Charles W. J. Withers. Zero Degrees: Geographies of the Prime Meridian. x + 319 pp., figs., maps, tables, index. Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 2017. $29.95, ₤23.95, €27 (cloth). ISBN 9780674088818.

Isis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 109 (4) ◽  
pp. 822-823 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. F. J. Mörzer Bruyns
Keyword(s):  
Harvard University ◽  
Prime Meridian

A Tribute to the Late William J. Curran

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-275
Author(s):  
O. Lawrence ◽  
J.D. Gostin
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Legal Medicine ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
International Institute ◽  
University Professor

In the summer of 1979, a group of experts on law, medicine, and ethics assembled in Siracusa, Sicily, under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists and the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Science, to draft guidelines on the rights of persons with mental illness. Sitting across the table from me was a quiet, proud man of distinctive intelligence, William J. Curran, Frances Glessner Lee Professor of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. Professor Curran was one of the principal drafters of those guidelines. Many years later in 1991, after several subsequent re-drafts by United Nations (U.N.) Rapporteur Erica-Irene Daes, the text was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly as the Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement of Mental Health Care. This was the kind of remarkable achievement in the field of law and medicine that Professor Curran repeated throughout his distinguished career.

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