Obituary: Pál Kozma (1920-2004)

2004 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-112
Author(s):  
Z. Csoma
Keyword(s):  
Academic Career ◽  
Mineral Metabolism ◽  
High Standard ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Chief Editor ◽  
State Prize ◽  
Editorial Committee ◽  
Leaf Analysis ◽  
Table Grapes ◽  
The University

Pál Kozma, a scientist famous throughout Europe for his work on vines, was born into a poor peasant family in the small village of Gyulaháza in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County in Eastern Hungary on 11 July 1920. Despite his thirst for knowledge, he was obliged to interrupt his studies on several occasions due to the poverty of his family, and it was not until 1947 that he finally graduated from the University of Agriculture with a first class honours degree in agriculture, specialising in horticulture and vine-growing. The following year he obtained his teaching diploma, again with first-class honours. In 1947 he started work as an assistant inspector of viticulture in Tarcal, later moving to the Technical College for Horticulture and Viticulture in Miklóstelep, where he was employed as a teacher and viticulture inspector. From 1949 onwards he worked in the Department of Viticulture at the Faculty of Horticulture and Viticulture of the University of Agricultural Sciences, filling the post of Head of Department from 1960 until he retired in 1990. From 1962-1965 he was Vice-Rector of the University, followed by six years as Rector from 1965-1971. The basic and applied research he carried out from 1948 onwards gave a new direction to viticulture. His field of research included the flowering biology of the vine (flower morphology, histology, divergence and evolution of flower types, special types of fertilisation and grape formation in various flower types, light and electron microscope studies on morphological traits), vine breeding through selection and crossing (intra- and interspecific hybrids of white and red wine grapes and table grape varieties), leaf analysis for the study of the organic and mineral metabolism of vines and the diagnosis of optimum nutrient supplies, transpiration, the physiological effects of cultivation and pruning methods, the physiology of vine branches, improved technologies for the cultivation of table grapes, and the history of viticulture. In addition to the success he achieved in scientific research, he was also an excellent teacher. His students left the university with a high standard of knowledge and many of them distinguished themselves in later life. In recognition of his achievements he was given many awards, including the State Prize in 1975 and the Order of the Hungarian Republic in 1990. He received a prize from the publishers for his books entitled "Table Grapes" in 1962 and "Vines and Their Cultivation I-II" in 1994. He also received a number of international awards, including the OIV Prize (1964, 1994), the Humboldt Memorial Plaque (1968) and the Hegel Medal, Berlin (1970). He was a member of the Editorial Committee of Acta Agronomica Hungarica from 1967 to 1994 and Chief Editor from 1995 to 2000. Those who were privileged to know Pál Kozma found him to be a good-humoured and extremely well-informed man, with an enormous thirst for new knowledge and the determination which had stood him in good stead in his rise from the depths of poverty to the heights of an academic career. He was not only highly intelligent, but also extremely hard-working, never allowing difficulties to hinder him in his quest for knowledge. He will be sadly missed, but his influence will remain with us in his books and in the work of the experts he trained so well.

scholarly journals Vernon Herbert Blackman, 1872-1967

1968 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 37-60 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
High Standard ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
The University ◽  
Freedom Of Action ◽  
Plant Behaviour

V. H. Blackman’s academic career spanned an era during which botany became an experimental subject and the interpretation of plant behaviour in terms of contemporary chemistry, physics and mathematics was an exciting new prospect. In Britain during the latter part of the nineteenth century, as he himself remarked, classification was pursued with an enthusiasm which almost excluded other aspects of botany; a circumstance attributed to the expansion of Empire which gave access to many new floras. Blackman belonged to the generations of men whose schooling was entirely in the classical tradition but who yet became professors of science subjects. In the nineteenth century such men expected to teach and discuss every aspect of their chosen discipline and prosecution of research was not an obligation for the teacher; the incentive was curiosity and the reward intellectual. Vocational opportunities were limited to the small university community, the schools and the herbaria of the state institutions. The men who accepted these posts were usually characterized by a strict sense of duty, a high standard of integrity, and a respect for learning. In the university they had almost complete freedom of action and time to think. Blackman was a fastidious and somewhat shy man who maintained the exacting standards of such scholars. He was always immaculate in appearance, unfailingly courteous and never apparently hurried. He trusted his staff and students absolutely and in an effortless and perhaps unconscious manner exercised a remarkable and benign authority which served to impress on those who worked with him, to their lasting benefit, the value of his tenets. Vernon Herbert Blackman was born on 8 January 1872 at a house in York Road, Lambeth, near Waterloo Station. His father, Frederick Blackman, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., practised medicine in the area which included slum streets into which his sisters were not allowed.

