Jane Jacobs
I am so sad, I heard on NPR yesterday that Jane Jacobs has died, well, she was in her 80s and unlikely to produce much more work, but she has been one of my favourite 'intellectual' writers recently. Nobody knows who she is except for urban planners and a few geographers. We didn't officially study her at Oxford but I came across her tangentially and she is quite an original thinker - her book Cities and the Wealth of Nations - is one of those I vividly remember reading, an original book that truly offered a different way of thinking about things. She was originally from Canada and spent her last days in Toronto. She never finished college but simply observed, that is true genius.
Well, I actually have more to say but I need to go to bed, got to get up and do some work.