April 25, 2016
Prince Rogers Nelson (1958 – 2016), known as Prince, was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and actor. He was a musical innovator and known for his eclectic work, flamboyant stage presence, extravagant dress and makeup, and wide vocal range. His music integrates a wide variety of styles, including funk, rock, R&B, soul, psychedelia, and pop.
Prince was born in Minneapolis and developed an interest in music as a young child. He secured a recording contract with Warner Bros at the age of 18, and released his album ‘For You’ in 1978. His 1979 album ‘Prince’ went platinum, and his next three records—’Dirty Mind’ (1980), ‘Controversy’ (1981), and ‘1999’ (1982)—continued his success, showcasing Prince’s trademark of prominently sexual lyrics and blending of funk, dance, and rock music. In 1984, he began referring to his backup band as ‘The Revolution’ and released ‘Purple Rain,’ which served as the soundtrack to his film debut of the same name and was met with widespread acclaim.
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February 8, 2016
Helmut Krone (1925 – 1996) was a pioneer of modern advertising. He spent over 30 years at the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach where he was the art director for the popular 1960s campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle, which featured a large unadorned photo of the car with the tiny word ‘Lemon’ underneath it. He was also responsible for the series of ‘When you’re only No. 2, you try harder’ advertisements for Avis, and the creation of Juan Valdez, who personified Colombian coffee. His work has been collected by the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian. Krone’s ‘Think Small’ advertisement for Volkswagen was voted the best campaign of all time in Advertising Age’s 1999 ‘The Century of Advertising issue.’
Krone was born in Yorkville, on the upper east side of Manhattan, which was at that time a German neighborhood. He attended Public School 77 in Queens before enrolling at the School of Industrial Art, where he hoped to become a product designer. When he was 21, he took his first step towards advertising, working with designer Robert Greenwell doing freelance advertisements for magazines. He followed naval service in World War II with postwar classes with Alexey Brodovitch and stints at ‘Esquire’ and ‘Sudler & Hennessey.’ Then, at the age of 29, he began to work for Doyle Dane Bernbach.
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October 8, 2015
Massimo [ma-see-moh] Vignelli [veen-yell-ee] (1931 – 2014) was an Italian graphic and industrial designer who worked in a number of areas including product packaging, housewares, furniture, public signage, and showrooms. He was the co-founder of Vignelli Associates, with his wife, Lella. His ethos was, ‘If you can design one thing, you can design everything,’ and this was reflected in the broad range of his work. Vignelli worked firmly within the Modernist tradition, and focused on simplicity through the use of basic geometric forms in all his work.
His educational background was in architecture, which he studied at the Politecnico di Milano and later at the Università di Architettura, Venice. From 1957 to 1960, he visited America on a fellowship, and returned to New York in 1966 to start the New York branch of a new company, Unimark International, which quickly became, in scope and personnel, one of the largest design firms in the world.
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October 3, 2015
Joshua Foer (b. 1982) is a freelance journalist living in Connecticut, with a primary focus on hard sciences. He was the 2006 USA Memory Champion, whichwas described in his 2011 book, ‘Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.’ Foer set a new US record in the ‘speed cards’ event by memorizing a deck of 52 cards in 1 minute and 40 seconds. His book describes his journey from participatory journalist to national champion mnemonist, under the tutelage of British Grand Master of Memory, Ed Cooke. Penguin paid a $1.2 million advance for publishing rights, and the film rights were optioned by Columbia Pictures shortly after publication.
Foer was born in Washington, DC to Esther Foer, Director of Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, and Albert Foer, the president of the American Antitrust Institute, an antitrust watchdog. He is the younger brother of former ‘The New Republic’ editor Franklin Foer and novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. Josh has organized several websites and organizations based on his interests. He created the ‘Athanasius Kircher Society,’ which had only one session, featuring savant Kim Peek and proto-astronaut Joseph Kittinger. He is the co-founder of the ‘Atlas Obscura,’ an online compendium of ‘The World’s Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica.’ He is also a co-organizer of ‘Sukkah City’ a Kosher architectural design competition, and Sefaria, a non-profit dedicated to building digital experiences and infrastructure for Jewish texts.
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September 28, 2015
Jerry DeWitt is an American author and public speaker, and a prominent member of the American atheism movement. He is a former pastor of two evangelical churches, who publicly deconverted to atheism in 2011. DeWitt is the former executive director of ‘Recovering From Religion,’ a group which helps people find their way after a loss of faith.
He currently leads the ‘Community Mission Chapel,’ which DeWitt calls an ‘atheist church.’ In a story for the ‘New York Times,’ he said, ‘Just because we value critical thinking and the scientific method, that doesn’t mean we suddenly become disembodied and we can no longer benefit from our emotional lives.’
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September 28, 2015
Tinker Hatfield (b. 1952) is the designer of many of Nike’s most popular and innovative athletic shoe designs, including the Air Jordan 3 through Air Jordan 15, the twentieth anniversary Air Jordan, the Air Jordan XXIII, XXV, XXIX, and other athletic sneakers including the world’s first ‘cross training’ shoes, the Nike Air Trainer. Hatfield oversees Nike’s ‘Innovation Kitchen.’ He is Nike’s Vice President for Design and Special Projects.
