Biographies

Hey Guys;This Is One of our heros,Professor Hessabi.enjoy and proud.

The world is constantly changing, moving forward and making progress. This evolutionary process would be possible only when people with great minds discover new things and initiate new solutions to the existing problems of the world. The ceaseless endeavor, of these people lead to new inventions and discoveries.


The world is indeed indebted to the works of many learned people who eagerly spend much of their lives to discover the hidden forces of the world and create new theories. These people are indeed the engine of the world’s movement and dynamism. In all ages such people lived and contributed to the well being of mankind. In the past many well-known learned scientists mastered various subjects such as mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, medicine and etc., mainly due to the limited scope of these fields at that time. But as the time passed and man’s knowledge in each field grew, the scientists’ field of specialization became more focused. However, there remained a few scientists whose curiosity and talent led them to master several fields of knowledge and they were able to meaningfully contribute to the world in many different areas. Professor Hessaby was one of these scientists who was able to master several fields of science. Therefore he can be considered a great person with great ideas and a great mind.

Professor Mahmoud Hessaby was born in 1903 in Tafresh, Iran, he lived 89 years and died in 1992. During his life he lived, studied and worked in different countries. In his early years of life he went to Lebanon, where he completed secondary school and studied Civil Engineering, Mathematics, History, Literature, Biology and Astronomy. He then went to Paris and studied Electrical and Mining Engineering and received degrees for them. Then he finally turned to physics and at the age of 25 he received his Ph.D. in this field. He once said that "I went first into medicine, then into Engineering and then I decided that it was physics, which could keep me busy and captivate me" (qtd. in "A Brief Biography of Professor Mahmud Hessaby" 16). He then went to Princeton, U.S.A. to work on his theory. After the completion of his work he went back to Iran, and greatly contributed to the development and modernization of his country.

One of the reasons that Professor Hessaby can be considered a great mind is his endless desire for knowledge that led him to study and master several fields of science. Dr. HadadAdel, one of the Iranian philosophers, said that, "Professor Hessaby was not only knowledgeable and a learned scientist but also he was very humble and was known for his sincere behavior " ("Dr. Hessaby, a man with lots of abilities" 29). He studied and researched in different subjects and was able to make great contributions in most of them. Such achievements are the result of deep curiosity and strong talent and intelligence that could not be found in ordinary people. He also taught different subjects at various universities and gave new and interesting ideas in each of them.

The other aspect that makes him a great mind is his well-known theory of "Infinitely extended particles". After Professor Hessaby obtained his Ph.D. in Physics he continued his research in U.S.A. That was when Professor Hessaby met with Professor Albert Einstein. Professor Hessaby was the only Iranian who closely worked with Professor Einstein. Professor Hessaby’s theories and his views were different from those of Professor Einstein’s, but he still continued to work closely with Professor Einstein. He worked on his theory in Princeton, Chicago and preformed many different experiments to verify his theory. He published the results of his research in 1946 at Princeton University. His theory "Infinitely extended particles" is well known among scientists and made him a senior member of the New York academy of science. Professor Einstein once said about him that "One day he will change the direction of physics in the world."("Dr Hessaby, infinitely extended particles" 7). In 1973 the medal of "Commandeur de la Legion", France’s greatest scientific medal was awarded to him for his great theory.

The other point that makes Professor Hessaby a great mind, is his loyalty and great services to his country. Dr. Hadad Adel said that, "Professor Hessaby did not use science as a mean to earn money, but to serve humanity" ("Dr. Hessaby, a man with lots of abilities" 31). He taught seven generations of Iranian students. He is one of the very few who transferred modern science and technology from all over the world to Iran. He also played a significant role in the establishment of Universities and scientific centers in Iran. Professor Hessaby established the first University in Iran called Tehran U. Due to his invaluable services, in 1990 he was given the title of "The Father of Physics" and he was a pioneer of modern science in Iran.

Every five years The American Biographical Institute (ABI) and The International Biographical Center (IBC) select a list of five thousand scientists from all over the world. Among these scientists only one person is chosen as the "World Man of the Year in Science". In 1990 these two institutes gave this title to Professor Mahmoud Hessaby.

In conclusion Professor Hessaby was a great person both in the history of the science and for the modernization of his country. He had an endless quest for knowledge and succeeded in developing valuable theories, such as the "infinitely extended particles". One of the great things he did was the modification of Newton’s law of gravity and Columbus’ law. Professor Hessaby knew eleven different languages, such as Persian, English, French, Arabic, German, Italian, Greek and etc. What makes professor Hessaby unique is the numerous services he rendered for his country, such as Establishment of Tehran U., the teachers collage the first meteorological station and radiological center in Iran. He also founded the space research center, the geophysics institute and the satellite tracking observatory center of Iran. It is interesting to know that professor Hessaby also mastered Persian literature, played piano and violin and established the first Iranian institute of music. Professor Hessaby’s life, his struggles, his tireless and intense interest in the quest of science as well as his deep interest in teaching the youth, and his commitment to the scientific progress of his country provides a living example and model for the students of science.

In the history of Persia different dynasties rivalled for supreme power, killing off their opponents. After the violent deaths of his father and elder brother, 12-year-old Ismail assembled an army, defeated the Khan of the Aq Qoyunlu and became Shah Ismail I of Persia (1487-1524). Near the end of his life Ismail I became a melancholic alcoholic and lost interest in affairs of state. His son, Tamasp I (1513-1576), is described as "a mean, treacherous and melancholy man". Gradually, he turned into a recluse and no longer left his palace. His son, Ismail II (1533-1577), had been imprisoned for the last twenty years of his father's reign. This Shah mercilessly killed off possible rivals to the throne, including many of his own brothers, until he died of an opium overdose. Shah Safi II (±1647-1694), a drunkard and recluse, was said to have shut himself up for seven years in the harem without emerging once. Shah Husayn (±1668-1726) was known for his uxoriousness and married many wives before he was deposed, imprisoned and beheaded.

Nadir (1688-1747) was the son of a poor peasant, who lived in Khurasan and died while Nadir was still a child. Nadir and his mother were carried off as slaves by the Özbegs, but Nadir managed to escape and became a soldier. Soon he attracted the attention of a chieftain of the Afshar1, in whose service Nadir rapidly advanced. Eventually, the ambitious Nadir fell out of favour. He became a rebel and gathered a substantial army.

In 1719 the Afghans had invaded Persia. They deposed the reigning Shah of the Safavid dynasty in 1722. Their ruler, Mahmud Ghilzai (±1699-1725), murdered a large number of Safavid Princes, hacking many of them to death by his own hand. After he had invited the leading citizens of Isfahan to a feast and massacred them there, his own supporters assassinated Mahmud in 1725. His cousin, Ashraf (±1700-1730), took over and married a Safavid princess.

