izzat

Biography
Early lif

Florence Nightingale was born into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia, Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and was named after the city of her birth. Florence's older sister Parthenope (pronounced [pɑ:'θi:nəpɪ]) had similarly been named after her place of birth, a Greek settlement now part of the city of Naples.
Her parents were William Edward Nightingale (1794–1874) and Frances ("Fanny") Nightingale née Smith (1789–1880). William Nightingale was born William Edward Shore. His mother Mary née Evans was the niece of one Peter Nightingale, under the terms of whose will William Shore not only inherited his estate Lea Hurst in Derbyshire, but also assumed the name and arms of Nightingale. Fanny's father (Florence's maternal grandfather) was the abolitionist William Smith.
Inspired by what she took as a Christian divine calling, experienced first in 1837 at Embley Park and later throughout her life, Florence announced her decision to enter nursing in 1845, despite the intense anger and distress of her family, particularly her mother. In this, she rebelled against the expected role for a woman of her status, which was to become a wife and mother. Nightingale worked hard to educate herself in the art and science of nursing, in spite of opposition from her family and the restrictive societal code for affluent young English women.
She cared for people in poverty. In December 1844, she became the leading advocate for improved medical care in the infirmaries and immediately engaged the support of Charles Villiers, then president of the Poor Law Board. This led to her active role in the reform of the Poor Laws, extending far beyond the provision of medical care. She was later instrumental in mentoring and then sending Agnes Elizabeth Jones and other Nightingale Probationers to Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary.
Nightingale was courted by politician and poet Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, but she rejected him, convinced that marriage would interfere with her ability to follow her calling to nursing. When in Rome in 1847, recovering from a mental breakdown precipitated by a continuing crisis of her relationship with Milnes, she met Sidney Herbert, a brilliant politician who had been Secretary at War (1845–1846), a position he would hold again during the Crimean War. Herbert was already married, but he and Nightingale were immediately attracted to each other and they became lifelong close friends. Herbert was instrumental in facilitating her pioneering work in the Crimea and in the field of nursing, and she became a key adviser to him in his political career. In 1851, she rejected Milnes' marriage proposal, against her mother's wishes.
Nightingale also had strong and intimate relations with Benjamin Jowett, particularly about the time that she was considering leaving money in her will to establish a Chair in Applied Statistics at the University of Oxford.[1]
Nightingale continued her travels with Charles and Selina Bracebridge as far as Greece and Egypt. Though not mentioned by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, her writings on Egypt in particular are fascinating testimony to her learning, literary skill and philosophy of life. Sailing up the Nile as far as Abu Simbel in January 1850 she wrote that "I don't think I ever saw anything which affected me much more than this", considering the temple: "Sublime in the highest style of intellectual beauty, intellect without effort, without suffering... not a feature is correct – but the whole effect is more expressive of spiritual grandeur than anything I could have imagined. It makes the impression upon one that thousands of voices do, uniting in one unanimous simultaneous feeling of enthusiasm or emotion, which is said to overcome the strongest man." At Thebes she wrote of being "called to God" while a week later near Cairo she wrote in her diary (as distinct from her far longer letters that Parthenope was to print after her return): "God called me in morning and asked me would I do good for him alone without reputation."[2] Later in 1850, she visited the Lutheran religious community at Kaiserswerth-am-Rhein where she observed Pastor Theodor Fliedner and the deaconesses working for the sick and the deprived. She regarded the experience as a turning point in her life, and issued her findings anonymously in 1851; The Institution of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, for the Practical Training of Deaconesses, etc. was her first published work.[3]
On 22 August 1853, Nightingale took the post of superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Upper Harley Street, London, a position she held until October 1854. Her father had given her an annual income of £500 (roughly £25,000/US$50,000 in present terms), which allowed her to live comfortably and to pursue her career. James Joseph Sylvester is said to have been her mentor.
Florence Nightingale's most famous contribution came during the Crimean War, which became her central focus when reports began to filter back to Britain about the horrific conditions for the wounded. On 21 October 1854, she and a staff of 38 women volunteer nurses, trained by Nightingale and including her aunt Mai Smith,[4] were sent (under the authorization of Sidney Herbert) to Turkey, about 545 km across the Black Sea from Balaklava in the Crimea, where the main British camp was based.
Nightingale arrived early in November 1854 at Selimiye Barracks in Scutari (modern-day Üsküdar in Istanbul). She and her nurses found wounded soldiers being badly cared for by overworked medical staff in the face of official indifference. Medicines were in short supply, hygiene was being neglected, and mass infections were common, many of them fatal. There was no equipment to process food for the patients.
Death rates did not drop; on the contrary, they began to rise. The death count was the highest of all hospitals in the region. During her first winter at Scutari, 4,077 soldiers died there. Ten times more soldiers died from illnesses such as typhus, typhoid, cholera and dysentery than from battle wounds. Conditions at the temporary barracks hospital were so fatal to the patients because of overcrowding and the hospital's defective sewers and lack of ventilation. A Sanitary Commission had to be sent out by the British government to Scutari in March 1855, almost six months after Florence Nightingale had arrived, and effected flushing out the sewers and improvements to ventilation.[5] Death rates were sharply reduced. It is directly through her thorough observations that the association linking sanitary conditions and healing became recognized and established. “Within 6 months of her arrival in Scutari, the mortality rate dropped from 42 percent to 2.2 percent“.[6] Florence insisted on adequate lighting, diet, hygiene, and activity. “She understood even then that the mind and body worked together, that cleanliness, the predecessor to our clean and sterile techniques of today, was a major barrier to infection, and that it promoted healing”.[7]
Nightingale continued believing the death rates were due to poor nutrition and supplies and overworking of the soldiers. It was not until after she returned to Britain and began collecting evidence before the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army that she came to believe that most of the soldiers at the hospital were killed by poor living conditions. This experience influenced her later career, when she advocated sanitary living conditions as of great importance. Consequently, she reduced deaths in the army during peacetime and turned attention to the sanitary design of hospitals.
The Lady with the Lamp
During the Crimean campaign, Florence Nightingale gained the nickname "The Lady with the Lamp", deriving from a phrase in a report in The Times:
She is a ‘ministering angel’ without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.[8]
The phrase was further popularised by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1857 poem "Santa Filomena":
Lo! in that hour of miseryA lady with a lamp I seePass through the glimmering gloom,And flit from room to room.
Return home
Nightingale returned to Britain a heroine on 7 August 1856, and, according to the BBC, was arguably the most famous Victorian after Queen Victoria herself. Nightingale moved from her family home in Middle Claydon, Buckinghamshire, to the Burlington Hotel in Piccadilly, where she was stricken by a fever, probably due to a chronic form of brucellosis ("Crimean fever") that she contracted during the Crimean war.[9] She barred her mother and sister from her room and rarely left it.
In response to an invitation from Queen Victoria – and despite the limitations of confinement to her room – Nightingale played the central role in the establishment of the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army, of which Sidney Herbert became chairman. As a woman, Nightingale could not be appointed to the Royal Commission, but she wrote the commission's 1,000-plus page report, that included detailed statistical reports, and she was instrumental in the implementation of its recommendations. The report led to a major overhaul of army military care, and to the establishment of an Army Medical School and of a comprehensive system of army medical records.
Later career
While she was still in Turkey, on 29 November 1855, a public meeting to give recognition to Florence Nightingale for her work in the war led to the establishment of the Nightingale Fund for the training of nurses. There was an outpouring of generous donations. Sidney Herbert served as honorary secretary of the fund, and the Duke of Cambridge was chairman. Nightingale was considered a pioneer in the concept of medical tourism as well, based on her letters from 1856 in which she would write of spas in Turkey detailing the health conditions, physical descriptions, dietary information, and other vitally important details of patients whom she directed there (where treatment was significantly less expensive than in Switzerland). It may be assumed she was directing patients of meagre means to affordable treatment.
By 1859 Nightingale had £45,000 at her disposal from the Nightingale Fund to set up the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas' Hospital on 9 July 1860. (It is now called the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery and is part of King's College London.) The first trained Nightingale nurses began work on 16 May 1865 at the Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary. She also campaigned and raised funds for the Royal Buckinghamshire Hospital in Aylesbury, near her family home.
Nightingale wrote Notes on Nursing, which was published in 1860, a slim 136-page book that served as the cornerstone of the curriculum at the Nightingale School and other nursing schools established. Notes on Nursing also sold well to the general reading public and is considered a classic introduction to nursing. Nightingale would spend the rest of her life promoting the establishment and development of the nursing profession and organizing it into its modern form.
Nightingale was an advocate for the improvement of care and conditions in the military and civilian hospitals in Britain. Among her popular books are Notes on Hospitals, which deals with the correlation of sanitary techniques to medical facilities; Notes on Nursing, which was the most valued nursing textbook of the day; Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army.
Nightingale's work served as an inspiration for nurses in the American Civil War. The Union government approached her for advice in organizing field medicine. Although her ideas met official resistance, they inspired the volunteer body of the United States Sanitary Commission.
In 1869, Nightingale and Dr Elizabeth Blackwell opened the Women's Medical College.
In the 1870s, Nightingale mentored Linda Richards, "America's first trained nurse", and enabled her to return to the USA with adequate training and knowledge to establish high-quality nursing schools. Linda Richards went on to become a great nursing pioneer in the USA and Japan.
By 1882, Nightingale nurses had a growing and influential presence in the embryonic nursing profession. Some had become matrons at several leading hospitals, including, in London, St Mary's Hospital, Westminster Hospital, St Marylebone Workhouse Infirmary and the Hospital for Incurables at Putney; and throughout Britain, e.g., Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley; Edinburgh Royal Infirmary; Cumberland Infirmary and Liverpool Royal Infirmary, as well as at Sydney Hospital in New South Wales, Australia.
In 1883, Nightingale was awarded the Royal Red Cross by Queen Victoria. In 1907, she became the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit. In 1908, she was given the Honourary Freedom of the City of London.
By 1896, Florence Nightingale was bedridden. She may have had what is now known as chronic fatigue syndrome.[citation needed] Her birthday is now celebrated as International CFS Awareness Day. A recent biography cites instead brucellosis and associated spondylitis.[10] During her bedridden years, she also did pioneering work in the field of hospital planning, and her work propagated quickly across Britain and the world.
Relationships
Although much of Nightingale's work improved the lot of women everywhere, she had little affection for women in general, preferring the friendship of powerful men. She often referred to herself in the masculine, as for example "a man of action".[11]
She did, however, have several important and passionate friendships with women. As a young woman she adored both an aunt and a female cousin. Later in life she kept up a prolonged correspondence with an Irish nun, Sister Mary Clare Moore, with whom she had worked in Crimea.[12] Her most beloved confidante was Mary Clarke, an Englishwoman she met in 1837 and kept in touch with throughout her life.[13]
In spite of these deep emotional attachments to women, most scholars of Nightingale's life believe that she remained celibate for her entire life; perhaps because she felt an almost religious calling to her career, or because she lived in time of sexual repression[14].

