My Science School

What do the Wright Brothers, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Thomas Alva Edison have in common? All of them became immensely successful in their fields even without a college degree!

The Wright Brothers never graduated from high school; Jobs, Gates and Zuckerberg are all Harvard dropouts. And Edison, the inventor of the practical light bulb and other devices, too never went to college. In fact, Edison, who was homeschooled for a few years, could not afford further education. Instead, he used his genius to come up with inventions that changed the world.

Early life

Born in February 11, 1847 in Ohio, Edison attended school only for a few months before dropping out. His mother, who was a teacher, taught him at home. When the Civil War broke out, Edison worked as a telegraph operator to support his family. However, a childhood illness had left him hard of hearing. The problem intensified after a train conductor allegedly boxed his ears for setting up a makeshift laboratory inside a train compartment. Working on devices to improve his hearing, Edison found his calling!

As an inventor

A curious kid from the start, he loved conducting chemistry experiments, he set up a small laboratory and workshop in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where in 1877, he developed a carbon transmitter to improve the quality of sound on the telephone. His work further led him to build a phonograph, a device that recorded and reproduced sound. The phonograph played such an important role in the development of the music recording industry that the Grammy awards were initially going to be named the Eddys after the inventor. It earned him the sobriquet ‘the Wizard of Menlo Park.’

Sparking an idea

Almost anyone can name the inventor of the light bulb. For over 50 years, scientists had been grappling with inventing a safer alternative to the conventional gaslight, but it was Edison, who came up with the inexpensive and safe electric light bulb. With prominent financial backers such as J.P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt family, Edison set up the Edison Electric Light Company and began research and development. He achieved a breakthrough in October 1879 which proved to be the key to the invention of a long-lasting and affordable light bulb. Edison’s invention became phenomenally successful and was even used at events such as Paris Lighting Exhibition in 1881 and the Crystal Palace in London in 1882. Riding on this success, he founded the General Electric Company in 1892.

Battery Life

Like Edison, automaker Henry Ford too was a pioneer in his field. At Ford’s request, Edison designed a car battery, which was introduced on the iconic Ford Model T. The nickel-iron batteries were longer-lasting compared to lead batteries, and were an early effort at developing an electric vehicle. It also marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship. They often went camping together and even built homes next to each other.

Rivalry with Tesla

The rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla is well known. Unlike Edison, Nikola Tesla’s inventions were not as celebrated in his day. Tesla, a brilliant scientist, was instrumental in the invention of x-ray and wireless communication, but would not market himself well and did not receive finding too. On the other hand, Edison had a business mindset in addition to his ingenuity, which helped steer his success. He held as many as 1,093 patents in the U.S., and more than 1,000 patents from 34 different countries.

Breathing his last

After years of pioneering research, Edison died on October 18, 1931 due to complications from diabetes. His last breath is reportedly contained in a test tube at the Henry Ford museum. BUT Edison’s legacy lives on every time we turn on the light or listen to a song, or even click a picture!

Oh really?

• Edison used to carry a small notebook in his pocket to note down any new idea that might strike him. The ideas were also accompanied by rough sketches of the devices.


• His first patent was for an automatic ‘vote recorder’, a predecessor of the modern EVM machines.


• Edison’s first laboratory was built inside the compartment of an abandoned train. Edison pioneered the industrial research laboratory, where up to 200 inventors worked with him. The lab was a cradle of research, and paved the way for new research institutions, dedicated to innovation.

 

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Sequestered among books, librarians lead relatively anonymous lives. The gatekeepers of knowledge work their way silently through cataloguing, preserving and issuing books. You do not usually read about them in the headlines nor remember their names.

So it was surprising when the demise of Barbara Testa, a modest librarian from Hollywood, was splashed across the pages of The New York Times. The news spread like wildfire and in a matter news and literacy mysteries of the 19th century!

Digging out the past

Rummaging through the attic in her home at Boulder Creek, California in the United States, Testa was looking for something valuable. She stumbled upon an old steamer trunk, which belonged to her grandfather James Gluck, who was a renowned attorney in the 19th century.

While clearing out his old letters and ledgers, she found a 600-page handwritten manuscript. Though its pages were old, the writing in black ink was clear. Her sixth sense started tingling. Her experience as a librarian and familiarity with Twain’s handwriting told her that this was no ordinary document.

And sure enough, it turned out that the manuscript was the missing first half of the original copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written by Mark Twain. The book is considered to be one of the great American novels penned by Twain.

A strong friendship

So how did it end up in a dusty old box in the attic of a librarian’s home?

Besides being a prominent lawyer, Gluck also loved books and was the curator of the Buffalo library. Collecting manuscripts was his hobby. And he had developed an enviable collection of precious manuscripts including those of Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott and Henry James.

Gluck, who was a pen pal of Twain, persuaded him to donate the manuscript of his masterpiece Huckleberry Finn to the library.

Twain was happy to oblige, but admitted that he could not find the first half of the manuscript which he believed to have been destroyed by the printers after the book was published. He sent the second half in 1885. Two years later, Twain found the first half and promptly sent it over to Gluck.

Before his death at the age of 45 in 1895, Gluck donated around 500 literary items to the library. Surprisingly, the first half of Huckleberry Finn was not among them. It is not clear whether the omission was a mere oversight on his part, or he deliberately kept the manuscript aside for his personal collection.

Legal hassles

For whatever reason, the manuscript ended up in an old trunk until Testa discovered it. Delighted, she sent the manuscript to Sotheby for authentication and planned to auction it off for a handsome sum. Its legitimacy was confirmed and its worth was estimated to be around $1.5 million.

However, when the news of the manuscript leaked out, the Buffalo library filed a legal suit to prevent Testa or her family members from selling it. The dispute was eventually settled and the manuscript went to the library. Testa allegedly received a finder’s fee of $1 million.

