WARREN BUFFETT

Warren Buffett, in full Warren Edward Buffett, (born August 30, 1930, Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.), American businessman and philanthropist, widely considered the most successful investor of the 20th century, having defied prevailing investment trends to amass a personal fortune of more than $60 billion.

Known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” Buffett was the son of U.S. Rep. Howard Homan Buffett from Nebraska. After graduating from the University of Nebraska (B.S., 1950), he studied with Benjamin Graham at the Columbia University School of Business (M.S., 1951). In 1956 Buffett returned to Omaha and in 1965 took majority control of the textile manufacturer Berkshire Hathaway Inc., turning it into his primary investment vehicle. From the 1960s through the ’90s the major stock averages rose by roughly 11 percent annually, but Berkshire Hathaway’s publicly traded shares gained about 28 percent per year. Though Buffett’s success with Berkshire Hathaway made him one of the world’s wealthiest men, he eschewed lavish spending and criticized governmental policies and taxation that favoured the rich over the middle or lower classes.

In June 2006 Buffett announced that he planned to donate more than 80 percent of his wealth to a handful of private charitable foundations. The main recipient was the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—created by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife—which focused on issues of world health and education. Gates and Buffett had maintained a close friendship since the early 1990s, and the foundation was slated to receive Buffett’s funds in increments that would eventually raise its assets to an estimated $60 billion. The other organizations receiving donations were those run by Buffett’s three children and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for his late wife, which focused on women’s reproductive rights and funded college scholarship programs.

During the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–08, Buffett made a number of deals that, though questioned at the time, proved highly profitable. In September 2008 he invested $5 billion in the U.S.-based bank holding company Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., and the following month Berkshire Hathaway purchased $3 billion in General Electric Company (GE) preferred stock. In November 2009 Buffett announced that Berkshire was buying the railroad company Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation for about $26 billion; the investment group already owned approximately 23 percent of the railroad. In 2011 Buffett was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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BIRBAL SAHNI

Birbal Sahni was an Indian palaeobotanist who founded the Institute of Palaeobotany at Lucknow, which was later renamed as Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany after his death. He was a pioneer in palaeobotanical research in India and was also a geologist who took an interest in archaeology. Palaeobotany is the study of fossil plants, and his interest in the subject stemmed from his childhood fascination with plants, shells, and stones. Born in late 19th century India, he was a bright and curious child who loved to explore and examine his surroundings. He grew up in an intellectually stimulating environment where his parents ensured that he received the best education possible. After attending the Government College at Lahore where he studied botany under S. R. Kashyap, he moved to England to further his education. After earning his doctorate from the University of London in 1919, he briefly worked in Germany before returning to India. Soon he became the Head of the Botany Department of the Lucknow University and proved to be an excellent teacher with a great passion for palaeobotany. Soon he made the department an active centre for palaeobotanical research and also inspired his students to venture into the field. The establishment of the Institute of Palaeobotany was the culmination of his years of hard work though he unfortunately passed away just a week after the foundation stone laying ceremony.

EARLY LIFE

Birbal Sahni was born on 14 November 1891 as the second son of Lala Ruchi Ram Sahni and Shrimati Ishwar Devi in Bhera, Shahpur District, West Punjab. His father was a patriot and social reformer who was active in India’s struggle for independence. An educator, he eventually became a Professor of Chemistry in the Lahore Government College.

Birbal’s childhood home was often visited by the likes of Motilal Nehru, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Sarojini Naidu, and Madan Mohan Malaviya which ensured that the young boy grew up in an intellectually stimulating environment.

He received his early education from the Mission and Central Model schools. Then he went to study at the Government College University, Lahore, where his father worked, before moving on to the Punjab University from where he graduated in 1911.

He was a brilliant student, and one of his mentors, S. R. Kashyap, had instilled in him a deep love for botany and motivated him to pursue his interest in the field. Thus Birbal moved to England for his higher studies.

He studied at the Emmanuel College at Cambridge and obtained a first class in Part I of the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1913 and completed Part II of the Tripos in 1915. At around the same time he also received his B.Sc. degree from London University.

He found a mentor in his teacher Sir Albert Charles Seward under whom he started doing his research on palaeobotany. Along with him, he worked on the study of Indian Gondwana Plants, the findings of which were published in the book, ‘Indian Gondwana Plants: A Revision’ in 1920. Meanwhile he was awarded his D.Sc degree by the University of London in 1919.

