Comfort, Alex

(1920-2000)

   Physician and physicist, he is best known for his popular Joy of Sex books and his work on aging. Educated at home by his parents in London, he nearly killed himself at age 14 while constructing a bomb. He went on to Trinity College Cambridge and taught and did research both in London and in the United States. A noted anarchist and pacifist, he was active in the nuclear disarmament movement. In a famous wartime opinion piece he called for the prosecution as war criminals of Allied leaders who directed saturation bombing of Germany. Some of his publications: The Silver River, 1938 (a diary of his travels in the South Atlantic). No Such Liberty, 1941 (novel). Authority and Delinquency in the Modern State, 1950. The Biolog y of Senescence, 1956. The Process of Aging, 1964. Some of his poems: "After Shakespeare," "After You, Madam," "Fear of the Earth," "Haste to the Wedding," "Letter to an American Visitor," "Notes for My Son," "Song for the Heroes," "The Atoll in the Mind," "The Song of Lazarus."

   Sources: Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Erotic Poetry: The Lyrics, Ballads, Idylls, and Epics of Love - Classical to Contemporary. William Cole, ed. Random House, 1963. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Joy of Sex & The Joy of Cooking Compared (http://www.goodbyemag.com/mar00/comfort.html). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The New British Poets: An Antholog y. Kenneth Rexroth, ed. New Directions, 1949.