I Came Across: October 2014

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Devendra Fadnavis

Born: 22 July 1970.
Devendra Fadnavis will become Maharashtra's 18th Chief Minister and the fourth from Vidarbha and BJP's first.
He is the current President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Maharashtra Pradesh and an MLA from Nagpur since 1999.
He is a strong proponent of a separate Vidarbha state.
He joined the BJP as a ward President of its youth wing. He became the youngest municipal corporator of the Nagpur Municipal Corporation at the age of 21.
He was the second youngest mayor elected in India, when he served as the Mayor of Nagpur at the age of 27 in 1997. He is also the only person to be re-elected as the Mayor in Council in Maharashtra.
He holds a Graduate Degree in Law from Nagpur University, a Post Graduate Degree in Business Management and a Diploma in Methods and Techniques of Project Management from D.S.E. Berlin.
www.devendrafadnavis.in

Manohar Lal Khattar

Manohar Lal Khattar (born 5 May 1954) was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Haryana after BJP's win in the Haryana Legislative Assembly election, 2014.
He represents Karnal constituency in Haryana Legislative Assembly.
He was appointed chairman of the BJP’s Haryana election committee for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
He was a former RSS pracharak. He joined the RSS in 1980, and has spent nearly 35 years as an active pracharak. He joined the BJP two decades ago.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Amartya Sen

Amartya Kumar Sen (born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States.
He is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University and was until 2004 the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is also Senior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Earlier on he was Professor of Economics at Jadavpur University Calcutta, the Delhi School of Economics, and the London School of Economics, and Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University. He serves as the chancellor of Nalanda University.
He is also known for being one of the strongest champions of rationalism, secularism and egalitarianism in India, and has condemned the unfortunate ghettoization of Ambedkar as a Dalit leader.
His research has ranged over social choice theory, economic theory, ethics and political philosophy, welfare economics, theory of measurement, decision theory, development economics, public health, and gender studies. Amartya Sen’s books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and include Choice of Techniques (1960), Growth Economics (1970), Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970), Choice, Welfare and Measurement (1982), Commodities and Capabilities (1987), The Standard of Living (1987), Development as Freedom (1999), Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (2006), The Idea of Justice (2009), and (jointly with Jean Dreze) An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions (2013).
He was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1998 "for his contributions to welfare economics".
Amartya Sen’s awards include Bharat Ratna (India); Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur (France); the National Humanities Medal (USA); Ordem do Merito Cientifico (Brazil); Honorary Companion of Honour (UK); Aztec Eagle (Mexico); Edinburgh Medal (UK); the George Marshall Award (USA); the Eisenhauer Medal (USA); and the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Kaushik Basu

Kaushik Basu (born 9 January 1952) is an Indian economist and academic who is Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist of the World Bank.
He is on leave from Cornell University where he is the C. Marks Professor of International Studies and Professor of Economics. Prior to that he was the Chairman of the Department of Economics and director, Center for Analytic Economics at Cornell University.
Till July 2012 he served as the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. He is also the Jury Chair for the Infosys Prize 2013 for the discipline of Social Sciences.
He is currently (the fourth) President of the Human Development and Capabilities Association, which was founded by Amartya Sen. He has held advisory posts with the ILO, the World Bank, the Reserve Bank of India and was, for several years, member of the steering committee of the Expert Group of Development Issues set up by the Swedish Government. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Exim Bank of India.
He was awarded Padma Bhushan by The Government of India, 2008.
www.kaushikbasu.org

C. Rangarajan

Chakravarthi Rangarajan (born 1932) is an Indian economist and a distinguished former Member of Parliament and Ex-Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
He is the former Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, he resigned the day the UPA went out of power.
He is also the Chairman of the Madras School of Economics, President of the Indian Statistical Institute and the Founding Chairman of the CR Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science.

