THE NOBEL LAUREATES - 3 - ANSWERS

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)