Biography Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa (1910–1997) was a Roman Catholic nun who devoted her life to serving the
poor and destitute around the world. She spent many years in Calcutta, India where she
founded the Missionaries of Charity, a religious congregation devoted to helping those in great
need. In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and became a symbol of
charitable, selfless work. In 2016, Mother Teresa was canonised by the Roman Catholic
Church as Saint Teresa. Mother Teresa was born in 1910 in Skopje, the capital of the
Republic of Macedonia. Little is known about her early life, but at a young age, she felt a
calling to be a nun and serve through helping the poor. At the age of 18, she was given
permission to join a group of nuns in Ireland. After a few months of training, with the Sisters of
Loreto, she was then given permission to travel to India. She took her formal religious vows in
1931 and chose to be named after St Therese of Lisieux– the patron saint of missionaries. On
her arrival in India, she began by working as a teacher; however, the widespread poverty of
Calcutta made a deep impression on her, and this led to her starting a new order called “The
Missionaries of Charity”. The primary objective of this mission was to look after people, who
nobody else was prepared to look after. Mother Teresa felt that serving others was a fundamental
principle of the teachings of Jesus Christ. She experienced two particularly traumatic periods in
Calcutta. The first was the Bengal famine of 1943 and the second was the Hindu/Muslim
violence in 1946, before the partition of India. In 1948, she left the convent to live full-time
among the poorest of Calcutta. She chose to wear a white Indian sari, with a blue border, out of
respect for the traditional Indian dress. For many years, Mother Teresa and a small band of
fellow nuns survived on minimal income and food, often having to beg for funds. But, slowly her
efforts with the poorest were noted and appreciated by the local community and Indian
politicians. In 1952, she opened her first home for the dying, which allowed people to die with
dignity. Mother Teresa often spent time with those who were dying. Some have criticised the
lack of proper medical attention, and their refusal to give painkillers. Others say that it afforded
many neglected people the opportunity to die knowing that someone cared. Her work spread
around the world. By 2013, there were 700 missions operating in over 130 countries. The scope
of their work also expanded to include orphanages and hospices for those with terminal illnesses.
The Missionaries of Charity now has branches throughout the world including branches in the
developed world where they work with the homeless and people affected by AIDS. In 1965, the
organisation became an International Religious Family by a decree of Pope Paul VI. In the
1960s, the life of Mother Teresa was brought to a wider public attention by Malcolm
Muggeridge who wrote a book and produced a documentary called “Something Beautiful for
God”. In 1979, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for work undertaken in the struggle to
overcome poverty and distress, which also constitutes a threat to peace.” She didn’t attend the
ceremonial banquet but asked that the $192,000 fund be given to the poor. In later years, she
was more active in western developed countries. She commented that though the West was
materially prosperous, there was often a spiritual poverty.

Award Given to Mother Teresa : The First Pope John XXIII Peace Prize (1971);
Kennedy Prize (1971); The Nehru Prize –“for the promotion of the international
peace and understanding”(1972); Albert Schweitzer International Prize (1975);
The Nobel Peace Prize (1979); States Presidential Medal of Freedom (1985);
Congressional Gold Medal (1994); U Thant Peace Award 1994; Honorary
citizenship of the United States (November 16,1996)
 Biografi Thomas Alva Edison
Born Thomas Alva Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was born February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio
(pronounced MY-lan). In 1854, when he was seven, the family
February 11, 1847 moved to Michigan, where Edison spent the rest of his childhood.
"Al," as he was called as a boy, went to school only a short time. He
Milan, Ohio, U.S.
did so poorly that his mother, a former teacher, taught her son at
home. Al learned to love reading, a habit he kept for the rest of his
Died October 18, life. He also liked to make experiments in the basement. Al not only
played hard, but also worked hard. At the age of 12 he sold fruit,
1931 (aged 84)
snacks and newspapers on a train as a "news butcher." (Trains were
West Orange, New the newest way to travel, cutting through the American wilderness.)
He even printed his own newspaper, the Grand Trunk Herald, on a
Jersey, U.S.
moving train. At 15, Al roamed the country as a "tramp telegrapher."
Using a kind of alphabet called Morse Code, he sent and received
Burial place Thomas Edison messages over the telegraph. Even though he was already losing his
hearing, he could still hear the clicks of the telegraph. In the next
National Historical Park
seven years he moved over a dozen times, often working all night,
taking messages for trains and even for the Union Army during the
Nationality American Civil War. In his spare time, he took things apart to see how they
worked. Finally, he decided to invent things himself. After the failure
of his first invention, the electric vote recorder, Edison moved to
Education Self-educated New York City. There he improved the way the stock ticker worked.
