5650 lives in brief

Press, 29 July 1989, Page 22

5650 lives in brief

The International Dictionary of 20th Century-Biography. By Edward Vernoff and Rima Shore. Sidgwick/Macmillan, 1989. 781 pp. index. $29.95 (paperback). Here are 5650 concise biographies, describing people from the last 80 years or so, from round the world, and in fields as far apart as country music and nuclear physics. The authors have tried hard not to allow entries from the United States and Western Europe to dominate the work, but the result is still not wholly satisfying. For instance, no New Zealand artists are listed in the index, although eight New Zealand writers make it. They are an odd mix: David Ballantyne, Baxter, Ursula Bethell, Frame, Michael Joseph, Mansfield, Marsh, and Sargeson. New Zealanders do creep in elsewhere. Sir Edmund Hillary, for instance, is one of only three people listed under “mountain climbing” (the others are Tenzing and Maurice Herzog). We have seven politicians deemed worthy: Fraser, Holyoake, Lange, Massey, Muldoon, Ngata, and Savage. Perhaps it is a measure of our importance that Cuba gets nine political entries and Albania gets four

(A good test — quick — name four Albanian politicians in this century). Entries generally are of about 100 to 200 words, with mention of appropriate biographies and autobiographies where these exist. As a sample, try this — the last in the book: “Zworykin, Valdimir Kosma (18891982), Russian-born U.S. engineer and inventor. Came to the United States after World War I and earned a Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburg (1926) while working for Westinghouse (192029). The “father of television,” he helped to design (1929) the kinescope picture tube that rconstructed the television image, and he laid the groundwork for the all-electronic television system by inventing (1931) the iconoscope, the first practical TV camera. As head of the electronics research laboratory of the Radio Corp, of America (R.C.A., 1929-54) he made contributions to other electronic equipment, most significantly the electron microscope, which made visible such structures as viruses and protein chains. He held some 120 U.S. patents.” Now that was worth knowing.— Literary Editor.