Thomas Bertram Lonsdale Webster 1905–1974

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Handley
Keyword(s):  
Academic Career ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Honorary Doctor ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
The University ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

Tom Webster grew up in London and lived there for twenty years in middle and later life, when he was Professor of Greek in the University at University College, the scene of much of his most fruitful work. For seventeen years before that, he was Hulme Professor of Greek at Manchester, taking up his appointment at the age of twenty-six, as the University recalled with pride and affection when it made him, in 1965, an honorary Doctor of Letters. He began his academic career with eight years (mainly) at Oxford, as an undergraduate and then a young don at Christ Church, with a fruitful interlude at Leipzig; he ended it with six years at Stanford, as Professor of Classics and then Emeritus. At and after the end of the First World War he was a schoolboy at Charterhouse; during the Second World War he served as an officer in Military Intelligence.

The Pransky interview: Dr Yoky Matsuoka, Vice President Technology, Nest Labs

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 481-486
Author(s):  
Joanne Pransky
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Industrial Robot ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Smoke Detector ◽  
Foundation Engineering ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The University

Purpose – This article is a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned entrepreneur regarding the evolution, commercialization and challenges of bringing a technological invention to market. Design/methodology/approach – The interviewee is Dr Yoky Matsuoka, the Vice President of Nest Labs. Matsuoka describes her career journey that led her from a semi-professional tennis player who wanted to build a robot tennis buddy, to a pioneer of neurobotics who then applied her multidisciplinary research in academia to the development of a mass-produced intelligent home automation device. Findings – Dr Matsuoka received a BS degree from the University of California, Berkeley and an MS and PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She was also a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and in Mechanical Engineering at Harvard University. Dr Matsuoka was formerly the Torode Family Endowed Career Development Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington (UW), Director of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering and Ana Loomis McCandless Professor of Robotics and Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2010, she joined Google X as one of its three founding members. She then joined Nest as VP of Technology. Originality/value – Dr Matsuoka built advanced robotic prosthetic devices and designed complementary rehabilitation strategies that enhanced the mobility of people with manipulation disabilities. Her novel work has made significant scientific and engineering contributions in the combined fields of mechanical engineering, neuroscience, bioengineering, robotics and computer science. Dr Matsuoka was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in which she used the Genius Award money to establish a nonprofit corporation, YokyWorks, to continue developing engineering solutions for humans with physical disabilities. Other awards include the Emerging Inventor of the Year, UW Medicine; IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award; Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers; and numerous others. She leads the development of the learning and control technology for the Nest smoke detector and Thermostat, which has saved the USA hundreds of billions of dollars in energy expenses. Nest was sold to Google in 2013 for a record $3.2 billion dollars in cash.

On Being a Punk and a Scholar: A Reflexive Account of Researching a Punk Scene in Russia

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 135-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Gololobov
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Social World ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Research Paradigms ◽  
Ethnographic Studies ◽  
Youth Subcultures ◽  
The University

Ethnographic studies of youth subcultures, scenes and urban tribes often rely on insiders’ accounts, where researchers investigate a social environment of which they are presently or formerly members. This approach raises important questions about the positionality of the researcher, and the reflexivity, epistemology and ethics of an ethnographic investigation, as different roles and engagement with the field, as well as the very identity of the ‘field’ itself, no longer fit into the methodological framework of traditional ethnography. This article explores the difficulties that arise during ethnographic research on one's own social world. I was actively involved in the Russian punk scene before pursuing my academic career in England, and in the framework of a research project on post-socialist punk at the University of Warwick, I went back to study this milieu as a ‘field’ in two different sites in 2009 and in 2010. The article shows the complexity of researching one's own subculture and demonstrates that active discentring of the ‘knowing authority’ in studying one's own ‘tribe’ necessarily involves a transformation of its main research paradigms, where epistemological and ethical issues appear to be rearranged in a new way which radically affects the methodological foundations of such an investigation.