At first, Nadir fought with the Afghans against the Özbegs until they withheld him further payment. In 1727 Nadir offered his services to Tamasp II (±1704-1740), heir to the Safavid dynasty. Nadir started the reconquest of Persia and drove the Afghans out of Khurasan. The Afghans suffered heavy losses, but before they fled Ashraf massacred an additional 3000 citizens of Isfahan. Most of the fleeing Afghans were soon overtaken and killed by Nadir's men, while others died in the desert. Ashraf himself was hunted down and murdered.

By 1729 Nadir had freed Persia from the Afghans. Tamasp II was crowned Shah, although he was little more than a figurehead. While Nadir was putting down a revolt in Khurasan, Tamasp moved against the Turks, losing Georgia and Armenia. Enraged, Nadir deposed Tamasp in 1732 and installed Tamasp's infant son, Abbas III (1732-1740), on the throne, naming himself regent. Within two years Nadir recaptured the lost territory and extended the Empire at the expense of the Turks and the Russians.

In 1736 Nadir evidently felt that his own position had been established so firmly that he no longer needed to hide behind a nominal Safavid Shah and ascended the throne himself. In 1738 he invaded Qandahar, captured Kabul and marched on to India. He seized and sacked Delhi and, after some disturbances, he killed 30000 of its citizens. He plundered the Indian treasures of the Mughal Emperors, taking with him the famous jewel-encrusted Peacock Throne and the Koh-i Noor diamond2. In 1740 Nadir had Tamasp II and his two infant sons put to death. Then he invaded Transoxania. He resumed war with Turkey in 1743. In addition, he built a navy and conquered Oman.

Gradually Nadir's greedy and intolerant nature became more pronounced. The financial burden of his standing armies was more than the Persians could bear and Nadir imposed the death penalty on those who failed to pay his taxes. He stored most of his loot for his own use and showed little if any concern for the general welfare of the country. Nadir concentrated all power in his own hands. He was a brilliant soldier and the founder of the Persian navy, but he was entirely lacking any interest in art and literature. Once, when Nadir was told that there was no war in paradise, he was reported to have asked: "How can there be any delights there?". He moved the capital to Mashhad in Khurasan, close to his favourite mountain fortress. He tried to reconcile Sunnism with Shi'itism, because he needed people of both faiths in his army, but the reconciliation failed.

In the evening Nadir would retire to his private apartment, where he usually supped with three or four favourites. He drank wine with moderation, but was very fond of women. In his later days he had 33 women in his harem. Nadir preferred to speak in Turki (Eastern Turkish), but he could converse in Persian, too. His contemporaries mentioned his remarkably loud voice, which enabled him to make his commands easily heard. From 1739 onwards Nadir used to dye his beard and moustache black, thus keeping a youthful appearance. Duting the 1740s he lost several of his front teeth.

In his later years, revolts began to break out against Nadir's oppressive rule and his increasing lust for blood and money. He suffered from dropsy, and as a result he was troubled at times by severe melancholia and outbursts of rage. In 1743 Nadir was treated for a liver complaint. In the summer of 1745 he was seriously ill and had to be carried in a litter. He suffered from constipation and had frequent attacks of vomiting.

Following an assination attempt, Nadir began exhibited signs of mental derangement. He suspected his own son, Reza Quli Mirza (1719-1747), of plotting against him and had him blinded. Soon he started executing the nobles who had witnessed his son's blinding. Gradually Nadir's attacks of frenzy became periods of actual insanity which recurred with increasing frequency. In January 1747 he left Isfahan for Kirman. Wherever he halted, Nadir had many people tortured and put to death. He had towers of their heads erected. In March he crossed the terrible Dasht-i-Lut desert, where many of his men perished of hunger and thirst. By then, even his own tribesmen felt that he was too dangerous a man to be near. A group of Afshar and Qajar chiefs decided "to breakfast off him ere he should sup off them". His own commanders surprised him in his sleep, but Nadir managed to kill two of them before the assassins cut off his head.

Nadir was Persia's most gifted military genius and is known as "The Second Alexander" and "The Napoleon of Persia". He raised his country from the lowest depths of degradation to the proud position of the foremost military power in Asia. Unfortunately, his triumphs were at the expense of incalculable suffering and terrible loss of life. His grandiosity, his insatiable desire for more conquests and his egocentric behaviour suggest a narcissistic personality disorder and in his last years he seems to have developed some paranoid tendencies. Nadir was married four times and had 5 sons and 15 grandsons. Their deaths were ordered by Nadir's successor.

Copyright © 1997, 2000, 2002 by J.N.W. Bos. All rights reserved.

Biography of Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee (Lee Hsiao Lung), was born in San Fransisco in November 1940 the son of a famous Chinese opera singer. Bruce moved to Hong Kong when he soon became a child star in the growing Eastern film industry. His first film was called The birth of Mankind, his last film which was uncompleted at the time of his death in 1973 was called Game of Death. Bruce was a loner and was constantly getting himself into fights, with this in mind he looked towards Kung Fu as a way of disciplining himself. The famous Yip Men taught Bruce his basic skills, but it was not long before he was mastering the master. Yip Men was acknowledged to be one of the greatest authorities on the subject of Wing Chun a branch of the Chinese Martial Arts. Bruce mastered this before progressing to his own style of Jeet Kune Do.

At the age of 19 Bruce left Hong Kong to study for a degree in philosophy at the University of Washington in America. It was at this time that he took on a waiter's job and also began to teach some of his skills to students who would pay. Some of the Japanese schools in the Seattle area tried to force Bruce out, and there was many confrontations and duels fought for Bruce to remain.

He met his wife Linda at the University he was studying. His Martial Arts school flourished and he soon graduated. He gained some small roles in Hollywood films - Marlowe- etc, and some major stars were begging to be students of the Little Dragon. James Coburn, Steve McQueen and Lee Marvin to name but a few. He regularly gave displays at exhibitions, and it was during one of these exhibitions that he was spotted by a producer and signed up to do The Green Hornet series. The series was quite successful in the States - but was a huge hit in Hong Kong. Bruce visited Hong Kong in 1968 and he was overwhelmed by the attention he received from the people he had left.

He once said on a radio program if the price was right he would do a movie for the Chinese audiences. He returned to the States and completed some episodes of Longstreet. He began writing his book on Jeet Kune Do at roughly the same time.

Back in Hong Kong producers were desperate to sign Bruce for a Martial Arts film, and it was Raymond Chow the head of Golden Harvest who produced The Big Boss. The rest as they say is history.

Read the chronological time life of Bruce Lee.

