1.
Natural history
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Natural history is the research and study of organisms including animals, fungi and plants in their environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. It encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it, with articles nowadays more often published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the sciences, natural history is the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms. That is a broad designation in a world filled with many narrowly focused disciplines. For example, geobiology has a strong multi-disciplinary nature combining scientists, a person who studies natural history is known as a naturalist or natural historian. The English term natural history is a translation of the Latin historia naturalis and its meaning has narrowed progressively with time, while the meaning of the related term nature has widened. In antiquity, it covered essentially anything connected with nature or which used materials drawn from nature. For example, Pliny the Elders encyclopedia of this title, published circa 77 to 79 AD, covers astronomy, geography, man and his technology, medicine and superstition as well as animals and plants. Medieval European academics considered knowledge to have two divisions, the humanities and divinity, with science studied largely through texts rather than observation or experiment. In modern terms, natural philosophy roughly corresponded to modern physics and chemistry, natural history had been encouraged by practical motives, such as Linnaeus aspiration to improve the economic condition of Sweden. Similarly, the Industrial Revolution prompted the development of geology to help find useful mineral deposits, the astronomer, William Herschel was also a natural historian. Instead of working with plants or minerals he worked with the stars and he spent his time building telescopes to see the stars and the rest of the time watching the stars. In the beginning, he believed there to be a known as a nebulae. Herschel can be considered a natural historian because he observed the natural world, in the process he made charts of all the stars and kept records of all that he saw. S. Wilcove and T. Eisner, The close observation of organisms—their origins, their evolution, their behavior and it encompasses changes in internal states insofar as they pertain to what organisms do. Some definitions go further, focusing on observation of organisms in their environment. Bartholomew, A student of history, or a naturalist, studies the world by observing plants. A common thread in many definitions of natural history is the inclusion of a component, as seen in a recent definition by H. W. Greene
2.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator. Since 1996, he has been the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, born and raised in New York City, Tyson became interested in astronomy at the age of nine after a visit to the Hayden Planetarium. After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, where he was editor-in-chief of the Physical Science Journal, after receiving a masters degree in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin in 1983, he earned his masters and doctorate in astrophysics at Columbia University. For the next three years, he was a research associate at Princeton University. In 1994, he joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist, in 1996, he became director of the planetarium and oversaw its $210-million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000. From 1995 to 2005, Tyson wrote monthly essays in the Universe column for Natural History magazine, during the same period, he wrote a monthly column in Star Date magazine, answering questions about the universe under the pen name Merlin. Material from the column appeared in his books Merlins Tour of the Universe, Tyson served on a 2001 government commission on the future of the U. S. aerospace industry, and on the 2004 Moon, Mars and Beyond commission. He was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal in the same year, from 2006 to 2011, he hosted the television show NOVA ScienceNow on PBS. Since 2009, Tyson hosted the weekly podcast StarTalk, a spin-off, also called StarTalk, began airing on National Geographic in 2015. In 2014, he hosted the television series Cosmos, A Spacetime Odyssey, the U. S. National Academy of Sciences awarded Tyson the Public Welfare Medal in 2015 for his extraordinary role in exciting the public about the wonders of science. Tyson was born as the second of three children in Manhattan, New York, into a living in the Bronx. His mother, Sunchita Maria Tyson, was a gerontologist for the U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and is of Puerto Rican descent. His African-American father, Cyril deGrasse Tyson, was a sociologist, human resource commissioner for New York City mayor John Lindsay, Tyson has two siblings, Stephen Joseph Tyson and Lynn Antipas Tyson. Tysons middle name, deGrasse, is from the name of his paternal grandmother. Tyson grew up in the Castle Hill neighborhood of the Bronx, from kindergarten throughout high school, Tyson attended public schools in the Bronx, P. S. 81, the Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy, and The Bronx High School of Science where he was captain of the wrestling team and his interest in astronomy began at the age of nine after visiting the sky theater of the Hayden Planetarium. He recalled that so strong was that imprint that Im certain that I had no choice in the matter, that in fact, during high school, Tyson attended astronomy courses offered by the Hayden Planetarium, which he called the most formative period of his life
3.
