Richard R. Ernst
Richard R. Ernst in 2009
Born	(1933-08-14) August 14, 1933 (age 78) Winterthur, Switzerland
Nationality	Swiss
Fields	Chemistry, Physics
Notable awards	Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1991)

Richard Robert Ernst (born August 14, 1933) is a Swiss physical chemist and Nobel Laureate.^[1]

Born in Winterthur, Switzerland, Ernst was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1991 for his contributions towards the development of Fourier Transform nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy while at Varian Associates, Palo Alto and the subsequent development of multi-dimensional NMR techniques. These underpin applications of NMR both to chemistry (NMR spectroscopy) and to medicine (MRI). He also received the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize in 1991.

Early Life

Ernst lived in house that his grandfather, a merchant, had built in 1898. Ernst's father, Robert Ernst, was teaching as an architect at the technical high school of their town. He also had two sisters. His town had a lot of art and industry in it, a lot of the art had to do with music. Winterthur had a small but first rank orchestra that was famous throughout Switzerland and also an industry in diesel motors and rail way engines.

Ernst soon became interested in both sides. Playing the violoncello brought him into numerous chamber and church music ensembles, and stimulated his interest in musical composition that he tried extensively while in high school. At the age of 13,though, Ernst found in his attic a case filled with chemicals, remainders of an uncle who died in 1923 and was, as a metallurgical engineer, interested in chemistry and photography. "I became almost immediately fascinated by the possibilities of trying out all conceivable reactions with them, some leading to explosions, others to unbearable poisoning of the air in our house, frightening my parents." Ernst said but he had survived and started to read all chemistry books that he could get a hand on, first some 19th century books from his home library that did not provide much reliable information, and then he emptied the rather extensive city library. Soon,though, he knew that he wanted become a chemist, rather than a composer. "I wanted to understand the secrets behind my chemical experiments and behind the processes in nature."

Education

After he had finished high school, Ernst started with high expectations and enthusiasm to study chemistry at the famous Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH-Z). But he was disappointed by the state of chemistry in the early fifties as it was taught at ETH-Z; the students had to memorize uncountable facts that even the professors did not understand. The physical chemistry lectures did not reveal much insight either, they were limited just to classical thermodynamics.So, Ernst had to return to reading in order to get the knowledge he wanted. He often read the book "Theoretical Chemistry" by S. Glasstone. In it he learned about the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, spectroscopy, statistical mechanics, and statistical thermodynamics.

He studied and served as faculty at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, from which he is now retired. He is Honorary Doctor of the Technical University of Munich and University of Zurich. Ernst received both his diploma in chemistry (1957) and his Ph.D. in physical chemistry (1962) from ETH Zürich.

Discoveries

Then, from 1963 to 1968 he worked as a research chemist in Palo Alto, California. In 1966, working with an American colleague, Ernst discovered that the sensitivity of NMR techniques (hitherto limited to analysis of only a few nuclei) could be dramatically increased by replacing the slow, sweeping radio waves traditionally used in NMR spectroscopy with short, intense pulses. His discovery enabled analysis of a great many more types of nuclei and smaller amounts of materials.

In 1968 he returned to Switzerland to teach at his alma mater. He was made assistant professor in 1970 and full professor in 1976. His second major contribution to the field of NMR spectroscopy was a technique that enabled a high-resolution, “two-dimensional” study of larger molecules than had previously been accessible to NMR. With Ernst's refinements, scientists were able to determine the three-dimensional structure of organic and inorganic compounds and of biological macromolecules such as proteins; to study the interaction between biological molecules and other substances such as metal ions, water, and drugs; to identify chemical species; and to study the rates of chemical reactions.

Ernst also was credited with many inventions and held several patents in his field.

He is a foreign fellow of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences ^[2]

He is member of the World Knowledge Dialogue Scientific Board.

References[link]

^[1]

1. ^ name=Earnstbio>Earnst, Richard, R. "Richard R. Earnst". NobelPrize.org. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1991/ernst-photo.html. Retrieved April 27, 2012. 

The 2009 Bel Air Film Festival featured the world premiere of a documentary film on Ernst Science Plus Dharma Equals Social Responsibility. Produced by Carlo Burton, the film takes place in Ernst's hometown in Switzerland."Film Festival Ticker". http://www.vimooz.com/festivalticker/2009/10/2nd-annual-bel-air-film-festival-announces-line-up-and-honorees/. </ref>

External links[link]

• http://www.vega.org.uk/video/programme/21
• Freeview video interview with Richard Ernst by the Vega Science Trust
• Interview with Professor Richard R. Ernst by Joanna Rose, science writer, 8 December 2001.
• The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1991
• Autobiography
• The Official Site of Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize

Sir Roger Penrose OM, FRS (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College. He has received a number of prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their contribution to our understanding of the universe.^[1] He is renowned for his work in mathematical physics, in particular his contributions to general relativity and cosmology. He is also a recreational mathematician and philosopher.

Career[link]

He was born in Colchester, Essex, England, Roger Penrose is a son of Lionel S. Penrose and Margaret Leathes.^[2] Penrose is the brother of mathematician Oliver Penrose and of chess Grandmaster Jonathan Penrose. Penrose attended University College School and University College, London, where he graduated with a first class degree in mathematics. In 1955, while still a student, Penrose reintroduced the E. H. Moore generalized matrix inverse, also known as the Moore–Penrose inverse^[3], after it had been reinvented by Arne Bjerhammar (1951). Penrose earned his Ph.D. at Cambridge (St John's College) in 1958, writing a thesis on "tensor methods in algebraic geometry" under algebraist and geometer John A. Todd. He devised and popularised the Penrose triangle in the 1950s, describing it as "impossibility in its purest form" and exchanged material with the artist M. C. Escher, whose earlier depictions of impossible objects partly inspired it. Escher's Waterfall, and Ascending and Descending were in turn inspired by Penrose. As reviewer Manjit Kumar puts it:

As a student in 1954, Penrose was attending a conference in Amsterdam when by chance he came across an exhibition of Escher's work. Soon he was trying to conjure up impossible figures of his own and discovered the tri-bar – a triangle that looks like a real, solid three-dimensional object, but isn't. Together with his father, a physicist and mathematician, Penrose went on to design a staircase that simultaneously loops up and down. An article followed and a copy was sent to Escher. Completing a cyclical flow of creativity, the Dutch master of geometrical illusions was inspired to produce his two masterpieces.^[4]

In 1965, at Cambridge, Penrose proved that singularities (such as black holes) could be formed from the gravitational collapse of immense, dying stars.^[5] This work was extended by Hawking to prove the Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems.