Death
On 13 August 1910, at the age of 90, she died peacefully in her sleep in her room at 10 South Street, Park Lane.[15] The offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was declined by her relatives, and she is buried in the graveyard at St. Margaret Church in East Wellow, Hampshire.[16][17]
Contributions
Statistics
Florence Nightingale had exhibited a gift for mathematics from an early age and excelled in the subject under the tutorship of her father. Later, Nightingale became a pioneer in the visual presentation of information and statistical graphics.[18] Among other things she used the pie chart, which had first been developed by William Playfair in 1801.
Florence Nightingale is credited with developing a form of the pie chart now known as the polar area diagram, or occasionally the Nightingale rose diagram, equivalent to a modern circular histogram to illustrate seasonal sources of patient mortality in the military field hospital she managed. Nightingale called a compilation of such diagrams a "coxcomb", but later that term has frequently been used for the individual diagrams. She made extensive use of coxcombs to present reports on the nature and magnitude of the conditions of medical care in the Crimean War to Members of Parliament and civil servants who would have been unlikely to read or understand traditional statistical reports.
In her later life Nightingale made a comprehensive statistical study of sanitation in Indian rural life and was the leading figure in the introduction of improved medical care and public health service in India.
In 1859 Nightingale was elected the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society and she later became an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.

Literature and the women's movement
While better known for her contributions in the nursing and mathematical fields, Nightingale is also an important link in the study of English feminism. During 1850 and 1852, she was struggling with her self-definition and the expectations of an upper-class marriage from her family. As she sorted out her thoughts, she wrote Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth. The three-volume book has never been printed in its entirety, but a section, called Cassandra, was published by Ray Strachey in 1928. Strachey included it in The Cause, a history of the women's movement. Apparently, the writing served its original purpose of sorting out thoughts; Nightingale left soon after to train at the Institute for deaconesses at Kaiserswerth.
Cassandra protests the over-feminization of women into near helplessness, such as Nightingale saw in her mother's and older sister's lethargic lifestyle, despite their education. She rejected their life of thoughtless comfort for the world of social service. The work also reflects her fear of her ideas being ineffective, as were Cassandra's. Cassandra is a virgin-priestess of Apollo who receives a divinely inspired prophecy, but her prophetic warnings go unheeded. Elaine Showalter called Nightingale's writing "a major text of English feminism, a link between Wollstonecraft and Woolf."[19]
Theology
Nightingale was a Christian universalist.[20] On 7 February 1837 – not long before her 17th birthday – something happened that would change her life: "God spoke to me", she wrote, "and called me to His service."[citation needed]
Legacy and memory

Nursing
The first official nurses’ training program, the Nightingale School for Nurses, opened in 1860. The mission of the school was to train nurses to work in hospitals, work with the poor, and to teach. This intended that students cared for people in their homes, an appreciation that is still advancing in reputation and professional opportunity for nurses today.[]
Florence Nightingale's lasting contribution has been her role in founding the modern nursing profession. She set an example of compassion, commitment to patient care, and diligent and thoughtful hospital administration. 21
The work of her School of Nursing continues today as the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery at King's College London. The Nightingale Building in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Southampton is also named after her. International Nurses Day is celebrated on her birthday each year.
The Florence Nightingale Declaration Campaign,[22] established by nursing leaders throughout the world through the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health (NIGH), aims to build a global grassroots movement to achieve two United Nations Resolutions for adoption by the UN General Assembly of 2008 which will declare: The International Year of the Nurse–2010 (the centennial of Nightingale's death); The UN Decade for a Healthy World–2011 to 2020 (the bicentennial of Nightingale's birth). NIGH also works to rekindle awareness about the important issues highlighted by Florence Nightingale, such as preventive medicine and holistic health. So far, The Florence Nightingale Declaration has been signed by over 18,500 signatories from 86 countries.
During the Vietnam War, Nightingale inspired many U.S. Army nurses, sparking a renewal of interest in her life and work. Her admirers include Country Joe of Country Joe and the Fish, who has assembled an extensive website in her honour.[23]
Four hospitals in Istanbul are named after Nightingale: F. N. Hastanesi in Şişli (the biggest private hospital in Turkey), Metropolitan F.N. Hastanesi in Gayrettepe, Avrupa F.N. Hastanesi in Mecidiyeköy, and Kızıltoprak F.N. Hastanesi in Kadiköy, all belonging to the Turkish Cardiology Foundation.[24]
The Agostino Gemelli Medical School[25] in Rome, the first university-based hospital in Italy and one of its most respected medical centres, honoured Nightingale's contribution to the nursing profession by giving the name "Bedside Florence" to a wireless computer system it developed to assist nursing.[26]
There are many foundations named after Florence Nightingale. Most are nursing foundations, but there is also Nightingale Research Foundation in Canada, dedicated to the study and treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome, which Nightingale is believed to have had.
There is a psychological effect known as the "Florence Nightingale Effect", whereby patients fall in love with their caregivers.
Museums and monuments
A statue of Florence Nightingale stands in Waterloo Place, Westminster, London, just off The Mall.
There are three statues of Florence Nightingale in Derby - one outside the Derby Royal Infirmary, one in St. Peter's Street, and one above the Nightingale-Macmillan Continuing Care Unit opposite the Derby Royal Infirmary. A public house named after her stands close to the Derby Royal Infirmary.[27]
There is a Florence Nightingale Museum in London and another museum devoted to her at her sister's family home, Claydon House, now a property of the National Trust.
The northernmost tower of the Selimiye Barracks building is today a museum, and in several of its rooms, relics and reproductions relevant to Florence Nightingale and her nurses are on exhibition.[28]
When she first arrived in Turkey, Nightingale would travel on horseback to make inspections. She then transferred to a mule cart and was reported to have escaped serious injury when the cart was toppled in an accident. Following this episode, she used a solid Russian-built carriage, with a waterproof hood and curtains. The carriage was returned to England after the war and subsequently given to the Nightingale training school for nurses, which she founded at St Thomas's Hospital. The carriage was damaged when the hospital was bombed by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. It was later restored and transferred to the Army Medical Services Museum in Mytchett, Surrey, near Aldershot.
A bronze plaque, attached to the plinth of the Crimean Memorial in the Haydarpaşa Cemetery, Istanbul and unveiled on Empire Day, 1954, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of her nursing service in that region, bears the inscription:[29]
"To Florence Nightingale, whose work near this Cemetery a century ago relieved much human suffering and laid the foundations for the nursing profession."
Florence Nightingale's voice was saved for posterity in a phonograph recording from 1890 preserved in the British Library Sound Archive.
Theatre
The first theatrical representations of Nightingale was Reginald Berkeley in his "The Lady with the Lamp", premiering in London in 1929 with Edith Evans in the title role. This does not portray her as an entirely sympathetic character and draws much characterisation from Lytton Strachey's biography of her in Eminent Victorians.[30] It was adapted as a film of the same name in 1951. Nightingale also appears in Edward Bond's surrealist play Early Morning, in which she is depicted having a lesbian affair with Queen Victoria.
In 2009, A stage musical play representation of Nightingale was produced by the Association of Nursing Service Administrators of the Philippines (ANSAP), entitled "The Voyage of the Lass". The play depicts the story of love and vocation on the nursing communities' icon Florence Nightingale, shown on all Fridays of February 2009 at the AFP Theatre, Camp Crame, Philippines. The play tells the story of Nightingale's early life and her struggles during the Crimean War. "The Voyage of the Lass" was a two-hour play that showcased Philippine local registered nurses from various hospitals of the country, exposing their talents on the performing arts.

