Humble Man Research Articles

Rutherford - Scientist Supreme

This new book dealing with the life of Ernest Rutherford has been written and compiled by a New Zealander, enthusiastic about both his country and the outstanding pioneer of radioactivity and nuclear physics, who was indeed one of the greatest physicists of all time (although he obtained the chemistry Nobel Prize in 1908). The author has searched most carefully for all possible traces of his hero, especially in the country of his birth, bringing together detailed reminiscences of surviving witnesses and their descendants and has collected together photos and pictures of the family, friends, teachers, buildings, places and towns and landscapes where Ernest grew up. He has thus also created something like a history of New Zealand and the life of British settlers in the second half of the 19th century. We have to be very grateful to Campbell for telling us these details of the tough conditions under which the later star of physics grew up, and we forgive him that his heart was less concerned with the later times, where Rutherford became the man we know, as these periods of his career in England, Canada and again England are far better known (from other biographies) than the early life in New Zealand. The book has been produced, designed and illustrated very well. It deserves a place of honour on the bookshelves of every physicist, especially physics teachers. Furthermore, the author gives quite reasonable accounts of the main scientific achievements of Rutherford, which can be digested even by the interested layman, and provides an excellent feeling of the greatness of his personality. Indeed, the 'Scientist Supreme' throughout his life enjoyed great popularity amongst contemporary colleagues and the admiration of the numerous collaborators (from all over the scientific world) who worked with him but despite the many honours bestowed on him he remained a straightforward and humble man.

Remembering Ibn Rushd

This year is the 800th anniversary of Ibn Rushd's (1128-1198) death.Our editorial is dedicated to his memory as a great Muslim scholar. Hislegacy is one of the greatest contributions to human understanding andintellectual scholarship. The occasion deserves much more than an editorial.This issue reports on a conference celebrating Ibn Rushd'sachievements and later this year MISS will have a report on the seminarthat the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) is organizing inAmman, Jordan, honoring his work. In this editorial I will try to clarifyIbn Rushd's place in Islamic Intellectual history and underscore his contributionsto the development of philosophical, theological, and scientificthought in the Muslim and Western worlds.Although Ibn Rushd has an important position in the Islamic intellectuallegacy, his contributions have not received due recognition in theMuslim world. Even among those who are aware of his works, to a greatextent, he has been misunderstood and misrepresented, and his positionhas undergone multiple distortions. We feel it is essential to understandhis work free of historical and contemporary ideological biases and distortionsin order to fully comprehend the problems and concerns thatmotivated Muslim scholars and provided the framework for Islamicthought. It is also important that we understand the reasons why he wasnot given the place he deserves in the Islamic heritage and why he isoften misinterpreted.Ibn Rushd was a great integrator of knowledge. He was a preeminentphysician and a prominent judge of his time. He was also a philosopherand theologian. His mastery of knowledge demonstrated two dimensions-he was both encyclopedic and specialist. In the areas of his specializations-medicine, jurisprudence, and philosophy-he was a masterwithout peer. Ibn Rushd had two outstanding qualities. He was extremelyintelligent and he was also extraordinarily just and fair in his approachto religion. It is important that we understand and appreciate his unprejudicedapproach to the study of religion. Indeed, it is one of his most distinctivequalities.Ibn Rushd was a committed Muslim and a very humble man. Thishumility manifests itself in his writings as well as in his methodology.His search for truth allowed him to explore all sources, including earlyGreek philosophers. He believed that we must examine all sources, even ...

Honus Wagner: the life of baseball's "flying dutchman"

Regarded by many of his contemporaries as the greatest baseball player of all time, John Peter Honus Wagner enjoyed a remarkable career with the Pittsburgh Pirates. His record of 17 consecutive.300-plus seasons is a mark that will probably never be broken. He led the National League eight times in hitting, six times in slugging percentage and five times in stolen bases. Known as the Flying Dutchman, he also excelled in the field, defining the shortstop position for a generation. Though one of the original inductees in the Baseball Hall of Fame, he has often been overlooked by baseball fans and historians. A humble man whose biggest passions were hunting and fishing, the Pirate shortstop lacked the flamboyance of a Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth. He rarely smoked or drank, though sometimes he indulged in a sandlot game with the neighborhood kids. Based on contemporary newspaper accounts, family scrapbooks and correspondence, and Wagner's own vestpocket notebooks, this is the story of baseball's first superstar.

