Special Person #5

Henry Ford

Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production.

Born: July 30, 1863, Greenfield Township, Wayne County, Michigan

Died: April 7, 1947, Fair Lane, Dearborn, Michigan, United States

Education: Detroit Business Institute

Occupation: Founder of Ford Motors, business magnate, engineering

Religion: Episcopalian

Ford did not invent the automobile, but he developed and manufactured the first automobile that many middle class Americans could afford to buy. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. As owner of the Ford Motor Company, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with "Fordism": mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers.

Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put dealerships throughout most of North America and in major cities on six continents. Ford left most of his vast wealth to the Ford Foundation and arranged for his family to control the company permanently.

Special Person #4

J. R. D. Tata

Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata was a French-born Indian aviator and business magnate. He became India's first licensed pilot. In 1983, he was awarded the French Legion of Honour and, in 1992, India's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna. 

Born: July 29, 1904, Paris, France

Died: November 29, 1993, Geneva, Switzerland

Full name: Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata

Parents: Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata

Ethnicity: Parsi

Occupation: Former Chairman of Tata Group

Known for: Founder  of TCS, Tata Motors, Titan Industries, Tata tea, Voltas.

Religion: Zoroastrianism

Children: None

Awards: Bharat Ratna

J. R. D. Tata was inspired early by aviation pioneer Louis Blériot, and took to flying. On February 10, 1929 Tata obtained the first pilot licence issued in India. He later came to be known as the father of Indian civil aviation. He founded India's first commercial airline, Tata Airlines in 1932, which became Air India in 1946, now India's national airline.  His father was a first cousin of Jamsetji Tata, a pioneer industrialist in India.

In 1968, he founded Tata Consultancy Services. In 1979, Tata Steel instituted a new practice: a worker being deemed to be "at work" from the moment he leaves home for work till he returns home from work. This made the company financially liable to the worker for any mishap on the way to and from work. In 1987, he founded Titan Industries. Tata Steel Township was also selected as a UN Global Compact City because of the quality of life, conditions of sanitation, roads and welfare that were offered by Tata Steel.

Awards and honors

JRD Tata received a number of awards. He received the Padma Vibhushan in 1957 on the eve of the silver jubilee of Air India. He also received the Guggenheim Medal for aviation in 1988. In 1992, because of his selfless humanitarian endeavors, JRD Tata was awarded India's highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna. In the same year, JRD Tata was also bestowed with the United Nations Population Award for his crusading endeavors towards initiating and successfully implementing the family planning movement in India, much before it became an official government policy.

Death

JRD Tata died in Geneva, Switzerland on November 29, 1993 at the age of 89. On his death, the Indian Parliament was adjourned in his memory—an honor not usually given to persons who are not Members of Parliament. He is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Special person #3

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. He was also an essayist, novelist and short story writer. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Issues which engaged Shaw's attention included education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.

Born: July 26, 1856, Dublin, Ireland

Died: November 2, 1950

Education: Wesley College, Dublin

Books: The Black Girl in Search of God, The Perfect Wagnerite, More

Awards: Nobel Prize in Literature (1925), Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay (1938- Pygmalion), Academy Award for Screenplay

Ocuupation: Playwright, critic, political activist

Genres: Satire, black comedy

Literary movement: Ibsenism, naturalism

He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize in Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion (adaptation of his play of the same name), respectively. Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize outright because he had no desire for public honours, but accepted it at his wife's behest: she considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did reject the monetary award, requesting it be used to finance translation of fellow playwright August Strindberg's works from Swedish to English.

Special Person #2

Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was a British biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer who made critical contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite.

Born: July 25, 1920, Notting Hill, United Kingdom

Full name: Rosalind Elsie Franklin

Education: University of Cambridge (1945)

Fields: X-ray Crystallography

Known for: Fine structure of coal and graphite, Structure of DNA, Structure of viruses

Her DNA work achieved the most fame because DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) plays an essential role in cell metabolism and genetics, and the discovery of its structure helped her co-workers understand how genetic information is passed from parents to children.

Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA which led to the discovery of the DNA double helix. Her data, according to Francis Crick, were "the data we actually used” to formulate Crick and Watson's 1953 hypothesis regarding the structure of DNA.

After finishing her portion of the work on DNA, Franklin led pioneering work on the tobacco mosaic virus and the polio virus. She died in 1958 at the age of 37 of ovarian cancer.

Nobel Prize

Franklin was never nominated for a Nobel Prize. She had died in 1958 and was ineligible for nomination to the Nobel Prize in 1962 which was subsequently awarded to Crick, Watson, and Wilkins in 1962. The award was for their body of work on nucleic acids and not exclusively for the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Special Person #1

Azim Premji

Azim Hashim Premji is an Indian business tycoon and philanthropist who is the chairman of Wipro Limited, guiding the company through four decades of diversification and growth to emerge as one of the Indian leaders in the software industry.  According to Forbes, he is currently the third wealthiest Indian, and the 41st richest in the world, with a personal wealth of $12.2 billion in 2012.

Born: July 24, 1945 (age 67), Bombay Presidency

Education: St. Mary's School, Mumbai, Stanford University

Occupation: Chairman of Wipro

When Azhim Premji took over as its chairman, Wipro dealt in hydrogenated cooking fats and later diversified to bakery fats, ethnic ingredient based toiletries, hair care soaps, baby toiletries, lighting products, and hereafter Premji made a focused shift from soaps to software.In the 80s Wipro diversified into IT.

In 2005 the Government of India honoured him with the title of Padma Bhushan for his outstanding work in trade and commerce. In 2011, he has been awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award by the Government of India.

Azim Premji Foundation and University

In 2001, he founded Azim Premji Foundation, a non-profit organisation, with a vision to significantly contribute to achieving quality universal education that facilitates a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society. The Foundation works in the area of elementary education to pilot and develop 'proofs of concept' that have a potential for systemic change in India's 1.3 million government-run schools. A specific focus is on working in rural areas where the majority of these schools exist. This choice to work with elementary education (Class I to VIII) in rural government-run is a response to evidence of educational attainment in India.

The Giving Pledge

Azim Premji has become the first Indian to sign up for the Giving Pledge, a campaign led by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, to encourage the wealthiest people to make a commitment to give most of their wealth to philanthropic causes. He is the third non-American after Richard Branson and David Sainsbury to join this philanthropy club.

"I strongly believe that those of us, who are privileged to have wealth, should contribute significantly to try and create a better world for the millions who are far less privileged"--- Azim Premji

In April 2013 he said that he has already given more than 25 per cent of his personal wealth to charity.