Your Favourite Film Music
Hans Zimmer
Hans Florian Zimmer (b. 1957) was born in Frankfurt, then part of West Germany. His father passed away when he was a child, and he was raised by his musician mother, who had fled Germany to England upon the outbreak of World War II. Zimmer began playing keyboards as a teen, and joined the Buggles in the late 70s (famous for their hit “Video Killed the Radio Star”, in which Zimmer makes an appearance). He continued to work with various European bands for the next decade. Meanwhile, he did some work on the side writing jingles for commercials. Soon, he teamed up with Stanley Myers to found a new recording studio in London called Lillie Yard. The duo started to produce a new style of music combining traditional orchestras with new electronic sounds. They wrote the score for a number of movies, climaxing with The Last Emperor in 1987, which won an Oscar for Best Original Score. The following year, Zimmer was hired to write the score for Rain Man. The movie went on to win four Oscars, with a nomination for Zimmer. A year later, another film for which he wrote a score won Best Picture. For his next film, Zimmer flew to Africa to record traditional African choirs, and this led him to be hired for The Lion King. (Which he says he agreed to do to impress his then-six year old daughter.) The immensely popular music that Zimmer wrote for The Lion King won him two Grammys, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar. The Broadway adaptation won a Tony Award, and set a record for being the highest-grossing Broadway show of all time. Zimmer went on to write hit music for many more films, including The Prince of Egypt, The Thin Red Line, The Rock, Gladiator, Pearl Harbor, The Last Samurai, Iron Man, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, and Interstellar. All in all, he has 1 win and 11 nominations for Oscars, 4 Grammys, 2 Golden Globes, 3 Saturn Awards, and many more. He has written scores for over 150 films, and made music for 17 television shows and 2 video games. Zimmer has been ranked among the “Top 100 Living Geniuses” and is considered one of the greatest film composers and musicians of all time. Zimmer has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and an asteroid is named after him. His latest work is the score for the new live adaptation of The Lion King, which opens in theatres this Friday.
Words of the Week
With science, there are unknowns, but there are also these rituals for finding the answers… It’s the same thing with Judaism. I think that’s why we have so many Jewish scientists. It’s easy to go from ‘I am trying to figure out the mysteries of the universe and these are my rituals for doing it,’ to ‘I’m trying to figure out the mysteries of the universe and these are my rituals for doing it.’ It’s the same thing, but just different rituals.
– Neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge
Ruth Lynn Fraenkel (b. 1943) was born in London to Jewish-Polish refugees who fled the Nazis. She studied law at Oxford University’s prestigious St. Anne’s College, and there met her future husband John Deech. After getting her MA, she briefly taught law at Windsor University in Canada, then returned to St. Anne’s and taught there for two decades before being elected its principal in 1991. As a specialist in family law and bioethics, she also headed Oxford’s Health Authority, and eventually became the governor of the UK Department of Health’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). The HFEA regulates fertility treatments, in-vitro fertilization, and embryological research across the UK. As its governor, Deech made some difficult and controversial decisions, including one case where a woman was forbidden from having a baby with her dead husband’s frozen sperm. She also fought against the decision to allow birth certificates not to name a father, stating “I regret the downgrading of the father as a person of importance – the legislative dismissal of the contribution of half the population to the upbringing of the next generation” and that “Tolerance of both types of parenting has to be ensured.” In 2002, Deech was knighted as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. That same year she was appointed governor of the BBC. Following this role, she was made a life peer of the House of Lords, and given the title Baroness Deech of Cumnor. At the same time, she served as the chairman of the Bar Standards Board, which regulates lawyers across England and Wales, and sat on the Jewish Leadership Council. Deech remains one of the world’s most renowned academics and ethicists. Oxford University recently named one of its buildings after her, and she was once ranked on “The God List” of the fifty most influential “people of faith” in Britain. She also regularly stands up for the Jewish community, and for Israel – at 