He attended the University of Oregon, where he ran track for coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, and at one time had the pole-vault record at the school. Academically, he studied architecture and graduated with a degree from the University of Oregon School of Architecture. Hatfield joined Nike in 1981, and in 1985 started working on shoe design, believing that his architectural skills could be applied to footwear.
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September 18, 2015
Colonel Tom Parker (1909 – 1997), born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, was a Dutch-born American entertainment impresario known best as the manager of Elvis Presley. Parker’s management of Presley defined the role of masterminding talent management, which involved every facet of his life and was seen as central to the success of Presley’s career.
‘The Colonel’ displayed a ruthless devotion to his own financial gain rather than his client’s interests and took more than the traditional 10 to 15 percent of his earnings (reaching up to 50 percent by the end of Presley’s life). Presley said of Parker: ‘I don’t think I’d have ever been very big if it wasn’t for him. He’s a very smart man.’ For many years Parker falsely claimed to have been US-born, but it eventually emerged that he was born in Breda in the Netherlands.
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September 5, 2015
Don Herbert (1917 – 2007) was the creator and host of educational television programs for children devoted to science and technology, notably ‘Watch Mr. Wizard’ (1951–65, 1971–72) and ‘Mr. Wizard’s World’ (1983–90). He also produced many short video programs about science and authored several popular books about science for children. Marcel LaFollette of the Smithsonian notes that no fictional hero was able to rival the popularity and longevity of ‘the friendly, neighborly scientist.’
In Herbert’s obituary, Bill Nye wrote, ‘Herbert’s techniques and performances helped create the United States’ first generation of homegrown rocket scientists just in time to respond to Sputnik. He sent us to the moon. He changed the world.’ Herbert is credited with turning ‘a generation of youth’ in the 1950s and early 1960s onto ‘the promise and perils of science.’
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August 29, 2015
Stewart Brand (b. 1938) is an American writer, best known as editor of the ‘Whole Earth Catalog,’ a counterculture magazine and mail order catalog. He founded a number of organizations, including The WELL (one of the oldest virtual communities in continuous operation), the Global Business Network (a scenario planner and forecaster for companies, NGOs, and governments), and the Long Now Foundation (a nonprofit that promotes very long-term projects, e.g. a 10,000 year clock). He is the author of several books, most recently ‘Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.’
Brand attended Phillips Exeter Academy. He studied biology at Stanford University, graduating in 1960. His first marriage was to Lois Jennings, an Ottawa Native American and mathematician. As a soldier in the Army, he was a parachutist and taught infantry skills; he later expressed the view that his experience in the military had fostered his competence in organizing. A civilian again in 1962, he studied design at San Francisco Art Institute, photography at San Francisco State College, and participated in a legitimate scientific study of then-legal LSD, in Menlo Park, California.
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April 17, 2015
Terry Gross (b. 1951) is the host and co-executive producer of ‘Fresh Air,’ an interview format radio show produced by ‘WHYY-FM,’ the flagship National Public Radio (NPR) station in Philadelphia. The show is broadcast nationally by NPR. Gross has won praise over the years for her low-key and friendly yet often probing interview style and for the diversity of her guests. She has a reputation for researching her guests’ work largely the night before an interview, often asking them unexpected questions about their early careers.
Gross grew up in a Jewish family in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in communications from SUNY, Buffalo. She began a teaching career, but said that she was ‘totally unequipped’ for the job, and was fired after only six weeks. Gross began her radio career in 1973 at ‘WBFO,’ a public radio station in Buffalo, where she had been volunteering. In 1975, she moved to WHYY-FM in Philadelphia to host and produce ‘Fresh Air,’ which was a local interview program at the time. In 1985, the show went national, being distributed weekly by NPR. It became a daily program two years later.
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March 30, 2015
David Miscavige (b. 1960) is the leader of the Church of Scientology. He was an assistant to church founder L. Ron Hubbard (a ‘Commodore’s messenger’) while a teenager, and rose to a leadership position by the early 1980s, becoming Chairman in 1987. He is lauded within Scientology for obtaining recognition as a tax-favored charity by the IRS, issuing restored and corrected editions of Hubbard’s works, and undertaking a program of new or remodeled churches and related facilities.
His official title is Chairman of the Board of Religious Technology Center (RTC), a corporation that controls the trademarks and copyrights of ‘Dianetics’ and Scientology. During his tenure, a number of allegations have been made against Miscavige, including claims of forced separation of family members, coercive fundraising practices, harassment of journalists and church critics, and humiliation of church staff members. He has also been accused of physically assaulting his staff. He has denied the majority of these claims, often criticizing the credibility of those who bring them.
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March 11, 2015
Susan Kare (b. 1954) is an artist and graphic designer who created many of the interface elements for the Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. She left Apple with Steve Jobs in 1985 to be the Creative Director at his new company NeXT.
Kare was born in Ithaca, New York, and is the sister of noted aerospace engineer Jordin Kare. She graduated from Harriton High School in 1971, received her B.A., summa cum laude, in Art from Mount Holyoke College in 1975 and her Ph.D. from New York University in 1978. She next moved to San Francisco and worked for the Museum of Modern Art. Today, the MOMA store in New York City carries stationery and notebooks featuring her designs.
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