Categotry Archives: Education

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Neil Postman

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Categories: Education, Media, Writers/Editors

npostman.jpgNeil Postman, a professor, media critic and author who spent a lifetime criticizing television, died on Oct. 5 of lung cancer. He was 72.
Postman graduated from the State University of New York at Fredonia in 1953. He received a master’s degree and a doctorate in education from the Teachers College, Columbia, then joined the faculty at New York University. During his 40-year tenure, Postman founded the Steinhardt School of Education’s program in media ecology and chaired the Department of Culture and Communication.
A contributing editor of The Nation and the author of 20 books, Postman was best known for writing “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business,” a book that claimed America’s ability to think seriously had been diminished by TV. The book was translated into eight languages, sold 200,000 copies worldwide and became required reading in many communication schools. He also penned several hundred articles for The New York Times Magazine, Time Magazine, The Washington Post and Le Monde.
In 1986, Postman received the George Orwell Award for clarity in language from the National Council of Teachers of English. Two years later, NYU gave him the Distinguished Teacher Award.

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John Orrell

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Categories: Education

John Overton Orrell, a historian who helped rebuild William Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on the South Bank of the Thames in London, died on Sept. 16 from melanoma. He was 68.
Born in Maidstone, England, Orrell graduated with an English degree from Oxford University. He immigrated to Canada, earned his doctorate from the University of Toronto and spent most of his career teaching Shakespeare at the University of Alberta. When American actor Sam Wanamaker decided to rebuild The Globe, Orrell became the project’s chief historical advisor.
The Globe was built in 1599 and destroyed in a fire in 1613. Almost 30 years later, it was rebuilt on the same foundation, only to be shut down by Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans and destroyed.
In 1987, the theatre’s reconstruction began. Orrell lent his expertise to the project by using the 17th-century etching, “The Long View of London” by Wenceslaus Hollar, as a template for the theatre’s blueprints. He then did a mathematic analysis to determine the building’s proportions. Construction was completed in 1997 and the 400th anniversary of the old Globe’s opening was celebrated in 1999.
Orrell also published several books, including “The Quest for Shakespeare’s Globe,” “The Theatres of Inigo Jones and John Webb” and “The Human Stage: English Theatre Design 1567-1640.”

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Jack Dymond

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Categories: Education, Scientists

jdymond.jpgJack R. Dymond, an oceanographer who discovered exotic life forms at the bottom of the sea, drowned on Sept. 19. He was 64.
Born in Ohio, Dymond earned a bachelor’s degree in geology from Miami University, and a doctorate from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego. He worked as a researcher at Columbia University before transferring to Oregon State University, where he taught until his retirement in 1997.
During his career, Dymond wrote nearly 100 scientific papers and traveled the world to explore underwater ecosystems. In 1977, he and a group of scientists found hot water vents spewing from the sea floor in the Galapagos Islands. Using the Alvin submersible to examine the vents, Dymond and his crew found an entire community of tube worms, clams and other previously unknown organisms living in the dark waters. It was the first ecosystem discovered on Earth that did not rely on the sun for energy.
“He was very inspiring in a way — he knew how to excite the people around him with new ideas, and also sort of show them how those new ideas could be approached in a reasonable way. He was one of those people for whom the strength of his personal relationships are as memorable as the specific scientific nuts and bolts that he contributed,” said friend and colleague Bob Collier.
Dymond, who was also the first person to explore the bottom of Crater Lake in Oregon, was fly-fishing on the Rogue River when he fell into the water and was pulled under by the current.

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Lord Blake

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Categories: Education, Military, Politicians, Writers/Editors

Lord Robert Norman William Blake, an historian, educator and biographer, died on Sept. 20. Cause of death was not released. He was 86.
Blake graduated from Magdalen College in Oxford. He intended to become a lawyer when World War II began. Instead, Blake served with the 124th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, for two years before he was captured in north Africa. After spending 15 months as a prisoner of war, Blake escaped and joined the British intelligence service, MI6.
Once the war ended, Blake moved back to England to teach. He spent 21 years at Oxford University’s Christ Church College, working as a politics professor, dean and pro-vice-chancellor. His Ford Lectures were collected into the textbook, “The Conservative Party, From Peel to John Major,” which was taught to a generation of students.
Blake also took on various editorial projects. He edited the manuscripts, “The Private Papers of Douglas Haig” and “The Unknown Prime Minister,” and spent a decade as the joint editor of Oxford University Press’ Dictionary of National Biography. His greatest achievement, however, was in writing “Disraeli,” one of the definitive biographies of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, a Conservative leader and unprincipled rake.
In 1971, Robert was appointed to the House of Lords and became Lord Blake of Braydeston. He was also an unofficial constitutional adviser to the Queen.

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Franco Modigliani

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Categories: Business, Education

Franco Modigliani, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, died on Sept. 25. Cause of death was not released. He was 85.
Modigliani was born in Italy. He studied economics and law at the University of Rome, but was forced to immigrate to the United States at the beginning of World War II to avoid religious and political persecution.
He received a doctorate in social science at the New School for Social Research in New York, joined the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, then taught at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. There he developed his best-known work, the life-cycle hypothesis.
He joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961. During his three decades at the university, Modigliani developed a reputation as a world-class economist for his writings on inflation and public deficits.
In 1985, Modigliani won the Nobel Prize in economics for researching how people save for retirement and how the market value of businesses is determined. He was also the former president of the American Economic Association, and the author of the autobiography, “The Adventures of an Economist.”

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