Born: 28 April 1937
Birthplace: Tikrit District, Iraq
Best Known As: Leader of Iraq, 1979-2003
Saddam Hussein was dictator of Iraq from 1979 until 2003, when his regime was overthrown by a United States-led invasion. Hussein had joined the revolutionary Baath party while he was a university student. He launched his political career in 1958 by assassinating a supporter of Iraqi ruler Abdul-Karim Qassim. Saddam rose in the ranks after a Baath coup, and by 1979 he was Iraq's president and de facto dictator. He led Iraq through a decade-long war with Iran, and in August of 1990 his forces invaded the neighboring country of Kuwait. A U.S.-led alliance organized by George Bush (the elder) ran Hussein's forces out of Kuwait in the Gulf War, which ended in February of 1991 with Saddam still in power. In 2002 Hussein came under renewed pressure from George W. Bush, the son of the first President Bush. In March of 2003, Hussein's regime was overthrown by an invasion of U.S. and British forces. Hussein disappeared, but U.S. forces captured him on 13 December 2003 after finding him hiding in a small underground pit on a farm near the town of Tikrit. Late in 2005 he went on trial in Iraq for the 1982 deaths of over 140 men in the town of Dujail, though at this writing the main portion of the trial is not expected to occur until 2006.

Before the 1991 Gulf War, Hussein threatened that if international forces led by the United States attacked Iraq, it would be "the mother of all wars," giving rise to a multi-purpose catchphrase: "the mother of all (fill in the blank)"... The U.S. effort in the Gulf War was directed by the elder George Bush and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell; Powell later became Secretary of State under Bush's son George W. Bush... Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay were killed by U.S forces in the northern town of Mosul in July of 2003... Saddam Hussein is no relation to King Hussein, the late ruler of Jordan

Born: 31 May 1930
Where: San Francisco, California, USA
Awards: Won 4 Oscars and 5 Golden Globes
Height: 6' 4"

Filmography: The Complete List

He is, of course, best known as The Man With No Name. With that menacing squint, the cigar-stub clenched between his teeth, the Stetson pulled low, ever ready to flip back that dirty poncho and reveal that well-oiled six-shooter. Woe betide you if you ever insulted his mule. Everyone, but everyone knows Clint Eastwood from Sergio Leone's Dollar trilogy. That was how he came to fame, wasn't it? Those were the films that led him to become the cynical deputy sheriff of Coogan's Bluff, the mystic revengers of High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider, the last of the rebel hold-outs in The Outlaw Josey Wales, and the aged gunslinger dragged back to violence in the Oscar-winning Unforgiven.

But, though he achieved his box-office breakthrough with those legendary mid-Sixties spaghetti westerns, and over the next 3 decades produced some of the greatest cowboy movies ever made, Eastwood has also scored major financial and artistic successes far beyond the dusty genre that spawned him. Where, say, Sylvester Stallone found trouble when he stepped away from Rocky or Rambo, Eastwood remained convincing when not portraying his cold frontiersman or his other major character, the perp-hating, authority-baiting "Dirty" Harry Callahan. Think of his manipulative Confederate seducer in The Beguiled: his orang-utan-loving bare-knuckle fighter in Every Which Way But Loose: his drunken cop, doomed by his incompetence in The Gauntlet: his dying singer, battling his way to the Grand Ole Oprey in Honkytonk Man: his haunted agent, desperate to save the President in In The Line Of Fire: his ageing photographer, suffering unrequited love in The Bridges Of Madison County. No sign of the silent killer there, but great films, all of them, along with so many more. It is to the Academy's undying shame that Eastwood was not nominated in any category till he was gone 60.

Repeated Post, buddy! Take a look at the first post! But thank you anyway for your attention to this topic and specially your interest in my favorite actor :happy: ;)

Reza1969

Born: 17 January 1962
Where: Newmarket, Ontario, Canada
Awards: Won 2 Golden Globes, nominated for 1 BAFTA
Height: 6' 2"

Arguments may occasionally rage over the acting abilities of Keanu Reeves and Brad Pitt, but no one, absolutely NO ONE divides opinion like Jim Carrey. With his elastic features, frantic mugging and screen-hogging antics, many believe him to be an intolerably childish clown, even more irritating than his brother in buffoonery Pee Wee Herman. Others though (and they can be counted in the multi-millions) see Carrey as continuing a long line of classic comedians stretching back through Jerry Lewis and Laurel and Hardy. They laud him as a comic machine-gun, only ever stalling his barrage for long enough to reload, then unleashing another hail of laughs. What's for sure is that no other comic actor, not even Robin Williams, can equal his manic intensity, and very few actors of any kind can match his extraordinary run of hits.

He was born James Eugene Carrey on the 17th of January, 1962, in Newmarket, Ontario (it's worth noting that both of America's biggest comic film stars - Carrey and Mike Myers - are Canadian). Newmarket was a neat and easy-going town just to the north of Toronto, and it was here that Carrey spent his early years with his three older siblings - Pat, John and Rita - and parents Percy and Kathleen. Kathleen suffered depression and was often chronically sick with illnesses both real and imagined. Percy, sharp-witted and highly amusing, was formerly a sax player in a big band, but had sold his sax and his dreams to take a job as an accountant. His wife's father habitually referred to him as "Loser", easily done as Percy was extremely mild-mannered. Indeed, Jim would later model The Mask's Stanley Ipkiss on him.

Biography for
Tom Cruise

Birth name
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV
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Height
5' 7" (1.70 m)
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Mini biography
In 1976, if you had told 14 year old Franciscan seminary student Thomas Cruise Mapother IV that one day in the not too distant future he would be considered one of the top 100 movie stars of all time, he would have probably grinned and told you that his ambition was to become a priest. Nonetheless, this sensitive, deeply religious youngster who was born in 1962 in Syracuse, New York, was destined to become Tom Cruise, one of the highest paid and most sought after actors in screen history. The only son (among four children) of nomadic parents young Tom spent his boyhood eternally on the move and by the time he was 14 he had attended 15 different schools in the US and Canada. He finally settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with his mother and her new husband. While in high school, he developed an interest in acting and abandoned his plans of becoming a priest, dropped out of school, and at age 18 headed for New York and a possible acting career. The next 15 years of his life are the stuff of legends. He made his film debut with a small part in Endless Love (1981) and from the outset exhibited an undeniable box office appeal to both male and female audiences.

Though below average height and not particularly handsome in the traditional sense, within 5 years Tom Cruise was starring in some of the top grossing films of the 1980s including Top Gun (1986); The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). By the 1990s he was one of the highest paid actors in the world earning an average 15 million dollars a picture in such blockbuster hits as Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996) - for which he received an Academy Award Nomination for best actor. In 1990 he renounced his devout Catholic beliefs and embraced The Church Of Scientology claiming that Scientology teachings had cured him of the dyslexia that had plagued him all of his life. A kind and thoughful man well known for his compassion and generosity, Tom Cruise is one of the best liked members of the movie community. He was married to actress Nicole Kidman until 2001. Thomas Cruise Mapother IV has indeed come a long way from the lonely wanderings of his youth

Born: 19

March 1955
Where: Idar-Oberstein, Germany
Awards: Won 1 Golden Globe
Height: 6'

In 2001, he swore blind that he'd never again appear in an all-action, explosions-a-go-go blockbuster, but Bruce Willis had a hard time escaping his reputation as that genre's most successful star. Indeed, since his first major cinematic hit, Die Hard, many of us cannot witness a fiery onscreen detonation without imagining Bruce - wide-eyed and panting in a grubby white vest - flying through the air, arms and legs flailing frantically. He's just too damn good at it. But, of course - being both a singing star, a restaurateur and an arch comedian - there's been far more to his career than that.

