Eiji Toyoda

Born: September 12, 1913
Kinjo, Nishi Kasugai, Japan
Japanese businessman and engineer
Eiji Toyoda is a former chairman of the Toyota Motor Company. His family-run business made revolutionary changes in the way automobiles were made.

eiji toyoda

Family business

Eiji Toyoda was born September 12, 1913, in Kinjo, Nishi Kasugai, Aichi, Japan, the son of Heikichi and Nao Toyoda. Toyoda's uncle, Sakichi, founded the original family business, Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, in 1926 in Nagoya, about 200 miles west of Tokyo, Japan. The family was so involved in the business that Eiji's father Heikichi (younger brother of Sakichi) even made his home inside the spinning factory. Such an early exposure to machines and business would have a significant effect on Toyoda's life.

Sakichi ultimately sold the patents (documents that give a person the legal right to control the production of an invention for a specific period of time) for his design to an English firm for two hundred fifty thousand dollars, at a time when textiles was Japan's top industry and used the money to pay for his eldest son Kiichiro's venture into auto making in the early 1930s.

After graduating in 1936 with a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Tokyo—training ground for most of Japan's future top executives—the twenty-three-year-old Toyoda joined the family spinning business as an engineering trainee and transferred a year later to the newly formed Toyota Motor Company. The company was a relative newcomer to the auto business in Japan. Eiji worked on the A1 prototype, the forerunner of the company's first production model, a six-cylinder sedan that borrowed heavily from Detroit automotive technology and resembled the radically styled Chrysler Airflow model of that period. During those early years, Toyoda gained lots of hands-on experience.

Expansion
In this spare time, Eiji Toyoda studied rockets and jet engines and, on the advice of his cousin, even researched helicopters. World War II (1939–45)—when Japan fought alongside Germany and Italy against France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States—left Japan's industry in a shambles, and the automaker began rebuilding its production facilities from scratch. But while Kiichiro Toyoda was rebuilding the manufacturing operations, Japan's shattered economy left the company with a growing bank of unsold cars. By 1949, the firm was unable to meet its payroll, and employees began a devastating fifteen-month strike (where workers walk out in protest)—the first and only walkout in the company's history—which pushed Toyota to the brink of bankruptcy. In 1950 the Japanese government forced Toyota to reorganize and split its sales and manufacturing operations into separate companies, each headed by a nonfamily member. Kiichiro Toyoda and his executive staff all resigned. Kiichiro died less than two years later.

Eiji Toyoda, meanwhile, had been named managing director of the manufacturing arm,

Toyota Motor Company. He was sent to the United States in 1950 to study the auto industry and return to Toyota with a report on American manufacturing methods. After touring Ford Motor's U.S. facilities, Toyoda turned to the task of redesigning Toyota's plants to incorporate advanced techniques and machinery.

President of ToyotaIn 1967 Toyoda was named president of Toyota Motor Company—the first family member to assume that post since Kiichiro resigned in 1950. A year later, the two branches of the company were unified in the new Toyota Motor Corporation, with Eiji Toyoda as chairman and Shoichiro Toyoda as president and chief executive officer.

The Toyodas led their company to a record year in 1984. Toyota sold an all-time high 1.7 million vehicles in Japan and the same number overseas and profits peaked at $2.1 billion in 1985. While that performance would certainly earn Toyota a mention in automotive history books, Eiji Toyoda and his company may be better remembered for a unique management style that has been copied by hundreds of Japanese companies and is gaining growing acceptance in the United States. The Toyota approach, adopted at its ten Japanese factories and twenty-four plants in seventeen countries, has three main objectives: keeping inventory to an absolute minimum through a system called kanban, or "just in time;" insuring that each step of the assembly process is performed correctly the first time; and cutting the amount of human labor that goes into each car.

What Toyoda accomplished for Toyota Motor was dazzling success at a time when Detroit automakers were struggling to stay profitable. Toyota, Japan's number one automaker, spearheaded the tidal wave of small, low-priced cars that swept the United States after successive energy crises in the midand late-1970s. In addition to running the largest corporation in Japan—and the world's third largest automaker, behind General Motors (GM) and Ford—Toyoda has overseen the development of a highly efficient manufacturing system that is being copied worldwide. Although Eiji Toyoda gave up his post as chairman in 1994, he continues to hold the title of honorary chair of the company.
For More Information

Toyoda, Eiji. Toyota : Fifty Years in Motion. New York: Kodansha International, 1987.

Read more : Eiji Toyoda Biography - life, family, history, son, old, information, born, time, year http://www.notablebiographies.com

More about → Eiji Toyoda

Jimi Hendrix ( 1942 – 1970 )

Guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Born Johnny Allen Hendrix (later changed to James Marshall) on November 27, 1942, in Seattle, Washington. Learning to play guitar as a teenager, Hendrix grew up to become a rock guitar legend. He had a difficult childhood, sometimes living in the care of relatives and even acquaintances at times.
His mother, Lucille, was only 17 years old when Hendrix was born. She had a stormy relationship with his father, Al, and eventually left the family after the couple had two more children together, sons Leon and Joseph. Hendrix would only see his mother sporadically before her death in 1958.
In many ways, music became a sanctuary for Hendrix. He was a fan of blues music and taught himself to play guitar. At the age of 14, Hendrix saw Elvis Presley perform. He got his first electric guitar the following year and eventually played with two bands—the Rocking Kings and the Tomcats. In 1959, Hendrix dropped out of high school. He worked odd jobs while continuing to follow his musical aspirations.
Hendrix enlisted in the United States Army in 1961 and trained at Fort Ord in California to become a paratrooper. Even as a soldier, he found time for music, creating a band named The King Casuals. Hendrix served in the army until 1962 when he was discharged due to an injury.
After leaving the military, Hendrix pursued his music, working as a session musician and playing backup for such performers as Little Richard, Sam Cooke, and the Isley Brothers. He also formed a group of his own called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, which played gigs around New York City's Greenwich Village neighborhood.
In mid-1966, Hendrix met Chas Chandler, a former member of the Animals, a successful rock group, who became his manager. Chandler convinced Hendrix to go to London where he joined forces with musicians Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell to create The Jimi Hendrix Experience. While there, Hendrix built up quite a following among England's rock royalty. Members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and Eric Clapton were all great admirers of Hendrix's work. One critic for the British music magazine Melody Maker said that he "had great stage presence" and looked at times as if he was playing "with no hands at all."
Released in 1967, the band's first single, "Hey Joe" was an instant smash in Britain, and was soon followed by other hits such as "Purple Haze" and "The Wind Cried Mary." On tour to support his first album, Are You Experienced? (1967), Hendrix delighted audiences with his outrageous guitar-playing skills and his innovative, experimental sound. He won over American music fans with his stunning performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, which ended with Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire.
Quickly becoming a rock music superstar, Hendrix scored again with his second album, Axis: Bold as Love (1968). His final album as part of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Electric Ladyland (1968), was released and featured the hit "All Along the Watchtower," which was written by Bob Dylan. The band continued to tour until it split up in 1969.
That same year, Hendrix performed at another legendary musical event: the Woodstock Festival. His rock rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" amazed the crowds and demonstrated his considerable talents as a musician. He was also an accomplished songwriter and musical experimenter. Hendrix even had his own recording studio in which he could work with different performers and try out new songs and sounds.
Hendrix tried his luck with another group, forming Band of Gypsys in late 1969 with his army buddy Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles. The band never really took off, and Hendrix began working on a new album tentatively named First Rays of the New Rising Sun, with Cox and Mitch Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Unfortunately Hendrix did not live to complete the project.
Hendrix died on September 18th, 1970, from drug-related complications. While this talented recording artist was only 27 years old at the time of his passing, Hendrix left his mark on the world of rock music and remains popular to this day. As one journalist wrote in the Berkeley Tribe, "Jimi Hendrix could get more out of an electric guitar than anyone else. He was the ultimate guitar player."

For more information visit : http://www.biography.com

More about → Jimi Hendrix ( 1942 – 1970 )

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Six weeks later the family moved to Munich, where he later on began his schooling at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree.

During his stay at the Patent Office, and in his spare time, he produced much of his remarkable work and in 1908 he was appointed Privatdozent in Berne. In 1909 he became Professor Extraordinary at Zurich, in 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague, returning to Zurich in the following year to fill a similar post. In 1914 he was appointed Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and Professor in the University of Berlin. He became a German citizen in 1914 and remained in Berlin until 1933 when he renounced his citizenship for political reasons and emigrated to America to take the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton*. He became a United States citizen in 1940 and retired from his post in 1945.

