Biography of Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. (1804–1896) (born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, Canada) and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871). He considered himself to be of Dutch ancestry.[1]


Thomas Edison as a boy
In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him "addled." This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. He recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint." His mother then home schooled him.[2] Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union.
Edison developed hearing problems at an early age. The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle ear infections. Around the middle of his career Edison attributed the hearing loss to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire and he was thrown off the train in Smiths Creek, Michigan, along with his apparatus and chemicals. In his later years he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears.[3][4]
Edison's family was forced to move to Port Huron, Michigan, when the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854,[5] but his life there was bittersweet. He sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, as well as vegetables that he sold to supplement his income. This began Edison's long streak of entrepreneurial ventures as he discovered his talents as a businessman. These talents eventually led him to found General Electric, which is still a publicly traded company, and 13 other companies.
Edison became a telegraph operator after he saved three-year-old Jimmie MacKenzie from being struck by a runaway train. Jimmie's father, station agent J.U. MacKenzie of Mount Clemens, Michigan, was so grateful that he trained Edison as a telegraph operator. Edison's first telegraphy job away from Port Huron was at Stratford Junction, Ontario, on the Grand Trunk Railway.[6] In 1866, at the age of 19, Thomas Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where as an employee of Western Union he worked the Associated Press bureau news wire. Edison requested the night shift, which allowed him plenty of time to spend at his two favorite pastimes—reading and experimenting. Eventually, the latter pre-occupation cost him his job. One night in 1867, he was working with a battery when he spilled sulphuric acid onto the floor. It ran between the floorboards and onto his boss's desk below. The next morning he was fired.[7]
One of his mentors during those early years was a fellow telegrapher and inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope, who allowed the impoverished youth to live and work in the basement of his Elizabeth, New Jersey, home. Some of Edison's earliest inventions were related to telegraphy, including a stock ticker. His first patent was for the electric vote recorder, (U. S. Patent 90,646),[8] which was granted on June 1, 1869.[9]
Marriages and children
On December 25, 1871, Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell, whom he had met two months earlier as she was an employee at one of his shops. They had three children:
• Marion Estelle Edison (1873–1965), nicknamed "Dot"
• Thomas Alva Edison, Jr. (1876–1935), nicknamed "Dash"
• William Leslie Edison (1878–1937)[10]
Mary Edison died on August 9, 1884.
On February 24, 1886, at the age of thirty nine, Edison married 20-year-old Mina Miller in Akron, Ohio.[11] She was the daughter of inventor Lewis Miller, co-founder of the Chautauqua Institution and a benefactor of Methodist charities. They also had three children:
• Madeleine Edison (1888–1979), who married John Eyre Sloane[12][13]
• Charles Edison (1890–1969), who took over the company upon his father's death and who later was elected Governor of New Jersey[14] He is buried in Rosedale Cemetery in Orange, New Jersey.
• Theodore Miller Edison (1898–1992).[15]
Mina outlived Thomas Edison, dying on August 24, 1947.[16][17]
Beginning his career


Photograph of Edison with his phonograph, taken by Mathew Brady in 1877
Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention which first gained him fame was the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park," New Jersey, where he lived. His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder and had poor sound quality. The tinfoil recordings could only be replayed a few times. In the 1880s, a redesigned model using wax-coated cardboard cylinders was produced by Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, and Charles Tainter. This was one reason that Thomas Edison continued work on his own "Perfected Phonograph
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Biography of Galileo

Galileo was born in Pisa (then part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany), the first of six children of Vincenzo Galilei, a famous lutenist and music theorist, and Giulia Ammannati. At the age of 8, his family moved to Florence, but he was left with Jacopo Borghini for two years.[1] He then was educated in the Camaldolese Monastery at Vallombrosa, 21 mi (34 km) southeast of Florence.[1] Although he seriously considered the priesthood as a young man, he enrolled for a medical degree at the University of Pisa at his father's urging. He did not complete this degree, but instead studied mathematics.[8] In 1589, he was appointed to the chair of mathematics in Pisa. In 1591 his father died and he was entrusted with the care of his younger brother Michelagnolo. In 1592, he moved to the University of Padua, teaching geometry, mechanics, and astronomy until 1610.[9] During this period Galileo made significant discoveries in both pure science (for example, kinematics of motion, and astronomy) and applied science (for example, strength of materials, improvement of the telescope). His multiple interests included the study of astrology, which in pre-modern disciplinary practice was seen as correlated to the studies of mathematics and astronomy.[10]
Although a devout Roman Catholic, Galileo fathered three children out of wedlock with Marina Gamba. They had two daughters, Virginia in 1600 and Livia in 1601, and one son, Vincenzio, in 1606. Because of their illegitimate birth, their father considered the girls unmarriageable. Their only worthy alternative was the religious life. Both girls were sent to the convent of San Matteo in Arcetri and remained there for the rest of their lives.[11] Virginia took the name Maria Celeste upon entering the convent. She died on April 2, 1634, and is buried with Galileo at the Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze. Livia took the name Sister Arcangela and was ill for most of her life. Vincenzio was later legitimized and married Sestilia Bocchineri.[12]
In 1610 Galileo published an account of his telescopic observations of the moons of Jupiter, using this observation to argue in favor of the sun-centered, Copernican theory of the universe against the dominant earth-centered Ptolemaic and Aristotelian theories. The next year Galileo visited Rome in order to demonstrate his telescope to the influential philosophers and mathematicians of the Jesuit Collegio Romano, and to let them see with their own eyes the reality of the four moons of Jupiter.[13] While in Rome he was also made a member of the Accademia dei Lincei.[14]
In 1612, opposition arose to the Sun-centered theory of the universe which Galileo supported. In 1614, from the pulpit of Santa Maria Novella, Father Tommaso Caccini (1574–1648) denounced Galileo's opinions on the motion of the Earth, judging them dangerous and close to heresy. Galileo went to Rome to defend himself against these accusations, but, in 1616, Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino personally handed Galileo an admonition enjoining him neither to advocate nor teach Copernican astronomy.[15] During 1621 and 1622 Galileo wrote his first book, The Assayer (Il Saggiatore), which was approved and published in 1623. In 1630, he returned to Rome to apply for a license to print the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in Florence in 1632. In October of that year, however, he was ordered to appear before the Holy Office in Rome.
Following a papal trial in which he was found vehemently suspect of heresy, Galileo was placed under house arrest and his movements restricted by the Pope. From 1634 onward he stayed at his country house at Arcetri, outside of Florence. He went completely blind in 1638 and was suffering from a painful hernia and insomnia, so he was permitted to travel to Florence for medical advice. He continued to receive visitors until 1642, when, after suffering fever and heart palpitations, he died
sumber:wikipedia