Homer W. Smith: The humanist

I came to these rocky shores of Maine from my native Brooklyn in the summer of 1938 before I entered medical school at New York University (NYU). It was here that I met Homer Smith, Jim Shannon and Robert Pitts. I worked in the laboratory of Homer Smith the entire summer on the excretion of phenol red by the dogfish and on the daddy sculpin, which has glomeruli when young and becomes aglomerular in adulthood, and therefore filters inulin when young and does not in adulthood. I had to fish for the sculpins and from time to time I hoped there were easier ways to catch the fish. It was an exciting and productive two months and a time when I made wonderful friends and became a colleague of Shannon and Pitts. I was sent here by my uncle Joe Bunim, who worked in the Department of Physiology after his fellowship at Yale and before he joined the faculty of the Department of Medicine at NYU. He was my big brother, who carefully and with wisdom, guided me through my years until he died at an early age in 1964. Smith and Shannon were Joe's idols. Shannon became my mentor. I worked with Shannon summers and during my school years. But always, Smith was the overseer and the constant source of stimulation and provider of knowledge. He was always at NYU, whereas Shannon and Pitts left NYU and continued their highly productive lives in other institutions, Shannon at NIH and Pitts at Syracuse and Cornell. I guess that, in this august group of scientists who came to celebrate Smith's 100th birthday, I was invited because I had known Homer Smith longer than anybody else. I met Homer 57 years ago when he was 43 years old and had been Chairman of the Department of Physiology at NYU for a good number of years and received worldwide acclaim as a scientist, author, philosopher and scholar. He was a very humble man who was constantly in pursuit of knowledge, always thinking constructively and analytically. He always seemed to be in deep thought. Here in Maine, during the summer months at Salsbuiy Cove, he was at home or in the lab always reading or writing. While in the labs he was looking over and studying data, or planning and suggesting experiments. At sunset almost every day, weather permitting, he would sit by himself close to the beach and watch the beautiful sunset and sit and think. He was never disturbed by anybody. When we in the lab were invited to his home we were most welcomed. He alone prepared and served the food. After we discussed the latest published books, especially novels, he frequently played the piano. He was a master at the piano. His insights into whatever was discussed were unique and extraordinary. None of the people in the room could match his scholarship.

Reflections of a humble media man.

Reflections of a humble media man.

The Life of Edward Baines: A Filial Biography of the ‘The Great Liar of the North’

(1995). The Life of Edward Baines: A Filial Biography of the ‘The Great Liar of the North’. Northern History: Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 208-222.

