World War I
World War I known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history, it is one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide. On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, on 23 July Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, the two moved to a war footing. A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe.
By July 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente—consisting of France and Britain—and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Russia felt it necessary to back Serbia and, after Austria-Hungary shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade on the 28th, partial mobilisation was approved. General Russian mobilisation was announced on the evening of 30 July; when Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on 1 August in support of Austria-Hungary, with Austria-Hungary following suit on 6th. German strategy for a war on two fronts against France and Russia was to concentrate the bulk of its army in the West to defeat France within four weeks shift forces to the East before Russia could mobilise. On 2 August, Germany demanded free passage through Belgium, an essential element in achieving a quick victory over France; when this was refused, German forces invaded Belgium on 3 August and declared war on France the same day. On 12 August and France declared war on Austria-Hungary.
In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Alliance, opening fronts in the Caucasus and the Sinai Peninsula. The war was fought in and drew upon each power's colonial empire as well, spreading the conflict to Africa and across the globe; the Entente and its allies would become known as the Allied Powers, while the grouping of Austria-Hungary and their allies would become known as the Central Powers. The German advance into France was halted at the Battle of the Marne and by the end of 1914, the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, marked by a long series of trench lines that changed little until 1917. In 1915, Italy opened a front in the Alps. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915 and Greece joined the Allies in 1917, expanding the war in the Balkans; the United States remained neutral, although by doing nothing to prevent the Allies from procuring American supplies whilst the Allied blockade prevented the Germans from doing the same the U. S. became an important supplier of war material to the Allies.
After the sinking of American merchant ships by German submarines, the revelation that the Germans were trying to incite Mexico to make war on the United States, the U. S. declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. Trained American forces would not begin arriving at the front in large numbers until mid-1918, but the American Expeditionary Force would reach some two million troops. Though Serbia was defeated in 1915, Romania joined the Allied Powers in 1916 only to be defeated in 1917, none of the great powers were knocked out of the war until 1918; the 1917 February Revolution in Russia replaced the Tsarist autocracy with the Provisional Government, but continuing discontent at the cost of the war led to the October Revolution, the creation of the Soviet Socialist Republic, the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the new government in March 1918, ending Russia's involvement in the war. This allowed the transfer of large numbers of German troops from the East to the Western Front, resulting in the German March 1918 Offensive.
This offensive was successful, but the Allies rallied and drove the Germans back in their Hundred Days Offensive. Bulgaria was the first Central Power to sign an armistice—the Armistice of Salonica on 29 September 1918. On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated. On 4 November, the Austro-Hungarian empire agreed to the Armistice of Villa Giusti after being decisively defeated by Italy in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. With its allies defeated, revolution at home, the military no longer willing to fight, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated on 9 November and Germany signed an armistice on 11 November 1918. World War I was a significant turning point in the political, cultural and social climate of the world; the war and its immediate aftermath sparked numerous uprisings. The Big Four (Britain, the United States, It
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, astronomer and author, recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time, a key figure in the scientific revolution. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first published in 1687, laid the foundations of classical mechanics. Newton made seminal contributions to optics, shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing the infinitesimal calculus. In Principia, Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to prove Kepler's laws of planetary motion, account for tides, the trajectories of comets, the precession of the equinoxes and other phenomena, eradicating doubt about the Solar System's heliocentricity, he demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and celestial bodies could be accounted for by the same principles. Newton's inference that the Earth is an oblate spheroid was confirmed by the geodetic measurements of Maupertuis, La Condamine, others, convincing most European scientists of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over earlier systems.
Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of colour based on the observation that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum. His work on light was collected in his influential book Opticks, published in 1704, he formulated an empirical law of cooling, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound, introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid. In addition to his work on calculus, as a mathematician Newton contributed to the study of power series, generalised the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, developed a method for approximating the roots of a function, classified most of the cubic plane curves. Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, he was a devout but unorthodox Christian who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Unusually for a member of the Cambridge faculty of the day, he refused to take holy orders in the Church of England.
Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. Politically and tied to the Whig party, Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689–90 and 1701–02, he was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden and Master of the Royal Mint, as well as president of the Royal Society. Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day, 25 December 1642 "an hour or two after midnight", at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire, his father named Isaac Newton, had died three months before. Born prematurely, Newton was a small child; when Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough.