Biography of Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon's father Carlo Buonaparte was Corsica's representative to the court of Louis XVI
Napoleon was born in the town of Ajaccio on Corsica, on 15 August 1769, one year after the island was transferred to France by the Republic of Genoa.[1] He was named Napoleone di Buonaparte (in Corsican, Nabolione or Nabulione), though he later adopted the more French-sounding Napoléon Bonaparte.[note 1] Napoleon wrote to Pasquale di Paoli—leader of a Corsican revolt against the French—in 1789: "I was born when my country was dying. Thirty thousand French, vomited on our shores, drowning the throne of liberty in waves of blood- such was the horrid sight which first met my view."[1] His heritage earned him popularity among Italians during his Italian campaigns.[2]
The family were minor Italian nobility of Tuscan origin, which had moved to Florence and broke into two branches; the original branch, Buonaparte-Sarzana, were compelled to leave Florence after the defeat of the Ghibellines and came to Corsica in the 16th century, when the island was still a possession of Genoa.[3]
His father Carlo Buonaparte, an attorney, was named Corsica's representative to the court of Louis XVI in 1778, where he remained for a number of years. The dominant influence of Napoleon's childhood was his mother, Maria Letizia Ramolino, whose firm discipline helped restrain the rambunctious Napoleon.[4][1]
Napoleon had an elder brother, Joseph, and younger siblings Lucien, Elisa, Louis, Pauline, Caroline and Jerome. He was baptised Catholic just before his second birthday, on 21 July 1771 at Ajaccio Cathedral.[5]
Napoleon's noble, moderately affluent background and family connections afforded him greater opportunities to study than were available to a typical Corsican of the time. On 15 May 1779, at age nine, Napoleon was admitted to a French military school at Brienne-le-Château, a small town near Troyes. He had to learn French before entering the school, but he spoke with a marked Italian accent throughout his life and never learned to spell properly.[6] During these school years Napoleon was teased by other students for his Corsican accent and he buried himself in study.[7][note 2] Upon completing the school in 1784, Bonaparte was admitted to the elite Ecole Militaire (Military college) in Paris. Though he had initially sought a naval assignment, he studied artillery and completed the two-year course of study in one year.[8] An examiner judged him as "very applied [to] abstract sciences, little curious as to the others; a thorough knowledge of mathematics and geography."[9][note 3]
Early career
Upon graduation in September 1785, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in La Fere artillery regiment and took up his new duties at the age of 16.[10] Napoleon served on garrison duty in Valence and Auxonne until after the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, although he took nearly two years of leave in Corsica and Paris during this period. He spent most of the next four years in Corsica, where a complex three-way struggle was playing out between royalists, revolutionaries, and Corsican nationalists. Bonaparte supported the Jacobin faction and gained the rank of lieutenant-colonel of a regiment of volunteers. After coming into conflict with the increasingly conservative nationalist leader, Pasquale Paoli, Bonaparte and his family fled to the French mainland in June 1793.[11]
Through the help of fellow Corsican Saliceti, Napoleon was appointed artillery commander of the French forces besieging Toulon, which had risen in revolt against the republican government and was occupied by British troops.[12] He spotted an ideal place for French guns to be set up so they could dominate the city's harbour, and the British ships would be forced to evacuate. The assault on the position, during which Bonaparte was wounded in the thigh, led to the recapture of the city and his promotion to Brigadier General. His actions brought him to the attention of the Committee of Public Safety, and he became a close associate of Augustin Robespierre, younger brother of the Revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre.[13] Following the fall of the elder Robespierre he was briefly imprisoned in the Chateau d'Antibes in August 1794, but was released within two weeks.[14] He also became engaged to Desiree Clary, later Queen of Sweden and Norway, but the engagement was broken off by Napoleon in 1796.[15]
13 Vendemiaire
Main article: 13 Vendemiaire
Bonaparte was serving in Paris when royalists and counter-revolutionaries organised an armed protest against the National Convention on 3 October 1795. Bonaparte was given command of the improvised forces defending the Convention in the Tuileries Palace. He seized artillery pieces with the aid of a young cavalry officer, Joachim Murat, who later became his brother-in-law, and used it to repel the attackers, 300 of whom died and the rest fled.[16][note 4] The defeat of the Royalist insurrection extinguished the threat to the Convention and earned him sudden fame, wealth, and the patronage of the new Directory, particularly that of its leader, Barras. Napoleon was quickly promoted to General de Division and within six months, he was given command of the French Army of Italy. Also, within weeks of Vendemiaire he was romantically attached to Barras's former mistress, Josephine de Beauharnais, whom he married on 9 March 1796.[17]
First Italian campaign
Main articles: French Revolutionary Wars: Campaigns of 1796 and French Revolutionary Wars: Campaigns of 1797
Two days after the marriage, Bonaparte left Paris to take command of the Army of Italy leading it on a successful invasion of Italy. At the battles of Montenotte and Lodi, he defeated Austrian forces, then drove them out of Lombardy and defeated the army of the Papal States.[18] Pope Pius VI had protested at the execution of Louis XVI, so France retaliated by annexing two small papal territories.


Napoleon at the Bridge of the Arcole, by Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, (ca. 1801), Louvre, Paris
Bonaparte ignored the Directory's order to march on Rome and dethrone the Pope. It was not until February of the following year that General Berthier captured Rome and took Pius VI prisoner. The Pope died of illness while in captivity. In early 1797, Bonaparte led his army into Austria and forced it to sue for peace. The resulting Treaty of Campo Formio gave France control of most of northern Italy, along with the Low Countries and Rhineland, but a secret clause promised Venice to Austria.[19] Bonaparte then marched on Venice and forced its surrender, ending more than 1,000 years of independence. Later in 1797, Bonaparte organised many of the French-dominated territories in Italy into the Cisalpine Republic.
His series of military triumphs was a result of his ability to apply his knowledge of conventional military thought to real-world situations, as demonstrated by his creative use of artillery tactics, using it as a mobile force to support his infantry. As he described it: "...Although I have fought sixty battles, I have learned nothing which I did not know at the beginning. Look at Caesar; he fought the first like the last."[20] Contemporary paintings of his headquarters during the Italian campaign depict his use of the Chappe semaphore line, first implemented in 1792. He was also adept at both intelligence and deception and had a sense of when to strike. He often won battles by concentrating his forces on an unsuspecting enemy, by using spies to gather information about opposing forces, and by concealing his own troop deployments. In this campaign, often considered his greatest, Napoleon's army captured 160,000 prisoners, 2,000 cannons and 170 standards.[21] A year of campaigning had witnessed breaks with the traditional norms of 18th century warfare and marked a new era in military history.
While campaigning in Italy, General Bonaparte became increasingly influential in French politics. He published two newspapers, ostensibly for the troops in his army, but widely circulated within France as well. In May 1797 he founded a third newspaper, published in Paris, Le Journal de Bonaparte et des hommes vertueux.[22] Elections in mid-1797 gave the royalist party increased power, alarming Barras and his allies on the Directory.[23] The royalists, in turn, began attacking Bonaparte for looting Italy and overstepping his authority in dealings with the Austrians. Bonaparte sent General Augereau to Paris to lead a coup d'etat and purge the royalists on 4 September (18 Fructidor). This left Barras and his Republican allies in firm control again, but dependent on Bonaparte to maintain it. Bonaparte himself proceeded to the peace negotiations with Austria, then returned to Paris in December as the conquering hero and the dominant force in government, more popular than the Directors.[24]
Egyptian expedition
Main article: French Invasion of Egypt (1798)
In March 1798, Bonaparte proposed a military expedition to seize Egypt, then a province of the Ottoman Empire, seeking to protect French trade interests and undermine Britain's access to India. The Directory, though troubled by the scope and cost of the enterprise, readily agreed so the popular general would be away from the center of power.[25]


Battle of the Nile by Thomas Luny
In May, Bonaparte was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences. His Egyptian expedition included a group of 167 scientists: mathematicians, naturalists, chemists and geodesers among them; their discoveries included the Rosetta Stone and their work was published in the Description of Egypt in 1809.[26] This deployment of intellectual resources is considered by Ahmed Youssef an indication of Bonaparte's devotion to the principles of the Enlightenment, and by Juan Cole as a masterstroke of propaganda, obfuscating the true imperialist motives of the invasion.[27] In a largely unsuccessful effort to gain the support of the Egyptian populace, Bonaparte also issued proclamations casting himself as a liberator of the people from Ottoman oppression, and praising the precepts of Islam.[note 5]
En route to his campaign in Egypt, Napoleon seized Malta on 9 June 1798. Requesting safe harbor to resupply his ships, he waited until his ships were safely in port, and then turned his guns on his hosts. The Knights of Malta were unable to defend themselves from this attack.
On 1 July, Napoleon landed successfully at Alexandria, temporarily eluding pursuit by the British Royal Navy. After landing he successfully fought The Battle of Chobrakit against the Mamelukes, an old power in the Middle East. This battle helped the French plan their attack in the Battle of the Pyramids fought over a week later, about 6 km from the pyramids. Bonaparte's forces were greatly outnumbered by the Mamelukes cavalry - 20,000 against 60,000 - but Bonaparte formed hollow squares, keeping supplies safely on the inside. In all, 300 French and approximately 6,000 Egyptians were killed.[28]
While the battle on land was a resounding French victory, the British Royal Navy managed to win at sea. The ships that had landed Bonaparte and his army sailed back to France, while a fleet of ships of the line remained to support the army along the coast. On 1 August the British fleet under Horatio Nelson fought the French in the Battle of the Nile, capturing or destroying all but two French vessels. With Bonaparte land-bound, his goal of strengthening the French position in the Mediterranean Sea was frustrated, but his army succeeded in consolidating power in Egypt, though it faced repeated uprisings.[29]


Bonaparte Before the Sphinx, (ca. 1868) by Jean-Leon Gerome, Hearst Castle
In early 1799, he led the army into the Ottoman province of Damascus (Syria and northern Israel) and defeated numerically superior Ottoman forces in several battles, but his army was weakened by disease—mostly bubonic plague—and poor supplies. Napoleon led 13,000 French soldiers to the conquest of the coastal towns of Arish, Gaza, Jaffa, and Haifa.[30]
The storming of Jaffa was particularly brutal. Though the French took control of the city within a few hours of the attack beginning, the French soldiers bayoneted approximately 2,000 Turkish soldiers trying to surrender. The soldiers then turned on the inhabitants of the town. Men, women, and children were robbed and murdered for three days, and the massacre ended with even more bloodshed, as Napoleon ordered 3,000 Turkish prisoners executed.[30]
With his army weakened by the plague, Napoleon was unable to reduce the fortress of Acre, and returned to Egypt in May. To speed up the retreat, he took the controversial step of ordering the poisoning of plague-stricken men along the way; it is not clear how many died.[31] His supporters have argued this decision was necessary given the continuing harassment of stragglers by Ottoman forces. Back in Egypt, on 25 July, Bonaparte defeated an Ottoman amphibious invasion at Abukir.[32] With the Egyptian campaign stagnating, and political instability developing back home, Bonaparte left Egypt for France in August 1799, leaving his army under General Kleber.[33]
Marriages and children


