# kb

id: list-of-ig-nobel-prize-winners-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners-2.md
category: reference
title: List of Ig Nobel Prize winners
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:15.055148+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: list-of-ig-nobel-prize-winners-20260505-0
summary:
Chemistry: Presented to Bijan Pakzad of Beverly Hills, for creating DNA Cologne and DNA Perfume, neither of which contain deoxyribonucleic acid, and both of which come in a triple helix bottle. Dentistry: Presented to Robert H. Beaumont, of Shoreview, Minnesota, for his incisive study "Patient Preference for Waxed or Unwaxed Dental Floss". Economics: Presented jointly to Nick Leeson and his superiors at Barings Bank and to Robert Citron of Orange County, California for using the calculus of derivatives to demonstrate that every financial institution has its limits. Literature: Presented to David B. Busch and James R. Starling, of Madison, Wisconsin, for their research report, "Rectal Foreign Bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's Literature." The citations include reports of, among other items: seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; eleven different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a jeweler's saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer glass; and one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine. Medicine: Presented to Marcia E. Buebel, David S. Shannahoff-Khalsa, and Michael R. Boyle, for their


id: list-of-ig-nobel-prize-winners-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners-3.md
category: reference
title: List of Ig Nobel Prize winners
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:15.055148+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: list-of-ig-nobel-prize-winners-20260505-0
summary:
Astronomy: Presented to Richard C. Hoagland of New Jersey, for identifying artificial features on the Moon and on Mars, including a human face on Mars and ten-mile high buildings on the far side of the Moon. Biology: Presented to T. Yagyu and his colleagues from the University Hospital of Zürich, Switzerland, the Kansai Medical University in Osaka, Japan, and the Neuroscience Technology Research in Prague, Czech Republic, for measuring people's brainwave patterns while they chewed different flavors of gum. Communications: Presented to Sanford Wallace, president of Cyber Promotions of Philadelphia. Nothing has stopped this self-appointed courier from delivering electronic junk mail to all the world. Economics: Presented to Akihiro Yokoi of Wiz Company in Chiba, Japan, and Aki Maita of Bandai Company in Tokyo, for diverting millions of man-hours of work into the husbandry of virtual pets. Entomology: Presented to Mark Hostetler of the University of Florida, for his book, That Gunk on Your Car, (ISBN 978-0-89815-961-5) which identifies the insect splats that appear on automobile windows. Literature: Presented to Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg of Israel, and to Michael Drosnin of the United States, for their claimed statistical discovery of a hidden code in the Bible. Medicine:


id: list-of-ig-nobel-prize-winners-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners-4.md
category: reference
title: List of Ig Nobel Prize winners
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:15.055148+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: list-of-ig-nobel-prize-winners-20260505-0
summary:
Biology: Presented to Richard Wassersug of Dalhousie University, for his firsthand report, "On the Comparative Palatability of Some Dry-Season Tadpoles from Costa Rica". Chemistry: Presented to Donatella Marazziti, Alessandra Rossi, and Giovanni B. Cassano of the University of Pisa, Italy, and Hagop S. Akiskal of the University of California, San Diego, for their discovery that, biochemically, romantic love may be indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. Computer Science: Presented to Chris Niswander of Tucson, Arizona, for inventing PawSense, software that detects when a cat is walking across your computer keyboard. Economics: Presented to The Reverend Sun Myung Moon, for bringing efficiency and steady growth to the mass marriage industry, with, according to his reports, a 36-couple wedding in 1960, a 430-couple wedding in 1968, an 1,800-couple wedding in 1975, a 6,000-couple wedding in 1982, a 30,000-couple wedding in 1992, a 360,000-couple wedding in 1995, and a 36,000,000-couple wedding in 1997. Literature: Presented to Jasmuheen (formerly known as Ellen Greve) of Australia, first lady of Breatharianism, for her book Living on Light, (ISBN 978-3-929512-35-9) which explains that although some people do eat food, they don't ever really need to. Medicine: Presented to Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, Pek van Andel, and Eduard Mooyaart


id: list-of-recipients-of-the-pour-le-m-rite-for-sciences-and-arts-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recipients_of_the_Pour_le_Mérite_for_Sciences_and_Arts-0.md
category: reference
title: List of recipients of the Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recipients_of_the_Pour_le_Mérite_for_Sciences_and_Arts
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:16.312103+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: list-of-recipients-of-the-pour-le-m-rite-for-sciences-and-arts-20260505-0
summary:
This is a list of recipients of the Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts (German: Pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste), a German and formerly Prussian honor given since 1842 for achievement in the humanities, sciences, or arts. == Bibliography == Lehmann, Gustaf (1913). "VII Friedensklasse 1842–1913". Die Ritter des Ordens pour le mérite 1812–1913 (in German). Vol. 2. Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler & Sohn. pp. 575–598. == References == == External links == Official website (in German)


id: becquerel-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Becquerel family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:18.478954+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: becquerel-family-20260505-0
summary:
The Becquerel family is a family of French scientists. The most notable members of them include: Antoine César Becquerel (1788–1878), pioneer in the study of electric and luminescent phenomena, father of Edmond Louis Alfred Becquerel (1814-1862), French physician and medical researcher, son of Antoine Cesar, brother of Edmond Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel (known as Edmond, 1820-1891), studied the solar spectrum, magnetism, electricity, and optics. Discovered photovoltaic effect. Son of Antoine Cesar, father of Henri. Henri Becquerel (1852-1908), discoverer of radioactivity, son of Edmond, father of Jean Jean Becquerel (1878-1953), worked on the optical and magnetic properties of crystals, son of Henri == See also == Becquerel (disambiguation) == References ==


id: bernoulli-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Bernoulli family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:19.585318+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bernoulli-family-20260505-0
summary:
The Bernoulli family ( bur-NOO-lee; German: [bɛʁˈnʊli]; Swiss Standard German: [bɛrˈnʊli]) of Basel was a patrician family, notable for having produced eight mathematically gifted academics who, among them, contributed substantially to the development of mathematics and physics during the early modern period. == History == Originally from Antwerp, a branch of the family relocated to Basel in 1620. While their origin in Antwerp is certain, proposed earlier connections with the Dutch family of Italian ancestry called Bornouilla (Bernoullie), or with the Castilian family de Bernuy (Bernoille, Bernouille), are uncertain. The first known member of the family was Leon Bernoulli (d. 1561), a doctor in Antwerp, at that time part of the Spanish Netherlands. His son, Jacob, emigrated to Frankfurt am Main in 1570 to escape from the Spanish persecution of the Protestants. Jacob's grandson, a spice trader, also named Jacob, moved to Basel, Switzerland in 1620, and was granted citizenship in 1622. His son, Niklaus Bernoulli (Nicolaus, 1623–1708), Leon's great-great-grandson, married Margarethe Schönauer. === Notable academic members === Margarethe and Niklaus had four sons, of whom Johann and Hieronymus became the progenitors of the "greater" and the "lesser" branches of the family, respectively. The four sons of Margarethe and Niklaus


id: chandrasekhar-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrasekhar_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Chandrasekhar family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrasekhar_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:20.694991+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: chandrasekhar-family-20260505-0
summary:
The Chandrasekhar family is a distinguished Indian intellectual family, several of whose members achieved eminence, notably in the field of physics. Two members of the family, Sir C. V. Raman and his nephew, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, were Nobel laureates in physics. For many members of the Chandrasekhar family there are multiple possible spellings in use for names. This includes R. Chandrasekhara Iyer; he was named Chandrasekharan (with an "n") but later became known as Chandrasekhara Aiyar (without the "n"). Furthermore, the family caste name "Aiyar" is sometimes spelled "Iyer" or "Ayyar". == Family tree == == First generation == Chandrasekhara Venkata (C. V.) Raman FNA, FASc, FRS, was a distinguished physicist whose achievements in the field of light scattering earned him the 1930 Nobel Prize for Physics. He discovered that when light traverses a transparent material, the wavelengths of some of the deflected light change. This phenomenon, now known as Raman scattering, results from the eponymous effect. Chandrasekhara Ramaswamy FASc (brother of C. V. Raman) was a noted meteorologist who served as Director-General of the Indian Meteorological Department (1965–1967). He conducted research into the regional and global effects of Indian monsoonal patterns. == Second generation == Venkatraman Radhakrishnan FASc (son of


id: conant-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conant_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Conant family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conant_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:21.992963+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: conant-family-20260505-0
summary:
The Conant family is a distinguished aristocratic family of English origin. == History == The Conant surname is thought to be of Celtic, possibly Breton origin. The earliest known member of the most prominent line of the family was John Conant, a yeoman of East Budleigh, Devon. His son Richard (1548–1630), had eight children including his second son Robert (c. 1583–1638) and his youngest child Roger (c. 1592–1679). Robert Conant's eldest son the Rev. John Conant (1608–1694) was a noted theologian who was Regius Professor of Divinity and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. John Conant's great-grandson Nathaniel (1745–1822) served as Chief Magistrate of the Bow Street Magistrates' Court and was knighted in 1813, when he was granted official sanction to use his claimed ancestral arms by virtue of a new grant, as the College of Arms had been unable to establish the family's right to them through its records. In 1862, Nathaniel's grandson Edward Nathaniel Conant (1820–1901) inherited his maternal uncle's estate and family seat at Lyndon Hall in the county of Rutland, where the family continues to reside. Edward's grandson Sir Roger Conant, 1st Baronet (1899–1973) was a Conservative Party Member of Parliament (MP) who served as Comptroller of the


id: curie-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Curie family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:23.324570+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: curie-family-20260505-0
summary:
The Curie family is a French family from which hailed a number of distinguished scientists. Polish-born Marie Skłodowska-Curie, her French husband Pierre Curie, their daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, and son-in-law, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, are its most prominent members. Five members of the family in total were awarded a Nobel Prize, with Marie winning twice. Marie and Pierre shared a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and Marie was awarded a second one in chemistry in 1911, making her the first person in history to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific disciplines. To date, only Linus Pauling has followed her in winning prizes in multiple categories, in chemistry and peace. Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Henry Richardson Labouisse, Jr., the spouse of Irène's younger sister, Ève Curie, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965. The chemical element curium (number 96) is named after Marie and Pierre. While Pierre Curie died at age 46 from an accident, Marie, Irène and Frédéric died from diseases likely caused by their exposure to radiation during their scientific experiments. == Family tree == == See also == Skłodowski family Bernoulli family Langevin family List of second-generation physicists == References


id: darwin-wedgwood-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin–Wedgwood_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Darwin–Wedgwood family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin–Wedgwood_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:28.334677+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: darwin-wedgwood-family-20260505-0
summary:
The Darwin–Wedgwood family are members of two connected families, each noted for particular prominent 18th-century figures: Erasmus Darwin FRS, a physician and natural philosopher, and Josiah Wedgwood FRS, a noted potter and founder of the eponymous Josiah Wedgwood & Sons pottery company. The Darwin and Wedgwood families were on friendly terms for much of their history and members intermarried, notably Charles Darwin, who married Emma Wedgwood. The most notable member of the family was Charles Darwin, a grandson of both Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood. The family also included at least ten Fellows of the Royal Society, and several artists and poets (among whom was the 20th-century composer Ralph Vaughan Williams). Presented below are brief biographical descriptions and genealogical information, and mentions of some notable descendants. (The individuals are listed by year of birth and grouped into generations.) The relationship to Francis Galton, and to his immediate ancestors, is also given. (Note, however, that the data tree below is not intended to include all descendants, nor is it intended to include all prominent descendants. Also note that Ursula Wood died in 2007, Richard Darwin Keynes died in 2010, and Horace Basil Barlow died in 2020.) == The first generation ==


id: darwin-wedgwood-family-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin–Wedgwood_family-1.md
category: reference
title: Darwin–Wedgwood family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin–Wedgwood_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:28.334677+00:00
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parent: darwin-wedgwood-family-20260505-0
summary:
Sarah Elizabeth Wedgwood (1793–1880). Josiah Wedgwood (1795–1880) married Caroline Darwin, daughter of Robert Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood. They are grandparents of composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. Mary Ann Wedgwood (1796–1798). Charlotte Wedgwood (1797–1862) was Charles Langton's first wife. After her death he married her cousin, Emily Catherine Darwin; she is the ancestor of Hugh Massingberd, see below. Henry Allen Wedgwood (1799–1885). Francis Wedgwood (1800–1888); married, on 26 April 1832 at Rolleston on Dove, Staffordshire, Frances Mosley, daughter of Rev. John Peploe Mosley and Sarah Maria Paget and granddaughter of Sir John Parker Mosley and Elizabeth Bayley; and was the grandfather of Josiah Wedgwood, 1st Baron Wedgwood and great-grandfather of C. V. Wedgwood and Camilla Wedgwood. Hensleigh Wedgwood (1803–1891), etymologist, philologist and barrister, author of A Dictionary of English Etymology father of Frances Julia Wedgwood (1833–1913), and grandfather of Bishop J. I. Wedgwood. His wife, his first cousin on his mother's side, Frances "Fanny" Wedgwood (née Mackintosh; 1800–1889, daughter of James Mackintosh), was a good friend and correspondent of Harriet Martineau. Frances (Fanny) Wedgwood (1806–1832). Emma Wedgwood (1808–1896); married Charles Darwin, son of Robert Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood. === Thomas Wedgwood === Thomas Wedgwood (1771–1805). Pioneer in developing photography, friend and patron


id: darwin-wedgwood-family-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin–Wedgwood_family-2.md
category: reference
title: Darwin–Wedgwood family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin–Wedgwood_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:28.334677+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: darwin-wedgwood-family-20260505-0
summary:
=== Francis Darwin === Francis Darwin (1848–1925) was the botanist son of Charles Darwin and Emma Darwin (née Wedgwood). Francis Darwin married Amy Ruck during 1874, who died during 1876 after the birth of their son Bernard Darwin, an author on golf – see below. Francis married Ellen Crofts during September 1883 and they had a daughter Frances Crofts, who married and became known as the poet Frances Cornford (see below). During 1913 he married his third wife Florence Henrietta Darwin (née Fisher); there were no children of this marriage, but he became step-father to Fredegond Shove née Maitland and Ermengard Maitland. He is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge, where he is interred in the same grave as his daughter Frances Cornford. His third wife and his brother Sir Horace Darwin and his wife Lady 'Ida' are interred in the same graveyard, as well as his step-daughter Fredegond Shove but not her sister Ermengard Maitland. === Leonard Darwin === Leonard Darwin (1850–1943) was variously an army officer, Member of Parliament and eugenicist who corresponded with Ronald Fisher, thus being the link between the two great evolutionary biologists. === Horace Darwin === Horace Darwin (1851–1928)


id: darwin-wedgwood-family-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin–Wedgwood_family-3.md
category: reference
title: Darwin–Wedgwood family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin–Wedgwood_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:28.334677+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: darwin-wedgwood-family-20260505-0
summary:
=== Horace Barlow === Horace Barlow (1921–2020) was Professor of Physiological Optics and Physiology, Berkeley, California, US (1964–73); Royal Society Research Professor, Physiological Laboratory, Cambridge (1973–87). === John Cornford === John Cornford (1915–1936), was a poet and member of the International Brigades died during the Spanish Civil War. Son of Francis and Frances Cornford, see above. === Christopher Cornford === Christopher Cornford (1917–1993), was an artist and writer. Son of Francis and Frances Cornford, see above. === Henry Galton Darwin === Henry Galton Darwin (1929–1992) was a lawyer and diplomat. Son of Charles Galton Darwin. === Robin Darwin === Robert Vere "Robin" Darwin (1910–1974) was an artist. He is the son of Bernard Darwin, see above. === Quentin Keynes === Quentin Keynes (1921–2003) was a bibliophile and explorer. Son of Margaret Keynes, née Darwin, see above. === Richard Keynes === Professor Richard Darwin Keynes FRS (1919–2010) was a British physiologist. Son of Margaret Keynes, née Darwin, see above. === Ursula Mommens === Ursula Mommens (née Darwin, first married name Trevelyan) (1908–2010) was a well-known potter. Daughter of Bernard Darwin, see above. Her son by Julian Trevelyan is the movie-maker Philip Trevelyan. === Geoffrey Tindal-Carill-Worsley === Air Commodore Geoffrey Tindal-Carill-Worsley (1908–1996)


id: darwin-wedgwood-family-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin–Wedgwood_family-4.md
category: reference
title: Darwin–Wedgwood family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin–Wedgwood_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:28.334677+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: darwin-wedgwood-family-20260505-0
summary:
== Coat of arms == These arms were granted to Reginald Darwin, of Fern, Derbyshire, for himself and certain descendants of his father, Sir Francis Sacheverel Darwin, and his uncle Robert Waring Darwin (Father of Charles), on 6 March 1890. As Charles Darwin was part of the destination, they have been used in association with him, despite being granted after his death. Something similar is used by Darwin College, Cambridge. A variant without mullets was being used by the Darwin family long before 1890. Erasmus Darwin used it with the motto E conchis omnia (All things out of shells), reflecting his belief that all life descended from one simple form. Charles' father Robert adopted the same motto, displaying it on his bookplate. Stephen Glover described in 1829 the older variant quartered with the Waring coat of arms (sable, a chevron between three storks' heads erased, argent). == See also == Keynes family Huxley family == Notes == == References == Milner, Richard (1994). Charles Darwin: Evolution of a Naturalist. Makers of Modern Science. New York City: Facts on File, Inc. ISBN 978-0-8160-2557-2. Freeman, Richard Broke (1982). "The Darwin family". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 17 (1): 9–21. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8312.1982.tb02010.x. Berra,


id: de-saussure-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Saussure_family-0.md
category: reference
title: De Saussure family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Saussure_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:29.464230+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: de-saussure-family-20260505-0
summary:
The De Saussure family is a family from the Geneva patriciate of Huguenot origins hailing from Lorraine, France but being settled in Switzerland since 1556. An American branch was established in South Carolina in the 18th century by Henri de Saussure; among his descendants were Chancellor Henry William de Saussure and US Senator William F. De Saussure. == History == The family originally hails from Saulxures in the Lorraine region of France. During their service as falconers to the duke he ennobled them in 1506. Due to religious persecution for being Huguenot they emigrated to Lausanne and Geneva, where they became citizens in 1556 respectively 1636. == Swiss branch == In Switzerland, as well as in the Republic of Geneva, they soon became politically and socio-economically active holding a variety of public offices. Théodore de Saussure became the mayor of Geneva, his son Nicolas de Saussure (1709-1791), a politician and agronomist. Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740 – 1799), an 18th century naturalist, was probably the most notable, his portrait was on the 20 Swiss Francs bill series which were in circulation from 1979 to 1995. His daughter Albertine Necker de Saussure (1766-1841) became an advocate for women s education and his


id: einstein-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Einstein family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:30.588947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: einstein-family-20260505-0
summary:
The Einstein family is the family of physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955). Einstein's fourth-great-grandfather, Jakob Weil, was his oldest recorded relative, born in the late 17th century, and the family continues to this day. Albert Einstein's second-great-grandfather, Löb Moses Sontheimer (1745–1831), was also the grandfather of the tenor Heinrich Sontheim (1820–1912) of Stuttgart. Albert's three children were from his relationship with his first wife, Mileva Marić, his daughter Lieserl being born a year before they married. Albert Einstein's second wife was Elsa Einstein, whose mother Fanny Koch was the sister of Albert's mother, and whose father, Rudolf Einstein, was the son of Raphael Einstein, a brother of Albert's paternal grandfather. Albert and Elsa were thus first cousins through their mothers and second cousins through their fathers. == Etymology == Einstein (English: EYEN-styne, German: [ˈaɪnʃtaɪn] ) is either a German habitational surname from various places named with a Middle High German derivative of the verb einsteinen 'to enclose, surround with stone'; or a Jewish (Ashkenazic) adaptation of the German name, or else an ornamental name using the ending -stein 'stone'. == Pauline Einstein (Albert's mother) == Pauline Einstein (née Koch; 8 February 1858 – 20 February 1920) was the mother of the


id: einstein-family-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family-1.md
category: reference
title: Einstein family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:30.588947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: einstein-family-20260505-0
summary:
=== Work === Albert Einstein’s father, Hermann Einstein, was an engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded an electrical engineering company, Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie. Based initially in Munich, the company manufactured electrical devices such as arc lamps and dynamos, and was involved in the installation of lighting systems throughout southern Germany and parts of northern Italy. Though the business saw early success, it struggled to compete with larger firms like AEG and Siemens. These difficulties eventually forced the company to close, prompting the Einstein family to move to Milan and later to Pavia in the 1890s. Hermann played a significant role in encouraging Albert’s early interest in science and engineering. He often took Albert on factory visits and supported his education despite the family’s financial instability. After the closure of the company, Hermann continued to seek work in the electrical industry but did not achieve the same level of business success again. He died in Milan in 1902, while Albert was still a student in Zürich. Pauline Einstein, Albert’s mother, came from a cultured and middle-class Jewish family. Although she did not pursue formal employment, she was an accomplished pianist and had a strong appreciation for music, literature, and


id: einstein-family-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family-2.md
category: reference
title: Einstein family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:30.588947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: einstein-family-20260505-0
summary:
Lieserl Einstein (27 January 1902 – September 1903) was the first child of Mileva Marić and Albert Einstein. According to the correspondence between her parents, Lieserl was born on 27 January 1902, a year before her parents married, in Újvidék, Austria-Hungary, present-day Novi Sad, Serbia, and was cared for by her mother for a short time while Einstein worked in Switzerland before Marić joined him there without the child. Lieserl's existence was unknown to biographers until 1986, when a batch of letters between Albert and Mileva Marić was discovered by Hans Albert Einstein's daughter Evelyn. Marić had hoped for a girl, while Einstein would have preferred a boy. In their letters, they called the unborn child "Lieserl", when referring to a girl, or "Hanserl", if a boy. Both "Lieserl" and "Hanserl" were diminutives of the common German names Liese (short for Elizabeth) and Hans. The first reference to Marić's pregnancy was found in a letter Einstein wrote to her from Winterthur, probably on 28 May 1901 (letter 36), asking twice about "the boy" and "our little son", whereas Marić's first reference was found in her letter of 13 November 1901 (letter 43) from Stein am Rhein, in which she referred


id: einstein-family-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family-3.md
category: reference
title: Einstein family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:30.588947+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: einstein-family-20260505-0
summary:
Eduard Einstein (28 July 1910 – 25 October 1965) was born in Zürich, Switzerland, the second son of physicist Albert Einstein from his first wife Mileva Marić. Albert Einstein and his family moved to Berlin in 1914. Shortly thereafter the parents separated, and Marić returned to Zürich, taking Eduard and his older brother Hans Albert with her. His father remarried in 1919 and in 1933 immigrated to the United States under the threat of Germany's rising Nazi regime. Eduard was a good student and had musical talent. Some of Eduard's poems, which refer to the same teachers as the biographical sketches in the autobiography of Nobel laureate Elias Canetti, were published in the school newspaper of the gymnasium (grammar school). After gymnasium, he started to study medicine to become a psychiatrist, but by the age of 21 he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was institutionalized two years later for the first of several times. Biographers of his father have speculated that the drugs and "cures" of the time damaged rather than aided the young Einstein. His brother Hans Albert Einstein believed that his memory and cognitive abilities had been deeply affected by electroconvulsive therapy treatments Eduard received while institutionalized. After


id: freud-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Freud family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:31.798248+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: freud-family-20260505-0
summary:
The family of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis, lived in Austria and Germany until the 1930s before emigrating to England, Canada, and the United States. Several of Freud's descendants and relatives have become well known in different fields. == Freud's parents and siblings == Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was born to Jewish Galician parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg in Mähren, in what then was the Austrian Empire (now called Příbor and in the Czech Republic). He was the eldest child of Jacob Freud (1815–1896), a wool merchant, and his third wife, Amalia Nathansohn (1835–1930). Jacob Freud was born in Tysmenitz, then part of the Austrian Partition of Poland called the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (now called Tysmenytsia and in Ukraine), the eldest child of Schlomo and Peppi (Pessel), née Hoffmann, Freud. His two brothers, Abae (c. 1815–c. 1885) and Josef (1825–1897), had difficulties that concerned the family, the former because of his mentally incapacitated children, the latter because his business dealings came under criminal investigation. Jacob Freud had two surviving children from his first marriage to Sally Kanner (1829–1852): Emanuel (1832–1914) Philipp (1836–1911) Jacob's second marriage (1852–1855) to Rebecca (family of origin uncertain) was childless. Amalia Freud


id: freud-family-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud_family-1.md
category: reference
title: Freud family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:31.798248+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: freud-family-20260505-0
summary:
The systematic persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany and the ensuing Holocaust had a profound effect on the family. Four of Freud's five sisters were murdered in concentration camps: in 1942 Mitzi Freud (eighty-one) and Paula Winternitz (seventy-eight) were transported to Theresienstadt and taken from there to the Maly Trostinets extermination camp, near Minsk, where they were murdered. In 1943 Dolfi Freud died in Theresienstadt of internal bleeding, probably due to advanced starvation and Rosa Graf (eighty-two) was deported to Treblinka, where she was murdered. Freud's brother, Alexander, escaped with his family to Switzerland shortly before the Anschluss and they subsequently emigrated to Canada. Freud's sons Oliver, a civil engineer, and Ernst Ludwig, an architect, lived and worked in Berlin until Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 after which they fled with their families to France and England respectively. Oliver Freud and his wife later emigrated to the United States. Their daughter Eva Freud had remained in France and died there of an infection contracted during an abortion. Freud and his remaining family left Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1938 after Ernest Jones, the then President of the International Psychoanalytic Association, secured immigration permits for them to move to Britain.


id: freud-family-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud_family-2.md
category: reference
title: Freud family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:31.798248+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: freud-family-20260505-0
summary:
After Sigmund Freud's death in 1939, Martha and Anna Freud made their home available to relatives and friends fleeing the Nazi occupation of Europe. In 1941, following the death of Martha's sister, Minna, Dorothy Burlingham (1891–1979) became a permanent member of the household. From their first meeting in Vienna in 1925, Anna and Dorothy developed "intimate relations that closely resembled those of lesbians", although Anna "categorically denied the existence of a sexual relationship". Dorothy had been a patient of Freud's and her four children, Bob, Mary (Mabbie), Katrina, and Michael, were among the first of Anna's after she had begun her own psychoanalytic practice. During and after the war they collaborated in establishing the Hampstead War Nursery that provided therapy and residential care for children whose lives had been disrupted by the war. Their work laid the foundations for the post-war Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic, founded in 1952 (later renamed the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families). Martin and Walter Freud were both interned in 1940 as enemy aliens. Following a change in government policy on internment, both were subsequently recruited to the Pioneer Corps. After the war, denied recognition as a (Vienna-trained) lawyer by the


id: freud-family-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud_family-3.md
category: reference
title: Freud family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:31.798248+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: freud-family-20260505-0
summary:
Mathilde Freud (1887–1978) married Robert Hollitscher (1875–1959), and had no children Jean-Martin Freud (1889–1967, known as Martin Freud) married Ernestine (Esti) Drucker (1896–1980), and had two children: Anton Walter Freud (1921–2004) married Annette Krarup (1925–2000) and had three children David Freud (born 1950, later Lord Freud), married Cilla Dickinson and had three children: Andrew Freud Emily Freud Juliet Freud Ida Freud (born 1952), married M. Fairbairn Caroline Freud (born 1955), married L. Penney Sophie Freud (1924–2022), married Paul Loewenstein (1921–1992) and had three children: Andrea Freud Loewenstein Dania Loewenstein, married S. Jekel George Loewenstein Oliver Freud (1891–1969), married (i) Ella Haim; (ii) Henny Fuchs (1892–1971). From his marriage to Henny Fuchs, he had one child: Eva Freud (1924–1944) Ernst L. Freud (1892–1970), married Lucie Brasch (1896–1989), and had three children: Stephan Gabriel Freud (1921–2015, known as Stephen Freud) married (i) Lois Blake (born 1924); (ii) Christine Ann Potter (born 1927). From his marriage to Lois Blake, he had one child: Dorothy Freud Lucian Michael Freud (1922–2011), married (i) Kathleen Garman (1926–2011), two children; (ii) Lady Caroline Blackwood (1931–1996). He also had four children by Suzy Boyt, four by Katherine McAdam (died 1998), two by Bernardine Coverley (died 2011), one by


id: herschel-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herschel_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Herschel family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herschel_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:33.023232+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: herschel-family-20260505-0
summary:
The Herschel family is a famous Anglo-German family of astronomers who lived from the 18th to the 20th century. The family originated from Pirna in Saxony which lies near Dresden. == Notable members == William Herschel (1738–1822), astronomer and composer, discoverer of Uranus Caroline Herschel (1750–1848), astronomer and singer, sister of Sir William Herschel John Herschel (1792–1871), mathematician and astronomer, son of Sir William Herschel Alexander Stewart Herschel (1836–1907), astronomer, grandson of Sir William Herschel William James Herschel (1833–1917), Pioneer of fingerprinting, grandson of Sir William Herschel John Herschel the Younger (1837–1921), grandson of Sir William Herschel == References ==


id: langevin-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langevin_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Langevin family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langevin_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:34.265443+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: langevin-family-20260505-0
summary:
The Langevin family is a French family with some prominent scientists. The French physicist Paul Langevin, member of the French Academy of Sciences and teacher at Collège de France, is the most prominent member. == Genealogy == == See also == Curie family Koechlin family == Photographs == == External links == Paty, Michel (2012). "Relativity in France". In Glick, T. F. (ed.). The Comparative Reception of Relativity. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 113–168. ISBN 9789400938755. Retrieved 13 December 2017. Langevin, P. (1911), "The Evolution of Space and Time", Scientia, X: 31–54 (translated by J. B. Sykes, 1973 from the original French: "L'évolution de l'espace et du temps"). Wolfram research biographical entry by Michel Barran. Julien Bok and Catherine Kounelis (2007). "Paul Langevin (1872–1946) – From Montmartre to the Panthéon: The Paris journey of an exceptional physicist" (PDF). Europhysics News. Vol. 38, no. 1. Adrienne R. Weill-Brunschvicg (2008). "Langevin, Paul - Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 2008". Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Charles Coulston Gillispie, Dictionary of scientific biography, Vol. 8, biography written by Francis Perrin, New York, Scribner's sons, 1973. Family of Paul Langevin, during the funeral, listening to Education minister Marcel Naegelen's talk, 21 December 1946 in


id: linn-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linné_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Linné family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linné_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:35.523666+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: linn-family-20260505-0
summary:
The von Linné family and Linnaeus family was the family of the renowned botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, physician and formalizer of the binomial nomenclature, Carl Linnaeus, and a Swedish noble family (No. 2044), ennobled on 20 April 1757 by the Swedish King Adolf Frederick, introduced at the House of Nobility in 1776. The von Linné family is predominantly famous for its contributions in the fields of science. The von Linné family descends from generations of priests and peasants in the historical province of Småland. The noble family's coat of arms prominently features a twinflower, one of Linnaeus's favourite plants. == Family tree == == References ==


id: noether-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Noether family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:36.746063+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: noether-family-20260505-0
summary:
The Noether family is a family of German mathematicians, whose family name has been given to some of their mathematical contributions: Max Noether (1844–1921), father of Emmy and Fritz Noether, Emmy Noether (1882–1935), professor at the University of Göttingen and at Bryn Mawr College Fritz Noether (1884–1941), professor at the University of Tomsk Gottfried E. Noether (1915–1991), son of Fritz Noether == References == == See also == Noether's theorem (disambiguation) List of things named after Emmy Noether


id: piccard-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccard_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Piccard family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccard_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:37.827606+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: piccard-family-20260505-0
summary:
The Piccard family are a Swiss family of adventurers, explorers and scientists. They collectively have broken several world records in exploration, particularly with balloons. The Star Trek character Jean-Luc Picard was named in honour of this family. Members include: Jules Piccard, a chemist and professor of chemistry Auguste Piccard, a physicist, aeronaut, balloonist, hydronaut Jacques Piccard, a hydronaut Bertrand Piccard, an aeronaut, psychiatrist and balloonist Jean Felix Piccard, an organic chemist, aeronaut, and balloonist Jeannette Piccard, wife of Jean Felix, an aeronaut and balloonist Don Piccard, a balloonist == References ==


id: sowerby-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sowerby_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Sowerby family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sowerby_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:38.931032+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sowerby-family-20260505-0
summary:
The Sowerby family () was a British family of several generations of naturalists, illustrators, botanists, and zoologists active from the late 18th century to the mid twentieth century. James Sowerby (1757–1822) James De Carle Sowerby (1787–1871) James Sowerby (1815–1834) William Sowerby (1827–1906) Joseph Sowerby (1829–ca.1871) Rev. Arthur Sowerby (1857–?) Arthur de Carle Sowerby (1885–1954) George Brettingham Sowerby I (1788–1854) George Brettingham Sowerby II (1812–1884) Charlotte Caroline Sowerby (1820–1865) George Brettingham Sowerby III (1843–1921) Charles Edward Sowerby (1795–1842) John Edward Sowerby (1825-1870) The three George Sowerbys produced major works on molluscs and their systematics. Together, they introduced numerous (sometimes the number 5000 is mentioned) taxonomic names. Because all three of the G.B Sowerbys published extensively on the subject of conchology, it is not easy even for professional taxonomists to unravel which of the three "G.B. Sowerbys" is meant in a particular citation when the numbering system G.B. Sowerby I, II, or III is not used. Even when a date is provided, this kind of attribution is not obvious: e.g. "Sowerby, 1870" can refer to either G.B. Sowerby II or G.B. Sowerby III. The scientific and artistic contributions of the family extended well into the 20th century. Arthur de Carle Sowerby (1885–1954),