American Museum of Natural History
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The American Museum of Natural History, located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, is one of the largest museums in the world. The museum has a scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year. Before construction of the present complex, the museum was housed in the Arsenal building in Central Park. Sherman, A. G. Phelps Dodge, William A. Haines, Charles A. Dana, Joseph H. Choate, Henry G. Stebbins, Henry Parish, the founding of the museum realized the dream of naturalist Dr. Albert S. Bickmore. Bickmore, a student of Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz, lobbied tirelessly for years for the establishment of a natural history museum in New York. In 1874, the cornerstone was laid for the museums first building, the original Victorian Gothic building, which was opened in 1877, was designed by J. Wrey Mould, both already closely identified with the architecture of Central Park. The original building was eclipsed by the south range of the museum, designed by J. Cleaveland Cady. It extends 700 feet along West 77th Street, with corner towers 150 feet tall and its pink brownstone and granite, similar to that found at Grindstone Island in the St. Lawrence River, came from quarries at Picton Island, New York. The entrance on Central Park West, the New York State Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt and it leads to a vast Roman basilica, where visitors are greeted with a cast of a skeleton of a rearing Barosaurus defending her young from an Allosaurus. The museum is accessible through its 77th street foyer, renamed the Grand Gallery. The hall leads into the oldest extant exhibit in the museum, since 1930, little has been added to the exterior of the original building. The architect Kevin Roche and his firm Roche-Dinkeloo have been responsible for the planning of the museum since the 1990s. Various renovations both interior and exterior have been carried out including improvements to Dinosaur Hall and mural restoration in Roosevelt Memorial Hall, in 1992 the firm designed the new eight story AMNH Library. The museums south façade, spanning 77th Street from Central Park West to Columbus Avenue was cleaned, repaired and re-emerged in 2009, steven Reichl, a spokesman for the museum, said that work would include restoring 650 black-cherry window frames and stone repairs. The museums consultant on the latest renovation is Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. an architectural and engineering firm with headquarters in Northbrook, the museums first two presidents were John David Wolfe and Robert L. Stuart, both among the museums founders. The museum was not put on a sound footing until the appointment of the president, Morris K. Jesup. Jesup was president for over 25 years, overseeing its expansion, the fourth president, Henry Fairfield Osborn, was appointed in 1906 on the death of Jesup. Osborn consolidated the museums expansion, developing it into one of the worlds foremost natural history museums, F. Trubee Davison was president from 1933 to 1951, with A. Perry Osborn as Acting President from 1941 to 1946
4.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
5.
Manhattan
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Manhattan is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and the citys historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, founded on November 1,1683, Manhattan is often described as the cultural and financial capital of the world and hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in the borough and it is historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders which equals US$1062 today. New York County is the United States second-smallest county by land area, on business days, the influx of commuters increases that number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York Citys five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the citys government. The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, a 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. The word Manhattan has been translated as island of hills from the Lenape language. The United States Postal Service prefers that mail addressed to Manhattan use New York, NY rather than Manhattan, the area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – was the first European to visit the area that would become New York City. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, a permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam, the 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 to US$23, variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars, as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York. Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony, New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2,1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it New York after the English Duke of York and Albany, the Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16,1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British political, British occupation lasted until November 25,1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city
6.