Reunion

Testa’s discovery helped in reuniting the first and second halves of the draft of Twain's classic novel. Once the manuscripts were studied together, scholars were able to see the extensive changes the author and his editors had made to the novel. Huge chunks of the story had been cut by the editors.

With the help of the manuscripts, scholars were able to restore some deleted scenes. One such scene was the one in which Huckleberry Finn and Jim, the runaway slave, hide in a cave while discussing ghosts. It was added to the reprints of the book. The scene adds tremendous value to the story and remains unforgettable even today.

Testa deserves credit for the amazing discovery that enhanced the story of Huckleberry Finn. Similarly, the Buffalo library’s prompt action ensured that the manuscript didn’t fall into the wrong hands.

Significance

Twain is one of the most celebrated American authors.

Huckleberry Finn was first published in 1884 in the U.K. It is a first-person account of Huckleberry ‘Huck’ Finn, the narrator of three other Twain novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom Sawyer, Detective and Tom Sawyer Abroad. It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The book is known for its colourful descriptions of people living in the Mississippi belt. It is considered to be a scathing satire on slavery and racism.

Huck is described as a young misfit, who wears cast-off clothes and sleeps in doorways and empty barrels. The character is believed to be based on Tom Blankenship, Twain’s childhood friend.

Twain wrote the book over a period of seven years. He wrote 400 pages in 1876 and finished the book after a long break.

 

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“Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime and departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time” – More than 200 hundred years after his death, the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow often greet us in the least expected places. Inside a get-well card; or a poster hanging on the restaurant walls, or stranger still, as a motivational message on a WhatsApp group. Such is the power of this gifted poet’s words that they have transcended time and truly left their immortal footprints.

Longfellow was nothing less than a celebrity in his time. From Abraham Lincoln and Nathaniel Hawthorne to Queen Victoria and Edgar Allan Poe, everyone was a fan of his lyrical and simple verses. And not just adults, he was adored by children, who found his verses to be playful and smart. He was second only to Lord Tennyson. Rarely has a poet received such recognition. But did you know that Longfellow was fluent in no less than eight languages?

A love for languages

Right from an early age, Longfellow displayed phenomenal linguistic skills. He picked up languages with an uncanny ease, without any special coaching. By 14, he was fluent in Latin, a language proficiency was so good that he was even offered the post of the professor of modern languages at his alma mater, Bowdoin College in Maine, immediately after graduating as the trustees were immensely impressed by his work.

Before taking up the job offer, Longfellow embarked on a three-year preparatory study tour across Europe. He travelled to France, Spain, Italy, Germany and England. In Madrid, he became friends with Washington Irving, author of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow. Irving encouraged the young Longfellow to pursue writing.

Longfellow, who started teaching at Bowdoin college on his return, translated textbooks from French, Italian, and Spanish. His first published book was a translation of the poetry of medieval Spanish poet Jorge Manrique in 1833.

He became the first American author to translate Dante’s Divine Comedy, which served as an inspiration for many generations of writers.

After Bowdoin, he taught Modern Languages at the prestigious Harvard College in Cambridge, where he spent the rest of his years.

Friendships

Longfellow had a close friendship with another great mind, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who also urged him to explore his literacy skills. At his behest, Longfellow published Voices of the Night, his debut book of poetry, which contained some of the poems he had written as a teenager. At Cambridge, Longfellow formed a literary society called the Five of Clubs, which included Charles Sumner and Cornelius Conway Felton. The house where it all began is now preserved as the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.

Simplicity is key

Longfellow penned lyrical poems, often presenting stories of mythology and legend. Though he was a huge success, he was also criticised for writing uncomplicated and simple verses. However, Longfellow loved writing poems that had a mass appeal. He wanted people to find pleasure and solace in his verse, regardless of whether they were rich or poor. The playful and musical nature of his poems made him a favourite among children too.

Poet’s corner

Longfellow’s life was marked by tragedy. He lost his first wife shortly after marriage. His second wife died in a freak accident at home. Both the losses cast a shadow on his life till the poet passed away at the age of 72 on March 24, 1882. As a tribute to the literary giant, a life-size bust of the poet was placed in the Poet’s Corner Westminster Abbey in 1884 – the first non-British writer to receive this honour.

Oh really?

• Longfellow was born in the seaside of Portland, Maine, in the U.S., over 200 years ago. His ancestors were among the earliest settlers in the U.S. They had come to the country on the historical Mayflower in search of a new and better life.


• He was the first U.S. author to translate Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.


• In 1867, Longfellow hosted Charles Dickens for Thanksgiving dinner.


• A bridge in Cambridge, which he frequently crossed while walking home from Cambridge, was later named after him. In 1906, the Boston Bridge was replaced and renamed the Longfellow Bridge.


• Longfellow sustained facial injuries that prevented him from shaving his face and he grew a full beard as his trademark.


• Paul Revere’s Ride is Longfellow’s best-known poem.

 

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A scraggly looking Newt Scamander with his magical suitcase packed with fantastical creatures captured our imagination after Harry Potter. But did you know J.K. Rowling based the character partly on the British naturalist and writer, Gerald Durrell? The wildlife conservationist strove to turn zoos into sanctuaries for endangered species giving a new direction to conservation.

A magical childhood

Childhood, it is said, is a magical time that shapes us into our future selves. And Durrell was lucky to spend a part of his childhood surrounded by books and a part of his childhood surrounded by books and animals on the Corfu island in Greece. From catching the glittering purple-and-orange agamas lounging on the gypsum cliffs and watching dung beetles in action to getting a ringside view of the dragonfly larvae hatching. Durrell could witness the most intimate and magical moments of the animal world. Later, he recounted his childhood fascination with the animal kingdom in his delightful autobiographical account The Corfu Trilogy – My Family and Other Animals; Birds and Relatives; and the Garden of the Gods.

