Name	Duke University
Image name	Duke University Crest.svg
Motto	''Eruditio et Religio'' (Latin)
Mottoeng	Knowledge and Faith
Established	1838
Former names	|||}}

|type = Private |affiliation = United Methodist Church ties, but nonsectarian and independent |endowment = }} |calendar = Semester |president = Richard H. Brodhead |faculty = 3,200 |staff = |students = 14,746 |undergrad = 6,526 |postgrad = 8,220 |city = Durham |state = North Carolina |country = United States|coor= |campus = }} |nickname = Blue Devils |athletics = NCAA Division I FBS; ACC26 varsity teams |affiliations = AAU, COFHE, 568 Group, URA, CDIO |colors = }}| }} |website = duke.edu | logo = 183px|upright|Logo of Duke University }}

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James B. Duke established The Duke Endowment, at which time the institution changed its name to honor his deceased father, Washington Duke.

The university has "historical, formal, on-going, and symbolic ties" with the United Methodist Church, but is a nonsectarian and independent institution. Duke's research expenditures in the 2010 fiscal year topped $983 million, the fifth largest figure in the nation. Competing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Duke's athletic teams—known as the Blue Devils—have captured twelve national championships, including four by its high profile men's basketball team.

The university's campus spans over on three contiguous campuses in Durham as well as a marine lab in Beaufort. Duke's main campus—designed largely by the prominent African American architect Julian Abele—incorporates Gothic architecture with the Duke Chapel at the campus' epicenter and highest point of elevation. The forest environs surrounding parts of the campus belie the University's proximity to downtown Durham. Construction projects have updated both the freshmen-populated Georgian-style East Campus and the main Gothic-style West Campus, as well as the adjacent Medical Center over the past five years.

History [link]

Beginnings [link]

Duke started in 1838 as Brown's Schoolhouse, a private subscription school founded in Randolph County in the present-day town of Trinity. Organized by the Union Institute Society, a group of Methodists and Quakers, Brown's Schoolhouse became the Union Institute Academy in 1841 when North Carolina issued a charter. The academy was renamed Normal College in 1851 and then Trinity College in 1859 because of support from the Methodist Church. In 1892 Trinity moved to Durham, largely due to generosity from Julian S. Carr and Washington Duke, powerful and respected Methodists who had grown wealthy through the tobacco and electrical industries. Carr donated land in 1892 for the original Durham campus, which is now known as East Campus. At the same time, Washington Duke gave the school $85,000 for an initial endowment and construction costs—later augmenting his generosity with three separate $100,000 contributions in 1896, 1899, and 1900—with the stipulation that the college "open its doors to women, placing them on an equal footing with men."

In 1924 Washington Duke's son, James B. Duke, established The Duke Endowment with a $40 million trust fund. Income from the fund was to be distributed to hospitals, orphanages, the Methodist Church, and four colleges (including Trinity College). William Preston Few, the president of Trinity at the time, insisted that the institution be renamed Duke University to honor the family's generosity and to distinguish it from the myriad of other colleges and universities carrying the "Trinity" name. At first, James B. Duke thought the name change would come off as self-serving, but eventually he accepted Few's proposal as a memorial to his father. Money from the endowment allowed the University to grow quickly. Duke's original campus, East Campus, was rebuilt from 1925 to 1927 with Georgian-style buildings. By 1930, the majority of the Collegiate Gothic-style buildings on the campus one mile (1.6 km) west were completed, and construction on West Campus culminated with the completion of Duke Chapel in 1935.

Expansion and growth [link]

Engineering, which had been taught since 1903, became a separate school in 1939. In athletics, Duke hosted and competed in the only Rose Bowl ever played outside California in Wallace Wade Stadium in 1942. During World War II, Duke was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission. In 1963 the Board of Trustees officially desegregated the undergraduate college. Increased activism on campus during the 1960s prompted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to speak at the University in November 1964 on the progress of the civil rights movement. Terry Sanford, the former governor of North Carolina, was elected president of the university in 1969, propelling the Fuqua School of Business's opening, the William R. Perkins library completion, and the founding of the Institute of Policy Sciences and Public Affairs (now the Sanford School of Public Policy). The separate Woman's College merged back with Trinity as the liberal arts college for both men and women in 1972. Beginning in the 1970s, Duke administrators began a long-term effort to strengthen Duke's reputation both nationally and internationally. Interdisciplinary work was emphasized, as was recruiting minority faculty and students. During this time it also became the birthplace of the first Physician Assistant degree program in the United States. Duke University Hospital was finished in 1980 and the student union building was fully constructed two years later. In 1986 the men's soccer team captured Duke's first National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship, and the men's basketball team followed shortly thereafter with championships in 1991 and 1992.

Recent history [link]

Duke's growth and academic focus have contributed to continuing the university's reputation as an academic and research powerhouse. The school has regularly sent three-member teams to the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, earning the title of the best collegiate undergraduate math team in the United States and Canada in 1993, 1996, and 2000. From 1996 to 2007, Duke's team finished in the top five 10 times, trailing only Harvard's 11 in that time period.

Construction continued on campus in the 1990s, with the Levine Science Research Center (LSRC) opening in 1994 to house interdisciplinary research. Similar projects have updated both the freshmen-housed East Campus and the main West Campus, as well as the adjacent Medical Center, in the past two decades.

In 1998 President Nan Keohane initiated a five-year $1.5 billion "Campaign for Duke" fundraising effort. Edmund T. Pratt, Jr. ('47) endowed the Pratt School of Engineering with a $35 million gift in 1999. The Campaign for Duke ended in 2003 with $2.36 billion raised, making it the fifth largest campaign in the history of American higher education. Three students were named Rhodes Scholars in both 2002 and 2006, a number surpassed only by Harvard in 2002 and the United States Military Academy in 2006. Overall, Duke has produced 43 Rhodes Scholars through 2011, including 22 in the 21-year period between 1990 to 2011.

In August 2005, Duke established a partnership with the National University of Singapore to develop a joint medical program, which had its first entering class in 2007. The first working demonstration of an invisibility cloak was unveiled by Duke researchers in October 2006. Another notable event in 2006 occurred when three lacrosse team members were falsely accused of rape. Charges against the players were later dropped and the accused were declared innocent by the state's attorney general. The incident garnered significant media attention. Figures from the 2010 fiscal year show research expenditures surpassed the $983 million mark.

Campus [link]

Duke University owns 220 buildings on of land, which includes the Duke Forest. The campus is divided into four main areas: West, East, and Central campuses and the Medical Center, which are all connected via a free bus service. On the Atlantic coast in Beaufort, Duke owns as part of its marine lab. One of the major public attractions on the main campus is the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, established in the 1930s.

Duke students often refer to the campus as "the Gothic Wonderland," a nickname referring to the Collegiate Gothic architecture of West Campus. Much of the campus was designed by Julian Abele, one of the first prominent African-American architects and the chief designer in the offices of architect Horace Trumbauer. The residential quadrangles are of an early and somewhat unadorned design, while the buildings in the academic quadrangles show influences of the more elaborate late French and Italian styles. The freshmen campus (East Campus) is composed of buildings in the Georgian architecture style.

The stone used for West Campus has seven primary colors and seventeen shades of color. The university supervisor of planning and construction wrote that the stone has "an older, more attractive antique effect" and a "warmer and softer coloring than the Princeton stone" that gave the university an "artistic look." James B. Duke initially suggested the use of stone from a quarry in Princeton, New Jersey, but later amended the plans to purchase a local quarry in Hillsborough to reduce costs. Duke Chapel stands at the center of West Campus on the highest ridge. Constructed from 1930 to 1935, the chapel seats 1,600 people and, at is one of the tallest buildings in Durham County.

From February 2001 to November 2005, Duke spent $835 million on 34 major construction projects as part of a five-year strategic plan, "Building on Excellence." Completed projects since 2002 include major additions to the business, law, nursing, and divinity schools, a new library, an art museum, a football training facility, two residential buildings, an engineering complex, a public policy building, an eye institute, two genetic research buildings, a student plaza, the French Family Science Center, and two new medical-research buildings.

Libraries and museums [link]

With more than six million volumes, the Duke University Library System is one of the ten largest private research university library systems in the U.S. and is 22nd largest among members of the Association of Research Libraries. In addition to millions of books, there are 17.7 million manuscripts, 1.2 million public documents, and tens of thousands of films and videos.

The William R. Perkins Library system comprises the Perkins Library complex (Perkins Library, Bostock Library, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library and University Archives), Lilly Library (which houses materials on fine arts, philosophy, film and video, and performing arts), the Music Library, and the Pearse Memorial Library (located at the Marine Lab). Besides the main William R. Perkins Library complex, the university library system also includes the separately-administered Ford (business), Divinity School, Goodson Law, and Medical Center libraries.

Duke's art collections are housed at the Nasher Museum of Art on Central Campus. The museum was designed by Rafael Viñoly and is named for Duke alumnus and art collector Raymond Nasher. The museum opened in 2005 at a cost of over $23 million and contains over 13,000 works of art, including works by Andy Warhol, Barkley L. Hendricks, Christian Marclay, Dario Robleto, and Kara Walker.

West, East, and Central Campuses [link]

West Campus, considered the main campus of the University, houses all the sophomores, along with some juniors and seniors. Most of the academic and administrative centers are located there. Main West Campus, with Duke Chapel at its center, contains the majority of residential quads to the south, while the main academic quad, library, and Medical Center are to the north. The campus, spanning , includes Science Drive, which is the location of science and engineering buildings. Most of the campus eateries and sports facilities—including the historic basketball stadium, Cameron Indoor Stadium—are on West Campus. {|style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto" |- |center|600px|thumb|alt=Panoramic photo of a row of three-story Gothic style building exteriors|The main West Campus is dominated by Neo-Gothic architecture. Shown here are typical residence halls. |} East Campus, the original location of Duke after it moved to Durham, functions as a freshman campus as well as the home of several academic departments. Since the 1995–96 academic year, all freshmen—and only freshmen, except for upperclassmen serving as Resident Assistants—have lived on East Campus, to build class unity. The campus encompasses and is from West Campus. The Art History, History, Literature, Music, Philosophy, and Women's Studies Departments are housed on East. Programs such as dance, drama, education, film, and the University Writing Program reside on East. The self-sufficient East Campus contains the freshman residence halls, a dining hall, coffee shop, post office, Lilly Library, Baldwin Auditorium, a theater, Brodie Gym, tennis courts, and several academic buildings. Separated from downtown by a short walk, the area was the site of the Women's College from 1930 to 1972. {|style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto" |- |600px|center|thumb|alt=Panoramic photo of Georgian style buildings lining a grass lawn with a domed auditorium in the background|East Campus, home to all Duke freshmen, features Georgian style architecture. Baldwin Auditorium can be seen on the right side.

