Hacker News with Generative AI: Biography

Karen Wynn Fonstad, Who Mapped Tolkien's Middle-Earth (nytimes.com)
In 1977, Karen Wynn Fonstad made a long shot cold call to J.R.R. Tolkien’s American publisher with the hope of landing a dream assignment: to create an exhaustive atlas of Middle-earth, the setting of the author’s widely popular “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
Fantasy Literature, Maps, Biography, J.R.R. Tolkien
24 points by indigoabstract 2 days ago | 4 comments
Byte Queue Limits – The unauthorized biography (medium.com)
Of the technologies I’ve worked on, Byte Queue Limits, or just BQL, seems the one for which I get the most comments! It’s rather ancient now dating back to 2011, however to my surprise it still seems quite relevant. Anyway, I thought it’d be fun today to look at it as part retrospective and part exposé.
Technology, Programming, Retrospective, Biography
9 points by dtaht 4 days ago | 0 comments
Shavarsh Karapetyan (wikipedia.org)
Shavarsh Karapetyan trained his eyes on the asphalt as he rounded the corner. He had 45 pounds of sand strapped to his back, facing the final push on a 13-mile run fueled by the fury he’d been nursing ever since Soviet coaches dropped him from the national swim team.
Sports, Biography, Perseverance
203 points by handfuloflight 7 days ago | 24 comments
The Tedious Heroism of David Ruggles (commonplace.online)
History also changes because of strange, flawed, deeply human people doing unremarkable, tedious, and often boring work.
History, Biography, Social Justice
140 points by samclemens 8 days ago | 22 comments
Edwin Cohn and the Harvard Blood Factory (asimov.press)
Edwin Cohn, a temperamental and entrepreneurial protein chemist working at Harvard University in the early 1900s, is perhaps one of the most underrated translational scientists of all time.
Science, History, Biography
43 points by mailyk 12 days ago | 6 comments
The sham legacy of Richard Feynman [video] (youtube.com)
Physics, Legacy, Biography, Science, Video
7 points by chrismatic 13 days ago | 4 comments
Bob Dylan has some Dylanesque thoughts on the "sorcery" of technology (arstechnica.com)
With the holiday release of the biopic A Complete Unknown, Bob Dylan is once again in the national spotlight.
Music, Technology, Biography, Bob Dylan
6 points by pseudolus 13 days ago | 0 comments
Bob Dylan has some Dylanesque thoughts on the "sorcery" of technology (arstechnica.com)
With the holiday release of the biopic A Complete Unknown, Bob Dylan is once again in the national spotlight.
Music, Technology, Biography
6 points by Tomte 14 days ago | 0 comments
A Private Life – Nikolai Tolstoy Remembers Patrick O'Brian (unseenhistories.com)
A Very Private Life – Nikolai Tolstoy Remembers Patrick O’Brian
Biography, History, Literature, Authors
82 points by unseenhistories 16 days ago | 31 comments
Twinge of Saudade: Biographies of Abba (lrb.co.uk)
In​ 1977, Abba were waiting at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm when they noticed a dishevelled young man charging towards them.
Music, Biography, Culture
19 points by avidly 16 days ago | 23 comments
Walter Isaacson: My So-Called Writing Life (2014) (wordpress.com)
Walter Isaacson is the 2014 LEH Humanist of the Year. President and CEO of The Aspen Institute and the best-selling author of biographies of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Ben Franklin, Isaacson contributed this autobiographical article to the new issue of Louisiana Cultural Vistas magazine. To read the full issue online and view more photos from this article, click here.  To renew your subscription to LCV, click here. The LEH will honor Isaacson at the March 29th Humanities Awards. 
Biography, Writing, Authors, Leadership, Humanities
50 points by nsoonhui 18 days ago | 14 comments
Intolerable Genius: Berkeley's Most Controversial Nobel Laureate (2019) (alumni.berkeley.edu)
IN THE SUMMER OF 1984 the senior scientists of Cetus Corp., a Berkeley biotech company, found themselves in a bind. One of their employees, a promising young scientist named Kary Mullis, had dreamed up a technique to exponentially replicate tiny scraps of DNA. He called it polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and if it worked it would change the world and likely earn Cetus a mountain of money. The only problem was Mullis was an interpersonal wrecking ball.
Science, Biography, Controversy, Academia
22 points by oli5679 19 days ago | 24 comments
Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory (abortretry.fail)
William Bradford Shockley Jr was born on the 13th of February in 1910 in London.
History, Biography, Semiconductor Industry
126 points by BirAdam 24 days ago | 40 comments
Turing Machines (samwho.dev)
On June 8th, 1954, Alan Turing was found dead in bed, at his home in Wilmslow. He had died the day before, aged 41, from cyanide poisoning. A half-slice of apple was on his bedside table, laced with cyanide. An inquest ruled the death a suicide.
