Carl von Ossietzky (October 3, 1889-May 4, 1938) was born in Hamburg, though his father, a civil servant, had originally come from a village near the German-Polish border. Seven years after Ossietzky’s father died in 1891, his mother married Gustav Walther, a Social Democrat, who was influential in shaping Ossietzky’s later political attitudes. Ossietzky’s academic…

I was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on October 29, 1920 of Spanish-Jewish ancestry. My father, a self-made business man, was a textile merchant and importer. He was born in Spanish Morocco, whereas my mother was born and raised in French Algeria and brought up in the French culture. When I was five years old, my…

My parents came to the United States in the early years of this century as part of a wave of Russian Jewish immigrants seeking freedom and opportunity in the New World. My mother, Sarah Levitan, came to America when she was 18. My father, Samuel, rebelling against an orthodox family, left home in his midteens…

Peyton Rous was born in Baltimore in 1879. His mother’s ancestors were Huguenots who settled in Virginia after the Edict of Nantes. Just before the Civil War in the 1860’s her father, foreseeing disaster, bought land in Texas, moving his big family there after it ended. There he became a judge «riding three counties», and…

Charles Scott Sherrington was born on November 27, 1857, at Islington, London. He was the son of James Norton Sherrington, of Caister, Great Yarmouth, who died when Sherrington was a young child. Sherrington’s mother later married Dr. Caleb Rose of Ipswich, a good classical scholar and a noted archaeologist, whose interest in the English artists…

Exploring the New RNA World by Thomas R. Cech 1989 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Not too long ago, most people considered RNA to be just a disposable copy of the really important nucleic acid, DNA. It is the double helix of DNA, after all, that shows up on magazine covers and television; DNA is the…

In one of his more light-hearted books, Isaac Bashevis Singer depicts his childhood in one of the over-populated poor quarters of Warsaw, a Jewish quarter, just before and during the First World War. The book, called In My Father’s Court (1966), is sustained by a redeeming, melancholy sense of humour and a clear-sightedness free of…

French Orhan Pamuk est né le 7 juin 1952 à Istanbul dans une famille bourgeoise, aisée et séculière. Son père était ingénieur civil comme l’oncle et le grand-père paternels. C’est le grand-père de Pamuk qui fonda la richesse familiale. Pendant sa jeunesse Pamuk projetait d’être peintre. Après avoir obtenu le diplôme de bachelier de Robert…

English Biobibliographical Notes Elfriede Jelinek was born on 20 October 1946 in the town of Mürzzuschlag in the Austrian province of Styria. Her father, of Czech-Jewish origin, was a chemist and worked in strategically important industrial production during the Second World War, thereby escaping persecution. Her mother was from a prosperous Vienna family, and Elfriede…

French Elfriede Jelinek est née le 20 octobre 1946 dans la ville de Mürzzuschlag dans le «land» autrichien de Styrie. Son père – d’origine tchèque et juive – était chimiste et employé à la recherche de matériel de guerre, de sorte qu’il échappe aux persécutions. Sa mère est issue d’une famille de la haute bourgeoisie…