CAREER

During his stint in England Sahni joined Professor Seward to work on a Revision of Indian Gondwana plants (1920, Palaeontologica Indica). In 1919 he briefly worked in Munich with the German plant morphologist Karl Ritter von Goebel. In 1920 he married Savitri Suri, daughter of Sunder Das Suri an Inspector of Schools in Punjab. Savitri took an interest in his work and was a constant companion.Sahni returned to India and served as Professor of Botany at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi and Punjab Universityo for about a year. He was appointed the first Professor and Head of the Botany Department of the Lucknow University in 1921, a position he retained until his death. The University of Cambridge recognised his researches by the award of the degree of Sc. D. in 1929. In 1932 Palaeontologica Indica included his account of the Bennettitalean plant that he named Williamsonia sewardi, and another description of a new type of petrified wood, Homoxylon, bearing resemblance to the wood of a living homoxylous angiosperm, but from the Jurassic age.During the following years he not only continued his investigations but collected around him a group of devoted students from all parts of the country and built up a reputation for the University which soon became the first Center for botanical and palaeobotanical investigations in India. Sahni maintained close relations with researchers around the globe, being a friend of Chester A. Arnold, noted American paleobotanist who later served his year in residence from 1958–1959 at the institute He was a founder of The Paleobotanical Society which established the Institute of Palaeobotany on 10 September 1946 which initially functioned in the Botany Department of Lucknow University but later moved to its present premises at 53 University Road, Lucknow in 1949. On 3 April 1949 the Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundation stone of the new building of the Institute. A week later, on 10 April 1949, Sahni succumbed to a heart attack.

AWARDS AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Sahni was recognised by several academies and institutions in India and abroad for his research. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) in 1936, the highest British scientific honour, awarded for the first time to an Indian botanist. He was elected Vice-President, Palaeobotany section, of the 5th and 6th International Botanical Congresses of 1930 and 1935, respectively; General President of the Indian Science Congress for 1940; President, National Academy of Sciences, India, 1937–1939 and 1943–1944. In 1948 he was elected an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Another high honour which came to him was his election as an Honorary President of the International Botanical Congress, Stockholm in 1950. For his work in numismatics he received the Nelson Wright Medal in 1945.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Minister of Education in 1947 offered the post of Secretary to the Ministry of Education to Sahni. This he reluctantly accepted.

The Birbal Sahni Gold Medal for students of botany was instituted in his memory. A bust of Sahni is placed in the Geological Survey of India in Calcutta.

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MICHIO KAKU

Dr. Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist at the City College of New York, a best-selling author, and a well-known popularizer of science. He’s the co-founder of string field theory (a branch of string theory) and continues Einstein’s search to unite the four fundamental forces of nature into one unified theory.

He has appeared frequently on television, written for popular science publications such as Discover, Wired, and New Scientist, been featured in documentaries such as Me & Isaac Newton, and hosted many of his own documentaries. 

His books include The Future of the Mind (2014), Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 (2012), Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel (2008), Parallel Worlds (2006), Einstein’s Cosmos (2005), Visions (1999), Beyond Einstein (1995), and Hyperspace (1994), in addition to several Ph.D.-level textbooks.

EARLY LIFE

Physicist Michio Kaku was born on January 24, 1947, in San Jose, California. His parents were both of Tibetan descent, and his grandfather immigrated to the United States for work in the cleanup efforts following the devastating 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.

Kaku first became attracted to science as a young child, and while a student at Cubberly High School in Palo Alto, he famously built an atom smasher in his parents' garage.

Kaku eventually landed at Harvard University, where he graduated first in his physics class in 1968. From there it was on to the University of California at Berkeley, where he worked at the Berkeley Radiation Lab and earned his Ph.D. in 1972.

The following year Kaku lectured at Princeton, but not long after, the Army drafted him. He was trained as an infantryman but spared combat when the Vietnam War ended shortly before he was scheduled for deployment.

ACADEMIC CAREER AND PUBLICATIONS

Kaku has expertise in several fields such as hadronic physics, supersymmetry, supergravity, superstring theory, and quantum physics among others. His knowledge on these topics has been subject of more than 70 publications in different journals covering physics-related subjects such as Physics Review.

