione's wand, and later steals Draco's. With his defeat of Voldemort at the end of the series, he comes into the possession of the Elder Wand, but uses it only to repair his holly wand, before returning it to Dumbledore's tomb, from which Voldemort had stolen it. In the film version of Deathly Hallows Part 2, Harry destroys the Elder Wand.\n\nHarry also inherits indirectly two of his father's prized possessions. One is the Marauder's Map, given to him by interim owners Fred and George Weasley, which endows Harry with comprehensive knowledge of Hogwarts' facilities, grounds, and occupants. The other is his father's Invisibility Cloak, given to him by Dumbledore, which eventually proves Harry's descent from the Peverell family. Harry uses these tools both to aid in excursions at school and to protect those he cares about; the Invisibility Cloak, in particular, can hide two full-grown people. If three fully-grown people hide under the cloak their feet will be visible. When Harry reaches his age of maturity at seventeen, Molly Weasley gives him a pocket watch which had once belonged to her brother Fabian Prewett, as it is traditional to give a boy a watch when he turns seventeen.\n\nThroughout the majority of the books, Harry also has a pet owl named Hedwig, used to deliver and receive messages and packages. Hedwig is killed in the seventh book, about which Rowling says: \"The loss of Hedwig represented a loss of innocence and security. She has been almost like a cuddly toy to Harry at times. I know that death upset a lot of people!\" As a Quidditch player, Harry has owned two high-quality brooms. The first, a Nimbus Two Thousand, was procured for him by Professor Minerva McGonagall when Harry was added to Gryffindor's Quidditch team despite being a first-year student. This broom was destroyed by the Whomping Willow during a match in Harry's third year. It was replaced by a Firebolt, an even faster (and more expensive) broom, purchased for Harry by Sirius; however, as Sirius was believed to be trying to murder Harry at the time, the broom was subjected to stringent security inspections before Harry was allowed to ride it. Harry used it throughout his Hogwarts career until it, along with Hedwig, was lost during the July escape from Privet Drive in the final book.\n\nHarry also owns a moleskin pouch, or small 'bag' that is used for storing items, which no one but the owner can get out. He receives this from Hagrid as a 17th birthday present. Harry uses the pouch throughout the course of Deathly Hallows to keep several sentimental (yet, as he himself admits, otherwise worthless) objects such as the Marauder's Map, a shard of the magical mirror given to him by his god-father Sirius, the fake Horcrux locket that had belonged to Sirius's brother R.A.B. (Regulus Arcturus Black), the Snitch bequeathed to him by Dumbledore, containing the Resurrection Stone that had previously been set into Voldemort's grandfather Marvolo Gaunt's signet ring, which Harry discovers is actually the second Hallow, a letter from his mother to Sirius with part of a photo (of him and his father, James), and eventually, his own broken wand (which Harry later repairs with the Elder Wand).\n\nFamily\n\nIn the novels, Harry is the only child of James and Lily Potter, orphaned as an infant. Rowling made Harry an orphan from the early drafts of her first book. She felt an orphan would be the most interesting character to write about. However, after her mother's death, Rowling wrote Harry as a child longing to see his dead parents again, incorporating her own anguish into him. Harry is categorised as a \"half-blood\" wizard in the series, because although both his parents were magical, Lily was \"Muggle-born\", and James was a pure-blood.\n\nHarry's aunt and uncle kept the truth about his parents' deaths from Harry, telling him that they had died in a car crash. James Potter is a descendant of Ignotus Peverell, the third of the three original owners of the Deathly Hallows, and thus so is Harry, a realisation he makes during the course of the final book. The lineage continues at the end of the saga through his three children with Ginny: James Sirius Potter, Albus Severus Potter and Lily Luna Potter.\n\nIn an original piece published on the Pottermore website in September 2015, Rowling described the history of the Potter family in greater detail, beginning with the 12th-century wizard Linfred of Stinchcombe, \"a locally well-beloved and eccentric man, whose nickname, 'the Potterer', became corrupted in time to 'Potter'\". Linfred was the inventor of a number of remedies that evolved into potions still used in the modern day, including Skele-Gro and Pepperup Potion. These successful products garnered Linfred the earnings that formed the basis of the family's wealth, which grew with the work of successive generations. Linfred's oldest son, Hardwin, married a beautiful young witch from Godric's Hollow named Iolanthe Peverell, the granddaughter of Ignotus Peverell, who continued the tradition of passing down Ignotus' Invisibility Cloak through the generations. Two of Harry Potter's ancestors have sat on the Wizengamot: Ralston Potter and Henry Potter. Ralston was a member from 1612–1652, and an ardent supporter of the Statute of Secrecy. Henry Potter, known as \"Harry\" to his closest loved ones, was a direct descendant of Hardwin and Iolanthe, and a paternal great-grandfather of Harry Potter. Henry served on the Wizengamot from 1913–1921, and caused a minor controversy when he publicly condemned then Minister for Magic, Archer Evermonde, for prohibiting the magical community from helping Muggles waging the First World War. Henry's son, Fleamont Potter, who was given his grandmother's surname as his given name in order to grant the dying wish of Henry's mother to continue her family name, garnered a reputation for his duels at Hogwarts, which were provoked when others mocked him for his name. Fleamont quadrupled the family gold by creating magical Sleekeazy's Hair Potion, selling his company at a vast profit when he retired. Fleamont and his wife, Euphemia, had given up hope of having a child when she became pregnant with their son, James, who would go on to marry Lily Evans and bear a son of their own, Harry Potter. Fleamont and Euphemia lived to see James and Lily marry, but they would never meet their famous grandson, as they both died of dragon pox, stemming from their advanced age.\n\nReception\nIn 2002, Harry Potter was voted No. 85 among the \"100 Best Fictional Characters\" by Book magazine and also voted the 35th \"Worst Briton\" in Channel 4's \"100 Worst Britons We Love to Hate\" programme. Entertainment Weekly ranked Harry Potter number two on its 2010 \"100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years\" list, saying \"Long after we've turned the last page and watched the last end credit, Harry still feels like someone we know. And that's the most magical thing about him.\" UGO Networks listed Harry as one of their best heroes of all time, who said that \"Harry is a hero to the often oppressed and downtrodden young fan boys and girls out there, who finally have an icon that is respected and revered by those who might otherwise look down on robe-wearing and wand waving as dork fodder\". Harry Potter was also ranked number thirty-six on Empire'''s 2008 list of \"100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time\". IGN said that Harry Potter was their favourite Harry Potter character, calling him a \"sympathetic figure\" and saying in response to his fights against Voldemort that \"everybody loves an underdog story of good vs. evil\".\n\nOn the other hand, he has received criticism. In The Irish Times, Ed Power wrote \"Potter, by contrast, is an anointed cherub, told he is special from the very outset. He has no winning attributes yet […] is fawned over endlessly. Harry is thus the ultimate 'Special One' – celebrated as an overachiever before he's achieved anything. [...] In Potter, [Rowling] encourages the underage reader to identify with a young man who is exceptional only because the author insists this to be the case. You're extraordinary no matter what. Is that an outlook I want to pass onto my kids?\" Author Lannah Marshall criticised the character, saying \"What I hear about Harry Potter, more often than not, is that he is a bland character. Defence of this includes that he is an audience surrogate, or what I call a 'puppet protagonist'. A puppet protagonist is a main character with dull, limited personality, enabling the audience to step inside the role and use their imagination to fill in the rest. The prevalence of first-person narration within Young Adult (YA) simply adds to the tide of puppet protagonists; introducing hundreds of bland, forgetful leads into interesting and complex stories to allow the reader to feel part of the tale. It's like we’re going back to the second-person horrors of choose-your-own-adventure books.\"\n\nDespite blowback from some Christian fundamentalists critical of Rowling's usage of witchcraft and magic in the series, other Christian critics, including Rev. John Killinger, have argued that Potter is a Christ figure in the series. Killinger opined in 2002 that \"J.K. Rowling has written the Christ story of the 21st century, and it's wonderful that she has attained such a magnificent following worldwide.\" He noted several allusions to Jesus in Potter's character arcs in Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets. Rowling herself later admitted that the Gospel story inspired that of Harry Potter, especially with his ultimate sacrifice in Deathly Hallows and apparent death before returning to defeat Voldemort once and for all.\n\nIn popular culture\n\nAccording to halloweenonline.com, Harry Potter sets were the fifth-best selling Halloween costume of 2005. In addition, wizard rock bands like Harry and the Potters and others regularly dress up in the style of Harry Potter, sporting painted forehead scars, black wigs, and round bottle top glasses. Wizard rock is a musical movement dating from 2002 that consists of at least 200 bands made up of young musicians, playing songs about Harry Potter. The movement started in Massachusetts with the band Harry and the Potters, who cosplay as Harry during live performances.\n\nParodies\n\nIn April 2009, a group of University of Michigan students eventually known as StarKid Productions performed Harry Potter: The Musical, a two-act musical parody that featured major elements from all seven books and an original score. They posted the entire musical on their YouTube channel but removed it in late June, to edit some more mature elements from the videos. The musical, re-titled A Very Potter Musical, was reposted on 5 July 2009, starring Darren Criss as Harry Potter. A sequel was premiered at the 2010 HPEF Harry Potter Conference Infinitus, and released on YouTube on 22 July at 8 pm EST. The sequel was called A Very Potter Sequel and featured the Death Eaters using the Time-Turner to go back in time to Harry's first year in Hogwarts. Harry Potter is spoofed in the Barry Trotter'' series by American writer Michael Gerber, where a \"Barry Trotter\" appears as the eponymous antihero. On his homepage, Gerber describes Trotter as an unpleasant character who \"drinks too much, eats like a pig, sleeps until noon, and owes everybody money.\" The author stated \"[s]ince I really liked Rowling's books […] I felt obligated to try to write a spoof worthy of the originals\".\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n Harry Potter: Quick facts from the Harry Potter lexicon\n Harry Potter quotes from Mugglenet\n Harry Potter Bibliography: Research and Criticism\n Harry Potter biography at The Harry Potter Encyclopedia\n Harry Potter on IMDb\n Harry Potter images from The Movie on Leaky.\n Dan Radcliffe as Harry Potter Images on Leaky.\n \n\nChild characters in film\nChild characters in literature\nChild characters in musical theatre\nChrist figures in fiction\nFictional characters who can turn invisible\nFictional child soldiers\nFictional English people\nFictional members of secret societies\nFictional war veterans\nHarry Potter characters\nLiterary characters introduced in 1997\nMale characters in film\nMale characters in literature\nOrphan characters in film\nOrphan characters in literature\nTeenage characters in film\nTeenage characters in literature\nTeenage characters in musical theatre\nWizards in fiction\nde:Figuren der Harry-Potter-Romane#Harry Potter"
] |
[
"Lord Voldemort",
"Character development",
"in what way was his character developed?",
"Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter",
"what was his character like?",
"he was a wizard ...",
"did he use magic?",
"I don't know.",
"did he ever cause any harm to Harry Potter?",
"Harry has to find out, before we find out. And--so--but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry."
] |
C_e1dce95f334b494096220fc2c296fae0_1
|
how did Rowling come up with the name Lord Voldemort?
| 5 |
How did Rowling come up with the name Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter?
|
Lord Voldemort
|
In a 2001 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter (the protagonist of the novels), and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry--he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And--so--but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since." In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death." Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. Some literary analysts have considered possible meanings in the name: Philip Nel states that Voldemort is derived from the French for "flight of death", and in a 2002 paper, Nilsen and Nilsen suggest that readers get a "creepy feeling" from the name Voldemort, because of the French word "mort" ("death") within it and that word's association with cognate English words derived from the Latin mors. CANNOTANSWER
|
Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter (the protagonist of the novels), and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first.
|
Lord Voldemort (, in the films) is a sobriquet for Tom Marvolo Riddle, a character and the main antagonist in J. K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels. The character first appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was published in 1997, and returned either in person or in flashbacks in each book and its film adaptation in the series except the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which he is only mentioned.
Voldemort is the archenemy of Harry Potter, who according to a prophecy has "the power to vanquish the Dark Lord". He attempts to murder the boy, but instead kills his parents, Lily and James Potter, and leaves Harry with a scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. Nearly every witch or wizard dares not utter his name and refers to him instead with such monikers as "You-Know-Who", "He Who Must Not Be Named", or "the Dark Lord". Voldemort's obsession with blood purity signifies his aim to rid the wizarding world of Muggle (non-magical) heritage and to conquer both worlds, Muggle and wizarding, to achieve pure-blood dominance. Through his mother's family, he is the last descendant of the wizard Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is the leader of the Death Eaters, a group of evil wizards and witches dedicated to ridding the Wizarding World of Muggles and establishing Voldemort as its supreme ruler.
Character development
In a 1999 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter, and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry—he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And—so—but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since."
In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death."
Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. The name Voldemort is derived from the French vol de mort which means "flight of death" or "theft of death".
Appearances
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Voldemort makes his debut in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In this story, Rowling introduces him as the Dark Lord who tried to kill Harry Potter because the boy was prophesied to destroy him. Voldemort murdered Harry's parents, James and Lily, but as a result of his mother's love and willingness to sacrifice herself for him, baby Harry survived when Voldemort tried to murder him with a Killing Curse. Voldemort was disembodied, and Harry was left with a mysterious, lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead as a result.
In the book, Voldemort unsuccessfully tries to regain his dissolved body by stealing the titular Philosopher's Stone. To achieve his objective, Voldemort uses Professor Quirrell's aid by latching onto the back of the latter's head. However, at the climax of the book, Harry manages to prevent Voldemort from stealing the stone.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
In the second instalment, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling introduces Tom Marvolo Riddle, a manifestation of a teenage Voldemort that resides inside a magical diary found by Ginny Weasley. In this book, Ginny is written as a shy girl with a crush on Harry. Feeling anxious and lonely, she begins to write into the diary and shares her deepest fears with the sympathetic Tom. However, at the climax of the story, when Riddle rearranges the letters in his name to write "I am Lord Voldemort", Riddle is revealed as a magical manifestation of the boy who would later grow up to become the Dark Lord. Riddle states he has grown strong on Ginny's fears and eventually possesses her, using her as a pawn to unlock the Chamber of Secrets, whence a basilisk is set free and petrifies several Hogwarts students. Harry defeats the manifestation of Riddle from the diary and the basilisk. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Albus Dumbledore reveals to Harry that the diary was one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Voldemort does not appear in the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, either in person or as a magical manifestation. He is, however, heard when Harry passes out from the harsh effects of a Dementor. Towards the end of the story, Sybill Trelawney, the Divination professor, makes a rare genuine prophecy: "The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight, the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever before. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master..." Though it is initially implied that the prophecy refers to Sirius Black, the book's ostensible antagonist, the servant is eventually revealed to be Peter Pettigrew, who, for the 12 years since Voldemort's fall, has been disguised as Ron's pet rat, Scabbers.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
In the fourth instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort reappears at the start and the climax of the book. Rowling lets many seemingly unrelated plot elements fall into order. It is revealed that Voldemort's minion Barty Crouch Jr, disguised as Hogwarts professor Mad-Eye Moody, has manipulated the events of the Triwizard Tournament in Harry's favour. Voldemort's goal is to teleport Harry under Dumbledore's watch as a reluctant participant to the Little Hangleton graveyard, where the Riddle family is buried. Harry is captured and, after Pettigrew uses Harry's blood to fulfil a gruesome magical ritual, Voldemort regains his body and is restored to his full power. For the first time in the series, Rowling describes his appearance: "tall and skeletally thin", with a face "whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils". Rowling writes that his "hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat's, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness". It was revealed that, while in Albania, Pettigrew had captured the Ministry of Magic official Bertha Jorkins, who was tortured for information about the Ministry. After they learned that Barty Crouch Jr, a faithful Death Eater, had been smuggled out of Azkaban and was privately confined at his father's house, they killed her. With Pettigrew's help, Voldemort creates a small, rudimentary body, corporeal enough to travel and perform magic, and formulated a plan to restore his own body by capturing Harry. A portion of the plan had been overheard by Frank Bryce, a gardener, whom Voldemort then killed. Voldemort then completes his plan and returns to life in his full body as a result of the ritual with Harry's blood. He then summons his Death Eaters to the graveyard to witness the death of Harry as he challenges Harry to a duel. However, when Voldemort duels Harry, their wands become magically locked together due to the twin Phoenix feather cores of the wands. Because of a phenomenon later revealed as Priori Incantatem, ghost-like manifestations of Voldemort's most recent victims (including Harry's parents) then appear and distract Voldemort, allowing Harry just enough time to escape via Portkey with the body of fellow-student, Cedric Diggory, who was murdered by Pettigrew on Voldemort's orders.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Voldemort appears at the climax of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, having again plotted against Harry. In this book, Harry goes through extreme emotional stress, and according to Rowling, it was necessary to prove that Harry is emotionally vulnerable and thus human, in contrast to his nemesis Voldemort, who is emotionally invulnerable and thus inhuman: "[Harry is] a very human hero, and this is, obviously, there's a contrast, between him, as a very human hero, and Voldemort, who has deliberately dehumanised himself. […] and Harry, therefore, did have to reach a point where he did almost break down." In this book, Voldemort makes liberal use of the Ministry of Magic's refusal to believe that he has returned. Voldemort engineers a plot to free Bellatrix Lestrange and other Death Eaters from Azkaban and then embarks on a scheme to retrieve the full record of a prophecy stored in the Department of Mysteries regarding Harry and himself. He sends a group of Death Eaters to retrieve the prophecy, where the Order of the Phoenix meets them. All but Bellatrix are captured, and Voldemort engages in a ferocious duel with Dumbledore. When Dumbledore gets the upper hand, Voldemort attempts to possess Harry but finds that he cannot; Harry is too full of that which Voldemort finds incomprehensible, and which he detests as weakness: love. Sensing that Dumbledore could win, Voldemort disapparates, but not before the Minister for Magic sees him in person, making his return to life public knowledge in the next book.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Voldemort does not appear in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, although his presence and actions are felt: he once again declares war, and begins to rise to power once more. He murders Amelia Bones of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and begins to target members of the Order of the Phoenix, including Emmeline Vance.
Rowling uses several chapters as exposition to establish Voldemort's backstory. In a series of flashbacks, using the pensieve as a plot device, she reveals that Voldemort was the son of the witch Merope Gaunt and a Muggle called Tom Riddle. Riddle abandoned Merope before their child's birth, soon after which Merope died. After living in an orphanage, young Riddle met Dumbledore, who told him he was a wizard and arranged for him to attend Hogwarts. Riddle was outwardly a model student, but was in reality a psychopath who took sadistic pleasure in using his powers to harm and control people. He eventually murdered his father and grandparents as revenge for abandoning him. The book also discusses Riddle's hatred of Muggles, his obsession with Horcruxes, and his desire to split his soul to achieve immortality. Rowling stated Voldemort's conception under the influence of a love potion symbolises the coercive circumstances under which he was brought into the world.
In the main plot of the book, Voldemort's next step is to engineer an assault on Hogwarts, and to kill Dumbledore. This is accomplished by Draco Malfoy, who arranges transportation of Death Eaters into Hogwarts by a pair of Vanishing Cabinets, which bypass the extensive protective enchantments placed around the school. The cabinets allow Voldemort's Death Eaters to enter Hogwarts, where battle commences and Dumbledore is cornered. Hogwarts professor (and re-doubled agent) Severus Snape uses the Killing Curse against Dumbledore when Draco could not force himself to do so.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort furthers his quest for ultimate power. He disposes of the Minister for Magic and replaces him with Pius Thicknesse, who is under the Imperius Curse. Establishing a totalitarian police state, he has Muggle-borns persecuted and arrested for "stealing magic" from the "pure blood" wizards. After failing to kill Harry with Draco's father Lucius Malfoy's borrowed wand (to avoid the effect of Priori Incantatem), he goes on a murderous search for the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand ever created, seeing it as the weapon he needs to overcome Harry's wand and make him truly invincible. He goes on a quest that takes him out of the country to Gregorovitch's wand shop, where he kills the old wandmaker. His journey also takes him to Nurmengard, the prison where Gellert Grindelwald is kept, and he kills Grindelwald as well. He finally locates the Elder Wand and steals it from Dumbledore's tomb.
Later, Voldemort finds out that Harry and his friends are hunting and destroying his Horcruxes when informed of their heist on the Lestranges' vault at Gringotts in search for Hufflepuff's Cup. After offering the occupants of Hogwarts mercy if they give up Harry, he assembles a large army and launches an invasion of the castle, where Harry is searching for Ravenclaw's Diadem. Voldemort orders his pet snake Nagini to execute Snape, believing it would make him the true master of the Elder Wand, since Snape killed Dumbledore. He then calls an hour's armistice, in exchange for Harry. When Harry willingly walks into Voldemort's camp in the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort strikes him down with the Elder Wand. However, the use of Harry's blood to resurrect Voldemort's body proves to be a major setback: while Harry's blood runs in Voldemort's veins, Harry cannot be killed as his mother's protection lives on now in Voldemort too. Instead, Voldemort destroys the part of his own soul that resides in Harry's body. Voldemort forces Rubeus Hagrid to carry Harry's apparently lifeless body back to the castle as a trophy, sparking another battle during which Nagini, his last Horcrux, is destroyed by Neville Longbottom. The battle then moves into the Great Hall, where Voldemort fights Minerva McGonagall, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Horace Slughorn simultaneously. Harry then reveals himself and explains to Voldemort that Draco became the true master of the Elder Wand when he disarmed Dumbledore; Harry, in turn, won the wand's allegiance when he took Draco's wand. Refusing to believe this, Voldemort casts the Killing Curse with the Elder Wand while Harry uses a Disarming Charm with Draco's, but the Elder Wand refuses to kill its master and the spell rebounds on Voldemort who, with all of his Horcruxes destroyed, finally dies. His body is laid in a different chamber from all the others who died battling him.
Rowling stated that after his death, Voldemort is forced to exist in the stunted infant-like form that Harry sees in the King's Cross-like Limbo after his confrontation with Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest. Rowling also mentioned that, despite his extreme fear of death, he cannot become a ghost.
Appearances in other material
In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, it is revealed that Bellatrix gave birth to Voldemort's daughter Delphi in Malfoy Manor before the Battle of Hogwarts. Twenty-two years later, Delphi poses as Cedric's cousin and manipulates Harry and Ginny's second son Albus Severus Potter and his friend, Draco and Astoria Greengrass's son Scorpius Malfoy, into stealing a prototype Time Turner with which she hopes to resurrect her father. Using the Time Turner, Scorpius accidentally creates an alternative timeline where Voldemort killed Harry at the battle and now rules the wizarding world. In an attempt to achieve this future, Delphi travels to Godric's Hollow on the night Voldemort killed Harry's parents, hoping to avert the prophecy that led to her father's downfall. After receiving a message from his son, Harry, together with Ron, Hermione and Draco (who by now has become friends with Harry after they join forces to save their respective sons) transfigures himself into Voldemort so that he can distract Delphi, allowing them to overpower her. The real Voldemort kills Harry's parents as prophesied, and Delphi is sent to Azkaban.
Portrayals within films
Voldemort appears in every Harry Potter film, with the exception of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Several actors have portrayed him in his varying incarnations and ages.
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Voldemort's manifestation is as a face on the back of Quirrell's head, an effect achieved by computer generated imagery. Ian Hart, the actor who played Quirrell in the same film, provided the voice and the facial source for this character. Voldemort also appears in a scene in the Forbidden Forest where he is seen drinking the blood of a unicorn. As Voldemort's face was altered enough by CG work, and Hart's voice was affected enough, there was no confusion by Hart's playing of the two roles. In that film, he was also shown in a flashback sequence when he arrived at the home of James and Lily Potter to kill them. In this scene Voldemort is played by Richard Bremmer, though his face is never seen. His next appearance would be in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as the 16-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle (portrayed by Christian Coulson).
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort is initially only heard, possessing the scratchy, weak voice heard in the first film. By the film's climax, however, he appears in his physical form for the first time, played by Ralph Fiennes. As in the book, Voldemort is shown clad in dark black robes, being tall and emaciated, with no hair and yellowish teeth; his wand has a white tone and the handle appears to be made of bone; his finger nails are long and pale blue while his toe nails appear to be infected. Unlike in the book, his pupils are not cat-like and his eyes are blue, because producer David Heyman felt that his evil would not be able to be seen and would not fill the audience with fear (his eyes do briefly take on a snake-like appearance when he opens them after turning human, but quickly turn normal). As in the book, the film version of Voldemort has snake-like slit nostrils with the flesh of his nose significantly pressed back. Ralph Fiennes' nose was not covered in makeup on the set, but was digitally removed in post-production. In this first appearance, Voldemort also has a forked tongue, but this element was removed for the subsequent films.
Fiennes stated that he had two weeks to shoot the climactic showdown scene where he is gloating over a terrified Harry, played by Daniel Radcliffe. Fiennes said with a chuckle: "I have no doubt children will be afraid of me now if they weren't before." In preparation, he read the novel Goblet of Fire, but jokingly conceded: "I was only interested in my scene, and I had to go through thousands and thousands of other scenes which I did, dutifully, until I got to my scene and I read it many, many, many, many, many times and that was my research." Fiennes reprised his role as Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2.
Fiennes's nephew, Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, portrayed Tom Riddle as a child in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. By the time filming arrived Christian Coulson was 29, and not considered suitable to return as the adolescent Riddle. Thomas James Longley was originally scheduled to take over the role, but last minute renegotiations saw Frank Dillane cast instead.
Characterisation
Outward appearance
After he regains his body in the fourth book, Rowling describes Voldemort as having pale skin, a chalk-white, skull-like face, snake-like slits for nostrils, red eyes and cat-like slits for pupils, a skeletally thin body and long, thin hands with unnaturally long fingers. As mentioned in the first chapter of the seventh book, he also has no hair or lips. Earlier in life, as seen through flashbacks contained in the second and sixth books, Tom Marvolo Riddle was handsome and tall with pale skin, jet black hair, and dark brown eyes. He could charm many people with his looks. The transformation into his monstrous state is believed to have been the result of creating his Horcruxes and becoming less human as he continued to divide his soul. In the films, Voldemort's eyes are blue with round pupils.
Personality
Rowling described Voldemort as "the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years". She elaborated that he is a "raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering", and whose only ambition in life is to become all-powerful and immortal. He is also a sadist who hurts and murders people—especially Muggles—for his own amusement. He has no conscience, feels no remorse or empathy, and does not recognise the worth and humanity of anybody except himself.
He feels no need for human companionship or friendship, and cannot comprehend love or affection for another. He believes he is superior to everyone around him, to the point that he frequently refers to himself in the third person as "Lord Voldemort". Rowling also stated that Voldemort is "incredibly power hungry. Racist, really", and that if Voldemort were to look into the Mirror of Erised, in which one sees one's greatest desire, he would see "Himself, all-powerful and eternal. That's what he wants."
Rowling also stated that Voldemort's conception by influence of Amortentia—a love potion administered by his mother, a witch named Merope Gaunt, to the Muggle Tom Riddle—is related to his inability to understand love; it is "a symbolic way of showing that he came from a loveless union—but of course, everything would have changed if Merope had survived and raised him herself and loved him. The enchantment under which Tom Riddle fathered Voldemort is important because it shows coercion, and there can't be many more prejudicial ways to enter the world than as the result of such a union".
Like most archetypical villains, Voldemort's arrogance leads to his downfall. He also suffers from a pathological fear of death, which he regards as a shameful and ignominious human weakness. According to Rowling, his Boggart would be his own corpse. Rowling also said that the difference between Harry and Voldemort is that Harry accepts mortality, and thus Harry is, in the end, stronger than his nemesis.
Magical abilities and skills
Rowling establishes Voldemort throughout the series as an extremely powerful, intelligent, and ruthless dark wizard, described as the greatest and most powerful Dark Wizard of all time. He is known as one of the greatest Legilimens in the world and a highly accomplished Occlumens; he can read minds and shield his own from penetration. Besides Dumbledore, he is also the only wizard ever known to be able to apparate silently. Voldemort was also said to fear one wizard alone, Dumbledore.
In the final book, Voldemort flies unsupported, something that amazes those who see it. Voldemort, like his ancestral family, the Gaunts, is a Parselmouth, meaning he can converse with serpents. This skill was inherited from his ancestor, Salazar Slytherin. The Gaunt family speak Parseltongue among themselves. This highly unusual trait may be preserved through inbreeding, a practice employed by the Gaunt Family to maintain their blood's purity. When Voldemort attempts to kill Harry his ability to speak Parseltongue is passed to Harry through the small bit of the former's soul. After that bit of soul is destroyed, Harry loses this ability. In a flashback in the sixth novel, Voldemort boasts to Dumbledore during a job interview that he has "pushed the boundaries of magic farther than they had ever before". Dumbledore states that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is more extensive than any wizard alive and that even Dumbledore's most powerful protective spells and charms would likely be insufficient if Voldemort returned to full power. Dumbledore also said that Voldemort was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen. Although Voldemort remains highly accomplished and prodigious in skill, he is enormously lacking and highly inept in the most powerful magic, love. This inability to love and trust others proves to be Voldemort's greatest weakness in the series. Voldemort initially voices scepticism that his own magic might not be the most powerful, but upon returning to power, he admits to his Death Eaters that he had overlooked the ancient and powerful magic which Lily Potter invoked and that would protect Harry from harm.
On her website, Rowling wrote that Voldemort's wand is made of yew, whose sap is poisonous and which symbolises death. It forms a deliberate contrast to Harry's wand, which is made of holly, which she chose because holly is alleged to repel evil.
Rowling establishes in the books that Voldemort is magically connected to Harry via Harry's forehead scar. He disembodies himself when his Killing Curse targeting Harry rebounds on him, leaving the scar on Harry's forehead. In the books, and to a lesser extent in the films, Harry's scar serves as an indicator of Voldemort's presence: it burns when the Dark Lord is near or when Voldemort is feeling murderous or exultant. According to Rowling, by attacking Harry when he was a baby Voldemort gave him "tools [that] no other wizard possessed—the scar and the ability it conferred, a magical window into Voldemort's mind".
Family
Notes: The names 'Thomas' and 'Mary' Riddle are taken from the films. The Potter Family is not shown.
Riddle family
The Riddle family, an old gentry family, consisted of Thomas and Mary Riddle and their son, Tom Riddle, Esq. They owned over half of the valley that the town of Little Hangleton lay in, and Thomas was the most prominent inhabitant of that town. They lived in a large house with fine gardens, but were unpopular amongst the local residents due to their snobbish attitudes. Tom, the only child of Thomas and Mary, was known as a playboy, his main interests being womanizing and horse-riding.
Rowling revealed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that young Merope Gaunt fell in love with Riddle, peering at him through the windows and bushes at every opportunity. Merope's brother Morfin disapproved of his sister's affection for Tom and hexed him as he rode by, covering him in hives. This breach of wizarding law, and the ensuing violent struggle with Ministry of Magic officials, led to Marvolo and Morfin being imprisoned in Azkaban. As surmised by Dumbledore, once Merope was alone and no longer dominated by her father, she could make her move for Tom. She offered him a drink laced with a love potion, and he became infatuated with her; they soon eloped and, within three months of the marriage, Merope became pregnant. Merope decided to stop giving Tom the love potion, having come to the belief such enchantment of a man was tantamount to slavery. She also revealed her witch status to Tom, believing either that he had fallen in love with her on his own or he would at least stay for their unborn child. She was wrong, and Tom quickly left his pregnant wife and went home to his parents, claiming to have been "hoodwinked" and tricked into marrying Merope. Tom Marvolo Riddle, their son, was born on 31 December 1926 Merope died in childbirth, leaving the baby to grow up alone in an orphanage.
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it is revealed that Voldemort murdered his father and grandparents, leaving himself the only surviving member of the Riddle family.
House of Gaunt
Most of the exposition of the House of Gaunts background occurs in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, through the medium of Dumbledore's Pensieve. The Gaunts were once a powerful and influential family, and are the last known descendants of Salazar Slytherin. However, a vein of mental instability and violence within the family, reinforced through cousin marriages intended to preserve the pureblood line, had reduced them to poverty and squalor, as shown in the Pensieve's "memory" that Harry and Dumbledore witnessed. Like Salazar Slytherin, the Gaunts spoke Parseltongue. At the time of the story, the Gaunts' only material asset is a ramshackle shanty in Little Hangleton, that stood in a thicket in a valley opposite the Riddle House. Like the Riddles, the Gaunts were also unpopular with the local residents, with a reputation for being vulgar and intimidating.
Marvolo Gaunt was the last family patriarch. He was sentenced to a short term in Azkaban for his and his son's assault upon a Ministry of Magic official; this affected his health and he died soon after returning home. His signet ring passed to his son, Morfin Gaunt, who was convicted of assaulting a Muggle, and later died in Azkaban, convicted this time as a party to the murder of Tom Riddle Jr. and Riddle's parents.
Dumbledore discovers the real culprit while visiting Morfin in Azkaban to gather information about Voldemort. After Dumbledore successfully extracts Morfin's memory of his encounter with his nephew, he tries to use the evidence to have Morfin released, but Morfin dies before the decision can be made. The House of Gaunt ended with Morfin's death.
Merope Gaunt () was the daughter of Marvolo, and sister of Morfin. Harry's first impression of her was that she looked "like the most defeated person he had ever seen". She married Tom Riddle Jr and became pregnant within three months of the wedding. It is suggested that she tricked her husband into loving her by using a love potion, but when she became pregnant, she chose to stop administering the potion. It is implied that Merope had grown tired of living the lie and thought that her husband might have grown to love her, or that he might have stayed for the sake of their unborn child; however, he left her. Desperate, Merope wandered through the streets of London. The only thing she had left was the heavy gold locket that had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin, one of her family's most treasured items, which she sold for a small amount. When she was due to give birth, she stumbled into a Muggle orphanage, where she gave birth to her only son. She died within the next hour.
Gormlaith Gaunt was a 17th-century descendant of Salazar Slytherin, and like Salazar, a Parselmouth. Her wand was that which once belonged to Salazar himself. Educated at Hogwarts, Gormlaith lived in Ireland in the early 1600s. In about 1608, Gormlaith killed her estranged unnamed sister, and her sister's husband, William Sayre (a descendant of the Irish witch Morrigan), and kidnapped their five-year-old daughter, Isolt Sayre, raising her in the neighbouring valley of Coomcallee, or "Hag's Glen", because she felt that her parents' association with Muggles would badly influence Isolt. Fanatical and cruel, Gormlaith used Dark magic to isolate Isolt from others, forbade her a wand, and did not allow her to attend Hogwarts as she herself had, disgusted that it was now filled with Muggle-borns. After twelve years with Gormlaith, Isolt stole Gormlaith's wand and fled to the Colonies and settled in Massachusetts, where she founded the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When Gormlaith learned of the school, she pursued her niece in Massachusetts, where she was killed by Isolt's friend, William the Pukwudgie, with a venom-tipped arrow.
The Gaunts, including Voldemort, are distantly related to Harry because they are descendants of the Peverell brothers.
Reception
Several people have drawn a parallel between Voldemort and some politicians. Rowling has said that Voldemort was "a sort of" Adolf Hitler, and that there is some parallel with Nazism in her books. Rowling also compared Voldemort to Joseph Stalin. Alfonso Cuarón, director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban compared Voldemort to George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, who he said "...have selfish interests and are very much in love with power. Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people." Andrew Slack and the Harry Potter Alliance compare media consolidation in the US to Voldemort's regime in Deathly Hallows and its control over the Daily Prophet and other media saying that "Once Voldemort took over every form of media in the wizarding world, Dumbledore's Army and the Order of the Phoenix formed an independent media movement called 'Potterwatch'. Now the HP Alliance and Wizard Rock have come together to fight for a Potterwatch movement in the real world to fight back against Big VoldeMedia from further pushing out local and foreign news, minority representation, and the right to a Free Press." Julia Turner of Slate Magazine also noted similarities between the events of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the War on Terror. She said that Voldemort commits acts of terrorism such as destroying bridges, murdering innocents, and forcing children to kill their elders.
Voldemort has also been compared with other characters within fiction, for example Sauron from The Lord of the Rings; they are, during the time when the main plot takes place, seeking to recover their lost power after having been considered dead or at least no longer a threat, and are also so feared that they are sometimes unnamed.
IGN listed Voldemort as their seventh favourite Harry Potter character, calling him "truly frightening".
In popular culture
Several campaigns have used Voldemort to compare his evil to the influence of politicians, large media and corporations. "Lord Voldemort" is a nickname sometimes used for Peter Mandelson. Voldemort is also a recurring theme among wizard rock bands. Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock! is the second album from Harry and the Potters, and the character is mentioned in songs such as "The Dark Lord Lament" and "Flesh, Blood, and Bone".
Voldemort has been parodied in various venues. In The Simpsons 13th season's premiere, "Treehouse of Horror XII", Montgomery Burns appears as "Lord Montymort". A parody of Voldemort appears in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy as "Lord Moldybutt", an enemy of Nigel Planter (a parody of Harry). Voldemort also appears in the Potter Puppet Pals sketches by Neil Cicierega. One of the episodes including him was the seventeenth most viewed video of all time as of 2008 and the winner for "Best Comedy" of the year 2007 at YouTube.
"Continuing the Magic", an article in the 21 May 2007 issue of Time, includes mock book covers designed by author Lon Tweeten, laced with pop culture references. One of them, the "Dark Lord of the Dance", shows Voldemort teaming up with Harry on Broadway. In the MAD Magazine parodies of the films, the character is called Lord Druckermort, a backwards reference to the magazine's longtime caricaturist Mort Drucker. In Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1969, a young Tom Marvolo Riddle (introduced as "Tom", whose middle name is a "marvel" and last name is a "conundrum") appears, and becomes the new avatar of Oliver Haddo at the story's conclusion. In A Very Potter Musical, Voldemort is played by actor Joe Walker.
In a segment celebrating British children's literature at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London, an inflatable Voldemort appeared alongside other villains, The Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Cruella de Vil, to haunt children's dreams, before the arrival of a group of over thirty Mary Poppins who descended with their umbrellas to defeat them.
During the 2016 United States elections, Daniel Radcliffe was asked by Sky News journalist Craig Dillon if he would compare Donald Trump to Lord Voldemort; Radcliffe responded, "Trump is worse".
Voldemort appears in The Lego Batman Movie as one of the prisoners in the Phantom Zone that Joker recruits to take over Gotham City. Though Ralph Fiennes is featured in this movie as the voice of the British butler Alfred Pennyworth, he does not reprise his role as Voldemort. Instead, Voldemort is voiced by Eddie Izzard.
Outside of the Harry Potter video games, Voldemort is also a playable character in Lego Dimensions, with archive audio of Fiennes' portrayal in the films used for his voiceovers.
A 2018 Italian fan film titled Voldemort: Origins of the Heir depicts the story of Tom Riddle's rise to power.
Voldemort appears in Space Jam: A New Legacy, in the crowd for the game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad.
An upcoming French fan-made short-film titled The House of Gaunt - Lord Voldemort Origins explores the origin story of Voldemort and The Gaunt family.
Notes
References
External links
Lord Voldemort at Harry Potter Lexicon
Fictional characters with disfigurements
Fictional characters with immortality
Fictional characters with spirit possession or body swapping abilities
Fictional dictators
Fictional English people
Fictional hypnotists and indoctrinators
Fictional illeists
Fictional mass murderers
Fictional necromancers
Fictional offspring of rape
Fictional patricides
Fictional terrorists
Fictional torturers
Harry Potter characters
Literary characters introduced in 1997
Male film villains
Male literary villains
Orphan characters in film
Orphan characters in literature
Psychopathy in fiction
Film supervillains
| false |
[
"Lord Voldemort (, in the films) is a sobriquet for Tom Marvolo Riddle, a character and the main antagonist in J. K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels. The character first appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was published in 1997, and returned either in person or in flashbacks in each book and its film adaptation in the series except the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which he is only mentioned.\n\nVoldemort is the archenemy of Harry Potter, who according to a prophecy has \"the power to vanquish the Dark Lord\". He attempts to murder the boy, but instead kills his parents, Lily and James Potter, and leaves Harry with a scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. Nearly every witch or wizard dares not utter his name and refers to him instead with such monikers as \"You-Know-Who\", \"He Who Must Not Be Named\", or \"the Dark Lord\". Voldemort's obsession with blood purity signifies his aim to rid the wizarding world of Muggle (non-magical) heritage and to conquer both worlds, Muggle and wizarding, to achieve pure-blood dominance. Through his mother's family, he is the last descendant of the wizard Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is the leader of the Death Eaters, a group of evil wizards and witches dedicated to ridding the Wizarding World of Muggles and establishing Voldemort as its supreme ruler.\n\nCharacter development \nIn a 1999 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter, and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. \"The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry—he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And—so—but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since.\"\n\nIn the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: \"Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does.\" In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as \"a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering\". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: \"Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death.\"\n\nThroughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as \"You-Know-Who\" or \"He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named\" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a \"taboo\" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. The name Voldemort is derived from the French vol de mort which means \"flight of death\" or \"theft of death\".\n\nAppearances\n\nHarry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone \n\nVoldemort makes his debut in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In this story, Rowling introduces him as the Dark Lord who tried to kill Harry Potter because the boy was prophesied to destroy him. Voldemort murdered Harry's parents, James and Lily, but as a result of his mother's love and willingness to sacrifice herself for him, baby Harry survived when Voldemort tried to murder him with a Killing Curse. Voldemort was disembodied, and Harry was left with a mysterious, lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead as a result.\n\nIn the book, Voldemort unsuccessfully tries to regain his dissolved body by stealing the titular Philosopher's Stone. To achieve his objective, Voldemort uses Professor Quirrell's aid by latching onto the back of the latter's head. However, at the climax of the book, Harry manages to prevent Voldemort from stealing the stone.\n\nHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets \nIn the second instalment, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling introduces Tom Marvolo Riddle, a manifestation of a teenage Voldemort that resides inside a magical diary found by Ginny Weasley. In this book, Ginny is written as a shy girl with a crush on Harry. Feeling anxious and lonely, she begins to write into the diary and shares her deepest fears with the sympathetic Tom. However, at the climax of the story, when Riddle rearranges the letters in his name to write \"I am Lord Voldemort\", Riddle is revealed as a magical manifestation of the boy who would later grow up to become the Dark Lord. Riddle states he has grown strong on Ginny's fears and eventually possesses her, using her as a pawn to unlock the Chamber of Secrets, whence a basilisk is set free and petrifies several Hogwarts students. Harry defeats the manifestation of Riddle from the diary and the basilisk. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Albus Dumbledore reveals to Harry that the diary was one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.\n\nHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban \nVoldemort does not appear in the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, either in person or as a magical manifestation. He is, however, heard when Harry passes out from the harsh effects of a Dementor. Towards the end of the story, Sybill Trelawney, the Divination professor, makes a rare genuine prophecy: \"The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight, the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever before. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master...\" Though it is initially implied that the prophecy refers to Sirius Black, the book's ostensible antagonist, the servant is eventually revealed to be Peter Pettigrew, who, for the 12 years since Voldemort's fall, has been disguised as Ron's pet rat, Scabbers.\n\nHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire \nIn the fourth instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort reappears at the start and the climax of the book. Rowling lets many seemingly unrelated plot elements fall into order. It is revealed that Voldemort's minion Barty Crouch Jr, disguised as Hogwarts professor Mad-Eye Moody, has manipulated the events of the Triwizard Tournament in Harry's favour. Voldemort's goal is to teleport Harry under Dumbledore's watch as a reluctant participant to the Little Hangleton graveyard, where the Riddle family is buried. Harry is captured and, after Pettigrew uses Harry's blood to fulfil a gruesome magical ritual, Voldemort regains his body and is restored to his full power. For the first time in the series, Rowling describes his appearance: \"tall and skeletally thin\", with a face \"whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils\". Rowling writes that his \"hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat's, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness\". It was revealed that, while in Albania, Pettigrew had captured the Ministry of Magic official Bertha Jorkins, who was tortured for information about the Ministry. After they learned that Barty Crouch Jr, a faithful Death Eater, had been smuggled out of Azkaban and was privately confined at his father's house, they killed her. With Pettigrew's help, Voldemort creates a small, rudimentary body, corporeal enough to travel and perform magic, and formulated a plan to restore his own body by capturing Harry. A portion of the plan had been overheard by Frank Bryce, a gardener, whom Voldemort then killed. Voldemort then completes his plan and returns to life in his full body as a result of the ritual with Harry's blood. He then summons his Death Eaters to the graveyard to witness the death of Harry as he challenges Harry to a duel. However, when Voldemort duels Harry, their wands become magically locked together due to the twin Phoenix feather cores of the wands. Because of a phenomenon later revealed as Priori Incantatem, ghost-like manifestations of Voldemort's most recent victims (including Harry's parents) then appear and distract Voldemort, allowing Harry just enough time to escape via Portkey with the body of fellow-student, Cedric Diggory, who was murdered by Pettigrew on Voldemort's orders.\n\nHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix \nVoldemort appears at the climax of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, having again plotted against Harry. In this book, Harry goes through extreme emotional stress, and according to Rowling, it was necessary to prove that Harry is emotionally vulnerable and thus human, in contrast to his nemesis Voldemort, who is emotionally invulnerable and thus inhuman: \"[Harry is] a very human hero, and this is, obviously, there's a contrast, between him, as a very human hero, and Voldemort, who has deliberately dehumanised himself. […] and Harry, therefore, did have to reach a point where he did almost break down.\" In this book, Voldemort makes liberal use of the Ministry of Magic's refusal to believe that he has returned. Voldemort engineers a plot to free Bellatrix Lestrange and other Death Eaters from Azkaban and then embarks on a scheme to retrieve the full record of a prophecy stored in the Department of Mysteries regarding Harry and himself. He sends a group of Death Eaters to retrieve the prophecy, where the Order of the Phoenix meets them. All but Bellatrix are captured, and Voldemort engages in a ferocious duel with Dumbledore. When Dumbledore gets the upper hand, Voldemort attempts to possess Harry but finds that he cannot; Harry is too full of that which Voldemort finds incomprehensible, and which he detests as weakness: love. Sensing that Dumbledore could win, Voldemort disapparates, but not before the Minister for Magic sees him in person, making his return to life public knowledge in the next book.\n\nHarry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince \nVoldemort does not appear in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, although his presence and actions are felt: he once again declares war, and begins to rise to power once more. He murders Amelia Bones of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and begins to target members of the Order of the Phoenix, including Emmeline Vance.\n\nRowling uses several chapters as exposition to establish Voldemort's backstory. In a series of flashbacks, using the pensieve as a plot device, she reveals that Voldemort was the son of the witch Merope Gaunt and a Muggle called Tom Riddle. Riddle abandoned Merope before their child's birth, soon after which Merope died. After living in an orphanage, young Riddle met Dumbledore, who told him he was a wizard and arranged for him to attend Hogwarts. Riddle was outwardly a model student, but was in reality a psychopath who took sadistic pleasure in using his powers to harm and control people. He eventually murdered his father and grandparents as revenge for abandoning him. The book also discusses Riddle's hatred of Muggles, his obsession with Horcruxes, and his desire to split his soul to achieve immortality. Rowling stated Voldemort's conception under the influence of a love potion symbolises the coercive circumstances under which he was brought into the world.\n\nIn the main plot of the book, Voldemort's next step is to engineer an assault on Hogwarts, and to kill Dumbledore. This is accomplished by Draco Malfoy, who arranges transportation of Death Eaters into Hogwarts by a pair of Vanishing Cabinets, which bypass the extensive protective enchantments placed around the school. The cabinets allow Voldemort's Death Eaters to enter Hogwarts, where battle commences and Dumbledore is cornered. Hogwarts professor (and re-doubled agent) Severus Snape uses the Killing Curse against Dumbledore when Draco could not force himself to do so.\n\nHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows \n\nIn Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort furthers his quest for ultimate power. He disposes of the Minister for Magic and replaces him with Pius Thicknesse, who is under the Imperius Curse. Establishing a totalitarian police state, he has Muggle-borns persecuted and arrested for \"stealing magic\" from the \"pure blood\" wizards. After failing to kill Harry with Draco's father Lucius Malfoy's borrowed wand (to avoid the effect of Priori Incantatem), he goes on a murderous search for the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand ever created, seeing it as the weapon he needs to overcome Harry's wand and make him truly invincible. He goes on a quest that takes him out of the country to Gregorovitch's wand shop, where he kills the old wandmaker. His journey also takes him to Nurmengard, the prison where Gellert Grindelwald is kept, and he kills Grindelwald as well. He finally locates the Elder Wand and steals it from Dumbledore's tomb.\n\nLater, Voldemort finds out that Harry and his friends are hunting and destroying his Horcruxes when informed of their heist on the Lestranges' vault at Gringotts in search for Hufflepuff's Cup. After offering the occupants of Hogwarts mercy if they give up Harry, he assembles a large army and launches an invasion of the castle, where Harry is searching for Ravenclaw's Diadem. Voldemort orders his pet snake Nagini to execute Snape, believing it would make him the true master of the Elder Wand, since Snape killed Dumbledore. He then calls an hour's armistice, in exchange for Harry. When Harry willingly walks into Voldemort's camp in the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort strikes him down with the Elder Wand. However, the use of Harry's blood to resurrect Voldemort's body proves to be a major setback: while Harry's blood runs in Voldemort's veins, Harry cannot be killed as his mother's protection lives on now in Voldemort too. Instead, Voldemort destroys the part of his own soul that resides in Harry's body. Voldemort forces Rubeus Hagrid to carry Harry's apparently lifeless body back to the castle as a trophy, sparking another battle during which Nagini, his last Horcrux, is destroyed by Neville Longbottom. The battle then moves into the Great Hall, where Voldemort fights Minerva McGonagall, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Horace Slughorn simultaneously. Harry then reveals himself and explains to Voldemort that Draco became the true master of the Elder Wand when he disarmed Dumbledore; Harry, in turn, won the wand's allegiance when he took Draco's wand. Refusing to believe this, Voldemort casts the Killing Curse with the Elder Wand while Harry uses a Disarming Charm with Draco's, but the Elder Wand refuses to kill its master and the spell rebounds on Voldemort who, with all of his Horcruxes destroyed, finally dies. His body is laid in a different chamber from all the others who died battling him.\n\nRowling stated that after his death, Voldemort is forced to exist in the stunted infant-like form that Harry sees in the King's Cross-like Limbo after his confrontation with Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest. Rowling also mentioned that, despite his extreme fear of death, he cannot become a ghost.\n\nAppearances in other material\n\nIn Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, it is revealed that Bellatrix gave birth to Voldemort's daughter Delphi in Malfoy Manor before the Battle of Hogwarts. Twenty-two years later, Delphi poses as Cedric's cousin and manipulates Harry and Ginny's second son Albus Severus Potter and his friend, Draco and Astoria Greengrass's son Scorpius Malfoy, into stealing a prototype Time Turner with which she hopes to resurrect her father. Using the Time Turner, Scorpius accidentally creates an alternative timeline where Voldemort killed Harry at the battle and now rules the wizarding world. In an attempt to achieve this future, Delphi travels to Godric's Hollow on the night Voldemort killed Harry's parents, hoping to avert the prophecy that led to her father's downfall. After receiving a message from his son, Harry, together with Ron, Hermione and Draco (who by now has become friends with Harry after they join forces to save their respective sons) transfigures himself into Voldemort so that he can distract Delphi, allowing them to overpower her. The real Voldemort kills Harry's parents as prophesied, and Delphi is sent to Azkaban.\n\nPortrayals within films \n\nVoldemort appears in every Harry Potter film, with the exception of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Several actors have portrayed him in his varying incarnations and ages.\n\nIn Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Voldemort's manifestation is as a face on the back of Quirrell's head, an effect achieved by computer generated imagery. Ian Hart, the actor who played Quirrell in the same film, provided the voice and the facial source for this character. Voldemort also appears in a scene in the Forbidden Forest where he is seen drinking the blood of a unicorn. As Voldemort's face was altered enough by CG work, and Hart's voice was affected enough, there was no confusion by Hart's playing of the two roles. In that film, he was also shown in a flashback sequence when he arrived at the home of James and Lily Potter to kill them. In this scene Voldemort is played by Richard Bremmer, though his face is never seen. His next appearance would be in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as the 16-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle (portrayed by Christian Coulson).\n\nIn Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort is initially only heard, possessing the scratchy, weak voice heard in the first film. By the film's climax, however, he appears in his physical form for the first time, played by Ralph Fiennes. As in the book, Voldemort is shown clad in dark black robes, being tall and emaciated, with no hair and yellowish teeth; his wand has a white tone and the handle appears to be made of bone; his finger nails are long and pale blue while his toe nails appear to be infected. Unlike in the book, his pupils are not cat-like and his eyes are blue, because producer David Heyman felt that his evil would not be able to be seen and would not fill the audience with fear (his eyes do briefly take on a snake-like appearance when he opens them after turning human, but quickly turn normal). As in the book, the film version of Voldemort has snake-like slit nostrils with the flesh of his nose significantly pressed back. Ralph Fiennes' nose was not covered in makeup on the set, but was digitally removed in post-production. In this first appearance, Voldemort also has a forked tongue, but this element was removed for the subsequent films.\n\nFiennes stated that he had two weeks to shoot the climactic showdown scene where he is gloating over a terrified Harry, played by Daniel Radcliffe. Fiennes said with a chuckle: \"I have no doubt children will be afraid of me now if they weren't before.\" In preparation, he read the novel Goblet of Fire, but jokingly conceded: \"I was only interested in my scene, and I had to go through thousands and thousands of other scenes which I did, dutifully, until I got to my scene and I read it many, many, many, many, many times and that was my research.\" Fiennes reprised his role as Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2.\n\nFiennes's nephew, Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, portrayed Tom Riddle as a child in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. By the time filming arrived Christian Coulson was 29, and not considered suitable to return as the adolescent Riddle. Thomas James Longley was originally scheduled to take over the role, but last minute renegotiations saw Frank Dillane cast instead.\n\nCharacterisation\n\nOutward appearance \nAfter he regains his body in the fourth book, Rowling describes Voldemort as having pale skin, a chalk-white, skull-like face, snake-like slits for nostrils, red eyes and cat-like slits for pupils, a skeletally thin body and long, thin hands with unnaturally long fingers. As mentioned in the first chapter of the seventh book, he also has no hair or lips. Earlier in life, as seen through flashbacks contained in the second and sixth books, Tom Marvolo Riddle was handsome and tall with pale skin, jet black hair, and dark brown eyes. He could charm many people with his looks. The transformation into his monstrous state is believed to have been the result of creating his Horcruxes and becoming less human as he continued to divide his soul. In the films, Voldemort's eyes are blue with round pupils.\n\nPersonality \nRowling described Voldemort as \"the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years\". She elaborated that he is a \"raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering\", and whose only ambition in life is to become all-powerful and immortal. He is also a sadist who hurts and murders people—especially Muggles—for his own amusement. He has no conscience, feels no remorse or empathy, and does not recognise the worth and humanity of anybody except himself.\nHe feels no need for human companionship or friendship, and cannot comprehend love or affection for another. He believes he is superior to everyone around him, to the point that he frequently refers to himself in the third person as \"Lord Voldemort\". Rowling also stated that Voldemort is \"incredibly power hungry. Racist, really\", and that if Voldemort were to look into the Mirror of Erised, in which one sees one's greatest desire, he would see \"Himself, all-powerful and eternal. That's what he wants.\"\n\nRowling also stated that Voldemort's conception by influence of Amortentia—a love potion administered by his mother, a witch named Merope Gaunt, to the Muggle Tom Riddle—is related to his inability to understand love; it is \"a symbolic way of showing that he came from a loveless union—but of course, everything would have changed if Merope had survived and raised him herself and loved him. The enchantment under which Tom Riddle fathered Voldemort is important because it shows coercion, and there can't be many more prejudicial ways to enter the world than as the result of such a union\".\n\nLike most archetypical villains, Voldemort's arrogance leads to his downfall. He also suffers from a pathological fear of death, which he regards as a shameful and ignominious human weakness. According to Rowling, his Boggart would be his own corpse. Rowling also said that the difference between Harry and Voldemort is that Harry accepts mortality, and thus Harry is, in the end, stronger than his nemesis.\n\nMagical abilities and skills \n\nRowling establishes Voldemort throughout the series as an extremely powerful, intelligent, and ruthless dark wizard, described as the greatest and most powerful Dark Wizard of all time. He is known as one of the greatest Legilimens in the world and a highly accomplished Occlumens; he can read minds and shield his own from penetration. Besides Dumbledore, he is also the only wizard ever known to be able to apparate silently. Voldemort was also said to fear one wizard alone, Dumbledore.\n\nIn the final book, Voldemort flies unsupported, something that amazes those who see it. Voldemort, like his ancestral family, the Gaunts, is a Parselmouth, meaning he can converse with serpents. This skill was inherited from his ancestor, Salazar Slytherin. The Gaunt family speak Parseltongue among themselves. This highly unusual trait may be preserved through inbreeding, a practice employed by the Gaunt Family to maintain their blood's purity. When Voldemort attempts to kill Harry his ability to speak Parseltongue is passed to Harry through the small bit of the former's soul. After that bit of soul is destroyed, Harry loses this ability. In a flashback in the sixth novel, Voldemort boasts to Dumbledore during a job interview that he has \"pushed the boundaries of magic farther than they had ever before\". Dumbledore states that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is more extensive than any wizard alive and that even Dumbledore's most powerful protective spells and charms would likely be insufficient if Voldemort returned to full power. Dumbledore also said that Voldemort was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen. Although Voldemort remains highly accomplished and prodigious in skill, he is enormously lacking and highly inept in the most powerful magic, love. This inability to love and trust others proves to be Voldemort's greatest weakness in the series. Voldemort initially voices scepticism that his own magic might not be the most powerful, but upon returning to power, he admits to his Death Eaters that he had overlooked the ancient and powerful magic which Lily Potter invoked and that would protect Harry from harm.\n\nOn her website, Rowling wrote that Voldemort's wand is made of yew, whose sap is poisonous and which symbolises death. It forms a deliberate contrast to Harry's wand, which is made of holly, which she chose because holly is alleged to repel evil.\n\nRowling establishes in the books that Voldemort is magically connected to Harry via Harry's forehead scar. He disembodies himself when his Killing Curse targeting Harry rebounds on him, leaving the scar on Harry's forehead. In the books, and to a lesser extent in the films, Harry's scar serves as an indicator of Voldemort's presence: it burns when the Dark Lord is near or when Voldemort is feeling murderous or exultant. According to Rowling, by attacking Harry when he was a baby Voldemort gave him \"tools [that] no other wizard possessed—the scar and the ability it conferred, a magical window into Voldemort's mind\".\n\nFamily \n\nNotes: The names 'Thomas' and 'Mary' Riddle are taken from the films. The Potter Family is not shown.\n\nRiddle family \nThe Riddle family, an old gentry family, consisted of Thomas and Mary Riddle and their son, Tom Riddle, Esq. They owned over half of the valley that the town of Little Hangleton lay in, and Thomas was the most prominent inhabitant of that town. They lived in a large house with fine gardens, but were unpopular amongst the local residents due to their snobbish attitudes. Tom, the only child of Thomas and Mary, was known as a playboy, his main interests being womanizing and horse-riding.\n\nRowling revealed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that young Merope Gaunt fell in love with Riddle, peering at him through the windows and bushes at every opportunity. Merope's brother Morfin disapproved of his sister's affection for Tom and hexed him as he rode by, covering him in hives. This breach of wizarding law, and the ensuing violent struggle with Ministry of Magic officials, led to Marvolo and Morfin being imprisoned in Azkaban. As surmised by Dumbledore, once Merope was alone and no longer dominated by her father, she could make her move for Tom. She offered him a drink laced with a love potion, and he became infatuated with her; they soon eloped and, within three months of the marriage, Merope became pregnant. Merope decided to stop giving Tom the love potion, having come to the belief such enchantment of a man was tantamount to slavery. She also revealed her witch status to Tom, believing either that he had fallen in love with her on his own or he would at least stay for their unborn child. She was wrong, and Tom quickly left his pregnant wife and went home to his parents, claiming to have been \"hoodwinked\" and tricked into marrying Merope. Tom Marvolo Riddle, their son, was born on 31 December 1926 Merope died in childbirth, leaving the baby to grow up alone in an orphanage.\n\nIn Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it is revealed that Voldemort murdered his father and grandparents, leaving himself the only surviving member of the Riddle family.\n\nHouse of Gaunt \nMost of the exposition of the House of Gaunts background occurs in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, through the medium of Dumbledore's Pensieve. The Gaunts were once a powerful and influential family, and are the last known descendants of Salazar Slytherin. However, a vein of mental instability and violence within the family, reinforced through cousin marriages intended to preserve the pureblood line, had reduced them to poverty and squalor, as shown in the Pensieve's \"memory\" that Harry and Dumbledore witnessed. Like Salazar Slytherin, the Gaunts spoke Parseltongue. At the time of the story, the Gaunts' only material asset is a ramshackle shanty in Little Hangleton, that stood in a thicket in a valley opposite the Riddle House. Like the Riddles, the Gaunts were also unpopular with the local residents, with a reputation for being vulgar and intimidating.\n\nMarvolo Gaunt was the last family patriarch. He was sentenced to a short term in Azkaban for his and his son's assault upon a Ministry of Magic official; this affected his health and he died soon after returning home. His signet ring passed to his son, Morfin Gaunt, who was convicted of assaulting a Muggle, and later died in Azkaban, convicted this time as a party to the murder of Tom Riddle Jr. and Riddle's parents.\n\nDumbledore discovers the real culprit while visiting Morfin in Azkaban to gather information about Voldemort. After Dumbledore successfully extracts Morfin's memory of his encounter with his nephew, he tries to use the evidence to have Morfin released, but Morfin dies before the decision can be made. The House of Gaunt ended with Morfin's death.\n\nMerope Gaunt () was the daughter of Marvolo, and sister of Morfin. Harry's first impression of her was that she looked \"like the most defeated person he had ever seen\". She married Tom Riddle Jr and became pregnant within three months of the wedding. It is suggested that she tricked her husband into loving her by using a love potion, but when she became pregnant, she chose to stop administering the potion. It is implied that Merope had grown tired of living the lie and thought that her husband might have grown to love her, or that he might have stayed for the sake of their unborn child; however, he left her. Desperate, Merope wandered through the streets of London. The only thing she had left was the heavy gold locket that had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin, one of her family's most treasured items, which she sold for a small amount. When she was due to give birth, she stumbled into a Muggle orphanage, where she gave birth to her only son. She died within the next hour.\n\nGormlaith Gaunt was a 17th-century descendant of Salazar Slytherin, and like Salazar, a Parselmouth. Her wand was that which once belonged to Salazar himself. Educated at Hogwarts, Gormlaith lived in Ireland in the early 1600s. In about 1608, Gormlaith killed her estranged unnamed sister, and her sister's husband, William Sayre (a descendant of the Irish witch Morrigan), and kidnapped their five-year-old daughter, Isolt Sayre, raising her in the neighbouring valley of Coomcallee, or \"Hag's Glen\", because she felt that her parents' association with Muggles would badly influence Isolt. Fanatical and cruel, Gormlaith used Dark magic to isolate Isolt from others, forbade her a wand, and did not allow her to attend Hogwarts as she herself had, disgusted that it was now filled with Muggle-borns. After twelve years with Gormlaith, Isolt stole Gormlaith's wand and fled to the Colonies and settled in Massachusetts, where she founded the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When Gormlaith learned of the school, she pursued her niece in Massachusetts, where she was killed by Isolt's friend, William the Pukwudgie, with a venom-tipped arrow.\n\nThe Gaunts, including Voldemort, are distantly related to Harry because they are descendants of the Peverell brothers.\n\nReception \nSeveral people have drawn a parallel between Voldemort and some politicians. Rowling has said that Voldemort was \"a sort of\" Adolf Hitler, and that there is some parallel with Nazism in her books. Rowling also compared Voldemort to Joseph Stalin. Alfonso Cuarón, director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban compared Voldemort to George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, who he said \"...have selfish interests and are very much in love with power. Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people.\" Andrew Slack and the Harry Potter Alliance compare media consolidation in the US to Voldemort's regime in Deathly Hallows and its control over the Daily Prophet and other media saying that \"Once Voldemort took over every form of media in the wizarding world, Dumbledore's Army and the Order of the Phoenix formed an independent media movement called 'Potterwatch'. Now the HP Alliance and Wizard Rock have come together to fight for a Potterwatch movement in the real world to fight back against Big VoldeMedia from further pushing out local and foreign news, minority representation, and the right to a Free Press.\" Julia Turner of Slate Magazine also noted similarities between the events of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the War on Terror. She said that Voldemort commits acts of terrorism such as destroying bridges, murdering innocents, and forcing children to kill their elders.\n\nVoldemort has also been compared with other characters within fiction, for example Sauron from The Lord of the Rings; they are, during the time when the main plot takes place, seeking to recover their lost power after having been considered dead or at least no longer a threat, and are also so feared that they are sometimes unnamed.\n\nIGN listed Voldemort as their seventh favourite Harry Potter character, calling him \"truly frightening\".\n\nIn popular culture \nSeveral campaigns have used Voldemort to compare his evil to the influence of politicians, large media and corporations. \"Lord Voldemort\" is a nickname sometimes used for Peter Mandelson. Voldemort is also a recurring theme among wizard rock bands. Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock! is the second album from Harry and the Potters, and the character is mentioned in songs such as \"The Dark Lord Lament\" and \"Flesh, Blood, and Bone\".\n\nVoldemort has been parodied in various venues. In The Simpsons 13th season's premiere, \"Treehouse of Horror XII\", Montgomery Burns appears as \"Lord Montymort\". A parody of Voldemort appears in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy as \"Lord Moldybutt\", an enemy of Nigel Planter (a parody of Harry). Voldemort also appears in the Potter Puppet Pals sketches by Neil Cicierega. One of the episodes including him was the seventeenth most viewed video of all time as of 2008 and the winner for \"Best Comedy\" of the year 2007 at YouTube.\n\n\"Continuing the Magic\", an article in the 21 May 2007 issue of Time, includes mock book covers designed by author Lon Tweeten, laced with pop culture references. One of them, the \"Dark Lord of the Dance\", shows Voldemort teaming up with Harry on Broadway. In the MAD Magazine parodies of the films, the character is called Lord Druckermort, a backwards reference to the magazine's longtime caricaturist Mort Drucker. In Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1969, a young Tom Marvolo Riddle (introduced as \"Tom\", whose middle name is a \"marvel\" and last name is a \"conundrum\") appears, and becomes the new avatar of Oliver Haddo at the story's conclusion. In A Very Potter Musical, Voldemort is played by actor Joe Walker.\n\nIn a segment celebrating British children's literature at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London, an inflatable Voldemort appeared alongside other villains, The Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Cruella de Vil, to haunt children's dreams, before the arrival of a group of over thirty Mary Poppins who descended with their umbrellas to defeat them.\n\nDuring the 2016 United States elections, Daniel Radcliffe was asked by Sky News journalist Craig Dillon if he would compare Donald Trump to Lord Voldemort; Radcliffe responded, \"Trump is worse\".\n\nVoldemort appears in The Lego Batman Movie as one of the prisoners in the Phantom Zone that Joker recruits to take over Gotham City. Though Ralph Fiennes is featured in this movie as the voice of the British butler Alfred Pennyworth, he does not reprise his role as Voldemort. Instead, Voldemort is voiced by Eddie Izzard.\n\nOutside of the Harry Potter video games, Voldemort is also a playable character in Lego Dimensions, with archive audio of Fiennes' portrayal in the films used for his voiceovers.\n\nA 2018 Italian fan film titled Voldemort: Origins of the Heir depicts the story of Tom Riddle's rise to power.\n\nVoldemort appears in Space Jam: A New Legacy, in the crowd for the game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad.\n\nAn upcoming French fan-made short-film titled The House of Gaunt - Lord Voldemort Origins explores the origin story of Voldemort and The Gaunt family.\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\n Lord Voldemort at Harry Potter Lexicon\n\nFictional characters with disfigurements\nFictional characters with immortality\nFictional characters with spirit possession or body swapping abilities\nFictional dictators\nFictional English people\nFictional hypnotists and indoctrinators\nFictional illeists\nFictional mass murderers\nFictional necromancers\nFictional offspring of rape\nFictional patricides\nFictional terrorists\nFictional torturers\nHarry Potter characters\nLiterary characters introduced in 1997\nMale film villains\nMale literary villains\nOrphan characters in film\nOrphan characters in literature\nPsychopathy in fiction\nFilm supervillains",
"Bellatrix Lestrange () is a fictional character in the Harry Potter book series written by J. K. Rowling. She evolved from an unnamed periphery character in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire into a major antagonist in subsequent novels. In the final instalment of the story, Rowling established her as Lord Voldemort's \"last, best lieutenant\". Bellatrix was the first female Death Eater introduced in the books, and remained the only woman explicitly identified as such until Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.\n\nShe is portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter in four Harry Potter films, from Order of the Phoenix (2007) to Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011).\n\nName\n\nHer given name derives from Latin as the feminine form of the noun \"warrior\". Like many members of the Black family, Bellatrix is named after a celestial body or astronomic structure, in this case one of the brightest stars in the constellation Orion.\n\nBellatrix's name has been translated into other languages in a variety of ways. Many of the changes accentuate the evil nature of her character, such as the Dutch \"Bellatrix van Detta\".\n\nCharacter background\nBellatrix Black was born to Cygnus and Druella (Rosier) Black in 1951. \n\nBellatrix is related by blood and marriage to many characters in the novels (although in the fifth book it is specified that all pure-blood families are related to each other): she has two younger sisters, Narcissa and Andromeda, and is first cousin to Sirius. She married Rodolphus Lestrange after leaving Hogwarts \"because it was expected of her\" to marry a pure-blood. However, Rowling stated in an interview that Bellatrix truly loved Voldemort. Andromeda married a Muggle-born, Ted Tonks, and was subsequently disowned by the Blacks, whereas Narcissa, conversely, married Lucius Malfoy, heir of a wealthy pure-blood family; thus, Bellatrix is the aunt of both Nymphadora Tonks and Draco Malfoy, respectively. \n\nAt Hogwarts, she, along with her sisters, was sorted into Slytherin. It is suggested in the novels that, as a student, Bellatrix associated with a group of students – including Rodolphus Lestrange, Severus Snape, Avery, Evan Rosier and Wilkes – who nearly all became Death Eaters. It is assumed Bellatrix was at least initially drawn to Lord Voldemort because they both believe in an ideology that favors pure-blood wizards and witches over other members of the community. This elitism, shared by the Malfoy and Lestrange clans, was instilled in Bellatrix since childhood. The Black family motto, toujours pur (French for \"always pure\"), reflects this steadfast belief in blood purity. Bellatrix, her husband, and her brother-in-law, were active Death Eaters during Voldemort's rise to power, and evaded capture and suspicion until after the Dark Lord's downfall.\n\nAppearances\n\nHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire\nIn this book, Rowling used Albus Dumbledore's Pensieve as a plot device to reveal that Bellatrix, rather than deserting her leader like many other Death Eaters, was part of the group of dark wizards – along with Rodolphus, Rabastan, and Barty Crouch Jr – that tortured well-known aurors Frank and Alice Longbottom in an attempt to gain information about Voldemort's location. For using the Unforgivable Cruciatus Curse to torture the Longbottoms until they went insane, Bellatrix and her three associates were sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban. At her trial, Bellatrix proudly and defiantly proclaimed that Voldemort would rise again. Later in that book, during his rebirthing ritual, Voldemort stated that the Lestranges were amongst the most faithful members of his inner circle.\n\nHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix\nFourteen years after Voldemort's fall, Bellatrix was one of the many Death Eaters who escaped Azkaban and rejoined him. After escaping from prison, she was present at the Battle of the Department of Mysteries in the climax of the book, in which a group of Death Eaters attempted to steal Sybill Trelawney's prophecy pertaining to Voldemort's downfall. Rowling let Bellatrix prove her magical prowess during the mission when she overpowered her niece Tonks and Kingsley Shacklebolt in one-on-one duels, killed her cousin Sirius by blasting him through the veil in the Death Chamber, and deflected one of Dumbledore's spells as she made her escape. Harry attempted to use the Cruciatus Curse on her in revenge for killing Sirius, but the curse was ineffective due to the lack of real cruelty behind it. Before she could do any more, Bellatrix was joined by her master, who ignored her warning that Dumbledore was in the building. Bellatrix was subdued by Dumbledore in the Ministry of Magic's Atrium while he duelled Voldemort. Voldemort interceded on Bellatrix's behalf, grabbing her and taking her with him as he Disapparated, though not before being glimpsed by Ministry officials.\n\nHarry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince\nAt the beginning of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Bellatrix attempts to keep Narcissa from confiding Draco's secret mission to Snape at Spinner's End. Rowling used the conversation between Snape and Bellatrix to imply that Voldemort is still furious at Bellatrix's failure in the previous book. That conversation also suggests that Bellatrix mistrusts Snape not only because of his low birth, but also for many valid questions about his loyalty to the Dark Lord. Snape surprises Bellatrix by replying to each of her arguments and by agreeing to create an Unbreakable Vow with Narcissa to assist Draco in his mission to kill Dumbledore. Later in the book, it is mentioned by Snape that Bellatrix had been teaching Occlumency to Draco, in an effort to aid him with his mission. In the film, she and Fenrir Greyback arrive at the Burrow, the Weasleys' home, and burn it down. Ginny Weasley and Harry chase after them, with Bellatrix taunting them over her murder of Sirius.\n\nHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows\nThe first chapter of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows implies that Voldemort is still angry with Bellatrix, as evidenced when he makes fun of the fact that her niece Tonks married werewolf Remus Lupin. However, Voldemort gives Bellatrix a chance to \"prune\" her family tree during the Death Eaters' attempt to capture Harry as the boy departs from the Dursleys' home, during which Bellatrix unsuccessfully tries to kill Tonks. In this book, Rowling reveals that Bellatrix is the guardian of Helga Hufflepuff's cup (though she is unaware that it is a Horcrux), which Voldemort has entrusted the Lestranges to keep in their Gringotts vault. Bellatrix and the Malfoys detain Harry, Ron, and Hermione at Malfoy Manor, and Hermione is tortured by Bellatrix when she suspects the trio has broken into her vault, but Dobby appears and saves the prisoners, though not before being hit by a knife thrown by Bellatrix as they disapparate to safety. Later in the book, Harry, Ron, and Hermione use a stray hair of Bellatrix's to disguise Hermione as Bellatrix using Polyjuice Potion, in order to gain access to the Lestrange's Gringotts vault. Though Voldemort apparently punishes Bellatrix and the Malfoys severely for interrupting his Elder Wand side quest only to have Potter escape and steal the cup, she nevertheless fights for her master in the Battle of Hogwarts towards the end of the novel. When the battle resumes inside the Great Hall after Harry's supposed death, Bellatrix simultaneously duels with Hermione, Ginny, and Luna Lovegood, none of whom is a match for Bellatrix, who nearly hits Ginny with a Killing Curse. An enraged Molly Weasley engages Bellatrix in a duel and fires a curse that hits Bellatrix right over the heart, killing her. Rowling revealed that, though there was speculation that Neville would kill Bellatrix, she had always intended Molly to do so because the author wanted to match Bellatrix's obsessive love with Molly's maternal love.\n\nAppearances in other media\n\nHarry Potter and the Cursed Child\nIn this play, which takes place over 19 years after The Deathly Hallows, it is revealed that Bellatrix is the mother of the story's antagonist Delphini, whom she had with Lord Voldemort during their stay at Malfoy Manor prior to the Battle of Hogwarts.\n\nProduction\n\nActress Helen McCrory was originally cast as Bellatrix in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix but dropped out due to pregnancy and was replaced with Helena Bonham Carter. Coincidentally, McCrory was later cast as Bellatrix's sister Narcissa in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, during the filming of which Bonham Carter learned that she was pregnant. McCrory was also cast as Narcissa after Naomi Watts was unavailable for the role. Elizabeth Hurley was also reportedly linked to the role of Bellatrix at one point. While filming the scene in the Department of Mysteries in Order of the Phoenix, Bonham Carter accidentally ruptured the eardrum of Matthew Lewis, the actor who portrayed Neville Longbottom, with her wand.\n\nFamily\n\nBellatrix is a member of the Black Family and is the cousin of Sirius Black. Bellatrix is the daughter of Cygnus and Druella Black and sister to Andromeda (mother of Nymphadora Tonks) and Narcissa (mother of Draco Malfoy).\n\nReception\nIGN listed Bellatrix Lestrange as their tenth top Harry Potter character, and IGN's Joe Utichi listed Bellatrix as his fourth favourite Harry Potter character, calling her the \"most pitiable\" of Voldemort's servants. In NextMovie.com's Harry Potter Mega Poll, Bellatrix was voted as the No. 1 villain in the series. Helena Bonham Carter received much praise for her portrayal of the character. Famed horror author Stephen King was a fan of the character, and claimed that reading Molly Weasley calling the character \"a bitch\" in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was \"the most shocking bitch in recent fiction\" and showed how mature the books had become.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\nHarry Potter characters\nLiterary characters introduced in 2003\nFemale film villains\nFemale literary villains\nFictional British people\nFictional witches\nFictional torturers\nFictional murderers\nFictional female assassins\nFictional prison escapees\nFictional terrorists\nFictional henchmen\nFemale characters in film\nFemale characters in literature"
] |
[
"Lord Voldemort",
"Character development",
"in what way was his character developed?",
"Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter",
"what was his character like?",
"he was a wizard ...",
"did he use magic?",
"I don't know.",
"did he ever cause any harm to Harry Potter?",
"Harry has to find out, before we find out. And--so--but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry.",
"how did Rowling come up with the name Lord Voldemort?",
"Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter (the protagonist of the novels), and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first."
] |
C_e1dce95f334b494096220fc2c296fae0_1
|
did she eventually flesh out his back story?
| 6 |
Did Rowling eventually flesh out Lord Voldemort's back story in Harry Potter?
|
Lord Voldemort
|
In a 2001 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter (the protagonist of the novels), and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry--he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And--so--but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since." In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death." Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. Some literary analysts have considered possible meanings in the name: Philip Nel states that Voldemort is derived from the French for "flight of death", and in a 2002 paper, Nilsen and Nilsen suggest that readers get a "creepy feeling" from the name Voldemort, because of the French word "mort" ("death") within it and that word's association with cognate English words derived from the Latin mors. CANNOTANSWER
|
she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first.
|
Lord Voldemort (, in the films) is a sobriquet for Tom Marvolo Riddle, a character and the main antagonist in J. K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels. The character first appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was published in 1997, and returned either in person or in flashbacks in each book and its film adaptation in the series except the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which he is only mentioned.
Voldemort is the archenemy of Harry Potter, who according to a prophecy has "the power to vanquish the Dark Lord". He attempts to murder the boy, but instead kills his parents, Lily and James Potter, and leaves Harry with a scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. Nearly every witch or wizard dares not utter his name and refers to him instead with such monikers as "You-Know-Who", "He Who Must Not Be Named", or "the Dark Lord". Voldemort's obsession with blood purity signifies his aim to rid the wizarding world of Muggle (non-magical) heritage and to conquer both worlds, Muggle and wizarding, to achieve pure-blood dominance. Through his mother's family, he is the last descendant of the wizard Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is the leader of the Death Eaters, a group of evil wizards and witches dedicated to ridding the Wizarding World of Muggles and establishing Voldemort as its supreme ruler.
Character development
In a 1999 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter, and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry—he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And—so—but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since."
In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death."
Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. The name Voldemort is derived from the French vol de mort which means "flight of death" or "theft of death".
Appearances
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Voldemort makes his debut in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In this story, Rowling introduces him as the Dark Lord who tried to kill Harry Potter because the boy was prophesied to destroy him. Voldemort murdered Harry's parents, James and Lily, but as a result of his mother's love and willingness to sacrifice herself for him, baby Harry survived when Voldemort tried to murder him with a Killing Curse. Voldemort was disembodied, and Harry was left with a mysterious, lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead as a result.
In the book, Voldemort unsuccessfully tries to regain his dissolved body by stealing the titular Philosopher's Stone. To achieve his objective, Voldemort uses Professor Quirrell's aid by latching onto the back of the latter's head. However, at the climax of the book, Harry manages to prevent Voldemort from stealing the stone.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
In the second instalment, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling introduces Tom Marvolo Riddle, a manifestation of a teenage Voldemort that resides inside a magical diary found by Ginny Weasley. In this book, Ginny is written as a shy girl with a crush on Harry. Feeling anxious and lonely, she begins to write into the diary and shares her deepest fears with the sympathetic Tom. However, at the climax of the story, when Riddle rearranges the letters in his name to write "I am Lord Voldemort", Riddle is revealed as a magical manifestation of the boy who would later grow up to become the Dark Lord. Riddle states he has grown strong on Ginny's fears and eventually possesses her, using her as a pawn to unlock the Chamber of Secrets, whence a basilisk is set free and petrifies several Hogwarts students. Harry defeats the manifestation of Riddle from the diary and the basilisk. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Albus Dumbledore reveals to Harry that the diary was one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Voldemort does not appear in the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, either in person or as a magical manifestation. He is, however, heard when Harry passes out from the harsh effects of a Dementor. Towards the end of the story, Sybill Trelawney, the Divination professor, makes a rare genuine prophecy: "The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight, the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever before. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master..." Though it is initially implied that the prophecy refers to Sirius Black, the book's ostensible antagonist, the servant is eventually revealed to be Peter Pettigrew, who, for the 12 years since Voldemort's fall, has been disguised as Ron's pet rat, Scabbers.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
In the fourth instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort reappears at the start and the climax of the book. Rowling lets many seemingly unrelated plot elements fall into order. It is revealed that Voldemort's minion Barty Crouch Jr, disguised as Hogwarts professor Mad-Eye Moody, has manipulated the events of the Triwizard Tournament in Harry's favour. Voldemort's goal is to teleport Harry under Dumbledore's watch as a reluctant participant to the Little Hangleton graveyard, where the Riddle family is buried. Harry is captured and, after Pettigrew uses Harry's blood to fulfil a gruesome magical ritual, Voldemort regains his body and is restored to his full power. For the first time in the series, Rowling describes his appearance: "tall and skeletally thin", with a face "whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils". Rowling writes that his "hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat's, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness". It was revealed that, while in Albania, Pettigrew had captured the Ministry of Magic official Bertha Jorkins, who was tortured for information about the Ministry. After they learned that Barty Crouch Jr, a faithful Death Eater, had been smuggled out of Azkaban and was privately confined at his father's house, they killed her. With Pettigrew's help, Voldemort creates a small, rudimentary body, corporeal enough to travel and perform magic, and formulated a plan to restore his own body by capturing Harry. A portion of the plan had been overheard by Frank Bryce, a gardener, whom Voldemort then killed. Voldemort then completes his plan and returns to life in his full body as a result of the ritual with Harry's blood. He then summons his Death Eaters to the graveyard to witness the death of Harry as he challenges Harry to a duel. However, when Voldemort duels Harry, their wands become magically locked together due to the twin Phoenix feather cores of the wands. Because of a phenomenon later revealed as Priori Incantatem, ghost-like manifestations of Voldemort's most recent victims (including Harry's parents) then appear and distract Voldemort, allowing Harry just enough time to escape via Portkey with the body of fellow-student, Cedric Diggory, who was murdered by Pettigrew on Voldemort's orders.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Voldemort appears at the climax of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, having again plotted against Harry. In this book, Harry goes through extreme emotional stress, and according to Rowling, it was necessary to prove that Harry is emotionally vulnerable and thus human, in contrast to his nemesis Voldemort, who is emotionally invulnerable and thus inhuman: "[Harry is] a very human hero, and this is, obviously, there's a contrast, between him, as a very human hero, and Voldemort, who has deliberately dehumanised himself. […] and Harry, therefore, did have to reach a point where he did almost break down." In this book, Voldemort makes liberal use of the Ministry of Magic's refusal to believe that he has returned. Voldemort engineers a plot to free Bellatrix Lestrange and other Death Eaters from Azkaban and then embarks on a scheme to retrieve the full record of a prophecy stored in the Department of Mysteries regarding Harry and himself. He sends a group of Death Eaters to retrieve the prophecy, where the Order of the Phoenix meets them. All but Bellatrix are captured, and Voldemort engages in a ferocious duel with Dumbledore. When Dumbledore gets the upper hand, Voldemort attempts to possess Harry but finds that he cannot; Harry is too full of that which Voldemort finds incomprehensible, and which he detests as weakness: love. Sensing that Dumbledore could win, Voldemort disapparates, but not before the Minister for Magic sees him in person, making his return to life public knowledge in the next book.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Voldemort does not appear in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, although his presence and actions are felt: he once again declares war, and begins to rise to power once more. He murders Amelia Bones of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and begins to target members of the Order of the Phoenix, including Emmeline Vance.
Rowling uses several chapters as exposition to establish Voldemort's backstory. In a series of flashbacks, using the pensieve as a plot device, she reveals that Voldemort was the son of the witch Merope Gaunt and a Muggle called Tom Riddle. Riddle abandoned Merope before their child's birth, soon after which Merope died. After living in an orphanage, young Riddle met Dumbledore, who told him he was a wizard and arranged for him to attend Hogwarts. Riddle was outwardly a model student, but was in reality a psychopath who took sadistic pleasure in using his powers to harm and control people. He eventually murdered his father and grandparents as revenge for abandoning him. The book also discusses Riddle's hatred of Muggles, his obsession with Horcruxes, and his desire to split his soul to achieve immortality. Rowling stated Voldemort's conception under the influence of a love potion symbolises the coercive circumstances under which he was brought into the world.
In the main plot of the book, Voldemort's next step is to engineer an assault on Hogwarts, and to kill Dumbledore. This is accomplished by Draco Malfoy, who arranges transportation of Death Eaters into Hogwarts by a pair of Vanishing Cabinets, which bypass the extensive protective enchantments placed around the school. The cabinets allow Voldemort's Death Eaters to enter Hogwarts, where battle commences and Dumbledore is cornered. Hogwarts professor (and re-doubled agent) Severus Snape uses the Killing Curse against Dumbledore when Draco could not force himself to do so.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort furthers his quest for ultimate power. He disposes of the Minister for Magic and replaces him with Pius Thicknesse, who is under the Imperius Curse. Establishing a totalitarian police state, he has Muggle-borns persecuted and arrested for "stealing magic" from the "pure blood" wizards. After failing to kill Harry with Draco's father Lucius Malfoy's borrowed wand (to avoid the effect of Priori Incantatem), he goes on a murderous search for the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand ever created, seeing it as the weapon he needs to overcome Harry's wand and make him truly invincible. He goes on a quest that takes him out of the country to Gregorovitch's wand shop, where he kills the old wandmaker. His journey also takes him to Nurmengard, the prison where Gellert Grindelwald is kept, and he kills Grindelwald as well. He finally locates the Elder Wand and steals it from Dumbledore's tomb.
Later, Voldemort finds out that Harry and his friends are hunting and destroying his Horcruxes when informed of their heist on the Lestranges' vault at Gringotts in search for Hufflepuff's Cup. After offering the occupants of Hogwarts mercy if they give up Harry, he assembles a large army and launches an invasion of the castle, where Harry is searching for Ravenclaw's Diadem. Voldemort orders his pet snake Nagini to execute Snape, believing it would make him the true master of the Elder Wand, since Snape killed Dumbledore. He then calls an hour's armistice, in exchange for Harry. When Harry willingly walks into Voldemort's camp in the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort strikes him down with the Elder Wand. However, the use of Harry's blood to resurrect Voldemort's body proves to be a major setback: while Harry's blood runs in Voldemort's veins, Harry cannot be killed as his mother's protection lives on now in Voldemort too. Instead, Voldemort destroys the part of his own soul that resides in Harry's body. Voldemort forces Rubeus Hagrid to carry Harry's apparently lifeless body back to the castle as a trophy, sparking another battle during which Nagini, his last Horcrux, is destroyed by Neville Longbottom. The battle then moves into the Great Hall, where Voldemort fights Minerva McGonagall, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Horace Slughorn simultaneously. Harry then reveals himself and explains to Voldemort that Draco became the true master of the Elder Wand when he disarmed Dumbledore; Harry, in turn, won the wand's allegiance when he took Draco's wand. Refusing to believe this, Voldemort casts the Killing Curse with the Elder Wand while Harry uses a Disarming Charm with Draco's, but the Elder Wand refuses to kill its master and the spell rebounds on Voldemort who, with all of his Horcruxes destroyed, finally dies. His body is laid in a different chamber from all the others who died battling him.
Rowling stated that after his death, Voldemort is forced to exist in the stunted infant-like form that Harry sees in the King's Cross-like Limbo after his confrontation with Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest. Rowling also mentioned that, despite his extreme fear of death, he cannot become a ghost.
Appearances in other material
In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, it is revealed that Bellatrix gave birth to Voldemort's daughter Delphi in Malfoy Manor before the Battle of Hogwarts. Twenty-two years later, Delphi poses as Cedric's cousin and manipulates Harry and Ginny's second son Albus Severus Potter and his friend, Draco and Astoria Greengrass's son Scorpius Malfoy, into stealing a prototype Time Turner with which she hopes to resurrect her father. Using the Time Turner, Scorpius accidentally creates an alternative timeline where Voldemort killed Harry at the battle and now rules the wizarding world. In an attempt to achieve this future, Delphi travels to Godric's Hollow on the night Voldemort killed Harry's parents, hoping to avert the prophecy that led to her father's downfall. After receiving a message from his son, Harry, together with Ron, Hermione and Draco (who by now has become friends with Harry after they join forces to save their respective sons) transfigures himself into Voldemort so that he can distract Delphi, allowing them to overpower her. The real Voldemort kills Harry's parents as prophesied, and Delphi is sent to Azkaban.
Portrayals within films
Voldemort appears in every Harry Potter film, with the exception of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Several actors have portrayed him in his varying incarnations and ages.
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Voldemort's manifestation is as a face on the back of Quirrell's head, an effect achieved by computer generated imagery. Ian Hart, the actor who played Quirrell in the same film, provided the voice and the facial source for this character. Voldemort also appears in a scene in the Forbidden Forest where he is seen drinking the blood of a unicorn. As Voldemort's face was altered enough by CG work, and Hart's voice was affected enough, there was no confusion by Hart's playing of the two roles. In that film, he was also shown in a flashback sequence when he arrived at the home of James and Lily Potter to kill them. In this scene Voldemort is played by Richard Bremmer, though his face is never seen. His next appearance would be in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as the 16-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle (portrayed by Christian Coulson).
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort is initially only heard, possessing the scratchy, weak voice heard in the first film. By the film's climax, however, he appears in his physical form for the first time, played by Ralph Fiennes. As in the book, Voldemort is shown clad in dark black robes, being tall and emaciated, with no hair and yellowish teeth; his wand has a white tone and the handle appears to be made of bone; his finger nails are long and pale blue while his toe nails appear to be infected. Unlike in the book, his pupils are not cat-like and his eyes are blue, because producer David Heyman felt that his evil would not be able to be seen and would not fill the audience with fear (his eyes do briefly take on a snake-like appearance when he opens them after turning human, but quickly turn normal). As in the book, the film version of Voldemort has snake-like slit nostrils with the flesh of his nose significantly pressed back. Ralph Fiennes' nose was not covered in makeup on the set, but was digitally removed in post-production. In this first appearance, Voldemort also has a forked tongue, but this element was removed for the subsequent films.
Fiennes stated that he had two weeks to shoot the climactic showdown scene where he is gloating over a terrified Harry, played by Daniel Radcliffe. Fiennes said with a chuckle: "I have no doubt children will be afraid of me now if they weren't before." In preparation, he read the novel Goblet of Fire, but jokingly conceded: "I was only interested in my scene, and I had to go through thousands and thousands of other scenes which I did, dutifully, until I got to my scene and I read it many, many, many, many, many times and that was my research." Fiennes reprised his role as Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2.
Fiennes's nephew, Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, portrayed Tom Riddle as a child in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. By the time filming arrived Christian Coulson was 29, and not considered suitable to return as the adolescent Riddle. Thomas James Longley was originally scheduled to take over the role, but last minute renegotiations saw Frank Dillane cast instead.
Characterisation
Outward appearance
After he regains his body in the fourth book, Rowling describes Voldemort as having pale skin, a chalk-white, skull-like face, snake-like slits for nostrils, red eyes and cat-like slits for pupils, a skeletally thin body and long, thin hands with unnaturally long fingers. As mentioned in the first chapter of the seventh book, he also has no hair or lips. Earlier in life, as seen through flashbacks contained in the second and sixth books, Tom Marvolo Riddle was handsome and tall with pale skin, jet black hair, and dark brown eyes. He could charm many people with his looks. The transformation into his monstrous state is believed to have been the result of creating his Horcruxes and becoming less human as he continued to divide his soul. In the films, Voldemort's eyes are blue with round pupils.
Personality
Rowling described Voldemort as "the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years". She elaborated that he is a "raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering", and whose only ambition in life is to become all-powerful and immortal. He is also a sadist who hurts and murders people—especially Muggles—for his own amusement. He has no conscience, feels no remorse or empathy, and does not recognise the worth and humanity of anybody except himself.
He feels no need for human companionship or friendship, and cannot comprehend love or affection for another. He believes he is superior to everyone around him, to the point that he frequently refers to himself in the third person as "Lord Voldemort". Rowling also stated that Voldemort is "incredibly power hungry. Racist, really", and that if Voldemort were to look into the Mirror of Erised, in which one sees one's greatest desire, he would see "Himself, all-powerful and eternal. That's what he wants."
Rowling also stated that Voldemort's conception by influence of Amortentia—a love potion administered by his mother, a witch named Merope Gaunt, to the Muggle Tom Riddle—is related to his inability to understand love; it is "a symbolic way of showing that he came from a loveless union—but of course, everything would have changed if Merope had survived and raised him herself and loved him. The enchantment under which Tom Riddle fathered Voldemort is important because it shows coercion, and there can't be many more prejudicial ways to enter the world than as the result of such a union".
Like most archetypical villains, Voldemort's arrogance leads to his downfall. He also suffers from a pathological fear of death, which he regards as a shameful and ignominious human weakness. According to Rowling, his Boggart would be his own corpse. Rowling also said that the difference between Harry and Voldemort is that Harry accepts mortality, and thus Harry is, in the end, stronger than his nemesis.
Magical abilities and skills
Rowling establishes Voldemort throughout the series as an extremely powerful, intelligent, and ruthless dark wizard, described as the greatest and most powerful Dark Wizard of all time. He is known as one of the greatest Legilimens in the world and a highly accomplished Occlumens; he can read minds and shield his own from penetration. Besides Dumbledore, he is also the only wizard ever known to be able to apparate silently. Voldemort was also said to fear one wizard alone, Dumbledore.
In the final book, Voldemort flies unsupported, something that amazes those who see it. Voldemort, like his ancestral family, the Gaunts, is a Parselmouth, meaning he can converse with serpents. This skill was inherited from his ancestor, Salazar Slytherin. The Gaunt family speak Parseltongue among themselves. This highly unusual trait may be preserved through inbreeding, a practice employed by the Gaunt Family to maintain their blood's purity. When Voldemort attempts to kill Harry his ability to speak Parseltongue is passed to Harry through the small bit of the former's soul. After that bit of soul is destroyed, Harry loses this ability. In a flashback in the sixth novel, Voldemort boasts to Dumbledore during a job interview that he has "pushed the boundaries of magic farther than they had ever before". Dumbledore states that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is more extensive than any wizard alive and that even Dumbledore's most powerful protective spells and charms would likely be insufficient if Voldemort returned to full power. Dumbledore also said that Voldemort was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen. Although Voldemort remains highly accomplished and prodigious in skill, he is enormously lacking and highly inept in the most powerful magic, love. This inability to love and trust others proves to be Voldemort's greatest weakness in the series. Voldemort initially voices scepticism that his own magic might not be the most powerful, but upon returning to power, he admits to his Death Eaters that he had overlooked the ancient and powerful magic which Lily Potter invoked and that would protect Harry from harm.
On her website, Rowling wrote that Voldemort's wand is made of yew, whose sap is poisonous and which symbolises death. It forms a deliberate contrast to Harry's wand, which is made of holly, which she chose because holly is alleged to repel evil.
Rowling establishes in the books that Voldemort is magically connected to Harry via Harry's forehead scar. He disembodies himself when his Killing Curse targeting Harry rebounds on him, leaving the scar on Harry's forehead. In the books, and to a lesser extent in the films, Harry's scar serves as an indicator of Voldemort's presence: it burns when the Dark Lord is near or when Voldemort is feeling murderous or exultant. According to Rowling, by attacking Harry when he was a baby Voldemort gave him "tools [that] no other wizard possessed—the scar and the ability it conferred, a magical window into Voldemort's mind".
Family
Notes: The names 'Thomas' and 'Mary' Riddle are taken from the films. The Potter Family is not shown.
Riddle family
The Riddle family, an old gentry family, consisted of Thomas and Mary Riddle and their son, Tom Riddle, Esq. They owned over half of the valley that the town of Little Hangleton lay in, and Thomas was the most prominent inhabitant of that town. They lived in a large house with fine gardens, but were unpopular amongst the local residents due to their snobbish attitudes. Tom, the only child of Thomas and Mary, was known as a playboy, his main interests being womanizing and horse-riding.
Rowling revealed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that young Merope Gaunt fell in love with Riddle, peering at him through the windows and bushes at every opportunity. Merope's brother Morfin disapproved of his sister's affection for Tom and hexed him as he rode by, covering him in hives. This breach of wizarding law, and the ensuing violent struggle with Ministry of Magic officials, led to Marvolo and Morfin being imprisoned in Azkaban. As surmised by Dumbledore, once Merope was alone and no longer dominated by her father, she could make her move for Tom. She offered him a drink laced with a love potion, and he became infatuated with her; they soon eloped and, within three months of the marriage, Merope became pregnant. Merope decided to stop giving Tom the love potion, having come to the belief such enchantment of a man was tantamount to slavery. She also revealed her witch status to Tom, believing either that he had fallen in love with her on his own or he would at least stay for their unborn child. She was wrong, and Tom quickly left his pregnant wife and went home to his parents, claiming to have been "hoodwinked" and tricked into marrying Merope. Tom Marvolo Riddle, their son, was born on 31 December 1926 Merope died in childbirth, leaving the baby to grow up alone in an orphanage.
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it is revealed that Voldemort murdered his father and grandparents, leaving himself the only surviving member of the Riddle family.
House of Gaunt
Most of the exposition of the House of Gaunts background occurs in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, through the medium of Dumbledore's Pensieve. The Gaunts were once a powerful and influential family, and are the last known descendants of Salazar Slytherin. However, a vein of mental instability and violence within the family, reinforced through cousin marriages intended to preserve the pureblood line, had reduced them to poverty and squalor, as shown in the Pensieve's "memory" that Harry and Dumbledore witnessed. Like Salazar Slytherin, the Gaunts spoke Parseltongue. At the time of the story, the Gaunts' only material asset is a ramshackle shanty in Little Hangleton, that stood in a thicket in a valley opposite the Riddle House. Like the Riddles, the Gaunts were also unpopular with the local residents, with a reputation for being vulgar and intimidating.
Marvolo Gaunt was the last family patriarch. He was sentenced to a short term in Azkaban for his and his son's assault upon a Ministry of Magic official; this affected his health and he died soon after returning home. His signet ring passed to his son, Morfin Gaunt, who was convicted of assaulting a Muggle, and later died in Azkaban, convicted this time as a party to the murder of Tom Riddle Jr. and Riddle's parents.
Dumbledore discovers the real culprit while visiting Morfin in Azkaban to gather information about Voldemort. After Dumbledore successfully extracts Morfin's memory of his encounter with his nephew, he tries to use the evidence to have Morfin released, but Morfin dies before the decision can be made. The House of Gaunt ended with Morfin's death.
Merope Gaunt () was the daughter of Marvolo, and sister of Morfin. Harry's first impression of her was that she looked "like the most defeated person he had ever seen". She married Tom Riddle Jr and became pregnant within three months of the wedding. It is suggested that she tricked her husband into loving her by using a love potion, but when she became pregnant, she chose to stop administering the potion. It is implied that Merope had grown tired of living the lie and thought that her husband might have grown to love her, or that he might have stayed for the sake of their unborn child; however, he left her. Desperate, Merope wandered through the streets of London. The only thing she had left was the heavy gold locket that had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin, one of her family's most treasured items, which she sold for a small amount. When she was due to give birth, she stumbled into a Muggle orphanage, where she gave birth to her only son. She died within the next hour.
Gormlaith Gaunt was a 17th-century descendant of Salazar Slytherin, and like Salazar, a Parselmouth. Her wand was that which once belonged to Salazar himself. Educated at Hogwarts, Gormlaith lived in Ireland in the early 1600s. In about 1608, Gormlaith killed her estranged unnamed sister, and her sister's husband, William Sayre (a descendant of the Irish witch Morrigan), and kidnapped their five-year-old daughter, Isolt Sayre, raising her in the neighbouring valley of Coomcallee, or "Hag's Glen", because she felt that her parents' association with Muggles would badly influence Isolt. Fanatical and cruel, Gormlaith used Dark magic to isolate Isolt from others, forbade her a wand, and did not allow her to attend Hogwarts as she herself had, disgusted that it was now filled with Muggle-borns. After twelve years with Gormlaith, Isolt stole Gormlaith's wand and fled to the Colonies and settled in Massachusetts, where she founded the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When Gormlaith learned of the school, she pursued her niece in Massachusetts, where she was killed by Isolt's friend, William the Pukwudgie, with a venom-tipped arrow.
The Gaunts, including Voldemort, are distantly related to Harry because they are descendants of the Peverell brothers.
Reception
Several people have drawn a parallel between Voldemort and some politicians. Rowling has said that Voldemort was "a sort of" Adolf Hitler, and that there is some parallel with Nazism in her books. Rowling also compared Voldemort to Joseph Stalin. Alfonso Cuarón, director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban compared Voldemort to George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, who he said "...have selfish interests and are very much in love with power. Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people." Andrew Slack and the Harry Potter Alliance compare media consolidation in the US to Voldemort's regime in Deathly Hallows and its control over the Daily Prophet and other media saying that "Once Voldemort took over every form of media in the wizarding world, Dumbledore's Army and the Order of the Phoenix formed an independent media movement called 'Potterwatch'. Now the HP Alliance and Wizard Rock have come together to fight for a Potterwatch movement in the real world to fight back against Big VoldeMedia from further pushing out local and foreign news, minority representation, and the right to a Free Press." Julia Turner of Slate Magazine also noted similarities between the events of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the War on Terror. She said that Voldemort commits acts of terrorism such as destroying bridges, murdering innocents, and forcing children to kill their elders.
Voldemort has also been compared with other characters within fiction, for example Sauron from The Lord of the Rings; they are, during the time when the main plot takes place, seeking to recover their lost power after having been considered dead or at least no longer a threat, and are also so feared that they are sometimes unnamed.
IGN listed Voldemort as their seventh favourite Harry Potter character, calling him "truly frightening".
In popular culture
Several campaigns have used Voldemort to compare his evil to the influence of politicians, large media and corporations. "Lord Voldemort" is a nickname sometimes used for Peter Mandelson. Voldemort is also a recurring theme among wizard rock bands. Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock! is the second album from Harry and the Potters, and the character is mentioned in songs such as "The Dark Lord Lament" and "Flesh, Blood, and Bone".
Voldemort has been parodied in various venues. In The Simpsons 13th season's premiere, "Treehouse of Horror XII", Montgomery Burns appears as "Lord Montymort". A parody of Voldemort appears in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy as "Lord Moldybutt", an enemy of Nigel Planter (a parody of Harry). Voldemort also appears in the Potter Puppet Pals sketches by Neil Cicierega. One of the episodes including him was the seventeenth most viewed video of all time as of 2008 and the winner for "Best Comedy" of the year 2007 at YouTube.
"Continuing the Magic", an article in the 21 May 2007 issue of Time, includes mock book covers designed by author Lon Tweeten, laced with pop culture references. One of them, the "Dark Lord of the Dance", shows Voldemort teaming up with Harry on Broadway. In the MAD Magazine parodies of the films, the character is called Lord Druckermort, a backwards reference to the magazine's longtime caricaturist Mort Drucker. In Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1969, a young Tom Marvolo Riddle (introduced as "Tom", whose middle name is a "marvel" and last name is a "conundrum") appears, and becomes the new avatar of Oliver Haddo at the story's conclusion. In A Very Potter Musical, Voldemort is played by actor Joe Walker.
In a segment celebrating British children's literature at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London, an inflatable Voldemort appeared alongside other villains, The Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Cruella de Vil, to haunt children's dreams, before the arrival of a group of over thirty Mary Poppins who descended with their umbrellas to defeat them.
During the 2016 United States elections, Daniel Radcliffe was asked by Sky News journalist Craig Dillon if he would compare Donald Trump to Lord Voldemort; Radcliffe responded, "Trump is worse".
Voldemort appears in The Lego Batman Movie as one of the prisoners in the Phantom Zone that Joker recruits to take over Gotham City. Though Ralph Fiennes is featured in this movie as the voice of the British butler Alfred Pennyworth, he does not reprise his role as Voldemort. Instead, Voldemort is voiced by Eddie Izzard.
Outside of the Harry Potter video games, Voldemort is also a playable character in Lego Dimensions, with archive audio of Fiennes' portrayal in the films used for his voiceovers.
A 2018 Italian fan film titled Voldemort: Origins of the Heir depicts the story of Tom Riddle's rise to power.
Voldemort appears in Space Jam: A New Legacy, in the crowd for the game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad.
An upcoming French fan-made short-film titled The House of Gaunt - Lord Voldemort Origins explores the origin story of Voldemort and The Gaunt family.
Notes
References
External links
Lord Voldemort at Harry Potter Lexicon
Fictional characters with disfigurements
Fictional characters with immortality
Fictional characters with spirit possession or body swapping abilities
Fictional dictators
Fictional English people
Fictional hypnotists and indoctrinators
Fictional illeists
Fictional mass murderers
Fictional necromancers
Fictional offspring of rape
Fictional patricides
Fictional terrorists
Fictional torturers
Harry Potter characters
Literary characters introduced in 1997
Male film villains
Male literary villains
Orphan characters in film
Orphan characters in literature
Psychopathy in fiction
Film supervillains
| true |
[
"is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Rumiko Takahashi. It consists of 9 stories told in 16 chapters irregularly published in Shogakukan's Shōnen Sunday Zōkan and Weekly Shōnen Sunday from 1984 to 1994.\n\nTwo of the stories from the series, Mermaid's Forest and Mermaid's Scar, were adapted as original video animations (OVAs) in 1991 and 1993, respectively. All of the tales, except one, were later adapted as an anime television series in 2003.\n\nIn North America, the manga has been licensed by Viz Media, while the first OVA was released by US Manga Corps in 1993 and the second OVA by Viz Media in 1995. The anime television series was licensed by Geneon Entertainment.\n\nPlot\nAccording to an ancient Japanese legend, mermaid flesh may grant immortality if eaten. However, there is a much greater chance that consumption will lead to death or transformation into a damned creature known as a Lost Soul (Deformed Ones in the English dub). Mermaid Saga tells the tale of Yuta, an immortal who has been alive for five hundred years after eating mermaid flesh. However, he is tired of his immortality and throughout the series, he wanders across Japan searching for a mermaid who may be able to turn him back into a normal human. He encounters Mana, a young woman who is about to be sacrificed. She has been forced to eat mermaid flesh so that after she is killed, her flesh can be used to rejuvenate a village of ageing immortal women. Yuta rescues her and they travel on together while Yuta pursues his quest to become human again.\n\nCharacters\nNote:In some cases a character is portrayed by a different voice actor in the OVAs. These voice actors are also added.\n\nMain characters\n\nA 500-year-old immortal. Yuta and his fellow fishermen ate the flesh of a mermaid to attain immortality when they captured one, but only Yuta survived while his comrades were either poisoned or turned into Deformed Ones. He married and lived normally until he discovered that while his wife grew older, he did not age physically from the day he ate the flesh. He hears that a mermaid could help him to become normal again, so he begins an endless search for a mermaid. During his travels, he encounters a lovely fifteen-year-old girl named Mana in a village of mermaids. They made her an immortal and were planning to devour her to rejuvenate themselves, but Yuta rescues her and she joins him as a traveling companion. Kind-hearted and helpful, Yuta befriends many people who have had contact with mermaid's flesh over his 500 years existence.\n\nAn immortal and Yuta's companion. She was raised by a group of old mermaids who kept her captive and incapacitated in a hut. Once she reached adolescence at 15 years of age, they made her an immortal and planned to eat her flesh in order to regain their youth. She is rescued by Yuta and then travels with him. She is very loyal to Yuta and rescues him a number of times. She has feelings for him, but due to her somewhat naïve nature, she does not seem to understand her own emotions.\n\nOther characters\n\nA young boy who has been immortal for 800 years. He has a childlike appearance but centuries of loneliness turned him into a cruel and heartless monster. His first victim was his original mother to whom he fed mermaid flesh, but she became a Lost Soul. After 100 years of being adopted by various people and losing them to famine, disease, and war, the boy decides to feed small amounts of mermaid flesh to random people, and have them pose as his parent until they succumb to the adverse effects of the flesh or serve their purpose. He acquired a Nambu pistol during World War II, which he used in his fight with Yuta who had discovered his true nature. His latest mother Misa, gave him the name Masato. He met her during World War II after she lost her son in an air-raid. When Yuta and Mana came across Misa and Masato, Misa was losing her regenerative powers so Masato planned to make his nanny Yukie his new mother. However, she turned into a Lost Soul. He tried to kill Yuta and Mana but failed and got in a car crash when he tried to escape them. His corpse was never found.\n\nShe lost her husband and child during World War II and was found by the young boy Masato who fed her mermaid flesh so that she could become his long-lived surrogate mother. After 80 years, she become weary of his manipulation and escaped but he found her and forced her to continue to act as his mother figure. As the mermaid flesh's effect began to wear off, Masato began to look for another surrogate. She died after being attacked by a Lost Soul which was formerly Masato's nanny, Yukie.\n\nShe is Masato's loving and caring nanny which made her an excellent choice to become Masato's new surrogate mother. Yukie was unaware of Masato's immortality. Masato gave her a piece mermaid's flesh make her an immortal, but instead she was transformed into a monstrous Lost Soul and was killed by Yuta. He was acting to protect Masato and his mother Misa from what he saw as a monster.\n\nShe was the teenage eldest daughter of Toba Island's leader of a band of pirates. Due to her father becoming ill, Rin became the leader. She was searching for a mermaid to cure her father many years ago and met Yuta when he came back to life after dying in a sea battle. They fell in love and Yuta promised to stay in Toba Island if he could turn back into a mortal. However, Yuta decided to leave Toba Island because he did not want to marry another mortal girl while he was immortal. Rin continued as the leader of Toba Island's pirates.\n\nA wife of the Sakagami Island headman. Isago told her husband of the immortality of the mermaid's flesh and encouraged him to find one. Isago is pregnant from her former husband who was murdered by the Sakagami pirates three years earlier. In order to give birth to a healthy child, Isago needs to eat the mermaid flesh, because she is in fact a mermaid. She tells Rin that there are mermaids who can walk on land and mermaids who swim at sea. The ones who walk on land eat the swimming mermaids' flesh, especially during pregnancy. Isago finally ate mermaid flesh, dived into the ocean, transformed back into a mermaid, and gave birth to two healthy merbabies.\n\nShe suffered from a deadly illness when she was a young girl. Her identical twin sister Sawa fed her the blood of a mermaid which cured her illness, but caused her arm to become deformed and turned her hair white. Because of her deformity, Towa was locked in a cell beneath the house. Her deformed arm caused her terrible pain, so she asked her fiancée Dr. Shiina to cut the arms off dead girls and re-attach them to her. But after a few years each arm became deformed and the pain came back. After their father died, Towa was released from her cell and tried to make Sawa eat mermaid flesh in revenge for her pitiful life, but Sawa suddenly died of a heart attack. Robbed of her revenge, Towa joins her twin in death, instructing the others to burn Mermaid Hill and everything associated with it.\n\nShe was Towa's identical twin sister who inherited the family line and was placed in charge of guarding Mermaid Hill, a hidden repository of mermaid flesh. When Towa was dying, she fed her the blood of a mermaid which deformed her arm and resulted in her confinement. Sawa married and gave birth to a child, but her husband died fighting in World War II and her child and father died sometime later. Sawa reluctantly reveals the location of Mermaid Hill after Towa threatens to kill Mana. Towa tried to force Sawa to eat mermaid's flesh, but she suddenly died of a cardiac arrest.\n\nTowa Kannagi's fiancé. Shiina begged Towa many times to leave with him but she always refused. Shiina agreed to cut the arms off dead girls and replace Towa's deformed arm. Shiina recounts to Yuta and Mana his history with Towa and how she was obsessed with by her \"other self\", Sawa. In the OVA, after Towa ran into the burning Mermaid Hill to end her life of revenge, Shiina chased after her to join her in death, making up for fifty-five years of lost time.\n\nHe was once a mortal, but he ate the flesh of a mermaid corpse he found lying on the beach hoping that he would gain immortality. When he awoke, he saw that his village had been destroyed and everyone - including his family - had been murdered, not realizing that he had killed them himself. The flesh had partially transformed him into a Lost Soul as he could speak and had human feelings. The transformation had caused his eyes to swell so he was called \"Big Eyes\". Mana is sympathetic to his situation and tries to protect him, but Yuta and a local hunter have no choice but to kill him because of his murderous ways.\n\nShe died as a young girl during the Warring States period. A Buddhist monk found her father mourning the loss of his only daughter and used an ancient art called \"Hangon\" to resurrect Natsume who became immortal. Many decades later, Yuta met Natsume and the monk who was pursuing her. The monk had used mermaid's liver in the process which caused her to eat the livers of animals and sometimes humans, so he decided to kill her. Natsume befriended Yuta and asked if she could travel with him, but her possessive father became angry and tried to kill Yuta. While Natsume's father was dealing with Yuta, the monk was able to rip out her liver. Natsume saved Yuta from being killed, but her father jumped off a cliff with her in his arms. He died immediately, but Natsume was able to live long enough to say good-bye to Yuta before she turned back into bones.\n\nHe is a young boy whom Yuta and Mana find terribly injured after he escaped from a moving car while being kidnapped. However, he quickly recovers after he swallows his mother's medicine. Yuta and Mana take Nanao home to his mother and grandmother who is behaving strangely. Yuta and Mana discover that Nanao's \"mother\" is actually Nanao's grandmother who became an immortal 25 years ago and after her son grew up, she kidnapped his son and raised him as her own. She tried to feed him mermaid flesh but Yuta stopped her.\n\nShe became an immortal in 1969 after her husband left with their son Nanao, due to her mental instability. She ate mermaid flesh and became immortal, but her face became scarred and gave her eternal pain. Years later, her son had grown, married and he had a baby son. She kidnapped the baby, also naming him Nanao and raised him as her own son. One day, she saw a woman's body lying on the beach and removed her face which she kept in a box. She switched it with her own face when she appeared in public to hide her disfiguring scar. She planned to feed mermaid flesh to her grandson Nanao to also make him immortal, but Yuta stopped her. She ran away in distress and her body was found later in a burned-out storehouse.\n\nShe met Yuta some years before World War II. When Nae learned about Yuta's curse of immortality, she told him a secret about some mermaid's ashes, brought to the local village by a nun long ago. Nae spread some ashes around the field of red flowers, causing them to bloom all year long and she called it \"red valley\". She and Yuta fell in love and began secretly meeting in the red valley. Her fiancée Eijiro, became jealous and murdered her. He planned to use the mermaid ashes to bring her back to life but could not find them. He eventually found the ashes and used them to bring her back to life, but she became a shadow of her former self with no memory of her past. Many years later, Yuta returned to the village with Mana, which caused Nae to remember remnants of her past. However, Eijiro fatally stabs Nae with his cane sword and slowly the effect of the ashes on Nae wears off, leaving her to die once again in the red valley.\n\nBefore World War II, Eijiro was a young, bright man who fell in love with and was betrothed to Nae Kogure who was from a wealthy family. When Yuta arrived, Nae fell in love with him and Eijiro became insanely jealous. He killed Nae when he believed she was planning to leave with Yuta. For most of his life he searched for the location of some mermaid's ashes to revive her and eventually does so, but Nae has no memory of her past. Many years later, Yuta returns to the village and finds Nae as young and beautiful as ever. Eijiro is still consumed by jealousy and fatally stabs Nae when she starts to remember Yuta and the past.\n\nA long time ago, Soukichi was an errand boy from Nae's family. Many years later after Nae's disappearance, as an old man, he helps Yuta and Mana, believing that Eijiro kidnapped her.\n\nAkiko is a sweet girl and the sister of the violent Shingo Kiryu. When they were young she tried to stop Shingo killing small animals with his knife, but she accidentally hit him in the face with his knife and caused him to lose an eye. Eventually Akiko decided to poison Shingo and herself. The poison she used was the flesh of a mermaid which caused Akiko to continue living in an almost comatose state, sitting at home in a chair like a life-sized doll. However, Shingo became immortal and ripped out her eye in revenge. After a battle with Shingo, Yuta decapitated Akiko, thus ending her existence as a lifeless doll.\n\nShingo is the insane and violent brother of Akiko Kiryu. They lived together in the Kiryu Manor shortly before the Russo-Japanese War. Yuta worked there temporarily and witnessed Shingo's cruel and sadistic behavior. Akiko tried to poison him with the flesh of a mermaid, but although he appeared to die, he became an immortal. His father tried to kill him again, but that failed as well. Because of Shingo's insanity, he was kept in a cell in the basement of the Kiryu home. Once he was released, he ripped out one of Akiko's eyes. Now, every time he murders someone he sees the last thing that she saw, his own twisted face reaching down to rip her eye out. He believes that killing his sister will make the visions stop, but after a battle with Yuta, Yuta decapitated Akiko. Yuta attempted to do the same with Shingo, but Shingo suffered another vision, realizing he would forever be tormented by his sister's last sight, and he took Yuta's sword and decapitated himself.\n\nAyu is a girl in the mermaid village who took care of Mana. Ayu was next to sacrifice herself. Ayu is a mermaid, but died after spears pierced her body. Yuta found her body and showed it to the old women.\n\nThe flesh of mermaids is reported to give eternal youth, regenerative self-healing properties, and longevity. It is also a poison which can cause death, deformity or cause the person to become a Lost Soul or monster. Mermaids mostly live beneath the sea and have a normal lifespan. However, some live on land and are immortal, but they must sometimes eat the flesh of an immortal human to rejuvenate themselves.\n\nMedia\n\nManga\nThe stories of Mermaid Saga are written and illustrated by Rumiko Takahashi, and were serialized irregularly in Shogakukan's Shōnen Sunday Zōkan and Weekly Shōnen Sunday from 1984 to 1994. In total there are 9 stories told in 16 chapters. The first wide-ban volume released by Shogakukan was Mermaid's Forest, named after the third story within it and published on April 25, 1988. The second wide-ban, Mermaid's Scar, was released on December 19, 1992, without two stories (4 chapters): \"Eye of the Demon\" and \"The Last Face\". These stories were not yet released when the book came out. The series was re-released in shinsoban format in 2003, in three volumes with all the stories.\n\nIn North America, Mermaid Forest began serialization by Viz Media in Animerica'''s first issue in November 1992. Rachel Matt Thorn provided the translation. It was published in the first nine issues, and then the rest was published in the comic book format from December 1993 to September 1995. The manga was later released in three graphic novel volumes, Mermaid Forest, Mermaid's Scar and Mermaid's Gaze, from November 1, 1994 to March 8, 1997. In 2004, it was released in four books, simply titled Mermaid Saga, from July 14 to December 22, 2004. In February 2020, Viz Media announced a 2-volume new edition of the manga, Mermaid Saga Collector's Edition. The first volume was published on November 17, 2020 and the second was published on February 16, 2021.\n\nVolume list\n1st Japanese edition\n\n1st English edition/2nd Japanese edition\n\n2nd English edition\n\n3rd English edition\n\nAnime\nOriginal video animations\nThe first original video animation (OVA), Mermaid Forest, by studio Pastel, was released in Japan in August 1991. A subtitled Laserdisc and VHS tape were released in North America by US Manga Corps on March 3, 1993. It was marketed as one of the Rumic World anime (along with Maris the Chojo, Fire Tripper, and Laughing Target).\n\nThe second OVA, Mermaid's Scar, made by Madhouse, was released in Japan on VHS and Laserdisc on September 24, 1993. Viz Media published a dubbed release on VHS on November 21, 1995.\n\nAnime television series\nIn 2003 the animation company Tokyo Movie Shinsha produced a 13 episodes TV series based on Takahashi's short stories as part of the Rumic Theater series and it was broadcast on TV Tokyo from October 4 to December 20, 2003. All but Mermaid's Gaze were animated. While closely following the story of the original manga (more so than the OVA versions), many of the violent aspects of the stories were toned down. Only eleven episodes were shown on Japanese TV, with the final two episodes (Mermaid's Scar'') released direct to video, allegedly because this particular story was too violent for TV. It was released in North America by Geneon.\n\nEpisode list\n\nSee also \nMermaids in popular culture\n\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Mermaid's Flesh at Rumic World Features summaries, characters descriptions, pictures galleries, and more.\n \n\n1984 manga\n1991 anime OVAs\n1993 anime OVAs\n2003 anime television series debuts\nCannibalism in fiction\nFiction about immortality\nFictional mermen and mermaids\nGeneon USA\nHorror anime and manga\nManga anthologies\nRomance anime and manga\nRumic World\nShogakukan franchises\nShogakukan manga\nShōnen manga\nSupernatural anime and manga\nTMS Entertainment\nTV Tokyo original programming\nViz Media manga\nWorks by Rumiko Takahashi",
"(born August 30, 1944) is a Japanese actress born in Kyoto, Japan. She has starred in several movies, notably Gate of Flesh (1964), a Japanese erotic film, part of a trilogy of films she made with director Seijun Suzuki. Including Story of a Prostitute (1965) and Carmen from Kawachi (1966), these films are known as Nogawa's \"Flesh Trilogy\". Nogawa has appeared in numerous films in Japan, including director Nagisa Oshima's The Pleasures of the Flesh (1965) and Zatoichi and the Fugitives (1968), the eighteenth film in the Zatoichi series. She has also appeared in television series on Nippon Television, TV Tokyo, Fuji TV, and NHK.\n\nFilmography\n Gate of Flesh (1964) - Maya\n Kunoichi ninpō (1964) - Sen hime\n Story of a Prostitute (1965) - Harumi\n The Pleasures of the Flesh (1965) - Hitomi\n Carmen from Kawachi (1966) - Carmen\n A Certain Killer (1967) - Keiko\n Daimon Otokode Shinitai (1969)\n Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Final Episode (1974) - Kaoru Sugita\n Hokuriku Proxy War (1977)\n Okinawan Boys (1983)\n Ruten no umi (1990) - Fusae Matsuzaka\n The Geisha House (1999) - Michiko\n The Sea Is Watching (2002) - Omine\n The Book Peddler (2016) - Sachi Toda\n\nTelevision\n Hissatsu Shiokinin (1973) -Okin\n Tasukenin Hashiru (1974)\n Choshichiro Edo Nikki (1983-91)\n Dokuganryū Masamune (1987) - Asahi no kata\n Last Cinderella (2013) - Setsuko Takenouchi\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n \n \n\nJapanese film actresses\nLiving people\n1944 births"
] |
[
"Lord Voldemort",
"Character development",
"in what way was his character developed?",
"Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter",
"what was his character like?",
"he was a wizard ...",
"did he use magic?",
"I don't know.",
"did he ever cause any harm to Harry Potter?",
"Harry has to find out, before we find out. And--so--but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry.",
"how did Rowling come up with the name Lord Voldemort?",
"Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter (the protagonist of the novels), and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first.",
"did she eventually flesh out his back story?",
"she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first."
] |
C_e1dce95f334b494096220fc2c296fae0_1
|
did he have any followers?
| 7 |
Did Lord Voldemort's character in Harry Potter have any followers?
|
Lord Voldemort
|
In a 2001 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter (the protagonist of the novels), and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry--he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And--so--but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since." In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death." Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. Some literary analysts have considered possible meanings in the name: Philip Nel states that Voldemort is derived from the French for "flight of death", and in a 2002 paper, Nilsen and Nilsen suggest that readers get a "creepy feeling" from the name Voldemort, because of the French word "mort" ("death") within it and that word's association with cognate English words derived from the Latin mors. CANNOTANSWER
|
his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.
|
Lord Voldemort (, in the films) is a sobriquet for Tom Marvolo Riddle, a character and the main antagonist in J. K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels. The character first appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was published in 1997, and returned either in person or in flashbacks in each book and its film adaptation in the series except the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which he is only mentioned.
Voldemort is the archenemy of Harry Potter, who according to a prophecy has "the power to vanquish the Dark Lord". He attempts to murder the boy, but instead kills his parents, Lily and James Potter, and leaves Harry with a scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. Nearly every witch or wizard dares not utter his name and refers to him instead with such monikers as "You-Know-Who", "He Who Must Not Be Named", or "the Dark Lord". Voldemort's obsession with blood purity signifies his aim to rid the wizarding world of Muggle (non-magical) heritage and to conquer both worlds, Muggle and wizarding, to achieve pure-blood dominance. Through his mother's family, he is the last descendant of the wizard Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is the leader of the Death Eaters, a group of evil wizards and witches dedicated to ridding the Wizarding World of Muggles and establishing Voldemort as its supreme ruler.
Character development
In a 1999 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter, and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry—he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And—so—but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since."
In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death."
Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. The name Voldemort is derived from the French vol de mort which means "flight of death" or "theft of death".
Appearances
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Voldemort makes his debut in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In this story, Rowling introduces him as the Dark Lord who tried to kill Harry Potter because the boy was prophesied to destroy him. Voldemort murdered Harry's parents, James and Lily, but as a result of his mother's love and willingness to sacrifice herself for him, baby Harry survived when Voldemort tried to murder him with a Killing Curse. Voldemort was disembodied, and Harry was left with a mysterious, lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead as a result.
In the book, Voldemort unsuccessfully tries to regain his dissolved body by stealing the titular Philosopher's Stone. To achieve his objective, Voldemort uses Professor Quirrell's aid by latching onto the back of the latter's head. However, at the climax of the book, Harry manages to prevent Voldemort from stealing the stone.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
In the second instalment, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling introduces Tom Marvolo Riddle, a manifestation of a teenage Voldemort that resides inside a magical diary found by Ginny Weasley. In this book, Ginny is written as a shy girl with a crush on Harry. Feeling anxious and lonely, she begins to write into the diary and shares her deepest fears with the sympathetic Tom. However, at the climax of the story, when Riddle rearranges the letters in his name to write "I am Lord Voldemort", Riddle is revealed as a magical manifestation of the boy who would later grow up to become the Dark Lord. Riddle states he has grown strong on Ginny's fears and eventually possesses her, using her as a pawn to unlock the Chamber of Secrets, whence a basilisk is set free and petrifies several Hogwarts students. Harry defeats the manifestation of Riddle from the diary and the basilisk. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Albus Dumbledore reveals to Harry that the diary was one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Voldemort does not appear in the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, either in person or as a magical manifestation. He is, however, heard when Harry passes out from the harsh effects of a Dementor. Towards the end of the story, Sybill Trelawney, the Divination professor, makes a rare genuine prophecy: "The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight, the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever before. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master..." Though it is initially implied that the prophecy refers to Sirius Black, the book's ostensible antagonist, the servant is eventually revealed to be Peter Pettigrew, who, for the 12 years since Voldemort's fall, has been disguised as Ron's pet rat, Scabbers.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
In the fourth instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort reappears at the start and the climax of the book. Rowling lets many seemingly unrelated plot elements fall into order. It is revealed that Voldemort's minion Barty Crouch Jr, disguised as Hogwarts professor Mad-Eye Moody, has manipulated the events of the Triwizard Tournament in Harry's favour. Voldemort's goal is to teleport Harry under Dumbledore's watch as a reluctant participant to the Little Hangleton graveyard, where the Riddle family is buried. Harry is captured and, after Pettigrew uses Harry's blood to fulfil a gruesome magical ritual, Voldemort regains his body and is restored to his full power. For the first time in the series, Rowling describes his appearance: "tall and skeletally thin", with a face "whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils". Rowling writes that his "hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat's, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness". It was revealed that, while in Albania, Pettigrew had captured the Ministry of Magic official Bertha Jorkins, who was tortured for information about the Ministry. After they learned that Barty Crouch Jr, a faithful Death Eater, had been smuggled out of Azkaban and was privately confined at his father's house, they killed her. With Pettigrew's help, Voldemort creates a small, rudimentary body, corporeal enough to travel and perform magic, and formulated a plan to restore his own body by capturing Harry. A portion of the plan had been overheard by Frank Bryce, a gardener, whom Voldemort then killed. Voldemort then completes his plan and returns to life in his full body as a result of the ritual with Harry's blood. He then summons his Death Eaters to the graveyard to witness the death of Harry as he challenges Harry to a duel. However, when Voldemort duels Harry, their wands become magically locked together due to the twin Phoenix feather cores of the wands. Because of a phenomenon later revealed as Priori Incantatem, ghost-like manifestations of Voldemort's most recent victims (including Harry's parents) then appear and distract Voldemort, allowing Harry just enough time to escape via Portkey with the body of fellow-student, Cedric Diggory, who was murdered by Pettigrew on Voldemort's orders.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Voldemort appears at the climax of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, having again plotted against Harry. In this book, Harry goes through extreme emotional stress, and according to Rowling, it was necessary to prove that Harry is emotionally vulnerable and thus human, in contrast to his nemesis Voldemort, who is emotionally invulnerable and thus inhuman: "[Harry is] a very human hero, and this is, obviously, there's a contrast, between him, as a very human hero, and Voldemort, who has deliberately dehumanised himself. […] and Harry, therefore, did have to reach a point where he did almost break down." In this book, Voldemort makes liberal use of the Ministry of Magic's refusal to believe that he has returned. Voldemort engineers a plot to free Bellatrix Lestrange and other Death Eaters from Azkaban and then embarks on a scheme to retrieve the full record of a prophecy stored in the Department of Mysteries regarding Harry and himself. He sends a group of Death Eaters to retrieve the prophecy, where the Order of the Phoenix meets them. All but Bellatrix are captured, and Voldemort engages in a ferocious duel with Dumbledore. When Dumbledore gets the upper hand, Voldemort attempts to possess Harry but finds that he cannot; Harry is too full of that which Voldemort finds incomprehensible, and which he detests as weakness: love. Sensing that Dumbledore could win, Voldemort disapparates, but not before the Minister for Magic sees him in person, making his return to life public knowledge in the next book.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Voldemort does not appear in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, although his presence and actions are felt: he once again declares war, and begins to rise to power once more. He murders Amelia Bones of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and begins to target members of the Order of the Phoenix, including Emmeline Vance.
Rowling uses several chapters as exposition to establish Voldemort's backstory. In a series of flashbacks, using the pensieve as a plot device, she reveals that Voldemort was the son of the witch Merope Gaunt and a Muggle called Tom Riddle. Riddle abandoned Merope before their child's birth, soon after which Merope died. After living in an orphanage, young Riddle met Dumbledore, who told him he was a wizard and arranged for him to attend Hogwarts. Riddle was outwardly a model student, but was in reality a psychopath who took sadistic pleasure in using his powers to harm and control people. He eventually murdered his father and grandparents as revenge for abandoning him. The book also discusses Riddle's hatred of Muggles, his obsession with Horcruxes, and his desire to split his soul to achieve immortality. Rowling stated Voldemort's conception under the influence of a love potion symbolises the coercive circumstances under which he was brought into the world.
In the main plot of the book, Voldemort's next step is to engineer an assault on Hogwarts, and to kill Dumbledore. This is accomplished by Draco Malfoy, who arranges transportation of Death Eaters into Hogwarts by a pair of Vanishing Cabinets, which bypass the extensive protective enchantments placed around the school. The cabinets allow Voldemort's Death Eaters to enter Hogwarts, where battle commences and Dumbledore is cornered. Hogwarts professor (and re-doubled agent) Severus Snape uses the Killing Curse against Dumbledore when Draco could not force himself to do so.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort furthers his quest for ultimate power. He disposes of the Minister for Magic and replaces him with Pius Thicknesse, who is under the Imperius Curse. Establishing a totalitarian police state, he has Muggle-borns persecuted and arrested for "stealing magic" from the "pure blood" wizards. After failing to kill Harry with Draco's father Lucius Malfoy's borrowed wand (to avoid the effect of Priori Incantatem), he goes on a murderous search for the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand ever created, seeing it as the weapon he needs to overcome Harry's wand and make him truly invincible. He goes on a quest that takes him out of the country to Gregorovitch's wand shop, where he kills the old wandmaker. His journey also takes him to Nurmengard, the prison where Gellert Grindelwald is kept, and he kills Grindelwald as well. He finally locates the Elder Wand and steals it from Dumbledore's tomb.
Later, Voldemort finds out that Harry and his friends are hunting and destroying his Horcruxes when informed of their heist on the Lestranges' vault at Gringotts in search for Hufflepuff's Cup. After offering the occupants of Hogwarts mercy if they give up Harry, he assembles a large army and launches an invasion of the castle, where Harry is searching for Ravenclaw's Diadem. Voldemort orders his pet snake Nagini to execute Snape, believing it would make him the true master of the Elder Wand, since Snape killed Dumbledore. He then calls an hour's armistice, in exchange for Harry. When Harry willingly walks into Voldemort's camp in the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort strikes him down with the Elder Wand. However, the use of Harry's blood to resurrect Voldemort's body proves to be a major setback: while Harry's blood runs in Voldemort's veins, Harry cannot be killed as his mother's protection lives on now in Voldemort too. Instead, Voldemort destroys the part of his own soul that resides in Harry's body. Voldemort forces Rubeus Hagrid to carry Harry's apparently lifeless body back to the castle as a trophy, sparking another battle during which Nagini, his last Horcrux, is destroyed by Neville Longbottom. The battle then moves into the Great Hall, where Voldemort fights Minerva McGonagall, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Horace Slughorn simultaneously. Harry then reveals himself and explains to Voldemort that Draco became the true master of the Elder Wand when he disarmed Dumbledore; Harry, in turn, won the wand's allegiance when he took Draco's wand. Refusing to believe this, Voldemort casts the Killing Curse with the Elder Wand while Harry uses a Disarming Charm with Draco's, but the Elder Wand refuses to kill its master and the spell rebounds on Voldemort who, with all of his Horcruxes destroyed, finally dies. His body is laid in a different chamber from all the others who died battling him.
Rowling stated that after his death, Voldemort is forced to exist in the stunted infant-like form that Harry sees in the King's Cross-like Limbo after his confrontation with Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest. Rowling also mentioned that, despite his extreme fear of death, he cannot become a ghost.
Appearances in other material
In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, it is revealed that Bellatrix gave birth to Voldemort's daughter Delphi in Malfoy Manor before the Battle of Hogwarts. Twenty-two years later, Delphi poses as Cedric's cousin and manipulates Harry and Ginny's second son Albus Severus Potter and his friend, Draco and Astoria Greengrass's son Scorpius Malfoy, into stealing a prototype Time Turner with which she hopes to resurrect her father. Using the Time Turner, Scorpius accidentally creates an alternative timeline where Voldemort killed Harry at the battle and now rules the wizarding world. In an attempt to achieve this future, Delphi travels to Godric's Hollow on the night Voldemort killed Harry's parents, hoping to avert the prophecy that led to her father's downfall. After receiving a message from his son, Harry, together with Ron, Hermione and Draco (who by now has become friends with Harry after they join forces to save their respective sons) transfigures himself into Voldemort so that he can distract Delphi, allowing them to overpower her. The real Voldemort kills Harry's parents as prophesied, and Delphi is sent to Azkaban.
Portrayals within films
Voldemort appears in every Harry Potter film, with the exception of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Several actors have portrayed him in his varying incarnations and ages.
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Voldemort's manifestation is as a face on the back of Quirrell's head, an effect achieved by computer generated imagery. Ian Hart, the actor who played Quirrell in the same film, provided the voice and the facial source for this character. Voldemort also appears in a scene in the Forbidden Forest where he is seen drinking the blood of a unicorn. As Voldemort's face was altered enough by CG work, and Hart's voice was affected enough, there was no confusion by Hart's playing of the two roles. In that film, he was also shown in a flashback sequence when he arrived at the home of James and Lily Potter to kill them. In this scene Voldemort is played by Richard Bremmer, though his face is never seen. His next appearance would be in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as the 16-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle (portrayed by Christian Coulson).
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort is initially only heard, possessing the scratchy, weak voice heard in the first film. By the film's climax, however, he appears in his physical form for the first time, played by Ralph Fiennes. As in the book, Voldemort is shown clad in dark black robes, being tall and emaciated, with no hair and yellowish teeth; his wand has a white tone and the handle appears to be made of bone; his finger nails are long and pale blue while his toe nails appear to be infected. Unlike in the book, his pupils are not cat-like and his eyes are blue, because producer David Heyman felt that his evil would not be able to be seen and would not fill the audience with fear (his eyes do briefly take on a snake-like appearance when he opens them after turning human, but quickly turn normal). As in the book, the film version of Voldemort has snake-like slit nostrils with the flesh of his nose significantly pressed back. Ralph Fiennes' nose was not covered in makeup on the set, but was digitally removed in post-production. In this first appearance, Voldemort also has a forked tongue, but this element was removed for the subsequent films.
Fiennes stated that he had two weeks to shoot the climactic showdown scene where he is gloating over a terrified Harry, played by Daniel Radcliffe. Fiennes said with a chuckle: "I have no doubt children will be afraid of me now if they weren't before." In preparation, he read the novel Goblet of Fire, but jokingly conceded: "I was only interested in my scene, and I had to go through thousands and thousands of other scenes which I did, dutifully, until I got to my scene and I read it many, many, many, many, many times and that was my research." Fiennes reprised his role as Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2.
Fiennes's nephew, Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, portrayed Tom Riddle as a child in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. By the time filming arrived Christian Coulson was 29, and not considered suitable to return as the adolescent Riddle. Thomas James Longley was originally scheduled to take over the role, but last minute renegotiations saw Frank Dillane cast instead.
Characterisation
Outward appearance
After he regains his body in the fourth book, Rowling describes Voldemort as having pale skin, a chalk-white, skull-like face, snake-like slits for nostrils, red eyes and cat-like slits for pupils, a skeletally thin body and long, thin hands with unnaturally long fingers. As mentioned in the first chapter of the seventh book, he also has no hair or lips. Earlier in life, as seen through flashbacks contained in the second and sixth books, Tom Marvolo Riddle was handsome and tall with pale skin, jet black hair, and dark brown eyes. He could charm many people with his looks. The transformation into his monstrous state is believed to have been the result of creating his Horcruxes and becoming less human as he continued to divide his soul. In the films, Voldemort's eyes are blue with round pupils.
Personality
Rowling described Voldemort as "the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years". She elaborated that he is a "raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering", and whose only ambition in life is to become all-powerful and immortal. He is also a sadist who hurts and murders people—especially Muggles—for his own amusement. He has no conscience, feels no remorse or empathy, and does not recognise the worth and humanity of anybody except himself.
He feels no need for human companionship or friendship, and cannot comprehend love or affection for another. He believes he is superior to everyone around him, to the point that he frequently refers to himself in the third person as "Lord Voldemort". Rowling also stated that Voldemort is "incredibly power hungry. Racist, really", and that if Voldemort were to look into the Mirror of Erised, in which one sees one's greatest desire, he would see "Himself, all-powerful and eternal. That's what he wants."
Rowling also stated that Voldemort's conception by influence of Amortentia—a love potion administered by his mother, a witch named Merope Gaunt, to the Muggle Tom Riddle—is related to his inability to understand love; it is "a symbolic way of showing that he came from a loveless union—but of course, everything would have changed if Merope had survived and raised him herself and loved him. The enchantment under which Tom Riddle fathered Voldemort is important because it shows coercion, and there can't be many more prejudicial ways to enter the world than as the result of such a union".
Like most archetypical villains, Voldemort's arrogance leads to his downfall. He also suffers from a pathological fear of death, which he regards as a shameful and ignominious human weakness. According to Rowling, his Boggart would be his own corpse. Rowling also said that the difference between Harry and Voldemort is that Harry accepts mortality, and thus Harry is, in the end, stronger than his nemesis.
Magical abilities and skills
Rowling establishes Voldemort throughout the series as an extremely powerful, intelligent, and ruthless dark wizard, described as the greatest and most powerful Dark Wizard of all time. He is known as one of the greatest Legilimens in the world and a highly accomplished Occlumens; he can read minds and shield his own from penetration. Besides Dumbledore, he is also the only wizard ever known to be able to apparate silently. Voldemort was also said to fear one wizard alone, Dumbledore.
In the final book, Voldemort flies unsupported, something that amazes those who see it. Voldemort, like his ancestral family, the Gaunts, is a Parselmouth, meaning he can converse with serpents. This skill was inherited from his ancestor, Salazar Slytherin. The Gaunt family speak Parseltongue among themselves. This highly unusual trait may be preserved through inbreeding, a practice employed by the Gaunt Family to maintain their blood's purity. When Voldemort attempts to kill Harry his ability to speak Parseltongue is passed to Harry through the small bit of the former's soul. After that bit of soul is destroyed, Harry loses this ability. In a flashback in the sixth novel, Voldemort boasts to Dumbledore during a job interview that he has "pushed the boundaries of magic farther than they had ever before". Dumbledore states that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is more extensive than any wizard alive and that even Dumbledore's most powerful protective spells and charms would likely be insufficient if Voldemort returned to full power. Dumbledore also said that Voldemort was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen. Although Voldemort remains highly accomplished and prodigious in skill, he is enormously lacking and highly inept in the most powerful magic, love. This inability to love and trust others proves to be Voldemort's greatest weakness in the series. Voldemort initially voices scepticism that his own magic might not be the most powerful, but upon returning to power, he admits to his Death Eaters that he had overlooked the ancient and powerful magic which Lily Potter invoked and that would protect Harry from harm.
On her website, Rowling wrote that Voldemort's wand is made of yew, whose sap is poisonous and which symbolises death. It forms a deliberate contrast to Harry's wand, which is made of holly, which she chose because holly is alleged to repel evil.
Rowling establishes in the books that Voldemort is magically connected to Harry via Harry's forehead scar. He disembodies himself when his Killing Curse targeting Harry rebounds on him, leaving the scar on Harry's forehead. In the books, and to a lesser extent in the films, Harry's scar serves as an indicator of Voldemort's presence: it burns when the Dark Lord is near or when Voldemort is feeling murderous or exultant. According to Rowling, by attacking Harry when he was a baby Voldemort gave him "tools [that] no other wizard possessed—the scar and the ability it conferred, a magical window into Voldemort's mind".
Family
Notes: The names 'Thomas' and 'Mary' Riddle are taken from the films. The Potter Family is not shown.
Riddle family
The Riddle family, an old gentry family, consisted of Thomas and Mary Riddle and their son, Tom Riddle, Esq. They owned over half of the valley that the town of Little Hangleton lay in, and Thomas was the most prominent inhabitant of that town. They lived in a large house with fine gardens, but were unpopular amongst the local residents due to their snobbish attitudes. Tom, the only child of Thomas and Mary, was known as a playboy, his main interests being womanizing and horse-riding.
Rowling revealed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that young Merope Gaunt fell in love with Riddle, peering at him through the windows and bushes at every opportunity. Merope's brother Morfin disapproved of his sister's affection for Tom and hexed him as he rode by, covering him in hives. This breach of wizarding law, and the ensuing violent struggle with Ministry of Magic officials, led to Marvolo and Morfin being imprisoned in Azkaban. As surmised by Dumbledore, once Merope was alone and no longer dominated by her father, she could make her move for Tom. She offered him a drink laced with a love potion, and he became infatuated with her; they soon eloped and, within three months of the marriage, Merope became pregnant. Merope decided to stop giving Tom the love potion, having come to the belief such enchantment of a man was tantamount to slavery. She also revealed her witch status to Tom, believing either that he had fallen in love with her on his own or he would at least stay for their unborn child. She was wrong, and Tom quickly left his pregnant wife and went home to his parents, claiming to have been "hoodwinked" and tricked into marrying Merope. Tom Marvolo Riddle, their son, was born on 31 December 1926 Merope died in childbirth, leaving the baby to grow up alone in an orphanage.
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it is revealed that Voldemort murdered his father and grandparents, leaving himself the only surviving member of the Riddle family.
House of Gaunt
Most of the exposition of the House of Gaunts background occurs in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, through the medium of Dumbledore's Pensieve. The Gaunts were once a powerful and influential family, and are the last known descendants of Salazar Slytherin. However, a vein of mental instability and violence within the family, reinforced through cousin marriages intended to preserve the pureblood line, had reduced them to poverty and squalor, as shown in the Pensieve's "memory" that Harry and Dumbledore witnessed. Like Salazar Slytherin, the Gaunts spoke Parseltongue. At the time of the story, the Gaunts' only material asset is a ramshackle shanty in Little Hangleton, that stood in a thicket in a valley opposite the Riddle House. Like the Riddles, the Gaunts were also unpopular with the local residents, with a reputation for being vulgar and intimidating.
Marvolo Gaunt was the last family patriarch. He was sentenced to a short term in Azkaban for his and his son's assault upon a Ministry of Magic official; this affected his health and he died soon after returning home. His signet ring passed to his son, Morfin Gaunt, who was convicted of assaulting a Muggle, and later died in Azkaban, convicted this time as a party to the murder of Tom Riddle Jr. and Riddle's parents.
Dumbledore discovers the real culprit while visiting Morfin in Azkaban to gather information about Voldemort. After Dumbledore successfully extracts Morfin's memory of his encounter with his nephew, he tries to use the evidence to have Morfin released, but Morfin dies before the decision can be made. The House of Gaunt ended with Morfin's death.
Merope Gaunt () was the daughter of Marvolo, and sister of Morfin. Harry's first impression of her was that she looked "like the most defeated person he had ever seen". She married Tom Riddle Jr and became pregnant within three months of the wedding. It is suggested that she tricked her husband into loving her by using a love potion, but when she became pregnant, she chose to stop administering the potion. It is implied that Merope had grown tired of living the lie and thought that her husband might have grown to love her, or that he might have stayed for the sake of their unborn child; however, he left her. Desperate, Merope wandered through the streets of London. The only thing she had left was the heavy gold locket that had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin, one of her family's most treasured items, which she sold for a small amount. When she was due to give birth, she stumbled into a Muggle orphanage, where she gave birth to her only son. She died within the next hour.
Gormlaith Gaunt was a 17th-century descendant of Salazar Slytherin, and like Salazar, a Parselmouth. Her wand was that which once belonged to Salazar himself. Educated at Hogwarts, Gormlaith lived in Ireland in the early 1600s. In about 1608, Gormlaith killed her estranged unnamed sister, and her sister's husband, William Sayre (a descendant of the Irish witch Morrigan), and kidnapped their five-year-old daughter, Isolt Sayre, raising her in the neighbouring valley of Coomcallee, or "Hag's Glen", because she felt that her parents' association with Muggles would badly influence Isolt. Fanatical and cruel, Gormlaith used Dark magic to isolate Isolt from others, forbade her a wand, and did not allow her to attend Hogwarts as she herself had, disgusted that it was now filled with Muggle-borns. After twelve years with Gormlaith, Isolt stole Gormlaith's wand and fled to the Colonies and settled in Massachusetts, where she founded the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When Gormlaith learned of the school, she pursued her niece in Massachusetts, where she was killed by Isolt's friend, William the Pukwudgie, with a venom-tipped arrow.
The Gaunts, including Voldemort, are distantly related to Harry because they are descendants of the Peverell brothers.
Reception
Several people have drawn a parallel between Voldemort and some politicians. Rowling has said that Voldemort was "a sort of" Adolf Hitler, and that there is some parallel with Nazism in her books. Rowling also compared Voldemort to Joseph Stalin. Alfonso Cuarón, director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban compared Voldemort to George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, who he said "...have selfish interests and are very much in love with power. Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people." Andrew Slack and the Harry Potter Alliance compare media consolidation in the US to Voldemort's regime in Deathly Hallows and its control over the Daily Prophet and other media saying that "Once Voldemort took over every form of media in the wizarding world, Dumbledore's Army and the Order of the Phoenix formed an independent media movement called 'Potterwatch'. Now the HP Alliance and Wizard Rock have come together to fight for a Potterwatch movement in the real world to fight back against Big VoldeMedia from further pushing out local and foreign news, minority representation, and the right to a Free Press." Julia Turner of Slate Magazine also noted similarities between the events of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the War on Terror. She said that Voldemort commits acts of terrorism such as destroying bridges, murdering innocents, and forcing children to kill their elders.
Voldemort has also been compared with other characters within fiction, for example Sauron from The Lord of the Rings; they are, during the time when the main plot takes place, seeking to recover their lost power after having been considered dead or at least no longer a threat, and are also so feared that they are sometimes unnamed.
IGN listed Voldemort as their seventh favourite Harry Potter character, calling him "truly frightening".
In popular culture
Several campaigns have used Voldemort to compare his evil to the influence of politicians, large media and corporations. "Lord Voldemort" is a nickname sometimes used for Peter Mandelson. Voldemort is also a recurring theme among wizard rock bands. Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock! is the second album from Harry and the Potters, and the character is mentioned in songs such as "The Dark Lord Lament" and "Flesh, Blood, and Bone".
Voldemort has been parodied in various venues. In The Simpsons 13th season's premiere, "Treehouse of Horror XII", Montgomery Burns appears as "Lord Montymort". A parody of Voldemort appears in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy as "Lord Moldybutt", an enemy of Nigel Planter (a parody of Harry). Voldemort also appears in the Potter Puppet Pals sketches by Neil Cicierega. One of the episodes including him was the seventeenth most viewed video of all time as of 2008 and the winner for "Best Comedy" of the year 2007 at YouTube.
"Continuing the Magic", an article in the 21 May 2007 issue of Time, includes mock book covers designed by author Lon Tweeten, laced with pop culture references. One of them, the "Dark Lord of the Dance", shows Voldemort teaming up with Harry on Broadway. In the MAD Magazine parodies of the films, the character is called Lord Druckermort, a backwards reference to the magazine's longtime caricaturist Mort Drucker. In Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1969, a young Tom Marvolo Riddle (introduced as "Tom", whose middle name is a "marvel" and last name is a "conundrum") appears, and becomes the new avatar of Oliver Haddo at the story's conclusion. In A Very Potter Musical, Voldemort is played by actor Joe Walker.
In a segment celebrating British children's literature at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London, an inflatable Voldemort appeared alongside other villains, The Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Cruella de Vil, to haunt children's dreams, before the arrival of a group of over thirty Mary Poppins who descended with their umbrellas to defeat them.
During the 2016 United States elections, Daniel Radcliffe was asked by Sky News journalist Craig Dillon if he would compare Donald Trump to Lord Voldemort; Radcliffe responded, "Trump is worse".
Voldemort appears in The Lego Batman Movie as one of the prisoners in the Phantom Zone that Joker recruits to take over Gotham City. Though Ralph Fiennes is featured in this movie as the voice of the British butler Alfred Pennyworth, he does not reprise his role as Voldemort. Instead, Voldemort is voiced by Eddie Izzard.
Outside of the Harry Potter video games, Voldemort is also a playable character in Lego Dimensions, with archive audio of Fiennes' portrayal in the films used for his voiceovers.
A 2018 Italian fan film titled Voldemort: Origins of the Heir depicts the story of Tom Riddle's rise to power.
Voldemort appears in Space Jam: A New Legacy, in the crowd for the game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad.
An upcoming French fan-made short-film titled The House of Gaunt - Lord Voldemort Origins explores the origin story of Voldemort and The Gaunt family.
Notes
References
External links
Lord Voldemort at Harry Potter Lexicon
Fictional characters with disfigurements
Fictional characters with immortality
Fictional characters with spirit possession or body swapping abilities
Fictional dictators
Fictional English people
Fictional hypnotists and indoctrinators
Fictional illeists
Fictional mass murderers
Fictional necromancers
Fictional offspring of rape
Fictional patricides
Fictional terrorists
Fictional torturers
Harry Potter characters
Literary characters introduced in 1997
Male film villains
Male literary villains
Orphan characters in film
Orphan characters in literature
Psychopathy in fiction
Film supervillains
| true |
[
"William Dorrell (March 15, 1752 - August 28, 1846) was an American new religious leader of the Dorrellites, a utopian sect located in Leyden, Massachusetts. He was also an early vegetarianism activist.\n\nBiography\n\nDorrell was born in Yorkshire. He became a soldier and went abroad to fight in the American Revolutionary War in 1775 under John Burgoyne. He escaped after being taken prisoner at Saratoga. In 1777 he married Polly Chase and resided in Vermont. Dorrell began preaching in 1794 and became known Reverend Dorrell. He founded a religious sect in Leyden, Massachusetts which became known as the Dorrellites.\n\nDorrell preached a vegetarian message that was founded upon the principle that people should not eat animal flesh or cause the death of any living creature. Members were forbidden to wear leather shoes or the skins of animals for any domestic purpose. Dorrell and his followers wore wooden shoes and lived upon milk and vegetables. Dorrell taught that people not need to pray, they must abide by God's laws and not any man-made law of the church or state. Dorrell advocated a philosophy of free love and did not believe that a man and woman need to marry before sexual intercourse. This caused rumours outside of the sect that Dorrell and his followers engaged in wild sexual activity. By 1798 some members left the community. \n\nDorrell starved himself to death because he thought he would live forever if he continued to eat. He died in Leyden on August 28, 1846.\n\nDorrell's wooden shoes are located at the Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield.\n\nReligious views\n\nDorrell believed he was a prophet sent to supersede the Christian dispensation and introduce a new one. He did not believe in the resurrection of Jesus or last judgement. He held the view that no prayer or worship is necessary; there is no law but that of nature. \n\nThe Dorrellites have been described as discrediting their own sect by their un-social behavior and strange beliefs. They held the view that each generation had a Messiah and William Dorrell was the Messiah of his generation. Dorrell believed he possessed supernatural powers and that he could not be harmed by any man. He retracted this claim after he was knocked down by Capt. Ezekiel Foster at a meeting and this resulted in the disbanding of the sect. Zadock Thompson noted that because of this incident, Dorrell renounced his religious doctrines. Dorrell admitted to his followers that he had duped them.\n\nHistorian John Warner Barber suggested that Dorrell \"did not believe in the Bible\" and was \"in the habit of occasionally drinking too much\".\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading\nWilliam Tyler Arms. (1959). The Dorrilite Years. In History of Leyden, Massachusetts, 1676-1959. The Enterprise and Journal.\n\n1752 births\n1846 deaths\nFounders of utopian communities\nVegetarianism activists",
"A cam follower, also known as a track follower, is a specialized type of roller or needle bearing designed to follow cam lobe profiles. Cam followers come in a vast array of different configurations, however the most defining characteristic is how the cam follower mounts to its mating part; stud style cam followers use a stud while the yoke style has a hole through the middle.\n\nConstruction\n\nThe modern stud type follower was invented and patented in 1937 by Thomas L. Robinson of the McGill Manufacturing Company. It replaced using a standard bearing and bolt. The new cam followers were easier to use because the stud was already included and they could also handle higher loads.\n\nWhile roller cam followers are similar to roller bearings, there are quite a few differences. Standard ball and roller bearings are designed to be pressed into a rigid housing, which provides circumferential support. This keeps the outer race from deforming, so the race cross-section is relatively thin. In the case of cam followers the outer race is loaded at a single point, so the outer race needs a thicker cross-section to reduce deformation. However, in order to facilitate this the roller diameter must be decreased, which also decreases the dynamic bearing capacity.\n\nEnd plates are used to contain the needles or bearing axially. On stud style followers one of the end plates is integrated into the inner race/stud; the other is pressed onto the stud up to a shoulder on the inner race. The inner race is induction hardened so that the stud remains soft if modifications need to be made. On yoke style followers the end plates are peened or pressed onto the inner race or liquid metal injected onto the inner race. The inner race is either induction hardened or through hardened.\n\nAnother difference is that a lubrication hole is provided to relubricate the follower periodically. A hole is provided at both ends of the stud for lubrication. They also usually have a black oxide finish to help reduce corrosion.\n\nTypes\nThere are many different types of cam followers available.\n\nAnti-friction element\nThe most common anti-friction element employed is a full complement of needle rollers. This design can withstand high radial loads but no thrust loads. A similar design is the caged needle roller design, which also uses needle rollers, but uses a cage to keep them separated. This design allows for higher speeds but decreases the load capacity. The cage also increases internal space so it can hold more lubrication, which increases the time between relubrications. Depending on the exact design sometimes two rollers are put in each pocket of the cage, using a cage design originated by RBC Bearings in 1971.\n\nFor heavy-duty applications a roller design can be used. This employs two rows of rollers of larger diameter than used in needle roller cam followers to increase the dynamic load capacity and provide some thrust capabilities. This design can support higher speeds than the full complement design.\n\nFor light-duty applications a bushing type follower can be used. Instead of using a type of a roller a plastic bushing is used to reduce friction, which provides a maintenance free follower. The disadvantage is that it can only support light loads, slow speeds, no thrust loads, and the temperature limit is . A bushing type stud follower can only support approximately 25% of the load of a roller type stud follower, while the heavy and yoke followers can handle 50%. Also all-metallic heavy-duty bushing type followers exist.\n\nShape\nThe outer diameter (OD) of the cam follower (stud or yoke) can be the standard cylindrical shape or be crowned. Crowned cam followers are used to keep the load evenly distributed if it deflects or if there is any misalignment between the follower and the followed surface. They are also used in turntable type applications to reduce skidding. Crowned followers can compensate for up to 0.5° of misalignment, while a cylindrical OD can only tolerate 0.06°. The only disadvantage is that they cannot bear as much load because of higher stresses.\n\nStud\nStud style cam followers usually have a standard sized stud, but a heavy stud is available for increased static load capacity.\n\nDrives\nThe standard driving system for a stud type cam follower is a slot, for use with a flat head screwdriver. However, hex sockets are available for higher torquing ability, which is especially useful for eccentric cam followers and those used in blind holes. Hex socket cam followers from most manufacturers eliminate the relubrication capability on that end of the cam follower. RBC Bearings' Hexlube cam followers feature a relubrication fitting at the bottom of the hex socket.\n\nEccentricity\nStud type cam followers are available with an eccentric stud. The stud has a bushing pushed onto it that has an eccentric outer diameter. This allows for adjustability during installation to eliminate any backlash. The adjustable range for an eccentric bearing is twice that of the eccentricity.\n\nYoke\nYOKE type cam followers are usually used in applications where minimal deflection is required, as they can be supported on both sides. They can support the same static load as a heavy stud follower.\n\nTrack followers\nAll cam followers can be track followers, but not all track followers are cam followers. Some track followers have specially shaped outer diameters (OD) to follow tracks. For example, track followers are available with a V-groove for following a V-track, or the OD can have a flange to follow the lip of the track.\n\nSpecialized track followers are also designed to withstand thrust loads so the anti-friction elements are usually bearing balls or of a tapered roller bearing construction.\n\nSee also \n Tappet\nReciprocating motion\n\nReferences \n\nBearings (mechanical)\nMechanical engineering"
] |
[
"Lord Voldemort",
"Character development",
"in what way was his character developed?",
"Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter",
"what was his character like?",
"he was a wizard ...",
"did he use magic?",
"I don't know.",
"did he ever cause any harm to Harry Potter?",
"Harry has to find out, before we find out. And--so--but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry.",
"how did Rowling come up with the name Lord Voldemort?",
"Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter (the protagonist of the novels), and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first.",
"did she eventually flesh out his back story?",
"she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first.",
"did he have any followers?",
"his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger."
] |
C_e1dce95f334b494096220fc2c296fae0_1
|
were they able to escape?
| 8 |
Did Harry Potter and his friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, escape from Lord Voldemort?
|
Lord Voldemort
|
In a 2001 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter (the protagonist of the novels), and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry--he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And--so--but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since." In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death." Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. Some literary analysts have considered possible meanings in the name: Philip Nel states that Voldemort is derived from the French for "flight of death", and in a 2002 paper, Nilsen and Nilsen suggest that readers get a "creepy feeling" from the name Voldemort, because of the French word "mort" ("death") within it and that word's association with cognate English words derived from the Latin mors. CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
Lord Voldemort (, in the films) is a sobriquet for Tom Marvolo Riddle, a character and the main antagonist in J. K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels. The character first appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was published in 1997, and returned either in person or in flashbacks in each book and its film adaptation in the series except the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which he is only mentioned.
Voldemort is the archenemy of Harry Potter, who according to a prophecy has "the power to vanquish the Dark Lord". He attempts to murder the boy, but instead kills his parents, Lily and James Potter, and leaves Harry with a scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. Nearly every witch or wizard dares not utter his name and refers to him instead with such monikers as "You-Know-Who", "He Who Must Not Be Named", or "the Dark Lord". Voldemort's obsession with blood purity signifies his aim to rid the wizarding world of Muggle (non-magical) heritage and to conquer both worlds, Muggle and wizarding, to achieve pure-blood dominance. Through his mother's family, he is the last descendant of the wizard Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is the leader of the Death Eaters, a group of evil wizards and witches dedicated to ridding the Wizarding World of Muggles and establishing Voldemort as its supreme ruler.
Character development
In a 1999 interview, Rowling said Voldemort was invented as a nemesis for Harry Potter, and she intentionally did not flesh out Voldemort's backstory at first. "The basic idea [was that Harry] didn't know he was a wizard ... And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. ... When he was one year old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry—he tried to curse him. ... Harry has to find out, before we find out. And—so—but for some mysterious reason the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since."
In the second book, Rowling establishes that Voldemort hates non-pure-blood wizards, despite being a half-blood himself. In a 2000 interview with the BBC, Rowling described Voldemort as a self-hating bully: "Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does." In the same year, Rowling became more precise about Voldemort. She began to link him to real-life tyrants, describing him as "a raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering". In 2004, though, Rowling said that she did not base Voldemort on any real person. In 2006, Rowling told an interviewer that Voldemort at his core has a human fear: the fear of death. She said: "Voldemort's fear is death, ignominious death. I mean, he regards death itself as ignominious. He thinks that it's a shameful human weakness, as you know. His worst fear is death."
Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a "taboo" spell is placed upon the name, such that Voldemort or his followers may trace anyone who utters it. By this means, his followers eventually find and capture Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. In the second book, Rowling reveals that I am Lord Voldemort is an anagram of the character's birth name, Tom Marvolo Riddle. According to the author, Voldemort's name is an invented word. The name Voldemort is derived from the French vol de mort which means "flight of death" or "theft of death".
Appearances
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Voldemort makes his debut in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. In this story, Rowling introduces him as the Dark Lord who tried to kill Harry Potter because the boy was prophesied to destroy him. Voldemort murdered Harry's parents, James and Lily, but as a result of his mother's love and willingness to sacrifice herself for him, baby Harry survived when Voldemort tried to murder him with a Killing Curse. Voldemort was disembodied, and Harry was left with a mysterious, lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead as a result.
In the book, Voldemort unsuccessfully tries to regain his dissolved body by stealing the titular Philosopher's Stone. To achieve his objective, Voldemort uses Professor Quirrell's aid by latching onto the back of the latter's head. However, at the climax of the book, Harry manages to prevent Voldemort from stealing the stone.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
In the second instalment, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling introduces Tom Marvolo Riddle, a manifestation of a teenage Voldemort that resides inside a magical diary found by Ginny Weasley. In this book, Ginny is written as a shy girl with a crush on Harry. Feeling anxious and lonely, she begins to write into the diary and shares her deepest fears with the sympathetic Tom. However, at the climax of the story, when Riddle rearranges the letters in his name to write "I am Lord Voldemort", Riddle is revealed as a magical manifestation of the boy who would later grow up to become the Dark Lord. Riddle states he has grown strong on Ginny's fears and eventually possesses her, using her as a pawn to unlock the Chamber of Secrets, whence a basilisk is set free and petrifies several Hogwarts students. Harry defeats the manifestation of Riddle from the diary and the basilisk. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Albus Dumbledore reveals to Harry that the diary was one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Voldemort does not appear in the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, either in person or as a magical manifestation. He is, however, heard when Harry passes out from the harsh effects of a Dementor. Towards the end of the story, Sybill Trelawney, the Divination professor, makes a rare genuine prophecy: "The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight, the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever before. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master..." Though it is initially implied that the prophecy refers to Sirius Black, the book's ostensible antagonist, the servant is eventually revealed to be Peter Pettigrew, who, for the 12 years since Voldemort's fall, has been disguised as Ron's pet rat, Scabbers.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
In the fourth instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort reappears at the start and the climax of the book. Rowling lets many seemingly unrelated plot elements fall into order. It is revealed that Voldemort's minion Barty Crouch Jr, disguised as Hogwarts professor Mad-Eye Moody, has manipulated the events of the Triwizard Tournament in Harry's favour. Voldemort's goal is to teleport Harry under Dumbledore's watch as a reluctant participant to the Little Hangleton graveyard, where the Riddle family is buried. Harry is captured and, after Pettigrew uses Harry's blood to fulfil a gruesome magical ritual, Voldemort regains his body and is restored to his full power. For the first time in the series, Rowling describes his appearance: "tall and skeletally thin", with a face "whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils". Rowling writes that his "hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat's, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness". It was revealed that, while in Albania, Pettigrew had captured the Ministry of Magic official Bertha Jorkins, who was tortured for information about the Ministry. After they learned that Barty Crouch Jr, a faithful Death Eater, had been smuggled out of Azkaban and was privately confined at his father's house, they killed her. With Pettigrew's help, Voldemort creates a small, rudimentary body, corporeal enough to travel and perform magic, and formulated a plan to restore his own body by capturing Harry. A portion of the plan had been overheard by Frank Bryce, a gardener, whom Voldemort then killed. Voldemort then completes his plan and returns to life in his full body as a result of the ritual with Harry's blood. He then summons his Death Eaters to the graveyard to witness the death of Harry as he challenges Harry to a duel. However, when Voldemort duels Harry, their wands become magically locked together due to the twin Phoenix feather cores of the wands. Because of a phenomenon later revealed as Priori Incantatem, ghost-like manifestations of Voldemort's most recent victims (including Harry's parents) then appear and distract Voldemort, allowing Harry just enough time to escape via Portkey with the body of fellow-student, Cedric Diggory, who was murdered by Pettigrew on Voldemort's orders.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Voldemort appears at the climax of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, having again plotted against Harry. In this book, Harry goes through extreme emotional stress, and according to Rowling, it was necessary to prove that Harry is emotionally vulnerable and thus human, in contrast to his nemesis Voldemort, who is emotionally invulnerable and thus inhuman: "[Harry is] a very human hero, and this is, obviously, there's a contrast, between him, as a very human hero, and Voldemort, who has deliberately dehumanised himself. […] and Harry, therefore, did have to reach a point where he did almost break down." In this book, Voldemort makes liberal use of the Ministry of Magic's refusal to believe that he has returned. Voldemort engineers a plot to free Bellatrix Lestrange and other Death Eaters from Azkaban and then embarks on a scheme to retrieve the full record of a prophecy stored in the Department of Mysteries regarding Harry and himself. He sends a group of Death Eaters to retrieve the prophecy, where the Order of the Phoenix meets them. All but Bellatrix are captured, and Voldemort engages in a ferocious duel with Dumbledore. When Dumbledore gets the upper hand, Voldemort attempts to possess Harry but finds that he cannot; Harry is too full of that which Voldemort finds incomprehensible, and which he detests as weakness: love. Sensing that Dumbledore could win, Voldemort disapparates, but not before the Minister for Magic sees him in person, making his return to life public knowledge in the next book.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Voldemort does not appear in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, although his presence and actions are felt: he once again declares war, and begins to rise to power once more. He murders Amelia Bones of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and begins to target members of the Order of the Phoenix, including Emmeline Vance.
Rowling uses several chapters as exposition to establish Voldemort's backstory. In a series of flashbacks, using the pensieve as a plot device, she reveals that Voldemort was the son of the witch Merope Gaunt and a Muggle called Tom Riddle. Riddle abandoned Merope before their child's birth, soon after which Merope died. After living in an orphanage, young Riddle met Dumbledore, who told him he was a wizard and arranged for him to attend Hogwarts. Riddle was outwardly a model student, but was in reality a psychopath who took sadistic pleasure in using his powers to harm and control people. He eventually murdered his father and grandparents as revenge for abandoning him. The book also discusses Riddle's hatred of Muggles, his obsession with Horcruxes, and his desire to split his soul to achieve immortality. Rowling stated Voldemort's conception under the influence of a love potion symbolises the coercive circumstances under which he was brought into the world.
In the main plot of the book, Voldemort's next step is to engineer an assault on Hogwarts, and to kill Dumbledore. This is accomplished by Draco Malfoy, who arranges transportation of Death Eaters into Hogwarts by a pair of Vanishing Cabinets, which bypass the extensive protective enchantments placed around the school. The cabinets allow Voldemort's Death Eaters to enter Hogwarts, where battle commences and Dumbledore is cornered. Hogwarts professor (and re-doubled agent) Severus Snape uses the Killing Curse against Dumbledore when Draco could not force himself to do so.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort furthers his quest for ultimate power. He disposes of the Minister for Magic and replaces him with Pius Thicknesse, who is under the Imperius Curse. Establishing a totalitarian police state, he has Muggle-borns persecuted and arrested for "stealing magic" from the "pure blood" wizards. After failing to kill Harry with Draco's father Lucius Malfoy's borrowed wand (to avoid the effect of Priori Incantatem), he goes on a murderous search for the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand ever created, seeing it as the weapon he needs to overcome Harry's wand and make him truly invincible. He goes on a quest that takes him out of the country to Gregorovitch's wand shop, where he kills the old wandmaker. His journey also takes him to Nurmengard, the prison where Gellert Grindelwald is kept, and he kills Grindelwald as well. He finally locates the Elder Wand and steals it from Dumbledore's tomb.
Later, Voldemort finds out that Harry and his friends are hunting and destroying his Horcruxes when informed of their heist on the Lestranges' vault at Gringotts in search for Hufflepuff's Cup. After offering the occupants of Hogwarts mercy if they give up Harry, he assembles a large army and launches an invasion of the castle, where Harry is searching for Ravenclaw's Diadem. Voldemort orders his pet snake Nagini to execute Snape, believing it would make him the true master of the Elder Wand, since Snape killed Dumbledore. He then calls an hour's armistice, in exchange for Harry. When Harry willingly walks into Voldemort's camp in the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort strikes him down with the Elder Wand. However, the use of Harry's blood to resurrect Voldemort's body proves to be a major setback: while Harry's blood runs in Voldemort's veins, Harry cannot be killed as his mother's protection lives on now in Voldemort too. Instead, Voldemort destroys the part of his own soul that resides in Harry's body. Voldemort forces Rubeus Hagrid to carry Harry's apparently lifeless body back to the castle as a trophy, sparking another battle during which Nagini, his last Horcrux, is destroyed by Neville Longbottom. The battle then moves into the Great Hall, where Voldemort fights Minerva McGonagall, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Horace Slughorn simultaneously. Harry then reveals himself and explains to Voldemort that Draco became the true master of the Elder Wand when he disarmed Dumbledore; Harry, in turn, won the wand's allegiance when he took Draco's wand. Refusing to believe this, Voldemort casts the Killing Curse with the Elder Wand while Harry uses a Disarming Charm with Draco's, but the Elder Wand refuses to kill its master and the spell rebounds on Voldemort who, with all of his Horcruxes destroyed, finally dies. His body is laid in a different chamber from all the others who died battling him.
Rowling stated that after his death, Voldemort is forced to exist in the stunted infant-like form that Harry sees in the King's Cross-like Limbo after his confrontation with Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest. Rowling also mentioned that, despite his extreme fear of death, he cannot become a ghost.
Appearances in other material
In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, it is revealed that Bellatrix gave birth to Voldemort's daughter Delphi in Malfoy Manor before the Battle of Hogwarts. Twenty-two years later, Delphi poses as Cedric's cousin and manipulates Harry and Ginny's second son Albus Severus Potter and his friend, Draco and Astoria Greengrass's son Scorpius Malfoy, into stealing a prototype Time Turner with which she hopes to resurrect her father. Using the Time Turner, Scorpius accidentally creates an alternative timeline where Voldemort killed Harry at the battle and now rules the wizarding world. In an attempt to achieve this future, Delphi travels to Godric's Hollow on the night Voldemort killed Harry's parents, hoping to avert the prophecy that led to her father's downfall. After receiving a message from his son, Harry, together with Ron, Hermione and Draco (who by now has become friends with Harry after they join forces to save their respective sons) transfigures himself into Voldemort so that he can distract Delphi, allowing them to overpower her. The real Voldemort kills Harry's parents as prophesied, and Delphi is sent to Azkaban.
Portrayals within films
Voldemort appears in every Harry Potter film, with the exception of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Several actors have portrayed him in his varying incarnations and ages.
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Voldemort's manifestation is as a face on the back of Quirrell's head, an effect achieved by computer generated imagery. Ian Hart, the actor who played Quirrell in the same film, provided the voice and the facial source for this character. Voldemort also appears in a scene in the Forbidden Forest where he is seen drinking the blood of a unicorn. As Voldemort's face was altered enough by CG work, and Hart's voice was affected enough, there was no confusion by Hart's playing of the two roles. In that film, he was also shown in a flashback sequence when he arrived at the home of James and Lily Potter to kill them. In this scene Voldemort is played by Richard Bremmer, though his face is never seen. His next appearance would be in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as the 16-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle (portrayed by Christian Coulson).
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort is initially only heard, possessing the scratchy, weak voice heard in the first film. By the film's climax, however, he appears in his physical form for the first time, played by Ralph Fiennes. As in the book, Voldemort is shown clad in dark black robes, being tall and emaciated, with no hair and yellowish teeth; his wand has a white tone and the handle appears to be made of bone; his finger nails are long and pale blue while his toe nails appear to be infected. Unlike in the book, his pupils are not cat-like and his eyes are blue, because producer David Heyman felt that his evil would not be able to be seen and would not fill the audience with fear (his eyes do briefly take on a snake-like appearance when he opens them after turning human, but quickly turn normal). As in the book, the film version of Voldemort has snake-like slit nostrils with the flesh of his nose significantly pressed back. Ralph Fiennes' nose was not covered in makeup on the set, but was digitally removed in post-production. In this first appearance, Voldemort also has a forked tongue, but this element was removed for the subsequent films.
Fiennes stated that he had two weeks to shoot the climactic showdown scene where he is gloating over a terrified Harry, played by Daniel Radcliffe. Fiennes said with a chuckle: "I have no doubt children will be afraid of me now if they weren't before." In preparation, he read the novel Goblet of Fire, but jokingly conceded: "I was only interested in my scene, and I had to go through thousands and thousands of other scenes which I did, dutifully, until I got to my scene and I read it many, many, many, many, many times and that was my research." Fiennes reprised his role as Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2.
Fiennes's nephew, Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, portrayed Tom Riddle as a child in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. By the time filming arrived Christian Coulson was 29, and not considered suitable to return as the adolescent Riddle. Thomas James Longley was originally scheduled to take over the role, but last minute renegotiations saw Frank Dillane cast instead.
Characterisation
Outward appearance
After he regains his body in the fourth book, Rowling describes Voldemort as having pale skin, a chalk-white, skull-like face, snake-like slits for nostrils, red eyes and cat-like slits for pupils, a skeletally thin body and long, thin hands with unnaturally long fingers. As mentioned in the first chapter of the seventh book, he also has no hair or lips. Earlier in life, as seen through flashbacks contained in the second and sixth books, Tom Marvolo Riddle was handsome and tall with pale skin, jet black hair, and dark brown eyes. He could charm many people with his looks. The transformation into his monstrous state is believed to have been the result of creating his Horcruxes and becoming less human as he continued to divide his soul. In the films, Voldemort's eyes are blue with round pupils.
Personality
Rowling described Voldemort as "the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years". She elaborated that he is a "raging psychopath, devoid of the normal human responses to other people's suffering", and whose only ambition in life is to become all-powerful and immortal. He is also a sadist who hurts and murders people—especially Muggles—for his own amusement. He has no conscience, feels no remorse or empathy, and does not recognise the worth and humanity of anybody except himself.
He feels no need for human companionship or friendship, and cannot comprehend love or affection for another. He believes he is superior to everyone around him, to the point that he frequently refers to himself in the third person as "Lord Voldemort". Rowling also stated that Voldemort is "incredibly power hungry. Racist, really", and that if Voldemort were to look into the Mirror of Erised, in which one sees one's greatest desire, he would see "Himself, all-powerful and eternal. That's what he wants."
Rowling also stated that Voldemort's conception by influence of Amortentia—a love potion administered by his mother, a witch named Merope Gaunt, to the Muggle Tom Riddle—is related to his inability to understand love; it is "a symbolic way of showing that he came from a loveless union—but of course, everything would have changed if Merope had survived and raised him herself and loved him. The enchantment under which Tom Riddle fathered Voldemort is important because it shows coercion, and there can't be many more prejudicial ways to enter the world than as the result of such a union".
Like most archetypical villains, Voldemort's arrogance leads to his downfall. He also suffers from a pathological fear of death, which he regards as a shameful and ignominious human weakness. According to Rowling, his Boggart would be his own corpse. Rowling also said that the difference between Harry and Voldemort is that Harry accepts mortality, and thus Harry is, in the end, stronger than his nemesis.
Magical abilities and skills
Rowling establishes Voldemort throughout the series as an extremely powerful, intelligent, and ruthless dark wizard, described as the greatest and most powerful Dark Wizard of all time. He is known as one of the greatest Legilimens in the world and a highly accomplished Occlumens; he can read minds and shield his own from penetration. Besides Dumbledore, he is also the only wizard ever known to be able to apparate silently. Voldemort was also said to fear one wizard alone, Dumbledore.
In the final book, Voldemort flies unsupported, something that amazes those who see it. Voldemort, like his ancestral family, the Gaunts, is a Parselmouth, meaning he can converse with serpents. This skill was inherited from his ancestor, Salazar Slytherin. The Gaunt family speak Parseltongue among themselves. This highly unusual trait may be preserved through inbreeding, a practice employed by the Gaunt Family to maintain their blood's purity. When Voldemort attempts to kill Harry his ability to speak Parseltongue is passed to Harry through the small bit of the former's soul. After that bit of soul is destroyed, Harry loses this ability. In a flashback in the sixth novel, Voldemort boasts to Dumbledore during a job interview that he has "pushed the boundaries of magic farther than they had ever before". Dumbledore states that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is more extensive than any wizard alive and that even Dumbledore's most powerful protective spells and charms would likely be insufficient if Voldemort returned to full power. Dumbledore also said that Voldemort was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen. Although Voldemort remains highly accomplished and prodigious in skill, he is enormously lacking and highly inept in the most powerful magic, love. This inability to love and trust others proves to be Voldemort's greatest weakness in the series. Voldemort initially voices scepticism that his own magic might not be the most powerful, but upon returning to power, he admits to his Death Eaters that he had overlooked the ancient and powerful magic which Lily Potter invoked and that would protect Harry from harm.
On her website, Rowling wrote that Voldemort's wand is made of yew, whose sap is poisonous and which symbolises death. It forms a deliberate contrast to Harry's wand, which is made of holly, which she chose because holly is alleged to repel evil.
Rowling establishes in the books that Voldemort is magically connected to Harry via Harry's forehead scar. He disembodies himself when his Killing Curse targeting Harry rebounds on him, leaving the scar on Harry's forehead. In the books, and to a lesser extent in the films, Harry's scar serves as an indicator of Voldemort's presence: it burns when the Dark Lord is near or when Voldemort is feeling murderous or exultant. According to Rowling, by attacking Harry when he was a baby Voldemort gave him "tools [that] no other wizard possessed—the scar and the ability it conferred, a magical window into Voldemort's mind".
Family
Notes: The names 'Thomas' and 'Mary' Riddle are taken from the films. The Potter Family is not shown.
Riddle family
The Riddle family, an old gentry family, consisted of Thomas and Mary Riddle and their son, Tom Riddle, Esq. They owned over half of the valley that the town of Little Hangleton lay in, and Thomas was the most prominent inhabitant of that town. They lived in a large house with fine gardens, but were unpopular amongst the local residents due to their snobbish attitudes. Tom, the only child of Thomas and Mary, was known as a playboy, his main interests being womanizing and horse-riding.
Rowling revealed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that young Merope Gaunt fell in love with Riddle, peering at him through the windows and bushes at every opportunity. Merope's brother Morfin disapproved of his sister's affection for Tom and hexed him as he rode by, covering him in hives. This breach of wizarding law, and the ensuing violent struggle with Ministry of Magic officials, led to Marvolo and Morfin being imprisoned in Azkaban. As surmised by Dumbledore, once Merope was alone and no longer dominated by her father, she could make her move for Tom. She offered him a drink laced with a love potion, and he became infatuated with her; they soon eloped and, within three months of the marriage, Merope became pregnant. Merope decided to stop giving Tom the love potion, having come to the belief such enchantment of a man was tantamount to slavery. She also revealed her witch status to Tom, believing either that he had fallen in love with her on his own or he would at least stay for their unborn child. She was wrong, and Tom quickly left his pregnant wife and went home to his parents, claiming to have been "hoodwinked" and tricked into marrying Merope. Tom Marvolo Riddle, their son, was born on 31 December 1926 Merope died in childbirth, leaving the baby to grow up alone in an orphanage.
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it is revealed that Voldemort murdered his father and grandparents, leaving himself the only surviving member of the Riddle family.
House of Gaunt
Most of the exposition of the House of Gaunts background occurs in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, through the medium of Dumbledore's Pensieve. The Gaunts were once a powerful and influential family, and are the last known descendants of Salazar Slytherin. However, a vein of mental instability and violence within the family, reinforced through cousin marriages intended to preserve the pureblood line, had reduced them to poverty and squalor, as shown in the Pensieve's "memory" that Harry and Dumbledore witnessed. Like Salazar Slytherin, the Gaunts spoke Parseltongue. At the time of the story, the Gaunts' only material asset is a ramshackle shanty in Little Hangleton, that stood in a thicket in a valley opposite the Riddle House. Like the Riddles, the Gaunts were also unpopular with the local residents, with a reputation for being vulgar and intimidating.
Marvolo Gaunt was the last family patriarch. He was sentenced to a short term in Azkaban for his and his son's assault upon a Ministry of Magic official; this affected his health and he died soon after returning home. His signet ring passed to his son, Morfin Gaunt, who was convicted of assaulting a Muggle, and later died in Azkaban, convicted this time as a party to the murder of Tom Riddle Jr. and Riddle's parents.
Dumbledore discovers the real culprit while visiting Morfin in Azkaban to gather information about Voldemort. After Dumbledore successfully extracts Morfin's memory of his encounter with his nephew, he tries to use the evidence to have Morfin released, but Morfin dies before the decision can be made. The House of Gaunt ended with Morfin's death.