P Kesava Menon

Puliyakot Keshava Menon

P Kesava Menon (1917 – October 22, 1979) was a mathematician best known as Director of the Indian Joint Cipher Bureau.
His sudden demise ended active research in the areas of number theory, combinatorics, algebra and cryptography.
He was appointed lecturer at the Annamalai University, where he served for two years, before joining the staff of Madras Christian College again as a professor and warden of Seliyur Hall.
He was devoted to his research work along with teaching, and, in 1948, he submitted his dissertation on "Contributions to the theory of numbers" for which he was conferred the highest and rarest degree of Doctor of Science (DSc).
He theorized and published the classical inequality theory, which is today known as "Kesava Menon's classical inequality theorem"^.
He partnered with the renowned mathematician Ramanujan, on the number theory, as noted here in the Journal of the London Mathematical Society.

Eswar Prasad

Eswar Prasad holds the New Century Chair in International Economics. He is the Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy at Cornell University and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
He began his studies in economics at the University of Madras (B.A., 1985), and continued at Brown University (M.A., 1986) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D., 1992).
He is a former Chief of the Financial Studies Division in the International Monetary Fund’s Research Department and was also the head of the IMF’s China division. He was the founding editor of the quarterly IMF Research Bulletin.
His research covers many areas including labor economics, business cycles, and open economy macroeconomics.
In his latest book, The Dollar Trap (2014), Prasad examines the U.S. dollar's faltering dominance in the world economy following the global financial crisis.

Shankar Acharya

Dr. Shankar Acharya (born October, 1945) is one of India’s leading policy economists.
He is currently Member Board of Governors and Honorary Professor at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). He is also the Non-Executive Part-time Chairman of the Board of Directors of Kotak Mahindra Bank.
As Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India (1993-2001) he was deeply involved in the economic reforms of the 1990s. He also served on the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), 1997-2000, and as a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (2001-2003) and Member, Twelfth Finance Commission (2004). Earlier, 1971-82, he worked in the World Bank, where he led the World Development Report team for 1979 and was Research Adviser to the World Bank, 1979-82. He was Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, 1985-90.
Dr. Acharya has a B.A. (First class honours) from Oxford University (1967) and a Ph. D. from Harvard University (1972).
He has published a number of books and numerous scholarly papers and contributed chapters of several books, mainly on topics in macroeconomic policy, growth, international economics and public finance.
He also writes a regular column on economic/financial issues in the Business Standard and is an occasional consultant to international institutions.

T. N. Srinivasan

Thirukodikaval Nilakanta Srinivasan (born March 27, 1933) is an Indian economist who since 1980 has taught and worked in the United States.
He is the Emeritus Samuel C. Park, Jr. Professor of Economics at Yale University. He was formerly chairman of the department of economics. He was a special adviser to the Development Research Center at the World Bank from 1977 to 1980, and has taught at numerous academic institutions over the past four decades, including MIT, Stanford University, and the Indian Statistical Institute.
He earned his Ph.D. in Economics (1962) from Yale University, M.A. in Mathematics (1954) from University of Madras, India and B.A. (Honors) Mathematics 1953 from University of Madras, India. He did his Professional Training in Statistics (1953-1955) at Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta.
He is visiting fellow at the Center for Research on Economic Development and Policy Reform, Stanford University; fellow at the Econometric Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and American Philosophical Society; and a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences of USA.
He has authored a prolific collection of books and articles on econometrics, world trade, and developing country economics.
In 2007, he received a Padma Bhushan decoration from the President of India for his contributions to Literature and Education.

Bibek Debroy

Bibek Debroy (born 25 January 1955) is an Indian economist.
Since March 2007, he has been professor at Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He has also been Visiting Honorary Senior Research Fellow for Institute for South Asian Studies in National University of Singapore from May 2009.

He was educated at the Presidency College (Calcutta), the Delhi School of Economics and the Trinity College (Cambridge).
He was Consultant to the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Govt. of India. He served as the Secretary General of PHDCCI. He has also worked as Director for a project "LARGE" (Legal Adjustments and Reforms for Globalising the Economy), set up by the Finance Ministry and UNDP for examining legal reforms in the country.
He has also authored several books, papers and popular articles, and continues to be the Consulting Editor of some of the most prominent financial newspapers in the country.

