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Marilyn Monroe posing with hairdresser Sidney Guilaroff’s statue of the discus thrower. Photograph by Milton Greene.

Maria Montessori

Slonimsky and John Cage, Los Angeles 1987 “enmeshed in the twisted musical ribbon” of Slonimsky’s invention called “Mobius Strip Tease”. Photo by Margo Leavin

Ronald Lewis Graham (born October 31, 1935) is a mathematician credited by the American Mathematical Society as being “one of the principal architects of the rapid development worldwide of discrete mathematics in recent years”. He has done important work in scheduling theory, computational geometry, Ramsey theory, and quasi-randomness.

KONRAD ZUSE (1910-1995)
1935-1938: Konrad Zuse builds Z1, world’s first program-controlled computer. Despite certain mechanical engineering problems it had all the basic ingredients of modern machines, using the binary system and today’s standard separation of storage and control. Zuse’s 1936 patent application (Z23139/GMD Nr. 005/021) also suggests a von Neumann architecture (re-invented in 1945) with program and data modifiable in storage.
1941: Zuse completes Z3, world’s first fully functional programmable computer.
1945: Zuse describes Plankalkuel, world’s first higher-level programming language, containing many standard features of today’s programming languages. FORTRAN came almost a decade later. Zuse also used Plankalkuel to design world’s first chess program.
1946: Zuse founds world’s first computer startup company: the Zuse-Ingenieurbüro Hopferau. Venture capital raised through ETH Zürich and an IBM option on Zuse’s patents.

The photo shows Konrad Zuse in the mid 80s with employees of the software company InterFace Connection GmbH (now Interface AG). (Photo Source)

Raymond Queneau

Georges Perec at Place Saint-Sulpice cafè, photo by Pierre Getzler

October 1974, Saint-Sulpice Square in Paris. A man is sitting on a terrace. On his table there’s a notebook, which he is conscientiously filling in with everything happening in front of him: letters, like K, L, M, or P (for parking). Symbols, and numbers: 86 for the bus, a 6 that indicates that we are in the 6th district in Paris; fugitive slogans from advertising; a stone for the fountain; the church, buildings; trees; a piece of sky; pigeons; vehicles; human beings; dogs; bread (Baguette), a salad. Colors: red for cars, blue for bags, green for shoes, blue for taxis.

Simultaneousness of actions or micro events: postures, gestures, discussions with two, three, sometimes more people; a man with a briefcase, two men smoking pipes, a woman with a coat, people that are gathering in front of the church, a man with a bow tie, three children coming from school, a priest, a man stopping to stroke a dog, a woman waiting for a taxi, two beaming Japanese tourists, a couple, a man with tics, a policeman with a bike. Every kind of activity: to wait, to stroll, to wander, to walk, to run, to go, to look for something, to hesitate, to stay, to wait for the bus, to stand, to get up.

Elements like a fountain, a kiosk, and a group of trees are all standing at a center. The surroundings are historical buildings, with a church on one side. There is a possibility to make a plan, to make an order, a framework with elements fixed in space, grounded in space, lifeless: Saint Sulpice Square is organized as a cube.

Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges

Renato Dulbecco, 97, Dies; Won Prize for Cancer Study

Portrait with Rita Levi Montalcini

Three books by Castoriadis

The Crisis of Modern Society
Paul Cardan (pseudonym of Cornelius Castoriadis)

From Bolshevism to the Bureaucracy
Paul Cardan (pseudonym of Cornelius Castoriadis)

Cornelius Castoriadis
introduction by Nikos Papastergiadis

Three important, closely linked concepts stand at the center of the thought of philosopher, economist, social critic, political thinker and psychoanalyst Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997): the imaginary, creation, and autonomy. They refer to the wide spectrum of meanings through which a society develops symbolic forms and institutional structures in order to express its identity. The radical left-wing group Socialisme ou Barbarie, founded by Castoriadis in 1948 together with Claude Lefort, influenced numerous labor movements throughout Europe. For his notes on topics in philosophy, economic science, politics, mathematics, and psychoanalysis, selected by cultural theorist Nikos Papastergiadis, excerpts of which are reproduced here, Castoriadis never used a notebook, but rather any material within his reach, whether the backs of ration cards or the empty lines in a conference program.

portrait by: Olivier Roller

John Arden Hiigli

It is said that an encounter with an extraordinary object can transform a person. That was certainly true for me when I first encountered a geodesic dome in the mid 1960s. It was certainly true in the mid 70s when Synergetics came out and I discovered the Isotropic Vector Matrix. Discovering my first dome in a lush public park in Wisconsin was an exquisite esthetic experience that transformed me in the sense that I experienced grandeur and peaceful stillness at the same time.

via: Mapping permutations of geometric form

adamferriss:

R. Buckminster Fuller at Black Mountain College by Nancy Newhall ca. 1948
Color Transparency

Edward O. Wilson, a three-year-old zoologist in 1932.

Edward O. Wilson’s childhood fascination with insects and other living things matured into an intellectual passion that fired one of the greatest careers in modern science. Wilson made his first major entomological discovery at age 13. By the time he completed graduate school he was already winning recognition as the world’s foremost authority on ants. From his base at Harvard University, he traveled the world, collecting rare specimens and gaining unprecedented insight into the evolution and behavior of these complex creatures.

E.O. Wilson Profile | Biography | Interview | Photo Gallery |

via: American Academy of Achievement

Rizzolatti (Leica Noctilux 50mm Tmax400-bw)

Giacomo Rizzolatti, professor of Neuroscience at the University of Parma during a workshop. He is internationally know for having discovered the so-called “mirror neurons” system, a major breakthrough in brain science, which many believe to be worth a Nobel prize. In essence, these are neurons that are activated both when we perform a specific gesture and when we see someone else performing the same gesture. Thus, they provide the neural basis for an intimate connection between perception and action.

by: Paolo Viviani

Rita Levi Montalcini photo by Albert Watson