Merope Gaunt () was the daughter of Marvolo, and sister of Morfin. Harry's first impression of her was that she looked "like the most defeated person he had ever seen". She married Tom Riddle Jr and became pregnant within three months of the wedding. It is suggested that she tricked her husband into loving her by using a love potion, but when she became pregnant, she chose to stop administering the potion. It is implied that Merope had grown tired of living the lie and thought that her husband might have grown to love her, or that he might have stayed for the sake of their unborn child; however, he left her. Desperate, Merope wandered through the streets of London. The only thing she had left was the heavy gold locket that had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin, one of her family's most treasured items, which she sold for a small amount. When she was due to give birth, she stumbled into a Muggle orphanage, where she gave birth to her only son. She died within the next hour.
Gormlaith Gaunt was a 17th-century descendant of Salazar Slytherin, and like Salazar, a Parselmouth. Her wand was that which once belonged to Salazar himself. Educated at Hogwarts, Gormlaith lived in Ireland in the early 1600s. In about 1608, Gormlaith killed her estranged unnamed sister, and her sister's husband, William Sayre (a descendant of the Irish witch Morrigan), and kidnapped their five-year-old daughter, Isolt Sayre, raising her in the neighbouring valley of Coomcallee, or "Hag's Glen", because she felt that her parents' association with Muggles would badly influence Isolt. Fanatical and cruel, Gormlaith used Dark magic to isolate Isolt from others, forbade her a wand, and did not allow her to attend Hogwarts as she herself had, disgusted that it was now filled with Muggle-borns. After twelve years with Gormlaith, Isolt stole Gormlaith's wand and fled to the Colonies and settled in Massachusetts, where she founded the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When Gormlaith learned of the school, she pursued her niece in Massachusetts, where she was killed by Isolt's friend, William the Pukwudgie, with a venom-tipped arrow.
The Gaunts, including Voldemort, are distantly related to Harry because they are descendants of the Peverell brothers.
Reception
Several people have drawn a parallel between Voldemort and some politicians. Rowling has said that Voldemort was "a sort of" Adolf Hitler, and that there is some parallel with Nazism in her books. Rowling also compared Voldemort to Joseph Stalin. Alfonso Cuarón, director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban compared Voldemort to George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein, who he said "...have selfish interests and are very much in love with power. Also, a disregard for the environment. A love for manipulating people." Andrew Slack and the Harry Potter Alliance compare media consolidation in the US to Voldemort's regime in Deathly Hallows and its control over the Daily Prophet and other media saying that "Once Voldemort took over every form of media in the wizarding world, Dumbledore's Army and the Order of the Phoenix formed an independent media movement called 'Potterwatch'. Now the HP Alliance and Wizard Rock have come together to fight for a Potterwatch movement in the real world to fight back against Big VoldeMedia from further pushing out local and foreign news, minority representation, and the right to a Free Press." Julia Turner of Slate Magazine also noted similarities between the events of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and the War on Terror. She said that Voldemort commits acts of terrorism such as destroying bridges, murdering innocents, and forcing children to kill their elders.
Voldemort has also been compared with other characters within fiction, for example Sauron from The Lord of the Rings; they are, during the time when the main plot takes place, seeking to recover their lost power after having been considered dead or at least no longer a threat, and are also so feared that they are sometimes unnamed.
IGN listed Voldemort as their seventh favourite Harry Potter character, calling him "truly frightening".
In popular culture
Several campaigns have used Voldemort to compare his evil to the influence of politicians, large media and corporations. "Lord Voldemort" is a nickname sometimes used for Peter Mandelson. Voldemort is also a recurring theme among wizard rock bands. Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock! is the second album from Harry and the Potters, and the character is mentioned in songs such as "The Dark Lord Lament" and "Flesh, Blood, and Bone".
Voldemort has been parodied in various venues. In The Simpsons 13th season's premiere, "Treehouse of Horror XII", Montgomery Burns appears as "Lord Montymort". A parody of Voldemort appears in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy as "Lord Moldybutt", an enemy of Nigel Planter (a parody of Harry). Voldemort also appears in the Potter Puppet Pals sketches by Neil Cicierega. One of the episodes including him was the seventeenth most viewed video of all time as of 2008 and the winner for "Best Comedy" of the year 2007 at YouTube.
"Continuing the Magic", an article in the 21 May 2007 issue of Time, includes mock book covers designed by author Lon Tweeten, laced with pop culture references. One of them, the "Dark Lord of the Dance", shows Voldemort teaming up with Harry on Broadway. In the MAD Magazine parodies of the films, the character is called Lord Druckermort, a backwards reference to the magazine's longtime caricaturist Mort Drucker. In Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1969, a young Tom Marvolo Riddle (introduced as "Tom", whose middle name is a "marvel" and last name is a "conundrum") appears, and becomes the new avatar of Oliver Haddo at the story's conclusion. In A Very Potter Musical, Voldemort is played by actor Joe Walker.
In a segment celebrating British children's literature at the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London, an inflatable Voldemort appeared alongside other villains, The Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Cruella de Vil, to haunt children's dreams, before the arrival of a group of over thirty Mary Poppins who descended with their umbrellas to defeat them.
During the 2016 United States elections, Daniel Radcliffe was asked by Sky News journalist Craig Dillon if he would compare Donald Trump to Lord Voldemort; Radcliffe responded, "Trump is worse".
Voldemort appears in The Lego Batman Movie as one of the prisoners in the Phantom Zone that Joker recruits to take over Gotham City. Though Ralph Fiennes is featured in this movie as the voice of the British butler Alfred Pennyworth, he does not reprise his role as Voldemort. Instead, Voldemort is voiced by Eddie Izzard.
Outside of the Harry Potter video games, Voldemort is also a playable character in Lego Dimensions, with archive audio of Fiennes' portrayal in the films used for his voiceovers.
A 2018 Italian fan film titled Voldemort: Origins of the Heir depicts the story of Tom Riddle's rise to power.
Voldemort appears in Space Jam: A New Legacy, in the crowd for the game between the Tune Squad and the Goon Squad.
An upcoming French fan-made short-film titled The House of Gaunt - Lord Voldemort Origins explores the origin story of Voldemort and The Gaunt family.
Notes
References
External links
Lord Voldemort at Harry Potter Lexicon
Fictional characters with disfigurements
Fictional characters with immortality
Fictional characters with spirit possession or body swapping abilities
Fictional dictators
Fictional English people
Fictional hypnotists and indoctrinators
Fictional illeists
Fictional mass murderers
Fictional necromancers
Fictional offspring of rape
Fictional patricides
Fictional terrorists
Fictional torturers
Harry Potter characters
Literary characters introduced in 1997
Male film villains
Male literary villains
Orphan characters in film
Orphan characters in literature
Psychopathy in fiction
Film supervillains
| false |
[
"Antigenic escape, immune escape, immune evasion or escape mutation occurs when the immune system of a host, especially of a human being, is unable to respond to an infectious agent: the host's immune system is no longer able to recognize and eliminate a pathogen, such as a virus. This process can occur in a number of different ways of both a genetic and an environmental nature. Such mechanisms include homologous recombination, and manipulation and resistance of the host's immune responses.\n\nDifferent antigens are able to escape through a variety of mechanisms. For example, the African trypanosome parasites are able to clear the host's antibodies, as well as resist lysis and inhibit parts of the innate immune response. Another bacteria, Bordetella pertussis, is able to escape the immune response by inhibiting neutrophils and macrophages from invading the infection site early on. One cause of antigenic escape is that a pathogen's epitopes (the binding sites for immune cells) become too similar to a person's naturally occurring MHC-1 epitopes, resulting in the immune system becoming unable to distinguish the infection from self-cells.\n\nAntigenic escape is not only crucial for the host's natural immune response, but also for the resistance against vaccinations. The problem of antigenic escape has greatly deterred the process of creating new vaccines. Because vaccines generally cover a small ratio of strains of one virus, the recombination of antigenic DNA that lead to diverse pathogens allows these invaders to resist even newly developed vaccinations. Some antigens may even target pathways different from those the vaccine had originally intended to target. Recent research on many vaccines, including the malaria vaccine, has focused on how to anticipate this diversity and create vaccinations that can cover a broader spectrum of antigenic variation. On 12 May 2021, scientists reported to The United States Congress of the continuing threat of COVID-19 variants and COVID-19 escape mutations, such as the E484K virus mutation.\n\nMechanisms of evasion\n\nHelicobacter pylori and homologous recombination \nThe most common of antigenic escape mechanisms, homologous recombination, can be seen in a wide variety of bacterial pathogens, including Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that infects the human stomach. While a host's homologous recombination can act as a defense mechanisms for fixing DNA double stranded breaks (DSBs), it can also create changes in antigenic DNA that can create new, unrecognizable proteins that allow the antigen to escape recognition by the host's immune response. Through the recombination of H. pylori's outer membrane proteins, immunoglobulins can no longer recognize these new structures and, therefore, cannot attack the antigen as part of the normal immune response.\n\nAfrican trypanosomes \nAfrican trypanosomes are parasites that are able to escape the immune responses of its host animal through a range of mechanisms. Its most prevalent mechanism is its ability to evade recognition by antibodies through antigenic variation. This is achieved through the switching of its variant surface glycoprotein or VSG, a substance that coats the entire antigen. When this coat is recognized by an antibody, the parasite can be eliminated. However, variation of this coat can lead to antibodies being unable to recognize and eliminate the antigen. In addition to this, the VSG coat is able to clear the antibodies themselves to escape their clearing function.\n\nTrypanosomes are also able to achieve evasion through the mediation of the host's immune response. Through the conversion of ATP to cAMP by the enzyme adenylate cyclase, the production of TNF-α, a signaling cytokine important for inducing inflammation, is inhibited in liver myeloid cells. In addition, trypanosomes are able to weaken the immune system by inducing B cell apoptosis (cell death) and the degradation of B cell lymphopoiesis. They are also able to induce suppressor molecules that can inhibit T cell reproduction.\n\nPlant RNA viruses \nLafforgue et al 2011 found escape mutants in plant RNA viruses to be encouraged by coexistence of transgenic crops with artificial microRNA (amiR)-based resistance with fully susceptible individuals of the same crop, and even more so by coexistence with weakly amiR-producing transgenics.\n\nTumor escape \nMany head and neck cancers are able to escape immune responses in a variety of ways. One such example is through the production of pro-inflammatory and immunosuppressive cytokines. This can be achieved when the tumor recruits immunosuppressive cell subsets into the tumor's environment. Such cells include pro-tumor M2 macrophages, myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), Th-2 polarized CD4 T-lymphocytes, and regulatory T-lymphocytes. These cells can then limit the responses of T cells through the production of cytokines and by releasing immune-modulating enzymes. Additionally tumors can escape antigen-directed therapies by loss or down-regulation of the associated antigens, as well demonstrated after checkpoint blockade immunotherapy and CAR-T cell therapy though more recent data indicate that this may be prevented by localized bystander killing mediated by fasL/fas. Alternatively therapies can be developed to encompass multiple antigens in parallel.\n\nEscape from vaccination\n\nConsequences of recent vaccines \nWhile vaccines are created to strengthen the immune response to pathogens, in many cases these vaccines are not able to cover the wide variety of strains a pathogen may have. Instead they may only protect against one or two strains, leading to the escape of strains not covered by the vaccine. This results in the pathogens being able to attack targets of the immune system different than those intended to be targeted by the vaccination. This parasitic antigen diversity is particularly troublesome for the development of the malaria vaccines.\n\nSolutions to escape of vaccination \nIn order to fix this problem, vaccines must be able to cover the wide variety of strains within a bacterial population. In recent research of Neisseria meningitidis, the possibility of such broad coverage may be achieved through the combination of multi-component polysaccharide conjugate vaccines. However, in order to further improve upon broadening the scope of vaccinations, epidemiological surveillance must be conducted to better detect the variation of escape mutants and their spread.\n\nSee also\n Viral strategies for immune response evasion\n\nReferences\n\nCell biology\n \nVaccination\n \n \n \nPhagocytes\nImmune system\nHuman cells",
"The Airstan incident was an international incident involving Russia and the Taliban of Afghanistan in 1995 and 1996.\n\nOn 3 August 1995, Taliban-controlled fighter aircraft intercepted an Airstan Ilyushin Il-76TD transport aircraft, with seven Russian nationals on board, forcing it to land at Taliban-occupied Kandahar International Airport. The men were held prisoner for over a year before making their escape; after overpowering their captors they re-possessed their aircraft, flying it to freedom.\n\nBackground\n\nIn 1995, Afghanistan was in a state of civil war. In late 1994 the Taliban movement sprang out of Kandahar and by early 1995 had taken control of most of the country south of Kabul, forcing other Afghan groups to abandon territory. In August 1995 the Russian crew of the Ilyushin Il-76 was working for Tatarstan-based Airstan, which was in turn leasing their plane to Rus Trans Avia Export, a Russian company that was based in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. On board the plane were Russian nationals: Vladimir Sharpatov (commander), Gazinur Khairullin (second pilot), Alexander Zdor (navigator), Askhad Abbyazov, Yuri Vshivtsev, Sergei Butuzov and Viktor Ryazanov. They were transporting 30 tons of weapons from Albania to the besieged Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.\n\nCapture and captivity\nOn 3 August 1995 a Taliban Air Force MiG-21 aircraft forced the Russian aircraft to land at Kandahar. Negotiations between the Russian government and the Taliban to free the men stalled for over a year and efforts by American senator Hank Brown to mediate between the two parties broke down over a prisoner exchange. The Taliban stated that they would free the airmen if the Russians released Afghans held by the Russian government. However the Russians denied holding any Afghan citizens. Brown was able to get the Taliban to agree that the Russian crew should be allowed to maintain their aircraft. This request paved the way for their escape.\n\nEscape\n\nThe Russians had been planning their escape for over a year. After Hank Brown secured visits to their aircraft for the whole crew they secretly not only did routine maintenance but prepared it for flight. On each trip the crew would be guarded by six Taliban guards but on 16 August 1996, half of the guards left the crew for afternoon prayers. Seizing the opportunity, the Russians overpowered the remaining guards and the pilot was able to start one engine from the auxiliary power unit (itself started with a battery). With one engine running, the remaining three could easily be started. The aircraft, with all seven of the crew aboard, quickly taxied down the runway. The Taliban tried to block the runway with a fire truck but the aircraft was able to take to the air thus avoiding the obstacle. The escapees were able to quickly exit Taliban controlled airspace and charted a course to the United Arab Emirates. The crew's escape was greeted with excitement and relief by the Russians and Russian President Boris Yeltsin telephoned the crewmen to congratulate them as they flew to Russia on a Russian government aircraft.\n\nIn popular media\nIn 2001 the men released a book about their ordeal called, Escape from Kandahar.\nKandahar (2010) – A Russian movie, by director Andrei Kavun, about the Russians and their escape.\nThe story of this is included in Operation Man Hunt () by Damien Lewis\n\nCurrent plane status \n\nAs of November 2019, the Ilyushin Il-76TD involved in the escape, RA-76842, is still in service, but is now operated by Aviacon Zitotrans.\n\nBibliography\nNotes\n\nReferences\n\n - Total pages: 308\n\nExternal links\nPictures of the crew's captivity\nwww.airliners.net – pictures of RA-76842\n\nAircraft hijackings\nAviation accidents and incidents in Afghanistan\nTaliban attacks\nTerrorist incidents in Afghanistan in 1995\n1996 in Afghanistan\nAirstan accidents and incidents\nAccidents and incidents involving the Ilyushin Il-76\nAviation accidents and incidents in 1995\nAviation accidents and incidents in 1996\nHostage taking in Afghanistan\nHistory of Tatarstan\n1996 in the United Arab Emirates\nAfghan Civil War (1992–1996)\nAugust 1995 events in Asia\nAfghanistan–Russia relations"
] |
[
"Me and Orson Welles",
"Release"
] |
C_6b221c9714634babbef87322a8377048_0
|
What month was this film released in theaters?
| 1 |
What month was Me and Orson Welles released in theaters?
|
Me and Orson Welles
|
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's resume and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal. Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost. It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009. The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future." CANNOTANSWER
|
The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009,
|
Me and Orson Welles is a 2008 period drama film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the story, set in 1937 New York, tells of a teenager hired to perform in Orson Welles's groundbreaking stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar who becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.
The film was shot in London and New York and on the Isle of Man in February, March and April 2008, and was released in the United States on November 25, 2009, and the United Kingdom on December 4, 2009.
McKay's portrayal of Welles was recognized with a multitude of accolades, and Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of the year by the National Board of Review.
Plot
In New York City in the fall of 1937, 17-year-old high-school student Richard Samuels meets Orson Welles, who unexpectedly offers him the role of Lucius in Caesar, the first production of his new Mercury Theatre repertory company. The company is immersed in rehearsals at its Broadway theater. Charmed by Welles, Richard learns that he is having an affair with the leading actress while his wife is pregnant. Richard finds ambitious production assistant Sonja Jones is attracted to him.
Welles tells Richard a few days before the premiere that he is worried, because he has recently had nothing but good luck; he fears that he will finally have bad luck with the premiere, and that the play will be a flop. During rehearsals Richard accidentally sets off the sprinkler system, soaking the entire theatre. When accused by Welles he denies having anything to do with the deluge, and suggests that the catastrophe was the bad luck that Welles needed to get out of the way.
Welles decides the entire production crew would benefit from a coupling game, and Richard cheats to ensure he is paired with Sonja. Richard spends the night with Sonja, but becomes jealous when she spends the next night with Welles. He confronts Welles, mentions his pregnant wife, and is fired. An apparent reconciliation follows, and Richard performs on the first night. The anti-fascist adaptation of Caesar is a huge success, but after the premiere, Richard is told that Welles only needed him in order to secure a successful first-night production and, that done, he has again been fired.
The broken-hearted but wiser Richard spontaneously recites lines from Julius Caesar in his high school English class, to his classmates' applause. He later meets up with a likely new girlfriend, Gretta Adler, a young aspiring playwright whom he met in a music store at the film's beginning. With Richard's and Sonja's assistance, Adler manages to get a story published in The New Yorker, and she invites Richard out, to help her celebrate.
Cast
Zac Efron as Richard Samuels
Christian McKay as Orson Welles
Claire Danes as Sonja Jones
Ben Chaplin as George Coulouris
James Tupper as Joseph Cotten
Eddie Marsan as John Houseman
Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd
Kelly Reilly as Muriel Brassler
Patrick Kennedy as Grover Burgess
Travis Oliver as John Hoyt
Zoe Kazan as Gretta Adler
Al Weaver as Sam Leve
Saskia Reeves as Barbara Luddy
Imogen Poots as Lorelei Lathrop
Rhodri Orders as Stefan Schnabel
Michael Brandon as Les Tremayne
Janie Dee as Mrs Samuels
Production
Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr. adapted the film's screenplay from Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name about a teenager (in reality, the 15-year-old Arthur Anderson, who played Lucius in Welles' production) involved in the founding of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. After receiving funding from CinemaNX, a production company backed by the Isle of Man film fund, and an offer from Framestore Features to co-finance the film, Richard Linklater came on board to direct Me and Orson Welles. Zac Efron signed on as the lead in early January 2008, claiming he decided to take the role of Richard Samuels because "It's a completely different project than I've ever done before," while Claire Danes joined the cast as the protagonist's love interest Sonja Jones in late January.
In the theatre, Christian McKay had portrayed Orson Welles in the one-man play Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles at a number of venues, including the Edinburgh Festival and King's Head (London). He reprised the role in the U.S. at the 2007 "Brits Off Broadway" festival, where Linklater saw his performance and then cast McKay as Welles, retaining him over the subsequent objections of the project's producer.
Me and Orson Welles underwent filming in the Isle of Man, Pinewood Studios, London and New York from February to April 2008. Filming in London commenced first in mid-February, before scenes in the Isle of Man were shot February 24–March 14, 2008, where filming locations included Gaiety Theatre and various other parts of Douglas. During filming in Douglas, Efron and Danes believe they sighted a ghost, or "supernatural" being, outside a window on set at Gaiety Theatre.
Filming in Britain resumed in late March for six weeks at Pinewood Studios. Other locations included Crystal Palace Park, where a façade of New York's Mercury Theatre was set up for a scene. Actor James Tupper claimed that the best replica of an old New York theater was in England, while many of the actors who filled the company were from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The production crew only briefly visited New York; photographs were taken and footage shot to be added into the film as digital effects. Every exterior shot was filmed on a single street built at Pinewood Studios with a green screen at one end; different angles and slightly altered set designs were used between shots to make the street appear different each time.
Release
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's résumé and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4–13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal.
Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost.
It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009.
The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one of the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future."
Reception
Box office
During its theatrical release (November 25, 2009 – February 25, 2010), Me and Orson Welles grossed a total of $1,190,003 in the United States and $2,336,172 worldwide.
Critical response
The film has received positive reviews from critics. It currently holds an 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 156 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Me and Orson Welles boasts a breakout performance by Christian McKay and an infectious love of the backstage drama that overcomes its sometimes fluffy tone." It holds a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic from 30 critics.
Film critic Roger Ebert called Me and Orson Welles "one of the best movies about the theater I've ever seen ... not only entertaining but an invaluable companion to the life and career of the Great Man". Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film for its "terrific acting" and called it "a must for lovers and students of the theater". Variety magazine's Todd McCarthy labelled McKay's performance "an extraordinary impersonation" of Welles, though he wrote that "Efron never feels like a proper fit for Richard". Karen Durbin of The New York Times praised McKay in the Welles role, saying he brought "a watchful, assessing and subtly excited gaze that makes him thrilling and a little dangerous."
"I've never seen a backstage movie that was truer to the experience of putting on a show," wrote Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout, who reserved special praise for the design team's recreation of Welles's production of Julius Caesar:
Like most Welles stage shows, alas, this one left few traces. No part of the production was filmed, and nothing else survives but the design sketches and some still photographs taken in 1937. ... What makes Me and Orson Welles uniquely interesting to scholars of American drama is that Mr. Linklater's design team found the Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man. This house closely resembles the old Comedy Theatre on 41st Street, which was torn down five years after Julius Caesar opened there. Using Samuel Leve's original designs, they reconstructed the set for Julius Caesar on the Gaiety's stage. Then Mr. Linklater filmed some 15 minutes' worth of scenes from the play, lit according to Jean Rosenthal's plot, accompanied by Marc Blitzstein's original incidental music and staged in a style as close to that of the 1937 production as is now possible.
Teachout wrote that he "was floored by the verisimilitude of the results", and that "you will never get any closer to the Welles Julius Caesar than by watching Me and Orson Welles, whose DVD version also includes a special feature comprising footage of the reconstructed scenes, not all of which made the final cut."
In 2015, Mercury actor Norman Lloyd (who is portrayed by Leo Bill in the film) praised Christian McKay's performance as Orson Welles as "the best rendition of him I've ever seen." However, he otherwise "hated" the film and he criticized the accuracy of the characters: "It bears no relation to truth, or to what happened when you worked with Orson and so forth. I thought McKay was very good, but the rest of the characters are just ridiculous. They're all made up! I didn't even recognize myself ... and then I thought, Well, thank goodness I can't!" Lloyd named George Coulouris as an example, who was shown as "neurotic and afraid to do his scene", while in reality he was someone "you couldn't stop from acting, for Christ's sake!".
Accolades
Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of 2009 by the National Board of Review. It was listed as one of the year's top ten films by critics including Philip French of The Observer, David Denby of The New Yorker, and Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott of At the Movies.
The film earned two awards from the Austin Film Critics Association – the Austin Film Award to director Richard Linklater. and the Breakthrough Artist Award to Christian McKay. McKay received many accolades for his portrayal of Orson Welles, including Best Supporting Actor awards from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Utah Film Critics Association. He received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actor nominations from the Boston Society of Film Critics (second place), Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, Denver Film Critics Society, Detroit Film Critics Society, Houston Film Critics Society, International Cinephile Society, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle (second place), Online Film & Television Association, Toronto Film Critics Association, and in the Chlotrudis Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and the Village Voice Film Poll (second place). McKay was nominated in the Best Actor category in the Evening Standard British Film Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards and 2009 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards.
Home media
On August 17, 2010, Warner released Me and Orson Welles on DVD () for exclusive sale at Target in the United States. Entertainment One Films released the DVD in Canada on the same date. The film has not been released on Blu-ray in the U.S., though it is available in the format in Italy and Germany.
Soundtrack
The original motion picture soundtrack for Me and Orson Welles was released on CD November 24, 2009, by Decca Records (5323762).
"This Year's Kisses", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"I'm Shooting High", Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra
"Sing, Sing, Sing", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"One O'Clock Jump", Count Basie and His Orchestra
"Ode to Krupa", Michael J McEvoy
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Christian McKay
"Let Yourself Go", Ginger Rogers
"Solitude", The Mills Brothers
"Aftershow Jam", Michael J McEvoy featuring Huw Morgan on trumpet
"They Can't Take That Away from Me", Fred Astaire
"In a Sentimental Mood" (Instrumental), Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"The Music Goes Round and Round", Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven
"I Surrender Dear", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"You Made Me Love You", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Have You Met Miss Jones?", James Langton and His Solid Senders
"Sing, Sing, Sing", James Langton and His Solid Senders
References
External links
Interview with Arthur Anderson
2008 films
2000s comedy-drama films
British films
British comedy-drama films
American comedy-drama films
2000s English-language films
Films directed by Richard Linklater
Films about Orson Welles
Films based on American novels
Films set in 1937
Films set in New York City
Films shot in England
Films about actors
Films about theatre
American films
Julius Caesar (play)
Films shot in the Isle of Man
2008 comedy films
2008 drama films
| true |
[
"Twenty-four feature films have been released based on the manga and anime series Case Closed, known as in the rest of the world. The first seven were directed by Kenji Kodama, films eight to fourteen were directed by Yasuichiro Yamamoto, films fifteen to twenty-one were directed by Kobun Shizuno, film twenty-two were directed by Yuzuru Tachikawa, and films twenty-three and twenty-four are directed by Chika Nagaoka. The films have been released in April of each year starting in 1997, excluding 2020. Each film features an original plotline rather than being an adaptation of the manga's story. Two film comics were released for each film. Funimation Entertainment released an English dubbed version of the first six films retaining the same name and story changes as its main Case Closed dub. Bang Zoom! Entertainment has begun to release English dubs of Case Closed films through Discotek Media, starting with the Episode One TV special.\n\nFilm series\n\nThe Time Bombed Skyscraper\n\nThe first film, Case Closed: The Time Bombed Skyscraper known as in Japan, was released in Japanese theaters on April 19, 1997. It was partly based on Gosho Aoyama's planned ending for his previous series, Magic Kaito. In the movie, a chain of bombing cases occur around Tokyo and is related to Jimmy Kudo's past investigations. The Time Bombed Skyscraper was released in North America on Region 1 DVD by Funimation Entertainment on October 3, 2006.\n\nThe Fourteenth Target\n\nThe second film, Case Closed: The Fourteenth Target known as , in Japan, was released to Japanese theaters on April 18, 1998. The film follows Conan Edogawa as he attempts to stop a murderer killing people in an unknown order. The Fourteenth Target was released in North America on Region 1 DVD by Funimation Entertainment on November 20, 2007.\n\nThe Last Wizard of the Century\n\nThe third film, Case Closed: The Last Wizard of the Century, known as in Japan, was released to Japanese theaters on April 17, 1999. This movie follows Conan Edogawa as he attempts to thwart Phantom Thief Kid's plan to steal a newly discovered Faberge egg. The Last Wizard of the Century was released in North America on Region 1 DVD by Funimation Entertainment on December 15, 2009.\n\nCaptured in Her Eyes\n\nThe fourth film, Case Closed: Captured in Her Eyes, known as in Japan, was released to Japanese theaters on April 22, 2000. Rachel Moore becomes entangled in a series of murder cases where police officers of a reopened case were victims; She was able to see the culprit but the trauma of witnessing an attempt at murder gave her amnesia and made herself a target of the killer. Captured in Her Eyes was released in North America on Region 1 DVD by Funimation Entertainment on December 29, 2009.\n\nCountdown to Heaven\n\nThe fifth film, Case Closed: Countdown to Heaven, known as in Japan, was released to Japanese theaters on April 21, 2001. A Twin Tower is built and opened to the public while a murderer kills its employees one by one. At the same time, the Black Organization are searching for Shiho Miyano. Countdown to Heaven was released in North America on Region 1 DVD by Funimation Entertainment on January 19, 2010.\n\nThe Phantom of Baker Street\n\nThe sixth film, Case Closed: The Phantom of Baker Street, known as in Japan, was released to Japanese theaters on April 20, 2002. The story follows Conan Edogawa and several children as they are trapped in Noah's Ark, a virtual reality game where death will result if they lose the game. The Phantom of Baker Street was released in North America on Region 1 DVD by Funimation Entertainment on February 16, 2010.\n\nCrossroad in the Ancient Capital\n\nThe seventh film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 19, 2003. The movie follows Conan and Hattori Heiji in Kyoto as they attempt to unmask antique robbers.\n\nMagician of the Silver Sky\n\nThe eighth film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 17, 2004. The movie follows a poisoning case on an airliner where both the pilot and co-pilot were also affected, Conan Edogawa and Phantom Thief Kid are forced to take control of the plane.\n\nStrategy Above the Depths\n\nThe ninth film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 9, 2005. The movie is set on a cruise ship and integrates the murder of the shipbuilder and a shipwreck disaster.\n\nThe Private Eyes' Requiem\n\nThe tenth film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 15, 2006. The plot revolves around Conan Edogawa's investigation of an old murder case as his friends are held hostage in an amusement park.\n\nJolly Roger in the Deep Azure\n\nThe eleventh film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 21, 2007. The movie follows Conan Edogawa as he investigates the murder of two scuba divers searching for the alleged treasure left by pirate Anne Bonny on a Japanese island.\n\nFull Score of Fear\n\nThe twelfth film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 19, 2008. The film follows Conan Edogawa as he attempts to discern the culprit targeting the lead singer for the grand opening of a new concert hall.\n\nThe Raven Chaser\n\nThe thirteenth film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 18, 2009. In the movie, a new member of the Black Organization, Irish, manages to find out Conan Edogawa's identity, putting everyone around him in danger.\n\nThe Lost Ship in the Sky\n\nThe fourteenth film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 17, 2010. In the film, Jirokichi Suzuki invites Conan Edogawa and his friends to ride the world's largest airship, but an unknown mysterious terrorist group hijacks the ship and releases a deadly virus.\n\nQuarter of Silence\n\nThe fifteenth film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 16, 2011. In the film, Conan Edogawa and his friends go to a town near a recently constructed dam to enjoy snow, as well as to find the truth behind a bombing case.\n\nThe Eleventh Striker\n\nThe sixteenth film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 14, 2012. The story revolves around soccer and a timed bomb in the stadium.\n\nPrivate Eye in the Distant Sea\n\nThe seventeenth film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 20, 2013. The story follows a case that occurs on an Aegis vessel.\n\nDimensional Sniper\n\nThe eighteenth film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 19, 2014. The story follows the FBI and Japanese Police as they try to stop a sniper causing chaos in Tokyō after killing a number of people.\n\nSunflowers of Inferno\n\nThe nineteenth film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 18, 2015. The movie revolves around the Kaito Kid's announcement of a heist, where he will steal Van Gogh's \"Sunflowers\" paintings. and Conan's attempts to discover the motives behind his sudden interest in the paintings, leading him to the possibility of an impostor posing as the Kaito Kid. Sunflowers of Inferno was released in the United States on Blu-ray by Discotek Media on January 25, 2022.\n\nThe Darkest Nightmare\n\nThe twentieth film, Case Closed: The Darkest Nightmare, known as in Japan, was released to Japanese theaters on April 16, 2016. The movie features Akai, Bourbon and, RUM. The Detective Boys and Professor Agasa meet a woman with amnesia, who regains her memory after seeing beaming colourful light, leading the Men In Black to them. The Darkest Nightmare was released in North America on Blu-ray by Discotek Media on September 28, 2021.\n\nCrimson Love Letter\n\nThe twenty-first film, Case Closed: Crimson Love Letter, known as in Japan, was released to Japanese theaters on April 15, 2017. The case follows an incident in Kyoto, where Kazuha is entered into a card competition. Crimson Love Letter was released in North America on Blu-ray by Discotek Media on December 29, 2020.\n\nZero the Enforcer\n\nThe twenty-second film, Case Closed: Zero the Enforcer, known as in Japan, was released to Japanese theaters on April 13, 2018. Out of nowhere, an explosion occurs at Tokyo. The police force tries to find the culprit of this mess, and end up suspecting Mouri Kogoro. Conan finds out that Amuro was the one who framed Kogoro and that Amuro is working with the NPA (National Police Agency). Conan must prove Kogoro's innocence, figure out who the real culprit is, and find out what Amuro is up to. Zero the Enforcer was released in North America on Blu-ray by Discotek Media on September 29, 2020.\n\nThe Fist of Blue Sapphire\n\nThe twenty-third film, , was released to Japanese theaters on April 12, 2019. The movie revolves around a Kaito Kid heist taking place in Singapore, the first time the primary setting is in another Asian country. The Fist of Blue Sapphire was released in North America on digital on March 16, 2021.\n\nThe Scarlet Bullet\n\nThe twenty-fourth film, , was supposed to be released to Japanese theaters on April 17, 2020, but was postponed to April 16, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The movie revolves around the Akai family as they and Conan investigate incidents that occur in Japan during the World Sports Games.\n\nThe Bride of Halloween\nThe twenty-fifth film, , will be released to Japanese theaters on April 15, 2022.\n\nSpin-off films\n\nLupin the 3rd vs. Detective Conan: The Movie\n\n was released to Japanese theaters on December 7, 2013. The plot follows Conan, who sets out to apprehend Arsène Lupin III, the suspect behind the theft of a jewel called the Cherry Sapphire. It is a sequel to the 2009 television special Lupin the 3rd vs. Detective Conan.\n\nSpecials\nThe Disappearance of Conan Edogawa: His History's Worst Two Days, a television special which aired in Japan during 2014, was released as a theatrical film in South Korea on 12 February 2015.\n\nCase Closed Episode One: The Great Detective Turned Small, known as , a television special which aired in Japan during 2016, was released as a theatrical film in South Korea on February 8, 2017. It was released in North America on Blu-ray by Discotek Media on July 28, 2020.\n\nDetective Conan: The Scarlet Alibi, as , was a compilation film combining footage from various television anime episodes that center on the Akai family. It was released as a theatrical film with a three-week limited run in Japan from February 11 to March 4, 2021, before the release of Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet. The film was also released in Indonesia, Hongkong and Taiwan. In Vietnam, Detective Conan: The Scarlet Alibi was released to Japanese theaters online on YouTube by POPS in a limited one and a half month.\n\nBox office performance\n\nReferences\nGeneral\n \n\nSpecific\n\nExternal links\n Official Detective Conan Movies Site \n\nFilm series introduced in 1997\nCase Closed (film series)\n\nJapanese film series\nAnimated film series\nLists of anime films\nAnime film series\nLists of films by franchise",
"In the American motion picture industry, a wide release (short for nationwide release) is a film playing at the same time at cinemas in most markets across the country. This is in contrast to the formerly common practice of a roadshow theatrical release in which a film opens at a few cinemas in key cities before circulating among cinemas around the country, or a limited release in which a film is booked at fewer cinemas (such as \"art house\" venues) in larger cities in anticipation of lesser commercial appeal. In some cases, a film that sells well in limited release will then \"go wide\". Since 1994, a wide release in the United States and Canada has been defined by Nielsen EDI as a film released in more than 600 theaters.\n\nThe practice emerged as a successful marketing strategy in the 1970s, and became increasingly common in subsequent decades, in parallel with the expansion of the number of screens available at multiplex cinemas. With the switch to digital formats – lowering the added cost of wide release and increasing the opportunity for piracy – \"opening wide\" has become the default release strategy for big-budget mainstream films, sometimes expanding to include closely spaced wide releases in various countries, or even simultaneous world-wide release.\n\nHistory\nPrior to the 1980s, most feature films initially opened in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and London, with a small set of prints then circulating as a \"roadshow\" among cinemas regionally over the course of a few months. The number of prints in circulation would be increased only to accommodate demand for highly popular features, which might be \"held over\" beyond their originally scheduled run. Many of the most successful major releases during this period were handled this way.\n\nIn 1946, David O. Selznick's Duel in the Sun was given a \"blitz\" release, where it was released simultaneously in a number of theaters in an area or city, with it opening in as many as 54 theaters in one area at the same time. The \"blitz\" approach had been used for a number of years in the Los Angeles area due to its geographic spread. Advantages of the new release approach included economies of scale on advertising costs and the fact that it allowed an old circus technique of making money and leaving before cinemagoers could realize how bad a film was. The following year, MGM used a \"splash\" approach on The Hucksters, opening in 350 theaters before expanding to 1,000 theaters a week later.\n\nIn 1952, Terry Turner of RKO introduced \"saturation booking\" (similar to nationwide release but on a regional scale) on a reissue of King Kong and then expanded this concept with Warner Bros.' The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), planning to have most of its bookings in its first two months, opening in New York and Los Angeles before expanding to 1,422 theaters within the first week.\n\nJoseph E. Levine, a distributor/exhibitor based in Boston who had worked on the \"blitz\" release of Duel in the Sun, hired Turner and adopted a similar approach on the 1958 US release of the Italian film Attila, quickly moving 90 prints through regional distribution hubs, renting them to mostly low-end theaters where he could book short runs with favorable box office terms. Booking dense concentrations of venues in a region allowed for the effective use of costly local TV and radio spots. Levine was able to generate over $2 million in US box office theatrical rentals with runs averaging only ten days per screen. Warner Bros. then paid him a $300,000 advance to secure the distribution rights to Hercules. Released the following summer with over 600 prints (175 of these played simultaneously in the greater New York City area) with the assistance of Warner's nationwide network of print exchanges, the film secured $4.7 million in rentals.\n\nIn 1974, Tom Laughlin gave The Trial of Billy Jack, a sequel to his independently distributed Billy Jack, one of the widest releases to date, opening in 1,200 theatres in the United States on November 13. The following year, Breakout was the first major studio film to go into wide release in its opening week, with Columbia Pictures distributing 1,325 prints nationwide, combined with a heavy national advertising campaign. The following month, Jaws was released in a similar way on 409 screens, expanding to nearly 1,000 by mid-August in conjunction with nationwide advertising. The modest success of Breakout and the blockbuster success of Jaws led other distributors to follow suit with other mass-market films. In December 1980, Any Which Way You Can beat the record set by Breakout, opening in a record 1,541 theaters.\n\nThe growth in the number and size of multiplexes since the 1980s, increasing the availability of screens with more flexible scheduling, facilitated this strategy and, together with the reduction in the number of movie palaces, saw an end to the roadshow release strategy. In 1984, Beverly Hills Cop was the first film playing simultaneously on more than 2,000 screens in the United States and Canada, in its third weekend in December. In 1990, 13 films were shown on 2,000 screens simultaneously, and in 1993 the number had almost doubled to 24. In 1993, 145 films (41% of films released) received a wide release in the United States and Canada with an average widest point of release of 1,493 engagements with 29% of the films' grosses coming from their opening week. \n\nIn May 1996, Mission: Impossible was the first film to be released in over 3,000 theaters in the United States and Canada. Meanwhile, Showgirls (1995) was the first film with an NC-17 rating to have a wide release in the United States, opening in 1,388 theaters. In 1996, 67 films were released on more than 2,000 screens and by 1997, the average widest point of release for wide release films in the United States and Canada had reached 1,888 engagements with 37% of the films' grosses coming from their opening week. By 2000, 22 films were released on more than 3,000 screens in the year, while the average widest point of release had increased to 2,228.\n\nBy 2002, opening globally on the same day became more commonplace, with Spider-Man being released on 7,500 screens at 3,615 theaters in the United States and Canada and 838 prints in 18 other countries. The same month, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones opened in 3,161 theaters in the United States and Canada, and in 73 other countries on 5,854 screens. In 2003, 20th Century Fox released X2, the second installment of the X-Men film series, in 3,741 theaters in the United States and Canada, and in 93 markets on 7,316 screens overseas. Later that year, Warner Bros. released the third Matrix film, The Matrix Revolutions, simultaneously in 108 territories on November 5, 2003 at 1400 Greenwich Mean Time on around 18,000 screens with 10,013 prints overseas and in 3,502 theaters in the United States and Canada. Shrek 2 became the first film to open in over 4,000 theaters in the United States and Canada in 2004. The Lion King set the record for the widest opening in the United States and Canada, being released in 4,725 theaters in 2019 before expanding two weeks later to 4,802 theaters.\n\nClassification\nSince 1994, a wide release in the United States and Canada has been defined by EDI as a film released in more than 600 theaters. In 1996, Variety considered a wide release as a film with 700 or more playdates or a film in the top 50 markets with at least 500 playdates. New Line distribution president Mitch Goldman called the term a misnomer as he claimed that a film needed to open in more than 800 theaters to be considered a wide release but that such a film might not even play the top cities and that a film could open in the top 50 markets with just 600 prints and be in wide release.\n\nSee also\n Art film\n Film release\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading\n Dade Hayes and Jonathan Bing, Open Wide: How Hollywood Box Office Became a National Obsession, Miramax Books, 2004. ()\n\nFilms by type"
] |
[
"Me and Orson Welles",
"Release",
"What month was this film released in theaters?",
"The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009,"
] |
C_6b221c9714634babbef87322a8377048_0
|
What were critics reviews of this film?
| 2 |
What were critics reviews of Me and Orson Welles?
|
Me and Orson Welles
|
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's resume and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal. Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost. It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009. The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future." CANNOTANSWER
|
Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008.
|
Me and Orson Welles is a 2008 period drama film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the story, set in 1937 New York, tells of a teenager hired to perform in Orson Welles's groundbreaking stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar who becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.
The film was shot in London and New York and on the Isle of Man in February, March and April 2008, and was released in the United States on November 25, 2009, and the United Kingdom on December 4, 2009.
McKay's portrayal of Welles was recognized with a multitude of accolades, and Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of the year by the National Board of Review.
Plot
In New York City in the fall of 1937, 17-year-old high-school student Richard Samuels meets Orson Welles, who unexpectedly offers him the role of Lucius in Caesar, the first production of his new Mercury Theatre repertory company. The company is immersed in rehearsals at its Broadway theater. Charmed by Welles, Richard learns that he is having an affair with the leading actress while his wife is pregnant. Richard finds ambitious production assistant Sonja Jones is attracted to him.
Welles tells Richard a few days before the premiere that he is worried, because he has recently had nothing but good luck; he fears that he will finally have bad luck with the premiere, and that the play will be a flop. During rehearsals Richard accidentally sets off the sprinkler system, soaking the entire theatre. When accused by Welles he denies having anything to do with the deluge, and suggests that the catastrophe was the bad luck that Welles needed to get out of the way.
Welles decides the entire production crew would benefit from a coupling game, and Richard cheats to ensure he is paired with Sonja. Richard spends the night with Sonja, but becomes jealous when she spends the next night with Welles. He confronts Welles, mentions his pregnant wife, and is fired. An apparent reconciliation follows, and Richard performs on the first night. The anti-fascist adaptation of Caesar is a huge success, but after the premiere, Richard is told that Welles only needed him in order to secure a successful first-night production and, that done, he has again been fired.
The broken-hearted but wiser Richard spontaneously recites lines from Julius Caesar in his high school English class, to his classmates' applause. He later meets up with a likely new girlfriend, Gretta Adler, a young aspiring playwright whom he met in a music store at the film's beginning. With Richard's and Sonja's assistance, Adler manages to get a story published in The New Yorker, and she invites Richard out, to help her celebrate.
Cast
Zac Efron as Richard Samuels
Christian McKay as Orson Welles
Claire Danes as Sonja Jones
Ben Chaplin as George Coulouris
James Tupper as Joseph Cotten
Eddie Marsan as John Houseman
Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd
Kelly Reilly as Muriel Brassler
Patrick Kennedy as Grover Burgess
Travis Oliver as John Hoyt
Zoe Kazan as Gretta Adler
Al Weaver as Sam Leve
Saskia Reeves as Barbara Luddy
Imogen Poots as Lorelei Lathrop
Rhodri Orders as Stefan Schnabel
Michael Brandon as Les Tremayne
Janie Dee as Mrs Samuels
Production
Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr. adapted the film's screenplay from Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name about a teenager (in reality, the 15-year-old Arthur Anderson, who played Lucius in Welles' production) involved in the founding of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. After receiving funding from CinemaNX, a production company backed by the Isle of Man film fund, and an offer from Framestore Features to co-finance the film, Richard Linklater came on board to direct Me and Orson Welles. Zac Efron signed on as the lead in early January 2008, claiming he decided to take the role of Richard Samuels because "It's a completely different project than I've ever done before," while Claire Danes joined the cast as the protagonist's love interest Sonja Jones in late January.
In the theatre, Christian McKay had portrayed Orson Welles in the one-man play Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles at a number of venues, including the Edinburgh Festival and King's Head (London). He reprised the role in the U.S. at the 2007 "Brits Off Broadway" festival, where Linklater saw his performance and then cast McKay as Welles, retaining him over the subsequent objections of the project's producer.
Me and Orson Welles underwent filming in the Isle of Man, Pinewood Studios, London and New York from February to April 2008. Filming in London commenced first in mid-February, before scenes in the Isle of Man were shot February 24–March 14, 2008, where filming locations included Gaiety Theatre and various other parts of Douglas. During filming in Douglas, Efron and Danes believe they sighted a ghost, or "supernatural" being, outside a window on set at Gaiety Theatre.
Filming in Britain resumed in late March for six weeks at Pinewood Studios. Other locations included Crystal Palace Park, where a façade of New York's Mercury Theatre was set up for a scene. Actor James Tupper claimed that the best replica of an old New York theater was in England, while many of the actors who filled the company were from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The production crew only briefly visited New York; photographs were taken and footage shot to be added into the film as digital effects. Every exterior shot was filmed on a single street built at Pinewood Studios with a green screen at one end; different angles and slightly altered set designs were used between shots to make the street appear different each time.
Release
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's résumé and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4–13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal.
Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost.
It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009.
The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one of the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future."
Reception
Box office
During its theatrical release (November 25, 2009 – February 25, 2010), Me and Orson Welles grossed a total of $1,190,003 in the United States and $2,336,172 worldwide.
Critical response
The film has received positive reviews from critics. It currently holds an 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 156 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Me and Orson Welles boasts a breakout performance by Christian McKay and an infectious love of the backstage drama that overcomes its sometimes fluffy tone." It holds a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic from 30 critics.
Film critic Roger Ebert called Me and Orson Welles "one of the best movies about the theater I've ever seen ... not only entertaining but an invaluable companion to the life and career of the Great Man". Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film for its "terrific acting" and called it "a must for lovers and students of the theater". Variety magazine's Todd McCarthy labelled McKay's performance "an extraordinary impersonation" of Welles, though he wrote that "Efron never feels like a proper fit for Richard". Karen Durbin of The New York Times praised McKay in the Welles role, saying he brought "a watchful, assessing and subtly excited gaze that makes him thrilling and a little dangerous."
"I've never seen a backstage movie that was truer to the experience of putting on a show," wrote Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout, who reserved special praise for the design team's recreation of Welles's production of Julius Caesar:
Like most Welles stage shows, alas, this one left few traces. No part of the production was filmed, and nothing else survives but the design sketches and some still photographs taken in 1937. ... What makes Me and Orson Welles uniquely interesting to scholars of American drama is that Mr. Linklater's design team found the Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man. This house closely resembles the old Comedy Theatre on 41st Street, which was torn down five years after Julius Caesar opened there. Using Samuel Leve's original designs, they reconstructed the set for Julius Caesar on the Gaiety's stage. Then Mr. Linklater filmed some 15 minutes' worth of scenes from the play, lit according to Jean Rosenthal's plot, accompanied by Marc Blitzstein's original incidental music and staged in a style as close to that of the 1937 production as is now possible.
Teachout wrote that he "was floored by the verisimilitude of the results", and that "you will never get any closer to the Welles Julius Caesar than by watching Me and Orson Welles, whose DVD version also includes a special feature comprising footage of the reconstructed scenes, not all of which made the final cut."
In 2015, Mercury actor Norman Lloyd (who is portrayed by Leo Bill in the film) praised Christian McKay's performance as Orson Welles as "the best rendition of him I've ever seen." However, he otherwise "hated" the film and he criticized the accuracy of the characters: "It bears no relation to truth, or to what happened when you worked with Orson and so forth. I thought McKay was very good, but the rest of the characters are just ridiculous. They're all made up! I didn't even recognize myself ... and then I thought, Well, thank goodness I can't!" Lloyd named George Coulouris as an example, who was shown as "neurotic and afraid to do his scene", while in reality he was someone "you couldn't stop from acting, for Christ's sake!".
Accolades
Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of 2009 by the National Board of Review. It was listed as one of the year's top ten films by critics including Philip French of The Observer, David Denby of The New Yorker, and Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott of At the Movies.
The film earned two awards from the Austin Film Critics Association – the Austin Film Award to director Richard Linklater. and the Breakthrough Artist Award to Christian McKay. McKay received many accolades for his portrayal of Orson Welles, including Best Supporting Actor awards from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Utah Film Critics Association. He received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actor nominations from the Boston Society of Film Critics (second place), Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, Denver Film Critics Society, Detroit Film Critics Society, Houston Film Critics Society, International Cinephile Society, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle (second place), Online Film & Television Association, Toronto Film Critics Association, and in the Chlotrudis Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and the Village Voice Film Poll (second place). McKay was nominated in the Best Actor category in the Evening Standard British Film Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards and 2009 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards.
Home media
On August 17, 2010, Warner released Me and Orson Welles on DVD () for exclusive sale at Target in the United States. Entertainment One Films released the DVD in Canada on the same date. The film has not been released on Blu-ray in the U.S., though it is available in the format in Italy and Germany.
Soundtrack
The original motion picture soundtrack for Me and Orson Welles was released on CD November 24, 2009, by Decca Records (5323762).
"This Year's Kisses", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"I'm Shooting High", Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra
"Sing, Sing, Sing", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"One O'Clock Jump", Count Basie and His Orchestra
"Ode to Krupa", Michael J McEvoy
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Christian McKay
"Let Yourself Go", Ginger Rogers
"Solitude", The Mills Brothers
"Aftershow Jam", Michael J McEvoy featuring Huw Morgan on trumpet
"They Can't Take That Away from Me", Fred Astaire
"In a Sentimental Mood" (Instrumental), Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"The Music Goes Round and Round", Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven
"I Surrender Dear", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"You Made Me Love You", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Have You Met Miss Jones?", James Langton and His Solid Senders
"Sing, Sing, Sing", James Langton and His Solid Senders
References
External links
Interview with Arthur Anderson
2008 films
2000s comedy-drama films
British films
British comedy-drama films
American comedy-drama films
2000s English-language films
Films directed by Richard Linklater
Films about Orson Welles
Films based on American novels
Films set in 1937
Films set in New York City
Films shot in England
Films about actors
Films about theatre
American films
Julius Caesar (play)
Films shot in the Isle of Man
2008 comedy films
2008 drama films
| false |
[
"The Yes Men is a 2003 documentary film about the early culture jamming exploits of The Yes Men.\n\nThe film revolves around \"The Yes Men\" — two anti-globalization activists, under the aliases Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno — who impersonate spokespeople for the WTO and affiliated corporations in order to secretly lampoon and satirize these organizations with elaborate ruses and fraudulent announcements of ridiculous corporate decisions, in front of live, unsuspecting audiences (usually comprising businesspeople, university student bodies, and the press). The film details the two activists' involvement in hoaxes targeting SimCopter, the 2000 G. W. Bush presidential campaign, McDonald's, and, most prominently, the WTO. The film also includes brief interviews with Michael Moore and Greg Palast.\n\nThe film premiered at the 28th Toronto International Film Festival in 2003. It was also shown as part of a special screening at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. The film received generally positive reviews from critics. It is followed by a sequel, The Yes Men Fix the World.\n\nReception\nOn Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 85% based on reviews from 84 critics. On Metacritic the film has a score of 68% based on reviews from 26 critics, indicating \"generally favorable reviews\".\n\nPeter Travers of Rolling Stone gave it 3 out of 4 and called the film \"Subversive and diabolically funny.\"\nRoger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 3 out of 4, and wrote: \"Amazing in what it shows, but underwhelming in what it does with it.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n The Yes Men website\n \n\n2003 comedy films\n2004 documentary films\n2004 films\n2003 films\nAmerican films\nAnti-modernist films\nDocumentary films about business\nEnglish-language films\nThe Yes Men\nUnited Artists films\nFilms about activists\nFilms directed by Chris Smith\nAnti-corporate activism\n\nfr:The Yes Men",
"Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: journalistic criticism which appears regularly in newspapers, magazines and other popular mass-media outlets; and academic criticism by film scholars who are informed by film theory and are published in academic journals. Academic film criticism rarely takes the form of a review; instead it is more likely to analyse the film and its place within the history of its genre, or the whole of film history.\n\nHistory \nFilm was introduced in the late 19th century. The earliest artistic criticism of film emerged in the early 1900s. The first paper to serve as a critique of film came out of The Optical Lantern and Cinematograph Journal, followed by the Bioscope in 1908.\n\nFilm is a relatively new form of art, in comparison to music, literature and painting which have existed since ancient times. Early writing on film sought to argue that films could also be considered a form of art. In 1911, Ricciotto Canudo wrote a manifesto proclaiming cinema to be the \"Sixth Art\" (later \"Seventh Art\"). For many decades after, film was still being treated with less prestige than longer-established art forms. In Sweden, serious film criticism was spearheaded by Bengt Idestam-Almquist, to the point of the Swedish Film Institute calling him the father of Swedish film criticism.\n\nBy the 1920s, critics were analyzing film for its merit and value as more than just entertainment. The growing popularity of the medium caused major newspapers to start hiring film critics. In the 1930s, the film industry saw audiences grow increasingly silent as films were now accompanied by sound. However, in the late 1930s audiences became influenced by print news sources reporting on movies and criticism became largely centered around audience reactions within the theaters.\n\nIt was in the 1940s that new forms of criticism emerged. Essays analyzing films with a distinctive charm and style sought to persuade the reader of the critic's argument. It was the emergence of these styles that brought film criticism to the mainstream, gaining the attention of many popular magazines; this made film reviews and critiques an eventual staple among most print media. As the decades passed, the fame for critics grew and gave rise to household names among the craft like James Agee, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael and in modern times Roger Ebert and Peter Travers.\n\nJournalistic criticism \nFilm critics working for newspapers, magazines, broadcast media, and online publications, mainly review new releases, although also review older films. An important task for these reviews is to inform readers on whether or not they would want to see the film. A film review will typically explain the premise of the film before discussing its merits or flaws. The verdict is often summarized with a form of rating. Numerous rating systems exist, such as 5- or 4-star scales, academic-style grades and pictograms (such as in the San Francisco Chronicle).\n\nSome well-known journalistic critics have included: James Agee (Time, The Nation); Vincent Canby (The New York Times); Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times); Mark Kermode (BBC, The Observer); James Berardinelli; Philip French (The Observer); Pauline Kael (The New Yorker); Manny Farber (The New Republic, Time, The Nation); Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian); Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune); Andrew Sarris (The Village Voice); Joel Siegel (Good Morning America); Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader); and Christy Lemire (What The Flick?!).\n\nRoger Ebert and Gene Siskel popularised the concept of reviewing films in a television format in the show Siskel & Ebert At the Movies which became syndicated in the 1980s. Both critics had established their careers in print media, and continued to write written reviews for their newspapers alongside their television show.\n\nOnline film criticism\n\nAggregators\nWebsites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic seek to improve the usefulness of film reviews by compiling them and assigning a score to each in order to gauge the general reception a film receives. Other less well known aggregators such as the Movie Review Query Engine (MRQE) are also available.\n\nOnline film critics\nBlogging also introduced opportunities for a new wave of amateur film critics to have their opinions heard. These review blogs may focus on one genre, director or actor, or encompass a much wider variety of films. Friends, friends of friends, or strangers are able to visit these blogsites, and can often leave their own comments about the movie and/or the author's review. Although much less frequented than their professional counterparts, these sites can gather a following of like-minded people who look to specific bloggers for reviews, as they have found that the critic consistently exhibits an outlook very similar to their own. YouTube has also served as a platform for amateur film critics.\n\nSome websites specialize in narrow aspects of film reviewing. For instance, there are sites that focus on specific content advisories for parents to judge a film's suitability for children. Others focus on a religious perspective (e.g. CAP Alert). Still others highlight more esoteric subjects such as the depiction of science in fiction films. One such example is Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics by Intuitor. Some online niche websites provide comprehensive coverage of the independent sector; usually adopting a style closer to print journalism. They tend to prohibit advertisement and offer uncompromising opinions free of any commercial interest. Their film critics normally have an academic film background.\n\nThe Online Film Critics Society, an international professional association of Internet-based cinema reviewers, consists of writers from all over the world, while New York Film Critics Online members handle reviews in the New York tri-state area.\n\nUser-submitted reviews\nCommunity-driven review sites, that allow internet users to submit personal movie reviews, have allowed the common movie goer to express their opinion on films. Many of these sites allow users to rate films on a 0 to 10 scale, while some rely on the star rating system of 1–5, 0–5 or 0–4 stars. The votes are then converted into an overall rating and ranking for any particular film. Some of these community driven review sites include Letterboxd, Reviewer, Movie Attractions, Flixster, FilmCrave, Flickchart and Everyone's a Critic. Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic aggregate both scores from accredited critics and those submitted by users.\n\nOn these online review sites, users generally only have to register with the site in order to submit reviews. This means that they are a form of open access poll, and have the same advantages and disadvantages; notably, there is no guarantee that they will be a representative sample of the film's audience. In some cases, online review sites have produced wildly differing results to scientific polling of audiences. Likewise, reviews and ratings for many movies can greatly differ between the different review sites, even though there are certain movies that are well-rated (or poorly-rated) across the board.\n\nAcademic film criticism \nMore often known as film theory or film studies, academic critique explores cinema beyond journalistic film reviews. These film critics try to examine why film works, how it works aesthetically or politically, what it means, and what effects it has on people. Rather than write for mass-market publications their articles are usually published in scholarly journals and texts which tend to be affiliated with university presses; or sometimes in up-market magazines.\n\nMost academic criticism of film often follows a similar format. They usually include summaries of the plot of the film to either refresh the plot to the reader or reinforce an idea of repetition in the film's genre. After this, there tends to be discussions about the cultural context, major themes and repetitions, and details about the legacy of the film.\n\nAcademic film criticism, or film studies can also be taught in academia, and is featured in many California colleges in the United States due to its established home of film: Hollywood. Some of these colleges include University of California, Davis, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, Stanford University, as well as many other colleges across the world.\n\nAcademic criticism is typically divided and taught in the form of many different disciplines that tackle critique in different manors. These can include:\n\n Formalism, that analyzes the way that things are done and the appearance of their form or shape.\n Structuralism, that examines the way that movies are sequenced, have a dedicated style, and the way that language and art itself can create meaning.\n Historical, a form of criticism that doesn't look at the direct things being said, but the culture and surrounding environments of a given film. The historical critic will create meaning from something that is not explicitly stated or shown in the film.\n Psychoanalysis, that breaks down the unconscious that one can experience while observing a given film.\n Political and economic, which not only looks into how economics and politics are depicted directly inside the film, but also how it effects the films creation, marketing, screening, and sale.\n\nAcademic film criticism tackles many aspects of film making and production as well as distribution. These disciplines include camera work, digitalization, lighting, and sound. Narratives, dialogues, themes, and genres are among maty other things that academic film critics take into consideration and evaluate when engaging in critique.\n\nSome notable academic film critics include André Bazin, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut (all writers for Cahiers du Cinéma); Kristin Thompson, David Bordwell, and Sergei Eisenstein. Godard, Truffaut and Eisenstein were also film directors.\n\nIssues and controversies\n\nInfluence\nIn the 2000s, the effect that reviews have on a film's box office performance and DVD rentals/sales have become a matter for debate. Some analysts argue that modern movie marketing, using pop culture convention appearances (e.g., Comicon) and social media along with traditional means of advertising, has led, in part, to a decline in the readership of many reviewers for newspapers and other print publications. There are fewer critics on television and radio in the last thirty years.\n\nHowever, in recent years, there has been a growing belief in the film industry that critic aggregators (especially Rotten Tomatoes) are increasing the collective influence of film critics. The underperformance of several films in 2017 was blamed on their low scores on Rotten Tomatoes. This has led to studies such as one commissioned by 20th Century Fox claiming that younger viewers give the website more credibility than the major studio marketing, which undercuts its effectiveness.\n\nToday, fan-run film analysis websites like Box Office Prophets, CineBee and Box Office Guru routinely factor more into the opinions of the general public on films produced.\n\nThe \"undulating curve of shifting expectations\" \nThe \"undulating curve of shifting expectations\" (UCoSE) refers to both the title of a recurring entertainment industry feature in New York magazine by cultural critic Adam Sternbergh and also to a concept of media analysis co-developed by writer Emily Nussbaum.\n\nUCoSE refers to the dynamic tension between pre-release promotional efforts and subsequent audience reactions to entertainment media.\n\nThe UCoSE provides a way of analyzing the trajectory of entertainment products as they metamorphize their way through his theorized seven-stage growth chart: Pre-Buzz, Buzz, Rave Reviews, Saturation Point, Overhyped, Backlash, and finally, Backlash To The Backlash.\n\nFemale representation \nThere have been many complaints against the film-criticism industry for its underrepresentation of women. A study of the top critics on Rotten Tomatoes shows that 91 per cent of writers for movie or entertainment magazines and websites are men, as are 90 per cent of those for trade publications, 80 per cent of critics for general interest magazines like Time, and 70 per cent of reviewers for radio formats such as NPR.\n\nWriting for The Atlantic, Kate Kilkenny argued that women were better represented in film criticism before the rise of the Internet. In the past, when film was considered less prestigious than visual art and literature, it was easier for women to break into film criticism. Judith Crist and Pauline Kael were two of the most influential film critics of the 1960s and 1970s. The Internet led to a decline in jobs at small newspapers where women were more likely to review films, whereas the more male-dominated jobs at major newspapers survived better. The Internet also encouraged a growth in niche review websites that were even more male-dominated than older media. Kilkenny also suggested that the shortage of female critics was related to the shortage of female opinion columnists.\n\nClem Bastow, culture writer at The Guardian Australia, discussed the possible effects of this on the critical response to the 2015 film The Intern, which received mixed reviews from critics:The critical response to The Intern was fascinating. There's a subset of male critics that clearly see Nancy Meyers as code for chick flick and react with according bile. What's very interesting, though, is that I think female critics, working in an industry that is coded as very male, if not macho, often feel the need to go hard on certain films for women, presumably because they worry that they'll be dismissed, critically speaking, if they praise a film like The Intern as though they're only reviewing it favorably because they're women.\n\nMatt Reynolds of Wired pointed out that \"men tend to look much more favorably on films with more masculine themes, or male leading actors.\" On online review sites such as IMDb, this leads to skewed, imbalanced review results as 70 per cent of reviewers on the site are men.\n\nA study using Johanson analysis was used evaluate the representation of women in 270 films. Johanson complied statistics for the year 2015 on how having a female protagonist affected a movie, with the following results:\n\n 22% of 2015's movies had female protagonists.\n Critics are slightly more likely to rate a film highly if it represents women well.\n Mainstream moviegoers are not turned off by films with female protagonists.\n Movies that represent women well are just as likely to be profitable as movies that don't, and are less risky as business propositions.\n\nSalary \nAs of 2021 movie critics earned a yearly average salary of $63,474.\n\nAs of 2013, American film critics earn about US$82,000 a year. Newspaper and magazine critics would make $27,364-$49,574. Online movie critics would make $2-$200 per review. TV critics would make up to $40,000-$60,000 per month.\n\nSee also \n\n Prestige picture\n List of film critics\n List of film journals and magazines\n List of films considered the best\n List of films considered the worst\n For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, a 2009 documentary film\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading \n\n Peter Bradshaw gives advice to young, aspiring, would-be film critics (The Guardian, 8 July 2008)\n Haberski, Raymond J. Jr. It's Only a Movie!: Film and Critics in American Culture, University Press of Kentucky, 2001. \n Rosenbaum, Jonathan. Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See, A Cappella Books, 2000. \n\nFilm criticism"
] |
[
"Me and Orson Welles",
"Release",
"What month was this film released in theaters?",
"The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009,",
"What were critics reviews of this film?",
"Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008."
] |
C_6b221c9714634babbef87322a8377048_0
|
Did Me and Orson Welles get a DVD release?
| 3 |
Did Me and Orson Welles get a DVD release?
|
Me and Orson Welles
|
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's resume and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal. Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost. It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009. The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future." CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
Me and Orson Welles is a 2008 period drama film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the story, set in 1937 New York, tells of a teenager hired to perform in Orson Welles's groundbreaking stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar who becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.
The film was shot in London and New York and on the Isle of Man in February, March and April 2008, and was released in the United States on November 25, 2009, and the United Kingdom on December 4, 2009.
McKay's portrayal of Welles was recognized with a multitude of accolades, and Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of the year by the National Board of Review.
Plot
In New York City in the fall of 1937, 17-year-old high-school student Richard Samuels meets Orson Welles, who unexpectedly offers him the role of Lucius in Caesar, the first production of his new Mercury Theatre repertory company. The company is immersed in rehearsals at its Broadway theater. Charmed by Welles, Richard learns that he is having an affair with the leading actress while his wife is pregnant. Richard finds ambitious production assistant Sonja Jones is attracted to him.
Welles tells Richard a few days before the premiere that he is worried, because he has recently had nothing but good luck; he fears that he will finally have bad luck with the premiere, and that the play will be a flop. During rehearsals Richard accidentally sets off the sprinkler system, soaking the entire theatre. When accused by Welles he denies having anything to do with the deluge, and suggests that the catastrophe was the bad luck that Welles needed to get out of the way.
Welles decides the entire production crew would benefit from a coupling game, and Richard cheats to ensure he is paired with Sonja. Richard spends the night with Sonja, but becomes jealous when she spends the next night with Welles. He confronts Welles, mentions his pregnant wife, and is fired. An apparent reconciliation follows, and Richard performs on the first night. The anti-fascist adaptation of Caesar is a huge success, but after the premiere, Richard is told that Welles only needed him in order to secure a successful first-night production and, that done, he has again been fired.
The broken-hearted but wiser Richard spontaneously recites lines from Julius Caesar in his high school English class, to his classmates' applause. He later meets up with a likely new girlfriend, Gretta Adler, a young aspiring playwright whom he met in a music store at the film's beginning. With Richard's and Sonja's assistance, Adler manages to get a story published in The New Yorker, and she invites Richard out, to help her celebrate.
Cast
Zac Efron as Richard Samuels
Christian McKay as Orson Welles
Claire Danes as Sonja Jones
Ben Chaplin as George Coulouris
James Tupper as Joseph Cotten
Eddie Marsan as John Houseman
Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd
Kelly Reilly as Muriel Brassler
Patrick Kennedy as Grover Burgess
Travis Oliver as John Hoyt
Zoe Kazan as Gretta Adler
Al Weaver as Sam Leve
Saskia Reeves as Barbara Luddy
Imogen Poots as Lorelei Lathrop
Rhodri Orders as Stefan Schnabel
Michael Brandon as Les Tremayne
Janie Dee as Mrs Samuels
Production
Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr. adapted the film's screenplay from Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name about a teenager (in reality, the 15-year-old Arthur Anderson, who played Lucius in Welles' production) involved in the founding of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. After receiving funding from CinemaNX, a production company backed by the Isle of Man film fund, and an offer from Framestore Features to co-finance the film, Richard Linklater came on board to direct Me and Orson Welles. Zac Efron signed on as the lead in early January 2008, claiming he decided to take the role of Richard Samuels because "It's a completely different project than I've ever done before," while Claire Danes joined the cast as the protagonist's love interest Sonja Jones in late January.
In the theatre, Christian McKay had portrayed Orson Welles in the one-man play Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles at a number of venues, including the Edinburgh Festival and King's Head (London). He reprised the role in the U.S. at the 2007 "Brits Off Broadway" festival, where Linklater saw his performance and then cast McKay as Welles, retaining him over the subsequent objections of the project's producer.
Me and Orson Welles underwent filming in the Isle of Man, Pinewood Studios, London and New York from February to April 2008. Filming in London commenced first in mid-February, before scenes in the Isle of Man were shot February 24–March 14, 2008, where filming locations included Gaiety Theatre and various other parts of Douglas. During filming in Douglas, Efron and Danes believe they sighted a ghost, or "supernatural" being, outside a window on set at Gaiety Theatre.
Filming in Britain resumed in late March for six weeks at Pinewood Studios. Other locations included Crystal Palace Park, where a façade of New York's Mercury Theatre was set up for a scene. Actor James Tupper claimed that the best replica of an old New York theater was in England, while many of the actors who filled the company were from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The production crew only briefly visited New York; photographs were taken and footage shot to be added into the film as digital effects. Every exterior shot was filmed on a single street built at Pinewood Studios with a green screen at one end; different angles and slightly altered set designs were used between shots to make the street appear different each time.
Release
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's résumé and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4–13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal.
Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost.
It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009.
The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one of the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future."
Reception
Box office
During its theatrical release (November 25, 2009 – February 25, 2010), Me and Orson Welles grossed a total of $1,190,003 in the United States and $2,336,172 worldwide.
Critical response
The film has received positive reviews from critics. It currently holds an 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 156 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Me and Orson Welles boasts a breakout performance by Christian McKay and an infectious love of the backstage drama that overcomes its sometimes fluffy tone." It holds a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic from 30 critics.
Film critic Roger Ebert called Me and Orson Welles "one of the best movies about the theater I've ever seen ... not only entertaining but an invaluable companion to the life and career of the Great Man". Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film for its "terrific acting" and called it "a must for lovers and students of the theater". Variety magazine's Todd McCarthy labelled McKay's performance "an extraordinary impersonation" of Welles, though he wrote that "Efron never feels like a proper fit for Richard". Karen Durbin of The New York Times praised McKay in the Welles role, saying he brought "a watchful, assessing and subtly excited gaze that makes him thrilling and a little dangerous."
"I've never seen a backstage movie that was truer to the experience of putting on a show," wrote Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout, who reserved special praise for the design team's recreation of Welles's production of Julius Caesar:
Like most Welles stage shows, alas, this one left few traces. No part of the production was filmed, and nothing else survives but the design sketches and some still photographs taken in 1937. ... What makes Me and Orson Welles uniquely interesting to scholars of American drama is that Mr. Linklater's design team found the Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man. This house closely resembles the old Comedy Theatre on 41st Street, which was torn down five years after Julius Caesar opened there. Using Samuel Leve's original designs, they reconstructed the set for Julius Caesar on the Gaiety's stage. Then Mr. Linklater filmed some 15 minutes' worth of scenes from the play, lit according to Jean Rosenthal's plot, accompanied by Marc Blitzstein's original incidental music and staged in a style as close to that of the 1937 production as is now possible.
Teachout wrote that he "was floored by the verisimilitude of the results", and that "you will never get any closer to the Welles Julius Caesar than by watching Me and Orson Welles, whose DVD version also includes a special feature comprising footage of the reconstructed scenes, not all of which made the final cut."
In 2015, Mercury actor Norman Lloyd (who is portrayed by Leo Bill in the film) praised Christian McKay's performance as Orson Welles as "the best rendition of him I've ever seen." However, he otherwise "hated" the film and he criticized the accuracy of the characters: "It bears no relation to truth, or to what happened when you worked with Orson and so forth. I thought McKay was very good, but the rest of the characters are just ridiculous. They're all made up! I didn't even recognize myself ... and then I thought, Well, thank goodness I can't!" Lloyd named George Coulouris as an example, who was shown as "neurotic and afraid to do his scene", while in reality he was someone "you couldn't stop from acting, for Christ's sake!".
Accolades
Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of 2009 by the National Board of Review. It was listed as one of the year's top ten films by critics including Philip French of The Observer, David Denby of The New Yorker, and Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott of At the Movies.
The film earned two awards from the Austin Film Critics Association – the Austin Film Award to director Richard Linklater. and the Breakthrough Artist Award to Christian McKay. McKay received many accolades for his portrayal of Orson Welles, including Best Supporting Actor awards from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Utah Film Critics Association. He received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actor nominations from the Boston Society of Film Critics (second place), Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, Denver Film Critics Society, Detroit Film Critics Society, Houston Film Critics Society, International Cinephile Society, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle (second place), Online Film & Television Association, Toronto Film Critics Association, and in the Chlotrudis Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and the Village Voice Film Poll (second place). McKay was nominated in the Best Actor category in the Evening Standard British Film Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards and 2009 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards.
Home media
On August 17, 2010, Warner released Me and Orson Welles on DVD () for exclusive sale at Target in the United States. Entertainment One Films released the DVD in Canada on the same date. The film has not been released on Blu-ray in the U.S., though it is available in the format in Italy and Germany.
Soundtrack
The original motion picture soundtrack for Me and Orson Welles was released on CD November 24, 2009, by Decca Records (5323762).
"This Year's Kisses", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"I'm Shooting High", Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra
"Sing, Sing, Sing", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"One O'Clock Jump", Count Basie and His Orchestra
"Ode to Krupa", Michael J McEvoy
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Christian McKay
"Let Yourself Go", Ginger Rogers
"Solitude", The Mills Brothers
"Aftershow Jam", Michael J McEvoy featuring Huw Morgan on trumpet
"They Can't Take That Away from Me", Fred Astaire
"In a Sentimental Mood" (Instrumental), Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"The Music Goes Round and Round", Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven
"I Surrender Dear", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"You Made Me Love You", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Have You Met Miss Jones?", James Langton and His Solid Senders
"Sing, Sing, Sing", James Langton and His Solid Senders
References
External links
Interview with Arthur Anderson
2008 films
2000s comedy-drama films
British films
British comedy-drama films
American comedy-drama films
2000s English-language films
Films directed by Richard Linklater
Films about Orson Welles
Films based on American novels
Films set in 1937
Films set in New York City
Films shot in England
Films about actors
Films about theatre
American films
Julius Caesar (play)
Films shot in the Isle of Man
2008 comedy films
2008 drama films
| false |
[
"Me and Orson Welles is a 2008 period drama film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the story, set in 1937 New York, tells of a teenager hired to perform in Orson Welles's groundbreaking stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar who becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.\n\nThe film was shot in London and New York and on the Isle of Man in February, March and April 2008, and was released in the United States on November 25, 2009, and the United Kingdom on December 4, 2009.\n\nMcKay's portrayal of Welles was recognized with a multitude of accolades, and Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of the year by the National Board of Review.\n\nPlot\nIn New York City in the fall of 1937, 17-year-old high-school student Richard Samuels meets Orson Welles, who unexpectedly offers him the role of Lucius in Caesar, the first production of his new Mercury Theatre repertory company. The company is immersed in rehearsals at its Broadway theater. Charmed by Welles, Richard learns that he is having an affair with the leading actress while his wife is pregnant. Richard finds ambitious production assistant Sonja Jones is attracted to him.\n\nWelles tells Richard a few days before the premiere that he is worried, because he has recently had nothing but good luck; he fears that he will finally have bad luck with the premiere, and that the play will be a flop. During rehearsals Richard accidentally sets off the sprinkler system, soaking the entire theatre. When accused by Welles he denies having anything to do with the deluge, and suggests that the catastrophe was the bad luck that Welles needed to get out of the way.\n\nWelles decides the entire production crew would benefit from a coupling game, and Richard cheats to ensure he is paired with Sonja. Richard spends the night with Sonja, but becomes jealous when she spends the next night with Welles. He confronts Welles, mentions his pregnant wife, and is fired. An apparent reconciliation follows, and Richard performs on the first night. The anti-fascist adaptation of Caesar is a huge success, but after the premiere, Richard is told that Welles only needed him in order to secure a successful first-night production and, that done, he has again been fired.\n\nThe broken-hearted but wiser Richard spontaneously recites lines from Julius Caesar in his high school English class, to his classmates' applause. He later meets up with a likely new girlfriend, Gretta Adler, a young aspiring playwright whom he met in a music store at the film's beginning. With Richard's and Sonja's assistance, Adler manages to get a story published in The New Yorker, and she invites Richard out, to help her celebrate.\n\nCast\n\n Zac Efron as Richard Samuels\n Christian McKay as Orson Welles\n Claire Danes as Sonja Jones\n Ben Chaplin as George Coulouris\n James Tupper as Joseph Cotten\n Eddie Marsan as John Houseman\n Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd\n Kelly Reilly as Muriel Brassler\n Patrick Kennedy as Grover Burgess\n Travis Oliver as John Hoyt\n Zoe Kazan as Gretta Adler\n Al Weaver as Sam Leve\n Saskia Reeves as Barbara Luddy\n Imogen Poots as Lorelei Lathrop\n Rhodri Orders as Stefan Schnabel\n Michael Brandon as Les Tremayne\n Janie Dee as Mrs Samuels\n\nProduction\n\nHolly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr. adapted the film's screenplay from Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name about a teenager (in reality, the 15-year-old Arthur Anderson, who played Lucius in Welles' production) involved in the founding of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. After receiving funding from CinemaNX, a production company backed by the Isle of Man film fund, and an offer from Framestore Features to co-finance the film, Richard Linklater came on board to direct Me and Orson Welles. Zac Efron signed on as the lead in early January 2008, claiming he decided to take the role of Richard Samuels because \"It's a completely different project than I've ever done before,\" while Claire Danes joined the cast as the protagonist's love interest Sonja Jones in late January.\n\nIn the theatre, Christian McKay had portrayed Orson Welles in the one-man play Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles at a number of venues, including the Edinburgh Festival and King's Head (London). He reprised the role in the U.S. at the 2007 \"Brits Off Broadway\" festival, where Linklater saw his performance and then cast McKay as Welles, retaining him over the subsequent objections of the project's producer.\n\nMe and Orson Welles underwent filming in the Isle of Man, Pinewood Studios, London and New York from February to April 2008. Filming in London commenced first in mid-February, before scenes in the Isle of Man were shot February 24–March 14, 2008, where filming locations included Gaiety Theatre and various other parts of Douglas. During filming in Douglas, Efron and Danes believe they sighted a ghost, or \"supernatural\" being, outside a window on set at Gaiety Theatre.\n\nFilming in Britain resumed in late March for six weeks at Pinewood Studios. Other locations included Crystal Palace Park, where a façade of New York's Mercury Theatre was set up for a scene. Actor James Tupper claimed that the best replica of an old New York theater was in England, while many of the actors who filled the company were from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The production crew only briefly visited New York; photographs were taken and footage shot to be added into the film as digital effects. Every exterior shot was filmed on a single street built at Pinewood Studios with a green screen at one end; different angles and slightly altered set designs were used between shots to make the street appear different each time.\n\nRelease\nSelect footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's résumé and Efron's teen \"heartthrob\" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4–13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be \"one of the hottest films\" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of \"only a few lucky winners\" to secure a seven-figure deal.\n\nAgain, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost.\n\nIt was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009.\n\nThe film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, \"The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one of the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future.\"\n\nReception\n\nBox office\nDuring its theatrical release (November 25, 2009 – February 25, 2010), Me and Orson Welles grossed a total of $1,190,003 in the United States and $2,336,172 worldwide.\n\nCritical response\nThe film has received positive reviews from critics. It currently holds an 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 156 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, \"Me and Orson Welles boasts a breakout performance by Christian McKay and an infectious love of the backstage drama that overcomes its sometimes fluffy tone.\" It holds a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic from 30 critics.\n\nFilm critic Roger Ebert called Me and Orson Welles \"one of the best movies about the theater I've ever seen ... not only entertaining but an invaluable companion to the life and career of the Great Man\". Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film for its \"terrific acting\" and called it \"a must for lovers and students of the theater\". Variety magazine's Todd McCarthy labelled McKay's performance \"an extraordinary impersonation\" of Welles, though he wrote that \"Efron never feels like a proper fit for Richard\". Karen Durbin of The New York Times praised McKay in the Welles role, saying he brought \"a watchful, assessing and subtly excited gaze that makes him thrilling and a little dangerous.\"\n\n\"I've never seen a backstage movie that was truer to the experience of putting on a show,\" wrote Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout, who reserved special praise for the design team's recreation of Welles's production of Julius Caesar:\n\nLike most Welles stage shows, alas, this one left few traces. No part of the production was filmed, and nothing else survives but the design sketches and some still photographs taken in 1937. ... What makes Me and Orson Welles uniquely interesting to scholars of American drama is that Mr. Linklater's design team found the Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man. This house closely resembles the old Comedy Theatre on 41st Street, which was torn down five years after Julius Caesar opened there. Using Samuel Leve's original designs, they reconstructed the set for Julius Caesar on the Gaiety's stage. Then Mr. Linklater filmed some 15 minutes' worth of scenes from the play, lit according to Jean Rosenthal's plot, accompanied by Marc Blitzstein's original incidental music and staged in a style as close to that of the 1937 production as is now possible.\n\nTeachout wrote that he \"was floored by the verisimilitude of the results\", and that \"you will never get any closer to the Welles Julius Caesar than by watching Me and Orson Welles, whose DVD version also includes a special feature comprising footage of the reconstructed scenes, not all of which made the final cut.\"\n\nIn 2015, Mercury actor Norman Lloyd (who is portrayed by Leo Bill in the film) praised Christian McKay's performance as Orson Welles as \"the best rendition of him I've ever seen.\" However, he otherwise \"hated\" the film and he criticized the accuracy of the characters: \"It bears no relation to truth, or to what happened when you worked with Orson and so forth. I thought McKay was very good, but the rest of the characters are just ridiculous. They're all made up! I didn't even recognize myself ... and then I thought, Well, thank goodness I can't!\" Lloyd named George Coulouris as an example, who was shown as \"neurotic and afraid to do his scene\", while in reality he was someone \"you couldn't stop from acting, for Christ's sake!\".\n\nAccolades\nMe and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of 2009 by the National Board of Review. It was listed as one of the year's top ten films by critics including Philip French of The Observer, David Denby of The New Yorker, and Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott of At the Movies.\n\nThe film earned two awards from the Austin Film Critics Association – the Austin Film Award to director Richard Linklater. and the Breakthrough Artist Award to Christian McKay. McKay received many accolades for his portrayal of Orson Welles, including Best Supporting Actor awards from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Utah Film Critics Association. He received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actor nominations from the Boston Society of Film Critics (second place), Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, Denver Film Critics Society, Detroit Film Critics Society, Houston Film Critics Society, International Cinephile Society, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle (second place), Online Film & Television Association, Toronto Film Critics Association, and in the Chlotrudis Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and the Village Voice Film Poll (second place). McKay was nominated in the Best Actor category in the Evening Standard British Film Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards and 2009 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards.\n\nHome media\nOn August 17, 2010, Warner released Me and Orson Welles on DVD () for exclusive sale at Target in the United States. Entertainment One Films released the DVD in Canada on the same date. The film has not been released on Blu-ray in the U.S., though it is available in the format in Italy and Germany.\n\nSoundtrack\nThe original motion picture soundtrack for Me and Orson Welles was released on CD November 24, 2009, by Decca Records (5323762).\n \"This Year's Kisses\", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra\n \"I'm Shooting High\", Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra\n \"Sing, Sing, Sing\", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra\n \"One O'Clock Jump\", Count Basie and His Orchestra\n \"Ode to Krupa\", Michael J McEvoy\n \"Let's Pretend There's a Moon\", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader\n \"Let's Pretend There's a Moon\", Christian McKay\n \"Let Yourself Go\", Ginger Rogers\n \"Solitude\", The Mills Brothers\n \"Aftershow Jam\", Michael J McEvoy featuring Huw Morgan on trumpet\n \"They Can't Take That Away from Me\", Fred Astaire\n \"In a Sentimental Mood\" (Instrumental), Benny Goodman and His Orchestra\n \"The Music Goes Round and Round\", Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven\n \"I Surrender Dear\", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader\n \"You Made Me Love You\", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader\n \"Have You Met Miss Jones?\", James Langton and His Solid Senders\n \"Sing, Sing, Sing\", James Langton and His Solid Senders\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n \n \n Interview with Arthur Anderson\n\n2008 films\n2000s comedy-drama films\nBritish films\nBritish comedy-drama films\nAmerican comedy-drama films\n2000s English-language films\nFilms directed by Richard Linklater\nFilms about Orson Welles\nFilms based on American novels\nFilms set in 1937\nFilms set in New York City\nFilms shot in England\nFilms about actors\nFilms about theatre\nAmerican films\nJulius Caesar (play)\nFilms shot in the Isle of Man\n2008 comedy films\n2008 drama films",
"Orson Welles' Magic Show is an unfinished television special by Orson Welles, filmed between 1976 and 1985. In it, Welles performs various magic tricks for the camera, promising that no trick photography is used.\n\nWelles had a lifelong interest in magic, having been taught his first magic tricks by Harry Houdini in the 1920s, when Welles was still a boy. He had already demonstrated his magic tricks in a number of films and television programmes including Follow the Boys (1944), Magic Trick (1953), Casino Royale (1967), and on his own unsuccessful 1979 pilot for The Orson Welles Show.\n\nAfter Orson Welles' death in 1985, all of his unfinished films were bequeathed to his long-term companion and mistress Oja Kodar, and she in turn donated many of them (including Orson Welles' Magic Show) to the Munich Film Museum for preservation and restoration. In 2000 the Munich Film Museum then edited together the complete footage into a 27-minute cut, which has subsequently been screened at numerous film festivals. \n\nThe restored footage has never been released on video or DVD.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\n1970s unfinished films\n1980s unfinished films\nUnfinished films\nUnreleased American films\nFilms directed by Orson Welles"
] |
[
"Me and Orson Welles",
"Release",
"What month was this film released in theaters?",
"The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009,",
"What were critics reviews of this film?",
"Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008.",
"Did Me and Orson Welles get a DVD release?",
"I don't know."
] |
C_6b221c9714634babbef87322a8377048_0
|
How much money did Me and Orson Welles make at the box office?
| 4 |
How much money did Me and Orson Welles make at the box office?
|
Me and Orson Welles
|
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's resume and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal. Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost. It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009. The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future." CANNOTANSWER
|
IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters,
|
Me and Orson Welles is a 2008 period drama film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the story, set in 1937 New York, tells of a teenager hired to perform in Orson Welles's groundbreaking stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar who becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.
The film was shot in London and New York and on the Isle of Man in February, March and April 2008, and was released in the United States on November 25, 2009, and the United Kingdom on December 4, 2009.
McKay's portrayal of Welles was recognized with a multitude of accolades, and Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of the year by the National Board of Review.
Plot
In New York City in the fall of 1937, 17-year-old high-school student Richard Samuels meets Orson Welles, who unexpectedly offers him the role of Lucius in Caesar, the first production of his new Mercury Theatre repertory company. The company is immersed in rehearsals at its Broadway theater. Charmed by Welles, Richard learns that he is having an affair with the leading actress while his wife is pregnant. Richard finds ambitious production assistant Sonja Jones is attracted to him.
Welles tells Richard a few days before the premiere that he is worried, because he has recently had nothing but good luck; he fears that he will finally have bad luck with the premiere, and that the play will be a flop. During rehearsals Richard accidentally sets off the sprinkler system, soaking the entire theatre. When accused by Welles he denies having anything to do with the deluge, and suggests that the catastrophe was the bad luck that Welles needed to get out of the way.
Welles decides the entire production crew would benefit from a coupling game, and Richard cheats to ensure he is paired with Sonja. Richard spends the night with Sonja, but becomes jealous when she spends the next night with Welles. He confronts Welles, mentions his pregnant wife, and is fired. An apparent reconciliation follows, and Richard performs on the first night. The anti-fascist adaptation of Caesar is a huge success, but after the premiere, Richard is told that Welles only needed him in order to secure a successful first-night production and, that done, he has again been fired.
The broken-hearted but wiser Richard spontaneously recites lines from Julius Caesar in his high school English class, to his classmates' applause. He later meets up with a likely new girlfriend, Gretta Adler, a young aspiring playwright whom he met in a music store at the film's beginning. With Richard's and Sonja's assistance, Adler manages to get a story published in The New Yorker, and she invites Richard out, to help her celebrate.
Cast
Zac Efron as Richard Samuels
Christian McKay as Orson Welles
Claire Danes as Sonja Jones
Ben Chaplin as George Coulouris
James Tupper as Joseph Cotten
Eddie Marsan as John Houseman
Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd
Kelly Reilly as Muriel Brassler
Patrick Kennedy as Grover Burgess
Travis Oliver as John Hoyt
Zoe Kazan as Gretta Adler
Al Weaver as Sam Leve
Saskia Reeves as Barbara Luddy
Imogen Poots as Lorelei Lathrop
Rhodri Orders as Stefan Schnabel
Michael Brandon as Les Tremayne
Janie Dee as Mrs Samuels
Production
Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr. adapted the film's screenplay from Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name about a teenager (in reality, the 15-year-old Arthur Anderson, who played Lucius in Welles' production) involved in the founding of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. After receiving funding from CinemaNX, a production company backed by the Isle of Man film fund, and an offer from Framestore Features to co-finance the film, Richard Linklater came on board to direct Me and Orson Welles. Zac Efron signed on as the lead in early January 2008, claiming he decided to take the role of Richard Samuels because "It's a completely different project than I've ever done before," while Claire Danes joined the cast as the protagonist's love interest Sonja Jones in late January.
In the theatre, Christian McKay had portrayed Orson Welles in the one-man play Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles at a number of venues, including the Edinburgh Festival and King's Head (London). He reprised the role in the U.S. at the 2007 "Brits Off Broadway" festival, where Linklater saw his performance and then cast McKay as Welles, retaining him over the subsequent objections of the project's producer.
Me and Orson Welles underwent filming in the Isle of Man, Pinewood Studios, London and New York from February to April 2008. Filming in London commenced first in mid-February, before scenes in the Isle of Man were shot February 24–March 14, 2008, where filming locations included Gaiety Theatre and various other parts of Douglas. During filming in Douglas, Efron and Danes believe they sighted a ghost, or "supernatural" being, outside a window on set at Gaiety Theatre.
Filming in Britain resumed in late March for six weeks at Pinewood Studios. Other locations included Crystal Palace Park, where a façade of New York's Mercury Theatre was set up for a scene. Actor James Tupper claimed that the best replica of an old New York theater was in England, while many of the actors who filled the company were from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The production crew only briefly visited New York; photographs were taken and footage shot to be added into the film as digital effects. Every exterior shot was filmed on a single street built at Pinewood Studios with a green screen at one end; different angles and slightly altered set designs were used between shots to make the street appear different each time.
Release
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's résumé and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4–13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal.
Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost.
It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009.
The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one of the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future."
Reception
Box office
During its theatrical release (November 25, 2009 – February 25, 2010), Me and Orson Welles grossed a total of $1,190,003 in the United States and $2,336,172 worldwide.
Critical response
The film has received positive reviews from critics. It currently holds an 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 156 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Me and Orson Welles boasts a breakout performance by Christian McKay and an infectious love of the backstage drama that overcomes its sometimes fluffy tone." It holds a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic from 30 critics.
Film critic Roger Ebert called Me and Orson Welles "one of the best movies about the theater I've ever seen ... not only entertaining but an invaluable companion to the life and career of the Great Man". Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film for its "terrific acting" and called it "a must for lovers and students of the theater". Variety magazine's Todd McCarthy labelled McKay's performance "an extraordinary impersonation" of Welles, though he wrote that "Efron never feels like a proper fit for Richard". Karen Durbin of The New York Times praised McKay in the Welles role, saying he brought "a watchful, assessing and subtly excited gaze that makes him thrilling and a little dangerous."
"I've never seen a backstage movie that was truer to the experience of putting on a show," wrote Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout, who reserved special praise for the design team's recreation of Welles's production of Julius Caesar:
Like most Welles stage shows, alas, this one left few traces. No part of the production was filmed, and nothing else survives but the design sketches and some still photographs taken in 1937. ... What makes Me and Orson Welles uniquely interesting to scholars of American drama is that Mr. Linklater's design team found the Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man. This house closely resembles the old Comedy Theatre on 41st Street, which was torn down five years after Julius Caesar opened there. Using Samuel Leve's original designs, they reconstructed the set for Julius Caesar on the Gaiety's stage. Then Mr. Linklater filmed some 15 minutes' worth of scenes from the play, lit according to Jean Rosenthal's plot, accompanied by Marc Blitzstein's original incidental music and staged in a style as close to that of the 1937 production as is now possible.
Teachout wrote that he "was floored by the verisimilitude of the results", and that "you will never get any closer to the Welles Julius Caesar than by watching Me and Orson Welles, whose DVD version also includes a special feature comprising footage of the reconstructed scenes, not all of which made the final cut."
In 2015, Mercury actor Norman Lloyd (who is portrayed by Leo Bill in the film) praised Christian McKay's performance as Orson Welles as "the best rendition of him I've ever seen." However, he otherwise "hated" the film and he criticized the accuracy of the characters: "It bears no relation to truth, or to what happened when you worked with Orson and so forth. I thought McKay was very good, but the rest of the characters are just ridiculous. They're all made up! I didn't even recognize myself ... and then I thought, Well, thank goodness I can't!" Lloyd named George Coulouris as an example, who was shown as "neurotic and afraid to do his scene", while in reality he was someone "you couldn't stop from acting, for Christ's sake!".
Accolades
Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of 2009 by the National Board of Review. It was listed as one of the year's top ten films by critics including Philip French of The Observer, David Denby of The New Yorker, and Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott of At the Movies.
The film earned two awards from the Austin Film Critics Association – the Austin Film Award to director Richard Linklater. and the Breakthrough Artist Award to Christian McKay. McKay received many accolades for his portrayal of Orson Welles, including Best Supporting Actor awards from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Utah Film Critics Association. He received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actor nominations from the Boston Society of Film Critics (second place), Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, Denver Film Critics Society, Detroit Film Critics Society, Houston Film Critics Society, International Cinephile Society, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle (second place), Online Film & Television Association, Toronto Film Critics Association, and in the Chlotrudis Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and the Village Voice Film Poll (second place). McKay was nominated in the Best Actor category in the Evening Standard British Film Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards and 2009 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards.
Home media
On August 17, 2010, Warner released Me and Orson Welles on DVD () for exclusive sale at Target in the United States. Entertainment One Films released the DVD in Canada on the same date. The film has not been released on Blu-ray in the U.S., though it is available in the format in Italy and Germany.
Soundtrack
The original motion picture soundtrack for Me and Orson Welles was released on CD November 24, 2009, by Decca Records (5323762).
"This Year's Kisses", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"I'm Shooting High", Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra
"Sing, Sing, Sing", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"One O'Clock Jump", Count Basie and His Orchestra
"Ode to Krupa", Michael J McEvoy
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Christian McKay
"Let Yourself Go", Ginger Rogers
"Solitude", The Mills Brothers
"Aftershow Jam", Michael J McEvoy featuring Huw Morgan on trumpet
"They Can't Take That Away from Me", Fred Astaire
"In a Sentimental Mood" (Instrumental), Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"The Music Goes Round and Round", Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven
"I Surrender Dear", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"You Made Me Love You", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Have You Met Miss Jones?", James Langton and His Solid Senders
"Sing, Sing, Sing", James Langton and His Solid Senders
References
External links
Interview with Arthur Anderson
2008 films
2000s comedy-drama films
British films
British comedy-drama films
American comedy-drama films
2000s English-language films
Films directed by Richard Linklater
Films about Orson Welles
Films based on American novels
Films set in 1937
Films set in New York City
Films shot in England
Films about actors
Films about theatre
American films
Julius Caesar (play)
Films shot in the Isle of Man
2008 comedy films
2008 drama films
| true |
[
"This is Orson Welles is a 1992 book by Orson Welles (1915–1985) and Peter Bogdanovich that comprises conversations between the two filmmakers recorded over several years, beginning in 1969. The wide-ranging volume encompasses Welles's life and his own stage, radio, and film work as well as his insights on the work of others. The interview book was transcribed by Bogdanovich after Welles's death, at the request of Welles's longtime companion and professional collaborator, Oja Kodar.\n\nIn addition to more than 300 pages of interviews, the book includes an annotated chronology of Welles's career, a summary of the alterations made in Welles's 1942 masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, and notes on each chapter by film scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum, who edited the volume.\n\nA second edition of This is Orson Welles was published in paperback in 1998, with a new introduction by Bogdanovich and excerpts of a 58-page memo Welles wrote Universal Pictures about the editing of his 1958 film Touch of Evil. The memo was used to create a director's cut of the film released in 1998.\n\nThe 1992 audiobook version of This is Orson Welles was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album.\n\nOrigin\nIn 1961 Peter Bogdanovich organized a retrospective of Orson Welles's films, the first in the United States, for the Museum of Modern Art. Welles was not able to attend — he was in Europe, preparing a film — but he did read the monograph Bogdanovich had written to accompany the screening and was favorably impressed by it. In 1968 Welles phoned Bogdanovich to invite him for coffee at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Over the space of two hours the two filmmakers found themselves completely at ease with each other. As they left the restaurant, Welles flipped through the pages of a book Bogdanovich had just written about John Ford, Welles's favorite director; Bogdanovich had brought a copy as a gift, since Welles was quoted in its pages. \"Isn't it too bad,\" Welles said, \"that you can't do a nice little book like this about me.\" They decided to do a book of interviews together.\n\n\"Of course it was Welles who suggested the shape of 'the book,' as we called it — we never did arrive at a title we both liked,\" Bogdanovich wrote. Recorded at intervals in the United States, Mexico and Europe, the interviews were not to be forced into the chronological order of Welles's life. Welles felt they should be more loosely organized, like their conversations. Bogdanovich transcribed the reel-to-reel tapes, organized the interviews into a chapter, and mailed the typed copy to Welles. Months later, Bogdanovich would get the chapter back from Welles, revised and sometimes rewritten. Some chapters were revised two or three times in this manner.\n\nIn 1974, Orson Welles cast Bogdanovich in the role of Brooks Otterlake, a successful director, in the unreleased film The Other Side of the Wind. Welles filmed partly in Bogdanovich's Bel Air home, where Welles and actress Oja Kodar lived off and on for two years. Work on the book continued intermittently through 1975; later in the 1970s the two directors \"drifted apart a bit,\" Bogdanovich later wrote.\n\nFor a time, the book was put on hold by Welles when he received a separate offer of $250,000 to write his memoirs. \"He had no choice but to agree,\" Bogdanovich wrote. \"This was OK with me; it was his life and one of the few ways he had of getting money to pay not only for his family's expenses, but also for the real work he was doing — his many directing projects.\" Then, Bogdanovich wrote, the book was literally lost for five years:\n\nOrson never did write his memoirs. Eventually, when he asked what had become of our book, it was lost somewhere in the depths of a storage facility while I was going through a personal and financial crisis (leading to bankruptcy and a kind of general breakdown in the summer of 1985, just a few months before Orson died). During one phone conversation he had said he hoped I wouldn't \"just publish\" the book after he was dead — implying that I knew where it was and was just hanging on to it. That upset me and so when we finally could get back into storage, and the boxes turned up, I sent all of them over to Orson — not keeping copies of anything — with a note saying, in effect, it was his life, and here it was for him to do as he saw fit. Orson called me as soon as he got it —he was very touched, he said, and thanked me profusely. He went on to explain that there wasn't much he could leave to Oja, and if anything happened to him, he was planning to will the book to her.\"\n\nAfter Welles died in October 1985, Oja Kodar asked Bogdanovich to help prepare the book for publication. He transcribed the materials, resulting in 1,400 pages that were then edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum into the 300 pages of interviews in the book.\n\nReception\n\nReviews and commentary\n Todd McCarthy, Variety — The book in question, which is based on hours of conversation between Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, is one I have been eagerly awaiting for fully 20 years, since Bogdanovich first told me about it on the set of Paper Moon. … The extravagantly rich result represents as detailed a reading of Welles' view of his own screen career as I could ever hope for. … The publisher, HarperCollins, has simultaneously released a four-pack volume of audio cassettes under the same title that includes four hours of the Welles–Bogdanovich interview. Some of the material overlaps, but much of it is different from what can be found in the book. And, in any event, it is great just to hear Welles telling these revealing stories himself, in his deep voice and with his infectious laugh.\n Michael Dwyer, The Irish Times — A lively, entertaining and fascinating collection of conversations between Welles and the critic turned director, Peter Bogdanovich, who initiated the project partly to redress the balance after \"three very damaging books\" about Welles appeared in the late 1960s. … This is the best book of its kind since François Truffaut's classic book of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock.\n The Observer — The creation of this book was itself uncannily like a Welles film: created in fragments, abandoned, then lost, then finally restored by another hand. Welles was always his own shrewdest, most lacerating analyst, as well as his most grandiloquent yarn spinner, and this is a wonderfully eloquent, elegiac book, a meditation on a 'failed' career worth dozens of orthodox successes.\n\nAwards\n The 1992 audiobook version of This is Orson Welles was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album.\n\nReferences\n\n1992 non-fiction books\nBooks about film\nWorks by Orson Welles\nBooks by Peter Bogdanovich\nHarperCollins books\nBooks of interviews",
"This is a bibliography of books by or about the director and actor Orson Welles.\n\nBooks by Orson Welles\n\nShakespeare studies\n Hill, Roger and Welles, Orson (eds.). Everybody's Shakespeare. Woodstock, Illinois: Todd Press, 1934. (omnibus volume and three separate volumes, with abridged and annotated scripts of The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar and Twelfth Night)\n Welles, Orson, and Hill, Roger (eds.). The Mercury Shakespeare. New York: Harper & Row, 1939. (revised version of the above; omnibus volume and three separate volumes, with abridged and annotated scripts of The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar and Twelfth Night)\n Welles, Orson, and Hill, Roger (eds.). The Mercury Shakespeare: Macbeth. New York: Harper & Row, 1941.\n\nScripts and screenplays\n\nPlays\n Welles, Orson. Miracle à Hollywood, et À Bon Entendeur. Paris: Gallimard, 1952. (two plays, [The Unthinking Lobster, and Fair Warning], only published in French)\n Welles, Orson. Moby Dick—Rehearsed. London: Samuel French, Inc., 1965. (play).\n France, Richard (ed.), Welles, Orson. Orson Welles on Shakespeare: The W.P.A. and Mercury Theatre Playscripts. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990. (scripts of 1930s Welles abridgments of Macbeth, Julius Caesar and Five Kings)\n Tarbox, Todd (ed.); Hill, Roger and Welles, Orson. Marching Song: A Play. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. (first publication of an unperformed play, written in 1932)\n\nRadio plays\n Welles, Orson. His Honor—The Mayor. New York: The Free Company, 1941. (script of radio play broadcast April 6, 1941)\n\nScreenplays\n Fry, Nicholas (ed.), Welles, Orson. The Trial. London: Lorrimer, 1970. (screenplay, first published in French by l’Avant scene du cinema in 1963)\nKael, Pauline, Mankiewicz, Herman J. and Welles, Orson. The Citizen Kane Book. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971. (screenplay prefaced by Kael's essay \"Raising Kane\")\n Comito, Terry (ed.), Welles, Orson. Touch of Evil. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1985 (screenplay).\n Pepper, James and Rosenbaum, Jonathan (eds.), Welles, Orson, and Kodar, Oja. The Big Brass Ring. Santa Barbara, California: Santa Teresa Press, 1987. (unproduced screenplay)\n Gellert Lyons, Bridget (ed.) Welles, Orson. Chimes at Midnight. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1988. (screenplay)\n Pepper, James and Rosenbaum, Jonathan (eds.), Welles, Orson. The Cradle Will Rock. Santa Barbara, California: Santa Teresa Press, 1994. (unproduced screenplay)\n Gosetti, Giorgio (ed.), Welles, Orson and Kodar, Oja. The Other Side of the Wind. Locarno, Switzerland: Cahiers du cinéma/ Locarno Film Festival, 2005. (screenplay of a film which was incomplete at the time of publication - subsequently completed in 2018)\n\nNovels and short stories\n Welles, Orson and others. The Lives of Harry Lime. London: Pocket Books, 1952. (short stories)\n Welles, Orson. Une Grosse Légume. Paris: Gallimard, 1953. (novel ghostwritten by Maurice Bessy, only published in French)\n Welles, Orson. Mr. Arkadin. Paris: Gallimard, 1954. (novel ghostwritten by Maurice Bessy, subsequently translated into English)\n\nInterviews\n Rosenbaum, Jonathan (ed.), Welles, Orson and Bogdanovich, Peter. This is Orson Welles. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. (revised and expanded in 1998)\n Estrin, Mark W. (ed.), Welles, Orson. Orson Welles Interviews. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2002.\n\nConversations\n Tarbox, Todd. Orson Welles and Roger Hill: A Friendship in Three Acts. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media, 2013. \n Biskind, Peter (ed.), Jaglom, Henry. My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles. New York: Metropolitan Books (Henry Holt and Company), 2013.\n\nArtwork\n Welles, Orson. Les Bravades. New York: Workman, 1996. \n Braund, Simon (ed). Orson Welles portfolio: Sketches and drawings from the Welles estate. Titan Books, 2019.\n\nBooks about Orson Welles\n\nBiographies\n Bessy, Maurice. Orson Welles: An investigation into his films and philosophy. Crown, 1971. (abridged translation of French-language biography, first published in Paris in 1963)\n Brady, Frank. Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989. \n Callow, Simon. Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu. London: Jonathan Cape, 1995; New York: Viking, 1996. (biography covering 1915–41)\n __. Orson Welles, Volume 2: Hello Americans. London: Jonathan Cape, 2006; New York: Viking, 2006. (biography covering 1941–47)\n __. Orson Welles, Volume 3: One-Man Band. London: Jonathan Cape, 2015; New York: Viking, 2016. (biography covering 1947–65)\n __. Orson Welles, Volume 4. (forthcoming 2019 biography covering 1965–85)\n Feeney, F. X. Orson Welles: Power, Heart and Soul. Raleigh, North Carolina: The Critical Press, 2015. \n Fowler, Roy Alexander. Orson Welles: A First Biography. London: Pendulum Publications, 1946.\n Heylin, Clinton. Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios. Chicago Review Press, 2005. \n Higham, Charles. Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. \n Leaming, Barbara. Orson Welles. New York: Viking, 1985. \n McBride, Joseph. Orson Welles. Harcourt Brace, 1977.\n McGilligan, Patrick. Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane. New York: HarperCollins, 2015. \n Noble, Peter. The Fabulous Orson Welles. London: Hutchinson and Co., 1956. \n Thomson, David. Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles. New York: Vintage, 1997. \n Valentinetti, Claudio M. Orson Welles. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1980. \n Visdei, Anca. Orson Welles. Éditions de Fallois, 2015. \n Whaley, Bart. Orson Welles: the man who was magic. Ebook, 2011.\n\nStudies of Citizen Kane (1941)\n Berthomé, Jean-Pierre and Thomas, François. Citizen Kane. Paris: Flammarion, 1992. \n Carringer, Robert. The Making of Citizen Kane. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.\n Gottesman, Ronald (ed.). Focus on Citizen Kane. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1971.\n __. Perspectives on Citizen Kane. New York: G.K. Hall/Macmillan, 1996.\n Joxe, Sandra, Citizen Kane, Orson Welles. Paris : Hatier, 1990. \n Kael, Pauline (ed.). The Citizen Kane Book. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1971.\n Lebo, Harlan. Citizen Kane: The Fiftieth Anniversary Album. New York: Doubleday, 1990.\n . Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey. New York: WGI Publishing, 2000.\n . Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2016. \n Merryman, Richard. Mank. The Wit, World and Life of Herman Mankiewicz. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1978.\n Mulvey, Laura. Citizen Kane. London: BFI, 1992.\n Naremore, James (ed.). Orson Welles's Citizen Kane: a Casebook. Oxford University Press, 2004. \n Pizzitola, Louis. Hearst over Hollywood: Power, passion and propaganda in the movies. Columbia University Press, 2002. \n Roy, Jean. Citizen Kane [de] Orson Welles: étude critique. Paris: Nathan, 1989. \n Walsh, John Evangelist. Walking Shadows: Orson Welles, William Randolph Hearst and Citizen Kane. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.\n\nStudies of other individual Welles films\n\nToo Much Johnson (unfinished, 1938)\n Studer, Massimiliano. Alle origini di Quarto potere. Too Much Johnson: il film perduto di Orson Welles. Milano: Mimesis editore, 2018. (about the unfinished film Too Much Johnson). In Italian language\n\nIt's All True (unfinished, 1942)\n Benamou, Catherine L. It's All True: Orson Welles's Pan-American Odyssey. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. (about the unfinished film It's All True)\n\nThe Magnificent Ambersons (1942)\n Carringer, Robert. The Magnificent Ambersons: a Reconstruction. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. \n Perkins, V. F. The Magnificent Ambersons. London: BFI, 1999.\n\nThe Stranger (1946)\n Strobel, Ricarda. Propagandafilm und Melodrama: Untersuchungen zu Alfred Hitchcocks \"Lifeboat\" und Orson Welles' \"The Stranger\". Berlin: Eissenschaftler-verlag, 1984.\n\nOthello (1952)\n Del Ministro, Maurizio. Othello di Welles. Rome: Bulzoni, 2000. (about Othello) \n Mac Liammóir, Micháel. Put Money in Thy Purse: The Making of Orson Welles's Othello. London: Methuen, 1952. (revised edition in 1978)\n\nDon Quixote (unfinished, 1955-73)\n Cobos, Juan, and Esteve Riambau. Don Quijote: páginas del guión cinematográfico de Orson Welles. Madrid: Asociación de Directores de Escena de España, 1992. (about the unfinished film Don Quixote) \n Sciortino, Sigismondo Domenico. Don Chisciotte e il Cinema (dell')Invisibile. Rome: La Camera Verde, 2013. (about the unfinished film Don Quixote)\n\nTouch of Evil (1957)\n Comito, Terry (ed.). Touch of Evil. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1985. (screenplay with literary criticism)\n\nThe Trial (1962)\n Trias, Jean-Phillipe. Le Procès d'Orson Welles. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma / CNDP, 2005. (about The Trial)\n\nChimes at Midnight (1965)\n Gellert Lyons, Bridget (ed.) Welles, Orson. Chimes at Midnight. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1988.\n Riambau, Esteve. Las cosas que hemos visto: Welles y Falstaff. Luces de Gálibo, 2015.\n\nThe Deep (unfinished, 1967-70)\n Kovačić, Duško and Rafaelić Daniel. Orson Welles in Hvar\n\nF for Fake (1973)\n Thieme, Claudia. F for Fake and the Growth in Complexity of Orson Welles' Documentary Form. New York: Peter Lang, 1997.\n\nThe Other Side of the Wind (unfinished, 1970-6; posthumously completed, 2018)\n Gosetti, Giorgio (ed.). The Other Side of the Wind. Locarno, Switzerland: Cahiers du cinéma/ Locarno Film Festival, 2005. \n Karp, Josh. Orson Welles's Last Movie: The Making of The Other Side of the Wind. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2015. \n Yates, Michael. Shoot 'Em Dead: Orson Welles & The Other Side of the Wind. Morrisville, North Carolina: Lulu, 2020.\n\nStudies of multiple Welles films\n Rosenbaum, Jonathan (trans.), Bazin, André. Orson Welles. Harper and Row, 1978.\n Bogdanovich, Peter. The Cinema of Orson Welles. New York: Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art, 1961.\n Cowie, Peter. The Cinema of Orson Welles. Da Capo Press, 1973.\n Drössler, Stefan, (ed.). The Unknown Orson Welles. Munich: Filmmuseum München/belleville Verlag, 2004. (about Welles's unfinished films; text in three languages) \n Garis, Robert. The Films of Orson Welles. Cambridge University Press, 2004.\n Gear, Matthew Asprey. At the End of the Street in the Shadow: Orson Welles and the City. Wallflower Press/Columbia University Press, 2016.\n Gottesman, Ronald (ed.). Focus on Orson Welles. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1976.\n Hel-Guedj, Johan-Frederik. Orson Welles, la règle du faux. Michalon, 1997. \n Higham, Charles. The Films of Orson Welles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970.\n Howard, James. The Complete Films of Orson Welles. Citadel Press, 1991.\n McBride, Joseph. Orson Welles. Da Capo Press, 1996. (heavily revised edition of a 1972 monograph)\n ___. What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? A Portrait of an Independent Career. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2006.\n Nagel, Elsa. L'Art du Mensonge et de la Vérité: Orson Welles, Le Procès et Une Histoire Immortelle. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1997. (about The Trial, The Immortal Story and F for Fake) \n Naremore, James. The Magic World of Orson Welles. Urbana, Chicago and Springfield, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2015. (centennial anniversary edition, first published by Oxford University Press in 1978, revised edition published by Southern Methodist University Press in 1989)\n Rasmussen, Randy. Orson Welles: Six Films, Scene by Scene, New York: McFarland, 2006\n Rippy, Marguerite. Orson Welles and the Unfinished RKO Projects: A Postmodern Perspective. Southern Illinois University Press, 2009.\n\nStudies of Welles's theatre work\n Anderegg, Michael. Orson Welles, Shakespeare and Popular Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.\n France, Richard. The Theatre of Orson Welles. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 1977.\n\nStudies of Welles's radio work\n Cantril, Hadley. The Invasion From Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940. \n Gallop, Alan. The Martians are coming ! The true story of Orson Welles'1938 panic broadcast. Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2011. \n Gosling, John. Waging the War of the Worlds: A history of the 1938 radio broadcast and resulting panic. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2009 (including the original script by Howard Koch) \n Heyer, Paul. The Medium and the Magician: Orson Welles, the Radio Years. Ottawa: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. \n Koch, Howard. The Panic Broadcast: The whole story of Orson Welles ' legendary radio show invasion from Mars. New York: Avon, 1970.\n Schwartz, A. Brad. Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News. New York: Hill & Wang, 2015.\n\nMemoirs prominently featuring Welles\n Anderson, Arthur, An Actor's Odyssey: Orson Welles to Lucky the Leprechaun. Albany: BearManor Media, 2010. . \n Bond, Dorian. Me and Orson Welles: Travelling Europe with a Hollywood Legend. The History press, 2018. \n Castle, William, Step Right Up! I'm Gonna Scare the Pants Off America: Memoirs of a B-Movie Mogul. New York: Putnam, 1992. \n Cotten, Joseph, Vanity will get you somewhere. San Francisco: Mercury House, 1987. \n Everett, Rupert, Red carpets and other bananas skins. Abacus, 2007. \n Feder, Chris Welles. In My Father's Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2009. \n Graver, Gary, with Rausch, Andrew J. Making Movies with Orson Welles; A Memoir. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2008. \n Heston, Charlton. In the Arena: An Autobiography. Simon & Schuster, 1995.\n Gómez, Andrés Vicente. El Sueño Loco [A Crazy Dream] (Ayuntamiento de Malaga, Malaga, 2001). \n Hill, Roger. One man's time and chance: A memoir of eighty years 1895-1975. Woodstock public library, 1977.\n Holiday, Billie with Dufty, William, Lady Sings the Blues. New York: Doubleday, 1956.\n Houseman, John. Run Through: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972. \n ___. Front and Center: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979. \n ___. Final Dress: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.\n ___. Unfinished Business: A Memoir, London: Chatto & Windus, 1986.\n Huston, John. An Open Book. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1980. \n Lindsay-Hogg, Michael. Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York and Points Beyond. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. \n McCambridge, Mercedes. The Quality of Mercy: An autobiography. New York: Time Books, 1981. \n Mac Liammóir, Micháel. All for Hecuba: An Irish Theatrical Biography. Dublin: Branden Books, 1967.\n Tasca di Cuto, Alessandro. 'Un Principe in America''. Sellerio Editore, 2004.; English translation, as ''A Prince in America'''. 2011.\n\nOther\n Orson Welles, Cahiers du cinéma, Éditions de l'Étoile, 1986. \n Anile, Alberto. Orson Welles in Italy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. (English translation of book first published in Italian in 2006)\n Beja, Morris, ed. Perspectives on Orson Welles. G. K. Hall, 1995.\n Berg, Chuck and Erskine, Tom (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Orson Welles. Checkmark Books, 2003.\n Berthomé, Jean-Pierre and Thomas, François. Orson Welles at Work. London: Phaidon, 2008. (English translation of book first published in French in 2006)\n Ciment, Michel. \"Les Enfants Terribles\" in American Film, December 1984. \n Cobos, Juan. Orson Welles: España como obsesión, Editiones de la Filmoteca, Institut de Valencià de Cultura, España, 1993. \n Conrad, Peter. Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life. London: Faber and Faber, 2003.\n D'Angela, Toni (ed.). Nelle terre di Orson Welles. Alessandria: Edizioni Falsopiano, 2004.\n Davies, Anthony. Filming Shakespeare's Plays. Cambridge University Press, 1988.\n Drazin, Charles. In Search of the Third Man. Limelight, 2000.\n Duncan, Paul. Orson Welles: Pocket Essentials. London: Pocket Books, 2000.\n Gilmore, James N. and Gottlieb, Sidney (ed.). Orson Welles in focus: Texts and contexts. Indiana university bloomington, 2018. \n Gosling, John. \"Waging the War of the Worlds\". McFarland & Company, Inc, 2009.\n Greene, Graham. The Third Man. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.\n Hormiga, Gustavo (2002). \"Orsonwelles, a new genus of giant linyphiid spiders (Araneae) from the Hawaiian Islands\". Invertebrate Systematics 16: 369–448.\n Ishaghpour, Youssef. Orson Welles, cinéaste, une caméra visible, éditions de la différence, 2001. (Three volumes) :\n Volume 1 : Mais notre dépendance à l'image est énorme..., 2001.\n Volume 2 : Les films de la période américaine, 2001.\n Volume 3 : Les Films de la période nomade, 2001.\n Jorgens, Jack J. Shakespeare on Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977.\n Müller, Adalberto, Orson Welles: Banda de um homem Só. Azouge, 2015. \n Naremore, James. \"The Trial, the FBI Vs Orson Welles\" in Film comment, vol. 27, n° 1, 22-27, 1991 (about FBI files on Welles)\n Riambau, Esteve. Orson Welles: Un España immortal, Editiones de la Filmoteca, Institut de Valencià de Cultura, España, 1993. \n Ramón, David. La Santa de Orson Welles, D.R. Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, 1991. \n Rosenbaum, Jonathan. \"Orson Welles's Essay Films and Documentary Fictions\", in Placing Movies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.\n _. \"The Battle Over Orson Welles\", in Essential Cinema. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.\n _. \"Orson Welles as Ideological Challenge\" in Movie Wars. A Capella Books, 2000.\n _. Discovering Orson Welles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. \n Shakespeare Bulletin, Volume 23, Number 1, Spring 2005: Special Welles issue.\n Simon, William G., (ed.). \"Special Welles issue\", in: Persistence of Vision: The Journal of the Film Faculty of the City University of New York; Number 7, 1989.\n Simonson, Robert. \"Orson's Shadow Talkback Series Continues May 4 with Welles's Daughter.\" May 3, 2005.\n Taylor, John Russell. Orson Welles: a Celebration. Pavilion, 1986.\n ___. Orson Welles. Pavilion, 1998.\n Thomas, François. \"Orson Welles et le remodelage du texte shakespearien\" in Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare 16 | 1998, 171-182 \n Tonguette, Peter Prescott. Orson Welles Remembered: Interviews With His Actors, Editors, Cinematographers and Magicians. New York: McFarland, 2007. \n Walters, Ben. Welles. London: Haus Publishing, 2004. \n Whaley, Barton. Orson Welles: The Man Who Was Magic, Lybrary.com, 2005. \n White, Rob. The Third Man. London: BFI, 2003.\n Wood, Bret. Orson Welles: a Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1990.\n\nWritten fiction featuring Welles as a character\n\nGraphic novels\nCamus, David and Abadzis, Nick. The Cigar That Fell In Love With a Pipe: Featuring Orson Welles & Rita Hayworth. SelfMadeHero, New York, 2014.\n\nNovellas\n Newman, Kim. Anno Dracula: The Other Side of Midnight. London, 2000. (subsequently integrated into Newman's 2013 novel Johnny Alucard, in a rewritten form)\n\nNovels\n Brown, Robert Dwight. Orson Welles' Lost War of the Worlds Screenplay. New York: Allonymous Books, 2013.\n Chabon, Michael. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. New York: Random House, 2000.\n Ferrario, Davide. Dissolvenza al nero (Fade to Black). Rome, 1994.\n Kaplow, Robert. Me and Orson Welles. San Francisco: MacAdam/Cage, 2003. \n Newman, Kim. Anno Dracula: Dracula Cha Cha Cha. Avon Books, London, 1998.\n _. Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard. Titan, London, 2013.\n\nOperas\n Hagen, Daron Orson Rehearsed. (Unpublished, though libretto included with 2021 CD release) 2018.\n\nPlays\n Druxman, Michael B. Orson Welles: A One-Person Play in Two Acts. Createspace, New York, 2011.\n Pendleton, Austin. Orson's Shadow. Dramatists Play Service, New York, 2006.\n Pettigrew, Joel. Mercury Man: The Last Performance of Orson Welles. (Unpublished) 2018.\n Wollman, Chris. The Sacred Beasts. (Unpublished) 2017.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n The Mercury Shakespeare at HathiTrust (original from the University of Michigan)\n\nBooks about film directors\nBibliographies of people\nWorks by Orson Welles\nBibliographies of American writers\nBibliographies by writer\nbibliography"
] |
[
"Me and Orson Welles",
"Release",
"What month was this film released in theaters?",
"The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009,",
"What were critics reviews of this film?",
"Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008.",
"Did Me and Orson Welles get a DVD release?",
"I don't know.",
"How much money did Me and Orson Welles make at the box office?",
"IndieWIRE reported, \"The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters,"
] |
C_6b221c9714634babbef87322a8377048_0
|
Did Me and Orson Welles go on to get a broader theater release?
| 5 |
Did Me and Orson Welles go on to get a broader theater release?
|
Me and Orson Welles
|
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's resume and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal. Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost. It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009. The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future." CANNOTANSWER
|
in the UK on December 4, 2009.
|
Me and Orson Welles is a 2008 period drama film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the story, set in 1937 New York, tells of a teenager hired to perform in Orson Welles's groundbreaking stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar who becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.
The film was shot in London and New York and on the Isle of Man in February, March and April 2008, and was released in the United States on November 25, 2009, and the United Kingdom on December 4, 2009.
McKay's portrayal of Welles was recognized with a multitude of accolades, and Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of the year by the National Board of Review.
Plot
In New York City in the fall of 1937, 17-year-old high-school student Richard Samuels meets Orson Welles, who unexpectedly offers him the role of Lucius in Caesar, the first production of his new Mercury Theatre repertory company. The company is immersed in rehearsals at its Broadway theater. Charmed by Welles, Richard learns that he is having an affair with the leading actress while his wife is pregnant. Richard finds ambitious production assistant Sonja Jones is attracted to him.
Welles tells Richard a few days before the premiere that he is worried, because he has recently had nothing but good luck; he fears that he will finally have bad luck with the premiere, and that the play will be a flop. During rehearsals Richard accidentally sets off the sprinkler system, soaking the entire theatre. When accused by Welles he denies having anything to do with the deluge, and suggests that the catastrophe was the bad luck that Welles needed to get out of the way.
Welles decides the entire production crew would benefit from a coupling game, and Richard cheats to ensure he is paired with Sonja. Richard spends the night with Sonja, but becomes jealous when she spends the next night with Welles. He confronts Welles, mentions his pregnant wife, and is fired. An apparent reconciliation follows, and Richard performs on the first night. The anti-fascist adaptation of Caesar is a huge success, but after the premiere, Richard is told that Welles only needed him in order to secure a successful first-night production and, that done, he has again been fired.
The broken-hearted but wiser Richard spontaneously recites lines from Julius Caesar in his high school English class, to his classmates' applause. He later meets up with a likely new girlfriend, Gretta Adler, a young aspiring playwright whom he met in a music store at the film's beginning. With Richard's and Sonja's assistance, Adler manages to get a story published in The New Yorker, and she invites Richard out, to help her celebrate.
Cast
Zac Efron as Richard Samuels
Christian McKay as Orson Welles
Claire Danes as Sonja Jones
Ben Chaplin as George Coulouris
James Tupper as Joseph Cotten
Eddie Marsan as John Houseman
Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd
Kelly Reilly as Muriel Brassler
Patrick Kennedy as Grover Burgess
Travis Oliver as John Hoyt
Zoe Kazan as Gretta Adler
Al Weaver as Sam Leve
Saskia Reeves as Barbara Luddy
Imogen Poots as Lorelei Lathrop
Rhodri Orders as Stefan Schnabel
Michael Brandon as Les Tremayne
Janie Dee as Mrs Samuels
Production
Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr. adapted the film's screenplay from Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name about a teenager (in reality, the 15-year-old Arthur Anderson, who played Lucius in Welles' production) involved in the founding of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. After receiving funding from CinemaNX, a production company backed by the Isle of Man film fund, and an offer from Framestore Features to co-finance the film, Richard Linklater came on board to direct Me and Orson Welles. Zac Efron signed on as the lead in early January 2008, claiming he decided to take the role of Richard Samuels because "It's a completely different project than I've ever done before," while Claire Danes joined the cast as the protagonist's love interest Sonja Jones in late January.
In the theatre, Christian McKay had portrayed Orson Welles in the one-man play Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles at a number of venues, including the Edinburgh Festival and King's Head (London). He reprised the role in the U.S. at the 2007 "Brits Off Broadway" festival, where Linklater saw his performance and then cast McKay as Welles, retaining him over the subsequent objections of the project's producer.
Me and Orson Welles underwent filming in the Isle of Man, Pinewood Studios, London and New York from February to April 2008. Filming in London commenced first in mid-February, before scenes in the Isle of Man were shot February 24–March 14, 2008, where filming locations included Gaiety Theatre and various other parts of Douglas. During filming in Douglas, Efron and Danes believe they sighted a ghost, or "supernatural" being, outside a window on set at Gaiety Theatre.
Filming in Britain resumed in late March for six weeks at Pinewood Studios. Other locations included Crystal Palace Park, where a façade of New York's Mercury Theatre was set up for a scene. Actor James Tupper claimed that the best replica of an old New York theater was in England, while many of the actors who filled the company were from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The production crew only briefly visited New York; photographs were taken and footage shot to be added into the film as digital effects. Every exterior shot was filmed on a single street built at Pinewood Studios with a green screen at one end; different angles and slightly altered set designs were used between shots to make the street appear different each time.
Release
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's résumé and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4–13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal.
Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost.
It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009.
The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one of the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future."
Reception
Box office
During its theatrical release (November 25, 2009 – February 25, 2010), Me and Orson Welles grossed a total of $1,190,003 in the United States and $2,336,172 worldwide.
Critical response
The film has received positive reviews from critics. It currently holds an 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 156 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Me and Orson Welles boasts a breakout performance by Christian McKay and an infectious love of the backstage drama that overcomes its sometimes fluffy tone." It holds a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic from 30 critics.
Film critic Roger Ebert called Me and Orson Welles "one of the best movies about the theater I've ever seen ... not only entertaining but an invaluable companion to the life and career of the Great Man". Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film for its "terrific acting" and called it "a must for lovers and students of the theater". Variety magazine's Todd McCarthy labelled McKay's performance "an extraordinary impersonation" of Welles, though he wrote that "Efron never feels like a proper fit for Richard". Karen Durbin of The New York Times praised McKay in the Welles role, saying he brought "a watchful, assessing and subtly excited gaze that makes him thrilling and a little dangerous."
"I've never seen a backstage movie that was truer to the experience of putting on a show," wrote Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout, who reserved special praise for the design team's recreation of Welles's production of Julius Caesar:
Like most Welles stage shows, alas, this one left few traces. No part of the production was filmed, and nothing else survives but the design sketches and some still photographs taken in 1937. ... What makes Me and Orson Welles uniquely interesting to scholars of American drama is that Mr. Linklater's design team found the Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man. This house closely resembles the old Comedy Theatre on 41st Street, which was torn down five years after Julius Caesar opened there. Using Samuel Leve's original designs, they reconstructed the set for Julius Caesar on the Gaiety's stage. Then Mr. Linklater filmed some 15 minutes' worth of scenes from the play, lit according to Jean Rosenthal's plot, accompanied by Marc Blitzstein's original incidental music and staged in a style as close to that of the 1937 production as is now possible.
Teachout wrote that he "was floored by the verisimilitude of the results", and that "you will never get any closer to the Welles Julius Caesar than by watching Me and Orson Welles, whose DVD version also includes a special feature comprising footage of the reconstructed scenes, not all of which made the final cut."
In 2015, Mercury actor Norman Lloyd (who is portrayed by Leo Bill in the film) praised Christian McKay's performance as Orson Welles as "the best rendition of him I've ever seen." However, he otherwise "hated" the film and he criticized the accuracy of the characters: "It bears no relation to truth, or to what happened when you worked with Orson and so forth. I thought McKay was very good, but the rest of the characters are just ridiculous. They're all made up! I didn't even recognize myself ... and then I thought, Well, thank goodness I can't!" Lloyd named George Coulouris as an example, who was shown as "neurotic and afraid to do his scene", while in reality he was someone "you couldn't stop from acting, for Christ's sake!".
Accolades
Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of 2009 by the National Board of Review. It was listed as one of the year's top ten films by critics including Philip French of The Observer, David Denby of The New Yorker, and Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott of At the Movies.
The film earned two awards from the Austin Film Critics Association – the Austin Film Award to director Richard Linklater. and the Breakthrough Artist Award to Christian McKay. McKay received many accolades for his portrayal of Orson Welles, including Best Supporting Actor awards from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Utah Film Critics Association. He received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actor nominations from the Boston Society of Film Critics (second place), Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, Denver Film Critics Society, Detroit Film Critics Society, Houston Film Critics Society, International Cinephile Society, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle (second place), Online Film & Television Association, Toronto Film Critics Association, and in the Chlotrudis Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and the Village Voice Film Poll (second place). McKay was nominated in the Best Actor category in the Evening Standard British Film Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards and 2009 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards.
Home media
On August 17, 2010, Warner released Me and Orson Welles on DVD () for exclusive sale at Target in the United States. Entertainment One Films released the DVD in Canada on the same date. The film has not been released on Blu-ray in the U.S., though it is available in the format in Italy and Germany.
Soundtrack
The original motion picture soundtrack for Me and Orson Welles was released on CD November 24, 2009, by Decca Records (5323762).
"This Year's Kisses", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"I'm Shooting High", Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra
"Sing, Sing, Sing", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"One O'Clock Jump", Count Basie and His Orchestra
"Ode to Krupa", Michael J McEvoy
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Christian McKay
"Let Yourself Go", Ginger Rogers
"Solitude", The Mills Brothers
"Aftershow Jam", Michael J McEvoy featuring Huw Morgan on trumpet
"They Can't Take That Away from Me", Fred Astaire
"In a Sentimental Mood" (Instrumental), Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"The Music Goes Round and Round", Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven
"I Surrender Dear", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"You Made Me Love You", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Have You Met Miss Jones?", James Langton and His Solid Senders
"Sing, Sing, Sing", James Langton and His Solid Senders
References
External links
Interview with Arthur Anderson
2008 films
2000s comedy-drama films
British films
British comedy-drama films
American comedy-drama films
2000s English-language films
Films directed by Richard Linklater
Films about Orson Welles
Films based on American novels
Films set in 1937
Films set in New York City
Films shot in England
Films about actors
Films about theatre
American films
Julius Caesar (play)
Films shot in the Isle of Man
2008 comedy films
2008 drama films
| true |
[
"This is Orson Welles is a 1992 book by Orson Welles (1915–1985) and Peter Bogdanovich that comprises conversations between the two filmmakers recorded over several years, beginning in 1969. The wide-ranging volume encompasses Welles's life and his own stage, radio, and film work as well as his insights on the work of others. The interview book was transcribed by Bogdanovich after Welles's death, at the request of Welles's longtime companion and professional collaborator, Oja Kodar.\n\nIn addition to more than 300 pages of interviews, the book includes an annotated chronology of Welles's career, a summary of the alterations made in Welles's 1942 masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, and notes on each chapter by film scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum, who edited the volume.\n\nA second edition of This is Orson Welles was published in paperback in 1998, with a new introduction by Bogdanovich and excerpts of a 58-page memo Welles wrote Universal Pictures about the editing of his 1958 film Touch of Evil. The memo was used to create a director's cut of the film released in 1998.\n\nThe 1992 audiobook version of This is Orson Welles was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album.\n\nOrigin\nIn 1961 Peter Bogdanovich organized a retrospective of Orson Welles's films, the first in the United States, for the Museum of Modern Art. Welles was not able to attend — he was in Europe, preparing a film — but he did read the monograph Bogdanovich had written to accompany the screening and was favorably impressed by it. In 1968 Welles phoned Bogdanovich to invite him for coffee at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Over the space of two hours the two filmmakers found themselves completely at ease with each other. As they left the restaurant, Welles flipped through the pages of a book Bogdanovich had just written about John Ford, Welles's favorite director; Bogdanovich had brought a copy as a gift, since Welles was quoted in its pages. \"Isn't it too bad,\" Welles said, \"that you can't do a nice little book like this about me.\" They decided to do a book of interviews together.\n\n\"Of course it was Welles who suggested the shape of 'the book,' as we called it — we never did arrive at a title we both liked,\" Bogdanovich wrote. Recorded at intervals in the United States, Mexico and Europe, the interviews were not to be forced into the chronological order of Welles's life. Welles felt they should be more loosely organized, like their conversations. Bogdanovich transcribed the reel-to-reel tapes, organized the interviews into a chapter, and mailed the typed copy to Welles. Months later, Bogdanovich would get the chapter back from Welles, revised and sometimes rewritten. Some chapters were revised two or three times in this manner.\n\nIn 1974, Orson Welles cast Bogdanovich in the role of Brooks Otterlake, a successful director, in the unreleased film The Other Side of the Wind. Welles filmed partly in Bogdanovich's Bel Air home, where Welles and actress Oja Kodar lived off and on for two years. Work on the book continued intermittently through 1975; later in the 1970s the two directors \"drifted apart a bit,\" Bogdanovich later wrote.\n\nFor a time, the book was put on hold by Welles when he received a separate offer of $250,000 to write his memoirs. \"He had no choice but to agree,\" Bogdanovich wrote. \"This was OK with me; it was his life and one of the few ways he had of getting money to pay not only for his family's expenses, but also for the real work he was doing — his many directing projects.\" Then, Bogdanovich wrote, the book was literally lost for five years:\n\nOrson never did write his memoirs. Eventually, when he asked what had become of our book, it was lost somewhere in the depths of a storage facility while I was going through a personal and financial crisis (leading to bankruptcy and a kind of general breakdown in the summer of 1985, just a few months before Orson died). During one phone conversation he had said he hoped I wouldn't \"just publish\" the book after he was dead — implying that I knew where it was and was just hanging on to it. That upset me and so when we finally could get back into storage, and the boxes turned up, I sent all of them over to Orson — not keeping copies of anything — with a note saying, in effect, it was his life, and here it was for him to do as he saw fit. Orson called me as soon as he got it —he was very touched, he said, and thanked me profusely. He went on to explain that there wasn't much he could leave to Oja, and if anything happened to him, he was planning to will the book to her.\"\n\nAfter Welles died in October 1985, Oja Kodar asked Bogdanovich to help prepare the book for publication. He transcribed the materials, resulting in 1,400 pages that were then edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum into the 300 pages of interviews in the book.\n\nReception\n\nReviews and commentary\n Todd McCarthy, Variety — The book in question, which is based on hours of conversation between Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, is one I have been eagerly awaiting for fully 20 years, since Bogdanovich first told me about it on the set of Paper Moon. … The extravagantly rich result represents as detailed a reading of Welles' view of his own screen career as I could ever hope for. … The publisher, HarperCollins, has simultaneously released a four-pack volume of audio cassettes under the same title that includes four hours of the Welles–Bogdanovich interview. Some of the material overlaps, but much of it is different from what can be found in the book. And, in any event, it is great just to hear Welles telling these revealing stories himself, in his deep voice and with his infectious laugh.\n Michael Dwyer, The Irish Times — A lively, entertaining and fascinating collection of conversations between Welles and the critic turned director, Peter Bogdanovich, who initiated the project partly to redress the balance after \"three very damaging books\" about Welles appeared in the late 1960s. … This is the best book of its kind since François Truffaut's classic book of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock.\n The Observer — The creation of this book was itself uncannily like a Welles film: created in fragments, abandoned, then lost, then finally restored by another hand. Welles was always his own shrewdest, most lacerating analyst, as well as his most grandiloquent yarn spinner, and this is a wonderfully eloquent, elegiac book, a meditation on a 'failed' career worth dozens of orthodox successes.\n\nAwards\n The 1992 audiobook version of This is Orson Welles was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album.\n\nReferences\n\n1992 non-fiction books\nBooks about film\nWorks by Orson Welles\nBooks by Peter Bogdanovich\nHarperCollins books\nBooks of interviews",
"The Orson Welles Cinema was a movie theater at 1001 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts that operated from 1969 to 1986. Showcasing independents, foreign films and revivals, it became a focal point of the Boston-Cambridge film community.\n\nHistory\n\nThe Orson Welles Cinema opened April 8, 1969 with Luis Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert, Orson Welles’ The Immortal Story and a midnight movie, Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.\n\nOriginally the Esquire Theater in the early 1960s, it became the Orson Welles Cinema under its next owner, folk musician Dean Gitter. It was programmed by then-Harvard Law student Peter Jaszi.\n\nOn September 29, 1970, the cinema was raided by Massachusetts State Police for showing Oh! Calcutta! on video. Gitter, Jaszi, and Ted Uzzle, among others, were arrested, and spent the night in the Cambridge jail. The case would later be literally laughed out of court.\n\nWhen Gitter departed, the new owners were Molly and Ralph Hoagland (previously a co-founder of the CVS Corporation). From 1971 to 1978 the theater was managed and programmed by Larry Jackson, who later held positions with Miramax, Orion Pictures and the Samuel Goldwyn Company. The theater was purchased by Herbert and Philip Meadow and managed by Phil Meadow through the early and mid-1980s.\n\nIn 1972–73, the Orson Welles Cinema expanded with two smaller screening rooms in addition to the main 400-seat auditorium. Jackson, who worked with Gary Graver and Welles on The Other Side of the Wind, succeeded in getting Welles to visit the cinema named in his honor. Welles and his cameraman Graver used the occasion—the premiere of F For Fake on January 7, 1977—to shoot footage inside the large auditorium for their documentary Filming Othello (1978). In March 2006, Jackson staged a showing of rare footage by Orson Welles in Northampton, Massachusetts.\n\nAncillary operations included the Orson Welles Film School, a photo shop, a record store, a bookstore and The Restaurant at the Orson Welles, aka the Orson Welles Restaurant. At first, it was famous for requiring strangers sitting at the same table to order the same meal. The chef was Odette J. Bery, who later wrote Another Season Cookbook: Recipes for Every Season from the Chef/Owner of Boston’s Another Season Restaurant (Globe Pequot, 1986). In his autobiography, comedian Jay Leno notes that he performed in the Orson Welles Restaurant during his early days as a stand-up comic. After the Welles Restaurant closed, the two-level space became Chi-Chi's, part of the Mexican restaurant chain.\n\nThe Orson Welles Cinema came to an end with fire caused by a popcorn maker at 2 pm on Saturday, May 24, 1986. The last three films shown were Henry Jaglom’s Always, Dick Clement’s Water and Dennis Potter’s Dreamchild.\n\nOperations\n\nThe Orson Welles Cinema’s advertising and promotion were under the direction of John Fogle, with ad and poster copy written by Fogle and Larry Jackson. The Welles Cinema’s posters were designed by Jean Fogle. Extra runs of these posters were sold in the lobby. Among Fogle’s outstanding creations was Vintage Hitchcock, a 13\" x 18\" poster she designed for a month-long Hitchcock series held in 1973.\n\nFilm notes for each showing were prepared by staffer John Rossi, who for each film gathered lengthy cast and crew credits, a partial synopsis and selected film reviews. These were prepared in the upstairs offices of the complex, as was the black-and-white digest-sized Orson Welles Cinema Magazine.\n\nScience Fiction Film Marathon\nIn February 1976, the Welles launched its 24-hour Science Fiction Film Marathon with The Day of the Triffids, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Fantastic Voyage, Five Million Years to Earth, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), It Came from Outer Space, Them!, The Thing from Another World (1951), The Shape of Things to Come, This Island Earth, The War of the Worlds, and Zardoz.\n\nThe Marathon became an annual event that continued even after the Orson Welles Cinema closed. Following the 11 Marathons held at the Orson Welles, the film series moved on to other Boston theaters, and under the name Boston Science Fiction Film Festival it is now held annually on President’s Day weekend at the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square, Somerville.\n\nFirst Boston Film Festival\nLess successful was the Welles’ Boston Film Festival (1976), which included such films as Monty Python's Flying Circus, And Now For Something Completely Different and Jacques Rivette’s Out One: Spectre. However, according to Welles Cinema staffers, many of the announced films arrived late or never appeared.\n\nLegacy\n\nFilm personalities associated with the Orson Welles Cinema include the first house manager, future actor Tommy Lee Jones, during the spring of his senior year at nearby Harvard University. Producer-screenwriter John Semper (Class Act, Spider-Man) was an employee, as was the Brazilian film composer Pancho Sáenz, future writer-director Martha Pinson and future sound editor David E. Stone.\n\nThe career of writer-producer Fred Barron began in 1975 when he used the history of Cambridge’s The Real Paper as the basis for a screenplay, Between the Lines. When Joan Micklin Silver brought Hester Street (1975) to the Welles Cinema, she was joined at the Welles Restaurant by Barron and others. When someone asked what she would direct next, she answered that she was looking at screenplays. Barron stood up, left the restaurant and returned with his screenplay. The success of Between the Lines (1977) led to a short-lived television series, also titled Between the Lines.\n\nOn January 2, 1975, Nicholas Ray appeared at the Welles for a Q&A session after the showing of the David Helpern documentary, I’m a Stranger Here Myself. Other filmmakers and musicians who made personal appearances or visited at the Welles Cinema included Peter Bogdanovich, Edward Dmytryk, Ed Emshwiller, Jean Eustache, Gary Graver, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jim McBride, Vincente Minnelli, Nicholas Ray, George A. Romero, Harold Russell, François Truffaut, Orson Welles and Neil Young. After Steven Lisberger premiered his Cosmic Cartoon (1973) at the Welles, the animated short received a Student Academy Award nomination, and he went on to make Animalympics and Tron. Rob Morris, former film intern, busboy, and waiter (for the restaurant next door) started a two-man company that created the first commercial multimedia computer system in the mid 1980s.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nAndy Lee’s 1980s photos of the Orson Welles Cinema and surrounding storefronts\nPeter Southwick photo of the Orson Welles Cinema exterior\nRobert Fourer review of Pierrot le fou and the Orson Welles Cinema in The Tech (April 29, 1969)\n\n1969 establishments in Massachusetts\n1986 disestablishments in Massachusetts\nBuildings and structures in Cambridge, Massachusetts\nBurned buildings and structures in the United States\nCinemas and movie theaters in Massachusetts\nCulture of Boston\nHistory of Cambridge, Massachusetts\nOrson Welles\nRepertory cinemas\nTheatres completed in 1969"
] |
[
"Me and Orson Welles",
"Release",
"What month was this film released in theaters?",
"The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009,",
"What were critics reviews of this film?",
"Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008.",
"Did Me and Orson Welles get a DVD release?",
"I don't know.",
"How much money did Me and Orson Welles make at the box office?",
"IndieWIRE reported, \"The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters,",
"Did Me and Orson Welles go on to get a broader theater release?",
"in the UK on December 4, 2009."
] |
C_6b221c9714634babbef87322a8377048_0
|
Did Me and Orson Welles ever make it to any streaming services?
| 6 |
Did Me and Orson Welles ever release to any streaming services?
|
Me and Orson Welles
|
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's resume and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal. Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost. It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009. The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future." CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
Me and Orson Welles is a 2008 period drama film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the story, set in 1937 New York, tells of a teenager hired to perform in Orson Welles's groundbreaking stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar who becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.
The film was shot in London and New York and on the Isle of Man in February, March and April 2008, and was released in the United States on November 25, 2009, and the United Kingdom on December 4, 2009.
McKay's portrayal of Welles was recognized with a multitude of accolades, and Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of the year by the National Board of Review.
Plot
In New York City in the fall of 1937, 17-year-old high-school student Richard Samuels meets Orson Welles, who unexpectedly offers him the role of Lucius in Caesar, the first production of his new Mercury Theatre repertory company. The company is immersed in rehearsals at its Broadway theater. Charmed by Welles, Richard learns that he is having an affair with the leading actress while his wife is pregnant. Richard finds ambitious production assistant Sonja Jones is attracted to him.
Welles tells Richard a few days before the premiere that he is worried, because he has recently had nothing but good luck; he fears that he will finally have bad luck with the premiere, and that the play will be a flop. During rehearsals Richard accidentally sets off the sprinkler system, soaking the entire theatre. When accused by Welles he denies having anything to do with the deluge, and suggests that the catastrophe was the bad luck that Welles needed to get out of the way.
Welles decides the entire production crew would benefit from a coupling game, and Richard cheats to ensure he is paired with Sonja. Richard spends the night with Sonja, but becomes jealous when she spends the next night with Welles. He confronts Welles, mentions his pregnant wife, and is fired. An apparent reconciliation follows, and Richard performs on the first night. The anti-fascist adaptation of Caesar is a huge success, but after the premiere, Richard is told that Welles only needed him in order to secure a successful first-night production and, that done, he has again been fired.
The broken-hearted but wiser Richard spontaneously recites lines from Julius Caesar in his high school English class, to his classmates' applause. He later meets up with a likely new girlfriend, Gretta Adler, a young aspiring playwright whom he met in a music store at the film's beginning. With Richard's and Sonja's assistance, Adler manages to get a story published in The New Yorker, and she invites Richard out, to help her celebrate.
Cast
Zac Efron as Richard Samuels
Christian McKay as Orson Welles
Claire Danes as Sonja Jones
Ben Chaplin as George Coulouris
James Tupper as Joseph Cotten
Eddie Marsan as John Houseman
Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd
Kelly Reilly as Muriel Brassler
Patrick Kennedy as Grover Burgess
Travis Oliver as John Hoyt
Zoe Kazan as Gretta Adler
Al Weaver as Sam Leve
Saskia Reeves as Barbara Luddy
Imogen Poots as Lorelei Lathrop
Rhodri Orders as Stefan Schnabel
Michael Brandon as Les Tremayne
Janie Dee as Mrs Samuels
Production
Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr. adapted the film's screenplay from Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name about a teenager (in reality, the 15-year-old Arthur Anderson, who played Lucius in Welles' production) involved in the founding of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. After receiving funding from CinemaNX, a production company backed by the Isle of Man film fund, and an offer from Framestore Features to co-finance the film, Richard Linklater came on board to direct Me and Orson Welles. Zac Efron signed on as the lead in early January 2008, claiming he decided to take the role of Richard Samuels because "It's a completely different project than I've ever done before," while Claire Danes joined the cast as the protagonist's love interest Sonja Jones in late January.
In the theatre, Christian McKay had portrayed Orson Welles in the one-man play Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles at a number of venues, including the Edinburgh Festival and King's Head (London). He reprised the role in the U.S. at the 2007 "Brits Off Broadway" festival, where Linklater saw his performance and then cast McKay as Welles, retaining him over the subsequent objections of the project's producer.
Me and Orson Welles underwent filming in the Isle of Man, Pinewood Studios, London and New York from February to April 2008. Filming in London commenced first in mid-February, before scenes in the Isle of Man were shot February 24–March 14, 2008, where filming locations included Gaiety Theatre and various other parts of Douglas. During filming in Douglas, Efron and Danes believe they sighted a ghost, or "supernatural" being, outside a window on set at Gaiety Theatre.
Filming in Britain resumed in late March for six weeks at Pinewood Studios. Other locations included Crystal Palace Park, where a façade of New York's Mercury Theatre was set up for a scene. Actor James Tupper claimed that the best replica of an old New York theater was in England, while many of the actors who filled the company were from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The production crew only briefly visited New York; photographs were taken and footage shot to be added into the film as digital effects. Every exterior shot was filmed on a single street built at Pinewood Studios with a green screen at one end; different angles and slightly altered set designs were used between shots to make the street appear different each time.
Release
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's résumé and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4–13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal.
Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost.
It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009.
The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one of the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future."
Reception
Box office
During its theatrical release (November 25, 2009 – February 25, 2010), Me and Orson Welles grossed a total of $1,190,003 in the United States and $2,336,172 worldwide.
Critical response
The film has received positive reviews from critics. It currently holds an 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 156 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Me and Orson Welles boasts a breakout performance by Christian McKay and an infectious love of the backstage drama that overcomes its sometimes fluffy tone." It holds a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic from 30 critics.
Film critic Roger Ebert called Me and Orson Welles "one of the best movies about the theater I've ever seen ... not only entertaining but an invaluable companion to the life and career of the Great Man". Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film for its "terrific acting" and called it "a must for lovers and students of the theater". Variety magazine's Todd McCarthy labelled McKay's performance "an extraordinary impersonation" of Welles, though he wrote that "Efron never feels like a proper fit for Richard". Karen Durbin of The New York Times praised McKay in the Welles role, saying he brought "a watchful, assessing and subtly excited gaze that makes him thrilling and a little dangerous."
"I've never seen a backstage movie that was truer to the experience of putting on a show," wrote Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout, who reserved special praise for the design team's recreation of Welles's production of Julius Caesar:
Like most Welles stage shows, alas, this one left few traces. No part of the production was filmed, and nothing else survives but the design sketches and some still photographs taken in 1937. ... What makes Me and Orson Welles uniquely interesting to scholars of American drama is that Mr. Linklater's design team found the Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man. This house closely resembles the old Comedy Theatre on 41st Street, which was torn down five years after Julius Caesar opened there. Using Samuel Leve's original designs, they reconstructed the set for Julius Caesar on the Gaiety's stage. Then Mr. Linklater filmed some 15 minutes' worth of scenes from the play, lit according to Jean Rosenthal's plot, accompanied by Marc Blitzstein's original incidental music and staged in a style as close to that of the 1937 production as is now possible.
Teachout wrote that he "was floored by the verisimilitude of the results", and that "you will never get any closer to the Welles Julius Caesar than by watching Me and Orson Welles, whose DVD version also includes a special feature comprising footage of the reconstructed scenes, not all of which made the final cut."
In 2015, Mercury actor Norman Lloyd (who is portrayed by Leo Bill in the film) praised Christian McKay's performance as Orson Welles as "the best rendition of him I've ever seen." However, he otherwise "hated" the film and he criticized the accuracy of the characters: "It bears no relation to truth, or to what happened when you worked with Orson and so forth. I thought McKay was very good, but the rest of the characters are just ridiculous. They're all made up! I didn't even recognize myself ... and then I thought, Well, thank goodness I can't!" Lloyd named George Coulouris as an example, who was shown as "neurotic and afraid to do his scene", while in reality he was someone "you couldn't stop from acting, for Christ's sake!".
Accolades
Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of 2009 by the National Board of Review. It was listed as one of the year's top ten films by critics including Philip French of The Observer, David Denby of The New Yorker, and Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott of At the Movies.
The film earned two awards from the Austin Film Critics Association – the Austin Film Award to director Richard Linklater. and the Breakthrough Artist Award to Christian McKay. McKay received many accolades for his portrayal of Orson Welles, including Best Supporting Actor awards from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Utah Film Critics Association. He received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actor nominations from the Boston Society of Film Critics (second place), Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, Denver Film Critics Society, Detroit Film Critics Society, Houston Film Critics Society, International Cinephile Society, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle (second place), Online Film & Television Association, Toronto Film Critics Association, and in the Chlotrudis Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and the Village Voice Film Poll (second place). McKay was nominated in the Best Actor category in the Evening Standard British Film Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards and 2009 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards.
Home media
On August 17, 2010, Warner released Me and Orson Welles on DVD () for exclusive sale at Target in the United States. Entertainment One Films released the DVD in Canada on the same date. The film has not been released on Blu-ray in the U.S., though it is available in the format in Italy and Germany.
Soundtrack
The original motion picture soundtrack for Me and Orson Welles was released on CD November 24, 2009, by Decca Records (5323762).
"This Year's Kisses", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"I'm Shooting High", Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra
"Sing, Sing, Sing", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"One O'Clock Jump", Count Basie and His Orchestra
"Ode to Krupa", Michael J McEvoy
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Christian McKay
"Let Yourself Go", Ginger Rogers
"Solitude", The Mills Brothers
"Aftershow Jam", Michael J McEvoy featuring Huw Morgan on trumpet
"They Can't Take That Away from Me", Fred Astaire
"In a Sentimental Mood" (Instrumental), Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"The Music Goes Round and Round", Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven
"I Surrender Dear", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"You Made Me Love You", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Have You Met Miss Jones?", James Langton and His Solid Senders
"Sing, Sing, Sing", James Langton and His Solid Senders
References
External links
Interview with Arthur Anderson
2008 films
2000s comedy-drama films
British films
British comedy-drama films
American comedy-drama films
2000s English-language films
Films directed by Richard Linklater
Films about Orson Welles
Films based on American novels
Films set in 1937
Films set in New York City
Films shot in England
Films about actors
Films about theatre
American films
Julius Caesar (play)
Films shot in the Isle of Man
2008 comedy films
2008 drama films
| false |
[
"This is Orson Welles is a 1992 book by Orson Welles (1915–1985) and Peter Bogdanovich that comprises conversations between the two filmmakers recorded over several years, beginning in 1969. The wide-ranging volume encompasses Welles's life and his own stage, radio, and film work as well as his insights on the work of others. The interview book was transcribed by Bogdanovich after Welles's death, at the request of Welles's longtime companion and professional collaborator, Oja Kodar.\n\nIn addition to more than 300 pages of interviews, the book includes an annotated chronology of Welles's career, a summary of the alterations made in Welles's 1942 masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, and notes on each chapter by film scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum, who edited the volume.\n\nA second edition of This is Orson Welles was published in paperback in 1998, with a new introduction by Bogdanovich and excerpts of a 58-page memo Welles wrote Universal Pictures about the editing of his 1958 film Touch of Evil. The memo was used to create a director's cut of the film released in 1998.\n\nThe 1992 audiobook version of This is Orson Welles was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album.\n\nOrigin\nIn 1961 Peter Bogdanovich organized a retrospective of Orson Welles's films, the first in the United States, for the Museum of Modern Art. Welles was not able to attend — he was in Europe, preparing a film — but he did read the monograph Bogdanovich had written to accompany the screening and was favorably impressed by it. In 1968 Welles phoned Bogdanovich to invite him for coffee at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Over the space of two hours the two filmmakers found themselves completely at ease with each other. As they left the restaurant, Welles flipped through the pages of a book Bogdanovich had just written about John Ford, Welles's favorite director; Bogdanovich had brought a copy as a gift, since Welles was quoted in its pages. \"Isn't it too bad,\" Welles said, \"that you can't do a nice little book like this about me.\" They decided to do a book of interviews together.\n\n\"Of course it was Welles who suggested the shape of 'the book,' as we called it — we never did arrive at a title we both liked,\" Bogdanovich wrote. Recorded at intervals in the United States, Mexico and Europe, the interviews were not to be forced into the chronological order of Welles's life. Welles felt they should be more loosely organized, like their conversations. Bogdanovich transcribed the reel-to-reel tapes, organized the interviews into a chapter, and mailed the typed copy to Welles. Months later, Bogdanovich would get the chapter back from Welles, revised and sometimes rewritten. Some chapters were revised two or three times in this manner.\n\nIn 1974, Orson Welles cast Bogdanovich in the role of Brooks Otterlake, a successful director, in the unreleased film The Other Side of the Wind. Welles filmed partly in Bogdanovich's Bel Air home, where Welles and actress Oja Kodar lived off and on for two years. Work on the book continued intermittently through 1975; later in the 1970s the two directors \"drifted apart a bit,\" Bogdanovich later wrote.\n\nFor a time, the book was put on hold by Welles when he received a separate offer of $250,000 to write his memoirs. \"He had no choice but to agree,\" Bogdanovich wrote. \"This was OK with me; it was his life and one of the few ways he had of getting money to pay not only for his family's expenses, but also for the real work he was doing — his many directing projects.\" Then, Bogdanovich wrote, the book was literally lost for five years:\n\nOrson never did write his memoirs. Eventually, when he asked what had become of our book, it was lost somewhere in the depths of a storage facility while I was going through a personal and financial crisis (leading to bankruptcy and a kind of general breakdown in the summer of 1985, just a few months before Orson died). During one phone conversation he had said he hoped I wouldn't \"just publish\" the book after he was dead — implying that I knew where it was and was just hanging on to it. That upset me and so when we finally could get back into storage, and the boxes turned up, I sent all of them over to Orson — not keeping copies of anything — with a note saying, in effect, it was his life, and here it was for him to do as he saw fit. Orson called me as soon as he got it —he was very touched, he said, and thanked me profusely. He went on to explain that there wasn't much he could leave to Oja, and if anything happened to him, he was planning to will the book to her.\"\n\nAfter Welles died in October 1985, Oja Kodar asked Bogdanovich to help prepare the book for publication. He transcribed the materials, resulting in 1,400 pages that were then edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum into the 300 pages of interviews in the book.\n\nReception\n\nReviews and commentary\n Todd McCarthy, Variety — The book in question, which is based on hours of conversation between Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, is one I have been eagerly awaiting for fully 20 years, since Bogdanovich first told me about it on the set of Paper Moon. … The extravagantly rich result represents as detailed a reading of Welles' view of his own screen career as I could ever hope for. … The publisher, HarperCollins, has simultaneously released a four-pack volume of audio cassettes under the same title that includes four hours of the Welles–Bogdanovich interview. Some of the material overlaps, but much of it is different from what can be found in the book. And, in any event, it is great just to hear Welles telling these revealing stories himself, in his deep voice and with his infectious laugh.\n Michael Dwyer, The Irish Times — A lively, entertaining and fascinating collection of conversations between Welles and the critic turned director, Peter Bogdanovich, who initiated the project partly to redress the balance after \"three very damaging books\" about Welles appeared in the late 1960s. … This is the best book of its kind since François Truffaut's classic book of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock.\n The Observer — The creation of this book was itself uncannily like a Welles film: created in fragments, abandoned, then lost, then finally restored by another hand. Welles was always his own shrewdest, most lacerating analyst, as well as his most grandiloquent yarn spinner, and this is a wonderfully eloquent, elegiac book, a meditation on a 'failed' career worth dozens of orthodox successes.\n\nAwards\n The 1992 audiobook version of This is Orson Welles was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album.\n\nReferences\n\n1992 non-fiction books\nBooks about film\nWorks by Orson Welles\nBooks by Peter Bogdanovich\nHarperCollins books\nBooks of interviews",
"Me and Orson Welles is a 2008 period drama film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the story, set in 1937 New York, tells of a teenager hired to perform in Orson Welles's groundbreaking stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar who becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.\n\nThe film was shot in London and New York and on the Isle of Man in February, March and April 2008, and was released in the United States on November 25, 2009, and the United Kingdom on December 4, 2009.\n\nMcKay's portrayal of Welles was recognized with a multitude of accolades, and Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of the year by the National Board of Review.\n\nPlot\nIn New York City in the fall of 1937, 17-year-old high-school student Richard Samuels meets Orson Welles, who unexpectedly offers him the role of Lucius in Caesar, the first production of his new Mercury Theatre repertory company. The company is immersed in rehearsals at its Broadway theater. Charmed by Welles, Richard learns that he is having an affair with the leading actress while his wife is pregnant. Richard finds ambitious production assistant Sonja Jones is attracted to him.\n\nWelles tells Richard a few days before the premiere that he is worried, because he has recently had nothing but good luck; he fears that he will finally have bad luck with the premiere, and that the play will be a flop. During rehearsals Richard accidentally sets off the sprinkler system, soaking the entire theatre. When accused by Welles he denies having anything to do with the deluge, and suggests that the catastrophe was the bad luck that Welles needed to get out of the way.\n\nWelles decides the entire production crew would benefit from a coupling game, and Richard cheats to ensure he is paired with Sonja. Richard spends the night with Sonja, but becomes jealous when she spends the next night with Welles. He confronts Welles, mentions his pregnant wife, and is fired. An apparent reconciliation follows, and Richard performs on the first night. The anti-fascist adaptation of Caesar is a huge success, but after the premiere, Richard is told that Welles only needed him in order to secure a successful first-night production and, that done, he has again been fired.\n\nThe broken-hearted but wiser Richard spontaneously recites lines from Julius Caesar in his high school English class, to his classmates' applause. He later meets up with a likely new girlfriend, Gretta Adler, a young aspiring playwright whom he met in a music store at the film's beginning. With Richard's and Sonja's assistance, Adler manages to get a story published in The New Yorker, and she invites Richard out, to help her celebrate.\n\nCast\n\n Zac Efron as Richard Samuels\n Christian McKay as Orson Welles\n Claire Danes as Sonja Jones\n Ben Chaplin as George Coulouris\n James Tupper as Joseph Cotten\n Eddie Marsan as John Houseman\n Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd\n Kelly Reilly as Muriel Brassler\n Patrick Kennedy as Grover Burgess\n Travis Oliver as John Hoyt\n Zoe Kazan as Gretta Adler\n Al Weaver as Sam Leve\n Saskia Reeves as Barbara Luddy\n Imogen Poots as Lorelei Lathrop\n Rhodri Orders as Stefan Schnabel\n Michael Brandon as Les Tremayne\n Janie Dee as Mrs Samuels\n\nProduction\n\nHolly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr. adapted the film's screenplay from Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name about a teenager (in reality, the 15-year-old Arthur Anderson, who played Lucius in Welles' production) involved in the founding of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. After receiving funding from CinemaNX, a production company backed by the Isle of Man film fund, and an offer from Framestore Features to co-finance the film, Richard Linklater came on board to direct Me and Orson Welles. Zac Efron signed on as the lead in early January 2008, claiming he decided to take the role of Richard Samuels because \"It's a completely different project than I've ever done before,\" while Claire Danes joined the cast as the protagonist's love interest Sonja Jones in late January.\n\nIn the theatre, Christian McKay had portrayed Orson Welles in the one-man play Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles at a number of venues, including the Edinburgh Festival and King's Head (London). He reprised the role in the U.S. at the 2007 \"Brits Off Broadway\" festival, where Linklater saw his performance and then cast McKay as Welles, retaining him over the subsequent objections of the project's producer.\n\nMe and Orson Welles underwent filming in the Isle of Man, Pinewood Studios, London and New York from February to April 2008. Filming in London commenced first in mid-February, before scenes in the Isle of Man were shot February 24–March 14, 2008, where filming locations included Gaiety Theatre and various other parts of Douglas. During filming in Douglas, Efron and Danes believe they sighted a ghost, or \"supernatural\" being, outside a window on set at Gaiety Theatre.\n\nFilming in Britain resumed in late March for six weeks at Pinewood Studios. Other locations included Crystal Palace Park, where a façade of New York's Mercury Theatre was set up for a scene. Actor James Tupper claimed that the best replica of an old New York theater was in England, while many of the actors who filled the company were from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The production crew only briefly visited New York; photographs were taken and footage shot to be added into the film as digital effects. Every exterior shot was filmed on a single street built at Pinewood Studios with a green screen at one end; different angles and slightly altered set designs were used between shots to make the street appear different each time.\n\nRelease\nSelect footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's résumé and Efron's teen \"heartthrob\" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4–13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be \"one of the hottest films\" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of \"only a few lucky winners\" to secure a seven-figure deal.\n\nAgain, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost.\n\nIt was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009.\n\nThe film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, \"The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one of the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future.\"\n\nReception\n\nBox office\nDuring its theatrical release (November 25, 2009 – February 25, 2010), Me and Orson Welles grossed a total of $1,190,003 in the United States and $2,336,172 worldwide.\n\nCritical response\nThe film has received positive reviews from critics. It currently holds an 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 156 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, \"Me and Orson Welles boasts a breakout performance by Christian McKay and an infectious love of the backstage drama that overcomes its sometimes fluffy tone.\" It holds a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic from 30 critics.\n\nFilm critic Roger Ebert called Me and Orson Welles \"one of the best movies about the theater I've ever seen ... not only entertaining but an invaluable companion to the life and career of the Great Man\". Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film for its \"terrific acting\" and called it \"a must for lovers and students of the theater\". Variety magazine's Todd McCarthy labelled McKay's performance \"an extraordinary impersonation\" of Welles, though he wrote that \"Efron never feels like a proper fit for Richard\". Karen Durbin of The New York Times praised McKay in the Welles role, saying he brought \"a watchful, assessing and subtly excited gaze that makes him thrilling and a little dangerous.\"\n\n\"I've never seen a backstage movie that was truer to the experience of putting on a show,\" wrote Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout, who reserved special praise for the design team's recreation of Welles's production of Julius Caesar:\n\nLike most Welles stage shows, alas, this one left few traces. No part of the production was filmed, and nothing else survives but the design sketches and some still photographs taken in 1937. ... What makes Me and Orson Welles uniquely interesting to scholars of American drama is that Mr. Linklater's design team found the Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man. This house closely resembles the old Comedy Theatre on 41st Street, which was torn down five years after Julius Caesar opened there. Using Samuel Leve's original designs, they reconstructed the set for Julius Caesar on the Gaiety's stage. Then Mr. Linklater filmed some 15 minutes' worth of scenes from the play, lit according to Jean Rosenthal's plot, accompanied by Marc Blitzstein's original incidental music and staged in a style as close to that of the 1937 production as is now possible.\n\nTeachout wrote that he \"was floored by the verisimilitude of the results\", and that \"you will never get any closer to the Welles Julius Caesar than by watching Me and Orson Welles, whose DVD version also includes a special feature comprising footage of the reconstructed scenes, not all of which made the final cut.\"\n\nIn 2015, Mercury actor Norman Lloyd (who is portrayed by Leo Bill in the film) praised Christian McKay's performance as Orson Welles as \"the best rendition of him I've ever seen.\" However, he otherwise \"hated\" the film and he criticized the accuracy of the characters: \"It bears no relation to truth, or to what happened when you worked with Orson and so forth. I thought McKay was very good, but the rest of the characters are just ridiculous. They're all made up! I didn't even recognize myself ... and then I thought, Well, thank goodness I can't!\" Lloyd named George Coulouris as an example, who was shown as \"neurotic and afraid to do his scene\", while in reality he was someone \"you couldn't stop from acting, for Christ's sake!\".\n\nAccolades\nMe and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of 2009 by the National Board of Review. It was listed as one of the year's top ten films by critics including Philip French of The Observer, David Denby of The New Yorker, and Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott of At the Movies.\n\nThe film earned two awards from the Austin Film Critics Association – the Austin Film Award to director Richard Linklater. and the Breakthrough Artist Award to Christian McKay. McKay received many accolades for his portrayal of Orson Welles, including Best Supporting Actor awards from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Utah Film Critics Association. He received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actor nominations from the Boston Society of Film Critics (second place), Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, Denver Film Critics Society, Detroit Film Critics Society, Houston Film Critics Society, International Cinephile Society, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle (second place), Online Film & Television Association, Toronto Film Critics Association, and in the Chlotrudis Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and the Village Voice Film Poll (second place). McKay was nominated in the Best Actor category in the Evening Standard British Film Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards and 2009 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards.\n\nHome media\nOn August 17, 2010, Warner released Me and Orson Welles on DVD () for exclusive sale at Target in the United States. Entertainment One Films released the DVD in Canada on the same date. The film has not been released on Blu-ray in the U.S., though it is available in the format in Italy and Germany.\n\nSoundtrack\nThe original motion picture soundtrack for Me and Orson Welles was released on CD November 24, 2009, by Decca Records (5323762).\n \"This Year's Kisses\", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra\n \"I'm Shooting High\", Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra\n \"Sing, Sing, Sing\", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra\n \"One O'Clock Jump\", Count Basie and His Orchestra\n \"Ode to Krupa\", Michael J McEvoy\n \"Let's Pretend There's a Moon\", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader\n \"Let's Pretend There's a Moon\", Christian McKay\n \"Let Yourself Go\", Ginger Rogers\n \"Solitude\", The Mills Brothers\n \"Aftershow Jam\", Michael J McEvoy featuring Huw Morgan on trumpet\n \"They Can't Take That Away from Me\", Fred Astaire\n \"In a Sentimental Mood\" (Instrumental), Benny Goodman and His Orchestra\n \"The Music Goes Round and Round\", Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven\n \"I Surrender Dear\", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader\n \"You Made Me Love You\", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader\n \"Have You Met Miss Jones?\", James Langton and His Solid Senders\n \"Sing, Sing, Sing\", James Langton and His Solid Senders\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n \n \n Interview with Arthur Anderson\n\n2008 films\n2000s comedy-drama films\nBritish films\nBritish comedy-drama films\nAmerican comedy-drama films\n2000s English-language films\nFilms directed by Richard Linklater\nFilms about Orson Welles\nFilms based on American novels\nFilms set in 1937\nFilms set in New York City\nFilms shot in England\nFilms about actors\nFilms about theatre\nAmerican films\nJulius Caesar (play)\nFilms shot in the Isle of Man\n2008 comedy films\n2008 drama films"
] |
[
"Me and Orson Welles",
"Release",
"What month was this film released in theaters?",
"The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009,",
"What were critics reviews of this film?",
"Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008.",
"Did Me and Orson Welles get a DVD release?",
"I don't know.",
"How much money did Me and Orson Welles make at the box office?",
"IndieWIRE reported, \"The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters,",
"Did Me and Orson Welles go on to get a broader theater release?",
"in the UK on December 4, 2009.",
"Did Me and Orson Welles ever make it to any streaming services?",
"I don't know."
] |
C_6b221c9714634babbef87322a8377048_0
|
Did Me and Orson Welles get shown at any film festivals?
| 7 |
Did Me and Orson Welles get shown at any film festivals?
|
Me and Orson Welles
|
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's resume and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal. Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost. It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009. The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future." CANNOTANSWER
|
Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008.
|
Me and Orson Welles is a 2008 period drama film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the story, set in 1937 New York, tells of a teenager hired to perform in Orson Welles's groundbreaking stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar who becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.
The film was shot in London and New York and on the Isle of Man in February, March and April 2008, and was released in the United States on November 25, 2009, and the United Kingdom on December 4, 2009.
McKay's portrayal of Welles was recognized with a multitude of accolades, and Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of the year by the National Board of Review.
Plot
In New York City in the fall of 1937, 17-year-old high-school student Richard Samuels meets Orson Welles, who unexpectedly offers him the role of Lucius in Caesar, the first production of his new Mercury Theatre repertory company. The company is immersed in rehearsals at its Broadway theater. Charmed by Welles, Richard learns that he is having an affair with the leading actress while his wife is pregnant. Richard finds ambitious production assistant Sonja Jones is attracted to him.
Welles tells Richard a few days before the premiere that he is worried, because he has recently had nothing but good luck; he fears that he will finally have bad luck with the premiere, and that the play will be a flop. During rehearsals Richard accidentally sets off the sprinkler system, soaking the entire theatre. When accused by Welles he denies having anything to do with the deluge, and suggests that the catastrophe was the bad luck that Welles needed to get out of the way.
Welles decides the entire production crew would benefit from a coupling game, and Richard cheats to ensure he is paired with Sonja. Richard spends the night with Sonja, but becomes jealous when she spends the next night with Welles. He confronts Welles, mentions his pregnant wife, and is fired. An apparent reconciliation follows, and Richard performs on the first night. The anti-fascist adaptation of Caesar is a huge success, but after the premiere, Richard is told that Welles only needed him in order to secure a successful first-night production and, that done, he has again been fired.
The broken-hearted but wiser Richard spontaneously recites lines from Julius Caesar in his high school English class, to his classmates' applause. He later meets up with a likely new girlfriend, Gretta Adler, a young aspiring playwright whom he met in a music store at the film's beginning. With Richard's and Sonja's assistance, Adler manages to get a story published in The New Yorker, and she invites Richard out, to help her celebrate.
Cast
Zac Efron as Richard Samuels
Christian McKay as Orson Welles
Claire Danes as Sonja Jones
Ben Chaplin as George Coulouris
James Tupper as Joseph Cotten
Eddie Marsan as John Houseman
Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd
Kelly Reilly as Muriel Brassler
Patrick Kennedy as Grover Burgess
Travis Oliver as John Hoyt
Zoe Kazan as Gretta Adler
Al Weaver as Sam Leve
Saskia Reeves as Barbara Luddy
Imogen Poots as Lorelei Lathrop
Rhodri Orders as Stefan Schnabel
Michael Brandon as Les Tremayne
Janie Dee as Mrs Samuels
Production
Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr. adapted the film's screenplay from Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name about a teenager (in reality, the 15-year-old Arthur Anderson, who played Lucius in Welles' production) involved in the founding of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. After receiving funding from CinemaNX, a production company backed by the Isle of Man film fund, and an offer from Framestore Features to co-finance the film, Richard Linklater came on board to direct Me and Orson Welles. Zac Efron signed on as the lead in early January 2008, claiming he decided to take the role of Richard Samuels because "It's a completely different project than I've ever done before," while Claire Danes joined the cast as the protagonist's love interest Sonja Jones in late January.
In the theatre, Christian McKay had portrayed Orson Welles in the one-man play Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles at a number of venues, including the Edinburgh Festival and King's Head (London). He reprised the role in the U.S. at the 2007 "Brits Off Broadway" festival, where Linklater saw his performance and then cast McKay as Welles, retaining him over the subsequent objections of the project's producer.
Me and Orson Welles underwent filming in the Isle of Man, Pinewood Studios, London and New York from February to April 2008. Filming in London commenced first in mid-February, before scenes in the Isle of Man were shot February 24–March 14, 2008, where filming locations included Gaiety Theatre and various other parts of Douglas. During filming in Douglas, Efron and Danes believe they sighted a ghost, or "supernatural" being, outside a window on set at Gaiety Theatre.
Filming in Britain resumed in late March for six weeks at Pinewood Studios. Other locations included Crystal Palace Park, where a façade of New York's Mercury Theatre was set up for a scene. Actor James Tupper claimed that the best replica of an old New York theater was in England, while many of the actors who filled the company were from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The production crew only briefly visited New York; photographs were taken and footage shot to be added into the film as digital effects. Every exterior shot was filmed on a single street built at Pinewood Studios with a green screen at one end; different angles and slightly altered set designs were used between shots to make the street appear different each time.
Release
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's résumé and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4–13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal.
Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost.
It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009.
The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one of the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future."
Reception
Box office
During its theatrical release (November 25, 2009 – February 25, 2010), Me and Orson Welles grossed a total of $1,190,003 in the United States and $2,336,172 worldwide.
Critical response
The film has received positive reviews from critics. It currently holds an 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 156 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Me and Orson Welles boasts a breakout performance by Christian McKay and an infectious love of the backstage drama that overcomes its sometimes fluffy tone." It holds a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic from 30 critics.
Film critic Roger Ebert called Me and Orson Welles "one of the best movies about the theater I've ever seen ... not only entertaining but an invaluable companion to the life and career of the Great Man". Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film for its "terrific acting" and called it "a must for lovers and students of the theater". Variety magazine's Todd McCarthy labelled McKay's performance "an extraordinary impersonation" of Welles, though he wrote that "Efron never feels like a proper fit for Richard". Karen Durbin of The New York Times praised McKay in the Welles role, saying he brought "a watchful, assessing and subtly excited gaze that makes him thrilling and a little dangerous."
"I've never seen a backstage movie that was truer to the experience of putting on a show," wrote Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout, who reserved special praise for the design team's recreation of Welles's production of Julius Caesar:
Like most Welles stage shows, alas, this one left few traces. No part of the production was filmed, and nothing else survives but the design sketches and some still photographs taken in 1937. ... What makes Me and Orson Welles uniquely interesting to scholars of American drama is that Mr. Linklater's design team found the Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man. This house closely resembles the old Comedy Theatre on 41st Street, which was torn down five years after Julius Caesar opened there. Using Samuel Leve's original designs, they reconstructed the set for Julius Caesar on the Gaiety's stage. Then Mr. Linklater filmed some 15 minutes' worth of scenes from the play, lit according to Jean Rosenthal's plot, accompanied by Marc Blitzstein's original incidental music and staged in a style as close to that of the 1937 production as is now possible.
Teachout wrote that he "was floored by the verisimilitude of the results", and that "you will never get any closer to the Welles Julius Caesar than by watching Me and Orson Welles, whose DVD version also includes a special feature comprising footage of the reconstructed scenes, not all of which made the final cut."
In 2015, Mercury actor Norman Lloyd (who is portrayed by Leo Bill in the film) praised Christian McKay's performance as Orson Welles as "the best rendition of him I've ever seen." However, he otherwise "hated" the film and he criticized the accuracy of the characters: "It bears no relation to truth, or to what happened when you worked with Orson and so forth. I thought McKay was very good, but the rest of the characters are just ridiculous. They're all made up! I didn't even recognize myself ... and then I thought, Well, thank goodness I can't!" Lloyd named George Coulouris as an example, who was shown as "neurotic and afraid to do his scene", while in reality he was someone "you couldn't stop from acting, for Christ's sake!".
Accolades
Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of 2009 by the National Board of Review. It was listed as one of the year's top ten films by critics including Philip French of The Observer, David Denby of The New Yorker, and Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott of At the Movies.
The film earned two awards from the Austin Film Critics Association – the Austin Film Award to director Richard Linklater. and the Breakthrough Artist Award to Christian McKay. McKay received many accolades for his portrayal of Orson Welles, including Best Supporting Actor awards from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Utah Film Critics Association. He received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actor nominations from the Boston Society of Film Critics (second place), Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, Denver Film Critics Society, Detroit Film Critics Society, Houston Film Critics Society, International Cinephile Society, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle (second place), Online Film & Television Association, Toronto Film Critics Association, and in the Chlotrudis Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and the Village Voice Film Poll (second place). McKay was nominated in the Best Actor category in the Evening Standard British Film Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards and 2009 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards.
Home media
On August 17, 2010, Warner released Me and Orson Welles on DVD () for exclusive sale at Target in the United States. Entertainment One Films released the DVD in Canada on the same date. The film has not been released on Blu-ray in the U.S., though it is available in the format in Italy and Germany.
Soundtrack
The original motion picture soundtrack for Me and Orson Welles was released on CD November 24, 2009, by Decca Records (5323762).
"This Year's Kisses", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"I'm Shooting High", Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra
"Sing, Sing, Sing", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"One O'Clock Jump", Count Basie and His Orchestra
"Ode to Krupa", Michael J McEvoy
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Christian McKay
"Let Yourself Go", Ginger Rogers
"Solitude", The Mills Brothers
"Aftershow Jam", Michael J McEvoy featuring Huw Morgan on trumpet
"They Can't Take That Away from Me", Fred Astaire
"In a Sentimental Mood" (Instrumental), Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"The Music Goes Round and Round", Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven
"I Surrender Dear", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"You Made Me Love You", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Have You Met Miss Jones?", James Langton and His Solid Senders
"Sing, Sing, Sing", James Langton and His Solid Senders
References
External links
Interview with Arthur Anderson
2008 films
2000s comedy-drama films
British films
British comedy-drama films
American comedy-drama films
2000s English-language films
Films directed by Richard Linklater
Films about Orson Welles
Films based on American novels
Films set in 1937
Films set in New York City
Films shot in England
Films about actors
Films about theatre
American films
Julius Caesar (play)
Films shot in the Isle of Man
2008 comedy films
2008 drama films
| false |
[
"The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh is a short film made in 1984 by Orson Welles. The film was intended as a private video letter from Welles to his longtime friend and accountant Bill Cronshaw, who was ill. In the film, Welles sits behind a typewriter at his desk and speaks of the human spirit, quoting the journal of aviator Charles Lindbergh. Welles was in visibly poor health himself when the film was made, and he did not intend for it to be seen by the public.\n\nProduction \n\nThe Spirit of Charles Lindbergh was the last film project completed by Orson Welles in his lifetime. After Welles's death in 1985, all of his unfinished films were bequeathed to his long-term companion and mistress Oja Kodar, and she in turn donated many of them (including The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh) to the Munich Film Museum for preservation and restoration. In 2000 the Munich Film Museum released a digitally restored version of the complete three minutes of footage, which has subsequently been screened at numerous film festivals.\n\nAlthough the restored footage has never been released on video or DVD, a brief clip of the unrestored footage can be seen at the end of Vassili Slovic's 1995 documentary Orson Welles: the One-Man Band.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\n \n\n1984 films\nAmerican films\nShort films directed by Orson Welles\n1984 short films\nCharles Lindbergh",
"Orson Welles' Magic Show is an unfinished television special by Orson Welles, filmed between 1976 and 1985. In it, Welles performs various magic tricks for the camera, promising that no trick photography is used.\n\nWelles had a lifelong interest in magic, having been taught his first magic tricks by Harry Houdini in the 1920s, when Welles was still a boy. He had already demonstrated his magic tricks in a number of films and television programmes including Follow the Boys (1944), Magic Trick (1953), Casino Royale (1967), and on his own unsuccessful 1979 pilot for The Orson Welles Show.\n\nAfter Orson Welles' death in 1985, all of his unfinished films were bequeathed to his long-term companion and mistress Oja Kodar, and she in turn donated many of them (including Orson Welles' Magic Show) to the Munich Film Museum for preservation and restoration. In 2000 the Munich Film Museum then edited together the complete footage into a 27-minute cut, which has subsequently been screened at numerous film festivals. \n\nThe restored footage has never been released on video or DVD.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n \n\n1970s unfinished films\n1980s unfinished films\nUnfinished films\nUnreleased American films\nFilms directed by Orson Welles"
] |
[
"Me and Orson Welles",
"Release",
"What month was this film released in theaters?",
"The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009,",
"What were critics reviews of this film?",
"Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008.",
"Did Me and Orson Welles get a DVD release?",
"I don't know.",
"How much money did Me and Orson Welles make at the box office?",
"IndieWIRE reported, \"The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters,",
"Did Me and Orson Welles go on to get a broader theater release?",
"in the UK on December 4, 2009.",
"Did Me and Orson Welles ever make it to any streaming services?",
"I don't know.",
"Did Me and Orson Welles get shown at any film festivals?",
"Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008."
] |
C_6b221c9714634babbef87322a8377048_0
|
Was this movie ever released in other languages?
| 8 |
Was Me and Orson Welles movie ever released in other languages besides English?
|
Me and Orson Welles
|
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's resume and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4-13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal. Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost. It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009. The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future." CANNOTANSWER
|
CANNOTANSWER
|
Me and Orson Welles is a 2008 period drama film directed by Richard Linklater and starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the story, set in 1937 New York, tells of a teenager hired to perform in Orson Welles's groundbreaking stage adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar who becomes attracted to a career-driven production assistant.
The film was shot in London and New York and on the Isle of Man in February, March and April 2008, and was released in the United States on November 25, 2009, and the United Kingdom on December 4, 2009.
McKay's portrayal of Welles was recognized with a multitude of accolades, and Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of the year by the National Board of Review.
