Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
Name	Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Birth date	January 12, 1914
Birth place	Jabalpur, Central Provinces and Berar, British India
Death date	February 05, 2008
Death place	Vlodrop, The Netherlands
Years active	1955–2008
Parents	Sri Ram Prasad (father)
Children	}}

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Sanskrit ''''), born Mahesh Prasad Varma or Mahesh Srivastava (January 12, 1914 – February 5, 2008) developed the Transcendental Meditation technique and was the leader and guru of the TM movement, characterised as a new religious movement and also as non-religious. His given name was Mahesh; ''Maharishi'' and ''Yogi'' are honorifics.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became a disciple and assistant of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya (spiritual leader) of Jyotirmath in the Indian Himalayas. The Maharishi credits Brahmananda Saraswati with inspiring his teachings. By 1955, the Maharishi had introduced the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique and other related programmes and initiatives to the world. His first global tour began in 1958.

He began to be known as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi around the year 1960. His devotees referred to him as ''His Holiness'', and because he often laughed in TV interviews he publicly became known as the ''giggling guru''.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Maharishi achieved fame as the guru to The Beatles and other celebrities. He started the TM-Sidhi programme, in the late 1970s that claimed to offer practitioners the ability to levitate and to create world peace. The Maharishi's Natural Law Party was founded in 1992, and ran campaigns in dozens of countries. He moved to MERU, Holland, near Vlodrop, the Netherlands, in the same year. In 2000, he created the Global Country of World Peace, a country without borders, and appointed its leaders. In 2008, the Maharishi announced his retirement from all administrative activities and went into mauna (spiritual silence) until his death three weeks later.

According to news reports, "more than 5 million people studied his methods", while TM websites report tens of thousands learned his advanced meditation techniques. His initiatives include schools and universities with campuses in several countries including India, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. The Maharishi, his family and close associates created charitable organisations and for-profit businesses that include nearly 1,000 TM centres, schools, universities, clinics, health supplements and organic farms. Estimates of the value of the Maharishi's empire range from the multi-millions to the billions of dollars.

Biography

Birth

He is said to be born in a village called Chichli in a Sub District called Gadarwara, Narsinghpur District near Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. Gadarwara is a hometown of another spiritual giant Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) who spent his early childhood and youth there.

Many accounts say he was born Mahesh Prasad Varma () into a family of the Kayastha caste living in the Central Provinces of British India now in Madhya Pradesh. A different name appears in the Allahabad University list of distinguished alumni, where he is listed as M.C. Srivastava. Srivastava is the name of his nephews and cousins, and an obituary says his name was "Mahesh Srivastava".

Mahesh's father is identified as a local tax official in the civil service. One source says he worked in the department of forestry.

Various accounts give the year of his birth as 1911, 1917 or 1918. Biographies by Paul Mason and William Jefferson say that he was born January 12, 1917 in Jabalpur, Central Provinces. The place of birth given in his passport is "Pounalulla", India and his birth date as 12 January 1918.

While a few sources say Mahesh came from a lower-caste family, the predominant view is that he was a member of the Kayastha caste, a high-status caste whose traditional profession is writing.

Early life

Mahesh studied physics at Allahabad University and earned a degree in 1942. Some accounts say that he worked in a factory following graduation. In 1941, he became a secretary to the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, and took a new name, Bal Brahmachari Mahesh. Coplin refers to ''bala brahmachari'' as both a title and a name, and considers that it "identified him as a fully dedicated student of spiritual knowledge and life-long celibate ascetic". Brahmachari Mahesh remained with Swami Brahmananda Saraswati until the latter died in 1953, when he moved to Uttarkashi in Uttarakhand in the Himalayas. He was trusted to take care of the bulk of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati's correspondence without direction, and was also sent out to give public speeches on Vedic (scriptural) themes. Although Brahmachari Mahesh was a close disciple, he could not be the Shankaracharya's spiritual successor because he was not of the Brahmin caste. The Shankaracharya, at the end of his life, charged Brahmachari Mahesh with the responsibility of travelling and teaching meditation to the masses, and named Swami Shantananda Saraswati as his successor.

Tour in India (1955-1957)

In 1955, Brahmachari Mahesh left Uttarkashi and began publicly teaching what he stated was a traditional meditation technique that he learned from his master Brahmananda Saraswati, which he called Transcendental Deep Meditation and later renamed Transcendental Meditation. He travelled around India for two years. At that time, he called his movement the Spiritual Development Movement, but renamed it the Spiritual Regeneration Movement in 1957, in Madras, India, on the concluding day of the Seminar of Spiritual Luminaries. According to J. Lynwood King, in his dissertation ''Fundamentals of Maharishi Vedic Science'', the feedback Brahmachari Mahesh received from the diverse population that learned his technique suggested to him that it could be of wide benefit. In his visits to southern India, he spoke in English rather than the Hindi spoken in his home area to avoid provoking resistance among those seeking linguistic self-determination and to appeal to the "learned classes", according to Coplin.

World tours (1958-1968)

In 1959, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi began his first world tour, writing: "I had one thing in mind, that I know something which is useful to every man".

The Maharishi's 1986 book, ''Thirty Years Around the World'', gives a detailed account of his world tours, as does a later biography, ''The Maharishi'' by Paul Mason. The first world tour began in Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar) and included the countries of Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and Hawaii. The ''Honolulu Star Bulletin'' reported: "He has no money, he asks for nothing. His worldly possessions can be carried in one hand. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is on a world odyssey. He carries a message that he says will rid the world of all unhappiness and discontent." In 1959, the Maharishi lectured and taught the Transcendental Meditation technique in Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, New York and London.

When the Maharishi came to the U.S. in 1959, his movement was renamed Transcendental Meditation. That same year he began the International Meditation Society with centres in San Francisco and London. Maharishi was a frequent guest at the Los Angeles home of Roland and Helena Olson and their daughter Theresa, who wrote several books about their experiences. He continued to visit the Olsons' home over the next few years.

In 1960, the Maharishi travelled to many cities in India, France, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Africa. He lectured, taught the Transcendental Meditation technique, and established administrative centres where practitioners could gather for meetings in his absence.

While in Manchester, England, the Maharishi gave a television interview and was featured in many English newspapers such as the Birmingham Post, the Oxford Mail and the Cambridge Daily News. This was also the year in which the Maharishi trained Henry Nyburg to be the first Transcendental Meditation teacher in Europe.

In 1961, the Maharishi visited Austria, Sweden, France, Italy, Greece, India, Kenya, England, USA and Canada. While in England, the Maharishi appeared on BBC television and gave a lecture to 5,000 people at the Royal Albert Hall in London. In April 1961, the Maharishi conducted his first Transcendental Meditation Teacher Training Course in Rishikesh, India with sixty participants from various countries. Teachers continued to be trained as time progressed. During the course, Maharishi began to introduce additional knowledge regarding the development of human potential, and began writing his translation and commentary on the first six chapters of the ancient Vedic text, the Bhagavad Gita.

At this time, the Maharishi began to recommend the daily practice of yoga exercises or asanas to accelerate growth through meditation. "For good health it is necessary for everyone to do something with the body so that it remain flexible and normal," Maharishi said. "The advantage of YOGA ASANAS over other eastern and western systems of physical posture is that they do not consume energy. They help restore life force, promote health and maintain normal conditions in the body." His organisation produced an introductory publication on yoga asanas in cooperation with a professor of yoga at the University of Travancore, India, K.B. Hari Krishna.

His 1962 world tour included visits to Europe, India, Australia and New Zealand. The year concluded in California where the Maharishi began dictating his book ''The Science of Being and Art of Living''. In Rishikesh, India, beginning on 20 April 1962, a forty-day course was held for "sadhus, sanyasis, and brahmacharis" to introduce TM to "religious preachers and spiritual masters in India".

The Maharishi toured cities in Europe, Asia, North America and India in 1963, and also addressed ministers of the Indian Parliament. According to his memoirs, twenty-one members of parliament then issued a public statement endorsing the Maharishi's goals and meditation technique. His Canadian tour generated news articles in the magazine Enjoy and in the Daily Colonist, Calgary Herald and The Albertan.

The Maharishi's fifth world tour, in 1964, consisted of visits to many cities in North America, Europe and India. During his visit to England, he appeared with the Abbot of Downside, Abbot Butler, on a BBC television show called "''The Viewpoint''". In October of that year, in California, the Maharishi began teaching the first Advanced Technique of Transcendental Meditation to some experienced meditators. While travelling in America, the Maharishi met with Robert Maynard Hutchins, the head of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and U Thant, the Secretary General of the United Nations. During this same year, the Maharishi finished his book ''The Science of Being and Art of Living'', which sold more than a million copies and was published in fifteen languages.

In 1966, the Maharishi founded the Students' International Meditation Society, which ''The Los Angeles Times'' later characterised as a "phenomenal success".

In 1967, the Maharishi gave a lecture at Caxton Hall in London which was attended by Pattie Boyd, George Harrison's wife, as well as Leon MacLaren, the founder and leader of the School of Economic Science (SES). That same year, an article in ''Time'' magazine called the Maharishi the "soothsayer for everyman" and reported that he "has been sharply criticised by other Indian sages, who complain that his program for spiritual peace without either penance or asceticism contravenes every traditional Hindu belief". Religion and culture scholar Sean McCloud says that ''Newsweek'' reported that "many Indian sages contend that his rather simplified system of meditation is without basis in the Bhagavad-Gita—the epic poem that is Hinduism’s most exalted scripture". McCloud also writes that ''Look'' magazine "asserted that tradition-minded gurus, angrily citing the Bhagavad Gita, say that self-abnegation and suffering along with rigid concentration are the prescribed pathway to Enlightenment", in contrast to the Maharishi's "belief that Enlightenment was compatible with active living and easily available to everyone."

Interaction with The Beatles

In 1967, the Maharishi's fame increased and his movement "really took off" when he became the "spiritual advisor to The Beatles". The Beatles met him for the first time in London in August 1967, and studied with him in Bangor, Wales, before travelling to Rishikesh, India in February 1968 to "devote themselves fully to his instruction". Starr left after ten days because he disliked the vegetarian diet, and McCartney left three weeks later. Both Beatles said later that they enjoyed the ashram experience and planned to continue with their meditation. Lennon and Harrison departed two weeks later after hearing a rumour that the Maharishi had made sexual advances towards Mia Farrow and a few other women.

Lennon wrote the song "Maharishi" (with the lines: "what have you done? You made a fool of everyone") as he was leaving. George Harrison argued that the title was disrespectful and possibly libelous. The title and lyrics were changed from "Maharishi" to "Sexy Sadie." On the ''Tonight Show'' a few months later, Lennon said that "We believe in meditation, but not the Maharishi and his scene". Lennon said the Beatles' association with the Maharishi was an "an error of judgment" and "a public mistake".

The ''New York Times'' and ''The Independent'' reported that the influence of the Maharishi, and the journey to Rishikesh to meditate, weaned The Beatles from LSD and inspired them to write many new songs. It was "an extraordinary period of creativity for them," during which they wrote almost all of the songs that would appear on both the White Album and Abbey Road, said biographer Barry Miles.

Alexis Mardas, head of the Beatles' Apple Electronics, noted the luxurious infrastructure at the Rishikesh ashram. Neil Aspinall, The Beatles' road manager, recalled his opinion in reference to obtaining rights for a feature film that, "This guy knows more about making deals than I do. He's really into scoring, the Maharishi".

The ''New York Times'' reported in 2008 that Harrison and McCartney reconsidered the accusations. McCartney said that the rumours of sexual impropriety were raised by Alexis Mardas who "had agendas of his own, and may have fabricated (or at least exaggerated) the story". In a press conference on April 3, 2009, prior to his performance at the David Lynch Foundation benefit concert "Change Begins Within", Paul McCartney commented that Transcendental Meditation was a gift The Beatles had received from Maharishi at a time when they were looking for something to stabilise them. Harrison commented, "Now, historically, there's the story that something went on that shouldn't have done — but nothing did". Farrow's autobiography is ambiguous about the incident: she describes "panicking" and fleeing after the Maharishi put his arms around her in a dark cave, immediately after a private meditation session. Deepak Chopra, who met and became a "disciple of the Maharishi's" in the 1990s before later splitting, said in 2008 that the Maharishi had a "falling out with the rock stars when he discovered them using drugs". In their obituaries of the Maharishi, ''Rolling Stone'' and Bloomberg news service stated that the rumour of impropriety was "unfounded" and never proven. Yoko Ono said in 2008 that if Lennon were alive he probably would have reconciled with the Maharishi.

Further growth of his TM movement (1968-1990)

In 1968, the Maharishi announced that he would stop his "public activities" and instead begin the training of TM teachers at his new global headquarters in Seelisberg, Switzerland.

In 1970, the Maharishi held a TM teacher training course at a Victorian hotel located in Poland Springs, Maine with 1,200 participants. Later that year, he held a similar four-week course at Humboldt State College in Arcata, California. About 1,500 people attended and it was described as a "sort of a crash program to train transcendental teachers". Following tax troubles in India, he moved his headquarters to Italy and then to Austria. That same year, the City of Hope Foundation in Los Angeles gave the Maharishi their "Man of Hope" award.

In 1971, the Maharishi held a press conference with American inventor, Buckminster Fuller, in Amherst Massachusetts.

A 1972, a TM training course was given by the Maharishi at Queens University and attended by 1,000 young people from all over the USA and Canada. At the start of the course the Maharishi encouraged the attendees to improve their appearance by getting haircuts and wearing ties.

In March 1973, Maharishi addressed the legislature of the state of Illinois. That same year, the legislature passed a resolution in support of the use of Maharishi’s Science of Creative Intelligence in Illinois public schools.

In 1974, Maharishi International University was founded. In October 1975, the Maharishi was pictured on the front cover of ''Time'' magazine. He made his last visit to the Spiritual Regeneration Movement centre in Los Angeles in 1975, according to film director David Lynch, who met him for the first time there.

In 1975, the Maharishi embarked on a five-continent trip to inaugurate what he called "the Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment". The Maharishi said the purpose of the inaugural tour was to "go around the country and give a gentle whisper to the population". He visited Ottawa during this tour and had a private meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, during which he spoke about the principles of TM and "the possibility of structuring an ideal society." That same year, the Pittsburg Press reported that “The Maharishi has been criticised by other Eastern yogis for simplifying their ancient art.” The Maharishi appeared as a guest on ''The Merv Griffin Show'' in 1975 and again in 1977 and this resulted in "tens of thousands of new practitioners” around the USA.

In the mid 1970s, the Maharishi's U.S. movement was operating 370 TM centres manned by 6,000 TM teachers. At that time, the Maharishi also began approaching the business community via an organisation called the American Foundation for SCI (AFSCI), whose objective was to eliminate stress for business professionals. The Maharishi's message was a promise of "increased creativity and flexibility, increased productivity, improved job satisfaction, improved relations with supervisors and co-workers". His TM movement came to be increasingly structured along the lines of a multinational corporation. The teaching of TM and the Science of Creative Intelligence in a New Jersey public school was stopped when a US court, in 1977, declared the movement to be religious, and ruled adoption of TM by public organisations in breach of the separation of church and state (First Amendment).

During the 1980s, the organisation continued to expand despite making claims that grew more and more outlandish and accusations of fraud from disaffected former disciples. However, his meditation technique continued to attract celebrities.

The Maharishi made a number of property investments with the funds he amassed. In England, he bought Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire, Roydon Hall in Maidstone, Swythamley Park in the Peak District and a Georgian rectory in Suffolk. In the United States, resorts and hotels, many in city centres, were purchased to be used as TM training centres. Doug Henning and the Maharishi planned a magical Vedic amusement park, Vedaland, and bought large tracts of land near Orlando, Florida and Niagara Falls, Ontario to host the park. The Maharishi commissioned plans from a prominent architect for the world's tallest building, a Vedic-style pyramid to be built in São Paulo, Brazil, and to be filled with Yogic Flyers and other TM endeavours. In later years, the Maharishi directed the purchase of properties in locations such as islands and land at the geographic centre of the continental United States and other countries.

In January 1988, the Maharishi's offices in India were raided by Indian police, who reportedly confiscated cash, securities and jewels. News reports varied widely as to the dollar value of the goods seized. One source said $500,000, while two others put the figure at $60,000 and $30,000, respectively. A fourth newspaper article, quoting Maharishi's Age of Enlightenment News Service reported that nothing at all of value was confiscated. The raid occurred amidst a conflict with authorities over taxes and the movement was accused of lying about expenses. The Maharishi moved out of India following the tax audit. That same year the Maharishi created a "Master Plan to Create Heaven on Earth", a plan for reduced crime, longer life spans and increased prosperity and happiness. Following an earthquake in Armenia, the Maharishi trained Russian TM teachers and set up a Maharishi Ayurveda training center in the Urals region.

Years in Vlodrop (1991-2008)

thumb|A detail of the Maharishi's headquarters In 1990, the Maharishi relocated his headquarters from Seelisberg, Switzerland to a former Franciscan monastery in Vlodrop, the Netherlands, which became known as MERU, Holland on account of the Maharishi European Research University (MERU) campus there. A building, called the "largest wooden structure" in the Netherlands, was built for Maharishi, reportedly at "vast expense". During his time in Vlodrop, he communicated to the public mainly via video and the internet. He also created a subscription-based, satellite TV channel, called Veda Vision, which broadcast content in twenty-two languages and 144 countries.

The Maharishi called Washington D.C. a "pool of mud" in 1991. After a decade of attempts to lower the rate of crime in the city, which had the second-largest TM community in the US, he told his followers to leave and save themselves from its "criminal atmosphere". The Maharishi is believed to have made his final public appearance in 1991, in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Deepak Chopra, "one of the Maharishi's top assistants before he launched his own career", wrote that the Maharishi collapsed in 1991 with kidney and pancreas failure, that the illness was kept secret by the Maharishi's family and that he tended to Maharishi during a year-long recovery. According to Chopra, the Maharishi accused him, in July 1993, of trying to compete for the position of guru and asked him to stop travelling and writing books, which led to Chopra's decision to leave the movement in January 1994.

The Maharishi inaugurated the Natural Law Party (NLP) as a means for achieving a "natural government" to enact his plans. His adherents, led by Maharishi University of Management president Bevan Morris, founded the NLP in 1992. It was active in forty-two countries. John Hagelin, the NLP's three-time candidate for U.S. president, denied any formal connection between the Maharishi and the party. The chief plank in the NLP's platform was funding the Maharishi's plan for thousands of Yogic Flyers who could create the Maharishi Effect and thereby insure invincibility for every nation. According to spokesman Bob Roth, "The Maharishi has said the party has to grow to encompass everyone". Critics charged that the party was an effort to recruit people for Transcendental Meditation, and that it resembled "the political arm of an international corporation" more than a "home-grown political creation". The Indian arm of the NLP, the Ajeya Bharat Party, achieved electoral success, winning one seat in a state assembly in 1998. The Maharishi shut down the political effort in 2004, saying, "I had to get into politics to know what is wrong there."

In 1992, the Maharishi began to send groups of Yogic Flyers to India, America, China and Brazil in an effort to increase global peace through a "coherent world consciousness".

In 2000, the Maharishi founded the Global Country of World Peace (GCWP) "to create global world peace by unifying all nations in happiness, prosperity, invincibility and perfect health, while supporting the rich diversity of our world family". The Maharishi crowned Tony Nader as the Maharaja (king) of the GCWP in 2000. The GCWP unsuccessfully attempted to establish a sovereign microstate when it offered USD 1.3 billion to the President of Suriname for a 200-year lease of of land and in 2002, attempted to choose a king for the Talamanca, a "remote Indian reservation" in Costa Rica.

In 2001, followers of the Maharishi founded Maharishi Vedic City a few miles north of Fairfield, Iowa in the United States. This new city requires that the construction of its homes and buildings be done according to the Maharishi Sthapatya Veda principles of "harmony with nature".

In a 2002 appearance on the CNN show, ''Larry King Live'', the first time in twenty-five years that the Maharishi had appeared in the mainstream media, he said "Transcendental Meditation is something that can be defined as a means to do what one wants to do in a better way, a right way, for maximum results". It was occasioned by the reissue of the Maharishi's book ''The Science of Being and Art of Living''. That same year, the Maharishi Global Financing Research Foundation issued the "RAAM" as a currency "dedicated to financing peace promoting projects".

In 2003, David Lynch began a fundraising project to raise USD 1 billion "on behalf of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi" to build a meditation centre large enough to hold 8,000 skilled practitioners.

The Maharishi ordered a suspension of TM training in Britain in 2005 due to his opposition to Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to support the Iraq War. The Maharishi said that he did not want to waste the "beautiful nectar" of TM on a "scorpion nation". He lifted the ban after Blair's resignation in 2007.

