Vocation : Writers : Textbook/ Non-fiction

Lloyd Viel Berkner (February 1, 1905 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – June 4, 1967 in Washington, D.C.) was an American physicist and engineer. He was one of the inventors of the measuring device that since has become standard at ionospheric stations because it measures the height and electron density of the ionosphere. The data obtained in the worldwide net of such instruments were important for the developing theory of short wave radio propagation to which Berkner himself gave important contributions.
Berkner was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1948.Later he investigated the development of the Earth's atmosphere. Since he needed data from the whole world, he proposed the International Geophysical Year in 1950. At that time, the IGY was the largest cooperative study of the Earth ever undertaken.
Berkner was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1956. The IGY was carried out by the International Council of Scientific Unions while he was president in 1957–1959. He was also a member of the President's Scientific Advisory Committee in 1958 while he was president of Associated Universities Inc.
In 1963, Berkner, with L.C. Marshall, advanced a theory to describe the way in which the atmospheres of the Solar System's inner planets had evolved.
Beginning in 1926, as a naval officer, Berkner assisted in the development of radar and navigation systems, naval aircraft electronics engineering, and studies that led to the construction of the Distant Early Warning system, a chain of radar stations designed to give the United States advance warning in the event of a missile attack across the North Pole. In the 50s and 60s, Berkner held intelligence clearances in the Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies. He worked with the CIA in some capacity as well, but any activities are wholly classified as of 2015.Berkner worked with Dallas community leaders to establish the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest (later renamed the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies, which would eventually become The University of Texas at Dallas).He wrote more than 100 papers and several books, including Rockets and Satellites (1958), Science in Space (1961), and The Scientific Age (1964).
In 1961, Berkner was president of the Institute of Radio Engineers.

Robert Gravem Webb (18 February 1927 – 18 September 2018) was an American herpetologist, expert in the systematics and biogeography of reptiles and amphibians, and professor emeritus of biological science at the University of Texas, El Paso.Webb received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Kansas in 1960.Webb had over a hundred publications to his name. He specialized in amphibians and reptiles of the southwestern United States and Mexico.The snake Lampropeltis webbi is named after him.

Peter Gallo (born 1959 in Rutland, Vermont) is an artist and writer who lives and works in Hyde Park, VT. He received his Ph.D. and MA in Art History from Concordia University, Montreal, and has written about the intersection of biopolitics, medicalization, and artistic experience from the eighteenth to early twenty-first centuries. He has a BA from Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT. For many years Gallo worked as a psychiatric crisis support worker and services coordinator for people with psychiatric and developmental disabilities in northern Vermont. Additionally, the artist has been active in the Grass Roots Art and Community Efforts (GRACE) in Hardwick, VT. He has organized numerous exhibitions including "Insider Art," (GRACE traveling exhibition, 1990), and Our Yard in the Future: The Art of Gayleen Aiken (Horton Gallery, 2007). He has contributed criticism to Art in America and Art New England, among others. The artist is represented by Anthony Reynolds Gallery in London, UK. Gallo's works have been featured in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and Europe, and are included in notable collections of contemporary art.
Gallo draws from a wide variety of sources – art historical, political, and literary, and often incorporates poetic, philosophical and found texts in his mixed-media paintings. He utilizes simple formal structures which emphasize the materiality of painting, and his works alternate between or combine both abstract and figurative elements. Nautical imagery derived from historical sources such as the "ship of fools," and the "ship of state," are among his signature subjects. His paintings often incorporate unconventional materials, including buttons, toothpicks, newspaper clippings, found photographs, string, typed texts, dental floss and chicken bones. His “improvisatory” style has been compared to that of Ree Morton, Joy Division and Forrest Bess. Critic Jonathon Goodman writes that in current art trends this kind of “ad hoc creativity often serves to mask poor skills, but in Gallo’s case, the rawness is a genuine part of his aesthetic, whose ungainliness keeps us thinking.“

Halsey Lawrence Royden, Jr. (September 26, 1928 – August 22, 1993) was an American mathematician, specializing in complex analysis on Riemann surfaces, several complex variables, and complex differential geometry. Royden is the author of a popular textbook on real analysis.

Alleen Pace Nilsen is an American literary scholar, linguist, and one of the pioneers of both humor studies and children's literature studies. She is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at Arizona State University, where she was previously the director of the English Education Program.
Together with her husband Don Nilsen, she co-founded the International Society for Humor Studies.

Ward Swift Just (September 5, 1935 – December 19, 2019) was an American writer. He was a war correspondent and the author of 19 novels and numerous short stories.