Plot
In New York City in the fall of 1937, 17-year-old high-school student Richard Samuels meets Orson Welles, who unexpectedly offers him the role of Lucius in Caesar, the first production of his new Mercury Theatre repertory company. The company is immersed in rehearsals at its Broadway theater. Charmed by Welles, Richard learns that he is having an affair with the leading actress while his wife is pregnant. Richard finds ambitious production assistant Sonja Jones is attracted to him.
Welles tells Richard a few days before the premiere that he is worried, because he has recently had nothing but good luck; he fears that he will finally have bad luck with the premiere, and that the play will be a flop. During rehearsals Richard accidentally sets off the sprinkler system, soaking the entire theatre. When accused by Welles he denies having anything to do with the deluge, and suggests that the catastrophe was the bad luck that Welles needed to get out of the way.
Welles decides the entire production crew would benefit from a coupling game, and Richard cheats to ensure he is paired with Sonja. Richard spends the night with Sonja, but becomes jealous when she spends the next night with Welles. He confronts Welles, mentions his pregnant wife, and is fired. An apparent reconciliation follows, and Richard performs on the first night. The anti-fascist adaptation of Caesar is a huge success, but after the premiere, Richard is told that Welles only needed him in order to secure a successful first-night production and, that done, he has again been fired.
The broken-hearted but wiser Richard spontaneously recites lines from Julius Caesar in his high school English class, to his classmates' applause. He later meets up with a likely new girlfriend, Gretta Adler, a young aspiring playwright whom he met in a music store at the film's beginning. With Richard's and Sonja's assistance, Adler manages to get a story published in The New Yorker, and she invites Richard out, to help her celebrate.
Cast
Zac Efron as Richard Samuels
Christian McKay as Orson Welles
Claire Danes as Sonja Jones
Ben Chaplin as George Coulouris
James Tupper as Joseph Cotten
Eddie Marsan as John Houseman
Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd
Kelly Reilly as Muriel Brassler
Patrick Kennedy as Grover Burgess
Travis Oliver as John Hoyt
Zoe Kazan as Gretta Adler
Al Weaver as Sam Leve
Saskia Reeves as Barbara Luddy
Imogen Poots as Lorelei Lathrop
Rhodri Orders as Stefan Schnabel
Michael Brandon as Les Tremayne
Janie Dee as Mrs Samuels
Production
Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr. adapted the film's screenplay from Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name about a teenager (in reality, the 15-year-old Arthur Anderson, who played Lucius in Welles' production) involved in the founding of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. After receiving funding from CinemaNX, a production company backed by the Isle of Man film fund, and an offer from Framestore Features to co-finance the film, Richard Linklater came on board to direct Me and Orson Welles. Zac Efron signed on as the lead in early January 2008, claiming he decided to take the role of Richard Samuels because "It's a completely different project than I've ever done before," while Claire Danes joined the cast as the protagonist's love interest Sonja Jones in late January.
In the theatre, Christian McKay had portrayed Orson Welles in the one-man play Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles at a number of venues, including the Edinburgh Festival and King's Head (London). He reprised the role in the U.S. at the 2007 "Brits Off Broadway" festival, where Linklater saw his performance and then cast McKay as Welles, retaining him over the subsequent objections of the project's producer.
Me and Orson Welles underwent filming in the Isle of Man, Pinewood Studios, London and New York from February to April 2008. Filming in London commenced first in mid-February, before scenes in the Isle of Man were shot February 24–March 14, 2008, where filming locations included Gaiety Theatre and various other parts of Douglas. During filming in Douglas, Efron and Danes believe they sighted a ghost, or "supernatural" being, outside a window on set at Gaiety Theatre.
Filming in Britain resumed in late March for six weeks at Pinewood Studios. Other locations included Crystal Palace Park, where a façade of New York's Mercury Theatre was set up for a scene. Actor James Tupper claimed that the best replica of an old New York theater was in England, while many of the actors who filled the company were from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The production crew only briefly visited New York; photographs were taken and footage shot to be added into the film as digital effects. Every exterior shot was filmed on a single street built at Pinewood Studios with a green screen at one end; different angles and slightly altered set designs were used between shots to make the street appear different each time.
Release
Select footage of Me and Orson Welles was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where financing and sales agency Cinetic Media were looking to sell the film to a distributor. Before its Cannes premiere, The Hollywood Reporter predicted that the film would attract distributors with Linklater's résumé and Efron's teen "heartthrob" status to appeal to a younger demographic, but Me and Orson Welles failed to secure any American acquisitions. Its first full screening was at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival, running September 4–13, 2008. In spite of its failure to find a buyer at Cannes, Toronto's co-director Cameron Bailey predicted that it would be "one of the hottest films" in the lineup, Anne Thompson of Variety magazine also believed that the film would be one of "only a few lucky winners" to secure a seven-figure deal.
Again, however, the film's distribution rights were not purchased and it went on to show at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. In May 2009, production company CinemaNX announced that it would distribute Me and Orson Welles itself, sharing marketing and advertising costs with Vue Entertainment. Freestyle Releasing was hired as the US distributor with Hart/Lunsford Pictures in exchange for participation in revenues paid the $4 million prints and advertising cost.
It was screened at the Woodstock Film Festival in September 2009, where Linklater was honored as the winner of the 2009 Maverick Award. it opened the New Orleans Film Festival on October 9, 2009; and it was screened at the St. Louis International Film Festival in November 2009.
The film was released in the US on November 25, 2009, and in the UK on December 4, 2009. IndieWIRE reported, "The do-it-yourself release of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles got off to a very nice start, averaging $15,910 from its four theaters, the highest PTA of all debuting films. ... While Orson Welles is one of the first examples of such a high-profile film going to the DIY route, if it proves successful, it's going to be done a lot more in the future."
Reception
Box office
During its theatrical release (November 25, 2009 – February 25, 2010), Me and Orson Welles grossed a total of $1,190,003 in the United States and $2,336,172 worldwide.
Critical response
The film has received positive reviews from critics. It currently holds an 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 156 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Me and Orson Welles boasts a breakout performance by Christian McKay and an infectious love of the backstage drama that overcomes its sometimes fluffy tone." It holds a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 on Metacritic from 30 critics.
Film critic Roger Ebert called Me and Orson Welles "one of the best movies about the theater I've ever seen ... not only entertaining but an invaluable companion to the life and career of the Great Man". Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film for its "terrific acting" and called it "a must for lovers and students of the theater". Variety magazine's Todd McCarthy labelled McKay's performance "an extraordinary impersonation" of Welles, though he wrote that "Efron never feels like a proper fit for Richard". Karen Durbin of The New York Times praised McKay in the Welles role, saying he brought "a watchful, assessing and subtly excited gaze that makes him thrilling and a little dangerous."
"I've never seen a backstage movie that was truer to the experience of putting on a show," wrote Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout, who reserved special praise for the design team's recreation of Welles's production of Julius Caesar:
Like most Welles stage shows, alas, this one left few traces. No part of the production was filmed, and nothing else survives but the design sketches and some still photographs taken in 1937. ... What makes Me and Orson Welles uniquely interesting to scholars of American drama is that Mr. Linklater's design team found the Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man. This house closely resembles the old Comedy Theatre on 41st Street, which was torn down five years after Julius Caesar opened there. Using Samuel Leve's original designs, they reconstructed the set for Julius Caesar on the Gaiety's stage. Then Mr. Linklater filmed some 15 minutes' worth of scenes from the play, lit according to Jean Rosenthal's plot, accompanied by Marc Blitzstein's original incidental music and staged in a style as close to that of the 1937 production as is now possible.
Teachout wrote that he "was floored by the verisimilitude of the results", and that "you will never get any closer to the Welles Julius Caesar than by watching Me and Orson Welles, whose DVD version also includes a special feature comprising footage of the reconstructed scenes, not all of which made the final cut."
In 2015, Mercury actor Norman Lloyd (who is portrayed by Leo Bill in the film) praised Christian McKay's performance as Orson Welles as "the best rendition of him I've ever seen." However, he otherwise "hated" the film and he criticized the accuracy of the characters: "It bears no relation to truth, or to what happened when you worked with Orson and so forth. I thought McKay was very good, but the rest of the characters are just ridiculous. They're all made up! I didn't even recognize myself ... and then I thought, Well, thank goodness I can't!" Lloyd named George Coulouris as an example, who was shown as "neurotic and afraid to do his scene", while in reality he was someone "you couldn't stop from acting, for Christ's sake!".
Accolades
Me and Orson Welles was named one of the top ten independent films of 2009 by the National Board of Review. It was listed as one of the year's top ten films by critics including Philip French of The Observer, David Denby of The New Yorker, and Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott of At the Movies.
The film earned two awards from the Austin Film Critics Association – the Austin Film Award to director Richard Linklater. and the Breakthrough Artist Award to Christian McKay. McKay received many accolades for his portrayal of Orson Welles, including Best Supporting Actor awards from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and the Utah Film Critics Association. He received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actor nominations from the Boston Society of Film Critics (second place), Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, Denver Film Critics Society, Detroit Film Critics Society, Houston Film Critics Society, International Cinephile Society, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle (second place), Online Film & Television Association, Toronto Film Critics Association, and in the Chlotrudis Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and the Village Voice Film Poll (second place). McKay was nominated in the Best Actor category in the Evening Standard British Film Awards, London Critics Circle Film Awards and 2009 San Diego Film Critics Society Awards.
Home media
On August 17, 2010, Warner released Me and Orson Welles on DVD () for exclusive sale at Target in the United States. Entertainment One Films released the DVD in Canada on the same date. The film has not been released on Blu-ray in the U.S., though it is available in the format in Italy and Germany.
Soundtrack
The original motion picture soundtrack for Me and Orson Welles was released on CD November 24, 2009, by Decca Records (5323762).
"This Year's Kisses", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"I'm Shooting High", Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra
"Sing, Sing, Sing", Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"One O'Clock Jump", Count Basie and His Orchestra
"Ode to Krupa", Michael J McEvoy
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Let's Pretend There's a Moon", Christian McKay
"Let Yourself Go", Ginger Rogers
"Solitude", The Mills Brothers
"Aftershow Jam", Michael J McEvoy featuring Huw Morgan on trumpet
"They Can't Take That Away from Me", Fred Astaire
"In a Sentimental Mood" (Instrumental), Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
"The Music Goes Round and Round", Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven
"I Surrender Dear", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"You Made Me Love You", Jools Holland and His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring Eddi Reader
"Have You Met Miss Jones?", James Langton and His Solid Senders
"Sing, Sing, Sing", James Langton and His Solid Senders
References
External links
Interview with Arthur Anderson
2008 films
2000s comedy-drama films
British films
British comedy-drama films
American comedy-drama films
2000s English-language films
Films directed by Richard Linklater
Films about Orson Welles
Films based on American novels
Films set in 1937
Films set in New York City
Films shot in England
Films about actors
Films about theatre
American films
Julius Caesar (play)
Films shot in the Isle of Man
2008 comedy films
2008 drama films
| false |
[
"Indradhanu () is a TV channel specialising in movies of Assam. It was launched on 15 April 2017 and is a part of the Pride East Entertainments Pvt. Ltd. based in Guwahati, Assam owned by Riniki Bhuyan Sarma. It is the first ever satellite movie TV channel of the northeast India. The channel broadcast recently released movies and shortfilms in Assamese, Hindi, Bengali and other regional languages.\n\nThe channel will also have a music show, The Legend, which will feature popular Assamese, Hindi, Bengali and other regional-language songs.\n\nReferences\n\nTelevision stations in Guwahati\nAssamese-language mass media\nAssamese-language television channels\nTelevision channels and stations established in 2017",
"Disney Character Voices International, Inc. is a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company with primary responsibility for the provision of translation and dubbing services for all Disney productions including those by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Disney Music Group, and Disney Media Distribution. This division also supervises dubbings for Disney theme parks and derived games. An office of the division is present in several countries around the world.\n\nHistory \n\nThe first dubbing issued for a Disney movie was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was originally distributed in 1938 in various Western languages. Walt Disney expressed to Tatiana Angelini, Swedish voice of Snow White, that she was his personal favorite international voice for the character. The movie premiered at the 6th Venice International Film Festival, winning the Grand Art Trophy special award. Disney was unable to secure distribution in Nazi Germany. To make a German-language version for Austria and Switzerland, Disney recorded native German voice talent in Amsterdam.\n\nIn the 40s, Jimmy Johnson named Jack Cutting, Disney animator since 1930, responsible for the dubbing of Disney movies foreign languages. In 1948, Disney received a Special Achievement Award at the 5th Golden Globe Awards for succeeding in producing a Hindustani dubbing of Bambi right after the end of the Indian independence movement, for \"furthering the (American) influence of the screen\". While Bambi was the first movie to be dubbed in Hindustani, it is unknown whether more movies followed, or if the next dubbings produced by Disney India had to wait for Aladdin to be released in 1994 in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. The DCVI affiliate branch itself was founded in January 1988, when Michael Eisner decided to set up a dubbing department, directed by Roy Disney.\n\nCast selection \n\nTo keep the whole production under control, Disney established a centralized system to hold auditions from actors all over the world, which gained the Walt Disney Company the 2017 Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards. Rick Dempsey, Senior Vice President of DCVI, said he specifically makes the casting decisions for countries that make the top 14 percent of the box office, which sets the blueprint of the character’s voice with the director of the particular language hub. Local offices placed in countries whose voices are directly selected by DCVI will have competence over a specific geographical area, and they will cast the rest of the region in comparison to the selected voices. According to Dempsey, the voices do not have to be identical to the original English voices, but they must match the character, letting them shine through. Especially since 2000s, local celebrities can sometimes be chosen for their appeal to their respective market more than their ability to match or accentuate the character, to make the movie more appealing to the local audience.\n\nLanguages \nDisney movies are usually released in theaters in a set of languages, which varies depending on the product. All Disney animated movies are systematically dubbed and distributed in a fixed group of languages. However, there are languages covered by the department on an irregular base, which varies depending on the movie.\n\nDubbings systematically released \nOver the years, the set of languages covered by DCVI has expanded, with a typical animated tentpole being nowadays distributed in theaters in 39 to 43 territories, an average live-action movie numbering 12 to 15 languages, and a four-quadrant live-action film like Pirates of the Caribbean being dubbed into about 27 tongues. The number of languages involved in the dubbing process varies in accordance with the kind of product, with animation movies covering the largest number, and it has expanded throughout the years.\n\nDubbings irregularly or occasionally released \n\nMoana was released in 2016, which received a total of three special dubbings in Polynesian languages in the space of two years from its original release date. Following upon the success of these three productions, a special Northern Sami dubbing was also made for the movie Frozen II, while no dubbing in this language was made for the first chapter of the series. A peculiar case in one-time dubbings are the Arapaho version of Bambi, released in 1994 and the Navajo version of Finding Nemo, released in 2016, made in collaboration with the Wyoming Indian Schools and the Navajo Nation Museum respectively. Differently from the rest of special dubbings, these two movies are not linked in any ways to the Arapaho and Navajo cultures, but they were rather chosen as a means to preserve these two languages, teaching them to young generations through a popular Disney movie. But while the Navajo version of Finding Nemo is a complete dubbing, which includes even a Navajo version of the end-credits song \"Beyond the Sea\" performed by Fall Out Boy's lead singer Patrick Stump, the Arapaho version of Bambi is only a partial dubbing, where the spoken parts were dubbed, but the songs were all left in English.\n\nReferences\n\nThe Walt Disney Company subsidiaries\nDubbing (filmmaking)\nAmerican companies established in 1942\nEntertainment companies established in 1942\n1942 establishments in California"
] |
[
"Sven Hedin",
"Political views"
] |
C_7909b0619f154bdab580c2e708ce492f_1
|
What was his main political view?
| 1 |
What was Hedin's main political view?
|
Sven Hedin
|
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship HSwMS Sverige, which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government. He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars. He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts. CANNOTANSWER
|
Hedin was a monarchist.
|
Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, (19 February 1865 – 26 November 1952) was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan. The posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life's work.
Overview
At 15 years of age, Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route. From that moment on, young Sven aspired to become an explorer. His studies under the German geographer and China expert, Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, awakened a love of Germany in Hedin and strengthened his resolve to undertake expeditions to Central Asia to explore the last uncharted areas of Asia. After obtaining a doctorate, learning several languages and dialects, and undertaking two trips through Persia, he ignored the advice of Ferdinand von Richthofen to continue his geographic studies to acquaint himself with geographical research methodology; the result was that Hedin had to leave the evaluation of his expedition results later to other scientists.
Between 1894 and 1908, in three daring expeditions through the mountains and deserts of Central Asia, he mapped and researched parts of Chinese Turkestan (officially Xinjiang) and Tibet which had been unexplored by Europeans until then. Upon his return to Stockholm in 1909 he was received as triumphantly as Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. In 1902, he became the last Swede (to date) to be raised to the untitled nobility and was considered one of Sweden's most important personalities. As a member of two scientific academies, he had a voice in the selection of Nobel Prize winners for both science and literature. Hedin never married and had no children, rendering his family line now extinct.
Hedin's expedition notes laid the foundations for a precise mapping of Central Asia. He was one of the first European scientific explorers to employ indigenous scientists and research assistants on his expeditions. Although primarily an explorer, he was also the first to unearth the ruins of ancient Buddhist cities in Chinese Central Asia. However, as his main interest in archaeology was finding ancient cities, he had little interest in gathering data thorough scientific excavations. Of small stature, with a bookish, bespectacled appearance, Hedin nevertheless proved himself a determined explorer, surviving several close brushes with death from hostile forces and the elements over his long career. His scientific documentation and popular travelogues, illustrated with his own photographs, watercolor paintings and drawings, his adventure stories for young readers and his lecture tours abroad made him world-famous.
As a renowned expert on Turkestan and Tibet, he was able to obtain unrestricted access to European and Asian monarchs and politicians as well as to their geographical societies and scholarly associations. They all sought to purchase his exclusive knowledge about the power vacuum in Central Asia with gold medals, diamond-encrusted grand crosses, honorary doctorates and splendid receptions, as well as with logistic and financial support for his expeditions. Hedin, in addition to Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sir Francis Younghusband, and Sir Aurel Stein, was an active player in the British-Russian struggle for influence in Central Asia, known as the Great Game. Their travels were supported because they filled in the "white spaces" in contemporary maps, providing valuable information.
Hedin was honored in ceremonies in:
1890 by King Oscar II of Sweden
1890 by Shah Nāser ad-Dīn Schah
1896, 1909 by Czar Nicholas II of Russia
from 1898 frequently by Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary
1902 by the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon
1903, 1914, 1917, 1926, 1936 by Kaiser Wilhelm II
1906 by the Viceroy of India Lord Minto
1907, 1926, 1933 by the 9th Panchen Lama Thubten Choekyi Nyima
1908 by Emperor Mutsuhito
1910 by Pope Pius X
1910 by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
1915 and subsequently by Hindenburg
1929 and 1935 by Chiang Kai-shek
1935, 1939, 1940 (twice) by Adolf Hitler.
Hedin was, and remained, a figure of the 19th century who clung to its visions and methods also in the 20th century. This prevented him from discerning the fundamental social and political upheavals of the 20th century and aligning his thinking and actions accordingly.
Concerned about the security of Scandinavia, he favored the construction of the battleship Sverige. In World War I he specifically allied himself in his publications with the German monarchy and its conduct of the war. Because of this political involvement, his scientific reputation was damaged among Germany's wartime enemies, along with his memberships in their geographical societies and learned associations, as well as any support for his planned expeditions.
After a less-than-successful lecture tour in 1923 through North America and Japan, he traveled on to Beijing to carry out an expedition to Chinese Turkestan (modern Xinjiang), but the region's unstable political situation thwarted this intention. He instead traveled through Mongolia by car and through Siberia aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway.
With financial support from the governments of Sweden and Germany, he led, between 1927 and 1935, an international and interdisciplinary Sino-Swedish Expedition to carry out scientific investigations in Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, with the participation of 37 scientists from six countries. Despite Chinese counter-demonstrations and after months of negotiations in China, was he able to make the expedition also a Chinese one by obtaining Chinese research commissions and the participation of Chinese scientists. He also concluded a contract which guaranteed freedom of travel for this expedition which, because of its arms, 300 camels, and activities in a war theater, resembled an invading army. However, the financing remained Hedin's private responsibility.
Because of failing health, the civil war in Chinese Turkestan, and a long period of captivity, Hedin, by then 70 years of age, had a difficult time after the currency depreciation of the Great Depression raising the money required for the expedition, the logistics for assuring the supplying of the expedition in an active war zone, and obtaining access for the expedition's participants to a research area intensely contested by local warlords. Nevertheless, the expedition was a scientific success. The archaeological artifacts which had been sent to Sweden were scientifically assessed for three years, after which they were returned to China under the terms of the contract.
Starting in 1937, the scientific material assembled during the expedition was published in over 50 volumes by Hedin and other expedition participants, thereby making it available for worldwide research on eastern Asia. When he ran out of money to pay printing costs, he pawned his extensive and valuable library, which filled several rooms, making possible the publication of additional volumes.
In 1935, Hedin made his exclusive knowledge about Central Asia available, not only to the Swedish government, but also to foreign governments such as China and Germany, in lectures and personal discussions with political representatives of Chiang Kai-shek and Adolf Hitler.
Although he was not a National Socialist, Hedin's hope that Nazi Germany would protect Scandinavia from invasion by the Soviet Union, brought him in dangerous proximity to representatives of National Socialism, who exploited him as an author. This destroyed his reputation and put him into social and scientific isolation. However, in correspondence and personal conversations with leading Nazis, his successful intercessions achieved the pardoning of ten people condemned to death and the release or survival of Jews who had been deported to Nazi concentration camps.
At the end of the war, U.S. troops deliberately confiscated documents relating to Hedin's planned Central Asia Atlas. The U.S. Army Map Service later solicited Hedin's assistance and financed the printing and publication of his life's work, the Central Asia Atlas. Whoever compares this atlas with Adolf Stielers Hand Atlas of 1891 can appreciate what Hedin accomplished between 1893 and 1935.
Although Hedin's research was taboo in Germany and Sweden because of his conduct relating to Nazi Germany, and stagnated for decades in Germany, the scientific documentation of his expeditions was translated into Chinese by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and incorporated into Chinese research. Following recommendations made by Hedin to the Chinese government in 1935, the routes he selected were used to construct streets and train tracks, as well as dams and canals to irrigate new farms being established in the Tarim and Yanji basins in Xinjiang and the deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold discovered during the Sino-Swedish Expedition were opened up for mining. Among the discoveries of this expedition should also be counted the many Asian plants and animals unheard of until that date, as well as fossil remains of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Many were named after Hedin, the species-level scientific classification being hedini. But one discovery remained unknown to Chinese researchers until the turn of the millennium: in the Lop Nur desert, Hedin discovered in 1933 and 1934 ruins of signal towers which prove that the Great Wall of China once extended as far west as Xinjiang.
From 1931 until his death in 1952, Hedin lived in Stockholm in a modern high-rise in a preferred location, the address being Norr Mälarstrand 66. He lived with his siblings in the upper three stories and from the balcony he had a wide view over Riddarfjärden Bay and Lake Mälaren to the island of Långholmen. In the entryway to the stairwell is to be found a decorative stucco relief map of Hedin's research area in Central Asia and a relief of the Lama temple, a copy of which he had brought to Chicago for the 1933 World's Fair.
On 29 October 1952, Hedin's will granted the rights to his books and his extensive personal effects to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Sven Hedin Foundation established soon thereafter holds all the rights of ownership.
Hedin died at Stockholm in 1952. The memorial service was attended by representatives of the Swedish royal household, the Swedish government, the Swedish Academy, and the diplomatic service. He is buried in the cemetery of Adolf Fredrik church in Stockholm.
Biography
Childhood influences
Sven Hedin was born in Stockholm, the son of Ludwig Hedin, Chief Architect of Stockholm.
When he was 15 years old Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Swedish Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route.
He describes this experience in his book My Life as an Explorer as follows:
On 24 April 1880, the steamer Vega sailed into Stockholms ström. The entire city was illuminated. The buildings around the harbor glowed in the light of innumerable lamps and torches. Gas flames depicted the constellation of Vega on the castle. Amidst this sea of light the famous ship glided into the harbor. I was standing on the Södermalm heights with my parents and siblings, from which we had a superb view. I was gripped by great nervous tension. I will remember this day until I die, as it was decisive for my future. Thunderous jubilation resounded from quays, streets, windows and rooftops. "That is how I want to return home some day," I thought to myself.
First trip to Iran (Persia)
In May 1885, Hedin graduated from Beskowska secondary school in Stockholm. He then accepted an offer to accompany the student Erhard Sandgren as his private tutor to Baku, where Sandgren's father was working as an engineer in the oil fields of Robert Nobel. Afterward he attended a course in topography for general staff officers for one month in summer 1885 and took a few weeks of instruction in portrait drawing; this comprised his entire training in those areas.
On 15 August 1885, he traveled to Baku with Erhard Sandgren and instructed him there for seven months, and he himself began to learn the Latin, French, German, Persian, Russian, English and Tatar languages. He later learned several Persian dialects as well as Turkish, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tibetan and some Chinese.
On 6 April 1886, Hedin left Baku for Iran (then called Persia), traveling by paddle steamer over the Caspian Sea, riding through the Alborz Range to Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz and the harbor city of Bushehr. From there he took a ship up the Tigris River to Baghdad (then in Ottoman Empire), returning to Tehran via Kermanshah, and then travelling through the Caucasus and over the Black Sea to Constantinople. Hedin then returned to Sweden, arriving on 18 September 1886.
In 1887, Hedin published a book about these travels entitled Through Persia, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.
Studies
From 1886 to 1888, Hedin studied under the geologist Waldemar Brøgger in Stockholm and Uppsala the subjects of geology, mineralogy, zoology and Latin. In December 1888, he became a Candidate in Philosophy. From October 1889 to March 1890 he studied in Berlin under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen.
Second trip to Iran
On 12 May 1890, he accompanied as interpreter and vice-consul a Swedish legation to Iran which was to present the Shah of Iran with the insignia of the Order of the Seraphim. As part of the Swedish legation, he was at an audience of the shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in Tehran. He spoke with him and later accompanied him to the Elburz Mountain Range. On 11 July 1890, he and three others climbed Mount Damavand where he collected primary material for his dissertation. Starting in September he traveled on the Silk Road via cities Mashhad, Ashgabat, Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Kashgar to the western outskirts of the Taklamakan Desert. On the trip home, he visited the grave of the Russian Asian scholar, Nikolai Przhevalsky in Karakol on the shore of Lake Issyk Kul. On 29 March 1891, he was back in Stockholm. He published the books King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890 and Through Chorasan and Turkestan about this journey.
Doctorate and career path
On 27 April 1892, Hedin traveled to Berlin to continue his studies under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen. Beginning of July he went to University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, attending lectures by Alfred Kirchhoff. Yet in the same month, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a 28-page dissertation entitled Personal Observations of Damavand. This dissertation is a summary of one part of his book, King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890. Eric Wennerholm remarked on the subject: I can only come to the conclusion that Sven [Hedin] received his doctorate when he was 27 years old after studying for a grand total of only eight months and collecting primary material for one-and-a-half days on the snow-clad peak of Mount Damavand.
Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen not only encouraged Hedin to absolve cursory studies, but also to become thoroughly acquainted with all branches of geographic science and the methodologies of the salient research work, so that he could later work as an explorer. Hedin abstained from doing this with an explanation he supplied in old age: I was not up to this challenge. I had gotten out onto the wild routes of Asia too early, I had perceived too much of the splendor and magnificence of the Orient, the silence of the deserts and the loneliness of long journeys. I could not get used to the idea of spending a long period of time back in school.
Hedin had therewith decided to become an explorer. He was attracted to the idea of traveling to the last mysterious portions of Asia and filling in the gaps by mapping an area completely unknown in Europe. As an explorer, Hedin became important for the Asian and European powers, who courted him, invited him to give numerous lectures, and hoped to obtain from him in return topographic, economic and strategic information about inner Asia, which they considered part of their sphere of influence. As the era of discovery came to a close around 1920, Hedin contented himself with organizing the Sino-Swedish Expedition for qualified scientific explorers.
First expedition
Between 1893 and 1897, Hedin investigated the Pamir Mountains, travelling through the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang region, across the Taklamakan Desert, Lake Kara-Koshun and Lake Bosten, proceeding to study northern Tibet. He covered on this journey and mapped of them on 552 sheets. Approximately led through previously uncharted areas.
He started out on this expedition on 16 October 1893, from Stockholm, traveling via Saint Petersburg and Tashkent to the Pamir Mountains. Several attempts to climb the high Muztagata—called the Father of the Glaciers—in the Pamir Mountains were unsuccessful. He remained in Kashgar until April 1895 and then left on 10 April with three local escorts from the village of Merket to cross the Taklamakan Desert via Tusluk to the Khotan River. Since their water supply was insufficient, seven camels died of thirst, as did two of his escorts (according to Hedin's dramatized and probably inaccurate account). Bruno Baumann traveled on this route in April 2000 with a camel caravan and ascertained that at least one of the escorts who, according to Hedin, had died of thirst had survived, and that it is impossible for a camel caravan traveling in springtime on this route to carry enough drinking water for both camels and travelers.
According to other sources, Hedin had neglected to completely fill the drinking water containers for his caravan at the beginning of the expedition and set out for the desert with only half as much water as could actually be carried. When he noticed the mistake, it was too late to return. Obsessed by his urge to carry out his research, Hedin deserted the caravan and proceeded alone on horseback with his servant. When that escort also collapsed from thirst, Hedin left him behind as well, but managed to reach a water source at the last desperate moment. He did, however, return to his servant with water and rescued him. Nevertheless, his ruthless behavior earned him massive criticism.
In January 1896, after a stopover in Kashgar, Hedin visited the 1,500-year-old abandoned cities of Dandan Oilik and Kara Dung, which are located northeast of Khotan in the Taklamakan Desert. At the beginning of March, he discovered Lake Bosten, one of the largest inland bodies of water in Central Asia. He reported that this lake is supplied by a single mighty feeder stream, the Kaidu River. He mapped Lake Kara-Koshun and returned on 27 May to Khotan. On 29 June, he started out from there with his caravan across northern Tibet and China to Beijing, where he arrived on 2 March 1897. He returned to Stockholm via Mongolia and Russia.
Second expedition
Another expedition in Central Asia followed in 1899–1902 through the Tarim Basin, Tibet and Kashmir to Calcutta. Hedin navigated the Yarkand, Tarim and Kaidu rivers and found the dry riverbed of the Kum-darja as well as the dried out lake bed of Lop Nur. Near Lop Nur, he discovered the ruins of the former walled royal city and later Chinese garrison town of Loulan, containing the brick building of the Chinese military commander, a stupa, and 19 dwellings built of poplar wood. He also found a wooden wheel from a horse-drawn cart (called an arabas) as well as several hundred documents written on wood, paper and silk in the Kharosthi script. These provided information about the history of the city of Loulan, which had once been located on the shores of Lop Nur but had been abandoned around the year 330 CE because the lake had dried out, depriving the inhabitants of drinking water.
During his travels in 1900 and 1901 he attempted in vain to reach the city of Lhasa, which was forbidden to Europeans. He continued to Leh, in Ladakh district, India. From Leh, Hedin's route took him to Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares to Calcutta, meeting there with George Nathaniel Curzon, England's then Viceroy to India.
This expedition resulted in 1,149 pages of maps, on which Hedin depicted newly discovered lands. He was the first to describe yardang formations in the Lop Desert.
Third expedition
Between 1905 and 1908, Hedin investigated the Central Iranian desert basins, the western highlands of Tibet and the Transhimalaya, which for a time was afterward called the Hedin Range. He visited the 9th Panchen Lama in the cloistered city of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse. Hedin was the first European to reach the Kailash region, including the sacred Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash, the midpoint of the earth according to Buddhist and Hindu mythology. The most important goal of the expedition was the search for the sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra Rivers, both of which Hedin found. From India, he returned via Japan and Russia to Stockholm.
He returned from this expedition with a collection of geological samples which are kept and studied in the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology of Munich University. These sedimentary rocks—such as breccia, conglomerate, limestone, and slate, as well as volcanic rock and granite—highlight the geological diversity of the regions visited by Hedin during this expedition.
Mongolia
In 1923, Hedin traveled to Beijing via the USA—where he visited the Grand Canyon—and Japan. Because of political and social unrest in China, he had to abandon an expedition to Xinjiang. Instead, he traveled with Frans August Larson (called the "Duke of Mongolia") in November and December in a Dodge automobile from Peking through Mongolia via Ulaanbaatar to Ulan-Ude, Russia and from there on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow.
Fourth expedition
Between 1927 and 1935, Hedin led an international Sino-Swedish Expedition which investigated the meteorological, topographic and prehistoric situation in Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Xinjiang.
Hedin described it as a peripatetic university in which the participating scientists worked almost independently, while he—like a local manager—negotiated with local authorities, made decisions, organized whatever was necessary, raised funds and recorded the route followed. He gave archaeologists, astronomers, botanists, geographers, geologists, meteorologists and zoologists from Sweden, Germany and China an opportunity to participate in the expedition and carry out research in their areas of specialty.
Hedin met Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing, who thereupon became a patron of the expedition. The Sino-Swedish Expedition was honored with a Chinese postage stamp series which had a print run of 25,000. The four stamps show camels at a camp with the expedition flag and bear the Chinese text, "Postal Service of the Prosperous Middle Kingdom" and in Latin underneath, "Scientific Expedition to the Northwestern Province of China 1927–1933". A painting in the Beijing Palace Museum entitled Nomads in the Desert served as model for the series. Of the 25,000 sets, 4,000 were sold across the counter and 21,500 came into the possession of the expedition. Hedin used them to finance the expedition, selling them for a price of five dollars per set. The stamps were unwelcome at the time due to the high price Hedin was selling them at, but years later became valuable treasures among collectors.
The first part of the expedition, from 1927 to 1932, led from Beijing via Baotou to Mongolia, over the Gobi Desert, through Xinjiang to Ürümqi, and into the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin. The expedition had a wealth of scientific results which are being published up to the present time. For example, the discovery of specific deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold reserves was of great economic relevance for China. In recognition of his achievements, the Berlin Geographical Society presented him with the Ferdinand von Richthofen Medal in 1933; the same honor was also awarded to Erich von Drygalski for his Gauss Expedition to the Antarctic; and to Alfred Philippson for his research on the Aegean Region.
From the end of 1933 to 1934, Hedin led—on behalf of the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing—a Chinese expedition to investigate irrigation measures and draw up plans and maps for the construction of two roads suitable for automobiles along the Silk Road from Beijing to Xinjiang. Following his plans, major irrigation facilities were constructed, settlements erected, and roads built on the Silk Road from Beijing to Kashgar, which made it possible to completely bypass the rough terrain of Tarim Basin.
One aspect of the geography of central Asia which intensively occupied Hedin for decades was what he called the "wandering lake" Lop Nur. In May 1934, he began a river expedition to this lake. For two months he navigated the Kaidu River and the Kum-Darja to Lop Nur, which had been filled with water since 1921. After the lake dried out in 1971 as a consequence of irrigation activities, the above-mentioned transportation link enabled the People's Republic of China to construct a nuclear weapon test site at Lop Nur.
His caravan of truck lorries was hijacked by the Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying who was retreating from northern Xinjiang along with his Kuomintang 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) from the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. While Hedin was detained by Ma Zhongying, he met General Ma Hushan, and Kemal Kaya Effendi.
Ma Zhongying's adjutant claimed to Hedin that Ma Zhongying had the entire region of Tian-shan-nan-lu (southern Xinjiang) under his control and Sven could pass through safely without any trouble. Hedin did not believe his assertions. Some of Ma Zhongying's Tungan (Chinese speaking Muslim) troops attacked Hedin's expedition by shooting at their vehicles.
For the return trip, Hedin selected the southern Silk Road route via Hotan to Xi'an, where the expedition arrived on 7 February 1935. He continued on to Beijing to meet with President Lin Sen and to Nanjing to Chiang Kai-shek. He celebrated his 70th birthday on 19 February 1935 in the presence of 250 members of the Kuomintang government, to whom he reported interesting facts about the Sino-Swedish Expedition. On this day, he was awarded the Brilliant Jade Order, Second Class.
At the end of the expedition, Hedin was in a difficult financial situation. He had considerable debts at the German-Asian Bank in Beijing, which he repaid with the royalties and fees received for his books and lectures. In the months after his return, he held 111 lectures in 91 German cities as well as 19 lectures in neighboring countries. To accomplish this lecture tour, he covered a stretch as long as the equator, by train and by car—in a time period of five months. He met Adolf Hitler in Berlin before his lecture on 14 April 1935.
Political views
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship , which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government.
He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars.
He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts.
Hedin and the Third Reich
Hedin's conservative and pro-German views eventually translated into sympathy for the Third Reich, and this would draw him into increasing controversy towards the end of his life. Adolf Hitler had been an early admirer of Hedin, who was in turn impressed with Hitler's nationalism. He saw the German leader's rise to power as a revival of German fortunes, and welcomed its challenge against Soviet Communism. He was not an entirely uncritical supporter of the Nazis, however. His own views were shaped by traditionalist, Christian and conservative values, while National Socialism was in part a modern revolutionary-populist movement. Hedin objected to some aspects of National Socialist rule, and occasionally attempted to convince the German government to relent in its anti-religious and anti-Semitic campaigns.
Hedin met Adolf Hitler and other leading National Socialists repeatedly and was in regular correspondence with them. The politely-worded correspondence usually concerned scheduling matters, birthday congratulations, Hedin's planned or completed publications, and requests by Hedin for pardons for people condemned to death, and for mercy, release and permission to leave the country for people interned in prisons or concentration camps. In correspondence with Joseph Goebbels and Hans Dräger, Hedin was able to achieve the printing of the Daily Watchwords year after year.
On 29 October 1942, Hitler read Hedin's book entitled, America in the Battle of the Continents. In the book Hedin promoted the view that President Roosevelt was responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939 and that Hitler had done everything in his power to prevent war. Moreover, Hedin argued that the origins of the Second World War lay not in German belligerence but in the Treaty of Versailles. This book deeply influenced Hitler and reaffirmed his views on the origins of the war and who was responsible for it. In a letter to Hedin the following day Hitler wrote, "I thank you warmly for the attention you have shown me. I have already read the book and welcome in particular that you so explicitly detailed the offers I made to Poland at the beginning of the War". Hitler continued, "without question, the individual guilty of this war, as you correctly state at the end of your book, is exclusively the American President Roosevelt."
The Nazis attempted to achieve a close connection to Hedin by bestowing awards upon him—later scholars have noted that "honors were heaped upon this prominent sympathizer." They asked him to present an address on Sport as a Teacher at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin's Olympic stadium. They made him an honorary member of the German-Swedish Union Berlin () In 1938, they presented him with the City of Berlin's Badge of Honor (). For his 75th birthday on 19 February 1940 they awarded him the Order of the German Eagle; shortly before that date it had been presented to Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. On New Year's Day 1943 they released the Oslo professor of philology and university rector Didrik Arup Seip from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Hedin's request to obtain Hedin's agreement to accept additional honors during the 470th anniversary of Munich University. On 15 January 1943, he received the Gold Medal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Goldmedaille der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). On 16 January 1943 he received an honorary doctorate from the faculty of natural sciences of Munich University. On the same day, the Nazis founded in his absence the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research located at Mittersill Castle, which was supposed to serve the long-term advancement of the scientific legacy of Hedin and Wilhelm Filchner as Asian experts. However, it was instead misused by Heinrich Himmler as an institute of the Research Association for German Genealogical Inheritance (Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V.). On 21 January 1943, he was requested to sign the Golden Book of the city of Munich.
Hedin supported the Nazis in his journalistic activities. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, he did not regret his collaboration with the Nazis because this cooperation had made it possible to rescue numerous Nazi victims from execution, or death in extermination camps.
Senior Jewish German archeologist Werner Scheimberg, sent in the expedition by the Thule Society, "had been one of the companions of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin on his excursions in the East, with archaeological and to some extent esoteric purposes".
Hedin was trying to discover the mythological place of Agartha and reproached the Polish explorer and visiting professor Antoni Ossendowski for having been gone where the Swedish explorer wasn't able to come, and thus was personally invited by Adolf Hitler in Berlin and honoured by the Führer during his 75th birthday feast.
Criticism of National Socialism
Johannes Paul wrote in 1954 about Hedin:
Much of what happened in the early days of Nazi rule had his approval. However, he did not hesitate to criticize whenever he considered this to be necessary, particularly in cases of Jewish persecution, conflict with the churches and bars to freedom of science.
In 1937 Hedin refused to publish his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden (Germany and World Peace) in Germany because the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda insisted on the deletion of Nazi-critical passages. In a letter Hedin wrote to State Secretary Walther Funk dated 16 April 1937, it becomes clear what his criticism of National Socialism was in this time before the establishment of extermination camps:
When we first discussed my plan to write a book, I stated that I only wanted to write objectively, scientifically, possibly critically, according to my conscience, and you considered that to be completely acceptable and natural. Now I emphasized in a very friendly and mild form that the removal of distinguished Jewish professors who have performed great services for mankind is detrimental to Germany and that this has given rise to many agitators against Germany abroad. So I took this position only in the interest of Germany.
My worry that the education of German youth, which I otherwise praise and admire everywhere, is deficient in questions of religion and the hereafter comes from my love and sympathy for the German nation, and as a Christian I consider it my duty to state this openly, and, to be sure, in the firm conviction that Luther’s nation, which is religious through and through, will understand me.
So far I have never gone against my conscience and will not do it now either. Therefore, no deletions will be made.
Hedin later published this book in Sweden.
Efforts on behalf of deported Jews
After he refused to remove his criticism of National Socialism from his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden, the Nazis confiscated the passports of Hedin's Jewish friend Alfred Philippson and his family in 1938 to prevent their intended departure to American exile and retain them in Germany as a bargaining chip when dealing with Hedin. The consequence was that Hedin expressed himself more favorably about Nazi Germany in his book Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland, subjugated himself against his conscience to the censorship of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and published the book in Germany.
On 8 June 1942, the Nazis increased the pressure on Hedin by deporting Alfred Philippson and his family to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. By doing so, they accomplished their goal of forcing Hedin against his conscience to write his book Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and other government agencies and to publish it in Germany in 1942. In return, the Nazis classified Alfred Philippson as "A-prominent" and granted his family privileges which enabled them to survive.
For a long time Hedin was in correspondence with Alfred Philippson and regularly sent food parcels to him in Theresienstadt concentration camp. On 29 May 1946, Alfred Philippson wrote to him (translation, abbreviated quotation): My dear Hedin! Now that letters can be sent abroad I have the opportunity to write to you…. We frequently think with deep gratitude of our rescuer, who alone is responsible for our being able to survive the horrible period of three years of incarceration and hunger in Theresienstadt concentration camp, at my age a veritable wonder. You will have learned that we few survivors were finally liberated just a few days before our intended gassing. We, my wife, daughter and I, were then brought on 9–10 July 1945 in a bus of the city of Bonn here to our home town, almost half of which is now destroyed….
Hedin responded on 19 July 1946 (translation, abbreviated quotation): …It was wonderful to find out that our efforts were not in vain. In these difficult years we attempted to rescue over one hundred other unfortunate people who had been deported to Poland, but in most cases without success. We were however able to help a few Norwegians. My home in Stockholm was turned into something like an information and assistance office, and I was excellently supported by Dr. Paul Grassmann, press attaché in the German embassy in Stockholm. He too undertook everything possible to further this humanitarian work. But almost no case was as fortunate as yours, dear friend! And how wonderful, that you are back in Bonn….
The names and fates of the over one hundred deported Jews whom Hedin tried to save have not yet been researched.
Efforts on behalf of deported Norwegians
Hedin supported the cause of the Norwegian author Arnulf Øverland and for the Oslo professor of philology and university director Didrik Arup Seip, who were interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He achieved the release of Didrik Arup Seip, but his efforts to free Arnulf Øverland were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Arnulf Øverland survived the concentration camp.
Efforts on behalf of Norwegian activists
After the third senate of the highest German military court (Reichskriegsgericht) in Berlin condemned to death for alleged espionage the ten Norwegians Sigurd Jakobsen, Gunnar Hellesen, Helge Børseth, Siegmund Brommeland, Peter Andree Hjelmervik, Siegmund Rasmussen, Gunnar Carlsen, Knud Gjerstad, Christian Oftedahl and Frithiof Lund on 24 February 1941, Hedin successfully appealed via Colonel General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst to Adolf Hitler for their reprieve. Their death penalty was converted on 17 June 1941 by Adolf Hitler to ten years forced labor. The Norwegians Carl W. Mueller, Knud Naerum, Peder Fagerland, Ottar Ryan, Tor Gerrard Rydland, Hans Bernhard Risanger and Arne Sørvag who had been condemned to forced labor under the same charge received reduced sentences at Hedin's request. Unfortunately, Hans Bernhard Risanger died in prison just a few days before his release.
Von Falkenhorst was condemned to death, by firing squad, by a British military court on 2 August 1946, because of his responsibility for passing on a Führerbefehl called the Commando Order. Hedin intervened on his behalf, achieving a pardon on 4 December 1946, with the argument that von Falkenhorst had likewise striven to pardon the ten Norwegians condemned to death. Von Falkenhorst's death penalty was commuted by the British military court to 20 years in prison. In the end, Nikolaus von Falkenhorst was released early from the Werl war criminals prison on 13 July 1953.
Awards
Because of his outstanding services, Hedin was raised to the untitled nobility by King Oskar II in 1902, the last time any Swede was to receive a charter of nobility. Oskar II suggested that he prefix the name Hedin with one of the two common predicates of nobility in Sweden, "af" or "von", but Hedin abstained from doing so in his written response to the king. In many noble families in Sweden, it was customary to do without the title of nobility. The coat of arms of Hedin, together with those of some two thousand noble families, is to be found on a wall of the Great Hall in Riddarhuset, the assembly house of Swedish nobility in Stockholm's inner city, Gamla Stan.
In 1905, Hedin was admitted to membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1909 to the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. From 1913 to 1952 he held the sixth of 18 chairs as an elected member of the Swedish Academy. In this position, he had a vote in the selection of Nobel Prize winners.
He was an honorary member of numerous Swedish and foreign scientific societies and institutions which honored him with some 40 gold medals; 27 of these medals can be viewed in Stockholm in a display case in the Royal Coin Cabinet.
He received honorary doctorates from Oxford (1909), Cambridge (1909), Heidelberg (1928), Uppsala (1935), and Munich (1943) universities and from the Handelshochschule Berlin (1931) (all Dr. phil. h.c.), from Breslau University (1915, Dr. jur. h.c.), and from Rostock University (1919, Dr. med. h.c.).
Numerous countries presented him with medals. In Sweden he became a Commander 1st Class of the Royal Order of the North Star (KNO1kl) with a brilliant badge and Knight of the Royal Order of Vasa (RVO). In the United Kingdom he was named Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire by King Edward VII. As a foreigner, he was not authorized to use the associated title of Sir, but he could place the designation KCIE after his family name Hedin. Hedin was also a Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle.
In his honor have been named a glacier, the Sven Hedin Glacier; a lunar crater Hedin; a genus of flowering plants, Hedinia; a species of the flowering plant, Gentiana hedini (now a synonym of Comastoma falcatum ); the beetles Longitarsus hedini and Coleoptera hedini; a butterfly, Fumea hedini Caradja; a spider, Dictyna hedini; a fossil hoofed mammal, Tsaidamotherium hedini; a fossil Therapsid (a "mammal-like reptile") Lystrosaurus hedini; and streets and squares in the cities of various countries (for example, "Hedinsgatan" at Tessinparken in Stockholm).
A permanent exhibition of articles found by Hedin on his expeditions is located in the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum.
In the Adolf Frederick church can be found the Sven Hedin memorial plaque by Liss Eriksson. The plaque was installed in 1959. On it, a globe with Asia to the fore can be seen, crowned with a camel. It bears the Swedish epitaph:
The Sven Hedin Firn in North Greenland was named after him.
Research on Hedin
Source material
A survey of the extensive sources for Hedin research shows that it would be difficult at present to come to a fair assessment of the personality and achievements of Hedin. Most of the source material has not yet been subjected to scientific scrutiny. Even the DFG project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie had to restrict itself to a small selection and a random examination of the source material.
The sources for Hedin research are located in numerous archives (and include primary literature, correspondence, newspaper articles, obituaries and secondary literature).
Hedin's own publications amount to some 30,000 pages.
There are about 2,500 drawings and watercolors, films and many photographs.
To this should be added 25 volumes with travel and expedition notes and 145 volumes of the diaries he regularly maintained between 1930 and 1952, totaling 8,257 pages.
The extensive holdings of the Hedin Foundation (Sven Hedins Stiftelse), which holds Hedin effects in trust, are to be found in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm.
Hedin's correspondence is in the archive of the German Foreign Office in Bonn, in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig, and above all in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm. Most of the correspondence in Hedin's estate is in the National Archives and accessible to researchers and the general public. It includes about 50,000 letters organized alphabetically according to country and sender as well as some 30,000 additional unsorted letters.
The scientific effects as well as a collection of newspaper articles about Hedin organized by year (1895–1952) in 60 bound folios can be found in the Ethnographic Museum.
The finds from Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang are, among other places, in Stockholm in the Ethnographic Museum (some 8,000 individual items), in the Institutes of Geology, Minearology and Paleontology of the Uppsala University, in the depots of the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Munich, and in the National Museum of China, Beijing.
Hedin's documentation
During his expeditions Hedin saw the focus of his work as being in field research. He recorded routes by plotting many thousands of kilometers of his caravan itinerary with the detail of a high resolution topographical map and supplemented them with innumerable altitude measurements and latitude and longitude data. At the same time he combined his field maps with panoramic drawings. He drafted the first precise maps of areas unresearched until that date: the Pamir mountains, the Taklamakan desert, Tibet, the Silk Road and the Himalayas. He was, as far as can be scientifically confirmed, the first European to recognize that the Himalayas were a continuous mountain range.
He systematically studied the lakes of inner Asia, made careful climatological observations over many years, and started extensive collections of rocks, plants, animals and antiquities. Underway he prepared watercolor paintings, sketches, drawings and photographs, which he later published in his works. The photographs and maps with the highest quality printing are to be found in the original Swedish publications.
Hedin prepared a scientific publication for each of his expeditions. The extent of documentation increased dramatically from expedition to expedition. His research report about the first expedition was published in 1900 as Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97 (Supplement 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen), Gotha 1900. The publication about the second expedition, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, increased to six text and two atlas volumes. Southern Tibet, the scientific publication on the third expedition, totalled twelve volumes, three of which were atlases. The results of the Sino-Swedish Expedition were published under the title of Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. This publication went through 49 editions.
This documentation was splendidly produced, which made the price so high that only a few libraries and institutes were able to purchase it. The immense printing costs had to be borne for the most part by Hedin himself, as was also true for the cost of the expeditions. He used the fees and royalties which he received from his popular science books and for his lectures for the purpose.
Hedin did not himself subject his documentation to scientific evaluation, but rather handed it over to other scientists for the purpose. Since he shared his experiences during his expeditions as popular science and incorporated them in a large number of lectures, travelogues, books for young people and adventure books, he became known to the general public. He soon became famous as one of the most well-recognized personalities of his time.
D. Henze wrote the following about an exhibition at the Deutsches Museum entitled Sven Hedin, the last explorer: He was a pioneer and pathfinder in the transitional period to a century of specialized research. No other single person illuminated and represented unknown territories more extensively than he. His maps alone are a unique creation. And the artist did not take second place to the savant, who deep in the night rapidly and apparently without effort rapidly created awe inspiring works. The discipline of geography, at least in Germany, has so far only concerned itself with his popularized reports. The consistent inclusion of the enormous, still unmined treasures in his scientific work are yet to be incorporated in the regional geography of Asia.
Current Hedin research
A scientific assessment of Hedin's character and his relationship to National Socialism was undertaken in the late 1990s and early 2000s at Bonn University by Professor Hans Böhm, Dipl.-Geogr. Astrid Mehmel and Christoph Sieker M.A. as part of the DFG Project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie (Sven Hedin and German Geography).
Literature
Primary
Scientific documentation
Sven Hedin: Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97. Supplementary volume 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen. Gotha 1900.
Sven Hedin: Scientific results of a journey in Central-Asia. 10 text and 2 map volumes. Stockholm 1904–1907. Volume 4
Sven Hedin: Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, Volume 1 1909 VOL. II
Sven Hedin: Southern Tibet. 11 text and 3 map volumes. Stockholm 1917–1922. VOL. VIII
Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. Over 50 volumes to date, contains primary and secondary literature. Stockholm 1937 ff.
Sven Hedin: Central Asia atlas. Maps, Statens etnografiska museum. Stockholm 1966. (appeared in the series Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under the leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition; Ausgabe 47. 1. Geography; 1)
Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa, Volume 1
THROUGH ASIA
Through Asia, Volume 1
German editions
a) Biography
Verwehte Spuren. Orientfahrten des Reise-Bengt und anderer Reisenden im 17. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1923.
b) Popular works
Durch Asiens Wüsten. Drei Jahre auf neuen Wegen in Pamir, Lop-nor, Tibet und China, 2 vol., Leipzig 1899; neue Ausgabe Wiesbaden 1981.
Im Herzen von Asien. Zehntausend Kilometer auf unbekannten Pfaden, 2 vol., Leipzig 1903.
Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1904; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Transhimalaja. Entdeckungen und Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1909–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1985.
Zu Land nach Indien durch Persien. Seistan und Bclutschistan, 2 vol., Leipzig 1910.
Von Pol zu Pol, 3 vol., Leipzig 1911–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Bagdad – Babylon – Ninive, Leipzig 1918
Jerusalem, Leipzig 1918.
General Prschewalskij in Innerasien, Leipzig 1922.
Meine erste Reise, Leipzig 1922.
An der Schwelle Innerasiens, Leipzig 1923.
Mount Everest, Leipzig 1923.
Persien und Mesopotamien, zwei asiatische Probleme, Leipzig 1923.
Von Peking nach Moskau, Leipzig 1924.
Gran Canon. Mein Besuch im amerikanischen Wunderland, Leipzig 1926.
Auf großer Fahrt. Meine Expedition mit Schweden, Deutschen und Chinesen durch die Wüste Gobi 1927– 1928, Leipzig 1929.
Rätsel der Gobi. Die Fortsetzung der Großen Fahrt durch Innerasien in den Jahren 1928–1930, Leipzig 1931.
Jehol, die Kaiserstadt, Leipzig 1932.
Die Flucht des Großen Pferdes, Leipzig 1935.
Die Seidenstraße, Leipzig 1936.
Der wandernde See, Leipzig 1937.
Im Verbotenen Land, Leipzig 1937
c) Political works
Ein Warnungsruf, Leipzig 1912.
Ein Volk in Waffen, Leipzig 1915.
Nach Osten!, Leipzig 1916.
Deutschland und der Weltfriede, Leipzig 1937 (unlike its translations, the original German edition of this title was printed but never delivered; only five copies were bound, one of which is in the possession of the F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden).
Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente, Leipzig 1942
d) Autobiographical works
Mein Leben als Entdecker, Leipzig 1926.
Eroberungszüge in Tibet, Leipzig 1940.
Ohne Auftrag in Berlin, Buenos Aires 1949; Tübingen-Stuttgart 1950.
Große Männer, denen ich begegnete, 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 1951.
Meine Hunde in Asien, Wiesbaden 1953.
Mein Leben als Zeichner, published by Gösta Montell in commemoration of Hedin's 100th birthday, Wiesbaden 1965.
e) Fiction
Tsangpo Lamas Wallfahrt, 2 vol., Leipzig 1921–1923.
Most German publications on Hedin were translated by F.A. Brockhaus Verlag from Swedish into German. To this extent Swedish editions are the original text. Often after the first edition appeared, F.A. Brockhaus Verlag published abridged versions with the same title. Hedin had not only an important business relationship with the publisher Albert Brockhaus, but also a close friendship. Their correspondence can be found in the Riksarkivet in Stockholm. There is a publication on this subject:
Sven Hedin, Albert Brockhaus: Sven Hedin und Albert Brockhaus. Eine Freundschaft in Briefen zwischen Autor und Verleger. F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1942.
Bibliography
Willy Hess: Die Werke Sven Hedins. Versuch eines vollständigen Verzeichnisses. Sven Hedin – Leben und Briefe, Vol. I. Stockholm 1962. likewise.: First Supplement. Stockholm 1965
Manfred Kleiner: Sven Anders Hedin 1865–1952 – eine Bibliografie der Sekundärliteratur. Self-published Manfred Kleinert, Princeton 2001.
Biographies
Detlef Brennecke: Sven Hedin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1986, 1991.
Johannes Paul: Abenteuerliche Lebensreise – Sieben biografische Essays. including: Sven Hedin. Der letzte Entdeckungsreisende. Wilhelm Köhler Verlag, Minden 1954, pp. 317–378.
Alma Hedin: Mein Bruder Sven. Nach Briefen und Erinnerungen. Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1925.
Eric Wennerholm: Sven Hedin 1865–1952. F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden 1978.
Axel Odelberg: Äventyr på Riktigt Berättelsen om Upptäckaren Sven Hedin. Norstedts, Stockholm 2008 (new biography in Swedish, 600 pages).
Hedin and National Socialism
Mehmel, Astrid: Sven Hedin und nationalsozialistische Expansionspolitik. In: Geopolitik. Grenzgänge im Zeitgeist Bd. 1 .1 1890 bis 1945 ed. by Irene Diekmann, Peter Krüger und Julius H. Schoeps, Potsdam 2000, pp. 189–238.
Danielsson, S.K.: The Intellectual Unmasked: Sven Hedin's Political Life from Pan-Germanism to National Socialism. Dissertation, Minnesota, 2005.
References
Further reading
Tommy Lundmark (2014) Sven Hedin institutet. En rasbiologisk upptäcksresa i Tredje riket. ) (Swedish)
External links
Scanned works
Excellent bibliography, listing publications and further literature
International Dunhuang Project Newsletter Issue No. 21, article on Sven Hedin, available also as PDF
British Indian intelligence on Sven Hedin. National Archives of India (1928)
1865 births
1952 deaths
Scientists from Stockholm
Explorers of Asia
Explorers of Central Asia
Explorers of Tibet
Geopoliticians
History of Tibet
Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
Members of the Swedish Academy
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences
Swedish explorers
Swedish geographers
Swedish topographers
Swedish nobility
Swedish people of Jewish descent
Swedish Christians
Swedish sinologists
Stockholm University alumni
Uppsala University alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni
Recipients of the Cullum Geographical Medal
Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire
Commanders First Class of the Order of the Polar Star
Knights of the Order of Vasa
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Swedish monarchists
Explorers of Iran
Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin
Victoria Medal recipients
Explorers of India
| true |
[
"Starrcade '94: Triple Threat was the 12th annual Starrcade professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by World Championship Wrestling (WCW). It took place on December 27, 1994, from the Nashville Municipal Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. The main event of the show was WCW World Heavyweight Champion Hulk Hogan defending the title against his former friend-turned-rival The Butcher. The show also included Jim Duggan defending the WCW United States Championship against Vader and Johnny B. Badd defending the WCW World Television Championship against Arn Anderson.\n\nAspersions were cast on the inclusion of The Butcher (Ed Leslie) in the main event, which was seen as a political maneuver on the part of Hulk Hogan (Leslie's real-life best friend). The match was received negatively by industry journalists, with Wade Keller calling it \"one of the low points of WCW\".\n\nWCW closed in 2001, and all rights to their television and pay-per-view shows – including the Starrcade series – were bought by WWE. In 2015, all WCW pay-per-views were made available on the WWE Network.\n\nProduction\n\nBackground\nFrom the 1960s to the 1980s, it was tradition for Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP), a member of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), to hold major professional wrestling events at Thanksgiving and Christmas, often at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina in the center of JCP's Virginia, North and South Carolina territory. In 1983, JCP created Starrcade as their supercard to continue the Thanksgiving tradition, bringing in wrestlers from other NWA affiliates and broadcasting the show in its territory on closed-circuit television. Starrcade soon became the flagship event of the year for JCP and highlighted their most important feuds and championship matches. In 1987 the show became available by nationwide pay-per-view as were all subsequent Starrcade shows. The Starrcade tradition was continued by World Championship Wrestling (WCW), into which JCP was transformed after it had been sold to Ted Turner in 1988. The 1994 event was the twelfth show to use the Starrcade name and was the first Starrcade to take place in the Nashville Municipal Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee.\n\nStorylines\nThe event featured wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds and storylines. Wrestlers portrayed villains, heroes, or less distinguishable characters in the scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches.\n\nEvent\n\nThe Honky Tonk Man was originally advertised for the show, scheduled to challenge Johnny B. Badd for the WCW World Television Championship but was fired by WCW's Eric Bischoff only days prior to the show for refusing to put over Johnny B. Badd. Instead WCW chose Arn Anderson to replace the Honky Tonk Man, wrestling and losing to Johnny. At the time of the show Harlem Heat had won the WCW World Tag Team Championship prior to the show, but the match had not been broadcast on television yet so Harlem Heat were not announced as the champions nor did they wear the championship belts to the ring, maintaining the illusion that they had not yet won the championship.\n\nReception\nThe involvement of The Butcher (Ed Leslie) in the main event of WCW's flagship pay-per-view garnered particular criticism. Stuart Carapola of PWInsider wrote that \"Starrcade 1994 saw [Hulk] Hogan defend the WCW World Title against his best friend [Leslie], who leapfrogged over everyone else in WCW despite being badly out of shape and greatly diminished from the wrestler he was.\" Wade Keller reported that Leslie's main event positioning was viewed as the result of Hogan making \"a political move to help a buddy, not doing what was best for business\". Keller called the match \"awful\", \"one of the low points of WCW\", and a \"sharp turn away\" from the \"good pay-per-view main events\" that the company was then known for presenting, while noting that Leslie \"wasn't over\".\n\nDave Meltzer awarded the Hogan vs. Butcher match ¾ of a star out of a possible five: no match on the card received a rating higher than 2¼ stars. In reviewing the event, Scott Keith of 411Mania wrote: \"Welcome to rock bottom, as Hogan's egomania results in the main event of the biggest WCW show of the year involving [Ed Leslie].\" He cautioned viewers to watch at their \"own risk\", while offering the \"strongest recommendation to avoid.\"\n\nResults\n\nSee also\nList of WCW pay-per-view events\n\nReferences\n\nStarrcade\n1994 in Tennessee\nEvents in Nashville, Tennessee\nProfessional wrestling in Nashville, Tennessee\nDecember 1994 events in the United States\n1994 World Championship Wrestling pay-per-view events",
"Systems theory in political science is a highly abstract, partly holistic view of politics, influenced by cybernetics. The adaptation of system theory to political science was conceived by David Easton in 1953.\n\nOverview\nIn simple terms, Easton's behavioral approach to politics, proposed that a political system could be seen as a delimited (i.e. all political systems have precise boundaries) and fluid (changing) system of steps in decision making. Greatly simplifying his model:\nInfluence of computers on the discipline of political science and the political system work within an environment.\nThe environment generates different demands from different section of society such as reservation system in the matter of a certain group, demand for better transportation etc.\n Step 1. changes in the social or physical environment surrounding a political system produce \"demands\" and \"supports\" for action or the status quo directed as \"inputs\" towards the political system, through political behavior.\n Step 2, these demands and supporting groups stimulate competition in a political system, leading to decisions or \"outputs\" directed at some aspect of the surrounding social or physical environment.\n Step 3, after a decision or output is made (e.g., a specific policy), it interacts with its environment, and if it produces change in the environment, there are \"outcomes.\"\n Step 4, when a new policy interacts with its environment, outcomes may generate new demands or supports and groups in support or against the policy (\"feedback\") or a new policy on some related matter.\n Step 5, feedback, leads back to Step 1, forming a never-ending cycle.\n\nPolitical analysis\nEaston aspired to make politics a science, that is, working with highly abstract models that described the regularities of patterns and processes in political life in general. In his view, the highest level of abstraction could make scientific generalizations about politics possible. In sum, politics should be seen as a whole, not as a collection of different problems to be solved.\n\nHis main model was driven by an organic view of politics, as if it were a living object. His theory is a statement of what makes political systems adapt and survive. He describes politics in a constant flux, thereby rejecting the idea of \"equilibrium\", so prevalent in some other political theories (see institutionalism). Moreover, he rejects the idea that politics could be examined by looking at different levels of analysis. His abstractions could account for any group and demand at any given time. That is, interest group theory and elite theory can be subsumed in political systems analysis.\nHis theory was and is highly influential in the pluralist tradition in political science. (see Harold Lasswell and Robert Dahl)\n\nCritiques\nEaston's approach has been criticised for being unfalsifiable and holding a Western or American bias, as well as not explaining crises or the breakdown of the system.\n\nSee also \n Behavioralism\n Karl W. Deutsch\n Structural-functionalism\n Niklas Luhmann\n\nReferences\n\n1953 introductions\nComparative politics\nPolitical science\nPolitical science\n\nes:Teoría sistémica en ciencia política"
] |
[
"Sven Hedin",
"Political views",
"What was his main political view?",
"Hedin was a monarchist."
] |
C_7909b0619f154bdab580c2e708ce492f_1
|
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?
| 2 |
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article in addition to Hedin being a monarchist?
|
Sven Hedin
|
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship HSwMS Sverige, which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government. He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars. He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts. CANNOTANSWER
|
From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland.
|
Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, (19 February 1865 – 26 November 1952) was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan. The posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life's work.
Overview
At 15 years of age, Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route. From that moment on, young Sven aspired to become an explorer. His studies under the German geographer and China expert, Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, awakened a love of Germany in Hedin and strengthened his resolve to undertake expeditions to Central Asia to explore the last uncharted areas of Asia. After obtaining a doctorate, learning several languages and dialects, and undertaking two trips through Persia, he ignored the advice of Ferdinand von Richthofen to continue his geographic studies to acquaint himself with geographical research methodology; the result was that Hedin had to leave the evaluation of his expedition results later to other scientists.
Between 1894 and 1908, in three daring expeditions through the mountains and deserts of Central Asia, he mapped and researched parts of Chinese Turkestan (officially Xinjiang) and Tibet which had been unexplored by Europeans until then. Upon his return to Stockholm in 1909 he was received as triumphantly as Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. In 1902, he became the last Swede (to date) to be raised to the untitled nobility and was considered one of Sweden's most important personalities. As a member of two scientific academies, he had a voice in the selection of Nobel Prize winners for both science and literature. Hedin never married and had no children, rendering his family line now extinct.
Hedin's expedition notes laid the foundations for a precise mapping of Central Asia. He was one of the first European scientific explorers to employ indigenous scientists and research assistants on his expeditions. Although primarily an explorer, he was also the first to unearth the ruins of ancient Buddhist cities in Chinese Central Asia. However, as his main interest in archaeology was finding ancient cities, he had little interest in gathering data thorough scientific excavations. Of small stature, with a bookish, bespectacled appearance, Hedin nevertheless proved himself a determined explorer, surviving several close brushes with death from hostile forces and the elements over his long career. His scientific documentation and popular travelogues, illustrated with his own photographs, watercolor paintings and drawings, his adventure stories for young readers and his lecture tours abroad made him world-famous.
As a renowned expert on Turkestan and Tibet, he was able to obtain unrestricted access to European and Asian monarchs and politicians as well as to their geographical societies and scholarly associations. They all sought to purchase his exclusive knowledge about the power vacuum in Central Asia with gold medals, diamond-encrusted grand crosses, honorary doctorates and splendid receptions, as well as with logistic and financial support for his expeditions. Hedin, in addition to Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sir Francis Younghusband, and Sir Aurel Stein, was an active player in the British-Russian struggle for influence in Central Asia, known as the Great Game. Their travels were supported because they filled in the "white spaces" in contemporary maps, providing valuable information.
Hedin was honored in ceremonies in:
1890 by King Oscar II of Sweden
1890 by Shah Nāser ad-Dīn Schah
1896, 1909 by Czar Nicholas II of Russia
from 1898 frequently by Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary
1902 by the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon
1903, 1914, 1917, 1926, 1936 by Kaiser Wilhelm II
1906 by the Viceroy of India Lord Minto
1907, 1926, 1933 by the 9th Panchen Lama Thubten Choekyi Nyima
1908 by Emperor Mutsuhito
1910 by Pope Pius X
1910 by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
1915 and subsequently by Hindenburg
1929 and 1935 by Chiang Kai-shek
1935, 1939, 1940 (twice) by Adolf Hitler.
Hedin was, and remained, a figure of the 19th century who clung to its visions and methods also in the 20th century. This prevented him from discerning the fundamental social and political upheavals of the 20th century and aligning his thinking and actions accordingly.
Concerned about the security of Scandinavia, he favored the construction of the battleship Sverige. In World War I he specifically allied himself in his publications with the German monarchy and its conduct of the war. Because of this political involvement, his scientific reputation was damaged among Germany's wartime enemies, along with his memberships in their geographical societies and learned associations, as well as any support for his planned expeditions.
After a less-than-successful lecture tour in 1923 through North America and Japan, he traveled on to Beijing to carry out an expedition to Chinese Turkestan (modern Xinjiang), but the region's unstable political situation thwarted this intention. He instead traveled through Mongolia by car and through Siberia aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway.
With financial support from the governments of Sweden and Germany, he led, between 1927 and 1935, an international and interdisciplinary Sino-Swedish Expedition to carry out scientific investigations in Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, with the participation of 37 scientists from six countries. Despite Chinese counter-demonstrations and after months of negotiations in China, was he able to make the expedition also a Chinese one by obtaining Chinese research commissions and the participation of Chinese scientists. He also concluded a contract which guaranteed freedom of travel for this expedition which, because of its arms, 300 camels, and activities in a war theater, resembled an invading army. However, the financing remained Hedin's private responsibility.
Because of failing health, the civil war in Chinese Turkestan, and a long period of captivity, Hedin, by then 70 years of age, had a difficult time after the currency depreciation of the Great Depression raising the money required for the expedition, the logistics for assuring the supplying of the expedition in an active war zone, and obtaining access for the expedition's participants to a research area intensely contested by local warlords. Nevertheless, the expedition was a scientific success. The archaeological artifacts which had been sent to Sweden were scientifically assessed for three years, after which they were returned to China under the terms of the contract.
Starting in 1937, the scientific material assembled during the expedition was published in over 50 volumes by Hedin and other expedition participants, thereby making it available for worldwide research on eastern Asia. When he ran out of money to pay printing costs, he pawned his extensive and valuable library, which filled several rooms, making possible the publication of additional volumes.
In 1935, Hedin made his exclusive knowledge about Central Asia available, not only to the Swedish government, but also to foreign governments such as China and Germany, in lectures and personal discussions with political representatives of Chiang Kai-shek and Adolf Hitler.
Although he was not a National Socialist, Hedin's hope that Nazi Germany would protect Scandinavia from invasion by the Soviet Union, brought him in dangerous proximity to representatives of National Socialism, who exploited him as an author. This destroyed his reputation and put him into social and scientific isolation. However, in correspondence and personal conversations with leading Nazis, his successful intercessions achieved the pardoning of ten people condemned to death and the release or survival of Jews who had been deported to Nazi concentration camps.
At the end of the war, U.S. troops deliberately confiscated documents relating to Hedin's planned Central Asia Atlas. The U.S. Army Map Service later solicited Hedin's assistance and financed the printing and publication of his life's work, the Central Asia Atlas. Whoever compares this atlas with Adolf Stielers Hand Atlas of 1891 can appreciate what Hedin accomplished between 1893 and 1935.
Although Hedin's research was taboo in Germany and Sweden because of his conduct relating to Nazi Germany, and stagnated for decades in Germany, the scientific documentation of his expeditions was translated into Chinese by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and incorporated into Chinese research. Following recommendations made by Hedin to the Chinese government in 1935, the routes he selected were used to construct streets and train tracks, as well as dams and canals to irrigate new farms being established in the Tarim and Yanji basins in Xinjiang and the deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold discovered during the Sino-Swedish Expedition were opened up for mining. Among the discoveries of this expedition should also be counted the many Asian plants and animals unheard of until that date, as well as fossil remains of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Many were named after Hedin, the species-level scientific classification being hedini. But one discovery remained unknown to Chinese researchers until the turn of the millennium: in the Lop Nur desert, Hedin discovered in 1933 and 1934 ruins of signal towers which prove that the Great Wall of China once extended as far west as Xinjiang.
From 1931 until his death in 1952, Hedin lived in Stockholm in a modern high-rise in a preferred location, the address being Norr Mälarstrand 66. He lived with his siblings in the upper three stories and from the balcony he had a wide view over Riddarfjärden Bay and Lake Mälaren to the island of Långholmen. In the entryway to the stairwell is to be found a decorative stucco relief map of Hedin's research area in Central Asia and a relief of the Lama temple, a copy of which he had brought to Chicago for the 1933 World's Fair.
On 29 October 1952, Hedin's will granted the rights to his books and his extensive personal effects to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Sven Hedin Foundation established soon thereafter holds all the rights of ownership.
Hedin died at Stockholm in 1952. The memorial service was attended by representatives of the Swedish royal household, the Swedish government, the Swedish Academy, and the diplomatic service. He is buried in the cemetery of Adolf Fredrik church in Stockholm.
Biography
Childhood influences
Sven Hedin was born in Stockholm, the son of Ludwig Hedin, Chief Architect of Stockholm.
When he was 15 years old Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Swedish Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route.
He describes this experience in his book My Life as an Explorer as follows:
On 24 April 1880, the steamer Vega sailed into Stockholms ström. The entire city was illuminated. The buildings around the harbor glowed in the light of innumerable lamps and torches. Gas flames depicted the constellation of Vega on the castle. Amidst this sea of light the famous ship glided into the harbor. I was standing on the Södermalm heights with my parents and siblings, from which we had a superb view. I was gripped by great nervous tension. I will remember this day until I die, as it was decisive for my future. Thunderous jubilation resounded from quays, streets, windows and rooftops. "That is how I want to return home some day," I thought to myself.
First trip to Iran (Persia)
In May 1885, Hedin graduated from Beskowska secondary school in Stockholm. He then accepted an offer to accompany the student Erhard Sandgren as his private tutor to Baku, where Sandgren's father was working as an engineer in the oil fields of Robert Nobel. Afterward he attended a course in topography for general staff officers for one month in summer 1885 and took a few weeks of instruction in portrait drawing; this comprised his entire training in those areas.
On 15 August 1885, he traveled to Baku with Erhard Sandgren and instructed him there for seven months, and he himself began to learn the Latin, French, German, Persian, Russian, English and Tatar languages. He later learned several Persian dialects as well as Turkish, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tibetan and some Chinese.
On 6 April 1886, Hedin left Baku for Iran (then called Persia), traveling by paddle steamer over the Caspian Sea, riding through the Alborz Range to Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz and the harbor city of Bushehr. From there he took a ship up the Tigris River to Baghdad (then in Ottoman Empire), returning to Tehran via Kermanshah, and then travelling through the Caucasus and over the Black Sea to Constantinople. Hedin then returned to Sweden, arriving on 18 September 1886.
In 1887, Hedin published a book about these travels entitled Through Persia, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.
Studies
From 1886 to 1888, Hedin studied under the geologist Waldemar Brøgger in Stockholm and Uppsala the subjects of geology, mineralogy, zoology and Latin. In December 1888, he became a Candidate in Philosophy. From October 1889 to March 1890 he studied in Berlin under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen.
Second trip to Iran
On 12 May 1890, he accompanied as interpreter and vice-consul a Swedish legation to Iran which was to present the Shah of Iran with the insignia of the Order of the Seraphim. As part of the Swedish legation, he was at an audience of the shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in Tehran. He spoke with him and later accompanied him to the Elburz Mountain Range. On 11 July 1890, he and three others climbed Mount Damavand where he collected primary material for his dissertation. Starting in September he traveled on the Silk Road via cities Mashhad, Ashgabat, Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Kashgar to the western outskirts of the Taklamakan Desert. On the trip home, he visited the grave of the Russian Asian scholar, Nikolai Przhevalsky in Karakol on the shore of Lake Issyk Kul. On 29 March 1891, he was back in Stockholm. He published the books King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890 and Through Chorasan and Turkestan about this journey.
Doctorate and career path
On 27 April 1892, Hedin traveled to Berlin to continue his studies under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen. Beginning of July he went to University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, attending lectures by Alfred Kirchhoff. Yet in the same month, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a 28-page dissertation entitled Personal Observations of Damavand. This dissertation is a summary of one part of his book, King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890. Eric Wennerholm remarked on the subject: I can only come to the conclusion that Sven [Hedin] received his doctorate when he was 27 years old after studying for a grand total of only eight months and collecting primary material for one-and-a-half days on the snow-clad peak of Mount Damavand.
Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen not only encouraged Hedin to absolve cursory studies, but also to become thoroughly acquainted with all branches of geographic science and the methodologies of the salient research work, so that he could later work as an explorer. Hedin abstained from doing this with an explanation he supplied in old age: I was not up to this challenge. I had gotten out onto the wild routes of Asia too early, I had perceived too much of the splendor and magnificence of the Orient, the silence of the deserts and the loneliness of long journeys. I could not get used to the idea of spending a long period of time back in school.
Hedin had therewith decided to become an explorer. He was attracted to the idea of traveling to the last mysterious portions of Asia and filling in the gaps by mapping an area completely unknown in Europe. As an explorer, Hedin became important for the Asian and European powers, who courted him, invited him to give numerous lectures, and hoped to obtain from him in return topographic, economic and strategic information about inner Asia, which they considered part of their sphere of influence. As the era of discovery came to a close around 1920, Hedin contented himself with organizing the Sino-Swedish Expedition for qualified scientific explorers.
First expedition
Between 1893 and 1897, Hedin investigated the Pamir Mountains, travelling through the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang region, across the Taklamakan Desert, Lake Kara-Koshun and Lake Bosten, proceeding to study northern Tibet. He covered on this journey and mapped of them on 552 sheets. Approximately led through previously uncharted areas.
He started out on this expedition on 16 October 1893, from Stockholm, traveling via Saint Petersburg and Tashkent to the Pamir Mountains. Several attempts to climb the high Muztagata—called the Father of the Glaciers—in the Pamir Mountains were unsuccessful. He remained in Kashgar until April 1895 and then left on 10 April with three local escorts from the village of Merket to cross the Taklamakan Desert via Tusluk to the Khotan River. Since their water supply was insufficient, seven camels died of thirst, as did two of his escorts (according to Hedin's dramatized and probably inaccurate account). Bruno Baumann traveled on this route in April 2000 with a camel caravan and ascertained that at least one of the escorts who, according to Hedin, had died of thirst had survived, and that it is impossible for a camel caravan traveling in springtime on this route to carry enough drinking water for both camels and travelers.
According to other sources, Hedin had neglected to completely fill the drinking water containers for his caravan at the beginning of the expedition and set out for the desert with only half as much water as could actually be carried. When he noticed the mistake, it was too late to return. Obsessed by his urge to carry out his research, Hedin deserted the caravan and proceeded alone on horseback with his servant. When that escort also collapsed from thirst, Hedin left him behind as well, but managed to reach a water source at the last desperate moment. He did, however, return to his servant with water and rescued him. Nevertheless, his ruthless behavior earned him massive criticism.
In January 1896, after a stopover in Kashgar, Hedin visited the 1,500-year-old abandoned cities of Dandan Oilik and Kara Dung, which are located northeast of Khotan in the Taklamakan Desert. At the beginning of March, he discovered Lake Bosten, one of the largest inland bodies of water in Central Asia. He reported that this lake is supplied by a single mighty feeder stream, the Kaidu River. He mapped Lake Kara-Koshun and returned on 27 May to Khotan. On 29 June, he started out from there with his caravan across northern Tibet and China to Beijing, where he arrived on 2 March 1897. He returned to Stockholm via Mongolia and Russia.
Second expedition
Another expedition in Central Asia followed in 1899–1902 through the Tarim Basin, Tibet and Kashmir to Calcutta. Hedin navigated the Yarkand, Tarim and Kaidu rivers and found the dry riverbed of the Kum-darja as well as the dried out lake bed of Lop Nur. Near Lop Nur, he discovered the ruins of the former walled royal city and later Chinese garrison town of Loulan, containing the brick building of the Chinese military commander, a stupa, and 19 dwellings built of poplar wood. He also found a wooden wheel from a horse-drawn cart (called an arabas) as well as several hundred documents written on wood, paper and silk in the Kharosthi script. These provided information about the history of the city of Loulan, which had once been located on the shores of Lop Nur but had been abandoned around the year 330 CE because the lake had dried out, depriving the inhabitants of drinking water.
During his travels in 1900 and 1901 he attempted in vain to reach the city of Lhasa, which was forbidden to Europeans. He continued to Leh, in Ladakh district, India. From Leh, Hedin's route took him to Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares to Calcutta, meeting there with George Nathaniel Curzon, England's then Viceroy to India.
This expedition resulted in 1,149 pages of maps, on which Hedin depicted newly discovered lands. He was the first to describe yardang formations in the Lop Desert.
Third expedition
Between 1905 and 1908, Hedin investigated the Central Iranian desert basins, the western highlands of Tibet and the Transhimalaya, which for a time was afterward called the Hedin Range. He visited the 9th Panchen Lama in the cloistered city of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse. Hedin was the first European to reach the Kailash region, including the sacred Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash, the midpoint of the earth according to Buddhist and Hindu mythology. The most important goal of the expedition was the search for the sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra Rivers, both of which Hedin found. From India, he returned via Japan and Russia to Stockholm.
He returned from this expedition with a collection of geological samples which are kept and studied in the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology of Munich University. These sedimentary rocks—such as breccia, conglomerate, limestone, and slate, as well as volcanic rock and granite—highlight the geological diversity of the regions visited by Hedin during this expedition.
Mongolia
In 1923, Hedin traveled to Beijing via the USA—where he visited the Grand Canyon—and Japan. Because of political and social unrest in China, he had to abandon an expedition to Xinjiang. Instead, he traveled with Frans August Larson (called the "Duke of Mongolia") in November and December in a Dodge automobile from Peking through Mongolia via Ulaanbaatar to Ulan-Ude, Russia and from there on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow.
Fourth expedition
Between 1927 and 1935, Hedin led an international Sino-Swedish Expedition which investigated the meteorological, topographic and prehistoric situation in Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Xinjiang.
Hedin described it as a peripatetic university in which the participating scientists worked almost independently, while he—like a local manager—negotiated with local authorities, made decisions, organized whatever was necessary, raised funds and recorded the route followed. He gave archaeologists, astronomers, botanists, geographers, geologists, meteorologists and zoologists from Sweden, Germany and China an opportunity to participate in the expedition and carry out research in their areas of specialty.
Hedin met Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing, who thereupon became a patron of the expedition. The Sino-Swedish Expedition was honored with a Chinese postage stamp series which had a print run of 25,000. The four stamps show camels at a camp with the expedition flag and bear the Chinese text, "Postal Service of the Prosperous Middle Kingdom" and in Latin underneath, "Scientific Expedition to the Northwestern Province of China 1927–1933". A painting in the Beijing Palace Museum entitled Nomads in the Desert served as model for the series. Of the 25,000 sets, 4,000 were sold across the counter and 21,500 came into the possession of the expedition. Hedin used them to finance the expedition, selling them for a price of five dollars per set. The stamps were unwelcome at the time due to the high price Hedin was selling them at, but years later became valuable treasures among collectors.
The first part of the expedition, from 1927 to 1932, led from Beijing via Baotou to Mongolia, over the Gobi Desert, through Xinjiang to Ürümqi, and into the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin. The expedition had a wealth of scientific results which are being published up to the present time. For example, the discovery of specific deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold reserves was of great economic relevance for China. In recognition of his achievements, the Berlin Geographical Society presented him with the Ferdinand von Richthofen Medal in 1933; the same honor was also awarded to Erich von Drygalski for his Gauss Expedition to the Antarctic; and to Alfred Philippson for his research on the Aegean Region.
From the end of 1933 to 1934, Hedin led—on behalf of the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing—a Chinese expedition to investigate irrigation measures and draw up plans and maps for the construction of two roads suitable for automobiles along the Silk Road from Beijing to Xinjiang. Following his plans, major irrigation facilities were constructed, settlements erected, and roads built on the Silk Road from Beijing to Kashgar, which made it possible to completely bypass the rough terrain of Tarim Basin.
One aspect of the geography of central Asia which intensively occupied Hedin for decades was what he called the "wandering lake" Lop Nur. In May 1934, he began a river expedition to this lake. For two months he navigated the Kaidu River and the Kum-Darja to Lop Nur, which had been filled with water since 1921. After the lake dried out in 1971 as a consequence of irrigation activities, the above-mentioned transportation link enabled the People's Republic of China to construct a nuclear weapon test site at Lop Nur.
His caravan of truck lorries was hijacked by the Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying who was retreating from northern Xinjiang along with his Kuomintang 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) from the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. While Hedin was detained by Ma Zhongying, he met General Ma Hushan, and Kemal Kaya Effendi.
Ma Zhongying's adjutant claimed to Hedin that Ma Zhongying had the entire region of Tian-shan-nan-lu (southern Xinjiang) under his control and Sven could pass through safely without any trouble. Hedin did not believe his assertions. Some of Ma Zhongying's Tungan (Chinese speaking Muslim) troops attacked Hedin's expedition by shooting at their vehicles.
For the return trip, Hedin selected the southern Silk Road route via Hotan to Xi'an, where the expedition arrived on 7 February 1935. He continued on to Beijing to meet with President Lin Sen and to Nanjing to Chiang Kai-shek. He celebrated his 70th birthday on 19 February 1935 in the presence of 250 members of the Kuomintang government, to whom he reported interesting facts about the Sino-Swedish Expedition. On this day, he was awarded the Brilliant Jade Order, Second Class.
At the end of the expedition, Hedin was in a difficult financial situation. He had considerable debts at the German-Asian Bank in Beijing, which he repaid with the royalties and fees received for his books and lectures. In the months after his return, he held 111 lectures in 91 German cities as well as 19 lectures in neighboring countries. To accomplish this lecture tour, he covered a stretch as long as the equator, by train and by car—in a time period of five months. He met Adolf Hitler in Berlin before his lecture on 14 April 1935.
Political views
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship , which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government.
He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars.
He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts.
Hedin and the Third Reich
Hedin's conservative and pro-German views eventually translated into sympathy for the Third Reich, and this would draw him into increasing controversy towards the end of his life. Adolf Hitler had been an early admirer of Hedin, who was in turn impressed with Hitler's nationalism. He saw the German leader's rise to power as a revival of German fortunes, and welcomed its challenge against Soviet Communism. He was not an entirely uncritical supporter of the Nazis, however. His own views were shaped by traditionalist, Christian and conservative values, while National Socialism was in part a modern revolutionary-populist movement. Hedin objected to some aspects of National Socialist rule, and occasionally attempted to convince the German government to relent in its anti-religious and anti-Semitic campaigns.
Hedin met Adolf Hitler and other leading National Socialists repeatedly and was in regular correspondence with them. The politely-worded correspondence usually concerned scheduling matters, birthday congratulations, Hedin's planned or completed publications, and requests by Hedin for pardons for people condemned to death, and for mercy, release and permission to leave the country for people interned in prisons or concentration camps. In correspondence with Joseph Goebbels and Hans Dräger, Hedin was able to achieve the printing of the Daily Watchwords year after year.
On 29 October 1942, Hitler read Hedin's book entitled, America in the Battle of the Continents. In the book Hedin promoted the view that President Roosevelt was responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939 and that Hitler had done everything in his power to prevent war. Moreover, Hedin argued that the origins of the Second World War lay not in German belligerence but in the Treaty of Versailles. This book deeply influenced Hitler and reaffirmed his views on the origins of the war and who was responsible for it. In a letter to Hedin the following day Hitler wrote, "I thank you warmly for the attention you have shown me. I have already read the book and welcome in particular that you so explicitly detailed the offers I made to Poland at the beginning of the War". Hitler continued, "without question, the individual guilty of this war, as you correctly state at the end of your book, is exclusively the American President Roosevelt."
The Nazis attempted to achieve a close connection to Hedin by bestowing awards upon him—later scholars have noted that "honors were heaped upon this prominent sympathizer." They asked him to present an address on Sport as a Teacher at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin's Olympic stadium. They made him an honorary member of the German-Swedish Union Berlin () In 1938, they presented him with the City of Berlin's Badge of Honor (). For his 75th birthday on 19 February 1940 they awarded him the Order of the German Eagle; shortly before that date it had been presented to Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. On New Year's Day 1943 they released the Oslo professor of philology and university rector Didrik Arup Seip from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Hedin's request to obtain Hedin's agreement to accept additional honors during the 470th anniversary of Munich University. On 15 January 1943, he received the Gold Medal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Goldmedaille der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). On 16 January 1943 he received an honorary doctorate from the faculty of natural sciences of Munich University. On the same day, the Nazis founded in his absence the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research located at Mittersill Castle, which was supposed to serve the long-term advancement of the scientific legacy of Hedin and Wilhelm Filchner as Asian experts. However, it was instead misused by Heinrich Himmler as an institute of the Research Association for German Genealogical Inheritance (Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V.). On 21 January 1943, he was requested to sign the Golden Book of the city of Munich.
Hedin supported the Nazis in his journalistic activities. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, he did not regret his collaboration with the Nazis because this cooperation had made it possible to rescue numerous Nazi victims from execution, or death in extermination camps.
Senior Jewish German archeologist Werner Scheimberg, sent in the expedition by the Thule Society, "had been one of the companions of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin on his excursions in the East, with archaeological and to some extent esoteric purposes".
Hedin was trying to discover the mythological place of Agartha and reproached the Polish explorer and visiting professor Antoni Ossendowski for having been gone where the Swedish explorer wasn't able to come, and thus was personally invited by Adolf Hitler in Berlin and honoured by the Führer during his 75th birthday feast.
Criticism of National Socialism
Johannes Paul wrote in 1954 about Hedin:
Much of what happened in the early days of Nazi rule had his approval. However, he did not hesitate to criticize whenever he considered this to be necessary, particularly in cases of Jewish persecution, conflict with the churches and bars to freedom of science.
In 1937 Hedin refused to publish his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden (Germany and World Peace) in Germany because the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda insisted on the deletion of Nazi-critical passages. In a letter Hedin wrote to State Secretary Walther Funk dated 16 April 1937, it becomes clear what his criticism of National Socialism was in this time before the establishment of extermination camps:
When we first discussed my plan to write a book, I stated that I only wanted to write objectively, scientifically, possibly critically, according to my conscience, and you considered that to be completely acceptable and natural. Now I emphasized in a very friendly and mild form that the removal of distinguished Jewish professors who have performed great services for mankind is detrimental to Germany and that this has given rise to many agitators against Germany abroad. So I took this position only in the interest of Germany.
My worry that the education of German youth, which I otherwise praise and admire everywhere, is deficient in questions of religion and the hereafter comes from my love and sympathy for the German nation, and as a Christian I consider it my duty to state this openly, and, to be sure, in the firm conviction that Luther’s nation, which is religious through and through, will understand me.
So far I have never gone against my conscience and will not do it now either. Therefore, no deletions will be made.
Hedin later published this book in Sweden.
Efforts on behalf of deported Jews
After he refused to remove his criticism of National Socialism from his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden, the Nazis confiscated the passports of Hedin's Jewish friend Alfred Philippson and his family in 1938 to prevent their intended departure to American exile and retain them in Germany as a bargaining chip when dealing with Hedin. The consequence was that Hedin expressed himself more favorably about Nazi Germany in his book Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland, subjugated himself against his conscience to the censorship of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and published the book in Germany.
On 8 June 1942, the Nazis increased the pressure on Hedin by deporting Alfred Philippson and his family to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. By doing so, they accomplished their goal of forcing Hedin against his conscience to write his book Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and other government agencies and to publish it in Germany in 1942. In return, the Nazis classified Alfred Philippson as "A-prominent" and granted his family privileges which enabled them to survive.
For a long time Hedin was in correspondence with Alfred Philippson and regularly sent food parcels to him in Theresienstadt concentration camp. On 29 May 1946, Alfred Philippson wrote to him (translation, abbreviated quotation): My dear Hedin! Now that letters can be sent abroad I have the opportunity to write to you…. We frequently think with deep gratitude of our rescuer, who alone is responsible for our being able to survive the horrible period of three years of incarceration and hunger in Theresienstadt concentration camp, at my age a veritable wonder. You will have learned that we few survivors were finally liberated just a few days before our intended gassing. We, my wife, daughter and I, were then brought on 9–10 July 1945 in a bus of the city of Bonn here to our home town, almost half of which is now destroyed….
Hedin responded on 19 July 1946 (translation, abbreviated quotation): …It was wonderful to find out that our efforts were not in vain. In these difficult years we attempted to rescue over one hundred other unfortunate people who had been deported to Poland, but in most cases without success. We were however able to help a few Norwegians. My home in Stockholm was turned into something like an information and assistance office, and I was excellently supported by Dr. Paul Grassmann, press attaché in the German embassy in Stockholm. He too undertook everything possible to further this humanitarian work. But almost no case was as fortunate as yours, dear friend! And how wonderful, that you are back in Bonn….
The names and fates of the over one hundred deported Jews whom Hedin tried to save have not yet been researched.
Efforts on behalf of deported Norwegians
Hedin supported the cause of the Norwegian author Arnulf Øverland and for the Oslo professor of philology and university director Didrik Arup Seip, who were interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He achieved the release of Didrik Arup Seip, but his efforts to free Arnulf Øverland were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Arnulf Øverland survived the concentration camp.
Efforts on behalf of Norwegian activists
After the third senate of the highest German military court (Reichskriegsgericht) in Berlin condemned to death for alleged espionage the ten Norwegians Sigurd Jakobsen, Gunnar Hellesen, Helge Børseth, Siegmund Brommeland, Peter Andree Hjelmervik, Siegmund Rasmussen, Gunnar Carlsen, Knud Gjerstad, Christian Oftedahl and Frithiof Lund on 24 February 1941, Hedin successfully appealed via Colonel General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst to Adolf Hitler for their reprieve. Their death penalty was converted on 17 June 1941 by Adolf Hitler to ten years forced labor. The Norwegians Carl W. Mueller, Knud Naerum, Peder Fagerland, Ottar Ryan, Tor Gerrard Rydland, Hans Bernhard Risanger and Arne Sørvag who had been condemned to forced labor under the same charge received reduced sentences at Hedin's request. Unfortunately, Hans Bernhard Risanger died in prison just a few days before his release.
Von Falkenhorst was condemned to death, by firing squad, by a British military court on 2 August 1946, because of his responsibility for passing on a Führerbefehl called the Commando Order. Hedin intervened on his behalf, achieving a pardon on 4 December 1946, with the argument that von Falkenhorst had likewise striven to pardon the ten Norwegians condemned to death. Von Falkenhorst's death penalty was commuted by the British military court to 20 years in prison. In the end, Nikolaus von Falkenhorst was released early from the Werl war criminals prison on 13 July 1953.
Awards
Because of his outstanding services, Hedin was raised to the untitled nobility by King Oskar II in 1902, the last time any Swede was to receive a charter of nobility. Oskar II suggested that he prefix the name Hedin with one of the two common predicates of nobility in Sweden, "af" or "von", but Hedin abstained from doing so in his written response to the king. In many noble families in Sweden, it was customary to do without the title of nobility. The coat of arms of Hedin, together with those of some two thousand noble families, is to be found on a wall of the Great Hall in Riddarhuset, the assembly house of Swedish nobility in Stockholm's inner city, Gamla Stan.
In 1905, Hedin was admitted to membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1909 to the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. From 1913 to 1952 he held the sixth of 18 chairs as an elected member of the Swedish Academy. In this position, he had a vote in the selection of Nobel Prize winners.
He was an honorary member of numerous Swedish and foreign scientific societies and institutions which honored him with some 40 gold medals; 27 of these medals can be viewed in Stockholm in a display case in the Royal Coin Cabinet.
He received honorary doctorates from Oxford (1909), Cambridge (1909), Heidelberg (1928), Uppsala (1935), and Munich (1943) universities and from the Handelshochschule Berlin (1931) (all Dr. phil. h.c.), from Breslau University (1915, Dr. jur. h.c.), and from Rostock University (1919, Dr. med. h.c.).
Numerous countries presented him with medals. In Sweden he became a Commander 1st Class of the Royal Order of the North Star (KNO1kl) with a brilliant badge and Knight of the Royal Order of Vasa (RVO). In the United Kingdom he was named Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire by King Edward VII. As a foreigner, he was not authorized to use the associated title of Sir, but he could place the designation KCIE after his family name Hedin. Hedin was also a Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle.
In his honor have been named a glacier, the Sven Hedin Glacier; a lunar crater Hedin; a genus of flowering plants, Hedinia; a species of the flowering plant, Gentiana hedini (now a synonym of Comastoma falcatum ); the beetles Longitarsus hedini and Coleoptera hedini; a butterfly, Fumea hedini Caradja; a spider, Dictyna hedini; a fossil hoofed mammal, Tsaidamotherium hedini; a fossil Therapsid (a "mammal-like reptile") Lystrosaurus hedini; and streets and squares in the cities of various countries (for example, "Hedinsgatan" at Tessinparken in Stockholm).
A permanent exhibition of articles found by Hedin on his expeditions is located in the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum.
In the Adolf Frederick church can be found the Sven Hedin memorial plaque by Liss Eriksson. The plaque was installed in 1959. On it, a globe with Asia to the fore can be seen, crowned with a camel. It bears the Swedish epitaph:
The Sven Hedin Firn in North Greenland was named after him.
Research on Hedin
Source material
A survey of the extensive sources for Hedin research shows that it would be difficult at present to come to a fair assessment of the personality and achievements of Hedin. Most of the source material has not yet been subjected to scientific scrutiny. Even the DFG project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie had to restrict itself to a small selection and a random examination of the source material.
The sources for Hedin research are located in numerous archives (and include primary literature, correspondence, newspaper articles, obituaries and secondary literature).
Hedin's own publications amount to some 30,000 pages.
There are about 2,500 drawings and watercolors, films and many photographs.
To this should be added 25 volumes with travel and expedition notes and 145 volumes of the diaries he regularly maintained between 1930 and 1952, totaling 8,257 pages.
The extensive holdings of the Hedin Foundation (Sven Hedins Stiftelse), which holds Hedin effects in trust, are to be found in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm.
Hedin's correspondence is in the archive of the German Foreign Office in Bonn, in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig, and above all in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm. Most of the correspondence in Hedin's estate is in the National Archives and accessible to researchers and the general public. It includes about 50,000 letters organized alphabetically according to country and sender as well as some 30,000 additional unsorted letters.
The scientific effects as well as a collection of newspaper articles about Hedin organized by year (1895–1952) in 60 bound folios can be found in the Ethnographic Museum.
The finds from Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang are, among other places, in Stockholm in the Ethnographic Museum (some 8,000 individual items), in the Institutes of Geology, Minearology and Paleontology of the Uppsala University, in the depots of the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Munich, and in the National Museum of China, Beijing.
Hedin's documentation
During his expeditions Hedin saw the focus of his work as being in field research. He recorded routes by plotting many thousands of kilometers of his caravan itinerary with the detail of a high resolution topographical map and supplemented them with innumerable altitude measurements and latitude and longitude data. At the same time he combined his field maps with panoramic drawings. He drafted the first precise maps of areas unresearched until that date: the Pamir mountains, the Taklamakan desert, Tibet, the Silk Road and the Himalayas. He was, as far as can be scientifically confirmed, the first European to recognize that the Himalayas were a continuous mountain range.
He systematically studied the lakes of inner Asia, made careful climatological observations over many years, and started extensive collections of rocks, plants, animals and antiquities. Underway he prepared watercolor paintings, sketches, drawings and photographs, which he later published in his works. The photographs and maps with the highest quality printing are to be found in the original Swedish publications.
Hedin prepared a scientific publication for each of his expeditions. The extent of documentation increased dramatically from expedition to expedition. His research report about the first expedition was published in 1900 as Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97 (Supplement 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen), Gotha 1900. The publication about the second expedition, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, increased to six text and two atlas volumes. Southern Tibet, the scientific publication on the third expedition, totalled twelve volumes, three of which were atlases. The results of the Sino-Swedish Expedition were published under the title of Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. This publication went through 49 editions.
This documentation was splendidly produced, which made the price so high that only a few libraries and institutes were able to purchase it. The immense printing costs had to be borne for the most part by Hedin himself, as was also true for the cost of the expeditions. He used the fees and royalties which he received from his popular science books and for his lectures for the purpose.
Hedin did not himself subject his documentation to scientific evaluation, but rather handed it over to other scientists for the purpose. Since he shared his experiences during his expeditions as popular science and incorporated them in a large number of lectures, travelogues, books for young people and adventure books, he became known to the general public. He soon became famous as one of the most well-recognized personalities of his time.
D. Henze wrote the following about an exhibition at the Deutsches Museum entitled Sven Hedin, the last explorer: He was a pioneer and pathfinder in the transitional period to a century of specialized research. No other single person illuminated and represented unknown territories more extensively than he. His maps alone are a unique creation. And the artist did not take second place to the savant, who deep in the night rapidly and apparently without effort rapidly created awe inspiring works. The discipline of geography, at least in Germany, has so far only concerned itself with his popularized reports. The consistent inclusion of the enormous, still unmined treasures in his scientific work are yet to be incorporated in the regional geography of Asia.
Current Hedin research
A scientific assessment of Hedin's character and his relationship to National Socialism was undertaken in the late 1990s and early 2000s at Bonn University by Professor Hans Böhm, Dipl.-Geogr. Astrid Mehmel and Christoph Sieker M.A. as part of the DFG Project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie (Sven Hedin and German Geography).
Literature
Primary
Scientific documentation
Sven Hedin: Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97. Supplementary volume 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen. Gotha 1900.
Sven Hedin: Scientific results of a journey in Central-Asia. 10 text and 2 map volumes. Stockholm 1904–1907. Volume 4
Sven Hedin: Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, Volume 1 1909 VOL. II
Sven Hedin: Southern Tibet. 11 text and 3 map volumes. Stockholm 1917–1922. VOL. VIII
Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. Over 50 volumes to date, contains primary and secondary literature. Stockholm 1937 ff.
Sven Hedin: Central Asia atlas. Maps, Statens etnografiska museum. Stockholm 1966. (appeared in the series Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under the leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition; Ausgabe 47. 1. Geography; 1)
Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa, Volume 1
THROUGH ASIA
Through Asia, Volume 1
German editions
a) Biography
Verwehte Spuren. Orientfahrten des Reise-Bengt und anderer Reisenden im 17. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1923.
b) Popular works
Durch Asiens Wüsten. Drei Jahre auf neuen Wegen in Pamir, Lop-nor, Tibet und China, 2 vol., Leipzig 1899; neue Ausgabe Wiesbaden 1981.
Im Herzen von Asien. Zehntausend Kilometer auf unbekannten Pfaden, 2 vol., Leipzig 1903.
Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1904; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Transhimalaja. Entdeckungen und Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1909–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1985.
Zu Land nach Indien durch Persien. Seistan und Bclutschistan, 2 vol., Leipzig 1910.
Von Pol zu Pol, 3 vol., Leipzig 1911–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Bagdad – Babylon – Ninive, Leipzig 1918
Jerusalem, Leipzig 1918.
General Prschewalskij in Innerasien, Leipzig 1922.
Meine erste Reise, Leipzig 1922.
An der Schwelle Innerasiens, Leipzig 1923.
Mount Everest, Leipzig 1923.
Persien und Mesopotamien, zwei asiatische Probleme, Leipzig 1923.
Von Peking nach Moskau, Leipzig 1924.
Gran Canon. Mein Besuch im amerikanischen Wunderland, Leipzig 1926.
Auf großer Fahrt. Meine Expedition mit Schweden, Deutschen und Chinesen durch die Wüste Gobi 1927– 1928, Leipzig 1929.
Rätsel der Gobi. Die Fortsetzung der Großen Fahrt durch Innerasien in den Jahren 1928–1930, Leipzig 1931.
Jehol, die Kaiserstadt, Leipzig 1932.
Die Flucht des Großen Pferdes, Leipzig 1935.
Die Seidenstraße, Leipzig 1936.
Der wandernde See, Leipzig 1937.
Im Verbotenen Land, Leipzig 1937
c) Political works
Ein Warnungsruf, Leipzig 1912.
Ein Volk in Waffen, Leipzig 1915.
Nach Osten!, Leipzig 1916.
Deutschland und der Weltfriede, Leipzig 1937 (unlike its translations, the original German edition of this title was printed but never delivered; only five copies were bound, one of which is in the possession of the F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden).
Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente, Leipzig 1942
d) Autobiographical works
Mein Leben als Entdecker, Leipzig 1926.
Eroberungszüge in Tibet, Leipzig 1940.
Ohne Auftrag in Berlin, Buenos Aires 1949; Tübingen-Stuttgart 1950.
Große Männer, denen ich begegnete, 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 1951.
Meine Hunde in Asien, Wiesbaden 1953.
Mein Leben als Zeichner, published by Gösta Montell in commemoration of Hedin's 100th birthday, Wiesbaden 1965.
e) Fiction
Tsangpo Lamas Wallfahrt, 2 vol., Leipzig 1921–1923.
Most German publications on Hedin were translated by F.A. Brockhaus Verlag from Swedish into German. To this extent Swedish editions are the original text. Often after the first edition appeared, F.A. Brockhaus Verlag published abridged versions with the same title. Hedin had not only an important business relationship with the publisher Albert Brockhaus, but also a close friendship. Their correspondence can be found in the Riksarkivet in Stockholm. There is a publication on this subject:
Sven Hedin, Albert Brockhaus: Sven Hedin und Albert Brockhaus. Eine Freundschaft in Briefen zwischen Autor und Verleger. F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1942.
Bibliography
Willy Hess: Die Werke Sven Hedins. Versuch eines vollständigen Verzeichnisses. Sven Hedin – Leben und Briefe, Vol. I. Stockholm 1962. likewise.: First Supplement. Stockholm 1965
Manfred Kleiner: Sven Anders Hedin 1865–1952 – eine Bibliografie der Sekundärliteratur. Self-published Manfred Kleinert, Princeton 2001.
Biographies
Detlef Brennecke: Sven Hedin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1986, 1991.
Johannes Paul: Abenteuerliche Lebensreise – Sieben biografische Essays. including: Sven Hedin. Der letzte Entdeckungsreisende. Wilhelm Köhler Verlag, Minden 1954, pp. 317–378.
Alma Hedin: Mein Bruder Sven. Nach Briefen und Erinnerungen. Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1925.
Eric Wennerholm: Sven Hedin 1865–1952. F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden 1978.
Axel Odelberg: Äventyr på Riktigt Berättelsen om Upptäckaren Sven Hedin. Norstedts, Stockholm 2008 (new biography in Swedish, 600 pages).
Hedin and National Socialism
Mehmel, Astrid: Sven Hedin und nationalsozialistische Expansionspolitik. In: Geopolitik. Grenzgänge im Zeitgeist Bd. 1 .1 1890 bis 1945 ed. by Irene Diekmann, Peter Krüger und Julius H. Schoeps, Potsdam 2000, pp. 189–238.
Danielsson, S.K.: The Intellectual Unmasked: Sven Hedin's Political Life from Pan-Germanism to National Socialism. Dissertation, Minnesota, 2005.
References
Further reading
Tommy Lundmark (2014) Sven Hedin institutet. En rasbiologisk upptäcksresa i Tredje riket. ) (Swedish)
External links
Scanned works
Excellent bibliography, listing publications and further literature
International Dunhuang Project Newsletter Issue No. 21, article on Sven Hedin, available also as PDF
British Indian intelligence on Sven Hedin. National Archives of India (1928)
1865 births
1952 deaths
Scientists from Stockholm
Explorers of Asia
Explorers of Central Asia
Explorers of Tibet
Geopoliticians
History of Tibet
Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
Members of the Swedish Academy
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences
Swedish explorers
Swedish geographers
Swedish topographers
Swedish nobility
Swedish people of Jewish descent
Swedish Christians
Swedish sinologists
Stockholm University alumni
Uppsala University alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni
Recipients of the Cullum Geographical Medal
Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire
Commanders First Class of the Order of the Polar Star
Knights of the Order of Vasa
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Swedish monarchists
Explorers of Iran
Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin
Victoria Medal recipients
Explorers of India
| true |
[
"Přírodní park Třebíčsko (before Oblast klidu Třebíčsko) is a natural park near Třebíč in the Czech Republic. There are many interesting plants. The park was founded in 1983.\n\nKobylinec and Ptáčovský kopeček\n\nKobylinec is a natural monument situated ca 0,5 km from the village of Trnava.\nThe area of this monument is 0,44 ha. Pulsatilla grandis can be found here and in the Ptáčovský kopeček park near Ptáčov near Třebíč. Both monuments are very popular for tourists.\n\nPonds\n\nIn the natural park there are some interesting ponds such as Velký Bor, Malý Bor, Buršík near Přeckov and a brook Březinka. Dams on the brook are examples of European beaver activity.\n\nSyenitové skály near Pocoucov\n\nSyenitové skály (rocks of syenit) near Pocoucov is one of famed locations. There are interesting granite boulders. The area of the reservation is 0,77 ha.\n\nExternal links\nParts of this article or all article was translated from Czech. The original article is :cs:Přírodní park Třebíčsko.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\nNature near the village Trnava which is there\n\nTřebíč\nParks in the Czech Republic\nTourist attractions in the Vysočina Region",
"Damn Interesting is an independent website founded by Alan Bellows in 2005. The website presents true stories from science, history, and psychology, primarily as long-form articles, often illustrated with original artwork. Works are written by various authors, and published at irregular intervals. The website openly rejects advertising, relying on reader and listener donations to cover operating costs.\n\nAs of October 2012, each article is also published as a podcast under the same name. In November 2019, a second podcast was launched under the title Damn Interesting Week, featuring unscripted commentary on an assortment of news articles featured on the website's \"Curated Links\" section that week. In mid-2020, a third podcast called Damn Interesting Curio Cabinet began highlighting the website's periodic short-form articles in the same radioplay format as the original podcast.\n\nIn July 2009, Damn Interesting published the print book Alien Hand Syndrome through Workman Publishing. It contains some favorites from the site and some exclusive content.\n\nAwards and recognition \nIn August 2007, PC Magazine named Damn Interesting one of the \"Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites\".\nThe article \"The Zero-Armed Bandit\" by Alan Bellows won a 2015 Sidney Award from David Brooks in The New York Times.\nThe article \"Ghoulish Acts and Dastardly Deeds\" by Alan Bellows was cited as \"nonfiction journalism from 2017 that will stand the test of time\" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.\nThe article \"Dupes and Duplicity\" by Jennifer Lee Noonan won a 2020 Sidney Award from David Brooks in the New York Times.\n\nAccusing The Dollop of plagiarism \n\nOn July 9, 2015, Bellows posted an open letter accusing The Dollop, a comedy podcast about history, of plagiarism due to their repeated use of verbatim text from Damn Interesting articles without permission or attribution. Dave Anthony, the writer of The Dollop, responded on reddit, admitting to using Damn Interesting content, but claiming that the use was protected by fair use, and that \"historical facts are not copyrightable.\" In an article about the controversy on Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey concluded, \"Any way one looks at it, The Dollop failed its ethical obligations to all of the people, not just those writing for Damn Interesting, who put in the time, energy and expertise into writing the original content upon which their show is based.\"\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n Official website\n\n2005 podcast debuts"
] |
[
"Sven Hedin",
"Political views",
"What was his main political view?",
"Hedin was a monarchist.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland."
] |
C_7909b0619f154bdab580c2e708ce492f_1
|
Did he have any stance on political strong holds?
| 3 |
Did Hedin have any stance on political strong holds?
|
Sven Hedin
|
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship HSwMS Sverige, which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government. He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars. He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts. CANNOTANSWER
|
He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire.
|
Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, (19 February 1865 – 26 November 1952) was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan. The posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life's work.
Overview
At 15 years of age, Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route. From that moment on, young Sven aspired to become an explorer. His studies under the German geographer and China expert, Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, awakened a love of Germany in Hedin and strengthened his resolve to undertake expeditions to Central Asia to explore the last uncharted areas of Asia. After obtaining a doctorate, learning several languages and dialects, and undertaking two trips through Persia, he ignored the advice of Ferdinand von Richthofen to continue his geographic studies to acquaint himself with geographical research methodology; the result was that Hedin had to leave the evaluation of his expedition results later to other scientists.
Between 1894 and 1908, in three daring expeditions through the mountains and deserts of Central Asia, he mapped and researched parts of Chinese Turkestan (officially Xinjiang) and Tibet which had been unexplored by Europeans until then. Upon his return to Stockholm in 1909 he was received as triumphantly as Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. In 1902, he became the last Swede (to date) to be raised to the untitled nobility and was considered one of Sweden's most important personalities. As a member of two scientific academies, he had a voice in the selection of Nobel Prize winners for both science and literature. Hedin never married and had no children, rendering his family line now extinct.
Hedin's expedition notes laid the foundations for a precise mapping of Central Asia. He was one of the first European scientific explorers to employ indigenous scientists and research assistants on his expeditions. Although primarily an explorer, he was also the first to unearth the ruins of ancient Buddhist cities in Chinese Central Asia. However, as his main interest in archaeology was finding ancient cities, he had little interest in gathering data thorough scientific excavations. Of small stature, with a bookish, bespectacled appearance, Hedin nevertheless proved himself a determined explorer, surviving several close brushes with death from hostile forces and the elements over his long career. His scientific documentation and popular travelogues, illustrated with his own photographs, watercolor paintings and drawings, his adventure stories for young readers and his lecture tours abroad made him world-famous.
As a renowned expert on Turkestan and Tibet, he was able to obtain unrestricted access to European and Asian monarchs and politicians as well as to their geographical societies and scholarly associations. They all sought to purchase his exclusive knowledge about the power vacuum in Central Asia with gold medals, diamond-encrusted grand crosses, honorary doctorates and splendid receptions, as well as with logistic and financial support for his expeditions. Hedin, in addition to Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sir Francis Younghusband, and Sir Aurel Stein, was an active player in the British-Russian struggle for influence in Central Asia, known as the Great Game. Their travels were supported because they filled in the "white spaces" in contemporary maps, providing valuable information.
Hedin was honored in ceremonies in:
1890 by King Oscar II of Sweden
1890 by Shah Nāser ad-Dīn Schah
1896, 1909 by Czar Nicholas II of Russia
from 1898 frequently by Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary
1902 by the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon
1903, 1914, 1917, 1926, 1936 by Kaiser Wilhelm II
1906 by the Viceroy of India Lord Minto
1907, 1926, 1933 by the 9th Panchen Lama Thubten Choekyi Nyima
1908 by Emperor Mutsuhito
1910 by Pope Pius X
1910 by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
1915 and subsequently by Hindenburg
1929 and 1935 by Chiang Kai-shek
1935, 1939, 1940 (twice) by Adolf Hitler.
Hedin was, and remained, a figure of the 19th century who clung to its visions and methods also in the 20th century. This prevented him from discerning the fundamental social and political upheavals of the 20th century and aligning his thinking and actions accordingly.
Concerned about the security of Scandinavia, he favored the construction of the battleship Sverige. In World War I he specifically allied himself in his publications with the German monarchy and its conduct of the war. Because of this political involvement, his scientific reputation was damaged among Germany's wartime enemies, along with his memberships in their geographical societies and learned associations, as well as any support for his planned expeditions.
After a less-than-successful lecture tour in 1923 through North America and Japan, he traveled on to Beijing to carry out an expedition to Chinese Turkestan (modern Xinjiang), but the region's unstable political situation thwarted this intention. He instead traveled through Mongolia by car and through Siberia aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway.
With financial support from the governments of Sweden and Germany, he led, between 1927 and 1935, an international and interdisciplinary Sino-Swedish Expedition to carry out scientific investigations in Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, with the participation of 37 scientists from six countries. Despite Chinese counter-demonstrations and after months of negotiations in China, was he able to make the expedition also a Chinese one by obtaining Chinese research commissions and the participation of Chinese scientists. He also concluded a contract which guaranteed freedom of travel for this expedition which, because of its arms, 300 camels, and activities in a war theater, resembled an invading army. However, the financing remained Hedin's private responsibility.
Because of failing health, the civil war in Chinese Turkestan, and a long period of captivity, Hedin, by then 70 years of age, had a difficult time after the currency depreciation of the Great Depression raising the money required for the expedition, the logistics for assuring the supplying of the expedition in an active war zone, and obtaining access for the expedition's participants to a research area intensely contested by local warlords. Nevertheless, the expedition was a scientific success. The archaeological artifacts which had been sent to Sweden were scientifically assessed for three years, after which they were returned to China under the terms of the contract.
Starting in 1937, the scientific material assembled during the expedition was published in over 50 volumes by Hedin and other expedition participants, thereby making it available for worldwide research on eastern Asia. When he ran out of money to pay printing costs, he pawned his extensive and valuable library, which filled several rooms, making possible the publication of additional volumes.
In 1935, Hedin made his exclusive knowledge about Central Asia available, not only to the Swedish government, but also to foreign governments such as China and Germany, in lectures and personal discussions with political representatives of Chiang Kai-shek and Adolf Hitler.
Although he was not a National Socialist, Hedin's hope that Nazi Germany would protect Scandinavia from invasion by the Soviet Union, brought him in dangerous proximity to representatives of National Socialism, who exploited him as an author. This destroyed his reputation and put him into social and scientific isolation. However, in correspondence and personal conversations with leading Nazis, his successful intercessions achieved the pardoning of ten people condemned to death and the release or survival of Jews who had been deported to Nazi concentration camps.
At the end of the war, U.S. troops deliberately confiscated documents relating to Hedin's planned Central Asia Atlas. The U.S. Army Map Service later solicited Hedin's assistance and financed the printing and publication of his life's work, the Central Asia Atlas. Whoever compares this atlas with Adolf Stielers Hand Atlas of 1891 can appreciate what Hedin accomplished between 1893 and 1935.
Although Hedin's research was taboo in Germany and Sweden because of his conduct relating to Nazi Germany, and stagnated for decades in Germany, the scientific documentation of his expeditions was translated into Chinese by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and incorporated into Chinese research. Following recommendations made by Hedin to the Chinese government in 1935, the routes he selected were used to construct streets and train tracks, as well as dams and canals to irrigate new farms being established in the Tarim and Yanji basins in Xinjiang and the deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold discovered during the Sino-Swedish Expedition were opened up for mining. Among the discoveries of this expedition should also be counted the many Asian plants and animals unheard of until that date, as well as fossil remains of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Many were named after Hedin, the species-level scientific classification being hedini. But one discovery remained unknown to Chinese researchers until the turn of the millennium: in the Lop Nur desert, Hedin discovered in 1933 and 1934 ruins of signal towers which prove that the Great Wall of China once extended as far west as Xinjiang.
From 1931 until his death in 1952, Hedin lived in Stockholm in a modern high-rise in a preferred location, the address being Norr Mälarstrand 66. He lived with his siblings in the upper three stories and from the balcony he had a wide view over Riddarfjärden Bay and Lake Mälaren to the island of Långholmen. In the entryway to the stairwell is to be found a decorative stucco relief map of Hedin's research area in Central Asia and a relief of the Lama temple, a copy of which he had brought to Chicago for the 1933 World's Fair.
On 29 October 1952, Hedin's will granted the rights to his books and his extensive personal effects to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Sven Hedin Foundation established soon thereafter holds all the rights of ownership.
Hedin died at Stockholm in 1952. The memorial service was attended by representatives of the Swedish royal household, the Swedish government, the Swedish Academy, and the diplomatic service. He is buried in the cemetery of Adolf Fredrik church in Stockholm.
Biography
Childhood influences
Sven Hedin was born in Stockholm, the son of Ludwig Hedin, Chief Architect of Stockholm.
When he was 15 years old Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Swedish Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route.
He describes this experience in his book My Life as an Explorer as follows:
On 24 April 1880, the steamer Vega sailed into Stockholms ström. The entire city was illuminated. The buildings around the harbor glowed in the light of innumerable lamps and torches. Gas flames depicted the constellation of Vega on the castle. Amidst this sea of light the famous ship glided into the harbor. I was standing on the Södermalm heights with my parents and siblings, from which we had a superb view. I was gripped by great nervous tension. I will remember this day until I die, as it was decisive for my future. Thunderous jubilation resounded from quays, streets, windows and rooftops. "That is how I want to return home some day," I thought to myself.
First trip to Iran (Persia)
In May 1885, Hedin graduated from Beskowska secondary school in Stockholm. He then accepted an offer to accompany the student Erhard Sandgren as his private tutor to Baku, where Sandgren's father was working as an engineer in the oil fields of Robert Nobel. Afterward he attended a course in topography for general staff officers for one month in summer 1885 and took a few weeks of instruction in portrait drawing; this comprised his entire training in those areas.
On 15 August 1885, he traveled to Baku with Erhard Sandgren and instructed him there for seven months, and he himself began to learn the Latin, French, German, Persian, Russian, English and Tatar languages. He later learned several Persian dialects as well as Turkish, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tibetan and some Chinese.
On 6 April 1886, Hedin left Baku for Iran (then called Persia), traveling by paddle steamer over the Caspian Sea, riding through the Alborz Range to Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz and the harbor city of Bushehr. From there he took a ship up the Tigris River to Baghdad (then in Ottoman Empire), returning to Tehran via Kermanshah, and then travelling through the Caucasus and over the Black Sea to Constantinople. Hedin then returned to Sweden, arriving on 18 September 1886.
In 1887, Hedin published a book about these travels entitled Through Persia, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.
Studies
From 1886 to 1888, Hedin studied under the geologist Waldemar Brøgger in Stockholm and Uppsala the subjects of geology, mineralogy, zoology and Latin. In December 1888, he became a Candidate in Philosophy. From October 1889 to March 1890 he studied in Berlin under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen.
Second trip to Iran
On 12 May 1890, he accompanied as interpreter and vice-consul a Swedish legation to Iran which was to present the Shah of Iran with the insignia of the Order of the Seraphim. As part of the Swedish legation, he was at an audience of the shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in Tehran. He spoke with him and later accompanied him to the Elburz Mountain Range. On 11 July 1890, he and three others climbed Mount Damavand where he collected primary material for his dissertation. Starting in September he traveled on the Silk Road via cities Mashhad, Ashgabat, Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Kashgar to the western outskirts of the Taklamakan Desert. On the trip home, he visited the grave of the Russian Asian scholar, Nikolai Przhevalsky in Karakol on the shore of Lake Issyk Kul. On 29 March 1891, he was back in Stockholm. He published the books King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890 and Through Chorasan and Turkestan about this journey.
Doctorate and career path
On 27 April 1892, Hedin traveled to Berlin to continue his studies under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen. Beginning of July he went to University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, attending lectures by Alfred Kirchhoff. Yet in the same month, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a 28-page dissertation entitled Personal Observations of Damavand. This dissertation is a summary of one part of his book, King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890. Eric Wennerholm remarked on the subject: I can only come to the conclusion that Sven [Hedin] received his doctorate when he was 27 years old after studying for a grand total of only eight months and collecting primary material for one-and-a-half days on the snow-clad peak of Mount Damavand.
Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen not only encouraged Hedin to absolve cursory studies, but also to become thoroughly acquainted with all branches of geographic science and the methodologies of the salient research work, so that he could later work as an explorer. Hedin abstained from doing this with an explanation he supplied in old age: I was not up to this challenge. I had gotten out onto the wild routes of Asia too early, I had perceived too much of the splendor and magnificence of the Orient, the silence of the deserts and the loneliness of long journeys. I could not get used to the idea of spending a long period of time back in school.
Hedin had therewith decided to become an explorer. He was attracted to the idea of traveling to the last mysterious portions of Asia and filling in the gaps by mapping an area completely unknown in Europe. As an explorer, Hedin became important for the Asian and European powers, who courted him, invited him to give numerous lectures, and hoped to obtain from him in return topographic, economic and strategic information about inner Asia, which they considered part of their sphere of influence. As the era of discovery came to a close around 1920, Hedin contented himself with organizing the Sino-Swedish Expedition for qualified scientific explorers.
First expedition
Between 1893 and 1897, Hedin investigated the Pamir Mountains, travelling through the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang region, across the Taklamakan Desert, Lake Kara-Koshun and Lake Bosten, proceeding to study northern Tibet. He covered on this journey and mapped of them on 552 sheets. Approximately led through previously uncharted areas.
He started out on this expedition on 16 October 1893, from Stockholm, traveling via Saint Petersburg and Tashkent to the Pamir Mountains. Several attempts to climb the high Muztagata—called the Father of the Glaciers—in the Pamir Mountains were unsuccessful. He remained in Kashgar until April 1895 and then left on 10 April with three local escorts from the village of Merket to cross the Taklamakan Desert via Tusluk to the Khotan River. Since their water supply was insufficient, seven camels died of thirst, as did two of his escorts (according to Hedin's dramatized and probably inaccurate account). Bruno Baumann traveled on this route in April 2000 with a camel caravan and ascertained that at least one of the escorts who, according to Hedin, had died of thirst had survived, and that it is impossible for a camel caravan traveling in springtime on this route to carry enough drinking water for both camels and travelers.
According to other sources, Hedin had neglected to completely fill the drinking water containers for his caravan at the beginning of the expedition and set out for the desert with only half as much water as could actually be carried. When he noticed the mistake, it was too late to return. Obsessed by his urge to carry out his research, Hedin deserted the caravan and proceeded alone on horseback with his servant. When that escort also collapsed from thirst, Hedin left him behind as well, but managed to reach a water source at the last desperate moment. He did, however, return to his servant with water and rescued him. Nevertheless, his ruthless behavior earned him massive criticism.
In January 1896, after a stopover in Kashgar, Hedin visited the 1,500-year-old abandoned cities of Dandan Oilik and Kara Dung, which are located northeast of Khotan in the Taklamakan Desert. At the beginning of March, he discovered Lake Bosten, one of the largest inland bodies of water in Central Asia. He reported that this lake is supplied by a single mighty feeder stream, the Kaidu River. He mapped Lake Kara-Koshun and returned on 27 May to Khotan. On 29 June, he started out from there with his caravan across northern Tibet and China to Beijing, where he arrived on 2 March 1897. He returned to Stockholm via Mongolia and Russia.
Second expedition
Another expedition in Central Asia followed in 1899–1902 through the Tarim Basin, Tibet and Kashmir to Calcutta. Hedin navigated the Yarkand, Tarim and Kaidu rivers and found the dry riverbed of the Kum-darja as well as the dried out lake bed of Lop Nur. Near Lop Nur, he discovered the ruins of the former walled royal city and later Chinese garrison town of Loulan, containing the brick building of the Chinese military commander, a stupa, and 19 dwellings built of poplar wood. He also found a wooden wheel from a horse-drawn cart (called an arabas) as well as several hundred documents written on wood, paper and silk in the Kharosthi script. These provided information about the history of the city of Loulan, which had once been located on the shores of Lop Nur but had been abandoned around the year 330 CE because the lake had dried out, depriving the inhabitants of drinking water.
During his travels in 1900 and 1901 he attempted in vain to reach the city of Lhasa, which was forbidden to Europeans. He continued to Leh, in Ladakh district, India. From Leh, Hedin's route took him to Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares to Calcutta, meeting there with George Nathaniel Curzon, England's then Viceroy to India.
This expedition resulted in 1,149 pages of maps, on which Hedin depicted newly discovered lands. He was the first to describe yardang formations in the Lop Desert.
Third expedition
Between 1905 and 1908, Hedin investigated the Central Iranian desert basins, the western highlands of Tibet and the Transhimalaya, which for a time was afterward called the Hedin Range. He visited the 9th Panchen Lama in the cloistered city of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse. Hedin was the first European to reach the Kailash region, including the sacred Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash, the midpoint of the earth according to Buddhist and Hindu mythology. The most important goal of the expedition was the search for the sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra Rivers, both of which Hedin found. From India, he returned via Japan and Russia to Stockholm.
He returned from this expedition with a collection of geological samples which are kept and studied in the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology of Munich University. These sedimentary rocks—such as breccia, conglomerate, limestone, and slate, as well as volcanic rock and granite—highlight the geological diversity of the regions visited by Hedin during this expedition.
Mongolia
In 1923, Hedin traveled to Beijing via the USA—where he visited the Grand Canyon—and Japan. Because of political and social unrest in China, he had to abandon an expedition to Xinjiang. Instead, he traveled with Frans August Larson (called the "Duke of Mongolia") in November and December in a Dodge automobile from Peking through Mongolia via Ulaanbaatar to Ulan-Ude, Russia and from there on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow.
Fourth expedition
Between 1927 and 1935, Hedin led an international Sino-Swedish Expedition which investigated the meteorological, topographic and prehistoric situation in Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Xinjiang.
Hedin described it as a peripatetic university in which the participating scientists worked almost independently, while he—like a local manager—negotiated with local authorities, made decisions, organized whatever was necessary, raised funds and recorded the route followed. He gave archaeologists, astronomers, botanists, geographers, geologists, meteorologists and zoologists from Sweden, Germany and China an opportunity to participate in the expedition and carry out research in their areas of specialty.
Hedin met Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing, who thereupon became a patron of the expedition. The Sino-Swedish Expedition was honored with a Chinese postage stamp series which had a print run of 25,000. The four stamps show camels at a camp with the expedition flag and bear the Chinese text, "Postal Service of the Prosperous Middle Kingdom" and in Latin underneath, "Scientific Expedition to the Northwestern Province of China 1927–1933". A painting in the Beijing Palace Museum entitled Nomads in the Desert served as model for the series. Of the 25,000 sets, 4,000 were sold across the counter and 21,500 came into the possession of the expedition. Hedin used them to finance the expedition, selling them for a price of five dollars per set. The stamps were unwelcome at the time due to the high price Hedin was selling them at, but years later became valuable treasures among collectors.
The first part of the expedition, from 1927 to 1932, led from Beijing via Baotou to Mongolia, over the Gobi Desert, through Xinjiang to Ürümqi, and into the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin. The expedition had a wealth of scientific results which are being published up to the present time. For example, the discovery of specific deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold reserves was of great economic relevance for China. In recognition of his achievements, the Berlin Geographical Society presented him with the Ferdinand von Richthofen Medal in 1933; the same honor was also awarded to Erich von Drygalski for his Gauss Expedition to the Antarctic; and to Alfred Philippson for his research on the Aegean Region.
From the end of 1933 to 1934, Hedin led—on behalf of the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing—a Chinese expedition to investigate irrigation measures and draw up plans and maps for the construction of two roads suitable for automobiles along the Silk Road from Beijing to Xinjiang. Following his plans, major irrigation facilities were constructed, settlements erected, and roads built on the Silk Road from Beijing to Kashgar, which made it possible to completely bypass the rough terrain of Tarim Basin.
One aspect of the geography of central Asia which intensively occupied Hedin for decades was what he called the "wandering lake" Lop Nur. In May 1934, he began a river expedition to this lake. For two months he navigated the Kaidu River and the Kum-Darja to Lop Nur, which had been filled with water since 1921. After the lake dried out in 1971 as a consequence of irrigation activities, the above-mentioned transportation link enabled the People's Republic of China to construct a nuclear weapon test site at Lop Nur.
His caravan of truck lorries was hijacked by the Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying who was retreating from northern Xinjiang along with his Kuomintang 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) from the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. While Hedin was detained by Ma Zhongying, he met General Ma Hushan, and Kemal Kaya Effendi.
Ma Zhongying's adjutant claimed to Hedin that Ma Zhongying had the entire region of Tian-shan-nan-lu (southern Xinjiang) under his control and Sven could pass through safely without any trouble. Hedin did not believe his assertions. Some of Ma Zhongying's Tungan (Chinese speaking Muslim) troops attacked Hedin's expedition by shooting at their vehicles.
For the return trip, Hedin selected the southern Silk Road route via Hotan to Xi'an, where the expedition arrived on 7 February 1935. He continued on to Beijing to meet with President Lin Sen and to Nanjing to Chiang Kai-shek. He celebrated his 70th birthday on 19 February 1935 in the presence of 250 members of the Kuomintang government, to whom he reported interesting facts about the Sino-Swedish Expedition. On this day, he was awarded the Brilliant Jade Order, Second Class.
At the end of the expedition, Hedin was in a difficult financial situation. He had considerable debts at the German-Asian Bank in Beijing, which he repaid with the royalties and fees received for his books and lectures. In the months after his return, he held 111 lectures in 91 German cities as well as 19 lectures in neighboring countries. To accomplish this lecture tour, he covered a stretch as long as the equator, by train and by car—in a time period of five months. He met Adolf Hitler in Berlin before his lecture on 14 April 1935.
Political views
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship , which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government.
He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars.
He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts.
Hedin and the Third Reich
Hedin's conservative and pro-German views eventually translated into sympathy for the Third Reich, and this would draw him into increasing controversy towards the end of his life. Adolf Hitler had been an early admirer of Hedin, who was in turn impressed with Hitler's nationalism. He saw the German leader's rise to power as a revival of German fortunes, and welcomed its challenge against Soviet Communism. He was not an entirely uncritical supporter of the Nazis, however. His own views were shaped by traditionalist, Christian and conservative values, while National Socialism was in part a modern revolutionary-populist movement. Hedin objected to some aspects of National Socialist rule, and occasionally attempted to convince the German government to relent in its anti-religious and anti-Semitic campaigns.
Hedin met Adolf Hitler and other leading National Socialists repeatedly and was in regular correspondence with them. The politely-worded correspondence usually concerned scheduling matters, birthday congratulations, Hedin's planned or completed publications, and requests by Hedin for pardons for people condemned to death, and for mercy, release and permission to leave the country for people interned in prisons or concentration camps. In correspondence with Joseph Goebbels and Hans Dräger, Hedin was able to achieve the printing of the Daily Watchwords year after year.
On 29 October 1942, Hitler read Hedin's book entitled, America in the Battle of the Continents. In the book Hedin promoted the view that President Roosevelt was responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939 and that Hitler had done everything in his power to prevent war. Moreover, Hedin argued that the origins of the Second World War lay not in German belligerence but in the Treaty of Versailles. This book deeply influenced Hitler and reaffirmed his views on the origins of the war and who was responsible for it. In a letter to Hedin the following day Hitler wrote, "I thank you warmly for the attention you have shown me. I have already read the book and welcome in particular that you so explicitly detailed the offers I made to Poland at the beginning of the War". Hitler continued, "without question, the individual guilty of this war, as you correctly state at the end of your book, is exclusively the American President Roosevelt."
The Nazis attempted to achieve a close connection to Hedin by bestowing awards upon him—later scholars have noted that "honors were heaped upon this prominent sympathizer." They asked him to present an address on Sport as a Teacher at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin's Olympic stadium. They made him an honorary member of the German-Swedish Union Berlin () In 1938, they presented him with the City of Berlin's Badge of Honor (). For his 75th birthday on 19 February 1940 they awarded him the Order of the German Eagle; shortly before that date it had been presented to Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. On New Year's Day 1943 they released the Oslo professor of philology and university rector Didrik Arup Seip from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Hedin's request to obtain Hedin's agreement to accept additional honors during the 470th anniversary of Munich University. On 15 January 1943, he received the Gold Medal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Goldmedaille der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). On 16 January 1943 he received an honorary doctorate from the faculty of natural sciences of Munich University. On the same day, the Nazis founded in his absence the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research located at Mittersill Castle, which was supposed to serve the long-term advancement of the scientific legacy of Hedin and Wilhelm Filchner as Asian experts. However, it was instead misused by Heinrich Himmler as an institute of the Research Association for German Genealogical Inheritance (Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V.). On 21 January 1943, he was requested to sign the Golden Book of the city of Munich.
Hedin supported the Nazis in his journalistic activities. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, he did not regret his collaboration with the Nazis because this cooperation had made it possible to rescue numerous Nazi victims from execution, or death in extermination camps.
Senior Jewish German archeologist Werner Scheimberg, sent in the expedition by the Thule Society, "had been one of the companions of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin on his excursions in the East, with archaeological and to some extent esoteric purposes".
Hedin was trying to discover the mythological place of Agartha and reproached the Polish explorer and visiting professor Antoni Ossendowski for having been gone where the Swedish explorer wasn't able to come, and thus was personally invited by Adolf Hitler in Berlin and honoured by the Führer during his 75th birthday feast.
Criticism of National Socialism
Johannes Paul wrote in 1954 about Hedin:
Much of what happened in the early days of Nazi rule had his approval. However, he did not hesitate to criticize whenever he considered this to be necessary, particularly in cases of Jewish persecution, conflict with the churches and bars to freedom of science.
In 1937 Hedin refused to publish his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden (Germany and World Peace) in Germany because the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda insisted on the deletion of Nazi-critical passages. In a letter Hedin wrote to State Secretary Walther Funk dated 16 April 1937, it becomes clear what his criticism of National Socialism was in this time before the establishment of extermination camps:
When we first discussed my plan to write a book, I stated that I only wanted to write objectively, scientifically, possibly critically, according to my conscience, and you considered that to be completely acceptable and natural. Now I emphasized in a very friendly and mild form that the removal of distinguished Jewish professors who have performed great services for mankind is detrimental to Germany and that this has given rise to many agitators against Germany abroad. So I took this position only in the interest of Germany.
My worry that the education of German youth, which I otherwise praise and admire everywhere, is deficient in questions of religion and the hereafter comes from my love and sympathy for the German nation, and as a Christian I consider it my duty to state this openly, and, to be sure, in the firm conviction that Luther’s nation, which is religious through and through, will understand me.
So far I have never gone against my conscience and will not do it now either. Therefore, no deletions will be made.
Hedin later published this book in Sweden.
Efforts on behalf of deported Jews
After he refused to remove his criticism of National Socialism from his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden, the Nazis confiscated the passports of Hedin's Jewish friend Alfred Philippson and his family in 1938 to prevent their intended departure to American exile and retain them in Germany as a bargaining chip when dealing with Hedin. The consequence was that Hedin expressed himself more favorably about Nazi Germany in his book Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland, subjugated himself against his conscience to the censorship of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and published the book in Germany.
On 8 June 1942, the Nazis increased the pressure on Hedin by deporting Alfred Philippson and his family to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. By doing so, they accomplished their goal of forcing Hedin against his conscience to write his book Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and other government agencies and to publish it in Germany in 1942. In return, the Nazis classified Alfred Philippson as "A-prominent" and granted his family privileges which enabled them to survive.
For a long time Hedin was in correspondence with Alfred Philippson and regularly sent food parcels to him in Theresienstadt concentration camp. On 29 May 1946, Alfred Philippson wrote to him (translation, abbreviated quotation): My dear Hedin! Now that letters can be sent abroad I have the opportunity to write to you…. We frequently think with deep gratitude of our rescuer, who alone is responsible for our being able to survive the horrible period of three years of incarceration and hunger in Theresienstadt concentration camp, at my age a veritable wonder. You will have learned that we few survivors were finally liberated just a few days before our intended gassing. We, my wife, daughter and I, were then brought on 9–10 July 1945 in a bus of the city of Bonn here to our home town, almost half of which is now destroyed….
Hedin responded on 19 July 1946 (translation, abbreviated quotation): …It was wonderful to find out that our efforts were not in vain. In these difficult years we attempted to rescue over one hundred other unfortunate people who had been deported to Poland, but in most cases without success. We were however able to help a few Norwegians. My home in Stockholm was turned into something like an information and assistance office, and I was excellently supported by Dr. Paul Grassmann, press attaché in the German embassy in Stockholm. He too undertook everything possible to further this humanitarian work. But almost no case was as fortunate as yours, dear friend! And how wonderful, that you are back in Bonn….
The names and fates of the over one hundred deported Jews whom Hedin tried to save have not yet been researched.
Efforts on behalf of deported Norwegians
Hedin supported the cause of the Norwegian author Arnulf Øverland and for the Oslo professor of philology and university director Didrik Arup Seip, who were interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He achieved the release of Didrik Arup Seip, but his efforts to free Arnulf Øverland were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Arnulf Øverland survived the concentration camp.
Efforts on behalf of Norwegian activists
After the third senate of the highest German military court (Reichskriegsgericht) in Berlin condemned to death for alleged espionage the ten Norwegians Sigurd Jakobsen, Gunnar Hellesen, Helge Børseth, Siegmund Brommeland, Peter Andree Hjelmervik, Siegmund Rasmussen, Gunnar Carlsen, Knud Gjerstad, Christian Oftedahl and Frithiof Lund on 24 February 1941, Hedin successfully appealed via Colonel General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst to Adolf Hitler for their reprieve. Their death penalty was converted on 17 June 1941 by Adolf Hitler to ten years forced labor. The Norwegians Carl W. Mueller, Knud Naerum, Peder Fagerland, Ottar Ryan, Tor Gerrard Rydland, Hans Bernhard Risanger and Arne Sørvag who had been condemned to forced labor under the same charge received reduced sentences at Hedin's request. Unfortunately, Hans Bernhard Risanger died in prison just a few days before his release.
Von Falkenhorst was condemned to death, by firing squad, by a British military court on 2 August 1946, because of his responsibility for passing on a Führerbefehl called the Commando Order. Hedin intervened on his behalf, achieving a pardon on 4 December 1946, with the argument that von Falkenhorst had likewise striven to pardon the ten Norwegians condemned to death. Von Falkenhorst's death penalty was commuted by the British military court to 20 years in prison. In the end, Nikolaus von Falkenhorst was released early from the Werl war criminals prison on 13 July 1953.
Awards
Because of his outstanding services, Hedin was raised to the untitled nobility by King Oskar II in 1902, the last time any Swede was to receive a charter of nobility. Oskar II suggested that he prefix the name Hedin with one of the two common predicates of nobility in Sweden, "af" or "von", but Hedin abstained from doing so in his written response to the king. In many noble families in Sweden, it was customary to do without the title of nobility. The coat of arms of Hedin, together with those of some two thousand noble families, is to be found on a wall of the Great Hall in Riddarhuset, the assembly house of Swedish nobility in Stockholm's inner city, Gamla Stan.
In 1905, Hedin was admitted to membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1909 to the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. From 1913 to 1952 he held the sixth of 18 chairs as an elected member of the Swedish Academy. In this position, he had a vote in the selection of Nobel Prize winners.
He was an honorary member of numerous Swedish and foreign scientific societies and institutions which honored him with some 40 gold medals; 27 of these medals can be viewed in Stockholm in a display case in the Royal Coin Cabinet.
He received honorary doctorates from Oxford (1909), Cambridge (1909), Heidelberg (1928), Uppsala (1935), and Munich (1943) universities and from the Handelshochschule Berlin (1931) (all Dr. phil. h.c.), from Breslau University (1915, Dr. jur. h.c.), and from Rostock University (1919, Dr. med. h.c.).
Numerous countries presented him with medals. In Sweden he became a Commander 1st Class of the Royal Order of the North Star (KNO1kl) with a brilliant badge and Knight of the Royal Order of Vasa (RVO). In the United Kingdom he was named Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire by King Edward VII. As a foreigner, he was not authorized to use the associated title of Sir, but he could place the designation KCIE after his family name Hedin. Hedin was also a Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle.
In his honor have been named a glacier, the Sven Hedin Glacier; a lunar crater Hedin; a genus of flowering plants, Hedinia; a species of the flowering plant, Gentiana hedini (now a synonym of Comastoma falcatum ); the beetles Longitarsus hedini and Coleoptera hedini; a butterfly, Fumea hedini Caradja; a spider, Dictyna hedini; a fossil hoofed mammal, Tsaidamotherium hedini; a fossil Therapsid (a "mammal-like reptile") Lystrosaurus hedini; and streets and squares in the cities of various countries (for example, "Hedinsgatan" at Tessinparken in Stockholm).
A permanent exhibition of articles found by Hedin on his expeditions is located in the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum.
In the Adolf Frederick church can be found the Sven Hedin memorial plaque by Liss Eriksson. The plaque was installed in 1959. On it, a globe with Asia to the fore can be seen, crowned with a camel. It bears the Swedish epitaph:
The Sven Hedin Firn in North Greenland was named after him.
Research on Hedin
Source material
A survey of the extensive sources for Hedin research shows that it would be difficult at present to come to a fair assessment of the personality and achievements of Hedin. Most of the source material has not yet been subjected to scientific scrutiny. Even the DFG project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie had to restrict itself to a small selection and a random examination of the source material.
The sources for Hedin research are located in numerous archives (and include primary literature, correspondence, newspaper articles, obituaries and secondary literature).
Hedin's own publications amount to some 30,000 pages.
There are about 2,500 drawings and watercolors, films and many photographs.
To this should be added 25 volumes with travel and expedition notes and 145 volumes of the diaries he regularly maintained between 1930 and 1952, totaling 8,257 pages.
The extensive holdings of the Hedin Foundation (Sven Hedins Stiftelse), which holds Hedin effects in trust, are to be found in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm.
Hedin's correspondence is in the archive of the German Foreign Office in Bonn, in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig, and above all in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm. Most of the correspondence in Hedin's estate is in the National Archives and accessible to researchers and the general public. It includes about 50,000 letters organized alphabetically according to country and sender as well as some 30,000 additional unsorted letters.
The scientific effects as well as a collection of newspaper articles about Hedin organized by year (1895–1952) in 60 bound folios can be found in the Ethnographic Museum.
The finds from Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang are, among other places, in Stockholm in the Ethnographic Museum (some 8,000 individual items), in the Institutes of Geology, Minearology and Paleontology of the Uppsala University, in the depots of the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Munich, and in the National Museum of China, Beijing.
Hedin's documentation
During his expeditions Hedin saw the focus of his work as being in field research. He recorded routes by plotting many thousands of kilometers of his caravan itinerary with the detail of a high resolution topographical map and supplemented them with innumerable altitude measurements and latitude and longitude data. At the same time he combined his field maps with panoramic drawings. He drafted the first precise maps of areas unresearched until that date: the Pamir mountains, the Taklamakan desert, Tibet, the Silk Road and the Himalayas. He was, as far as can be scientifically confirmed, the first European to recognize that the Himalayas were a continuous mountain range.
He systematically studied the lakes of inner Asia, made careful climatological observations over many years, and started extensive collections of rocks, plants, animals and antiquities. Underway he prepared watercolor paintings, sketches, drawings and photographs, which he later published in his works. The photographs and maps with the highest quality printing are to be found in the original Swedish publications.
Hedin prepared a scientific publication for each of his expeditions. The extent of documentation increased dramatically from expedition to expedition. His research report about the first expedition was published in 1900 as Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97 (Supplement 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen), Gotha 1900. The publication about the second expedition, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, increased to six text and two atlas volumes. Southern Tibet, the scientific publication on the third expedition, totalled twelve volumes, three of which were atlases. The results of the Sino-Swedish Expedition were published under the title of Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. This publication went through 49 editions.
This documentation was splendidly produced, which made the price so high that only a few libraries and institutes were able to purchase it. The immense printing costs had to be borne for the most part by Hedin himself, as was also true for the cost of the expeditions. He used the fees and royalties which he received from his popular science books and for his lectures for the purpose.
Hedin did not himself subject his documentation to scientific evaluation, but rather handed it over to other scientists for the purpose. Since he shared his experiences during his expeditions as popular science and incorporated them in a large number of lectures, travelogues, books for young people and adventure books, he became known to the general public. He soon became famous as one of the most well-recognized personalities of his time.
D. Henze wrote the following about an exhibition at the Deutsches Museum entitled Sven Hedin, the last explorer: He was a pioneer and pathfinder in the transitional period to a century of specialized research. No other single person illuminated and represented unknown territories more extensively than he. His maps alone are a unique creation. And the artist did not take second place to the savant, who deep in the night rapidly and apparently without effort rapidly created awe inspiring works. The discipline of geography, at least in Germany, has so far only concerned itself with his popularized reports. The consistent inclusion of the enormous, still unmined treasures in his scientific work are yet to be incorporated in the regional geography of Asia.
Current Hedin research
A scientific assessment of Hedin's character and his relationship to National Socialism was undertaken in the late 1990s and early 2000s at Bonn University by Professor Hans Böhm, Dipl.-Geogr. Astrid Mehmel and Christoph Sieker M.A. as part of the DFG Project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie (Sven Hedin and German Geography).
Literature
Primary
Scientific documentation
Sven Hedin: Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97. Supplementary volume 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen. Gotha 1900.
Sven Hedin: Scientific results of a journey in Central-Asia. 10 text and 2 map volumes. Stockholm 1904–1907. Volume 4
Sven Hedin: Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, Volume 1 1909 VOL. II
Sven Hedin: Southern Tibet. 11 text and 3 map volumes. Stockholm 1917–1922. VOL. VIII
Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. Over 50 volumes to date, contains primary and secondary literature. Stockholm 1937 ff.
Sven Hedin: Central Asia atlas. Maps, Statens etnografiska museum. Stockholm 1966. (appeared in the series Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under the leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition; Ausgabe 47. 1. Geography; 1)
Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa, Volume 1
THROUGH ASIA
Through Asia, Volume 1
German editions
a) Biography
Verwehte Spuren. Orientfahrten des Reise-Bengt und anderer Reisenden im 17. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1923.
b) Popular works
Durch Asiens Wüsten. Drei Jahre auf neuen Wegen in Pamir, Lop-nor, Tibet und China, 2 vol., Leipzig 1899; neue Ausgabe Wiesbaden 1981.
Im Herzen von Asien. Zehntausend Kilometer auf unbekannten Pfaden, 2 vol., Leipzig 1903.
Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1904; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Transhimalaja. Entdeckungen und Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1909–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1985.
Zu Land nach Indien durch Persien. Seistan und Bclutschistan, 2 vol., Leipzig 1910.
Von Pol zu Pol, 3 vol., Leipzig 1911–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Bagdad – Babylon – Ninive, Leipzig 1918
Jerusalem, Leipzig 1918.
General Prschewalskij in Innerasien, Leipzig 1922.
Meine erste Reise, Leipzig 1922.
An der Schwelle Innerasiens, Leipzig 1923.
Mount Everest, Leipzig 1923.
Persien und Mesopotamien, zwei asiatische Probleme, Leipzig 1923.
Von Peking nach Moskau, Leipzig 1924.
Gran Canon. Mein Besuch im amerikanischen Wunderland, Leipzig 1926.
Auf großer Fahrt. Meine Expedition mit Schweden, Deutschen und Chinesen durch die Wüste Gobi 1927– 1928, Leipzig 1929.
Rätsel der Gobi. Die Fortsetzung der Großen Fahrt durch Innerasien in den Jahren 1928–1930, Leipzig 1931.
Jehol, die Kaiserstadt, Leipzig 1932.
Die Flucht des Großen Pferdes, Leipzig 1935.
Die Seidenstraße, Leipzig 1936.
Der wandernde See, Leipzig 1937.
Im Verbotenen Land, Leipzig 1937
c) Political works
Ein Warnungsruf, Leipzig 1912.
Ein Volk in Waffen, Leipzig 1915.
Nach Osten!, Leipzig 1916.
Deutschland und der Weltfriede, Leipzig 1937 (unlike its translations, the original German edition of this title was printed but never delivered; only five copies were bound, one of which is in the possession of the F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden).
Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente, Leipzig 1942
d) Autobiographical works
Mein Leben als Entdecker, Leipzig 1926.
Eroberungszüge in Tibet, Leipzig 1940.
Ohne Auftrag in Berlin, Buenos Aires 1949; Tübingen-Stuttgart 1950.
Große Männer, denen ich begegnete, 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 1951.
Meine Hunde in Asien, Wiesbaden 1953.
Mein Leben als Zeichner, published by Gösta Montell in commemoration of Hedin's 100th birthday, Wiesbaden 1965.
e) Fiction
Tsangpo Lamas Wallfahrt, 2 vol., Leipzig 1921–1923.
Most German publications on Hedin were translated by F.A. Brockhaus Verlag from Swedish into German. To this extent Swedish editions are the original text. Often after the first edition appeared, F.A. Brockhaus Verlag published abridged versions with the same title. Hedin had not only an important business relationship with the publisher Albert Brockhaus, but also a close friendship. Their correspondence can be found in the Riksarkivet in Stockholm. There is a publication on this subject:
Sven Hedin, Albert Brockhaus: Sven Hedin und Albert Brockhaus. Eine Freundschaft in Briefen zwischen Autor und Verleger. F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1942.
Bibliography
Willy Hess: Die Werke Sven Hedins. Versuch eines vollständigen Verzeichnisses. Sven Hedin – Leben und Briefe, Vol. I. Stockholm 1962. likewise.: First Supplement. Stockholm 1965
Manfred Kleiner: Sven Anders Hedin 1865–1952 – eine Bibliografie der Sekundärliteratur. Self-published Manfred Kleinert, Princeton 2001.
Biographies
Detlef Brennecke: Sven Hedin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1986, 1991.
Johannes Paul: Abenteuerliche Lebensreise – Sieben biografische Essays. including: Sven Hedin. Der letzte Entdeckungsreisende. Wilhelm Köhler Verlag, Minden 1954, pp. 317–378.
Alma Hedin: Mein Bruder Sven. Nach Briefen und Erinnerungen. Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1925.
Eric Wennerholm: Sven Hedin 1865–1952. F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden 1978.
Axel Odelberg: Äventyr på Riktigt Berättelsen om Upptäckaren Sven Hedin. Norstedts, Stockholm 2008 (new biography in Swedish, 600 pages).
Hedin and National Socialism
Mehmel, Astrid: Sven Hedin und nationalsozialistische Expansionspolitik. In: Geopolitik. Grenzgänge im Zeitgeist Bd. 1 .1 1890 bis 1945 ed. by Irene Diekmann, Peter Krüger und Julius H. Schoeps, Potsdam 2000, pp. 189–238.
Danielsson, S.K.: The Intellectual Unmasked: Sven Hedin's Political Life from Pan-Germanism to National Socialism. Dissertation, Minnesota, 2005.
References
Further reading
Tommy Lundmark (2014) Sven Hedin institutet. En rasbiologisk upptäcksresa i Tredje riket. ) (Swedish)
External links
Scanned works
Excellent bibliography, listing publications and further literature
International Dunhuang Project Newsletter Issue No. 21, article on Sven Hedin, available also as PDF
British Indian intelligence on Sven Hedin. National Archives of India (1928)
1865 births
1952 deaths
Scientists from Stockholm
Explorers of Asia
Explorers of Central Asia
Explorers of Tibet
Geopoliticians
History of Tibet
Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
Members of the Swedish Academy
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences
Swedish explorers
Swedish geographers
Swedish topographers
Swedish nobility
Swedish people of Jewish descent
Swedish Christians
Swedish sinologists
Stockholm University alumni
Uppsala University alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni
Recipients of the Cullum Geographical Medal
Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire
Commanders First Class of the Order of the Polar Star
Knights of the Order of Vasa
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Swedish monarchists
Explorers of Iran
Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin
Victoria Medal recipients
Explorers of India
| true |
[
"In politics, hardline (or hard-line) is an adjective describing a stance on an issue that is inflexible and not subject to compromise. A hardliner is a person holding such views. The stance is usually far from the centrist view. People, policies, and laws can be considered hardline. A hardliner may be either a reactionary or a revolutionary. Synonyms for hardliner include diehard, hawk, extremist, fanatic, or zealot. The term is almost always relative to the Overton window of a given time and place.\n\nExamples by country\n\nFrance \nThe French government has taken a hardline stance against terrorism. France removed restrictions on raiding houses of suspected terrorists, although only five cases have been brought to court while over four thousand searches were conducted. Critics say the approach unfairly blames the Muslim community for radical extremists.\n\nIran \nEbrahim Raisi, a Shi'ite cleric and prominent politician, ran as a hardline challenger to President Rouhani in 2017 and was Rouhani's main challenger. He ran primarily on economic reforms and increasing distance with the West.\nHe later ran again for President in 2021 and won the election by 61.9% of the popular vote, succeeding Rouhani, who was term-limited.\n\nRussia \nAfter increased sanctions by Western countries, a poll from 2016 recorded that fifty-nine percent of Russians did not want their government to change its behavior. The respondents felt that either Westerns wanted to harm Russia, hold it to standards they did not live up to, or were simply ignorant of Russian reasoning for actions.\n\nUnited Kingdom \nBrexit is a hardline position on relations with the European Union. The United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union to preserve its sovereignty, which was dubbed Brexit. After the vote, the two top searches on Google about the European Union were the implications of leaving the European Union and what \"EU\" (short for European Union) meant.\n\nUnited States \nOne of the more common issues that uses hardline or hardliner as a description is illegal immigration. For example, the United States House of Representatives had two bills in June 2018 about immigration to consider: the hardline and centrist options. The House failed to pass the centrist bill. The House did not vote on the more extreme bill.\n\nWords implying hardline stances\n\nHawk \nA hawk is someone who prefers an extreme or aggressive stance, typically on war. When referring to war, a hawk is always in favor of war. The opposite is a dove, who prefers peace. However, the term hawk can also be used for other issues, like the deficit. John McCain, the American senator and 2008 presidential nominee was a [war] hawk because of his policies on the Middle East. A current example of a hawk is John R. Bolton, who was the national security advisor for President Trump.\n\nSee also \n Amity-enmity complex\n Groupthink\n Ideocracy\n Ideology\n Political midlife crisis\n Reactionary\n Siege mentality\n State collapse\n The Anatomy of Revolution\n The True Believer\n\nReferences \n\nPolitical ideologies\nPolitical theories\nPolitical spectrum\nPolitical terminology",
"Stance is the position an American football player adopts when a play begins. There are three common stances used by linemen: two-point, three-point, and four-point. The stance names reference the number of points where a player's body is touching the ground while down in the stance. Each technique has its own strengths and weaknesses; therefore, each one is used accordingly in different situations. Furthermore, stances are taught and used differently depending on the level of competition (little league football, high school football, college football, etc.).\n\nOverview\nIn the National Football League (NFL), the average amount of plays per game is over 60 per team. This means that, in one game, a lineman playing the entire time could enter a stance more than 60 times. However, it is not likely to be the same stance every time. Furthermore, it is important to remember that the offensive team must remain still for one second prior to the ball being snapped. This means that once an offensive player has become set in a stance, he must stay in it until the ball is snapped and the play begins. Additional motion can result in a false start penalty. Defensive players, on the other hand, are permitted to shift as much as they want before a play. It is possible for a defensive lineman to line up in one stance and then change to another just before the play begins. He can even shift his body to another place.\n\nTwo-point stance\nThe two-point variation is the most upright stance. Another name for the stance is the universal stance. The two-point is used by offensive linemen to facilitate better pass blocking because it increases their initial field of vision and gives more reaction time (to stay in front of a rushing player). Consequently, it is usually only used in a situation that will require passing. Some defensive linemen employ this stance to pass rush because they naturally obtain more quickness and agility out of it (particularly the defensive ends).\n\nTechnique\nThe \"two-points\" on the ground in this stance are just the feet. They are placed shoulder width apart pointing forward. One of the feet is staggered back, for an offensive-lineman this will be the foot away from the ball; for a defensive-lineman it will be the foot towards the ball. While in this stance the player's center of gravity will be slightly lowered by bending at the knees and waist. Weight is kept away from the heels to promote quickness and agility out of the stance in any direction.\n\nThree-point stance\nThe most common variation is the three-point stance. The purpose of this stance is to give the player leverage and allow more of their legs' power to be used. This is the offensive lineman's most used stance. It allows them to easily stay low and move in any direction at the snap of the ball. The interior defensive lineman use this stance for the same reason; however, it is usually slightly adjusted.\n\nTechnique\nThe added \"point\" is the player's strong hand on the ground (the down-hand). In higher divisions of play, ambidexterity between down-hands is required. A player entering the stance begins in a two-point stance; the player's staggered foot will be on the same side as the down-hand. The player then bends the knees and waist until the thighs and back are nearly parallel to the ground. The down-hand is merely an anchoring point for offensive linemen; typically, very little weight is put onto it. Offensive linemen may have to move in any direction so it is counterproductive to put weight on their down-hand (this only facilitates forward movement.) However, defensive players usually put more weight on their down-hand to have a more explosive start as they almost always go forward. This gives them the power of their legs coupled with forward momentum for a stronger push.\n\nFour-point stance\nThe least common variation is the four-point stance. This stance is used for maximum explosion and leverage in one direction (straight ahead of the player). Offensive linemen will typically only use it if they need to force the line forward only inches. Interior defensive lineman will use it to keep this push from happening.\n\nTechnique\nThe added \"point\" in this stance is the other arm. It is simply a three-point with the other hand put down. However, the hands in this case are allowed as much of the body's weight as the feet.\n\nProposed bans\nThe three-point stance has become a staple in every football game. However, this has drawn attention to the danger it puts players in. The NFL has gained bad reputation because of the players' long-term and sometimes life-threatening complications brought about by head injuries. The NFL's commissioner, Roger Goodell, has stated the possibility of banning the three-point stance because it makes linemen more likely to initiate head-to-head contact.\n\nReferences\n\nAmerican football terminology"
] |
[
"Sven Hedin",
"Political views",
"What was his main political view?",
"Hedin was a monarchist.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland.",
"Did he have any stance on political strong holds?",
"He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire."
] |
C_7909b0619f154bdab580c2e708ce492f_1
|
Did he help shape any policies?
| 4 |
Did Hedin help shape any policies?
|
Sven Hedin
|
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship HSwMS Sverige, which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government. He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars. He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts. CANNOTANSWER
|
He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship HSwMS Sverige, which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance.
|
Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, (19 February 1865 – 26 November 1952) was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan. The posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life's work.
Overview
At 15 years of age, Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route. From that moment on, young Sven aspired to become an explorer. His studies under the German geographer and China expert, Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, awakened a love of Germany in Hedin and strengthened his resolve to undertake expeditions to Central Asia to explore the last uncharted areas of Asia. After obtaining a doctorate, learning several languages and dialects, and undertaking two trips through Persia, he ignored the advice of Ferdinand von Richthofen to continue his geographic studies to acquaint himself with geographical research methodology; the result was that Hedin had to leave the evaluation of his expedition results later to other scientists.
Between 1894 and 1908, in three daring expeditions through the mountains and deserts of Central Asia, he mapped and researched parts of Chinese Turkestan (officially Xinjiang) and Tibet which had been unexplored by Europeans until then. Upon his return to Stockholm in 1909 he was received as triumphantly as Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. In 1902, he became the last Swede (to date) to be raised to the untitled nobility and was considered one of Sweden's most important personalities. As a member of two scientific academies, he had a voice in the selection of Nobel Prize winners for both science and literature. Hedin never married and had no children, rendering his family line now extinct.
Hedin's expedition notes laid the foundations for a precise mapping of Central Asia. He was one of the first European scientific explorers to employ indigenous scientists and research assistants on his expeditions. Although primarily an explorer, he was also the first to unearth the ruins of ancient Buddhist cities in Chinese Central Asia. However, as his main interest in archaeology was finding ancient cities, he had little interest in gathering data thorough scientific excavations. Of small stature, with a bookish, bespectacled appearance, Hedin nevertheless proved himself a determined explorer, surviving several close brushes with death from hostile forces and the elements over his long career. His scientific documentation and popular travelogues, illustrated with his own photographs, watercolor paintings and drawings, his adventure stories for young readers and his lecture tours abroad made him world-famous.
As a renowned expert on Turkestan and Tibet, he was able to obtain unrestricted access to European and Asian monarchs and politicians as well as to their geographical societies and scholarly associations. They all sought to purchase his exclusive knowledge about the power vacuum in Central Asia with gold medals, diamond-encrusted grand crosses, honorary doctorates and splendid receptions, as well as with logistic and financial support for his expeditions. Hedin, in addition to Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sir Francis Younghusband, and Sir Aurel Stein, was an active player in the British-Russian struggle for influence in Central Asia, known as the Great Game. Their travels were supported because they filled in the "white spaces" in contemporary maps, providing valuable information.
Hedin was honored in ceremonies in:
1890 by King Oscar II of Sweden
1890 by Shah Nāser ad-Dīn Schah
1896, 1909 by Czar Nicholas II of Russia
from 1898 frequently by Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary
1902 by the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon
1903, 1914, 1917, 1926, 1936 by Kaiser Wilhelm II
1906 by the Viceroy of India Lord Minto
1907, 1926, 1933 by the 9th Panchen Lama Thubten Choekyi Nyima
1908 by Emperor Mutsuhito
1910 by Pope Pius X
1910 by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
1915 and subsequently by Hindenburg
1929 and 1935 by Chiang Kai-shek
1935, 1939, 1940 (twice) by Adolf Hitler.
Hedin was, and remained, a figure of the 19th century who clung to its visions and methods also in the 20th century. This prevented him from discerning the fundamental social and political upheavals of the 20th century and aligning his thinking and actions accordingly.
Concerned about the security of Scandinavia, he favored the construction of the battleship Sverige. In World War I he specifically allied himself in his publications with the German monarchy and its conduct of the war. Because of this political involvement, his scientific reputation was damaged among Germany's wartime enemies, along with his memberships in their geographical societies and learned associations, as well as any support for his planned expeditions.
After a less-than-successful lecture tour in 1923 through North America and Japan, he traveled on to Beijing to carry out an expedition to Chinese Turkestan (modern Xinjiang), but the region's unstable political situation thwarted this intention. He instead traveled through Mongolia by car and through Siberia aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway.
With financial support from the governments of Sweden and Germany, he led, between 1927 and 1935, an international and interdisciplinary Sino-Swedish Expedition to carry out scientific investigations in Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, with the participation of 37 scientists from six countries. Despite Chinese counter-demonstrations and after months of negotiations in China, was he able to make the expedition also a Chinese one by obtaining Chinese research commissions and the participation of Chinese scientists. He also concluded a contract which guaranteed freedom of travel for this expedition which, because of its arms, 300 camels, and activities in a war theater, resembled an invading army. However, the financing remained Hedin's private responsibility.
Because of failing health, the civil war in Chinese Turkestan, and a long period of captivity, Hedin, by then 70 years of age, had a difficult time after the currency depreciation of the Great Depression raising the money required for the expedition, the logistics for assuring the supplying of the expedition in an active war zone, and obtaining access for the expedition's participants to a research area intensely contested by local warlords. Nevertheless, the expedition was a scientific success. The archaeological artifacts which had been sent to Sweden were scientifically assessed for three years, after which they were returned to China under the terms of the contract.
Starting in 1937, the scientific material assembled during the expedition was published in over 50 volumes by Hedin and other expedition participants, thereby making it available for worldwide research on eastern Asia. When he ran out of money to pay printing costs, he pawned his extensive and valuable library, which filled several rooms, making possible the publication of additional volumes.
In 1935, Hedin made his exclusive knowledge about Central Asia available, not only to the Swedish government, but also to foreign governments such as China and Germany, in lectures and personal discussions with political representatives of Chiang Kai-shek and Adolf Hitler.
Although he was not a National Socialist, Hedin's hope that Nazi Germany would protect Scandinavia from invasion by the Soviet Union, brought him in dangerous proximity to representatives of National Socialism, who exploited him as an author. This destroyed his reputation and put him into social and scientific isolation. However, in correspondence and personal conversations with leading Nazis, his successful intercessions achieved the pardoning of ten people condemned to death and the release or survival of Jews who had been deported to Nazi concentration camps.
At the end of the war, U.S. troops deliberately confiscated documents relating to Hedin's planned Central Asia Atlas. The U.S. Army Map Service later solicited Hedin's assistance and financed the printing and publication of his life's work, the Central Asia Atlas. Whoever compares this atlas with Adolf Stielers Hand Atlas of 1891 can appreciate what Hedin accomplished between 1893 and 1935.
Although Hedin's research was taboo in Germany and Sweden because of his conduct relating to Nazi Germany, and stagnated for decades in Germany, the scientific documentation of his expeditions was translated into Chinese by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and incorporated into Chinese research. Following recommendations made by Hedin to the Chinese government in 1935, the routes he selected were used to construct streets and train tracks, as well as dams and canals to irrigate new farms being established in the Tarim and Yanji basins in Xinjiang and the deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold discovered during the Sino-Swedish Expedition were opened up for mining. Among the discoveries of this expedition should also be counted the many Asian plants and animals unheard of until that date, as well as fossil remains of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Many were named after Hedin, the species-level scientific classification being hedini. But one discovery remained unknown to Chinese researchers until the turn of the millennium: in the Lop Nur desert, Hedin discovered in 1933 and 1934 ruins of signal towers which prove that the Great Wall of China once extended as far west as Xinjiang.
From 1931 until his death in 1952, Hedin lived in Stockholm in a modern high-rise in a preferred location, the address being Norr Mälarstrand 66. He lived with his siblings in the upper three stories and from the balcony he had a wide view over Riddarfjärden Bay and Lake Mälaren to the island of Långholmen. In the entryway to the stairwell is to be found a decorative stucco relief map of Hedin's research area in Central Asia and a relief of the Lama temple, a copy of which he had brought to Chicago for the 1933 World's Fair.
On 29 October 1952, Hedin's will granted the rights to his books and his extensive personal effects to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Sven Hedin Foundation established soon thereafter holds all the rights of ownership.
Hedin died at Stockholm in 1952. The memorial service was attended by representatives of the Swedish royal household, the Swedish government, the Swedish Academy, and the diplomatic service. He is buried in the cemetery of Adolf Fredrik church in Stockholm.
Biography
Childhood influences
Sven Hedin was born in Stockholm, the son of Ludwig Hedin, Chief Architect of Stockholm.
When he was 15 years old Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Swedish Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route.
He describes this experience in his book My Life as an Explorer as follows:
On 24 April 1880, the steamer Vega sailed into Stockholms ström. The entire city was illuminated. The buildings around the harbor glowed in the light of innumerable lamps and torches. Gas flames depicted the constellation of Vega on the castle. Amidst this sea of light the famous ship glided into the harbor. I was standing on the Södermalm heights with my parents and siblings, from which we had a superb view. I was gripped by great nervous tension. I will remember this day until I die, as it was decisive for my future. Thunderous jubilation resounded from quays, streets, windows and rooftops. "That is how I want to return home some day," I thought to myself.
First trip to Iran (Persia)
In May 1885, Hedin graduated from Beskowska secondary school in Stockholm. He then accepted an offer to accompany the student Erhard Sandgren as his private tutor to Baku, where Sandgren's father was working as an engineer in the oil fields of Robert Nobel. Afterward he attended a course in topography for general staff officers for one month in summer 1885 and took a few weeks of instruction in portrait drawing; this comprised his entire training in those areas.
On 15 August 1885, he traveled to Baku with Erhard Sandgren and instructed him there for seven months, and he himself began to learn the Latin, French, German, Persian, Russian, English and Tatar languages. He later learned several Persian dialects as well as Turkish, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tibetan and some Chinese.
On 6 April 1886, Hedin left Baku for Iran (then called Persia), traveling by paddle steamer over the Caspian Sea, riding through the Alborz Range to Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz and the harbor city of Bushehr. From there he took a ship up the Tigris River to Baghdad (then in Ottoman Empire), returning to Tehran via Kermanshah, and then travelling through the Caucasus and over the Black Sea to Constantinople. Hedin then returned to Sweden, arriving on 18 September 1886.
In 1887, Hedin published a book about these travels entitled Through Persia, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.
Studies
From 1886 to 1888, Hedin studied under the geologist Waldemar Brøgger in Stockholm and Uppsala the subjects of geology, mineralogy, zoology and Latin. In December 1888, he became a Candidate in Philosophy. From October 1889 to March 1890 he studied in Berlin under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen.
Second trip to Iran
On 12 May 1890, he accompanied as interpreter and vice-consul a Swedish legation to Iran which was to present the Shah of Iran with the insignia of the Order of the Seraphim. As part of the Swedish legation, he was at an audience of the shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in Tehran. He spoke with him and later accompanied him to the Elburz Mountain Range. On 11 July 1890, he and three others climbed Mount Damavand where he collected primary material for his dissertation. Starting in September he traveled on the Silk Road via cities Mashhad, Ashgabat, Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Kashgar to the western outskirts of the Taklamakan Desert. On the trip home, he visited the grave of the Russian Asian scholar, Nikolai Przhevalsky in Karakol on the shore of Lake Issyk Kul. On 29 March 1891, he was back in Stockholm. He published the books King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890 and Through Chorasan and Turkestan about this journey.
Doctorate and career path
On 27 April 1892, Hedin traveled to Berlin to continue his studies under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen. Beginning of July he went to University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, attending lectures by Alfred Kirchhoff. Yet in the same month, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a 28-page dissertation entitled Personal Observations of Damavand. This dissertation is a summary of one part of his book, King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890. Eric Wennerholm remarked on the subject: I can only come to the conclusion that Sven [Hedin] received his doctorate when he was 27 years old after studying for a grand total of only eight months and collecting primary material for one-and-a-half days on the snow-clad peak of Mount Damavand.
Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen not only encouraged Hedin to absolve cursory studies, but also to become thoroughly acquainted with all branches of geographic science and the methodologies of the salient research work, so that he could later work as an explorer. Hedin abstained from doing this with an explanation he supplied in old age: I was not up to this challenge. I had gotten out onto the wild routes of Asia too early, I had perceived too much of the splendor and magnificence of the Orient, the silence of the deserts and the loneliness of long journeys. I could not get used to the idea of spending a long period of time back in school.
Hedin had therewith decided to become an explorer. He was attracted to the idea of traveling to the last mysterious portions of Asia and filling in the gaps by mapping an area completely unknown in Europe. As an explorer, Hedin became important for the Asian and European powers, who courted him, invited him to give numerous lectures, and hoped to obtain from him in return topographic, economic and strategic information about inner Asia, which they considered part of their sphere of influence. As the era of discovery came to a close around 1920, Hedin contented himself with organizing the Sino-Swedish Expedition for qualified scientific explorers.
First expedition
Between 1893 and 1897, Hedin investigated the Pamir Mountains, travelling through the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang region, across the Taklamakan Desert, Lake Kara-Koshun and Lake Bosten, proceeding to study northern Tibet. He covered on this journey and mapped of them on 552 sheets. Approximately led through previously uncharted areas.
He started out on this expedition on 16 October 1893, from Stockholm, traveling via Saint Petersburg and Tashkent to the Pamir Mountains. Several attempts to climb the high Muztagata—called the Father of the Glaciers—in the Pamir Mountains were unsuccessful. He remained in Kashgar until April 1895 and then left on 10 April with three local escorts from the village of Merket to cross the Taklamakan Desert via Tusluk to the Khotan River. Since their water supply was insufficient, seven camels died of thirst, as did two of his escorts (according to Hedin's dramatized and probably inaccurate account). Bruno Baumann traveled on this route in April 2000 with a camel caravan and ascertained that at least one of the escorts who, according to Hedin, had died of thirst had survived, and that it is impossible for a camel caravan traveling in springtime on this route to carry enough drinking water for both camels and travelers.
According to other sources, Hedin had neglected to completely fill the drinking water containers for his caravan at the beginning of the expedition and set out for the desert with only half as much water as could actually be carried. When he noticed the mistake, it was too late to return. Obsessed by his urge to carry out his research, Hedin deserted the caravan and proceeded alone on horseback with his servant. When that escort also collapsed from thirst, Hedin left him behind as well, but managed to reach a water source at the last desperate moment. He did, however, return to his servant with water and rescued him. Nevertheless, his ruthless behavior earned him massive criticism.
In January 1896, after a stopover in Kashgar, Hedin visited the 1,500-year-old abandoned cities of Dandan Oilik and Kara Dung, which are located northeast of Khotan in the Taklamakan Desert. At the beginning of March, he discovered Lake Bosten, one of the largest inland bodies of water in Central Asia. He reported that this lake is supplied by a single mighty feeder stream, the Kaidu River. He mapped Lake Kara-Koshun and returned on 27 May to Khotan. On 29 June, he started out from there with his caravan across northern Tibet and China to Beijing, where he arrived on 2 March 1897. He returned to Stockholm via Mongolia and Russia.
Second expedition
Another expedition in Central Asia followed in 1899–1902 through the Tarim Basin, Tibet and Kashmir to Calcutta. Hedin navigated the Yarkand, Tarim and Kaidu rivers and found the dry riverbed of the Kum-darja as well as the dried out lake bed of Lop Nur. Near Lop Nur, he discovered the ruins of the former walled royal city and later Chinese garrison town of Loulan, containing the brick building of the Chinese military commander, a stupa, and 19 dwellings built of poplar wood. He also found a wooden wheel from a horse-drawn cart (called an arabas) as well as several hundred documents written on wood, paper and silk in the Kharosthi script. These provided information about the history of the city of Loulan, which had once been located on the shores of Lop Nur but had been abandoned around the year 330 CE because the lake had dried out, depriving the inhabitants of drinking water.
During his travels in 1900 and 1901 he attempted in vain to reach the city of Lhasa, which was forbidden to Europeans. He continued to Leh, in Ladakh district, India. From Leh, Hedin's route took him to Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares to Calcutta, meeting there with George Nathaniel Curzon, England's then Viceroy to India.
This expedition resulted in 1,149 pages of maps, on which Hedin depicted newly discovered lands. He was the first to describe yardang formations in the Lop Desert.
Third expedition
Between 1905 and 1908, Hedin investigated the Central Iranian desert basins, the western highlands of Tibet and the Transhimalaya, which for a time was afterward called the Hedin Range. He visited the 9th Panchen Lama in the cloistered city of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse. Hedin was the first European to reach the Kailash region, including the sacred Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash, the midpoint of the earth according to Buddhist and Hindu mythology. The most important goal of the expedition was the search for the sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra Rivers, both of which Hedin found. From India, he returned via Japan and Russia to Stockholm.
He returned from this expedition with a collection of geological samples which are kept and studied in the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology of Munich University. These sedimentary rocks—such as breccia, conglomerate, limestone, and slate, as well as volcanic rock and granite—highlight the geological diversity of the regions visited by Hedin during this expedition.
Mongolia
In 1923, Hedin traveled to Beijing via the USA—where he visited the Grand Canyon—and Japan. Because of political and social unrest in China, he had to abandon an expedition to Xinjiang. Instead, he traveled with Frans August Larson (called the "Duke of Mongolia") in November and December in a Dodge automobile from Peking through Mongolia via Ulaanbaatar to Ulan-Ude, Russia and from there on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow.
Fourth expedition
Between 1927 and 1935, Hedin led an international Sino-Swedish Expedition which investigated the meteorological, topographic and prehistoric situation in Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Xinjiang.
Hedin described it as a peripatetic university in which the participating scientists worked almost independently, while he—like a local manager—negotiated with local authorities, made decisions, organized whatever was necessary, raised funds and recorded the route followed. He gave archaeologists, astronomers, botanists, geographers, geologists, meteorologists and zoologists from Sweden, Germany and China an opportunity to participate in the expedition and carry out research in their areas of specialty.
Hedin met Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing, who thereupon became a patron of the expedition. The Sino-Swedish Expedition was honored with a Chinese postage stamp series which had a print run of 25,000. The four stamps show camels at a camp with the expedition flag and bear the Chinese text, "Postal Service of the Prosperous Middle Kingdom" and in Latin underneath, "Scientific Expedition to the Northwestern Province of China 1927–1933". A painting in the Beijing Palace Museum entitled Nomads in the Desert served as model for the series. Of the 25,000 sets, 4,000 were sold across the counter and 21,500 came into the possession of the expedition. Hedin used them to finance the expedition, selling them for a price of five dollars per set. The stamps were unwelcome at the time due to the high price Hedin was selling them at, but years later became valuable treasures among collectors.
The first part of the expedition, from 1927 to 1932, led from Beijing via Baotou to Mongolia, over the Gobi Desert, through Xinjiang to Ürümqi, and into the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin. The expedition had a wealth of scientific results which are being published up to the present time. For example, the discovery of specific deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold reserves was of great economic relevance for China. In recognition of his achievements, the Berlin Geographical Society presented him with the Ferdinand von Richthofen Medal in 1933; the same honor was also awarded to Erich von Drygalski for his Gauss Expedition to the Antarctic; and to Alfred Philippson for his research on the Aegean Region.
From the end of 1933 to 1934, Hedin led—on behalf of the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing—a Chinese expedition to investigate irrigation measures and draw up plans and maps for the construction of two roads suitable for automobiles along the Silk Road from Beijing to Xinjiang. Following his plans, major irrigation facilities were constructed, settlements erected, and roads built on the Silk Road from Beijing to Kashgar, which made it possible to completely bypass the rough terrain of Tarim Basin.
One aspect of the geography of central Asia which intensively occupied Hedin for decades was what he called the "wandering lake" Lop Nur. In May 1934, he began a river expedition to this lake. For two months he navigated the Kaidu River and the Kum-Darja to Lop Nur, which had been filled with water since 1921. After the lake dried out in 1971 as a consequence of irrigation activities, the above-mentioned transportation link enabled the People's Republic of China to construct a nuclear weapon test site at Lop Nur.
His caravan of truck lorries was hijacked by the Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying who was retreating from northern Xinjiang along with his Kuomintang 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) from the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. While Hedin was detained by Ma Zhongying, he met General Ma Hushan, and Kemal Kaya Effendi.
Ma Zhongying's adjutant claimed to Hedin that Ma Zhongying had the entire region of Tian-shan-nan-lu (southern Xinjiang) under his control and Sven could pass through safely without any trouble. Hedin did not believe his assertions. Some of Ma Zhongying's Tungan (Chinese speaking Muslim) troops attacked Hedin's expedition by shooting at their vehicles.
For the return trip, Hedin selected the southern Silk Road route via Hotan to Xi'an, where the expedition arrived on 7 February 1935. He continued on to Beijing to meet with President Lin Sen and to Nanjing to Chiang Kai-shek. He celebrated his 70th birthday on 19 February 1935 in the presence of 250 members of the Kuomintang government, to whom he reported interesting facts about the Sino-Swedish Expedition. On this day, he was awarded the Brilliant Jade Order, Second Class.
At the end of the expedition, Hedin was in a difficult financial situation. He had considerable debts at the German-Asian Bank in Beijing, which he repaid with the royalties and fees received for his books and lectures. In the months after his return, he held 111 lectures in 91 German cities as well as 19 lectures in neighboring countries. To accomplish this lecture tour, he covered a stretch as long as the equator, by train and by car—in a time period of five months. He met Adolf Hitler in Berlin before his lecture on 14 April 1935.
Political views
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship , which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government.
He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars.
He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts.
Hedin and the Third Reich
Hedin's conservative and pro-German views eventually translated into sympathy for the Third Reich, and this would draw him into increasing controversy towards the end of his life. Adolf Hitler had been an early admirer of Hedin, who was in turn impressed with Hitler's nationalism. He saw the German leader's rise to power as a revival of German fortunes, and welcomed its challenge against Soviet Communism. He was not an entirely uncritical supporter of the Nazis, however. His own views were shaped by traditionalist, Christian and conservative values, while National Socialism was in part a modern revolutionary-populist movement. Hedin objected to some aspects of National Socialist rule, and occasionally attempted to convince the German government to relent in its anti-religious and anti-Semitic campaigns.
Hedin met Adolf Hitler and other leading National Socialists repeatedly and was in regular correspondence with them. The politely-worded correspondence usually concerned scheduling matters, birthday congratulations, Hedin's planned or completed publications, and requests by Hedin for pardons for people condemned to death, and for mercy, release and permission to leave the country for people interned in prisons or concentration camps. In correspondence with Joseph Goebbels and Hans Dräger, Hedin was able to achieve the printing of the Daily Watchwords year after year.
