As reported on the Writers Almanac today:
It's the birthday of Buckminster Fuller, born in Milton, Massachusetts (1895). He was an inventor, engineer, architect, mathematician, poet and cosmologist; he once said "The only ones who don't get trained for specialization are artists, they want to be whole." He called himself a "Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Scientist" and many of his friends were artists. He said artists "keep the integrity of childhood alive until we reach the bridge between the arts and science. ... Artists frequently conceive of a pattern in their imagination before scientists find it in nature."
In 1927, when he was thirty-two, Fuller was about to throw himself into the freezing water of Lake Michigan. He was bankrupt and jobless with a wife and newborn daughter to support. There on the shore it struck him that his life belonged to the universe, not to himself, and he chose to devote his life to helping humanity. Before his death in 1983, he was awarded twenty-five U.S. patents, wrote twenty-eight books, received forty-seven honorary doctorates and numerous awards, and circled the globe fifty-seven times. His primary interest was shelter and housing, and he is best known for his invention of the geodesic dome.
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