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Larry Page


Lawrence Edward "Larry" Page (born March 26, 1973 in Lansing, Michigan) is an American entrepreneur who co-founded the Google internet search engine, now Google Inc., with Sergey Brin.


Early life and education

Larry Page is the son of the late Dr. Carl Victor Page, one of the University of Michigan's first computer science Ph.D Graduates, and professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at Michigan State University, and Gloria Page, a computer programming teacher at Michigan State University. He is also the brother of Carl Victor Page, Jr., a co-founder of eGroups, later sold to Yahoo! for approximately half a billion dollars.


Page attended a Montessori school in Lansing, Michigan and graduated from East Lansing High School. Page holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer engineering from the University of Michigan with honors and a Masters degree from Stanford University. At University of Michigan, Page was a member of the solar car team and served as the president of the HKN.


Business

While a student in the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, Page met Sergey Brin. Together they launched the Google search engine in 1998. Google is based on patented PageRank technology, which relies on the structure of links between web sites to determine the ranking of an individual site. Page is still "on leave" from the Ph.D. program.

Page ran Google as co-president with Brin until 2001 when they hired Eric Schmidt to become Chairman and CEO of Google.

According to the 2006 edition of Forbes, Page had an estimated net worth of $16.6 Billion, making him the 26th richest person in the world, one place behind Brin.Page and Brin recently purchased a pre-owned Qantas Boeing 767 airliner for their business and personal needs.

In 2007, Page was cited by PC World as #1 on the list of the 50 most important people on the web, along with Brin and Schmidt.

Page is also an investor in Tesla Motors, which is developing the Tesla Roadster, a 250 mile range battery electric vehicle

http://en.wikipedia.org


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Eric Schmidt


Eric Emerson Schmidt (b. 1955 in Washington, D.C.) is Chairman and CEO of Google Inc and a member of the Board of Directors of Apple Inc.He also sits on the Princeton University Board of Trustees.He lives in Atherton, California with his wife Wendy.

Education

After graduating from Yorktown High School (Virginia), Schmidt attended Princeton University where he earned a bachelor of science in electrical engineering. He has also obtained a MS in 1979 and a PhD in 1982 in EECS from the University of California, Berkeley. He was joint author of lex, a lexical parser and an important tool for compiler construction and taught at Stanford University as a part time professor of business.


Previous and current work

Schmidt left Novell after the acquisition of Cambridge Technology Partners. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin (with the assistance of executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, Inc.) recruited Eric Schmidt to run their company in 2001 under the influence of venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz.

Schmidt joined Google's board of directors as chairman in March 2001 and became the company's CEO in August 2001. At Google, Schmidt shares responsibility for Google's daily operations with founders Page and Brin. As indicated by page 29 of Google's 2004 S-1 Filing,Schmidt, Page, and Brin run Google as a triumvirate. Schmidt possesses the legal responsibilities typically assigned to the CEO of a public company and focuses on management of the vice presidents and the sales organization.

According to Google's website, Schmidt also focuses on "building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum.

Schmidt is one of the few people who have become billionaires (USD) based on stock options received as an employee in a corporation of which neither he nor a relative was the founder. "Earlier this year, he pulled in almost $90 million from sales of Google stock and made at least another $50 million selling shares in the past two months as the stock leaped to more than $300 a share.In its 2006 'World's Richest People' list, Forbes ranked Schmidt as the 129th richest person in the world (the ranking was shared by Onsi Sawiris, Alexei Kuzmichov, and Robert Rowling) with an estimated wealth of $6.2 billion.

Schmidt was elected to Apple's board of directors on August 28, 2006.

In 2007, Schmidt was cited by PC World as #1 on the list of the 50 Most Important People on the Web, along with Google co-Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.He is also on the list of ARTnews 200 top art collectors.

from www.wikipedia.org


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John C. Mather


John Cromwell Mather (b. August 7, 1946, Roanoke, Virginia) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his work on COBE with George Smoot. COBE was the first experiment to measure "... the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation."

This work helped cement the big-bang theory of the universe using the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE). According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE-project can also be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science.

Mather is a senior astrophysicist at the U.S. space agency's (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and adjunct professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2007, Mather was listed among Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.

Education and initial research

* 1964 Newton High School, Newton, New Jersey
* 1968 B.Sc. (Physics), Swarthmore College
* 1974 Ph.D. (Physics), University of California, Berkeley
* 1974-76 (NRC Postdoctoral Fellow), Columbia University Goddard Institute for
Space Studies

Participation in COBE

As an NRC postdoctoral fellow at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, he led the proposal efforts on COBE (1974-1976). The success of COBE was the outcome of prodigious team work involving more than 1,000 researchers, engineers and other participants. John Mather coordinated the entire process and also had primary responsibility for the experiment that revealed the blackbody form of the microwave background radiation measured by COBE. George Smoot had main responsibility for measuring the small variations in the temperature of the radiation.[1]

In the book The Very First Light Mather with co-author John Boslough chronicled his team's work for the general public.

Honours and awards

* 1964-68 Swarthmore College Open Scholarship (honorary)
* 1967 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, 30th place nationwide
* 1968-70 NSF Fellowship and honorary Woodrow Wilson Fellowship
* 1970-74 Fellow, Hertz Foundation
* 1974-76 Postdoctoral Fellow, NRC
* 1990 NASA GSFC John C. Lindsay Memorial Award
* 1991 Rotary National Space Achievement Award
* 1991 National Air and Space Museum Trophy
* 1992 Aviation Week and Space Technology Laurels for Space/Missiles
* 1993 Discover Magazine Technology Award finalist
* 1993 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space Science Award
* 1993 American Astronomical Society and American Institute of Physics Dannie
Heineman Prize for Astrophysics
* 1994 Fellow, Goddard Space Flight Center
* 1994 Doctor of Science, honoris causa, Swarthmore College
* 1995 City of Philadelphia John Scott Award
* 1996 American Academy of Arts and Sciences Rumford Prize
* 1996 Fellow, American Physical Society
* 1997 Aviation Week and Space Technology Hall of Fame
* 1997 Member, National Academy of Sciences
* 1998 Marc Aaronson Memorial Prize
* 1998 Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
* 1999 Franklin Institute Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics
* 2005 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers George W. Goddard Award
* 2006 Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation Prize in Cosmology
* 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics
* 2007 Fellow, SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering

from www.wikipedia.org

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George Smoot


George Fitzgerald Smoot III (born February 20, 1945) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his work on COBE with John C. Mather that led to the measurement "...of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation."

This work helped cement the big-bang theory of the universe using the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE). According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE-project can also be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science.

He is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2003 he was awarded the Einstein Medal.


Education

Smoot was born in Yukon, Florida. He graduated from Upper Arlington High School in Upper Arlington, Ohio in 1962. He studied mathematics before switching to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he obtained dual bachelor's degrees in mathematics and physics in 1966, and a Ph.D. in particle physics in 1970.

Although Smoot attended MIT, he was not the same Smoot who was laid end to end to measure the Harvard Bridge between Cambridge and Boston;this was his cousin Oliver R. Smoot, an MIT alumnus who served as the chairman of the American National Standards Institute.

Initial research

George Smoot then switched to cosmology, and went to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where he collaborated with Luis Walter Alvarez on the experiment HAPPE, a stratospheric balloon for the detection of antimatter in the upper atmosphere, which was predicted by the now obscure steady state theory of cosmology.

He then took up an interest in cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), previously discovered by Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson in 1964. There were, at that time, several open questions about this, relating directly to fundamental questions about the structure of the universe. Certain models predicted the universe as a whole was rotating, which would have an effect on the CMB: its temperature depending on the direction of observation. With the help of Alvarez and Richard A. Muller, Smoot developed a differential radiometer which measured the difference in temperature of the CMB between two directions 60 degrees apart. The instrument, which was mounted on a Lockheed U-2 plane, made it possible to determine that the overall rotation of the universe was zero, which was within the limits of accuracy of the instrument. It did, however, detect a variation in the temperature of the CMB of a different sort. That the CMB appears to be at a higher temperature on one side of the sky than on the opposite side, referred to as a dipole pattern, has been explained as a Doppler effect of the Earth's motion relative to the area of CMB emission, which is called the last scattering surface. Such a doppler effect arises because the Sun, and in fact the Milky Way as a whole, is not stationary, but rather is moving at nearly 600 km/s with respect to the last scattering surface. This is probably due to the gravitational attraction between our galaxy and a concentration of mass like the Great Attractor.

