Ruth Forbes Young

Ruth Young "was one of the most accomplished and gracious women of our times... She never flaunted her background as the eldest great granddaughter of both the transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Muir Forbes, the activist en age in the Boston/China shipping trade. Indeed, it was only in her later years that she began to share stories of her unusual family and the pearls of wisdom she cultivated from experience.

"As a woman with no professional history in international affairs, but simply "a hunch that something must be done" to prevent further catastrophic war after the dropping of the Atom Bomb, she founded the International Peace Academy. Today the IPA is one of the most important no n- governmental organizations providing off-the-record meeting grounds for figures such as Kofi Annan who, as head of the U.N. Peacekeeping Operations long before his appointment as Secretary General, called for preventive diplomacy and preventive action to nip conflict in the bud.

"As a painter adept at portraiture as well as still life, Ruth Young exhibited her paintings in galleries in New York and Philadelphia. Her portfolio also contains surrealist images of wan human beings, their heads poking up from holes in the ground devastated by war, as well as young African Americans dancing the Lindy Hop over 50 years go. She would resume work on a painting long after-it was apparently finished, adding just the right stroke., for one stroke could change everything, to perfect it. In her later years she delighted in "painting peephole vistas in the actual landscape' surrounding her country home in Pennsylvania so that the distant hills could be enjoyed.

"As the wife and helpmate of the late Arthur M. Young, the inventor and philosopher (see New York Times obituary news June 3, 1995), she founded, the Institute for the Study of Consciousness in Berkeley, California. This organization helps increase knowledge of man at this turning point in history, the implications of his abnormal abilities, and of a universe seen increasing, p as existing, and evolving, though the principle of intention."

• Former Director, Association for Cultural Evolution