On 29 October 1942, Hitler read Hedin's book entitled, America in the Battle of the Continents. In the book Hedin promoted the view that President Roosevelt was responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939 and that Hitler had done everything in his power to prevent war. Moreover, Hedin argued that the origins of the Second World War lay not in German belligerence but in the Treaty of Versailles. This book deeply influenced Hitler and reaffirmed his views on the origins of the war and who was responsible for it. In a letter to Hedin the following day Hitler wrote, "I thank you warmly for the attention you have shown me. I have already read the book and welcome in particular that you so explicitly detailed the offers I made to Poland at the beginning of the War". Hitler continued, "without question, the individual guilty of this war, as you correctly state at the end of your book, is exclusively the American President Roosevelt."
The Nazis attempted to achieve a close connection to Hedin by bestowing awards upon him—later scholars have noted that "honors were heaped upon this prominent sympathizer." They asked him to present an address on Sport as a Teacher at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin's Olympic stadium. They made him an honorary member of the German-Swedish Union Berlin () In 1938, they presented him with the City of Berlin's Badge of Honor (). For his 75th birthday on 19 February 1940 they awarded him the Order of the German Eagle; shortly before that date it had been presented to Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. On New Year's Day 1943 they released the Oslo professor of philology and university rector Didrik Arup Seip from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Hedin's request to obtain Hedin's agreement to accept additional honors during the 470th anniversary of Munich University. On 15 January 1943, he received the Gold Medal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Goldmedaille der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). On 16 January 1943 he received an honorary doctorate from the faculty of natural sciences of Munich University. On the same day, the Nazis founded in his absence the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research located at Mittersill Castle, which was supposed to serve the long-term advancement of the scientific legacy of Hedin and Wilhelm Filchner as Asian experts. However, it was instead misused by Heinrich Himmler as an institute of the Research Association for German Genealogical Inheritance (Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V.). On 21 January 1943, he was requested to sign the Golden Book of the city of Munich.
Hedin supported the Nazis in his journalistic activities. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, he did not regret his collaboration with the Nazis because this cooperation had made it possible to rescue numerous Nazi victims from execution, or death in extermination camps.
Senior Jewish German archeologist Werner Scheimberg, sent in the expedition by the Thule Society, "had been one of the companions of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin on his excursions in the East, with archaeological and to some extent esoteric purposes".
Hedin was trying to discover the mythological place of Agartha and reproached the Polish explorer and visiting professor Antoni Ossendowski for having been gone where the Swedish explorer wasn't able to come, and thus was personally invited by Adolf Hitler in Berlin and honoured by the Führer during his 75th birthday feast.
Criticism of National Socialism
Johannes Paul wrote in 1954 about Hedin:
Much of what happened in the early days of Nazi rule had his approval. However, he did not hesitate to criticize whenever he considered this to be necessary, particularly in cases of Jewish persecution, conflict with the churches and bars to freedom of science.
In 1937 Hedin refused to publish his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden (Germany and World Peace) in Germany because the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda insisted on the deletion of Nazi-critical passages. In a letter Hedin wrote to State Secretary Walther Funk dated 16 April 1937, it becomes clear what his criticism of National Socialism was in this time before the establishment of extermination camps:
When we first discussed my plan to write a book, I stated that I only wanted to write objectively, scientifically, possibly critically, according to my conscience, and you considered that to be completely acceptable and natural. Now I emphasized in a very friendly and mild form that the removal of distinguished Jewish professors who have performed great services for mankind is detrimental to Germany and that this has given rise to many agitators against Germany abroad. So I took this position only in the interest of Germany.
My worry that the education of German youth, which I otherwise praise and admire everywhere, is deficient in questions of religion and the hereafter comes from my love and sympathy for the German nation, and as a Christian I consider it my duty to state this openly, and, to be sure, in the firm conviction that Luther’s nation, which is religious through and through, will understand me.
So far I have never gone against my conscience and will not do it now either. Therefore, no deletions will be made.
Hedin later published this book in Sweden.
Efforts on behalf of deported Jews
After he refused to remove his criticism of National Socialism from his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden, the Nazis confiscated the passports of Hedin's Jewish friend Alfred Philippson and his family in 1938 to prevent their intended departure to American exile and retain them in Germany as a bargaining chip when dealing with Hedin. The consequence was that Hedin expressed himself more favorably about Nazi Germany in his book Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland, subjugated himself against his conscience to the censorship of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and published the book in Germany.
On 8 June 1942, the Nazis increased the pressure on Hedin by deporting Alfred Philippson and his family to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. By doing so, they accomplished their goal of forcing Hedin against his conscience to write his book Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and other government agencies and to publish it in Germany in 1942. In return, the Nazis classified Alfred Philippson as "A-prominent" and granted his family privileges which enabled them to survive.
For a long time Hedin was in correspondence with Alfred Philippson and regularly sent food parcels to him in Theresienstadt concentration camp. On 29 May 1946, Alfred Philippson wrote to him (translation, abbreviated quotation): My dear Hedin! Now that letters can be sent abroad I have the opportunity to write to you…. We frequently think with deep gratitude of our rescuer, who alone is responsible for our being able to survive the horrible period of three years of incarceration and hunger in Theresienstadt concentration camp, at my age a veritable wonder. You will have learned that we few survivors were finally liberated just a few days before our intended gassing. We, my wife, daughter and I, were then brought on 9–10 July 1945 in a bus of the city of Bonn here to our home town, almost half of which is now destroyed….
Hedin responded on 19 July 1946 (translation, abbreviated quotation): …It was wonderful to find out that our efforts were not in vain. In these difficult years we attempted to rescue over one hundred other unfortunate people who had been deported to Poland, but in most cases without success. We were however able to help a few Norwegians. My home in Stockholm was turned into something like an information and assistance office, and I was excellently supported by Dr. Paul Grassmann, press attaché in the German embassy in Stockholm. He too undertook everything possible to further this humanitarian work. But almost no case was as fortunate as yours, dear friend! And how wonderful, that you are back in Bonn….
The names and fates of the over one hundred deported Jews whom Hedin tried to save have not yet been researched.
Efforts on behalf of deported Norwegians
Hedin supported the cause of the Norwegian author Arnulf Øverland and for the Oslo professor of philology and university director Didrik Arup Seip, who were interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He achieved the release of Didrik Arup Seip, but his efforts to free Arnulf Øverland were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Arnulf Øverland survived the concentration camp.
Efforts on behalf of Norwegian activists
After the third senate of the highest German military court (Reichskriegsgericht) in Berlin condemned to death for alleged espionage the ten Norwegians Sigurd Jakobsen, Gunnar Hellesen, Helge Børseth, Siegmund Brommeland, Peter Andree Hjelmervik, Siegmund Rasmussen, Gunnar Carlsen, Knud Gjerstad, Christian Oftedahl and Frithiof Lund on 24 February 1941, Hedin successfully appealed via Colonel General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst to Adolf Hitler for their reprieve. Their death penalty was converted on 17 June 1941 by Adolf Hitler to ten years forced labor. The Norwegians Carl W. Mueller, Knud Naerum, Peder Fagerland, Ottar Ryan, Tor Gerrard Rydland, Hans Bernhard Risanger and Arne Sørvag who had been condemned to forced labor under the same charge received reduced sentences at Hedin's request. Unfortunately, Hans Bernhard Risanger died in prison just a few days before his release.
Von Falkenhorst was condemned to death, by firing squad, by a British military court on 2 August 1946, because of his responsibility for passing on a Führerbefehl called the Commando Order. Hedin intervened on his behalf, achieving a pardon on 4 December 1946, with the argument that von Falkenhorst had likewise striven to pardon the ten Norwegians condemned to death. Von Falkenhorst's death penalty was commuted by the British military court to 20 years in prison. In the end, Nikolaus von Falkenhorst was released early from the Werl war criminals prison on 13 July 1953.
Awards
Because of his outstanding services, Hedin was raised to the untitled nobility by King Oskar II in 1902, the last time any Swede was to receive a charter of nobility. Oskar II suggested that he prefix the name Hedin with one of the two common predicates of nobility in Sweden, "af" or "von", but Hedin abstained from doing so in his written response to the king. In many noble families in Sweden, it was customary to do without the title of nobility. The coat of arms of Hedin, together with those of some two thousand noble families, is to be found on a wall of the Great Hall in Riddarhuset, the assembly house of Swedish nobility in Stockholm's inner city, Gamla Stan.
In 1905, Hedin was admitted to membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1909 to the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. From 1913 to 1952 he held the sixth of 18 chairs as an elected member of the Swedish Academy. In this position, he had a vote in the selection of Nobel Prize winners.
He was an honorary member of numerous Swedish and foreign scientific societies and institutions which honored him with some 40 gold medals; 27 of these medals can be viewed in Stockholm in a display case in the Royal Coin Cabinet.
He received honorary doctorates from Oxford (1909), Cambridge (1909), Heidelberg (1928), Uppsala (1935), and Munich (1943) universities and from the Handelshochschule Berlin (1931) (all Dr. phil. h.c.), from Breslau University (1915, Dr. jur. h.c.), and from Rostock University (1919, Dr. med. h.c.).
Numerous countries presented him with medals. In Sweden he became a Commander 1st Class of the Royal Order of the North Star (KNO1kl) with a brilliant badge and Knight of the Royal Order of Vasa (RVO). In the United Kingdom he was named Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire by King Edward VII. As a foreigner, he was not authorized to use the associated title of Sir, but he could place the designation KCIE after his family name Hedin. Hedin was also a Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle.
In his honor have been named a glacier, the Sven Hedin Glacier; a lunar crater Hedin; a genus of flowering plants, Hedinia; a species of the flowering plant, Gentiana hedini (now a synonym of Comastoma falcatum ); the beetles Longitarsus hedini and Coleoptera hedini; a butterfly, Fumea hedini Caradja; a spider, Dictyna hedini; a fossil hoofed mammal, Tsaidamotherium hedini; a fossil Therapsid (a "mammal-like reptile") Lystrosaurus hedini; and streets and squares in the cities of various countries (for example, "Hedinsgatan" at Tessinparken in Stockholm).
A permanent exhibition of articles found by Hedin on his expeditions is located in the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum.
In the Adolf Frederick church can be found the Sven Hedin memorial plaque by Liss Eriksson. The plaque was installed in 1959. On it, a globe with Asia to the fore can be seen, crowned with a camel. It bears the Swedish epitaph:
The Sven Hedin Firn in North Greenland was named after him.
Research on Hedin
Source material
A survey of the extensive sources for Hedin research shows that it would be difficult at present to come to a fair assessment of the personality and achievements of Hedin. Most of the source material has not yet been subjected to scientific scrutiny. Even the DFG project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie had to restrict itself to a small selection and a random examination of the source material.
The sources for Hedin research are located in numerous archives (and include primary literature, correspondence, newspaper articles, obituaries and secondary literature).
Hedin's own publications amount to some 30,000 pages.
There are about 2,500 drawings and watercolors, films and many photographs.
To this should be added 25 volumes with travel and expedition notes and 145 volumes of the diaries he regularly maintained between 1930 and 1952, totaling 8,257 pages.
The extensive holdings of the Hedin Foundation (Sven Hedins Stiftelse), which holds Hedin effects in trust, are to be found in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm.
Hedin's correspondence is in the archive of the German Foreign Office in Bonn, in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig, and above all in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm. Most of the correspondence in Hedin's estate is in the National Archives and accessible to researchers and the general public. It includes about 50,000 letters organized alphabetically according to country and sender as well as some 30,000 additional unsorted letters.
The scientific effects as well as a collection of newspaper articles about Hedin organized by year (1895–1952) in 60 bound folios can be found in the Ethnographic Museum.
The finds from Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang are, among other places, in Stockholm in the Ethnographic Museum (some 8,000 individual items), in the Institutes of Geology, Minearology and Paleontology of the Uppsala University, in the depots of the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Munich, and in the National Museum of China, Beijing.
Hedin's documentation
During his expeditions Hedin saw the focus of his work as being in field research. He recorded routes by plotting many thousands of kilometers of his caravan itinerary with the detail of a high resolution topographical map and supplemented them with innumerable altitude measurements and latitude and longitude data. At the same time he combined his field maps with panoramic drawings. He drafted the first precise maps of areas unresearched until that date: the Pamir mountains, the Taklamakan desert, Tibet, the Silk Road and the Himalayas. He was, as far as can be scientifically confirmed, the first European to recognize that the Himalayas were a continuous mountain range.
He systematically studied the lakes of inner Asia, made careful climatological observations over many years, and started extensive collections of rocks, plants, animals and antiquities. Underway he prepared watercolor paintings, sketches, drawings and photographs, which he later published in his works. The photographs and maps with the highest quality printing are to be found in the original Swedish publications.
Hedin prepared a scientific publication for each of his expeditions. The extent of documentation increased dramatically from expedition to expedition. His research report about the first expedition was published in 1900 as Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97 (Supplement 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen), Gotha 1900. The publication about the second expedition, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, increased to six text and two atlas volumes. Southern Tibet, the scientific publication on the third expedition, totalled twelve volumes, three of which were atlases. The results of the Sino-Swedish Expedition were published under the title of Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. This publication went through 49 editions.
This documentation was splendidly produced, which made the price so high that only a few libraries and institutes were able to purchase it. The immense printing costs had to be borne for the most part by Hedin himself, as was also true for the cost of the expeditions. He used the fees and royalties which he received from his popular science books and for his lectures for the purpose.
Hedin did not himself subject his documentation to scientific evaluation, but rather handed it over to other scientists for the purpose. Since he shared his experiences during his expeditions as popular science and incorporated them in a large number of lectures, travelogues, books for young people and adventure books, he became known to the general public. He soon became famous as one of the most well-recognized personalities of his time.
D. Henze wrote the following about an exhibition at the Deutsches Museum entitled Sven Hedin, the last explorer: He was a pioneer and pathfinder in the transitional period to a century of specialized research. No other single person illuminated and represented unknown territories more extensively than he. His maps alone are a unique creation. And the artist did not take second place to the savant, who deep in the night rapidly and apparently without effort rapidly created awe inspiring works. The discipline of geography, at least in Germany, has so far only concerned itself with his popularized reports. The consistent inclusion of the enormous, still unmined treasures in his scientific work are yet to be incorporated in the regional geography of Asia.
Current Hedin research
A scientific assessment of Hedin's character and his relationship to National Socialism was undertaken in the late 1990s and early 2000s at Bonn University by Professor Hans Böhm, Dipl.-Geogr. Astrid Mehmel and Christoph Sieker M.A. as part of the DFG Project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie (Sven Hedin and German Geography).
Literature
Primary
Scientific documentation
Sven Hedin: Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97. Supplementary volume 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen. Gotha 1900.
Sven Hedin: Scientific results of a journey in Central-Asia. 10 text and 2 map volumes. Stockholm 1904–1907. Volume 4
Sven Hedin: Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, Volume 1 1909 VOL. II
Sven Hedin: Southern Tibet. 11 text and 3 map volumes. Stockholm 1917–1922. VOL. VIII
Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. Over 50 volumes to date, contains primary and secondary literature. Stockholm 1937 ff.
Sven Hedin: Central Asia atlas. Maps, Statens etnografiska museum. Stockholm 1966. (appeared in the series Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under the leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition; Ausgabe 47. 1. Geography; 1)
Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa, Volume 1
THROUGH ASIA
Through Asia, Volume 1
German editions
a) Biography
Verwehte Spuren. Orientfahrten des Reise-Bengt und anderer Reisenden im 17. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1923.
b) Popular works
Durch Asiens Wüsten. Drei Jahre auf neuen Wegen in Pamir, Lop-nor, Tibet und China, 2 vol., Leipzig 1899; neue Ausgabe Wiesbaden 1981.
Im Herzen von Asien. Zehntausend Kilometer auf unbekannten Pfaden, 2 vol., Leipzig 1903.
Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1904; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Transhimalaja. Entdeckungen und Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1909–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1985.
Zu Land nach Indien durch Persien. Seistan und Bclutschistan, 2 vol., Leipzig 1910.
Von Pol zu Pol, 3 vol., Leipzig 1911–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Bagdad – Babylon – Ninive, Leipzig 1918
Jerusalem, Leipzig 1918.
General Prschewalskij in Innerasien, Leipzig 1922.
Meine erste Reise, Leipzig 1922.
An der Schwelle Innerasiens, Leipzig 1923.
Mount Everest, Leipzig 1923.
Persien und Mesopotamien, zwei asiatische Probleme, Leipzig 1923.
Von Peking nach Moskau, Leipzig 1924.
Gran Canon. Mein Besuch im amerikanischen Wunderland, Leipzig 1926.
Auf großer Fahrt. Meine Expedition mit Schweden, Deutschen und Chinesen durch die Wüste Gobi 1927– 1928, Leipzig 1929.
Rätsel der Gobi. Die Fortsetzung der Großen Fahrt durch Innerasien in den Jahren 1928–1930, Leipzig 1931.
Jehol, die Kaiserstadt, Leipzig 1932.
Die Flucht des Großen Pferdes, Leipzig 1935.
Die Seidenstraße, Leipzig 1936.
Der wandernde See, Leipzig 1937.
Im Verbotenen Land, Leipzig 1937
c) Political works
Ein Warnungsruf, Leipzig 1912.
Ein Volk in Waffen, Leipzig 1915.
Nach Osten!, Leipzig 1916.
Deutschland und der Weltfriede, Leipzig 1937 (unlike its translations, the original German edition of this title was printed but never delivered; only five copies were bound, one of which is in the possession of the F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden).
Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente, Leipzig 1942
d) Autobiographical works
Mein Leben als Entdecker, Leipzig 1926.
Eroberungszüge in Tibet, Leipzig 1940.
Ohne Auftrag in Berlin, Buenos Aires 1949; Tübingen-Stuttgart 1950.
Große Männer, denen ich begegnete, 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 1951.
Meine Hunde in Asien, Wiesbaden 1953.
Mein Leben als Zeichner, published by Gösta Montell in commemoration of Hedin's 100th birthday, Wiesbaden 1965.
e) Fiction
Tsangpo Lamas Wallfahrt, 2 vol., Leipzig 1921–1923.
Most German publications on Hedin were translated by F.A. Brockhaus Verlag from Swedish into German. To this extent Swedish editions are the original text. Often after the first edition appeared, F.A. Brockhaus Verlag published abridged versions with the same title. Hedin had not only an important business relationship with the publisher Albert Brockhaus, but also a close friendship. Their correspondence can be found in the Riksarkivet in Stockholm. There is a publication on this subject:
Sven Hedin, Albert Brockhaus: Sven Hedin und Albert Brockhaus. Eine Freundschaft in Briefen zwischen Autor und Verleger. F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1942.
Bibliography
Willy Hess: Die Werke Sven Hedins. Versuch eines vollständigen Verzeichnisses. Sven Hedin – Leben und Briefe, Vol. I. Stockholm 1962. likewise.: First Supplement. Stockholm 1965
Manfred Kleiner: Sven Anders Hedin 1865–1952 – eine Bibliografie der Sekundärliteratur. Self-published Manfred Kleinert, Princeton 2001.
Biographies
Detlef Brennecke: Sven Hedin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1986, 1991.
Johannes Paul: Abenteuerliche Lebensreise – Sieben biografische Essays. including: Sven Hedin. Der letzte Entdeckungsreisende. Wilhelm Köhler Verlag, Minden 1954, pp. 317–378.
Alma Hedin: Mein Bruder Sven. Nach Briefen und Erinnerungen. Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1925.
Eric Wennerholm: Sven Hedin 1865–1952. F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden 1978.
Axel Odelberg: Äventyr på Riktigt Berättelsen om Upptäckaren Sven Hedin. Norstedts, Stockholm 2008 (new biography in Swedish, 600 pages).
Hedin and National Socialism
Mehmel, Astrid: Sven Hedin und nationalsozialistische Expansionspolitik. In: Geopolitik. Grenzgänge im Zeitgeist Bd. 1 .1 1890 bis 1945 ed. by Irene Diekmann, Peter Krüger und Julius H. Schoeps, Potsdam 2000, pp. 189–238.
Danielsson, S.K.: The Intellectual Unmasked: Sven Hedin's Political Life from Pan-Germanism to National Socialism. Dissertation, Minnesota, 2005.
References
Further reading
Tommy Lundmark (2014) Sven Hedin institutet. En rasbiologisk upptäcksresa i Tredje riket. ) (Swedish)
External links
Scanned works
Excellent bibliography, listing publications and further literature
International Dunhuang Project Newsletter Issue No. 21, article on Sven Hedin, available also as PDF
British Indian intelligence on Sven Hedin. National Archives of India (1928)
1865 births
1952 deaths
Scientists from Stockholm
Explorers of Asia
Explorers of Central Asia
Explorers of Tibet
Geopoliticians
History of Tibet
Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
Members of the Swedish Academy
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences
Swedish explorers
Swedish geographers
Swedish topographers
Swedish nobility
Swedish people of Jewish descent
Swedish Christians
Swedish sinologists
Stockholm University alumni
Uppsala University alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni
Recipients of the Cullum Geographical Medal
Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire
Commanders First Class of the Order of the Polar Star
Knights of the Order of Vasa
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Swedish monarchists
Explorers of Iran
Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin
Victoria Medal recipients
Explorers of India
| false |
[
"Moseley Forum is a neighbourhood forum of local Moseley residents who represent a geographic area of Birmingham, England. The city has a number of neighbourhood forums, bodies recognised by the City Council, which allow local residents (non-politicians) to help shape local policies and local services.\n\nExternal links\nmoseleyforum.org.uk\n\nCommunity organisations in Birmingham, West Midlands\nMoseley",
"National Police Bureau () is an institution under Ministry of Interior, Pakistan. The bureau acts as think tank for government in help shape policies for law enforcement agencies and recommending police reforms for the ministry.\n\nThe Bureau was established in 1977 as Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) until being renamed in 2004. It is headed by a Director General reporting to the Minister of Interior.\n\nSee also\n Ministry of Interior, Pakistan\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n Website\n\nPakistan federal departments and agencies\nGovernment agencies established in 1977\n1977 establishments in Pakistan"
] |
[
"Sven Hedin",
"Political views",
"What was his main political view?",
"Hedin was a monarchist.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland.",
"Did he have any stance on political strong holds?",
"He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire.",
"Did he help shape any policies?",
"He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship HSwMS Sverige, which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance."
] |
C_7909b0619f154bdab580c2e708ce492f_1
|
did he receive any criticism?
| 5 |
Did Hedin receive any criticism?
|
Sven Hedin
|
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship HSwMS Sverige, which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government. He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars. He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts. CANNOTANSWER
|
The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government.
|
Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, (19 February 1865 – 26 November 1952) was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan. The posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life's work.
Overview
At 15 years of age, Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route. From that moment on, young Sven aspired to become an explorer. His studies under the German geographer and China expert, Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, awakened a love of Germany in Hedin and strengthened his resolve to undertake expeditions to Central Asia to explore the last uncharted areas of Asia. After obtaining a doctorate, learning several languages and dialects, and undertaking two trips through Persia, he ignored the advice of Ferdinand von Richthofen to continue his geographic studies to acquaint himself with geographical research methodology; the result was that Hedin had to leave the evaluation of his expedition results later to other scientists.
Between 1894 and 1908, in three daring expeditions through the mountains and deserts of Central Asia, he mapped and researched parts of Chinese Turkestan (officially Xinjiang) and Tibet which had been unexplored by Europeans until then. Upon his return to Stockholm in 1909 he was received as triumphantly as Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. In 1902, he became the last Swede (to date) to be raised to the untitled nobility and was considered one of Sweden's most important personalities. As a member of two scientific academies, he had a voice in the selection of Nobel Prize winners for both science and literature. Hedin never married and had no children, rendering his family line now extinct.
Hedin's expedition notes laid the foundations for a precise mapping of Central Asia. He was one of the first European scientific explorers to employ indigenous scientists and research assistants on his expeditions. Although primarily an explorer, he was also the first to unearth the ruins of ancient Buddhist cities in Chinese Central Asia. However, as his main interest in archaeology was finding ancient cities, he had little interest in gathering data thorough scientific excavations. Of small stature, with a bookish, bespectacled appearance, Hedin nevertheless proved himself a determined explorer, surviving several close brushes with death from hostile forces and the elements over his long career. His scientific documentation and popular travelogues, illustrated with his own photographs, watercolor paintings and drawings, his adventure stories for young readers and his lecture tours abroad made him world-famous.
As a renowned expert on Turkestan and Tibet, he was able to obtain unrestricted access to European and Asian monarchs and politicians as well as to their geographical societies and scholarly associations. They all sought to purchase his exclusive knowledge about the power vacuum in Central Asia with gold medals, diamond-encrusted grand crosses, honorary doctorates and splendid receptions, as well as with logistic and financial support for his expeditions. Hedin, in addition to Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sir Francis Younghusband, and Sir Aurel Stein, was an active player in the British-Russian struggle for influence in Central Asia, known as the Great Game. Their travels were supported because they filled in the "white spaces" in contemporary maps, providing valuable information.
Hedin was honored in ceremonies in:
1890 by King Oscar II of Sweden
1890 by Shah Nāser ad-Dīn Schah
1896, 1909 by Czar Nicholas II of Russia
from 1898 frequently by Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary
1902 by the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon
1903, 1914, 1917, 1926, 1936 by Kaiser Wilhelm II
1906 by the Viceroy of India Lord Minto
1907, 1926, 1933 by the 9th Panchen Lama Thubten Choekyi Nyima
1908 by Emperor Mutsuhito
1910 by Pope Pius X
1910 by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
1915 and subsequently by Hindenburg
1929 and 1935 by Chiang Kai-shek
1935, 1939, 1940 (twice) by Adolf Hitler.
Hedin was, and remained, a figure of the 19th century who clung to its visions and methods also in the 20th century. This prevented him from discerning the fundamental social and political upheavals of the 20th century and aligning his thinking and actions accordingly.
Concerned about the security of Scandinavia, he favored the construction of the battleship Sverige. In World War I he specifically allied himself in his publications with the German monarchy and its conduct of the war. Because of this political involvement, his scientific reputation was damaged among Germany's wartime enemies, along with his memberships in their geographical societies and learned associations, as well as any support for his planned expeditions.
After a less-than-successful lecture tour in 1923 through North America and Japan, he traveled on to Beijing to carry out an expedition to Chinese Turkestan (modern Xinjiang), but the region's unstable political situation thwarted this intention. He instead traveled through Mongolia by car and through Siberia aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway.
With financial support from the governments of Sweden and Germany, he led, between 1927 and 1935, an international and interdisciplinary Sino-Swedish Expedition to carry out scientific investigations in Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, with the participation of 37 scientists from six countries. Despite Chinese counter-demonstrations and after months of negotiations in China, was he able to make the expedition also a Chinese one by obtaining Chinese research commissions and the participation of Chinese scientists. He also concluded a contract which guaranteed freedom of travel for this expedition which, because of its arms, 300 camels, and activities in a war theater, resembled an invading army. However, the financing remained Hedin's private responsibility.
Because of failing health, the civil war in Chinese Turkestan, and a long period of captivity, Hedin, by then 70 years of age, had a difficult time after the currency depreciation of the Great Depression raising the money required for the expedition, the logistics for assuring the supplying of the expedition in an active war zone, and obtaining access for the expedition's participants to a research area intensely contested by local warlords. Nevertheless, the expedition was a scientific success. The archaeological artifacts which had been sent to Sweden were scientifically assessed for three years, after which they were returned to China under the terms of the contract.
Starting in 1937, the scientific material assembled during the expedition was published in over 50 volumes by Hedin and other expedition participants, thereby making it available for worldwide research on eastern Asia. When he ran out of money to pay printing costs, he pawned his extensive and valuable library, which filled several rooms, making possible the publication of additional volumes.
In 1935, Hedin made his exclusive knowledge about Central Asia available, not only to the Swedish government, but also to foreign governments such as China and Germany, in lectures and personal discussions with political representatives of Chiang Kai-shek and Adolf Hitler.
Although he was not a National Socialist, Hedin's hope that Nazi Germany would protect Scandinavia from invasion by the Soviet Union, brought him in dangerous proximity to representatives of National Socialism, who exploited him as an author. This destroyed his reputation and put him into social and scientific isolation. However, in correspondence and personal conversations with leading Nazis, his successful intercessions achieved the pardoning of ten people condemned to death and the release or survival of Jews who had been deported to Nazi concentration camps.
At the end of the war, U.S. troops deliberately confiscated documents relating to Hedin's planned Central Asia Atlas. The U.S. Army Map Service later solicited Hedin's assistance and financed the printing and publication of his life's work, the Central Asia Atlas. Whoever compares this atlas with Adolf Stielers Hand Atlas of 1891 can appreciate what Hedin accomplished between 1893 and 1935.
Although Hedin's research was taboo in Germany and Sweden because of his conduct relating to Nazi Germany, and stagnated for decades in Germany, the scientific documentation of his expeditions was translated into Chinese by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and incorporated into Chinese research. Following recommendations made by Hedin to the Chinese government in 1935, the routes he selected were used to construct streets and train tracks, as well as dams and canals to irrigate new farms being established in the Tarim and Yanji basins in Xinjiang and the deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold discovered during the Sino-Swedish Expedition were opened up for mining. Among the discoveries of this expedition should also be counted the many Asian plants and animals unheard of until that date, as well as fossil remains of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Many were named after Hedin, the species-level scientific classification being hedini. But one discovery remained unknown to Chinese researchers until the turn of the millennium: in the Lop Nur desert, Hedin discovered in 1933 and 1934 ruins of signal towers which prove that the Great Wall of China once extended as far west as Xinjiang.
From 1931 until his death in 1952, Hedin lived in Stockholm in a modern high-rise in a preferred location, the address being Norr Mälarstrand 66. He lived with his siblings in the upper three stories and from the balcony he had a wide view over Riddarfjärden Bay and Lake Mälaren to the island of Långholmen. In the entryway to the stairwell is to be found a decorative stucco relief map of Hedin's research area in Central Asia and a relief of the Lama temple, a copy of which he had brought to Chicago for the 1933 World's Fair.
On 29 October 1952, Hedin's will granted the rights to his books and his extensive personal effects to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Sven Hedin Foundation established soon thereafter holds all the rights of ownership.
Hedin died at Stockholm in 1952. The memorial service was attended by representatives of the Swedish royal household, the Swedish government, the Swedish Academy, and the diplomatic service. He is buried in the cemetery of Adolf Fredrik church in Stockholm.
Biography
Childhood influences
Sven Hedin was born in Stockholm, the son of Ludwig Hedin, Chief Architect of Stockholm.
When he was 15 years old Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Swedish Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route.
He describes this experience in his book My Life as an Explorer as follows:
On 24 April 1880, the steamer Vega sailed into Stockholms ström. The entire city was illuminated. The buildings around the harbor glowed in the light of innumerable lamps and torches. Gas flames depicted the constellation of Vega on the castle. Amidst this sea of light the famous ship glided into the harbor. I was standing on the Södermalm heights with my parents and siblings, from which we had a superb view. I was gripped by great nervous tension. I will remember this day until I die, as it was decisive for my future. Thunderous jubilation resounded from quays, streets, windows and rooftops. "That is how I want to return home some day," I thought to myself.
First trip to Iran (Persia)
In May 1885, Hedin graduated from Beskowska secondary school in Stockholm. He then accepted an offer to accompany the student Erhard Sandgren as his private tutor to Baku, where Sandgren's father was working as an engineer in the oil fields of Robert Nobel. Afterward he attended a course in topography for general staff officers for one month in summer 1885 and took a few weeks of instruction in portrait drawing; this comprised his entire training in those areas.
On 15 August 1885, he traveled to Baku with Erhard Sandgren and instructed him there for seven months, and he himself began to learn the Latin, French, German, Persian, Russian, English and Tatar languages. He later learned several Persian dialects as well as Turkish, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tibetan and some Chinese.
On 6 April 1886, Hedin left Baku for Iran (then called Persia), traveling by paddle steamer over the Caspian Sea, riding through the Alborz Range to Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz and the harbor city of Bushehr. From there he took a ship up the Tigris River to Baghdad (then in Ottoman Empire), returning to Tehran via Kermanshah, and then travelling through the Caucasus and over the Black Sea to Constantinople. Hedin then returned to Sweden, arriving on 18 September 1886.
In 1887, Hedin published a book about these travels entitled Through Persia, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.
Studies
From 1886 to 1888, Hedin studied under the geologist Waldemar Brøgger in Stockholm and Uppsala the subjects of geology, mineralogy, zoology and Latin. In December 1888, he became a Candidate in Philosophy. From October 1889 to March 1890 he studied in Berlin under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen.
Second trip to Iran
On 12 May 1890, he accompanied as interpreter and vice-consul a Swedish legation to Iran which was to present the Shah of Iran with the insignia of the Order of the Seraphim. As part of the Swedish legation, he was at an audience of the shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in Tehran. He spoke with him and later accompanied him to the Elburz Mountain Range. On 11 July 1890, he and three others climbed Mount Damavand where he collected primary material for his dissertation. Starting in September he traveled on the Silk Road via cities Mashhad, Ashgabat, Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Kashgar to the western outskirts of the Taklamakan Desert. On the trip home, he visited the grave of the Russian Asian scholar, Nikolai Przhevalsky in Karakol on the shore of Lake Issyk Kul. On 29 March 1891, he was back in Stockholm. He published the books King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890 and Through Chorasan and Turkestan about this journey.
Doctorate and career path
On 27 April 1892, Hedin traveled to Berlin to continue his studies under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen. Beginning of July he went to University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, attending lectures by Alfred Kirchhoff. Yet in the same month, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a 28-page dissertation entitled Personal Observations of Damavand. This dissertation is a summary of one part of his book, King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890. Eric Wennerholm remarked on the subject: I can only come to the conclusion that Sven [Hedin] received his doctorate when he was 27 years old after studying for a grand total of only eight months and collecting primary material for one-and-a-half days on the snow-clad peak of Mount Damavand.
Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen not only encouraged Hedin to absolve cursory studies, but also to become thoroughly acquainted with all branches of geographic science and the methodologies of the salient research work, so that he could later work as an explorer. Hedin abstained from doing this with an explanation he supplied in old age: I was not up to this challenge. I had gotten out onto the wild routes of Asia too early, I had perceived too much of the splendor and magnificence of the Orient, the silence of the deserts and the loneliness of long journeys. I could not get used to the idea of spending a long period of time back in school.
Hedin had therewith decided to become an explorer. He was attracted to the idea of traveling to the last mysterious portions of Asia and filling in the gaps by mapping an area completely unknown in Europe. As an explorer, Hedin became important for the Asian and European powers, who courted him, invited him to give numerous lectures, and hoped to obtain from him in return topographic, economic and strategic information about inner Asia, which they considered part of their sphere of influence. As the era of discovery came to a close around 1920, Hedin contented himself with organizing the Sino-Swedish Expedition for qualified scientific explorers.
First expedition
Between 1893 and 1897, Hedin investigated the Pamir Mountains, travelling through the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang region, across the Taklamakan Desert, Lake Kara-Koshun and Lake Bosten, proceeding to study northern Tibet. He covered on this journey and mapped of them on 552 sheets. Approximately led through previously uncharted areas.
He started out on this expedition on 16 October 1893, from Stockholm, traveling via Saint Petersburg and Tashkent to the Pamir Mountains. Several attempts to climb the high Muztagata—called the Father of the Glaciers—in the Pamir Mountains were unsuccessful. He remained in Kashgar until April 1895 and then left on 10 April with three local escorts from the village of Merket to cross the Taklamakan Desert via Tusluk to the Khotan River. Since their water supply was insufficient, seven camels died of thirst, as did two of his escorts (according to Hedin's dramatized and probably inaccurate account). Bruno Baumann traveled on this route in April 2000 with a camel caravan and ascertained that at least one of the escorts who, according to Hedin, had died of thirst had survived, and that it is impossible for a camel caravan traveling in springtime on this route to carry enough drinking water for both camels and travelers.
According to other sources, Hedin had neglected to completely fill the drinking water containers for his caravan at the beginning of the expedition and set out for the desert with only half as much water as could actually be carried. When he noticed the mistake, it was too late to return. Obsessed by his urge to carry out his research, Hedin deserted the caravan and proceeded alone on horseback with his servant. When that escort also collapsed from thirst, Hedin left him behind as well, but managed to reach a water source at the last desperate moment. He did, however, return to his servant with water and rescued him. Nevertheless, his ruthless behavior earned him massive criticism.
In January 1896, after a stopover in Kashgar, Hedin visited the 1,500-year-old abandoned cities of Dandan Oilik and Kara Dung, which are located northeast of Khotan in the Taklamakan Desert. At the beginning of March, he discovered Lake Bosten, one of the largest inland bodies of water in Central Asia. He reported that this lake is supplied by a single mighty feeder stream, the Kaidu River. He mapped Lake Kara-Koshun and returned on 27 May to Khotan. On 29 June, he started out from there with his caravan across northern Tibet and China to Beijing, where he arrived on 2 March 1897. He returned to Stockholm via Mongolia and Russia.
Second expedition
Another expedition in Central Asia followed in 1899–1902 through the Tarim Basin, Tibet and Kashmir to Calcutta. Hedin navigated the Yarkand, Tarim and Kaidu rivers and found the dry riverbed of the Kum-darja as well as the dried out lake bed of Lop Nur. Near Lop Nur, he discovered the ruins of the former walled royal city and later Chinese garrison town of Loulan, containing the brick building of the Chinese military commander, a stupa, and 19 dwellings built of poplar wood. He also found a wooden wheel from a horse-drawn cart (called an arabas) as well as several hundred documents written on wood, paper and silk in the Kharosthi script. These provided information about the history of the city of Loulan, which had once been located on the shores of Lop Nur but had been abandoned around the year 330 CE because the lake had dried out, depriving the inhabitants of drinking water.
During his travels in 1900 and 1901 he attempted in vain to reach the city of Lhasa, which was forbidden to Europeans. He continued to Leh, in Ladakh district, India. From Leh, Hedin's route took him to Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares to Calcutta, meeting there with George Nathaniel Curzon, England's then Viceroy to India.
This expedition resulted in 1,149 pages of maps, on which Hedin depicted newly discovered lands. He was the first to describe yardang formations in the Lop Desert.
Third expedition
Between 1905 and 1908, Hedin investigated the Central Iranian desert basins, the western highlands of Tibet and the Transhimalaya, which for a time was afterward called the Hedin Range. He visited the 9th Panchen Lama in the cloistered city of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse. Hedin was the first European to reach the Kailash region, including the sacred Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash, the midpoint of the earth according to Buddhist and Hindu mythology. The most important goal of the expedition was the search for the sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra Rivers, both of which Hedin found. From India, he returned via Japan and Russia to Stockholm.
He returned from this expedition with a collection of geological samples which are kept and studied in the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology of Munich University. These sedimentary rocks—such as breccia, conglomerate, limestone, and slate, as well as volcanic rock and granite—highlight the geological diversity of the regions visited by Hedin during this expedition.
Mongolia
In 1923, Hedin traveled to Beijing via the USA—where he visited the Grand Canyon—and Japan. Because of political and social unrest in China, he had to abandon an expedition to Xinjiang. Instead, he traveled with Frans August Larson (called the "Duke of Mongolia") in November and December in a Dodge automobile from Peking through Mongolia via Ulaanbaatar to Ulan-Ude, Russia and from there on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow.
Fourth expedition
Between 1927 and 1935, Hedin led an international Sino-Swedish Expedition which investigated the meteorological, topographic and prehistoric situation in Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Xinjiang.
Hedin described it as a peripatetic university in which the participating scientists worked almost independently, while he—like a local manager—negotiated with local authorities, made decisions, organized whatever was necessary, raised funds and recorded the route followed. He gave archaeologists, astronomers, botanists, geographers, geologists, meteorologists and zoologists from Sweden, Germany and China an opportunity to participate in the expedition and carry out research in their areas of specialty.
Hedin met Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing, who thereupon became a patron of the expedition. The Sino-Swedish Expedition was honored with a Chinese postage stamp series which had a print run of 25,000. The four stamps show camels at a camp with the expedition flag and bear the Chinese text, "Postal Service of the Prosperous Middle Kingdom" and in Latin underneath, "Scientific Expedition to the Northwestern Province of China 1927–1933". A painting in the Beijing Palace Museum entitled Nomads in the Desert served as model for the series. Of the 25,000 sets, 4,000 were sold across the counter and 21,500 came into the possession of the expedition. Hedin used them to finance the expedition, selling them for a price of five dollars per set. The stamps were unwelcome at the time due to the high price Hedin was selling them at, but years later became valuable treasures among collectors.
The first part of the expedition, from 1927 to 1932, led from Beijing via Baotou to Mongolia, over the Gobi Desert, through Xinjiang to Ürümqi, and into the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin. The expedition had a wealth of scientific results which are being published up to the present time. For example, the discovery of specific deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold reserves was of great economic relevance for China. In recognition of his achievements, the Berlin Geographical Society presented him with the Ferdinand von Richthofen Medal in 1933; the same honor was also awarded to Erich von Drygalski for his Gauss Expedition to the Antarctic; and to Alfred Philippson for his research on the Aegean Region.
From the end of 1933 to 1934, Hedin led—on behalf of the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing—a Chinese expedition to investigate irrigation measures and draw up plans and maps for the construction of two roads suitable for automobiles along the Silk Road from Beijing to Xinjiang. Following his plans, major irrigation facilities were constructed, settlements erected, and roads built on the Silk Road from Beijing to Kashgar, which made it possible to completely bypass the rough terrain of Tarim Basin.
One aspect of the geography of central Asia which intensively occupied Hedin for decades was what he called the "wandering lake" Lop Nur. In May 1934, he began a river expedition to this lake. For two months he navigated the Kaidu River and the Kum-Darja to Lop Nur, which had been filled with water since 1921. After the lake dried out in 1971 as a consequence of irrigation activities, the above-mentioned transportation link enabled the People's Republic of China to construct a nuclear weapon test site at Lop Nur.
His caravan of truck lorries was hijacked by the Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying who was retreating from northern Xinjiang along with his Kuomintang 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) from the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. While Hedin was detained by Ma Zhongying, he met General Ma Hushan, and Kemal Kaya Effendi.
Ma Zhongying's adjutant claimed to Hedin that Ma Zhongying had the entire region of Tian-shan-nan-lu (southern Xinjiang) under his control and Sven could pass through safely without any trouble. Hedin did not believe his assertions. Some of Ma Zhongying's Tungan (Chinese speaking Muslim) troops attacked Hedin's expedition by shooting at their vehicles.
For the return trip, Hedin selected the southern Silk Road route via Hotan to Xi'an, where the expedition arrived on 7 February 1935. He continued on to Beijing to meet with President Lin Sen and to Nanjing to Chiang Kai-shek. He celebrated his 70th birthday on 19 February 1935 in the presence of 250 members of the Kuomintang government, to whom he reported interesting facts about the Sino-Swedish Expedition. On this day, he was awarded the Brilliant Jade Order, Second Class.
At the end of the expedition, Hedin was in a difficult financial situation. He had considerable debts at the German-Asian Bank in Beijing, which he repaid with the royalties and fees received for his books and lectures. In the months after his return, he held 111 lectures in 91 German cities as well as 19 lectures in neighboring countries. To accomplish this lecture tour, he covered a stretch as long as the equator, by train and by car—in a time period of five months. He met Adolf Hitler in Berlin before his lecture on 14 April 1935.
Political views
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship , which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government.
He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars.
He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts.
Hedin and the Third Reich
Hedin's conservative and pro-German views eventually translated into sympathy for the Third Reich, and this would draw him into increasing controversy towards the end of his life. Adolf Hitler had been an early admirer of Hedin, who was in turn impressed with Hitler's nationalism. He saw the German leader's rise to power as a revival of German fortunes, and welcomed its challenge against Soviet Communism. He was not an entirely uncritical supporter of the Nazis, however. His own views were shaped by traditionalist, Christian and conservative values, while National Socialism was in part a modern revolutionary-populist movement. Hedin objected to some aspects of National Socialist rule, and occasionally attempted to convince the German government to relent in its anti-religious and anti-Semitic campaigns.
Hedin met Adolf Hitler and other leading National Socialists repeatedly and was in regular correspondence with them. The politely-worded correspondence usually concerned scheduling matters, birthday congratulations, Hedin's planned or completed publications, and requests by Hedin for pardons for people condemned to death, and for mercy, release and permission to leave the country for people interned in prisons or concentration camps. In correspondence with Joseph Goebbels and Hans Dräger, Hedin was able to achieve the printing of the Daily Watchwords year after year.
On 29 October 1942, Hitler read Hedin's book entitled, America in the Battle of the Continents. In the book Hedin promoted the view that President Roosevelt was responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939 and that Hitler had done everything in his power to prevent war. Moreover, Hedin argued that the origins of the Second World War lay not in German belligerence but in the Treaty of Versailles. This book deeply influenced Hitler and reaffirmed his views on the origins of the war and who was responsible for it. In a letter to Hedin the following day Hitler wrote, "I thank you warmly for the attention you have shown me. I have already read the book and welcome in particular that you so explicitly detailed the offers I made to Poland at the beginning of the War". Hitler continued, "without question, the individual guilty of this war, as you correctly state at the end of your book, is exclusively the American President Roosevelt."
The Nazis attempted to achieve a close connection to Hedin by bestowing awards upon him—later scholars have noted that "honors were heaped upon this prominent sympathizer." They asked him to present an address on Sport as a Teacher at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin's Olympic stadium. They made him an honorary member of the German-Swedish Union Berlin () In 1938, they presented him with the City of Berlin's Badge of Honor (). For his 75th birthday on 19 February 1940 they awarded him the Order of the German Eagle; shortly before that date it had been presented to Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. On New Year's Day 1943 they released the Oslo professor of philology and university rector Didrik Arup Seip from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Hedin's request to obtain Hedin's agreement to accept additional honors during the 470th anniversary of Munich University. On 15 January 1943, he received the Gold Medal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Goldmedaille der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). On 16 January 1943 he received an honorary doctorate from the faculty of natural sciences of Munich University. On the same day, the Nazis founded in his absence the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research located at Mittersill Castle, which was supposed to serve the long-term advancement of the scientific legacy of Hedin and Wilhelm Filchner as Asian experts. However, it was instead misused by Heinrich Himmler as an institute of the Research Association for German Genealogical Inheritance (Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V.). On 21 January 1943, he was requested to sign the Golden Book of the city of Munich.
Hedin supported the Nazis in his journalistic activities. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, he did not regret his collaboration with the Nazis because this cooperation had made it possible to rescue numerous Nazi victims from execution, or death in extermination camps.
Senior Jewish German archeologist Werner Scheimberg, sent in the expedition by the Thule Society, "had been one of the companions of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin on his excursions in the East, with archaeological and to some extent esoteric purposes".
Hedin was trying to discover the mythological place of Agartha and reproached the Polish explorer and visiting professor Antoni Ossendowski for having been gone where the Swedish explorer wasn't able to come, and thus was personally invited by Adolf Hitler in Berlin and honoured by the Führer during his 75th birthday feast.
Criticism of National Socialism
Johannes Paul wrote in 1954 about Hedin:
Much of what happened in the early days of Nazi rule had his approval. However, he did not hesitate to criticize whenever he considered this to be necessary, particularly in cases of Jewish persecution, conflict with the churches and bars to freedom of science.
In 1937 Hedin refused to publish his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden (Germany and World Peace) in Germany because the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda insisted on the deletion of Nazi-critical passages. In a letter Hedin wrote to State Secretary Walther Funk dated 16 April 1937, it becomes clear what his criticism of National Socialism was in this time before the establishment of extermination camps:
When we first discussed my plan to write a book, I stated that I only wanted to write objectively, scientifically, possibly critically, according to my conscience, and you considered that to be completely acceptable and natural. Now I emphasized in a very friendly and mild form that the removal of distinguished Jewish professors who have performed great services for mankind is detrimental to Germany and that this has given rise to many agitators against Germany abroad. So I took this position only in the interest of Germany.
My worry that the education of German youth, which I otherwise praise and admire everywhere, is deficient in questions of religion and the hereafter comes from my love and sympathy for the German nation, and as a Christian I consider it my duty to state this openly, and, to be sure, in the firm conviction that Luther’s nation, which is religious through and through, will understand me.
So far I have never gone against my conscience and will not do it now either. Therefore, no deletions will be made.
Hedin later published this book in Sweden.
Efforts on behalf of deported Jews
After he refused to remove his criticism of National Socialism from his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden, the Nazis confiscated the passports of Hedin's Jewish friend Alfred Philippson and his family in 1938 to prevent their intended departure to American exile and retain them in Germany as a bargaining chip when dealing with Hedin. The consequence was that Hedin expressed himself more favorably about Nazi Germany in his book Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland, subjugated himself against his conscience to the censorship of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and published the book in Germany.
On 8 June 1942, the Nazis increased the pressure on Hedin by deporting Alfred Philippson and his family to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. By doing so, they accomplished their goal of forcing Hedin against his conscience to write his book Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and other government agencies and to publish it in Germany in 1942. In return, the Nazis classified Alfred Philippson as "A-prominent" and granted his family privileges which enabled them to survive.
For a long time Hedin was in correspondence with Alfred Philippson and regularly sent food parcels to him in Theresienstadt concentration camp. On 29 May 1946, Alfred Philippson wrote to him (translation, abbreviated quotation): My dear Hedin! Now that letters can be sent abroad I have the opportunity to write to you…. We frequently think with deep gratitude of our rescuer, who alone is responsible for our being able to survive the horrible period of three years of incarceration and hunger in Theresienstadt concentration camp, at my age a veritable wonder. You will have learned that we few survivors were finally liberated just a few days before our intended gassing. We, my wife, daughter and I, were then brought on 9–10 July 1945 in a bus of the city of Bonn here to our home town, almost half of which is now destroyed….
Hedin responded on 19 July 1946 (translation, abbreviated quotation): …It was wonderful to find out that our efforts were not in vain. In these difficult years we attempted to rescue over one hundred other unfortunate people who had been deported to Poland, but in most cases without success. We were however able to help a few Norwegians. My home in Stockholm was turned into something like an information and assistance office, and I was excellently supported by Dr. Paul Grassmann, press attaché in the German embassy in Stockholm. He too undertook everything possible to further this humanitarian work. But almost no case was as fortunate as yours, dear friend! And how wonderful, that you are back in Bonn….
The names and fates of the over one hundred deported Jews whom Hedin tried to save have not yet been researched.
Efforts on behalf of deported Norwegians
Hedin supported the cause of the Norwegian author Arnulf Øverland and for the Oslo professor of philology and university director Didrik Arup Seip, who were interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He achieved the release of Didrik Arup Seip, but his efforts to free Arnulf Øverland were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Arnulf Øverland survived the concentration camp.
Efforts on behalf of Norwegian activists
After the third senate of the highest German military court (Reichskriegsgericht) in Berlin condemned to death for alleged espionage the ten Norwegians Sigurd Jakobsen, Gunnar Hellesen, Helge Børseth, Siegmund Brommeland, Peter Andree Hjelmervik, Siegmund Rasmussen, Gunnar Carlsen, Knud Gjerstad, Christian Oftedahl and Frithiof Lund on 24 February 1941, Hedin successfully appealed via Colonel General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst to Adolf Hitler for their reprieve. Their death penalty was converted on 17 June 1941 by Adolf Hitler to ten years forced labor. The Norwegians Carl W. Mueller, Knud Naerum, Peder Fagerland, Ottar Ryan, Tor Gerrard Rydland, Hans Bernhard Risanger and Arne Sørvag who had been condemned to forced labor under the same charge received reduced sentences at Hedin's request. Unfortunately, Hans Bernhard Risanger died in prison just a few days before his release.
Von Falkenhorst was condemned to death, by firing squad, by a British military court on 2 August 1946, because of his responsibility for passing on a Führerbefehl called the Commando Order. Hedin intervened on his behalf, achieving a pardon on 4 December 1946, with the argument that von Falkenhorst had likewise striven to pardon the ten Norwegians condemned to death. Von Falkenhorst's death penalty was commuted by the British military court to 20 years in prison. In the end, Nikolaus von Falkenhorst was released early from the Werl war criminals prison on 13 July 1953.
Awards
Because of his outstanding services, Hedin was raised to the untitled nobility by King Oskar II in 1902, the last time any Swede was to receive a charter of nobility. Oskar II suggested that he prefix the name Hedin with one of the two common predicates of nobility in Sweden, "af" or "von", but Hedin abstained from doing so in his written response to the king. In many noble families in Sweden, it was customary to do without the title of nobility. The coat of arms of Hedin, together with those of some two thousand noble families, is to be found on a wall of the Great Hall in Riddarhuset, the assembly house of Swedish nobility in Stockholm's inner city, Gamla Stan.
In 1905, Hedin was admitted to membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1909 to the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. From 1913 to 1952 he held the sixth of 18 chairs as an elected member of the Swedish Academy. In this position, he had a vote in the selection of Nobel Prize winners.
He was an honorary member of numerous Swedish and foreign scientific societies and institutions which honored him with some 40 gold medals; 27 of these medals can be viewed in Stockholm in a display case in the Royal Coin Cabinet.
He received honorary doctorates from Oxford (1909), Cambridge (1909), Heidelberg (1928), Uppsala (1935), and Munich (1943) universities and from the Handelshochschule Berlin (1931) (all Dr. phil. h.c.), from Breslau University (1915, Dr. jur. h.c.), and from Rostock University (1919, Dr. med. h.c.).
Numerous countries presented him with medals. In Sweden he became a Commander 1st Class of the Royal Order of the North Star (KNO1kl) with a brilliant badge and Knight of the Royal Order of Vasa (RVO). In the United Kingdom he was named Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire by King Edward VII. As a foreigner, he was not authorized to use the associated title of Sir, but he could place the designation KCIE after his family name Hedin. Hedin was also a Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle.
In his honor have been named a glacier, the Sven Hedin Glacier; a lunar crater Hedin; a genus of flowering plants, Hedinia; a species of the flowering plant, Gentiana hedini (now a synonym of Comastoma falcatum ); the beetles Longitarsus hedini and Coleoptera hedini; a butterfly, Fumea hedini Caradja; a spider, Dictyna hedini; a fossil hoofed mammal, Tsaidamotherium hedini; a fossil Therapsid (a "mammal-like reptile") Lystrosaurus hedini; and streets and squares in the cities of various countries (for example, "Hedinsgatan" at Tessinparken in Stockholm).
A permanent exhibition of articles found by Hedin on his expeditions is located in the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum.
In the Adolf Frederick church can be found the Sven Hedin memorial plaque by Liss Eriksson. The plaque was installed in 1959. On it, a globe with Asia to the fore can be seen, crowned with a camel. It bears the Swedish epitaph:
The Sven Hedin Firn in North Greenland was named after him.
Research on Hedin
Source material
A survey of the extensive sources for Hedin research shows that it would be difficult at present to come to a fair assessment of the personality and achievements of Hedin. Most of the source material has not yet been subjected to scientific scrutiny. Even the DFG project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie had to restrict itself to a small selection and a random examination of the source material.
The sources for Hedin research are located in numerous archives (and include primary literature, correspondence, newspaper articles, obituaries and secondary literature).
Hedin's own publications amount to some 30,000 pages.
There are about 2,500 drawings and watercolors, films and many photographs.
To this should be added 25 volumes with travel and expedition notes and 145 volumes of the diaries he regularly maintained between 1930 and 1952, totaling 8,257 pages.
The extensive holdings of the Hedin Foundation (Sven Hedins Stiftelse), which holds Hedin effects in trust, are to be found in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm.
Hedin's correspondence is in the archive of the German Foreign Office in Bonn, in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig, and above all in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm. Most of the correspondence in Hedin's estate is in the National Archives and accessible to researchers and the general public. It includes about 50,000 letters organized alphabetically according to country and sender as well as some 30,000 additional unsorted letters.
The scientific effects as well as a collection of newspaper articles about Hedin organized by year (1895–1952) in 60 bound folios can be found in the Ethnographic Museum.
The finds from Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang are, among other places, in Stockholm in the Ethnographic Museum (some 8,000 individual items), in the Institutes of Geology, Minearology and Paleontology of the Uppsala University, in the depots of the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Munich, and in the National Museum of China, Beijing.
Hedin's documentation
During his expeditions Hedin saw the focus of his work as being in field research. He recorded routes by plotting many thousands of kilometers of his caravan itinerary with the detail of a high resolution topographical map and supplemented them with innumerable altitude measurements and latitude and longitude data. At the same time he combined his field maps with panoramic drawings. He drafted the first precise maps of areas unresearched until that date: the Pamir mountains, the Taklamakan desert, Tibet, the Silk Road and the Himalayas. He was, as far as can be scientifically confirmed, the first European to recognize that the Himalayas were a continuous mountain range.
He systematically studied the lakes of inner Asia, made careful climatological observations over many years, and started extensive collections of rocks, plants, animals and antiquities. Underway he prepared watercolor paintings, sketches, drawings and photographs, which he later published in his works. The photographs and maps with the highest quality printing are to be found in the original Swedish publications.
Hedin prepared a scientific publication for each of his expeditions. The extent of documentation increased dramatically from expedition to expedition. His research report about the first expedition was published in 1900 as Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97 (Supplement 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen), Gotha 1900. The publication about the second expedition, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, increased to six text and two atlas volumes. Southern Tibet, the scientific publication on the third expedition, totalled twelve volumes, three of which were atlases. The results of the Sino-Swedish Expedition were published under the title of Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. This publication went through 49 editions.
This documentation was splendidly produced, which made the price so high that only a few libraries and institutes were able to purchase it. The immense printing costs had to be borne for the most part by Hedin himself, as was also true for the cost of the expeditions. He used the fees and royalties which he received from his popular science books and for his lectures for the purpose.
Hedin did not himself subject his documentation to scientific evaluation, but rather handed it over to other scientists for the purpose. Since he shared his experiences during his expeditions as popular science and incorporated them in a large number of lectures, travelogues, books for young people and adventure books, he became known to the general public. He soon became famous as one of the most well-recognized personalities of his time.
D. Henze wrote the following about an exhibition at the Deutsches Museum entitled Sven Hedin, the last explorer: He was a pioneer and pathfinder in the transitional period to a century of specialized research. No other single person illuminated and represented unknown territories more extensively than he. His maps alone are a unique creation. And the artist did not take second place to the savant, who deep in the night rapidly and apparently without effort rapidly created awe inspiring works. The discipline of geography, at least in Germany, has so far only concerned itself with his popularized reports. The consistent inclusion of the enormous, still unmined treasures in his scientific work are yet to be incorporated in the regional geography of Asia.
Current Hedin research
A scientific assessment of Hedin's character and his relationship to National Socialism was undertaken in the late 1990s and early 2000s at Bonn University by Professor Hans Böhm, Dipl.-Geogr. Astrid Mehmel and Christoph Sieker M.A. as part of the DFG Project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie (Sven Hedin and German Geography).
Literature
Primary
Scientific documentation
Sven Hedin: Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97. Supplementary volume 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen. Gotha 1900.
Sven Hedin: Scientific results of a journey in Central-Asia. 10 text and 2 map volumes. Stockholm 1904–1907. Volume 4
Sven Hedin: Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, Volume 1 1909 VOL. II
Sven Hedin: Southern Tibet. 11 text and 3 map volumes. Stockholm 1917–1922. VOL. VIII
Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. Over 50 volumes to date, contains primary and secondary literature. Stockholm 1937 ff.
Sven Hedin: Central Asia atlas. Maps, Statens etnografiska museum. Stockholm 1966. (appeared in the series Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under the leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition; Ausgabe 47. 1. Geography; 1)
Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa, Volume 1
THROUGH ASIA
Through Asia, Volume 1
German editions
a) Biography
Verwehte Spuren. Orientfahrten des Reise-Bengt und anderer Reisenden im 17. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1923.
b) Popular works
Durch Asiens Wüsten. Drei Jahre auf neuen Wegen in Pamir, Lop-nor, Tibet und China, 2 vol., Leipzig 1899; neue Ausgabe Wiesbaden 1981.
Im Herzen von Asien. Zehntausend Kilometer auf unbekannten Pfaden, 2 vol., Leipzig 1903.
Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1904; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Transhimalaja. Entdeckungen und Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1909–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1985.
Zu Land nach Indien durch Persien. Seistan und Bclutschistan, 2 vol., Leipzig 1910.
Von Pol zu Pol, 3 vol., Leipzig 1911–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Bagdad – Babylon – Ninive, Leipzig 1918
Jerusalem, Leipzig 1918.
General Prschewalskij in Innerasien, Leipzig 1922.
Meine erste Reise, Leipzig 1922.
An der Schwelle Innerasiens, Leipzig 1923.
Mount Everest, Leipzig 1923.
Persien und Mesopotamien, zwei asiatische Probleme, Leipzig 1923.
Von Peking nach Moskau, Leipzig 1924.
Gran Canon. Mein Besuch im amerikanischen Wunderland, Leipzig 1926.
Auf großer Fahrt. Meine Expedition mit Schweden, Deutschen und Chinesen durch die Wüste Gobi 1927– 1928, Leipzig 1929.
Rätsel der Gobi. Die Fortsetzung der Großen Fahrt durch Innerasien in den Jahren 1928–1930, Leipzig 1931.
Jehol, die Kaiserstadt, Leipzig 1932.
Die Flucht des Großen Pferdes, Leipzig 1935.
Die Seidenstraße, Leipzig 1936.
Der wandernde See, Leipzig 1937.
Im Verbotenen Land, Leipzig 1937
c) Political works
Ein Warnungsruf, Leipzig 1912.
Ein Volk in Waffen, Leipzig 1915.
Nach Osten!, Leipzig 1916.
Deutschland und der Weltfriede, Leipzig 1937 (unlike its translations, the original German edition of this title was printed but never delivered; only five copies were bound, one of which is in the possession of the F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden).
Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente, Leipzig 1942
d) Autobiographical works
Mein Leben als Entdecker, Leipzig 1926.
Eroberungszüge in Tibet, Leipzig 1940.
Ohne Auftrag in Berlin, Buenos Aires 1949; Tübingen-Stuttgart 1950.
Große Männer, denen ich begegnete, 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 1951.
Meine Hunde in Asien, Wiesbaden 1953.
Mein Leben als Zeichner, published by Gösta Montell in commemoration of Hedin's 100th birthday, Wiesbaden 1965.
e) Fiction
Tsangpo Lamas Wallfahrt, 2 vol., Leipzig 1921–1923.
Most German publications on Hedin were translated by F.A. Brockhaus Verlag from Swedish into German. To this extent Swedish editions are the original text. Often after the first edition appeared, F.A. Brockhaus Verlag published abridged versions with the same title. Hedin had not only an important business relationship with the publisher Albert Brockhaus, but also a close friendship. Their correspondence can be found in the Riksarkivet in Stockholm. There is a publication on this subject:
Sven Hedin, Albert Brockhaus: Sven Hedin und Albert Brockhaus. Eine Freundschaft in Briefen zwischen Autor und Verleger. F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1942.
Bibliography
Willy Hess: Die Werke Sven Hedins. Versuch eines vollständigen Verzeichnisses. Sven Hedin – Leben und Briefe, Vol. I. Stockholm 1962. likewise.: First Supplement. Stockholm 1965
Manfred Kleiner: Sven Anders Hedin 1865–1952 – eine Bibliografie der Sekundärliteratur. Self-published Manfred Kleinert, Princeton 2001.
Biographies
Detlef Brennecke: Sven Hedin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1986, 1991.
Johannes Paul: Abenteuerliche Lebensreise – Sieben biografische Essays. including: Sven Hedin. Der letzte Entdeckungsreisende. Wilhelm Köhler Verlag, Minden 1954, pp. 317–378.
Alma Hedin: Mein Bruder Sven. Nach Briefen und Erinnerungen. Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1925.
Eric Wennerholm: Sven Hedin 1865–1952. F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden 1978.
Axel Odelberg: Äventyr på Riktigt Berättelsen om Upptäckaren Sven Hedin. Norstedts, Stockholm 2008 (new biography in Swedish, 600 pages).
Hedin and National Socialism
Mehmel, Astrid: Sven Hedin und nationalsozialistische Expansionspolitik. In: Geopolitik. Grenzgänge im Zeitgeist Bd. 1 .1 1890 bis 1945 ed. by Irene Diekmann, Peter Krüger und Julius H. Schoeps, Potsdam 2000, pp. 189–238.
Danielsson, S.K.: The Intellectual Unmasked: Sven Hedin's Political Life from Pan-Germanism to National Socialism. Dissertation, Minnesota, 2005.
References
Further reading
Tommy Lundmark (2014) Sven Hedin institutet. En rasbiologisk upptäcksresa i Tredje riket. ) (Swedish)
External links
Scanned works
Excellent bibliography, listing publications and further literature
International Dunhuang Project Newsletter Issue No. 21, article on Sven Hedin, available also as PDF
British Indian intelligence on Sven Hedin. National Archives of India (1928)
1865 births
1952 deaths
Scientists from Stockholm
Explorers of Asia
Explorers of Central Asia
Explorers of Tibet
Geopoliticians
History of Tibet
Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
Members of the Swedish Academy
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences
Swedish explorers
Swedish geographers
Swedish topographers
Swedish nobility
Swedish people of Jewish descent
Swedish Christians
Swedish sinologists
Stockholm University alumni
Uppsala University alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni
Recipients of the Cullum Geographical Medal
Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire
Commanders First Class of the Order of the Polar Star
Knights of the Order of Vasa
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Swedish monarchists
Explorers of Iran
Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin
Victoria Medal recipients
Explorers of India
| true |
[
"When a traffic stop is made, a warning issued by the officer is a statement that the motorist has committed some offense, but is being spared the actual citation. Officers use their own discretion whether to issue a citation or warning. The motorist may receive the warning either verbally or written, but will not be charged with the offense, will not have to pay a fine, and will not receive any points. Depending on the laws of the jurisdiction, the warning may or may not appear on records visible to officers, which, if it does, could result in another stop within a fixed period of time leading to an actual citation, or in some cases, the motorist may be charged with both offenses.\n\nCriticism of warnings\nOne criticism of warnings is the possibility that officers may offer them to some motorists and not to others based on favoritism, singling them out over factors such as their race, attractive appearance, the vehicle they are driving, the way they are dressed, or their social class. Warnings can be difficult to challenge, which could be a violation of due process of law. They adversely affect a driver's CSA score, and cannot be reversed like a successfully challenged citation.\n\nSee also\n Police caution\n\nReferences\n\nTraffic law\nLaw enforcement",
"In law, a coupon settlement is a resolution between disputing parties in a class action lawsuit, reached either before or after court action begins. In a coupon settlement, class members receive coupons or other promises for products or services instead of a cash award. Coupon settlements are recognised in state and federal courts in the United States.\n\nCriticism\nCoupon settlements have been used as a way for a defendant to forestall major liability by precluding a large number of people from litigating their claims separately to recover reasonable compensation for the damages.\n\nHowever, existing law requires judicial approval of all coupon settlements, and in most cases, class members are given a chance to opt out of class settlement though class members, despite opt-out notices, may be unaware of their right to opt out because they did not receive the notice, did not read it, or did not understand it. \n\nThe Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) addresses some of those concerns. Coupon settlements may be audited by an independent expert before judicial approval to ensure that the settlement will be of value to the class members (28 U.S.C.A. 1712(d)). \n\nIn the United States, federal courts must hold a hearing and make specific findings that the coupon settlement is fair, reasonable, and adequate and that the class members' interests are represented. The following can be taken into consideration during the hearing:\n\n The strength of the class member's case.\n The risk, expense, complexity, and duration of further litigation.\n The risk of maintaining class action status.\n The amount offered to each class member in settlement.\n The form of the settlement (coupons, checks, replacement products, or services).\n The amount offered in total in settlement.\n The extent of the discovery that has been completed.\n The experience of counsel.\n The presence of a governmental participant.\n The reaction of class members to the proposed settlement.\n\nAnother criticism has been that plaintiffs' lawyers involved in coupon settlements receive cash fees in amounts that generally dwarf the award recovered by individual class members.\n\nSee also\n Settlement (disambiguation)\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n ‘Class ActionFairness Act of 2005\n\nCivil law (common law)\nCivil procedure"
] |
[
"Sven Hedin",
"Political views",
"What was his main political view?",
"Hedin was a monarchist.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland.",
"Did he have any stance on political strong holds?",
"He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire.",
"Did he help shape any policies?",
"He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship HSwMS Sverige, which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance.",
"did he receive any criticism?",
"The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government."
] |
C_7909b0619f154bdab580c2e708ce492f_1
|
Did he ever change his view on something?
| 6 |
Did Hedin ever change his view on anything?
|
Sven Hedin
|
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship HSwMS Sverige, which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government. He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars. He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts. CANNOTANSWER
|
He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen.
|
Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, (19 February 1865 – 26 November 1952) was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan. The posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life's work.
Overview
At 15 years of age, Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route. From that moment on, young Sven aspired to become an explorer. His studies under the German geographer and China expert, Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, awakened a love of Germany in Hedin and strengthened his resolve to undertake expeditions to Central Asia to explore the last uncharted areas of Asia. After obtaining a doctorate, learning several languages and dialects, and undertaking two trips through Persia, he ignored the advice of Ferdinand von Richthofen to continue his geographic studies to acquaint himself with geographical research methodology; the result was that Hedin had to leave the evaluation of his expedition results later to other scientists.
Between 1894 and 1908, in three daring expeditions through the mountains and deserts of Central Asia, he mapped and researched parts of Chinese Turkestan (officially Xinjiang) and Tibet which had been unexplored by Europeans until then. Upon his return to Stockholm in 1909 he was received as triumphantly as Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. In 1902, he became the last Swede (to date) to be raised to the untitled nobility and was considered one of Sweden's most important personalities. As a member of two scientific academies, he had a voice in the selection of Nobel Prize winners for both science and literature. Hedin never married and had no children, rendering his family line now extinct.
Hedin's expedition notes laid the foundations for a precise mapping of Central Asia. He was one of the first European scientific explorers to employ indigenous scientists and research assistants on his expeditions. Although primarily an explorer, he was also the first to unearth the ruins of ancient Buddhist cities in Chinese Central Asia. However, as his main interest in archaeology was finding ancient cities, he had little interest in gathering data thorough scientific excavations. Of small stature, with a bookish, bespectacled appearance, Hedin nevertheless proved himself a determined explorer, surviving several close brushes with death from hostile forces and the elements over his long career. His scientific documentation and popular travelogues, illustrated with his own photographs, watercolor paintings and drawings, his adventure stories for young readers and his lecture tours abroad made him world-famous.
As a renowned expert on Turkestan and Tibet, he was able to obtain unrestricted access to European and Asian monarchs and politicians as well as to their geographical societies and scholarly associations. They all sought to purchase his exclusive knowledge about the power vacuum in Central Asia with gold medals, diamond-encrusted grand crosses, honorary doctorates and splendid receptions, as well as with logistic and financial support for his expeditions. Hedin, in addition to Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sir Francis Younghusband, and Sir Aurel Stein, was an active player in the British-Russian struggle for influence in Central Asia, known as the Great Game. Their travels were supported because they filled in the "white spaces" in contemporary maps, providing valuable information.
Hedin was honored in ceremonies in:
1890 by King Oscar II of Sweden
1890 by Shah Nāser ad-Dīn Schah
1896, 1909 by Czar Nicholas II of Russia
from 1898 frequently by Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary
1902 by the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon
1903, 1914, 1917, 1926, 1936 by Kaiser Wilhelm II
1906 by the Viceroy of India Lord Minto
1907, 1926, 1933 by the 9th Panchen Lama Thubten Choekyi Nyima
1908 by Emperor Mutsuhito
1910 by Pope Pius X
1910 by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
1915 and subsequently by Hindenburg
1929 and 1935 by Chiang Kai-shek
1935, 1939, 1940 (twice) by Adolf Hitler.
Hedin was, and remained, a figure of the 19th century who clung to its visions and methods also in the 20th century. This prevented him from discerning the fundamental social and political upheavals of the 20th century and aligning his thinking and actions accordingly.
Concerned about the security of Scandinavia, he favored the construction of the battleship Sverige. In World War I he specifically allied himself in his publications with the German monarchy and its conduct of the war. Because of this political involvement, his scientific reputation was damaged among Germany's wartime enemies, along with his memberships in their geographical societies and learned associations, as well as any support for his planned expeditions.
After a less-than-successful lecture tour in 1923 through North America and Japan, he traveled on to Beijing to carry out an expedition to Chinese Turkestan (modern Xinjiang), but the region's unstable political situation thwarted this intention. He instead traveled through Mongolia by car and through Siberia aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway.
With financial support from the governments of Sweden and Germany, he led, between 1927 and 1935, an international and interdisciplinary Sino-Swedish Expedition to carry out scientific investigations in Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, with the participation of 37 scientists from six countries. Despite Chinese counter-demonstrations and after months of negotiations in China, was he able to make the expedition also a Chinese one by obtaining Chinese research commissions and the participation of Chinese scientists. He also concluded a contract which guaranteed freedom of travel for this expedition which, because of its arms, 300 camels, and activities in a war theater, resembled an invading army. However, the financing remained Hedin's private responsibility.
Because of failing health, the civil war in Chinese Turkestan, and a long period of captivity, Hedin, by then 70 years of age, had a difficult time after the currency depreciation of the Great Depression raising the money required for the expedition, the logistics for assuring the supplying of the expedition in an active war zone, and obtaining access for the expedition's participants to a research area intensely contested by local warlords. Nevertheless, the expedition was a scientific success. The archaeological artifacts which had been sent to Sweden were scientifically assessed for three years, after which they were returned to China under the terms of the contract.
Starting in 1937, the scientific material assembled during the expedition was published in over 50 volumes by Hedin and other expedition participants, thereby making it available for worldwide research on eastern Asia. When he ran out of money to pay printing costs, he pawned his extensive and valuable library, which filled several rooms, making possible the publication of additional volumes.
In 1935, Hedin made his exclusive knowledge about Central Asia available, not only to the Swedish government, but also to foreign governments such as China and Germany, in lectures and personal discussions with political representatives of Chiang Kai-shek and Adolf Hitler.
Although he was not a National Socialist, Hedin's hope that Nazi Germany would protect Scandinavia from invasion by the Soviet Union, brought him in dangerous proximity to representatives of National Socialism, who exploited him as an author. This destroyed his reputation and put him into social and scientific isolation. However, in correspondence and personal conversations with leading Nazis, his successful intercessions achieved the pardoning of ten people condemned to death and the release or survival of Jews who had been deported to Nazi concentration camps.
At the end of the war, U.S. troops deliberately confiscated documents relating to Hedin's planned Central Asia Atlas. The U.S. Army Map Service later solicited Hedin's assistance and financed the printing and publication of his life's work, the Central Asia Atlas. Whoever compares this atlas with Adolf Stielers Hand Atlas of 1891 can appreciate what Hedin accomplished between 1893 and 1935.
Although Hedin's research was taboo in Germany and Sweden because of his conduct relating to Nazi Germany, and stagnated for decades in Germany, the scientific documentation of his expeditions was translated into Chinese by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and incorporated into Chinese research. Following recommendations made by Hedin to the Chinese government in 1935, the routes he selected were used to construct streets and train tracks, as well as dams and canals to irrigate new farms being established in the Tarim and Yanji basins in Xinjiang and the deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold discovered during the Sino-Swedish Expedition were opened up for mining. Among the discoveries of this expedition should also be counted the many Asian plants and animals unheard of until that date, as well as fossil remains of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Many were named after Hedin, the species-level scientific classification being hedini. But one discovery remained unknown to Chinese researchers until the turn of the millennium: in the Lop Nur desert, Hedin discovered in 1933 and 1934 ruins of signal towers which prove that the Great Wall of China once extended as far west as Xinjiang.
From 1931 until his death in 1952, Hedin lived in Stockholm in a modern high-rise in a preferred location, the address being Norr Mälarstrand 66. He lived with his siblings in the upper three stories and from the balcony he had a wide view over Riddarfjärden Bay and Lake Mälaren to the island of Långholmen. In the entryway to the stairwell is to be found a decorative stucco relief map of Hedin's research area in Central Asia and a relief of the Lama temple, a copy of which he had brought to Chicago for the 1933 World's Fair.
On 29 October 1952, Hedin's will granted the rights to his books and his extensive personal effects to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Sven Hedin Foundation established soon thereafter holds all the rights of ownership.
Hedin died at Stockholm in 1952. The memorial service was attended by representatives of the Swedish royal household, the Swedish government, the Swedish Academy, and the diplomatic service. He is buried in the cemetery of Adolf Fredrik church in Stockholm.
Biography
Childhood influences
Sven Hedin was born in Stockholm, the son of Ludwig Hedin, Chief Architect of Stockholm.
When he was 15 years old Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Swedish Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route.
He describes this experience in his book My Life as an Explorer as follows:
On 24 April 1880, the steamer Vega sailed into Stockholms ström. The entire city was illuminated. The buildings around the harbor glowed in the light of innumerable lamps and torches. Gas flames depicted the constellation of Vega on the castle. Amidst this sea of light the famous ship glided into the harbor. I was standing on the Södermalm heights with my parents and siblings, from which we had a superb view. I was gripped by great nervous tension. I will remember this day until I die, as it was decisive for my future. Thunderous jubilation resounded from quays, streets, windows and rooftops. "That is how I want to return home some day," I thought to myself.
First trip to Iran (Persia)
In May 1885, Hedin graduated from Beskowska secondary school in Stockholm. He then accepted an offer to accompany the student Erhard Sandgren as his private tutor to Baku, where Sandgren's father was working as an engineer in the oil fields of Robert Nobel. Afterward he attended a course in topography for general staff officers for one month in summer 1885 and took a few weeks of instruction in portrait drawing; this comprised his entire training in those areas.
On 15 August 1885, he traveled to Baku with Erhard Sandgren and instructed him there for seven months, and he himself began to learn the Latin, French, German, Persian, Russian, English and Tatar languages. He later learned several Persian dialects as well as Turkish, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tibetan and some Chinese.
On 6 April 1886, Hedin left Baku for Iran (then called Persia), traveling by paddle steamer over the Caspian Sea, riding through the Alborz Range to Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz and the harbor city of Bushehr. From there he took a ship up the Tigris River to Baghdad (then in Ottoman Empire), returning to Tehran via Kermanshah, and then travelling through the Caucasus and over the Black Sea to Constantinople. Hedin then returned to Sweden, arriving on 18 September 1886.
In 1887, Hedin published a book about these travels entitled Through Persia, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.
Studies
From 1886 to 1888, Hedin studied under the geologist Waldemar Brøgger in Stockholm and Uppsala the subjects of geology, mineralogy, zoology and Latin. In December 1888, he became a Candidate in Philosophy. From October 1889 to March 1890 he studied in Berlin under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen.
Second trip to Iran
On 12 May 1890, he accompanied as interpreter and vice-consul a Swedish legation to Iran which was to present the Shah of Iran with the insignia of the Order of the Seraphim. As part of the Swedish legation, he was at an audience of the shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in Tehran. He spoke with him and later accompanied him to the Elburz Mountain Range. On 11 July 1890, he and three others climbed Mount Damavand where he collected primary material for his dissertation. Starting in September he traveled on the Silk Road via cities Mashhad, Ashgabat, Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Kashgar to the western outskirts of the Taklamakan Desert. On the trip home, he visited the grave of the Russian Asian scholar, Nikolai Przhevalsky in Karakol on the shore of Lake Issyk Kul. On 29 March 1891, he was back in Stockholm. He published the books King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890 and Through Chorasan and Turkestan about this journey.
Doctorate and career path
On 27 April 1892, Hedin traveled to Berlin to continue his studies under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen. Beginning of July he went to University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, attending lectures by Alfred Kirchhoff. Yet in the same month, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a 28-page dissertation entitled Personal Observations of Damavand. This dissertation is a summary of one part of his book, King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890. Eric Wennerholm remarked on the subject: I can only come to the conclusion that Sven [Hedin] received his doctorate when he was 27 years old after studying for a grand total of only eight months and collecting primary material for one-and-a-half days on the snow-clad peak of Mount Damavand.
Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen not only encouraged Hedin to absolve cursory studies, but also to become thoroughly acquainted with all branches of geographic science and the methodologies of the salient research work, so that he could later work as an explorer. Hedin abstained from doing this with an explanation he supplied in old age: I was not up to this challenge. I had gotten out onto the wild routes of Asia too early, I had perceived too much of the splendor and magnificence of the Orient, the silence of the deserts and the loneliness of long journeys. I could not get used to the idea of spending a long period of time back in school.
Hedin had therewith decided to become an explorer. He was attracted to the idea of traveling to the last mysterious portions of Asia and filling in the gaps by mapping an area completely unknown in Europe. As an explorer, Hedin became important for the Asian and European powers, who courted him, invited him to give numerous lectures, and hoped to obtain from him in return topographic, economic and strategic information about inner Asia, which they considered part of their sphere of influence. As the era of discovery came to a close around 1920, Hedin contented himself with organizing the Sino-Swedish Expedition for qualified scientific explorers.
First expedition
Between 1893 and 1897, Hedin investigated the Pamir Mountains, travelling through the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang region, across the Taklamakan Desert, Lake Kara-Koshun and Lake Bosten, proceeding to study northern Tibet. He covered on this journey and mapped of them on 552 sheets. Approximately led through previously uncharted areas.
He started out on this expedition on 16 October 1893, from Stockholm, traveling via Saint Petersburg and Tashkent to the Pamir Mountains. Several attempts to climb the high Muztagata—called the Father of the Glaciers—in the Pamir Mountains were unsuccessful. He remained in Kashgar until April 1895 and then left on 10 April with three local escorts from the village of Merket to cross the Taklamakan Desert via Tusluk to the Khotan River. Since their water supply was insufficient, seven camels died of thirst, as did two of his escorts (according to Hedin's dramatized and probably inaccurate account). Bruno Baumann traveled on this route in April 2000 with a camel caravan and ascertained that at least one of the escorts who, according to Hedin, had died of thirst had survived, and that it is impossible for a camel caravan traveling in springtime on this route to carry enough drinking water for both camels and travelers.
According to other sources, Hedin had neglected to completely fill the drinking water containers for his caravan at the beginning of the expedition and set out for the desert with only half as much water as could actually be carried. When he noticed the mistake, it was too late to return. Obsessed by his urge to carry out his research, Hedin deserted the caravan and proceeded alone on horseback with his servant. When that escort also collapsed from thirst, Hedin left him behind as well, but managed to reach a water source at the last desperate moment. He did, however, return to his servant with water and rescued him. Nevertheless, his ruthless behavior earned him massive criticism.
In January 1896, after a stopover in Kashgar, Hedin visited the 1,500-year-old abandoned cities of Dandan Oilik and Kara Dung, which are located northeast of Khotan in the Taklamakan Desert. At the beginning of March, he discovered Lake Bosten, one of the largest inland bodies of water in Central Asia. He reported that this lake is supplied by a single mighty feeder stream, the Kaidu River. He mapped Lake Kara-Koshun and returned on 27 May to Khotan. On 29 June, he started out from there with his caravan across northern Tibet and China to Beijing, where he arrived on 2 March 1897. He returned to Stockholm via Mongolia and Russia.
Second expedition
Another expedition in Central Asia followed in 1899–1902 through the Tarim Basin, Tibet and Kashmir to Calcutta. Hedin navigated the Yarkand, Tarim and Kaidu rivers and found the dry riverbed of the Kum-darja as well as the dried out lake bed of Lop Nur. Near Lop Nur, he discovered the ruins of the former walled royal city and later Chinese garrison town of Loulan, containing the brick building of the Chinese military commander, a stupa, and 19 dwellings built of poplar wood. He also found a wooden wheel from a horse-drawn cart (called an arabas) as well as several hundred documents written on wood, paper and silk in the Kharosthi script. These provided information about the history of the city of Loulan, which had once been located on the shores of Lop Nur but had been abandoned around the year 330 CE because the lake had dried out, depriving the inhabitants of drinking water.
During his travels in 1900 and 1901 he attempted in vain to reach the city of Lhasa, which was forbidden to Europeans. He continued to Leh, in Ladakh district, India. From Leh, Hedin's route took him to Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares to Calcutta, meeting there with George Nathaniel Curzon, England's then Viceroy to India.
This expedition resulted in 1,149 pages of maps, on which Hedin depicted newly discovered lands. He was the first to describe yardang formations in the Lop Desert.
Third expedition
Between 1905 and 1908, Hedin investigated the Central Iranian desert basins, the western highlands of Tibet and the Transhimalaya, which for a time was afterward called the Hedin Range. He visited the 9th Panchen Lama in the cloistered city of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse. Hedin was the first European to reach the Kailash region, including the sacred Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash, the midpoint of the earth according to Buddhist and Hindu mythology. The most important goal of the expedition was the search for the sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra Rivers, both of which Hedin found. From India, he returned via Japan and Russia to Stockholm.
He returned from this expedition with a collection of geological samples which are kept and studied in the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology of Munich University. These sedimentary rocks—such as breccia, conglomerate, limestone, and slate, as well as volcanic rock and granite—highlight the geological diversity of the regions visited by Hedin during this expedition.
Mongolia
In 1923, Hedin traveled to Beijing via the USA—where he visited the Grand Canyon—and Japan. Because of political and social unrest in China, he had to abandon an expedition to Xinjiang. Instead, he traveled with Frans August Larson (called the "Duke of Mongolia") in November and December in a Dodge automobile from Peking through Mongolia via Ulaanbaatar to Ulan-Ude, Russia and from there on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow.
Fourth expedition
Between 1927 and 1935, Hedin led an international Sino-Swedish Expedition which investigated the meteorological, topographic and prehistoric situation in Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Xinjiang.
Hedin described it as a peripatetic university in which the participating scientists worked almost independently, while he—like a local manager—negotiated with local authorities, made decisions, organized whatever was necessary, raised funds and recorded the route followed. He gave archaeologists, astronomers, botanists, geographers, geologists, meteorologists and zoologists from Sweden, Germany and China an opportunity to participate in the expedition and carry out research in their areas of specialty.
Hedin met Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing, who thereupon became a patron of the expedition. The Sino-Swedish Expedition was honored with a Chinese postage stamp series which had a print run of 25,000. The four stamps show camels at a camp with the expedition flag and bear the Chinese text, "Postal Service of the Prosperous Middle Kingdom" and in Latin underneath, "Scientific Expedition to the Northwestern Province of China 1927–1933". A painting in the Beijing Palace Museum entitled Nomads in the Desert served as model for the series. Of the 25,000 sets, 4,000 were sold across the counter and 21,500 came into the possession of the expedition. Hedin used them to finance the expedition, selling them for a price of five dollars per set. The stamps were unwelcome at the time due to the high price Hedin was selling them at, but years later became valuable treasures among collectors.
The first part of the expedition, from 1927 to 1932, led from Beijing via Baotou to Mongolia, over the Gobi Desert, through Xinjiang to Ürümqi, and into the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin. The expedition had a wealth of scientific results which are being published up to the present time. For example, the discovery of specific deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold reserves was of great economic relevance for China. In recognition of his achievements, the Berlin Geographical Society presented him with the Ferdinand von Richthofen Medal in 1933; the same honor was also awarded to Erich von Drygalski for his Gauss Expedition to the Antarctic; and to Alfred Philippson for his research on the Aegean Region.
From the end of 1933 to 1934, Hedin led—on behalf of the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing—a Chinese expedition to investigate irrigation measures and draw up plans and maps for the construction of two roads suitable for automobiles along the Silk Road from Beijing to Xinjiang. Following his plans, major irrigation facilities were constructed, settlements erected, and roads built on the Silk Road from Beijing to Kashgar, which made it possible to completely bypass the rough terrain of Tarim Basin.
One aspect of the geography of central Asia which intensively occupied Hedin for decades was what he called the "wandering lake" Lop Nur. In May 1934, he began a river expedition to this lake. For two months he navigated the Kaidu River and the Kum-Darja to Lop Nur, which had been filled with water since 1921. After the lake dried out in 1971 as a consequence of irrigation activities, the above-mentioned transportation link enabled the People's Republic of China to construct a nuclear weapon test site at Lop Nur.
His caravan of truck lorries was hijacked by the Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying who was retreating from northern Xinjiang along with his Kuomintang 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) from the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. While Hedin was detained by Ma Zhongying, he met General Ma Hushan, and Kemal Kaya Effendi.
Ma Zhongying's adjutant claimed to Hedin that Ma Zhongying had the entire region of Tian-shan-nan-lu (southern Xinjiang) under his control and Sven could pass through safely without any trouble. Hedin did not believe his assertions. Some of Ma Zhongying's Tungan (Chinese speaking Muslim) troops attacked Hedin's expedition by shooting at their vehicles.
For the return trip, Hedin selected the southern Silk Road route via Hotan to Xi'an, where the expedition arrived on 7 February 1935. He continued on to Beijing to meet with President Lin Sen and to Nanjing to Chiang Kai-shek. He celebrated his 70th birthday on 19 February 1935 in the presence of 250 members of the Kuomintang government, to whom he reported interesting facts about the Sino-Swedish Expedition. On this day, he was awarded the Brilliant Jade Order, Second Class.
At the end of the expedition, Hedin was in a difficult financial situation. He had considerable debts at the German-Asian Bank in Beijing, which he repaid with the royalties and fees received for his books and lectures. In the months after his return, he held 111 lectures in 91 German cities as well as 19 lectures in neighboring countries. To accomplish this lecture tour, he covered a stretch as long as the equator, by train and by car—in a time period of five months. He met Adolf Hitler in Berlin before his lecture on 14 April 1935.
Political views
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship , which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government.
He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars.
He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts.
Hedin and the Third Reich
Hedin's conservative and pro-German views eventually translated into sympathy for the Third Reich, and this would draw him into increasing controversy towards the end of his life. Adolf Hitler had been an early admirer of Hedin, who was in turn impressed with Hitler's nationalism. He saw the German leader's rise to power as a revival of German fortunes, and welcomed its challenge against Soviet Communism. He was not an entirely uncritical supporter of the Nazis, however. His own views were shaped by traditionalist, Christian and conservative values, while National Socialism was in part a modern revolutionary-populist movement. Hedin objected to some aspects of National Socialist rule, and occasionally attempted to convince the German government to relent in its anti-religious and anti-Semitic campaigns.
Hedin met Adolf Hitler and other leading National Socialists repeatedly and was in regular correspondence with them. The politely-worded correspondence usually concerned scheduling matters, birthday congratulations, Hedin's planned or completed publications, and requests by Hedin for pardons for people condemned to death, and for mercy, release and permission to leave the country for people interned in prisons or concentration camps. In correspondence with Joseph Goebbels and Hans Dräger, Hedin was able to achieve the printing of the Daily Watchwords year after year.
On 29 October 1942, Hitler read Hedin's book entitled, America in the Battle of the Continents. In the book Hedin promoted the view that President Roosevelt was responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939 and that Hitler had done everything in his power to prevent war. Moreover, Hedin argued that the origins of the Second World War lay not in German belligerence but in the Treaty of Versailles. This book deeply influenced Hitler and reaffirmed his views on the origins of the war and who was responsible for it. In a letter to Hedin the following day Hitler wrote, "I thank you warmly for the attention you have shown me. I have already read the book and welcome in particular that you so explicitly detailed the offers I made to Poland at the beginning of the War". Hitler continued, "without question, the individual guilty of this war, as you correctly state at the end of your book, is exclusively the American President Roosevelt."
The Nazis attempted to achieve a close connection to Hedin by bestowing awards upon him—later scholars have noted that "honors were heaped upon this prominent sympathizer." They asked him to present an address on Sport as a Teacher at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin's Olympic stadium. They made him an honorary member of the German-Swedish Union Berlin () In 1938, they presented him with the City of Berlin's Badge of Honor (). For his 75th birthday on 19 February 1940 they awarded him the Order of the German Eagle; shortly before that date it had been presented to Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. On New Year's Day 1943 they released the Oslo professor of philology and university rector Didrik Arup Seip from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Hedin's request to obtain Hedin's agreement to accept additional honors during the 470th anniversary of Munich University. On 15 January 1943, he received the Gold Medal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Goldmedaille der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). On 16 January 1943 he received an honorary doctorate from the faculty of natural sciences of Munich University. On the same day, the Nazis founded in his absence the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research located at Mittersill Castle, which was supposed to serve the long-term advancement of the scientific legacy of Hedin and Wilhelm Filchner as Asian experts. However, it was instead misused by Heinrich Himmler as an institute of the Research Association for German Genealogical Inheritance (Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V.). On 21 January 1943, he was requested to sign the Golden Book of the city of Munich.
Hedin supported the Nazis in his journalistic activities. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, he did not regret his collaboration with the Nazis because this cooperation had made it possible to rescue numerous Nazi victims from execution, or death in extermination camps.
Senior Jewish German archeologist Werner Scheimberg, sent in the expedition by the Thule Society, "had been one of the companions of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin on his excursions in the East, with archaeological and to some extent esoteric purposes".
Hedin was trying to discover the mythological place of Agartha and reproached the Polish explorer and visiting professor Antoni Ossendowski for having been gone where the Swedish explorer wasn't able to come, and thus was personally invited by Adolf Hitler in Berlin and honoured by the Führer during his 75th birthday feast.
Criticism of National Socialism
Johannes Paul wrote in 1954 about Hedin:
Much of what happened in the early days of Nazi rule had his approval. However, he did not hesitate to criticize whenever he considered this to be necessary, particularly in cases of Jewish persecution, conflict with the churches and bars to freedom of science.
In 1937 Hedin refused to publish his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden (Germany and World Peace) in Germany because the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda insisted on the deletion of Nazi-critical passages. In a letter Hedin wrote to State Secretary Walther Funk dated 16 April 1937, it becomes clear what his criticism of National Socialism was in this time before the establishment of extermination camps:
When we first discussed my plan to write a book, I stated that I only wanted to write objectively, scientifically, possibly critically, according to my conscience, and you considered that to be completely acceptable and natural. Now I emphasized in a very friendly and mild form that the removal of distinguished Jewish professors who have performed great services for mankind is detrimental to Germany and that this has given rise to many agitators against Germany abroad. So I took this position only in the interest of Germany.
My worry that the education of German youth, which I otherwise praise and admire everywhere, is deficient in questions of religion and the hereafter comes from my love and sympathy for the German nation, and as a Christian I consider it my duty to state this openly, and, to be sure, in the firm conviction that Luther’s nation, which is religious through and through, will understand me.
So far I have never gone against my conscience and will not do it now either. Therefore, no deletions will be made.
Hedin later published this book in Sweden.
Efforts on behalf of deported Jews
After he refused to remove his criticism of National Socialism from his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden, the Nazis confiscated the passports of Hedin's Jewish friend Alfred Philippson and his family in 1938 to prevent their intended departure to American exile and retain them in Germany as a bargaining chip when dealing with Hedin. The consequence was that Hedin expressed himself more favorably about Nazi Germany in his book Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland, subjugated himself against his conscience to the censorship of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and published the book in Germany.
On 8 June 1942, the Nazis increased the pressure on Hedin by deporting Alfred Philippson and his family to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. By doing so, they accomplished their goal of forcing Hedin against his conscience to write his book Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and other government agencies and to publish it in Germany in 1942. In return, the Nazis classified Alfred Philippson as "A-prominent" and granted his family privileges which enabled them to survive.
For a long time Hedin was in correspondence with Alfred Philippson and regularly sent food parcels to him in Theresienstadt concentration camp. On 29 May 1946, Alfred Philippson wrote to him (translation, abbreviated quotation): My dear Hedin! Now that letters can be sent abroad I have the opportunity to write to you…. We frequently think with deep gratitude of our rescuer, who alone is responsible for our being able to survive the horrible period of three years of incarceration and hunger in Theresienstadt concentration camp, at my age a veritable wonder. You will have learned that we few survivors were finally liberated just a few days before our intended gassing. We, my wife, daughter and I, were then brought on 9–10 July 1945 in a bus of the city of Bonn here to our home town, almost half of which is now destroyed….
Hedin responded on 19 July 1946 (translation, abbreviated quotation): …It was wonderful to find out that our efforts were not in vain. In these difficult years we attempted to rescue over one hundred other unfortunate people who had been deported to Poland, but in most cases without success. We were however able to help a few Norwegians. My home in Stockholm was turned into something like an information and assistance office, and I was excellently supported by Dr. Paul Grassmann, press attaché in the German embassy in Stockholm. He too undertook everything possible to further this humanitarian work. But almost no case was as fortunate as yours, dear friend! And how wonderful, that you are back in Bonn….
The names and fates of the over one hundred deported Jews whom Hedin tried to save have not yet been researched.
Efforts on behalf of deported Norwegians
Hedin supported the cause of the Norwegian author Arnulf Øverland and for the Oslo professor of philology and university director Didrik Arup Seip, who were interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He achieved the release of Didrik Arup Seip, but his efforts to free Arnulf Øverland were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Arnulf Øverland survived the concentration camp.
Efforts on behalf of Norwegian activists
After the third senate of the highest German military court (Reichskriegsgericht) in Berlin condemned to death for alleged espionage the ten Norwegians Sigurd Jakobsen, Gunnar Hellesen, Helge Børseth, Siegmund Brommeland, Peter Andree Hjelmervik, Siegmund Rasmussen, Gunnar Carlsen, Knud Gjerstad, Christian Oftedahl and Frithiof Lund on 24 February 1941, Hedin successfully appealed via Colonel General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst to Adolf Hitler for their reprieve. Their death penalty was converted on 17 June 1941 by Adolf Hitler to ten years forced labor. The Norwegians Carl W. Mueller, Knud Naerum, Peder Fagerland, Ottar Ryan, Tor Gerrard Rydland, Hans Bernhard Risanger and Arne Sørvag who had been condemned to forced labor under the same charge received reduced sentences at Hedin's request. Unfortunately, Hans Bernhard Risanger died in prison just a few days before his release.
Von Falkenhorst was condemned to death, by firing squad, by a British military court on 2 August 1946, because of his responsibility for passing on a Führerbefehl called the Commando Order. Hedin intervened on his behalf, achieving a pardon on 4 December 1946, with the argument that von Falkenhorst had likewise striven to pardon the ten Norwegians condemned to death. Von Falkenhorst's death penalty was commuted by the British military court to 20 years in prison. In the end, Nikolaus von Falkenhorst was released early from the Werl war criminals prison on 13 July 1953.
Awards
Because of his outstanding services, Hedin was raised to the untitled nobility by King Oskar II in 1902, the last time any Swede was to receive a charter of nobility. Oskar II suggested that he prefix the name Hedin with one of the two common predicates of nobility in Sweden, "af" or "von", but Hedin abstained from doing so in his written response to the king. In many noble families in Sweden, it was customary to do without the title of nobility. The coat of arms of Hedin, together with those of some two thousand noble families, is to be found on a wall of the Great Hall in Riddarhuset, the assembly house of Swedish nobility in Stockholm's inner city, Gamla Stan.
In 1905, Hedin was admitted to membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1909 to the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. From 1913 to 1952 he held the sixth of 18 chairs as an elected member of the Swedish Academy. In this position, he had a vote in the selection of Nobel Prize winners.
He was an honorary member of numerous Swedish and foreign scientific societies and institutions which honored him with some 40 gold medals; 27 of these medals can be viewed in Stockholm in a display case in the Royal Coin Cabinet.
He received honorary doctorates from Oxford (1909), Cambridge (1909), Heidelberg (1928), Uppsala (1935), and Munich (1943) universities and from the Handelshochschule Berlin (1931) (all Dr. phil. h.c.), from Breslau University (1915, Dr. jur. h.c.), and from Rostock University (1919, Dr. med. h.c.).
Numerous countries presented him with medals. In Sweden he became a Commander 1st Class of the Royal Order of the North Star (KNO1kl) with a brilliant badge and Knight of the Royal Order of Vasa (RVO). In the United Kingdom he was named Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire by King Edward VII. As a foreigner, he was not authorized to use the associated title of Sir, but he could place the designation KCIE after his family name Hedin. Hedin was also a Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle.
In his honor have been named a glacier, the Sven Hedin Glacier; a lunar crater Hedin; a genus of flowering plants, Hedinia; a species of the flowering plant, Gentiana hedini (now a synonym of Comastoma falcatum ); the beetles Longitarsus hedini and Coleoptera hedini; a butterfly, Fumea hedini Caradja; a spider, Dictyna hedini; a fossil hoofed mammal, Tsaidamotherium hedini; a fossil Therapsid (a "mammal-like reptile") Lystrosaurus hedini; and streets and squares in the cities of various countries (for example, "Hedinsgatan" at Tessinparken in Stockholm).
A permanent exhibition of articles found by Hedin on his expeditions is located in the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum.
In the Adolf Frederick church can be found the Sven Hedin memorial plaque by Liss Eriksson. The plaque was installed in 1959. On it, a globe with Asia to the fore can be seen, crowned with a camel. It bears the Swedish epitaph:
The Sven Hedin Firn in North Greenland was named after him.
Research on Hedin
Source material
A survey of the extensive sources for Hedin research shows that it would be difficult at present to come to a fair assessment of the personality and achievements of Hedin. Most of the source material has not yet been subjected to scientific scrutiny. Even the DFG project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie had to restrict itself to a small selection and a random examination of the source material.
The sources for Hedin research are located in numerous archives (and include primary literature, correspondence, newspaper articles, obituaries and secondary literature).
Hedin's own publications amount to some 30,000 pages.
There are about 2,500 drawings and watercolors, films and many photographs.
To this should be added 25 volumes with travel and expedition notes and 145 volumes of the diaries he regularly maintained between 1930 and 1952, totaling 8,257 pages.
The extensive holdings of the Hedin Foundation (Sven Hedins Stiftelse), which holds Hedin effects in trust, are to be found in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm.
Hedin's correspondence is in the archive of the German Foreign Office in Bonn, in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig, and above all in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm. Most of the correspondence in Hedin's estate is in the National Archives and accessible to researchers and the general public. It includes about 50,000 letters organized alphabetically according to country and sender as well as some 30,000 additional unsorted letters.
The scientific effects as well as a collection of newspaper articles about Hedin organized by year (1895–1952) in 60 bound folios can be found in the Ethnographic Museum.
The finds from Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang are, among other places, in Stockholm in the Ethnographic Museum (some 8,000 individual items), in the Institutes of Geology, Minearology and Paleontology of the Uppsala University, in the depots of the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Munich, and in the National Museum of China, Beijing.
Hedin's documentation
During his expeditions Hedin saw the focus of his work as being in field research. He recorded routes by plotting many thousands of kilometers of his caravan itinerary with the detail of a high resolution topographical map and supplemented them with innumerable altitude measurements and latitude and longitude data. At the same time he combined his field maps with panoramic drawings. He drafted the first precise maps of areas unresearched until that date: the Pamir mountains, the Taklamakan desert, Tibet, the Silk Road and the Himalayas. He was, as far as can be scientifically confirmed, the first European to recognize that the Himalayas were a continuous mountain range.
He systematically studied the lakes of inner Asia, made careful climatological observations over many years, and started extensive collections of rocks, plants, animals and antiquities. Underway he prepared watercolor paintings, sketches, drawings and photographs, which he later published in his works. The photographs and maps with the highest quality printing are to be found in the original Swedish publications.
Hedin prepared a scientific publication for each of his expeditions. The extent of documentation increased dramatically from expedition to expedition. His research report about the first expedition was published in 1900 as Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97 (Supplement 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen), Gotha 1900. The publication about the second expedition, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, increased to six text and two atlas volumes. Southern Tibet, the scientific publication on the third expedition, totalled twelve volumes, three of which were atlases. The results of the Sino-Swedish Expedition were published under the title of Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. This publication went through 49 editions.
This documentation was splendidly produced, which made the price so high that only a few libraries and institutes were able to purchase it. The immense printing costs had to be borne for the most part by Hedin himself, as was also true for the cost of the expeditions. He used the fees and royalties which he received from his popular science books and for his lectures for the purpose.
Hedin did not himself subject his documentation to scientific evaluation, but rather handed it over to other scientists for the purpose. Since he shared his experiences during his expeditions as popular science and incorporated them in a large number of lectures, travelogues, books for young people and adventure books, he became known to the general public. He soon became famous as one of the most well-recognized personalities of his time.
D. Henze wrote the following about an exhibition at the Deutsches Museum entitled Sven Hedin, the last explorer: He was a pioneer and pathfinder in the transitional period to a century of specialized research. No other single person illuminated and represented unknown territories more extensively than he. His maps alone are a unique creation. And the artist did not take second place to the savant, who deep in the night rapidly and apparently without effort rapidly created awe inspiring works. The discipline of geography, at least in Germany, has so far only concerned itself with his popularized reports. The consistent inclusion of the enormous, still unmined treasures in his scientific work are yet to be incorporated in the regional geography of Asia.
Current Hedin research
A scientific assessment of Hedin's character and his relationship to National Socialism was undertaken in the late 1990s and early 2000s at Bonn University by Professor Hans Böhm, Dipl.-Geogr. Astrid Mehmel and Christoph Sieker M.A. as part of the DFG Project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie (Sven Hedin and German Geography).
Literature
Primary
Scientific documentation
Sven Hedin: Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97. Supplementary volume 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen. Gotha 1900.
Sven Hedin: Scientific results of a journey in Central-Asia. 10 text and 2 map volumes. Stockholm 1904–1907. Volume 4
Sven Hedin: Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, Volume 1 1909 VOL. II
Sven Hedin: Southern Tibet. 11 text and 3 map volumes. Stockholm 1917–1922. VOL. VIII
Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. Over 50 volumes to date, contains primary and secondary literature. Stockholm 1937 ff.
Sven Hedin: Central Asia atlas. Maps, Statens etnografiska museum. Stockholm 1966. (appeared in the series Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under the leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition; Ausgabe 47. 1. Geography; 1)
Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa, Volume 1
THROUGH ASIA
Through Asia, Volume 1
German editions
a) Biography
Verwehte Spuren. Orientfahrten des Reise-Bengt und anderer Reisenden im 17. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1923.
b) Popular works
Durch Asiens Wüsten. Drei Jahre auf neuen Wegen in Pamir, Lop-nor, Tibet und China, 2 vol., Leipzig 1899; neue Ausgabe Wiesbaden 1981.
Im Herzen von Asien. Zehntausend Kilometer auf unbekannten Pfaden, 2 vol., Leipzig 1903.
Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1904; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Transhimalaja. Entdeckungen und Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1909–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1985.
Zu Land nach Indien durch Persien. Seistan und Bclutschistan, 2 vol., Leipzig 1910.
Von Pol zu Pol, 3 vol., Leipzig 1911–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Bagdad – Babylon – Ninive, Leipzig 1918
Jerusalem, Leipzig 1918.
General Prschewalskij in Innerasien, Leipzig 1922.
Meine erste Reise, Leipzig 1922.
An der Schwelle Innerasiens, Leipzig 1923.
Mount Everest, Leipzig 1923.
Persien und Mesopotamien, zwei asiatische Probleme, Leipzig 1923.
Von Peking nach Moskau, Leipzig 1924.
Gran Canon. Mein Besuch im amerikanischen Wunderland, Leipzig 1926.
Auf großer Fahrt. Meine Expedition mit Schweden, Deutschen und Chinesen durch die Wüste Gobi 1927– 1928, Leipzig 1929.
Rätsel der Gobi. Die Fortsetzung der Großen Fahrt durch Innerasien in den Jahren 1928–1930, Leipzig 1931.
Jehol, die Kaiserstadt, Leipzig 1932.
Die Flucht des Großen Pferdes, Leipzig 1935.
Die Seidenstraße, Leipzig 1936.
Der wandernde See, Leipzig 1937.
Im Verbotenen Land, Leipzig 1937
c) Political works
Ein Warnungsruf, Leipzig 1912.
Ein Volk in Waffen, Leipzig 1915.
Nach Osten!, Leipzig 1916.
Deutschland und der Weltfriede, Leipzig 1937 (unlike its translations, the original German edition of this title was printed but never delivered; only five copies were bound, one of which is in the possession of the F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden).
Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente, Leipzig 1942
d) Autobiographical works
Mein Leben als Entdecker, Leipzig 1926.
Eroberungszüge in Tibet, Leipzig 1940.
Ohne Auftrag in Berlin, Buenos Aires 1949; Tübingen-Stuttgart 1950.
Große Männer, denen ich begegnete, 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 1951.
Meine Hunde in Asien, Wiesbaden 1953.
Mein Leben als Zeichner, published by Gösta Montell in commemoration of Hedin's 100th birthday, Wiesbaden 1965.
e) Fiction
Tsangpo Lamas Wallfahrt, 2 vol., Leipzig 1921–1923.
Most German publications on Hedin were translated by F.A. Brockhaus Verlag from Swedish into German. To this extent Swedish editions are the original text. Often after the first edition appeared, F.A. Brockhaus Verlag published abridged versions with the same title. Hedin had not only an important business relationship with the publisher Albert Brockhaus, but also a close friendship. Their correspondence can be found in the Riksarkivet in Stockholm. There is a publication on this subject:
Sven Hedin, Albert Brockhaus: Sven Hedin und Albert Brockhaus. Eine Freundschaft in Briefen zwischen Autor und Verleger. F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1942.
Bibliography
Willy Hess: Die Werke Sven Hedins. Versuch eines vollständigen Verzeichnisses. Sven Hedin – Leben und Briefe, Vol. I. Stockholm 1962. likewise.: First Supplement. Stockholm 1965
Manfred Kleiner: Sven Anders Hedin 1865–1952 – eine Bibliografie der Sekundärliteratur. Self-published Manfred Kleinert, Princeton 2001.
Biographies
Detlef Brennecke: Sven Hedin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1986, 1991.
Johannes Paul: Abenteuerliche Lebensreise – Sieben biografische Essays. including: Sven Hedin. Der letzte Entdeckungsreisende. Wilhelm Köhler Verlag, Minden 1954, pp. 317–378.
Alma Hedin: Mein Bruder Sven. Nach Briefen und Erinnerungen. Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1925.
Eric Wennerholm: Sven Hedin 1865–1952. F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden 1978.
Axel Odelberg: Äventyr på Riktigt Berättelsen om Upptäckaren Sven Hedin. Norstedts, Stockholm 2008 (new biography in Swedish, 600 pages).
Hedin and National Socialism
Mehmel, Astrid: Sven Hedin und nationalsozialistische Expansionspolitik. In: Geopolitik. Grenzgänge im Zeitgeist Bd. 1 .1 1890 bis 1945 ed. by Irene Diekmann, Peter Krüger und Julius H. Schoeps, Potsdam 2000, pp. 189–238.
Danielsson, S.K.: The Intellectual Unmasked: Sven Hedin's Political Life from Pan-Germanism to National Socialism. Dissertation, Minnesota, 2005.
References
Further reading
Tommy Lundmark (2014) Sven Hedin institutet. En rasbiologisk upptäcksresa i Tredje riket. ) (Swedish)
External links
Scanned works
Excellent bibliography, listing publications and further literature
International Dunhuang Project Newsletter Issue No. 21, article on Sven Hedin, available also as PDF
British Indian intelligence on Sven Hedin. National Archives of India (1928)
1865 births
1952 deaths
Scientists from Stockholm
Explorers of Asia
Explorers of Central Asia
Explorers of Tibet
Geopoliticians
History of Tibet
Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
Members of the Swedish Academy
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences
Swedish explorers
Swedish geographers
Swedish topographers
Swedish nobility
Swedish people of Jewish descent
Swedish Christians
Swedish sinologists
Stockholm University alumni
Uppsala University alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni
Recipients of the Cullum Geographical Medal
Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire
Commanders First Class of the Order of the Polar Star
Knights of the Order of Vasa
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Swedish monarchists
Explorers of Iran
Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin
Victoria Medal recipients
Explorers of India
| true |
[
"Something Like a Bird is an album by Charles Mingus, released on the Atlantic label in 1981. The album reached a peak position of number 37 on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart. Mingus is featured as composer and director but does not actually play on this album as his ALS had progressed to the point where he was no longer able to do so. These were the last sessions of his own music he ever participated in, although he did attend one session for the partial collaboration with Joni Mitchell, Mingus before his death in January 1979.\n\nReception\nThe Allmusic review states: \"It's not essential but certainly colorful.\".\n\nTrack listing\n \"Something Like a Bird Part 1\" (Mingus)\t-19:12\n \"Something Like a Bird Part 2\" (Mingus)\t-12:14\n \"Farewell, Farwell\" (Mingus) - 5:57\n\nReferences\n\n1981 albums\nAtlantic Records albums\nCharles Mingus albums",
"Resolution is Hidden in Plain View's second full-length album, released on July 24, 2007 through Drive-Thru Records. This album was released after the band had already broken up.\n\nThe album was produced by Brian McTernan.\n\nTrack listing \n Bendy - 3:24\n I Don't Wanna Hear It - 2:51\n Like An Ocean - 2:58\n Heavy Breathing - 3:43\n Walk Harbor City - 3:48\n Circles - 3:55\n Our Time - 3:43\n Off My Shoulders - 4:24\n Interlude - 0:57\n Something Needs To Change - 4:13\n The Lake House - 3:58\n Hear Me Out - 4:11\n\n2007 albums\nHidden in Plain View albums\nDrive-Thru Records albums\nAlbums produced by Brian McTernan"
] |
[
"Sven Hedin",
"Political views",
"What was his main political view?",
"Hedin was a monarchist.",
"Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?",
"From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland.",
"Did he have any stance on political strong holds?",
"He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire.",
"Did he help shape any policies?",
"He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship HSwMS Sverige, which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance.",
"did he receive any criticism?",
"The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government.",
"Did he ever change his view on something?",
"He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen."
] |
C_7909b0619f154bdab580c2e708ce492f_1
|
Was his view ever challenged?
| 7 |
Was Hedin's view ever challenged?
|
Sven Hedin
|
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship HSwMS Sverige, which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government. He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars. He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts. CANNOTANSWER
|
). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society.
|
Sven Anders Hedin, KNO1kl RVO, (19 February 1865 – 26 November 1952) was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, travel writer and illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan. The posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life's work.
Overview
At 15 years of age, Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route. From that moment on, young Sven aspired to become an explorer. His studies under the German geographer and China expert, Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen, awakened a love of Germany in Hedin and strengthened his resolve to undertake expeditions to Central Asia to explore the last uncharted areas of Asia. After obtaining a doctorate, learning several languages and dialects, and undertaking two trips through Persia, he ignored the advice of Ferdinand von Richthofen to continue his geographic studies to acquaint himself with geographical research methodology; the result was that Hedin had to leave the evaluation of his expedition results later to other scientists.
Between 1894 and 1908, in three daring expeditions through the mountains and deserts of Central Asia, he mapped and researched parts of Chinese Turkestan (officially Xinjiang) and Tibet which had been unexplored by Europeans until then. Upon his return to Stockholm in 1909 he was received as triumphantly as Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. In 1902, he became the last Swede (to date) to be raised to the untitled nobility and was considered one of Sweden's most important personalities. As a member of two scientific academies, he had a voice in the selection of Nobel Prize winners for both science and literature. Hedin never married and had no children, rendering his family line now extinct.
Hedin's expedition notes laid the foundations for a precise mapping of Central Asia. He was one of the first European scientific explorers to employ indigenous scientists and research assistants on his expeditions. Although primarily an explorer, he was also the first to unearth the ruins of ancient Buddhist cities in Chinese Central Asia. However, as his main interest in archaeology was finding ancient cities, he had little interest in gathering data thorough scientific excavations. Of small stature, with a bookish, bespectacled appearance, Hedin nevertheless proved himself a determined explorer, surviving several close brushes with death from hostile forces and the elements over his long career. His scientific documentation and popular travelogues, illustrated with his own photographs, watercolor paintings and drawings, his adventure stories for young readers and his lecture tours abroad made him world-famous.
As a renowned expert on Turkestan and Tibet, he was able to obtain unrestricted access to European and Asian monarchs and politicians as well as to their geographical societies and scholarly associations. They all sought to purchase his exclusive knowledge about the power vacuum in Central Asia with gold medals, diamond-encrusted grand crosses, honorary doctorates and splendid receptions, as well as with logistic and financial support for his expeditions. Hedin, in addition to Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sir Francis Younghusband, and Sir Aurel Stein, was an active player in the British-Russian struggle for influence in Central Asia, known as the Great Game. Their travels were supported because they filled in the "white spaces" in contemporary maps, providing valuable information.
Hedin was honored in ceremonies in:
1890 by King Oscar II of Sweden
1890 by Shah Nāser ad-Dīn Schah
1896, 1909 by Czar Nicholas II of Russia
from 1898 frequently by Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary
1902 by the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon
1903, 1914, 1917, 1926, 1936 by Kaiser Wilhelm II
1906 by the Viceroy of India Lord Minto
1907, 1926, 1933 by the 9th Panchen Lama Thubten Choekyi Nyima
1908 by Emperor Mutsuhito
1910 by Pope Pius X
1910 by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
1915 and subsequently by Hindenburg
1929 and 1935 by Chiang Kai-shek
1935, 1939, 1940 (twice) by Adolf Hitler.
Hedin was, and remained, a figure of the 19th century who clung to its visions and methods also in the 20th century. This prevented him from discerning the fundamental social and political upheavals of the 20th century and aligning his thinking and actions accordingly.
Concerned about the security of Scandinavia, he favored the construction of the battleship Sverige. In World War I he specifically allied himself in his publications with the German monarchy and its conduct of the war. Because of this political involvement, his scientific reputation was damaged among Germany's wartime enemies, along with his memberships in their geographical societies and learned associations, as well as any support for his planned expeditions.
After a less-than-successful lecture tour in 1923 through North America and Japan, he traveled on to Beijing to carry out an expedition to Chinese Turkestan (modern Xinjiang), but the region's unstable political situation thwarted this intention. He instead traveled through Mongolia by car and through Siberia aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway.
With financial support from the governments of Sweden and Germany, he led, between 1927 and 1935, an international and interdisciplinary Sino-Swedish Expedition to carry out scientific investigations in Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, with the participation of 37 scientists from six countries. Despite Chinese counter-demonstrations and after months of negotiations in China, was he able to make the expedition also a Chinese one by obtaining Chinese research commissions and the participation of Chinese scientists. He also concluded a contract which guaranteed freedom of travel for this expedition which, because of its arms, 300 camels, and activities in a war theater, resembled an invading army. However, the financing remained Hedin's private responsibility.
Because of failing health, the civil war in Chinese Turkestan, and a long period of captivity, Hedin, by then 70 years of age, had a difficult time after the currency depreciation of the Great Depression raising the money required for the expedition, the logistics for assuring the supplying of the expedition in an active war zone, and obtaining access for the expedition's participants to a research area intensely contested by local warlords. Nevertheless, the expedition was a scientific success. The archaeological artifacts which had been sent to Sweden were scientifically assessed for three years, after which they were returned to China under the terms of the contract.
Starting in 1937, the scientific material assembled during the expedition was published in over 50 volumes by Hedin and other expedition participants, thereby making it available for worldwide research on eastern Asia. When he ran out of money to pay printing costs, he pawned his extensive and valuable library, which filled several rooms, making possible the publication of additional volumes.
In 1935, Hedin made his exclusive knowledge about Central Asia available, not only to the Swedish government, but also to foreign governments such as China and Germany, in lectures and personal discussions with political representatives of Chiang Kai-shek and Adolf Hitler.
Although he was not a National Socialist, Hedin's hope that Nazi Germany would protect Scandinavia from invasion by the Soviet Union, brought him in dangerous proximity to representatives of National Socialism, who exploited him as an author. This destroyed his reputation and put him into social and scientific isolation. However, in correspondence and personal conversations with leading Nazis, his successful intercessions achieved the pardoning of ten people condemned to death and the release or survival of Jews who had been deported to Nazi concentration camps.
At the end of the war, U.S. troops deliberately confiscated documents relating to Hedin's planned Central Asia Atlas. The U.S. Army Map Service later solicited Hedin's assistance and financed the printing and publication of his life's work, the Central Asia Atlas. Whoever compares this atlas with Adolf Stielers Hand Atlas of 1891 can appreciate what Hedin accomplished between 1893 and 1935.
Although Hedin's research was taboo in Germany and Sweden because of his conduct relating to Nazi Germany, and stagnated for decades in Germany, the scientific documentation of his expeditions was translated into Chinese by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and incorporated into Chinese research. Following recommendations made by Hedin to the Chinese government in 1935, the routes he selected were used to construct streets and train tracks, as well as dams and canals to irrigate new farms being established in the Tarim and Yanji basins in Xinjiang and the deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold discovered during the Sino-Swedish Expedition were opened up for mining. Among the discoveries of this expedition should also be counted the many Asian plants and animals unheard of until that date, as well as fossil remains of dinosaurs and other extinct animals. Many were named after Hedin, the species-level scientific classification being hedini. But one discovery remained unknown to Chinese researchers until the turn of the millennium: in the Lop Nur desert, Hedin discovered in 1933 and 1934 ruins of signal towers which prove that the Great Wall of China once extended as far west as Xinjiang.
From 1931 until his death in 1952, Hedin lived in Stockholm in a modern high-rise in a preferred location, the address being Norr Mälarstrand 66. He lived with his siblings in the upper three stories and from the balcony he had a wide view over Riddarfjärden Bay and Lake Mälaren to the island of Långholmen. In the entryway to the stairwell is to be found a decorative stucco relief map of Hedin's research area in Central Asia and a relief of the Lama temple, a copy of which he had brought to Chicago for the 1933 World's Fair.
On 29 October 1952, Hedin's will granted the rights to his books and his extensive personal effects to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Sven Hedin Foundation established soon thereafter holds all the rights of ownership.
Hedin died at Stockholm in 1952. The memorial service was attended by representatives of the Swedish royal household, the Swedish government, the Swedish Academy, and the diplomatic service. He is buried in the cemetery of Adolf Fredrik church in Stockholm.
Biography
Childhood influences
Sven Hedin was born in Stockholm, the son of Ludwig Hedin, Chief Architect of Stockholm.
When he was 15 years old Hedin witnessed the triumphal return of the Swedish Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld after his first navigation of the Northern Sea Route.
He describes this experience in his book My Life as an Explorer as follows:
On 24 April 1880, the steamer Vega sailed into Stockholms ström. The entire city was illuminated. The buildings around the harbor glowed in the light of innumerable lamps and torches. Gas flames depicted the constellation of Vega on the castle. Amidst this sea of light the famous ship glided into the harbor. I was standing on the Södermalm heights with my parents and siblings, from which we had a superb view. I was gripped by great nervous tension. I will remember this day until I die, as it was decisive for my future. Thunderous jubilation resounded from quays, streets, windows and rooftops. "That is how I want to return home some day," I thought to myself.
First trip to Iran (Persia)
In May 1885, Hedin graduated from Beskowska secondary school in Stockholm. He then accepted an offer to accompany the student Erhard Sandgren as his private tutor to Baku, where Sandgren's father was working as an engineer in the oil fields of Robert Nobel. Afterward he attended a course in topography for general staff officers for one month in summer 1885 and took a few weeks of instruction in portrait drawing; this comprised his entire training in those areas.
On 15 August 1885, he traveled to Baku with Erhard Sandgren and instructed him there for seven months, and he himself began to learn the Latin, French, German, Persian, Russian, English and Tatar languages. He later learned several Persian dialects as well as Turkish, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tibetan and some Chinese.
On 6 April 1886, Hedin left Baku for Iran (then called Persia), traveling by paddle steamer over the Caspian Sea, riding through the Alborz Range to Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz and the harbor city of Bushehr. From there he took a ship up the Tigris River to Baghdad (then in Ottoman Empire), returning to Tehran via Kermanshah, and then travelling through the Caucasus and over the Black Sea to Constantinople. Hedin then returned to Sweden, arriving on 18 September 1886.
In 1887, Hedin published a book about these travels entitled Through Persia, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.
Studies
From 1886 to 1888, Hedin studied under the geologist Waldemar Brøgger in Stockholm and Uppsala the subjects of geology, mineralogy, zoology and Latin. In December 1888, he became a Candidate in Philosophy. From October 1889 to March 1890 he studied in Berlin under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen.
Second trip to Iran
On 12 May 1890, he accompanied as interpreter and vice-consul a Swedish legation to Iran which was to present the Shah of Iran with the insignia of the Order of the Seraphim. As part of the Swedish legation, he was at an audience of the shah Naser al-Din Shah Qajar in Tehran. He spoke with him and later accompanied him to the Elburz Mountain Range. On 11 July 1890, he and three others climbed Mount Damavand where he collected primary material for his dissertation. Starting in September he traveled on the Silk Road via cities Mashhad, Ashgabat, Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and Kashgar to the western outskirts of the Taklamakan Desert. On the trip home, he visited the grave of the Russian Asian scholar, Nikolai Przhevalsky in Karakol on the shore of Lake Issyk Kul. On 29 March 1891, he was back in Stockholm. He published the books King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890 and Through Chorasan and Turkestan about this journey.
Doctorate and career path
On 27 April 1892, Hedin traveled to Berlin to continue his studies under Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen. Beginning of July he went to University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, attending lectures by Alfred Kirchhoff. Yet in the same month, he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a 28-page dissertation entitled Personal Observations of Damavand. This dissertation is a summary of one part of his book, King Oscar's Legation to the Shah of Persia in 1890. Eric Wennerholm remarked on the subject: I can only come to the conclusion that Sven [Hedin] received his doctorate when he was 27 years old after studying for a grand total of only eight months and collecting primary material for one-and-a-half days on the snow-clad peak of Mount Damavand.
Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen not only encouraged Hedin to absolve cursory studies, but also to become thoroughly acquainted with all branches of geographic science and the methodologies of the salient research work, so that he could later work as an explorer. Hedin abstained from doing this with an explanation he supplied in old age: I was not up to this challenge. I had gotten out onto the wild routes of Asia too early, I had perceived too much of the splendor and magnificence of the Orient, the silence of the deserts and the loneliness of long journeys. I could not get used to the idea of spending a long period of time back in school.
Hedin had therewith decided to become an explorer. He was attracted to the idea of traveling to the last mysterious portions of Asia and filling in the gaps by mapping an area completely unknown in Europe. As an explorer, Hedin became important for the Asian and European powers, who courted him, invited him to give numerous lectures, and hoped to obtain from him in return topographic, economic and strategic information about inner Asia, which they considered part of their sphere of influence. As the era of discovery came to a close around 1920, Hedin contented himself with organizing the Sino-Swedish Expedition for qualified scientific explorers.
First expedition
Between 1893 and 1897, Hedin investigated the Pamir Mountains, travelling through the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang region, across the Taklamakan Desert, Lake Kara-Koshun and Lake Bosten, proceeding to study northern Tibet. He covered on this journey and mapped of them on 552 sheets. Approximately led through previously uncharted areas.
He started out on this expedition on 16 October 1893, from Stockholm, traveling via Saint Petersburg and Tashkent to the Pamir Mountains. Several attempts to climb the high Muztagata—called the Father of the Glaciers—in the Pamir Mountains were unsuccessful. He remained in Kashgar until April 1895 and then left on 10 April with three local escorts from the village of Merket to cross the Taklamakan Desert via Tusluk to the Khotan River. Since their water supply was insufficient, seven camels died of thirst, as did two of his escorts (according to Hedin's dramatized and probably inaccurate account). Bruno Baumann traveled on this route in April 2000 with a camel caravan and ascertained that at least one of the escorts who, according to Hedin, had died of thirst had survived, and that it is impossible for a camel caravan traveling in springtime on this route to carry enough drinking water for both camels and travelers.
According to other sources, Hedin had neglected to completely fill the drinking water containers for his caravan at the beginning of the expedition and set out for the desert with only half as much water as could actually be carried. When he noticed the mistake, it was too late to return. Obsessed by his urge to carry out his research, Hedin deserted the caravan and proceeded alone on horseback with his servant. When that escort also collapsed from thirst, Hedin left him behind as well, but managed to reach a water source at the last desperate moment. He did, however, return to his servant with water and rescued him. Nevertheless, his ruthless behavior earned him massive criticism.
In January 1896, after a stopover in Kashgar, Hedin visited the 1,500-year-old abandoned cities of Dandan Oilik and Kara Dung, which are located northeast of Khotan in the Taklamakan Desert. At the beginning of March, he discovered Lake Bosten, one of the largest inland bodies of water in Central Asia. He reported that this lake is supplied by a single mighty feeder stream, the Kaidu River. He mapped Lake Kara-Koshun and returned on 27 May to Khotan. On 29 June, he started out from there with his caravan across northern Tibet and China to Beijing, where he arrived on 2 March 1897. He returned to Stockholm via Mongolia and Russia.
Second expedition
Another expedition in Central Asia followed in 1899–1902 through the Tarim Basin, Tibet and Kashmir to Calcutta. Hedin navigated the Yarkand, Tarim and Kaidu rivers and found the dry riverbed of the Kum-darja as well as the dried out lake bed of Lop Nur. Near Lop Nur, he discovered the ruins of the former walled royal city and later Chinese garrison town of Loulan, containing the brick building of the Chinese military commander, a stupa, and 19 dwellings built of poplar wood. He also found a wooden wheel from a horse-drawn cart (called an arabas) as well as several hundred documents written on wood, paper and silk in the Kharosthi script. These provided information about the history of the city of Loulan, which had once been located on the shores of Lop Nur but had been abandoned around the year 330 CE because the lake had dried out, depriving the inhabitants of drinking water.
During his travels in 1900 and 1901 he attempted in vain to reach the city of Lhasa, which was forbidden to Europeans. He continued to Leh, in Ladakh district, India. From Leh, Hedin's route took him to Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares to Calcutta, meeting there with George Nathaniel Curzon, England's then Viceroy to India.
This expedition resulted in 1,149 pages of maps, on which Hedin depicted newly discovered lands. He was the first to describe yardang formations in the Lop Desert.
Third expedition
Between 1905 and 1908, Hedin investigated the Central Iranian desert basins, the western highlands of Tibet and the Transhimalaya, which for a time was afterward called the Hedin Range. He visited the 9th Panchen Lama in the cloistered city of Tashilhunpo in Shigatse. Hedin was the first European to reach the Kailash region, including the sacred Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash, the midpoint of the earth according to Buddhist and Hindu mythology. The most important goal of the expedition was the search for the sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra Rivers, both of which Hedin found. From India, he returned via Japan and Russia to Stockholm.
He returned from this expedition with a collection of geological samples which are kept and studied in the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology of Munich University. These sedimentary rocks—such as breccia, conglomerate, limestone, and slate, as well as volcanic rock and granite—highlight the geological diversity of the regions visited by Hedin during this expedition.
Mongolia
In 1923, Hedin traveled to Beijing via the USA—where he visited the Grand Canyon—and Japan. Because of political and social unrest in China, he had to abandon an expedition to Xinjiang. Instead, he traveled with Frans August Larson (called the "Duke of Mongolia") in November and December in a Dodge automobile from Peking through Mongolia via Ulaanbaatar to Ulan-Ude, Russia and from there on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow.
Fourth expedition
Between 1927 and 1935, Hedin led an international Sino-Swedish Expedition which investigated the meteorological, topographic and prehistoric situation in Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Xinjiang.
Hedin described it as a peripatetic university in which the participating scientists worked almost independently, while he—like a local manager—negotiated with local authorities, made decisions, organized whatever was necessary, raised funds and recorded the route followed. He gave archaeologists, astronomers, botanists, geographers, geologists, meteorologists and zoologists from Sweden, Germany and China an opportunity to participate in the expedition and carry out research in their areas of specialty.
Hedin met Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing, who thereupon became a patron of the expedition. The Sino-Swedish Expedition was honored with a Chinese postage stamp series which had a print run of 25,000. The four stamps show camels at a camp with the expedition flag and bear the Chinese text, "Postal Service of the Prosperous Middle Kingdom" and in Latin underneath, "Scientific Expedition to the Northwestern Province of China 1927–1933". A painting in the Beijing Palace Museum entitled Nomads in the Desert served as model for the series. Of the 25,000 sets, 4,000 were sold across the counter and 21,500 came into the possession of the expedition. Hedin used them to finance the expedition, selling them for a price of five dollars per set. The stamps were unwelcome at the time due to the high price Hedin was selling them at, but years later became valuable treasures among collectors.
The first part of the expedition, from 1927 to 1932, led from Beijing via Baotou to Mongolia, over the Gobi Desert, through Xinjiang to Ürümqi, and into the northern and eastern parts of the Tarim Basin. The expedition had a wealth of scientific results which are being published up to the present time. For example, the discovery of specific deposits of iron, manganese, oil, coal and gold reserves was of great economic relevance for China. In recognition of his achievements, the Berlin Geographical Society presented him with the Ferdinand von Richthofen Medal in 1933; the same honor was also awarded to Erich von Drygalski for his Gauss Expedition to the Antarctic; and to Alfred Philippson for his research on the Aegean Region.
From the end of 1933 to 1934, Hedin led—on behalf of the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek in Nanjing—a Chinese expedition to investigate irrigation measures and draw up plans and maps for the construction of two roads suitable for automobiles along the Silk Road from Beijing to Xinjiang. Following his plans, major irrigation facilities were constructed, settlements erected, and roads built on the Silk Road from Beijing to Kashgar, which made it possible to completely bypass the rough terrain of Tarim Basin.
One aspect of the geography of central Asia which intensively occupied Hedin for decades was what he called the "wandering lake" Lop Nur. In May 1934, he began a river expedition to this lake. For two months he navigated the Kaidu River and the Kum-Darja to Lop Nur, which had been filled with water since 1921. After the lake dried out in 1971 as a consequence of irrigation activities, the above-mentioned transportation link enabled the People's Republic of China to construct a nuclear weapon test site at Lop Nur.
His caravan of truck lorries was hijacked by the Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhongying who was retreating from northern Xinjiang along with his Kuomintang 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) from the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. While Hedin was detained by Ma Zhongying, he met General Ma Hushan, and Kemal Kaya Effendi.
Ma Zhongying's adjutant claimed to Hedin that Ma Zhongying had the entire region of Tian-shan-nan-lu (southern Xinjiang) under his control and Sven could pass through safely without any trouble. Hedin did not believe his assertions. Some of Ma Zhongying's Tungan (Chinese speaking Muslim) troops attacked Hedin's expedition by shooting at their vehicles.
For the return trip, Hedin selected the southern Silk Road route via Hotan to Xi'an, where the expedition arrived on 7 February 1935. He continued on to Beijing to meet with President Lin Sen and to Nanjing to Chiang Kai-shek. He celebrated his 70th birthday on 19 February 1935 in the presence of 250 members of the Kuomintang government, to whom he reported interesting facts about the Sino-Swedish Expedition. On this day, he was awarded the Brilliant Jade Order, Second Class.
At the end of the expedition, Hedin was in a difficult financial situation. He had considerable debts at the German-Asian Bank in Beijing, which he repaid with the royalties and fees received for his books and lectures. In the months after his return, he held 111 lectures in 91 German cities as well as 19 lectures in neighboring countries. To accomplish this lecture tour, he covered a stretch as long as the equator, by train and by car—in a time period of five months. He met Adolf Hitler in Berlin before his lecture on 14 April 1935.
Political views
Hedin was a monarchist. From 1905 onwards he took a stand against the move toward democracy in his Swedish homeland. He warned of the dangers he assumed to be coming from Czarist Russia, and called for an alliance with the German Empire. Therefore, he advocated a strengthened national defence, with a vigilant military preparedness. August Strindberg was one of his opponents on this issue, which divided Swedish politics at the time. In 1912 Hedin publicly supported the Swedish coastal defense ship Society. He helped collect public donations for the building of the coastal defense ship , which the Liberal and anti-militarist government of Karl Staaff had been unwilling to finance. In early 1914, when the Liberal government enacted cutbacks to the country's defenses, Hedin wrote the Courtyard Speech, in which King Gustaf V promised to strengthen the country's defenses. The speech led to a political crisis that ended with Staaff and his government resigning and being replaced by a non-party, more conservative government.
He developed a lasting affinity for the German empire, with which he became acquainted during his formal studies. This is also shown in his admiration for Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he even visited in exile in the Netherlands. Influenced by imperial Russian and later the Soviet union's attempts to dominate and control territories outside its borders, especially in Central Asia and Turkestan, Hedin felt that Soviet Russia posed a great threat to the West, which may be part of the reason why he supported Germany during both World Wars.
He viewed World War I as a struggle of the German race (particularly against Russia) and took sides in books like Ein Volk in Waffen. Den deutschen Soldaten gewidmet (A People in Arms. Dedicated to the German Soldier). As a consequence, he lost friends in France and England and was expelled from the British Royal Geographical Society, and from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. Germany's defeat in World War I and the associated loss of its international reputation affected him deeply. That Sweden gave asylum to Wolfgang Kapp as a political refugee after the failure of the Kapp Putsch is said to be primarily attributable to his efforts.
Hedin and the Third Reich
Hedin's conservative and pro-German views eventually translated into sympathy for the Third Reich, and this would draw him into increasing controversy towards the end of his life. Adolf Hitler had been an early admirer of Hedin, who was in turn impressed with Hitler's nationalism. He saw the German leader's rise to power as a revival of German fortunes, and welcomed its challenge against Soviet Communism. He was not an entirely uncritical supporter of the Nazis, however. His own views were shaped by traditionalist, Christian and conservative values, while National Socialism was in part a modern revolutionary-populist movement. Hedin objected to some aspects of National Socialist rule, and occasionally attempted to convince the German government to relent in its anti-religious and anti-Semitic campaigns.
Hedin met Adolf Hitler and other leading National Socialists repeatedly and was in regular correspondence with them. The politely-worded correspondence usually concerned scheduling matters, birthday congratulations, Hedin's planned or completed publications, and requests by Hedin for pardons for people condemned to death, and for mercy, release and permission to leave the country for people interned in prisons or concentration camps. In correspondence with Joseph Goebbels and Hans Dräger, Hedin was able to achieve the printing of the Daily Watchwords year after year.
On 29 October 1942, Hitler read Hedin's book entitled, America in the Battle of the Continents. In the book Hedin promoted the view that President Roosevelt was responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939 and that Hitler had done everything in his power to prevent war. Moreover, Hedin argued that the origins of the Second World War lay not in German belligerence but in the Treaty of Versailles. This book deeply influenced Hitler and reaffirmed his views on the origins of the war and who was responsible for it. In a letter to Hedin the following day Hitler wrote, "I thank you warmly for the attention you have shown me. I have already read the book and welcome in particular that you so explicitly detailed the offers I made to Poland at the beginning of the War". Hitler continued, "without question, the individual guilty of this war, as you correctly state at the end of your book, is exclusively the American President Roosevelt."
The Nazis attempted to achieve a close connection to Hedin by bestowing awards upon him—later scholars have noted that "honors were heaped upon this prominent sympathizer." They asked him to present an address on Sport as a Teacher at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin's Olympic stadium. They made him an honorary member of the German-Swedish Union Berlin () In 1938, they presented him with the City of Berlin's Badge of Honor (). For his 75th birthday on 19 February 1940 they awarded him the Order of the German Eagle; shortly before that date it had been presented to Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. On New Year's Day 1943 they released the Oslo professor of philology and university rector Didrik Arup Seip from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Hedin's request to obtain Hedin's agreement to accept additional honors during the 470th anniversary of Munich University. On 15 January 1943, he received the Gold Medal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Goldmedaille der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften). On 16 January 1943 he received an honorary doctorate from the faculty of natural sciences of Munich University. On the same day, the Nazis founded in his absence the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research located at Mittersill Castle, which was supposed to serve the long-term advancement of the scientific legacy of Hedin and Wilhelm Filchner as Asian experts. However, it was instead misused by Heinrich Himmler as an institute of the Research Association for German Genealogical Inheritance (Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e.V.). On 21 January 1943, he was requested to sign the Golden Book of the city of Munich.
Hedin supported the Nazis in his journalistic activities. After the collapse of Nazi Germany, he did not regret his collaboration with the Nazis because this cooperation had made it possible to rescue numerous Nazi victims from execution, or death in extermination camps.
Senior Jewish German archeologist Werner Scheimberg, sent in the expedition by the Thule Society, "had been one of the companions of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin on his excursions in the East, with archaeological and to some extent esoteric purposes".
Hedin was trying to discover the mythological place of Agartha and reproached the Polish explorer and visiting professor Antoni Ossendowski for having been gone where the Swedish explorer wasn't able to come, and thus was personally invited by Adolf Hitler in Berlin and honoured by the Führer during his 75th birthday feast.
Criticism of National Socialism
Johannes Paul wrote in 1954 about Hedin:
Much of what happened in the early days of Nazi rule had his approval. However, he did not hesitate to criticize whenever he considered this to be necessary, particularly in cases of Jewish persecution, conflict with the churches and bars to freedom of science.
In 1937 Hedin refused to publish his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden (Germany and World Peace) in Germany because the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda insisted on the deletion of Nazi-critical passages. In a letter Hedin wrote to State Secretary Walther Funk dated 16 April 1937, it becomes clear what his criticism of National Socialism was in this time before the establishment of extermination camps:
When we first discussed my plan to write a book, I stated that I only wanted to write objectively, scientifically, possibly critically, according to my conscience, and you considered that to be completely acceptable and natural. Now I emphasized in a very friendly and mild form that the removal of distinguished Jewish professors who have performed great services for mankind is detrimental to Germany and that this has given rise to many agitators against Germany abroad. So I took this position only in the interest of Germany.
My worry that the education of German youth, which I otherwise praise and admire everywhere, is deficient in questions of religion and the hereafter comes from my love and sympathy for the German nation, and as a Christian I consider it my duty to state this openly, and, to be sure, in the firm conviction that Luther’s nation, which is religious through and through, will understand me.
So far I have never gone against my conscience and will not do it now either. Therefore, no deletions will be made.
Hedin later published this book in Sweden.
Efforts on behalf of deported Jews
After he refused to remove his criticism of National Socialism from his book Deutschland und der Weltfrieden, the Nazis confiscated the passports of Hedin's Jewish friend Alfred Philippson and his family in 1938 to prevent their intended departure to American exile and retain them in Germany as a bargaining chip when dealing with Hedin. The consequence was that Hedin expressed himself more favorably about Nazi Germany in his book Fünfzig Jahre Deutschland, subjugated himself against his conscience to the censorship of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, and published the book in Germany.
On 8 June 1942, the Nazis increased the pressure on Hedin by deporting Alfred Philippson and his family to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. By doing so, they accomplished their goal of forcing Hedin against his conscience to write his book Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and other government agencies and to publish it in Germany in 1942. In return, the Nazis classified Alfred Philippson as "A-prominent" and granted his family privileges which enabled them to survive.
For a long time Hedin was in correspondence with Alfred Philippson and regularly sent food parcels to him in Theresienstadt concentration camp. On 29 May 1946, Alfred Philippson wrote to him (translation, abbreviated quotation): My dear Hedin! Now that letters can be sent abroad I have the opportunity to write to you…. We frequently think with deep gratitude of our rescuer, who alone is responsible for our being able to survive the horrible period of three years of incarceration and hunger in Theresienstadt concentration camp, at my age a veritable wonder. You will have learned that we few survivors were finally liberated just a few days before our intended gassing. We, my wife, daughter and I, were then brought on 9–10 July 1945 in a bus of the city of Bonn here to our home town, almost half of which is now destroyed….
Hedin responded on 19 July 1946 (translation, abbreviated quotation): …It was wonderful to find out that our efforts were not in vain. In these difficult years we attempted to rescue over one hundred other unfortunate people who had been deported to Poland, but in most cases without success. We were however able to help a few Norwegians. My home in Stockholm was turned into something like an information and assistance office, and I was excellently supported by Dr. Paul Grassmann, press attaché in the German embassy in Stockholm. He too undertook everything possible to further this humanitarian work. But almost no case was as fortunate as yours, dear friend! And how wonderful, that you are back in Bonn….
The names and fates of the over one hundred deported Jews whom Hedin tried to save have not yet been researched.
Efforts on behalf of deported Norwegians
Hedin supported the cause of the Norwegian author Arnulf Øverland and for the Oslo professor of philology and university director Didrik Arup Seip, who were interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He achieved the release of Didrik Arup Seip, but his efforts to free Arnulf Øverland were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Arnulf Øverland survived the concentration camp.
Efforts on behalf of Norwegian activists
After the third senate of the highest German military court (Reichskriegsgericht) in Berlin condemned to death for alleged espionage the ten Norwegians Sigurd Jakobsen, Gunnar Hellesen, Helge Børseth, Siegmund Brommeland, Peter Andree Hjelmervik, Siegmund Rasmussen, Gunnar Carlsen, Knud Gjerstad, Christian Oftedahl and Frithiof Lund on 24 February 1941, Hedin successfully appealed via Colonel General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst to Adolf Hitler for their reprieve. Their death penalty was converted on 17 June 1941 by Adolf Hitler to ten years forced labor. The Norwegians Carl W. Mueller, Knud Naerum, Peder Fagerland, Ottar Ryan, Tor Gerrard Rydland, Hans Bernhard Risanger and Arne Sørvag who had been condemned to forced labor under the same charge received reduced sentences at Hedin's request. Unfortunately, Hans Bernhard Risanger died in prison just a few days before his release.
Von Falkenhorst was condemned to death, by firing squad, by a British military court on 2 August 1946, because of his responsibility for passing on a Führerbefehl called the Commando Order. Hedin intervened on his behalf, achieving a pardon on 4 December 1946, with the argument that von Falkenhorst had likewise striven to pardon the ten Norwegians condemned to death. Von Falkenhorst's death penalty was commuted by the British military court to 20 years in prison. In the end, Nikolaus von Falkenhorst was released early from the Werl war criminals prison on 13 July 1953.
Awards
Because of his outstanding services, Hedin was raised to the untitled nobility by King Oskar II in 1902, the last time any Swede was to receive a charter of nobility. Oskar II suggested that he prefix the name Hedin with one of the two common predicates of nobility in Sweden, "af" or "von", but Hedin abstained from doing so in his written response to the king. In many noble families in Sweden, it was customary to do without the title of nobility. The coat of arms of Hedin, together with those of some two thousand noble families, is to be found on a wall of the Great Hall in Riddarhuset, the assembly house of Swedish nobility in Stockholm's inner city, Gamla Stan.
In 1905, Hedin was admitted to membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1909 to the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. From 1913 to 1952 he held the sixth of 18 chairs as an elected member of the Swedish Academy. In this position, he had a vote in the selection of Nobel Prize winners.
He was an honorary member of numerous Swedish and foreign scientific societies and institutions which honored him with some 40 gold medals; 27 of these medals can be viewed in Stockholm in a display case in the Royal Coin Cabinet.
He received honorary doctorates from Oxford (1909), Cambridge (1909), Heidelberg (1928), Uppsala (1935), and Munich (1943) universities and from the Handelshochschule Berlin (1931) (all Dr. phil. h.c.), from Breslau University (1915, Dr. jur. h.c.), and from Rostock University (1919, Dr. med. h.c.).
Numerous countries presented him with medals. In Sweden he became a Commander 1st Class of the Royal Order of the North Star (KNO1kl) with a brilliant badge and Knight of the Royal Order of Vasa (RVO). In the United Kingdom he was named Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire by King Edward VII. As a foreigner, he was not authorized to use the associated title of Sir, but he could place the designation KCIE after his family name Hedin. Hedin was also a Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle.
In his honor have been named a glacier, the Sven Hedin Glacier; a lunar crater Hedin; a genus of flowering plants, Hedinia; a species of the flowering plant, Gentiana hedini (now a synonym of Comastoma falcatum ); the beetles Longitarsus hedini and Coleoptera hedini; a butterfly, Fumea hedini Caradja; a spider, Dictyna hedini; a fossil hoofed mammal, Tsaidamotherium hedini; a fossil Therapsid (a "mammal-like reptile") Lystrosaurus hedini; and streets and squares in the cities of various countries (for example, "Hedinsgatan" at Tessinparken in Stockholm).
A permanent exhibition of articles found by Hedin on his expeditions is located in the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum.
In the Adolf Frederick church can be found the Sven Hedin memorial plaque by Liss Eriksson. The plaque was installed in 1959. On it, a globe with Asia to the fore can be seen, crowned with a camel. It bears the Swedish epitaph:
The Sven Hedin Firn in North Greenland was named after him.
Research on Hedin
Source material
A survey of the extensive sources for Hedin research shows that it would be difficult at present to come to a fair assessment of the personality and achievements of Hedin. Most of the source material has not yet been subjected to scientific scrutiny. Even the DFG project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie had to restrict itself to a small selection and a random examination of the source material.
The sources for Hedin research are located in numerous archives (and include primary literature, correspondence, newspaper articles, obituaries and secondary literature).
Hedin's own publications amount to some 30,000 pages.
There are about 2,500 drawings and watercolors, films and many photographs.
To this should be added 25 volumes with travel and expedition notes and 145 volumes of the diaries he regularly maintained between 1930 and 1952, totaling 8,257 pages.
The extensive holdings of the Hedin Foundation (Sven Hedins Stiftelse), which holds Hedin effects in trust, are to be found in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm.
Hedin's correspondence is in the archive of the German Foreign Office in Bonn, in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig, and above all in the Ethnographic Museum and in the National Archives in Stockholm. Most of the correspondence in Hedin's estate is in the National Archives and accessible to researchers and the general public. It includes about 50,000 letters organized alphabetically according to country and sender as well as some 30,000 additional unsorted letters.
The scientific effects as well as a collection of newspaper articles about Hedin organized by year (1895–1952) in 60 bound folios can be found in the Ethnographic Museum.
The finds from Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang are, among other places, in Stockholm in the Ethnographic Museum (some 8,000 individual items), in the Institutes of Geology, Minearology and Paleontology of the Uppsala University, in the depots of the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Munich, and in the National Museum of China, Beijing.
Hedin's documentation
During his expeditions Hedin saw the focus of his work as being in field research. He recorded routes by plotting many thousands of kilometers of his caravan itinerary with the detail of a high resolution topographical map and supplemented them with innumerable altitude measurements and latitude and longitude data. At the same time he combined his field maps with panoramic drawings. He drafted the first precise maps of areas unresearched until that date: the Pamir mountains, the Taklamakan desert, Tibet, the Silk Road and the Himalayas. He was, as far as can be scientifically confirmed, the first European to recognize that the Himalayas were a continuous mountain range.
He systematically studied the lakes of inner Asia, made careful climatological observations over many years, and started extensive collections of rocks, plants, animals and antiquities. Underway he prepared watercolor paintings, sketches, drawings and photographs, which he later published in his works. The photographs and maps with the highest quality printing are to be found in the original Swedish publications.
Hedin prepared a scientific publication for each of his expeditions. The extent of documentation increased dramatically from expedition to expedition. His research report about the first expedition was published in 1900 as Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97 (Supplement 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen), Gotha 1900. The publication about the second expedition, Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, increased to six text and two atlas volumes. Southern Tibet, the scientific publication on the third expedition, totalled twelve volumes, three of which were atlases. The results of the Sino-Swedish Expedition were published under the title of Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. This publication went through 49 editions.
This documentation was splendidly produced, which made the price so high that only a few libraries and institutes were able to purchase it. The immense printing costs had to be borne for the most part by Hedin himself, as was also true for the cost of the expeditions. He used the fees and royalties which he received from his popular science books and for his lectures for the purpose.
Hedin did not himself subject his documentation to scientific evaluation, but rather handed it over to other scientists for the purpose. Since he shared his experiences during his expeditions as popular science and incorporated them in a large number of lectures, travelogues, books for young people and adventure books, he became known to the general public. He soon became famous as one of the most well-recognized personalities of his time.
D. Henze wrote the following about an exhibition at the Deutsches Museum entitled Sven Hedin, the last explorer: He was a pioneer and pathfinder in the transitional period to a century of specialized research. No other single person illuminated and represented unknown territories more extensively than he. His maps alone are a unique creation. And the artist did not take second place to the savant, who deep in the night rapidly and apparently without effort rapidly created awe inspiring works. The discipline of geography, at least in Germany, has so far only concerned itself with his popularized reports. The consistent inclusion of the enormous, still unmined treasures in his scientific work are yet to be incorporated in the regional geography of Asia.
Current Hedin research
A scientific assessment of Hedin's character and his relationship to National Socialism was undertaken in the late 1990s and early 2000s at Bonn University by Professor Hans Böhm, Dipl.-Geogr. Astrid Mehmel and Christoph Sieker M.A. as part of the DFG Project Sven Hedin und die deutsche Geographie (Sven Hedin and German Geography).
Literature
Primary
Scientific documentation
Sven Hedin: Die geographisch-wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien 1894–97. Supplementary volume 28 to Petermanns Mitteilungen. Gotha 1900.
Sven Hedin: Scientific results of a journey in Central-Asia. 10 text and 2 map volumes. Stockholm 1904–1907. Volume 4
Sven Hedin: Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventures in Tibet, Volume 1 1909 VOL. II
Sven Hedin: Southern Tibet. 11 text and 3 map volumes. Stockholm 1917–1922. VOL. VIII
Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition. Over 50 volumes to date, contains primary and secondary literature. Stockholm 1937 ff.
Sven Hedin: Central Asia atlas. Maps, Statens etnografiska museum. Stockholm 1966. (appeared in the series Reports from the scientific expedition to the north-western provinces of China under the leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin. The sino-Swedish expedition; Ausgabe 47. 1. Geography; 1)
Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa, Volume 1
THROUGH ASIA
Through Asia, Volume 1
German editions
a) Biography
Verwehte Spuren. Orientfahrten des Reise-Bengt und anderer Reisenden im 17. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1923.
b) Popular works
Durch Asiens Wüsten. Drei Jahre auf neuen Wegen in Pamir, Lop-nor, Tibet und China, 2 vol., Leipzig 1899; neue Ausgabe Wiesbaden 1981.
Im Herzen von Asien. Zehntausend Kilometer auf unbekannten Pfaden, 2 vol., Leipzig 1903.
Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1904; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Transhimalaja. Entdeckungen und Abenteuer in Tibet, Leipzig 1909–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1985.
Zu Land nach Indien durch Persien. Seistan und Bclutschistan, 2 vol., Leipzig 1910.
Von Pol zu Pol, 3 vol., Leipzig 1911–1912; new edition Wiesbaden 1980.
Bagdad – Babylon – Ninive, Leipzig 1918
Jerusalem, Leipzig 1918.
General Prschewalskij in Innerasien, Leipzig 1922.
Meine erste Reise, Leipzig 1922.
An der Schwelle Innerasiens, Leipzig 1923.
Mount Everest, Leipzig 1923.
Persien und Mesopotamien, zwei asiatische Probleme, Leipzig 1923.
Von Peking nach Moskau, Leipzig 1924.
Gran Canon. Mein Besuch im amerikanischen Wunderland, Leipzig 1926.
Auf großer Fahrt. Meine Expedition mit Schweden, Deutschen und Chinesen durch die Wüste Gobi 1927– 1928, Leipzig 1929.
Rätsel der Gobi. Die Fortsetzung der Großen Fahrt durch Innerasien in den Jahren 1928–1930, Leipzig 1931.
Jehol, die Kaiserstadt, Leipzig 1932.
Die Flucht des Großen Pferdes, Leipzig 1935.
Die Seidenstraße, Leipzig 1936.
Der wandernde See, Leipzig 1937.
Im Verbotenen Land, Leipzig 1937
c) Political works
Ein Warnungsruf, Leipzig 1912.
Ein Volk in Waffen, Leipzig 1915.
Nach Osten!, Leipzig 1916.
Deutschland und der Weltfriede, Leipzig 1937 (unlike its translations, the original German edition of this title was printed but never delivered; only five copies were bound, one of which is in the possession of the F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden).
Amerika im Kampf der Kontinente, Leipzig 1942
d) Autobiographical works
Mein Leben als Entdecker, Leipzig 1926.
Eroberungszüge in Tibet, Leipzig 1940.
Ohne Auftrag in Berlin, Buenos Aires 1949; Tübingen-Stuttgart 1950.
Große Männer, denen ich begegnete, 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 1951.
Meine Hunde in Asien, Wiesbaden 1953.
Mein Leben als Zeichner, published by Gösta Montell in commemoration of Hedin's 100th birthday, Wiesbaden 1965.
e) Fiction
Tsangpo Lamas Wallfahrt, 2 vol., Leipzig 1921–1923.
Most German publications on Hedin were translated by F.A. Brockhaus Verlag from Swedish into German. To this extent Swedish editions are the original text. Often after the first edition appeared, F.A. Brockhaus Verlag published abridged versions with the same title. Hedin had not only an important business relationship with the publisher Albert Brockhaus, but also a close friendship. Their correspondence can be found in the Riksarkivet in Stockholm. There is a publication on this subject:
Sven Hedin, Albert Brockhaus: Sven Hedin und Albert Brockhaus. Eine Freundschaft in Briefen zwischen Autor und Verleger. F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1942.
Bibliography
Willy Hess: Die Werke Sven Hedins. Versuch eines vollständigen Verzeichnisses. Sven Hedin – Leben und Briefe, Vol. I. Stockholm 1962. likewise.: First Supplement. Stockholm 1965
Manfred Kleiner: Sven Anders Hedin 1865–1952 – eine Bibliografie der Sekundärliteratur. Self-published Manfred Kleinert, Princeton 2001.
Biographies
Detlef Brennecke: Sven Hedin mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1986, 1991.
Johannes Paul: Abenteuerliche Lebensreise – Sieben biografische Essays. including: Sven Hedin. Der letzte Entdeckungsreisende. Wilhelm Köhler Verlag, Minden 1954, pp. 317–378.
Alma Hedin: Mein Bruder Sven. Nach Briefen und Erinnerungen. Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig 1925.
Eric Wennerholm: Sven Hedin 1865–1952. F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden 1978.
Axel Odelberg: Äventyr på Riktigt Berättelsen om Upptäckaren Sven Hedin. Norstedts, Stockholm 2008 (new biography in Swedish, 600 pages).
Hedin and National Socialism
Mehmel, Astrid: Sven Hedin und nationalsozialistische Expansionspolitik. In: Geopolitik. Grenzgänge im Zeitgeist Bd. 1 .1 1890 bis 1945 ed. by Irene Diekmann, Peter Krüger und Julius H. Schoeps, Potsdam 2000, pp. 189–238.
Danielsson, S.K.: The Intellectual Unmasked: Sven Hedin's Political Life from Pan-Germanism to National Socialism. Dissertation, Minnesota, 2005.
References
Further reading
Tommy Lundmark (2014) Sven Hedin institutet. En rasbiologisk upptäcksresa i Tredje riket. ) (Swedish)
External links
Scanned works
Excellent bibliography, listing publications and further literature
International Dunhuang Project Newsletter Issue No. 21, article on Sven Hedin, available also as PDF
British Indian intelligence on Sven Hedin. National Archives of India (1928)
1865 births
1952 deaths
Scientists from Stockholm
Explorers of Asia
Explorers of Central Asia
Explorers of Tibet
Geopoliticians
History of Tibet
Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
Members of the Swedish Academy
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences
Swedish explorers
Swedish geographers
Swedish topographers
Swedish nobility
Swedish people of Jewish descent
Swedish Christians
Swedish sinologists
Stockholm University alumni
Uppsala University alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni
Recipients of the Cullum Geographical Medal
Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire
Commanders First Class of the Order of the Polar Star
Knights of the Order of Vasa
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Swedish monarchists
Explorers of Iran
Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin
Victoria Medal recipients
Explorers of India
| true |
[
"Jeo Tupas Santisima (born 28 May 1996) is a Filipino professional boxer who challenged for the WBO super-bantamweight title in February 2020.\n\nProfessional career\nSantisima defeated Rene Dacquel in four rounds. This set up a world title opportunity for Santisima.\n\nSantisima challenged Emanuel Navarrete for the WBO junior featherweight world title, where he lost by technical knockout in his first knockout loss. This fight was on the Deontay Wilder vs. Tyson Fury II Pay Per View undercard and was Santisima's first fight in the United States.\n\nReferences\n\nLiving people\n1996 births\nPeople from Masbate\nFilipino male boxers\nSuper-bantamweight boxers\nFeatherweight boxers",
"Pseudorationalism was the label given by economist and philosopher Otto Neurath to a school of thought that he was heavily critical of, throughout many of his writings but primarily in his 1913 paper \"The lost wanderers of Descartes and the auxiliary motive\" and later to a lesser extent in his 1935 \"Pseudorationalismus der Falsifikation\", a review of and attack on Popper's first book, Logik der Forschung (The Logic of Scientific Discovery), contrasting this approach with his own view of what rationalism should properly be. Neurath aimed his criticism at a Cartesian belief that all actions can be subject to rational analysis, saying that\n\nNeurath considered that \"pseudo-rationalists\", be they philosophers or scientists, made the mistake of assuming that a complete rational system could be devised for the laws of nature. He argued rather that no system could be complete, being based upon a picture of reality that could only ever be incomplete and imperfect. Pseudo-rationalism, in Neurath's view, was a refusal or simple inability to face up to the limits of rationality and reason. \"Rationalism\", he wrote , \"sees its chief triumph in the clear recognition of the limits of actual insight.\". Whereas a pseudorationalist acknowledges no such limits, but rather contents that all decisions can be subject to the rules of insight. Scientific method is, according to Neurath, pseudorationalist where it contends that the rules for the scientific method will always lead ever closer to the truth.\n\nNeurath further challenged Cartesian \"pseudorationalism\" by asserting that operating upon incomplete data was in fact the norm, where Cartesian thinking would have it be the rare exception. Rather than there being one, final, rational answer to any given problem, Neurath asserted that scientific endeavour required a continuing and never-ending series of choices, made so in part because of the ambiguity of language.\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading \n \n\nMetatheory of science\nRationalism"
] |
[
"Rahul Dravid",
"Golden years"
] |
C_52e2fff8b563440da632c6c90324029a_1
|
What started his golden years
| 1 |
What started Rahul Dravid's golden years?
|
Rahul Dravid
|
As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain, Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal. Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid played his part scoring 157 runs in 4 matches at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe opening the innings before getting injured while fielding at slips forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament. India started off the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk inning of 49 ball 41 runs, including 5 fours and a six, chasing a target of 63 runs. However, Dravid's poor patch truly ended in the next Test series against Zimbabwe, which was also the first series for John Wright as the new Indian coach. Wright was instrumental in Dravid's association with Kent earlier this year. Dravid returned the favour by recommending his name to the BCCI for the post of national team coach. By now, Dravid had played 8 Tests since his last hundred against New Zealand at Mohali scoring just 350 runs at a paltry average of 23.33 without a single fifty plus inning. The Indian vice-captain ended the run drought and welcomed the new Indian coach with a double hundred - Dravid's first. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second inning guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 - highest batting average by an Indian in a Test series. Dravid scored just a solitary fifty in the second of the five match bilateral ODI series between India and Zimbabwe. However, the series proved to be a milestone in Dravid's career. Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the 5th match of the series as the regular captain Ganguly had to sit out due to one match suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39 run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain. CANNOTANSWER
|
As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain,
|
Rahul Sharad Dravid (; born 11 January 1973) is a former Indian cricketer and captain of the Indian national team, currently serving as its head coach. Prior to his appointment to the senior men's national team, Dravid was the Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), and the head coach of the India Under-19 and India A teams. Under his tutelage, the under-19 team finished runners up at the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup and won the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Known for his sound batting technique, Dravid scored 24,177 runs in international cricket and is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is colloquially known as Mr. Dependable and often referred to as The Wall.
Born in a Marathi family and raised in Bangalore, he started playing cricket at the age of 12 and later represented Karnataka at the under-15, under-17 and under-19 levels. Hailed as The Wall, Dravid was named one of the best five cricketers of the year by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 2000 and received the Player of the Year and the Test Player of the Year awards at the inaugural ICC awards ceremony in 2004. In December 2011, he became the first non-Australian cricketer to deliver the Bradman Oration in Canberra.
As of December 2016, Dravid is the fourth-highest run scorer in Test cricket, after Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis. In 2004, after completing his century against Bangladesh in Chittagong, he became the first player to score a century in all the ten Test-playing countries. As of October 2012, he holds the record for the most catches taken by a player (non-wicket-keeper) in Test cricket, with 210. Dravid holds a unique record of never getting out for a Golden duck in the 286 Test innings which he has played. He has faced 31258 balls, which is the highest number of balls faced by any player in test cricket. He has also spent 44152 minutes at the crease, which is the highest time spent on crease by any player in test cricket. Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar are currently the highest scoring partnership in Test cricket history having scored 6920 runs combined when batting together for India.
In August 2011, after receiving a surprise recall in the ODI series against England, Dravid declared his retirement from ODIs as well as Twenty20 International (T20I), and in March 2012, he announced his retirement from international and first-class cricket. He appeared in the 2012 Indian Premier League as captain of the Rajasthan Royals.
Rahul Dravid, along with Glenn McGrath were honoured during the seventh annual Bradman Awards function in Sydney on 1 November 2012. Dravid has also been honoured with the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan award, India's fourth and third highest civilian awards respectively.
In 2014, Rahul Dravid joined the GoSports Foundation, Bangalore as a member of their board of advisors. In collaboration with GoSports Foundation he is mentoring India's future Olympians and Paralympians as part of the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme. Indian badminton player Prannoy Kumar, Para-swimmer Sharath Gayakwad and young Golfer S. Chikkarangappa was part of the initial group of athletes to be mentored by Rahul Dravid. In July 2018, Dravid became the fifth Indian cricketer to be inducted into ICC Hall of Fame.
Early life
Dravid was born in a Marathi-Speaking Brahmin family in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. His family later moved to Bangalore, Karnataka, where he was raised. His mother tongue is Marathi. Dravid's father Sharad Dravid worked for a company that makes jams and preserves, giving rise to the later nickname Jammy. His mother, Pushpa, was a professor of architecture at the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bangalore. Dravid has a younger brother named Vijay. He did his schooling at St. Joseph's Boys High School, Bangalore and earned a degree in commerce from St. Joseph's College of Commerce, Bangalore. He was selected to India's national cricket team while working towards an MBA at St Joseph's College of Business Administration. He is fluent in several languages: Marathi, Kannada, English and Hindi.
Formative years and domestic career
Dravid started playing cricket at the age of 12, and represented Karnataka at the under-15, the under-17 and the under-19 levels. Former cricketer Keki Tarapore first noticed Dravid's talent while coaching at a summer camp in the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Dravid scored a century for his school team. He also played as wicket-keeper.
Dravid made his Ranji Trophy debut in February 1991, while still attending college. Playing alongside future India teammates Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath against Maharashtra in Pune, he scored 82 runs in the match, which ended in a draw. He followed it up with a century against Bengal and three successive centuries after. However, Dravid's first full season was in 1991–92, when he scored two centuries and finished up with 380 runs at an average of 63.30, getting selected for the South Zone cricket team in the Duleep Trophy. Dravid's caught the national team selectors' eye with his good performances for India A in the home series against England A in 1994–95.
International career
Debut
Dravid, who had been knocking at the doors of Indian national cricket team for quite a while with his consistent performance in domestic cricket, received his first national call in October 1994, for the last two matches of the Wills World Series. However, he could not break into the playing eleven. He went back to the domestic circuit and kept knocking harder. So much so, that when the selectors announced the Indian team for the 1996 World Cup sans Dravid, an Indian daily newspaper carried a headline – "Rahul Dravid gets a raw deal". Dravid eventually made his international debut on 3 April 1996 in an ODI against Sri Lanka in the Singer Cup held in Singapore immediately after the 1996 World Cup, replacing Vinod Kambli. He wasn't particularly impressive with the bat, scoring just three runs before being dismissed by Muttiah Muralitharan, but took two catches in the match. He followed it up with another failure in the next game scoring just four runs before getting run out against Pakistan.
In contrast to his ODI debut, his Test debut was rather successful one. Dravid was selected for the Indian squad touring England on the backdrop of a consistent performance in domestic cricket for five years. Fine performances in the tour games including fifties against Gloucestershire and Leicestershire failed to earn him a place in the team for the First Test. He finally made his Test debut at Lord's on 20 June 1996 against England in the Second Test of the series at the expense of injured senior batsman Sanjay Manjrekar. Manjrekar, who was suffering from an ankle injury, was to undergo a fitness test on the morning of the Second Test. Dravid had already been informed that he would play if Manjrekar fails the test. As Manjrekar failed the fitness test, ten minutes before the toss, Sandeep Patil, the then Indian coach, went up to Dravid to inform him that he was indeed going to make his debut that day. Patil recalled years later:
Coming in to bat at no. 7, he forged important partnerships, first with another debutante Sourav Ganguly and then with Indian lower order, securing a vital first innings lead for his team. Dravid scored 95 runs before getting out to the bowling of Chris Lewis. He was just five runs short of a landmark debut hundred when he nicked a Lewis delivery to the keeper and walked even before umpire's decision. He also took his first catch in Test cricket in this match to dismiss Nasser Hussain off the bowling of Srinath. In the next tour game against British Universities, Dravid scored a hundred. He scored another fifty in the first innings of the Third Test. Dravid concluded a successful debut series with an impressive average of 62.33 from two Test matches.
1996–98: A tale of two formats
Dravid's early years in international cricket mirrored his international debut. He had contrasting fortunes in the long and the shorter format of the game. While he straightaway made a name for himself in Test cricket, he had to struggle quite a bit to make a mark in ODIs.
After a successful Test debut in England, Dravid played in the one-off Test against Australia in Delhi – his first Test in India. Batting at no. 6, he scored 40 runs in the first innings. Dravid batted at no. 3 position for the first time in the First Test of the three-match home series against South Africa in Ahmedabad in November 1996. He didn't do too well in the series scoring just 175 runs at a modest average of 29.16.
Two weeks later, India toured South Africa for a three–match Test series. Chasing a target of 395 runs in the First Test, Indian team bundled out meekly for 66 runs on the Durban pitch that provided excessive bounce and seam movement. Dravid, batting at no. 6, was the only Indian batsman who reached double figures in the innings scoring 27 not out. He was promoted to the no. 3 slot again in the second innings of the Second Test, a move that paid rich dividends in the ensuing Test. He almost won the Third Test for India with his maiden test hundred in the first innings scoring 148 runs and another 81 runs in the second innings at Wanderers before the thunderstorms, dim light and Cullinan's hundred saved the day for South Africa enabling them to draw the match. Dravid's performance in this Test earned him his first Man of the Match award in Test cricket. He top scored for India in the series with 277 runs at an average of 55.40.
Dravid continued in the same vein in the West Indies where he once again top scored for India in the five–match Test series aggregating 360 runs at an average of 72.00 including four fifties. 92 runs scored in the first innings of the fifth match in Georgetown earned him a joint Man of the Match award along with Shivnarine Chanderpaul. With this series, Dravid concluded a successful 1996/97 Test season, topping the international runs chart with 852 runs from 12 matches at an average of 50.11 with six fifties and one hundred.
Dravid continued his good run scoring seven fifties in the next eight Tests that included fifties in six consecutive innings (three each against Sri Lanka and Australia), becoming only the second Indian to do so after Gundappa Vishwanath. By the end of 1997/98 Test season, he had scored 15 fifties in 22 Tests which included four scores of nineties but just a solitary hundred.
The century drought came to an end in the 1998/99 Test season when he further raised the bar of his performance scoring 752 runs in seven Tests at an average of 62.66 that included four hundreds and one fifty and in the process topping the runs chart for India for the season. The first of those four hundreds came on the Zimbabwe tour. Dravid top scored in both the innings against Zimbabwe scoring 118 and 44 runs respectively however, India lost the one-off Test.
The Zimbabwe tour was followed by a tour to New Zealand. First Test having been abandoned without a ball being bowled, the series started for Dravid with the first duck of his Test career in the first innings of the Second Test and ended with hundreds in both the innings of the Third Test in Hamilton. He scored 190 and 103 not out in the first and the second innings respectively, becoming only the third Indian batsman, after Vijay Hazare and Sunil Gavaskar, to score a century in both innings of a Test match. Dravid topped the runs table for the series with 321 runs from two matches at an average of 107.00 but could not prevent India from losing the series 0–1.
Later that month, India played a two Test home series against Pakistan. Dravid didn't contribute much with the bat. India lost the First Test but won the Second Test in Delhi riding on Kumble's historic 10-wicket haul. Dravid played his part in the 10-wicket haul by taking a catch to dismiss Mushtaq Ahmed who was Kumble's eighth victim of the innings. The Indo-Pak Test series was followed by the 1998–99 Asian Test Championship. Dravid couldn't do much with the bat as India went on to lose the riot-affected First Test of the championship against Pakistan at the Eden Gardens. India went to Sri Lanka to play the Second Test of the championship. Dravid scored his fourth hundred of the season at Colombo in the first innings of the match. He also effected a brilliant run out of Russel Arnold during Sri Lankan innings fielding at short leg. On the fourth morning, Dravid got injured while fielding at the same position when the ball from Jayawardene's pull shot hit his face through the helmet grill. He didn't come out to bat in the second innings due to the injury. The match ended in a draw as India failed to qualify for the Finals of the championship.
In a stark contrast to his Test career, Dravid had to struggle a lot to make a mark in the ODIs. Between his ODI debut in April 1996 and the end of 1998 calendar year, Dravid regularly found himself in and out of the ODI team.
Dravid tasted first success of his ODI career in the 1996 'Friendship' Cup against Pakistan in the tough conditions of Toronto. He emerged as the highest scorer of the series with 220 runs in five matches at an average of 44.00 and a strike rate of 68.53. He won his first ODI Man of the Match award for the 46 runs scored in the low scoring third game of the series. He top scored for India in the Standard Bank International One-Day Series 1996/97 in South Africa with 280 runs from eight games at an average of 35.00 and a strike rate of 60.73, the highlight being a Man of the Match award-winning performance (84 runs, one catch) in the Final of the series that came in a losing cause. He was the second highest run scorer for India in the four-match bilateral ODI series in the West Indies in 1996/97 with 121 runs at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 57.61. Dravid's maiden ODI hundred came in a losing cause in the 1997 Pepsi Independence Cup against Pakistan in Chennai. Dravid top scored for India in the quadrangular event with 189 runs from three games at an average of 94.50 and a strike rate of 75.60 however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the series.
However, Dravid's achievements in the ODIs were dwarfed by his failures in the shorter format of the game. 14 runs from two games in the 1996 Pepsi Sharjah Cup; 20 runs from two innings in the Singer World Series; 65 runs from four innings in the 1997 'Friendship' Cup; 88 runs from four games in the 1998 Coca-Cola Triangular Series including a 22-ball five runs and a 21-ball one run innings, both coming against Bangladesh; 32 runs from four games in the 1998 'Friendship' Cup; a slew of such poor performances often forced him to the sidelines of the India ODI squad. By the end of 1998, Dravid had scored 1709 runs in 65 ODIs at a humble average of 31.64 with a poor strike rate of 63.48.
By now, Dravid had been branded as a Test specialist. While he continued to score heavily in Test cricket, his poor strike rate in ODIs came under scanner. He drew criticism for not being able to adjust his style of play to the needs of ODI cricket, his lack of attacking capability and play big strokes. However, Dravid worked hard and re-tooled his game by increasing his range of strokes and adapting his batting style to suit the requirements of ODI cricket. He learned to pace his innings cleverly without going for the slogs.
Dravid's ODI renaissance began during the 1998/99 New Zealand tour. He scored a run-a-ball hundred in the first match of the bilateral ODI series that earned him his third Man of the Match award in ODIs. The hundred came in a losing cause. However, his effort of 51 runs from 71 balls in the Fourth ODI came in India's victory and earned him his second Man of the Match award of the series. He ended as the top scorer of the series with 309 runs from five games at an average of 77.25 and a strike rate of 84.65. Dravid scored a hundred against Sri Lanka in 1998/99 Pepsi Cup at Nagpur adding a record 236 runs for the 2nd wicket with Ganguly, who also scored a hundred in the match. Uncharacteristically, Dravid was the faster of the two scoring 116 of 118 deliveries. In the next match against Pakistan, he bowled four overs and took the wicket of Saeed Anwar, out caught behind by wicket-keeper Nayan Mongia. This was his first wicket in international cricket.
Dravid warmed up for his debut World Cup with two fifties in the 1998–99 Coca-Cola Cup in Sharjah, one each against England and Pakistan. Standing-in as the substitute wicket-keeper in the third match of the series for Nayan Mongia, who got injured during keeping, Dravid effected two dismissals. He first stumped Graeme Hick off Sunil Joshi's bowling, who became Dravid's first victim as a wicket-keeper, and then caught Neil Fairbrother off Ajay Jadeja's bowling. He top scored for India in the tournament, though his last ODI innings before the World Cup was a golden duck against Pakistan, in the Final of the series.
Debut World Cup success
Dravid announced his form in England hitting consecutive fifties against Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire in the warm-up games.
He made his World Cup debut against South Africa at Hove striking a half century, but scored just 13 in the next game against Zimbabwe. India lost both the games. Having lost the first two games, India needed to win the remaining three games of the first round to have any chance of advancing into the Super Six stage. Dravid put up a partnership of 237 runs with Sachin Tendulkar against Kenya at Bristol – a World Cup record – and in the process hit his maiden World Cup hundred, helping India to a 94-run victory. India's designated keeper Mongia left the field at the end of 9th over during Kenyan innings, forcing Dravid to keep the wickets for the rest of the innings. In the absence of injured Nayan Mongia, Dravid played his first ODI as a designated keeper against Sri Lanka at Taunton. Dravid once again staged a record breaking partnership worth 318 runs – the first ever three hundred run partnership in ODI history – but this time with Sourav Ganguly, guiding India to a 157-run win. Dravid scored 145 runs from 129 balls with 17 fours and a six, becoming the second batsman in World Cup history to hit back-to-back hundreds. Dravid struck a fine fifty in the last group match as India defeated England to advance into the Super Six stage. Dravid scored 2, 61 & 29 in the three Super Six matches against Australia, Pakistan & New Zealand respectively. India failed to qualify for the semi-finals having lost to Australia and New Zealand but achieved a consolation victory against Pakistan in a tense game, what with the military conflict going on between the two countries in Kashmir at the same time. Dravid emerged as the top scorer of the tournament with 461 runs from 8 games at an average of 65.85 and a strike rate of 85.52.
Dravid's post-World Cup campaign started on a poor note with just 40 runs coming in 4 games of Aiwa Cup in August 1999. He soon came into his own, top-scoring for India in two consecutive limited-overs series – the Singapore Challenge, the highlight being a hundred in the Final coming in a lost cause, and the DMC Cup, the highlight being a match winning effort (77 runs, 4 catches) in the series decider for which he received man-of-the-match award. Dravid topped the international runs chart for 1999 cricket season across all formats scoring 782 runs from 19 matches. By now, Dravid had started to keep wickets on an infrequent basis with India fielding him as designated wicket-keeper in five out of 10 ODIs played in the three events.
Dravid kick-started his post World Cup Test season with a decent outing against New Zealand in the 3-match home series. His best effort of the series came in the second innings of the First test at Mohali scoring 144, helping India salvage a draw after being bowled out for 83 runs in the First innings. This was Dravid's sixth test hundred but his first test hundred on Indian soil. Dravid did well in the 3–2 series win against New Zealand in the bilateral ODI series, scoring 240 runs in 5 games at an average of 60 and a strike rate of 83.62, ending as the second highest scorer in the series. His career best effort in ODIs came in this series in the second game at Hyderabad where he scored run-a-ball 153 runs which included 15 fours and two sixes. He featured in a 331-run partnership with Tendulkar, which was the highest partnership in ODI cricket history, a record that stood for 15 years until it was broken in 2015. In 1999, Dravid scored 1761 runs in 43 ODIs at an average of 46.34 and a strike rate of 75.16 including 6 hundreds and 8 fifties and featured in two 300+ partnerships.
India toured Australia in December 1999 for a 3-match test series and a triangular ODI tournament. Although Dravid scored a hundred against Tasmania in the practice match, he failed miserably with the bat in the Test series as India slumped to a 0–3 whitewash. He did reasonably well in the 1999–2000 Carlton & United Series scoring 3 fifties in the triangular event however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the tournament.
Dravid's poor form in Tests continued as India suffered a 0–2 whitewash against South Africa in a home series. He had moderate success in the bilateral ODI series against South Africa. He contributed to India's 3–2 series win with 208 runs at an average of 41.60 which included 2 fifties and three wickets at an average of 22.66 topping the bowling average chart for the series. His career best bowling figure of 2/43 from nine overs in the First ODI at Kochi, was also the best bowling figure by any bowler in that particular match.
Rise through the ranks
In February 2000, Tendulkar's resignation from captaincy led to the promotion of Ganguly, the vice-captain then, as the new captain of the Indian team. In May 2000, while Dravid was busy playing county cricket in England, he was appointed as the vice-captain of the Indian team announced for the Asia cup.
India did well in the 2000 ICC KnockOut Trophy. Indian team, coming out of the shadows of the infamous match fixing scandal, showed a lot of character under the new leadership of Ganguly and Dravid, beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid scored 157 runs in 4 matches of the tournament, at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid scored 85 runs in a match against Zimbabwe in the 2000–01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy while opening the innings but was forced to miss the rest of the tournament because of an injury.
India kick started the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk knock of 41 runs from 49 balls, including 5 fours and a six, while chasing a target of 63 runs. The ensuing test series against Zimbabwe was John Wright's first assignment as Indian coach. Dravid, who was instrumental in Wright's appointment as India's first foreign head coach, welcomed him with his maiden double hundred. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second, guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 – highest batting average by an Indian in a series across all formats.
Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the fifth match of the bilateral ODI series against Zimbabwe in the absence of Ganguly who was serving suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39-run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain.
History at Eden
The Australian team toured India in February 2001 for what was being billed as the Final Frontier for Steve Waugh's all conquering men, who were coming on the back of 15 consecutive Test wins. Dravid failed in the first innings of the First Test but displayed strong resilience in Tendulkar's company in the second innings. Dravid's 196 ball long resistance finally ended when he got out bowled to Warne for 39 runs. Australians extended their winning streak to 16 Tests as they beat India convincingly by 10 wickets inside three days.
The Australian juggernaut seemed unstoppable as they looked on course towards their 17th consecutive victory in the Second Test at the Eden Gardens, when they bowled India out for meagre 171 in the first innings and enforced a follow-on after securing a massive lead of 274 runs. In the second innings, Laxman, who had scored a fine fifty in the first innings, was promoted to no. 3 position which had been Dravid's usual spot for quite sometime now, while Dravid, who had gotten out bowled to Warne for second time in a row in the first innings for just 25 runs, was relegated to no. 6 position. When Dravid joined Laxman in the middle on the third day of the Test, with scoreboard reading 232/4 and India still needing 42 runs to avoid an innings defeat, another convincing win for Australia looked inevitable. Instead, two of them staged one of the greatest fightbacks in cricketing history.
Dravid and Laxman played out the remaining time on the third day and whole of the fourth day, denying Australia any wicket on Day 4. Dravid, angered by the flak that the Indian team had been receiving lately in the media coverage, celebrated his hundred in an uncharacteristic fashion brandishing his bat at the press box. Eventually, Laxman got out on the fifth morning bringing the 376-runs partnership to an end. Dravid soon perished getting run out for 180 while trying to force the pace. Ganguly declared the innings at 657/7, setting Australia a target of 384 runs with 75 overs left in the match. An inspired team India bowled superbly to dismiss Australia for 212 in 68.3 overs. India won the match by 171 runs. This was only the third instance of a team winning a Test after following-on and India became the 2nd team to do so.