Napoleon's second wife, Marie Louise with her son Napoleon II
Napoleon married Josephine de Beauharnais in 1796, when he was 26. He formally adopted her son Eugene and cousin Stephanie after assuming the throne, and arranged dynastic marriages for them. Josephine had her daughter Hortense marry Napoleon's brother, Louis.[96]
Napoleon's and Josephine's marriage was unconventional, and both were known to have affairs. Josephine agreed to divorce so he could remarry in the hopes of producing an heir.[97] Therefore in March 1810, he married Marie Louise, Archduchess of Austria by proxy; he had married into the family of German rulers.[note 23] They remained married until his death, though she did not join him in exile. The couple had one child Napoleon Francis Joseph Charles (1811–32), known from birth as the King of Rome. He was later Napoleon II though he reigned for only two weeks. He was awarded the title of the Duke of Reichstadt in 1818 and had no children himself.
Napoleon acknowledged two illegitimate children:
• Charles, Count Leon, (1806–81) by Louise Catherine Eleonore Denuelle de la Plaigne
• Alexandre Joseph Colonna, Count Walewski, (1810-68) by Countess Walewski.
He may have had further illegitimate offspring:
• Emilie Pellapra, (1806-71) by Françoise-Marie LeRoy
• Karl Eugin von Mühlfeld, by Victoria Kraus
• Hélène Napoleone Bonaparte (1816-1910) by Countess Albine de Montholon
• Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, whose mother remains unknown
sumber: wikipedia

Biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Mozart's birthplace at Getreidegasse 9, Salzburg, Austria
Family and early years
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born to Leopold and Anna Maria Pertl Mozart in Getreidegasse 9 in Salzburg, the capital of the sovereign Archbishopric of Salzburg, in what is now Austria, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. His only sibling who survived past birth was his sister Maria Anna (1751–1829), called "Nannerl". Wolfgang was baptized the day after his birth at St. Rupert's Cathedral. The baptismal record gives his name in Latinized form as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. Mozart generally called himself "Wolfgang Amadè Mozart"[2][page # needed] as an adult, but there were many variants.
Mozart's father Leopold Mozart (1719–1787) was deputy Kapellmeister to the court orchestra of the Archbishop of Salzburg and a minor composer. He was also an experienced teacher; in the year of Mozart's birth he published a successful violin textbook, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.


Anonymous portrait of the child Mozart, possibly by Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni; painted in 1763 on commission from Leopold
When Nannerl was seven, Leopold began giving her keyboard lessons. The three-year old Mozart looked on, evidently with fascination: his sister later recorded that at this age "he often spent much time at the clavier [keyboard], picking out thirds, [...] and his pleasure showed it sounded good [to him]."[3] Nannerl continued: "in the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and pieces at the clavier. [...] he could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time. [...] At the age of five he was already composing little pieces, which he played to his father who wrote them down."[3] Among them were the Andante (K. 1a) and Allegro in C (K. 1b).
Biographer Maynard Solomon[4] notes that while Leopold was a very devoted teacher to his children, there is evidence that Wolfgang was motivated to make progress even beyond what his father was teaching him. His first independent (and ink-spattered) composition, and his initial ability to play the violin, were both his own doing and were a great surprise to Leopold. The father and son seem to have been close; both of the precocious episodes just mentioned brought tears to Leopold's eyes.[5]
Leopold eventually gave up composing when his son's outstanding musical talents became evident.[6] He was Wolfgang's only teacher in his earliest years. He taught his children languages and academic subjects as well as music.[4]


The Mozart family on tour: Leopold, Wolfgang, and Nannerl. Watercolor by Carmontelle, ca. 1763[7]

1762–1773: Years of travel
During Mozart's formative years, his family made several European journeys in which the children were exhibited as child prodigies. These began with an exhibition in 1762 at the Court of the Elector of Bavaria in Munich, then in the same year at the Imperial Court in Vienna and Prague. A long concert tour spanning three and a half years followed, taking the family to the courts of Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London, The Hague, again to Paris, and back home via Zürich, Donaueschingen, and Munich. During this trip Mozart met a great number of musicians and acquainted himself with the works of other composers. A particularly important influence was Johann Christian Bach, who met Mozart in London in 1764–65. The family again went to Vienna in late 1767 and remained there until December 1768.
These trips were often arduous, because of the primitive conditions of travel at that time,[8] the need to wait patiently for invitations and reimbursement from the nobility,[9] and long, near-fatal illnesses endured far from home: first Leopold (London, summer 1764)[10] then the two children (The Hague, fall 1765)[11]
After one year in Salzburg, Leopold and Wolfgang left for Italy, leaving Wolfgang's mother and sister at home. This journey took from December 1769 to March 1771, and like earlier journeys had the purpose of displaying the now-teenaged Mozart's abilities as a performer and as a rapidly maturing composer. Mozart met G.B. Martini in Bologna, and was accepted as a member of the famous Accademia Filarmonica. In Rome he heard Gregorio Allegri's Miserere once in performance in the Sistine Chapel then wrote it out in its entirety from memory, only returning to correct minor errors; thus producing the first illegal copy of this closely-guarded property of the Vatican.
In Milan, Mozart wrote the opera Mitridate Rè di Ponto (1770), performed with success. This led to further opera commissions, and Wolfgang and Leopold returned twice from Salzburg to Milan (August-December 1771, October 1772-March 1773) for the composition and premieres of Ascanio in Alba (1771) and Lucio Silla (1772). Leopold hoped these visits would result in a professional appointment for his son in Italy, but these hopes were never fulfilled.[12]
Toward the end of the final Italian journey Mozart wrote the first of his works that is still widely performed today, the solo cantata "Exsultate, jubilate", K. 165.
1773–1777: The Salzburg court
Following his final return with his father from Italy (13 March 1773), Mozart was employed as a court musician by the ruler of Salzburg Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo. Mozart was a favorite son in Salzburg, where he had a great number of friends and admirers,[13] and he had the opportunity to compose in many genres, including symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, serenades, and the occasional opera. Some of the works he produced during this early period are widely performed today. For instance, during the period between April and December of 1775, Mozart developed an enthusiasm for violin concertos, producing a series of five (the only ones he ever wrote), steadily increasing in their musical sophistication. The last three (K. 216, K. 218, K. 219) are now staples of the repertoire. In 1776 he produced a series of piano concertos, culminating in the E flat concerto K. 271 of early 1777, considered by critics to be a breakthrough work.[14]
Despite these artistic successes, Mozart gradually grew more discontented with Salzburg and made increasingly strenuous efforts to find a position elsewhere. The reason seems to be in part his low salary, 150 florins per year.[15] In addition, Mozart longed to compose operas, and Salzburg provided at best rare occasions for opera productions. The situation became worse in 1775 when the court theater was closed, and the other theater in Salzburg was largely reserved for visiting troupes.[16]
Two long job-hunting expeditions interrupted this long Salzburg stay: Wolfgang and Leopold (they were both looking) visited Vienna from 14 July to 26 September 1773 and Munich from 6 December 1774 to March 1775. Neither visit was successful, though the Munich journey resulted in a popular success with the premiere of Mozart's opera La finta giardiniera.[17]
1777–1778: The Paris journey


Family portrait from about 1780 by Johann Nepomuk della Croce: Nannerl, Wolfgang, Leopold. On the wall is a portrait of Mozart's mother, who had died in 1778.
In August 1777, Mozart resigned his Salzburg position[18] and embarked (23 September) on yet another job-hunting tour, with visits to Augsburg, Mannheim, Paris, and Munich.[19] Since Archbishop Colloredo would not give Leopold leave to travel, Mozart's mother Anna Maria was assigned to accompany him.
In Mannheim Mozart became acquainted with members of the Mannheim orchestra, the best in Europe at the time. He also fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of four daughters in a musical family. There were some prospects of employment in Mannheim, but eventually they failed to pan out, and Mozart left for Paris (14 March 1778)[20] in order to continue his search. His luck there was hardly better; one of his letters home indicates what may have been a job offer as organist at Versailles, but it was a job Mozart did not want.[21] He eventually fell into debt and took to pawning valuables.[22] The nadir of the visit occurred when Mozart's mother took ill and died (23 June 1778);[23] There had been delays in calling a doctor, which Halliwell speculates may have been due to lack of funds.[24]
While Wolfgang was in Paris Leopold was energetically pursuing opportunities for him back home in Salzburg,[25] and with the support of the local nobility obtained a better post for him, as court organist and concertmaster, at a pay of 450 florins.[26] However, Wolfgang was reluctant to take up this position,[27] and after departing from Paris (26 September 1778) he tarried in Mannheim, then Munich, still hoping to find a job outside Salzburg. In Munich he encountered Aloysia again, now a very successful singer, who made it plain to Mozart that she was no longer interested in him.[28]
Mozart finally reached home on 15 January 1779 and took up his new position. His discontent with Salzburg continued.
Among the better known works that Mozart wrote on the Paris journey are the A minor piano sonata, K. 310/300d, from 1778; and the "Paris" Symphony (no. 31), performed in Paris on the 12th and 18th of June, 1778.[29]