This was his big break. By 1870 his company was manufacturing his
Occupation Inventor, businessman
stock ticker in Newark, New Jersey. He also improved the telegraph,
making it send up to four messages at once. During this time he
married his first wife, Mary Stilwell, on Christmas Day, 1871. They
Years active 1877–1930 had three children -- Marion, Thomas, Jr., and William. Wanting a
quieter spot to do more inventing, Edison moved from Newark to
 Mary Stilwell Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876. There he built his most famous
Spouse(s) (m. 1871; d. 1884)
laboratory. He was not alone in Menlo Park. Edison hired "muckers"
 Mina Miller
(m. 1886) to help him out. These "muckers" came from all over the world to
make their fortune in America. They often stayed up all night
Children  Marion Estelle Edison working with the "chief mucker," Edison himself. He is sometime
called the "Wizard of Menlo Park" because he created two of his
 Thomas Alva Edison Jr.
three greatest works there. The phonograph was the first machine
 William Leslie Edison that could record the sound of someone's voice and play it back. In
 Madeleine Edison 1877, Edison recorded the first words on a piece of tin foil. He
 Charles Edison recited the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and the
phonograph played the words back to him. This was invented by a
 Theodore Miller Edison man whose hearing was so poor that he thought of himself as "deaf"!
Relatives Lewis Miller (father-in-
Starting in 1878, Edison and the muckers worked on one of his
greatest achievements. The electric light system was more than just
law) the incandescent lamp, or "light bulb." Edison also designed a
system of power plants that make the electrical power and the wiring
that brings it to people's homes. Imagine all the things you "plug in." In 1885, one year after his first
wife died, Edison met a 20-year-old woman named Mina Miller. Her father was an inventor in Edison's
home state of Ohio. Edison taught her Morse Code. Mina Edison wanted a home in the country, so
Edison bought Glenmont, a 29-room home with 13-1/2 acres of land in West Orange, New Jersey. They
married on February 24, 1886 and had three children: Madeleine, Charles and Theodore. A year later,
Edison built a laboratory in West Orange that was ten times larger than the one in Menlo Park. In fact, it
was one of the largest laboratories in the world, almost as famous as Edison himself. Well into the night,
laboratory buildings glowed with electric light while the Wizard and his "muckers" turned Edison's
dreams into inventions. Once, the "chief mucker" worked for three days straight, taking only short naps.
Edison earned half of his 1,093 patents in West Orange. But Edison did more than invent. Here Edison
could think of ways to make a better phonograph, for example, build it with his muckers, have them test
it and make it work, then manufacture it in the factories that surrounded his laboratory. This improved
phonograph could then be sold throughout the world. Not only did Edison improve the phonograph
several times, but he also worked on X-rays, storage batteries, and the first talking doll. At West Orange
he also worked on one of his greatest ideas: motion pictures, or "movies." The inventions made here
changed the way we live even today. He worked here until his death on October 18, 1931, at the age of
84. By that time, everyone had heard of the "Wizard" and looked up to him. The whole world called
him a genius. But he knew that having a good idea was not enough. It takes hard work to make dreams
into reality. That is why Edison liked to say, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."
Biography Albert Einstein
Born in Germany 1879, Albert Einstein is one of the most celebrated scientists of the
Twentieth Century. His theories on relativity laid the framework for a new branch of physics,
and Einstein’s E = mc2 on mass-energy equivalence is one of the most famous formulas in the
world. In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to theoretical
physics and the evolution of Quantum Theory. Einstein is also well known as an original free-
thinker, speaking on a range of humanitarian and global issues. After contributing to the
theoretical development of nuclear physics and encouraging F.D. Roosevelt to start the
Manhattan Project, he later spoke out against the use of nuclear weapons. Born in Germany to
Jewish parents, Einstein settled in Switzerland and then, after Hitler’s rise to power, the United
States. Einstein was a truly global man and one of the undisputed genius’ of the Twentieth
Century. Einstein was born 14 March 1879, in Ulm the German Empire. His parents were
working-class (salesman/engineer) and non-observant Jews. Aged 15, the family moved to
Milan, Italy where his father hoped Albert would become a mechanical engineer. However,
despite Einstein’s intellect and thirst for knowledge, his early academic reports suggested
anything but a glittering career in academia. His teachers found him dim and slow to learn. Part
of the problem was that Albert expressed no interest in learning languages and the learning by
rote that was popular at the time. At the age of 12, Einstein picked up a book on geometry and
read it cover to cover. – He would later refer to it as his ‘holy booklet’. He became fascinated
by maths and taught himself – becoming acquainted with the great scientific discoveries of the
age. He applied for admission to the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. His first attempt
was a failure because he failed exams in botany, zoology and languages. However, he passed
the next year and in 1900 became a Swiss citizen. At college, he met a fellow student Mileva
Maric, and after a long friendship, they married in 1903; they had two sons before divorcing
several years later. In 1896 Einstein renounced his German citizenship to avoid military
conscription. For five years he was stateless, before successfully applying for Swiss citizenship
in 1901. After graduating from Zurich college, he attempted to gain a teaching post but none
was fortcoming; instead he gained a job in the Swiss Patent Office. While working at the Patent
Office, Einstein continued his own scientific discoveries and began radical experiments to
consider the nature of light and space. He published his first scientific paper in 1900, and by
1905 had completed his PhD entitled “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions. In
addition to working on his PhD, Einstein also worked feverishly on other papers. In 1905, he
published four pivotal scientific works, which would revolutionise modern physics. 1905 would
later be referred to as his ‘annus mirabilis‘ Einstein’s work started to gain recognition, and he
was given a post at the University of Zurich (1909) and, in 1911, was offered the post of full-
professor at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague (which was then part of Austria-
Hungary Empire). He took Austrian-Hungary citizenship to accept the job. In 1914, he returned
to Germany and was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. (1914–
1932)
Albert Einstein’s Scientific Contributions : Quantum Theory; Special Theory of
Relativity; General Theory of Relativity 1916; Solar eclipse of 1919; Bohr-Einstein
debates; Exile.