After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, he was offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined, and he collaborated with Dr. Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Einstein always appeared to have a clear view of the problems of physics and the determination to solve them. He had a strategy of his own and was able to visualize the main stages on the way to his goal. He regarded his major achievements as mere stepping-stones for the next advance.

At the start of his scientific work, Einstein realized the inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics and his special theory of relativity stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. He dealt with classical problems of statistical mechanics and problems in which they were merged with quantum theory: this led to an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules. He investigated the thermal properties of light with a low radiation density and his observations laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.

In his early days in Berlin, Einstein postulated that the correct interpretation of the special theory of relativity must also furnish a theory of gravitation and in 1916 he published his paper on the general theory of relativity. During this time he also contributed to the problems of the theory of radiation and statistical mechanics.

In the 1920's, Einstein embarked on the construction of unified field theories, although he continued to work on the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory, and he persevered with this work in America. He contributed to statistical mechanics by his development of the quantum theory of a monatomic gas and he has also accomplished valuable work in connection with atomic transition probabilities and relativistic cosmology.

After his retirement he continued to work towards the unification of the basic concepts of physics, taking the opposite approach, geometrisation, to the majority of physicists.

Einstein's researches are, of course, well chronicled and his more important works include Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics (1938). Among his non-scientific works, About Zionism (1930), Why War? (1933), My Philosophy (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950) are perhaps the most important.

Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. During the 1920's he lectured in Europe, America and the Far East and he was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world. He gained numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925, and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1935.

Einstein's gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation, music played an important part in his life. He married Mileva Maric in 1903 and they had a daughter and two sons; their marriage was dissolved in 1919 and in the same year he married his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, who died in 1936. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey.

 From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

---

• Albert Einstein was formally associated with the Institute for Advanced Study located in Princeton, New Jersey.

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1922
Source : http://nobelprize.org

More about → Albert Einstein

Akio Morita ( 1921-1999 )

Sony Corporation, Monday, Oct. 3, 1999 -- Akio Morita was born on January 26, 1921, in the city of Nagoya, to a family of sake brewers. The Morita family has been brewing sake for nearly 400 years in the city of Tokoname, near Nagoya. Under the strict eyes of his father, Kyuzaemon, Akio was groomed to become the heir to the family business. As a student, Akio often sat in on company meetings with his father and he would help with the family business even on school holidays.

The Morita family had in those days already embraced the latest in Western culture, like the automobile and the electric phonograph. Whenever he was relieved from his household duties, the young Akio would become engrossed in taking apart the phonograph and putting it back together.

From an early age, Akio was fond of tinkering with electronic appliances, and mathematics and physics were his favorite subjects during his elementary and junior high school days. After graduating from High School Number Eight, he entered the Physics Department at Osaka Imperial University.

During that time, Japan was in midst of the Pacific War. In 1944, Akio, who had become a Navy lieutenant upon graduation from university that year, met the late Masaru Ibuka for the first time in the Navy's Wartime Research Committee.

When he returned to the family home in Nagoya after the war, Morita was invited to join the faculty of the Tokyo Institute of Technology by one of its professors. Morita packed his belongings and prepared to leave for Tokyo, when an article about a research laboratory founded by Ibuka appeared in an Asahi newspaper column called, "Blue Pencil." With the end of the war, Ibuka had founded Tokyo Telecommunications Research Institute to embark on a new beginning. Upon reading this article, Morita visited Ibuka in Tokyo and they decided to establish a new company together.

On May 7, 1946, Ibuka and Morita founded Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation) with approximately 20 employees and initial capital of 190,000 yen. At that time, Ibuka was 38 years old and Morita was 25.

Throughout their long partnership, Ibuka devoted his energies to technological research and product development, while Morita was instrumental in leading Sony in the areas of marketing, globalization, finance and human resources. Morita also spearheaded Sony's entry into the software business, and he contributed to the overall management of the company.

The company's drive to expand its business globally is apparent in the decision to change its corporate name to Sony in 1958, a decision that was not well received either within or outside the company because Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo had already become widely known. To counter such views, Morita stressed it was necessary to change the name of the company to something that was easier to pronounce and remember, in order for the company to grow and increase its presence globally. In addition, Morita reasoned that the company could one day branch out into products other than electronics and the name Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo would no longer be appropriate. Therefore, he changed the name to Sony Corporation and decided to write 'Sony' in the katakana alphabet (a Japanese alphabet that is normally used to write foreign names), something that was unheard of at that time.

In 1960, Sony Corporation of America was established in the United States. Morita decided to move to the U.S. with his family and took the lead in creating new sales channels for the company. He believed that Sony should develop its own direct sales channels, rather than rely on local dealers.

Many products that have been launched throughout Sony's history can be credited to Morita's creativity and innovative ideas. His ideas gave birth to totally new lifestyles and cultures, and this is evident from such products as the Walkman and the video cassette recorder.

Morita also demonstrated his ability to break away from conventional thinking in the financial area, when Sony issued American Depositary Receipts in the U.S. in 1961. It was the first time that a Japanese company had offered shares on the New York Stock Exchange, and this enabled the company to raise capital not just in Japan. Sony paved the way for Japanese companies to raise foreign capital, at a time when the common practice of Japanese management was to borrow funds from banks.

In the area of human resources, Morita wrote a book called Never Mind School Records in 1966 and stressed that school records are not important in carrying out a job. Morita's point of view, which he had first made known more than 30 years ago, is today followed by many companies in Japan.

As changing the name Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo to Sony indicates, Morita was eager to diversify Sony's operations outside of the electronics business. In 1968, the company entered the music software business in Japan by establishing CBS/Sony Group Inc. jointly with CBS, Inc. of the U.S. Then in 1979, Sony entered the financial business in Japan with the founding of Sony Prudential Life Insurance Co. Ltd., a 50-50 joint venture with The Prudential Life Insurance Co. of America. Furthermore, Sony acquired CBS Records Inc., the records group of CBS in 1988. The following year, Sony acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc., enabling the company to become a comprehensive entertainment company that owns both quality software content and a wealth of hardware.

Besides managing Sony, Morita was active in building a cultural bridge between Japan and abroad as Vice Chairman of the Keidanren (Japan Federation of Economic Organizations) and as a member of the Japan-U.S. Economic Relations Group, better known as the "Wise Men's Group." He was instrumental in trying to ease trade frictions between Japan and the U.S., and through the publication of such literary works as Made in Japan, he became, "one of the most well-known Japanese in the U.S."

Morita was the first Japanese to be awarded the Albert Medal from the United Kingdom's Royal Society of Arts in 1982. In 1984, he received the National Order of the Legion of Honor (Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur), the highest and most prestigious French order, and in 1991, he was awarded the First Class Order of the Sacred Treasure from H. M. the Emperor of Japan. In addition, Morita received numerous awards from countries such as Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States, which shows the extent of his global recognition.

Morita emitted a natural radiance, and his personality, which he himself described as "cheerful," was loved by many. He had a wide circle of friends both in Japan and abroad, including individuals like Kiichi Miyazawa, former Prime Minister of Japan, Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State, and orchestra conductors such as Zubin Mehta and the late Herbert von Karajan.

Morita's boundless curiosity and challenging spirit extended to his private life; he started skiing, tennis, and scuba diving when he was past 50 years old.

For more information visit : http://www.sony.com

More about → Akio Morita ( 1921-1999 )

Dharma Singh Khalsa M.D.