Central Campus, consisting of between East and West campuses, houses around 850 juniors and seniors and 200 professional students in apartments. It is home to the Nasher Museum of Art, the Freeman Center for Jewish Life, the Duke Police Department, the Duke Office of Disability Management, a Ronald McDonald House, and administrative departments such as Duke Residence Life and Housing Services. Central Campus has several recreation and social facilities such as basketball courts, tennis courts, a sand volleyball court, barbecue grills and picnic shelters, a general gathering building called Devil's Den, the Mill Village, and a convenience store. {|style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto"|- | |}Since 2005, there has been a long-term plan in place to restructure Central Campus over the subsequent 20 to 50 years. The idea is to develop an "academic village" as a key center for the Duke community. This academic village will provide living arrangements for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students and some faculty, plus dining, recreation, and academic support spaces while serving as a living laboratory for sustainability.

Key places [link]

Duke Forest, established in 1931, consists of in six divisions, just west of West Campus. The largest private research forest in North Carolina and one of the largest in the nation, the Duke Forest demonstrates a variety of forest stand types and silvicultural treatments. Duke Forest is used extensively for research, and includes the Aquatic Research Facility, Forest Carbon Transfer and Storage (FACTS-I) research facility, two permanent towers suitable for micrometerological studies, and other areas designated for animal behavior and ecosystem study. More than of trails are open to the public for hiking, cycling, and horseback riding.

The Duke Lemur Center, located inside the Duke Forest, is the world's largest sanctuary for rare and endangered prosimian primates. Founded in 1966, the Duke Lemur Center spans and contains nearly 300 animals of 25 different species of lemurs, galagos and lorises.

The Sarah P. Duke Gardens, established in the early 1930s, is situated between West Campus and the apartments of Central Campus. The gardens occupy , divided into four major sections: the original Terraces and their surroundings; the H.L. Blomquist Garden of Native Plants, devoted to flora of the Southeastern United States; the W.L. Culberson Asiatic Arboretum, housing plants of Eastern Asia, as well as disjunct species found in Eastern Asia and Eastern North America; and the Doris Duke Center Gardens. There are five miles (8 km) of allées and paths throughout the gardens.

Duke University Medical Center, bordering Duke's West Campus northern boundary, combines one of the top-rated hospitals and one of the top-ranked medical schools in the U.S. Founded in 1930, the Medical Center occupies 8 million square feet (700,000 m²) in 99 buildings on .

Duke University Marine Lab, located in the town of Beaufort, North Carolina, is also technically part of Duke's campus. The marine lab is situated on Pivers Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, across the channel from Beaufort. Duke's interest in the area began in the early 1930s and the first buildings were erected in 1938. The resident faculty represent the disciplines of oceanography, marine biology, marine biomedicine, marine biotechnology, and coastal marine policy, and management. The Marine Laboratory is a member of the National Association of Marine Laboratories.

Academics [link]

Duke's student body consists of 6,526 undergraduates and 8,220 graduate and professional students (as of fall 2011). The university has "historic and symbolic ties to the Methodist Church but it always has been independent in its governance." For the undergraduate class of 2015, Duke received 29,724 applications, and accepted approximately 13% of them. According to ''The Huffington Post'', Duke ranks among the ten toughest universities to get into based on admissions data. The yield rate (the percentage of accepted students who choose to attend the university) is approximately 45%. For the class of 2014, 95% of admitted students ranked in the top 10% of their high school classes. The middle 50% range of SAT scores for first-year students is 660-750 for verbal/critical reading, 690-780 for math, and 670-770 for writing, while the ACT range is 31–34.

{| style="text-align:center; float:left; font-size:85%; margin-left:2em; margin:auto;" class="wikitable" |+ ''Demographics of student body Fall 2010'' ! !! Undergraduate !! Graduate !! U.S. Census |- ! African American | 10% || 5% || 12.1% |- ! Asian American | 22% || 9% || 4.3% |- ! Non-Hispanic White American | 47% || 54% || 68% |- ! Hispanic American | 7% || 4% || 14.5% |- ! Other/Unknown/International | 14% || 28% || N/A |}

Duke University has two schools for undergraduates: Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and Pratt School of Engineering.

From 2001 to 2011, Duke has had the sixth highest number of Fulbright, Rhodes, Truman, and Goldwater scholarships in the nation among private universities. The University practices need-blind admissions and meets 100% of admitted students' demonstrated need. About 50 percent of all Duke students receive some form of financial aid, which includes need-based aid, athletic aid, and merit aid. The average need-based grant for the 2010–2011 academic year was nearly $36,000. Roughly 60 merit-based scholarships are also offered, including the Angier B. Duke Memorial Scholarship, awarded for academic excellence. Other scholarships are geared toward students in North Carolina, African-American students, and high-achieving students requiring financial aid.

Duke's endowment had a market value of $5.7 billion in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2011. The University's special academic facilities include an art museum, several language labs, the Duke Forest, the Duke Herbarium, a lemur center, a phytotron, a free electron laser, a nuclear magnetic resonance machine, a nuclear lab, and a marine lab. Duke is a leading participant in the National Lambda Rail Network and runs a program for gifted children known as the Talent Identification Program.

Graduate profile [link]

In 2009, the School of Medicine received 5,166 applications and accepted approximately 4% of them, while the average GPA and MCAT scores for accepted students from 2002 through 2009 were 3.74 and 34, respectively. The School of Law accepted approximately 13% of its applicants for the Class of 2014, while enrolling students had a median GPA of 3.75 and median LSAT of 170.

The University's graduate and professional schools include the Graduate School, the Pratt School of Engineering, the Nicholas School of the Environment, the School of Medicine, the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, the School of Nursing, the Fuqua School of Business, the School of Law, the Divinity School, and the Sanford School of Public Policy.

Undergraduate curriculum [link]

Duke offers 36 arts and sciences majors, four engineering majors, and 46 additional majors that have been approved under Program II, which allows students to design their own interdisciplinary major. Sixteen certificate programs also are available. Students may pursue a combination of a total of up to three majors, minors, and certificates. Eighty percent of undergraduates enroll in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, while the rest are in the Pratt School of Engineering.

Trinity's curriculum operates under the revised version of "Curriculum 2000." It ensures that students are exposed to a variety of "areas of knowledge" and "modes of inquiry." The curriculum aims to help students develop critical faculties and judgment by learning how to access, synthesize, and communicate knowledge effectively. The intent is to assist students in acquiring perspective on current and historical events, conducting research and solving problems, and developing tenacity and a capacity for hard and sustained work. Freshmen can elect to participate in the FOCUS Program, which allows students to engage in an interdisciplinary exploration of a specific topic in a small group setting.

Pratt's curriculum is narrower in scope, but still accommodates double majors in a variety of disciplines. The school emphasizes undergraduate research—opportunities for hands-on experiences arise through internships, fellowship programs, and the structured curriculum. For the class of 2010, about 31% of Pratt undergraduates studied abroad, small compared to the percentage for Trinity undergraduates (47%), but much larger than the national average for engineering students (3.2%).

Research [link]

In the 2010 fiscal year, research expenditures surpassed $983 million, placing Duke as the fifth largest research university in the nation overall and second largest private university. In the 2005 fiscal year, Duke University Medical Center received the sixth-largest amount of funding from the National Institute of Health, netting $391.2 million. Duke's funding increased 14.8% from 2004, representing the largest growth of any top-20 recipient. In the 2008 fiscal year, Duke University School of Nursing was 18th nationally in the rankings of the National Institute of Health funding for nursing schools, netting more than $2.34 million, up 54 percent from 2007, when it ranked 30th nationally.

Throughout the school's history, Duke researchers have made breakthroughs, including the biomedical engineering department's development of the world's first real-time, three-dimensional ultrasound diagnostic system and the first engineered blood vessels. In the mechanical engineering department, Adrian Bejan developed the constructal theory, which explains the shapes that arise in nature. Duke has pioneered studies involving nonlinear dynamics, chaos, and complex systems in physics. In May 2006 Duke researchers mapped the final human chromosome, which made world news as the Human Genome Project was finally complete. Reports of Duke researchers' involvement in new AIDS vaccine research surfaced in June 2006. The biology department combines two historically strong programs in botany and zoology, while one of the divinity school's leading theologians is Stanley Hauerwas, whom ''Time'' named "America's Best Theologian" in 2001. The graduate program in literature boasts several internationally renowned figures, including Fredric Jameson, and Michael Hardt, while philosophers Robert Brandon and Lakatos Award-winner Alexander Rosenberg contribute to Duke's ranking as the nation's best program in philosophy of biology, according to the ''Philosophical Gourmet Report''.

Rankings [link]

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In the 2012 ''U.S. News & World Report'' ranking of undergraduate programs at doctoral granting institutions, Duke ranked 10th. In the past twenty years, ''U.S. News & World Report'' has placed Duke as high as 3rd and as low as 10th. In 2011, Duke was ranked 19th in the world in the QS World University Rankings and 22nd in the world in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. Duke was ranked the 14th-best university in the world by ''Newsweek'' and 35th best globally by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2010, focusing on quality of scientific research and the number of Nobel Prizes. ''The Wall Street Journal'' ranked Duke sixth (fifth among universities) in its "feeder" rankings in 2006, analyzing the percentage of undergraduates that enroll in what it considers the top five medical, law, and business schools. The 2010 report by the ''Center for Measuring University Performance'' puts Duke at 6th in the nation. The 2011 Emerging/Trendence Global Employability Ranking as published by ''The New York Times'' surveyed hundreds of chief executives and chairmen from around the world and asked them to select the best universities from which they recruited, placed Duke at 13th in the world and 9th in the country. In 2005, Duke enrolled 117 National Merit Scholars, the 6th university in rank by number. Duke ranks 5th among national universities to have produced Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Goldwater, and Udall Scholars. According to the 2010–2011 PayScale's statistical study on "How Much a College Degree is Worth" through graduation rate, total cost to graduate, and university's return on investment (ROI), Duke is ranked 9th nationally. According to the 2011 ''Princeton Review'' survey on "Top Dream Colleges" among parents, Duke ranked as the 6th dream university. ''Kiplinger''s ''50 Best Values in Private Universities 2010–11'' ranks Duke at 5th best overall after taking financial aid into consideration. According to a study by ''Forbes'', Duke ranks 11th among universities that have produced billionaires and 1st among universities in the South. A survey by the ''Journal of Blacks in Higher Education'' in 2002 ranked Duke as the #1 university in the country in regard to the integration of African American students and faculty. Data from Payscale.com in 2012 shows Duke graduates earning the 6th highest median salaries among national universities in the US. According to a poll of recruiters conducted by the Wall Street Journal, Duke ranks 2nd in terms of producing the best graduates who have received either a marketing or liberal arts degree. Collegeatlas.com ranks the undergraduate liberal arts program at Duke number 3 in the nation, the ranking incorporates both research universities as well as liberal arts colleges in the United States.