Arvind Panagariya

Born: September 30, 1952, India.
Arvind Panagariya is the Professor of Indian Political Economy in the Department of International and Public Affairs and of Economics.
He holds a BA from Rajasthan University (1971) and a PhD in Economics from Princeton University (1978).
He was formerly a professor of economics and codirector of the Center for International and Public Affairs at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the chief economist of the Asian Development Bank. He has also advised the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and UNCTAD in various capacities.
He has written or edited more than a half-dozen books, including The Economics of Preferential Trade Agreements with Jagdish Bhagwati (1996); The Global Trading System and Developing Asia with M.G. Quibria and N. Rao (1997); and Lectures on International Trade with J. Bhagwati and T.N. Srinivasan (1998).
He is the founding editor of the Journal of Policy Reform, which he edited with Dani Rodrik (1996–2001).
He writes a monthly column in the Economic Times, India's top financial daily. He has also written guest columns in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, India Today, and Outlook.

Jagdish Bhagwati

Born: July 26, 1934, Mumbai, India.
Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati is an India-born, naturalized American economist.
He is a professor of economics and law at Columbia University.
He is notable for his researches in international trade and for his advocacy of free trade.
Bhagwati had a public academic spat over India's welfare policies with Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who was influential in the UPA government. While both men agree on the need for social spending and economic growth to fight poverty, Bhagwati accuses Sen of not backing reforms needed to stimulate growth, including in tax, labour, privatisation and foreign investment.

Francis Wacziarg

Wacziarg is the late co-founder of Neemrana Hotels who passed away on February 19, 2014.
He arrived in India in the heady aftermath of the 1968 Paris uprising by students that had shaken the conscience of the world. He fell in love with the country and decided to stay on.
He was then a member of a committee that opposed the Vietnam War and promoted the study of left movements around the world.
He was assigned India with the brief to follow around the CPI(M) patriarch, EMS Namboodiripad, to understand how the left was faring in a country that seemed to be the ideal candidate for the next big revolution.
He was the founding member of Intach, and a very significant figure on Delhi's cultural scene. He was also credited with pioneering a path-breaking genre of music that can only be described as Indianized western operas.

Noor Inayat Khan

Noor Inayat Khan, World War II Heroine, was born in Moscow in January 1914 to an Indian father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, and an American mother, Ora Ray Baker. She was a descendant of Tipu Sultan, the remarkable 19th century ruler of Mysore kingdom.
She joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and was later recruited for the Special Operations Executive, a secret organization started by Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
She was the first woman radio operator to be flown undercover to Paris and worked from there for three months under the code name Madeleine. However she was betrayed, arrested and finally executed in Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany. Though she was tortured and interrogated, she revealed nothing, not even her real name. Her last word as they shot her was "Liberte"! She was only 30.
She was posthumously awarded the highest honour, the George Cross, by Britain. France awarded her the Croix de Guerre.
In 2006, President Pranab Mukherjee, then the defence minister of India, paid an official visit to Noor's family house outside Paris and described her bravery and sacrifice as "inspirational".

Vinay Mehta

Vinay Mehta designed in 2006, VENTiT, the world first breathing Pizza Box.
By using the structure of corrugation, the box provides effective ventilation for hot food deliveries allowing for food to remain fresher for longer.
www.ventit.in

Murali Thummarukudy

Murali Thummarukudy is the Chief of Disaster Risk Reduction in the UN Environment Programme based in Geneva , Switzerland.
He is a civil engineer by training and emergency response expert by profession from Kerala, India.
He has been involved in post disaster response and follow up of almost all major disasters of the twenty-first century, including the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, Cyclone Nargis (Myanmar, 2008), Sichuan Earthquake (China, 2008), Haiti Earthquake (2010), Tohoku Tsunami (2011) and floods in Thailand (2011).
He has also worked on post conflict environmental assessments of Rwanda, Iraq, Lebanon, occupied Palestinian territories and Sudan.
Prior to joining the United Nations, Muralee was an Environmental Advisor to oil companies in the shell group in South East Asia and Middle East.
www.muraleethummarukudy.com