Upper West Side
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The Upper West Side is sometimes also considered by the real estate industry to include the neighborhood of Morningside Heights. Like the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side is an affluent, primarily residential area with many of its residents working in areas of Midtown. Conversely, the Upper East Side is traditionally perceived to be home to commercial, the Upper West Side, along with the Upper East Side, is considered to be among New York Citys wealthiest neighborhoods. Upper West Side is bounded on the south by 59th Street, Central Park to the east, and its northern boundary is somewhat less obvious. Although it has historically been cited as 110th Street, which fixes the neighborhood alongside Central Park, it is now considered to be 125th Street. The area north of West 96th Street and east of Broadway is also identified as Manhattan Valley, the overlapping area west of Amsterdam Avenue to Riverside Park was once known as the Bloomingdale District. From west to east, the avenues of the Upper West Side are Riverside Drive, West End Avenue, Broadway, Amsterdam Avenue, Columbus Avenue, with the building of Lincoln Center, its name, though perhaps not the reality, was stretched south to 58th Street. This is a reversion to the historical name. The long high bluff above useful sandy coves along the North River was little used or traversed by the Lenape people, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the Upper West Side-to-be contained some of colonial New Yorks most ambitious houses, spaced along Bloomingdale Road. It became increasingly infilled with smaller, more villas in the first half of the nineteenth century. Its name was a derivation of the given to the area by Dutch settlers to New Netherland, likely from Bloemendaal. The Dutch Anglicized the name to Bloomingdale or the Bloomingdale District and it consisted of farms and villages along a road known as the Bloomingdale Road. Bloomingdale Road was renamed The Boulevard in 1868, as the farms and villages were divided into building lots, by the 18th century it contained numerous farms and country residences of many of the citys well-off, a major parcel of which was the Apthorp Farm. Within the confines of the modern-day Upper West Side, the road passed through areas known as Harsenville, Stryckers Bay, Bloomingdale, in the latter half of the 19th century, was the name of a village that occupied the area just south of 110th street. Much of the riverfront of the Upper West Side was a shipping, transportation, the Hudson River Railroad line right-of-way was granted in the late 1830s to connect New York City to Albany, and soon ran along the riverbank. One major non-industrial development, the creation of Central Park in the 1850s and 60s, parts of the neighborhood became a ragtag collection of squatters housing, boarding houses, and rowdy taverns. In 1868, the city began straightening and grading the section of the Bloomingdale Road from Harsenville north and it retained that name until the end of the century, when the name Broadway finally supplanted it. Development of the neighborhood lagged even while Central Park was being out in the 1860s and 70s
7.
Zeiss projector
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A Zeiss projector is one of a line of planetarium projectors manufactured by the Carl Zeiss Company. The first modern planetarium projectors were designed and built in 1924 by the Zeiss Works of Jena, Zeiss projectors are designed to sit in the middle of a dark, dome-covered room and project an accurate image of the stars and other astronomical objects on the dome. They are generally large, complicated, and imposing machines, the first Zeiss Mark I projector was installed in the Deutsches Museum in Munich in August,1923. It possessed a distinctive appearance, with a sphere of projection lenses supported above a large. Marks II through VI were similar in appearance, using two spheres of star projectors separated along an axis that contained projectors for the planets. Beginning with Mark VII, the axis was eliminated and the two spheres were merged into a single, egg-shaped projection unit. The Mark I was created in 1923–1924 and was the worlds first modern planetarium projector, the Mark II was developed during the 1930s jointly by Carl Zeiss AG factories in Jena and Oberkochen. Following WWII and the division of Germany, each developed its own line of projectors. Marks III – VI were developed in Oberkochen from 1957–1989, meanwhile, the East German facility in Jena developed the ZKP projector line. The Mark VII was developed in 1993 and was the first joint project of the two Zeiss factories following German reunification, as of 2011, Zeiss currently manufactures three main models of planetarium projectors. The Starmaster line of projectors are designed for smaller domes than the Universarium, between 1923 and 2011, Zeiss manufactured a total of 631 projectors. Therefore, the table is highly incomplete. List of planetariums Planetarium Planetarium Jena Walther Bauersfeld Zeiss Planetariums
8.