Dravid scored 81 runs in the first innings of the Third Test and took 4 catches in the match as India defeated Australia at Chennai in a nail biting finish to clinch the series 2–1. Dravid scored 80 in the first of the 5-match ODI series at his home ground as India won the match by 60 runs. He didn't do too well in the remaining 4 ODIs as Australia won the series 3–2. Dravid topped the averages for the 2000/01 Test season with 839 runs from six matches at an average of 104.87.
Dravid had a decent outing in Zimbabwe, scoring 137 runs from 134 balls in the First Tour game and aggregating 138 runs at an average of 69.00 from the drawn Test series. In the ensuing triangular ODI series, he aggregated 121 runs from 5 matches at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 101.68, the highlight being an unbeaten 72 off 64 balls, while chasing a target of 235 against Zimbabwe in the 3rd match of the series, guiding India to a 4-wicket win with four balls to spare. He was adjudged man of the match for his match winning knock.
On the next tour to Sri Lanka, India lost the first three matches of the triangular event. In the absence of suspended Ganguly, Dravid captained the side in the 4th match leading them to their first victory of the series. India won the next two matches to qualify for the Final. Dravid played crucial innings in all the three victories. Eventually, India lost the Final to Sri Lanka. He top scored for India in the series with 259 runs from seven matches at an average of 51.80 and a strike rate of 59.81. Reinstated to his usual no. 3 position in the absence of injured Laxman, Dravid top scored for India in the ensuing 3-Test series as well with 235 runs at an average of 47.00. The highlight for Dravid was 75 runs scored in the tough fourth innings chase of the Second Test – a crucial contribution to India's first Test win in Sri Lanka since 1993 despite the absence of key players like Tendulkar, Laxman, Srinath and Kumble.
Dravid had decent success in Standard Bank tri-series on South Africa tour, scoring 214 runs (including 3 fifties) at an average of 53.50 and a strike rate of 71.81. He also kept wickets in the final two ODIs of the series effecting 3 stumpings. The highlight for Dravid in the ensuing Test series came in the second innings of the Second Test. India, having failed to last hundred overs in any of the previous three innings in the series, needed to bat out four sessions in the Second Test to save the match. They started on a poor note losing their first wicket in the first over with no runs on the scoreboard. However, Dravid forged an important partnership of 171 runs with Dasgupta that lasted for 83.2 overs taking India to the brink of safety. Poor weather helped India salvage a draw as only 96.2 overs could be bowled in the innings. Dravid captained the team in the 'unofficial' Third test in the absence of injured Ganguly, which India lost by an innings margin.
By the end of the South African tour, Dravid had started experiencing problem in his right shoulder. Although he played the ensuing home test series against England, he pulled out of the six-match bilateral ODI series to undergo shoulder rehabilitation program in South Africa. He returned for the Zimbabwe's tour of India but performed below par, scoring a fifty each in the Test series and the bilateral ODI series.
2002–2006: Peak years
Dravid hit the peak form of his career in 2002. Between Season 2002 and Season 2006, Dravid was the second highest scorer overall and top scorer for India across formats, scoring 8,914 runs from 174 matches at an average of 54.02, including 19 hundreds.
Dravid had a decent outing in West Indies in 2002. The highlights for him included – hitting a hundred with a swollen jaw and helping India avoid the follow-on in the process at Georgetown in the drawn First Test; contributing with a fifty and four catches to India's victory in the Second Test at Port of Spain – India's first Test victory in West Indies since 1975–76; and another fifty in the drawn Fourth Test with a wicket to boot – that of Ridley Jacobs who was batting on 118. This was Dravid's only wicket in Test cricket. He played as India's designated keeper in the ODI series but didn't contribute much with the bat in the 2–1 series win.
A quartet of hundreds
India's tour of England in 2002 started with a triangular ODI event involving India, England and Sri Lanka. India emerged as the winners of the series beating England in the Final – their first victory after nine consecutive defeats in one-day finals. Dravid played as designated keeper in six out of seven matches effecting nine dismissals (6 catches, 3 stumpings) – most by a keeper in the series. He also did well with the bat aggregating 245 runs at an average of 49.00 including three fifties. His performance against Sri Lanka in fourth ODI (64 runs, 1 catch) earned him a man of the match award.
India lost the first of the four match Test series. Having conceded a 260 runs lead in the first innings of the Second Test at Nottingham, Indians were in a spot of bother. However, Dravid led the fightback in the second innings with a hundred as Indians managed to earn a draw.
Ganguly won the toss in the Third Test and took a bold decision to bat first on a gloomy overcast morning at Headingley on a pitch known to be traditionally conducive for fast and swing bowling. Having lost an early wicket, Dravid weathered the storm in company of Sanjay Bangar. They played cautiously, taking body blows on a pitch with uneven bounce. Dravid completed his second hundred of the series in the process. As the conditions became more and more conducive for batting, the Indian batsmen piled on England's misery. Indians declared the innings on 628/8 and then bowled England out twice to register their first test victory in England since 1986. Despite being outscored by Tendulkar, Dravid was awarded man of the match for his efforts. Dravid scored a double hundred in the drawn Fourth Test to notch up his second consecutive man of the match award of the series. Christopher Martin-Jenkins noted during the Fourth Test: Dravid aggregated 602 runs in the series from four matches at an average of 100.33, including three hundreds and a fifty and was adjudged joint man of the series along with Michael Vaughan.
India jointly shared the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka. Dravid contributed to India's successful campaign with 120 runs at an average of 60.00 and five dismissals behind the wicket. Dravid scored a hundred in the First Test of the three match home series against West Indies becoming the first Indian batsman to score hundreds in four consecutive Test innings but had to retire soon after owing to severe cramps. Dravid did well in the subsequent bilateral 7-match ODI series aggregating 300 runs at an average of 75.00 and a strike rate of 89.82 including one hundred and two fifties. He also effected 7 dismissals (6 catches, 1 stumping) in the series. India trailing 1–2, needed 325 runs to win the Fourth ODI and level the series. Dravid scored a hundred leading India to a successful chase. He once again scored a crucial fifty in the Sixth ODI as India once again leveled the series after trailing 2–3. India, however, lost the last match to lose the series 3–4.
Dravid top scored for India in the two-match Test series in New Zealand as India slumped to a whitewash. He played as designated keeper in six of the 7-match bilateral ODI series and effected seven dismissals but fared poorly with the bat as India were handed a 2-5 drubbing by the New Zealand.
2003 Cricket World Cup
Dravid arrived in South Africa with the Indian squad to participate in the 2003 Cricket World Cup in the capacity of first-choice keeper-batsman as part of their seven batsmen-four bowlers strategy – an experiment that had brought success to the team in the past year. The idea was that making Dravid keep wickets allowed India to accommodate an extra specialist batsman. The strategy worked out well for India in the World Cup. India recovered from a less than convincing victory against minnows Netherlands and a loss to Australia in the league stage and embarked on a dream run winning eight consecutive matches to qualify for the World Cup Finals for the first time since 1983. India eventually lost the Final to Australia ending as runner-up in the tournament. Dravid contributed to India's campaign with 318 runs at an average of 63.60 and 16 dismissals (15 catches, 1 stumping). Highlights for Dravid in the tournament included a fifty against England, 44 not out against Pakistan in a successful chase and an unbeaten fifty in another successful chase against New Zealand.
Dravid topped the international runs chart for 2003/04 cricket season across formats aggregating 1993 runs from 31 matches at an average of 64.29 including three double hundreds. First of those came against New Zealand in the first of the two-test home series at Ahmedabad. Dravid scored 222 runs in the first innings and 73 runs in the second innings receiving a man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid captained Indian Test Team for the first time in the second game of the series at Mohali in the absence of Ganguly. Both the matches ended in a draw. Dravid top scored in the series with 313 runs at an average of 78.25. India next participated in TVS cup alongside New Zealand and Australia. India lost to Australia in the Final. Dravid scored two fifties in the series but the highlight was his fifty against New Zealand in the ninth match that came in just 22 balls – second fastest fifty by an Indian.
An Eden encore
After earning a draw in the first of the four-match Test series in Australia, Indians found themselves reeling at 85/4 in the Second Test at Adelaide after Australia had piled 556 runs in the first innings when Laxman joined Dravid in the middle. They batted for 93.5 overs bringing about their second 300-run partnership adding 303 runs together before Laxman perished for 148 runs. However, Dravid continued to complete his second double hundred of the season. He was the last man out for 233 runs as India conceded a marginal first innings lead of 33 runs to Australia. India bowled Australia out for paltry score of 196 riding on Agarkar's six-wicket haul, and were set a target of 230 runs to win the match. Dravid helped India tread through a tricky chase with an unbeaten fifty as India registered their first test victory in Australia since 1980/81 to go up 1–0 in the series. This was the first time that Australians were 0-1 down in a home series since 1994. Dravid won the man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid registered a score of ninety each in the next two tests as Australia leveled the series 1–1. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 619 runs at an average of 123.80 and was awarded player of the series for his efforts.
Dravid did moderately well in the ensuing VB series with three fifties in the league stage, all of which came in winning cause. However, India lost the best-of-three finals to Australia 2–0. Dravid was fined half his match fee for applying cough lozenge on the ball during a match in the series against Zimbabwe – an act that was claimed to be an innocent mistake by coach John Wright.
India visited Pakistan in March 2004 to participate in a bilateral Test series for the first time since 1989/90. Prior to the Test series, India participated and won the 5-match ODI series 3–2. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 248 runs at an average of 62.00 and a strike rate of 73.59. Dravid scored 99 runs in the First ODI helping India post an imposing total of 349. He also took the important catch of threatening Inzamam-ul-Haq, who was batting on 122, as India went on to win the match by five runs. When Indians were trailing in the series 1–2, Dravid helped India level the series with an unbeaten fifty during a successful chase in the Fourth ODI.
Captaincy
Dravid captained India in the first two tests in the absence of injured Ganguly and led India to their first-ever Test victory in Pakistan. Dravid, standing in only his second test as team's captain, took a bold and controversial decision during First Test at Multan that divided the cricket fraternity. Pakistani cricketers had been on field for 150+ overs as India posted a total in excess of 600 runs in the first innings. Dravid, who wanted to have a crack at the tired Pakistani batsmen in the final hour of second day's play, declared Indian innings with Tendulkar batting at 194, just six runs short of his double century. While some praised the team before personal milestones approach of the Indian captain, most criticized Dravid's timing of declaration as there were no pressing concerns and there was ample time left in the match to try and bowl Pakistan out twice. While Tendulkar was admittedly disappointed, any rumours of rift between him and Dravid were quashed by both the cricketers and the team management, who claimed that the matter had been discussed and sorted amicably behind closed doors. India eventually went on to win the match by innings margin. Pakistan leveled the series beating India in the Second Test. Dravid slammed a double hundred in the Third Test at Rawalpindi – his third double hundred of the season. He scored 270 runs – his career best performance – before getting out to reverse sweep trying to force the pace. India went on to win the match and the series – their first series victory outside India since 1993. Dravid was adjudged man of the match for his effort.
Dravid was appointed the captain for the Indian team for 2007 World Cup, where India had an unsuccessful campaign.
During India's unsuccessful tour of England in 2011, in which their 4–0 loss cost them the top rank in Test cricket, Dravid made three centuries.
2011 Tour of England
Having regained his form on the tour to West Indies, where he scored a match-winning hundred in Sabina park, Jamaica, Dravid then toured England in what was billed as the series which would decide the World No. 1 ranking in tests.
In the first test at Lord's, in reply to England's 474, Dravid scored an unbeaten 103, his first hundred at the ground where he debuted in 1996. He received scant support from his teammates as India were bowled out for 286 and lost the test. The 2nd test at Trentbridge, Nottingham again saw Dravid in brilliant form. Sent out to open the batting in place of an injured Gautam Gambhir, he scored his second successive hundred. His 117 though, again came in a losing cause, as a collapse of 6 wickets for 21 runs in the first innings led to a massive defeat by 319 runs. Dravid failed in both innings in the third test at Birmingham, as India lost by an innings and 242 runs, one of the heaviest defeats in their history. However, he came back brilliantly in the fourth and final match at The Oval. Again opening the batting in place of Gambhir, he scored an unbeaten 146 out of India's total of 300, carrying his bat through the innings. Once again, though, his efforts were in vain as India lost the match, completing a 0–4 whitewash.
In all, he scored 461 runs in the four matches at an average of 76.83 with three hundreds. He accounted for over 26% of India's runs in the series and was named India's man of the series by England coach Andy Flower. His performance in the series was met with widespread admiration and was hailed by some as one of his finest ever series
Retirement
Rahul Dravid was dropped from the ODI team in 2009, but was selected again for an ODI series in England in 2011, surprising even Dravid himself since, although he had not officially retired from ODI cricket, he had not expected to be recalled. After being selected, he announced that he would retire from ODI cricket after the series. He played his last ODI innings against England at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, on 16 September 2011, scoring 69 runs from 79 balls before being bowled by Graeme Swann. His last limited-overs international match was his debut T20I match; he announced his retirement before playing his first T20I match.
Dravid announced his retirement from Test and domestic cricket on 9 March 2012, after the 2011–12 tour of Australia, but he said that he would captain the Rajasthan Royals in the 2012 Indian Premier League. He was the second-highest run scorer and had taken the highest number of catches in Test cricket at the time of his retirement.
In July 2014, he played for the MCC side in the Bicentenary Celebration match at Lord's.
Coaching
Towards the end of his playing career, Dravid took on a role as mentor of the Rajasthan Royals IPL team, officially taking over in 2014. During this time, he also became involved with the Indian national team, serving as mentor for the team's tour of England in 2014. After leading the Royals to a third-place finish in the 2015 IPL season, he was appointed as the head coach of the India U-19 and India A teams. Dravid achieved immense success as coach, with the U-19s reaching the finals of the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Two years later, the team went on to win the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup, beating Australia by 8 wickets to win their fourth Under-19 World Cup, the most by any national side. Dravid was credited with bringing up future national team players including Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan and Washington Sundar. Alongside his coaching roles, Dravid took on several mentor roles, including at the Delhi Daredevils IPL team.
In July 2019, following his four-year stint as coach of the junior teams, Dravid was appointed Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA). He was in charge of "overseeing all cricket related activities at NCA was involved in mentoring, coaching, training and motivating players, coaches and support staff at the NCA". As head of NCA, he was widely praised for developing a steady supply of talent to the senior team and revamping player fitness and rehabilitation regiments.
In November 2021, he was appointed as head coach of the Indian national cricket team.
County stint
Dravid had always been keen on further honing his batting skills in testing English conditions by playing in county cricket. He had discussed about the prospects regarding the same with John Wright, the former New Zealand cricketer and incumbent Kent coach, during India's 1998–99 tour of New Zealand. Wright was particularly impressed with Dravid's performance on that tour, especially his twin hundreds at Hamilton. The talks finally materialized and Dravid made his county debut for Kent in April 2000. His co-debutante Ganguly made his county debuted in the same match, albeit for the opposite team.
Kent offer had come as a welcome change for Dravid. There was too much negativity surrounding Indian cricket marred by match fixing controversy. Dravid himself had been struggling to score runs in Tests for quite some time now. The county stint gave him a chance to "get away to a new environment" and "relax". The wide variety of pitches and weather conditions in England and a full season of intense county cricket against professional cricketers gave him a chance to further his cricketing education and learn things about his game.
Dravid made the most of this opportunity. In his 2nd game for Kent, Dravid scored a fluid 182 propelling them to an innings and 163 runs victory over the touring Zimbabwe side. Out of 7 first class tour games that Zimbabwe played on that tour, Kent was the only team that managed to beat them. Dravid hit another fifty in a draw against Surrey. The newly appointed vice-captain had to leave the county championship temporarily, missing two championship games and two one day games, to fulfill his national commitment. Indian team, Dravid included, fared poorly in the Asia cup and failed to qualify for the Final. Subsequently, Dravid returned to England to resume his county sojourn with Kent.
In July 2000, Kent's away match against Hampshire at Portsmouth was billed as a showdown between two great cricketers- Warne and Dravid. Dravid came out on top. On a dustbowl, tailor-made to suit home team spinners, Warne took 4 wickets but could not take the all important wicket of Dravid. Coming in to bat at 15/2, Dravid faced 295 balls scoring 137 runs – his maiden hundred in county championships. Dravid scored 73 not out in the 2nd innings guiding Kent to a six wicket victory as Warne went wicketless.
In their last county game of the season, Kent needed one bonus point to prevent themselves from being relegated to the Second Division. Dravid made sure they stay put in the First Division by fetching that one bonus point with an inning of 77 runs.
Dravid concluded a successful stint with Kent aggregating 1221 runs from 16 first class matches(15 county games and 1 tour game against Zimbabwe) at an average of 55.50 including 2 hundreds and 8 fifties. He shouldered Kent's batting single-handedly as the second best Kent batsman during the same period, Paul Nixon, scored just 567 runs at an average of 33.35 in 17 matches. Dravid contributed to Kent's county campaign not just with the bat but also with his fielding and bowling taking 14 catches and 4 wickets at an average of 32.00.
Indian Premier League and Champions League
Rahul Dravid played for Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2008, 2009 and 2010. Later he played for Rajasthan Royals and led it to finals of Champions League T20 in 2013, and play-offs of Indian Premier League in 2013. Dravid announced retirement from Twenty20 after playing the 2013 Champions League Twenty20 in September–October 2013.
Playing style
Dravid was known for his technique, and has been one of the best batsmen for the Indian cricket team. In the beginning, he was known as a defensive batsman who should be confined to Test cricket, and was dropped from the ODI squad due to a low strike rate. However, he later scored consistently in ODIs as well, earning him the ICC Player of the Year award. His nickname of 'The Wall' in Reebok advertisements is now used as his nickname. Dravid has scored 36 centuries in Test cricket, with an average of 52.31; this included five double centuries. In one-dayers, he averaged 39.16, with a strike rate of 71.23. He is one of the few Indians whose Test average is better at away than at home, averaging almost five runs more on foreign pitches. As of 23 September 2010, Dravid's Test average in abroad is 55.53, and his Test average at home is 50.76; his ODI average abroad is 37.93 and his ODI average at home is 43.11. Dravid averages 66.34 runs in Indian Test victories. and 50.69 runs in ODIs.
Dravid's sole Test wicket was of Ridley Jacobs in the fourth Test match against the West Indies during the 2001–2002 series. While he has no pretensions to being a bowler, Dravid often kept wicket for India in ODIs.
Dravid was involved in two of the largest partnerships in ODIs: a 318-run partnership with Sourav Ganguly, the first pair to combine for a 300-run partnership, and then a 331-run partnership with Sachin Tendulkar, which is a world record. He also holds the record for the greatest number of innings played since debut before being dismissed for a duck. His highest scores in ODIs and Tests are 153 and 270 respectively.
He was named one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 2000. Though primarily a defensive batsman, Dravid scored 50 runs not out in 22 balls (a strike rate of 227.27) against New Zealand in Hyderabad on 15 November 2003, the second fastest 50 among Indian batsmen. Only Ajit Agarkar's 67 runs off 21 balls is faster than that of Dravid.
In 2004, Dravid was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India. On 7 September 2004, he was awarded the inaugural Player of the year award and the Test player of the year award by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
After reaching 10,000 Test runs milestone, he said, "It's a proud moment for sure. For me, growing up, I dreamt of playing for India. When I look back, I probably exceeded my expectations with what I have done over the last 10 to 12 years. I never had an ambition to do it because I never believed – it is just a reflection of my longevity in the game."
Dravid is also one of the two batsmen to score 10,000 runs at a single batting position and is the fourth highest run scorer in Test cricket, behind Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis.
Controversies
Ball-tampering incident
In January 2004, Dravid was found guilty of ball tampering during an ODI with Zimbabwe. Match referee Clive Lloyd adjudged the application of an energy sweet to the ball as a deliberate offence, although Dravid himself denied this was his intent. Lloyd emphasised that television footage caught Dravid putting a lozenge on the ball during the Zimbabwean innings on Tuesday night at the Gabba. According to the ICC's Code of Conduct, players are not allowed to apply substances to the ball other than sweat and saliva. Dravid was fined half of his match fee.
Indian coach John Wright came out in defence of Dravid, stating that "It was an innocent mistake". Wright argued that Dravid had been trying to apply saliva to the ball when parts of a losenge he had been chewing stuck to the ball; Dravid then tried to wipe it off. ICC regulations prevented Dravid from commenting about the issue, but former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly also stated that Dravid's act was "just an accident".
Captaincy
Rahul Dravid has had a mixed record when leading India in Tests.
One of Dravid's most debated decisions was taken in March 2004, when he was standing in as the captain for injured Sourav Ganguly. India's first innings was declared at a point when Sachin Tendulkar was at 194 runs not out with 16 overs remaining on Day 2. In this test match Sehwag scored triple century first time. He became the first Indian to score triple century in test with a score of 309.
In March 2006, India lost the Mumbai Test, giving England its first Test victory in India since 1985, enabling it to draw the series 1–1. The defeat in Mumbai was arguably the result of Dravid's decision to bowl first on a flat dry pitch, which later deteriorated and ended with an Indian collapse in the run chase. Coincidentally, it was Dravid's 100th test match in which the Indians were all out for 100 runs in the second innings.
After India failed to qualify for the final of the DLF Cup, Dravid, the skipper, was criticised by former all-rounder Ravi Shastri who said that he was not assertive enough and let Greg Chappell make too many decisions. When asked for a response, Dravid said that Shastri, while a 'fair critic', was 'not privy' to the internal decision-making process of the team.
He was criticised by Vijay Mallya for not picking the team with right balance after his then IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore finished seventh out of the eight teams that participated in the 2008 season.
Achievements and awards
National honours
1998 – Arjuna Award recipient for achievements in cricket
2004 – Padma Shri – India's fourth highest civilian award
2013 – Padma Bhushan – India's third highest civilian award
Other honours
1999 – CEAT International Cricketer of the World Cup
2000 – Dravid was one of the five cricketers selected as Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
2004 – ICC Cricketer of the year – Highest award in the ICC listings
2004 – ICC Test Player of The Year, ICC Cricketer of The Year
2004 – MTV Youth Icon of the Year
2006 – Captain of the ICC's Test Team
2011 – NDTV Indian of the Year's Lifetime Achievement Award with Dev Anand
2012 – Don Bradman Award with Glenn McGrath
2015 – Wisden India's Highest Impact Test Batsman
2018 – ICC Hall of Fame
Personal life
Family
On 4 May 2003 he married Vijeta Pendharkar, a surgeon from Nagpur. Vijeta Pendharkar is also from Deshastha Brahmin community as Dravid. They have two children: Samit, born in 2005, and Anvay, born in 2009. Dravid is fluent in Marathi, Hindi, Kannada and English.
Commercial endorsements
Rahul Dravid has been sponsored by several brands throughout his career including Reebok (1996 – present), Pepsi (1997 present), Kissan (Unknown), Castrol (2001 – present), Hutch
(2003), Karnataka Tourism (2004), Max Life (2005 – present), Bank of Baroda (2005 – present), Citizen (2006 – present), Skyline Construction (2006 – present), Sansui (2007), Gillette (2007 – present), Samsung (2002 – 2004), World Trade Center Noida (2013– present),
CRED (2021-present).
Social commitments
Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA)
UNICEF Supporter and AIDS Awareness Campaign
Biographies
Books
Two biographies have been written on Rahul Dravid and his career:
Rahul Dravid – A Biography written by Vedam Jaishankar (). Publisher: UBSPD Publications. Date: January 2004
The Nice Guy Who Finished First written by Devendra Prabhudesai. Publisher: Rupa Publications. Date: November 2005
A collection of articles, testimonials and interviews related to Dravid was released by ESPNcricinfo following his retirement. The book was titled Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel.
See also
Sachin Tendulkar
Sourav Ganguly
VVS Laxman
Virendra Sehwag
References
External links
Indian cricketers
India Test cricketers
India One Day International cricketers
India Twenty20 International cricketers
India Test cricket captains
Wisden Cricketers of the Year
Karnataka cricketers
South Zone cricketers
Kent cricketers
Scotland cricketers
ACC Asian XI One Day International cricketers
ICC World XI One Day International cricketers
World XI Test cricketers
Royal Challengers Bangalore cricketers
Canterbury cricketers
Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers
Rajasthan Royals cricketers
India Blue cricketers
Cricketers at the 1999 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2003 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2007 Cricket World Cup
Recipients of the Padma Shri in sports
1973 births
Living people
Cricketers from Indore
Cricketers from Bangalore
Recipients of the Arjuna Award
International Cricket Council Cricketer of the Year
Marathi people
Indian cricket coaches
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in sports
Indian cricket commentators
Wicket-keepers
| false |
[
"\"Golden Slippers\" is a spiritual popularized in the years following the American Civil War by the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The song is also known by its opening line, \"What Kind of Shoes You Gwine (Going) To Wear\". The song became the basis for a minstrel show parody song, \"Oh, Dem Golden Slippers\", which itself became an American musical standard. The parody song is also frequently referred to as \"Golden Slippers\".\n\nSong \nAs presented in its earliest recordings, \"Golden Slippers\" is a stirring and proud song, considerably different than its rather jaunty parody. In it, the lead singer asks the choir what kind of finery they will wear in going to join the Heavenly choir. The lyrics for the first stanza are:\n\nWhat kind of shoes you goin’ to wear? / \nGolden slippers! / \nWhat kind of shoes you goin’ to wear? / \nGolden slippers!\n\nGolden slippers I’m bound to wear, / \nTo outshine the glittering sun. / \nOh, yes, yes, yes my Lord, / \nI’m going to join the Heavenly choir. / \nYes, yes, yes my Lord, / \nSoldier of the cross.\n\nAlthough there are variations between existing recordings, subsequent stanzas involve a \"long white robe\" (as in \"Oh, Dem Golden Slippers\"), a \"starry crown\", a \"new song\", and a \"golden harp\".\n\nOver the first half of the twentieth century, various recordings of the song as \"Golden Slippers\" were made by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the Golden Echo Quartet, the Tuskegee Institute (University) Singers, Wood's Famous Blind Jubilee Singers & Cotton Belt Quartet, and the Wiseman Quartet.\n\nAs \"What Kind Of Shoes You Gwine To Wear\", the song was recorded in the late 1920s with a considerably different up-tempo melody and playful arrangement by William Rexroat and his Cedar Crest Singers. As the chorus sings each of the questions and responses, the lead singer interjects a smart-aleck answer before joining with them. (An example: \"I'm goin' to wear my old work shoes!\" to \"What kind of shoes you gwine to wear, golden shoes\".)\n\nA performance of this latter arrangement appeared on the 1973 folk album \"Lonesome Robin\" by Bob Coltman, as \"What Kind of Shoes\".\n\nReferences \n\nAfrican-American cultural history\nAmerican folk songs\nAfrican-American spiritual songs",
"Del Allison Hall (born May 7, 1949) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey left wing.\n\nHall started his professional career with the California Golden Seals of the National Hockey League (NHL) in the 1971–72 NHL season, but played only nine games in the NHL over four seasons, spending the majority of those years with the organization's minor league farm teams in the IHL, WHL and CHL.\n\nHall moved to the rival World Hockey Association (WHA) for the 1975–76 WHA season, recording two extremely productive offensive seasons with the Phoenix Roadrunners. He started the 1977–78 WHA season with the Cincinnati Stingers, playing 25 games before being traded to the Edmonton Oilers mid-season, where he played one more game before retiring.\n\nCareer statistics\n\nRegular season and playoffs\n\nExternal links \n\n1949 births\nLiving people\nCalifornia Golden Seals players\nCanadian ice hockey left wingers\nCincinnati Stingers players\nColumbus Golden Seals players\nEdmonton Oilers (WHA) players\nIce hockey people from Ontario\nPhoenix Roadrunners (WHA) players\nSalt Lake Golden Eagles (CHL) players\nSalt Lake Golden Eagles (WHL) players\nSportspeople from Peterborough, Ontario\nUndrafted National Hockey League players"
] |
[
"Rahul Dravid",
"Golden years",
"What started his golden years",
"As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain,"
] |
C_52e2fff8b563440da632c6c90324029a_1
|
Who was helping him
| 2 |
Who was helping Rahul Dravid?
|
Rahul Dravid
|
As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain, Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal. Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid played his part scoring 157 runs in 4 matches at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe opening the innings before getting injured while fielding at slips forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament. India started off the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk inning of 49 ball 41 runs, including 5 fours and a six, chasing a target of 63 runs. However, Dravid's poor patch truly ended in the next Test series against Zimbabwe, which was also the first series for John Wright as the new Indian coach. Wright was instrumental in Dravid's association with Kent earlier this year. Dravid returned the favour by recommending his name to the BCCI for the post of national team coach. By now, Dravid had played 8 Tests since his last hundred against New Zealand at Mohali scoring just 350 runs at a paltry average of 23.33 without a single fifty plus inning. The Indian vice-captain ended the run drought and welcomed the new Indian coach with a double hundred - Dravid's first. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second inning guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 - highest batting average by an Indian in a Test series. Dravid scored just a solitary fifty in the second of the five match bilateral ODI series between India and Zimbabwe. However, the series proved to be a milestone in Dravid's career. Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the 5th match of the series as the regular captain Ganguly had to sit out due to one match suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39 run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain. CANNOTANSWER
|
Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal.
|
Rahul Sharad Dravid (; born 11 January 1973) is a former Indian cricketer and captain of the Indian national team, currently serving as its head coach. Prior to his appointment to the senior men's national team, Dravid was the Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), and the head coach of the India Under-19 and India A teams. Under his tutelage, the under-19 team finished runners up at the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup and won the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Known for his sound batting technique, Dravid scored 24,177 runs in international cricket and is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is colloquially known as Mr. Dependable and often referred to as The Wall.
Born in a Marathi family and raised in Bangalore, he started playing cricket at the age of 12 and later represented Karnataka at the under-15, under-17 and under-19 levels. Hailed as The Wall, Dravid was named one of the best five cricketers of the year by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 2000 and received the Player of the Year and the Test Player of the Year awards at the inaugural ICC awards ceremony in 2004. In December 2011, he became the first non-Australian cricketer to deliver the Bradman Oration in Canberra.
As of December 2016, Dravid is the fourth-highest run scorer in Test cricket, after Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis. In 2004, after completing his century against Bangladesh in Chittagong, he became the first player to score a century in all the ten Test-playing countries. As of October 2012, he holds the record for the most catches taken by a player (non-wicket-keeper) in Test cricket, with 210. Dravid holds a unique record of never getting out for a Golden duck in the 286 Test innings which he has played. He has faced 31258 balls, which is the highest number of balls faced by any player in test cricket. He has also spent 44152 minutes at the crease, which is the highest time spent on crease by any player in test cricket. Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar are currently the highest scoring partnership in Test cricket history having scored 6920 runs combined when batting together for India.
In August 2011, after receiving a surprise recall in the ODI series against England, Dravid declared his retirement from ODIs as well as Twenty20 International (T20I), and in March 2012, he announced his retirement from international and first-class cricket. He appeared in the 2012 Indian Premier League as captain of the Rajasthan Royals.
Rahul Dravid, along with Glenn McGrath were honoured during the seventh annual Bradman Awards function in Sydney on 1 November 2012. Dravid has also been honoured with the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan award, India's fourth and third highest civilian awards respectively.
In 2014, Rahul Dravid joined the GoSports Foundation, Bangalore as a member of their board of advisors. In collaboration with GoSports Foundation he is mentoring India's future Olympians and Paralympians as part of the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme. Indian badminton player Prannoy Kumar, Para-swimmer Sharath Gayakwad and young Golfer S. Chikkarangappa was part of the initial group of athletes to be mentored by Rahul Dravid. In July 2018, Dravid became the fifth Indian cricketer to be inducted into ICC Hall of Fame.
Early life
Dravid was born in a Marathi-Speaking Brahmin family in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. His family later moved to Bangalore, Karnataka, where he was raised. His mother tongue is Marathi. Dravid's father Sharad Dravid worked for a company that makes jams and preserves, giving rise to the later nickname Jammy. His mother, Pushpa, was a professor of architecture at the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bangalore. Dravid has a younger brother named Vijay. He did his schooling at St. Joseph's Boys High School, Bangalore and earned a degree in commerce from St. Joseph's College of Commerce, Bangalore. He was selected to India's national cricket team while working towards an MBA at St Joseph's College of Business Administration. He is fluent in several languages: Marathi, Kannada, English and Hindi.
Formative years and domestic career
Dravid started playing cricket at the age of 12, and represented Karnataka at the under-15, the under-17 and the under-19 levels. Former cricketer Keki Tarapore first noticed Dravid's talent while coaching at a summer camp in the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Dravid scored a century for his school team. He also played as wicket-keeper.
Dravid made his Ranji Trophy debut in February 1991, while still attending college. Playing alongside future India teammates Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath against Maharashtra in Pune, he scored 82 runs in the match, which ended in a draw. He followed it up with a century against Bengal and three successive centuries after. However, Dravid's first full season was in 1991–92, when he scored two centuries and finished up with 380 runs at an average of 63.30, getting selected for the South Zone cricket team in the Duleep Trophy. Dravid's caught the national team selectors' eye with his good performances for India A in the home series against England A in 1994–95.
International career
Debut
Dravid, who had been knocking at the doors of Indian national cricket team for quite a while with his consistent performance in domestic cricket, received his first national call in October 1994, for the last two matches of the Wills World Series. However, he could not break into the playing eleven. He went back to the domestic circuit and kept knocking harder. So much so, that when the selectors announced the Indian team for the 1996 World Cup sans Dravid, an Indian daily newspaper carried a headline – "Rahul Dravid gets a raw deal". Dravid eventually made his international debut on 3 April 1996 in an ODI against Sri Lanka in the Singer Cup held in Singapore immediately after the 1996 World Cup, replacing Vinod Kambli. He wasn't particularly impressive with the bat, scoring just three runs before being dismissed by Muttiah Muralitharan, but took two catches in the match. He followed it up with another failure in the next game scoring just four runs before getting run out against Pakistan.
In contrast to his ODI debut, his Test debut was rather successful one. Dravid was selected for the Indian squad touring England on the backdrop of a consistent performance in domestic cricket for five years. Fine performances in the tour games including fifties against Gloucestershire and Leicestershire failed to earn him a place in the team for the First Test. He finally made his Test debut at Lord's on 20 June 1996 against England in the Second Test of the series at the expense of injured senior batsman Sanjay Manjrekar. Manjrekar, who was suffering from an ankle injury, was to undergo a fitness test on the morning of the Second Test. Dravid had already been informed that he would play if Manjrekar fails the test. As Manjrekar failed the fitness test, ten minutes before the toss, Sandeep Patil, the then Indian coach, went up to Dravid to inform him that he was indeed going to make his debut that day. Patil recalled years later:
Coming in to bat at no. 7, he forged important partnerships, first with another debutante Sourav Ganguly and then with Indian lower order, securing a vital first innings lead for his team. Dravid scored 95 runs before getting out to the bowling of Chris Lewis. He was just five runs short of a landmark debut hundred when he nicked a Lewis delivery to the keeper and walked even before umpire's decision. He also took his first catch in Test cricket in this match to dismiss Nasser Hussain off the bowling of Srinath. In the next tour game against British Universities, Dravid scored a hundred. He scored another fifty in the first innings of the Third Test. Dravid concluded a successful debut series with an impressive average of 62.33 from two Test matches.
1996–98: A tale of two formats
Dravid's early years in international cricket mirrored his international debut. He had contrasting fortunes in the long and the shorter format of the game. While he straightaway made a name for himself in Test cricket, he had to struggle quite a bit to make a mark in ODIs.
After a successful Test debut in England, Dravid played in the one-off Test against Australia in Delhi – his first Test in India. Batting at no. 6, he scored 40 runs in the first innings. Dravid batted at no. 3 position for the first time in the First Test of the three-match home series against South Africa in Ahmedabad in November 1996. He didn't do too well in the series scoring just 175 runs at a modest average of 29.16.
Two weeks later, India toured South Africa for a three–match Test series. Chasing a target of 395 runs in the First Test, Indian team bundled out meekly for 66 runs on the Durban pitch that provided excessive bounce and seam movement. Dravid, batting at no. 6, was the only Indian batsman who reached double figures in the innings scoring 27 not out. He was promoted to the no. 3 slot again in the second innings of the Second Test, a move that paid rich dividends in the ensuing Test. He almost won the Third Test for India with his maiden test hundred in the first innings scoring 148 runs and another 81 runs in the second innings at Wanderers before the thunderstorms, dim light and Cullinan's hundred saved the day for South Africa enabling them to draw the match. Dravid's performance in this Test earned him his first Man of the Match award in Test cricket. He top scored for India in the series with 277 runs at an average of 55.40.
Dravid continued in the same vein in the West Indies where he once again top scored for India in the five–match Test series aggregating 360 runs at an average of 72.00 including four fifties. 92 runs scored in the first innings of the fifth match in Georgetown earned him a joint Man of the Match award along with Shivnarine Chanderpaul. With this series, Dravid concluded a successful 1996/97 Test season, topping the international runs chart with 852 runs from 12 matches at an average of 50.11 with six fifties and one hundred.
Dravid continued his good run scoring seven fifties in the next eight Tests that included fifties in six consecutive innings (three each against Sri Lanka and Australia), becoming only the second Indian to do so after Gundappa Vishwanath. By the end of 1997/98 Test season, he had scored 15 fifties in 22 Tests which included four scores of nineties but just a solitary hundred.
The century drought came to an end in the 1998/99 Test season when he further raised the bar of his performance scoring 752 runs in seven Tests at an average of 62.66 that included four hundreds and one fifty and in the process topping the runs chart for India for the season. The first of those four hundreds came on the Zimbabwe tour. Dravid top scored in both the innings against Zimbabwe scoring 118 and 44 runs respectively however, India lost the one-off Test.
The Zimbabwe tour was followed by a tour to New Zealand. First Test having been abandoned without a ball being bowled, the series started for Dravid with the first duck of his Test career in the first innings of the Second Test and ended with hundreds in both the innings of the Third Test in Hamilton. He scored 190 and 103 not out in the first and the second innings respectively, becoming only the third Indian batsman, after Vijay Hazare and Sunil Gavaskar, to score a century in both innings of a Test match. Dravid topped the runs table for the series with 321 runs from two matches at an average of 107.00 but could not prevent India from losing the series 0–1.
Later that month, India played a two Test home series against Pakistan. Dravid didn't contribute much with the bat. India lost the First Test but won the Second Test in Delhi riding on Kumble's historic 10-wicket haul. Dravid played his part in the 10-wicket haul by taking a catch to dismiss Mushtaq Ahmed who was Kumble's eighth victim of the innings. The Indo-Pak Test series was followed by the 1998–99 Asian Test Championship. Dravid couldn't do much with the bat as India went on to lose the riot-affected First Test of the championship against Pakistan at the Eden Gardens. India went to Sri Lanka to play the Second Test of the championship. Dravid scored his fourth hundred of the season at Colombo in the first innings of the match. He also effected a brilliant run out of Russel Arnold during Sri Lankan innings fielding at short leg. On the fourth morning, Dravid got injured while fielding at the same position when the ball from Jayawardene's pull shot hit his face through the helmet grill. He didn't come out to bat in the second innings due to the injury. The match ended in a draw as India failed to qualify for the Finals of the championship.
In a stark contrast to his Test career, Dravid had to struggle a lot to make a mark in the ODIs. Between his ODI debut in April 1996 and the end of 1998 calendar year, Dravid regularly found himself in and out of the ODI team.
Dravid tasted first success of his ODI career in the 1996 'Friendship' Cup against Pakistan in the tough conditions of Toronto. He emerged as the highest scorer of the series with 220 runs in five matches at an average of 44.00 and a strike rate of 68.53. He won his first ODI Man of the Match award for the 46 runs scored in the low scoring third game of the series. He top scored for India in the Standard Bank International One-Day Series 1996/97 in South Africa with 280 runs from eight games at an average of 35.00 and a strike rate of 60.73, the highlight being a Man of the Match award-winning performance (84 runs, one catch) in the Final of the series that came in a losing cause. He was the second highest run scorer for India in the four-match bilateral ODI series in the West Indies in 1996/97 with 121 runs at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 57.61. Dravid's maiden ODI hundred came in a losing cause in the 1997 Pepsi Independence Cup against Pakistan in Chennai. Dravid top scored for India in the quadrangular event with 189 runs from three games at an average of 94.50 and a strike rate of 75.60 however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the series.
However, Dravid's achievements in the ODIs were dwarfed by his failures in the shorter format of the game. 14 runs from two games in the 1996 Pepsi Sharjah Cup; 20 runs from two innings in the Singer World Series; 65 runs from four innings in the 1997 'Friendship' Cup; 88 runs from four games in the 1998 Coca-Cola Triangular Series including a 22-ball five runs and a 21-ball one run innings, both coming against Bangladesh; 32 runs from four games in the 1998 'Friendship' Cup; a slew of such poor performances often forced him to the sidelines of the India ODI squad. By the end of 1998, Dravid had scored 1709 runs in 65 ODIs at a humble average of 31.64 with a poor strike rate of 63.48.
By now, Dravid had been branded as a Test specialist. While he continued to score heavily in Test cricket, his poor strike rate in ODIs came under scanner. He drew criticism for not being able to adjust his style of play to the needs of ODI cricket, his lack of attacking capability and play big strokes. However, Dravid worked hard and re-tooled his game by increasing his range of strokes and adapting his batting style to suit the requirements of ODI cricket. He learned to pace his innings cleverly without going for the slogs.
Dravid's ODI renaissance began during the 1998/99 New Zealand tour. He scored a run-a-ball hundred in the first match of the bilateral ODI series that earned him his third Man of the Match award in ODIs. The hundred came in a losing cause. However, his effort of 51 runs from 71 balls in the Fourth ODI came in India's victory and earned him his second Man of the Match award of the series. He ended as the top scorer of the series with 309 runs from five games at an average of 77.25 and a strike rate of 84.65. Dravid scored a hundred against Sri Lanka in 1998/99 Pepsi Cup at Nagpur adding a record 236 runs for the 2nd wicket with Ganguly, who also scored a hundred in the match. Uncharacteristically, Dravid was the faster of the two scoring 116 of 118 deliveries. In the next match against Pakistan, he bowled four overs and took the wicket of Saeed Anwar, out caught behind by wicket-keeper Nayan Mongia. This was his first wicket in international cricket.
Dravid warmed up for his debut World Cup with two fifties in the 1998–99 Coca-Cola Cup in Sharjah, one each against England and Pakistan. Standing-in as the substitute wicket-keeper in the third match of the series for Nayan Mongia, who got injured during keeping, Dravid effected two dismissals. He first stumped Graeme Hick off Sunil Joshi's bowling, who became Dravid's first victim as a wicket-keeper, and then caught Neil Fairbrother off Ajay Jadeja's bowling. He top scored for India in the tournament, though his last ODI innings before the World Cup was a golden duck against Pakistan, in the Final of the series.
Debut World Cup success
Dravid announced his form in England hitting consecutive fifties against Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire in the warm-up games.
He made his World Cup debut against South Africa at Hove striking a half century, but scored just 13 in the next game against Zimbabwe. India lost both the games. Having lost the first two games, India needed to win the remaining three games of the first round to have any chance of advancing into the Super Six stage. Dravid put up a partnership of 237 runs with Sachin Tendulkar against Kenya at Bristol – a World Cup record – and in the process hit his maiden World Cup hundred, helping India to a 94-run victory. India's designated keeper Mongia left the field at the end of 9th over during Kenyan innings, forcing Dravid to keep the wickets for the rest of the innings. In the absence of injured Nayan Mongia, Dravid played his first ODI as a designated keeper against Sri Lanka at Taunton. Dravid once again staged a record breaking partnership worth 318 runs – the first ever three hundred run partnership in ODI history – but this time with Sourav Ganguly, guiding India to a 157-run win. Dravid scored 145 runs from 129 balls with 17 fours and a six, becoming the second batsman in World Cup history to hit back-to-back hundreds. Dravid struck a fine fifty in the last group match as India defeated England to advance into the Super Six stage. Dravid scored 2, 61 & 29 in the three Super Six matches against Australia, Pakistan & New Zealand respectively. India failed to qualify for the semi-finals having lost to Australia and New Zealand but achieved a consolation victory against Pakistan in a tense game, what with the military conflict going on between the two countries in Kashmir at the same time. Dravid emerged as the top scorer of the tournament with 461 runs from 8 games at an average of 65.85 and a strike rate of 85.52.
Dravid's post-World Cup campaign started on a poor note with just 40 runs coming in 4 games of Aiwa Cup in August 1999. He soon came into his own, top-scoring for India in two consecutive limited-overs series – the Singapore Challenge, the highlight being a hundred in the Final coming in a lost cause, and the DMC Cup, the highlight being a match winning effort (77 runs, 4 catches) in the series decider for which he received man-of-the-match award. Dravid topped the international runs chart for 1999 cricket season across all formats scoring 782 runs from 19 matches. By now, Dravid had started to keep wickets on an infrequent basis with India fielding him as designated wicket-keeper in five out of 10 ODIs played in the three events.
Dravid kick-started his post World Cup Test season with a decent outing against New Zealand in the 3-match home series. His best effort of the series came in the second innings of the First test at Mohali scoring 144, helping India salvage a draw after being bowled out for 83 runs in the First innings. This was Dravid's sixth test hundred but his first test hundred on Indian soil. Dravid did well in the 3–2 series win against New Zealand in the bilateral ODI series, scoring 240 runs in 5 games at an average of 60 and a strike rate of 83.62, ending as the second highest scorer in the series. His career best effort in ODIs came in this series in the second game at Hyderabad where he scored run-a-ball 153 runs which included 15 fours and two sixes. He featured in a 331-run partnership with Tendulkar, which was the highest partnership in ODI cricket history, a record that stood for 15 years until it was broken in 2015. In 1999, Dravid scored 1761 runs in 43 ODIs at an average of 46.34 and a strike rate of 75.16 including 6 hundreds and 8 fifties and featured in two 300+ partnerships.
India toured Australia in December 1999 for a 3-match test series and a triangular ODI tournament. Although Dravid scored a hundred against Tasmania in the practice match, he failed miserably with the bat in the Test series as India slumped to a 0–3 whitewash. He did reasonably well in the 1999–2000 Carlton & United Series scoring 3 fifties in the triangular event however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the tournament.
Dravid's poor form in Tests continued as India suffered a 0–2 whitewash against South Africa in a home series. He had moderate success in the bilateral ODI series against South Africa. He contributed to India's 3–2 series win with 208 runs at an average of 41.60 which included 2 fifties and three wickets at an average of 22.66 topping the bowling average chart for the series. His career best bowling figure of 2/43 from nine overs in the First ODI at Kochi, was also the best bowling figure by any bowler in that particular match.
Rise through the ranks
In February 2000, Tendulkar's resignation from captaincy led to the promotion of Ganguly, the vice-captain then, as the new captain of the Indian team. In May 2000, while Dravid was busy playing county cricket in England, he was appointed as the vice-captain of the Indian team announced for the Asia cup.
India did well in the 2000 ICC KnockOut Trophy. Indian team, coming out of the shadows of the infamous match fixing scandal, showed a lot of character under the new leadership of Ganguly and Dravid, beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid scored 157 runs in 4 matches of the tournament, at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid scored 85 runs in a match against Zimbabwe in the 2000–01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy while opening the innings but was forced to miss the rest of the tournament because of an injury.
India kick started the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk knock of 41 runs from 49 balls, including 5 fours and a six, while chasing a target of 63 runs. The ensuing test series against Zimbabwe was John Wright's first assignment as Indian coach. Dravid, who was instrumental in Wright's appointment as India's first foreign head coach, welcomed him with his maiden double hundred. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second, guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 – highest batting average by an Indian in a series across all formats.
Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the fifth match of the bilateral ODI series against Zimbabwe in the absence of Ganguly who was serving suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39-run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain.
History at Eden
The Australian team toured India in February 2001 for what was being billed as the Final Frontier for Steve Waugh's all conquering men, who were coming on the back of 15 consecutive Test wins. Dravid failed in the first innings of the First Test but displayed strong resilience in Tendulkar's company in the second innings. Dravid's 196 ball long resistance finally ended when he got out bowled to Warne for 39 runs. Australians extended their winning streak to 16 Tests as they beat India convincingly by 10 wickets inside three days.
The Australian juggernaut seemed unstoppable as they looked on course towards their 17th consecutive victory in the Second Test at the Eden Gardens, when they bowled India out for meagre 171 in the first innings and enforced a follow-on after securing a massive lead of 274 runs. In the second innings, Laxman, who had scored a fine fifty in the first innings, was promoted to no. 3 position which had been Dravid's usual spot for quite sometime now, while Dravid, who had gotten out bowled to Warne for second time in a row in the first innings for just 25 runs, was relegated to no. 6 position. When Dravid joined Laxman in the middle on the third day of the Test, with scoreboard reading 232/4 and India still needing 42 runs to avoid an innings defeat, another convincing win for Australia looked inevitable. Instead, two of them staged one of the greatest fightbacks in cricketing history.
Dravid and Laxman played out the remaining time on the third day and whole of the fourth day, denying Australia any wicket on Day 4. Dravid, angered by the flak that the Indian team had been receiving lately in the media coverage, celebrated his hundred in an uncharacteristic fashion brandishing his bat at the press box. Eventually, Laxman got out on the fifth morning bringing the 376-runs partnership to an end. Dravid soon perished getting run out for 180 while trying to force the pace. Ganguly declared the innings at 657/7, setting Australia a target of 384 runs with 75 overs left in the match. An inspired team India bowled superbly to dismiss Australia for 212 in 68.3 overs. India won the match by 171 runs. This was only the third instance of a team winning a Test after following-on and India became the 2nd team to do so.
Dravid scored 81 runs in the first innings of the Third Test and took 4 catches in the match as India defeated Australia at Chennai in a nail biting finish to clinch the series 2–1. Dravid scored 80 in the first of the 5-match ODI series at his home ground as India won the match by 60 runs. He didn't do too well in the remaining 4 ODIs as Australia won the series 3–2. Dravid topped the averages for the 2000/01 Test season with 839 runs from six matches at an average of 104.87.
Dravid had a decent outing in Zimbabwe, scoring 137 runs from 134 balls in the First Tour game and aggregating 138 runs at an average of 69.00 from the drawn Test series. In the ensuing triangular ODI series, he aggregated 121 runs from 5 matches at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 101.68, the highlight being an unbeaten 72 off 64 balls, while chasing a target of 235 against Zimbabwe in the 3rd match of the series, guiding India to a 4-wicket win with four balls to spare. He was adjudged man of the match for his match winning knock.
On the next tour to Sri Lanka, India lost the first three matches of the triangular event. In the absence of suspended Ganguly, Dravid captained the side in the 4th match leading them to their first victory of the series. India won the next two matches to qualify for the Final. Dravid played crucial innings in all the three victories. Eventually, India lost the Final to Sri Lanka. He top scored for India in the series with 259 runs from seven matches at an average of 51.80 and a strike rate of 59.81. Reinstated to his usual no. 3 position in the absence of injured Laxman, Dravid top scored for India in the ensuing 3-Test series as well with 235 runs at an average of 47.00. The highlight for Dravid was 75 runs scored in the tough fourth innings chase of the Second Test – a crucial contribution to India's first Test win in Sri Lanka since 1993 despite the absence of key players like Tendulkar, Laxman, Srinath and Kumble.
Dravid had decent success in Standard Bank tri-series on South Africa tour, scoring 214 runs (including 3 fifties) at an average of 53.50 and a strike rate of 71.81. He also kept wickets in the final two ODIs of the series effecting 3 stumpings. The highlight for Dravid in the ensuing Test series came in the second innings of the Second Test. India, having failed to last hundred overs in any of the previous three innings in the series, needed to bat out four sessions in the Second Test to save the match. They started on a poor note losing their first wicket in the first over with no runs on the scoreboard. However, Dravid forged an important partnership of 171 runs with Dasgupta that lasted for 83.2 overs taking India to the brink of safety. Poor weather helped India salvage a draw as only 96.2 overs could be bowled in the innings. Dravid captained the team in the 'unofficial' Third test in the absence of injured Ganguly, which India lost by an innings margin.
By the end of the South African tour, Dravid had started experiencing problem in his right shoulder. Although he played the ensuing home test series against England, he pulled out of the six-match bilateral ODI series to undergo shoulder rehabilitation program in South Africa. He returned for the Zimbabwe's tour of India but performed below par, scoring a fifty each in the Test series and the bilateral ODI series.
2002–2006: Peak years
Dravid hit the peak form of his career in 2002. Between Season 2002 and Season 2006, Dravid was the second highest scorer overall and top scorer for India across formats, scoring 8,914 runs from 174 matches at an average of 54.02, including 19 hundreds.
Dravid had a decent outing in West Indies in 2002. The highlights for him included – hitting a hundred with a swollen jaw and helping India avoid the follow-on in the process at Georgetown in the drawn First Test; contributing with a fifty and four catches to India's victory in the Second Test at Port of Spain – India's first Test victory in West Indies since 1975–76; and another fifty in the drawn Fourth Test with a wicket to boot – that of Ridley Jacobs who was batting on 118. This was Dravid's only wicket in Test cricket. He played as India's designated keeper in the ODI series but didn't contribute much with the bat in the 2–1 series win.
A quartet of hundreds
India's tour of England in 2002 started with a triangular ODI event involving India, England and Sri Lanka. India emerged as the winners of the series beating England in the Final – their first victory after nine consecutive defeats in one-day finals. Dravid played as designated keeper in six out of seven matches effecting nine dismissals (6 catches, 3 stumpings) – most by a keeper in the series. He also did well with the bat aggregating 245 runs at an average of 49.00 including three fifties. His performance against Sri Lanka in fourth ODI (64 runs, 1 catch) earned him a man of the match award.
India lost the first of the four match Test series. Having conceded a 260 runs lead in the first innings of the Second Test at Nottingham, Indians were in a spot of bother. However, Dravid led the fightback in the second innings with a hundred as Indians managed to earn a draw.
Ganguly won the toss in the Third Test and took a bold decision to bat first on a gloomy overcast morning at Headingley on a pitch known to be traditionally conducive for fast and swing bowling. Having lost an early wicket, Dravid weathered the storm in company of Sanjay Bangar. They played cautiously, taking body blows on a pitch with uneven bounce. Dravid completed his second hundred of the series in the process. As the conditions became more and more conducive for batting, the Indian batsmen piled on England's misery. Indians declared the innings on 628/8 and then bowled England out twice to register their first test victory in England since 1986. Despite being outscored by Tendulkar, Dravid was awarded man of the match for his efforts. Dravid scored a double hundred in the drawn Fourth Test to notch up his second consecutive man of the match award of the series. Christopher Martin-Jenkins noted during the Fourth Test: Dravid aggregated 602 runs in the series from four matches at an average of 100.33, including three hundreds and a fifty and was adjudged joint man of the series along with Michael Vaughan.
India jointly shared the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka. Dravid contributed to India's successful campaign with 120 runs at an average of 60.00 and five dismissals behind the wicket. Dravid scored a hundred in the First Test of the three match home series against West Indies becoming the first Indian batsman to score hundreds in four consecutive Test innings but had to retire soon after owing to severe cramps. Dravid did well in the subsequent bilateral 7-match ODI series aggregating 300 runs at an average of 75.00 and a strike rate of 89.82 including one hundred and two fifties. He also effected 7 dismissals (6 catches, 1 stumping) in the series. India trailing 1–2, needed 325 runs to win the Fourth ODI and level the series. Dravid scored a hundred leading India to a successful chase. He once again scored a crucial fifty in the Sixth ODI as India once again leveled the series after trailing 2–3. India, however, lost the last match to lose the series 3–4.
Dravid top scored for India in the two-match Test series in New Zealand as India slumped to a whitewash. He played as designated keeper in six of the 7-match bilateral ODI series and effected seven dismissals but fared poorly with the bat as India were handed a 2-5 drubbing by the New Zealand.
2003 Cricket World Cup
Dravid arrived in South Africa with the Indian squad to participate in the 2003 Cricket World Cup in the capacity of first-choice keeper-batsman as part of their seven batsmen-four bowlers strategy – an experiment that had brought success to the team in the past year. The idea was that making Dravid keep wickets allowed India to accommodate an extra specialist batsman. The strategy worked out well for India in the World Cup. India recovered from a less than convincing victory against minnows Netherlands and a loss to Australia in the league stage and embarked on a dream run winning eight consecutive matches to qualify for the World Cup Finals for the first time since 1983. India eventually lost the Final to Australia ending as runner-up in the tournament. Dravid contributed to India's campaign with 318 runs at an average of 63.60 and 16 dismissals (15 catches, 1 stumping). Highlights for Dravid in the tournament included a fifty against England, 44 not out against Pakistan in a successful chase and an unbeaten fifty in another successful chase against New Zealand.
Dravid topped the international runs chart for 2003/04 cricket season across formats aggregating 1993 runs from 31 matches at an average of 64.29 including three double hundreds. First of those came against New Zealand in the first of the two-test home series at Ahmedabad. Dravid scored 222 runs in the first innings and 73 runs in the second innings receiving a man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid captained Indian Test Team for the first time in the second game of the series at Mohali in the absence of Ganguly. Both the matches ended in a draw. Dravid top scored in the series with 313 runs at an average of 78.25. India next participated in TVS cup alongside New Zealand and Australia. India lost to Australia in the Final. Dravid scored two fifties in the series but the highlight was his fifty against New Zealand in the ninth match that came in just 22 balls – second fastest fifty by an Indian.
An Eden encore
After earning a draw in the first of the four-match Test series in Australia, Indians found themselves reeling at 85/4 in the Second Test at Adelaide after Australia had piled 556 runs in the first innings when Laxman joined Dravid in the middle. They batted for 93.5 overs bringing about their second 300-run partnership adding 303 runs together before Laxman perished for 148 runs. However, Dravid continued to complete his second double hundred of the season. He was the last man out for 233 runs as India conceded a marginal first innings lead of 33 runs to Australia. India bowled Australia out for paltry score of 196 riding on Agarkar's six-wicket haul, and were set a target of 230 runs to win the match. Dravid helped India tread through a tricky chase with an unbeaten fifty as India registered their first test victory in Australia since 1980/81 to go up 1–0 in the series. This was the first time that Australians were 0-1 down in a home series since 1994. Dravid won the man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid registered a score of ninety each in the next two tests as Australia leveled the series 1–1. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 619 runs at an average of 123.80 and was awarded player of the series for his efforts.
Dravid did moderately well in the ensuing VB series with three fifties in the league stage, all of which came in winning cause. However, India lost the best-of-three finals to Australia 2–0. Dravid was fined half his match fee for applying cough lozenge on the ball during a match in the series against Zimbabwe – an act that was claimed to be an innocent mistake by coach John Wright.
India visited Pakistan in March 2004 to participate in a bilateral Test series for the first time since 1989/90. Prior to the Test series, India participated and won the 5-match ODI series 3–2. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 248 runs at an average of 62.00 and a strike rate of 73.59. Dravid scored 99 runs in the First ODI helping India post an imposing total of 349. He also took the important catch of threatening Inzamam-ul-Haq, who was batting on 122, as India went on to win the match by five runs. When Indians were trailing in the series 1–2, Dravid helped India level the series with an unbeaten fifty during a successful chase in the Fourth ODI.
Captaincy
Dravid captained India in the first two tests in the absence of injured Ganguly and led India to their first-ever Test victory in Pakistan. Dravid, standing in only his second test as team's captain, took a bold and controversial decision during First Test at Multan that divided the cricket fraternity. Pakistani cricketers had been on field for 150+ overs as India posted a total in excess of 600 runs in the first innings. Dravid, who wanted to have a crack at the tired Pakistani batsmen in the final hour of second day's play, declared Indian innings with Tendulkar batting at 194, just six runs short of his double century. While some praised the team before personal milestones approach of the Indian captain, most criticized Dravid's timing of declaration as there were no pressing concerns and there was ample time left in the match to try and bowl Pakistan out twice. While Tendulkar was admittedly disappointed, any rumours of rift between him and Dravid were quashed by both the cricketers and the team management, who claimed that the matter had been discussed and sorted amicably behind closed doors. India eventually went on to win the match by innings margin. Pakistan leveled the series beating India in the Second Test. Dravid slammed a double hundred in the Third Test at Rawalpindi – his third double hundred of the season. He scored 270 runs – his career best performance – before getting out to reverse sweep trying to force the pace. India went on to win the match and the series – their first series victory outside India since 1993. Dravid was adjudged man of the match for his effort.
Dravid was appointed the captain for the Indian team for 2007 World Cup, where India had an unsuccessful campaign.
During India's unsuccessful tour of England in 2011, in which their 4–0 loss cost them the top rank in Test cricket, Dravid made three centuries.
2011 Tour of England
Having regained his form on the tour to West Indies, where he scored a match-winning hundred in Sabina park, Jamaica, Dravid then toured England in what was billed as the series which would decide the World No. 1 ranking in tests.
In the first test at Lord's, in reply to England's 474, Dravid scored an unbeaten 103, his first hundred at the ground where he debuted in 1996. He received scant support from his teammates as India were bowled out for 286 and lost the test. The 2nd test at Trentbridge, Nottingham again saw Dravid in brilliant form. Sent out to open the batting in place of an injured Gautam Gambhir, he scored his second successive hundred. His 117 though, again came in a losing cause, as a collapse of 6 wickets for 21 runs in the first innings led to a massive defeat by 319 runs. Dravid failed in both innings in the third test at Birmingham, as India lost by an innings and 242 runs, one of the heaviest defeats in their history. However, he came back brilliantly in the fourth and final match at The Oval. Again opening the batting in place of Gambhir, he scored an unbeaten 146 out of India's total of 300, carrying his bat through the innings. Once again, though, his efforts were in vain as India lost the match, completing a 0–4 whitewash.
In all, he scored 461 runs in the four matches at an average of 76.83 with three hundreds. He accounted for over 26% of India's runs in the series and was named India's man of the series by England coach Andy Flower. His performance in the series was met with widespread admiration and was hailed by some as one of his finest ever series
Retirement
Rahul Dravid was dropped from the ODI team in 2009, but was selected again for an ODI series in England in 2011, surprising even Dravid himself since, although he had not officially retired from ODI cricket, he had not expected to be recalled. After being selected, he announced that he would retire from ODI cricket after the series. He played his last ODI innings against England at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, on 16 September 2011, scoring 69 runs from 79 balls before being bowled by Graeme Swann. His last limited-overs international match was his debut T20I match; he announced his retirement before playing his first T20I match.
Dravid announced his retirement from Test and domestic cricket on 9 March 2012, after the 2011–12 tour of Australia, but he said that he would captain the Rajasthan Royals in the 2012 Indian Premier League. He was the second-highest run scorer and had taken the highest number of catches in Test cricket at the time of his retirement.
In July 2014, he played for the MCC side in the Bicentenary Celebration match at Lord's.
Coaching
Towards the end of his playing career, Dravid took on a role as mentor of the Rajasthan Royals IPL team, officially taking over in 2014. During this time, he also became involved with the Indian national team, serving as mentor for the team's tour of England in 2014. After leading the Royals to a third-place finish in the 2015 IPL season, he was appointed as the head coach of the India U-19 and India A teams. Dravid achieved immense success as coach, with the U-19s reaching the finals of the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Two years later, the team went on to win the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup, beating Australia by 8 wickets to win their fourth Under-19 World Cup, the most by any national side. Dravid was credited with bringing up future national team players including Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan and Washington Sundar. Alongside his coaching roles, Dravid took on several mentor roles, including at the Delhi Daredevils IPL team.
In July 2019, following his four-year stint as coach of the junior teams, Dravid was appointed Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA). He was in charge of "overseeing all cricket related activities at NCA was involved in mentoring, coaching, training and motivating players, coaches and support staff at the NCA". As head of NCA, he was widely praised for developing a steady supply of talent to the senior team and revamping player fitness and rehabilitation regiments.
In November 2021, he was appointed as head coach of the Indian national cricket team.
County stint
Dravid had always been keen on further honing his batting skills in testing English conditions by playing in county cricket. He had discussed about the prospects regarding the same with John Wright, the former New Zealand cricketer and incumbent Kent coach, during India's 1998–99 tour of New Zealand. Wright was particularly impressed with Dravid's performance on that tour, especially his twin hundreds at Hamilton. The talks finally materialized and Dravid made his county debut for Kent in April 2000. His co-debutante Ganguly made his county debuted in the same match, albeit for the opposite team.
Kent offer had come as a welcome change for Dravid. There was too much negativity surrounding Indian cricket marred by match fixing controversy. Dravid himself had been struggling to score runs in Tests for quite some time now. The county stint gave him a chance to "get away to a new environment" and "relax". The wide variety of pitches and weather conditions in England and a full season of intense county cricket against professional cricketers gave him a chance to further his cricketing education and learn things about his game.
Dravid made the most of this opportunity. In his 2nd game for Kent, Dravid scored a fluid 182 propelling them to an innings and 163 runs victory over the touring Zimbabwe side. Out of 7 first class tour games that Zimbabwe played on that tour, Kent was the only team that managed to beat them. Dravid hit another fifty in a draw against Surrey. The newly appointed vice-captain had to leave the county championship temporarily, missing two championship games and two one day games, to fulfill his national commitment. Indian team, Dravid included, fared poorly in the Asia cup and failed to qualify for the Final. Subsequently, Dravid returned to England to resume his county sojourn with Kent.
In July 2000, Kent's away match against Hampshire at Portsmouth was billed as a showdown between two great cricketers- Warne and Dravid. Dravid came out on top. On a dustbowl, tailor-made to suit home team spinners, Warne took 4 wickets but could not take the all important wicket of Dravid. Coming in to bat at 15/2, Dravid faced 295 balls scoring 137 runs – his maiden hundred in county championships. Dravid scored 73 not out in the 2nd innings guiding Kent to a six wicket victory as Warne went wicketless.
In their last county game of the season, Kent needed one bonus point to prevent themselves from being relegated to the Second Division. Dravid made sure they stay put in the First Division by fetching that one bonus point with an inning of 77 runs.
Dravid concluded a successful stint with Kent aggregating 1221 runs from 16 first class matches(15 county games and 1 tour game against Zimbabwe) at an average of 55.50 including 2 hundreds and 8 fifties. He shouldered Kent's batting single-handedly as the second best Kent batsman during the same period, Paul Nixon, scored just 567 runs at an average of 33.35 in 17 matches. Dravid contributed to Kent's county campaign not just with the bat but also with his fielding and bowling taking 14 catches and 4 wickets at an average of 32.00.
Indian Premier League and Champions League
Rahul Dravid played for Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2008, 2009 and 2010. Later he played for Rajasthan Royals and led it to finals of Champions League T20 in 2013, and play-offs of Indian Premier League in 2013. Dravid announced retirement from Twenty20 after playing the 2013 Champions League Twenty20 in September–October 2013.
Playing style
Dravid was known for his technique, and has been one of the best batsmen for the Indian cricket team. In the beginning, he was known as a defensive batsman who should be confined to Test cricket, and was dropped from the ODI squad due to a low strike rate. However, he later scored consistently in ODIs as well, earning him the ICC Player of the Year award. His nickname of 'The Wall' in Reebok advertisements is now used as his nickname. Dravid has scored 36 centuries in Test cricket, with an average of 52.31; this included five double centuries. In one-dayers, he averaged 39.16, with a strike rate of 71.23. He is one of the few Indians whose Test average is better at away than at home, averaging almost five runs more on foreign pitches. As of 23 September 2010, Dravid's Test average in abroad is 55.53, and his Test average at home is 50.76; his ODI average abroad is 37.93 and his ODI average at home is 43.11. Dravid averages 66.34 runs in Indian Test victories. and 50.69 runs in ODIs.
Dravid's sole Test wicket was of Ridley Jacobs in the fourth Test match against the West Indies during the 2001–2002 series. While he has no pretensions to being a bowler, Dravid often kept wicket for India in ODIs.
Dravid was involved in two of the largest partnerships in ODIs: a 318-run partnership with Sourav Ganguly, the first pair to combine for a 300-run partnership, and then a 331-run partnership with Sachin Tendulkar, which is a world record. He also holds the record for the greatest number of innings played since debut before being dismissed for a duck. His highest scores in ODIs and Tests are 153 and 270 respectively.
He was named one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 2000. Though primarily a defensive batsman, Dravid scored 50 runs not out in 22 balls (a strike rate of 227.27) against New Zealand in Hyderabad on 15 November 2003, the second fastest 50 among Indian batsmen. Only Ajit Agarkar's 67 runs off 21 balls is faster than that of Dravid.
In 2004, Dravid was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India. On 7 September 2004, he was awarded the inaugural Player of the year award and the Test player of the year award by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
After reaching 10,000 Test runs milestone, he said, "It's a proud moment for sure. For me, growing up, I dreamt of playing for India. When I look back, I probably exceeded my expectations with what I have done over the last 10 to 12 years. I never had an ambition to do it because I never believed – it is just a reflection of my longevity in the game."
Dravid is also one of the two batsmen to score 10,000 runs at a single batting position and is the fourth highest run scorer in Test cricket, behind Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis.
Controversies
Ball-tampering incident
In January 2004, Dravid was found guilty of ball tampering during an ODI with Zimbabwe. Match referee Clive Lloyd adjudged the application of an energy sweet to the ball as a deliberate offence, although Dravid himself denied this was his intent. Lloyd emphasised that television footage caught Dravid putting a lozenge on the ball during the Zimbabwean innings on Tuesday night at the Gabba. According to the ICC's Code of Conduct, players are not allowed to apply substances to the ball other than sweat and saliva. Dravid was fined half of his match fee.
Indian coach John Wright came out in defence of Dravid, stating that "It was an innocent mistake". Wright argued that Dravid had been trying to apply saliva to the ball when parts of a losenge he had been chewing stuck to the ball; Dravid then tried to wipe it off. ICC regulations prevented Dravid from commenting about the issue, but former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly also stated that Dravid's act was "just an accident".
Captaincy
Rahul Dravid has had a mixed record when leading India in Tests.
One of Dravid's most debated decisions was taken in March 2004, when he was standing in as the captain for injured Sourav Ganguly. India's first innings was declared at a point when Sachin Tendulkar was at 194 runs not out with 16 overs remaining on Day 2. In this test match Sehwag scored triple century first time. He became the first Indian to score triple century in test with a score of 309.
In March 2006, India lost the Mumbai Test, giving England its first Test victory in India since 1985, enabling it to draw the series 1–1. The defeat in Mumbai was arguably the result of Dravid's decision to bowl first on a flat dry pitch, which later deteriorated and ended with an Indian collapse in the run chase. Coincidentally, it was Dravid's 100th test match in which the Indians were all out for 100 runs in the second innings.
After India failed to qualify for the final of the DLF Cup, Dravid, the skipper, was criticised by former all-rounder Ravi Shastri who said that he was not assertive enough and let Greg Chappell make too many decisions. When asked for a response, Dravid said that Shastri, while a 'fair critic', was 'not privy' to the internal decision-making process of the team.
He was criticised by Vijay Mallya for not picking the team with right balance after his then IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore finished seventh out of the eight teams that participated in the 2008 season.
Achievements and awards
National honours
1998 – Arjuna Award recipient for achievements in cricket
2004 – Padma Shri – India's fourth highest civilian award
2013 – Padma Bhushan – India's third highest civilian award
Other honours
1999 – CEAT International Cricketer of the World Cup
2000 – Dravid was one of the five cricketers selected as Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
2004 – ICC Cricketer of the year – Highest award in the ICC listings
2004 – ICC Test Player of The Year, ICC Cricketer of The Year
2004 – MTV Youth Icon of the Year
2006 – Captain of the ICC's Test Team
2011 – NDTV Indian of the Year's Lifetime Achievement Award with Dev Anand
2012 – Don Bradman Award with Glenn McGrath
2015 – Wisden India's Highest Impact Test Batsman
2018 – ICC Hall of Fame
Personal life
Family
On 4 May 2003 he married Vijeta Pendharkar, a surgeon from Nagpur. Vijeta Pendharkar is also from Deshastha Brahmin community as Dravid. They have two children: Samit, born in 2005, and Anvay, born in 2009. Dravid is fluent in Marathi, Hindi, Kannada and English.
Commercial endorsements
Rahul Dravid has been sponsored by several brands throughout his career including Reebok (1996 – present), Pepsi (1997 present), Kissan (Unknown), Castrol (2001 – present), Hutch
(2003), Karnataka Tourism (2004), Max Life (2005 – present), Bank of Baroda (2005 – present), Citizen (2006 – present), Skyline Construction (2006 – present), Sansui (2007), Gillette (2007 – present), Samsung (2002 – 2004), World Trade Center Noida (2013– present),
CRED (2021-present).
Social commitments
Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA)
UNICEF Supporter and AIDS Awareness Campaign
Biographies
Books
Two biographies have been written on Rahul Dravid and his career:
Rahul Dravid – A Biography written by Vedam Jaishankar (). Publisher: UBSPD Publications. Date: January 2004
The Nice Guy Who Finished First written by Devendra Prabhudesai. Publisher: Rupa Publications. Date: November 2005
A collection of articles, testimonials and interviews related to Dravid was released by ESPNcricinfo following his retirement. The book was titled Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel.
See also
Sachin Tendulkar
Sourav Ganguly
VVS Laxman
Virendra Sehwag
References
External links
Indian cricketers
India Test cricketers
India One Day International cricketers
India Twenty20 International cricketers
India Test cricket captains
Wisden Cricketers of the Year
Karnataka cricketers
South Zone cricketers
Kent cricketers
Scotland cricketers
ACC Asian XI One Day International cricketers
ICC World XI One Day International cricketers
World XI Test cricketers
Royal Challengers Bangalore cricketers
Canterbury cricketers
Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers
Rajasthan Royals cricketers
India Blue cricketers
Cricketers at the 1999 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2003 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2007 Cricket World Cup
Recipients of the Padma Shri in sports
1973 births
Living people
Cricketers from Indore
Cricketers from Bangalore
Recipients of the Arjuna Award
International Cricket Council Cricketer of the Year
Marathi people
Indian cricket coaches
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in sports
Indian cricket commentators
Wicket-keepers
| false |
[
"Michael Coates was an English born Quaker who in South Africa befriended Gandhi and attempted to convert him to Christianity. Coates was one of Gandhi's closest friends in Pretoria, standing up for him in the face of persecution and helping Gandhi gain the political connections necessary to avoid police interference while walking after 9 p.m. Coates was also responsible for introducing Gandhi to Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, giving Gandhi a more intimate understanding of Jesus's gospel of love.\n\nReferences\n\nEnglish Quakers\nYear of birth missing\nYear of death missing\nPlace of birth missing",
"Helping the runner, also called assisting the runner and aiding the runner, is a penalty in gridiron football that occurs when an offensive player pulls or carries the ball carrier in order to gain additional yards. Though originally a common call, the penalty has become extremely rare, having last been called at the professional level in 1991. In the National Football League (NFL), a violation is given a 10-yard penalty. It is five yards in college football and high school football.\n\nThe foul was first created in either the late 1890s or early 1900s. An early use of the penalty was in 1904, when The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, \"On the offense the team has made wonderful improvement, especially in helping the runner. In the Columbia game it was seldom that the man with the ball was not pushed or pulled for an extra yard or so.\" It was originally a 15-yard penalty.\n\nThe official NCAA rule book in 1950 stated, \"The runner shall not grasp, or be pulled by, any teammate, nor shall any teammate push the runner or lift him from the ground while the ball is in play. Penalty for \"helping the runner\" is 15 yards from the spot of the foul.\" In 1958, Dick Becker of the Lincoln Journal Star wrote, \"Colorado was assessed 15 yards late in the game for \"helping the runner.\" Although it is seldom called, the rule book explains it thusly: \". . .but the runner shall not grasp a teammate and no other player of his team shall grasp, push, lift or charge into him to assist in gaining forward progress.\"\n\nThe penalty in college and high school was later reduced to 10 yards, and finally 5 yards. The NFL and CFL continued with the foul as 10 yards. In 2005, the National Football League made the penalty only for pulling and carrying, removing the flag in cases of pushing. The NCAA followed in 2013. Pushing still remains illegal in high school games.\n\nThe last time helping the runner was called at professional levels was in 1991, when Kansas City Chiefs center Tim Grunhard pulled running back Robb Thomas in the divisional round of the playoffs.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n1991 helping the runner penalty on YouTube\n\nGridiron football penalties"
] |
[
"Rahul Dravid",
"Golden years",
"What started his golden years",
"As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain,",
"Who was helping him",
"Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal."
] |
C_52e2fff8b563440da632c6c90324029a_1
|
What did he do
| 3 |
What did Rahul Dravid do?
|
Rahul Dravid
|
As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain, Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal. Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid played his part scoring 157 runs in 4 matches at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe opening the innings before getting injured while fielding at slips forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament. India started off the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk inning of 49 ball 41 runs, including 5 fours and a six, chasing a target of 63 runs. However, Dravid's poor patch truly ended in the next Test series against Zimbabwe, which was also the first series for John Wright as the new Indian coach. Wright was instrumental in Dravid's association with Kent earlier this year. Dravid returned the favour by recommending his name to the BCCI for the post of national team coach. By now, Dravid had played 8 Tests since his last hundred against New Zealand at Mohali scoring just 350 runs at a paltry average of 23.33 without a single fifty plus inning. The Indian vice-captain ended the run drought and welcomed the new Indian coach with a double hundred - Dravid's first. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second inning guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 - highest batting average by an Indian in a Test series. Dravid scored just a solitary fifty in the second of the five match bilateral ODI series between India and Zimbabwe. However, the series proved to be a milestone in Dravid's career. Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the 5th match of the series as the regular captain Ganguly had to sit out due to one match suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39 run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain. CANNOTANSWER
|
Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals.
|
Rahul Sharad Dravid (; born 11 January 1973) is a former Indian cricketer and captain of the Indian national team, currently serving as its head coach. Prior to his appointment to the senior men's national team, Dravid was the Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), and the head coach of the India Under-19 and India A teams. Under his tutelage, the under-19 team finished runners up at the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup and won the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Known for his sound batting technique, Dravid scored 24,177 runs in international cricket and is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is colloquially known as Mr. Dependable and often referred to as The Wall.
Born in a Marathi family and raised in Bangalore, he started playing cricket at the age of 12 and later represented Karnataka at the under-15, under-17 and under-19 levels. Hailed as The Wall, Dravid was named one of the best five cricketers of the year by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 2000 and received the Player of the Year and the Test Player of the Year awards at the inaugural ICC awards ceremony in 2004. In December 2011, he became the first non-Australian cricketer to deliver the Bradman Oration in Canberra.
As of December 2016, Dravid is the fourth-highest run scorer in Test cricket, after Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis. In 2004, after completing his century against Bangladesh in Chittagong, he became the first player to score a century in all the ten Test-playing countries. As of October 2012, he holds the record for the most catches taken by a player (non-wicket-keeper) in Test cricket, with 210. Dravid holds a unique record of never getting out for a Golden duck in the 286 Test innings which he has played. He has faced 31258 balls, which is the highest number of balls faced by any player in test cricket. He has also spent 44152 minutes at the crease, which is the highest time spent on crease by any player in test cricket. Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar are currently the highest scoring partnership in Test cricket history having scored 6920 runs combined when batting together for India.
In August 2011, after receiving a surprise recall in the ODI series against England, Dravid declared his retirement from ODIs as well as Twenty20 International (T20I), and in March 2012, he announced his retirement from international and first-class cricket. He appeared in the 2012 Indian Premier League as captain of the Rajasthan Royals.
Rahul Dravid, along with Glenn McGrath were honoured during the seventh annual Bradman Awards function in Sydney on 1 November 2012. Dravid has also been honoured with the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan award, India's fourth and third highest civilian awards respectively.
In 2014, Rahul Dravid joined the GoSports Foundation, Bangalore as a member of their board of advisors. In collaboration with GoSports Foundation he is mentoring India's future Olympians and Paralympians as part of the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme. Indian badminton player Prannoy Kumar, Para-swimmer Sharath Gayakwad and young Golfer S. Chikkarangappa was part of the initial group of athletes to be mentored by Rahul Dravid. In July 2018, Dravid became the fifth Indian cricketer to be inducted into ICC Hall of Fame.
Early life
Dravid was born in a Marathi-Speaking Brahmin family in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. His family later moved to Bangalore, Karnataka, where he was raised. His mother tongue is Marathi. Dravid's father Sharad Dravid worked for a company that makes jams and preserves, giving rise to the later nickname Jammy. His mother, Pushpa, was a professor of architecture at the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bangalore. Dravid has a younger brother named Vijay. He did his schooling at St. Joseph's Boys High School, Bangalore and earned a degree in commerce from St. Joseph's College of Commerce, Bangalore. He was selected to India's national cricket team while working towards an MBA at St Joseph's College of Business Administration. He is fluent in several languages: Marathi, Kannada, English and Hindi.
Formative years and domestic career
Dravid started playing cricket at the age of 12, and represented Karnataka at the under-15, the under-17 and the under-19 levels. Former cricketer Keki Tarapore first noticed Dravid's talent while coaching at a summer camp in the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Dravid scored a century for his school team. He also played as wicket-keeper.
Dravid made his Ranji Trophy debut in February 1991, while still attending college. Playing alongside future India teammates Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath against Maharashtra in Pune, he scored 82 runs in the match, which ended in a draw. He followed it up with a century against Bengal and three successive centuries after. However, Dravid's first full season was in 1991–92, when he scored two centuries and finished up with 380 runs at an average of 63.30, getting selected for the South Zone cricket team in the Duleep Trophy. Dravid's caught the national team selectors' eye with his good performances for India A in the home series against England A in 1994–95.
International career
Debut
Dravid, who had been knocking at the doors of Indian national cricket team for quite a while with his consistent performance in domestic cricket, received his first national call in October 1994, for the last two matches of the Wills World Series. However, he could not break into the playing eleven. He went back to the domestic circuit and kept knocking harder. So much so, that when the selectors announced the Indian team for the 1996 World Cup sans Dravid, an Indian daily newspaper carried a headline – "Rahul Dravid gets a raw deal". Dravid eventually made his international debut on 3 April 1996 in an ODI against Sri Lanka in the Singer Cup held in Singapore immediately after the 1996 World Cup, replacing Vinod Kambli. He wasn't particularly impressive with the bat, scoring just three runs before being dismissed by Muttiah Muralitharan, but took two catches in the match. He followed it up with another failure in the next game scoring just four runs before getting run out against Pakistan.
In contrast to his ODI debut, his Test debut was rather successful one. Dravid was selected for the Indian squad touring England on the backdrop of a consistent performance in domestic cricket for five years. Fine performances in the tour games including fifties against Gloucestershire and Leicestershire failed to earn him a place in the team for the First Test. He finally made his Test debut at Lord's on 20 June 1996 against England in the Second Test of the series at the expense of injured senior batsman Sanjay Manjrekar. Manjrekar, who was suffering from an ankle injury, was to undergo a fitness test on the morning of the Second Test. Dravid had already been informed that he would play if Manjrekar fails the test. As Manjrekar failed the fitness test, ten minutes before the toss, Sandeep Patil, the then Indian coach, went up to Dravid to inform him that he was indeed going to make his debut that day. Patil recalled years later:
Coming in to bat at no. 7, he forged important partnerships, first with another debutante Sourav Ganguly and then with Indian lower order, securing a vital first innings lead for his team. Dravid scored 95 runs before getting out to the bowling of Chris Lewis. He was just five runs short of a landmark debut hundred when he nicked a Lewis delivery to the keeper and walked even before umpire's decision. He also took his first catch in Test cricket in this match to dismiss Nasser Hussain off the bowling of Srinath. In the next tour game against British Universities, Dravid scored a hundred. He scored another fifty in the first innings of the Third Test. Dravid concluded a successful debut series with an impressive average of 62.33 from two Test matches.
1996–98: A tale of two formats
Dravid's early years in international cricket mirrored his international debut. He had contrasting fortunes in the long and the shorter format of the game. While he straightaway made a name for himself in Test cricket, he had to struggle quite a bit to make a mark in ODIs.
After a successful Test debut in England, Dravid played in the one-off Test against Australia in Delhi – his first Test in India. Batting at no. 6, he scored 40 runs in the first innings. Dravid batted at no. 3 position for the first time in the First Test of the three-match home series against South Africa in Ahmedabad in November 1996. He didn't do too well in the series scoring just 175 runs at a modest average of 29.16.
Two weeks later, India toured South Africa for a three–match Test series. Chasing a target of 395 runs in the First Test, Indian team bundled out meekly for 66 runs on the Durban pitch that provided excessive bounce and seam movement. Dravid, batting at no. 6, was the only Indian batsman who reached double figures in the innings scoring 27 not out. He was promoted to the no. 3 slot again in the second innings of the Second Test, a move that paid rich dividends in the ensuing Test. He almost won the Third Test for India with his maiden test hundred in the first innings scoring 148 runs and another 81 runs in the second innings at Wanderers before the thunderstorms, dim light and Cullinan's hundred saved the day for South Africa enabling them to draw the match. Dravid's performance in this Test earned him his first Man of the Match award in Test cricket. He top scored for India in the series with 277 runs at an average of 55.40.
Dravid continued in the same vein in the West Indies where he once again top scored for India in the five–match Test series aggregating 360 runs at an average of 72.00 including four fifties. 92 runs scored in the first innings of the fifth match in Georgetown earned him a joint Man of the Match award along with Shivnarine Chanderpaul. With this series, Dravid concluded a successful 1996/97 Test season, topping the international runs chart with 852 runs from 12 matches at an average of 50.11 with six fifties and one hundred.
Dravid continued his good run scoring seven fifties in the next eight Tests that included fifties in six consecutive innings (three each against Sri Lanka and Australia), becoming only the second Indian to do so after Gundappa Vishwanath. By the end of 1997/98 Test season, he had scored 15 fifties in 22 Tests which included four scores of nineties but just a solitary hundred.
The century drought came to an end in the 1998/99 Test season when he further raised the bar of his performance scoring 752 runs in seven Tests at an average of 62.66 that included four hundreds and one fifty and in the process topping the runs chart for India for the season. The first of those four hundreds came on the Zimbabwe tour. Dravid top scored in both the innings against Zimbabwe scoring 118 and 44 runs respectively however, India lost the one-off Test.
The Zimbabwe tour was followed by a tour to New Zealand. First Test having been abandoned without a ball being bowled, the series started for Dravid with the first duck of his Test career in the first innings of the Second Test and ended with hundreds in both the innings of the Third Test in Hamilton. He scored 190 and 103 not out in the first and the second innings respectively, becoming only the third Indian batsman, after Vijay Hazare and Sunil Gavaskar, to score a century in both innings of a Test match. Dravid topped the runs table for the series with 321 runs from two matches at an average of 107.00 but could not prevent India from losing the series 0–1.
Later that month, India played a two Test home series against Pakistan. Dravid didn't contribute much with the bat. India lost the First Test but won the Second Test in Delhi riding on Kumble's historic 10-wicket haul. Dravid played his part in the 10-wicket haul by taking a catch to dismiss Mushtaq Ahmed who was Kumble's eighth victim of the innings. The Indo-Pak Test series was followed by the 1998–99 Asian Test Championship. Dravid couldn't do much with the bat as India went on to lose the riot-affected First Test of the championship against Pakistan at the Eden Gardens. India went to Sri Lanka to play the Second Test of the championship. Dravid scored his fourth hundred of the season at Colombo in the first innings of the match. He also effected a brilliant run out of Russel Arnold during Sri Lankan innings fielding at short leg. On the fourth morning, Dravid got injured while fielding at the same position when the ball from Jayawardene's pull shot hit his face through the helmet grill. He didn't come out to bat in the second innings due to the injury. The match ended in a draw as India failed to qualify for the Finals of the championship.
In a stark contrast to his Test career, Dravid had to struggle a lot to make a mark in the ODIs. Between his ODI debut in April 1996 and the end of 1998 calendar year, Dravid regularly found himself in and out of the ODI team.
Dravid tasted first success of his ODI career in the 1996 'Friendship' Cup against Pakistan in the tough conditions of Toronto. He emerged as the highest scorer of the series with 220 runs in five matches at an average of 44.00 and a strike rate of 68.53. He won his first ODI Man of the Match award for the 46 runs scored in the low scoring third game of the series. He top scored for India in the Standard Bank International One-Day Series 1996/97 in South Africa with 280 runs from eight games at an average of 35.00 and a strike rate of 60.73, the highlight being a Man of the Match award-winning performance (84 runs, one catch) in the Final of the series that came in a losing cause. He was the second highest run scorer for India in the four-match bilateral ODI series in the West Indies in 1996/97 with 121 runs at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 57.61. Dravid's maiden ODI hundred came in a losing cause in the 1997 Pepsi Independence Cup against Pakistan in Chennai. Dravid top scored for India in the quadrangular event with 189 runs from three games at an average of 94.50 and a strike rate of 75.60 however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the series.
However, Dravid's achievements in the ODIs were dwarfed by his failures in the shorter format of the game. 14 runs from two games in the 1996 Pepsi Sharjah Cup; 20 runs from two innings in the Singer World Series; 65 runs from four innings in the 1997 'Friendship' Cup; 88 runs from four games in the 1998 Coca-Cola Triangular Series including a 22-ball five runs and a 21-ball one run innings, both coming against Bangladesh; 32 runs from four games in the 1998 'Friendship' Cup; a slew of such poor performances often forced him to the sidelines of the India ODI squad. By the end of 1998, Dravid had scored 1709 runs in 65 ODIs at a humble average of 31.64 with a poor strike rate of 63.48.
By now, Dravid had been branded as a Test specialist. While he continued to score heavily in Test cricket, his poor strike rate in ODIs came under scanner. He drew criticism for not being able to adjust his style of play to the needs of ODI cricket, his lack of attacking capability and play big strokes. However, Dravid worked hard and re-tooled his game by increasing his range of strokes and adapting his batting style to suit the requirements of ODI cricket. He learned to pace his innings cleverly without going for the slogs.
Dravid's ODI renaissance began during the 1998/99 New Zealand tour. He scored a run-a-ball hundred in the first match of the bilateral ODI series that earned him his third Man of the Match award in ODIs. The hundred came in a losing cause. However, his effort of 51 runs from 71 balls in the Fourth ODI came in India's victory and earned him his second Man of the Match award of the series. He ended as the top scorer of the series with 309 runs from five games at an average of 77.25 and a strike rate of 84.65. Dravid scored a hundred against Sri Lanka in 1998/99 Pepsi Cup at Nagpur adding a record 236 runs for the 2nd wicket with Ganguly, who also scored a hundred in the match. Uncharacteristically, Dravid was the faster of the two scoring 116 of 118 deliveries. In the next match against Pakistan, he bowled four overs and took the wicket of Saeed Anwar, out caught behind by wicket-keeper Nayan Mongia. This was his first wicket in international cricket.
Dravid warmed up for his debut World Cup with two fifties in the 1998–99 Coca-Cola Cup in Sharjah, one each against England and Pakistan. Standing-in as the substitute wicket-keeper in the third match of the series for Nayan Mongia, who got injured during keeping, Dravid effected two dismissals. He first stumped Graeme Hick off Sunil Joshi's bowling, who became Dravid's first victim as a wicket-keeper, and then caught Neil Fairbrother off Ajay Jadeja's bowling. He top scored for India in the tournament, though his last ODI innings before the World Cup was a golden duck against Pakistan, in the Final of the series.
Debut World Cup success
Dravid announced his form in England hitting consecutive fifties against Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire in the warm-up games.
He made his World Cup debut against South Africa at Hove striking a half century, but scored just 13 in the next game against Zimbabwe. India lost both the games. Having lost the first two games, India needed to win the remaining three games of the first round to have any chance of advancing into the Super Six stage. Dravid put up a partnership of 237 runs with Sachin Tendulkar against Kenya at Bristol – a World Cup record – and in the process hit his maiden World Cup hundred, helping India to a 94-run victory. India's designated keeper Mongia left the field at the end of 9th over during Kenyan innings, forcing Dravid to keep the wickets for the rest of the innings. In the absence of injured Nayan Mongia, Dravid played his first ODI as a designated keeper against Sri Lanka at Taunton. Dravid once again staged a record breaking partnership worth 318 runs – the first ever three hundred run partnership in ODI history – but this time with Sourav Ganguly, guiding India to a 157-run win. Dravid scored 145 runs from 129 balls with 17 fours and a six, becoming the second batsman in World Cup history to hit back-to-back hundreds. Dravid struck a fine fifty in the last group match as India defeated England to advance into the Super Six stage. Dravid scored 2, 61 & 29 in the three Super Six matches against Australia, Pakistan & New Zealand respectively. India failed to qualify for the semi-finals having lost to Australia and New Zealand but achieved a consolation victory against Pakistan in a tense game, what with the military conflict going on between the two countries in Kashmir at the same time. Dravid emerged as the top scorer of the tournament with 461 runs from 8 games at an average of 65.85 and a strike rate of 85.52.
Dravid's post-World Cup campaign started on a poor note with just 40 runs coming in 4 games of Aiwa Cup in August 1999. He soon came into his own, top-scoring for India in two consecutive limited-overs series – the Singapore Challenge, the highlight being a hundred in the Final coming in a lost cause, and the DMC Cup, the highlight being a match winning effort (77 runs, 4 catches) in the series decider for which he received man-of-the-match award. Dravid topped the international runs chart for 1999 cricket season across all formats scoring 782 runs from 19 matches. By now, Dravid had started to keep wickets on an infrequent basis with India fielding him as designated wicket-keeper in five out of 10 ODIs played in the three events.
Dravid kick-started his post World Cup Test season with a decent outing against New Zealand in the 3-match home series. His best effort of the series came in the second innings of the First test at Mohali scoring 144, helping India salvage a draw after being bowled out for 83 runs in the First innings. This was Dravid's sixth test hundred but his first test hundred on Indian soil. Dravid did well in the 3–2 series win against New Zealand in the bilateral ODI series, scoring 240 runs in 5 games at an average of 60 and a strike rate of 83.62, ending as the second highest scorer in the series. His career best effort in ODIs came in this series in the second game at Hyderabad where he scored run-a-ball 153 runs which included 15 fours and two sixes. He featured in a 331-run partnership with Tendulkar, which was the highest partnership in ODI cricket history, a record that stood for 15 years until it was broken in 2015. In 1999, Dravid scored 1761 runs in 43 ODIs at an average of 46.34 and a strike rate of 75.16 including 6 hundreds and 8 fifties and featured in two 300+ partnerships.
India toured Australia in December 1999 for a 3-match test series and a triangular ODI tournament. Although Dravid scored a hundred against Tasmania in the practice match, he failed miserably with the bat in the Test series as India slumped to a 0–3 whitewash. He did reasonably well in the 1999–2000 Carlton & United Series scoring 3 fifties in the triangular event however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the tournament.
Dravid's poor form in Tests continued as India suffered a 0–2 whitewash against South Africa in a home series. He had moderate success in the bilateral ODI series against South Africa. He contributed to India's 3–2 series win with 208 runs at an average of 41.60 which included 2 fifties and three wickets at an average of 22.66 topping the bowling average chart for the series. His career best bowling figure of 2/43 from nine overs in the First ODI at Kochi, was also the best bowling figure by any bowler in that particular match.
Rise through the ranks
In February 2000, Tendulkar's resignation from captaincy led to the promotion of Ganguly, the vice-captain then, as the new captain of the Indian team. In May 2000, while Dravid was busy playing county cricket in England, he was appointed as the vice-captain of the Indian team announced for the Asia cup.
India did well in the 2000 ICC KnockOut Trophy. Indian team, coming out of the shadows of the infamous match fixing scandal, showed a lot of character under the new leadership of Ganguly and Dravid, beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid scored 157 runs in 4 matches of the tournament, at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid scored 85 runs in a match against Zimbabwe in the 2000–01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy while opening the innings but was forced to miss the rest of the tournament because of an injury.
India kick started the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk knock of 41 runs from 49 balls, including 5 fours and a six, while chasing a target of 63 runs. The ensuing test series against Zimbabwe was John Wright's first assignment as Indian coach. Dravid, who was instrumental in Wright's appointment as India's first foreign head coach, welcomed him with his maiden double hundred. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second, guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 – highest batting average by an Indian in a series across all formats.
Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the fifth match of the bilateral ODI series against Zimbabwe in the absence of Ganguly who was serving suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39-run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain.
History at Eden
The Australian team toured India in February 2001 for what was being billed as the Final Frontier for Steve Waugh's all conquering men, who were coming on the back of 15 consecutive Test wins. Dravid failed in the first innings of the First Test but displayed strong resilience in Tendulkar's company in the second innings. Dravid's 196 ball long resistance finally ended when he got out bowled to Warne for 39 runs. Australians extended their winning streak to 16 Tests as they beat India convincingly by 10 wickets inside three days.
The Australian juggernaut seemed unstoppable as they looked on course towards their 17th consecutive victory in the Second Test at the Eden Gardens, when they bowled India out for meagre 171 in the first innings and enforced a follow-on after securing a massive lead of 274 runs. In the second innings, Laxman, who had scored a fine fifty in the first innings, was promoted to no. 3 position which had been Dravid's usual spot for quite sometime now, while Dravid, who had gotten out bowled to Warne for second time in a row in the first innings for just 25 runs, was relegated to no. 6 position. When Dravid joined Laxman in the middle on the third day of the Test, with scoreboard reading 232/4 and India still needing 42 runs to avoid an innings defeat, another convincing win for Australia looked inevitable. Instead, two of them staged one of the greatest fightbacks in cricketing history.
Dravid and Laxman played out the remaining time on the third day and whole of the fourth day, denying Australia any wicket on Day 4. Dravid, angered by the flak that the Indian team had been receiving lately in the media coverage, celebrated his hundred in an uncharacteristic fashion brandishing his bat at the press box. Eventually, Laxman got out on the fifth morning bringing the 376-runs partnership to an end. Dravid soon perished getting run out for 180 while trying to force the pace. Ganguly declared the innings at 657/7, setting Australia a target of 384 runs with 75 overs left in the match. An inspired team India bowled superbly to dismiss Australia for 212 in 68.3 overs. India won the match by 171 runs. This was only the third instance of a team winning a Test after following-on and India became the 2nd team to do so.
Dravid scored 81 runs in the first innings of the Third Test and took 4 catches in the match as India defeated Australia at Chennai in a nail biting finish to clinch the series 2–1. Dravid scored 80 in the first of the 5-match ODI series at his home ground as India won the match by 60 runs. He didn't do too well in the remaining 4 ODIs as Australia won the series 3–2. Dravid topped the averages for the 2000/01 Test season with 839 runs from six matches at an average of 104.87.
Dravid had a decent outing in Zimbabwe, scoring 137 runs from 134 balls in the First Tour game and aggregating 138 runs at an average of 69.00 from the drawn Test series. In the ensuing triangular ODI series, he aggregated 121 runs from 5 matches at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 101.68, the highlight being an unbeaten 72 off 64 balls, while chasing a target of 235 against Zimbabwe in the 3rd match of the series, guiding India to a 4-wicket win with four balls to spare. He was adjudged man of the match for his match winning knock.
On the next tour to Sri Lanka, India lost the first three matches of the triangular event. In the absence of suspended Ganguly, Dravid captained the side in the 4th match leading them to their first victory of the series. India won the next two matches to qualify for the Final. Dravid played crucial innings in all the three victories. Eventually, India lost the Final to Sri Lanka. He top scored for India in the series with 259 runs from seven matches at an average of 51.80 and a strike rate of 59.81. Reinstated to his usual no. 3 position in the absence of injured Laxman, Dravid top scored for India in the ensuing 3-Test series as well with 235 runs at an average of 47.00. The highlight for Dravid was 75 runs scored in the tough fourth innings chase of the Second Test – a crucial contribution to India's first Test win in Sri Lanka since 1993 despite the absence of key players like Tendulkar, Laxman, Srinath and Kumble.
Dravid had decent success in Standard Bank tri-series on South Africa tour, scoring 214 runs (including 3 fifties) at an average of 53.50 and a strike rate of 71.81. He also kept wickets in the final two ODIs of the series effecting 3 stumpings. The highlight for Dravid in the ensuing Test series came in the second innings of the Second Test. India, having failed to last hundred overs in any of the previous three innings in the series, needed to bat out four sessions in the Second Test to save the match. They started on a poor note losing their first wicket in the first over with no runs on the scoreboard. However, Dravid forged an important partnership of 171 runs with Dasgupta that lasted for 83.2 overs taking India to the brink of safety. Poor weather helped India salvage a draw as only 96.2 overs could be bowled in the innings. Dravid captained the team in the 'unofficial' Third test in the absence of injured Ganguly, which India lost by an innings margin.
By the end of the South African tour, Dravid had started experiencing problem in his right shoulder. Although he played the ensuing home test series against England, he pulled out of the six-match bilateral ODI series to undergo shoulder rehabilitation program in South Africa. He returned for the Zimbabwe's tour of India but performed below par, scoring a fifty each in the Test series and the bilateral ODI series.
2002–2006: Peak years
Dravid hit the peak form of his career in 2002. Between Season 2002 and Season 2006, Dravid was the second highest scorer overall and top scorer for India across formats, scoring 8,914 runs from 174 matches at an average of 54.02, including 19 hundreds.
Dravid had a decent outing in West Indies in 2002. The highlights for him included – hitting a hundred with a swollen jaw and helping India avoid the follow-on in the process at Georgetown in the drawn First Test; contributing with a fifty and four catches to India's victory in the Second Test at Port of Spain – India's first Test victory in West Indies since 1975–76; and another fifty in the drawn Fourth Test with a wicket to boot – that of Ridley Jacobs who was batting on 118. This was Dravid's only wicket in Test cricket. He played as India's designated keeper in the ODI series but didn't contribute much with the bat in the 2–1 series win.
A quartet of hundreds
India's tour of England in 2002 started with a triangular ODI event involving India, England and Sri Lanka. India emerged as the winners of the series beating England in the Final – their first victory after nine consecutive defeats in one-day finals. Dravid played as designated keeper in six out of seven matches effecting nine dismissals (6 catches, 3 stumpings) – most by a keeper in the series. He also did well with the bat aggregating 245 runs at an average of 49.00 including three fifties. His performance against Sri Lanka in fourth ODI (64 runs, 1 catch) earned him a man of the match award.
India lost the first of the four match Test series. Having conceded a 260 runs lead in the first innings of the Second Test at Nottingham, Indians were in a spot of bother. However, Dravid led the fightback in the second innings with a hundred as Indians managed to earn a draw.
Ganguly won the toss in the Third Test and took a bold decision to bat first on a gloomy overcast morning at Headingley on a pitch known to be traditionally conducive for fast and swing bowling. Having lost an early wicket, Dravid weathered the storm in company of Sanjay Bangar. They played cautiously, taking body blows on a pitch with uneven bounce. Dravid completed his second hundred of the series in the process. As the conditions became more and more conducive for batting, the Indian batsmen piled on England's misery. Indians declared the innings on 628/8 and then bowled England out twice to register their first test victory in England since 1986. Despite being outscored by Tendulkar, Dravid was awarded man of the match for his efforts. Dravid scored a double hundred in the drawn Fourth Test to notch up his second consecutive man of the match award of the series. Christopher Martin-Jenkins noted during the Fourth Test: Dravid aggregated 602 runs in the series from four matches at an average of 100.33, including three hundreds and a fifty and was adjudged joint man of the series along with Michael Vaughan.
India jointly shared the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka. Dravid contributed to India's successful campaign with 120 runs at an average of 60.00 and five dismissals behind the wicket. Dravid scored a hundred in the First Test of the three match home series against West Indies becoming the first Indian batsman to score hundreds in four consecutive Test innings but had to retire soon after owing to severe cramps. Dravid did well in the subsequent bilateral 7-match ODI series aggregating 300 runs at an average of 75.00 and a strike rate of 89.82 including one hundred and two fifties. He also effected 7 dismissals (6 catches, 1 stumping) in the series. India trailing 1–2, needed 325 runs to win the Fourth ODI and level the series. Dravid scored a hundred leading India to a successful chase. He once again scored a crucial fifty in the Sixth ODI as India once again leveled the series after trailing 2–3. India, however, lost the last match to lose the series 3–4.
Dravid top scored for India in the two-match Test series in New Zealand as India slumped to a whitewash. He played as designated keeper in six of the 7-match bilateral ODI series and effected seven dismissals but fared poorly with the bat as India were handed a 2-5 drubbing by the New Zealand.
2003 Cricket World Cup
Dravid arrived in South Africa with the Indian squad to participate in the 2003 Cricket World Cup in the capacity of first-choice keeper-batsman as part of their seven batsmen-four bowlers strategy – an experiment that had brought success to the team in the past year. The idea was that making Dravid keep wickets allowed India to accommodate an extra specialist batsman. The strategy worked out well for India in the World Cup. India recovered from a less than convincing victory against minnows Netherlands and a loss to Australia in the league stage and embarked on a dream run winning eight consecutive matches to qualify for the World Cup Finals for the first time since 1983. India eventually lost the Final to Australia ending as runner-up in the tournament. Dravid contributed to India's campaign with 318 runs at an average of 63.60 and 16 dismissals (15 catches, 1 stumping). Highlights for Dravid in the tournament included a fifty against England, 44 not out against Pakistan in a successful chase and an unbeaten fifty in another successful chase against New Zealand.
Dravid topped the international runs chart for 2003/04 cricket season across formats aggregating 1993 runs from 31 matches at an average of 64.29 including three double hundreds. First of those came against New Zealand in the first of the two-test home series at Ahmedabad. Dravid scored 222 runs in the first innings and 73 runs in the second innings receiving a man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid captained Indian Test Team for the first time in the second game of the series at Mohali in the absence of Ganguly. Both the matches ended in a draw. Dravid top scored in the series with 313 runs at an average of 78.25. India next participated in TVS cup alongside New Zealand and Australia. India lost to Australia in the Final. Dravid scored two fifties in the series but the highlight was his fifty against New Zealand in the ninth match that came in just 22 balls – second fastest fifty by an Indian.
An Eden encore
After earning a draw in the first of the four-match Test series in Australia, Indians found themselves reeling at 85/4 in the Second Test at Adelaide after Australia had piled 556 runs in the first innings when Laxman joined Dravid in the middle. They batted for 93.5 overs bringing about their second 300-run partnership adding 303 runs together before Laxman perished for 148 runs. However, Dravid continued to complete his second double hundred of the season. He was the last man out for 233 runs as India conceded a marginal first innings lead of 33 runs to Australia. India bowled Australia out for paltry score of 196 riding on Agarkar's six-wicket haul, and were set a target of 230 runs to win the match. Dravid helped India tread through a tricky chase with an unbeaten fifty as India registered their first test victory in Australia since 1980/81 to go up 1–0 in the series. This was the first time that Australians were 0-1 down in a home series since 1994. Dravid won the man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid registered a score of ninety each in the next two tests as Australia leveled the series 1–1. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 619 runs at an average of 123.80 and was awarded player of the series for his efforts.
Dravid did moderately well in the ensuing VB series with three fifties in the league stage, all of which came in winning cause. However, India lost the best-of-three finals to Australia 2–0. Dravid was fined half his match fee for applying cough lozenge on the ball during a match in the series against Zimbabwe – an act that was claimed to be an innocent mistake by coach John Wright.
India visited Pakistan in March 2004 to participate in a bilateral Test series for the first time since 1989/90. Prior to the Test series, India participated and won the 5-match ODI series 3–2. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 248 runs at an average of 62.00 and a strike rate of 73.59. Dravid scored 99 runs in the First ODI helping India post an imposing total of 349. He also took the important catch of threatening Inzamam-ul-Haq, who was batting on 122, as India went on to win the match by five runs. When Indians were trailing in the series 1–2, Dravid helped India level the series with an unbeaten fifty during a successful chase in the Fourth ODI.
Captaincy
Dravid captained India in the first two tests in the absence of injured Ganguly and led India to their first-ever Test victory in Pakistan. Dravid, standing in only his second test as team's captain, took a bold and controversial decision during First Test at Multan that divided the cricket fraternity. Pakistani cricketers had been on field for 150+ overs as India posted a total in excess of 600 runs in the first innings. Dravid, who wanted to have a crack at the tired Pakistani batsmen in the final hour of second day's play, declared Indian innings with Tendulkar batting at 194, just six runs short of his double century. While some praised the team before personal milestones approach of the Indian captain, most criticized Dravid's timing of declaration as there were no pressing concerns and there was ample time left in the match to try and bowl Pakistan out twice. While Tendulkar was admittedly disappointed, any rumours of rift between him and Dravid were quashed by both the cricketers and the team management, who claimed that the matter had been discussed and sorted amicably behind closed doors. India eventually went on to win the match by innings margin. Pakistan leveled the series beating India in the Second Test. Dravid slammed a double hundred in the Third Test at Rawalpindi – his third double hundred of the season. He scored 270 runs – his career best performance – before getting out to reverse sweep trying to force the pace. India went on to win the match and the series – their first series victory outside India since 1993. Dravid was adjudged man of the match for his effort.
Dravid was appointed the captain for the Indian team for 2007 World Cup, where India had an unsuccessful campaign.
During India's unsuccessful tour of England in 2011, in which their 4–0 loss cost them the top rank in Test cricket, Dravid made three centuries.
2011 Tour of England
Having regained his form on the tour to West Indies, where he scored a match-winning hundred in Sabina park, Jamaica, Dravid then toured England in what was billed as the series which would decide the World No. 1 ranking in tests.
In the first test at Lord's, in reply to England's 474, Dravid scored an unbeaten 103, his first hundred at the ground where he debuted in 1996. He received scant support from his teammates as India were bowled out for 286 and lost the test. The 2nd test at Trentbridge, Nottingham again saw Dravid in brilliant form. Sent out to open the batting in place of an injured Gautam Gambhir, he scored his second successive hundred. His 117 though, again came in a losing cause, as a collapse of 6 wickets for 21 runs in the first innings led to a massive defeat by 319 runs. Dravid failed in both innings in the third test at Birmingham, as India lost by an innings and 242 runs, one of the heaviest defeats in their history. However, he came back brilliantly in the fourth and final match at The Oval. Again opening the batting in place of Gambhir, he scored an unbeaten 146 out of India's total of 300, carrying his bat through the innings. Once again, though, his efforts were in vain as India lost the match, completing a 0–4 whitewash.
In all, he scored 461 runs in the four matches at an average of 76.83 with three hundreds. He accounted for over 26% of India's runs in the series and was named India's man of the series by England coach Andy Flower. His performance in the series was met with widespread admiration and was hailed by some as one of his finest ever series
Retirement
Rahul Dravid was dropped from the ODI team in 2009, but was selected again for an ODI series in England in 2011, surprising even Dravid himself since, although he had not officially retired from ODI cricket, he had not expected to be recalled. After being selected, he announced that he would retire from ODI cricket after the series. He played his last ODI innings against England at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, on 16 September 2011, scoring 69 runs from 79 balls before being bowled by Graeme Swann. His last limited-overs international match was his debut T20I match; he announced his retirement before playing his first T20I match.
Dravid announced his retirement from Test and domestic cricket on 9 March 2012, after the 2011–12 tour of Australia, but he said that he would captain the Rajasthan Royals in the 2012 Indian Premier League. He was the second-highest run scorer and had taken the highest number of catches in Test cricket at the time of his retirement.
In July 2014, he played for the MCC side in the Bicentenary Celebration match at Lord's.
Coaching
Towards the end of his playing career, Dravid took on a role as mentor of the Rajasthan Royals IPL team, officially taking over in 2014. During this time, he also became involved with the Indian national team, serving as mentor for the team's tour of England in 2014. After leading the Royals to a third-place finish in the 2015 IPL season, he was appointed as the head coach of the India U-19 and India A teams. Dravid achieved immense success as coach, with the U-19s reaching the finals of the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Two years later, the team went on to win the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup, beating Australia by 8 wickets to win their fourth Under-19 World Cup, the most by any national side. Dravid was credited with bringing up future national team players including Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan and Washington Sundar. Alongside his coaching roles, Dravid took on several mentor roles, including at the Delhi Daredevils IPL team.
In July 2019, following his four-year stint as coach of the junior teams, Dravid was appointed Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA). He was in charge of "overseeing all cricket related activities at NCA was involved in mentoring, coaching, training and motivating players, coaches and support staff at the NCA". As head of NCA, he was widely praised for developing a steady supply of talent to the senior team and revamping player fitness and rehabilitation regiments.
In November 2021, he was appointed as head coach of the Indian national cricket team.
County stint
Dravid had always been keen on further honing his batting skills in testing English conditions by playing in county cricket. He had discussed about the prospects regarding the same with John Wright, the former New Zealand cricketer and incumbent Kent coach, during India's 1998–99 tour of New Zealand. Wright was particularly impressed with Dravid's performance on that tour, especially his twin hundreds at Hamilton. The talks finally materialized and Dravid made his county debut for Kent in April 2000. His co-debutante Ganguly made his county debuted in the same match, albeit for the opposite team.
Kent offer had come as a welcome change for Dravid. There was too much negativity surrounding Indian cricket marred by match fixing controversy. Dravid himself had been struggling to score runs in Tests for quite some time now. The county stint gave him a chance to "get away to a new environment" and "relax". The wide variety of pitches and weather conditions in England and a full season of intense county cricket against professional cricketers gave him a chance to further his cricketing education and learn things about his game.
Dravid made the most of this opportunity. In his 2nd game for Kent, Dravid scored a fluid 182 propelling them to an innings and 163 runs victory over the touring Zimbabwe side. Out of 7 first class tour games that Zimbabwe played on that tour, Kent was the only team that managed to beat them. Dravid hit another fifty in a draw against Surrey. The newly appointed vice-captain had to leave the county championship temporarily, missing two championship games and two one day games, to fulfill his national commitment. Indian team, Dravid included, fared poorly in the Asia cup and failed to qualify for the Final. Subsequently, Dravid returned to England to resume his county sojourn with Kent.
In July 2000, Kent's away match against Hampshire at Portsmouth was billed as a showdown between two great cricketers- Warne and Dravid. Dravid came out on top. On a dustbowl, tailor-made to suit home team spinners, Warne took 4 wickets but could not take the all important wicket of Dravid. Coming in to bat at 15/2, Dravid faced 295 balls scoring 137 runs – his maiden hundred in county championships. Dravid scored 73 not out in the 2nd innings guiding Kent to a six wicket victory as Warne went wicketless.
In their last county game of the season, Kent needed one bonus point to prevent themselves from being relegated to the Second Division. Dravid made sure they stay put in the First Division by fetching that one bonus point with an inning of 77 runs.
Dravid concluded a successful stint with Kent aggregating 1221 runs from 16 first class matches(15 county games and 1 tour game against Zimbabwe) at an average of 55.50 including 2 hundreds and 8 fifties. He shouldered Kent's batting single-handedly as the second best Kent batsman during the same period, Paul Nixon, scored just 567 runs at an average of 33.35 in 17 matches. Dravid contributed to Kent's county campaign not just with the bat but also with his fielding and bowling taking 14 catches and 4 wickets at an average of 32.00.
Indian Premier League and Champions League
Rahul Dravid played for Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2008, 2009 and 2010. Later he played for Rajasthan Royals and led it to finals of Champions League T20 in 2013, and play-offs of Indian Premier League in 2013. Dravid announced retirement from Twenty20 after playing the 2013 Champions League Twenty20 in September–October 2013.
Playing style
Dravid was known for his technique, and has been one of the best batsmen for the Indian cricket team. In the beginning, he was known as a defensive batsman who should be confined to Test cricket, and was dropped from the ODI squad due to a low strike rate. However, he later scored consistently in ODIs as well, earning him the ICC Player of the Year award. His nickname of 'The Wall' in Reebok advertisements is now used as his nickname. Dravid has scored 36 centuries in Test cricket, with an average of 52.31; this included five double centuries. In one-dayers, he averaged 39.16, with a strike rate of 71.23. He is one of the few Indians whose Test average is better at away than at home, averaging almost five runs more on foreign pitches. As of 23 September 2010, Dravid's Test average in abroad is 55.53, and his Test average at home is 50.76; his ODI average abroad is 37.93 and his ODI average at home is 43.11. Dravid averages 66.34 runs in Indian Test victories. and 50.69 runs in ODIs.
Dravid's sole Test wicket was of Ridley Jacobs in the fourth Test match against the West Indies during the 2001–2002 series. While he has no pretensions to being a bowler, Dravid often kept wicket for India in ODIs.
Dravid was involved in two of the largest partnerships in ODIs: a 318-run partnership with Sourav Ganguly, the first pair to combine for a 300-run partnership, and then a 331-run partnership with Sachin Tendulkar, which is a world record. He also holds the record for the greatest number of innings played since debut before being dismissed for a duck. His highest scores in ODIs and Tests are 153 and 270 respectively.
He was named one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 2000. Though primarily a defensive batsman, Dravid scored 50 runs not out in 22 balls (a strike rate of 227.27) against New Zealand in Hyderabad on 15 November 2003, the second fastest 50 among Indian batsmen. Only Ajit Agarkar's 67 runs off 21 balls is faster than that of Dravid.
In 2004, Dravid was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India. On 7 September 2004, he was awarded the inaugural Player of the year award and the Test player of the year award by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
After reaching 10,000 Test runs milestone, he said, "It's a proud moment for sure. For me, growing up, I dreamt of playing for India. When I look back, I probably exceeded my expectations with what I have done over the last 10 to 12 years. I never had an ambition to do it because I never believed – it is just a reflection of my longevity in the game."
Dravid is also one of the two batsmen to score 10,000 runs at a single batting position and is the fourth highest run scorer in Test cricket, behind Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis.
Controversies
Ball-tampering incident
In January 2004, Dravid was found guilty of ball tampering during an ODI with Zimbabwe. Match referee Clive Lloyd adjudged the application of an energy sweet to the ball as a deliberate offence, although Dravid himself denied this was his intent. Lloyd emphasised that television footage caught Dravid putting a lozenge on the ball during the Zimbabwean innings on Tuesday night at the Gabba. According to the ICC's Code of Conduct, players are not allowed to apply substances to the ball other than sweat and saliva. Dravid was fined half of his match fee.
Indian coach John Wright came out in defence of Dravid, stating that "It was an innocent mistake". Wright argued that Dravid had been trying to apply saliva to the ball when parts of a losenge he had been chewing stuck to the ball; Dravid then tried to wipe it off. ICC regulations prevented Dravid from commenting about the issue, but former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly also stated that Dravid's act was "just an accident".
Captaincy
Rahul Dravid has had a mixed record when leading India in Tests.
One of Dravid's most debated decisions was taken in March 2004, when he was standing in as the captain for injured Sourav Ganguly. India's first innings was declared at a point when Sachin Tendulkar was at 194 runs not out with 16 overs remaining on Day 2. In this test match Sehwag scored triple century first time. He became the first Indian to score triple century in test with a score of 309.
In March 2006, India lost the Mumbai Test, giving England its first Test victory in India since 1985, enabling it to draw the series 1–1. The defeat in Mumbai was arguably the result of Dravid's decision to bowl first on a flat dry pitch, which later deteriorated and ended with an Indian collapse in the run chase. Coincidentally, it was Dravid's 100th test match in which the Indians were all out for 100 runs in the second innings.
After India failed to qualify for the final of the DLF Cup, Dravid, the skipper, was criticised by former all-rounder Ravi Shastri who said that he was not assertive enough and let Greg Chappell make too many decisions. When asked for a response, Dravid said that Shastri, while a 'fair critic', was 'not privy' to the internal decision-making process of the team.
He was criticised by Vijay Mallya for not picking the team with right balance after his then IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore finished seventh out of the eight teams that participated in the 2008 season.
Achievements and awards
National honours
1998 – Arjuna Award recipient for achievements in cricket
2004 – Padma Shri – India's fourth highest civilian award
2013 – Padma Bhushan – India's third highest civilian award
Other honours
1999 – CEAT International Cricketer of the World Cup
2000 – Dravid was one of the five cricketers selected as Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
2004 – ICC Cricketer of the year – Highest award in the ICC listings
2004 – ICC Test Player of The Year, ICC Cricketer of The Year
2004 – MTV Youth Icon of the Year
2006 – Captain of the ICC's Test Team
2011 – NDTV Indian of the Year's Lifetime Achievement Award with Dev Anand
2012 – Don Bradman Award with Glenn McGrath
2015 – Wisden India's Highest Impact Test Batsman
2018 – ICC Hall of Fame
Personal life
Family
On 4 May 2003 he married Vijeta Pendharkar, a surgeon from Nagpur. Vijeta Pendharkar is also from Deshastha Brahmin community as Dravid. They have two children: Samit, born in 2005, and Anvay, born in 2009. Dravid is fluent in Marathi, Hindi, Kannada and English.
Commercial endorsements
Rahul Dravid has been sponsored by several brands throughout his career including Reebok (1996 – present), Pepsi (1997 present), Kissan (Unknown), Castrol (2001 – present), Hutch
(2003), Karnataka Tourism (2004), Max Life (2005 – present), Bank of Baroda (2005 – present), Citizen (2006 – present), Skyline Construction (2006 – present), Sansui (2007), Gillette (2007 – present), Samsung (2002 – 2004), World Trade Center Noida (2013– present),
CRED (2021-present).
Social commitments
Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA)
UNICEF Supporter and AIDS Awareness Campaign
Biographies
Books
Two biographies have been written on Rahul Dravid and his career:
Rahul Dravid – A Biography written by Vedam Jaishankar (). Publisher: UBSPD Publications. Date: January 2004
The Nice Guy Who Finished First written by Devendra Prabhudesai. Publisher: Rupa Publications. Date: November 2005
A collection of articles, testimonials and interviews related to Dravid was released by ESPNcricinfo following his retirement. The book was titled Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel.
See also
Sachin Tendulkar
Sourav Ganguly
VVS Laxman
Virendra Sehwag
References
External links
Indian cricketers
India Test cricketers
India One Day International cricketers
India Twenty20 International cricketers
India Test cricket captains
Wisden Cricketers of the Year
Karnataka cricketers
South Zone cricketers
Kent cricketers
Scotland cricketers
ACC Asian XI One Day International cricketers
ICC World XI One Day International cricketers
World XI Test cricketers
Royal Challengers Bangalore cricketers
Canterbury cricketers
Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers
Rajasthan Royals cricketers
India Blue cricketers
Cricketers at the 1999 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2003 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2007 Cricket World Cup
Recipients of the Padma Shri in sports
1973 births
Living people
Cricketers from Indore
Cricketers from Bangalore
Recipients of the Arjuna Award
International Cricket Council Cricketer of the Year
Marathi people
Indian cricket coaches
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in sports
Indian cricket commentators
Wicket-keepers
| false |
[
"\"What Did I Do to You?\" is a song recorded by British singer Lisa Stansfield for her 1989 album, Affection. It was written by Stansfield, Ian Devaney and Andy Morris, and produced by Devaney and Morris. The song was released as the fourth European single on 30 April 1990. It included three previously unreleased songs written by Stansfield, Devaney and Morris: \"My Apple Heart,\" \"Lay Me Down\" and \"Something's Happenin'.\" \"What Did I Do to You?\" was remixed by Mark Saunders and by the Grammy Award-winning American house music DJ and producer, David Morales. The single became a top forty hit in the European countries reaching number eighteen in Finland, number twenty in Ireland and number twenty-five in the United Kingdom. \"What Did I Do to You?\" was also released in Japan.\n\nIn 2014, the remixes of \"What Did I Do to You?\" were included on the deluxe 2CD + DVD re-release of Affection and on People Hold On ... The Remix Anthology. They were also featured on The Collection 1989–2003 box set (2014), including previously unreleased Red Zone Mix by David Morales.\n\nCritical reception\nThe song received positive reviews from music critics. Matthew Hocter from Albumism viewed it as a \"upbeat offering\". David Giles from Music Week said it is \"beautifully performed\" by Stansfield. A reviewer from Reading Eagle wrote that \"What Did I Do to You?\" \"would be right at home on the \"Saturday Night Fever\" soundtrack.\"\n\nMusic video\nA music video was produced to promote the single, directed by Philip Richardson, who had previously directed the videos for \"All Around the World\" and \"Live Together\". It features Stansfield with her kiss curls, dressed in a white outfit and performing with her band on a stage in front of a jumping audience. The video was later published on Stansfield's official YouTube channel in November 2009. It has amassed more than 1,6 million views as of October 2021.\n\nTrack listings\n\n European/UK 7\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK/Japanese CD single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n UK 10\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix) – 5:52\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK 12\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 4:22\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 3:19\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:15\n\n UK 12\" promotional single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Anti Poll Tax Dub) – 6:31\n\n Other remixes\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Red Zone Mix) – 7:45\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nLisa Stansfield songs\n1990 singles\nSongs written by Lisa Stansfield\n1989 songs\nArista Records singles\nSongs written by Ian Devaney\nSongs written by Andy Morris (musician)",
"\"What Would Steve Do?\" is the second single released by Mumm-Ra on Columbia Records, which was released on February 19, 2007. It is a re-recorded version of the self-release they did in April 2006. It reached #40 in the UK Singles Chart, making it their highest charting single.\n\nTrack listings\nAll songs written by Mumm-Ra.\n\nCD\n\"What Would Steve Do?\"\n\"Cute As\"\n\"Without You\"\n\n7\"\n\"What Would Steve Do?\"\n\"What Would Steve Do? (Floorboard Mix)\"\n\nGatefold 7\"\n\"What Would Steve Do?\"\n\"Cute As\"\n\nReferences\n\n2007 singles\nMumm-Ra (band) songs\n2006 songs\nColumbia Records singles"
] |
[
"Rahul Dravid",
"Golden years",
"What started his golden years",
"As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain,",
"Who was helping him",
"Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal.",
"What did he do",
"Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals."
] |
C_52e2fff8b563440da632c6c90324029a_1
|
What did he try
| 4 |
What did Rahul Dravid try?
|
Rahul Dravid
|
As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain, Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal. Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid played his part scoring 157 runs in 4 matches at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe opening the innings before getting injured while fielding at slips forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament. India started off the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk inning of 49 ball 41 runs, including 5 fours and a six, chasing a target of 63 runs. However, Dravid's poor patch truly ended in the next Test series against Zimbabwe, which was also the first series for John Wright as the new Indian coach. Wright was instrumental in Dravid's association with Kent earlier this year. Dravid returned the favour by recommending his name to the BCCI for the post of national team coach. By now, Dravid had played 8 Tests since his last hundred against New Zealand at Mohali scoring just 350 runs at a paltry average of 23.33 without a single fifty plus inning. The Indian vice-captain ended the run drought and welcomed the new Indian coach with a double hundred - Dravid's first. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second inning guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 - highest batting average by an Indian in a Test series. Dravid scored just a solitary fifty in the second of the five match bilateral ODI series between India and Zimbabwe. However, the series proved to be a milestone in Dravid's career. Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the 5th match of the series as the regular captain Ganguly had to sit out due to one match suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39 run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain. CANNOTANSWER
|
Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket.
|
Rahul Sharad Dravid (; born 11 January 1973) is a former Indian cricketer and captain of the Indian national team, currently serving as its head coach. Prior to his appointment to the senior men's national team, Dravid was the Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), and the head coach of the India Under-19 and India A teams. Under his tutelage, the under-19 team finished runners up at the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup and won the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Known for his sound batting technique, Dravid scored 24,177 runs in international cricket and is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is colloquially known as Mr. Dependable and often referred to as The Wall.
Born in a Marathi family and raised in Bangalore, he started playing cricket at the age of 12 and later represented Karnataka at the under-15, under-17 and under-19 levels. Hailed as The Wall, Dravid was named one of the best five cricketers of the year by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 2000 and received the Player of the Year and the Test Player of the Year awards at the inaugural ICC awards ceremony in 2004. In December 2011, he became the first non-Australian cricketer to deliver the Bradman Oration in Canberra.
As of December 2016, Dravid is the fourth-highest run scorer in Test cricket, after Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis. In 2004, after completing his century against Bangladesh in Chittagong, he became the first player to score a century in all the ten Test-playing countries. As of October 2012, he holds the record for the most catches taken by a player (non-wicket-keeper) in Test cricket, with 210. Dravid holds a unique record of never getting out for a Golden duck in the 286 Test innings which he has played. He has faced 31258 balls, which is the highest number of balls faced by any player in test cricket. He has also spent 44152 minutes at the crease, which is the highest time spent on crease by any player in test cricket. Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar are currently the highest scoring partnership in Test cricket history having scored 6920 runs combined when batting together for India.
In August 2011, after receiving a surprise recall in the ODI series against England, Dravid declared his retirement from ODIs as well as Twenty20 International (T20I), and in March 2012, he announced his retirement from international and first-class cricket. He appeared in the 2012 Indian Premier League as captain of the Rajasthan Royals.
Rahul Dravid, along with Glenn McGrath were honoured during the seventh annual Bradman Awards function in Sydney on 1 November 2012. Dravid has also been honoured with the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan award, India's fourth and third highest civilian awards respectively.
In 2014, Rahul Dravid joined the GoSports Foundation, Bangalore as a member of their board of advisors. In collaboration with GoSports Foundation he is mentoring India's future Olympians and Paralympians as part of the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme. Indian badminton player Prannoy Kumar, Para-swimmer Sharath Gayakwad and young Golfer S. Chikkarangappa was part of the initial group of athletes to be mentored by Rahul Dravid. In July 2018, Dravid became the fifth Indian cricketer to be inducted into ICC Hall of Fame.
Early life
Dravid was born in a Marathi-Speaking Brahmin family in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. His family later moved to Bangalore, Karnataka, where he was raised. His mother tongue is Marathi. Dravid's father Sharad Dravid worked for a company that makes jams and preserves, giving rise to the later nickname Jammy. His mother, Pushpa, was a professor of architecture at the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bangalore. Dravid has a younger brother named Vijay. He did his schooling at St. Joseph's Boys High School, Bangalore and earned a degree in commerce from St. Joseph's College of Commerce, Bangalore. He was selected to India's national cricket team while working towards an MBA at St Joseph's College of Business Administration. He is fluent in several languages: Marathi, Kannada, English and Hindi.
Formative years and domestic career
Dravid started playing cricket at the age of 12, and represented Karnataka at the under-15, the under-17 and the under-19 levels. Former cricketer Keki Tarapore first noticed Dravid's talent while coaching at a summer camp in the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Dravid scored a century for his school team. He also played as wicket-keeper.
Dravid made his Ranji Trophy debut in February 1991, while still attending college. Playing alongside future India teammates Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath against Maharashtra in Pune, he scored 82 runs in the match, which ended in a draw. He followed it up with a century against Bengal and three successive centuries after. However, Dravid's first full season was in 1991–92, when he scored two centuries and finished up with 380 runs at an average of 63.30, getting selected for the South Zone cricket team in the Duleep Trophy. Dravid's caught the national team selectors' eye with his good performances for India A in the home series against England A in 1994–95.
International career
Debut
Dravid, who had been knocking at the doors of Indian national cricket team for quite a while with his consistent performance in domestic cricket, received his first national call in October 1994, for the last two matches of the Wills World Series. However, he could not break into the playing eleven. He went back to the domestic circuit and kept knocking harder. So much so, that when the selectors announced the Indian team for the 1996 World Cup sans Dravid, an Indian daily newspaper carried a headline – "Rahul Dravid gets a raw deal". Dravid eventually made his international debut on 3 April 1996 in an ODI against Sri Lanka in the Singer Cup held in Singapore immediately after the 1996 World Cup, replacing Vinod Kambli. He wasn't particularly impressive with the bat, scoring just three runs before being dismissed by Muttiah Muralitharan, but took two catches in the match. He followed it up with another failure in the next game scoring just four runs before getting run out against Pakistan.
In contrast to his ODI debut, his Test debut was rather successful one. Dravid was selected for the Indian squad touring England on the backdrop of a consistent performance in domestic cricket for five years. Fine performances in the tour games including fifties against Gloucestershire and Leicestershire failed to earn him a place in the team for the First Test. He finally made his Test debut at Lord's on 20 June 1996 against England in the Second Test of the series at the expense of injured senior batsman Sanjay Manjrekar. Manjrekar, who was suffering from an ankle injury, was to undergo a fitness test on the morning of the Second Test. Dravid had already been informed that he would play if Manjrekar fails the test. As Manjrekar failed the fitness test, ten minutes before the toss, Sandeep Patil, the then Indian coach, went up to Dravid to inform him that he was indeed going to make his debut that day. Patil recalled years later:
Coming in to bat at no. 7, he forged important partnerships, first with another debutante Sourav Ganguly and then with Indian lower order, securing a vital first innings lead for his team. Dravid scored 95 runs before getting out to the bowling of Chris Lewis. He was just five runs short of a landmark debut hundred when he nicked a Lewis delivery to the keeper and walked even before umpire's decision. He also took his first catch in Test cricket in this match to dismiss Nasser Hussain off the bowling of Srinath. In the next tour game against British Universities, Dravid scored a hundred. He scored another fifty in the first innings of the Third Test. Dravid concluded a successful debut series with an impressive average of 62.33 from two Test matches.
1996–98: A tale of two formats
Dravid's early years in international cricket mirrored his international debut. He had contrasting fortunes in the long and the shorter format of the game. While he straightaway made a name for himself in Test cricket, he had to struggle quite a bit to make a mark in ODIs.
After a successful Test debut in England, Dravid played in the one-off Test against Australia in Delhi – his first Test in India. Batting at no. 6, he scored 40 runs in the first innings. Dravid batted at no. 3 position for the first time in the First Test of the three-match home series against South Africa in Ahmedabad in November 1996. He didn't do too well in the series scoring just 175 runs at a modest average of 29.16.
Two weeks later, India toured South Africa for a three–match Test series. Chasing a target of 395 runs in the First Test, Indian team bundled out meekly for 66 runs on the Durban pitch that provided excessive bounce and seam movement. Dravid, batting at no. 6, was the only Indian batsman who reached double figures in the innings scoring 27 not out. He was promoted to the no. 3 slot again in the second innings of the Second Test, a move that paid rich dividends in the ensuing Test. He almost won the Third Test for India with his maiden test hundred in the first innings scoring 148 runs and another 81 runs in the second innings at Wanderers before the thunderstorms, dim light and Cullinan's hundred saved the day for South Africa enabling them to draw the match. Dravid's performance in this Test earned him his first Man of the Match award in Test cricket. He top scored for India in the series with 277 runs at an average of 55.40.
Dravid continued in the same vein in the West Indies where he once again top scored for India in the five–match Test series aggregating 360 runs at an average of 72.00 including four fifties. 92 runs scored in the first innings of the fifth match in Georgetown earned him a joint Man of the Match award along with Shivnarine Chanderpaul. With this series, Dravid concluded a successful 1996/97 Test season, topping the international runs chart with 852 runs from 12 matches at an average of 50.11 with six fifties and one hundred.
Dravid continued his good run scoring seven fifties in the next eight Tests that included fifties in six consecutive innings (three each against Sri Lanka and Australia), becoming only the second Indian to do so after Gundappa Vishwanath. By the end of 1997/98 Test season, he had scored 15 fifties in 22 Tests which included four scores of nineties but just a solitary hundred.
The century drought came to an end in the 1998/99 Test season when he further raised the bar of his performance scoring 752 runs in seven Tests at an average of 62.66 that included four hundreds and one fifty and in the process topping the runs chart for India for the season. The first of those four hundreds came on the Zimbabwe tour. Dravid top scored in both the innings against Zimbabwe scoring 118 and 44 runs respectively however, India lost the one-off Test.
The Zimbabwe tour was followed by a tour to New Zealand. First Test having been abandoned without a ball being bowled, the series started for Dravid with the first duck of his Test career in the first innings of the Second Test and ended with hundreds in both the innings of the Third Test in Hamilton. He scored 190 and 103 not out in the first and the second innings respectively, becoming only the third Indian batsman, after Vijay Hazare and Sunil Gavaskar, to score a century in both innings of a Test match. Dravid topped the runs table for the series with 321 runs from two matches at an average of 107.00 but could not prevent India from losing the series 0–1.
Later that month, India played a two Test home series against Pakistan. Dravid didn't contribute much with the bat. India lost the First Test but won the Second Test in Delhi riding on Kumble's historic 10-wicket haul. Dravid played his part in the 10-wicket haul by taking a catch to dismiss Mushtaq Ahmed who was Kumble's eighth victim of the innings. The Indo-Pak Test series was followed by the 1998–99 Asian Test Championship. Dravid couldn't do much with the bat as India went on to lose the riot-affected First Test of the championship against Pakistan at the Eden Gardens. India went to Sri Lanka to play the Second Test of the championship. Dravid scored his fourth hundred of the season at Colombo in the first innings of the match. He also effected a brilliant run out of Russel Arnold during Sri Lankan innings fielding at short leg. On the fourth morning, Dravid got injured while fielding at the same position when the ball from Jayawardene's pull shot hit his face through the helmet grill. He didn't come out to bat in the second innings due to the injury. The match ended in a draw as India failed to qualify for the Finals of the championship.
In a stark contrast to his Test career, Dravid had to struggle a lot to make a mark in the ODIs. Between his ODI debut in April 1996 and the end of 1998 calendar year, Dravid regularly found himself in and out of the ODI team.
Dravid tasted first success of his ODI career in the 1996 'Friendship' Cup against Pakistan in the tough conditions of Toronto. He emerged as the highest scorer of the series with 220 runs in five matches at an average of 44.00 and a strike rate of 68.53. He won his first ODI Man of the Match award for the 46 runs scored in the low scoring third game of the series. He top scored for India in the Standard Bank International One-Day Series 1996/97 in South Africa with 280 runs from eight games at an average of 35.00 and a strike rate of 60.73, the highlight being a Man of the Match award-winning performance (84 runs, one catch) in the Final of the series that came in a losing cause. He was the second highest run scorer for India in the four-match bilateral ODI series in the West Indies in 1996/97 with 121 runs at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 57.61. Dravid's maiden ODI hundred came in a losing cause in the 1997 Pepsi Independence Cup against Pakistan in Chennai. Dravid top scored for India in the quadrangular event with 189 runs from three games at an average of 94.50 and a strike rate of 75.60 however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the series.
However, Dravid's achievements in the ODIs were dwarfed by his failures in the shorter format of the game. 14 runs from two games in the 1996 Pepsi Sharjah Cup; 20 runs from two innings in the Singer World Series; 65 runs from four innings in the 1997 'Friendship' Cup; 88 runs from four games in the 1998 Coca-Cola Triangular Series including a 22-ball five runs and a 21-ball one run innings, both coming against Bangladesh; 32 runs from four games in the 1998 'Friendship' Cup; a slew of such poor performances often forced him to the sidelines of the India ODI squad. By the end of 1998, Dravid had scored 1709 runs in 65 ODIs at a humble average of 31.64 with a poor strike rate of 63.48.
By now, Dravid had been branded as a Test specialist. While he continued to score heavily in Test cricket, his poor strike rate in ODIs came under scanner. He drew criticism for not being able to adjust his style of play to the needs of ODI cricket, his lack of attacking capability and play big strokes. However, Dravid worked hard and re-tooled his game by increasing his range of strokes and adapting his batting style to suit the requirements of ODI cricket. He learned to pace his innings cleverly without going for the slogs.
Dravid's ODI renaissance began during the 1998/99 New Zealand tour. He scored a run-a-ball hundred in the first match of the bilateral ODI series that earned him his third Man of the Match award in ODIs. The hundred came in a losing cause. However, his effort of 51 runs from 71 balls in the Fourth ODI came in India's victory and earned him his second Man of the Match award of the series. He ended as the top scorer of the series with 309 runs from five games at an average of 77.25 and a strike rate of 84.65. Dravid scored a hundred against Sri Lanka in 1998/99 Pepsi Cup at Nagpur adding a record 236 runs for the 2nd wicket with Ganguly, who also scored a hundred in the match. Uncharacteristically, Dravid was the faster of the two scoring 116 of 118 deliveries. In the next match against Pakistan, he bowled four overs and took the wicket of Saeed Anwar, out caught behind by wicket-keeper Nayan Mongia. This was his first wicket in international cricket.
Dravid warmed up for his debut World Cup with two fifties in the 1998–99 Coca-Cola Cup in Sharjah, one each against England and Pakistan. Standing-in as the substitute wicket-keeper in the third match of the series for Nayan Mongia, who got injured during keeping, Dravid effected two dismissals. He first stumped Graeme Hick off Sunil Joshi's bowling, who became Dravid's first victim as a wicket-keeper, and then caught Neil Fairbrother off Ajay Jadeja's bowling. He top scored for India in the tournament, though his last ODI innings before the World Cup was a golden duck against Pakistan, in the Final of the series.
Debut World Cup success
Dravid announced his form in England hitting consecutive fifties against Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire in the warm-up games.
He made his World Cup debut against South Africa at Hove striking a half century, but scored just 13 in the next game against Zimbabwe. India lost both the games. Having lost the first two games, India needed to win the remaining three games of the first round to have any chance of advancing into the Super Six stage. Dravid put up a partnership of 237 runs with Sachin Tendulkar against Kenya at Bristol – a World Cup record – and in the process hit his maiden World Cup hundred, helping India to a 94-run victory. India's designated keeper Mongia left the field at the end of 9th over during Kenyan innings, forcing Dravid to keep the wickets for the rest of the innings. In the absence of injured Nayan Mongia, Dravid played his first ODI as a designated keeper against Sri Lanka at Taunton. Dravid once again staged a record breaking partnership worth 318 runs – the first ever three hundred run partnership in ODI history – but this time with Sourav Ganguly, guiding India to a 157-run win. Dravid scored 145 runs from 129 balls with 17 fours and a six, becoming the second batsman in World Cup history to hit back-to-back hundreds. Dravid struck a fine fifty in the last group match as India defeated England to advance into the Super Six stage. Dravid scored 2, 61 & 29 in the three Super Six matches against Australia, Pakistan & New Zealand respectively. India failed to qualify for the semi-finals having lost to Australia and New Zealand but achieved a consolation victory against Pakistan in a tense game, what with the military conflict going on between the two countries in Kashmir at the same time. Dravid emerged as the top scorer of the tournament with 461 runs from 8 games at an average of 65.85 and a strike rate of 85.52.
Dravid's post-World Cup campaign started on a poor note with just 40 runs coming in 4 games of Aiwa Cup in August 1999. He soon came into his own, top-scoring for India in two consecutive limited-overs series – the Singapore Challenge, the highlight being a hundred in the Final coming in a lost cause, and the DMC Cup, the highlight being a match winning effort (77 runs, 4 catches) in the series decider for which he received man-of-the-match award. Dravid topped the international runs chart for 1999 cricket season across all formats scoring 782 runs from 19 matches. By now, Dravid had started to keep wickets on an infrequent basis with India fielding him as designated wicket-keeper in five out of 10 ODIs played in the three events.
Dravid kick-started his post World Cup Test season with a decent outing against New Zealand in the 3-match home series. His best effort of the series came in the second innings of the First test at Mohali scoring 144, helping India salvage a draw after being bowled out for 83 runs in the First innings. This was Dravid's sixth test hundred but his first test hundred on Indian soil. Dravid did well in the 3–2 series win against New Zealand in the bilateral ODI series, scoring 240 runs in 5 games at an average of 60 and a strike rate of 83.62, ending as the second highest scorer in the series. His career best effort in ODIs came in this series in the second game at Hyderabad where he scored run-a-ball 153 runs which included 15 fours and two sixes. He featured in a 331-run partnership with Tendulkar, which was the highest partnership in ODI cricket history, a record that stood for 15 years until it was broken in 2015. In 1999, Dravid scored 1761 runs in 43 ODIs at an average of 46.34 and a strike rate of 75.16 including 6 hundreds and 8 fifties and featured in two 300+ partnerships.
India toured Australia in December 1999 for a 3-match test series and a triangular ODI tournament. Although Dravid scored a hundred against Tasmania in the practice match, he failed miserably with the bat in the Test series as India slumped to a 0–3 whitewash. He did reasonably well in the 1999–2000 Carlton & United Series scoring 3 fifties in the triangular event however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the tournament.
Dravid's poor form in Tests continued as India suffered a 0–2 whitewash against South Africa in a home series. He had moderate success in the bilateral ODI series against South Africa. He contributed to India's 3–2 series win with 208 runs at an average of 41.60 which included 2 fifties and three wickets at an average of 22.66 topping the bowling average chart for the series. His career best bowling figure of 2/43 from nine overs in the First ODI at Kochi, was also the best bowling figure by any bowler in that particular match.
Rise through the ranks
In February 2000, Tendulkar's resignation from captaincy led to the promotion of Ganguly, the vice-captain then, as the new captain of the Indian team. In May 2000, while Dravid was busy playing county cricket in England, he was appointed as the vice-captain of the Indian team announced for the Asia cup.
India did well in the 2000 ICC KnockOut Trophy. Indian team, coming out of the shadows of the infamous match fixing scandal, showed a lot of character under the new leadership of Ganguly and Dravid, beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid scored 157 runs in 4 matches of the tournament, at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid scored 85 runs in a match against Zimbabwe in the 2000–01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy while opening the innings but was forced to miss the rest of the tournament because of an injury.
India kick started the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk knock of 41 runs from 49 balls, including 5 fours and a six, while chasing a target of 63 runs. The ensuing test series against Zimbabwe was John Wright's first assignment as Indian coach. Dravid, who was instrumental in Wright's appointment as India's first foreign head coach, welcomed him with his maiden double hundred. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second, guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 – highest batting average by an Indian in a series across all formats.
Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the fifth match of the bilateral ODI series against Zimbabwe in the absence of Ganguly who was serving suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39-run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain.
History at Eden
The Australian team toured India in February 2001 for what was being billed as the Final Frontier for Steve Waugh's all conquering men, who were coming on the back of 15 consecutive Test wins. Dravid failed in the first innings of the First Test but displayed strong resilience in Tendulkar's company in the second innings. Dravid's 196 ball long resistance finally ended when he got out bowled to Warne for 39 runs. Australians extended their winning streak to 16 Tests as they beat India convincingly by 10 wickets inside three days.
The Australian juggernaut seemed unstoppable as they looked on course towards their 17th consecutive victory in the Second Test at the Eden Gardens, when they bowled India out for meagre 171 in the first innings and enforced a follow-on after securing a massive lead of 274 runs. In the second innings, Laxman, who had scored a fine fifty in the first innings, was promoted to no. 3 position which had been Dravid's usual spot for quite sometime now, while Dravid, who had gotten out bowled to Warne for second time in a row in the first innings for just 25 runs, was relegated to no. 6 position. When Dravid joined Laxman in the middle on the third day of the Test, with scoreboard reading 232/4 and India still needing 42 runs to avoid an innings defeat, another convincing win for Australia looked inevitable. Instead, two of them staged one of the greatest fightbacks in cricketing history.
Dravid and Laxman played out the remaining time on the third day and whole of the fourth day, denying Australia any wicket on Day 4. Dravid, angered by the flak that the Indian team had been receiving lately in the media coverage, celebrated his hundred in an uncharacteristic fashion brandishing his bat at the press box. Eventually, Laxman got out on the fifth morning bringing the 376-runs partnership to an end. Dravid soon perished getting run out for 180 while trying to force the pace. Ganguly declared the innings at 657/7, setting Australia a target of 384 runs with 75 overs left in the match. An inspired team India bowled superbly to dismiss Australia for 212 in 68.3 overs. India won the match by 171 runs. This was only the third instance of a team winning a Test after following-on and India became the 2nd team to do so.
Dravid scored 81 runs in the first innings of the Third Test and took 4 catches in the match as India defeated Australia at Chennai in a nail biting finish to clinch the series 2–1. Dravid scored 80 in the first of the 5-match ODI series at his home ground as India won the match by 60 runs. He didn't do too well in the remaining 4 ODIs as Australia won the series 3–2. Dravid topped the averages for the 2000/01 Test season with 839 runs from six matches at an average of 104.87.
Dravid had a decent outing in Zimbabwe, scoring 137 runs from 134 balls in the First Tour game and aggregating 138 runs at an average of 69.00 from the drawn Test series. In the ensuing triangular ODI series, he aggregated 121 runs from 5 matches at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 101.68, the highlight being an unbeaten 72 off 64 balls, while chasing a target of 235 against Zimbabwe in the 3rd match of the series, guiding India to a 4-wicket win with four balls to spare. He was adjudged man of the match for his match winning knock.
On the next tour to Sri Lanka, India lost the first three matches of the triangular event. In the absence of suspended Ganguly, Dravid captained the side in the 4th match leading them to their first victory of the series. India won the next two matches to qualify for the Final. Dravid played crucial innings in all the three victories. Eventually, India lost the Final to Sri Lanka. He top scored for India in the series with 259 runs from seven matches at an average of 51.80 and a strike rate of 59.81. Reinstated to his usual no. 3 position in the absence of injured Laxman, Dravid top scored for India in the ensuing 3-Test series as well with 235 runs at an average of 47.00. The highlight for Dravid was 75 runs scored in the tough fourth innings chase of the Second Test – a crucial contribution to India's first Test win in Sri Lanka since 1993 despite the absence of key players like Tendulkar, Laxman, Srinath and Kumble.
Dravid had decent success in Standard Bank tri-series on South Africa tour, scoring 214 runs (including 3 fifties) at an average of 53.50 and a strike rate of 71.81. He also kept wickets in the final two ODIs of the series effecting 3 stumpings. The highlight for Dravid in the ensuing Test series came in the second innings of the Second Test. India, having failed to last hundred overs in any of the previous three innings in the series, needed to bat out four sessions in the Second Test to save the match. They started on a poor note losing their first wicket in the first over with no runs on the scoreboard. However, Dravid forged an important partnership of 171 runs with Dasgupta that lasted for 83.2 overs taking India to the brink of safety. Poor weather helped India salvage a draw as only 96.2 overs could be bowled in the innings. Dravid captained the team in the 'unofficial' Third test in the absence of injured Ganguly, which India lost by an innings margin.
By the end of the South African tour, Dravid had started experiencing problem in his right shoulder. Although he played the ensuing home test series against England, he pulled out of the six-match bilateral ODI series to undergo shoulder rehabilitation program in South Africa. He returned for the Zimbabwe's tour of India but performed below par, scoring a fifty each in the Test series and the bilateral ODI series.
2002–2006: Peak years
Dravid hit the peak form of his career in 2002. Between Season 2002 and Season 2006, Dravid was the second highest scorer overall and top scorer for India across formats, scoring 8,914 runs from 174 matches at an average of 54.02, including 19 hundreds.
Dravid had a decent outing in West Indies in 2002. The highlights for him included – hitting a hundred with a swollen jaw and helping India avoid the follow-on in the process at Georgetown in the drawn First Test; contributing with a fifty and four catches to India's victory in the Second Test at Port of Spain – India's first Test victory in West Indies since 1975–76; and another fifty in the drawn Fourth Test with a wicket to boot – that of Ridley Jacobs who was batting on 118. This was Dravid's only wicket in Test cricket. He played as India's designated keeper in the ODI series but didn't contribute much with the bat in the 2–1 series win.
A quartet of hundreds
India's tour of England in 2002 started with a triangular ODI event involving India, England and Sri Lanka. India emerged as the winners of the series beating England in the Final – their first victory after nine consecutive defeats in one-day finals. Dravid played as designated keeper in six out of seven matches effecting nine dismissals (6 catches, 3 stumpings) – most by a keeper in the series. He also did well with the bat aggregating 245 runs at an average of 49.00 including three fifties. His performance against Sri Lanka in fourth ODI (64 runs, 1 catch) earned him a man of the match award.
India lost the first of the four match Test series. Having conceded a 260 runs lead in the first innings of the Second Test at Nottingham, Indians were in a spot of bother. However, Dravid led the fightback in the second innings with a hundred as Indians managed to earn a draw.
Ganguly won the toss in the Third Test and took a bold decision to bat first on a gloomy overcast morning at Headingley on a pitch known to be traditionally conducive for fast and swing bowling. Having lost an early wicket, Dravid weathered the storm in company of Sanjay Bangar. They played cautiously, taking body blows on a pitch with uneven bounce. Dravid completed his second hundred of the series in the process. As the conditions became more and more conducive for batting, the Indian batsmen piled on England's misery. Indians declared the innings on 628/8 and then bowled England out twice to register their first test victory in England since 1986. Despite being outscored by Tendulkar, Dravid was awarded man of the match for his efforts. Dravid scored a double hundred in the drawn Fourth Test to notch up his second consecutive man of the match award of the series. Christopher Martin-Jenkins noted during the Fourth Test: Dravid aggregated 602 runs in the series from four matches at an average of 100.33, including three hundreds and a fifty and was adjudged joint man of the series along with Michael Vaughan.
India jointly shared the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka. Dravid contributed to India's successful campaign with 120 runs at an average of 60.00 and five dismissals behind the wicket. Dravid scored a hundred in the First Test of the three match home series against West Indies becoming the first Indian batsman to score hundreds in four consecutive Test innings but had to retire soon after owing to severe cramps. Dravid did well in the subsequent bilateral 7-match ODI series aggregating 300 runs at an average of 75.00 and a strike rate of 89.82 including one hundred and two fifties. He also effected 7 dismissals (6 catches, 1 stumping) in the series. India trailing 1–2, needed 325 runs to win the Fourth ODI and level the series. Dravid scored a hundred leading India to a successful chase. He once again scored a crucial fifty in the Sixth ODI as India once again leveled the series after trailing 2–3. India, however, lost the last match to lose the series 3–4.
Dravid top scored for India in the two-match Test series in New Zealand as India slumped to a whitewash. He played as designated keeper in six of the 7-match bilateral ODI series and effected seven dismissals but fared poorly with the bat as India were handed a 2-5 drubbing by the New Zealand.
2003 Cricket World Cup
Dravid arrived in South Africa with the Indian squad to participate in the 2003 Cricket World Cup in the capacity of first-choice keeper-batsman as part of their seven batsmen-four bowlers strategy – an experiment that had brought success to the team in the past year. The idea was that making Dravid keep wickets allowed India to accommodate an extra specialist batsman. The strategy worked out well for India in the World Cup. India recovered from a less than convincing victory against minnows Netherlands and a loss to Australia in the league stage and embarked on a dream run winning eight consecutive matches to qualify for the World Cup Finals for the first time since 1983. India eventually lost the Final to Australia ending as runner-up in the tournament. Dravid contributed to India's campaign with 318 runs at an average of 63.60 and 16 dismissals (15 catches, 1 stumping). Highlights for Dravid in the tournament included a fifty against England, 44 not out against Pakistan in a successful chase and an unbeaten fifty in another successful chase against New Zealand.
Dravid topped the international runs chart for 2003/04 cricket season across formats aggregating 1993 runs from 31 matches at an average of 64.29 including three double hundreds. First of those came against New Zealand in the first of the two-test home series at Ahmedabad. Dravid scored 222 runs in the first innings and 73 runs in the second innings receiving a man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid captained Indian Test Team for the first time in the second game of the series at Mohali in the absence of Ganguly. Both the matches ended in a draw. Dravid top scored in the series with 313 runs at an average of 78.25. India next participated in TVS cup alongside New Zealand and Australia. India lost to Australia in the Final. Dravid scored two fifties in the series but the highlight was his fifty against New Zealand in the ninth match that came in just 22 balls – second fastest fifty by an Indian.
An Eden encore
After earning a draw in the first of the four-match Test series in Australia, Indians found themselves reeling at 85/4 in the Second Test at Adelaide after Australia had piled 556 runs in the first innings when Laxman joined Dravid in the middle. They batted for 93.5 overs bringing about their second 300-run partnership adding 303 runs together before Laxman perished for 148 runs. However, Dravid continued to complete his second double hundred of the season. He was the last man out for 233 runs as India conceded a marginal first innings lead of 33 runs to Australia. India bowled Australia out for paltry score of 196 riding on Agarkar's six-wicket haul, and were set a target of 230 runs to win the match. Dravid helped India tread through a tricky chase with an unbeaten fifty as India registered their first test victory in Australia since 1980/81 to go up 1–0 in the series. This was the first time that Australians were 0-1 down in a home series since 1994. Dravid won the man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid registered a score of ninety each in the next two tests as Australia leveled the series 1–1. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 619 runs at an average of 123.80 and was awarded player of the series for his efforts.
Dravid did moderately well in the ensuing VB series with three fifties in the league stage, all of which came in winning cause. However, India lost the best-of-three finals to Australia 2–0. Dravid was fined half his match fee for applying cough lozenge on the ball during a match in the series against Zimbabwe – an act that was claimed to be an innocent mistake by coach John Wright.
India visited Pakistan in March 2004 to participate in a bilateral Test series for the first time since 1989/90. Prior to the Test series, India participated and won the 5-match ODI series 3–2. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 248 runs at an average of 62.00 and a strike rate of 73.59. Dravid scored 99 runs in the First ODI helping India post an imposing total of 349. He also took the important catch of threatening Inzamam-ul-Haq, who was batting on 122, as India went on to win the match by five runs. When Indians were trailing in the series 1–2, Dravid helped India level the series with an unbeaten fifty during a successful chase in the Fourth ODI.
Captaincy
Dravid captained India in the first two tests in the absence of injured Ganguly and led India to their first-ever Test victory in Pakistan. Dravid, standing in only his second test as team's captain, took a bold and controversial decision during First Test at Multan that divided the cricket fraternity. Pakistani cricketers had been on field for 150+ overs as India posted a total in excess of 600 runs in the first innings. Dravid, who wanted to have a crack at the tired Pakistani batsmen in the final hour of second day's play, declared Indian innings with Tendulkar batting at 194, just six runs short of his double century. While some praised the team before personal milestones approach of the Indian captain, most criticized Dravid's timing of declaration as there were no pressing concerns and there was ample time left in the match to try and bowl Pakistan out twice. While Tendulkar was admittedly disappointed, any rumours of rift between him and Dravid were quashed by both the cricketers and the team management, who claimed that the matter had been discussed and sorted amicably behind closed doors. India eventually went on to win the match by innings margin. Pakistan leveled the series beating India in the Second Test. Dravid slammed a double hundred in the Third Test at Rawalpindi – his third double hundred of the season. He scored 270 runs – his career best performance – before getting out to reverse sweep trying to force the pace. India went on to win the match and the series – their first series victory outside India since 1993. Dravid was adjudged man of the match for his effort.
Dravid was appointed the captain for the Indian team for 2007 World Cup, where India had an unsuccessful campaign.
During India's unsuccessful tour of England in 2011, in which their 4–0 loss cost them the top rank in Test cricket, Dravid made three centuries.
2011 Tour of England
Having regained his form on the tour to West Indies, where he scored a match-winning hundred in Sabina park, Jamaica, Dravid then toured England in what was billed as the series which would decide the World No. 1 ranking in tests.
In the first test at Lord's, in reply to England's 474, Dravid scored an unbeaten 103, his first hundred at the ground where he debuted in 1996. He received scant support from his teammates as India were bowled out for 286 and lost the test. The 2nd test at Trentbridge, Nottingham again saw Dravid in brilliant form. Sent out to open the batting in place of an injured Gautam Gambhir, he scored his second successive hundred. His 117 though, again came in a losing cause, as a collapse of 6 wickets for 21 runs in the first innings led to a massive defeat by 319 runs. Dravid failed in both innings in the third test at Birmingham, as India lost by an innings and 242 runs, one of the heaviest defeats in their history. However, he came back brilliantly in the fourth and final match at The Oval. Again opening the batting in place of Gambhir, he scored an unbeaten 146 out of India's total of 300, carrying his bat through the innings. Once again, though, his efforts were in vain as India lost the match, completing a 0–4 whitewash.
In all, he scored 461 runs in the four matches at an average of 76.83 with three hundreds. He accounted for over 26% of India's runs in the series and was named India's man of the series by England coach Andy Flower. His performance in the series was met with widespread admiration and was hailed by some as one of his finest ever series
Retirement
Rahul Dravid was dropped from the ODI team in 2009, but was selected again for an ODI series in England in 2011, surprising even Dravid himself since, although he had not officially retired from ODI cricket, he had not expected to be recalled. After being selected, he announced that he would retire from ODI cricket after the series. He played his last ODI innings against England at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, on 16 September 2011, scoring 69 runs from 79 balls before being bowled by Graeme Swann. His last limited-overs international match was his debut T20I match; he announced his retirement before playing his first T20I match.
Dravid announced his retirement from Test and domestic cricket on 9 March 2012, after the 2011–12 tour of Australia, but he said that he would captain the Rajasthan Royals in the 2012 Indian Premier League. He was the second-highest run scorer and had taken the highest number of catches in Test cricket at the time of his retirement.
In July 2014, he played for the MCC side in the Bicentenary Celebration match at Lord's.
Coaching
Towards the end of his playing career, Dravid took on a role as mentor of the Rajasthan Royals IPL team, officially taking over in 2014. During this time, he also became involved with the Indian national team, serving as mentor for the team's tour of England in 2014. After leading the Royals to a third-place finish in the 2015 IPL season, he was appointed as the head coach of the India U-19 and India A teams. Dravid achieved immense success as coach, with the U-19s reaching the finals of the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Two years later, the team went on to win the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup, beating Australia by 8 wickets to win their fourth Under-19 World Cup, the most by any national side. Dravid was credited with bringing up future national team players including Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan and Washington Sundar. Alongside his coaching roles, Dravid took on several mentor roles, including at the Delhi Daredevils IPL team.
In July 2019, following his four-year stint as coach of the junior teams, Dravid was appointed Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA). He was in charge of "overseeing all cricket related activities at NCA was involved in mentoring, coaching, training and motivating players, coaches and support staff at the NCA". As head of NCA, he was widely praised for developing a steady supply of talent to the senior team and revamping player fitness and rehabilitation regiments.
In November 2021, he was appointed as head coach of the Indian national cricket team.
County stint
Dravid had always been keen on further honing his batting skills in testing English conditions by playing in county cricket. He had discussed about the prospects regarding the same with John Wright, the former New Zealand cricketer and incumbent Kent coach, during India's 1998–99 tour of New Zealand. Wright was particularly impressed with Dravid's performance on that tour, especially his twin hundreds at Hamilton. The talks finally materialized and Dravid made his county debut for Kent in April 2000. His co-debutante Ganguly made his county debuted in the same match, albeit for the opposite team.
Kent offer had come as a welcome change for Dravid. There was too much negativity surrounding Indian cricket marred by match fixing controversy. Dravid himself had been struggling to score runs in Tests for quite some time now. The county stint gave him a chance to "get away to a new environment" and "relax". The wide variety of pitches and weather conditions in England and a full season of intense county cricket against professional cricketers gave him a chance to further his cricketing education and learn things about his game.
Dravid made the most of this opportunity. In his 2nd game for Kent, Dravid scored a fluid 182 propelling them to an innings and 163 runs victory over the touring Zimbabwe side. Out of 7 first class tour games that Zimbabwe played on that tour, Kent was the only team that managed to beat them. Dravid hit another fifty in a draw against Surrey. The newly appointed vice-captain had to leave the county championship temporarily, missing two championship games and two one day games, to fulfill his national commitment. Indian team, Dravid included, fared poorly in the Asia cup and failed to qualify for the Final. Subsequently, Dravid returned to England to resume his county sojourn with Kent.
In July 2000, Kent's away match against Hampshire at Portsmouth was billed as a showdown between two great cricketers- Warne and Dravid. Dravid came out on top. On a dustbowl, tailor-made to suit home team spinners, Warne took 4 wickets but could not take the all important wicket of Dravid. Coming in to bat at 15/2, Dravid faced 295 balls scoring 137 runs – his maiden hundred in county championships. Dravid scored 73 not out in the 2nd innings guiding Kent to a six wicket victory as Warne went wicketless.
In their last county game of the season, Kent needed one bonus point to prevent themselves from being relegated to the Second Division. Dravid made sure they stay put in the First Division by fetching that one bonus point with an inning of 77 runs.
Dravid concluded a successful stint with Kent aggregating 1221 runs from 16 first class matches(15 county games and 1 tour game against Zimbabwe) at an average of 55.50 including 2 hundreds and 8 fifties. He shouldered Kent's batting single-handedly as the second best Kent batsman during the same period, Paul Nixon, scored just 567 runs at an average of 33.35 in 17 matches. Dravid contributed to Kent's county campaign not just with the bat but also with his fielding and bowling taking 14 catches and 4 wickets at an average of 32.00.
Indian Premier League and Champions League
Rahul Dravid played for Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2008, 2009 and 2010. Later he played for Rajasthan Royals and led it to finals of Champions League T20 in 2013, and play-offs of Indian Premier League in 2013. Dravid announced retirement from Twenty20 after playing the 2013 Champions League Twenty20 in September–October 2013.
Playing style
Dravid was known for his technique, and has been one of the best batsmen for the Indian cricket team. In the beginning, he was known as a defensive batsman who should be confined to Test cricket, and was dropped from the ODI squad due to a low strike rate. However, he later scored consistently in ODIs as well, earning him the ICC Player of the Year award. His nickname of 'The Wall' in Reebok advertisements is now used as his nickname. Dravid has scored 36 centuries in Test cricket, with an average of 52.31; this included five double centuries. In one-dayers, he averaged 39.16, with a strike rate of 71.23. He is one of the few Indians whose Test average is better at away than at home, averaging almost five runs more on foreign pitches. As of 23 September 2010, Dravid's Test average in abroad is 55.53, and his Test average at home is 50.76; his ODI average abroad is 37.93 and his ODI average at home is 43.11. Dravid averages 66.34 runs in Indian Test victories. and 50.69 runs in ODIs.
Dravid's sole Test wicket was of Ridley Jacobs in the fourth Test match against the West Indies during the 2001–2002 series. While he has no pretensions to being a bowler, Dravid often kept wicket for India in ODIs.
Dravid was involved in two of the largest partnerships in ODIs: a 318-run partnership with Sourav Ganguly, the first pair to combine for a 300-run partnership, and then a 331-run partnership with Sachin Tendulkar, which is a world record. He also holds the record for the greatest number of innings played since debut before being dismissed for a duck. His highest scores in ODIs and Tests are 153 and 270 respectively.
He was named one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 2000. Though primarily a defensive batsman, Dravid scored 50 runs not out in 22 balls (a strike rate of 227.27) against New Zealand in Hyderabad on 15 November 2003, the second fastest 50 among Indian batsmen. Only Ajit Agarkar's 67 runs off 21 balls is faster than that of Dravid.
In 2004, Dravid was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India. On 7 September 2004, he was awarded the inaugural Player of the year award and the Test player of the year award by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
After reaching 10,000 Test runs milestone, he said, "It's a proud moment for sure. For me, growing up, I dreamt of playing for India. When I look back, I probably exceeded my expectations with what I have done over the last 10 to 12 years. I never had an ambition to do it because I never believed – it is just a reflection of my longevity in the game."
Dravid is also one of the two batsmen to score 10,000 runs at a single batting position and is the fourth highest run scorer in Test cricket, behind Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis.
Controversies
Ball-tampering incident
In January 2004, Dravid was found guilty of ball tampering during an ODI with Zimbabwe. Match referee Clive Lloyd adjudged the application of an energy sweet to the ball as a deliberate offence, although Dravid himself denied this was his intent. Lloyd emphasised that television footage caught Dravid putting a lozenge on the ball during the Zimbabwean innings on Tuesday night at the Gabba. According to the ICC's Code of Conduct, players are not allowed to apply substances to the ball other than sweat and saliva. Dravid was fined half of his match fee.
Indian coach John Wright came out in defence of Dravid, stating that "It was an innocent mistake". Wright argued that Dravid had been trying to apply saliva to the ball when parts of a losenge he had been chewing stuck to the ball; Dravid then tried to wipe it off. ICC regulations prevented Dravid from commenting about the issue, but former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly also stated that Dravid's act was "just an accident".
Captaincy
Rahul Dravid has had a mixed record when leading India in Tests.
One of Dravid's most debated decisions was taken in March 2004, when he was standing in as the captain for injured Sourav Ganguly. India's first innings was declared at a point when Sachin Tendulkar was at 194 runs not out with 16 overs remaining on Day 2. In this test match Sehwag scored triple century first time. He became the first Indian to score triple century in test with a score of 309.
In March 2006, India lost the Mumbai Test, giving England its first Test victory in India since 1985, enabling it to draw the series 1–1. The defeat in Mumbai was arguably the result of Dravid's decision to bowl first on a flat dry pitch, which later deteriorated and ended with an Indian collapse in the run chase. Coincidentally, it was Dravid's 100th test match in which the Indians were all out for 100 runs in the second innings.
After India failed to qualify for the final of the DLF Cup, Dravid, the skipper, was criticised by former all-rounder Ravi Shastri who said that he was not assertive enough and let Greg Chappell make too many decisions. When asked for a response, Dravid said that Shastri, while a 'fair critic', was 'not privy' to the internal decision-making process of the team.
He was criticised by Vijay Mallya for not picking the team with right balance after his then IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore finished seventh out of the eight teams that participated in the 2008 season.
Achievements and awards
National honours
1998 – Arjuna Award recipient for achievements in cricket
2004 – Padma Shri – India's fourth highest civilian award
2013 – Padma Bhushan – India's third highest civilian award
Other honours
1999 – CEAT International Cricketer of the World Cup
2000 – Dravid was one of the five cricketers selected as Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
2004 – ICC Cricketer of the year – Highest award in the ICC listings
2004 – ICC Test Player of The Year, ICC Cricketer of The Year
2004 – MTV Youth Icon of the Year
2006 – Captain of the ICC's Test Team
2011 – NDTV Indian of the Year's Lifetime Achievement Award with Dev Anand
2012 – Don Bradman Award with Glenn McGrath
2015 – Wisden India's Highest Impact Test Batsman
2018 – ICC Hall of Fame
Personal life
Family
On 4 May 2003 he married Vijeta Pendharkar, a surgeon from Nagpur. Vijeta Pendharkar is also from Deshastha Brahmin community as Dravid. They have two children: Samit, born in 2005, and Anvay, born in 2009. Dravid is fluent in Marathi, Hindi, Kannada and English.
Commercial endorsements
Rahul Dravid has been sponsored by several brands throughout his career including Reebok (1996 – present), Pepsi (1997 present), Kissan (Unknown), Castrol (2001 – present), Hutch
(2003), Karnataka Tourism (2004), Max Life (2005 – present), Bank of Baroda (2005 – present), Citizen (2006 – present), Skyline Construction (2006 – present), Sansui (2007), Gillette (2007 – present), Samsung (2002 – 2004), World Trade Center Noida (2013– present),
CRED (2021-present).
Social commitments
Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA)
UNICEF Supporter and AIDS Awareness Campaign
Biographies
Books
Two biographies have been written on Rahul Dravid and his career:
Rahul Dravid – A Biography written by Vedam Jaishankar (). Publisher: UBSPD Publications. Date: January 2004
The Nice Guy Who Finished First written by Devendra Prabhudesai. Publisher: Rupa Publications. Date: November 2005
A collection of articles, testimonials and interviews related to Dravid was released by ESPNcricinfo following his retirement. The book was titled Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel.
