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John Derbyshire

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Revision as of 17:24, 8 April 2012 by 11 Arlington (talk | contribs) (→Beliefs and disagreements with fellow National Review writers)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) For the swimmer, see John Derbyshire (swimmer). Not to be confused with Jonathan Derbyshire.
John Derbyshire
John Derbyshire, photographed in June 2001
Born (1945-06-03) June 3, 1945 (age 79)
NationalityBritish American
CitizenshipAmerican
Alma materUniversity College London
Occupation(s)Programmer, writer
Known forPrime Obsession
Websitewww.johnderbyshire.com

John Derbyshire (/ˈdɑːrbʃər/; born June 3, 1945) is a British-American writer. He formerly wrote a column in National Review. He has also written for New English Review. These columns cover a broad range of political-cultural topics, including immigration, China, history, mathematics, and race. Derbyshire's 1996 novel, Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year". His 2004 non-fiction book, Prime Obsession, won the Mathematical Association of America's inaugural Euler Book Prize. A new political book, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, was released in September 2009.

Derbyshire attended the Northampton School for Boys and graduated from University College London, where he studied mathematics. Before turning to writing full-time, he worked on Wall Street as a computer programmer.

Beliefs and disagreements with fellow National Review writers

Derbyshire has differed from his fellow writers at National Review on many subjects. For example, Derbyshire supported Michael Schiavo's position in the Terri Schiavo case, ridiculed George W. Bush's "itty-bitty tax cut, paid for by dumping a slew of federal debt on your children and grandchildren", has derided Bush in general for being too sure of his religious convictions and for his "rich-kid-ness", dismisses small-government conservatism as unlikely to ever take hold (although he is not unsympathetic to it), has called for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq (but favored the invasion), opposes market reforms or any other changes in Social Security, is pro-choice on abortion, supports euthanasia in a fairly wide range of circumstances, and has suggested that he might (in a time of international crisis) vote for Hillary Clinton as president.

Derbyshire's views on the Schiavo case attracted criticism from fellow writers at National Review Online such as Ramesh Ponnuru. The Derbyshire-Ponnuru dispute arose again over Ponnuru's recently published book, Party of Death. Derbyshire reviewed the book harshly in the New English Review, and Ponnuru replied on NRO with a strongly worded rebuttal.

Though Derbyshire broadly agrees with many other writers at National Review Online on immigration, he encountered strong opposition from former NRO blogger John Podhoretz, who described Derbyshire's comments on restricting immigration to maintain "ethnic balance" in severe terms: "But maintaining 'ethnic balance' is not fine. It is chillingly, horrifyingly not fine." In response, fellow Corner contributor Jonah Goldberg, who described himself as philosophically "in the middle" of the two, noted:

I should say that I think JPod is getting too hung up on the phrase "ethnic balance" as a codeword for all sorts of unlovely things. It seems to me that if you're going to sit down and have any immigration policy at all, it's unavoidable that you're going to address the issue of ethnic balance in one way or another, no matter what you call it. Ultimately, you have to choose where people come from if you have an immigration policy, even if you emphasize other factors like skills or family unification. So you can either look at it directly or you can skirt around it. But you can't avoid it.

He wrote about American schooling in his book We Are Doomed, "Education is a vast sea of lies, waste, corruption, crackpot theorizing, and careerist log-rolling." He further argued that people "had better brace ourselves for the catastrophe" coming as a result.

Derbyshire also has said he thinks that women's suffrage should be repealed. In 2005, in a monthly column containing a series of miscellaneous musings, he stated that women's physical attractiveness peaks between ages 15-20, a comment which also drew considerable criticism.

Comments on race and multiculturalism

In April 2012, Derbyshire wrote an article for Taki's Magazine titled "The Talk: Nonblack Version." The article was a response to reports in the news media of 'talks' given by African American parents to their children warning them against white authority figures. The article, which he couched in terms of purported advice he had given his own children on dealing with African Americans, describes 5% of black people as "ferociously hostile" to whites and a majority of black people as willing to go along with such hostility. He then advises his readers to avoid settling in black neighborhoods, avoid events that draw large numbers of black people, and refrain from helping black people who seem to be in distress. He also advises white readers to scrutinize black politicians more heavily than white ones, to cultivate friendships with the handful of "intelligent and well socialized blacks" for reasons of public relations, and asserts that the average intelligence of black people is lower than that of white people. Derbyshire's column immediately provoked condemnation from across the political spectrum. Derbyshire's editor at the conservative publication "National Review," Rich Lowry, described the piece as "appalling." He wrote in a statement about the article on the National Review Web site: "We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we'd never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways." Calls were made from a number of sources for Derbyshire to be dismissed from the "National Review," and on April 7 he was fired by them.

