John Derbyshire
John Derbyshire (born 3 June 1945) is a British-born American computer programmer, journalist, and political commentator. He was noted for being one of the last paleoconservatives at the National Review,[1][2] until he was fired in 2012 for writing an article for Taki's Magazine that was widely viewed as racist.[3] Since 2012 he has written for white nationalist website VDARE.[2][4]
For the swimmer, see John Derbyshire (swimmer).
John Derbyshire
3 June 1945
United States of
Computer programmer, journalist, political commentator
In the article that caused his firing, Derbyshire suggested that white and East Asian parents should talk to their children about the threats posed to their safety by black people. He also recommended that parents tell their children not to live in predominantly black communities.[3] He included the line "If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date."[3]
He has also written for the New English Review. His columns cover political-cultural topics, including immigration, China, history, mathematics, and race.[5][6] Derbyshire's 1996 novel about Chinese American immigrants, Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year".[7] His 2004 non-fiction book Prime Obsession won the Mathematical Association of America's inaugural Euler Book Prize.[8] A political book, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, was released in September 2009.[9]
Early life
Derbyshire attended the Northampton School for Boys and graduated from University College London, of the University of London, where he studied mathematics. Before turning to writing full-time, he worked on Wall Street as a computer programmer.
Career
National Review
Derbyshire worked as a writer at National Review until he was terminated in 2012 because of an article published in Taki's Magazine that was widely perceived as racist.[10][11]
Derbyshire began writing for the far-right website VDARE in May 2012.[2][4] In his first column for the website, Derbyshire wrote "White supremacy, in the sense of a society in which key decisions are made by white Europeans, is one of the better arrangements History has come up with."[4]
Mathematics
Derbyshire's book Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics was first published in hardcover in 2003 and then paperback in 2004. It focuses on the Riemann hypothesis, one of the Millennium Problems.[12] The book is aimed, as Derbyshire puts it in his prologue, "at the intelligent and curious but nonmathematical reader ..."
Prime Obsession explores such topics as complex numbers, field theory, the prime number theorem, the zeta function, the harmonic series, and others. The biographical sections give relevant information about the lives of mathematicians who worked in these areas, including Euler, Gauss, Lejeune Dirichlet, Lobachevsky, Chebyshev, Vallée-Poussin, Hadamard, as well as Riemann himself.
In 2006, Joseph Henry Press published another Derbyshire book of popular mathematics: Unknown Quantity: A Real And Imaginary History of Algebra.
Role in Way of the Dragon
Derbyshire had an uncredited role in Way of the Dragon (released in the United States as Return of the Dragon), a 1972 martial arts film directed by and starring, actor and martial artist Bruce Lee.[13] Of landing the part, Derbyshire said: "The casting director had obviously just trawled around the low-class guesthouses for unemployed foreigners of a sufficiently thuggish appearance."[14]
Personal life
Derbyshire's has been married to Lynette Rose Derbyshire, a Chinese immigrant, since 1986.[28] The couple were married in the city of Jilin, in Jilin Province, northeast China, and have a daughter and a son. He has lived in Long Island, New York since 1992.[29] In early 2012, he underwent treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.[30]
He has also written numerous articles for various publications, including National Review, The New Criterion, The American Conservative and The Washington Times.
Derbyshire records a weekly podcast called "Radio Derb," in which he comments on current events. The podcast was hosted on the National Review website before being moved to Taki's Magazine. It is now hosted on VDARE.