See also
Sachin Tendulkar
Sourav Ganguly
VVS Laxman
Virendra Sehwag
References
External links
Indian cricketers
India Test cricketers
India One Day International cricketers
India Twenty20 International cricketers
India Test cricket captains
Wisden Cricketers of the Year
Karnataka cricketers
South Zone cricketers
Kent cricketers
Scotland cricketers
ACC Asian XI One Day International cricketers
ICC World XI One Day International cricketers
World XI Test cricketers
Royal Challengers Bangalore cricketers
Canterbury cricketers
Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers
Rajasthan Royals cricketers
India Blue cricketers
Cricketers at the 1999 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2003 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2007 Cricket World Cup
Recipients of the Padma Shri in sports
1973 births
Living people
Cricketers from Indore
Cricketers from Bangalore
Recipients of the Arjuna Award
International Cricket Council Cricketer of the Year
Marathi people
Indian cricket coaches
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in sports
Indian cricket commentators
Wicket-keepers
| true |
[
"The Real Donovan is the first compilation album from Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. It was released in the US (Hickory LPM 135 (monaural) /LPS 135 (stereo)) in September 1966.\n\nHistory\nWhen Donovan signed a contract with Epic Records, he became entangled in a legal dispute with Pye Records over the rights to his music. These legal proceedings withheld any new Donovan releases in the United Kingdom until late 1966. In the meantime, Pye Records' United States distributor Hickory Records compiled The Real Donovan from Donovan's Pye Records releases, choosing several songs that had not yet appeared on any United States release.\n\nThe Real Donovan was released within the same month as Donovan's first Epic Records album Sunshine Superman. Both albums were intended to capitalize on the success of the \"Sunshine Superman\" single, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts in the United States. While it did not match the Billboard chart success and sales of Sunshine Superman, The Real Donovan did chart, ultimately reaching No. 96.\n\nAlbum origins of tracks\nThe following is a list explaining the original releases of each song. Tracks that were previously unreleased in the United States are noted with *, followed by explanations of their origin.\n\n \"Turquoise\" (UK single, released 30 October 1965; Released in U.S. as b-side to \"To Try for the Sun\" in January 1966)\n \"Oh Deed I Do\"* (from UK version of Fairytale, released 22 October 1965)\n \"Catch the Wind\" (from What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid, released 14 May 1965)\n \"Remember the Alamo\" (from What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid, released 14 May 1965)\n \"Ballad of a Crystal Man\"* (from The Universal Soldier EP, released 15 August 1965)\n \"Colours\" (from Fairytale, released 22 October 1965)\n \"Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)\"* (b-side of \"Turquoise\", released 30 October 1965)\n \"Belated Forgiveness Plea\" (from Fairytale, released 22 October 1965)\n \"Ramblin' Boy\" (from What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid, released 14 May 1965)\n \"The War Drags On\"* (from The Universal Soldier EP, released 15 August 1965)\n \"Josie\" (from What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid, released 14 May 1965)\n \"To Try for the Sun\" (from Fairytale, released 22 October 1965)\n\nTrack listing\nAll tracks by Donovan Leitch, except where noted.\n\nSide one\n\n\"Turquoise\"\n\"Oh Deed I Do\" (Bert Jansch)\n\"Catch the Wind\"\n\"Remember the Alamo\" (Jane Bowers)\n\"Ballad of a Crystal Man\"\n\"Colours\"\n\nSide two\n\n\"Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)\"\n\"Belated Forgiveness Plea\"\n\"Rambin' Boy\"\n\"The War Drags On\" (Mick Softley)\n\"Josie\"\n\"To Try for the Sun\"\n\nExternal links\n The Real Donovan – Donovan Unofficial Site\n\nReal Donovan\nReal Donovan\nHickory Records compilation albums",
"Compliance gaining is a term used in the social sciences that encompasses the intentional act of altering another's behavior. Research in this area originated in the field of social psychology, but communication scholars have also provided ample research in compliance gaining. While persuasion focuses on attitudes and beliefs, compliance gaining focuses on behavior.\n\nOverview\nCompliance gaining occurs whenever a person intentionally induces another person to do something that they might have not done otherwise. Compliance gaining and persuasion are related; however, they are not one and the same. Changes in attitudes and beliefs are often the goal in persuasion; compliance gaining seeks to change the behavior of a target. It is not necessary to change a person's attitude or beliefs to gain compliance. For instance, an automobile driver might have positive attitudes towards driving fast. The threat of a speeding ticket from a police officer positioned in a speed trap may gain compliance from the driver. Conversely, persuading someone to change their attitude or belief will not necessarily gain compliance. A doctor might tell a patient that tobacco use poses a serious threat to a smoker's health. The patient may accept this as a fact and view smoking negatively, but might also continue to use tobacco.\n\nDevelopments\nCompliance gaining research has its roots in social psychology, but overlaps with many other disciplines such as communication and sociology. Compliance gaining can occur via mediated channels, but the research is most associated with interpersonal communication. In 1967, sociologists Marwell and Schmitt attempted to explain how people select compliance gaining messages. The researchers posited that people have a mental bank of strategies that they draw from when selecting a message. Marwell and Schmitt created a typology for compliance gaining techniques: promise, threat, positive expertise, negative expertise, liking, pregiving, aversive stimulation, debt, moral appeal, positive self-feeling, negative self-feeling, positive altercasting, negative altertcasting, altruism, positive esteem, and negative esteem. This study was the catalyst for more interest in compliance gaining from communication scholars.\n\nMiller, Boster, Roloff, and Seibold (1977) as well as Cody and McLaughlin (1980) studied the situational variables that influences compliance gaining strategies. The latter study identified six different typologies of situations that can influence compliance gaining behaviors: personal benefits (how much personal gain an actor can yield from the influencing behavior), dominance (the power relation between the actor and the target), rights (whether the actor has the right to expect compliance), resistance (how easy will the target be influenced), intimacy (whether the relation between actor and target is shallow), and consequences (what sort of effect this situation would have on the relationship between actor and target). Dillard and Burgoon (1985) later investigated the Cody-McLaughlin typologies. They concluded that situational variables, as described by Cody and McLaughlin, did very little to predict compliance gaining strategy selection. As early as 1982, there was already strong criticism about the strength of the relationships between situational variables and compliance gaining message selection.\n\nBy the 1990s, many research efforts attempting to link compliance gaining strategy selection and features of a situation or features of the individual \"failed to coalesce into a coherent body of knowledge\". Situational dimensions and individual differences were not effective in predicting so researchers went into other perspectives in an effort to understand compliance gaining. For instance, Schrader and Dillard (1998) linked primary and secondary goals to compliance gaining strategy. Using the theoretical framework of Goals-Plans-Actions developed by Dillard in 1980, Schrader and Dillard operate from the assumption that individuals possess and act on multiple goals. In any compliance seeking situation, the actor has primary goals that drive the attempt to influence a target. The primary goal is what the interaction is all about. For instance, if an actor wants a target to stop smoking, this is the primary goal and this is what drives the interaction. However, in the course of pursuing that goal, there are \"secondary\" goals to consider. These are goals that limit the behavior of the actor. If getting a target to stop smoking is the primary goal, then a secondary goal might be to maintain a friendly relationship with the target. Dillard specifies five types of secondary goals that temper the compliance gaining behavior: identity goals (morals and personal standards), interaction goals (impression management), relational resource goals (relationship management), personal resource goals (material concerns of the actor), and arousal management goals (efforts to manage anxiety about the compliance gaining attempt).\n\nDespite the charges of individual differences making very little progress in prediction compliance gaining strategies, some researchers in the 2000s have focused their efforts to rectify this weakness in the research to link individual differences with compliance gaining effectiveness. King (2001), acknowledging the paucity of robust situational and trait studies linked to compliance gaining, attempted to isolate one situation as a predictor for compliance gaining message selection. King's research suggested that when target of compliance gaining were perceived to be less resistant to influence attempts, the actors used more compliance gaining tactics. When targets were perceived as strongly resistant, the actors used less tactics. Elias and Loomis (2004) found that gender and race affect an instructor's ability to gain compliance in a college classroom. Punyanunt (2000) found that using humor may enhance the effectiveness of pro-social compliance gaining techniques in the classroom. Remland and Jones (1994) found that vocal intensity and touch also affect compliance gaining. Goei et al. (2003) posited that \"feelings of liking\" between target and actor as well as doing favors for the target lead to liking and obligation, which leads to increased compliance. Pre-giving (giving a target a small gift or favor such as a free sample of food) is positively associated with increased compliance in strangers. \nOne of the major criticisms of examining compliance gaining literature is that very little research studies actual compliance. Filling out a survey and reporting intent to comply with a request is certainly different than actually completing the request. For example, many people might report that they will comply with a doctor's order, but away from the doctor's office, they may ignore medical advice.\n\nApplication\nCompliance gaining research has a fairly diverse background so much of the research uses alternate paradigms and perspectives. As mentioned above, the field of compliance gaining originated in social psychology, but was adopted by many communication scholars as well. Many fields from consumer psychology to primary education pedagogy have taken great interest in compliance gaining.\n\nMedicine \nDoctors have expressed much frustration with compliance resistance from their patients. A reported 50% of patients do not comply with medical advice and prescriptions. Researchers, as well as medical professionals, have a vested interest in learning strategies that can increase compliance in their patients. Many severe and chronic conditions can be avoided if early treatments are followed as prescribed, avoiding death, permanent injury, and costlier medical treatments later on. Researchers in communication have reported some key findings such as: clear and effective communication about a patient's condition or illness increases the likelihood of patient compliance with medical advice; doctors that use humor in their communication with patients have higher satisfaction rates; high satisfaction rates with physicians is highly correlated with patient compliance.\n\nPedagogy \nFor teachers, gaining compliance from students is a must for effective teaching. Studies in compliance gaining have ranged from elementary education all the way to adult and higher education.\n\nSales and consumer psychology \nAdvertising and marketing are tools of persuasion. There is literally centuries' worth of literature available about persuasion. However, changing attitudes and beliefs about a product does not necessarily change behaviors. Purchasing a product is a behavior. Researchers such as Parrish-Sprowl, Carveth, & Senk (1994) have applied compliance gaining research to effective sales.\n\nCompliance\nCompliance gaining was not originally conceived in the field of communication but found its roots in the late 1960s as a result of studies and research by two sociologists, Gerald Marwell and David Schmitt. In 1967, Marwell and Schmitt produced some interesting compliance-gaining tactics concerning the act of getting a teenager to study. The tactics, sixteen in all, are as follows.\n\n Promise: If you comply, I will reward you. For example, you offer to increase Dick's allowance if he studies more.\n Threat: If you do not comply, I will punish you. For example, you threaten to forbid Dick to use the car if he doesn't start studying more.\n Expertise (positive): If you comply, you will be rewarded because of the \"nature of things.\" For example, you tell Dick that if he gets good grades he be able to get into college and get a good job.\n Expertise (negative): If you do not comply, you will be punished because of the \"nature of things.\" For example, you tell Dick that if he does not get good grades he will not be able to get into college or get a good job.\n Liking: Act friendly and helpful to get the person in a \"good frame of mind\" so they comply with the request. For example, you try to be as friendly and pleasant as possible to put Dick in a good mood before asking him to study.\n Pre-giving: Reward the person before requesting compliance. For example, raise Dick's allowance and tell him you now expect him to study.\n Aversive stimulation: Continuously punish the person, making cessation contingent on compliance. For example, you tell Dick he may not use the car until he studies more.\n Debt: You owe me compliance because of past favors. For example, you point out that you have sacrificed and saved to pay for Dick's education and that he owes it to you to get good enough grades to get into a good college.\n Moral appeal: You are immoral if you do not comply. You tell Dick that it is morally wrong for anyone not to get as good grades as possible and that he should study more.\n Self-feeling (positive): You will feel better about yourself if you comply. For example, you tell Dick that he will feel proud if he gets himself to study more.\n Self-feeling (negative): You will feel worse about yourself if you do not comply. For example, you tell Dick that he will feel ashamed of himself if he gets bad grades.\n Altercasting (positive): A person with \"good\" qualities would comply. For example, you tell Dick that because he is a mature and intelligent person he naturally will want to study more and get good grades.\n Altercasting (negative): Only a person with \"bad\" qualities would not comply. For example, you tell Dick that he should study because only someone very childish does not study.\n Altruism: I need your compliance very badly, so do it for me. For example, you tell Dick that you really want very badly for him to get into a good college and that you wish he would study more as a personal favor to you.\n Esteem (positive): People you value will think better of you if you comply. For example, you tell Dick that the whole family will be very proud of him if he gets good grades.\n Esteem (negative): People you value will think the worse of you if you do not comply. For example, you tell Dick that the whole family will be very disappointed in him if he gets poor grades.\n\nIn 1967, Marwell and Schmitt conducted experimental research, using the sixteen compliance gaining tactics and identified five basic compliance-gaining strategies: Rewarding activity, Punishing activity, Expertise, Activation of impersonal commitments, and Activation of personal commitments.\n\nPower\nAnother element of compliance-gaining was produced in the early 1960s, as French and Raven were researching the concepts of power, legitimacy, and politeness. They identified five influential aspects associated with power, which help illustrate elements of the study of compliance. The fives bases of power are as follows:\n\n Reward Power: A person with reward power has control over some valued resource (e.g., promotions and raises).\n Coercive Power: A person with coercive power has the ability to inflict punishments (e.g., fire you).\n Expert Power: Expert power is based on what a person knows (e.g., you may do what a doctor tells you to do because they know more about medicine than you do).\n Legitimate Power: Legitimate power is based on formal rank or position (e.g., you obey someone's commands because they are the vice president in the company for which you work).\n Referent Power: People have referent power when the person they are trying to influence wants to be like them (e.g., a mentor often has this type of power).\n\n(French & Raven, 1960)\n\nTechniques\nThe study of compliance gaining has been central in the development of many commonly used or heard of techniques. The following techniques are a few of what has evolved as a product of the study of compliance gaining strategies. Note, many of these techniques have been empirically documented increasing compliance.\n\nFoot-in-the-door (FITD) \n\nWith research starting in 1966 by Freedman & Fraser, foot-in-the door is one of the earliest and most researched compliance gaining techniques. This technique gains compliance by making a smaller easy request then a larger more difficult request at a later time. The smaller request is usually one that would be widely accepted without scrutiny. The larger request is usually the actual the task or goal wanted to be completed.\n\nEffectivity \nFreedman and Fraser thought that after satisfying the smaller initial request, if the person was not forced to do then they must be \"the type of person who fulfills such requests\".\n\nThe smaller task/request should relate to the larger request and not be trivial. For the foot-in-the-door technique to be successful it must generate the self-aware \"I am the kind of person who fulfills this type of request\" other wise known as the self-perception theory. Other studies found that if the initial request is easy but unusual or bizarre, it would also generate the foot-in-the-door effectiveness. This idea was developed further into the Disrupt-Then-Reframe technique.\n\nThere are other reasons besides the self-perception theory that makes the foot-in-the-door technique successful.\n\nConsistency – Cialdini and Guadagno, Asher, and Demaine believe that what makes people want to fulfill larger request is the need to be consistent.\n\nThe Norm to Help Others – Harris believed that after the first request, the norm to help others becomes clear. It only becomes evident after the person reviews his or her reason why they completed the original request.\n\nSatisfying the First Request – Crano and Sivacek thought what made the technique so effective was personal satisfaction. \"The person learns that the fulfillment of request brings the reward of a positive experience. One may assume that the likelihood that satisfaction of this type appears willi increase if the person has to react to something unusual that awakens his or her mindfulness, and will decrease in situations in which the person reacts automatically and habitually\".\n\nDoor-in-the-face (DITF) \n\nDoor-in-the-face was first introduced in 1975 by Cialdini and colleagues. The opposite of foot-in-the-door, in the door-in-the-face technique, the requestor asks a large objectionable request which is denied by the target instead of gaining compliance by asking a smaller easy request. The requestor seeking compliance ask a smaller more reasonable request.\n\nThere are several theories that explain why door-in-the-face is an effective gaining compliance technique.\n\nSelf-presentation theory – \"that individuals will comply with a second request due to fears one will be perceived negatively by rejecting successive prosocial request for compliance\".\n\nReciprocal concessions – this theory describes the effects of door-in-the-face as a \"process of mutual concessions\". \"The second request represents a concession on the part of the sender (from his or her initial request), and compliance to the second request represents a concession on the part of the receiver (from his or her inclination to not comply with the first request)\".\n\nGuilt – One reason that makes door-in-the-face such an effective technique is people feel guilty for refusing to comply with a request twice.\n\nSocial Responsibility – this theory describes the social repercussions and pressures that occur if an individual declines a request.\n\nAll together the theories propose that a target who declines the first request feel a \"personal or social responsibility\" to comply with the second request. In an effort to avoid feeling guilty or reduce the sense of obligation the target would have.\n\nRecent techniques\n\nDisrupt-then-reframe (DTR) \nDTR was first introduced by Barbara Price Davis and Eric S. Knowles in 1999. This technique states that a person will be more likely to comply with a request if the initial request or pitch is confusing. The pitch is immediately followed by a reframing or a reason to comply with the request.\n\nAn example of this technique is: A waiter states that \"the steak dinner is on special for 800 pennies; it's a really good deal\". Disrupting the couple by saying \"800 pennies\" instead of \"8 dollars\", the waiter is able to increase the likelihood that they will buy the steak dinner.\n\nDTR was found to be a very effective way to gain compliance in non-profit instances such as raising money for charities or asking people to take a survey. DTR was found to be less successful as a sales technique; this may be because the message is more scrutinized, making it harder to confuse the target.\n\nPersistence \nPersistence used as a compliance gaining technique, gets the target to comply by repeating the message. In 1979, Cacioppo and Petty found that repeating the message more than five times lead to decrease in compliance. Success is enhanced if the repetition comes from more than one person and is enhanced further if the message has the same idea or meaning but is not exact.\n\nAn example of this technique would be: \"My wife kept reminding me to take out the trash until I finally did it.\"\n\nDump and chase (DAC) \nPersistence has a high probability of annoying the target and creating a negative interaction which could be viewed as \"nagging\". A way to avoid this would be rejecting the targets objection to your request by asking \"why not?\", then forming another message to overcome the second objection to gain compliance. This technique is called dump and chase.\n\nMechanics of this technique are urgency and guilt. When the repeated message is presented to the target it may be perceived as urgent, thus making it seem more important, and more willing to comply. By creating a sense of obligation in the request, the target may develop guilt if not willing to comply.\n\nJust-One-More (JOM) \nJust-One-More was developed as a way to make a donation seem more important. The use of this technique involves using the language of \"Just-One-More\" to gain compliance. The technique is found to be most useful in instances regarding volunteering and donations. It is seen as \"the last person to help will be more rewarding than being one of the first or those in the middle, due to the expectation that the requestor will appreciate the last person more than any of those who complied previously\".\nFor Example: \"Do you want to buy this car? I need just one more sale to reach my quota this month.\"\n\nIf the target finds that the requestor is lying or being deceptive about being the last one, it will create a negative outlook on the person and the organization that he or she represents. Even though losing some of the effectiveness the requestor could state that they are \"close to their goal\" or \"almost there\".\n\n64 compliance gaining strategies \nIn \"Classifying Compliance Gaining Messages: Taxonomic Disorder and Strategic Confusion\", Kathy Kellermann and Tim Cole put together 64 compliance gaining strategies as an attempt to classify more than 820 previous strategies.\n Actor Takes Responsibility: Try to get others to comply by stating your willingness to help them or even work on the request yourself. That is, try to gain their compliance by offering to do it yourself as a means of getting them to do what you want. Example: \"Is there anything I can do to so you can finish the project on time?\"\n Altercasting (Negative): Try to get others to comply by pointing out that only a bad person would not do what is wanted. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that only a person with negative qualities wouldn't comply. Example: \"You should stop watching these types of television shows as only a disturbed person would like them.\" \n Altercasting (Positive): Try to get others to comply by pointing out that a good person would do what is wanted. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that any person with positive qualities would comply. Example: \"A good boy would eat all his vegetables.\"\n Altruism: Try to get others to comply by asking them to give you a hand out of the goodness of their heart. That is, try to gain their compliance by asking them to be altruistic and just do it for you. Example: \"Could you help me move, I would really appreciate it.\"\n Assertion: Try to get others to comply by asserting (forcefully stating) what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by demanding (commanding) them to comply. Example: \"Go get a bandaid now!\"\n Audience-Use: Try to get others to comply by having a group of other people present when you make your request. That is, try to gain their compliance by asking them in front of other people as a way to back up your request. Example: \"I asked her to go to the prom with me in front of her friends.\" \n Authority Appeal: Try to get others to comply on the basis of the authority that you or other people have. That is, try to gain their compliance by using or relying on a position of power over them to get them do to what you want. Example: \"My boss told me to get him the reports by 10 am so I did.\"\n Aversive Stimulation: Try to get others to comply by doing things they don't like until they agree to comply. That is, try to gain their compliance by bothering them until they do what you want. Example: \"My co-worker kept bothering me to quit smoking until I finally did.\"\n Bargaining: Try to get others to comply by striking a bargain with them. That is, try to gain their compliance by negotiating a deal where you each do something for the other so everyone gets what they want. Example: \"If you help me with the dishes, I will help you with the laundry.\"\n Benefit (Other): Try to get others to comply by telling them people other than themselves would benefit if they do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out how it helps people other than themselves if they comply. Example: \"By donating to our fundraiser, You ensure that everyone will have a coat this winter.\"\nBenefit (Self): Try to get others to comply by telling them you personally would benefit if they do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out how it helps oneself if they comply. Example: \"If you helped me with the yard work, then I won't get a ticket by the city tomorrow.\"\nBenefit (Target): Try to get others to comply by telling them they personally would benefit if they do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out how it helps them if they comply. Example: \"If you go grocery shopping for me tonight then you will have something for lunch tomorrow.\"\nChallenge: Try to get others to comply by challenging them to do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by provoking, stimulating, tempting, goading, and/or galvanizing them to comply. Example: I didn't want to race until his car pulled beside mine and he revved the engine. \nCompliment: Try to get others to comply by complimenting them on their abilities or accomplishments. That is, try to gain their compliance by praising them to get them to do what you want. Example: With that jump shot, you would be really good at basketball. \nCompromise: Try to get others to comply by offering to compromise with them. That is, try to gain their compliance by making a concession to them so they'll make their concession to you and do what you want. Example: \"I will drop you off at the airport if you will go to the dentist with me.\"\n Cooperation: Try to get others to comply by being cooperative and collaborating with them. That is, try to gain their compliance not by telling the other person what to do but by offering to discuss things and work them out together. Example: \"We should get the team together and brainstorm new ideas for this problem.\"\nCriticize: Try to get others to comply by criticizing them. That is, try to gain their compliance by attacking them on a personal level to get them to do what you want. Example: \"It looks like you're really gaining some weight, why don't you go on a run with me.\"\nDebasement: Try to get others to comply by acting pitiful and pleading. That is, try to gain their compliance by debasing, demeaning, degrading, devaluing, humiliating, and/or lowering yourself so as to deprive yourself of esteem or self-worth to get them to do what you want. Example: \"I am so stupid, I can't believe I deleted the report. Can you please go delay the presentation.\" \nDebt: Try to get others to comply by reminding them they are in debt to you because of things you have done for them in the past. That is, try to gain their compliance by indicating that they owe it to you to do what you want. Example: \"You should paid for my lunch, I bought your lunch last time.\"\nDeceit: Try to get others to comply by misleading them. That is, try to gain their compliance by lying to or deceiving them. Example: \"We told them the car was in perfect working order, but the transmission is about to go out.\"\nDirect Request: Try to get others to comply by just making a direct request. That is, try to gain their compliance by simply asking or stating what you want without giving any reasons for them to comply. Example: \"Can I use the computer?\"\nDisclaimer (Norms/Rules): Try to get others to comply by downplaying or disavowing restrictions and constraints that might prevent them from doing what you want them to do. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that otherwise applicable procedures, rules, norms, and/or expectations should be broken in this instance. Example: \"You should drive faster than the speed limit, this is an emergency!\"\nDisclaimer (Other): Try to get others to comply by downplaying or disavowing the ability of anyone else to do so. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that other people can't help you or do what is needed. Example: \"I would ask Ted for his help but we know that he is not good at presentations.\"\nDisclaimer (Self): Try to get others to comply by downplaying or disavowing your reasons for asking. That is, try to gain their compliance by indicating that: (a) you don't want to make a bad impression nor do you have bad intentions, (b) you don't really want to make the request and you are only doing so reluctantly, and/or (c) you simply have no choice but to make the request. Example: \"I'm sorry that I am asking you for money, I'm really not a beggar.\"\nDisclaimer (Target): Try to get others to comply by acknowledging and sympathizing with why they may not want to do so. That is, try to gain their compliance by indicating that: (a) you understand and are aware of their reasons, feelings, and abilities, and/or (b) that you are sensitive to their needs and concerns even though you must ask them to do what you want. Example: \"I know that you're disappointed that you can't go on the trip, but do you mind helping me get the presentation ready?\"\nDisclaimer (Task): Try to get others to comply by downplaying what you are asking them to do. That is, try to gain their compliance by indicating that what you want them to do isn't what they think it is and shouldn't pose a problem; it isn't awful, effortful, difficult, or dumb. Example: \"Updating the database shouldn't take that much time.\"\nDisclaimer (Time): Try to get others to comply by downplaying or disavowing being busy as a reason to refuse your request. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that there is or soon will be enough time for them to do what you want. Example: \"We should go to the store now, you can finish your report later.\"\nDuty: Try to get others to comply by pointing out it is their duty to do so. That is, try to gain their compliance by stating they should fulfill obligations, responsibilities, and commitments that they have. Example: \"Taking out the trash at the end of the day is a part of your job.\"\nEquity: Try to get others to comply on the grounds that it is equitable to do so. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that being fair, just, and impartial means they should do what you want. Example: \"Your brother cleaned the house last time; it's your turn now.\"\nEsteem (Negative) by Others: Try to get others to comply by pointing out that, if they do not do so, other people will think worse of them. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that in the eyes of others they will be viewed more negatively if they don't do what you want. Example: \"If you don't go to that college, other people will think you're going to a party school.\"\nEsteem (Positive) by Others: Try to get others to comply by pointing out that, if they do so, other people will think better of them. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that in the eyes of others they will be viewed more positively if they do what you want. Example: \"If you play football, everyone will think that you're really tough.\"\nEsteem (Negative) by Actor: Try to get others to comply by pointing out that, if they do not do so, you will think worse of them. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that in your eyes they will be viewed more negatively if they don't do what you want. Example: \"I would be really disappointed if you went to the party instead of studying.\"\nEsteem (Positive) by Actor: Try to get others to comply by pointing out that, if they do so, you will think better of them. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that in your eyes they will be viewed more positively if they do what you want. Example: \"If you went to law school, I would have a new level of respect for you.\"\nExpertise (Negative): Try to get others to comply by pointing out that because of the way the world works, unfavorable things will happen if they don't change their behavior. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that in the natural course of things, bad outcomes will occur if they don't do what you want. Example: \"You will get the flu, if you don't get a flu shot.\"\nExpertise (Positive): Try to get others to comply by pointing out that because the way the world works, favorable things will happen if they change their behavior. That is, try to gain their compliance by noting that in the natural course of things, good outcomes will occur if they do what you want. Example: \"If you work hard at your job, you're sure to get that promotion.\"\nHinting: Try to get others to comply by hinting around at what you want them to do. That is, try to gain their compliance by indicating indirectly what you want, hoping they will figure it out and comply even though you never come out and really say it. Example: \"I left the trash by the front door, so Dan would take it out.\" \nI Want: Try to get others to comply for no reason other than you want them to. That is, try to gain their compliance by telling them to do what you want because you desire it. Example: \"I want you to go with me to the city.\"\nInvoke Norm: Try to get others to comply by indicating they would be out of step with the norm if they didn't do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by prodding them to conform to what others have, do, or desire. Example: \"Everyone is going to the gym after work.\"\nIt's Up to You: Try to get others to comply by telling them the decision is theirs to make and it's up to them. That is, try to gain their compliance by telling them the choice to comply is up to them. Example: \"It's up to you to save your money, instead of spending it on video games.\"\nLogical Empirical: Try to get others to comply by making logical arguments. That is, try to gain their compliance through the use of reasoning, evidence, facts, and data. Example: \"Statistics show that non-smokers live longer than smokers.\"\nMoral Appeal: Try to get others to comply by appealing to their moral or ethical standards. That is, try to gain their compliance by letting them know what is right and what is wrong. Example: \"Don't buy those shoes they are made using child labor.\"\nMy Concern for You: Try to get others to comply because of your concern for them. That is, try to gain their compliance by referring to your regard for, consideration of, interest in, and feelings for them. Example: \"Please go to the doctor, I'm worried about you.\"\nNature of Situation: Try to get others to comply by being attentive to the situation or circumstances you find yourselves in. That is, try to gain their compliance by taking note of the appropriateness of their behavior to the situation and/or the appropriateness of your request in the situation. Example: \"I told my son that the bed was not a trampoline.\" \nNegative Affect: Try to get others to comply by being really negative: expressing negative emotions, acting really unfriendly, and creating an unappealing impression. That is, try to gain their compliance by acting displeased to get them to do what you want. Example: \"Angrily, I told her to put her phone on silent after it went off in class..\"\nNot Seek Compliance: No attempt is made to get others to do what you want. That is, no compliance is sought. Example: \"I didn't ask if I could go out tonight.\"\nPersistence: Try to get others to comply by being persistent. That is, try to gain their compliance by persevering (continuing) in your attempts to get them to do what you want. Example: \"After asking for over a year, we are finally getting a pool.\"\nPersonal Expertise: Try to get others to comply by referring to your credibility (your personal expertise). That is, try to gain their compliance based on your experience, know-how, trustworthiness, and judgment. Example: \"You should get those shoes, I have them and they feel great when running. \nPositive Affect: Try to get others to comply by being really positive: expressing positive emotions, acting really friendly, and creating an appealing impression. That is, try to gain their compliance by charming them into doing what you want. Example: \"She was really happy, when she asked for a raise.\"\nPre-Giving: Try to get others to comply by doing positive and nice things for them in advance of asking them to do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by giving them things they'd like and then only afterwards making your request. Example: \"I bought my wife flowers, then later asked if I could go fishing this weekend.\"\nPromise: Try to get others to comply by making a promise. That is, try to gain their compliance by offering to give them a reward or something they'd like if they do what is wanted. Example: \"If you behave in the store, I promise that we will stop for ice cream on the way home.\"\nPromote Task: Try to get others to comply by promoting the value and worth of what you want them to do. That is, try to gain their compliance by identifying one or more positive qualities of the thing you are asking them to do (e.g., what you want them to do is important, meaningful, rewarding, enjoyable etc.). Example: \"If you complete this presentation on time, you will be less stressed and will get a good grade.\"\nSelf-Feeling (Negative): Try to get others to comply by stating that not doing so will result in an automatic decrease in their self-worth. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that they will feel worse about themselves if they don't do what you want. Example: \"You will feel bad if you throw all that food away instead of donating it.\"\nSelf-Feeling (Positive): Try to get others to comply by stating that doing so will result in an automatic increase in their self-worth. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that they will feel better about themselves if they do what you want. Example: \"You will feel better if you donate that old coat to charity instead of selling it in the garage sale.\" \nSuggest: Try to get others to comply by offering suggestions about what it is you want them to do. That is, try to gain their compliance by subtly proposing an idea that indirectly points out and describes what it is you want them to do. Example: \"Why don't you try the steak instead of the chicken?\"\nSurveillance: Try to get others to comply by indicating your awareness and observation of what they do. That is, try to gain their compliance by referring to your general vigilance, surveillance, scrutiny, and/or monitoring of their behavior. Example: \"I will find out if you're lying to me about the car accident.\" \nThird Party: Try to get others to comply by having someone else ask them for you. That is, try to gain their compliance by getting someone else to intervene and do it for you. Example: \"Jane don't you think Jim should go on that date with the girl from accounting.\" \nThis Is the Way Things Are: Try to get others to comply by telling them they have to because that is just the way things are. That is, try to gain their compliance by referring to rules, procedures, policies, or customs that require them to comply. Example: \"You should slow down since the speed limit is only 25 mph.\"\nThought Manipulation: Try to get others to comply by convincing them that the request you are making is really their own idea. That is, try to gain their compliance by having them think they were the ones who really wanted to do it in the first place. Example: \"We should go on the roller coaster, since you wanted to come to the fair in the first place.\" \nThreat: Try to get others to comply by threatening them. That is, try to gain their compliance by saying you will punish them if they don't do what you want. Example: \"If you go to the bar again tonight, consider us done.\" \nValue Appeal: Try to get others to comply because of important values that compel action in this instance. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing to central and joint beliefs that should guide what they do. Example: \"Since we both care about the ocean, we should volunteer for the cleanup.\"\nWarning: Try to get others to comply by warning them about what they are doing. That is, try to gain their compliance by alerting them to possible negative consequences of their behavior. Example: \"You might get fired if you stay up all night.\" \nWelfare (Others): Try to get others to comply by telling them how other people would be hurt if they don't do what you want. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out that the welfare of other people is at stake. Example: \"If you are not going to be in the family photo then we won't take one.\" \nWhy Not?: Try to get others to comply by making them justify why they should not. That is, try to gain their compliance by pointing out there are no real grounds for not doing so. Example: \"Why wouldn't you help your sister?\"\nYour Concern for Me: Try to get others to comply because of their concern for you. That is, try to gain their compliance by referring to their regard for, consideration of, interest in, and feelings for you. Example: \"If you really cared for me then you would go to the dance recital.\"\n\nReferences\n\nFurther reading\n \n Dillard, J.P. (2004). The goals-plans-action model of interpersonal influence. In J. S. Seiter & R. H. Gass (Eds.) Readings in persuasion, social influence, and compliance gaining (pp. 185–206). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.\n French, J. P. R., Jr., & Raven, B. (1960). The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright & A. Zander (Eds.), Group dynamics (pp. 607–623). New York: Harper & Row.\n \n \n \n McQuillen, J. S., Higginbotham, D. C., & Cummings, M. C. (1984). Compliance-resisting behaviors: The effects of age, agent, and types of request. In R. N. Bostrom (Ed.), Communication yearbook 8 (pp. 747–762). Beverly Hills: SAGE.\n \n \n Wheeless, L. R., Barraclough, R., & Stewart, R. (1983). Compliance-gaining and power in persuasion. In R. Bostrom (Ed.), Communication yearbook 7 (pp. 105–145). Beverly Hills: Sage.\n\nPersuasion\nAttitude change\nSociological theories"
] |
[
"Rahul Dravid",
"Golden years",
"What started his golden years",
"As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain,",
"Who was helping him",
"Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal.",
"What did he do",
"Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals.",
"What did he try",
"Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket."
] |
C_52e2fff8b563440da632c6c90324029a_1
|
What was his next challenge
| 5 |
What was Rahul Dravid's next challenge?
|
Rahul Dravid
|
As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain, Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal. Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid played his part scoring 157 runs in 4 matches at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe opening the innings before getting injured while fielding at slips forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament. India started off the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk inning of 49 ball 41 runs, including 5 fours and a six, chasing a target of 63 runs. However, Dravid's poor patch truly ended in the next Test series against Zimbabwe, which was also the first series for John Wright as the new Indian coach. Wright was instrumental in Dravid's association with Kent earlier this year. Dravid returned the favour by recommending his name to the BCCI for the post of national team coach. By now, Dravid had played 8 Tests since his last hundred against New Zealand at Mohali scoring just 350 runs at a paltry average of 23.33 without a single fifty plus inning. The Indian vice-captain ended the run drought and welcomed the new Indian coach with a double hundred - Dravid's first. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second inning guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 - highest batting average by an Indian in a Test series. Dravid scored just a solitary fifty in the second of the five match bilateral ODI series between India and Zimbabwe. However, the series proved to be a milestone in Dravid's career. Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the 5th match of the series as the regular captain Ganguly had to sit out due to one match suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39 run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain. CANNOTANSWER
|
Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe
|
Rahul Sharad Dravid (; born 11 January 1973) is a former Indian cricketer and captain of the Indian national team, currently serving as its head coach. Prior to his appointment to the senior men's national team, Dravid was the Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), and the head coach of the India Under-19 and India A teams. Under his tutelage, the under-19 team finished runners up at the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup and won the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Known for his sound batting technique, Dravid scored 24,177 runs in international cricket and is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is colloquially known as Mr. Dependable and often referred to as The Wall.
Born in a Marathi family and raised in Bangalore, he started playing cricket at the age of 12 and later represented Karnataka at the under-15, under-17 and under-19 levels. Hailed as The Wall, Dravid was named one of the best five cricketers of the year by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 2000 and received the Player of the Year and the Test Player of the Year awards at the inaugural ICC awards ceremony in 2004. In December 2011, he became the first non-Australian cricketer to deliver the Bradman Oration in Canberra.
As of December 2016, Dravid is the fourth-highest run scorer in Test cricket, after Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis. In 2004, after completing his century against Bangladesh in Chittagong, he became the first player to score a century in all the ten Test-playing countries. As of October 2012, he holds the record for the most catches taken by a player (non-wicket-keeper) in Test cricket, with 210. Dravid holds a unique record of never getting out for a Golden duck in the 286 Test innings which he has played. He has faced 31258 balls, which is the highest number of balls faced by any player in test cricket. He has also spent 44152 minutes at the crease, which is the highest time spent on crease by any player in test cricket. Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar are currently the highest scoring partnership in Test cricket history having scored 6920 runs combined when batting together for India.
In August 2011, after receiving a surprise recall in the ODI series against England, Dravid declared his retirement from ODIs as well as Twenty20 International (T20I), and in March 2012, he announced his retirement from international and first-class cricket. He appeared in the 2012 Indian Premier League as captain of the Rajasthan Royals.
Rahul Dravid, along with Glenn McGrath were honoured during the seventh annual Bradman Awards function in Sydney on 1 November 2012. Dravid has also been honoured with the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan award, India's fourth and third highest civilian awards respectively.
In 2014, Rahul Dravid joined the GoSports Foundation, Bangalore as a member of their board of advisors. In collaboration with GoSports Foundation he is mentoring India's future Olympians and Paralympians as part of the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme. Indian badminton player Prannoy Kumar, Para-swimmer Sharath Gayakwad and young Golfer S. Chikkarangappa was part of the initial group of athletes to be mentored by Rahul Dravid. In July 2018, Dravid became the fifth Indian cricketer to be inducted into ICC Hall of Fame.
Early life
Dravid was born in a Marathi-Speaking Brahmin family in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. His family later moved to Bangalore, Karnataka, where he was raised. His mother tongue is Marathi. Dravid's father Sharad Dravid worked for a company that makes jams and preserves, giving rise to the later nickname Jammy. His mother, Pushpa, was a professor of architecture at the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bangalore. Dravid has a younger brother named Vijay. He did his schooling at St. Joseph's Boys High School, Bangalore and earned a degree in commerce from St. Joseph's College of Commerce, Bangalore. He was selected to India's national cricket team while working towards an MBA at St Joseph's College of Business Administration. He is fluent in several languages: Marathi, Kannada, English and Hindi.
Formative years and domestic career
Dravid started playing cricket at the age of 12, and represented Karnataka at the under-15, the under-17 and the under-19 levels. Former cricketer Keki Tarapore first noticed Dravid's talent while coaching at a summer camp in the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Dravid scored a century for his school team. He also played as wicket-keeper.
Dravid made his Ranji Trophy debut in February 1991, while still attending college. Playing alongside future India teammates Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath against Maharashtra in Pune, he scored 82 runs in the match, which ended in a draw. He followed it up with a century against Bengal and three successive centuries after. However, Dravid's first full season was in 1991–92, when he scored two centuries and finished up with 380 runs at an average of 63.30, getting selected for the South Zone cricket team in the Duleep Trophy. Dravid's caught the national team selectors' eye with his good performances for India A in the home series against England A in 1994–95.
International career
Debut
Dravid, who had been knocking at the doors of Indian national cricket team for quite a while with his consistent performance in domestic cricket, received his first national call in October 1994, for the last two matches of the Wills World Series. However, he could not break into the playing eleven. He went back to the domestic circuit and kept knocking harder. So much so, that when the selectors announced the Indian team for the 1996 World Cup sans Dravid, an Indian daily newspaper carried a headline – "Rahul Dravid gets a raw deal". Dravid eventually made his international debut on 3 April 1996 in an ODI against Sri Lanka in the Singer Cup held in Singapore immediately after the 1996 World Cup, replacing Vinod Kambli. He wasn't particularly impressive with the bat, scoring just three runs before being dismissed by Muttiah Muralitharan, but took two catches in the match. He followed it up with another failure in the next game scoring just four runs before getting run out against Pakistan.
In contrast to his ODI debut, his Test debut was rather successful one. Dravid was selected for the Indian squad touring England on the backdrop of a consistent performance in domestic cricket for five years. Fine performances in the tour games including fifties against Gloucestershire and Leicestershire failed to earn him a place in the team for the First Test. He finally made his Test debut at Lord's on 20 June 1996 against England in the Second Test of the series at the expense of injured senior batsman Sanjay Manjrekar. Manjrekar, who was suffering from an ankle injury, was to undergo a fitness test on the morning of the Second Test. Dravid had already been informed that he would play if Manjrekar fails the test. As Manjrekar failed the fitness test, ten minutes before the toss, Sandeep Patil, the then Indian coach, went up to Dravid to inform him that he was indeed going to make his debut that day. Patil recalled years later:
Coming in to bat at no. 7, he forged important partnerships, first with another debutante Sourav Ganguly and then with Indian lower order, securing a vital first innings lead for his team. Dravid scored 95 runs before getting out to the bowling of Chris Lewis. He was just five runs short of a landmark debut hundred when he nicked a Lewis delivery to the keeper and walked even before umpire's decision. He also took his first catch in Test cricket in this match to dismiss Nasser Hussain off the bowling of Srinath. In the next tour game against British Universities, Dravid scored a hundred. He scored another fifty in the first innings of the Third Test. Dravid concluded a successful debut series with an impressive average of 62.33 from two Test matches.
1996–98: A tale of two formats
Dravid's early years in international cricket mirrored his international debut. He had contrasting fortunes in the long and the shorter format of the game. While he straightaway made a name for himself in Test cricket, he had to struggle quite a bit to make a mark in ODIs.
After a successful Test debut in England, Dravid played in the one-off Test against Australia in Delhi – his first Test in India. Batting at no. 6, he scored 40 runs in the first innings. Dravid batted at no. 3 position for the first time in the First Test of the three-match home series against South Africa in Ahmedabad in November 1996. He didn't do too well in the series scoring just 175 runs at a modest average of 29.16.
Two weeks later, India toured South Africa for a three–match Test series. Chasing a target of 395 runs in the First Test, Indian team bundled out meekly for 66 runs on the Durban pitch that provided excessive bounce and seam movement. Dravid, batting at no. 6, was the only Indian batsman who reached double figures in the innings scoring 27 not out. He was promoted to the no. 3 slot again in the second innings of the Second Test, a move that paid rich dividends in the ensuing Test. He almost won the Third Test for India with his maiden test hundred in the first innings scoring 148 runs and another 81 runs in the second innings at Wanderers before the thunderstorms, dim light and Cullinan's hundred saved the day for South Africa enabling them to draw the match. Dravid's performance in this Test earned him his first Man of the Match award in Test cricket. He top scored for India in the series with 277 runs at an average of 55.40.
Dravid continued in the same vein in the West Indies where he once again top scored for India in the five–match Test series aggregating 360 runs at an average of 72.00 including four fifties. 92 runs scored in the first innings of the fifth match in Georgetown earned him a joint Man of the Match award along with Shivnarine Chanderpaul. With this series, Dravid concluded a successful 1996/97 Test season, topping the international runs chart with 852 runs from 12 matches at an average of 50.11 with six fifties and one hundred.
Dravid continued his good run scoring seven fifties in the next eight Tests that included fifties in six consecutive innings (three each against Sri Lanka and Australia), becoming only the second Indian to do so after Gundappa Vishwanath. By the end of 1997/98 Test season, he had scored 15 fifties in 22 Tests which included four scores of nineties but just a solitary hundred.
The century drought came to an end in the 1998/99 Test season when he further raised the bar of his performance scoring 752 runs in seven Tests at an average of 62.66 that included four hundreds and one fifty and in the process topping the runs chart for India for the season. The first of those four hundreds came on the Zimbabwe tour. Dravid top scored in both the innings against Zimbabwe scoring 118 and 44 runs respectively however, India lost the one-off Test.
The Zimbabwe tour was followed by a tour to New Zealand. First Test having been abandoned without a ball being bowled, the series started for Dravid with the first duck of his Test career in the first innings of the Second Test and ended with hundreds in both the innings of the Third Test in Hamilton. He scored 190 and 103 not out in the first and the second innings respectively, becoming only the third Indian batsman, after Vijay Hazare and Sunil Gavaskar, to score a century in both innings of a Test match. Dravid topped the runs table for the series with 321 runs from two matches at an average of 107.00 but could not prevent India from losing the series 0–1.
Later that month, India played a two Test home series against Pakistan. Dravid didn't contribute much with the bat. India lost the First Test but won the Second Test in Delhi riding on Kumble's historic 10-wicket haul. Dravid played his part in the 10-wicket haul by taking a catch to dismiss Mushtaq Ahmed who was Kumble's eighth victim of the innings. The Indo-Pak Test series was followed by the 1998–99 Asian Test Championship. Dravid couldn't do much with the bat as India went on to lose the riot-affected First Test of the championship against Pakistan at the Eden Gardens. India went to Sri Lanka to play the Second Test of the championship. Dravid scored his fourth hundred of the season at Colombo in the first innings of the match. He also effected a brilliant run out of Russel Arnold during Sri Lankan innings fielding at short leg. On the fourth morning, Dravid got injured while fielding at the same position when the ball from Jayawardene's pull shot hit his face through the helmet grill. He didn't come out to bat in the second innings due to the injury. The match ended in a draw as India failed to qualify for the Finals of the championship.
In a stark contrast to his Test career, Dravid had to struggle a lot to make a mark in the ODIs. Between his ODI debut in April 1996 and the end of 1998 calendar year, Dravid regularly found himself in and out of the ODI team.
Dravid tasted first success of his ODI career in the 1996 'Friendship' Cup against Pakistan in the tough conditions of Toronto. He emerged as the highest scorer of the series with 220 runs in five matches at an average of 44.00 and a strike rate of 68.53. He won his first ODI Man of the Match award for the 46 runs scored in the low scoring third game of the series. He top scored for India in the Standard Bank International One-Day Series 1996/97 in South Africa with 280 runs from eight games at an average of 35.00 and a strike rate of 60.73, the highlight being a Man of the Match award-winning performance (84 runs, one catch) in the Final of the series that came in a losing cause. He was the second highest run scorer for India in the four-match bilateral ODI series in the West Indies in 1996/97 with 121 runs at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 57.61. Dravid's maiden ODI hundred came in a losing cause in the 1997 Pepsi Independence Cup against Pakistan in Chennai. Dravid top scored for India in the quadrangular event with 189 runs from three games at an average of 94.50 and a strike rate of 75.60 however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the series.
However, Dravid's achievements in the ODIs were dwarfed by his failures in the shorter format of the game. 14 runs from two games in the 1996 Pepsi Sharjah Cup; 20 runs from two innings in the Singer World Series; 65 runs from four innings in the 1997 'Friendship' Cup; 88 runs from four games in the 1998 Coca-Cola Triangular Series including a 22-ball five runs and a 21-ball one run innings, both coming against Bangladesh; 32 runs from four games in the 1998 'Friendship' Cup; a slew of such poor performances often forced him to the sidelines of the India ODI squad. By the end of 1998, Dravid had scored 1709 runs in 65 ODIs at a humble average of 31.64 with a poor strike rate of 63.48.
By now, Dravid had been branded as a Test specialist. While he continued to score heavily in Test cricket, his poor strike rate in ODIs came under scanner. He drew criticism for not being able to adjust his style of play to the needs of ODI cricket, his lack of attacking capability and play big strokes. However, Dravid worked hard and re-tooled his game by increasing his range of strokes and adapting his batting style to suit the requirements of ODI cricket. He learned to pace his innings cleverly without going for the slogs.
Dravid's ODI renaissance began during the 1998/99 New Zealand tour. He scored a run-a-ball hundred in the first match of the bilateral ODI series that earned him his third Man of the Match award in ODIs. The hundred came in a losing cause. However, his effort of 51 runs from 71 balls in the Fourth ODI came in India's victory and earned him his second Man of the Match award of the series. He ended as the top scorer of the series with 309 runs from five games at an average of 77.25 and a strike rate of 84.65. Dravid scored a hundred against Sri Lanka in 1998/99 Pepsi Cup at Nagpur adding a record 236 runs for the 2nd wicket with Ganguly, who also scored a hundred in the match. Uncharacteristically, Dravid was the faster of the two scoring 116 of 118 deliveries. In the next match against Pakistan, he bowled four overs and took the wicket of Saeed Anwar, out caught behind by wicket-keeper Nayan Mongia. This was his first wicket in international cricket.
Dravid warmed up for his debut World Cup with two fifties in the 1998–99 Coca-Cola Cup in Sharjah, one each against England and Pakistan. Standing-in as the substitute wicket-keeper in the third match of the series for Nayan Mongia, who got injured during keeping, Dravid effected two dismissals. He first stumped Graeme Hick off Sunil Joshi's bowling, who became Dravid's first victim as a wicket-keeper, and then caught Neil Fairbrother off Ajay Jadeja's bowling. He top scored for India in the tournament, though his last ODI innings before the World Cup was a golden duck against Pakistan, in the Final of the series.
Debut World Cup success
Dravid announced his form in England hitting consecutive fifties against Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire in the warm-up games.
He made his World Cup debut against South Africa at Hove striking a half century, but scored just 13 in the next game against Zimbabwe. India lost both the games. Having lost the first two games, India needed to win the remaining three games of the first round to have any chance of advancing into the Super Six stage. Dravid put up a partnership of 237 runs with Sachin Tendulkar against Kenya at Bristol – a World Cup record – and in the process hit his maiden World Cup hundred, helping India to a 94-run victory. India's designated keeper Mongia left the field at the end of 9th over during Kenyan innings, forcing Dravid to keep the wickets for the rest of the innings. In the absence of injured Nayan Mongia, Dravid played his first ODI as a designated keeper against Sri Lanka at Taunton. Dravid once again staged a record breaking partnership worth 318 runs – the first ever three hundred run partnership in ODI history – but this time with Sourav Ganguly, guiding India to a 157-run win. Dravid scored 145 runs from 129 balls with 17 fours and a six, becoming the second batsman in World Cup history to hit back-to-back hundreds. Dravid struck a fine fifty in the last group match as India defeated England to advance into the Super Six stage. Dravid scored 2, 61 & 29 in the three Super Six matches against Australia, Pakistan & New Zealand respectively. India failed to qualify for the semi-finals having lost to Australia and New Zealand but achieved a consolation victory against Pakistan in a tense game, what with the military conflict going on between the two countries in Kashmir at the same time. Dravid emerged as the top scorer of the tournament with 461 runs from 8 games at an average of 65.85 and a strike rate of 85.52.
Dravid's post-World Cup campaign started on a poor note with just 40 runs coming in 4 games of Aiwa Cup in August 1999. He soon came into his own, top-scoring for India in two consecutive limited-overs series – the Singapore Challenge, the highlight being a hundred in the Final coming in a lost cause, and the DMC Cup, the highlight being a match winning effort (77 runs, 4 catches) in the series decider for which he received man-of-the-match award. Dravid topped the international runs chart for 1999 cricket season across all formats scoring 782 runs from 19 matches. By now, Dravid had started to keep wickets on an infrequent basis with India fielding him as designated wicket-keeper in five out of 10 ODIs played in the three events.
Dravid kick-started his post World Cup Test season with a decent outing against New Zealand in the 3-match home series. His best effort of the series came in the second innings of the First test at Mohali scoring 144, helping India salvage a draw after being bowled out for 83 runs in the First innings. This was Dravid's sixth test hundred but his first test hundred on Indian soil. Dravid did well in the 3–2 series win against New Zealand in the bilateral ODI series, scoring 240 runs in 5 games at an average of 60 and a strike rate of 83.62, ending as the second highest scorer in the series. His career best effort in ODIs came in this series in the second game at Hyderabad where he scored run-a-ball 153 runs which included 15 fours and two sixes. He featured in a 331-run partnership with Tendulkar, which was the highest partnership in ODI cricket history, a record that stood for 15 years until it was broken in 2015. In 1999, Dravid scored 1761 runs in 43 ODIs at an average of 46.34 and a strike rate of 75.16 including 6 hundreds and 8 fifties and featured in two 300+ partnerships.
India toured Australia in December 1999 for a 3-match test series and a triangular ODI tournament. Although Dravid scored a hundred against Tasmania in the practice match, he failed miserably with the bat in the Test series as India slumped to a 0–3 whitewash. He did reasonably well in the 1999–2000 Carlton & United Series scoring 3 fifties in the triangular event however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the tournament.
Dravid's poor form in Tests continued as India suffered a 0–2 whitewash against South Africa in a home series. He had moderate success in the bilateral ODI series against South Africa. He contributed to India's 3–2 series win with 208 runs at an average of 41.60 which included 2 fifties and three wickets at an average of 22.66 topping the bowling average chart for the series. His career best bowling figure of 2/43 from nine overs in the First ODI at Kochi, was also the best bowling figure by any bowler in that particular match.
Rise through the ranks
In February 2000, Tendulkar's resignation from captaincy led to the promotion of Ganguly, the vice-captain then, as the new captain of the Indian team. In May 2000, while Dravid was busy playing county cricket in England, he was appointed as the vice-captain of the Indian team announced for the Asia cup.
India did well in the 2000 ICC KnockOut Trophy. Indian team, coming out of the shadows of the infamous match fixing scandal, showed a lot of character under the new leadership of Ganguly and Dravid, beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid scored 157 runs in 4 matches of the tournament, at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid scored 85 runs in a match against Zimbabwe in the 2000–01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy while opening the innings but was forced to miss the rest of the tournament because of an injury.
India kick started the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk knock of 41 runs from 49 balls, including 5 fours and a six, while chasing a target of 63 runs. The ensuing test series against Zimbabwe was John Wright's first assignment as Indian coach. Dravid, who was instrumental in Wright's appointment as India's first foreign head coach, welcomed him with his maiden double hundred. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second, guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 – highest batting average by an Indian in a series across all formats.
Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the fifth match of the bilateral ODI series against Zimbabwe in the absence of Ganguly who was serving suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39-run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain.
History at Eden
The Australian team toured India in February 2001 for what was being billed as the Final Frontier for Steve Waugh's all conquering men, who were coming on the back of 15 consecutive Test wins. Dravid failed in the first innings of the First Test but displayed strong resilience in Tendulkar's company in the second innings. Dravid's 196 ball long resistance finally ended when he got out bowled to Warne for 39 runs. Australians extended their winning streak to 16 Tests as they beat India convincingly by 10 wickets inside three days.
The Australian juggernaut seemed unstoppable as they looked on course towards their 17th consecutive victory in the Second Test at the Eden Gardens, when they bowled India out for meagre 171 in the first innings and enforced a follow-on after securing a massive lead of 274 runs. In the second innings, Laxman, who had scored a fine fifty in the first innings, was promoted to no. 3 position which had been Dravid's usual spot for quite sometime now, while Dravid, who had gotten out bowled to Warne for second time in a row in the first innings for just 25 runs, was relegated to no. 6 position. When Dravid joined Laxman in the middle on the third day of the Test, with scoreboard reading 232/4 and India still needing 42 runs to avoid an innings defeat, another convincing win for Australia looked inevitable. Instead, two of them staged one of the greatest fightbacks in cricketing history.
Dravid and Laxman played out the remaining time on the third day and whole of the fourth day, denying Australia any wicket on Day 4. Dravid, angered by the flak that the Indian team had been receiving lately in the media coverage, celebrated his hundred in an uncharacteristic fashion brandishing his bat at the press box. Eventually, Laxman got out on the fifth morning bringing the 376-runs partnership to an end. Dravid soon perished getting run out for 180 while trying to force the pace. Ganguly declared the innings at 657/7, setting Australia a target of 384 runs with 75 overs left in the match. An inspired team India bowled superbly to dismiss Australia for 212 in 68.3 overs. India won the match by 171 runs. This was only the third instance of a team winning a Test after following-on and India became the 2nd team to do so.
Dravid scored 81 runs in the first innings of the Third Test and took 4 catches in the match as India defeated Australia at Chennai in a nail biting finish to clinch the series 2–1. Dravid scored 80 in the first of the 5-match ODI series at his home ground as India won the match by 60 runs. He didn't do too well in the remaining 4 ODIs as Australia won the series 3–2. Dravid topped the averages for the 2000/01 Test season with 839 runs from six matches at an average of 104.87.
Dravid had a decent outing in Zimbabwe, scoring 137 runs from 134 balls in the First Tour game and aggregating 138 runs at an average of 69.00 from the drawn Test series. In the ensuing triangular ODI series, he aggregated 121 runs from 5 matches at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 101.68, the highlight being an unbeaten 72 off 64 balls, while chasing a target of 235 against Zimbabwe in the 3rd match of the series, guiding India to a 4-wicket win with four balls to spare. He was adjudged man of the match for his match winning knock.
On the next tour to Sri Lanka, India lost the first three matches of the triangular event. In the absence of suspended Ganguly, Dravid captained the side in the 4th match leading them to their first victory of the series. India won the next two matches to qualify for the Final. Dravid played crucial innings in all the three victories. Eventually, India lost the Final to Sri Lanka. He top scored for India in the series with 259 runs from seven matches at an average of 51.80 and a strike rate of 59.81. Reinstated to his usual no. 3 position in the absence of injured Laxman, Dravid top scored for India in the ensuing 3-Test series as well with 235 runs at an average of 47.00. The highlight for Dravid was 75 runs scored in the tough fourth innings chase of the Second Test – a crucial contribution to India's first Test win in Sri Lanka since 1993 despite the absence of key players like Tendulkar, Laxman, Srinath and Kumble.
Dravid had decent success in Standard Bank tri-series on South Africa tour, scoring 214 runs (including 3 fifties) at an average of 53.50 and a strike rate of 71.81. He also kept wickets in the final two ODIs of the series effecting 3 stumpings. The highlight for Dravid in the ensuing Test series came in the second innings of the Second Test. India, having failed to last hundred overs in any of the previous three innings in the series, needed to bat out four sessions in the Second Test to save the match. They started on a poor note losing their first wicket in the first over with no runs on the scoreboard. However, Dravid forged an important partnership of 171 runs with Dasgupta that lasted for 83.2 overs taking India to the brink of safety. Poor weather helped India salvage a draw as only 96.2 overs could be bowled in the innings. Dravid captained the team in the 'unofficial' Third test in the absence of injured Ganguly, which India lost by an innings margin.
By the end of the South African tour, Dravid had started experiencing problem in his right shoulder. Although he played the ensuing home test series against England, he pulled out of the six-match bilateral ODI series to undergo shoulder rehabilitation program in South Africa. He returned for the Zimbabwe's tour of India but performed below par, scoring a fifty each in the Test series and the bilateral ODI series.
2002–2006: Peak years
Dravid hit the peak form of his career in 2002. Between Season 2002 and Season 2006, Dravid was the second highest scorer overall and top scorer for India across formats, scoring 8,914 runs from 174 matches at an average of 54.02, including 19 hundreds.
Dravid had a decent outing in West Indies in 2002. The highlights for him included – hitting a hundred with a swollen jaw and helping India avoid the follow-on in the process at Georgetown in the drawn First Test; contributing with a fifty and four catches to India's victory in the Second Test at Port of Spain – India's first Test victory in West Indies since 1975–76; and another fifty in the drawn Fourth Test with a wicket to boot – that of Ridley Jacobs who was batting on 118. This was Dravid's only wicket in Test cricket. He played as India's designated keeper in the ODI series but didn't contribute much with the bat in the 2–1 series win.
A quartet of hundreds
India's tour of England in 2002 started with a triangular ODI event involving India, England and Sri Lanka. India emerged as the winners of the series beating England in the Final – their first victory after nine consecutive defeats in one-day finals. Dravid played as designated keeper in six out of seven matches effecting nine dismissals (6 catches, 3 stumpings) – most by a keeper in the series. He also did well with the bat aggregating 245 runs at an average of 49.00 including three fifties. His performance against Sri Lanka in fourth ODI (64 runs, 1 catch) earned him a man of the match award.
India lost the first of the four match Test series. Having conceded a 260 runs lead in the first innings of the Second Test at Nottingham, Indians were in a spot of bother. However, Dravid led the fightback in the second innings with a hundred as Indians managed to earn a draw.
Ganguly won the toss in the Third Test and took a bold decision to bat first on a gloomy overcast morning at Headingley on a pitch known to be traditionally conducive for fast and swing bowling. Having lost an early wicket, Dravid weathered the storm in company of Sanjay Bangar. They played cautiously, taking body blows on a pitch with uneven bounce. Dravid completed his second hundred of the series in the process. As the conditions became more and more conducive for batting, the Indian batsmen piled on England's misery. Indians declared the innings on 628/8 and then bowled England out twice to register their first test victory in England since 1986. Despite being outscored by Tendulkar, Dravid was awarded man of the match for his efforts. Dravid scored a double hundred in the drawn Fourth Test to notch up his second consecutive man of the match award of the series. Christopher Martin-Jenkins noted during the Fourth Test: Dravid aggregated 602 runs in the series from four matches at an average of 100.33, including three hundreds and a fifty and was adjudged joint man of the series along with Michael Vaughan.
India jointly shared the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka. Dravid contributed to India's successful campaign with 120 runs at an average of 60.00 and five dismissals behind the wicket. Dravid scored a hundred in the First Test of the three match home series against West Indies becoming the first Indian batsman to score hundreds in four consecutive Test innings but had to retire soon after owing to severe cramps. Dravid did well in the subsequent bilateral 7-match ODI series aggregating 300 runs at an average of 75.00 and a strike rate of 89.82 including one hundred and two fifties. He also effected 7 dismissals (6 catches, 1 stumping) in the series. India trailing 1–2, needed 325 runs to win the Fourth ODI and level the series. Dravid scored a hundred leading India to a successful chase. He once again scored a crucial fifty in the Sixth ODI as India once again leveled the series after trailing 2–3. India, however, lost the last match to lose the series 3–4.
Dravid top scored for India in the two-match Test series in New Zealand as India slumped to a whitewash. He played as designated keeper in six of the 7-match bilateral ODI series and effected seven dismissals but fared poorly with the bat as India were handed a 2-5 drubbing by the New Zealand.
2003 Cricket World Cup
Dravid arrived in South Africa with the Indian squad to participate in the 2003 Cricket World Cup in the capacity of first-choice keeper-batsman as part of their seven batsmen-four bowlers strategy – an experiment that had brought success to the team in the past year. The idea was that making Dravid keep wickets allowed India to accommodate an extra specialist batsman. The strategy worked out well for India in the World Cup. India recovered from a less than convincing victory against minnows Netherlands and a loss to Australia in the league stage and embarked on a dream run winning eight consecutive matches to qualify for the World Cup Finals for the first time since 1983. India eventually lost the Final to Australia ending as runner-up in the tournament. Dravid contributed to India's campaign with 318 runs at an average of 63.60 and 16 dismissals (15 catches, 1 stumping). Highlights for Dravid in the tournament included a fifty against England, 44 not out against Pakistan in a successful chase and an unbeaten fifty in another successful chase against New Zealand.
Dravid topped the international runs chart for 2003/04 cricket season across formats aggregating 1993 runs from 31 matches at an average of 64.29 including three double hundreds. First of those came against New Zealand in the first of the two-test home series at Ahmedabad. Dravid scored 222 runs in the first innings and 73 runs in the second innings receiving a man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid captained Indian Test Team for the first time in the second game of the series at Mohali in the absence of Ganguly. Both the matches ended in a draw. Dravid top scored in the series with 313 runs at an average of 78.25. India next participated in TVS cup alongside New Zealand and Australia. India lost to Australia in the Final. Dravid scored two fifties in the series but the highlight was his fifty against New Zealand in the ninth match that came in just 22 balls – second fastest fifty by an Indian.
An Eden encore
After earning a draw in the first of the four-match Test series in Australia, Indians found themselves reeling at 85/4 in the Second Test at Adelaide after Australia had piled 556 runs in the first innings when Laxman joined Dravid in the middle. They batted for 93.5 overs bringing about their second 300-run partnership adding 303 runs together before Laxman perished for 148 runs. However, Dravid continued to complete his second double hundred of the season. He was the last man out for 233 runs as India conceded a marginal first innings lead of 33 runs to Australia. India bowled Australia out for paltry score of 196 riding on Agarkar's six-wicket haul, and were set a target of 230 runs to win the match. Dravid helped India tread through a tricky chase with an unbeaten fifty as India registered their first test victory in Australia since 1980/81 to go up 1–0 in the series. This was the first time that Australians were 0-1 down in a home series since 1994. Dravid won the man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid registered a score of ninety each in the next two tests as Australia leveled the series 1–1. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 619 runs at an average of 123.80 and was awarded player of the series for his efforts.
Dravid did moderately well in the ensuing VB series with three fifties in the league stage, all of which came in winning cause. However, India lost the best-of-three finals to Australia 2–0. Dravid was fined half his match fee for applying cough lozenge on the ball during a match in the series against Zimbabwe – an act that was claimed to be an innocent mistake by coach John Wright.
India visited Pakistan in March 2004 to participate in a bilateral Test series for the first time since 1989/90. Prior to the Test series, India participated and won the 5-match ODI series 3–2. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 248 runs at an average of 62.00 and a strike rate of 73.59. Dravid scored 99 runs in the First ODI helping India post an imposing total of 349. He also took the important catch of threatening Inzamam-ul-Haq, who was batting on 122, as India went on to win the match by five runs. When Indians were trailing in the series 1–2, Dravid helped India level the series with an unbeaten fifty during a successful chase in the Fourth ODI.
Captaincy
Dravid captained India in the first two tests in the absence of injured Ganguly and led India to their first-ever Test victory in Pakistan. Dravid, standing in only his second test as team's captain, took a bold and controversial decision during First Test at Multan that divided the cricket fraternity. Pakistani cricketers had been on field for 150+ overs as India posted a total in excess of 600 runs in the first innings. Dravid, who wanted to have a crack at the tired Pakistani batsmen in the final hour of second day's play, declared Indian innings with Tendulkar batting at 194, just six runs short of his double century. While some praised the team before personal milestones approach of the Indian captain, most criticized Dravid's timing of declaration as there were no pressing concerns and there was ample time left in the match to try and bowl Pakistan out twice. While Tendulkar was admittedly disappointed, any rumours of rift between him and Dravid were quashed by both the cricketers and the team management, who claimed that the matter had been discussed and sorted amicably behind closed doors. India eventually went on to win the match by innings margin. Pakistan leveled the series beating India in the Second Test. Dravid slammed a double hundred in the Third Test at Rawalpindi – his third double hundred of the season. He scored 270 runs – his career best performance – before getting out to reverse sweep trying to force the pace. India went on to win the match and the series – their first series victory outside India since 1993. Dravid was adjudged man of the match for his effort.
Dravid was appointed the captain for the Indian team for 2007 World Cup, where India had an unsuccessful campaign.
During India's unsuccessful tour of England in 2011, in which their 4–0 loss cost them the top rank in Test cricket, Dravid made three centuries.
2011 Tour of England
Having regained his form on the tour to West Indies, where he scored a match-winning hundred in Sabina park, Jamaica, Dravid then toured England in what was billed as the series which would decide the World No. 1 ranking in tests.
In the first test at Lord's, in reply to England's 474, Dravid scored an unbeaten 103, his first hundred at the ground where he debuted in 1996. He received scant support from his teammates as India were bowled out for 286 and lost the test. The 2nd test at Trentbridge, Nottingham again saw Dravid in brilliant form. Sent out to open the batting in place of an injured Gautam Gambhir, he scored his second successive hundred. His 117 though, again came in a losing cause, as a collapse of 6 wickets for 21 runs in the first innings led to a massive defeat by 319 runs. Dravid failed in both innings in the third test at Birmingham, as India lost by an innings and 242 runs, one of the heaviest defeats in their history. However, he came back brilliantly in the fourth and final match at The Oval. Again opening the batting in place of Gambhir, he scored an unbeaten 146 out of India's total of 300, carrying his bat through the innings. Once again, though, his efforts were in vain as India lost the match, completing a 0–4 whitewash.
In all, he scored 461 runs in the four matches at an average of 76.83 with three hundreds. He accounted for over 26% of India's runs in the series and was named India's man of the series by England coach Andy Flower. His performance in the series was met with widespread admiration and was hailed by some as one of his finest ever series
Retirement
Rahul Dravid was dropped from the ODI team in 2009, but was selected again for an ODI series in England in 2011, surprising even Dravid himself since, although he had not officially retired from ODI cricket, he had not expected to be recalled. After being selected, he announced that he would retire from ODI cricket after the series. He played his last ODI innings against England at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, on 16 September 2011, scoring 69 runs from 79 balls before being bowled by Graeme Swann. His last limited-overs international match was his debut T20I match; he announced his retirement before playing his first T20I match.
Dravid announced his retirement from Test and domestic cricket on 9 March 2012, after the 2011–12 tour of Australia, but he said that he would captain the Rajasthan Royals in the 2012 Indian Premier League. He was the second-highest run scorer and had taken the highest number of catches in Test cricket at the time of his retirement.
In July 2014, he played for the MCC side in the Bicentenary Celebration match at Lord's.
Coaching
Towards the end of his playing career, Dravid took on a role as mentor of the Rajasthan Royals IPL team, officially taking over in 2014. During this time, he also became involved with the Indian national team, serving as mentor for the team's tour of England in 2014. After leading the Royals to a third-place finish in the 2015 IPL season, he was appointed as the head coach of the India U-19 and India A teams. Dravid achieved immense success as coach, with the U-19s reaching the finals of the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Two years later, the team went on to win the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup, beating Australia by 8 wickets to win their fourth Under-19 World Cup, the most by any national side. Dravid was credited with bringing up future national team players including Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan and Washington Sundar. Alongside his coaching roles, Dravid took on several mentor roles, including at the Delhi Daredevils IPL team.
In July 2019, following his four-year stint as coach of the junior teams, Dravid was appointed Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA). He was in charge of "overseeing all cricket related activities at NCA was involved in mentoring, coaching, training and motivating players, coaches and support staff at the NCA". As head of NCA, he was widely praised for developing a steady supply of talent to the senior team and revamping player fitness and rehabilitation regiments.
In November 2021, he was appointed as head coach of the Indian national cricket team.
County stint
Dravid had always been keen on further honing his batting skills in testing English conditions by playing in county cricket. He had discussed about the prospects regarding the same with John Wright, the former New Zealand cricketer and incumbent Kent coach, during India's 1998–99 tour of New Zealand. Wright was particularly impressed with Dravid's performance on that tour, especially his twin hundreds at Hamilton. The talks finally materialized and Dravid made his county debut for Kent in April 2000. His co-debutante Ganguly made his county debuted in the same match, albeit for the opposite team.
Kent offer had come as a welcome change for Dravid. There was too much negativity surrounding Indian cricket marred by match fixing controversy. Dravid himself had been struggling to score runs in Tests for quite some time now. The county stint gave him a chance to "get away to a new environment" and "relax". The wide variety of pitches and weather conditions in England and a full season of intense county cricket against professional cricketers gave him a chance to further his cricketing education and learn things about his game.
Dravid made the most of this opportunity. In his 2nd game for Kent, Dravid scored a fluid 182 propelling them to an innings and 163 runs victory over the touring Zimbabwe side. Out of 7 first class tour games that Zimbabwe played on that tour, Kent was the only team that managed to beat them. Dravid hit another fifty in a draw against Surrey. The newly appointed vice-captain had to leave the county championship temporarily, missing two championship games and two one day games, to fulfill his national commitment. Indian team, Dravid included, fared poorly in the Asia cup and failed to qualify for the Final. Subsequently, Dravid returned to England to resume his county sojourn with Kent.
In July 2000, Kent's away match against Hampshire at Portsmouth was billed as a showdown between two great cricketers- Warne and Dravid. Dravid came out on top. On a dustbowl, tailor-made to suit home team spinners, Warne took 4 wickets but could not take the all important wicket of Dravid. Coming in to bat at 15/2, Dravid faced 295 balls scoring 137 runs – his maiden hundred in county championships. Dravid scored 73 not out in the 2nd innings guiding Kent to a six wicket victory as Warne went wicketless.
In their last county game of the season, Kent needed one bonus point to prevent themselves from being relegated to the Second Division. Dravid made sure they stay put in the First Division by fetching that one bonus point with an inning of 77 runs.
Dravid concluded a successful stint with Kent aggregating 1221 runs from 16 first class matches(15 county games and 1 tour game against Zimbabwe) at an average of 55.50 including 2 hundreds and 8 fifties. He shouldered Kent's batting single-handedly as the second best Kent batsman during the same period, Paul Nixon, scored just 567 runs at an average of 33.35 in 17 matches. Dravid contributed to Kent's county campaign not just with the bat but also with his fielding and bowling taking 14 catches and 4 wickets at an average of 32.00.
Indian Premier League and Champions League
Rahul Dravid played for Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2008, 2009 and 2010. Later he played for Rajasthan Royals and led it to finals of Champions League T20 in 2013, and play-offs of Indian Premier League in 2013. Dravid announced retirement from Twenty20 after playing the 2013 Champions League Twenty20 in September–October 2013.
Playing style
Dravid was known for his technique, and has been one of the best batsmen for the Indian cricket team. In the beginning, he was known as a defensive batsman who should be confined to Test cricket, and was dropped from the ODI squad due to a low strike rate. However, he later scored consistently in ODIs as well, earning him the ICC Player of the Year award. His nickname of 'The Wall' in Reebok advertisements is now used as his nickname. Dravid has scored 36 centuries in Test cricket, with an average of 52.31; this included five double centuries. In one-dayers, he averaged 39.16, with a strike rate of 71.23. He is one of the few Indians whose Test average is better at away than at home, averaging almost five runs more on foreign pitches. As of 23 September 2010, Dravid's Test average in abroad is 55.53, and his Test average at home is 50.76; his ODI average abroad is 37.93 and his ODI average at home is 43.11. Dravid averages 66.34 runs in Indian Test victories. and 50.69 runs in ODIs.
Dravid's sole Test wicket was of Ridley Jacobs in the fourth Test match against the West Indies during the 2001–2002 series. While he has no pretensions to being a bowler, Dravid often kept wicket for India in ODIs.
Dravid was involved in two of the largest partnerships in ODIs: a 318-run partnership with Sourav Ganguly, the first pair to combine for a 300-run partnership, and then a 331-run partnership with Sachin Tendulkar, which is a world record. He also holds the record for the greatest number of innings played since debut before being dismissed for a duck. His highest scores in ODIs and Tests are 153 and 270 respectively.
He was named one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 2000. Though primarily a defensive batsman, Dravid scored 50 runs not out in 22 balls (a strike rate of 227.27) against New Zealand in Hyderabad on 15 November 2003, the second fastest 50 among Indian batsmen. Only Ajit Agarkar's 67 runs off 21 balls is faster than that of Dravid.
In 2004, Dravid was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India. On 7 September 2004, he was awarded the inaugural Player of the year award and the Test player of the year award by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
After reaching 10,000 Test runs milestone, he said, "It's a proud moment for sure. For me, growing up, I dreamt of playing for India. When I look back, I probably exceeded my expectations with what I have done over the last 10 to 12 years. I never had an ambition to do it because I never believed – it is just a reflection of my longevity in the game."
Dravid is also one of the two batsmen to score 10,000 runs at a single batting position and is the fourth highest run scorer in Test cricket, behind Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis.
Controversies
Ball-tampering incident
In January 2004, Dravid was found guilty of ball tampering during an ODI with Zimbabwe. Match referee Clive Lloyd adjudged the application of an energy sweet to the ball as a deliberate offence, although Dravid himself denied this was his intent. Lloyd emphasised that television footage caught Dravid putting a lozenge on the ball during the Zimbabwean innings on Tuesday night at the Gabba. According to the ICC's Code of Conduct, players are not allowed to apply substances to the ball other than sweat and saliva. Dravid was fined half of his match fee.
Indian coach John Wright came out in defence of Dravid, stating that "It was an innocent mistake". Wright argued that Dravid had been trying to apply saliva to the ball when parts of a losenge he had been chewing stuck to the ball; Dravid then tried to wipe it off. ICC regulations prevented Dravid from commenting about the issue, but former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly also stated that Dravid's act was "just an accident".
Captaincy
Rahul Dravid has had a mixed record when leading India in Tests.
One of Dravid's most debated decisions was taken in March 2004, when he was standing in as the captain for injured Sourav Ganguly. India's first innings was declared at a point when Sachin Tendulkar was at 194 runs not out with 16 overs remaining on Day 2. In this test match Sehwag scored triple century first time. He became the first Indian to score triple century in test with a score of 309.
In March 2006, India lost the Mumbai Test, giving England its first Test victory in India since 1985, enabling it to draw the series 1–1. The defeat in Mumbai was arguably the result of Dravid's decision to bowl first on a flat dry pitch, which later deteriorated and ended with an Indian collapse in the run chase. Coincidentally, it was Dravid's 100th test match in which the Indians were all out for 100 runs in the second innings.
After India failed to qualify for the final of the DLF Cup, Dravid, the skipper, was criticised by former all-rounder Ravi Shastri who said that he was not assertive enough and let Greg Chappell make too many decisions. When asked for a response, Dravid said that Shastri, while a 'fair critic', was 'not privy' to the internal decision-making process of the team.
He was criticised by Vijay Mallya for not picking the team with right balance after his then IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore finished seventh out of the eight teams that participated in the 2008 season.
Achievements and awards
National honours
1998 – Arjuna Award recipient for achievements in cricket
2004 – Padma Shri – India's fourth highest civilian award
2013 – Padma Bhushan – India's third highest civilian award
Other honours
1999 – CEAT International Cricketer of the World Cup
2000 – Dravid was one of the five cricketers selected as Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
2004 – ICC Cricketer of the year – Highest award in the ICC listings
2004 – ICC Test Player of The Year, ICC Cricketer of The Year
2004 – MTV Youth Icon of the Year
2006 – Captain of the ICC's Test Team
2011 – NDTV Indian of the Year's Lifetime Achievement Award with Dev Anand
2012 – Don Bradman Award with Glenn McGrath
2015 – Wisden India's Highest Impact Test Batsman
2018 – ICC Hall of Fame
Personal life
Family
On 4 May 2003 he married Vijeta Pendharkar, a surgeon from Nagpur. Vijeta Pendharkar is also from Deshastha Brahmin community as Dravid. They have two children: Samit, born in 2005, and Anvay, born in 2009. Dravid is fluent in Marathi, Hindi, Kannada and English.
Commercial endorsements
Rahul Dravid has been sponsored by several brands throughout his career including Reebok (1996 – present), Pepsi (1997 present), Kissan (Unknown), Castrol (2001 – present), Hutch
(2003), Karnataka Tourism (2004), Max Life (2005 – present), Bank of Baroda (2005 – present), Citizen (2006 – present), Skyline Construction (2006 – present), Sansui (2007), Gillette (2007 – present), Samsung (2002 – 2004), World Trade Center Noida (2013– present),
CRED (2021-present).
Social commitments
Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA)
UNICEF Supporter and AIDS Awareness Campaign
Biographies
Books
Two biographies have been written on Rahul Dravid and his career:
Rahul Dravid – A Biography written by Vedam Jaishankar (). Publisher: UBSPD Publications. Date: January 2004
The Nice Guy Who Finished First written by Devendra Prabhudesai. Publisher: Rupa Publications. Date: November 2005
A collection of articles, testimonials and interviews related to Dravid was released by ESPNcricinfo following his retirement. The book was titled Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel.
See also
Sachin Tendulkar
Sourav Ganguly
VVS Laxman
Virendra Sehwag
References
External links
Indian cricketers
India Test cricketers
India One Day International cricketers
India Twenty20 International cricketers
India Test cricket captains
Wisden Cricketers of the Year
Karnataka cricketers
South Zone cricketers
Kent cricketers
Scotland cricketers
ACC Asian XI One Day International cricketers
ICC World XI One Day International cricketers
World XI Test cricketers
Royal Challengers Bangalore cricketers
Canterbury cricketers
Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers
Rajasthan Royals cricketers
India Blue cricketers
Cricketers at the 1999 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2003 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2007 Cricket World Cup
Recipients of the Padma Shri in sports
1973 births
Living people
Cricketers from Indore
Cricketers from Bangalore
Recipients of the Arjuna Award
International Cricket Council Cricketer of the Year
Marathi people
Indian cricket coaches
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in sports
Indian cricket commentators
Wicket-keepers
| false |
[
"Season 1 of the Indian Telugu-language competitive reality TV series MasterChef India – Telugu was aired from 27 August 2021 to 27 November 2021 on Gemini TV. Tamannaah hosted the initial 16 episodes of the season and Anasuya Bharadwaj hosted episodes 17-24. There was no host present in the remaining episodes. Professional chefs Chalapathi Rao, Sanjay Thumma and Mahesh Padala serve as the judges. K. Krishna Tejasvi, a home baker from Hyderabad won the competition, with G. D. Anusha as the runner-up.\n\nFormat\nFrom around 5000 applicants, 800 were selected for virtual auditions. One hundred winners were selected for a live audition at Innovative Film City, Bengaluru. The top 20 home cooks were selected from this audition to compete in the MasterChef apron challenge. The winners were placed in the Top 14.\n\nTop 14\n\nElimination Table\n\n (WON) The cook won the individual/pair challenge and was safe for the next challenge(s).\n (WON) The cook won the team challenge and was safe for the next challenge(s). \n (IMN) The cook won/used an Immunity Pin in the challenge.\n (WON) The cook won the individual challenge and was promoted as a finalist.\n (SAFE) The cook did not participate in the challenge as he/she already advanced to the next round.\n (TOP) The cook was one of the top entries in the individual/pair challenge but failed.\n (IN) The cook was not chosen as a top or bottom entry in the individual/pair challenge.\n (IN) The cook was not chosen as a top or bottom entry in the team challenge.\n (WAIT) The cook was waiting for the result.\n (DNP) The cook did not participate in the challenge(s) due to the result of the previous challenge or personal problems.\n (BTM) The cook was one of the bottom entries in the individual challenge and had to compete in the next elimination challenge.\n (BTM) The cook was one of the bottom entries in the team challenge and had to compete in the next elimination challenge.\n (PT) The cook competed in the elimination challenge and advanced.\n (PELM) The cook was eliminated but later given a second chance to participate in an upcoming challenge.\n (ELIM) The cook was eliminated from MasterChef.\n\nGuest Appearances \n Allu Sirish\n Chef Rajesh Kadakanthala\n V. M. L. Karthikeyan\n\nEpisodes\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\n MasterChef India – Telugu (season 1) at IMDb \n MasterChef India – Telugu (season 1) at Sun NXT\n\nMasterChef India\n2021 Indian television seasons",
"The eighth and final season of the American reality television competition series HGTV Star premiered on June 9, 2013. The series had been renamed from \"Design Star\" for this new edition. David Bromstad returned for his second season as host, and Sabrina Soto joined the show, along with returning judges Vern Yip and Genevieve Gorder.\n\nDesigners\n\nAge is at the time of the show's filming\n\nElimination Table\n\n (WINNER) The designer won the competition.\n (RUNNER-UP) The designer received second place.\n (WIN) The designer was selected as the winner of the episode's elimination challenge.\n (HIGH) The designer was selected as one of the top entries in the elimination challenge, but did not win.\n (IN) The designer advanced to the next challenge, but was not selected as a top nor a bottom entry in the elimination challenge.\n (LOW) The designer was selected as one of the bottom entries in the elimination challenge, but was not the final contestant to move on to the next round\n (LOW) The designer was selected as one of the bottom entries in the elimination challenge and was the final contestant to move on to the next round.\n (OUT) The designer was eliminated from the competition.\n\n2013 American television seasons"
] |
[
"Rahul Dravid",
"Golden years",
"What started his golden years",
"As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain,",
"Who was helping him",
"Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal.",
"What did he do",
"Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals.",
"What did he try",
"Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket.",
"What was his next challenge",
"Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe"
] |
C_52e2fff8b563440da632c6c90324029a_1
|
What made this possible
| 6 |
What made Dravid's 85 runs against Zimbabwe possible?
|
Rahul Dravid
|
As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain, Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal. Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid played his part scoring 157 runs in 4 matches at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe opening the innings before getting injured while fielding at slips forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament. India started off the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk inning of 49 ball 41 runs, including 5 fours and a six, chasing a target of 63 runs. However, Dravid's poor patch truly ended in the next Test series against Zimbabwe, which was also the first series for John Wright as the new Indian coach. Wright was instrumental in Dravid's association with Kent earlier this year. Dravid returned the favour by recommending his name to the BCCI for the post of national team coach. By now, Dravid had played 8 Tests since his last hundred against New Zealand at Mohali scoring just 350 runs at a paltry average of 23.33 without a single fifty plus inning. The Indian vice-captain ended the run drought and welcomed the new Indian coach with a double hundred - Dravid's first. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second inning guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 - highest batting average by an Indian in a Test series. Dravid scored just a solitary fifty in the second of the five match bilateral ODI series between India and Zimbabwe. However, the series proved to be a milestone in Dravid's career. Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the 5th match of the series as the regular captain Ganguly had to sit out due to one match suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39 run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain. CANNOTANSWER
|
opening the innings before getting injured while fielding at slips forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament.
|
Rahul Sharad Dravid (; born 11 January 1973) is a former Indian cricketer and captain of the Indian national team, currently serving as its head coach. Prior to his appointment to the senior men's national team, Dravid was the Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), and the head coach of the India Under-19 and India A teams. Under his tutelage, the under-19 team finished runners up at the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup and won the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Known for his sound batting technique, Dravid scored 24,177 runs in international cricket and is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is colloquially known as Mr. Dependable and often referred to as The Wall.
Born in a Marathi family and raised in Bangalore, he started playing cricket at the age of 12 and later represented Karnataka at the under-15, under-17 and under-19 levels. Hailed as The Wall, Dravid was named one of the best five cricketers of the year by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 2000 and received the Player of the Year and the Test Player of the Year awards at the inaugural ICC awards ceremony in 2004. In December 2011, he became the first non-Australian cricketer to deliver the Bradman Oration in Canberra.
As of December 2016, Dravid is the fourth-highest run scorer in Test cricket, after Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis. In 2004, after completing his century against Bangladesh in Chittagong, he became the first player to score a century in all the ten Test-playing countries. As of October 2012, he holds the record for the most catches taken by a player (non-wicket-keeper) in Test cricket, with 210. Dravid holds a unique record of never getting out for a Golden duck in the 286 Test innings which he has played. He has faced 31258 balls, which is the highest number of balls faced by any player in test cricket. He has also spent 44152 minutes at the crease, which is the highest time spent on crease by any player in test cricket. Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar are currently the highest scoring partnership in Test cricket history having scored 6920 runs combined when batting together for India.
In August 2011, after receiving a surprise recall in the ODI series against England, Dravid declared his retirement from ODIs as well as Twenty20 International (T20I), and in March 2012, he announced his retirement from international and first-class cricket. He appeared in the 2012 Indian Premier League as captain of the Rajasthan Royals.
Rahul Dravid, along with Glenn McGrath were honoured during the seventh annual Bradman Awards function in Sydney on 1 November 2012. Dravid has also been honoured with the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan award, India's fourth and third highest civilian awards respectively.
In 2014, Rahul Dravid joined the GoSports Foundation, Bangalore as a member of their board of advisors. In collaboration with GoSports Foundation he is mentoring India's future Olympians and Paralympians as part of the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme. Indian badminton player Prannoy Kumar, Para-swimmer Sharath Gayakwad and young Golfer S. Chikkarangappa was part of the initial group of athletes to be mentored by Rahul Dravid. In July 2018, Dravid became the fifth Indian cricketer to be inducted into ICC Hall of Fame.
Early life
Dravid was born in a Marathi-Speaking Brahmin family in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. His family later moved to Bangalore, Karnataka, where he was raised. His mother tongue is Marathi. Dravid's father Sharad Dravid worked for a company that makes jams and preserves, giving rise to the later nickname Jammy. His mother, Pushpa, was a professor of architecture at the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bangalore. Dravid has a younger brother named Vijay. He did his schooling at St. Joseph's Boys High School, Bangalore and earned a degree in commerce from St. Joseph's College of Commerce, Bangalore. He was selected to India's national cricket team while working towards an MBA at St Joseph's College of Business Administration. He is fluent in several languages: Marathi, Kannada, English and Hindi.
Formative years and domestic career
Dravid started playing cricket at the age of 12, and represented Karnataka at the under-15, the under-17 and the under-19 levels. Former cricketer Keki Tarapore first noticed Dravid's talent while coaching at a summer camp in the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Dravid scored a century for his school team. He also played as wicket-keeper.
Dravid made his Ranji Trophy debut in February 1991, while still attending college. Playing alongside future India teammates Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath against Maharashtra in Pune, he scored 82 runs in the match, which ended in a draw. He followed it up with a century against Bengal and three successive centuries after. However, Dravid's first full season was in 1991–92, when he scored two centuries and finished up with 380 runs at an average of 63.30, getting selected for the South Zone cricket team in the Duleep Trophy. Dravid's caught the national team selectors' eye with his good performances for India A in the home series against England A in 1994–95.
International career
Debut
Dravid, who had been knocking at the doors of Indian national cricket team for quite a while with his consistent performance in domestic cricket, received his first national call in October 1994, for the last two matches of the Wills World Series. However, he could not break into the playing eleven. He went back to the domestic circuit and kept knocking harder. So much so, that when the selectors announced the Indian team for the 1996 World Cup sans Dravid, an Indian daily newspaper carried a headline – "Rahul Dravid gets a raw deal". Dravid eventually made his international debut on 3 April 1996 in an ODI against Sri Lanka in the Singer Cup held in Singapore immediately after the 1996 World Cup, replacing Vinod Kambli. He wasn't particularly impressive with the bat, scoring just three runs before being dismissed by Muttiah Muralitharan, but took two catches in the match. He followed it up with another failure in the next game scoring just four runs before getting run out against Pakistan.
In contrast to his ODI debut, his Test debut was rather successful one. Dravid was selected for the Indian squad touring England on the backdrop of a consistent performance in domestic cricket for five years. Fine performances in the tour games including fifties against Gloucestershire and Leicestershire failed to earn him a place in the team for the First Test. He finally made his Test debut at Lord's on 20 June 1996 against England in the Second Test of the series at the expense of injured senior batsman Sanjay Manjrekar. Manjrekar, who was suffering from an ankle injury, was to undergo a fitness test on the morning of the Second Test. Dravid had already been informed that he would play if Manjrekar fails the test. As Manjrekar failed the fitness test, ten minutes before the toss, Sandeep Patil, the then Indian coach, went up to Dravid to inform him that he was indeed going to make his debut that day. Patil recalled years later:
Coming in to bat at no. 7, he forged important partnerships, first with another debutante Sourav Ganguly and then with Indian lower order, securing a vital first innings lead for his team. Dravid scored 95 runs before getting out to the bowling of Chris Lewis. He was just five runs short of a landmark debut hundred when he nicked a Lewis delivery to the keeper and walked even before umpire's decision. He also took his first catch in Test cricket in this match to dismiss Nasser Hussain off the bowling of Srinath. In the next tour game against British Universities, Dravid scored a hundred. He scored another fifty in the first innings of the Third Test. Dravid concluded a successful debut series with an impressive average of 62.33 from two Test matches.
1996–98: A tale of two formats
Dravid's early years in international cricket mirrored his international debut. He had contrasting fortunes in the long and the shorter format of the game. While he straightaway made a name for himself in Test cricket, he had to struggle quite a bit to make a mark in ODIs.
After a successful Test debut in England, Dravid played in the one-off Test against Australia in Delhi – his first Test in India. Batting at no. 6, he scored 40 runs in the first innings. Dravid batted at no. 3 position for the first time in the First Test of the three-match home series against South Africa in Ahmedabad in November 1996. He didn't do too well in the series scoring just 175 runs at a modest average of 29.16.
Two weeks later, India toured South Africa for a three–match Test series. Chasing a target of 395 runs in the First Test, Indian team bundled out meekly for 66 runs on the Durban pitch that provided excessive bounce and seam movement. Dravid, batting at no. 6, was the only Indian batsman who reached double figures in the innings scoring 27 not out. He was promoted to the no. 3 slot again in the second innings of the Second Test, a move that paid rich dividends in the ensuing Test. He almost won the Third Test for India with his maiden test hundred in the first innings scoring 148 runs and another 81 runs in the second innings at Wanderers before the thunderstorms, dim light and Cullinan's hundred saved the day for South Africa enabling them to draw the match. Dravid's performance in this Test earned him his first Man of the Match award in Test cricket. He top scored for India in the series with 277 runs at an average of 55.40.
Dravid continued in the same vein in the West Indies where he once again top scored for India in the five–match Test series aggregating 360 runs at an average of 72.00 including four fifties. 92 runs scored in the first innings of the fifth match in Georgetown earned him a joint Man of the Match award along with Shivnarine Chanderpaul. With this series, Dravid concluded a successful 1996/97 Test season, topping the international runs chart with 852 runs from 12 matches at an average of 50.11 with six fifties and one hundred.
Dravid continued his good run scoring seven fifties in the next eight Tests that included fifties in six consecutive innings (three each against Sri Lanka and Australia), becoming only the second Indian to do so after Gundappa Vishwanath. By the end of 1997/98 Test season, he had scored 15 fifties in 22 Tests which included four scores of nineties but just a solitary hundred.
The century drought came to an end in the 1998/99 Test season when he further raised the bar of his performance scoring 752 runs in seven Tests at an average of 62.66 that included four hundreds and one fifty and in the process topping the runs chart for India for the season. The first of those four hundreds came on the Zimbabwe tour. Dravid top scored in both the innings against Zimbabwe scoring 118 and 44 runs respectively however, India lost the one-off Test.
The Zimbabwe tour was followed by a tour to New Zealand. First Test having been abandoned without a ball being bowled, the series started for Dravid with the first duck of his Test career in the first innings of the Second Test and ended with hundreds in both the innings of the Third Test in Hamilton. He scored 190 and 103 not out in the first and the second innings respectively, becoming only the third Indian batsman, after Vijay Hazare and Sunil Gavaskar, to score a century in both innings of a Test match. Dravid topped the runs table for the series with 321 runs from two matches at an average of 107.00 but could not prevent India from losing the series 0–1.
Later that month, India played a two Test home series against Pakistan. Dravid didn't contribute much with the bat. India lost the First Test but won the Second Test in Delhi riding on Kumble's historic 10-wicket haul. Dravid played his part in the 10-wicket haul by taking a catch to dismiss Mushtaq Ahmed who was Kumble's eighth victim of the innings. The Indo-Pak Test series was followed by the 1998–99 Asian Test Championship. Dravid couldn't do much with the bat as India went on to lose the riot-affected First Test of the championship against Pakistan at the Eden Gardens. India went to Sri Lanka to play the Second Test of the championship. Dravid scored his fourth hundred of the season at Colombo in the first innings of the match. He also effected a brilliant run out of Russel Arnold during Sri Lankan innings fielding at short leg. On the fourth morning, Dravid got injured while fielding at the same position when the ball from Jayawardene's pull shot hit his face through the helmet grill. He didn't come out to bat in the second innings due to the injury. The match ended in a draw as India failed to qualify for the Finals of the championship.
In a stark contrast to his Test career, Dravid had to struggle a lot to make a mark in the ODIs. Between his ODI debut in April 1996 and the end of 1998 calendar year, Dravid regularly found himself in and out of the ODI team.
Dravid tasted first success of his ODI career in the 1996 'Friendship' Cup against Pakistan in the tough conditions of Toronto. He emerged as the highest scorer of the series with 220 runs in five matches at an average of 44.00 and a strike rate of 68.53. He won his first ODI Man of the Match award for the 46 runs scored in the low scoring third game of the series. He top scored for India in the Standard Bank International One-Day Series 1996/97 in South Africa with 280 runs from eight games at an average of 35.00 and a strike rate of 60.73, the highlight being a Man of the Match award-winning performance (84 runs, one catch) in the Final of the series that came in a losing cause. He was the second highest run scorer for India in the four-match bilateral ODI series in the West Indies in 1996/97 with 121 runs at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 57.61. Dravid's maiden ODI hundred came in a losing cause in the 1997 Pepsi Independence Cup against Pakistan in Chennai. Dravid top scored for India in the quadrangular event with 189 runs from three games at an average of 94.50 and a strike rate of 75.60 however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the series.
However, Dravid's achievements in the ODIs were dwarfed by his failures in the shorter format of the game. 14 runs from two games in the 1996 Pepsi Sharjah Cup; 20 runs from two innings in the Singer World Series; 65 runs from four innings in the 1997 'Friendship' Cup; 88 runs from four games in the 1998 Coca-Cola Triangular Series including a 22-ball five runs and a 21-ball one run innings, both coming against Bangladesh; 32 runs from four games in the 1998 'Friendship' Cup; a slew of such poor performances often forced him to the sidelines of the India ODI squad. By the end of 1998, Dravid had scored 1709 runs in 65 ODIs at a humble average of 31.64 with a poor strike rate of 63.48.
By now, Dravid had been branded as a Test specialist. While he continued to score heavily in Test cricket, his poor strike rate in ODIs came under scanner. He drew criticism for not being able to adjust his style of play to the needs of ODI cricket, his lack of attacking capability and play big strokes. However, Dravid worked hard and re-tooled his game by increasing his range of strokes and adapting his batting style to suit the requirements of ODI cricket. He learned to pace his innings cleverly without going for the slogs.
Dravid's ODI renaissance began during the 1998/99 New Zealand tour. He scored a run-a-ball hundred in the first match of the bilateral ODI series that earned him his third Man of the Match award in ODIs. The hundred came in a losing cause. However, his effort of 51 runs from 71 balls in the Fourth ODI came in India's victory and earned him his second Man of the Match award of the series. He ended as the top scorer of the series with 309 runs from five games at an average of 77.25 and a strike rate of 84.65. Dravid scored a hundred against Sri Lanka in 1998/99 Pepsi Cup at Nagpur adding a record 236 runs for the 2nd wicket with Ganguly, who also scored a hundred in the match. Uncharacteristically, Dravid was the faster of the two scoring 116 of 118 deliveries. In the next match against Pakistan, he bowled four overs and took the wicket of Saeed Anwar, out caught behind by wicket-keeper Nayan Mongia. This was his first wicket in international cricket.
Dravid warmed up for his debut World Cup with two fifties in the 1998–99 Coca-Cola Cup in Sharjah, one each against England and Pakistan. Standing-in as the substitute wicket-keeper in the third match of the series for Nayan Mongia, who got injured during keeping, Dravid effected two dismissals. He first stumped Graeme Hick off Sunil Joshi's bowling, who became Dravid's first victim as a wicket-keeper, and then caught Neil Fairbrother off Ajay Jadeja's bowling. He top scored for India in the tournament, though his last ODI innings before the World Cup was a golden duck against Pakistan, in the Final of the series.
Debut World Cup success
Dravid announced his form in England hitting consecutive fifties against Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire in the warm-up games.
He made his World Cup debut against South Africa at Hove striking a half century, but scored just 13 in the next game against Zimbabwe. India lost both the games. Having lost the first two games, India needed to win the remaining three games of the first round to have any chance of advancing into the Super Six stage. Dravid put up a partnership of 237 runs with Sachin Tendulkar against Kenya at Bristol – a World Cup record – and in the process hit his maiden World Cup hundred, helping India to a 94-run victory. India's designated keeper Mongia left the field at the end of 9th over during Kenyan innings, forcing Dravid to keep the wickets for the rest of the innings. In the absence of injured Nayan Mongia, Dravid played his first ODI as a designated keeper against Sri Lanka at Taunton. Dravid once again staged a record breaking partnership worth 318 runs – the first ever three hundred run partnership in ODI history – but this time with Sourav Ganguly, guiding India to a 157-run win. Dravid scored 145 runs from 129 balls with 17 fours and a six, becoming the second batsman in World Cup history to hit back-to-back hundreds. Dravid struck a fine fifty in the last group match as India defeated England to advance into the Super Six stage. Dravid scored 2, 61 & 29 in the three Super Six matches against Australia, Pakistan & New Zealand respectively. India failed to qualify for the semi-finals having lost to Australia and New Zealand but achieved a consolation victory against Pakistan in a tense game, what with the military conflict going on between the two countries in Kashmir at the same time. Dravid emerged as the top scorer of the tournament with 461 runs from 8 games at an average of 65.85 and a strike rate of 85.52.
Dravid's post-World Cup campaign started on a poor note with just 40 runs coming in 4 games of Aiwa Cup in August 1999. He soon came into his own, top-scoring for India in two consecutive limited-overs series – the Singapore Challenge, the highlight being a hundred in the Final coming in a lost cause, and the DMC Cup, the highlight being a match winning effort (77 runs, 4 catches) in the series decider for which he received man-of-the-match award. Dravid topped the international runs chart for 1999 cricket season across all formats scoring 782 runs from 19 matches. By now, Dravid had started to keep wickets on an infrequent basis with India fielding him as designated wicket-keeper in five out of 10 ODIs played in the three events.
Dravid kick-started his post World Cup Test season with a decent outing against New Zealand in the 3-match home series. His best effort of the series came in the second innings of the First test at Mohali scoring 144, helping India salvage a draw after being bowled out for 83 runs in the First innings. This was Dravid's sixth test hundred but his first test hundred on Indian soil. Dravid did well in the 3–2 series win against New Zealand in the bilateral ODI series, scoring 240 runs in 5 games at an average of 60 and a strike rate of 83.62, ending as the second highest scorer in the series. His career best effort in ODIs came in this series in the second game at Hyderabad where he scored run-a-ball 153 runs which included 15 fours and two sixes. He featured in a 331-run partnership with Tendulkar, which was the highest partnership in ODI cricket history, a record that stood for 15 years until it was broken in 2015. In 1999, Dravid scored 1761 runs in 43 ODIs at an average of 46.34 and a strike rate of 75.16 including 6 hundreds and 8 fifties and featured in two 300+ partnerships.
India toured Australia in December 1999 for a 3-match test series and a triangular ODI tournament. Although Dravid scored a hundred against Tasmania in the practice match, he failed miserably with the bat in the Test series as India slumped to a 0–3 whitewash. He did reasonably well in the 1999–2000 Carlton & United Series scoring 3 fifties in the triangular event however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the tournament.
Dravid's poor form in Tests continued as India suffered a 0–2 whitewash against South Africa in a home series. He had moderate success in the bilateral ODI series against South Africa. He contributed to India's 3–2 series win with 208 runs at an average of 41.60 which included 2 fifties and three wickets at an average of 22.66 topping the bowling average chart for the series. His career best bowling figure of 2/43 from nine overs in the First ODI at Kochi, was also the best bowling figure by any bowler in that particular match.
Rise through the ranks
In February 2000, Tendulkar's resignation from captaincy led to the promotion of Ganguly, the vice-captain then, as the new captain of the Indian team. In May 2000, while Dravid was busy playing county cricket in England, he was appointed as the vice-captain of the Indian team announced for the Asia cup.
India did well in the 2000 ICC KnockOut Trophy. Indian team, coming out of the shadows of the infamous match fixing scandal, showed a lot of character under the new leadership of Ganguly and Dravid, beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid scored 157 runs in 4 matches of the tournament, at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid scored 85 runs in a match against Zimbabwe in the 2000–01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy while opening the innings but was forced to miss the rest of the tournament because of an injury.
India kick started the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk knock of 41 runs from 49 balls, including 5 fours and a six, while chasing a target of 63 runs. The ensuing test series against Zimbabwe was John Wright's first assignment as Indian coach. Dravid, who was instrumental in Wright's appointment as India's first foreign head coach, welcomed him with his maiden double hundred. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second, guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 – highest batting average by an Indian in a series across all formats.
Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the fifth match of the bilateral ODI series against Zimbabwe in the absence of Ganguly who was serving suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39-run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain.
History at Eden
The Australian team toured India in February 2001 for what was being billed as the Final Frontier for Steve Waugh's all conquering men, who were coming on the back of 15 consecutive Test wins. Dravid failed in the first innings of the First Test but displayed strong resilience in Tendulkar's company in the second innings. Dravid's 196 ball long resistance finally ended when he got out bowled to Warne for 39 runs. Australians extended their winning streak to 16 Tests as they beat India convincingly by 10 wickets inside three days.
The Australian juggernaut seemed unstoppable as they looked on course towards their 17th consecutive victory in the Second Test at the Eden Gardens, when they bowled India out for meagre 171 in the first innings and enforced a follow-on after securing a massive lead of 274 runs. In the second innings, Laxman, who had scored a fine fifty in the first innings, was promoted to no. 3 position which had been Dravid's usual spot for quite sometime now, while Dravid, who had gotten out bowled to Warne for second time in a row in the first innings for just 25 runs, was relegated to no. 6 position. When Dravid joined Laxman in the middle on the third day of the Test, with scoreboard reading 232/4 and India still needing 42 runs to avoid an innings defeat, another convincing win for Australia looked inevitable. Instead, two of them staged one of the greatest fightbacks in cricketing history.
Dravid and Laxman played out the remaining time on the third day and whole of the fourth day, denying Australia any wicket on Day 4. Dravid, angered by the flak that the Indian team had been receiving lately in the media coverage, celebrated his hundred in an uncharacteristic fashion brandishing his bat at the press box. Eventually, Laxman got out on the fifth morning bringing the 376-runs partnership to an end. Dravid soon perished getting run out for 180 while trying to force the pace. Ganguly declared the innings at 657/7, setting Australia a target of 384 runs with 75 overs left in the match. An inspired team India bowled superbly to dismiss Australia for 212 in 68.3 overs. India won the match by 171 runs. This was only the third instance of a team winning a Test after following-on and India became the 2nd team to do so.
Dravid scored 81 runs in the first innings of the Third Test and took 4 catches in the match as India defeated Australia at Chennai in a nail biting finish to clinch the series 2–1. Dravid scored 80 in the first of the 5-match ODI series at his home ground as India won the match by 60 runs. He didn't do too well in the remaining 4 ODIs as Australia won the series 3–2. Dravid topped the averages for the 2000/01 Test season with 839 runs from six matches at an average of 104.87.
Dravid had a decent outing in Zimbabwe, scoring 137 runs from 134 balls in the First Tour game and aggregating 138 runs at an average of 69.00 from the drawn Test series. In the ensuing triangular ODI series, he aggregated 121 runs from 5 matches at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 101.68, the highlight being an unbeaten 72 off 64 balls, while chasing a target of 235 against Zimbabwe in the 3rd match of the series, guiding India to a 4-wicket win with four balls to spare. He was adjudged man of the match for his match winning knock.
On the next tour to Sri Lanka, India lost the first three matches of the triangular event. In the absence of suspended Ganguly, Dravid captained the side in the 4th match leading them to their first victory of the series. India won the next two matches to qualify for the Final. Dravid played crucial innings in all the three victories. Eventually, India lost the Final to Sri Lanka. He top scored for India in the series with 259 runs from seven matches at an average of 51.80 and a strike rate of 59.81. Reinstated to his usual no. 3 position in the absence of injured Laxman, Dravid top scored for India in the ensuing 3-Test series as well with 235 runs at an average of 47.00. The highlight for Dravid was 75 runs scored in the tough fourth innings chase of the Second Test – a crucial contribution to India's first Test win in Sri Lanka since 1993 despite the absence of key players like Tendulkar, Laxman, Srinath and Kumble.
Dravid had decent success in Standard Bank tri-series on South Africa tour, scoring 214 runs (including 3 fifties) at an average of 53.50 and a strike rate of 71.81. He also kept wickets in the final two ODIs of the series effecting 3 stumpings. The highlight for Dravid in the ensuing Test series came in the second innings of the Second Test. India, having failed to last hundred overs in any of the previous three innings in the series, needed to bat out four sessions in the Second Test to save the match. They started on a poor note losing their first wicket in the first over with no runs on the scoreboard. However, Dravid forged an important partnership of 171 runs with Dasgupta that lasted for 83.2 overs taking India to the brink of safety. Poor weather helped India salvage a draw as only 96.2 overs could be bowled in the innings. Dravid captained the team in the 'unofficial' Third test in the absence of injured Ganguly, which India lost by an innings margin.
By the end of the South African tour, Dravid had started experiencing problem in his right shoulder. Although he played the ensuing home test series against England, he pulled out of the six-match bilateral ODI series to undergo shoulder rehabilitation program in South Africa. He returned for the Zimbabwe's tour of India but performed below par, scoring a fifty each in the Test series and the bilateral ODI series.
2002–2006: Peak years
Dravid hit the peak form of his career in 2002. Between Season 2002 and Season 2006, Dravid was the second highest scorer overall and top scorer for India across formats, scoring 8,914 runs from 174 matches at an average of 54.02, including 19 hundreds.
Dravid had a decent outing in West Indies in 2002. The highlights for him included – hitting a hundred with a swollen jaw and helping India avoid the follow-on in the process at Georgetown in the drawn First Test; contributing with a fifty and four catches to India's victory in the Second Test at Port of Spain – India's first Test victory in West Indies since 1975–76; and another fifty in the drawn Fourth Test with a wicket to boot – that of Ridley Jacobs who was batting on 118. This was Dravid's only wicket in Test cricket. He played as India's designated keeper in the ODI series but didn't contribute much with the bat in the 2–1 series win.
A quartet of hundreds
India's tour of England in 2002 started with a triangular ODI event involving India, England and Sri Lanka. India emerged as the winners of the series beating England in the Final – their first victory after nine consecutive defeats in one-day finals. Dravid played as designated keeper in six out of seven matches effecting nine dismissals (6 catches, 3 stumpings) – most by a keeper in the series. He also did well with the bat aggregating 245 runs at an average of 49.00 including three fifties. His performance against Sri Lanka in fourth ODI (64 runs, 1 catch) earned him a man of the match award.
India lost the first of the four match Test series. Having conceded a 260 runs lead in the first innings of the Second Test at Nottingham, Indians were in a spot of bother. However, Dravid led the fightback in the second innings with a hundred as Indians managed to earn a draw.
Ganguly won the toss in the Third Test and took a bold decision to bat first on a gloomy overcast morning at Headingley on a pitch known to be traditionally conducive for fast and swing bowling. Having lost an early wicket, Dravid weathered the storm in company of Sanjay Bangar. They played cautiously, taking body blows on a pitch with uneven bounce. Dravid completed his second hundred of the series in the process. As the conditions became more and more conducive for batting, the Indian batsmen piled on England's misery. Indians declared the innings on 628/8 and then bowled England out twice to register their first test victory in England since 1986. Despite being outscored by Tendulkar, Dravid was awarded man of the match for his efforts. Dravid scored a double hundred in the drawn Fourth Test to notch up his second consecutive man of the match award of the series. Christopher Martin-Jenkins noted during the Fourth Test: Dravid aggregated 602 runs in the series from four matches at an average of 100.33, including three hundreds and a fifty and was adjudged joint man of the series along with Michael Vaughan.
India jointly shared the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka. Dravid contributed to India's successful campaign with 120 runs at an average of 60.00 and five dismissals behind the wicket. Dravid scored a hundred in the First Test of the three match home series against West Indies becoming the first Indian batsman to score hundreds in four consecutive Test innings but had to retire soon after owing to severe cramps. Dravid did well in the subsequent bilateral 7-match ODI series aggregating 300 runs at an average of 75.00 and a strike rate of 89.82 including one hundred and two fifties. He also effected 7 dismissals (6 catches, 1 stumping) in the series. India trailing 1–2, needed 325 runs to win the Fourth ODI and level the series. Dravid scored a hundred leading India to a successful chase. He once again scored a crucial fifty in the Sixth ODI as India once again leveled the series after trailing 2–3. India, however, lost the last match to lose the series 3–4.
Dravid top scored for India in the two-match Test series in New Zealand as India slumped to a whitewash. He played as designated keeper in six of the 7-match bilateral ODI series and effected seven dismissals but fared poorly with the bat as India were handed a 2-5 drubbing by the New Zealand.
2003 Cricket World Cup
Dravid arrived in South Africa with the Indian squad to participate in the 2003 Cricket World Cup in the capacity of first-choice keeper-batsman as part of their seven batsmen-four bowlers strategy – an experiment that had brought success to the team in the past year. The idea was that making Dravid keep wickets allowed India to accommodate an extra specialist batsman. The strategy worked out well for India in the World Cup. India recovered from a less than convincing victory against minnows Netherlands and a loss to Australia in the league stage and embarked on a dream run winning eight consecutive matches to qualify for the World Cup Finals for the first time since 1983. India eventually lost the Final to Australia ending as runner-up in the tournament. Dravid contributed to India's campaign with 318 runs at an average of 63.60 and 16 dismissals (15 catches, 1 stumping). Highlights for Dravid in the tournament included a fifty against England, 44 not out against Pakistan in a successful chase and an unbeaten fifty in another successful chase against New Zealand.
Dravid topped the international runs chart for 2003/04 cricket season across formats aggregating 1993 runs from 31 matches at an average of 64.29 including three double hundreds. First of those came against New Zealand in the first of the two-test home series at Ahmedabad. Dravid scored 222 runs in the first innings and 73 runs in the second innings receiving a man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid captained Indian Test Team for the first time in the second game of the series at Mohali in the absence of Ganguly. Both the matches ended in a draw. Dravid top scored in the series with 313 runs at an average of 78.25. India next participated in TVS cup alongside New Zealand and Australia. India lost to Australia in the Final. Dravid scored two fifties in the series but the highlight was his fifty against New Zealand in the ninth match that came in just 22 balls – second fastest fifty by an Indian.
An Eden encore
After earning a draw in the first of the four-match Test series in Australia, Indians found themselves reeling at 85/4 in the Second Test at Adelaide after Australia had piled 556 runs in the first innings when Laxman joined Dravid in the middle. They batted for 93.5 overs bringing about their second 300-run partnership adding 303 runs together before Laxman perished for 148 runs. However, Dravid continued to complete his second double hundred of the season. He was the last man out for 233 runs as India conceded a marginal first innings lead of 33 runs to Australia. India bowled Australia out for paltry score of 196 riding on Agarkar's six-wicket haul, and were set a target of 230 runs to win the match. Dravid helped India tread through a tricky chase with an unbeaten fifty as India registered their first test victory in Australia since 1980/81 to go up 1–0 in the series. This was the first time that Australians were 0-1 down in a home series since 1994. Dravid won the man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid registered a score of ninety each in the next two tests as Australia leveled the series 1–1. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 619 runs at an average of 123.80 and was awarded player of the series for his efforts.
Dravid did moderately well in the ensuing VB series with three fifties in the league stage, all of which came in winning cause. However, India lost the best-of-three finals to Australia 2–0. Dravid was fined half his match fee for applying cough lozenge on the ball during a match in the series against Zimbabwe – an act that was claimed to be an innocent mistake by coach John Wright.
India visited Pakistan in March 2004 to participate in a bilateral Test series for the first time since 1989/90. Prior to the Test series, India participated and won the 5-match ODI series 3–2. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 248 runs at an average of 62.00 and a strike rate of 73.59. Dravid scored 99 runs in the First ODI helping India post an imposing total of 349. He also took the important catch of threatening Inzamam-ul-Haq, who was batting on 122, as India went on to win the match by five runs. When Indians were trailing in the series 1–2, Dravid helped India level the series with an unbeaten fifty during a successful chase in the Fourth ODI.
Captaincy
Dravid captained India in the first two tests in the absence of injured Ganguly and led India to their first-ever Test victory in Pakistan. Dravid, standing in only his second test as team's captain, took a bold and controversial decision during First Test at Multan that divided the cricket fraternity. Pakistani cricketers had been on field for 150+ overs as India posted a total in excess of 600 runs in the first innings. Dravid, who wanted to have a crack at the tired Pakistani batsmen in the final hour of second day's play, declared Indian innings with Tendulkar batting at 194, just six runs short of his double century. While some praised the team before personal milestones approach of the Indian captain, most criticized Dravid's timing of declaration as there were no pressing concerns and there was ample time left in the match to try and bowl Pakistan out twice. While Tendulkar was admittedly disappointed, any rumours of rift between him and Dravid were quashed by both the cricketers and the team management, who claimed that the matter had been discussed and sorted amicably behind closed doors. India eventually went on to win the match by innings margin. Pakistan leveled the series beating India in the Second Test. Dravid slammed a double hundred in the Third Test at Rawalpindi – his third double hundred of the season. He scored 270 runs – his career best performance – before getting out to reverse sweep trying to force the pace. India went on to win the match and the series – their first series victory outside India since 1993. Dravid was adjudged man of the match for his effort.
Dravid was appointed the captain for the Indian team for 2007 World Cup, where India had an unsuccessful campaign.
During India's unsuccessful tour of England in 2011, in which their 4–0 loss cost them the top rank in Test cricket, Dravid made three centuries.
2011 Tour of England
Having regained his form on the tour to West Indies, where he scored a match-winning hundred in Sabina park, Jamaica, Dravid then toured England in what was billed as the series which would decide the World No. 1 ranking in tests.
In the first test at Lord's, in reply to England's 474, Dravid scored an unbeaten 103, his first hundred at the ground where he debuted in 1996. He received scant support from his teammates as India were bowled out for 286 and lost the test. The 2nd test at Trentbridge, Nottingham again saw Dravid in brilliant form. Sent out to open the batting in place of an injured Gautam Gambhir, he scored his second successive hundred. His 117 though, again came in a losing cause, as a collapse of 6 wickets for 21 runs in the first innings led to a massive defeat by 319 runs. Dravid failed in both innings in the third test at Birmingham, as India lost by an innings and 242 runs, one of the heaviest defeats in their history. However, he came back brilliantly in the fourth and final match at The Oval. Again opening the batting in place of Gambhir, he scored an unbeaten 146 out of India's total of 300, carrying his bat through the innings. Once again, though, his efforts were in vain as India lost the match, completing a 0–4 whitewash.
In all, he scored 461 runs in the four matches at an average of 76.83 with three hundreds. He accounted for over 26% of India's runs in the series and was named India's man of the series by England coach Andy Flower. His performance in the series was met with widespread admiration and was hailed by some as one of his finest ever series
Retirement
Rahul Dravid was dropped from the ODI team in 2009, but was selected again for an ODI series in England in 2011, surprising even Dravid himself since, although he had not officially retired from ODI cricket, he had not expected to be recalled. After being selected, he announced that he would retire from ODI cricket after the series. He played his last ODI innings against England at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, on 16 September 2011, scoring 69 runs from 79 balls before being bowled by Graeme Swann. His last limited-overs international match was his debut T20I match; he announced his retirement before playing his first T20I match.
Dravid announced his retirement from Test and domestic cricket on 9 March 2012, after the 2011–12 tour of Australia, but he said that he would captain the Rajasthan Royals in the 2012 Indian Premier League. He was the second-highest run scorer and had taken the highest number of catches in Test cricket at the time of his retirement.
In July 2014, he played for the MCC side in the Bicentenary Celebration match at Lord's.
Coaching
Towards the end of his playing career, Dravid took on a role as mentor of the Rajasthan Royals IPL team, officially taking over in 2014. During this time, he also became involved with the Indian national team, serving as mentor for the team's tour of England in 2014. After leading the Royals to a third-place finish in the 2015 IPL season, he was appointed as the head coach of the India U-19 and India A teams. Dravid achieved immense success as coach, with the U-19s reaching the finals of the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Two years later, the team went on to win the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup, beating Australia by 8 wickets to win their fourth Under-19 World Cup, the most by any national side. Dravid was credited with bringing up future national team players including Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan and Washington Sundar. Alongside his coaching roles, Dravid took on several mentor roles, including at the Delhi Daredevils IPL team.
In July 2019, following his four-year stint as coach of the junior teams, Dravid was appointed Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA). He was in charge of "overseeing all cricket related activities at NCA was involved in mentoring, coaching, training and motivating players, coaches and support staff at the NCA". As head of NCA, he was widely praised for developing a steady supply of talent to the senior team and revamping player fitness and rehabilitation regiments.
In November 2021, he was appointed as head coach of the Indian national cricket team.
County stint
Dravid had always been keen on further honing his batting skills in testing English conditions by playing in county cricket. He had discussed about the prospects regarding the same with John Wright, the former New Zealand cricketer and incumbent Kent coach, during India's 1998–99 tour of New Zealand. Wright was particularly impressed with Dravid's performance on that tour, especially his twin hundreds at Hamilton. The talks finally materialized and Dravid made his county debut for Kent in April 2000. His co-debutante Ganguly made his county debuted in the same match, albeit for the opposite team.
Kent offer had come as a welcome change for Dravid. There was too much negativity surrounding Indian cricket marred by match fixing controversy. Dravid himself had been struggling to score runs in Tests for quite some time now. The county stint gave him a chance to "get away to a new environment" and "relax". The wide variety of pitches and weather conditions in England and a full season of intense county cricket against professional cricketers gave him a chance to further his cricketing education and learn things about his game.
Dravid made the most of this opportunity. In his 2nd game for Kent, Dravid scored a fluid 182 propelling them to an innings and 163 runs victory over the touring Zimbabwe side. Out of 7 first class tour games that Zimbabwe played on that tour, Kent was the only team that managed to beat them. Dravid hit another fifty in a draw against Surrey. The newly appointed vice-captain had to leave the county championship temporarily, missing two championship games and two one day games, to fulfill his national commitment. Indian team, Dravid included, fared poorly in the Asia cup and failed to qualify for the Final. Subsequently, Dravid returned to England to resume his county sojourn with Kent.
In July 2000, Kent's away match against Hampshire at Portsmouth was billed as a showdown between two great cricketers- Warne and Dravid. Dravid came out on top. On a dustbowl, tailor-made to suit home team spinners, Warne took 4 wickets but could not take the all important wicket of Dravid. Coming in to bat at 15/2, Dravid faced 295 balls scoring 137 runs – his maiden hundred in county championships. Dravid scored 73 not out in the 2nd innings guiding Kent to a six wicket victory as Warne went wicketless.
In their last county game of the season, Kent needed one bonus point to prevent themselves from being relegated to the Second Division. Dravid made sure they stay put in the First Division by fetching that one bonus point with an inning of 77 runs.
Dravid concluded a successful stint with Kent aggregating 1221 runs from 16 first class matches(15 county games and 1 tour game against Zimbabwe) at an average of 55.50 including 2 hundreds and 8 fifties. He shouldered Kent's batting single-handedly as the second best Kent batsman during the same period, Paul Nixon, scored just 567 runs at an average of 33.35 in 17 matches. Dravid contributed to Kent's county campaign not just with the bat but also with his fielding and bowling taking 14 catches and 4 wickets at an average of 32.00.
Indian Premier League and Champions League
Rahul Dravid played for Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2008, 2009 and 2010. Later he played for Rajasthan Royals and led it to finals of Champions League T20 in 2013, and play-offs of Indian Premier League in 2013. Dravid announced retirement from Twenty20 after playing the 2013 Champions League Twenty20 in September–October 2013.
Playing style
Dravid was known for his technique, and has been one of the best batsmen for the Indian cricket team. In the beginning, he was known as a defensive batsman who should be confined to Test cricket, and was dropped from the ODI squad due to a low strike rate. However, he later scored consistently in ODIs as well, earning him the ICC Player of the Year award. His nickname of 'The Wall' in Reebok advertisements is now used as his nickname. Dravid has scored 36 centuries in Test cricket, with an average of 52.31; this included five double centuries. In one-dayers, he averaged 39.16, with a strike rate of 71.23. He is one of the few Indians whose Test average is better at away than at home, averaging almost five runs more on foreign pitches. As of 23 September 2010, Dravid's Test average in abroad is 55.53, and his Test average at home is 50.76; his ODI average abroad is 37.93 and his ODI average at home is 43.11. Dravid averages 66.34 runs in Indian Test victories. and 50.69 runs in ODIs.
Dravid's sole Test wicket was of Ridley Jacobs in the fourth Test match against the West Indies during the 2001–2002 series. While he has no pretensions to being a bowler, Dravid often kept wicket for India in ODIs.
Dravid was involved in two of the largest partnerships in ODIs: a 318-run partnership with Sourav Ganguly, the first pair to combine for a 300-run partnership, and then a 331-run partnership with Sachin Tendulkar, which is a world record. He also holds the record for the greatest number of innings played since debut before being dismissed for a duck. His highest scores in ODIs and Tests are 153 and 270 respectively.
He was named one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 2000. Though primarily a defensive batsman, Dravid scored 50 runs not out in 22 balls (a strike rate of 227.27) against New Zealand in Hyderabad on 15 November 2003, the second fastest 50 among Indian batsmen. Only Ajit Agarkar's 67 runs off 21 balls is faster than that of Dravid.
In 2004, Dravid was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India. On 7 September 2004, he was awarded the inaugural Player of the year award and the Test player of the year award by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
After reaching 10,000 Test runs milestone, he said, "It's a proud moment for sure. For me, growing up, I dreamt of playing for India. When I look back, I probably exceeded my expectations with what I have done over the last 10 to 12 years. I never had an ambition to do it because I never believed – it is just a reflection of my longevity in the game."
Dravid is also one of the two batsmen to score 10,000 runs at a single batting position and is the fourth highest run scorer in Test cricket, behind Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis.
Controversies
Ball-tampering incident
In January 2004, Dravid was found guilty of ball tampering during an ODI with Zimbabwe. Match referee Clive Lloyd adjudged the application of an energy sweet to the ball as a deliberate offence, although Dravid himself denied this was his intent. Lloyd emphasised that television footage caught Dravid putting a lozenge on the ball during the Zimbabwean innings on Tuesday night at the Gabba. According to the ICC's Code of Conduct, players are not allowed to apply substances to the ball other than sweat and saliva. Dravid was fined half of his match fee.
Indian coach John Wright came out in defence of Dravid, stating that "It was an innocent mistake". Wright argued that Dravid had been trying to apply saliva to the ball when parts of a losenge he had been chewing stuck to the ball; Dravid then tried to wipe it off. ICC regulations prevented Dravid from commenting about the issue, but former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly also stated that Dravid's act was "just an accident".
Captaincy
Rahul Dravid has had a mixed record when leading India in Tests.
One of Dravid's most debated decisions was taken in March 2004, when he was standing in as the captain for injured Sourav Ganguly. India's first innings was declared at a point when Sachin Tendulkar was at 194 runs not out with 16 overs remaining on Day 2. In this test match Sehwag scored triple century first time. He became the first Indian to score triple century in test with a score of 309.
In March 2006, India lost the Mumbai Test, giving England its first Test victory in India since 1985, enabling it to draw the series 1–1. The defeat in Mumbai was arguably the result of Dravid's decision to bowl first on a flat dry pitch, which later deteriorated and ended with an Indian collapse in the run chase. Coincidentally, it was Dravid's 100th test match in which the Indians were all out for 100 runs in the second innings.
After India failed to qualify for the final of the DLF Cup, Dravid, the skipper, was criticised by former all-rounder Ravi Shastri who said that he was not assertive enough and let Greg Chappell make too many decisions. When asked for a response, Dravid said that Shastri, while a 'fair critic', was 'not privy' to the internal decision-making process of the team.
He was criticised by Vijay Mallya for not picking the team with right balance after his then IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore finished seventh out of the eight teams that participated in the 2008 season.
Achievements and awards
National honours
1998 – Arjuna Award recipient for achievements in cricket
2004 – Padma Shri – India's fourth highest civilian award
2013 – Padma Bhushan – India's third highest civilian award
Other honours
1999 – CEAT International Cricketer of the World Cup
2000 – Dravid was one of the five cricketers selected as Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
2004 – ICC Cricketer of the year – Highest award in the ICC listings
2004 – ICC Test Player of The Year, ICC Cricketer of The Year
2004 – MTV Youth Icon of the Year
2006 – Captain of the ICC's Test Team
2011 – NDTV Indian of the Year's Lifetime Achievement Award with Dev Anand
2012 – Don Bradman Award with Glenn McGrath
2015 – Wisden India's Highest Impact Test Batsman
2018 – ICC Hall of Fame
Personal life
Family
On 4 May 2003 he married Vijeta Pendharkar, a surgeon from Nagpur. Vijeta Pendharkar is also from Deshastha Brahmin community as Dravid. They have two children: Samit, born in 2005, and Anvay, born in 2009. Dravid is fluent in Marathi, Hindi, Kannada and English.
Commercial endorsements
Rahul Dravid has been sponsored by several brands throughout his career including Reebok (1996 – present), Pepsi (1997 present), Kissan (Unknown), Castrol (2001 – present), Hutch
(2003), Karnataka Tourism (2004), Max Life (2005 – present), Bank of Baroda (2005 – present), Citizen (2006 – present), Skyline Construction (2006 – present), Sansui (2007), Gillette (2007 – present), Samsung (2002 – 2004), World Trade Center Noida (2013– present),
CRED (2021-present).
Social commitments
Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA)
UNICEF Supporter and AIDS Awareness Campaign
Biographies
Books
Two biographies have been written on Rahul Dravid and his career:
Rahul Dravid – A Biography written by Vedam Jaishankar (). Publisher: UBSPD Publications. Date: January 2004
The Nice Guy Who Finished First written by Devendra Prabhudesai. Publisher: Rupa Publications. Date: November 2005
A collection of articles, testimonials and interviews related to Dravid was released by ESPNcricinfo following his retirement. The book was titled Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel.
See also
Sachin Tendulkar
Sourav Ganguly
VVS Laxman
Virendra Sehwag
References
External links
Indian cricketers
India Test cricketers
India One Day International cricketers
India Twenty20 International cricketers
India Test cricket captains
Wisden Cricketers of the Year
Karnataka cricketers
South Zone cricketers
Kent cricketers
Scotland cricketers
ACC Asian XI One Day International cricketers
ICC World XI One Day International cricketers
World XI Test cricketers
Royal Challengers Bangalore cricketers
Canterbury cricketers
Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers
Rajasthan Royals cricketers
India Blue cricketers
Cricketers at the 1999 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2003 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2007 Cricket World Cup
Recipients of the Padma Shri in sports
1973 births
Living people
Cricketers from Indore
Cricketers from Bangalore
Recipients of the Arjuna Award
International Cricket Council Cricketer of the Year
Marathi people
Indian cricket coaches
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in sports
Indian cricket commentators
Wicket-keepers
| false |
[
"Software audio synthesis environments typically consist of an audio programming language (which may be graphical) and a user environment to design/run the language in. Although many of these environments are comparable in their abilities to produce high-quality audio, their differences and specialties are what draw users to a particular platform. This article compares noteworthy audio synthesis environments, and enumerates basic issues associated with their use.\n\nSubjective comparisons\nAudio synthesis environments comprise a wide and varying range of software and hardware configurations. Even different versions of the same environment can differ dramatically. Because of this broad variability, certain aspects of different systems cannot be directly compared. Moreover, some levels of comparison are either very difficult to objectively quantify, or depend purely on personal preference.\n\nSome of the commonly considered subjective attributes for comparison include:\n Usability (how difficult is it for beginners to generate some kind of meaningful output)\n Learnability (how steep the learning curve is for new, average, and advancing users)\n Sound \"quality\" (which environment produces the most subjectively appealing sound)\n Creative flow (in what ways does the environment affect the creative process - e.g. guiding the user in certain directions)\n\nThese attributes can vary strongly depending on the tasks used for evaluation.\n\nSome other common comparisons include:\n Audio performance (issues such as throughput, latency, concurrency, etc.)\n System performance (issues such as buggyness or stability)\n Support and community (who uses the system and who provides help, advice, training and tutorials)\n System capabilities (what is possible and what is not possible [regardless of effort] with the system)\n Interoperability (how well does the system integrate with other systems from different vendors)\n\nBuilding blocks of sound and sound \"quality\" \nAudio software often has a slightly different \"sound\" when compared against others. This is because there are different ways to implement the basic building blocks (such as sinewaves, pink noise, or FFT) which result in slightly different aural characteristics. Although people can of course prefer one system's \"sound\" over another, perhaps the best output can be determined by using sophisticated audio analyzers in combination with the listener's ears. The idea of this would be to arrive at what most would agree is as \"pure\" a sound as possible.\n\nUser interface \nThe interface to an audio system often has a significant influence on the creative flow of the user, not because of what is possible (the stable/mature systems listed here are fully featured enough to be able to achieve an enormous range of sonic/compositional objectives), but because of what is made easy and what is made difficult. This is again very difficult to boil down to a brief comparative statement. One issue may be which interface metaphors are used (e.g. boxes-and-wires, documents, flow graphs, hardware mixing desks).\n\nGeneral\n\nProgramming language features\n\nData interface methods\nInterfaces between the language environment and other software or hardware (not user interfaces).\n\nTechnical\n\nReferences\n\nSee also\n List of music software\n\nAudio programming languages\nElectronic music software\n \nMultimedia software comparisons\nSoftware synthesizers",
"Postplatyptilia pusillus is a moth of the family Pterophoridae. It was described by Rodolfo Amando Philippi in 1864.\n\nThe type specimens are all lost. Philipp Christoph Zeller stated in 1877: \"it is hardly possible to determine what species is involved by the description made.\" Cees Gielis stated in 2006: \"This is however not correct, because the mentioning of: 'die Fuehler sind am Grunde blass rosenroth' [the feet are pale rose red at the bottom], gives a good characteristic.\"\n\nReferences\n\npusillus\nMoths described in 1864"
] |
[
"Rahul Dravid",
"Golden years",
"What started his golden years",
"As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain,",
"Who was helping him",
"Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal.",
"What did he do",
"Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals.",
"What did he try",
"Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket.",
"What was his next challenge",
"Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe",
"What made this possible",
"opening the innings before getting injured while fielding at slips forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament."
] |
C_52e2fff8b563440da632c6c90324029a_1
|
What did he try next
| 7 |
What did Rahul Dravid try next?
|
Rahul Dravid
|
As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain, Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal. Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid played his part scoring 157 runs in 4 matches at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe opening the innings before getting injured while fielding at slips forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament. India started off the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk inning of 49 ball 41 runs, including 5 fours and a six, chasing a target of 63 runs. However, Dravid's poor patch truly ended in the next Test series against Zimbabwe, which was also the first series for John Wright as the new Indian coach. Wright was instrumental in Dravid's association with Kent earlier this year. Dravid returned the favour by recommending his name to the BCCI for the post of national team coach. By now, Dravid had played 8 Tests since his last hundred against New Zealand at Mohali scoring just 350 runs at a paltry average of 23.33 without a single fifty plus inning. The Indian vice-captain ended the run drought and welcomed the new Indian coach with a double hundred - Dravid's first. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second inning guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 - highest batting average by an Indian in a Test series. Dravid scored just a solitary fifty in the second of the five match bilateral ODI series between India and Zimbabwe. However, the series proved to be a milestone in Dravid's career. Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the 5th match of the series as the regular captain Ganguly had to sit out due to one match suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39 run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain. CANNOTANSWER
|
India started off the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk inning of 49 ball 41 runs, including 5 fours and a six,
|
Rahul Sharad Dravid (; born 11 January 1973) is a former Indian cricketer and captain of the Indian national team, currently serving as its head coach. Prior to his appointment to the senior men's national team, Dravid was the Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), and the head coach of the India Under-19 and India A teams. Under his tutelage, the under-19 team finished runners up at the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup and won the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Known for his sound batting technique, Dravid scored 24,177 runs in international cricket and is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is colloquially known as Mr. Dependable and often referred to as The Wall.
Born in a Marathi family and raised in Bangalore, he started playing cricket at the age of 12 and later represented Karnataka at the under-15, under-17 and under-19 levels. Hailed as The Wall, Dravid was named one of the best five cricketers of the year by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 2000 and received the Player of the Year and the Test Player of the Year awards at the inaugural ICC awards ceremony in 2004. In December 2011, he became the first non-Australian cricketer to deliver the Bradman Oration in Canberra.
As of December 2016, Dravid is the fourth-highest run scorer in Test cricket, after Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis. In 2004, after completing his century against Bangladesh in Chittagong, he became the first player to score a century in all the ten Test-playing countries. As of October 2012, he holds the record for the most catches taken by a player (non-wicket-keeper) in Test cricket, with 210. Dravid holds a unique record of never getting out for a Golden duck in the 286 Test innings which he has played. He has faced 31258 balls, which is the highest number of balls faced by any player in test cricket. He has also spent 44152 minutes at the crease, which is the highest time spent on crease by any player in test cricket. Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar are currently the highest scoring partnership in Test cricket history having scored 6920 runs combined when batting together for India.
In August 2011, after receiving a surprise recall in the ODI series against England, Dravid declared his retirement from ODIs as well as Twenty20 International (T20I), and in March 2012, he announced his retirement from international and first-class cricket. He appeared in the 2012 Indian Premier League as captain of the Rajasthan Royals.
Rahul Dravid, along with Glenn McGrath were honoured during the seventh annual Bradman Awards function in Sydney on 1 November 2012. Dravid has also been honoured with the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan award, India's fourth and third highest civilian awards respectively.
In 2014, Rahul Dravid joined the GoSports Foundation, Bangalore as a member of their board of advisors. In collaboration with GoSports Foundation he is mentoring India's future Olympians and Paralympians as part of the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme. Indian badminton player Prannoy Kumar, Para-swimmer Sharath Gayakwad and young Golfer S. Chikkarangappa was part of the initial group of athletes to be mentored by Rahul Dravid. In July 2018, Dravid became the fifth Indian cricketer to be inducted into ICC Hall of Fame.
Early life
Dravid was born in a Marathi-Speaking Brahmin family in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. His family later moved to Bangalore, Karnataka, where he was raised. His mother tongue is Marathi. Dravid's father Sharad Dravid worked for a company that makes jams and preserves, giving rise to the later nickname Jammy. His mother, Pushpa, was a professor of architecture at the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bangalore. Dravid has a younger brother named Vijay. He did his schooling at St. Joseph's Boys High School, Bangalore and earned a degree in commerce from St. Joseph's College of Commerce, Bangalore. He was selected to India's national cricket team while working towards an MBA at St Joseph's College of Business Administration. He is fluent in several languages: Marathi, Kannada, English and Hindi.
Formative years and domestic career
Dravid started playing cricket at the age of 12, and represented Karnataka at the under-15, the under-17 and the under-19 levels. Former cricketer Keki Tarapore first noticed Dravid's talent while coaching at a summer camp in the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Dravid scored a century for his school team. He also played as wicket-keeper.
Dravid made his Ranji Trophy debut in February 1991, while still attending college. Playing alongside future India teammates Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath against Maharashtra in Pune, he scored 82 runs in the match, which ended in a draw. He followed it up with a century against Bengal and three successive centuries after. However, Dravid's first full season was in 1991–92, when he scored two centuries and finished up with 380 runs at an average of 63.30, getting selected for the South Zone cricket team in the Duleep Trophy. Dravid's caught the national team selectors' eye with his good performances for India A in the home series against England A in 1994–95.
International career
Debut
Dravid, who had been knocking at the doors of Indian national cricket team for quite a while with his consistent performance in domestic cricket, received his first national call in October 1994, for the last two matches of the Wills World Series. However, he could not break into the playing eleven. He went back to the domestic circuit and kept knocking harder. So much so, that when the selectors announced the Indian team for the 1996 World Cup sans Dravid, an Indian daily newspaper carried a headline – "Rahul Dravid gets a raw deal". Dravid eventually made his international debut on 3 April 1996 in an ODI against Sri Lanka in the Singer Cup held in Singapore immediately after the 1996 World Cup, replacing Vinod Kambli. He wasn't particularly impressive with the bat, scoring just three runs before being dismissed by Muttiah Muralitharan, but took two catches in the match. He followed it up with another failure in the next game scoring just four runs before getting run out against Pakistan.
In contrast to his ODI debut, his Test debut was rather successful one. Dravid was selected for the Indian squad touring England on the backdrop of a consistent performance in domestic cricket for five years. Fine performances in the tour games including fifties against Gloucestershire and Leicestershire failed to earn him a place in the team for the First Test. He finally made his Test debut at Lord's on 20 June 1996 against England in the Second Test of the series at the expense of injured senior batsman Sanjay Manjrekar. Manjrekar, who was suffering from an ankle injury, was to undergo a fitness test on the morning of the Second Test. Dravid had already been informed that he would play if Manjrekar fails the test. As Manjrekar failed the fitness test, ten minutes before the toss, Sandeep Patil, the then Indian coach, went up to Dravid to inform him that he was indeed going to make his debut that day. Patil recalled years later:
Coming in to bat at no. 7, he forged important partnerships, first with another debutante Sourav Ganguly and then with Indian lower order, securing a vital first innings lead for his team. Dravid scored 95 runs before getting out to the bowling of Chris Lewis. He was just five runs short of a landmark debut hundred when he nicked a Lewis delivery to the keeper and walked even before umpire's decision. He also took his first catch in Test cricket in this match to dismiss Nasser Hussain off the bowling of Srinath. In the next tour game against British Universities, Dravid scored a hundred. He scored another fifty in the first innings of the Third Test. Dravid concluded a successful debut series with an impressive average of 62.33 from two Test matches.
1996–98: A tale of two formats
Dravid's early years in international cricket mirrored his international debut. He had contrasting fortunes in the long and the shorter format of the game. While he straightaway made a name for himself in Test cricket, he had to struggle quite a bit to make a mark in ODIs.
After a successful Test debut in England, Dravid played in the one-off Test against Australia in Delhi – his first Test in India. Batting at no. 6, he scored 40 runs in the first innings. Dravid batted at no. 3 position for the first time in the First Test of the three-match home series against South Africa in Ahmedabad in November 1996. He didn't do too well in the series scoring just 175 runs at a modest average of 29.16.
Two weeks later, India toured South Africa for a three–match Test series. Chasing a target of 395 runs in the First Test, Indian team bundled out meekly for 66 runs on the Durban pitch that provided excessive bounce and seam movement. Dravid, batting at no. 6, was the only Indian batsman who reached double figures in the innings scoring 27 not out. He was promoted to the no. 3 slot again in the second innings of the Second Test, a move that paid rich dividends in the ensuing Test. He almost won the Third Test for India with his maiden test hundred in the first innings scoring 148 runs and another 81 runs in the second innings at Wanderers before the thunderstorms, dim light and Cullinan's hundred saved the day for South Africa enabling them to draw the match. Dravid's performance in this Test earned him his first Man of the Match award in Test cricket. He top scored for India in the series with 277 runs at an average of 55.40.
Dravid continued in the same vein in the West Indies where he once again top scored for India in the five–match Test series aggregating 360 runs at an average of 72.00 including four fifties. 92 runs scored in the first innings of the fifth match in Georgetown earned him a joint Man of the Match award along with Shivnarine Chanderpaul. With this series, Dravid concluded a successful 1996/97 Test season, topping the international runs chart with 852 runs from 12 matches at an average of 50.11 with six fifties and one hundred.
Dravid continued his good run scoring seven fifties in the next eight Tests that included fifties in six consecutive innings (three each against Sri Lanka and Australia), becoming only the second Indian to do so after Gundappa Vishwanath. By the end of 1997/98 Test season, he had scored 15 fifties in 22 Tests which included four scores of nineties but just a solitary hundred.
The century drought came to an end in the 1998/99 Test season when he further raised the bar of his performance scoring 752 runs in seven Tests at an average of 62.66 that included four hundreds and one fifty and in the process topping the runs chart for India for the season. The first of those four hundreds came on the Zimbabwe tour. Dravid top scored in both the innings against Zimbabwe scoring 118 and 44 runs respectively however, India lost the one-off Test.
The Zimbabwe tour was followed by a tour to New Zealand. First Test having been abandoned without a ball being bowled, the series started for Dravid with the first duck of his Test career in the first innings of the Second Test and ended with hundreds in both the innings of the Third Test in Hamilton. He scored 190 and 103 not out in the first and the second innings respectively, becoming only the third Indian batsman, after Vijay Hazare and Sunil Gavaskar, to score a century in both innings of a Test match. Dravid topped the runs table for the series with 321 runs from two matches at an average of 107.00 but could not prevent India from losing the series 0–1.
Later that month, India played a two Test home series against Pakistan. Dravid didn't contribute much with the bat. India lost the First Test but won the Second Test in Delhi riding on Kumble's historic 10-wicket haul. Dravid played his part in the 10-wicket haul by taking a catch to dismiss Mushtaq Ahmed who was Kumble's eighth victim of the innings. The Indo-Pak Test series was followed by the 1998–99 Asian Test Championship. Dravid couldn't do much with the bat as India went on to lose the riot-affected First Test of the championship against Pakistan at the Eden Gardens. India went to Sri Lanka to play the Second Test of the championship. Dravid scored his fourth hundred of the season at Colombo in the first innings of the match. He also effected a brilliant run out of Russel Arnold during Sri Lankan innings fielding at short leg. On the fourth morning, Dravid got injured while fielding at the same position when the ball from Jayawardene's pull shot hit his face through the helmet grill. He didn't come out to bat in the second innings due to the injury. The match ended in a draw as India failed to qualify for the Finals of the championship.
In a stark contrast to his Test career, Dravid had to struggle a lot to make a mark in the ODIs. Between his ODI debut in April 1996 and the end of 1998 calendar year, Dravid regularly found himself in and out of the ODI team.
Dravid tasted first success of his ODI career in the 1996 'Friendship' Cup against Pakistan in the tough conditions of Toronto. He emerged as the highest scorer of the series with 220 runs in five matches at an average of 44.00 and a strike rate of 68.53. He won his first ODI Man of the Match award for the 46 runs scored in the low scoring third game of the series. He top scored for India in the Standard Bank International One-Day Series 1996/97 in South Africa with 280 runs from eight games at an average of 35.00 and a strike rate of 60.73, the highlight being a Man of the Match award-winning performance (84 runs, one catch) in the Final of the series that came in a losing cause. He was the second highest run scorer for India in the four-match bilateral ODI series in the West Indies in 1996/97 with 121 runs at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 57.61. Dravid's maiden ODI hundred came in a losing cause in the 1997 Pepsi Independence Cup against Pakistan in Chennai. Dravid top scored for India in the quadrangular event with 189 runs from three games at an average of 94.50 and a strike rate of 75.60 however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the series.
However, Dravid's achievements in the ODIs were dwarfed by his failures in the shorter format of the game. 14 runs from two games in the 1996 Pepsi Sharjah Cup; 20 runs from two innings in the Singer World Series; 65 runs from four innings in the 1997 'Friendship' Cup; 88 runs from four games in the 1998 Coca-Cola Triangular Series including a 22-ball five runs and a 21-ball one run innings, both coming against Bangladesh; 32 runs from four games in the 1998 'Friendship' Cup; a slew of such poor performances often forced him to the sidelines of the India ODI squad. By the end of 1998, Dravid had scored 1709 runs in 65 ODIs at a humble average of 31.64 with a poor strike rate of 63.48.
By now, Dravid had been branded as a Test specialist. While he continued to score heavily in Test cricket, his poor strike rate in ODIs came under scanner. He drew criticism for not being able to adjust his style of play to the needs of ODI cricket, his lack of attacking capability and play big strokes. However, Dravid worked hard and re-tooled his game by increasing his range of strokes and adapting his batting style to suit the requirements of ODI cricket. He learned to pace his innings cleverly without going for the slogs.
Dravid's ODI renaissance began during the 1998/99 New Zealand tour. He scored a run-a-ball hundred in the first match of the bilateral ODI series that earned him his third Man of the Match award in ODIs. The hundred came in a losing cause. However, his effort of 51 runs from 71 balls in the Fourth ODI came in India's victory and earned him his second Man of the Match award of the series. He ended as the top scorer of the series with 309 runs from five games at an average of 77.25 and a strike rate of 84.65. Dravid scored a hundred against Sri Lanka in 1998/99 Pepsi Cup at Nagpur adding a record 236 runs for the 2nd wicket with Ganguly, who also scored a hundred in the match. Uncharacteristically, Dravid was the faster of the two scoring 116 of 118 deliveries. In the next match against Pakistan, he bowled four overs and took the wicket of Saeed Anwar, out caught behind by wicket-keeper Nayan Mongia. This was his first wicket in international cricket.
Dravid warmed up for his debut World Cup with two fifties in the 1998–99 Coca-Cola Cup in Sharjah, one each against England and Pakistan. Standing-in as the substitute wicket-keeper in the third match of the series for Nayan Mongia, who got injured during keeping, Dravid effected two dismissals. He first stumped Graeme Hick off Sunil Joshi's bowling, who became Dravid's first victim as a wicket-keeper, and then caught Neil Fairbrother off Ajay Jadeja's bowling. He top scored for India in the tournament, though his last ODI innings before the World Cup was a golden duck against Pakistan, in the Final of the series.
Debut World Cup success
Dravid announced his form in England hitting consecutive fifties against Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire in the warm-up games.
He made his World Cup debut against South Africa at Hove striking a half century, but scored just 13 in the next game against Zimbabwe. India lost both the games. Having lost the first two games, India needed to win the remaining three games of the first round to have any chance of advancing into the Super Six stage. Dravid put up a partnership of 237 runs with Sachin Tendulkar against Kenya at Bristol – a World Cup record – and in the process hit his maiden World Cup hundred, helping India to a 94-run victory. India's designated keeper Mongia left the field at the end of 9th over during Kenyan innings, forcing Dravid to keep the wickets for the rest of the innings. In the absence of injured Nayan Mongia, Dravid played his first ODI as a designated keeper against Sri Lanka at Taunton. Dravid once again staged a record breaking partnership worth 318 runs – the first ever three hundred run partnership in ODI history – but this time with Sourav Ganguly, guiding India to a 157-run win. Dravid scored 145 runs from 129 balls with 17 fours and a six, becoming the second batsman in World Cup history to hit back-to-back hundreds. Dravid struck a fine fifty in the last group match as India defeated England to advance into the Super Six stage. Dravid scored 2, 61 & 29 in the three Super Six matches against Australia, Pakistan & New Zealand respectively. India failed to qualify for the semi-finals having lost to Australia and New Zealand but achieved a consolation victory against Pakistan in a tense game, what with the military conflict going on between the two countries in Kashmir at the same time. Dravid emerged as the top scorer of the tournament with 461 runs from 8 games at an average of 65.85 and a strike rate of 85.52.
Dravid's post-World Cup campaign started on a poor note with just 40 runs coming in 4 games of Aiwa Cup in August 1999. He soon came into his own, top-scoring for India in two consecutive limited-overs series – the Singapore Challenge, the highlight being a hundred in the Final coming in a lost cause, and the DMC Cup, the highlight being a match winning effort (77 runs, 4 catches) in the series decider for which he received man-of-the-match award. Dravid topped the international runs chart for 1999 cricket season across all formats scoring 782 runs from 19 matches. By now, Dravid had started to keep wickets on an infrequent basis with India fielding him as designated wicket-keeper in five out of 10 ODIs played in the three events.
Dravid kick-started his post World Cup Test season with a decent outing against New Zealand in the 3-match home series. His best effort of the series came in the second innings of the First test at Mohali scoring 144, helping India salvage a draw after being bowled out for 83 runs in the First innings. This was Dravid's sixth test hundred but his first test hundred on Indian soil. Dravid did well in the 3–2 series win against New Zealand in the bilateral ODI series, scoring 240 runs in 5 games at an average of 60 and a strike rate of 83.62, ending as the second highest scorer in the series. His career best effort in ODIs came in this series in the second game at Hyderabad where he scored run-a-ball 153 runs which included 15 fours and two sixes. He featured in a 331-run partnership with Tendulkar, which was the highest partnership in ODI cricket history, a record that stood for 15 years until it was broken in 2015. In 1999, Dravid scored 1761 runs in 43 ODIs at an average of 46.34 and a strike rate of 75.16 including 6 hundreds and 8 fifties and featured in two 300+ partnerships.
India toured Australia in December 1999 for a 3-match test series and a triangular ODI tournament. Although Dravid scored a hundred against Tasmania in the practice match, he failed miserably with the bat in the Test series as India slumped to a 0–3 whitewash. He did reasonably well in the 1999–2000 Carlton & United Series scoring 3 fifties in the triangular event however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the tournament.
Dravid's poor form in Tests continued as India suffered a 0–2 whitewash against South Africa in a home series. He had moderate success in the bilateral ODI series against South Africa. He contributed to India's 3–2 series win with 208 runs at an average of 41.60 which included 2 fifties and three wickets at an average of 22.66 topping the bowling average chart for the series. His career best bowling figure of 2/43 from nine overs in the First ODI at Kochi, was also the best bowling figure by any bowler in that particular match.
Rise through the ranks
In February 2000, Tendulkar's resignation from captaincy led to the promotion of Ganguly, the vice-captain then, as the new captain of the Indian team. In May 2000, while Dravid was busy playing county cricket in England, he was appointed as the vice-captain of the Indian team announced for the Asia cup.
India did well in the 2000 ICC KnockOut Trophy. Indian team, coming out of the shadows of the infamous match fixing scandal, showed a lot of character under the new leadership of Ganguly and Dravid, beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid scored 157 runs in 4 matches of the tournament, at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid scored 85 runs in a match against Zimbabwe in the 2000–01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy while opening the innings but was forced to miss the rest of the tournament because of an injury.
India kick started the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk knock of 41 runs from 49 balls, including 5 fours and a six, while chasing a target of 63 runs. The ensuing test series against Zimbabwe was John Wright's first assignment as Indian coach. Dravid, who was instrumental in Wright's appointment as India's first foreign head coach, welcomed him with his maiden double hundred. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second, guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 – highest batting average by an Indian in a series across all formats.
Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the fifth match of the bilateral ODI series against Zimbabwe in the absence of Ganguly who was serving suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39-run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain.
History at Eden
The Australian team toured India in February 2001 for what was being billed as the Final Frontier for Steve Waugh's all conquering men, who were coming on the back of 15 consecutive Test wins. Dravid failed in the first innings of the First Test but displayed strong resilience in Tendulkar's company in the second innings. Dravid's 196 ball long resistance finally ended when he got out bowled to Warne for 39 runs. Australians extended their winning streak to 16 Tests as they beat India convincingly by 10 wickets inside three days.
The Australian juggernaut seemed unstoppable as they looked on course towards their 17th consecutive victory in the Second Test at the Eden Gardens, when they bowled India out for meagre 171 in the first innings and enforced a follow-on after securing a massive lead of 274 runs. In the second innings, Laxman, who had scored a fine fifty in the first innings, was promoted to no. 3 position which had been Dravid's usual spot for quite sometime now, while Dravid, who had gotten out bowled to Warne for second time in a row in the first innings for just 25 runs, was relegated to no. 6 position. When Dravid joined Laxman in the middle on the third day of the Test, with scoreboard reading 232/4 and India still needing 42 runs to avoid an innings defeat, another convincing win for Australia looked inevitable. Instead, two of them staged one of the greatest fightbacks in cricketing history.
Dravid and Laxman played out the remaining time on the third day and whole of the fourth day, denying Australia any wicket on Day 4. Dravid, angered by the flak that the Indian team had been receiving lately in the media coverage, celebrated his hundred in an uncharacteristic fashion brandishing his bat at the press box. Eventually, Laxman got out on the fifth morning bringing the 376-runs partnership to an end. Dravid soon perished getting run out for 180 while trying to force the pace. Ganguly declared the innings at 657/7, setting Australia a target of 384 runs with 75 overs left in the match. An inspired team India bowled superbly to dismiss Australia for 212 in 68.3 overs. India won the match by 171 runs. This was only the third instance of a team winning a Test after following-on and India became the 2nd team to do so.
Dravid scored 81 runs in the first innings of the Third Test and took 4 catches in the match as India defeated Australia at Chennai in a nail biting finish to clinch the series 2–1. Dravid scored 80 in the first of the 5-match ODI series at his home ground as India won the match by 60 runs. He didn't do too well in the remaining 4 ODIs as Australia won the series 3–2. Dravid topped the averages for the 2000/01 Test season with 839 runs from six matches at an average of 104.87.
Dravid had a decent outing in Zimbabwe, scoring 137 runs from 134 balls in the First Tour game and aggregating 138 runs at an average of 69.00 from the drawn Test series. In the ensuing triangular ODI series, he aggregated 121 runs from 5 matches at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 101.68, the highlight being an unbeaten 72 off 64 balls, while chasing a target of 235 against Zimbabwe in the 3rd match of the series, guiding India to a 4-wicket win with four balls to spare. He was adjudged man of the match for his match winning knock.
On the next tour to Sri Lanka, India lost the first three matches of the triangular event. In the absence of suspended Ganguly, Dravid captained the side in the 4th match leading them to their first victory of the series. India won the next two matches to qualify for the Final. Dravid played crucial innings in all the three victories. Eventually, India lost the Final to Sri Lanka. He top scored for India in the series with 259 runs from seven matches at an average of 51.80 and a strike rate of 59.81. Reinstated to his usual no. 3 position in the absence of injured Laxman, Dravid top scored for India in the ensuing 3-Test series as well with 235 runs at an average of 47.00. The highlight for Dravid was 75 runs scored in the tough fourth innings chase of the Second Test – a crucial contribution to India's first Test win in Sri Lanka since 1993 despite the absence of key players like Tendulkar, Laxman, Srinath and Kumble.
Dravid had decent success in Standard Bank tri-series on South Africa tour, scoring 214 runs (including 3 fifties) at an average of 53.50 and a strike rate of 71.81. He also kept wickets in the final two ODIs of the series effecting 3 stumpings. The highlight for Dravid in the ensuing Test series came in the second innings of the Second Test. India, having failed to last hundred overs in any of the previous three innings in the series, needed to bat out four sessions in the Second Test to save the match. They started on a poor note losing their first wicket in the first over with no runs on the scoreboard. However, Dravid forged an important partnership of 171 runs with Dasgupta that lasted for 83.2 overs taking India to the brink of safety. Poor weather helped India salvage a draw as only 96.2 overs could be bowled in the innings. Dravid captained the team in the 'unofficial' Third test in the absence of injured Ganguly, which India lost by an innings margin.
By the end of the South African tour, Dravid had started experiencing problem in his right shoulder. Although he played the ensuing home test series against England, he pulled out of the six-match bilateral ODI series to undergo shoulder rehabilitation program in South Africa. He returned for the Zimbabwe's tour of India but performed below par, scoring a fifty each in the Test series and the bilateral ODI series.
2002–2006: Peak years
Dravid hit the peak form of his career in 2002. Between Season 2002 and Season 2006, Dravid was the second highest scorer overall and top scorer for India across formats, scoring 8,914 runs from 174 matches at an average of 54.02, including 19 hundreds.
Dravid had a decent outing in West Indies in 2002. The highlights for him included – hitting a hundred with a swollen jaw and helping India avoid the follow-on in the process at Georgetown in the drawn First Test; contributing with a fifty and four catches to India's victory in the Second Test at Port of Spain – India's first Test victory in West Indies since 1975–76; and another fifty in the drawn Fourth Test with a wicket to boot – that of Ridley Jacobs who was batting on 118. This was Dravid's only wicket in Test cricket. He played as India's designated keeper in the ODI series but didn't contribute much with the bat in the 2–1 series win.
A quartet of hundreds
India's tour of England in 2002 started with a triangular ODI event involving India, England and Sri Lanka. India emerged as the winners of the series beating England in the Final – their first victory after nine consecutive defeats in one-day finals. Dravid played as designated keeper in six out of seven matches effecting nine dismissals (6 catches, 3 stumpings) – most by a keeper in the series. He also did well with the bat aggregating 245 runs at an average of 49.00 including three fifties. His performance against Sri Lanka in fourth ODI (64 runs, 1 catch) earned him a man of the match award.
India lost the first of the four match Test series. Having conceded a 260 runs lead in the first innings of the Second Test at Nottingham, Indians were in a spot of bother. However, Dravid led the fightback in the second innings with a hundred as Indians managed to earn a draw.
Ganguly won the toss in the Third Test and took a bold decision to bat first on a gloomy overcast morning at Headingley on a pitch known to be traditionally conducive for fast and swing bowling. Having lost an early wicket, Dravid weathered the storm in company of Sanjay Bangar. They played cautiously, taking body blows on a pitch with uneven bounce. Dravid completed his second hundred of the series in the process. As the conditions became more and more conducive for batting, the Indian batsmen piled on England's misery. Indians declared the innings on 628/8 and then bowled England out twice to register their first test victory in England since 1986. Despite being outscored by Tendulkar, Dravid was awarded man of the match for his efforts. Dravid scored a double hundred in the drawn Fourth Test to notch up his second consecutive man of the match award of the series. Christopher Martin-Jenkins noted during the Fourth Test: Dravid aggregated 602 runs in the series from four matches at an average of 100.33, including three hundreds and a fifty and was adjudged joint man of the series along with Michael Vaughan.
India jointly shared the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka. Dravid contributed to India's successful campaign with 120 runs at an average of 60.00 and five dismissals behind the wicket. Dravid scored a hundred in the First Test of the three match home series against West Indies becoming the first Indian batsman to score hundreds in four consecutive Test innings but had to retire soon after owing to severe cramps. Dravid did well in the subsequent bilateral 7-match ODI series aggregating 300 runs at an average of 75.00 and a strike rate of 89.82 including one hundred and two fifties. He also effected 7 dismissals (6 catches, 1 stumping) in the series. India trailing 1–2, needed 325 runs to win the Fourth ODI and level the series. Dravid scored a hundred leading India to a successful chase. He once again scored a crucial fifty in the Sixth ODI as India once again leveled the series after trailing 2–3. India, however, lost the last match to lose the series 3–4.
Dravid top scored for India in the two-match Test series in New Zealand as India slumped to a whitewash. He played as designated keeper in six of the 7-match bilateral ODI series and effected seven dismissals but fared poorly with the bat as India were handed a 2-5 drubbing by the New Zealand.
2003 Cricket World Cup
Dravid arrived in South Africa with the Indian squad to participate in the 2003 Cricket World Cup in the capacity of first-choice keeper-batsman as part of their seven batsmen-four bowlers strategy – an experiment that had brought success to the team in the past year. The idea was that making Dravid keep wickets allowed India to accommodate an extra specialist batsman. The strategy worked out well for India in the World Cup. India recovered from a less than convincing victory against minnows Netherlands and a loss to Australia in the league stage and embarked on a dream run winning eight consecutive matches to qualify for the World Cup Finals for the first time since 1983. India eventually lost the Final to Australia ending as runner-up in the tournament. Dravid contributed to India's campaign with 318 runs at an average of 63.60 and 16 dismissals (15 catches, 1 stumping). Highlights for Dravid in the tournament included a fifty against England, 44 not out against Pakistan in a successful chase and an unbeaten fifty in another successful chase against New Zealand.
Dravid topped the international runs chart for 2003/04 cricket season across formats aggregating 1993 runs from 31 matches at an average of 64.29 including three double hundreds. First of those came against New Zealand in the first of the two-test home series at Ahmedabad. Dravid scored 222 runs in the first innings and 73 runs in the second innings receiving a man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid captained Indian Test Team for the first time in the second game of the series at Mohali in the absence of Ganguly. Both the matches ended in a draw. Dravid top scored in the series with 313 runs at an average of 78.25. India next participated in TVS cup alongside New Zealand and Australia. India lost to Australia in the Final. Dravid scored two fifties in the series but the highlight was his fifty against New Zealand in the ninth match that came in just 22 balls – second fastest fifty by an Indian.
An Eden encore
After earning a draw in the first of the four-match Test series in Australia, Indians found themselves reeling at 85/4 in the Second Test at Adelaide after Australia had piled 556 runs in the first innings when Laxman joined Dravid in the middle. They batted for 93.5 overs bringing about their second 300-run partnership adding 303 runs together before Laxman perished for 148 runs. However, Dravid continued to complete his second double hundred of the season. He was the last man out for 233 runs as India conceded a marginal first innings lead of 33 runs to Australia. India bowled Australia out for paltry score of 196 riding on Agarkar's six-wicket haul, and were set a target of 230 runs to win the match. Dravid helped India tread through a tricky chase with an unbeaten fifty as India registered their first test victory in Australia since 1980/81 to go up 1–0 in the series. This was the first time that Australians were 0-1 down in a home series since 1994. Dravid won the man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid registered a score of ninety each in the next two tests as Australia leveled the series 1–1. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 619 runs at an average of 123.80 and was awarded player of the series for his efforts.
Dravid did moderately well in the ensuing VB series with three fifties in the league stage, all of which came in winning cause. However, India lost the best-of-three finals to Australia 2–0. Dravid was fined half his match fee for applying cough lozenge on the ball during a match in the series against Zimbabwe – an act that was claimed to be an innocent mistake by coach John Wright.
India visited Pakistan in March 2004 to participate in a bilateral Test series for the first time since 1989/90. Prior to the Test series, India participated and won the 5-match ODI series 3–2. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 248 runs at an average of 62.00 and a strike rate of 73.59. Dravid scored 99 runs in the First ODI helping India post an imposing total of 349. He also took the important catch of threatening Inzamam-ul-Haq, who was batting on 122, as India went on to win the match by five runs. When Indians were trailing in the series 1–2, Dravid helped India level the series with an unbeaten fifty during a successful chase in the Fourth ODI.
Captaincy
Dravid captained India in the first two tests in the absence of injured Ganguly and led India to their first-ever Test victory in Pakistan. Dravid, standing in only his second test as team's captain, took a bold and controversial decision during First Test at Multan that divided the cricket fraternity. Pakistani cricketers had been on field for 150+ overs as India posted a total in excess of 600 runs in the first innings. Dravid, who wanted to have a crack at the tired Pakistani batsmen in the final hour of second day's play, declared Indian innings with Tendulkar batting at 194, just six runs short of his double century. While some praised the team before personal milestones approach of the Indian captain, most criticized Dravid's timing of declaration as there were no pressing concerns and there was ample time left in the match to try and bowl Pakistan out twice. While Tendulkar was admittedly disappointed, any rumours of rift between him and Dravid were quashed by both the cricketers and the team management, who claimed that the matter had been discussed and sorted amicably behind closed doors. India eventually went on to win the match by innings margin. Pakistan leveled the series beating India in the Second Test. Dravid slammed a double hundred in the Third Test at Rawalpindi – his third double hundred of the season. He scored 270 runs – his career best performance – before getting out to reverse sweep trying to force the pace. India went on to win the match and the series – their first series victory outside India since 1993. Dravid was adjudged man of the match for his effort.
Dravid was appointed the captain for the Indian team for 2007 World Cup, where India had an unsuccessful campaign.
During India's unsuccessful tour of England in 2011, in which their 4–0 loss cost them the top rank in Test cricket, Dravid made three centuries.
2011 Tour of England
Having regained his form on the tour to West Indies, where he scored a match-winning hundred in Sabina park, Jamaica, Dravid then toured England in what was billed as the series which would decide the World No. 1 ranking in tests.
In the first test at Lord's, in reply to England's 474, Dravid scored an unbeaten 103, his first hundred at the ground where he debuted in 1996. He received scant support from his teammates as India were bowled out for 286 and lost the test. The 2nd test at Trentbridge, Nottingham again saw Dravid in brilliant form. Sent out to open the batting in place of an injured Gautam Gambhir, he scored his second successive hundred. His 117 though, again came in a losing cause, as a collapse of 6 wickets for 21 runs in the first innings led to a massive defeat by 319 runs. Dravid failed in both innings in the third test at Birmingham, as India lost by an innings and 242 runs, one of the heaviest defeats in their history. However, he came back brilliantly in the fourth and final match at The Oval. Again opening the batting in place of Gambhir, he scored an unbeaten 146 out of India's total of 300, carrying his bat through the innings. Once again, though, his efforts were in vain as India lost the match, completing a 0–4 whitewash.
In all, he scored 461 runs in the four matches at an average of 76.83 with three hundreds. He accounted for over 26% of India's runs in the series and was named India's man of the series by England coach Andy Flower. His performance in the series was met with widespread admiration and was hailed by some as one of his finest ever series
Retirement
Rahul Dravid was dropped from the ODI team in 2009, but was selected again for an ODI series in England in 2011, surprising even Dravid himself since, although he had not officially retired from ODI cricket, he had not expected to be recalled. After being selected, he announced that he would retire from ODI cricket after the series. He played his last ODI innings against England at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, on 16 September 2011, scoring 69 runs from 79 balls before being bowled by Graeme Swann. His last limited-overs international match was his debut T20I match; he announced his retirement before playing his first T20I match.
Dravid announced his retirement from Test and domestic cricket on 9 March 2012, after the 2011–12 tour of Australia, but he said that he would captain the Rajasthan Royals in the 2012 Indian Premier League. He was the second-highest run scorer and had taken the highest number of catches in Test cricket at the time of his retirement.
In July 2014, he played for the MCC side in the Bicentenary Celebration match at Lord's.
Coaching
Towards the end of his playing career, Dravid took on a role as mentor of the Rajasthan Royals IPL team, officially taking over in 2014. During this time, he also became involved with the Indian national team, serving as mentor for the team's tour of England in 2014. After leading the Royals to a third-place finish in the 2015 IPL season, he was appointed as the head coach of the India U-19 and India A teams. Dravid achieved immense success as coach, with the U-19s reaching the finals of the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Two years later, the team went on to win the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup, beating Australia by 8 wickets to win their fourth Under-19 World Cup, the most by any national side. Dravid was credited with bringing up future national team players including Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan and Washington Sundar. Alongside his coaching roles, Dravid took on several mentor roles, including at the Delhi Daredevils IPL team.
In July 2019, following his four-year stint as coach of the junior teams, Dravid was appointed Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA). He was in charge of "overseeing all cricket related activities at NCA was involved in mentoring, coaching, training and motivating players, coaches and support staff at the NCA". As head of NCA, he was widely praised for developing a steady supply of talent to the senior team and revamping player fitness and rehabilitation regiments.
In November 2021, he was appointed as head coach of the Indian national cricket team.
County stint
Dravid had always been keen on further honing his batting skills in testing English conditions by playing in county cricket. He had discussed about the prospects regarding the same with John Wright, the former New Zealand cricketer and incumbent Kent coach, during India's 1998–99 tour of New Zealand. Wright was particularly impressed with Dravid's performance on that tour, especially his twin hundreds at Hamilton. The talks finally materialized and Dravid made his county debut for Kent in April 2000. His co-debutante Ganguly made his county debuted in the same match, albeit for the opposite team.
Kent offer had come as a welcome change for Dravid. There was too much negativity surrounding Indian cricket marred by match fixing controversy. Dravid himself had been struggling to score runs in Tests for quite some time now. The county stint gave him a chance to "get away to a new environment" and "relax". The wide variety of pitches and weather conditions in England and a full season of intense county cricket against professional cricketers gave him a chance to further his cricketing education and learn things about his game.
Dravid made the most of this opportunity. In his 2nd game for Kent, Dravid scored a fluid 182 propelling them to an innings and 163 runs victory over the touring Zimbabwe side. Out of 7 first class tour games that Zimbabwe played on that tour, Kent was the only team that managed to beat them. Dravid hit another fifty in a draw against Surrey. The newly appointed vice-captain had to leave the county championship temporarily, missing two championship games and two one day games, to fulfill his national commitment. Indian team, Dravid included, fared poorly in the Asia cup and failed to qualify for the Final. Subsequently, Dravid returned to England to resume his county sojourn with Kent.
In July 2000, Kent's away match against Hampshire at Portsmouth was billed as a showdown between two great cricketers- Warne and Dravid. Dravid came out on top. On a dustbowl, tailor-made to suit home team spinners, Warne took 4 wickets but could not take the all important wicket of Dravid. Coming in to bat at 15/2, Dravid faced 295 balls scoring 137 runs – his maiden hundred in county championships. Dravid scored 73 not out in the 2nd innings guiding Kent to a six wicket victory as Warne went wicketless.
In their last county game of the season, Kent needed one bonus point to prevent themselves from being relegated to the Second Division. Dravid made sure they stay put in the First Division by fetching that one bonus point with an inning of 77 runs.
Dravid concluded a successful stint with Kent aggregating 1221 runs from 16 first class matches(15 county games and 1 tour game against Zimbabwe) at an average of 55.50 including 2 hundreds and 8 fifties. He shouldered Kent's batting single-handedly as the second best Kent batsman during the same period, Paul Nixon, scored just 567 runs at an average of 33.35 in 17 matches. Dravid contributed to Kent's county campaign not just with the bat but also with his fielding and bowling taking 14 catches and 4 wickets at an average of 32.00.
Indian Premier League and Champions League
Rahul Dravid played for Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2008, 2009 and 2010. Later he played for Rajasthan Royals and led it to finals of Champions League T20 in 2013, and play-offs of Indian Premier League in 2013. Dravid announced retirement from Twenty20 after playing the 2013 Champions League Twenty20 in September–October 2013.
Playing style
Dravid was known for his technique, and has been one of the best batsmen for the Indian cricket team. In the beginning, he was known as a defensive batsman who should be confined to Test cricket, and was dropped from the ODI squad due to a low strike rate. However, he later scored consistently in ODIs as well, earning him the ICC Player of the Year award. His nickname of 'The Wall' in Reebok advertisements is now used as his nickname. Dravid has scored 36 centuries in Test cricket, with an average of 52.31; this included five double centuries. In one-dayers, he averaged 39.16, with a strike rate of 71.23. He is one of the few Indians whose Test average is better at away than at home, averaging almost five runs more on foreign pitches. As of 23 September 2010, Dravid's Test average in abroad is 55.53, and his Test average at home is 50.76; his ODI average abroad is 37.93 and his ODI average at home is 43.11. Dravid averages 66.34 runs in Indian Test victories. and 50.69 runs in ODIs.
Dravid's sole Test wicket was of Ridley Jacobs in the fourth Test match against the West Indies during the 2001–2002 series. While he has no pretensions to being a bowler, Dravid often kept wicket for India in ODIs.
Dravid was involved in two of the largest partnerships in ODIs: a 318-run partnership with Sourav Ganguly, the first pair to combine for a 300-run partnership, and then a 331-run partnership with Sachin Tendulkar, which is a world record. He also holds the record for the greatest number of innings played since debut before being dismissed for a duck. His highest scores in ODIs and Tests are 153 and 270 respectively.
He was named one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 2000. Though primarily a defensive batsman, Dravid scored 50 runs not out in 22 balls (a strike rate of 227.27) against New Zealand in Hyderabad on 15 November 2003, the second fastest 50 among Indian batsmen. Only Ajit Agarkar's 67 runs off 21 balls is faster than that of Dravid.
In 2004, Dravid was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India. On 7 September 2004, he was awarded the inaugural Player of the year award and the Test player of the year award by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
After reaching 10,000 Test runs milestone, he said, "It's a proud moment for sure. For me, growing up, I dreamt of playing for India. When I look back, I probably exceeded my expectations with what I have done over the last 10 to 12 years. I never had an ambition to do it because I never believed – it is just a reflection of my longevity in the game."
Dravid is also one of the two batsmen to score 10,000 runs at a single batting position and is the fourth highest run scorer in Test cricket, behind Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis.
Controversies
Ball-tampering incident
In January 2004, Dravid was found guilty of ball tampering during an ODI with Zimbabwe. Match referee Clive Lloyd adjudged the application of an energy sweet to the ball as a deliberate offence, although Dravid himself denied this was his intent. Lloyd emphasised that television footage caught Dravid putting a lozenge on the ball during the Zimbabwean innings on Tuesday night at the Gabba. According to the ICC's Code of Conduct, players are not allowed to apply substances to the ball other than sweat and saliva. Dravid was fined half of his match fee.
Indian coach John Wright came out in defence of Dravid, stating that "It was an innocent mistake". Wright argued that Dravid had been trying to apply saliva to the ball when parts of a losenge he had been chewing stuck to the ball; Dravid then tried to wipe it off. ICC regulations prevented Dravid from commenting about the issue, but former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly also stated that Dravid's act was "just an accident".
Captaincy
Rahul Dravid has had a mixed record when leading India in Tests.
One of Dravid's most debated decisions was taken in March 2004, when he was standing in as the captain for injured Sourav Ganguly. India's first innings was declared at a point when Sachin Tendulkar was at 194 runs not out with 16 overs remaining on Day 2. In this test match Sehwag scored triple century first time. He became the first Indian to score triple century in test with a score of 309.
In March 2006, India lost the Mumbai Test, giving England its first Test victory in India since 1985, enabling it to draw the series 1–1. The defeat in Mumbai was arguably the result of Dravid's decision to bowl first on a flat dry pitch, which later deteriorated and ended with an Indian collapse in the run chase. Coincidentally, it was Dravid's 100th test match in which the Indians were all out for 100 runs in the second innings.
After India failed to qualify for the final of the DLF Cup, Dravid, the skipper, was criticised by former all-rounder Ravi Shastri who said that he was not assertive enough and let Greg Chappell make too many decisions. When asked for a response, Dravid said that Shastri, while a 'fair critic', was 'not privy' to the internal decision-making process of the team.
He was criticised by Vijay Mallya for not picking the team with right balance after his then IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore finished seventh out of the eight teams that participated in the 2008 season.
Achievements and awards
National honours
1998 – Arjuna Award recipient for achievements in cricket
2004 – Padma Shri – India's fourth highest civilian award
2013 – Padma Bhushan – India's third highest civilian award
Other honours
1999 – CEAT International Cricketer of the World Cup
2000 – Dravid was one of the five cricketers selected as Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
2004 – ICC Cricketer of the year – Highest award in the ICC listings
2004 – ICC Test Player of The Year, ICC Cricketer of The Year
2004 – MTV Youth Icon of the Year
2006 – Captain of the ICC's Test Team
2011 – NDTV Indian of the Year's Lifetime Achievement Award with Dev Anand
2012 – Don Bradman Award with Glenn McGrath
2015 – Wisden India's Highest Impact Test Batsman
2018 – ICC Hall of Fame
Personal life
Family
On 4 May 2003 he married Vijeta Pendharkar, a surgeon from Nagpur. Vijeta Pendharkar is also from Deshastha Brahmin community as Dravid. They have two children: Samit, born in 2005, and Anvay, born in 2009. Dravid is fluent in Marathi, Hindi, Kannada and English.
Commercial endorsements
Rahul Dravid has been sponsored by several brands throughout his career including Reebok (1996 – present), Pepsi (1997 present), Kissan (Unknown), Castrol (2001 – present), Hutch
(2003), Karnataka Tourism (2004), Max Life (2005 – present), Bank of Baroda (2005 – present), Citizen (2006 – present), Skyline Construction (2006 – present), Sansui (2007), Gillette (2007 – present), Samsung (2002 – 2004), World Trade Center Noida (2013– present),
CRED (2021-present).
Social commitments
Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA)
UNICEF Supporter and AIDS Awareness Campaign
Biographies
Books
Two biographies have been written on Rahul Dravid and his career:
Rahul Dravid – A Biography written by Vedam Jaishankar (). Publisher: UBSPD Publications. Date: January 2004
The Nice Guy Who Finished First written by Devendra Prabhudesai. Publisher: Rupa Publications. Date: November 2005
A collection of articles, testimonials and interviews related to Dravid was released by ESPNcricinfo following his retirement. The book was titled Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel.
See also
Sachin Tendulkar
Sourav Ganguly
VVS Laxman
Virendra Sehwag
References
External links
Indian cricketers
India Test cricketers
India One Day International cricketers
India Twenty20 International cricketers
India Test cricket captains
Wisden Cricketers of the Year
Karnataka cricketers
South Zone cricketers
Kent cricketers
Scotland cricketers
ACC Asian XI One Day International cricketers
ICC World XI One Day International cricketers
World XI Test cricketers
Royal Challengers Bangalore cricketers
Canterbury cricketers
Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers
Rajasthan Royals cricketers
India Blue cricketers
Cricketers at the 1999 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2003 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2007 Cricket World Cup
Recipients of the Padma Shri in sports
1973 births
Living people
Cricketers from Indore
Cricketers from Bangalore
Recipients of the Arjuna Award
International Cricket Council Cricketer of the Year
Marathi people
Indian cricket coaches
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in sports
Indian cricket commentators
Wicket-keepers
| false |
[
"The Real Donovan is the first compilation album from Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. It was released in the US (Hickory LPM 135 (monaural) /LPS 135 (stereo)) in September 1966.\n\nHistory\nWhen Donovan signed a contract with Epic Records, he became entangled in a legal dispute with Pye Records over the rights to his music. These legal proceedings withheld any new Donovan releases in the United Kingdom until late 1966. In the meantime, Pye Records' United States distributor Hickory Records compiled The Real Donovan from Donovan's Pye Records releases, choosing several songs that had not yet appeared on any United States release.\n\nThe Real Donovan was released within the same month as Donovan's first Epic Records album Sunshine Superman. Both albums were intended to capitalize on the success of the \"Sunshine Superman\" single, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts in the United States. While it did not match the Billboard chart success and sales of Sunshine Superman, The Real Donovan did chart, ultimately reaching No. 96.\n\nAlbum origins of tracks\nThe following is a list explaining the original releases of each song. Tracks that were previously unreleased in the United States are noted with *, followed by explanations of their origin.\n\n \"Turquoise\" (UK single, released 30 October 1965; Released in U.S. as b-side to \"To Try for the Sun\" in January 1966)\n \"Oh Deed I Do\"* (from UK version of Fairytale, released 22 October 1965)\n \"Catch the Wind\" (from What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid, released 14 May 1965)\n \"Remember the Alamo\" (from What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid, released 14 May 1965)\n \"Ballad of a Crystal Man\"* (from The Universal Soldier EP, released 15 August 1965)\n \"Colours\" (from Fairytale, released 22 October 1965)\n \"Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)\"* (b-side of \"Turquoise\", released 30 October 1965)\n \"Belated Forgiveness Plea\" (from Fairytale, released 22 October 1965)\n \"Ramblin' Boy\" (from What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid, released 14 May 1965)\n \"The War Drags On\"* (from The Universal Soldier EP, released 15 August 1965)\n \"Josie\" (from What's Bin Did and What's Bin Hid, released 14 May 1965)\n \"To Try for the Sun\" (from Fairytale, released 22 October 1965)\n\nTrack listing\nAll tracks by Donovan Leitch, except where noted.\n\nSide one\n\n\"Turquoise\"\n\"Oh Deed I Do\" (Bert Jansch)\n\"Catch the Wind\"\n\"Remember the Alamo\" (Jane Bowers)\n\"Ballad of a Crystal Man\"\n\"Colours\"\n\nSide two\n\n\"Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness)\"\n\"Belated Forgiveness Plea\"\n\"Rambin' Boy\"\n\"The War Drags On\" (Mick Softley)\n\"Josie\"\n\"To Try for the Sun\"\n\nExternal links\n The Real Donovan – Donovan Unofficial Site\n\nReal Donovan\nReal Donovan\nHickory Records compilation albums",
"Mukul Chadda is an Indian actor who works in Hindi cinema.\n\nEarly life and education\nMukul was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He is an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and it was after working in a bank in New York City that he decided to take his passion for acting forward. Even while he was in New York City, he take part-time classes at Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. He did shows and he would rehearse on weekends. Then he left his job and came to India. His plan was to try it out for a year or two and see what happens next. Then he did it for longer and after he did a bunch of advertisements and other stuff then he realized that acting was paying his bills, so he continued acting.\n\nPersonal life\nMukul has been married to actress Rasika Dugal since 2010.\n\nFilmography\n\nFilms\n\nWeb Series\n\nAwards and nominations\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\nIndian male actors\nLiving people\nYear of birth missing (living people)\nIndian male film actors\nMale actors in Hindi cinema\nMale actors from Mumbai\nIndian stage actors\n \nIndian Institute of Management Ahmedabad\nIndian Institute of Management Ahmedabad\nIndian Institutes of Management alumni"
] |
[
"Rahul Dravid",
"Golden years",
"What started his golden years",
"As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain,",
"Who was helping him",
"Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal.",
"What did he do",
"Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals.",
"What did he try",
"Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket.",
"What was his next challenge",
"Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe",
"What made this possible",
"opening the innings before getting injured while fielding at slips forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament.",
"What did he try next",
"India started off the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk inning of 49 ball 41 runs, including 5 fours and a six,"
] |
C_52e2fff8b563440da632c6c90324029a_1
|
What did the last game he play in
| 8 |
What was the last game Rahul Dravid played in?
|
Rahul Dravid
|
As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain, Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal. Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid played his part scoring 157 runs in 4 matches at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe opening the innings before getting injured while fielding at slips forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament. India started off the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk inning of 49 ball 41 runs, including 5 fours and a six, chasing a target of 63 runs. However, Dravid's poor patch truly ended in the next Test series against Zimbabwe, which was also the first series for John Wright as the new Indian coach. Wright was instrumental in Dravid's association with Kent earlier this year. Dravid returned the favour by recommending his name to the BCCI for the post of national team coach. By now, Dravid had played 8 Tests since his last hundred against New Zealand at Mohali scoring just 350 runs at a paltry average of 23.33 without a single fifty plus inning. The Indian vice-captain ended the run drought and welcomed the new Indian coach with a double hundred - Dravid's first. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second inning guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 - highest batting average by an Indian in a Test series. Dravid scored just a solitary fifty in the second of the five match bilateral ODI series between India and Zimbabwe. However, the series proved to be a milestone in Dravid's career. Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the 5th match of the series as the regular captain Ganguly had to sit out due to one match suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39 run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain. CANNOTANSWER
|
However, Dravid's poor patch truly ended in the next Test series against Zimbabwe, which was also the first series for John Wright as the new Indian coach.
|
Rahul Sharad Dravid (; born 11 January 1973) is a former Indian cricketer and captain of the Indian national team, currently serving as its head coach. Prior to his appointment to the senior men's national team, Dravid was the Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), and the head coach of the India Under-19 and India A teams. Under his tutelage, the under-19 team finished runners up at the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup and won the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Known for his sound batting technique, Dravid scored 24,177 runs in international cricket and is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is colloquially known as Mr. Dependable and often referred to as The Wall.
Born in a Marathi family and raised in Bangalore, he started playing cricket at the age of 12 and later represented Karnataka at the under-15, under-17 and under-19 levels. Hailed as The Wall, Dravid was named one of the best five cricketers of the year by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 2000 and received the Player of the Year and the Test Player of the Year awards at the inaugural ICC awards ceremony in 2004. In December 2011, he became the first non-Australian cricketer to deliver the Bradman Oration in Canberra.
As of December 2016, Dravid is the fourth-highest run scorer in Test cricket, after Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis. In 2004, after completing his century against Bangladesh in Chittagong, he became the first player to score a century in all the ten Test-playing countries. As of October 2012, he holds the record for the most catches taken by a player (non-wicket-keeper) in Test cricket, with 210. Dravid holds a unique record of never getting out for a Golden duck in the 286 Test innings which he has played. He has faced 31258 balls, which is the highest number of balls faced by any player in test cricket. He has also spent 44152 minutes at the crease, which is the highest time spent on crease by any player in test cricket. Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar are currently the highest scoring partnership in Test cricket history having scored 6920 runs combined when batting together for India.
In August 2011, after receiving a surprise recall in the ODI series against England, Dravid declared his retirement from ODIs as well as Twenty20 International (T20I), and in March 2012, he announced his retirement from international and first-class cricket. He appeared in the 2012 Indian Premier League as captain of the Rajasthan Royals.
Rahul Dravid, along with Glenn McGrath were honoured during the seventh annual Bradman Awards function in Sydney on 1 November 2012. Dravid has also been honoured with the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan award, India's fourth and third highest civilian awards respectively.
In 2014, Rahul Dravid joined the GoSports Foundation, Bangalore as a member of their board of advisors. In collaboration with GoSports Foundation he is mentoring India's future Olympians and Paralympians as part of the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme. Indian badminton player Prannoy Kumar, Para-swimmer Sharath Gayakwad and young Golfer S. Chikkarangappa was part of the initial group of athletes to be mentored by Rahul Dravid. In July 2018, Dravid became the fifth Indian cricketer to be inducted into ICC Hall of Fame.
Early life
Dravid was born in a Marathi-Speaking Brahmin family in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. His family later moved to Bangalore, Karnataka, where he was raised. His mother tongue is Marathi. Dravid's father Sharad Dravid worked for a company that makes jams and preserves, giving rise to the later nickname Jammy. His mother, Pushpa, was a professor of architecture at the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bangalore. Dravid has a younger brother named Vijay. He did his schooling at St. Joseph's Boys High School, Bangalore and earned a degree in commerce from St. Joseph's College of Commerce, Bangalore. He was selected to India's national cricket team while working towards an MBA at St Joseph's College of Business Administration. He is fluent in several languages: Marathi, Kannada, English and Hindi.
Formative years and domestic career
Dravid started playing cricket at the age of 12, and represented Karnataka at the under-15, the under-17 and the under-19 levels. Former cricketer Keki Tarapore first noticed Dravid's talent while coaching at a summer camp in the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Dravid scored a century for his school team. He also played as wicket-keeper.
Dravid made his Ranji Trophy debut in February 1991, while still attending college. Playing alongside future India teammates Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath against Maharashtra in Pune, he scored 82 runs in the match, which ended in a draw. He followed it up with a century against Bengal and three successive centuries after. However, Dravid's first full season was in 1991–92, when he scored two centuries and finished up with 380 runs at an average of 63.30, getting selected for the South Zone cricket team in the Duleep Trophy. Dravid's caught the national team selectors' eye with his good performances for India A in the home series against England A in 1994–95.
International career
Debut
Dravid, who had been knocking at the doors of Indian national cricket team for quite a while with his consistent performance in domestic cricket, received his first national call in October 1994, for the last two matches of the Wills World Series. However, he could not break into the playing eleven. He went back to the domestic circuit and kept knocking harder. So much so, that when the selectors announced the Indian team for the 1996 World Cup sans Dravid, an Indian daily newspaper carried a headline – "Rahul Dravid gets a raw deal". Dravid eventually made his international debut on 3 April 1996 in an ODI against Sri Lanka in the Singer Cup held in Singapore immediately after the 1996 World Cup, replacing Vinod Kambli. He wasn't particularly impressive with the bat, scoring just three runs before being dismissed by Muttiah Muralitharan, but took two catches in the match. He followed it up with another failure in the next game scoring just four runs before getting run out against Pakistan.
In contrast to his ODI debut, his Test debut was rather successful one. Dravid was selected for the Indian squad touring England on the backdrop of a consistent performance in domestic cricket for five years. Fine performances in the tour games including fifties against Gloucestershire and Leicestershire failed to earn him a place in the team for the First Test. He finally made his Test debut at Lord's on 20 June 1996 against England in the Second Test of the series at the expense of injured senior batsman Sanjay Manjrekar. Manjrekar, who was suffering from an ankle injury, was to undergo a fitness test on the morning of the Second Test. Dravid had already been informed that he would play if Manjrekar fails the test. As Manjrekar failed the fitness test, ten minutes before the toss, Sandeep Patil, the then Indian coach, went up to Dravid to inform him that he was indeed going to make his debut that day. Patil recalled years later:
Coming in to bat at no. 7, he forged important partnerships, first with another debutante Sourav Ganguly and then with Indian lower order, securing a vital first innings lead for his team. Dravid scored 95 runs before getting out to the bowling of Chris Lewis. He was just five runs short of a landmark debut hundred when he nicked a Lewis delivery to the keeper and walked even before umpire's decision. He also took his first catch in Test cricket in this match to dismiss Nasser Hussain off the bowling of Srinath. In the next tour game against British Universities, Dravid scored a hundred. He scored another fifty in the first innings of the Third Test. Dravid concluded a successful debut series with an impressive average of 62.33 from two Test matches.
1996–98: A tale of two formats
Dravid's early years in international cricket mirrored his international debut. He had contrasting fortunes in the long and the shorter format of the game. While he straightaway made a name for himself in Test cricket, he had to struggle quite a bit to make a mark in ODIs.
After a successful Test debut in England, Dravid played in the one-off Test against Australia in Delhi – his first Test in India. Batting at no. 6, he scored 40 runs in the first innings. Dravid batted at no. 3 position for the first time in the First Test of the three-match home series against South Africa in Ahmedabad in November 1996. He didn't do too well in the series scoring just 175 runs at a modest average of 29.16.
Two weeks later, India toured South Africa for a three–match Test series. Chasing a target of 395 runs in the First Test, Indian team bundled out meekly for 66 runs on the Durban pitch that provided excessive bounce and seam movement. Dravid, batting at no. 6, was the only Indian batsman who reached double figures in the innings scoring 27 not out. He was promoted to the no. 3 slot again in the second innings of the Second Test, a move that paid rich dividends in the ensuing Test. He almost won the Third Test for India with his maiden test hundred in the first innings scoring 148 runs and another 81 runs in the second innings at Wanderers before the thunderstorms, dim light and Cullinan's hundred saved the day for South Africa enabling them to draw the match. Dravid's performance in this Test earned him his first Man of the Match award in Test cricket. He top scored for India in the series with 277 runs at an average of 55.40.
Dravid continued in the same vein in the West Indies where he once again top scored for India in the five–match Test series aggregating 360 runs at an average of 72.00 including four fifties. 92 runs scored in the first innings of the fifth match in Georgetown earned him a joint Man of the Match award along with Shivnarine Chanderpaul. With this series, Dravid concluded a successful 1996/97 Test season, topping the international runs chart with 852 runs from 12 matches at an average of 50.11 with six fifties and one hundred.
Dravid continued his good run scoring seven fifties in the next eight Tests that included fifties in six consecutive innings (three each against Sri Lanka and Australia), becoming only the second Indian to do so after Gundappa Vishwanath. By the end of 1997/98 Test season, he had scored 15 fifties in 22 Tests which included four scores of nineties but just a solitary hundred.
The century drought came to an end in the 1998/99 Test season when he further raised the bar of his performance scoring 752 runs in seven Tests at an average of 62.66 that included four hundreds and one fifty and in the process topping the runs chart for India for the season. The first of those four hundreds came on the Zimbabwe tour. Dravid top scored in both the innings against Zimbabwe scoring 118 and 44 runs respectively however, India lost the one-off Test.
The Zimbabwe tour was followed by a tour to New Zealand. First Test having been abandoned without a ball being bowled, the series started for Dravid with the first duck of his Test career in the first innings of the Second Test and ended with hundreds in both the innings of the Third Test in Hamilton. He scored 190 and 103 not out in the first and the second innings respectively, becoming only the third Indian batsman, after Vijay Hazare and Sunil Gavaskar, to score a century in both innings of a Test match. Dravid topped the runs table for the series with 321 runs from two matches at an average of 107.00 but could not prevent India from losing the series 0–1.
Later that month, India played a two Test home series against Pakistan. Dravid didn't contribute much with the bat. India lost the First Test but won the Second Test in Delhi riding on Kumble's historic 10-wicket haul. Dravid played his part in the 10-wicket haul by taking a catch to dismiss Mushtaq Ahmed who was Kumble's eighth victim of the innings. The Indo-Pak Test series was followed by the 1998–99 Asian Test Championship. Dravid couldn't do much with the bat as India went on to lose the riot-affected First Test of the championship against Pakistan at the Eden Gardens. India went to Sri Lanka to play the Second Test of the championship. Dravid scored his fourth hundred of the season at Colombo in the first innings of the match. He also effected a brilliant run out of Russel Arnold during Sri Lankan innings fielding at short leg. On the fourth morning, Dravid got injured while fielding at the same position when the ball from Jayawardene's pull shot hit his face through the helmet grill. He didn't come out to bat in the second innings due to the injury. The match ended in a draw as India failed to qualify for the Finals of the championship.
In a stark contrast to his Test career, Dravid had to struggle a lot to make a mark in the ODIs. Between his ODI debut in April 1996 and the end of 1998 calendar year, Dravid regularly found himself in and out of the ODI team.