Mozart in 1777. Portrait requested by Padre Martini for his gallery.
1781: Departure to Vienna
In January 1781, Mozart's opera Idomeneo, premiered with "considerable success" (New Grove) in Munich. The following March, the composer was summoned to Vienna, where his employer, Prince-Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg, was attending the celebrations for the installation of the Emperor Joseph II. Mozart, who had just experienced success in Munich, was offended when Colloredo treated him as a mere servant, and particularly when the Archbishop forbade him to perform before the Emperor at Countess Thun's (for a fee that would have been fully half of his Salzburg salary). In May the resulting quarrel intensified: Mozart attempted to resign, and was refused. The following month, however, the delayed permission was granted, but in a grossly insulting way: Mozart was dismissed literally "with a kick in the ass", administered by the Archbishop's steward, Count Arco. In the meantime, Mozart had been noticing opportunities to earn a good living in Vienna, and he felt he ought to settle there and develop his own freelance career.[30]
The quarrel with the Archbishop was made harder for Mozart by the fact that his father took the Archbishop's side: hoping fervently that his son would come home when Colloredo returned, his father exchanged emotionally intense letters with Wolfgang, urging him to reconcile with their employer. Wolfgang passionately defended his intention to pursue his career alone in Vienna. The debate ended when Mozart was dismissed, freeing himself both of his oppressive employer and of his father's demands to return. Solomon thus characterizes Mozart's resignation as a "revolutionary step," and it greatly altered the course of his future life.[31]
Early Vienna years
Mozart's new career in Vienna began very well. He performed often as a pianist, notably in a competition before the Emperor with Muzio Clementi, 24 December 1781,[30] and according to the New Grove, he soon "had established himself as the finest keyboard player in Vienna."[30] Mozart also prospered as a composer: during 1781–1782 he wrote the opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction from the Seraglio"), which premiered 16 July 1782 and achieved a huge success. The work was soon being performed "throughout German-speaking Europe",[30] and fully established Mozart's reputation as a composer.


1782 portrait of Constanze Mozart by Joseph Lange
Near the height of his quarrels with Archbishop Colloredo, Mozart moved in (1 May or 2 May 1781) with the Weber family, who had moved to Vienna from Mannheim. The father, Fridolin, had died, and the Webers were now taking in lodgers to make ends meet.[32] Aloysia, who had earlier rejected Mozart's suit, was now married to the actor Joseph Lange, and Mozart's interest shifted to the third daughter, Constanze. The couple were married, with father Leopold's "grudging consent" (New Grove), on 4 August 1782.[33] They had six children, of whom only two survived infancy: Karl Thomas (1784–1858) and Franz Xaver Wolfgang (1791–1844; later a minor composer himself).
During 1782–1783, Mozart became closely acquainted with the work of J. S. Bach and G.F. Handel as a result of the influence of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who owned many manuscripts of works by the Baroque masters. Mozart's study of these works led first to a number of works imitating Baroque style and later had a powerful influence on his own personal musical language, for example the fugal passages in Die Zauberflöte ("The Magic Flute"), and in the finale of Symphony No. 41.
In 1783, Wolfgang and Constanze visited Wolfgang's family in Salzburg, but the visit was not a success, as Leopold and Nannerl were, at best, only polite to Constanze. However, the visit sparked the composition of one of Mozart's great liturgical pieces, the Mass in C Minor, which, though not completed, was premiered in Salzburg. Constanze sang in the premiere.[34]
Following his move to Vienna, Mozart met Joseph Haydn and the two composers became friends; see Haydn and Mozart. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes played together in an impromptu string quartet. Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn (K. 387, K. 421, K. 428, K. 458, K. 464, and K. 465) date from 1782–85, and are often judged to be his response to Haydn's Opus 33 set from 1781. Haydn stood in awe of Mozart; when he first heard the last three of Mozart's series, he told the visiting Leopold, "Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name: He has taste, and, furthermore, the most profound knowledge of composition."
During the years 1782–1785, Mozart put on a series of concerts in which he appeared as soloist in his own piano concertos. He wrote three or four concertos for each concert season, and since space in the theaters was scarce, he booked unconventional venues: a large room in the Trattnerhof, an apartment building; and the ballroom of the Mehlgrube, a restaurant.[35] The concerts were very popular, and the concertos Mozart composed for them are considered among his finest works. Solomon writes that during this period Mozart created "a harmonious connection between an eager composer-performer and a delighted audience, which was given the opportunity of witnessing the transformation and perfection of a major musical genre".[35]
With the substantial money Mozart earned in his concerts and elsewhere, he and Constanze adopted a rather plush lifestyle. They moved to an expensive apartment, with a rent of 460 florins.[36] Mozart also bought a fine fortepiano from Anton Walter for about 900 florins, and a billiards table for about 300.[36] The Mozarts also sent their son Karl Thomas to an expensive boarding school[37][38] and kept servants. These choices inhibited saving, and were the partial cause of a stressful financial situation for the Mozart family a few years later.[39][40]
On 14 December 1784, Mozart became a Freemason, admitted to the lodge "Zur Wohltätigkeit" ("Beneficence").[41] Freemasonry played an important role in the remainder of Mozart's life; he attended many meetings, a number of his friends were Masons, and on various occasions he composed Masonic music. For details see: Mozart and Freemasonry.
1786–1787: Return to opera
Despite the great success of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Mozart did little writing of operas during the years that followed it, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act Der Schauspieldirektor. He focused instead on his career as a piano soloist and writer of concertos. However, around the end of 1785, Mozart reshifted his focus again. He ceased to write piano concertos on a regular basis,[42][page # needed] and began his famous operatic collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. 1786 saw the Vienna premiere of The Marriage of Figaro, which was quite successful in Vienna and even more so in a Prague production later the same year. The Prague success led to a commission for a second Mozart-Da Ponte opera, Don Giovanni, which premiered 1787 to acclaim in Prague and was also produced, with some success, in Vienna in 1788. Both operas are considered among Mozart's most important works and are mainstays of the operatic repertoire today; their musical complexity caused difficulty for both listeners and performers alike at their premieres.
In December 1787 Mozart finally obtained a steady post under aristocratic patronage. Emperor Joseph II appointed him as his "chamber composer", a post vacated the previous month when Gluck died. It was a part-time job, however. It paid only 800 florins per year, and merely required Mozart to compose dances for the annual balls in the Redoutensaal. Mozart complained to Constanze that the pay was "too much for what I do, too little for what I could do".[43] However, even this much proved important to Mozart later on when hard times arrived. Court records show that Joseph's intent was explicitly to help make sure that Mozart, whom he esteemed, did not leave Vienna to seek better prospects elsewhere.[43]
In 1787, the young Ludwig van Beethoven traveled to Vienna for two weeks in hopes of studying with Mozart. The evidence for what happened during this visit is conflicting, and at least three hypotheses are in play: that Mozart heard Beethoven play and praised him, that Mozart rejected Beethoven as a student, and that they never even met. (See: Mozart and Beethoven.)