id: struve-family-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struve_family-0.md
category: reference
title: Struve family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struve_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:44.011306+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: struve-family-20260505-0
summary:
The Struve family (pronounced [ˈʃtʁuvə] in German, [ˈstruvɪ] in Russian) were a Baltic German noble family of Eastphalian origin and originated in Magdeburg, the family produced five generations of astronomers from the 18th to 20th centuries. Members of the family were also prominent in chemistry, government and diplomacy. == Origins == The first branch of the family that produced five generations of astronomers originated in Altona, then part of both Denmark and Germany The first scientist member of the family was mathematician Jacob Struve (1755–1841); his forebears included Johann Struve (1700–1778) and Abel Struve (1719–1762). In 1783, Jacob Struve married Maria Emerentia Wiese (1764–1847). Their children were: Carl Ludwig Struve (1785–1838) Ernst Heinrich Struve (1786–1822) Gustav Philipp Christoph Struve (1788–1829) Christiane Regine Elisabeth Struve (1791–1853) Friedrich Georg Wilhelm (von) Struve (1793–1864) Ludwig August Struve (1795–1828) Johanna Marie Struve (1797–1871) In the beginning of the 19th century, Jacob Struve sent his sons to Dorpat (now Tartu, Estonia) in the Russian Empire to avoid conscription in the Napoleonic armies. His fourth son, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm, taught at the University of Dorpat from 1813 and was full professor and director of Dorpat Observatory from 1820. Ennobled by Tsar Nicholas I, at whose request


id: struve-family-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struve_family-1.md
category: reference
title: Struve family
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struve_family
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:44.011306+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: struve-family-20260505-0
summary:
Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve's cousin, Johann Christoph Gustav von Struve, son of diplomat Anton Sebastian von Struve. "After finishing his studies and several extensive journeyings (sic), Anton started his career as private secretary to Count Schonberg, Minister in Dresden. In 1755 he entered the services of the Duke of Holstein-Gottrop, who later as Peter III became emperor of Russia, and thus became a Russian subject, along with his 2 brothers who were also induced to accompany Peter to Russia. One of these was the celebrated astronomer, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, and the third, the scientist. Anton Sebastian, after several diplomatic missions in Russian services, ended as Resident Minister at the German Reichstag at Regensburg. He died April 7, 1802. Hi biography is to be found in Schlichtegroll's "Nekrolog der Deutschen für das 19th. Jahrhundert". He had 12 children, but only five sons and four daughters attained maturity. Of these, only the eldest (Gustav von Struve, Sept. 26,1763 – 1828), and the youngest (Henry, 1772–1851), and Phillipine (She married President von Grün), the youngest daughter, had issue." (incorrect – see below) (1729–1802), became a diplomat in the Russian service primarily in Regensburg, Bavaria. Johann Christoph and his wife, née


id: independent-scientist-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_scientist-0.md
category: reference
title: Independent scientist
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_scientist
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:45.529732+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: independent-scientist-20260505-0
summary:
An independent scientist (historically also known as gentleman scientist) is a financially independent scientist who pursues scientific study without direct affiliation to a public institution such as a university or government-run research and development body. The term "gentleman scientist" arose in post-Renaissance Europe, but became less common in the 20th century as government and private funding increased. Most independent scientists have at some point in their career been affiliated with some academic institution, such as Charles Darwin, who was affiliated with the Geological Society of London. == History == Self-funded scientists practiced more commonly from the Renaissance until the late 19th century, including the Victorian era, especially in England, before large-scale government and corporate funding was available. Many early fellows of the Royal Society in London were independent scientists. === Modern === Modern-day independent scientists who fund their own research on an independent basis include, for example, Stephen Wolfram who funds his research through the sale of Mathematica software, Julian Barbour, Aubrey de Grey, Barrington Moore, Susan Blackmore, James Lovelock, and John Wilkinson who funds his research on "molecular synergism in nature" by running a regulatory scientific consultancy in natural products. Peter Rich said of Peter D. Mitchell: "I think


id: andr-marie-amp-re-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/André-Marie_Ampère-0.md
category: reference
title: André-Marie Ampère
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/André-Marie_Ampère
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:46.698183+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: andr-marie-amp-re-20260505-0
summary:
André-Marie Ampère (20 January 1775 – 10 June 1836) was a French physicist and mathematician who was one of the founders of the science of classical electromagnetism, which he referred to as electrodynamics. He made also important contributions in chemistry and philosophy. He is also the inventor of numerous applications, such as the solenoid (a term coined by him) and the electrical telegraph. As an autodidact, Ampère was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and professor at the École polytechnique and the Collège de France. The SI unit of electric current, the ampere (A), is named after him. His name is also one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower. The term kinematic is the English version of his cinématique, which he constructed from the Greek κίνημα kinema ("movement, motion"), itself derived from κινεῖν kinein ("to move"). == Biography == === Early life === André-Marie Ampère was born on 20 January 1775 in Lyon to Jean-Jacques Ampère, a prosperous businessman, and Jeanne Antoinette Desutières-Sarcey Ampère, during the height of the French Enlightenment. He spent his childhood and adolescence at the family property at Poleymieux-au-Mont-d'Or near Lyon, a house that today hosts the Ampère Museum, dedicated to


id: andr-marie-amp-re-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/André-Marie_Ampère-1.md
category: reference
title: André-Marie Ampère
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/André-Marie_Ampère
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:46.698183+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: andr-marie-amp-re-20260505-0
summary:
=== Work in electromagnetism === In September 1820, Ampère's friend and eventual eulogist François Arago showed the members of the French Academy of Sciences the surprising discovery by Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted that a magnetic needle is deflected by an adjacent electric current. Ampère began developing a mathematical and physical theory to understand the relationship between electricity and magnetism. Furthering Ørsted's experimental work, Ampère showed that two parallel wires carrying electric currents attract or repel each other, depending on whether the currents flow in the same or opposite directions, respectively - this laid the foundation of electrodynamics. He also applied mathematics in generalizing physical laws from these experimental results. The most important of these was the principle that came to be called Ampère's law, which states that the mutual action of two lengths of current-carrying wire is proportional to their lengths and to the intensities of their currents. Ampère also applied this same principle to magnetism, showing the harmony between his law and French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb's law of electric action. Ampère's devotion to, and skill with, experimental techniques anchored his science within the emerging fields of experimental physics. Ampère also provided a physical understanding of the


id: mary-anning-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning-0.md
category: reference
title: Mary Anning
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:48.037973+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: mary-anning-20260505-0
summary:
Mary Anning ( 21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) was an English fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist. She became known internationally for her discoveries in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset, South West England. Anning's findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth. Anning searched for fossils in the area's Blue Lias and Charmouth Mudstone cliffs, particularly during the winter months when landslides exposed new fossils that had to be collected quickly before they were lost to the sea. Her discoveries included the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton when she was twelve years old; the first two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces, and she also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods. Anning struggled financially for much of her life. As a woman, she was not eligible to join the Geological Society of London, and she did not always receive full credit


id: mary-anning-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning-1.md
category: reference
title: Mary Anning
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:48.037973+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: mary-anning-20260505-0
summary:
By the late 18th century, Lyme Regis had become a popular seaside resort, especially after 1792 when the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars made travel to the European mainland dangerous for the English gentry, and increasing numbers of wealthy and middle-class tourists were arriving there. Even before Anning's time, locals supplemented their income by selling what were called "curios" to visitors. These were fossils with colourful local names such as "snake-stones" (ammonites), "devil's fingers" (belemnites), and "verteberries" (vertebrae), to which were sometimes attributed medicinal and mystical properties. Fossil collecting was in vogue in the late 18th and early 19th century, at first as a pastime, but gradually transforming into a science as the importance of fossils to geology and biology was understood. The source of most of these fossils were the coastal cliffs around Lyme Regis, part of a geological formation known as the Blue Lias. This consists of alternating layers of limestone and shale, laid down as sediment on a shallow seabed early in the Jurassic period (about 210–195 million years ago). It is one of the richest fossil locations in Britain. The cliffs could be dangerously unstable, however, especially in winter when rain weakened them, causing landslides.


id: mary-anning-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning-2.md
category: reference
title: Mary Anning
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:48.037973+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: mary-anning-20260505-0
summary:
=== Fossil shop and growing expertise in a risky occupation === Anning continued to support herself selling fossils. Her primary stock in trade consisted of invertebrate fossils such as ammonite and belemnite shells, which were common in the area and sold for a few shillings. Vertebrate fossils, such as ichthyosaur skeletons, sold for more, but were much rarer. Collecting them was dangerous winter work. In 1823, an article in The Bristol Mirror said of her: This persevering female has for years gone daily in search of fossil remains of importance at every tide, for many miles under the hanging cliffs at Lyme, whose fallen masses are her immediate object, as they alone contain these valuable relics of a former world, which must be snatched at the moment of their fall, at the continual risk of being crushed by the half suspended fragments they leave behind, or be left to be destroyed by the returning tide: – to her exertions we owe nearly all the fine specimens of Ichthyosauri of the great collections ... The risks of Anning's profession were illustrated when in October 1833 she barely avoided being killed by a landslide that buried her black-and-white terrier, Tray, her constant


id: mary-anning-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning-3.md
category: reference
title: Mary Anning
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:48.037973+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: mary-anning-20260505-0
summary:
=== Interactions with the scientific community === As a woman, Anning was treated as an outsider to the scientific community. At the time in Britain, women were not allowed to vote, hold public office, or attend university. The newly formed, but increasingly influential Geological Society of London did not allow women to become members, or even to attend meetings as guests. The only occupations generally open to working-class women were farm labour, domestic service, and work in the newly opened factories. Although Anning knew more about fossils and geology than many of the wealthy fossilists to whom she sold, it was always the gentlemen geologists who published the scientific descriptions of the specimens she found, often neglecting to mention Anning's name. She became resentful of this. Anna Pinney, a young woman who sometimes accompanied Anning while she collected, wrote: "She says the world has used her ill ... these men of learning have sucked her brains, and made a great deal of publishing works, of which she furnished the contents, while she derived none of the advantages." Anning herself wrote in a letter: "The world has used me so unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone". Hugh


id: mary-anning-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning-4.md
category: reference
title: Mary Anning
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:48.037973+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: mary-anning-20260505-0
summary:
By 1830, because of difficult economic conditions in Britain that reduced the demand for fossils, coupled with long gaps between major finds, Anning was having financial problems again. Her friend, the geologist Henry De la Beche, assisted her by commissioning Georg Scharf to make a lithographic print based on De la Beche's watercolour painting, Duria Antiquior, portraying life in prehistoric Dorset that was based largely on fossils Anning had found. De la Beche sold copies of the print to his fellow geologists and other wealthy friends and donated the proceeds to Anning. It became the first such scene from what later became known as deep time to be widely circulated. In December 1830, Anning finally made another major find, a skeleton of a new type of plesiosaur, which sold for £200. It was around this time that Anning switched from attending the local Congregational church, where she had been baptised and in which she and her family had always been active members, to the Anglican church. The change was prompted in part by a decline in Congregational attendance that began in 1828 when its popular pastor, John Gleed, a fellow fossil collector, left for the United States to campaign against


id: mary-anning-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning-5.md
category: reference
title: Mary Anning
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:48.037973+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: mary-anning-20260505-0
summary:
Anning's first famous discovery was made shortly after her father's death when she was still a child of about 12. In 1811 (some sources say 1810 or 1809) her brother Joseph found a 4 ft (1.2 m) skull, but failed to locate the rest of the animal. After Joseph told Anning to look between the cliffs at Lyme Regis and Charmouth, she found the skeleton—17 ft (5.2 m) long in all—a few months later. The family hired workmen to dig it out in November that year, an event covered by the local press on 9 November, who identified the fossil as a crocodile. Other ichthyosaur remains had been discovered in years past at Lyme and elsewhere, but the specimen found by the Annings was the first to come to the attention of scientific circles in London. It was purchased by the lord of a local manor, who passed it to William Bullock for public display in London where it created a sensation. At a time when most people in Britain still believed in a literal interpretation of Genesis, that the Earth was only a few thousand years old and that species did not evolve or become extinct, the find raised


id: mary-anning-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning-6.md
category: reference
title: Mary Anning
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:48.037973+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: mary-anning-20260505-0
summary:
In 1823, Anning discovered a second, much more complete plesiosaur skeleton, specimen NHMUK OR 22656 (formerly BMNH 22656). When Conybeare presented his analysis of plesiosaur anatomy to a meeting of the Geological Society in 1824, he again failed to mention Anning by name, even though she had possibly collected both skeletons and had made the sketch of the second skeleton he used in his presentation. Conybeare's presentation was made at the same meeting at which William Buckland described the dinosaur Megalosaurus and the combination created a sensation in scientific circles. Conybeare's presentation followed the resolution of a controversy over the legitimacy of one of the fossils. The fact that the plesiosaur's long neck had an unprecedented 35 vertebrae raised the suspicions of the eminent French anatomist Georges Cuvier when he reviewed Anning's drawings of the second skeleton, and he wrote to Conybeare suggesting the possibility that the find was a fake produced by combining fossil bones from different kinds of animals. Fraud was far from unknown among early 19th-century fossil collectors, and if the controversy had not been resolved promptly, the accusation could have seriously damaged Anning's ability to sell fossils to other geologists. Cuvier's accusation had resulted in a


id: mary-anning-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning-7.md
category: reference
title: Mary Anning
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:48.037973+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: mary-anning-20260505-0
summary:
Anning's discoveries became key pieces of evidence for extinction. Georges Cuvier had argued for the reality of extinction in the late 1790s based on his analysis of fossils of mammals such as mammoths. Nevertheless, until the early 1820s it was still believed by many scientifically literate people that just as new species did not appear, so existing ones did not become extinct—in part because they felt that extinction would imply that God's creation had been imperfect; any oddities found were explained away as belonging to animals still living somewhere in an unexplored region of the Earth. The bizarre nature of the fossils found by Anning—some, such as the plesiosaur, so unlike any known living creature—struck a major blow against this idea. The ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and pterosaur she found, along with the first dinosaur fossils, which were discovered by Gideon Mantell and William Buckland during the same period, showed that during previous eras the Earth was inhabited by creatures different from those living today, and provided important support for another controversial suggestion of Cuvier's: that there had been an "age of reptiles" in which they rather than mammals had been the dominant form of animal life. This phrase became popular after


id: mary-anning-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning-8.md
category: reference
title: Mary Anning
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:48.037973+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: mary-anning-20260505-0
summary:
In 2009, Tracy Chevalier wrote a historical novel entitled Remarkable Creatures, in which Anning and Elizabeth Philpot were the main characters. Another historical novel about Anning, Curiosity by Joan Thomas, was published in March 2010. In 2010, 163 years after her death, the Royal Society included Anning in a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science. In 1902, the Lyme Regis Museum was built on the site of her former home. It was commissioned by Thomas Philpot, a relative of the Philpot sisters. The area where she collected fossils is now part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. In 2021, the Royal Mint issued sets of commemorative fifty pence coins called The Mary Anning Collection, designed by the palaeoartist Bob Nicholls and minted in acknowledgement of her lack of recognition as "one of Britain's greatest fossil hunters". The coins have images of Temnodontosaurus, Plesiosaurus and Dimorphodon, which she discovered, and her discoveries were "often overlooked at a time when the scientific world was dominated by men", and as "a working-class woman". In March 2024, the Royal Mail issued a set of four stamps celebrating Mary Anning and her discoveries. In May 2024,


id: manfred-von-ardenne-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Ardenne-0.md
category: reference
title: Manfred von Ardenne
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Ardenne
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:49.289092+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: manfred-von-ardenne-20260505-0
summary:
Manfred Baron von Ardenne (German pronunciation: [ˈmanfʁeːt fɔn aʁˈdɛn]; 20 January 1907 – 26 May 1997) was a German researcher, autodidact in applied physics, and an inventor. He took out approximately 600 patents in fields including electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear technology, plasma physics, and radio and television technology. From 1928 to 1945, he directed his self-funded and private research laboratory Forschungslaboratorium für Elektronenphysik, where he developed and invented many techniques used in modern physics. After World War II, von Ardenne was held in Soviet custody and was one of many of the German nuclear physicists in the Soviet program of nuclear weapons, and later honored with the Stalin Prize. Upon his return to the then East Germany, he started another private engineering firm, Forschungsinstitut Manfred von Ardenne. Ardenne is seen as one of the main inventors of the television. == Career == === Early years === The stormy life of von Ardenne's grandmother, Elisabeth von Ardenne (1853–1952), is said to have been the inspiration for Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane, one of the most famous German realist novels. Born in 1907 in Hamburg to a wealthy aristocratic family, Ardenne was the oldest of five children. In 1913, Ardenne's father,


id: manfred-von-ardenne-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Ardenne-1.md
category: reference
title: Manfred von Ardenne
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Ardenne
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:49.289092+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: manfred-von-ardenne-20260505-0
summary:
=== In the Soviet Union === Von Ardenne, Gustav Hertz, Nobel laureate and director of Research Laboratory II at Siemens, Peter Adolf Thiessen, ordinarius professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin and director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie (KWIPC) in Berlin-Dahlem, and Max Volmer, ordinarius professor and director of the Physical Chemistry Institute at the Berlin Technische Hochschule, had made a pact. The pact was a pledge that whoever first made contact with the Soviets would speak for the rest. The objectives of their pact were threefold: (1) Prevent plunder of their institutes, (2) Continue their work with minimal interruption, and (3) Protect themselves from prosecution for any political acts of the past. Before the end of World War II, Thiessen, a member of the NSDAP, had Communist contacts. On 27 April 1945, Thiessen arrived at von Ardenne's institute in an armored vehicle with a major of the Soviet Army, who was also a leading Soviet chemist, and they issued Ardenne a protective letter (Schutzbrief). All four of the pact members were taken to the Soviet Union. Von Ardenne was made head of Institute A, in Sinop, a suburb of Sukhumi. In his first meeting with


id: robert-bakewell-agriculturalist-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bakewell_(agriculturalist)-0.md
category: reference
title: Robert Bakewell (agriculturalist)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bakewell_(agriculturalist)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:50.386801+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: robert-bakewell-agriculturalist-20260505-0
summary:
Robert Bakewell (23 May 1725 – 1 October 1795) was an English agriculturalist, now recognized as one of the most important figures in the British Agricultural Revolution. In addition to work in agronomy, Bakewell is particularly notable as the first to implement systematic selective breeding of livestock. His advancements not only led to specific improvements in sheep, cattle and horses, but contributed to general knowledge of artificial selection. == Early life == Robert Bakewell, the second eldest son, was born on 23 May 1725 at Dishley Grange, near Loughborough in Leicestershire. As a young man he travelled extensively in Europe and Britain, learning about other farming methods. Others interested in his work included Prince Grigory Potemkin and François de la Rochefoucauld (1765–1848). He supported his revolutionary new breeding techniques with grassland irrigation, flooding and fertilizing pasturelands to improve grazing. He taught these practices to many farmers, and in 1783 formed The Dishley Society to promote them and to advance the interests of livestock breeders. His apprentices and contemporaries, especially Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester, used his methods to continue improvements to British livestock long after his death in October 1795. === Sheep === Arguably the most influential of Bakewell's


id: robert-bakewell-agriculturalist-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bakewell_(agriculturalist)-1.md
category: reference
title: Robert Bakewell (agriculturalist)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bakewell_(agriculturalist)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:50.386801+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: robert-bakewell-agriculturalist-20260505-0
summary:
== Bibliography == Young 1771, "Letter II", in The Farmer's Tour through the East of England, vol. I (London, 1771 ), p. 124 Young, A., 1776-1791 (1932): Tours in England and Wales. (Selected from the Annals of Agriculture), London School of Economics Marshall 1790, The rural economy of the Midland counties (2 vols, London, 1790; vol1/vol2) W. Redhead, R. Laing and W. Marshall jun., Observations on the different breeds of sheep, and the state of sheep farming in some of the principal counties of England (Edinburgh, 1792), pp. 33–39 John Lawrence, "Robert Bakewell", The Annual Necrology for 1797-8; including, also, various articles of neglected biography (London, 1800/1805) (note: final 2-3 pages omitted from Google Books scan of the 1800 edition) Pitt 1809, A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Leicester. Richard Phillips, London. J. Hunt, Agricultural memoirs; or history of the Dishley System. In answer to Sir John Saunders Sebright, Bart., M.P. (Nottingham, 1812), p. 119 Youatt 1834, Cattle: Their breeds, management, and diseases George Culley & Robert Heaton 1804, Observations on live stock: containing hints for choosing and improving the best breeds of the most useful kinds of domestic animals Darwin, Charles, 1842, "Sketch on Natural


id: julian-barbour-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Barbour-0.md
category: reference
title: Julian Barbour
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Barbour
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:51.694802+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: julian-barbour-20260505-0
summary:
Julian Barbour (; born 1937) is a British physicist with research interests in quantum gravity and the history of science. Since receiving his PhD degree on the foundations of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity at the University of Cologne in 1968, Barbour has supported himself and his family without an academic position, working part-time as a translator (although he has an Oxford University email address and his research has been funded, for example by a FQXi grant). He resides near Banbury, England. == Timeless physics == His 1999 book The End of Time advances timeless physics: the controversial view that time, as we perceive it, does not exist as anything other than an illusion, and that a number of problems in physical theory arise from assuming that it does exist. He argues that we have no evidence of the past other than our memory of it, and no evidence of the future other than our belief in it. "Difference merely creates an illusion of time, with each individual moment existing in its own right, complete and whole." He calls these moments "Nows". It is all an illusion: there is no motion and no change. He argues that the illusion


id: james-bowdoin-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bowdoin-0.md
category: reference
title: James Bowdoin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bowdoin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:53.054160+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: james-bowdoin-20260505-0
summary:
James Bowdoin II ( BOH-din; August 7, 1726 – November 6, 1790) was an American politician from Boston, Massachusetts who was active during the American Revolution and the following decade. He initially gained fame and influence as a wealthy merchant. He served in both branches of the Massachusetts General Court from the 1750s to the 1770s. Although he was initially supportive of the royal governors, he opposed British colonial policy and eventually became an influential advocate of independence. He authored a highly political report on the 1770 Boston Massacre that has been described by historian Francis Walett as one of the most influential pieces of writing that shaped public opinion in the colonies. From 1775 to 1777, he served as president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress's executive council, the de facto head of the Massachusetts government. He was elected president of the constitutional convention that drafted the state's constitution in 1779, and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1780, losing to John Hancock. In 1785, following Hancock's resignation, he was elected governor. Due to the large debts of Massachusetts, incurred from the Revolutionary War, Bowdoin ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility. During his two years in office, the combination of


id: james-bowdoin-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bowdoin-1.md
category: reference
title: James Bowdoin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bowdoin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:53.054160+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: james-bowdoin-20260505-0
summary:
Bowdoin was elected to the provincial assembly in 1753 and served there until named to the governor's council in 1756. Although at first supportive of the royal governor, his politics became more radical as British colonial policy became increasingly unpopular, and Bowdoin believed those policies would have a negative effect on the New England economy. Personal factors may also have played a role in Bowdoin's shift in views: John Temple, the local customs commissioner and Bowdoin's son in law, was embroiled in nasty disputes with Governor Francis Bernard in the 1760s. By 1769 Bowdoin was one of the principal spokesmen of the opposition to the governor on the council. In that year Bernard rejected Bowdoin's renewed election to the council. Bowdoin, however, was instrumental in causing Bernard's downfall from office. Private letters critical of the provincial government that Bernard had written were published in 1769 to great outrage. Bowdoin rebutted the charges and claims made in Bernard's letters, and published a highly polemic pamphlet arguing for Bernard's removal that was sent to the colonial secretary, Lord Hillsborough. Bowdoin won reelection to the assembly in 1770, and was promptly reelected to the council the same year, soon after Bernard left the


id: james-bowdoin-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bowdoin-2.md
category: reference
title: James Bowdoin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bowdoin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:53.054160+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: james-bowdoin-20260505-0
summary:
Bowdoin ran against Hancock in subsequent elections, but was never able to overcome Hancock's enormous popularity. The contest between the two men was just one element of a long-running rivalry that encompassed business, politics, and religion, and was apparently deeply personal. The two men were both involved in the administration of Harvard, where their feud sometimes became ugly. For example, in 1776, while Hancock was simultaneously treasurer of Harvard and president of the Second Continental Congress, a committee headed by Bowdoin decided that securities physically held by Hancock were at risk because of the war, and a delegation was sent to Philadelphia to receive an accounting of them and physical custody of the papers. Hancock's dilatory responses and refusal to produce an accounting of the college books dragged on for several years, as a result of which Bowdoin orchestrated his censure by the Harvard board of overseers. The matter reached a peak of sorts in 1783 when the college's issues with Hancock were read and discussed in an open meeting at which Hancock was the presiding officer. Both Bowdoin and Hancock attended the Brattle Street Church, where they competed with each other over the size and quality of the improvements


id: james-bowdoin-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bowdoin-3.md
category: reference
title: James Bowdoin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bowdoin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:53.054160+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: james-bowdoin-20260505-0
summary:
After the legislature adjourned on July 18, 1786, without substantively addressing these complaints, rural Massachusetts protestors organized direct action, and began protest marches that shut down the state's court system, which enforced tax and civil forfeiture judgments and had become a focus of the discontent. Bowdoin issued a proclamation in early September denouncing these actions, but took no overt steps to immediately organize a militia response (unlike governors in neighboring Connecticut and New Hampshire). When the foreclosure court in Worcester was shut down by similar action on September 5, the county militia (composed mainly of men sympathetic to the protestors) refused to turn out, much to Bowdoin's chagrin. The closure of the Worcester court was followed by closings in Concord and Taunton, and when the militia marched into Great Barrington to force court open there, one of the Judges, William Whiting asked the militiamen to take sides. 800 of the 1,000 men took the people's side of the road. By October, one correspondent wrote, "We are now in a state of Anarchy and Confusion bordering on Civil War". These court closings mirrored closings in 1774, when colonists had shut down the King's business everywhere west of Boston. Fearing a new


id: robert-boyle-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle-0.md
category: reference
title: Robert Boyle
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:54.217837+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: robert-boyle-20260505-0
summary:
Robert Boyle (; 25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, alchemist and inventor. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry, and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method. He is best known for Boyle's law, which describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system. Among his works, The Sceptical Chymist is seen as a cornerstone book in the field of chemistry. He was a devout and pious Anglican and is noted for his works in theology. == Biography == === Early years === Boyle was born at Lismore Castle in County Waterford, in the far south of Ireland, the seventh son and fourteenth child of the 1st Earl of Cork ("the Great Earl of Cork") and Catherine Fenton. Lord Cork, then known simply as Richard Boyle, had arrived in Dublin from England in 1588 during the Tudor plantations of Ireland and obtained an appointment as a deputy escheator. He had amassed enormous wealth and landholdings by the time Robert was born and had


id: robert-boyle-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle-1.md
category: reference
title: Robert Boyle
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:54.217837+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: robert-boyle-20260505-0
summary:
In 1668 he left Oxford for London where he resided at the house of his elder sister Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh, in Pall Mall. He experimented in the laboratory she had in her home and attended her salon of intellectuals interested in the sciences. The siblings maintained "a lifelong intellectual partnership, where brother and sister shared medical remedies, promoted each other's scientific ideas, and edited each other's manuscripts." His contemporaries widely acknowledged Katherine's influence on his work, but later historiographers dropped discussion of her accomplishments and relationship to her brother from their histories. === Later years === In 1669 his health, never very strong, began to fail seriously and he gradually withdrew from his public engagements, ceasing his communications to the Royal Society, and advertising his desire to be excused from receiving guests, "unless upon occasions very extraordinary", on Tuesday and Friday forenoon, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoon. In the leisure thus gained he wished to "recruit his spirits, range his papers", and prepare some important chemical investigations which he proposed to leave "as a kind of Hermetic legacy to the studious disciples of that art", but of which he did not make known the nature. His health became still


id: robert-boyle-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle-2.md
category: reference
title: Robert Boyle
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:54.217837+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: robert-boyle-20260505-0
summary:
==== Other contributions ==== Among his major work in and contributions to physics were Boyle's law, the discovery of the role played by air in the propagation of sound, and investigations of the expansive force of freezing water, specific gravities, refractive powers, crystals, electricity, colour, and hydrostatics. == Theological interests == In addition to philosophy, Boyle devoted much time to theology, showing a very decided leaning to the practical side and an indifference to controversial polemics. At the Restoration of Charles II of England in 1660, he was favourably received at court and in 1665 would have received the provostship of Eton College had he agreed to take holy orders, but this he refused to do on the ground that his writings on religious subjects would have greater weight coming from a layman than a paid minister of the Church. Moreover, Boyle incorporated his scientific interests into his theology, believing that natural philosophy could provide powerful evidence for the existence of God. In works such as Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things (1688), for instance, he criticised contemporary philosophers – such as René Descartes – who denied that the study of nature could reveal much about God. Instead,


id: robert-boyle-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle-3.md
category: reference
title: Robert Boyle
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:54.217837+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: robert-boyle-20260505-0
summary:
1660 – New Experiments Physico-Mechanical: Touching the Spring of the Air and their Effects 1661 – The Sceptical Chymist 1662 – Whereunto is Added a Defence of the Authors Explication of the Experiments, Against the Obiections of Franciscus Linus and Thomas Hobbes (a book-length addendum to the second edition of New Experiments Physico-Mechanical) 1663 – Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy (followed by a second part in 1671) 1664 – Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, with Observations on a Diamond that Shines in the Dark 1665 – New Experiments and Observations Touching Cold 1666 – Hydrostatical Paradoxes 1666 – Origin of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Philosophy. (A continuation of his work on the spring of air demonstrated that a reduction in ambient pressure could lead to bubble formation in living tissue. This description of a viper in a vacuum was the first recorded description of decompression sickness.) 1669 – A Continuation of New Experiments Physico-mechanical, Touching the Spring and Weight of the Air, and Their Effects 1670 – Tracts about the Cosmical Qualities of Things, the Temperature of the Subterraneal and Submarine Regions, the Bottom of the Sea, &tc. with an Introduction to the History


id: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)-0.md
category: reference
title: James Braid (surgeon)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:56.562119+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-0
summary:
James Braid (19 June 1795 – 25 March 1860) was a Scottish surgeon, natural philosopher, and "gentleman scientist". He was a significant innovator in the treatment of clubfoot, spinal curvature, knock-knees, bandy legs, and squint; a significant pioneer of hypnotism and hypnotherapy, and an important and influential pioneer in the adoption of both hypnotic anaesthesia and chemical anaesthesia. He is regarded by some, such as William S. Kroger (2008, p. 3), as the "Father of Modern Hypnotism". However, in relation to the issue of there being significant connections between Braid's "hypnotism" and "modern hypnotism" (as it is practised), let alone "identity" between the two, André Muller Weitzenhoffer (2000) urges the utmost caution in making any such assumption: "It has been a basic assumption of modern (i.e., twentieth century) hypnotism that it is founded on the same phenomenology it historically evolved from. Such differences as exist between older versions of hypnotism and newer ones being reduced largely to a matter of interpretation of the facts. That there are common elements is not in question, but that there is full identity in questionable and basically untestable." – André Muller Weitzenhoffer (p. 3; emphasis added). Also, in relation to the clinical application of


id: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)-1.md
category: reference
title: James Braid (surgeon)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:56.562119+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-0
summary:
[all of which] determined me to consider the whole as a system of collusion or illusion, or of excited imagination, sympathy, or imitation. I therefore abandoned the subject as unworthy of farther investigation, until I attended the conversazioni of Lafontaine, where I saw one fact, the inability of a patient to open his eyelids, which arrested my attention; I felt convinced it was not to be attributed to any of the causes referred to, and I therefore instituted experiments to determine the question; and exhibited the results to the public in a few days after. – (Braid, Neurypnology (1843), p. 35; emphasis added). Braid always maintained that he had gone to Lafontaine's demonstration as an open-minded sceptic, eager to examine the presented evidence at first hand – that is, rather than "entirely [depending] on reading or hearsay evidence for his knowledge of it" – and, then, from that evidence, form a considered opinion of Lafontaine's work. He was neither a closed-minded cynic intent on destroying Lafontaine, nor a deluded and naïvely credulous believer seeking authorization of his already formed belief. Braid was amongst the medical men who were invited onto the platform by Lafontaine. Braid examined the physical condition of


id: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)-2.md
category: reference
title: James Braid (surgeon)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:56.562119+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-0
summary:
On the evening of Sunday, 10 April 1842, at St Jude's Church, Liverpool, the controversial cleric Hugh Boyd M'Neile preached a sermon against Mesmerism for more than ninety minutes to a capacity congregation; and, according to most critics, it was a poorly argued and unimpressive performance. M'Neile's core argument was that scripture asserts the existence of "satanic agency"; and, in the process of delivering his sermon, he provided examples of the various instantiations that "satanic agency" might manifest (observing times, divination, necromancy, etc.), and claimed that these were all forms of "witchcraft"; and, further, he asserted that, because scripture asserts that, as "latter times" approach, more and more evidence of "satanic agency" will appear, it was, M'Neile asserted, ipso facto, transparently obvious that the exhibitions of Lafontaine and Braid, in Liverpool, at that very moment, were concrete examples of those particular instantiations. He then moved into a confusing admixture of philippic (against Braid and Lafontaine), and polemic (against animal magnetism), wherein he concluded that all mesmeric phenomena were due to "satanic agency". In particular, he attacked Braid as a man, a scientist, a philosopher, and a medical professional. He claimed that Braid and Lafontaine were one and the same kind.