Born in Ohio and raised in Florida, Dharma Singh Khalsa. M.D. is a graduate of Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska. Dr. Dharma, as he is usually called, received his training in Anesthesiology at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco, where he was Chief Resident. Dr. Dharma has also received advanced training at Harvard and UCLA. Dr. Dharma has helped people from all over the world, including a past president of a foreign country, Hollywood writers and celebrities, business leaders, doctors, lawyers, professionals, and others from all walks of life. He has been invited to share his work at medical meetings in the USA, South America, Europe, Monte Carlo, and India.
Since 1993, he has been the President and Medical Director of the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation in Tucson, Arizona, the original voice in the integrative medical approach to the prevention and treatment of memory loss. The ARPF is dedicated to fighting Alzheimer’s disease and finding a cure through research and prevention.
In 2003, Dr. Khalsa spearheaded a research study of SPECT Scans Before and After Kirtan Kriya Meditation on healthy subjects, in conjunction with the Amen Clinic (UCI Irvine, CA).
In 2006, Dr. Khalsa became Associate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the School of Medicine.
Since then, he has participated in two additional groundbreaking scientific research studies:
1. Global Cerebral Blood Flow in fMRI Scans of Advanced Meditators. This project was completed in 2007, and was part of a fully funded University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine study.
2. Kirtan Kriya and SPECT Scans in Subjects with Memory Loss. This breakthrough study, which was completed in 2008, examined the effectiveness of a specific mind/body technique on people with a diagnosis of memory loss. Final data shows that memory loss was reversed and well being enhanced.
3. Meditation use to reduce stress response and improve cognitive functioning in older family dementia caregivers. This study will be carried out in 2009 and 2010 at UCLA, in conjunction with the Department of Psychiatry
In May 2003, Dr. Dharma testified before Congress about his pioneering work in the area of lifestyle influence on Alzheimer’s disease, and called on Congress to fund a national education and outreach campaign designed to inform the public of the benefits of an integrative medical approach to Alzheimer’s. After testifying, he had a private meeting with the Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona, M.D., to discuss the public health challenges of this disease. At that meeting Dr. Carmona voiced strong support for Dr. Dharma’s work.
An ordained minister and yogi, he is the author of the international best sellers Brain Longevity™, The Pain Cure, Meditation As Medicine, Food As Medicine, The Better Memory Kit, The New Golden Rules, and The End of Karma.
Dr. Dharma is also the author of several mind/body CDs and DVDs, such as Wake Up To Wellness CD and DVD, Boost Your Brain Power DVD, Here Comes the Sun DVD, and Sleepy Time Nice DVD.
He is the creator of the groundbreaking From Darkness to Light, a holistic program to Healing Adverse Childhood Experiences, as well as a pop-music album entitled Love is in You, featuring his group, Bliss. All these products are available on his website: www.drdharma.com
He lectures and consults worldwide. Dharma lives in Tucson, Arizona with his wife Kirti, who is originally from Rome, Italy.
You can also see their website at http://www.brain-longevity.com

More about → Dharma Singh Khalsa M.D.

Yasser Arafat (1929 - 2004)

Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat As Qudwa al-Hussaeini was born on 24 August 1929 in Cairo, his father a textile merchant who was a Palestinian with some Egyptian ancestry, his mother from an old Palestinian family in Jerusalem. She died when Yasir, as he was called, was five years old, and he was sent to live with his maternal uncle in Jerusalem, the capital of the British Mandate of Palestine. He has revealed little about his childhood, but one of his earliest memories is of British soldiers breaking into his uncle's house after midnight, beating members of the family and smashing furniture.

After four years in Jerusalem, his father brought him back to Cairo, where an older sister took care of him and his siblings. Arafat never mentions his father, who was not close to his children. Arafat did not attend his father's funeral in 1952.

In Cairo, before he was seventeen Arafat was smuggling arms to Palestine to be used against the British and the Jews. At nineteen, during the war between the Jews and the Arab states, Arafat left his studies at the University of Faud I (later Cairo University) to fight against the Jews in the Gaza area. The defeat of the Arabs and the establishment of the state of Israel left him in such despair that he applied for a visa to study at the University of Texas. Recovering his spirits and retaining his dream of an independent Palestinian homeland, he returned to Faud University to major in engineering but spent most of his time as leader of the Palestinian students.

He did manage to get his degree in 1956, worked briefly in Egypt, then resettled in Kuwait, first being employed in the department of public works, next successfully running his own contracting firm. He spent all his spare time in political activities, to which he contributed most of the profits. In 1958 he and his friends founded Al-Fatah, an underground network of secret cells, which in 1959 began to publish a magazine advocating armed struggle against Israel. At the end of 1964 Arafat left Kuwait to become a full-time revolutionary, organising Fatah raids into Israel from Jordan.

It was also in 1964 that the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was established, under the sponsorship of the Arab League, bringing together a number of groups all working to free Palestine for the Palestinians. The Arab states favoured a more conciliatory policy than Fatah's, but after their defeat by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, Fatah emerged from the underground as the most powerful and best organised of the groups making up the PLO, took over that organisation in 1969 when Arafat became the chairman of the PLO executive committee. The PLO was no longer to be something of a puppet organisation of the Arab states, wanting to keep the Palestinians quiet, but an independent nationalist organisation, based in Jordan.

Arafat developed the PLO into a state within the state of Jordan with its own military forces. King Hussein of Jordan, disturbed by its guerrilla attacks on Israel and other violent methods, eventually expelled the PLO from his country. Arafat sought to build a similar organisation in Lebanon, but this time was driven out by an Israeli military invasion. He kept the organization alive, however, by moving its headquarters to Tunis. He was a survivor himself, escaping death in an airplane crash, surviving any assassination attempts by Israeli intelligence agencies, and recovering from a serious stroke.

His life was one of constant travel, moving from country to country to promote the Palestinian cause, always keeping his movements secret, as he did any details about his private life. Even his marriage to Suha Tawil, a Palestinian half his age, was kept secret for some fifteen months. She had already begun significant humanitarian activities at home, especially for disabled children, but the prominent part she took in the public events in Oslo was a surprise for many Arafat-watchers. Since then, their daughter, Zahwa, named after Arafat's mother, has been born.

The period after the expulsion from Lebanon was a low time for Arafat and the PLO. Then the intifada (shaking) protest movement strengthened Arafat by directing world attention to the difficult plight of the Palestinians. In 1988 came a change of policy. In a speech at a special United Nations session held in Geneva, Switzerland, Arafat declared that the PLO renounced terrorism and supported "the right of all parties concerned in the Middle East conflict to live in peace and security, including the state of Palestine, Israel and other neighbours".

The prospects for a peace agreement with Israel now brightened. After a setback when the PLO supported Iraq in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the peace process began in earnest, leading to the Oslo Accords of 1993.

This agreement included provision for the Palestinian elections which took place in early 1996, and Arafat was elected President of the Palestine Authority. Like other Arab regimes in the area, however, Arafat's governing style tended to be more dictatorial than democratic. When the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu came to power in Israel in 1996, the peace process slowed down considerably. Much depends upon the nature of the new Israeli government, which will result from the elections to be held in 1999.

Selected Bibliography
General
Corbin, Jane. The Norway Channel. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1994. By BBC reporter with good access to the negotiators.
Freedman, Robert Owen, ed. Israel under Rabin. Boulder: Westview, 1995.
Laqueur, Walter, and Barry Rubin, eds. The Israel-Arab Reader. A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict. 5th rev. ed., PB, New York: Penguin, 1995.
Makovsky, David. Making Peace with the P.L.O.: The Rabin Government’s Road to the Oslo Accord. Boulder: Westview, 1996. By a diplomatic correspondent with critical perspective. Includes many documents.
Peleg, Ilan, ed. Middle East Peace Process: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Albany, NY: State University of N.Y. Press, 1998.
Perry, Mark. A Fire in Zion. The Israeli-Palestinian Search for Peace. New York: Morrow, 1994. The background since 1988. By a well-informed journalist.
Said, Edward W. Peace and Its Discontents. Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Process. New York: Vintage PB, 1995. Eloquent critique of the Oslo Accords by a leading Palestinian-American intellectual.
Savir, Uri. The Process: 1,100 Days That Changed the Middle East. New York: Random House 1998. Hopeful inside view by chief Israeli negotiator.
Tessler, Mark. A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994. PB, scholarly and balanced.
Quandt, William B. The Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1967. Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1993.

About Yasser Arafat
Aburish, Said K. Arafat: From Defender to Dictator. New York & London: Bloomsbury Press, 1998, Critical interpretation of Arafat’s cultural background.
Gowers, Andrew. Arafat. The Biography: London: Virgin Books, 1994. Revised and updated 1990 publication.
Hart, Alan. Arafat: A Political Biography. rev. ed., London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1994. Sympathetic account largely dependent on many interviews with Arafat.
Wallach, John & Janet. Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990.

• Since there is no biographical description of Yasser Arafat in Les Prix Nobel for 1994, this account was written by the editor of Nobel Lectures, Peace 1991-1995, published by World Scientific Publishing Co.

• From Nobel Lectures, Peace 1991-1995, Editor Irwin Abrams, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1999

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

The place of Arafat's birth is disputed. Besides Cairo, other sources mention Jerusalem and Gaza as his birthplace.

Yasser Arafat died on November 11, 2004

For more information visit : http://nobelprize.org

More about → Yasser Arafat (1929 - 2004)

Warren Edward Buffett (1930 - )

Warren Edward Buffett was born on August 30, 1930 to his father Howard, a stockbroker-turned-Congressman. The only boy, he was the second of three children, and displayed an amazing aptitude for both money and business at a very early age. Acquaintances recount his uncanny ability to calculate columns of numbers off the top of his head - a feat Warren still amazes business colleagues with today.
At only six years old, Buffett purchased 6-packs of Coca Cola from his grandfather's grocery store for twenty five cents and resold each of the bottles for a nickel, pocketing a five cent profit. While other children his age were playing hopscotch and jacks, Warren was making money. Five years later, Buffett took his step into the world of high finance. At eleven years old, he purchased three shares of Cities Service Preferred at $38 per share for both himself and his older sister, Doris. Shortly after buying the stock, it fell to just over $27 per share. A frightened but resilient Warren held his shares until they rebounded to $40. He promptly sold them - a mistake he would soon come to regret. Cities Service shot up to $200. The experience taught him one of the basic lessons of investing: patience is a virtue.