Silicon Graphics
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Silicon Graphics, Inc. was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and software. Early systems were based on the Geometry Engine that Clark and Marc Hannah had developed at Stanford University, for much of its history, the company focused on 3D imaging and were a major supplier of both hardware and software in this market. They reincorporated as a Delaware corporation in January 1990, through the mid to late-1990s, the rapidly improving performance of commodity Wintel machines began to erode SGIs stronghold in the 3D market. The porting of Maya to other platforms is an event in this process. In the mid-2000s the company repositioned itself as a supercomputer vendor, Ed McCracken was CEO of Silicon Graphics from 1984 to 1997. During those years, SGI grew from revenues of $5.4 million to $3.7 billion. The addition of 3D graphic capabilities to PCs, and the ability of clusters of Linux- and BSD-based PCs to take on many of the tasks of larger SGI servers, ate into SGIs core markets. The porting of Maya to Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows further eroded the low end of SGIs product line, in response to challenges faced in the marketplace and a falling share price Ed McCracken was fired and SGI brought in Richard Belluzzo to replace him. Under Belluzzos leadership a number of initiatives were taken which are considered to have accelerated the corporate decline, one such initiative was trying to sell workstations running Windows NT called Visual Workstations instead of just ones which ran IRIX, the companys version of UNIX. This put the company in more direct competition with the likes of Dell. The product line was unsuccessful and abandoned a few years later, SGIs premature announcement of its migration from MIPS to Itanium and its abortive ventures into IA-32 architecture systems damaged SGIs credibility in the market. In 1999, in an attempt to clarify their current market position as more than a company, Silicon Graphics Inc. changed its corporate identity to SGI. The new logo drew criticism for wasting the professional associated with the previous cube logo. SGI continued to use the Silicon Graphics name for its product line. In November 2005, SGI announced that it had been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because its common stock had fallen below the share price for listing on the exchange. SGIs market capitalization dwindled from a peak of seven billion dollars in 1995 to just $120 million at the time of delisting. In February 2006, SGI noted that it could run out of cash by the end of the year, in mid-2005, SGI hired Alix Partners to advise it on returning to profitability and received a new line of credit. SGI announced it was postponing its scheduled annual December stockholders meeting until March 2006 and it proposed a reverse stock split to deal with the de-listing from the New York Stock Exchange
9.
Tom Hanks
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Thomas Jeffrey Hanks is an American actor and filmmaker. Hanks films have grossed more than $4.5 billion at U. S. and Canadian box offices and more than $9.0 billion worldwide, Hanks has been nominated for numerous awards during his career. In 2004, he received the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In 2014, he received a Kennedy Center Honor and, in 2016, he received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, in 2010, Spielberg and Hanks were executive producers on the HBO miniseries The Pacific. Hanks was born in Concord, California, the son of Janet Marylyn, a worker, and Amos Mefford Hanks. His mother was of Portuguese descent, while his father had English ancestry. The familys three oldest children, Sandra, Larry and Tom, went with their father, while the youngest, Jim, in his childhood, his family moved often. By the age of ten, Hanks had lived in ten different houses, while Hanks family religious history was Catholic and Mormon, he has characterized himself as being a Bible-toting evangelical for several years as a teenager. In school, Hanks was unpopular with students and teachers alike, later telling Rolling Stone magazine, I was a geek, I was horribly, painfully, terribly shy. At the same time, I was the guy whod yell out funny captions during filmstrips, but I didnt get into trouble. I was always a good kid and pretty responsible. In 1965, his father married Frances Wong, a San Francisco native of Chinese descent, Frances had three children, two of whom lived with Hanks during his high school years. Hanks acted in plays, including South Pacific, while attending Skyline High School in Oakland. Hanks studied theater at Chabot College in Hayward, California, and transferred to California State University, Sacramento, Hanks told New York magazine in 1986, Acting classes looked like the best place for a guy who liked to make a lot of noise and be rather flamboyant. I spent a lot of going to plays. I wouldnt take dates with me, id just drive to a theater, buy myself a ticket, sit in the seat and read the program, and then get into the play completely. I spent a lot of time like that, seeing Brecht, Tennessee Williams, Ibsen, during his years studying theater, Hanks met Vincent Dowling, head of the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. At Dowlings suggestion, Hanks became an intern at the festival and his internship stretched into a three-year experience that covered most aspects of theater production, including lighting, set design, and stage management, prompting Hanks to drop out of college
10.