Bruce Willis was born Walter Bruce Willison on the 19th of March, 1955 in Idar-Oberstein, a German town near the border with Luxembourg. His dad, David, being a military man, was stationed there and his wife, Marlene, was from Kassel (they'd be divorced in 1971). On his discharge in 1957, David took his family back to Carney's Point, New Jersey, finding employment as a welder and a factory worker. Bruce, the oldest of four children (he has a sister, Flo, and two brothers, one of whom, David, is a movie producer), attended high school at Penn's Grove. A popular fellow, he was elected Student Council President and, strangely for a boy of such resolute blue-collar pride, threw himself into drama classes. This was perhaps because, tormented by a debilitating stutter, he discovered that he lost his impediment when onstage. He was also a talented wrestler - that scar on his shoulder now is actually the result of a serious sprain. Though a good student, he was suspended for three months in his senior year for taking part in what he later described as "the annual riot".

Upon leaving school, Bruce (nicknamed Bruno) was expected to attend college but, keen to live as a normal working-man, he instead took a job transporting work crews at the Du Pont factory in nearby Deepwaters. This continued until a fellow driver was killed on the job, and Bruce quit, later becoming a security guard at a nuclear plant under construction. Already keen on music, and kicking back in general, he hung out in bars and played harmonica in R&B band Loose Goose. Yet, despite his desire to be "regular", he discovered that he missed acting and enrolled at Montclair State College, where he leapt enthusiastically back into drama classes, causing something of a stir with his performance in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Eager to forge a career, he'd skip classes to attend auditions in New York City - eventually dropping out altogether and taking an apartment in Hell's Kitchen, much closer to the action. He would for some months share his lowly abode with another aspiring actor, Linda Fiorentino.

Still working to pay the bills, Bruce got himself a job tending bar at Café Central, a trendy media hang-out, and sought parts in plays, shows and ads. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1977 in Heaven And Earth and nabbed uncredited roles in The First Deadly Sin (where he also stood in for the killer in long-shots) and Sidney Lumet's excellent Prince Of The City and Paul Newman-starring The Verdict. Then it all began to happen. He was a hit onstage in Sam Shepard's Fool For Love and scored a sweet role as wife-beating gun-runner Tony Amato in the massive hit show Miami Vice. He also appeared in Hart To Hart and, dead cool in his natty shades, in the first TV ad for Levi 501 Blues plus, along with the then-unknown Sharon Stone, another ad for a Seagrams Wine Cooler.

But this was just a taster. Now real stardom arrived, though not in the way he expected. Flying off to LA, he auditioned for a part in Madonna's Desperately Seeking Susan, but was rejected. Being as he was in town, he checked out the other auditions taking place - one of which was for a new ABC show to be named Moonlighting. Willis found himself up against 3000 other hopefuls in the race to star alongside Cybill Shepherd as the smooth, wisecracking David Addison. And, being as that was him to a tee, he won over the producer, who cast him despite protests from ABC - the company preferring a name actor in the role.

Screened from 1985 to 1989, the show was an enormous success, with private eyes Addison and Shepherd's Maddie Hayes flirting, fighting and solving improbably complex crimes with great aplomb. On-set, the stars' relationship was far more fraught, their in-fighting becoming legendary and Willis picking up an unwanted reputation for "being difficult". But Bruce, ever ambitious despite his easy-going persona, was looking beyond the world of TV. He used his breaks from Moonlighting to star in two movies by Blake Edwards (famed Pink Panther director). First was Blind Date, with Kim Basinger, an excellent slapstick caper that was outrageously panned. Then came Sunset, the tale of two ageing cowboys solving a crime in Hollywood, where Willis played Tom Mix to James Garner's Wyatt Earp - it was another relative flop.

1987 saw everything turn around. For a start, Bruce met his future wife, Demi Moore, at the premiere of Stakeout, a cop comedy starring her then-boyfriend Emilio Estevez. He also became an international singing star, getting his funk out and crashing the charts with the hit LP, The Return Of Bruno, a collection of Motown-type material, including a cover of Respect Yourself. This would be followed by a second LP, If It Don't Kill You, It Just Makes You Stronger. The Bruno connection was continued with the comedy rockumentary, also titled Return Of Bruno, where Willis played the supposedly super-influential Bruno Radolini, paid onscreen homage by the likes of Elton John, Phil Collins and Gene Simmons.

Winning an Emmy and a Golden Globe for Moonlighting, it couldn't get much better for Bruce. Then it did. Directed by John McTiernan and filmed by Jan De Bont (who went on to direct Speed and Twister), Die Hard was a word-of-mouth smash that took everyone by surprise. As Detective John McClane, thwarting Alan Rickman in his villainous attempt to hijack a skyscraper, Willis redefined the role of the action hero. A slightly shabby smartarse, struggling in life and love, he was panicked, vulnerable and constantly on the edge of failure - yet somehow won through against impossible odds. Willis then hit big again, this time providing wise-ass put-downs for a new-born babe, in Look Who's Talking.

Now began a difficult period in Willis's career. Never content to sit comfortably in a single genre, he now played a traumatised Vietnam vet in Norman Jewison's In Country, and appeared in another mockumentary, this time the movie industry-based That's Adequate. More hits followed with the sequels to Die Hard and Look Who's Talking, but suddenly Willis's career became a rollercoaster of the genuinely sickening variety. Starring alongside Tom Hanks in Brian De Palma's adaptation of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire Of The Vanities, he was involved in one of the most expensive and critically reviled disasters in film history. Quickly he redeemed himself with Tony Scott's superior action flick The Last Boy Scout, but then it got even worse with Hudson Hawk. Based on a story by Willis himself (he also wrote the title song), it concerned a super-burglar taking on his last big job - "big job" being an apt description of the whole movie, according to crits and public alike. It went down like the proverbial lead zeppelin.

With all the stories of financial catastrophe flying around, it was understandable that most people missed out on the fact that the early Nineties also saw Willis deliver two of his finest performances. Alongside wife Demi in Alan Rudolph's excellent Mortal Thoughts, he was fantastic, and wholly out-of-character, as a mean-spirited bully. Then there was Billy Bathgate, a dodgy Mob movie starring Dustin Hoffman, wherein Willis shone as a slick rival gangster eventually consigned to the bottom of the river, concrete Hush Puppies and all.