Sanjaya Rajaram

Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram is an Indian born Mexican scientist.
He was awarded 2014 World Food Prize for his scientific research in developing 480 wheat varieties that have been released in 51 countries. This innovation has led to an increase in world wheat production by more than 200 million tonnes in the years following the Green Revolution.
His breakthrough achievement in successfully cross-breeding winter and spring wheat varieties, which were distinct gene pools and had been isolated from one another for hundreds of years, led to him developing plants that have higher yields and a broad genetic base.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

T P Rajeevan

Born: 1959, Paleri, Kozhikode, Kerala, India.
Thachom Poyil Rajeevan is a poet, novelist and literary reviewer.
He writes in English and Malayalam his native language. His poems have been translated into many languages and published in the United States and Europe.
In Malayalam his works include three collections of poems in Malayalam viz, Vathil, (The Door, 1991), Rashtratantram (Political Strategies, 2004) and Koritharichanal (The Day when I was Horripilated, 2005) in addition to a collection of essays on literary and cultural issues, titled Athe Akasam and Athe Bhoomi (The Same Sky, The same Earth, 2001) and a travelogue namely Purappettu Poya Vakku (On the Trial of the Lost Word, 2006).
He has edited an anthology of world poetry, Virunnuvanna Vakuu (The Guest Words).
His First novel in Malayalam, Paleri Manikkyam: Oru Pathirakolapathakathinte Katha has been made into movie.
www.thachompoyilrajeevan.com

Adoor Gopalakrishnan

Born: 3 July, 1941, Kerala, India.
Moutatthu Gopalakrishnan Unnithan commonly known as Adoor Gopalakrishnan, is an Indian film director, script writer, and producer.
His debut feature, Swayamvaram (1972) went on to win the national awards for best film, best director, best cameraman and best actress.
He has served on the juries of Venice, Singapore, Hawaii, Alexandria, New Delhi, Sochi, Shanghai etc.
He won National Film Awards sixteen times, Kerala State Film Awards seventeen times and also won several international film awards. He won the prestigious British Film Institute award for Elippathayam (1981). Adoor received the Padma Shri in 1984.
In recognition of his contribution to international cinema, the French Government has bestowed on him the title of 'The Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters’ a top French honour for culture (2005).
In 2004 he received the Dada Saheb Phalke Award, India’s highest national honour for Life- time achievement in cinema.
In 2006 he received India’s top civilian award, Padma Vibhushan for his contribution to the Arts (Cinema).

Shaji N. Karun

Born: 1 January 1952, Kerala, India.
Shaji Neelakantan Karun is a National Award-winning Indian film director and cinematographer.
He studied cinema and television at the highly reputed film institute of India at Pune.
He become the cinematographer of nearly 40 films and almost all films of Aravindan. His work won him the Eastman Kodak Award for Excellence in 1990.
His debut film Piravi (1988) won the Caméra d'Or - Mention d'honneur at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.
In 2000, he was decorated with the Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the Ministry of Culture, the government of France.
For his achievements in cinema, the Government of India hounoured him by Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in 2010.
He is best known for his award winning films Piravi (1989), Vanaprastham (1999) and Kutty Srank (2010).
www.shaji.info

G. Aravindan

Born: 21 January 1935, Kottayam, India.
Died: 15 March 1991, Trivandrum, India.
Govindan Aravindan was popularly known as G. Aravindan was a national award winning film director, screenwriter, musician and cartoonist from Kerala, India.
He was known for his unorthodox way of filmmaking. He changed his cinematic forms consistently and experimented in storytelling without regular narrative styles.
Before venturing into film field, he was an established cartoonist.
He had also worked with documentaries and theatre.

Ashraf Ghani

Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai born 1949 is an economist and anthropologist.
He was elected as the President of Afghanistan on September 21, 2014.
He signed a power sharing agreement with opponent Abdullah Abdullah, who will fill the newly created position of government chief executive.
He is the co-founder of the Institute for State Effectiveness, an organization set up in 2005 to improve the ability of states to serve their citizens.
He is a member of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, an independent initiative hosted by the United Nations Development Programme.

