Search

Information about several papers discussed at the conference "Life Writing in Europe" by the International Auto/Biography Association (IABA) Europe, held at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands on October 29-31, 2009 is presented. Topics include gender politics in biographies, language and national identity, and a comparison of the academic study of biographical writings from the U.S. and Canada with those from Europe. The symposium featured several scholars including Georg Misch, Philippe Lejeune, and Mineke Bosch.

In this article, we investigate accepted claims that relate to the gestation of Einstein’s corpus papers of 1905. Contrary to what is generally believed, Einstein had much interaction with the scientific community and with specific works that were co-evolving with his own ideas. At the very least, the question of credit should be revisited on several points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses two poems that give voice to the forgotten wives of venerated Jewish mystics. In ways both overt and covert, they manifest the writer's occupation as an academic scholar and a woman learned in Jewish texts. The story of the kabbalist's wife, left out of the sacred texts and seemingly insignificant from the writer's professional point of view as a scholar, comes to expression by way of art, in a poem. The poems are discussed here within a political context of poetry that poses demands for social change within the space defined as simultaneously public and private. A reading of these poems presents the ways in which their authors, as creative artists, appropriate canonical Jewish texts for themselves. The extra-textual political nature of these works comes to expression, for the first poem, in the mode of its publication, and for the second, in the place it occupies in the poet's personal biography, as she chooses to present it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on the professional biographies of six professors identified as excellent by senior students in three programmes at the School of Humanities, Mar del Plata State University. In-depth interviews examined the teachings and practices these instructors encountered along their educational biographies in order to find traces of these experiences in their current lives. The aim is to disclose the subtle ways in which the past influences their academic present. The life histories retrieved reveal the importance of the actors' mentors at the onset of their teaching and research at the university. The recovery of these memories allows the conceptualization of experts' role in the education of novices, thus examining what is traditionally considered as the informal supervision of teaching assistants and junior researchers. In this way, we try to create a site at the university where it is possible to discuss mentors' good practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the obituary pages of quality newspapers attempt to be purveyors of instant and authoritative biography, offering unfettered accounts of lives lived, they demonstrate some haphazard practice in recording their subjects' sexual persuasion. That intermittent unreliability has been the topic of critical comment in the gay media, particularly when obituaries have failed to recognise the existence of same-sex partners. This research paper, through an impressionistic sampling of British, American, and Australian obituary columns, finds evidence of a gradual shift towards candid posthumous character study, but points also to episodes of erratic rendition, especially in indicating sexual inclination within that process. It argues that the legitimacy of the obituary as an instrument of historical record is compromised accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the potential future of political biography in Great Britain. While it is attested that the British political biography is a very well-honed and respected form of literature, this paper also posits that biography is intellectually and culturally the least confident form of political writing. Biographers are contrasted with artists in other genres, such as thriller writing, filmmaking, and wood-carving. Prominent political figures such as English author Samuel Johnson and English anarchist and biographer Lytton Strachey are discussed in relation to the topic. It is urged that complacency poses a risk to the future of British political biography.