No one seemed to notice. Bruce struggled on through the Meryl Streep comedy Death Becomes Her, the enjoyable but mostly ignored Striking Distance, a bit part in The Player, and an uncredited role in Loaded Weapon, but his career seemed to be fast spiralling downwards. Until the intervention of someone who most definitely had seen both Mortal Thoughts and Billy Bathgate - videohound Quentin Tarantino. Willis thought his part in Pulp Fiction would be tiny but it grew to spread throughout the movie. As boxer Butch Coolidge, he charmingly comforted lover Maria de Medeiros, heroically saved Ving Rhames from the Gimp and his rapist buddies, blew John Travolta to smithereens AND got away scot-free. It was a superb performance - Bruce was BACK.

And, being Bruce, he refused to make it easy on himself. He played a man in a pink bunny-suit in Rob Reiner's North, appeared alongside Newman again in the low-key Nobody's Fool, and went all arty in Four Rooms. He played a possibly lunatic time-traveller in Terry Gilliam's tremendous 12 Monkeys, and hit pay-dirt once more in Die Hard III. He seemed to have hit a plateau where he could do much as he liked, keeping his profile high with the occasional blockbuster and his involvement, along with Schwarzenegger and Stallone in the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain.

Then the wheels came off again, slowly this time. Walter Hill's Last Man Standing was a superior update of Kurosawa's Yojimbo with Willis suitably shady in the lead role, but it made no money. Next came a series of mediocre action flicks in The Jackal, The Siege and Mercury Rising, and the superficial, Gaultier-spoiled sci-fi oddity The Fifth Element. Willis's standing as a Hollywood big cheese and a guarantee of vast financial returns was in terrible danger. When Disney pulled the plug on his next project, Broadway Brawler, word was that Willis was finished. In fact, the only good press he got was for taking his clothes off on the David Letterman Show in order to publicise his wife's miserable Striptease.

Amazingly, this latest disaster proved to be the launch-pad to Bruce's greatest success yet. Stripped of his Broadway Brawler responsibilities, he took the lead in space-pic Armageddon, leading a motley band charged with saving us all from an onrushing meteor. It was a $200 million hit. It seemed the guy was charmed. Now taking the lead in a film that ought to have been a mere cult oddity carried by his name alone, Willis took a $20 million fee AND a hefty percentage. And, as supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense out-did even Armageddon, he found himself raking in upwards of $100 million, smashing Tom Hanks record for Forrest Gump.

It just got better and better. Having starred alongside Matthew Perry in The Whole Nine Yards, as a favour to his newfound buddy he appeared in Friends as Paul Stevens, the disapproving father of Ross Geller's (too-) young girlfriend. Handing his fee over to various charities, he walked off with another Emmy. Then came another massive screen hit, Unbreakable, once more with Sixth Sense director M. Night Shalamayan. Now Willis was bigger than ever, even becoming the first star to lend his face and body-movements to a videogame star, appearing as Trey Kincaide in the hit Apocalypse.

It wasn't all good news. With Demi Moore, Willis had had three daughters - Rumer, Scout Larue and Tallulah Belle - but his 12 year marriage, deemed by many to be the strongest in Tinseltown, ended in 2000 (Bruce would subsequently buy a house five miles north of the family home in Hailey, Idaho). He also lost his position as Seagrams spokesman after being caught for drunk driving. And then there was Planet Hollywood, which filed for bankrupcy reorganisation, closed numerous branches and submitted to a major restructuring. Stepping back into music, Bruce toured Europe in order to revive interest in the burger chain. Re-bitten by the boogie bug, he'd turn down a part in Ocean's Eleven in order to concentrate on a new LP, his part being taken by Andy Garcia. He'd also help set up a new label, the Uptop Music Corporation, dedicated to releasing acts by marginalised artists like Aaron Neville's son Ivan.

Attempting to spread his wings a little, Bruce followed Unbreakable with a string of more testing projects. First he returned to comedy, alongside Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchett in the heist romp Bandits. Then came Hart's War, the first of consecutive big screen military dramas. Here Colin Farrell was assigned to defend a black officer accused of murdering a white racist in a POW camp during WW2. As senior officer Colonel William McNamara, Willis appears offensively uninterested - but then perhaps he has something equally heroic on the go.

After appearing in a filmed stage version of Sam Shepard's True West (writer of Bruce's stage breakthrough), recorded at the Liberty Theatre in Hailey, Idaho, where he was a small-time crook trying to ingratiate his way into the film business, came another war drama, Tears Of The Sun. Here he led a troop of Navy SEALS into a Nigerian war zone to rescue several US nationals. Doctor Monica Bellucci, however, refuses to leave without her patients so Bruce, after a surprising change of heart, decides to lead them all to safety through a particularly dangerous stretch of jungle. It was a tough role as much of the movie's true drama - the sacrificing of innocent lives, the disobeying of orders, the risking of his own men - had to be played out on Willis's own face. Once again, he proved himself more than able.

Returning to comedy, Bruce reprised his role as Jimmy The Tulip in a sequel to The Whole Nine Yards, this time rescuing the bumbling Matthew Perry from a gang of Hungarian kidnappers. 2005 would see a string of new releases (as well as a string of musical dates in Las Vegas). First would come Hostage, where he played an LA hostage negotiator who suffers a terrible professional experience and moves to less challenging climes. Unfortunately, he gets involved in another hostage crisis, one complicated by the fact that his own wife and kid have been simultaneously kidnapped, with a ransom demand that turns the original job into a nightmare. It was gloomy fare, but ingenious and, despite Willis's claims that he'd never return to action movies, it was action-packed. The film would also see the debut of Bruce's daughter, Rumer.

Also gloomy, but far more ingenious would be Robert Rodriguez's visually-stunning Sin City, based on the graphic novels of Frank Miller. This was set in a seedy, violent noir-world, where the stories of several tortured denizens collided. Bruce would play John Hartigan, a cop jailed for a crime he didn't commit, who discovers on his release that the girl he was protecting when first framed is now being menaced by an utter psycho. Joining him in a truly stellar cast would be Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen and Josh Hartnett.

Willis then moved on to Alpha Dog, written and directed by Nick Cassavetes and based on the real-life story of Jesse James Hollywood. He was a young drug dealer who, inspired by his vagabond father, managed to buy himself a $200,000 house at the age of 19 but then blew everything when he kidnapped and killed the 15-year-old brother of a client who owed him $1500, being then forced to go on the run. Alpha Dog, which would also feature pop star Justin Timberlake and Bruce's old Seagrams-advertising buddy Sharon Stone, would see Willis play the charismatic father, whose buccaneering attitude to crime saw his son go wrong. Filmed in late 2004, it would be close to release when Hollywood was finally caught after a 4-year search by the FBI, hiding out in Brazil. Oddly, just as he was being deported back to the States, his father would be busted on suspicion of drug possession.

