Alexander Fleming

Biography 1:

Alexander Fleming was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, on August 6, 1881, and studied medicine, serving as a physician during World War I. Through research and experimentation, Fleming discovered a bacteria-destroying mold which he would call penicillin in 1928, paving the way for the use of antibiotics in modern healthcare. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945 and died on March 11, 1955.

Early Years

Alexander Fleming was born in rural Lochfield, in East Ayrshire, Scotland, on August 6, 1881. His parents, Hugh and Grace were farmers, and Alexander was one of their four children. He also had four half-siblings who were the surviving children from his father Hugh’s first marriage. He attended the Louden Moor School, the Darvel School and Kilmarnock Academy before moving to London in 1895, where he lived with his older brother, Thomas Fleming. In London, Fleming finished his basic education at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster).

Fleming was a member of the Territorial Army, and served from 1900 to 1914 in the London Scottish Regiment. He entered the medical field in 1901, studying at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School at the University of London. While at St. Mary’s, he won the 1908 gold medal as the top medical student.

Early Career and World War I

Alexander Fleming had planned to become a surgeon, but a temporary position in the Inoculation Department at St. Mary’s Hospital changed his path toward the then-new field of bacteriology. There, he developed his research skills under the guidance of bacteriologist and immunologist Sir Almroth Edward Wright, whose revolutionary ideas of vaccine therapy represented an entirely new direction in medical treatment.

During World War I, Fleming served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He worked as a bacteriologist, studying wound infections in a makeshift lab that had been set up by Wright in Boulogne, France. Through his research there, Fleming discovered that antiseptics commonly used at the time were doing more harm than good, as their diminishing effects on the body’s immunity agents largely outweighed their ability to break down harmful bacteria — therefore, more soldiers were dying from antiseptic treatment than from the infections they were trying to destroy. Fleming recommended that, for more effective healing, wounds simply be kept dry and clean. However, his recommendations largely went unheeded.

Returning to St. Mary’s after the war, in 1918, Fleming took on a new position: assistant director of St. Mary’s Inoculation Department. (He would become a professor of bacteriology at the University of London in 1928, and an emeritus professor of bacteriology in 1948.)

In November 1921, while nursing a cold, Fleming discovered lysozyme, a mildly antiseptic enzyme present in body fluids, when a drop of mucus dripped from his nose onto a culture of bacteria. Thinking that his mucus might have some kind of effect on bacterial growth, he mixed it with the culture. A few weeks later, he observed that the bacteria had been dissolved. This marked Fleming’s first great discovery, as well as a significant contribution to human immune system research. (As it turned out, however, lysozyme had no effect on the most destructive bacteria.)

The Road to Penicillin

In September 1928, Fleming returned to his laboratory after a month away with his family, and noticed that a culture of Staphylococcus aureus he had left out had become contaminated with a mold (later identified as Penicillium notatum). He also discovered that the colonies of staphylococci surrounding this mold had been destroyed.

He later said of the incident, «When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I suppose that was exactly what I did.» He at first called the substance «mold juice,» and then named it «penicillin,» after the mold that produced it.

Thinking he had found an enzyme more powerful than lysozyme, Fleming decided to investigate further. What he found out, though, was that it was not an enzyme at all, but an antibiotic — one of the first antibiotics to be discovered. Further development of the substance was not a one-man operation, as his previous efforts had been, so Fleming recruited two young researchers. The three men unfortunately failed to stabilize and purify penicillin, but Fleming pointed out that penicillin had clinical potential, both in topical and injectable forms, if it could be developed properly.

On the heels of Fleming’s discovery, a team of scientists from the University of Oxford — led by Howard Florey and his co-worker, Ernst Chain — isolated and purified penicillin. The antibiotic eventually came into use during World War II, revolutionizing battlefield medicine and, on a much broader scale, the field of infection control.

Florey, Chain and Fleming shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, but their relationship was tainted over who should receive the most credit for penicillin. The press tended to emphasize Fleming’s role due to the compelling back-story of his chance discovery and his greater willingness to be interviewed.

Later Years and Honors

In 1946, Fleming succeeded Almroth Edward Wright as head of St. Mary’s Inoculation Department, which was renamed the Wright-Fleming Institute. Additionally, Fleming served as president of the Society for General Microbiology, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Science, and an honorary member of nearly every medical and scientific society in the world.

Outside of the scientific community, Fleming was named rector of Edinburgh University from 1951 to 1954, freeman of many municipalities, and Honorary Chief Doy-gei-tau of the American Indian Kiowa tribe. He was also awarded honorary doctorate degrees from nearly 30 European and American universities.

Fleming died of a heart attack on March 11, 1955, at his home in London, England. He was survived by his second wife, Dr. Amalia Koutsouri-Vourekas, and his only child, Robert, from his first marriage.

Biography 2:

Fleming was a Scottish bacteriologist and Nobel Prize winner, best known for his discovery of penicillin

Alexander Fleming was born in Ayrshire on 6 August 1881, the son of a farmer. He moved to London at the age of 13 and later trained as a doctor. He qualified with distinction in 1906 and began research at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School at the University of London under Sir Almroth Wright, a pioneer in vaccine therapy. In World War One Fleming served in the Army Medical Corps and was mentioned in dispatches. After the war, he returned to St Mary’s.

In 1928, while studying influenza, Fleming noticed that mould had developed accidentally on a set of culture dishes being used to grow the staphylococci germ. The mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. Fleming experimented further and named the active substance penicillin. It was two other scientists however, Australian Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, a refugee from Nazi Germany, who developed penicillin further so that it could be produced as a drug. At first supplies of penicillin were very limited, but by the 1940s it was being mass-produced by the American drugs industry.

Fleming wrote numerous papers on bacteriology, immunology and chemotherapy. He was elected professor of the medical school in 1928 and emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of London in 1948. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1943 and knighted in 1944. In 1945 Fleming, Florey and Chain shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Fleming died on 11 March 1955.

Joan Miró

Biography 1:

Joan Miró (20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and ceramicist. He was born in Barcelona and was Catalan. He died of heart disease in Palma, Majorca. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundacio Joan Miró, was opened in Barcelona in 1975.

Joan Miro started painting when he was fourteen he attended an art school. He then started to develop his own style to draw scenes of trees and landscapes. In around the 1930s Joan started to make rapid changes to his style of painting. Influenced by Pablo Picasso, Miro developed more surrealist works.

Miró was a significant influence on late 20th-century art, in particular the American abstract expressionist artists.

Biography 2:

(born April 20, 1893, Barcelona, Spain—died December 25, 1983, Palma, Majorca), Catalan painter who combined abstract art with Surrealist fantasy. His mature style evolved from the tension between his fanciful, poetic impulse and his vision of the harshness of modern life. He worked extensively in lithography and produced numerous murals, tapestries, and sculptures for public spaces.

Early life and artistic training

Miró’s father was a watchmaker and goldsmith. Both his father’s background as an artisan and the austere Catalan landscape would be of great importance to his art. According to his parents’ wishes, he attended a commercial college. He then worked for two years as a clerk in an office until he had a mental and physical breakdown. His parents took him for convalescence to an estate they bought especially for this purpose—Montroig, near Tarragona, Spain—and in 1912 they allowed him to attend an art school in Barcelona. His teacher at this school, Francisco Galí, showed a great understanding of his 18-year-old pupil, advising him to touch the objects he was about to draw, a procedure that strengthened Miró’s feeling for the spatial quality of objects. Galí also introduced his pupil to examples of the latest schools of modern art from Paris as well as to the buildings of Antoni Gaudí, Barcelona’s famous Art Nouveau architect.

From 1915 to 1919 Miró worked in Spain—in Barcelona, at Montroig, and on the island of Majorca—painting landscapes, portraits, and nudes in which he focused on the rhythmic interplay of volumes and areas of colour. He experimented with the boldly colourful Fauvist style, but his treatment of form was geometric, influenced by the work of Paul Cézanne and the Cubist artists.

From early in his career Miró sought to establish means of metaphorical expression—that is, to discover signs that stand for concepts of nature in a transcendent, poetic sense. He wanted to portray nature as it would be depicted by a primitive person or a child equipped with the intelligence of a 20th-century adult; in this respect, he had much in common with the Surrealists and Dadaists, two schools of modern artists who were striving to achieve similar aims by more intellectual means than those used by Miró.

Paris and early work

From 1919 onward Miró lived alternately in Spain and Paris. He was one of the many artists who made their way from abroad to Paris during the first two decades of the 20th century. Most of these foreign artists elected to become French citizens after coming into contact with the exciting French artistic metropolis, but Miró remained attached to his Catalan homeland.

