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What’s New: December 2024

This month’s update adds seven twentieth-century lives, including émigrés from central Europe (the anthropologist Franz Steiner, the bioengineer Heinz Wolff, the set designer, Voytek Roman), unconventional business figures (Peter Middleton and the hippy entrepreneur Nicholas Carr-Saunders), a master mosaicist (Gertrude Martin), and a prominent figure in the London criminal underworld (Billy Hill).

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Kopal, Zdeněk (1914-1993), astronomer

The Czech astronomer Zdeněk Kopal, a refugee from Nazism, held the chair of astronomy at Manchester University from 1951 to 1981, where he supported the new science of radio astronomy. His research to map the surface of the moon was fundamental to the Apollo programme of manned landings.

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News

DECEMBER 12, 2024

What's New: December 2024

Welcome to the 117th update of the Oxford DNB, which adds seven twentieth-century lives, including three émigrés from continental Europe, two businesspeople, a mosaicist, and a figure from London’s criminal underworld. The update also includes one updated article and six new portrait likenesses

NOVEMBER 14, 2024

What's New: November 2024

Welcome to the 116th update of the Oxford DNB, which has a special focus on lives with a global dimension, literary lives, and medical lives. This update adds twelve new biographies, spanning four centuries, and one reference group article, and also includes four revisited biographies. There are also three additional portrait likenesses.

OCTOBER 24, 2024

What’s New: October 2024

Welcome to the 115th update of the Oxford DNB, which adds biographies of four people of African or part-African descent in Britain and its empire, accompanied by a reference group article and seven new portrait likenesses.