id: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)-3.md
category: reference
title: James Braid (surgeon)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:56.562119+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-0
summary:
"I adopted the term "hypnotism" to prevent my being confounded with those who entertain those extreme notions [sc. that a mesmeriser's will has an "irresistible power… over his subjects" and that clairvoyance and other "higher phenomena" are routinely manifested by those in the mesmeric state], as well as to get rid of the erroneous theory about a magnetic fluid, or exoteric influence of any description being the cause of the sleep. I distinctly avowed that hypnotism laid no claim to produce any phenomena which were not "quite reconcilable with well-established physiological and psychological principles"; pointed out the various sources of fallacy which might have misled the mesmerists; [and] was the first to give a public explanation of the trick [by which a fraudulent subject had been able to deceive his mesmeriser]… [Further, I have never been] a supporter of the imagination theory – i.e., that the induction of [hypnosis] in the first instance is merely the result of imagination. My belief is quite the contrary. I attribute it to the induction of a habit of intense abstraction, or concentration of attention, and maintain that it is most readily induced by causing the patient to fix his thoughts and sight on


id: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)-4.md
category: reference
title: James Braid (surgeon)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:56.562119+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-0
summary:
In his presentation Braid stressed that, because he had clearly demonstrated that the effects of hypnotism were "quite reconcilable with well-established physiological and psychological principles" (viz., they were well connected to the prevailing canonical knowledge), it was highly significant that none of the extraordinary effects that the mesmerists and animal magnetists routinely claimed for their operations – such as clairvoyance, direct mental suggestion, and mesmeric intuition – could be produced with hypnotism. So, he argued, it was clear that their claims were entirely without foundation.However, he also stressed to his audience that, whilst it was, indeed, entirely true that these effects could not be produced with hypnotism – and whilst the claims of the mesmerists and animal magnetists were, ipso facto, entirely false – one must not make the mistake of concluding that this was unequivocal evidence of deception, dishonesty, or outright fraud on the part of those making these erroneous claims.In Braid’s view (given that many of the proponents of such views were decent men, and that their experiences had been honestly recounted), the only possible explanation was that their observations were seriously flawed.To Braid, these faults in their investigatory processes were "the chief source of error". He urged


id: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)-5.md
category: reference
title: James Braid (surgeon)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:56.562119+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-0
summary:
"[The explanation for] the power that serpents have to fascinate birds … is simply this – that when the attention of man or animal is deeply engrossed or absorbed by a given idea associated with movement, a current of nervous force is sent into the muscles which produces a corresponding motion, not only without any conscious effort of volition, but even in opposition to volition, in many instances; and hence they seem to be irresistibly drawn, or spell-bound, according to the purport of the dominant idea or impression in the mind of each at the time.The volition is prostrate; the individual is so completely monoideised, or under the influence of the dominant idea, as to be incapable of exerting an efficient restraining or opposing power to the dominant idea; and in the case of the bird and serpent, it is first wonder which arrests the creature's attention, and then fear causes that mono-ideo-dynamic action of the muscles which involuntarily issues in the advance and capture of the unhappy bird …It is this very principle of involuntary muscular action from a dominant idea which has got possession of the mind, and the suggestions conveyed to the mind by the muscular action


id: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)-6.md
category: reference
title: James Braid (surgeon)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:05:56.562119+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: james-braid-surgeon-20260505-0
summary:
== Influence == Braid's work had a strong influence on a number of important French medical figures, especially Étienne Eugène Azam (1822–1899) of Bordeaux (Braid's principal French "disciple"), the anatomist Pierre Paul Broca (1824–1880), the physiologist Joseph Pierre Durand de Gros (1826–1901), and (per medium of Azam) the eminent hypnotherapist, and one of the founders of the Nancy School, Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault (1823–1904). Braid hypnotised the English Swedenborgian writer J.J.G. Wilkinson, who observed him hypnotising others several times, and began using hypnotism himself. Wilkinson soon became a passionate advocate of Braid's work and his published remarks on hypnotism were quoted enthusiastically by Braid several times in his later writings. However, Braid's legacy was maintained in Great Britain largely by John Milne Bramwell who collected all of his available works and published a biography and account of Braid's theory and practice as well as several books on hypnotism of his own (see below). == Works == Braid published many letters and articles in journals and newspapers; he also published several pamphlets, and a number of books (many of which were compendiums of his previously published works). His first major publication was Neurypnology, or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep (1843), written less than


id: william-brownrigg-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Brownrigg-0.md
category: reference
title: William Brownrigg
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Brownrigg
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:01.835858+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: william-brownrigg-20260505-0
summary:
William Brownrigg (24 March 1712 [O.S. 13 March 1711] – 6 January 1800) was an English physician and scientist who practised at Whitehaven in Cumberland. While there, Brownrigg carried out experiments that earned him the Copley Medal in 1766 for his work on carbonic acid gas. He was the first person to recognise platinum as a new element. He was created a Fellow of the Royal Society. == Early life and education == He was born at High Close Hall near Plumbland, the son of local gentry, George Brownrigg. William's mother, Mary Brownrigg, was from Ireland. William was educated in Latin and Greek by a local clergyman from the age of 13 and by the age of 15 was an apprentice to an apothecary in Carlisle. Then followed two years studying under a surgeon in London before going to Leiden where he studied under Boerhaave, 's Gravesande, van Royen and Albinus. He graduated in 1737 with his thesis "De Praxi Medica Ineunda" – about the environment where the clinician practises medicine. He gained the degree of Doctor of Medicine (MD). == Medical career == Brownrigg returned to Britain and took up medicine with an established doctor called Richard Senhouse in


id: george-cayley-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cayley-0.md
category: reference
title: George Cayley
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cayley
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:03.078841+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: george-cayley-20260505-0
summary:
Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet (27 December 1773 – 15 December 1857) was an English engineer, inventor, and aviator. He was a pioneer of aeronautical engineering and is sometimes referred to as "the father of aviation", designing the first glider reliably reported to carry a human aloft. He is commonly credited as the first person to understand the underlying principles and forces of heavier-than-air flight: weight, lift, drag and thrust. He was also the inventor of the wire wheel. In 1799, he set forth the concept of the modern aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control. Modern aeroplane design is based on those discoveries and on the cambered wings he proposed. He constructed the first flying model aeroplane and also diagrammed the elements of vertical flight. He correctly predicted that sustained flight would not occur until a lightweight engine was developed to provide adequate thrust and lift. The Wright brothers acknowledged his importance to the development of aviation. Cayley represented the Whig party as Member of Parliament for Scarborough from 1832 to 1835, and in 1838, helped found the UK's first Polytechnic Institute, the Royal Polytechnic Institution (now University of Westminster) and served


id: george-cayley-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cayley-1.md
category: reference
title: George Cayley
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cayley
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:03.078841+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: george-cayley-20260505-0
summary:
The model glider successfully flown by Cayley in 1804 had the layout of a modern aircraft, with a kite-shaped wing towards the front and an adjustable tailplane at the back consisting of horizontal stabilisers and a vertical fin. A movable weight allowed adjustment of the model's centre of gravity. In 1843 he was the first to suggest the idea of a convertiplane. At some time before 1849 he designed and built a biplane in which an unknown ten-year-old boy flew. Later, with the continued assistance of his grandson George John Cayley and his resident engineer Thomas Vick, he developed a larger scale glider (also probably fitted with "flappers") which flew across Brompton Dale in front of Wydale Hall in 1853. The first adult aviator has been claimed to be either Cayley's coachman, footman or butler. One source (Gibbs-Smith) has suggested that it was John Appleby, a Cayley employee; however, there is no definitive evidence to fully identify the pilot. An entry in volume IX of the 8th Encyclopædia Britannica of 1855 is the most contemporaneous authoritative account regarding the event. A 2007 biography of Cayley (Richard Dee's The Man Who Discovered Flight: George Cayley and the First Airplane) claims the


id: andrew-crosse-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Crosse-0.md
category: reference
title: Andrew Crosse
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Crosse
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:04.246897+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: andrew-crosse-20260505-0
summary:
Andrew Crosse (17 June 1784 – 6 July 1855) was a British scientist who was born and died at Fyne Court, Broomfield, Somerset. Crosse was an early pioneer and experimenter in the use of electricity. He became known after press reports of an electrocrystallization experiment he conducted in 1836, during which insects "appeared". == Early life == Crosse was the first son of Richard Crosse and Susannah Porter. In 1788 he accompanied them on a trip to France, where he went to school for a time in Orléans. From the age of six until he was eight he stayed with a tutor, the Reverend Mr White, in Dorchester, where he learned Greek. On 1 February 1792 he was sent to boarding school in Bristol. Around the age of 12, Crosse persuaded one of his teachers to let him attend a series of lectures on the natural sciences, the second of which was on the subject of electricity. This was the cause of his lifelong interest in the subject. Crosse first began experimenting with electricity during his time in the sixth form, when he built a Leyden jar. After leaving school, he studied at Brasenose College, Oxford. == Scientific research ==


id: andrew-crosse-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Crosse-1.md
category: reference
title: Andrew Crosse
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Crosse
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:04.246897+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: andrew-crosse-20260505-0
summary:
A few months after the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Crosse was conducting another electrocrystallization experiment when, on the 26th day of the experiment, he saw what he described as "the perfect insect, standing erect on a few bristles which formed its tail". More creatures appeared and two days later they began moving their legs. Over the next few weeks hundreds more appeared. They crawled around the table and hid themselves wherever they could find shelter. Crosse identified them as being members of the genus Acarus. Puzzled, Crosse mentioned the incident to a couple of friends. A local newspaper learned of the incident and published an article about the "extraordinary experiment," naming the insects Acarus crossii. The article was subsequently picked up by other newspapers across the country and elsewhere in Europe. Some readers apparently gained the impression that Crosse had somehow "created" the insects, or at least claimed to have done so. He received angry letters in which he was accused of blasphemy and trying to take God's place as a creator. Some of them included death threats. Other scientists tried to repeat the experiment. W. H. Weeks took extensive measures to assure a


id: charles-darwin-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin-0.md
category: reference
title: Charles Darwin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:05.516999+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-darwin-20260505-0
summary:
Charles Robert Darwin ( DAR-win; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept. In a joint presentation with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh; instead, he helped Robert Edmond Grant to investigate marine invertebrates. His studies at the University of Cambridge's Christ's College from 1828 to 1831 encouraged his passion for natural science. However, it was his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836 that truly established Darwin as an eminent geologist. The observations and theories he developed during his voyage supported Charles Lyell's concept of gradual geological


id: charles-darwin-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin-1.md
category: reference
title: Charles Darwin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:05.516999+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-darwin-20260505-0
summary:
Both families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. Robert Darwin, a freethinker, had baby Charles baptised in November 1809 in the Anglican St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, but Charles and his siblings attended the local Unitarian Church with their mother. The eight-year-old Charles already had a taste for natural history and collecting when he joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. That July, his mother died. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus in attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder. Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father treat impoverished people in Shropshire, before going to the well-regarded University of Edinburgh Medical School with his brother Erasmus in October 1825. Darwin found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so he neglected his studies. He learned taxidermy in around 40 daily hour-long sessions from John Edmonstone, a Black Briton from Demerara in the South American rainforest, who had been taught there by Charles Waterton, and when brought to Scotland was freed from slavery. In Darwin's second year at the university, he joined the Plinian Society, a student natural-history group featuring lively debates in which radical democratic students


id: charles-darwin-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin-2.md
category: reference
title: Charles Darwin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:05.516999+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-darwin-20260505-0
summary:
On their first stop ashore at St Jago in Cape Verde, Darwin found that a white band high in the volcanic rock cliffs included seashells. FitzRoy had given him the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, which set out uniformitarian concepts of land slowly rising or falling over immense periods,[II] and Darwin saw things Lyell's way, theorising and thinking of writing a book on geology. When they reached Brazil, Darwin was delighted by the tropical forest, but detested the sight of slavery there, and disputed this issue with FitzRoy. The survey continued to the south in Patagonia. They stopped at Bahía Blanca, and in cliffs near Punta Alta, Darwin made a significant find of fossil bones of huge extinct mammals beside modern seashells, indicating recent extinction with no signs of change in climate or catastrophe. He found bony plates like a giant version of the armour on local armadillos. From a jaw and tooth, he identified the gigantic Megatherium, then from Cuvier's description thought the armour was from this animal. The finds were shipped to England, and scientists found the fossils of great interest. On rides with gauchos into the interior to explore geology and collect more fossils,


id: charles-darwin-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin-3.md
category: reference
title: Charles Darwin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:05.516999+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-darwin-20260505-0
summary:
On 2 October 1836, Beagle anchored at Falmouth, Cornwall. Darwin promptly made the long coach journey to Shrewsbury to visit his home and see relatives. He then hurried to Cambridge to see Henslow, who advised him on finding available naturalists to catalogue Darwin's animal collections and to take on the botanical specimens. Darwin's father organised investments, enabling his son to be a self-funded gentleman scientist, and an excited Darwin went around the London institutions being fêted and seeking experts to describe the collections. British zoologists at the time had a huge backlog of work, due to the encouragement of natural history collecting throughout the British Empire, and there was a danger of specimens being left in storage. Charles Lyell eagerly met Darwin for the first time on 29 October and soon introduced him to the up-and-coming anatomist Richard Owen, who had the facilities of the Royal College of Surgeons to work on the fossil bones collected by Darwin. Owen's surprising results included other gigantic extinct ground sloths as well as the Megatherium Darwin had identified, a near complete skeleton of the unknown Scelidotherium and a hippopotamus-sized rodent-like skull named Toxodon resembling a giant capybara. The armour fragments were actually from


id: charles-darwin-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin-4.md
category: reference
title: Charles Darwin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:05.516999+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-darwin-20260505-0
summary:
While developing this intensive study of transmutation, Darwin became mired in more work. Still rewriting his Journal, he took on editing and publishing the expert reports on his collections, and with Henslow's help obtained a Treasury grant of £1,000 to sponsor this multi-volume Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, a sum equivalent to about £115,000 in 2021. He stretched the funding to include his planned books on geology, and agreed to unrealistic dates with the publisher. As the Victorian era began, Darwin pressed on with writing his Journal, and in August 1837 began correcting printer's proofs. As Darwin worked under pressure, his health suffered. On 20 September, he had "an uncomfortable palpitation of the heart", so his doctors urged him to "knock off all work" and live in the country for a few weeks. After visiting Shrewsbury, he joined his Wedgwood relatives at Maer Hall, Staffordshire, but found them too eager for tales of his travels to give him much rest. His charming, intelligent, and cultured cousin Emma Wedgwood, nine months older than Darwin, was nursing his invalid aunt. His uncle Josiah pointed out an area of ground where cinders had disappeared under loam. Darwin suggested that this might


id: charles-darwin-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin-5.md
category: reference
title: Charles Darwin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:05.516999+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-darwin-20260505-0
summary:
In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work... By mid-December, Darwin saw a similarity between farmers picking the best stock in selective breeding, and a Malthusian Nature selecting from chance variants so that "every part of newly acquired structure is fully practical and perfected", thinking this comparison "a beautiful part of my theory". He later called his theory natural selection, an analogy with what he termed the "artificial selection" of selective breeding. On 11 November, he returned to Maer and proposed to Emma, once more telling her his ideas. She accepted, then, in exchanges of loving letters, showed how she valued his openness in sharing their differences, while expressing her strong Unitarian beliefs and concerns


id: charles-darwin-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin-6.md
category: reference
title: Charles Darwin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:05.516999+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-darwin-20260505-0
summary:
=== Publication of the theory of natural selection === By the start of 1856, Darwin was investigating whether eggs and seeds could survive travel across seawater to spread species across oceans. Hooker increasingly doubted the traditional view that species were fixed, but their young friend Thomas Henry Huxley was still firmly against the transmutation of species. Lyell was intrigued by Darwin's speculations without realising their extent. When he read a paper by Alfred Russel Wallace, "On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species", he saw similarities with Darwin's thoughts. He urged him to publish to establish precedence. Though Darwin saw no threat, on 14 May 1856, he began writing a short paper. Finding answers to difficult questions held him up repeatedly, and he expanded his plans to a "big book on species" titled Natural Selection, which was to include his "note on Man". He continued his research, obtaining information and specimens from naturalists worldwide, including Wallace, who was working in Borneo. In mid-1857, he added a section heading, "Theory applied to Races of Man", but did not add text on this topic. On 5 September 1857, Darwin sent the American botanist Asa Gray a detailed outline of


id: charles-darwin-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin-7.md
category: reference
title: Charles Darwin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:05.516999+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-darwin-20260505-0
summary:
The book aroused international interest, with less controversy than had greeted the popular and less scientific Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Though Darwin's illness kept him away from the public debates, he eagerly scrutinised the scientific response, commenting on press cuttings, reviews, articles, satires and caricatures, and corresponded on it with colleagues worldwide. The book did not explicitly discuss human origins,[IV] but included a number of hints about the animal ancestry of humans from which the inference could be made. Upon reading it, Huxley remarked "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" The first review asked, "If a monkey has become a man – what may not a man become?" It said this should be left to theologians as being too dangerous for ordinary readers. Among early favourable responses, Huxley's reviews swiped at Richard Owen, leader of the scientific establishment which Huxley was trying to overthrow. In April, Owen's review attacked Darwin's friends and condescendingly dismissed his ideas, angering Darwin, but Owen and others began to promote ideas of supernaturally guided evolution. Patrick Matthew drew attention to his 1831 book, which had a brief appendix suggesting a concept of natural selection leading to new species, but


id: charles-darwin-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin-8.md
category: reference
title: Charles Darwin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:05.516999+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-darwin-20260505-0
summary:
Despite repeated bouts of illness during the last twenty-two years of his life, Darwin's work continued. Having published On the Origin of Species as an abstract of his theory, he pressed on with experiments, research, and writing of his "big book". He covered human descent from earlier animals, including the evolution of society and of mental abilities, as well as explaining decorative beauty in wildlife and diversifying into innovative plant studies. Enquiries about insect pollination led in 1861 to novel studies of wild orchids, showing adaptation of their flowers to attract specific moths to each species and ensure cross-fertilisation. In 1862, Fertilisation of Orchids gave his first detailed demonstration of the power of natural selection to explain complex ecological relationships, making testable predictions. Explorers in Madagascar had discovered an orchid, Angraecum sesquipedale, with a sixteen-inch-long nectary. Darwin predicted the existence of a moth with a proboscis long enough to pollinate it; the pollen "would not be withdrawn until some huge moth, with a wonderfully long proboscis, tried to drain the last drop." Explorers in Madagascar discovered Xanthopan in 1903. As his health declined, he lay on his sickbed in a room filled with inventive experiments to trace the movements of


id: charles-darwin-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin-9.md
category: reference
title: Charles Darwin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:05.516999+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-darwin-20260505-0
summary:
Charles Waring Darwin, born in December 1856, was the tenth and last of the children. Emma Darwin was aged 48 at the time of the birth, and the child was mentally subnormal and never learnt to walk or talk. He probably had Down syndrome, which had not then been medically described. The evidence is a photograph by William Erasmus Darwin of the infant and his mother, showing a characteristic head shape, and the family's observations of the child. Charles Waring died of scarlet fever on 28 June 1858, when Darwin wrote in his journal: "Poor dear Baby died." Of his surviving children, George, Francis and Horace became Fellows of the Royal Society, distinguished as an astronomer, botanist and civil engineer, respectively. All three were knighted. Another son, Leonard, went on to be a soldier, politician, economist, eugenicist, and mentor of the statistician and evolutionary biologist Ronald Fisher. == Views and opinions == === Religious views === Darwin's family tradition was nonconformist Unitarianism, while his father and grandfather were freethinkers, and his baptism and boarding school were Church of England. When going to Cambridge to become an Anglican clergyman, he did not "in the least doubt the strict and literal truth


id: charles-darwin-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin-10.md
category: reference
title: Charles Darwin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:05.516999+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-darwin-20260505-0
summary:
=== Human society === Darwin's views on social and political issues reflected his time and social position. He grew up in a family of Whig reformers who, like his uncle Josiah Wedgwood, supported electoral reform and the emancipation of slaves. Darwin was passionately opposed to slavery. Taking taxidermy lessons in 1826 from the freed slave John Edmonstone, whom Darwin long recalled as "a very pleasant and intelligent man", reinforced his belief that black people shared the same feelings, and could be as intelligent as people of other races. He took the same attitude to native people he met on the Beagle voyage. Though commonplace in Britain at the time, Silliman and Bachman noticed the contrast with slave-owning America. Around twenty years later, racism became a feature of British society, but Darwin remained strongly against slavery, against "ranking the so-called races of man as distinct species", and against ill-treatment of native people.[VII] Darwin's interaction with Yaghans (Fuegians) such as Jemmy Button during the second voyage of HMS Beagle had a profound impact on his view of indigenous peoples. At his arrival in Tierra del Fuego, he made a colourful description of "Fuegian savages". This view changed as he came to know


id: charles-darwin-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin-11.md
category: reference
title: Charles Darwin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:05.516999+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-darwin-20260505-0
summary:
Darwin was a prolific writer. Even without the publication of his works on evolution, he would have had a considerable reputation as the author of The Voyage of the Beagle, as a geologist who had published extensively on South America and had solved the puzzle of the formation of coral atolls, and as a biologist who had published the definitive work on barnacles. While On the Origin of Species dominates perceptions of his work, The Descent of Man and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals had considerable impact, and his books on plants including The Power of Movement in Plants were innovative studies of great importance, as was his final work on The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms. == Legacy and commemoration == As Alfred Russel Wallace put it, Darwin had "wrought a greater revolution in human thought within a quarter of a century than any man of our time – or perhaps any time", having "given us a new conception of the world of life, and a theory which is itself a powerful instrument of research; has shown us how to combine into one consistent whole the facts accumulated by all the


id: edward-digges-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Digges-0.md
category: reference
title: Edward Digges
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Digges
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:06.815126+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: edward-digges-20260505-0
summary:
Edward Digges (14 February 1620 – 15 March 1674/75) was an English barrister and colonist who became a premium tobacco planter and official in the Virginia colony. The son of the English politician Dudley Digges represented the colony before the Virginia Company of London and the royal government, as well as served for two decades on the colony's Council of State. Digges served as interim Colonial Governor of Virginia from March 1655 to December 1656, and for longer periods as the colony's receiver general and auditor-general. He is also known for planting mulberry trees and promoting the silk industry in the colony. == Early life and education == Born in Chilham Castle, Kent, England, and christened in Chilham parish on 29 March 1620, Edward Digges was the fourth son of Sir Dudley Digges (1583–1638) and his wife Mary Kempe (1583–?). Sir Dudley was the Master of the Rolls for King Charles I and an investor in the Virginia Company of London. On 13 June 1621, that company gave Sir Dudley a patent, and on 10 June 1622 he was identified as holding the patent for a particular plantation in Virginia, but this son would not arrive in Virginia for another


id: edward-digges-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Digges-1.md
category: reference
title: Edward Digges
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Digges
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:06.815126+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: edward-digges-20260505-0
summary:
William Digges (c. 1651 – 24 July 1697) served in the House of Burgesses as well as in local offices. He married Elizabeth Wharton, step-daughter of Lord Baltimore, and had ten children. Dudley Digges (burgess) (1664 – 18 Jan 1710) served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly. He married Susannah Cole (1674 – 1708), daughter of Col. William Cole of Bolthorpe by his first wife, and produced four children: Cole Digges (burgess) (1691-1744) Edward Digges (who died in Woodford, England in 1711) Dudley Digges Jr. (1694-1768) A daughter, Elizabeth Mary (– 1690/91); she married her first cousin Francis Page, and had a daughter Elizabeth, who in turn married a first cousin (John Page) and died in 1702, aged 19, leaving two children (John and Elizabeth), both of whom died without issue. Anne (– 1686); she became the second wife of Col. William Cole (member of the Governor's Council) of Bolthorpe in Warwick County, Virginia. They had two sons, both of whom died in childhood, although her husband remarried and the son of his third wife, the former Martha Lear, was William Cole who represented Warwick County alongside Cole Digges mentioned above. Edward; he shared in the 1692 division


id: carlo-fornasini-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Fornasini-0.md
category: reference
title: Carlo Fornasini
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Fornasini
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:09.307260+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: carlo-fornasini-20260505-0
summary:
Cavaliere dottore Carlo Fornasini (3 November 1854 – 24 December 1931) was an Italian micropalaeontologist who specialised in Foraminifera ('forams'). He was a pioneer in using fossil forams to sequence marine sedimentary deposits by their relative dates; a technique called biostratigraphy. == Biography == He was the third son of Francesco Fornasini, a medical doctor, and his wife Carlotta (née Ferraresi). He studied natural sciences at the University of Bologna, under the guidance of Giovanni Capellini (1833-1922), the Professor of Geology there. In 1877, he graduated with honours as dottore (in effect, PhD), on the basis of a thesis which argued from the sequence of the fossil record that certain chalks, marls and clays in the Savena valley near Bologna dated from the Pliocene (5.3-2.6 Ma) rather than, as had previously been thought (including by Capellini), from the Miocene (23.0-5.3 Ma). That same year, Capellini published a paper about this discovery which relegated Fornasini's contribution to that of an assistant and which passed off Fornasini's conclusions as his own. That sort of behaviour has become unacceptable. In 1928, Michele Gortani (1883-1966), who had succeeded Capellini as Professor of Geology, wrote that "the Master had deprived his most promising student, Carlo


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-0.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and political philosopher. Among the most influential intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States; a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence; and the first postmaster general. Born in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Franklin became a successful newspaper editor and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies, publishing The Pennsylvania Gazette at age 23. He became wealthy publishing this and Poor Richard's Almanack, which he wrote under the pseudonym "Richard Saunders". After 1767, he was associated with the Pennsylvania Chronicle, a newspaper known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the policies of the British Parliament and the Crown. He pioneered and was the first president of the Academy and College of Philadelphia, which opened in 1751 and later became the University of Pennsylvania. He organized and was the first secretary of the American Philosophical Society and was elected its president in 1769. He was appointed deputy postmaster-general for the British colonies in 1753, which enabled him to set up the first national


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-1.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
Franklin was born on Milk Street in Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay, on January 17, 1706, and baptized at the Old South Meeting House in Boston. As a child growing up along the Charles River, Franklin recalled that he was "generally the leader among the boys." Franklin's father wanted him to attend school with the clergy but only had enough money to send him to school for two years. He attended Boston Latin School but did not graduate; he continued his education through voracious reading. Although "his parents talked of the church as a career" for Franklin, his schooling ended when he was ten. He worked for his father for a time, and at 12 he became an apprentice to his brother James, a printer, who taught him the printing trade. When Benjamin was 15, James founded The New-England Courant, which was the third newspaper founded in Boston. When denied the chance to write a letter to the paper for publication, Franklin adopted the pseudonym of "Silence Dogood", a middle-aged widow. Mrs. Dogood's letters were published and became a subject of conversation around town. Neither James nor the Courant's readers were aware of the ruse, and James was unhappy with


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-2.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
Upon Denham's death, Franklin returned to his former trade. In 1728, he set up a printing house in partnership with Hugh Meredith; the following year he became the publisher of The Pennsylvania Gazette, a newspaper in Philadelphia. The Gazette gave Franklin a forum for agitation about a variety of local reforms and initiatives through printed essays and observations. Over time, his commentary, and his adroit cultivation of a positive image as an industrious and intellectual young man, earned him a great deal of social respect. But even after he achieved fame as a scientist and statesman, he habitually signed his letters with the unpretentious 'B. Franklin, Printer'. In 1732, he published the first German-language newspaper in America – Die Philadelphische Zeitung – although it failed after only one year because four other newly founded German papers quickly dominated the newspaper market. Franklin also printed Moravian religious books in German. He often visited Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, staying at the Moravian Sun Inn. In a 1751 pamphlet on demographic growth and its implications for the Thirteen Colonies, he called the Pennsylvania Germans "Palatine Boors" who could never acquire the "Complexion" of Anglo-American settlers and referred to "Blacks and Tawneys" as weakening the social


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-3.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
At age 17 in 1723, Franklin proposed to 15-year-old Deborah Read while a boarder in the Read home. At that time, Deborah's mother was wary of allowing her young daughter to marry Franklin, who was on his way to London at Governor Keith's request, and also because of his financial instability. Her own husband had recently died, and she declined Franklin's request to marry her daughter. Franklin travelled to London, and after he failed to communicate as expected with Deborah and her family, they interpreted his long silence as a breaking of his promises. At the urging of her mother, Deborah married a potter named John Rogers on August 5, 1725. John soon fled to Barbados with her dowry in order to avoid debts and prosecution. Since Rogers's fate was unknown, bigamy laws prevented Deborah from remarrying. Franklin returned in 1726 and resumed his courtship of Deborah. They established a common-law marriage on September 1, 1730. They took in his recently acknowledged illegitimate young son and raised him in their household. They had two children together. Their son, Francis Folger Franklin, was born in October 1732 and died of smallpox in 1736. Their daughter, Sarah "Sally" Franklin, was born in


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-4.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
In 1736, Franklin created the Union Fire Company, one of the first volunteer firefighting companies in America. In the same year, he printed a new currency for New Jersey based on innovative anti-counterfeiting techniques he had devised. His political career also commenced, particularly as the Chief Clerk of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly, a capacity wherein he served until 1751. Throughout his career, he was an advocate for paper money, publishing A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency in 1729, and his printer printed money. He was influential in the more restrained and thus successful monetary experiments in the Middle Colonies, which stopped deflation without causing excessive inflation. In 1766, he made a case for paper money to the British House of Commons. As he matured, Franklin began to concern himself more with public affairs. In 1743, he first devised a scheme for the Academy, Charity School, and College of Philadelphia; however, the person he had in mind to run the academy, Rev. Richard Peters, refused and Franklin put his ideas away until 1749 when he printed his own pamphlet, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania. He was appointed president of the Academy


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-5.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
Well known as a printer and publisher, Franklin was appointed postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737, holding the office until 1753, when he and publisher William Hunter were named deputy postmasters–general of British North America, the first to hold the office. (Joint appointments were standard at the time, for political reasons.) He was responsible for the British colonies from Pennsylvania north and east, as far as the island of Newfoundland. A post office for local and outgoing mail had been established in Halifax, Nova Scotia, by local stationer Benjamin Leigh, on April 23, 1754, but service was irregular. Franklin opened the first post office to offer regular, monthly mail in Halifax on December 9, 1755. Meantime, Hunter became postal administrator in Williamsburg, Virginia, and oversaw areas south of Annapolis, Maryland. Franklin reorganized the service's accounting system and improved speed of delivery between Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. By 1761, efficiencies led to the first profits for the colonial post office. When the lands of New France were ceded to the British under the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the British province of Quebec was created among them, and Franklin saw mail service expanded between Montreal, Trois-Rivières, Quebec City, and New York.


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-6.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
==== Scientific work ==== In 1756, Franklin had become a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (now the Royal Society of Arts), which had been founded in 1754. After his return to the United States in 1775, he became the Society's Corresponding Member, continuing a close connection. The Royal Society of Arts instituted a Benjamin Franklin Medal in 1956 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of his birth and the 200th anniversary of his membership of the RSA. The study of natural philosophy (referred today as science in general) drew him into overlapping circles of acquaintance. Franklin was, for example, a corresponding member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. In 1759, the University of St Andrews awarded him an honorary doctorate in recognition of his accomplishments. In October 1759, he was granted Freedom of the Borough of St Andrews. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford University in 1762. Because of these honors, he was often addressed as "Dr. Franklin." While living in London in 1768, he developed a phonetic alphabet in A Scheme for a new Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling. This reformed alphabet discarded six letters he regarded as


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-7.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
=== Coming of revolution === In 1763, soon after Franklin returned to Pennsylvania from England for the first time, the western frontier was engulfed in a bitter war known as Pontiac's Rebellion. The Paxton Boys, a group of settlers convinced that the Pennsylvania government was not doing enough to protect them from American Indian raids, murdered a group of peaceful Susquehannock Indians and marched on Philadelphia. Franklin helped to organize a local militia to defend the capital against the mob. He met with the Paxton leaders and persuaded them to disperse. Franklin wrote a scathing attack against the racial prejudice of the Paxton Boys. "If an Indian injures me", he asked, "does it follow that I may revenge that injury on all Indians?" He provided an early response to British surveillance through his own network of counter-surveillance and manipulation. "He waged a public relations campaign, secured secret aid, played a role in privateering expeditions, and churned out effective and inflammatory propaganda." === Declaration of Independence === By the time Franklin arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, after his second mission to Great Britain, the American Revolution had begun at the Battles of Lexington and Concord the previous month, on


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-8.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
When he returned home in 1785, Franklin occupied a position second only to that of George Washington as the champion of American independence. Le Ray honored him with a commissioned portrait painted by Joseph Duplessis, which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. After his return, Franklin became an abolitionist and freed his two slaves. He eventually became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. ==== President of Pennsylvania and Delegate to the Constitutional convention ==== Special balloting conducted October 18, 1785, unanimously elected him the sixth president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, replacing John Dickinson. The office was practically that of the governor. He held that office for slightly over three years, longer than any other, and served the constitutional limit of three full terms. Shortly after his initial election, he was re-elected to a full term on October 29, 1785, and again in the fall of 1786 and on October 31, 1787. In that capacity, he served as host to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. He also served as a delegate to the Convention. It was primarily an honorary position and he seldom engaged in debate. According to


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-9.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
Franklin was, along with his contemporary Leonhard Euler, the only major scientist who supported Christiaan Huygens's wave theory of light, which was basically ignored by the rest of the scientific community. In the 18th century, Isaac Newton's corpuscular theory was held to be true; it took Thomas Young's well-known slit experiment in 1803 to persuade most scientists to believe Huygens's theory. Franklin started exploring the phenomenon of electricity in the 1740s, after he met the itinerant lecturer Archibald Spencer, who used static electricity in his demonstrations. He proposed that "vitreous" and "resinous" electricity were not different types of "electrical fluid" (as electricity was called then), but the same "fluid" under different pressures. (The same proposal was made independently that same year by William Watson.) He was the first to label them as positive and negative respectively, which replaced the then current distinction made between 'vitreous' and 'resinous' electricity, and he was the first to discover the principle of conservation of charge. In 1748, he constructed a multiple plate capacitor, that he called an "electrical battery" (not a true battery like Volta's pile) by placing eleven panes of glass sandwiched between lead plates, suspended with silk cords and connected by wires.


