Saved from Nazis, he helped all humanity
|  | Thursday, June 9, 2022 | | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY ARNOLD NEWMAN, VIA GETTY IMAGES | |
At 6, Arno Penzias had to escape the Nazis. A stranger from New Jersey sponsored him. That escape from the Holocaust allowed Penzias, years later (pictured above), to confirm a great leap forward for all humanity: the Big Bang Theory.
It wasn’t until 2012 that the family of the Nobel-winning astrophysicist tracked down the identity of the sponsor. Bernard Yudin, a New Jersey paint merchant who had requested anonymity in his sponsorship, died in 1950 of cancer and never would know what Penzias did. Even the surviving Yudins didn’t know of Bernard’s kindness until they met the Penzias descendants.
“He did what he did because it was right and didn’t mention it to anybody, Yudin’s great-grandson, Joe, tells Nat Geo. “He knew that they got out. I think that’s all he needed.” The younger Yudin noted that many geniuses were among the millions killed by the Nazis—and expressed gratitude that one shining star, Arno Penzias, escaped.
Read the full story here. | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY RICHARD BARNES | | Before the Holocaust: Six-year-old Arno Penzias stands between his parents in this photograph (above). It was shown in 1938 to a New Jersey man who agreed, while remaining anonymous, to support the kid in the U.S. The sponsor would never know that the young boy he helped save would one day receive the Nobel Prize (facsimile at left).
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY SISSE BRIMBERG, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION | | | First off, they’re not fish: Jellyfish, Elizabeth Kolbert once wrote for Nat Geo, are “scary, squishy, cool, brainless, mesmerizing.” They’ve been in existence for more than 500 million years—floating, swishing, and occasionally stinging. Pictured above, a group of Atlantic sea nettles swims at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. The image recently was featured in our Photo of the Day archival collection. | | | |
 | PHOTOGRAPH BY GIANNI DAGLI ORTI, SHUTTERSTOCK
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY NICHOLE SOBECKI | | ‘I could feel myself suffocating’: That’s the first sentence of photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Nichole Sobecki’s account of underwater diving underneath pyramids at the ancient necropolis of Nuri. The burial chambers of Kushite royals have been flooded with groundwater leaching from the nearby Nile, so archaeologists have been forced to work underwater. Sobecki learned to scuba dive for the story—and made it out alive, by the way. (Pictured above, a funerary figure discovered underwater known as a shabti, an object intended to serve a king in the afterlife.)
The National Geographic Society is helping fund the archaeological work at Nuri in the northern Sudan desert. Learn more about its efforts. | | | |
 | | Anywhere from 30 [percent] to 60 percent of ocean life has yet to be described or discovered. ... Maybe, just maybe, I’ll help close that discovery gap. | | | | Kakani Katija | | Bioengineer at Bioinspiration Lab; Nat Geo Explorer | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY JOEL SARTORE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTO ARK | | | High in the cloud forests: That’s where woolly monkeys live, their thick coat of fur protecting them from sun, rain, and insect bites in the sweltering Amazon Basin. Photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Joel Sartore made this portrait of a brown woolly monkey at the Piscilago Zoo in Colombia as part of his Photo Ark collection of the world’s vulnerable species. Some types of woolly monkeys are endangered by shrinking habitat and the exotic pet trade—and females have three-year intervals between births, which makes the monkeys’ declining numbers more concerning, Nat Geo reports. | | | |
Correction: Madagascar’s location, off the southeastern mainland of Africa, was misstated in yesterday’s newsletter. Thanks to readers Muhammad Isa Waley and John Dunkelberger for the quick point-out. Here’s a look at the more than 1,000 dazzling orchid varieties found there.
This newsletter was curated and edited by David Beard, Heather Kim, Jen Tse, and Monica Williams. Do you have an idea for the newsletter? Let us know at david.beard@natgeo.com. Thanks for reading! | |
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