IN: Francis George Steiner, FBA (born April 23, 1929) is a French-born American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, and educator. He has written extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the impact of the Holocaust. An article in The Guardian described Steiner as a "polyglot and polymath", saying that he is either "often credited with recasting the role of the critic", or a "pretentious namedropper" whose "range comes at the price of inaccuracy" and "complacency". Among his admirers, Steiner is ranked "among the great minds in today's literary world."

George Steiner was born in 1929 in Paris, to Viennese Jewish parents Dr Frederick George Steiner and Mrs Else Steiner (nee Franzos). He has an elder sister, Ruth Lilian, who was born in Vienna in 1922. Frederick Steiner was a senior lawyer in the Austrian Central Bank, and Else Steiner was a Viennese grande dame.  Five years before George Steiner's birth, his father had moved his family from Austria to France to escape the growing threat of Nazism. He believed that Jews were "endangered guests wherever they went" and equipped his children with languages. Steiner grew up with three mother tongues: German, English, and French; his mother was multilingual and would often "begin a sentence in one language and end it in another."  When he was six years old, his father who believed in the importance of classical education taught him to read the Iliad in the original Greek. His mother, for whom "self-pity was nauseating", helped Steiner overcome a handicap he had been born with, a withered right arm. Instead of allowing him to become left-handed, she insisted he use his right hand as an able-bodied person would.  Steiner's first formal education took place at the Lycee Janson-de-Sailly in Paris. In 1940, during World War II, Steiner's father once again relocated his family, this time to New York City. Within a month of their move, the Nazis occupied Paris, and of the many Jewish children in Steiner's class at school, he was one of only two who survived the war. Again his father's insight had saved his family, and this made Steiner feel like a survivor, which profoundly influenced his later writings. "My whole life has been about death, remembering and the Holocaust." Steiner became a "grateful wanderer", saying that "Trees have roots and I have legs; I owe my life to that." He spent the rest of his school years at the Lycee Francais de New York in Manhattan, and became a United States citizen in 1944.

Who where his parents

OUT: Paris, to Viennese Jewish parents Dr Frederick George Steiner and Mrs Else Steiner (nee Franzos).


IN: Kurt Friedrich Godel (UK: , US: ; German: ['kUat 'go:dl] ( listen); April 28, 1906 - January 14, 1978) was an Austrian, and later American, logician, mathematician, and philosopher.

Godel was born April 28, 1906, in Brunn, Austria-Hungary (now Brno, Czech Republic) into the ethnic German family of Rudolf Godel (1874-1929), the manager of a textile factory, and Marianne Godel (nee Handschuh, 1879-1966). Throughout his life, Godel would remain close to his mother; their correspondence was frequent and wide-ranging. At the time of his birth the city had a German-speaking majority which included his parents. His father was Catholic and his mother was Protestant and the children were raised Protestant. The ancestors of Kurt Godel were often active in Brunn's cultural life. For example, his grandfather Joseph Godel was a famous singer of that time and for some years a member of the "Brunner Mannergesangverein".  Godel automatically became a Czechoslovak citizen at age 12 when the Austro-Hungarian Empire broke up at the end of World War I. According to his classmate Klepetar, like many residents of the predominantly German Sudetenlander, "Godel considered himself always Austrian and an exile in Czechoslovakia". He chose to become an Austrian citizen at age 23. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Godel automatically became a German citizen at age 32. After World War II, at the age of 42, he became an American citizen.  In his family, young Kurt was known as Herr Warum ("Mr. Why") because of his insatiable curiosity. According to his brother Rudolf, at the age of six or seven Kurt suffered from rheumatic fever; he completely recovered, but for the rest of his life he remained convinced that his heart had suffered permanent damage. Beginning at age four, Godel suffered from "frequent episodes of poor health," which would continue for his entire life.  Godel attended the Evangelische Volksschule, a Lutheran school in Brunn from 1912 to 1916, and was enrolled in the Deutsches Staats-Realgymnasium from 1916 to 1924, excelling with honors in all his subjects, particularly in mathematics, languages and religion. Although Kurt had first excelled in languages, he later became more interested in history and mathematics. His interest in mathematics increased when in 1920 his older brother Rudolf (born 1902) left for Vienna to go to medical school at the University of Vienna. During his teens, Kurt studied Gabelsberger shorthand, Goethe's Theory of Colours and criticisms of Isaac Newton, and the writings of Immanuel Kant.

What made him think his heart had permanent damage?

OUT:
According to his brother Rudolf, at the age of six or seven Kurt suffered from rheumatic fever;