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In the spring of my junior year in 1957 on spring break in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I met Carol Ann Leopold, my wife to be. She and her family were from St. Louis. We were at DePauw together where she was an English and Spanish major planning to become a teacher. Although she dated many of my fraternity brothers, I had not met her previously. After spring break we began to date and I gave her my fraternity pin a month later. Our dates were primarily "study dates" at the library (the only thing I could afford) and after mostly A's in my senior year I was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. At Christmas we were engaged and married within several weeks of graduation from DePauw on June 21, 1958.
During my senior year of college I began to apply to medical schools and planned to go to Washington University Medical School in St. Louis. However, my faculty advisor Forst Fuller, a professor in the biology department and also my mentor during an elective research project to understand how fish managed calcium metabolism without parathyroid glands, suggested that I consider a new MD-PhD program at Western Reserve University. A fraternity brother, Bill Sutherland, also advised that I consider this new combined degree program that his father Earl Sutherland, Jr initiated in Cleveland in 1957. The program paid full tuition for both degrees and provided a modest stipend of $2000 per year. I quickly applied and was interviewed on a Saturday morning in February of 1958 by the entire Pharmacology Department. Needless to say, I was awed by the attention they gave me and decided immediately to accept their offer. Carol, my fianc閑, was somewhat concerned that I was now planning seven more years of education but she has always been understanding and supportive of my training, career path and numerous moves around the country. The game plan was to have Carol teach high school English as I went through the combined degree program. These plans abruptly changed within three months when Carol became pregnant. After teaching for only one semester, she was asked to resign when the pregnancy "began to show". Subsequently, she was a substitute teacher, part time secretary and hospital clinic coordinator as we progressed with our family; four girls, including a set of identical twins before I finished medical school and graduate school in 1965. Number five, the first boy, was born as I finished my residency in 1967. Fortunately, we didn't stop as planned after number four was born.
As I entered the new combined degree program my mentors were Earl Sutherland, Jr. the chairman of the Pharmacology Department and Theodore Rall a new young assistant professor and collaborator of Sutherland's. The year before I arrived they had discovered cyclic AMP as a "second messenger" of epinephrine - and glucagon-mediated effects on glycogenolysis in liver preparations. My assignment was to show that the catecholamine effects on cyclic AMP formation were due to effects through the beta adrenergic receptor. Alquist had previously reported that adrenergic effects could be classified as alpha or beta depending on the relative potency of several catecholamines. The new and only beta adrenergic receptor antagonist, dichloroisoproterenol, had also been just described and was to become a useful antagonist in our work. We found that catecholamine effects on adenylyl cyclase activation in both heart and liver preparations were, indeed, due to beta adrenergic effects as shown by the relative potencies of l-isoproterenol, l-epinephrine and l-norepinephrine with inhibition by dichloroisoproterenol and failure of alpha blockers and agonists to have effects. I also found that acetylcholine and other cholinergic agents inhibited adenylyl cyclase preparations, the first description of hormones, inhibiting cyclic AMP formation. I then became interested in agents that could block the effects of cyclic AMP on phosphorylase kinase and phosphorylase activation. This required some novel assays and an acquaintance with numerous cyclic AMP analogues and other nucleotides including cyclic GMP, cyclic IMP, cyclic CMP, etc. Many of these nucleotides and their analogues were synthesized by Theo Pasternak, a professor from Geneva who was on sabbatical collaborating with Sutherland and Rall. This work subsequently influenced my desire to work with cyclic GMP as described in my Nobel lecture. Later I again played organic chemist to make some nucleotides.