COBE

At that time, the CMB appeared to be perfectly uniform excluding the distortion caused by the Doppler effect as mentioned above. This result contradicted observations of the universe, with various structures such as galaxies, galaxy clusters, that indicate that the universe was relatively heterogeneous on a small scale. However, these structures formed slowly. Thus, if the universe is heterogeneous today, it would be heterogeneous at the time of the emission of the CMB as well, observable today through weak variations in the temperature of the CMB. It was the detection of these anisotropies that Smoot was working on in the late 1970s. He then proposed to NASA a project involving a satellite equipped with a detector that was similar to the one mounted on the U-2, but was more sensitive and not influenced by air pollution. The proposal was accepted and gave rise to the satellite COBE, and cost US$160 million. COBE was launched on November 18, 1989, after a delay owing to the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger. After more than two years of observation and analysis, the COBE research team announced on 23 April 1992 that the satellite had detected tiny fluctuations in the CMB, a breakthrough in the study of the early universe.The observations were "evidence for the birth of the universe" and Smoot said that "it's like looking at God."

The success of COBE was the outcome of prodigious team work involving more than 1,000 researchers, engineers and other participants. John Mather coordinated the entire process and also had primary responsibility for the experiment that revealed the blackbody form of the CMB measured by COBE. George Smoot had main responsibility for measuring the small variations in the temperature of the radiation.
Smoot collaborated with San Francisco Chronicle journalist Keay Davidson to write the general-audience book Wrinkles in Time, that chronicled his team's efforts.In the book The Very First Light, John Mather and John Boslough complement and broaden the COBE story as presented in Smoot's Wrinkles in Time.In this book Mather reported that George Smoot violated team policy by leaking news of COBE's discoveries to the press before NASA's formal announcement, a leak that, to Mather, smacked of self-promotion and betrayal. This report proved to be erroneous and Mather and Smoot have since reconciled.

Recent projects

After COBE, Smoot took part in another experiment involving a stratospheric balloon, MAXIMA, which had improved angular resolution compared to COBE, and refined the measurements of the anisotropies of the CMB. Smoot has continued CMB observations and analysis and is currently a collaborator on the third generation CMB anisotropy satellite Planck. He is also a collaborator in the design of the Supernova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP), a satellite which is proposed to measure the properties of dark energy.[14] He has also assisted in analyzing data from the Spitzer Space Telescope in connection with measuring far infrared background radiation.

from www.wikipedia.org


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Johannes Gutenberg

Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1400 – February 3, 1468) was a German goldsmith and printer, who is credited with inventing movable type printing in Europe (c. 1439) and mechanical printing globally. His major work, the Gutenberg Bible, also known as the 42-line bible, has been acclaimed for its high aesthetic and technical quality.

Among the specific contributions to printing that are attributed to Gutenberg are the design of metal movable type, the invention of a process for making such type in quantity (mass production), the use of oil-based ink, and the use of a wooden printing press similar to the screw olive and wine presses of the period. His truly epochal invention was the combination of these elements into a practical system. Gutenberg may have been familiar with printing; it is claimed that he had worked on copper engravings with an artist known as the Master of the Playing Cards. Gutenberg's method for making type is traditionally considered to have included a type metal alloy and a hand mould for casting type. It should be noted that new research may indicate that standardised moveable type was a more complex evolutionary process spread over multiple locations.


The use of movable type was a marked improvement on the handwritten manuscript, which was the existing method of book production in Europe, and upon woodblock printing, and revolutionized European book-making. Gutenberg's printing technology spread rapidly throughout Europe and is considered a key factor in the European Renaissance. Gutenberg remains a towering figure in the popular image; in 1999, the A&E Network ranked Gutenberg #1 on their "People of the Millennium" countdown, and in 1997, Time–Life magazine picked Gutenberg's invention as the most important of the second millennium.

Printing press

Around 1439, Gutenberg was involved in a financial misadventure making polished metal mirrors (which were believed to capture holy light from religious relics) for sale to pilgrims to Aachen: in 1439 the city was planning to exhibit its collection of relics from Emperor Charlemagne but the event was delayed by one year and the capital already spent could not be repaid. When the question of satisfying the investors came up, Gutenberg is said to have promised to share a "secret". It has been widely speculated that this secret may have been the idea of printing with movable type. Legend has it that the idea came to him "like a ray of light"

At least up to 1444, he lived in Strasbourg, most likely in the St. Arbogast suburb. It was in Strasbourg in 1440 that Gutenberg perfected and unveiled the secret of printing based on his research, mysteriously entitled Kunst und Aventur (art and enterprise). It is not clear what work he was engaged in, or whether some early trials with printing from movable type may have been conducted there. After this, there is a gap of four years in the record. In 1448, he was back in Mainz, where he took out a loan from his brother-in-law Arnold Gelthus, presumably for a printing press.

By 1450, the press was most likely in operation, and a German poem had been printed, possibly the first item to be printed there. Gutenberg was able to convince the wealthy moneylender Johann Fust for a loan of 800 guilders. Peter Schoeffer, who became Fust's son-in-law, also joined the enterprise. Shoeffer had worked as a scribe in Paris and designed some of the first typefaces.

Gutenberg's workshop was set up at Hof Humbrecht, a property belonging to a distant relative. It is not clear when Gutenberg conceived the Bible project, but for this he borrowed another 800 guilders from Fust, and work commenced in 1452. At the same time, the press was also printing other, more lucrative texts (possibly Latin grammars). There is also some speculation that there may have been two presses, one for the pedestrian texts, and one for the Bible. One of the profitmaking enterprises of the new press was the printing of thousands of indulgences for the church, documented from 1454–55.

In 1455 Gutenberg published his 42-line Bible, commonly known as the Gutenberg Bible. About 180 were printed, most on paper and some on vellum.

Court case

Sometime in 1455, there was a dispute between Gutenberg and Fust, and Fust demanded his money back, accusing Gutenberg of embezzling funds. Meanwhile the expenses of the Bible project had proliferated, and Gutenberg's debt now exceeded 2,000 guilders. Fust sued at the archbishop's court. A November 1455 legal document records that there was a partnership for a "project of the books," the funds for which Gutenberg had used for other purposes, according to Fust. The court decided in favour of Fust, giving him control over the Bible printing workshop and half of all printed Bibles.

Thus Gutenberg was effectively bankrupt, but it appears he retained (or re-started) a small printing shop, and participated in the printing of a bible in the town of Bamberg around 1459, for which he at least supplied the type. But since his printed books never carry his name or a date, it is difficult to be certain, and there is consequently a considerable scholarly literature. It is also possible that the large Catholicon dictionary, 300 copies of 744 pages, printed in Mainz in 1460, may have been executed in his workshop.

Meanwhile, the Fust–Schoeffer shop were the first to bring out a book with the printer's name and date, the Mainz Psalter of August 1457, and while proudly proclaiming the mechanical process by which it had been produced, it made no mention of Gutenberg.

Later life

In 1462, during a conflict between two archbishops, Mainz was sacked by archbishop Adolph von Nassau, and Gutenberg was exiled. An old man by now, he moved to Eltville where he may have initiated and supervised a new printing press belonging to the brothers Bechtermünze.

In January 1465, Gutenberg's achievements were recognized and he was given the title Hofmann (gentleman of the court) by von Nassau. This honour included a stipend, an annual court outfit, as well as 2180 liters of grain and 2000 liters of wine tax-free. It is believed he may have moved back to Mainz around this time, but this is not certain.

Gutenberg died in 1468 and was buried in the Franciscan church at Mainz, his contributions largely unknown. This church and the cemetery were later destroyed, and Gutenberg's grave is lost.

In 1504, he was mentioned as the inventor of typography in a book by Professor Ivo Wittig. It was not until 1567 that the first portrait of Gutenberg, almost certainly an imaginary reconstruction, appeared in Heinrich Pantaleon's biography of famous Germans.

from www.wikipedia.org


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Nikolaus Otto


Nikolaus August Otto (June 10, 1832 Holzhausen an der Haide, Nassau - January 26, 1891 Cologne) was the German inventor of the first internal-combustion engine to efficiently burn fuel directly in a piston chamber. Although other internal combustion engines had been invented (e.g. by Étienne Lenoir) these were not based on four separate strokes. The concept of four strokes is likely to have been around at the time of Otto's invention but he was the first to make it practical.