Newton disliked his stepfather and maintained some enmity towards his mother for marrying him, as revealed by this entry in a list of sins committed up to the age of 19: "Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them." Newton's mother had three children from her second marriage. From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The King's School, which taught Latin and Greek and imparted a significant foundation of mathematics, he was removed from school, returned to Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth by October 1659. His mother, widowed for the second time, attempted to make him an occupation he hated. Henry Stokes, master at The King's School, persuaded his mother to send him back to school. Motivated by a desire for revenge against a schoolyard bully, he became the top-ranked student, distinguishing himself by building sundials and models of windmills. In June 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, on the recommendation of his uncle Rev William Ayscough, who had studied there.
He started as a subsizar—paying his way by performing valet's duties—until he was awarded a scholarship in 1664, guaranteeing him four more years until he could get his MA. At that time, the college's teachings were based on those of Aristotle, whom Newton supplemented with modern philosophers such as Descartes, astronomers such as Galileo and Thomas Street, through whom he learned of Kepler's work, he set down in his notebook a series of "Quaestiones" about mechanical philosophy. In 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that became calculus. Soon after Newton had obtained his BA degree in August 1665, the university temporarily closed as a precaution against the Great Plague. Although he had been undistinguished as a Cambridge student, Newton's private studies at his home in Woolsthorpe over the subsequent two years saw the development of his theories on calculus and the law of gravitation. In April 1667, he returned in October was elected as a fellow of Trinity.
Fellows were required to become ordained priests, although this was no
National Library of the Czech Republic
The National Library of the Czech Republic is the central library of the Czech Republic. It is directed by the Ministry of Culture; the library's main building is located in the historical Clementinum building in Prague, where half of its books are kept. The other half of the collection is stored in the district of Hostivař; the National Library is the biggest library in the Czech Republic, in its funds there are around 6 million documents. The library has around 60,000 registered readers; as well as Czech texts, the library stores older material from Turkey and India. The library houses books for Charles University in Prague; the library won international recognition in 2005 as it received the inaugural Jikji Prize from UNESCO via the Memory of the World Programme for its efforts in digitising old texts. The project, which commenced in 1992, involved the digitisation of 1,700 documents in its first 13 years; the most precious medieval manuscripts preserved in the National Library are the Codex Vyssegradensis and the Passional of Abbes Kunigunde.
In 2006 the Czech parliament approved funding for the construction of a new library building on Letna plain, between Hradčanská metro station and Sparta Prague's football ground, Letná stadium. In March 2007, following a request for tender, Czech architect Jan Kaplický was selected by a jury to undertake the project, with a projected completion date of 2011. In 2007 the project was delayed following objections regarding its proposed location from government officials including Prague Mayor Pavel Bém and President Václav Klaus. Plans for the building had still not been decided in February 2008, with the matter being referred to the Office for the Protection of Competition in order to determine if the tender had been won fairly. In 2008, Minister of Culture Václav Jehlička announced the end of the project, following a ruling from the European Commission that the tender process had not been carried out legally; the library was affected by the 2002 European floods, with some documents moved to upper levels to avoid the excess water.
Over 4,000 books were removed from the library in July 2011 following flooding in parts of the main building. There was a fire at the library in December 2012. List of national and state libraries Official website
Virtual International Authority File
The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of several national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. Discussion about having a common international authority started in the late 1990s. After a series of failed attempts to come up with a unique common authority file, the new idea was to link existing national authorities; this would present all the benefits of a common file without requiring a large investment of time and expense in the process. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library and the OCLC on August 6, 2003; the Bibliothèque nationale de France joined the project on October 5, 2007. The project transitioned to being a service of the OCLC on April 4, 2012; the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together. A VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary "see" and "see also" records from the original records, refers to the original authority records.
The data are available for research and data exchange and sharing. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol; the file numbers are being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAF's clustering algorithm is run every month; as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records. Authority control Faceted Application of Subject Terminology Integrated Authority File International Standard Authority Data Number International Standard Name Identifier Wikipedia's authority control template for articles Official website VIAF at OCLC
Klaus Hentschel
Klaus Hentschel is a German physicist, historian of science and Professor and head of the History of Science and Technology section in the History Department of the University of Stuttgart. He is known for his contributions in the field of the history of science. Born in Bad Nauheim, Hentschel from 1979 to 1985 studied physics, science and musicology at the University of Hamburg, he completed his studies in philosophy in 1985 with the master's examination, a study in physics in 1987. After some studies in the United States, among others in Boston on a DAAD, he in 1989 received his PhD at the University of Hamburg, his thesis was entitled "Interpretationen und Fehlinterpretationen der speziellen und der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie durch Zeitgenossen Albert Einsteins". After graduation Hentschel participated in a research project by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft on epistemic modal logic. In 1991 he was appointed assistant professor at the Institute for the History of Science of the University of Göttingen.