Born in Jamshedpur in India on January 7, 1925, Durrell had moved to Corfu with his family when he was 10, after his father’s death. On Corfu, he met Theodore Stephanides, a Greek-British scientist, who mentored the curious Durrell. The brilliant scientist who played a huge role in Durrell’s development features in the Corfu Trilogy.

Pursuit of a dream

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Durrell was forced to move in England. Without a formal education, he found it difficult to find work in England. So he followed his passion and started working as a helper in aquariums and pet stores.

Durrell yearned to go on wildlife expeditions to explore the animal world. His lack of experience, however, threw very few opportunities his way. Finally, he got his lucky break in 1947. He travelled to the British Cameroon) with the acclaimed ornithologist John Yealland. He returned home with a collection of exceptional animals, which he sold to prominent zoos including the London zoo. But Durrell was unhappy with how the zoos treated animals. He dreamed of turning the zoos into breeding grounds and sanctuaries for endangered species, instead of merely places where animals are kept in captivity for public environment.

Writing for conservation

That’s when Durrell started writing humorous autobiographical accounts to raise money for conservation as well as more expeditions. The success of his books The Overloaded Ark and My Family and Other Animals helped him travel and acquire an enviable collection of wild and endangered animals. But instead of giving them away to other zoos, where he wasn’t sure how they would be treated. Durrell set up his own menagerie. And the Jersey Zoo opened its doors in 1959. He dedicated it to ‘saving species from extinction.’ Through Durrell’s vision, the zoo has today become the home of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. It runs breeding programmes and rehabilitates endangered species such as gorillas, lemurs and tortoises before releasing them into the wild.

Legacy

Durrell believed that the wiping out of an animal species should be considered “a criminal offence.” In 1988, a time capsule was buried in his park, with a letter to future generations written by Durrell, “We hope that there will be fireflies and glow-worms at night to guide you and butterflies in hedges and forests to greet you. We hope that your dawns will have an orchestra of birdsong and that the sound of their wings and the opalescence of their colouring will dazzle you. We hope that there will still be the extraordinary varieties of creatures sharing the land of the planet with you to enchant you and enrich your lives as they have done for us. We hope that you will be grateful for having been born into such a magical extinction today, the world truly needs another Durrell!

Oh Really?

• Durrell attended St. Joseph’s (North Point) School, Darjeeling. His father worked as an engineer in the British Raj. His older brother, Lawrence was a popular British poet and travel writer.


• The Durrell Wildlife Conservation List comes out with the “Red List of Endangered Species.” The ploughshare tortoise, Madagascar big-headed turtle, mountain chicken, and pygmy hog are some of the endangered species that feature on this list.

 

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Widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time, Court Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, better known as Leo Tolstoy, was born on September 9, 1828. His ideas on non-violence had a profound impact on Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Early Life

Born on his family estate, Yasnaya Polyana in the Tula province of Russia, Tolstoy belonged to an affluent family. Unfortunately, he lost his parents at a young age and lived with different relatives over the years.

At 16, Tolstoy began studying law and Oriental languages at Kazan University, but since he was home-schooled, he struggled to cope. Frustrated, he dropped out of the university and started looking for a non-academic career.

Sowing the seeds

Intent on taking up farming, Tolstoy moved to the family’s estate and began managing serfs and farmhands. Though he enjoyed the toil, he had to give up farming as he wanted to return to Moscow, which he missed. On his brother’s insistence, he joined the Russian Army. Tolstoy fought in the Crimean War, between Russia, and Britain and France. The violence and bloodshed he witnessed during the war scared him for life. He left the Army as soon as the war ended.

A new religion

Seeking solace in religion, he tried to evolve his own views on religion wherein he rejected the authority of the church and promoted ahimsa or non-violence. He believed in leading a morally and physically ascetic life. His followers moved onto the author’s estate to be near him and came to be known as Tolstayans. Many of these communes are operational even today.

Among those influenced by Tolstoy’s social beliefs were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi established a cooperative colony named after Tolstoy in South Africa and corresponded with the author, crediting him with his own spiritual and philosophical evolution, particularly with regard to Tolstoy’s teachings on peaceful non-resistance to evil.

Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910, a few months after a few months after embarking on a pilgrimage with his daughter.

About war and peace

Written by the author over a period of six years, War and Peace cemented Tolstoy’s position as one of the greatest writers in the world. While it is a tale about the French invasion of Russia and its impact on everyday lives, it also perfectly captures the ethos of the time we live in today.

Oh Really?

• A Bombay High Court Judge asked an accused civil activist to explain why he had a copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace at home. The comment has drawn criticism from people across the world.


• Tolstoy maintained a journal throughout his life in which he kept a detailed record of all his activities. In the diary, he jotted down a list of rules he aspired to live by. This included sleeping by 10 p.m. and with no more than a two-hour nap in the afternoon; eating moderately and avoiding sweets.


• Tolstoy’s wife helped him in finishing War and Peace on time. After completing the first draft in 1865, Tolstoy kept revising it over and over again. His wife, Sophia, patiently wrote out each version by hand – sometimes she even used a magnifying glass to decipher his scribbles. Over the next seven years, she rewrote the complete manuscript at least eight times.


• While fighting in the Army, Tolstoy wrote Childhood, an autobiographical novel, followed by Boyhood and Youth. His other works include Anna Karenina, Resurrection, Family Happiness and The Death of Ivan Illyich.  

 

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Few books have captured the imagination of generations of readers like Little Women, the 1868 novel by Louisa May Alcott. Over the years, the book has been adapted, to the silver screen several times, including the 1994 remake starring Winona Ryder as the heroine Jo March. Now 25 years later, director Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, which released on December 25, once again welcomes audiences into the warm, loving and chaotic home of the March family. But how much do you know about Alcott, who defied stereotypes and conventions to become one of the foremost women writers of her time?

Early life

Born in Pennsylvania, United States, Alcott’s family closely resembled the March sisters you come across in Little Women. The family struggled with poverty, forcing Alcott and her three sisters to work as governesses, domestic servants and teachers to earn money. Some of her employers even mistreated her.