Otto and Langen
In 1864, Otto co-founded an engine manufacturing business in Cologne. Along with his business partner Eugen Langen he established “N.A. Otto & Cie.”. This company exists today as “Deutz AG”, who boasts the fact that they are the world's oldest engine manufacturers, with over 140 years of experience.

Engine development

The first major breakthrough at Otto's company was during its founding year, with the development of the "atmospheric gas power machine". This atmospheric engine was later awarded a Gold Medal at the World Exhibition in Paris as an economical drive engine for small businesses. Manufacturing of these engines began in 1868. In 1872 Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach joined his company for a while and together they produced the idea of the four-stroke cycle or, Otto cycle engine, which was first described in 1876.

This engine was designed as a stationary engine and in the action of the engine, the stroke is an upward or downward movement of a piston in a cylinder. Used later in an adapted form as an automobile engine, four up-down strokes are involved: (1) downward intake stroke—coal-gas and air enter the piston chamber, (2) upward compression stroke—the piston compresses the mixture, (3) downward power stroke—ignites the fuel mixture by electric spark, and (4) upward exhaust stroke—releases exhaust gas from the piston chamber. Otto only sold his engine as a stationary motor.

In 1879, working independently in another part of Germany, Karl Benz was granted a patent for his internal combustion engine.

In 1882, the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Wurzburg awarded Otto with an honorary doctorate.

That same year Daimler and Maybach left Deutz-AG-Gasmotorenfabrik and in 1890 would establish Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (Daimler Engines Company) or DMG. Its purpose was the construction of small, high speed engines based on the same technology.

In 1885 Karl Benz used his engine to propel a three-wheeled automobile that was granted a patent dated January 29, 1886. In the same year, Benz began production and sold automobiles.

The Otto Cycle engine patent was invalidated in 1886 when it was discovered that another inventor, Alphonse Beau de Rochas, had already described the four-stroke cycle principle in a privately published pamphlet.

In 1885 Daimler and Maybach designed and built a motorcycle with an engine of the Otto Cycle type that they patented. In 1886 they placed a stationary engine into a stagecoach as an experiment and, in 1889, designed and built their first automobile. DMG was founded in 1890. In 1892 they first sold an automobile to a customer.

In 1884, Otto once again revolutionized engine design. At this point in time internal combustion engines were stationary due to the fact that they could not run on liquid fuel. They were run with gas, and required a pilot light in order to operate. This changed with the introduction of a low-voltage magneto ignition. This electrical ignition system allows engines to use liquid fuel, making mobile use possible.

In 1900 Daimler died and in 1909 Maybach left Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft. In 1926, their successors at DMG merged with the Karl Benz company, forming Daimler-Benz.

Earlier patents

According to recent historical studies, the Italian inventors Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci patented a first working efficient version of an internal combustion engine in 1854 in London (pt. Num. 1072). It is claimed that the Otto engine is in many parts at least inspired from this precedent invention, but, as yet there is no documentation of knowledge about the Italian engine by Otto.

from www.wikipedia.org


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Marie Curie


Maria Skłodowska-Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 Juli 1934) adalah perintis dalam bidang radiologi dan pemenang Hadiah Nobel dua kali, yakni Fisika pada 1903 dan Kimia pada 1911. Ia mendirikan Curie Institute. Bersama dengan suaminya, Pierre Curie, ia menemukan unsur radium.

Curie adalah salah satu dari sedikit orang yang memenangi dua Hadiah Nobel dalam dua bidang, adalah salah satu peneliti terpenting dalam bidang radiasi dan efeknya sebagai perintis radiologi. Catatan miliknya bersifat radioaktif, sampai baru-baru ini seorang cucu perempuannya mendekontaminasinya.


Marie Curie dibesarkan di Polandia dalam keluarga guru. Karena krisis di Polandia, ia jatuh miskin dan harus hidup hemat. Yang lebih menyedihkan lagi, ia harus sembunyi-sembunyi untuk belajar ilmunya. Baru setelah dia pergi ke Paris untuk sekolah di Universitas Sorbonne maka dia dapat lebih leluasa untuk melakukan riset sampai akhirnya dari bekalnya itu dia mampu mengisolasi radium dari laboratorium tuanya yang sederhana; dari sinilah awal kepopulerannya.

Dedikasinya yang tinggi terhadap ilmu pengetahuan sangatlah tinggi. Sampai saat ini, belum ada lagi seorang perempuan dengan talenta dan dedikasi yang demikian besar terhadap ilmu pengetahuan. Marie Curie terus bekerja dan menyelediki nuklir dan radioaktif hanya di dalam laboratorium sederhana tanpa mau memikirkan diri sendiri. Bahkan ia tidak mau mendaftarkan penemuannya ke paten karena terlalu berpegang teguh pada prinsip, "ilmu pengetahuan adalah untuk umat manusia".

# Marie dan Pierre Curie dan Penemuan Polonium dan Radium - nobelprize.org
# Penghargaan Nobel dalam Fisika 1903 dan Penghargaan Nobel dalam Kimia 1911 pidato
penyerahan penghargaan Nobel
# Biografi singkat di nobel-winners.com; GFDL

from www.wikipedia.org


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Douglas Dean Osheroff


Douglas Dean Osheroff (born August 1, 1945) is an American physicist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1996 with David Lee and Robert C. Richardson for discovering the superfluidic nature of 3He. This discovery was made in 1971, while Osheroff was a graduate student at Cornell.

Osheroff, born in Aberdeen, Washington, earned his Bachelor's degree in 1967 from Caltech, where he was a student of Richard Feynman. He received a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1973.

He now teaches at Stanford University in the Departments of Physics and Applied Physics, where he served as chair for a period of time. His research is focused on phenomena that occur at extremely low temperatures.

Osheroff was selected to serve on the Space Shuttle Columbia investigation panel, serving much the same role as Richard Feynman did on the Space Shuttle Challenger panel.

He currently serves on the board of advisors of Scientists and Engineers for America, an organization focused on promoting sound science in American government.

Osheroff is left-handed, and he often blames his slight quirks and eccentricities on it. He is also an avid photographer and introduces students at Stanford to medium-format film photography in a freshman seminar titled "The Technical Aspects of Photography." In addition, he has taught the Stanford introductory physics course on electricity and magnetism on multiple occasions, most recently in Spring 2007. This is one of the larger classes at Stanford, with several hundred students enrolled.

External links

* Nobel Physics Prize Winners 1996
* Nobel autobiography
* Stanford Physics Department - Osheroff
* Osheroff Learning of his Nobel Prize - Osheroff released this recording from his answering machine, which showed his initial annoyance with a 2.30am phone call.
* Freeview video interview with Douglas Osheroff by the Vega Science Trust
* Curriculum vitae; awards; quotations on learning, physics, politics, global warming and pizza; links and more

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Albert Fert


Albert Fert (b. March 7, 1938) is a French physicist and one of the discoverers of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disks. He is currently professor at Université Paris-Sud in Orsay and scientific director of a joint laboratory ('Unité mixte de recherche') between the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (National Scientific Research Centre) and Thales Group. He was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Peter Grünberg.



Biography

Fert graduated in 1962 from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He received his master's degree in 1963 at the University of Paris, and earned his PhD in 1970 at the Université Paris-Sud.


In 1988 Fert discovered the Giant magnetoresistance effect (GMR) in multilayers of iron and chromium which is recognized as the birth of spintronics; GMR was simultaneously and independently discovered by Peter Grünberg from the Jülich Research Centre. Since 1988, Albert Fert has made contributions to the field of spintronics.

Awards

* American Physical Society International Prize for New Materials (1994)
* Grand prix de physique Jean Ricard of the French Physical Society (1994)
* International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Magnetism Award (1994)
* Hewlett-Packard Europhysics Prize (1997)
* Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Gold Medal (2003)
* Wolf Prize in Physics (2006)
* Japan Prize (2007)
* Elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 2004
* Nobel Prize in Physics (2007)

from www.wikipedia.org


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Tim Berners-Lee


Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA (born June 8, 1955) is an English developer who with the help of Robert Cailliau invented the World Wide Web. He is also the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (which oversees its continued development), and a senior researcher and holder of the 3Com Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).


Background and early career

Tim Berners-Lee was born in London, England, the son of Conway Berners-Lee and Mary Lee Woods. His parents, both mathematicians, were employed together on the team that built the Manchester Mark I, one of the earliest computers. They taught Berners-Lee to use mathematics everywhere, even at the dinner table. Berners-Lee attended Sheen Mount Primary School (which has dedicated a new hall in his honour) before moving on to study his O-Levels and A-Levels at Emanuel School in Wandsworth.


