One cloudless day in 1915, a load of dynamite destroyed the central piers of a stone bridge that had stood untouched for centuries next to the mainly Muslim town of Višegrad in Bosnia. The bridge, named for Mehmed Paša Sokolović, the Ottoman Grand Vizier who had ordered its construction, spanned the River Drina not far from Bosnia's current border with Serbia. The previous … [Read more...]
Nobel Notable of Laureate Park: Jonas Salk, the Shy Vaccinator
Just one question pops up on our Medical City quiz today: Can you name one scientist, any scientist, responsible for inventing the COVID vaccine? Sorry, Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx don’t count; though they led the national effort to convince (most of) us to take the vaccine, they didn’t develop the vaccine themselves. Isn’t it odd – and revealing – that a couple hundred … [Read more...]
Nobel Notable of Laureate Park: Saul Bellow, Agent of Angst
With this article, we continue our series on the Nobel laureates whose names grace the 130+ streets of Laureate Park. Some writers seem blessed with indelible fame, even if recognition emerges slowly. Herman Melville, for one example, garnered little praise during his lifetime. Not until the 1920s did critics crown Moby Dick as a literary masterpiece, and Melville’s … [Read more...]
Nobel Notable of Laureate Park: Leon Lederman, Cosmological Comedian
“The Goddamn Particle” was the title Leon Lederman had chosen for his book about the development of quantum mechanics. Lederman, the “Mel Brooks of Physics,” had invented the moniker as a joke. The goddamn particle in question was a bit of mass later to be recognized as the Higgs boson, the final puzzle piece in the array of 17 elementary particles that make up the Standard … [Read more...]
Nobel Notable of Laureate Park: Harold Pinter, Prickly Playwright
If you’ve ever viewed a play by Harold Pinter and found his characters to be creepy and weird, consider this: Pinter himself looked upon them as strangers. So, you say to yourself, if Pinter had such a dim appreciation of his own characters, then how am I supposed to understand them? Let alone identify with them? Let’s be blunt. Pinter’s characters are not nice people. By … [Read more...]
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