I was first in my class every year in medical school and graduate school. This was a wonderful and exciting time in my life working with these mentors, watching a new area of biology develop and actively participating in the work. I loved research as Earl Sutherland was quite a visionary who was able to bring together multiple disciplines and areas to apply to his work. Ted Rall taught how to do those fool proof "Sunday experiments" as we came to call them. It was on Sundays that I could design and conduct those large and complex experiments with all of Ted's required controls such that the data were "publishable". We and others in the department were able to determine that multiple hormones including catecholamines, cholinergics, ACTH, vasopressin, etc. could increase or decrease adenylyl cyclase activity and cyclic AMP formation. Prior to this the view of Sutherland was that receptors and adenylyl cyclase were a single macromolecule or a tightly associated complex in cell membranes. My work as a student and the work of others questioned this hypothesis and suggested that different receptors for this growing list of hormones must be coupled to adenylyl cyclase in yet to be determined complex ways (see Gilman's and Rodbell's Nobel lecture of 1994 for a greater description of their subsequent work).
I also enjoyed medical school and found myself learning everything presented before me. I knew that I couldn't determine what was to be true and important and many of our faculty acknowledged this as well. Since anything could be important, I began to learn everything taught. The new experimental integrated organ-system approach to medical education at Western Reserve permitted me to assimilate and integrate information more readily. I also thoroughly enjoyed my clinical rotations in medicine, surgery, OB-GYN, pediatrics, orthopedics, neurology, etc. There were few clinical rotations that I didn't think about as a possible discipline for my future academic career. I subsequently learned that I was at the top of the medical school and graduate school class each year and received prizes at graduation for both clinical medicine and research. I was in my element and loved it. There was no doubt in my mind about an academic career in medicine, research and teaching.
In order to supplement my stipend with so many children, I moonlighted at the Cleveland Clinic working one or two nights per week on the OB-GYN service to follow mothers with pelvic exams as they progressed through labor, assisted in deliveries and Caesarian sections and then scrubbed tables and floors after each delivery. All of this for $20.00 per night for 12 hours of work from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. one or two nights per week for four years. On slow evenings I was able to study, analyze lab data and write research protocols. Some nights required that I work all night and then attend a full day of classes the next day. I continued this during my clinical clerkships requiring my absence from my family as often as 4 to 5 nights per week. However, I tried to have dinner with my family as often as my schedule permitted. My wife and children were very understanding. They grew up as wonderful children and adults in spite of my absence, obviously due to a devoted wife and mother. My current fetish is my 5 grandchildren who I try to spend as much time with as possible, undoubtedly due to my guilt as an absent father. I did manage to spend several weeks each summer with my family as we took them camping all over the U.S. to various scientific meetings. There are only a few states where we have not camped together as a family and they all became proficient swimmers at a young age.
[ Last edited by lizz_7777 at 22-11-2008 10:03 PM ] |
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I decided to go to Massachusetts General Hospital for my internship and residency in medicine (1965-67). What a wonderful experience this was with some of the worlds' leading scientists, teachers and clinicians. Our group of 14 housestaff included exciting bright minds such as Tom Smith, Tony Gotto, Jim Willerson, Ed Scolnik and others that had considerable influence on me. My attendings and chief residents included Alex Leaf, Dan Federman, Roman DeSanctis, Frank Austen, Sam Thier, Ken Shine and others. As a resident Joe Goldstein and Mike Brown were two of our interns. I couldn't have asked for a greater introduction to medicine in spite of being on call every other night and weekend. I did, however, miss the laboratory and each spring I found myself in the library reading many of the abstracts of the Federation meeting (currently FASEB meeting) to see what I was missing in "second messengers and hormone signaling". I generated a notebook that contained numerous "obvious experiments" to be done. When I subsequently went to NIH as a clinical associate in the Heart Institute I was able to do many of the planned experiments in Martha Vaughan's laboratory. She too was an excellent mentor with a style different from either Sutherland or Rall. She gave me considerable freedom to pursue a number of areas related to cyclic AMP and hormonal regulation. Her husband, the late Jack Orloff, while superficially a gruff and tough man, was a sensitive person and talented scientist. I was indeed fortunate that they and many others at NIH influenced my thinking and career planning. I soon learned that I had numerous role models and attempted to extract the best features of each as I planned my career path and future.