Next up would come more noir with a role in Lucky Number Sleven, where Bruce's Sin City co-star Josh Hartnett became embroiled in a savage New York turf war between Jewish and Afro-American gangs led by Ben Kingsley and Morgan Freeman respectively. Then Willis would replace Jim Carrey as the voice of a con-artist racoon in the animation Over The Hedge, where forest animals attempted to resist the lure of encroaching suburbia. And, unarguably proving the foolishness of that "no more action movies" quote, there'd be Die Hard 4.0, written by hostage scribe Doug Richardson, who pictured John McClane, now retired, teaming with his daughter to battle terrorists in the Caribbean.

Having been paid $22.5 million for Hart's War, as well as huge sums for The Whole Ten Yards and Hostage, Bruce Willis remains right up there with Tom Cruise at the top of the A-list. Fair enough, considering his movies have taken far in excess of $2 billion at the box-office. Also, the publicity surrounding his private life has seldom been more frantic. Having dated Spanish model Maria Bravo Rosado, he'd also be connected to ---- star Alisha Klass, actress Estella Warren and Czech model Eva Jasanovska, on top of a series of scurrilous reports claiming he'd helped bring an end to Monica Bellucci's marriage. 2004 would see him end a 10-month relationship with actress Brooke Burns, a Baywatch babe 23 years his junior. Meanwhile, his ex-wife Demi Moore was doing her bit to keep Bruce in the tabloids, with Willis often turning up alongside Moore, their kids and Moore's toy-boy lover Ashton Kutcher.

Nearly 20 years of massive fame, and still going strong. Not bad at all for a stuttering van-driver called Walter.

Dominic Wills

Few Victorians are as well-remembered today as Charles Robert Darwin. Born into a wealthy Shropshire gentry family, Darwin grew up amidst wealth, comfort and country sports. An unimpressive student, Darwin vacillated between the prospect of becoming a country physician, like his father, or a clergyman. The advantage to becoming a country parson, as Darwin saw it, would be the freedom to pursue his growing interest in natural history. However, an unforeseen opportunity precluded these early plans. After his student days in Edinburgh and Christ's College Cambridge, Darwin's connections in 1831 offered him the opportunity of travelling on a survey ship, H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist and the captain's gentleman dining companion. The round-the-world journey lasted almost five years. Darwin spent most of these years investigating the geology and life of the lands he visited, especially South America, the Galapagos islands, and pacific coral islands.

Darwin also read the works of men of science like Alexander von Humboldt and the geologist Charles Lyell. Lyell's new book, Principles of Geology, was particularly influential for Darwin. Lyell argued that the world had been shaped not by great catastrophes like floods but by the gradual processes we see active around us: wind, erosion, volcanoes, earthquakes etc. Lyell offered not just a new geology but a new way of explaining the world. Slow gradual cumulative change over a long period of time could produce great effects. Visible non-miraculous causes should be preferred when seeking explanations. Darwin had the opportunity to witness all of these forces himself during the Beagle voyage and he became convinced that something like Lyell's method was correct. Darwin also collected organisms of all sorts, as well as unearthing many fossils. Darwin wondered why the fossils he unearthed in South America resembled the present inhabitants of that continent more than any other life form known. Where had the new species come from? In fact, why was the world covered with so many different kinds of living things? Why were some very similar to one another and others vastly different? Why did some desert species live in deserts in Africa, but quite different species in the Americas? If species suited their environments, why were not all jungle species the same in Asia, Africa and South America? Instead each region had its own fauna and flora.

Darwin did not hit on a solution during the Beagle voyage, but rather a few years later in London, while writing books on his travels and studying the specimens he had collected. Experts in London were able to tell him how many of the species of plants and animals he had collected in the Galapagos Islands were unique species, found nowhere else. Clearly they resembled species from South America 500 miles away. It seemed as if migrants from South America had come to the Galapagos and then changed.

Darwin began to speculate on how species could arise by means still active around us. His idiosyncratic eclecticism led him to investigate some unconventional evidence. He made countless inquiries of animal breeders, both farmers and hobbyists like pigeon fanciers, trying to understand how they made distinct breeds of animals. Gradually Darwin decided that organisms were infinitely variable, and that the supposed limits or barriers to species were a myth. In modern terms we would say that Darwin came to accept that life evolves. In other words that the kinds of organisms in the world are not fixed kinds. The conventional view of the time was that species had been created where they are now found- in accordance with the environment.

Darwin then sought to explain how evolution works. He was familiar with the evolutionary theories earlier proposed by his grandfather Erasmus Darwin and by the great French zoologist J.B. Lamarck. But already Darwin's thinking was far in advance of theirs. He was thinking of the history of life as a branching genealogical tree, not of independent lineages somehow impelled to progress upwards.

In 1838 Darwin read the Rev. Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). Malthus was widely believed to have conclusively demonstrated that human population growth would necessarily outstrip food production unless population growth was somehow checked. Population growth was geometrical. For example, two parents might have four children, each of whom could have four children, whose children could also have four children. Thus in four generations there would be an increase from 2 to 4 to 24 to 96 an so forth.

The focus of this argument inspired Darwin. He realised that an enormous proportion of living things are destroyed before they can reproduce. This must be true because every species would breed enough to fill the earth in a few hundred generations. But they do not do so. Populations remain roughly stable year after year. The only way this can be so is that most offspring do not survive long enough to reproduce. For example, there are around 9 million cats in Britain today. There are about 120 million birds. Britain's cats kill about 60 million birds per year. Many millions more die from loss of habitat, starvation, disease, flying into windows, cars and so forth. Yet the bird population is not declining. So although birds are breeding at a Malthusian rate, accidents and predation and so forth kill so many that the population size essentially stands still.

Darwin, already concentrating on how new varieties of life might be formed, suddenly realised that the key to evolution was whatever made a difference between those that survive to reproduce and those that do not. He called this open-ended collection of multifarious causes 'natural selection'.

As Darwin wrote in his autobiography in 1876: 'In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species. Here, then I had at last got a theory by which to work'. Below is the famous passage from Darwin's personal notebook where these ideas were first recorded:

[Sept] 28th.[1838] Even the energetic language of Decandolle does not convey the warring of the species as inference from Malthus - increase of brutes must be prevented solely by positive checks, excepting that famine may stop desire. —in nature production does not increase, whilst no check prevail, but the positive check of famine and consequently death. . .

...—The final cause of all this wedging, must be to sort out proper structure, and adapt it to change.—to do that for form, which Malthus shows is the final effect by means however of volition of this populousness on the energy of man. One may say there is a force like a hundred thousand wedges trying [to] force every kind of adapted structure into the gaps in the economy of nature, or rather forming gaps by thrusting out weaker ones.

Or, as Darwin later put it in the Origin of Species (1859):

As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.

Therefore only the survivors would pass on their form and abilities. Their characteristics would persist and multiply whilst characteristics of those that did not live long enough to reproduce would decrease. Darwin did not know precisely how inheritance worked—genes and DNA were totally unknown. Nevertheless he appreciated the crucial point that inheritance occurs. Offspring resemble their parents. Darwin thought in terms of populations of diverse heritable things with no essence—not representatives of ideal types as many earlier thinkers had done. From his observations and experiments with domesticated and wild plants and animals he could find no limits to the extent organic forms could vary and change through generations. Thus the existing species in the world were related not along a chain of being or in statically separate species categories but were all related on a genealogical family tree through 'descent with modification'.

