Walter Kohn
Walter Kohn
Born	(1923-03-09) March 9, 1923 (age 89) Vienna
Nationality	United States
Fields	Physics
Institutions	UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego
Alma mater	University of Toronto, Harvard
Known for	Density functional theory
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Chemistry(1998), Buckley Prize
Signature

A banner on a lightpole at the University of California, Santa Barbara, commemorating Walter Kohn being awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998.

Walter Kohn (born March 9, 1923, in Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist. He was awarded, with John Pople, the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1998.^[1] The award recognized their contributions to the understandings of the electronic properties of materials. In particular, Kohn played the leading role in the development of density functional theory, which made it possible to incorporate quantum mechanical effects in the electronic density (rather than through its many-body wavefunction). This computational simplification led to many insights and became an essential tool for electronic materials, atomic and molecular structure.

Early years in Canada[link]

Kohn arrived in England as part of the famous Kindertransport rescue operation, immediately after the annexation of Austria by Hitler. He is from a Jewish family, both of his parents were later killed in the Holocaust. Because he was a German national, he was sent to Canada by the English in July 1940. As a 17-year-old, Kohn traveled as part of a British convoy moving through U-boat-infested waters to Quebec City in Canada; and from there, by train, to a camp in Trois-Rivières. He was at first held in detention in a camp near Sherbrooke, Quebec. This camp, as well as others, provided a small number of educational facilities that Kohn used to the fullest, and he finally succeeded in entering the University of Toronto. As a German national, the future Nobel laureate in chemistry was not allowed to enter the chemistry building, and so he opted for physics and mathematics. A short but fascinating autobiography may be found on the Nobelist webpage.^[2]

Scientific career[link]

Kohn received a war-time bachelor's degree in applied mathematics at the end of his one-year army service, having completed only 2½ out of the 4-year undergraduate program, from the University of Toronto in 1945; he was awarded an M.A. degree in applied mathematics by Toronto in 1946. Kohn was awarded a Ph.D. degree in physics by Harvard University in 1948, where he worked under Julian Schwinger on the three-body scattering problem. At Harvard he also fell under the influence of Van Vleck and solid state physics.

He moved from Harvard to Carnegie Mellon University from 1950 to 1960, after a short stint in Copenhagen as a National Research Council of Canada post-doctoral fellow. At Carnegie Mellon he did much of his seminal work on multiple-scattering band-structure work, now known as the KKR method. His association with Bell Labs got him involved with semiconductor physics, and produced a long and fruitful collaboration with Luttinger (including, for example, development of the Luttinger-Kohn model of semiconductor band structure). In 1960 he moved to the newly founded University of California, San Diego, held a term as the physics department chair,^[3] and remained until 1979. He then accepted the Founding Director's position at the new Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara. He took his present position as a professor in the Physics Department at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1984; he is currently professor emeritus and research professor.

Kohn made significant contributions to semiconductor physics, which led to his award of the Oliver E. Buckley Prize by the American Physical Society. He was also awarded the Feenburg medal for his contributions to the many-body problem. His work on density functional theory was initiated during a visit to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, with Pierre Hohenberg, and was prompted by a consideration of alloy theory. The Hohenberg-Kohn theorem was further developed, in collaboration with Lu Sham, to produce the Kohn-Sham equations. The latter is the standard work horse of modern materials science,^[4] and even used in quantum theories of plasmas.^[4] In 2004, a study of all citations to the Physical Review  journals from 1893 until 2003, found Kohn to be an author of five of the 100 papers with the "highest citation impact", including the first two.^[5]

Scientist with a great following[link]

Walter Kohn receiving an honorary doctorate at The University of Oxford

Walter Kohn is a well-known and much-loved figure on many European campuses. He was a regular visitor to Jacques Friedel's laboratory and Carl Moser's laboratory (CECAM) in Orsay, Universite Paris IX. Another favorite stop for Kohn is in Switzerland, at the ETH. He also visits the National Research Council of Canada, his Canadian Alma Mater the University of Toronto, Montreal, and Sherbrooke whenever his itineraries permit him to do so. He is equally at home in Denmark, Israel, England or France. He has students in virtually every part of the world.

In 1957, he relinquished his Canadian citizenship and became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

He is a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.

See also[link]

• List of Jewish Nobel laureates
• List of Nobel laureates affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara

References[link]

Some publications[link]

• W. Kohn, An essay on condensed matter physics in the twentieth century, Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 71, No. 2, pp. S59-S77, Centenary 1999. APS
• W. Kohn, Nobel Lecture: Electronic structure of matter — wave functions and density functionals, Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 71, No. 5, pp. 1253–1266 (1999). APS
• D. Jérome, T.M. Rice, and W. Kohn, Excitonic Insulator, Physical Review, Vol. 158, No. 2, pp. 462–475 (1967). APS
• P. Hohenberg, and W. Kohn, Inhomogeneous Electron Gas, Physical Review, Vol. 136, No. 3B, pp. B864-B871 (1964). APS
• W. Kohn, and L. J. Sham, Self-Consistent Equations Including Exchange and Correlation Effects, Physical Review, Vol. 140, No. 4A, pp. A1133-A1138 (1965). APS
• W. Kohn, and J. M. Luttinger, New Mechanism for Superconductivity, Physical Review Letters, Vol. 15, No. 12, pp. 524–526 (1965). APS
• W. Kohn, Theory of the Insulating State, Physical review, Vol. 133, No. 1A, pp. A171-A181 (1964). APS
• W. Kohn, Cyclotron Resonance and de Haas-van Alphen Oscillations of an Interacting Electron Gas, Physical Review, Vol. 123, pp. 1242–1244 (1961). APS

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Walter Kohn

• Photograph of Walter Kohn: [2]
• "Quantum Chemistry Comes of Age," The Chemical Educator, Vol. 5, No. 3, S1430-4171(99)06333-7, doi:10.1007/s00897990333a, © 2000 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
• Freeview video interview with Walter Kohn by the Vega Science Trust
• Official homepage of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998
• Kohn's faculty website at University of California-Santa Barbara. Retrieved November 11, 2006.