I remained at NIH for more than three years (1967-70) when the University of Virginia called to recruit me to develop a new Clinical Pharmacology Division in the Department of Medicine with an appointment as an Associate Professor in medicine and pharmacology. I couldn't resist the offer from Ed Hook, the new chairman of medicine and Joe Larner, the new chairman of pharmacology. Other faculty such as Tom Hunter, the Vice President of Medical Affairs, Ken Crispell the Dean, Bob Berne, Bob Haynes and others influenced my decision to leave NIH. I had known Larner, Berne and Haynes since they were faculty at Western Reserve when I was a student. Charlottesville was also an appealing place to raise my five children. Some colleagues around the country, particularly David Kipnis, another one of my role models, questioned me about going to Charlottesville. Just the previous year I called him to apply for a fellowship in endocrinology at Washington University. I was then 33 years old with 5 children and his advice was appropriate. He said, "Fred, time for you to get a job and support your family", and I took his advice to heart.
I joined the faculty at the University of Virginia, September 1, 1970 and nervously thought about how I could launch my own independent research career. I decided to work with cyclic GMP as it was beginning to emerge as a possible new "second messenger" to mediate hormone effects. This is detailed in my Nobel lecture. I remained at the University of Virginia from 1970 to 1981 where I was promoted as one of the youngest professors in 1975; I was also asked to become the Director of their Clinical Research Center in 1971 and the Director of Clinical Pharmacology in 1973. I built a research program with both clinical and basic studies and started to recruit many exciting students and fellows to work with me. Of the 82 fellows and students I have trained and collaborated with to date twenty are professors, chairmen, research directors and division chiefs around the world. I view them as offspring and keep in contact with most of them in my travels. There is no question that one of my greatest accomplishments is to have participated in the training of such successful scientists in my own laboratory and also influenced the careers of many talented medical students, graduate students and housestaff.
After looking at many university positions around the country as a chair of medicine or pharmacology and industrial positions, I decided to go to Stanford in July 1981 as Chief of Medicine of the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital, a Stanford affiliated hospital. I was a professor of medicine and pharmacology and the associate chairman of medicine. While it was difficult to leave many friends and colleagues at the University of Virginia where we conducted the first experiments with the biological effects of nitric oxide, I couldn't turn down this exciting opportunity at Stanford. Ken Melmon was chairman of medicine and during our first three years together we recruited about 30 new young faculty. Inspite of the large administrative and clinical teaching demands, I continued to supervise a large and productive laboratory with about 15 students, fellows and staff. Trainees continued to come to our laboratory from all over the world. Some of my students and fellows subsequently went to medical school and after completing residencies have become very productive physician scientists at a number of institutions.
After a stint as Acting Chairman of Medicine at Stanford (1986-88), I left to become a Vice President at Abbott Laboratories as I was becoming concerned about managed health care on the horizon and its possible effects on patient care, research and education. After considering several industrial positions, I chose Abbott primarily because of its president Jack Schuler, a sales and marketing person with an MBA from Stanford who also had considerable vision. We worked well together as he taught me many business principles and I taught him about drug discovery and development. I enjoyed the access to all of Abbott's resources, scientific staff, instrumentation and what initially seemed like an unlimited research budget. I eventually learned that one can never have enough resources when one looks for novel therapies of major diseases; it's an expensive undertaking. Nevertheless, in four years of directing their pharmaceutical discovery and development programs we were able to discover many novel drug targets and we brought forward about 24 new compounds for clinical trials for various diseases. I continued to have a very productive lab with two NIH grants, some outside funding for fellows and about 20 scientists working with me on nitric oxide and cyclic GMP. The administrative demands and travel were considerable since I was a corporate officer, vice president and also overseeing many industrial collaborations around the world. When I left Abbott I was supervising about 1500 scientists and staff and probably earned the equivalent of an MBA from the experience on the job plus periodic management courses required by the company. Before my arrival at Abbott the company had no postdoctoral fellows or extramural funding. When I left we had about $3.5 mill. per year of extramural grant support and about 35 fellows in pharmaceutical research. Unfortunately, Abbott reorganized its senior management and my business role models were asked to leave. As Abbott's senior scientist I found myself wedged between upper management, the marketing staff and the scientists and constantly was defending my decisions about the research programs. There were always considerable marketing pressures on me that in my opinion were often the wrong decisions to develop novel therapeutics for diseases without adequate therapy.