Oil painting by Urs Schmid (1995) of a Penrose tiling using fat and thin rhombi.

In 1967, Penrose invented the twistor theory which maps geometric objects in Minkowski space into the 4-dimensional complex space with the metric signature (2,2). In 1969, he conjectured the cosmic censorship hypothesis. This proposes (rather informally) that the universe protects us from the inherent unpredictability of singularities (such as the one in the centre of a black hole) by hiding them from our view behind an event horizon. This form is now known as the "weak censorship hypothesis"; in 1979, Penrose formulated a stronger version called the "strong censorship hypothesis". Together with the BKL conjecture and issues of nonlinear stability, settling the censorship conjectures is one of the most important outstanding problems in general relativity. Also from 1979 dates Penrose's influential Weyl curvature hypothesis on the initial conditions of the observable part of the Universe and the origin of the second law of thermodynamics.^[6] Penrose and James Terrell independently realized that objects travelling near the speed of light will appear to undergo a peculiar skewing or rotation. This effect has come to be called the Terrell rotation or Penrose–Terrell rotation.^[7][8]

Penrose is well known for his 1974 discovery of Penrose tilings, which are formed from two tiles that can only tile the plane nonperiodically, and are the first tilings to exhibit fivefold rotational symmetry. Penrose developed these ideas based on the article Deux types fondamentaux de distribution statistique^[9] (1938; an English translation Two Basic Types of Statistical Distribution) by Czech geographer, demographer and statistician Jaromír Korčák. In 1984, such patterns were observed in the arrangement of atoms in quasicrystals.^[10] Another noteworthy contribution is his 1971 invention of spin networks, which later came to form the geometry of spacetime in loop quantum gravity. He was influential in popularizing what are commonly known as Penrose diagrams (causal diagrams). In 2004 Penrose released The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, a 1,099-page book aimed at giving a comprehensive guide to the laws of physics. He has proposed a novel interpretation of quantum mechanics.^[11] In 2010, Penrose reported possible evidence, based on concentric circles found in WMAP data of the CMB sky, of an earlier universe existing before the Big Bang of our own present universe.^[12]

Penrose is the Francis and Helen Pentz Distinguished (visiting) Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University.^[13] Penrose is married to Vanessa Thomas, head of mathematics at Abingdon School,^[14][15] with whom he has one son.^[14] He has three sons from a previous marriage to American Joan Isabel Wedge, whom he married in 1959.

Physics and consciousness[link]

At a conference in 2005

Penrose has written books on the connection between fundamental physics and human (or animal) consciousness. In The Emperor's New Mind (1989), he argues that known laws of physics are inadequate to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. Penrose proposes the characteristics this new physics may have and specifies the requirements for a bridge between classical and quantum mechanics (what he calls correct quantum gravity). Penrose uses a variant of Turing's halting theorem to demonstrate that a system can be deterministic without being algorithmic. (E.g., imagine a system with only two states, ON and OFF. The system's state is ON if a given Turing machine halts, and OFF if the Turing machine does not halt, then the system's state is completely determined by the Turing machine, however there is no algorithmic way to determine whether the Turing machine stops.) Penrose believes that such deterministic non-algorithmic processes may come in play in the quantum mechanical wave function reduction, and may be harnessed by the brain. He argues that the present computer is unable to have intelligence because it is an algorithmically deterministic system. He argues against the viewpoint that the rational processes of the mind are completely algorithmic and can thus be duplicated by a sufficiently complex computer. This contrasts with supporters of strong artificial intelligence, who contend that thought can be simulated algorithmically. He bases this on claims that consciousness transcends formal logic because things such as the insolubility of the halting problem and Gödel's incompleteness theorem prevent an algorithmically based system of logic from reproducing such traits of human intelligence as mathematical insight. These claims were originally espoused by the philosopher John Lucas of Merton College, Oxford. The Penrose/Lucas argument about the implications of Gödel's incompleteness theorem for computational theories of human intelligence has been widely criticized by mathematicians, computer scientists and philosophers, and the consensus among experts in these fields seems to be that the argument fails, though different authors may choose different aspects of the argument to attack.^[16] Marvin Minsky, a leading proponent of artificial intelligence, was particularly critical, stating that Penrose "tries to show, in chapter after chapter, that human thought cannot be based on any known scientific principle." Minsky's position is exactly the opposite - he believes that humans are, in fact, machines, whose functioning, although complex, is fully explainable by current physics. Minsky maintains that "one can carry that quest [for scientific explanation] too far by only seeking new basic principles instead of attacking the real detail. This is what I see in Penrose's quest for a new basic principle of physics that will account for consciousness."^[17]

Penrose responded to criticism of The Emperor's New Mind with his follow up 1994 book Shadows of the Mind, and in 1997 with The Large, the Small and the Human Mind. In those works, he also combined his observations with that of anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff.