Elie Wiesel
Wiesel at the 2012 Time 100
Born	Eliezer Wiesel (1928-09-30) September 30, 1928 (age 83) Sighet, Maramureş County, Romania
Occupation	Political activist, professor, novelist
Ethnicity	Jewish
Notable award(s)	Nobel Peace Prize Presidential Medal of Freedom Congressional Gold Medal

Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBE ( /ˈɛli vɨˈzɛl/; Hungarian: Wiesel Lázár; born September 30, 1928)^[1] is a Romanian-born Jewish-American^[1] writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps.^[2] Wiesel is also the Advisory Board chairman of the Algemeiner Journal newspaper.

When Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, the Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a "messenger to mankind," stating that through his struggle to come to terms with "his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler's death camps", as well as his "practical work in the cause of peace", Wiesel had delivered a powerful message "of peace, atonement and human dignity" to humanity.^[3]

Early life[link]

The house where Wiesel was born

Wiesel was born in Sighet,^[4] Transylvania (now Sighetu Marmaţiei), Maramureş, Kingdom of Romania,^[4] in the Carpathian Mountains. His mother, Sarah Feig, was the daughter of Dodye Feig, a celebrated Vizhnitz Hasid and farmer from a nearby village. He was active and trusted within the community, and in the early years of his life had spent a few months in jail for having helped Polish Jews who escaped and were hungry. It was his father, Chlomo, who instilled a strong sense of humanism in his son, encouraging him to learn Hebrew and to read literature, whereas his mother encouraged him to study the Torah. Wiesel has said his father represented reason, and his mother Sarah promoted faith.^[5] In his home, his family spoke Yiddish most of the time, but also Romanian, Hungarian and German.^[6][7] Wiesel had three sisters – older sisters Hilda and Beatrice, and younger sister Tzipora. Beatrice and Hilda survived the war and were reunited with Wiesel at a French orphanage. They eventually emigrated to North America, with Beatrice moving to Montreal, Canada. Tzipora, Chlomo and Sarah did not survive the Holocaust.

World War II[link]

Buchenwald, 1945. Wiesel is in the second row from the bottom, seventh from the left.

In 1940, Romania lost the town of Sighet following the Second Vienna Award. In 1944, Wiesel, his family and the rest of the town were placed in one of the two ghettos in Sighet. Wiesel and his family lived in the larger of the two, on Serpent Street. On May 16, 1944, the Hungarian authorities allowed the German army to deport the Jewish community in Sighet to Auschwitz-Birkenau. While at Auschwitz, his inmate number, "A-7713," was tattooed onto his left arm.^[8][9] Wiesel was separated from his mother and sisters Hilda, Beatrice, and Tzipora. Wiesel's mother and sister Tzipora were presumably killed in the gas chambers upon arrival. Wiesel and his father were sent to the attached work camp Buna, a subcamp of Auschwitz III-Monowitz. He managed to remain with his father for over eight months as they were forced to work under appalling conditions and shuffled between three concentration camps in the closing days of the war. On January 29, 1945, just a few weeks after the two were marched to Buchenwald, Wiesel's father was beaten^[10] by a Nazi as he was suffering from dysentery, starvation, and exhaustion. He was also beaten by other inmates for his food. He was later sent to the crematorium, only weeks before the camp was liberated by the U. S. Third Army on April 11.^[11]

After the war[link]

After World War II, Wiesel taught Hebrew and worked as a choirmaster before becoming a professional journalist. He learned French, which became the language he used most frequently in writing.^[12] He wrote for Israeli and French newspapers, including Tsien in Kamf (in Yiddish) L'arche. For ten years after the war, Wiesel refused to write about or discuss his experiences during the Holocaust. Like many survivors, Wiesel could not find the words to describe his experiences. However, a meeting with François Mauriac, the 1952 Nobel Laureate in Literature, who eventually became Wiesel's close friend, persuaded him to write about his experiences.

Wiesel first wrote the 900-page memoir Un di velt hot geshvign (And the World Remained Silent) in Yiddish, which was published in abridged form in Buenos Aires.^[13] Wiesel rewrote a shortened version of the manuscript in French, and it was published as the 127-page La Nuit, and later translated into English as Night. Even with Mauriac's support, Wiesel had trouble finding a publisher for his book, and initially it sold few copies.

In 1960, Arthur Wang of Hill & Wang agreed to pay a $100 pro-forma advance, and published it in the US in September that year as Night. The book agent was Georges Borchardt, then just starting his career. Borchardt remains Wiesel's literary agent today.

The book sold just 1,046 copies over the next 18 months, but attracted interest from reviewers, leading to television interviews with Wiesel and meetings with literary figures like Saul Bellow. "The English translation came out in 1960, and the first printing was 3,000 copies," Wiesel said in an interview. "And it took three years to sell them. Now, I get 100 letters a month from children about the book. And there are many, many million copies in print." The 1979 book and play The Trial of God is said to have been based on Wiesel's real-life Auschwitz experience of witnessing three Jews who, close to death, conduct a trial against God, under the accusation that He has been oppressive of the Jewish people.