In ''U.S. News & World Report''s "America's Best Graduate Schools 2013," Duke's medical school ranked 9th for research. The hospital was ranked 10th in the nation by the 2010–2011 ''U.S. News & World Report'' Health Rankings of Best Hospitals in America. The School of Law was ranked 11th in 2012 by the same publication, while law recruiters ranked the program 8th in the country. Duke's nursing school ranked 7th in ''U.S. News & World Report''s 2013 rankings, while the Sanford School of Public Policy ranked 16th in 2012 for national public affairs programs and 6th for public policy analysis. Among business schools in the United States, the Fuqua School of Business was ranked 4th for its Executive M.B.A. program, 3rd for marketing, 8th for management, and 12th overall by ''U.S. News & World Report'' in 2012, while ''BusinessWeek'' ranked its full-time MBA program 6th in the nation in 2010. The graduate program for the Pratt School of Engineering was ranked 28th while the biomedical engineering program was ranked 3rd by ''U.S. News & World Report''. Taking the ''U.S. News & World Report'' Professional School Rankings in 2008 based on Mean Reputation Score, Duke ranks 7th among national universities. ''Times Higher Education'' ranked the mathematics department tenth in the world in 2011. Duke's graduate level specialties that are ranked among the top ten in the nation include areas in the following departments: biological sciences, medicine, nursing, engineering, law, business, English, history, physics, statistics, public affairs, physician assistant (ranked #1), clinical psychology, political science, and sociology.

Student life [link]

Residential life [link]

Duke requires its students to live on campus for the first three years of undergraduate life, except for a small percentage of second semester juniors who are exempted by a lottery system. This requirement is justified by the administration as an effort to help students connect more closely with one another and sustain a sense of belonging within the Duke community. Thus, 85% of undergraduates live on campus. All freshmen are housed in one of 14 residences on East Campus. These buildings range in occupancy size from 50 (Epworth—the oldest residence hall, built in 1892 as "the Inn") to 190 residents (Gilbert-Addoms). Most of these are in the Georgian style typical of the East Campus architecture. Although the newer residence halls differ in style, they still relate to East’s Georgian heritage. Learning communities connect the residential component of East Campus with students of similar academic and social interests. Similarly, students in FOCUS, a first-year program that features courses clustered around a specific theme, live together in the same residence hall as other students in their cluster.

The majority of sophomores reside on West Campus, but they may also elect to live on Central Campus. Juniors and seniors can choose to reside on either of the two campuses, although the majority of undergraduate seniors choose to live off campus. West Campus contains six quadrangles—the four along "Main" West were built in 1930s, while two newer ones have since been added. Central Campus provides housing for over 1,000 students in several apartment buildings. Various learning communities are allocated sections of the quadrangles, thereby living close to one another, but still within the context of a larger community. Twenty-seven "selective living groups" are housed within sections on West, including 15 fraternities. Most of the non-fraternity selective living groups are coeducational.

Greek and social life [link]

About 30% of undergraduate men and about 40% of undergraduate women at Duke are members of fraternities and sororities. Most of the 15 Interfraternity Council recognized fraternity chapters live in sections within the residence halls, while the nine Panhellenic Association sorority chapters feature no such living arrangements, although students can elect to "block" in groups to live near one another. Eight National Pan-Hellenic Council (historically African American) fraternities and sororities also hold chapters at Duke. In addition, there are seven other fraternities and sororities that are a part of the Inter-Greek Council, the multicultural Greek umbrella organization. Duke also has 11 Selective Living Groups, or SLGs, on campus for students wanting self-selected living arrangements. SLGs are residential groups similar to fraternities or sororities, except they are generally co-ed and unaffiliated with any national organizations. Fraternity chapters frequently host social events in their residential sections, which are often open to non-members.

In the late-1990s, a new keg policy was put into effect that requires all student groups to purchase kegs through Duke Dining Services. According to administrators, the rule change was intended as a way to ensure compliance with alcohol consumption laws as well as to increase on-campus safety. Some students saw the administration's increasingly strict policies as an attempt to alter social life at Duke. As a result, off-campus parties at rented houses became more frequent in subsequent years as a way to avoid Duke policies. Many of these houses were situated in the midst of family neighborhoods, prompting residents to complain about excessive noise and other violations. Police have responded by breaking up parties at several houses, handing out citations, and occasionally arresting party-goers. In the mid-to-late 2000s (decade), the administration made a concerted effort to help students re-establish a robust, on-campus social life and has worked with numerous student groups, especially the Duke University Union, to feature a wide array of events and activities. In March 2006, the university purchased 15 houses in the Trinity Park area that Duke students had typically rented and subsequently sold them to individual families in an effort to encourage renovations to the properties and to reduce off-campus partying in the midst of residential neighborhoods.

Duke athletics, particularly men's basketball, traditionally serves as a significant component of student life. Duke's students have been recognized as some of the most creative and original fans in all of collegiate athletics. Students, often referred to as Cameron Crazies, show their support of the men's basketball team by "tenting" for home games against key Atlantic Coast Conference rivals, especially University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). Because tickets to all varsity sports are free to students, they line up for hours before each game, often spending the night on the sidewalk. For a mid-February game against UNC, some of the most eager students might even begin tenting before spring classes begin. The total number of participating tents is capped at 100 (each tent can have up to 12 occupants), though interest is such that it could exceed that number if space permitted. Tenting involves setting up and inhabiting a tent on the grass near Cameron Indoor Stadium, an area known as Krzyzewskiville, or K-ville for short. There are different categories of tenting based on the length of time and number of people who must be in the tent. At night, K-ville often turns into the scene of a party or occasional concert. The men's basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski, occasionally buys pizza for the inhabitants of the tent village.

Activities [link]

Student organizations [link]

More than 400 student clubs and organizations operate on Duke's campus. These include numerous student government, special interest, and service organizations. Duke Student Government (DSG) charters and provides most of the funding for other student groups and represents students' interests when dealing with the administration. The Duke University Union (DUU) is the school's primary programming organization, serving a center of social, cultural, intellectual and recreational life. Cultural groups are provided funding directly from the university via the Multicultural Center as well as other institutional funding sources. One of the most popular activities on campus is competing in sports. Duke has 38 sports clubs, and 8 intramural teams that are officially recognized. Performance groups such as Hoof 'n' Horn, the country's second oldest student-run musical theater organization, a cappella groups, student bands, and theater organizations are also prominent on campus. The Duke University mock trial team won the national championship in 2012. The Duke University Student Dining Advisory Committee provides guidance to the administration on issues regarding student dining, life, and restaurant choices.

Cultural groups on campus include the Asian Students Association, Blue Devils United (the student lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender group), Black Student Alliance, Diya (South Asian Association), Jewish Life at Duke, Mi Gente (Latino Student Association), International Association/International Council, Muslim Student Association, Native American Student Coalition, Newman Catholic Student Center, Languages Dorm, and Students of the Caribbean.

Civic engagement [link]

According to ''The Princeton Review'', Duke is one of 81 institutions in the country with outstanding community service programs. In 2008 Duke received the Community Engagement Classification from Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In February 2007, Duke launched DukeEngage, a $30 million civic engagement program that allows undergraduates to participate in an in-depth service opportunity over the course of a summer or semester. The program's scope has been called "unprecedented in U.S. higher education." Duke students have created more than 30 service organizations in Durham and the surrounding area. Examples include a weeklong camp for children of cancer patients (Camp Kesem) and a group that promotes awareness about sexual health, rape prevention, alcohol and drug use, and eating disorders (Healthy Devils). The Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, started by the Office of Community Affairs in 1996, attempts to address major concerns of local residents and schools by leveraging university resources. Another community project, "Scholarship with a Civic Mission," is a joint program between the Hart Leadership Program and the Kenan Institute for Ethics. Other programs include Project CHILD, a tutoring program involving 80 first-year volunteers; an after-school program for at-risk students in Durham that was started with $2.25 million grant from the Kellogg Foundation in 2002; and Project BUILD, a freshman volunteering group that dedicates 3,300 hours of service to a variety of projects such as schools, Habitat for Humanity, food banks, substance rehabilitation centers, and homeless shelters. Some courses at Duke incorporate service as part of the curriculum to augment material learned in class such as in psychology or education courses (known as service learning courses).

Student media [link]

''The Chronicle'', Duke's independent undergraduate daily newspaper, has been continually published since 1905 and now, along with its website, has a readership of about 70,000. Its editors are responsible for selecting the term "Blue Devil". The newspaper won Best in Show in the tabloid division at the 2005 Associated Collegiate Press National College Media Convention. Cable 13, established in 1976, is Duke's student-run television station. It is a popular activity for students interested in film production and media. WXDU-FM, licensed in 1983, is the University's nationally recognized, noncommercial FM radio station, operated by student and community volunteers.

Athletics [link]

Duke's 26 varsity sports teams, known as the Blue Devils, are members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)'s Division I Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). Duke's teams have won twelve NCAA team national championships—the women's golf team has won five (1999, 2002, 2005, 2006, and 2007), the men's basketball team has won four (1991, 1992, 2001, and 2010), and the men's soccer (1986), women's tennis (2009), and men's lacrosse (2010) teams have won one each.

In the past ten years, Duke has finished in the top 30 in the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) Directors' Cup, an overall measure of an institution's athletic success. In 2011 Duke finished fifth in all of Division I and placed the best in the ACC, while the athletic program finished tenth in 2010. Duke has won 118 ACC Championships, 47 of which have come since 1999–2000 (through 2010–11), which is the second most in the ACC. Duke teams that have been ranked in the top ten nationally in the 2000s (decade) include men's and women's basketball, men's and women's tennis, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's fencing, men's and women's cross country running, men's and women's lacrosse, women's field hockey, and men's and women's golf. Ten of these teams were ranked in the top ten in the country during the 2010–11 school year, while 17 were in the top 25. The men's lacrosse program has proven successful, reaching the NCAA tournament semifinals in six consecutive participating seasons from 2005 to 2011, including winning the national championship in 2010.

The Blue Devil mascot's origins are rooted in an elite French alpine fighting unit that garnered accolades and much global attention during World War I and its aftermath for its flowing blue capes and blue berets. Duke's mascot origin is considered to be military and patriotic rather than anti-religious. Historically, Duke's major rival has been the Tar Heels of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, especially in basketball. The rivalry has led the fanbases to identify the two differing shades of blue in relation to their respective university—calling the lighter powder blue "Carolina blue" and the darker blue "Duke blue".

On the academic front, according to a 2006 evaluation conducted by the NCAA, Duke's student-athletes have the highest graduation rate of any institution in the nation. From 2005 to 2010, Duke has placed in the top three every year (and finished first in 2005 through 2007) among Division I schools in the National Collegiate Scouting Association Power Rankings—a combination of the institution's Director's Cup standing, its athletic graduation rate, and its academic rank in ''U.S. News & World Report.'' Duke led the ACC in Honor Roll inductees 23 out of the last 24 years through the 2010–2011 academic year.