The Autobiography of an Idea

The purpose of this essay is to support the premise that an idea is born, nurtured, and raised to maturity just as an individual is. That idea is death, the cessation of life - or death-in-life - as the sole source stream in a writer's world. That idea was/is a gift. For me, it is a second-handed gift, because I was influenced by a certain group of writers via the influence that this group exerted on my first mentor in creative writing. I received the ideas pandered by my mentor from many writers, even Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first professional African American poet, and the American poet Edgar Allan Poe, but more readily from the pre-romantic writers of English literature. Some of the pre-romantics belonged to the eighteenth-century Graveyard School of writing. Back-story reveals that my mentor occupied his mind with the thoughts of others to buttress the "brutal dilemmas" of his own existence, dilemmas that had in part faced the writers of his favorite literary works, especially Robert Burns and Edgar Allan Poe. Catherine Haich, after experiments and experiences with spiritualism, expresses the view in her book Initiation that "... it is possible to receive the thoughts of another human being" (90). After years with Sweet Mary by "Sweet Afton," the tragic child bride Annabel Lee, the "Raven" quoting "Nevermore," and the man without a country (but with a "dead soul") sauntering the deck of ship after ship, mumbling, "I can never say again, |This is my own native land,'"(1) I became an initiate of "tragedy" as my mentor envisioned it, and was eventually baptized as a true believer. My mentor was my father, Calvin Shepherd Jackson (1880?-1947) of Winsborn, South Carolina. He became my mother country as a writer. His spirit, his consciousness, his thoughts permeated my being so completely that it is fair to say that he was my god from 1923 to 1930. This man, who became a Christian minister, believed in the efficacy of fate. His classical studies at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, in the field of Greek literature introduced him to the Greek mind/spirit that held fate as the grand arbiter in human affairs. He never came to terms with the idea that Jehovah God could man the affairs of the being created in his own image with justice and mercy. He, somehow, did not ingest the ideas that, though the tragic hero moved to catastrophe because of his flaw in character, he maintained his moral courage and spiritual prowess. A line from Calvin's poem "The Apple Man" reads, "All my themes become discord." Since Calvin was my god, I worshipped at his shrine of "tragedy," unconsciously bringing a predilection for doom and gloom into my stories and verse. When Lance Jeffers, the revered African American poet, read my short stories in the mid-1980s, he said in a letter, "Several of your stories are realistic tragedies. There is often in |Rena' in Such Things from the Valley, |Silas,' |Little Jake,' and |Runetta' in Seeds Beneath the Snow, that element that sobers and brings tears to the eyes."(2) My few faithful critics have never become tear-struck on reading my fiction,(3) although they do note some characters who are struggling to alleviate inordinate justice. Lance, however, set me thinking. I knew Aristotle's "imitation of an action" definition of tragedy. I knew about Shakespeare's tragedies. But Lance's words came across to me as "What have I to do with Hecuba?" in terms of my having an affinity with tragedy as a writer. Me? Tragedy? Then, I remembered Linda's conversation with her sons in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Her inference that a small boat has as much need for a harbor as a large one shows us the "brutal dilemmas" in the life of the humble man, whose life counts as well as the life of a mighty ruler. The death of Linda's husband Willie Loman is a metaphor of fallen humanity. For the first time I was moved to examine my own stoies to see why my people were always falling. …

It Has Been Said

IT HAS BEEN SAID and collected by DAVID DAVIS* "Doctors do not cry but men do."—Harry Weiss "Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat."—Robert GiRAVES "Curiosity about the private life may be of three kinds: the useful, the harmless , and the impertinent."—T. S. Eliot "The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down."—T. S. Eliot "These docs, they always ask you how you live so long. I tell 'em, 'If I'd known I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself "—Eubie Blake "A good doctor should know a little about everything—even medicine."— Baron Montesquieu ' "Methodologists remind me of people who clean their glasses so thoroughly tfiat they never have time to look through them."—Sigmund Freud "Slogans save the expenditure of thinking."—Sigmund Freud "The greatest discoveries of surgery are anesthesia, asepsis, and roentgenology —and none was made by a surgeon."—Martin H. Fischer "I hate reasonable people—the activity of their brains sucks up all the blood out of their hearts. I was once afraid of turning out reasonable myself."—W. B. Yeats ""Address: 1823 Bayou Shore Drive, Galveston, Texas 77551. Material appearing under this title is collected with the aim of making the serious a bit less serious, the ponderous a bit less heavy, and the reading hours a bit more fun. Toward this goal we invite a guest editor of this feature for each issue. Will readers volunteer to share their senses of humor by collecting or recollecting items that have brought smiles to their faces? We invite your participation. Originals are also welcome. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 33, 3 · Spring 1990 \ 375 "The three greatest things in the world—love, beauty, and happiness—have this feature in common, that they are utterly incapable of measurement."—A.J. Balfour "Mind—a mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itselfwith."—Ambrose Bierce "The chief disadvantage of knowing more and seeing farther than others is to be not generally understood."—William Hazlitt "A fool can learn to say all the things a wise man says and to say them on the same occasion."—J. Kekes "Intelligence is the art of good guessing."—Horace Barlow "It doesn't matter that everything has already been said. No one was listening ."—André Gide "All progress is only half as great as it first appears."—J. N. Nestroy "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."—Mark Twain "Praise is like smoking. It is warm and pleasant as long as you don't inhale."— Adolf Meyer "The old men do not grow wise. They grow careful."—Ernest Hemingway "All too often the most exciting of biochemical findings in psychiatry turn out to have the most mundane explanation."—Lancet Editorial "As in a sport, you cannot score every time. There are moments, and many of them, when it is important to pass the ball so that a colleague may eventually score."—Peter Ustinov "Aging is a birth-defect."—Al Rosenthal "If you can walk through life with a smile, you are probably not paying attention ."—Steve Allen "It is easier to be wise for others than for oneself."—La Rochefoucauld 376 It Has Been Said and collected by MICHAEL UHRINt "Productivity in science will thrive only if curiosity is very deep, indeed, insatiable ."—Hans Krebs "Memory is the mother of all wisdom."—Aeschylus "It was only in my 40's that I started to feel young."—Henry Miller "I don't want to make money. I just want to be wonderful."—Marilyn Monroe "... the safest and soundest society is one which is rich in people who are excellent in different ways."—Hans Krebs "A humble man is not disturbed by praise."—Thomas Merton "Only little boys and old men sneer at love...