Television
Portrayals of Nightingale on television, in documentary as in fiction, vary - the BBC's 2008 Florence Nightingale emphasised her independence and feeling of religious calling, but in Channel 4's 2006 Mary Seacole: The Real Angel of the Crimea she was portrayed as narrow-minded and opposed to Seacole's efforts. In 1985 a TV biopic "Florence Nightingale", starring Jaclyn Smith as Florence, was produced.
Film
In 1912 a biographical silent film titled The Victoria Cross starring Julia Swayne Gordon as Nightingale was produced. In 1915 another biographical silent film titled Florence Nightingale was produced starring Elisabeth Risdon. In 1936 a biographical film titled White Angel was produced, starring Kay Francis as Nightingale. A 1951 a second "talkie" biographical film titled The Lady With The Lamp was produced starring Anna Neagle.
Banknotes
Florence Nightingale's image appeared on the reverse of Series D £10 banknotes issued by the Bank of England from 1975 until 1994. As well as a standing portrait, she was depicted on the notes in a field hospital in the Crimea, holding her lamp.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein, 1921
Born
March 14, 1879(1879-03-14)Ulm, Kingdom of Württemberg, German Empire
Died
April 18, 1955 (aged 76)Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Residence
Germany, Italy, Switzerland, USA
Citizenship
Württemberg/Germany (1879–96)Stateless (1896-1901)Switzerland (1901–55)Austria (1911–12)Germany (1914–33)United States (1940–55)[1]
Ethnicity
Ashkenazi Jewish and German
Fields
Physics
Institutions
Swiss Patent Office (Bern)University of Zurich Charles University in Prague ETH Zurich Prussian Academy of Sciences Kaiser Wilhelm Institute University of Leiden Institute for Advanced Study
Alma mater
ETH Zurich University of Zurich
Doctoral advisor
Alfred Kleiner
Other academic advisors
Heinrich Friedrich Weber
Notable students
Ernst G. Straus Nathan Rosen
Known for
General relativity Special relativity Photoelectric effect Brownian motion Mass-energy equivalence Einstein field equations Unified Field Theory Bose–Einstein statistics
Notable awards
Nobel Prize in Physics (1921)Copley Medal (1925)Max Planck Medal (1929)Person of the Century
Religious stance
Agnostic
Signature
Albert Einstein (pronounced /ˈælbərt ˈaɪnstaɪn/; German: [ˈalbɐt ˈaɪ̯nʃtaɪ̯n] ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was an ethnically Jewish, German-born theoretical physicist.[2][3] He is best known for his theories of special relativity and general relativity. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect."[4]. He is often regarded as the father of Modern Physics and the greatest scientist of the 20th Century.
Einstein's many contributions to physics include:
The special theory of relativity, which reconciled mechanics with electromagnetism
The general theory of relativity, a new theory of gravitation obeying the equivalence principle.
Founding of relativistic cosmology with a cosmological constant
The first post-Newtonian expansion, explaining the perihelion advance of Mercury
Prediction of the deflection of light by gravity and gravitational lensing
The first fluctuation dissipation theorem which explained the Brownian movement of molecules
The theory of density fluctuations in gasses and liquids, giving a criterion for critical opalescence
The photon theory and wave-particle duality derived from the thermodynamic properties of light
The quantum theory of atomic motion in solids
Zero-point energy
The semiclassical version of the Schrödinger equation
Relations for atomic transition probabilities which predicted stimulated emission
The quantum theory of a monatomic gas which predicted Bose-Einstein condensation
The EPR paradox
A program for a unified field theory
The geometrization of fundamental physics.
Einstein published more than 300 scientific works and more than 150 non-scientific works.[5][6] In 1999 Time magazine named him the Person of the Century beating contenders like Mahatma Gandhi and Franklin Roosevelt, and in the words of a biographer, "to the scientifically literate and the public at large, Einstein is synonymous with genius."
Early life and education
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire on March 14, 1879.[6] His father was Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer. His mother was Pauline Einstein (née Koch). In 1880, the family moved to Munich, where his father and his uncle founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a company that manufactured electrical equipment based on direct current.[6]

Einstein at the age of 4. His father showed him a pocket compass, and Einstein realized that there must be something causing the needle to move, despite the apparent "empty space."[8]
The Einsteins, although of Jewish ancestry, did not observe Jewish religious practices, and their son attended a Catholic elementary school. Although Einstein had early speech difficulties, he was a top student in elementary school.[9][10] As he grew, Einstein built models and mechanical devices for fun, and began to show a talent for mathematics.[6] In 1889, a family friend Max Talmud introduced the ten year old Einstein to key texts in science, mathematics and philosophy, including Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Euclid's Elements (which Einstein called the "holy little geometry book").[11]
Albert Einstein in 1893 (age 14). From Euclid, Einstein began to understand deductive reasoning, and by the age of twelve, he had learned Euclidean geometry. Soon after he began to investigate infinitesimal calculus. At age 16, he performed the first of his famous thought experiments in which he visualized traveling alongside a beam of light.[12]
In 1894, his father's company failed: direct current (DC) lost the War of Currents to alternating current (AC). In search of business, the Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and then, a few months later, to Pavia. When the family moved to Pavia, Einstein stayed in Munich to finish his studies at the Luitpold Gymnasium. His father intended for him to pursue electrical engineering, but Einstein clashed with authorities and resented the school's regimen and teaching method. He later wrote that the spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in strict rote learning. In the spring of 1895, he withdrew to join his family in Pavia, convincing the school to let him go by using a doctor's note.[6] During this time, Einstein wrote his first scientific work, "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields".[13]
Einstein applied directly to the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule (later Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH)) in Zürich, Switzerland. Lacking the requisite gymnasium certificate, he took an entrance examination, which he failed, although he got exceptional marks in mathematics and physics.[14] The Einsteins sent Albert to Aarau, in northern Switzerland to finish secondary school.[6] While lodging with the family of Professor Jost Winteler, he fell in love with the family's daughter, Marie. (His sister Maja later married the Winteler son, Paul.)[15] In Aarau, Einstein studied Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. At age 17, he graduated, and, with his father's approval, renounced his citizenship in the German Kingdom of Württemberg to avoid military service, and enrolled in 1896 in the mathematics and physics program at the Polytechnic in Zurich. Marie Winteler moved to Olsberg, Switzerland for a teaching post.
In the same year, Einstein's future wife, Mileva Marić, also entered the Polytechnic to study mathematics and physics, the only woman in the academic cohort. Over the next few years, Einstein and Marić's friendship developed into romance. In a letter to her, Einstein called Marić "a creature who is my equal and who is as strong and independent as I am."[16] Einstein graduated in 1900 from the Polytechnic with a diploma in mathematics and physics;[17] Although historians have debated whether Marić influenced Einstein's work, the overwhelming consensus amongst academic historians of science is that she did not.[18][19][20]

Albert Einstein
Spouse(s)
1. Mileva Marić, 6 January 1903-14 February 1919; 2. Elsa Löwenthal née Einstein, m. 1923
Children
1. Lieserl Einstein, 1902; Hans Albert Einstein 14 May 1904;Eduard Einstein, 28 July 1910
Marriages and children
In early 1902, Einstein and Mileva Marić had a daughter they called Lieserl, born in Novi Sad where the parents of Mileva lived.[21] Her fate is uncertain after 1903.[22] Einstein and Marić married in 1903, and in 1904 the couple's first son, Hans Albert Einstein, was born in Bern, Switzerland. Their second son, Eduard, was born in Zurich in 1910. In 1914, Einstein moved to Berlin, while his wife remained in Zurich with their sons. They divorced on 14 February 1919, having lived apart for five years. Einstein married Elsa Löwenthal (née Einstein) in 1923. She was his first cousin maternally and his second cousin paternally. In autumn 1935 they moved to a house they purchased in Princeton, New Jersey; shortly afterward, Elsa Einstein was diagnosed with heart and kidney problems and died in December, 1936.[23]

Misbun Sidek

Datuk Misbun Sidek
Mural of Sidek Brothers in Muzium Negara
Personal information
Nickname(s)
Bun
Birth name
Mohmed Misbun Sidek
Date of birth
February 17, 1960 (1960-02-17) (age 49)
Place of birth
Banting, Selangor
Men's singles
Country
Malaysia
Mohmed Misbun Sidek or (Datuk Mohmed Misbun Sidek, DMSM) (Nickname: Bun) (born February 17, 1960 in Kancung Darat, Banting, Selangor) was a Malaysian national badminton player. He is the oldest of the five Sidek Brothers.
He and his siblings were all actively involved in the national badminton scene.
Misbun won the gold medal in badminton for men singles during the 1981 SEA Games in Manila.
He currently serves as coach to the players in the Malaysian national badminton team.
The Malacca Government honoured the national badminton coach Misbun Sidek with the Darjah Mulia Seri Melaka (DMSM) state award, which carries the title of ‘Datuk’. The Yang di-Pertua Negri Tun Mohd Khalil Yaakob presented the award to the former national shuttler on August 28, 2008 at Istana Melaka.

Achievements
1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1987 Malaysia National Badminton Champion
1981, 1983 German Open Champion
1982 World Cup Runner Up
1982, 1983 Swedish Open Champion
1983 Canada Open Champion
1983 Pro Kennex Cup Runner Up
1986 All England Runner Up
1986 Malaysia Open Runner Up
1987 Singapore Open Champion
1987 Taiwan Open Champion
1988 World Badminton Grand Prix Runner Up
1988 Thomas Cup Runner Up (men team event)

P. Ramlee

Promotional headshot.
Born
Teuku Zakaria Teuku Nyak PutehMarch 22, 1929(1929-03-22)Penang, Malaysia
Died
May 27, 1973 (aged 44)Jalan Dedap, Taman P. RamleeSetapak, Kuala Lumpur
Spouse(s)
Saloma
Tan Sri Datuk Amar Dr P. Ramlee ,PSM, AMN,DA (Posthumous) (Sarawak) (22 March 1929–29 May 1973) was a Malaysian film actor, director, singer, and songwriter. Due to his contributions in the movie and music industry, as well as in the literary scene, he is often attributed as the icon of Malay entertainment in both Malaysia, Singapore as well as in Sumatra, Indonesia (especially in Acheh due to his ancestry).
Biography
Ramlee was born Teuku Zakaria bin Teuku Nyak Puteh to Teuku Nyak Puteh bin Teuku Karim and Che' Mah Hussein at his grandmother's house (now opened as P. Ramlee House) in Counter Hall (now renamed as Jalan P. Ramlee), Penang, Malaysia. His father Teuku Nyak Puteh was a sailor from Lhokseumawe in the province of Aceh, Indonesia.
As a child, he studied in several schools, including the famous Penang Free School. During his school days he was very active in sports, especially sepak takraw, badminton, and football.
Career
Main article: List of P. Ramlee films
P.Ramlee's big break came on 1 June 1948 when he was spotted by Tamil film director B. S. Rajhans. The director was impressed by Ramlee, and in 1949 he was cast in the film Nasib (Fate). Seven years later, Ramlee directed his first film Penarik Becha (The Trishaw Man). In 1957, Ramlee would act in the first of his Bujang Lapok (Dowdy Bachelors) comedic films that he acted along S. Shamsuddin along with Aziz Sattar, which are still popular among the modern Malay film watchers.
During his career he directed and acted in sixty-six films, and had more than 360 songs to his credit. Among his films that received awards are:
Best Musical Score for Hang Tuah — Third Asian Film Festival, Hong Kong (1956)
Best Male Actor for Anak-ku Sazali (My son, Sazali) — Fourth Asian Film Festival, Tokyo (1957)
Best Comedy Film for Nujum Pak Belalang (The Fortune Teller) — Seventh Asian Film Festival, Tokyo (1960)
Most Versatile Talent for Ibu Mertua Ku (My Mother In-law) — Tenth Asian Film Festival, Tokyo (1963)
Best Comedy Film for Madu Tiga (Three Wives) — Eleventh Asian Film Festival, Taipei (1964)
His final film was Laksamana Do Re Mi on 1972 and last songs and lyrics was Ayer Mata Di Kuala Lumpur on 1973 before his death.
Death
On 29 May 1973 P.Ramlee died at the age of 44 due to heart problems and was buried in Jalan Ampang Muslim Cemetery, Kuala Lumpur. In 1986, in honour of his contributions to the Malaysian entertainment industry, the P. Ramlee Memorial was set up in Setapak, Kuala Lumpur. In 1982, Jalan Parry in the KL city centre has been renamed Jalan P. Ramlee in his honor. He was posthumously awarded with the Malaysian honorific title Tan Sri in the early 1990s.Recently,He was also posthumously awarded the honorific title of 'Datuk Amar' by Sarawak State Government.Upon the conferment of the award,the Chief Minister of Sarawak,Pehin Sri Dr.Hj Abdul Taib Mahmud,who is a vivid fan of P.Ramlee, later presented the award to her daughter,Dian P.Ramlee in a ceremony honoring veteran artistes in Kuching.