Darwin also identified another means by which some individuals would have descendants and others would not. He later called this sexual selection. This theory explained why the male --- in many species produce colourful displays or specialised body parts to attract females or to compete against other males. Those males who beat other males, or were selected for breeding by females left more offspring and so subsequent generations would resemble them more than those who succeeded less often to reproduce. As Darwin pointed out, "A hornless stag or spurless cock would have a
poor chance of leaving offspring."

Darwin, deeply studied in the sciences of his time, yet living somewhat removed from his colleagues as a closet theorist, was able to think in new ways and to conceive of worlds quite unimaginable to his orthodox friends. However, the legend of Darwin as a lone genius discovering evolution by natural selection on the Galapagos Islands is a legend whose fabrication we can reconstruct. Nevertheless, it seems to be so widespread today that nothing historians say to the contrary can dislodge it. Perhaps the best antidotes are the excellent biographies of Darwin by Janet Browne (1995, 2002) and Desmond and Moore (1991).

Many have argued that Darwin borrowed an idea of individual struggle from laissez-faire social theory and applied it to the natural world. Karl Marx was perhaps the first to observe that Darwin's theories of individual struggle resembled contemporary British theories of political economy. The logic of these social theories is moving. However, there is no clear evidence of a specific causal connection between these social factors and Darwin's thought. Of course Darwin was not isolated from the social environments in which he lived. Nevertheless, Darwin spent most of his time thinking about the properties of organisms, how they all vary to some degree, how apparent lineages resemble one another, and how the rigours of nature meant that a vast quantity of life was constantly being snuffed out in a natural winnowing of forms. The important point for Darwin was not the survival of an individual, or as Herbert Spencer called it, the 'survival of the fittest', but success in creating offspring—in the perpetuation of a stock. After all, Darwin named his theory 'natural selection' not 'individual competition' or 'survival of the ruthless'. Had he used an alternative, he later wrote, it would have been "natural preservation". Historians often miss the point when seeking ideological, social, or other contextual influences behind Darwin's theory of evolution. Although these are the things of most interest and importance to historians, they were not so for the young Darwin. The most important thing for Darwin was his "long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants".

As far as we know, Darwin did not, at first, tell anyone about his speculations. Perhaps the first colleague to be told was his correspondent, the botanist J.D. Hooker on 14 January 1844: 'I am almost convinced, (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable'. Darwin told only a handful of other friends of his ideas during the succeeding years. Meanwhile he married his cousin Emma Wedgwood in 1839 and continued to study and publish on a variety of scientific subjects achieving a great reputation as a naturalist and traveller. His eight years gruelling work on barnacles, published 1851-4 established Darwin's reputation as an authority on taxonomy as well as geology and the distribution of flora and fauna as in his earlier works.

Darwin conducted breeding experiments with animals and plants and corresponded and read widely for many years to refine and substantiate his theories of evolution. In 1842 he prepared an essay outlining his evolutionary theory. After completing his work on barnacles Darwin turned to his theory to explain species. He was interrupted in 1858 when a letter from an English naturalist and collector, Alfred Russel Wallace, in the Malay Archipelago arrived. In an essay enclosed with this now famous letter Wallace described his ideas 'On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type'. The similarity to Darwin's theory of evolution was striking for Darwin. He sent the letter on to Lyell and it was decided, to avoid competition for priority, to publicise abstracts by both men as soon as possible. The papers were read in the absence of Darwin and Wallace at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London in 1858. Darwin worked on creating an 'abstract' of his work in progress on natural selection. This abstract became one of the most famous books of modern times On the Origin of Species (1859).

Although Darwin's exposition was the most accurate and well-supported explanation for the diversity of life, he was not the first to propose that life evolves. A glance at Darwin's 'An historical sketch of the progress of opinion on the origin of species' shows that Darwin made no pretence to have originated or discovered evolution by descent with modification. However, Darwin's understanding of branching descent was more accurate than many of his predecessors who considered one species or family changing over time. We know that a wide popular literature such as George Combe's Constitution of Man (1828) and the anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) had already shocked and converted vast popular audiences to belief in the power of natural laws to control the development of nature and society. Historians of science now believe that Darwin's effect was, as James Secord put it, a 'palace coup' amongst elite men of science rather than a revolution. Darwin, as an unquestionably respectable authority in elite science, publicly threw his weight on the side of evolution, and soon young allies like Hooker, T.H. Huxley, and John Tyndall publicly threw their own weight towards the same position. Darwin's name is so linked with evolution because he was the high-status insider who made evolution acceptable, even respectable. Most of his contemporaries did not particularly like Darwin's primary mechanism of natural selection. Very often in subsequent years evolution was accepted but natural selection was not. In fact, a generation of biologists regarded Darwin as correct in uncovering the evolution of life but mistaken in stressing natural selection. Natural selection's canonisation had to wait until the modern synthesis of Darwinism with Mendelian genetics in the 1930s. This is rather odd if, as so many historians assert, natural selection was just Darwin's way of applying his social world onto nature.

Like Combe, Babbage, Chambers, Spencer and countless other authors before him, Darwin represented his doctrine as furthering the domain of natural laws. We see this in the following epigraph chosen by Darwin for the Origin of Species:

" But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so
far as this-we can perceive that events are brought about not by
insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular
case, but by the establishment of general laws."

W. WHEWELL : Bridgewater Treatise.

Darwin even saw the power of his law of natural selection extending beyond life to what we would call psychology, linguistics, and to society and history (see for example Descent of Man chapter 3, 1871).

The Origin of Species

In the Origin of Species Darwin first tried to convince his readers that organisms are utterly malleable and not fixed natural kinds. He showed that domestic plants and animals were known to be highly variable and to have changed so much under domestication as to be classified as different species by taxonomists. He then showed that the existence and abundance of organisms was dependent on many factors, many of which tended to hold their numbers in check such as climate, food, predation, available space etc. Only then did Darwin set about showing the effects of differential death and survival on reproduction and the persistence and diversification of forms—natural selection. In other words Darwin's theory of evolution has three main elements or requirements: variation, selection and descent or heredity. If all individual life forms are unique, which no one denied, and these differences could make a difference to which organisms lived to reproduce and which did not, then, if these differences could be inherited by offspring, subsequent generations would be descended from those which were lucky enough to survive.

An illustrative example is seen in the recent work of biologists in the Galapagos Islands. During a drought season when no new seeds were produced for an island's finches to eat, the finches were forced to hunt for remaining seeds on the ground. Soon all the visible seeds had been devoured. It so happened that those with slightly thicker bills than average could turn over stones a little bit better than the rest to find the remaining seeds and so they managed to survive the famine. The others perished. When the drought ended and the birds again had young, this new generation had slightly thicker bills. This is an example of Darwinian evolution observed and measured in the field. (See Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch. 1994.)