In 2007, the GCWP purchased the American Bank Note Company Building near the New York Stock Exchange for its Maharishi Global Financial Capital. Its purpose is to create funding that will support the construction of 3,000 "peace palaces" around the world.

During this period, sceptics were critical of some of the Maharishi's programmes, such as a $10 trillion plan to end poverty through organic farming in poor countries and a $1 billion plan to use meditation groups to end conflict. In 2008, BBC news reported that "The Maharishi's commercial mantras drew criticism from stricter Hindus, but his promises of better health, stress relief and spiritual enlightenment drew devotees from all over the world".

Swami Swaroopananda, one of the people who claim to be Brahmananda Saraswati's undisputed successor, told a German filmmaker in 2010 that "Mahesh Yogi instigated [Swami] Shantanand [Saraswati] to fight the court case" and that as a member of the trader class and Saraswati's bookkeeper, the Maharishi had no right to teach meditation or to give mantras, and that "Gurus don't sell their knowledge, they share it." Other sources say that Maharishi worked closely with the Shankaracharya and was considered a "great disciple" and his "right (hand) man". According to biographer Paul Mason, Swami Shantanand Saraswati (whom Brahmananda Saraswati had named as his successor) "publicly commended the practice of the Maharishi's meditation," referring to it as a 'master key to the knowledge of Vedanta.' Sociologist J.R Coplin, who conducted interviews in India as part of his research on the TM organisation, says that Swami Shantanand's successor as Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, Swami Vishnudevanand, "speaks highly of Maharishi and sees his teaching as a reflection of their master's (Brahmananda Saraswati)".

Death

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, concerned about his health, became increasingly secluded in two rooms of his residence. He communicated with even his closest advisors by closed-circuit television.

On January 12, 2008, the Maharishi declared: "It has been my pleasure at the feet of Guru Dev (Brahmananda Saraswati), to take the light of Guru Dev and pass it on in my environment. Now today, I am closing my designed duty to Guru Dev. And I can only say, 'Live long the world in peace, happiness, prosperity, and freedom from suffering.'"

A week before his death, the Maharishi said that he was "stepping down as leader of the TM movement" and "retreating into silence" and that he planned to spend his remaining time studying "the ancient Indian texts". Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died peacefully in his sleep of natural causes on February 5, 2008 at his residence in Vlodrop, Netherlands. The cremation and funeral rites were conducted at the Maharishi's Allahabad ashram in India, overlooking the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers. The funeral, with state honours, was carried by Sadhana TV station and was presided over by one of the claimants to the seat of Shankaracharya of the North, Swami Vasudevananda Saraswati Maharaj. Also in attendance were state and local officials, thirty-five Rajas of the Global Country of World Peace, one-time disciple Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and David Lynch. A troop of uniformed policemen lowered their arms in salute. A memorial building, the Maharishi Smarak, is now under construction near the same site. With a projected height of about and a golden roof topped with kalashas, it is expected to be "visible everywhere from the city of Prayag (Allahabad)".

The Maharishi was survived by a number of nephews and nieces. One nephew, Brahmachari Girish Chandra Varma, is chairman of the Maharishi Vidya Mandir Schools Group, president of Maharishi Institute of Management, chancellor of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Vedic University and chancellor of Maharishi University of Management and Technology in India. Varma is also Director General of Maharishi World Centre of Gandharva Ved and Maharishi World Capital of Peace, Brahmasthan of India. Other nephews include Anand Shrivastava, chairman of the Maharishi Group, and Ajay Prakash Shrivastava, president of Maharishi Vidya Mandir Schools.

After his death, Indian spiritual guru and former disciple Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, said "Maharishi laid the foundation for a new world based on the knowledge of Vedas and spirituality" and that "there was none like him and none shall ever be again." Paul McCartney also commented saying that "Whilst I am deeply saddened by his passing, my memories of him will only be joyful ones. He was a great man who worked tirelessly for the people of the world and the cause of unity."

Public image

Diminutive at a little over five feet tall, the Maharishi was often seen wearing a traditional cotton or silk white dhoti and carrying or wearing flowers. The Maharishi sitting cross-legged on a deerskin became a familiar sight. He had a "grayish-white beard, mustache and long, dark, stringy hair". Barry Miles says that the Maharishi had "liquid eyes, twinkling but inscrutable with the wisdom from the East". Miles described the Maharishi in his seventies as looking much younger than his age. He had a high-pitched voice. Newspapers, detractors, and even followers began referring to him as the "Giggling Guru", in part due to his habit of laughing during television interviews. TV personality Merv Griffin described him as having "a long flowing beard and a distinctive, high pitched laugh that I loved to provoke". And the Maharishi is also credited with helping to "inspire the anti-materialism of the late 60s". When some observers questioned how his organisation’s money was being used, the Maharishi said, "It goes to support the centres, it does not go on me. I have nothing."

''Private Eye'' ridiculed the guru as "Veririchi Lottsa Money Yogi Bear". The Maharishi was also parodied by comedians Bill Dana and Joey Forman in the 1968 comedy album "The Mashuganishi Yogi", and by comedian Mike Myers in the film The Love Guru and in the character "Guru Maharishi Yogi" featured in the BBC sketch show Goodness Gracious Me.

Scientist and futurist Buckminister Fuller, after spending two days on the stage with Maharishi at a symposium at the University of Massachusetts in 1971, said, "You could not meet with Maharishi without recognizing instantly his integrity. You look in his eyes and there it is."

Philosophy and teaching

When the Maharishi first began teaching he had three main aims: to revive the spiritual tradition in India, that meditation was for everyone and not just for recluses, and to show that Vedanta is compatible with science. The Maharishi had a message of happiness, writing in 1967, that "being happy is of the utmost importance. Success in anything is through happiness. Under all circumstances be happy. Just think of any negativity that comes at you as a raindrop falling into the ocean of your bliss". His philosophy featured the concept that "within everyone is an unlimited reservoir of energy, intelligence, and happiness". He emphasised the naturalness of his meditation technique as a simple way of developing this potential.

He also taught that practising Transcendental Meditation twice a day would create inner peace and that "mass meditation sessions" could create outer peace by reducing violence and war. According to a TM website, the performance of yagyas by 7,000 pandits in India, plus hundreds of Yogic Flyers in Germany, brought "coherence and unity in the collective consciousness of Germany" and caused the fall of the Berlin Wall. One religion scholar, Michael York, considers the Maharishi to have been the most articulate spokesman for the spiritual argument that a critical mass of people becoming enlightened through the practice of "meditation and yogic discipline" will trigger the New Age movement's hoped-for period of postmillennial "peace, harmony, and collective consciousness".

Religious studies scholar Carl Olson writes that the TM technique was based on "a neo-Vedanta metaphysical philosophy in which an unchanging reality is opposed to an ever-changing phenomenal world" and that the Maharishi says it is not necessary to renounce worldly activities to gain enlightenment, unlike other ascetic traditions.

Some religious studies scholars have further said that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is one of a number of Indian gurus who brought neo-Hindu adaptations of Vedantic Hinduism to the west. Author Meera Nanda calls neo-Hinduism "the brand of Hinduism that is taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Deepak Chopra, and their clones". J.R. Coplin, a sociologist and MIU graduate, says that the Maharishi saw his own purpose as "the 'revival' of the knowledge of an integrated life based upon Vedic principles and Vedantist reality".

Author Barry Miles writes that, in spite of the media's scepticism for the Maharishi's spiritual message, they seized upon him because young people seemed to listen to his pro-establishment, anti-drug message.

Transcendental Meditation

During a CNN interview in 2002, the Maharishi said "Transcendental meditation is something that can be defined as a means to do what one wants to do in a better way, a right way, for maximum results". Over a thirty-year period, the Maharishi held many advanced, in-residence courses and assemblies in North America, India and Europe for practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation technique. These courses consisted of long meditation sessions, lectures by Maharishi, discussions based on personal experiences of meditation, questions from course participants, and organisational meetings. This type of in-residence course style continues to this day. By the time of his death, there were nearly 1,000 TM training centres around the world.

In the mid 1970s, the Maharishi began the TM-Sidhi programme, including Yogic Flying, as an additional option for those who had been practising the Transcendental Meditation technique for some time. According to Coplin, this new aspect of knowledge emphasised not only the individual, but also the collective benefits created by group practice of this advanced programme. This new programme gave rise to a new principle called the ''Maharishi Effect'', which is said to "create coherence in the collective consciousness" and to suppress crime, violence, and accidents.

Maharishi Vedic Science

thumb|Entrance to the Maharishi University of Management and Maharishi Vedic University campus in Vlodrop, Holland Maharishi Vedic Science, or MVS, is based on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's interpretation of the ancient Vedic texts. MVS includes two aspects, the practical aspect of the Transcendental Meditation technique and the TM-Sidhi programme, as well as the theoretical aspect of how MVS is applied to day to day living.

These applications include programmes in: Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health (MVAH); Maharishi Sthapatya Veda, a mathematical system for the design and construction of buildings; Maharishi Gandharva Veda, a system claiming the evaluation of life tendencies of an individual; Maharishi Vedic Agriculture, a trademarked process for producing fresh, organic food; and Consciousness-Based Education.

According to educator James Grant, a former Maharishi University of Management Associate Professor of Education and the former Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Maharishi brought out a "full revival of the Vedic tradition of knowledge from India" and demonstrated its relevance in many areas including education, business, medicine and government.

Publications

The Maharishi has written more than twenty books on the Transcendental Meditation technique and Maharishi Vedic Science.

In 1955, the organisers of The Great Spiritual Development Conference of Kerala published ''The Beacon Light of the Himalayas'', a transcribed, 170-page, "souvenir" of the conference. Authors Chryssides, Humes and Forsthoefel, Miller, and Russel cite this as the Maharishi's first published book on Transcendental Meditation, although Transcendental Meditation is not mentioned in the text of the book. The book is dedicated to Maharshi Bala Brahmachari Mahesh Yogi Rajaram by his devotees of Kerala and contains photographs, letters and lectures by numerous authors which appear in various languages such as English, Hindi and Sanskrit.

The Maharishi audiotaped the text of the book ''Science of Being and Art of Living'', which was later transcribed and published in fifteen languages in 1963. The book is described by its author as "the summation of both the practical wisdom" of "Vedic Rishis" and the "scientific thinking" of the "Western world".

In his 1967 publication, ''Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation and Commentary'', the Maharishi describes the Bhagavad Gita as "the Scripture of Yoga". He says that "its purpose is to explain in theory and practice all that is needed to raise the consciousness of man to the highest possible level." In 1964, the Maharishi attended the All-India Yogic Conference held in Calcutta, India, where he said that the teachings contained in the Bhagavad Gita were misunderstood in the current age, and "the practice of yoga was misunderstood, misinterpreted, and misapplied", resulting in "weakness in the fields of thought and action". The Maharishi said that the source of his commentary was his master: "We are just an innocent means for the spontaneous flow of that knowledge—that's all."

Other initiatives, projects and programmes

Maharishi International University (renamed Maharishi University of Management (MUM) in 1995), the first university Maharishi founded, began classes in Santa Barbara, California, in 1973. In 1974 the university moved to Fairfield, Iowa, where it remains today. The university houses a library of the Maharishi's taped lectures and writings, including the thirty-three-lesson Science of Creative Intelligence course, originally a series of lectures given by the Maharishi in Fiuggi, Italy, in 1972. Described in the MUM university catalogue as combining modern science and Vedic science, the course also defines certain higher states of consciousness, and gives guidance on how to attain these states.

The Maharishi Vidya Mandir Schools (MVMS), an educational system established in sixteen Indian states and affiliated with the New Delhi Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), was founded in 1995 by the Maharishi. It has 148 branches in 118 cities with 90,000 to 100,000 students and 5,500 teaching and support staff.

In 1998, Maharishi Open University was founded by the Maharishi. It was accessible via a network of eight satellites broadcasting to every country in the world, and via the Internet.

The Maharishi also introduced theories of management, defence, and government, programmes designed to alleviate poverty, and introduced a new economic development currency called the RAAM. In 2000, the Maharishi began building administrative and teaching centres called "Peace Palaces" around the world, and by 2008 at least eight had been constructed in the US alone.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in his farewell message on January 11, 2008, announced the establishment of the Brahmananda Saraswati Trust (BST), named in honour of his teacher, to support large groups totalling more than 30,000 peace-creating Vedic Pandits in perpetuity across India. According to Bevan Morris, the Prime Minister of the Global Country of World Peace, the BST is an endowment fund to "support the Vedic Pandits to perform Yagyas and Graha Shanti for all 192 countries of the world generation after generation". The Patron of the Brahmanand Saraswati Trust is the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math.

Organisations and businesses

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is credited with heading charitable organisations, for-profit businesses, and real estate investments whose total value has been estimated at 2 to 5 billion. The real estate alone was valued in 2003 at between $3.6 and $5 billion. Holdings in the United States, estimated at $250 million in 2008, include dozens of hotels, commercial buildings and undeveloped land. The Maharishi Group, an international conglomerate created by the Maharishi in 1959, is controlled by members of the Maharishi's family including his nephew, Anand Shrivastava (also spelled ''Srivastava''). The Maharishi "amassed a personal fortune that his spokesman told one reporter may exceed $1 billion". According to a 2008 article in ''The Times'', the Maharishi "was reported to have an income of six million pounds". The Maharishi's "worldwide network" is primarily financed by course fees for Transcendental Meditation as well as real estate holdings and donations.

In his biography of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, ''The Story of the Maharishi'' (published 1976), William Jefferson suggests that the financial aspect of the TM organisation was one of the greatest controversies it faced. He says the paradox that a movement whose concern is spiritual growth should have generated so much controversy about finances is unfortunate, and notes that other organisations handled finances differently from the TM organisation. Jefferson says that the concerns with money came from journalists more than those who have learned to meditate. The controversy circled around the Maharishi's mission, the comments from leaders of the movement at that time, and fees and charges the TM organisation made. According to Jefferson, Maharishi said in response to concerns about finances in the TM organisation that, "Money is never on my mind. When I created the world plan to establish centres in every country on earth, I didn’t consider whether we had the necessary money to do it, I saw only the possibility…". The Maharishi also said, "We cannot take away the economic aspects of the movement…even though my message concerns the non-economic fulfilment of life. If initiations were free we could not cover the overhead for spreading the movement through out the world." According to ''The Times'' obituary, the Maharishi said he had no interest in wealth: "It goes to support the centres, it does not go on me. I have nothing."

Notable followers

According to the movement, four to six million people have been trained in the TM technique since 1959. Among the notable practitioners (see full list in main article noted above): The Beatles, David Lynch, John Hagelin, Mia Farrow, and Doug Henning. Followers who became spiritual teachers or self-help authors include Deepak Chopra, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, John Gray, and Barbara De Angelis.

Published works

''Beacon Light of the Himalayas'', Azad Printers, 1955

''Meditation : easy system propounded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.'', International Meditation Centre, 1962

''Science of Being and Art of Living – Transcendental Meditation'', Allied Publishers, 1963 ISBN 0-452-28266-7

''Love and God'', Spiritual Regeneration Movement, 1965

''Yoga asanas'', Spiritual Regeneration Movement, 1965

''Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita – A New Translation and Commentary, Chapters 1-6'', Arkana 1967 ISBN 0-14-019247-6

''Meditations of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi'', Bantam books, 1968

''Alliance for knowledge'', Maharishi International University, 1974

''Creating an ideal society: a global undertaking'', International Association for the Advancement of the Science of Creative Intelligence, 1976

''Results of scientific research on the Transcendental Meditation program'', MERU Press, 1976

''Enlightenment to every individual, invincibility to every nation'', Age of Enlightenment, 1978 ISBN 99911-608-9-2

''Freedom behind bars: enlightenment to every individual and invincibility to every nation'', International Association for the Advancement of the Science of Creative Intelligence, 1978

''Dawn of the age of enlightenment'', MVU Press, 1986 ISBN 9789071750021

''Life supported by natural law : discovery of the Unified Field of all the laws of nature and the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field'', Age of Enlightenment Press, 1986 ISBN 9780891860518

''Thirty years around the world: dawn of the Age of Enlightenment'', Maharishi Vedic University, 1986 ISBN 9789071750014

''Maharishi's Programme to create world peace: global inauguration'', Age of Enlightenment Press, 1987 ISBN 9780891860525

''Maharishi's master plan to create heaven on earth'', Maharishi Vedic University Press, 1991 ISBN 9789071750113

''A Proven program for our criminal justice system: Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation and Corrections'', Maharishi International University, 1993

''Vedic knowledge for everyone: Maharishi Vedic University, an introduction'', Maharishi Vedic University Press, 1994 ISBN 90-71750-17-5

''Maharishi's Absolute Theory of Government – Automation in Administration'', Maharishi Prakshan, 1995 ISBN 81-7523-002-9

''Maharishi University of Management – Wholeness on the Move'', Age of Enlightenment Publications, 1995 ISBN 81-7523-001-0

''Constitution of India Fulfilled through Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation'', Age of Enlightenment Publications, 1996 ISBN 81-7523-004-5

''Inaugurating Maharishi Vedic University'', Maharishi Vedic University Press, 1996 ISBN 978-81-7523-006-4

''Maharishi's Absolute Theory of Defence – Sovereignty in Invincibility'', Age of Enlightenment Publications, 1996 ISBN 81-7523-000-2

''Celebrating Perfection in Education – Dawn of Total Knowledge'', Maharishi Vedic University Press, 1997 ISBN 81-7523-013-4

''Maharishi Forum of Natural Law and National Law for Doctors – Perfect Health for Everyone'', Age of Enlightenment Publications, 1997 ISBN 81-7523-003-7

''Maharishi Speaks to Educators – Mastery Over Natural Law'', Age of Enlightenment Publications, 1997 ISBN 81-7523-008-8

''Maharishi Speaks to Students – Mastery Over Natural Law'', Age of Enlightenment Publications, 1997 ISBN 81-7523-012-6

''Celebrating Perfection in Administration'', Maharishi Vedic University, 1998 ISBN 81-7523-015-0

''Ideal India – The Lighthouse of Peace on Earth'', Maharishi University of Management, 2001 ISBN 90-806005-1-2

;Discography

''The master speaks'', World Pacific Records, 1967

References

Further reading

Official List of Books by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Mason, Paul (2005) ''The Maharishi: The Biography of the Man Who Gave Transcendental Meditation to the World'', Element Books Ltd, ISBN 1-85230-571-1

External links

Transcendental Meditation/Maharishi

Official List of Lifetime Achievements

Larry King interview with Maharishi May 12 2002

Category:1917 births Category:2008 deaths Category:Indian religious leaders Category:Transcendental Meditation movement Category:Transcendental Meditation practitioners Category:Allahabad University alumni Category:People from Jabalpur Category:People associated with The Beatles

br:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi bg:Махариши Махеш Йоги cs:Mahariši Maheš Jógi cy:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi da:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi de:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi es:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi eo:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi fr:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ko:마하리시 마헤쉬 요기 hi:महर्षि महेश योगी it:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi he:מהרישי מהש יוגי li:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi hu:Maharisi Mahes jógi nl:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ja:マハリシ・マヘーシュ・ヨーギー no:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi pl:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi pt:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ru:Махариши Махеш Йоги sa:महर्षि महेश योगी simple:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi sk:Maháraši Maheš Jogi fi:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi sv:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ta:மகேஷ் யோகி ur:مہا رشی مہیش یوگی

Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
Name	Buckminster Fuller
Birth date	July 12, 1895
Birth place	Milton, Massachusetts, United States
Death date	July 01, 1983
Death place	Los Angeles, United States
Occupation	designer, architect, author, inventor
Spouse	Anne Fuller
Children	2: Allegra Fuller Snyder and Alexandra who died in childhood }}

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American engineer, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society.

Fuller published more than 30 books, inventing and popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", ephemeralization, and synergetics. He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, the best known of which is the geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their resemblance to geodesic spheres.

Biography

Fuller was born on July 12, 1895, in Milton, Massachusetts, the son of Richard Buckminster Fuller and Caroline Wolcott Andrews, and also the grandnephew of the American Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller. He attended Froebelian Kindergarten. Spending much of his youth on Bear Island, in Penobscot Bay off the coast of Maine, he had trouble with geometry, being unable to understand the abstraction necessary to imagine that a chalk dot on the blackboard represented a mathematical point, or that an imperfectly drawn line with an arrow on the end was meant to stretch off to infinity. He often made items from materials he brought home from the woods, and sometimes made his own tools. He experimented with designing a new apparatus for human propulsion of small boats.

Years later, he decided that this sort of experience had provided him with not only an interest in design, but also a habit of being familiar with and knowledgeable about the materials that his later projects would require. Fuller earned a machinist's certification, and knew how to use the press brake, stretch press, and other tools and equipment used in the sheet metal trade.

