At the beginning of the last century, he was the nation’s foremost portrait painter of children, an author, horse breeder, champion figure skater, and originator of the cooperative housing concept. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. of IBM was his patron and Adolph Ochs, publisher of the New York Times, his advocate in the media. Among his friends were Enrico Caruso, Nikola Tesla, Paderewski, Mark Twain, and the Presidents Roosevelt. At age 56 he turned to sculpture, rising to the top rank and producing the Mark Twain Memorial and the Four Freedoms. In his scientific treatises he challenged Science to acknowledge the Supreme Being and reform theoretical physics; he urged Religion to accept science and abandon the fossilized dogma of centuries past. Knowledge of the natural laws of the universe, Russell maintained, would bring about a “New Age.” To Glenn Clark, he was “The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe.” Charles Hardy as a teenager knew Russell when he was nearly ninety years old. Now, fifty years later, Hardy re-introduces Walter Russell to the world in this exhaustively researched, long-overdue biography.