He is an alumnus of The Queen's College, Oxford where he played table tennis for Oxford, against rival Cambridge. While at Queen's, Berners-Lee built a computer with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television. During his time at university, he was caught hacking with a friend and was subsequently banned from using the university computer. He graduated in 1976 with a degree in physics.

He met his first wife Jane while at Oxford and they married soon after they started work in Poole. After graduation, Berners-Lee was employed at Plessey Controls Limited in Poole as a programmer. Jane also worked at Plessey Telecommunications Limited in Poole. In 1978, he worked at D.G. Nash Limited (also in Poole) where he wrote typesetting software and an operating system.

Inventing the World Wide Web

While an independent contractor at CERN ( The World's largest particle physics laboratory based in Switzerland) from June to December 1980, Berners-Lee proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers.[2] While there, he built a prototype system named ENQUIRE. After leaving CERN, in 1980, he went to work at John Poole's Image Computer Systems Ltd., he returned in 1984 as a fellow. In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet node in Europe, and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the Internet: "I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web."[3] He wrote his initial proposal in March of 1989, and in 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau, produced a revision which was accepted by his manager, Mike Sendall. He used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire system to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first web browser and editor (called WorldWideWeb and developed on NEXTSTEP) and the first Web server called httpd (short for HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon).

The first Web site built was at CERN and was first put online on 6 August 1991. It provided an explanation about what the World Wide Web was, how one could own a browser and how to set up a Web server. It was also the world's first Web directory, since Berners-Lee maintained a list of other Web sites apart from his own.

In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It comprised various companies that were willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Web. In December 2004 he accepted a chair in Computer Science at the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK, to work on his new project — the Semantic Web.

Berners-Lee made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. The World Wide Web Consortium decided that their standards must be based on royalty-free technology, so they can be easily adopted by anyone.

Current life

In 2001, he became a patron of the East Dorset Heritage Trust having previously lived in Colehill in Wimborne, East Dorset, England.

He is now living in Lexington, Massachusetts (USA) with his wife Nancy and two children, Alice and Ben.

As for religion, he left the Church of England, a religion in which he had been brought up, as a teenager just after being "confirmed" because he could not "believe in all kinds of unbelievable things." He and his family eventually found a Unitarian Universalist church while they were living in Boston. He appreciates Unitarian Universalism and hence settled in it.
He has become one of the leading voices in favour of Net Neutrality.

from www.wikipedia.org


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Vinton Cerf


Vinton Gray Cerf (born June 23, 1943) (IPA: [sɝf]) is an American computer scientist who is commonly referred to as one of the "founding fathers of the Internet" for his key technical and managerial role, together with Bob Kahn, in the creation of the Internet and the TCP/IP protocols which it uses.

He was also a co-founder (in 1992) of the Internet Society (ISOC) which is intended to both promote the views of ordinary users of the Internet, and also serve as an umbrella body for the technical groups developing the Internet (such as the Internet Engineering Task Force). He served as the first president of the Internet Society from 1992-1995, served on the board of trustees through the end of 2001, and served as chairman of the board from 1998 to 1999.


He has a hearing impairment, and serves on the board of Gallaudet University, the first school of higher learning for the deaf and hard-of-hearing; he received an award from the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. He and his family currently reside in Virginia.

Cerf joined the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1999, and is serving a term until the end of 2007; he used to be the ICANN Chair.

Cerf is a member of the Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov's IT Advisory Council, assigned with a Presidential Decree on March 8, 2002.[1] He is also a member of the Advisory Board of Eurasia Group, the political risk consultancy.

Cerf is also working on the Interplanetary Internet, together with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It will be a new standard to communicate from planet to planet, using radio/laser communications that are highly tolerant to signal degradation.

In February 2006, Cerf testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation's Hearing on “Network Neutrality”.

Cerf currently serves on the board of advisors of Scientists and Engineers for America, an organization focused on promoting sound science in American government.

Awards and honors

Cerf has received a number of honorary degrees, including doctorates, from the University of the Balearic Islands, ETH in Switzerland, Capitol College, Gettysburg College, George Mason University, University of Pisa, University of Rovira and Virgili (Tarragona, Spain), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of Lulea (Sweden), University of Twente (Netherlands), Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and Brooklyn Polytechnic.
Further awards include:
* Prince of Asturias award for science and technology
* Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery
* Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award
* SIGCOMM Award for "contributions to the Internet [spanning] more than 25 years, from development of the fundamental TCP/IP protocols".
* In December 1997 he, along with his partner Robert E. Kahn, was presented with the National Medal of Technology by President Bill Clinton, for their contributions towards the creation of the Internet and TCP/IP.
* He received the Living Legend Medal from the Library of Congress in April 2000
* Dr. Cerf was selected as a Fellow of the Association for Women in Science (AWIS)in 2000
* Cerf and Kahn were the winners of the Turing Award for 2004, for their "pioneering work on internetworking, including .. the Internet's basic communications protocols .. and for inspired leadership in networking."
* In November 2005, Vinton Cerf and Kahn were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush for their contributions to the creation of the Internet. [4]
* He and Robert Kahn were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2006.

from www.wikipedia.org


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Jawed Karim


Jawed Karim is a co-founder of the popular video sharing website YouTube.

Karim was born in Merseburg, East Germany, in 1979 and moved to West Germany in 1982. His father, Naimul Karim, is a Bangladeshi researcher at 3M. His mother, Christine Karim, is a research assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Minnesota.

Karim grew up in Germany, and his family moved to the United States in 1992. He graduated from Central High School (Saint Paul, Minnesota), and went on to attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He left campus prior to graduating to become an early employee at PayPal, but continued his coursework, earning his bachelor's degree in computer science in 2004.


While working at PayPal, he met Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. The three later founded the YouTube video sharing website in 2005. After co-founding the company and developing the YouTube concept and website with Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, Karim enrolled as a graduate student in computer science at Stanford University while acting as an advisor to YouTube. When YouTube was acquired by Google, Karim's 137,443 shares of stock were valued at $64.6 million, while his cofounders each earned around $326 million.

In October 2006, Jawed gave a lecture about the history of YouTube at the University of Illinois' annual ACM Conference entitled YouTube: From Concept to Hyper-growth. In his lecture he mentioned Wikipedia as being an innovative social experiment and added that he created the Air Force One article in 2002. He returned again to the University of Illinois in May 2007 as the 136th and youngest Commencement Speaker in Illinois history.

More recently, Jawed has launched a venture fund called Youniversity Ventures, with the goal of helping current and former university students to launch their business ideas.

from www.wikipedia.org

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Chad Hurley


Chad Meredith Hurley (born 1977) is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of the popular San Bruno, California-based video sharing website YouTube, one of the biggest providers of videos on the Internet. In June 2006, he was voted 28th on Business 2.0's "50 people who matter" list. In October 2006 he sold YouTube for $1.65 billion to Google.

According to an October 10, 2006 Wall Street Journal article, he worked in eBay's PayPal division -- one of his tasks involved designing the original PayPal logo -- before starting YouTube with fellow PayPal colleagues Steve Chen and Jawed Karim.

According to a March 1, 2006 online Newsweek column, Hurley is a user interface expert and was primarily responsible for the tagging and video sharing aspects of the site.

Early Years

Chad Hurley grew up near Birdsboro, Pennsylvania, with an older sister (Heather) and a younger brother (Brent). His parents are Donald Hurley, a financial consultant, and JoAnn, a school teacher. Since childhood, he showed interest in the arts.

He graduated from Twin Valley High School, Elverson in 1995, where his mother still teaches the Gifted program and Math. He then went on to receive his B.A. in Fine Art from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He was a stand-out runner for Twin Valley High School's vaunted Cross Country program, which won two of its numerous PIAA State titles with him as a member in 1992 and 1994. He was also member of the Technology Student Association during high school.
Working for PayPal

When he was about to graduate, Hurley heard of then-new company PayPal that, at the time dedicated to enable PDA users to send money among themselves. Hurley sent his resume and received a job interview. After flying to California, he was asked to design a logo to show his skills. The result is the current logo of PayPal that now dedicates to securing all kinds of online transactions.

