Edward Donnall Thomas was a Nobel Prize winning haematologist known for his work in making bone marrow and blood stem cell transplantation a treatment for leukaemia and other blood conditions. His work has saved and improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and has advanced medical knowledge. Here is a brief summary of how he lived his life…

1920 – Born to the second wife of a 50-year-old general practitioner in a small town in Texas.

Childhood – Grew up in that small town with mediocre academic results all the way up to university.

University – He enrols in the University of Texas, studies chemistry and chemical engineering. Money is short so he takes on various jobs. Waits tables in a girls’ dormitory and meets his wife, Dorothy Martin who is training to be a journalist. They marry and will go on to have 3 children together.

Age 21 – He graduates with a Bachelor’s degree.

Age 23 – He graduates with a Master’s degree and enrols in Harvard Medical School.

Age 26 – He graduates with a doctorate and does his residency at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. There, he meets Joseph Murray who becomes a friend and colleague, and they would pursue research on transplants, bone marrow and leukaemia. His wife becomes a lab technician to support the family and they begin working closely together.

Age 35 – He becomes physician-in-chief at the Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital, a teaching hospital in New York associated with Columbia university.

Age 43 – He moves his lab to the United States Public Health Service in Seattle.

Over the course of his career – His research on haematology, animal models and rigorous studies in humans reduces the painful reaction patients can have to a transplant. His bone marrow transplant research aids leukaemia and anaemia sufferers and encourages further research in those fields.

Age 45-69 – He is a member of numerous medical boards and committees with medical institutions like the National Institutes of Health, Leukaemia Society of America, National Cancer Institute, American Society of Hematology and Academie Royale de Medecine de Belgigue.

Age 54-71 – He gives lectures at medical institutions all around the world.

Age 55-78 – He wins many awards from medical associations.

Age 70 – He wins the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine along with his friend, Joseph Murray, and also the National Medal of Science.

Age 71-76 – He receives honorary doctorates and memberships from various universities around the world.

Age 92 – He dies of heart failure, survived by his wife and children.

More life summaries available here.

Photographs: Wikipedia Commons. Compiler: Sy
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Born to a working-class family in an immigrant ghetto in Pittsburgh, Andy Warhola capitalised on his artistic gifts and went on to make a name for himself in New York while building a remarkable portfolio of work in the fields of art, music, film-making, publishing and television. This is a brief summary of how he did it…

1928 – Andy Warhola is born in a back bedroom of a tiny apartment in Pittsburgh’s immigrant ghetto. His father, Andrej Warhola, works in construction and is mostly out of town during the week. His mother, Julia, is a home-maker who likes going to church more than material things. He has two older brothers, Paul and John, with whom he shares a bed. The family speaks Po Nasemu at home and Andy would grow up speaking broken English for a while.

Age 4 – Andy enrols in first grade but gets hit by a girl on the first day and goes home in tears, refusing to go back.

Age 6 – The Warholas have moved. Andy starts school at Holmes Elementary School which misunderstands Andy’s single day in first grade as a full year and places him in second grade when he enrols. All though grade school, his English improves, his art ability is recognised, and most of his friends are girls.

Age 8 – The Warholas move to a more middle-class neighbourhood called Oakland. Andy catches rheumatic fever and is away from school for months. He enjoys his time at home, lying in bed with comics and colouring books.

Age 9 – His teacher recommends him for a gifted children’s art class on Saturday mornings at the Carnegie Institute, which he would attend for the next 4 years. There, he is exposed to great art and also children from Pittsburgh’s upper class. He stands out as an artist even then.

Age 13 – Andy’s father dies from hepatitis-related peritonitis. Andy develops puberty-related acne, especially around the nose. After school, he hangs out at the local drugstore and draws people.

Age 16 – His mother Julia is diagnosed with colon cancer. She goes for a colostomy and Andy looks after her after school.