In the early 1920s Miró combined meticulously detailed realism with abstraction in landscapes such as the renowned Farm (1921) and The Tilled Field (1923–24). He gradually removed the objects he portrayed from their natural context and reassembled them as if in accordance with a new, mysterious grammar, creating a ghostly, eerie impression.

From 1925 to 1928, under the influence of the Dadaists, Surrealists, and Paul Klee, Miró painted “dream pictures” and “imaginary landscapes” in which the linear configurations and patches of colour look almost as though they were set down randomly, as in The Policeman (1925). In paintings such as Dog Barking at the Moon(1926), he rendered figures of animals and humans as indeterminate forms. Miró signed the manifesto of the Surrealist movement in 1924, and the members of the group respected him for the way he portrayed the realm of unconscious experience. The poet André Breton, the chief spokesman of Surrealism, stated that Miró was “the most Surrealist of us all.”

After a trip in 1928 to the Netherlands, where he studied the 17th-century Dutch realist painters in the museums, Miró executed a series of works based on Old Master paintings titled Dutch Interiors (1928). In the 1930s Miró became more experimental, working with techniques of collage and sculptural assemblage and creating sets and costumes for ballets. He designed tapestries in 1934, which led to his interest in the monumental and in murals. His paintings began to be exhibited regularly in French and American galleries.

At the time of the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, Miró was living in Paris. Although he typically was not political in his work, the turmoil in his native country inspired him to embrace social criticism. For example, he depicted a peasant revolt in The Reaper, a mural he painted for the pavilion of the Spanish Republic at the Paris World Exhibition of 1937. He also imbued his pictures of this period, such as the nightmarish Head of a Woman (1938), with a demonic expressiveness that mirrored the fears and horrors of those years.

Mature work and international recognition

During World War II Miró returned to Spain, where he painted Constellations (1941), a series of small works scattered with symbols of the elements and the cosmos, expressing the happy collaboration of everything creative. During the last year of the war (1944), Miró, together with his potter friend José Lloréns Artigas, produced ceramics with a new impetuosity of expression: their vessels were often intentionally misshapen and fragmented.

Beginning in 1948, Miró once again divided his time between Spain and Paris. That year he began a series of very poetic works based on the combined themes of woman, bird, and star. In 1949 and 1950 he created some paintings that were wildly spontaneous in character, while executing others with punctilious craftsmanship. He used both approaches in his increasingly large sculptures, amalgamating all of his earlier figurations to form erotic fetishes or signals towering into space.

In the years following World War II Miró became internationally famous; his sculptures, drawings, and paintings were exhibited in many countries. He was commissioned to paint a number of murals, notably for the Terrace Hilton Hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio (1947), and for Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1950). His ceramic experiments culminated in the two great ceramic walls in the UNESCO building in Paris (1958), for which he received the Great International Prize of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. In 1962 Paris honoured Miró with a major exhibition of his collected works in the National Museum of Modern Art. The Catalan architect José Luis Sert built for him the large studio of which he had dreamed all of his life on Majorca. Among his later works were several monumental sculptures, such as those he executed for the city of Chicago (unveiled 1981) and for the city of Houston (1982).

In spite of his fame, however, Miró, a taciturn, introverted man, continued to devote himself exclusively to looking and creating. His art had developed slowly from his first clumsy attempts at expression to the apparently playful masterpieces of his later period. In his late works Miró employed an even greater simplification of figure and background; he sometimes created a composition merely by setting down a dot and a sensitive line on a sea-blue surface, as in Blue II (1961). The whimsical or aggressive irony of his earlier work gave way to a quasi-religious meditation. In 1980, in conjunction with his being awarded Spain’s Gold Medal of Fine Arts, a plaza in Madrid was named in Miró’s honour.

Pablo Picasso

Biography 1:

Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain. When he was baptized, he was named after various saints and relatives: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso. His father, Jose Ruiz Blasco, was an artist and art professor who gave Pablo art lessons. His mother was Maria Picasso y Lopez. According to his mother, his first word was “piz” when he was trying to say “lápiz,” the Spanish word for pencil.

Picasso was not a good student. He often had to go to detention. Here’s what he said about it.
“For being a bad student I was banished to the ‘calaboose’ – a bare cell with whitewashed walls and a bench to sit on. I liked it there, because I took along a sketch pad and drew incessantly … I could have stayed there forever drawing without stopping ”

When he was nine, Picasso finished his first painting, Le picador. It shows a man on a horse at a bullfight. When he started painting, he used a realistic style. He began to experiment with different techniques and styles. When he was 13, he was admitted to the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, Spain. When he was 16, Picasso’s father and uncle decided to send him to Madrid’s Royal Academy of San Fernando. This was Spain’s top art school. He did not like formal instruction and soon stopped going to classes. He loved Madrid and enjoyed going to The Prado museum to see paintings by famous Spanish painters. He particularly like El Greco’s work.

In 1900, Picasso went to Paris. He met Max Jacob, a journalist and poet. Max helped Picasso learn to speak French. He also met many of the famous artists who lived in Paris. In 1905, American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein began to collect his work and helped to make him famous.

He and Georges Braque invented Cubism, a form of painting that featured simple geometric shapes. He is also known for making collages – gluing previously unrelated things together with images. He created oil paintings, sculpture, drawings, stage designs, tapestries, rugs, etchings, collage, and architecture. No other painter or sculptor was as famous while he was still alive. It is estimated that Picasso produced at least 50,000 works of art: 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. He also wrote plays and poetry. He became very wealthy.

Some of his famous paintings include: The Old Guitarist; Asleep and Seated Woman, which portray Marie-Therese Walter, one of the women he loved; Guernica, a mural about the Spanish Civil War; and Three Musicians.

Picasso loved many women. He married two of them, Olga Khokhlova and Jacqueline Roque. He had four children: Paulo, Maya, Claude and Paloma, who is famous for her jewelry designs. He died April 8, 1973 in Mougins, France.

Picasso quotes:

“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them. ”
“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. ”
“He can who thinks he can, and he can’t who thinks he can’t. This is an inexorable, indisputable law. ”
“Action is the foundational key to all success.”

Biography 2:

• Occupation: Artist
• Born: October 25, 1881 in Málaga, Spain
• Died: April 8, 1973 in Mougins, France
• Famous works: The Pipes of Pan, Three Musicians, Guernica, The Weeping Woman
• Style/Period: Cubism, Modern Art

Biography 2:

Where did Pablo Picasso grow up?

Pablo Picasso grew up in Spain where he was born on October 25, 1881. His father was a painter and art teacher. Pablo liked to draw from an early age. Legend has it that his first word was «piz», short for «pencil» in Spanish. It soon became apparent that Pablo had little interest in school, but was an extremely talented artist.

When he was fourteen Pablo attended a famous art school in Barcelona. A few years later he went to another school in Madrid. However, Pablo was bored with the classic teachings of art school. He didn’t want to paint like people hundreds of years ago. He wanted to create something new.

Blue Period (1901-1904)

In 1901, Pablo’s close friend Carlos Casagemas committed suicide. Pablo became very sad. Around the same time he began painting in Paris. For the next four years his paintings were dominated by the color blue. Many of the subjects were sad and somber looking. He painted people with elongated features and faces. Some of his paintings from this period include Poor People on the Seashore and The Old Guitarist.

Rose Period (1904 – 1906)

Eventually Pablo got over his depression. He also fell in love with a French model. He began to use warmer colors in his paintings including pinks, reds, oranges, and beiges. Art historians call this time in Pablo’s life the Rose Period. He also began to paint happier scenes such as circuses. Some of his paintings from this period include The Peasants and Mother and Child.

Cubism (1907 – 1921)

In 1907 Picasso began to experiment with a new style of painting. He worked with another artist named Georges Braque. By 1909 they had created a completely new style of painting called Cubism. In Cubism the subjects are analyzed and broken up into different sections. Then the sections are put back together and painted from different perspectives and angles. Go here to see an example of Picasso’s Cubism art.

In 1912 Picasso began to combine Cubism and collage. This was where he would use sand or plaster in his paint to give it texture. He would also apply materials such as colored paper, newspapers, and wallpaper to his paintings to give them added dimension.

Some of Picasso’s Cubism paintings include Three Musicians and the Portrait of Ambroise Vollard.

Neoclassical Style

Although Picasso would continue to experiment with Cubism, around 1921 he went through a period of painting more classical style paintings. He borrowed ideas from Renaissance painters such as Raphael. He created powerful characters that almost appeared to be three-dimensional, like statues. Some of his works in this style include The Pipes of Pan and Woman in White.

