J. R. R. Tolkien central role in Wagner's opera. Tolkien also acknowledged several non-Germanic influences or sources for some of his stories and ideas. Sophocles' play "Oedipus Rex" he cited as inspiring elements of "The Silmarillion" and "The Children of Húrin". In addition, Tolkien first read William Forsell Kirby's translation of the Finnish national epic, the "Kalevala", while attending King Edward's School. He described its character of Väinämöinen as one of his influences for Gandalf the Grey. The "Kalevala"'s antihero Kullervo was further described as an inspiration for Túrin Turambar. Dimitra Fimi, Douglas A. Anderson, John Garth, and many other prominent Tolkien scholars believe
U. S. R. Murty of the Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B. U. S. R. Murty Uppaluri Siva Ramachandra Murty, or U. S. R. Murty (as he prefers to write his name), is a Professor Emeritus of the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization, University of Waterloo. U. S. R. Murty received his Ph.D. in 1967 from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, with a thesis on extremal graph theory; his advisor was C. R. Rao. Murty is well known for his work in matroid theory and graph theory, and mainly for being a co-author with J. A. Bondy of a textbook on graph theory. Murty