Penrose and Hameroff have argued that consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in microtubules, which they dubbed Orch-OR (orchestrated objective reduction). Max Tegmark, in a paper in Physical Review E,^[18] calculated that the time scale of neuron firing and excitations in microtubules is slower than the decoherence time by a factor of at least 10,000,000,000. The reception of the paper is summed up by this statement in Tegmark's support: "Physicists outside the fray, such as IBM's John A. Smolin, say the calculations confirm what they had suspected all along. 'We're not working with a brain that's near absolute zero. It's reasonably unlikely that the brain evolved quantum behavior'".^[19] Tegmark's paper has been widely cited by critics of the Penrose–Hameroff position.

In their reply to Tegmark's paper, also published in Physical Review E, the physicists Scott Hagan, Jack Tuszynski and Hameroff^[20][21] claimed that Tegmark did not address the Orch-OR model, but instead a model of his own construction. This involved superpositions of quanta separated by 24 nm rather than the much smaller separations stipulated for Orch-OR. As a result, Hameroff's group claimed a decoherence time seven orders of magnitude greater than Tegmark's, but still well short of the 25 ms required if the quantum processing in the theory was to be linked to the 40 Hz gamma synchrony, as Orch-OR suggested. To bridge this gap, the group made a series of proposals. It was supposed that the interiors of neurons could alternate between liquid and gel states. In the gel state, it was further hypothesized that the water electrical dipoles are oriented in the same direction, along the outer edge of the microtubule tubulin subunits. Hameroff et al. proposed that this ordered water could screen any quantum coherence within the tubulin of the microtubules from the environment of the rest of the brain. Each tubulin also has a tail extending out from the microtubules, which is negatively charged, and therefore attracts positively charged ions. It is suggested that this could provide further screening. Further to this, there was a suggestion that the microtubules could be pumped into a coherent state by biochemical energy.

Roger Penrose in the University of Santiago de Compostela to pick up the Fonseca prize.

Finally, it is suggested that the configuration of the microtubule lattice might be suitable for quantum error correction, a means of holding together quantum coherence in the face of environmental interaction. In the last decade, some researchers who are sympathetic to Penrose's ideas have proposed an alternative scheme for quantum processing in microtubules based on the interaction of tubulin tails with microtubule-associated proteins, motor proteins and presynaptic scaffold proteins. These proposed alternative processes have the advantage of taking place within Tegmark's time to decoherence.

Hameroff, in a lecture in part of a Google Tech talks series exploring Quantum biology, gave an overview of current research in the area, and responded to subsequent criticisms of the Orch-OR model.^[22] In addition to this, a recent 2011 paper by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff gives an updated model of their Orch-OR theory, in light of criticisms, and discusses the place of consciousness within the universe.^[23]

Phillip Tetlow, although himself supportive of Penrose's views, acknowledges that Penrose's ideas about the human thought process are at present a minority view in scientific circles, citing Minsky's criticisms and quoting science journalist Charles Seife's description of Penrose as "one of a handful of scientists" who believe that the nature of consciousness suggests a quantum process.^[19]

Religious views[link]

Penrose does not hold to any religious doctrine,^[24] and refers to himself as an atheist.^[25] In the film A Brief History of Time, he said, "I think I would say that the universe has a purpose, it's not somehow just there by chance ... some people, I think, take the view that the universe is just there and it runs along–it's a bit like it just sort of computes, and we happen somehow by accident to find ourselves in this thing. But I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe, I think that there is something much deeper about it."^[26] Penrose is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.

Awards and honours[link]

Roger Penrose during a lecture

Penrose has been awarded many prizes for his contributions to science. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1972. In 1975, Stephen Hawking and Penrose were jointly awarded the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1985, he was awarded the Royal Society Royal Medal. Along with Stephen Hawking, he was awarded the prestigious Wolf Foundation Prize for Physics in 1988. In 1989 he was awarded the Dirac Medal and Prize of the British Institute of Physics. In 1990 Penrose was awarded the Albert Einstein Medal for outstanding work related to the work of Albert Einstein by the Albert Einstein Society. In 1991, he was awarded the Naylor Prize of the London Mathematical Society. From 1992 to 1995 he served as President of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation. In 1994, Penrose was knighted for services to science.^[27] In the same year he was also awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) by the University of Bath.^[28] In 1998, he was elected Foreign Associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences. In 2000 he was appointed to the Order of Merit. In 2004 he was awarded the De Morgan Medal for his wide and original contributions to mathematical physics. To quote the citation from the London Mathematical Society:

His deep work on General Relativity has been a major factor in our understanding of black holes. His development of Twistor Theory has produced a beautiful and productive approach to the classical equations of mathematical physics. His tilings of the plane underlie the newly discovered quasi-crystals.

In 2005 Penrose was awarded an honorary doctorate (Honoris Causa) by Warsaw University and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), and in 2006 by the University of York. In 2008 Penrose was awarded the Copley Medal. He is also a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association and one of the patrons of the Oxford University Scientific Society. In 2011, Penrose was awarded the Fonseca prize by the University of Santiago de Compostela. In 2012 Penrose was awarded the Richard R. Ernst Medal by ETHZ for his contributions to science and strengthening the connection between science and society.

Works[link]

• Techniques of Differential Topology in Relativity (1972, ISBN 0-89871-005-7)
• Spinors and Space-Time: Volume 1, Two-Spinor Calculus and Relativistic Fields (with Wolfgang Rindler, 1987) ISBN 0-521-33707-0 (paperback)
• Spinors and Space-Time: Volume 2, Spinor and Twistor Methods in Space-Time Geometry (with Wolfgang Rindler, 1988) (reprint), ISBN 0-521-34786-6 (paperback)
• The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and The Laws of Physics (1989, ISBN 0-14-014534-6 (paperback); it received the Rhone-Poulenc science book prize in 1990)
• Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (1994, ISBN 0-19-853978-9 (hardback))
• The Nature of Space and Time (with Stephen Hawking, 1996, ISBN 0-691-03791-4 (hardback), ISBN 0-691-05084-8 (paperback))
• The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind (with Abner Shimony, Nancy Cartwright, and Stephen Hawking, 1997, ISBN 0-521-56330-5 (hardback), ISBN 0-521-65538-2 (paperback), Canto edition: ISBN 0-521-78572-3)
• White Mars or, The Mind Set Free (with Brian W. Aldiss, 1999, ISBN 978-0-316-85243-2 (hardback))
• The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (2004, ISBN 0-224-04447-8 (hardcover), ISBN 0-09-944068-7 (paperback))
• Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe (Bodley Head (23 Sep 2010) ISBN 978-0-224-08036-1)

Penrose also wrote forewords to Quantum Aspects of Life and Zee's book Fearful Symmetry.