Politics of Einstein
Einstein described himself as a Zionist Socialist. He did support the state of Israel, but became
concerned about the narrow nationalism of the new state. In 1952, he was offered the position as
President of Israel, but he declined saying he had: “neither the natural ability nor the experience
to deal with human beings.” … “I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at
once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it.” Albert Einstein was involved in many civil
rights movements such as the American campaign to end lynching. He joined the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and considered racism,
America’s worst disease. But he also spoke highly of the meritocracy in American society and
the value of being able to speak freely. On the outbreak of war in 1939, Einstein wrote
to President Roosevelt about the prospect of Germany developing an atomic bomb. He warned
Roosevelt that the Germans were working on a bomb with a devastating potential. Roosevelt
headed his advice and started the Manhattan project to develop the US atom bomb. But, after the
war ended, Einstein reverted to his pacifist views. Einstein said after the war. “Had I known that
the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger.”
(Newsweek, 10 March 1947) In the post-war McCarthyite era, Einstein was scrutinised closely
for potential Communist links. He wrote an article in favour of socialism, “Why Socialism”
(1949) He criticised Capitalism and suggested a democratic socialist alternative. He was also a
strong critic of the arms race. Einstein remarked: “I do not know how the third World War will
be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks!” Einstein was feted as a
scientist, but he was a polymath with interests in many fields. In particular, he loved music. He
wrote that if he had not been a scientist, he would have been a musician. Einstein played the
violin to a high standard. “I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in
terms of music… I get most joy in life out of music.” Einstein died in 1955, at his request his
brain and vital organs were removed for scientific study.
Biography B.J.Habibie
B.J. Habibie, in full Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, (born June 25, 1936, Parepare,
Indonesia), Indonesian aircraft engineer and politician who was president of Indonesia (1998–
99) and a leader in the country’s technological and economic development in the late 20th and
early 21st centuries. Brilliant in science and mathematics from childhood, Habibie received his
postsecondary education at the Bandung Institute of Technology in Bandung, Indonesia, and
furthered his studies at the Institute of Technology of North Rhine–Westphalia in Aachen,
West Germany. After graduating in 1960, he remained in West Germany as an aeronautics
researcher and production supervisor. Suharto took power as Indonesia’s second president in
1966, and in 1974 he asked Habibie—whom he had known for 25 years—to return to the
country to help build advanced industries. Suharto assured him that he could do whatever was
needed to accomplish that goal. Initially assigned to the state oil company, Pertamina, Habibie
became a government adviser and chief of a new aerospace company in 1976. Two years later
he became research minister and head of the Agency for Technology Evaluation and
Application. In these roles he oversaw a number of ventures involving the production and
transportation of heavy machinery, steel, electronics and telecommunications equipment, and
arms and ammunition. Habibie believed his enterprises ultimately would spawn high-tech
ventures in the private sector and allow the country to climb the technology ladder. In 1993 he
unveiled the first Indonesian-developed plane, which he helped design, and in the following year
he launched a plan to refurbish more than three dozen vessels bought from the former East
German navy at his initiative. The Finance Ministry balked at the cost of the latter endeavour,
while the armed forces thought that its turf had been violated. Nevertheless, Habibie got more
than $400 million for refurbishing. Meanwhile, in 1990 Habibie was appointed head of the
Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals Association, and during the 1993 central-board elections of the
country’s ruling party, Golkar, Habibie helped the children and allies of President Suharto rise
to top positions, easing out long-standing military-backed power brokers. By the late 1990s
Habibie was viewed as one of several possible successors to the aging Suharto. In March 1998
Suharto appointed Habibie to the vice presidency, and two months later, in the wake of large-
scale violence in Jakarta, Suharto announced his resignation. Thrust unexpectedly into the
country’s top position, Habibie immediately began to implement major reforms. He appointed a
new cabinet; fired Suharto’s eldest daughter as social affairs minister as well as his longtime
friend as trade and industry minister; named a committee to draft less-restrictive political laws;
allowed a free press; arranged for free parliamentary and presidential elections the following
year; and agreed to presidential term limits (two five-year terms). He also granted amnesty to
more than 100 political prisoners. In 1999 Habibie announced that East Timor, a former
Portuguese colony that had been invaded by Indonesia in 1975, could choose between
special autonomy and independence; the territory chose independence. Indonesia held free
general elections (the first since 1955) in June, as promised. Later that year Habibie ran for
president, but he withdrew his candidacy shortly before the October election, which was won
by Abdurrahman Wahid. After Wahid took office, Habibie essentially stepped out of politics,
although in 2000 he established the Habibie Center, a political research institute.