In 1995 he obtained his habilitation in Hamburg with the thesis, entitled "Zum Zusammenspiel von Instrument, Experiment und Theorie. Rotverschiebung im Sonnenspektrum und verwandte spektrale Verschiebungseffekte von 1880 bis 1960.". In the year 1995/1996 Klaus Hentschel was Fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology of Bern Dibner, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1996 to 2002 he was successively Assistant Professor at the Institute for the History of Science at the University of Göttingen, visiting scholar at MIT, Visiting Professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hamburg. From 2003 to 2005 he worked with a research grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft at the University of Bern and 2005/2006 at the University of Stuttgart in the Department of History of Science and Technology. In 2006 Hentschel was appointed Professor at the University of Halle-Wittenberg for a period of five years in the field of comparative history of science.
In the same year he was appointed Professor at the University of Stuttgart, where he chairs the Department of History of Science and Technology in the History department since 2007. 1989: Kurt-Hartwig-Siemers Science-Prize of the University of Hamburg 1992: Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Prize of the German Federal Ministry of Science & Education 1998: Marc-Auguste-Pictet-Prize of the Société de physique et d'histoire naturelle de Genève in Geneva 1999: Georg-Uschmann-Prize for History of Science of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina 2017: Neu-Whitrow-Prize of the Commission on Bibliography and Documentation, International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science for his international Database of Scientific Illustrators 1450-1950 2004: Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina 2005: Corresponding member of the Académie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences in Paris, Rom und Liège 2013: Full member of the Académie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences 2015: Chairman of the Ruth Schmidt Stockhausen Stiftung for Visual Arts and Poetry.
Hentschel, Klaus. Interpretationen und Fehlinterpretationen der speziellen und der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie durch Zeitgenossen Albert Einsteins.. Hentschel, Klaus, ed. Physics and national socialism: An anthology of primary sources. Basel, 1996/2011. Hentschel, Klaus. Zum Zusammenspiel von Instrument, Experiment und Theorie. Hamburg, 1998. Hentschel, Klaus; the Mental Aftermath: On the Mentality of German Physicists 1945-1949. Oxford, 2007. Hentschel, Klaus. Mapping the Spectrum-Techniques of Visual Representation in Research and Teaching. Oxford, 2002. Hentschel, Klaus. Visual Cultures of Science and Technology - A Comparative History. Oxford, 2014. Dan Greenberger, Klaus Hentschel and Friedel Weinert: Compendium of Quantum Physics. Concepts, Experiments and Philosophy. Dordrecht, New York 2009. Articles: Hentschel, Klaus. "Die Korrespondenz Einstein-Schlick: Zum Verhältnis der Physik zur Philosophie." Annals of Science 43.5: 475-488. Hentschel, Klaus. Einstein's attitude towards experiments: Testing relativity theory 1907-1927, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 23, pp. 593-624.