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-10.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
When rain has wet the kite twine so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it streams out plentifully from the key at the approach of your knuckle, and with this key a phial, or Leyden jar, may be charged: and from electric fire thus obtained spirits may be kindled, and all other electric experiments [may be] performed which are usually done by the help of a rubber glass globe or tube; and therefore the sameness of the electrical matter with that of lightening [sic] completely demonstrated. Franklin's electrical experiments led to his invention of the lightning rod. He said that conductors with a sharp rather than a smooth point could discharge silently and at a far greater distance. He surmised that this could help protect buildings from lightning by attaching "upright Rods of Iron, made sharp as a Needle and gilt to prevent Rusting, and from the Foot of those Rods a Wire down the outside of the Building into the Ground; ... Would not these pointed Rods probably draw the Electrical Fire silently out of a Cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-11.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
An aging Franklin accumulated all his oceanographic findings in Maritime Observations, published by the Philosophical Society's transactions in 1786. It contained ideas for sea anchors, catamaran hulls, watertight compartments, shipboard lightning rods and a soup bowl designed to stay stable in stormy weather. While traveling on a ship, Franklin had observed that the wake of a ship was diminished when the cooks scuttled their greasy water. He studied the effects on a large pond in Clapham Common, London. "I fetched out a cruet of oil and dropt a little of it on the water ... though not more than a teaspoon full, produced an instant calm over a space of several yards square." He later used the trick to "calm the waters" by carrying "a little oil in the hollow joint of [his] cane." === Meteorology === On October 21, 1743, according to the popular myth, a storm moving from the southwest denied Franklin the opportunity of witnessing a lunar eclipse. He was said to have noted that the prevailing winds were actually from the northeast, contrary to what he had expected. In correspondence with his brother, he learned that the same storm had not reached Boston until after the


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-12.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
Like the other advocates of republicanism, Franklin emphasized that the new republic could survive only if the people were virtuous. All his life, he explored the role of civic and personal virtue, as expressed in Poor Richard's aphorisms. He felt that organized religion was necessary to keep men good to their fellow men, but rarely attended religious services himself. When he met Voltaire in Paris and asked his fellow member of the Enlightenment vanguard to bless his grandson, Voltaire said in English, "God and Liberty", and added, "this is the only appropriate benediction for the grandson of Monsieur Franklin." Franklin's parents were both pious Puritans. The family attended the Old South Church, the most liberal Puritan congregation in Boston, where Benjamin Franklin was baptized in 1706. Franklin's father, a poor chandler, owned a copy of a book, Bonifacius: Essays to Do Good, by the Puritan preacher and family friend Cotton Mather, which Franklin often cited as a key influence on his life. "If I have been a useful citizen," Franklin wrote to Cotton Mather's son seventy years later, "the public owes the advantage of it to that book." His first pen name, Silence Dogood, paid homage both to the book


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-13.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
... Sunday being my studying day, I never was without some religious principles. I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that He made the world, and governed it by His providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter. Franklin retained a lifelong commitment to the non-religious Puritan virtues and political values he had grown up with, and through his civic work and publishing, he succeeded in passing these values into the American culture permanently. He had a "passion for virtue." These Puritan values included his devotion to egalitarianism, education, industry, thrift, honesty, temperance, charity and community spirit. Thomas Kidd states, "As an adult, Franklin touted ethical responsibility, industriousness, and benevolence, even as he jettisoned Christian orthodoxy." The classical authors read in the Enlightenment period taught an abstract ideal of republican government based on hierarchical social orders of king, aristocracy and commoners. It was widely believed that English liberties relied on their balance of power, but also hierarchal deference to the privileged class. "Puritanism ... and the epidemic evangelism of the mid-eighteenth century,


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-14.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as it probably has, of making his doctrines more respected and better observed; especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any particular marks of his displeasure. On July 4, 1776, Congress appointed a three-member committee composed of Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams to design the Great Seal of the United States. Franklin's proposal (which was not adopted) featured the motto: "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God"


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-15.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
O Pharisaical Britain! to pride thyself in setting free a single Slave that happens to land on thy coasts, while thy Merchants in all thy ports are encouraged by thy laws to continue a commerce whereby so many hundreds of thousands are dragged into a slavery that can scarce be said to end with their lives, since it is entailed on their posterity! Franklin refused to publicly debate the issue of slavery at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. At the time of the American founding, there were about half a million slaves in the United States, mostly in the five southernmost states, where they made up 40% of the population. Many of the leading American founders – such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison – owned slaves, but many others did not. Benjamin Franklin thought that slavery was "an atrocious debasement of human nature" and "a source of serious evils." In 1787, Franklin and Benjamin Rush helped write a new constitution for the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and that same year Franklin became president of the organization. In 1790, Quakers from New York and Pennsylvania presented their petition for abolition to Congress. Their argument against


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-16
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-16.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
The rapid progress true science now makes, occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon: it is impossible to imagine the height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter; we may perhaps learn to deprive large masses of their gravity, and give them absolute levity for the sake of easy transport. Agriculture may diminish its labour and double its produce... In 1773, Franklin imagined a technology similar to cryonics: I wish it were possible to invent a method of embalming drowned persons in such a manner that they might be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence... == Interests and activities == === Musical endeavors === Franklin is known to have played the violin, the harp, and the guitar. He also composed music, which included a string quartet in early classical style. While he was in London, he developed a much-improved version of the glass harmonica, in which the glasses rotate on a shaft, with the player's fingers held steady, instead of the other way around. He worked with the London


id: benjamin-franklin-20260505-17
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin-17.md
category: reference
title: Benjamin Franklin
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:16.447701+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: benjamin-franklin-20260505-0
summary:
On April 12, 1976, as part of a bicentennial celebration, Congress dedicated a 20-foot (6 m) tall marble statue in Philadelphia's Franklin Institute as the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller presided over the dedication ceremony. Many of Franklin's personal possessions are on display at the institute. In London, his house at 36 Craven Street, which is the only surviving former residence of Franklin, was first marked with a blue plaque and has since been opened to the public as the Benjamin Franklin House. In 1998, workmen restoring the building dug up the remains of six children and four adults hidden below the home. A total of 15 bodies have been recovered. The Friends of Benjamin Franklin House (the organization responsible for the restoration) note that the bones were likely placed there by William Hewson, who lived in the house for two years and who had built a small anatomy school at the back of the house. They note that while Franklin likely knew what Hewson was doing, he probably did not participate in any dissections because he was much more of a physicist than a medical man. He has been honored on U.S. postage stamps many times.


id: francis-galton-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton-0.md
category: reference
title: Francis Galton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:17.894886+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: francis-galton-20260505-0
summary:
Sir Francis Galton (; 16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911) was an English polymath and the originator of eugenics during the Victorian era; his ideas later became the basis of behavioural genetics. Galton produced over 340 papers and books. He also developed the statistical concept of correlation and widely promoted regression toward the mean. He was the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and inheritance of intelligence, and introduced the use of questionnaires and surveys for collecting data on human communities, which he needed for genealogical and biographical works and for his anthropometric studies. He popularised the phrase "nature versus nurture". His book Hereditary Genius (1869) was the first social scientific attempt to study genius and greatness. As an investigator of the human mind, he founded psychometrics and differential psychology, as well as the lexical hypothesis of personality. He devised a method for classifying fingerprints that proved useful in forensic science. He also conducted research on the power of prayer, concluding it had none due to its null effects on the longevity of those prayed for. His quest for the scientific principles of diverse phenomena extended even to the optimal method for making tea.


id: francis-galton-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton-1.md
category: reference
title: Francis Galton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:17.894886+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: francis-galton-20260505-0
summary:
=== Early scientific career === Galton was a polymath who made important contributions in many fields, including meteorology (the anticyclone and the first popular weather maps), statistics (regression and correlation), psychology (synaesthesia), biology (the nature and mechanism of heredity), and criminology (fingerprints). Much of this was influenced by his penchant for counting and measuring. Galton prepared the first weather map published in The Times (1 April 1875, showing the weather from the previous day, 31 March), now a standard feature in newspapers worldwide. He became very active in the British Association for the Advancement of Science, presenting many papers on a wide variety of topics at its meetings from 1858 to 1899. He was the general secretary from 1863 to 1867, president of the Geographical section in 1867 and 1872, and president of the Anthropological Section in 1877 and 1885. He was active on the council of the Royal Geographical Society for over forty years, in various committees of the Royal Society, and on the Meteorological Council. James McKeen Cattell, a student of Wilhelm Wundt who had been reading Galton's articles, decided he wanted to study under him. He eventually built a professional relationship with Galton, measuring subjects and working


id: francis-galton-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton-2.md
category: reference
title: Francis Galton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:17.894886+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: francis-galton-20260505-0
summary:
Galton invented the term eugenics in 1883 and set down many of his observations and conclusions in a book, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development. In the book's introduction, he wrote: [This book's] intention is to touch on various topics more or less connected with that of the cultivation of race, or, as we might call it, with "eugenic"1 questions, and to present the results of several of my own separate investigations.1 This is, with questions bearing on what is termed in Greek, eugenes, namely, good in stock, hereditarily endowed with noble qualities. This, and the allied words, eugeneia, etc., are equally applicable to men, brutes, and plants. We greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognizance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea; it is at least a neater word and a more generalized one than


id: francis-galton-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton-3.md
category: reference
title: Francis Galton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:17.894886+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: francis-galton-20260505-0
summary:
Galton's formulation of regression and its link to the bivariate normal distribution can be traced to his attempts at developing a mathematical model for population stability. Although Galton's first attempt to study Darwinian questions, Hereditary Genius, generated little enthusiasm at the time, the text led to his further studies in the 1870s concerning the inheritance of physical traits. This text contains some crude notions of the concept of regression, described in a qualitative matter. For example, he wrote of dogs: "If a man breeds from strong, well-shaped dogs, but of mixed pedigree, the puppies will be sometimes, but rarely, the equals of their parents. They will commonly be of a mongrel, nondescript type, because ancestral peculiarities are apt to crop out in the offspring." This notion created a problem for Galton, as he could not reconcile the tendency of a population to maintain a normal distribution of traits from generation to generation with the notion of inheritance. It seemed that a large number of factors operated independently on offspring, leading to the normal distribution of a trait in each generation. However, this provided no explanation as to how a parent can have a significant impact on his offspring, which was


id: francis-galton-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton-4.md
category: reference
title: Francis Galton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:17.894886+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: francis-galton-20260505-0
summary:
Now, in the chapter on Pangenesis in my Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication I have not said one word about the blood, or about any fluid proper to any circulating system. It is, indeed, obvious that the presence of gemmules in the blood can form no necessary part of my hypothesis; for I refer in illustration of it to the lowest animals, such as the Protozoa, which do not possess blood or any vessels; and I refer to plants in which the fluid, when present in the vessels, cannot be considered as true blood. The fundamental laws of growth, reproduction, inheritance, &c., are so closely similar throughout the whole organic kingdom, that the means by which the gemmules (assuming for the moment their existence) are diffused through the body, would probably be the same in all beings; therefore the means can hardly be diffusion through the blood. Nevertheless, when I first heard of Mr. Galton's experiments, I did not sufficiently reflect on the subject, and saw not the difficulty of believing in the presence of gemmules in the blood. Galton explicitly rejected the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics (Lamarckism), and was an early proponent of "hard


id: francis-galton-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton-5.md
category: reference
title: Francis Galton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:17.894886+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: francis-galton-20260505-0
summary:
=== Anthropometric Laboratory === In 1884, London hosted the International Health Exhibition. This exhibition placed much emphasis on highlighting Victorian developments in sanitation and public health, and allowed the nation to display its advanced public health outreach, compared to other countries at the time. Francis Galton took advantage of this opportunity to set up his anthropometric laboratory. He stated that the purpose of this laboratory was to "show the public the simplicity of the instruments and methods by which the chief physical characteristics of man may be measured and recorded." The laboratory was an interactive walk-through in which physical characteristics such as height, weight, and eyesight, would be measured for each subject after payment of an admission fee. Upon entering the laboratory, a subject would visit the following stations in order. First, they would fill in a form with personal and family history (age, birthplace, marital status, residence, and occupation), then visit stations that recorded hair and eye colour, followed by the keenness, colour-sense, and depth perception of sight. Next, they would examine the keenness, or relative acuteness, of hearing and highest audible note of their hearing followed by an examination of their sense of touch. However, because the surrounding


id: francis-galton-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton-6.md
category: reference
title: Francis Galton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:17.894886+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: francis-galton-20260505-0
summary:
=== The questionnaire === Galton's inquiries into the mind involved detailed recording of people's subjective accounts of whether and how their minds dealt with phenomena such as mental imagery. To better elicit this information, he pioneered the use of the questionnaire. In one study, he asked his fellow members of the Royal Society of London to describe mental images that they experienced. In another, he collected in-depth surveys from eminent scientists for a work examining the effects of nature and nurture on the propensity toward scientific thinking. === Variance and standard deviation === Core to any statistical analysis is the concept that measurements vary: they have both a central tendency, or mean, and a spread around this central value, or variance. In the late 1860s, Galton conceived of a measure to quantify normal variation: the standard deviation. Galton was a keen observer. In 1906, visiting a livestock fair, he stumbled upon an intriguing contest. An ox was on display, and the villagers were invited to guess the animal's weight after it was slaughtered and dressed. Nearly 800 participated, and Galton was able to study their individual entries after the event. Galton stated that "the middlemost estimate expresses the vox populi,


id: francis-galton-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton-7.md
category: reference
title: Francis Galton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:17.894886+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: francis-galton-20260505-0
summary:
=== Composite photography === Galton also devised a technique called "composite portraiture" (produced by superimposing multiple photographic portraits of individuals' faces registered on their eyes) to create an average face (see averageness). In the 1990s, a hundred years after his discovery, much psychological research has examined the attractiveness of these faces, an aspect that Galton had remarked on in his original lecture. Others, including Sigmund Freud in his work on dreams, picked up Galton's suggestion that these composites might represent a useful metaphor for an Ideal type or a concept of a "natural kind" (see Eleanor Rosch)—such as Jewish men, criminals, patients with tuberculosis, etc.—onto the same photographic plate, thereby yielding a blended whole, or "composite", that he hoped could generalise the facial appearance of his subject into an "average" or "central type". (See also entry Modern physiognomy under Physiognomy). This work began in the 1880s while the Jewish scholar Joseph Jacobs studied anthropology and statistics with Francis Galton. Jacobs asked Galton to create a composite photograph of a Jewish type. One of Jacobs' first publications that used Galton's composite imagery was "The Jewish Type, and Galton's Composite Photographs", Photographic News, 29, (24 April 1885): 268–269. Galton hoped his technique


id: francis-galton-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton-8.md
category: reference
title: Francis Galton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:17.894886+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: francis-galton-20260505-0
summary:
The KING has also been pleased, by Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, bearing date the 26th June, 1909, to confer the dignity of a Knight of the said United Kingdom upon: Francis Galton, Esq., Sc.D., F.R.S., Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge His statistical heir Karl Pearson, first holder of the Galton Chair of Eugenics at University College, London (now Galton Chair of Genetics), wrote a three-volume biography of Galton, in four parts, after his death. The flowering plant genus Galtonia was named after Galton. University College London has in the twenty-first century been involved in a historical inquiry into its role as the institutional birthplace of eugenics. Galton established a laboratory at UCL in 1904. Some students and staff have called on the university to rename its Galton lecture theatre, with journalist Angela Saini stating, "Galton's seductive promise was of a bold new world filled only with beautiful, intelligent, productive people. The scientists in its thrall claimed this could be achieved by controlling reproduction, policing borders to prevent certain types of immigrants, and locking away "undesirables", including disabled people." In June 2020, University College London (UCL) announced the renaming


id: thomas-godfrey-inventor-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Godfrey_(inventor)-0.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Godfrey (inventor)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Godfrey_(inventor)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:19.582567+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: thomas-godfrey-inventor-20260505-0
summary:
Thomas Godfrey (January 10, 1704 – December 1749) was a glazier and self-taught mathematician and astronomer in the Pennsylvania Colony, who invented the octant in 1730. A similar octant was also independently invented about the same time by John Hadley in London with Hadley receiving the greater share of the credit for development. He published almanacs and contributed essays on mathematics, astronomy and general topics to the Pennsylvania Gazette and Pennsylvania Journal. He assisted the Welsh surveyor Lewis Evans in conducting astronomical observations to correct the longitude of Philadelphia on maps published by Evans. He was friends with Benjamin Franklin and a founding member of the Junto club, which was the precursor of the American Philosophical Society. He served as a director of the Library Company of Philadelphia and was a member of American Philosophical Society with the title "mathematician". == Early life == Godfrey was born January 10, 1704, to Joseph and Catherine Godfrey on the family farm in Bristol Township, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania. His father died when he was 1 years old and he inherited the family farm at age 21. He moved to Philadelphia and worked as a plumber and a glazier. He installed the glass in


id: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney-0.md
category: reference
title: Goldsworthy Gurney
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:20.803004+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-0
summary:
Sir Goldsworthy Gurney (14 February 1793 – 28 February 1875) was a British surgeon, chemist, architect, builder, lecturer and consultant. He was a prototypical British gentleman scientist and inventor of the Victorian era. Amongst many accomplishments, he developed the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, and later applied its principles to a novel form of illumination, the Bude-Light; developed a series of early steam-powered road vehicles; and laid claim—still discussed and disputed today—to the blastpipe, a key component in the success of steam locomotives, engines, and other coal-fired systems. Events surrounding the failure of his steam vehicle enterprise gave rise to controversy in his time, with considerable polarisation of opinion. His daughter Anna Jane Gurney (1816–1895) was devoted to him. During her lifetime, she engaged in a campaign to ensure the blastpipe was seen as his invention. == Biography == Gurney was born in St Merryn, Cornwall, England on 14 February 1793. His unusual Christian name was his grandmother's surname but taken from his godmother who was a Maid of Honour to Queen Charlotte. Gurney's grandfather married into money, allowing his father, and to an extent himself, to live as gentlemen. He was schooled at the Grammar School at Truro, where he showed an


id: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney-1.md
category: reference
title: Goldsworthy Gurney
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:20.803004+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-0
summary:
Perhaps arising out of the Boyton farming connection he took a second wife, being married at St. Giles in the Field to Jane Betty, the 24-year-old daughter of a farmer from Sheepwash, Devon; Gurney was 61. The marriage appears to have been unsuccessful; there was perhaps some contention between Anna Jane (39) and her much younger stepmother. Jane Betty was removed from Gurney's will, although they were never divorced. Gurney continued to divide his time between London and Cornwall, variously engaged in work with clients; experimenting and innovating in diverse fields such as heating (the Gurney Stove) or electrical conduction; and in improving his Hornacott estate. He was appointed president of the Launceston Agricultural Society. In 1863, Gurney was knighted by Queen Victoria, but later that year suffered a paralytic stroke; he sold Hornacott and retired back to Reeds in Cornwall, where he lived with his devoted Anna Jane, ultimately dying on 28 February 1875. He is buried at Launcells parish church. == Gurney's steam coach == In the period 1824–31, Gurney designed and built a number of steam-powered road vehicles. He established a business, the Gurney Steam Carriage Company, to develop and promote steam-powered road transport. He obtained patents


id: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney-2.md
category: reference
title: Goldsworthy Gurney
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:20.803004+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-0
summary:
Gurney later said that his first prototype weighed four tons and that he worked to reduce this to 2 tons for his steam coach, the vehicle for which he is best known. This took the form of a large stage coach with 6 passengers inside and 12 (he later claimed 15) outside, plus the guide, who doubled as the engine-man/stoker. The body of the vehicle was 15' long, or 20' including the front pole and a pair of steered pilot wheels. The print "The New Steam Carriage" at the top of this section is an 1828 reprint of an earlier print by George Morton. It shows the coach in front of a pub with propellers in front of the rear wheels. The caption states "It has been constructed..." and "The rate of travelling is intended to be from 8 to 10 miles per hour". This dates it to mid-1827. The "London and Bath" livery was perhaps an inducement to get Major Dobbyn to invest: in September 1827 he paid Gurney £6,000 for the franchise for the London, Bath and Bristol road, for which Gurney would build him eight coaches. In tests, Gurney found that the propellers didn't work well and


id: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney-3.md
category: reference
title: Goldsworthy Gurney
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:20.803004+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-0
summary:
== Gurney's steam drags == During 1828, Gurney switched from developing his steam coach to producing a steam drag, a small road-going steam locomotive which could pull a carriage, an omnibus or any other wheeled vehicle. A key figure in this was Sir Charles Dance, a retired colonel of the Life Guards (one of the regiments based at Regent Park Barracks). Five years later he told a meeting in Westminster of 40 MPs, peers and others that: ... several years ago he had been induced to consider the application of Steam to locomotive purposes as important to the military operations of the country, and had subsequently embarked capital in Mr Gurney's experiments ... On 22 July 1829 Gurney's new steam drag was on view at Dance's home at Bushey in Hertfordshire. Present was General Sir James Willoughby Gordon FRS, Quartermaster-General of the Army. His responsibilities included equipping and moving the army and its materiel. The next day, General Gordon wrote a highly favourable report of what he had seen at Bushey. The vehicle had performed for half an hour at up to 10 mph, uphill and around corners, with a barouche in tow. Five days later, on 27 July 1829,


id: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney-4.md
category: reference
title: Goldsworthy Gurney
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:20.803004+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-0
summary:
The remains of the Lord of the Isles (which exploded) rests in Glasgow Riverside Museum. This vehicle confirms a detail reported by Gordon. The rear axle, just inboard of where the wheel would sit, has flats which form a hexagon. Gordon's plan shows what Gurney called a carrier, an iron bar forming a diameter of the wheel which transfers torque from the axle to the felloes of the wheel, thereby allowing lighter spokes to be used. In his evidence to the 1831 Select Committee, Gurney was asked about the drive to the wheels: In general, were the wheels connected together, or had they an independent motion? Always one was attached to the axle; they had no independent motion; this will be seen by reference to No. 5 on the arm or carrier of the wheel (which is a part of the axle,) and can be attached to the wheel at pleasure by a bolt, making the wheel also in that case part of the axle. Gordon describes it differently:[the carrier,] being pressed up by the engine against the bolt which is shown above it, must force the wheel in that direction, and thus propel the carriageGordon's mechanism would allow the


id: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney-5.md
category: reference
title: Goldsworthy Gurney
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:20.803004+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-0
summary:
In addition to this flagrant outrage against justice and utility, the worthy squires and magistrates of the Cheltenham district, suddenly, without any necessity, covered a long tract of the road with a layer of loose gravel, a foot deep, which, adding to the above-mentioned difficulties and impediments, put an entire stop to the undertaking. At the same time, press coverage of an accident befalling a Glasgow steam drag adversely affected the reputation of the vehicles. Gurney was bankrupted with debts of £232,000. Sufficient was the concern about Gurney's bankruptcy, and sufficient were his contacts, that a further select committee was convened from 1831 to 1835, on Mr.Goldsworthy Gurney's Case. Its final report stated: Mr Goldsworthy Gurney was the first person to successfully operate steam carriages on common roads, and he took out patents for his invention in 1825 and 1826–27. In 1830 Mr Gurney entered into contracts with various individuals for the commercial exploitation of his invention, carrying passengers at a lower fare than horse carriages. In 1831 more than 50 private bills were passed by Parliament imposing prohibitive tolls on steam carriages (two pounds or more, while horse carriages might pay six shillings or less), and the contractors suspended


id: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney-6.md
category: reference
title: Goldsworthy Gurney
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:20.803004+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-0
summary:
A key development of his time at the Surrey Institute was use of the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, normally credited to Robert Hare, in which an intensely hot flame was created by burning a jet of oxygen and hydrogen together. The blowpipe was the underpinning of limelight, and Gurney was its first exponent. According to A History of The Growth of The Steam-Engine by Robert H. Thurston, Gurney was a proponent of the ammonia engine. "In 1822… Mr. Goldsworthy Gurney, who subsequently took an active part in their introduction, stated, in his lectures, that "elementary power is capable of being applied to propel carriages along common roads with great political advantage, and the floating knowledge of the day places the object within reach." He made an ammonia engine—probably the first ever made—and worked it so successfully, that he made use of it in driving a little locomotive." Arising from his successes with mine ventilation he was commissioned in 1852 to improve the gas lighting, heating, and especially the ventilation systems for the new Houses of Parliament at Westminster. Although he had some success in moving air around the palace buildings, ridding the legislature of the foul smell of the Thames was beyond


id: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney-7.md
category: reference
title: Goldsworthy Gurney
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsworthy_Gurney
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:20.803004+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: goldsworthy-gurney-20260505-0
summary:
To his inventive genius the world is indebted for the high speed of the locomotive, without which railways could not have succeeded and would never have been made. In her copy of the Dictionary of National Biography, all references to the blowpipe were amended by hand to his blowpipe. In 1880 she donated £500 to memorialise "his" Steam Jet, at the stone-laying ceremony for Truro Cathedral, somehow managing to rope the children of the then Prince of Wales to present the money. (The Prince of Wales, HRH Prince Albert Edward was timidly asked whether he minded, and replied "Oh, why not? The boys would stand on their heads if she wished."). Anna Jane's subscription read: In memory of her father Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, inventor of the steam-jet, as a thank offering to almighty God for the benefit of high speed locomotion whereby His good gifts are conveyed from one nation to another and the word of the Lord is sent unto all parts of the world. A chiming clock presented by her in 1889 to St Olaf's Church, Poughill, in Bude, was inscribed "His inventions and discoveries in steam and electricity rendered transport by land and sea so rapid that


id: john-d-hamaker-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Hamaker-0.md
category: reference
title: John D. Hamaker
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Hamaker
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:25.991451+00:00
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John D. Hamaker (1914–1994), was an American mechanical engineer, ecologist, agronomist and science writer in the fields of soil regeneration, rock dusting, mineral cycles, climate cycles and glaciology. == Biography == === Background === Hamaker was born in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, and graduated from Purdue University in Mechanical Engineering. Concerned for the environment, he became a student of ecology and agriculture and was influenced by books such as Bread From Stones, which showed that plants grow better in soils generated by mimicking natural soil-forming processes that take millennia, such as the advance and retreat of glaciers scouring the Earth's crust, or rock weathering of volcanic lava. In the 1960s, Hamaker cultivated an interest in soil and climate issues, and began publishing articles about how the health of an individual, society and planetary ecology thrive only as an interdependent whole. For 30 years, he wrote and campaigned for organic agriculture based on soil remineralization, and was the first to call for the remineralization of the Earth to forestall the next glacial period within the current ice age cycle. He produced a book, The Survival Of Civilization, in 1982, republished in 2002 as Remineralize The Earth. === Early developments ===


id: john-d-hamaker-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Hamaker-1.md
category: reference
title: John D. Hamaker
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Hamaker
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=== Rock grinders === Hamaker invented an autogenous rock grinder, designed to grind rock upon rock with minimal wear of metal parts, and a macro version, both for creating rock dust. The full design for the rock grinder was described in The Survival Of Civilization and Donald Weaver's To Love And Regenerate The Earth. On 19 October 1984, China's Research Institute of Forests accepted a copy of Hamaker's rock grinder patent papers, since at the time, China was taking the lead in reforestation programs. == Scientific basis == === Climate cycles === The Earth's soil is demineralized during every interglacial period, the short 10,000-year warm period between every 90,000-year glacial period which is within the current Ice Age or Quaternary Period encompassing the Pleistocene and Holocene, or current interglacial. This causes a decline in the world's forests and other vegetation which are carbon dioxide sinks, and so more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere rose throughout the 20th century and continue to do so. Excessive heat from the sun is trapped by CO2 and other greenhouse gases, affecting global climate. Hamaker explained the 100,000-year cycle of major ice ages by postulating that the


id: john-d-hamaker-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Hamaker-2.md
category: reference
title: John D. Hamaker
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Hamaker
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:25.991451+00:00
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== Influence == John D. Hamaker's work inspired a growing movement of people to become involved in remineralization, including permaculturists, organic farmers, biodynamic farmers, gardeners, vegetarians, environmentalists, scientists, climatologists, journalists, religious groups, political groups, community organizations and ordinary citizens. === Remineralize the Earth === In the 1980s, Hamaker became a catalyst for the formation of Remineralize the Earth (RTE), set up by Joanna Campe, its president and Executive Director who produced the Soil Remineralization Newsletter in the 1980s and Remineralize the Earth magazine in the 1990s, before the non-profit organization's incorporation in 1994. Remineralize the Earth began promoting the regeneration of soils and forests worldwide with finely ground rock dust as a sustainable alternative to chemical fertilizers and pesticides. As well as recycling and returning organic matter to the soil, the organization asserted that returning all of the mineral nutrients which create fertile soils and healthy crops and forests, was equally important. For RTE, remineralization was essential to restoring ecological balance and stabilizing the climate. In 1994, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Bureau of Mines, National Stone Association and National Aggregates Association co-sponsored a symposium "Soil Remineralization and Sustainable Agriculture" at USDA headquarters in Washington DC. In 1995,


id: john-d-hamaker-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Hamaker-3.md
category: reference
title: John D. Hamaker
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Hamaker
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:25.991451+00:00
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=== Institute For A Future === In the mid-1980s, author, and Harvard clinical psychologist, Larry Ephron, set up the U.S. based Institute For A Future and wrote The End: The Coming Ice Age & How We Can Stop It, which examined the theory and themes raised in Hamaker's book citing climatologist Reid Bryson, of the University of Wisconsin: "Breakthrought never come from within the establishment." The book specifically examined man's influence on nature and climate change. Topics covered included astrophysics, climatology, geology, glaciology, microbiology, paleobotany, paleontology, palynology, plate tectonics, soil remineralization, seismology, soil science, solar physics and human survival. Ephron showed how climatologists such as John Gribbin and Stephen Schneider who recognized the connection between global warming and the buildup of snow and ice, saw ice buildup only as a side effect of continued overall warming, rather than linking CO2 increase, global warming, ice buildup, glaciation and ice ages, together. An exception was Pierre Lehman, a Swiss atmospheric physicist who noted the important link between soil and climate. NASA climatologist James Hansen was also noted as saying "it is not certain whether CO2 warming will cause the ice sheets to shrink or grow. For example, if the ocean warms but


id: john-d-hamaker-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Hamaker-4.md
category: reference
title: John D. Hamaker
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Hamaker
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:25.991451+00:00
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parent: john-d-hamaker-20260505-0
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== Rocks for Crops == In 2007, the research organization Rocks for Crops was initiated by soil scientist, Jairo Restrepo Rivera of the University of Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), who translated Bread From Stones into Spanish and gave conferences on remineralization in Colombia, Brazil and Mexico; Peter Von Straaten from the University of Guelph (Canada); and Suzi Teodoro from the University of Brasília (Brazil). The group confirmed that a branch of geology called agrogeology, originating at the University of Guelph, was evolving, since Von Straaten published the book Agrogeology: The Use of Rocks for Crops and Rivera produced the book and video, Manual Práctico ABC de la Agricultura Orgánica y Harina de Rocas, which described how to regenerate overcultivated soils with rock dust. The science was developing in Germany, Canada and USA, and being researched in Brazil, Tanzania and the Canary Islands. Other university researchers included professors William Fyfe and Ward Chesworth. The science of agrogeology is the study of natural geological materials suitable for restoring soils as an alternative to chemical fertilizers, particularly for worn out tropical soils. Due to intense tropical rainfall, chemical fertilizers are washed away from laterite soils within weeks, and cannot be stored


id: oliver-heaviside-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside-0.md
category: reference
title: Oliver Heaviside
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:27.222356+00:00
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Oliver Heaviside ( HEV-ee-syde; 18 May 1850 – 3 February 1925) was a British mathematician and electrical engineer who invented a new technique for solving differential equations (equivalent to the Laplace transform), independently developed vector calculus, and rewrote Maxwell's equations in the form commonly used today. He significantly shaped the way Maxwell's equations were understood and applied in the decades following Maxwell's death. Also, in 1893, he extended them to gravitoelectromagnetism, which was confirmed by Gravity Probe B in 2005. His formulation of the telegrapher's equations became commercially important during his own lifetime, after their significance went unremarked for a long while, as few others were versed at the time in his novel methodology. Although at odds with the scientific establishment for most of his life, Heaviside changed the face of telecommunications, mathematics, and science. == Early years == Oliver Heaviside was born on 18 May 1850 at 55 Kings Street (now Plender Street) in Camden Town, England, the youngest of three children of Thomas Heaviside, a draughtsman and wood engraver, and Rachel Elizabeth West. He was a short and red-headed child, and suffered from scarlet fever when young, which left him with a hearing impairment that he felt hindered


id: oliver-heaviside-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside-1.md
category: reference
title: Oliver Heaviside
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside
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== Middle years == From 1882 to 1902, except for three years, Heaviside contributed regular articles to the trade paper The Electrician, which wished to improve its standing, for which he was paid £40 per year. This was hardly enough to live on, but his demands were very small and he was doing what he most wanted. Between 1883 and 1887 he averaged 2–3 articles per month and these articles later formed the bulk of his Electromagnetic Theory and Electrical Papers. In 1880, Heaviside researched the skin effect in telegraph transmission lines. That same year he patented, in England, the coaxial cable. In 1884 he recast Maxwell's mathematical analysis from its original cumbersome form (they had already been recast as quaternions) to its modern vector terminology, thereby reducing twelve of the original twenty equations in twenty unknowns down to the four differential equations in two unknowns we now know as Maxwell's equations. These four re-formulated equations describe the nature of electric charges (both static and moving), magnetic fields, and the relationship between the two, namely electromagnetic fields. Between 1880 and 1887, Heaviside developed the operational calculus using p {\displaystyle p} for the differential operator, (which Boole had previously denoted by