Euboulos'Ankylionand the Game of Kottabos

Euboulos' 'αγκελ⋯ων is represented by only four fragments (frr. 1–3 frr. 1–4 Hunter), all culled from Athenaeus, which tell us nothing about the plot of the play or about the identity of its titular character. R. L. Hunter, in his recent commentary on Euboulos, discusses at length the name 'αγκελ⋯ων and concludes that it could belong to either (1) a humble and poor man; (2) ‘a character from folklore notorious for sexual relations with his mother’ ; or (3)’ a wily slave such as those foreshadowed in Aristophanes and familiar from New Comedy'. In view of our ignorance of the play's plot, each of these possibilities has an equal claim to our consideration. I believe, however, that the context in which the fragments are embedded in Athenaeus allows us to refine our understanding of the name even further.

O'Neill, Wilder, and American Drama

C.W.E. Bigsby. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth Century American Drama: Volume One. 1900-1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.342 pp. Jackson R. Bryer, ed. With introductory essays by Travis Bogard. "The Theatre We Worked For": The Letters of Eugene O'Neill to Kenneth Macgowan. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. 274 pp. Horst Frenz and Susan Tuck, eds. Eugene O'Neill's Critics: Voices from Abroad. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984. 225 pp. Gilbert A. Harrison. The Enthusiast: A Life of Thornton Wilder. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1983. 403 pp. Linda Simon. Thornton Wilder: His World. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979. 298 pp. These five books offer a view of two major practitioners of the theater in the twentieth century, and an overview of the stir around them. The two biographies of Thornton Wilder reveal a humble man of eclectic enthu- siasms and catholic interests. The exchange of letters between Eugene O'Neill and Kenneth Macgowan sheds light on the needs of a developing playwright and his theater. The appraisals and encomia from abroad permit a reassessment of O'Neill from a variety of fresh angles. Bigsby's critical introduction offers a unified thematic approach to the theater which is both selective and penetrating.

Ejnar Mikkelsen (1880-1971)