Warren Buffett's Education

In 1947, a seventeen year old Warren Buffett graduated from High School. It was never his intention to go to college; he had already made $5,000 delivering newspapers (this is equal to $42,610.81 in 2000). His father had other plans, and urged his son to attend the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. Buffett stayed two years, complaining that he knew more than his professors. When Howard was defeated in the 1948 Congressional race, Warren returned home to Omaha and transferred to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Working full-time, he managed to graduate in only three years. Warren Buffett approached graduate studies with the same resistance he displayed a few years earlier. He was finally persuaded to apply to Harvard Business School, which, in the worst admission decision in history, rejected him as "too young". Slighted, Warren applied to Columbia where famed investors Ben Graham and David Dodd taught - an experience that would forever change his life.

Ben Graham - Buffett's Mentor

Ben Graham had become well known during the 1920's. At a time when the rest of the world was approaching the investment arena as a giant game of roulette, he searched for stocks that were so inexpensive they were almost completely devoid of risk. One of his best known calls was the Northern Pipe Line, an oil transportation company managed by the Rockefellers. The stock was trading at $65 a share, but after studying the balance sheet, Graham realized that the company had bond holdings worth $95 for every share. The value investor tried to convince management to sell the portfolio, but they refused. Shortly thereafter, he waged a proxy war and secured a spot on the Board of Directors. The company sold its bonds and paid a dividend in the amount of $70 per share. When he was 40 years old, Ben Graham published Security Analysis, one of the greatest works ever penned on the stock market. At the time, it was risky; investing in equities had become a joke (the Dow Jones had fallen from 381.17 to 41.22 over the course of three to four short years following the crash of 1929). It was around this time that Graham came up with the principle of "intrinsic" business value - a measure of a business's true worth that was completely and totally independent of the stock price. Using intrinsic value, investors could decide what a company was worth and make investment decisions accordingly. His subsequent book, The Intelligent Investor, which Warren celebrates as "the greatest book on investing ever written", introduced the world to Mr. Market - the best investment analogy in history.
Through his simple yet profound investment principles, Ben Graham became an idyllic figure to the twenty-one year old Warren Buffett. Reading an old edition of Who's Who, Warren discovered his mentor was the Chairman of a small, unknown insurance company named GEICO. He hopped a train to Washington D.C. one Saturday morning to find the headquarters. When he got there, the doors were locked. Not to be stopped, Buffett relentlessly pounded on the door until a janitor came to open it for him. He asked if there was anyone in the building. As luck (or fate) would have it, there was. It turns out that there was a man still working on the sixth floor. Warren was escorted up to meet him and immediately began asking him questions about the company and its business practices; a conversation that stretched on for four hours. The man was none other than Lorimer Davidson, the Financial Vice President. The experience would be something that stayed with Buffett for the rest of his life. He eventually acquired the entire GEICO company through his corporation, Berkshire Hathaway.Flying through his graduate studies at Columbia, Warren Buffett was the only student ever to earn an A+ in one of Graham's classes. Disappointingly. both Ben Graham and Warren's father advised him not to work on Wall Street after he graduated. Absolutely determined, Buffett offered to work for the Graham partnership for free. Ben turned him down. He preferred to hold his spots for Jews who were not hired at Gentile firms at the time. Warren was crushed.

Warren Buffett Returns Home
Returning home, he took a job at his father's brokerage house and began seeing a girl by the name of Susie Thompson. The relationship eventually turned serious and in April of 1952 the two were married. They rented out a three-room apartment for $65 a month; it was run-down and served as home to several mice. It was here their daughter, also named Susie, was born. In order to save money, they made a bed for her in a dresser drawer.

During these initial years, Warren's investments were predominately limited to a Texaco station and some real estate, but neither were successful. It was also during this time he began teaching night classes at the University of Omaha (something that wouldn't have been possible several months before. In an effort to conquer his intense fear of public speaking, Warren took a course by Dale Carnegie). Thankfully, things changed. Ben Graham called one day, inviting the young stockbroker to come to work for him. Warren was finally given the opportunity he had long awaited.

Warren Buffett Goes to Work for Ben Graham
The couple took a house in the suburbs of New York. Buffett spent his days analyzing S&P reports, searching for investment opportunities. It was during this time that the difference between the Graham and Buffett philosophies began to emerge. Warren became interested in how a company worked - what made it superior to competitors. Ben simply wanted numbers whereas Warren was predominately interested in a company's management as a major factor when deciding to invest, Graham looked only at the balance sheet and income statement; he could care less about corporate leadership. Between 1950 and 1956, Warren built his personal capital up to $140,000 from a mere $9,800. With this war chest, he set his sights back on Omaha and began planning his next move.

On May 1, 1956, Warren Buffett rounded up seven limited partners which included his Sister Doris and Aunt Alice, raising $105,000 in the process. He put in $100 himself, officially creating the Buffett Associates, Ltd. Before the end of the year, he was managing around $300,000 in capital. Small, to say the least, but he had much bigger plans for that pool of money. He purchased a house for $31,500, affectionately nicknamed "Buffett's Folly", and managed his partnerships originally from the bedroom, and later, a small office. By this time, his life had begun to take shape; he had three children, a beautiful wife, and a very successful business.

Over the course of the next five years, the Buffett partnerships racked up an impressive 251.0% profit, while the Dow was up only 74.3%. A somewhat-celebrity in his hometown, Warren never gave stock tips despite constant requests from friends and strangers alike. By 1962, the partnership had capital in excess of $7.2 million, of which a cool $1 million was Buffett's personal stake (he didn't charge a fee for the partnership - rather Warren was entitled to 1/4 of the profits above 4%). He also had more than 90 limited partners across the United States. In one decisive move, he melded the partnerships into a single entity called "Buffett Partnerships Ltd.", upped the minimum investment to $100,000, and opened an office in Kiewit Plaza on Farnam street.

In 1962, a man by the name of Charlie Munger moved back to his childhood home of Omaha from California. Though somewhat snobbish, Munger was brilliant in every sense of the word. He had attended Harvard Law School without a Bachelor's Degree. Introduced by mutual friends, Buffett and Charlie were immediately drawn together, providing the roots for a friendship and business collaboration that would last for the next forty years.

Ten years after its founding, the Buffett Partnership assets were up more than 1,156% compared to the Dow's 122.9%. Acting as lord over assets that had ballooned to $44 million dollars, Warren and Susie's personal stake was $6,849,936. Mr. Buffett, as they say, had arrived.

Wisely enough, just as his persona of success was beginning to be firmly established, Warren Buffett closed the partnership to new accounts. The Vietnam war raged full force on the other side of the world and the stock market was being driven up by those who hadn't been around during the depression. All while voicing his concern for rising stock prices, the partnership pulled its biggest coup in 1968, recording a 59.0% gain in value, catapulting to over $104 million in assets. The next year, Warren went much further than closing the fund to new accounts; he liquidated the partnership. In May 1969, he informed his partners that he was "unable to find any bargains in the current market". Buffett spent the remainder of the year liquidating the portfolio, with the exception of two companies - Berkshire and Diversified Retailing. The shares of Berkshire were distributed among the partners with a letter from Warren informing them that he would, in some capacity, be involved in the business, but was under no obligation to them in the future. Warren was clear in his intention to hold onto his own stake in the company (he owned 29% of the Berkshire Hathaway stock) but his intentions weren't revealed.

Warren Buffett Gains Control of Berkshire Hathaway
Buffett's role at Berkshire Hathaway had actually been somewhat defined years earlier. On May 10, 1965, after accumulating 49% of the common stock, Warren named himself Director. Terrible management had run the company nearly into the ground, and he was certain with a bit of tweaking, it could be run better. Immediately Mr. Buffett made Ken Chace President of the company, giving him complete autonomy over the organization. Although he refused to award stock options on the basis that it was unfair to shareholders, Warren agreed to cosign a loan for $18,000 for his new President to purchase 1,000 shares of the company's stock.

Two years later, in 1967, Warren asked National Indemnity's founder and controlling shareholder Jack Ringwalt to his office. Asked what he thought the company was worth, Ringwalt told Buffett at least $50 per share, a $17 premium above its then-trading price of $33. Warren offered to buy the whole company on the spot - a move that cost him $8.6 million dollars. That same year, Berkshire paid out a dividend of 10 cents on its outstanding stock. It never happened again; Warren said he "must have been in the bathroom when the dividend was declared".