Surrealism

Around 1924 Pablo became interested in the Surrealist movement. Surrealist paintings weren’t supposed to make any sense. They often appear like something you would see in a dream or a nightmare. Although Picasso didn’t become a member of the movement, he did incorporate some of their ideas into his paintings. Some people called this time his Monster period. Examples of the surrealism influence on Picasso’s art include Guernica and The Red Armchair.

Legacy

Today, Pablo Picasso is considered the greatest artist of the 20th century. Many people consider him to be one of the greatest in all of art history. He painted in a number of different styles and created many unique contributions to the world of art. Near the end of his life he painted a number of self portraits. One of his last works of art was a self portrait done with crayon on paper entitledSelf-Portrait Facing Death. He died a year later at the age of 91 on April 8, 1973.

Interesting Facts about Pablo Picasso

• His full name is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. Wow!
• His mother once told him when he was a child that «If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk you’ll end up as the pope.»
• In the 1930s Picasso became fascinated with the mythical creature the Minotaur. This creature had the body of a man and the head of a bull. It appeared in many of his pieces of art.
• He produced over 1,800 paintings and 1,200 sculptures.
• Many of his paintings have been sold for over $100 million!
• He was married twice and had four children.

Nelson Mandela

Biography 1:

• Occupation: President of South Africa and Activist
• Born: July 18, 1918 in Mvezo, South Africa
• Died: December 5, 2013 in Johannesburg, South Africa
• Best known for: Serving 27 years in prison as a protest against apartheid

Biography:

Nelson Mandela was a civil rights leader in South Africa. He fought against apartheid, a system where non-white citizens were segregated from whites and did not have equal rights. He served a good portion of his life in prison for his protests, but became a symbol for his people. Later he would become president of South Africa.

Where did Nelson Mandela grow up?

Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918 in Mvezo, South Africa. His birth name is Rolihlahla. He got the nickname Nelson from a teacher in school. Nelson was a member of Thimbu royalty and his father was chief of the city of Mvezo. He attended school and later college at the College of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand. At Witwatersrand, Mandela got his law degree and would meet some of his fellow activists against apartheid.

What did Nelson Mandela do?

Nelson Mandela became a leader in the African National Congress (ANC). At first he pushed hard for the congress and the protesters to follow Mohandas Gandhi’s non-violence approach. At one point he started to doubt that this approach would work and started up an armed branch of the ANC. He planned to bomb certain buildings, but only the buildings. He wanted to make sure that no one would be hurt. He was classified as a terrorist by the South African government and sent to prison.

Mandela would spend the next 27 years in prison. His prison sentence brought international visibility to the anti-apartheid movement. He was finally released through international pressure in 1990.

Once released from prison, Nelson continued his campaign to end apartheid. His hard work and life long effort paid off when all races were allowed to vote in the 1994 election. Nelson Mandela won the election and became president of South Africa. There were several times during the process where violence threatened to break out. Nelson was a strong force in keeping the calm and preventing a major civil war.

How long was Nelson Mandela in prison?

He spent 27 years in prison. He refused to bend on his principals in order to be released and stated that he would die for his ideals. He wanted all people of all races to have equal rights in South Africa.

Fun facts about Nelson Mandela

• Nelson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
• July 18th is Nelson Mandela day. People are asked to devote 67 minutes to helping others. The 67 minutes represents the 67 years Mandela spent serving his country.
• Invictus was a 2009 movie about Nelson Mandela and the South African rugby team.
• He had six children and twenty grandchildren.

Biography 2:

Mandela was known for ending apartheid, a system that separated whites from nonwhites in South Africa. After spending 27 years in prison for fighting against racial inequality, he became the country’s first democratically elected president. “I think he’s a hero for the world,” said President Barack Obama in a speech during his visit to Senegal in June.

Early Years

Mandela was born Rolihlahla Mandela on July 18, 1918. He grew up poor in a small South African village. When Mandela was nine, he was adopted by and sent to live with his father’s friend, a prosperous clan chief.

In school, Mandela learned about African history and his ancestors’ struggles with discrimination. He wanted to help his countrymen. He later traveled to Johannesburg, where he studied law and opened the country’s first black law practice. He also joined the African National Congress, a group that fought for racial equality.

Fight Against Apartheid

In 1948, the government introduced apartheid, which left the country’s nonwhite majority with few economic opportunities. In response, Mandela traveled throughout South Africa and encouraged people to take part in nonviolent demonstrations against the government’s racial segregation policies. He was arrested for organizing anti-government activities and eventually sentenced to life in prison. “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities,” he said during his trial. “It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Mandela’s imprisonment led to protests around the world and economic sanctions, or limits on trade, against his country.

First Black President

On February 11, 1990, South African president F.W. de Klerk released Mandela from prison, and the two worked together to end apartheid. Three years later, they won the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.

In 1994, for the first time in South African history, nonwhites were allowed to vote in democratic elections. Mandela was elected president by an overwhelming majority. While in office, he worked to improve housing, education, and economic opportunities for the country’s large black population.

Mandela stepped down as president in 1999. That same year, he created the Nelson Mandela’s Children Fund, a charity that helps poor South African children. “Children are the wealth of our country,” he said in an interview with TFK in 2002. “They must be given love.”

Over the years, Mandela continued working to promote peace around the world. In 2007, he helped found The Elders, an organization of world leaders committed to ending conflicts and promoting human rights. “When you want to get a herd to move in a certain direction,” he told TIME in 1994, “you stand at the back with a stick. Then a few of the more energetic cattle move to the front and the rest of the cattle follow. You are really guiding them from behind. That is how a leader should do his work.”

Public retirement

In June 2004, Mandela announced that he was retiring from public life. Mandela said «Don’t call me, I will call you.» Although continuing to meet with close friends and family, the Nelson Mandela Foundation denied invitations for him to appear at public events and most interview requests.

Mother Teresa

Biography 1:

• Occupation: Catholic Nun
• Born: August 26, 1910 in Uskub, Ottoman Empire
• Died: September 5, 1997 in Calcutta, India
• Best known for: Fighting for the rights of the sick and helpless

Biography:

Mother Teresa was a humanitarian. This means she did things to help out other people. Her entire life was fully devoted to helping the poor, the sick, the needy, and the helpless.

Where did Mother Teresa grow up?

Mother Teresa was born in Uskub, Ottoman Empire on August 26, 1910. This city is now called Skopje and is the capital of the Republic of Macedonia. Her birth name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. Her father died when she was eight and she was raised by her mother. She was raised as a Roman Catholic and decided to devote her life to God at a young age. She joined the Sisters of Loreto at the age of 18 to become a missionary to India. She first had to learn English. So she went to Ireland to learn English at the Loreto Abby.

A year later she started her missionary work in Darjeeling, India. She learned the local language, Bengali, and taught at the local school. She soon took her first vows as a nun and took the name Teresa. She would teach for many years in India becoming the headmistress at a school in eastern Calcutta.

What did Mother Teresa do?

When she was 36 years old she felt the call from God to help the poor of India. She received some basic medical training and then set out to help the sick and needy. This wasn’t an easy task in 1948 India. She had very little support and, while trying to feed and help the poorest of the poor, she herself was constantly hungry and even had to beg for food.

Soon other women joined her and she formed the Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa described the purpose of the Missionaries of Charity as an organization to take care of «the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone». Wow! She had some lofty goals and considering where she was at the start (see above paragraph where she was starving), she accomplished some amazing things. The Missionaries of Charity originally had 13 members. Today they have over 4,000 nuns who care for people just like Mother Teresa described all over the world.

It wasn’t an easy task to build such an organization and to keep the focus on the poorest people. She worked almost up until her death on September 5, 1997.

Fun facts about Mother Teresa

• Mother Teresa has been beatified by the Catholic Church. This is a step on the way to becoming a Saint. She is now called Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.
• Albania’s international airport is named after her, the Aeroporti Nene Tereza.
• She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
• She once traveled through a war zone to rescue 37 children from the front lines.
• She received numerous awards for all her charity work including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan.

Biography 2:

Synopsis

Baptized on August 27, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia, Mother Teresa taught in India for 17 years before she experienced her 1946 «call within a call» to devote herself to caring for the sick and poor. Her order established a hospice; centers for the blind, aged, and disabled; and a leper colony. She was summoned to Rome in 1968, and in 1979 received the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work.

Early Life

Catholic nun and missionary Mother Teresa was born circa August 26, 1910 (her date of birth is disputed), in Skopje, the current capital of the Republic of Macedonia. On August 27, 1910, a date frequently cited as her birthday, she was baptized as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. Mother Teresa’s parents, Nikola and Dranafile Bojaxhiu, were of Albanian descent; her father was an entrepreneur who worked as a construction contractor and a trader of medicines and other goods. The Bojaxhius were a devoutly Catholic family, and Nikola Bojaxhiu was deeply involved in the local church as well as in city politics as a vocal proponent of Albanian independence.

