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Contents

March 25, 2004 • Volume 51, Number 5

Contributors

Freeman Dyson has spent most of his life as a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, taking time off to advise the US government and write books for the general public. He was born in England and worked as a civilian scientist for the Royal Air Force during World War II. He came to Cornell University as a graduate student in 1947 and worked with Hans Bethe and Richard Feynman, producing a user-friendly way to calculate the behavior of atoms and radiation. He also worked on nuclear reactors, solid-state physics, ferromagnetism, astrophysics, and biology, looking for problems where elegant mathematics could be usefully applied.

Dyson’s books include Disturbing the Universe (1979), Weapons and Hope (1984), Infinite in All Directions (1988), Origins of Life (1986, second edition 1999), The Sun, the Genome and the Internet (1999), and A Many-Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe (2010). He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 2000 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.

Jared Diamond, a Professor of Physiology and Public Health at UCLA and winner of both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Medal of Science, is the author of, among other books, Guns, Germs, and Steel. (March 2004)

Pankaj Mishra was born in North India in 1969 and now lives in London and India. He is the author of The Romantics, winner of the Los Angeles Times‘s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and The Guardian. His most recent book is Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond.

John Brewerteaches in the Humanities and Social Sciences Division at the California Institute of Technology. His most recent book is A Sentimental Murder: Love and Madness in the Eighteenth Century. (June 2008)

John Bayley has written two books about his wife, the novelist Iris Murdoch, Elegy for Iris and Iris and Her Friends. (July 2004)

Robert Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at Warwick University, England. His latest book is Keynes: The Return of the Master. Felix Martin, an economist at Thames River Capital LLP, worked at the World Bank for two stretches between 1998 and 2008. He was formerly an executive board member and analyst at the European Stability Initiative.
 www.skidelskyr.com. (April 2011)

Vijay Joshi is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and the author, with Ian Little, of India: Macroeconomics and Political Economy, 1964–1991, and India’s Economic Reforms, 1991–2001. (March 2004)

John Ashbery is the author of several books of poetry, including Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975), which received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award; and Some Trees (1956), which was selected by W. H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series. He has also published art criticism, plays, and a novel. Ashbery is currently the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr., Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. His latest book of poetry is Planisphere and his new translation of Rimbaud’s Illuminations will be available in paperback in May.


Geoffrey O’Brien is Editor in Chief of the Library of America. His latest books are The Fall of the House of Walworth and Early Autumn. 
(September 2011)

Michael Chabon is the author of ten books, including The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, and Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Jonathan Spence is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale. Among his books are The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, The Death of Woman Wang, and Return to Dragon Mountain. (December 2011)

Gabriele Annan is a book and film critic living in London. (March 2006)

Emma Rothschild is Director of the Joint Centre for History and Economics at King’s College, Cambridge and Harvard, and Professor of History at Harvard. Her latest book is Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment. (February 2009)

Brian Urquhart is a former Undersecretary-General of the United Nations. His books include Hammarskjöld, A Life in Peace and War, and Ralph Bunche: An American Life. (April 2011)

Michael Massing, a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, writes frequently on the press and foreign affairs.

George M. Fredrickson is Edgar E. Robinson Professor of US History Emeritus at Stanford. His most recent books are Racism: A Short History and Not Just Black and White, a collection co-edited with Nancy Foner. (August 2006)

Sherwin B. Nuland is Clinical Professor of Surgery and a Fellow of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale. He is the author of How We Die, which won the National Book Award in 1994, and Lost in America. (December 2005)

Richard Horton is a physician. He edits The Lancet, a weekly medical journal based in London and New York. He is also a visiting professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.