July 25
Eric Hoffer
On this date in 1902, Eric Hoffer was born in New York City to German immigrants. By age 5 he was reading in both English and German. Struck by unexplained blindness at age 7, Hoffer regained his sight at 15. The experience of reading deprivation turned him into a nonstop, inveterate reader. He started working as a migrant in California at age 18 and spent most of his life as a dockworker, writing in his spare time, which won him the sobriquet of “the longshoreman philosopher.”
His first book, The True Believer (1951), is a classic. Nine other books were published during his lifetime. His autobiography, Truth Imagined, was published posthumously. D. 1983.
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.“The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ. … To rely on the evidence of the senses and of reason is heresy and treason.”
— Hoffer, "The True Believer" (1951)
“Thus the effectiveness of a doctrine should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity or the validity of the truths it embodies, but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from his self and the world as it is. What Pascal said of an effective religion is true of any effective doctrine: It must be ‘contrary to nature, to common sense and to pleasure.’ “
Rosalind Franklin
On this date in 1920, chemist and freethinker Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born in London to Jewish parents Ellis and Muriel (Waley) Franklin. Before dying in her 30s of ovarian cancer, she made significant contributions to the understanding of DNA and RNA, contributions which were only recognized by the scientific community after her death. “We were a family which debated things,” her younger sister, Jenifer Glynn, said in an interview with BBC News. (Sept. 12, 2015) “So Rosalind grew up with a love of argument. My mother said that when my sister was told something, even when she was very young, she wanted proof. It’s a scientific trait.”
After earning advanced degrees in physical chemistry, she became a research associate at King’s College London in 1951 and worked on X-ray diffraction studies, which would eventually facilitate the double helix theory of DNA. It was her famous “Photograph 51” that finally revealed DNA’s helical structure to James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953. They, along with Franklin’s colleague Maurice Wilkins, shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962, four years after her death.
Crick and Watson failed to mention her in their acceptance speeches, even though Crick had written to Jacques Monod that “the data which really helped us to obtain the structure was mainly obtained by Rosalind Franklin,” according to a 2012 account by Glynn in The Lancet. Wilkins made a brief reference to her “very valuable” contribution.
Franklin made respected contributions to the study of coal, carbon, graphite and viruses and published nearly 50 scientific papers, a remarkable achievement for a woman of her era who lived only 37 years. She is the namesake of Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, a graduate school in North Chicago, Ill., and the British Royal Society’s Rosalind Franklin Award, presented annually for outstanding work in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.
“Photograph 51” by American playwright Anna Ziegler opened in London in September 2015 and continues to be presented in theaters around the world. Nicole Kidman played Franklin in the London production. A Mars rover named the Rosalind Franklin is scheduled to be launched in 2020 by the European and Russian space agencies. The name was chosen by a British panel from almost 36,000 suggestions. (D. 1958)
PHOTO: National Portrait Gallery, London
“[As to] the question of a creator. A creator of what? … I see no reason to believe that a creator of protoplasm or primeval matter, if such there be, has any reason to be interested in our insignificant race in a tiny corner of the universe, and still less in us, as still more insignificant individuals.”
— Franklin letter to her father in 1940 when she was 20. "Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA," by Brenda Maddox, p. 61 (2002)
Compiled by Bill Dunn
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
Woody Harrelson
On this date in 1961, Woodrick Tracy “Woody” Harrelson was born in Midland, Texas, to Diane (née Oswald) and Charles Harrelson. His father, a convicted murderer-for-hire, died in 2007 in prison. Harrelson was raised Presbyterian and grew up in Lebanon, Ohio, and graduated from Hanover College with a degree in theater arts and English in 1983. Hanover is a Presbyterian school. Future vice president Mike Pence was a classmate.
Harrelson’s television acting career began in 1985 when he was cast as bartender Woody Boyd on “Cheers.” After “Cheers” ended in 1991, Harrelson focused on his film career, notably appearing in “Indecent Proposal” (1993), “Natural Born Killers” (1994) and “The People vs. Larry Flint” (1996), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Actor.
Harrelson appeared in the award-winning “No Country for Old Men” (2007), for which he and the rest of the cast won a Screen Actor’s Guild Award for Best Cast. In 2009 he played an army captain in “The Messenger.” He also had roles in “Friends with Benefits” (2011), “The Hunger Games” (2012 and three sequels), “Game Change” (2012), “War for the Planet of the Apes” (2017) and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017), for which he received Oscar and Screen Actors Guild nominations. In 2018 he co-starred in “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”
Harrelson is a vegan and is very active in the green movement, working for organic living and social change. Harrelson is also not shy in expressing his opinions about cannabis legalization or his lack of religion. In an October 2009 interview with Playboy magazine, he said, “I like the mellow vibe of herb, its uninhibiting effect. … Whether your drug is sugar, coffee, sex, exercise or religion — everybody has something.” In the same interview he discussed his personal loss of faith.
In 2008 he married his longtime partner Laura Louie. They have three daughters: Deni, born in 1993; Zoe, born in 1996; and Makani, born in 2006.
“I was getting into theology and studying the roots of the Bible, but then I started to discover the man-made nature of it. I started seeing things that made me ask, ‘Is God really speaking through this instrument? … My eyes opened to the reality of the Bible being just a document to control people. At the time I was a real mama’s boy and deeply mesmerized by the church.”
— Harrelson, Playboy magazine (October 2009)
Compiled by Eleanor Wroblewski; photo by s_bukley / Shutterstock.com
© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.