id: oliver-heaviside-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside-2.md
category: reference
title: Oliver Heaviside
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside
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In 1896, FitzGerald and John Perry obtained a civil list pension of £120 per year for Heaviside, who was now living in Devon, and persuaded him to accept it, after he had rejected other charitable offers from the Royal Society. In 1902, Heaviside proposed the existence of what is now known as the Kennelly–Heaviside layer of the ionosphere. Heaviside's proposal included means by which radio signals are transmitted around the Earth's curvature. The existence of the ionosphere was confirmed in 1923. The predictions by Heaviside, combined with Planck's radiation theory, probably discouraged further attempts to detect radio waves from the Sun and other astronomical objects. For whatever reason, there seem to have been no attempts for 30 years, until Jansky's development of radio astronomy in 1932. Heaviside was an opponent of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Mathematician Howard Eves has commented that Heaviside "was the only first-rate physicist at the time to impugn Einstein, and his invectives against relativity theory often bordered on the absurd". In later years his behavior became quite eccentric. According to associate B.A. Behrend, he became a recluse who was so averse to meeting people that he delivered the manuscripts of his Electrician papers to a


id: oliver-heaviside-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside-3.md
category: reference
title: Oliver Heaviside
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside
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== Innovations and discoveries == Heaviside did much to develop and advocate vector methods and vector calculus. Maxwell's formulation of electromagnetism consisted of 20 equations in 20 variables. Heaviside employed the curl and divergence operators of the vector calculus to reformulate 12 of these 20 equations into four equations in four variables ( B , E , J and ρ {\displaystyle {\textbf {B}},{\textbf {E}},{\textbf {J}}~{\text{and}}~\rho } ), the form by which they have been known ever since (see Maxwell's equations). Less well known is that Heaviside's equations and Maxwell's are not exactly the same, and in fact it is easier to modify the former to make them compatible with quantum physics. The possibility of gravitational waves was also discussed by Heaviside using the analogy between the inverse-square law in gravitation and electricity. With quaternion multiplication, the square of a vector is a negative quantity, much to Heaviside's displeasure. As he advocated abolishing this negativity, he has been credited by C. J. Joly with developing hyperbolic quaternions, though in fact that mathematical structure was largely the work of Alexander Macfarlane. He invented the Heaviside step function, using it to calculate the current when an electric circuit is switched on. He was


id: hirohito-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-0.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
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Emperor Shōwa (born Hirohito; 29 April 1901 – 7 January 1989) was the 124th emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, reigning from 1926 until his death in 1989. He remains the longest-reigning emperor in Japanese history and one of the longest-reigning monarchs in the world. As emperor during the Shōwa era, Hirohito presided over the rise of Japanese militarism, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Asia-Pacific theater of World War II, and the nation's postwar economic miracle. Hirohito was born during the reign of his paternal grandfather, Emperor Meiji, as the first child of Crown Prince Yoshihito and Crown Princess Sadako (later Emperor Taishō and Empress Teimei). When Emperor Meiji died in 1912, Hirohito's father ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne, and Hirohito was proclaimed Crown Prince of Japan in 1916, making him the heir apparent. In 1921, he made an official visit to six European countries, marking the first time a Japanese crown prince had traveled abroad. Due to his father's ill health, Hirohito became Sesshō of Japan (regent) that same year. In 1924, he married Princess Nagako Kuni, with whom he later had seven children: Shigeko, Sachiko, Kazuko, Atsuko, Akihito, Masahito and Takako. He became emperor upon


id: hirohito-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-1.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
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From 3 March to 3 September 1921 (Taisho 10), the Crown Prince made official visits to the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Vatican City and Malta (then a protectorate of the British Empire). This was the first visit to Europe by the Crown Prince. Despite strong opposition in Japan, this was realized by the efforts of elder Japanese statesmen (Genrō) such as Yamagata Aritomo and Saionji Kinmochi. The departure of Prince Hirohito was widely reported in newspapers. The Japanese battleship Katori was used, and departed from Yokohama, sailed to Naha, Hong Kong, Singapore, Colombo, Suez, Cairo, and Gibraltar. In April, Hirohito was present in Malta for the opening of the Maltese Parliament. After sailing for two months, the Katori arrived in Portsmouth on 9 May, on the same day reaching the British capital, London. Hirohito was welcomed in the UK as a partner of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and met with King George V and Prime Minister David Lloyd George. That evening, a banquet was held at Buckingham Palace, where Hirohito met with George V and Prince Arthur of Connaught. George V said that he treated his father like Hirohito, who was nervous in an unfamiliar foreign country, and


id: hirohito-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-2.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
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Prince Hirohito married his distant cousin Princess Nagako Kuni, the eldest daughter of Prince Kuniyoshi Kuni, on 26 January 1924. They had seven children (two sons and five daughters) (see Issue). The daughters who lived to adulthood left the imperial family as a result of the American reforms of the Japanese imperial household in October 1947 (in the case of Princess Shigeko) or under the terms of the Imperial Household Law at the moment of their subsequent marriages (in the cases of Princesses Kazuko, Atsuko, and Takako). == Early reign and World War II == === Accession === On 25 December 1926, Yoshihito died and Hirohito became emperor. The Crown Prince was said to have received the succession (senso). The Taishō era's end and the Shōwa era's beginning were proclaimed. The deceased Emperor was posthumously renamed Emperor Taishō within days. Following Japanese custom, the new Emperor was never referred to by his given name, but rather was referred to simply as "His Majesty the Emperor" which may be shortened to "His Majesty". In writing, the Emperor was also referred to formally as "The Reigning Emperor." In November 1928, Hirohito's accession was confirmed in ceremonies (sokui), which are conventionally identified as


id: hirohito-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-3.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
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parent: hirohito-20260505-0
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Nonetheless, according to Herbert Bix, Hirohito's main concern seems to have been the possibility of an attack by the Soviet Union given his questions to his chief of staff, Prince Kan'in Kotohito, and army minister, Hajime Sugiyama, about the time it could take to crush Chinese resistance and how could they prepare for the eventuality of a Soviet incursion. Based on Bix's findings, Hirohito was displeased by Prince Kan'in's evasive responses about the substance of such contingency plans but nevertheless still approved the decision to move troops to North China. According to Akira Fujiwara, Hirohito endorsed the policy of qualifying the invasion of China as an "incident" instead of a "war"; therefore, he did not issue any notice to observe international law in this conflict (unlike what his predecessors did in previous conflicts officially recognized by Japan as wars), and the Deputy Minister of the Japanese Army instructed the chief of staff of Japanese China Garrison Army on 5 August not to use the term "prisoners of war" for Chinese captives. This instruction led to the removal of the constraints of international law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners. The works of Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno show that Hirohito


id: hirohito-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-4.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
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Of course His Majesty is a pacifist, and there is no doubt he wished to avoid war. When I told him that to initiate war was a mistake, he agreed. But the next day, he would tell me: "You were worried about it yesterday, but you do not have to worry so much." Thus, gradually, he began to lean toward war. And the next time I met him, he leaned even more toward. In short, I felt the Emperor was telling me: my prime minister does not understand military matters, I know much more. In short, the Emperor had absorbed the view of the army and navy high commands. The army and the navy recommended the appointment of Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni, one of Hirohito's uncles, as prime minister. According to the Shōwa "Monologue", written after the war, Hirohito then said that if the war were to begin while a member of the imperial house was prime minister, the imperial house would have to carry the responsibility and he was opposed to this. Instead, Hirohito chose the hard-line General Hideki Tōjō, who was known for his devotion to the imperial institution, and asked him to make a policy review of what


id: hirohito-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-5.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
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parent: hirohito-20260505-0
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There has never been a cabinet in which the prime minister, and all the ministers, reported so often to the throne. In order to effect the essence of genuine direct imperial rule and to relieve the concerns of the Emperor, the ministers reported to the throne matters within the scope of their responsibilities as per the prime minister's directives ... In times of intense activities, typed drafts were presented to the Emperor with corrections in red. First draft, second draft, final draft and so forth, came as deliberations progressed one after the other and were sanctioned accordingly by the Emperor. In the first six months of war, all the major engagements had been victories. Japanese advances were stopped in the summer of 1942 with the Battle of Midway and the landing of the American forces on Guadalcanal and Tulagi in August. Hirohito played an increasingly influential role in the war; in eleven major episodes he was deeply involved in supervising the actual conduct of war operations. Hirohito pressured the High Command to order an early attack on the Philippines in 1941–42, including the fortified Bataan peninsula. He secured the deployment of army air power in the Guadalcanal campaign. Following Japan's


id: hirohito-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-6.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:28.660739+00:00
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parent: hirohito-20260505-0
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In early 1945, in the wake of the losses in the Battle of Leyte, Emperor Hirohito began a series of individual meetings with senior government officials to consider the progress of the war. All but ex-Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe advised continuing the war. Konoe feared a communist revolution even more than defeat in war and urged a negotiated surrender. In February 1945, during the first private audience with Hirohito he had been allowed in three years, Konoe advised Hirohito to begin negotiations to end the war. According to Grand Chamberlain Hisanori Fujita, Hirohito, still looking for a tennozan (a great victory) in order to provide a stronger bargaining position, firmly rejected Konoe's recommendation. With each passing week victory became less likely. In April, the Soviet Union issued notice that it would not renew its neutrality agreement. Japan's ally Germany surrendered in early May 1945. In June, the cabinet reassessed the war strategy, only to decide more firmly than ever on a fight to the last man. This strategy was officially affirmed at a brief Imperial Council meeting, at which, as was normal, Hirohito did not speak. The following day, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Kōichi Kido prepared a draft


id: hirohito-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-7.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
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After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, there was a large amount of pressure that came from both Allied countries and Japanese leftists that demanded Hirohito step down and be indicted as a war criminal. Australia, Britain and 70 percent of the American public wanted Hirohito tried as a Class-A war criminal. General Douglas MacArthur did not like the idea, as he thought that an ostensibly cooperating emperor would help establish a peaceful allied occupation regime in Japan. MacArthur saw Hirohito as a symbol of the continuity and cohesion of the Japanese people. To avoid the possibility of civil unrest in Japan, any possible evidence that would incriminate Hirohito and his family were excluded from the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. MacArthur created a plan that separated Hirohito from the militarists, retained Hirohito as a constitutional monarch but only as a figurehead, and used Hirohito to retain control over Japan to help achieve American postwar objectives in Japan. As Hirohito appointed his uncle and daughter's father-in-law, Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni as the Prime Minister to replace Kantarō Suzuki, who resigned owing to responsibility for the surrender, to assist the American occupation, there were attempts by numerous leaders to have


id: hirohito-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-8.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
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parent: hirohito-20260505-0
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Nevertheless, Hirohito's status as a limited constitutional monarch was formalized with the enactment of the 1947 constitution–officially, an amendment to the Meiji Constitution, but in truth an entirely new document written by the United States. It defined the Emperor as "the symbol of the state and the unity of the people." His role was redefined as entirely ceremonial and representative, without even nominal governmental powers. He was limited to performing matters of state as delineated in the Constitution, and in most cases his actions in that realm were carried out in accordance with the binding instructions of the Cabinet. Following the Iranian Revolution and the end of the short-lived Central African Empire, both in 1979, Hirohito found himself the last monarch in the world to bear any variation of the highest royal title "emperor." === Public figure === He was not only the first reigning Japanese emperor to visit foreign countries, but also the first to meet an American president. His status and image became strongly positive in the United States. ==== Visit to Europe ==== The talks between Emperor Hirohito and President Nixon were not planned at the outset, because initially the stop in the United States was only


id: hirohito-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-9.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:28.660739+00:00
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parent: hirohito-20260505-0
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=== Yasukuni Shrine === Hirohito maintained an official boycott of the Yasukuni Shrine after it was revealed to him that Class-A war criminals had secretly been enshrined after its post-war rededication. This boycott lasted from 1978 until his death and has been continued by his successors, Akihito and Naruhito. On 20 July 2006, Nihon Keizai Shimbun published a front-page article about the discovery of a memorandum detailing the reason that Hirohito stopped visiting Yasukuni. The memorandum, kept by former chief of Imperial Household Agency Tomohiko Tomita, confirms for the first time that the enshrinement of 14 Class-A war criminals in Yasukuni was the reason for the boycott. Tomita recorded in detail the contents of his conversations with Hirohito in his diaries and notebooks. According to the memorandum, in 1988, Hirohito expressed his strong displeasure at the decision made by Yasukuni Shrine to include Class-A war criminals in the list of war dead honored there by saying, "At some point, Class-A criminals became enshrined, including Matsuoka and Shiratori. I heard Tsukuba acted cautiously." Tsukuba is believed to refer to Fujimaro Tsukuba, the former chief Yasukuni priest at the time, who decided not to enshrine the war criminals despite having received in


id: hirohito-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-10.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:28.660739+00:00
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parent: hirohito-20260505-0
summary:
Historians who point to a higher degree of the Emperor's involvement in the war have stated that Hirohito was directly responsible for the atrocities committed by the imperial forces in the Second Sino-Japanese War and in World War II. They have said that he and some members of the imperial family, such as his brother Prince Chichibu, his cousins the princes Takeda and Fushimi, and his uncles the princes Kan'in, Asaka, and Higashikuni, should have been tried for war crimes. In a study published in 1996, historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta said that the Three Alls policy (Sankō Sakusen), a Japanese scorched earth policy adopted in China and sanctioned by Emperor Hirohito himself, was both directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. In Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, Herbert P. Bix said the Sankō Sakusen far surpassed Nanking Massacre not only in terms of numbers, but in brutality. According to Bix, "[t]hese military operations caused death and suffering on a scale incomparably greater than the totally unplanned orgy of killing in Nanking, which later came to symbolize the war". While the Nanking Massacre was unplanned, Bix said "Hirohito knew of and approved annihilation


id: hirohito-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-11.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:28.660739+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: hirohito-20260505-0
summary:
...as a matter of course, [Hirohito] wanted to keep what his generals conquered -- though he was less greedy than some of them. None of this should surprise us. Hirohito would no more have granted Korea independence or returned Manchuria to China than Roosevelt would have granted Hawaii independence or returned Texas to Mexico. Historians such as Herbert Bix, Akira Fujiwara, Peter Wetzler, and Akira Yamada assert that post-war arguments favoring the view that Hirohito was a mere figurehead overlook the importance of numerous "behind the chrysanthemum curtain" meetings where the real decisions were made between the Emperor, his chiefs of staff, and the cabinet. Using primary sources and the monumental work of Shirō Hara as a basis, Fujiwara and Wetzler have produced evidence suggesting that the Emperor actively participated in making political and military decisions and was neither bellicose nor a pacifist but an opportunist who governed in a pluralistic decision-making process. Historian Peter Wetzler states that the emperor was thoroughly informed of military matters, and comensurate with his position and Japanese methods of forming policies, he participated in making political and military decisions as the constitutional emperor of Imperial Japan and head of the imperial house. For his


id: hirohito-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-12.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:28.660739+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: hirohito-20260505-0
summary:
In Hirohito's monologue: It doesn't matter much if an incident occurs in Manchuria, as it is rural; however, if something were to happen in the Tientsin-Peking area, Anglo-American intervention would likely worsen and could lead to a clash. While he could justify the aggression of his military in China's northeastern provinces, he lacked confidence in Japan's capacity to win a war against the United States and Britain. He was also more aware than his military commanders of Japan's vulnerability to an economic blockade by Western powers. Japan signed the Tripartite Pact in 1940 and another agreement in December 1941 that forbade Japan from signing a separate peace treaty with the United States. In the Dokuhaku roku, Hirohito said: (In 1941,) we thought we could achieve a draw with the US, or at best win by a six to four margin; but total victory was nearly impossible ... When the war actually began, however, we gained a miraculous victory at Pearl Harbor and our invasions of Malaya and Burma succeeded far quicker than expected. So, if not for this (agreement), we might have achieved peace when we were in an advantageous position. The passage in the Dokuhaku roku refutes the theory


id: hirohito-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-13.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:28.660739+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: hirohito-20260505-0
summary:
"The Emperor appears to have been prepared for war in the face of the tense times." (13 October 1941) Likewise, Koichi Kido, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, is quoted as saying: "I occasionally have to try to stop him from going too far." (13 October 1941) "The Emperor's resolve appears to be going too far." (20 November 1941) "I requested the Emperor to say things to give the impression that Japan will exhaust all measures to pursue peace when the Foreign Minister is present." (20 November 1941) Seiichi Chadani, professor of modern Japanese history with Shigakukan University who has studied Hirohito's actions before and during the war said on the discovery of Hyakutake's diary: "The archives available so far, including his biography compiled by the Imperial Household Agency, contained no detailed descriptions that his aides expressed concerns about Hirohito leaning toward Japan's entry into the war." "(Hyakutake's diary) is a significant record penned by one of the close aides to the Emperor documenting the process of how Japan's leaders led to the war." ==== Vice Interior Minister Yuzawa's account on Hirohito's role in Pearl Harbor raid ==== In late July 2018, the bookseller Takeo Hatano, an acquaintance of the


id: hirohito-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-14.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:28.660739+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: hirohito-20260505-0
summary:
"By personality and temperament, Hirohito was ill-suited to the role assigned to him by destiny. The successors of the men who had led the Meiji Restoration yearned for a charismatic warrior king. Instead, they were given an introspective prince who grew up to be more at home in the science laboratory than on the military parade ground. But in his early years, every effort was made to cast him in a different mould." "A man of stronger personality than Hirohito might have tried more strenuously to check the growing influence of the military in Japanese politics and the drift of Japan toward war with the western powers." "The contemporary diary evidence suggests that Hirohito was uncomfortable with the direction of Japanese policy." "The consensus of those who have studied the documents of the period is that Hirohito was consistent in attempting to use his personal influence to induce caution and to moderate and even obstruct the growing impetus toward war." Whitehead concludes that ultimately Hirohito was "powerless" and comparisons with Hitler are "ridiculously wide off the mark." If Hirohito acted too insistently with his views he could have been isolated or replaced with a more pliant member of the royal


id: hirohito-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito-15.md
category: reference
title: Hirohito
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:28.660739+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: hirohito-20260505-0
summary:
=== Foreign honours === Germany: Grand Cross Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (GCBVO) Finland: Grand Cross of the Order of the White Rose of Finland, with Collar (1942) Norway: Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Olav (StkStOO), with Collar (26 September 1922) Sweden: Knight of the Royal Order of the Seraphim (RSerafO), with Collar (8 May 1919) Denmark: Knight of the Order of the Elephant (RE) (24 January 1923) Poland: Knight of the Order of the White Eagle (1922) Thailand: Knight of the Order of the Rajamitrabhorn (KRMBh) (27 May 1963) Knight of the Order of the Royal House of Chakri (KMChk) (30 January 1925) Nepal: Member of the Most Glorious Order of Ojaswi Rajanya (19 April 1960) Philippines: Grand Collar of the Order of Sikatuna (28 September 1966) Brazil: Grand Cross of the National Order of the Southern Cross (1955) Italian Royal Family: Knight of the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation (31 October 1916) Italy: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (OMRI), with Collar (9 March 1982) Belgium: Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold Malaysia: Honorary Recipient of the Order of the


id: william-jackson-hooker-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jackson_Hooker-0.md
category: reference
title: William Jackson Hooker
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jackson_Hooker
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:29.967042+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: william-jackson-hooker-20260505-0
summary:
William Jackson Hooker (6 July 1785 – 12 August 1865) was an English botanist and botanical illustrator, who became the first director of Kew when in 1841 it was recommended to be placed under state ownership as a botanic garden. At Kew he founded the Herbarium and enlarged the gardens and arboretum. The standard author abbreviation Hook. is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name. Hooker was born and educated in Norwich. An inheritance gave him the means to travel and to devote himself to the study of natural history, particularly botany. He published his account of an expedition to Iceland in 1809, even though his notes and specimens were destroyed during his voyage home. He married Maria, the eldest daughter of the Norfolk banker Dawson Turner, in 1815, afterwards living in Halesworth for 11 years, where he established a herbarium that became renowned by botanists at the time. He held the post of Regius Professor of Botany at Glasgow University, where he worked with the botanist and lithographer Thomas Hopkirk and enjoyed the supportive friendship of Joseph Banks for his exploring, collecting and organising work. In 1841 he succeeded William Townsend Aiton as


id: william-jackson-hooker-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jackson_Hooker-1.md
category: reference
title: William Jackson Hooker
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jackson_Hooker
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:29.967042+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: william-jackson-hooker-20260505-0
summary:
When a young man, Hooker gained the patronage and friendship of some of most important naturalists in eastern England, including Smith, who had founded the Linnean Society of London in 1788 and owned Carl Linnaeus's collection of plants and books, the botanist and antiquarian Dawson Turner, and Joseph Banks. In 1807, Hooker was bitten by an adder when walking near Burgh Castle and badly hurt. He was found by friends and taken to Dawson Turner's house, where he was cared for until he recovered completely from the effects of the snake's bite. Once he had fully recovered, he accompanied Turner and his wife Mary on a tour of Scotland. In 1808, he again travelled to Scotland, this time accompanied by his friend William Borrer. During this journey he discovered a new species of moss, Andreaea nivalis, on Ben Nevis, which may have led to him publishing a paper Some Observations on the Genus Andreaea in 1810. Hooker produced the illustrations for James Edward Smith's paper Characters of Hookeria, a new Genus of Mosses, with Descriptions of Ten Species, a genus named by Smith in honour of William and his older brother Joseph. Hooker had discovered a specimen of the moss


id: william-jackson-hooker-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jackson_Hooker-2.md
category: reference
title: William Jackson Hooker
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jackson_Hooker
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:29.967042+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: william-jackson-hooker-20260505-0
summary:
His years at Glasgow were his most productive, when he was known as the most active botanist in the country. In 1821 he brought out the Flora Scotica, written to be used by his botany students. He was awarded a doctorate by Glasgow University in 1821. He worked with the lithographer and botanist Thomas Hopkirk to establish the Royal Botanic Institution of Glasgow and to lay out and develop the Botanic Gardens. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1823. Under Hooker, the Botanic Gardens enjoyed remarkable success and became prominent in the botanic world. The garden was his responsibility and he set to work developing it with the help of his extensive network of friends and acquaintances. Principal among these was Sir Joseph Banks, who promised Kew's help. The botanic gardens steadily acquired new plants, often from visiting naturalists, or from students who had travelled. His work on the botanic garden resulted in experts expressing the view that "Glasgow would not suffer by comparison with any other establishment in Europe". During his professorship at Glasgow, his numerous published works included Flora Londinensis, British Flora, Flora Boreali-Americana, Icones Filicum, The Botany


id: william-jackson-hooker-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jackson_Hooker-3.md
category: reference
title: William Jackson Hooker
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jackson_Hooker
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:29.967042+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: william-jackson-hooker-20260505-0
summary:
In June 1815, he married Maria Sarah Turner, the eldest daughter of Dawson Turner and Mary Palgrave. Maria was an amateur artist who collected mosses, and who with her sister Elizabeth illustrated them for her husband. The couple toured the Lake District and across Ireland on their honeymoon, before travelling to Scotland. They had five children. William Dawson Hooker (born 1816) was a naturalist who trained as a doctor. He published Notes on Norway (1837 and 1839). He emigrated with his new wife to Jamaica to practise medicine, but died at Kingston, aged 24. Joseph Dalton Hooker (born 1817) became a botanist and was appointed the first assistant director at Kew. He served in this post for 10 years, before taking over as director from his father in 1865. The three daughters in the family were Maria (born 1819), Elizabeth (born 1820), and Mary Harriet (born 1825), who died aged sixteen. === Death === He was engaged on the Synopsis filicum with the botanist John Gilbert Baker when he contracted a throat infection then epidemic at Kew. == Works == Hooker studied mosses, liverworts, and ferns, and published a monograph on a group of liverworts, British Jungermanniae, in 1816. This


id: kenneth-hsu-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu-0.md
category: reference
title: Kenneth Hsu
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:31.108462+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: kenneth-hsu-20260505-0
summary:
Kenneth Jinghwa Hsu (simplified Chinese: 许靖华; traditional Chinese: 許靖華; pinyin: Xǔ Jìnghuá, born 28 June 1929) is a Chinese paleoclimatologist, oceanographer, and entrepreneur who was born in Nanjing, China. == Biography == Education Hsu (Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c.) studied at the Chinese National Central University (later renamed Nanjing University in mainland China and reinstated in Taiwan) (B.Sc. 1948), and came to the United States in 1948 where he studied at Ohio State University (M.A., 1950), and at University of California, Los Angeles, where he received his Ph.D. in 1953. Professional life Hsu initially worked as a petroleum geologist for the Shell Development Corporation, now called Shell Oil Company, in Houston, Texas, US, between 1954 and 1963. He was associate professor at two universities in the USA between 1963 and 1967, before becoming professor of geology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) between 1967 and 1994, where he promoted experimental geology and built up 5 leading international laboratories in the fields of rock mechanics (geophysics), mass-spectrometry (isotope geochemistry), Quaternary research (paleoclimatology), sedimentology and tectonics. It was after his retirement from University teaching that Hsu started to work in environmental engineering. Professorships & lectureships While Hsu was professor at


id: kenneth-hsu-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu-1.md
category: reference
title: Kenneth Hsu
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:31.108462+00:00
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parent: kenneth-hsu-20260505-0
summary:
Sedimentology: Journal of the International Association of Sedimentologists (Founding Editor & Editor-in-Chief 1972–1979). UK: Blackwell Science. Journal of Sedimentary Petrography. Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Geophysical Research Letters. Bulletin of the Japanese Geological Society. Tethys. Geologie Mediterrane. Scientific affiliations Advisor, Chinese Natural Science Foundation. Alumni of the Century, Nanjing University (Gold Medal, University Centenary Celebration). Associate fellow, Third World Academy of Sciences. Chair, International Marine Geology Commission, 1980–89. Chairman, department of earth sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Distinguished alumnus, Ohio State University. Emeritus professor, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. First distinguished alumni lecturer of geology, UCLA. Guest professor, National Taiwan University (1994–95). Guest professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Honorary professor, University College London, April 2008. International Writer of the Year, International Book Club (Cambridge), 2003. Keck Professor, Colorado School of Mines. Member, National Academy of Sciences, Academy Sinica (Taiwan). Member, Mediterranean Academy of Sciences. Member and foreign associate, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 1986. President, International Association of Sedimentologists, 1978–82. Senior fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, Berlin, 1995–96. University professor, Nanjing University. University professor, Beijing University of Geosciences. Advisory work Hsu was a convener of numerous scientific conferences, founder of several scientific societies, and advisor to


id: kenneth-hsu-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu-2.md
category: reference
title: Kenneth Hsu
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:31.108462+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: kenneth-hsu-20260505-0
summary:
== Career timeline == 1944-48 Bachelor of Science in geology, Nanjing University, China. 1948-50 M.A. degree in geology, Ohio State University, USA. 1950-53 Doctorate in geology and geophysics, University of California at Los Angeles, USA. 1954-63 Research geologist and research associate, Shell Development Corporation, Houston, Texas, USA. 1963-64 Associate professor, State University of New York at Binhamton, USA. 1964-67 Associate professor, University of California at Riverside, USA. 1967-94 Professor, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ), Zurich, Switzerland. 1994 Chief executive, Tarim Associates for Mineral & Oil Exploration AG, Switzerland. 1999 Chief executive, Fengshui Water Technology Limited, Lichtenstein. 2003 Chief executive and chairman of the board, Tarim Resource Recycling Limited, UK. 2005 President, Kenneth Hsu Corporation of Integrated Hydrologic Circuit Technology & Development, Beijing, China. 2007 Chief executive, Lazarus Oil International, UK. 2007 Director, Kenneth Hsu Consulting, UK. 2007 Chief engineer and senior advisor, Institute for IHC Development, National Institute Of Earth Sciences, Beijing, China. 2007 Director, Center for Environmental & Health Engineering, Henan University, Kaifeng, China. == Notable writings == Hsu authored or edited over 20 books, many in multiple languages, and was elected an International Writer of the Year by the International Book Club (Cambridge, UK) in 2003. The


id: kenneth-hsu-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu-3.md
category: reference
title: Kenneth Hsu
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:31.108462+00:00
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parent: kenneth-hsu-20260505-0
summary:
=== Climate And Peoples === 2000, Climate And Peoples: A Theory Of Climate Changes & Their Impacts On Hominid Evolution, Language Dispersal & Demographic Migrations. English. 2000, Klima Macht Geschichte: Menschheitsgeschichte als Abbild der Klimaentwicklung, Zurich: Orell Füssli Verlag, 334 pp. ISBN 3-280-02406-4. German. (Climate Makes History: The History Of Mankind As A Reflection Of Climatic Evolution) 2002, Klima nacht Geschichte, Taiwan: Commonwealth Publishers. Chinese. === Gaia & The Cambrian Explosion === 1996, Gaia & The Cambrian Explosion: A Short History for Everyone of Life on Earth. Taichung: Chinese National Museum Of Natural History, Taiwan, 51pp. Chinese. 1996, Gaia & The Cambrian Explosion: A Short History for Everyone of Life on Earth. German. === Geologic Atlas Of China === 1998, Geologic Atlas of China, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 24 plates, 362 pp. English. 1998, Geologic Atlas of China. Chinese. === Geology Of Switzerland === 1991, Geologie der Schweiz, Basel: Birkhouser, 219pp. Hardback. German. 1995, Geology of Switzerland: An Introduction to Tectonic Facies. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 250 pp. English. === Tectonic Facies Of China === 1992, Tectonic Facies of China. China: Marine Geology Research Institute (Qingdao), 96 pp. Chinese. 1996, Tectonic Facies of China. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. English. 1996, Tectonic Facies


id: kenneth-hsu-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu-4.md
category: reference
title: Kenneth Hsu
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:31.108462+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: kenneth-hsu-20260505-0
summary:
=== Science articles === The Dark Side Of Science, Global View Monthly, Commonwealth Publishers, Taipei, Taiwan, 1998. In Search Of A Common Language, Transfigural Mathematics, [14], Volume 2, Number 1, 1996, pp41–59 In Search Of A Common Language, Arbeitsberichte, Wissenschaftskolleg, Jahbrbuch 1995–1996, pp87–95 In Search Of A Physical Theory Of Time, PNAS. [15] Are Chronons the Elementary Particles in Space and Time?, Terrestrial, Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences, Volume 7, Number 239–255, June 1996. TAO, PO Box 23–59, Taipei, Taiwan, PRC. Why I Write, Transfigural Mathematics, Volume 1, Number 5, 1996, pp-11-18 Why Isaac Newton Was Not A Chinese, 24 June 1994, Abschiedsvorlesung von Prof. Dr. Kenneth J. Hsu, Auditorium Maximum der ETH Zurich Fractal Geometry Of A Career in Controversies in Modern Geology: Evolution of Geological Theories in Sedimentology, Earth History & Tectonics, edited by D.W. Müller, J.A. McKenzie, H. Weissert, Academic Press-Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, London, New York, Sydney, 1991. === Evolution articles === Is Darwinism Science? Taoists, Nazis and Gamblers Offer Different Views Of Evolution, Earthwatch Magazine, March 1989, pp15–17. Catastrophic Extinctions & The Inevitability Of The Improbable, Referat und Diskussion der 28. Sitzung der Studiengruppe Energieperspektiven Baden, 26. Marz 1987, Doukumentation Nr. 28, Studiengruppe Energieperspektiven. Evolution, Ideology, Darwinism


id: kenneth-hsu-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu-5.md
category: reference
title: Kenneth Hsu
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hsu
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:31.108462+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: kenneth-hsu-20260505-0
summary:
== Other writings == 1970 Development of the Northern Apennines Geosyncline, ed. by G. Sestini, Palaoegeography, Palaeoclimatol, Palaeocol., 11, (1972), pp. 72–74, XIV 1973 Atlas of Palaeobiogeography, ed. by Anthony Hallam, Sedimentology (1973), v. 20, Aug. 1973, pp. 453–454, XIII 1974 Marine Evaporites, Origin, Diagenesis and Geochemistry, ed. by D.W. Kirkland, et al. Sedimentology, v. 21, no. 3, Aug. 1974, pp. 486–487, XIII. 1977 International Stratigraphic Guide, ed. by H.D. Hedberg, et al., Sedimentology (1977), v. 24, pp. 597–598, XIII. 1978 Sedimentary Rocks, by F.J. Petitjohn - Sedimentary Petrology, Part II, by H. Füchtbauer - Sediment Petrologie, Teil II, by H. Füchtbauer & G. Müller - Origin of Sedimentary Rocks, by H. Blatt, et al. Sedimentology (1978), 25, pp. 149–152, XIII 1978 The Evolution of North America, by Ph. B. King - Studies in Palaeo-Oceanography, by W.W. Hay - Palaeographic Provinces and Provinciality, by Ch. A. Ross - Tectonics and Sedimentation, by W.R. Dickinson Sedimentology, v. 25, no. 5, Oct. 1978, pp. 732–735, XIII. 1979 Sorby on Geology, ed. by Ch. Summerson, Sedimentology, v. 26, no. 6, Dec. 1979, pp. 873–875, XIII. 1981 The Geological Evolution of the River Nile, by R. Said, Springer 1981, 151 pp. 73 figs., in


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-0.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
summary:
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography, while his advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement pioneered modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring. Humboldt and Carl Ritter are both regarded as the founders of modern geography as they established it as an independent scientific discipline. Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in the Americas, exploring and describing them for the first time from a non-Spanish European scientific point of view. On these travels, along with French explorer Aimé Bonpland, he traversed thousands of miles through some of the most difficult and little-known places on Earth, to include identifying the source of the Orinoco River and in 1802 climbing the highest mountain in Ecuador to a height of 19,286 feet, at the time a world record altitude for a Westerner. His description of the journey was written up and published in several volumes over 21 years. Humboldt resurrected the use of the