Dravid tasted first success of his ODI career in the 1996 'Friendship' Cup against Pakistan in the tough conditions of Toronto. He emerged as the highest scorer of the series with 220 runs in five matches at an average of 44.00 and a strike rate of 68.53. He won his first ODI Man of the Match award for the 46 runs scored in the low scoring third game of the series. He top scored for India in the Standard Bank International One-Day Series 1996/97 in South Africa with 280 runs from eight games at an average of 35.00 and a strike rate of 60.73, the highlight being a Man of the Match award-winning performance (84 runs, one catch) in the Final of the series that came in a losing cause. He was the second highest run scorer for India in the four-match bilateral ODI series in the West Indies in 1996/97 with 121 runs at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 57.61. Dravid's maiden ODI hundred came in a losing cause in the 1997 Pepsi Independence Cup against Pakistan in Chennai. Dravid top scored for India in the quadrangular event with 189 runs from three games at an average of 94.50 and a strike rate of 75.60 however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the series.
However, Dravid's achievements in the ODIs were dwarfed by his failures in the shorter format of the game. 14 runs from two games in the 1996 Pepsi Sharjah Cup; 20 runs from two innings in the Singer World Series; 65 runs from four innings in the 1997 'Friendship' Cup; 88 runs from four games in the 1998 Coca-Cola Triangular Series including a 22-ball five runs and a 21-ball one run innings, both coming against Bangladesh; 32 runs from four games in the 1998 'Friendship' Cup; a slew of such poor performances often forced him to the sidelines of the India ODI squad. By the end of 1998, Dravid had scored 1709 runs in 65 ODIs at a humble average of 31.64 with a poor strike rate of 63.48.
By now, Dravid had been branded as a Test specialist. While he continued to score heavily in Test cricket, his poor strike rate in ODIs came under scanner. He drew criticism for not being able to adjust his style of play to the needs of ODI cricket, his lack of attacking capability and play big strokes. However, Dravid worked hard and re-tooled his game by increasing his range of strokes and adapting his batting style to suit the requirements of ODI cricket. He learned to pace his innings cleverly without going for the slogs.
Dravid's ODI renaissance began during the 1998/99 New Zealand tour. He scored a run-a-ball hundred in the first match of the bilateral ODI series that earned him his third Man of the Match award in ODIs. The hundred came in a losing cause. However, his effort of 51 runs from 71 balls in the Fourth ODI came in India's victory and earned him his second Man of the Match award of the series. He ended as the top scorer of the series with 309 runs from five games at an average of 77.25 and a strike rate of 84.65. Dravid scored a hundred against Sri Lanka in 1998/99 Pepsi Cup at Nagpur adding a record 236 runs for the 2nd wicket with Ganguly, who also scored a hundred in the match. Uncharacteristically, Dravid was the faster of the two scoring 116 of 118 deliveries. In the next match against Pakistan, he bowled four overs and took the wicket of Saeed Anwar, out caught behind by wicket-keeper Nayan Mongia. This was his first wicket in international cricket.
Dravid warmed up for his debut World Cup with two fifties in the 1998–99 Coca-Cola Cup in Sharjah, one each against England and Pakistan. Standing-in as the substitute wicket-keeper in the third match of the series for Nayan Mongia, who got injured during keeping, Dravid effected two dismissals. He first stumped Graeme Hick off Sunil Joshi's bowling, who became Dravid's first victim as a wicket-keeper, and then caught Neil Fairbrother off Ajay Jadeja's bowling. He top scored for India in the tournament, though his last ODI innings before the World Cup was a golden duck against Pakistan, in the Final of the series.
Debut World Cup success
Dravid announced his form in England hitting consecutive fifties against Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire in the warm-up games.
He made his World Cup debut against South Africa at Hove striking a half century, but scored just 13 in the next game against Zimbabwe. India lost both the games. Having lost the first two games, India needed to win the remaining three games of the first round to have any chance of advancing into the Super Six stage. Dravid put up a partnership of 237 runs with Sachin Tendulkar against Kenya at Bristol – a World Cup record – and in the process hit his maiden World Cup hundred, helping India to a 94-run victory. India's designated keeper Mongia left the field at the end of 9th over during Kenyan innings, forcing Dravid to keep the wickets for the rest of the innings. In the absence of injured Nayan Mongia, Dravid played his first ODI as a designated keeper against Sri Lanka at Taunton. Dravid once again staged a record breaking partnership worth 318 runs – the first ever three hundred run partnership in ODI history – but this time with Sourav Ganguly, guiding India to a 157-run win. Dravid scored 145 runs from 129 balls with 17 fours and a six, becoming the second batsman in World Cup history to hit back-to-back hundreds. Dravid struck a fine fifty in the last group match as India defeated England to advance into the Super Six stage. Dravid scored 2, 61 & 29 in the three Super Six matches against Australia, Pakistan & New Zealand respectively. India failed to qualify for the semi-finals having lost to Australia and New Zealand but achieved a consolation victory against Pakistan in a tense game, what with the military conflict going on between the two countries in Kashmir at the same time. Dravid emerged as the top scorer of the tournament with 461 runs from 8 games at an average of 65.85 and a strike rate of 85.52.
Dravid's post-World Cup campaign started on a poor note with just 40 runs coming in 4 games of Aiwa Cup in August 1999. He soon came into his own, top-scoring for India in two consecutive limited-overs series – the Singapore Challenge, the highlight being a hundred in the Final coming in a lost cause, and the DMC Cup, the highlight being a match winning effort (77 runs, 4 catches) in the series decider for which he received man-of-the-match award. Dravid topped the international runs chart for 1999 cricket season across all formats scoring 782 runs from 19 matches. By now, Dravid had started to keep wickets on an infrequent basis with India fielding him as designated wicket-keeper in five out of 10 ODIs played in the three events.
Dravid kick-started his post World Cup Test season with a decent outing against New Zealand in the 3-match home series. His best effort of the series came in the second innings of the First test at Mohali scoring 144, helping India salvage a draw after being bowled out for 83 runs in the First innings. This was Dravid's sixth test hundred but his first test hundred on Indian soil. Dravid did well in the 3–2 series win against New Zealand in the bilateral ODI series, scoring 240 runs in 5 games at an average of 60 and a strike rate of 83.62, ending as the second highest scorer in the series. His career best effort in ODIs came in this series in the second game at Hyderabad where he scored run-a-ball 153 runs which included 15 fours and two sixes. He featured in a 331-run partnership with Tendulkar, which was the highest partnership in ODI cricket history, a record that stood for 15 years until it was broken in 2015. In 1999, Dravid scored 1761 runs in 43 ODIs at an average of 46.34 and a strike rate of 75.16 including 6 hundreds and 8 fifties and featured in two 300+ partnerships.
India toured Australia in December 1999 for a 3-match test series and a triangular ODI tournament. Although Dravid scored a hundred against Tasmania in the practice match, he failed miserably with the bat in the Test series as India slumped to a 0–3 whitewash. He did reasonably well in the 1999–2000 Carlton & United Series scoring 3 fifties in the triangular event however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the tournament.
Dravid's poor form in Tests continued as India suffered a 0–2 whitewash against South Africa in a home series. He had moderate success in the bilateral ODI series against South Africa. He contributed to India's 3–2 series win with 208 runs at an average of 41.60 which included 2 fifties and three wickets at an average of 22.66 topping the bowling average chart for the series. His career best bowling figure of 2/43 from nine overs in the First ODI at Kochi, was also the best bowling figure by any bowler in that particular match.
Rise through the ranks
In February 2000, Tendulkar's resignation from captaincy led to the promotion of Ganguly, the vice-captain then, as the new captain of the Indian team. In May 2000, while Dravid was busy playing county cricket in England, he was appointed as the vice-captain of the Indian team announced for the Asia cup.
India did well in the 2000 ICC KnockOut Trophy. Indian team, coming out of the shadows of the infamous match fixing scandal, showed a lot of character under the new leadership of Ganguly and Dravid, beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid scored 157 runs in 4 matches of the tournament, at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid scored 85 runs in a match against Zimbabwe in the 2000–01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy while opening the innings but was forced to miss the rest of the tournament because of an injury.
India kick started the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk knock of 41 runs from 49 balls, including 5 fours and a six, while chasing a target of 63 runs. The ensuing test series against Zimbabwe was John Wright's first assignment as Indian coach. Dravid, who was instrumental in Wright's appointment as India's first foreign head coach, welcomed him with his maiden double hundred. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second, guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 – highest batting average by an Indian in a series across all formats.
Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the fifth match of the bilateral ODI series against Zimbabwe in the absence of Ganguly who was serving suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39-run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain.
History at Eden
The Australian team toured India in February 2001 for what was being billed as the Final Frontier for Steve Waugh's all conquering men, who were coming on the back of 15 consecutive Test wins. Dravid failed in the first innings of the First Test but displayed strong resilience in Tendulkar's company in the second innings. Dravid's 196 ball long resistance finally ended when he got out bowled to Warne for 39 runs. Australians extended their winning streak to 16 Tests as they beat India convincingly by 10 wickets inside three days.
The Australian juggernaut seemed unstoppable as they looked on course towards their 17th consecutive victory in the Second Test at the Eden Gardens, when they bowled India out for meagre 171 in the first innings and enforced a follow-on after securing a massive lead of 274 runs. In the second innings, Laxman, who had scored a fine fifty in the first innings, was promoted to no. 3 position which had been Dravid's usual spot for quite sometime now, while Dravid, who had gotten out bowled to Warne for second time in a row in the first innings for just 25 runs, was relegated to no. 6 position. When Dravid joined Laxman in the middle on the third day of the Test, with scoreboard reading 232/4 and India still needing 42 runs to avoid an innings defeat, another convincing win for Australia looked inevitable. Instead, two of them staged one of the greatest fightbacks in cricketing history.
Dravid and Laxman played out the remaining time on the third day and whole of the fourth day, denying Australia any wicket on Day 4. Dravid, angered by the flak that the Indian team had been receiving lately in the media coverage, celebrated his hundred in an uncharacteristic fashion brandishing his bat at the press box. Eventually, Laxman got out on the fifth morning bringing the 376-runs partnership to an end. Dravid soon perished getting run out for 180 while trying to force the pace. Ganguly declared the innings at 657/7, setting Australia a target of 384 runs with 75 overs left in the match. An inspired team India bowled superbly to dismiss Australia for 212 in 68.3 overs. India won the match by 171 runs. This was only the third instance of a team winning a Test after following-on and India became the 2nd team to do so.
Dravid scored 81 runs in the first innings of the Third Test and took 4 catches in the match as India defeated Australia at Chennai in a nail biting finish to clinch the series 2–1. Dravid scored 80 in the first of the 5-match ODI series at his home ground as India won the match by 60 runs. He didn't do too well in the remaining 4 ODIs as Australia won the series 3–2. Dravid topped the averages for the 2000/01 Test season with 839 runs from six matches at an average of 104.87.
Dravid had a decent outing in Zimbabwe, scoring 137 runs from 134 balls in the First Tour game and aggregating 138 runs at an average of 69.00 from the drawn Test series. In the ensuing triangular ODI series, he aggregated 121 runs from 5 matches at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 101.68, the highlight being an unbeaten 72 off 64 balls, while chasing a target of 235 against Zimbabwe in the 3rd match of the series, guiding India to a 4-wicket win with four balls to spare. He was adjudged man of the match for his match winning knock.
On the next tour to Sri Lanka, India lost the first three matches of the triangular event. In the absence of suspended Ganguly, Dravid captained the side in the 4th match leading them to their first victory of the series. India won the next two matches to qualify for the Final. Dravid played crucial innings in all the three victories. Eventually, India lost the Final to Sri Lanka. He top scored for India in the series with 259 runs from seven matches at an average of 51.80 and a strike rate of 59.81. Reinstated to his usual no. 3 position in the absence of injured Laxman, Dravid top scored for India in the ensuing 3-Test series as well with 235 runs at an average of 47.00. The highlight for Dravid was 75 runs scored in the tough fourth innings chase of the Second Test – a crucial contribution to India's first Test win in Sri Lanka since 1993 despite the absence of key players like Tendulkar, Laxman, Srinath and Kumble.
Dravid had decent success in Standard Bank tri-series on South Africa tour, scoring 214 runs (including 3 fifties) at an average of 53.50 and a strike rate of 71.81. He also kept wickets in the final two ODIs of the series effecting 3 stumpings. The highlight for Dravid in the ensuing Test series came in the second innings of the Second Test. India, having failed to last hundred overs in any of the previous three innings in the series, needed to bat out four sessions in the Second Test to save the match. They started on a poor note losing their first wicket in the first over with no runs on the scoreboard. However, Dravid forged an important partnership of 171 runs with Dasgupta that lasted for 83.2 overs taking India to the brink of safety. Poor weather helped India salvage a draw as only 96.2 overs could be bowled in the innings. Dravid captained the team in the 'unofficial' Third test in the absence of injured Ganguly, which India lost by an innings margin.
By the end of the South African tour, Dravid had started experiencing problem in his right shoulder. Although he played the ensuing home test series against England, he pulled out of the six-match bilateral ODI series to undergo shoulder rehabilitation program in South Africa. He returned for the Zimbabwe's tour of India but performed below par, scoring a fifty each in the Test series and the bilateral ODI series.
2002–2006: Peak years
Dravid hit the peak form of his career in 2002. Between Season 2002 and Season 2006, Dravid was the second highest scorer overall and top scorer for India across formats, scoring 8,914 runs from 174 matches at an average of 54.02, including 19 hundreds.
Dravid had a decent outing in West Indies in 2002. The highlights for him included – hitting a hundred with a swollen jaw and helping India avoid the follow-on in the process at Georgetown in the drawn First Test; contributing with a fifty and four catches to India's victory in the Second Test at Port of Spain – India's first Test victory in West Indies since 1975–76; and another fifty in the drawn Fourth Test with a wicket to boot – that of Ridley Jacobs who was batting on 118. This was Dravid's only wicket in Test cricket. He played as India's designated keeper in the ODI series but didn't contribute much with the bat in the 2–1 series win.
A quartet of hundreds
India's tour of England in 2002 started with a triangular ODI event involving India, England and Sri Lanka. India emerged as the winners of the series beating England in the Final – their first victory after nine consecutive defeats in one-day finals. Dravid played as designated keeper in six out of seven matches effecting nine dismissals (6 catches, 3 stumpings) – most by a keeper in the series. He also did well with the bat aggregating 245 runs at an average of 49.00 including three fifties. His performance against Sri Lanka in fourth ODI (64 runs, 1 catch) earned him a man of the match award.
India lost the first of the four match Test series. Having conceded a 260 runs lead in the first innings of the Second Test at Nottingham, Indians were in a spot of bother. However, Dravid led the fightback in the second innings with a hundred as Indians managed to earn a draw.
Ganguly won the toss in the Third Test and took a bold decision to bat first on a gloomy overcast morning at Headingley on a pitch known to be traditionally conducive for fast and swing bowling. Having lost an early wicket, Dravid weathered the storm in company of Sanjay Bangar. They played cautiously, taking body blows on a pitch with uneven bounce. Dravid completed his second hundred of the series in the process. As the conditions became more and more conducive for batting, the Indian batsmen piled on England's misery. Indians declared the innings on 628/8 and then bowled England out twice to register their first test victory in England since 1986. Despite being outscored by Tendulkar, Dravid was awarded man of the match for his efforts. Dravid scored a double hundred in the drawn Fourth Test to notch up his second consecutive man of the match award of the series. Christopher Martin-Jenkins noted during the Fourth Test: Dravid aggregated 602 runs in the series from four matches at an average of 100.33, including three hundreds and a fifty and was adjudged joint man of the series along with Michael Vaughan.
India jointly shared the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka. Dravid contributed to India's successful campaign with 120 runs at an average of 60.00 and five dismissals behind the wicket. Dravid scored a hundred in the First Test of the three match home series against West Indies becoming the first Indian batsman to score hundreds in four consecutive Test innings but had to retire soon after owing to severe cramps. Dravid did well in the subsequent bilateral 7-match ODI series aggregating 300 runs at an average of 75.00 and a strike rate of 89.82 including one hundred and two fifties. He also effected 7 dismissals (6 catches, 1 stumping) in the series. India trailing 1–2, needed 325 runs to win the Fourth ODI and level the series. Dravid scored a hundred leading India to a successful chase. He once again scored a crucial fifty in the Sixth ODI as India once again leveled the series after trailing 2–3. India, however, lost the last match to lose the series 3–4.
Dravid top scored for India in the two-match Test series in New Zealand as India slumped to a whitewash. He played as designated keeper in six of the 7-match bilateral ODI series and effected seven dismissals but fared poorly with the bat as India were handed a 2-5 drubbing by the New Zealand.
2003 Cricket World Cup
Dravid arrived in South Africa with the Indian squad to participate in the 2003 Cricket World Cup in the capacity of first-choice keeper-batsman as part of their seven batsmen-four bowlers strategy – an experiment that had brought success to the team in the past year. The idea was that making Dravid keep wickets allowed India to accommodate an extra specialist batsman. The strategy worked out well for India in the World Cup. India recovered from a less than convincing victory against minnows Netherlands and a loss to Australia in the league stage and embarked on a dream run winning eight consecutive matches to qualify for the World Cup Finals for the first time since 1983. India eventually lost the Final to Australia ending as runner-up in the tournament. Dravid contributed to India's campaign with 318 runs at an average of 63.60 and 16 dismissals (15 catches, 1 stumping). Highlights for Dravid in the tournament included a fifty against England, 44 not out against Pakistan in a successful chase and an unbeaten fifty in another successful chase against New Zealand.
Dravid topped the international runs chart for 2003/04 cricket season across formats aggregating 1993 runs from 31 matches at an average of 64.29 including three double hundreds. First of those came against New Zealand in the first of the two-test home series at Ahmedabad. Dravid scored 222 runs in the first innings and 73 runs in the second innings receiving a man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid captained Indian Test Team for the first time in the second game of the series at Mohali in the absence of Ganguly. Both the matches ended in a draw. Dravid top scored in the series with 313 runs at an average of 78.25. India next participated in TVS cup alongside New Zealand and Australia. India lost to Australia in the Final. Dravid scored two fifties in the series but the highlight was his fifty against New Zealand in the ninth match that came in just 22 balls – second fastest fifty by an Indian.
An Eden encore
After earning a draw in the first of the four-match Test series in Australia, Indians found themselves reeling at 85/4 in the Second Test at Adelaide after Australia had piled 556 runs in the first innings when Laxman joined Dravid in the middle. They batted for 93.5 overs bringing about their second 300-run partnership adding 303 runs together before Laxman perished for 148 runs. However, Dravid continued to complete his second double hundred of the season. He was the last man out for 233 runs as India conceded a marginal first innings lead of 33 runs to Australia. India bowled Australia out for paltry score of 196 riding on Agarkar's six-wicket haul, and were set a target of 230 runs to win the match. Dravid helped India tread through a tricky chase with an unbeaten fifty as India registered their first test victory in Australia since 1980/81 to go up 1–0 in the series. This was the first time that Australians were 0-1 down in a home series since 1994. Dravid won the man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid registered a score of ninety each in the next two tests as Australia leveled the series 1–1. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 619 runs at an average of 123.80 and was awarded player of the series for his efforts.
Dravid did moderately well in the ensuing VB series with three fifties in the league stage, all of which came in winning cause. However, India lost the best-of-three finals to Australia 2–0. Dravid was fined half his match fee for applying cough lozenge on the ball during a match in the series against Zimbabwe – an act that was claimed to be an innocent mistake by coach John Wright.
India visited Pakistan in March 2004 to participate in a bilateral Test series for the first time since 1989/90. Prior to the Test series, India participated and won the 5-match ODI series 3–2. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 248 runs at an average of 62.00 and a strike rate of 73.59. Dravid scored 99 runs in the First ODI helping India post an imposing total of 349. He also took the important catch of threatening Inzamam-ul-Haq, who was batting on 122, as India went on to win the match by five runs. When Indians were trailing in the series 1–2, Dravid helped India level the series with an unbeaten fifty during a successful chase in the Fourth ODI.
Captaincy
Dravid captained India in the first two tests in the absence of injured Ganguly and led India to their first-ever Test victory in Pakistan. Dravid, standing in only his second test as team's captain, took a bold and controversial decision during First Test at Multan that divided the cricket fraternity. Pakistani cricketers had been on field for 150+ overs as India posted a total in excess of 600 runs in the first innings. Dravid, who wanted to have a crack at the tired Pakistani batsmen in the final hour of second day's play, declared Indian innings with Tendulkar batting at 194, just six runs short of his double century. While some praised the team before personal milestones approach of the Indian captain, most criticized Dravid's timing of declaration as there were no pressing concerns and there was ample time left in the match to try and bowl Pakistan out twice. While Tendulkar was admittedly disappointed, any rumours of rift between him and Dravid were quashed by both the cricketers and the team management, who claimed that the matter had been discussed and sorted amicably behind closed doors. India eventually went on to win the match by innings margin. Pakistan leveled the series beating India in the Second Test. Dravid slammed a double hundred in the Third Test at Rawalpindi – his third double hundred of the season. He scored 270 runs – his career best performance – before getting out to reverse sweep trying to force the pace. India went on to win the match and the series – their first series victory outside India since 1993. Dravid was adjudged man of the match for his effort.
Dravid was appointed the captain for the Indian team for 2007 World Cup, where India had an unsuccessful campaign.
During India's unsuccessful tour of England in 2011, in which their 4–0 loss cost them the top rank in Test cricket, Dravid made three centuries.
2011 Tour of England
Having regained his form on the tour to West Indies, where he scored a match-winning hundred in Sabina park, Jamaica, Dravid then toured England in what was billed as the series which would decide the World No. 1 ranking in tests.
In the first test at Lord's, in reply to England's 474, Dravid scored an unbeaten 103, his first hundred at the ground where he debuted in 1996. He received scant support from his teammates as India were bowled out for 286 and lost the test. The 2nd test at Trentbridge, Nottingham again saw Dravid in brilliant form. Sent out to open the batting in place of an injured Gautam Gambhir, he scored his second successive hundred. His 117 though, again came in a losing cause, as a collapse of 6 wickets for 21 runs in the first innings led to a massive defeat by 319 runs. Dravid failed in both innings in the third test at Birmingham, as India lost by an innings and 242 runs, one of the heaviest defeats in their history. However, he came back brilliantly in the fourth and final match at The Oval. Again opening the batting in place of Gambhir, he scored an unbeaten 146 out of India's total of 300, carrying his bat through the innings. Once again, though, his efforts were in vain as India lost the match, completing a 0–4 whitewash.
In all, he scored 461 runs in the four matches at an average of 76.83 with three hundreds. He accounted for over 26% of India's runs in the series and was named India's man of the series by England coach Andy Flower. His performance in the series was met with widespread admiration and was hailed by some as one of his finest ever series
Retirement
Rahul Dravid was dropped from the ODI team in 2009, but was selected again for an ODI series in England in 2011, surprising even Dravid himself since, although he had not officially retired from ODI cricket, he had not expected to be recalled. After being selected, he announced that he would retire from ODI cricket after the series. He played his last ODI innings against England at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, on 16 September 2011, scoring 69 runs from 79 balls before being bowled by Graeme Swann. His last limited-overs international match was his debut T20I match; he announced his retirement before playing his first T20I match.
Dravid announced his retirement from Test and domestic cricket on 9 March 2012, after the 2011–12 tour of Australia, but he said that he would captain the Rajasthan Royals in the 2012 Indian Premier League. He was the second-highest run scorer and had taken the highest number of catches in Test cricket at the time of his retirement.
In July 2014, he played for the MCC side in the Bicentenary Celebration match at Lord's.
Coaching
Towards the end of his playing career, Dravid took on a role as mentor of the Rajasthan Royals IPL team, officially taking over in 2014. During this time, he also became involved with the Indian national team, serving as mentor for the team's tour of England in 2014. After leading the Royals to a third-place finish in the 2015 IPL season, he was appointed as the head coach of the India U-19 and India A teams. Dravid achieved immense success as coach, with the U-19s reaching the finals of the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Two years later, the team went on to win the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup, beating Australia by 8 wickets to win their fourth Under-19 World Cup, the most by any national side. Dravid was credited with bringing up future national team players including Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan and Washington Sundar. Alongside his coaching roles, Dravid took on several mentor roles, including at the Delhi Daredevils IPL team.
In July 2019, following his four-year stint as coach of the junior teams, Dravid was appointed Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA). He was in charge of "overseeing all cricket related activities at NCA was involved in mentoring, coaching, training and motivating players, coaches and support staff at the NCA". As head of NCA, he was widely praised for developing a steady supply of talent to the senior team and revamping player fitness and rehabilitation regiments.
In November 2021, he was appointed as head coach of the Indian national cricket team.
County stint
Dravid had always been keen on further honing his batting skills in testing English conditions by playing in county cricket. He had discussed about the prospects regarding the same with John Wright, the former New Zealand cricketer and incumbent Kent coach, during India's 1998–99 tour of New Zealand. Wright was particularly impressed with Dravid's performance on that tour, especially his twin hundreds at Hamilton. The talks finally materialized and Dravid made his county debut for Kent in April 2000. His co-debutante Ganguly made his county debuted in the same match, albeit for the opposite team.
Kent offer had come as a welcome change for Dravid. There was too much negativity surrounding Indian cricket marred by match fixing controversy. Dravid himself had been struggling to score runs in Tests for quite some time now. The county stint gave him a chance to "get away to a new environment" and "relax". The wide variety of pitches and weather conditions in England and a full season of intense county cricket against professional cricketers gave him a chance to further his cricketing education and learn things about his game.
Dravid made the most of this opportunity. In his 2nd game for Kent, Dravid scored a fluid 182 propelling them to an innings and 163 runs victory over the touring Zimbabwe side. Out of 7 first class tour games that Zimbabwe played on that tour, Kent was the only team that managed to beat them. Dravid hit another fifty in a draw against Surrey. The newly appointed vice-captain had to leave the county championship temporarily, missing two championship games and two one day games, to fulfill his national commitment. Indian team, Dravid included, fared poorly in the Asia cup and failed to qualify for the Final. Subsequently, Dravid returned to England to resume his county sojourn with Kent.
In July 2000, Kent's away match against Hampshire at Portsmouth was billed as a showdown between two great cricketers- Warne and Dravid. Dravid came out on top. On a dustbowl, tailor-made to suit home team spinners, Warne took 4 wickets but could not take the all important wicket of Dravid. Coming in to bat at 15/2, Dravid faced 295 balls scoring 137 runs – his maiden hundred in county championships. Dravid scored 73 not out in the 2nd innings guiding Kent to a six wicket victory as Warne went wicketless.
In their last county game of the season, Kent needed one bonus point to prevent themselves from being relegated to the Second Division. Dravid made sure they stay put in the First Division by fetching that one bonus point with an inning of 77 runs.
Dravid concluded a successful stint with Kent aggregating 1221 runs from 16 first class matches(15 county games and 1 tour game against Zimbabwe) at an average of 55.50 including 2 hundreds and 8 fifties. He shouldered Kent's batting single-handedly as the second best Kent batsman during the same period, Paul Nixon, scored just 567 runs at an average of 33.35 in 17 matches. Dravid contributed to Kent's county campaign not just with the bat but also with his fielding and bowling taking 14 catches and 4 wickets at an average of 32.00.
Indian Premier League and Champions League
Rahul Dravid played for Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2008, 2009 and 2010. Later he played for Rajasthan Royals and led it to finals of Champions League T20 in 2013, and play-offs of Indian Premier League in 2013. Dravid announced retirement from Twenty20 after playing the 2013 Champions League Twenty20 in September–October 2013.
Playing style
Dravid was known for his technique, and has been one of the best batsmen for the Indian cricket team. In the beginning, he was known as a defensive batsman who should be confined to Test cricket, and was dropped from the ODI squad due to a low strike rate. However, he later scored consistently in ODIs as well, earning him the ICC Player of the Year award. His nickname of 'The Wall' in Reebok advertisements is now used as his nickname. Dravid has scored 36 centuries in Test cricket, with an average of 52.31; this included five double centuries. In one-dayers, he averaged 39.16, with a strike rate of 71.23. He is one of the few Indians whose Test average is better at away than at home, averaging almost five runs more on foreign pitches. As of 23 September 2010, Dravid's Test average in abroad is 55.53, and his Test average at home is 50.76; his ODI average abroad is 37.93 and his ODI average at home is 43.11. Dravid averages 66.34 runs in Indian Test victories. and 50.69 runs in ODIs.
Dravid's sole Test wicket was of Ridley Jacobs in the fourth Test match against the West Indies during the 2001–2002 series. While he has no pretensions to being a bowler, Dravid often kept wicket for India in ODIs.
Dravid was involved in two of the largest partnerships in ODIs: a 318-run partnership with Sourav Ganguly, the first pair to combine for a 300-run partnership, and then a 331-run partnership with Sachin Tendulkar, which is a world record. He also holds the record for the greatest number of innings played since debut before being dismissed for a duck. His highest scores in ODIs and Tests are 153 and 270 respectively.
He was named one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 2000. Though primarily a defensive batsman, Dravid scored 50 runs not out in 22 balls (a strike rate of 227.27) against New Zealand in Hyderabad on 15 November 2003, the second fastest 50 among Indian batsmen. Only Ajit Agarkar's 67 runs off 21 balls is faster than that of Dravid.
In 2004, Dravid was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India. On 7 September 2004, he was awarded the inaugural Player of the year award and the Test player of the year award by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
After reaching 10,000 Test runs milestone, he said, "It's a proud moment for sure. For me, growing up, I dreamt of playing for India. When I look back, I probably exceeded my expectations with what I have done over the last 10 to 12 years. I never had an ambition to do it because I never believed – it is just a reflection of my longevity in the game."
Dravid is also one of the two batsmen to score 10,000 runs at a single batting position and is the fourth highest run scorer in Test cricket, behind Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis.
Controversies
Ball-tampering incident
In January 2004, Dravid was found guilty of ball tampering during an ODI with Zimbabwe. Match referee Clive Lloyd adjudged the application of an energy sweet to the ball as a deliberate offence, although Dravid himself denied this was his intent. Lloyd emphasised that television footage caught Dravid putting a lozenge on the ball during the Zimbabwean innings on Tuesday night at the Gabba. According to the ICC's Code of Conduct, players are not allowed to apply substances to the ball other than sweat and saliva. Dravid was fined half of his match fee.
Indian coach John Wright came out in defence of Dravid, stating that "It was an innocent mistake". Wright argued that Dravid had been trying to apply saliva to the ball when parts of a losenge he had been chewing stuck to the ball; Dravid then tried to wipe it off. ICC regulations prevented Dravid from commenting about the issue, but former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly also stated that Dravid's act was "just an accident".
Captaincy
Rahul Dravid has had a mixed record when leading India in Tests.
One of Dravid's most debated decisions was taken in March 2004, when he was standing in as the captain for injured Sourav Ganguly. India's first innings was declared at a point when Sachin Tendulkar was at 194 runs not out with 16 overs remaining on Day 2. In this test match Sehwag scored triple century first time. He became the first Indian to score triple century in test with a score of 309.
In March 2006, India lost the Mumbai Test, giving England its first Test victory in India since 1985, enabling it to draw the series 1–1. The defeat in Mumbai was arguably the result of Dravid's decision to bowl first on a flat dry pitch, which later deteriorated and ended with an Indian collapse in the run chase. Coincidentally, it was Dravid's 100th test match in which the Indians were all out for 100 runs in the second innings.
After India failed to qualify for the final of the DLF Cup, Dravid, the skipper, was criticised by former all-rounder Ravi Shastri who said that he was not assertive enough and let Greg Chappell make too many decisions. When asked for a response, Dravid said that Shastri, while a 'fair critic', was 'not privy' to the internal decision-making process of the team.
He was criticised by Vijay Mallya for not picking the team with right balance after his then IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore finished seventh out of the eight teams that participated in the 2008 season.
Achievements and awards
National honours
1998 – Arjuna Award recipient for achievements in cricket
2004 – Padma Shri – India's fourth highest civilian award
2013 – Padma Bhushan – India's third highest civilian award
Other honours
1999 – CEAT International Cricketer of the World Cup
2000 – Dravid was one of the five cricketers selected as Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
2004 – ICC Cricketer of the year – Highest award in the ICC listings
2004 – ICC Test Player of The Year, ICC Cricketer of The Year
2004 – MTV Youth Icon of the Year
2006 – Captain of the ICC's Test Team
2011 – NDTV Indian of the Year's Lifetime Achievement Award with Dev Anand
2012 – Don Bradman Award with Glenn McGrath
2015 – Wisden India's Highest Impact Test Batsman
2018 – ICC Hall of Fame
Personal life
Family
On 4 May 2003 he married Vijeta Pendharkar, a surgeon from Nagpur. Vijeta Pendharkar is also from Deshastha Brahmin community as Dravid. They have two children: Samit, born in 2005, and Anvay, born in 2009. Dravid is fluent in Marathi, Hindi, Kannada and English.
Commercial endorsements
Rahul Dravid has been sponsored by several brands throughout his career including Reebok (1996 – present), Pepsi (1997 present), Kissan (Unknown), Castrol (2001 – present), Hutch
(2003), Karnataka Tourism (2004), Max Life (2005 – present), Bank of Baroda (2005 – present), Citizen (2006 – present), Skyline Construction (2006 – present), Sansui (2007), Gillette (2007 – present), Samsung (2002 – 2004), World Trade Center Noida (2013– present),
CRED (2021-present).
Social commitments
Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA)
UNICEF Supporter and AIDS Awareness Campaign
Biographies
Books
Two biographies have been written on Rahul Dravid and his career:
Rahul Dravid – A Biography written by Vedam Jaishankar (). Publisher: UBSPD Publications. Date: January 2004
The Nice Guy Who Finished First written by Devendra Prabhudesai. Publisher: Rupa Publications. Date: November 2005
A collection of articles, testimonials and interviews related to Dravid was released by ESPNcricinfo following his retirement. The book was titled Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel.
See also
Sachin Tendulkar
Sourav Ganguly
VVS Laxman
Virendra Sehwag
References
External links
Indian cricketers
India Test cricketers
India One Day International cricketers
India Twenty20 International cricketers
India Test cricket captains
Wisden Cricketers of the Year
Karnataka cricketers
South Zone cricketers
Kent cricketers
Scotland cricketers
ACC Asian XI One Day International cricketers
ICC World XI One Day International cricketers
World XI Test cricketers
Royal Challengers Bangalore cricketers
Canterbury cricketers
Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers
Rajasthan Royals cricketers
India Blue cricketers
Cricketers at the 1999 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2003 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2007 Cricket World Cup
Recipients of the Padma Shri in sports
1973 births
Living people
Cricketers from Indore
Cricketers from Bangalore
Recipients of the Arjuna Award
International Cricket Council Cricketer of the Year
Marathi people
Indian cricket coaches
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in sports
Indian cricket commentators
Wicket-keepers
| false |
[
"The 1980 Stanley Cup Finals was the championship series of the National Hockey League's (NHL) 1979–80 season, and the culmination of the 1980 Stanley Cup playoffs. It was contested by the New York Islanders in their first-ever Finals appearance and the Philadelphia Flyers, in their fourth Finals appearance, and first since 1976. The Islanders would win the best-of-seven series, four games to two, to win their first Stanley Cup championship and the third for a post-1967 expansion team after Philadelphia's Cup wins in 1974 and 1975.\n\nPaths to the Finals\n\nNew York defeated the Los Angeles Kings 3–1, the Boston Bruins 4–1 and the Buffalo Sabres 4–2 to advance to the Final.\n\nPhiladelphia defeated the Edmonton Oilers 3–0, the New York Rangers 4–1 and the Minnesota North Stars 4–1 to make it to the Final.\n\nGame summaries\nIn game one, Denis Potvin scored the first power-play overtime goal in Stanley Cup Final history. In game six, Bob Nystrom scored the Cup winner in overtime, his fourth career overtime goal, at the time putting him alone behind Maurice Richard's six on the all-time overtime goal-scoring list. Ken Morrow joined the team after winning the Olympic gold medal and added the Stanley Cup to cap a remarkable season.\n\nIn the United States, the first five games were syndicated by the Hughes Television Network. Hughes used CBC's Hockey Night in Canada feeds for the American coverage. game six was televised in the United States by the CBS network, as a special edition of its CBS Sports Spectacular anthology series. This would be the last NHL game to air on U.S. network television until 1990, when the All-Star Game was televised on NBC. As of 2015, it is also the last Stanley Cup Finals game to be played in the afternoon (earlier than 5:00 local time).\n\nThe deciding game six was marred by one of the most infamous blown official calls in NHL playoff history. With the game tied 1–1, the Islanders Butch Goring picked up a drop pass from New York left wing Clark Gillies which had clearly gone back over the Flyers' defensive zone blue line into center ice. Linesman Leon Stickle waved the play as on-side, and Goring threaded a pass to right wing Duane Sutter who beat Philadelphia goalie Pete Peeters for a 2-1 New York lead. The Flyers argued vehemently to no avail. Everyone on both sides except Goring and Sutter appeared to relax as if play had been blown dead once the puck went over the blue line. Flyers captain Mel Bridgman stated the play changed the momentum of the game at a critical time even though the Flyers scored shortly afterwards to tie the score 2-2. Stickle admitted after the game that he had blown the call. Ultimately, it was the Flyers lack of discipline and the resulting Islander Power Play goals that were the difference in the series. \n\nThe series-winning overtime goal in game six was scored by Bobby Nystrom and assisted by fellow third liners John Tonelli and Lorne Henning. Nystrom's redirection of Tonelli's cross-ice pass from just above the Flyers left side face-off circle, floated up and over goalie Pete Peeters' blocker before the Philadelphia keeper could slide over to stop the puck. Henning's \"thread the needle\" pass was a key component, of the goal.\n\nTeam rosters\n\nNew York Islanders\n\n|}\n\nPhiladelphia Flyers\n\n|}\n\nStanley Cup engraving\nThe 1980 Stanley Cup was presented to Islanders captain Denis Potvin by NHL President John Ziegler following the Islanders 5–4 win over the Flyers in game six.\n\nThe following Islanders players and staff had their names engraved on the Stanley Cup\n\n1979–80 New York Islanders\n\nBroadcasting\nBob Cole, Dan Kelly and Jim Robson shared play-by-play duties for CBC's coverage. Cole did play-by-play for the first half of Games 1 and 2. Meanwhile, Kelly did play-by-play for the rest of Games 1–4 (Kelly also called the overtime period of Game 1). Finally, Robson did play-by-play for first half of Games 3–4 and Game 6 entirely. In essence, this meant that Cole or Robson did play-by-play for the first period and the first half of the second period. Therefore, at the closest stoppage of play near the 10-minute mark of the second period, Cole or Robson handed off the call to Kelly for the rest of the game. However, the roles of Kelly and Robson switched for Game 5.\n\nIn the United States, the first five games were syndicated by the Hughes Television Network. Hughes used CBC's Hockey Night in Canada feeds for the American coverage. Game 6 was televised in the United States by the CBS network, as a special edition of its CBS Sports Spectacular anthology series. Dan Kelly did the play-by-play for CBS for the first and third periods as well as overtime. Tim Ryan did play-by-play for the second period while Lou Nanne served as the color commentator throughout. This would be the last NHL game to air on U.S. network television until 1990, when the All-Star Game was televised on NBC. As of 2021, it is also the last Stanley Cup Final game to be played in the afternoon (earlier than 5:00 local time).\n\nSee also\n 1980 NBA Finals\n 1980 World Series\n Super Bowl XV\n\nReferences\n\nNotes\n\nStanley Cup\nStanley Cup Finals\nNew York Islanders games\nPhiladelphia Flyers games\nMay 1980 sports events in the United States\nSports competitions in New York (state)\nSports competitions in Philadelphia\n1980 in sports in New York (state)\n1980 in sports in Pennsylvania\n1980s in Philadelphia\nFin",
"The Los Angeles Kings are a professional ice hockey team based in Los Angeles, California. They are members of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL). This is a list of players who have played at least one game for the Kings.\n\nKey\n Appeared in a Kings game during the 2019–20 NHL season or is still part of the organization.\n Stanley Cup winner, retired jersey or elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame\n\nThe \"Seasons\" column lists the first year of the season of the player's first game and the last year of the season of the player's last game. For example, a player who played one game in the 2000–2001 season would be listed as playing with the team from 2000 to 2001, regardless of what calendar year the game occurred within.\n\nStatistics complete as of the 2019–20 NHL season.\n\nGoaltenders\n\nSkaters\n\nStatistical notes\na: As of the 2005–2006 NHL season, all games will have a winner, teams losing in overtime and shootouts are awarded one point thus the OTL stat replacees the tie statistic. The OTL column also includes SOL (Shootout losses).\nb: Save percentage did not become an official NHL statistic until the 1982–83 season. Therefore, goaltenders who played before 1982 do not have official save percentages.\n\nPlayer notes\n1: Byron Dafoe was born in Sussex, England, but he grew up in British Columbia, Canada. However, he never represented Canada in international play. \n2: Yutaka Fukufuji is the first Japanese-born player in NHL history.\n3: Kevin Brown was born in Birmingham, England, but moved to Canada as a child. However, he never represented Canada in international play.\n4:Rick Chartraw was born in Caracas, Venezuela, but moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, at the age of four. Chartraw never represented the United States in international play.\n5: Adam Deadmarsh was born in Trail, British Columbia, but held dual citizenship and chose to represent the United States in international play.\n6: Randy Gilhen was born in Zweubruken, Germany but grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. However, Gilhen never represented Canada in international play.\n7: Mark Hardy was born in Samedan, Switzerland, but represented Canada internationally.\n8: Brady Murry was born in Brandon, Manitoba but represented the United States international.\n9: Jim Paek was born in South Korea and as a child immigrated to Canada, which he also represented in international play. Paek was the first South Korean to ever play in the NHL.\n10: Luc Robitaille served as captain for the first 39 games of the 1992–1993 season while Gretzky was out with an injury.\n11: John Tripp was born in Canada, but represents Germany internationally.\n\nReferences\nGeneral\n\nhockeydb.com\n\nSpecific\n\nLos Angeles Kings\n \nplayers"
] |
[
"Rahul Dravid",
"Golden years",
"What started his golden years",
"As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain,",
"Who was helping him",
"Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal.",
"What did he do",
"Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals.",
"What did he try",
"Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket.",
"What was his next challenge",
"Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe",
"What made this possible",
"opening the innings before getting injured while fielding at slips forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament.",
"What did he try next",
"India started off the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk inning of 49 ball 41 runs, including 5 fours and a six,",
"What did the last game he play in",
"However, Dravid's poor patch truly ended in the next Test series against Zimbabwe, which was also the first series for John Wright as the new Indian coach."
] |
C_52e2fff8b563440da632c6c90324029a_1
|
When did he end this
| 9 |
When did Rahul Dravid end his cricket career?
|
Rahul Dravid
|
As the new international season commenced, the first and foremost challenge for the newly appointed captain and vice-captain, Ganguly and Dravid, was to pull the team out of the shadows of the match fixing scandal. Indian team played 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy with vigour and showed a lot of character beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid played his part scoring 157 runs in 4 matches at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid played the first two matches of 2000-01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy and scored 85 runs in the 2nd match against Zimbabwe opening the innings before getting injured while fielding at slips forcing him to miss the rest of the tournament. India started off the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk inning of 49 ball 41 runs, including 5 fours and a six, chasing a target of 63 runs. However, Dravid's poor patch truly ended in the next Test series against Zimbabwe, which was also the first series for John Wright as the new Indian coach. Wright was instrumental in Dravid's association with Kent earlier this year. Dravid returned the favour by recommending his name to the BCCI for the post of national team coach. By now, Dravid had played 8 Tests since his last hundred against New Zealand at Mohali scoring just 350 runs at a paltry average of 23.33 without a single fifty plus inning. The Indian vice-captain ended the run drought and welcomed the new Indian coach with a double hundred - Dravid's first. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second inning guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 - highest batting average by an Indian in a Test series. Dravid scored just a solitary fifty in the second of the five match bilateral ODI series between India and Zimbabwe. However, the series proved to be a milestone in Dravid's career. Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the 5th match of the series as the regular captain Ganguly had to sit out due to one match suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39 run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain. CANNOTANSWER
|
Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39 run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain.
|
Rahul Sharad Dravid (; born 11 January 1973) is a former Indian cricketer and captain of the Indian national team, currently serving as its head coach. Prior to his appointment to the senior men's national team, Dravid was the Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), and the head coach of the India Under-19 and India A teams. Under his tutelage, the under-19 team finished runners up at the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup and won the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Known for his sound batting technique, Dravid scored 24,177 runs in international cricket and is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is colloquially known as Mr. Dependable and often referred to as The Wall.
Born in a Marathi family and raised in Bangalore, he started playing cricket at the age of 12 and later represented Karnataka at the under-15, under-17 and under-19 levels. Hailed as The Wall, Dravid was named one of the best five cricketers of the year by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 2000 and received the Player of the Year and the Test Player of the Year awards at the inaugural ICC awards ceremony in 2004. In December 2011, he became the first non-Australian cricketer to deliver the Bradman Oration in Canberra.
As of December 2016, Dravid is the fourth-highest run scorer in Test cricket, after Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis. In 2004, after completing his century against Bangladesh in Chittagong, he became the first player to score a century in all the ten Test-playing countries. As of October 2012, he holds the record for the most catches taken by a player (non-wicket-keeper) in Test cricket, with 210. Dravid holds a unique record of never getting out for a Golden duck in the 286 Test innings which he has played. He has faced 31258 balls, which is the highest number of balls faced by any player in test cricket. He has also spent 44152 minutes at the crease, which is the highest time spent on crease by any player in test cricket. Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar are currently the highest scoring partnership in Test cricket history having scored 6920 runs combined when batting together for India.
In August 2011, after receiving a surprise recall in the ODI series against England, Dravid declared his retirement from ODIs as well as Twenty20 International (T20I), and in March 2012, he announced his retirement from international and first-class cricket. He appeared in the 2012 Indian Premier League as captain of the Rajasthan Royals.
Rahul Dravid, along with Glenn McGrath were honoured during the seventh annual Bradman Awards function in Sydney on 1 November 2012. Dravid has also been honoured with the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan award, India's fourth and third highest civilian awards respectively.
In 2014, Rahul Dravid joined the GoSports Foundation, Bangalore as a member of their board of advisors. In collaboration with GoSports Foundation he is mentoring India's future Olympians and Paralympians as part of the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme. Indian badminton player Prannoy Kumar, Para-swimmer Sharath Gayakwad and young Golfer S. Chikkarangappa was part of the initial group of athletes to be mentored by Rahul Dravid. In July 2018, Dravid became the fifth Indian cricketer to be inducted into ICC Hall of Fame.
Early life
Dravid was born in a Marathi-Speaking Brahmin family in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. His family later moved to Bangalore, Karnataka, where he was raised. His mother tongue is Marathi. Dravid's father Sharad Dravid worked for a company that makes jams and preserves, giving rise to the later nickname Jammy. His mother, Pushpa, was a professor of architecture at the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bangalore. Dravid has a younger brother named Vijay. He did his schooling at St. Joseph's Boys High School, Bangalore and earned a degree in commerce from St. Joseph's College of Commerce, Bangalore. He was selected to India's national cricket team while working towards an MBA at St Joseph's College of Business Administration. He is fluent in several languages: Marathi, Kannada, English and Hindi.
Formative years and domestic career
Dravid started playing cricket at the age of 12, and represented Karnataka at the under-15, the under-17 and the under-19 levels. Former cricketer Keki Tarapore first noticed Dravid's talent while coaching at a summer camp in the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Dravid scored a century for his school team. He also played as wicket-keeper.
Dravid made his Ranji Trophy debut in February 1991, while still attending college. Playing alongside future India teammates Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath against Maharashtra in Pune, he scored 82 runs in the match, which ended in a draw. He followed it up with a century against Bengal and three successive centuries after. However, Dravid's first full season was in 1991–92, when he scored two centuries and finished up with 380 runs at an average of 63.30, getting selected for the South Zone cricket team in the Duleep Trophy. Dravid's caught the national team selectors' eye with his good performances for India A in the home series against England A in 1994–95.
International career
Debut
Dravid, who had been knocking at the doors of Indian national cricket team for quite a while with his consistent performance in domestic cricket, received his first national call in October 1994, for the last two matches of the Wills World Series. However, he could not break into the playing eleven. He went back to the domestic circuit and kept knocking harder. So much so, that when the selectors announced the Indian team for the 1996 World Cup sans Dravid, an Indian daily newspaper carried a headline – "Rahul Dravid gets a raw deal". Dravid eventually made his international debut on 3 April 1996 in an ODI against Sri Lanka in the Singer Cup held in Singapore immediately after the 1996 World Cup, replacing Vinod Kambli. He wasn't particularly impressive with the bat, scoring just three runs before being dismissed by Muttiah Muralitharan, but took two catches in the match. He followed it up with another failure in the next game scoring just four runs before getting run out against Pakistan.
In contrast to his ODI debut, his Test debut was rather successful one. Dravid was selected for the Indian squad touring England on the backdrop of a consistent performance in domestic cricket for five years. Fine performances in the tour games including fifties against Gloucestershire and Leicestershire failed to earn him a place in the team for the First Test. He finally made his Test debut at Lord's on 20 June 1996 against England in the Second Test of the series at the expense of injured senior batsman Sanjay Manjrekar. Manjrekar, who was suffering from an ankle injury, was to undergo a fitness test on the morning of the Second Test. Dravid had already been informed that he would play if Manjrekar fails the test. As Manjrekar failed the fitness test, ten minutes before the toss, Sandeep Patil, the then Indian coach, went up to Dravid to inform him that he was indeed going to make his debut that day. Patil recalled years later:
Coming in to bat at no. 7, he forged important partnerships, first with another debutante Sourav Ganguly and then with Indian lower order, securing a vital first innings lead for his team. Dravid scored 95 runs before getting out to the bowling of Chris Lewis. He was just five runs short of a landmark debut hundred when he nicked a Lewis delivery to the keeper and walked even before umpire's decision. He also took his first catch in Test cricket in this match to dismiss Nasser Hussain off the bowling of Srinath. In the next tour game against British Universities, Dravid scored a hundred. He scored another fifty in the first innings of the Third Test. Dravid concluded a successful debut series with an impressive average of 62.33 from two Test matches.
1996–98: A tale of two formats
Dravid's early years in international cricket mirrored his international debut. He had contrasting fortunes in the long and the shorter format of the game. While he straightaway made a name for himself in Test cricket, he had to struggle quite a bit to make a mark in ODIs.
After a successful Test debut in England, Dravid played in the one-off Test against Australia in Delhi – his first Test in India. Batting at no. 6, he scored 40 runs in the first innings. Dravid batted at no. 3 position for the first time in the First Test of the three-match home series against South Africa in Ahmedabad in November 1996. He didn't do too well in the series scoring just 175 runs at a modest average of 29.16.
Two weeks later, India toured South Africa for a three–match Test series. Chasing a target of 395 runs in the First Test, Indian team bundled out meekly for 66 runs on the Durban pitch that provided excessive bounce and seam movement. Dravid, batting at no. 6, was the only Indian batsman who reached double figures in the innings scoring 27 not out. He was promoted to the no. 3 slot again in the second innings of the Second Test, a move that paid rich dividends in the ensuing Test. He almost won the Third Test for India with his maiden test hundred in the first innings scoring 148 runs and another 81 runs in the second innings at Wanderers before the thunderstorms, dim light and Cullinan's hundred saved the day for South Africa enabling them to draw the match. Dravid's performance in this Test earned him his first Man of the Match award in Test cricket. He top scored for India in the series with 277 runs at an average of 55.40.
Dravid continued in the same vein in the West Indies where he once again top scored for India in the five–match Test series aggregating 360 runs at an average of 72.00 including four fifties. 92 runs scored in the first innings of the fifth match in Georgetown earned him a joint Man of the Match award along with Shivnarine Chanderpaul. With this series, Dravid concluded a successful 1996/97 Test season, topping the international runs chart with 852 runs from 12 matches at an average of 50.11 with six fifties and one hundred.
Dravid continued his good run scoring seven fifties in the next eight Tests that included fifties in six consecutive innings (three each against Sri Lanka and Australia), becoming only the second Indian to do so after Gundappa Vishwanath. By the end of 1997/98 Test season, he had scored 15 fifties in 22 Tests which included four scores of nineties but just a solitary hundred.
The century drought came to an end in the 1998/99 Test season when he further raised the bar of his performance scoring 752 runs in seven Tests at an average of 62.66 that included four hundreds and one fifty and in the process topping the runs chart for India for the season. The first of those four hundreds came on the Zimbabwe tour. Dravid top scored in both the innings against Zimbabwe scoring 118 and 44 runs respectively however, India lost the one-off Test.
The Zimbabwe tour was followed by a tour to New Zealand. First Test having been abandoned without a ball being bowled, the series started for Dravid with the first duck of his Test career in the first innings of the Second Test and ended with hundreds in both the innings of the Third Test in Hamilton. He scored 190 and 103 not out in the first and the second innings respectively, becoming only the third Indian batsman, after Vijay Hazare and Sunil Gavaskar, to score a century in both innings of a Test match. Dravid topped the runs table for the series with 321 runs from two matches at an average of 107.00 but could not prevent India from losing the series 0–1.
Later that month, India played a two Test home series against Pakistan. Dravid didn't contribute much with the bat. India lost the First Test but won the Second Test in Delhi riding on Kumble's historic 10-wicket haul. Dravid played his part in the 10-wicket haul by taking a catch to dismiss Mushtaq Ahmed who was Kumble's eighth victim of the innings. The Indo-Pak Test series was followed by the 1998–99 Asian Test Championship. Dravid couldn't do much with the bat as India went on to lose the riot-affected First Test of the championship against Pakistan at the Eden Gardens. India went to Sri Lanka to play the Second Test of the championship. Dravid scored his fourth hundred of the season at Colombo in the first innings of the match. He also effected a brilliant run out of Russel Arnold during Sri Lankan innings fielding at short leg. On the fourth morning, Dravid got injured while fielding at the same position when the ball from Jayawardene's pull shot hit his face through the helmet grill. He didn't come out to bat in the second innings due to the injury. The match ended in a draw as India failed to qualify for the Finals of the championship.
In a stark contrast to his Test career, Dravid had to struggle a lot to make a mark in the ODIs. Between his ODI debut in April 1996 and the end of 1998 calendar year, Dravid regularly found himself in and out of the ODI team.
Dravid tasted first success of his ODI career in the 1996 'Friendship' Cup against Pakistan in the tough conditions of Toronto. He emerged as the highest scorer of the series with 220 runs in five matches at an average of 44.00 and a strike rate of 68.53. He won his first ODI Man of the Match award for the 46 runs scored in the low scoring third game of the series. He top scored for India in the Standard Bank International One-Day Series 1996/97 in South Africa with 280 runs from eight games at an average of 35.00 and a strike rate of 60.73, the highlight being a Man of the Match award-winning performance (84 runs, one catch) in the Final of the series that came in a losing cause. He was the second highest run scorer for India in the four-match bilateral ODI series in the West Indies in 1996/97 with 121 runs at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 57.61. Dravid's maiden ODI hundred came in a losing cause in the 1997 Pepsi Independence Cup against Pakistan in Chennai. Dravid top scored for India in the quadrangular event with 189 runs from three games at an average of 94.50 and a strike rate of 75.60 however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the series.
However, Dravid's achievements in the ODIs were dwarfed by his failures in the shorter format of the game. 14 runs from two games in the 1996 Pepsi Sharjah Cup; 20 runs from two innings in the Singer World Series; 65 runs from four innings in the 1997 'Friendship' Cup; 88 runs from four games in the 1998 Coca-Cola Triangular Series including a 22-ball five runs and a 21-ball one run innings, both coming against Bangladesh; 32 runs from four games in the 1998 'Friendship' Cup; a slew of such poor performances often forced him to the sidelines of the India ODI squad. By the end of 1998, Dravid had scored 1709 runs in 65 ODIs at a humble average of 31.64 with a poor strike rate of 63.48.
By now, Dravid had been branded as a Test specialist. While he continued to score heavily in Test cricket, his poor strike rate in ODIs came under scanner. He drew criticism for not being able to adjust his style of play to the needs of ODI cricket, his lack of attacking capability and play big strokes. However, Dravid worked hard and re-tooled his game by increasing his range of strokes and adapting his batting style to suit the requirements of ODI cricket. He learned to pace his innings cleverly without going for the slogs.
Dravid's ODI renaissance began during the 1998/99 New Zealand tour. He scored a run-a-ball hundred in the first match of the bilateral ODI series that earned him his third Man of the Match award in ODIs. The hundred came in a losing cause. However, his effort of 51 runs from 71 balls in the Fourth ODI came in India's victory and earned him his second Man of the Match award of the series. He ended as the top scorer of the series with 309 runs from five games at an average of 77.25 and a strike rate of 84.65. Dravid scored a hundred against Sri Lanka in 1998/99 Pepsi Cup at Nagpur adding a record 236 runs for the 2nd wicket with Ganguly, who also scored a hundred in the match. Uncharacteristically, Dravid was the faster of the two scoring 116 of 118 deliveries. In the next match against Pakistan, he bowled four overs and took the wicket of Saeed Anwar, out caught behind by wicket-keeper Nayan Mongia. This was his first wicket in international cricket.
Dravid warmed up for his debut World Cup with two fifties in the 1998–99 Coca-Cola Cup in Sharjah, one each against England and Pakistan. Standing-in as the substitute wicket-keeper in the third match of the series for Nayan Mongia, who got injured during keeping, Dravid effected two dismissals. He first stumped Graeme Hick off Sunil Joshi's bowling, who became Dravid's first victim as a wicket-keeper, and then caught Neil Fairbrother off Ajay Jadeja's bowling. He top scored for India in the tournament, though his last ODI innings before the World Cup was a golden duck against Pakistan, in the Final of the series.
Debut World Cup success
Dravid announced his form in England hitting consecutive fifties against Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire in the warm-up games.
He made his World Cup debut against South Africa at Hove striking a half century, but scored just 13 in the next game against Zimbabwe. India lost both the games. Having lost the first two games, India needed to win the remaining three games of the first round to have any chance of advancing into the Super Six stage. Dravid put up a partnership of 237 runs with Sachin Tendulkar against Kenya at Bristol – a World Cup record – and in the process hit his maiden World Cup hundred, helping India to a 94-run victory. India's designated keeper Mongia left the field at the end of 9th over during Kenyan innings, forcing Dravid to keep the wickets for the rest of the innings. In the absence of injured Nayan Mongia, Dravid played his first ODI as a designated keeper against Sri Lanka at Taunton. Dravid once again staged a record breaking partnership worth 318 runs – the first ever three hundred run partnership in ODI history – but this time with Sourav Ganguly, guiding India to a 157-run win. Dravid scored 145 runs from 129 balls with 17 fours and a six, becoming the second batsman in World Cup history to hit back-to-back hundreds. Dravid struck a fine fifty in the last group match as India defeated England to advance into the Super Six stage. Dravid scored 2, 61 & 29 in the three Super Six matches against Australia, Pakistan & New Zealand respectively. India failed to qualify for the semi-finals having lost to Australia and New Zealand but achieved a consolation victory against Pakistan in a tense game, what with the military conflict going on between the two countries in Kashmir at the same time. Dravid emerged as the top scorer of the tournament with 461 runs from 8 games at an average of 65.85 and a strike rate of 85.52.
Dravid's post-World Cup campaign started on a poor note with just 40 runs coming in 4 games of Aiwa Cup in August 1999. He soon came into his own, top-scoring for India in two consecutive limited-overs series – the Singapore Challenge, the highlight being a hundred in the Final coming in a lost cause, and the DMC Cup, the highlight being a match winning effort (77 runs, 4 catches) in the series decider for which he received man-of-the-match award. Dravid topped the international runs chart for 1999 cricket season across all formats scoring 782 runs from 19 matches. By now, Dravid had started to keep wickets on an infrequent basis with India fielding him as designated wicket-keeper in five out of 10 ODIs played in the three events.
Dravid kick-started his post World Cup Test season with a decent outing against New Zealand in the 3-match home series. His best effort of the series came in the second innings of the First test at Mohali scoring 144, helping India salvage a draw after being bowled out for 83 runs in the First innings. This was Dravid's sixth test hundred but his first test hundred on Indian soil. Dravid did well in the 3–2 series win against New Zealand in the bilateral ODI series, scoring 240 runs in 5 games at an average of 60 and a strike rate of 83.62, ending as the second highest scorer in the series. His career best effort in ODIs came in this series in the second game at Hyderabad where he scored run-a-ball 153 runs which included 15 fours and two sixes. He featured in a 331-run partnership with Tendulkar, which was the highest partnership in ODI cricket history, a record that stood for 15 years until it was broken in 2015. In 1999, Dravid scored 1761 runs in 43 ODIs at an average of 46.34 and a strike rate of 75.16 including 6 hundreds and 8 fifties and featured in two 300+ partnerships.
India toured Australia in December 1999 for a 3-match test series and a triangular ODI tournament. Although Dravid scored a hundred against Tasmania in the practice match, he failed miserably with the bat in the Test series as India slumped to a 0–3 whitewash. He did reasonably well in the 1999–2000 Carlton & United Series scoring 3 fifties in the triangular event however, India failed to qualify for the Final of the tournament.
Dravid's poor form in Tests continued as India suffered a 0–2 whitewash against South Africa in a home series. He had moderate success in the bilateral ODI series against South Africa. He contributed to India's 3–2 series win with 208 runs at an average of 41.60 which included 2 fifties and three wickets at an average of 22.66 topping the bowling average chart for the series. His career best bowling figure of 2/43 from nine overs in the First ODI at Kochi, was also the best bowling figure by any bowler in that particular match.
Rise through the ranks
In February 2000, Tendulkar's resignation from captaincy led to the promotion of Ganguly, the vice-captain then, as the new captain of the Indian team. In May 2000, while Dravid was busy playing county cricket in England, he was appointed as the vice-captain of the Indian team announced for the Asia cup.
India did well in the 2000 ICC KnockOut Trophy. Indian team, coming out of the shadows of the infamous match fixing scandal, showed a lot of character under the new leadership of Ganguly and Dravid, beating Kenya, Australia and South Africa in consecutive matches to reach the Finals. Although India lost to New Zealand in the Finals, their spirited performance in the tournament helped restoring public faith back in Indian cricket. Dravid scored 157 runs in 4 matches of the tournament, at an average of 52.33, including 2 fifties. Dravid scored 85 runs in a match against Zimbabwe in the 2000–01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy while opening the innings but was forced to miss the rest of the tournament because of an injury.
India kick started the new Test season with a 9-wicket win against Bangladesh. Dravid played a brisk knock of 41 runs from 49 balls, including 5 fours and a six, while chasing a target of 63 runs. The ensuing test series against Zimbabwe was John Wright's first assignment as Indian coach. Dravid, who was instrumental in Wright's appointment as India's first foreign head coach, welcomed him with his maiden double hundred. He scored 200 not out in the first inning and 70 not out in the second, guiding India to a comfortable 9-wicket victory against Zimbabwe. He scored 162 in the drawn Second test to end the series with an average of 432.00 – highest batting average by an Indian in a series across all formats.
Dravid captained the Indian team for the first time in the fifth match of the bilateral ODI series against Zimbabwe in the absence of Ganguly who was serving suspension. Riding on Agarkar's all-round performance, Dravid led India to a 39-run victory in his maiden ODI as Indian captain.
History at Eden
The Australian team toured India in February 2001 for what was being billed as the Final Frontier for Steve Waugh's all conquering men, who were coming on the back of 15 consecutive Test wins. Dravid failed in the first innings of the First Test but displayed strong resilience in Tendulkar's company in the second innings. Dravid's 196 ball long resistance finally ended when he got out bowled to Warne for 39 runs. Australians extended their winning streak to 16 Tests as they beat India convincingly by 10 wickets inside three days.
The Australian juggernaut seemed unstoppable as they looked on course towards their 17th consecutive victory in the Second Test at the Eden Gardens, when they bowled India out for meagre 171 in the first innings and enforced a follow-on after securing a massive lead of 274 runs. In the second innings, Laxman, who had scored a fine fifty in the first innings, was promoted to no. 3 position which had been Dravid's usual spot for quite sometime now, while Dravid, who had gotten out bowled to Warne for second time in a row in the first innings for just 25 runs, was relegated to no. 6 position. When Dravid joined Laxman in the middle on the third day of the Test, with scoreboard reading 232/4 and India still needing 42 runs to avoid an innings defeat, another convincing win for Australia looked inevitable. Instead, two of them staged one of the greatest fightbacks in cricketing history.
Dravid and Laxman played out the remaining time on the third day and whole of the fourth day, denying Australia any wicket on Day 4. Dravid, angered by the flak that the Indian team had been receiving lately in the media coverage, celebrated his hundred in an uncharacteristic fashion brandishing his bat at the press box. Eventually, Laxman got out on the fifth morning bringing the 376-runs partnership to an end. Dravid soon perished getting run out for 180 while trying to force the pace. Ganguly declared the innings at 657/7, setting Australia a target of 384 runs with 75 overs left in the match. An inspired team India bowled superbly to dismiss Australia for 212 in 68.3 overs. India won the match by 171 runs. This was only the third instance of a team winning a Test after following-on and India became the 2nd team to do so.
Dravid scored 81 runs in the first innings of the Third Test and took 4 catches in the match as India defeated Australia at Chennai in a nail biting finish to clinch the series 2–1. Dravid scored 80 in the first of the 5-match ODI series at his home ground as India won the match by 60 runs. He didn't do too well in the remaining 4 ODIs as Australia won the series 3–2. Dravid topped the averages for the 2000/01 Test season with 839 runs from six matches at an average of 104.87.
Dravid had a decent outing in Zimbabwe, scoring 137 runs from 134 balls in the First Tour game and aggregating 138 runs at an average of 69.00 from the drawn Test series. In the ensuing triangular ODI series, he aggregated 121 runs from 5 matches at an average of 40.33 and a strike rate of 101.68, the highlight being an unbeaten 72 off 64 balls, while chasing a target of 235 against Zimbabwe in the 3rd match of the series, guiding India to a 4-wicket win with four balls to spare. He was adjudged man of the match for his match winning knock.
On the next tour to Sri Lanka, India lost the first three matches of the triangular event. In the absence of suspended Ganguly, Dravid captained the side in the 4th match leading them to their first victory of the series. India won the next two matches to qualify for the Final. Dravid played crucial innings in all the three victories. Eventually, India lost the Final to Sri Lanka. He top scored for India in the series with 259 runs from seven matches at an average of 51.80 and a strike rate of 59.81. Reinstated to his usual no. 3 position in the absence of injured Laxman, Dravid top scored for India in the ensuing 3-Test series as well with 235 runs at an average of 47.00. The highlight for Dravid was 75 runs scored in the tough fourth innings chase of the Second Test – a crucial contribution to India's first Test win in Sri Lanka since 1993 despite the absence of key players like Tendulkar, Laxman, Srinath and Kumble.
Dravid had decent success in Standard Bank tri-series on South Africa tour, scoring 214 runs (including 3 fifties) at an average of 53.50 and a strike rate of 71.81. He also kept wickets in the final two ODIs of the series effecting 3 stumpings. The highlight for Dravid in the ensuing Test series came in the second innings of the Second Test. India, having failed to last hundred overs in any of the previous three innings in the series, needed to bat out four sessions in the Second Test to save the match. They started on a poor note losing their first wicket in the first over with no runs on the scoreboard. However, Dravid forged an important partnership of 171 runs with Dasgupta that lasted for 83.2 overs taking India to the brink of safety. Poor weather helped India salvage a draw as only 96.2 overs could be bowled in the innings. Dravid captained the team in the 'unofficial' Third test in the absence of injured Ganguly, which India lost by an innings margin.
By the end of the South African tour, Dravid had started experiencing problem in his right shoulder. Although he played the ensuing home test series against England, he pulled out of the six-match bilateral ODI series to undergo shoulder rehabilitation program in South Africa. He returned for the Zimbabwe's tour of India but performed below par, scoring a fifty each in the Test series and the bilateral ODI series.
2002–2006: Peak years
Dravid hit the peak form of his career in 2002. Between Season 2002 and Season 2006, Dravid was the second highest scorer overall and top scorer for India across formats, scoring 8,914 runs from 174 matches at an average of 54.02, including 19 hundreds.
Dravid had a decent outing in West Indies in 2002. The highlights for him included – hitting a hundred with a swollen jaw and helping India avoid the follow-on in the process at Georgetown in the drawn First Test; contributing with a fifty and four catches to India's victory in the Second Test at Port of Spain – India's first Test victory in West Indies since 1975–76; and another fifty in the drawn Fourth Test with a wicket to boot – that of Ridley Jacobs who was batting on 118. This was Dravid's only wicket in Test cricket. He played as India's designated keeper in the ODI series but didn't contribute much with the bat in the 2–1 series win.
A quartet of hundreds
India's tour of England in 2002 started with a triangular ODI event involving India, England and Sri Lanka. India emerged as the winners of the series beating England in the Final – their first victory after nine consecutive defeats in one-day finals. Dravid played as designated keeper in six out of seven matches effecting nine dismissals (6 catches, 3 stumpings) – most by a keeper in the series. He also did well with the bat aggregating 245 runs at an average of 49.00 including three fifties. His performance against Sri Lanka in fourth ODI (64 runs, 1 catch) earned him a man of the match award.
India lost the first of the four match Test series. Having conceded a 260 runs lead in the first innings of the Second Test at Nottingham, Indians were in a spot of bother. However, Dravid led the fightback in the second innings with a hundred as Indians managed to earn a draw.
Ganguly won the toss in the Third Test and took a bold decision to bat first on a gloomy overcast morning at Headingley on a pitch known to be traditionally conducive for fast and swing bowling. Having lost an early wicket, Dravid weathered the storm in company of Sanjay Bangar. They played cautiously, taking body blows on a pitch with uneven bounce. Dravid completed his second hundred of the series in the process. As the conditions became more and more conducive for batting, the Indian batsmen piled on England's misery. Indians declared the innings on 628/8 and then bowled England out twice to register their first test victory in England since 1986. Despite being outscored by Tendulkar, Dravid was awarded man of the match for his efforts. Dravid scored a double hundred in the drawn Fourth Test to notch up his second consecutive man of the match award of the series. Christopher Martin-Jenkins noted during the Fourth Test: Dravid aggregated 602 runs in the series from four matches at an average of 100.33, including three hundreds and a fifty and was adjudged joint man of the series along with Michael Vaughan.
India jointly shared the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy with Sri Lanka. Dravid contributed to India's successful campaign with 120 runs at an average of 60.00 and five dismissals behind the wicket. Dravid scored a hundred in the First Test of the three match home series against West Indies becoming the first Indian batsman to score hundreds in four consecutive Test innings but had to retire soon after owing to severe cramps. Dravid did well in the subsequent bilateral 7-match ODI series aggregating 300 runs at an average of 75.00 and a strike rate of 89.82 including one hundred and two fifties. He also effected 7 dismissals (6 catches, 1 stumping) in the series. India trailing 1–2, needed 325 runs to win the Fourth ODI and level the series. Dravid scored a hundred leading India to a successful chase. He once again scored a crucial fifty in the Sixth ODI as India once again leveled the series after trailing 2–3. India, however, lost the last match to lose the series 3–4.
Dravid top scored for India in the two-match Test series in New Zealand as India slumped to a whitewash. He played as designated keeper in six of the 7-match bilateral ODI series and effected seven dismissals but fared poorly with the bat as India were handed a 2-5 drubbing by the New Zealand.
2003 Cricket World Cup
Dravid arrived in South Africa with the Indian squad to participate in the 2003 Cricket World Cup in the capacity of first-choice keeper-batsman as part of their seven batsmen-four bowlers strategy – an experiment that had brought success to the team in the past year. The idea was that making Dravid keep wickets allowed India to accommodate an extra specialist batsman. The strategy worked out well for India in the World Cup. India recovered from a less than convincing victory against minnows Netherlands and a loss to Australia in the league stage and embarked on a dream run winning eight consecutive matches to qualify for the World Cup Finals for the first time since 1983. India eventually lost the Final to Australia ending as runner-up in the tournament. Dravid contributed to India's campaign with 318 runs at an average of 63.60 and 16 dismissals (15 catches, 1 stumping). Highlights for Dravid in the tournament included a fifty against England, 44 not out against Pakistan in a successful chase and an unbeaten fifty in another successful chase against New Zealand.
Dravid topped the international runs chart for 2003/04 cricket season across formats aggregating 1993 runs from 31 matches at an average of 64.29 including three double hundreds. First of those came against New Zealand in the first of the two-test home series at Ahmedabad. Dravid scored 222 runs in the first innings and 73 runs in the second innings receiving a man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid captained Indian Test Team for the first time in the second game of the series at Mohali in the absence of Ganguly. Both the matches ended in a draw. Dravid top scored in the series with 313 runs at an average of 78.25. India next participated in TVS cup alongside New Zealand and Australia. India lost to Australia in the Final. Dravid scored two fifties in the series but the highlight was his fifty against New Zealand in the ninth match that came in just 22 balls – second fastest fifty by an Indian.
An Eden encore
After earning a draw in the first of the four-match Test series in Australia, Indians found themselves reeling at 85/4 in the Second Test at Adelaide after Australia had piled 556 runs in the first innings when Laxman joined Dravid in the middle. They batted for 93.5 overs bringing about their second 300-run partnership adding 303 runs together before Laxman perished for 148 runs. However, Dravid continued to complete his second double hundred of the season. He was the last man out for 233 runs as India conceded a marginal first innings lead of 33 runs to Australia. India bowled Australia out for paltry score of 196 riding on Agarkar's six-wicket haul, and were set a target of 230 runs to win the match. Dravid helped India tread through a tricky chase with an unbeaten fifty as India registered their first test victory in Australia since 1980/81 to go up 1–0 in the series. This was the first time that Australians were 0-1 down in a home series since 1994. Dravid won the man of the match award for his efforts. Dravid registered a score of ninety each in the next two tests as Australia leveled the series 1–1. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 619 runs at an average of 123.80 and was awarded player of the series for his efforts.
Dravid did moderately well in the ensuing VB series with three fifties in the league stage, all of which came in winning cause. However, India lost the best-of-three finals to Australia 2–0. Dravid was fined half his match fee for applying cough lozenge on the ball during a match in the series against Zimbabwe – an act that was claimed to be an innocent mistake by coach John Wright.
India visited Pakistan in March 2004 to participate in a bilateral Test series for the first time since 1989/90. Prior to the Test series, India participated and won the 5-match ODI series 3–2. Dravid top scored for India in the series with 248 runs at an average of 62.00 and a strike rate of 73.59. Dravid scored 99 runs in the First ODI helping India post an imposing total of 349. He also took the important catch of threatening Inzamam-ul-Haq, who was batting on 122, as India went on to win the match by five runs. When Indians were trailing in the series 1–2, Dravid helped India level the series with an unbeaten fifty during a successful chase in the Fourth ODI.
Captaincy
Dravid captained India in the first two tests in the absence of injured Ganguly and led India to their first-ever Test victory in Pakistan. Dravid, standing in only his second test as team's captain, took a bold and controversial decision during First Test at Multan that divided the cricket fraternity. Pakistani cricketers had been on field for 150+ overs as India posted a total in excess of 600 runs in the first innings. Dravid, who wanted to have a crack at the tired Pakistani batsmen in the final hour of second day's play, declared Indian innings with Tendulkar batting at 194, just six runs short of his double century. While some praised the team before personal milestones approach of the Indian captain, most criticized Dravid's timing of declaration as there were no pressing concerns and there was ample time left in the match to try and bowl Pakistan out twice. While Tendulkar was admittedly disappointed, any rumours of rift between him and Dravid were quashed by both the cricketers and the team management, who claimed that the matter had been discussed and sorted amicably behind closed doors. India eventually went on to win the match by innings margin. Pakistan leveled the series beating India in the Second Test. Dravid slammed a double hundred in the Third Test at Rawalpindi – his third double hundred of the season. He scored 270 runs – his career best performance – before getting out to reverse sweep trying to force the pace. India went on to win the match and the series – their first series victory outside India since 1993. Dravid was adjudged man of the match for his effort.
Dravid was appointed the captain for the Indian team for 2007 World Cup, where India had an unsuccessful campaign.
During India's unsuccessful tour of England in 2011, in which their 4–0 loss cost them the top rank in Test cricket, Dravid made three centuries.
2011 Tour of England
Having regained his form on the tour to West Indies, where he scored a match-winning hundred in Sabina park, Jamaica, Dravid then toured England in what was billed as the series which would decide the World No. 1 ranking in tests.
In the first test at Lord's, in reply to England's 474, Dravid scored an unbeaten 103, his first hundred at the ground where he debuted in 1996. He received scant support from his teammates as India were bowled out for 286 and lost the test. The 2nd test at Trentbridge, Nottingham again saw Dravid in brilliant form. Sent out to open the batting in place of an injured Gautam Gambhir, he scored his second successive hundred. His 117 though, again came in a losing cause, as a collapse of 6 wickets for 21 runs in the first innings led to a massive defeat by 319 runs. Dravid failed in both innings in the third test at Birmingham, as India lost by an innings and 242 runs, one of the heaviest defeats in their history. However, he came back brilliantly in the fourth and final match at The Oval. Again opening the batting in place of Gambhir, he scored an unbeaten 146 out of India's total of 300, carrying his bat through the innings. Once again, though, his efforts were in vain as India lost the match, completing a 0–4 whitewash.
In all, he scored 461 runs in the four matches at an average of 76.83 with three hundreds. He accounted for over 26% of India's runs in the series and was named India's man of the series by England coach Andy Flower. His performance in the series was met with widespread admiration and was hailed by some as one of his finest ever series
Retirement
Rahul Dravid was dropped from the ODI team in 2009, but was selected again for an ODI series in England in 2011, surprising even Dravid himself since, although he had not officially retired from ODI cricket, he had not expected to be recalled. After being selected, he announced that he would retire from ODI cricket after the series. He played his last ODI innings against England at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, on 16 September 2011, scoring 69 runs from 79 balls before being bowled by Graeme Swann. His last limited-overs international match was his debut T20I match; he announced his retirement before playing his first T20I match.
Dravid announced his retirement from Test and domestic cricket on 9 March 2012, after the 2011–12 tour of Australia, but he said that he would captain the Rajasthan Royals in the 2012 Indian Premier League. He was the second-highest run scorer and had taken the highest number of catches in Test cricket at the time of his retirement.
In July 2014, he played for the MCC side in the Bicentenary Celebration match at Lord's.
Coaching
Towards the end of his playing career, Dravid took on a role as mentor of the Rajasthan Royals IPL team, officially taking over in 2014. During this time, he also became involved with the Indian national team, serving as mentor for the team's tour of England in 2014. After leading the Royals to a third-place finish in the 2015 IPL season, he was appointed as the head coach of the India U-19 and India A teams. Dravid achieved immense success as coach, with the U-19s reaching the finals of the 2016 U-19 Cricket World Cup. Two years later, the team went on to win the 2018 U-19 Cricket World Cup, beating Australia by 8 wickets to win their fourth Under-19 World Cup, the most by any national side. Dravid was credited with bringing up future national team players including Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan and Washington Sundar. Alongside his coaching roles, Dravid took on several mentor roles, including at the Delhi Daredevils IPL team.
In July 2019, following his four-year stint as coach of the junior teams, Dravid was appointed Head of Cricket at the National Cricket Academy (NCA). He was in charge of "overseeing all cricket related activities at NCA was involved in mentoring, coaching, training and motivating players, coaches and support staff at the NCA". As head of NCA, he was widely praised for developing a steady supply of talent to the senior team and revamping player fitness and rehabilitation regiments.
In November 2021, he was appointed as head coach of the Indian national cricket team.
County stint
Dravid had always been keen on further honing his batting skills in testing English conditions by playing in county cricket. He had discussed about the prospects regarding the same with John Wright, the former New Zealand cricketer and incumbent Kent coach, during India's 1998–99 tour of New Zealand. Wright was particularly impressed with Dravid's performance on that tour, especially his twin hundreds at Hamilton. The talks finally materialized and Dravid made his county debut for Kent in April 2000. His co-debutante Ganguly made his county debuted in the same match, albeit for the opposite team.
Kent offer had come as a welcome change for Dravid. There was too much negativity surrounding Indian cricket marred by match fixing controversy. Dravid himself had been struggling to score runs in Tests for quite some time now. The county stint gave him a chance to "get away to a new environment" and "relax". The wide variety of pitches and weather conditions in England and a full season of intense county cricket against professional cricketers gave him a chance to further his cricketing education and learn things about his game.
Dravid made the most of this opportunity. In his 2nd game for Kent, Dravid scored a fluid 182 propelling them to an innings and 163 runs victory over the touring Zimbabwe side. Out of 7 first class tour games that Zimbabwe played on that tour, Kent was the only team that managed to beat them. Dravid hit another fifty in a draw against Surrey. The newly appointed vice-captain had to leave the county championship temporarily, missing two championship games and two one day games, to fulfill his national commitment. Indian team, Dravid included, fared poorly in the Asia cup and failed to qualify for the Final. Subsequently, Dravid returned to England to resume his county sojourn with Kent.
In July 2000, Kent's away match against Hampshire at Portsmouth was billed as a showdown between two great cricketers- Warne and Dravid. Dravid came out on top. On a dustbowl, tailor-made to suit home team spinners, Warne took 4 wickets but could not take the all important wicket of Dravid. Coming in to bat at 15/2, Dravid faced 295 balls scoring 137 runs – his maiden hundred in county championships. Dravid scored 73 not out in the 2nd innings guiding Kent to a six wicket victory as Warne went wicketless.
In their last county game of the season, Kent needed one bonus point to prevent themselves from being relegated to the Second Division. Dravid made sure they stay put in the First Division by fetching that one bonus point with an inning of 77 runs.
Dravid concluded a successful stint with Kent aggregating 1221 runs from 16 first class matches(15 county games and 1 tour game against Zimbabwe) at an average of 55.50 including 2 hundreds and 8 fifties. He shouldered Kent's batting single-handedly as the second best Kent batsman during the same period, Paul Nixon, scored just 567 runs at an average of 33.35 in 17 matches. Dravid contributed to Kent's county campaign not just with the bat but also with his fielding and bowling taking 14 catches and 4 wickets at an average of 32.00.
Indian Premier League and Champions League
Rahul Dravid played for Royal Challengers Bangalore in IPL 2008, 2009 and 2010. Later he played for Rajasthan Royals and led it to finals of Champions League T20 in 2013, and play-offs of Indian Premier League in 2013. Dravid announced retirement from Twenty20 after playing the 2013 Champions League Twenty20 in September–October 2013.
Playing style
Dravid was known for his technique, and has been one of the best batsmen for the Indian cricket team. In the beginning, he was known as a defensive batsman who should be confined to Test cricket, and was dropped from the ODI squad due to a low strike rate. However, he later scored consistently in ODIs as well, earning him the ICC Player of the Year award. His nickname of 'The Wall' in Reebok advertisements is now used as his nickname. Dravid has scored 36 centuries in Test cricket, with an average of 52.31; this included five double centuries. In one-dayers, he averaged 39.16, with a strike rate of 71.23. He is one of the few Indians whose Test average is better at away than at home, averaging almost five runs more on foreign pitches. As of 23 September 2010, Dravid's Test average in abroad is 55.53, and his Test average at home is 50.76; his ODI average abroad is 37.93 and his ODI average at home is 43.11. Dravid averages 66.34 runs in Indian Test victories. and 50.69 runs in ODIs.
Dravid's sole Test wicket was of Ridley Jacobs in the fourth Test match against the West Indies during the 2001–2002 series. While he has no pretensions to being a bowler, Dravid often kept wicket for India in ODIs.
Dravid was involved in two of the largest partnerships in ODIs: a 318-run partnership with Sourav Ganguly, the first pair to combine for a 300-run partnership, and then a 331-run partnership with Sachin Tendulkar, which is a world record. He also holds the record for the greatest number of innings played since debut before being dismissed for a duck. His highest scores in ODIs and Tests are 153 and 270 respectively.
He was named one of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 2000. Though primarily a defensive batsman, Dravid scored 50 runs not out in 22 balls (a strike rate of 227.27) against New Zealand in Hyderabad on 15 November 2003, the second fastest 50 among Indian batsmen. Only Ajit Agarkar's 67 runs off 21 balls is faster than that of Dravid.
In 2004, Dravid was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India. On 7 September 2004, he was awarded the inaugural Player of the year award and the Test player of the year award by the International Cricket Council (ICC).
After reaching 10,000 Test runs milestone, he said, "It's a proud moment for sure. For me, growing up, I dreamt of playing for India. When I look back, I probably exceeded my expectations with what I have done over the last 10 to 12 years. I never had an ambition to do it because I never believed – it is just a reflection of my longevity in the game."
Dravid is also one of the two batsmen to score 10,000 runs at a single batting position and is the fourth highest run scorer in Test cricket, behind Tendulkar, Ponting and Kallis.
Controversies
Ball-tampering incident
In January 2004, Dravid was found guilty of ball tampering during an ODI with Zimbabwe. Match referee Clive Lloyd adjudged the application of an energy sweet to the ball as a deliberate offence, although Dravid himself denied this was his intent. Lloyd emphasised that television footage caught Dravid putting a lozenge on the ball during the Zimbabwean innings on Tuesday night at the Gabba. According to the ICC's Code of Conduct, players are not allowed to apply substances to the ball other than sweat and saliva. Dravid was fined half of his match fee.
Indian coach John Wright came out in defence of Dravid, stating that "It was an innocent mistake". Wright argued that Dravid had been trying to apply saliva to the ball when parts of a losenge he had been chewing stuck to the ball; Dravid then tried to wipe it off. ICC regulations prevented Dravid from commenting about the issue, but former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly also stated that Dravid's act was "just an accident".
Captaincy
Rahul Dravid has had a mixed record when leading India in Tests.
One of Dravid's most debated decisions was taken in March 2004, when he was standing in as the captain for injured Sourav Ganguly. India's first innings was declared at a point when Sachin Tendulkar was at 194 runs not out with 16 overs remaining on Day 2. In this test match Sehwag scored triple century first time. He became the first Indian to score triple century in test with a score of 309.
In March 2006, India lost the Mumbai Test, giving England its first Test victory in India since 1985, enabling it to draw the series 1–1. The defeat in Mumbai was arguably the result of Dravid's decision to bowl first on a flat dry pitch, which later deteriorated and ended with an Indian collapse in the run chase. Coincidentally, it was Dravid's 100th test match in which the Indians were all out for 100 runs in the second innings.
After India failed to qualify for the final of the DLF Cup, Dravid, the skipper, was criticised by former all-rounder Ravi Shastri who said that he was not assertive enough and let Greg Chappell make too many decisions. When asked for a response, Dravid said that Shastri, while a 'fair critic', was 'not privy' to the internal decision-making process of the team.
He was criticised by Vijay Mallya for not picking the team with right balance after his then IPL team Royal Challengers Bangalore finished seventh out of the eight teams that participated in the 2008 season.
Achievements and awards
National honours
1998 – Arjuna Award recipient for achievements in cricket
2004 – Padma Shri – India's fourth highest civilian award
2013 – Padma Bhushan – India's third highest civilian award
Other honours
1999 – CEAT International Cricketer of the World Cup
2000 – Dravid was one of the five cricketers selected as Wisden Cricketer of the Year.
2004 – ICC Cricketer of the year – Highest award in the ICC listings
2004 – ICC Test Player of The Year, ICC Cricketer of The Year
2004 – MTV Youth Icon of the Year
2006 – Captain of the ICC's Test Team
2011 – NDTV Indian of the Year's Lifetime Achievement Award with Dev Anand
2012 – Don Bradman Award with Glenn McGrath
2015 – Wisden India's Highest Impact Test Batsman
2018 – ICC Hall of Fame
Personal life
Family
On 4 May 2003 he married Vijeta Pendharkar, a surgeon from Nagpur. Vijeta Pendharkar is also from Deshastha Brahmin community as Dravid. They have two children: Samit, born in 2005, and Anvay, born in 2009. Dravid is fluent in Marathi, Hindi, Kannada and English.
Commercial endorsements
Rahul Dravid has been sponsored by several brands throughout his career including Reebok (1996 – present), Pepsi (1997 present), Kissan (Unknown), Castrol (2001 – present), Hutch
(2003), Karnataka Tourism (2004), Max Life (2005 – present), Bank of Baroda (2005 – present), Citizen (2006 – present), Skyline Construction (2006 – present), Sansui (2007), Gillette (2007 – present), Samsung (2002 – 2004), World Trade Center Noida (2013– present),
CRED (2021-present).
Social commitments
Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA)
UNICEF Supporter and AIDS Awareness Campaign
Biographies
Books
Two biographies have been written on Rahul Dravid and his career:
Rahul Dravid – A Biography written by Vedam Jaishankar (). Publisher: UBSPD Publications. Date: January 2004
The Nice Guy Who Finished First written by Devendra Prabhudesai. Publisher: Rupa Publications. Date: November 2005
A collection of articles, testimonials and interviews related to Dravid was released by ESPNcricinfo following his retirement. The book was titled Rahul Dravid: Timeless Steel.
See also
Sachin Tendulkar
Sourav Ganguly
VVS Laxman
Virendra Sehwag
References
External links
Indian cricketers
India Test cricketers
India One Day International cricketers
India Twenty20 International cricketers
India Test cricket captains
Wisden Cricketers of the Year
Karnataka cricketers
South Zone cricketers
Kent cricketers
Scotland cricketers
ACC Asian XI One Day International cricketers
ICC World XI One Day International cricketers
World XI Test cricketers
Royal Challengers Bangalore cricketers
Canterbury cricketers
Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers
Rajasthan Royals cricketers
India Blue cricketers
Cricketers at the 1999 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2003 Cricket World Cup
Cricketers at the 2007 Cricket World Cup
Recipients of the Padma Shri in sports
1973 births
Living people
Cricketers from Indore
Cricketers from Bangalore
Recipients of the Arjuna Award
International Cricket Council Cricketer of the Year
Marathi people
Indian cricket coaches
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in sports
Indian cricket commentators
Wicket-keepers
| false |
[
"José Antonio \"Txato\" Latorre Beaskoetxea (born 1 January 1941) is a Spanish former professional football player. He played as a forward for Athletic Bilbao, Indautxu, and Sabadell.\n\nBiography \n\nWhen he was young he played for his hometown team, Zorrota Football Club. Athletic Bilbao signed him as a youth and when he was 19 he first played in La Liga. He completed 7 matches and scored one goal. In 1961, when he was 20, he played 16 matches and scored 3 goals. In the 1963/64 season he scored only one goal but the goal was the 2000th in the history of the club on the 14th league day against Real Valladolid in the 88th minute. The worst season for him as a player of Athletic Bilbao was in 1964 because he did not play any match. He decided to go to SD Indautxu to end the season. There he played 11 matches and scored 4 goals. When he returned to Athletic in 1965 he did not play. He moved to CE Sabadell FC for the next 3 years where he did not score and played only 900 minutes. After this, he quit football to work as an engineer for the next 30 years.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal link\n\nAthletic Profile\n\n1941 births\nLiving people\nFootballers from Bilbao\nSpanish footballers\nSegunda División players\nAssociation football forwards\nAthletic Bilbao footballers\nCE Sabadell FC footballers\nLa Liga players",
"Levi Lovett (2 February 1854 – 7 April 1929) was a British trade unionist.\n\nBorn in Hugglescote, Leicestershire, Lovett worked in coal mining from the age of 12. A devout Methodist and lay preacher, he was elected as checkweighman at Snibston No.2 colliery in 1885, then in 1887 was the founding President of the Coalville and District Miners' Association. He served in this post until 1902, when he became the union's agent.\n\nAlthough generally politically liberal, Lovett was asked to stand for the Labour Party in Bosworth at the 1918 general election, although he did not end up being the party's candidate. He continued as agent of the renamed Leicestershire Miners' Association until 1923, when he was replaced by Jack W. Smith.\n\nReferences\n\n1854 births\n1929 deaths\nBritish coal miners\nLeaders of British trade unions\nPeople from Hugglescote"
] |
[
"David Attenborough",
"Early life and family"
] |
C_b1caf59a3c484f208e434159c3ae7d42_1
|
Where was he born?
| 1 |
Where was David Attenborough born?
|
David Attenborough
|
Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director and his younger brother, John, was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo), and the only surviving child among them. During World War II, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Europe. Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and other natural specimens. He received encouragement in this pursuit at age seven, when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his "museum". He also spent a considerable amount of his time in the grounds of the university, and, aged 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered via his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which wasn't revealed at the time, was a pond less than five metres from the department. A few years later, one of his adoptive sisters gave him a piece of amber filled with prehistoric creatures; some 50 years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine. In 1936 David and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl. Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and then won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945, where he studied geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947 he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950 Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel; she died in 1997. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress. CANNOTANSWER
|
Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester,
|
Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
Attenborough was a senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. His filmography as writer, presenter and narrator spans eight decades; it includes Zoo Quest, Natural World, Wildlife on One, the Planet Earth franchise, The Blue Planet and its sequel. He is the only person to have won BAFTAs in all of the categories black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolutions.
While Attenborough's earlier work focused more on the wonders of the natural world, his later work has been more vocal in support of environmental causes. He has advocated for restoring planetary biodiversity, limiting population growth, switching to renewable energy, mitigating climate change, reducing meat consumption, and setting aside more areas for natural preservation.
On his broadcasting and passion for nature, NPR stated he "roamed the globe and shared his discoveries and enthusiasms with his patented semi-whisper way of narrating". In 2018 and 2019, Attenborough received Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narrator. He is widely considered a national treasure in the UK, although he himself does not like the term. He is the younger brother of the late director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough, and older brother of the late motor executive John Attenborough.
Life and family
Attenborough was born on 8 May 1926 in Isleworth, Middlesex, and grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons; his elder brother, Richard (died in 2014), became an actor and director, and his younger brother, John (died in 2012), was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo. During the Second World War, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Germany.
Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones, and natural specimens. He received encouragement when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his collection. He spent much time in the grounds of the university. Aged around 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered through his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which he did not reveal at the time, was a pond right next to the department. A year later, his adoptive sister Marianne gave him a piece of amber containing prehistoric creatures; some sixty years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine.
In 1936, Attenborough and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl.
Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester. He won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945 to study geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947, he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950, Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Jane died in 1997. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress.
Attenborough had a pacemaker fitted in June 2013, as well as a double knee replacement in 2015. In September 2013 he commented: "If I was earning my money by hewing coal I would be very glad indeed to stop. But I'm not. I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune."
Career
Early years at the BBC
After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC. Although he was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service. Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television, and he had seen only one programme in his life. However, he accepted Adams' offer of a three-month training course, and in 1952 he joined the BBC full-time. Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big, he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.
Attenborough's association with natural history programmes began when he produced and presented the three-part series Animal Patterns. The studio-bound programme featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism and courtship displays. Through this programme, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast in 1954, where Attenborough became the presenter at short notice due to Lester being taken ill.
In 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead, he formed his own department, the Travel and Exploration Unit, which allowed him to continue to front Zoo Quest as well as produce other documentaries, notably the Travellers' Tales and Adventure series. In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.
BBC administration
Attenborough became Controller of BBC 2 in March 1965, succeeding Michael Peacock. He had a clause inserted in his contract that would allow him to continue making programmes on an occasional basis. Later the same year he filmed elephants in Tanzania, and in 1969 he made a three-part series on the cultural history of the Indonesian island of Bali. For the 1971 film A Blank on the Map, he joined the first Western expedition to a remote highland valley in New Guinea to seek out a lost tribe.
BBC Two was launched in 1964, but had struggled to capture the public's imagination. When Attenborough arrived as controller, he quickly abolished the channel's quirky kangaroo mascot and shook up the schedule. With a mission to make BBC Two's output diverse and different from that offered by other networks, he began to establish a portfolio of programmes that defined the channel's identity for decades to come. Under his tenure, music, the arts, entertainment, archaeology, experimental comedy, travel, drama, sport, business, science and natural history all found a place in the weekly schedules. Often, an eclectic mix was offered within a single evening's viewing. Programmes he commissioned included Man Alive, Call My Bluff, Chronicle, Match of the Day, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Money Programme. With the addition of colour television, Attenborough brought snooker to the BBC to show the benefits of the format, as the sport uses coloured balls. The show – Pot Black – was later credited with the boom of the sport into the 1980s.
One of his most significant decisions was to order a 13-part series on the history of Western art, to show off the quality of the new UHF colour television service that BBC Two offered. Broadcast to universal acclaim in 1969, Civilisation set the blueprint for landmark authored documentaries, which were informally known as "sledgehammer" projects. Others followed, including Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (also commissioned by Attenborough), and Alistair Cooke's America. Attenborough thought that the story of evolution would be a natural subject for such a series. He shared his idea with Christopher Parsons, a producer at the Natural History Unit, who came up with a title Life on Earth and returned to Bristol to start planning the series. Attenborough harboured a strong desire to present the series himself, but this would not be possible so long as he remained in a management post.
While in charge of BBC Two, Attenborough turned down Terry Wogan's job application to be a presenter on the channel, stating that there weren't any suitable vacancies. The channel already had an Irish announcer, with Attenborough reflecting in 2016: "To have had two Irishmen presenting on BBC Two would have looked ridiculous. This is no comment whatsoever on Terry Wogan's talents." Attenborough has also acknowledged that he sanctioned the wiping of television output during this period to cut costs, including a series by Alan Bennett, which he later regretted. In 1969, Attenborough was promoted to director of programmes, making him responsible for the output of both BBC channels. His tasks, which included agreeing budgets, attending board meetings and firing staff, were now far removed from the business of filming programmes. When Attenborough's name was being suggested as a candidate for the position of Director-General of the BBC in 1972, he phoned his brother Richard to confess that he had no appetite for the job. Early the following year, he left his post to return to full-time programme-making, leaving him free to write and present the planned natural history epic.
After his resignation, Attenborough became a freelance broadcaster and started work on his next project, a trip to Indonesia with a crew from the Natural History Unit. It resulted in the 1973 series Eastwards with Attenborough, which was similar in tone to the earlier Zoo Quest; the main difference was the introduction of colour. Attenborough stated that he wanted to work in Asia, because previous nature documentaries had mostly focused on Africa. That year, Attenborough was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Language of Animals. After his work on Eastwards with Attenborough, he began to work on the scripts for Life on Earth. Due to the scale of his ambition, the BBC decided to partner with an American network to secure the necessary funding. While the negotiations were proceeding, he worked on a number of other television projects. He presented a series on tribal art (The Tribal Eye, 1975) and another on the voyages of discovery (The Explorers, 1975). He also presented a BBC children's series about cryptozoology entitled Fabulous Animals (1975), which featured mythical creatures such as mermaids and unicorns. Eventually, the BBC signed a co-production deal with Turner Broadcasting and Life on Earth moved into production in 1976.
Life series
Beginning with Life on Earth in 1979, Attenborough set about creating a body of work which became a benchmark of quality in wildlife film-making, and influenced a generation of documentary film-makers. The series established many of the hallmarks of the BBC's natural history output. By treating his subject seriously and researching the latest discoveries, Attenborough and his production team gained the trust of scientists, who responded by allowing him to feature their subjects in his programmes. Innovation was another factor in Life on Earth'''s success: new film-making techniques were devised to get the shots Attenborough wanted, with a focus on events and animals that were up till then unfilmed. International air travel enabled the series to be devised so that Attenborough visited several locations around the globe in each episode, sometimes even changing continents in one sequence. Although appearing as the on-screen presenter, he restricted his time on camera to give more time to his subjects.
Five years after the success of Life on Earth, the BBC released The Living Planet. This time, Attenborough built his series around the theme of ecology, the adaptations of living things to their environment. It was another critical and commercial success, generating huge international sales for the BBC. In 1990, The Trials of Life completed the original Life trilogy, looking at animal behaviour through the different stages of life.
In the 1990s, Attenborough continued to use the "Life" title for a succession of authored documentaries. In 1993, he presented Life in the Freezer, the first television series to survey the natural history of Antarctica. Although past normal retirement age, he then embarked on a number of more specialised surveys of the natural world, beginning with plants. They proved a difficult subject for his producers, who had to deliver hours of television featuring what are essentially immobile objects. The result was The Private Life of Plants (1995), which showed plants as dynamic organisms by using time-lapse photography to speed up their growth, and went on to earn a Peabody Award.
Prompted by an enthusiastic ornithologist at the BBC Natural History Unit, Attenborough then turned his attention to birds. As he was neither an birdwatcher nor a bird expert, he decided he was better qualified to make The Life of Birds (1998) on the theme of behaviour. The documentary series won a second Peabody Award the following year. The order of the remaining "Life" series was dictated by developments in camera technology. For The Life of Mammals (2002), low-light and infrared cameras were deployed to reveal the behaviour of nocturnal mammals. The series contains a number of memorable two shots of Attenborough and his subjects, which included chimpanzees, a blue whale and a grizzly bear. Advances in macro photography made it possible to capture the natural behaviour of very small creatures for the first time, and in 2005, Life in the Undergrowth introduced audiences to the world of invertebrates.
At this point, Attenborough realised that he had spent 20 years unconsciously assembling a collection of programmes on all the major groups of terrestrial animals and plants – only reptiles and amphibians were missing. When Life in Cold Blood was broadcast in 2008, he had the satisfaction of completing the set, brought together in a DVD encyclopaedia called Life on Land. He commented: "The evolutionary history is finished. The endeavour is complete. If you'd asked me 20 years ago whether we'd be attempting such a mammoth task, I'd have said 'Don't be ridiculous!' These programmes tell a particular story and I'm sure others will come along and tell it much better than I did, but I do hope that if people watch it in 50 years' time, it will still have something to say about the world we live in."
However, in 2010 Attenborough asserted that his First Life – dealing with evolutionary history before Life on Earth – should be included within the "Life" series. In the documentary Attenborough's Journey, he stated, "This series, to a degree which I really didn't fully appreciate until I started working on it, really completes the set."
Beyond Life on Earth
Alongside the "Life" series, Attenborough continued to work on other television documentaries, mainly in the natural history genre. He wrote and presented a series on man's influence on the natural history of the Mediterranean Basin, The First Eden, in 1987. Two years later, he demonstrated his passion for fossils in Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives. In 1990, he worked on the BBC's Prisoners of Conscience series where he highlighted the case of Mahjoub Sharif. Attenborough narrated every episode of Wildlife on One, a BBC One wildlife series that ran for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005. At its peak, it drew a weekly audience of eight to ten million, and the 1987 episode "Meerkats United" was voted the best wildlife documentary of all time by BBC viewers. He has narrated over 50 episodes of Natural World, BBC Two's flagship wildlife series. Its forerunner, The World About Us, was created by Attenborough in 1969, as a vehicle for colour television. In 1997, he narrated the BBC Wildlife Specials, each focussing on a charismatic species, and screened to mark the Natural History Unit's 40th anniversary.
As a writer and narrator, Attenborough continued to collaborate with the BBC Natural History Unit in the new millennium. Alastair Fothergill, a senior producer with whom Attenborough had worked on The Trials of Life and Life in the Freezer, was making The Blue Planet (2001), the Unit's first comprehensive series on marine life. He decided not to use an on-screen presenter due to difficulties in speaking to a camera through diving apparatus, but asked Attenborough to narrate the films. The same team reunited for Planet Earth (2006), the biggest nature documentary ever made for television and the first BBC wildlife series to be shot in high definition. In 2009, he co-wrote and narrated Life, a ten-part series focussing on extraordinary animal behaviour, and narrated Nature's Great Events, which showed how seasonal changes trigger major natural spectacles. In January 2009, the BBC commissioned Attenborough to provide a series of 20 ten-minute monologues covering the history of nature. Entitled David Attenborough's Life Stories, they were broadcast on Radio 4 on Friday nights.
In 2011, Fothergill gave Attenborough a more prominent role in Frozen Planet, a major series on the natural history of the polar regions; Attenborough appeared on screen and authored the final episode, in addition to performing voiceover duties. Attenborough introduced and narrated the Unit's first 4K production Life Story. For Planet Earth II (2016), Attenborough returned as narrator and presenter, with the main theme music composed by Hans Zimmer.In October 2014, the corporation announced a trio of new one-off Attenborough documentaries as part of a raft of new natural history programmes. "Attenborough's Paradise Birds" and "Attenborough's Big Birds" was shown on BBC Two and "Waking Giants", which follows the discovery of giant dinosaur bones in South America, aired on BBC One. The BBC also commissioned Atlantic Productions to make a three-part, Attenborough-fronted series Great Barrier Reef in 2015. The series marked the 10th project for Attenborough and Atlantic, and saw him returning to a location he first filmed at in 1957. On radio, Attenborough has continued as one of the presenters of BBC Radio 4's Tweet of the Day, which began a second series in September 2014. Attenborough forged a partnership with Sky, working on documentaries for the broadcaster's new 3D network, Sky 3D. Their first collaboration was Flying Monsters 3D, a film about pterosaurs which debuted on Christmas Day of 2010. A second film, The Bachelor King 3D, followed a year later. His next 3D project, Conquest of the Skies, made by the team behind the BAFTA-winning David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive, aired on Sky 3D during Christmas 2014.
Attenborough has narrated three series of David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities for UKTV channel Watch, with the third series showing in 2015. He has also narrated A majestic celebration: Wild Karnataka, India's first blue-chip natural history film, directed by Kalyan Varma and Amoghavarsha. Blue Planet II was broadcast in 2017, with Attenborough returning as presenter. The series was critically acclaimed and gained the highest UK viewing figure for 2017: 14.1 million. Attenborough narrated the 2018 five part series Dynasties, each episode dealing with one species in particular. In 2021 he presented the three part series Attenborough's Life in Colour, and The Mating Game, a five part series.
Environmentalist advocacy
By the turn of the millennium, Attenborough's authored documentaries were adopting a more overtly environmentalist stance. In State of the Planet (2000), he used the latest scientific evidence and interviews with leading scientists and conservationists to assess the impact of human activities on the natural world. He later turned to the issues of global warming (The Truth about Climate Change, 2006) and human population growth (How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?, 2009). He contributed a programme which highlighted the plight of endangered species to the BBC's Saving Planet Earth project in 2007, the 50th anniversary of the Natural History Unit.
In 2019, Attenborough narrated Our Planet, an eight-part documentary series, for Netflix. In contrast to much of his prior work for the BBC, this series emphasised the destructive role of human activities throughout the series. Before, he would often note concerns in a final section of the work. He also narrated Wild Karnataka, a documentary about the Karnataka forest area. In 2019, Attenborough's one-off film documentary about climate change for BBC One called Climate Change – The Facts was aired; the tone of the documentary was significantly graver than previous work for the BBC. This was followed by Extinction: The Facts, which is partly based on the 2019 IPBES report on the decline of biodiversity.“Sir David Attenborough makes stark warning about species extinction” . BBC Science. Retrieved 14 October 2020
In 2020, Attenborough narrated the documentary film David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. The film acts as Attenborough's witness statement, reflecting on his career as a naturalist and his hopes for the future. It was released on Netflix on 4 October 2020. Further work for Netflix includes the documentary titled Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet, released on 4 June 2021. In October 2020, Attenborough began filming in Cambridge for The Green Planet. In 2021, Attenborough narrated A Perfect Planet, a five-part earth science series for BBC One.
COP26
Attenborough was a key figure in the build up to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), and gave a speech at the opening ceremony. In his speech he stated that humans were "the greatest problem solvers to have ever existed on Earth" and spoke of his optimism for the future, finishing by saying "In my lifetime I've witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery."
Views and advocacy
Environment
Attenborough's programmes have often included references to the impact of human society on the natural world. The last episode of The Living Planet, for example, focuses almost entirely on humans' destruction of the environment and ways that it could be stopped or reversed. Despite this, he has been criticised for not giving enough prominence to environmental messages. In 2018 while promoting Dynasties, he said that repeated messages on threats to wildlife in programming could be a "turn-off" to viewers. Some environmentalists feel that programmes like Attenborough's give a false picture of idyllic wilderness and do not do enough to acknowledge that such areas are increasingly encroached upon by humans. However, the increased urgency of environmental messaging in films such as Extinction: The Facts, which depicts the continuing sixth mass extinction, Climate Change – The Facts and A Life on Our Planet from 2019 and 2020 received praise. In Seven Worlds, One Planet, Attenborough discusses the devastating impact that deforestation is having on the planet and the species.
In 2005 and 2006, he backed a BirdLife International project to stop the killing of albatross by longline fishing boats. He gave support to WWF's campaign to have 220,000 square kilometres of Borneo's rainforest designated a protected area. He serves as a vice-president of The Conservation Volunteers, vice-president of Fauna and Flora International, president of Butterfly Conservation and president emiritus of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust. In 2003, he launched an appeal on behalf of the World Land Trust to create a rainforest reserve in Ecuador in memory of Christopher Parsons, the producer of Life on Earth and a personal friend, who had died the previous year. The same year, he helped to launch ARKive, a global project instigated by Parsons to gather together natural history media into a digital library. ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, of which Attenborough is a patron. He later became patron of the World Land Trust. In 2020, he backed a Fauna and Flora International campaign calling for a global moratorium on deep sea mining for its impact on marine life.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Attenborough advocated on behalf of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and its conservation efforts, which have been impacted by the economic fallout from the pandemic. In 2020, Attenborough was named as a member of the Earthshot prize Council, an initiative of Prince William to find solutions to environmental issues. He is a patron of the Friends of Richmond Park and serves on the advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazine.
Attenborough was initially sceptical about the human influence on climate change, and stated that a 2004 lecture finally convinced him humans were responsible. He remained silent on the issue until 2006. Attenborough attended and spoke at COP26 as the "People's Advocate" for the event, and urged world leaders to act to reduce emissions. He supported Glyndebourne in their successful application to obtain planning permission for a wind turbine in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and gave evidence at the planning inquiry arguing in favour of the proposal. In his 2020 documentary film David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Attenborough advocates for people to adopt a vegetarian diet or to reduce meat consumption to save wildlife, noting that "the planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters."
Human population
Attenborough has linked anthropogenic effects on the environment with human population growth. He has attracted criticism for his views on human overpopulation and human population control. His most popular comment online in a 2020 study related to the topic of overpopulation. He is a patron of Population Matters, a UK charity advocating for family planning, sustainable consumption and proposed sustainable human population. In a 2013 interview with the Radio Times, Attenborough described humans as a "plague on the Earth", and described the act of sending food to famine-stricken countries as "barmy" for population reasons. He called for more debate about human population growth, saying that since he "first started making programmes 60 years ago, the human population has tripled."
According to Attenborough, improving women's rights around the world is an effective way "to limit our birth rate." He said that "anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist."
Religious views
Attenborough considers himself an agnostic. When asked whether his observation of the natural world has given him faith in a creator, he generally responds with some version of this story, making reference to the Onchocerca volvulus parasitic worm:
My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'.
He has explained that he feels the evidence all over the planet clearly shows evolution to be the best way to explain the diversity of life, and that "as far as [he's] concerned, if there is a supreme being then he chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world". In a BBC Four interview with Mark Lawson, he was asked if he at any time had any religious faith. He replied simply, "no". He said "It never really occurred to me to believe in God".
In 2002, Attenborough joined an effort by leading clerics and scientists to oppose the inclusion of creationism in the curriculum of UK state-funded independent schools which receive private sponsorship, such as the Emmanuel Schools Foundation.
In 2009, he stated that the Book of Genesis, by saying that the world was there for people to control, had taught generations that they can "dominate" the environment, and that this has resulted in the devastation of vast areas of the environment. He further explained to the science journal Nature, "That's why Darwinism, and the fact of evolution, is of great importance, because it is that attitude which has led to the devastation of so much, and we are in the situation that we are in".
Also in early 2009, the BBC broadcast an Attenborough one-hour special, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life. In reference to the programme, Attenborough stated that "People write to me that evolution is only a theory. Well, it is not a theory. Evolution is as solid a historical fact as you could conceive. Evidence from every quarter. What is a theory is whether natural selection is the mechanism and the only mechanism. That is a theory. But the historical reality that dinosaurs led to birds and mammals produced whales, that's not theory." He strongly opposes creationism and its offshoot "intelligent design", saying that the results of a survey that found a quarter of science teachers in state schools believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science lessons was "really terrible".
In March 2009, Attenborough appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Attenborough stated that he felt evolution did not rule out the existence of a God and accepted the title of agnostic saying, "My view is: I don't know one way or the other but I don't think that evolution is against a belief in God".
Attenborough has joined the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and other top scientists in signing a campaign statement co-ordinated by the British Humanist Association (BHA). The statement calls for "creationism to be banned from the school science curriculum and for evolution to be taught more widely in schools".
BBC and public service broadcasting
Attenborough is a lifelong supporter of the BBC, public service broadcasting and the television licence. He has said that public service broadcasting "is one of the things that distinguishes this country and makes me want to live here", and believes that it is not reducible to individual programmes, but "can only effectively operate as a network [...] that measures its success not only by its audience size but by the range of its schedule".
... the BBC per minute in almost every category is as cheap as you can find anywhere in the world and produces the best quality. [...] The BBC has gone through swingeing staff cuts. It has been cut to the bone, if you divert licence fee money elsewhere, you cut quality and services. [...] There is a lot of people who want to see the BBC weakened. They talk of this terrible tax of the licence fee. Yet it is the best bargain that is going. Four radio channels and god knows how many TV channels. It is piffling.
Attenborough expressed the view that there had often been people wanting to remove the BBC, adding "there's always been trouble about the licence and if you dropped your guard you could bet our bottom dollar there'd be plenty of people who'd want to take it away. The licence fee is the basis on which the BBC is based and if you destroy it, broadcasting... becomes a wasteland." He expressed regret at some of the changes made to the BBC in the 1990s by its Director-General, John Birt, who introduced an internal market at the corporation, slimmed and even closed some departments and outsourced much of the corporation's output to private production companies. Although he said Birt's policies had poor results, Attenborough also acknowledged "the BBC had to change." In 2008, he criticised the BBC's television schedules, positing that the two senior networks, BBC One and BBC Two – which Attenborough stated were "first set up as a partnership" – now "schedule simultaneously programmes of identical character, thereby contradicting the very reason that the BBC was given a second network."
Politics
In 1998, Attenborough described himself as "a standard, boring left-wing liberal" and expressed the view that the market economy was "misery". In 2013, Attenborough joined rock guitarists Brian May and Slash in opposing the government's policy on the cull of badgers in the UK by participating in a song dedicated to badgers. Attenborough was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in the 2014 referendum on that issue. Prior to the 2015 UK general election, Attenborough was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas.
In a 2020 interview, Attenborough criticised excess capitalism as a driver of ecological imbalance, stating "the excesses the capitalist system has brought us, have got to be curbed somehow", and that "greed does not actually lead to joy", although he added "That doesn't mean to say that capitalism is dead". He also lamented the lack of international cooperation on climate change, and said "there should be no dominant nation on this planet." In 2021, Attenborough told the leaders of the 47th G7 summit that "tackling climate change was now as much a political challenge as it was a scientific or technological one" and urged more action. Attenborough also stated that "(we) are on the verge of destabilising the entire planet."
Achievements, awards and recognition
Attenborough's contribution to broadcasting and wildlife film-making has brought him international recognition. He has been called "the great communicator, the peerless educator" and "the greatest broadcaster of our time." His programmes are often cited as an example of what public service broadcasting should be, even by critics of the BBC, and have influenced a generation of wildlife film-makers.
Honorary titles
By January 2013, Attenborough had collected 32 honorary degrees from British universities, more than any other person. In 1980, he was honoured by the Open University, with which he has had a close association throughout his career. He has honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Durham University (1982) and the University of Cambridge (1984) and honorary Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Oxford (1988) and the University of Ghent (1997). In 2006, the two eldest Attenborough brothers returned to their home city to receive the title of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester, "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the University." David Attenborough was previously awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the university in 1970, and was made an honorary Freeman of the City of Leicester in 1990. In 2013, he was made an Honorary Freeman of the City of Bristol. In 2010, he was awarded Honorary Doctorates from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Nottingham Trent University.
Attenborough has received the title Honorary Fellow from Clare College, Cambridge (1980), the Zoological Society of London (1998), the Linnean Society (1999), the Institute of Biology (Now the Royal Society of Biology) (2000), and the Society of Antiquaries (2007). He is Honorary Patron of the North American Native Plant Society and was elected as a Corresponding Member of the Australian Academy of Science.
Recognition
Attenborough has been featured as the subject of a number of BBC television programmes. Life on Air (2002) examined the legacy of his work, and Attenborough the Controller (2002) focused on his time in charge of BBC Two. He was also featured prominently in The Way We Went Wild (2004), a series about natural history television presenters, and 100 Years of Wildlife Films (2007), a programme marking the centenary of the nature documentary. In 2006, British television viewers were asked to vote for their Favourite Attenborough Moments for a UKTV poll to coincide with the broadcaster's 80th birthday. The winning clip showed Attenborough observing the mimicry skills of the superb lyrebird.
Attenborough was named the most trusted celebrity in the UK in a 2006 Reader's Digest poll, and in 2007 he won The Culture Show's Living Icon Award. He has been named among the 100 Greatest Britons in a 2002 BBC poll and is one of the top ten "Heroes of Our Time" according to New Statesman magazine. In September 2009, London's Natural History Museum opened the Attenborough Studio, part of its Darwin Centre development.
In 2012, Attenborough was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life. The same year, Attenborough featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named him among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands".
A British polar research ship was named RRS Sir David Attenborough in his honour. While an Internet poll suggesting the name of the ship had the most votes for Boaty McBoatface, Science Minister Jo Johnson said there were "more suitable names", and the official name was eventually picked up from one of the more favoured choices. However, one of its research sub-sea vehicles was named "Boaty" in recognition of the public vote.
Species named after Attenborough
At least 20 species and genera, both living and extinct, have been named in Attenborough's honour. Plants named after him include an alpine hawkweed (Hieracium attenboroughianum) discovered in the Brecon Beacons, a species of Ecuadorian flowering tree (Blakea attenboroughi), one of the world's largest-pitchered carnivorous plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii), along with a genus of flowering plants (Sirdavidia).
Several Arthropods are named after Attenborough including a butterfly, Attenborough's black-eyed satyr (Euptychia attenboroughi), a dragonfly, Attenborough's pintail (Acisoma attenboroughi), a millimetre-long goblin spider (Prethopalpus attenboroughi), an ornate Caribbean smiley-faced spider (Spintharus davidattenboroughi), an Indonesian flightless weevil (Trigonopterus attenboroughi), a Madagascan ghost shrimp (Ctenocheloides attenboroughi), and a soil snail (Palaina attenboroughi). The Monogenean Cichlidogyrus attenboroughi, a parasite from a deep-sea fish in the Lake Tanganyika, is probably the only parasite species named after him. Vertebrates have also been named after Attenborough, including a Namibian lizard (Platysaurus attenboroughi), a bird (Polioptila attenboroughi), a Peruvian frog (Pristimantis attenboroughi), a Madagascan stump-toed frog (Stumpffia davidattenboroughi), and one of only four species of long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi).
In 1993, after discovering that the Mesozoic reptile Plesiosaurus conybeari did not belong to the genus Plesiosaurus, the palaeontologist Robert Bakker renamed the species Attenborosaurus conybeari. A fossilised armoured fish discovered in Western Australia in 2008 was named Materpiscis attenboroughi, after Attenborough had filmed at the site and highlighted its scientific importance in Life on Earth. In 2015, a species of tree from Gabon (in the Annonaceae family) Sirdavidia was named with his title.
The Materpiscis fossil is believed to be the earliest organism capable of internal fertilisation. A miniature marsupial lion, Microleo attenboroughi, was named in his honour in 2016. The fossil grasshopper Electrotettix attenboroughi was named after Attenborough. In March 2017, a 430 million year old tiny crustacean was named after him. Called Cascolus ravitis, the first word is a Latin translation of the root meaning of "Attenborough", and the second is based on a description of him in Latin. In July 2017, the Caribbean bat Myotis attenboroughi was named after him. A new species of fan-throated lizard from coastal Kerala in southern India was named Sitana attenboroughii in his honour when it was described in 2018.
In 2018, a new species of phytoplankton, Syracosphaera azureaplaneta, was named to honour The Blue Planet, the TV documentary presented by Attenborough, and to recognise his contribution to promoting understanding of the oceanic environment. The same year, Attenborough was also commemorated in the name of the scarab beetle Sylvicanthon attenboroughi. In 2021 an extinct species of horseshoe crab was named Attenborolimulus superspinosus.Awards
In addition, he is the only person to have won BAFTAs for programmes in black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D, and 4K.
Filmography
David Attenborough's television credits span eight decades and his association with natural history programmes dates back to The Pattern of Animals and Zoo Quest in the early 1950s. His most influential work, 1979's Life on Earth, launched a strand of nine authored documentaries with the BBC Natural History Unit which shared the Life strand name and spanned 30 years. He narrated every episode of the long-running BBC series Wildlife on One and in his later career has voiced several high-profile BBC wildlife documentaries, among them The Blue Planet and Planet Earth. He became a pioneer in the 3D documentary format with Flying Monsters in 2010.
Bibliography
David Attenborough's work as an author has strong parallels with his broadcasting career. In the 1950s and 1960s, his published work included accounts of his animal collecting expeditions around the world, which became the Zoo Quest series. He wrote an accompanying volume to each of his nine Life documentaries, along with books on tribal art and birds of paradise. His autobiography, Life on Air, was published in 2002, revised in 2009 and is one of a number of his works which is available as a self-narrated audiobook. Attenborough has also contributed forewords and introductions to many other works, notably those accompanying Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, Africa and other BBC series he has narrated.
Zoo Quest to Guyana (1956)
Zoo Quest for a Dragon (1957) – republished in 1959 to include an additional 85 pages titled Quest for the Paradise Birds Zoo Quest in Paraguay (1959)
Quest in Paradise (1960)
People of Paradise (1960)
Zoo Quest to Madagascar (1961)
Quest Under Capricorn (1963)
Fabulous Animals (1975)
The Tribal Eye (1976)
Life on Earth (1979)
Discovering Life on Earth (1981)
The Living Planet (1984)
The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man (1987)
The Atlas of the Living World (1989)
The Trials of Life (1990)
The Private Life of Plants (1994)
The Life of Birds (1998)
The Life of Mammals (2002)
Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster (2002) – autobiography, revised in 2009
Life in the Undergrowth (2005)
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery (2007) – with Susan Owens, Martin Clayton and Rea Alexandratos
Life in Cold Blood (2007)
David Attenborough's Life Stories (2009)
David Attenborough's New Life Stories (2011)
Drawn From Paradise: The Discovery, Art and Natural History of the Birds of Paradise (2012) – with Errol Fuller
Adventures of a Young Naturalist: The Zoo Quest Expeditions (2017)
Journeys to the Other Side of the World: Further Adventures of a Young Naturalist (2018)
Dynasties: The Rise and Fall of Animal Families with Stephen Moss (2018)
A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future (2020)
References
External links
BBC Books David Attenborough website
David Attenborough at the British Film Institute
David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet
Wildfilmhistory.org biography
PBS interview with Attenborough in 1998
People and Planet: David Attenborough, video of the 2011 RSA President's Lecture
David Attenborough interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, 27 December 1998
David Attenborough: humanity must come to its senses or face environmental disaster. Radio Times''. 13 October 2016.
1926 births
20th-century Royal Navy personnel
Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Articles containing video clips
David
BAFTA fellows
BBC television presenters
BBC television producers
BBC Two controllers
British Book Award winners
British social commentators
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order
Critics of creationism
Cultural critics
English agnostics
English autobiographers
English broadcasters
English conservationists
English environmentalists
English nature writers
English television personalities
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science
Fellows of the Linnean Society of London
Fellows of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society
Fellows of the Royal Society (Statute 12)
Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts
Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology
Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Fellows of the Zoological Society of London
International Emmy Founders Award winners
Kalinga Prize recipients
Knights Bachelor
Living people
Members of the Order of Merit
Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George
Outstanding Narrator Primetime Emmy Award winners
People associated with the University of Leicester
People educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys
People from Isleworth
People from Leicester
Presidents of the British Science Association
Primetime Emmy Award winners
Social critics
Military personnel from Middlesex
| false |
[
"Miguel Skrobot (Warsaw, 1873 – Curitiba, February 20, 1912) was a businessman Brazilian of Polish origin.\n\nMiguel Skrobot was born in 1873, in Warsaw, Poland, to José Skrobot and Rosa Skrobot. When he was 18 he migrated to Brazil and settled in Curitiba as a merchant.\n\nHe married Maria Pansardi, who was born in Tibagi, Paraná, to Italian immigrants, and she bore him three children. He kept a steam-powered factory where he worked on grinding and toasting coffee beans under the \"Rio Branco\" brand, located on the spot where today stands the square called Praça Zacarias (square located in the center of Curitiba). He also owned a grocery store near Praça Tiradentes (also a square in the center of Curitiba, where the city was born). He died an early death, when he was 39, on February 20, 1912.\n\nReferences\n\n1873 births\n1912 deaths\nBrazilian businesspeople\nPeople from Curitiba\nPolish emigrants to Brazil",
"Adolf von Rauch (22 April 1798 - 12 December 1882) was a German paper manufacturer in Heilbronn, where he was born and died and where he was a major builder of social housing.\n\nPapermakers\n1798 births\n1882 deaths\nPeople from Heilbronn"
] |
[
"David Attenborough",
"Early life and family",
"Where was he born?",
"Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester,"
] |
C_b1caf59a3c484f208e434159c3ae7d42_1
|
What did his father do for a living?
| 2 |
What did David Attenborough's father do for a living?
|
David Attenborough
|
Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director and his younger brother, John, was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo), and the only surviving child among them. During World War II, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Europe. Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and other natural specimens. He received encouragement in this pursuit at age seven, when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his "museum". He also spent a considerable amount of his time in the grounds of the university, and, aged 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered via his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which wasn't revealed at the time, was a pond less than five metres from the department. A few years later, one of his adoptive sisters gave him a piece of amber filled with prehistoric creatures; some 50 years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine. In 1936 David and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl. Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and then won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945, where he studied geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947 he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950 Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel; she died in 1997. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress. CANNOTANSWER
|
where his father, Frederick, was principal.
|
Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
Attenborough was a senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. His filmography as writer, presenter and narrator spans eight decades; it includes Zoo Quest, Natural World, Wildlife on One, the Planet Earth franchise, The Blue Planet and its sequel. He is the only person to have won BAFTAs in all of the categories black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolutions.
While Attenborough's earlier work focused more on the wonders of the natural world, his later work has been more vocal in support of environmental causes. He has advocated for restoring planetary biodiversity, limiting population growth, switching to renewable energy, mitigating climate change, reducing meat consumption, and setting aside more areas for natural preservation.
On his broadcasting and passion for nature, NPR stated he "roamed the globe and shared his discoveries and enthusiasms with his patented semi-whisper way of narrating". In 2018 and 2019, Attenborough received Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narrator. He is widely considered a national treasure in the UK, although he himself does not like the term. He is the younger brother of the late director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough, and older brother of the late motor executive John Attenborough.
Life and family
Attenborough was born on 8 May 1926 in Isleworth, Middlesex, and grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons; his elder brother, Richard (died in 2014), became an actor and director, and his younger brother, John (died in 2012), was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo. During the Second World War, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Germany.
Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones, and natural specimens. He received encouragement when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his collection. He spent much time in the grounds of the university. Aged around 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered through his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which he did not reveal at the time, was a pond right next to the department. A year later, his adoptive sister Marianne gave him a piece of amber containing prehistoric creatures; some sixty years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine.
In 1936, Attenborough and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl.
Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester. He won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945 to study geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947, he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950, Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Jane died in 1997. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress.
Attenborough had a pacemaker fitted in June 2013, as well as a double knee replacement in 2015. In September 2013 he commented: "If I was earning my money by hewing coal I would be very glad indeed to stop. But I'm not. I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune."
Career
Early years at the BBC
After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC. Although he was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service. Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television, and he had seen only one programme in his life. However, he accepted Adams' offer of a three-month training course, and in 1952 he joined the BBC full-time. Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big, he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.
Attenborough's association with natural history programmes began when he produced and presented the three-part series Animal Patterns. The studio-bound programme featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism and courtship displays. Through this programme, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast in 1954, where Attenborough became the presenter at short notice due to Lester being taken ill.
In 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead, he formed his own department, the Travel and Exploration Unit, which allowed him to continue to front Zoo Quest as well as produce other documentaries, notably the Travellers' Tales and Adventure series. In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.
BBC administration
Attenborough became Controller of BBC 2 in March 1965, succeeding Michael Peacock. He had a clause inserted in his contract that would allow him to continue making programmes on an occasional basis. Later the same year he filmed elephants in Tanzania, and in 1969 he made a three-part series on the cultural history of the Indonesian island of Bali. For the 1971 film A Blank on the Map, he joined the first Western expedition to a remote highland valley in New Guinea to seek out a lost tribe.
BBC Two was launched in 1964, but had struggled to capture the public's imagination. When Attenborough arrived as controller, he quickly abolished the channel's quirky kangaroo mascot and shook up the schedule. With a mission to make BBC Two's output diverse and different from that offered by other networks, he began to establish a portfolio of programmes that defined the channel's identity for decades to come. Under his tenure, music, the arts, entertainment, archaeology, experimental comedy, travel, drama, sport, business, science and natural history all found a place in the weekly schedules. Often, an eclectic mix was offered within a single evening's viewing. Programmes he commissioned included Man Alive, Call My Bluff, Chronicle, Match of the Day, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Money Programme. With the addition of colour television, Attenborough brought snooker to the BBC to show the benefits of the format, as the sport uses coloured balls. The show – Pot Black – was later credited with the boom of the sport into the 1980s.
One of his most significant decisions was to order a 13-part series on the history of Western art, to show off the quality of the new UHF colour television service that BBC Two offered. Broadcast to universal acclaim in 1969, Civilisation set the blueprint for landmark authored documentaries, which were informally known as "sledgehammer" projects. Others followed, including Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (also commissioned by Attenborough), and Alistair Cooke's America. Attenborough thought that the story of evolution would be a natural subject for such a series. He shared his idea with Christopher Parsons, a producer at the Natural History Unit, who came up with a title Life on Earth and returned to Bristol to start planning the series. Attenborough harboured a strong desire to present the series himself, but this would not be possible so long as he remained in a management post.
While in charge of BBC Two, Attenborough turned down Terry Wogan's job application to be a presenter on the channel, stating that there weren't any suitable vacancies. The channel already had an Irish announcer, with Attenborough reflecting in 2016: "To have had two Irishmen presenting on BBC Two would have looked ridiculous. This is no comment whatsoever on Terry Wogan's talents." Attenborough has also acknowledged that he sanctioned the wiping of television output during this period to cut costs, including a series by Alan Bennett, which he later regretted. In 1969, Attenborough was promoted to director of programmes, making him responsible for the output of both BBC channels. His tasks, which included agreeing budgets, attending board meetings and firing staff, were now far removed from the business of filming programmes. When Attenborough's name was being suggested as a candidate for the position of Director-General of the BBC in 1972, he phoned his brother Richard to confess that he had no appetite for the job. Early the following year, he left his post to return to full-time programme-making, leaving him free to write and present the planned natural history epic.
After his resignation, Attenborough became a freelance broadcaster and started work on his next project, a trip to Indonesia with a crew from the Natural History Unit. It resulted in the 1973 series Eastwards with Attenborough, which was similar in tone to the earlier Zoo Quest; the main difference was the introduction of colour. Attenborough stated that he wanted to work in Asia, because previous nature documentaries had mostly focused on Africa. That year, Attenborough was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Language of Animals. After his work on Eastwards with Attenborough, he began to work on the scripts for Life on Earth. Due to the scale of his ambition, the BBC decided to partner with an American network to secure the necessary funding. While the negotiations were proceeding, he worked on a number of other television projects. He presented a series on tribal art (The Tribal Eye, 1975) and another on the voyages of discovery (The Explorers, 1975). He also presented a BBC children's series about cryptozoology entitled Fabulous Animals (1975), which featured mythical creatures such as mermaids and unicorns. Eventually, the BBC signed a co-production deal with Turner Broadcasting and Life on Earth moved into production in 1976.
Life series
Beginning with Life on Earth in 1979, Attenborough set about creating a body of work which became a benchmark of quality in wildlife film-making, and influenced a generation of documentary film-makers. The series established many of the hallmarks of the BBC's natural history output. By treating his subject seriously and researching the latest discoveries, Attenborough and his production team gained the trust of scientists, who responded by allowing him to feature their subjects in his programmes. Innovation was another factor in Life on Earth'''s success: new film-making techniques were devised to get the shots Attenborough wanted, with a focus on events and animals that were up till then unfilmed. International air travel enabled the series to be devised so that Attenborough visited several locations around the globe in each episode, sometimes even changing continents in one sequence. Although appearing as the on-screen presenter, he restricted his time on camera to give more time to his subjects.
Five years after the success of Life on Earth, the BBC released The Living Planet. This time, Attenborough built his series around the theme of ecology, the adaptations of living things to their environment. It was another critical and commercial success, generating huge international sales for the BBC. In 1990, The Trials of Life completed the original Life trilogy, looking at animal behaviour through the different stages of life.
In the 1990s, Attenborough continued to use the "Life" title for a succession of authored documentaries. In 1993, he presented Life in the Freezer, the first television series to survey the natural history of Antarctica. Although past normal retirement age, he then embarked on a number of more specialised surveys of the natural world, beginning with plants. They proved a difficult subject for his producers, who had to deliver hours of television featuring what are essentially immobile objects. The result was The Private Life of Plants (1995), which showed plants as dynamic organisms by using time-lapse photography to speed up their growth, and went on to earn a Peabody Award.
Prompted by an enthusiastic ornithologist at the BBC Natural History Unit, Attenborough then turned his attention to birds. As he was neither an birdwatcher nor a bird expert, he decided he was better qualified to make The Life of Birds (1998) on the theme of behaviour. The documentary series won a second Peabody Award the following year. The order of the remaining "Life" series was dictated by developments in camera technology. For The Life of Mammals (2002), low-light and infrared cameras were deployed to reveal the behaviour of nocturnal mammals. The series contains a number of memorable two shots of Attenborough and his subjects, which included chimpanzees, a blue whale and a grizzly bear. Advances in macro photography made it possible to capture the natural behaviour of very small creatures for the first time, and in 2005, Life in the Undergrowth introduced audiences to the world of invertebrates.
At this point, Attenborough realised that he had spent 20 years unconsciously assembling a collection of programmes on all the major groups of terrestrial animals and plants – only reptiles and amphibians were missing. When Life in Cold Blood was broadcast in 2008, he had the satisfaction of completing the set, brought together in a DVD encyclopaedia called Life on Land. He commented: "The evolutionary history is finished. The endeavour is complete. If you'd asked me 20 years ago whether we'd be attempting such a mammoth task, I'd have said 'Don't be ridiculous!' These programmes tell a particular story and I'm sure others will come along and tell it much better than I did, but I do hope that if people watch it in 50 years' time, it will still have something to say about the world we live in."
However, in 2010 Attenborough asserted that his First Life – dealing with evolutionary history before Life on Earth – should be included within the "Life" series. In the documentary Attenborough's Journey, he stated, "This series, to a degree which I really didn't fully appreciate until I started working on it, really completes the set."
Beyond Life on Earth
Alongside the "Life" series, Attenborough continued to work on other television documentaries, mainly in the natural history genre. He wrote and presented a series on man's influence on the natural history of the Mediterranean Basin, The First Eden, in 1987. Two years later, he demonstrated his passion for fossils in Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives. In 1990, he worked on the BBC's Prisoners of Conscience series where he highlighted the case of Mahjoub Sharif. Attenborough narrated every episode of Wildlife on One, a BBC One wildlife series that ran for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005. At its peak, it drew a weekly audience of eight to ten million, and the 1987 episode "Meerkats United" was voted the best wildlife documentary of all time by BBC viewers. He has narrated over 50 episodes of Natural World, BBC Two's flagship wildlife series. Its forerunner, The World About Us, was created by Attenborough in 1969, as a vehicle for colour television. In 1997, he narrated the BBC Wildlife Specials, each focussing on a charismatic species, and screened to mark the Natural History Unit's 40th anniversary.
As a writer and narrator, Attenborough continued to collaborate with the BBC Natural History Unit in the new millennium. Alastair Fothergill, a senior producer with whom Attenborough had worked on The Trials of Life and Life in the Freezer, was making The Blue Planet (2001), the Unit's first comprehensive series on marine life. He decided not to use an on-screen presenter due to difficulties in speaking to a camera through diving apparatus, but asked Attenborough to narrate the films. The same team reunited for Planet Earth (2006), the biggest nature documentary ever made for television and the first BBC wildlife series to be shot in high definition. In 2009, he co-wrote and narrated Life, a ten-part series focussing on extraordinary animal behaviour, and narrated Nature's Great Events, which showed how seasonal changes trigger major natural spectacles. In January 2009, the BBC commissioned Attenborough to provide a series of 20 ten-minute monologues covering the history of nature. Entitled David Attenborough's Life Stories, they were broadcast on Radio 4 on Friday nights.
In 2011, Fothergill gave Attenborough a more prominent role in Frozen Planet, a major series on the natural history of the polar regions; Attenborough appeared on screen and authored the final episode, in addition to performing voiceover duties. Attenborough introduced and narrated the Unit's first 4K production Life Story. For Planet Earth II (2016), Attenborough returned as narrator and presenter, with the main theme music composed by Hans Zimmer.In October 2014, the corporation announced a trio of new one-off Attenborough documentaries as part of a raft of new natural history programmes. "Attenborough's Paradise Birds" and "Attenborough's Big Birds" was shown on BBC Two and "Waking Giants", which follows the discovery of giant dinosaur bones in South America, aired on BBC One. The BBC also commissioned Atlantic Productions to make a three-part, Attenborough-fronted series Great Barrier Reef in 2015. The series marked the 10th project for Attenborough and Atlantic, and saw him returning to a location he first filmed at in 1957. On radio, Attenborough has continued as one of the presenters of BBC Radio 4's Tweet of the Day, which began a second series in September 2014. Attenborough forged a partnership with Sky, working on documentaries for the broadcaster's new 3D network, Sky 3D. Their first collaboration was Flying Monsters 3D, a film about pterosaurs which debuted on Christmas Day of 2010. A second film, The Bachelor King 3D, followed a year later. His next 3D project, Conquest of the Skies, made by the team behind the BAFTA-winning David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive, aired on Sky 3D during Christmas 2014.
Attenborough has narrated three series of David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities for UKTV channel Watch, with the third series showing in 2015. He has also narrated A majestic celebration: Wild Karnataka, India's first blue-chip natural history film, directed by Kalyan Varma and Amoghavarsha. Blue Planet II was broadcast in 2017, with Attenborough returning as presenter. The series was critically acclaimed and gained the highest UK viewing figure for 2017: 14.1 million. Attenborough narrated the 2018 five part series Dynasties, each episode dealing with one species in particular. In 2021 he presented the three part series Attenborough's Life in Colour, and The Mating Game, a five part series.
Environmentalist advocacy
By the turn of the millennium, Attenborough's authored documentaries were adopting a more overtly environmentalist stance. In State of the Planet (2000), he used the latest scientific evidence and interviews with leading scientists and conservationists to assess the impact of human activities on the natural world. He later turned to the issues of global warming (The Truth about Climate Change, 2006) and human population growth (How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?, 2009). He contributed a programme which highlighted the plight of endangered species to the BBC's Saving Planet Earth project in 2007, the 50th anniversary of the Natural History Unit.
In 2019, Attenborough narrated Our Planet, an eight-part documentary series, for Netflix. In contrast to much of his prior work for the BBC, this series emphasised the destructive role of human activities throughout the series. Before, he would often note concerns in a final section of the work. He also narrated Wild Karnataka, a documentary about the Karnataka forest area. In 2019, Attenborough's one-off film documentary about climate change for BBC One called Climate Change – The Facts was aired; the tone of the documentary was significantly graver than previous work for the BBC. This was followed by Extinction: The Facts, which is partly based on the 2019 IPBES report on the decline of biodiversity.“Sir David Attenborough makes stark warning about species extinction” . BBC Science. Retrieved 14 October 2020
In 2020, Attenborough narrated the documentary film David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. The film acts as Attenborough's witness statement, reflecting on his career as a naturalist and his hopes for the future. It was released on Netflix on 4 October 2020. Further work for Netflix includes the documentary titled Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet, released on 4 June 2021. In October 2020, Attenborough began filming in Cambridge for The Green Planet. In 2021, Attenborough narrated A Perfect Planet, a five-part earth science series for BBC One.
COP26
Attenborough was a key figure in the build up to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), and gave a speech at the opening ceremony. In his speech he stated that humans were "the greatest problem solvers to have ever existed on Earth" and spoke of his optimism for the future, finishing by saying "In my lifetime I've witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery."
Views and advocacy
Environment
Attenborough's programmes have often included references to the impact of human society on the natural world. The last episode of The Living Planet, for example, focuses almost entirely on humans' destruction of the environment and ways that it could be stopped or reversed. Despite this, he has been criticised for not giving enough prominence to environmental messages. In 2018 while promoting Dynasties, he said that repeated messages on threats to wildlife in programming could be a "turn-off" to viewers. Some environmentalists feel that programmes like Attenborough's give a false picture of idyllic wilderness and do not do enough to acknowledge that such areas are increasingly encroached upon by humans. However, the increased urgency of environmental messaging in films such as Extinction: The Facts, which depicts the continuing sixth mass extinction, Climate Change – The Facts and A Life on Our Planet from 2019 and 2020 received praise. In Seven Worlds, One Planet, Attenborough discusses the devastating impact that deforestation is having on the planet and the species.
In 2005 and 2006, he backed a BirdLife International project to stop the killing of albatross by longline fishing boats. He gave support to WWF's campaign to have 220,000 square kilometres of Borneo's rainforest designated a protected area. He serves as a vice-president of The Conservation Volunteers, vice-president of Fauna and Flora International, president of Butterfly Conservation and president emiritus of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust. In 2003, he launched an appeal on behalf of the World Land Trust to create a rainforest reserve in Ecuador in memory of Christopher Parsons, the producer of Life on Earth and a personal friend, who had died the previous year. The same year, he helped to launch ARKive, a global project instigated by Parsons to gather together natural history media into a digital library. ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, of which Attenborough is a patron. He later became patron of the World Land Trust. In 2020, he backed a Fauna and Flora International campaign calling for a global moratorium on deep sea mining for its impact on marine life.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Attenborough advocated on behalf of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and its conservation efforts, which have been impacted by the economic fallout from the pandemic. In 2020, Attenborough was named as a member of the Earthshot prize Council, an initiative of Prince William to find solutions to environmental issues. He is a patron of the Friends of Richmond Park and serves on the advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazine.
Attenborough was initially sceptical about the human influence on climate change, and stated that a 2004 lecture finally convinced him humans were responsible. He remained silent on the issue until 2006. Attenborough attended and spoke at COP26 as the "People's Advocate" for the event, and urged world leaders to act to reduce emissions. He supported Glyndebourne in their successful application to obtain planning permission for a wind turbine in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and gave evidence at the planning inquiry arguing in favour of the proposal. In his 2020 documentary film David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Attenborough advocates for people to adopt a vegetarian diet or to reduce meat consumption to save wildlife, noting that "the planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters."
Human population
Attenborough has linked anthropogenic effects on the environment with human population growth. He has attracted criticism for his views on human overpopulation and human population control. His most popular comment online in a 2020 study related to the topic of overpopulation. He is a patron of Population Matters, a UK charity advocating for family planning, sustainable consumption and proposed sustainable human population. In a 2013 interview with the Radio Times, Attenborough described humans as a "plague on the Earth", and described the act of sending food to famine-stricken countries as "barmy" for population reasons. He called for more debate about human population growth, saying that since he "first started making programmes 60 years ago, the human population has tripled."
According to Attenborough, improving women's rights around the world is an effective way "to limit our birth rate." He said that "anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist."
Religious views
Attenborough considers himself an agnostic. When asked whether his observation of the natural world has given him faith in a creator, he generally responds with some version of this story, making reference to the Onchocerca volvulus parasitic worm:
My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'.
He has explained that he feels the evidence all over the planet clearly shows evolution to be the best way to explain the diversity of life, and that "as far as [he's] concerned, if there is a supreme being then he chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world". In a BBC Four interview with Mark Lawson, he was asked if he at any time had any religious faith. He replied simply, "no". He said "It never really occurred to me to believe in God".
In 2002, Attenborough joined an effort by leading clerics and scientists to oppose the inclusion of creationism in the curriculum of UK state-funded independent schools which receive private sponsorship, such as the Emmanuel Schools Foundation.
In 2009, he stated that the Book of Genesis, by saying that the world was there for people to control, had taught generations that they can "dominate" the environment, and that this has resulted in the devastation of vast areas of the environment. He further explained to the science journal Nature, "That's why Darwinism, and the fact of evolution, is of great importance, because it is that attitude which has led to the devastation of so much, and we are in the situation that we are in".
Also in early 2009, the BBC broadcast an Attenborough one-hour special, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life. In reference to the programme, Attenborough stated that "People write to me that evolution is only a theory. Well, it is not a theory. Evolution is as solid a historical fact as you could conceive. Evidence from every quarter. What is a theory is whether natural selection is the mechanism and the only mechanism. That is a theory. But the historical reality that dinosaurs led to birds and mammals produced whales, that's not theory." He strongly opposes creationism and its offshoot "intelligent design", saying that the results of a survey that found a quarter of science teachers in state schools believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science lessons was "really terrible".
In March 2009, Attenborough appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Attenborough stated that he felt evolution did not rule out the existence of a God and accepted the title of agnostic saying, "My view is: I don't know one way or the other but I don't think that evolution is against a belief in God".
Attenborough has joined the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and other top scientists in signing a campaign statement co-ordinated by the British Humanist Association (BHA). The statement calls for "creationism to be banned from the school science curriculum and for evolution to be taught more widely in schools".
BBC and public service broadcasting
Attenborough is a lifelong supporter of the BBC, public service broadcasting and the television licence. He has said that public service broadcasting "is one of the things that distinguishes this country and makes me want to live here", and believes that it is not reducible to individual programmes, but "can only effectively operate as a network [...] that measures its success not only by its audience size but by the range of its schedule".
... the BBC per minute in almost every category is as cheap as you can find anywhere in the world and produces the best quality. [...] The BBC has gone through swingeing staff cuts. It has been cut to the bone, if you divert licence fee money elsewhere, you cut quality and services. [...] There is a lot of people who want to see the BBC weakened. They talk of this terrible tax of the licence fee. Yet it is the best bargain that is going. Four radio channels and god knows how many TV channels. It is piffling.
Attenborough expressed the view that there had often been people wanting to remove the BBC, adding "there's always been trouble about the licence and if you dropped your guard you could bet our bottom dollar there'd be plenty of people who'd want to take it away. The licence fee is the basis on which the BBC is based and if you destroy it, broadcasting... becomes a wasteland." He expressed regret at some of the changes made to the BBC in the 1990s by its Director-General, John Birt, who introduced an internal market at the corporation, slimmed and even closed some departments and outsourced much of the corporation's output to private production companies. Although he said Birt's policies had poor results, Attenborough also acknowledged "the BBC had to change." In 2008, he criticised the BBC's television schedules, positing that the two senior networks, BBC One and BBC Two – which Attenborough stated were "first set up as a partnership" – now "schedule simultaneously programmes of identical character, thereby contradicting the very reason that the BBC was given a second network."
Politics
In 1998, Attenborough described himself as "a standard, boring left-wing liberal" and expressed the view that the market economy was "misery". In 2013, Attenborough joined rock guitarists Brian May and Slash in opposing the government's policy on the cull of badgers in the UK by participating in a song dedicated to badgers. Attenborough was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in the 2014 referendum on that issue. Prior to the 2015 UK general election, Attenborough was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas.
In a 2020 interview, Attenborough criticised excess capitalism as a driver of ecological imbalance, stating "the excesses the capitalist system has brought us, have got to be curbed somehow", and that "greed does not actually lead to joy", although he added "That doesn't mean to say that capitalism is dead". He also lamented the lack of international cooperation on climate change, and said "there should be no dominant nation on this planet." In 2021, Attenborough told the leaders of the 47th G7 summit that "tackling climate change was now as much a political challenge as it was a scientific or technological one" and urged more action. Attenborough also stated that "(we) are on the verge of destabilising the entire planet."
Achievements, awards and recognition
Attenborough's contribution to broadcasting and wildlife film-making has brought him international recognition. He has been called "the great communicator, the peerless educator" and "the greatest broadcaster of our time." His programmes are often cited as an example of what public service broadcasting should be, even by critics of the BBC, and have influenced a generation of wildlife film-makers.
Honorary titles
By January 2013, Attenborough had collected 32 honorary degrees from British universities, more than any other person. In 1980, he was honoured by the Open University, with which he has had a close association throughout his career. He has honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Durham University (1982) and the University of Cambridge (1984) and honorary Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Oxford (1988) and the University of Ghent (1997). In 2006, the two eldest Attenborough brothers returned to their home city to receive the title of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester, "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the University." David Attenborough was previously awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the university in 1970, and was made an honorary Freeman of the City of Leicester in 1990. In 2013, he was made an Honorary Freeman of the City of Bristol. In 2010, he was awarded Honorary Doctorates from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Nottingham Trent University.
Attenborough has received the title Honorary Fellow from Clare College, Cambridge (1980), the Zoological Society of London (1998), the Linnean Society (1999), the Institute of Biology (Now the Royal Society of Biology) (2000), and the Society of Antiquaries (2007). He is Honorary Patron of the North American Native Plant Society and was elected as a Corresponding Member of the Australian Academy of Science.
Recognition
Attenborough has been featured as the subject of a number of BBC television programmes. Life on Air (2002) examined the legacy of his work, and Attenborough the Controller (2002) focused on his time in charge of BBC Two. He was also featured prominently in The Way We Went Wild (2004), a series about natural history television presenters, and 100 Years of Wildlife Films (2007), a programme marking the centenary of the nature documentary. In 2006, British television viewers were asked to vote for their Favourite Attenborough Moments for a UKTV poll to coincide with the broadcaster's 80th birthday. The winning clip showed Attenborough observing the mimicry skills of the superb lyrebird.
Attenborough was named the most trusted celebrity in the UK in a 2006 Reader's Digest poll, and in 2007 he won The Culture Show's Living Icon Award. He has been named among the 100 Greatest Britons in a 2002 BBC poll and is one of the top ten "Heroes of Our Time" according to New Statesman magazine. In September 2009, London's Natural History Museum opened the Attenborough Studio, part of its Darwin Centre development.
In 2012, Attenborough was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life. The same year, Attenborough featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named him among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands".
A British polar research ship was named RRS Sir David Attenborough in his honour. While an Internet poll suggesting the name of the ship had the most votes for Boaty McBoatface, Science Minister Jo Johnson said there were "more suitable names", and the official name was eventually picked up from one of the more favoured choices. However, one of its research sub-sea vehicles was named "Boaty" in recognition of the public vote.
Species named after Attenborough
At least 20 species and genera, both living and extinct, have been named in Attenborough's honour. Plants named after him include an alpine hawkweed (Hieracium attenboroughianum) discovered in the Brecon Beacons, a species of Ecuadorian flowering tree (Blakea attenboroughi), one of the world's largest-pitchered carnivorous plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii), along with a genus of flowering plants (Sirdavidia).
Several Arthropods are named after Attenborough including a butterfly, Attenborough's black-eyed satyr (Euptychia attenboroughi), a dragonfly, Attenborough's pintail (Acisoma attenboroughi), a millimetre-long goblin spider (Prethopalpus attenboroughi), an ornate Caribbean smiley-faced spider (Spintharus davidattenboroughi), an Indonesian flightless weevil (Trigonopterus attenboroughi), a Madagascan ghost shrimp (Ctenocheloides attenboroughi), and a soil snail (Palaina attenboroughi). The Monogenean Cichlidogyrus attenboroughi, a parasite from a deep-sea fish in the Lake Tanganyika, is probably the only parasite species named after him. Vertebrates have also been named after Attenborough, including a Namibian lizard (Platysaurus attenboroughi), a bird (Polioptila attenboroughi), a Peruvian frog (Pristimantis attenboroughi), a Madagascan stump-toed frog (Stumpffia davidattenboroughi), and one of only four species of long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi).
In 1993, after discovering that the Mesozoic reptile Plesiosaurus conybeari did not belong to the genus Plesiosaurus, the palaeontologist Robert Bakker renamed the species Attenborosaurus conybeari. A fossilised armoured fish discovered in Western Australia in 2008 was named Materpiscis attenboroughi, after Attenborough had filmed at the site and highlighted its scientific importance in Life on Earth. In 2015, a species of tree from Gabon (in the Annonaceae family) Sirdavidia was named with his title.
The Materpiscis fossil is believed to be the earliest organism capable of internal fertilisation. A miniature marsupial lion, Microleo attenboroughi, was named in his honour in 2016. The fossil grasshopper Electrotettix attenboroughi was named after Attenborough. In March 2017, a 430 million year old tiny crustacean was named after him. Called Cascolus ravitis, the first word is a Latin translation of the root meaning of "Attenborough", and the second is based on a description of him in Latin. In July 2017, the Caribbean bat Myotis attenboroughi was named after him. A new species of fan-throated lizard from coastal Kerala in southern India was named Sitana attenboroughii in his honour when it was described in 2018.
In 2018, a new species of phytoplankton, Syracosphaera azureaplaneta, was named to honour The Blue Planet, the TV documentary presented by Attenborough, and to recognise his contribution to promoting understanding of the oceanic environment. The same year, Attenborough was also commemorated in the name of the scarab beetle Sylvicanthon attenboroughi. In 2021 an extinct species of horseshoe crab was named Attenborolimulus superspinosus.Awards
In addition, he is the only person to have won BAFTAs for programmes in black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D, and 4K.
Filmography
David Attenborough's television credits span eight decades and his association with natural history programmes dates back to The Pattern of Animals and Zoo Quest in the early 1950s. His most influential work, 1979's Life on Earth, launched a strand of nine authored documentaries with the BBC Natural History Unit which shared the Life strand name and spanned 30 years. He narrated every episode of the long-running BBC series Wildlife on One and in his later career has voiced several high-profile BBC wildlife documentaries, among them The Blue Planet and Planet Earth. He became a pioneer in the 3D documentary format with Flying Monsters in 2010.
Bibliography
David Attenborough's work as an author has strong parallels with his broadcasting career. In the 1950s and 1960s, his published work included accounts of his animal collecting expeditions around the world, which became the Zoo Quest series. He wrote an accompanying volume to each of his nine Life documentaries, along with books on tribal art and birds of paradise. His autobiography, Life on Air, was published in 2002, revised in 2009 and is one of a number of his works which is available as a self-narrated audiobook. Attenborough has also contributed forewords and introductions to many other works, notably those accompanying Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, Africa and other BBC series he has narrated.
Zoo Quest to Guyana (1956)
Zoo Quest for a Dragon (1957) – republished in 1959 to include an additional 85 pages titled Quest for the Paradise Birds Zoo Quest in Paraguay (1959)
Quest in Paradise (1960)
People of Paradise (1960)
Zoo Quest to Madagascar (1961)
Quest Under Capricorn (1963)
Fabulous Animals (1975)
The Tribal Eye (1976)
Life on Earth (1979)
Discovering Life on Earth (1981)
The Living Planet (1984)
The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man (1987)
The Atlas of the Living World (1989)
The Trials of Life (1990)
The Private Life of Plants (1994)
The Life of Birds (1998)
The Life of Mammals (2002)
Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster (2002) – autobiography, revised in 2009
Life in the Undergrowth (2005)
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery (2007) – with Susan Owens, Martin Clayton and Rea Alexandratos
Life in Cold Blood (2007)
David Attenborough's Life Stories (2009)
David Attenborough's New Life Stories (2011)
Drawn From Paradise: The Discovery, Art and Natural History of the Birds of Paradise (2012) – with Errol Fuller
Adventures of a Young Naturalist: The Zoo Quest Expeditions (2017)
Journeys to the Other Side of the World: Further Adventures of a Young Naturalist (2018)
Dynasties: The Rise and Fall of Animal Families with Stephen Moss (2018)
A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future (2020)
References
External links
BBC Books David Attenborough website
David Attenborough at the British Film Institute
David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet
Wildfilmhistory.org biography
PBS interview with Attenborough in 1998
People and Planet: David Attenborough, video of the 2011 RSA President's Lecture
David Attenborough interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, 27 December 1998
David Attenborough: humanity must come to its senses or face environmental disaster. Radio Times''. 13 October 2016.
1926 births
20th-century Royal Navy personnel
Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Articles containing video clips
David
BAFTA fellows
BBC television presenters
BBC television producers
BBC Two controllers
British Book Award winners
British social commentators
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order
Critics of creationism
Cultural critics
English agnostics
English autobiographers
English broadcasters
English conservationists
English environmentalists
English nature writers
English television personalities
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science
Fellows of the Linnean Society of London
Fellows of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society
Fellows of the Royal Society (Statute 12)
Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts
Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology
Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Fellows of the Zoological Society of London
International Emmy Founders Award winners
Kalinga Prize recipients
Knights Bachelor
Living people
Members of the Order of Merit
Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George
Outstanding Narrator Primetime Emmy Award winners
People associated with the University of Leicester
People educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys
People from Isleworth
People from Leicester
Presidents of the British Science Association
Primetime Emmy Award winners
Social critics
Military personnel from Middlesex
| true |
[
"Gregor Schnitzler (born 1964) is a German film director. He directed more than fifteen films since 1991. His best-known films are What to Do in Case of Fire? and The Cloud based on the novel by Gudrun Pausewang.\n\nHis father, Conrad, was well known for his work in experimental music and for being an early member of both Tangerine Dream and Cluster (spelled Kluster during his period with the group.)\n\nSelected filmography\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\n1964 births\nLiving people\nMass media people from Berlin",
"Hershel of Ostropol (, Little Hersh of Ostropol; 1757–1811) is a prominent figure in Jewish humor. Hershel was a prankster from Ostropol, Crown Poland (now Ukraine), who lived in poverty and targeted the rich and powerful, both Jew and Gentile. Common folks were not safe from his shenanigans, either, but usually got off lightly. He is also remembered by Ukrainian Gentiles as something of an ethnic folk hero, who could take on establishment forces much larger than himself with nothing but his humor.\n\nHershel was originally a shochet who, having offended some of his townspeople with his humor, left, wandered, and \"found his calling\" as court jester of the Baal Shem Tov's grandson. Publicity for the transition to reputation as a jokester is traced to a 1920s writer named Chaim Bloch and a book he wrote.\n\nOverview\nWhile his exploits have been mythologized over the years, the character of Hershele is based on a historic figure, who lived in what is today Ukraine during the late 18th or early 19th century. He may have used his wits to get by, eventually earning a permanent position as court jester of sorts to Rabbi Boruch of Medzhybizh.\n\nIn the Hershele stories, he was chosen by members of Rabbi Boruch's court in order to counter the rebbe's notorious fits of temper and lift his chronic melancholy.\n\nIt is believed that Hershele died of an accident that was brought about by one of Rabbi Boruch's fits of anger. Hershele lingered for several days and died in Rabbi Boruch's own bed surrounded by Rabbi Boruch and his followers. He is thought to be buried in the old Jewish cemetery in Medzhybizh, though his grave is unmarked.\n\nHershele was the subject of several epic poems, a novel, a comedy performed in 1930 by the Vilna Troupe, and a US TV program in the 1950s. Two illustrated children's books, The Adventures of Hershel of Ostropol, and Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, have been published. Both books were written by Eric Kimmel and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman.\n\nA tale about him, When Hershel Eats by Nathan Ausubel, was included in Joanna Cole's 1982 work, Best-Loved Folktales of the World.\n\nIn 2002, a play entitled Hershele the Storyteller was performed in New York City.\n\nIn 1999, Shari Aronson of Z Puppets Rosenschnoz received permission from Eric Kimmel to adapt the book Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins for the stage. This adaptation has since been produced four times by Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company, with puppets by Chris Griffith winning a 2009 MN Ivey Award, and multiple times by theater companies and Jewish Community Centers across the U.S.\n\nTales and examples\n\nThe Goose\nWhen Hershele was a child, he had a number of brothers and sisters, of which he was the smallest. Thus, whenever they had a meal, he'd be the last to get anything. As a result, whenever they had goose, he never got to eat a foot, which was his favorite part. One evening, he snuck into the kitchen before dinner and cut a foot off of the goose, slipping it under his shirt to hide.\nDuring dinner, his father noticed that Hershele's shirt was grease-stained and that the goose's left foot was missing.\n-\t\"Hershele,\" he said. \"Did you take the goose's foot?\"\n-\t\"No, father,\" he said. \"Maybe it was a one-footed goose.\"\n-\t\"A one-footed goose? There's no such thing!\"\n-\t\"Sure there is. I'll take you to see one after dinner.\"\nThat evening, Hershele took his father out to a lake near their village. A flock of geese were sleeping on the banks, each tucking one foot into its body so that only the other was visible.\n-\t\"There's one,\" said Hershele, pointing. Thinking to outsmart his son, his father clapped, waking the goose and causing it to lower its other leg.\n-\t\"There. Now, Hershele, will you admit that you stole-\"\n-\t\"Wow, father! You just clapped and the goose grew a foot! Why didn't you do that to the one at the table?\"\n\nMy Father\nHershele was traveling along the road when he came to a small inn. He went up to the door and politely asked if he could have a bite to eat and a pile of hay in the stables on which to rest for the night. The innkeeper and his wife refused.\n-\t\"Oh, really, you're going to say no to me?\" snapped Hershel.\n-\t\"Y-yes,\" stammered the innkeeper, beginning to get worried.\n-\t\"You know what happens if you refuse me? I do what my father did when someone said no to him! Do you want me to do what my father did? Do you? Do you?\"\n-\t\"Give him what he wants,\" hissed the innkeeper's wife into his ear. \"He's clearly insane. I don't know what his father did, but it must be something terrible!\"\nAgreeing with his wife, the innkeeper allowed Hershele to stay for the night, going so far as to offer him a large meal and a place at their table. After dinner, he offered Hershele one of his finest rooms, to which the vagabond happily agreed.\n-\t\"So,\" he said as the dishes were cleared away. \"Now that everything is settled, I'm curious: what did your father do?\"\n-\t\"Well, since you ask so nicely, I'll tell you,\" Hershele replied. \"When my father was alone starving on the road, and he was refused anything to eat, why he'd go to bed hungry!\"\n\nRolls and Doughnuts\nHershele once entered a restaurant and asked for two rolls. When these were brought to him he changed his mind, asked for two doughnuts instead, ate them, then walked out without paying. The owner ran after him and demanded to be paid for the doughnuts. \n-\t“But I gave you the rolls for them,” Hershele said. \n-\t“You didn’t pay for the rolls, either,” the owner said. \n-\t“Well, I haven’t eaten the rolls, have I?” Hershele replied and walked away.\n\nGood Manners\nOne time Hershele and a vagabond friend bought two loaves of bread. Hershele picked them up from the baker, then handed the smaller one to his friend and kept the larger one for himself. \n-\t“This is very impolite,” his friend said. \n-\t“What would you have done if you were me?” Hershele asked. \n-\t“I’d give you the large loaf and keep the small one, of course!” The friend said. \n-\t“Well, you’ve got the small one. Now what do you want?”\n\nOn a Dare\nOn a dare to slap a hated man in his Jewish hometown, Hershele did just that, unprovoked. When the man asked him why he did this, Hershele replied that he thought the man was Berel. \n-\t“And if I’m Berel,” said the offended man, “does this give you the right to hit me?” \n-\t “Keep your nose out of my and Berel’s affairs,” Hershele replied.\n\nThe Pig\nDuring the feast of Passover, Hershele once sat across from a self-absorbed rich man who made derogatory remarks about Hershele’s eating habits. \n-\t“What separates you from a pig, is what I’d like to know,” the man said derisively. \n-\t“The table,” Hershele replied.\n\nThe Painting\nOnce, Hershele was selling antiques and trinkets in the market. Among his wares was a large canvas, that was entirely blank. A customer asked Hershele what it was, and Hershele replied:\n-\t\"For a silver ruble, I will tell you about this painting. (The man, overwhelmed by curiosity, gives him a silver ruble). Well, this painting is a famous painting, The Jews Pursued by the Egyptians Crossed the Red Sea.\"\n-\t\"Well, where are the Jews?\"\n-\t\"They've crossed.\"\n-\t\"And the Egyptians?\"\n-\t\"Haven't come yet.\"\n-\t(Getting frustrated at having been duped) \"And where's the Red Sea?!\"\n-\t\"It's parted, dummkopf!\"\n\nThe Hat\nA story from Kehilalinks:\nHershele was visiting a distant town. The local Polish lord rode in. The locals removed their hats and bowed. Hershel stood still.\n\"Where are you from?\" the nobleman asked. \n \"From Ostropol\" Hershele answered.\n\"What about the hat?\" asked the lord.\n \"The hat too is from Ostropol.\"\n\nThe Rich Miser\nHershele was once collecting alms in a large town. The local gvir (rich man) rebuffed him rudely. Hershele responded with a smile, and said \"I am sure you will remain wealthy your whole life\". The gvir was confused and asked \"why?\" Hershele said, \"Well, even a pauper like me who accidentally drops a few kopeks in the outhouse pit will not bother to fish them out of the waste. Berel, who is a little richer than me, would do the same for a few rubles even. So if the Lord of hosts, who has said \"mine is silver, and mine is the gold\" dropped fifty thousand rubles into you, He will certainly leave it there.\"\n\nSee also\n Hitar Petar\nMotke Chabad\n Nasreddin\n Păcală\n Till Eulenspiegel\n\nReferences \n\nJewish comedy and humor\nJewish literature\nJewish society\nPeople from Medzhybizh\nJesters\nUkrainian folklore\nUkrainian entertainers\nHumor and wit characters\nClowns\n1757 births\n1811 deaths\nYiddish-language folklore\nEuropean folklore characters\nUkrainian Jews\nJews of the Russian Empire"
] |
[
"David Attenborough",
"Early life and family",
"Where was he born?",
"Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester,",
"What did his father do for a living?",
"where his father, Frederick, was principal."
] |
C_b1caf59a3c484f208e434159c3ae7d42_1
|
Did David have siblings?
| 3 |
Did David Attenborough have siblings?
|
David Attenborough
|
Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director and his younger brother, John, was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo), and the only surviving child among them. During World War II, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Europe. Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and other natural specimens. He received encouragement in this pursuit at age seven, when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his "museum". He also spent a considerable amount of his time in the grounds of the university, and, aged 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered via his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which wasn't revealed at the time, was a pond less than five metres from the department. A few years later, one of his adoptive sisters gave him a piece of amber filled with prehistoric creatures; some 50 years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine. In 1936 David and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl. Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and then won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945, where he studied geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947 he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950 Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel; she died in 1997. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress. CANNOTANSWER
|
He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director and his younger brother, John, was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo),
|
Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
Attenborough was a senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. His filmography as writer, presenter and narrator spans eight decades; it includes Zoo Quest, Natural World, Wildlife on One, the Planet Earth franchise, The Blue Planet and its sequel. He is the only person to have won BAFTAs in all of the categories black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolutions.
While Attenborough's earlier work focused more on the wonders of the natural world, his later work has been more vocal in support of environmental causes. He has advocated for restoring planetary biodiversity, limiting population growth, switching to renewable energy, mitigating climate change, reducing meat consumption, and setting aside more areas for natural preservation.
On his broadcasting and passion for nature, NPR stated he "roamed the globe and shared his discoveries and enthusiasms with his patented semi-whisper way of narrating". In 2018 and 2019, Attenborough received Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narrator. He is widely considered a national treasure in the UK, although he himself does not like the term. He is the younger brother of the late director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough, and older brother of the late motor executive John Attenborough.
Life and family
Attenborough was born on 8 May 1926 in Isleworth, Middlesex, and grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons; his elder brother, Richard (died in 2014), became an actor and director, and his younger brother, John (died in 2012), was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo. During the Second World War, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Germany.
Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones, and natural specimens. He received encouragement when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his collection. He spent much time in the grounds of the university. Aged around 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered through his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which he did not reveal at the time, was a pond right next to the department. A year later, his adoptive sister Marianne gave him a piece of amber containing prehistoric creatures; some sixty years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine.
In 1936, Attenborough and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl.
Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester. He won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945 to study geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947, he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950, Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Jane died in 1997. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress.
Attenborough had a pacemaker fitted in June 2013, as well as a double knee replacement in 2015. In September 2013 he commented: "If I was earning my money by hewing coal I would be very glad indeed to stop. But I'm not. I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune."
Career
Early years at the BBC
After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC. Although he was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service. Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television, and he had seen only one programme in his life. However, he accepted Adams' offer of a three-month training course, and in 1952 he joined the BBC full-time. Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big, he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.
Attenborough's association with natural history programmes began when he produced and presented the three-part series Animal Patterns. The studio-bound programme featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism and courtship displays. Through this programme, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast in 1954, where Attenborough became the presenter at short notice due to Lester being taken ill.
In 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead, he formed his own department, the Travel and Exploration Unit, which allowed him to continue to front Zoo Quest as well as produce other documentaries, notably the Travellers' Tales and Adventure series. In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.
BBC administration
Attenborough became Controller of BBC 2 in March 1965, succeeding Michael Peacock. He had a clause inserted in his contract that would allow him to continue making programmes on an occasional basis. Later the same year he filmed elephants in Tanzania, and in 1969 he made a three-part series on the cultural history of the Indonesian island of Bali. For the 1971 film A Blank on the Map, he joined the first Western expedition to a remote highland valley in New Guinea to seek out a lost tribe.
BBC Two was launched in 1964, but had struggled to capture the public's imagination. When Attenborough arrived as controller, he quickly abolished the channel's quirky kangaroo mascot and shook up the schedule. With a mission to make BBC Two's output diverse and different from that offered by other networks, he began to establish a portfolio of programmes that defined the channel's identity for decades to come. Under his tenure, music, the arts, entertainment, archaeology, experimental comedy, travel, drama, sport, business, science and natural history all found a place in the weekly schedules. Often, an eclectic mix was offered within a single evening's viewing. Programmes he commissioned included Man Alive, Call My Bluff, Chronicle, Match of the Day, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Money Programme. With the addition of colour television, Attenborough brought snooker to the BBC to show the benefits of the format, as the sport uses coloured balls. The show – Pot Black – was later credited with the boom of the sport into the 1980s.
One of his most significant decisions was to order a 13-part series on the history of Western art, to show off the quality of the new UHF colour television service that BBC Two offered. Broadcast to universal acclaim in 1969, Civilisation set the blueprint for landmark authored documentaries, which were informally known as "sledgehammer" projects. Others followed, including Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (also commissioned by Attenborough), and Alistair Cooke's America. Attenborough thought that the story of evolution would be a natural subject for such a series. He shared his idea with Christopher Parsons, a producer at the Natural History Unit, who came up with a title Life on Earth and returned to Bristol to start planning the series. Attenborough harboured a strong desire to present the series himself, but this would not be possible so long as he remained in a management post.
While in charge of BBC Two, Attenborough turned down Terry Wogan's job application to be a presenter on the channel, stating that there weren't any suitable vacancies. The channel already had an Irish announcer, with Attenborough reflecting in 2016: "To have had two Irishmen presenting on BBC Two would have looked ridiculous. This is no comment whatsoever on Terry Wogan's talents." Attenborough has also acknowledged that he sanctioned the wiping of television output during this period to cut costs, including a series by Alan Bennett, which he later regretted. In 1969, Attenborough was promoted to director of programmes, making him responsible for the output of both BBC channels. His tasks, which included agreeing budgets, attending board meetings and firing staff, were now far removed from the business of filming programmes. When Attenborough's name was being suggested as a candidate for the position of Director-General of the BBC in 1972, he phoned his brother Richard to confess that he had no appetite for the job. Early the following year, he left his post to return to full-time programme-making, leaving him free to write and present the planned natural history epic.
After his resignation, Attenborough became a freelance broadcaster and started work on his next project, a trip to Indonesia with a crew from the Natural History Unit. It resulted in the 1973 series Eastwards with Attenborough, which was similar in tone to the earlier Zoo Quest; the main difference was the introduction of colour. Attenborough stated that he wanted to work in Asia, because previous nature documentaries had mostly focused on Africa. That year, Attenborough was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Language of Animals. After his work on Eastwards with Attenborough, he began to work on the scripts for Life on Earth. Due to the scale of his ambition, the BBC decided to partner with an American network to secure the necessary funding. While the negotiations were proceeding, he worked on a number of other television projects. He presented a series on tribal art (The Tribal Eye, 1975) and another on the voyages of discovery (The Explorers, 1975). He also presented a BBC children's series about cryptozoology entitled Fabulous Animals (1975), which featured mythical creatures such as mermaids and unicorns. Eventually, the BBC signed a co-production deal with Turner Broadcasting and Life on Earth moved into production in 1976.
Life series
Beginning with Life on Earth in 1979, Attenborough set about creating a body of work which became a benchmark of quality in wildlife film-making, and influenced a generation of documentary film-makers. The series established many of the hallmarks of the BBC's natural history output. By treating his subject seriously and researching the latest discoveries, Attenborough and his production team gained the trust of scientists, who responded by allowing him to feature their subjects in his programmes. Innovation was another factor in Life on Earth'''s success: new film-making techniques were devised to get the shots Attenborough wanted, with a focus on events and animals that were up till then unfilmed. International air travel enabled the series to be devised so that Attenborough visited several locations around the globe in each episode, sometimes even changing continents in one sequence. Although appearing as the on-screen presenter, he restricted his time on camera to give more time to his subjects.
Five years after the success of Life on Earth, the BBC released The Living Planet. This time, Attenborough built his series around the theme of ecology, the adaptations of living things to their environment. It was another critical and commercial success, generating huge international sales for the BBC. In 1990, The Trials of Life completed the original Life trilogy, looking at animal behaviour through the different stages of life.
In the 1990s, Attenborough continued to use the "Life" title for a succession of authored documentaries. In 1993, he presented Life in the Freezer, the first television series to survey the natural history of Antarctica. Although past normal retirement age, he then embarked on a number of more specialised surveys of the natural world, beginning with plants. They proved a difficult subject for his producers, who had to deliver hours of television featuring what are essentially immobile objects. The result was The Private Life of Plants (1995), which showed plants as dynamic organisms by using time-lapse photography to speed up their growth, and went on to earn a Peabody Award.
Prompted by an enthusiastic ornithologist at the BBC Natural History Unit, Attenborough then turned his attention to birds. As he was neither an birdwatcher nor a bird expert, he decided he was better qualified to make The Life of Birds (1998) on the theme of behaviour. The documentary series won a second Peabody Award the following year. The order of the remaining "Life" series was dictated by developments in camera technology. For The Life of Mammals (2002), low-light and infrared cameras were deployed to reveal the behaviour of nocturnal mammals. The series contains a number of memorable two shots of Attenborough and his subjects, which included chimpanzees, a blue whale and a grizzly bear. Advances in macro photography made it possible to capture the natural behaviour of very small creatures for the first time, and in 2005, Life in the Undergrowth introduced audiences to the world of invertebrates.
At this point, Attenborough realised that he had spent 20 years unconsciously assembling a collection of programmes on all the major groups of terrestrial animals and plants – only reptiles and amphibians were missing. When Life in Cold Blood was broadcast in 2008, he had the satisfaction of completing the set, brought together in a DVD encyclopaedia called Life on Land. He commented: "The evolutionary history is finished. The endeavour is complete. If you'd asked me 20 years ago whether we'd be attempting such a mammoth task, I'd have said 'Don't be ridiculous!' These programmes tell a particular story and I'm sure others will come along and tell it much better than I did, but I do hope that if people watch it in 50 years' time, it will still have something to say about the world we live in."
However, in 2010 Attenborough asserted that his First Life – dealing with evolutionary history before Life on Earth – should be included within the "Life" series. In the documentary Attenborough's Journey, he stated, "This series, to a degree which I really didn't fully appreciate until I started working on it, really completes the set."
Beyond Life on Earth
Alongside the "Life" series, Attenborough continued to work on other television documentaries, mainly in the natural history genre. He wrote and presented a series on man's influence on the natural history of the Mediterranean Basin, The First Eden, in 1987. Two years later, he demonstrated his passion for fossils in Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives. In 1990, he worked on the BBC's Prisoners of Conscience series where he highlighted the case of Mahjoub Sharif. Attenborough narrated every episode of Wildlife on One, a BBC One wildlife series that ran for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005. At its peak, it drew a weekly audience of eight to ten million, and the 1987 episode "Meerkats United" was voted the best wildlife documentary of all time by BBC viewers. He has narrated over 50 episodes of Natural World, BBC Two's flagship wildlife series. Its forerunner, The World About Us, was created by Attenborough in 1969, as a vehicle for colour television. In 1997, he narrated the BBC Wildlife Specials, each focussing on a charismatic species, and screened to mark the Natural History Unit's 40th anniversary.
As a writer and narrator, Attenborough continued to collaborate with the BBC Natural History Unit in the new millennium. Alastair Fothergill, a senior producer with whom Attenborough had worked on The Trials of Life and Life in the Freezer, was making The Blue Planet (2001), the Unit's first comprehensive series on marine life. He decided not to use an on-screen presenter due to difficulties in speaking to a camera through diving apparatus, but asked Attenborough to narrate the films. The same team reunited for Planet Earth (2006), the biggest nature documentary ever made for television and the first BBC wildlife series to be shot in high definition. In 2009, he co-wrote and narrated Life, a ten-part series focussing on extraordinary animal behaviour, and narrated Nature's Great Events, which showed how seasonal changes trigger major natural spectacles. In January 2009, the BBC commissioned Attenborough to provide a series of 20 ten-minute monologues covering the history of nature. Entitled David Attenborough's Life Stories, they were broadcast on Radio 4 on Friday nights.
In 2011, Fothergill gave Attenborough a more prominent role in Frozen Planet, a major series on the natural history of the polar regions; Attenborough appeared on screen and authored the final episode, in addition to performing voiceover duties. Attenborough introduced and narrated the Unit's first 4K production Life Story. For Planet Earth II (2016), Attenborough returned as narrator and presenter, with the main theme music composed by Hans Zimmer.In October 2014, the corporation announced a trio of new one-off Attenborough documentaries as part of a raft of new natural history programmes. "Attenborough's Paradise Birds" and "Attenborough's Big Birds" was shown on BBC Two and "Waking Giants", which follows the discovery of giant dinosaur bones in South America, aired on BBC One. The BBC also commissioned Atlantic Productions to make a three-part, Attenborough-fronted series Great Barrier Reef in 2015. The series marked the 10th project for Attenborough and Atlantic, and saw him returning to a location he first filmed at in 1957. On radio, Attenborough has continued as one of the presenters of BBC Radio 4's Tweet of the Day, which began a second series in September 2014. Attenborough forged a partnership with Sky, working on documentaries for the broadcaster's new 3D network, Sky 3D. Their first collaboration was Flying Monsters 3D, a film about pterosaurs which debuted on Christmas Day of 2010. A second film, The Bachelor King 3D, followed a year later. His next 3D project, Conquest of the Skies, made by the team behind the BAFTA-winning David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive, aired on Sky 3D during Christmas 2014.
Attenborough has narrated three series of David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities for UKTV channel Watch, with the third series showing in 2015. He has also narrated A majestic celebration: Wild Karnataka, India's first blue-chip natural history film, directed by Kalyan Varma and Amoghavarsha. Blue Planet II was broadcast in 2017, with Attenborough returning as presenter. The series was critically acclaimed and gained the highest UK viewing figure for 2017: 14.1 million. Attenborough narrated the 2018 five part series Dynasties, each episode dealing with one species in particular. In 2021 he presented the three part series Attenborough's Life in Colour, and The Mating Game, a five part series.
Environmentalist advocacy
By the turn of the millennium, Attenborough's authored documentaries were adopting a more overtly environmentalist stance. In State of the Planet (2000), he used the latest scientific evidence and interviews with leading scientists and conservationists to assess the impact of human activities on the natural world. He later turned to the issues of global warming (The Truth about Climate Change, 2006) and human population growth (How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?, 2009). He contributed a programme which highlighted the plight of endangered species to the BBC's Saving Planet Earth project in 2007, the 50th anniversary of the Natural History Unit.
In 2019, Attenborough narrated Our Planet, an eight-part documentary series, for Netflix. In contrast to much of his prior work for the BBC, this series emphasised the destructive role of human activities throughout the series. Before, he would often note concerns in a final section of the work. He also narrated Wild Karnataka, a documentary about the Karnataka forest area. In 2019, Attenborough's one-off film documentary about climate change for BBC One called Climate Change – The Facts was aired; the tone of the documentary was significantly graver than previous work for the BBC. This was followed by Extinction: The Facts, which is partly based on the 2019 IPBES report on the decline of biodiversity.“Sir David Attenborough makes stark warning about species extinction” . BBC Science. Retrieved 14 October 2020
In 2020, Attenborough narrated the documentary film David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. The film acts as Attenborough's witness statement, reflecting on his career as a naturalist and his hopes for the future. It was released on Netflix on 4 October 2020. Further work for Netflix includes the documentary titled Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet, released on 4 June 2021. In October 2020, Attenborough began filming in Cambridge for The Green Planet. In 2021, Attenborough narrated A Perfect Planet, a five-part earth science series for BBC One.
COP26
Attenborough was a key figure in the build up to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), and gave a speech at the opening ceremony. In his speech he stated that humans were "the greatest problem solvers to have ever existed on Earth" and spoke of his optimism for the future, finishing by saying "In my lifetime I've witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery."
Views and advocacy
Environment
Attenborough's programmes have often included references to the impact of human society on the natural world. The last episode of The Living Planet, for example, focuses almost entirely on humans' destruction of the environment and ways that it could be stopped or reversed. Despite this, he has been criticised for not giving enough prominence to environmental messages. In 2018 while promoting Dynasties, he said that repeated messages on threats to wildlife in programming could be a "turn-off" to viewers. Some environmentalists feel that programmes like Attenborough's give a false picture of idyllic wilderness and do not do enough to acknowledge that such areas are increasingly encroached upon by humans. However, the increased urgency of environmental messaging in films such as Extinction: The Facts, which depicts the continuing sixth mass extinction, Climate Change – The Facts and A Life on Our Planet from 2019 and 2020 received praise. In Seven Worlds, One Planet, Attenborough discusses the devastating impact that deforestation is having on the planet and the species.
In 2005 and 2006, he backed a BirdLife International project to stop the killing of albatross by longline fishing boats. He gave support to WWF's campaign to have 220,000 square kilometres of Borneo's rainforest designated a protected area. He serves as a vice-president of The Conservation Volunteers, vice-president of Fauna and Flora International, president of Butterfly Conservation and president emiritus of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust. In 2003, he launched an appeal on behalf of the World Land Trust to create a rainforest reserve in Ecuador in memory of Christopher Parsons, the producer of Life on Earth and a personal friend, who had died the previous year. The same year, he helped to launch ARKive, a global project instigated by Parsons to gather together natural history media into a digital library. ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, of which Attenborough is a patron. He later became patron of the World Land Trust. In 2020, he backed a Fauna and Flora International campaign calling for a global moratorium on deep sea mining for its impact on marine life.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Attenborough advocated on behalf of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and its conservation efforts, which have been impacted by the economic fallout from the pandemic. In 2020, Attenborough was named as a member of the Earthshot prize Council, an initiative of Prince William to find solutions to environmental issues. He is a patron of the Friends of Richmond Park and serves on the advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazine.
