May 9, 2011
Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983) was an American engineer and author. He popularized terms such as ‘Spaceship Earth,’ ephemeralization, and synergetics. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, the best known of which is the geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres.
As a child he had trouble with geometry, being unable to understand the abstraction necessary to imagine that a chalk dot on the blackboard represented a mathematical point, or that an imperfectly drawn line with an arrow on the end was meant to stretch off to infinity. He often made items from materials he brought home from the woods, and sometimes made his own tools.
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May 6, 2011
Thom Yorke (b. 1968) is an English musician who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter of the alternative rock band Radiohead. He mainly plays guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar (notably during the Kid A and Amnesiac sessions). In July 2006, he released his debut solo album, The Eraser.
At birth, his left eye was fixed shut; he underwent five eye operations before he was six years old. He has stated that the last surgery was ‘botched,’ leaving him with a drooping eyelid.
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May 4, 2011
Sir Ken Robinson (b. 1950) is an author, and expert on education and the arts.
Robinson’s 2001 book, ‘Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative,’ argues that creativity is undervalued and ignored in Western culture and especially in its educational systems.
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May 3, 2011
Anton Stankowski (1906 – 1998) was a German graphic designer, photographer and painter. Typical Stankowski designs attempt to illustrate processes or behaviors rather than objects. Such experiments resulted in the use of fractal-like structures long before their popularization by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975. Despite producing many unique examples of concrete art and photographics, Stankowski is best known for designing the simple trademark of the Deutsche Bank.
His work is noted for straddling the camps of fine and applied arts by synthesising information and creative impulse. He was inspired by the abstract paintings of Mondrian, van Doesburg, and Kandinsky. Stankowski advocated graphic design as a field of pictorial creation that requires collaboration with free artists and scientists.
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May 3, 2011
Carl Sagan (1934 – 1996) was an American astronomer. He devoted his life to popularizing science. He speculated about what life from other planets would be like, and promoted the search for extraterrestrial life. He is world famous for his popular science books and the television series Cosmos, which he co-wrote and presented.
He was born in Brooklyn New York where his father, Sam Sagan, was a Jewish clothes maker and his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, was a housewife. Sagan attended the University of Chicago earning two degrees in physics. He followed with a doctorate in Astronomy in 1960 and taught at Harvard University until 1968, when he moved to Cornell University.
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April 29, 2011
Jan Fabre [fah-ber] (b. 1958) is a Belgian multidisciplinary artist, playwright, stage director, choreographer and designer. Fabre is famous for his Bic-art (ballpoint drawings). In 1990, he covered an entire building with ballpoint drawings.
His decoration of the ceiling of the Royal Palace in Brussels ‘Heaven of Delight’ (made out of one million six hundred thousand jewel-scarab wing cases) is widely praised. In 2004 he erected Totem, a giant bug stuck on a 70 foot steel needle in Leuven, Belgium.
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April 25, 2011
Spencer Tunick (b. 1967) is an American artist. He is best known for his installations that feature large numbers of nude people posed in artistic formations. In his own words, ‘A body is a living entity. It represents life, freedom, sensuality, and it is a mechanism to carry out our thoughts. A body is always beautiful to me.’ These installations are often situated in urban locations throughout the world, although he has also done some woodland and beach installations and still does individuals and small groups occasionally. His models are unpaid volunteers who receive a limited edition photo as compensation.
In May 2007, approximately 18,000 people posed for Tunick in Mexico City’s principal square, the Zócalo, setting a new record, and more than doubling his previous high, 7,000 in Barcelona in 2003. Male and female volunteers of different ages stood and saluted, laid down on the ground, crouched in the fetal position, and otherwise posed for Tunick’s lens in the city’s massive central plaza, the Plaza de la Constitución.
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April 24, 2011
Adolphe Millot [me-low] (1857 – 1921) was a French naturalist illustrator. He worked for the Grand Larousse encyclopédique (a French encyclopedic dictionary).
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April 23, 2011
Adrian Hill (1895–1977) was a British artist and pioneering Art Therapist. He wrote many best-selling books about painting and drawing, and in the 1950s and early 1960s presented a BBC children’s television program called ‘Sketch Club.’
His own work combined elements of impressionism and surrealism as well as more conventional representations, and was widely displayed at major art galleries during his lifetime, both in Britain and abroad.
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April 21, 2011
Andrew Wakefield (b. 1957) is a British former surgeon and medical researcher known for his fraudulent claims of a causative connection between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. He also created the term ‘autistic enterocolitis’ to describe an unproven form of inflammatory bowel disease (not to be confused with irritable bowel syndrome).
In January 2011, an article by British investigative reporter, Brian Deer and its accompanying editorial in the British Medical Journal identified Wakefield’s work as an ‘elaborate fraud.’ In a follow-up article, Deer said that Wakefield had planned to launch a venture on the back of an MMR vaccination scare that would profit from new medical tests and ‘litigation driven testing.’ Wakefield’s study and public recommendations against the use of the combined MMR vaccine were linked to a steep decline in vaccination rates in the United Kingdom and a corresponding rise in measles cases, resulting in serious illness and several fatalities.
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April 20, 2011
Chef Ra (1950 – 2006), born Jim Wilson, Jr., was an marijuana advocate, author, and cook in the United States. After gaining notoriety as a ganja gourmet, he began writing his High Times column, ‘Chef Ra’s Psychedelic Kitchen,’ in 1988 at the request of editor Steve Hager.
Ra was a fixture of Ann Arbor’s Hash Bash, speaking out about the benefits of cannabis for 19 consecutive years.
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April 18, 2011
Genie is the pseudonym for Susan M. Wiley, a feral child who spent nearly all of the first thirteen years of her life locked inside a bedroom strapped to a potty chair. She was a victim of one of the most severe cases of social isolation in American history. Genie was discovered by Los Angeles authorities in 1970.
Genie’s discovery was compared extensively with that of Victor of Aveyron, about whom a film was made, ‘The Wild Child.’ Psychologists, linguists and other scientists exhibited great interest in the case due to its perceived ability to reveal insights into the development of language and linguistic critical periods.
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