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-1.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
summary:
Due to his youthful penchant for collecting and labeling plants, shells, and insects, Alexander received the playful title of "the little apothecary". Marked for a political career, Alexander studied finance for six months in 1787 at the University of Frankfurt (Oder), which his mother might have chosen less for its academic excellence than its closeness to their home in Berlin. On 25 April 1789, he matriculated at the University of Göttingen, then known for the lectures of C. G. Heyne and anatomist J. F. Blumenbach. His brother Wilhelm was already a student at Göttingen, but they did not interact much, since their intellectual interests were quite different. His vast and varied interests were by this time fully developed. At the University of Göttingen, Humboldt met Steven Jan van Geuns, a Dutch medical student, with whom he travelled to the Rhine in the fall of 1789. In Mainz, they met Georg Forster, a naturalist who had been with Captain James Cook on his second voyage. Humboldt's scientific excursion resulted in his 1790 treatise Mineralogische Beobachtungen über einige Basalte am Rhein (Brunswick, 1790) (Mineralogic Observations on Several Basalts on the River Rhine). The following year, 1790, Humboldt returned to Mainz to embark


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-2.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
summary:
In 1794, Humboldt was admitted to the famous group of intellectuals and cultural leaders of Weimar Classicism. Goethe and Schiller were the key figures at the time. Humboldt contributed (7 June 1795) to Schiller's new periodical, Die Horen, a philosophical allegory entitled Die Lebenskraft, oder der rhodische Genius (The Life Force, or the Rhodian Genius). In this short piece, the only literary story Humboldt ever authored, he tried to summarize the often contradictory results of the thousands of Galvanic experiments he had undertaken. In 1792 and 1797, Humboldt was in Vienna; in 1795 he made a geological and botanical tour through Switzerland and Italy. Although this service to the state was regarded by him as only an apprenticeship to the service of science, he fulfilled its duties with such conspicuous ability that not only did he rise rapidly to the highest post in his department, but he was also entrusted with several important diplomatic missions. Neither brother attended the funeral of their mother on 19 November 1796. Humboldt had not hidden his aversion to his mother, with one correspondent writing of him after her death, "her death... must be particularly welcomed by you". After severing his official connections, he awaited


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-3.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00
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parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
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Armed with authorization from the King of Spain, Humboldt and Bonpland made haste to sail, taking the ship Pizarro from La Coruña, on 5 June 1799. The ship stopped six days on the island of Tenerife, where Humboldt climbed the volcano Teide, and then sailed on to the New World, landing at Cumaná, Venezuela, on 16 July. The ship's destination was not originally Cumaná, but an outbreak of typhoid on board meant that the captain changed course from Havana to land in northern South America. Humboldt had not mapped out a specific plan of exploration, so that the change did not upend a fixed itinerary. He later wrote that the diversion to Venezuela made possible his explorations along the Orinoco River to the border of Portuguese Brazil. With the diversion, the Pizarro encountered two large dugout canoes each carrying 18 Guayaqui Indians. The Pizarro's captain accepted the offer of one of them to serve as pilot. Humboldt hired this Indian, named Carlos del Pino, as a guide. Venezuela from the 16th to the 18th centuries was a relative backwater compared to the seats of the Spanish viceroyalties based in New Spain (Mexico) and Peru, but during the Bourbon reforms, the


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-4.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00
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parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
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On 24 November 1800, the two friends set sail for Cuba, landing on 19 December, where they met fellow botanist and plant collector John Fraser. Fraser and his son had been shipwrecked off the Cuban coast, and did not have a license to be in the Spanish Indies. Humboldt, who was already in Cuba, interceded with crown officials in Havana, as well as giving them money and clothing. Fraser obtained permission to remain in Cuba and explore. Humboldt entrusted Fraser with taking two cases of Humboldt and Bonpland's botanical specimens to England when he returned, for eventual conveyance to the German botanist Willdenow in Berlin. Humboldt and Bonpland stayed in Cuba until 5 March 1801, when they left for the mainland of northern South America again, arriving there on 30 March. Humboldt is considered to be the "second discoverer of Cuba" due to the scientific and social research he conducted on this Spanish colony. During an initial three-month stay at Havana, his first tasks were to survey that city properly and the nearby towns of Guanabacoa, Regla, and Bejucal. He befriended Cuban landowner and thinker Francisco de Arango y Parreño; together they visited the Guines area in south Havana, the


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-5.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00
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parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
summary:
Humboldt and Bonpland had not intended to go to New Spain, but when they were unable to join a voyage to the Pacific, they left the Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil and headed for Acapulco on Mexico's west coast. Even before Humboldt and Bonpland started on their way to New Spain's capital on Mexico's central plateau, Humboldt realized the captain of the vessel that brought them to Acapulco had reckoned its location incorrectly. Since Acapulco was the main west-coast port and the terminus of the Asian trade from the Spanish Philippines, having accurate maps of its location was extremely important. Humboldt set up his instruments, surveying the deep-water bay of Acapulco, to determine its longitude. Humboldt and Bonpland landed in Acapulco on 15 February 1803, and from there they went to Taxco, a silver-mining town in modern Guerrero. In April 1803, he visited Cuernavaca, Morelos. Impressed by its climate, he nicknamed the city the City of Eternal Spring. Humboldt and Bonpland arrived in Mexico City, having been officially welcomed via a letter from the king's representative in New Spain, Viceroy Don José de Iturrigaray. Humboldt was also given a special passport to travel throughout New Spain and letters of introduction to


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-6.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00
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parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
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=== The United States, 1804 === Leaving from Cuba, Humboldt decided to take an unplanned short visit to the United States. Knowing that the current U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson, was himself a scientist, Humboldt wrote to him saying that he would be in the United States. Jefferson warmly replied, inviting him to visit the White House in the nation's new capital. In his letter Humboldt had gained Jefferson's interest by mentioning that he had discovered mammoth teeth near the Equator. Jefferson had previously written that he believed mammoths had never lived so far south. Humboldt had also hinted at his knowledge of New Spain. Arriving in Philadelphia, which was a center of learning in the U.S., Humboldt met with some of the major scientific figures of the era, including chemist and anatomist Caspar Wistar, who pushed for compulsory smallpox vaccination, and botanist Benjamin Smith Barton, as well as physician Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who wished to hear about cinchona bark from a South American tree, which cured fevers. Humboldt's treatise on cinchona was published in English in 1821. After arriving in Washington D.C, Humboldt held numerous intense discussions with Jefferson on both scientific matters and


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-7.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00
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parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
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Humboldt saw the need for an approach to science that could account for the harmony of nature among the diversity of the physical world. For Humboldt, "the unity of nature" meant that it was the interrelation of all physical sciences—such as the conjoining between biology, meteorology and geology—that determined where specific plants grew. He found these relationships by unraveling myriad, painstakingly collected data, data extensive enough that it became an enduring foundation upon which others could base their work. Humboldt viewed nature holistically, and tried to explain natural phenomena without the appeal to religious dogma. He believed in the central importance of observation, and as a consequence had amassed a vast array of the most sophisticated scientific instruments then available. Each had its own velvet lined box and was the most accurate and portable of its time; nothing quantifiable escaped measurement. According to Humboldt, everything should be measured with the finest and most modern instruments and sophisticated techniques available, for that collected data was the basis of all scientific understanding. This quantitative methodology would become known as Humboldtian science. Humboldt wrote "Nature herself is sublimely eloquent. The stars as they sparkle in firmament fill us with delight and ecstasy, and


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-8.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
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parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
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Humboldt conducted a census of the indigenous and European inhabitants in New Spain, publishing a schematized drawing of racial types and populations distribution, grouping them by region and social characteristics. He estimated the population to be six million individuals. He estimated Indians to be forty percent of New Spain's population, but their distribution being uneven; the most dense were in the center and south of Mexico, the least dense in the north. He presented these data in chart form, for easier understanding. He also surveyed the non-Indian population, categorized as Whites (Spaniards), Negroes, and castes (castas). American-born Spaniards, so-called creoles had been painting depictions of mixed-race family groupings in the eighteenth century, showing father of one racial category, mother of another, and the offspring in a third category in hierarchical order, so racial hierarchy was an essential way elites viewed Mexican society. Humboldt reported that American-born Spaniards were legally racial equals of those born in Spain, but the crown policy since the Bourbons took the Spanish throne privileged those born in Iberia. Humboldt observed that "the most miserable European, without education and without intellectual cultivation, thinks himself superior to whites born in the new continent". The truth in this assertion,


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-9.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
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During his lifetime Humboldt became one of the most famous men in Europe. Academies, both native and foreign, were eager to elect him to their membership, the first being The American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, which he visited at the tail end of his travel through the Americas. He was elected to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1805. Over the years other learned societies in the U.S. elected him a member, including the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, MA) in 1816; the Linnean Society of London in 1818; the New York Historical Society in 1820; a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1822; the American Ethnological Society (New York) in 1843; and the American Geographical and Statistical Society, (New York) in 1856. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1810. The Royal Society, whose president Sir Joseph Banks had aided Humboldt as a young man, now welcomed him as a foreign member. After Mexican independence from Spain in 1821, the Mexican government recognized him with high honors for his services to the nation. In 1827, the first President of Mexico, Guadalupe Victoria granted Humboldt Mexican citizenship and


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-10.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
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parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
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In 1811, and again in 1818, projects of Asiatic exploration were proposed to Humboldt, first by Tsar Nicholas I's Russian government, and afterwards by the Prussian government; but on each occasion, untoward circumstances interposed. It was not until he had begun his sixtieth year that he resumed his early role of traveler in the interests of science. The Russian Finance Minister, Count Georg von Cancrin, contacted Humboldt about whether a platinum-based currency was possible in Russia and invited him to visit the Ural Mountains. Humboldt was not encouraging about a platinum-based currency, when silver was the standard as a world currency. But the invitation to visit the Urals was intriguing, especially since Humboldt had long dreamed of going to Asia. He had wanted to travel to India and made considerable efforts to persuade the British East India Company to authorize a trip, but those efforts were fruitless. When Russia renewed its earlier invitation to Humboldt, he accepted. The Russians sought to entice Humboldt by engaging his enduring interest in mining sites, for comparative scientific purposes for Humboldt, but for the Russians to gain expert knowledge about their resources. For Humboldt, the Russian monarch's promise to fund the trip was extremely


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-11.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00
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parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
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Between May and November 1829 he and the growing expedition traversed the wide expanse of the Russian empire from the Neva to the Yenisei, accomplishing in twenty-five weeks a distance of 9,614 miles (15,472 km). Humboldt and the expedition party travelled by coach on well maintained roads, with rapid progress being made because of changes of horses at way stations. The party had grown, with Johann Seifert, who was a huntsman and collector of animal specimens; a Russian mining official; Count Adolphe Polier, one of Humboldt's friends from Paris; a cook; plus a contingent of Cossacks for security. Three carriages were filled with people, supplies, and scientific instruments. For Humboldt's magnetic readings to be accurate, they carried an iron-free tent. This expedition was unlike his Spanish American travels with Bonpland, with the two alone and sometimes accompanied by local guides. The Russian government was interested in Humboldt's finding prospects for mining and commercial advancement of the realm and made it clear that Humboldt was not to investigate social issues, nor criticize social conditions of Russian serfs. In his publications on Spanish America, he did comment on the conditions of the indigenous populations, and deplored black slavery, but well after he


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-12.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
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parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
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As with most of Humboldt's works, Kosmos was also translated into multiple languages in editions of uneven quality. It was very popular in Britain and America. In 1849 a German newspaper commented that in England two of the three different translations were made by women, "while in Germany most of the men do not understand it". The first translation by Augustin Pritchard—published anonymously by Mr. Baillière (volume I in 1845 and volume II in 1848)—suffered from being hurriedly made. In a letter Humboldt said of it: "It will damage my reputation. All the charm of my description is destroyed by an English sounding like Sanskrit." The other two translations were made by Elizabeth Juliana Leeves Sabine under the superintendence of her husband Col. Edward Sabine (4 volumes 1846–1858), and by Elise Otté (5 volumes 1849–1858, the only complete translation of the 4 German volumes). These three translations were also published in the United States. The numbering of the volumes differs between the German and the English editions. Volume 3 of the German edition corresponds to the volumes 3 and 4 of the English translation, as the German volume appeared in 2 parts in 1850 and 1851. Volume 5 of the


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-13.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00
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parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
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Humboldt was generous toward his friends and mentored young scientists. He and Bonpland parted ways after their return to Europe, and Humboldt largely took on the task of publishing the results of their Latin American expedition at Humboldt's expense, but he included Bonpland as co-author on the nearly 30 published volumes. Bonpland returned to Latin America, settling in Buenos Aires, Argentina, then moved to the countryside near the border with Paraguay. The forces of Dr. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, the strong man of Paraguay, abducted Bonpland after killing Bonpland's estate workers. Bonpland was accused of "agricultural espionage" and of threatening Paraguay's virtual monopoly on the cultivation of yerba mate. Despite international pressure, including the British government and Simón Bolívar's, along with European scientists including Humboldt, Francia kept Bonpland prisoner until 1831. He was released after nearly 10 years in Paraguay. Humboldt and Bonpland maintained a warm correspondence about science and politics until Bonpland's death in 1858. During Humboldt's time in Paris, he met in 1818 the young and brilliant Peruvian student of the Royal Mining School of Paris, Mariano Eduardo de Rivero y Ustariz. Subsequently, Humboldt acted as a mentor of the career of this promising Peruvian scientist. Another


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-14.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00
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In the Napoleonic wars, Prussia had capitulated to France, signing the Treaty of Tilsit. The Prussian royal family returned to Berlin, but sought better terms of the treaty and Friedrich Wilhelm III commissioned his younger brother Prince Wilhelm with this. Friedrich Wilhelm III asked Alexander to be part of the mission, charged with introducing the prince to Paris society. This turn of events for Humboldt could not have been better, since he desired to live in Paris rather than Berlin. In 1814 Humboldt accompanied the allied sovereigns to London. Three years later he was summoned by the king of Prussia to attend him at the congress of Aachen. Again in the autumn of 1822 he accompanied the same monarch to the Congress of Verona, proceeded thence with the royal party to Rome and Naples and returned to Paris in the spring of 1823. Humboldt had long regarded Paris as his true home. Thus, when at last he received from his sovereign a summons to join his court at Berlin, he obeyed reluctantly. Between 1830 and 1848 Humboldt was frequently employed in diplomatic missions to the court of King Louis Philippe of France, with whom he always maintained the most cordial


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-15.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:32.417759+00:00
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parent: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-0
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Because Humboldt did not mention God in his work Cosmos, and sometimes spoke unfavourably of religious attitudes, it was occasionally speculated that he was a materialist philosopher, or perhaps an atheist. However, unlike irreligious figures such as Robert G. Ingersoll, who went so far as to use Humboldtian science to campaign against religion, Humboldt himself denied imputations of atheism. In a letter to Varnhagen von Ense he emphasized that he believed the world had indeed been created, writing of Cosmos: "...'creation' and the 'created world' are never lost sight of in the book. And did I not, only eight months ago, in the French translation, say, in the plainest terms: 'It is this necessity of things, this occult but permanent connection, this periodical return in the progress, development of formation, phenomena, and events which constitute 'Nature' submissive to a controlling power?'" It has been argued that "although Humboldt emphasizes the basis of morality in the nature of man, he does acknowledge that a belief in God is linked directly to acts of virtue" and therefore "the dignity of man lies at the centre of Humboldt's religious thought". Humboldt also believed firmly in an afterlife. A letter he wrote to his


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-16
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-16.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
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=== Illness and death === On 24 February 1857, Humboldt suffered a minor stroke, which passed without perceptible symptoms. It was not until the winter of 1858–1859 that his strength began to decline; on 6 May 1859, he died peacefully in Berlin, aged 89. His last words were reported to be "How glorious these sunbeams are! They seem to call Earth to the Heavens!" His remains were conveyed in state through the streets of Berlin, in a hearse drawn by six horses. Royal chamberlains led the cortège, each charged with carrying a pillow with Humboldt's medals and other decorations of honor. Humboldt's extended family, descendants of his brother Wilhelm, walked in the procession. Humboldt's coffin was received by the prince-regent at the door of the cathedral. He was interred at the family resting-place at Tegel, alongside his brother Wilhelm and sister-in-law Caroline. == Honours and namesakes == The honours which had been showered on Humboldt during their life continued after his death. More species are named after Humboldt than after any other human being. The first centenary of Humboldt's birth was celebrated on 14 September 1869, with great enthusiasm in both the New and Old Worlds. Numerous monuments were constructed


id: alexander-von-humboldt-20260505-17
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt-17.md
category: reference
title: Alexander von Humboldt
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
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=== Ships === Alexander von Humboldt is also a German ship named after the scientist, originally built in 1906 by the German shipyard AG Weser at Bremen as Reserve Sonderburg. She was operated throughout the North and Baltic Seas until being retired in 1986. Subsequently, she was converted into a three-masted barque by the German shipyard Motorwerke Bremerhaven, and was re-launched in 1988 as Alexander von Humboldt. The Jan De Nul Group operates a hopper dredger built in 1998 also named Alexander von Humboldt. === Recognitions by contemporaries === Simón Bolívar wrote that "The real discoverer of South America was Humboldt, since his work was more useful for our people than the work of all conquerors". Charles Darwin expressed his debt to Humboldt, and admiration for his work, writing to Joseph Dalton Hooker that Humboldt was the "greatest scientific traveller who ever lived". Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote that "Alexander is destined to combine ideas and follow chains of thoughts which would otherwise have remained unknown for ages. His depth, his sharp mind and his incredible speed are a rare combination." Johann Wolfgang Goethe observed that "Humboldt showers us with true treasures". Friedrich Schiller wrote that "Alexander impresses many, particularly when


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-0.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
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Thomas Jefferson (April 13 [O.S. April 2], 1743 – July 4, 1826) was a Founding Father, second vice president, and third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. He was a leading proponent of democracy, republicanism, and natural rights, and produced formative documents and decisions at the state, national, and international levels. Jefferson was born into the Colony of Virginia's planter class. During the American Revolution, he represented Virginia in the Second Continental Congress, which unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson's advocacy for individual rights, including freedom of thought, speech, and religion, helped shape the ideological foundations of the revolution. Jefferson served as the second governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781. In 1785, Congress appointed him as U.S. Minister to France, where he served from 1785 to 1789. President George Washington then appointed Jefferson the nation's first secretary of state, where he served from 1790 to 1793. In 1792, Jefferson and political ally James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the nation's First Party System. Jefferson and Federalist John Adams became both personal friends and political rivals. In


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-1.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
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parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 (April 2, 1743, Old Style, Julian calendar), at the family's Shadwell Plantation in the Colony of Virginia, then one of the Thirteen Colonies of British America. He was the third of ten children. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a planter and surveyor; his mother was Jane Randolph. Peter Jefferson moved his family to Tuckahoe Plantation in 1745 following the death of William Randolph III, the plantation's owner and Jefferson's friend, who in his will had named Peter guardian of Randolph's children. The Jeffersons returned to Shadwell before October 1753. Jefferson began his education together with the Randolph children at Tuckahoe under tutors. Thomas' father Peter, who was self-taught and regretted not having a formal education, entered Thomas into an English school at age five. In 1752, at age nine, he attended a local school run by a Presbyterian minister and also began studying the natural world, which he grew to love. He studied Latin, Greek, and French, and began learning to ride horses. Thomas read books from his father's modest library. He was taught from 1758 to 1760 by the Reverend James Maury near Gordonsville, Virginia, where he studied history, science, and the


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-2.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
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parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
In 1767, Jefferson was granted admission to the Virginia bar, and lived with his mother at Shadwell. Between 1769 and 1775, he represented Albemarle County in Virginia's House of Burgesses. While serving in the House of Burgesses, Jefferson pursued reforms to slavery, including writing and sponsoring legislation in 1769 to strip power from the royal governor and courts, instead providing masters of slaves with the discretion to emancipate them. Jefferson persuaded his cousin Richard Bland to spearhead the legislation's passage, but it faced strong opposition in a state whose economy was largely agrarian. As a lawyer, Jefferson took on seven freedom-seeking enslaved people as clients and waived his fee for one he claimed should be freed before the minimum statutory age for emancipation. Jefferson invoked natural law, arguing "everyone comes into the world with a right to his own person and using it at his own will ... This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because it is necessary for his own sustenance." The judge cut him off and ruled against his client. As a consolation, Jefferson gave his client some money, which was conceivably used to aid his escape shortly


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-3.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
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parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. At age 33, he was one of the youngest delegates to the Second Continental Congress, which convened in the colonial capital of Philadelphia following the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which launched the American Revolutionary War in 1775. Delegates to the Congress overwhelmingly favored authoring, ratifying, and issuing a formal declaration of independence from Britain. Jefferson was inspired by the Enlightenment ideals of the sanctity of the individual, and the writings of Locke and Montesquieu. Jefferson sought out John Adams, a Continental Congress delegate from Massachusetts and an emerging leader in the Congress. They became close friends, and Adams supported Jefferson's appointment to the Committee of Five, which the Congress charged with authoring the Declaration: Adams, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman. The committee initially thought that Adams should write the document, but Adams persuaded the committee to choose Jefferson due to Jefferson being a Virginian, popular, and a good writer by Adams. Jefferson consulted with his fellow committee members, but mostly wrote the Declaration of Independence in isolation between June 11 and 28, 1776. Jefferson drew considerably on his proposed draft of the Virginia Constitution, George


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-4.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
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parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
In 1780, Jefferson received a letter of inquiry from French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois into the geography, history, and government of Virginia, as part of a study of the United States. Jefferson organized his responses in a book, Notes on the State of Virginia (1785). The book explores what constitutes a good society, using Virginia as an exemplar. Jefferson included extensive data about the state's natural resources and economy and wrote at length about slavery and miscegenation; he articulated his belief that blacks and whites could not live together as free people in one society because of justified resentments of the enslaved. He also wrote of his views on the American Indians, equating them to European settlers. Notes was first published in 1785 in French and appeared in English in 1787. Biographer George Tucker considered the work "surprising in the extent of the information which a single individual had been thus far able to acquire, as to the physical features of the state"; University of Virginia historian Merrill D. Peterson described it as an accomplishment for which all Americans should be grateful. == Member of Congress == Jefferson was appointed a Virginia delegate to the Congress of the Confederation organized following


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-5.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
Jefferson sent for his youngest surviving child, nine-year-old Polly, in June 1787. She was accompanied by a young slave from Monticello, Sally Hemings. Jefferson had taken her older brother, James Hemings, to Paris as part of his domestic staff and had him trained in French cuisine. According to Sally's son, Madison Hemings, 16-year-old Sally and Jefferson began a sexual relationship in Paris, where she became pregnant. Madison indicated his mother agreed to return to the United States only after Jefferson promised to free her children when they came of age. While in France, Jefferson became a regular companion of the Marquis de Lafayette, a French hero of the American Revolution, and Jefferson used his influence with Lafayette to procure trade agreements with France. As the French Revolution began, Jefferson agreed to allow his Paris residence at Hôtel de Langeac to be used for meetings by Lafayette and other revolutionary leaders. He was in Paris during the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and he consulted with Lafayette as Lafayette drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Jefferson often found his mail opened by postmasters, so he invented his own enciphering device, the "Wheel


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-6.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
In the presidential campaign of 1796, Jefferson lost the electoral college vote to Federalist John Adams 71–68. He did, however, receive the second-highest number of votes and, under the electoral laws at the time, was elected as vice president. As presiding officer of the United States Senate, Jefferson assumed a more passive role than his predecessor, John Adams. He allowed the Senate to freely conduct debates and confined his participation to procedural issues, which he called an "honorable and easy" role. Jefferson previously studied parliamentary law and procedure for 40 years, making him qualified to serve as presiding officer. In 1800, he published his assembled notes on Senate procedure as A Manual of Parliamentary Practice. He cast only three tie-breaking votes in the Senate. In four confidential talks with French consul Joseph Létombe in the spring of 1797, Jefferson attacked Adams, predicting that his rival would only serve one term. He also encouraged France to invade England, and advised Létombe to stall any American envoys sent to Paris. This toughened the tone that the French government adopted toward the Adams administration. After Adams's initial peace envoys were rebuffed, Jefferson and his supporters lobbied for the release of papers related to


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-7.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
=== Financial affairs === Jefferson's first challenge as president was shrinking the $83 million national debt. He began dismantling Hamilton's Federalist fiscal system with help from the secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallatin. Gallatin devised a plan to eliminate the national debt in sixteen years by extensive annual appropriations and reduction in taxes. The administration eliminated the whiskey excise and other taxes after closing "unnecessary offices" and cutting "useless establishments and expenses". Jefferson believed that the First Bank of the United States represented a "most deadly hostility" to republican government. He wanted to dismantle the bank before its charter expired in 1811, but was dissuaded by Gallatin. Gallatin argued that the national bank was a useful financial institution and set out to expand its operations. Jefferson looked to other corners to address the growing national debt. He shrank the Navy, for example, deeming it unnecessary in peacetime, and incorporated a fleet of inexpensive gunboats intended only for local defense to avoid provocation against foreign powers. After two terms, he had lowered the national debt from $83 million to $57 million. === Domestic affairs === Jefferson pardoned several of those imprisoned under the Alien and Sedition Acts. Congressional Republicans repealed the


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-8.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
Spain ceded ownership of the Louisiana territory in 1800 to France. Jefferson was concerned that Napoleon's interests in the vast territory would threaten the security of the continent and Mississippi River shipping. He wrote that the cession "works most sorely on the U.S. It completely reverses all the political relations of the U.S." In 1802, he instructed James Monroe and Robert R. Livingston to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans and adjacent coastal areas. In early 1803, Jefferson offered Napoleon nearly $10 million for 40,000 square miles (100,000 square kilometres) of tropical territory. Napoleon realized that French military control was impractical over such a vast remote territory, and he was in dire need of funds for his wars on the home front. In early April 1803, he unexpectedly made negotiators a counter-offer to sell 827,987 square miles (2,144,480 square kilometres) of French territory for $15 million (~$380 million in 2024), doubling the size of the United States. U.S. negotiators accepted the offer and signed the treaty on April 30, 1803. Word of the unexpected purchase did not reach Jefferson until July 3, 1803. He unknowingly acquired the most fertile tract of land of its size on Earth, making the new


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-9.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
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parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
Jefferson refuted the contemporary notion that Indians were inferior and maintained that they were equal in body and mind to people of European descent, although he believed them to be inferior in terms of culture and technology. As governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War, Jefferson recommended moving the Cherokee and Shawnee tribes, who had allied with the British, to west of the Mississippi River. But when he took office as president, he quickly took measures to avert another major conflict, as American and Indian societies were in collision and the British were inciting Indian tribes from Canada. In Georgia, he stipulated that the state would release its legal claims for lands to its west in exchange for military support in expelling the Cherokee from Georgia. This facilitated his policy of western expansion, to "advance compactly as we multiply". In keeping with his Enlightenment thinking, President Jefferson adopted an assimilation policy toward American Indians known as his "civilization program" which included securing peaceful U.S.–Indian treaty alliances and encouraging agriculture. Jefferson advocated that Indian tribes should make federal purchases by credit holding their lands as collateral. Various tribes accepted Jefferson's policies, including the Shawnees led by Black Hoof, the Muscogee, and


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-10.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
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parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
Following the 1801 electoral deadlock, Jefferson's relationship with his vice president, Aaron Burr, rapidly eroded. Jefferson suspected Burr of seeking the presidency for himself, while Burr was angered by Jefferson's refusal to appoint some of his supporters to federal office. Burr was dropped from the Democratic-Republican ticket in 1804 in favor of charismatic George Clinton. The same year, Burr was soundly defeated in his bid to be elected New York governor. During the campaign, Alexander Hamilton made publicly callous remarks regarding Burr's moral character. Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel, held on July 11, 1804. In the duel, Burr mortally wounded Hamilton, who died the following day. Burr was subsequently indicted for Hamilton's murder, causing him to flee to Georgia, even though he remained president of the U.S. Senate during Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase's impeachment trial. Both indictments quietly died and Burr was not prosecuted. In August 1804, Burr contacted British Minister Anthony Merry offering to cede U.S. western territory in return for money and British ships. After leaving office in April 1805, Burr traveled west and conspired with Louisiana Territory governor James Wilkinson, beginning a large-scale recruitment for a military expedition. Burr discussed seizing control of Mexico or


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-11.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
In December 1807, news arrived that Napoleon had extended the Berlin Decree, globally banning British imports. The Royal Navy, meanwhile continued to impress sailors from American merchant ships. However, Congress had no appetite to prepare the U.S. for war; Jefferson asked for and received the Embargo Act, an alternative that allowed the U.S. more time to build up defensive works, militias, and naval forces. Meacham argued that the Embargo Act was a projection of power that surpassed the Alien and Sedition Acts, and R. B. Bernstein said that Jefferson "was pursuing policies resembling those he had cited in 1776 as grounds for independence and revolution". In November 1807, Jefferson, for several days, met with his cabinet to discuss the deteriorating foreign situation. Secretary of State James Madison supported the embargo, while Treasury Secretary Gallatin opposed it, due to its indefinite time frame and the risk to the policy of American neutrality. The U.S. economy suffered, criticism grew, and opponents began evading the embargo. Instead of retreating, Jefferson sent federal agents to secretly track down smugglers and violators. Three acts were passed in Congress during 1807 and 1808, called the Supplementary, the Additional, and the Enforcement acts. The government could not


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-12.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
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parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
=== Autobiography === In 1821, at the age of 77, Jefferson began writing his Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson: 1743–1790, in which he said he sought to "state some recollections of dates and facts concerning myself". He focused on the struggles and achievements he experienced until July 29, 1790, where the narrative stopped short. He excluded his youth, emphasizing the revolutionary era. He related that his ancestors came from Wales to America in the early 17th century and settled in the western frontier of the Virginia colony, which influenced his zeal for individual and state rights. Jefferson described his father as uneducated, but with a "strong mind and sound judgement". He also addressed his enrollment in the College of William & Mary and his election to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775. He expressed opposition to the idea of a privileged aristocracy made up of large landowning families partial to the King, and instead promoted "the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society, & scattered with equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic". The work is primarily concerned with the Declaration and reforming


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-13.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
Jefferson subscribed to the political ideals expounded by John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton, whom he considered the three greatest men who ever lived. He was also influenced by the writings of Gibbon, Hume, Robertson, Bolingbroke, Montesquieu, and Voltaire. Jefferson thought that the independent yeoman and agrarian life were ideals of republican virtues. He distrusted cities and financiers, favored decentralized government power, and believed that the tyranny that had plagued the common man in Europe was due to corrupt political establishments and monarchies. He supported efforts to disestablish the Church of England, wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and he pressed for a wall of separation between church and state. The Republicans under Jefferson were strongly influenced by the 18th-century British Whig Party, which believed in limited government. His Democratic-Republican Party became dominant in early American politics, and his views became known as Jeffersonian democracy. === Philosophy, society, and government === Jefferson wrote letters and speeches prolifically; these show him to be well-read in the philosophical literature of his day and of antiquity. Nevertheless, some scholars do not take Jefferson seriously as a philosopher mainly because he did not produce a formal work on philosophy. However, he has


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-14.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
Jefferson considered democracy to be the expression of society and promoted national self-determination, cultural uniformity, and education of all males of the commonwealth. He supported public education and a free press as essential components of a democratic nation. After resigning as secretary of state in 1793, Jefferson focused on the electoral bases of the Republicans and Federalists. The "Republican" classification for which he advocated included "the entire body of landholders" everywhere and "the body of laborers" without land. Republicans united behind Jefferson as vice president, with the election of 1796 expanding democracy nationwide at grassroots levels. Jefferson promoted Republican candidates for local offices. Beginning with Jefferson's electioneering for the "revolution of 1800", his political efforts were based on egalitarian appeals. In his later years, he referred to the 1800 election "as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of '76 was in its form", one "not effected indeed by the sword ... but by the ... suffrage of the people". Voter participation grew during Jefferson's presidency, increasing to "unimaginable levels" compared to the Federalist Era, with turnout of about 67,000 in 1800 rising to about 143,000 in 1804. At the onset of the American Revolution, Jefferson


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-15.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
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parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; & that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. In 1791, President Washington asked Jefferson, then secretary of state, and Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury, if the Congress had the authority to create a national bank. While Hamilton believed so, Jefferson and Madison thought a national bank would ignore the needs of individuals and farmers, and would violate the Tenth Amendment by assuming powers not granted to the federal government by the states. Hamilton successfully argued that the implied powers given to the federal government in the Constitution supported the creation of a national bank, among other federal actions. Jefferson used agrarian resistance to banks and speculators as the first defining principle of an opposition party, recruiting candidates for Congress on the issue as early as 1792. As president, Jefferson was persuaded by Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin to leave the bank intact but sought to restrain its influence. === Slavery === Scholars give radically differing interpretations on Jefferson's views and relationship with slavery. Opinions range from "emancipationists" who view him as an early


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-16
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-16.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
Claims that Jefferson fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings after his wife's death have been debated since 1802. In that year James T. Callender, after being denied a position as postmaster, alleged Jefferson had taken Hemings as a concubine and fathered several children with her. In 1998, a panel of researchers conducted a Y-DNA study of living descendants of Jefferson's uncle, Field, and of a descendant of Hemings's son, Eston Hemings. The results showed a match with the male Jefferson line. Subsequently, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) formed a nine-member research team of historians to assess the matter. The TJF report concluded that "the DNA study ... indicates a high probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings". The TJF also concluded that Jefferson likely fathered all of Hemings's children listed at Monticello. In July 2017, the TJF announced that archeological excavations at Monticello had revealed what they believe to have been Sally Hemings's quarters, adjacent to Jefferson's bedroom. Since the results of the DNA tests were made public, the consensus among most historians has been that Jefferson had a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings and that he was the father of her son Eston Hemings. A minority of scholars