Alcott learned about women’s rights and equality, thanks to her parents, Bronson and Abigail Alcott. They were friends with Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass and Julia Ward Howe, who ended up creating on a young Alcott.

Her family operated an Underground Railroad, a network of people offering shelter and aid to slaves escaping from the South. Alcott helped them hide a fugitive slave for nearly a week. These experiences shaped her character and taught her to be open-minded.

Finding her voice

Alcott championed for universal suffrage. She wrote on women’s rights and went door to door in Massachusetts to encourage women to vote. When the state passed a law allowing women to vote in local elections she was the first one to get herself registered as a voter. Overcoming resistance, she, along with 19 women, cast their ballots. The Nineteenth Amendment was finally ratified in the U.S. Constitution decades after her death.

Writing became an outlet for Alcott to voice her thoughts and experiences. One of her poems was published in a women’s magazine when she was 19. This gave her confidence to write more, especially edge-of-the-seat thrillers, which were written largely by men.

Adopting the pseudonym A.M. Barnard, she penned some racy pulp fiction about spies and revenge.

Alcott started writing a story about adolescent girls at the behest of her publisher Thomas Niles. When he asked Alcott to write a “girls” story, she had her doubts of its success. After all, it was a time when women were expected only to marry and take care of the household. She was not sure how the public would respond to a talented and independent heroine like Jo March. Her scepticism proved unfounded as Little Women turned out to be a smash hit.

Drawn from her own experiences, Little Women went on to become so popular that fans flooded her with letters, demanding sequels. Despite becoming a bestselling author, Alcott enlisted as an army nurse when the Civil War broke out. Putting on a brave face, she comforted dying soldiers and helped doctors perform amputations. She later wrote about her stressful but meaningful experience in Hospital Sketches.

Mercury poisoning

While working as a nurse, she contracted typhoid fever and was treated with a compound containing mercury. Though she recovered at the time, she continued to be chronically ill for the rest of her life due to exposure to mercury. At 51, she died of a stroke in Boston on March 6, 1888. She is buried next to her childhood companions Thoreau, Emerson and Hawthorne.

 

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If you had lived in New York nearly a century ago, you would surely have bumped into a tall, thin man with deep-set eyes and a moustache, curved around the edges. The curious man probably observing you from a distance would have seemed intimidating till he came up and talked to you. His courteous ways would have impressed you so much that you would have started sharing your life story with him before long.

For that’s what William Sydney Porter, better known by his pen name O. Henry, loved to do. He loved observing people, speaking to them and collecting their stories. That’s how he met Soapy, the inspiration behind the character of the homeless man who desperately wants to be arrested in The Cop and the Anthem, the loving couple who give secret Christmas gift to each other despite falling on hard times (The Gift of the Magi), and other characters, whom he immortalized through his short stories.

Porter’s own life story was as fascinating as any of his characters. Did you know he worked as a ranch-hand, pharmacist, bank teller and even served time in prison, before he found fame as a storyteller?

The Pharmacist

Born September 11, 1862 in North Carolina, Porter lost his mother at a young age. His aunt Lina raised him. The only formal education the master storyteller received was at the school where his aunt was a teacher. It was here that he developed a life-long love of books.

He spent his youth serving as an assistant in his uncle’s pharmacy, where he was quick to pick up potion-making skills. At the age of 19, he became a licensed pharmacist. But he soon realised that it was not where his calling lay. Instead, amidst bottles of medicines and pills, his creativity unleashed through art. Besides filling up their prescriptions, he drew sketches of the customers who visited frequently. Needless to say, such gestures endeared him to everyone in the town.

So it was with a heavy heart that he left town when he was 20 years old. The move was prompted by health concerns over a persistent cough, which he hoped would be cured once he had a change of air. And that’s when he arrived in Austin’s Texas, a place he called home for the rest of his life.

The cowboy and his ways

For the next three years, he lived in Austin and held several jobs from a ranch-hand and a draftsman to a journalist and a banker. Porter was convicted of embezzlement by an Austin bank where he worked as a teller. But he was released after serving three years of a five-year prison sentence on account of good behaviour. While he was at Ohio Penitentiary, which was known for being a harsh prison, he was given special treatment because of his potion-making skills. He was even granted more free time than his fellow prisoners. He spent it writing some of his most famous short stories.

From this low-point in life, Porter made a remarkable comeback. Three years and about a dozen short stories later, he emerged from prison as “O. Henry” which helped him hide his true identity. He moved to New York City, where over the next nine years before his death in 1910, he published nearly 600 stories and gained worldwide acclaim as a master storyteller.

Movies inspired by his books

Henry’s short stories with their plot twists and surprise endings easily lend themselves to the screen. It’s not surprising therefore, that many of his stories have been adapted into films:

• Lootera (2013): A film by Vikramaditya Motwane starring Ranveer Singh and Sonakshi Sinha, it is inspired by the short story ‘The Last Leaf’.


• Raincoat (2204): Rituparno Ghosh’s first Hindi film is an adaptation of O. Henry ‘s “The Gift of the Magi”.


• Khatta Meetha (1998): Remade in Hindi by Priyadarshan, the film about the ethics to be followed in life, is based on “After Twenty Years”.

Oh Henry!

• O. Henry was the pen name of author William Sydney Porter. He even wrote under other pseudonyms such as S.H. Peters, James L. Bliss, T.B. Dowd, and Howard Clark.


• Porter’s pen name is said to have been derived from the way he addressed his cat – “Oh Henry!” – or it could be a tribute to a French pharmacist named Eteinne-Ossian Henry.


• He wrote nearly 600 stories about life in the U.S., especially New York. One of his best stores was rejected at least 12 times. But he did not lose heart.


• The O. Henry Award is a prestigious annual prize named after Porter and given to outstanding short stories.