In 1970, Buffett named himself Chairman of the Board of Berkshire Hathaway and for the first time, wrote the letter to the shareholders (Ken Chace had been responsible for the task in the past). That same year, the Chairman's capital allocation began to display his prudence; textile profits were a pitiful $45,000, while insurance and banking each brought in $2.1 and $2.6 million dollars. The paltry cash brought in from the struggling looms in New Bedford, Massachusetts had provided the stream of capital necessary to start building Berkshire.

A year or so later, Warren Buffett was offered the chance to buy a company by the name of See's Candy. The gourmet chocolate maker sold its own brand of candies to its customers at a premium to regular confectionary treats. The balance sheet reflected what Californians already knew - they were more than willing to pay a bit "extra" for the special "See's" taste. The businessman decided Berkshire would be willing to purchase the company for $25 million in cash. See's owners were holding out for $30 million, but soon conceded. It was the biggest investment Berkshire or Buffett had ever made.

Following several investments and an SEC investigation (after causing a merger to fail, Warren and Munger offered to buy the stock of Wesco, the target company, at the inflated price simply because they thought it was "the right thing to do". Not surprisingly, the government didn't believe them), Buffett began to see Berkshire's net worth climb. From 1965 to 1975, the company's book value rose from $20 per share to around $95. It was also during this period that Warren made his final purchases of Berkshire stock (when the partnership dolled out the shares, he owned 29%. Years later, he had invested more than $15.4 million dollars into the company at an average cost of $32.45 per share). This brought his ownership to over 43% of the stock with Susie holding another 3%. His entire fortune was placed into Berkshire. With no personal holdings, the company had become his sole investment vehicle.

In 1976, Buffett once again became involved with GEICO. The company had recently reported amazingly high losses and its stock was pummeled down to $2 per share. Warren wisely realized that the basic business was still in tact; most of the problem were caused by an inept management. Over the next few years, Berkshire built up its position in this ailing insurer and reaped millions in profits. Benjamin Graham, who still held his fortune in the company, died in in September of the same year, shortly before the turnaround. Years later, the insurance giant would become a fully owned subsidiary of Berkshire.

Changes in Warren Buffett's Personal Life
It was shortly thereafter one of the most profound and upsetting events in Buffett's life took place. At forty-five, Susan Buffett left her husband - in form. Although she remained married to Warren, the humanitarian / singer secured an apartment in San Francisco and, insisting she wanted to live on her own, moved there. Warren was absolutely devastated; throughout his life, Susie had been "the sunshine and rain in my [his] garden". The two remained close, speaking every day, taking their annual two-week New York trip, and meeting the kids at their California Beach house for Christmas get-togethers. The transition was hard for the businessman, but he eventually grew somewhat accustomed to the new arrangement. Susie called several women in the Omaha area and insisted they go to dinner and a movie with her husband; eventually, she set Warren up with Astrid Menks, a waitress. Within the year, she moved in with Buffett, all with Susie's blessing.

Warren Buffett Wants Two Nickels to Rub Together
By the late '70s, the his reputation had grown to the point that the rumor Warren Buffett was buying a stock was enough to shoot its price up 10%. Berkshire Hathaway's stock was trading at more than $290 a share, and Buffett's personal wealth was almost $140 million. The irony was that Warren never sold a single share of his company, meaning his entire available cash was the $50,000 salary he received. During this time, he made a comment to a broker, "Everything I got is tied up in Berkshire. I'd like a few nickels outside."

This prompted Warren to start investing for his personal life. According to Roger Lowenstein's "Buffett", Warren was far more speculative with his own investments. At one point he bought copper futures which was unadulterated speculation. In a short time, he had made $3 million dollars. When prompted to invest in real estate by a friend, he responded "Why should I buy real estate when the stock market is so easy?"

Berkshire Hathaway Announces Charitable Giving Program
Later, Buffett once again showed his tendency of bucking the popular trend. In 1981, the decade of greed, Berkshire announced a new charity plan which was thought up by Munger and approved by Warren. The plan called for each shareholder to designate charities which would receive $2 for each Berkshire share the stockholder owned. This was in response to a common practice on Wall Street of the CEO choosing who received the company's hand-outs (often they would go to the executive's schools, churches, and organizations). The plan was a huge success and over the years the amount was upped for each share. Eventually, the Berkshire shareholders were giving millions of dollars away each year, all to their own causes. The program was eventually discontinued after associates at one of Berkshire's subsidiaries, The Pampered Chef, experienced discrimination because of the controversal pro-choice charities Buffett chose to allocate his pro-rated portion of the charitable contribution pool. Another important event around this time was the stock price which hit $750 per share in 1982. Most of the gains could be attributed to Berkshire's stock portfolio which was now valued at over $1.3 billion dollars.

Warren Buffett Buys Nebraska Furniture Mart, Scott Fetzer and an Airplane for Berkshire Hathaway
For all the fine businesses Berkshire had managed collect, one of the best was about to come under its stable. In 1983, Warren Buffett walked into Nebraska Furniture Mart, the multi-million dollar furniture retailer built from scratch by Rose Blumpkin. Speaking to Mrs. B, as local residents called her, Buffett asked if she would be interested in selling the store to Berkshire Hathaway. Blumpkin's answer was a simple "yes", to which she responded she would part for "$60 million". The deal was sealed on a handshake and one page contract was drawn up. The Russian-born immigrant merely folded the check without looking at it when she received it days later.

Scott & Fetzer was another great addition to the Berkshire family. The company itself had been the target of a hostile takeover when an LPO was launched by Ralph Schey, the Chairman. The year was 1984 and Ivan Boesky soon launched a counter offer for $60 a share (the original tender offer stood at $50 a share - $5 above market value). The maker of Kirby vacuum cleaners and World Book encyclopedia, S&F was panicking. Buffett, who had owned a quarter of a million shares, dropped a message to the company asking them to call if they were interested in a merger. The phone rang almost immediately. Berkshire offered $60 per share in cold, hard, cash. When the deal was wrapped up less than a week later, Berkshire Hathaway had a new $315 million dollar cash-generating powerhouse to add to its collection. The small stream of cash that was taken out of the struggling textile mill had built one of the most powerful companies in the world. Far more impressive things were to be done in the next decade. Berkshire would see its share price climb from $2,600 to as high as $80,000 in the 1990's.

In 1986, Buffett bought a used Falcon aircraft for $850,000. As he had become increasingly recognizable, it was no longer comfortable for him to fly commercially. The idea of the luxury was hard for him to adjust to, but he loved the jet immensely. The passion for jets eventually, in part, led him to purchase Executive Jet in the 90's.

The 80's went on with Berkshire increasing in value as if on cue, the only bump in the road being the crash of 1987. Warren, who wasn't upset about the market correction, calmly checked the price of his company and went back to work. It was representative of how he viewed stocks and businesses in general. This was one of "Mr. Market's" temporary aberrations. It was quite a strong one; fully one-fourth of Berkshire's market cap was wiped out. Unfazed, Warren plowed on.

I'll Take a Coke
A year later, in 1988, he started buying up Coca-Cola stock like an addict. His old neighbor, now the President of Coca-Cola, noticed someone was loading up on shares and became concerned. After researching the transactions, he noticed the trades were being placed from the Midwest. He immediately thought of Buffett, whom he called. Warren confessed to being the culprit and requested they don't speak of it until he was legally required to disclose his holdings at the 5% threshold. Within a few months, Berkshire owned 7% of the company, or $1.02 billion dollars worth of the stock. Within three years, Buffett's Coca-Cola stock would be worth more than the entire value of Berkshire when he made the investment.

Warren Buffett's Money and Reputation On the Line During the Solomon Scandal
By 1989, Berkshire Hathaway was trading at $8,000 a share. Buffett was now, personally, worth more than $3.8 billion dollars. Within the next ten years, he would be worth ten times that amount. Before that would happen, there were much darker times ahead (read The Solomon Scandal).

Warren Buffet at the Turn of the Millennium
During the remainder of the 1990's, the stock catapulted as high as $80,000 per share. Even with this astronomical feat, as the dot-com frenzy began to take hold, Warren Buffett was accused of "losing his touch". In 1999, when Berkshire reported a net increase of 0.5% per share, several newspapers ran stories about the demise of the Oracle. Confident that the technology bubble would burst, Warren Buffett continued to do what he did best: allocate capital into great businesses that were selling below intrinsic value. His efforts did not go unrewarded. When the markets finally did come to their senses, Warren Buffett was once again a star. Berkshire's stock recovered to its previous levels after falling to around $45,000 per share, and the man from Omaha was once again seen as an investment icon.