Men's basketball [link]

Duke's men's basketball team is one of the nation's most successful basketball programs. The team has captured four National Championships (fifth place all time), while attending 15 Final Fours (third place overall) and 10 Championship games (tied for second). Duke has the most Atlantic Coast Conference championships, with 19, and has the most National Players of the Year in the nation, with 11. Seventy-two players have been selected in the NBA Draft, while 32 players have been honored as All-Americans. Duke's program is one of only two to have been to at least one Final Four and one National Championship game in each of the past five decades. The program's home facility is historic Cameron Indoor Stadium, considered one of the top venues in the nation.

The team's success has been particularly outstanding over the past 30 years under coach Mike Krzyzewski (often simply called "Coach K"), who also has coached the USA men's national basketball team since 2006 and led the team to Olympic gold in 2008 and to World Championship gold in 2010. Their successes include becoming the only team to win four national championships since the NCAA Tournament field was expanded to 64 teams in 1985, 11 Final Fours in the past 25 years, and eight of nine ACC tournament championships from 1999 to 2006.

Football [link]

The Blue Devils have won seven ACC Football Championships, have had ten players honored as ACC Player of the Year (the most in the ACC), and have had three Pro Football Hall of Famers come through the program (second in the ACC to only Miami's four). The Blue Devils have produced 11 College Football Hall of Famers, which is tied for the 2nd most in the ACC. Duke has also won 18 total conference championships (7 ACC, 9 Southern Conference, and 1 Big Five Conference). That total is the highest in the ACC.

The most famous Duke football season came in 1938, when Wallace Wade coached the "Iron Dukes" that shut out all regular season opponents; only three teams in history can claim such a feat. That same year, Duke made their first Rose Bowl appearance, where they lost 7–3 when USC scored a touchdown in the final minute of the game. Wade's Blue Devils lost another Rose Bowl to Oregon State in 1942, this one held at Duke's home stadium due to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which resulted in the fear that a large gathering on the West Coast might be in range of Japanese aircraft carriers. The football program proved successful in the 1950s and 1960s, winning six of the first ten ACC football championships from 1953 to 1962 under coach Bill Murray; the Blue Devils would not win the ACC championship again until 1989 under coach Steve Spurrier.

Duke has not had a winning football season since 1994, but has shown some signs of improvement in recent years. David Cutcliffe was brought in prior to the 2008 season, and amassed more wins in his first season than the previous three years combined. The 2009 team won 5 of 12 games, and was eliminated from bowl contention in the next-to-last game of the season. Mike MacIntyre, the defensive coordinator, was named 2009 Assistant Coach of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA).

While the football team has struggled at times on the field, the graduation rate of its players is consistently among the highest among Division I-A schools. Duke's high graduation rates have earned it more AFCA Academic Achievement Awards than any other institution.

Alumni [link]

Duke's active alumni base of more than 145,000 devote themselves to the university through organizations and events such as the annual Reunion Weekend and Homecoming. There are 75 Duke clubs in the U.S. and 38 such international clubs. For the 2008–09 fiscal year, Duke tied for third in alumni giving rate among U.S. colleges and universities according to ''U.S. News & World Report''. Based on statistics compiled by PayScale in 2011, Duke alumni rank seventh in mid-career median salary among all U.S. colleges and universities. A number of alumni have made significant contributions in the fields of government, law, science, academia, business, arts, journalism, and athletics, among others.

Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States graduated with a law degree in 1937. Former U.S. Senator and Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole, 33rd President of Chile Ricardo Lagos, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Juanita M. Kreps, congressman and three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs and former Chief of Staff of the United States Army Eric Shinseki, and the first United States Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey are among the most notable alumni with involvement in politics and government.

In the research realm, Duke graduates who have won the Nobel Prize in Physics include Hans Dehmelt for his development of the ion trap technique, Robert Richardson for his discovery of superfluidity in helium-3, and Charles Townes for his work on quantum electronics. Other alumni in research and academia include Turing Award winners Fred Brooks and John Cocke, Templeton Prize winning physicist and religion scholar Ian Barbour, MacArthur Award recipient Paul Farmer, and former Dean of the Graduate School at Princeton Theodore Ziolkowski.

Prominent journalists include talk show host Charlie Rose, ''The Washington Post'' sports writer John Feinstein, Chief Washington Correspondent for CNBC and ''The Wall Street Journal'' writer John Harwood, CBS News President Sean McManus, chief legal correspondent for ''Good Morning America'' Dan Abrams, and CNN anchor and senior correspondent for ''The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer'' Judy Woodruff. Basketball analysts and commentators include Jay Bilas, Mike Gminski, Jim Spanarkel, and Jay Williams. Magazine editors include Rik Kirkland of ''Fortune'' and Clay Felker, founder of ''New York Magazine,'' who died in 2008.

In the area of literature, William C. Styron won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1968 for his novel ''The Confessions of Nat Turner'' and is well known for his 1979 novel ''Sophie's Choice.'' Anne Tyler also received the Pulitzer Prize for her 1988 novel ''Breathing Lessons''. In the arts realm, Annabeth Gish (actress in the ''X-Files'' and ''The West Wing''), Ken Jeong (actor in ''The Hangover'' and ''Community''), Randall Wallace (screenwriter, producer, and director, ''Braveheart'', ''Pearl Harbor'', ''We Were Soldiers''), Mike Posner (singer, songwriter, and producer, ''Cooler Than Me'', ''Please Don't Go'') and David Hudgins (television writer and producer, ''Everwood'', ''Friday Night Lights'') headline the list.

On the business front, the current or recent President, CEO, or Chairman of each of the following Fortune 500 companies is a Duke alumnus: Apple (Tim Cook), BB&T; (John A. Allison IV), Boston Scientific Corporation (Peter Nicholas), Chesapeake Energy (Aubrey McClendon), Cisco System (John Chambers), General Motors (Rick Wagoner), JPMorgan Chase (Steven Black), Medtronic (William A. Hawkins), Morgan Stanley (John J. Mack), Norfolk Southern (David R. Goode), Northwest Airlines (Gary L. Wilson), PepsiCo (Karl von der Heyden), Pfizer (Edmund T. Pratt, Jr.), The Bank of New York Mellon (Gerald Hassell), and Wachovia (Robert K. Steel). Kevin Martin was Chairman of the FCC, and Rex Adams serves as the Chairman of PBS. Another alumna, Melinda Gates, is the co-founder of the $31.9 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the nation's wealthiest charitable foundation.

Management and ownership of professional athletic franchises include John Angelos (Executive Vice President of the Baltimore Orioles), Aubrey McClendon (partial owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder), John Canning, Jr. (co-owner of Milwaukee Brewers), Danny Ferry (former general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers), Stephen Pagliuca (co-owner of Boston Celtics), and Jeffrey Vinik (owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning).

Finally, several athletes have become stars at the professional level, especially in basketball's NBA. Shane Battier, Corey Maggette, Elton Brand, Carlos Boozer, Luol Deng, Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley, Grant Hill, and J.J. Redick are among the most famous.

Notes [link]

External links [link]

Duke.edu: Official website of Duke University

GoDuke.com: Official athletics website of Duke University

''The Chronicle Online'': Official student newspaper of Duke University

Category:Association of American Universities Category:Oak Ridge Associated Universities Duke University Category:Duke family Category:Educational institutions established in 1838 Category:Universities and colleges in the Research Triangle, North Carolina Category:Universities and colleges in North Carolina Category:National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities members Category:Universities and colleges accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Category:Universities and colleges in Durham, North Carolina

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Converted	y
Character name	Blue Devil
Real name	Daniel Patrick Cassidy
Publisher	DC Comics
Debut	''Fury of Firestorm'' #24 (June 1984)
Creators	Dan Mishkin (writer)Gary Cohn (writer)Paris Cullins (artist)
Alliances	ShadowpactJustice LeagueSentinels of Magic
Partners
Supports
Aliases
Powers	Superhuman strength, durability, vision, and hearingHealing factorCan find demons on Earth and banish them to HellHighly trained martial artist and acrobat
Cat	super
Subcat	DC Comics
Hero	y
Sortkey	Blue Devil }}

Blue Devil is a fictional character, a superhero featured in material published by DC Comics. He first appeared in a special insert published in ''Fury of Firestorm'' #24 (June 1984). That story led directly into ''Blue Devil'' #1, also cover dated June 1984. He was created by Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn, and Paris Cullins.

Fictional character biography[link]

Daniel Patrick Cassidy is a special effects wizard and stuntman hired to create and play the title character in the movie ''Blue Devil''. To that end Cassidy creates a full-body costume with a hidden powered exoskeleton and built-in special-effects devices. When two of his co-stars accidentally free a demon named Nebiros, Cassidy uses his costume to drive the demon back, but not before being blasted with mystical energy. After the fight, Cassidy finds that the blast has permanently grafted the Blue Devil costume to his body.

Cassidy quickly finds himself embroiled in repeated adventures and conflicts with supervillains, as his newfound status has turned him into a "weirdness magnet." Never stopping to seek a way to remove his costume, Cassidy starts to enjoy his new lifestyle, and becomes more and more comfortable as a superhero, even accepting a place in the Justice League of America. He gains a sidekick of some sort, when Eddie Bloomberg, his former gofer and devoted fan, designs a suit similar to his own to adventure as the Kid Devil. Eventually, he moves into "The House of Weirdness" with Cain the Caretaker as his superintendent.

The first ''Blue Devil'' series was intentionally written as a humorous and light-hearted comic book story, but this light-hearted style was discarded with later appearances of the character.

Blue Demon and later alliances[link]

Seeking more fame and thrills, Blue Devil is approached by the demon Neron. Neron is known for offering Faustian bargains to heroes and villains alike. Neron offers Cassidy fame as an actor, requiring an act of destruction as payment. Neron sends Cassidy to destroy an unmanned electrical substation in the desert. Believing it to be a relatively harmless act, Blue Devil complies, however he unwittingly causes the death of Eddie's Aunt Marlene, Cassidy's best friend. The story of his personal loss is enough to attract several movie offers.

Opposing Neron, Cassidy is able to partly foil the demon's short-term plans, but he dies in the process. Cassidy's death is short-lived, as he is restored to life as a real devil, no longer a man in an organic suit. Ironically, Cassidy had been a devout Catholic, but now the Blue Devil is despised by the Catholic Church and even unable to set foot on consecrated ground without self-immolating.

Blue Devil joins the Justice League again, until his second death at the hands of Mist, who showered him with holy water. Blue Devil's bones are retrieved by Sebastian Faust, who much later restores him again to life, seeking help to restart the fires of Hell during the Day of Judgment storyline. Blue Devil now has the chance to confront Nebiros, empowered by a magic trident seemingly given by the King of Lies himself; Blue Devil stalls Nebiros, stripping him of his trident and allowing Firestorm to deal the killing blow, while back on Earth the other heroes of the Sentinels of Magic save the world.

Blue Devil then joins the Sentinels of Magic and partners with Faust, but it is an uneasy partnership. As an apparent act of kindness, Faust restores Blue Devil's freedom by restoring to him his last missing bone. Blue Devil sacrifices his life against Hermes Trismegistus, but as a true devil he is restored to life again, tasked to roam the Earth with Lucifer's Trident banishing escaped demons back to Hell.