Mathematics

Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics by John Derbyshire

Derbyshire's book, Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics was first published in hardcover in 2003 and then paperback in 2004. It focuses on the Riemann hypothesis, one of the Millennium Problems. The book is aimed, as Derbyshire puts it in his prologue, "at the intelligent and curious but nonmathematical reader... I think I have pitched my book to the level of a person who finished high school math satisfactorily and perhaps went on to a couple of college courses...."

Prime Obsession explores such topics as complex numbers, field theory, the prime number theorem, the zeta function, the harmonic series, and others. The biographical sections give relevant information about the lives of mathematicians who worked in these areas, including Euler, Gauss, Dirichlet, Lobachevsky, Chebyshev, Vallée-Poussin, Hadamard, as well as Riemann himself.

In 2006, Joseph Henry Press published another Derbyshire book of popular mathematics: Unknown Quantity: A Real And Imaginary History of Algebra.

Appearance in Bruce Lee movie

Derbyshire had an uncredited role in Meng long guojiang (released in the West as Way of the Dragon and Return of the Dragon), a 1972 martial arts film starring Bruce Lee. Of landing the part, Derbyshire says: "The casting director had obviously just trawled around the low-class guesthouses for unemployed foreigners of a sufficiently thuggish appearance."

Personal life

Derbyshire is married to Lynette Rose, a Chinese citizen , and has two children, a daughter and a son. He lives in Huntington, New York. He has often recounted observations from his personal life in his bi-monthly column "The Straggler" in National Review. In a July 2011 blog post, Derbyshire stated that his sixteen-year-old son, Danny, "has set his heart on joining the military" and is "immovable on this, simply won’t consider anything else." His son is set to be enlisted in mid-2013.

Published works

He has also written numerous articles for various publications, including National Review, The New Criterion, and The Washington Times and maintained a weekly audio commentary on current events on the National Review website.

References

  1. "John Derbyshire archive". National Review Online. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  2. "Articles by John Derbyshire at New English Review". New English Review. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  3. "The Mathematical Association of America's Euler Book Prize". MAA Online. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  4. John Derbyshire (2005-05-10). "Twilight of Conservatism". National Review Online. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  5. John Derbyshire (2006-07-05). "Gone, but Not Forgotten". National Review Online. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  6. John Derbyshire (2005-06-24). "Just Got Back From The Windy City..." National Review Online. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  7. Ramesh Ponnuru (2005-03-23). "Contra Derbyshire". National Review Online. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  8. John Derbyshire (2006-06). "A Frigid and Pitiless Dogma". New English Review. Retrieved 2007-04-13. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. Ramesh Ponnuru (2006-06-07). "Unreason". National Review Online. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  10. John Podhoretz (2006-05-12). "Ethnic Balance?". National Review Online. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  11. Jonah Goldberg (2006-05-12). "Superior Immigrants". National Review Online. Retrieved 2008-05-11.
  12. ^ http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/271317/credentialed-society-john-derbyshire
  13. http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2009/09/30/62209/derbyshire-female-suffrage/
  14. http://old.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire200511300810.asp
  15. http://www.hugoschwyzer.net/2012/04/08/john-derbyshire-fired-over-racism-not-sexualization-of-15-year-old-girls/
  16. Derbyshire, John (April 05, 2012). "The Talk: Nonblack Version". Retrieved April 06, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  17. Derbyshire, John (March 29, 2012). "Multiculturalism: When Will the Sleeper Wake?". Retrieved April 06, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  18. S. W. Graham. "Read This: Prime Obsession". The Mathematical Association of America. Retrieved 2009-10-30.
  19. "Twelve questions for John Derbyshire". The Economist. Retrieved 2009-10-30.
  20. John Derbyshire (2003-10-15). "Thug (Uncredited)". National Review Online. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  21. John Derbyshire (writing as "Giles Matthews") (1987-07-25). "Getting Married in Manchuria". The Spectator. Archived from the original on 2007-02-08. Retrieved 2007-04-13. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  22. http://www.johnderbyshire.com/FamilyAlbum/page.html

External links

Interviews

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