Stephen Hawking ( 1942 )

* Born: 8 January 1942

* Birthplace: Oxford, England

* Best Known As: The author of A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking is considered the world's foremost living theoretical physicist. He's an expert on black holes whose stated intention is to unify quantum mechanics with Einstein's general theory of relativity, forming a single theory to explain the origin (and end) of the universe. Hawking, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, is the author of the best-selling book A Brief History of Time and something of a celebrity: he has made guest appearances on the TV shows Star Trek and The Simpsons. Hawking has suffered from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig's disease) since he was a young man and is confined to a wheelchair.

In 1979 Hawking took the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. According to Hawking's own site, "The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas, who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow, and then in 1663 by Isaac Newton."

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Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970)

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) became one of the most successful mystery writers of all time. Most of his reputation stems from Perry Mason and other memorable characters that he created. Gardner's best novels offer abundant evidence of his natural storytelling talent.

Gardner was born in Malden, Massachusetts on July 17, 1889. He spent much of his childhood traveling with his mining-engineer father through the remote regions of California, Oregon, and the Klondike. In his teens he not only boxed for money, but also promoted a number of unlicensed matches. Gardner attended high school in California and graduated from Palo Alto High School 1909. He enrolled at Valparaiso University in Indiana that same year but was soon expelled for striking a professor.

In the practice of law Gardner found the form of combat he seemed born to master. He was admitted to the California bar in 1911 and opened an office in Oxnard, where he practiced law until 1918. As a lawyer he represented the Chinese community and gained a reputation for flamboyant trial tactics. In one case, for instance, he had dozens of Chinese merchants exchange identities so that he could discredit a policeman's identification of a client. Gardner worked as a salesman for the Consolidated Sales Company from 1918 until 1921. He then resumed his legal career in Ventura, California from 1921 until 1933.


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Shmuel Yoseph Agnon (1888–1970)

Israeli writer, b. Buczacz, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Buchach, Ukraine), as Samuel Josef Czaczkes. Widely regarded as the greatest 20th-century writer of fiction in Hebrew, he shared (with Nelly Sachs) the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Agnon settled in Palestine in 1907 and spent most of his life in Jerusalem. His fiction explores Jewish existence from late-18th- and early-19th-century E Europe shtels to the declining Jewish culture of the late 19th cent. to the post–World War I period and the lives of immigrants in Palestine and Israel. Although he initially wrote in both Hebrew and Yiddish, eventually he wrote in Hebrew alone.

His novels, which range in approach from the realistic to the surreal, include Hakhnasat kalah (1919, tr. The Bridal Canopy, 1967), the autobiographical Ore'ah Nata' Lalun (1938, tr. A Guest for the Night, 1968), and 'Tmol shilshom (1945, tr. Only Yesterday, 2000). Agnon is also acclaimed for his short stories, which have been translated into English in Days of Awe (1938, tr. 1948), 21 Stories (1970), and Jaffa, Belle of the Seas (1998).

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Iris Murdoch ( 1919 - 1999 )

* Born: 15 July 1919
* Birthplace: Dublin, Ireland
* Died: 8 February 1999
* Best Known As: Alzheimer's stricken author of The Sea, The Sea

Irish-English writer Iris Murdoch's long career as a novelist, playwright, critic and philosophy professor came to an end in the 1990s because of Alzheimer's disease. Murdoch was made a fellow in 1948 of St. Anne's College, Oxford, where she taught philosophy until 1963. Her writing career began in earnest after she made a splash with her 1953 study of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. The next year she published Under the Net, the first of more than two dozen novels. From the 1950s through the 1980s she earned a reputation as a prolific writer and deep thinker, cranking out essays on the art of fiction ("Against Dryness") and moral issues (collected in 1967's The Sovereignty of Good and Other Concepts), and achieving success with novels such as A Severed Head (1961), The Sea, The Sea (1978) and The Good Apprentice (1985). Her novels are famously chock full of unlikely incidents and complicated storylines, and reveal a belief in the power of art and mythology as a tool to understand something greater than the self. Celebrated especially in England, Murdoch was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1987. In the mid-1990s she began showing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, a development detailed in Elegy for Iris (1998), a book by her husband, writer John Bayley (the book inspired the 2001 film Iris). Her other novels include The Bell (1958), The Black Prince (1973), The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974) and The Green Knight (1994).

The movie Iris (2001) starred both Kate Winslet and Judi Dench as the author.

