Quote:Wallace Thornhill (1942 to present) or Wal as he is known, graduated in Physics at Melbourne University in 1964 and began postgraduate studies with Prof. Victor Hopper’s upper atmosphere research group. Before entering university, he had been inspired by Immanuel Velikovsky through his controversial best-selling book, Worlds in Collision. Wal experienced first-hand the indifference and sometimes hostility toward a radical challenge to mainstream science. He realized there is no career for a heretic in academia.

Wal worked for 11 years with IBM Australia. The later years were spent in the prestigious IBM Systems Development Institute in Canberra, working on the first computer graphics system in Australia. He was the technical support for the computing facilities in the Research Schools at the Australian National University, which gave him excellent access to libraries and scientists there.

Quote:Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul TC (/ˈvɪdjɑːdər ˌsuːrədʒprəˈsɑːd ˈnaɪpɔːl, naɪˈpɔːl/; 17 August 1932 – 11 August 2018), most commonly known as V. S. Naipaul, and informally, Vidia Naipaul, was a Trinidadian-British writer of works of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad, his bleaker later novels of the wider world, and his vigilant chronicles of life and travels. He wrote in prose that was widely admired, but his views sometimes aroused controversy. He published more than thirty books over fifty years.

Naipaul won the Booker Prize in 1971 for his novel In a Free State. In 1989, he was awarded the Trinity Cross, Trinidad and Tobago's highest national honour. He received a knighthood in Britain in 1990, and in 2001, the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In the late 19th century, Naipaul's grandparents had emigrated from India to work in Trinidad's cocoa plantations as indentured servants. His breakthrough novel A House for Mr Biswas was published in 1961. On the fiftieth anniversary of its publication, he dedicated it to Patricia Anne Hale, to whom he was married from 1955 until her death in 1996, and who had served as first reader, editor, and critic of his writings.

Quote:Edward Wilmot Blyden (3 August 1832 – 7 February 1912) was an educator, writer, diplomat, and politician primarily in Liberia. Born in the West Indies, he joined the free black immigrants from the United States who migrated to the region. He taught for five years in the British West African Colony of Sierra Leone in the early 20th century. His writings on pan-Africanism were influential in both colonies. These were founded during the slavery years for the resettlement of free blacks from Great Britain and the United States.

Blyden's writings attracted attention in the sponsoring countries as well. He believed that Zionism was a model for what he called Ethiopianism, and that African Americans could return to Africa and redeem it. He believed political independence to be a prerequisite for economic independence, and argued that Africans must counter the neo-colonial policies of former colonial powers.[1]

Blyden was recognised in his youth for his talents and drive; he was educated and mentored by John Knox, an American Protestant minister in St Thomas, Danish West Indies, who encouraged him to continue his education in the United States. In 1850 Blyden was refused admission to three Northern theological seminaries because of his race.[2] Knox encouraged him to go to Liberia, the colony set up for freedmen by the American Colonization Society; Blyden emigrated that year, in 1850, and made his career and life there. He married into a prominent family and soon started working as a journalist.