In 1919, when Mother Teresa was only 8 years old, her father suddenly fell ill and died. While the cause of his death remains unknown, many have speculated that political enemies poisoned him. In the aftermath of her father’s death, Mother Teresa became extraordinarily close to her mother, a pious and compassionate woman who instilled in her daughter a deep commitment to charity.

Although by no means wealthy, Drana Bojaxhiu extended an open invitation to the city’s destitute to dine with her family. «My child, never eat a single mouthful unless you are sharing it with others,» she counseled her daughter. When Mother Teresa asked who the people eating with them were, her mother uniformly responded, «Some of them are our relations, but all of them are our people.»

 

Religious Calling

Mother Teresa attended a convent-run primary school and then a state-run secondary school. As a girl, Mother Teresa sang in the local Sacred Heart choir and was often asked to sing solos. The congregation made an annual pilgrimage to the chapel of the Madonna of Letnice atop Black Mountain in Skopje, and it was on one such trip at the age of 12 that Mother Teresa first felt a calling to a religious life. Six years later, in 1928, an 18-year-old Agnes Bojaxhiu decided to become a nun and set off for Ireland to join the Loreto Sisters of Dublin. It was there that she took the name Sister Mary Teresa after Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.

A year later, Mother Teresa traveled on to Darjeeling, India for the novitiate period; in May 1931, Mother Teresa made her First Profession of Vows. Afterward she was sent to Calcutta, where she was assigned to teach at Saint Mary’s High School for Girls, a school run by the Loreto Sisters and dedicated to teaching girls from the city’s poorest Bengali families. Mother Teresa learned to speak both Bengali and Hindi fluently as she taught geography and history and dedicated herself to alleviating the girls’ poverty through education.

On May 24, 1937, she took her Final Profession of Vows to a life of poverty, chastity and obedience. As was the custom for Loreto nuns, she took on the title of «mother» upon making her final vows and thus became known as Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa continued to teach at Saint Mary’s, and in 1944 she became the school’s principal. Through her kindness, generosity and unfailing commitment to her students’ education, she sought to lead them to a life of devotion to Christ. «Give me the strength to be ever the light of their lives, so that I may lead them at last to you,» she wrote in prayer.

A New Calling

However, on September 10, 1946, Mother Teresa experienced a second calling that would forever transform her life. She was riding a train from Calcutta to the Himalayan foothills for a retreat when Christ spoke to her and told her to abandon teaching to work in the slums of Calcutta aiding the city’s poorest and sickest people. «I want Indian Nuns, Missionaries of Charity, who would be my fire of love amongst the poor, the sick, the dying and the little children,» she heard Christ say to her on the train that day. «You are I know the most incapable person—weak and sinful but just because you are that—I want to use You for My glory. Wilt thou refuse?»

Since Mother Teresa had taken a vow of obedience, she could not leave her convent without official permission. After nearly a year and a half of lobbying, in January 1948 she finally received approval from the local Archbishop Ferdinand Périer to pursue this new calling. That August, wearing the blue and white sari that she would always wear in public for the rest of her life, she left the Loreto convent and wandered out into the city. After six months of basic medical training, she voyaged for the first time into Calcutta’s slums with no more specific goal than to aid «the unwanted, the unloved, the uncared for.»

The Missionaries of Charity

Mother Teresa quickly translated this somewhat vague calling into concrete actions to help the city’s poor. She began an open-air school and established a home for the dying destitute in a dilapidated building she convinced the city government to donate to her cause. In October 1950, she won canonical recognition for a new congregation, the Missionaries of Charity, which she founded with only 12 members—most of them former teachers or pupils from St. Mary’s School.

As the ranks of her congregation swelled and donations poured in from around India and across the globe, the scope of Mother Teresa’s charitable activities expanded exponentially. Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, she established a leper colony, an orphanage, a nursing home, a family clinic and a string of mobile health clinics.

In 1971, Mother Teresa traveled to New York City to open her first American-based house of charity, and in the summer of 1982, she secretly went to Beirut, Lebanon, where she crossed between Christian East Beirut and Muslim West Beirut to aid children of both faiths. In 1985, Mother Teresa returned to New York and spoke at the 40th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly. While there, she also opened Gift of Love, a home to care for those infected with HIV/AIDS.

 

International Charity and Recognition

In February 1965, Pope Paul VI bestowed the Decree of Praise upon the Missionaries of Charity, which prompted Mother Teresa to begin expanding internationally. By the time of her death in 1997, the Missionaries of Charity numbered over 4,000—in addition to thousands more lay volunteers—with 610 foundations in 123 countries on all seven continents.

The Decree of Praise was just the beginning, as Mother Teresa received various honors for her tireless and effective charity. She was awarded the Jewel of India, the highest honor bestowed on Indian civilians, as well as the now-defunct Soviet Union’s Gold Medal of the Soviet Peace Committee. And in 1979, Mother Teresa won her highest honor when she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her work «in bringing help to suffering humanity.»

Controversy

Despite this widespread praise, Mother Teresa’s life and work have not gone without criticism. In particular, she has drawn criticism for her vocal endorsement of some of the Catholic Church’s more controversial doctrines, such as opposition to contraception and abortion. «I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion,» Mother Teresa said in her 1979 Nobel lecture.

In 1995, she publicly advocated a «no» vote in the Irish referendum to end the country’s constitutional ban on divorce and remarriage. The most scathing criticism of Mother Teresa can be found in Christopher Hitchens’ book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, in which Hitchens argued that Mother Teresa glorified poverty for her own ends and provided a justification for the preservation of institutions and beliefs that sustained widespread poverty.

Death and Legacy

After several years of deteriorating health in which she suffered from heart, lung and kidney problems, Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997 at the age of 87. Since her death, Mother Teresa has remained in the public spotlight. In particular, the publication of her private correspondence in 2003 caused a wholesale re-evaluation of her life by revealing the crisis of faith she suffered for most of the last 50 years of her life.

In one despairing letter to a confidant, she wrote, «Where is my Faith—even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness—My God—how painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith—I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.» While such revelations are shocking considering her public image of perfect faith, they have also made Mother Teresa a more relatable and human figure to all those who experience doubt in their beliefs.

For her unwavering commitment to aiding those most in need, Mother Teresa stands out as one of the greatest humanitarians of the 20th century. She combined profound empathy and a fervent commitment to her cause with incredible organizational and managerial skills that allowed her to develop a vast and effective international organization of missionaries to help impoverished citizens all across the globe.

However, despite the enormous scale of her charitable activities and the millions of lives she touched, to her dying day she held only the most humble conception of her own achievements. Summing up her life in characteristically self-effacing fashion, Mother Teresa said, «By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.»

Jamie Oliver

Biography 1:

By the time he was 31, Jamie Oliver had sold millions of cookery books, conquered the US market, opened a restaurant, starred in several TV shows and revolutionised UK school dinners.

Responsible for making cooking cool, the energetic man, whose cookbooks are bestsellers worldwide, has been voted the sexiest chef on television and his cookery shows are broadcast in over 50 countries. He is the self-proclaimed ambassador for British cooking whose diners include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Charles.

Born in 1975, Jamie developed his fascination for all things food at his parents’ restaurant in Essex. After leaving school he attended the Westminster Catering College, before travelling to France to further his skills. On his return he landed the job of head pastry chef for Antonio Carluccio at The Neal Street Restaurant. Jamie’s next move was to the River Café, where he stayed for three and a half years, fine-tuning his skills under the guidance of Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers.

Spotted in the background of a documentary about the restaurant, it wasn’t long before the editors of the show focused in more and more on this cheeky young chef. The day after the programme was broadcast, Jamie received calls from five different production companies all eager to work with him. He soon became the hottest celebrity chef on the circuit and his programme, ‘The Naked Chef’, revolutionised TV cooking shows – even though he was fully clothed!

His cheeky manner and down to earth personality have won him legions of fans around the world. Indeed, he is responsible for re-introducing the word ‘pukka’ to the wider world. Jamie is also a chef that likes to take risks – he set up ‘Fifteen Foundation’, a charity which trains unemployed young adults to become professional chefs, and gambled over a million pounds of his own money on its success. The accompanying TV series and book were both huge successes.

His efforts to improve school meals saw him take on the British Government as well as the unenviable task of convincing schoolchildren to give up fast food. Again, the success of Jamie’s mission was huge and major steps were taken to improve the quality and variety of food on offer in schools.

Jamie’s energy and lovable character made him advertising gold for Sainsbury’s, which signed an endorsement deal worth £2 million a year with the chef in 2000, making him the face of the supermarket. Over the years, he has appeared in numerous campaigns urging the nation to eat healthy by taking advantage of the chain’s grocery and food options.