That Davies was alive throughout the years of preparation and publication of his biography was a mixed blessing. It made it possible to observe him in many contexts, and his excellent memory meant that much could be learned from interviews. But his memory was not perfect and there were parts of his life he shied away from and papers he chose not to make available. If balance and accuracy were to be achieved, interviews with friends, enemies, and neutral observers were needed, as was a thorough examination of the record—newspapers edited by Davies' father, his own editorials and articles, his manuscripts and professional correspondence, private letters still in the hands of correspondents, diaries (insofar as he was willing to make them available), and the like. While "Man of Myt"h was in preparation, he was sufficiently skittish that the possibility he might withdraw from the project was ever present. He had much to say about the difficulties of writing biography in two novels and in many letters, but he claimed he'd never read his own biography so he would not have to answer questions about it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The generally accepted biography of the famous Cordovan musician and composer, Alī b. Nafi‛ Ziryab (d. 242/857), contains evident problems of chronology and content and is based almost entirely upon one source, al-Maqqarī's Nafh˙ al-⃛īb min ghu⋅n al-Andalus al-ratīb, written in the eleventh/seventeenth century. Modern scholarship generally has overlooked the fifth/eleventh-century source for this late version of his biography and has not taken other, earlier, sources into account. The result is a misbegotten biography that distorts both its subject and the Mediterranean world in which Ziryab lived. This article refines the biography of Ziryab by using the earliest available Arabic sources, including works by Ibn ‛Abd Rabbih (d. 328/940), Ibn al-Qutiyya (d. 365/977), Ibn H˙ayyan (d. 469/1076), Ah˙mad al-Tīfashī (d. 651/1253) and Ibn Khaldun (d. 803/1402). By comparing these accounts and attempting to reconcile their inconsistencies, the paper proposes a more logical chronology for Ziryab's career that not only resolves obvious problems with the standard biography, but also portrays this important artist in relation to the network of political and economic institutions that united the eastern and western ends of the Islamic Mediterranean world in the early third/ninth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A relational approach is proposed which provides a framework for connecting levels of analysis/phenomena relevant to narrative identity. Because it is grounded in a systemic relational metanarrative, the relational approach does not preference any one level. Small story and big story are both viewed as integral to the larger identity project. A third analytic level, the middle story, is suggested as a bridge between small and big story. As one example of the approach, systemic analyses of narrative stability for two university students are presented, based on interviews conducted over four years. These analyses conceptually connect middle-level processes with big stories and illustrate principles of circular causality. The final portion of the paper discusses implications and requirements of the relational approach, and other ways that it might be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of epiphanies, turning points and critical biographical moments is a central analytic category of life history research in general, and of youth studies in particular. In this paper we explore how we have engaged with ideas of 'fatefulness' (Giddens 1991) and biographical 'choice' in a longitudinal qualitative study of young people's transitions to adulthood, tracing the employment of theoretical and analytical devices through time to assess their usefulness in this context. We attempted to operationalise Giddens' idea of the fateful moment in relation to biographical data asking how the analysis of a formal narrative device (critical moments, turning points) might play a part in mapping and theorising the configuration of structural conditions, individual responses, timing and chance. We reviewed earlier analyses, and the changes of interpretation brought about by the accumulation of biographical data through time, recognising the provisional nature of interpretation in longitudinal research and analysis. The process of revisiting and revising our deliberations over the meaning and significance of the critical moments within biographical narratives confirms the interpretative value of focussing on these narrative forms, yet suggests that late modern theoretical frameworks with their emphasis on reflexivity may have a limited contribution to make to understanding the configuration of biography and history. We suggest that this makes a theoretical and methodological contribution to biographical and narrative approaches to the study of young people's lives, transitions to adulthood and trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the emergence of the concept of choice biography, as it is linked to the work of Ulrich Beck, in youth research. The concept has been called a current pervasive theoretical orthodoxy. However, this article argues that the concept is most often taken up to critique, and Beck used mostly as a foil, through arguing that he overemphasizes agency and neglects structural constraints, in establishing or occupying a middle-ground theoretical position between structure and agency. I propose that the relationship and balance between structure and agency is of little interest to Beck and aim to discourage forcing his work into this frame. Instead of focusing on a shift towards agency, and proposing the concept of choice biographies to understand the shift, Beck is making the more complicated claim that at the very moment, and through the same processes, that some of the constraints placed on people are breaking down, the predictability and security that would allow these new options to function as deliberate choices also weaken. More importantly, Beck asks the question of whether the concepts developed by twentieth-century sociology are up to the task of theorizing the contemporary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A brief sketch of the life and work of Sir Ronald Ross