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-17
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-17.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
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parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
=== Linguistics === Jefferson had a lifelong interest in linguistics, and could speak, read, and write in a number of languages, including French, Greek, Italian, and German. In his early years, he excelled in classical languages. Jefferson later came to regard Greek as the "perfect language" as expressed in its laws and philosophy. While attending the College of William & Mary, he taught himself Italian. Here Jefferson first became familiar with the Anglo-Saxon language, studying it in a linguistic and philosophical capacity. He owned 17 volumes of Anglo-Saxon texts and grammar and later wrote an essay on the Anglo-Saxon language. Jefferson claimed to have taught himself Spanish during his nineteen-day journey to France, using only a grammar guide and a copy of Don Quixote. Linguistics played a significant role in how Jefferson modeled and expressed political and philosophical ideas. He believed that the study of ancient languages was essential in understanding the roots of modern language. Jefferson criticized language purists and supported the introduction of neologisms to English, foreseeing the emergence of "an American dialect". He described the Académie Française, a body designated to regulate the French language, as an "endeavor to arrest the progress of their language". He collected


id: thomas-jefferson-20260505-18
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson-18.md
category: reference
title: Thomas Jefferson
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:33.894887+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: thomas-jefferson-20260505-0
summary:
Jefferson has been memorialized with buildings, sculptures, postage, and currency. In the 1920s, Jefferson, together with George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, was chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and approved by President Calvin Coolidge to be depicted in a stone national memorial at Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills in South Dakota. The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., in 1943, on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth. The interior of the memorial includes a 19-foot (6 m) statue of Jefferson by Rudulph Evans and engravings of passages from Jefferson's writings. Most prominent among these passages are the words inscribed around the Jefferson Memorial: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man", a quote from Jefferson's September 23, 1800, letter to Benjamin Rush. Several species have been named after Jefferson, both during and after his life. Most notable is from a fossil taxon of ground sloths, †Megalonyx. Jefferson himself had defined the genus in 1799 without naming a species. The species of the type fossil would be classified †M. jeffersonii (Jefferson's ground sloth) in honor of Jefferson by Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest in 1822. The flower genus


id: charles-alexander-johns-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Alexander_Johns-0.md
category: reference
title: Charles Alexander Johns
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Alexander_Johns
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:35.073374+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-alexander-johns-20260505-0
summary:
Charles Alexander Johns (1811–1874) was a 19th-century British botanist and educator who was the author of a long series of popular books on natural history. == Early years == Charles Alexander Johns was born on 31 December 1811 in Plymouth, England, one of eight surviving children of Henry Incledon Johns, a banker and poet, and Maria (Boone) Johns. Two of his sisters, Emily and Julia, would prove to be exceptionally talented botanical artists. An economic crisis in 1825 forced the closure of the bank where Johns's father Henry was a working partner, throwing him out of a job and causing hardship for the family. Henry Johns then went to work as a teacher at Plymouth New Grammar School. Johns's father had encouraged his interest in natural history from an early age, and Charles had aimed for a career in the church, following an established pattern in Britain of "parson naturalists." One of his early teachers was a local silversmith and amateur botanist, George Banks, who published a study of English botany in 1823. Johns was, however, largely self-taught as a botanist. == Teaching == In 1830, Johns's father suffered a stroke that led to failing health, creating further economic uncertainty


id: charles-alexander-johns-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Alexander_Johns-1.md
category: reference
title: Charles Alexander Johns
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Alexander_Johns
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:35.073374+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: charles-alexander-johns-20260505-0
summary:
The launce or sand-eel is a small cylindrical fish from six to twelve inches long, which by day swims about in shoals on the sandy coast, and by night burrows in the sand, keeping near the water line. It is used by fishermen as bait for larger fish, and by others is eaten either fresh or salted. The method of catching it is quite peculiar. As it begins to grow dark the fisherman, armed with a crooked iron instrument, which, with its handle, is about a foot in length, buries its point a few inches in the sand which has just been left by a receding wave, and draws it towards him with a quick motion, holding his left hand ready to catch whatever he may scrape up. When he feels any impediment he lifts his hook with a jerk, bringing up a lively fish, which if it be not immediately secured, by a few contortions of its body penetrates the sand and disappears; or if it happen that the sand be covered by ever so shallow a coating of water, instantly turns its head towards the sea and shoots down to meet the coming wave with such rapidity as


id: robert-kraichnan-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kraichnan-0.md
category: reference
title: Robert Kraichnan
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kraichnan
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:36.814147+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: robert-kraichnan-20260505-0
summary:
Robert Harry Kraichnan (KRAYSH-nan; January 15, 1928 – February 26, 2008), a resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico, was an American theoretical physicist (fluid dynamicist) best known for his work on the theory of fluid turbulence. == Life == Kraichnan received his B.S. and Ph.D. in physics from MIT, graduating in 1949. He became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1949/50, and was one of the last assistants to Albert Einstein. After his appointment at Princeton, he worked in Columbia University and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. From 1962 on, he was supported by research grants and worked as a freelance consultant for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Princeton University, the Office of Naval Research, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and NASA. He had a keen passion for hiking, so he lived in the mountains of New Hampshire and later in White Rock, New Mexico and eventually to Santa Fe, New Mexico near Los Alamos. In 2003, he returned to academia when he was appointed Homewood Professor in the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, but by this time he had already fallen ill. He was the recipient


id: leopold-kronecker-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kronecker-0.md
category: reference
title: Leopold Kronecker
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kronecker
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:38.132385+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: leopold-kronecker-20260505-0
summary:
Leopold Kronecker (German: [ˈkʁoːnɛkɐ]; 7 December 1823 – 29 December 1891) was a German mathematician who worked on number theory, abstract algebra and logic, and criticized Georg Cantor's work on set theory. Heinrich Weber quoted Kronecker as having said, "Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk" ("God made the integers, all else is the work of man"). Kronecker was a student and life-long friend of Ernst Kummer. == Biography == Leopold Kronecker was born on 7 December 1823 in Liegnitz, Prussia (now Legnica, Poland) in a wealthy Jewish family. His parents, Isidor and Johanna (née Prausnitzer), took care of their children's education and provided them with private tutoring at home—Leopold's younger brother Hugo Kronecker would also follow a scientific path, later becoming a notable physiologist. Kronecker then went to the Liegnitz Gymnasium where he was interested in a wide range of topics including science, history and philosophy, while also practicing gymnastics and swimming. At the gymnasium he was taught by Ernst Kummer, who noticed and encouraged the boy's interest in mathematics. In 1841 Kronecker became a student at the University of Berlin where his interest did not immediately focus on mathematics, but rather spread over


id: leopold-kronecker-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kronecker-1.md
category: reference
title: Leopold Kronecker
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Kronecker
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:06:38.132385+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: leopold-kronecker-20260505-0
summary:
== Further reading == Bell, E. T. (1986), Men of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, ISBN 978-0-671-62818-5 Davis, Martin (2001), Engines of Logic Mathematicians and the Origin of the Computer, W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 978-0-393-32229-3 Edwards, Harold (1987), "An Appreciation of Kronecker", Mathematical Intelligencer, 9 (1): 28–35, doi:10.1007/BF03023570, S2CID 120885744 Edwards, Harold (1989), "Kronecker's Views on the Foundations of Mathematics", in Rowe, D. E.; McCleary, J. (eds.), The History of Modern Mathematics, vol. 1, Academic Press, pp. 67–78, ISBN 978-0-12-599661-7 Kronecker, Leopold (1996) [1887], "On the concept of number", in Ewald, William B. (ed.), From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics, vol. 2, Oxford University Press, pp. 947–955, ISBN 978-0-19-850536-5 van Heijenoort, Jean (1977), From Frege to Gödel A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879–1931, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-32449-7 Weber, H. (1893), "Leopold Kronecker" (PDF), Mathematische Annalen, 43 (1), Springer Berlin / Heidelberg: 1–25, doi:10.1007/BF01446613, ISSN 0025-5831, S2CID 177800385 == External links == O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Leopold Kronecker", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews Leopold Kronecker at the Mathematics Genealogy Project The Infinite Heist Story of "the hard-fought journey to embed the concept of infinity


id: george-frederick-kunz-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frederick_Kunz-0.md
category: reference
title: George Frederick Kunz
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frederick_Kunz
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:04.269793+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: george-frederick-kunz-20260505-0
summary:
George Frederick Kunz (September 29, 1856 – June 29, 1932) was an American mineralogist and mineral collector. == Biography == Kunz was born in New York City and began an interest in minerals at a very young age. By his teens, he had amassed a collection of over four thousand items, which he sold for four hundred dollars to the University of Minnesota. Kunz attended Cooper Union but did not finish and did not attend college. Nonetheless, he taught himself mineralogy from books and field research. This expertise landed him a job with Tiffany & Co., and his knowledge and enthusiasm propelled him into a vice presidency by the time he was 23. He gained much notoriety for identifying a new gem variety of the mineral spodumene which was named kunzite in his honor. He also supervised the cutting of the very large stone that became the Tiffany Yellow Diamond. He headed up the US mining and mineralogical exhibits at the international expositions in Paris (1889), Chicago (1893), Atlanta (1895), Paris (1900), and St. Louis (1904). He gave a series of eight lectures on "Precious Stones" for the Lowell Institute's 1894–95 season. As a gentleman scientist, he was a member


id: george-frederick-kunz-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frederick_Kunz-1.md
category: reference
title: George Frederick Kunz
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frederick_Kunz
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:04.269793+00:00
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parent: george-frederick-kunz-20260505-0
summary:
Kunz, George Frederick (1888). "Diamonds in Meteorites". Science. ns-11 (266): 118–119. doi:10.1126/science.ns-11.266.118-a. PMID 17799324. S2CID 40675694. Kunz, George Frederick (January–March 1891). "Exhibition of Gems Used as Amulets, etc". The American Journal of Folklore. 4 (12). American Folklore Society: 29–31. doi:10.2307/532930. JSTOR 532930. Kunz, George Frederick. "The genesis of the diamond" Science, pp. 450–456, 1897 Baskerville, Charles; Kunz, G F. "Kunzite and its unique properties" American Journal of Science, vol.18, no.103, pp. 25–28, July 1904 Kunz, George Frederick. "The cause of the San Francisco earthquake" Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, pp. 289–290, 1908 Kunz, George Frederick. "Diamonds in North America" Geological Society of America Bulletin, vol.42, no.1, pp. 221–222, March 1931. Kunz, George F. Gems and Precious Stones of North America: A Popular Description of Their Occurrence, Value, History, Archaeology, and of the Collections in Which They Exist; Also a Chapter on Pearls, and on Remarkable Foreign Gems Owned in the United States. Illustrated with eight colored plates and numerous minor engravings. New York: The Scientific Publishing Co. 1890. 336 pages. Second edition with Appendix, 367 pp. 24 Pls., 1892. Kunz George F. Gems, Jewelers’ Materials, and Ornamental Stones of California. Bulletin of the California State Mining Bureau.


id: george-frederick-kunz-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frederick_Kunz-2.md
category: reference
title: George Frederick Kunz
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frederick_Kunz
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:04.269793+00:00
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parent: george-frederick-kunz-20260505-0
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Rings for the Finger, from the Earliest Known Times to the Present, with Full Descriptions of the Origin, Early Making, Materials, the Archaeology, History, For Affection, For Love, For Engagement, For Wedding, Commemorative, Mourning, Etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company. 1917. Frontispiece is an oil painting of the Maharani of Sikkim (northeastern Hindustan), and illustrated with 381 pages, plates, partly colored, portraits, etc., plus a holographic facsimile letter from Admiral Peary to the author on the question of ring usage by Eskimo peoples. The Kunz Collection copy is inscribed by the author to his daughter, Bessie: "For Elizabeth Handforth Kunz, with the love of her father, the author, George Frederick Kunz, 30 January 1916. New York." A fine copy of a work that John Sinkankas says "remains the largest single storehouse of information on rings available in any language". Kunz, George F. Shakespeare and Precious Stones, Treating of the Known References of Precious Stones in Shakespeare's Works, With Comments as to the Origin of his Material, the Knowledge of the Poet Concerning Precious Stones, and References to Where the Precious Stones of His Time Came From. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott. 1916. 100 pages with illustrations, portraits, etc. "Treating of the


id: george-frederick-kunz-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frederick_Kunz-3.md
category: reference
title: George Frederick Kunz
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frederick_Kunz
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:04.269793+00:00
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parent: george-frederick-kunz-20260505-0
summary:
== References == == Bibliography == Ahlborn, Richard E. and Vera Beaver-Bricken Espinola, eds. Russian Copper Icons and Crosses From the Kunz Collection: Castings of Faith. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. 1991. 85 pages with illustrations, some colored. Includes bibliographical references pages 84–85. Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology: No. 51. Burchard, Hank. "Wright Idea, Wrong Stuff." The Washington Post. June 10, 1988, page WE49. Discusses new display of the Kunz collection of Russian icons sold to the Smithsonian Institution. Conklin, Lawrence H. "On Kunz and Kunzite." Mineralogical Record. Volume 18, pages 369–372. Conklin, Lawrence H. "The Original Specimens of Kunzite." The Matrix: A Journal on the History of Minerals. Volume 1, number 3, page 45. An account of the first specimen of kunzite from Charles Baskerville's collection, used in 1903 in the original determination and naming of that species. Conklin, Lawrence H. "Curious Lore of George F. Kunz." Matrix: A Journal of the History of Minerals. Dillburg, PA. Volume 5 (3), 1997, pages 108–114. Conklin, Lawrence H. Notes and commentaries on letters to George F. Kunz: correspondence from various sources, including Clarence S. Bement: with facsimiles. New Canaan, Ct.: L. H. Conklin, 1986. 137 pages, ill., portraits. ; 29


id: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier-0.md
category: reference
title: Antoine Lavoisier
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:05.583915+00:00
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parent: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-0
summary:
Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( lə-VWAH-zee-ay; French: [ɑ̃twan lɔʁɑ̃ də lavwazje]; 26 August 1743 – 8 May 1794), also Antoine Lavoisier after the French Revolution, was a French nobleman and chemist who was central to the 18th-century chemical revolution and who had a large influence on both the history of chemistry and the history of biology. It is generally accepted that Lavoisier's great accomplishments in chemistry stem largely from his changing the science from a qualitative to a quantitative one. Lavoisier is noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in combustion, opposing the prior phlogiston theory of combustion. He named oxygen (1778), recognizing it as an element, and also recognized hydrogen as an element (1783). By using more precise measurements than previous experimenters, he confirmed the developing theory that, although matter in a closed system may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same (now known as the law of conservation of mass), which led to the development of the balanced physical and chemical reaction equations that we still use today. Lavoisier helped construct the metric system, wrote the first extensive list of elements, in which he predicted the existence of silicon, and helped to reform


id: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier-1.md
category: reference
title: Antoine Lavoisier
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:05.583915+00:00
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parent: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-0
summary:
==== Sponsorship of the sciences ==== Lavoisier had a vision of public education having roots in "scientific sociability" and philanthropy. Lavoisier gained a vast majority of his income through buying stock in the General Farm, which allowed him to work on science full-time, live comfortably, and allowed him to contribute financially to better the community. (It would also contribute to his demise during the Reign of Terror many years later.) It was very difficult to secure public funding for the sciences at the time, and additionally not very financially profitable for the average scientist, so Lavoisier used his wealth to open a very expensive and sophisticated laboratory in France so that aspiring scientists could study without the barriers of securing funding for their research. He also pushed for public education in the sciences. He founded two organizations, Lycée and Musée des Arts et Métiers, which were created to serve as educational tools for the public. Funded by the wealthy and noble, the Lycée regularly taught courses to the public beginning in 1793. === Ferme générale and marriage === At the age of 26, around the time he was elected to the Academy of Sciences, Lavoisier bought a share in the


id: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier-2.md
category: reference
title: Antoine Lavoisier
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:05.583915+00:00
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parent: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-0
summary:
=== Royal Commission on Agriculture === Lavoisier urged the establishment of a Royal Commission on Agriculture. He then served as its Secretary and spent considerable sums of his own money in order to improve the agricultural yields in the Sologne, an area where farmland was of poor quality. The humidity of the region often led to a blight of the rye harvest, causing outbreaks of ergotism among the population. In 1788 Lavoisier presented a report to the Commission detailing ten years of efforts on his experimental farm to introduce new crops and types of livestock. His conclusion was that despite the possibilities of agricultural reforms, the tax system left tenant farmers with so little that it was unrealistic to expect them to change their traditional practices. === Gunpowder Commission === Lavoisier's researches on combustion were carried out in the midst of a very busy schedule of public and private duties, especially in connection with the Ferme Générale. There were also innumerable reports for and committees of the Academy of Sciences to investigate specific problems on order of the royal government. Lavoisier, whose organizing skills were outstanding, frequently landed the task of writing up such official reports. In 1775 he was


id: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier-3.md
category: reference
title: Antoine Lavoisier
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:05.583915+00:00
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parent: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-0
summary:
==== Blinking experiment ==== An apocryphal story exists regarding Lavoisier's execution in which the scientist blinked his eyes to demonstrate that the head retained some consciousness after being severed. Some variants of the story include Joseph-Louis Lagrange as being the scientist to observe and record Lavoisier's blinking. This story was not recorded in contemporary accounts of Lavoisier's death, and the execution site was too removed from the public for Lagrange to have viewed Lavoisier's alleged experiment. The story likely originated in a 1990s Discovery Channel documentary about guillotines and then subsequently spread online, becoming what one source describes as an urban legend. == Contributions to chemistry == === Oxygen theory of combustion === Contrary to prevailing thought at the time, Lavoisier theorized that common air, or one of its components, combines with substances when they are burned. He demonstrated this through experiment. During late 1772 Lavoisier turned his attention to the phenomenon of combustion, the topic on which he was to make his most significant contribution to science. He reported the results of his first experiments on combustion in a note to the Academy on 20 October, in which he reported that when phosphorus burned, it combined with a large


id: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier-4.md
category: reference
title: Antoine Lavoisier
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:05.583915+00:00
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parent: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-0
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=== Pioneer of stoichiometry === Lavoisier's researches included some of the first truly quantitative chemical experiments. He carefully weighed the reactants and products of a chemical reaction in a sealed glass vessel so that no gases could escape, which was a crucial step in the advancement of chemistry. In 1774, he showed that, although matter can change its state in a chemical reaction, the total mass of matter is the same at the end as at the beginning of every chemical change. Thus, for instance, if a piece of wood is burned to ashes, the total mass remains unchanged if gaseous reactants and products are included. Lavoisier's experiments supported the law of conservation of mass. In France it is taught as Lavoisier's Law and is paraphrased from a statement in his Traité Élémentaire de Chimie: "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed." Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765) had previously expressed similar ideas in 1748 and proved them in experiments; others whose ideas pre-date the work of Lavoisier include Jean Rey (1583–1645), Joseph Black (1728–1799), and Henry Cavendish (1731–1810). === Chemical nomenclature === Lavoisier, together with Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, Claude-Louis Berthollet, and Antoine François de Fourcroy, submitted a new program


id: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier-5.md
category: reference
title: Antoine Lavoisier
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:05.583915+00:00
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parent: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-0
summary:
=== Easter memoir === The "official" version of Lavoisier's Easter Memoir appeared in 1778. In the intervening period, Lavoisier had ample time to repeat some of Priestley's latest experiments and perform some new ones of his own. In addition to studying Priestley's dephlogisticated air, he studied more thoroughly the residual air after metals had been calcined. He showed that this residual air supported neither combustion nor respiration and that approximately five volumes of this air added to one volume of the dephlogisticated air gave common atmospheric air. Common air was then a mixture of two distinct chemical species with quite different properties. Thus when the revised version of the Easter Memoir was published in 1778, Lavoisier no longer stated that the principle which combined with metals on calcination was just common air but "nothing else than the healthiest and purest part of the air" or the "eminently respirable part of the air". The same year he coined the name oxygen for this constituent of the air, from the Greek words meaning "acid former". He was struck by the fact that the combustion products of such nonmetals as sulfur, phosphorus, charcoal, and nitrogen were acidic. He held that all acids contained


id: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier-6.md
category: reference
title: Antoine Lavoisier
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:05.583915+00:00
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parent: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-0
summary:
The relationship between combustion and respiration had long been recognized from the essential role which air played in both processes. Lavoisier was almost obliged, therefore, to extend his new theory of combustion to include the area of respiration physiology. His first memoirs on this topic were read to the Academy of Sciences in 1777, but his most significant contribution to this field was made in the winter of 1782–1783 in association with Laplace. The result of this work was published in a memoir, "On Heat." Lavoisier and Laplace designed an ice calorimeter apparatus for measuring the amount of heat given off during combustion or respiration. The outer shell of the calorimeter was packed with snow, which melted to maintain a constant temperature of 0 °C around an inner shell filled with ice. By measuring the quantity of carbon dioxide and heat produced by confining a live guinea pig in this apparatus, and by comparing the amount of heat produced when sufficient carbon was burned in the ice calorimeter to produce the same amount of carbon dioxide as that which the guinea pig exhaled, they concluded that respiration was, in fact, a slow combustion process. Lavoisier stated, "la respiration est donc


id: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier-7.md
category: reference
title: Antoine Lavoisier
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:05.583915+00:00
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parent: antoine-lavoisier-20260505-0
summary:
Opuscules physiques et chimiques (Paris: Chez Durand, Didot, Esprit, 1774). (Second edition, 1801) L'art de fabriquer le salin et la potasse, publié par ordre du Roi, par les régisseurs-généraux des Poudres & Salpêtres (Paris, 1779). Instruction sur les moyens de suppléer à la disette des fourrages, et d'augmenter la subsistence des bestiaux, Supplément à l'instruction sur les moyens de pourvoir à la disette des fourrages, publiée par ordre du Roi le 31 mai 1785 (Instruction on the means of compensating for the food shortage with fodder, and of increasing the subsistence of cattle, Supplement to the instruction on the means of providing for the food shortage with fodder, published by order of King on 31 May 1785). (with Guyton de Morveau, Claude-Louis Berthollet, Antoine Fourcroy) Méthode de nomenclature chimique (Paris: Chez Cuchet, 1787) (with Fourcroy, Morveau, Cadet, Baumé, d'Arcet, and Sage) Nomenclature chimique, ou synonymie ancienne et moderne, pour servir à l'intelligence des auteurs. (Paris: Chez Cuchet, 1789) Traité élémentaire de chimie, présenté dans un ordre nouveau et d'après les découvertes modernes (Paris: Chez Cuchet, 1789; Bruxelles: Cultures et Civilisations, 1965) (lit. Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, presented in a new order and alongside modern discoveries) also here (with Pierre-Simon Laplace)


id: antony-garrett-lisi-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Garrett_Lisi-0.md
category: reference
title: Antony Garrett Lisi
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Garrett_Lisi
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:06.750984+00:00
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parent: antony-garrett-lisi-20260505-0
summary:
Antony Garrett Lisi (born January 24, 1968), known as Garrett Lisi, is an American theoretical physicist. Lisi works as an independent researcher without an academic position. Lisi is known for "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything," an unpublished preprint paper proposing a unified field theory based on the E8 Lie group, combining particle physics with Einstein's theory of gravitation. The theory is incomplete and has unresolved problems. The theory has been extensively criticized in the scientific community. == Biography == === Education and career === Lisi was born in Los Angeles and raised in San Diego, California. He graduated from Cate School in 1987. Lisi went on to receive two B.S. degrees with highest honors in physics and mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1991. Lisi received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, San Diego, in 1999. Lisi then left academia. In July 2006, Lisi was awarded an FQXi grant to conduct research in quantum mechanics and unification. In June 2007, Lisi thought that the algebraic structure he had constructed in an attempt to unify the Standard Model of particle physics with general relativity partially matched part of the algebraic structure of the E8


id: alfred-lee-loomis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lee_Loomis-0.md
category: reference
title: Alfred Lee Loomis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lee_Loomis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:08.048084+00:00
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parent: alfred-lee-loomis-20260505-0
summary:
Alfred Lee Loomis (November 4, 1887 – August 11, 1975) was an American attorney, investment banker, philanthropist, scientist, physicist, inventor of the LORAN Long Range Navigation System and a lifelong patron of scientific research. He established the Loomis Laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York, and his role in the development of radar and the atomic bomb contributed to the Allied victory in World War II. He invented the Aberdeen Chronograph for measuring muzzle velocities, contributed significantly (perhaps critically, according to Luis Alvarez) to the development of a ground-controlled approach technology for aircraft, and participated in preliminary meetings of the Manhattan Project. Loomis also made contributions to biological instrumentation. Working with E. Newton Harvey he co-invented the microscope centrifuge, and pioneered techniques for electroencephalography. In 1937, he discovered the sleep K-complex brainwave. During the Great Depression, Loomis anonymously paid the Physical Review journal's fees for authors who could not afford them. == Early life == Born in Manhattan, Loomis was the son of Julia Josephine Stimson and Henry Patterson Loomis, and grandson of Alfred Lebbeus Loomis. There were prominent members of society on both sides of his family; primarily they were physicians. Alfred's parents separated when he was very young, and


id: alfred-lee-loomis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lee_Loomis-1.md
category: reference
title: Alfred Lee Loomis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lee_Loomis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:08.048084+00:00
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parent: alfred-lee-loomis-20260505-0
summary:
== Laboratory at Tuxedo Park == Taking advantage of his considerable wealth, Loomis increasingly indulged his interest in science. He established a personal laboratory near his mansion within the exclusive enclave of Tuxedo Park, New York. He and his small staff conducted pioneering studies in spectrometry, high-frequency sound and capillary waves, electro-encephalography, and the precise measurement of time, chronometry. Eventually Loomis was elected to the National Academy of Sciences for his work in physics. His laboratory was the best of its kind, containing equipment that few universities could afford. His reputation spread quickly, particularly in Europe, where money for science was scarce. Loomis often sent first-class tickets to famous European scientists so that they could travel to the United States to meet with their peers and collaborate on projects. They would be picked up at the airport or train station and brought to Tuxedo Park in his limousine. At first, some in the scientific community called him an "eccentric dabbler," but soon his laboratory became the meeting place for some of the most accomplished scientists of the time, such as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, James Franck, and Enrico Fermi. Scientists who worked with him personally, were convinced of


id: alfred-lee-loomis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lee_Loomis-2.md
category: reference
title: Alfred Lee Loomis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lee_Loomis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:08.048084+00:00
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parent: alfred-lee-loomis-20260505-0
summary:
Alfred Lee Loomis Jr. - an investor, two-time winner of the Bermuda Race and head of the winning America's Cup syndicate in 1977 William Farnsworth - a physician and professor at Brandeis (Farnsworth's grandson is Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix). Henry Loomis - head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Loomis, always a very private person who avoided publicity, retreated from public life entirely after closing the "Rad Lab" and finishing his related obligations in 1947. He retired to East Hampton, with Manette and never granted another interview. Loomis had an affair with a colleague's wife, Manette Hobart, and in 1945 he divorced Ellen and immediately married Manette, scandalizing New York society. At this point he changed his lifestyle, eschewing his multiple residences and numerous servants and settling into a single household in which he and his wife shared a relationship that was characterized by its domesticity. They remained married until Alfred Loomis died more than 30 years later at age 87. == Patents == External shoe tree, 1914 U.S. patent 1,106,465 Net, 1916 U.S. patent 1,184,466 Toy, 1917 U.S. patent 1,222,005 Chronograph, 1921 U.S. patent 1,376,890 Method and apparatus for forming emulsions and the like, 1929 U.S. patent 1,734,975


id: james-lovelock-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock-0.md
category: reference
title: James Lovelock
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:09.585027+00:00
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parent: james-lovelock-20260505-0
summary:
James Ephraim Lovelock (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022) was an English independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system. With a PhD in the chemistry of disinfection, Lovelock began his career performing cryopreservation experiments on rodents, including successfully thawing and reviving frozen specimens. His methods were influential in the theories of cryonics (the cryopreservation of humans). He invented the electron capture detector and, using it, became the first to detect the widespread presence of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere. While designing scientific instruments for NASA, he developed the Gaia hypothesis. In the 2000s, he proposed a method of climate engineering to restore carbon dioxide–consuming algae. He was an outspoken member of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy, asserting that fossil fuel interests have been behind opposition to nuclear energy, citing the effects of carbon dioxide as being harmful to the environment and warning of global warming due to the greenhouse effect. He wrote several environmental science books based upon the Gaia hypothesis from the late 1970s. He also worked for MI5, the British security service, for decades. Bryan Appleyard, writing in The Sunday Times, described


id: james-lovelock-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock-1.md
category: reference
title: James Lovelock
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:09.585027+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: james-lovelock-20260505-0
summary:
Lovelock invented the electron capture detector, which ultimately assisted in discoveries about the persistence of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and their role in stratospheric ozone depletion. After studying the operation of the Earth's sulphur cycle, Lovelock and his colleagues, Robert Jay Charlson, Meinrat Andreae and Stephen G. Warren developed the CLAW hypothesis as a possible example of biological control of the Earth's climate. Lovelock was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974. He served as the president of the Marine Biological Association (MBA) from 1986 to 1990 and was an Honorary Visiting Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford (formerly Green College, Oxford) from 1994. As an independent scientist, inventor and author, Lovelock worked out of a barn-turned-laboratory he called his "experimental station" located in a wooded valley on the Devon–Cornwall border in South West England. In 1988 he made an extended appearance on the Channel 4 television programme After Dark, alongside Heathcote Williams and Petra Kelly, among others. On 8 May 2012, he appeared on the Radio Four series The Life Scientific, talking to Jim Al-Khalili about the Gaia hypothesis. On the programme, he mentioned how his ideas had been received by various people, including Jonathon Porritt. He also said


id: james-lovelock-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock-2.md
category: reference
title: James Lovelock
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:09.585027+00:00
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parent: james-lovelock-20260505-0
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In Lovelock's 2006 book, The Revenge of Gaia, he argued that the lack of respect humans have had for Gaia, through the damage done to rainforests and the reduction in planetary biodiversity, is testing Gaia's capacity to minimise the effects of the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. This eliminates the planet's negative feedbacks and increases the likelihood of homeostatic positive feedback potential associated with runaway global warming. Similarly, the warming of the oceans is extending the oceanic thermocline layer of tropical oceans into the Arctic and Antarctic waters, preventing the rise of oceanic nutrients into the surface waters and eliminating the algal blooms of phytoplankton on which oceanic food chains depend. As phytoplankton and forests are the main ways in which Gaia draws down greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, taking it out of the atmosphere, the elimination of this environmental buffering will see, according to Lovelock, most of the Earth becoming uninhabitable for humans and other life-forms by the middle of this century, with a massive extension of tropical deserts. In 2012, Lovelock distanced himself from these conclusions, saying he had "gone too far" in describing the consequences of climate change over the next century in this book.