Hang Tuah

Hikayat Hang Tuah
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Hikayat Hang Tuah is a Malay work of literature that tells the tale of the legendary Malay Muslim warrior Hang Tuah and his four warrior friends - Hang Jebat, Hang Kasturi, Hang Lekir and Hang Lekiu - who lived during the height of the Sultanate of Malacca in the 15th century.
The most memorable chapter in the work concerns a duel between Hang Tuah and his closest friend, Hang Jebat. Hang Tuah was falsely accused of adultery with one of his sultan's maids by his jealous rivals. Upon hearing the accusation, the sultan ordered Hang Tuah killed, without an investigation of his alleged offense. Hang Tuah was secretly saved, however, by his executioner, a bendahara. Hang Jebat was aware that Hang Tuah was being unjustly punished and in a show of support and deep loyalty for his friend, revolted against the sultan. The sultan's forces were unable to suppress Hang Jebat. The sultan later came to realize that Hang Tuah was innocent, and immediately regretted sentencing Hang Tuah to death. The bendahara then told the sultan that Hang Tuah was still alive, and that only Hang Tuah could overcome Hang Jebat's rebellion. Hang Tuah was immediately recalled and given amnesty. After seven days of fighting, Hang Tuah managed to kill Hang Jebat. (See Hang Tuah) According to the Malay Annals, it was Hang Kasturi that fought with Hang Tuah instead of Hang Jebat.
Malay culture holds the Hang Tuah legends in extremely high regard. In fact, one of the hottest debates in Malay literature centers on the duel between Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat. Hang Tuah is a symbol of absolute loyalty to a ruler while Hang Jebat symbolizes truth and justice. Hence, there is the question of who is right.
Though it is generally perceived that there were five friends, there is doubt that Hang Lekir and Hang Lekiu are indeed two different persons. In the Jawi script, the letter "ﺭ" (ra) and the letter "ﻭ" (wow) look similar and those were part of the nouns "Leki-r" and "Leki-u". Due to the similarity, the differentiation of Lekir and Lekiu might be due to mistranslation. Many historians and literature experts disagree however, and point out that the five friends are a Malay version of the five warriors of the Mahabharata .
Apart from that, Hikayat Hang Tuah is highly critical of the Javanese and deals with the rivalry between Malacca and Majapahit. In the literary work, many of the crooks and the villains were from Majapahit or Java. The king of Majapahit is depicted as an indecisive person and Majapahit's grand vizier Gajah Mada as sly, cunning and unsympathetic.
Hikayat Hang Tuah was listed in UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme International Register in 2001.
Hang Tuah is a legendary warrior/hero who lived during the reign of Sultan Mansur Shah of the Sultanate of Malacca in the 15th century. He was the greatest of all the laksamana, or sultan's admirals, and was known to be a ferocious fighter. Hang Tuah is held in the highest regard, even in present-day Malaysian Malay culture, and is arguably the most well-known and illustrious warrior figure in Malaysian history and literature.

Hang Tuah's Career
Hang Tuah's illustrious career as an admiral or laksamana includes tales of his absolute and unfaltering loyalty to his Sultan, some of which are chronicled in Sejarah Melayu (the semi-historical Malay Annals) and Hikayat Hang Tuah (a romantic collection of tales involving Hang Tuah).
Hang Tuah became the Sultan's constant aide, accompanying the King on official visits to foreign countries. On one such visit to Majapahit, Taming Sari, a famous Majapahit warrior, challenged Hang Tuah to a duel. After a brutal fight, Hang Tuah emerged as winner and the ruler of Majapahit bestowed upon him Taming Sari’s kris or weapon. The Taming Sari kris was named after its original owner, and was purported to be magical, empowering its owner with invincibility. It is said to be the source of Hang Tuah’s alleged supernatural abilities.
Hang Tuah also acted as the Sultan's ambassador, travelling on his Sultan's behalf to allied countries. Another story concerning Hang Tuah's legendary loyalty to the Sultan is found in the Hikayat Hang Tuah, and involves his visit to Inderaputa, in Pahang during one such voyage. The Sultan sent Hang Tuah to Pahang with the task of persuading the princess Tun Teja, who was already engaged, to become the Sultan's companion. Tun Teja fell under the impression that Hang Tuah had come to persuade her to marry him, not the Sultan, and agreed to elope with him to Melaka. It was only during the voyage home that Hang Tuah revealed his deception to Tun Teja.
The Hikayat Hang Tuah and Sejarah Melayu each carry different accounts of this incident, however. The Hikayat records that it was Hang Tuah who persuaded Tun Teja to elope with him, thus deceiving her. Sejarah Melayu, however, claims that it was another warrior, Hang Nadim, who deceived Tun Teja.
Perhaps the most famous story in which Hang Tuah is involved is his fight with his closest childhood companion, Hang Jebat. Hang Tuah's deep loyalty to and popularity with the Sultan led to rumours being circulated that Hang Tuah was having an illicit affair with one of the Sultan's concubines. The Sultan sentenced Hang Tuah to death without trial for the alleged offense. The death sentence was never carried out, however, because Hang Tuah's executioner, the Bendahara, went against the Sultan’s orders and hid Hang Tuah in a remote region of Melaka.
Believing that Hang Tuah was dead, murdered unjustly by the Sultan he served, Hang Jebat avenged his friend's death. Hang Jebat's revenge allegedly became a palace killing spree or furious rebellion against the Sultan (sources differ as to what actually occurred). It remains consistent, however, that Hang Jebat wreaked havoc onto the royal court, and the Sultan was unable to stop him, as none of the Sultan's warriors dared to challenge the more ferocious and skilled Hang Jebat. The Bendahara then informed the Sultan that the only man able to stop Hang Jebat, Hang Tuah, was still alive. The Bendahara recalled Hang Tuah from his hiding place and the warrior was given full amnesty by the Sultan and instructed to kill Hang Jebat. After seven gruelling days of fighting, Hang Tuah was able to kill Hang Jebat.
It is notable that the two main sources of Hang Tuah's life differ yet again on the details of his life. According the Hikayat Hang Tuah, it was Hang Jebat who avenged his friend's death, only to be killed by the same friend, but according to Sejarah Melayu, it was Hang Kasturi. The Sejarah Melayu is the more historical account[citation needed], but the Hang Jebat story, as the more romantic tale, remains more popular.
Hang Tuah continued to serve Malacca after the death of Hang Jebat. Later in his life, as Hang Tuah progressed in his years, the warrior was ordered by the successive Malaccan Sultan to court a legendary princess on the Sultan's behalf. The Puteri Gunung Ledang (Princess of Mount Ledang) was so named because she resided on Mount Ledang at the Melaka-Johor border. According to legend, the Princess met with Hang Tuah, and only agreed to marry the Sultan if he satisfied a list of requirements, or pre-wedding gifts. The list included a golden bridge linking Melaka with the top of Gunung Ledang, seven trays of mosquito livers, seven jars of virgins' tears and a bowl of the Sultan's first born son's blood. Hang Tuah knew the tasks would not be fulfilled, and was said to be so overwhelmed that he failed his Sultan that he flung his kris into a river and vowed only to return to Melaka if it resurfaced, which it never did. It was also said that he then vanished into thin air. According to other sources, however, Hang Tuah lived until old age, and his body is said to be have been buried in Tanjung Kling in Melaka, where his tomb can still be seen today.
Hang Tuah the Legend
Hang Tuah is famous for quoting the words "Takkan Melayu Hilang di Dunia" which literally means "Malays will never vanish from the face of the earth" or "Never shall the Malay(s) (race) vanish from the face of the earth". The quote is a famous rallying cry for Malay nationalism.
He remains an extremely popular Malay legend, embodying the values of Malay culture at the time, when allegiance and loyalty were paramount above all else. The Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat story, whether completely true or not, represents a paradox in the Malay psyche about loyalty and justice, and remains a point of debate among students of Malay history and literature.
Hang Tuah in Media
Hang Tuah is a prominent legendary figure in Malaysia's popular culture and his story has been adapted into several movies. The more famous of these movies include Hang Tuah, starring the late P. Ramlee in the titular role, and Puteri Gunung Ledang, which starred M. Nasir as Hang Tuah. In 1995, XX Ray 2, a film by Aziz M. Osman was made and tells about modern scientists were sent back in Hang Tuah's era. In the film, Hang Tuah (played by Jalaluddin Hassan) got the quote Takkan Melayu Hilang Di Dunia from one of the scientists from future (played by Aziz M. Osman).TUAH film, which starred (Jamal Abdillah)
Places and things named after Hang Tuah
In Malaysia
Four roads in Malaysia are named after Hang Tuah: Jalan Hang Tuah in Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, Malacca, and in Taman Khalidi Bharu, Muar, Johor
The Royal Malaysian Navy has a frigate named KD Hang Tuah.
A strip along Jalan Hang Tuah has been renamed Hang Tuah Mall and popularised as a tourist attraction.
In Indonesia
Streets : Jalan Hang Tuah in Medan, Pekanbaru, and Jakarta
University of Hang Tuah in Surabaya, Indonesia
The Indonesian Navy also has a frigate named KRI Hang Tuah.