is provided, and his papers on a priori pathometry summarized. Ross was one of the earliest epidemic modellers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biography of news researcher Liz Donovan, who died in 2008, serves as a thread of a journey through the profession of news librarian and describes the evolution of newspaper newsrooms throughout 40 years. Information systems and resources have changed -from paper clippings to the Internet and Web 2.0-, but the economic situation of the press has also changed, leading to cutbacks. Unfortunately, with the mistaken idea that "everything is on the Internet", news companies are devaluing the contributions made by information professionals to newspaper content, and often close or decimate the news libraries, thus losing an important amount of know-how and quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James Parsons Burkitt (1870–1959), a civil engineer and County Surveyor of Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, was one of the pioneers of modern ornithology. He was an experienced field ornithologist when, during the early 1920s, he designed and conducted the first population study of a bird, the robin ( Erithacus rubecula), based on marked (ringed) individuals. He discovered details of territorial behaviour, song, and threat display, and estimated the average life-span of this bird. After the completion of his robin study he continued to observe and to publish on the birds around his home. In this biographical paper, hitherto unreported details of his ornithological work, including a series of maps showing the robins’ territories at Lawnakilla (1922–1926), are provided, and the places near Enniskillen where Burkitt lived and studied birds are located. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on literature related to Caesars. It is stated that the descendants of the Caesars ended with Nero. In his "Tacitus" Ronald Syme stated that the last six biographies of Suetonius' Caesars which are thought to form the final two of eight books, were not a part of the author's original design. In two later papers, Syme modified his theory, with no less reservation or characteristic brevity. In both theories, he stated that what now stands as the beginning of Galba may have originally been at the end of the account of Nero.

D. I. Mendeleev to our regret had not written memoirs, but biographical notes and fragments were spread in his versatile works and correspondence. This publication is mainly composed of some among these notes arranged along the chronology. Up till now no analogous attempts has been made to bring together the biography of D.I. Mendeleev by “pumping out” of his published works and the documents kept in archives the tales on some events of his life, and in this respect this paper is unique, although evidently not all material that fundamentally may be used is included. But even taking this circumstance in consideration, to look on the life and scientific work of the great scientist through his perception and estimation of various of his curriculum vitae would be, using the pet word of Dmitrii Ivanovich, “extremely helpful.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an autopsychobiography. It is, therefore, as described by Dr. William Todd Schultz, a combination of psychological theory and biography and not quite either one because it looks at only one subject or unit of analysis, and it does not presume to tell an entire life story but merely a splinter from a life story. It is a post postmodem woridview that it seizes the moment to capture a story on paper (http://www.psychobiography.com/definitions2.html). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine the ways that prospective teachers studying in a university-based, graduate-level teacher education programme engage in reflection toward making meaning of disability. I focus on the background experiences, identities, and knowledge that teachers draw from to make meaning of social and cultural models of disability, and which relate to their developing ideas about inclusive teaching practices. Providing prospective teachers a forum to reflect and find connections between their experiences — more often as persons who do not identify as disabled — and persons with disabilities suggests one way that teacher educators can build curriculum that counters a perception of students labelled with disabilities as 'others', and subsequently supports teachers to propose directions for inclusive teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This purely recreational paper is about one of the most colorful characters of the Italian Renaissance, Girolamo Cardano, and the discovery of two basic ingredients of quantum theory, probability and complex numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  The seminal paper by Ya. B. Zeldovich (Soviet Physics Uspekhi 11, 381–393, 1968) is reprinted here, together with an editorial comment on its lasting scientific relevance, and a biography of the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers Olive Banks' work on charting the history and development of British feminism, and particularly her use of collective biography as a research and analytic tool. It is argued that while this has been seen as the least 'fashionable' aspect of her work, it took forward C. Wright Mills' contention for one definition of sociology as the interaction between biography and history, and predated by a decade or so similar work on prosopography by Bourdieu from the 1990s onwards. More recently other sociologists and educationists have taken up this methodological approach, including Jane Martin and Bronwyn Davies and Susanne Gannon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1730s the fourth earl of Shaftesbury engaged Benjamin Martyn to write a biography of his great-grandfather, the first earl, defending his reputation against the accounts given by Gilbert Burnet and others. With the support of other members of his family a considerable body of source material (some now lost) was assembled, including a memoir of Shaftesbury by his steward Thomas Stringer and a defence of his character and actions by another former member of the household, Benjamin Wyche. Most of Martyn's Life had been written by 1740, but it was not published. After his death in 1763 the papers he had left were extensively revised by a team of historians that included Roger Flexman and Andrew Kippis. Versions of the Life were printed in 1770 and 1773 but not published. Neither the fifth nor the sixth earl had any interest in the project, but the only copy of the 1770 printing not in the hands of the Shaftesbury family was bought in 1830 by a London publisher, and after further changes made by G. W. Cooke the Life was finally published in 1836. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents a new 3D object recognition/pose strategy based on Fourier descriptors clustering for silhouettes. The method consists of two parts. Firstly, an off-line process calculates and stores a clustered Fourier descriptors database corresponding to the silhouettes of the synthetic model of the object viewed from multiple viewpoints. Next, an on-line process solves the recognition/pose problem for an object that is sensed by a camera placed at the end of a robotic arm. The method solves the ambiguity problem – due to object symmetries or similar projections belonging to different objects – by taking a minimum number of additional views of the scene which are selected through a heuristic next best view (NBV) algorithm. The method works in reduced computational time conditions and provides identification and pose of the object. A validation test of this method has been carried out in our lab yielding excellent results. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper presents basic biographical data on the Austrian pioneer of experimental medicine Salomon Stricker (1834-1898), and emphasizes the link of his experimental work to important research projects of this time period. His influence on Carl Heitzmann and Carl Koller was pointed out. The work of both was connected directly with Sticker's experimental designs, far less known in published literature. Demonstrating ad oculos the world of capillaries, diapedesis of blood cells, cell division in vivo by Stricker, paved the way for investigations in immunology and allergology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's opinion on the lack of a biography on Dame Margery Perham, who was an academic expert on British colonial administration. The author discusses Perham's accomplishments which include her work as a research consultant to Lord Hailey and his team on the African Survey project, her election of a Fellow of the British Academy and the first invited woman to give the British Broadcasting Corporation's Reith Lectures. Perham's books "West African Passages," and "Pacific Prelude," and the papers she left to Oxford University's Rhodes House are discussed.

Abstract: The major contributions of Richard H. Dalitz to hypernuclear physics, since his first paper in 1955 to his last one in 2005 covering a span of 50 years during which he founded and led the theoretical study of hypernuclei, are reviewed from a personal perspective. Topical remarks on the search for quasi-bound -nuclear states and on kaon condensation are made. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper focuses on a specific aspect of Stefan Zweig's literary activity, his three historical biographies, all produced within a short span of time between the deaths of his father and mother. The inquiry leads to the hypothesis that the endeavour bypasses Zweig's difficulty to reach his ideal as a writer, his lifelong striving after being a novelist. Looking into the impediment, the matricide motif in his life and work is taken up as an example of hidden forces behind his difficulty. These forces are presented as underlying the writer's subsequent destiny, his relationship to women, and his suicide through an identification with the mother. The literary activity of his last period is discussed as a shield to elaborate and offset the motif. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with historical memory. It analyzes specifically the conditions for the creation of both a generational and national collective memory. Based on transnational research carried out in 2004 in Argentina and Switzerland for which men and women from five quinquennial groups were interviewed, this work focuses on the results for Argentina. The following questions guided the research on the historical content of memories: What is the building process of a generational historical memory like? Can we find a common, transgenerational memory that could be labeled as national? Can a national memory coexist with generational memories? Thus, the research goals are, on the one hand, to trace the contours of the historical dimension in collective memory and its generational differences. And second, to describe the ways in which personal biography, societal changes, and individual perception of facts coalesce. This research was based on two tenets: a generation's collective historical memory starts taking shaping during teenage and youth, and a generation's historical memory is a subjective process of memory building developed over the course of a lifetime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper aims at presenting an improved Goldstein''s type method for a class of variant variational inequalities. In particular, the iterate computed by an existing Goldstein''s type method [He, A Goldstein''s type projection method for a class of variant variational inequalities J. Comput. Math. 17(4) (1999) 425–434]. is used to construct a descent direction, and thus the new method generates the new iterate by searching the optimal step size along the descent direction. Some restrictions on the involving functions of the existing Goldstein''s type methods are relaxed, while the global convergence of the new method is proved without additional assumptions. The computational superiority of the new method is verified by the comparison to some existing methods. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A biography of Ethel Tobach, a peace psychologist in the U.S. is presented. She was born in Russia in 1921 and studied in Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, New York. She enlisted in the Army in 1944 and she returned to New York where she continued her education on a war-service scholarship and graduated with a BA in 1949. She is currently the curator at the American Museum of Natural History and has authored numerous scholarly papers.