Attenborough was initially sceptical about the human influence on climate change, and stated that a 2004 lecture finally convinced him humans were responsible. He remained silent on the issue until 2006. Attenborough attended and spoke at COP26 as the "People's Advocate" for the event, and urged world leaders to act to reduce emissions. He supported Glyndebourne in their successful application to obtain planning permission for a wind turbine in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and gave evidence at the planning inquiry arguing in favour of the proposal. In his 2020 documentary film David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Attenborough advocates for people to adopt a vegetarian diet or to reduce meat consumption to save wildlife, noting that "the planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters."
Human population
Attenborough has linked anthropogenic effects on the environment with human population growth. He has attracted criticism for his views on human overpopulation and human population control. His most popular comment online in a 2020 study related to the topic of overpopulation. He is a patron of Population Matters, a UK charity advocating for family planning, sustainable consumption and proposed sustainable human population. In a 2013 interview with the Radio Times, Attenborough described humans as a "plague on the Earth", and described the act of sending food to famine-stricken countries as "barmy" for population reasons. He called for more debate about human population growth, saying that since he "first started making programmes 60 years ago, the human population has tripled."
According to Attenborough, improving women's rights around the world is an effective way "to limit our birth rate." He said that "anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist."
Religious views
Attenborough considers himself an agnostic. When asked whether his observation of the natural world has given him faith in a creator, he generally responds with some version of this story, making reference to the Onchocerca volvulus parasitic worm:
My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'.
He has explained that he feels the evidence all over the planet clearly shows evolution to be the best way to explain the diversity of life, and that "as far as [he's] concerned, if there is a supreme being then he chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world". In a BBC Four interview with Mark Lawson, he was asked if he at any time had any religious faith. He replied simply, "no". He said "It never really occurred to me to believe in God".
In 2002, Attenborough joined an effort by leading clerics and scientists to oppose the inclusion of creationism in the curriculum of UK state-funded independent schools which receive private sponsorship, such as the Emmanuel Schools Foundation.
In 2009, he stated that the Book of Genesis, by saying that the world was there for people to control, had taught generations that they can "dominate" the environment, and that this has resulted in the devastation of vast areas of the environment. He further explained to the science journal Nature, "That's why Darwinism, and the fact of evolution, is of great importance, because it is that attitude which has led to the devastation of so much, and we are in the situation that we are in".
Also in early 2009, the BBC broadcast an Attenborough one-hour special, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life. In reference to the programme, Attenborough stated that "People write to me that evolution is only a theory. Well, it is not a theory. Evolution is as solid a historical fact as you could conceive. Evidence from every quarter. What is a theory is whether natural selection is the mechanism and the only mechanism. That is a theory. But the historical reality that dinosaurs led to birds and mammals produced whales, that's not theory." He strongly opposes creationism and its offshoot "intelligent design", saying that the results of a survey that found a quarter of science teachers in state schools believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science lessons was "really terrible".
In March 2009, Attenborough appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Attenborough stated that he felt evolution did not rule out the existence of a God and accepted the title of agnostic saying, "My view is: I don't know one way or the other but I don't think that evolution is against a belief in God".
Attenborough has joined the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and other top scientists in signing a campaign statement co-ordinated by the British Humanist Association (BHA). The statement calls for "creationism to be banned from the school science curriculum and for evolution to be taught more widely in schools".
BBC and public service broadcasting
Attenborough is a lifelong supporter of the BBC, public service broadcasting and the television licence. He has said that public service broadcasting "is one of the things that distinguishes this country and makes me want to live here", and believes that it is not reducible to individual programmes, but "can only effectively operate as a network [...] that measures its success not only by its audience size but by the range of its schedule".
... the BBC per minute in almost every category is as cheap as you can find anywhere in the world and produces the best quality. [...] The BBC has gone through swingeing staff cuts. It has been cut to the bone, if you divert licence fee money elsewhere, you cut quality and services. [...] There is a lot of people who want to see the BBC weakened. They talk of this terrible tax of the licence fee. Yet it is the best bargain that is going. Four radio channels and god knows how many TV channels. It is piffling.
Attenborough expressed the view that there had often been people wanting to remove the BBC, adding "there's always been trouble about the licence and if you dropped your guard you could bet our bottom dollar there'd be plenty of people who'd want to take it away. The licence fee is the basis on which the BBC is based and if you destroy it, broadcasting... becomes a wasteland." He expressed regret at some of the changes made to the BBC in the 1990s by its Director-General, John Birt, who introduced an internal market at the corporation, slimmed and even closed some departments and outsourced much of the corporation's output to private production companies. Although he said Birt's policies had poor results, Attenborough also acknowledged "the BBC had to change." In 2008, he criticised the BBC's television schedules, positing that the two senior networks, BBC One and BBC Two – which Attenborough stated were "first set up as a partnership" – now "schedule simultaneously programmes of identical character, thereby contradicting the very reason that the BBC was given a second network."
Politics
In 1998, Attenborough described himself as "a standard, boring left-wing liberal" and expressed the view that the market economy was "misery". In 2013, Attenborough joined rock guitarists Brian May and Slash in opposing the government's policy on the cull of badgers in the UK by participating in a song dedicated to badgers. Attenborough was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in the 2014 referendum on that issue. Prior to the 2015 UK general election, Attenborough was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas.
In a 2020 interview, Attenborough criticised excess capitalism as a driver of ecological imbalance, stating "the excesses the capitalist system has brought us, have got to be curbed somehow", and that "greed does not actually lead to joy", although he added "That doesn't mean to say that capitalism is dead". He also lamented the lack of international cooperation on climate change, and said "there should be no dominant nation on this planet." In 2021, Attenborough told the leaders of the 47th G7 summit that "tackling climate change was now as much a political challenge as it was a scientific or technological one" and urged more action. Attenborough also stated that "(we) are on the verge of destabilising the entire planet."
Achievements, awards and recognition
Attenborough's contribution to broadcasting and wildlife film-making has brought him international recognition. He has been called "the great communicator, the peerless educator" and "the greatest broadcaster of our time." His programmes are often cited as an example of what public service broadcasting should be, even by critics of the BBC, and have influenced a generation of wildlife film-makers.
Honorary titles
By January 2013, Attenborough had collected 32 honorary degrees from British universities, more than any other person. In 1980, he was honoured by the Open University, with which he has had a close association throughout his career. He has honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Durham University (1982) and the University of Cambridge (1984) and honorary Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Oxford (1988) and the University of Ghent (1997). In 2006, the two eldest Attenborough brothers returned to their home city to receive the title of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester, "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the University." David Attenborough was previously awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the university in 1970, and was made an honorary Freeman of the City of Leicester in 1990. In 2013, he was made an Honorary Freeman of the City of Bristol. In 2010, he was awarded Honorary Doctorates from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Nottingham Trent University.
Attenborough has received the title Honorary Fellow from Clare College, Cambridge (1980), the Zoological Society of London (1998), the Linnean Society (1999), the Institute of Biology (Now the Royal Society of Biology) (2000), and the Society of Antiquaries (2007). He is Honorary Patron of the North American Native Plant Society and was elected as a Corresponding Member of the Australian Academy of Science.
Recognition
Attenborough has been featured as the subject of a number of BBC television programmes. Life on Air (2002) examined the legacy of his work, and Attenborough the Controller (2002) focused on his time in charge of BBC Two. He was also featured prominently in The Way We Went Wild (2004), a series about natural history television presenters, and 100 Years of Wildlife Films (2007), a programme marking the centenary of the nature documentary. In 2006, British television viewers were asked to vote for their Favourite Attenborough Moments for a UKTV poll to coincide with the broadcaster's 80th birthday. The winning clip showed Attenborough observing the mimicry skills of the superb lyrebird.
Attenborough was named the most trusted celebrity in the UK in a 2006 Reader's Digest poll, and in 2007 he won The Culture Show's Living Icon Award. He has been named among the 100 Greatest Britons in a 2002 BBC poll and is one of the top ten "Heroes of Our Time" according to New Statesman magazine. In September 2009, London's Natural History Museum opened the Attenborough Studio, part of its Darwin Centre development.
In 2012, Attenborough was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life. The same year, Attenborough featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named him among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands".
A British polar research ship was named RRS Sir David Attenborough in his honour. While an Internet poll suggesting the name of the ship had the most votes for Boaty McBoatface, Science Minister Jo Johnson said there were "more suitable names", and the official name was eventually picked up from one of the more favoured choices. However, one of its research sub-sea vehicles was named "Boaty" in recognition of the public vote.
Species named after Attenborough
At least 20 species and genera, both living and extinct, have been named in Attenborough's honour. Plants named after him include an alpine hawkweed (Hieracium attenboroughianum) discovered in the Brecon Beacons, a species of Ecuadorian flowering tree (Blakea attenboroughi), one of the world's largest-pitchered carnivorous plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii), along with a genus of flowering plants (Sirdavidia).
Several Arthropods are named after Attenborough including a butterfly, Attenborough's black-eyed satyr (Euptychia attenboroughi), a dragonfly, Attenborough's pintail (Acisoma attenboroughi), a millimetre-long goblin spider (Prethopalpus attenboroughi), an ornate Caribbean smiley-faced spider (Spintharus davidattenboroughi), an Indonesian flightless weevil (Trigonopterus attenboroughi), a Madagascan ghost shrimp (Ctenocheloides attenboroughi), and a soil snail (Palaina attenboroughi). The Monogenean Cichlidogyrus attenboroughi, a parasite from a deep-sea fish in the Lake Tanganyika, is probably the only parasite species named after him. Vertebrates have also been named after Attenborough, including a Namibian lizard (Platysaurus attenboroughi), a bird (Polioptila attenboroughi), a Peruvian frog (Pristimantis attenboroughi), a Madagascan stump-toed frog (Stumpffia davidattenboroughi), and one of only four species of long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi).
In 1993, after discovering that the Mesozoic reptile Plesiosaurus conybeari did not belong to the genus Plesiosaurus, the palaeontologist Robert Bakker renamed the species Attenborosaurus conybeari. A fossilised armoured fish discovered in Western Australia in 2008 was named Materpiscis attenboroughi, after Attenborough had filmed at the site and highlighted its scientific importance in Life on Earth. In 2015, a species of tree from Gabon (in the Annonaceae family) Sirdavidia was named with his title.
The Materpiscis fossil is believed to be the earliest organism capable of internal fertilisation. A miniature marsupial lion, Microleo attenboroughi, was named in his honour in 2016. The fossil grasshopper Electrotettix attenboroughi was named after Attenborough. In March 2017, a 430 million year old tiny crustacean was named after him. Called Cascolus ravitis, the first word is a Latin translation of the root meaning of "Attenborough", and the second is based on a description of him in Latin. In July 2017, the Caribbean bat Myotis attenboroughi was named after him. A new species of fan-throated lizard from coastal Kerala in southern India was named Sitana attenboroughii in his honour when it was described in 2018.
In 2018, a new species of phytoplankton, Syracosphaera azureaplaneta, was named to honour The Blue Planet, the TV documentary presented by Attenborough, and to recognise his contribution to promoting understanding of the oceanic environment. The same year, Attenborough was also commemorated in the name of the scarab beetle Sylvicanthon attenboroughi. In 2021 an extinct species of horseshoe crab was named Attenborolimulus superspinosus.Awards
In addition, he is the only person to have won BAFTAs for programmes in black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D, and 4K.
Filmography
David Attenborough's television credits span eight decades and his association with natural history programmes dates back to The Pattern of Animals and Zoo Quest in the early 1950s. His most influential work, 1979's Life on Earth, launched a strand of nine authored documentaries with the BBC Natural History Unit which shared the Life strand name and spanned 30 years. He narrated every episode of the long-running BBC series Wildlife on One and in his later career has voiced several high-profile BBC wildlife documentaries, among them The Blue Planet and Planet Earth. He became a pioneer in the 3D documentary format with Flying Monsters in 2010.
Bibliography
David Attenborough's work as an author has strong parallels with his broadcasting career. In the 1950s and 1960s, his published work included accounts of his animal collecting expeditions around the world, which became the Zoo Quest series. He wrote an accompanying volume to each of his nine Life documentaries, along with books on tribal art and birds of paradise. His autobiography, Life on Air, was published in 2002, revised in 2009 and is one of a number of his works which is available as a self-narrated audiobook. Attenborough has also contributed forewords and introductions to many other works, notably those accompanying Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, Africa and other BBC series he has narrated.
Zoo Quest to Guyana (1956)
Zoo Quest for a Dragon (1957) – republished in 1959 to include an additional 85 pages titled Quest for the Paradise Birds Zoo Quest in Paraguay (1959)
Quest in Paradise (1960)
People of Paradise (1960)
Zoo Quest to Madagascar (1961)
Quest Under Capricorn (1963)
Fabulous Animals (1975)
The Tribal Eye (1976)
Life on Earth (1979)
Discovering Life on Earth (1981)
The Living Planet (1984)
The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man (1987)
The Atlas of the Living World (1989)
The Trials of Life (1990)
The Private Life of Plants (1994)
The Life of Birds (1998)
The Life of Mammals (2002)
Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster (2002) – autobiography, revised in 2009
Life in the Undergrowth (2005)
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery (2007) – with Susan Owens, Martin Clayton and Rea Alexandratos
Life in Cold Blood (2007)
David Attenborough's Life Stories (2009)
David Attenborough's New Life Stories (2011)
Drawn From Paradise: The Discovery, Art and Natural History of the Birds of Paradise (2012) – with Errol Fuller
Adventures of a Young Naturalist: The Zoo Quest Expeditions (2017)
Journeys to the Other Side of the World: Further Adventures of a Young Naturalist (2018)
Dynasties: The Rise and Fall of Animal Families with Stephen Moss (2018)
A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future (2020)
References
External links
BBC Books David Attenborough website
David Attenborough at the British Film Institute
David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet
Wildfilmhistory.org biography
PBS interview with Attenborough in 1998
People and Planet: David Attenborough, video of the 2011 RSA President's Lecture
David Attenborough interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, 27 December 1998
David Attenborough: humanity must come to its senses or face environmental disaster. Radio Times''. 13 October 2016.
1926 births
20th-century Royal Navy personnel
Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Articles containing video clips
David
BAFTA fellows
BBC television presenters
BBC television producers
BBC Two controllers
British Book Award winners
British social commentators
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order
Critics of creationism
Cultural critics
English agnostics
English autobiographers
English broadcasters
English conservationists
English environmentalists
English nature writers
English television personalities
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science
Fellows of the Linnean Society of London
Fellows of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society
Fellows of the Royal Society (Statute 12)
Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts
Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology
Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Fellows of the Zoological Society of London
International Emmy Founders Award winners
Kalinga Prize recipients
Knights Bachelor
Living people
Members of the Order of Merit
Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George
Outstanding Narrator Primetime Emmy Award winners
People associated with the University of Leicester
People educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys
People from Isleworth
People from Leicester
Presidents of the British Science Association
Primetime Emmy Award winners
Social critics
Military personnel from Middlesex
| false |
[
"Noel Arthur David (born 26 February 1971, in Puducherry, settled in Hyderabad, India) is a former Indian cricketer. He played domestic cricket for Hyderabad and played four One Day Internationals for India in 1997.\n\nEarly life \nWhen he was 5 years old his family moved to Hyderabad from Puducherry. Still, one of his siblings (elder brother) is living in Puducherry. He attended All Saints High School which has produced test players like Abid Ali, Syed Kirmani, Mohammad Azharuddin and Venkatapathy Raju. Already a 100 and 200 m athlete, his fielding developed with coach Sampath Kumar.\n\nCareer \nDavid was a bowling all-rounder - a decent off-break bowler and a lower order batsman. He was an excellent fielder. David scored a double century in just his second game as part of Hyderabad's record 944.\n\nSachin Tendulkar is believed to have asked \"Noel who?\" when he learned that Noel David was the replacement for the injured pace spear head Javagal Srinath during India's 1997 tour of West Indies. Noel David in a later interview clarified Sachin never said that statement, and it was Ajit Wadekar who did.\n\nSunil Gavaskar once said that he was the greatest ever fielder for Indian cricket team; along with Caribbean commentator Tony Cozier, Gavaskar compared David with Jonty Rhodes.\n\nPost retirement \n, David is chief selector for Hyderabad as well as chairman of the Junior Selection Committee. David has an ambition to become the coach of the Hyderabad team.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links \n\nHyderabad cricketers\nIndian cricketers\nIndia One Day International cricketers\nSouth Zone cricketers\n1971 births\nLiving people\nCricketers from Hyderabad, India",
"Haunted is a 1995 horror film, by veteran director Lewis Gilbert and starring Aidan Quinn, Kate Beckinsale, Anthony Andrews, Victoria Shalet and John Gielgud. It is based on a 1988 novel of the same name by James Herbert, but makes significant changes to the original story. The film was produced by Andrews and Gilbert.\n\nPlot\nIn 1928 England, David Ash (Aidan Quinn), an American professor, has spent a majority of his life working in the field of parapsychology to disprove the existence of ghosts. He was motivated by the untimely death of his twin sister, Juliet, for which he blames himself. As a professor at Oxford, he receives a series of urgent entreaties from a Ms. Webb, who claims she is being tormented by ghosts, to come and help her. David travels to Sussex, where he is picked up at the railway station by the beautiful Christina Mariell (Kate Beckinsale). Christina explains that Ms. Webb is in fact their Nanny Tess (Anna Massey), and that she wrote to David at the urging of the Mariell siblings, Christina, Robert and Simon. The siblings are concerned for her mental health and believe her belief in ghosts is due to her senility. She drives David to the palatial Edbrook House, where he meets Christina's two brothers and the withdrawn Nanny Tess.\n\nDavid begins to perform forensic examinations of the house, trying to detect evidence of paranormal activity. Complicating the investigation is Christina's continuous flirtation with David, and his own infatuation with her. However, older brother Robert (Anthony Andrews) is adamantly against their friendship and the two have a suspiciously close relationship. David himself begins having paranormal experiences. Christina, who had originally told David both her parents died in India, admits that in fact her mother drowned herself in the lake and Nanny Tess was the one who discovered the body. David postulates that it is the trauma of this which is causing Nanny Tess to see the ghost of Mrs. Mariell.\n\nWhen David decides to finally leave Edbrook, he asks Christina to come away with him. Although she refuses, they engage in a passionate kiss and end up in making love in her bed. In the morning when David wakes, the wind is gusting through the house, which is now cloaked in black drapes and littered with fallen leaves. He searches for Christina but instead sees the ghost of his twin sister Juliet, who leads David to a cemetery. Juliet calls his attention to a specific tombstone which states that Robert, Christina and Simon Mariell all died in a fire at Edbrook House in 1923.\n\nA very confused David seeks out Dr. Doyle (John Gielgud), the family doctor, only to be told by his sister's ghost that Doyle also had died many years ago. Despite his sister's warning, David leaves with Christina, who has appeared in her car. On the drive home, he sees the vision of his sister in the middle of the road and wrenches the wheel to avoid her. The car crashes into a tree and explodes, killing Christina. David escapes, returns to the house, and confronts Nanny Tess. She confirms that the Mariell siblings are indeed dead and that their ghosts will do anything to keep Nanny Tess and David from leaving. Nanny Tess also reveals that the reason Mrs. Mariell drowned herself was because she discovered drunken Simon and Robert in their parent's bed having incestuous sex with Christina. The siblings appear and force Nanny Tess to confess to their murder (she had locked the siblings in a bedroom and then set fire to the house).\n\nRobert reveals that, with David as the new victim of their torments, they no longer need Nanny Tess. They kill Nanny Tess, and Christina asks David to die for them. He tries to escape, but is blocked by the three siblings and Dr. Doyle. They set the mansion ablaze, but he escapes to the upstairs bedroom. While Robert, Simon and Christina cackle mockingly within the flames at his imminent death, Juliet suddenly appears and walks through the flames, takes David by the hand and rescues him from the inferno. As they walk away from the mansion's ruins, Juliet absolves him of his guilt over her death and departs to the afterlife.\n\nAfter the harrowing experience, David returns home and is greeted by his assistant, Kate, as he steps off the train. A few steps behind the unsuspecting couple, Christina steps out of the shadows and follows them through the fog as they leave the platform.\n\nProduction\nHaunted was shot on location in Parham Park and Parham House, West Sussex, England.\n\nCast\n\nAidan Quinn as Professor David Ash\nPeter England as Young David Ash 12\nKate Beckinsale as Christina Mariell 20\nAnthony Andrews as Robert Mariell 30\nJohn Gielgud as Dr. Doyle\nAnna Massey as Nanny Tessa Webb\nAlex Lowe as Simon Mariell 26\nVictoria Shalet as Young Juliet Ash 12\nGeraldine Somerville as Kate McCarrick\nLinda Bassett as Madam Brontski\nLiz Smith as Old Gypsy Woman\nAlice Douglas as Clare\nEdmund Moriarty as Liam\nEmily Hamilton as Mary\nTom Lipscombe as School Boy\n\nReception\n\nThe film received an 80% fresh rating from five critics on Rotten Tomatoes.\n\nSee also\nList of ghost films\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n \n\n1995 films\n1995 horror films\n1995 drama films\n1990s ghost films\n1990s mystery films\nBritish films\nBritish ghost films\nBritish horror drama films\nBritish mystery films\nEnglish-language films\nFilms about siblings\nFilms based on British novels\nFilms directed by Lewis Gilbert\nFilms set in 1928\nGothic horror films\nBritish haunted house films\nMystery horror films\nIncest in film\nFilms set in Sussex\nFilms shot in West Sussex"
] |
[
"David Attenborough",
"Early life and family",
"Where was he born?",
"Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester,",
"What did his father do for a living?",
"where his father, Frederick, was principal.",
"Did David have siblings?",
"He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director and his younger brother, John, was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo),"
] |
C_b1caf59a3c484f208e434159c3ae7d42_1
|
Did his parents foster children?
| 4 |
Did David Attenborough's parents foster children?
|
David Attenborough
|
Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director and his younger brother, John, was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo), and the only surviving child among them. During World War II, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Europe. Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and other natural specimens. He received encouragement in this pursuit at age seven, when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his "museum". He also spent a considerable amount of his time in the grounds of the university, and, aged 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered via his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which wasn't revealed at the time, was a pond less than five metres from the department. A few years later, one of his adoptive sisters gave him a piece of amber filled with prehistoric creatures; some 50 years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine. In 1936 David and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl. Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and then won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945, where he studied geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947 he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950 Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel; she died in 1997. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress. CANNOTANSWER
|
his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Europe.
|
Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
Attenborough was a senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. His filmography as writer, presenter and narrator spans eight decades; it includes Zoo Quest, Natural World, Wildlife on One, the Planet Earth franchise, The Blue Planet and its sequel. He is the only person to have won BAFTAs in all of the categories black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolutions.
While Attenborough's earlier work focused more on the wonders of the natural world, his later work has been more vocal in support of environmental causes. He has advocated for restoring planetary biodiversity, limiting population growth, switching to renewable energy, mitigating climate change, reducing meat consumption, and setting aside more areas for natural preservation.
On his broadcasting and passion for nature, NPR stated he "roamed the globe and shared his discoveries and enthusiasms with his patented semi-whisper way of narrating". In 2018 and 2019, Attenborough received Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narrator. He is widely considered a national treasure in the UK, although he himself does not like the term. He is the younger brother of the late director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough, and older brother of the late motor executive John Attenborough.
Life and family
Attenborough was born on 8 May 1926 in Isleworth, Middlesex, and grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons; his elder brother, Richard (died in 2014), became an actor and director, and his younger brother, John (died in 2012), was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo. During the Second World War, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Germany.
Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones, and natural specimens. He received encouragement when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his collection. He spent much time in the grounds of the university. Aged around 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered through his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which he did not reveal at the time, was a pond right next to the department. A year later, his adoptive sister Marianne gave him a piece of amber containing prehistoric creatures; some sixty years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine.
In 1936, Attenborough and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl.
Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester. He won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945 to study geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947, he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950, Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Jane died in 1997. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress.
Attenborough had a pacemaker fitted in June 2013, as well as a double knee replacement in 2015. In September 2013 he commented: "If I was earning my money by hewing coal I would be very glad indeed to stop. But I'm not. I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune."
Career
Early years at the BBC
After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC. Although he was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service. Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television, and he had seen only one programme in his life. However, he accepted Adams' offer of a three-month training course, and in 1952 he joined the BBC full-time. Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big, he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.
Attenborough's association with natural history programmes began when he produced and presented the three-part series Animal Patterns. The studio-bound programme featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism and courtship displays. Through this programme, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast in 1954, where Attenborough became the presenter at short notice due to Lester being taken ill.
In 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead, he formed his own department, the Travel and Exploration Unit, which allowed him to continue to front Zoo Quest as well as produce other documentaries, notably the Travellers' Tales and Adventure series. In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.
BBC administration
Attenborough became Controller of BBC 2 in March 1965, succeeding Michael Peacock. He had a clause inserted in his contract that would allow him to continue making programmes on an occasional basis. Later the same year he filmed elephants in Tanzania, and in 1969 he made a three-part series on the cultural history of the Indonesian island of Bali. For the 1971 film A Blank on the Map, he joined the first Western expedition to a remote highland valley in New Guinea to seek out a lost tribe.
BBC Two was launched in 1964, but had struggled to capture the public's imagination. When Attenborough arrived as controller, he quickly abolished the channel's quirky kangaroo mascot and shook up the schedule. With a mission to make BBC Two's output diverse and different from that offered by other networks, he began to establish a portfolio of programmes that defined the channel's identity for decades to come. Under his tenure, music, the arts, entertainment, archaeology, experimental comedy, travel, drama, sport, business, science and natural history all found a place in the weekly schedules. Often, an eclectic mix was offered within a single evening's viewing. Programmes he commissioned included Man Alive, Call My Bluff, Chronicle, Match of the Day, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Money Programme. With the addition of colour television, Attenborough brought snooker to the BBC to show the benefits of the format, as the sport uses coloured balls. The show – Pot Black – was later credited with the boom of the sport into the 1980s.
One of his most significant decisions was to order a 13-part series on the history of Western art, to show off the quality of the new UHF colour television service that BBC Two offered. Broadcast to universal acclaim in 1969, Civilisation set the blueprint for landmark authored documentaries, which were informally known as "sledgehammer" projects. Others followed, including Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (also commissioned by Attenborough), and Alistair Cooke's America. Attenborough thought that the story of evolution would be a natural subject for such a series. He shared his idea with Christopher Parsons, a producer at the Natural History Unit, who came up with a title Life on Earth and returned to Bristol to start planning the series. Attenborough harboured a strong desire to present the series himself, but this would not be possible so long as he remained in a management post.
While in charge of BBC Two, Attenborough turned down Terry Wogan's job application to be a presenter on the channel, stating that there weren't any suitable vacancies. The channel already had an Irish announcer, with Attenborough reflecting in 2016: "To have had two Irishmen presenting on BBC Two would have looked ridiculous. This is no comment whatsoever on Terry Wogan's talents." Attenborough has also acknowledged that he sanctioned the wiping of television output during this period to cut costs, including a series by Alan Bennett, which he later regretted. In 1969, Attenborough was promoted to director of programmes, making him responsible for the output of both BBC channels. His tasks, which included agreeing budgets, attending board meetings and firing staff, were now far removed from the business of filming programmes. When Attenborough's name was being suggested as a candidate for the position of Director-General of the BBC in 1972, he phoned his brother Richard to confess that he had no appetite for the job. Early the following year, he left his post to return to full-time programme-making, leaving him free to write and present the planned natural history epic.
After his resignation, Attenborough became a freelance broadcaster and started work on his next project, a trip to Indonesia with a crew from the Natural History Unit. It resulted in the 1973 series Eastwards with Attenborough, which was similar in tone to the earlier Zoo Quest; the main difference was the introduction of colour. Attenborough stated that he wanted to work in Asia, because previous nature documentaries had mostly focused on Africa. That year, Attenborough was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Language of Animals. After his work on Eastwards with Attenborough, he began to work on the scripts for Life on Earth. Due to the scale of his ambition, the BBC decided to partner with an American network to secure the necessary funding. While the negotiations were proceeding, he worked on a number of other television projects. He presented a series on tribal art (The Tribal Eye, 1975) and another on the voyages of discovery (The Explorers, 1975). He also presented a BBC children's series about cryptozoology entitled Fabulous Animals (1975), which featured mythical creatures such as mermaids and unicorns. Eventually, the BBC signed a co-production deal with Turner Broadcasting and Life on Earth moved into production in 1976.
Life series
Beginning with Life on Earth in 1979, Attenborough set about creating a body of work which became a benchmark of quality in wildlife film-making, and influenced a generation of documentary film-makers. The series established many of the hallmarks of the BBC's natural history output. By treating his subject seriously and researching the latest discoveries, Attenborough and his production team gained the trust of scientists, who responded by allowing him to feature their subjects in his programmes. Innovation was another factor in Life on Earth'''s success: new film-making techniques were devised to get the shots Attenborough wanted, with a focus on events and animals that were up till then unfilmed. International air travel enabled the series to be devised so that Attenborough visited several locations around the globe in each episode, sometimes even changing continents in one sequence. Although appearing as the on-screen presenter, he restricted his time on camera to give more time to his subjects.
Five years after the success of Life on Earth, the BBC released The Living Planet. This time, Attenborough built his series around the theme of ecology, the adaptations of living things to their environment. It was another critical and commercial success, generating huge international sales for the BBC. In 1990, The Trials of Life completed the original Life trilogy, looking at animal behaviour through the different stages of life.
In the 1990s, Attenborough continued to use the "Life" title for a succession of authored documentaries. In 1993, he presented Life in the Freezer, the first television series to survey the natural history of Antarctica. Although past normal retirement age, he then embarked on a number of more specialised surveys of the natural world, beginning with plants. They proved a difficult subject for his producers, who had to deliver hours of television featuring what are essentially immobile objects. The result was The Private Life of Plants (1995), which showed plants as dynamic organisms by using time-lapse photography to speed up their growth, and went on to earn a Peabody Award.
Prompted by an enthusiastic ornithologist at the BBC Natural History Unit, Attenborough then turned his attention to birds. As he was neither an birdwatcher nor a bird expert, he decided he was better qualified to make The Life of Birds (1998) on the theme of behaviour. The documentary series won a second Peabody Award the following year. The order of the remaining "Life" series was dictated by developments in camera technology. For The Life of Mammals (2002), low-light and infrared cameras were deployed to reveal the behaviour of nocturnal mammals. The series contains a number of memorable two shots of Attenborough and his subjects, which included chimpanzees, a blue whale and a grizzly bear. Advances in macro photography made it possible to capture the natural behaviour of very small creatures for the first time, and in 2005, Life in the Undergrowth introduced audiences to the world of invertebrates.
At this point, Attenborough realised that he had spent 20 years unconsciously assembling a collection of programmes on all the major groups of terrestrial animals and plants – only reptiles and amphibians were missing. When Life in Cold Blood was broadcast in 2008, he had the satisfaction of completing the set, brought together in a DVD encyclopaedia called Life on Land. He commented: "The evolutionary history is finished. The endeavour is complete. If you'd asked me 20 years ago whether we'd be attempting such a mammoth task, I'd have said 'Don't be ridiculous!' These programmes tell a particular story and I'm sure others will come along and tell it much better than I did, but I do hope that if people watch it in 50 years' time, it will still have something to say about the world we live in."
However, in 2010 Attenborough asserted that his First Life – dealing with evolutionary history before Life on Earth – should be included within the "Life" series. In the documentary Attenborough's Journey, he stated, "This series, to a degree which I really didn't fully appreciate until I started working on it, really completes the set."
Beyond Life on Earth
Alongside the "Life" series, Attenborough continued to work on other television documentaries, mainly in the natural history genre. He wrote and presented a series on man's influence on the natural history of the Mediterranean Basin, The First Eden, in 1987. Two years later, he demonstrated his passion for fossils in Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives. In 1990, he worked on the BBC's Prisoners of Conscience series where he highlighted the case of Mahjoub Sharif. Attenborough narrated every episode of Wildlife on One, a BBC One wildlife series that ran for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005. At its peak, it drew a weekly audience of eight to ten million, and the 1987 episode "Meerkats United" was voted the best wildlife documentary of all time by BBC viewers. He has narrated over 50 episodes of Natural World, BBC Two's flagship wildlife series. Its forerunner, The World About Us, was created by Attenborough in 1969, as a vehicle for colour television. In 1997, he narrated the BBC Wildlife Specials, each focussing on a charismatic species, and screened to mark the Natural History Unit's 40th anniversary.
As a writer and narrator, Attenborough continued to collaborate with the BBC Natural History Unit in the new millennium. Alastair Fothergill, a senior producer with whom Attenborough had worked on The Trials of Life and Life in the Freezer, was making The Blue Planet (2001), the Unit's first comprehensive series on marine life. He decided not to use an on-screen presenter due to difficulties in speaking to a camera through diving apparatus, but asked Attenborough to narrate the films. The same team reunited for Planet Earth (2006), the biggest nature documentary ever made for television and the first BBC wildlife series to be shot in high definition. In 2009, he co-wrote and narrated Life, a ten-part series focussing on extraordinary animal behaviour, and narrated Nature's Great Events, which showed how seasonal changes trigger major natural spectacles. In January 2009, the BBC commissioned Attenborough to provide a series of 20 ten-minute monologues covering the history of nature. Entitled David Attenborough's Life Stories, they were broadcast on Radio 4 on Friday nights.
In 2011, Fothergill gave Attenborough a more prominent role in Frozen Planet, a major series on the natural history of the polar regions; Attenborough appeared on screen and authored the final episode, in addition to performing voiceover duties. Attenborough introduced and narrated the Unit's first 4K production Life Story. For Planet Earth II (2016), Attenborough returned as narrator and presenter, with the main theme music composed by Hans Zimmer.In October 2014, the corporation announced a trio of new one-off Attenborough documentaries as part of a raft of new natural history programmes. "Attenborough's Paradise Birds" and "Attenborough's Big Birds" was shown on BBC Two and "Waking Giants", which follows the discovery of giant dinosaur bones in South America, aired on BBC One. The BBC also commissioned Atlantic Productions to make a three-part, Attenborough-fronted series Great Barrier Reef in 2015. The series marked the 10th project for Attenborough and Atlantic, and saw him returning to a location he first filmed at in 1957. On radio, Attenborough has continued as one of the presenters of BBC Radio 4's Tweet of the Day, which began a second series in September 2014. Attenborough forged a partnership with Sky, working on documentaries for the broadcaster's new 3D network, Sky 3D. Their first collaboration was Flying Monsters 3D, a film about pterosaurs which debuted on Christmas Day of 2010. A second film, The Bachelor King 3D, followed a year later. His next 3D project, Conquest of the Skies, made by the team behind the BAFTA-winning David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive, aired on Sky 3D during Christmas 2014.
Attenborough has narrated three series of David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities for UKTV channel Watch, with the third series showing in 2015. He has also narrated A majestic celebration: Wild Karnataka, India's first blue-chip natural history film, directed by Kalyan Varma and Amoghavarsha. Blue Planet II was broadcast in 2017, with Attenborough returning as presenter. The series was critically acclaimed and gained the highest UK viewing figure for 2017: 14.1 million. Attenborough narrated the 2018 five part series Dynasties, each episode dealing with one species in particular. In 2021 he presented the three part series Attenborough's Life in Colour, and The Mating Game, a five part series.
Environmentalist advocacy
By the turn of the millennium, Attenborough's authored documentaries were adopting a more overtly environmentalist stance. In State of the Planet (2000), he used the latest scientific evidence and interviews with leading scientists and conservationists to assess the impact of human activities on the natural world. He later turned to the issues of global warming (The Truth about Climate Change, 2006) and human population growth (How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?, 2009). He contributed a programme which highlighted the plight of endangered species to the BBC's Saving Planet Earth project in 2007, the 50th anniversary of the Natural History Unit.
In 2019, Attenborough narrated Our Planet, an eight-part documentary series, for Netflix. In contrast to much of his prior work for the BBC, this series emphasised the destructive role of human activities throughout the series. Before, he would often note concerns in a final section of the work. He also narrated Wild Karnataka, a documentary about the Karnataka forest area. In 2019, Attenborough's one-off film documentary about climate change for BBC One called Climate Change – The Facts was aired; the tone of the documentary was significantly graver than previous work for the BBC. This was followed by Extinction: The Facts, which is partly based on the 2019 IPBES report on the decline of biodiversity.“Sir David Attenborough makes stark warning about species extinction” . BBC Science. Retrieved 14 October 2020
In 2020, Attenborough narrated the documentary film David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. The film acts as Attenborough's witness statement, reflecting on his career as a naturalist and his hopes for the future. It was released on Netflix on 4 October 2020. Further work for Netflix includes the documentary titled Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet, released on 4 June 2021. In October 2020, Attenborough began filming in Cambridge for The Green Planet. In 2021, Attenborough narrated A Perfect Planet, a five-part earth science series for BBC One.
COP26
Attenborough was a key figure in the build up to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), and gave a speech at the opening ceremony. In his speech he stated that humans were "the greatest problem solvers to have ever existed on Earth" and spoke of his optimism for the future, finishing by saying "In my lifetime I've witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery."
Views and advocacy
Environment
Attenborough's programmes have often included references to the impact of human society on the natural world. The last episode of The Living Planet, for example, focuses almost entirely on humans' destruction of the environment and ways that it could be stopped or reversed. Despite this, he has been criticised for not giving enough prominence to environmental messages. In 2018 while promoting Dynasties, he said that repeated messages on threats to wildlife in programming could be a "turn-off" to viewers. Some environmentalists feel that programmes like Attenborough's give a false picture of idyllic wilderness and do not do enough to acknowledge that such areas are increasingly encroached upon by humans. However, the increased urgency of environmental messaging in films such as Extinction: The Facts, which depicts the continuing sixth mass extinction, Climate Change – The Facts and A Life on Our Planet from 2019 and 2020 received praise. In Seven Worlds, One Planet, Attenborough discusses the devastating impact that deforestation is having on the planet and the species.
In 2005 and 2006, he backed a BirdLife International project to stop the killing of albatross by longline fishing boats. He gave support to WWF's campaign to have 220,000 square kilometres of Borneo's rainforest designated a protected area. He serves as a vice-president of The Conservation Volunteers, vice-president of Fauna and Flora International, president of Butterfly Conservation and president emiritus of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust. In 2003, he launched an appeal on behalf of the World Land Trust to create a rainforest reserve in Ecuador in memory of Christopher Parsons, the producer of Life on Earth and a personal friend, who had died the previous year. The same year, he helped to launch ARKive, a global project instigated by Parsons to gather together natural history media into a digital library. ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, of which Attenborough is a patron. He later became patron of the World Land Trust. In 2020, he backed a Fauna and Flora International campaign calling for a global moratorium on deep sea mining for its impact on marine life.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Attenborough advocated on behalf of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and its conservation efforts, which have been impacted by the economic fallout from the pandemic. In 2020, Attenborough was named as a member of the Earthshot prize Council, an initiative of Prince William to find solutions to environmental issues. He is a patron of the Friends of Richmond Park and serves on the advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazine.
Attenborough was initially sceptical about the human influence on climate change, and stated that a 2004 lecture finally convinced him humans were responsible. He remained silent on the issue until 2006. Attenborough attended and spoke at COP26 as the "People's Advocate" for the event, and urged world leaders to act to reduce emissions. He supported Glyndebourne in their successful application to obtain planning permission for a wind turbine in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and gave evidence at the planning inquiry arguing in favour of the proposal. In his 2020 documentary film David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Attenborough advocates for people to adopt a vegetarian diet or to reduce meat consumption to save wildlife, noting that "the planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters."
Human population
Attenborough has linked anthropogenic effects on the environment with human population growth. He has attracted criticism for his views on human overpopulation and human population control. His most popular comment online in a 2020 study related to the topic of overpopulation. He is a patron of Population Matters, a UK charity advocating for family planning, sustainable consumption and proposed sustainable human population. In a 2013 interview with the Radio Times, Attenborough described humans as a "plague on the Earth", and described the act of sending food to famine-stricken countries as "barmy" for population reasons. He called for more debate about human population growth, saying that since he "first started making programmes 60 years ago, the human population has tripled."
According to Attenborough, improving women's rights around the world is an effective way "to limit our birth rate." He said that "anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist."
Religious views
Attenborough considers himself an agnostic. When asked whether his observation of the natural world has given him faith in a creator, he generally responds with some version of this story, making reference to the Onchocerca volvulus parasitic worm:
My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'.
He has explained that he feels the evidence all over the planet clearly shows evolution to be the best way to explain the diversity of life, and that "as far as [he's] concerned, if there is a supreme being then he chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world". In a BBC Four interview with Mark Lawson, he was asked if he at any time had any religious faith. He replied simply, "no". He said "It never really occurred to me to believe in God".
In 2002, Attenborough joined an effort by leading clerics and scientists to oppose the inclusion of creationism in the curriculum of UK state-funded independent schools which receive private sponsorship, such as the Emmanuel Schools Foundation.
In 2009, he stated that the Book of Genesis, by saying that the world was there for people to control, had taught generations that they can "dominate" the environment, and that this has resulted in the devastation of vast areas of the environment. He further explained to the science journal Nature, "That's why Darwinism, and the fact of evolution, is of great importance, because it is that attitude which has led to the devastation of so much, and we are in the situation that we are in".
Also in early 2009, the BBC broadcast an Attenborough one-hour special, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life. In reference to the programme, Attenborough stated that "People write to me that evolution is only a theory. Well, it is not a theory. Evolution is as solid a historical fact as you could conceive. Evidence from every quarter. What is a theory is whether natural selection is the mechanism and the only mechanism. That is a theory. But the historical reality that dinosaurs led to birds and mammals produced whales, that's not theory." He strongly opposes creationism and its offshoot "intelligent design", saying that the results of a survey that found a quarter of science teachers in state schools believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science lessons was "really terrible".
In March 2009, Attenborough appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Attenborough stated that he felt evolution did not rule out the existence of a God and accepted the title of agnostic saying, "My view is: I don't know one way or the other but I don't think that evolution is against a belief in God".
Attenborough has joined the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and other top scientists in signing a campaign statement co-ordinated by the British Humanist Association (BHA). The statement calls for "creationism to be banned from the school science curriculum and for evolution to be taught more widely in schools".
BBC and public service broadcasting
Attenborough is a lifelong supporter of the BBC, public service broadcasting and the television licence. He has said that public service broadcasting "is one of the things that distinguishes this country and makes me want to live here", and believes that it is not reducible to individual programmes, but "can only effectively operate as a network [...] that measures its success not only by its audience size but by the range of its schedule".
... the BBC per minute in almost every category is as cheap as you can find anywhere in the world and produces the best quality. [...] The BBC has gone through swingeing staff cuts. It has been cut to the bone, if you divert licence fee money elsewhere, you cut quality and services. [...] There is a lot of people who want to see the BBC weakened. They talk of this terrible tax of the licence fee. Yet it is the best bargain that is going. Four radio channels and god knows how many TV channels. It is piffling.
Attenborough expressed the view that there had often been people wanting to remove the BBC, adding "there's always been trouble about the licence and if you dropped your guard you could bet our bottom dollar there'd be plenty of people who'd want to take it away. The licence fee is the basis on which the BBC is based and if you destroy it, broadcasting... becomes a wasteland." He expressed regret at some of the changes made to the BBC in the 1990s by its Director-General, John Birt, who introduced an internal market at the corporation, slimmed and even closed some departments and outsourced much of the corporation's output to private production companies. Although he said Birt's policies had poor results, Attenborough also acknowledged "the BBC had to change." In 2008, he criticised the BBC's television schedules, positing that the two senior networks, BBC One and BBC Two – which Attenborough stated were "first set up as a partnership" – now "schedule simultaneously programmes of identical character, thereby contradicting the very reason that the BBC was given a second network."
Politics
In 1998, Attenborough described himself as "a standard, boring left-wing liberal" and expressed the view that the market economy was "misery". In 2013, Attenborough joined rock guitarists Brian May and Slash in opposing the government's policy on the cull of badgers in the UK by participating in a song dedicated to badgers. Attenborough was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in the 2014 referendum on that issue. Prior to the 2015 UK general election, Attenborough was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas.
In a 2020 interview, Attenborough criticised excess capitalism as a driver of ecological imbalance, stating "the excesses the capitalist system has brought us, have got to be curbed somehow", and that "greed does not actually lead to joy", although he added "That doesn't mean to say that capitalism is dead". He also lamented the lack of international cooperation on climate change, and said "there should be no dominant nation on this planet." In 2021, Attenborough told the leaders of the 47th G7 summit that "tackling climate change was now as much a political challenge as it was a scientific or technological one" and urged more action. Attenborough also stated that "(we) are on the verge of destabilising the entire planet."
Achievements, awards and recognition
Attenborough's contribution to broadcasting and wildlife film-making has brought him international recognition. He has been called "the great communicator, the peerless educator" and "the greatest broadcaster of our time." His programmes are often cited as an example of what public service broadcasting should be, even by critics of the BBC, and have influenced a generation of wildlife film-makers.
Honorary titles
By January 2013, Attenborough had collected 32 honorary degrees from British universities, more than any other person. In 1980, he was honoured by the Open University, with which he has had a close association throughout his career. He has honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Durham University (1982) and the University of Cambridge (1984) and honorary Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Oxford (1988) and the University of Ghent (1997). In 2006, the two eldest Attenborough brothers returned to their home city to receive the title of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester, "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the University." David Attenborough was previously awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the university in 1970, and was made an honorary Freeman of the City of Leicester in 1990. In 2013, he was made an Honorary Freeman of the City of Bristol. In 2010, he was awarded Honorary Doctorates from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Nottingham Trent University.
Attenborough has received the title Honorary Fellow from Clare College, Cambridge (1980), the Zoological Society of London (1998), the Linnean Society (1999), the Institute of Biology (Now the Royal Society of Biology) (2000), and the Society of Antiquaries (2007). He is Honorary Patron of the North American Native Plant Society and was elected as a Corresponding Member of the Australian Academy of Science.
Recognition
Attenborough has been featured as the subject of a number of BBC television programmes. Life on Air (2002) examined the legacy of his work, and Attenborough the Controller (2002) focused on his time in charge of BBC Two. He was also featured prominently in The Way We Went Wild (2004), a series about natural history television presenters, and 100 Years of Wildlife Films (2007), a programme marking the centenary of the nature documentary. In 2006, British television viewers were asked to vote for their Favourite Attenborough Moments for a UKTV poll to coincide with the broadcaster's 80th birthday. The winning clip showed Attenborough observing the mimicry skills of the superb lyrebird.
Attenborough was named the most trusted celebrity in the UK in a 2006 Reader's Digest poll, and in 2007 he won The Culture Show's Living Icon Award. He has been named among the 100 Greatest Britons in a 2002 BBC poll and is one of the top ten "Heroes of Our Time" according to New Statesman magazine. In September 2009, London's Natural History Museum opened the Attenborough Studio, part of its Darwin Centre development.
In 2012, Attenborough was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life. The same year, Attenborough featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named him among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands".
A British polar research ship was named RRS Sir David Attenborough in his honour. While an Internet poll suggesting the name of the ship had the most votes for Boaty McBoatface, Science Minister Jo Johnson said there were "more suitable names", and the official name was eventually picked up from one of the more favoured choices. However, one of its research sub-sea vehicles was named "Boaty" in recognition of the public vote.
Species named after Attenborough
At least 20 species and genera, both living and extinct, have been named in Attenborough's honour. Plants named after him include an alpine hawkweed (Hieracium attenboroughianum) discovered in the Brecon Beacons, a species of Ecuadorian flowering tree (Blakea attenboroughi), one of the world's largest-pitchered carnivorous plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii), along with a genus of flowering plants (Sirdavidia).
Several Arthropods are named after Attenborough including a butterfly, Attenborough's black-eyed satyr (Euptychia attenboroughi), a dragonfly, Attenborough's pintail (Acisoma attenboroughi), a millimetre-long goblin spider (Prethopalpus attenboroughi), an ornate Caribbean smiley-faced spider (Spintharus davidattenboroughi), an Indonesian flightless weevil (Trigonopterus attenboroughi), a Madagascan ghost shrimp (Ctenocheloides attenboroughi), and a soil snail (Palaina attenboroughi). The Monogenean Cichlidogyrus attenboroughi, a parasite from a deep-sea fish in the Lake Tanganyika, is probably the only parasite species named after him. Vertebrates have also been named after Attenborough, including a Namibian lizard (Platysaurus attenboroughi), a bird (Polioptila attenboroughi), a Peruvian frog (Pristimantis attenboroughi), a Madagascan stump-toed frog (Stumpffia davidattenboroughi), and one of only four species of long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi).
In 1993, after discovering that the Mesozoic reptile Plesiosaurus conybeari did not belong to the genus Plesiosaurus, the palaeontologist Robert Bakker renamed the species Attenborosaurus conybeari. A fossilised armoured fish discovered in Western Australia in 2008 was named Materpiscis attenboroughi, after Attenborough had filmed at the site and highlighted its scientific importance in Life on Earth. In 2015, a species of tree from Gabon (in the Annonaceae family) Sirdavidia was named with his title.
The Materpiscis fossil is believed to be the earliest organism capable of internal fertilisation. A miniature marsupial lion, Microleo attenboroughi, was named in his honour in 2016. The fossil grasshopper Electrotettix attenboroughi was named after Attenborough. In March 2017, a 430 million year old tiny crustacean was named after him. Called Cascolus ravitis, the first word is a Latin translation of the root meaning of "Attenborough", and the second is based on a description of him in Latin. In July 2017, the Caribbean bat Myotis attenboroughi was named after him. A new species of fan-throated lizard from coastal Kerala in southern India was named Sitana attenboroughii in his honour when it was described in 2018.
In 2018, a new species of phytoplankton, Syracosphaera azureaplaneta, was named to honour The Blue Planet, the TV documentary presented by Attenborough, and to recognise his contribution to promoting understanding of the oceanic environment. The same year, Attenborough was also commemorated in the name of the scarab beetle Sylvicanthon attenboroughi. In 2021 an extinct species of horseshoe crab was named Attenborolimulus superspinosus.Awards
In addition, he is the only person to have won BAFTAs for programmes in black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D, and 4K.
Filmography
David Attenborough's television credits span eight decades and his association with natural history programmes dates back to The Pattern of Animals and Zoo Quest in the early 1950s. His most influential work, 1979's Life on Earth, launched a strand of nine authored documentaries with the BBC Natural History Unit which shared the Life strand name and spanned 30 years. He narrated every episode of the long-running BBC series Wildlife on One and in his later career has voiced several high-profile BBC wildlife documentaries, among them The Blue Planet and Planet Earth. He became a pioneer in the 3D documentary format with Flying Monsters in 2010.
Bibliography
David Attenborough's work as an author has strong parallels with his broadcasting career. In the 1950s and 1960s, his published work included accounts of his animal collecting expeditions around the world, which became the Zoo Quest series. He wrote an accompanying volume to each of his nine Life documentaries, along with books on tribal art and birds of paradise. His autobiography, Life on Air, was published in 2002, revised in 2009 and is one of a number of his works which is available as a self-narrated audiobook. Attenborough has also contributed forewords and introductions to many other works, notably those accompanying Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, Africa and other BBC series he has narrated.
Zoo Quest to Guyana (1956)
Zoo Quest for a Dragon (1957) – republished in 1959 to include an additional 85 pages titled Quest for the Paradise Birds Zoo Quest in Paraguay (1959)
Quest in Paradise (1960)
People of Paradise (1960)
Zoo Quest to Madagascar (1961)
Quest Under Capricorn (1963)
Fabulous Animals (1975)
The Tribal Eye (1976)
Life on Earth (1979)
Discovering Life on Earth (1981)
The Living Planet (1984)
The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man (1987)
The Atlas of the Living World (1989)
The Trials of Life (1990)
The Private Life of Plants (1994)
The Life of Birds (1998)
The Life of Mammals (2002)
Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster (2002) – autobiography, revised in 2009
Life in the Undergrowth (2005)
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery (2007) – with Susan Owens, Martin Clayton and Rea Alexandratos
Life in Cold Blood (2007)
David Attenborough's Life Stories (2009)
David Attenborough's New Life Stories (2011)
Drawn From Paradise: The Discovery, Art and Natural History of the Birds of Paradise (2012) – with Errol Fuller
Adventures of a Young Naturalist: The Zoo Quest Expeditions (2017)
Journeys to the Other Side of the World: Further Adventures of a Young Naturalist (2018)
Dynasties: The Rise and Fall of Animal Families with Stephen Moss (2018)
A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future (2020)
References
External links
BBC Books David Attenborough website
David Attenborough at the British Film Institute
David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet
Wildfilmhistory.org biography
PBS interview with Attenborough in 1998
People and Planet: David Attenborough, video of the 2011 RSA President's Lecture
David Attenborough interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, 27 December 1998
David Attenborough: humanity must come to its senses or face environmental disaster. Radio Times''. 13 October 2016.
1926 births
20th-century Royal Navy personnel
Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Articles containing video clips
David
BAFTA fellows
BBC television presenters
BBC television producers
BBC Two controllers
British Book Award winners
British social commentators
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order
Critics of creationism
Cultural critics
English agnostics
English autobiographers
English broadcasters
English conservationists
English environmentalists
English nature writers
English television personalities
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science
Fellows of the Linnean Society of London
Fellows of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society
Fellows of the Royal Society (Statute 12)
Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts
Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology
Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Fellows of the Zoological Society of London
International Emmy Founders Award winners
Kalinga Prize recipients
Knights Bachelor
Living people
Members of the Order of Merit
Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George
Outstanding Narrator Primetime Emmy Award winners
People associated with the University of Leicester
People educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys
People from Isleworth
People from Leicester
Presidents of the British Science Association
Primetime Emmy Award winners
Social critics
Military personnel from Middlesex
| false |
[
"Utah Foster Care (UFC), formerly \"Utah Foster Care Foundation\" is a non-profit organization that provides foster families for the State of Utah. Since its founding, UFC has played a role in caring for young children who have been subjected to abuse, neglect, and other hardships by their caretakers. As of 2013, at any given time in Utah, there are about 2,700 children experiencing crisis in the home who are in need of foster care. Nearly half of all cases involve substance abuse by biological parents. Given the difficult circumstances and special needs of these children, UFC's goal is to find and prepare foster parents to meet those needs.\n\nThe Utah Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS), the agency responsible for the placement of children in foster homes, contracts with UFC to recruit, train, and retain the families needed to care for these children in crisis. Thus, UFC is not a child placement agency, but works directly with DCFS to meet the needs of foster children in Utah. Below is described six general attributes of UFC. They include their mission and goals, history, organizational structure, program relationships, budget, and challenges.\n\nMission and Goals\n\nThe mission of the Utah Foster Care is three-fold. As specified in their recruitment efforts, \"Our mission is to serve Utah’s children by finding, educating and nurturing families to meet the needs of children in foster care.\" They carefully screen potential foster parents, provide extensive training, and maintain continued support for providers while they care for these children. During this process, their objective is to identify providers that are willing to help families reunite when possible and adopt children when such a reunion is not achievable.\n \nSpecific goals are provided through a contract with DCFS. In addition to their contracted goal, they also seek to promote privately raised donations. This extra funding funds support groups, camps, winter retreats, appreciation events, and their wishing well program (e.g., gifts like a baseball glove or dance lesson that providers can't afford independently).\n\nHistory\n\nUtah Foster Care originated following a 1993 lawsuit by the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) over the state's failure to protect children. At the time, Utah had only one-third the number of qualified foster parents they needed to provide care for the children who had been abused or neglected in the state. Despite the need for improvement and five years to make the necessary changes, DCFS was still not in compliance with the lawsuit requirements, due to a lack of effective training and recruiting methods.\n\nIn 1997, then-Governor Mike Leavitt called for a joint effort of government, schools, churches and civic organizations to solve the problem. Through generous donations by several philanthropists in the state, and under the watchful eye of retired private executive Richard Shipley, the Utah Foster Care was formed in 1999. This private, non-profit organization would serve as an intermediary between the private sector and the DCFS, and would assume the task of supplying a well-trained, thoroughly vetted pool of foster parents. The UFC, as a non-governmental agency, was especially effective at utilizing the efforts of Utah churches while maintaining the necessary separation of church and state.\n\nBy the time Governor Leavitt left office in 2003, the number of foster families had doubled to more than twelve hundred. Since then, the suit with NCYL ended when \"all parties agreed that significant and steady improvements ... resulted in a child welfare system that protects the state’s abused and neglected children, and helps families get the support they need.\" Today, there are approximately fourteen hundred families serving the needs of foster children in Utah.\n\nWith the organization of UFC, four major changes were implemented to improve the quality of training and selection within the foster care program.\n UFC conducts an in home pre-screening for potential foster parents. By doing so, they are able to quickly discern qualified parents and ensure the safety of the foster children before further training.\n Training hours were increased from 20 to 32 hours and with re-certification required each year. In addition, both spouses have to attend a portion of these meetings.\n Training was made consistent throughout the state. Successful recruiting and training activities were implemented throughout the state along with uniform qualifications.\n The selection of foster parents is closely tied to the needs of the children. Instead of mass generalized marketing recruitment, UFC employs specific targeted recruitment based on the needs of those it their care. Placement now takes into consideration cultural background, geography, and special needs.\n\nThrough these changes, the recruitment and retention of foster parents has significantly improved. Families have more meaningful experiences and children are placed with foster parents who serve their needs best.\n\nOrganizational structure\nSimilar to other non-profit entities, Utah Foster Care is led by a board of directors and CEO. With the help of 32 full-time employees, they oversee all recruitment, training, and retention activities. In total, seven individuals report directly to the CEO. They include an Accountant, Media Specialist, Development Coordinator, HR Manager, and Directors over the three departments.\n\nThe Director of Recruitment is in charge of the regional managing recruiters who in turn manage individual recruiters. The Recruitment page of the UFC website states: \"We find families to meet the needs of Utah children in foster care.\" The goal of recruitment is to dispel the misconceptions and myths surrounding foster care. Recruiters are seeking opportunities to let foster/adoptive parents tell their stories in order to accomplish this goal.\n\nThe Director of Education oversees each regional trainer and their assistants. The primary goal of these trainers is to provide as much information to help parents meet the overwhelming needs of foster children. In addition, foster parents are trained to recognize their own need and seek out resources that will meet those needs.\n\nThe Director of Retention has jurisdiction over regional retention specialists, who are focused on ensuring that these foster parents, or resource families, are valued by the community and themselves. Retention specialists provide additional support for training and enhancing the professional regard of these resource families.\n\nWithin the state, UFC has created five regions: North, East, West, Salt Lake Valley, and Southwest. These regions are each represented within the three departments of the organization. These positions include area representatives, recruiters, regional trainers, and retention specialists who play a valuable supportive role for each Director as they oversee their respective responsibilities.\n\nThe service provided by UFC is best understood by looking at the track followed by foster care providers in order to receive a child in their home. The process to become a foster care parent entails the following six steps:\n In anticipation of the need for foster providers, DCFS contracts with UFC to recruit and train a specific number of potential foster care providers each year. Recruitment activities consist of marketing, educating, and providing initial screenings for interested parties.\n Once UFC has recruited potential providers, they inform DCFS of these individuals.\n While the potential foster parent continues their training, a DCFS caseworker opens a file and begins the process of certification with the Office of Licensing (OL).\n Once the foster care provider has completed the required training and satisfied all other requirements, the OL issues a license to the foster parent.\n DCFS reviews qualified foster parents with the needs of the children in the program.\n Once a foster child is placed in the home of an approved provider, UFC re-enters the process to provide important resources for foster parents as they care for the needs of these children.\n\nProgram Relationships\n\nUFC's efforts are significantly impacted by the contract requirements provided by DCFS, which guidelines are given in accordance with Utah legislation. Consequently, federal and state laws only indirectly affect UFC through their contractual relationship with DCFS. Also, because UFC deals only with the recruiting, training, and retention of qualified providers, they are not involved in the licensing of foster care providers or the placement of children in foster homes.\n\nThe following organizations operate independently of UFC but are relationships important to the foster care system organized in the state of Utah:\n\n Utah Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS): Investigates allegations of abuse and neglect and determines when a child should be removed from the custody of their parents. Responsible to place children with foster families, supervises the care of foster children, and oversees the care they receive.\n Utah Office of Licensing (OL): licenses foster parents, responsible to make sure that foster families meet all requirements and standards. Conducts home studies prior to foster parents being licensed and receiving a foster child.\n Utah Foster and Adoptive Families Association (UFAFA): A support and advocacy group composed of Utah foster and adoptive families. As a non-profit organization, UFAFA consists of a collective body of foster/adoptive families that provides information for UFC and other foster providers as they work to educate local and state leaders about issues confronting foster care in Utah.\n Businesses in communities help as well. For example, Wal-Mart in Vernal does an annual Giving Tree, Aspen Grove donates a weekend getaway for 75 foster families each year, volunteers from United Parcel Service Foundation in Salt Lake have filled information bags for the Chalk Art Festival, and UFC has qualified for and received grants from the UPS Foundation.\n\nThe following four steps helps to better understand the track followed by foster children as they move through the foster program. These steps include:\n\n1. DCFS is notified of potential child abuse and neglect.\n\n2. DCFS investigates the problem to identify the validity of the reported abuse.\n\n3. If necessary, DCFS removes the child from their home.\n\n4. These children are placed in a licensed foster care home as determined by DCFS caseworkers.\n\nBudget\n\nThough UFC relies upon several forms of funding, they are primarily dependent upon a contract with DCFS. Since 1999, the State of Utah has contracted with UFC through DCFS to recruit and provide training for foster parents. It is an exclusive five-year contract in which DCFS can make annual amendments to the financial support they provide and the consequent number of foster homes they hire UFC to supply.\n\nThis contract represents approximately 81% of UFC's total annual revenue for FY 2013. The balance of the budget comes through fundraising efforts from individuals, larger organizations, and corporations (17%), and through interest and investment income (2%).\n\nTotal revenue decreased 2.9% between FY 2009 & FY 2013. In the last five years, state funding has decreased a total of 6.39% Consequently, UFC has been more engaged in fundraising efforts to compensate for the loss of funding from the State of Utah. \nIn FY 2013, 39% of funds were spent on recruitment, 22% on training and education, 26% on retention, and 13% on development and administrative support. The funding employs three part-time and 32 full-time staff. This staff is spread across 5 regions, with regional offices, to run the programs that support the close to 1400 licensed foster families in Utah. These foster families meet the needs of the estimated 2700 children in foster care.\n\nChallenges\n\nToday, UFC faces many challenges, including but not limited to, the following:\n\nFinancial: Funding comes from two sources: first and primarily, from the state of Utah through the DCFS, and secondly, from local fundraising. These sources will always bring uncertainty to the level of funding available to accomplish the desired results from year to year. A tenuous balance exists between the successful recruitment of quality foster parents and sufficient funding to support their success.\n\nEnlistment: The dynamics of society continue to cause an increase in the number of children needing foster parents as well as rising intensity in the physical and emotional issues that these children and their families must battle. The awareness of these difficult issues may significantly impact the ability to recruit the needed foster care families. An additional aspect of the enlistment challenge is public awareness concerning the opportunity to help. It is challenging to find the most effective tools to recruit the number of quality foster parents needed. In addition, the growing number of children with major behavioral problems or special needs in the program is increasing. This increase makes it very difficult for UFC to find foster providers who are willing and able to take care of these types of children. A study of the Utah foster care system between 2001 and 2004 evaluated 6000 children placed in the program. Measurements indicated 54% of them had at least one chronic or acute medical condition, and 44% had at least one mental health condition. Of the mental health issues, most were behavioral or mood disorder-related. The study supports and strengthens previous, smaller studies that concluded foster children were more likely to face mental or physical health challenges when compared to the general pediatric population. One particularly concerning find is that two-thirds of the adolescents placed in foster care during the study had a Body Mass Index result that categorized them in either overweight or obese levels for their age group.\n\nTraining: In many instances, the foster parents are taking in children with a wide array of challenges, which can place a significant strain on their own family life. Thus, training is not only needed for foster parents in order to meet children's needs, but also in how to balance their own lives. Because of the increasing needs for many of the foster children, higher levels of expertise are needed for the trainers of foster parents. To emphasize the importance of specialized training among foster families, a study of foster to adoption placement rates suggested children placed in foster care services have a lower probability for adoption. Furthermore, foster parents who have had previous and specialized training are more likely than those without training to consider adoption. The research stated, \"Foster parents who were specialized, meaning that they have received training in working with difficult child populations, were more likely to consider adoption than those who are not.\"\n\nRecruitment: Recruitment of providers for special groups such as teens and siblings remains a large challenge. Though extensive effort has been exerted to overcome this, it continues to be extremely difficult to resolve. An article dated 14 February 2012 in the Deseret News writes, \"A 2011 legislative audit showed that among nearly 1,300 licensed foster care families statewide at that time, only about 200 were willing to care for children ages 14-18.\" The article continues, \"Finding [these children] support by increasing the number of foster families is the focus of the Utah Foster Care[....]\"\n\nPreservation of Family: Kinship caregiving is when extended family is recruited to fill the role of foster care. This effort preserves as much family identity as possible and provides safety and connection for the child. Placing children with kinship caregivers has been shown to be the most beneficial foster care situation for children in the system. The attempt to preserve a self-identity can be key to the successful outcome for these children. A significant challenge for not only the kinship care families, but for all foster families, is to somehow preserve and strengthen the self-identify of these children.\n\nProcesses & Systems: The need to both collect and evaluate information cause challenges with the foster care system. The UFC has a high level of accountability to DCFS for the foster family. As well, DCFS must be highly accountable to both state and federal legislation requirements. Accountability brings consistency, but if not monitored, it can also become cumbersome and apply additional stress on the foster care parents and the DCFS. In the future, it is critical to match both the data collection and analysis to the most pressing needs of families and foster children. As the complex needs of foster children change over time, so should the collection, analysis and application of data. The process of state budgeting is such that responding to these changes can be difficult and slow.\nOne specific example lies with the current requirement of 12 hours of in-service training per year for foster care parents. In regards to collection and evaluation, it would be important to ask if this requirement remains sufficient given the increased challenges that come with foster children.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n \n\nFoster care in the United States\nAdoption in the United States\nNon-profit organizations based in Utah\n1999 establishments in Utah",
"Adoption in Connecticut means \"the establishment by court order of the legal relationship of parent and child.\" Adoption is provided for in Title 45a of the Connecticut General Statutes. The provisions of this title, with a few exceptions are to be \"liberally construed in the best interests of any child for whom a petition [for adoption] has been filed under said sections.\" Fundamentally, adoption is a two-step process: (1) an agreement to give and receive the child in adoption and (2) approval of said agreement by the probate court.\n\nAdoption and foster care\nFoster care in Connecticut is the placement of children with families that have been licensed by the Department of Children and Families (DCF) for long-term care. A \"child in foster care\", or foster child, means a child residing with an adult who is approved by DCF to stand in loco parentis for the child and on whose behalf foster care payments are being made by DCF. There are currently approximately 6,400 children in foster care in Connecticut. These children live in variety of custodial arrangements: foster care, group homes, independent living, medical care, relative care, residential facility, \"SAFE\" homes and shelters. Most children in foster care are not available for adoption. At any given time there are between 150 and 170 children, within the foster care system, who are ready for adoption.\n\nPlacement of foster children\nDCF must take reasonable efforts to reunify parents and children unless a court has decreed otherwise.\n\nThe changing nature of adoption\nTraditionally, adoption could not proceed unless the parental rights of both parents were first terminated. However, this is no longer always the case. In some instances, birth parents and legal parents have entered into an open adoption agreement, also known as \"cooperative postadoption agreements.\" Either or both birth parents and an intended adoptive parent may enter into a cooperative postadoption agreement regarding communication or contact between either or both birth parents and the adopted child. Such an agreement may be entered into if: (1) The child is in the custody of the Department of Children and Families; (2) an order terminating parental rights has not yet been entered; and (3) either or both birth parents agree to a voluntary termination of parental rights, including an agreement in a case which began as an involuntary termination of parental rights. The postadoption agreement shall be applicable only to a birth parent who is a party to the agreement. Such agreement shall be in addition to those under common law. Counsel for the child and any guardian ad litem for the child may be heard on the proposed cooperative postadoption agreement. There shall be no presumption of communication or contact between the birth parents and an intended adoptive parent in the absence of a cooperative postadoption agreement.\n\nIn Michaud v. Wawrack, the Court held that an agreement between birth mother and adoptive parents, that was not part of the adoption decree, is enforceable, provided it was in the best interests of the child. The terms of a cooperative postadoption agreement may include the following: \"(1) Provision for communication between the child and either or both birth parents; (2) provision for future contact between either or both birth parents and the child or an adoptive parent; and (3) maintenance of medical history of either or both birth parents who are a party to the agreement.\"\n\nReferences\n\nAdoption in the United States\nAdoption law\nConnecticut law"
] |
[
"David Attenborough",
"Early life and family",
"Where was he born?",
"Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester,",
"What did his father do for a living?",
"where his father, Frederick, was principal.",
"Did David have siblings?",
"He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director and his younger brother, John, was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo),",
"Did his parents foster children?",
"his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Europe."
] |
C_b1caf59a3c484f208e434159c3ae7d42_1
|
What did David like to do as a child?
| 5 |
What did David Attenborough like to do as a child?
|
David Attenborough
|
Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director and his younger brother, John, was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo), and the only surviving child among them. During World War II, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Europe. Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and other natural specimens. He received encouragement in this pursuit at age seven, when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his "museum". He also spent a considerable amount of his time in the grounds of the university, and, aged 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered via his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which wasn't revealed at the time, was a pond less than five metres from the department. A few years later, one of his adoptive sisters gave him a piece of amber filled with prehistoric creatures; some 50 years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine. In 1936 David and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl. Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and then won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945, where he studied geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947 he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950 Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel; she died in 1997. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress. CANNOTANSWER
|
Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and other natural specimens.
|
Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
Attenborough was a senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. His filmography as writer, presenter and narrator spans eight decades; it includes Zoo Quest, Natural World, Wildlife on One, the Planet Earth franchise, The Blue Planet and its sequel. He is the only person to have won BAFTAs in all of the categories black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolutions.
While Attenborough's earlier work focused more on the wonders of the natural world, his later work has been more vocal in support of environmental causes. He has advocated for restoring planetary biodiversity, limiting population growth, switching to renewable energy, mitigating climate change, reducing meat consumption, and setting aside more areas for natural preservation.
On his broadcasting and passion for nature, NPR stated he "roamed the globe and shared his discoveries and enthusiasms with his patented semi-whisper way of narrating". In 2018 and 2019, Attenborough received Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narrator. He is widely considered a national treasure in the UK, although he himself does not like the term. He is the younger brother of the late director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough, and older brother of the late motor executive John Attenborough.
Life and family
Attenborough was born on 8 May 1926 in Isleworth, Middlesex, and grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons; his elder brother, Richard (died in 2014), became an actor and director, and his younger brother, John (died in 2012), was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo. During the Second World War, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Germany.
Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones, and natural specimens. He received encouragement when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his collection. He spent much time in the grounds of the university. Aged around 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered through his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which he did not reveal at the time, was a pond right next to the department. A year later, his adoptive sister Marianne gave him a piece of amber containing prehistoric creatures; some sixty years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine.
In 1936, Attenborough and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl.
Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester. He won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945 to study geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947, he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950, Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Jane died in 1997. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress.
Attenborough had a pacemaker fitted in June 2013, as well as a double knee replacement in 2015. In September 2013 he commented: "If I was earning my money by hewing coal I would be very glad indeed to stop. But I'm not. I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune."
Career
Early years at the BBC
After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC. Although he was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service. Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television, and he had seen only one programme in his life. However, he accepted Adams' offer of a three-month training course, and in 1952 he joined the BBC full-time. Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big, he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.
Attenborough's association with natural history programmes began when he produced and presented the three-part series Animal Patterns. The studio-bound programme featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism and courtship displays. Through this programme, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast in 1954, where Attenborough became the presenter at short notice due to Lester being taken ill.
In 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead, he formed his own department, the Travel and Exploration Unit, which allowed him to continue to front Zoo Quest as well as produce other documentaries, notably the Travellers' Tales and Adventure series. In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.
BBC administration
Attenborough became Controller of BBC 2 in March 1965, succeeding Michael Peacock. He had a clause inserted in his contract that would allow him to continue making programmes on an occasional basis. Later the same year he filmed elephants in Tanzania, and in 1969 he made a three-part series on the cultural history of the Indonesian island of Bali. For the 1971 film A Blank on the Map, he joined the first Western expedition to a remote highland valley in New Guinea to seek out a lost tribe.
BBC Two was launched in 1964, but had struggled to capture the public's imagination. When Attenborough arrived as controller, he quickly abolished the channel's quirky kangaroo mascot and shook up the schedule. With a mission to make BBC Two's output diverse and different from that offered by other networks, he began to establish a portfolio of programmes that defined the channel's identity for decades to come. Under his tenure, music, the arts, entertainment, archaeology, experimental comedy, travel, drama, sport, business, science and natural history all found a place in the weekly schedules. Often, an eclectic mix was offered within a single evening's viewing. Programmes he commissioned included Man Alive, Call My Bluff, Chronicle, Match of the Day, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Money Programme. With the addition of colour television, Attenborough brought snooker to the BBC to show the benefits of the format, as the sport uses coloured balls. The show – Pot Black – was later credited with the boom of the sport into the 1980s.
One of his most significant decisions was to order a 13-part series on the history of Western art, to show off the quality of the new UHF colour television service that BBC Two offered. Broadcast to universal acclaim in 1969, Civilisation set the blueprint for landmark authored documentaries, which were informally known as "sledgehammer" projects. Others followed, including Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (also commissioned by Attenborough), and Alistair Cooke's America. Attenborough thought that the story of evolution would be a natural subject for such a series. He shared his idea with Christopher Parsons, a producer at the Natural History Unit, who came up with a title Life on Earth and returned to Bristol to start planning the series. Attenborough harboured a strong desire to present the series himself, but this would not be possible so long as he remained in a management post.
While in charge of BBC Two, Attenborough turned down Terry Wogan's job application to be a presenter on the channel, stating that there weren't any suitable vacancies. The channel already had an Irish announcer, with Attenborough reflecting in 2016: "To have had two Irishmen presenting on BBC Two would have looked ridiculous. This is no comment whatsoever on Terry Wogan's talents." Attenborough has also acknowledged that he sanctioned the wiping of television output during this period to cut costs, including a series by Alan Bennett, which he later regretted. In 1969, Attenborough was promoted to director of programmes, making him responsible for the output of both BBC channels. His tasks, which included agreeing budgets, attending board meetings and firing staff, were now far removed from the business of filming programmes. When Attenborough's name was being suggested as a candidate for the position of Director-General of the BBC in 1972, he phoned his brother Richard to confess that he had no appetite for the job. Early the following year, he left his post to return to full-time programme-making, leaving him free to write and present the planned natural history epic.
After his resignation, Attenborough became a freelance broadcaster and started work on his next project, a trip to Indonesia with a crew from the Natural History Unit. It resulted in the 1973 series Eastwards with Attenborough, which was similar in tone to the earlier Zoo Quest; the main difference was the introduction of colour. Attenborough stated that he wanted to work in Asia, because previous nature documentaries had mostly focused on Africa. That year, Attenborough was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Language of Animals. After his work on Eastwards with Attenborough, he began to work on the scripts for Life on Earth. Due to the scale of his ambition, the BBC decided to partner with an American network to secure the necessary funding. While the negotiations were proceeding, he worked on a number of other television projects. He presented a series on tribal art (The Tribal Eye, 1975) and another on the voyages of discovery (The Explorers, 1975). He also presented a BBC children's series about cryptozoology entitled Fabulous Animals (1975), which featured mythical creatures such as mermaids and unicorns. Eventually, the BBC signed a co-production deal with Turner Broadcasting and Life on Earth moved into production in 1976.
Life series
Beginning with Life on Earth in 1979, Attenborough set about creating a body of work which became a benchmark of quality in wildlife film-making, and influenced a generation of documentary film-makers. The series established many of the hallmarks of the BBC's natural history output. By treating his subject seriously and researching the latest discoveries, Attenborough and his production team gained the trust of scientists, who responded by allowing him to feature their subjects in his programmes. Innovation was another factor in Life on Earth'''s success: new film-making techniques were devised to get the shots Attenborough wanted, with a focus on events and animals that were up till then unfilmed. International air travel enabled the series to be devised so that Attenborough visited several locations around the globe in each episode, sometimes even changing continents in one sequence. Although appearing as the on-screen presenter, he restricted his time on camera to give more time to his subjects.
Five years after the success of Life on Earth, the BBC released The Living Planet. This time, Attenborough built his series around the theme of ecology, the adaptations of living things to their environment. It was another critical and commercial success, generating huge international sales for the BBC. In 1990, The Trials of Life completed the original Life trilogy, looking at animal behaviour through the different stages of life.
In the 1990s, Attenborough continued to use the "Life" title for a succession of authored documentaries. In 1993, he presented Life in the Freezer, the first television series to survey the natural history of Antarctica. Although past normal retirement age, he then embarked on a number of more specialised surveys of the natural world, beginning with plants. They proved a difficult subject for his producers, who had to deliver hours of television featuring what are essentially immobile objects. The result was The Private Life of Plants (1995), which showed plants as dynamic organisms by using time-lapse photography to speed up their growth, and went on to earn a Peabody Award.
Prompted by an enthusiastic ornithologist at the BBC Natural History Unit, Attenborough then turned his attention to birds. As he was neither an birdwatcher nor a bird expert, he decided he was better qualified to make The Life of Birds (1998) on the theme of behaviour. The documentary series won a second Peabody Award the following year. The order of the remaining "Life" series was dictated by developments in camera technology. For The Life of Mammals (2002), low-light and infrared cameras were deployed to reveal the behaviour of nocturnal mammals. The series contains a number of memorable two shots of Attenborough and his subjects, which included chimpanzees, a blue whale and a grizzly bear. Advances in macro photography made it possible to capture the natural behaviour of very small creatures for the first time, and in 2005, Life in the Undergrowth introduced audiences to the world of invertebrates.
At this point, Attenborough realised that he had spent 20 years unconsciously assembling a collection of programmes on all the major groups of terrestrial animals and plants – only reptiles and amphibians were missing. When Life in Cold Blood was broadcast in 2008, he had the satisfaction of completing the set, brought together in a DVD encyclopaedia called Life on Land. He commented: "The evolutionary history is finished. The endeavour is complete. If you'd asked me 20 years ago whether we'd be attempting such a mammoth task, I'd have said 'Don't be ridiculous!' These programmes tell a particular story and I'm sure others will come along and tell it much better than I did, but I do hope that if people watch it in 50 years' time, it will still have something to say about the world we live in."
However, in 2010 Attenborough asserted that his First Life – dealing with evolutionary history before Life on Earth – should be included within the "Life" series. In the documentary Attenborough's Journey, he stated, "This series, to a degree which I really didn't fully appreciate until I started working on it, really completes the set."
Beyond Life on Earth
Alongside the "Life" series, Attenborough continued to work on other television documentaries, mainly in the natural history genre. He wrote and presented a series on man's influence on the natural history of the Mediterranean Basin, The First Eden, in 1987. Two years later, he demonstrated his passion for fossils in Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives. In 1990, he worked on the BBC's Prisoners of Conscience series where he highlighted the case of Mahjoub Sharif. Attenborough narrated every episode of Wildlife on One, a BBC One wildlife series that ran for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005. At its peak, it drew a weekly audience of eight to ten million, and the 1987 episode "Meerkats United" was voted the best wildlife documentary of all time by BBC viewers. He has narrated over 50 episodes of Natural World, BBC Two's flagship wildlife series. Its forerunner, The World About Us, was created by Attenborough in 1969, as a vehicle for colour television. In 1997, he narrated the BBC Wildlife Specials, each focussing on a charismatic species, and screened to mark the Natural History Unit's 40th anniversary.
As a writer and narrator, Attenborough continued to collaborate with the BBC Natural History Unit in the new millennium. Alastair Fothergill, a senior producer with whom Attenborough had worked on The Trials of Life and Life in the Freezer, was making The Blue Planet (2001), the Unit's first comprehensive series on marine life. He decided not to use an on-screen presenter due to difficulties in speaking to a camera through diving apparatus, but asked Attenborough to narrate the films. The same team reunited for Planet Earth (2006), the biggest nature documentary ever made for television and the first BBC wildlife series to be shot in high definition. In 2009, he co-wrote and narrated Life, a ten-part series focussing on extraordinary animal behaviour, and narrated Nature's Great Events, which showed how seasonal changes trigger major natural spectacles. In January 2009, the BBC commissioned Attenborough to provide a series of 20 ten-minute monologues covering the history of nature. Entitled David Attenborough's Life Stories, they were broadcast on Radio 4 on Friday nights.
In 2011, Fothergill gave Attenborough a more prominent role in Frozen Planet, a major series on the natural history of the polar regions; Attenborough appeared on screen and authored the final episode, in addition to performing voiceover duties. Attenborough introduced and narrated the Unit's first 4K production Life Story. For Planet Earth II (2016), Attenborough returned as narrator and presenter, with the main theme music composed by Hans Zimmer.In October 2014, the corporation announced a trio of new one-off Attenborough documentaries as part of a raft of new natural history programmes. "Attenborough's Paradise Birds" and "Attenborough's Big Birds" was shown on BBC Two and "Waking Giants", which follows the discovery of giant dinosaur bones in South America, aired on BBC One. The BBC also commissioned Atlantic Productions to make a three-part, Attenborough-fronted series Great Barrier Reef in 2015. The series marked the 10th project for Attenborough and Atlantic, and saw him returning to a location he first filmed at in 1957. On radio, Attenborough has continued as one of the presenters of BBC Radio 4's Tweet of the Day, which began a second series in September 2014. Attenborough forged a partnership with Sky, working on documentaries for the broadcaster's new 3D network, Sky 3D. Their first collaboration was Flying Monsters 3D, a film about pterosaurs which debuted on Christmas Day of 2010. A second film, The Bachelor King 3D, followed a year later. His next 3D project, Conquest of the Skies, made by the team behind the BAFTA-winning David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive, aired on Sky 3D during Christmas 2014.
Attenborough has narrated three series of David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities for UKTV channel Watch, with the third series showing in 2015. He has also narrated A majestic celebration: Wild Karnataka, India's first blue-chip natural history film, directed by Kalyan Varma and Amoghavarsha. Blue Planet II was broadcast in 2017, with Attenborough returning as presenter. The series was critically acclaimed and gained the highest UK viewing figure for 2017: 14.1 million. Attenborough narrated the 2018 five part series Dynasties, each episode dealing with one species in particular. In 2021 he presented the three part series Attenborough's Life in Colour, and The Mating Game, a five part series.
Environmentalist advocacy
By the turn of the millennium, Attenborough's authored documentaries were adopting a more overtly environmentalist stance. In State of the Planet (2000), he used the latest scientific evidence and interviews with leading scientists and conservationists to assess the impact of human activities on the natural world. He later turned to the issues of global warming (The Truth about Climate Change, 2006) and human population growth (How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?, 2009). He contributed a programme which highlighted the plight of endangered species to the BBC's Saving Planet Earth project in 2007, the 50th anniversary of the Natural History Unit.
In 2019, Attenborough narrated Our Planet, an eight-part documentary series, for Netflix. In contrast to much of his prior work for the BBC, this series emphasised the destructive role of human activities throughout the series. Before, he would often note concerns in a final section of the work. He also narrated Wild Karnataka, a documentary about the Karnataka forest area. In 2019, Attenborough's one-off film documentary about climate change for BBC One called Climate Change – The Facts was aired; the tone of the documentary was significantly graver than previous work for the BBC. This was followed by Extinction: The Facts, which is partly based on the 2019 IPBES report on the decline of biodiversity.“Sir David Attenborough makes stark warning about species extinction” . BBC Science. Retrieved 14 October 2020
In 2020, Attenborough narrated the documentary film David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. The film acts as Attenborough's witness statement, reflecting on his career as a naturalist and his hopes for the future. It was released on Netflix on 4 October 2020. Further work for Netflix includes the documentary titled Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet, released on 4 June 2021. In October 2020, Attenborough began filming in Cambridge for The Green Planet. In 2021, Attenborough narrated A Perfect Planet, a five-part earth science series for BBC One.
COP26
Attenborough was a key figure in the build up to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), and gave a speech at the opening ceremony. In his speech he stated that humans were "the greatest problem solvers to have ever existed on Earth" and spoke of his optimism for the future, finishing by saying "In my lifetime I've witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery."
Views and advocacy
Environment
Attenborough's programmes have often included references to the impact of human society on the natural world. The last episode of The Living Planet, for example, focuses almost entirely on humans' destruction of the environment and ways that it could be stopped or reversed. Despite this, he has been criticised for not giving enough prominence to environmental messages. In 2018 while promoting Dynasties, he said that repeated messages on threats to wildlife in programming could be a "turn-off" to viewers. Some environmentalists feel that programmes like Attenborough's give a false picture of idyllic wilderness and do not do enough to acknowledge that such areas are increasingly encroached upon by humans. However, the increased urgency of environmental messaging in films such as Extinction: The Facts, which depicts the continuing sixth mass extinction, Climate Change – The Facts and A Life on Our Planet from 2019 and 2020 received praise. In Seven Worlds, One Planet, Attenborough discusses the devastating impact that deforestation is having on the planet and the species.
In 2005 and 2006, he backed a BirdLife International project to stop the killing of albatross by longline fishing boats. He gave support to WWF's campaign to have 220,000 square kilometres of Borneo's rainforest designated a protected area. He serves as a vice-president of The Conservation Volunteers, vice-president of Fauna and Flora International, president of Butterfly Conservation and president emiritus of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust. In 2003, he launched an appeal on behalf of the World Land Trust to create a rainforest reserve in Ecuador in memory of Christopher Parsons, the producer of Life on Earth and a personal friend, who had died the previous year. The same year, he helped to launch ARKive, a global project instigated by Parsons to gather together natural history media into a digital library. ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, of which Attenborough is a patron. He later became patron of the World Land Trust. In 2020, he backed a Fauna and Flora International campaign calling for a global moratorium on deep sea mining for its impact on marine life.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Attenborough advocated on behalf of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and its conservation efforts, which have been impacted by the economic fallout from the pandemic. In 2020, Attenborough was named as a member of the Earthshot prize Council, an initiative of Prince William to find solutions to environmental issues. He is a patron of the Friends of Richmond Park and serves on the advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazine.
Attenborough was initially sceptical about the human influence on climate change, and stated that a 2004 lecture finally convinced him humans were responsible. He remained silent on the issue until 2006. Attenborough attended and spoke at COP26 as the "People's Advocate" for the event, and urged world leaders to act to reduce emissions. He supported Glyndebourne in their successful application to obtain planning permission for a wind turbine in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and gave evidence at the planning inquiry arguing in favour of the proposal. In his 2020 documentary film David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Attenborough advocates for people to adopt a vegetarian diet or to reduce meat consumption to save wildlife, noting that "the planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters."
Human population
Attenborough has linked anthropogenic effects on the environment with human population growth. He has attracted criticism for his views on human overpopulation and human population control. His most popular comment online in a 2020 study related to the topic of overpopulation. He is a patron of Population Matters, a UK charity advocating for family planning, sustainable consumption and proposed sustainable human population. In a 2013 interview with the Radio Times, Attenborough described humans as a "plague on the Earth", and described the act of sending food to famine-stricken countries as "barmy" for population reasons. He called for more debate about human population growth, saying that since he "first started making programmes 60 years ago, the human population has tripled."
According to Attenborough, improving women's rights around the world is an effective way "to limit our birth rate." He said that "anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist."
Religious views
Attenborough considers himself an agnostic. When asked whether his observation of the natural world has given him faith in a creator, he generally responds with some version of this story, making reference to the Onchocerca volvulus parasitic worm:
My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'.
He has explained that he feels the evidence all over the planet clearly shows evolution to be the best way to explain the diversity of life, and that "as far as [he's] concerned, if there is a supreme being then he chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world". In a BBC Four interview with Mark Lawson, he was asked if he at any time had any religious faith. He replied simply, "no". He said "It never really occurred to me to believe in God".
In 2002, Attenborough joined an effort by leading clerics and scientists to oppose the inclusion of creationism in the curriculum of UK state-funded independent schools which receive private sponsorship, such as the Emmanuel Schools Foundation.
In 2009, he stated that the Book of Genesis, by saying that the world was there for people to control, had taught generations that they can "dominate" the environment, and that this has resulted in the devastation of vast areas of the environment. He further explained to the science journal Nature, "That's why Darwinism, and the fact of evolution, is of great importance, because it is that attitude which has led to the devastation of so much, and we are in the situation that we are in".
Also in early 2009, the BBC broadcast an Attenborough one-hour special, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life. In reference to the programme, Attenborough stated that "People write to me that evolution is only a theory. Well, it is not a theory. Evolution is as solid a historical fact as you could conceive. Evidence from every quarter. What is a theory is whether natural selection is the mechanism and the only mechanism. That is a theory. But the historical reality that dinosaurs led to birds and mammals produced whales, that's not theory." He strongly opposes creationism and its offshoot "intelligent design", saying that the results of a survey that found a quarter of science teachers in state schools believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science lessons was "really terrible".
In March 2009, Attenborough appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Attenborough stated that he felt evolution did not rule out the existence of a God and accepted the title of agnostic saying, "My view is: I don't know one way or the other but I don't think that evolution is against a belief in God".
Attenborough has joined the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and other top scientists in signing a campaign statement co-ordinated by the British Humanist Association (BHA). The statement calls for "creationism to be banned from the school science curriculum and for evolution to be taught more widely in schools".
BBC and public service broadcasting
Attenborough is a lifelong supporter of the BBC, public service broadcasting and the television licence. He has said that public service broadcasting "is one of the things that distinguishes this country and makes me want to live here", and believes that it is not reducible to individual programmes, but "can only effectively operate as a network [...] that measures its success not only by its audience size but by the range of its schedule".
... the BBC per minute in almost every category is as cheap as you can find anywhere in the world and produces the best quality. [...] The BBC has gone through swingeing staff cuts. It has been cut to the bone, if you divert licence fee money elsewhere, you cut quality and services. [...] There is a lot of people who want to see the BBC weakened. They talk of this terrible tax of the licence fee. Yet it is the best bargain that is going. Four radio channels and god knows how many TV channels. It is piffling.
Attenborough expressed the view that there had often been people wanting to remove the BBC, adding "there's always been trouble about the licence and if you dropped your guard you could bet our bottom dollar there'd be plenty of people who'd want to take it away. The licence fee is the basis on which the BBC is based and if you destroy it, broadcasting... becomes a wasteland." He expressed regret at some of the changes made to the BBC in the 1990s by its Director-General, John Birt, who introduced an internal market at the corporation, slimmed and even closed some departments and outsourced much of the corporation's output to private production companies. Although he said Birt's policies had poor results, Attenborough also acknowledged "the BBC had to change." In 2008, he criticised the BBC's television schedules, positing that the two senior networks, BBC One and BBC Two – which Attenborough stated were "first set up as a partnership" – now "schedule simultaneously programmes of identical character, thereby contradicting the very reason that the BBC was given a second network."
Politics
In 1998, Attenborough described himself as "a standard, boring left-wing liberal" and expressed the view that the market economy was "misery". In 2013, Attenborough joined rock guitarists Brian May and Slash in opposing the government's policy on the cull of badgers in the UK by participating in a song dedicated to badgers. Attenborough was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in the 2014 referendum on that issue. Prior to the 2015 UK general election, Attenborough was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas.
In a 2020 interview, Attenborough criticised excess capitalism as a driver of ecological imbalance, stating "the excesses the capitalist system has brought us, have got to be curbed somehow", and that "greed does not actually lead to joy", although he added "That doesn't mean to say that capitalism is dead". He also lamented the lack of international cooperation on climate change, and said "there should be no dominant nation on this planet." In 2021, Attenborough told the leaders of the 47th G7 summit that "tackling climate change was now as much a political challenge as it was a scientific or technological one" and urged more action. Attenborough also stated that "(we) are on the verge of destabilising the entire planet."
Achievements, awards and recognition
Attenborough's contribution to broadcasting and wildlife film-making has brought him international recognition. He has been called "the great communicator, the peerless educator" and "the greatest broadcaster of our time." His programmes are often cited as an example of what public service broadcasting should be, even by critics of the BBC, and have influenced a generation of wildlife film-makers.
Honorary titles
By January 2013, Attenborough had collected 32 honorary degrees from British universities, more than any other person. In 1980, he was honoured by the Open University, with which he has had a close association throughout his career. He has honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Durham University (1982) and the University of Cambridge (1984) and honorary Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Oxford (1988) and the University of Ghent (1997). In 2006, the two eldest Attenborough brothers returned to their home city to receive the title of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester, "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the University." David Attenborough was previously awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the university in 1970, and was made an honorary Freeman of the City of Leicester in 1990. In 2013, he was made an Honorary Freeman of the City of Bristol. In 2010, he was awarded Honorary Doctorates from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Nottingham Trent University.
Attenborough has received the title Honorary Fellow from Clare College, Cambridge (1980), the Zoological Society of London (1998), the Linnean Society (1999), the Institute of Biology (Now the Royal Society of Biology) (2000), and the Society of Antiquaries (2007). He is Honorary Patron of the North American Native Plant Society and was elected as a Corresponding Member of the Australian Academy of Science.
Recognition
Attenborough has been featured as the subject of a number of BBC television programmes. Life on Air (2002) examined the legacy of his work, and Attenborough the Controller (2002) focused on his time in charge of BBC Two. He was also featured prominently in The Way We Went Wild (2004), a series about natural history television presenters, and 100 Years of Wildlife Films (2007), a programme marking the centenary of the nature documentary. In 2006, British television viewers were asked to vote for their Favourite Attenborough Moments for a UKTV poll to coincide with the broadcaster's 80th birthday. The winning clip showed Attenborough observing the mimicry skills of the superb lyrebird.
Attenborough was named the most trusted celebrity in the UK in a 2006 Reader's Digest poll, and in 2007 he won The Culture Show's Living Icon Award. He has been named among the 100 Greatest Britons in a 2002 BBC poll and is one of the top ten "Heroes of Our Time" according to New Statesman magazine. In September 2009, London's Natural History Museum opened the Attenborough Studio, part of its Darwin Centre development.
In 2012, Attenborough was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life. The same year, Attenborough featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named him among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands".
A British polar research ship was named RRS Sir David Attenborough in his honour. While an Internet poll suggesting the name of the ship had the most votes for Boaty McBoatface, Science Minister Jo Johnson said there were "more suitable names", and the official name was eventually picked up from one of the more favoured choices. However, one of its research sub-sea vehicles was named "Boaty" in recognition of the public vote.
Species named after Attenborough
At least 20 species and genera, both living and extinct, have been named in Attenborough's honour. Plants named after him include an alpine hawkweed (Hieracium attenboroughianum) discovered in the Brecon Beacons, a species of Ecuadorian flowering tree (Blakea attenboroughi), one of the world's largest-pitchered carnivorous plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii), along with a genus of flowering plants (Sirdavidia).
Several Arthropods are named after Attenborough including a butterfly, Attenborough's black-eyed satyr (Euptychia attenboroughi), a dragonfly, Attenborough's pintail (Acisoma attenboroughi), a millimetre-long goblin spider (Prethopalpus attenboroughi), an ornate Caribbean smiley-faced spider (Spintharus davidattenboroughi), an Indonesian flightless weevil (Trigonopterus attenboroughi), a Madagascan ghost shrimp (Ctenocheloides attenboroughi), and a soil snail (Palaina attenboroughi). The Monogenean Cichlidogyrus attenboroughi, a parasite from a deep-sea fish in the Lake Tanganyika, is probably the only parasite species named after him. Vertebrates have also been named after Attenborough, including a Namibian lizard (Platysaurus attenboroughi), a bird (Polioptila attenboroughi), a Peruvian frog (Pristimantis attenboroughi), a Madagascan stump-toed frog (Stumpffia davidattenboroughi), and one of only four species of long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi).
In 1993, after discovering that the Mesozoic reptile Plesiosaurus conybeari did not belong to the genus Plesiosaurus, the palaeontologist Robert Bakker renamed the species Attenborosaurus conybeari. A fossilised armoured fish discovered in Western Australia in 2008 was named Materpiscis attenboroughi, after Attenborough had filmed at the site and highlighted its scientific importance in Life on Earth. In 2015, a species of tree from Gabon (in the Annonaceae family) Sirdavidia was named with his title.
The Materpiscis fossil is believed to be the earliest organism capable of internal fertilisation. A miniature marsupial lion, Microleo attenboroughi, was named in his honour in 2016. The fossil grasshopper Electrotettix attenboroughi was named after Attenborough. In March 2017, a 430 million year old tiny crustacean was named after him. Called Cascolus ravitis, the first word is a Latin translation of the root meaning of "Attenborough", and the second is based on a description of him in Latin. In July 2017, the Caribbean bat Myotis attenboroughi was named after him. A new species of fan-throated lizard from coastal Kerala in southern India was named Sitana attenboroughii in his honour when it was described in 2018.
In 2018, a new species of phytoplankton, Syracosphaera azureaplaneta, was named to honour The Blue Planet, the TV documentary presented by Attenborough, and to recognise his contribution to promoting understanding of the oceanic environment. The same year, Attenborough was also commemorated in the name of the scarab beetle Sylvicanthon attenboroughi. In 2021 an extinct species of horseshoe crab was named Attenborolimulus superspinosus.Awards
In addition, he is the only person to have won BAFTAs for programmes in black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D, and 4K.
Filmography
David Attenborough's television credits span eight decades and his association with natural history programmes dates back to The Pattern of Animals and Zoo Quest in the early 1950s. His most influential work, 1979's Life on Earth, launched a strand of nine authored documentaries with the BBC Natural History Unit which shared the Life strand name and spanned 30 years. He narrated every episode of the long-running BBC series Wildlife on One and in his later career has voiced several high-profile BBC wildlife documentaries, among them The Blue Planet and Planet Earth. He became a pioneer in the 3D documentary format with Flying Monsters in 2010.
Bibliography
David Attenborough's work as an author has strong parallels with his broadcasting career. In the 1950s and 1960s, his published work included accounts of his animal collecting expeditions around the world, which became the Zoo Quest series. He wrote an accompanying volume to each of his nine Life documentaries, along with books on tribal art and birds of paradise. His autobiography, Life on Air, was published in 2002, revised in 2009 and is one of a number of his works which is available as a self-narrated audiobook. Attenborough has also contributed forewords and introductions to many other works, notably those accompanying Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, Africa and other BBC series he has narrated.
Zoo Quest to Guyana (1956)
Zoo Quest for a Dragon (1957) – republished in 1959 to include an additional 85 pages titled Quest for the Paradise Birds Zoo Quest in Paraguay (1959)
Quest in Paradise (1960)
People of Paradise (1960)
Zoo Quest to Madagascar (1961)
Quest Under Capricorn (1963)
Fabulous Animals (1975)
The Tribal Eye (1976)
Life on Earth (1979)
Discovering Life on Earth (1981)
The Living Planet (1984)
The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man (1987)
The Atlas of the Living World (1989)
The Trials of Life (1990)
The Private Life of Plants (1994)
The Life of Birds (1998)
The Life of Mammals (2002)
Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster (2002) – autobiography, revised in 2009
Life in the Undergrowth (2005)
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery (2007) – with Susan Owens, Martin Clayton and Rea Alexandratos
Life in Cold Blood (2007)
David Attenborough's Life Stories (2009)
David Attenborough's New Life Stories (2011)
Drawn From Paradise: The Discovery, Art and Natural History of the Birds of Paradise (2012) – with Errol Fuller
Adventures of a Young Naturalist: The Zoo Quest Expeditions (2017)
Journeys to the Other Side of the World: Further Adventures of a Young Naturalist (2018)
Dynasties: The Rise and Fall of Animal Families with Stephen Moss (2018)
A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future (2020)
References
External links
BBC Books David Attenborough website
David Attenborough at the British Film Institute
David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet
Wildfilmhistory.org biography
PBS interview with Attenborough in 1998
People and Planet: David Attenborough, video of the 2011 RSA President's Lecture
David Attenborough interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, 27 December 1998
David Attenborough: humanity must come to its senses or face environmental disaster. Radio Times''. 13 October 2016.
1926 births
20th-century Royal Navy personnel
Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Articles containing video clips
David
BAFTA fellows
BBC television presenters
BBC television producers
BBC Two controllers
British Book Award winners
British social commentators
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order
Critics of creationism
Cultural critics
English agnostics
English autobiographers
English broadcasters
English conservationists
English environmentalists
English nature writers
English television personalities
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science
Fellows of the Linnean Society of London
Fellows of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society
Fellows of the Royal Society (Statute 12)
Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts
Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology
Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Fellows of the Zoological Society of London
International Emmy Founders Award winners
Kalinga Prize recipients
Knights Bachelor
Living people
Members of the Order of Merit
Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George
Outstanding Narrator Primetime Emmy Award winners
People associated with the University of Leicester
People educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys
People from Isleworth
People from Leicester
Presidents of the British Science Association
Primetime Emmy Award winners
Social critics
Military personnel from Middlesex
| false |
[
"\"What Did I Do to You?\" is a song recorded by British singer Lisa Stansfield for her 1989 album, Affection. It was written by Stansfield, Ian Devaney and Andy Morris, and produced by Devaney and Morris. The song was released as the fourth European single on 30 April 1990. It included three previously unreleased songs written by Stansfield, Devaney and Morris: \"My Apple Heart,\" \"Lay Me Down\" and \"Something's Happenin'.\" \"What Did I Do to You?\" was remixed by Mark Saunders and by the Grammy Award-winning American house music DJ and producer, David Morales. The single became a top forty hit in the European countries reaching number eighteen in Finland, number twenty in Ireland and number twenty-five in the United Kingdom. \"What Did I Do to You?\" was also released in Japan.\n\nIn 2014, the remixes of \"What Did I Do to You?\" were included on the deluxe 2CD + DVD re-release of Affection and on People Hold On ... The Remix Anthology. They were also featured on The Collection 1989–2003 box set (2014), including previously unreleased Red Zone Mix by David Morales.\n\nCritical reception\nThe song received positive reviews from music critics. Matthew Hocter from Albumism viewed it as a \"upbeat offering\". David Giles from Music Week said it is \"beautifully performed\" by Stansfield. A reviewer from Reading Eagle wrote that \"What Did I Do to You?\" \"would be right at home on the \"Saturday Night Fever\" soundtrack.\"\n\nMusic video\nA music video was produced to promote the single, directed by Philip Richardson, who had previously directed the videos for \"All Around the World\" and \"Live Together\". It features Stansfield with her kiss curls, dressed in a white outfit and performing with her band on a stage in front of a jumping audience. The video was later published on Stansfield's official YouTube channel in November 2009. It has amassed more than 1,6 million views as of October 2021.\n\nTrack listings\n\n European/UK 7\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK/Japanese CD single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix Edit) – 4:20\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n UK 10\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Mark Saunders Remix) – 5:52\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 5:19\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 4:17\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:59\n\n European/UK 12\" single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"My Apple Heart\" – 4:22\n\"Lay Me Down\" – 3:19\n\"Something's Happenin'\" – 3:15\n\n UK 12\" promotional single\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Morales Mix) – 7:59\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Anti Poll Tax Dub) – 6:31\n\n Other remixes\n\"What Did I Do to You?\" (Red Zone Mix) – 7:45\n\nCharts\n\nReferences\n\nLisa Stansfield songs\n1990 singles\nSongs written by Lisa Stansfield\n1989 songs\nArista Records singles\nSongs written by Ian Devaney\nSongs written by Andy Morris (musician)",
"Dead Funny is a 1994 independent drama film directed by John Feldman. It stars Elizabeth Peña as Vivian Saunders, a woman who comes home from work and finds her boyfriend Reggie Barker (Andrew McCarthy) pinned to her kitchen table with a long knife.\n\nPlot\nVivian Saunders (Elizabeth Peña) comes home one day to an unusual surprise: her boyfriend Reggie Barker (Andrew McCarthy) is lying on the kitchen table with a large sword sticking out of his body. At first Vivian thinks this must be some sort of joke, but she discovers that Reggie is indeed dead, and as she calls her best friend Louise (Paige Turco) to figure out what might have happened and what to do, it occurs to her that she blacked out after too much wine the night before and isn't sure what she did before she passed out. After a few phone calls, Vivian's women's support group arrives, and what to do about Reggie soon takes second place to what Vivian should do for herself.\n\nCast\nElizabeth Peña as Vivian Saunders\nAndrew McCarthy as Reggie Barker\nPaige Turco as Louise\nBlanche Baker as Barbara\nAllison Janney as Jennifer\nAdelle Lutz as Mari\nNovella Nelson as Frances\nLisa Jane Persky as Sarah\nMichael Mantell as Harold\nKen Kensei as Yoshi\nBai Ling as Norriko\n\nRelease\nThis film has only been released on VHS and LaserDisc format.\n\nReception\nDavid Nusair of DVD Talk negatively reviewed the film, saying \"By the time we find out what really happened to McCarthy's character, it's impossible to care.\" Time Out also negatively reviewed the film, writing \"How did it happen? Who did it? Who cares? Probably not Feldman who seems more interested in shooting his actresses' naked thighs.\" The New York Times stated that Dead Funny \"tries so hard to be ingeniously tricky and ambiguous that it ends up outsmarting itself\".\n\nVariety positively reviewed the film, praising Peña's performance.\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n \n\n1994 films\nAmerican drama films\nAmerican independent films\nAmerican films\n1994 drama films\nEnglish-language films"
] |
[
"David Attenborough",
"Early life and family",
"Where was he born?",
"Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester,",
"What did his father do for a living?",
"where his father, Frederick, was principal.",
"Did David have siblings?",
"He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director and his younger brother, John, was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo),",
"Did his parents foster children?",
"his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Europe.",
"What did David like to do as a child?",
"Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and other natural specimens."
] |
C_b1caf59a3c484f208e434159c3ae7d42_1
|
Did he get involved in anything specific as a child?
| 6 |
Did David Attenborough get involved in anything specific as a child?
|
David Attenborough
|
Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director and his younger brother, John, was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo), and the only surviving child among them. During World War II, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Europe. Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and other natural specimens. He received encouragement in this pursuit at age seven, when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his "museum". He also spent a considerable amount of his time in the grounds of the university, and, aged 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered via his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which wasn't revealed at the time, was a pond less than five metres from the department. A few years later, one of his adoptive sisters gave him a piece of amber filled with prehistoric creatures; some 50 years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine. In 1936 David and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl. Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and then won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945, where he studied geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947 he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950 Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel; she died in 1997. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress. CANNOTANSWER
|
He also spent a considerable amount of his time in the grounds of the university, and, aged 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts,
|
Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
Attenborough was a senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. His filmography as writer, presenter and narrator spans eight decades; it includes Zoo Quest, Natural World, Wildlife on One, the Planet Earth franchise, The Blue Planet and its sequel. He is the only person to have won BAFTAs in all of the categories black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolutions.
While Attenborough's earlier work focused more on the wonders of the natural world, his later work has been more vocal in support of environmental causes. He has advocated for restoring planetary biodiversity, limiting population growth, switching to renewable energy, mitigating climate change, reducing meat consumption, and setting aside more areas for natural preservation.
On his broadcasting and passion for nature, NPR stated he "roamed the globe and shared his discoveries and enthusiasms with his patented semi-whisper way of narrating". In 2018 and 2019, Attenborough received Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narrator. He is widely considered a national treasure in the UK, although he himself does not like the term. He is the younger brother of the late director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough, and older brother of the late motor executive John Attenborough.
Life and family
Attenborough was born on 8 May 1926 in Isleworth, Middlesex, and grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons; his elder brother, Richard (died in 2014), became an actor and director, and his younger brother, John (died in 2012), was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo. During the Second World War, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Germany.
Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones, and natural specimens. He received encouragement when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his collection. He spent much time in the grounds of the university. Aged around 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered through his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which he did not reveal at the time, was a pond right next to the department. A year later, his adoptive sister Marianne gave him a piece of amber containing prehistoric creatures; some sixty years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine.
In 1936, Attenborough and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl.
Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester. He won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945 to study geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947, he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950, Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Jane died in 1997. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress.
Attenborough had a pacemaker fitted in June 2013, as well as a double knee replacement in 2015. In September 2013 he commented: "If I was earning my money by hewing coal I would be very glad indeed to stop. But I'm not. I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune."
Career
Early years at the BBC
After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC. Although he was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service. Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television, and he had seen only one programme in his life. However, he accepted Adams' offer of a three-month training course, and in 1952 he joined the BBC full-time. Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big, he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.
Attenborough's association with natural history programmes began when he produced and presented the three-part series Animal Patterns. The studio-bound programme featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism and courtship displays. Through this programme, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast in 1954, where Attenborough became the presenter at short notice due to Lester being taken ill.
In 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead, he formed his own department, the Travel and Exploration Unit, which allowed him to continue to front Zoo Quest as well as produce other documentaries, notably the Travellers' Tales and Adventure series. In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.
BBC administration
Attenborough became Controller of BBC 2 in March 1965, succeeding Michael Peacock. He had a clause inserted in his contract that would allow him to continue making programmes on an occasional basis. Later the same year he filmed elephants in Tanzania, and in 1969 he made a three-part series on the cultural history of the Indonesian island of Bali. For the 1971 film A Blank on the Map, he joined the first Western expedition to a remote highland valley in New Guinea to seek out a lost tribe.
BBC Two was launched in 1964, but had struggled to capture the public's imagination. When Attenborough arrived as controller, he quickly abolished the channel's quirky kangaroo mascot and shook up the schedule. With a mission to make BBC Two's output diverse and different from that offered by other networks, he began to establish a portfolio of programmes that defined the channel's identity for decades to come. Under his tenure, music, the arts, entertainment, archaeology, experimental comedy, travel, drama, sport, business, science and natural history all found a place in the weekly schedules. Often, an eclectic mix was offered within a single evening's viewing. Programmes he commissioned included Man Alive, Call My Bluff, Chronicle, Match of the Day, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Money Programme. With the addition of colour television, Attenborough brought snooker to the BBC to show the benefits of the format, as the sport uses coloured balls. The show – Pot Black – was later credited with the boom of the sport into the 1980s.
One of his most significant decisions was to order a 13-part series on the history of Western art, to show off the quality of the new UHF colour television service that BBC Two offered. Broadcast to universal acclaim in 1969, Civilisation set the blueprint for landmark authored documentaries, which were informally known as "sledgehammer" projects. Others followed, including Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (also commissioned by Attenborough), and Alistair Cooke's America. Attenborough thought that the story of evolution would be a natural subject for such a series. He shared his idea with Christopher Parsons, a producer at the Natural History Unit, who came up with a title Life on Earth and returned to Bristol to start planning the series. Attenborough harboured a strong desire to present the series himself, but this would not be possible so long as he remained in a management post.
While in charge of BBC Two, Attenborough turned down Terry Wogan's job application to be a presenter on the channel, stating that there weren't any suitable vacancies. The channel already had an Irish announcer, with Attenborough reflecting in 2016: "To have had two Irishmen presenting on BBC Two would have looked ridiculous. This is no comment whatsoever on Terry Wogan's talents." Attenborough has also acknowledged that he sanctioned the wiping of television output during this period to cut costs, including a series by Alan Bennett, which he later regretted. In 1969, Attenborough was promoted to director of programmes, making him responsible for the output of both BBC channels. His tasks, which included agreeing budgets, attending board meetings and firing staff, were now far removed from the business of filming programmes. When Attenborough's name was being suggested as a candidate for the position of Director-General of the BBC in 1972, he phoned his brother Richard to confess that he had no appetite for the job. Early the following year, he left his post to return to full-time programme-making, leaving him free to write and present the planned natural history epic.
After his resignation, Attenborough became a freelance broadcaster and started work on his next project, a trip to Indonesia with a crew from the Natural History Unit. It resulted in the 1973 series Eastwards with Attenborough, which was similar in tone to the earlier Zoo Quest; the main difference was the introduction of colour. Attenborough stated that he wanted to work in Asia, because previous nature documentaries had mostly focused on Africa. That year, Attenborough was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Language of Animals. After his work on Eastwards with Attenborough, he began to work on the scripts for Life on Earth. Due to the scale of his ambition, the BBC decided to partner with an American network to secure the necessary funding. While the negotiations were proceeding, he worked on a number of other television projects. He presented a series on tribal art (The Tribal Eye, 1975) and another on the voyages of discovery (The Explorers, 1975). He also presented a BBC children's series about cryptozoology entitled Fabulous Animals (1975), which featured mythical creatures such as mermaids and unicorns. Eventually, the BBC signed a co-production deal with Turner Broadcasting and Life on Earth moved into production in 1976.
Life series
Beginning with Life on Earth in 1979, Attenborough set about creating a body of work which became a benchmark of quality in wildlife film-making, and influenced a generation of documentary film-makers. The series established many of the hallmarks of the BBC's natural history output. By treating his subject seriously and researching the latest discoveries, Attenborough and his production team gained the trust of scientists, who responded by allowing him to feature their subjects in his programmes. Innovation was another factor in Life on Earth'''s success: new film-making techniques were devised to get the shots Attenborough wanted, with a focus on events and animals that were up till then unfilmed. International air travel enabled the series to be devised so that Attenborough visited several locations around the globe in each episode, sometimes even changing continents in one sequence. Although appearing as the on-screen presenter, he restricted his time on camera to give more time to his subjects.
Five years after the success of Life on Earth, the BBC released The Living Planet. This time, Attenborough built his series around the theme of ecology, the adaptations of living things to their environment. It was another critical and commercial success, generating huge international sales for the BBC. In 1990, The Trials of Life completed the original Life trilogy, looking at animal behaviour through the different stages of life.
In the 1990s, Attenborough continued to use the "Life" title for a succession of authored documentaries. In 1993, he presented Life in the Freezer, the first television series to survey the natural history of Antarctica. Although past normal retirement age, he then embarked on a number of more specialised surveys of the natural world, beginning with plants. They proved a difficult subject for his producers, who had to deliver hours of television featuring what are essentially immobile objects. The result was The Private Life of Plants (1995), which showed plants as dynamic organisms by using time-lapse photography to speed up their growth, and went on to earn a Peabody Award.
Prompted by an enthusiastic ornithologist at the BBC Natural History Unit, Attenborough then turned his attention to birds. As he was neither an birdwatcher nor a bird expert, he decided he was better qualified to make The Life of Birds (1998) on the theme of behaviour. The documentary series won a second Peabody Award the following year. The order of the remaining "Life" series was dictated by developments in camera technology. For The Life of Mammals (2002), low-light and infrared cameras were deployed to reveal the behaviour of nocturnal mammals. The series contains a number of memorable two shots of Attenborough and his subjects, which included chimpanzees, a blue whale and a grizzly bear. Advances in macro photography made it possible to capture the natural behaviour of very small creatures for the first time, and in 2005, Life in the Undergrowth introduced audiences to the world of invertebrates.
At this point, Attenborough realised that he had spent 20 years unconsciously assembling a collection of programmes on all the major groups of terrestrial animals and plants – only reptiles and amphibians were missing. When Life in Cold Blood was broadcast in 2008, he had the satisfaction of completing the set, brought together in a DVD encyclopaedia called Life on Land. He commented: "The evolutionary history is finished. The endeavour is complete. If you'd asked me 20 years ago whether we'd be attempting such a mammoth task, I'd have said 'Don't be ridiculous!' These programmes tell a particular story and I'm sure others will come along and tell it much better than I did, but I do hope that if people watch it in 50 years' time, it will still have something to say about the world we live in."
However, in 2010 Attenborough asserted that his First Life – dealing with evolutionary history before Life on Earth – should be included within the "Life" series. In the documentary Attenborough's Journey, he stated, "This series, to a degree which I really didn't fully appreciate until I started working on it, really completes the set."
Beyond Life on Earth
Alongside the "Life" series, Attenborough continued to work on other television documentaries, mainly in the natural history genre. He wrote and presented a series on man's influence on the natural history of the Mediterranean Basin, The First Eden, in 1987. Two years later, he demonstrated his passion for fossils in Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives. In 1990, he worked on the BBC's Prisoners of Conscience series where he highlighted the case of Mahjoub Sharif. Attenborough narrated every episode of Wildlife on One, a BBC One wildlife series that ran for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005. At its peak, it drew a weekly audience of eight to ten million, and the 1987 episode "Meerkats United" was voted the best wildlife documentary of all time by BBC viewers. He has narrated over 50 episodes of Natural World, BBC Two's flagship wildlife series. Its forerunner, The World About Us, was created by Attenborough in 1969, as a vehicle for colour television. In 1997, he narrated the BBC Wildlife Specials, each focussing on a charismatic species, and screened to mark the Natural History Unit's 40th anniversary.
As a writer and narrator, Attenborough continued to collaborate with the BBC Natural History Unit in the new millennium. Alastair Fothergill, a senior producer with whom Attenborough had worked on The Trials of Life and Life in the Freezer, was making The Blue Planet (2001), the Unit's first comprehensive series on marine life. He decided not to use an on-screen presenter due to difficulties in speaking to a camera through diving apparatus, but asked Attenborough to narrate the films. The same team reunited for Planet Earth (2006), the biggest nature documentary ever made for television and the first BBC wildlife series to be shot in high definition. In 2009, he co-wrote and narrated Life, a ten-part series focussing on extraordinary animal behaviour, and narrated Nature's Great Events, which showed how seasonal changes trigger major natural spectacles. In January 2009, the BBC commissioned Attenborough to provide a series of 20 ten-minute monologues covering the history of nature. Entitled David Attenborough's Life Stories, they were broadcast on Radio 4 on Friday nights.
In 2011, Fothergill gave Attenborough a more prominent role in Frozen Planet, a major series on the natural history of the polar regions; Attenborough appeared on screen and authored the final episode, in addition to performing voiceover duties. Attenborough introduced and narrated the Unit's first 4K production Life Story. For Planet Earth II (2016), Attenborough returned as narrator and presenter, with the main theme music composed by Hans Zimmer.In October 2014, the corporation announced a trio of new one-off Attenborough documentaries as part of a raft of new natural history programmes. "Attenborough's Paradise Birds" and "Attenborough's Big Birds" was shown on BBC Two and "Waking Giants", which follows the discovery of giant dinosaur bones in South America, aired on BBC One. The BBC also commissioned Atlantic Productions to make a three-part, Attenborough-fronted series Great Barrier Reef in 2015. The series marked the 10th project for Attenborough and Atlantic, and saw him returning to a location he first filmed at in 1957. On radio, Attenborough has continued as one of the presenters of BBC Radio 4's Tweet of the Day, which began a second series in September 2014. Attenborough forged a partnership with Sky, working on documentaries for the broadcaster's new 3D network, Sky 3D. Their first collaboration was Flying Monsters 3D, a film about pterosaurs which debuted on Christmas Day of 2010. A second film, The Bachelor King 3D, followed a year later. His next 3D project, Conquest of the Skies, made by the team behind the BAFTA-winning David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive, aired on Sky 3D during Christmas 2014.
Attenborough has narrated three series of David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities for UKTV channel Watch, with the third series showing in 2015. He has also narrated A majestic celebration: Wild Karnataka, India's first blue-chip natural history film, directed by Kalyan Varma and Amoghavarsha. Blue Planet II was broadcast in 2017, with Attenborough returning as presenter. The series was critically acclaimed and gained the highest UK viewing figure for 2017: 14.1 million. Attenborough narrated the 2018 five part series Dynasties, each episode dealing with one species in particular. In 2021 he presented the three part series Attenborough's Life in Colour, and The Mating Game, a five part series.
Environmentalist advocacy
By the turn of the millennium, Attenborough's authored documentaries were adopting a more overtly environmentalist stance. In State of the Planet (2000), he used the latest scientific evidence and interviews with leading scientists and conservationists to assess the impact of human activities on the natural world. He later turned to the issues of global warming (The Truth about Climate Change, 2006) and human population growth (How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?, 2009). He contributed a programme which highlighted the plight of endangered species to the BBC's Saving Planet Earth project in 2007, the 50th anniversary of the Natural History Unit.
In 2019, Attenborough narrated Our Planet, an eight-part documentary series, for Netflix. In contrast to much of his prior work for the BBC, this series emphasised the destructive role of human activities throughout the series. Before, he would often note concerns in a final section of the work. He also narrated Wild Karnataka, a documentary about the Karnataka forest area. In 2019, Attenborough's one-off film documentary about climate change for BBC One called Climate Change – The Facts was aired; the tone of the documentary was significantly graver than previous work for the BBC. This was followed by Extinction: The Facts, which is partly based on the 2019 IPBES report on the decline of biodiversity.“Sir David Attenborough makes stark warning about species extinction” . BBC Science. Retrieved 14 October 2020
In 2020, Attenborough narrated the documentary film David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. The film acts as Attenborough's witness statement, reflecting on his career as a naturalist and his hopes for the future. It was released on Netflix on 4 October 2020. Further work for Netflix includes the documentary titled Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet, released on 4 June 2021. In October 2020, Attenborough began filming in Cambridge for The Green Planet. In 2021, Attenborough narrated A Perfect Planet, a five-part earth science series for BBC One.
COP26
Attenborough was a key figure in the build up to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), and gave a speech at the opening ceremony. In his speech he stated that humans were "the greatest problem solvers to have ever existed on Earth" and spoke of his optimism for the future, finishing by saying "In my lifetime I've witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery."
Views and advocacy
Environment
Attenborough's programmes have often included references to the impact of human society on the natural world. The last episode of The Living Planet, for example, focuses almost entirely on humans' destruction of the environment and ways that it could be stopped or reversed. Despite this, he has been criticised for not giving enough prominence to environmental messages. In 2018 while promoting Dynasties, he said that repeated messages on threats to wildlife in programming could be a "turn-off" to viewers. Some environmentalists feel that programmes like Attenborough's give a false picture of idyllic wilderness and do not do enough to acknowledge that such areas are increasingly encroached upon by humans. However, the increased urgency of environmental messaging in films such as Extinction: The Facts, which depicts the continuing sixth mass extinction, Climate Change – The Facts and A Life on Our Planet from 2019 and 2020 received praise. In Seven Worlds, One Planet, Attenborough discusses the devastating impact that deforestation is having on the planet and the species.
In 2005 and 2006, he backed a BirdLife International project to stop the killing of albatross by longline fishing boats. He gave support to WWF's campaign to have 220,000 square kilometres of Borneo's rainforest designated a protected area. He serves as a vice-president of The Conservation Volunteers, vice-president of Fauna and Flora International, president of Butterfly Conservation and president emiritus of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust. In 2003, he launched an appeal on behalf of the World Land Trust to create a rainforest reserve in Ecuador in memory of Christopher Parsons, the producer of Life on Earth and a personal friend, who had died the previous year. The same year, he helped to launch ARKive, a global project instigated by Parsons to gather together natural history media into a digital library. ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, of which Attenborough is a patron. He later became patron of the World Land Trust. In 2020, he backed a Fauna and Flora International campaign calling for a global moratorium on deep sea mining for its impact on marine life.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Attenborough advocated on behalf of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and its conservation efforts, which have been impacted by the economic fallout from the pandemic. In 2020, Attenborough was named as a member of the Earthshot prize Council, an initiative of Prince William to find solutions to environmental issues. He is a patron of the Friends of Richmond Park and serves on the advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazine.
Attenborough was initially sceptical about the human influence on climate change, and stated that a 2004 lecture finally convinced him humans were responsible. He remained silent on the issue until 2006. Attenborough attended and spoke at COP26 as the "People's Advocate" for the event, and urged world leaders to act to reduce emissions. He supported Glyndebourne in their successful application to obtain planning permission for a wind turbine in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and gave evidence at the planning inquiry arguing in favour of the proposal. In his 2020 documentary film David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Attenborough advocates for people to adopt a vegetarian diet or to reduce meat consumption to save wildlife, noting that "the planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters."
Human population
Attenborough has linked anthropogenic effects on the environment with human population growth. He has attracted criticism for his views on human overpopulation and human population control. His most popular comment online in a 2020 study related to the topic of overpopulation. He is a patron of Population Matters, a UK charity advocating for family planning, sustainable consumption and proposed sustainable human population. In a 2013 interview with the Radio Times, Attenborough described humans as a "plague on the Earth", and described the act of sending food to famine-stricken countries as "barmy" for population reasons. He called for more debate about human population growth, saying that since he "first started making programmes 60 years ago, the human population has tripled."
According to Attenborough, improving women's rights around the world is an effective way "to limit our birth rate." He said that "anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist."
Religious views
Attenborough considers himself an agnostic. When asked whether his observation of the natural world has given him faith in a creator, he generally responds with some version of this story, making reference to the Onchocerca volvulus parasitic worm:
My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'.
He has explained that he feels the evidence all over the planet clearly shows evolution to be the best way to explain the diversity of life, and that "as far as [he's] concerned, if there is a supreme being then he chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world". In a BBC Four interview with Mark Lawson, he was asked if he at any time had any religious faith. He replied simply, "no". He said "It never really occurred to me to believe in God".
In 2002, Attenborough joined an effort by leading clerics and scientists to oppose the inclusion of creationism in the curriculum of UK state-funded independent schools which receive private sponsorship, such as the Emmanuel Schools Foundation.
In 2009, he stated that the Book of Genesis, by saying that the world was there for people to control, had taught generations that they can "dominate" the environment, and that this has resulted in the devastation of vast areas of the environment. He further explained to the science journal Nature, "That's why Darwinism, and the fact of evolution, is of great importance, because it is that attitude which has led to the devastation of so much, and we are in the situation that we are in".
Also in early 2009, the BBC broadcast an Attenborough one-hour special, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life. In reference to the programme, Attenborough stated that "People write to me that evolution is only a theory. Well, it is not a theory. Evolution is as solid a historical fact as you could conceive. Evidence from every quarter. What is a theory is whether natural selection is the mechanism and the only mechanism. That is a theory. But the historical reality that dinosaurs led to birds and mammals produced whales, that's not theory." He strongly opposes creationism and its offshoot "intelligent design", saying that the results of a survey that found a quarter of science teachers in state schools believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science lessons was "really terrible".
In March 2009, Attenborough appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Attenborough stated that he felt evolution did not rule out the existence of a God and accepted the title of agnostic saying, "My view is: I don't know one way or the other but I don't think that evolution is against a belief in God".
Attenborough has joined the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and other top scientists in signing a campaign statement co-ordinated by the British Humanist Association (BHA). The statement calls for "creationism to be banned from the school science curriculum and for evolution to be taught more widely in schools".
BBC and public service broadcasting
Attenborough is a lifelong supporter of the BBC, public service broadcasting and the television licence. He has said that public service broadcasting "is one of the things that distinguishes this country and makes me want to live here", and believes that it is not reducible to individual programmes, but "can only effectively operate as a network [...] that measures its success not only by its audience size but by the range of its schedule".
... the BBC per minute in almost every category is as cheap as you can find anywhere in the world and produces the best quality. [...] The BBC has gone through swingeing staff cuts. It has been cut to the bone, if you divert licence fee money elsewhere, you cut quality and services. [...] There is a lot of people who want to see the BBC weakened. They talk of this terrible tax of the licence fee. Yet it is the best bargain that is going. Four radio channels and god knows how many TV channels. It is piffling.
Attenborough expressed the view that there had often been people wanting to remove the BBC, adding "there's always been trouble about the licence and if you dropped your guard you could bet our bottom dollar there'd be plenty of people who'd want to take it away. The licence fee is the basis on which the BBC is based and if you destroy it, broadcasting... becomes a wasteland." He expressed regret at some of the changes made to the BBC in the 1990s by its Director-General, John Birt, who introduced an internal market at the corporation, slimmed and even closed some departments and outsourced much of the corporation's output to private production companies. Although he said Birt's policies had poor results, Attenborough also acknowledged "the BBC had to change." In 2008, he criticised the BBC's television schedules, positing that the two senior networks, BBC One and BBC Two – which Attenborough stated were "first set up as a partnership" – now "schedule simultaneously programmes of identical character, thereby contradicting the very reason that the BBC was given a second network."
Politics
In 1998, Attenborough described himself as "a standard, boring left-wing liberal" and expressed the view that the market economy was "misery". In 2013, Attenborough joined rock guitarists Brian May and Slash in opposing the government's policy on the cull of badgers in the UK by participating in a song dedicated to badgers. Attenborough was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in the 2014 referendum on that issue. Prior to the 2015 UK general election, Attenborough was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas.
In a 2020 interview, Attenborough criticised excess capitalism as a driver of ecological imbalance, stating "the excesses the capitalist system has brought us, have got to be curbed somehow", and that "greed does not actually lead to joy", although he added "That doesn't mean to say that capitalism is dead". He also lamented the lack of international cooperation on climate change, and said "there should be no dominant nation on this planet." In 2021, Attenborough told the leaders of the 47th G7 summit that "tackling climate change was now as much a political challenge as it was a scientific or technological one" and urged more action. Attenborough also stated that "(we) are on the verge of destabilising the entire planet."
Achievements, awards and recognition
Attenborough's contribution to broadcasting and wildlife film-making has brought him international recognition. He has been called "the great communicator, the peerless educator" and "the greatest broadcaster of our time." His programmes are often cited as an example of what public service broadcasting should be, even by critics of the BBC, and have influenced a generation of wildlife film-makers.
Honorary titles
By January 2013, Attenborough had collected 32 honorary degrees from British universities, more than any other person. In 1980, he was honoured by the Open University, with which he has had a close association throughout his career. He has honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Durham University (1982) and the University of Cambridge (1984) and honorary Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Oxford (1988) and the University of Ghent (1997). In 2006, the two eldest Attenborough brothers returned to their home city to receive the title of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester, "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the University." David Attenborough was previously awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the university in 1970, and was made an honorary Freeman of the City of Leicester in 1990. In 2013, he was made an Honorary Freeman of the City of Bristol. In 2010, he was awarded Honorary Doctorates from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Nottingham Trent University.
Attenborough has received the title Honorary Fellow from Clare College, Cambridge (1980), the Zoological Society of London (1998), the Linnean Society (1999), the Institute of Biology (Now the Royal Society of Biology) (2000), and the Society of Antiquaries (2007). He is Honorary Patron of the North American Native Plant Society and was elected as a Corresponding Member of the Australian Academy of Science.
Recognition
Attenborough has been featured as the subject of a number of BBC television programmes. Life on Air (2002) examined the legacy of his work, and Attenborough the Controller (2002) focused on his time in charge of BBC Two. He was also featured prominently in The Way We Went Wild (2004), a series about natural history television presenters, and 100 Years of Wildlife Films (2007), a programme marking the centenary of the nature documentary. In 2006, British television viewers were asked to vote for their Favourite Attenborough Moments for a UKTV poll to coincide with the broadcaster's 80th birthday. The winning clip showed Attenborough observing the mimicry skills of the superb lyrebird.
Attenborough was named the most trusted celebrity in the UK in a 2006 Reader's Digest poll, and in 2007 he won The Culture Show's Living Icon Award. He has been named among the 100 Greatest Britons in a 2002 BBC poll and is one of the top ten "Heroes of Our Time" according to New Statesman magazine. In September 2009, London's Natural History Museum opened the Attenborough Studio, part of its Darwin Centre development.
In 2012, Attenborough was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life. The same year, Attenborough featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named him among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands".
A British polar research ship was named RRS Sir David Attenborough in his honour. While an Internet poll suggesting the name of the ship had the most votes for Boaty McBoatface, Science Minister Jo Johnson said there were "more suitable names", and the official name was eventually picked up from one of the more favoured choices. However, one of its research sub-sea vehicles was named "Boaty" in recognition of the public vote.
Species named after Attenborough
At least 20 species and genera, both living and extinct, have been named in Attenborough's honour. Plants named after him include an alpine hawkweed (Hieracium attenboroughianum) discovered in the Brecon Beacons, a species of Ecuadorian flowering tree (Blakea attenboroughi), one of the world's largest-pitchered carnivorous plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii), along with a genus of flowering plants (Sirdavidia).
Several Arthropods are named after Attenborough including a butterfly, Attenborough's black-eyed satyr (Euptychia attenboroughi), a dragonfly, Attenborough's pintail (Acisoma attenboroughi), a millimetre-long goblin spider (Prethopalpus attenboroughi), an ornate Caribbean smiley-faced spider (Spintharus davidattenboroughi), an Indonesian flightless weevil (Trigonopterus attenboroughi), a Madagascan ghost shrimp (Ctenocheloides attenboroughi), and a soil snail (Palaina attenboroughi). The Monogenean Cichlidogyrus attenboroughi, a parasite from a deep-sea fish in the Lake Tanganyika, is probably the only parasite species named after him. Vertebrates have also been named after Attenborough, including a Namibian lizard (Platysaurus attenboroughi), a bird (Polioptila attenboroughi), a Peruvian frog (Pristimantis attenboroughi), a Madagascan stump-toed frog (Stumpffia davidattenboroughi), and one of only four species of long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi).
In 1993, after discovering that the Mesozoic reptile Plesiosaurus conybeari did not belong to the genus Plesiosaurus, the palaeontologist Robert Bakker renamed the species Attenborosaurus conybeari. A fossilised armoured fish discovered in Western Australia in 2008 was named Materpiscis attenboroughi, after Attenborough had filmed at the site and highlighted its scientific importance in Life on Earth. In 2015, a species of tree from Gabon (in the Annonaceae family) Sirdavidia was named with his title.
The Materpiscis fossil is believed to be the earliest organism capable of internal fertilisation. A miniature marsupial lion, Microleo attenboroughi, was named in his honour in 2016. The fossil grasshopper Electrotettix attenboroughi was named after Attenborough. In March 2017, a 430 million year old tiny crustacean was named after him. Called Cascolus ravitis, the first word is a Latin translation of the root meaning of "Attenborough", and the second is based on a description of him in Latin. In July 2017, the Caribbean bat Myotis attenboroughi was named after him. A new species of fan-throated lizard from coastal Kerala in southern India was named Sitana attenboroughii in his honour when it was described in 2018.
In 2018, a new species of phytoplankton, Syracosphaera azureaplaneta, was named to honour The Blue Planet, the TV documentary presented by Attenborough, and to recognise his contribution to promoting understanding of the oceanic environment. The same year, Attenborough was also commemorated in the name of the scarab beetle Sylvicanthon attenboroughi. In 2021 an extinct species of horseshoe crab was named Attenborolimulus superspinosus.Awards
In addition, he is the only person to have won BAFTAs for programmes in black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D, and 4K.
Filmography
David Attenborough's television credits span eight decades and his association with natural history programmes dates back to The Pattern of Animals and Zoo Quest in the early 1950s. His most influential work, 1979's Life on Earth, launched a strand of nine authored documentaries with the BBC Natural History Unit which shared the Life strand name and spanned 30 years. He narrated every episode of the long-running BBC series Wildlife on One and in his later career has voiced several high-profile BBC wildlife documentaries, among them The Blue Planet and Planet Earth. He became a pioneer in the 3D documentary format with Flying Monsters in 2010.
Bibliography
David Attenborough's work as an author has strong parallels with his broadcasting career. In the 1950s and 1960s, his published work included accounts of his animal collecting expeditions around the world, which became the Zoo Quest series. He wrote an accompanying volume to each of his nine Life documentaries, along with books on tribal art and birds of paradise. His autobiography, Life on Air, was published in 2002, revised in 2009 and is one of a number of his works which is available as a self-narrated audiobook. Attenborough has also contributed forewords and introductions to many other works, notably those accompanying Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, Africa and other BBC series he has narrated.
Zoo Quest to Guyana (1956)
Zoo Quest for a Dragon (1957) – republished in 1959 to include an additional 85 pages titled Quest for the Paradise Birds Zoo Quest in Paraguay (1959)
Quest in Paradise (1960)
People of Paradise (1960)
Zoo Quest to Madagascar (1961)
Quest Under Capricorn (1963)
Fabulous Animals (1975)
The Tribal Eye (1976)
Life on Earth (1979)
Discovering Life on Earth (1981)
The Living Planet (1984)
The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man (1987)
The Atlas of the Living World (1989)
The Trials of Life (1990)
The Private Life of Plants (1994)
The Life of Birds (1998)
The Life of Mammals (2002)
Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster (2002) – autobiography, revised in 2009
Life in the Undergrowth (2005)
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery (2007) – with Susan Owens, Martin Clayton and Rea Alexandratos
Life in Cold Blood (2007)
David Attenborough's Life Stories (2009)
David Attenborough's New Life Stories (2011)
Drawn From Paradise: The Discovery, Art and Natural History of the Birds of Paradise (2012) – with Errol Fuller
Adventures of a Young Naturalist: The Zoo Quest Expeditions (2017)
Journeys to the Other Side of the World: Further Adventures of a Young Naturalist (2018)
Dynasties: The Rise and Fall of Animal Families with Stephen Moss (2018)
A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future (2020)
References
External links
BBC Books David Attenborough website
David Attenborough at the British Film Institute
David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet
Wildfilmhistory.org biography
PBS interview with Attenborough in 1998
People and Planet: David Attenborough, video of the 2011 RSA President's Lecture
David Attenborough interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, 27 December 1998
David Attenborough: humanity must come to its senses or face environmental disaster. Radio Times''. 13 October 2016.
1926 births
20th-century Royal Navy personnel
Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Articles containing video clips
David
BAFTA fellows
BBC television presenters
BBC television producers
BBC Two controllers
British Book Award winners
British social commentators
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order
Critics of creationism
Cultural critics
English agnostics
English autobiographers
English broadcasters
English conservationists
English environmentalists
English nature writers
English television personalities
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science
Fellows of the Linnean Society of London
Fellows of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society
Fellows of the Royal Society (Statute 12)
Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts
Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology
Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Fellows of the Zoological Society of London
International Emmy Founders Award winners
Kalinga Prize recipients
Knights Bachelor
Living people
Members of the Order of Merit
Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George
Outstanding Narrator Primetime Emmy Award winners
People associated with the University of Leicester
People educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys
People from Isleworth
People from Leicester
Presidents of the British Science Association
Primetime Emmy Award winners
Social critics
Military personnel from Middlesex
| false |
[
"Jimmy Ruben Sylow Westerheim (born January 17, 1987) is the founder and CEO of the non-profit organisation The Human Aspect. \n\nThrough Westerheim's experience working for Doctors Without Borders in Syria and Afghanistan, he became interested in creating a tool to share life lessons across the world. Westerheim founded The Human Aspect foundation when he left his careers in shipping and humanitarian work to self fund the mental health video project. Westerheim has himself faced mental health challenges, citing his biological father that did not want anything to do with him and being bullied as a child, which led him to plan to take his own life at the age of 13.\n\nSince founding The Human Aspect in 2016 Westerheim has traveled as a speaker and interviewing for the foundation in multiple different countries such as The United Kingdom, Sierra Leone and Ukraine. In addition to talk to local health authorities about how to get more people in need to use the countries help services.\n\nReferences\n\n1987 births\nLiving people",
"ANK '64was an Estonian artist collective active in the years 1964 to 1969 in Tallinn.\n\nThe group included originally 10 artists: Jüri Arrak, , , Malle Leis, , Enno Ootsing, , , Aili Vint and Tõnis Vint. The group did not practice any specific style of art, but recognized as works of art anything related to modern youth culture such as pop-art. Members of the group were not only active as artists, but also organized and attended lectures on foreign artists and their activities. Members of the group were involved in the Leningrad and Moscow underground non-conformist art movement.\n\nThe first group exhibition was held in 1964 on the premises of the Estonian Theatre. A retrospective of their work 50 years after they first gathered was held in the Tallinn Art Hall from 6 November-15 December 2013. Many of the original artists were still active at the time and showed their recent work in addition to a historical overview.\n\nReferences \n\nEstonian artist groups and collectives\nTallinn"
] |
[
"David Attenborough",
"Early life and family",
"Where was he born?",
"Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester,",
"What did his father do for a living?",
"where his father, Frederick, was principal.",
"Did David have siblings?",
"He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director and his younger brother, John, was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo),",
"Did his parents foster children?",
"his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Europe.",
"What did David like to do as a child?",
"Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and other natural specimens.",
"Did he get involved in anything specific as a child?",
"He also spent a considerable amount of his time in the grounds of the university, and, aged 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts,"
] |
C_b1caf59a3c484f208e434159c3ae7d42_1
|
What made him get more interested in dinosaurs?
| 7 |
What made David Attenborough get more interested in dinosaurs?
|
David Attenborough
|
Attenborough was born in Isleworth, Middlesex (now part of west London), but grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons (his elder brother, Richard, became an actor and director and his younger brother, John, was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo), and the only surviving child among them. During World War II, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Europe. Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and other natural specimens. He received encouragement in this pursuit at age seven, when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his "museum". He also spent a considerable amount of his time in the grounds of the university, and, aged 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered via his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which wasn't revealed at the time, was a pond less than five metres from the department. A few years later, one of his adoptive sisters gave him a piece of amber filled with prehistoric creatures; some 50 years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine. In 1936 David and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl. Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and then won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945, where he studied geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947 he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950 Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel; she died in 1997. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress. CANNOTANSWER
|
He received encouragement in this pursuit at age seven, when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his "museum".
|
Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
Attenborough was a senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. His filmography as writer, presenter and narrator spans eight decades; it includes Zoo Quest, Natural World, Wildlife on One, the Planet Earth franchise, The Blue Planet and its sequel. He is the only person to have won BAFTAs in all of the categories black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolutions.
While Attenborough's earlier work focused more on the wonders of the natural world, his later work has been more vocal in support of environmental causes. He has advocated for restoring planetary biodiversity, limiting population growth, switching to renewable energy, mitigating climate change, reducing meat consumption, and setting aside more areas for natural preservation.
On his broadcasting and passion for nature, NPR stated he "roamed the globe and shared his discoveries and enthusiasms with his patented semi-whisper way of narrating". In 2018 and 2019, Attenborough received Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Narrator. He is widely considered a national treasure in the UK, although he himself does not like the term. He is the younger brother of the late director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough, and older brother of the late motor executive John Attenborough.
Life and family
Attenborough was born on 8 May 1926 in Isleworth, Middlesex, and grew up in College House on the campus of the University College, Leicester, where his father, Frederick, was principal. He is the middle of three sons; his elder brother, Richard (died in 2014), became an actor and director, and his younger brother, John (died in 2012), was an executive at Italian car manufacturer Alfa Romeo. During the Second World War, through a British volunteer network known as the Refugee Children's Movement, his parents also fostered two Jewish refugee girls from Germany.
Attenborough spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones, and natural specimens. He received encouragement when a young Jacquetta Hawkes admired his collection. He spent much time in the grounds of the university. Aged around 11, he heard that the zoology department needed a large supply of newts, which he offered through his father to supply for 3d each. The source, which he did not reveal at the time, was a pond right next to the department. A year later, his adoptive sister Marianne gave him a piece of amber containing prehistoric creatures; some sixty years later, it would be the focus of his programme The Amber Time Machine.
In 1936, Attenborough and his brother Richard attended a lecture by Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) at De Montfort Hall, Leicester, and were influenced by his advocacy of conservation. According to Richard, David was "bowled over by the man's determination to save the beaver, by his profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Canadian wilderness and by his warnings of ecological disaster should the delicate balance between them be destroyed. The idea that mankind was endangering nature by recklessly despoiling and plundering its riches was unheard of at the time, but it is one that has remained part of Dave's own credo to this day." In 1999, Richard directed a biopic of Belaney entitled Grey Owl.
Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester. He won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945 to study geology and zoology and obtained a degree in natural sciences. In 1947, he was called up for national service in the Royal Navy and spent two years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth. In 1950, Attenborough married Jane Elizabeth Ebsworth Oriel. The couple had two children, Robert and Susan. Jane died in 1997. Robert is a senior lecturer in bioanthropology for the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Susan is a former primary school headmistress.
Attenborough had a pacemaker fitted in June 2013, as well as a double knee replacement in 2015. In September 2013 he commented: "If I was earning my money by hewing coal I would be very glad indeed to stop. But I'm not. I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune."
Career
Early years at the BBC
After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC. Although he was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service. Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television, and he had seen only one programme in his life. However, he accepted Adams' offer of a three-month training course, and in 1952 he joined the BBC full-time. Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big, he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.
Attenborough's association with natural history programmes began when he produced and presented the three-part series Animal Patterns. The studio-bound programme featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism and courtship displays. Through this programme, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast in 1954, where Attenborough became the presenter at short notice due to Lester being taken ill.
In 1957, the BBC Natural History Unit was formally established in Bristol. Attenborough was asked to join it, but declined, not wishing to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead, he formed his own department, the Travel and Exploration Unit, which allowed him to continue to front Zoo Quest as well as produce other documentaries, notably the Travellers' Tales and Adventure series. In the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his study with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree.
BBC administration
Attenborough became Controller of BBC 2 in March 1965, succeeding Michael Peacock. He had a clause inserted in his contract that would allow him to continue making programmes on an occasional basis. Later the same year he filmed elephants in Tanzania, and in 1969 he made a three-part series on the cultural history of the Indonesian island of Bali. For the 1971 film A Blank on the Map, he joined the first Western expedition to a remote highland valley in New Guinea to seek out a lost tribe.
BBC Two was launched in 1964, but had struggled to capture the public's imagination. When Attenborough arrived as controller, he quickly abolished the channel's quirky kangaroo mascot and shook up the schedule. With a mission to make BBC Two's output diverse and different from that offered by other networks, he began to establish a portfolio of programmes that defined the channel's identity for decades to come. Under his tenure, music, the arts, entertainment, archaeology, experimental comedy, travel, drama, sport, business, science and natural history all found a place in the weekly schedules. Often, an eclectic mix was offered within a single evening's viewing. Programmes he commissioned included Man Alive, Call My Bluff, Chronicle, Match of the Day, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Money Programme. With the addition of colour television, Attenborough brought snooker to the BBC to show the benefits of the format, as the sport uses coloured balls. The show – Pot Black – was later credited with the boom of the sport into the 1980s.
One of his most significant decisions was to order a 13-part series on the history of Western art, to show off the quality of the new UHF colour television service that BBC Two offered. Broadcast to universal acclaim in 1969, Civilisation set the blueprint for landmark authored documentaries, which were informally known as "sledgehammer" projects. Others followed, including Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (also commissioned by Attenborough), and Alistair Cooke's America. Attenborough thought that the story of evolution would be a natural subject for such a series. He shared his idea with Christopher Parsons, a producer at the Natural History Unit, who came up with a title Life on Earth and returned to Bristol to start planning the series. Attenborough harboured a strong desire to present the series himself, but this would not be possible so long as he remained in a management post.
While in charge of BBC Two, Attenborough turned down Terry Wogan's job application to be a presenter on the channel, stating that there weren't any suitable vacancies. The channel already had an Irish announcer, with Attenborough reflecting in 2016: "To have had two Irishmen presenting on BBC Two would have looked ridiculous. This is no comment whatsoever on Terry Wogan's talents." Attenborough has also acknowledged that he sanctioned the wiping of television output during this period to cut costs, including a series by Alan Bennett, which he later regretted. In 1969, Attenborough was promoted to director of programmes, making him responsible for the output of both BBC channels. His tasks, which included agreeing budgets, attending board meetings and firing staff, were now far removed from the business of filming programmes. When Attenborough's name was being suggested as a candidate for the position of Director-General of the BBC in 1972, he phoned his brother Richard to confess that he had no appetite for the job. Early the following year, he left his post to return to full-time programme-making, leaving him free to write and present the planned natural history epic.
After his resignation, Attenborough became a freelance broadcaster and started work on his next project, a trip to Indonesia with a crew from the Natural History Unit. It resulted in the 1973 series Eastwards with Attenborough, which was similar in tone to the earlier Zoo Quest; the main difference was the introduction of colour. Attenborough stated that he wanted to work in Asia, because previous nature documentaries had mostly focused on Africa. That year, Attenborough was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on The Language of Animals. After his work on Eastwards with Attenborough, he began to work on the scripts for Life on Earth. Due to the scale of his ambition, the BBC decided to partner with an American network to secure the necessary funding. While the negotiations were proceeding, he worked on a number of other television projects. He presented a series on tribal art (The Tribal Eye, 1975) and another on the voyages of discovery (The Explorers, 1975). He also presented a BBC children's series about cryptozoology entitled Fabulous Animals (1975), which featured mythical creatures such as mermaids and unicorns. Eventually, the BBC signed a co-production deal with Turner Broadcasting and Life on Earth moved into production in 1976.
Life series
Beginning with Life on Earth in 1979, Attenborough set about creating a body of work which became a benchmark of quality in wildlife film-making, and influenced a generation of documentary film-makers. The series established many of the hallmarks of the BBC's natural history output. By treating his subject seriously and researching the latest discoveries, Attenborough and his production team gained the trust of scientists, who responded by allowing him to feature their subjects in his programmes. Innovation was another factor in Life on Earth'''s success: new film-making techniques were devised to get the shots Attenborough wanted, with a focus on events and animals that were up till then unfilmed. International air travel enabled the series to be devised so that Attenborough visited several locations around the globe in each episode, sometimes even changing continents in one sequence. Although appearing as the on-screen presenter, he restricted his time on camera to give more time to his subjects.
Five years after the success of Life on Earth, the BBC released The Living Planet. This time, Attenborough built his series around the theme of ecology, the adaptations of living things to their environment. It was another critical and commercial success, generating huge international sales for the BBC. In 1990, The Trials of Life completed the original Life trilogy, looking at animal behaviour through the different stages of life.
In the 1990s, Attenborough continued to use the "Life" title for a succession of authored documentaries. In 1993, he presented Life in the Freezer, the first television series to survey the natural history of Antarctica. Although past normal retirement age, he then embarked on a number of more specialised surveys of the natural world, beginning with plants. They proved a difficult subject for his producers, who had to deliver hours of television featuring what are essentially immobile objects. The result was The Private Life of Plants (1995), which showed plants as dynamic organisms by using time-lapse photography to speed up their growth, and went on to earn a Peabody Award.
Prompted by an enthusiastic ornithologist at the BBC Natural History Unit, Attenborough then turned his attention to birds. As he was neither an birdwatcher nor a bird expert, he decided he was better qualified to make The Life of Birds (1998) on the theme of behaviour. The documentary series won a second Peabody Award the following year. The order of the remaining "Life" series was dictated by developments in camera technology. For The Life of Mammals (2002), low-light and infrared cameras were deployed to reveal the behaviour of nocturnal mammals. The series contains a number of memorable two shots of Attenborough and his subjects, which included chimpanzees, a blue whale and a grizzly bear. Advances in macro photography made it possible to capture the natural behaviour of very small creatures for the first time, and in 2005, Life in the Undergrowth introduced audiences to the world of invertebrates.
At this point, Attenborough realised that he had spent 20 years unconsciously assembling a collection of programmes on all the major groups of terrestrial animals and plants – only reptiles and amphibians were missing. When Life in Cold Blood was broadcast in 2008, he had the satisfaction of completing the set, brought together in a DVD encyclopaedia called Life on Land. He commented: "The evolutionary history is finished. The endeavour is complete. If you'd asked me 20 years ago whether we'd be attempting such a mammoth task, I'd have said 'Don't be ridiculous!' These programmes tell a particular story and I'm sure others will come along and tell it much better than I did, but I do hope that if people watch it in 50 years' time, it will still have something to say about the world we live in."
However, in 2010 Attenborough asserted that his First Life – dealing with evolutionary history before Life on Earth – should be included within the "Life" series. In the documentary Attenborough's Journey, he stated, "This series, to a degree which I really didn't fully appreciate until I started working on it, really completes the set."
Beyond Life on Earth
Alongside the "Life" series, Attenborough continued to work on other television documentaries, mainly in the natural history genre. He wrote and presented a series on man's influence on the natural history of the Mediterranean Basin, The First Eden, in 1987. Two years later, he demonstrated his passion for fossils in Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives. In 1990, he worked on the BBC's Prisoners of Conscience series where he highlighted the case of Mahjoub Sharif. Attenborough narrated every episode of Wildlife on One, a BBC One wildlife series that ran for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005. At its peak, it drew a weekly audience of eight to ten million, and the 1987 episode "Meerkats United" was voted the best wildlife documentary of all time by BBC viewers. He has narrated over 50 episodes of Natural World, BBC Two's flagship wildlife series. Its forerunner, The World About Us, was created by Attenborough in 1969, as a vehicle for colour television. In 1997, he narrated the BBC Wildlife Specials, each focussing on a charismatic species, and screened to mark the Natural History Unit's 40th anniversary.
As a writer and narrator, Attenborough continued to collaborate with the BBC Natural History Unit in the new millennium. Alastair Fothergill, a senior producer with whom Attenborough had worked on The Trials of Life and Life in the Freezer, was making The Blue Planet (2001), the Unit's first comprehensive series on marine life. He decided not to use an on-screen presenter due to difficulties in speaking to a camera through diving apparatus, but asked Attenborough to narrate the films. The same team reunited for Planet Earth (2006), the biggest nature documentary ever made for television and the first BBC wildlife series to be shot in high definition. In 2009, he co-wrote and narrated Life, a ten-part series focussing on extraordinary animal behaviour, and narrated Nature's Great Events, which showed how seasonal changes trigger major natural spectacles. In January 2009, the BBC commissioned Attenborough to provide a series of 20 ten-minute monologues covering the history of nature. Entitled David Attenborough's Life Stories, they were broadcast on Radio 4 on Friday nights.
In 2011, Fothergill gave Attenborough a more prominent role in Frozen Planet, a major series on the natural history of the polar regions; Attenborough appeared on screen and authored the final episode, in addition to performing voiceover duties. Attenborough introduced and narrated the Unit's first 4K production Life Story. For Planet Earth II (2016), Attenborough returned as narrator and presenter, with the main theme music composed by Hans Zimmer.In October 2014, the corporation announced a trio of new one-off Attenborough documentaries as part of a raft of new natural history programmes. "Attenborough's Paradise Birds" and "Attenborough's Big Birds" was shown on BBC Two and "Waking Giants", which follows the discovery of giant dinosaur bones in South America, aired on BBC One. The BBC also commissioned Atlantic Productions to make a three-part, Attenborough-fronted series Great Barrier Reef in 2015. The series marked the 10th project for Attenborough and Atlantic, and saw him returning to a location he first filmed at in 1957. On radio, Attenborough has continued as one of the presenters of BBC Radio 4's Tweet of the Day, which began a second series in September 2014. Attenborough forged a partnership with Sky, working on documentaries for the broadcaster's new 3D network, Sky 3D. Their first collaboration was Flying Monsters 3D, a film about pterosaurs which debuted on Christmas Day of 2010. A second film, The Bachelor King 3D, followed a year later. His next 3D project, Conquest of the Skies, made by the team behind the BAFTA-winning David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive, aired on Sky 3D during Christmas 2014.
Attenborough has narrated three series of David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities for UKTV channel Watch, with the third series showing in 2015. He has also narrated A majestic celebration: Wild Karnataka, India's first blue-chip natural history film, directed by Kalyan Varma and Amoghavarsha. Blue Planet II was broadcast in 2017, with Attenborough returning as presenter. The series was critically acclaimed and gained the highest UK viewing figure for 2017: 14.1 million. Attenborough narrated the 2018 five part series Dynasties, each episode dealing with one species in particular. In 2021 he presented the three part series Attenborough's Life in Colour, and The Mating Game, a five part series.
Environmentalist advocacy
By the turn of the millennium, Attenborough's authored documentaries were adopting a more overtly environmentalist stance. In State of the Planet (2000), he used the latest scientific evidence and interviews with leading scientists and conservationists to assess the impact of human activities on the natural world. He later turned to the issues of global warming (The Truth about Climate Change, 2006) and human population growth (How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?, 2009). He contributed a programme which highlighted the plight of endangered species to the BBC's Saving Planet Earth project in 2007, the 50th anniversary of the Natural History Unit.
In 2019, Attenborough narrated Our Planet, an eight-part documentary series, for Netflix. In contrast to much of his prior work for the BBC, this series emphasised the destructive role of human activities throughout the series. Before, he would often note concerns in a final section of the work. He also narrated Wild Karnataka, a documentary about the Karnataka forest area. In 2019, Attenborough's one-off film documentary about climate change for BBC One called Climate Change – The Facts was aired; the tone of the documentary was significantly graver than previous work for the BBC. This was followed by Extinction: The Facts, which is partly based on the 2019 IPBES report on the decline of biodiversity.“Sir David Attenborough makes stark warning about species extinction” . BBC Science. Retrieved 14 October 2020
In 2020, Attenborough narrated the documentary film David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. The film acts as Attenborough's witness statement, reflecting on his career as a naturalist and his hopes for the future. It was released on Netflix on 4 October 2020. Further work for Netflix includes the documentary titled Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet, released on 4 June 2021. In October 2020, Attenborough began filming in Cambridge for The Green Planet. In 2021, Attenborough narrated A Perfect Planet, a five-part earth science series for BBC One.
COP26
Attenborough was a key figure in the build up to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), and gave a speech at the opening ceremony. In his speech he stated that humans were "the greatest problem solvers to have ever existed on Earth" and spoke of his optimism for the future, finishing by saying "In my lifetime I've witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery."
Views and advocacy
Environment
Attenborough's programmes have often included references to the impact of human society on the natural world. The last episode of The Living Planet, for example, focuses almost entirely on humans' destruction of the environment and ways that it could be stopped or reversed. Despite this, he has been criticised for not giving enough prominence to environmental messages. In 2018 while promoting Dynasties, he said that repeated messages on threats to wildlife in programming could be a "turn-off" to viewers. Some environmentalists feel that programmes like Attenborough's give a false picture of idyllic wilderness and do not do enough to acknowledge that such areas are increasingly encroached upon by humans. However, the increased urgency of environmental messaging in films such as Extinction: The Facts, which depicts the continuing sixth mass extinction, Climate Change – The Facts and A Life on Our Planet from 2019 and 2020 received praise. In Seven Worlds, One Planet, Attenborough discusses the devastating impact that deforestation is having on the planet and the species.
In 2005 and 2006, he backed a BirdLife International project to stop the killing of albatross by longline fishing boats. He gave support to WWF's campaign to have 220,000 square kilometres of Borneo's rainforest designated a protected area. He serves as a vice-president of The Conservation Volunteers, vice-president of Fauna and Flora International, president of Butterfly Conservation and president emiritus of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust. In 2003, he launched an appeal on behalf of the World Land Trust to create a rainforest reserve in Ecuador in memory of Christopher Parsons, the producer of Life on Earth and a personal friend, who had died the previous year. The same year, he helped to launch ARKive, a global project instigated by Parsons to gather together natural history media into a digital library. ARKive is an initiative of Wildscreen, of which Attenborough is a patron. He later became patron of the World Land Trust. In 2020, he backed a Fauna and Flora International campaign calling for a global moratorium on deep sea mining for its impact on marine life.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Attenborough advocated on behalf of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and its conservation efforts, which have been impacted by the economic fallout from the pandemic. In 2020, Attenborough was named as a member of the Earthshot prize Council, an initiative of Prince William to find solutions to environmental issues. He is a patron of the Friends of Richmond Park and serves on the advisory board of BBC Wildlife magazine.
Attenborough was initially sceptical about the human influence on climate change, and stated that a 2004 lecture finally convinced him humans were responsible. He remained silent on the issue until 2006. Attenborough attended and spoke at COP26 as the "People's Advocate" for the event, and urged world leaders to act to reduce emissions. He supported Glyndebourne in their successful application to obtain planning permission for a wind turbine in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and gave evidence at the planning inquiry arguing in favour of the proposal. In his 2020 documentary film David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Attenborough advocates for people to adopt a vegetarian diet or to reduce meat consumption to save wildlife, noting that "the planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters."
Human population
Attenborough has linked anthropogenic effects on the environment with human population growth. He has attracted criticism for his views on human overpopulation and human population control. His most popular comment online in a 2020 study related to the topic of overpopulation. He is a patron of Population Matters, a UK charity advocating for family planning, sustainable consumption and proposed sustainable human population. In a 2013 interview with the Radio Times, Attenborough described humans as a "plague on the Earth", and described the act of sending food to famine-stricken countries as "barmy" for population reasons. He called for more debate about human population growth, saying that since he "first started making programmes 60 years ago, the human population has tripled."
According to Attenborough, improving women's rights around the world is an effective way "to limit our birth rate." He said that "anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist."
Religious views
Attenborough considers himself an agnostic. When asked whether his observation of the natural world has given him faith in a creator, he generally responds with some version of this story, making reference to the Onchocerca volvulus parasitic worm:
My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind. And [I ask them], 'Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy'.
He has explained that he feels the evidence all over the planet clearly shows evolution to be the best way to explain the diversity of life, and that "as far as [he's] concerned, if there is a supreme being then he chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world". In a BBC Four interview with Mark Lawson, he was asked if he at any time had any religious faith. He replied simply, "no". He said "It never really occurred to me to believe in God".
In 2002, Attenborough joined an effort by leading clerics and scientists to oppose the inclusion of creationism in the curriculum of UK state-funded independent schools which receive private sponsorship, such as the Emmanuel Schools Foundation.
In 2009, he stated that the Book of Genesis, by saying that the world was there for people to control, had taught generations that they can "dominate" the environment, and that this has resulted in the devastation of vast areas of the environment. He further explained to the science journal Nature, "That's why Darwinism, and the fact of evolution, is of great importance, because it is that attitude which has led to the devastation of so much, and we are in the situation that we are in".
Also in early 2009, the BBC broadcast an Attenborough one-hour special, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life. In reference to the programme, Attenborough stated that "People write to me that evolution is only a theory. Well, it is not a theory. Evolution is as solid a historical fact as you could conceive. Evidence from every quarter. What is a theory is whether natural selection is the mechanism and the only mechanism. That is a theory. But the historical reality that dinosaurs led to birds and mammals produced whales, that's not theory." He strongly opposes creationism and its offshoot "intelligent design", saying that the results of a survey that found a quarter of science teachers in state schools believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science lessons was "really terrible".
In March 2009, Attenborough appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Attenborough stated that he felt evolution did not rule out the existence of a God and accepted the title of agnostic saying, "My view is: I don't know one way or the other but I don't think that evolution is against a belief in God".
Attenborough has joined the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and other top scientists in signing a campaign statement co-ordinated by the British Humanist Association (BHA). The statement calls for "creationism to be banned from the school science curriculum and for evolution to be taught more widely in schools".
BBC and public service broadcasting
Attenborough is a lifelong supporter of the BBC, public service broadcasting and the television licence. He has said that public service broadcasting "is one of the things that distinguishes this country and makes me want to live here", and believes that it is not reducible to individual programmes, but "can only effectively operate as a network [...] that measures its success not only by its audience size but by the range of its schedule".
... the BBC per minute in almost every category is as cheap as you can find anywhere in the world and produces the best quality. [...] The BBC has gone through swingeing staff cuts. It has been cut to the bone, if you divert licence fee money elsewhere, you cut quality and services. [...] There is a lot of people who want to see the BBC weakened. They talk of this terrible tax of the licence fee. Yet it is the best bargain that is going. Four radio channels and god knows how many TV channels. It is piffling.
Attenborough expressed the view that there had often been people wanting to remove the BBC, adding "there's always been trouble about the licence and if you dropped your guard you could bet our bottom dollar there'd be plenty of people who'd want to take it away. The licence fee is the basis on which the BBC is based and if you destroy it, broadcasting... becomes a wasteland." He expressed regret at some of the changes made to the BBC in the 1990s by its Director-General, John Birt, who introduced an internal market at the corporation, slimmed and even closed some departments and outsourced much of the corporation's output to private production companies. Although he said Birt's policies had poor results, Attenborough also acknowledged "the BBC had to change." In 2008, he criticised the BBC's television schedules, positing that the two senior networks, BBC One and BBC Two – which Attenborough stated were "first set up as a partnership" – now "schedule simultaneously programmes of identical character, thereby contradicting the very reason that the BBC was given a second network."
Politics
In 1998, Attenborough described himself as "a standard, boring left-wing liberal" and expressed the view that the market economy was "misery". In 2013, Attenborough joined rock guitarists Brian May and Slash in opposing the government's policy on the cull of badgers in the UK by participating in a song dedicated to badgers. Attenborough was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in the 2014 referendum on that issue. Prior to the 2015 UK general election, Attenborough was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas.
In a 2020 interview, Attenborough criticised excess capitalism as a driver of ecological imbalance, stating "the excesses the capitalist system has brought us, have got to be curbed somehow", and that "greed does not actually lead to joy", although he added "That doesn't mean to say that capitalism is dead". He also lamented the lack of international cooperation on climate change, and said "there should be no dominant nation on this planet." In 2021, Attenborough told the leaders of the 47th G7 summit that "tackling climate change was now as much a political challenge as it was a scientific or technological one" and urged more action. Attenborough also stated that "(we) are on the verge of destabilising the entire planet."
Achievements, awards and recognition
Attenborough's contribution to broadcasting and wildlife film-making has brought him international recognition. He has been called "the great communicator, the peerless educator" and "the greatest broadcaster of our time." His programmes are often cited as an example of what public service broadcasting should be, even by critics of the BBC, and have influenced a generation of wildlife film-makers.
Honorary titles
By January 2013, Attenborough had collected 32 honorary degrees from British universities, more than any other person. In 1980, he was honoured by the Open University, with which he has had a close association throughout his career. He has honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Durham University (1982) and the University of Cambridge (1984) and honorary Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Oxford (1988) and the University of Ghent (1997). In 2006, the two eldest Attenborough brothers returned to their home city to receive the title of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester, "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the University." David Attenborough was previously awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the university in 1970, and was made an honorary Freeman of the City of Leicester in 1990. In 2013, he was made an Honorary Freeman of the City of Bristol. In 2010, he was awarded Honorary Doctorates from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Nottingham Trent University.
Attenborough has received the title Honorary Fellow from Clare College, Cambridge (1980), the Zoological Society of London (1998), the Linnean Society (1999), the Institute of Biology (Now the Royal Society of Biology) (2000), and the Society of Antiquaries (2007). He is Honorary Patron of the North American Native Plant Society and was elected as a Corresponding Member of the Australian Academy of Science.
Recognition
Attenborough has been featured as the subject of a number of BBC television programmes. Life on Air (2002) examined the legacy of his work, and Attenborough the Controller (2002) focused on his time in charge of BBC Two. He was also featured prominently in The Way We Went Wild (2004), a series about natural history television presenters, and 100 Years of Wildlife Films (2007), a programme marking the centenary of the nature documentary. In 2006, British television viewers were asked to vote for their Favourite Attenborough Moments for a UKTV poll to coincide with the broadcaster's 80th birthday. The winning clip showed Attenborough observing the mimicry skills of the superb lyrebird.
Attenborough was named the most trusted celebrity in the UK in a 2006 Reader's Digest poll, and in 2007 he won The Culture Show's Living Icon Award. He has been named among the 100 Greatest Britons in a 2002 BBC poll and is one of the top ten "Heroes of Our Time" according to New Statesman magazine. In September 2009, London's Natural History Museum opened the Attenborough Studio, part of its Darwin Centre development.
In 2012, Attenborough was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life. The same year, Attenborough featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. A panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named him among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands".
A British polar research ship was named RRS Sir David Attenborough in his honour. While an Internet poll suggesting the name of the ship had the most votes for Boaty McBoatface, Science Minister Jo Johnson said there were "more suitable names", and the official name was eventually picked up from one of the more favoured choices. However, one of its research sub-sea vehicles was named "Boaty" in recognition of the public vote.
Species named after Attenborough
At least 20 species and genera, both living and extinct, have been named in Attenborough's honour. Plants named after him include an alpine hawkweed (Hieracium attenboroughianum) discovered in the Brecon Beacons, a species of Ecuadorian flowering tree (Blakea attenboroughi), one of the world's largest-pitchered carnivorous plants (Nepenthes attenboroughii), along with a genus of flowering plants (Sirdavidia).
Several Arthropods are named after Attenborough including a butterfly, Attenborough's black-eyed satyr (Euptychia attenboroughi), a dragonfly, Attenborough's pintail (Acisoma attenboroughi), a millimetre-long goblin spider (Prethopalpus attenboroughi), an ornate Caribbean smiley-faced spider (Spintharus davidattenboroughi), an Indonesian flightless weevil (Trigonopterus attenboroughi), a Madagascan ghost shrimp (Ctenocheloides attenboroughi), and a soil snail (Palaina attenboroughi). The Monogenean Cichlidogyrus attenboroughi, a parasite from a deep-sea fish in the Lake Tanganyika, is probably the only parasite species named after him. Vertebrates have also been named after Attenborough, including a Namibian lizard (Platysaurus attenboroughi), a bird (Polioptila attenboroughi), a Peruvian frog (Pristimantis attenboroughi), a Madagascan stump-toed frog (Stumpffia davidattenboroughi), and one of only four species of long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi).
In 1993, after discovering that the Mesozoic reptile Plesiosaurus conybeari did not belong to the genus Plesiosaurus, the palaeontologist Robert Bakker renamed the species Attenborosaurus conybeari. A fossilised armoured fish discovered in Western Australia in 2008 was named Materpiscis attenboroughi, after Attenborough had filmed at the site and highlighted its scientific importance in Life on Earth. In 2015, a species of tree from Gabon (in the Annonaceae family) Sirdavidia was named with his title.
The Materpiscis fossil is believed to be the earliest organism capable of internal fertilisation. A miniature marsupial lion, Microleo attenboroughi, was named in his honour in 2016. The fossil grasshopper Electrotettix attenboroughi was named after Attenborough. In March 2017, a 430 million year old tiny crustacean was named after him. Called Cascolus ravitis, the first word is a Latin translation of the root meaning of "Attenborough", and the second is based on a description of him in Latin. In July 2017, the Caribbean bat Myotis attenboroughi was named after him. A new species of fan-throated lizard from coastal Kerala in southern India was named Sitana attenboroughii in his honour when it was described in 2018.
In 2018, a new species of phytoplankton, Syracosphaera azureaplaneta, was named to honour The Blue Planet, the TV documentary presented by Attenborough, and to recognise his contribution to promoting understanding of the oceanic environment. The same year, Attenborough was also commemorated in the name of the scarab beetle Sylvicanthon attenboroughi. In 2021 an extinct species of horseshoe crab was named Attenborolimulus superspinosus.Awards
In addition, he is the only person to have won BAFTAs for programmes in black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D, and 4K.
Filmography
David Attenborough's television credits span eight decades and his association with natural history programmes dates back to The Pattern of Animals and Zoo Quest in the early 1950s. His most influential work, 1979's Life on Earth, launched a strand of nine authored documentaries with the BBC Natural History Unit which shared the Life strand name and spanned 30 years. He narrated every episode of the long-running BBC series Wildlife on One and in his later career has voiced several high-profile BBC wildlife documentaries, among them The Blue Planet and Planet Earth. He became a pioneer in the 3D documentary format with Flying Monsters in 2010.
Bibliography
David Attenborough's work as an author has strong parallels with his broadcasting career. In the 1950s and 1960s, his published work included accounts of his animal collecting expeditions around the world, which became the Zoo Quest series. He wrote an accompanying volume to each of his nine Life documentaries, along with books on tribal art and birds of paradise. His autobiography, Life on Air, was published in 2002, revised in 2009 and is one of a number of his works which is available as a self-narrated audiobook. Attenborough has also contributed forewords and introductions to many other works, notably those accompanying Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, Africa and other BBC series he has narrated.
Zoo Quest to Guyana (1956)
Zoo Quest for a Dragon (1957) – republished in 1959 to include an additional 85 pages titled Quest for the Paradise Birds Zoo Quest in Paraguay (1959)
Quest in Paradise (1960)
People of Paradise (1960)
Zoo Quest to Madagascar (1961)
Quest Under Capricorn (1963)
Fabulous Animals (1975)
The Tribal Eye (1976)
Life on Earth (1979)
Discovering Life on Earth (1981)
The Living Planet (1984)
The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man (1987)
The Atlas of the Living World (1989)
The Trials of Life (1990)
The Private Life of Plants (1994)
The Life of Birds (1998)
The Life of Mammals (2002)
Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster (2002) – autobiography, revised in 2009
Life in the Undergrowth (2005)
Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery (2007) – with Susan Owens, Martin Clayton and Rea Alexandratos
Life in Cold Blood (2007)
David Attenborough's Life Stories (2009)
David Attenborough's New Life Stories (2011)
Drawn From Paradise: The Discovery, Art and Natural History of the Birds of Paradise (2012) – with Errol Fuller
Adventures of a Young Naturalist: The Zoo Quest Expeditions (2017)
Journeys to the Other Side of the World: Further Adventures of a Young Naturalist (2018)
Dynasties: The Rise and Fall of Animal Families with Stephen Moss (2018)
A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future (2020)
References
External links
BBC Books David Attenborough website
David Attenborough at the British Film Institute
David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet
Wildfilmhistory.org biography
PBS interview with Attenborough in 1998
People and Planet: David Attenborough, video of the 2011 RSA President's Lecture
David Attenborough interview on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs, 27 December 1998
David Attenborough: humanity must come to its senses or face environmental disaster. Radio Times''. 13 October 2016.
1926 births
20th-century Royal Navy personnel
Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Articles containing video clips
David
BAFTA fellows
BBC television presenters
BBC television producers
BBC Two controllers
British Book Award winners
British social commentators
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order
Critics of creationism
Cultural critics
English agnostics
English autobiographers
English broadcasters
English conservationists
English environmentalists
English nature writers
English television personalities
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science
Fellows of the Linnean Society of London
Fellows of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society
Fellows of the Royal Society (Statute 12)
Fellows of the Royal Society of Arts
Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology
Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Fellows of the Zoological Society of London
International Emmy Founders Award winners
Kalinga Prize recipients
Knights Bachelor
Living people
Members of the Order of Merit
Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George
Outstanding Narrator Primetime Emmy Award winners
People associated with the University of Leicester
People educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys
People from Isleworth
People from Leicester
Presidents of the British Science Association
Primetime Emmy Award winners
Social critics
Military personnel from Middlesex
| false |
[
"The pseudoscientific and pseudohistorical notion that non-avian dinosaurs and humans coexisted at some time in the past or still coexist in the present is common among Young Earth creationists and other groups.\n\nMainstream science currently understands that all birds are dinosaurs that descended from feathered theropods. By this broad and more technical sense of the word, humanity has coexisted with dinosaurs since the first humans appeared on Earth. However, in a narrow and more colloquial sense, the term \"dinosaur\" refers specifically to non-avian dinosaurs, all of which died out in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction about 66 million years ago, while the genus Homo emerged only about 3 million years ago, leaving a period of tens of millions of years between the last dinosaurs and the first humans. This article refers to attempts that have been made to deny such timespan.\n\nMythological creatures\nSome proponents claim that mythological reptiles such as dragons and the Behemoth are historical descriptions of dinosaurs.\n\nHoaxes\nSome hoaxes presented as historical depictions of dinosaurs, such as the Ica stones, have been produced.\n\nFiction\nSpeculative fiction commonly portrays non-avian dinosaurs with humans. Examples include The Flintstones, in which Stone Age humans have dinosaurs as pets and transportation, and the comic series The Cavern Clan, in which the protagonist is a caveman who hunts dinosaurs, as well as in the comic strip Alley Oop. The coexistence has been present in works of alternative history in which dinosaurs do not go extinct, such as the Pixar movie The Good Dinosaur.\n\nSee also\n List of topics characterized as pseudoscience\n\nReferences\n\nPseudoscience\nPseudohistory\nPseudoarchaeology",
"Prehysteria! is a series of three family monster comedy films made in the early to mid-1990s about the adventures of five miniature baby dinosaurs named after famous pop musicians. The dinosaurs were Elvis, a male Tyrannosaurus, Paula, a female Brachiosaurus, Jagger, a male Stegosaurus, Hammer, a male Chasmosaurus, and Madonna, a female Geosternbergia (despite having the crest of a male, and despite the fact that Geosternbergia was a genus of pterosaur rather than a dinosaur). The films were made by Moonbeam Entertainment, the family-oriented sub-brand of B-movie producer Charles Band's Full Moon Entertainment. Richard Band, Michael Bishop, and Fuzzbee Morse composed the music for the movies.\n\nDevelopment\nIn the early 1990s, Charles Band was working on a new label from Full Moon Entertainment, called Moonbeam Entertainment. Moonbeam Entertainment was created specifically for family, science fiction and fantasy films created for children and adults with no \"hard edge\" to them. Around the same time, storyboard artist Peter von Sholly, approached Band with a concept about creating a movie about miniature dinosaurs. Band, intrigued with the idea, thought that it was perfect to be the first Moonbeam film. David Allen Productions and Mark Rappaport created the special effects for all of the films.\n\nThe first Prehysteria! was co-directed by Charles and Albert Band and it was released in 1993. The film was a huge success, gaining over $100,000,000 in rental sales. Due to its outcome, a sequel, Prehysteria! 2, was quickly developed and released in 1994. No character from the first film returned; however, Albert Band returned to direct. In 1995, Moonbeam developed a second sequel entitled Prehysteria! 3. David DeCoteau directed the film. The only returning character was Owen Bush from the second film. All of the films were released by Paramount Home Video. *Besides the dinosaurs, Mr. Cranston (Owen Bush) is the only returning character in the series. The Stegosaurus, Jagger, never appeared on the first three film posters. Prehysteria! was Austin O'Brien's first lead role. The Tyrannosaurus, Elvis, and Brachiosaurus, Paula, have appeared on all of the film posters. The dinosaurs in the first three films were realized by traditional stop motion animation and rod puppets. Prehysteria! 2 and Prehysteria! 3 were both aimed at younger audiences. Madonna the Geosternbergia hurt her wing in Prehysteria! 2, so that the producers could save money on the cost of stop motion animation. In Prehysteria! 3, Madonna does not fly. Prehysteria! was the first Moonbeam Entertainment film. Prehysteria 2 was Moonbeam's first sequel. The characters of \"Richie\", played by Stuart Fratkin and \"Louis\", played by Tony Longo from the first Prehysteria!, were brought back to star in another Moonbeam Production, \"Remote\", because they had done so well as comedic thugs in Prehysteria!.\n\nFilms\n\nPrehysteria!\nThe first film in the series that was released in 1993, Prehysteria! tells the story of Rico Sarno, a museum curator, who enters a forbidden temple in South America, and discovers a nest of five eggs. He steals them and brings them back to his museum. Frank Taylor (Brett Cullen), a raisin farmer, sells fossils to Rico and in a mix-up, the Taylor's dog takes a cooler, which has the eggs. The kids, Monica (Samantha Mills) and Jerry (Austin O'Brien) discover the dinosaurs when they hatch and try to keep it a secret, until their father finds out. When Vicki (Colleen Morris), a woman who works for Rico, sees the dinosaurs, she tells the Taylors not to give them back to Rico because he will expose them. Rico finds out the Taylors have them and hires two robbers to help him get the dinosaurs back.\n\nCast\nBrett Cullen as Frank Taylor\nColleen Morris as Vicky\nSamantha Mills as Monica Taylor\nAustin O'Brien as Jerry Taylor\nTony Longo as Louis\nStuart Fratkin as Ritchie\nStephen Lee as Rico Sarno\nTom Williams as Whitey\nFrank Welker as Elvis, Paula, Jagger, Hammer and Madonna\n\nReception\nTV Guide called it, \"the worst kind of kids' film.\"\n\nPrehysteria! 2\nPrehysteria! 2 was the sequel to the first film and was released in 1994. Mr. Cranston is a friend of the Taylors and he watches the mini-dinosaurs while they are on vacation. The five mini-dinosaurs break out of the Taylors' farm and accidentally get shipped into a crate of raisins. The crate is found in a box car by Naomi (Jennifer Harte), a girl whose father works at the train station and a rich kid named Brendan Wellington (Kevin Connors) who is hiding in the box car because he is being chased by bullies who are about to attack him. When the two discover the raisin crate, they get into an argument on who should keep the dinosaurs, Brendan claiming that he saw them first and Naomi claiming them on the fact that it is her box car. Brendan pays a worker for the crate, knowing that the dinosaurs are inside. Brendan is unhappy because he has no friends and is desperate for attention because his father does not spend much time with him. Naomi and Brendan later become friends and the mini-dinosaurs help the boy get the attention he needs, and try to save him from his abusive mistress Miss Winters who is allergic to animals. When she finds out about Brendan having pets (not knowing that they are dinosaurs) she hires two exterminators. She also views Brendan as a child with a lot of problems and wants to send him to a disciplinary school.\n\nCast\nKevin Connors as Brendan Wellington\nJennifer Harte as Naomi\nDean Scofield as Mr. Wellington\nBettye Ackerman as Miss Winters\nOwen Bush as Mr. Cranston\nGreg Lewis as Ivan\nMichael Hagiwara as Mr. Hiro\nLarry Hankin as Ketchum\nAlan Palo as Killam\nFrank Welker as Elvis, Paula, Jagger, Hammer and Madonna\n\nPrehysteria! 3\nPrehysteria! 3 is the third and final film of the series, and was released in 1995. This time, the five dinosaurs fall out of the back of Mr. Cranston's truck, and they make their way to another family's home. The dinosaurs help the MacGregor family, who is struggling with their mini-putt golf course. Ella MacGregor, (Whitney Anderson) is in love with her Scottish culture, but is sad that the mini-putt golf course is going under. She finds the dinosaurs, and with her family's help, they re-build the golf course with a dinosaur theme, which helps them a lot. But Ella's evil uncle Hal MacGregor (Bruce Weitz) is determined to take over the course by all means, and Ella and her parents must hide the mini-dinosaurs to protect them from danger.\n\nCast\nWhitney Anderson as Ella MacGregor\nOwen Bush as Mr. Cranston\nDave Buzzotta as Heath MacGregor\nThomas Emery Dennis as Dole\nJohn Fujioka as Mr. Yamamoto\nMatt Letscher as Needlemeyer\nPam Matteson as Michelle MacGregor\nMichael R. Thayer as Jeff\nBruce Weitz as Hal MacGregor\nFred Willard as Thomas MacGregor\nFrank Welker as Elvis, Paula, Jagger, Hammer and Madonna\n\nHome media\nBy 1995, all of the three films in the Prehysteria! series were out on VHS and laserdisc. The series saw a DVD release in Germany under the title \"Jurassic Kids\" in 2014.\n\nIn 2018, the first film of the series received a Blu-Ray release with a new transfer from the original 35mm camera negative.\n\nSee also\nJurassic Park\n\nReferences\n\nExternal links\n\n1990s fantasy films\nFull Moon Features films\nFilms about dinosaurs\n1993 films\n1994 films\n1995 films\nFilms using stop-motion animation\nParamount Pictures direct-to-video films\nFilms directed by Albert Band\nFilms scored by Richard Band"
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.