British Chess Championship
The British Chess Championship is organised by the English Chess Federation. The main tournament incorporates the British Chess Championships, the English Chess Championships and the British Women's Chess Championship so it is possible, although it has never happened, for one player to win all three titles in the same competition; the English Women's Chess Championship was incorporated into this event but did not take place in 2015 and was held as a separate competition in 2016. Since 1923 there have been sections for juniors, since 1982 there has been an over-sixty championship; the championship venue changes every year and has been held in different locations in England, Scotland and once on the Isle of Man. The championship was open to citizens of any Commonwealth country and has been won by Mir Sultan Khan and Abe Yanofsky. After the Indian R. B. Ramesh finished first in 2002 and several other Indians took top prizes at the same event, many top Britons declined to compete in the 2003 championship.
Following the victory of Indian Abhijit Kunte in 2003 and criticism that the British Championship was not serving the interests of British players, it was announced that starting in 2004 only British and Irish players would be eligible to take part. Since 2006 the Commonwealth Chess Championship has been organized on an annual basis; these were the first large tournaments organised by the British Chess Association, international players were allowed to participate. In July 1862, Adolf Anderssen won the first international tournament organized by the British Chess Association, held in London. Second place went followed by John Owen; this was the first round-robin tournament. In August 1872, Wilhelm Steinitz won the second British Chess Federation international tourney, held in London. Second place went to Joseph Henry Blackburne; the great London 1883 chess tournament was won convincingly by Johannes Hermann Zukertort ahead of Steinitz. In 1884, a new British Chess Association was inaugurated. In July 1885, Isidor Gunsberg won the first British Chess Federation championship in London.
In August 1886, Blackburne and Amos Burn tied for first in the second British Chess Federation championship, held in London. Blackburne won the play-off. In December 1887, Burn and Gunsberg tied for first in the third British Chess Federation Congress in London; the first British Championship was organized by the British Chess Association as an event at the 1866 London Congress. A rule awarded the B. C. A. Challenge Cup permanently to a player. John Wisker accomplished this in 1872 by defeating Cecil De Vere in a play-off; the British Championship was discontinued until 1904. Ten amateur championships were held between 1886 and 1902, but they did not include the strongest players and were unrepresentative in the earlier years; the current championship series was begun by the British Chess Federation in 1904. The championship was not held in war years, it was not held in 1919, 1922, 1927, 1930 as major international events were being held in England. José Raúl Capablanca won the 12th British Chess Congress at Hastings 1919 and the 15th BCC at London 1922, Alexander Alekhine won the 16th BCC at Portsmouth/Southsea 1923, Aron Nimzowitsch and Savielly Tartakower won at London 1927, Edgard Colle won at Scarborough 1930.
In 1939 the championship was not held as the British team was in Buenos Aires for the 8th Chess Olympiad. In that time, Max Euwe won an international tournament at Bournemouth 1939, played during the BCC; the women's championship was held in most of those years. British Rapidplay Chess Championships Sunnucks, Anne. "The Encyclopaedia of Chess". St. Martin's Press: 43–45. LCCN 78106371 Whyld, Ken. Chess: The Records. Guinness Books. Pp. 89–92. ISBN 0-85112-455-0 BritBase - List of all British Chess Champions from 1904 to present British Champions 1904 – present; the English Chess Federation
Mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in his or her work to solve mathematical problems. Mathematics is concerned with numbers, quantity, space and change. One of the earliest known mathematicians was Thales of Miletus, he is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' Theorem. The number of known mathematicians grew when Pythagoras of Samos established the Pythagorean School, whose doctrine it was that mathematics ruled the universe and whose motto was "All is number", it was the Pythagoreans who coined the term "mathematics", with whom the study of mathematics for its own sake begins. The first woman mathematician recorded by history was Hypatia of Alexandria, she succeeded her father as Librarian at the Great Library and wrote many works on applied mathematics. Because of a political dispute, the Christian community in Alexandria punished her, presuming she was involved, by stripping her naked and scraping off her skin with clamshells.
