Answer the question at the end by quoting:

Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 - February 9, 2001) was an American economist and political scientist whose primary interest was decision-making within organizations and is best known for the theories of "bounded rationality" and "satisficing". He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978 and the Turing Award in 1975. His research was noted for its interdisciplinary nature and spanned across the fields of cognitive science, computer science, public administration, management, and political science. He was at Carnegie Mellon University for most of his career, from 1949 to 2001.
Herbert Alexander Simon was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on June 15, 1916. His father, Arthur Simon (1881-1948), was an electrical engineer who had come to the United States from Germany in 1903 after earning his engineering degree from the Technische Hochschule of Darmstadt. An inventor who was granted "several dozen patents", his father also was an independent patent attorney. His mother, Edna Marguerite Merkel, was an accomplished pianist whose ancestors had come from Prague and Cologne. His European ancestors had been piano makers, goldsmiths, and vintners. Simon's father was Jewish and his mother came from a family with Jewish, Lutheran, and Catholic backgrounds. Simon called himself an atheist. Simon was educated in the Milwaukee public school system, where he developed an interest in science. He found schoolwork to be interesting and easy. Unlike many children, Simon was exposed to the idea that human behavior could be studied scientifically at a relatively young age due to the influence of his mother's younger brother, Harold Merkel, who had studied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison under John R. Commons. Through his uncle's books on economics and psychology, Simon discovered the social sciences. Among his earliest influences, Simon has cited Richard Ely's economics textbook, Norman Angell's The Great Illusion, and Henry George's Progress and Poverty. At that time, Simon argued "from conviction, rather than cussedness" in favor of George's controversial "single tax" on land rents. In 1933, Simon entered the University of Chicago, and following those early influences, he studied the social sciences and mathematics. He was interested in biology, but chose not to study it because of his "color-blindness and awkwardness in the laboratory". He chose instead to focus on political science and economics. His most important mentor was Henry Schultz, an econometrician and mathematical economist. Simon received both his B.A. (1936) and his Ph.D. (1943) in political science, from the University of Chicago, where he studied under Harold Lasswell, Nicholas Rashevsky, Rudolf Carnap, Henry Schultz, and Charles Edward Merriam. After enrolling in a course on "Measuring Municipal Governments", Simon was invited to be a research assistant for Clarence Ridley, with whom he coauthored Measuring Municipal Activities in 1938. Eventually his studies led him to the field of organizational decision-making, which would become the subject of his doctoral dissertation.

What do we know about his mother?

His mother, Edna Marguerite Merkel, was an accomplished pianist whose ancestors had come from Prague and Cologne.

Answer the question at the end by quoting:

Hughes was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1938. His father and paternal grandfather were lawyers. Hughes's father, Geoffrey Forrest Hughes, was a pilot in the First World War, with later careers as a solicitor and company director. He died from lung cancer when Robert was aged 12.
Hughes left Australia for Europe in 1964, living for a time in Italy before settling in London in 1965, where he wrote for The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, and The Observer, among others, and contributed to the London version of Oz. In 1970 he was appointed art critic for TIME magazine and moved to New York, where he soon became an influential voice. Hughes and Harold Hayes were recruited in 1978 to anchor the new ABC News (US) newsmagazine 20/20. His only broadcast, on 6 June 1978, proved so controversial that, less than a week later, ABC News president Roone Arledge terminated the contracts of both men, replacing them with veteran TV host Hugh Downs. Hughes co-produced, in association with German producer Reiner Moritz and Lorna Pegram, the BBC eight-part series The Shock of the New (1980) on the development of modern art since the Impressionists. It was accompanied by a book with the same title. John O'Connor of The New York Times said, "Agree or disagree, you will not be bored. Mr. Hughes has a disarming way of being provocative." Hughes's book The Fatal Shore followed in 1987. A study of the British penal colonies and early European settlement of Australia, it became an international best-seller. During the late 1990s, Hughes was a prominent supporter of the Australian Republican Movement. Hughes's TV series American Visions (1997) reviewed the history of American art since the Revolution. Australia: Beyond the Fatal Shore (2000) was a series musing on modern Australia and Hughes's relationship with it. During production, Hughes was involved in a near-fatal road accident. Hughes's documentary on Francisco Goya, Goya: Crazy Like a Genius (2002), was broadcast on the first night of the new British domestic digital service, BBC Four. He created a one-hour update to The Shock of the New, titled The New Shock of the New, which first aired in 2004. He published the first volume of his memoirs, Things I Didn't Know, in 2006.

When dd his career take off?
In 1970 he was appointed art critic for TIME magazine and moved to New York, where he soon became an influential voice.