Tomorrow is the 81st birthday of a fascinating man that Sandefur and I have had the great privilege to get to know over the last couple years. His name is Mark Perakh. He's a retired physicist from CSU, the owner of the TalkReason site and the author of many articles and at least one book on the intelligent design movement. He's also a contributor to the Panda's Thumb. And to say he has lived an interesting life is to provide new meaning for the word "understatement". He was born in the Soviet Union shortly after the revolution that swept the communists into power. He fought in World War 2, finished his PhD, refused to work on the Soviet nuclear weapons project and was put in prison, and later managed to escape his homeland and come to the US. Is it any wonder that he gets a little miffed when he sees the likes of Dembski casually throwing around comparisons of pro-evolution scientists as "Stalinists", having lived through the Stalinist purges and languished in a gulag?
In an email to the PT contributors (a couple of them just finishing their PhD programs) yesterday, he recounted how he wrote the dissertation for his first PhD while sitting on a bench in a public garden on Odessa, still wearing his WWII army uniform. I think it reminds us all of how good we have it. Most of the greatest traumas of our lives are the result of our own bad decisions. Yet here is a man who endured unimaginable tyranny, spent time in a gulag, fought in a war that killed 20 million of his countrymen, and somehow managed to remain hopeful and sane. This is a life to be celebrated and admired. Happy Birthday, Mark. May there be many more to come.
Correction: Mark writes to inform me that he doesn't actually own TalkReason, just runs parts of it, and that when he was in prison it was Krushchev's gulag, not Stalin's. Had it been Stalin's, he says, he would almost certainly have been killed.
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yes, Happy birthday Mark! I have greatly enjoyed all your writings that I have come across.
Mark is one of those amazing people that the mid-20thC seemed to throw up occasionally. His autobiography would not get published as fiction, as it strains credulity, but it happened.
I want to be like Mark when I grow up
I have of read a great deal from mr Perakhs hand, as I guess everyone interested in the science-creationism controversy, and I must say I am very much impressed by his knowledge and his skill in writing.
A very happy birthday, and indeed many happy returns.
/Soren
Copenhagen
Denmark
Ed, could you do at least me a favor? I do not know what CSU is supposed to refer to. I really do like your blog, but please do not assume that those of us who are currently living outside of the midwest know what the acronym is supposed to refer to.
Good form: First time in a post, spell it out in long form. (If I am interested in the topic, I can thereafter do a google search.) Thereafter, the usage of the acronym in the post and comments is fine. It really isn't that complex.
'I do not know what CSU is supposed to refer to.'
CSU stands for Cal. State (not in the Midwest BTW), and it is indicated on Dr Perakh's home page. You can find it using that new fangled thing called a web search engine; I used Yahoo's. It really isn't that complex.
Sorry, I'm just used to abbreviating colleges. CSU is Cal. State University, where Mark taught.