For more information visit : beginnersinvest.about.com

More about → Warren Edward Buffett (1930 - )

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

Details about William Shakespeare’s life are sketchy, mostly mere surmise based upon court or other clerical records. His parents, John and Mary (Arden), were married about 1557; she was of the landed gentry, he a yeoman—a glover and commodities merchant. By 1568, John had risen through the ranks of town government and held the position of high bailiff, similar to mayor. William, the eldest son, was born in 1564, probably on April 23, several days before his baptism on April 26, 1564. That Shakespeare also died on April 23, 52 years later, may have resulted in the adoption of this birthdate.
William no doubt attended the local grammar school in Stratford where his parents lived, and would have studied primarily Latin rhetoric, logic, and literature [Barnet, viii]. At age 18 (1582), William married Anne Hathaway, a local farmer’s daughter eight years his senior. Their first daughter (Susanna) was born six months later (1583), and twins Judith and Hamnet were born in 1585.
Shakespeare’s life can be divided into three periods: the first 20 years in Stratford, which include his schooling, early marriage, and fatherhood; the next 25 years as an actor and playwright in London; and the last five in retirement back in Stratford where he enjoyed moderate wealth gained from his theatrical successes. The years linking the first two periods are marked by a lack of information about Shakespeare, and are often referred to as the “dark years”; the transition from active work into retirement was gradual and cannot be precisely dated [Boyce, 587].
John Shakespeare had suffered financial reverses from William’s teen years until well into the height of the playwright’s popularity and success. In 1596, John Shakespeare was granted a coat of arms, almost certainly purchased by William, who the next year bought a sizable house in Stratford. By the time of his death, William had substantial properties, both professional and personal, which he bestowed on his theatrical associates and his family (primarily his daughter Susanna, having rewritten his will one month before his death to protect his assets from Judith’s new husband, Thomas Quiney, who ran afoul of church doctrine and public esteem before and after the marriage) [Boyce, 529].
Shakespeare probably left school at 15, which was the norm, and took some sort of job, especially since this was the period of his father’s financial difficulty. Numerous references in his plays suggest that William may have in fact worked for his father, thereby gaining specialized knowledge [Boyce, 587].
At some point during the “dark years,” Shakespeare began his career with a London theatrical company—perhaps in 1589—for he was already an actor and playwright of some note in 1592. Shakespeare apparently wrote and acted for Pembroke’s Men, as well as numerous others, in particular Strange’s Men, which later became the Chamberlain’s Men, with whom he remained for the rest of his career.
When, in 1592, the Plague closed the theaters for about two years, Shakespeare turned to writing book-length narrative poetry. Most notable were “Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece,” both of which were dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, whom scholars accept as Shakespeare’s friend and benefactor despite a lack of documentation. During this same period, Shakespeare was writing his sonnets, which are more likely signs of the time’s fashion rather than actual love poems detailing any particular relationship. He returned to play writing when theaters reopened in 1594, and published no more poetry. His sonnets were published without his consent in 1609, shortly before his retirement.
Amid all of his success, Shakespeare suffered the loss of his only son, Hamnet, who died in 1596 at the age of 11. But Shakespeare’s career continued unabated, and in London in 1599, he became one of the partners in the new Globe Theater [Boyce, 589], built by the Chamberlain’s Men. This group was a remarkable assemblage of “excellent actors who were also business partners and close personal friends . . . [including] Richard Burbage . . . [who] all worked together as equals . . . ” [Chute, 131].
When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 and was succeeded by her cousin King James of Scotland, the Chamberlain’s Men was renamed the King’s Men, and Shakespeare’s productivity and popularity continued uninterrupted. He invested in London real estate and, one year away from retirement, purchased a second theater, the Blackfriars Gatehouse, in partnership with his fellow actors. His final play was Henry VIII, two years before his death in 1616.
Incredibly, most of Shakespeare’s plays had never been published in anything except pamphlet form, and were simply extant as acting scripts stored at the Globe. Only the efforts of two of Shakespeare’s company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, preserved his 36 plays (minus Pericles, the thirty-seventh) [Barnet, xvii] in the First Folio. Heminges and Condell published the plays, they said, “only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare” [Chute, 133]. Theater scripts were not regarded as literary works of art, but only the basis for the performance. Plays were a popular form of entertainment for all layers of society in Shakespeare’s time, which perhaps explains why Hamlet feels compelled to instruct the traveling Players on the fine points of acting, urging them not “to split the ears of the groundlings,” nor “speak no more than is set down for them.”
Present copies of Shakespeare’s plays have, in some cases, been reconstructed in part from scripts written down by various members of an acting company who performed particular roles. Shakespeare’s plays, like those of many of the actors who also were playwrights, belonged to the acting company. The performance, rather than the script, was what concerned the author, for that was how his play would become popular—and how the company, in which many actors were shareholders, would make money.
William Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, and was buried two days later in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church where he had been baptized exactly 52 years earlier.

For more information visit : www.enotes.com

More about → William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

Larry Page and Sergey Brin (1973 - )

Larry Page (Lawrence Page)

• March 26, 1973

• East Lansing, Michigan

Sergey Brin

• August 21, 1973

• Moscow, Russia

Sergey Brin - Larry Page

Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google, the Internet search engine, while they were graduate students at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Since its founding in 1998, Google has become one of the most successful dot-com businesses in history. Both Page and Brin were reluctant entrepreneurs who were committed to developing their company on their own terms, not those dictated by the prevailing business culture.

Not instant best friends
Page grew up in the East Lansing, Michigan, area, where his father, Carl Victor Page, was a professor of computer science at Michigan State University. The senior Page was also an early pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, and reportedly gave his young son his first computer when Larry was just six years old. Several years later Page entered the University of Michigan, where he earned an undergraduate degree in engineering with a concentration in computer engineering.
 An innovative thinker with a sense of humor as well, Page once built a working ink-jet printer out of Lego blocks. He was eager to advance in his career, and decided to study for a Ph.D degree. He was admitted to the prestigious doctoral program in computer science at Stanford University. On an introductory weekend at the Palo Alto campus that had been arranged for new students, he met Sergey Brin. A native of Moscow, Russia, Brin was also the son of a professor, and came to the United States with his family when he was six. His father taught math at the University of Maryland, and it was from that school's College Park campus that Brin earned an undergraduate degree in computer science and math.

Brin was already enrolled in Stanford's PhD program when Page arrived in 1995. As Brin explained to Robert McGarvey of Technology Review, "I was working on data mining, the idea of taking large amounts of data, analyzing it for patterns and trying to extract relationships that are useful." One weekend Brin was assigned to a team that showed the new doctoral students around campus, and Page was in his group. Industry lore claims they argued the whole time, but soon found themselves working together on a research project. That 1996 paper, "Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," became the basis for the Google search engine.

A hit with fellow students
Page and Brin created an algorithm, or set of step-by-step instructions for solving a specific computer task. Their algorithm searched all the hypertext documents in cyberspace, which are the basis for Web pages on the Internet. A typical search engine such as Hot Bot, which was popular at one time in the mid-1990s, worked by looking for a term the user entered—"New York Yankees," for example—in all of those documents. If the phrase "New York Yankees" was written into one Web site's hypertext code several dozen or even a hundred times, that document would come up first in the search results. But it might just turn out to be an Internet store that sold sports memorabilia.

Page and Brin wanted to create a search tool that would find the most relevant Web page first. If someone typed in "New York Yankees," for example, the official Yankees site would be the first result returned. Their algorithm analyzed the "back links" in a hypertext document, or how many times other sites linked to it—the more links, the higher the relevancy of the page. As an article in Time explained, their search technology was the first to "treat the Internet as a democracy. Google interprets connections between websites as votes. The most linked-to sites win on the Google usefulness ballot and rise to the top of the search results."

"I hope they will be able to return answers, not just documents.... In the future, Google will be your interface to all the world's knowledge—not just web pages."

Sergey Brin, Guardian (London, England), November 23, 2000.
The search engine with Page and Brin's unique algorithm was initially named "Backrub," but they later settled on "PageRank," named after Page. It soon caught on with other Stanford users when Page and Brin let them try it out. The two set up a simple search page for users, because they did not have a web page developer to create anything very impressive. They also began stringing together the necessary computing power to handle searches by multiple users, by using any computer part they could find. As their search engine grew in popularity among Stanford users, it needed more and more servers to process the queries. "At Stanford we'd stand on the loading dock and try to snag computers as they came in," Page recalled to McGarvey. "We would see who got 20 computers and ask them if they could spare one."