I left Abbott in 1993 to be a founder, President and CEO of a new biotech company, Molecular Geriatrics Corporation. The plan was to create another intensive research-based biotech company. Unfortunately, my investment banker never raised the amounts of money promised and he eventually lost a major personal fortune with his leveraging tactics. I found myself skipping around the world to find investors and partners to keep the company afloat and pay the bills. After a partnership with a major pharmaceutical company and some more financing as a private company, I left to rejoin academics, hopefully much wiser.
After considering a number of Vice President, Dean positions and Chairmanships, I realized that such positions would probably totally remove me from the laboratory, fellows and students, things I could not give up. In April 1997, I became the University of Texas-Houston's first chairman of a newly combined basic science department, Integrative Biology, Pharmacology and Physiology. I am also creating a new Division of Clinical Pharmacology jointly between our department and medicine. I plan to continue an active basic and clinical research program and will participate in clinical medicine and teaching again. Thus, I have come full circle. I am back in my academic element again and I love it. I also expect to continue some business adventures and exercise my entrepreneurial skills, areas that I also enjoy and view as lucrative hobbies. The freedom and intellectual environment of academic medicine and bright young students and fellows are exciting and a daily joy for me. After all, I hope to tell Ron Delismon some day "Two Nobels to zero".
[ Last edited by lizz_7777 at 22-11-2008 10:06 PM ] |
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Ahmed Zewail
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1999
AutobiographyOn the banks of the Nile, the Rosetta branch, I lived an enjoyable childhood in the City of Disuq, which is the home of the famous mosque, Sidi Ibrahim. I was born (February 26, 1946) in nearby Damanhur, the "City of Horus", only 60 km from Alexandria. In retrospect, it is remarkable that my childhood origins were flanked by two great places - Rosetta, the city where the famous Stone was discovered, and Alexandria, the home of ancient learning. The dawn of my memory begins with my days, at Disuq's preparatory school. I am the only son in a family of three sisters and two loving parents. My father was liked and respected by the city community - he was helpful, cheerful and very much enjoyed his life. He worked for the government and also had his own business. My mother, a good-natured, contented person, devoted all her life to her children and, in particular, to me. She was central to my "walks of life" with her kindness, total devotion and native intelligence. Although our immediate family is small, the Zewails are well known in Damanhur.
The family's dream was to see me receive a high degree abroad and to return to become a university professor - on the door to my study room, a sign was placed reading, "Dr. Ahmed," even though I was still far from becoming a doctor. My father did live to see that day, but a dear uncle did not. Uncle Rizk was special in my boyhood years and I learned much from him - an appreciation for critical analyses, an enjoyment of music, and of intermingling with the masses and intellectuals alike; he was respected for his wisdom, financially well-to-do, and self-educated. Culturally, my interests were focused - reading, music, some sports and playing backgammon. The great singer Um Kulthum (actually named Kawkab Elsharq - a superstar of the East) had a major influence on my appreciation of music. On the first Thursday of each month we listened to Um Kulthum's concert - "waslats" (three songs) - for more than three hours. During all of my study years in Egypt, the music of this unique figure gave me a special happiness, and her voice was often in the background while I was studying mathematics, chemistry... etc. After three decades I still have the same feeling and passion for her music. In America, the only music I have been able to appreciate on this level is classical, and some jazz. Reading was and still is my real joy.