Age 17 – Andy joins the Carnegie Institute of Technology. When World War II ends, he nearly gets kicked out to make way for returning veterans but creates a big scene and cries and gets another chance. Meantime, he takes on a part-time job working for his brother, peddling fruits and vegetables door to door. When not selling fruit, he would stand on his brother’s truck and draw sketches of the neighbourhood women and children which he would sell for a quarter. That sketchbook gets Andy back into school and he wins the school’s award for finest work by student done over the summer and gets an exhibition of his drawings.

Later in college – He develops a unique drawing technique using a blotted line and soon attracts followers among his fellow art students. He decides to go into commercial art after school and concentrates on building a portfolio for that purpose. He also gets a part-time job at Joseph Horne, a top department store in Pittsburgh, getting paid to skim through fashion magazines to get ideas for window displays.

Age 20 – He enters a provocative painting into a juried art show titled ‘The Broad Gave Me My Face but I Can Pick My Own Nose’—a portrait of a young man with a finger in his nose. The judges argue over this painting and it gets publicity even when retitled as ‘Why Pick On Me’ and hung in the show of “rejects”. He also becomes the only male to join the modern-dance club. Meantime, he is also member of the film club and art director of Carnegie Tech’s literary magazine.

Age 21 – He graduates with a BFA. His friend Philip Pearlstein decides to go to New York and gets a cheap sublet on the Lower East Side. Andy joins him, boarding the train with his Carnegie Tech portfolio and $200.

First week in New York – He goes to see the art director for Glamour magazine and she ends up giving him 2 assignments. On his first assignment, the credit line misspells his name as ‘Warhol’ and that becomes the name he uses from then on.

Over the next years – Andy moves multiple times, living with various roommates, mostly dancers. A friend from Carnegie Tech introduces him to New York’s homosexual underground. He develops a big crush on award-winning writer Truman Capote and begins stalking him.

Age 24 – His mother moves in with him and shares his bedroom. Andy has his first art exhibit at the Hugo Gallery titled ‘15 Drawings Based on the Writing of Truman Capote’. Nobody buys anything and he gets only 1 lukewarm review in the press. His commercial art career, on the other hand, is flourishing. He is becoming one of the highest paid illustrators in America.

Age 25 – He and his mother move to a bigger apartment with two bedrooms but he continues to share a bedroom with his mother. They have many cats who reproduce and end up with even more cats. Andy gets his first boyfriend, Carl Willers, who he meets at the New York Public Library.

Age 27 – He has an operation on his nose to reduce it but it does not change his appearance. Since he is starting to lose hair, he buys a wig and it eventually becomes part of his signature style. He hires a paid studio assistant and gets his mother to do lettering for his commercial work. He gets his friends to work for free and rewards them with dinners and paid nights out in the town. He starts selling his commercial rejects at Serendipity’s—an ice-cream parlour.

Age 28 – Andy and television set designer friend, Charles Lisanby, make a trip around the world. They go to the Far East, Italy, France and England. Andy hopes for more with Charles but Charles doesn’t feel the same way.

Age 32 – Andy buys a four-storey town house on Lexington Avenue. His mother moves along with him. He is now top of the commercial art sector, both professionally and financially. He turns his sights to establishing himself as a serious artist but is rejected by galleries and goes into a depression. His mother nags him to send money home to his brothers who have growing families in Pittsburgh.

Age 34 – Andy paints soup cans. Irving Blum, a young art dealer from Los Angeles, offers him his first show at the Fergus Gallery in Los Angeles. Blum himself ends up buying the whole set of soup cans for $1000. (He would sell them in 1999 for $7million.)

After that – Andy continues doing pop images of soup cans and Coke bottles. He turns to silk-screening to make the process faster. When Marilyn Monroe commits suicide, he does a series of portraits on her. People start dropping by the townhouse day and night to hang out and Andy welcomes them. He gives his mother her own apartment on the street level of the house. When his brothers and family visit, he doesn’t introduce them to his friends. Out of his house, he attends events, pushing himself to get noticed. With the help of assistants, he produces a staggering amount of groundbreaking work.