Night has been translated into 30 languages. By 1997, the book was selling 300,000 copies annually in the United States alone. By March 2006, about six million copies were sold in the United States. On January 16, 2006, Oprah Winfrey chose the work for her book club. One million extra paperback and 150,000 hardcover copies were printed carrying the "Oprah's Book Club" logo, with a new translation by Wiesel's wife, Marion, and a new preface by Wiesel. On February 13, 2006, Night was no. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list for paperback non-fiction.

Life in the United States[link]

In 1955, Wiesel moved to New York City, having become a US citizen: due to injuries suffered in a traffic accident, he was forced to stay in New York past his visa's expiration and was offered citizenship to resolve his status. In the US, Wiesel wrote over 40 books, both fiction and non-fiction, and won many literary prizes. Wiesel's writing is considered among the most important in Holocaust literature. Some historians credit Wiesel with giving the term 'Holocaust' its present meaning, but he does not feel that the word adequately describes the event and wishes it were used less frequently to describe significant occurrences as everyday tragedies.^[14]

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for speaking out against violence, repression, and racism. He has received many other prizes and honors for his work, including the Congressional Gold Medal in 1985, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996.

Wiesel also played a role in the initial success of The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski by endorsing it prior to revelations that the book was fiction and, in the sense that it was presented as all Kosinski's true experience, a hoax.

Wiesel addressing the United States Congress

He is also the recipient of The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence. Wiesel has published two volumes of his memoirs. The first, All Rivers Run to the Sea, was published in 1994 and covered his life up to the year 1969 while the second, titled And the Sea is Never Full and published in 1999, covered 1969 to 1999.

Wiesel and his wife, Marion, started the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. He served as chairman for the Presidential Commission on the Holocaust (later renamed US Holocaust Memorial Council) from 1978 to 1986, spearheading the building of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C..

Wiesel is particularly fond of teaching and holds the position of Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Boston University. From 1972 to 1976, Wiesel was a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York and member of the American Federation of Teachers. In 1982 he served as the first Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University. He also co-instructs Winter Term (January) courses at Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Florida. From 1997 to 1999 he was Ingeborg Rennert Visiting Professor of Judaic Studies at Barnard College.

Wiesel in 1987.

Wiesel has become a popular speaker on the subject of the Holocaust. As a political activist, he has advocated for many causes, including Israel, the plight of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, the victims of apartheid in South Africa, Argentina's Desaparecidos, Bosnian victims of genocide in the former Yugoslavia, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, and the Kurds. Conversely, he withdrew from his role as chair of the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, and made efforts to abort the conference, in deference to Israeli objection to the inclusion of sessions on the Armenian genocide.^[15][16]

In 2004 he voiced support for intervention in Darfur, Sudan at the Darfur Emergency Summit convened at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York by the American Jewish World Service and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.^[17] He also led a commission organized by the Romanian government to research and write a report, released in 2004, on the true history of the Holocaust in Romania and the involvement of the Romanian wartime regime in atrocities against Jews and other groups, including the Roma. The Romanian government accepted the findings in the report and committed to implementing the commission's recommendations for educating the public on the history of the Holocaust in Romania. The commission, formally called the International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, came to be called the Wiesel Commission in honor of his leadership.

Wiesel is the honorary chair of the Habonim Dror Camp Miriam Campership and Building Fund, and a member of the International Council of the New York–based Human Rights Foundation. On March 27, 2001, Wiesel appeared at the University of Florida for Jewish Awareness Month and was presented with an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from the University of Florida by Dr. Charles Young.^{[18][dead link]}

In 2002, he inaugurated the Elie Wiesel Memorial House in Sighet in his childhood home.^[19]

Recent[link]

President George W. Bush, joined by the Dalai Lama and Wiesel, Oct. 17, 2007, to the ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., for the presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama

In early 2006, Wiesel traveled to Auschwitz with Oprah Winfrey, a visit which was broadcast as part of The Oprah Winfrey Show on May 24, 2006.^[20] Wiesel said that this would most likely be his last trip there. In September 2006, he appeared before the UN Security Council with actor George Clooney to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. On November 30, 2006 Wiesel received an honorary knighthood in London in recognition of his work toward raising Holocaust education in the United Kingdom.^[21]

During the early 2007 selection process for the Kadima candidate for President of Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly offered Wiesel the nomination (and, as the ruling-party candidate and an apolitical figure, likely the presidency), but Wiesel "was not very interested."^[22] Shimon Peres was chosen as the Kadima candidate (and later President) instead. In 2007, Wiesel was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Lifetime Achievement Award.^[23]

In 2007 the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity issued a letter condemning Armenian genocide denial that was signed by 53 Nobel laureates including Wiesel. Wiesel has repeatedly called Turkey's 90-year-old campaign to downplay its actions during the Armenian genocide a double killing.^[24]

Wiesel is a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor.^[25]

In December 2008, Wiesel and his wife lost their life savings, and the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity lost nearly all of its assets (approximately $15.2 million USD) through Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme,^[26] an experience Wiesel later spoke about at a Conde Nast roundtable. In a New York Times article, Wiesel called Madoff "a psychopath." ^[27]

In 2009, Wiesel criticized the Vatican for lifting the excommunication of controversial bishop Richard Williamson, a member of the Society of Saint Pius X.^[28]