Science and mathematics in the Islamic world during the Middle Ages followed various models and modes of funding varied based on scholars. It was extensive patronage and strong intellectual policies implemented by specific rulers that allowed scientific knowledge to develop in many areas. Funding for translation of scientific texts in other languages was ongoing throughout the reign of certain caliphs, it turned out that certain scholars became experts in the works they translated and in turn received further support for continuing to develop certain sciences; as these sciences received wider attention from the elite, more scholars were invited and funded to study particular sciences. An example of a translator and mathematician who benefited from this type of support was al-Khawarizmi. A notable feature of many scholars working under Muslim rule in medieval times is that they were polymaths. Examples include the work on optics and astronomy of Ibn al-Haytham; the Renaissance brought an increased emphasis on science to Europe.
During this period of transition from a feudal and ecclesiastical culture to a predominantly secular one, many notable mathematicians had other occupations: Luca Pacioli. As time passed, many mathematicians gravitated towards universities. An emphasis on free thinking and experimentation had begun in Britain's oldest universities beginning in the seventeenth century at Oxford with the scientists Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle, at Cambridge where Isaac Newton was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics & Physics. Moving into the 19th century, the objective of universities all across Europe evolved from teaching the “regurgitation of knowledge” to “encourag productive thinking.” In 1810, Humboldt convinced the King of Prussia to build a university in Berlin based on Friedrich Schleiermacher’s liberal ideas. Thus and laboratories started to evolve. British universities of this period adopted some approaches familiar to the Italian and German universities, but as they enjoyed substantial freedoms and autonomy the changes there had begun with the Age of Enlightenment, the same influences that inspired Humboldt.
The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge emphasized the importance of research, arguably more authentically implementing Humboldt’s idea of a university than German universities, which were subject to state authority. Overall, science became the focus of universities in the 20th centuries. Students could conduct research in seminars or laboratories and began to produce doctoral theses with more scientific content. According to Humboldt, the mission of the University of Berlin was to pursue scientific knowledge; the German university system fostered professional, bureaucratically regulated scientific research performed in well-equipped laboratories, instead of the kind of research done by private and individual scholars in Great Britain and France. In fact, Rüegg asserts that the German system is responsible for the development of the modern research university because it focused on the idea of “freedom of scientific research and study.” Mathematicians cover a breadth of topics within mathematics in their undergraduate education, proceed to specialize in topics of their own choice at the graduate level.
In some universities, a qualifying exam serves to test both the breadth and depth of a student's understanding of mathematics. Mathematicians involved with solving problems with applications in real life are called applied mathematicians. Applied mathematicians are mathematical scientists who, with their specialized knowledge and professional methodology, approach many of the imposing problems presented in related scientific fields. With professional focus on a wide variety of problems, theoretical systems, localized constructs, applied mathematicians work in the study and formulation of mathematical models. Mathematicians and applied mathematicians are considered to be two of the STEM careers; the discipline of applied mathematics concerns
Royal Society
The President and Fellows of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge known as the Royal Society, is a learned society. Founded on 28 November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II as "The Royal Society", it is the oldest national scientific institution in the world. The society is the United Kingdom's and Commonwealth of Nations' Academy of Sciences and fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, recognising excellence in science, supporting outstanding science, providing scientific advice for policy, fostering international and global co-operation and public engagement; the society is governed by its Council, chaired by the Society's President, according to a set of statutes and standing orders. The members of Council and the President are elected from and by its Fellows, the basic members of the society, who are themselves elected by existing Fellows; as of 2016, there are about 1,600 fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS, with up to 52 new fellows appointed each year.
There are royal fellows, honorary fellows and foreign members, the last of which are allowed to use the postnominal title ForMemRS. The Royal Society President is Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, who took up the post on 30 November 2015. Since 1967, the society has been based at 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, a Grade I listed building in central London, used by the Embassy of Germany, London; the Invisible College has been described as a precursor group to the Royal Society of London, consisting of a number of natural philosophers around Robert Boyle. The concept of "invisible college" is mentioned in German Rosicrucian pamphlets in the early 17th century. Ben Jonson in England referenced the idea, related in meaning to Francis Bacon's House of Solomon, in a masque The Fortunate Isles and Their Union from 1624/5; the term accrued currency for the exchanges of correspondence within the Republic of Letters. In letters in 1646 and 1647, Boyle refers to "our invisible college" or "our philosophical college".