See also[link]

• Conformal Cyclic Cosmology
• Orch-OR
• Quantum mind
• Multiverse
• Quantum Aspects of Life (book)
• Illumination problem

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Ferguson, Kitty (1991). Stephen Hawking: Quest For A Theory of Everything. Franklin Watts. ISBN 0-553-29895-X.
• Misner, Charles; Thorne, Kip S. & Wheeler, John Archibald (1973). Gravitation. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-0344-0. ; see Box 34.2.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Roger Penrose

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Roger Penrose

• Dangerous Knowledge – Penrose was one of the principal interviewees in a BBC documentary about the mathematics of infinity directed by David Malone
• Penrose's new theory "Aeons Before the Big Bang?":
  • Original 2005 lecture: "Before the Big Bang? A new perspective on the Weyl curvature hypothesis" (Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge, Nov 11, 2005).
  • Original publication: "Before the Big Bang: an outrageous new perspective and its implications for particle physics". Proceedings of EPAC 2006. Edinburgh. 2759–2762 (cf. also Hill, C.D. & Nurowski, P. (2007) "On Penrose's 'Before the Big Bang' ideas". Ithaca)
  • Revised 2009 lecture: "Aeons Before the Big Bang?" (Georgia Institute of Technology, Center for Relativistic Astrophysics)
  • BBC interview on the new theory
• Roger Penrose on The Forum
• Penrose on sidestepping reason
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Roger Penrose", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Penrose.html .
• Shaking Up Foundations of Math: Roger Penrose on Kurt Gödel's Groundbreaking Work
• Hilary Putnam's review of Penrose's 'Shadows of the Mind' claiming that Penrose's use of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is fallacious
  • Beyond the Doubting of a Shadow: A Reply to Commentaries on Shadows of the Mind
• Penrose Tiling found in Islamic Architecture
• Two theories for the formation of quasicrystals resembling Penrose tilings
• Tegmark, Max. 2000. "The importance of quantum decoherence in brain processes". Physical Review E. vol 61. pp. 4194–4206.
  • "Biological feasibility of quantum states in the brain" – (a disputation of Tegmark's result by Hagan, Hameroff, and Tuszyński)
    • Tegmarks's rejoinder to Hagan et al.
• "Toilet Paper Plagiarism" – D. Trull about Penrose's lawsuit concerning the use of his Penrose tilings on toilet paper
• Roger Penrose: A Knight on the tiles (Plus magazine)
• Penrose's Gifford Lecture biography
• Quantum-Mind
• Audio: Roger Penrose in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion show

The Forum

• Roger Penrose speaking about Hawking's new book on Premier Christian Radio

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (May 2010)

The Basics
The Basics at the Oxford Art Factory, 2010
Background information
Origin	Melbourne, Australia
Genres	Rock
Years active	2002–present
Labels	Independent, Albert Records
Associated acts	Gotye, Down Hills Home, Dog With Wheels, Blood Red Bird
Website	The Basics Official Website
Members
Wally De Backer Kris Schroeder Tim Heath
Past members
Michael Hubbard
Notable instruments
Lead guitar, drums, bass guitar.

The Basics ( /ˈbæzɪtʃ/ BAZZ-ich) are a three-piece band from Melbourne, Australia, formed by Wally De Backer and Kris Schroeder in 2002. Their style has been described as anything from 'indie-pop' to 'rock'n'roll' to 'pop-rock', though their records show they span a wide range of genres, including reggae, ska, country, and electro-pop. They are "recognised as one of Australia's hardest-working bands".^[1]

With close to 1000 shows in their ten-year career, their live performances are well-known for their sense of humour and energy.^[2]

Formation[link]

The Basics were formed after Kris met Wally at a party in Melbourne.^[3] The event was to see off the young aspiring producer, who was about to depart for Los Angeles, and together with a number of musician friends, the two jammed on some blues-rock standards. Later that night, they bonded over a mutual love of The Beatles, 70s and 80s cartoon theme songs and old Sierra adventure games.

Initially, they played around Melbourne as an acoustic guitar/drums combo, starting at The Opposition in Frankston and the House of Fools in Footscray, where in late 2002 they met Michael Hubbard and later invited him to join them on electric guitar.^[4] Though lacking any real experience with the instrument, Kris willingly purchased his first bass guitar, and the trio was born. During this time, the group start performing songs with more complicated three-part harmony.

During late 2002 and early 2003, The Basics recorded and released an album called Get Back through MGM Distribution. They began what was to become regular tours of the East and West coasts of Australia.

2004-2005: Current lineup[link]

Tim Heath joined the group in June 2004, after Michael decided to pursue his solo career, which has included being one half of Down Hills Home.^[4] Tim was reportedly the only person to reply to an advertisement in Melbourne's Beat Magazine looking for a new guitarist. Tim apparently answered the advertisement - which said the applicant "must have a love of 50s and 60s rock'n'roll" - thinking that he would be meeting "a couple of old guys to play with on the weekends over some beers". They soon recorded For Girls Like You.