One Year Later[link]

One Year Later Blue Devil is employed as a bouncer at the Oblivion Bar, an interdimensional place for magical beings, and there he is recruited by Ragman, Enchantress, and the Detective Chimp to fight against Spectre in ''Day of Vengeance''. With his enhanced demonic strength, he's the heavy hitter of the Shadowpact, the assemblage of magical heroes devoted to fight for every "lost cause." This grouping is even able to wound the powerful Eclipso. Feeling necessary for the first time in a long time, he devotes himself to the team. One of the goals they take on is to help look over the wild magic of the "Tenth Age"; a direct result of the events of ''Day of Vengeance''.

He spends the "missing year" trapped in Riverrock, Wyoming along with the rest of Shadowpact. It is a small city hidden by a blood shield by an assembly of evil magical beings, called the Pentacle. There he meets, or rather meets again, Jack of Fire, a red, muscular demon. The entity is hiding a disfigured, bony face under a black bandanna, claiming to have been turned into a demon by the actions of Daniel. He further explains that the very same moment the demonic Neron granted fame and powers to Cassidy as the Blue Devil, the dead parents and siblings of Patrick were dragged from Heaven to Hell.

From then on, Blue Devil's life starts going downhill: even if in his personal time line passed only a few days, the Enchantress was forced to steal a year of life out of every Shadowpact member (and surviving Riverrock towns person) to shatter the bloody barrier. As such, the entire world had long thought Shadowpact lost, even building a memorial statue. Having been considered dead for a year, Blue Devil struggles to rebuild his life.

Blue Devil is forced to confront Kid Devil, now granted metahuman powers by Neron himself. When questioned about his involvement in Marlene's death, Blue Devil is forced to admit that his actions were what caused her death. Due to the terms of his deal with Neron, that he would become Neron's eternal servant on his 20th birthday should he lose his trust in Blue Devil, Kid Devil realizes that he is now damned, having lost all trust in Blue Devil following his confession. Kid Devil, enraged, yells at Blue Devil to stay away from him and runs off, leaving a guiltridden Blue Devil behind.

To add further misery to his condition, Blue Devil is demoted to the rank of "rhyming demon." His new position results in the heroic Earth-based angel Zauriel being sent to confront him. His demotion is explained as the paradoxical condition of his being both a hero and a demon: being famous and loved by everyone, he makes Hell a glamorous place, spurring weak minds to attain his glamor by selling their souls to hell. Zauriel, on behalf of his good faith, takes Blue Devil's place in the Shadowpact, giving him enough time get out of his infernal deal.

Blue Devil puts his case in the hands of an eager lawyer, more than happy to be able to confront Hell itself in a hall of justice. Blue Devil undertakes the task of completing 13 labors, as Hercules before him, on behalf of the Catholic Church as a show of good will.

Returning to Hell for the final hearing, he discovers that Jack of Fire was the one selling his sibling's soul first, with Blue Devil merely following unwillingly. His lawyer repeatedly proves that Jack is the only one who can return Cassidy's soul, and the souls of his family, back, since he was the one who sold them in the first place. Blue Devil uses his new lower status as a rhyming demon to force Jack to do so, but in the process he loses both Lucifer's Trident and his demon form, reverting back to a mortal.

Jack of Fire is now allied with a seemingly all-powerful Sun God, but plots to betray him in retaliation for his harsh treatment and to lead an army of demons on Earth. Cassidy feels forced to don a new suit of armor, very similar to the one he wore during his Hollywood years, but even more powerful. He sets off to fight his brother, who refuses. Instead, after a brief confrontation, acknowledging that the Sun God will eventually kill him for his betrayal, he commits suicide in front of Cassidy, naming him inheritor of all his powers and demonic status - but without forfeiting his soul. Cassidy rejoins the Shadowpact to defeat the Sun God, and Zauriel ends his temporary membership with the group.

Blue Devil is seen as part of Alan Scott's superhero army in ''Final Crisis'' #5 (Dec. 2008).

During the ''Reign in Hell'' storyline, Cassidy convinces Zatanna and Sargon the Sorcerer to take him to Hell and accompany him as to make a deal with Lord Satanus against Neron; when, after much suffering, they reach Satanus, he pleads to be incorporated into Satanus' attack force in hopes of receiving the gift of full humanity from the demon in case of his victory. Inadvertently, he brags about being capable of handling Etrigan, who is causing damage to Satanus' forces; Satanus takes heed of this and teleports him to do battle with Etrigan. Upon losing, the demon steals the remains of his humanity.

Later, due to the effects of the magical drug Satanus has released all over Hell, he is transformed into a human, but soulless. Etrigan, now transformed into a replica of Jason Blood, offers him his soul back, warning him the drug only worked on pureblood demons such as the type he had been transformed into when Etrigan stole his soul, meaning accepting it back meant returning to his demon shape forever. He is later traumatized by Sargon's sacrifice to let almost all heroes intervening in the War of Hell escape to Nanda Parbat, and is later the only one convinced of reuniting the Shadowpact by Detective Chimp.

His most recent appearance was with Zatanna and the Phantom Stranger at the desecrated grave of Batman in ''Blackest Night''. In typical fashion, he cracks that the Stranger brought them there to "hold hands and sing Kumbaya." That changes when black rings take control of Crispus Allen. While Zatanna was sent to gather the Justice League, Blue Devil and the Stranger attempt to stop the Black Lantern Spectre, failing miserably. He and the Stranger head to Nanda Parbat, where the Stranger helps Deadman remove the black ring from his body. Blue Devil is then tasked by the Stranger to protect the body, being told that it is of "singular importance."

Powers and abilities[link]

Even before he became Blue Devil, Dan Cassidy was a highly trained martial artist and acrobat. His costume included Kevlar body armor, visual and auditory amplifiers, radio gear, mini-gills allowing underwater breathing, and servo-motors which increased his strength at least twentyfold. After being grafted to Cassidy's body the costume became organic and gained the ability to self-repair at an extremely fast rate (effectively a healing factor). Cassidy's abilities seem to have been changed little by his transformation into an actual demon.

In his current incarnation, Blue Devil still possesses some degree of superhuman strength, capable of going toe-to-toe with beings like Eclipso, and knocking out a power-drunk Enchantress in one punch. He is also remarkably resistant to physical damage, evidenced when Eclipso threw him a distance of approximately 500 feet upwards, he did not even require time to recover before getting up and heading back into the fight.

Originally, Blue Devil wielded a trident of his own design which included, among other things, rocket engines capable of carrying two people at high speeds. He now carries the Trident of Lucifer, which allows him to find demons on Earth and banish them to Hell. During a battle with Eclipso and the Spectre the trident was thrown into the ocean; it was recovered shortly after by Aquaman who returned it to Cassidy, and much later given to Jack of Fire.

Briefly resuming his human body with a more powerful exosuit, Cassidy is given back his trident and demonic powers by Jack of Fire, but as a "demon with a soul".

Other versions[link]

Kingdom Come[link]

In ''Kingdom Come'', there is a background character named Blue Devil II, an indigo-skinned demon with wings who was visually based on Chernabog, the demon from the Disney film ''Fantasia''.

In other media[link]

Television[link]

Blue Devil appeared in a few episodes of ''Justice League Unlimited''. He mostly serving as a background character with non-speaking cameo appearances. He only spoke in the series finale episode "Destroyer", where he had one line to yell for everyone to go to the Javelins.

Blue Devil makes a non-speaking cameo appearance in the ''Young Justice'' episode "Revelation". He is shown helping the Flash and Captain Atom prevent a nuclear meltdown caused by gigantic moving plants. In "Agendas," Blue Devil is considered for membership in the Justice League. The suggestion ends up being passed over.

Toys[link]

Blue Devil was the sixth figure released in the thirteenth wave of the DC Universe Classics line. He appears in his regular costume and his accessory is his trident.

Miscellaneous[link]

In the comic book adaptation of ''Justice League Unlimited'', Blue Devil is the featured character of issue number 25.

References[link]

External links[link]

Cosmic Teams entry

Blue Devil interview/preview on THE PULSE

Justin's Honest-to-Goodness Blue Devil Page

The Grand Comics Database Project - Index access for ''Blue Devil'' and ''Blue Devil Annual''

Category:DC Comics characters with superhuman strength Category:DC Comics superheroes Category:DC Comics titles Category:DC Comics characters with accelerated healing Category:Fictional demons Category:Fictional American people of Irish descent Category:Fictional characters who have made pacts with devils Category:DC Comics demons Category:DC Comics martial artists Category:1984 comic debuts Category:Comics characters introduced in 1984

de:Blue Devil es:Blue Devil fa:بلو دویل fr:Blue Devil tl:Blue Devil

name	Richard Dawkins
birth name	Clinton Richard Dawkins
birth date	March 26, 1941
birth place	Nairobi, Kenya Colony
nationality	British
education	MA, DPhil (Oxon)
alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
doctoral advisor	Nikolaas Tinbergen
doctoral students	Alan Grafen, Mark Ridley
occupation	Ethologist
years active	1967–present
employer	University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of Oxford
organization	Fellow of the Royal SocietyFellow of the Royal Society of Literature
known for	Gene-centered view of evolution, concept of the meme, as well as advocacy of atheism and science.
notable works	''The Selfish Gene'' (1976)''The Extended Phenotype'' (1982)''The Blind Watchmaker'' (1986)''The God Delusion'' (2006)
influences	Charles Darwin, Ronald Fisher, George C. Williams, W. D. Hamilton, Daniel Dennett, Bertrand Russell
spouse	Marian Stamp Dawkins (m. 1967–1984)Eve Barham (m. 1984–?)Lalla Ward (m. 1992–present)
children	Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984)
parents	Clinton John DawkinsJean Mary Vyvyan (née Ladner)
awards	Faraday Award (1990)Kistler Prize (2001)
website	The Richard Dawkins Foundation
footnotes	}}

Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941), known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.

Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book ''The Selfish Gene'', which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term ''meme''. In 1982 he introduced an influential concept into evolutionary biology, presented in his book ''The Extended Phenotype'', that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms.

Dawkins is an atheist, a vice president of the British Humanist Association, and a supporter of the Brights movement. He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book ''The Blind Watchmaker'', he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a ''blind'' watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. In his 2006 book ''The God Delusion'', Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—"a fixed false belief." As of January 2010 the English-language version has sold more than two million copies and had been translated into 31 languages.

Biography [link]

Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya. His father, Clinton John Dawkins (1915–2010), returning to England in 1949, when Dawkins was eight. His father had inherited a country estate, Over Norton Park, which he turned into a commercial farm. Both his parents were interested in natural sciences; they answered Dawkins' questions in scientific terms.

Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing". He was confirmed, and embraced Christianity until his mid-teens, at which point he concluded that the theory of evolution was a better explanation for life's complexity, and ceased believing in a god. Dawkins states: "the main residual reason why I was religious was from being so impressed with the complexity of life and feeling that it had to have a designer, and I think it was when I realised that Darwinism was a far superior explanation that pulled the rug out from under the argument of design. And that left me with nothing." Dawkins' research in this period concerned models of animal decision-making.

From 1967 to 1969, he was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. During this period, the students and faculty at UC Berkeley were largely opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War, and Dawkins became heavily involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities. He returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 taking a position as a lecturer, and in 1990, as a reader in zoology. In 1995 he was appointed Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position that had been endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder "be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field", and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.

Since 1970 he has been a fellow of New College. He has delivered a number of inaugural and other lectures, including the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (1989), first Erasmus Darwin Memorial Lecture (1990), Michael Faraday Lecture (1991), T. H. Huxley Memorial Lecture (1992), Irvine Memorial Lecture (1997), Sheldon Doyle Lecture (1999), Tinbergen Lecture (2004) and Tanner Lectures (2003). In 1991 he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children. He has also served as editor of a number of journals, and has acted as editorial advisor to the ''Encarta Encyclopedia'' and the ''Encyclopedia of Evolution''. He is a senior editor of the Council for Secular Humanism's ''Free Inquiry'' magazine, for which he also writes a column. He has been a member of the editorial board of ''Skeptic'' magazine since its foundation.

He has sat on judging panels for awards as diverse as the Royal Society's Faraday Award and the British Academy Television Awards, and has been president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2004 Balliol College, Oxford instituted the Dawkins Prize, awarded for "outstanding research into the ecology and behaviour of animals whose welfare and survival may be endangered by human activities". In September 2008, he retired from his professorship, announcing plans to "write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in 'anti-scientific' fairytales."

Personal life [link]

On 19 August 1967, Dawkins married fellow ethologist Marian Stamp in Annestown, County Waterford, Ireland; they divorced in 1984. Later that same year, on 1 June, he married Eve Barham (19 August 1951–28 February 1999) in Oxford. They had a daughter, Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984, Oxford). Dawkins and Barham also divorced and she later died of cancer. In 1992 he married actress Lalla Ward in Kensington and Chelsea, London. Dawkins met her through their mutual friend Douglas Adams, who had worked with her on the BBC's ''Doctor Who''.

Work [link]

Evolutionary biology [link]

In his scientific works, Dawkins is best known for his popularisation of the gene-centred view of evolution. This view is most clearly set out in his books ''The Selfish Gene'' (1976), where he notes that "all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities", and ''The Extended Phenotype'' (1982), in which he describes natural selection as "the process whereby replicators out-propagate each other". In his role as an ethologist, interested in animal behaviour and its relation to natural selection, he advocates the idea that the gene is the principal unit of selection in evolution.

Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution (such as spandrels, described by Gould and Lewontin) and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene. He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection as a basis for understanding altruism. This behaviour appears at first to be an evolutionary paradox, since helping others costs precious resources and decreases one's own fitness. Previously, many had interpreted this as an aspect of group selection: individuals were doing what was best for the survival of the population or species as a whole, and not specifically for themselves. British evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton had used the gene-centred view to explain altruism in terms of inclusive fitness and kin selection − that individuals behave altruistically toward their close relatives, who share many of their own genes. Similarly, Robert Trivers, thinking in terms of the gene-centred model, developed the theory of reciprocal altruism, whereby one organism provides a benefit to another in the expectation of future reciprocation. Dawkins popularised these ideas in ''The Selfish Gene'', and developed them in his own work.

He has also been strongly critical of the Gaia philosophy theory of the independent scientist James Lovelock.

Critics of Dawkins' approach suggest that taking the gene as the unit of ''selection'' − of a single event in which an individual either succeeds or fails to reproduce − is misleading, but that the gene could be better described as a unit of ''evolution'' − of the long-term changes in allele frequencies in a population. In ''The Selfish Gene'', Dawkins explains that he is using George C. Williams' definition of the gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency." Another common objection is that genes cannot survive alone, but must cooperate to build an individual, and therefore cannot be an independent "unit". In ''The Extended Phenotype'', Dawkins suggests that because of genetic recombination and sexual reproduction, from an individual gene's viewpoint all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted.

Advocates for higher levels of selection such as Richard Lewontin, David Sloan Wilson, and Elliot Sober suggest that there are many phenomena (including altruism) that gene-based selection cannot satisfactorily explain. The philosopher Mary Midgley, with whom Dawkins clashed in print concerning ''The Selfish Gene'', has criticised gene selection, memetics and sociobiology as being excessively reductionist and suggests that the popularity of Dawkins' work is due to factors in the Zeitgeist such as the increased individualism of the Thatcher/Reagan decades.

In a set of controversies over the mechanisms and interpretation of evolution (the so-called 'Darwin Wars'), one faction was often named after Dawkins and its rival after the American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould, reflecting the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of pertinent ideas. In particular, Dawkins and Gould have been prominent commentators in the controversy over sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, with Dawkins generally approving and Gould generally being critical. A typical example of Dawkins' position was his scathing review of ''Not in Our Genes'' by Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin and Richard C. Lewontin. Two other thinkers on the subject often considered to be allied to Dawkins are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology. Despite their academic disagreements, Dawkins and Gould did not have a hostile personal relationship, and Dawkins dedicated a large portion of his 2003 book ''A Devil's Chaplain'' posthumously to Gould, who had died the previous year.

Dawkins' book ''The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution'' expounds the evidence for biological evolution. All of his previous works dealing with evolution had assumed its truth, and not explicitly provided the evidence to this effect. Dawkins felt that this represented a gap in his oeuvre, and decided to write the book to coincide with Darwin's bicentennial year.

Meme [link]

Dawkins coined the word ''meme'' (the behavioural equivalent of a gene) as a way to encourage readers to think about how Darwinian principles might be extended beyond the realm of genes. Indeed, it was intended as an extension of his "replicators" argument, but it took on a life of its own in the hands of other authors such as Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore. These popularisations then led to the emergence of the field of memetics, from which he has distanced himself.

Dawkins' ''memes'' refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator of a certain idea or a complex of ideas. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as capable of such replication, generally through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (although not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Memes are not always copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes, which may themselves prove more, or less, efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a hypothesis of cultural evolution, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes.

Although Dawkins invented the specific term ''meme'' independently, he has not claimed that the idea itself was entirely novel, and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past. For instance, John Laurent has suggested that the term may have derived from the work of the little-known German biologist Richard Semon. In 1904 Semon published ''Die Mneme'' (which appeared in English in 1924 as ''The Mneme''). This book discussed the cultural transmission of experiences, with insights parallel to those of Dawkins. Laurent also found the term ''mneme'' used in Maurice Maeterlinck's ''The Life of the White Ant'' (1926), and has highlighted the similarities to Dawkins' concept. Author James Gleick describes Dawkins’ concept of the meme as "his most famous memorable invention, far more influential than his selfish genes or his later proselytizing against religiosity".

Criticism of creationism [link]

Dawkins is a prominent critic of creationism (the religious belief that humanity, life and the universe were created by a deity, without recourse to evolution). He has described the Young Earth creationist view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as "a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood", and his 1986 book, ''The Blind Watchmaker'', contains a sustained critique of the argument from design, an important creationist argument. In the book, Dawkins argued against the watchmaker analogy made famous by the 18th-century English theologian William Paley in his book ''Natural Theology''. Paley argued that, just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence merely by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Dawkins shares the view generally held by scientists that natural selection is sufficient to explain the apparent functionality and non-random complexity of the biological world, and can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, albeit as an automatic, nonintelligent, ''blind'' watchmaker.

thumb|left|Dawkins at the 34th annual conference of American Atheists, 2008In 1986 Dawkins participated in an Oxford Union debate, in which he and English biologist John Maynard Smith debated Young Earth creationist A. E. Wilder-Smith and Edgar Andrews, president of the Biblical Creation Society. In general, however, Dawkins has followed the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould and refused to participate in formal debates with creationists because "what they seek is the oxygen of respectability", and doing so would "give them this oxygen by the mere act of ''engaging'' with them at all". He suggests that creationists "don't mind being beaten in an argument. What matters is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public."

In a December 2004 interview with American journalist Bill Moyers, Dawkins said that "among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know." When Moyers questioned him on the use of the word ''theory'', Dawkins stated that "evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening." He added that "it is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene... the detective hasn't actually seen the murder take place, of course. But what you do see is a massive clue... Huge quantities of circumstantial evidence. It might as well be spelled out in words of English."

Dawkins has ardently opposed the inclusion of intelligent design in science education, describing it as "not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one". He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler", a reference to English biologist T. H. Huxley, who was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's evolutionary ideas. He has been a strong critic of the British organisation Truth in Science, which promotes the teaching of creationism in state schools, and he plans—through the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science—to subsidise the delivery of books, DVDs and pamphlets to schools, in order to counteract what he has described as an "educational scandal".

Advocacy of atheism [link]

Dawkins is an outspoken atheist and a prominent critic of religion. In an interview with Thomas Bass for a book published in 1994 he described himself as a "fairly militant atheist". In 1996, when asked if he would prefer to be known as a scientist or a militant atheist, he replied "Bertrand Russell called himself the Passionate Sceptic. It's aiming high, but I'll shoot for that." Dawkins is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, a vice-president of the British Humanist Association (since 1996), a Distinguished Supporter of the Humanist Society of Scotland, a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board, a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism, and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. In 2003 he became a signatory of the humanist manifesto ''Humanism and Its Aspirations'', published by the American Humanist Association. As a result of his advocacy of atheism, Dawkins has sometimes been described as a vocal, militant rationalist, and as "the UK's Chief Atheist".

Dawkins believes that his own atheism is the logical extension of his understanding of evolution and that religion is largely incompatible with science. In his 1986 book ''The Blind Watchmaker'', Dawkins wrote:

{{blockquote| An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. }}

In his 1991 essay "Viruses of the Mind" (from which the term ''faith-sufferer'' originated), he suggested that memetic theory might analyse and explain the phenomenon of religious belief and some of the common characteristics of religions, such as the belief that punishment awaits non-believers. According to Dawkins, faith − belief that is not based on evidence − is one of the world's great evils. He claims it to be analogous to the smallpox virus, though more difficult to eradicate. Dawkins is well known for his contempt for religious extremism, from Islamist terrorism to Christian fundamentalism; but he has also argued with liberal believers and religious scientists, from biologists Kenneth Miller and Francis Collins to theologians Alister McGrath and Richard Harries. Dawkins has stated that his opposition to religion is twofold, claiming it to be both a source of conflict and a justification for belief without evidence. However, he describes himself as a "cultural Christian", and proposed the slogan "Atheists for Jesus".