Also, it was during his days at PayPal that he met Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, two PayPal engineers with whom he talked about several ideas for businesses. In 2002, when eBay bought PayPal for $1.54 billion, Hurley received a bonus which he used to finance their future venture. Another link that helped their future venture was their connection to Roelof Botha, the South African former PayPal CFO.

Birth of YouTube

YouTube was born when the founders (Hurley, Chen, and Karim) wanted to share some videos from a dinner party with friends in San Francisco in January 2005. Sending the clips around by e-mail was a bust: The e-mails kept getting rejected because they were so big. Posting the videos online was a headache, too. So they got to work to design something simpler.

In 11 months the site became one of the most popular on the Internet because the founders designed it so people can post almost anything they like on YouTube in minutes. Members, who can comment on videos and set up their own sites on YouTube, add tens of thousands (or more) new videos a day. Steve Chen points out that "From Day One we concentrated on building a service and community around video. That made us a lot different from the iTunes and the Googles out there."

However, some users have been posting videos that are still under copyright, without any of the required legal approvals. YouTube normally does not screen out copyrighted works before they're posted, but they do comply with all such requests. Although this raises potentially thorny problems, Sequoia Capital is betting on YouTube, having invested $3.5 million. But skeptics wonder if the startup can balance its surging popularity with the looming legal risks. "I think YouTube is fantastic," said Joanne Bradford, head of sales at MSN and other Microsoft properties. "But five years from now I don't know how they make their money. Their problem is all the pirated content"

Sale of YouTube

On October 16, 2006, Chen and Hurley sold YouTube to Google, Inc. for $1.65 billion.

It was reported in the Wall Street Journal that Chad Hurley's share in the $1.65B sale of Youtube.com is $345.6M at Google's Feb. 7, 2007 closing stock price of $470.01. He received 694,087 Google shares directly and another 41,232 shares in a trust. His other two co-founders, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim received 625,366 shares and 137,443 shares respectively valued at $326.2M and $64.6M. The journal's report was based on Google's registration statement with SEC filed on Feb. 7, 2007.

articel from www.wikipedia.org


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SOICHIRO HONDA


Soichiro Honda (Honda Sō'ichirō, 17 November 1906–5 Agustus 1991) adalah seorang industrialis Jepang yang dilahirkan di Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Jepang.

Honda menghabiskan masa kecilnya membantu ayahnya dalam bisnis reparasi sepeda. Pada saat 15 tahun, tanpa pendidikan formal, Honda pindah ke Tokyo untuk mencari kerja. Dia bekerja magang di sebuah bengkel pada 1922, dan setelah mempertimbangkan pekerjaannya, ia tetap bekerja di sana selama enam tahun lagi sebelum kembali ke kampung halamannya untuk memulai usaha reparasi mobilnya pada 1928 dalam usia 22 tahun.

Honda menyukai balapan otomotif dan menciptakan rekor kecepatan pada 1936. Dia kemudian mengalami cedera dalam sebuah kecelakaan yang parah - tulangnya patah termasuk di kedua pergelangan tangannya - dan berhasil dibujuk istrinya untuk berhenti membalap. Honda lalu berkonsentrasi pada usahanya, dan pada 1937 dia pindah ke pembuatan cincin-piston dengan mendirikan Industri Berat Tokai Seiki (IBTS). Pada 1948 dia menjual IBTS kepada Toyota seharga 450.000 yen (kira-kira sama dengan 1 juta dolar AS jika diukur pada tahun 2003).

Pada 1948 Honda memulai produksi sepeda motor sebagai presiden Honda Corporation. Honda mengubah perusahaan tersebut menjadi sebuah perusahaan multinasional berharga milyaran yang memproduksi sepeda motor terlaris di dunia. Rekayasa mesin Honda yang sangat baik dan pemasaran yang pintar membuat Honda berhasil melebihi penjualan sepeda motor Triumph dan Harley-Davidson di pasaran lokal mereka masing-masing.

Honda tetap menjabat presiden perusahaan hingga dia pensiun pada 1973, kemudian tinggal sebagai direktur dan diangkat sebagai "penasehat tertinggi" pada 1983. Setelah pensiun Honda menyibukkan dirinya dengan pekerjaan yang berhubungan dengan Yayasan Honda. Dia meninggal pada 1991 karena gagal lever.

Perjalanan hidup dan karirnya

Sochiro Honda lahir sebagai anak pertama seorang pandai besi bernama Gihei Honda, pada 1906 di sebuah desa kecil bernama Komyo (sekarang bernama Tenryu), Jepang. Ia tidak mengenyam pendidikan formal memadai dan tidak cemerlang di sekolah. Namun memiliki semangat dan cita-cita yang sangat tinggi.

Berbagai literatur menyebutkan bahwa awal ketertarikannya pada dunia diawali pada usia yang sangat muda. Pada tahun 1922 dia bekerja pada bengkel Art Shokai, tidak meneruskan keahlian ayahnya sebagai seorang pandai besi. Pekerjaannya tidak langsung berhubungan dengan mesin seperti yang dia inginkan namun sebagai seorang tenaga cleaning service sambil mengasuh bayi dari pemilik bengkel, sampai pemilik bengkel menemukan bakat Honda yang sesungguhnya. Enam tahun kemudian dia dipercaya membuka bengkel cabang Art Shokai di Hamamatsu. bengkel itulah yang membuka jalan selanjutnya.

Awalnya, dia merasa bahwa bengkel miliknya adalah yang satu-satunya di kota itu, namun tak lama kemudian dia dihadapkan pada kenyataan bahwa dia tidak sendirian. Segera muncul pesaing-pesaing baru namun ia memiliki 2 langkah untuk memenangkan persaingan. Pertama ia menerima perbaikan yang ditolak sebelumnya oleh bengkel lainnya dan kedua adalah bekerja secepat mungkin sehingga pelanggan tidak butuh waktu lama untuk menunggu.

Namun Sochiro bukan tipe yang puas dengan satu keberhasilan. Dia banyak menginginkan gagasan yang perlu diwujudkan. Contohnya ide membuat velg dengan jari-jari logam menggantikan jari-jari kayu. Obsesinya membuatring piston yang saat itu masih sulit untuk didapat. Masa itu, buatan luar negeri jarang yang sempurna dan sukar dibuat. Ring piston itulah yang membuat dirinya kembali ke sekolah pada usia 28 tahun setelah bergulat dengan berbagai macam percobaan, ring piston yang dibuatnya tidak sesuai harapannya. Butuh tiga tahun untuk mewujudkan proyek ring piston ini. Namun di masa perang dunia akhirnya menjadi penyuplai industri militer.

Setelah perang usai, ia muncul ide memasang mesin pada sepeda yang merupakan cikal bakal sepeda motor di kemudian hari. Awalnya ia memanfaatkan mesin-mesin bekas perang. Sewaktu buatannya dijual, respon masyarakat luar biasa. Dagangannya cepat laku hingga mendorongnya untuk membuat sepeda motor yang sebenarnya. Pada 24 September 1948 didirikannya Honda Motor Company. Prototype pertamanya sendiri lahir pada Agustus 1948 yang dinamai "Dream" (Seperti halnya spirit dan filosofi Honda Company, "The power of The Dream").

Meski sepeda motornya sukses, Honda ternyata terbentur masalah finansial bahkan terancam bangkrut. Ia memang seorang penemu dan mekanik yang hebat namun tidak pandai mengelola keuangan. Inilah yang kemudian mempertemukan dirinya dengan Takeo Fujisawa orang yang sangat berpengaruh pada kelangsungan bisnis Honda selanjutnya. Saat itu Honda berusia 42 Tahun dan Fujisawa berusia 38 tahun. Dengan mimpi dan keinginannya untuk menjangkau dunia, dan itulah yang terjadi selanjutnya sehingga produk-produk Honda tak hanya menjadi nomor 1 di Jepang tetapi juga di Amerika dan di belahan lainnya.

Di mata karyawannya, Sochiro terkenal keras, bahkan tak jarang dia "main tangan" dalam arti yang sesungguhnya. Bekerja dengan Sochiro berarti ada dua pilihan: pindah ke perusahaan lain atau belajar dengannya. Satoshi Okubo, salah seorang chairman Honda, seperti yang dikutip Robert L Shook dalam bukunya, Honda an American Succes Story, mengatakan : "pada tahun 1950-an tidak banyak lowongan pekerjaan pada perusahaan besar. Saya ingat ucapan Sochiro Honda dihadapan karyawan baru bahwa perusahaan lain mungkin tidak mempertimbangkan anda, tapi kami percaya pada anda semua, kalau ingin keluar silahkan. Beritahu kami jika ada yang tidak puas dan kalau ada kesempatan yang lebih baik silahkan ambil". Namun kekerasan Sochiro biasanya mencair ketika acara minum sake bersama. Di saat itu dia dikenal menjadi murah hati dan penuh welas asih.