As a boy it was clear that my inclinations were toward the physical sciences. Mathematics, mechanics, and chemistry were among the fields that gave me a special satisfaction. Social sciences were not as attractive because in those days much emphasis was placed on memorization of subjects, names and the like, and for reasons unknown (to me), my mind kept asking "how" and "why". This characteristic has persisted from the beginning of my life. In my teens, I recall feeling a thrill when I solved a difficult problem in mechanics, for instance, considering all of the tricky operational forces of a car going uphill or downhill. Even though chemistry required some memorization, I was intrigued by the "mathematics of chemistry". It provides laboratory phenomena which, as a boy, I wanted to reproduce and understand. In my bedroom I constructed a small apparatus, out of my mother's oil burner (for making Arabic coffee) and a few glass tubes, in order to see how wood is transformed into a burning gas and a liquid substance. I still remember this vividly, not only for the science, but also for the danger of burning down our house! It is not clear why I developed this attraction to science at such an early stage.
After finishing high school, I applied to universities. In Egypt, you send your application to a central Bureau (Maktab El Tansiq), and according to your grades, you are assigned a university, hopefully on your list of choice. In the sixties, Engineering, Medicine, Pharmacy, and Science were tops. I was admitted to Alexandria University and to the faculty of science. Here, luck played a crucial role because I had little to do with Maktab El Tansiq's decision, which gave me the career I still love most: science. At the time, I did not know the depth of this feeling, and, if accepted to another faculty, I probably would not have insisted on the faculty of science. But this passion for science became evident on the first day I went to the campus in Maharem Bek with my uncle - I had tears in my eyes as I felt the greatness of the university and the sacredness of its atmosphere. My grades throughout the next four years reflected this special passion. In the first year, I took four courses, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and geology, and my grades were either excellent or very good. Similarly, in the second year I scored very highly (excellent) in Chemistry and was chosen for a group of seven students (called "special chemistry"), an elite science group. I graduated with the highest honors - "Distinction with First Class Honor" - with above 90% in all areas of chemistry. With these scores, i was awarded, as a student, a stipend every month of approximately |
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My presence - as the Egyptian at Penn - was starting to be felt by the professors and students as my scores were high, and I also began a successful course of research. I owe much to my research advisor, Professor Robin Hochstrasser, who was, and still is, a committed scientist and educator. The diverse research problems I worked on, and the collaborations with many able scientists, were both enjoyable and profitable. My publication list was increasing, but just as importantly, I was learning new things literally every day - in chemistry, in physics and in other fields. The atmosphere at the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM) was most stimulating and I was enthusiastic about researching in areas that crossed the disciplines of physics and chemistry (sometimes too enthusiastic!). My courses were enjoyable too; I still recall the series 501, 502, 503 and the physics courses I took with the Nobel Laureate, Bob Schrieffer. I was working almost "day and night," and doing several projects at the same time: The Stark effect of simple molecules; the Zeeman effect of solids like NO2- and benzene; the optical detection of magnetic resonance (ODMR); double resonance techniques, etc. Now, thinking about it, I cannot imagine doing all of this again, but of course then I was "young and innocent".
The research for my Ph.D. and the requirements for a degree were essentially completed by 1973, when another war erupted in the Middle East. I had strong feelings about returning to Egypt to be a University Professor, even though at the beginning of my years in America my memories of the frustrating bureaucracy encountered at the time of my departure were still vivid. With time, things change, and I recollected all the wonderful years of my childhood and the opportunities Egypt had provided to me. Returning was important to me, but I also knew that Egypt would not be able to provide the scientific atmosphere I had enjoyed in the U.S. A few more years in America would give me and my family two opportunities: First, I could think about another area of research in a different place (while learning to be professorial!). Second, my salary would be higher than that of a graduate student, and we could then buy a big American car that would be so impressive for the new Professor at Alexandria University! I applied for five positions, three in the U.S., one in Germany and one in Holland, and all of them with world-renowned professors. I received five offers and decided on Berkeley.
