About whom should I learn while we still share a planet?
March 2, 2010 12:29 AM Subscribe
What really awesome people should I learn about before they die? Inspired by my frustrations with
this post(and others) on the blue.
It's frustrating to learn about people who have done incredible work from their obituaries. The Robert McCall post, linked above, was particularly troubling to me. He illustrated a great percentage of what I read and gawked at when I was younger, yet I, for whatever reason, didn't connect the individual works back to the man (and consequently, back to his much larger body of work). This has happened to me before when reading obits on Metafilter and elsewhere, but I won't say about whom, for fear of revealing how much of a philistine I am.
Who, like McCall, is influential and/or prolific in his/her respective field and is not likely to be around a decade from now? I'm not very interested in pop musicians, actors or politicians, or even older people who have just recently become famous. I'm generally more interested in people such as art musicians, authors, visual artists, scientists and other academics who are and have been known as being "old guard" types in their fields. Bonus points awarded commensurate with prolificacy if he/she continues to produce work up to the present.
posted by The Potate to grab bag (48 answers total) 40 users marked this as a favorite
The article also mentions another architect, Oscar Niemeyer from Brazil, who is apparently still working at the age of 102.
posted by TheOtherGuy at 1:22 AM on March 2, 2010 [1 favorite]