The Basics in 2005 continued to tour and play small festivals, and after releasing For Girls Like You through MGM Distribution, they departed for a national tour of Australia, which lasted for two months and took them to every Australian state and territory. Stuart Padbury, a young Melbourne sound engineer, joined them on much of this tour. On returning, the band began demonstrating songs for a new album.

2006-2009: Touring and soundtracks[link]

In 2006, The Basics began recording what was to become known as Stand Out/Fit In. Taking several months, it was not completed until the end of the year, despite intentions to have it released in June. Instead, they held a successful 'album preview', where each of the tracks was demonstrated in 'rough form' accompanied by a music video for each (produced by Melbourne photographic artist James Bryans). The band also talked about the origins of the songs. This event brought a lot of attention to the band for the idea's originality. They pre-released a radio single 'Just Hold On' from the album. The band were invited to play the hugely popular Homebake Festival in Sydney, where they received a great response, after being introduced onto the stage by a short stocky Asian guy with big calves ("one of the highlights" wrote The Daily Telegraph).

In 2007, the band departed on a tri-state residency which saw them play Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane every week for the month of April - a bold move which brought further attention to the band for its original idea.^[5] Riding on the wave of this tour, Schroeder, De Backer and Heath departed on their first overseas tour which saw them performing 26 shows around Japan, Norway and the United Kingdom.^[6] They also toured twice more up the East Coast, one of which was with popular Japanese band The Bawdies. Their song 'Rattle My Chain' was used in a series of commercials for Volvo Australia. The song 'Hey There!' featured in the British film The Bank Job - starring Jason Statham - and was used as the backing for a February 2007 short film directed by Tim Longhurst called The Rip. Their song 'Better' was featured in a surfing documentary about the invention of the shortboard in 1967.

In 2008, the band appeared on Australia's Channel 9 for Australia Day celebrations, performing two of their songs - 'Just Hold On' and 'Hey There!' - to an estimated audience of 2 million. Securing an Australian Government grant, they embarked on a two-month tour of Australia, specifically targeting "culturally underprivileged groups" in rural and regional schoolchildren and Indigenous communities. The programme had them holding masterclasses and performing alongside Indigenous groups in the remote Northern Territory and Queensland.^[7][8] Their initiative also had them raising money for the charity Lifeline^{[disambiguation needed ]}, their contribution to which was recognised with a plaque at the end of the tour. Season two of Californication starring David Duchovny featured their cover of the classic 'Have Love, Will Travel', most famously covered by 'The Sonics'.

In 2009, The Basics for the first time enjoyed the support of Australian radio network Triple J, which had reportedly snubbed the band's previous material.^[9] The singles 'With This Ship' and 'Like A Brother' were added to the station's playlist, and momentum carried The Basics overseas for a second tour of the United Kingdom and Norway, and also a series of shows in Dublin, Ireland. They were joined by the longtime front-of-house engineer Stuart Padbury, who had been mixing them since 2005. The band was often seen in the Grafton Street Mall in Dublin, busking to promote their concerts there. Their second show in Oslo, Norway, saw the band perform with Hot Tub, one of the members of the Norwegian boy band "Boyzvoice", in his first performance for several years. Season Eight of Scrubs featured the song 'Lookin' Over My Shoulder'.

Despite all this promise, the band's album Keep Your Friends Close - produced and part-recorded by Peter Cobbin at London's Abbey Road Studios - though enjoying many favourable reviews,^{[10][11][12][13]} failed to impress Richard Kingsmill, music director of Triple J. This effectively ended the band's apparent upward spiral and the resulting album launch tour was reportedly "trying".

2010: Hiatus and live album[link]

In 2010, following the band's fourth stint at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, and the recording of a yet-unreleased live album, an indefinite hiatus was announced on the band's websites. This was in part due to the impending release of a new album produced by Wally for his Gotye project, and also to reported tensions within the band following the previous year's disappointments.

However, this hiatus was soon broken with a two-month residency at the Northcote Social Club in Melbourne, which saw an apparent return to form.^[14] The band's EP "Wait For You" enjoys airplay on Triple J.^[15] The Basics also played a one-off show at Sydney's Oxford Art Factory.^[16]

On 20 August 2010, The Basics released their fourth LP /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/, available free and exclusively from their website for digital download^[17]. The band had reportedly moved to expand their listenership through this free giveaway, though 300 "Deluxe" CD/vinyl versions have been printed. /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/ was recorded at the Northcote Social Club on 6 February, "in front of a live studio audience", and like the previous record, was mixed by Peter Cobbin at Abbey Road Studios. Technically a self-titled album, the phonetics spell out the accurate pronunciation of the band’s name. Kris Schroeder: "For years we’ve worked at bringing our live energy into the studio and thus far it’s been a bit hit-and-miss. Our trick this time was to pull a switcheroo and bring the studio to us instead; the result is the best and closest to us we’ve sounded yet."

Melbourne thespian and Dog With Wheels bassist David Bramble - friends with Heath from university days - has occasionally joined the band on tour, playing keys, often while sporting a large moustache. Other guests have included Jake Mason (saxophone), also of Cookin' on 3 Burners and The Bamboos^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Gideon Brazil (saxophone, flute), Simon Imrei (guitar and vocals) and Monty MacKenzie (saxophone).

Covers have often made an appearance from various sources: to date, some of the bands covered have been Cream, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Police, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, New Kids on the Block, Richard Berry, Sonny Curtis and The Crickets, JJ Cale, Harry Nilsson, Bill Scott, Ryan Adams and The Coasters (via The Beatles for their cover of Three Cool Cats).