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Benjamin Spock ( 1903 - 1998 )

* Born: 2 May 1903

* Birthplace: New Haven, Connecticut

* Died: 15 March 1998 (natural causes)

* Best Known As: The author of Baby and Child Care

Dr. Benjamin Spock's book Baby and Child Care was published in 1946, just in time for the post-World War II baby boom, and became a best-selling guide to child rearing. Pediatrician Spock encouraged new parents to use common sense and to treat children with respect. This led some critics to call him the "Father of Permissiveness," in spite of Spock's protests to the contrary. In the 1960s Spock gained new fame as a pacifist and Vietnam War protester.

Spock rowed on Yale's crew team, and with them won a gold medal in the 1924 Olympics... Contrary to popular rumor, Dr. Spock's son did not commit suicide. His grandson Peter did commit suicide in 1983... Spock is occasionally confused with Mr. Spock of the TV show Star Trek.


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Amy Tan (1952)

* Born: 19 February 1952

* Birthplace: Oakland, California

* Best Known As: Author of The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan is a Chinese-American author from San Francisco who wrote the 1989 best-seller The Joy Luck Club. The daughter of immigrants, Tan spent most of her childhood in central California. In the late 1960s her father and one of her two brothers died of brain tumors and Tan's mother moved the family to Europe. After finishing high school in Switzerland in 1969, Tan returned to the United States and eventually ended up in California again, where she studied literature and linguistics at San Jose State University and earned a masters degree in 1973. She worked as a business writer and then began publishing short stories in 1986. The Joy Luck Club recounted the family tales of four modern Chinese-American women; it was widely hailed for its depiction of the Chinese-American experience of the late 20th century. Tan's other books have also fared well, including two children's books and a non-fiction collection, The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings (2003). Her novels include The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), The Hundred Secret Senses (1995) and Saving Fish From Drowning (2005).

Tan has sung with the Rock Bottom Remainders, the informal rock band that includes fellow writers Stephen King and Dave Barry.

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Stephen King (1947)

* Born: 21 September 1947

* Birthplace: Portland, Maine

* Best Known As: The author of scary bestsellers

Since the early 1970s, Stephen King has been America's most famous horror writer. His books are a mainstay of paperback bookracks everywhere, and have spawned a multi-media franchise that includes movies, TV shows, video games and comic books. King is famously fecund, turning out a novel a year and sometimes more. His string of bestsellers began with Carrie (1974), and his early horror novels include Salem's Lot (1975), The Shining (1977) and The Dead Zone (1979), all of which have been adapted for film or television. Since conquering the horror market, King has written novels in other genres and experimented with various publishing methods, including issuing installments of The Green Mile (1996) and beginning the Internet-first publication of The Plant in 2000 (commercially unsuccessful, installments were suspended after five months). King's other books include: The Stand (1978); Firestarter (1980); Cujo (1981); Pet Sematary (1983); Insomnia (1984); Misery (1987); Delores Claiborne (1992); Bag of Bones (1998); and Cell (2006).

King also writes under the pseudonym Richard Bachman... King is one of the members of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band made up of published writers and including Dave Barry and Amy Tan.

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Dave Barry (1947)

* Born: 3 July 1947

* Birthplace: Armonk, New York

* Best Known As: Famously goofy humor columnist for The Miami Herald

David "Dave" Barry (born July 3, 1947) is a bestselling American author and Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist who wrote a nationally syndicated column for the The Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005. He has also written numerous books of humor and parody, as well as comedic novels.

Quotes By: Dave Barry

"Democracy: In which you say what you like and do what you're told."

"Although Golf was originally restricted to wealthy Protestants, today its open to anybody who owns hideous clothing."

"There are two distinctive classes of people today, those who have personal computers, and those who have several thousand extra dollars apiece."

"Guys are simple... women are not simple and they always assume that men must be just as complicated as they are, only way more mysterious. The whole point is guys are not thinking much. They are just what they appear to be. Tragically."

"What Women Want: To be loved, to be listened to, to be desired, to be respected, to be needed, to be trusted, and sometimes, just to be held. What Men Want: Tickets for the world series."

"I am not the only person who uses his computer mainly for the purpose of diddling with his computer."


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George Sand (1804-1876)

Born: July 1, 1804

Place of Birth : Paris, France

Died: June 9, 1876

Place of Death : Nohant, France

Known As : French author

The French novelist George Sand was one of the most successful female writers of the nineteenth century.

Every night from midnight until dawn, George Sand covered her daily quota of twenty pages with her large, tranquil writing, never crossing out a line. All her novels are love stories in which her romantic idealism unfolds in a realistic setting.

The early works by George Sand are novels of passion, written to lessen the pain of her first love affairs. Indiana (1832) has as its central theme woman's search for the absolute in love. Valentine (1832) depicts an upper-class woman, unhappily married, who finds that a farmer's son loves her. Lélia (1854) is a lyrical but searching confession of the author's own physical coldness. Lélia is a beautiful woman loved by a young poet, but she can show him only motherly affection.

