How many people do you really know? Do you agree with Joan Chittister? Who has written, “…We are becoming a world of cardboard figures, entombed in technology, living in hermetically sealed personal planets. We don’t really know anybody anymore, and nobody really knows us.” We will take a close look at a world famous individual whose name would be familiar to almost any educated person anywhere in the world. Yet, the world never, in any meaningful sense, really knew him. He was famous, yes, but he was also a very human and in some respects a very tragic figure. This urbane, gentle genius was truly one for the ages. I would love to have known him.

Dick Smythe is an entomologist retired from the research division of the US Forest Service. Throughout his life he has maintained two dominant interests: first, his fascination with the natural world – our non-human environment and endless source of wonder; second, his abiding interest in religion/theology – a subject of continuing education and challenge.