Stephanie Kwolek

Born: July 31, 1923, New Kensington, Pennsylvania, United States.
Died: June 18, 2014, Wilmington, Delaware, United States.
Stephanie Louise Kwolek was an American chemist, whose career at the DuPont company covered over forty years.
She is best known for inventing the first of a family of synthetic fibers of exceptional strength and stiffness in the 1960s: poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide—better known as Kevlar.
Kevlar fibre is used in body armour, bullet-proof gear, sporting gear, boats, puncture-resistant tires and also in some smartphones.

Akhouri Sinha

Born: Buxar, Bihar, India.
Akhouri Sinha is a professor in the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development at the University of Minnesota.
The United States Geological Survey has named a mountain in Antarctica in honour of Sinha, Mt Sinha for his work he did as an explorer in 1971-72.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Born: May 12, 1895, Madanapalle, India.
Died: February 17, 1986, Ojai, California, United States.
Jiddu Krishnamurti is regarded globally as one of the greatest thinkers and religious teachers of all time.
He and his brother were adopted in their youth by Dr Annie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society.
He travelled throughout the world talking to large audiences and to individuals about the need for a radical change in mankind.
He belonged to no religious organization, sect or country, nor did he subscribe to any school of political or ideological thought.
www.jkrishnamurti.org

Julius Robert Oppenheimer

Born: April 22, 1904, New York City, New York, United States.
Died: February 18, 1967, Princeton, New Jersey, United States.
Julius Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley.
He is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for leading the Manhattan Project, the program that developed the first nuclear weapon during World War II.
The first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945, in the Trinity test in New Mexico.
Oppenheimer remarked later that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

Safra A. Catz

Born: December 1, 1961, Holon, Israel.
Catz is an Israeli-born American business executive.
She is the CFO of Oracle-the world's No. 1 database platform and one of the highest-paid female executive.

Subodh Gupta

Born: 1964, Khagaul.
Subodh Gupta is an artist based in New Delhi.
He employs many of the original techniques of French conceptualist Marcel Duchamp by elevating the ready-made into an art object.
He chooses signature objects of the Indian sub-continent and relocates them as art objects in monumental installations of stainless steel and tiffin-tins.

14th Dalai Lama

Born: July 6, 1935, Taktser, China.
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibet.
At the very young age of two, the child who was named Lhamo Dhondup was recognized as the reincarnation of the previous 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso.
He has strived to make Tibet an independent and democratic state from China. At present he and his followers are exiled to India.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
In December 2008, the Dalai Lama announced his semi-retirement.
www.dalailama.com
www.twitter.com/DalaiLama
www.dalailamafoundation.org

The Dalai Lamas are believed to be manifestations of Avalokiteshvara or Chenrezig, the Bodhisattva of Compassion and the patron saint of Tibet. Bodhisattvas are believed to be enlightened beings who have postponed their own nirvana and chosen to take rebirth in order to serve humanity.

Aung San Suu Kyi

Born: June 19, 1945, Yangon, Myanmar.
Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of the legendary liberation movement leader Aung San.
She is a Burmese opposition politician and chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Burma.
She was one of the founders of the NLD.
From 1988 she led the opposition to the military junta that had ruled Burma since 1962.
In 1989, the government placed Suu Kyi under house arrest and she spent 15 of the next 21 years in custody. She was finally released from house arrest in November 2010.
She won The Nobel Peace Prize 1991 "for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights".

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Desmond Tutu

Born: 7 October 1931, Klerksdorp, Western Transvaal, South Africa
Desmond Tutu is a South African social rights activist and the first black Archbishop of Cape Town and bishop of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa).
He rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid.
He has campaigned to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia.
He received The Nobel Peace Prize 1984 for his opposition to South Africa's brutal apartheid regime, the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2007.
He has also compiled several books of his speeches and sayings.