Drawing of Mozart in silverpoint, made by Dora Stock during Mozart's visit to Dresden, April 1789
1788–1790
Toward the end of the decade, Mozart's career declined.
Around 1786 he had ceased to appear frequently in public concerts, and his income dropped.[44] This was in general a difficult time for musicians in Vienna because Austria was at war, and both the general level of prosperity and the ability of the aristocracy to support music had declined.[45][page # needed]
By mid-1788, Mozart and his family moved from central Vienna to cheaper lodgings in the suburb of Alsergrund.[44] Mozart began to borrow money, most often from his friend and fellow Mason Michael Puchberg; "a dismal series of begging letters" (New Grove) survives. Maynard Solomon and others have suggested that Mozart suffered from depression at this time, and it seems his output rate sank somewhat.[46] The major works of the period include the last three symphonies (1788: 39, 40, 41; it is not certain whether these were performed in Mozart's lifetime), and the last of the three Da Ponte operas, Cosi fan tutte, premiered 1790.
During this time Mozart made long journeys hoping to improve his fortunes: a visit in spring of 1789 to Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin (see: Mozart's Berlin journey), and a 1790 visit to Frankfurt, Mannheim, and other German cities. The trips produced only isolated success and did not solve Mozart's financial problems.
1791
Mozart's last year was, until his final illness struck, one of great productivity and (in the view of Maynard Solomon) personal recovery.[47] During this time Mozart wrote a great deal of music, including some of his most admired works: the opera The Magic Flute, the final piano concerto (K. 595 in B flat), the Clarinet Concerto K. 622, the last in his great series of string quintets (K. 614 in E flat), the motet Ave verum corpus K. 618, and the unfinished Requiem K. 626.
Mozart's financial situation, which in 1790 was the source of extreme anxiety to him, also began to improve. Although the evidence is uncertain[48] it appears that admiring wealthy patrons in Hungary and in Amsterdam pledged annuities to Mozart, in return for the occasional composition. Mozart also probably made considerable money from the sale of dance music that he wrote for his job as Imperial chamber composer.[48] He ceased to borrow large sums from Puchberg and made a start on paying off his debts.[48]
Lastly, Mozart experienced great satisfaction in the public success of some his works, notably The Magic Flute (performed many times even during the short period between its premiere and Mozart's death)[49] and the Little Masonic Cantata K. 623, premiered 15 November 1791.[50]
Final illness and death
Main article: Death of Mozart


Posthumous painting by Barbara Krafft in 1819
Mozart fell ill while in Prague, for the 6 September premiere of his opera La clemenza di Tito, written in 1791 on commission for the coronation festivities of the Emperor.[51] He was able to continue his professional functions for some time, for instance conducting the premiere of The Magic Flute on 30 September. The illness intensified on 20 November, at which point Mozart became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.
Mozart was tended in his final illness by Constanze, her youngest sister Sophie, and the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. There is evidence that he was mentally occupied with the task of finishing his Requiem. However, the evidence that he actually dictated passages to Süssmayr is very slim.[52][53]
Mozart died at 1 in the morning on 5 December. The New Grove describes his funeral thus: "Mozart was buried in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St Marx cemetery outside the city on 7 December. If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, Süssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild."[44]
The cause of Mozart's death cannot be determined with certainty. His death record listed "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. Dozens of theories have been proposed, including trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment. The practice of bleeding medical patients, common at that time, is also cited as a contributing cause. However, the most widely accepted version is that he died of acute rheumatic fever; he had had three or even four known attacks of it since his childhood, and this particular disease has a tendency to recur, leaving increasingly serious consequences each time, such as rampant infection and heart valve damage.[54]
Mozart's spare funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer: memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well attended.[55] Indeed, during the period following his death, Mozart's musical reputation rose substantially; Solomon describes an "unprecedented wave of enthusiasm"[56] for his work. Biographies were written (initially by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Nissen), and publishers vied to produce complete editions of his works.[56]


Unfinished portrait of Mozart by his brother-in-law Joseph Lange
Portrait
See also: Mozart's compositional method and Mozart and Roman Catholicism
Mozart's physical appearance was described by tenor Michael Kelly, in his Reminiscences: "a remarkable small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain". His early biographer Niemetschek wrote, "there was nothing special about [his] physique [...] He was small and his countenance, except for his large intense eyes, gave no signs of his genius." His facial complexion was pitted, a reminder of his childhood case of smallpox. He loved elegant clothing: Kelly remembered him at a rehearsal: "[he] was on the stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra". Of his voice Constanze later wrote that it "was a tenor, rather soft in speaking and delicate in singing, but when anything excited him, or it became necessary to exert it, it was both powerful and energetic."[57]
Mozart worked very hard, a great deal of the time, and finished works where necessary at a tremendous pace. When composing he often made sketches and drafts, though (unlike Beethoven's sketches) these are mostly not preserved, Constanze having destroyed them after his death.[58]
Mozart also enjoyed billiards and liked dancing. He kept pets (a canary, a starling and a dog), and kept a horse for recreational riding.[59]
He was raised Roman Catholic and remained a loyal member of the Catholic Church throughout his life.[60]
Mozart lived at the center of Viennese musical life, and knew a great number of people, including not just his fellow musicians, but also theatrical performers, fellow transplanted Salzburgers, and many aristocrats, including a fairly close acquaintance with the Emperor, Joseph II. Mozart had a considerable number of friends, of whom Solomon estimates the three closest were Gottfried Janequin, Count August Hatzfeld, and Sigmund Barisani. Others included the singers Franz Xaver Gerl and Benedikt Schack, Haydn (mentioned above), and the horn player Joseph Leutgeb. Leutgeb and Mozart carried on a curious kind of friendly mockery, often with Leutgeb as the butt of Mozart's practical jokes.[61]
Particularly in his youth, Mozart had a striking fondness for scatological and sexual humor, which is preserved in his many surviving letters, notably those written to his cousin Maria Anna Thekla Mozart around 1777–1778, but also in his correspondence with his sister Nannerl.[62] Mozart even wrote scatological music, the canon "Leck mich im Arsch" (literally "Lick me in the arse", sometimes idiomatically translated "Kiss my arse" or "Get stuffed") K. 231

Biography of Marie Curie

Maria Skłodowska's birthplace on ulica Freta (Freta Street) in Warsaw's "New Town."


Dołęga coat-of-arms, hereditary in Skłodowska's family
Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw to Bronisława and Władysław Skłodowski, impoverished teachers who could barely make ends meet[2] but who instilled in their children a sense of the value of learning. The father, Władysław, taught mathematics and physics, subjects that his daughter was to pursue. On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings. This condemned each subsequent generation, including that of Maria and her elder sisters and brother, to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.[3]
Maria was the youngest of five children: Zofia (born 1862), Józef (1863), Bronisława (1865), Helena (1866) and finally Maria (1867).
Maria's early years were marked by the death of her sister Zofia from typhus and, two years later, the death of her courageous, hard-working mother from tuberculosis. These events caused Maria to give up her Roman Catholic religion and become agnostic.[4]
From childhood Skłodowska showed a phenomenal memory and capacity for concentration, an exceptionally quick mind, and extraordinary diligence; she was known to neglect food and sleep in order to study. She also showed a certain predisposition to depressions, which would recur later in life.[5] At age sixteen she graduated at the top of her class from a Russian liceum, winning a gold medal.
Because she was female, and because of Russian reprisals following the Polish 1863 uprising against Tsarist Russia, Skłodowska was denied admission to a regular university.[citation needed] Her father having lost his savings through bad investments, Maria had to take work as a teacher while attending Warsaw's illegal Polish Flying University.
At age 18 she took a post in Ciechanów as a governess to a wealthy landed family, the Żórawskis. During her nearly four years there, far from home, Maria experienced isolation, life among strangers, abasement as a governess, and finally her first, joyous but also painful, love, which left her with a deep sense of humiliation. Her pupil Kazimierz Żórawski, after going to Warsaw to study, realized the attraction that he had felt to his tutor, who radiated intelligence and a vivacious girlish charm. But his parents disapproved of any plans that he might have harbored of marrying the penniless girl, and Kazimierz wanted no conflict with his parents.[6]


Krakowskie Przedmieście 66, near Warsaw's Old Town (in the distance). At a lab here, in 1890–91, Maria Skłodowska did her first scientific work.