Following the 11 September 2001 attacks, when asked how the world might have changed, Dawkins responded:

{{blockquote| Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful! }}

Dawkins has especially risen to prominence in contemporary public debates relating science and religion since the publication of his 2006 book ''The God Delusion'', which has achieved greater sales figures worldwide than any of his other works to date. Its success has been seen by many as indicative of a change in the contemporary cultural zeitgeist, central to a recent rise in the popularity of atheistic literature. ''The God Delusion'' was praised by among others the Nobel laureates Sir Harold Kroto and James D. Watson and by psychologist Steven Pinker. In the book, Dawkins suggested that atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind. He sees education and consciousness-raising as the primary tools in opposing what he considers to be religious dogma and indoctrination. These tools include the fight against certain stereotypes, and he has adopted the term ''Bright'' as a way of associating positive public connotations with those who possess a naturalistic worldview. Dawkins notes that feminists have succeeded in arousing widespread embarrassment at the routine use of "he" instead of "she". Similarly, he suggests, a phrase such as "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should be considered just as socially absurd as, for instance, "Marxist child": children should not be classified based on their parents' ideological beliefs. According to Dawkins, there is no such thing as a Christian child or a Muslim child, as children have about as much capacity to make the decision to become Christians or Muslims as they do to become Marxists. Critics have said that the programme gave too much time to marginal figures and extremists, and that Dawkins' confrontational style did not help his cause and exhibited similarities with the approaches of religious fundamentalists more than with the approaches of the dispassionate, analytic approach of 'hard' science; Dawkins rejected these claims, citing the number of moderate religious broadcasts in everyday media as providing a suitable balance to the extremists in the programmes. He further remarked that someone who is deemed an "extremist" in a religiously moderate country may well be considered "mainstream" in a religiously conservative one. The unedited recordings of Dawkins' conversations with Alister McGrath and Richard Harries, including material unused in the broadcast version, have been made available online by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

Dawkins' work has been controversial, and a number of Christian thinkers have responded to it. For example, Oxford theologian Alister McGrath (author of ''The Dawkins Delusion'' and ''Dawkins' God'') maintains that Dawkins is ignorant of Christian theology and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently. In reply, Dawkins asks "do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?", and − in the paperback edition of ''The God Delusion'' − he refers to the American biologist PZ Myers, who has satirised this line of argument as "The Courtier's Reply". Dawkins had an extended debate with McGrath at the 2007 ''Sunday Times'' Literary Festival.

Dawkins argues that "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other". He disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould's principle of nonoverlapping magisteria. In an interview with ''Time'' magazine, Dawkins said:

I think that Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does not keep off the scientific turf. Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.

Astrophysicist Martin Rees, who has described himself as an unbeliever who identifies with Christianity from a cultural perspective, has suggested that Dawkins' attack on mainstream religion is unhelpful. Regarding Rees' claim in his book ''Our Cosmic Habitat'' that "such questions lie beyond science", Dawkins asks "what expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot?" Elsewhere, Dawkins has written that "there's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic, and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority or revelation." He has said that the publication of ''The God Delusion'' is "probably the culmination" of his campaign against religion.

In 2007 Dawkins founded the Out Campaign to encourage atheists worldwide to declare their stance publicly and proudly. Inspired by the gay rights movement, Dawkins hopes that atheists' identifying of themselves as such, and thereby increasing public awareness of how many people hold these views, will reduce the negative opinion of atheism among the religious majority.

In September 2008, following a complaint by Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar, a court in Turkey blocked access to Dawkins' website ''richarddawkins.net''. The court decision was made due to "insult to personality". As of 8 July 2011, ''richarddawkins.net'' is no longer blocked in Turkey.

In October 2008, Dawkins officially supported the UK's first atheist advertising initiative, the Atheist Bus Campaign. Created by Guardian journalist Ariane Sherine and administered by the British Humanist Association the campaign aimed to raise funds to place atheist adverts on buses in the London area, and Dawkins pledged to match the amount raised by atheists, up to a maximum of £5,500. However, the campaign was an unprecedented success, raising over £100,000 in its first four days, and generating global press coverage. The campaign, started in January 2009, features adverts across the UK with the slogan: "''There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.''" Dawkins said that "this campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think—and thinking is anathema to religion."

In 2010 Dawkins supported legal efforts to charge Pope Benedict XVI with crimes against humanity. Dawkins and fellow anti-religion campaigner Christopher Hitchens were believed to have explored the option of attempting to have the Pope arrested under the same legal principle that saw Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested during a visit to Britain in 1998. Dawkins has given support to the idea of a "free thinking" school which he calls "Think for Yourself Academy". The school would not "indoctrinate children in atheism, any more than in religion" but it would teach children to "ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded".

On 15 September 2010, Dawkins, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in ''The Guardian'', stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to the United Kingdom, while acknowledging his right to tour the UK as head of the Roman Catholic Church.

Richard Dawkins Foundation [link]

In 2006 Dawkins founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS), a non-profit organisation. The foundation is in developmental phase. It has been granted charitable status in the United Kingdom and the United States. RDFRS plans to finance research on the psychology of belief and religion, finance scientific education programs and materials, and publicise and support secular charitable organisations. The foundation also offers humanist, rationalist and scientific materials and information through its website.

Dawkins has said the "trend toward theocratic thinking in the United States is a danger not only for America but for the entire world." Connected to this concern, Dawkins invited Sean Faircloth to serve as opening speaker on Dawkins' 2011 US book tour. Faircloth is author of the book ''Attack of the Theocrats, How the Religious Right Harms Us All and What We Can Do About It''. The Richard Dawkins Foundation (United States branch) later hired Faircloth, who has ten years experience as a state legislator, as Director of Strategy and Policy.

Other fields [link]

In his role as professor for public understanding of science, Dawkins has been a critic of pseudoscience and alternative medicine. His 1998 book ''Unweaving the Rainbow'' takes John Keats' accusation that, by explaining the rainbow, Isaac Newton had diminished its beauty, and argues for the opposite conclusion. He suggests that deep space, the billions of years of life's evolution, and the microscopic workings of biology and heredity contain more beauty and wonder than do "myths" and "pseudoscience". Dawkins wrote a foreword to John Diamond's posthumously published ''Snake Oil'', a book devoted to debunking alternative medicine, in which he asserted that alternative medicine was harmful, if only because it distracted patients from more successful conventional treatments and gave people false hopes. Dawkins states that "there is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work."

Dawkins has expressed concern about the growth of the planet's human population and about the matter of overpopulation. In ''The Selfish Gene'', he briefly mentions population growth, giving the example of Latin America, whose population, at the time the book was written, was doubling every 40 years. He is critical of Roman Catholic attitudes to family planning and population control, stating that leaders who forbid contraception and "express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation" will get just such a method in the form of starvation.

As a supporter of the ''Great Ape Project'' – a movement to extend certain moral and legal rights to all great apes – Dawkins contributed the article "Gaps in the Mind" to the ''Great Ape Project'' book edited by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer. In this essay, he criticises contemporary society's moral attitudes as being based on a "discontinuous, speciesist imperative".

Dawkins also regularly comments in newspapers and weblogs on contemporary political questions; his opinions include opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the British nuclear deterrent and the actions of US President George W. Bush. Several such articles were included in ''A Devil's Chaplain'', an anthology of writings about science, religion and politics. He is also a supporter of the Republic campaign to replace the British monarchy with a democratically elected president. Dawkins has described himself as a Labour voter in the 1970s and voter for the Liberal Democrats since the party's creation. In 2009 he spoke at the party's conference in opposition to blasphemy laws, alternative medicine and faith schools. In the UK general election of 2010, Dawkins officially endorsed the Liberal Democrats, in support of their campaign for electoral reform and for their "refusal to pander to 'faith'."

In the 2007 TV documentary ''The Enemies of Reason'', Dawkins discusses what he sees as the dangers of abandoning critical thought and rationale based upon scientific evidence. He specifically cites astrology, spiritualism, dowsing, alternative faiths, alternative medicine and homoeopathy. He also discusses how the Internet can be used to spread religious hatred and conspiracy theories with scant attention to evidence-based reasoning.

Continuing a long-standing partnership with Channel 4, Dawkins participated in a five-part television series ''Genius of Britain'', along with fellow scientists Stephen Hawking, James Dyson, Paul Nurse, and Jim Al-Khalili. The five-episode series was broadcast in June 2010. The series focussed on major British scientific achievements throughout history.

Dawkins presented a More4 documentary entitled ''Faith School Menace?'' in which he argued for "us to reconsider the consequences of faith education, which... bamboozles parents and indoctrinates and divides children."

In 1998 Dawkins expressed his appreciation for two books, famous for their criticism of postmodernism in US universities, in departments like literary studies, anthropology and other cultural studies; the two books are ''Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science'' (by Gross and Levitt) and ''Intellectual Impostures'' (by Sokal and Bricmont), both related to the Sokal affair hoax. In the same occasion Dawkins also criticised Cambridge University for awarding philosopher Jacques Derrida an honorary doctorate.

In 2011 Dawkins joined the professoriate of the New College of the Humanities, a new private university in London established by A. C. Grayling, which is scheduled to open in September 2012.

Awards and recognition [link]

Dawkins was awarded a Doctor of Science by the University of Oxford in 1989. He holds honorary doctorates in science from the University of Huddersfield, University of Westminster, Durham University, the University of Hull, the University of Antwerp, and the University of Oslo, and honorary doctorates from the University of Aberdeen, Open University, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the University of Valencia. He also holds honorary doctorates of letters from the University of St Andrews and the Australian National University (HonLittD, 1996), and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997 and the Royal Society in 2001. He is one of the patrons of the Oxford University Scientific Society.

In 1987 Dawkins received a Royal Society of Literature award and a ''Los Angeles Times'' Literary Prize for his book, ''The Blind Watchmaker''. In the same year, he received a ''Sci. Tech'' Prize for Best Television Documentary Science Programme of the Year, for the BBC ''Horizon'' episode ''The Blind Watchmaker''.

His other awards have included the Zoological Society of London Silver Medal (1989), Finlay innovation award (1990), the Michael Faraday Award (1990), the Nakayama Prize (1994), the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year Award (1996), the fifth International Cosmos Prize (1997), the Kistler Prize (2001), the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic (2001), the Bicentennial Kelvin Medal of The Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow (2002) and the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest (2009).

Dawkins topped ''Prospect'' magazine's 2004 list of the top 100 public British intellectuals, as decided by the readers, receiving twice as many votes as the runner-up. He has been short-listed as a candidate in their 2008 follow-up poll. In 2005 the Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Foundation awarded him its Shakespeare Prize in recognition of his "concise and accessible presentation of scientific knowledge". He won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science for 2006 and the Galaxy British Book Awards Author of the Year Award for 2007. In the same year, he was listed by ''Time'' magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007, and he was ranked 20th in ''The Daily Telegraph'''s 2007 list of 100 greatest living geniuses. He was awarded the Deschner Award, named after German anti-clerical author Karlheinz Deschner.

Since 2003, the Atheist Alliance International has awarded a prize during its annual conference, honouring an outstanding atheist whose work has done most to raise public awareness of atheism during that year. It is known as the Richard Dawkins Award, in honour of Dawkins' own work.

