Kenneth Locke Hale 

(August 15, 1934 – October 8, 2001), also known as Ken Hale, was an American linguist at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studied a huge variety of previously unstudied
and often endangered languages—especially indigenous languages of North
America and Australia. Languages investigated by Hale include Navajo, O'odham, Warlpiri,
and Ulwa.
Among his major contributions to linguistic theory was the hypothesis that certain languages
were non-configurational, lacking the phrase structure characteristic of such languages as
English
Hale was born in Evanston, Illinois. When he was six his family moved to a ranch
near Canelo in southern Arizona. He attended the Verde Valley School before Hale said he
was "thrown out" for being too distracted by his study of languages, before transferring to
Tucson High School.[citation needed] As a young man, Hale was an avid bull and bronc rider. A film
clip of Hale being thrown from a bull in the 1952 Tucson Rodeo was used as stock footage and
is included in the film Arena.[citation needed]
He was a student at the University of Arizona from 1952 and obtained his PhD from Indiana
University Bloomington in 1959 (thesis A Papago grammar). He taught at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1961-63 and at the University of Arizona, Tucson in 1963-66.
From 1967 he held a sequence of appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology until his retirement in 1999.[1]
Hale was known as a polyglot who retained the ability to learn new languages with
extraordinary rapidity and perfection throughout his life. As a child, in addition to English he
learned both Spanish and the native American language Tohono O'odham. He
learned Jemez and Hopi from his high school roommates and Navajo from his roommate at
the University of Arizona. Hale managed in just one week to write up 750 pages of fieldwork
notes on the Marra language alone in 1959.[2]
He became so fluent in Warlpiri that he raised his sons Ezra and Caleb to speak Warlpiri after
his return from Australia to the United States. Ezra delivered his eulogy for his father in
Warlpiri.[3]
Junko Tabei
22 September 1939 – 20 October 2016) was a Japanese mountaineer, author and a teacher.
She was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest and the first woman to ascend
the Seven Summits, climbing the highest peak on every continent.
Tabei wrote seven books, organized environmental projects to clean up rubbish left behind by
climbers on Everest, and led annual climbs up Mount Fuji for youth affected by the Great East
Japan Earthquake.
An astronomer named asteroid 6897 Tabei after her and in 2019, a mountain range on Pluto
was named Tabei Montes in her honour.
Early life
Junko Ishibashi was born on 22 September 1939 in Miharu, Fukushima, the fifth daughter of
seven children. Her father was a printer. She was considered a frail child, but nevertheless she
began mountain climbing at the age of ten, going on a class climbing trip to Mount Nasu.[6]
[7]
 She enjoyed the non-competitive nature of the sport and the striking natural landscapes that
came into view upon reaching the top of the mountain. Although she was interested in doing
more climbing, her family did not have enough money for such an expensive hobby, and
Ishibashi made only a few climbs during her high school years.
From 1958 to 1962,[2Ishibashi studied English and American literature at Showa Women's
University. She initially planned on a career as a teacher. After graduation, she returned to her
earlier passion for climbing by joining a number of men's climbing clubs. While some men
welcomed her as a fellow climber, others questioned her motives for pursuing a typically male-
dominated sport. Soon, Ishibashi had climbed all the major mountains in Japan,
including Mount Fuji.
When she was 27, Ishibashi married Masanobu Tabei, a mountaineer she had met during a
climbing excursion on Mount Tanigawa. The couple eventually had two children: a daughter,
Noriko, and a son, Shinya.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