On June 5, 2009, Wiesel accompanied US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as they toured Buchenwald. Merkel and Wiesel each spoke about Buchenwald in personal terms, with Merkel considering the responsibility of Germans vis-à-vis Nazi history, and Wiesel reflecting on the suffering and death of his father in the camp.^[29]

Wiesel returned to Hungary for the first official visit since the Holocaust between December 9–11, 2009 by the invitation of Rabbi Slomó Köves, executive rabbi of the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation and the Hungarian branch of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. During his visit Wiesel participated in a conference at the Upper House Chamber of the Hungarian Parliament, met Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai and President László Sólyom, and made a speech to the approximately 10,000 participants of an anti-racist gathering held in Faith Hall. The speech was broadcast live by Magyar ATV, a nationwide television channel.^[30][31][32]

In November 2011 Wiesel accepted an appointment to the Board of Visitors of Ralston College, a start-up liberal arts college based in Savannah, Georgia.^[33]

2007 attack on Wiesel

Elie Wiesel at the 2008 World Economic Forum.

On February 1, 2007, Wiesel was attacked in a San Francisco hotel by 22-year-old Holocaust denier Eric Hunt, who tried to drag Wiesel into a hotel room. Wiesel was not injured and Hunt fled the scene. Later, Hunt bragged about the incident on a Holocaust denial website.^[34] Approximately one month later, he was arrested and charged with multiple offenses.^[35] Hunt was convicted on July 21, 2008,^[36] and was sentenced to two years, but was given credit for time served and good behavior; he was released on probation and ordered to undergo psychological treatment. The jury convicted Hunt of three charges but dismissed the remaining charges of attempted kidnapping, stalking, and an additional count of false imprisonment, amid Hunt's withdrawal of his insanity plea.^{[37][dead link]} District Attorney Kamala Harris said, "Crimes motivated by hate are among the most reprehensible of offenses ... This defendant has been made to answer for an unwarranted and biased attack on a man who has dedicated his life to peace."^[38] At his sentencing hearing, Hunt apologized and insisted that he no longer denies the Holocaust;^[39] however, he continued for some time afterwards to maintain and update a (now defunct) blog that denied the Holocaust and was critical of prominent Jewish people,^[40] and has since started a new website that actively denies the Holocaust.^{[citation needed]}

Reaction to proxy baptizing of Jews by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

On February 13, 2012, the Salt Lake City Tribune announced that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints performed a posthumous baptism of Simon Wiesenthal's parents.^[41] The following day, the Huffington Post announced that Wiesel's name had been submitted by a Latter-day Saint to a genealogical database used for proposing proxy baptisms. The Huffington Post also notified Wiesel, prompting him to speak out against the practice of posthumously baptizing Jews and to call on United States presidential candidate and Latter-day Saint Mitt Romney to denounce it.^[42][43][44] In an interview on February 15, 2012 with Lawrence O'Donnell, Wiesel called the practice "bizarre", and said, "I am a Jew. Born a Jew. Lived as a Jew. Tried to write about the Jewish condition...the human condition all over the world, and they should do it to me?" He reported that he had worked for two years with Bobby Adams and Holocaust survivor Ernest Michel to achieve an agreement with the LDS church regarding the practice of baptizing Holocaust dead, and that LDS church apostle Quentin Cook apologized to him by telephone earlier that day for the database submission of his family's names, and reported blocking the name of former Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir from proxy baptism.^[45]

Controversy over historical and religious rights to Jerusalem[link]

On April 18, 2010 in The New York Times and on 16 April for three other newspapers, Wiesel wrote a full-paged advertisement in which he emphasized the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and criticized the Obama administration for pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt East Jerusalem Jewish settlement construction.^[46][47] He said that: "For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture — and not a single time in the Koran."^[48]

Extended quotation from the text:

"For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics. It belongs to the Jewish people and is much more than a city; it is what binds one Jew to another in a way that remains hard to explain. When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time; it is a homecoming. The first song I heard was my mother's lullaby about and for Jerusalem. Its sadness and its joy are part of our collective memory."

Three weeks later, on May 4, 2010, Wiesel met with President Obama at the White House to discuss Middle East peace relations. Afterwards, Wiesel said, "The president is convinced that the peace process must continue. And we all agree of course. There is no substitute to peace among nations. Each side must understand that there is no absolute justice in the world, nor absolute peace in the world. One side must understand the other's need for assurance for respect."^[49]

Wiesel's position on Jerusalem has been criticized by the Americans for Peace Now in an open letter: "Jerusalem is not just a Jewish symbol. It is also a holy city to billions of Christians and Muslims worldwide. It is Israel's capital, but it is also a focal point of Palestinian national aspirations." They also claimed that equal residential rights do not exist in the city.^[50] Wiesel has also been criticized in Israel. Haaretz published an article by Yossi Sarid which accused him of being out of touch with the realities of life in Jerusalem.^[51]

Wiesel was notably criticized by former DePaul University professor and political scientist Norman Finkelstein in his book The Holocaust Industry. Finkelstein accuses Wiesel of promoting the "uniqueness doctrine" which holds, according to Finkelstein, the Holocaust as the paramount of evil and therefore historically incomparable to other genocides.^[52] Finklestein also accuses Wiesel of playing down the importance of other genocides, especially the Armenian Genocide, and thwarting efforts of raising awareness of the genocide of the Romani people executed by the Nazis. Finkelstein cited Wiesel's lobbying for commemorating Jews alone (not the Romani people) in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., in addition to his numerous other assertions on the "uniqueness of Holocaust."^[53]

Awards and honors[link]