Michio Kaku is known as a popularizer of science, and he has authored several popular science textbooks. His first book was released in 1994 – Hyperspace, followed by Beyond Einstein which he wrote with Jennifer Thompson a year later. In 1998, he published Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century, then two books in 2004: Einstein’s Cosmos and Parallel Worlds. His most recent works include Physics of the Impossible (2008), Physics of the Future (2011), and The Future of the Mind (2015).

All of these publications have sparked a great interest in the minds of scholars and curious minds alike who are interested in the realm of theoretical physics and other related disciplines given the futurist vision that Michio Kaku believes in.

Michio Kaku’s publications reflect his involvement in the ongoing search for understanding and unifying the forces of nature into just one theory. He continues his works based on Einstein’s earlier findings, and Michio Kaku is known as one of the founders of string field theory. His book Hyperspace was a great best seller and was voted as one of the top science books by both The Washington Post and The New York Times in the same year.

THE POPULARIZER OF SCIENCE

This is a commonly heard phrase whenever Michio Kaku’s name is mentioned, and not without good reason. Apart from comprehensive publications of both books and journal articles, he has a known presence in many different forms of media.

He has made appearances on several notable television channels such as BBC, Discovery, ABC, CNN, and the Science Channel just to name a few. Apart from his publications in Physics Review, his works and articles are also available to the public through popular science publications such as Wired, New Scientist, and Discover.

Some of his more recent media exposure includes the History Channel’s The Universe; BBC’s Time; where he went through an extraordinary exploration of time; and BBC’s Vision of the Future, where he explored today’s science as well as that of the future.

On a weekly basis, Michio Kaku can be heard on radio programs which are broadcasted all over the USA. He hosts Science Fantastic and Explorations in Science. Apart from these weekly radio programs, his talks about physics and his studies can be seen in several websites dedicated to his work, and on YouTube channels.

He has also been part of documentaries such as Obsessed and Scientific which discusses the possibility of time travel, ABC’s UFOs: Seeing is Believing, and he was one of the scientists who were featured in Me and Isaac Newton. For BBC, he has hosted the three-hour documentary Visions of the Future. In 2009 when he hosted a weekly TV series at the Science Channel called Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible. One of his more interesting thoughts has been featured on Discovery Channel’s Alien Planet where he discussed the possible future of interstellar exploration.

His presence in different media and his skill in communicating complex theories in easier to understand language has made him an influential popularizer of science.

Kaku is a father to two daughters and is married to Shizue Kaku. His favorite songs include the Star Wars Theme as well as Star Trek’s Next Generation Theme, both in line with his interest in physics and interstellar matters of science.

BOOKSEdit

Kaku is the author of various popular science books:

• Beyond Einstein: The Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the Universe (with Jennifer Thompson) (1987)
• Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension (1994)
• Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century(1998)
• Einstein's Cosmos: How Albert Einstein's Vision Transformed Our Understanding of Space and Time(2004)
• Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos (2004)
• Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel (2008)
• Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 (2011)
• The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind (2014)
• The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth (2018)

Hyperspace was a bestseller and voted one of the best science books of the year by The New York Times and The Washington Post. Parallel Worlds was a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction in the UK.

RADIOEdit

Kaku is the host of the weekly one-hour radio program Exploration, produced by the Pacifica Foundation's WBAI in New York. Exploration is syndicated to community and independent radio stations and makes previous broadcasts available on the program's website. Kaku defines the show as dealing with the general topics of science, war, peace and the environment.

In April 2006, Kaku began broadcasting Science Fantastic on 90 commercial radio stations in the United States. It is syndicated by Talk Radio Network and now reaches 130 radio stations and America's Talk on XM and remains the only nationally syndicated science radio program. Featured guests include Nobel laureates and top researchers in the fields of string theory, time travel, black holes, gene therapy, aging, space travel, artificial intelligence and SETI. When Kaku is busy filming for television, Science Fantastic goes on hiatus, sometimes for several months. Kaku is also a frequent guest on many programs, where he is outspoken in all areas and issues he considers of importance, such as the program Coast to Coast Am where, on November 30, 2007, he reaffirmed his belief that the existence of extraterrestrial life is a certainty. During the debut of Art Bell's new radio show Dark Matter on September 16, 2013, Bell referred to Kaku as "the next Carl Sagan", referring to Kaku's similar ability to explain complex science so anyone can understand it.

Kaku has appeared on many mainstream talk shows, discussing popular fiction such as Back to the Future, Lost,and the theories behind the time travel these and other fictional entertainment focus on.