• O. Henry’s love of language inspired the O. Henry Pun-Off, an annual spoken word competition which began in 1978 and takes place every year at the O. Henry House in Austin, Texas.

 

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Toxic wastes produced by the breakdown of food in the body are normally removed by the kidneys. The kidneys also regulate the body’s fluid and salt content. If they go wrong, the poisonous wastes accumulate in the blood and fluid builds up, which eventually causes uremia, a disease which kills thousands of people each year.

Kidneys can sometimes fail without warning, but more common is ‘chronic kidney failure’, in which the kidneys deteriorate gradually. The only ways of dealing with kidney failure are either to transplant a healthy kidney or to remove the waste products artificially.

Waste removal is done by dialysis machine which acts as an artificial kidney, filtering the wastes out of the blood. The process is often performed at home by patients trained to use the machine. One method, haemopdialysis, involves inserting two needles into the patient’s arm or leg – one in an artery, the other in a vein. Each needle is connected by a piece of tubing to the dialysis machine.

Blood flows the patient’s artery into the machine where it is mixed with a drug called heparin to stop it from clotting. It is then passed through a semipermeable coiled Cellophane tube, which is immersed in a warm chemical bath. The perforations in the Cellophane are large enough for the small molecules of waste to filter through them, but the blood cells, which are larger, remain inside the tube. Once the waste products have been filtered out, the cleansed blood is mixed with an agent which counteracts the heparin and is pumped back into the patient through the needle in the vein.

Three sessions a week

Someone who requires this mechanical form of waste removal has to undergo three eight-hour sessions a week, connected to the machine.

Another filtering system, called peritoneal dialysis, does not require the machinery used in haemodialysis. The peritoneum is a large protective sac of flexible tissue, surrounding the abdominal organs. These organs have a plentiful blood supply, and being close to them the peritoneum is well situated to act as a filter for unwanted molecules.

In peritoneal dialysis, the patient has a small piece of tubing inserted through the abdominal wall into his or her peritoneum. A special liquid known as dialysing fluid is then poured into the abdominal cavity via the tube. The fluid attracts the waste products from the blood in the abdominal organs, and is then sucked out. The whole process takes up to 12 hours, and is performed two or four times a week.

The type of dialysis that patients revive depends on a number of factors, including age, the availability of machines, and their ability to insert needles into themselves. In some countries, the cost of machines is also a consideration.

 

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With his white beard, pointed nose and large glasses, Salman Rushdie cuts a stem, intimidating figure. Neither his television appearances for his inventions give away any sign of pressure or fear. It’s hard to imagine that for over 10 years, the author was living under the shadow of a fatwa, a death sentence, and was on the hit list of the terrorist group, Al-Qaeda.

Writing satires which blends fiction with reality, Rushdie has often been thrown into the midst of controversies. But the novelist’s work speaks for itself. With his new book, Quichotte shortlisted for the Booker Prize for fiction, here’s a look at his amazing literacy journey.

Early life

When Rushdie was just 10, he wrote his first story. It was a dozen pages long, and its protagonist was a boy who lived in Bombay and found the beginning of a rainbow, as broad and wide as a staircase. Though Rushdie never managed to finish this story, he went on to write 12 critically acclaimed novels, children’s books, essays and a whole lot more.

Rushdie was born on June 19, 1947 in Bombay in a Muslim family of Kashmiri descent. His mother was a teacher, while his father worked as a lawyer and a businessman. Rushdie attended the Cathedral and John Connon School, a repute school in Mumbai, where he impressed his classmates and teachers with his exemplary vocabulary and flair for writing. When he was offered a scholarship by the prestigious Balliol College, Oxford, Rushdie turned it down, choosing to attend Cambridge University, his father’s alma mater instead.

Advertising success

Before becoming a full-time writer, Rushdie tried his hand at acting and production, but without success. He took up a job with an advertising firm in London. His slogan Aero chocolate bars “irresistible” earned him praise from the advertising industry. However Rushdie wanted to focus on writing and so he quit his job to write a novel. The endeavor failed and he went back to writing advertising copy.

Library recognition

It was with his second book midnight’s children in 1981 that his writing career took off. Written in the magic realism style, the book follows the life of a child, born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, who is endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born on the same historic occasion. Midnight’s children won the Booker prize. In 1993, the book won the Booker of bookers which was a special award given on the 25th anniversary of the price. Nearly 15 years later, Rushdie was also awarded the Best of the Booker’s, which mark the 40th birthday of the Booker in 2008. But his fourth book, Satanic verses, embroiled him in a controversy which almost cost him his life

Life threatened

The book was banned in 13 countries, including India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. In 1989, this spiritual leader of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on Radio Tehran for Rushdie’s execution. Violence and riots erupted around the world, people burnt copies of the book and took out rallies. There were even several failed assassination attempts on his life, forcing Rushdie to live under police protection for 10 years with the help of the British government.

Writing for children

Even while he was in hiding, Rushdie didn’t stop writing. He forayed into the realm of children’s literature with his book Haroun and the Sea of stories in 1990. He dedicated the book to his elder son Zafar, who was 10 then. The book is believed to be autobiographical, a representation of his thoughts and feelings when he was in hiding. In 2010 he wrote another children’s book, Luka and Fire of life for his younger son, Milan. Both books revolve around a family headed by a storyteller Rashid Khalifa, living in the city of Alif Bat: a city so sad that it has forgotten its own name.

Free at last

Finally in 1998, Iran partially lifted the fatwa against Rushdie. He declared that he would stop living in hiding and was granted a visa to finally visit India in 1999. Despite this, it was reported in 2006 that the fatwa cannot be withdrawn fully as Khoemeini, who had issued it was dead.

Magic realism and satire

Rushdie is known for his magic realism style of writing. Magic realism is a literacy technique in which the story take place in the real world, but it has a magical element. Other authors who use this technique include Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Orhan Pamuk. Rushdie’s works are also heavily satirical. Satire is a form of writing which ridiculous and criticises a government or an institution.