• Prix de l'Université de la Langue Française (Prix Rivarol) for The Town Beyond the Wall, 1963.^[54]
• National Jewish Book Council Award for The Town Beyond the Wall, 1963.^[54]
• Ingram Merrill award, 1964.^[55]
• Prix Médicis for A Beggar in Jerusalem, 1968.^[54]
• Jewish Heritage Award, Haifa University, 1975.^[55]
• Holocaust Memorial Award, New York Society of Clinical Psychologists, 1975.^[55]
• S.Y. Agnon Medal, 1980.^[55]
• Jabotinsky Medal, State of Israel, 1980.^[55]
• Prix Livre Inter, France, for The Testament, 1980.^[54]
• Grand Prize in Literature from the City of Paris for The Fifth Son, 1983.^[54]
• Commander in the French Legion of Honor, 1984.^[54]
• U.S. Congressional Gold Medal, 1984.^[56]
• Medal of Liberty, 1986.^[57]
• Nobel Peace Prize, 1986.
• Grand Officer in the French Legion of Honor, 1990.
• Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1992.^[58]
• Niebuhr Medal, Elmhurst College, Illinois, 1995.^[59]
• Grand Cross in the French Legion of Honor, 2000.
• Star of Romania, 2002.^[55]
• Man of the Year award, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2005.^[55]
• Light of Truth award, International Campaign for Tibet, 2005.^[55]
• Honorary Knighthood, United Kingdom, 2006.^[21]
• Honorary Visiting Professor of Humanities, Rochester College, 2008.^[60]
• National Humanities Medal, 2009.^[61]
• Norman Mailer Prize, Lifetime Achievement, 2011.
• Loebenberg Humanitarian Award, Florida Holocaust Museum, 2012.^[62]

Honorary degrees[link]

• Doctor of Humane Letters, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, 1985.^[63]
• Doctor of Humane Letters, Depaul University, Chicago, 1997.^[64]
• Doctorate, Seton Hall University, New Jersey, 1998.^[65]
• Doctor of Humanities, Michigan State University, 1999.
• Doctorate, McDaniel College, Westminster, MD, 2005.^[66]
• Doctor of Humane Letters, Dartmouth College, 2006.^[67]
• Doctor of Humane Letters, Cabrini College, Radnor, PA, 2007.^[68]
• Doctor of Humane Letters, University of Vermont, 2007.^[69]
• Doctor of Humanities, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, 2007.^[70]
• Doctor of Letters, City College of New York, 2008.^[71]
• Doctorate, Tel Aviv University, 2008.^[72]
• Doctorate, Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel, 2008.^[73]
• Doctor of Humane Letters, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, 2009.^[74]
• Doctor of Letters, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, 2010.^[75]
• Doctor of Humane Letters, Washington University in St. Louis, 2011.^[76]
• Doctor of Humane Letters, College of Charleston, 2011.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Bibliography[link]

See Elie Wiesel bibliography.

See also[link]

• List of Jewish Nobel laureates
• The Boys of Buchenwald – A documentary about the orphanage in which he stayed after the Holocaust
• God on Trial – A 2008 joint BBC / WGBH Boston dramatisation of his book The Trial of God, about a group of Auschwitz prisoners who place God on trial for breaching his contract with the Jewish people.
• Echo Foundation
• Elie Wiesel National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania
• Wiesel Commission

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Berenbaum, Michael. The Vision of the Void: Theological Reflections on the Works of Elie Wiesel. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1979. ISBN 0-8195-6189-4
• Cockburn, Alexander (April 1, 2006). "Did Oprah Pick Another Fibber?: Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel’s Night: Is Frey or Wiesel the Bigger Moral Poseur?". CounterPunch. http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/04/01/truth-and-fiction-in-elie-wiesel-s-night-is-frey-or-wiesel-the-bigger-moral-poseur. Retrieved February 2, 2012. 
• Davis, Colin. Elie Wiesel's Secretive Texts. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1994. ISBN 0-8130-1303-8
• Doblmeier, Martin (2008). The Power of Forgiveness (Documentary). Alexandria, VA: Journey Films. http://www.thepowerofforgiveness.com/about/peopleinthefilm/wiesel.html. 
• Downing, Frederick L. Elie Wiesel: A Religious Biography. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-88146-099-5
• Fine, Ellen S. Legacy of Night: The Literary Universe of Elie Wiesel. New York: State University of New York Press, 1982. ISBN 0-87395-590-0
• Fonseca, Isabel. Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey. London: Vintage, 1996. ISBN 978-0-679-73743-8
• Friedman, John S. (Spring 1984). "Elie Wiesel, The Art of Fiction No. 79". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2995/the-art-of-fiction-no-79-elie-wiesel. 
• Hitchens, Christopher (February 1, 2001). "Wiesel Words". The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/article/wiesel-words. Retrieved February 3, 2012. 
• Rota, Olivier. Choisir le français pour exprimer l'indicible. Elie Wiesel, in Mythe et mondialisation. L'exil dans les littératures francophones, Actes du colloque organisé dans le cadre du projet bilatéral franco-roumain « Mythes et stratégies de la francophonie en Europe, en Roumanie et dans les Balkans », programme Brâcuşi des 8-9 septembre 2005, Editura Universităţii Suceava, 2006, pp. 47–55. Re-published in Sens, dec. 2007, pp. 659–668.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Elie Wiesel