Selain mencintai dunia permesinan, Sochiro sendiri tergila-gila dalam dunia balap. Itu pula yang kemudian menjadi kunci suksesnya. Dari arena balap, dia mendapatkan masukan berharga bagi pengembangan produknya. Bahkan ketika baru memasuki dunia pembuatan mobil pada tahun 1962, hanya 2 tahun sesudahnya, ia langsung merealisasikan idamannya, terjun di arena Formula 1. Sedangkan di kancah produksi massal, Honda menelurkan produk yang sangat disukai pasar, hemat bahan bakar dan berkecepatan tinggi, yang menjadi trade merk Honda hingga sekarang.

Pengagum Napoleon Bonaparte ini dikenal sebagai antinepotisme. Ia tidak suka menempatkan keluarganya di posisi penting begitu saja. Ketika ia pensiun pada 1973, ia menyerahkan pimpinannya pada Kiyoshi Kawashima. Sochiro meninggal pada tahun 1991 di usia 84 akibat penyakit liver. Meninggalkan istrinya, Sachi dan seorang anak laki-laki serta dua anak perempuan.
Diperoleh dari http://id.wikipedia.org


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Carlos Slim Helú


Carlos Slim Helú Aglamaz (lahir 28 Januari 1940) adalah seorang usahawan di bidang industri komunikasi, perusahaan telekomunikasi Teléfonos de México dan América Móvil. Pada tanggal 3 Juli 2007, sebuah laporan dari jurnalis finansial asal Meksiko Eduardo Garcia menunjukan bahwa kekayaan Slim (US$67.8 milyar) telah melebihi kekayaan pendiri Microsoft Bill Gates (US$59.2 milyar), menjadikannya sebagai orang terkaya di dunia.


Ayahnya adalah Julian Slim Haddad Aglamaz, seorang Kristen Maronite Lebanon yang pada masa mudanya kabur ke Meksiko pada tahun 1902 untuk menghindari pemerintahan militer keras dari Kekaisaran Ottoman. Ayahnya dan dua kakaknya tiba di pelabuhan Meksiko Tampico, lalu ke Kota Mexico, di mana pada tahun 1911, Julian mendirikan toko bahan kering disebut La Estrella del Oriente dan bertaruh dan membeli beberapa real estate utama di pusat kota -- dan keluar sebagai sebuah langkah yang tepat.

"Itu adalah keberanian", kata Slim Helu, "Dia mengajarkan saya tak peduli seberapa jelek krisis yang terjadi, Meksiko tidak akan menghilang, dan bila saya memiliki kepercayaan pada negara ini, investasi yang cermat akhirnya akan membayar.

from www.wikipedia.org


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Roman Abramovich


Roman Arkadievich Abramovich(lahir 24 Oktober 1966 di Saratov, Rusia), adalah seorang milyarder Rusia dan pemilik perusahaan investasi Millhouse Capital, dianggap sebagai salah seorang oligarki Rusia. Menurut majalah Forbes 2006, pada 13 Februari 2006 ia memiliki kekayaan bersih sebesar US$ 18.2 milyar dan menurut majalah Finance Rusia pada Januari 2007 kekayaannya mencapai US$ 21 milyar . Ia dianggap sebagai orang terkaya yang tinggal di Inggris Raya pada tahun 2003.

Penekanan pengucapan nama keluarganya sering pada suku kata kedua (Abrámovich) bila dilafalkan dalam Bahasa Inggris, sedangkan dalam bahasa asalnya Rusia ditekan pada suku kata ketiga (Abramóvich).


Di Rusia, Abramovich adalah seorang gubernur untuk provinsi Chukotka, ia terpilih pada tahun 2000. Di luar Rusia, ia terkenal sebagai pemilik klub sepakbola Liga Primer Inggris Chelsea, dan peranannya yang penting pada sepakbola Eropa. Selain hal-hal tersebut, kegiatan Abramovich lainnya tidak diketahui oleh publik.

Masa Kecil dan Pendidikan

Ayahnya adalah seorang Yahudi, dan ibunya adalah seorang Rusia. Kakek-nenek Roman dari sisi ayah dibuang ke Siberia dari Tauragė, Lithuania oleh pemerintah Uni Sovyet setelah pendudukan Lithuania pada tahun 1940.Roman dibesarkan sebagai seorang yatim piatu. Ibunya, Irina Ostrowski Abramovich, meninggal karena penyakit bakteremia karena aborsi saat Roman berusia satu tahun.Ayahnya Arkady Abramovich terbunuh pada sebuah kecelakaan di proyek pembangunan saat Roman berusia tiga tahun.Abramovich dibesarkan oleh pamannya di Ukhta and dan oleh neneknya di Moskow. Sebelum pindah ke Moskow ia dan saudara perempuannya tinggal di Syktyvkar, ibukota Republik Komi. Abramovich bersekolah di Institut Industri di kota Ukhta sebelum mengikuti wajib militer pada Angkatan Bersenjata Uni Sovyet. Setelah mengikuti wajib militer ia sempat berkuliah sebentar di Institut Auto Transport Negeri di Moskow sebelum mengambil cuti untuk berbisnis. Ia akhirnya mendapatkan gelar dari Akademi Hukum Negeri Moskow dengan sistem pembelajaran jarak jauh.

Kesuksesan Bisnis

Abramovich mendapatkan kekayaannya dengan membeli saham-saham industri-industri yang baru diprivatisasikan setelah jatuhnya komunisme dengan harga murah. Ia pernah menjadi pemegang saham terbesar di Sibneft, sebuah perusahaan minyak besar, dan juga pemegang saham yang penting di RusAl, produsen aluminium terbesar kedua di dunia, dan beberapa perusahaan lainnya.

Abramovich dan Sepakbola Eropa

[sunting] Chelsea F.C.
Stamford Bridge, stadion Chelsea
Stamford Bridge, stadion Chelsea

Pada bulan Juni 2003, ia menjadi pemilik perusahaan-perusahaan yang mengendalikan Klub Sepakbola Chelsea di Inggris. Sebelumnya ia telah mempertimbangkan untuk membeli beberapa klub lainnya sebelum akhirnya ia membeli Chelsea, yang saat itu mengalami kesulitan finansial. Pembelian ini membuatnya menjadi terkenal di Inggris. Segera setelah Abramovich mengendalikan Chelsea, ia menanamkan modal dalam jumlah besar (diperkirakan mencapai £ 440 juta sampai Januari 2006), dengan memperhitungkan pengambilalihan beban hutang sebesar £ 80 juta dan transfer-transfer pemain.

Klub ini juga meluncurkan sebuah program ambisius pada pengembangan komersial, dengan tujuan menjadi merk yang mendunia, dan mengumumkan rencana membangun sebuah kompleks latihan mewah yang baru Cobham, Surrey.Chelsea mengakhiri musim pertamanya setelah pengambilalihan pada posisi ke-2 di Premiership, dari posisi ke-4 pada musim sebelumnya dan mencapai tahap semifinal pada Liga Champion Eropa. Manajer baru, José Mourinho, direkrut dan Chelsea mengakhiri musim berikutnya sebagai juara liga, pertama setelah 50 tahun. Setelah lima tahun pengambilalihan klub ini telah memenangkan lima trofi utama, terbanyak dibandingkan klub-klub lainnya dalam periode yang sama. Saat ini mereka menjadi salah satu kekuatan utama dalam sepakbola Inggris

CSKA Moscow

Pada bulan Maret 2004, Sibneft menyetujui kontrak sponsor selama tiga tahun dengan nilai US$ 58 juta dengan klub sepakbola CSKA Moscow. Karena perusahaan tersebut mengungkapkan bahwa keputusan dilakukan oleh tingkat manajemen puncak, diduga bahwa ini merupakan usaha Abramovich untuk menangkal tuduhan 'tidak patriotik' saat ia mengambil alih Chelsea. Peraturan UEFA melarang satu orang memiliki lebih dari satu tim yang berpartisipasi dalam kompetisi UEFA, karenanya Abramovich tidak dapat memiliki saham di CSKA. Berdasarkan investigasi khusus yang dilakukan UEFA, akhirnya ia dinyatakan bebas dari konflik kepentingan antara kedua klub.Walaupun demikian, ia disebut sebagai orang yang paling berpengaruh dalam sepakbola Rusia oleh sebuah majalah Rusia Pro Sport pada akhir Juni 2004. Pada bulan Mei 2005, CSKA memenangkan gelar Piala UEFA, klub Eropa pertama yang berhasil memenangkan kejuaran Eropa. Namun pada bulan Oktober 2005 Abramovich menjual seluruh sahamnya di Sibfnet dan pemilik perusahaan yang baru Gazprom, yang sebelumnya telah mensponsori klub sepakbola FC Zenit Saint Petersburg, membatalkan kesepakatan sponsor tersebut.