Maxed out credit cards
During this time Page and Brin were running the project out of their dorm rooms at Stanford. Page's room served as the data hub, while Brin's was the business office. But they were reluctant entrepreneurs, not wanting to shelve their Ph.D. studies and join the dot-com rush of the era. In mid-1998 they finally relented. "Pretty soon, we had 10,000 searches a day," Page told Newsweek 's Steven Levy. "And we figured, maybe this is really real." They initially set out just to defray their costs. "We spent about $15,000 on a terabyte [one million megabytes] of disks," Brin explained to McGarvey. "We spread that across three credit cards. Once we did that, we wrote up a business plan."

Google Pranks
The freewheeling corporate culture at Google has produced the occasional prank since its founding. The company had been known to post fake press releases around April 1, or April Fools' Day. In 2000, for example, it launched "MentalPlex," which offered Google site visitors the ability to "search smarter and faster" by peering into a circle with shifting colors.

In 2003 Google explained its novel search technology "PigeonRank" in an April Fools' Day insertion on their Web site that offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse into "the technology behind Google's great results." It was pigeons, the page explained, that helped deliver such quick and accurate search results. In a FAQ, or Frequently Asked Questions, section of the page, it addressed the question, "Aren't pigeons really stupid? How do they do this?" Google responded, "While no pigeon has actually been confirmed for a seat on the Supreme Court, pigeons are surprisingly adept at making instant judgments when confronted with difficult choices."

Page and Brin had the idea to license their PageRank technology to other companies to pay off their credit card debt, but none were interested. David Filo (1966–), another Stanford graduate who had started Yahoo.com, suggested they form a search-engine company. They named their company "Google," after the mathematical term Googol, which specified the number one followed by a hundred zeros. They took it to Andy Bechtolsheim (1956–), a Stanford graduate and co-founder of Sun Microsystems. One of their professors set up an in an early morning meeting with Bechtolsheim. They showed him their Google demo, but Bechtolsheim had another meeting on his schedule that morning, and needed to leave. He liked their idea, however, and offered to write them a check on the spot for seed money. It was for $100,000, and was made out to "Google." In order to deposit it, Page and Brin first needed to open a bank account with their company name on it.

Page and Brin went on to raise more money from friends, family, and then from venture capital firms that funded new businesses. By the end of 1999 they had set up headquarters in an office park in Mountain View, and had officially launched the site. In June of 2000, Google reached an important hallmark: it had indexed one billion Internet URLs, or Uniform Resource Locators. A URL is the World Wide Web address of a site on the Internet. Reaching the one-billion mark made Google the most comprehensive search engine on the Web.

Hired industry pro
In their first years in business, Brin served as president, while Page was the chief executive officer. The company continued to grow exponentially during 2001. Google even became a verb—to "Google" someone or something meant to search for it via the engine, but it was most commonly used in reference to checking out the Web presence of potential dates. Page and Brin's company was the subject of articles in mainstream publications, but they continually rejected offers to go public—make their company a publicly traded one on Wall Street. They did, however, hire Eric Schmidt (1955–) as chief executive officer and board chair in 2001. Schmidt was a veteran of Sun, where he had served as chief technology officer. As Brin explained to Betsy Cummings in Sales & Marketing Management, "Larry and I have done a good job," but conceded that "the probability of doing something dumb" was still likely. "It's clear we need some international strategy, and Eric brings that."

Google kept expanding in cyberspace. It added search capabilities in dozens of languages, and began partnering with overseas sites as well. It also attracted legions of devoted new employees. Its headquarters were informally known as the "Googleplex," and workers were relatively free to make their own hours, with the idea that employees should be able to work when they felt they were most productive. Google staff were also encouraged to use 80 percent of their work hours on regular work, and the other 20 percent on projects of their own design. One of those side projects emerged as Orkut.com, a harder-to-join version of the social-networking phenomenon Friendster.com. Orkut was named after the Google engineer who created it, Orkut Buyukkokten.
 Page and Brin strove to keep Google's corporate culture relaxed in other ways, which they felt benefited the company in the long run. Its perks were legendary. There was free Ben and Jerry's ice cream, an on-site masseuse, a ping-pong table, yoga classes, and even a staff physician. Employees could bring their dogs to work, and the company cafeteria was run by a professional chef who used to work for the rock band the Grateful Dead. Brin discussed his management philosophy with Cummings. "Since we started the company, we've grown twenty percent per month. Our employees can do whatever they want."

Long-awaited IPO
By early 2004 Google was one of the most-visited Web sites in the world. Its servers handled some 138,000 search queries per minute, or about two hundred million daily. Analysts believed it was taking in approximately $1 billion in revenues annually, and the company finally announced plans to become a publicly traded company with an initial public offering (IPO) of stock. Theirs, however, would utilize a unique online auction process to sell its first shares to the public. This meant that the large Wall Street firms that handled the IPO underwriting—which investigated the company's books and then placed a monetary value on it—would not be able to give the first shares out to their top clients as a perk. It was estimated that Google was going to be valued at least at $15 billion, and possibly even as high as $30 billion.

Page and Brin each own thirty-eight million shares of Google stock. They would become overnight millionaires when Google began trading on the NASDAQ, or National Association of Securities Dealers Automatic Quotation system, sometime in 2004. Business journalists were calling it the most hotly anticipated IPO of the post-dot-com era. Many other Internet companies had quickly become publicly traded ones in the late 1990s, but began to crash when the economy slowed over the next few years. Just prior to launching their IPO, Google entered a legally required "quiet period," in which they were not allowed to discuss their plans or strategies with the press. Brin told Levy in Newsweek just before that period that he and Page were content to keep tinkering with their research-paper idea. "I think we're pretty far along compared to 10 years ago," he said. "At the same time, where can you go? Certainly if you had all the world's information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you'd be better off. Between that and today, there's plenty of space to cover."

More about → Larry Page and Sergey Brin (1973 - )

Sir Tim Berners-Lee (1955 - )

Tim Berners Lee has ensured that all of us are going to be in touch with each other whether we like it or not. He has changed the course of the world when he made the Internet accessible to everyone. Maybe due recognition will come many years from now when the true potential of the Internet is realized.

Tim Berners Lee has invented something that is becoming as ubiquitous as man himself. It affects us all; it is used by millions of people all over the world. Tim Berners Lee has invented the World Wide Web.

He was born June 8, 1955 in London, England. His parents were the quintessential computer geeks. As a matter of fact they met when they were working on the first computer to be commercially sold. It was natural that they encouraged him to think and work innovatively as he grew up. Tim Berners Lee was raised in London and studied at the Queen's College at Oxford University.

Tim had inherited his parent’s interest in computer technology. In 1976 he set about building his own computer. He used tools and paraphernalia that could be found in the house. Tim took up employment with Plessey Telecommunications Ltd, a major UK Telecom equipment manufacturer. Working on bar code technology and message systems helped further whet his appetite for computer systems.

One of the most common sights would be to find Tim immersed in his work oblivious to the world. Tim Berners Lee once famously said that, "Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch." Tim Berners Lee’s internet adventure started in the Swiss Alps. He was completing a six-month course as a software engineer at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in Geneva. In 1980, he came up with a language called HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language). This has been adopted as the official language for the Internet.

The world got its first glimpse at the World Wide Web when Tim put up the first web site called info.cern.ch. It explained the working of the World Wide Web and all about servers and browsers. It also had a facility to compile a database of other web sites. It was a website cum directory cum primitive search engine. People started putting up all kinds of information on the Internet. The possibilities that it threw up were enormous. The number of Internet users was growing at an exponential speed. They were doubling in less than two months time.

The entire concept of the Internet grew out of a program that Tim Berners Lee had written called "Enquire Within Upon Everything." All the components were already there before Tim Berners Lee had arrived but it is to his credit that he brought it all together. One man has ensured that the rest of mankind will be forever connected to each other. Tim’s greatness lies in the fact that he does not seem to be perturbed about the fact that he has not commercially gained from his idea. He never even thought of applying for a patent. In 1994 he founded World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts. All technology standards from this institute are based on royalty free technology. According to Eric Schmidt, CEO of Novell, "If this were a traditional science, Berners-Lee would win a Nobel Prize."

Most of Tim Berners Lee’s admirers lie in academic circles. There are not many people who have even heard of him outside the world of technology. He has won a number of national and international awards. In 1995, Tim Berners-Lee received the Kilby Foundation's "Young Innovator of the Year" Award; other awards that he has received include the Charles Babbage award, PC Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award in Technical Excellence, Albert Medal of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Art, Manufactures and Commerce. International accolades include George R Stibitz Computer Pioneer award at the American Computer Museum, Japan Prize from the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan and Finland's Millennium Technology Prize.