Members[link]

Current

• Wally De Backer - drums, vocals (2002-present)
• Kris Schroeder - bass, vocals (2002-present)
• Tim Heath - guitar, vocals (2004-present)

Former

• Michael Hubbard - guitar, vocals (2002-2004)

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• Get Back (15 January 2004)
• Stand Out/Fit In (5 May 2007)
• Keep Your Friends Close (25 September 2009)
• /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/ (20 August 2010)

EP[link]

• For Girls Like You (11 July 2005)
• Lookin' Over My Shoulder (10 February 2007)
• Like A Brother (5 June 2009)
• Wait For You (21 May 2010)

Singles[link]

• Call It Rhythm & Blues (20 August 2004)
• Just Hold On
• With This Ship (22 February 2009)

Upcoming projects[link]

The band is taking a three year hiatus, with an announced return to the stage together in early 2014. Wally De Backer launched Making Mirrors under his Gotye act in August 2011, Tim Heath will be touring and recording with Blood Red Bird, and Kris Schroeder recorded a solo EP titled, Patience in the Face of Control, before leaving Australia to work with the Red Cross in Kenya for a two year sabbatical.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Website
• Myspace Website

Richard McClure Scarry (June 5, 1919 – April 30, 1994) was a popular American children's author and illustrator who published over 300 books with total sales of over 100 million units worldwide.^[1]

Scarry was born in Boston, Massachusetts, where his parents ran a shop. The Scarry family enjoyed a comfortable life even during the time of the Great Depression. Following high school graduation, Scarry enrolled in a business college but soon dropped out, finding it not to his liking. He then studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he remained until being drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II.

Following the war, Scarry worked for the art departments of various magazines before making a career breakthrough in 1949 with Little Golden Books.

[edit] Busytown

Scarry's most famous series of books was about Busytown. Scarry's characters were almost always anthropomorphic animals. His books were popular with children throughout the world. Over 100 million copies of his books were sold, and they have been translated into dozens of languages.^[1]

While his books are largely populated by common animal species such as cats, rabbits, domestic pigs, and mice, he proved to be quite adept at giving human characteristics to a seemingly endless number of creatures. Beavers, raccoons, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, owls, bears, goats, elephants, foxes, gorillas, crocodiles, dogs, wolves, anteaters, hyenas, baboons, chickens, worms, and insects were just some of the other animals to be featured in Scarry's works. Many of his later illustrations feature characters in traditional Swiss clothing and show architecturally correct drawings of half-timber houses. Examinations of drawings featuring mechanical devices, such as the rigging on a sailboat or a fighter jet, also show that they were drawn with accuracy.

In the 1980s and 1990s, many of his Best Ever series of books were converted into popular animated videos, which are available on DVD and VHS and also aired at times during TLC's Ready Set Learn block between scheduled programs from 1995 to 2003 as some of the network's Short Stuff breaks. Some of these animated films include Richard Scarry's Best Silly Stories and Songs Videos Ever and The Busiest Firefighters Ever. The Busytown books were also adapted into an animated series, The Busy World of Richard Scarry, which ran on Showtime from 1993 to 1996 and later reran in the late 1990s on Nickelodeon and Noggin. A further animated series, Busytown Mysteries was commissioned by CBC Television from the Cookie Jar Group in 2007, and airs on the Kids' CBC Block morning program. Busytown was also featured at the Carnegie Science Center from June 13 through September 8, 2002 in an interactive exhibit entitled "Richard Scarry's Busytown."^[2]

Titles reprinted since the death of Mr. Scarry in 1994 were significantly condensed from their original versions. For example, in "Best Word Book Ever" whole sections have been deleted: the section on painting was removed, as was the section on music making. The "Buildings" section was removed — it originally depicted a church, a cathedral, and a French Foreign Legion fortress. The "Out West" section removed as well. Other parts of the book were edited to show more women in the workplace and fewer cultural stereotypes. Examples in Best Word Book Ever include the Grocery section: in the old version, the grocer is a male bear — in the new version, the grocer is a female bear. In the Boats and Ships section, the old version showed a Native American in a canoe — in the new version, it shows a mouse in a pink sweater. In the "Work Machines" section, a male bulldozer operator became a female bulldozer operator with the addition of pink flowers on the sleeves. In the "When You Grow Up" section, a milkman becomes a female taxi driver. A Cowboy was replaced by a female gardener and a female scientist. A commuter-train conductor was replaced by a reporter and a female photographer. A soldier was replaced by a female judge and a small female cat.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life and family[link]

Scarry's wife, Patricia Murphy, was a writer of children's textbooks who met Richard during collaboration when he was a textbook illustrator. She is credited with writing many of the stories in his subsequent children's books, such as Good Night, Little Bear, The Bunny Book, and The Fishing Cat.

In 1972 the Scarrys bought a chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland. Here he founded his studio where he spent most of the day (from about 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) writing and illustrating his books. His studio contained a single desk, lamp and chair. His wife was told not to bother him except for his hour break for lunch.

Scarry died of myocardial infarction (heart attack) in Gstaad at age 74 in 1994.^[1]

Scarry's papers and drawings are in the collection of the University of Connecticut archives.

His son, Richard Scarry, Jr., is also an illustrator, sometimes working under the nickname Huck Scarry, sometimes working in his father's style as Richard Scarry. Huck is the nickname of Huckle Cat, one of the most commonly recurring Busytown characters. Scarry Jr. lives in Vienna, Austria; socialites Olympia and Fiona Scarry are his daughters.