Plaque commemorating Skłodowska's first scientific work, in a physics laboratory directed by J.J. Boguski, at Warsaw's Museum of Industry and Agriculture
Maria returned to Warsaw, pursued her education, worked in a laboratory on historic Krakowskie Przedmieście, and dreamed of going to Paris, France, where her sister Bronisława was finishing her medical studies, financed partly with Maria's savings. Maria continued her long-distance romance with Kazimierz, who eventually went to Zakopane, where Maria was visiting, to be alone with her again. Mania, though smitten with him, stuck by her guns, rejecting all proposals short of marriage.[7]
Their subsequent breakup proved tragic for both. Kazimierz Żórawski soon earned his doctorate and pursued an academic career as a mathematician, becoming a professor and rector of Kraków University and president of the Warsaw Society of Learning. He of course followed Maria's stunning scientific career. Anecdotes would describe him, in old age, often sitting beneath her monument on Warsaw's Wawel Street (ulica Wawelska) before the Radium Institute that had been founded by double Nobel laureate Maria Skłodowska–Curie ("Madame Curie").[8]
Maria Skłodowska in 1891, after the breakup, went back to her old idea of studying in Paris, where her sister had completed medical school and gotten married. Maria found shelter with her sister and was soon one of only twenty-odd women among two thousand students of the exact sciences at the Sorbonne (the University of Paris). Though at first behind her classmates in some areas, she soon caught up.[9]
At the Sorbonne, Skłodowska studied mathematics, physics and chemistry. (Later, in 1909, she would become that University's first female professor, when she was named to her late husband's chair in physics, which he had held for only a year and a half before his tragic death.) In early 1893 she graduated first in her undergraduate class. A year later, also at the Sorbonne, she obtained her master's degree in mathematics.
It was then that Pierre Curie entered her life. He was an instructor in the School of Physics and Chemistry, the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI). Skłodowska had begun her scientific career in Paris with an investigation of the magnetic properties of various steels; it was their mutual interest in magnetism that drew Skłodowska and Curie together.[10] He soon realized that in Skłodowska he had met a genius.[11]
Her departure for the summer to Warsaw only enhanced their mutual feelings for each other. She was still laboring under the illusion that she would be able to return to Poland and work in her chosen field of study. When, however, she was denied a place at Kraków University merely because she was a woman, she returned to Paris. Not fully a year later, in 1895, she and Pierre Curie married, and thereafter the two physicists hardly ever left their laboratory. Their one shared recreation was long bicycle trips and journeys abroad, which brought them even closer. Maria had found a new love, a partner and scientific collaborator that she could depend on.[12]


Pierre and Marie Curie in their Paris lab before April 19, 1906 (when he died).
Eventually they studied radioactive materials, particularly pitchblende, the complex mineral from which uranium was extracted. By April 1898, Skłodowska–Curie deduced that pitchblende must contain traces of an unknown substance far more radioactive than uranium. In July 1898, Pierre and Marie together published an article announcing the existence of an element which they named "polonium," in honor of her native Poland, then still partitioned among three empires. On December 26, 1898, the Curies announced the existence of a second element, which they named "radium" for its intense radioactivity — a word that they coined.
Over the course of four years of the most arduous work in the most difficult physical conditions, they processed a ton of pitchblende, eventually in 1902 isolating one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride. By 1910 Marie, working on without her husband, who had been killed in 1906, would isolate the pure radium metal. In an unusual decision, Skłodowska-Curie intentionally refrained from patenting the radium-isolation process so that the scientific community could do research unhindered.
Since they were unaware of the deleterious effects of radiation exposure attendant on their chronic unprotected work with radioactive substances, Marie and Pierre had no idea what price they were paying for their research.[13]
In 1903, under the supervision of Henri Becquerel,[14] Marie received her DSc from the University of Paris, becoming the first woman in France to complete a doctorate.
Marie also saw to it that Pierre completed his own long-deferred doctorate. At the time, a witticism circulated that "Pierre's greatest discovery was Maria, and then she discovered radioactivity." [15]


Maria Skłodowska–Curie's 1911 Nobel Prize diploma
In 1903, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Pierre Curie, Marie Curie, and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."
Maria and Pierre were unable to go to Stockholm in person to receive the prize. They immediately, however, shared its financial proceeds with needy persons and acquaintances, including students.[16]
Skłodowska–Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize. Eight years later, she would receive the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element."
A month after accepting her 1911 Nobel Prize, she was hospitalized with depression and a kidney ailment.
Skłodowska–Curie was the first person to win or share two Nobel Prizes. She is one of only two people who have been awarded a Nobel Prize in two different fields, the other being Linus Pauling (Chemistry, Peace). She remains the only woman to have won two Nobel Prizes, and the only person to have won Nobel Prizes in two different science fields. Nevertheless, the French Academy of Sciences refused to abandon its prejudice against women, and she failed by one vote to be elected to membership.[17] It would be her doctoral student, Marguerite Perey, who would be the first woman elected to the Academy — in 1962, over half a century after Pierre Curie's 1905 election.
On April 19, 1906, Pierre was killed in a street accident as he was leaving a publisher's office. He had gone there to review proofs of an article, and found the business closed due to a strike. Heading back across the street in heavy rain, he was struck by a horse-drawn vehicle and fell under its wheels, fracturing his skull. While it has been speculated that he may previously have been weakened by prolonged radiation exposure, it has not been proven that this was the cause of the accident.
Marie was devastated by her husband's death. She noted that as of that moment she had suddenly become "an incurably and wretchedly lonely person." Nevertheless, she courageously undertook to carry on at the Sorbonne the physics course that Pierre had been teaching, and she sought in her exhausting work regime a meaning for her life. Paradoxically, recognition for her work now grew to a crescendo, and in 1911 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded her her second Nobel Prize. A delegation of celebrated Polish men of learning, headed by world-famous novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, besought her to return to Poland and continue her research in her native country.[18]
After Pierre's death, Marie may have had an affair with physicist Paul Langevin[citation needed] — a married man who had left his wife — which resulted in a press scandal, exploited by her academic opponents. Despite her fame as a scientist working for France, the public's attitude to the scandal tended toward xenophobia. Later, Skłodowska–Curie's granddaughter, Hélène Joliot, would marry Langevin's grandson, Michel Langevin.
During World War I, Skłodowska-Curie pushed for the use of mobile radiography units, which came to be popularly known as petites Curies ("Little Curies"), for the treatment of wounded soldiers. These units were powered using tubes of radium emanation, a colorless, radioactive gas given off by radium, later identified as radon. Skłodowska-Curie personally provided the tubes, derived from the radium she purified. Also, promptly after the war started, she donated her and her husband's gold Nobel Prize medals for the war effort.
After World War I, in 1921 and again in 1929, Skłodowska-Curie toured the United States, where she was welcomed triumphally, to raise funds for research on radium. These distractions from her scientific labors, and the attendant publicity, caused her much discomfort but provided resources for her work. Her second American tour succeeded in equipping the Warsaw Radium Institute, founded in 1925 with her sister Bronisława as director.
In her later years, Skłodowska-Curie headed the Pasteur Institute and a radioactivity laboratory created for her by the University of Paris.
Skłodowska–Curie visited Poland a last time in the spring of 1934.[19] Only a couple of months later, she was dead. Her death near Sallanches, Savoy, in 1934 was from aplastic anemia, almost certainly due to exposure to radiation. The damaging effects of ionizing radiation were then not yet known, and much of her work had been carried out in a shed with no safety measures. She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the pretty blue-green light that the substances gave off in the dark.
She was interred at the cemetery in Sceaux, where Pierre lay, but sixty years later, in 1995, in honor of their work, the remains of both were transferred to the Panthéon in Paris. Her laboratory is preserved in the Musée Curie.
The Curies' elder daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935 for discovering that aluminum could be made radioactive and emit neutrons when bombarded with alpha rays. The younger daughter, Ève Curie, wrote a biography of her late mother.
A year after the death of Skłodowska–Curie, in 1935, the Polish President's wife, Michalina Mościcka, unveiled a statue of the scientist before Warsaw's Oncology Center, housed in the building of the former Radium Institute that Skłodowska–Curie had founded. The monument suffered from gunfire during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, but when maintenance work was being done, it was decided not to remove these scars.[20]
In 1967, a museum devoted to Skłodowska–Curie was established in Warsaw's "New Town," in her birthplace on ulica Freta (Freta Street).

Biography of Leonardo De Vinci

Early life, 1452–1466

Leonardo's earliest known drawing, the Arno Valley, (1473) - Uffizi
Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, "at the third hour of the night"[nb 5] in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno River in the territory of Florence.[4] He was the illegitimate son of Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine notary, and Caterina, a peasant[5][3] who may have been a slave from the Middle East.[nb 6][6] Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense, "da Vinci" simply meaning "of Vinci": his full birth name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, son of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci."[4]
Little is known about Leonardo's early life. He spent his first five years in the hamlet of Anchiano, then lived in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle, Francesco, in the small town of Vinci. His father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera, who loved Leonardo but died young.[7] In later life, Leonardo only recorded two childhood incidents. One, which he regarded as an omen, was when a kite dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face.[7] The second occurred while exploring in the mountains. He discovered a cave and was both terrified that some great monster might lurk there, and driven by curiosity to find out what was inside.[7]
Leonard's early life has been the subject of historical conjecture.[8] Vasari, the 16th century biographer of Renaissance painters tells of how a local peasant requested that Ser Piero ask his talented son to paint a picture on a round plaque. Leonardo responded with a painting of snakes spitting fire which was so terrifying that Ser Piero sold it to a Florentine art dealer, who sold it to the Duke of Milan. Meanwhile, having made a profit, Ser Piero bought a plaque decorated with a heart pierced by an arrow, which he gave to the peasant.[9]