Biodata YABhg. Tun Dr. Mahathir Early life

Personal
Mahathir was born in Alor Setar, Kedah,[6] the youngest of nine children[7] of a schoolteacher and a housewife. His father, Mohamad Iskandar, was of half-Indian origin, being the son of a Malayalee Muslim (who migrated from Kerala) and a Malay mother, while Mahathir's own mother, Wan Tampawan, was Malay.[8]
During World War II, he sold pisang goreng (banana fritters) and other snacks to supplement his family income during the Japanese occupation of Malaya. Mahathir attended a Malay vernacular school before continuing his education at the Sultan Abdul Hamid College in Alor Star. Mahathir then attended the King Edward VII Medical College (the predecessor of present-day National University of Singapore) in Singapore, where he edited a medical student magazine called The Cauldron; he also contributed to the The Straits Times newspaper pseudonymously under the nickname "Che Det". Mahathir was also President of the Muslim Society in the college.[9] Upon graduation in 1953, Mahathir joined the then Malayan government service as a medical officer. He married Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali—a fellow doctor and former classmate in college—on 5 August 1956, and left government service in 1957 to set up his own private practice in Alor Star. Mahathir thrived in private practice, and allowed him to own by 1959 a Pontiac Catalina and employ an ethnic Chinese chauffeur (at the time, almost all chauffeurs in Malaysia were Malays, owing to the economic dominance of the ethnic Chinese).[10] Some critics have suggested this foreshadowed a later hallmark of Mahathir's politics, which focused on the "cultivation of such emblems of power".[11]
From his marriage with Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah binti Haji Mohamad Ali, they have seven children,[12] four sons and three daughters: Marina Mahathir, Mirzan Mahathir, Melinda Mahathir, Mokhzani Mahathir, Mukhriz Mahathir, Maizura Mahathir and Mazhar Mahathir. [13] Both Mukhriz and Mokhzani [14] are involved in business as well as in politics while their eldest daughter Marina is a prominent local writer and AIDS activist.[15]
He successfully underwent a heart bypass operation in 1989 at age 63.[13]
Political career
In the third general election of 1964, Mahathir was elected Member of Parliament for Kota Setar Selatan[16] defeating the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party's (PAS) candidate with a 60.2% majority. He lost the seat in the following general election in 1969 by a mere 989 votes to PAS's candidate, Haji Yusoff Rawa.[17]
Following the race riots of 13 May 1969, Mahathir was sacked from the UMNO Supreme Council on 12 July, following his widespread distribution to the public of his letter to Tunku Abdul Rahman, the Prime Minister at that time. In his letter, he had criticised the manner in which Tunku Abdul Rahman had handled the country's administration which was believed to favour the ethnic Chinese. Mahathir was subsequently relieved of his party membership on 26 September.[17]
While in the political wilderness, Mahathir wrote his book, "The Malay Dilemma"[17] in which he sought to explain the causes of the 13 May Incident in Kuala Lumpur and the reasons for the Malays' lack of economic progress within their own country. He then proposed a politico-economic solution in the form of "constructive protection", worked out after careful consideration of the effects of heredity and environmental factors on the Malay race. The book, published in 1970, was promptly banned by the Tunku Abdul Rahman government.[17] However, some of the proposals in this book had been used by Tun Abdul Razak, Tunku Abdul Rahman's successor, in his "New Economic Policy" (NEP) that was principally geared towards affirmative action economic programs to address the nation's economic disparity between the Malays and the non-Malays. The ban on his book was eventually lifted after Mahathir became Prime Minister in 1981.[17]
Mahathir rejoined UMNO on 7 March 1972, and was appointed as Senator in 1973. He relinquished the senatorship post in 1974 in order to contest in the general elections where he was returned unopposed in the constituency of Kubang Pasu, and was appointed as the Minister of Education.[17] In 1975, he became one of the three vice-presidents of UMNO, after winning the seat by 47 votes. Tun Hussein Onn appointed Mahathir as Deputy Prime Minister on 15 September 1978, and in a Cabinet reshuffle, appointed him concurrently as the Minister of Trade and Industry.
Mahathir had announced that he has resigned from UMNO, the backbone of the ruling party, the Barisan National on 19 May 2008 which coincides with the Wesak Day celebration.
Prime Minister
Mahathir became the Prime Minister of Malaysia on 16 July 1981 when Tun Hussein Onn stepped down due to health reasons. He was the nation's first Prime Minister that came from a modest social background, whereas the first three prime ministers were members of the royal or elite families.[13]
After 22 years in office, Mahathir retired on 31 October 2003, making him one of Asia's longest-serving political leaders. Upon his retirement on 31 October 2003, Mahathir was awarded a "Tun"-ship, Malaysia's highest civilian honour.
Deputy Prime Ministers
Tun Musa Hitam 1981-1986
Tun Ghafar Baba 1986-1993, appointed by Mahathir
Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim 1993-1998
Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi 1999-2003, appointed by Mahathir
Major constitutional changes
In 1983 and 1991, he took on the federal and state monarchies, removing the royal veto and royal immunity from prosecution.[11] Prior to this amendment of the law, royal assent was required in order for any bill to pass into law. With effect of this amendment, approval by parliament could be legally considered as royal assent after a period of 30 days, notwithstanding the views of the monarchs.
In 1988 when the future of the ruling party UMNO was about to be decided in the Supreme Court (it had just been de-registered as an illegal society in the High Court), he was believed to have engineered the dismissal of the Lord President of the Supreme Court, Salleh Abas, and three other supreme court justices who tried to block the misconduct hearings. The series of incidents in 1988 has been widely viewed as the end of the Malaysian judiciary's independence from the executive.
Economic policies
During his term in office, Mahathir turned Malaysia into a regional high-tech manufacturing, financial, and telecommunications hub through his economic policies based on corporate nationalism, known as the various "Malaysia Plans" which set out the government middle-term objectives. These policies with strong Keynesian tendency remained in effect almost to the end of his tenure in office.[citation needed]
His pet projects have included Perwaja Steel, an attempt to emulate South Korea and Japan, the Proton car company, and Astro, a satellite television service.[citation needed]
Mahathir is credited with spearheading the phenomenal growth of the Malaysian economy, now one of the largest in Southeast Asia. Growth between 1988 and 1997 averaged over ten percent and living standards rose twentyfold, with poverty relatively almost eradicated and social indicators such as literacy levels and infant mortality rates becoming almost on par with developed countries.[citation needed]
During this period, Mahathir embarked on various large scale national projects, such as the North-South Expressway, Multimedia Super Corridor, the planned capital city of Putrajaya, Johor's Port of Tanjung Pelepas, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, the Bakun Dam in Sarawak, and the Petronas Towers.
While such projects have their benefits, corresponding high costs have made some Malaysians reluctant to engage in more of such ventures, believing that the money can be better spent on other areas of development.[18] On the other hand, Mahathir has always argued that such projects yield a direct return to the economy, apart from just serving the national pride, as government spendings in turn create jobs along with other multiplier effects. Mahathir has also been criticised for the failures and inefficiency of some of his pet projects. Perwaja Steel eventually failed and had to be rescued by a corporate white knight. Its chairman, Eric Chia, faced charges of corruption in 2004. Proton eventually had to be bought by Petronas when its parent DRB-HICOM found itself over-extended, and is still currently fighting to become profitable. Astro enjoyed a monopoly on pay television services in Malaysia until 2005 when it ended with the granting of a licence to a rival MiTV
The Bakun Dam project was to be managed by a local construction firm, Ekran Berhad. It issued a 1-for-1 on time rights issue which was 63% undersubscribed (the first time in Malaysia for an event of this magnitude). Ekran's chairman, Ting Pek King, had to purchase all unsubscribed shares at a cost of $500 million ringgit due to his agreement with the underwriters. Subsequently the dam project was taken back by the government which was obliged to pay Ekran for the work already completed.[citation needed]
1997 Asian financial crisis
During the Asian financial crisis of 1997, IMF had prescribed a recovery package for Malaysia, but Mahathir defied international pressure, his then Deputy Anwar Ibrahim, and conventional wisdom in rejecting the package. Though economic prosperity has been mixed since then, Mahathir argued that Malaysia's recovery was relatively faster and better, as compared to many other Asian countries affected. After the financial crisis, the IMF and World Bank acknowledged that Mahathir's approach had worked.[19]
During Mahathir's administration, there are a few speculation activities made by the administration which caused losses for Malaysia. Between 1981 and 1982, Malaysian businesses became involved in the international tin venture. The activity caused the price of the commodity to skyrocket, resulting in the collapse of the export market for tin. This venture cost Malaysia USD 80 million or MYR 209 million in losses.[20]
In 1990, Bank Negara Malaysia became involved in the Pound Sterling speculation. The speculation activity failed and costs the central bank USD 4 billion.[21] In 1994, the bank continued to pursue the speculation activity and further lost USD 2.2 billion. Finally, in 1994, the central bank technically become insolvent and was bailed out by the Ministry of Finance.[22][23]
Sacking of Anwar Ibrahim
In 1998, the government brought charges of sexual misconduct and abuse of power charges against the former finance minister and deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim. Anwar claimed that he was being set up because he had tried to turn corruption and nepotism into major political issues, with Mahathir and his associates as the targets. Mahathir's supporters believe that it was Anwar's attempt to replace Mahathir as the Prime Minister, upon seeing the downfall of Indonesia's Suharto, that has led him to be removed from politics altogether.
The government included the statements of the purported victims of Anwar's sexual assaults, evidence that was alleged by some to be tainted.[24][25] Furthermore, the prosecution was unable to accurately decide on a date that the alleged acts of anal sex had occurred - the government originally alleged that a sodomy had occurred inside a building that had not been constructed at the time of the alleged event. When the anomaly was pointed out, the prosecution amended the date of the alleged acts to a date after the building was built. Mahathir himself went as far as to go on television to declare Anwar guilty of sodomy and homosexual acts, even as the trial still was underway. There was widespread condemnation of the trial from human rights groups and the Malaysia bar association, who expressed serious doubts about its fairness. Mahathir then ordered a crackdown on the media and opposition parties who protested the trial. Anwar Ibrahim was sentenced to six years in prison for corruption and nine years prison for sodomy, to be served consecutively.[26][27]
The Anwar crisis sparked protests by many Malaysians, of all ethnic groups, and Anwar's supporters formed "Parti Keadilan Nasional" (National Justice Party) or "KeADILan". It garnered widespread support from Malaysians, but it managed to win only five parliamentary seats in the 1999 elections.[28] In the subsequent 2004 elections, when Mahathir's successor became Prime Minister, KeADILan was nearly wiped out, with Anwar's wife Wan Azizah winning its sole parliamentary seat. Six months later, Anwar's conviction was overturned and he was released. Mahathir criticized the release of Anwar. The 2008 elections showed a major comeback from the opposition parties with Anwar's KeADILan party helping to form five state governments, as well as becoming the biggest opposition party in Parliament.
Educational system