Le Compagnon du tour de France (1840), Consuelo (1842–1843), and Le Péché de Monsieur Antoine (1847) are typical novels of this period for the author. She sympathized in these novels with the difficult lives of the worker and the farmer. She also wrote a number of novels devoted to country life, most produced during her retreat to Nohant. La Mare au diable (1846), La Petite Fadette (1849), and Les Maîtres sonneurs (1852) are typical novels of this genre.

As George Sand grew older, she spent more and more time at her beloved Nohant and gave herself up to the gentle, peaceful life she created for herself there, the entertainment of friends, the staging of puppet shows, and most of all to her grandchildren. Though she had lost none of her vital energy and enthusiasm, she grew less concerned with politics. Her quest for the absolute in love had led her through years of stormy affairs to reaching a tolerant and universal love—of God, of nature, and of children. She died in Nohant on June 9, 1876.

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Pearl S. Buck ( 1892 – 1973 )

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973), most familiarly known as Pearl S. Buck (birth name Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker) , was a prolific American writer and Nobel Prize in Literature winner,with her novel The Good Earth, in 1932.

Born in Hillsboro, West Virginia to Caroline (Stulting) and Absalom Sydenstricker, Buck and her southern Presbyterian missionaries parents went to Zhejiang, China in 1895. She was brought up there and first knew the Chinese language and customs, especially from Mr. Kong, and then was taught English by her mother and her teacher. She was encouraged to write at an early age.

By 1910, she left for America and went to Randolph-Macon Women's College, where she would earn her degree in 1914. She then returned to China, and married an agricultural economist, John Lossing Buck, on May 13, 1917. In 1921, she and John had a daughter with phenylketonuria, Carol. The small family then moved to Nanjing, where Pearl taught English literature at University of Nanking. In 1925, adopted Janice (later surnamed Walsh) and subsequently 8 more adoptees. In 1926, she left China and returned to the United States for a short time in order to earn her Master of Arts degree from Cornell University.

Buck began her writing career in 1930 with her first publication of East Wind:West Wind. In 1931 she wrote her best known novel, The Good Earth, which is considered to be one of the best of her many works. The story of the farmer Wang Lung's life brought her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932. Her career would keep flourishing, and she won the William Dean Howells Medal in 1935.

Pearl was forced to flee China in 1934 due to political tensions. She returned to the United States, and obtained a divorce from her husband. She then married Richard J. Walsh, president of the John Day Publishing Company, on June 11, 1935, and adopt six other children. In 1938 she won the Nobel Prize for Literature, after writing biographies of her parents, The Exile, and The Fighting Angel.

In her lifetime, Pearl S. Buck would write over 100 works of literature, her most known being The Good Earth. She wrote novels, short stories, fiction, and children's stories. Many of her life experiences are related to or in her books. She wanted to prove to her readers that universality of mankind can exist if they accept it. She dealt with many topics including women, emotions (in general), Asians, immigration, adoption, and conflicts that many people go through in life. In 1949, she established Welcome House Inc., the first adoption agency dedicated to the placement of bi-racial children, particulary Amerasians.

Pearl S. Buck died on March 6, 1973 in Danby, Vermont and was interred in Green Hills Farm, Perkasie, Pennsylvania.

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Eric Carle

* Born: 25 June 1929

* Birthplace: Syracuse, New York

* Best Known As: Author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Eric Carle has written and illustrated dozens of books for young children, the most famous being 1969's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Born in New York but raised in Germany, Carle returned to the United States in 1952 and began working in graphics arts, first for the New York Times and then at a New York advertising agency. The first book he illustrated, written by Bill Martin, Jr., was Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (1967). Carle then wrote and illustrated 1, 2, 3 To The Zoo (1968), and has been publishing children's books ever since. His distinctive collage-illustration has made his books instantly recognizable, and he has won numerous awards throughout his career. Some of Carle's most popular titles are The Mixed-Up Chameleon (1975), The Very Busy Spider (1984), The Very Quiet Cricket (1990) and The Very Lonely Firefly (1995).

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Bobby Farrelly ( 1958 )

* Born: Jun 17, 1958

* Occupation: Director, Writer

* Active: '90s-2000s

* Major Genres: Comedy

* Career Highlights: Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary, Kingpin

* First Major Screen Credit: Dumb and Dumber (1994)

Bobby Farrelly (born June 17, 1958) in Cumberland, Rhode Island is an American film director, screenwriter and producer from Cumberland, Rhode Island. He is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Together with his brother, Peter Farrelly, he has written, directed, and produced several comedy films including There's Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, Shallow Hal, Me, Myself and Irene and Stuck on You. They also conceived the Seinfeld episode "The Virgin"

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