A biography of Russian mathematician Evgenii Ivanovich Moiseev is presented. He was born on March 7, 1948 in Odintsovo, Russia and studied at Moscow State University. He taught 7 doctors of sciences, 12 philosophy doctors and wrote more that 150 papers. Awards received by Moiseev include Lenin Komsomol Prize in the Field of Science and Engineering (1980), Lomonosov Prize of the first degree for scientific achievements (1994), and the title Honorary Professor of Moscow State University.

This paper explores the ambivalent feelings towards the Government of India produced in one of the government's own employees. In establishing the Delhi Improvement Trust in the 1930s, Arthur Parke Hume had to battle against governmental cost cutting in an attempt to secure the rehousing of slum evictees. The refusal of the government to accept this welfarist commitment to investment led to the stalling of the improvement projects and great emotional disquiet for Hume. This is traced through his personal correspondence with his parents. In interweaving these insights with the imperial archive, three biographical approaches are adopted. A traditional chronology is used to order the events, an analytical approach is used to outline the discursive regularities of Hume's observations, and a genealogical approach is used to suggest the influences on Hume's writings and the broader governmental rationalities that he had to negotiate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Records of individuals who achieved rebirth in the pure land of Amitãbha Buddha began as a genre of hagiography in eighth-century China and began appearing in Japan in the late tenth century. Thereafter these ōjōden were produced repeatedly throughout Japanese history in greater numbers than in China, and came to function as a form of prooftext for the establishment of the Pure Land school. Focusing on an apocryphal Indian ōjōden created in the late Heian period, this paper evaluates the form and content of ōjōden as a unique genre of Japanese religious literature exhibiting influences from monastic bibliography, miracle texts, and the category of adbhutadharma in Indian Buddhist literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Samuel Pozzi was a major figure in the early development of modern gynaecological surgery. His textbook, A Treatise on Gynaecology, published in French in 1890 and rapidly translated into five other languages, was the first internationally acclaimed text integrating modern principles of anaesthesia, antisepsis, diagnosis, surgical technique and postoperative care, and in later editions remained a standard reference up to the 1930s. He was the author of more than 400 papers on gynaecological and general abdominal surgery and his technical expertise drew surgeons from all over the world to his theatre in the Hospital Broca, in one of the poorer parts of Paris. He was equally successful in several professional fields apart from medicine. However, his name is now little known in the English-speaking world. This short biography aims to re-introduce Pozzi to readers of English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utterances within the context of telling fictional tales that appear to be assertions are nevertheless not to be taken at face value. The present paper attempts to explain exactly what such 'pseudo-assertions' are, and how they behave. Many pseudo-assertions can take on multiple roles, both within fictions and in what I call 'participatory criticism' of a fiction, especially when they occur discourse-initially. This fact, taken together with problems for replacement accounts of pseudo-assertion based on the implicit prefixing of an 'in the fiction' operator, suggest that pseudo-assertion is best understood as a kind of make-believe. This proposal is elaborated and defended, and some applications to fictionalism are tentatively explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some of the findings derived from a UK Aimhigher South Yorkshire research report on disability and higher education. Many of the students who shared their life histories for this project found that there was a lack of information in making choices about their futures, especially information about pursuing higher education. Without information to make informed choices, disabled students not only experience stress and anxiety, but also difficulty in preparing themselves for higher education study. This is, perhaps, reason for the low proportion of disabled learners in further and higher education. There are many reasons to explain this disparity. Many factors are inextricably linked to disablism institutionalized within many sectors of education. The education arena is not being singled out here. However, it does serve as further notice of the pervasiveness of disablism existing in wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on American novelist William Faulkner's biographers who seem bent on creating and spreading myth about Faulkner. The author finds the situation particularly intriguing since the documents being cited to prove Faulkner's story are in the Blotner Papers, the research flies that writer Joseph Blotner compiled in writing his biography of Faulkner.

