Word: pergamon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Such scornful sentiments have helped to make shaggy, unorthodox Robert Maxwell, 43, Britain's most unpopular publisher - among other publishers. By acting on his beliefs, Maxwell has not only become a multimillionaire, but also in 15 years has lifted his Pergamon Press Ltd. from obscurity to No. 1 rank as a publisher of scientific and technical books (600 last year) and trade journals (120, from The Archives of Oral Biology to Problems of Cybernetics...
...sets at $300 each), Maxwell last week brought out a new 15-volume edition of Brit ain's highly regarded Chamber's Encyclopaedia with which he confidently expects to capture some of the 99% of the world market held by U.S. publishers. Eighty percent of Pergamon's output is already sold abroad in 123 countries, including the U.S., which accounts for half of the company's exports. "If there were 50 other firms in Britain doing what we are," boasts Maxwell, "we wouldn't have a balance of payments problem or a wages freeze...
...family's one-room Carpathian mountain home at 16 to join the underground fighting Hitler. Later he made his way to Britain, joined the British army as a private, left as a captain. With the profits of some shrewd postwar trading in German scientific manuscripts, he bought Pergamon in 1951 for $36,400, cajoled experts from all over the world into writing scientific tomes for him. Fluent in nine languages including Russian, he won a virtual corner on rights to Soviet scientific works by face-to-face salesmanship with Nikita Khrushchev. In the process, he also persuaded the Soviet...