Later that year – Gallery owner Eleanor Ward gives Andy his first show in New York. It sells out. He gives up commercial work.

Age 35 – Andy gets interviewed by the media and becomes famous. He creates his Disaster series—made of disturbing images like an electric chair— which becomes popular in Europe but not in America. He creates the ‘16 Jackies’ collection right after President John Kennedy is assassinated. He has a new boyfriend, stockbroker turned poet John Giorno.

Age 36 – Andy buys a Bolex 8mm and starts filming people. He goes on a road trip across America to Los Angeles. When in Hollywood, he shoots films and accumulates a growing entourage of young people eager to be in his films. His collection of Elvis portraits, exhibited at Fergus Gallery, however, does not sell and gets dismal reviews.

Back in New York – He moves into a warehouse space on the 5th floor of a loft building. He calls it The Factory and hires an off-Broadway lighting designer to design it. He starts entertaining at The Factory instead of his town house and attracts members from the swinging drug culture. He starts doing his famous ‘Screen Tests’. In April, a mural he is commissioned to do causes a furor and he does a show of Brillo boxes at Stable Gallery that does not sell. November, for his first show in the Leo Castelli Gallery, he presents his Flower series. In December, he wins the Sixth Annual Film Culture Award.

Age 37 – Andy meets socialite Edie Sedgwick, invites her to the Factory and starts putting her in his films. With her as his acquaintance, the upper class begins inviting him to their parties. In May, he brings her to the opening of his Flower series at Sonnabend Gallery in Paris and announces his retirement from painting. They have a falling out because he doesn’t pay her.

Age 38 – Andy meets the Velvet Underground and adds Nico to their band. They play together for the first time at a dinner for the New York Society of Clinical Psychologists. They then play at the Dom for a month then takes the show on the road. 6 months later, the unprofitable band dies out. His artwork is not profitable either. He makes a movie about The Chelsea Hotel and its inhabitants—‘Chelsea Girls’—and that becomes the first of his movies to make money.

Age 39 – To make extra money, he and his friends travel around college campuses giving lectures. The students are unimpressed and Andy eventually hires an impersonator to stand in for him. He meets Fred Hughes, makes him president of Andy Warhol Enterprises and gets him to sell his artworks while he focuses on making his next film, ‘Lonesome Cowboys’.

Age 40 – Andy gets shot by Valerie Solanas, founder and sole member of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) but survives. The Factory’s open-door policy ends. He lets Paul Morrissey take over making films. He meets Jed Johnson.

Age 41 – Andy starts Interview magazine. He also starts doing commissioned portraits at $25,000 per portrait.

Age 42 – His mother goes for a visit in Pittsburgh, has a stroke and never returns to New York. He designs a cover for the new Rolling Stones album. He does a series of artworks of world leaders.

Age 44 – His mother dies in a nursing home at age 80.

Age 46 – Andy movies into a new town house with Jed Johnson and their dachshunds. He starts compiling dated Time Capsules (made of his stuff) that he says will be valuable someday and auctioned off. He goes to compile about 600 such cartons.

Age 47 – He publishes ‘The Philosophy of Andy Warhol’.

Age 49 – He paints his Hammer & Sickle still lifes, skull paintings and 103 shadow paintings.

Age 50 – ‘Bad’ the movie flops and Andy stops making movies altogether. His relationship with Jed Johnson (who directed the film) also ends.

Age 52 – He produces a show on cable television called Andy Warhol’s TV. He publishes a book with Pat Hackett called ‘POPism: The Warhol Sixties’.

Age 53 – He does the series ‘Myth, Dollar Signs, Crosses, Guns and Knives’. His work is exhibited around the world.