 

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Whether it is Arthur Conan Doyle’s clever, superhuman Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie’s fussy Belgian Hercule Poirot, or the uber cool James Bond, a good murder mystery or spy novel leaves us on the edge of our seats. And what happens if the spy is a 14-year-old, working with the British Secret Service M16? Anyone who has read the Alex Rider series will tell you that it is just double the fun.

But how much do you know about its author Anthony Horowitz?

British screenwriter and children’s author Horowitz solves crimes from a tiny shed in his garden. The author of the bestselling series weaves an intriguing mystery with his pen and then looks for clues and red herrings that will help readers identify the culprit. His shed is filled with all kinds of knick-knacks, including a bust of Tintin, to inspire his writing, and once he gets started, Horowitz can complete writing a novel in less than three months!

Early pick

Horowitz was an underachiever in school. Instead, he found solace in books and telling stories. He spent hours reading in his father’s library and entertaining his classmates by narrating the stories he read. By the time Horowitz turned eight he had found his calling. He began writing his own stories and knew he wanted to become a writer when he grew up. He even asked his father to gift him a typewriter for his eighth birthday. At 13, his mother introduced him to the stories of Frankenstein and Dracula. She gifted him a skull for his birthday, and Horowitz still looks at it every now and then. It motivates him to keep writing.

Though he graduated from the University of York with a lower second class degree in English literature, Horowitz tasted success early on. He was 22 when his first book, The Sinister Secret of Frederick K Bower, a humorous adventure for children, was published in 1979. It was later issued as Enter Frederick K Bower. In 1981, his second novel, Misha, the Magician and the Mysterious Amulet, was published and he moved to Paris to write his third book.

Alex Rider

The Alex Rider series was born out of Horowitz’s love for the sophisticated British spy, James Bond. Growing up Horowitz eagerly followed all the Bond books and films. After becoming a successful writer, Horowitz wondered whether he could reinvent the Bond films from the perspective of a 14-year-old. Since the publication of the first Alex Rider novel Stormbreaker in 2000, the series has become a huge hit. It has been translated into about 40 languages.

Other works

Over the years Horowitz has written 50-plus novels, besides Poirot and Midsomer Murders, detective series for television. He was commissioned by the Conan Doyle Estate to write new novel featuring the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. And the result: The House of Silk (2011) and Moriatry (2014). He has also written two official James Bond novels, Trigger Mortis (2015) and Forever and a Day (2018) following a commission by the Ian Fleming Estate. Horowitz’s latest novels The Word Is Murder and The Sentence Is Death features himself as a writer following Hawthorne, a sharp, brooding detective as he sets about solving crimes.

Pet peeves

From going underground at Wimbledon for Skeleton Key and potholing in Yorkshire for The Sentence is Death to driving a crane for Point Blanc, Horowitz meticulously researches every last detail for his books. For his novel Snakehead, he spent time at an oil rig in Aberdeen; explored Bangkok and the Outback in Australia. He even picked up kickboxing in Thailand.

One of Horowitz’s greatest fears, strangely enough, is dropping dead in the middle of a novel. He’s so afraid of this that he actually leaves behind detailed notes about how to finish the book when he starts writing a new novel, because he can’t imagine anyone unravelling the mystery without his help.

After writing 50 novels, there’s still a lot more to come from this polymath.

And we can’t wait to read more about the adventures of Alex Rider!

 

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If you have read the classic Jane Eyre, which is about a feisty and strong-willed governess, you may be familiar with the name Charlotte Bronte. The author along with her sisters, Emily and Anne, was one of the most important literacy voices of the 19th Century. Last month, the Bronte Society acquired a rare, match-sized book written by Charlotte at the age of 14. One of six “little books” it was created by the author for the tiny toy soldiers, she and her siblings loved playing with.

Early life

Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their brother Branwell lived with their vicar father in Haworth, West Yorkshire in England. A young Charlotte had to come to terms with death and loss from an early age as she had lost her mother when she was five and later, her two elder sisters Maria and Elizabeth to tuberculosis. After the death of her two siblings Charlotte took on the role of the elder sister.

School was a nightmare for Charlotte. The Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge had a harsh environment, and Charlotte had several bad experiences there. It served as an inspiration for the dark and cold Lowood Institution in Jane Eyre.

A world of their own

Living in a small, remote village, Charlotte and her siblings had only each other for company. But a wooden village and a few toy soldiers were enough to unlock their imagination. They invented entire worlds created entire towns – like ‘the Great Glasstown Confederacy’ – filled with peasants and nobles, where an adventure was always afoot!

Charlotte wrote tiny books recording the detailed histories and adventures of these fictional worlds. The second issue of one such book, called The Young Men’s Magazine, was recently bought by the Bronte Society for a sum of 600,000. The miniature book will be displayed at the Parsonage Museum, built in the Brontes’ old home in Haworth.

As Charlotte and her siblings grew older, their imagination became more colourful. During dinner time, all the siblings would chat about possible storylines and flesh out characters. The adventures made way for romances, secret heroes and scheming villains. Some of these stories, including that of the Duke of Zamorna and the lovely Mina Laury from the imaginary kingdom of Angria, written by Charlotte were later published by Penguin as the Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte.

Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell

Charlotte often worked as a teacher and governess, but did not enjoy it. She went on to study in Brussels at the Peonsionnat Heger, a school for young ladies, where she fell in love with her teacher. However, he did not reciprocate her feelings and Charlotte was heartbroken.

She found solace in writing. Charlotte and her siblings penned several novels and poems using male pen names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Currer Bell was Charlotte, Emily was Ellis and Anne was Acton. Charlotte even used this pseudonym while writing her most successful novel Jane Eyre. She did not want to reveal her identity as she feared that readers will not take a female author seriously. A famous poet had even told her once that “literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life.”

