With Peter Paul Roget, it was creating elaborate lists. With Mary Somerville, it was the exotic shape of algebraic symbols.
And with Sharon Kay Penman (b. 1945), it was vindicating England's most reviled monarch -- Richard III.
A THING DEVISED BY THE ENEMY
With a name like hers, you'd wonder why Penman considered doing anything other than writing. She'd loved it from a young age but, like many of us, had difficulty deciding on both a college and a major. After a few false starts at different schools, she transferred to the University of Texas at Austin and graduated at age 24 with a major in history.
In her academic wanderings, she became fascinated with King Richard III, the House of York's last king, portrayed by Shakespeare as a nasty hunchback who murdered his young nephews and drowned his brother in a butt of malmsey (Madeira).
Penman was astonished to learn that Shakespeare took extreme poetic license with Richard III (sort of like Hollywood)...
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