Academia

Fuller attended Milton Academy in Massachusetts, and after that began studying at Harvard. He was expelled from Harvard twice: first for spending all his money partying with a vaudeville troupe, and then, after having been readmitted, for his "irresponsibility and lack of interest." By his own appraisal, he was a non-conforming misfit in the fraternity environment. It was to be many years before he received a Sc.D. from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.

Wartime experience

Between his sessions at Harvard, Fuller worked in Canada as a mechanic in a textile mill, and later as a laborer for the meat-packing industry. He also served in the U.S. Navy in World War I, as a shipboard radio operator, as an editor of a publication, and as a crash-boat commander. After discharge, he worked again for the meat packing industry, thereby acquiring management experience. In 1917, he married Anne Hewlett. During the early 1920s, he and his father-in-law developed the Stockade Building System for producing light-weight, weatherproof, and fireproof housing — although the company would ultimately fail.

Bankruptcy and depression

By age 32, Fuller was bankrupt and jobless, living in public, low-income housing in Chicago, Illinois. In 1922, Fuller's young daughter Alexandra died from complications from polio and spinal meningitis. Allegedly, he felt responsible and this caused him to drink frequently and to contemplate suicide for a while. He finally chose to embark on "an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity."

Recovery

In 1927 Fuller resolved to think independently which included a commitment to "the search for the principles governing the universe and help advance the evolution of humanity in accordance with them... finding ways of doing more with less to the end that all people everywhere can have more and more." By 1928, Fuller was living in Greenwich Village and spending much of his time at the popular café Romany Marie's, where he had spent an evening in conversation with Marie and Eugene O'Neill several years earlier. Fuller accepted a job decorating the interior of the café in exchange for meals, giving informal lectures several times a week, and models of the Dymaxion house were exhibited at the café. Isamu Noguchi arrived during 1929 — Constantin Brâncuşi, an old friend of Marie's, had directed him there — and Noguchi and Fuller were soon collaborating on several projects, including the modeling of the Dymaxion car. It was the beginning of their lifelong friendship.

Geodesic domes

Fuller taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina during the summers of 1948 and 1949, serving as its Summer Institute director in 1949. There, with the support of a group of professors and students, he began reinventing a project that would make him famous: the geodesic dome. Although the geodesic dome had been created some 30 years earlier by Dr. Walther Bauersfeld, Fuller was awarded United States patents. He is credited for popularizing this type of structure.

One of his early models was first constructed in 1945 at Bennington College in Vermont, where he frequently lectured. During 1949, he erected his first geodesic dome building that could sustain its own weight with no practical limits. It was 4.3 meters (14 ft) in diameter and constructed of aluminum aircraft tubing and a vinyl-plastic skin, in the form of an icosahedron. To prove his design, and to awe non-believers, Fuller suspended from the structure's framework several students who had helped him build it. The U.S. government recognized the importance of his work, and employed his firm Geodesics, Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina to make small domes for the army. Within a few years there were thousands of these domes around the world.

Best-known work

For the next half-century, Fuller developed many ideas, designs and inventions, particularly regarding practical, inexpensive shelter and transportation. He documented his life, philosophy and ideas scrupulously by a daily diary (later called the ''Dymaxion Chronofile''), and by twenty-eight publications. Fuller financed some of his experiments with inherited funds, sometimes augmented by funds invested by his collaborators, one example being the Dymaxion car project.

World stage

International recognition began with the success of his huge geodesic domes during the 1950s. Fuller taught at Washington University in St. Louis in 1955, where he met James Fitzgibbon, who would become a close friend and colleague. From 1959 to 1970, Fuller taught at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Beginning as an assistant professor, he gained full professorship during 1968, in the School of Art and Design. Working as a designer, scientist, developer, and writer, he lectured for many years around the world. He collaborated at SIU with the designer John McHale. During 1965, Fuller inaugurated the World Design Science Decade (1965 to 1975) at the meeting of the International Union of Architects in Paris, which was, in his own words, devoted to "applying the principles of science to solving the problems of humanity."

Fuller believed human societies would soon rely mainly on renewable sources of energy, such as solar- and wind-derived electricity. He hoped for an age of "omni-successful education and sustenance of all humanity." For his lifetime of work, the American Humanist Association named him the 1969 Humanist of the Year.

Honors

Fuller was awarded 28 United States patents and many honorary doctorates. In 1960, he was awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal from The Franklin Institute. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1968. On January 16, 1970, he received the Gold Medal award from the American Institute of Architects. He also received numerous other awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom presented to him on February 23, 1983 by President Ronald Reagan.

Last filmed appearance

Fuller's last filmed interview took place on April 3, 1983, in which he presented his analysis of Simon Rodia's Watts Towers as a unique embodiment of the structural principles found in nature. Portions of this interview appear in ''I Build the Tower,'' a documentary film on Rodia's architectural masterpiece.

Death

Fuller died on July 1, 1983, 11 days before his 88th birthday. During the period leading up to his death, his wife had been lying comatose in a Los Angeles hospital, dying of cancer. It was while visiting her there that he exclaimed, at a certain point: "She is squeezing my hand!" He then stood up, suffered a heart attack, and died an hour later, at age 87. His wife of 66 years died 36 hours later. They are buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Philosophy and worldview

The grandson of a Unitarian minister (Arthur Buckminster Fuller), R. Buckminster Fuller was also Unitarian. Buckminster Fuller was an early environmental activist. He was very aware of the finite resources the planet has to offer, and promoted a principle that he termed "ephemeralization", which, in essence — according to futurist and Fuller disciple Stewart Brand — Fuller coined to mean "doing more with less". Resources and waste material from cruder products could be recycled into making more valuable products, increasing the efficiency of the entire process. Fuller also introduced synergetics, an encompassing term which he used broadly as a metaphoric language for communicating experiences using geometric concepts and, more specifically, to reference the empirical study of systems in transformation, with an emphasis on total system behavior unpredicted by the behavior of any isolated components. Fuller coined this term long before the term synergy became popular.

Fuller was a pioneer in thinking globally, and he explored principles of energy and material efficiency in the fields of architecture, engineering and design. He cited François de Chardenedes' opinion that petroleum, from the standpoint of its replacement cost out of our current energy "budget" (essentially, the net incoming solar flux), had cost nature "over a million dollars" per U.S. gallon (US$300,000 per litre) to produce. From this point of view, its use as a transportation fuel by people commuting to work represents a huge net loss compared to their earnings. An encapsulation quotation of his views might be, "There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance."

Fuller was concerned about sustainability and about human survival under the existing socio-economic system, yet remained optimistic about humanity's future. Defining wealth in terms of knowledge, as the "technological ability to protect, nurture, support, and accommodate all growth needs of life," his analysis of the condition of "Spaceship Earth" caused him to conclude that at a certain time during the 1970s, humanity had attained an unprecedented state. He was convinced that the accumulation of relevant knowledge, combined with the quantities of major recyclable resources that had already been extracted from the earth, had attained a critical level, such that competition for necessities was not necessary anymore. Cooperation had become the optimum survival strategy. "Selfishness," he declared, "is unnecessary and hence-forth unrationalizable.... War is obsolete." He criticized previous utopian schemes as too exclusive, and thought this was a major source of their failure. To work, he thought that a utopia needed to include everyone.

Fuller also claimed that the natural analytic geometry of the universe was based on arrays of tetrahedra. He developed this in several ways, from the close-packing of spheres and the number of compressive or tensile members required to stabilize an object in space. One confirming result was that the strongest possible homogeneous truss is cyclically tetrahedral.

In his 1970 book ''I Seem To Be a Verb'', he wrote: "I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe."

He had become a guru of the design, architecture, and 'alternative' communities, such as Drop City, the community of experimental artists to whom he awarded the 1966 "Dymaxion Award" for "poetically economic" domed living structures.

Major design projects

>

	File:Géode V 3 1.gif>140px	A geodesic sphere.

The geodesic dome

Fuller was most famous for his lattice shell structures - geodesic domes, which have been used as parts of military radar stations, civic buildings, environmental protest camps and exhibition attractions. An examination of the geodesic design by Bauersfeld for the Zeiss Planetarium, built some 20 years prior to Fuller's work, reveals that Fuller's Geodesic Dome patent (U.S. 2,682,235) follows the same methodology as Bauersfeld's design.

Their construction is based on extending some basic principles to build simple "tensegrity" structures (tetrahedron, octahedron, and the closest packing of spheres), making them lightweight and stable. The patent for geodesic domes was awarded during 1954, part of Fuller's exploration of nature's constructing principles to find design solutions. The Fuller Dome is referenced in the Hugo Award-winning novel ''Stand on Zanzibar'' by John Brunner, in which a geodesic dome is said to cover the entire island of Manhattan, and it floats on air due to the hot-air balloon effect of the large air-mass under the dome (and perhaps its construction of lightweight materials).

Transportation

In the 1930s, Fuller designed and built prototypes of what he hoped would be a safer, aerodynamic car, which he called the Dymaxion. ("Dymaxion" is said to be a syllabic abbreviation of ''dynamic maximum tension'', or possibly of ''dynamic maximum ion''.) Fuller worked with professional colleagues for three years beginning in 1932 on a design idea Fuller had derived from aircraft technologies. The three prototype cars were different from anything being sold at the time. They had three wheels: two front drive wheels and one rear, steered wheel. The engine was in the rear, and the chassis and body were original designs. The aerodynamic, somewhat tear-shaped body was large enough to seat eleven people and was about long, resembling a blend of a light aircraft (without wings) and a Volkswagen van of 1950s vintage. All three prototypes were essentially a mini-bus, and its concept long predated the Volkswagen Type 2 mini-bus conceived in 1947 by Ben Pon.

Despite its length, and due to its three-wheel design, the Dymaxion turned on a small radius and could easily be parked in a tight space. The prototypes were efficient in fuel consumption for their day, traveling about 30 miles per gallon. Fuller contributed a great deal of his own money to the project, in addition to funds from one of his professional collaborators. An industrial investor was also very interested in the concept. Fuller anticipated the cars could travel on an open highway safely at up to about 160 km/h (100 miles per hour), but, in practise, they were difficult to control and steer above 80 km/h (50 mph). Investors backed out and research ended after one of the prototypes was involved in a high-profile collision that resulted in a fatality. In 2007, ''Time Magazine'' reported on the Dymaxion as one of the "50 worst cars of all time".

In 1943, industrialist Henry J. Kaiser asked Fuller to develop a prototype for a smaller car, but Fuller's five-seater design was never developed further.

Housing

Fuller's energy-efficient and inexpensive Dymaxion House garnered much interest, but has never been produced. Here the term "Dymaxion" is used in effect to signify a "radically strong and light tensegrity structure". One of Fuller's Dymaxion Houses is on display as a permanent exhibit at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan. Designed and developed during the mid-1940s, this prototype is a round structure (not a dome), shaped something like the flattened "bell" of certain jellyfish. It has several innovative features, including revolving dresser drawers, and a fine-mist shower that reduces water consumption. According to Fuller biographer Steve Crooks, the house was designed to be delivered in two cylindrical packages, with interior color panels available at local dealers. A circular structure at the top of the house was designed to rotate around a central mast to use natural winds for cooling and air circulation.

Conceived nearly two decades before, and developed in Wichita, Kansas, the house was designed to be lightweight and adapted to windy climates. It was to be inexpensive to produce and purchase, and assembled easily. It was to be produced using factories, workers and technologies that had produced World War II aircraft. It was ultramodern-looking at the time, built of metal, and sheathed in polished aluminum. The basic model enclosed 90 m² (1000 square feet) of floor area. Due to publicity, there were many orders during the early Post-War years, but the company that Fuller and others had formed to produce the houses failed due to management problems.

During 1969, Fuller began the Otisco Project, named after its location in Otisco, New York. The project developed and demonstrated concrete spray technology used in conjunction with mesh covered wireforms as a viable means of producing large scale, load bearing spanning structures built on site without the use of pouring molds, other adjacent surfaces or hoisting.

The initial construction method used a circular concrete footing in which anchor posts were set. Tubes cut to length and with ends flattened were then bolted together to form a duodeca-rhombicahedron (22 sided hemisphere) geodesic structure with spans ranging to . The form was then draped with layers of ¼-inch wire mesh attached by twist ties. Concrete was then sprayed onto the structure, building up a solid layer which, when cured, would support additional concrete to be added by a variety of traditional means. Fuller referred to these buildings as monolithic ferroconcrete geodesic domes. The tubular frame form proved too problematic when it came to setting windows and doors, and was abandoned. The second method used iron rebar set vertically in the concrete footing and then bent inward and welded in place to create the dome's wireform structure and performed satisfactorily. Domes up to three stories tall built with this method proved to be remarkably strong. Other shapes such as cones, pyramids and arches proved equally adaptable.

The project was enabled by a grant underwritten by Syracuse University and sponsored by US Steel (rebar), the Johnson Wire Corp, (mesh) and Portland Cement Company (concrete). The ability to build large complex load bearing concrete spanning structures in free space would open many possibilities in architecture, and is considered as one of Fuller's greatest contributions.

Alternative map projection

Fuller also designed an alternative projection map, called the Dymaxion map. This was designed to show Earth's continents with minimum distortion when projected or printed on a flat surface.

Quirks

Fuller was a frequent flier, often crossing time zones. He famously wore three watches; one for the current zone, one for the zone he had departed, and one for the zone he was going to. In this respect he follows the jazz drummer Buddy Rich, who in the Pete Atkin / Clive James song “The Wristwatch for a Drummer”, also “wears three, one on the right wrist, one on the left, and the third one around his knee”. The wristwatch in question is the imagined “Omega Incabloc Oyster Accutron 72” for which “Buckminster Fuller designed the case” Fuller also noted that a single sheet of newsprint, inserted over a shirt and under a suit jacket, provided completely effective heat insulation during long flights.

He experimented with polyphasic sleep, which he called Dymaxion sleep. In 1943, he told ''Time Magazine'' that he had slept only two hours a day for two years. He quit the schedule because it conflicted with his business associates' sleep habits, but stated that Dymaxion sleep could help the United States win World War II.

Fuller documented his life copiously from 1915 to 1983, approximately of papers in a collection called the Dymaxion Chronofile. He also kept copies of all ingoing and outgoing correspondence. The enormous Fuller Collection is currently housed at Stanford University.

If somebody kept a very accurate record of a human being, going through the era from the Gay 90s, from a very different kind of world through the turn of the century — as far into the twentieth century as you might live. I decided to make myself a good case history of such a human being and it meant that I could not be judge of what was valid to put in or not. I must put everything in, so I started a very rigorous record.

Practical achievements

Fuller introduced a number of concepts, and helped develop others. Certainly, a number of his projects were not successful in terms of commitment from industry or acceptance by most of the public. However, more than 500,000 geodesic domes have been built around the world and many are in use. According to the Buckminster Fuller Institute, the largest geodesic-dome structures are:

Seagaia Ocean Dome: Miyazaki, Japan, 216 m (710 ft).

Multi-Purpose Arena: Nagoya, Japan, 187 m (614 ft).

Tacoma Dome: Tacoma, Washington, USA, 162 m (530 ft).

Superior Dome: Northern Michigan Univ. Marquette, Michigan, USA, 160 m (525 ft).

Walkup Skydome: Northern Arizona Univ. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA, 153 m (502 ft).

Poliedro de Caracas: Caracas, Venezuela, 145 m (475 ft).

Round Valley High School Stadium: Springerville-Eagar, Arizona, USA, 134 m (440 ft).

Former Spruce Goose Hangar: Long Beach, California, USA, 126 m (415 ft).

Formosa Plastics Storage Facility: Mai Liao, Taiwan, 123 m (402 ft).

Union Tank Car Maintenance Facility: Baton Rouge, Louisiana USA, 117 m (384 ft), destroyed in November 2007.

Lehigh Portland Cement Storage Facility: Union Bridge, Maryland USA, 114 m (374 ft).

The Eden Project, Cornwall, United Kingdom

Other notable domes include:

Spaceship Earth at Disney World's Epcot Center in Florida, 80.8-meters (265 ft) wide (Spaceship Earth is actually a self supporting geodesic sphere, the only one currently in existence.)

The Gold Dome in Oklahoma City, formerly a bank and now a multicultural society and business center.

Downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, is a geodesic sphere hosting the Telus World of Science, a science centre (formerly called Science World), that was originally the Expo Centre built for Expo 86.

The dome over a shopping center in downtown Ankara, Turkey, 109.7-meter (360 ft) tall

The dome enclosing a civic center in Stockholm, Sweden, 85.3-meter (280 ft) high.

The world's largest aluminum dome formerly housed the “Spruce Goose” airplane in Long Beach Harbor, California, USA.

However, contrary to Fuller's hopes, domes are not an everyday sight in most places. In practice, most of the smaller owner-built geodesic structures had disadvantages (see geodesic domes), including their unconventional appearance.

An interesting spin-off of Fuller's dome-design conceptualization was the Buckminster Ball, which was the official FIFA approved design for footballs (association football), from their introduction at the 1970 World Cup until recently. The design was a truncated icosahedron -- essentially a "Geodesic Sphere", consisting of 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal panels. This was used continuously for 34 years until replaced by the 14-panel Teamgeist for the 2006 World Cup.

Fuller was followed (historically) by other designers and architects, such as Sir Norman Foster and Steve Baer, willing to explore the possibilities of new geometries in the design of buildings, not based on conventional rectangles.

Language and neologisms

Buckminster Fuller spoke and wrote in a unique style and said it was important to describe the world as accurately as possible. Fuller often created long run-on sentences and used unusual compound words (omniwell-informed, intertransformative, omni-interaccommodative, omniself-regenerative) as well as terms he himself invented.

Fuller used the word ''Universe'' without the definite or indefinite articles (''the'' or ''a'') and always capitalized the word. Fuller wrote that "by Universe I mean: the aggregate of all humanity's consciously apprehended and communicated (to self or others) Experiences."

The words "down" and "up", according to Fuller, are awkward in that they refer to a planar concept of direction inconsistent with human experience. The words "in" and "out" should be used instead, he argued, because they better describe an object's relation to a gravitational center, the Earth. "I suggest to audiences that they say, 'I'm going "outstairs" and "instairs."' At first that sounds strange to them; They all laugh about it. But if they try saying in and out for a few days in fun, they find themselves beginning to realize that they are indeed going inward and outward in respect to the center of Earth, which is our Spaceship Earth. And for the first time they begin to feel real 'reality.'"

"World-around" is a term coined by Fuller to replace "worldwide". The general belief in a flat Earth died out in Classical antiquity, so using "wide" is an anachronism when referring to the surface of the Earth—a spheroidal surface has area and encloses a volume but has no width. Fuller held that unthinking use of obsolete scientific ideas detracts from and misleads intuition. Other neologisms collectively invented by the Fuller family, according to Allegra Fuller Snyder, are the terms "sunsight" and "sunclipse", replacing "sunrise" and "sunset" to overturn the geocentric bias of most pre-Copernican celestial mechanics.

Fuller also invented the word "livingry," as opposed to weaponry (or "killingry"), to mean that which is in support of all human, plant, and Earth life. "The architectural profession — civil, naval, aeronautical, and astronautical — has always been the place where the most competent thinking is conducted regarding livingry, as opposed to weaponry."

As well as contributing significantly to the development of tensegrity technology, Fuller invented the term "tensegrity" from ''tensional integrity''. "Tensegrity describes a structural-relationship principle in which structural shape is guaranteed by the finitely closed, comprehensively continuous, tensional behaviors of the system and not by the discontinuous and exclusively local compressional member behaviors. Tensegrity provides the ability to yield increasingly without ultimately breaking or coming asunder."

"Dymaxion" is a portmanteau of "dynamic maximum tension". It was invented by an adman about 1929 at Marshall Field's department store in Chicago to describe Fuller's concept house, which was shown as part of a house of the future store display. These were three words that Fuller used repeatedly to describe his design.

Fuller also helped to popularise the concept of Spaceship Earth: "The most important fact about Spaceship Earth: an instruction manual didn't come with it."

Concepts and buildings

''R. Buckminster Fuller's 28 patents''

His concepts and buildings include: {| |

Dymaxion house (1928) See autonomous building

Aerodynamic Dymaxion car (1933)

Prefabricated compact bathroom cell (1937)

Dymaxion Deployment Unit (1940)

Dymaxion Map of the world (1946)

Buildings (1943)

Tensegrity structures (1949)

|

Geodesic dome for Ford Motor Company (1953)

Patent on geodesic domes (1954)

The World Game (1961) and the World Game Institute (1972)

Patent on octet truss (1961)

Montreal Biosphère (1967), United States pavilion at Expo 67

Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science |}

Influence and legacy

Among the many people who were influenced by Buckminster Fuller are: Constance Abernathy, Ruth Asawa, J. Baldwin, Michael Ben-Eli, Pierre Cabrol, Joseph Clinton, Peter Floyd, Medard Gabel, Michael Hays, David Johnston, Robert Kiyosaki, Peter Pearce, Shoji Sadao, Edwin Schlossberg, Kenneth Snelson, and Robert Anton Wilson.