Age 54-58 – 23-year-old graffiti artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat charms Andy and they soon start painting together. They fall out eventually. Andy then exhibits his ‘Oxidation’ paintings from 1978—made from getting the Factory crowd to pee on canvases, and signs up with a modelling agency that books him for fashion shoots and magazines. Companies now commission him to glorify their products. He does more art and travels the world. Andy Warhol Television is shown on cable TV. He does his last series of self-portraits. He spends Christmas and Easter helping out a homeless shelter. He does his last great series based on ‘The Last Supper’.

Age 58 – Andy Warhol dies due to complications from gallbladder removal surgery.

1994, 7 years after his death – The Andy Warhol Museum opens in Pittsburgh. He goes on to become the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books and films.

More life summaries available here.

Photographs: Public domain. Compiler: Sy
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Lee Kuan Yew was a brilliant student born in an underdeveloped but wealthy British colony called Singapore. At 35, he became prime minister of the colony and went on to lead the country to independence and economic growth all the way into his 60s. This is the timeline of his personal story…

1923 – Lee Kuan Yew is born in a large two-storey bungalow in Singapore. His father, Lee Chin Koon, is 20, a rich man’s son. His mother, Chua Jim Neo is 16, also from a wealthy family. Their marriage was arranged and Kuan Yew would end up with 3 younger brothers and 1 younger sister.

Age 5 – Kuan Yew’s family is no longer wealthy. His parents’ families lost their fortunes in the Great Depression and his father is now a storekeeper. He lives in his maternal grandfather’s house along with 7 cousins and no television. He is the oldest of all the children in the house.

Age 6 – His grandmother makes him attend a Chinese school, believing the exposure would be beneficial for him. Coming from an English and Malay speaking household, he barely understands what the teachers are saying.

Age 7 – His begging to be transferred to an English school wins out and he transfers to the Telok Kurau English School.

Age 12 – He is the top student in his school and gets into Raffles Institution—which takes in only top students.

Age 16 – He meets schoolmate Kwa Geok Choo, the only girl in his boys’ school, when she presents a prize to him at Prize Giving Day.

Age 17 – Kuan Yew is the top student in school in the Senior Cambridge examinations and also the top student among all students in Singapore and Malaya. He receives a scholarship to study at Raffles College and moves into its dormitories.

Age 18 – He is the best student in Mathematics but not in English or Economics. Former schoolmate Geok Choo, who had also entered Raffles College, is best in those subjects. Abdul Razak bin Hussain, who would go on to become prime minister of Malaysia, is his classmate but they are not close.

Age 19 – The Japanese invade Singapore and his house is looted. Singapore’s colonial rulers, the British, very quickly withdraw their forces from Singapore. Kuan Yew begins to question his assumptions about the superiority of his colonial rulers.

During the war – Schools close. He spends his time learning Chinese and Japanese because his new rulers do not know English. He works as a clerk for about 2 years then takes on a job as an English-language editor for the Japanese information and propaganda department. Towards the end of the war, to make ends meet amid scarcity of food and inflation, he turns to trading in the black market—buying and keeping so that he can sell back on the market when prices go up. He goes into business making gum and meets Geok Choo again in the midst of it. He later would recall this period of his life as being more educational than any university could ever be.

Age 21 – He asks Geok Choo out to his 21st birthday dinner and she shows up escorted by her brother-in-law.

Age 22 – Hiroshima is bombed. The Japanese surrender a few days later. The British do not return until weeks later. He and his mother rent a house formerly owned by middle-class Europeans on Oxley Road. He and his younger brother start a business supplying workers to British officers in charge of public works.

Age 23 – He begins a courtship of Geok Choo and leaves Singapore to continue his studies in England. Upon arrival by ship, he goes to the London School of Economics in person to ask to be admitted, explaining that his studies had been disrupted by the war. He is admitted but later changes his mind and applies to Cambridge instead.