Whoopi Goldberg
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Caryn Elaine Johnson, known professionally as Whoopi Goldberg, is an American actress, comedian, author and television host. She has been nominated for 13 Emmy Awards for her work in television and is one of the few entertainers who has won an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Oscar, and a Tony Award. She was the black woman in the history of the Academy Awards to win an acting Oscar. In the period drama film The Color Purple, her role was playing Celie. In the romantic fantasy film Ghost, Goldberg played Oda Mae Brown, in 1992, she starred as a pretend nun in the comedy Sister Act. From 1998 to 2002, she was co-producer of the game show Hollywood Squares. Since 2007, she has been the moderator of the television talk show The View. Caryn Elaine Johnson was born in Manhattan, New York City on November 13,1955, the daughter of Robert James Johnson, Jr. a clergyman, and Emma Johnson and she was raised in the Chelsea-Elliot Houses. Goldberg has described her mother as a stern, strong, and wise woman who raised her as a mother with her brother Clyde. She went to a local Catholic school, St Columbas when she was younger and her more recent forebears migrated north from Faceville, Georgia, Palatka, Florida, and Virginia. She dropped out of Washington Irving High School and she has stated that her stage forename was taken from a whoopee cushion, If you get a little gassy, youve got to let it go. So people used to say to me, Youre like a whoopee cushion, and thats where the name came from. According to the Jewish Chronicle, one suggests that her mother thought that the familys original surname was not Jewish enough for her daughter to become a star. According to an anecdote told by Nichelle Nichols in Trekkies, a young Goldberg was watching Star Trek, theres a black lady on TV and she aint no maid. This spawned lifelong fandom of Star Trek for Goldberg, who would ask for and receive a recurring guest-starring role on Star Trek. Between 1979 and 1981, she lived in East Germany, working in a number of theater productions, during her travels, she would smuggle various items into the country for the artists she stayed with. Goldberg trained under acting teacher Uta Hagen at the HB Studio in New York City and she first appeared onscreen in 1982 in Citizen, Im Not Losing My Mind, Im Giving It Away, an avant-garde ensemble feature by San Francisco filmmaker William Farley. Goldberg created The Spook Show, a show composed of different character monologues in 1983
11.
Robert Redford
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Charles Robert Redford Jr. is an American actor, director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, and philanthropist. Redford is the founder of the Sundance Film Festival, Redfords career began in 1960 as a guest star on numerous TV shows, including, The Untouchables, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Twilight Zone, among others. He earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont and his greatest Broadway success was as the stuffy newlywed husband of Elizabeth Ashley in Neil Simons Barefoot in the Park. Redford made his debut in War Hunt. His role in Inside Daisy Clover won him a Golden Globe for best new star and he starred in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which was a huge success and made him a major star. The popular and acclaimed All the Presidents Men was a film for Redford. The first film that Redford directed, Ordinary People, was one of the most critically and publicly acclaimed films of the decade, winning four Oscars, and in the same year, he starred in Brubaker. He starred in Out of Africa, which was a critical and box office success. He released his film as a director, A River Runs Through It. Redford won the 1980 Academy Award for Best Director in 1981 for directing Ordinary People and he was previously nominated for Best Actor in 1974 for his performance in The Sting, and went on to receive Best Director and Best Picture nominations in 1995 for Quiz Show. He won a second Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2002, in 2010, he was made a chevalier of the Légion dHonneur. He has won BAFTA, Directors Guild of America, Golden Globe, in April 2014, Time Magazine included Redford in their annual TIME100 as one of the Most Influential People in the World, declaring him the Godfather of Indie Film. In 2016, President Barack Obama honored Redford with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, Redford was born on August 18,1936, in Santa Monica, California to Martha W. and Charles Robert Redford, Sr. a milkman-turned-accountant. He has a stepbrother, William, from his fathers remarriage, Redford is of English, Irish, Scottish, and Scots-Irish ancestry. Redfords family moved to Van Nuys, California, while his father worked in El Segundo and he attended Van Nuys High School, where he was classmates with baseball pitcher Don Drysdale. He has described himself as having been a bad student, finding inspiration outside the classroom and he hit tennis balls with Pancho Gonzales at the Los Angeles Tennis Club to warm him up. After graduating from school in 1954, he attended the University of Colorado in Boulder for a year and a half. While there, he worked at the restaurant/bar The Sink, a painting of his likeness is prominent in the bars murals, while at Colorado, Redford began drinking heavily, and as a result lost his half-scholarship and was kicked out of school