Keluarga, Minat dan Kegiatan Lainnya

Abramovich menikah dia kali, dengan Olga (bercerai 1990), dan dengan Irina (terlahir dengan nama Malandina) pada tahun 1991 (bercerai 2007).

Pada tanggal 15 October 2006, surat kabar News of the World melaporkan bahwa Iria telah menyewa dua pengacara perceraian terkemuka di Inggris, setelah mendapat laporan hubungan dekat Abramovich dengan seorang gadis cantik yang berusia 23 tahun Daria Zhukova, bekas pacar petenis terkemuka Rusia Marat Safin. Perceraian ini mungkin akan menjadi rekor perceraian termahal (diperkirakan melibatkan uang sebesar £5.5 miliar). Abramovich menyatakan belum berkonsultasi dengan pengacaranya tentang perceraian tersebut.However, they later divorced in Russia in March 2007, with a settlement reported as being $300 million.

Roman Abramovich juga mensponsori pameran fotografi seorang fotografer Uzbekistan (dulu Uni Sovyet) Max Penson (1893–1959) yang dibuka pada tanggal 29 November 2006 yang dilaksanakan di Gilbert Collection yang bertempat di Somerset House London. Sebelumnya ia juga telah mendanai pameran fotografi "Quiet Resistance: Russian Pictorial Photography 1900s-1930s" di galeri yang sama tahun 2005.Kedua pameran tersebut dikelola oleh Moscow House of Photography.

from www.wikipedia.org


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Enzo Anselmo Ferrari


Enzo Anselmo Ferrari (February 20, 1898 - August 14, 1988) was the founder of the Scuderia Ferrari Grand Prix motor racing team, and subsequently of the Ferrari car manufacturer.

Biography

For a History of the racing team, see Scuderia Ferrari

Born in Modena, Enzo Ferrari grew up with little formal education but a strong desire to race cars. During World War I he was a mule-skinner in the Italian Army. His father, Alfredo, died in 1916 as a result of a widespread Italian flu outbreak. Enzo became sick himself and was consequently discharged from Italian service. Upon returning home he found that the family firm had collapsed. Having no other job prospects he sought unsuccessfully to find work at Fiat and eventually settled for a job at a smaller car company called CMN redesigning used truck bodies into small passenger cars. He took up racing in 1919 on the CMN team, but had little initial success.


He left CMN in 1920 to work at Alfa Romeo and racing their cars in local races he had more success. In 1923, racing in Ravenna, he acquired the Prancing Horse badge which decorated the fuselage of Francesco Baracca's (Italy's leading ace of WWI) SPAD fighter, given from his mother, taken from the wreckage of the plane after his mysterious death. This icon would have to wait until 1932 to be plastered on a racing car. In 1924 he won the Coppa Acerbo at Pescara. His successes in local races encouraged Alfa to offer him a chance of much more prestigious competition and he was lauded by Mussolini. Ferrari turned this opportunity down and in something of a funk he did not race again until 1927 and even then his racing career was mostly over. He continued to work directly for Alfa Romeo until 1929 before starting Scuderia Ferrari as the racing team for Alfa.
The racecar drivers Enzo Ferrari (1st from left), Tazio Nuvolari (4th) and Achille Varzi (6th) of Alfa Romeo with Prospero Gianferrari (3rd) at Colle Maddalena
The racecar drivers Enzo Ferrari (1st from left), Tazio Nuvolari (4th) and Achille Varzi (6th) of Alfa Romeo with Prospero Gianferrari (3rd) at Colle Maddalena

Ferrari managed the development of the factory Alfa cars, and built up a team of over forty drivers, including Giuseppe Campari and Tazio Nuvolari. Ferrari himself continued racing until the birth of his first son in 1932 (Alfredo Ferrari, known as Dino, who died in 1956).

The support of Alfa Romeo lasted until 1933 when financial constraints made Alfa withdraw. Only at the intervention of Pirelli did Ferrari receive any cars at all. Despite the quality of the Scuderia drivers the company won few victories (1935 in Germany by Nuvolari was a notable exception). Auto Union and Mercedes dominated the era.

In 1937 Alfa took control of its racing efforts again, reducing Ferrari to Director of Sports under Alfa's engineering director. Ferrari soon left, but a contract clause restricted him from racing or designing for four years.

He set up Auto-Avio Costruzioni, a company supplying parts to other racing teams. But in the Mille Miglia of 1940 the company manufactured two cars to compete, driven by Alberto Ascari and Lotario Rangoni. During World War II his firm was involved in war production and following bombing relocated from Modena to Maranello. It was not until after World War II that Ferrari sought to shed his fascist reputation and make cars bearing his name, founding today's Ferrari S.p. A. in 1945.

The first open-wheeled race was in Turin in 1948 and the first victory came later in the year in Lago di Garda. Ferrari participated in the Formula 1 World Championship since its introduction in 1950 but the first victory was not until the British Grand Prix of 1951. The first championship came in 1952-53, when the Formula One season was raced with Formula Two cars. The company also sold production sports cars in order to finance the racing endeavours not only in Grand Prix but also in events such as the Mille Miglia and Le Mans. Indeed many of the firm's greatest victories came at Le Mans (14 victories, including six in a row 1960-65) rather than in Grand Prix, certainly the company was more involved there than in Formula One during the 1950s and 1960s despite the successes of Juan-Manuel Fangio (1956), Mike Hawthorn (1958), Phil Hill (1961) and John Surtees (1964).

In the 1960s the problems of reduced demand and inadequate financing forced Ferrari to allow Fiat to take a stake in the company. Ferrari had offered Ford the opportunity to buy the firm in 1963 for US$18 million but, late in negotiations, Ferrari withdrew. This decision triggered the Ford Motor Company's decision to launch a serious European sports car racing program. The company became joint-stock and Fiat took a small share in 1965 and then in 1969 they increased their holding to 50% of the company. (In 1988 Fiat's holding was increased to 90%).

Ferrari remained managing director until 1971. Despite stepping down he remained an influence over the firm until his death. The input of Fiat took some time to have effect. It was not until 1975 with Niki Lauda that the firm won any championships — the skill of the driver and the ability of the engine overcoming the deficiencies of the chassis and aerodynamics. But after those successes and the promise of Jody Scheckter title in 1979, the company's Formula One championship hopes fell into the doldrums. 1982 opened with a strong car, the 126C2, world-class drivers, and promising results in the early races.

However, Gilles Villeneuve was killed in the 126C2 in May, and teammate Didier Pironi had his career cut short in a violent end over end flip on the misty backstraight at Hockenheim in August. Pironi was leading the driver's championship at the time; he would lose the lead as he sat out the remaining races. The team would not see championship glory again during Ferrari's lifetime.

Enzo Ferrari died in Modena in 1988 at the age of 90 at the beginning of the dominance of the McLaren Honda combination. The only race which McLaren did not win in 1988 was the Italian Grand Prix - this was held just weeks after Enzo's death, and, fittingly, the result was a 1-2 finish for Ferrari, with Gerhard Berger leading home Michele Alboreto. After Enzo's death, the Scuderia Ferrari team has had further success, notably with Michael Schumacher from 1996-2006. He witnessed the launch of the one of the greatest road cars the Ferrari F40 shortly before his death, which was dedicated as a symbol of his achievements. In 2003 the first car to be named after him was launched in the Enzo Ferrari.

Made a Cavaliere del Lavoro in 1952, to add to his honours of Cavaliere and Commendatore in the 1920s, Enzo also received a number of honorary degrees, the Hammarskjöld Prize in 1962, the Columbus Prize in 1965, and the De Gasperi Award in 1987. In 1994, he was posthumously inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame. Enzo famously used purple ink in his fountain pen, although the reason for this remains unclear.