The Baptism of Christ (1472–1475)—Uffizi, by Verrocchio and Leonardo
Verrocchio's workshop, 1466–1476
In 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to one of the most successful artists of his day, Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio. Verrocchio's workshop was at the centre of the intellectual currents of Florence, assuring the young Leonardo of an education in the humanities. Other famous painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop include Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.[7][10] Leonardo would have been exposed to a vast range of technical skills and had the opportunity to learn drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling.[11][12][13]
Much of the painted production of Verrocchio's workshop was done by his employees. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his Baptism of Christ, painting the young angel holding Jesus’ robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master's that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again.[9] This is probably an exaggeration. On close examination, the painting reveals much that has been painted or touched up over the tempera using the new technique of oil paint, the landscape, the rocks that can be seen through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus bearing witness to the hand of Leonardo.[5]
Leonardo himself may have been the model for two works by Verrocchio, including the bronze statue of David in the Bargello and the Archangel Michael in Tobias and the Angel.[5]
By 1472, at the age of twenty, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of St Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine,[nb 7] but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate with him.[7] Leonardo's earliest known dated work is a drawing in pen and ink of the Arno valley, drawn on 5 August 1473.[nb 8][10]
Professional life, 1476–1513
Adoration of the Magi, return to text


The Adoration of the Magi, (1481)—Uffizi, Florence, Italy. This important commission was interrupted when Leonardo went to Milan.
Court records of 1476 show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with sodomy,[nb 9] and acquitted.[14] From that date until 1478 there is no record of his work or even of his whereabouts,[15] although it is assumed that Leonardo had his own workshop in Florence between 1476 and 1481.[5] He was commissioned to paint an altarpiece in 1478 for the Chapel of St Bernard and The Adoration of the Magi in 1481 for the Monks of San Donato a Scopeto.
In 1482 Leonardo, who according to Vasari was a most talented musician,[16] created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head. Lorenzo de’ Medici sent Leonardo, bearing the lyre as a gift, to Milan, to secure peace with Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan.[17] At this time Leonardo wrote an often-quoted letter to Ludovico, describing the many marvellous and diverse things that he could achieve in the field of engineering and informing the Lord that he could also paint.[18][10]
Leonardo continued work in Milan between 1482 and 1499. He was commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie.[7] While living in Milan between 1493 and 1495 Leonardo listed a woman called Caterina among his dependents in his taxation documents. When she died in 1495, the list of funeral expenditure suggests that she was his mother.[19][7]


Study of horse from Leonardo's journals – Royal Library, Windsor Castle
He worked on many different projects for Ludovico, including the preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions, designs for a dome for Milan Cathedral and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, Ludovico's predecessor. Seventy tons of bronze were set aside for casting it. The monument remained unfinished for several years, which was not unusual for Leonardo. In 1492 the clay model of the horse was completed. It surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello's statue of Gattemelata in Padua and Verrocchio's Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, and became known as the "Gran Cavallo".[10][20] Leonardo began making detailed plans for its casting,[10] however, Michelangelo rudely implied that Leonardo was unable to cast it.[7] In November 1494 Ludovico gave the bronze to be used for cannons to defend the city from invasion by Charles VIII.[10]
At the start of the Second Italian War in 1499, the invading French troops used the life-size clay model for the "Gran Cavallo" for target practice. With Ludovico Sforza overthrown, Leonardo, with his assistant Salai and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli, fled Milan for Venice, where he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.[7][5]
On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist, a work that won such admiration that "men and women, young and old" flocked to see it "as if they were attending a great festival".[9][nb 10] In 1502 Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron.[5] He returned to Florence where he rejoined the Guild of St Luke on 18 October 1503, and spent two years designing and painting a great mural of The Battle of Anghiari for the Signoria,[5] with Michelangelo designing its companion piece, The Battle of Cascina.[nb 11] In Florence in 1504, he was part of a committee formed to relocate, against the artist's will, Michelangelo's statue of David.[23]
In 1506 he returned to Milan. Many of Leonardo's most prominent pupils or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan,[7] including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco D'Oggione.[nb 12] However, he did not stay in Milan for long because his father had died in 1504, and in 1507 he was back in Florence trying to sort out problems with his brothers over his father's estate. By 1508 he was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.[5]
Old age


Clos Lucé in France, where Leonardo died in 1519
From September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere in the Vatican in Rome, where Raphael and Michelangelo were both active at the time.[5] In October 1515, François I of France recaptured Milan.[24] On 19th December, Leonardo was present at the meeting of Francois I and Pope Leo X, which took place in Bologna.[7][25][26] It was for Francois that Leonardo was commissioned to make a mechanical lion which could walk forward, then open its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies.[9][nb 13] In 1516, he entered François' service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé[nb 14] near the king's residence at the royal Chateau Amboise. It was here that he spent the last three years of his life, accompanied by his friend and apprentice, Count Francesco Melzi, supported by a pension totalling 10,000 scudi.[5]
Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, France, on May 2, 1519. François I had become a close friend. Vasari records that the King held Leonardo's head in his arms as he died, although this story, beloved by the French and portrayed in romantic paintings by Ingres, Ménageot and other French artists, may be legend rather than fact.[nb 15][28] Vasari also tells us that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament.[9] In accordance to his will, sixty beggars followed his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the castle of Amboise. Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving as well as money, Leonardo's paintings, tools, library and personal effects. Leonardo also remembered his other long-time pupil and companion, Salai and his servant Battista di Vilussis, who each received half of Leonardo's vineyards, his brothers who received land, and his serving woman who received a black cloak of good stuff with a fur edge.[29]
Some twenty years after Leonardo's death, François was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benevenuto Cellini as saying: "There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher.
Relationships and influences


Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise, (1425-1452) were a source of communal pride. Many artists assisted in their creation.
Florence—Leonardo's artistic and social background
Leonardo commenced his apprenticeship with Verrocchio in 1466, the year that Verrocchio's master, the great sculptor Donatello, died. The painter Uccello whose early experiments with perspective were to influence the development of landscape painting, was a very old man. The painters Piero della Francesca and Fra Filippo Lippi, sculptor Luca della Robbia, and architect and writer Alberti were in their sixties. The successful artists of the next generation were Leonardo's teacher Verrocchio, Antonio Pollaiuolo and the portrait sculptor, Mino da Fiesole whose lifelike busts give the most reliable likenesses of Lorenzo Medici's father Piero and uncle Giovanni.[31][32][33]
Leonardo's youth was spent in a Florence that was ornamented by the works of these artists and by Donatello's contemporaries, Masaccio whose figurative frescoes were imbued with realism and emotion and Ghiberti whose Gates of Paradise, gleaming with gold leaf, displayed the art of combining complex figure compositions with detailed architectural backgrounds. Piero della Francesca had made a detailed study of perspective, and was the first painter to make a scientific study of light. These studies and Alberti's Treatise were to have a profound effect on younger artists and in particular on Leonardo's own observations and artworks.[31][32][33]
Massaccio's depiction of the naked and distraught Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden created a powerfully expressive image of the human form, cast into three dimensions by the use of light and shade which was to be developed in the works of Leonardo in a way that was to be influential in the course of painting. The Humanist influence of Donatello's David can be seen in Leonardo's late paintings, particularly John the Baptist.[31]


A small devotional picture by Verrocchio, c. 1470
A prevalent tradition in Florence was the small altarpiece of the Virgin and Child. Many of these were created in tempera or glazed terracotta by the workshops of Filippo Lippi, Verrocchio and the prolific della Robbia family.[31] Leonardo's early Madonnas such as the The Madonna with a carnation and The Benois Madonna followed this tradition while showing indiosyncratic departures, particularly in the case of the Benois Madonna in which the Virgin is set at an oblique angle to the picture space with the Christ Child at the opposite angle. This compositional theme was to emerge in Leonardo's later paintings such as The Virgin and Child with St. Anne.[7]
Leonardo was a contemporary of Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugino, who were all slightly older than he was. He would have met them at the workshop of Verrocchio, with whom they had associations, and at the Academy of the Medici.[7]Botticelli was a particular favourite of the Medici family and thus his success as a painter was assured. Ghirlandaio and Perugino were both prolific and ran large workshops. They competently delivered commissions to well-satisfied patrons who appreciated Ghirlandaio's ability to portray the wealthy citizens of Florence within large religious frescoes, and Perugino's ability to deliver a multitude of saints and angels of unfailing sweetness and innocence.[31]