The same year also saw the chef marry former model Juliette Norton who he had met in 1993. The couple started a family in March 2002 with the birth of Poppy Honey Oliver, who was joined in April the next year by Daisy Boo Oliver. After nearly six years, the couple expanded their brood with Petal Blossom Rainbow Oliver, who was born in April 2009, and Buddy Bear Maurice Oliver, who was welcomed into the family in September 2010.

Jamie’s career as an author received a boost in 2010 when it was revealed that he had reached a new milestone that made him the biggest-selling author in the country after Harry Potter creator JK Rowling. UK sales of his cookbooks exceeded the £100 million mark in November, buoyed by his latest release – Jamie’s 30-Minute Meals.

Jamie continues to make his own brand of cookery shows. Now a multi-millionaire, Jamie and his wife Jools live in London’s fashionable Primrose Hill with their children.

Biography 2:

Jamie Oliver,  (born May 27, 1975, Clavering, Essex, England), British chef who achieved worldwide fame with his hit television shows The Naked Chef (1999) andJamie Oliver’s Food Revolution (2010– ) and as author of a number of cookbooks with a variety of culinary themes.

Oliver’s parents were owners of a pub-restaurant in Clavering, Essex. After persistently begging the chefs to let him assist, he was allowed to work in the kitchen. At age 16 Oliver entered the Westminster Catering College before traveling to France for additional training and experience. He landed his first job in London at the Neal Street Restaurant as head pastry chef and soon began working as sous-chef at the River Café, where his talent in front of the camera was discovered during the filming of a documentary on the restaurant. He was quickly contracted by Optomen Television to host his first series, The Naked Chef, in which he demonstrated how to simplify food preparation by using basic ingredients and cooking techniques.

In addition to starring in numerous television programs—including Oliver’s Twist(2002) and several other Naked Chef series—Oliver authored a number of best-selling cookbooks and launched his own line of cookware. In 2002 he established the Fifteen Foundation, a London-based program that gave underprivileged youths the opportunity to experience careers in the culinary industry at Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant. The success of the project, chronicled in the television seriesJamie’s Kitchen, spurred Oliver’s plans to expand the program throughout the United Kingdom and overseas.

The five-week television series Jamie’s School Dinners, which aired in 2005, documented the challenges Oliver faced while training a group of school cafeteria workers to prepare new, healthier items, as well as his ability to encourage students to try the new menu. The show helped Oliver launch his overwhelmingly successful “Feed Me Better” campaign to improve the quality of meals served in Britain’s schools. Largely through his efforts, the British government agreed to increase the amount spent on each school meal. In 2007 Oliver began hosting Jamie at Home, a show that focused on urban gardening and the preparation of homegrown produce. Three years later Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution aired in the United States. The six-episode program, which chronicled his efforts to improve the eating habits of people in Huntington, West Virginia, won an Emmy Award for outstanding reality program. The show returned for a second season in 2011, set in Los Angeles. Both seasons gave special attention to providing healthy food in schools.

Mark Zuckerberg

Biography 1:

Why is Mark Zuckerberg Important?:

Mark Zuckerberg was the Harvard computer science student who along with a few friends launched the world’s most popular social networking website called Facebook in February 2004. Mark Zuckerberg also has the distinction of being the world’s youngest billionaire, which he achieved in 2008. He was named «Man of the Year» by Time magazine in 2010*. Zuckerberg currently is the chief executive and president of Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984,in White Plains, New York. His father, Edward Zuckerberg is a dentist, and his mother, Karen Zuckerberg is a psychiatrist.

Mark and his three sisters, Randi, Donna, and Arielle, were raised in Dobbs Ferry, New York, a sleepy, well-off town on the bank of the Hudson River.

The Zuckerberg family is of Jewish heritage, however, Mark Zuckerberg has stated that he is currently an atheist.

Mark Zuckerberg attended Ardsley High School, and then transferred to the Phillips Exeter Academy. He excelled in classical studies and science. By his high school graduation, Zuckerberg could read and write: French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek.

In his second year of college at Harvard University, Zuckerberg met his girlfriend and now wife, medical student Priscilla Chan. In September 2010, Zuckerberg and Chan began living together.

As of 2015, Mark Zuckerberg’s personal wealth was estimated to be $34.8 billion.

Was Mark Zuckerberg a Computer Programmer?

Yes indeed he was, Mark Zuckerberg used computers and began writing software before entering high school. He was taught the Atari BASIC Programming language in the 1990s, by his father. Edward Zuckerberg was dedicated to his son’s learning and even hired software developer David Newman to give his son private lessons.

While still in high school, Mark Zuckerberg enrolled in a graduate course in computer programming at Mercy College and wrote a software program he called «ZuckNet,» which allowed all the computers between the family home and his father’s dental office to communicate by pinging each other. The young Zuckerberg wrote a music player called the Synapse Media Player that used artificial intelligence to learn the user’s listening habits. Both Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase Synapse and hire Mark Zuckerberg, However, he turned them both down and enrolled at Harvard University in September 2002.

Harvard University

Mark Zuckerberg attended Harvard University where he studied psychology and computer science. In his sophomore year, he wrote a program he called CourseMatch, which allowed users to make class selection decisions based on the choices of other students and also to help them form study groups.

Biography 2:

Computer Programmer, Philanthropist (1984–)

QUICK FACTS

NAME Mark Zuckerberg

OCCUPATION Computer Programmer, Philanthropist

BIRTH DATE May 14, 1984 (age 31)

EDUCATION Harvard University, Phillips Exeter Academy

PLACE OF BIRTH White Plains, New York

AKA Mark Zuckerberg

FULL NAME Mark Elliot Zuckerberg

ZODIAC SIGN Taurus

Mark Zuckerberg is co-founder and CEO of the social-networking website Facebook, as well as one of the world’s youngest billionaires.

Synopsis

Born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, Mark Zuckerberg co-founded the social-networking website Facebook out of his college dorm room. He left Harvard after his sophomore year to concentrate on the site, the user base of which has grown to more than 250 million people, making Zuckerberg a billionaire. The birth of Facebook was recently portrayed in the film The Social Network.

Early Life

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, into a comfortable, well-educated family, and raised in the nearby village of Dobbs Ferry. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, ran a dental practice attached to the family’s home. His mother, Karen, worked as a psychiatrist before the birth of the couple’s four children—Mark, Randi, Donna and Arielle.

Zuckerberg developed an interest in computers at an early age; when he was about 12, he used Atari BASIC to create a messaging program he named «Zucknet.» His father used the program in his dental office, so that the receptionist could inform him of a new patient without yelling across the room. The family also used Zucknet to communicate within the house. Together with his friends, he also created computer games just for fun. «I had a bunch of friends who were artists,» he said. «They’d come over, draw stuff, and I’d build a game out of it.»

To keep up with Mark’s burgeoning interest in computers, his parents hired private computer tutor David Newman to come to the house once a week and work with Mark. Newman later told reporters that it was hard to stay ahead of the prodigy, who began taking graduate courses at nearby Mercy College around this same time.

Zuckerberg later studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, an exclusive preparatory school in New Hampshire. There he showed talent in fencing, becoming the captain of the school’s team. He also excelled in literature, earning a diploma in classics. Yet Zuckerberg remained fascinated by computers, and continued to work on developing new programs. While still in high school, he created an early version of the music software Pandora, which he called Synapse. Several companies—including AOL and Microsoft—expressed an interest in buying the software, and hiring the teenager before graduation. He declined the offers.

Time at Harvard

After graduating from Exeter in 2002, Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard University. By his sophomore year at the ivy league institution, he had developed a reputation as the go-to software developer on campus. It was at that time that he built a program called CourseMatch, which helped students choose their classes based on the course selections of other users. He also invented Facemash, which compared the pictures of two students on campus and allowed users to vote on which one was more attractive. The program became wildly popular, but was later shut down by the school administration after it was deemed inappropriate.

Based on the buzz of his previous projects, three of his fellow students—Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss—sought him out to work on an idea for a social networking site they called Harvard Connection. This site was designed to use information from Harvard’s student networks in order to create a dating site for the Harvard elite. Zuckerberg agreed to help with the project, but soon dropped out to work on his own social networking site with friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin.

Zuckerberg and his friends created a site that allowed users to create their own profiles, upload photos, and communicate with other users. The group ran the site—first called The Facebook—out of a dorm room at Harvard until June 2004. After his sophomore year, Zuckerberg dropped out of college to devote himself to Facebook full time, moving the company to Palo Alto, California. By the end of 2004, Facebook had 1 million users.