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Further information: Education in Malaysia
In 1974, Mahathir was appointed Minister of Education.[29][30] He had always believed in the need for "education for the masses", with greater emphasis on maths and science, at high school level, in order to achieve his dream of a developed Malaysia. He continued to strongly promote his agenda of quantity-and-quality higher education during his term as prime minister.[citation needed]
In those days, English, Chinese and Tamil-medium schools were fully run by private and missionary organizations. Students from these school sat for the respective overseas examinations set by the board of school committees and associations. For instance, Overseas Cambridge School Certificate (OSC) was set for English schools.[citation needed] Under the former Prime Minister's order, he drafted the KBSM syllabus in order to make Malay a compulsory subject to be taught in all subjects in these schools. Overseas examinations were subsequently abolished one after another throughout the years. Schools which converted to the national type received heavy fundings from the government. Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) and Sijil Rendah Pelajaran (SRP) were fully introduced as national examinations.[citation needed]
In order to cater for the lower income indigenous population, boarding schools were promoted and constructed. Through government scholarships, tens of thousands of students were sent yearly to universities in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia—western-type countries that Mahathir aspired to achieve par development with. Middle- and higher-income groups from non-Bumiputera Malaysians who were unable to get a place in the local universities, due to the restrictive quota system and limited government scholarships, also independently sent their children to these universities. This has led Malaysia to have the third largest number of students going to western-type countries to pursue higher education, after China and India.[citation needed]
In 1980, education quota was introduced as part of the National Economic Policy.[31] Mahathir who became the acting prime minister, introduced the quota system to all economic sectors in Malaysia including the education system, whereby a designated percentage of undergraduate seats of higher institutions were reserved for Bumiputra citizens.
Towards his later years, Mahathir promoted the liberalization of university start-ups, leading to branch campuses being built or the formation of permanent tie-ups with some of the most prestigious universities in the world. Amongst others, these led to the construction of the University of Nottingham in Malaysia (in partnership with the University of Nottingham, U.K.), Malaysia University of Science and Technology (M.U.S.T.), in partnership with M.I.T. (U.S.) and Motorola) , Monash University Malaysia (in partnership with Monash University, Australia) and Curtin University of Technology, Sarawak Campus (in partnership with Curtin University of Technology, Australia)
Private companies with a long running history in Malaysia like Intel and AMD were also encouraged to set up, and run partnerships and/or higher education centres and centres of excellence.
In the year before his retirement, he announced that Mathematics and Science subjects must be taught in English in all primary and secondary schools with aim to increase competitiveness of Malaysian students.[32]
Foreign relations

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During Mahathir's tenure in office, Malaysia's relationship with the West was generally fine despite being known to be an outspoken critic towards them.[3] Early during his tenure, a small disagreement with the United Kingdom over university tuition fees sparked off a boycott of all British goods led by Mahathir, in what became known as the "Buy British Last" campaign. It also led to a search for development models in Asia, most notably Japan. This was the beginning of his famous "Look East Policy". Although the dispute was later resolved by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Mahathir continued to emphasize Asian development models over contemporary Western ones.
United States
Mahathir has always been an outspoken critic of the United States[5] and yet the United States was the biggest source of foreign investment, and was Malaysia's biggest customer during Mahathir's rule. Furthermore, Malaysian military officers continued to train in the US under the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program.
Some say that relations with the United States took a turn for the worse in 1998,[33] when US Vice President Al Gore stated at the APEC conference hosted by Malaysia:
"Democracy confers a stamp of legitimacy that reforms must have in order to be effective. And so, among nations suffering economic crises, we continue to hear calls for democracy, calls for reform, in many languages - People Power, doi moi, reformasi. We hear them today - right here, right now - among the brave people of Malaysia."
Al Gore left immediately after making that statement, probably as a form of protest.[citation needed]
Al Gore and the United States were critical of the trial of Mahathir's former deputy Anwar Ibrahim, going as far to label it as a "show trial". US News and World Report called the trial a "tawdry spectacle."[34] The government included the statements of the purported "victims" of Anwar's sodomy attacks, evidence that was widely considered to be tainted. Furthermore, the prosecution was unable to accurately decide on a date that the alleged acts of anal sex had occurred - the government originally alleged that a sodomy had occurred inside a building that had not been constructed at the time of the alleged event. Mahathir himself went as far as to go on television to declare Anwar guilty of sodomy and homosexual acts, even as the trial still was underway. In response to widespread condemnation of the trail from human rights groups and the Malaysia bar association, he ordered a crackdown on the media and opposition parties who protested the trial. Many of the "reformasi" supporters who were against Mahathir at that time were arrested by the FRU and Special Branch and were detained without trial under the ISA. Some of them were opposition supporters, and some of them were former academics.
Also, Anwar Ibrahim was the preeminent Malaysian spokesperson for the economic policies preferred by the IMF, which included interest rate hikes, among others. An article in Malaysia Today commented that "Gore's comments constituted a none-too-subtle attack on Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and more generally on governments, including Japan, that resist US demands for further market reforms."[35] Gore's endorsement for the reformasi (reformation) asking for (among other things) the ouster of Mahathir, was anathema to Mahathir, and he remarked that "I've never seen anybody so rude". This also summed up the Malaysian expectation that one who is a guest should not show such discourtesy to the host.[36]