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Elie Wiesel

• The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity
• Works by Elie Wiesel on Open Library at the Internet Archive
• The short film Elie Wiesel on the Nature of Human Nature (1985) is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• The short film Conversations with Elie Wiesel (2001) is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• The short film Anti-Semitism Redux (2002) is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• The short film Anti-Semitism . . . "the worlds most durable ideology" (2004) is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• The short film "The Open Mind - Am I My Brother's Keeper? (September 27, 2007)" is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• The short film "The Open Mind - Taking Life: Can It Be an Act of Compassion and Mercy (September 27, 2007)" is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]

Speeches and interviews

Roger Myerson

Born	(1951-03-29) March 29, 1951 (age 61) Boston, Massachusetts
Nationality	United States
Institution	University of Chicago Northwestern University
Field	Game theory
Alma mater	Harvard University
Influences	Kenneth Arrow
Contributions	Mechanism design
Awards	Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2007)
Information at IDEAS/RePEc

Roger Bruce Myerson (born March 29, 1951) is an American economist and Nobel laureate recognized with Leonid Hurwicz and Eric Maskin for "having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory."^[1] A professor at the University of Chicago, he has made contributions as an economist, as an applied mathematician, and as a political scientist.

Biography[link]

Roger Myerson was born on March 29, 1951 in Boston to a Jewish family. He attended Harvard University, where he received his A.B., summa cum laude, and S.M. in applied mathematics in 1973. He completed his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1976. His doctorate thesis was A Theory of Cooperative Games.^[2]

From 1976 to 2001, Myerson was a professor of economics at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, where he conducted much of his Nobel-winning research.^[3] From 1978 to 1979, he was Visiting Researcher at Bielefeld University. He was Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago from 1985–86 and from 2000–01. He became Professor of Economics at Chicago in 2001. Currently, he is the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago.^[2]

Nobel Prize[link]

Myerson was one of the three winners of the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, the other two being Leonid Hurwicz of the University of Minnesota, and Eric Maskin of the Institute for Advanced Study. He was awarded the prize for his contributions to mechanism design theory.^[4]

Myerson made a path-breaking contribution to mechanism design theory when he discovered a fundamental connection between the allocation to be implemented and the monetary transfers needed to induce informed agents to reveal their information truthfully. Mechanism design theory allows for people to distinguish situations in which markets work well from those in which they do not. The theory has helped economists identify efficient trading mechanisms, regulation schemes, and voting procedures. Today, the theory plays a central role in many areas of economics and parts of political science.^[4]

Personal life[link]

In 1980 Myerson married Gina Weber and the couple had two children, Daniel and Rebecca.^[5]

Publications[link]

Game theory and mechanism design

• "Graphs and Cooperation in Games," Mathematics of Operations Research 2 (1977), 225–229.
• "Two-Person Bargaining Problems and Comparable Utility," Econometrica 45 (1977), 1631–1637.
• "Refinements of the Nash Equilibrium Concept," International Journal of Game Theory 7 (1978), 73–80.
• "Incentive Compatibility and the Bargaining Problem," Econometrica 47 (1979), 61–73.
• "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research 6 (1981), 58–73.
• "Mechanism Design by an Informed Principal," Econometrica 51 (1983), 1767–1797.
• "Two-Person Bargaining Problems with Incomplete Information," Econometrica 52 (1984), 461–487.
• "Bayesian Equilibrium and Incentive Compatibility," in Social Goals and Social Organization, edited by L. Hurwicz, D. Schmeidler, and Hugo Sonnenschein, Cambridge University Press (1985), 229–259.

He wrote a general textbook on game theory in 1991, and has also written on the history of game theory, including his review of the origins and significance of noncooperative game theory.^[6] He also served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Game Theory for ten years.

Myerson has worked on economic analysis of political institutions and written several major survey papers:

• "Analysis of Democratic Institutions: Structure, Conduct, and Performance," Journal of Economic Perspectives 9:1 (1995), 77–89.
• "Economic Analysis of Political Institutions: An Introduction," Advances in Economic Theory and Econometrics: Theory and Applications, volume 1, edited by D. Kreps and K. Wallis (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pages 46–65.
• "Theoretical Comparisons of Electoral Systems," European Economic Review 43 (1999), 671–697.

His recent work on democratization has raised critical questions about American policy in occupied Iraq.^[7]

Bibliography[link]

• Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict, Harvard University Press, 1991.
• Probability Models for Economic Decisions, Duxbury Press, 2005.

See also[link]

• List of economists
• List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References[link]

External links[link]

• Myerson Nobel Prize lecture
• Webpage at the University of Chicago
• ABC News Chicago interview
• Roger Myerson at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• The scientific background to the 2007 Nobel prize: Mechanism Design Theory
• IDEAS/RePEc
• Interview at the Pritzker Military Library

Walter Dix

Walter Dix at the Olympic Trials 2008
Personal information
Nationality	American
Born	(1986-01-31) January 31, 1986 (age 26) Coral Springs, Florida, U.S.
Residence	Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S.
Height	5 ft 9 in (175 cm)
Weight	190 lb (86 kg)
Sport
Sport	Running
Event(s)	100 meters, 200 meters
College team	Florida State Seminoles
Club	Nike
Coached by	John Smith
Achievements and titles
Personal best(s)	100m: 9.88 s (Nottwil 2010) 200m: 19.53 s (Brussels 2011)
Medal record Men's athletics Competitor for the  United States Olympic Games Bronze 2008 Beijing 100 m Bronze 2008 Beijing 200 m World Championships Silver 2011 Daegu 100 m Silver 2011 Daegu 200 m USA Outdoor Championships Gold 2011 Eugene 100 m Gold 2011 Eugene 200 m Gold 2010 Des Moines 100 m Silver 2010 Des Moines 200 m

Walter Dix (born January 31, 1986) is an American sprinter who specializes in the 100 meters and 200 meters. He is the fourth fastest 200 m runner ever with a best of 19.53 seconds, and has broken the 10-second barrier in the 100 m with a best of 9.88 seconds.

