OF THE
TIMES
[She was] named 18 times in the yearly Gallup's most admired man and woman poll as one of the ten women around the world that Americans admired most. In 1999, a poll of Americans ranked her first in Gallup's List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century. In that survey, she out-polled all other volunteered answers by a wide margin, and was in first place in all major demographic categories except the very young.The criticisms of Agnes Gonxha, as she was christened, have been growing for a long time. I wasn't aware of them until I read Christopher Hitchens's cleverly titled book, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, which I found deeply disturbing. The book is polemic at Hitchens's best, and though the facts were surprising, he was never sued and his accusations were never refuted - nor even rebutted. (You can read excerpts here and here, but I urge you to read the book.) In light of that, I accepted Mother Teresa as a deeply flawed person.
[H]e had a profound effect on thousands of individuals who took his courses - who in turn affected others. Undoubtedly the ripples from the stones he dropped eventually touched some of today's leading libertarians.The entire obituary of Galambos written by Browne is must reading. Browne says a lot of negative things about Galambos, but at the end of reading the obituary, the thought lingers: Who was this guy? And the next thought is: Boy, I wish I could have sat in on one of his courses. They aren't any notes of his class. Browne reports, Galambos was very protective of his ideas and never put anything in writing. Indeed, Browne tells us:
He was a fascinating mixture of contrasts. He combined a brilliant mind with an ungracious personality. He was an astrophysicist who taught social science. He preached the importance of respect for intellectual property, but freely lifted the ideas of others without giving them credit. He was dishonest, but he inspired others to be more honest. He disdained the word "libertarian" while turning thousands of people into libertarians. He was an insensitive teacher, and yet he apparently changed the lives of most of the people he taught.
He required every student entering one of his courses to sign a contract agreeing not to divulge any of the course ideas without permission from Galambos - and not even to use the ideas, in business or elsewhere, without permission.