Darwin's theory of genealogical evolution (as opposed to earlier theories by Lamarck or Chambers which entailed independent lineages unfolding sequentially because of an innate tendency towards progress) made sense of a host of diverse bodies of evidence such as the succession of fossil forms in the geological record, geographical distribution of life (biogeography), recapitulative appearances in embryology, homologies, vestigial organs, the taxonomic relationships observed throughout the world and so forth.

The famous last paragraph of the Origin of Species is a concise and eloquent précis of Darwin's vision:

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.


Modern commentators often misunderstand the meaning of the title of Darwin's book. They take the origin of species to mean the origin of life. Then it is pointed out that Darwin 'failed' to throw light on the origin of life. But this was not Darwin's project. Darwin argued that species—that is the different kinds of organisms we observe—come not from multiple unique creation events on each island or particular place—but instead that species are the modified descendants of earlier forms. Darwin demonstrated that the origination of species could be entirely explained by descent with modification and not spontaneous creations according to environmental circumstances or divine interventions.

The reactions to Darwin's evolutionary theories were varied and pronounced. In zoology, taxonomy, botany, palaeontology, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, literature and religion Darwin's work engendered profound reactions—many of which are still ongoing. Most disturbing of all, however, were the implications for the cherished uniqueness of Man. Although Darwin cautiously refrained from mentioning Man in the Origin except for his famous cryptic sentence: 'Much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history' most people who read the book could think only about what this genealogical view of life meant for Man. This is a subject Darwin later took up in The Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). In these brilliantly original and seminal works Darwin showed that there is no difference of kind between Man and other animals, but only of degree. Rather than an unbridgeable gulf, Darwin showed there is a gradation of change not only between Man and other animals, but between all organic forms which is a consequence of the gradual change continuously and cumulatively operating over time.


Darwin's massive achievements are not restricted to his early scientific works and his evolutionary works. His keen observation, imagination, curiosity and energy allowed him to make strikingly prescient contributions to ecology, botany and a dozen of what would later be distinct disciplines. Darwin was very impressed by the inter-relatedness of different species, climate and environment. He stressed that the life in any area was the outcome of an amazing history of struggle or war or 'great battle for life'. He proposed new solutions to how organisms spread across the globe. His numerous discoveries and theories are too numerous to list here. In his final book published the year before his death, The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms (1881) Darwin again made an important contribution which, as was characteristic of Darwin, revealed the amazing complexity and importance of a natural process of gradual accumulation, which no one seemed to have grasped before, and that had all along been under our feet.

A myth about Darwin still circulates today—that he repented of evolutionism or converted to Christianity on his deathbed. These stories are usually circulated by those who would like them to be true, but they are not. There are no mysteries surrounding Darwin's death; his relatives present at the time wrote detailed accounts of his last hours. The history of the legend, however, is very interestingly and fulsomely revealed in James Moore, The Darwin legend (1994). Darwin was not an atheist, but a deist; that is he believed that some creating intelligence had designed the universe and set up natural laws according to which all of nature was unwaveringly governed.

Charles Darwin was a mild, kind, pleasant man, unassuming and sincerely modest. He suffered from an unexplained illness much of his adult life (perhaps picked up during the Beagle voyage). He nevertheless remained driven and ambitious to explore nature and examine it candidly and to remain part of the elite scientific world he respected and admired. Darwin died in 1882 and he is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Francis Crick
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962
Biography

Francis Harry Compton Crick was born on June 8th, 1916, at Northampton, England, being the elder child of Harry Crick and Annie Elizabeth Wilkins. He has one brother, A. F. Crick, who is a doctor in New Zealand.
Crick was educated at Northampton Grammar School and Mill Hill School, London. He studied physics at University College, London, obtained a B.Sc. in 1937, and started research for a Ph.D. under Prof E. N. da C. Andrade, but this was interrupted by the outbreak of war in 1939. During the war he worked as a scientist for the British Admiralty, mainly in connection with magnetic and acoustic mines. He left the Admiralty in 1947 to study biology.
Supported by a studentship from the Medical Research Council and with some financial help from his family, Crick went to Cambridge and worked at the Strangeways Research Laboratory. In 1949 he joined the Medical Research Council Unit headed by M. F. Perutz of which he has been a member ever since. This Unit was for many years housed in the Cavendish Laboratory Cambridge, but in 1962 moved into a large new building - the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology - on the New Hospital site. He became a research student for the second time in 1950, being accepted as a member of Caius College, Cambridge, and obtained a Ph.D. in 1954 on a thesis entitled «X-ray diffraction: polypeptides and proteins».
During the academic year 1953-1954 Crick was on leave of absence at the Protein Structure Project of the Brooklyn Polytechnic in Brooklyn, New York. He has also lectured at Harvard, as a Visiting Professor, on two occasions, and has visited other laboratories in the States for short periods.
In 1947 Crick knew no biology and practically no organic chemistry or crystallography, so that much of the next few years was spent in learning the elements of these subjects. During this period, together with W. Cochran and V. Vand he worked out the general theory of X-ray diffraction by a helix, and at the same time as L. Pauling and R. B. Corey, suggested that the alpha-keratin pattern was due to alpha-helices coiled round each other.
A critical influence in Crick's career was his friendship, beginning in 1951, with J. D. Watson, then a young man of 23, leading in 1953 to the proposal of the double-helical structure for DNA and the replication scheme. Crick and Watson subsequently suggested a general theory for the structure of small viruses.
Crick in collaboration with A. Rich has proposed structures for polyglycine II and collagen and (with A. Rich, D. R. Davies, and J. D.Watson) a structure for polyadenylic acid.
In recent years Crick, in collaboration with S. Brenner, has concentrated more on biochemistry and genetics leading to ideas about protein synthesis (the «adaptor hypothesis»), and the genetic code, and in particular to work on acridine-type mutants.
Crick was made an F.R.S. in 1959. He was awarded the Prix Charles Leopold Meyer of the French Academy of Sciences in 1961, and the Award of Merit of the Gairdner Foundation in 1962. Together with J. D. Watson he was a Warren Triennial Prize Lecturer in 1959 and received a Research Corporation Award in 1962. With J. D. Watson and M. H. F. Wilkins he was presented with a Lasker Foundation Award in 1960. In 1962 he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of University College, London. He was a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, in 1960-1961, and is now a non-resident Fellow of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, San Diego, California.
In 1940 Crick married Ruth Doreen Dodd. Their son, Michael F. C. Crick is a scientist. They were divorced in 1947. In 1949 Crick married Odile Speed. They have two daughters, Gabrielle A. Crick and Jacqueline M. T. Crick. The family lives in a house appropriately called «The Golden Helix», in which Crick likes to find his recreation in conversation with his friends.

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