William Rutherford Sanders (1828–1881), anatomist, physician, linguist and museum conservator

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-123
Author(s):  
Dugald Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Neurological Disorders ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Structure And Function ◽  
Royal Infirmary ◽  
Abdominal Abscess ◽  
General Pathology ◽  
Consultant Physician ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
And Function ◽  
The University

William Rutherford Sanders spent a childhood and early student days divided between Edinburgh and Montpelier, France before graduating in Medicine in Edinburgh. An early interest in the spleen was encouraged by a two-year period in Europe where he became familiar with the work of Helmholtz, Bernard and Henle. Returning to Edinburgh, his growing experience led to the position of assistant in the Infirmary pathology department. He conducted classes in the University of Edinburgh and on behalf of the Royal Colleges became familiar with the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons where he was chosen as Conservator in 1853. Criticised by 20th century historians for concentrating on verbal teaching rather than on the conservation of the museum, Sanders became a consultant physician to the Royal Infirmary in 1861 and in 1869 Professor of General Pathology. Throughout these years, Sanders gave as much time as possible to the study of the structure and function of the spleen and to neurological disorders such as hemiplegia. His later life was interrupted by a series of illnesses commencing with an abdominal abscess. A prolonged convalescence allowed the resumption of work but deranged vision and hemiplegia preceded his death on 18 February 1881.

Henry Drysdale Dakin 1880-1952

1952 ◽  
Vol 8 (21) ◽  
pp. 128-148 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Working Hours ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Later Life ◽  
School Life ◽  
Iron And Steel ◽  
The North ◽  
Modern School ◽  
Sugar Refinery ◽  
The Many ◽  
The University

Henry Drysdale Dakin was born at 60 Fitzjohn’s Avenue, Hampstead, London, on 12 March 1880. He was the youngest of a family of eight, there being five brothers and three sisters of whom one brother and two sisters now survive. His father, Thomas Burns Dakin, had previously owned a sugar refinery in London, and when this came to an end he acquired an iron and steel business in Leeds, and the whole family removed to Yorkshire. After a brief spell at Merchant Taylors’ School, H. D. Dakin entered Leeds Modern School in 1893 and remained there for the rest of his school life. Five of the old boys of this school became University professors, and of these may be mentioned H. H. Turner, Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, and H. M. Dawson, who was the first Professor of Physical Chemistry at Leeds, both of whom were elected to the Fellowship of this Society, and the latter, who was a few years senior to Dakin at school, became his personal friend at the University. Some years ago this school, which was formerly in the centre of Leeds, moved to the north of the city and was organized as four Houses, one of which is known as ‘Dakin House’; and thus Dakin’s memory is kept green in the school, and his story and prestige have become a part of the school’s history. Assistant to analyst After leaving school Dakin was apprenticed to the Leeds City Analyst, Mr T. Fairley. He remained in Fairley’s laboratory for four years and in later life he ascribed a great importance to the experience which he gained there. An analyst in this position held many public appointments which brought a great variety of work to the laboratory. Among other offices Fairley held that of official gas referee, and this involved a good deal of analytical work—such as tests for sulphur content—involving attendance at gas works, and this work usually fell to the lot of the senior apprentice of the time. Accordingly, much of Dakin’s early life was spent in the precincts of gas works. In spite of long working hours, however, he found time to become an angler. One of his holidays in later years was spent fishing in Ireland with his friend, Harold Dudley. Dakin was inclined to trace a connexion between this period in Fairley’s laboratory and his later interest in biochemistry, because of the experience he gained from the many analyses of water, foods and fertilizers which came his way, as well as from the examinations made for a number of poisons. He admitted, indeed, that he had revelled in books on medical jurisprudence; but he claimed that all this had helped him to realize that chemistry had a biological side.