An allotrope of carbon - fullerene, and a particular molecule of that allotrope C₆₀ (buckminsterfullerene or buckyball) has been named after him. The Buckminsterfullerene molecule, which consists of 60 carbon atoms, very closely resembles a spherical version of Fuller's geodesic dome. The 1996 Nobel prize in chemistry was given to Kroto, Curl, and Smalley for their discovery of the fullerene.

On July 12, 2004, the United States Post Office released a new commemorative stamp honoring R. Buckminster Fuller on the 50th anniversary of his patent for the geodesic dome and by the occasion of his 109th birthday.

Fuller was the subject of two documentary films: ''The World of Buckminster Fuller'' (1971) and ''Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud'' (1996).

During June 2008, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented "Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe", the most comprehensive retrospective to date of his work and ideas. The exhibition traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2009. It presented a combination of models, sketches, and other artifacts, representing six decades of the artist's integrated approach to housing, transportation, communication, and cartography. It also featured the extensive connections with Chicago from his years spent living, teaching, and working in the city.

On February 25, 2011, Chicago-based indie band Driftless Pony Club released their album "Buckminster," whose songs used the names of some of Fuller's essays and were dedicated to his life and ideas.

Bibliography

''4d Timelock'' (1928)

''Nine Chains to the Moon'' (1938)

''Untitled Epic Poem on the History of Industrialization'' (1962)

''Ideas and Integrities, a Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure'' (1963) ISBN 0134491408

''No More Secondhand God and Other Writings'' (1963)

''Education Automation: Freeing the Scholar to Return'' (1963)

''What I Have Learned: A Collection of 20 Autobiograhical Essays'', Chapter "How Little I Know", (1968)

''Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth'' (1969) ISBN 080932461X

''Utopia or Oblivion'' (1969) ISBN 0553028839

''Approaching the Benign Environment'' (1970) ISBN 0817366415 (with Eric A. Walker and James R. Killian, Jr.)

''I Seem to Be a Verb'' (1970) coauthors Jerome Agel, Quentin Fiore, ISBN 1127231537

''Intuition'' (1970)

''Buckminster Fuller to Children of Earth'' (1972) compiled and photographed by Cam Smith, ISBN 0385029799

''The Dymaxion World of Buckminster Fuller'' (1960, 1973) coauthor Robert Marks, ISBN 0385018045

''Earth, Inc'' (1973) ISBN 0385018258

''Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking'' (1975) in collaboration with E.J. Applewhite with a preface and contribution by Arthur L. Loeb, ISBN 002541870X

''Tetrascroll: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, A Cosmic Fairy Tale'' (1975)

''And It Came to Pass — Not to Stay'' (1976) ISBN 0025418106

''R. Buckminster Fuller on Education'' (1979) ISBN 0870232762

''Synergetics 2: Further Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking'' (1979) in collaboration with E.J. Applewhite

''Buckminster Fuller Sketchbook'' (1981)

''Critical Path'' (1981) ISBN 0312174888

''Grunch of Giants'' (1983) ISBN 0312351933

''Humans in Universe'' (1983) coauthor Anwar Dil, ISBN 0899250017

''Cosmography: A Posthumous Scenario for the Future of Humanity'' (1992) coauthor Kiyoshi Kuromiya, ISBN 0025418505

See also

''Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud''

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge

Cloud nine (Tensegrity sphere)

Design science revolution

Emissions Reduction Currency System

Noosphere

Old Man River's City project

Spome

''Whole Earth Catalog''

References

Further reading

Applewhite, E. J. ''Cosmic Fishing: An account of writing Synergetics with Buckminster Fuller''. 1977 (ISBN 0-02-502710-7)

Applewhite, E. J., ed. ''Synergetics Dictionary, The Mind Of Buckminster Fuller; in four volumes''. Garland Publishing, Inc. New York and London. 1986 (ISBN 0-8240-8729-1)

Chu, Hsiao-Yun. "Fuller's Laboratory Notebook." ''Collections,'' Volume 4 Issue 4 Fall 2008 (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press), 295-306.

Chu, Hsiao-Yun and Roberto Trujillo. ''New Views on R. Buckminster Fuller.''(Stanford, CA; Stanford University Press, 2009) ISBN 0804762791

Eastham, Scott: ''American Dreamer. Bucky Fuller and the Sacred Geometry of Nature''; The Lutterworth Press 2007, Cambridge; ISBN 9780718830311

Edmondson, Amy: "A Fuller Explanation"; EmergentWorld LLC. 2007 (ISBN 978-0-6151-8314-5)

Hatch, Alden ''Buckminster Fuller At Home In The Universe''. 1974 (ISBN 0-440-04408-1) Crown Publishers, New York.

Kenner, Hugh. ''Bucky: a guided tour of Buckminster Fuller''. 1973 (ISBN 0-688-00141-6)

Krausse, Joachim and Lichtenstein, Claude. ed. ''Your Private Sky, R. Buckminster Fuller: The Art Of Design Science''. Lars Mueller Publishers. 1999 (ISBN 3-907044-88-6)

McHale, John. ''R. Buckminster Fuller''. George Brazillier, Inc., New York. hardback. 1962.

Pawley, Martin. ''Buckminster Fuller''. Taplinger Publishing Company, New York. 1991. hardcover (ISBN 0-8008-1116-X)

Potter, R. Robert. ''Buckminster Fuller (Pioneers in Change Series)''. Silver Burdett Publishers. 1990 (ISBN 0-382-09972-9)

Robertson, Donald. ''Mind's Eye Of Buckminster Fuller''. 1974 (ISBN 0-533-01017-9) Vantage Press, Inc., New York.

Sieden, Lloyd. ''Buckminster Fuller's Universe, His Life and Work''. 1989 (ISBN 0-7382-0379-3), explores Fuller's personal life, his beliefs and drives.

Snyder, Robert. ''Buckminster Fuller: An Autobiographical Monologue/Scenario''. St. Martin's Press, New York. hardback. 1980 (ISBN 0-312-24547-5)

Sterngold, James. "The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller." ''The New York Times'' [Arts Section], June 15, 2008.

Ward, James, ed., ''The Artifacts Of R. Buckminster Fuller, A Comprehensive Collection of His Designs and Drawings in Four Volumes: Volume One. The Dymaxion Experiment, 1926–1943; Volume Two. Dymaxion Deployment, 1927–1946; Volume Three. The Geodesic Revolution, Part 1, 1947–1959; Volume Four. The Geodesic Revolution, Part 2, 1960-1983'': Edited with descriptions by James Ward. Garland Publishing, New York. 1984 (ISBN 0-8240-5082-7 vol. 1, ISBN 0-8240-5083-5 vol. 2, ISBN 0-8240-5084-3 vol. 3, ISBN 0-8240-5085-1 vol. 4)

Wong, Yunn Chii, ''The Geodesic Works of Richard Buckminster Fuller, 1948-1968 (The Universe as a Home of Man)'', PhD thesis, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 1999.

Wühr, Paul, ''Das falsche Buch''. (Fuller appears as a character in this book.)

Zung, T.K. Thomas. ''Buckminster Fuller: Anthology for a New Millennium''. St. Martin's Press. 2001 (ISBN 0-312-26639-1)

External links

Buckminster Fuller Institute

Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony for the Presidential Medal of Freedom – February 23, 1983

''Buckminster Fuller'', a portrait by Ansel Adams

;Articles about Fuller

WIRED article about Buckminster Fuller

Dymaxion Man: The Visions of Buckminster Fuller By Elizabeth Kolbert, ''The New Yorker'' (June 9, 2008)

The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller New York Times article questioning Fuller's supposed consideration of suicide, (June 15, 2008)

;Collections

Buckminster Fuller Digital Collection at Stanford includes 380 hrs. of streamed audio-visual material from Fuller's personal archive

Buckminster Fuller Papers housed at Stanford University Libraries

Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, York University – Archival photographs of Buckminster Fuller from the Toronto Telegram.

;Everything I Know

"Everything I Know" Session, Philadelphia, 1975 at Stanford University Libraries archives

The "Everything I Know" 42-hour lecture session — video, audio, and full transcripts.

;Media

R. Buckminster Fuller on PBS

Buckminster Fuller discussed on The State of Things

, a 1974 documentary , a 1996 episode of ''American Masters'' , a 2004 short animated documentary

;Other resources

CJ Fearnley's List of Buckminster Fuller Resources on the Internet

Buckminster Fuller at Pionniers & Précurseurs. Includes a good bibliography

Category:1895 births Category:1983 deaths Category:American architects Category:American architecture writers Category:American industrial designers Category:American inventors Fuller Category:American military personnel of World War I Category:American non-fiction environmental writers Category:American technology writers Category:Bates College alumni Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Futurologists Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Modernist architects Category:The Hunger Project Category:Milton Academy alumni Category:People from Penobscot County, Maine Category:Solar building designers Category:High-tech architecture Category:Modernist architecture Category:Organic architecture Category:Sustainability advocates Category:Systems scientists Category:Washington University in St. Louis faculty Category:Alternative historians Category:American Unitarians Category:Whole Earth Category:People from Milton, Massachusetts Category:Southern Illinois University Carbondale faculty Category:Recipients of the Royal Gold Medal Category:Black Mountain College faculty Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Archives of American Art related

ar:ريتشارد بوكمينستر فولر bn:বাকমিন্‌স্টার ফুলার zh-min-nan:Buckminster Fuller be:Рычард Бакмінстэр Фулер be-x-old:Рычард Бакмінстэр Фулер bs:Buckminster Fuller bg:Бъкминстър Фулър ca:Buckminster Fuller cs:Buckminster Fuller da:Buckminster Fuller de:Richard Buckminster Fuller el:Ρίτσαρντ Μπάκμινστερ Φούλερ es:Richard Buckminster Fuller eo:Buckminster Fuller eu:Richard Buckminster Fuller fa:باکمینستر فولر fr:Richard Buckminster Fuller ko:벅민스터 풀러 hi:बकमिन्स्टर फुलर hr:Buckminster Fuller id:Buckminster Fuller is:Buckminster Fuller it:Richard Buckminster Fuller he:באקמינסטר פולר jv:Buckminster Fuller hu:Buckminster Fuller nl:Richard Buckminster Fuller ja:バックミンスター・フラー no:Richard Buckminster Fuller nds:Buckminster Fuller pl:Buckminster Fuller pt:Buckminster Fuller ro:Richard Buckminster Fuller ru:Фуллер, Ричард Бакминстер sco:Buckminster Fuller sq:Buckminister Fuller simple:Buckminster Fuller sk:Buckminster Fuller sr:Бакминстер Фулер sh:Buckminster Fuller fi:Buckminster Fuller sv:Buckminster Fuller tl:Buckminster Fuller ta:பக்மினிசிட்டர் ஃபுல்லர் th:บักมินสเตอร์ ฟุลเลอร์ tr:Buckminster Fuller uk:Річард Бакмінстер Фуллер vi:Buckminster Fuller war:Buckminster Fuller zh:巴克敏斯特·富勒

Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
Name	Howard Stern
Birth name	Howard Allan Stern
Birth date	January 12, 1954
Birth place	Jackson Heights, New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Radio personality, television host, author, actor, photographer
Years active	1975–present
Spouse	Alison Berns (1978–2001; div.)Beth Ostrosky (2008–present)
Party	Libertarian during 1994 Governor of New York campaign
Website	www.howardstern.com }}

Howard Allan Stern (born January 12, 1954) is an American radio personality, television host, author, actor, and photographer best known for his radio show, which was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2005. He gained wide recognition in the 1990s where he was labeled a "shock jock" for his outspoken and sometimes controversial style. Stern has been exclusive to Sirius XM Radio, a subscription-based satellite radio service, since 2006. The son of a former recording and radio engineer, Stern wished to pursue a career in radio at the age of five. While at Boston University he worked at the campus station WTBU before a brief stint at WNTN in Newton, Massachusetts.

He developed his on-air personality when he landed positions at WRNW in Briarcliff Manor, WCCC in Hartford and WWWW in Detroit. In 1981, he was paired with his current newscaster and co-host Robin Quivers at WWDC in Washington, D.C. Stern then moved to WNBC in New York City in 1982 to host afternoons until his firing in 1985. He re-emerged on WXRK that year, and became one of the most popular radio personalities during his 20-year tenure at the station. Stern's show is the most-fined radio program, after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued fines to station licensees for allegedly indecent material that totaled $2.5 million. Stern has won ''Billboard's'' Nationally Syndicated Air Personality of the Year award eight times, and is one of the highest-paid figures in radio.

Stern describes himself as the "King of All Media" for his ventures outside radio. Since 1987, he has hosted numerous late night television shows, pay-per-view events and home video releases. He embarked on a five-month political campaign for Governor of New York in 1994. His two books, ''Private Parts'' (1993) and ''Miss America'' (1995), spent 20 and 16 weeks respectively on ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list. The former was adapted into ''Private Parts'' (1997), a biographical comedy film that starred Stern and his radio show staff that earned $41.2 million in domestic revenue. Stern performs on its soundtrack which topped the ''Billboard'' 200 chart.

Early life and education

Stern was born on January 12, 1954 into a Jewish family who lived in Jackson Heights, Queens in New York City. His parents Ben and Ray (née Schiffman) are children of Austro-Hungarian immigrants, and his sister Ellen is four years older than he. The family moved to the hamlet of Roosevelt on Long Island in 1955, where Stern developed an interest in radio at five years of age. While Ray was a homemaker and later an inhalation therapist, Ben was a co-owner of Aura Recording, Inc., a recording studio in Manhattan where cartoons and commercials were produced. When he made occasional visits with his father, Stern witnessed actors Wally Cox, Don Adams and Larry Storch voice his favorite cartoon characters, which influenced him to later talk on the air rather than play records. Ben was also an engineer at WHOM, a radio station in Manhattan. On completion of sixth grade, Stern left Washington-Rose Elementary School for Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School. In June 1969, the family moved to nearby Rockville Centre and Stern transferred to South Side High School.

Stern spent the first two of four years at Boston University in the College of Basic Studies. In 1973, he started to work at WTBU, the campus radio station where he spun records, read the news, and hosted interviews. He also hosted a comedy program with three fellow students called ''The King Schmaltz Bagel Hour''. Stern gained admission to the School of Public Communications in 1974 and earned a diploma in July 1975 at the Radio Engineering Institute of Electronics in Fredericksburg, Virginia which allowed him to apply for a first class FCC radio-telephone license. With the license, Stern made his professional debut at WNTN in Newton, Massachusetts, performing airshift, newscasting and production duties between August and December 1975. He graduated magna cum laude from Boston University in May 1976 with a degree in Communications and now funds a scholarship at the university.

Career

Early professional radio career (1976–1981)

After his graduation in 1976, Stern declined an offer to work evenings at WRNW, a progressive rock station in Briarcliff Manor, Westchester County, New York. He was unsure of his talent, and questioned his future in the professional industry. Stern took creative and media planning roles at Benton & Bowles, a New York advertising agency, followed by a job in selling radio time to advertisers. He realized the mistake of declining on-air work and contacted WRNW a second time where he agreed to work covering shifts over the Christmas holiday period. Stern was hired full time in 1977 and worked a four-hour midday shift, six days per week a $96 weekly salary. He subsequently worked as the station's production and program director for an increased salary of $250.

In 1979, Stern spotted an advertisement for a "wild, fun morning guy" at rock station WCCC in Hartford, Connecticut. He submitted a more outrageous audition tape with Robert Klein and Cheech and Chong records mixed with flatulence routines and one-liners. Stern was hired with no change in salary with a more intense schedule. After four hours on the air he voiced and produced commercials for another four. On Saturdays, following a six-hour show, he did production work for the next three. As the station's public affairs director he also hosted a Sunday morning talk show which he favoured. In the summer of the 1979 energy crisis, Stern held a two-day boycott of Shell Oil Company which attracted media attention. Stern left WCCC a year later after he was declined a pay increase. Fred Norris, the overnight disc jockey, has been Stern's producer and writer since 1981.

Management at rock outlet WWWW in Detroit, Michigan praised Stern's audition tape in their search for a new morning man. Stern was hired for the job which he started on April 21, 1980. He learned to become more open on the air and "decided to cut down the barriers...strip down all the ego...and be totally honest", he later told ''Newsday''. His efforts earned him a ''Billboard'' award for "Album-Oriented Rock Personality of the Year For a Major Market" and the Drake-Chenault "Top Five Talent Search" title. The station however, ran into problems after Stern's quarterly Arbitron ratings had decreased while it struggled to compete with its stronger rock competitors. In January 1981, WWWW switched to a country music format much to Stern's dislike, who left the station soon after. He received offers to work at WXRT in Chicago and CHUM in Toronto, but did not take them.

Washington and WNBC New York (1981–1985)

Stern moved to Washington, D.C. to host mornings at rock station WWDC on March 2, 1981. He wanted to develop his show further, and looked for a co-worker with a sense of humor to riff with on news and current events. The station paired Stern with Robin Quivers, a newscaster and consumer affairs reporter from WFBR in Baltimore. Though he felt restricted and controlled by management who enforced a strict format, Stern had the second highest rated morning radio program in January 1982. Impressed with his ratings success, Stern was approached by NBC with an offer to work afternoons at WNBC in New York City. After he signed a five-year contract worth $1 million in March, Stern's relationship with WWDC management worsened, and his contract with the station was terminated on June 25. He had more than tripled the station's morning ratings during his stay. In its July issue ''The Washingtonian'' named Stern the area's best disc jockey. Stern released ''50 Ways to Rank Your Mother'', a comedy album of his radio bits. The record was re-released as ''Unclean Beaver'' in November 1994.

On April 2, 1982, a news report by Douglas Kiker on raunch radio featuring Stern aired on ''NBC Magazine''. The piece stimulated discussion among NBC management to withdraw Stern's contract. When he began his afternoon program in September, management closely monitored Stern, telling him to avoid talk of a sexual and religious nature. In his first month, Stern was suspended for several days for "Virgin Mary Kong", a segment featuring a video game where a group of men pursued the Virgin Mary around a singles bar in Jerusalem. An attorney was hired to man a "dump button", and cut Stern off the microphone should potentially offensive areas be discussed. This became the task of program director Kevin Metheny, who Stern nicknamed "Pig Virus". On May 21, 1984, Stern made his first appearance on ''Late Night with David Letterman'', launching him into the national spotlight. A year later he claimed the highest ratings at WNBC in four years with a 5.7% market share.

On September 30, 1985, Stern and Quivers were fired for what management termed "conceptual differences" regarding the show. said program director John Hayes, who Stern nicknamed "The Incubus". In 1992, Stern believed Thornton Bradshaw, chairman of WNBC's owner RCA, heard his "Bestiality Dial-a-Date" segment and ordered his firing. Stern and Quivers kept in touch with their audience throughout October and November where they toured club venues with a stage show.

K-Rock, early television endeavors and Fartman (1985–1992)

Stern signed a contract with Infinity Broadcasting worth around $500,000 and returned to afternoons on its New York rock station WXRK on November 18, 1985. The show moved to mornings on February 18, 1986 and entered national syndication on August 18 when WYSP in Philadelphia first simulcast the program. In the New York market ''The Howard Stern Show'' was the highest-rated morning program for seven consecutive years between 1994 and 2001. In 1994, ''Billboard'' magazine added the "Nationally Syndicated Air Personality of the Year" category to its annual radio awards based on entertainment value, creativity and ratings success. Stern was awarded the title from 1994 to 2002.

In May 1987, Stern recorded five television pilots for Fox when the network planned to replace ''The Late Show'' hosted by Joan Rivers. The series was never picked up; one executive having described the show as "poorly produced", "in poor taste" and "boring". Stern hosted his first pay-per-view event on February 27, 1988 named ''Howard Stern's Negligeé and Underpants Party''. Over 60,000 homes purchased the two-hour special that grossed $1.2 million. On September 7, 1989, over 16,000 fans packed out Nassau Coliseum for ''Howard Stern's U.S. Open Sores'', a live event that featured a tennis match between Stern and his radio show producer, Gary Dell'Abate. Both events were released for home video. From 1990 to 1992, Stern was the host of ''The Howard Stern Show'', a Saturday night program on WWOR-TV. The series ran for 69 episodes to 65 markets nationwide. In February 1991, Stern released ''Crucified by the FCC'', a collection of censored radio segments following the first fine issued to Infinity by the FCC over alleged indecency. He released a third video tape, ''Butt Bongo Fiesta'', in October 1992 that sold 260,000 copies for a gross of over $10 million. He returned to Saturday night television that November with ''The Howard Stern "Interview"'', a one-on-one celebrity interview series on E!.