Though her first novel The Professor was rejected nine times, her second book Jane Eyre was published to huge acclaim in 1847.

However, her siblings didn’t live long enough to see her succeed. All three of them succumbed to tuberculosis between 1848 and 1849. Without her siblings with whom she had shared a close bond, Charlotte felt lost and alone.

Years later she married her father’s friend Arthur Bell Nicholls. They lived together at the Parsonage for a few months before her death. Bronte died at the age of 38 on March 31, 1855.

 

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When Lucy Maud Manotgomery wrote her first novel in 1905, it was rejected by almost all publishers she showed it to. Upset, she locked away the manuscript in a hat box. A couple of years later, when she tried to get her book published again, she succeeded. That novel was none other than Anne of Green Gables, which went on to become a children’s classic, recommended for students around the world even today.

This coming-of-age story – about the adventures of a redheaded girl set in the small town of Prince Edward Island – became one of the most popular books of Canada, being translated into about 30 different languages and adapted into several films and television series.

And it all started with a little bit of imagination.

Growing up, author Lucy Maud Montgomery had two imaginary friends, Katie Maurice and Lucy Gray. Katie and Lucy ‘lived’ in an imaginary room behind the bookcase in her grandparents’ house, where she spent her childhood. They were her constant companions and comforted her when she was scared and alone. They also did something more: they sharpened her imagination and fostered her creativity.

Keeping the secret

Montgomery’s father left her in the custody of her grandparents after her mother’s death. When she was nine, Montgomery began writing poetry and keeping a journal. Her poem On Cape LeForce was published by a local newspaper, the Patriot. But her family was not supportive of her writing as they considered it to be a waste of time, especially for a woman. But Montgomery did not give up, instead she continued writing in secret at night by sneaking in candles to her room. When she grew up, she even started working at a post office run by her family so that she could clandestinely send out her work to publishers.

A matter of luck

After graduating from college, Montgomery started working as a teacher. Though she did not enjoy it much, teaching gave her extra time to write. She penned hundreds of poems and short stories, but they continued to be rejected by Canadian, British, and American magazines. Finally, she was able to publish her first novel Anne of Green Gables in 1905, which marked the beginning of Montgomery’s successful career as a novelist.

Anne Shirley

Mirroring the author herself, Montgomery’s heroine, Anne Shirley, is an eternal optimist and an unrepentant romantic. Anne fights against all odds to find love, acceptance and her pace in the world. Montgomery’s beautiful descriptions of her hometown peppered with Victorian green-gabled farmhouses as well as its people, immortalised the tiny province of Prince Edward Island. Each year, hundreds of Montgomery’s fans visit the island to see the place she loved so much.

Legacy

After the Anne series, she wrote a number of successful novels and stories. For her literacy contribution, she became the first Canadian woman to be made a member of the British Royal Society of Arts and was also appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. She died on April 24, 1942. Like Anne, Montgomery was a woman much ahead of her time!

 

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Growing up is hard enough, but being a middle child can make it all the more difficult. Elder siblings tend to pick on you, while the younger ones can get away with anything. No one knows it better than author Jeff Kinney, whose words-and-cartoons exploration of the trials of a middle school misfit, written in the form of a journal, has been a colossal success.

Drawing from life

Born in Maryland in the United States, Kinney was caught between four siblings – elder brother Rodrick, his sister, and his younger brother, Patrick. Needless to say, multiple scuffles and fights were an unavoidable part of his childhood. Later, drawing on to these memories helped him create the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

But did you know Kinney didn’t grow up wanting to be a children’s author? In fact, his dream was to become a newspaper cartoonist, but he wasn’t able to get his comic strips published. So, he spent eight years writing the first book in the series.

Right from childhood, Kinney loved to draw, but he wasn’t very good at it. So he developed his own drawing style – with stick figures and bug-eyed characters. Using his surroundings as an inspiration, he created comics strips about the life around him. One such comic strip was Igdoof, which Kinney ran in his college newspaper at the University of Maryland. However, his work looked too juvenile and so he never received any efforts from big newspapers.

A love for computers

Besides drawing, Kinney was equally fond of computers. When his parents bought their first computer, Kinney was so interested in it that he even learned to write his own computer programmes. It was hard for his parents to keep him away from his new hobby. His computer skills helped him land a job after college.

Kinney started working as a content creator for a children’s website. After receiving multiple rejection letters for his comic strip, Kinney published his first book online in daily installments on funbrain.com, which offers free educational games for kids. Within a year, he had 12 million readers. To date, the online version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid has more than 80 million visits, and is typically read by more than 70,000 kids a day.

He continues to pioneer new Internet content as the full-time design director of Poptropica, which he helped set up in 2007. The website uses educational games to create a love for reading among children.

An author’s dream

In the Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Wrecking Ball, the Heffleys embark on major home improvements thanks to a surprise windfall. Kinney, who recently opened a bookstore in Massachusetts, draws from his own experience to regale us with a humorous tale of a family tackling renovations and all the problems that come with it from rotten wood and toxic mould to sinister creatures. As a child, Kinney spent a lot of time in bookshops. That’s why they hold a special place in his heart. When the local bookshop in his hometown went out of business, Kinney felt a sense of irreparable loss. So now years later, after establishing himself as a successful author, he decided to open a bookshop in his adopted hometown of Plainville, Massachusetts. He called it ‘An Unlikely Story’.

 

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Age is just a number and no one can prove it better than John Bannister Goodenough. Chances are that most of us never heard of this 97-year-old scientist before he became the oldest Nobel laureate, but his invention has became an irreplaceable part of our lives.

Goodenough, a professor at the University of Texas, came up with lithium cobalt oxide, a key material that led to doubling the potential of the lithium-ion battery, widely used in mobile phones, laptops and electric cars.

Early life

Growing up in Connecticut, near Yale University, where his father was a professor of the History of Religion, Goodenough learned to enjoy the quiet countryside and nature. Exploring the neighbourhood on his childhood catching butterflies and trapping rodents-especially woodchucks, a species of large squirrels.

