Among a plethora of front-rank intellectuals are the physicist Freeman Dyson, the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot and the biologist Ernst Mayr, who recently turned 100. Unlike Oscar Wilde in his infamous US customs incident, all have plenty to declare apart from their genius, talking lucidly and movingly about the events that shaped them. Their powers of recall, often stretching back to early childhood memories, are utterly enthralling.
In the past, well-intentioned sites have been desperately let down by design as shabby as an Open University lecturer’s suit. People’s Archive could be wearing Armani — an immaculate home page lays out the 15 lives currently featured on the site, with more coming soon.
Conveniently, each life story is broken down into manageable episodes of a few minutes.
The facility to send chapters to friends encourages viral propagation of the juiciest episodes, such as Edward Teller expressing regret about his testimony at the Oppenheimer hearings. Watching John Maynard Smith, who passed away shortly before the site went live, talk about the death of his own mentor, JBS Haldane, is a poignant highlight.
An individual annual subscription costs £23.50. Considering the window that the site opens onto the greatest minds of the past 100 years, this seems a small price to pay.