Mahathir greeting U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.
However, Mahathir's views were already firmly entrenched before this event. For example, before the ASEAN meeting in 1997, he made a speech condemning the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, calling it an oppressive instrument by which the United States and other countries try to impose their values on Asians. He went on to share his view that Asians need stability and economic growth more than civil liberties. These remarks did not endear him to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who was a guest at the meeting.
The relationship was stormy both ways. Following Anwar Ibrahim's sacking and subsequent imprisonment, Madeleine Albright paid a visit to Anwar's wife.
Yet Mahathir has not hesitated to point to America for justification of his own actions. In speaking of arbitrary detention without trial of prisoners of conscience in Malaysia, he said: "Events in the United States have shown that there are instances where certain special powers need to be used in order to protect the public for the general good."
At the other end of the spectrum, the United States government has previously criticised the Malaysian government for implementing the ISA, most recently in 2001 when President George W. Bush said "The Internal Security Act is a draconian law. No country should any longer have laws that allow for detention without trial." In 2004, however, Bush reversed his stance and claimed "We cannot simply classify Malaysia’s Internal Security Act as a draconian law."
In 2003 Mahathir spoke to the Non-Aligned Movement in Kuala Lumpur, and as part of his speech, said:
"If innocent people who died in the attack on Afghanistan and those who have been dying from lack of food and medical care in Iraq are considered collaterals, are the 3,000 who died in New York, and the 200 in Bali also just collaterals whose deaths are necessary for operations to succeed?"[clarification needed]
Marie Huhtala, the American ambassador to Malaysia responded with a statement:
"These are not helpful statements by any standard, and I'm here to tell you that Washington does take note of them. They are bound to have a harmful effect on the relationship."
More recently, the 2003 Invasion of Iraq caused additional friction between the two countries; Mahathir was highly critical of President Bush for acting without a United Nations mandate.
In spite of all this, Malaysia's relationship with the US has been strong. A 2003 house subcommittee hearing (Serial No. 108–21) on US policy towards South East Asia sums it up as "Despite sometimes blunt and intemperate public remarks by Prime Minister Mahathir, U.S.-Malaysian cooperation has a solid record in areas as diverse as education, trade, military relations, and counter-terrorism".
Even after retirement, Mahathir was not hesitant about his criticisms of the United States. In 2004, (The Star, 18 October 2004), he was quoted as having said "The American people are, by and large, very ignorant and know nothing about the rest of the world.... Yet they are the people who will decide who will be the most powerful man in the world". In the same interview, he also predicted George W. Bush's victory in the 2004 United States Presidential Election, in which he was later proven correct. In another October 2006 interview with Associated Press, he predicted that the Republicians will retain both chambers in the 2006 mid-term elections because "American voters are not astute and will be fooled by President George W. Bush's propaganda." This prediction was proven faulty.
Australia
Mahathir's relationship with Australia (the closest country in the Anglosphere to Malaysia, and the one whose foreign policy is most concentrated on the region), and his relationship with Australia's political leaders, has been particularly rocky. Mahathir regularly took offense at portrayals of Malaysia in the Australian media (which criticized Mahathir's belligerence and outspokeness), calling on the government to intervene in this (an action that would be politically unthinkable in Australia). Relationships between Mahathir and Australia's leaders reached a low point in 1993 when Paul Keating described Mahathir as "recalcitrant" for not attending the APEC summit. (It is thought that Keating's description was a linguistic gaffe, and that what he had in mind was "intransigent".)[37]
Mahathir, along with other Malaysian politicians (and many other Asian leaders) also heavily criticized Keating's successor, John Howard, whom he believed had encouraged Pauline Hanson, whose views were widely perceived in Asia[citation needed] (and Australia)[38] as racist. Australian politicians then pointed out Mahathir's farcical trial of Anwar Ibrahim, saying that the prosecution was using homophobic overtones.[citation needed]
Mahathir has valued the right of a nation to do whatever it wants within its borders, which he calls "sovereignty". This was articulated in the ASEAN policy of non-interference. In 2000, Mahathir was quoted as saying: "If Australia wants to be a friend to Asia, it should stop behaving as if it is there to teach us how to run our country. It is a small nation in terms of numbers and it should behave like a small nation and not be a teacher." He also said, "This country stands out like a sore thumb trying to impose its European values in Asia as if it is the good old days when people can shoot aborigines without caring about human rights".[citation needed]
Mahathir also made remarks to the effect that John Howard was trying to be America's 'Deputy Sheriff' in the Pacific region. This was in response to John Howard's statement that they would pursue terrorists over the borders of their neighbours.
His perception of Howard has not softened after retirement. In an interview, he stated: "They (accepted) Blair, and I am sure they will accept Bush. They have already accepted Howard who told a blatant lie", a reference to the "Children overboard" scandal during the run-up to the 2001 Australian elections.
Despite this supposed non-interference policy, Malaysia during Mahathir's premiership had been constantly criticising Singapore, but would take the slightest unfavourable comment coming from Singapore as an attempt to interfere in the domestic affairs of Malaysia.[citation needed]
Middle East
Under Mahathir, Malaysia was a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, and established diplomatic relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization. (Israeli citizens remain banned from entering Malaysia and Malaysian citizens from Israel without special government permission.) In 1986, a major diplomatic row erupted with neighbouring Singapore when Chaim Herzog, the President of Israel, paid a state visit.
Mahathir's public remarks about Jews date back as early as 1970 when he wrote in his controversial book The Malay Dilemma: "The Jews for example are not merely hook-nosed, but understand money instinctively."[39][40]
In 1997, during the financial crisis, he attributed the collapse of the Malaysian ringgit to a conspiracy of Jews against a prosperous Muslim state: "The Jews robbed the Palestinians of everything, but in Malaysia they could not do so, hence they do this, depress the ringgit." Under strong international criticism, he issued a partial retraction, but not in Malay language media sources.[41]
On 16 October 2003, shortly before he stepped down as prime minister, Mahathir said during a summit for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Putrajaya, that:
“
We [Muslims] are actually very strong, 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Nazis killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million [during the Holocaust]. But today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them. They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries. And they, this tiny community, have become a world power.[42]
”
He also named Israel as "the enemy allied with most powerful nations." Israel strongly criticized the remarks. The speech was also condemned by most nations from the West. Speaking on behalf of the European Union, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said that Dr Mahathir had employed "expressions that were gravely offensive, very strongly anti-Semitic and... strongly counter to principles of tolerance, dialogue and understanding'." At the same time, Mahathir's speech was defended by several Muslim leaders and politicians, including Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Maher and Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai.[40][43] United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Bush considered the comments "reprehensible and hateful."[44] The Muslim Public Affairs Council condemned Mahathir's remarks as "extremely offensive, anti-Semitic comments."[40] The Malaysian prime minister's comments were also condemned by Jewish organizations and the government of Israel.
His comments were widely criticized in the West, but the issue was ignored in Asia and Islamic countries, which felt that his remark had been taken out of context. Mahathir later defended his remarks, saying: "I am not anti-Semitic ... I am against those Jews who kill Muslims and the Jews who support the killers of Muslims." He tagged the West as "anti-Muslim", for double standards by "protecting Jews while allowing others to insult Islam." He also said "But when somebody condemns the Muslims, calls my prophet, "terrorist", did the European Union say anything?"[45]
Singapore
Mahathir is an alumnus of the National University of Singapore (previously named University of Malaya). He graduated as a physician from then King Edward VII Medical College in 1953, during British rule. He is held in high regard by his alma mater, and regularly attends reunions.
However, relations with Singapore under Mahathir's tenure have been stormy. Many disputed issues raised during his administration have not been resolved, and in fact have been exaggerated. Many of these international issues have been raised up under Mahathir's Premiership term, but no significant headway had been made then to resolve them bilaterally. Issues have included:
the low price of raw water paid by Singapore to Malaysia (3 Malaysian cents (US$0.008) per 1000 gallons);
the proposed replacement of the Causeway by a suspension bridge to improve water flow through the Straits of Johor (later cancelled by Mahathir's successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi);
Singapore's land reclamation work, affecting shipping access to Port Tanjung Pelepas;
the use of Malaysian airspace by Republic of Singapore Air Force jets;
the status of Pedra Branca Island (also known as "Pulau Batu Putih"), was brought to the International Court of Justice and now belongs to Singapore; and
the sovereignty of the railway line crossing Singapore and Points of Agreement regarding the matter.
Both sides had stubbornly refused to compromise, with the result of bilateral relations turning frosty.[citation needed] The absurdity of the whole situation was illustrated by Mahathir's proposal to replace the Malaysian portion of the Causeway with half a bridge, with the end result, a structure which would symbolise Singapore's uncompromising attitude.[citation needed] Under Prime Minister Abdullah, relations have begun to thaw, and inter-citizen relations have gone on much as they have before in that they are totally independent of political bickering. Many Singaporeans and Malaysians have relatives on the both sides of the Causeway, and despite the bickering of both governments over different issues, relations between citizens of both countries remained unaffected.
Recently, the issue of replacement of the Causeway with a bridge and the use of Malaysian airspace by the RSAF have been successfully solved by Mahathir's successor Abdullah, an issue that has been heavily criticised by Mahathir.
People's Republic of China
Though an anti-communist in his early career, Mahathir highly approves of the new directions adopted by the People's Republic of China (PRC) after Deng Xiaoping's ascension to power. Malaysia and the PRC maintained a close relationship since the late 1990s, when doubts and suspicions of China's ambition in ASEAN region were cleared, and Mahathir and Chinese leaders found many common grounds in their authoritarian style of ruling and their opposition to Western interference in regional matters. Mahathir is keen that the rise of PRC could to some extent balance the American influence in Southeast Asia, as well as benefiting Malaysia from the PRC's economic prosperity.
Bosnia-Herzegovina
In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mahathir has been noted as a particular ally and sympathetic co-religionist of that nation. He visited Sarajevo in June, 2005 to open a bridge near Bosmal City Center signifying friendship between Malaysians and Bosnians.
He made another 3-day visit to Visoko to see the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun in July 2006. He made another visit a few months later.
In February 2007, four non-governmental organizations: the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, the Congress of Bosniak Intellectuals, and two Christian organizations: the Serb Civil Council and the Croat National Council, nominated Mahatir for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work during the conflict.[46]
On 22 June 2007, he made another visit to Sarajevo with a group of Malaysian businessmen to explore the investment opportunities in the country.
Russian Federation
Before the fall of the Soviet Union, Malaysia had relations with the Communist state. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the Malaysian government and other Islamic states sided with the Mujahideen. Since the 1990s however, relations between Russia and Malaysia have improved significantly. In 2002 Mahathir made his visit to Moscow. He made the statement that Russia can be the rival to the United States and Israel and he praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and his opposition to Western interference and democracy promotion.[citation needed]
Developing world
Among some developing and Islamic countries, Mahathir is generally respected,[3] particularly for Malaysia's relatively high economic growth as well as for his support towards liberal Muslim values.[47] Foreign leaders, such as Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, praised him and have been trying to emulate Mahathir's developmental formulae. He was one of the greatest spokesmen on Third World issues, and strongly supported the bridging of the North-South divide, as well as exhorting the development of Islamic nations. He was dedicated to various Third World blocs such as ASEAN, the G77, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organization of Islamic Nations, and most recently, the G22 at the latest WTO talks at Cancún.
Retirement