Stern appeared at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards as Fartman, a fictional superhero that first appeared in the ''National Lampoon'' humor magazine series. According to the trademark he filed for the character that October, he first used Fartman in July 1981. Stern rejected multiple scripts for a proposed summer 1993 release of ''The Adventures of Fartman'' until a verbal agreement was reached with New Line Cinema. Screenwriter J. F. Lawton had prepared a script before relations soured over the film's rating, content and merchandising rights and the project was abandoned.

''Private Parts'', E! show and run for Governor (1993–1994)

In 1993, Stern signed a $1 million advance contract with Simon & Schuster to publish his first book. Co-authored with Larry Sloman and edited by Judith Regan, the release of ''Private Parts'' on October 7 saw its first printing of 225,000 copies being sold within hours of going on sale. It became the fastest-selling title in the history of Schuster after five days. In its eighth printing two weeks later, over one million copies had been distributed. Stern embarked on a book signing tour that attracted an estimated 10,000 fans at a Barnes & Noble store on Fifth Avenue in New York. In its first run, ''Private Parts'' spent 20 weeks on ''The New York Times'' Best-Seller list. Stern has written forewords for ''Steal This Dream'' (1998), a biography of Abbie Hoffman, ''Disgustingly Dirty Joke Book'' (1998) by Jackie Martling, ''Too Fat to Fish'' (2008) by Artie Lange, and ''Dear Mrs. Fitzsimmons: Tales of Redemption from an Irish Mailbox'' (2010) by Greg Fitzsimmons.

Stern hosted his second pay-per-view event, ''The Miss Howard Stern New Year's Eve Pageant'', on December 31, 1993. It broke the subscriber record for a non-sports event previously held by a New Kids on the Block concert in 1990. Around 400,000 households purchased the event that grossed an estimated $16 million. Stern released the program on VHS in early 1994 as ''Howard Stern's New Year's Rotten Eve 1994''. Between his book royalties and pay-per-view profits, Stern's earnings in the latter months of 1993 totalled around $7.5 million. In its 20th anniversary issue in 1993, ''Radio & Records'' named Stern the most influential air personality of the past two decades.

On March 21, 1994, Stern announced his candidacy for Governor of New York under the Libertarian Party ticket, challenging Mario Cuomo for re-election. He planned to reinstate the death penalty, stagger highway tolls to improve traffic flow, and limit road work to night hours. At the party's nomination convention in Albany on April 23, Stern won the required two-thirds majority on the first ballot, receiving 287 of the 381 votes cast (75.33%). James Ostrowski finished second with 34 votes (8.92%). To place his name on the November ballot, Stern was obliged to state his home address and to complete a financial disclosure form under the Ethics in Government Act of 1987. After denying to disclose his financial information, Stern was denied an injunction on August 2. He withdrew his candidacy two days later. Cuomo was defeated in the gubernatorial election on November 8 by George Pataki, who Stern backed. Pataki signed "The Howard Stern Bill" that limited construction on state roads to night hours in New York and Long Island, in 1995.

In June 1994, robotic cameras were installed at WXRK studios to film ''The Howard Stern Show'' for a condensed half-hour show on E!. ''Howard Stern'' ran for 11 years until the last taped episode aired on July 8, 2005. In conjunction with his move to satellite radio, Stern launched Howard Stern on Demand, a subscription video-on-demand service, on November 18. The service was relaunched as Howard TV on March 16, 2006.

''Miss America'' and ''Private Parts'' film (1995–1997)

On April 3, 1995, three days after the shooting of singer Selena, Stern's comments regarding her death and Mexican Americans caused an uproar in the Hispanic community. He criticized her music and gunfire sound effects were played over her songs. "This music does absolutely nothing for me. Alvin and the Chipmunks have more soul...Spanish people have the worst taste in music. They have no depth". On April 6, Stern responded with a statement in Spanish, stressing his comments were made in satire and not intended to hurt those who loved her. A day later, Justice of the Peace Eloy Cano of Harlingen, Texas issued an arrest warrant on Stern for disorderly conduct.

In 1995, Stern signed a deal with ReganBooks worth $3 million to write his second book, ''Miss America''. He wrote about his cybersex experiences on the Prodigy service, a private meeting with Michael Jackson, and his suffering with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Released on November 7, the book sold 33,000 copies at Barnes & Noble stores on the same day which set a new one-day record. ''Publishers Weekly'' reported over 1.39 million copies were sold by the year's end and ranked it the third best-selling book of 1995. ''Miss America'' spent a total of 16 weeks on ''The New York Times'' best-seller list.

Production for a film adaptation of ''Private Parts'' began in May 1996 with all shooting complete in four months. Its premiere was held at The Theatre at Madison Square Garden on February 27, 1997, where Stern performed "The Great American Nightmare" with Rob Zombie. Making its general release on March 7, ''Private Parts'' topped the box office sales in its opening weekend with a gross of $14.6 million, and went on to earn a total of $41.2 million in domestic gross revenue. The film holds a "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a website that aggregates film reviews. 79% of critics gave ''Private Parts'' a positive review based on a sample of 48 reviews, with an average score of 6.6 out of 10. For his performance, Stern won a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for "Favorite Male Newcomer" and was nominated for a Golden Satellite Award for "Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture (Comedy)" and a Golden Raspberry Award for "Worst New Star". The soundtrack to ''Private Parts'' sold 178,000 copies in its first week of release, topping the ''Billboard'' 200 chart.

Stern filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against Ministry of Film Inc. in October 1997, claiming it recruited him for a film titled ''Jane'' starring Melanie Griffith while knowing it had insufficient funds. Stern, who was unpaid when production ceased, accused the studio of breach of contract, fraud and negligent representation. A settlement was reached in 1999 with Stern receiving $50,000.

Return to Saturday night television and productions (1998–2004)

In August 1998, Stern returned to Saturday night television with ''The Howard Stern Radio Show''. Broadcast across the country on CBS affiliates, it featured radio show highlights along with material unseen in his nightly E! show. The show competed for ratings with comedy shows ''Saturday Night Live'' on NBC and ''MADtv'' on Fox. Concerned with its risqué content, affiliates began to leave the show after two episodes. Making its launch on 79 stations on August 22, 1998, this number was reduced to 55 by June 1999. A total of 84 episodes were broadcast. The final re-run aired on November 17, 2001, to around 30 markets.

In 1994, Stern launched the Howard Stern Production Company for original and joint production and development ventures. He intended to make a film adaptation of ''Brother Sam'', the biography of the late comedian Sam Kinison. In September 1999, UPN announced the production of ''Doomsday'', an animated science-fiction comedy series executively produced by Stern. Originally set for a 2000 release, Stern starred as Orinthal, a family dog. The project was eventually abandoned. From 2000 to 2002, Stern was the executive producer of ''Son of the Beach'', a sitcom which ran for three seasons on FX. In late 2001, Howard Stern Productions was reportedly developing a new sitcom titled ''Kane''. The pilot episode was never filmed. In 2002, Stern acquired the rights to comedy films ''Rock 'n' Roll High School'' (1979) and ''Porky's'' (1982). He filed a $100 million lawsuit in March 2003 against ABC and the producers of ''Are You Hot?'', claiming the series was based on his radio segment called "The Evaluators". A settlement was reached on August 7.

Stern announced in early 2004 of talks with ABC to host a prime time interview special, which never materialized. In August 2004, cable channel Spike picked up 13 episodes of ''Howard Stern: The High School Years'', a second animated series Stern was to executive produce. On November 14, 2005, Stern announced the completion of episode scripts and 30 seconds of test animations. Stern eventually gave the project up. In 2007, he explained the episodes could have been produced "on the cheap" at $300,000 each, though the quality he demanded would have cost over $1 million. Actor Michael Cera was cast as the lead voice.

Satellite radio and ''America's Got Talent'' (2004–present)

On October 6, 2004, Stern announced the signing of a five-year contract with Sirius Satellite Radio, a medium free from FCC regulations, that started in January 2006. His decision to leave terrestrial radio occurred in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show in February that caused a crackdown on perceived indecency in broadcasting. The incident prompted tighter control over content by station owners and managers to which Stern felt "dead inside" creatively. Stern hosted his final broadcast on terrestrial airwaves on December 16, 2005. During his 20 years at WXRK his show had syndicated in 60 markets across the United States and Canada and gained a peak audience of 20 million listeners.

With an annual budget of $100 million for all production, staff and programming costs, Stern launched two channels on Sirius in 2005 named Howard 100 and Howard 101. He assembled the Howard 100 News team that covered stories about his show and those associated with it, and a new dedicated studio was constructed at Sirius' headquarters in New York. On January 9, 2006, the day of his first broadcast, Stern and his agent received 34.3 million shares of stock from the company worth $218 million for exceeding subscriber targets set in 2004. A second stock incentive was paid in 2007, with Stern receiving 22 million shares worth $82.9 million.

On February 28, 2006, CBS Radio (formerly Infinity Broadcasting) filed a lawsuit against Stern, his agent and Sirius. The suit claimed Stern had misused CBS broadcast time to promote Sirius for unjust enrichment during the last 14 months of his terrestrial radio contract. In a press conference held hours before the suit was filed, Stern said it was nothing more than a "personal vendetta" against him by CBS president Leslie Moonves. A settlement was reached on May 25, with Sirius paying $2 million to CBS for control of Stern's 20-year broadcast archives. In the same month, ''Time'' magazine included Stern in its Time 100 list. He also ranked seventh in Forbes' Celebrity 100 list in June 2006, and reappeared in 2011 at number 26.

Stern signed a new contract with Sirius to continue his show for five more years in December 2010. Following the agreement, Stern and his agent filed a lawsuit against Sirius on March 22, 2011, for allegedly failing to pay stock bonuses promised to them from the past four years while helping the company exceed subscriber growth targets. Sirius said it was "surprised and disappointed" by the suit. In May, Stern announced that he would be broadcasting on a reduced schedule, alternating between three-day and four-day working weeks. On December 15, 2011, Stern announced that he will replace Piers Morgan as a judge for the seventh season of ''America's Got Talent''. Filming will take place in New York and will start in February 2012.

FCC fines

From 1990 to 2004, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has fined owners of radio stations that carried ''The Howard Stern Show'' a total of $2.5 million for indecent programming.

Personal life

Stern married his first wife, Alison (née Berns), on June 4, 1978 at Temple Ohabei Shalom in Brookline, Massachusetts. They have three daughters: Emily Beth (b. 1983), Debra Jennifer (b. 1986) and Ashley Jade (b. 1993). On October 22, 1999, Stern announced their decision to separate. The marriage ended in 2001 with an amicable divorce and settlement. In 2000, Stern began to date model Beth Ostrosky, co-host of ''Casino Cinema'' from 2004 to 2007. She also frequently appeared in the American edition of ''FHM''. On February 14, 2007 Stern announced their engagement. They married on October 3, 2008, at Le Cirque restaurant in New York City.

While attending Boston University, Stern developed an interest in Transcendental Meditation, which he practices to this day. He credits it with aiding him in quitting smoking and achieving his goals in radio. Stern interviewed the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the technique, twice. Stern also plays on the Internet Chess Club, and has taken lessons from chess master Dan Heisman, although he has recently claimed to have quit playing. Howard's latest passion is photography, where he does private shoots for friends and secured his first paid 'gig' shooting a layout for ''Hamptons'' magazine in July 2011. Stern has also shot photographs for ''WHIRL'' magazine and the North Shore Animal League.

Filmography

Films

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Year ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Film ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Role ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Notes |- | 1986 | ''Ryder, P.I.'' | Ben Ben Wah - T.V. Commentator | |- | 1997 | ''Private Parts'' | Himself | Blockbuster Entertainment Award for "Favourite Male Newcomer" (1998) Nominated – Golden Raspberry Award for "Worst New Star" (1998)Nominated – Golden Satellite Award for "Best Male Actor Performance in a Comedy or Musical" (1998) |}

Home video releases

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Year ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Title ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Role ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Notes |- | 1988 | ''Howard Stern's Negligeé and Underpants Party'' | rowspan="4"| Himself/Host |- | 1989 | ''Howard Stern's U.S. Open Sores'' | |- | 1992 | ''Butt Bongo Fiesta'' | |- | 1994 | ''Howard Stern's New Year's Rotten Eve 1994'' | |}

Television

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Year ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Title ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Role ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Notes |- | 1981 | ''Petey Greene's Washington'' | Himself | |- | 1987 | ''Nightlife'' | Himself | |- | 1984–1993 | ''Late Night with David Letterman'' | Himself | Multiple appearances |- | 1987 | ''The Howard Stern Show'' | Himself - Host | Series of 5 pilot episodes that never aired |- | 1988 | ''The New Hollywood Squares'' | Announcer - Guest | |- | 1990–1992 | ''The Howard Stern Show'' | Himself - Host | |- | 1992 | ''1992 MTV Video Music Awards'' | Fartman | |- | 1992–1993 | ''The Howard Stern "Interview"'' | Himself - Host | |- | 1993 | ''The Larry Sanders Show'' | Himself | Season 2, episode 18 |- | 1993 | ''The Jon Stewart Show'' | Himself | Season 1, episode 1 |- | 1994–2005 | ''Howard Stern'' | Himself - Host | |- | 1997 | ''Saturday Night Live'' | Himself | Season 22, episode 14 |- | 1998 | ''The Magic Hour'' | Himself | |- | 1998 | ''The Roseanne Show'' | Himself | Season 1, episode 54 |- | 1998–2001 | ''The Howard Stern Radio Show'' | Himself - Host |- | 2001 | ''The Concert for New York City'' | Himself |- | 2004 | ''Extra'' | Himself | |- | 2005–present | ''Howard Stern On Demand'' | Himself - Host | Known as ''Howard TV'' since March 2006 |- |2011 | ''Piers Morgan Tonight'' | Himself - Guest | Episode 2 |- |2011 | ''The Daily Show with Jon Stewart'' | Himself - Guest | Season 16, episode 29 |- |2011 | ''The Late Show with David Letterman'' | Himself - Guest | Season 18, episode 3439 |- |2012–present | ''America's Got Talent'' | Himself | New judge, replacing Piers Morgan |}

Discography

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Year ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Album ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Label ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Notes |- | 1982 | ''50 Ways to Rank Your Mother'' | Wren Records | Re-released as ''Unclean Beaver'' (1994) on Ichiban/Citizen X labels |- | 1991 | ''Crucified By the FCC'' | Infinity Broadcasting | |- | 1997 | ''Private Parts: The Album'' | Warner Brothers | ''Billboard'' 200 Number-one album from March 15–21, 1997 |}

Bibliography

References

Sources

External links

Official Website

''The Howard Stern Show'' on Sirius XM Radio

Category:1954 births Category:Living people Category:People from Jackson Heights, Queens Category:Actors from New York City Category:American actor–politicians Category:American actors Category:American comedians Category:American libertarians Category:American people of Austrian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Category:American radio personalities Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television personalities Category:American television producers Category:American television talk show hosts Category:American writers Category:Boston University alumni Category:Free speech activists Category:Jewish comedians Category:Jewish comedy and humor Category:Obscenity controversies Category:People from Nassau County, New York Category:People self-identifying as substance abusers Category:Photographers from New York Category:Radio personalities from New York City Category:Reality television judges Category:Religious skeptics Category:Sirius Satellite Radio Category:Transcendental Meditation practitioners

bg:Хауърд Стърн da:Howard Stern de:Howard Stern es:Howard Stern fr:Howard Stern gl:Howard Stern he:הווארד סטרן nl:Howard Stern ja:ハワード・スターン no:Howard Stern pl:Howard Stern pt:Howard Stern ru:Стерн, Говард simple:Howard Stern fi:Howard Stern sv:Howard Stern uk:Говард Стерн

Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
alt	A headshot of an older man is looking to the left while smiling
birth name	Clinton Eastwood, Jr.
birth date	May 31, 1930
birth place	San Francisco, California, U.S.
nationality	American
occupation	Actor, director, producer, composer, politician
years active	1955–present
spouse	Maggie Johnson (1953–84; two children)Dina Ruiz (1996–present; one child)
domesticpartner	Frances Fisher (1990-95; one child)
children	Kimber TunisKyle EastwoodAlison EastwoodScott ReevesKathryn ReevesFrancesca Fisher-EastwoodMorgan Eastwood }}

Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member the TV series ''Rawhide'' (1959–1965). He rose to fame for playing the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's ''Dollars'' Trilogy of spaghetti westerns (''A Fistful of Dollars'', ''For a Few Dollars More'', and ''The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'') during the 1960s, and as San Francisco Police Department Inspector Harry Callahan in the ''Dirty Harry'' films (''Dirty Harry'', ''Magnum Force'', ''The Enforcer'', ''Sudden Impact'', and ''The Dead Pool'') during the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, along with several others in which he plays tough-talking no-nonsense police officers, have made him an enduring cultural icon of masculinity.

Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director and Producer of the Best Picture, as well as receiving nominations for Best Actor, for his work in the films ''Unforgiven'' (1992) and ''Million Dollar Baby'' (2004). These films in particular, as well as others including ''Play Misty for Me'' (1971), ''The Outlaw Josey Wales'' (1976), ''Pale Rider'' (1985), ''In the Line of Fire'' (1993), ''The Bridges of Madison County'' (1995), and ''Gran Torino'' (2008), have all received commercial success and critical acclaim. Eastwood's only comedies have been ''Every Which Way but Loose'' (1978), its sequel ''Any Which Way You Can'' (1980), and ''Bronco Billy'' (1980); despite being widely panned by critics, the "Any Which Way" films are the two highest-grossing films of his career after adjusting for inflation.

Eastwood has directed most of his own star vehicles, but he has also directed films in which he did not appear such as ''Mystic River'' (2003) and ''Letters from Iwo Jima'' (2006), for which he received Academy Award nominations and ''Changeling'' (2008), which received Golden Globe Award nominations. He has received considerable critical praise in France in particular, including for several of his films which were panned in the United States, and was awarded two of France's highest honors: in 1994 he received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal and in 2007 was awarded the Légion d'honneur medal. In 2000 he was awarded the Italian Venice Film Festival Golden Lion for lifetime achievement.

Since 1967, Eastwood has run his own production company, Malpaso, which has produced the vast majority of his films. He also served as the nonpartisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, from 1986 to 1988. Eastwood has seven children by five different women, although he has only married twice.

Early life

Eastwood was born in San Francisco to Clinton Eastwood, Sr. (1906–70), a steelworker and migrant worker, and Margaret Ruth (née Runner; 1909–2006), a factory worker. He was nicknamed "Samson" by the hospital nurses as he weighed at birth. After his father died in 1970, Eastwood's mother remarried to John Belden Wood (1913–2004) in 1972, and they remained married until his death 32 years later. Eastwood is of English, Irish, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry and was raised in a middle class home with his younger sister, Jean (born 1934). His family relocated often as his father worked at different jobs along the West Coast, including at a pulp mill. The family settled in Piedmont, California, where Eastwood attended Piedmont Junior High School and Piedmont Senior High School, taking part in sports such as basketball, football, gymnastics, and competitive swimming. He later transferred to Oakland Technical High School where the drama teachers encouraged him to enroll in school plays, but he was not interested. As his family moved to different areas he held a series of jobs including lifeguard, paper carrier, grocery clerk, forest firefighter, and golf caddy.

In 1950, Eastwood began a one-year stint as a lifeguard for the United States Army during the Korean War and was posted to Fort Ord in California. While on leave in 1951 Eastwood was a passenger onboard a Douglas AD bomber that ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean near Point Reyes. After escaping from the sinking aircraft he and the pilot swam to safety.

Eastwood later moved to Los Angeles and began a romance with Maggie Johnson, a college student. He managed an apartment house in Beverly Hills by day and worked at a gas station by night. He enrolled at Los Angeles City College and married Johnson shortly before Christmas 1953 in South Pasadena.

Film career

1950s

Early career struggles

According to the CBS press release for ''Rawhide'', Universal Studios, known then as the Universal-International film company, was shooting in Fort Ord when an enterprising assistant spotted Eastwood and arranged a meeting with the series' director. According to Eastwood's official biography the key figure was a man named Chuck Hill, who was stationed in Fort Ord and had contacts in Hollywood. Later, in Los Angeles, Hill became reacquainted with Eastwood and managed to sneak him into one of Universal's studios, where he showed him to cameraman Irving Glassberg. Glassberg arranged for an audition with Arthur Lubin who, although impressed with Eastwood's appearance and frame, initially questioned his acting skills remarking, "He was quite amateurish. He didn't know which way to turn or which way to go or do anything". Lubin suggested he attend drama classes and arranged for his initial contract in April 1954 at $100 (US$}} in dollars) per week. After signing Eastwood was initially criticized for his stiff manner, his squint and with hissing his lines through his teeth, a feature that would become a life-long trademark.