Nelson Mandela

Born: July 18, 1918, Mvezo, South Africa
Died: December 5, 2013, Houghton Estate, Johannesburg, South Africa
Nelson Mandela was an anti-apartheid revolutionary, philanthropist and former president of South African.
A member of the African National Congress party, his protest landed him in prison for nearly three decades and made him the face of the antiapartheid movement both within his country and internationally. He was released in 1990.
In 1994 became the first black president of South Africa in a fully representative democratic election, forming a multiethnic government to oversee the country’s transition
He was awarded the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.
www.nelsonmandela.org

Jordan Belfort

Born: July 9, 1962, New York, United States.
Jordan Belfort is an American motivational speaker and former stockbroker nicknamed "The Wolf of Wall Street".
He was convicted of fraud crimes related to stock market manipulation and running a boiler room as part of a penny stock scam.
His memoir is The Wolf of Wall Street (2008) and a film adaptation was released in 2013.
www.jordanbelfort.com

Richard Stallman

Born: March 16, 1953, New York City.
Richard Stallman often known by his initials 'rms', is a software freedom activist and computer programmer.
He is the President of the Free Software Foundation.
Free Software Foundation campaigns for software to be distributed in a manner such that its users receive the freedoms to use, study, distribute and modify that software.
He is best known for launching the GNU Project, founding the Free Software Foundation, developing the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and writing the GNU General Public License.
www.stallman.org

Birutė Galdikas

Born: 10 May 1946, Wiesbaden, German.
Birutė Marija Filomena Galdikas is an anthropologist, primatologist, conservationist, ethologist and author of several books relating to the endangered orangutan particularly the Bornean orangutan.
For over four decades she has studied and worked closely with the orangutans of Indonesian Borneo in their natural habitat and is today the world’s foremost authority on the orangutan.
www.orangutan.org

Jane Goodall

Born: April 3, 1934, in London, England.
Jane Goodall is an English primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist and an UN Messenger of Peace.
She is considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees and is best known for her 45-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania.
She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots program and she has served on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project since its founding in 1996.
www.janegoodall.org

Dian Fossey

Born: January 16, 1932, San Francisco, California, United States.
Died: December 26, 1985, Rwanda.
Fossey was an American zoologist, primatologist, and anthropologist.
She studied the endangered gorillas of the Rwandan mountain forest for two decades.
Fossey, along with Jane Goodall and Birutė Galdikas, were the so-called Trimates, a group of three prominent researchers on primates (Fossey on gorillas; Goodall on chimpanzees; and Galdikas on orangutans)
Fossey told her story in the book Gorillas in the Mist (1983), which was later adapted for a film (1988).
She was murdered in 1985, presumably by poachers at her Rwandan forest camp.
http://gorillafund.org

Louis Leakey

Born: 7 August 1903, Kabete, British East Africa (modern-day Kenya).
Died: 1 October 1972, London, United Kingdom.
Louis Leakey with wife Mary, was a British paleoanthropologist and archaeologist whose work was important in establishing human evolutionary development in Africa, particularly through his discoveries in the Olduvai Gorge.
His team made unprecedented discoveries of hominids millions of years old linked to human evolution including H. habilis and H. erectus.
He inspired (and found sponsors for) field studies of chimpanzees, mountain gorillas, and orangutans by Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas Brindamour.
www.leakey.com

Friday, October 17, 2014

Mohammed Burhanuddin

Born: March 6, 1915, Surat.
Died: January 17, 2014, Malabar Hill, Mumbai.
Dr. Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin was appointed 52nd Da'i al-Mutlaq of a minority group of Shia Muslims, the Dawoodi Bohras in 1967.
He was the first Dai among Doat Mutlaqeen to complete 100 years of age.
He built the Raudat Tahera in Mumbai and Iftetah over the mausoleum of his father. The mausoleum is the only one of its kind to have the entire Quran inscribed on its walls.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Vikram Seth