id: james-lovelock-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock-3.md
category: reference
title: James Lovelock
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:09.585027+00:00
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parent: james-lovelock-20260505-0
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=== Climate === Writing in The Independent in 2006, Lovelock argued that, as a result of global warming, "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable" by the end of the 21st century. The same year he suggested that "we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can." He further predicted in 2007 that the temperature increase would leave much of the world's land uninhabitable and unsuitable for farming, with northerly migrations and new cities created in the Arctic; furthermore, he added that much of Europe will have turned to desert and Britain will have become Europe's "life-raft" due to its stable temperature caused by being surrounded by the ocean. He was quoted in The Guardian in 2008 that 80% of humans will perish by 2100, and this climate change will last 100,000 years. In a 2010 interview with the Guardian newspaper, he said that democracy might have


id: james-lovelock-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock-4.md
category: reference
title: James Lovelock
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:09.585027+00:00
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== Awards and recognition == Lovelock was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974. His nomination reads: Lovelock has made distinguished contributions to several diverse fields, including a study of the transmission of respiratory infection, and methods of air sterilisation; the role of Ca and other divalent ions in blood clotting; damage to various living cells by freezing, thawing and thermal shock and its prevention by the presence of neutral solutes; methods of freezing and thawing small live animals; methods for preparing sperm for artificial insemination, which have been of major economic importance. He has invented a family of ionisation detectors for gas chromatography. His electron capture detectors are the most sensitive that have been made and are universally used on pollution problems for residual halogen compounds. He has many inventions, including a gas chromatograph, which will be used to investigate planetary atmospheres. His chromatographic work has led to investigation of blood lipids in various animals, including arteriosclerotic humans. He has made a study of detecting life on other planets by analysis of their atmosphere and extended this to world pollution problems. His work generally shows remarkable originality, simplicity and ingenuity. Lovelock was awarded a number of prestigious


id: gregor-mendel-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel-0.md
category: reference
title: Gregor Mendel
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:10.769171+00:00
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parent: gregor-mendel-20260505-0
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Gregor Johann Mendel (; German: [ˈmɛndl̩]; Czech: Řehoř Jan Mendel; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was an Austrian biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno (Brünn), Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a German-speaking family in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire (today's Czech Republic) and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics. Though farmers had known for millennia that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favor certain desirable traits, Mendel's pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance. Mendel worked with seven characteristics of pea plants: plant height, pod shape and color, seed shape and color, and flower position and color. Taking seed color as an example, Mendel showed that when a true-breeding yellow pea and a true-breeding green pea were cross-bred, their offspring always produced yellow seeds. However, in the next generation, the green peas reappeared at a ratio of 1 green to 3 yellow. To explain this phenomenon, Mendel coined the terms "recessive" and "dominant" in reference to certain traits. In the preceding example, the green


id: gregor-mendel-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel-1.md
category: reference
title: Gregor Mendel
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:10.769171+00:00
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parent: gregor-mendel-20260505-0
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Mendel, known as the "father of modern genetics," chose to study variation in plants in his monastery's 2 hectares (4.9 acres) experimental garden. Mendel was assisted in his experimental design by Aleksander Zawadzki while his superior abbot Napp wrote to discourage him, saying that the Bishop giggled when informed of the detailed genealogies of peas. After initial experiments with pea plants, Mendel settled on studying seven traits that seemed to be inherited independently of other traits: seed shape, flower color, seed coat tint, pod shape, unripe pod color, flower location, and plant height. He first focused on seed shape, which was either angular or round. Between 1856 and 1863 Mendel cultivated and tested some 28,000 plants, the majority of which were pea plants (Pisum sativum). This study showed that, when true-breeding different varieties were crossed to each other (e.g., tall plants fertilized by short plants), in the second generation, one in four pea plants had purebred recessive traits, two out of four were hybrids, and one out of four were purebred dominant. His experiments led him to make two generalizations, the Law of Segregation and the Law of Independent Assortment, which later came to be known as Mendel's Laws of


id: gregor-mendel-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel-2.md
category: reference
title: Gregor Mendel
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:10.769171+00:00
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parent: gregor-mendel-20260505-0
summary:
=== Modern analysis of the genes causing Mendel's pea phenotypes === Mendel postulated that seven "factors" determine the features he studied in peas. These factors are called "genes" today, but the nature of these genes remained mysterious for more than a century. The effort to identify these genes lasted until 2025 when the last 3 genes were discovered. The seven genes are as follows (genes are abbreviated PsXYZ for Pisum sativum, the scientific name of the pea): the wrinkled phenotype of peas (wild-type round) is caused by an insertion in the PsSBE1 gene. The yellow phenotype (wild-type: green) is caused by an insertion or mutation in the PsSGR gene. The white phenotype of the flower color (wild-type: purple) is caused by a deletion in the PsbHLH gene. The dwarf phenotype is caused by the PsGA3ox1 gene while the pod color phenotype (yellow vs. green) is caused by the PsChlG gene. Finally, the pod shape is determined by the PsCLE41 gene which causes the constricted or inflated phenotypes and the PsCIK2/3 gene causes the terminal and axial flower position. === Other experiments === Mendel also experimented with hawkweed (Hieracium). He published a report on his work with hawkweed, a group of


id: gregor-mendel-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel-3.md
category: reference
title: Gregor Mendel
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:10.769171+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: gregor-mendel-20260505-0
summary:
== Mendelian paradox == In 1936, Ronald Fisher, a prominent statistician and population geneticist, reconstructed Mendel's experiments, analyzed results from the F2 (second filial) generation, and found the ratio of dominant to recessive phenotypes (e.g., yellow versus green peas; round versus wrinkled peas) to be implausibly and consistently too close to the expected ratio of 3 to 1. Fisher asserted that "the data of most, if not all, of the experiments have been falsified to agree closely with Mendel's expectations". Mendel's alleged observations, according to Fisher, were "abominable," "shocking," and "cooked." Other scholars agree with Fisher that Mendel's various observations come uncomfortably close to Mendel's expectations. A. W. F. Edwards, for instance, remarks: "One can applaud the lucky gambler; but when he is lucky again tomorrow, and the next day, and the following day, one is entitled to become a little suspicious". Three other lines of evidence likewise lend support to the assertion that Mendel's results are indeed too good to be true. Fisher's analysis gave rise to the Mendelian paradox: Mendel's reported data are, statistically speaking, too good to be true, yet "everything we know about Mendel suggests that he was unlikely to engage in either deliberate fraud or


id: isaac-newton-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-0.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
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parent: isaac-newton-20260505-0
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Sir Isaac Newton ( ; 4 January [O.S. 25 December] 1643 – 31 March [O.S. 20 March] 1727) was an English polymath who was a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, author and inventor. He was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, achieved the first great unification in physics and established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for formulating infinitesimal calculus, although he developed calculus years before Leibniz. Newton contributed to and refined the scientific method, and his work is considered the most influential in bringing forth modern science. In the Principia, Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. While this is the case, his laws still serve as excellent approximations for the vast majority of physical phenomena involving low speeds (much less than the speed of light) and weak gravitational fields. He used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion, account for


id: isaac-newton-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-1.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
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=== The King's School === From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The King's School in Grantham, which taught Latin and Ancient Greek and probably imparted a significant foundation of mathematics. He was removed from school by his mother and returned to Woolsthorpe by October 1659. His mother, widowed for the second time, attempted to make him a farmer, an occupation he hated. Henry Stokes, master at The King's School, and Reverend William Ayscough (Newton's uncle) persuaded his mother to send him back to school. Motivated by a desire for revenge against a schoolyard bully, whom Newton beat in a fight and humiliated, he became the top-ranked student, distinguishing himself mainly by building sundials and models of windmills. === University of Cambridge === In June 1661, Newton was admitted to Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. His uncle the Reverend William Ayscough, who had studied at Cambridge, recommended him to the university. At Cambridge, Newton started as a subsizar, paying his way by performing valet duties until he was awarded a scholarship in 1664, which covered his university costs for four more years until the completion of his MA. At the time,


id: isaac-newton-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-2.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
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parent: isaac-newton-20260505-0
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=== Mathematics === Newton's work has been said "to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics then studied". His work on calculus, usually referred to as fluxions, began in 1664, and by 20 May 1665 as seen in a manuscript, Newton "had already developed the calculus to the point where he could compute the tangent and the curvature at any point of a continuous curve". His work by 1665 amounted to a systematic calculus that unified differentiation and integration, which he applied to the dynamic analysis of algebraic and transcendental curves, an approach described by scholar Tom Whiteside as "radically novel, indeed unprecedented" and which later directly informed the theory of central-force orbits in the Principia. Another manuscript of October 1666, is now published among Newton's mathematical papers. Newton recorded a definitive tract of calculus in what is called his "Waste Book". He was self-taught in mathematics and did his research without help, as according to scholar Richard S. Westfall, "By every indication we have, Newton carried out his education in mathematics and his program of research entirely on his own." His work De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas, sent by Isaac Barrow to John Collins in June 1669, was


id: isaac-newton-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-3.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
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parent: isaac-newton-20260505-0
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Newton had been reluctant to publish his calculus because he feared controversy and criticism. He was close to the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier. In 1691, Duillier started to write a new version of Newton's Principia, and corresponded with Leibniz. In 1693, the relationship between Duillier and Newton deteriorated and the book was never completed. Starting in 1699, Duillier accused Leibniz of plagiarism. The mathematician John Keill accused Leibniz of plagiarism in 1708 in the Royal Society journal, thereby deteriorating the situation even more. The dispute then broke out in full force in 1711 when the Royal Society proclaimed in a study that it was Newton who was the true discoverer and labelled Leibniz a fraud; it was later found that Newton wrote the study's concluding remarks on Leibniz. Thus began the bitter controversy which marred the lives of both men until Leibniz's death in 1716. Newton's first major mathematical discovery was the generalised binomial theorem, valid for any exponent, in 1664–65, which has been called "one of the most powerful and significant in the whole of mathematics." He discovered Newton's identities (probably without knowing of earlier work by Albert Girard in 1629), Newton's method, the Newton polygon, and


id: isaac-newton-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-4.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
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In 1666, Newton observed that the spectrum of colours exiting a prism in the position of minimum deviation is oblong, even when the light ray entering the prism is circular, which is to say, the prism refracts different colours by different angles. This led him to conclude that colour is a property intrinsic to light – a point which had, until then, been a matter of debate. From 1670 to 1672, Newton lectured on optics. During this period he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that the multicoloured image produced by a prism, which he named a spectrum, could be recomposed into white light by a lens and a second prism. Modern scholarship has revealed that Newton's analysis and resynthesis of white light owes a debt to corpuscular alchemy. In his work on Newton's rings in 1671, he used a method that was unprecedented in the 17th century, as "he averaged all of the differences, and he then calculated the difference between the average and the value for the first ring", in effect introducing a now standard method for reducing noise in measurements, and which does not appear elsewhere at the time. He extended his "error-slaying method" to studies of


id: isaac-newton-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-5.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
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parent: isaac-newton-20260505-0
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Newton argued that light is composed of particles or corpuscles, which were refracted by accelerating into a denser medium. He verged on soundlike waves to explain the repeated pattern of reflection and transmission by thin films (Opticks Bk. II, Props. 12), but still retained his theory of 'fits' that disposed corpuscles to be reflected or transmitted (Props.13). Despite his known preference of a particle theory, Newton noted that light had both particle-like and wave-like properties in Opticks; he believed that corpuscles must interact with waves in a medium to explain interference patterns and the general phenomenon of diffraction. In his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the ether to transmit forces between particles. The contact with the Cambridge Platonist philosopher Henry More revived his interest in alchemy. He replaced the ether with occult forces based on Hermetic ideas of attraction and repulsion between particles. His contributions to science cannot be isolated from his interest in alchemy. This was at a time when there was no clear distinction between alchemy and science. Newton contributed to the study of astigmatism by helping to erect its mathematical foundation through his discovery that when oblique pencils of light undergo refraction,


id: isaac-newton-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-6.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
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parent: isaac-newton-20260505-0
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=== Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica === Newton had been developing his theory of gravitation as far back as 1665. In 1679, he returned to his work on celestial mechanics by considering gravitation and its effect on the orbits of planets with reference to Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Newton's reawakening interest in astronomical matters received further stimulus by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 1680–1681, on which he corresponded with John Flamsteed. After his exchanges with Robert Hooke, Newton worked out a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector. He shared his results with Edmond Halley and the Royal Society in De motu corporum in gyrum, a tract written on about nine sheets which was copied into the Royal Society's Register Book in December 1684. As part of this work, Newton also coined the term centripetal force. This tract contained the nucleus that Newton would develop and expand to form the Principia. The Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial help from Halley. In this work, Newton stated the three universal laws of motion.


id: isaac-newton-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-7.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
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=== Other significant work === Newton studied heat and energy flow, formulating an empirical law of cooling which states that the rate at which an object cools is proportional to the temperature difference between the object and its surrounding environment. It was first formulated in 1701, being the first heat transfer formulation and serves as the formal basis of convective heat transfer, later being incorporated by Joseph Fourier into his work. Newton was the first to observe and qualitatively describe what would much later be formalised as the Magnus effect, nearly two centuries before Heinrich Magnus's experimental studies. In a 1672 text, Newton recounted watching tennis players at Cambridge college and noted how a tennis ball struck obliquely with a spinning motion curved in flight. He explained that the ball's combination of circular and progressive motion caused one side to "press and beat the contiguous air more violently" than the other, thereby producing "a reluctancy and reaction of the air proportionably greater", an astute observation of the pressure differential responsible for lateral deflection. === Philosophy of science === Newton's role as a philosopher was deeply influential, and understanding the philosophical landscape of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries requires


id: isaac-newton-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-8.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
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parent: isaac-newton-20260505-0
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In the 1690s, Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal and symbolic interpretation of the Bible. A manuscript Newton sent to John Locke in which he disputed the fidelity of 1 John 5:7—the Johannine Comma—and its fidelity to the original manuscripts of the New Testament, remained unpublished until 1785. Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England for Cambridge University in 1689 and 1701, but according to some accounts his only comments were to complain about a cold draught in the chamber and request that the window be closed. He was, however, noted by the Cambridge diarist Abraham de la Pryme to have rebuked students who were frightening locals by claiming that a house was haunted. Newton moved to London to take up the post of Warden of the Mint during the reign of King William III in 1696, a position that he had obtained through the patronage of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took charge of England's great recoining, clashed with Robert Lucas, 3rd Baron Lucas of Shenfield, the Governor of the Tower, and secured the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch for


id: isaac-newton-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-9.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
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=== Knighthood === In April 1705, Newton was knighted by Queen Anne during a royal visit to Trinity College, Cambridge. The knighthood is likely to have been motivated by political considerations connected with the parliamentary election in May 1705, rather than any recognition of Newton's scientific work or services as Master of the Mint. Newton was the second scientist to be knighted, after Francis Bacon. As a result of a report written by Newton on 21 September 1717 to the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury, the bimetallic relationship between gold coins and silver coins was changed by royal proclamation on 22 December 1717, forbidding the exchange of gold guineas for more than 21 silver shillings. This inadvertently resulted in a silver shortage as silver coins were used to pay for imports, while exports were paid for in gold, effectively moving Britain from the silver standard to its first gold standard. It is a matter of debate as to whether he intended to do this or not. It has been argued that Newton viewed his work at the Mint as a continuation of his alchemical work. Newton was invested in the South Sea Company and lost at least £10,000, and


id: isaac-newton-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-10.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
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parent: isaac-newton-20260505-0
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== Personality == Newton has been described as an incredibly driven and disciplined man who dedicated his life to his work. He is known for having a prodigious appetite for work, which he prioritised above his personal health. Newton also maintained strict control over his physical appetites, being sparing with food and drink and becoming a vegetarian later in life. While Newton was a secretive and neurotic individual, he is not considered to have been psychotic or bipolar. He has been described as an "incredible polymath" who was "immensely versatile", with some of his first studies relating to a potential phonetic alphabet and universal language. Newton's diverse range of interests is seen in his library, which contained 1,752 books that could be identified. A large portion consisted of works on theology (27.2%, or 477 books), followed by alchemy (9.6%, 169 books), mathematics (7.2%, 126 books), physics (3.0%, 52 books), and finally astronomy (1.9%, 33 books). Ultimately, books related to his famous scientific work made up slightly less than 12% of the total collection. Although it was claimed that he was once engaged, Newton never married. Voltaire, who was in London at the time of Newton's funeral, said that he "was


id: isaac-newton-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-11.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
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parent: isaac-newton-20260505-0
summary:
William Stukeley wrote of Newton’s diligence in reading and studying the Bible:No man in England read the Bible more carefully than he did, none study’d it more, as appears by his printed works, by many pieces he left which are not printed, and even by the Bible which he commonly used, thumbd over, as they call it, in an extraordinary degree, with frequency of use.By 1672, he had started to record his theological researches in notebooks which he showed to no one and which have only been available for public examination since 1972. Over half of what Newton wrote concerned theology and alchemy, and most has never been printed. His writings show extensive knowledge of early Church texts and reveal that he sided with Arius, who rejected the conventional view of the Trinity and was the losing party in the conflict with Athanasius over the Creed. Newton "recognized Christ as a divine mediator between God and man, who was subordinate to the Father who created him." He was especially interested in prophecy, but for him, "the great apostasy was trinitarianism." Newton tried unsuccessfully to obtain one of the two fellowships that exempted the holder from the ordination requirement. At the


id: isaac-newton-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-12.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
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parent: isaac-newton-20260505-0
summary:
Of an estimated ten million words of writing in Newton's papers, about one million deal with alchemy. Many of Newton's writings on alchemy are copies of other manuscripts, with his own annotations. Alchemical texts mix artisanal knowledge with philosophical speculation, often hidden behind layers of wordplay, allegory, and imagery to protect craft secrets. Some of the content contained in Newton's papers could have been considered heretical by the church. In 1888, after spending sixteen years cataloguing Newton's papers, Cambridge University kept a small number and returned the rest to the Earl of Portsmouth. In 1936, a descendant offered the papers for sale at Sotheby's. The collection was broken up and sold for a total of about £9,000. John Maynard Keynes was one of about three dozen bidders who obtained part of the collection at auction. Keynes went on to reassemble an estimated half of Newton's collection of papers on alchemy before donating his collection to Cambridge University in 1946. All of Newton's known writings on alchemy are currently being put online in a project undertaken by Indiana University: "The Chymistry of Isaac Newton" and has been summarised in a book. Newton's fundamental contributions to science include the quantification of gravitational


id: isaac-newton-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-13.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: isaac-newton-20260505-0
summary:
Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colours thus produced. Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race! He was born on 25th December 1642, and died on 20th March 1726. Science writer John G. Simmons ranked Newton first in The Scientific 100, based on a qualitative assessment in which he ordered the scientists according to overall influence, and described him as "the most influential figure in the history of Western science". Physicist Peter Rowlands described him as "the central figure in the history of science", who "more than anyone else is the source of our great confidence in the power of science." New Scientist called Newton "the


id: isaac-newton-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-14.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: isaac-newton-20260505-0
summary:
Physicist Edward Andrade stated that Newton "was capable of greater sustained mental effort than any man, before or since". He also noted the place of Newton in history, stating:From time to time in the history of mankind a man arises who is of universal significance, whose work changes the current of human thought or of human experience, so that all that comes after him bears evidence of his spirit. Such a man was Shakespeare, such a man was Beethoven, such a man was Newton, and, of the three, his kingdom is the most widespread. The French physicist and mathematician Jean-Baptiste Biot praised Newton's genius, stating that: Never was the supremacy of intellect so justly established and so fully confessed . . . In mathematical and in experimental science without an equal and without an example; combining the genius for both in its highest degree.Despite his rivalry with Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz, Leibniz still praised the work of Newton, with him responding to a question at a dinner in 1701 from Sophia Charlotte, the Queen of Prussia, about his view of Newton with:Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time of when Newton lived, what he had done was


id: isaac-newton-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-15.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: isaac-newton-20260505-0
summary:
On one assessment there should be no doubt: Newton was the greatest creative genius physics has ever seen. None of the other candidates for the superlative (Einstein, Maxwell, Boltzmann, Gibbs, and Feynman) has matched Newton's combined achievements as theoretician, experimentalist, and mathematician.Albert Einstein kept a picture of Newton on his study wall alongside ones of Michael Faraday and of James Clerk Maxwell. Einstein stated that Newton's creation of calculus in relation to his laws of motion was "perhaps the greatest advance in thought that a single individual was ever privileged to make." He also noted the influence of Newton, stating that:The whole evolution of our ideas about the processes of nature, with which we have been concerned so far, might be regarded as an organic development of Newton's ideas.In 1999, an opinion poll of 100 of the day's leading physicists voted Einstein the "greatest physicist ever," with Newton the runner-up, while a parallel survey of rank-and-file physicists ranked Newton as the greatest. In 2005, a dual survey of the public and members of Britain's Royal Society asked two questions: who made the bigger overall contributions to science and who made the bigger positive contributions to humankind, with the candidates being


id: isaac-newton-20260505-16
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton-16.md
category: reference
title: Isaac Newton
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:12.165802+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: isaac-newton-20260505-0
summary:
In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge to his mother in Lincolnshire. Whilst he was pensively meandering in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself & if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that supposition. It is known from his notebooks that Newton was grappling in the late 1660s with the idea that terrestrial gravity extends, in an inverse-square proportion, to the Moon, as other scientists had already conjectured. Around 1665, Newton made quantitative analysis, considering the period and distance of the Moon's orbit and considering the timing of objects falling on Earth. Newton did not publish these results at the time because he could not prove that the Earth's gravity acts as if all its mass were concentrated at its center. That proof took him twenty years. Detailed analysis of historical accounts


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-0.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer OP-ən-hy-mər; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. He is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in overseeing the development of the first nuclear weapons. Born in New York City, Oppenheimer obtained a degree in chemistry from Harvard University in 1925 and a doctorate in physics from the University of Göttingen in Germany in 1927, studying under Max Born. After research at other institutions, he joined the physics faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was made a full professor in 1936. Oppenheimer made significant contributions to physics in the fields of quantum mechanics and nuclear physics, including the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wave functions; work on the theory of positrons, quantum electrodynamics, and quantum field theory; and the Oppenheimer–Phillips process in nuclear fusion. With his students, he also made major contributions to astrophysics, including the theory of cosmic ray showers, and the theory of neutron stars and black holes. In 1941, Oppenheimer was briefed about nuclear weapon design by Australian physicist Mark Oliphant. In


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-1.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
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parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
After being accepted at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1924, Oppenheimer wrote to Ernest Rutherford requesting permission to work at the Cavendish Laboratory, though Bridgman's letter of recommendation said that Oppenheimer's clumsiness in the laboratory suggested that theoretical, rather than experimental, physics would be his forte. Rutherford was unimpressed, but Oppenheimer went to Cambridge nonetheless; J. J. Thomson ultimately accepted him on the condition that he complete a basic laboratory course. Oppenheimer was very unhappy at Cambridge and wrote to a friend: "I am having a pretty bad time. The lab work is a terrible bore, and I am so bad at it that it is impossible to feel that I am learning anything." He developed an antagonistic relationship with his tutor, Patrick Blackett, a future Nobel laureate. According to Oppenheimer's friend Francis Fergusson, Oppenheimer once confessed to leaving a poisoned apple on Blackett's desk, and Oppenheimer's parents convinced the university authorities not to expel him. There are no records of either a poisoning incident or probation, but Oppenheimer had regular sessions with a psychiatrist in Harley Street, London, and according to Charles Oppenheimer, his grandson, the poison apple story is unsubstantiated and American Prometheus conceded that it was unproven. Oppenheimer


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-2.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
Probably the most important ingredient he brought to his teaching was his exquisite taste. He always knew what were the important problems, as shown by his choice of subjects. He truly lived with those problems, struggling for a solution, and he communicated his concern to the group. In its heyday, there were about eight or ten graduate students in his group and about six Post-doctoral Fellows. He met this group once a day in his office and discussed with one after another the status of the student's research problem. He was interested in everything, and in one afternoon they might discuss quantum electrodynamics, cosmic rays, electron pair production and nuclear physics. Oppenheimer worked closely with Nobel Prize-winning experimental physicist Ernest Lawrence and his cyclotron pioneers, helping them understand the data that their machines were producing at Berkeley's Radiation Laboratory, which eventually developed into today's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 1936, Berkeley promoted him to full professor at an annual salary of $3,300 (equivalent to $77,000 in 2025). In return, he was asked to curtail his teaching at Caltech, so a compromise was reached whereby Berkeley released him for six weeks each year, enough to teach one term at Caltech. Oppenheimer


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-3.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
He didn't have Sitzfleisch, "sitting flesh," when you sit on a chair. As far as I know, he never wrote a long paper or did a long calculation, anything of that kind. He didn't have patience for that; his own work consisted of little aperçus, but quite brilliant ones. But he inspired other people to do things, and his influence was fantastic. == Private and political life == Oppenheimer's mother died in 1931, after which he grew closer to his father, who, though still residing in New York, became a frequent visitor to California. When his father died in 1937, leaving $392,602 (equivalent to $8.6 million in 2024) to be divided between Oppenheimer and his brother Frank, Oppenheimer promptly wrote a will bequeathing his estate to the University of California to fund graduate scholarships. === Politics === During the 1920s, Oppenheimer remained uninformed about world affairs. He claimed that he did not read newspapers or popular magazines and only learned of the Wall Street crash of 1929 while he was on a walk with Ernest Lawrence six months after the crash occurred. He once remarked that he never cast a vote until the 1936 presidential election. From 1934 on, he


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-4.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
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parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
=== Relationships and children === In 1936, Oppenheimer became involved with Jean Tatlock, the daughter of a Berkeley literature professor and a student at Stanford University School of Medicine. The two had similar political views; she wrote for the Western Worker, a Communist Party newspaper. In 1939, after a tempestuous relationship, Tatlock broke up with Oppenheimer. In August of that year, he met Katherine ("Kitty") Puening, a former Communist Party member. Kitty's first marriage had lasted only a few months. Her second, common-law, husband from 1934 to 1937 was Joe Dallet, an active member of the Communist Party killed in 1937 in the Spanish Civil War. Kitty returned from Europe to the U.S., where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in botany from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1938 she married Richard Harrison, a physician and medical researcher, and in June 1939 moved with him to Pasadena, California, where he became chief of radiology at a local hospital and she enrolled as a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles. She and Oppenheimer created a minor scandal by sleeping together after one of Tolman's parties, and in the summer of 1940 she stayed with Oppenheimer at his


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-5.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
Oppenheimer was overeducated in those fields which lie outside the scientific tradition, such as his interest in religion, in the Hindu religion in particular, which resulted in a feeling for the mystery of the universe that surrounded him almost like a fog. He saw physics clearly, looking toward what had already been done, but at the border he tended to feel there was much more of the mysterious and novel than there actually was ... [he turned] away from the hard, crude methods of theoretical physics into a mystical realm of broad intuition.... In Oppenheimer the element of earthiness was feeble. Yet it was essentially this spiritual quality, this refinement as expressed in speech and manner, that was the basis of his charisma. He never expressed himself completely. He always left a feeling that there were depths of sensibility and insight not yet revealed. These may be the qualities of the born leader who seems to have reserves of uncommitted strength. In spite of this, observers such as physicists Luis Alvarez and Jeremy Bernstein have suggested that if Oppenheimer had lived long enough to see his predictions substantiated by experiment, he might have won a Nobel Prize for his work


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-6.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
In June 1942, the U.S. Army established the Manhattan Engineer District to handle its part in the atom bomb project, beginning the process of transferring responsibility from the Office of Scientific Research and Development to the military. In September, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr., was appointed director of what became known as the Manhattan Project. By October 12, 1942, Groves and Oppenheimer had decided that for security and cohesion, they needed to establish a centralized, secret research laboratory in a remote location. Groves selected Oppenheimer to head the project's secret weapons laboratory, although it is not known precisely when. On October 15, 1942, after a meeting in Chicago on the Manhattan Project Groves invited Oppenheimer to join himself, James C. Marshall and Kenneth Nichols on their return trip to New York on the 20th Century Limited. After dinner on the train, they discussed the project. After Oppenheimer left the train, none of the three could name another suitable scientist to head the project. Shortly afterwards Oppenheimer was appointed to head the Los Alamos Laboratory. This decision surprised many, because Oppenheimer had left-wing political views and no record as a leader of large projects. Groves worried that because Oppenheimer did


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-7.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
At this point in the war, there was considerable anxiety among the scientists that the German nuclear weapons program might be progressing faster than the Manhattan Project. In a letter dated May 25, 1943, Oppenheimer responded to a proposal by Fermi to use radioactive materials to poison German food supplies. Oppenheimer asked Fermi whether he could produce enough strontium without letting too many in on the secret. Oppenheimer continued, "I think we should not attempt a plan unless we can poison food sufficient to kill a half a million men." In 1943, development efforts were directed to a plutonium gun-type fission weapon called "Thin Man". Initial research on the properties of plutonium was done using cyclotron-generated plutonium-239, which was extremely pure but could be created only in tiny amounts. When Los Alamos received the first sample of plutonium from the X-10 Graphite Reactor in April 1944, a problem was discovered: reactor-bred plutonium had a higher concentration of plutonium-240 (five times that of "cyclotron" plutonium), making it unsuitable for use in a gun-type weapon. In July 1944, Oppenheimer abandoned the Thin Man gun design in favor of an implosion-type weapon; a smaller version of Thin Man became Little Boy. Using chemical


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-8.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
== Postwar activities == Once the public learned of the Manhattan Project after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer—suddenly a household name as the "father of the atomic bomb"—became a national spokesman for science, emblematic of a new type of technocratic power; he appeared on the covers of Life and Time. Nuclear physics became a powerful force as nations realized the strategic and political power that atomic weapons conferred. Like many scientists of his generation, Oppenheimer felt that security from atomic bombs could come only from a transnational organization such as the newly formed United Nations, which could institute a program to stifle a nuclear arms race. === Institute for Advanced Study === In November 1945, Oppenheimer left Los Alamos to return to Caltech, but soon found that his heart was no longer in teaching. In 1947, he accepted an offer from Lewis Strauss to take up the directorship of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. This meant moving back east and leaving Ruth Tolman, the wife of his friend Richard Tolman, with whom he had begun an affair after leaving Los Alamos. The job came with a salary of $20,000 per annum, plus rent-free accommodation


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-9.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
As a member of the Board of Consultants to a committee appointed by Truman, Oppenheimer strongly influenced the 1946 Acheson–Lilienthal Report. In this report, the committee advocated the creation of an international Atomic Development Authority, which would own all fissionable material and the means of its production, such as mines and laboratories, and atomic power plants where it could be used for peaceful energy production. Bernard Baruch was appointed to translate this report into a proposal to the United Nations, resulting in the Baruch Plan of 1946. The Baruch Plan introduced many additional provisions regarding enforcement, in particular requiring inspection of the Soviet Union's uranium resources. It was seen as an attempt to maintain the United States' nuclear monopoly and rejected by the Soviets. With this, it became clear to Oppenheimer that an arms race was unavoidable, due to the mutual suspicion of the United States and the Soviet Union, which even Oppenheimer was starting to distrust. After the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) came into being in 1947 as a civilian agency in control of nuclear research and weapons issues, Oppenheimer was appointed as the chairman of its General Advisory Committee (GAC). From this position, he advised on a number


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-10.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
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parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
Oppenheimer played a role on a number of government panels and study projects during the late 1940s and early 1950s, some of which thrust him into controversies and power struggles. In 1948, Oppenheimer chaired the Department of Defense's Long-Range Objectives Panel, a body created by AEC liaison Donald F. Carpenter. It looked at the military utility of nuclear weapons, including how they might be delivered. After a year's worth of study, in spring 1952, Oppenheimer wrote the draft report of Project GABRIEL, which examined the dangers of nuclear fallout. Oppenheimer was also a member of the Science Advisory Committee of the Office of Defense Mobilization. Oppenheimer participated in Project Charles during 1951, which examined the possibility of creating an effective air defense of the United States against atomic attack, and in the follow-on Project East River in 1952, which, with Oppenheimer's input, recommended building a warning system that would provide one-hour notice of an impending atomic attack against American cities. Those two projects led to Project Lincoln in 1952, a large effort on which Oppenheimer was one of the senior scientists. Undertaken at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, which had recently been founded to study issues of air defense, this in


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-11.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
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parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover had been following Oppenheimer since before the war, when he showed Communist sympathies as a professor at Berkeley and had been close to members of the Communist Party, including his wife and brother. They strongly suspected that he himself was a member of the party, based on wiretaps in which party members referred to him or appeared to refer to him as a communist, as well as reports from informers within the party. He had been under close surveillance since the early 1940s, his home and office bugged, his phone tapped and his mail opened. In August 1943, Oppenheimer told Manhattan Project security agents that George Eltenton, whom he did not know, had solicited three men at Los Alamos for nuclear secrets on behalf of the Soviet Union. When pressed on the issue in later interviews, Oppenheimer admitted that the only person who had approached him was his friend Haakon Chevalier, a Berkeley professor of French literature, who had mentioned the matter privately at a dinner at Oppenheimer's house. The FBI furnished Oppenheimer's political enemies with evidence that intimated communist ties. These enemies included Strauss, an AEC commissioner who had long harbored resentment against


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-12.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
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parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
In a great number of cases, I have seen Dr. Oppenheimer act—I understand that Dr. Oppenheimer acted—in a way which for me was exceedingly hard to understand. I thoroughly disagreed with him in numerous issues and his actions frankly appeared to me confused and complicated. To this extent I feel that I would like to see the vital interests of this country in hands which I understand better, and therefore trust more. In this very limited sense I would like to express a feeling that I would feel personally more secure if public matters would rest in other hands. Teller's testimony outraged the scientific community, and he was virtually ostracized from academic science. Ernest Lawrence refused to testify, pleading an attack of ulcerative colitis, but an interview in which Lawrence condemned Oppenheimer was submitted in evidence. Many top scientists, as well as government and military figures, testified on Oppenheimer's behalf. Physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi said that the suspension of the security clearance was unnecessary: "he is a consultant, and if you don't want to consult the guy, you don't consult him, period." But Groves testified that, under the stricter security criteria in effect in 1954, he "would not clear Dr.


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-13.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
Starting in 1954, Oppenheimer lived for several months of each year on the island of Saint John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In 1957, he purchased a two-acre (0.8-hectare) tract of land on Gibney Beach, where he built a spartan home on the beach. He spent considerable time sailing with his daughter Toni and wife Kitty. Oppenheimer's first public appearance following the stripping of his security clearance was a lecture titled "Prospects in the Arts and Sciences" for the Columbia University Bicentennial radio show Man's Right to Knowledge, in which he outlined his philosophy and his thoughts on the role of science in the modern world. He had been selected for the final episode of the lecture series two years prior to the security hearing, though the university remained adamant that he stay on even after the controversy. In February 1955, the president of the University of Washington, Henry Schmitz, abruptly canceled an invitation to Oppenheimer to deliver a series of lectures there. Schmitz's decision caused an uproar among the students; 1,200 of them signed a petition protesting the decision, and Schmitz was burned in effigy. While they marched in protest, the state of Washington outlawed the Communist Party, and


id: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer-14.md
category: reference
title: J. Robert Oppenheimer
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:07:13.473219+00:00
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parent: j-robert-oppenheimer-20260505-0
summary:
=== Enrico Fermi Award === In 1959, then-Senator John F. Kennedy voted to deny Lewis Strauss, Oppenheimer's greatest detractor in his security hearings, confirmation as Secretary of Commerce, effectively ending Strauss's political career. In 1962, Kennedy―now President of the United States―invited Oppenheimer to a ceremony honoring 49 Nobel Prize winners. At the event, AEC chairman Glenn Seaborg asked Oppenheimer whether he wanted another security hearing. Oppenheimer declined. In March 1963, the General Advisory committee of the AEC selected Oppenheimer to receive its Enrico Fermi Award, an award Congress had created in 1954. Kennedy was assassinated before he could present the award to Oppenheimer, but his successor, Lyndon Johnson, did so in a December 1963 ceremony at which he cited Oppenheimer's "contributions to theoretical physics as a teacher and originator of ideas, [and] leadership of the Los Alamos Laboratory and the atomic energy program during critical years." He called the signing of the award one of Kennedy's greatest acts as president. Oppenheimer told Johnson, "I think it is just possible, Mr. President, that it has taken some charity and some courage for you to make this award today." Kennedy's widow, Jackie, made a point of attending the ceremony so she could