In May 1954 Eastwood auditioned for his first role in ''Six Bridges to Cross'', but was rejected by Joseph Pevney. After many unsuccessful auditions he eventually landed a minor role as a laboratory assistant in director Jack Arnold's ''Revenge of the Creature'', a sequel to ''The Creature from the Black Lagoon''. He then worked for three weeks on Lubin's ''Lady Godiva of Coventry'' in September 1954, then won a role in February 1955 as a sailor in ''Francis in the Navy'' as well as appearing uncredited in another Jack Arnold film, ''Tarantula'', in which he played a squadron pilot. In May 1955 Eastwood had a brief appearance in the film ''Never Say Goodbye'', during which he shared a scene with Rock Hudson. Universal presented him with his first television role on July 2, 1955, in NBC's ''Allen in Movieland'', which starred Tony Curtis and Benny Goodman. Although he continued to develop as an actor Universal terminated Eastwood's contract on October 23, 1955.

Eastwood then joined the Marsh Agency and although Lubin landed him his biggest role to date in ''The First Traveling Saleslady'' (1956) and later hired him for ''Escapade in Japan'', without a formal contract Eastwood struggled. He met financial advisor Irving Leonard, who would later arguably take most responsibility for launching his career in the late 1950s and 1960s, whom Eastwood described as being "like a second father to me". On Leonard's advice Eastwood switched talent agencies to the Kumin-Olenick Agency in 1956 and to Mitchell Gertz in 1957. He landed several small roles in 1956 as a temperamental army officer for a segment of ABC's ''Reader's Digest'' series, and as a motorcycle gang member on a ''Highway Patrol'' episode. Eastwood had a minor uncredited role as a ranch hand in his first western film, ''Law Man'', in June 1956. The following year he played a cadet in the ''West Point'' television series and a suicidal gold prospector in ''Death Valley Days''. In 1955 he played a Navy lieutenant in a segment of ''Navy Log'' and in early 1959 he made a notable guest appearance on ''Maverick'', opposite James Garner, as a cowardly villain intent on marrying a rich girl for money. Eastwood had a small part as an aviator in the French picture ''Lafayette Escadrille'' and took on a major role as an ex-Confederate renegade in ''Ambush at Cimarron Pass'', a film which Eastwood viewed as disastrous and the lowest point of his career.

Rawhide

In a long sought after career breakthrough, Eastwood was cast as Rowdy Yates for the CBS hour-long western series ''Rawhide'' in 1958, although he was not especially happy with his role. By now, aged almost 30, he felt that his character Rowdy was too young and too cloddish for him to feel comfortable with the part. Filming began in Arizona in the summer of 1958 and on release it took just three weeks for ''Rawhide'' to reach the top 20 in the TV ratings. Although the series never won an Emmy it was a major success for several years, reaching its peak at number six in the ratings between October 1960 and April 1961. The ''Rawhide'' years (1959–65) were some of the most grueling of Eastwood's career. He often filmed for six days a week at an average of twelve hours a day, yet some directors still criticized him for not working hard enough. By late 1963 ''Rawhide'''s popularity had declined. Lacking freshness in the scripts, it was canceled in the middle of the 1965–66 television season. Eastwood made his first attempt at directing when he filmed several trailers for the show, although he was unable to convince producers to let him direct an episode. In the show's first season Eastwood earned $750 (US$}} in dollars) an episode. At the time of its cancellation he received a $119,000 (US$}} in dollars) compensation package.

1960s

In late 1963 Eastwood's co-star on ''Rawhide'', Eric Fleming, rejected an offer to star in an Italian-made western called ''A Fistful of Dollars''; to be directed in a remote region of Spain by Sergio Leone who was relatively unknown at the time. Other actors, including Charles Bronson, Steve Reeves, Richard Harrison, Frank Wolfe, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, and Ty Hardin, were also considered for the role. Knowing that he could play a cowboy convincingly Harrison suggested Eastwood, who in turn saw the film as an opportunity to escape from ''Rawhide''. He signed a contract for $15,000 (US$}} in dollars) in wages for eleven weeks' work with a bonus of a Mercedes automobile upon completion and arrived in Rome in May 1964 Eastwood later spoke about the transition from a television western to ''A Fistful of Dollars'': "In ''Rawhide'' I did get awfully tired of playing the conventional white hat. The hero who kisses old ladies and dogs and was kind to everybody. I decided it was time to be an anti-hero." Eastwood was instrumental in creating the Man with No Name character's distinctive visual style and although a non-smoker, Leone insisted he smoke cigars as an essential ingredient of the "mask" he was attempting to create with the loner character.

Some interior shots for ''A Fistful of Dollars'' were done at the Cinecittà studio on the outskirts of Rome, before production moved to a small village in Andalusia, Spain. The film became a benchmark in the development of spaghetti westerns, with Leone depicting a more lawless and desolate world than in traditional westerns; meanwhile challenging stereotypical American notions of a western hero by replacing him with a morally ambiguous antihero. The film's success meant Eastwood became a major star in Italy and he was re-hired by Leone to star in ''For a Few Dollars More'' (1965), the second film of the trilogy. Through the efforts of screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni, the rights to the film and the final film of the trilogy (''The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'') were sold to United Artists for roughly $900,000 (US$}} in dollars).

In January 1966 Eastwood met with producer Dino De Laurentiis in New York City and agreed to star in a non-western five-part anthology production named ''Le streghe'' ("The Witches") opposite De Laurentiis' wife, actress Silvana Mangano. Eastwood's nineteen-minute installment only took a few days to shoot but his performance did not go down well with the critics, with one saying "no other performance of his is quite so 'un-Clintlike' ". Two months later Eastwood began work on the third ''Dollars'' film, ''The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'', in which he again played the mysterious Man with No Name. Lee Van Cleef returned to play a ruthless fortune seeker, while Eli Wallach portrayed the cunning Mexican bandit Tuco. The storyline involves the search for a cache of Confederate gold buried in a cemetery. One day during filming of a scene where a bridge was to be dynamited Eastwood, suspicious of explosives, urged Wallach to retreat to the hilltop saying, "I know about these things. Stay as far away from special effects and explosives as you can." Minutes later crew confusion, over the word "Vaya!", resulted in a premature explosion which could have killed the co-star, while necessitating rebuilding of the bridge.

The ''Dollars'' trilogy was not shown in the United States until 1967 when ''A Fistful of Dollars'' opened in January, ''For a Few Dollars More'' in May, and ''The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'' in December. All the films proved successful in cinemas, particularly ''The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'' which eventually earned $8 million (US$}} in dollars) in rental earnings and turned Eastwood into a major film star. All three films received generally bad reviews and marked the beginning of Eastwood's battle to win the respect of American film critics. Judith Crist described ''A Fistful of Dollars'' as "cheapjack", while ''Newsweek'' considered ''For a Few Dollars More'' as "excruciatingly dopey". Renata Adler of ''The New York Times'' remarked that ''The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'' was "the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre", despite the fact that it is now widely considered one of the finest films in the history of cinema. ''Time'' magazine highlighted the film's wooden acting, especially Eastwood's, although critics such as Vincent Canby and Bosley Crowther of ''The New York Times'' praised Eastwood's coolness in playing the tall, lone stranger. Leone's unique style of cinematography was widely acclaimed, even by some critics who panned the acting.

Stardom brought more "tough guy" roles for Eastwood. He signed for the American revisionist western ''Hang 'Em High'' (1968), in which he featured alongside Inger Stevens, Pat Hingle, Dennis Hopper, Ed Begley, Bruce Dern, and James MacArthur. A cross between ''Rawhide'' and Leone's westerns, the film brought him a salary of $400,000 (US$}} in dollars) and 25% of its net earnings. He plays a man who seeks revenge after being lynched by vigilantes and left for dead. Using money earned from the ''Dollars'' trilogy Leonard helped establish Eastwood's production company, Malpaso Productions, named after the Malpaso Creek on Eastwood's property in Monterey County, California. Leonard arranged for ''Hang 'Em High'' to be a joint production with United Artists and, when it opened in July 1968, the film became the biggest United Artists opening in history — its box office receipts exceeding all the James Bond films of the time. It was widely praised by critics; including Archer Winsten of the ''New York Post'' who described ''Hang 'Em High'' as, "a western of quality, courage, danger and excitement".

Before the release of ''Hang 'Em High'' Eastwood had already begun work on the film ''Coogan's Bluff'', about an Arizona deputy sheriff tracking a wanted psychopathic criminal (Don Stroud) through the streets of New York City. He was reunited with Universal Studios for the project after receiving an offer of $1 million (US$}} in dollars)—more than double his previous salary. Jennings Lang arranged for Eastwood to meet Don Siegel, a Universal contract director who later became one of Eastwood's close friends, with the two forming a close partnership that would last for more than ten years over five films. Filming began in November 1967, before the full script had been finalized. The film was controversial for its portrayal of violence, with Eastwood's role creating the prototype for what would later become the macho cop of the ''Dirty Harry'' films. ''Coogan's Bluff'' also became the first collaboration with Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin, who would later compose the jazzy score to several of Eastwood's films in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly the ''Dirty Harry'' film series.

Eastwood was paid $850,000 (US$}} in dollars) in 1968 for the war epic ''Where Eagles Dare'', about a World War II squad parachuting into a Gestapo stronghold in the mountains. Richard Burton played the squad's commander with Eastwood as his right-hand man. He was also cast as Two-Face in the ''Batman'' television show, but the series was canceled before filming could commence.

Eastwood then branched out to star in the only musical of his career, ''Paint Your Wagon'' (1969). Eastwood and fellow non-singer Lee Marvin play gold miners who share the same wife (portrayed by Jean Seberg). Bad weather and delays plagued the production while its budget eventually exceeded $20 million (US$}} in dollars), extremely expensive for the time. The film was not a critical or commercial success, although it was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.

1970s

In 1970 Eastwood starred in the western ''Two Mules for Sister Sara'' with Shirley MacLaine and directed by Don Siegel. The film follows an American mercenary who gets mixed up with a whore disguised as a nun and ends up helping a group of Juarista rebels during the reign of Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico. Eastwood once again played a mysterious stranger—unshaven, wearing a serape-like vest, and smoking a cigar. Although the film received moderate reviewsthe film is listed in ''The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made''. Later the same year Eastwood starred as one of a group of Americans who steal a fortune in gold from the Nazis in the World War II film ''Kelly's Heroes'' with Donald Sutherland and Telly Savalas. ''Kelly's Heroes'' was the last film in which Eastwood appeared that was not produced by his own Malpaso Productions. Filming commenced in July 1969 on location in Yugoslavia and in London. The film received mostly a positive reception and its anti-war sentiments were recognized. In the winter of 1969–70, Eastwood and Siegel began planning his next film, ''The Beguiled'', a tale of a wounded Union soldier held captive by the sexually repressed matron of a southern girl's school. Upon release the film received major recognition in France and is considered one of Eastwood's finest works by the French. However, it grossed less than $1 million (US$}} in dollars) and, according to Eastwood and Lang, flopped due to poor publicity and the "emasculated" role of Eastwood.

Eastwood's career reached a turning point in 1971. Before Irving Leonard died he and Eastwood had discussed the idea of Malpaso producing ''Play Misty for Me'', a film that was to give Eastwood the artistic control he desired and his debut as a director. The script was about a jazz disc jockey named Dave (Eastwood) who has a casual affair with Evelyn (Jessica Walter), a listener who had been calling the radio station repeatedly at night asking him to play her favorite song—Erroll Garner's "Misty". When Dave ends their relationship the fan becomes violent and murderous. Filming commenced in Monterey in September 1970 and included footage of that year's Monterey Jazz Festival. The film was highly acclaimed with critics such as Jay Cocks in ''Time'', Andrew Sarris in the ''Village Voice'', and Archer Winsten in the ''New York Post'' all praising the film, as well as Eastwood's directorial skills and performance. Walter was nominated for a Golden Globe Best Actress Award (Drama) for her performance in the film.

The script for ''Dirty Harry'' (1971) was written by Harry Julian Fink and Rita M. Fink. It is a story about a hard-edged New York City (later changed to San Francisco) police inspector named Harry Callahan who is determined to stop a psychotic killer by any means. ''Dirty Harry'' is arguably Eastwood's most memorable character and has been credited with inventing the "loose-cannon cop genre", which is still imitated to this day. Author Eric Lichtenfeld argues that Eastwood's role as Dirty Harry established the "first true archetype" of the action film genre. His lines (quoted at left) have been cited as among the most memorable in cinematic history and are regarded by firearms historians, such as Garry James and Richard Venola, as the force which catapulted the ownership of .44 Magnum pistols to unprecedented heights in the United States; specifically the Smith & Wesson Model 29 carried by Harry Callahan. ''Dirty Harry'' proved a phenomenal success after its release in December 1971, earning some $22 million (US$}} in dollars) in the United States and Canada alone. It was Siegel's highest-grossing film and the start of a series of films featuring the character of Harry Callahan. Although a number of critics praised his performance as Dirty Harry, such as Jay Cocks of ''Time'' magazine who described him as "giving his best performance so far, tense, tough, full of implicit identification with his character", the film was widely criticized and accused of fascism.

Following Sean Connery's announcement that he would not play James Bond again Eastwood was offered the role but turned it down because he believed the character should be played by an English actor. He next starred in the loner Western ''Joe Kidd'' (1972), based on a character inspired by Reies Lopez Tijerina who stormed a courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico, in June 1967. Filming began in Old Tucson in November 1971 under director John Sturges, but Eastwood suffered symptoms of a bronchial infection and several panic attacks during filming. ''Joe Kidd'' received a mixed reception, with Roger Greenspun of ''The New York Times'' writing that the film was unremarkable, with foolish symbolism and sloppy editing, although he praised Eastwood's performance.

In 1973 Eastwood directed his first western, ''High Plains Drifter'', in which he starred alongside Verna Bloom, Marianna Hill, Billy Curtis, ''Rawhide'''s Paul Brinegar and Geoffrey Lewis. The film had a moral and supernatural theme, later emulated in ''Pale Rider''. The plot follows a mysterious stranger (Eastwood) who arrives in a brooding Western town where the people hire him to defend the town against three felons who are soon to be released. There remains confusion during the film as to whether the stranger is the brother of the deputy, whom the felons lynched and murdered, or his ghost. Holes in the plot were filled with black humor and allegory, influenced by Leone. The revisionist film received a mixed reception from critics, but was a major box office success. A number of critics thought Eastwood's directing was "as derivative as it was expressive", with Arthur Knight of the ''Saturday Review'' remarking that Eastwood had "absorbed the approaches of Siegel and Leone and fused them with his own paranoid vision of society". John Wayne, who had declined a role in the film, sent a letter of disapproval to Eastwood some weeks after the film's release saying that "the townspeople did not represent the true spirit of the American pioneer, the spirit that made America great". Eastwood next turned his attention towards ''Breezy'' (1973), a film about love blossoming between a middle-aged man and a teenage girl. During casting for the film Eastwood met Sondra Locke for the first time, an actress who would play major roles in many of his films for the next ten years and would become an important figure in his life. Kay Lenz was awarded the part of Breezy because Locke, at 28, was considered too old. The film, shot very quickly and efficiently by Eastwood and Frank Stanley, came in $1 million (US$}} in dollars) under budget and was finished three days ahead of schedule. ''Breezy'' was not a major critical or commercial success; it barely reached the Top 50 before disappearing and was only made available on video in 1998.

Once filming of ''Breezy'' had finished, Warner Brothers announced that Eastwood had agreed to reprise his role as Detective Harry Callahan in ''Magnum Force'' (1973), a sequel to ''Dirty Harry'', about a group of rogue young officers (among them David Soul, Robert Urich and Tim Matheson) in the San Francisco Police Force who systematically exterminate the city's worst criminals. Although the film was a major success after release, grossing $58.1 million (US$}} in dollars) in the United States alone and a new record for Eastwood, it was not a critical success. ''The New York Times'' critic Nora Sayre panned the often contradictory moral themes of the film, while the paper's Frank Rich called it "the same old stuff".

In 1974 Eastwood teamed up with Jeff Bridges and George Kennedy in the buddy action caper ''Thunderbolt and Lightfoot'', a road movie about a veteran bank robber Thunderbolt (Eastwood) and a young con man drifter, Lightfoot (Bridges). On its release, in spring 1974, the film was praised for its offbeat comedy mixed with high suspense and tragedy but was only a modest success at the box office, earning $32.4 million (US$}} in dollars). Eastwood's acting was noted by critics but was overshadowed by Bridges who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Eastwood reportedly fumed at the lack of Academy Award recognition for him and swore that he would never work for United Artists again.

Eastwood's next film ''The Eiger Sanction'' (1975) was based on Trevanian's critically acclaimed spy novel of the same name. Eastwood plays Jonathan Hemlock in a role originally intended for Paul Newman, an assassin turned college art professor who decides to return to his former profession for one last sanction in return for a rare Pissarro painting. In the process he must climb the north face of the Eiger in Switzerland under perilous conditions. Once again Eastwood starred alongside George Kennedy. Mike Hoover taught Eastwood how to climb during several weeks of preparation at Yosemite in the summer of 1974 before filming commenced in Grindelwald on August 12, 1974. Despite prior warnings about the perils of the Eiger the film crew suffered a number of accidents, including one fatality. In spite of the danger Eastwood insisted on doing all his own climbing and stunts. Upon its release in May 1975 ''The Eiger Sanction'' was a commercial failure, receiving only $23.8 million (US$}} in dollars) at the box office, and was panned by most critics. Joy Gould Boyum of the ''Wall Street Journal'' dismissed the film as "brutal fantasy". Eastwood blamed Universal Studios for the film's poor promotion and turned his back on them to make an agreement with Warner Brothers, through Frank Wells, that has lasted to the present day.

''The Outlaw Josey Wales'' (1976), a western inspired by Asa Carter's eponymous 1972 novel, has lead character Josey Wales (Eastwood) as a pro-Confederate guerilla who refuses to surrender his arms after the American Civil War and is chased across the old southwest by a group of enforcers. Eastwood cast his young son Kyle Eastwood, Chief Dan George, and Sondra Locke for the first time, against the wishes of director Philip Kaufman. Kaufman was notoriously fired by producer Bob Daley under Eastwood's command, resulting in a fine reported to be around $60,000 (US$}} in dollars) from the Directors Guild of America—who subsequently passed new legislation reserving the right to impose a major fine on a producer for discharging a director and taking his place. The film was pre-screened at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Humanities in Idaho during a six-day conference entitled ''Western Movies: Myths and Images''. Invited to the screening were: some 200 esteemed film critics, including Jay Cocks and Arthur Knight; directors such as King Vidor, William Wyler, and Howard Hawks; along with a number of academics. Upon release in August 1976 ''The Outlaw Josey Wales'' was widely acclaimed, with many critics and viewers seeing Eastwood's role as an iconic one that related to America's ancestral past and the destiny of the nation after the American Civil War. Roger Ebert compared the nature and vulnerability of Eastwood's portrayal of Josey Wales with his Man with No Name character in the ''Dollars'' westerns and praised the film's atmosphere. The film would later appear in ''Time''s "Top 10 Films of the Year".

Eastwood was then offered the role of Benjamin L. Willard in Francis Coppola's ''Apocalypse Now'', but declined as he did not want to spend weeks on location in the Philippines. He also refused the part of a platoon leader in Ted Post's Vietnam War film ''Go Tell the Spartans'' and instead decided to make a third ''Dirty Harry'' film ''The Enforcer''. The film had Harry partnered with a new female officer (Tyne Daly) to face a San Francisco Bay area group resembling the Symbionese Liberation Army. The film, culminating in a shootout on Alcatraz island, was considerably shorter than the previous ''Dirty Harry'' films at 95 minutes, but was a major commercial success grossing $100 million (US$}} in dollars) worldwide to become Eastwood's highest-grossing film to date.

In 1977 he directed and starred in ''The Gauntlet'' opposite Locke, Pat Hingle, William Prince, Bill McKinney, and Mara Corday. He portrays a down-and-out cop who falls in love with a prostitute that he is assigned to escort from Las Vegas to Phoenix, to testify against the mob. Although a moderate hit with the viewing public critics had mixed feelings about the film, with many believing it was overly violent. Eastwood's longtime nemesis Pauline Kael called it "a tale varnished with foul language and garnished with violence". Roger Ebert, on the other hand, gave it three stars and called it "...classic Clint Eastwood: fast, furious, and funny." In 1978 Eastwood starred in ''Every Which Way but Loose'' alongside Locke, Geoffrey Lewis, Ruth Gordon and John Quade. In an uncharacteristic offbeat comedy role, Eastwood played Philo Beddoe, a trucker and brawler who roams the American West searching for a lost love accompanied by his brother and an orangutan called Clyde. The film proved a surprising success upon its release and became Eastwood's most commercially successful film at the time. Panned by the critics it ranked high amongst the box office successes of his career and was the second-highest grossing film of 1978.