After the death of his son, Alfredo "Dino" Ferrari, Enzo wore sunglasses just about every day to honor his son.

from www.wikipedia.org

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Peter Sauber


Peter Sauber was born in Zurich, Switzerland on October 13, 1943. He is famous in motor-racing circles for being the team principal and owner of the Sauber Formula One (also see BMW Sauber) team.

Early involvement

After being trained as an electrician, Peter Sauber took the plunge into adult life, taking on a role as a car salesman in Hinwil, Switzerland. This was Sauber's first real association with the automobile, and it proved to be the catalyst for his involvement in motor-racing.


Sauber's motorsport connection was somewhat paradoxical, given that racing in his native land had been banned after the Le Mans tragedy of 1955. That said, he still managed to compete in hillclimbing events in the Volkswagen Beetle he'd purchased—and thus, laid the foundations for his first project as a team owner.

After opting not to take on the family traffic light business, Peter built the Sauber C1 in his parents' basement. It was a car of tubular frame, powered by a 1-litre Ford Cosworth engine. He subsequently drove it to the 1970 Swiss hillclimb championship. It also remained in racing for ten years in the hands of other drivers, notably Friedrich Hürzeler, who took the 1974 crown in the car.

In 1971, Sauber handed over the drivers seat to Hans Kunis, who drove the new Sauber C2 model in the same series, as Peter himself had done so the year before.

Sauber had started to gain a portfolio of customers and in 1973, Sauber built three C3 spec chassis for different customers. Designed by Guy Boisson, the car was used predominantly in the Swiss Sports car Championship.

The C4 of 1975 heralded the first aluminium chassis developed by the team, and Boisson was joined by Edy Wiss in designing it, and only one C4 was ever produced.

The most successful of the early Sauber cars, the C5 was used to great effect in conjunction with its 2 litre BMW engine—taking the 1976 Interserie Championship in the hands of Herbert Muller.

Being a group six sports car, the car was allowed to take part in the legendary Le Mans 24 heures race, and Sauber entered the C5 in both 1977 and 1978. In '77 the car led its class before retiring, with the same thing happening in '78.

1979 marked the end of Sauber's first foray into sports car building - and the start of preparing chassis for Lola F2 cars. The drivers finished 1-2-4 in the championship that year - one of them wasc Max Wietl, who subsequently joined the team as team manager.

In 1980, and 1981, Sauber and Wietl turned their attentions to developing BMW M1 sportscars, in the latter year it won the 1000km Nürburgring.

In 1982, with BASF sponsorship, Sauber returned to sports car racing. The C6 was the first car to be tested in a windtunnel by Sauber. It was during these tests that Sauber built up a strong relationship with Leo Ress, who would later become instrumental in the F1 project.

In 1985, the teams relationship with Mercedes-Benz began. This sports car partnership culminated in November 1991 - having ignited the career of the legendary Michael Schumacher and Sauber's very own protégé Karl Wendlinger.

Formula One

Sauber now began to look seriously at launching an F1 team. In the summer of 1991 Harvey Postlethwaite joined the team to design an F1 car and Mercedes funded a vast new factory at Hinwil.

In November 1991 Mercedes decided against direct involvement and so Sauber entered F1 by itself in 1993, with drivers JJ Lehto and Wendlinger powered by engines built by Ilmor but rebadged as Saubers. Sauber did convince Mercedes to enter F1 in 1994 but a year later the German company did a deal with McLaren, leaving Sauber to become the Ford F1 works team. This was followed by a deal with the Malaysian oil company Petronas in 1995 and the establishment of an engineering company called Sauber Petronas Engineering to design and build V10 engines. The company began buying old Ferrari engines and rebadging them as Sauber Petronas V10s but the F1 engine program itself was scrapped in 1998. In recent years Sauber has been very successful with the team finishing fourth in the World Championship in 2001 and fifth in 2002 despite having a much smaller budget than many of its rivals.

fro www.wikipedia.org


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Jerry Yang


Jerry Chih-Yuan Yang (traditional Chinese: 楊致遠; simplified Chinese: 杨致远; pinyin: Yáng Zhìyuǎn; born November 6, 1968) is a Taiwanese American entrepreneur, co-founder with David Filo and CEO of Yahoo! Inc. He is also one of the two Chief Yahoo!s and board director of the company. As of 2007 his net worth is estimated to be US$2.2 billion and is ranked 432nd among the world's richest people according to Forbes.

Early life

Born in the capital city of Taipei, Taiwan on November 6, 1968, Yang moved to San Jose, California at the age of ten, with his mother and brother. His father had died when Yang was two. He claimed that despite his mother being an English teacher, he only knew one English word (shoe) on his arrival. Mastering the English language in only three years, he was soon[citation needed] placed into an AP English class.



Yang graduated from Sierramont Middle School, and Piedmont Hills High School, then went on to receive his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

Career

While he studied in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, he co-created in April 1994 with David Filo an Internet website consisting of a directory of other websites called "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web". It was renamed Yahoo, a backronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle", but Yang and Filo insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth". Yahoo became very popular, Yang and Filo realized the business potential and co-founded Yahoo! Inc. in April 1995. They took a leave of absence and postponed their doctoral programs indefinitely.

Yahoo! started off as a web portal with a web directory to providing an extensive range of products and services for online activities, it is now one of the leading internet brands and has the most trafficked network on the internet

Yang is married to Akiko Yamazaki, who was raised in Costa Rica. She graduated from Stanford University with a degree in industrial engineering. The couple met at the Stanford in Kyoto overseas program in 1992.

Yang is currently on the Board of Directors of Alibaba, the Asian Pacific Fund, Cisco and Yahoo! Japan, and is also on the Stanford University Board of Trustees.

In February 2007, Jerry Yang and his wife pledged USD $75 million to Stanford University, their alma mater, the bulk of which would be dedicated to the building of a new environmental building on campus.

Jerry Yang was criticised for his statement regarding the role of Yahoo! in the arrest of Shi Tao by Chinese authorities.

Shi Tao was convicted for “divulging state secrets abroad” after he used a Yahoo! e-mail address to send a report declaring that the Chinese media was ordered not to cover the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 on June 4th to a pro-democracy Web site run by a Chinese emigre in New York.

Yahoo! was criticised for providing the Chinese security agencies with the IP addresses of the senders, the recipients and the time of the message. Reporters Without Borders called Yahoo! “a Chinese police informant” whose shameful behavior led to the conviction of a reputable journalist and writer.

Jerry Yang declared "To be doing business in China, or anywhere else in the world, we have to comply with local law[s]." This was controversial, as critics claimed Yahoo! violated international law as well as a 1989 decision by the U.S. Congress to prohibit U.S. companies from selling "crime control and detection" equipment or software to the Chinese Government.

The New York Times reported that political prisoner Wang Xiaoning and other journalists had brought a civil suit against Yahoo for aiding and abetting the Chinese government which resulted in torture that included beatings and imprisonment.

More recently Jerry Yang was summoned to Washington to answer for Yahoo's misleading comments regarding its role in the arrests of Shi Tao and other journalists in China.

from www.wikipedia.org

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Sakichi Toyoda


Sakichi Toyoda (豊田 佐吉 Toyoda Sakichi, 14 Februari 1867 – 30 Oktober 1930) adalah penemu dan industrialis Jepang yang ikut mendirikan Toyota Industries. Ia dilahirkan di Kosai, Shizuoka sebagai anak tukang kayu yang miskin, tapi begitu sukses hingga dikenal sebagai bapak revolusi industri Jepang. Julukannya adalah "Raja Penemu dari Jepang".

Toyoda menciptakan berbagai jenis mesin tenun. Penemuannya yang paling terkenal adalah mesin tenun sistem otomatis (Jidoka) yang dapat berhenti sendiri bila terjadi gangguan teknis. Sistem Jidoka nantinya dijadikan bagian dari sistem produksi yang disebut Sistem Produksi Toyota.

Sakichi Toyoda memiliki dua adik laki-laki, Sasuke Toyoda dan Heikichi Toyoda (ayah dari Eiji Toyoda). Putranya yang bernama Kiichiro Toyoda menjadi pendiri Toyota Motor Corporation. Selain itu, ia juga memiliki seorang anak perempuan yang bernama Aiko Toyoda. Atas jasanya, Toyoda diberi penghargaan Blue Ribbon Award dan Order of Merit Third Class dari pemerintah Jepang.
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