Bibliography[link]

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

• ABC Word Book (ISBN 0-0-711143-6)
• Best Word Book Ever (ISBN 0-307-15510-2) (first published 1970, "new revised edition" 1980)
• Best Bedtime Book Ever
• Busy, Busy World (ISBN 0-307-65539-3)
• Busy, Busy Town (ISBN 0-307-16803-4)
• Cars and Trucks and Things That Go (ISBN 0-307-15785-7)
• European Word Book
• Great Big Air Book (ISBN 0-394-92167-4)
• Great Big Mystery Book (ISBN 0-00-138143-1)
• Great Big Schoolhouse (ISBN 0-00-138150-4)
• Hop Aboard! Here We Go! (ISBN 0-307-13756-2, ISBN 978-0-307-13756-2)
• Is This the House of Mistress Mouse? (ISBN 0-307-12029-5)
• Longest Book Ever! (ISBN 0-689-80134-3)
• Peasant Pig and the Terrible Dragon (ISBN 0-394-84567-6)
• Pig Will and Pig Won't: A Book of Manners (ISBN 0-679-86653-1) (first published 1984)
• Please and Thank You Book (ISBN 0-394-82681-7)
• Richard Scarry's Boats (1967) (ISBN 0-30-711537-2)
• Richard Scarry's Best Christmas Book Ever (1981) (ISBN 0394949366, ISBN 978-0-394-94936-9)
• Silly Stories
• Richard Scarry's Just For Fun (1960) (ISBN 0-307-02116-5)
• The fables of La Fontaine (1963)
• Tinker and Tanker (ISBN 0-385-06010-6)
• What Do People Do All Day? (ISBN 0-394-81823-7)
• Beginner Books by Richard Scarry:
  • Richard Scarry's The Best Mistake Ever! and Other Stories (1984) (B-Extra 9)
  • Pie Rats (1994) (B-Extra 10)
• Bright and Early Books by Richard Scarry:
  • The Early Bird 1968 (BE-Extra 1, ISBN 0-394-81138-0)
• Richard Scarry's Funniest Storybook Ever (ISBN 0-00-138145-8)
• Richard Scarry's The Busiest People Ever (ISBN 0-00-711151-7)
• Richard Scarry's Best Story Book Ever (ISBN 0-307-16548-5)
• Richard Scarry's Animal Nursery Tales (ISBN 0-307-16810-9)
• Richard Scarry's Storybook Dictionary: A Giant Golden Book
• Richard Scarry's Biggest Word Book Ever! (1985) (ISBN 0-394-87374-2)

Stories made to video[link]

Golden Book Videos:

• "Get Ready for School" (Golden Step Ahead 1981, 1991).
• The Gingerbread Man and Other Nursery Stories (Golden Book 1985)
• Old MacDonald's Farm and Other Animal Tales (Golden Book 1986)

Random House Videos:

• Best ABC Video Ever! (Random House 1989)
• Best Counting Video Ever! (Random House 1989)
• Best Busy People Video Ever! (Random House 1993)
• Best Learning Songs Video Ever! (Random House 1993)
• Best Silly Stories and Songs Video Ever! (Random House 1994)
• Best Sing-Along Mother Goose Video Ever! (Random House 1994)

The Busy World of Richard Scarry:

• Summer Picnic and 2 other stories (Cinar 1993)
• Sergeant Murphy's Day Off and 2 other stories (Cinar 1993)
• The Best Birthday Present Ever and 2 other stories (Cinar 1993)
• The Busiest Firefighters Ever and 2 other stories (Cinar 1993)
• The Best Babysitter Ever and 2 other stories (Cinar 1993)
• Mr. Frumble's New Cars and 2 other stories (Cinar 1993)
• A Trip To The Moon and 2 other stories (Cinar 1993)
• The Snowstorm and 2 other stories (Cinar 1993)
• The Best of the Busy World of Richard Scarry (Cinar and Minute Maid 1993)

Richard Scarry's:

• Sally's First Day At School and 2 other stories (Polygram Cinar 1993, 1994, 1995)
• New Friend On The Block and 2 other stories (Polygram Cinar 1993, 1994, 1995)
• The Best Birthday Party Ever and 2 other stories (Polygram Cinar 1993, 1994, 1995)
• Now I Know My 123's and 2 other stories (Polygram Cinar 1993, 1994, 1995)
• The Best Spelling Bee Ever and 2 other stories (Polygram Cinar 1993, 1994, 1995)
• Practice Makes Perfect and 2 other stories (Polygram Cinar 1993, 1994, 1995)
• Making Progress and 2 other stories (Polygram Cinar 1993, 1994, 1995)
• Be My Valentine and 2 other stories (Polygram Cinar 1993, 1994, 1995)
• The First Easter Egg Ever and 2 other stories (Polygram Cinar 1993, 1994, 1995)
• The First Halloween Ever and 2 other stories (Polygram Cinar 1993, 1994, 1995)
• The Best Christmas Present Ever and 2 other stories (Polygram Cinar 1993, 1994, 1995)
• The Best Christmas Surprise Ever and 2 other stories (Polygram Cinar 1993, 1994, 1995)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Books and Writers: Richard Scarry (1919-1994)
• The Best Word Book Ever, 1963 and 1991; a comparison of changes (though these were also present in the First Revised Edition, published in 1980)
• The Busy World of Richard Scarry (TV program)
• Richard Scarry at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Richard Scarry in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Richard Scarry at the Notable Names Database

Richard David Precht

Richard David Precht in 2009
Born	(1964-12-08) December 8, 1964 (age 47) Solingen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Era	21st-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
Influenced by Musil · Grün · Sandel

Richard David Precht (born December 8, 1964 in Solingen) is a German writer and philosopher who has become especially well known as an author of successful popular science books about philosophical issues.^[1][2][3]

Life[link]

Richard David Precht was born as a son of a married couple (Hans-Jürgen Precht, 30 April 1933 in Hannover; Mother 1 August 1938 in Neuhof bei Berlin). He grew up in an alternative and unconventional-bourgeois family with five children including two Vietnamese adoptees whom the parents adopted in 1969 and 1972 symbolically against the Vietnam War. His father, a formal industrial designer, dealt with literature and also the setup and care of a larger private library. His mother was a housewife and very involved in Terre des hommes. The children grew up in an intellectual and idealistic left wing milieu. Having completed his higher secondary schooling Abitur at the Gymnasium Schwertstraße in Solingen, Precht did his alternative service as a parish worker. After this he studied philosophy, German studies and history of art at the University of Cologne. In 1994, he obtained a doctorate (Dr. phil.) in German studies. From 1991 to 1995 he worked as a scientific assistant in a cognitive science research project.