The Rise of Facebook

In 2005, Zuckerberg’s enterprise received a huge boost from the venture capital firm Accel Partners. Accel invested $12.7 million into the network, which at the time was open only to ivy league students. Zuckerberg’s company then granted access to other colleges, high school and international schools, pushing the site’s membership to more than 5.5 million users by December 2005. The site then began attracting the interest of other companies, who wanted to advertise with the popular social hub. Not wanting to sell out, Zuckerberg turned down offers from companies such as Yahoo! and MTV Networks. Instead, he focused on expanding the site, opening up his project to outside developers and adding more features.

Zuckerberg seemed to be going nowhere but up, however in 2006, the business mogul faced his first big hurdle. The creators of Harvard Connection claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea, and insisted the software developer needed to pay for their business losses. Zuckerberg maintained that the ideas were based on two very different types of social networks but, after lawyers searched Zuckerberg’s records, incriminating Instant Messages revealed that Zuckerberg may have intentionally stolen the intellectual property of Harvard Connection and offered Facebook users’ private information to his friends.

Zuckerberg later apologized for the incriminating messages, saying he regretted them. «If you’re going to go on to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right?» he said in an interview with The New Yorker. «I think I’ve grown and learned a lot.»

Although an initial settlement of $65 million was reached between the two parties, the legal dispute over the matter continued well into 2011, after Narendra and the Winklevosses claimed they were misled in regards to the value of their stock.

Zuckerberg faced yet another personal challenge when the 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, by writer Ben Mezrich, hit stores. Mezrich was heavily criticized for his re-telling of Zuckerberg’s story, which used invented scenes, re-imagined dialogue and fictional characters. Regardless of how true-to-life the story was, Mezrich managed to sell the rights of the tale to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, and the critically acclaimed film The Social Network received eight Academy Award nominations.

Zuckerberg objected strongly to the film’s narrative, and later told a reporter at The New Yorker that many of the details in the film were inaccurate. For example, Zuckerberg has been dating longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan, a Chinese-American medical student he met at Harvard, since 2003. He also said he never had interest in joining any of the final clubs. «It’s interesting what stuff they focused on getting right; like, every single shirt and fleece that I had in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece that I own,» Zuckerberg told a reporter at a start-up conference in 2010. «So there’s all this stuff that they got wrong and a bunch of random details that they got right.»

Yet Zuckerberg and Facebook continued to succeed, in spite of the criticism. Time magazine named him Person of the Year in 2010, and Vanity Fair placed him at the top of their New Establishment list. Forbes also ranked Zuckerberg at No. 35—beating out Apple CEO Steve Jobs—on its «400» list, estimating his net worth to be $6.9 billion.

Philanthropic Causes

Since amassing his sizeable fortune, Zuckerberg has used his millions to fund a variety of philanthropic causes. The most notable examples came in 2010. In September of that year, he donated $100 million to save the failing Newark Public Schools system in New Jersey. Then, in December 2010, Zuckerberg signed the «Giving Pledge», promising to donate at least 50 percent of his wealth to charity over the course of his lifetime. Other Giving Pledge members include Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and George Lucas. After his donation, Zuckerberg called on other young, wealthy entrepreneurs to follow suit. «With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts,» he said.

Going Public

Zuckerberg made two major life changes in May 2012. Facebook had its initial public offering, which raised $16 billion, making it the biggest internet IPO in history. How Zuckerberg’s company will handle this influx of cash remains to be seen. But Zuckerberg may be looking at more acquisitions. He personally negotiated the company deal to buy Instragram the previous month.

After the initial success of the IPO, the Facebook stock price dropped somewhat in the early days of trading. But Zuckerberg is expected to weather any ups and downs in his company’s market performance. He holds more than a quarter of its stock and retains 57 percent control of the voting shares.

On May 19, 2012—a day after the IPO—Zuckerberg wed his longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan. About 100 people gathered at the couple’s Palo Alto, California home. The guests thought they were there to celebrate Chan’s graduation from medical school, but instead they witnessed Zuckerberg and Chan exchange vows.

In May 2013, Facebook made the Fortune 500 list for the first time—making Zuckerberg, at the age of 28, the youngest CEO on the list.

Malala Yousafzai

Biography 1:

Malala Yousafzai (born July 12, 1997) is a Pakistani student and education activist. She is known for her activism for girls’ and women’s rights, especially for being allowed to go to school. Yousafzai is originally from the town of Mingora in the Swat District. She was a victim of a gunshot attack in October 2012. Yousafzai is the youngest person to have won the Nobel Peace Prize. She won the prize in October 2014. She was 17.

In 2009, at age 11, many people got to know her through a weblog of the BBC News’ Urdu language service. The BBC published translated writings about her life under Taliban rule. On 9 October 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by Atta Ullah Khan, a Taliban gunman.

She was given emergency treatment in Pakistan and then moved to England for more medical treatment.

On 3 January 2013, Yousafzai was discharged from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham to continue to recover at her family’s temporary home in the West Midlands. She had two five-hour long operations on 2 February 2013. She had a titanium plate put over the hole in her skull and a cochlear implant so she could hear again.

In May 2012 David Trumble, an award-winning artist, made a cartoon of Yousafzai as a Disney princess as part of a drawing of other feminist icons that he had made into princesses that was in the Huffington Post.

On 12 July 2013, at age 16, she made a speech at headquarters of the United Nations, stressing the right to education for all and for human rights and peace and non-violence against terrorism and intolerance citing the proverb: «the pen is mightier than the sword».

She was nominated for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. She has won a lot of prizes. She is the 2013 recipient of the Sakharov Prize. She was one of the winners of Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year. Lady Gaga, who was also a winner and was on the month’s cover, said that Yousafazi should have been on November’s cover of Glamour instead of her.

On October she met President Obama, Michelle Obama, and their daughter Malia in the Oval Office.

The Taliban have said that they still want to assassinate Yousafzai.

In October 2013 a book about her life I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban was published, with her help. The book was banned in Pakistani private schools.

On 27 November 2013 Yousafazi was given the GG2 Hammer Award at the GG2 (Garavi Gujarat2) Leadership Awards 2013.

Yousafazi was chosen by TIME magazine as a candidate for 2013’s Person of the Year.

She was nominated for the World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child in 2014.

Biography 2:

Children’s Activist, Women’s Rights Activist (1997–)

QUICK FACTS

NAME Malala Yousafzai

OCCUPATION Children’s Activist, Women’s Rights Activist

BIRTH DATE July 12, 1997 (age 17)

PLACE OF BIRTH Mingora, Pakistan

AKA Gul Makai

FULL NAME Malala Yousafzai

ZODIAC SIGN Cancer

As a young girl, Malala Yousafzai defied the Taliban in Pakistan and demanded that girls be allowed to receive an education. She was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012, but survived.

QUOTES

“If I win Nobel Peace Prize, it would be a great opportunity for me, but if I don’t get it, it’s not important because my goal is not to get Nobel Peace Prize, my goal is to get peace and my goal is to see the education of every child.”

—Malala Yousafzai

Synopsis

Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997, in Mingora, Pakistan. As a child, she became an advocate for girls’ education, which resulted in the Taliban issuing a death threat against her. On October 9, 2012, a gunman shot Malala when she was traveling home from school. She survived, and has continued to speak out on the importance of education. She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2013. In  2014,  she was nominated again and won, becoming the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Early Life

On July 12, 1997, Malala Yousafzai was born in Mingora, Pakistan, located in the country’s Swat Valley. For the first few years of her life, her hometown remained a popular tourist spot that was known for its summer festivals. However, the area began to change as the Taliban tried to take control.

Initial Activism

Yousafzai attended a school that her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, had founded. After the Taliban began attacking girls’ schools in Swat, Malala gave a speech in Peshawar, Pakistan, in September 2008. The title of her talk was, «How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?»

In early 2009, Yousafzai began blogging for the BBC about living under the Taliban’s threats to deny her an education. In order to hide her identity, she used the name Gul Makai. However, she was revealed to be the BBC blogger in December of that year.

With a growing public platform, Yousafzai continued to speak out about her right, and the right of all women, to an education. Her activism resulted in a nomination for the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2011. That same year, she was awarded Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize.

Targeted by the Taliban

When she was 14, Malala and her family learned that the Taliban had issued a death threat against her. Though Malala was frightened for the safety of her father—an anti-Taliban activist—she and her family initially felt that the fundamentalist group would not actually harm a child.

On October 9, 2012, on her way home from school, a man boarded the bus Malala was riding in and demanded to know which girl was Malala. When her friends looked toward Malala, her location was given away. The gunman fired at her, hitting Malala in the left side of her head; the bullet then traveled down her neck. Two other girls were also injured in the attack.

