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For someone who was voted by his acting school peers as 'The Least Likely To Succeed', Gene Hackman went on to have a remarkable acting career spanning around half a century with multiple prestigious awards. His notable films include Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection, Unforgiven, Mississippi Burning and The Royal Tenenbaums. Apart from acting, Gene Hackman is also a novelist and has written six books.
Known as a typical Hitchcock Blonde, Tippi Hedren soared to fame with her roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Marnie. An animal rights activist, too, she set up the Roar Foundation and the Shambala Preserve, after witnessing the plight of the animals that are used for shoots.
Retired actress Vera Miles is best known for her role in the classic 1960 film Psycho and its sequel. Crowned Miss Kansas in 1948, she ended up becoming the third runner-up in the Miss America contest. She started acting soon after and formed a close professional relationship with Alfred Hitchcock, appearing in many of his films.
Joan Plowright is a retired actress who won several prestigious awards, such as a Tony Award and two Golden Globe Awards, during her career which spanned more than 70 years. During the 2004 New Year Honours, Plowright was appointed a Dame Commander for her contribution to the entertainment industry. The Plowright Theatre is named after Joan Plowright in her honor.
Peter Higgs is a British theoretical physicist. He studied at King's College London and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1954. He went on to have a brilliant academic career and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1983. In 2013, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Belgian physicist François Englert.
The only woman to ever serve as the president of Nicaragua, Violeta Chamorro, was born to an affluent cattle rancher and was mostly educated in the U.S. She was married to La Prensa heir Pedro Joaquim Chamorro Cardenal and later took over the operations of the paper.
Tunisian-born French artist Micheline Roquebrune is best known as legendary actor Sean Connery’s second wife. Roquebrune had met Connery in Morocco in the 1970s. They mostly lived in their resort in Marbella and in the Bahamas. Connery was her third husband, and following his death, she revealed he had dementia.
German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas is counted among the most influential philosophers across the world and is identified with the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He influenced many disciplines through his work which addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere, and includes topics starting from social-political theory to aesthetics, language to philosophy of religion, and epistemology.
Werner Arber is a Swiss geneticist and microbiologist whose discovery of restriction endonucleases earned him the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1978; he shared the award with Daniel Nathans and Hamilton Smith. Arber's work alongside Nathans and Smith led to the progression of recombinant DNA technology. Werner Arber is also credited with co-founding the World Cultural Council.
Nobel Prize-winning neurobiologist Eric Kandel is known for his research on the role of synapses in memory and learning. An Austrian Jew, he left his country with his family and moved to the U.S. in the wake of anti-Semitism. A doctor, specializing in psychiatry, he later taught at Columbia University.
Mochtar Riady is an Indonesian financial magnate. He is best known as the founder of Lippo Group where he is currently serving as Chairman Emeritus. Lippo Group, a multinational conglomerate company, was founded by Mochtar Riady in 1950. The company has a collective presence across North America and Asia.
Born to a popular politician father and a socialite mother, John Julius Norwich was educated at Eton and later served the navy. A diplomat, historian, and traveler, he is known for his books such as Absolute Monarchs and for hosting documentaries such as Maestro and the BBC radio show My Word!
Ivar Giaever is a Norwegian-American physicist and engineer whose discovery of the tunnelling phenomena in solids earned him the prestigious Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973. Over the course of his illustrious career, Ivar Giaever has also received several other awards, such as the Oliver E. Buckley Prize, Golden Plate Award, and Zworykin Award.
Alfred Moisiu is a former Albanian military general turned diplomat and politician. The oldest son of Albanian Army general, Spiro Moisiu, he was ambitious from the beginning and received a Ph.D. in military science. After a successful military career, he entered politics and went on to serve as the president of Albania from 2002 to 2007.
Lady Pamela Hicks is a British aristocrat best known as the daughter of Edwina Mountbatten and Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Lady Pamela Hicks' memoirs of her time in India during the Indian Independence revealed important details surrounding the event, including her mother's extra-marital relationship with the future Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