Early in 1974 we went to Berkeley, excited by the new opportunities. Culturally, moving from Philadelphia to Berkeley was almost as much of a shock as the transition from Alexandria to Philadelphia - Berkeley was a new world! I saw Telegraph Avenue for the first time, and this was sufficient to indicate the difference. I also met many graduate students whose language and behavior I had never seen before, neither in Alexandria, nor in Philadelphia. I interacted well with essentially everybody, and in some cases I guided some graduate students. But I also learned from members of the group. The obstacles did not seem as high as they had when I came to the University of Pennsylvania because culturally and scientifically I was better equipped. Berkeley was a great place for science - the BIG science. In the laboratory, my aim was to utilize the expertise I had gained from my Ph.D. work on the spectroscopy of pairs of molecules, called dimers, and to measure their coherence with the new tools available at Berkeley. Professor Charles Harris was traveling to Holland for an extensive stay, but when he returned to Berkeley we enjoyed discussing science at late hours! His ideas were broad and numerous, and in some cases went beyond the scientific language I was familiar with. Nevertheless, my general direction was established. I immediately saw the importance of the concept of coherence. I decided to tackle the problem, and, in a rather short time, acquired a rigorous theoretical foundation which was new to me. I believe that this transition proved vital in subsequent years of my research.
I wrote two papers with Charles, one theoretical and the other experimental. They were published in Physical Review. These papers were followed by other work, and I extended the concept of coherence to multidimensional systems, publishing my first independently authored paper while at Berkeley. In collaboration with other graduate students, I also published papers on energy transfer in solids. I enjoyed my interactions with the students and professors, and at Berkeley's popular and well-attended physical chemistry seminars. Charles decided to offer me the IBM Fellowship that was only given to a few in the department. He strongly felt that I should get a job at one of the top universities in America, or at least have the experience of going to the interviews; I am grateful for his belief in me. I only applied to a few places and thought I had no chance at these top universities. During the process, I contacted Egypt, and I also considered the American University in Beirut (AUB). Although I visited some places, nothing was finalized, and I was preparing myself for the return. Meanwhile, I was busy and excited about the new research I was doing. Charles decided to build a picosecond laser, and two of us in the group were involved in this hard and "non-profitable" direction of research (!); I learned a great deal about the principles of lasers and their physics.
During this period, many of the top universities announced new positions, and Charles asked me to apply. I decided to send applications to nearly a dozen places and, at the end, after interviews and enjoyable visits, I was offered an Assistant Professorship at many, including Harvard, Caltech, Chicago, Rice, and Northwestern. My interview at Caltech had gone well, despite the experience of an exhausting two days, visiting each half hour with a different faculty member in chemistry and chemical engineering. The visit was exciting, surprising and memorable. The talks went well and I even received some undeserved praise for style. At one point, I was speaking about what is known as the FVH, picture of coherence, where F stands for Feynman, the famous Caltech physicist and Nobel Laureate. I went to the board to write the name and all of a sudden I was stuck on the spelling. Half way through, I turned to the audience and said, "you know how to spell Feynman". A big laugh erupted, and the audience thought I was joking - I wasn't! After receiving several offers, the time had come to make up my mind, but I had not yet heard from Caltech. I called the Head of the Search Committee, now a colleague of mine, and he was lukewarm, encouraging me to accept other offers. However, shortly after this, I was contacted by Caltech with a very attractive offer, asking me to visit with my family. We received the red carpet treatment, and that visit did cost Caltech! I never regretted the decision of accepting the Caltech offer.
My science family came from all over the world, and members were of varied backgrounds, cultures, and abilities. The diversity in this "small world" I worked in daily provided the most stimulating environment, with many challenges and much optimism. Over the years, my research group has had close to 150 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting associates. Many of them are now in leading academic, industrial and governmental positions. Working with such minds in a village of science has been the most rewarding experience - Caltech was the right place for me.
