Category Archives: Biography

Carl Reiner

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Deskarati

Carl Reiner was born in the Bronx, New York, the son of Bessie (née Mathias) and Irving Reiner, who was a watchmaker. His parents were Jewish immigrants, his father from Romania and his mother from Austria. When he was sixteen, his older brother Charlie read in the New York Daily … Continue reading →

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Isaac Newton

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Deskarati

Newton was an English physicist and mathematician, and the greatest scientist of his era. Isaac Newton  (1643 – 1727) was born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire. His father was a prosperous farmer, who died three months before Newton was born. His mother … Continue reading →

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Wilhelm Röntgen

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Deskarati

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (27 March 1845 – 10 February 1923) was a German physicist, who, on 8 November 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as X-rays or Röntgen rays, an achievement that earned him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. In honour of his … Continue reading →

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Elon Musk

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Deskarati

Elon Musk was born in South Africa, in 1971. His father was an engineer and his mother a nutritionist. An avid fan of computers, by the age of twelve Musk had written the code for his own video game, a … Continue reading →

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Newlands’ Octaves

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Deskarati

John Alexander Reina Newlands (26 November 1837 – 29 July 1898) was an English chemist who worked on the development of the Periodic Table. Newlands was born in London and was the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister and his … Continue reading →

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Vladimir Tretchikoff

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Deskarati

With the news this week that Tretchikoff’s famous Green Lady is going up for auction this year gave us the idea for a post on this underrated painter. – Deskarati Vladimir Grigoryevich Tretchikoff  was born on 13th December 1913 in Petropavlovsk, Russia, … Continue reading →

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Jackson Pollock

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Deskarati

Jackson Pollock was born January 28, 1912 in Cody, Wyoming. He was the fifth and youngest son. When he was a year old his family moved to Arizona, and then to Chico, California. His dad started off as a farmer, … Continue reading →

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Syd Barrett

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Deskarati

Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett (6 January 1946 – 7 July 2006) was an English singer, songwriter, guitarist, and painter, best remembered as a founder member of the band Pink Floyd. He was the lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter during the … Continue reading →

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Abraham Lincoln

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Deskarati

As the new Spielberg film ‘Lincoln’ premièred this week, we thought you might like a brief bio of the great man: - Deskarati Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States and one of the great American leaders. His presidency was dominated by … Continue reading →

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How Einstein got his Ph D

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Deskarati

Einstein’s first advisor was Dr. Weber, but he found his lectures were very traditional, lost interest, and stopped attending after two weeks. For his Ph D project, Einstein proposed measuring “c” using an interferometer, similar to the Michelson-Morley experiment, of … Continue reading →

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Imhotep

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Deskarati

Imhotep was chief architect to the Egyptian pharaoh Djoser (reigned c.2630 – c.2611 BC). He was responsible for the world’s first known monumental stone building, the Step Pyramid at Sakkara and is the first architect we know by name. A … Continue reading →

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Samuel Pepys

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Deskarati

Pepys is famous for his diaries, which cover the years 1659 – 1669, but also enjoyed a successful career as a naval administrator and member of parliament. Samuel Pepys was born on 23 February 1633 near Fleet Street in London, … Continue reading →

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G K Chesterton

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Deskarati

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer. He published works on philosophy,ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction. Chesterton is often referred to as … Continue reading →

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Edward Jenner

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Deskarati

Edward Jenner was born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire on 18 May 1749, the son of the local vicar. At the age of 14, he was apprenticed to a local surgeon and then trained in London. In 1772, he returned to Berkeley … Continue reading →

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Caravaggio

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Deskarati

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610) was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use … Continue reading →

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John Cabot

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Deskarati

Cabot was an Italian-born explorer who, in attempting to find a direct route to Asia, became the first early modern European to discover North America. John Cabot (in Italian Giovanni Caboto) was probably born in Genoa but may have been … Continue reading →

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Craig Venter

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Deskarati

John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946) is an American biologist and entrepreneur. He is known for being one of the first to sequence the human genome and for creating the first cell with a synthetic genome. Venter founded Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and the J. Craig … Continue reading →

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Damien Hirst

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Deskarati

Damien Hirst was born in 1965 in Bristol and grew up in Leeds. In 1984 he moved to London, where he worked in construction before studying for a BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths college from 1986 to 1989. He … Continue reading →

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Niels Bohr – Happy Birthday

Posted on October 7, 2012 by Deskarati

Niels Henrik David Bohr ( 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. He developed the model of the atom with the nucleus at the center and electrons … Continue reading →

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Pavlov’s Dogs

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Deskarati

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov ( September 26 1849 – February 27, 1936) was a famous Russian physiologist. From his childhood days Pavlov demonstrated intellectual brilliance along with an unusual energy which he named “the instinct for research”. Inspired when the progressive ideas which D. I. Pisarev, the most … Continue reading →

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