scholarly journals Constructing the self in later life: The life story of Selaelo Thias Kgatla (1949–)

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Landman
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Church Leadership ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Life Review ◽  
The Self ◽  
Interview Schedule ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
University Of Pretoria ◽  
The University

On 15 April 2014 the author conducted an interview with Selaelo Thias Kgatla (then 64) by means of a prearranged interview schedule to revaluate a life review. Kgatla’s years of academic and ecclesiastical involvement leading to his ordination as the minister of the Polokwane Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa at the age of 47 were considered. However, the focus was on the last 18 years before his retirement, which was to happen in December 2015. This period commenced with his ordination in 1997 and covered his involvement in church leadership as Assessor and later Moderator of the Northern Synod (since 1999) and as Moderator of the General Synod (since 2005), as well as his appointments as professor at the University of Limpopo in 1997 and at the University of Pretoria in 2010.In freezing this interview into the academic account given here, oral history and methodological sensitivities are considered. The interviewee’s ownership of his life review is acknowledged; his construction of the self as a coherent story of church leadership is respected; and the characteristics of remembering in later life are pointed out reverentially.The life review with Kgatla was expanded with interviews from colleagues and congregants of his choice who confirmed the construction of his life story as one of relationship and resistance. Finally, the author gives a concluding overview of aims achieved in the article in terms of oral methodology and the contents of a life review in which the interviewee constructed his life as a church leader on the interface between resistance and relationship.

scholarly journals Absolventinnenbefragung muv

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Wroblewski ◽  
◽  
Victoria Englmaier
Keyword(s):  
Academic Career ◽  
Science System ◽  
University Of Vienna ◽  
Leaky Pipeline ◽  
The University ◽  
Further Development

Despite some successes, however, there are still barriers for women at universities, which are reflected in the so-called "leaky pipeline", i.e. a decreasing proportion of women the higher their position in the science system. The University of Vienna is also characterised by a pronounced leaky pipeline. The mentoring programme of the University of Vienna - muv - was launched to counteract this development and to support women in entering an academic career. The programme has been continuously evaluated and further developed. This report continues this tradition and provides input for a discussion on the further development of the programme.

scholarly journals Maks Samec and his adapting to academic standards after World War II

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Željko Oset
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Research Policy ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Academic Standards ◽  
World War ◽  
Administrative Reforms ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The University ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Second Chance

The paper at hand deals with the academic career of Maks Samec (1881-1964) after World War II. Samec lost his habilitation upon the »purge« at the University of Ljubljana in August of 1945, but was offered a second chance as an irreplaceable scientist – he became the founder of the newly established Institute of Chemistry at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA). He has earned numerous recognitions and state decorations for his work. At the institute, he strived to apply his academic standards, but was not entirely successful, which was also a consequence of administrative reforms and changes to research policy in the 1950s.

scholarly journals Menn, maskuliniteter og faghierarkier

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-74
Author(s):  
Lotta Snickare ◽  
Øystein Gullvåg Holter ◽  
Knut Liestøl
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Masculine Norms ◽  
Informal Communities ◽  
University Of Oslo ◽  
The University

Abstract: Men, Masculinities and Professional Hierarchies Research on gender equality in academia only addresses men’s experiences to a limited extent, and the significance of masculine norms is also poorly elucidated. In this chapter, we present our results on the effects of male dominance in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Oslo. We first discuss whether it is an advantage to be a man at the faculty. The simple answer, based on our data, is “yes”. However, although we could not identify a specific “male” pattern of problems, a significant proportion of men experience problems – some feel “as affected as women” and oppose specific measures for women. There are also indications of informal communities of men, a poorly-considered majority position, the notion that an academic career is incompatible with family and caregiving – not just for women, but for men too – and tendencies toward an unyielding connection between men, masculinity and professional hierarchies.

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