Age 24 – He helps Geok Choo get into Cambridge too. They secretly marry. He notices the racial prejudices around him and becomes critical of British rulership.

Age 26 – Both of them graduate and join Middle Temple to qualify to practice law in Singapore.

Age 27 – Kuan Yew is third in class and is called to the Bar. He and Geok Choo return to Singapore. He gets his first job as a lawyer at the firm, Laycock & Ong, as does she. He marries Geok Choo a second time in Singapore and she moves into his home which he still shares with more than 7 members of his extended family.

Age 28 – His boss, Laycock wins the election through the political party—The Progressive Party—and a seat at the Legislative Council. Kuan Yew worked as his election agent to make it happen. He completes his pupillage and is called to the Bar.

Age 29 – His first child, Hsien Loong is born. He takes on his first union work, standing up for striking workers, and gets press exposure and publicity that enhances his professional reputation. Numerous trade unions and clans begin approaching him to be their legal advisor. Over the next few years, he would take on more union and strike cases.

Age 30 – He and friends meet in his basement dining room to consider forming a political party.

Age 31 – They start the People’s Action Party. At work, his boss, Laycock, gives him partnership but does not want to continue employing his wife who is now preoccupied with childcare.

Age 32 – Kuan Yew wins the election by a huge margin. He is elected to the Legislative Assembly and becomes leader of the People’s Action Party. His daughter, Wei Ling is born. His boss’ party loses the elections and his boss terminates his partnership at the firm. Kuan Yew sets up a new firm, Lee & Lee, with his wife and brother, next to his boss’ firm, and sends his eldest son to a Chinese school to show solidarity with the Chinese masses. He begins getting heavily involved in politics and the fight for Singapore’s independence from the British.

Age 34 – People’s Action Party wins 13 out of 14 seats in the City Council election. Kuan Yew’s third child and second son, Hsien Yang, is born.

Age 35 – People’s Action Party wins 43 out of 51 seats in the general election. Lee Kuan Yew becomes prime minister of the self-governing state of Singapore. He leaves his law office to his wife and brother and focuses on learning about public administration. Lays the foundations of many important government policies including an economic board and the building programme that will transform the village atmosphere of Singapore into a modern, high-rise one.

Age 39 – Singaporeans vote for a merger with Malaya. Kuan Yew himself is for the union.

Age 40 – Malaysia is formed, with Singapore as one of its many states. People’s Action Party wins the general election in Singapore.

Age 42 – Things do not work out. In Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman declares that Singapore has ceased to be a state of Malaysia. Meantime, in Singapore, Kuan Yew proclaims Singapore to be an independent nation.

In the years afterward – The People’s Action Party goes on to win all seats in Parliament in the subsequent 4 elections leading up to 1984. Singapore becomes increasingly modernised and full-time national service is introduced to build up Singapore’s defence force.

Age 61 – 1984, 2 opposition parties are elected to parliament for the first time since Singapore’s independence. The Youth Wing of the People’s Action Party is set up in 1986 and the Women’s Wing in 1989.

Age 67 – Kuan Yew stands down as prime minister and People’s Action Party member, Goh Chok Tong takes over.

Age 75 – Kuan Yew publishes the first volume of his memoirs.

Age 77 – Publishes the second volume of his memoirs.

Age 80 – His wife suffers her first stroke and he adjusts his lifestyle to take care of her.

Age 81 – His eldest son is sworn in as prime minister. Goh Chok Tong is made Senior Minister and Kuan Yew is made Minister Mentor.

Age 85 – His wife suffers her second stroke. He spends his nights reading to her after coming home from work.

Age 87 – His wife, Geok Choo dies from stroke-related illness.

Age 88 – Kuan Yew steps down from the Cabinet. He continues living in the house on Oxley Road.

Age 91 – He dies from pneumonia, just months before Singapore’s 50th year of independence.

More life summaries available here.

Photographs: A.K. Bristol, Wellington City Archives. Compiler: Sy
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