TELEVISION AND FILMSEdit

Kaku has appeared in many forms of media and on many programs and networks, including Good Morning America, The Screen Savers, Larry King Live, 60 Minutes, Imus In The Morning, Nightline, 20/20, Naked Science, CNN, ABC News, Conan, CBS News, NBC News, Al Jazeera English, Fox News Channel, The History Channel, , The Science Channel, The Discovery Channel, TLC, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Colbert Report, The Art Bell Show and its successor, Coast to Coast AM, BBC World News America, The Covino & Rich Show, Head Rush, Late Show with David Letterman, and Real Time with Bill Maher. He was interviewed for two PBS documentaries, The Path to Nuclear Fission: The Story of Lise Meitner and Otto Hahnand Out from the Shadows: The Story of Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, which were produced and directed by his former WBAI radio colleague Rosemarie Reed.

In 1999, Kaku was one of the scientists profiled in the feature-length film Me & Issac Newton, directed by Michael Apted. It played theatrically in the United States, was later broadcast on national TV, and won several film awards.

In 2005, Kaku appeared in the short documentary film Obsessed & Scientific about the possibility of time travel and the people who dream about it. It screened at the Montreal World Film Festival; a feature film expansion is in development talks. Kaku also appeared in the ABC documentary UFOs: Seeing is Believing, in which he suggested that while he believes it is extremely unlikely that extraterrestrials have ever actually visited Earth, we must keep our minds open to the possible existence of civilizations a million years ahead of us in technology, where entirely new avenues of physics open up. He also discussed the future of interstellar exploration and alien life in the Discovery Channel special Alien Planet as one of the multiple speakers who co-hosted the show, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity on The History Channel.

In February 2006, Kaku appeared as presenter in the BBC-TV four-part documentary Time which seeks to explore the mysterious nature of time. Part one of the series concerns personal time, and how we perceive and measure the passing of time. The second in the series deals with cheating time, exploring possibilities of extending the lifespan of organisms. The geological time covered in part three explores the ages of the Earth and the Sun. Part four covers the topics of cosmological time, the beginning of time and the events that occurred at the instant of the big bang.

On January 28, 2007, Kaku hosted the Discovery Channel series 2057. This three-hour program discussed how medicine, the city, and energy could change over the next 50 years.

In 2008, Kaku hosted the three-hour BBC-TV documentary Visions of the Future, on the future of computers, medicine, and quantum physics, and he appeared in several episodes of the History Channel's Universe series.

On December 1, 2009, he began hosting a 12-episode weekly TV series for the Science Channel at 10 pm, called Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible, based on his best-selling book. Each 30-minute episode discusses the scientific basis behind imaginative schemes, such as time travel, parallel universes, warp drive, star ships, light sabers, force fields, teleportation, invisibility, death stars, and even superpowers and flying saucers. Each episode includes interviews with the world's top scientists working on prototypes of these technologies, interviews with science fiction fans, clips from science fiction movies, and special effects and computer graphics. Although these inventions are impossible today, the series discusses when these technologies might become feasible in the future.

In 2010, he began to appear in a series on the website Gametrailers.com called Science of Games, discussing the scientific aspects of various popular video games such as Mass Effect 2 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Kaku is popular in mainstream media because of his knowledge and his accessible approach to presenting complex subjects in science. While his technical writings are confined to theoretical physics, his public speaking and media appearances cover a broad range of topics, from the Kardashev scale to more esoteric subjects such as wormholes and time travel. In January 2007, Kaku visited Oman. While there, he talked at length to select members of that country's decision makers. In an interview with local media, Kaku elaborated on his vision of mankind's future. Kaku considers climate change and terrorism as serious threats in man's evolution from a Type 0 civilization to Type 1 on the Kardashev scale.

He is featured in Symphony of Science's songs, "The Quantum World", " Our Place in the Cosmos", "The Secret of the Stars", and "Monsters of the Cosmos"

On October 11, 2010, Michio Kaku appeared in the BBC program "What Happened Before the Big Bang" (along with Laura Mersini-Houghton, Andrei Linde, Roger Penrose, Lee Smolin, Neil Turok, and other notable cosmologists and physicists), where he propounded his theory of the universe created out of nothing.

Over January 22–25, 2011, Kaku was invited to the fifth annual Global Competitiveness Forum (GCF), held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, next to renowned specialists including the British journalist Nick Pope, the Canadian ufologist Stanton Friedman, and the French astrophysicist Jacques Vallée.