The society's common theme was to acquire knowledge through experimental investigation. Three dated letters are the basic documentary evidence: Boyle sent them to Isaac Marcombes, Francis Tallents who at that point was a fellow of Magdalene College and London-based Samuel Hartlib; the Royal Society started from groups of physicians and natural philosophers, meeting at a variety of locations, including Gresham College in London. They were influenced by the "new science", as promoted by Francis Bacon in his New Atlantis, from 1645 onwards. A group known as "The Philosophical Society of Oxford" was run under a set of rules still retained by the Bodleian Library. After the English Restoration, there were regular meetings at Gresham College, it is held that these groups were the inspiration for the foundation of the Royal Society. Another view of the founding, held at the time, was that it was due to the influence of French scientists and the Montmor Academy in 1657, reports of which were sent back to England by English scientists attending.
This view was held by Jean-Baptiste du Hamel, Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle and Melchisédech Thévenot at the time and has some grounding in that Henry Oldenburg, the society's first secretary, had attended the Montmor Academy meeting. Robert Hooke, disputed this, writing that: makes Mr Oldenburg to have been the instrument, who inspired the English with a desire to imitate the French, in having Philosophical Clubs, or Meetings. I will not say, that Mr Oldenburg did rather inspire the French to follow the English, or, at least, did help them, hinder us. But'tis well known who were the principal men that began and promoted that design, both in this city and in Oxford, and not only these Philosophic Meetings were. On 28 November 1660, the 1660 committee of 12 announced the formation of a "College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning", which would meet weekly to discuss science and run experiments. At the second meeting, Sir Robert Moray announced that the King approved of the gatherings, a royal charter was signed on 15 July 1662 which created the "Royal Society of London", with Lord Brouncker serving as the first president.
A second royal charter was signed on 23 April 1663, with the king noted as the founder and with the name of "the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge". This initial royal favour has continued and, since every monarch has been the patron of the society; the society's early meetings included experiments performed first by Hooke and by Denis Papin, appointed in 1684. These experiments varied in their subject area, were both important in some cases and trivial in others; the society published an English translation of Essays of Natural Experiments Made in the Accademia del Cimento, under the Protection of the Most Serene Prince Leopold of Tuscany in 1684, an Italian book documenting experiments at the Accademia del Cimento. Although meeting at Gresham College, the Society temporarily moved to Arundel House in 1666 after the Great Fire of London, which did not harm Gresham but did lead to its appropriation by the Lord Mayor; the Society r
James Joseph Sylvester
James Joseph Sylvester FRS HFRSE LLD was an English mathematician. He made fundamental contributions to matrix theory, invariant theory, number theory, partition theory, combinatorics, he played a leadership role in American mathematics in the half of the 19th century as a professor at the Johns Hopkins University and as founder of the American Journal of Mathematics. At his death, he was professor at Oxford. James Joseph was born in London on the son of Abraham Joseph, a merchant. James adopted the surname Sylvester when his older brother did so upon emigration to the United States—a country which at that time required all immigrants to have a given name, a middle name, a surname. At the age of 14, Sylvester was a student of Augustus De Morgan at the University of London, his family withdrew him from the University after he was accused of stabbing a fellow student with a knife. Subsequently, he attended the Liverpool Royal Institution. Sylvester began his study of mathematics at St John's College, Cambridge in 1831, where his tutor was John Hymers.
Although his studies were interrupted for two years due to a prolonged illness, he ranked second in Cambridge's famous mathematical examination, the tripos, for which he sat in 1837. However, Sylvester was not issued a degree, because graduates at that time were required to state their acceptance of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, Sylvester could not do so because he was Jewish. For the same reason, he was unable to obtain a Smith's prize. In 1838, Sylvester became professor of natural philosophy at University College London and in 1839 a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 1841, he was awarded an MA by Trinity College, Dublin. In the same year he moved to the United States to become a professor of mathematics at the University of Virginia, but left after less than four months following a violent encounter with two students he had disciplined, he moved to New York City and began friendships with the Harvard mathematician Benjamin Peirce and the Princeton physicist Joseph Henry.