My biological children were all "made in America". I have two daughters, Maha, a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas, Austin, and Amani, a junior at Berkeley, both of whom I am very proud. I met Dema, my wife, by a surprising chance, a fairy tale. In 1988 it was announced that I was a winner of the King Faisal International Prize. In March of 1989, I went to receive the award from Saudi Arabia, and there I met Dema; her father was receiving the same prize in literature. We met in March, got engaged in July and married in September, all of the same year, 1989. Dema has her M.D. from Damascus University, and completed a Master's degree in Public Health at UCLA. We have two young sons, Nabeel and Hani, and both bring joy and excitement to our life. Dema is a wonderful mother, and is my friend and confidante.
The journey from Egypt to America has been full of surprises. As a Moeid, I was unaware of the Nobel Prize in the way I now see its impact in the West. We used to gather around the TV or read in the newspaper about the recognition of famous Egyptian scientists and writers by the President, and these moments gave me and my friends a real thrill - maybe one day we would be in this position ourselves for achievements in science or literature. Some decades later, when President Mubarak bestowed on me the Order of Merit, first class, and the Grand Collar of the Nile ("Kiladate El Niel"), the highest State honor, it brought these emotional boyhood days back to my memory. I never expected that my portrait, next to the pyramids, would be on a postage stamp or that the school I went to as a boy and the road to Rosetta would be named after me. Certainly, as a youngster in love with science, I had no dreams about the honor of the Nobel Prize.
[ Last edited by lizz_7777 at 22-11-2008 10:31 PM ] |
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Shirin Ebadi
The Nobel Peace Prize 2003
Autobiography
I was born in the city of Hamedan [northwestern Iran] in 1947. My family were academics and practising Muslims. At the time of my birth my father was the head of Hamedan's Registry Office. My father, Mohammad Ali Ebadi, one of the first lecturers in commercial law, had written several books. He passed away in 1993.
I spent my childhood in a family filled with kindness and affection. I have two sisters and a brother all of whom are highly educated. My mother dedicated all her time and devotion to our upbringing.
I came to Tehran with my family when I was a one year old and have since been a resident in the capital. I began my education at Firuzkuhi primary school and went on to Anoshiravn Dadgar and Reza Shah Kabir secondary schools for my higher education. I sat the Tehran University entrance exams and gained a place at the Faculty of Law in 1965. I received my law degree in three-and-a-half years, and immediately sat the entrance exams for the Department of Justice. After a six-month apprenticeship in adjudication, I began to serve officially as a judge in March 1969. While serving as a judge, I continued my education and obtained a doctorate with honours in private law from Tehran University in 1971.
I held a variety of positions in the Justice Department. In 1975, I became the President of Bench 24 of the [Tehran] City Court. I am the first woman in the history of Iranian justice to have served as a judge. Following the victory of the Islamic Revolution in February 1979, since the belief was that Islam forbids women to serve as judges, I and other female judges were dismissed from our posts and given clerical duties. They made me a clerk in the very court I once presided over. We all protested. As a result, they promoted all former female judges, including myself, to the position of "experts" in the Justice Department. I could not tolerate the situation any longer, and so put in a request for early retirement. My request was accepted. Since the Bar Association had remained closed for some time since the revolution and was being managed by the Judiciary, my application for practising law was turned down. I was, in effect, housebound for many years. Finally, in 1992 I succeeded in obtaining a lawyer's licence and set up my own practice.
I used my time of unemployment to write several books and had many articles published in Iranian journals. After receiving my lawyer's licence I accepted to defend many cases. Some were national cases. Among them, I represented the families of the serial murders victims (the family of Dariush and Parvaneh Foruhar) and Ezzat Ebrahiminejad, who were killed during the attack on the university dormitory. I also participated in some press-related cases. I took on a large number of social cases, too, including child abuse. Recently I agreed to represent the mother of Mrs Zahra Kazemi, a photojournalist killed in Iran.
I also teach at university. Each year, a number of students from outside Iran join my human rights training courses.
I am married. My husband is an electrical engineer. We have two daughters. One is 23 years old. She is studying for a doctorate in telecommunications at McGill University in Canada. The other is 20 years old and is in her third year at Tehran University where she reads law.