Eastwood starred in the atmospheric thriller ''Escape from Alcatraz'' in 1979, the last of his films to be directed by Don Siegel. It was based on the true story of Frank Lee Morris who, along with John and Clarence Anglin, escaped from the notorious Alcatraz prison in 1962. The film was a major success and marked the beginning of a period of praise for Eastwood from the critics; Stanley Kauffmann of ''The New Republic'' lauding it as "crystalline cinema" and Frank Rich of ''Time'' describing it as "cool, cinematic grace".

1980s

Eastwood directed the 1980 comedy ''Bronco Billy'' as well as playing the lead role in alongside Locke, Scatman Crothers, and Sam Bottoms. His children, Kyle and Alison, also had small roles as orphans. Eastwood has cited ''Bronco Billy'' as being one of the most affable shoots of his career and biographer Richard Schickel has argued that the character of Bronco Billy is Eastwood's most self-referential work. The film was a commercial failure but was appreciated by critics. Janet Maslin of ''The New York Times'' believed the film was "the best and funniest Clint Eastwood movie in quite a while", praising Eastwood's directing and the way he intricately juxtaposes the old West and the new. Later in 1980 Eastwood starred in ''Any Which Way You Can'', the sequel to ''Every Which Way but Loose''. The film received a number of bad reviews from critics, although Maslin described it as "funnier and even better than its predecessor". The film became another box office success and was among the top five highest-grossing films of the year.

In 1982 Eastwood directed and starred alongside his son Kyle in ''Honkytonk Man'', based on the eponymous Clancy Carlile's depression-era novel. Eastwood portrays a struggling western singer Red Stovall who suffers from tuberculosis, but has finally been given an opportunity to make it big at the Grand Ole Opry. He is accompanied by his young nephew (Kyle) to Nashville, Tennessee where he is supposed to record a song. Only ''Time'' gave the film a good review in the United States, with most reviewers criticizing its blend of muted humor and tragedy. Nevertheless the film received critical acclaim in France, where it was compared to John Ford's ''The Grapes of Wrath'', and it has since acquired the very high rating of 93% on ''Rotten Tomatoes''. In that same year Eastwood directed, produced, and starred in the Cold War-themed ''Firefox'' alongside Freddie Jones, David Huffman, Warren Clarke and Ronald Lacey. Based on a 1977 novel with the same name written by Craig Thomas, the film was shot before ''Honkeytonk Man'' but was released after it. Russian filming locations were not possible due to the Cold War, and the film had to be shot in Vienna and other locations in Austria to simulate many of the Eurasian story locations. With a production cost of $20 million (US$}} in dollars) it was Eastwood's highest budget film to date. ''People'' magazine likened Eastwood's performance to "Luke Skywalker trapped in Dirty Harry's Soul".

''Sudden Impact'', the fourth ''Dirty Harry'' film, was shot in the spring and summer of 1983 and is widely considered to be the darkest and most violent of the series. By this time Eastwood received 60% of all profits from films he starred in and directed, with the rest going to the studio. ''Sudden Impact'' was the last film which he starred in with Locke. She plays a woman raped, along with her sister, by a ruthless gang at a fairground and seeks revenge for her sister's now vegetative state by systematically murdering her rapists. The line "Go ahead, make my day", uttered by Eastwood during an early scene in a coffee shop, is often cited as one of cinema's immortal ones; famously quoted by President Ronald Reagan in a speech to Congress and used during the 1984 presidential elections. The film was the highest-earning of all the ''Dirty Harry'' films earning $70 million (US$}} in dollars). It received rave reviews with many critics praising the feminist aspects of the film, through its explorations of the physical and psychological consequences of rape.

''Tightrope'' (1984) had Eastwood starring opposite his daughter Alison, Geneviève Bujold, and Jamie Rose in a provocative thriller, inspired by newspaper articles about an elusive Bay Area rapist. Set in New Orleans, to avoid confusion with the ''Dirty Harry'' films, Eastwood played a single-parent cop drawn into his target's tortured psychology and fascination for sadomasochism. He next starred in the period comedy ''City Heat'' (1984) alongside Burt Reynolds, a film about a private eye and his partner who get mixed up with gangsters in the prohibition era of the 1930s. It grossed around $50 million (US$}} in dollars) domestically, but was overshadowed by Eddie Murphy's ''Beverly Hills Cop'' and failed to meet expectations.

Eastwood made his only foray into TV direction with the 1985 ''Amazing Stories'' episode "Vanessa In The Garden", which starred Harvey Keitel and Sondra Locke. This was his first collaboration with Steven Spielberg, who later co-produced ''Flags of Our Fathers'' and ''Letters from Iwo Jima''. Eastwood revisited the western genre when he directed and starred in ''Pale Rider'' (1985) opposite Michael Moriarty and Carrie Snodgress. The film is based on the classic 1953 western ''Shane'' and follows a preacher descending from the mists of the Sierras to side with the miners during the California Gold Rush of 1850. The title is a reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as the rider of the pale horse is Death, and shows similarities to Eastwood's 1973 western ''High Plains Drifter'' in its themes of morality and justice as well as its exploration of the supernatural. ''Pale Rider'' became one of Eastwood's most successful films to date. It was hailed as one of the best films of 1985 and the best western in years with Gene Siskel of the ''Chicago Tribune'' remarking, "This year (1985) will go down in film history as the moment Clint Eastwood finally earned respect as an artist".

In 1986 Eastwood co-starred with Marsha Mason in the military drama ''Heartbreak Ridge'', about the 1983 United States invasion of Grenada. He portrays an aging United States Marine Gunnery Sergeant and Korean War veteran. The production and filming of ''Heartbreak Ridge'' were marred by internal disagreements, between Eastwood and long-time friend and producer Fritz Manes as well as between Eastwood and the United States Department of Defense who expressed contempt for the film. At the time the film was a commercial rather than a critical success, only becoming viewed more favorably in recent times. The film was released in 1,470 theaters and grossed $70 million (US$}}) domestically.

Eastwood starred in ''The Dead Pool'' (1988), the fifth and final Dirty Harry film in the series. It co-starred Liam Neeson, Patricia Clarkson, and a young Jim Carrey who plays Johnny Squares, a drug-addled rock star and the first of the victims on a list of celebrities drawn up by horror film director Peter Swan (Neeson) who are deemed most likely to die, the so-called "Dead Pool". The list is stolen by an obsessed fan, who in mimicking his favorite director, systematically makes his way through the list killing off celebrities, of which Dirty Harry is also included. ''The Dead Pool'' grossed nearly $38 million (US$}}), relatively low receipts for a ''Dirty Harry'' film and it is generally viewed as the weakest film of the series, although Roger Ebert perceived it to be as good as the original.

Eastwood began working on smaller, more personal projects, and experienced a lull in his career between 1988 and 1992. Always interested in jazz he directed ''Bird'' (1988), a biopic starring Forest Whitaker as jazz musician Charlie "Bird" Parker. Alto saxophonist Jackie McLean and Spike Lee, son of jazz bassist Bill Lee and a long term critic of Eastwood, criticized the characterization of Charlie Parker remarking that it did not capture his true essence and sense of humor. Eastwood received two Golden Globes for the film, the Cecil B. DeMille Award for his lifelong contribution, and the Best Director award. However, ''Bird'' was a commercial disaster earning just $11 million, which Eastwood attributed to the declining interest in jazz among black people.

Carrey would again appear with Eastwood in the poorly received comedy ''Pink Cadillac'' (1989) alongside Bernadette Peters. The film is about a bounty hunter and a group of white supremacists chasing an innocent woman who tries to outrun everyone in her husband's prized pink Cadillac. The film was a disaster, both critically and commercially, earning barely more than ''Bird'' and marking the lowest point in Eastwood's career in years.

1990s

Eastwood directed and starred in ''White Hunter Black Heart'' (1990), an adaptation of Peter Viertel's ''roman à clef'', about John Huston and the making of the classic film ''The African Queen''. Shot on location in Zimbabwe in the summer of 1989, the film received some critical attention but with only a limited release earned just $8.4 million (US$}} in dollars). Later the same year Eastwood directed and co-starred with Charlie Sheen in ''The Rookie'', a buddy cop action film. Critics found the macho jiving between Eastwood and Sheen unconvincing and passed the film off as "blatant racial Hispanic stereotyping". An ongoing lawsuit filed by Stacy McLaughlin resulted in no Eastwood films showing in cinemas in 1991—the third time in his career. The suit was in response to Eastwood allegedly ramming McLaughlin's car while backing out of his parking space at Malpaso. Eastwood won the suit and agreed to pay McLaughlin's court fees if she did not appeal.

}} In 1992 Eastwood revisited the western genre in the self-directed film ''Unforgiven'', where he played an aging ex-gunfighter long past his prime opposite Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris, and his then girlfriend Frances Fisher. Scripts existed for the film as early as 1976 under titles such as ''The Cut-Whore Killings'' and ''The William Munny Killings'' but Eastwood delayed the project, partly because he wanted to wait until he was old enough to play his character and to savor it as the last of his western films. By re-envisioning established genre conventions in a more ambiguous and unromantic light the picture laid the groundwork for later westerns such as ''Deadwood''. ''Unforgiven'' was a major commercial and critical success, with nominations for nine Academy Awards including Best Actor for Eastwood and Best Original Screenplay for David Webb Peoples. It won four, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. Jack Methews of the ''Los Angeles Times'' described it as "the finest classical western to come along since perhaps John Ford's 1956 ''The Searchers''. In June 2008 ''Unforgiven'' was acknowledged as the fourth best American film in the western genre, behind ''Shane'', ''High Noon'', and ''The Searchers'', in the American Film Institute's "AFI's 10 Top 10" list.

Eastwood played Frank Horrigan in the Secret Service thriller ''In the Line of Fire'' (1993) directed by Wolfgang Petersen and co-starring John Malkovich and Rene Russo. Horrigan is a guilt-ridden Secret Service agent, haunted by his failure to react in time to save John F. Kennedy's life. As of 2011 it is the last time he acted in a film that he did not direct himself. The film was among the top 10 box office performers in that year, earning a reported $200 million (US$}} in dollars) in the United States alone. Later in 1993 Eastwood directed and co-starred with Kevin Costner in ''A Perfect World''. Set in the 1960s,Eastwood plays a Texas Ranger in pursuit of an escaped convict (Costner) who hits the road with a young boy (T.J. Lowther). Janet Maslin of ''The New York Times'' remarked that the film was the highest point of Eastwood's directing career and it has since been cited as one of his most underrated directorial achievements.

At the May 1994 Cannes Film Festival Eastwood received France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal then on March 27, 1995, he was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the 67th Academy Awards. His next appearance was in a cameo role as himself in the 1995 children's film ''Casper'' and continued to expand his repertoire by playing opposite Meryl Streep in the romantic picture ''The Bridges of Madison County'' in the same year. Based on a best-selling novel by Robert James Waller and set in Iowa, ''The Bridges of Madison County'' relates the story of Robert Kincaid (Eastwood), a photographer working for ''National Geographic'', who has a love affair with middle-aged Italian farm wife Francesca (Streep). The film was a hit at the box office and highly acclaimed by critics, despite unfavorable views of the novel and a subject deemed potentially disastrous for film. Roger Ebert remarked that "Streep and Eastwood weave a spell, and it is based on that particular knowledge of love and self that comes with middle age." ''The Bridges of Madison County'' was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Picture and won a César Award in France for Best Foreign Film. Streep was also nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.

As well as directing the 1997 political thriller ''Absolute Power'', Eastwood once again appeared alongside co-star Gene Hackman. Eastwood played the role of a veteran thief who witnesses the Secret Service cover up of a murder. The film received a mixed reception from critics and was generally viewed as one of his weaker efforts. Maitland McDonagh of ''TV Guide'' remarked, "The plot turns are no more ludicrous than those of the average political thriller, but the slow pace makes their preposterousness all the more obvious. Eastwood's acting limitations are also sorely evident, since Luther is the kind of thoughtful thief who has to talk, rather than maintaining the enigmatic fortitude that is Eastwood's forte. Disappointing." Later in 1997 Eastwood directed ''Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil'', based on the novel by John Berendt and starring John Cusack, Kevin Spacey, and Jude Law, a film which received a mixed response from critics.

Eastwood directed and starred in ''True Crime'' (1999), which also featured his young daughter Francesca Fisher-Eastwood. He plays Steve Everett, a journalist recovering from alcoholism given the task of covering the execution of murderer Frank Beechum (Isaiah Washington). The film received a mixed reception with Janet Maslin of ''The New York Times'' writing, "''True Crime'' is directed by Mr. Eastwood with righteous indignation and increasingly strong momentum. As in ''A Perfect World,'' his direction is galvanized by a sense of second chances and tragic misunderstandings, and by contrasting a larger sense of justice with the peculiar minutiae of crime. Perhaps he goes a shade too far in the latter direction, though." If some reviews for ''True Crime'' were positive, commercially it was a box office bomb—earning less than half its $55 million (US$}} in dollars) budget—and easily became Eastwood's worst performing film of the 1990s aside from ''White Hunter Black Heart'', which only had limited release.

2000s

In 2000 Eastwood directed and starred in ''Space Cowboys'' alongside Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner as one of a group of veteran "ex-test pilots" who are sent into space to repair an old Soviet satellite. The original music score was composed by Eastwood and Lennie Niehaus. ''Space Cowboys'' was well-received and holds a 79% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. The film received a moderately favorable review from Roger Ebert, "it's too secure within its traditional story structure to make much seem at risk — but with the structure come the traditional pleasures as well." The film grossed over $90 million in its United States release, more than Eastwood's two previous films combined. The following year he played an ex-FBI agent on the track of a sadistic killer (Jeff Daniels) in the thriller ''Blood Work'', loosely based on the 1998 novel of the same name by Michael Connelly. The film was a failure, grossing just $26.2 million (US$}} in dollars) on an estimated budget of $50 million (US$}} in dollars), and received mixed reviews with a consensus at Rotten Tomatoes calling it "well-made but marred by lethargic pacing". Eastwood did, however, win the Future Film Festival Digital Award at the Venice Film Festival.

Eastwood directed and scored the crime drama ''Mystic River'' (2003), a film about murder, vigilantism, and sexual abuse, set in Boston. Starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, and Tim Robbins, ''Mystic River'' was lauded by critics and viewers alike. The film won two Academy Awards, Best Actor for Penn and Best Supporting Actor for Robbins, with Eastwood garnering nominations for Best Director and Best Picture. Eastwood was named Best Director of the Year by the London Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. The film grossed $90 million (US$}} in dollars) domestically on a budget of $30 million (US$}} in dollars).

The following year Eastwood found further critical and commercial success when he directed, produced, scored, and starred in the boxing drama ''Million Dollar Baby'', playing a cantankerous trainer who forms a bond with female boxer (Hilary Swank) who he is persuaded to train by his lifelong friend (Morgan Freeman). The film won four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Swank), and Best Supporting Actor (Freeman). At age 74 Eastwood became the oldest of eighteen directors to have directed two or more Best Picture winners. He also received a nomination for Best Actor and a Grammy nomination for his score. A. O. Scott of ''The New York Times'' lauded the film as a "masterpiece" and the best film of the year.

In 2006 Eastwood directed two films about World War II's Battle of Iwo Jima. The first, ''Flags of Our Fathers'', focused on the men who raised the American flag on top of Mount Suribachi and was followed by ''Letters from Iwo Jima'', which dealt with the tactics of the Japanese soldiers on the island and the letters they wrote home to family members. ''Letters from Iwo Jima'' was the first American film to depict a war issue completely from the view of an American enemy. Both films received praise from critics and garnered several nominations at the 79th Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay for ''Letters from Iwo Jima''. At the 64th Golden Globe Awards Eastwood received nominations for Best Director in both films. ''Letters from Iwo Jima'' won the award for Best Foreign Language Film. Eastwood next directed ''Changeling'' (2008), based on a true story set in the late 1920s. Angelina Jolie stars as a woman who is reunited with her missing son only to realize that he is an impostor. After its release at several film festivals the film grossed over $110 million (US$}} in dollars), the majority of which came from foreign markets. The film was highly acclaimed, with Damon Wise of ''Empire'' describing ''Changeling'' as "flawless". Todd McCarthy of ''Variety'' described it as "emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed" and stated that ''Changeling'' was a more complex and wide-ranging work than Eastwood's ''Mystic River'', saying the characters and social commentary were brought into the story with an "almost breathtaking deliberation". Film critic Prairie Miller said that, in its portrayal of female courage, the film was "about as feminist as Hollywood can get" whilst David Denby argued that, like Eastwood's ''Million Dollar Baby'', the film was "less an expression of feminist awareness than a case of awed respect for a woman who was strong and enduring." Eastwood received nominations for Best Original Score at the 66th Golden Globe Awards, Best Direction at the 62nd British Academy Film Awards and director of the year from the London Film Critics' Circle.

After four years away from acting Eastwood ended his "self-imposed acting hiatus" with ''Gran Torino'', which he also directed, produced, and partly scored with his son Kyle and Jamie Cullum. Biographer Marc Eliot called Eastwood's role "an amalgam of the Man with No Name, Dirty Harry, and William Munny, here aged and cynical but willing and able to fight on whenever the need arose." Eastwood has said that the role will most likely be the last time he acts in a film. It grossed close to $30 million (US$}} in dollars) during its wide release opening weekend in January 2009, the highest of his career as an actor or director. ''Gran Torino'' eventually grossed over $268 million (US$}} in dollars) in theaters worldwide becoming the highest-grossing film of Eastwood's career so far, without adjustment for inflation.

His 29th directorial outing came with ''Invictus'', a film based on the story of the South African team at the 1995 Rugby World Cup, with Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as rugby team captain François Pienaar. Freeman had bought the film rights to John Carlin's book on which the film is based. The film met with generally positive reviews; Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars and described it as a "very good film... with moments evoking great emotion", while ''Variety''s Todd McCarthy wrote, "Inspirational on the face of it, Clint Eastwood's film has a predictable trajectory, but every scene brims with surprising details that accumulate into a rich fabric of history, cultural impressions and emotion." Eastwood was nominated for Best Director at the 67th Golden Globe Awards.

2010s

}} In 2010, Eastwood directed the drama ''Hereafter'', again working with Damon, who portrayed a psychic. The film had its world premiere on September 12, 2010 at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and was given a limited release on October 15, 2010. ''Hereafter'' received mixed reviews from critics, with the consensus at Rotten Tomatoes being, "Despite a thought-provoking premise and Clint Eastwood's typical flair as director, ''Hereafter'' fails to generate much compelling drama, straddling the line between poignant sentimentality and hokey tedium." In the same year, Eastwood served as executive producer for a Turner Classic Movies (TCM) documentary about jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, ''Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way'', to commemorate Brubeck's 90th birthday.

Eastwood's current project is a 2011 biopic of J. Edgar Hoover, entitled ''J. Edgar'', focusing on the former FBI director's scandalous career and controversial private life. It will star Leonardo DiCaprio as Hoover, Armie Hammer as Clyde Tolson, and Damon Herriman as Bruno Hauptmann. In January 2011, it was announced that Eastwood is in talks to direct Beyoncé Knowles in a fourth remake of the 1937 film ''A Star Is Born'', with a 2012 release likely.

Directing style

Beginning with the thriller ''Play Misty for Me'', Eastwood has directed over 30 films in his career; including westerns, action films, and dramas. From the very early days of his career, Eastwood had been frustrated by directors insisting that scenes be re-shot multiple times and perfected and when he began as a director in 1971 he made a conscious attempt to avoid any aspects of directing he had been indifferent to as an actor. As a result, Eastwood is renowned for his efficient film directing and to reduce filming time and to keep budgets under control. Eastwood usually avoids actors rehearsing and prefers most scenes to be completed on the first take. In preparation for filming Eastwood rarely uses storyboards for developing the layout of a shooting schedule. He also attempts to reduce script background details on characters to allow the audience to become more involved in the film, considering their imagination a requirement for a film that connects with viewers. Eastwood has indicated that he lays out a film's plot to provide the audience with necessary details, but not "so much that it insults their intelligence."According to ''Life'' magazine, "Eastwood's style is to shoot first and act afterward. He etches his characters virtually without words. He has developed the art of underplaying to the point that anyone around him who so much as flinches looks hammily histrionic."