Reviewers of Hershel Parker's Herman Melville: A Biography, 1851-1891 in the New York Times and other influential papers expressed disbelief that The Isle of the Cross and Poems (1860) had ever existed. In fact, Melville scholars had known much about The Isle of the Cross (but not the flame) for decades and since 1922 had known almost everything about Poems. Like these reviewers, many other modern critics no longer perform archival research themselves and fail to acknowledge decades of basic documentary work done on Melville. It is as if critics believe nothing new could have been discovered after 1921, the year of Raymond Weaver's biography of Melville. The consequence of this ignorance, manifest in much literary criticism, is a pernicious distortion of the trajectory of Melville's whole literary career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the virtually unknown biography of Julien Raimond, a wealthy indigo planter of one-quarter African descent who became the leading advocate of racial reforms in Paris during the French Revolution. The article explores Raimond's identity before and during the Revolution, challenging his historical reputation as a political conservative whose actions were primarily motivated by financial self-interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider how the life story develops through the creation of self-event connections in narrating experiences. We first outline the ways in which such connections have been implied by existing work on the life story, and then consider the varieties of such connections that we see in our own work. That work suggests that self-event connections can construct both a stable sense of self as well as a sense of how the self has changed across time. Moreover, different types of connections have different implications for the development of the life story. We also consider developmental and other factors which make one or another type of connection more likely. Finally, we consider two issues for future work, as well as some methodological considerations involved in testing those proposals. Copyright © 2007 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The amulpüllün biographical oratory which takes place at Mapuche funerals in southern Chile is said to ‘complete’ the person. Such a perspective challenges the assumption that mortuary practices necessarily constitute a form of analysis, a division of the component parts of the social person. In this paper I explore what it is about the Mapuche person which needs to be ‘completed,’ and how funeral oratory achieves this goal. Utilizing Bakhtin's concepts of consummation and transgredience, and Ricoeur's concepts of emplotment and narrative identity, I suggest that it is only from the position of outsidedness that the necessary totalization of the deceased's person can occur. These processes of synthesis and totalization cast light upon an apparent contradiction between the importance which Amerindians place upon biography as an oral form, and theoretical approaches which stress the instability and divisibility of an Amerindian personhood predicated upon the incorporation of the other. Rather than viewing the totalization which occurs in biography as a critique of such an approach, I see it as a solution to the ontological problem which such an approach describes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the author's emphasis on the significance of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) to illuminate aspects of the history of the academic discipline of geography in Great Britain. It is stressed that this paper concentrates on neglect of the generic form of biographical writing, specifically its narrowing of perspective on what comprises the field of geography. The author affirms that this dictionary offers geography historians an important new resource. ODNB, in its electronic form, is described as more easily accessed and debated.

