1. B. Wangari Maathai
"Wangari Muta Maathai" (1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011) was a
renowned Kenyan social, environmental and political activist and the first
African woman to win the Nobel Prize. In 1977, Maathai founded the "Green
Belt Movement", an environmental non-governmental organization focused on
the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 1984,
she was awarded the "Right Livelihood Award" for "converting the
Kenyan ecological debate into mass action for reforestation." In 1986, the
Movement established a "Pan African Green Belt Network" and exposed
over 40 individuals from other African countries to the approach. Some of these
individuals established similar tree planting initiatives in their own
countries or they used some of the Green Belt Movement methods to improve their
efforts.
Wangari Maathai was
internationally recognized for her persistent struggle for democracy, human
rights and environmental conservation. She addressed the UN on several
occasions and spoke on behalf of women at special sessions of the General
Assembly for the five-year review of the earth summit. Maathai was an elected
member of Parliament and served as assistant minister for Environment and
Natural resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki between January
2003 and November 2005. She was an Honorary Councillor of the World Future
Council. She was affiliated to professional bodies and received several awards.
On 25 September 2011, Maathai died of complications from ovarian cancer.
"Unbowed: A Memoir" is a 2006 autobiography by Wangari
Maathai.
2. C. Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (10
February 1890 – 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist and literary
translator. Pasternak’s first books of verse went unnoticed. With "Sestra
moya zhizn" (My Sister Life), 1922, and "Temy i variatsii"
(Themes and Variations), 1923, the later marked by an extreme, though sober
style, Pasternak first gained a place as a leading poet among his Russian
contemporaries. In 1924 he published "Vysokaya bolezn" (Sublime
Malady), which portrayed the 1905 revolt as he saw it, and "Detstvo
Lyuvers" (The Childhood of Lovers), a lyrical and psychological depiction
of a young girl on the threshold of womanhood. Pasternak’s reticent
autobiography, "Okhrannaya gramota" (Safe Conduct), appeared in 1931,
and was followed the next year by a collection of lyrics, "Vtoroye
rozhdenie" (Second Birth), 1932.
(Young Pasternak)
In 1957 "Doctor
Zhivago", Pasternak’s only novel – (except for the earlier “novel in
verse” Spektorsky - 1926) – whose plot takes place between the Russian
Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War, first appeared in an Italian
translation (The Novel was rejected for publication in the USSR due to the
author's independent-minded stance on the "October Revolution", but the
manuscript was smuggled to Italy for publication) and has been acclaimed by
some critics as a successful attempt at combining lyrical-descriptive and
epic-dramatic styles. The novel was made into a film by David Lean in 1965 starring
Omar Sharif in the title role as "Yuri Zhivago", a married physician
whose life is irreversibly altered by the Russian Revolution and subsequent
Civil War.
Pasternak was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature the next year in 1958, an event that enraged the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which forced him to decline the prize,
though his descendants were able to accept it in his name in 1988.
3. A. Baruch Samuel Blumberg
"Baruch Samuel Blumberg" (July 28, 1925 – April 5,
2011) — known as "Barry Blumberg" — was an American physician,
geneticist and co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
(with Daniel Carleton Gajdusek), for his work on the hepatitis B virus while an
investigator at the National Institutes of Health, US. He was President of the
American Philosophical Society from 2005 until his death.
Blumberg received the Nobel Prize for "discoveries
concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious
diseases." Blumberg identified the hepatitis B virus, and later developed
its diagnostic test and vaccine.
4. A. Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a
Mexican poet, writer and diplomat and was recognized as one of the major Latin
American writers of the 20th century. He received the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1990.
As a child, Paz’s family was ruined financially by the Mexican
Civil War, and he grew up in straitened circumstances. Nonetheless, he had
access to the excellent library that had been stocked by his grandfather, a
politically active liberal intellectual who had himself been a writer. As a
teenager in 1931, Paz published his first poems, including
"Cabellera". Two years later, at the age of 19, he published Luna
Silvestre ("Wild Moon"), a collection of poems. In 1937, the young
poet visited Spain, where he identified strongly with the Republican cause in
the Spanish Civil War. His reflection on that experience, "Bajo tu clara
sombra y otros poemas" (“Beneath Your Clear Shadow and Other Poems”), was
published in Spain in 1937 and revealed him as a writer of real promise. Before
returning home Paz visited Paris, where Surrealism and its adherents exerted a
profound influence on him.
His major poetic publications included "No pasaran!"
(1937; “They Shall Not Pass!”), "Libertad bajo palabra" (1949;
“Freedom Under Parole”), "¿Águila o sol?" (1951; Eagle or Sun?), and "Piedra
de sol" (1957; The Sun Stone).
Paz entered Mexico’s diplomatic corps in 1945, after having
lived for two years in San Francisco and New York, and served in a variety of
assignments, including one as Mexico’s ambassador to India from 1962 to 1968. While
in India, he met numerous writers of a group known as the "Hungry
Generation" (an avant garde literary movement in the Bengali language
launched by Binoy Mazumdar, Shakti Chattopadhyay,Saileswar Ghosh, Malay Roy
Choudhury and others) and had a profound influence on them. The six years he
spent in India as Mexican ambassador was depicted in his book " In Light
of India" (translated by Eliot Weinberger), which revealed how the people
and culture of India changed his life.
5. B. Ronald Ross
Sir
Ronald Ross (born May 13, 1857, Almora, India — died Sept. 16, 1932, Putney
Heath, London, Eng.), British doctor who received the Nobel Prize for
Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on malaria becoming the first
British Nobel laureate, and the first born outside Europe. His discovery of the
malarial parasite in the gastrointestinal tract of the Anopheles mosquito led
to the realization that malaria was transmitted by Anopheles, and laid the
foundation for combating the disease.
After
graduating in medicine (1879), Ross entered the “Indian Medical Service” and
served in the third Anglo-Burmese War (1885). On leave he studied bacteriology
in London (1888–89) and then returned to India, where, prompted by Patrick
Manson’s guidance and assistance, he began (1895) a series of investigations on
malaria. He discovered the presence of the malarial parasite within the
Anopheles mosquito in 1897. Using birds that were sick with malaria, he was
soon able to ascertain the entire life cycle of the malarial parasite,
including its presence in the mosquito’s salivary glands. He demonstrated that
malaria is transmitted from infected birds to healthy ones by the bite of a
mosquito, a finding that suggested the disease’s mode of transmission to humans.
(Page
from notebook where Sir Ronald Ross records his discovery of the mosquito
transmission of malaria, 20 August 1897)
(Oocysts
stages of malaria parasites developing in the walls of a mosquito midgut – stomach.
Such oocysts were seen, for the first time, by Sir Ronald Ross on 20 August
1897.)
He was a
polymath, writing a number of poems, published several novels, and composed
songs. He was also an amateur artist and natural mathematician.
After
resigning from his service in India, he joined the faculty of Liverpool School
of Tropical Medicine, and continued as Professor and Chairman of Tropical
Medicine of the institute for 10 years. In 1926, he became “Director-in-Chief
of the Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases”, which was
established in honour of his works. He remained there until his death.
“…With
tears and toiling breath,
I find
thy cunning seeds,
O
million-murdering Death.”
(fragment
of poem by Ronald Ross, written in August 1897, following his discovery of
malaria parasites in anopheline mosquitoes fed on malaria-infected patients in
Calcutta)