In February 2010 he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.

Media [link]

Selected publications [link]

Documentary films [link]

''Nice Guys Finish First'' (1986)

''The Blind Watchmaker'' (1987)

''Growing Up in the Universe'' (1991)

''Break the Science Barrier'' (1996)

''The Root of All Evil?'' (2006)

''The Enemies of Reason'' (2007)

''The Genius of Charles Darwin'' (2008)

''Faith School Menace?'' (2010)

Other appearances [link]

''Doctor Who'': "The Stolen Earth" (2008) – as himself

''Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed'' (2008) – as himself

''The Purpose of Purpose'' (2009) – Lecture tour among American universities

''Beautiful Minds'' (April 2012) – BBC4 documentary

Notes[link]

b. The debate ended with the motion "That the doctrine of creation is more valid than the theory of evolution" being defeated by 198 votes to 115.

References [link]

External links [link]

General

Official website

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

Video

National Geographic Interviews – A series of video interviews with National Geographic Channel with Richard Dawkins on Darwin, Evolution and God.

Video interview with Riz Khan for Al Jazeera English

Video interview at Big Think

Selected writings

Viruses of the Mind (1993) – Religion as a mental virus.

The Real Romance in the Stars (1995) – A critical view of astrology.

The Emptiness of Theology at RDFRS.(1998) – A critical view of theology.

Snake Oil and Holy Water (1999) – suggests that there is no convergence occurring between science and theism.

What Use is Religion? (2004) – suggests that religion may have no survival value other than to itself.

Race and Creation (2004) – On race, its usage and a theory of how it evolved.

The giant tortoise's tale, The turtle's tale and The lava lizard's tale (2005) – A series of three articles written after a visit to the Galápagos Islands.

Dawkins' ''Huffington Post'' articles

Audio

2011 Interview on io9's Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast

Richard Dawkins on RadioLIVE's Weekend Variety Wireless – Richard Dawkins appears live on New Zealand's Radio Live, taking calls from the audience.

Category:1941 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century biologists Category:21st-century biologists Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Category:Atheism activists Category:British atheists Category:British republicans Category:Critics of religions Category:English atheists Category:English biologists Category:English humanists Category:English sceptics Category:English science writers Category:Ethologists Category:Evolutionary biologists Category:Fellows of New College, Oxford Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:Gifford Lecturers Category:New College of the Humanities Category:People educated at Oundle School Category:People from Nairobi Category:Presenters of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures Category:Recipients of the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic Category:Statutory Professors of the University of Oxford Category:University of California, Berkeley faculty

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Birth date	January 14, 1928
Birth place	New York, New York,United States
Death date	March 19, 1984
Death place	Tijuana, Mexico
Influences	Walker Evans, Robert Frank
Nationality	American
Occupation	Photographer
Years active	}}

Garry Winogrand (14 January 1928, New York City – 19 March 1984, Tijuana, Mexico) was a street photographer known for his portrayal of America in the mid-20th century. John Szarkowski called him the central photographer of his generation.

Winogrand was influenced by Walker Evans and Robert Frank and their respective publications ''American Photographs'' and ''The Americans''. Henri Cartier-Bresson was another influence although stylistically different.

Winogrand was known for his portrayal of American life in the early 1960s. Many of his photographs depict the social issues of his time and in the role of media in shaping attitudes. He roamed the streets of New York with his 35mm Leica camera rapidly taking photographs using a prefocused wide angle lens. His pictures frequently appeared as if they were driven by the energy of the events he was witnessing.

Winogrand's photographs of the Bronx Zoo and the Coney Island Aquarium made up his first book ''The Animals'' (1969), a collection of pictures that observes the connections between humans and animals. His book ''Public Relations'' (1977) shows press conferences with deer-in-the-headlight writers and politicians, protesters beaten by cops, and museum parties frequented by the self-satisfied cultural glitterati. These photographs capture the evolution of a uniquely 20th and 21st century phenomenon, the event created to be documented. In ''Stock Photographs'' (1980), Winogrand published his views of the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo.

At the time of his death there was discovered about 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film, 6,500 rolls of developed but not proofed exposures, and contact sheets made from about 3,000 rolls. The Garry Winogrand Archive at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) comprises of over 20,000 fine and work prints, 20,000 contact sheets, 100,000 negatives and 30,500 35mm colour slides as well as a small group of Polaroid prints and several amateur motion picture films.

Biography[link]

Winogrand grew up in the then predominantly Jewish working-class area of the Bronx, New York, where his father, Abraham, was a leather worker, and his mother, Bertha, made neckties for piecemeal work.

Winogrand studied painting at City College of New York and painting and photography at Columbia University in New York City in 1948. He also attended a photojournalism class taught by Alexey Brodovich at The New School for Social Research in New York City in 1951.

In the early 1960s Winogrand photographed on the streets of New York City alongside Joel Meyerowitz, Lee Friedlander, Tod Papageorge and Diane Arbus.

In 1955 two of Winogrand’s photos appeared in The Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Winogrand's first one-man show was held at Image Gallery in New York City in 1959. His first notable appearance was in ''Five Unrelated Photographers'' in 1963, also at MoMA in New York City, along with Minor White, George Krause, Jerome Liebling and Ken Heyman. In 1966 Winogrand exhibited at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York with Lee Friedlander, Duane Michals, Bruce Davidson, and Danny Lyon in an exhibition entitled ''Toward a Social Landscape.'' In 1967 he participated in the ''New Documents'' show at MoMA in New York City with Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander, curated by John Szarkowski.

John Szarkowski, the Director of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art, became an editor and reviewer of Winogrand's work. Szarkowski called him the central photographer of his generation.

In 1964 Winogrand was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship Award to travel through America. Some of the results of this work were shown in the New Documents exhibition. He was awarded his second Guggenheim Fellowship in 1969 to continue exploring media events and their effect on the public. Between 1969 and 1976 Winogrand shot about 700 rolls of film at public events, producing 6,500 eleven by fourteen inch prints for Tod Papageorge to select for the exhibition and book ''Public Relations''. Winogrand received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1975. In 1979 with his third Guggenheim Fellowship he moved to Los Angeles to document California. While in LA he developed 8522 rolls of film.

Winogrand worked as a commercial photographer between 1952 and 1954 at the Pix Photo Agency in Manhattan and from 1954 at Brackman Associates.

Between 1971 and 1972 Winogrand taught photography at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and between 1973 and 1978 at the University of Texas in Austin.

In 1952 Winogrand married Adrienne Lebow, separating in 1963 and divorcing in 1966, they had two children, Laurie and Ethan. Around 1967 Winogrand married his second wife Judy Teller, they were together until 1969. In 1972 he married Eileen Adele Hale, with whom he had a daughter, Melissa.

Winogrand died of gall bladder cancer, in 1984 at age 56. As evidence of his prolific nature, Winogrand left behind nearly 300,000 unedited images. Some of these images have been exhibited posthumously, and published by MoMA in the overview of his work ''Winogrand, Figments from the Real World''.

Quotations by Garry Winogrand[link]

"A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera 'saw' a piece of time and space."

"Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed."

"I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs."

"I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both."

"I don't know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs." (In reference to his book, "Women Are Beautiful.")

"All things are photographable."

"I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions."

Books[link]

The Animals. 1969. Museum of Modern Art, New York. ISBN 0-37451-301-5

Women are Beautiful. 1975. Light Gallery / Farrar, Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-87070-633-0

Public Relations. 1977. Museum of Modern Art, New York

Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo. 1980. Olympic Marketing Corp. ISBN 0-292724-33-0

The Man in the Crowd: The Uneasy Streets of Garry Winogrand. 1998. Fraenkel Gallery. ISBN 1-881337-05-7

The Game of Photography. 2001. Tf Edition. ISBN 8-49518-366-8

Winogrand 1964. 2002. Arena Editions. ISBN 0-374513-01-5

Arrivals & Departures: The Airport Pictures of Garry Winogrand. 2002. Charles Rivers. ISBN 1-891024-47-7

Figments from the Real World. 2003. Museum of Modern Art, New York. ISBN 0-87070-635-7

Exhibitions[link]

Selected Solo Exhibitions[link]

1986. "Little-known Photographs by Garry Winogrand", Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

1985. Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts

1984

*"Recent Works", Houston Center for Photography, Texas

* "Women are Beautiful", Zabriskie Gallery, New York

* "Garry Winogrand: A Celebration", Light Gallery, New York

1983. "Big Shots, Photographs of Celebrities, 1960-80", Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

1981

* Light Gallery, New York

* The Burton Gallery of Photographic Art, Toronto

1980

* Galerie de Photographie, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris

* "Garry Winogrand: Retrospective", Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco,

* University of Colorado, Boulder

1979

* "Greece", Light Gallery, New York

* "The Rodeo", Alan Frumkin Gallery, Chicago

1977

* The Cronin Gallery, Houston

* Light Gallery, New York

1975. "Women are Beautiful", Light Gallery, New York

1972. Light Gallery, New York

1969. "The Animals", The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Selected Group Exhibitions[link]

1983. "Masters of the Street: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Josef Koudelka, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand", University Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

1981

* "Central Park Photographs: Lee Friedlander, Tod Papageorge and Garry Winogrand", The Dairy in Central Park, New York, 1980

* "Bruce Davidson and Garry Winogrand", Moderna Museet / Fotografiska Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

* "Garry Winogrand, Larry Clark and Arthur Tress", G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Los Angeles

1978. "Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960", The Museum of Modern Art, New York

1977. "Public Relations", The Museum of Modern Art, New York

1976. "The Great American Rodeo", The Fort Worth Art Museum, Texas

1975. "14 American Photographers", The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland

1971. "Seen in Passing", Latent Image Gallery, Houston

1970. "The Descriptive Tradition: Seven Photographers", Boston University, Massachusetts

1969. "New Photography USA", Traveling exhibition prepared for the International Program of The Museum of Modern Art, New York

1967. "New Documents", The Museum of Modern Art, New York City with Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander, curated by John Szarkowski

1964. "The Photographer’s Eye", The Museum of Modern Art, New York

1963. "Photography ‘63", The George Eastman House of Photography, Rochester, New York

1957. "Seventy Photographers Look at New York", The Museum of Modern Art, New York

1955. "The Family of Man", The Museum of Modern Art, New York

References[link]

External links[link]

Garry Winogrand & Bill Moyers video, with transcript

Winogrand's overview

Coffee and Workprints: A Workshop With Garry Winogrand

Another Workshop With Garry Winogrand

An Interview with Garry Winogrand

Review of Winogrand, Figments from the Real World, by Philip Greenspun

Garry Winogrand: Huge Influence, Early Exit, by Frank Van Riper

Garry Winogrand's Leica M4

Photography as a Framing Art

Category:1928 births Category:1984 deaths Category:American photographers Category:People from Austin, Texas Category:People from New York City Category:Street photographers Category:Guggenheim Fellows

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