Along with his siblings, Goodenough attended a boarding school in Massachusetts. The future Nobel laureate had a hard time mastering reading and writing; eventually he earned a place at the respected Yale University. After trying out a smorgasbord of courses including liberal arts, he turned his focus on mathematics.

The college fee was $900 per annum and Goodenough’s father could contribute a mere $35. So Goodenough started tutoring students from wealthy homes to be able to pay the rest of the fee.

Adventures in meteorology

Halfway through his education,. Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, a U.S. Navy base near Hawaii. Goodenough volunteered to join the Army as a meteorologists on the advice of his maths professor. Stationed in the Azores archipelago off the coast of Portugal, he helped predict the best time to move troops and planes.

While in the Army, Goodenough took a liking to Physics. So after the war ended, he pursued his further education in his subject. Since he was a returning officer, the Army supported his higher studies, and Goodenough joined the University of Chicago, which was doing pioneering work in the field.

The Physics department at the university was headed by none other than the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi, who created the world’s first nuclear reactor. A tough taskmaster, Fermi set the bar high for his students with a qualifying exam of 32 hours, stretched over eight hours a day for four days. The exam was so tough that Goodenough could get through only on his second attempt.

Battery-powered

Goodenough was offered a position at MIT’s Lincoln Lab, which was a research centre for the U.S. Department of Defense. He developed technology for national security applications. After decades of work on electric and magnetic properties of solids, he moved to another prestigious academic institution, the University of Oxford in England, as the head of the inorganic chemistry lab.

The next few years would become the most defining of his career. Goodenough immersed himself in battery research and came up with lithium cobalt oxide, a material that could be sustainably and safely used in lithium-ion batteries. Stanley Whittingham, one of the three awardees of the 2019 Nobel Chemistry Prize, had developed the first-ever functional lithium battery in the 1970s, but it ran the risk of exploding. The discoveries of Goodenough and Akira Yoshino, who was the part of the trio to share the Nobel, helped in making the battery safer and viable for use.

While the lithium-ion batteries became a commercial success, Goodenough did not make any money out of it. He did not patent the battery technology and signed over the royalty rights to the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, a U.K. government lab near Oxford. After being tipped for the Nobel Prize for many years, Goodenough finally received the honour on October 9, 2019. When the prize was announced, he was in London to receive the prestigious Copley medal at the Royal Society of London. He slept through the announcement of the Nobel and learned of his win from a fellow scientist.

97 and going strong

Goodenough, who is now just three years shy of 100, goes to the office, his lab, every day. He is vehemently opposed to retirement and never wishes to hang up his boots. Well, that’s Goodenough for us!

 

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The Bhabha of India’s nuclear plans

Whether it is used for defence or development, there’s no denying the importance of nuclear energy. Though India is not part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the country has made significant strides in nuclear science – it is now equipped with 22 nuclear reactors in seven power plants. And it is all thanks to the efforts of people like Dr. Homi J. Bhabha, who is known as the father of India’ s nuclear programme.

Early life

Bhabha was born in Mumbai on October 30, 1909. A close relative of Dorabji Tata, a key figure in the development of the Tata Group. Bhabha’s family persuaded him to pursue mechanical engineering and join the Tata Iron and Steel Company in Jamshedpur. But Bhabha discovered his true calling was physics.

He conveyed his change of heart in an insightful letter to his family, which reflects his passion for the subject. ‘The business or job of engineer is not the thing for me. It is totally foreign to my nature and radically opposed to my temperament and opinions. Physics is my line. I shall do great things here,” he wrote.

He studied in Cambridge, where he was internationally recognized for his work with cosmic rays. Bhabha was working in the famed Cavendish Laboratory where many discoveries of the time were taking place.

World War II

Bhabha returned to India for a short vacation, where World War II broke out. Instead of going back to England, he decided to stay on in India. He joined the Noble Laureate C.V. Raman’s laboratory at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore.

Bhabha strongly believed that India had to develop its nuclear capabilities so as to emerge as a power to reckon with. He said the country had to develop an atom bomb if it needed to defend itself. He convinced India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to start a nuclear programme and became the founding chairperson of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1948.

Powering development

Bhabha formulated India’s three-stage nuclear power programme in 1954, which is even followed today, to secure the country’s long-term energy independence. The programme was developed around India’s limited uranium and thorium reserves found in the coastal regions of South India.

Bhabha was appointed the President of the United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1955. He served as the member of the Indian Cabinet’s Scientific Advisory Committee.

Promoting nuclear research

Besides strengthening India’s nuclear programme, Bhabha also helped promote research in fundamental sciences and mathematics. Along with JRD Tata, Bhabha established the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) on the campus of IISc. It was later shifted to Mumbai, and gained international recognition in the fields of cosmic ray physics, theoretical physics and mathematics. Bhabha built a new laboratory dedicated to technology development for the atomic energy programme. It was called Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay, in 1954, and later renamed Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) after his demise.

Death and legacy

Both TIFR and BARC served as the cornerstones of India’s development of nuclear weapons, which Bhabha supervised as a director. Following rising tensions after the Sino-India war, Bhabha boasted of India’s nuclear capabilities in a famous speech on All India Radio in 1965. He said if he had the green signal, India could make a nuclear bomb in 18 months. Three months later, on January 24, 1996, he died in a plane crash when Air India Flight 101 flew into Mont Blanc in France. He was on his way to Vienna to attend a meeting of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency. While conspiracy theories about Bhabha’s death still abound, India on this day lost one of its finest nuclear scientists at the prime of his career.

Brush strokes

Not just science, Bhabha was equally fond of music and art. His superb drawing skills won him many awards at the annual exhibitions of the Bombay Art Society. Even today, his paintings along with other priceless collections of art are on display at the TIFR and BARC campuses, making them unique among scientific institutions in the world.

 

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