Born: 20 June 1952, Kolkata, India.
Vikram Seth is an Indian poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children's writer, biographer and memoirist.
Seth's collections of poetry such as "Mappings" and "Beastly tales" are notable contributions to the Indian English language poetry.
He has received several awards including Padma Shri, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH Smith Literary Award and Crossword Book Award.
Seth self-identifies as bisexual. In 2006, he became a leader of the campaign against India's Section 377, a law against homosexuality.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Born: 15 January 1929, Atlanta, GA, USA
Died: 4 April 1968, Memphis, TN, USA
Martin Luther King, Jr. 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 Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.
He won the The Nobel Peace Prize 1964.
Martin Luther King dreamt that all inhabitants of the United States would be judged by their personal qualities and not by the color of their skin.
In April 1968 he was murdered by a white racist.

Shakuntala Devi

Born: November 4, 1929, Bangalore
Died: April 21, 2013, Bangalore
Shakuntala Devi was an Indian writer and mental calculator, popularly known as the "human computer".
A child prodigy, her talents eventually earned her a place in the 1982 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records.
As a writer, Devi wrote a number of books, including novels and non-fiction texts about mathematics, puzzles, and astrology.
She also wrote what is considered the first study of homosexuality in India; it treated homosexuality in an understanding light and is considered pioneering.

Ramnath Goenka

Born: April 22, 1904, Darbhanga, Bihar.
Died: October 5, 1991, Mumbai.
Ramnath Goenka was an Indian newspaper publisher.
He launched The Indian Express and created the Indian Express Group with various English and regional language publications.
Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards is instituted by The Express Group in his memory.

Dadabhai Naoroji

Born: September 4, 1825, Mumbai.
Died: June 30, 1917, Mumbai.
He was instrumental in the establishment of the Indian National Congress along with A.O. Hume and Dinshaw Edulji Wacha and was President of the Indian National Congress thrice.
He was a member of parliament (MP) in the United Kingdom House of Commons between 1892 and 1895 and the first Asian to be a British MP.
Dadabhai Naoroji is fondly called as the "Grand Old Man of India".
His book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India brought attention to the draining of India's wealth into Britain.

Arvind Subramanian

Arvind Subramanian is an U.S.-based Indian economist.
He has been appointed as the Chief Economic Advisor for India on 16th October 2014.
He is the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington.
His book Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance was published in September 2011 and he is coauthor of Who Needs to Open the Capital Account? (2012).
Foreign Policy magazine has named him as one of the world's top 100 global thinkers in 2011.
He is a development economist who worked closely with Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan when both were at the International Monetary Fund.

Richard Flanaga

Born: 1961, Longford, Tasmania, Australian.
He is an Australian novelist.
Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2014 for story of prisoners and captors on Burma railway in 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North'.
He has also written and directed feature films.

Neel Mukherjee

Born: 1970, West Bengal.
He is an India-born British author.
His second novel 'The Lives of Others' was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014.
His first novel 'Past Continuous' was joint winner of the Vodafone-Crossword Award, India’s premier literary award for writing in English for best novel of 2008 (along with Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies).
www.neelmukherjee.com

Edwin Lutyens

Born: March 1869, London, United Kingdom.
Died: 1 January 1944, London, United Kingdom.
He has been referred to as "the greatest British architect".
He built the Viceroy’s House (now Rashtrapati Bhavan) in New Delhi.
In recognition of his contribution, New Delhi is also known as "Lutyen's Delhi".
www.lutyenstrust.org.uk

Hermann Rorschach

Born: 8 November 1884, Zurich, Switzerland.
Died: 1 April 1922, Herisau, Switzerland.
Hermann Rorschach was a Swiss psychoanalyst who created the controversial Rorschach Inkblot Test to measure social behavior.
In 1921, Rorschach introduced his findings in a book entitled Psychodiagnostics.

Caligula

Born: August 31 12 A.D, Antium (now Anzio), Italy.
Gaius Caesar known as Caligula succeeded Tiberius and served as Roman emperor from 37 to 41 A.D.
He was known for his cruelty, sadism, extravagance and sexual perversity.
In early AD 41, Caligula became the first Roman Emperor to be assassinated.

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