Mahathir at the 50th Hari Merdeka Parade (Independence Day) celebrations.
In 2002 a tearful[48] Mahathir announced his resignation to a surprised UMNO General Assembly. He was persuaded to stay on for a further eighteen months, in a carefully planned handover that ended in October 2003. On his retirement, he was granted Malaysia's highest honour, which entitles him to the title Tun from his original Datuk Seri. Since retirement, he has been serving as an advisor to the Malaysian national oil company Petronas and the Malaysian national car company Proton, an original core national project initiated by Mahathir during his premiership. He is also the head of the Perdana Leadership Foundation, a foundation whose aim is to preserve, develop and spread materials regarding or written by previous Malaysian Prime Ministers. While he has retired from all political offices, he remains very outspoken regarding national policies.
In 2005 Mahathir brought up the issue of excessive awarding of Approved Permits (APs) to import cars, stating that they were creating too much competition for Proton, causing friction between him and Rafidah Aziz, the Minister for International Trade and Industry, who oversaw the awarding of APs. His successor, Abdullah, then announced that a National Automotive Policy (NAP) would be created to appropriately handle the issue. Later, when touching on the issue, Mahathir lamented the government's majority in Parliament, saying, "I believe that the country should have a strong government but not too strong. A two-thirds majority like I enjoyed when I was prime minister is sufficient but a 90% majority is too strong....We need an opposition to remind us if we are making mistakes. When you are not opposed you think everything you do is right".[49]
Mahathir has also ventured into a bakery business with a Japanese partner. Together they established a Japanese-style bakery and bistro outlet called "The Loaf". As of October 2007, there are two outlets in Malaysia, one in Langkawi and one in Kuala Lumpur. They are planning expand their business into other countries in Southeast Asia.[50] In May 2008, Mahathir started a blog under his old pseudonym, which reached a million visitors within the span of one month.[51][52]
Criticism of his successor
In 2006 Mahathir's relationship with his successor started to get strained. In a press conference on 7 June 2006 at the Perdana Leadership Foundation, which he heads, Mahathir said that Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was not his first choice as successor but it was the current Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, instead. He said that he felt hurt by allegations that he "finished all the government's money, and that the government was bankrupt" because of the mega-projects initiated by him during his tenure as prime minister.[53] Mahathir added that he has "...a habit of choosing the wrong people" when he was answering the question whether Abdullah had stabbed him in the back.[53] He has also criticised the present government's decision to scrap the plan to replace Malaysia's side of the Johor-Singapore Causeway. In his opinion, Malaysia does not need to seek the approval to build a bridge on its own soil. This and other such issues have led many to believe that UMNO is under the threat of splitting into Mahathir and Badawi factions. A statement was issued by UMNO to reassure the public that they wholeheartedly supported Badawi, although as of yet, no stand has been taken over the issue of Mahathir's membership in the party. Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, Nazri Aziz, suggested that Mahathir "wants to force him (Abdullah) to quit. He needs to be told he is no longer Prime Minister. His campaign is not for the sake of the country but for himself."[54]
To make his voice heard, Mahathir decided to bid to become a delegate from Kubang Pasu for the 2006 UMNO general assembly. This move, if successful, would bring great chagrin to Abdullah who seemed to use every form of censorship available to shut Mahathir up. He failed in his bid to be elected as a representative which is surprising given the fact that Kubang Pasu is his stronghold for over three decades.[55] Later, an angry Mahathir claimed that the "establishment" (in reference to the present government) were doing everything in their power including, but not limited to using government machine that is normally reserved for general elections, to ensure that he didn't get elected. Mahathir even went as far as to allege — albeit, without proof — that the interested party paid RM200 for every vote cast against him. Mahathir also challenged the government to throw him in jail if the government wanted him to shut his mouth.[56]
On, 22 October 2006, Mahathir had a private meeting with Abdullah, in which he voiced his dissatisfactions face-to-face for the first time with Abdullah. This meeting was highly anticipated by members of UMNO and other Malaysians to be an opportunity to narrow the differences between both of them.
However, Mahathir continued his criticisms of Abdullah after the meeting, saying that he was not satisfied with Abdullah's answers to his views.[57]
In a press conference after the meeting, Mahathir revealed one of his dissatisfactions; he felt that his civil liberties to voice his opinions and meeting with people were curtailed by the government. This is a quote from the press conference on this topic.
"And I pointed out to him that firstly, this has become a police state. Because every time anybody invites me to give a talk, they would be called up by the police and warned, called up by the police and told to withdraw the invitation. Someone was not allowed to hold any meeting at all which involves me. This happened to many people. They were very shy to tell me about it but they were called up by the police and of course they were also called up by the mentri besar as well... But I consider this a police state. And I consider also that my civic right has been taken away from me because I have every right to talk to Umno people, university people, civil servants and that’s my right".[57]
Mahathir also voiced certain conducts of Abdullah and his relatives (before and after Abdullah became Prime Minister) that would amount to corruption although Mahathir did not explicitly accuse Abdullah of that. Mahathir expressed his disappointment regarding Abdullah's role in the oil-for-food programme with Iraq; Abdullah's name was listed as a beneficiary in a report published by the US government regarding the programme. Abdullah's son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin, and his son had also been accused by Mahathir of offering contracts to their connections, which amounts to corruption.
Mahathir had also criticised Abdullah's handling of the Approved Permits (AP) issue, expressing his surprise that Rafidah Aziz was still retained as a Cabinet member although two people on the list of persons issued with highest number of APs were linked to Rafidah.[57]
He continued his criticisms of Abdullah for being responsible for the ruling party's disastrous performance in the recent general elections. Mahathir accused Abdullah of corruption, nepotism and weakness in his administration and said they were reasons voters snubbed the UMNO-led coalition.[58]
Weblog
Mahathir started to weblog since May 2008. The site is intended to publish all his writings as when he is able to pen his thoughts and opinions. [2]
Resignation from UMNO
Mahathir announced his resignation from UMNO on 19 May 2008 (Monday) at 12.35pm before 1,000 Kedah UMNO members in Alor Star and urged other members to follow suit as a way of pressuring Abdullah to step down. However, he resists to join any other party and would only rejoin UMNO after Abdullah steps down. His departure raises the possibility of large-scale desertions by loyalists, which could split the party and bring down the government.[59]
His son Mukhriz, the Jerlun member of Parliament, and a contender for the UMNO youth chief post in the next party election, however stays put but nevertheless urges Abdullah to quit immediately.
Other controversies
Former Malaysia Airlines chief executive officer, Tajudin Ramli claimed that he (Tajudin) was "forced" to buy out the shares of Malaysia Airlines by Mahathir during a period when the national carrier suffered financial difficulties. However, Mahathir denied this claim and said that he only asked if Tajudin was interested in the shares.[60]
In 2006 he had a 2-hour talk with James W. Walter and William Rodriguez with regards to the US Government involvement in the 9/11 attacks.[61] He urged the world's 1.3 billion Muslims to boycott Dutch products following the release of the anti-Islam movie Fitna by the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, it was reported on 30 March 2008.[62]
On 17 January 2008, Mahathir was brought before a Royal Commission that is looking into alleged manipulation of top judicial appointments during his administration, a scandal that has cast doubts about the independence of Malaysia's judiciary. He was made to testify before a government inquiry into a secretly recorded video clip that showed a man believed to be a prominent lawyer, V.K. Lingam, boasting that he could get key judicial appointments made with Mahathir's help. Throughout the inquiry Mahathir feign ignorance and forgot key timelines.[63] The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Lingam video clip finally found that it was former Chief Justice Tun Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim who was talking to prominent lawyer Datuk V.K. Lingam on the telephone. Sources said the five-man panel also found that the video clip was authentic and that the conversation was true in substance. They said the commission also found that it was lawyer Loh Mui Fah who Lingam was speaking to after his telephone conversation with Fairuz. Commission chairman Tan Sri Haidar Mohamed Noor presented a two-volume report on the findings to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin at the Istana Negara here yesterday.[64] The Cabinet has ordered the attorney-general to immediately direct agencies to investigate on allegations levelled against six prominent individuals identified in the Lingam video clip. The six are former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, retired chief justices Tun Mohd Eusoff Chin and Tun Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim, former minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, tycoon Tan Sri Vincent Tan and prominent lawyer Datuk V.K. Lingam.[65]
See also: Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Lingam Video Clip
Justice Datuk Ian Chin revealed that he received threats from a former prime minister in two cases he presided in Sibu in 1997. One being a libel suit and the other on an election petition matter.[66] One was a judgment on a libel case involving MGG Pillai and Tan Sri Vincent Tan where he refused to give what he considered to be an astronomical award. The other judgment was in an election petition on Bukit Bangunan in the Sri Aman Division that he ruled in favour of Independent candidate Donald Lawan against Barisan Nasional candidate Mong Dagang. He also claimed that he and selected judges were sent to a boot camp to ensure they got the message.[67] However, Mahathir has sinced rebuked Justice Ian Chin's allegations in his blog. [3]
A retired Federal Court judge, Tan Sri Azmi Kamaruddin has alleged that Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had wanted to amend Article 121 of the Federal Constitution because he wanted the judiciary to be under his control. He mentioned that Dr Mahathir’s agenda was tied to the Umno 11 case involving then Umno vice-president Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah whose supporters had challenged his post as Umno president.[68]
Many commentators are critical of Mahathir's perceived corruption, particularly because of his penchant for megaprojects and his policies aimed at creating a class of Malay capitalists. However, former de facto Law Minister Zaid Ibrahim writes in his memoirs: "In my heart, I cannot accept allegations that Dr Mahathir personally was a corrupt man. Corrupt people are never brave enough to speak as loudly as Dr Mahathir. Wealth is not a major motivation for him. He only craves power."[69]

Health
The former Prime Minister has a history of mild heart attacks. He had a coronary artery bypass in 1989. On 9 November 2006, he was admitted into Institut Jantung Negara (National Heart Institute) in Kuala Lumpur after suffering a mild heart attack that was caused by a clot in his arteries and has since recovered.[70] On 14 May 2007, Mahathir was admitted to the intensive care unit of a hospital in Langkawi after suffering from breathing difficulties.[71]
Mahathir, 82, underwent a second heart bypass on 4 September 2007 in a specialist cardiac hospital in Kuala Lumpur.[72] He recovered in the intensive care unit where he was operated on by a team of surgeons, including a US specialist.[73]
On 23 September 2007, Mahathir underwent further surgery at the National Heart Institute due to an infection of the surgical wound in his chest.[74] He has since come out of the hospital and appears to be healthy, even appearing in the V. K. Lingam public inquiry on 17 January 2008 as a witness.[75]
Legacy

Mahathir was featured on the facade of Telekom Tower in Kuala Lumpur during the national day celebrations in 2004.
For his efforts to promote the economic development of the country, Mahathir has been granted the soubriquet of Bapa Pemodenan (Father of Modernization).[2]
Since his resignation, there are signs that his influence is on the wane, notably the cancellation of a Mahathir-approved double tracking rail project on grounds of cost.[citation needed]
Mahathir's official residence, Sri Perdana, where he resided from 23 August 1983 to 18 October 1999, was turned into a museum (Galeria Sri Perdana). In keeping with the principle of heritage conservation, the original design and layout of the Sri Perdana has been preserved.
Books
The Malay Dilemma (1970) ISBN 9812043551
The Challenge,(1986) ISBN 9679780910
Regionalism, Globalism, and Spheres of Influence: ASEAN and the Challenge of Change into the 21st Century (1989) ISBN 9813035498
The Pacific Rim in the 21st century,(1995)
The Challenges of Turmoil,(1998) ISBN 9679786528
The Way Forward, (1998) ISBN 0297842293
A New Deal for Asia, (1999)
Islam & The Muslim Ummah, (2001) ISBN 9679787389
Globalisation and the New Realities (2002)
Reflections on Asia, (2002) ISBN 967978813X
The Malaysian Currency Crisis: How and why it Happened,(2003) ISBN 9679787567
Achieving True Globalization, (2004) ISBN 9679789047
Islam, Knowledge, and Other Affairs, (2006) ISBN 9833698034
Principles of Public Administration: An Introduction, (2007) ISBN 978-983-195-2535
Chedet.com Blog Merentasi Halangan (Bilingual), (2008) ISBN 9679695891
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