John Safer

Key takeaways

John Safer belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect John Safer to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of John Safer from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

John H. Safer (September 6, 1922 – December 7, 2018) was an American sculptor. Safer's varied career spanned work in theater lighting, television, real estate, politics and banking. Safer was best known for his monumental sculptures, but he has also created many smaller works. These include award sculptures for organizations such as the National Air and Space Museum, the PGA Tour, the Georgetown University Lombardi Cancer Center, the World Peace Foundation, and the Shakespeare Guild. Safer's works stand in museums, galleries and embassies throughout the world. In 1972 and in 1989 the U.S. Department of State sent a group of Safer sculptures abroad to be exhibited as examples of America's finest art. He died in December 2018 at the age of 96.

Sculpture Safer's earliest sculptures in the 1950s and 1960s were small works of Lucite. Over time he also began to work in bronze and stainless steel. The pieces became larger and in 1979 his first public commission, Judgment, a multi-ton patinated bronze, was installed at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was the first in a long string of public installations. As the commissions grew in number they grew in size as well. Interplay, created in 1987, is 18 feet (5.5 m) high. Leading Edge, created in 1989, is 20 feet (6.1 m) high. His hallmark work, Ascent, which stands at the entrance of the Smithsonian Institution's Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport in Virginia, is 75 feet (23 m) high. "Through his work, John has tried to capture the essence and reduce the subject to the pure line in space that Aristotle believed to be the basis of sculpture."

Early life John Safer was born and raised in Washington, D.C., the only child of John and Rebecca Herzmark Safer. His father, who operated a moving and storage business, was a lawyer who graduated from Georgetown University Law School at the head of his class. His mother Rebecca Herzmark Safer was a social activist, suffragette and intellectual. John learned to read and write by the age of four. At this time his mother entered him into first grade at the Maret French School. Safer continued as a precocious student. Fluent in French, he entered high school at the age of eleven and graduated when he was fourteen. He was pressured by his mother to enroll at Harvard University. Safer, uncomfortable at the thought of being a fourteen-year-old college student, deliberately failed the Harvard entrance exam by handing in blank pages. Safer instead attended Woodward Prep School. There he discovered his love for and ability in athletics. This theme would greatly influence his art and his life. Until then, his age and size had prevented him from participating in sports and left him with the sense that he was a misfit. At the age of sixteen, Safer entered George Washington University where he majored in economics. He became an assistant to Professor Edward Acheson –– brother of the United States Secretary of State Dean Acheson –– who became a mentor. At the beginning of World War II, Safer enlisted in the United States Air Force to become a flying cadet. Safer became a first lieutenant and served in India, Burma and China. When the war ended in 1945 he opted for an additional year in the Air Force hoping to fulfill a dream of seeing Europe's great works of art while he was stationed there. His new assignment allowed him to visit the Parthenon, the Tate, and the Louvre. While in Rome, he learned that he was suddenly to be transferred to Athens. Unwilling to leave Italy without visiting the Accademia in Florence, Safer "borrowed" a jeep to make the drive to see Michelangelo's David. The Accademia was closed but he convinced the caretaker to let him in. The two hours Safer spent alone with the masterpiece resulted in a seminal experience, but it was Michelangelo's other sculptures in the Gallery, The Prisoners, which gave Safer an insight that was to impact his entire life and transform his artistic career. The Prisoners are heroic figures rising from rough hewn stone. The upper portion of the figures are finished while the lower part remains uncarved. As Safer studied The Prisoners he realized the power of the abstract –– a realization that gave direction to his future work.

Businessman After Safer graduated from Harvard Law School in 1949 his fascination with the emerging technology and promise of television prompted him to take a job as a handyman at WXEL in Cleveland, Ohio. He quickly rose to the position of program director. During this time his innovations led the new independent station to "beat the ratings of all the network affiliates." In 1953 Safer's father became terminally ill and he returned to Washington, D.C. to take over his father's affairs. Although Safer successfully parlayed these into a major real estate development business he did not find his commercial life a rewarding one. In 1974 Safer entered the world of banking, becoming chairman of the executive committee of Financial General Bankshares, and in 1981 the chairman of the board of DC National Bank, which later became part of Bank of America. In 1999 Safer became chairman of the board of Materia, Inc. Materia specializes in Olefin metathesis, and is noted for its Nobel Prize–winning green chemistry.

Sculptor

Safer never formally studied art. His first forays into sculpture were experiments with plastic swizzle sticks. In 1957 he made his first creations, and he continued to experiment, eventually beginning to carve Lucite. In 1969 Safer had his first show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the Michael Berger Gallery. Several shows in private galleries followed with a major exhibition at the Pyramid Gallery in Washington, D.C.

In 1971 the renowned art collector and U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Walter Annenberg, invited Safer to have an exhibition at the American Embassy in London. In 1972 President Gerald Ford presented Safer's Limits of Infinity to King Juan Carlos of Spain as a gift of state. This in turn led to several major events in Safer's sculptural career. As a result of a news report of President Ford's gift, the Dean of Harvard Law School sought to acquire a Safer sculpture for the school. This culminated in 1979 with the installation of Judgment, a monumental bronze work which was presented to Harvard Law School as a gift of Safer's class of 1949. This was Safer's first monumental public work.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with John Safer

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what John Safer claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to John Safer before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about John Safer ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of John Safer

In research: John Safer appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses John Safer in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: John Safer is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1922 births, 2018 deaths, 20th-century American male sculptors, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for John Safer outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study John Safer in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what John Safer means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain John Safer out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is John Safer in simple terms?

John H. Safer (September 6, 1922 – December 7, 2018) was an American sculptor.

Why does John Safer matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study John Safer?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on John Safer.