Computer Science, History, Biography
115 points by jakelazaroff 28 days ago | 35 comments
Khalid Sheldrake: The East Dulwich man who would be King (nationalarchives.gov.uk)
Bertie Sheldrake was a South London pickle manufacturer who converted to Islam and became king of a far-flung Islamic republic before returning to London and settling back into obscurity.
Biography, History, United Kingdom, Religion, Islam
59 points by Geekette 31 days ago | 31 comments
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a Modern Antihero (newyorker.com)
He is from a wealthy and prominent Maryland family, the valedictorian of a prestigious private school, an Ivy League graduate. His family and friends speak of him fondly, and they worried about him when he fell off the grid, some months ago.
Crime, Biography, Social Class
12 points by rbanffy 35 days ago | 5 comments
True Crime: Allan Pinkerton's Thirty Years a Detective (1884) (publicdomainreview.org)
Allan Pinkerton, Thirty Years a Detective: A Thorough and Comprehensive Exposé of Criminal Practices of All Grades and Classes (New York: G. W. Carleton & Co., 1884).
True Crime, History, Biography, Crime, Law Enforcement
60 points by samclemens 40 days ago | 20 comments
Arthur Cravan: The Disappearing Dadaist (historytoday.com)
The last time anyone saw Arthur Cravan alive, he was sailing off, alone, into the Pacific Ocean on a leaky boat.
Art, History, Dadaism, Biography
26 points by apollinaire 41 days ago | 1 comments
Memory is all we have (onepercentrule.substack.com)
Few lives illuminate the deep capacity of the human mind as vividly as that of Eric Kandel. A Nobel laureate whose life story intertwines survival, curiosity, and groundbreaking discovery, Kandel exemplifies how life’s relentless challenges serve as an enduring test of intelligence in all its forms.
Memory, Neuroscience, Biography, Intelligence
40 points by drcwpl 43 days ago | 11 comments
Curriculum Vitae of Donald E. Knuth [pdf] (www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu)
Computer Science, Academia, Biography
11 points by joebig 44 days ago | 1 comments
The ambiguous witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2014) (newcriterion.com)
The matter of the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is at once straightforward and immensely complicated.
Theology, History, Biography
72 points by Pamar 45 days ago | 41 comments
The sham legacy of Richard Feynman [video] (youtube.com)
Physics, Legacy, Biography, Video
15 points by nabla9 45 days ago | 8 comments
Claud Cockburn invented guerrilla journalism (jacobin.com)
In Believe Nothing Until It Is Officially Denied, Patrick Cockburn explores the fascinating life of his father, journalist Claud Cockburn, whose cutting prose spoke truth to power with charm and wit.
Journalism, Biography, History, Politics
42 points by mdp2021 46 days ago | 7 comments
Colt's Revolutions (taylor.town)
For a full biography of Samuel Colt written by professional historians, I recommend [Revolver by Rasenberger, Roy, et al.] For a highly editorialized and possibly misleading biography of Samuel Colt, see below.
Biography, History, Firearms, Controversial Content
5 points by surprisetalk 47 days ago | 1 comments
Minakata Kumagusu (wikipedia.org)
Minakata Kumagusu (南方 熊楠, May 18, 1867 – December 29, 1941) was a Japanese author, biologist, naturalist and ethnologist.
Biography, Japan, Science, Biology, Ethnology
6 points by benbreen 52 days ago | 1 comments
A slave narrative resurfaces after nearly 170 years (nytimes.com)
John S. Jacobs was a fugitive, an abolitionist — and the brother of the canonical author Harriet Jacobs. Now, his own fierce autobiography has re-emerged.
History, Literature, Slavery, Biography
129 points by cocacola1 53 days ago | 73 comments
Graphic novelist's Elon Musk book can't find UK or US publisher (theguardian.com)
A biography by a British graphic novelist of Elon Musk is struggling to find an English-language publisher due to feared “legal consequences”.
Publishing, Elon Musk, Biography, Censorship
5 points by nickcotter 55 days ago | 0 comments
Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy (korny.info)
My grandfather, Dr Kornelis Sietsma was a Dutch Reformed Church minister in wartime Amsterdam. He preached in ways that offended the Nazi occupiers, and they deported him to the Dachau concentration camp, where he died.
Biography, History, Religion
97 points by pavel_lishin 56 days ago | 33 comments
The remarkable life and astonishing times of Dwight Smith Young (wordpress.com)
Down at the Little White School Museum here in Oswego, we have the audio tape and transcript of an interview with Dick Young that was done by an unfortunately anonymous high school student back in 1973.
Biography, History, Local History
54 points by omega3 57 days ago | 6 comments
Arthur Frommer, 95, Dies; His Guidebooks Opened Travel to the Masses (nytimes.com)
Arthur Frommer, who expanded the horizons of postwar Americans and virtually invented the low-budget travel industry with his seminal guidebook, “Europe on 5 Dollars a Day: A Guide to Inexpensive Travel,” which introduced millions to an experience once considered the exclusive domain of the wealthy, died on Monday at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 95.
Travel, History, Publishing, Biography
6 points by bookofjoe 58 days ago | 0 comments