In 1997, Precht was Arthur F. Burns Fellow at Chicago Tribune. Two years later Precht received the Heinz-Kühn-Scholarship. In 2000-01, he was Fellow at the European College of Journalism and in 2001 he was awarded for journalism in the field of biomedical studies.

As an essayist Precht has written for German newspaper and magazines. From 2002 to 2004 he was columnist of Literaturen, a sophisticated intellectual literary magazine, and from 2005 to 2008 was freelance moderator of Tageszeichen, a broadcast program of WDR.

Precht today gives many lectures at universities and science congresses. In the 2008-09 Wintersemester, he gave a lecture series about the most important topics in philosophy at the University of Luxembourg.

Precht lives with his wife Caroline Mart, a television journalist and vice-chief editor of RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg, his son and three stepchildren in Luxembourg and Cologne.

Works[link]

Precht is successful with literary works as well as non-fiction.

Dissertation[link]

Precht's dissertation from 1994 has the title "Die gleitende Logik der Seele. Ästhetische Selbstreflexivität in Robert Musil's „Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften", a phenomenological analysis which works out the effective structures of Musil's book.

Fiction books[link]

In 1999, Precht together with his brother Georg Jonathan wrote the detective Bildungsroman Das Schiff im Noor. The novel opens in year 1985 and uses the Danish island Lilleö (in reality: Ærø) as a backdrop for a complicated web of analogies and motives, for example the relation between theology and policework. On the surface, the novel is a detective story about a sunken ship and a homicide from a long time ago. The novel deals in its more profound significance with the order of things. Even the philosopher Michel Foucalt appears in the shape of the conservator Mikkel Folket. The novel was republished in 2009 with the original planned name Die Instrumente des Herrn Jörgensen.

The novel Die Kosmonauten from 2002 deals with the love story and finding of identity of Georg and Rosalie in their late twenties where they had got to know each other in Cologne and shortly afterwards moved together to Berlin in the post-reunification period 1990-91. They first live the life of Bohemians in Berlin-Mitte from which Rosalie increasingly distances herself over the course of the story. She changes her mindset, falls in love with another man and parts from Georg to have a bourgeois lifestyle. At the end of the novel their common friend Leonhard is killed in a tragic accident. Parallel to this story, Precht recounts in short the tragic destiny of Sergei Krikalev, the last cosmonaut of the Soviet Union.

In 2005, he published his autobiographical book Lenin kam nur bis zum Lüdenscheid - Meine kleine deutsche Revolution where he recalls from a child's perspective his childhood in the 1970s within a leftwing family who stands close to the party DCP. Simultaneously, he reviews the global political events in West Germany and East Germany in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and describes political attitudes, ideological mindsets as well as details of an everyday life in this era. The book received numerously positive critics and it was filmed with the support of WDR, SWR and the Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen. In 2008, the film came out in many German repertory cinemas and reached 20,000 viewers.

Philosophical non-fictional[link]

In 1997, his book Noahs Erbe was published where Precht deals with the ethical question in relation between humans and animals as well as their social consequences. As a result, he pleads for a change in the treatment of animals on the basis of a "ethic of nescience".

Originally planned as an introduction to philosophy for young people, his most successful work, the non-fiction Wer bin ich – und wenn ja, wie viele? (English: "Who Am I – And If So, How Many?"; release of the English version in April 2011) was published in 2007. It is an introduction to philosophy linking the results of brain research, psychology, behaviour research and other sciences. The book is regarded as an introduction to the great matter of being human and mankind, structured in Kant's classification: What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope? After a recommendation by Elke Heidenreich, the book occupied first place in the Spiegel bestseller list. It sold yet over 1,000,000 copies and was translated into 32 languages. According to non-fiction bestseller list of Spiegel, it was the most successful hardcover non-fiction of the year 2008 and achieved third place in the bestseller of the decade.

In 2009, the non-fiction Liebe - ein unordentliches Gefühl links the scientific-biological view of sexuality and love with the psychological and social-cultural circumstances of our comprehension and behaviour in love. Precht's main thesis is that sexual love doesn't come from sexuality but from the parent-child relationship. The need for attachment and closeness comes from the childhood relationship to the parents and it later searches in the sexual partner an equivalent. Thus, love is a projection of (early-)childhood needs and experiences in love. From March 2009 to December 2009 it was on the Spiegel bestseller list.

The non-fiction Die Kunst kein Egoist zu sein was published in 2010. The book is structured in three parts: "good and evil", "willing and doing" and "moral and society". Precht deals with the question of moral at first (philosophical and evolutionary) and comes to the conclusion that humans have a relatively high need to be in tune with themselves and also to consider themselves well. In the second moral-psychological part however, he examines numerous strategies by which people trick themselves by repressing, replacing, comparing or feeling not to be responsible. In the third part, he reflects about consequences for our present society. He criticizes the renunciation of politics to the regulatory policy in the economy, pleads for more civic commitment and for a transformation of democracy by new forms of citizen participation and co-partnership.

Publishing[link]

Precht has been co-publisher of the magazine agora42 since December 2010. It is a social fiasco that "economists are hardly interested in philosophy and philosophers are hardly interested in economics," Precht says .^[4]

Position[link]

Precht is an advocate of a new civil society. He stands philosophically close to the American Communitarianism, the idea to democratise the society with higher civic sense of community. He considers the obligation of economy and politics for constant economic growth as damaging.^[5] In the debate about the thesis of Thilo Sarrazin Precht views the accusations toward the migrants as a diversion with regard to the more fundamentally question about the distribution, the growing gap between rich and poor and the establishment of moral-distant settings in the upper class as well as the under class.^[6] Precht is a severe critic of the Bundeswehr mission in Afghanistan.^[7]

References[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Richard David Precht