Interviewers Richard Thompson and Tim Hunter note that Eastwood's films are "superbly paced: unhurried; cool; and [give] a strong sense of real time, regardless of the speed of the narrative" while Ric Gentry considers Eastwood's pacing to be "unrushed and relaxed". Many of Eastwood's films rely on low lighting to give his films a "noir-ish" feel. Reviewers have pointed out that the majority of his films are based on the male point-of-view, although female characters typically have strong roles as both heroes and villains.

Politics

Eastwood registered as a Republican to vote for Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and later supported Richard Nixon's 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns. However, he later criticized Nixon's handling of the Vietnam War and his morality during Watergate. He expressed his disapproval of America's wars in Korea (1950–1953), Vietnam (1964–1973), and Iraq (2003–2010), believing that the United States should not be overly militaristic or play the role of global policeman. He considers himself too individualistic to be either right-wing or left-wing, describing himself as a "political nothing" and a "moderate" in 1974 and a libertarian in 1997. Eastwood has stated that while he does not see himself as conservative, he is not an "ultra-leftist" either. At times he has supported Democrats in California, including Representative Sam Farr in 2002 and Governor Gray Davis in 2003. A longtime liberal on social issues Eastwood has stated that he is pro-choice on abortion. He has endorsed the notion of allowing gays to marry and contributed to groups supporting the Equal Rights Amendment for women.

As a politician Eastwood has made successful forays into both local and state government. In April 1986 he was elected mayor for one term in his home town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California – a small, wealthy town and artist community on the Monterey Peninsula. During his term he tended towards supporting small business interests and advocating environmental protection. In 2001 Eastwood was appointed to the California State Park and Recreation Commission by Governor Davis, then reappointed in 2004 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. As the vice chairman of the commission, in 2005 along with chairman Bobby Shriver, he led the movement opposed to a six-lane extension of California State Route 241, a toll road that would cut through San Onofre State Beach. Eastwood and Shriver supported a 2006 lawsuit to block the toll road and urged the California Coastal Commission to reject the project, which it duly did in February 2008. In March 2008 Eastwood and Shriver's non-reappointment to the commission on the expiry of their terms prompted the Natural Resources Defense Council (NDRC) to request a legislative investigation into the decision. Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Eastwood to the California Film Commission in April 2004. He has also acted as a spokesman for Take Pride in America, an agency of the United States Department of the Interior which advocates taking responsibility for natural, cultural, and historic resources.

During the 2008 United States Presidential Election Eastwood endorsed John McCain, whom he has known since 1973, but nevertheless wished Barack Obama well upon his subsequent victory. In August 2010 Eastwood wrote to the British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne to protest the decision to close the UK Film Council, warning that the closure could result in fewer foreign production companies choosing to work in the UK.

Personal life

Relationships

Eastwood has fathered at least seven children by five different women and has been described as a "serial womanizer". According to biographers Eastwood has always had a strong sexual appetite and particularly so during the 1970s. He has had affairs with many women including actresses Catherine Deneuve, Peggy Lipton, Jean Seberg, Kay Lenz, Jamie Rose, Inger Stevens, Jo Ann Harris, Jill Banner, casting director Jane Brolin, script analyst Megan Rose, and swimming champion Anita Lhoest.

On December 19, 1953, Eastwood married model Maggie Johnson, six months after they had met on a blind date. The couple had two children: Kyle Eastwood (born May 19, 1968) and Alison Eastwood (born May 22, 1972). Eastwood filed for divorce in 1979 after a long separation, but the $25 million (US$}} in dollars) divorce settlement was not finalized until May 1984.

During an earlier separation from Johnson he fathered a daughter, Kimber (born June 17, 1964), with dancer Roxanne Tunis. Eastwood did not publicly acknowledge her until 1996. Kimber is the mother of Eastwood's oldest grandchild, Clinton, born on February 21, 1984.

He began a fourteen-year relationship with actress Sondra Locke in 1975. They co-starred in six films together: ''The Outlaw Josey Wales'', ''The Gauntlet'', ''Every Which Way but Loose'', ''Bronco Billy'', ''Any Which Way You Can'', and ''Sudden Impact''. During the relationship Locke had two abortions and a subsequent tubal ligation at his request. The couple separated acrimoniously in 1989; Locke filed a palimony suit against Eastwood after being evicted from the home which they shared. She sued him a second time, for fraud, regarding an alleged phony directing deal he gave her in settlement of the first lawsuit. Locke and Eastwood went on to resolve the dispute with a non-public settlement in 1999. Her memoir ''The Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly'' includes an account of their years together.

During his cohabitation with Locke, Eastwood had an affair with flight attendant Jacelyn Reeves. According to biographers they met at the premiere of ''Pale Rider'' where they conceived a son, Scott Reeves (born March 21, 1986). They also had a daughter, Kathryn Reeves (born February 2, 1988), although neither of them were publicly acknowledged until years later. Kathryn served as Miss Golden Globe at the 2005 ceremony where she presented Eastwood with an award for ''Million Dollar Baby''.

In 1990 Eastwood began living with actress Frances Fisher, whom he had met on the set of ''Pink Cadillac'' (1989). They co-starred in ''Unforgiven'' and had a daughter, Francesca Fisher-Eastwood (born August 7, 1993). The couple ended their relationship in early 1995, but remain friends and later appeared together in ''True Crime''. Eastwood met anchorwoman Dina Ruiz when she interviewed him in 1993 and they married on March 31, 1996, when Eastwood surprised her with a private ceremony at his home on the Shadow Creek Golf Course in Las Vegas. She is 35 years his junior and the couple's daughter, Morgan Eastwood, was born on December 12, 1996.

Leisure

Despite appearing to smoke in many of his films, Eastwood is a life-long non-smoker, has been conscious of his health and fitness since he was a teenager, and practices healthy eating and daily Transcendental Meditation. On July 21, 1970, Eastwood's father died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 64. This profoundly altered Eastwood's lifestyle, encouraging him to adopt a vigorous health and exercise regime to ensure his longevity. He abstained from hard liquor, although he still favored cold beer, and opened an old English-inspired pub called the Hog's Breath Inn in Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1971. Eastwood eventually sold the pub and now owns the Mission Ranch Hotel and Restaurant, also located in Carmel-by-the-Sea.

Eastwood is a keen golfer and owns the Tehàma Golf Club. He is also an investor in the world-renowned Pebble Beach Golf Links and donates his time every year to charitable causes at major tournaments. Eastwood was formerly a licensed pilot and often flew his helicopter to the studios to avoid traffic.

Music

Eastwood is an audiophile and has had a strong passion for music all his life. He particularly favors jazz and country and western music and is a pianist and composer. Jazz has played an important role in Eastwood's life from a young age and, although he never made it as a professional musician, he passed on the influence to his son Kyle Eastwood, a successful jazz bassist and composer. Eastwood developed as a ragtime pianist early on and had originally intended to pursue a career in music by studying for a music theory degree after graduating from high school. In late 1959 he produced the album ''Cowboy Favorites'', released on the Cameo label.

Eastwood has his own Warner Bros. Records-distributed imprint Malpaso Records, as part of his deal with Warner Brothers, which has released all of the scores of Eastwood's films from ''The Bridges of Madison County'' onward. Eastwood co-wrote "Why Should I Care" with Linda Thompson and Carole Bayer Sager, which was recorded by Diana Krall. Eastwood composed the film scores of ''Mystic River'', ''Grace Is Gone'' (2007), and ''Changeling'', and the original piano compositions for ''In the Line of Fire''. He also wrote and performed the song heard over the credits of ''Gran Torino''. The music in ''Grace Is Gone'' received two Golden Globe nominations by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for the 65th Golden Globe Awards. Eastwood was nominated for Best Original Score, while the song "Grace is Gone" with music by Eastwood and lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager was nominated for Best Original Song. It won the Satellite Award for Best Song at the 12th Satellite Awards. ''Changeling'' was nominated for Best Score at the 14th Critics' Choice Awards, Best Original Score at the 66th Golden Globe Awards, and Best Music at the 35th Saturn Awards. On September 22, 2007, Eastwood was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music at the Monterey Jazz Festival, on which he serves as an active board member. Upon receiving the award he gave a speech claiming, "It's one of the great honors I'll cherish in this lifetime."

Awards and honors

colspan="2" Best Director Best Director Best Director

+ Academy Awards
Year !! Award !! Film !! W/N
	Academy Award for Best Director>Best Director	Unforgiven'' >
Academy Award for Best Picture	Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Actor	Best Actor	''Unforgiven''
1994	Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award || style="text-align: center"|Won
rowspan="2"	2003	|	Mystic River (film)>Mystic River''	Nominated
Best Picture	''Mystic River''
rowspan="3"	2004	|	''Million Dollar Baby''	Won
Best Picture
Best Actor	''Million Dollar Baby''
rowspan="2"	2006	|	''Letters from Iwo Jima''	Nominated
Best Picture	''Letters from Iwo Jima''

Eastwood has been recognized with multiple awards and nominations for his work in film, television, and music. His widest reception has been in film work, for which he has received Academy Awards, Directors Guild of America Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and People's Choice Awards, among others. Eastwood is one of only two people to have been twice nominated for Best Actor and Best Director for the same film (''Unforgiven'' and ''Million Dollar Baby'') the other being Warren Beatty (''Heaven Can Wait'' and ''Reds''). Along with Beatty, Robert Redford, Richard Attenborough, Kevin Costner, and Mel Gibson, he is one of the few directors best known as an actor to win an Academy Award for directing. On February 27, 2005, he became one of only three living directors (along with Miloš Forman and Francis Ford Coppola) to have directed two Best Picture winners. At age 74, he was also the oldest recipient of the Academy Award for Best Director. Eastwood has directed five actors in Academy Award–winning performances: Gene Hackman in ''Unforgiven'', Tim Robbins and Sean Penn in ''Mystic River'', and Morgan Freeman and Hilary Swank in ''Million Dollar Baby''.

On August 22, 1984, Eastwood was honored at a ceremony at Grauman's Chinese theater to record his hand and footprints in cement. Eastwood received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1996 and received an honorary degree from AFI in 2009. On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Eastwood into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts. In early 2007, Eastwood was presented with the highest civilian distinction in France, Légion d'honneur, at a ceremony in Paris. French President Jacques Chirac told Eastwood that he embodied "the best of Hollywood". In October 2009, he was honored by the Lumière Award (in honor of the Lumière Brothers, inventors of the Cinematograph) during the first edition of the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, France. This award honors his entire career and his major contribution to the 7th Art. In February 2010, Eastwood was recognized by President Barack Obama with an arts and humanities award. Obama described Eastwood's films as "essays in individuality, hard truths and the essence of what it means to be American."

Eastwood has also been awarded at least three honorary degrees from universities and colleges, including an honorary degree from University of the Pacific in 2006, an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Southern California on May 27, 2007, and an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music at the Monterey Jazz Festival on September 22, 2007.

Filmography

Eastwood has contributed to over 50 films over his career as actor, director, producer, and composer. He has acted in several television series, most notably starring in ''Rawhide''. He started directing in 1971 and made his debut as a producer in 1982 with ''Firefox'' and ''Honkytonk Man''. Eastwood also has contributed music to his films, either through performing, writing, or composing. He has mainly starred in western, action, and drama films. According to the box office-revenue tracking website, Box Office Mojo, films featuring Eastwood have grossed a total of more than US$1.68 billion domestically, with an average of $37 million per film.

Notes

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

Clint Eastwood at Rotten Tomatoes

Charlie Rose show: An hour with Clint Eastwood

|- ! colspan="3" style="background: #DAA520;"|National Board of Review |-

Category:1930 births Category:Actors from California Category:Akira Kurosawa Award winners Category:American actor-politicians Category:American aviators Category:American composers Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American film producers Category:American firefighters Category:American libertarians Category:American people of Dutch descent Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:American restaurateurs Category:American television actors Category:Best Director Academy Award winners Category:Best Director Golden Globe winners Category:California Republicans Category:César Award winners Category:Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur Category:Eastwood family Category:English-language film directors Category:Fellini Gold Medalists Category:Film directors from California Category:Film producers from California Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Living people Category:Mayors of places in California Category:Recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun Category:People from Oakland, California Category:People from Piedmont, California Category:People from San Francisco, California Category:Producers who won the Best Picture Academy Award Category:Spaghetti Western actors Category:Transcendental Meditation practitioners Category:United States Army soldiers Category:Western (genre) film actors Category:Western (genre) film directors Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients Category:Helicopter pilots

ar:كلينت إيستوود an:Clint Eastwood bn:ক্লিন্ট ইস্টউড zh-min-nan:Clint Eastwood be:Клінт Іствуд be-x-old:Клінт Іствуд bar:Eastwood Clint bs:Clint Eastwood br:Clint Eastwood bg:Клинт Истууд ca:Clint Eastwood cv:Клинт Иствут cs:Clint Eastwood cy:Clint Eastwood da:Clint Eastwood de:Clint Eastwood et:Clint Eastwood el:Κλιντ Ίστγουντ es:Clint Eastwood eo:Clint Eastwood eu:Clint Eastwood fa:کلینت استوود fr:Clint Eastwood fy:Clint Eastwood ga:Clint Eastwood gd:Clint Eastwood gl:Clint Eastwood ko:클린트 이스트우드 hi:क्लिंट ईस्टवुड hr:Clint Eastwood io:Clint Eastwood id:Clint Eastwood it:Clint Eastwood he:קלינט איסטווד sw:Clint Eastwood ht:Clint Eastwood la:Clint Eastwood lv:Klints Īstvuds lb:Clint Eastwood lt:Clint Eastwood hu:Clint Eastwood mk:Клинт Иствуд ml:ക്ലിന്റ് ഈസ്റ്റ്‌വുഡ് mr:क्लिंट ईस्टवूड nl:Clint Eastwood ja:クリント・イーストウッド no:Clint Eastwood nn:Clint Eastwood nds:Clint Eastwood pl:Clint Eastwood pt:Clint Eastwood ro:Clint Eastwood ru:Иствуд, Клинт sq:Clint Eastwood simple:Clint Eastwood sk:Clint Eastwood sl:Clint Eastwood sr:Клинт Иствуд sh:Clint Eastwood fi:Clint Eastwood sv:Clint Eastwood tl:Clint Eastwood ta:கிலின்ட் ஈஸ்ட்வுட் th:คลินต์ อีสต์วูด tr:Clint Eastwood uk:Клінт Іствуд vi:Clint Eastwood zh:克林·伊斯威特

Brahmananda Saraswati (20 December 1870 - 20 May 1953) was the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, a revered Hindu spiritual title in India, from 1941 to 1953.

Early life

Brahmananda Saraswati was born into a Brahmin family in the village of Gana, near Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, India. He was called Rajaram in his younger days and was also known as Maha Yogiraj.

At the age of nine Rajaram left his home unannounced to follow a spiritual path of renunciation but was soon returned to his parents by a policeman. On returning home, he asked his parents for permission to leave home and begin the life of a recluse. His parents wanted him to marry and live the life of a householder and asked their family guru, or panditji, to convince Rajaram to forget his dream of a reclusive life. The family guru, however, was so impressed with Rajaram's advanced state of wisdom and spiritual evolution that he gave up any attempt to change the boy's mind. The parents then also acquiesced and gave their permission for Rajaram to leave. Two days later Rajaram formally renounced his family life and left his boyhood home in search of solitude in the Himalayas.The story of Rajaram's youthful renunciation echoes a similar tale about Shankara who is said to have abandoned his mother to lead a renunciate life at the age of eight.

Rajaram traveled by foot to the town of Haridwar and then on to Rishikesh, the gateway to the Himalayas. Here he began the search for a suitable guru or spiritual master. Rajaram met many wise sages, but none of them met his requirements of life long celibacy and an intimate knowledge and experience of the Vedas.

Five years later at the age of fourteen, in a village in Uttar Kashi, Rajaram found his chosen Master and became a disciple of Dandi Swami Krishnanand Saraswati. At that time, Rajaram was given the name of Brahma Chaitanya Brahmachari. He then became the favorite disciple in his master's ashram and, according his master's instructions, he retired to a cave, resolving not to emerge until he had attained enlightenment.

Adult life

At the age of twenty five, the Brahmachari emerged from his cave and permanently rejoined his Master at his ashram.

In 1904, at the age of thirty-six Brahmachari was initiated into the order of "Sannyas" by his Master at the great Indian celebration called Kumbh Mela. At that time, Brahmachari was formally ordained into the ascetic order and given the name Shri Swami Brahmanand Saraswati Maharaj.

Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math

In 1941, at the age of 70, after repeated requests and decades of meditation and living alone in silence in the forests and mountains of India, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati accepted the position of Shankaracharya (spiritual leader) of Jyotir Math, a position that had been vacant for about 150 years.. He refashioned the Buddhist notion of formal monastic orders and made them available to his followers. This prompted Ramanuja to call him a crypto-Buddhist and Madhva continued the assault, saying that Shankara's unflinching monism was prompted by his inability to count beyond one. Followers of the orthodox school of Mimamsa were also unhappy at his emphasis on the importance of renunciation. Shankara's later rise to pre-eminence represents a turn-around in his reputation.

On various occasions Brahmananda Saraswati was visited by public figures such as Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the president of India, and the philosopher Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, who succeeded Prasad as President of India. In 1950, President Radhakrishnan addressed Brahmananda Saraswati as Vedanta Incarnate, the embodiment of truth.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became a devotee of Brahmananda Saraswati shortly before Brahmanda Saraswati was installed as Shankaracharya in 1941. The Maharishi later became the Shankaracharya's personal assistant. The Maharishi wrote an essay on Brahmananda Sarawsati, whom he revered as Guru Dev or greatest teacher, saying: "In the English Language, his devotees felt that the expression "His Holiness" did not adequately describe this personified Divine Effulgence; and so the new expression "His Divinity" was used. With such unique adoration of newer and fuller grandeur, transcending the glories of the expression of antiquity, was worshiped the holy name of Guru Deva, the living expression of Upanishadic Reality, the embodiment of the transcendent Divinity." This essay was included later in the 1955 book ''Beacon Light of the Himalayas''.

Those trained by the Maharishi respect Brahmananda Saraswati as their Guru Dev and as an outstanding representative of the Vedic tradition. It is in recognition of Guru Dev as the modern custodian of the Vedic tradition that a puja ceremony is performed by the Transcendental Meditation teacher during personal instruction. In Monier-Williams' Sanskrit dictionary, the primary meaning of 'puja' is honour.

An explanation of the purpose of the TM puja ceremony, the Sanskrit text of the ceremony, and its English translation was written and published by the Maharishi in the pamphlet, ''The Holy Tradition''. The court in ''Malnak v Yogi'', quoting and citing ''The Holy Tradition'', found that this ceremony involved the making of offerings to a deified Guru Dev. The title Guru Dev is widely used, often to refer to a deceased spiritual teacher. Mahatma Gandhi called the Bengali poet and musician Rabindranath Tagore Guru Dev.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in his farewell message on January 11, 2008, announced the establishment of the Brahmananda Saraswati Trust, named in honor of his teacher, to support large groups totaling more than 30,000 peace-creating Vedic Pandits in perpetuity across India.

Swami Shree Swaroopananda Saraswati ji

“Swami Shree Swaroopananda Saraswati ji was born Pothiram Upadhyay in 1924, in Seoni District, the village of Dighori, in Madhya Pradesh. At nine years old he left home to visit the holy places of India, including Varanasi where he eventually studied with Swami Karpatri who is also known as Hariharananda Saraswati, a disciple of Guru Dev Swami Brahmananda Saraswati. In 1942 when he was nineteen years old he became a freedom fighter in the Quit India movement and was known as 'Revolutionary Sadhu'. He served two prison sentences for this offence, of 9 months & 6 months. In 1950 Guru Dev made him a dandi sannyasi. After Guru Dev's passing in 1953, Swarupanandji took up with a new guru, Swami Krishnabhodashram ji Maharaj. Krishnabhodashramji was established as Guru Dev's successor by Swami Karpatri. Swami Swarupanandji became president of the Ramrajya Parishad Party, which had been set up by Swami Karpatri. On Krishnabhodashram's demise the post of Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math passed to Swami Swarupanandji. There were now two Shankaracharya ashrams in Joshimath, Swami Swaroopanand's on the site of Trotakacharya's cave, just below the ashram that Guru Dev Swami Brahmanand had built in the 1940s. In 1982 Swami Swaroopanand inherited the title of Shankaracharya of Dwarka.”

References

External links

Life & Teaching of Guru Dev, Shankaracharya Swami Brahmanand Saraswati

Biographical data and quotations

The official website of Swami Shree Swaroopananda Saraswati ji

Category:1871 births Category:1953 deaths Category:Hindu religious figures Category:People from Faizabad Category:Transcendental Meditation movement Category:People from Chamoli district

de:Brahmananda Saraswati fr:Brahmananda Saraswati