Dix was a highly successful amateur athlete, setting a state record in the 100 m and trying out for the US Olympic Team at the age of eighteen. He joined Florida State University and in his first year he broke the 100 m American junior record and won at the NCAA Outdoor Championships. After a fourth place finish at the 2005 US Championships, Dix continued with his collegiate success, setting an NCAA record of 19.69 seconds in the 200 m and coming within one hundredth of the 100 m record. He completed a 100 m, 200 m, and 4×100 meter relay sweep at the 2007 NCAA Outdoor Championships, the first to do so since John Carlos in 1969. He closed his amateur career in 2008: another NCAA 200 m title made him the third most decorated track athlete in NCAA history, and he won gold and silver at the 2008 US Olympic Trials.

Dix turned professional in mid-2008, signing a multi-million dollar contract with Nike. He reached the Olympic finals in the 100 and 200 m, and won two bronze medals; the only American track athlete to win two individual medals at the 2008 Summer Olympics. He suffered an injury at the 2009 US Championships, thus missing out on the World Championships, and a contract dispute with his agent resulted in only a handful of appearances that season.

Early life[link]

The son of a track and field coach, Walter Dix competed at athletics meetings from a young age, specialising in sprinting and the long jump. His speed also translated well to the football field, and he often played the sport at school.^[1] Dix was an accomplished high school runner: in his final year at Coral Springs High School in 2004 he recorded 10.28 seconds in the 100 meters, then third all-time on the Florida high school record list behind only Houston McTear and Curtis Johnson, and broke the 200 meters Florida high school record with 20.62 seconds. Aside from J-Mee Samuels' 10.28 seconds in the 100 m, these were the two fastest marks by a high school athlete that year.^[2] Both these times were within the Olympic standard for the events. He competed at the US Olympic Trials in the 200 m, but did not progress beyond the heats stage.^[3]

College track athletics[link]

He began attending Florida State University (FSU) in late 2004, working with coach Bob Braman. At his first regional meeting for the university, he won the 60-meter dash, 200 m and 4×400 meter relay, and was chosen as the Atlantic Coast Conference rookie of the year.^[4] He made his first major impact at the NCAA Indoor Championships: after a sixth place finish in the 60 m, he came second in the 200 m with a world junior record of 20.37 s, beaten only by Wallace Spearmon.^[1][5] Following this, he became USA Track & Field's Athlete of the Week after setting an American junior record in the 100 m. Running in the Icahn Stadium at the 2005 NCAA East Regional Championships, his heat-winning time of 10.06 seconds bettered Stanley Floyd's 25-year-old mark. Dix went on to win the 100 m final and also won the 200 m in 20.23 seconds, the fourth fastest time by an American junior sprinter.^[6]

At his first NCAA Outdoor Championships, Dix became FSU's first winner at the championships since 1980, and the first to do so as a freshman. He won the 100 m in 10.21 seconds, beating the defending NCAA champions DaBryan Blanton and Tyson Gay to the title.^[7] After recording a personal best of 20.18 seconds in the semifinals, he managed a fourth place finish in the 200 m race.^[8] Dix competed at his first US senior championships that year and, as the only amateur to reach the 100 m final, he finished fourth. The only athletes to beat him were Leonard Scott, reigning Olympic Champion Shawn Crawford and the eventual world champion Justin Gatlin.^[9]

Multiple NCAA champion[link]

Dix's second year at FSU was characterised by success in the 200 m. He won his first indoor NCAA title in the 200 m and was runner-up in the 60 m, having set a personal best of 6.59 seconds in the heats.^[8] His time of 20.27 seconds in the 200 m final was the fastest indoor run in the world that year.^[10] His fastest of the season came at the Reebok invitational and his time of 20.25 seconds placed him as the 13th fastest runner in 2006.^[8] He completed a 200 m NCAA Championship double by taking the outdoor title, and he also finished as runner-up in the 100 m, second to Xavier Carter.^[11]

In his third year as an FSU athlete he won four NCAA Division I titles, starting with a 200 m win indoors.^[12] In the 2007 NCAA East Regional final, he won the 100 m dash in 10.05 seconds. His performance in the 200 m was more impressive however: he set the all-time collegiate record of 19.69 seconds in the 200 m, breaking Joe DeLoach's record that had stood since 1988. This made him the sixth fastest 200 m runner ever and it was the seventh fastest run in history at the time.^[13]

At the NCAA Outdoor Championships that year, he won three separate national titles, beating all opposition in the 100 m, 200 m, and 4×100 meter relay races. This achievement made him the first man to win the three races at an NCCA Championships since John Carlos did so in 1969.^[1] Dix's time of 9.93 seconds in the 100 m was a world-leader at that point of the season, and was just 0.01 behind Ato Boldon's NCAA record. For these accomplishments, he was again named USATF's Athlete of the Week.^[14]

In his final year as an amateur athlete, he spent much of early 2008 battling a hamstring injury.^[15] However, he returned in April to win his third 200 m NCAA outdoor title, while placing fourth in the 100 m. Although his personal bests rivalled those of top professional athletes, Dix decided to finish his degree in social science at FSU, as his graduation in May 2008 allowed him to focus on the Olympic Trials thereafter.^[16]