 (/mænˈdɛlə/;[1] Xhosa: [xolíɬaɬa mandɛ̂ːla]; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South
African anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first president of South
Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in
a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy
of apartheid by fostering racial reconciliation. Ideologically an African nationalist and socialist,
he served as the president of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.
Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 in the village of Mvezo in Umtata, then part of South
Africa's Cape Province.[2] Given the forename Rolihlahla,[note 1]
 a Xhosa term colloquially
meaning "troublemaker",[4] in later years he became known by his clan name, Madiba. [5] His
patrilineal great-grandfather, Ngubengcuka, was ruler of the Thembu Kingdom in
the Transkeian Territories of South Africa's modern Eastern Cape province.[6] One of
Ngubengcuka's sons, named Mandela, was Nelson's grandfather and the source of his
surname.[7] Because Mandela was the king's child by a wife of the Ixhiba clan, a so-called
"Left-Hand House", the descendants of his cadet branch of the royal family were morganatic,
ineligible to inherit the throne but recognised as hereditary royal councillors.[8]
Nelson Mandela's father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa Mandela (1880–1928), was a local chief
and councillor to the monarch; he was appointed to the position in 1915, after his predecessor
was accused of corruption by a governing white magistrate.[9] In 1926, Gadla was also sacked
for corruption, but Nelson was told that his father had lost his job for standing up to the
magistrate's unreasonable demands.[10] A devotee of the god Qamata,[11] Gadla was a
polygamist with four wives, four sons and nine daughters, who lived in different villages.
Nelson's mother was Gadla's third wife, Nosekeni Fanny, daughter of Nkedama of the Right
Hand House and a member of the amaMpemvu clan of the Xhosa
Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha
(Egyptian Arabic: ‫د الباشا‬ZZ‫راهيم احم‬ZZ‫ز اب‬ZZ‫د العزي‬ZZ‫وظ عب‬ZZ‫نجيب محف‬, IPA: [næˈɡiːb mɑħˈfuːzˤ]; 11 December
1911 – 30 August 2006) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Mahfouz is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers in the Arabic literature, along
with Taha Hussein, to explore themes of existentialism.[1] He is the only Egyptian to win the
Nobel Prize in Literature. He published 35 novels, over 350 short stories, 26 screenplays,
hundreds of op-ed columns for Egyptian newspapers, and seven plays over a 70-year career,
from the 1930s until 2004. All of his novels take place in Egypt, and always mentions the lane,
which equals the world. His most famous works include The Cairo Trilogy and Children of
Gebelawi. Many of Mahfouz's works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films; no Arab
writer exceeds Mahfouz in number of works that have been adapted for cinema and television.
While Mahfouz's literature is classified as realist literature, existential themes appear in it.
Mahfouz was born in a lower middle-class Muslim Egyptian family in Old Cairo in 1911. The
first part of his compound given name was chosen in appreciation of the well-known
obstetrician, Naguib Pasha Mahfouz, who oversaw his difficult birth.[3] Mahfouz was the
seventh and the youngest child, with four brothers and two sisters, all of them much older than
him. (Experientially, he grew up an "only child.") The family lived in two popular districts of
Cairo: first, in the Bayt al-Qadi neighborhood in the Gamaleya quarter in the old city, from
where they moved in 1924 to Abbaseya, then a new Cairo suburb north of the old city,
locations that would provide the backdrop for many of Mahfouz's later writings. His father,
Abdel-Aziz Ibrahim, whom Mahfouz described as having been "old-fashioned", was a civil
servant, and Mahfouz eventually followed in his footsteps in 1934. Mahfouz's mother, Fatimah,
was the daughter of Mustafa Qasheesha, an Al-Azhar sheikh, and although illiterate herself,
took the boy Mahfouz on numerous excursions to cultural locations such as the Egyptian
Museum and the Pyramids.[4]
The Mahfouz family were devout Muslims and Mahfouz had a strict Islamic upbringing. In an
interview, he elaborated on the stern religious climate at home during his childhood. He stated
that "You would never have thought that an artist would emerge from that family.
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
(born 23 March 1953) is an Indian billionaire entrepreneur.[2] She is the executive chairperson
and founder of Biocon Limited and Biocon Biologics Limited,[3] a biotechnology company based
in Bangalore, India[4] and the former chairperson of Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
[5]
 In 2014, she was awarded the Othmer Gold Medal for outstanding contributions to the
progress of science and chemistry.[6][7][8][9][10] She was on the Financial Times 2011 top 50
women in business list.[11] In 2019, she was listed as the 68th most powerful woman in the
world by Forbes.[12] She was named EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year 2020. [13] She is
married to John Shaw.
Kiran Mazumdar was born on 23 March 1953 in Bangalore, Karnataka state, [14] to Gujarati
parents.[15] She was educated at Bangalore's Bishop Cotton Girl's High School, graduating in
1968. She then attended Mount Carmel College, Bangalore, a women's college offering pre-
university courses as an affiliate of Bangalore University.[16] She studied biology and zoology,
graduating from Bangalore University with a bachelor's degree in zoology in 1973. [17][18]
[19]
 Mazumdar hoped to go to medical school, but was not able to obtain a scholarship.[20]
Her father, Rasendra Mazumdar, was the head brewmaster at United Breweries.[21] He
suggested that she study fermentation science, and train to be a brewmaster, a very non-
traditional field for women.[20] Mazumdar went to Ballarat College, Melbourne University in
Australia to study malting and brewing. In 1974, she was the only woman enrolled in the
brewing course and topped in her class.[22] She earned the degree as master brewer in 1975.
[23][18][22]

She worked as a trainee brewer in Carlton and United Breweries, Melbourne and as a trainee
maltster at Barrett Brothers and Burston, Australia. She also worked for some time as a
technical consultant at Jupiter Breweries Limited, Calcutta and as a technical manager at
Standard Maltings Corporation, Baroda between 1975 and 1977.[18][24] However, when she
investigated the possibility of advancing her career in Bangalore or Delhi, she was told that
she could not be hired as a master brewer in India because "It's a man's work."[25]: 152–153  [26] She
began to look abroad for opportunities and was offered a position in Scotland
Yang Liwei
(Chinese: 杨 利 伟 ; born 21 June 1965) is a major general, former military pilot, and
former taikonaut at the People's Liberation Army.
In October 2003, Yang became the first person sent into space by the Chinese space
program. This mission, Shenzhou 5, made China the third country to independently send
humans into space. He is currently a vice chief designer of China Manned Space Engineering.
Background
Yang Liwei was born in Suizhong County, Huludao, Liaoning.[1] His mother was a teacher and
his father was an accountant at a state agricultural firm.[2] Yang Liwei married Zhang Yumei
with whom they had a son together. Zhang Yumei was a part of the People's Liberation Army
and was a teacher in China's Space Program.[3][4]
In 1983, he enlisted for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and was admitted to the Air Force
Second Flight Academy (空军第二飞行学院), graduating in 1987 with a bachelor's degree.[5] He
participated in the screening process for astronauts in 1996.[6] In the PLAAF, he logged 1,350
hours of flight time as a fighter pilot before he went to space training.[1]
Yang entered Tsinghua University in Beijing for doctoral studies in 2004 and received a Doctor
of Philosophy in Management in 2009.