Plenty of Nothing

Mommsen Stamp

This 1950 East German stamp commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Prussian Academy of Sciences features the smiling face of Roman historian Theodor Mommsen, who was born on this date in 1817. Source.

Elisabeth Mann Borgese

Elisabeth Mann Borgese, the youngest daughter of Thomas Mann the novelist, was a world expert on the law of the sea. She taught at Dalhousie University in the 1980s and had a house at Sambro Head. Source.

Colin Munro MacLeod

Colin Munro MacLeod, who died 50 years ago tomorrow, in 1943 co-designed the Avery-MacLeod-McCarty Experiment that identified DNA as the molecule responsible for bacterial transformation. Source. He was from Port Hastings, Nova Scotia.

Hilary Armstrong

Hilary Armstrong's reappraisal of the Neoplatonist Plotinus elevated that philosopher's status from minor to major. He spent much of his career at the University of Liverpool, but to give himself a break from the university politics there he took a post at Dalhousie University, commuting between England and Nova Scotia through the 1970s. Source.

Bunty McLeod

C. H. "Bunty" McLeod ran the McGill University observatory from 1873 until the First World War. Source.

Lego Irving Finkel

Source.

G.M.A. Grube

G.M.A. Grube (1899-1982) was a classicist at the University of Toronto who specialized in Plato, and you still see his name on the covers of the translations he did for Hackett Publishing, which any used bookstore with a philosophy shelf will have. But he was also a political activist, a member of the League for Social Reconstruction, the editor of their journal Canadian Forum, and he ran for the CCF in the riding of Broadview in Toronto in 1940, 1945, 1949 and 1950. Source. And.

Barbara Kawakami

Barbara Kawakami is an expert on the clothing worn by Japanese agricultural workers in Hawaii. Source. She is the author of Picture Bride, a history of Japanese women sent to Hawaii to marry. Read an article by Kawakami, and watch a video.

McLuhan Interview

Put this interview under your pillow and drift off while Marshall free-associates.

Hilda Petrie, Archaeologist

Hilda Petrie in Egypt. Source.