Over the course of his college career, Dix became only the second athlete to win three NCAA 200 m outdoor titles (after Ralph Metcalfe) and, with six outdoor NCAA titles, he is listed as the joint third on all-time list. Furthermore, he finished with two indoor titles and 18 All-American honors.^[3]

Professional career[link]

2008 Olympic Games[link]

Competing at the US Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon, Dix qualified for the 2008 Summer Olympics in both the 100 and 200 m events. After recording a personal-best-equaling 9.93 seconds in the 100 m semifinals,^[3] he took second place behind Tyson Gay with a wind-assisted 9.80 seconds.^[17] He stated that his NCAA experience had helped raise his confidence and that he was less nervous than he was at the 2005 US Championships.^[18] The 200 m favorite Gay suffered an injury in the qualifying rounds,^[15] and Dix and Crawford both finished the 200 m final with 19.86 seconds, with Dix elected the winner by a photo finish.^[19] After signing a sponsorship deal with Nike worth around $1,000,000 a year,^[20] described by his agent as "the largest deal ever for a track athlete just coming out of college", Dix stated that his aims for the Olympics were personal bests in the individual sprints and a gold in the relay race.^[15]

The 2008 Olympic 100 m final, with Usain Bolt leading and Dix in blue (center).

Competing in his first Olympics, Dix qualified for the 100 m final with a season's best of 9.95 seconds.^[21] In the final he registered a personal best of 9.91 seconds, finishing behind new world record holder Usain Bolt of Jamaica and Richard Thompson of Trinidad and Tobago. The Olympic bronze medal was Dix's first medal at a major international competition.^[22]

A few days later, he finished fifth in the 200 m final with a time of 19.98 seconds, some distance off the winner Usain Bolt who had broken the world record. However, it transpired that both the silver and bronze medalists (Churandy Martina of the Netherlands Antilles and American Wallace Spearmon) had stepped out of their lanes thus they were disqualified. As a result, Dix received his second Olympic bronze medal.^[23] Further disqualifications occurred in the heats of the Olympic 4×100 meter relay race: Darvis Patton and Tyson Gay misjudged a baton pass, causing the American team to be eliminated and spoiling any chance of Dix receiving a relay medal.^[24] He finished the Olympics as the only American sprinter to medal in two individual events.^[25] Dix closed the season with two sub-10 second runs at the Weltklasse and Athletissima meetings, finishing second to a Jamaican on both occasions (Bolt and Asafa Powell).^[26][27]

Low-key 2009[link]

The year after the Olympics, Dix began the season with a world-leading time of 10.00 seconds in Tallahassee in April.^[28] He also set a world-leading relay time of 37.92 seconds with Travis Padgett, Shawn Crawford and Darvis Patton at the Penn Relays.^[29] However, he failed to maintain this strong form through the rest of 2009. Coach Teddy Long planned to improve Dix's start and acceleration in his races, but the two parted company in April.^[20] He placed third behind Michael Rodgers and Asafa Powell at the Prefontaine Classic but, unusually, this proved to one of the highlights of a low-profile year for Dix.^[30] He competed at the US Championships, but injuries forced him out of both the 100 m and 200 m races and he did not qualify for the World Championships. Furthermore, he entered a legal battle with his management company, regarding whether they merited the 20% portion of his multi-million dollar sponsorship contract with Nike.^[20] The dispute with his agent Kimberly Holland was resolved in July: although the terms were undisclosed, Dix left Holland's Icon Management and decided to be his own agent.^[31] With his father as his coach, a legal battle and no major races to prepare for, Dix ran only a handful of local meetings in the rest of 2009.^[20]

Return to top level[link]

Dix returned to national competition with an appearance at the 2010 USA Indoor Track and Field Championships. He took fourth place in the final and set a new 60 m indoor best of 6.58 seconds.^[32] Event winner Ivory Williams was disqualified after testing positive for marijuana and Dix was upgraded to third.^[33] He opened his outdoor season at the Seminole Twilight meet in May, recording 9.98 seconds in the 100 m and 19.89 seconds for the 200 m.^[34] He began to participate in Diamond League meetings, competing on the European circuit for the first time. He beat Wallace Spearmon at the Golden Gala's 200 m race, breaking Michael Johnson's meet record.^[35] He also took to the national stage, winning the 100 m and finishing as the 200 m runner-up at the 2010 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships.^[36] A week later, Dix beat Tyson Gay at the Prefontaine Classic for another meet record of 19.72 seconds.^[37] In August at a meet in Nottwil, Switzerland, Dix ran a new personal best of 9.88 seconds, finishing second behind Nesta Carter who also set a new personal best of 9.86 seconds.^[38] In the first meeting of the 2011 IAAF Diamond League, at the Qatar Athletic Super Grand Prix, he won the 200 m with a time of 20.06 seconds.^[39]

He moved to Southern California in 2012 to train with John Smith and opened his outdoor season with a wind-aided run of 9.85 seconds.^[40]

Personal life[link]

Walter Dix is the son of Washington and Plinnie Dix. His father, a former sprinter, is an assistant principal and track coach at New River Middle School, while his mother is a high school teacher. He has two older brothers, Alex and William, who also were track runners.^[41] While attending Florida State University, Dix became a member of the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.^[42]

Personal bests[link]

As of 2010^[update], Dix's bests in the 200 m, both indoors and outdoors, are the seventh fastest of all time.^[43][44] His best in the 100 m is the sixth fastest by an American athlete.^[45]