The Portinari Altarpiece, by Hugo van der Goes for a Florentine family
These three were among those commissioned to paint the walls of the Sistine Chapel, the work commencing with Perugino's employment in 1479. Leonardo was not part of this prestigious commission. His first significant commission, The Adoration of the Magi for the Monks of Scopeto, was never completed.[7]
In 1476, during the time of Leonardo's association with Verrocchio's workshop, Hugo van der Goes arrived in Florence, bringing the Portinari Altarpiece and the new painterly techniques from Northern Europe which were to profoundly effect Leonardo, Ghirlandaio, Perugino and others. In 1479, the Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, who worked exclusively in oils, travelled north on his way to Venice, where the leading painter, Giovanni Bellini adopted the technique of oil painting, quickly making it the preferred method in Venice. Leonardo was also later to visit Venice.[33]
Like the two contemporary architects, Bramante and Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, Leonardo experimented with designs for centrally-planned churches, a number of which appear in his journals, as both plans and views, although none was ever realised.[31][34]


Lorenzo de' Medici between Antonio Pucci and Francesco Sassetti, with Giulio de' Medici, fresco by Ghirlandaio
Leonardo's political contemporaries were Lorenzo Medici (il Magnifico), who was three years older, and his popular younger brother Giuliano who was slain in the Pazzi Conspiracy in 1478. Ludovico il Moro who ruled Milan between 1479–1499 and to whom Leonardo was sent as ambassador from the Medici court, was also of Leonardo's age.[31][32]
With Alberti, Leonardo visited the home of the Medici and through them came to know the older Humanist philosophers of whom Marsiglio Ficino, proponent of Neo Platonism, Cristoforo Landino, writer of commentaries on Classical writings, and John Argyropoulos, teacher of Greek and translator of Aristotle were foremost. Also associated with the Academy of the Medici was Leonardo's contemporary, the brilliant young poet and philosopher Pico della Mirandola.[33][35] Leonardo later wrote in the margin of a journal "The Medici made me and the Medici destroyed me." While it was through the action of Lorenzo that Leonardo was to receive his important Milanese commissions, it is not known exactly what Leonardo meant by this cryptic comment.[7]
Although usually named together as the three giants of the High Renaissance, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were not of the same generation. Leonardo was 23 when Michelangelo was born and 31 when Raphael was born. The short-lived Raphael died in 1520, the year after Leonardo, but Michelangelo went on creating for another 45 years.[32][33]


Study for a portrait of Isabella d'Este (1500) Louvre. Isabella appears to have been his only female friend.
Personal life
Main article: Leonardo da Vinci's personal life
Leonardo had many friends who are now renowned either in their fields or for their historical significance. They included the mathematician Luca Pacioli, with whom he collaborated on a book in the 1490s, and Cesare Borgia, whose service he was in from 1502–1503. During that time he also met Niccolò Machiavelli, with whom he later developed a close friendship. Also among his friends were Franchinus Gaffurius and Isabella d'Este. Leonardo appears to have had no close relationships with women except for Isabella d'Este. He drew a portrait of her while on a journey which took him through Mantua, and which appears to have been used to create a painted portrait now lost.[7]
Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. Within his own lifetime his extraordinary powers of invention, his "outstanding physical beauty", "infinite grace", "great strength and generosity", "regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind" as described by Vasari[9] attracted the curiosity of others. Many authors have speculated on various aspects of Leonardo's personality. His sexuality has often been the subject of study, analysis and speculation. This trend began in the mid-16th century and was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries, most notably by Sigmund Freud.[36]
Leonardo's most intimate relationships were perhaps with his pupils Salai and Melzi, Melzi writing that Leonardo's feelings for him were both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16th century that these relationships were of an erotic nature. Since then much has been written about Leonardo's presumed homosexuality and its role in his art, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in John the Baptist and Bacchus, and more explicitly in a number of drawings.[37]
Assistants and pupils


Salai as John the Baptist (c. 1514)—Louvre
Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno,[38] known as il Salaino ("The little devil) or Salai, entered Leonardo's household in 1490 at the age of ten. The relationship was not an easy one. A year later Leonardo made a list of the boy's misdemeanours, calling him "a thief, a liar, stubborn, and a glutton", after he had made off with money and valuables on at least five occasions, and spent a fortune on clothes, including twenty-four pairs of shoes.[39] Nevertheless, Leonardo's notebooks during their early years contain many drawings of the student. Salai remained his companion, servant, and assistant for the next thirty years.[5]
In 1506, Leonardo took as a pupil Count Francesco Melzi, the fifteen-year-old son of a Lombard aristocrat. Melzi became Leonardo's constant companion,[40] and is considered to have been his favourite student. He travelled to France with Leonardo and Salai, and was with him until his death.[7] Salai, however, left France in 1518 and returned to Milan, where he built a house in part of the vineyard owned by Leonardo, which was eventually bequeathed to him. In 1525 he died violently, either murdered or as the result of a duel.[41]
Salai executed a number of paintings under the name of Andrea Salai, but although Vasari claims that Leonardo "taught him a great deal about painting",[9] his work is generally considered to be of less artistic merit than others among Leonardo's pupils such as Marco d'Oggione and Boltraffio. In 1515 he painted a nude version of the Mona Lisa, known as Monna Vanna.[42] Salai owned the Mona Lisa at the time of his death in 1525, and in his will it was assessed at 505 lire, an exceptionally high valuation for a small panel portrait

Biography of Helen Keller

Helen Keller, age 8, with her tutor Anne Sullivan while vacationing on Cape Cod, July 1888 (photo re-discovered in 2008)
Helen Keller was born at an estate called Ivy Green[1] in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, to Captain Arthur H. Keller, a former officer of the Confederate Army, and Kate Adams Keller, a cousin of Robert E. Lee and daughter of Charles W. Adams, a former Confederate general.[2] The Keller family originates from Germany, and at least one source claims her father was of Swiss descent.[3] She was not born blind and deaf; it was not until nineteen months of age that she came down with an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", which could have possibly been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. At that time her only communication partner was Martha Washington, the six-year-old daughter of the family cook, who was able to create a sign language with her; by age seven, she had over 60 home signs to communicate with her family.
In his doctoral dissertation, "Deaf-blind Children (psychological development in a process of education)" (1971, Moscow Defectology Institute), Soviet blind-deaf psychologist Meshcheryakov asserted that Washington's friendship and teaching was crucial for Keller's later developments.[4]


Keller and Sullivan in 1898
In 1886, her mother, inspired by an account in Charles Dickens' American Notes of the successful education of another deafblind child, Laura Bridgman, dispatched young Helen, accompanied by her father, to seek out Dr. J. Julian Chisolm, an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist in Baltimore, for advice.[5] He, subsequently, put them in touch with Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised the couple to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated, which was then located in South Boston. The school delegated teacher and former student Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired and then only 20 years old, to become Keller's instructor.
It was the beginning of a 49-year-long relationship, eventually evolving into governess and then eventual companion.
Sullivan got permission from Keller's father to isolate the girl from the rest of the family in a little house in their garden. Anne loved Helen dearly and loved her like she was her child. Her first task was to instill discipline in the spoiled girl. Keller's big breakthrough in communication came one day when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on her palm, while running cool water over her hand, symbolized the idea of "water"; she then nearly exhausted Sullivan demanding the names of all the other familiar objects in her world (including her prized doll).
In 1890, ten-year-old Helen Keller was introduced to the story of Ragnhild Kåta, a deafblind Norwegian girl who had learned to speak. Kåta's success inspired Keller to want to learn to speak as well. Sullivan taught her charge to speak using the Tadoma method of touching the lips and throat of others as they speak, combined with fingerspelling letters on the palm of the child's hand. Later Keller learned Braille, and used it to read not only English but also French, German, Greek, and Latin. Later she wrote 2 books and acted in a movie.
Formal education
In 1888, Keller attended the Royal Institute For the Blind. In 1894, Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan moved to New York City to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf and Horace Mann School for the Deaf. In 1896, they returned to Massachusetts and Helen entered The Cambridge School for Young Ladies before gaining admittance, in 1900, to Radcliffe College. Her admirer Mark Twain had introduced her to Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleton Rogers, who, with his wife, paid for her education. In 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe magna cum laude, becoming the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree
Companions
Anne Sullivan stayed as a companion to Helen Keller long after she taught her. Anne married John Macy in 1905, and her health started failing around 1914. Polly Thompson was hired to keep house. She was a young woman from Scotland who didn't have experience with deaf or blind people. She progressed to working as a secretary as well, and eventually became a constant companion to Helen.[7]
After Anne died in 1936, Helen and Polly moved to Connecticut. They travelled worldwide raising funding for the blind. Polly had a stroke in 1957 from which she never fully recovered, and died in 1960.[6]
Winnie Corbally, a nurse who was originally brought in to care for Polly Thompson in 1957, stayed on after Thompson's death and was Keller's companion for the rest of her life