Sunday 8 February 2015

SHMUEL (SAMUEL) BLUM

SHMUEL (SAMUEL) BLUM (b. July 4, 1892)
He was born in Bielsk, Grodno district, and studied in a religious elementary school, a local yeshiva, and with his father, R. Moyshe-Tsvi Blum, a famed scholar.  At age fifteen he became a university auditor, and at age seventeen he emigrated to the United States where he worked by day as a cigar maker and studied at night.  In 1914 he enrolled in the agricultural faculty at Cornell University, and later he studied sociology at the University of South Carolina from which he received an M. A. diploma in 1922.  He began publishing in 1917 in Tsukunft (Future) in New York, in which he placed longer pieces (“A kapitl byologye” [A chapter of biology] in September 1917; “Organishe evolutsye” [Organic evolution] over the course of 1918).  A fair number of years later, he contributed essays to Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal) and Amerikaner (American), both in New York, and he published articles on various topics (politics, sociology, history) as well in Fraye arbeter shtime (Free voice of labor), Dos idishe folk (The Jewish people), and Di tsayt (The times).  In 1931 he published his book Der boym fun lebn, araynfir in der zoologisher visnshaft (The tree of life, an introduction to the science of zoology), “with special attention to the evolutionary process which leads to mankind” (318 pp.), including thirty-three illustrations and a glossary of biology terms (pp. 305-18).  The book was published serially in Amerikaner.  Later Blum became a farmer in Lakewood, New Jersey.

Source: Ts. Rudi, in Yivo-bleter 2 (1931), pp. 433-34 (Vilna); Dr. A. Mukdoni, in Morgn-zhurnal (New York) (August 14, 1931).


No comments:

Post a Comment