The shooting left Malala in critical condition, so she was flown to a military hospital in Peshawar. A portion of her skull was removed to treat her swelling brain. To receive further care, she was transferred to Birmingham, England.

After the Attack

Once she was in the United Kingdom, Yousafzai was taken out of a medically induced coma. Though she would require multiple surgeries—including repair of a facial nerve to fix the paralyzed left side of her face—she had suffered no major brain damage. In March 2013, she was able to begin attending school in Birmingham.

The shooting resulted in a massive outpouring of support for Yousafzai, which continued during her recovery. She gave a speech at the United Nations on her 16th birthday, in 2013. She has also written an autobiography, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, which was released in October 2013. Unfortunately, the Taliban still considers Yousafzai a target.

Despite the Taliban’s threats, Yousafzai remains a staunch advocate for the power of education. On October 10, 2013, in acknowledgement of her work, the European Parliament awarded Yousafzai the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. That same year, she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. She didn’t win the prize, but was named a nominee again in March 2014. In August of the same year, Leanin.Org held a live chat on Facebook with Sheryl Sandberg and Yousafzai about the importance of education for girls around the world. She talked about her story, her inspiration and family, her plans for the future and advocacy, and she answered a variety of inquiries from the social network’s users.

In October 2014, Yousafzai received the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi. At age 17, she became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In congratulating Yousafzai, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said: “She is (the) pride of Pakistan, she has made her countrymen proud. Her achievement is unparalleled and unequaled. Girls and boys of the world should take lead from her struggle and commitment.» U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described her as «a brave and gentle advocate of peace who through the simple act of going to school became a global teacher.”

Biography 3:

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani school pupil and spokesperson for women’s right to education. In retaliation for her high profile campaign for education and criticism of the Taliban, she was shot in the head at close range by a Taliban gunman. She survived the gunshot wound and has become a leading spokesperson for human rights, education and women’s rights. She has received numerous peace awards, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 along with Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian children’s rights activist.

Early Life Malala

Malala was born (12 July 1997) in Mingora, the Swat District of north west Pakistan to a Sunni Muslim family. She was named Malala, which means ‘grief stricken’ after a famous female Pashun poet and warrior from Afghanistan.

Her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai is a poet, and runs a chain of public schools. He is a leading educational advocate himself. In 2009, she began writing an anonymous blog for the BBC expressing her views on education and life under the threat of the Taliban taking over her valley. It was her father who suggested his own daughter to the BBC. She wrote under the byline “Gul Makai”

During this period, the Taliban’s military hold on the area intensified. At times, Malala reported hearing artillery from the advancing Taliban forces. As the Taliban took control of the area they issued edicts banning television, banning music, and banning women from going shopping and limiting women’s education. Many girls schools were blown up and as a consequence pupils stayed at home, scared of possible reprisals from the Taliban. However, for a time, there was a brief respite when the Taliban stated girls could receive primary education, if they wore Burkhas. But, a climate of fear prevailed and Malala and her father began to receive death threats for their outspoken views. As a consequence, Malala and her father began to fear for their safety. Her father once considered moving Malala outside of Swat to a boarding school, but Malala didn’t want to move.

” I don’t know why, but hearing I was being targeted did not worry me. It seemed to me that everybody knows they will die one day.” I am Malala p.188

When her father suggested they stop their campaigns for human rights, Malala replied

“How can we do that? You were the one who said that if we believe in something greater than our lives, then our voices will only multiply ever if we are dead. We can’t disown our campaign!’ I am Malala p.188

People were asking me to speak at events. How could I refuse saying there was a security problem? We couldn’t do that, especially not as proud Pashtuns. My father always said that heroism is in the Pastun DNA. I am Malala p.180

After the BBC blog ended, Malala featured in a documentary made by New York Times reporter Adam B.Ellick. She also received greater international coverage and her identity about writing the BBC blog was revealed. In 2011, she received Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize and she was nominated by Archbishop Desmond Tutu for the International Children’s Peace Prize. Her increased profile and strident criticism of the Taliban caused Taliban leaders to meet, and in 2012, they voted to kill her.

On 9 October, 2012, a masked gunman entered her school bus and asked “Which one of you is Malala? Speak up, otherwise I will shoot at you all.”

Malala was identified and she was shot with a single bullet which went through her head, neck and shoulder. Two other girls were also injured, though not as badly as Malala.

Malala survived the initial shooting, but was in a critical condition. Her father was convinced she would die and told the village to prepare for her funeral. Her critical organs were failing and she developed an infection. In a coma, she was moved to a hospital in Rwalpindi. Later on the 15 October she was moved to Birmingham in the United Kingdom for further treatment at a specialist hospital for treating military injuries. A couple of days later, she came out of a coma and responded well to treatment. She was discharged on January 3, 2013 and moved with her family to a temporary home in the West Midlands. Writing in her book “I am Malala” she writes.

“It was a miracle I was alive” (p.237)

She also writes about her lack of bitterness or desire for revenge.

“My only regret was that I hadn’t had a chance to speak to them before they shot me. Now they’d never hear what I had to say. I didn’t even think a single bad thought about the man who shot me – I had no thoughts of revenge – I just wanted to go back to Swat. I wanted to go home” I am Malala p.237

Her assassination received worldwide condemnation and protests across Pakistan. Over 2 million people signed the Right to Education campaign. The petition helped the ratification of Pakistan’s first right to education bill in Pakistan.

Ehsanullah Ehsan, chief spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that Yousafzai was a symbol of the infidels and obscenity. However, other Islamic clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwa against the Taliban leaders and said there was no religious justification for shooting a schoolgirl.

On 15 October, UN Special Envoy for global education, Gordon Brown, visited Malala whilst she was in hospital and launched a petition in her name – ‘In support for what Malala fought for.’

Using the slogan “I am Malala” the petition contains three demands

• We call on Pakistan to agree to a plan to deliver education for every child.
• We call on all countries to outlaw discrimination against girls.
• We call on international organizations to ensure the world’s 61 million out-of-school children are in education by the end of 2015.

I am Malala – petition

On 12 July 2013, she spoke at the United Nations to a group of 500 youths calling for worldwide access to education.

“I am not against anyone, neither am I here to speak in terms of personal revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorist group. I’m here to speak up for the right of education for every child. I want education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all terrorists and extremists.”

Her global fame and admiration in the West has caused something of a backlash in Pakistan. Many in Pakistan fear the West’s support of Malala is hypocritical given the US drone strikes on Pakistan and Afghanistan. Also, her plight highlights the unchecked militancy of the Taliban, which is a problem for Pakistan. Some in Pakistan fear Malala is promoting a Western agenda. However, on her part, Malala is dismayed by conspiracy theories in her own country and is keen to portray her native Pakistan in a good light. Her BBC blog expresses such a sentiment.

…I immediately saw images of Pakistanis fill my screen. Not the usual rock hurling Pakistanis, irrationally shouting amidst flaming tyres, but gentle candle-lighting, beautiful Pakistanis with words of love and peace on their lips. It was UN International day of the Girl Child and the BBC chose to illustrate this with a story of what they termed a National Awakening in Pakistan, following the shooting of 14-year-old school girl, Malala Yousafzai. I was delighted at the apparent 24 hour flip from a narrative of “those Pakistanis are so barbaric they shoot their own school girls” to one of hope, resilience, and a more accurate reflection of the millions who reject such an act. (5 February, 2013)

“Today we all know education is our basic right. Not just in the West; Islam too has given us this right. Islam says every girl and everybody should go to school. In the Quran it is written, God wants us to have knowledge.” I am Malala p.263

“One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education first.”

– UN Speech, July 12, 2013

“I love my God. I thank my Allah. I talk to him all day. He is the greatest. By giving me this height to reach people, he has also given me great responsibilities. Peace in every home, every street, every village, every country – this is my dream. Education for every boy and every girl in the world. To sit down on a chair and read my books with all my friends at school is my right right. To see each and every human being with a smile of happiness is my wish. I am Malala p 265

“I am Malala, My world has changed by I have not.” p.265

In October, 2014, the Nobel committee awarded Malala the Nobel Peace Prize, the said:

“Despite her youth, Malala Yousafzai has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education, and has shown by example that children and young people, too, can contribute to improving their own situations.

“This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. Through her heroic struggle she has become a leading spokesperson for girls’ rights to education.”

In 2014 Yousafazi has won Nobel Peace Prize and will be given a Doctor of Civil Law degree by the University of King’s College.