The British Government has honored him by conferring upon him, Knighthood. In 2004 he was given the rank of Knight Commander (the second-highest rank in the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II. On January 27, 2005 he was named Greatest Briton of 2004 for his achievements as well as displaying the key British characteristics of "diffidence, determination, a sharp sense of humor and adaptability."

Tim’s greatest achievement is however the fact that he almost seems to resent the attention that is occasionally showered upon him. He seems happiest when he is left to himself, doing his research. Tim is married to Nancy Carlson. They have two children.

More about → Sir Tim Berners-Lee (1955 - )

Walt Disney ( 1901 – 1966 )

(Born December 5, 1901, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died December 15, 1966, Los Angeles, California) American motion-picture and television producer and showman, famous as a pioneer of animated cartoon films and as the creator of such cartoon characters as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. He also planned and built Disneyland, a huge amusement park that opened near Los Angeles in 1955, and before his death he had begun building a second such park, Walt Disney World, near Orlando, Florida. The Disney Company he founded has become one of the world's largest entertainment conglomerates.

Early life

Walter Elias Disney was the fourth son of Elias Disney, a peripatetic carpenter, farmer, and building contractor, and his wife, Flora Call, who had been a public school teacher. When Walt was little more than an infant, the family moved to a farm near Marceline, Missouri, a typical small Midwestern town, which is said to have furnished the inspiration and model for the Main Street, U.S.A., of Disneyland. There Walt began his schooling and first showed a taste and aptitude for drawing and painting with crayons and watercolours.
His restless father soon abandoned his efforts at farming and moved the family to Kansas City, Missouri, where he bought a morning newspaper route and compelled his young sons to assist him in delivering papers. Walt later said that many of the habits and compulsions of his adult life stemmed from the disciplines and discomforts of helping his father with the paper route. In Kansas City the young Walt began to study cartooning with a correspondence school and later took classes at the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design.
In 1917 the Disneys moved back to Chicago, and Walt entered McKinley High School, where he took photographs, made drawings for the school paper, and studied cartooning on the side, for he was hopeful of eventually achieving a job as a newspaper cartoonist. His progress was interrupted by World War I, in which he participated as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross in France and Germany.
Returning to Kansas City in 1919, he found occasional employment as a draftsman and inker in commercial art studios, where he met Ub Iwerks, a young artist whose talents contributed greatly to Walt's early success.

First Animated Cartoons

Dissatisfied with their progress, Disney and Iwerks started a small studio of their own in 1922 and acquired a secondhand movie camera with which they made one and two-minute animated advertising films for distribution to local movie theatres. They also did a series of animated cartoon sketches called Laugh-O-grams and the pilot film for a series of seven-minute fairy tales that combined both live action and animation, Alice in Cartoonland. A New York film distributor cheated the young producers, and Disney was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1923. He moved to California to pursue a career as a cinematographer, but the surprise success of the first Alice film compelled Disney and his brother Roy—a lifelong business partner—to reopen shop in Hollywood. With Roy as business manager, Disney resumed the Alice series, persuading Iwerks to join him and assist with the drawing of the cartoons. They invented a character called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, contracted for distribution of the films at $1,500 each, and propitiously launched their small enterprise. In 1927, just before the transition to sound in motion pictures, Disney and Iwerks experimented with a new character—a cheerful, energetic, and mischievous mouse called Mickey. They had planned two shorts, called Plane Crazy and Gallopin' Gaucho, that were to introduce Mickey Mouse when The Jazz Singer, a motion picture with the popular singer Al Jolson, brought the novelty of sound to the movies. Fully recognizing the possibilities for sound in animated-cartoon films, Disney quickly produced a third Mickey Mouse cartoon equipped with voices and music, entitled Steamboat Willie, and cast aside the other two soundless cartoon films. When it appeared in 1928, Steamboat Willie was a sensation.

The following year Disney started a new series called Silly Symphonies with a picture entitled The Skeleton Dance, in which a skeleton rises from the graveyard and does a grotesque, clattering dance set to music based on classical themes. Original and briskly syncopated, the film ensured popular acclaim for the series, but, with costs mounting because of the more complicated drawing and technical work, Disney's operation was continually in peril.
The growing popularity of Mickey Mouse and his girlfriend, Minnie, however, attested to the public's taste for the fantasy of little creatures with the speech, skills, and personality traits of human beings. (Disney himself provided the voice for Mickey until 1947.) This popularity led to the invention of other animal characters, such as Donald Duck and the dogs Pluto and Goofy. In 1933 Disney produced a short, The Three Little Pigs, which arrived in the midst of the Great Depression and took the country by storm. Its treatment of the fairy tale of the little pig who works hard and builds his house of brick against the huffing and puffing of a threatening wolf suited the need for fortitude in the face of economic disaster, and its song “Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”was a happy taunting of adversity. It was in this period of economic hard times in the early 1930s that Disney fully endeared himself and his cartoons to audiences all over the world, and his operation began making money in spite of the Depression.
Disney had by that time gathered a staff of creative young people, who were headed by Iwerks. Colour was introduced in the Academy Award-winning Silly Symphonies film Flowers and Trees (1932), while other animal characters came and went in films such as The Grasshopper and the Ants (1934) and The Tortoise and the Hare (1935). Roy franchised tie-in sales with the cartoons of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck—watches, dolls, shirts, and tops—and reaped more wealth for the company.

Feature-length cartoons

Walt Disney was never one to rest or stand still. He had long thought of producing feature-length animated films in addition to the shorts. In 1934 he began work on a version of the classic fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), a project that required great organization and coordination of studio talent and a task for which Disney possessed a unique capacity. While he actively engaged in all phases of creation in his films, he functioned chiefly as coordinator and final decision maker rather than as designer and artist. Snow White was widely acclaimed by critics and audiences alike as an amusing and sentimental romance. By animating substantially human figures in the characters of Snow White, the Prince, and the Wicked Queen and by forming caricatures of human figures in the seven dwarfs, Disney departed from the scope and techniques of the shorts and thus proved animation's effectiveness as a vehicle for feature-length stories.
While Disney continued to do short films presenting the anthropomorphic characters of his little animals, he was henceforth to develop a wide variety of full-length entertainment films, such as Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). Disney also produced a totally unusual and exciting film—his multisegmented and stylized Fantasia (1940), in which cartoon figures and colour patterns were animated to the music of Igor Stravinsky, Paul Dukas, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and others. In 1940 Disney moved his company into a new studio in Burbank, California, abandoning the old plant it had occupied in the early days of growth.

Major films and television productions

A strike by Disney animators in 1941was a major setback for the company. Many top animators resigned, and it would be many years before the company produced animated features that lived up to the quality of its early 1940s classics. Disney's foray into films for the federal government during World War II helped the studio perfect methods of combining live-action and animation; the studio's commercial films using this hybrid technique include The Reluctant Dragon (1941), Saludos Amigos (1942), The Three Caballeros (1945), Make Mine Music (1946), and Song of the South (1946).
The Disney studio by that time was established as a big-business enterprise and began to produce a variety of entertainment films. One popular series, called True-Life Adventures, featured nature-based motion pictures such as Seal Island (1948), Beaver Valley (1950), and The Living Desert (1953). The Disney studio also began making full-length animation romances, such as Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953), and produced low-budget, live-action films, including The Absent-Minded Professor (1961). The Disney studio was among the first to foresee the potential of television as a popular-entertainment medium and to produce films directly for it. The Zorro and Davy Crockett series were very popular with children, and Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color became a Sunday-night fixture. But the climax of Disney's career as a theatrical film producer came with his release in 1964 of the motion picture Mary Poppins, which won worldwide popularity.

Disneyland

In the early 1950s Disney had initiated plans for a huge amusement park to be built near Los Angeles. When Disneyland opened in 1955, much of Disney's disposition toward nostalgic sentiment and fantasy was evident in its design and construction. It soon became a mecca for tourists from around the world. A second Disney park, Walt Disney World, near Orlando, Florida, which was under construction at the time of his death, opened in 1971.

Assessment

Disney's imagination and energy, his whimsical humour, and his gift for being attuned to the vagaries of popular taste inspired him to develop well-loved amusements for “children of all ages” throughout the world. Although some criticized his frequently saccharine subject matter and accused him of creating a virtual stylistic monopoly in American animation that discouraged experimentation, there is no denying his pathbreaking accomplishments. His achievement as a creator of entertainment for an almost unlimited public and as a highly ingenious merchandiser of his wares can rightly be compared to the most successful industrialists in history.

More about → Walt Disney ( 1901 – 1966 )