The grand old man of Danish and international arctic exploration is dead. Miki, as he was known among friends, was a sailor, explorer, and author. Strangely enough he also became a government official. He went to sea at fourteen and had just received his captain's certification when he became a member of the Danish Expedition to East Greenland, 1900. From 1901 to 1902 he was cartographer to the Baldwin-Ziegler Expedition to arctic America; from 1906 to 1908 he was leader of the Anglo-American Polar Expedition to the Beaufort Sea and from 1909 to 1912 he led the "Alabama" Expedition to Northeast Greenland in search of the bodies and papers of Mylius-Erichsen and Hagen who perished during the "Danmark Expedition". During his first expedition he became interested in the well-being of the Angmagssalik Eskimos; during the last he realized the tremendous hunting possibilities for Greenlanders in Central East Greenland. He became the strongest advocate for establishing a settlement within that area, preferably in Scoresbysund. At every opportunity he urged and pleaded with the administration for this - but in vain. National feelings also became involved when a treaty giving special rights to Norwegian hunters in East Greenland was ratified. Miki used strong argumentation and hard words when presenting his ideas and feelings while the administration tried to evade the precarious question. Miki might have been respected in governmental circles but certainly he was not very well liked. Fortunately he did not care and characteristically he carried out his ideas by soliciting funds from private sources which enabled him to head the expedition that founded the Scoresbysund colony in 1924. In 1925 he headed a fishing research cruise in West Greenland waters. In 1926 and 1932 he again explored in East Greenland. When the Norwegian government in 1931 occupied parts of East Greenland he established the Scoresbysund committee and was its president until 1967. When the government finally recognized him and his ideas he became a member of the Danish delegation to the International Court in The Hague in 1932 in the case of Denmark versus Norway, and was appointed Inspector of East Greenland in 1933, a position he held until 1950. During and after these years Miki frequently visited East Greenland where the population loved him and made him an honorary citizen in 1964. Denmark, the University of Copenhagen, and learned societies throughout the world bestowed great honours upon him. In his own opinion the greatest of them all came from a big-hunter in Scoresbysund who told Miki on one of his last visits: "Miki, now you are old and soon you will die, but don't worry. Send your wife up here, and I will take good care of her". Miki's interest in Greenland and the Arctic, paired with a tremendous vitality, led to the revival of the Greenland Society whose president he was from 1933 to 1955, and honorary president from 1956. He also solicited funds for establishing the Danish Arctic Institute where he served on the board from 1954 to 1963. During World War II he was an advisor on Greenland to the Danish Embassy in Washington D.C. He was a Charter Associate and a Fellow of The Arctic Institute of North America, a Governor (1949-54) and finally an honorary Associate from 1957. He wrote a number of books about his expeditions, works on Greenland and Eskimo life and a five-volume autobiography. In spite of all his travel and publicity, his well-written books, and other great achievements, and the numerous distinguished honours he received, Miki was a humble man with the deepest respect for learning, science, scientists, and the true values of life. His humility made him a great and strong personality who will be remembered and honoured not only in our circle, but by all who knew him.

Role of the Dean and Faculty in Governance of the Medical School

We need only look at the turnover rate of deans of medical schools to realize that something is amiss. The average dean is not totally happy in his job. This is in part because of the pressures put on him from many sources, but it is also because he is usually untrained for the role he must play. Further, as soon as he leaves the fold of the faculty and assumes the mantle of dean, he is invested in the eyes of the faculty with a strange and wonderful aura. Edward Rosenheim, Jr., professor of English at the University of Chicago, has written a classic "Letter to a New Dean."1 Addressing his friend Fats, the new Dean of Floodwater State University, Rosenheim comments, You are, of course, an amiable and humble man; beware, however, the illusion that the deanship involves a subtle, special expertise, the mastery of a craft whose

Tendentiousness in Patristic Collections

The problem of judging the dogmatic tendency of mixed patristic corpora is often a delicate one. As I have pointed out elsewhere such collections appear often to have been made up for general theological or devotional reading and were probably valued more for the variety of their contents than for any consistent principle of selection. This point is strikingly confirmed by an anecdote in John Moschus's Pratum spirituale c. 46 (P. G. 87, 3, col. 2900):We once approached Father Kyriakos, a priest of the Laura of Kalamon on the holy Jordan. And he related to us,“Once I saw in my sleep a woman of honorable appearance and dressed in purple and with her two venerable and worthy men, standing outside my cell. And I assumed that the woman was Our Lady the Mother of God and that the two men with her were John the Divine and John the Baptist. Therefore, leaving my cell I invited them to enter and pray in my cell. But she did not consent. I stayed therefore a while beseeching her and saying, ‘Let not the humble man be turned away and put to confusion’ (Ps. 74:21) etc. And when she saw me pressing my request, she answered me severely saying, ‘You have my enemy in your cell and how do you expect me to enter?’ And saying this, she departed.