Hentschel, Klaus. "Erwin Finlay Freundlich and testing Einstein's theory of relativity." Archive for history of exact sciences 47.2: 143-201. Hentschel, Klaus. Das Brechungsgesetz in der Fassung von Snellius. Rekonstruktion seines Entdeckungspfades und eine Übersetzung seines lateinischen Manuskriptes sowie ergänzender Dokumente, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 55, pp. 297-344. Hentschel, Klaus. What history of science can learn from Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 27, pp. 211-216. Hentschel, Klaus. Gauß, Meyerstein and Hanoverian metrology, Annals of Science 64,1, 41-72. Hentschel, Klaus. Von der Materialforschung zur materials science, NTM International Journal of History & Ethics of Natural Sciences and Medicine, N. S. 19,1, pp. 5-40. Klaus Hentschel, University of Stuttgart Research Gate Profile von Klaus Hentschel with more than 200 downloadable publications
Einstein Tower
The Einstein Tower is an astrophysical observatory in the Albert Einstein Science Park in Potsdam, Germany built by architect Erich Mendelsohn. It was built on the summit of the Potsdam Telegraphenberg to house a solar telescope designed by the astronomer Erwin Finlay-Freundlich; the telescope supports observations to validate Albert Einstein's relativity theory. The building was first conceived around 1917, built from 1919 to 1921 after a fund-raising drive, became operational in 1924. Although Einstein never worked there, he supported the operation of the telescope, it is still a working solar observatory today as part of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam. Light from the telescope is directed down through the shaft to the basement where the instruments and laboratory are located. There were more than half a dozen telescopes in the laboratory; this was one of Mendelsohn's first major projects, completed when a young Richard Neutra was on his staff, is his best-known building. Between 1917–1920 Mendelsohn created numerous sketches with the attempt to create a structure that reflects Einstein's groundbreaking theories.
The exterior was conceived in concrete, but due to construction difficulties with the complex design and shortages from the war, much of the building was realized in brick, covered with stucco. Because the material was changed during construction of the building, the designs were not updated to accommodate them; this dampness. Extensive repair work had to be done only five years after the initial construction, overseen by Mendelsohn himself. Since numerous renovations have been done periodically; the building was damaged by Allied bombing during World War II, leaving it in a state that, as the architecture blog A456 noted, was more in line with Mendelsohn's conceptual sketches than the pre-war structure was. It underwent a full renovation in 1999, for its 75th anniversary, to correct problems with dampness and decay that had meant decades of repair, it is cited as one of the landmarks of expressionist architecture. According to lore, Mendelsohn took Einstein on a long tour of the completed structure, waiting for some sign of approval.
The design, while logical and sufficient to its purpose, stood out like an "ungainly spaceship" in the suburbs of Potsdam. Einstein said nothing until hours during a meeting with the building committee, when he whispered his one-word judgment: "Organic". Mendelsohn himself said that he had designed it out of some unknown urge, letting it emerge from "the mystique around Einstein's universe". In 1911 Einstein published the initial version of his innovative General Theory of Relativity. One of the predicted effects according to the theory was a slight shift of spectral lines in the sun’s gravitation field, now known as the red shift; the solar observatory in Potsdam was designed and constructed to verify this phenomenon. The Mount Wilson Observatory in California, the first tower telescope worldwide, was the model for the facility designed by Freundlich. In tower telescopes a coelostat at the top of a vertical construction directs light down to an objective; the actual lens system is rigidly integrated into the construction.
The mirrors at the top are movable and only these small lightweight instrument components are needed to track the sun. Because of the vertical arrangement, air turbulence near the ground has no effect. In the Einstein Tower the construction containing the optics consists of two wooden platforms, each six m high, placed one above the other; the telescope has a lens objective of 60 cm diameter and focal length of 14 m. Rooms for observations and measurements are located at the base of the tower. In California the lab rooms are under each other. Another rotating mirror directs the sunlight to the spectrograph lab located in the basement behind an earthen wall on the southern side of the tower, it is about 14 m long and thermally insulated. Here is where the light analyzed; this design of a horizontal laboratory wing led to the elongated profile of the entire facility. Soon after research started at the site, it became evident that the proof sought would be harder to obtain than anticipated since the minimal shift of spectral lines was obscured by other solar influences.
The reason was atmospheric turbulence on the solar surface. However and Freundlich had from the beginning not only been interested in the specific problem of the red shift, but had intended basic research in solar physics, the laboratories were so designed that new equipment could be installed without difficulty; the turbulent behavior of the outer solar atmosphere soon became the primary subject of research at the Einstein Tower. The red shift could be proved only in the 1950s after it became possible to analyze the complex disturbances of the solar atmosphere; the characteristics and behavior of magnetic fields provide the key to understanding solar activity and are at the focus of work at the Einstein Tower. The solar magnetic field can be measured with the help of a double spectrograph and two photoelectric polarization analyzers. Measurements in the photosphere, the visible light realm, permit conclusions about the situation at higher altitude levels; the Potsdam astronomers participate in the operation of an observatory on Tenerife.
Instruments to be used there are first tested at the Einstein Tower. The Einstein Tower plays an important role in training students. In the tower’s entrance area there is a bronze bust of Einstein whic