Abstract: The first three, successive Editors-in-Chief of Agricultural Water Management, Jans Wesseling, Jan van Schilfgaarde, and Herman Bouwer, were of Dutch origin, received their early training immediately after World War II, and started their careers in the early 1950s: Jans in The Netherlands and Jan and Herman in the USA. In this paper we review the circumstances and the highlights of their contributions to responsible management of water in agriculture. Following a sketch of the state of agricultural water management research around 1950, both in The Netherlands and in the USA, we describe their training, document their early scientific contributions, especially in the realm of agricultural drainage, and highlight their later service as research managers. The three careers reflect the great progress in the second half of the 20th century: the scope of water management research widened, computational capabilities became more powerful, experimental methods became more sophisticated. With increasing attention for environmental implications of water management, the focus of research changed from mainly water quantity to both water quantity and quality. The review of the careers of the first three Editors-in-Chief shows that the journal Agricultural Water Management from its inception and throughout its first quarter century was in very good hands. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper provides a biographical and historical context for understanding and appreciating Magda B. Arnold's (1903–2002) theory and research on emotion. It situates Arnold's work in the context of mid-century emotion theory, the status of women psychologists, and pre-Cognitive Revolution psychology more generally. In considering Arnold's life and work, three themes stand out and deserve emphasis: (1) Arnold's lifelong passion and commitment to her project of grounding the psychology of emotion in brain processes; (2) the tensions and complementarities between her identity as a hardnosed scientist and a person of deep religious faith; and (3) the larger scientific and scholarly context within which her long and complex life and career unfolded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the life and works of Edmund Wilson. Wilson has published six of his works under his authorization, that include five journals and a collection of letters. Many authors have written about Wilson's biography, including Jeffrey Meyers' critical biography in 1995, a centenary symposium on Wilson's work at Princeton University, and the appearance of the collected papers "Edmund Wilson: Centennial Reflections."

The original sheet music collection of "Blind Tom" Wiggins is frequently requested by patrons of the Columbus State University Archives. As musicians and researchers discover the music of this amazing 19th-century performer, enhanced methods of access to these rare archival materials are needed. This paper provides a brief biographical introduction to the life of the musical prodigy "Blind Tom" and will discuss the efforts of the CSU Archives to preserve and enhance access in both print and digital format to the original materials housed in the facility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the biography of a single piece of pottery found in a tomb in Sardinia. The form is one that is common in Levantine sites in the Mediterranean in the Early Iron Age, but this single vessel, its history, context, and form, allows a greater story to be told: it points to a second wave of Levantine exploration and colonization – probably Tyrian – that built upon a Euboean–northern Phoenician initial phase in the eighth century BC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing biography is rarely as straightforward as simply drawing together the threads of someone else's life. Not only must the biographer grapple with the challenge of pulling that life into a narrative shape, she must also deal with the issue of the biographical self to consider the way in which that self impacts and influences the story. Seen like this, biography becomes a collaborative experience--a mesh of self/other relations. Using the case study of the "Michael Fields "--the subjects of my biography in-progress--this paper explores the effects of the researcher/subject relationship and the way in which it effects a kind of scholarly desire both on (and off) the page. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we shall be considering the interweave of scientific and biographical aspects of Piero Sraffa's life, specifically with regard to the correlation between those moments in which his condition as an emigrant assumed particular relevance and three turning points of his scientific activity: his decision to undertake a career as an academic economist, which we guess was taken approximately in the Spring of 1923; his discovery of the equations to be developed in the systems presented in 1960 in his book, most probably in November 1927; and his decision to assume the editorship of the writings of David Ricardo, approximately in February 1930. We have chosen to confine our research to the period between Piero Sraffa's first sojourn abroad as a young economist and the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the unique aspects of Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë and argues that Gaskell's portrayal of Haworth and its moorland hinterland owes as much to Charlotte's feelings about her home environment as to Gaskell's preconceived notions and perceptions of the place that she visited in 1853. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]