Curated category
Jewish agnostics
- Albert EinsteinWhen Albert Einstein was five and sick in bed, his father brought him a compass. The trembling needle, always pointing the same way, convinced the boy that…
- J. Robert OppenheimerJ. Robert Oppenheimer stood in a control bunker near Alamogordo, New Mexico, in the early morning hours of the 16th of July, 1945, holding a post to steady…
- Gustav MahlerGustav Mahler was born on the 7th of July 1860 in a village in Bohemia, the second son of a coachman-turned-innkeeper who had clawed his way up from nothing.
- Neil GaimanNeil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman was born on the 10th of November 1960 in Portchester, Hampshire, into a family whose name had been changed from Chaiman to…
- Aaron CoplandAaron Copland grew up above a Brooklyn shop at 628 Washington Avenue, in a family of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants who had traveled through Scotland just to…
- Arthur MillerArthur Miller died on the evening of the 10th of February 2005 - the fifty-sixth anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman.
- Carl SaganCarl Sagan grew up in a modest Bensonhurst apartment with parents who, by his own account, "knew almost nothing about science." Yet it was precisely those…
- Émile DurkheimÉmile Durkheim was born on the 15th of April 1858 in Épinal, Lorraine, France, the son of a rabbi and the grandson of a rabbi, and the great-grandson of one…
- Stan LeeStan Lee signed off his monthly column with a single word: "Excelsior!" It is also the New York state motto, which suited a man born Stanley Martin Lieber on…
- Milton FriedmanMilton Friedman died on the 16th of November 2006, and his last column ran in The Wall Street Journal the very next day.
- Joseph HellerJoseph Heller was born on the 1st of May, 1923, in Coney Island, Brooklyn, to poor Jewish immigrant parents from Russia.
- Edward TellerEdward Teller watched the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945 while almost everyone else lay face-down on the ground with their backs turned.
- Rosalind FranklinRosalind Franklin died on the 16th of April 1958, at age 37, one day before the world's fair in Brussels opened its doors to reveal a five-foot model of a…
- Ray KurzweilRay Kurzweil was born on the 12th of February 1948 in Queens, New York City, to parents who had fled Austria just before World War II.
- Wilhelm ReichWilhelm Reich was born on the 24th of March 1897 in Dobzau, Galicia, a corner of Austria-Hungary that is now part of Ukraine, and he died on the 3rd of…