Kaku appears on the DVD and Blu-ray extras of the 2012 version of Total Recall, discussing the technological aspects of the future explored in the film.

WEB SERIESEdit

In 2018, Kaku hosts the web series Next World with Michio Kaku on CuriosityStream.

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BERNARD ARNAULT

We need not emphasize on how the French have been the face of the luxury fashion brands from since the 19^thcentury. Among those Frenchmen who were responsible for the fashion revolution, Bernard Arnault stands out for the reasons obvious. The man who owns Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Givenchy and Dom Perignon, some of the most precious French luxury fashion houses, is someone whose story is definitely worth knowing.

It is probably a given that someone like that would be incredibly rich, because Bernard Arnault also happens to be the 13^th richest man in the world. Also for the record, he is the richest man of France and one of the richest men in the whole of Europe.

Arnault must have had business in his blood, what with his father Jean Arnault being a businessman who owned a civil engineering company. After getting done with his engineering in the year 1971, Bernard Arnault, as expected, joined his father’s business.  Soon after, he brought about some remarkable changes to the establishment. He convinced his father to sell the company and from there on, they focused entirely on real estate, which was a wise move back then.

EARLY LIFE

After graaduating from the Lycée Maxence Van Der Meersch in Roubaix, Arnault was admitted to the École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, from which he graduated with an engineering degree in 1971.

His father, Jean Leon Arnault, a graduate of École Centrale Paris, was a manufacturer and the owner of the civil engineering company, Ferret-Savinel.

CAREER

He joined his father’s company after graduating from college. He started planning for the company’s expansion and growth and in 1976 he was successful in convincing his father to liquidate the construction division of the company and invest the proceeds in a more lucrative business.

The Arnaults received 40 million French francs from the liquidation of the construction division which they invested in real estate business, which was then a booming sector. Now renamed Ferinel, the company became a very successful one with a specialty in holiday accommodation.

Bernard Arnault became the director of company development in 1974, and was named the CEO in 1977. He succeeded his father as president of the company in 1979.

The French Socialists came to power in 1981, forcing Arnault and his family to move to the United States. Being the astute businessman that he was, he prospered there too, developing condominiums in Palm Beach, Florida. Eventually he began to build a U.S. branch of his family’s property business.

The political scenario in his native France changed in 1983. The French Socialists switched to a more conservative economic course and Arnault decided to return home.

The enterprising businessman saw a lucrative opportunity when the textile firm, Boussac Saint-Frères, went bankrupt. The textile empire comprised several businesses, including the couture house of Christian Dior. Arnault collaborated with Antoine Bernheim, managing partner of the investment firm of Lazard Fréres who arranged the financing for Arnault's acquisition of Boussac.
Arnault invested $15 million of his own money, and Bernheim helped him to raise the reminder of the reported $80 million purchase price of Boussac Saint-Frères. Upon this acquisition, Arnault sold most of the company’s assets, retaining only the prestigious Christian Dior brand and Le Bon Marché department store. He became the CEO of Dior in 1985.

After selling off most of the assets of Boussac, Arnault gained $400 million in the process. In 1987, he was invited to invest in LVMH by the company’s chairman, Henri Racamier. Arnault chose to invest through a joint venture with Guinness PLC that held 24% of LVMH's shares. Over the next couple of years, he continued to buy more shares in the company, spending several hundred millions in the process.

By January 1989, Arnault had managed to gain control over 43.5% of the shares of LVMH with 35% of the voting rights. He was then unanimously elected chairman of the executive management board.

After taking over LVMH, he fired several of the company’s top executives and chose to recruit new talent to revitalize the company. He was a tough taskmaster and was known for his inclination to quickly terminate employees who did not deliver according to his expectations.

He set about implementing an ambitious plan of growth and expansion of his businesses and acquired several other companies over the 1990s, including the perfume firm Guerlain (1994), Loewe (1996), Marc Jacobs (1997), Sephora (1997), and Thomas Pink (1999).

   AWARDS

• Commandeur of the Légion d'Honneur (10 February 2007)
• Grand Officer of the Légion d'Honneur (14 July 2011)
• The Woodrow Wilson Award for Global Corporate Citizenship (2011)
• Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (2012)
• The Museum of Modern Art's David Rockefeller Award (March 2014)

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