[ Last edited by lizz_7777 at 23-11-2008 01:32 AM ] |
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Mohamed El Baradei
The Nobel Peace Prize 2005
Biography
Dr. Mohamed El Baradei is the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an intergovernmental organization that is part of the United Nations system. He was appointed to the office effective 1 December 1997, and reappointed to a third term in September 2005.
From 1984, Dr. El Baradei was a senior staff member of the IAEA Secretariat, holding a number of high-level policy positions, including Agency's Legal Adviser and subsequently Assistant Director General for External Relations.
Dr. El Baradei was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1942, son of the late Mostafa El Baradei, a lawyer and former President of the Egyptian Bar Association. He gained a Bachelor's degree in Law in 1962 at the University of Cairo, and a Doctorate in International Law at the New York University School of Law in 1974.
He began his career in the Egyptian Diplomatic Service in 1964, serving on two occasions in the Permanent Missions of Egypt to the United Nations in New York and Geneva, in charge of political, legal and arms control issues. From 1974 to 1978 he was a special assistant to the Foreign Minister of Egypt. In 1980 he left the Diplomatic Service to join the United Nations and became a senior fellow in charge of the International Law Program at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. From 1981 to 1987 he was also an Adjunct Professor of International Law at the New York University School of Law.
During his career as diplomat, international civil servant and scholar, Dr. ElBaradei has become closely familiar with the work and processes of international organizations, particularly in the fields of international peace and security and international development. He has lectured widely in the fields of international law, international organizations, arms control and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and is the author of various articles and books on these subjects. He belongs to a number of professional associations, including the International Law Association and the American Society of International Law.
In October 2005, Dr. El Baradei and the IAEA were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for efforts "to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way." In addition, he has received multiple other awards for his work. These include the International Four Freedoms award from the Roosevelt Institute, the James Park Morton Interfaith Award, and the Golden Plate Award from the Academy of Achievement. Dr. ElBaradei is also the recipient of a number of honorary degrees and decorations, including a Doctorate of Laws from New York University and the Nile Collar |
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Muhammad Yunus
The Nobel Peace Prize 2006
Biography
"Banker to the Poor"
Professor Muhammad Yunus established the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983, fueled by the belief that credit is a fundamental human right. His objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves.
From Dr. Yunus' personal loan of small amounts of money to destitute basketweavers in Bangladesh in the mid-70s, the Grameen Bank has advanced to the forefront of a burgeoning world movement toward eradicating poverty through microlending. Replicas of the Grameen Bank model operate in more than 100 countries worldwide.
Born in 1940 in the seaport city of Chittagong, Professor Yunus studied at Dhaka University in Bangladesh, then received a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at Vanderbilt University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt in 1969 and the following year became an assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University. Returning to Bangladesh, Yunus headed the economics department at Chittagong University.
From 1993 to 1995, Professor Yunus was a member of the International Advisory Group for the Fourth World Conference on Women, a post to which he was appointed by the UN secretary general. He has served on the Global Commission of Women's Health, the Advisory Council for Sustainable Economic Development and the UN Expert Group on Women and Finance.
Professor Yunus is the recipient of numerous international awards for his ideas and endeavors, including the Mohamed Shabdeen Award for Science (1993), Sri Lanka; Humanitarian Award (1993), CARE, USA; World Food Prize (1994), World Food Prize Foundation, USA; lndependence Day Award (1987), Bangladesh's highest award; King Hussein Humanitarian Leadership Award (2000), King Hussien Foundation, Jordan; Volvo Environment Prize (2003), Volvo Environment Prize Foundation, Sweden; Nikkei Asia Prize for Regional Growth (2004), Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan; Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom Award (2006), Roosevelt Institute of The Netherlands; and the Seoul Peace Prize (2006), Seoul Peace Prize Cultural Foundation, Seoul, Korea. He is a member of the board of the United Nations Foundation.
[ Last edited by lizz_7777 at 22-11-2008 11:15 PM ] |
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