Martin Luther King Jr

Biography 1:

• Occupation: Civil Rights Leader
• Born: January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, GA
• Died: April 4, 1968 in Memphis, TN
• Best known for: Advancing the Civil Rights Movement and his «I Have a Dream» speech

Biography:

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a civil rights activist in the 1950s and 1960s. He led non-violent protests to fight for the rights of all people including African Americans. He hoped that America and the world could become a colorblind society where race would not impact a person’s civil rights. He is considered one of the great orators of modern times, and his speeches still inspire many to this day.

Where did Martin grow up?

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, GA on January 15, 1929. He went to Booker T. Washington High School. He was so smart that he skipped two grades in high school. He started his college education at Morehouse College at the young age of fifteen. After getting his degree in sociology from Morehouse, Martin got a divinity degree from Crozer Seminary and then got his doctor’s degree in theology from Boston University.

Martin’s dad was a preacher which inspired Martin to pursue the ministry. He had a younger brother and an older sister. In 1953 he married Coretta Scott. Later, they would have four children including Yolanda, Martin, Dexter, and Bernice.

How did he get involved in civil rights?

In his first major civil rights action, Martin Luther King, Jr. led the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This started when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. She was arrested and spent the night in jail. As a result, Martin helped to organize a boycott of the public transportation system in Montgomery. The boycott lasted for over a year. It was very tense at times. Martin was arrested and his house was bombed. In the end, however, Martin prevailed and segregation on the Montgomery buses came to an end.

When did King give his famous «I Have a Dream» speech?

In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. helped to organize the famous «March on Washington». Over 250,000 people attended this march in an effort to show the importance of civil rights legislation. Some of the issues the march hoped to accomplish included an end to segregation in public schools, protection from police abuse, and to get laws passed that would prevent discrimination in employment.

It was at this march where Martin gave his «I Have a Dream» speech. This speech has become one of the most famous speeches in history. The March on Washington was a great success. The Civil Rights Act was passed a year later in 1964.

How did he die?

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4. 1968 in Memphis, TN. While standing on the balcony of his hotel, he was shot by James Earl Ray.

Interesting Facts about Martin Luther King, Jr.

• King was the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
• Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a national holiday.
• At the Atlanta premier of the movie Gone with the Wind, Martin sang with his church choir.
• There are over 730 streets in the United States named after Martin Luther King, Jr.
• One of his main influences was Mohandas Gandhi who taught people to protest in a non-violent manner.
• He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
• The name on his original birth certificate is Michael King. This was a mistake, however. He was supposed to be named after his father who was named for Martin Luther, the leader of the Christian reformation movement.
• He is often referred to by his initials MLK.

Biography 2:

Martin Luther King, Jr.(January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American pastor, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.

He worked hard to make people understand that not only blacks but that all races should always be treated equally to white people. He gave speeches to encourage African Americans to protest without the need for violence. One peaceful strategy was for African Americans to have sit-ins (which is basically a place where people go to protest and don’t leave until their demands are met).

They would do this by sitting in a restaurant seat that was supposed to be only for white people. They would politely ask for some food and refuse to leave until someone gave them some. Another strategy that Martin Luther used was leading boycotts. This is where people would refuse to buy goods or services from people who did not treat white people and black people the same. Martin Luther also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his «I Have a Dream» speech.

King was active from the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 to 1956 until his murder by James Earl Ray in April 1968. King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. Hundreds of streets and a county in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor. A memorial statue on the National Mall was opened to the public in 2011.

Life

Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929. Although the name «Michael» appeared on his birth certificate, his name was later changed to Martin Luther in honor of German reformer Martin Luther.

He first began to be well known in 1955 when he led a protest against the way black people were segregated on buses. At that time they had to sit at the back of the bus, separate from white people. He soon became world famous when he told his supporters, and the people who were against equal rights, that only peaceful ways should be used to solve the problem.

After graduating from college in 1948, he decided he was not exactly the type of person to join the Baptist Church. So, he was not sure what kind of career he wanted. He considered a career in medicine and law. He rejected both and joined the Baptist Church. He studied at a theological seminary in Pennsylvania. While studying there, King learned about the non-violent methods used by Mahatma Gandhi against the British in India. King was convinced that such methods would help the civil rights movement.

He was made the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. This association was created during the boycott. He became an important leader of the boycott. King was arrested for starting a boycott. He was fined $500 with $500 more in court costs. His house was fire-bombed. Others involved with MIA were also intimidated. However, by the end of 1956, segregation had been removed in Montgomery and bus integration had been introduced. Another result of the boycott was the starting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). This organization was committed to the use of non-violence. Its motto was «Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed.» Martin Luther King was elected its president.

In 1963, a civil rights march in Washington, DC happened that made King even more famous. The march was a major success. It was officially called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was held on August 28, 1963. The final speaker was Martin Luther King, Jr. He made his legendary ‘I have a Dream’ speech which was heard throughout the world. It told people about the civil rights movement in America. In 1964, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The year 1964 was also when the Civil Rights Act was passed. This act banned many kinds of discrimination against black people. King then moved on to a bill that would make sure that black Americans would be allowed to vote. This led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It made it against the law to stop somebody from voting because of their race.

After this, he continued to work with many others to fight against poverty and the Vietnam War.

Assassination

King had clearly made enemies in his rise to fame. The Ku Klux Klan did what they could to hurt his reputation, this was especially in the South. Even the FBI kept a close eye on him. On the evening of April 4, 1968, at 6:01 pm, while King was standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was preparing to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, a rifle shot rang out. A bullet entered through his right cheek, and travelled down his neck, severing the jugular vein and major arteries in the process before lodging in his shoulder. Unconscious, he fell violently backwards onto the balcony. The unconscious King was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where doctors opened his chest and performed manual heart massage. He never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. According to Taylor Branch, King’s autopsy revealed that though he was only 39 years old, he had the heart of a 60 year old man. His death led to riots in many cities. In March 1969, James Earl Ray was found guilty of killing King. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. James Earl Ray died in 1998, his brother having disconnected life support he was attached to since February 11.

Legacy

In 1986, America created a national holiday. It is commonly known as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, in his honor. It is celebrated on the third Monday of the month of January. This is around the time of his birthday. The holiday was created because people had campaigned for this to happen, including singer Stevie Wonder. He wrote a text for the campaign.

Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize and his speech goes on to other people who faced racism. He also gained all rights for blacks. He made African American lives much easier to live.

Sir Ken Robinson

Bio
“If there was a moment when our crisis in education hit critical mass it may well have been the date Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk went up on YouTube. In just 19 minutes his wry but eviscerating presentation gave voice to what so many of us are living through: our schools are failing to recognize creativity; we’re failing to prepare the next generation for the challenges that lie ahead.” – VANITY FAIR

Sir Ken Robinson, PhD is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources in education and in business. He is also one of the world’s leading speakers on these topics, with a profound impact on audiences everywhere. The videos of his famous 2006 and 2010 talks to the prestigious TED Conference have been viewed more than 25 million times and seen by an estimated 250 million people in over 150 countries. His 2006 talk is the most viewed in TED’s history. In 2011 he was listed as “one of the world’s elite thinkers on creativity and innovation” by Fast Company magazine, and was ranked among the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top business thought leaders.

Sir Ken works with governments and educations systems in Europe, Asia and the USA, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies and some of the world’s leading cultural organizations. In 1998, he led a national commission on creativity, education and the economy for the UK Government. All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (The Robinson Report) was published to wide acclaim in 1999. He was the central figure in developing a strategy for creative and economic development as part of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, working with the ministers for training, education enterprise and culture. The resulting blueprint for change, Unlocking Creativity, was adopted by politicians of all parties and by business, education and cultural leaders across the Province. He was one of four international advisors to the Singapore Government for its strategy to become the creative hub of South East Asia.

For twelve years, he was professor of education at the University of Warwick in the UK and is now professor emeritus. He has received honorary degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design, the Open University and the Central School of Speech and Drama; Birmingham City University, the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and Oklahoma State University. He was been honored with the Athena Award of the Rhode Island School of Design for services to the arts and education; the Peabody Medal for contributions to the arts and culture in the United States, the Arthur C. Clarke Imagination Award, the Gordon Parks Award for achievements in education and the Benjamin Franklin Medal of the Royal Society of Arts for outstanding contributions to cultural relations between the United Kingdom and the United States. In 2005, he was named as one of Time/Fortune/CNN’s ‘Principal Voices’. In 2003, he received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for his services to the arts.

His 2009 book The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything is a New York Times best seller and has been translated into twenty-one languages. A 10th anniversary edition of his classic work on creativity and innovation, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative was published in 2011. His latest book, Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life, will be published by Viking in May 2013. Sir Ken was born in Liverpool, UK. He is married to Therese (Lady) Robinson. They have two children, James and Kate, and now live in Los Angeles, California.