However, he left in November 1843 after being denied appointment as Professor of Mathematics at Columbia College, again for his Judaism, returned to England. On his return to England, he was hired in 1844 by the Equity and Law Life Assurance Society for which he developed successful actuarial models and served as de facto CEO, a position that required a law degree; as a result, he studied for the Bar, meeting a fellow British mathematician studying law, Arthur Cayley, with whom he made significant contributions to invariant theory and matrix theory during a long collaboration. He did not obtain a position teaching university mathematics until 1855, when he was appointed professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, from which he retired in 1869, because the compulsory retirement age was 55; the Woolwich academy refused to pay Sylvester his full pension, only relented after a prolonged public controversy, during which Sylvester took his case to the letters page of The Times. One of Sylvester's lifelong passions was for poetry.
Following his early retirement, Sylvester published a book entitled The Laws of Verse in which he attempted to codify a set of laws for prosody in poetry. In 1872, he received his B. A. and M. A. from Cambridge, having been denied the degrees due to his being a Jew. In 1876 Sylvester again crossed the Atlantic Ocean to become the inaugural professor of mathematics at the new Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, his salary was $5,000. After negotiation, agreement was reached on a salary, not paid in gold. In 1878 he founded the American Journal of Mathematics; the only other mathematical journal in the US at that time was the Analyst, which became the Annals of Mathematics. In 1883, he returned to England to take up the Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford University, he held this chair until his death, although in 1892 the University appointed a deputy professor to the same chair. He was on the governing body of Abingdon School. Sylvester died in London on 15 March 1897, he is buried in Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery on Kingsbury Road in London.
Sylvester invented a great number of mathematical terms such as "matrix", "graph" and "discriminant". He coined the term "totient" for Euler's totient function φ, his collected scientific work fills four volumes. In 1880, the Royal Society of London awarded Sylvester the Copley Medal, its highest award for scientific achievement. In Discrete geometry he is remembered for a result on the orchard problem. Sylvester House, a portion of an undergraduate dormitory at Johns Hopkins University, is named in his honor. Several professorships there are named in his honor also. Sylvester, James Joseph, The Laws of Verse Or Principles of Versification Exemplified in Metrical Translations: together with an annotated reprint of the inaugural presidential address to the mathematical and physical section of the British Association at Exeter, London: Longmans, Green and Co, ISBN 978-1-177-91141-2 Sylvester, James Joseph, Henry Frederick, ed; the collected mathematical papers of James Joseph Sylvester, I, New York: AMS Chelsea Publishing, ISBN 978-0-8218-3654-5 Sylvester, James Jose
Fellow of the British Academy
Fellowship of the British Academy is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. There are three kinds of fellowship Fellows, for scholars resident in the United Kingdom Corresponding Fellows, for scholars not resident in the UK Honorary Fellows, an honorary academic titleThe award of fellowship is evidenced by published work and fellows may use the post-nominal letters: FBA. Examples of fellows include Mary Beard, Nicholas Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford, Jeremy Horder, Michael Lobban, M. R. James and Rowan Williams. List of Fellows of the British Academy
Mount Jerome Cemetery and Crematorium
Mount Jerome Cemetery & Crematorium is situated in Harold's Cross on the south side of Dublin, Ireland. Since its foundation in 1836, it has witnessed over 300,000 burials. An Protestant cemetery, Roman Catholics have been buried there since the 1920s; the name of the cemetery comes from an estate established there by the Reverend Stephen Jerome, who in 1639 was vicar of St. Kevin's Parish. At that time, Harold's Cross was part of St. Kevin's Parish. In the latter half of the 17th century, the land passed into the ownership of the Earl of Meath, who in turn leased plots to prominent Dublin families. A house, Mount Jerome House, was constructed in one of these plots, leased to John Keogh. In 1834, after an aborted attempt to set up a cemetery in the Phoenix Park, the General Cemetery Company of Dublin bought the Mount Jerome property, "for establishing a general cemetery in the neighbourhood of the city of Dublin"; the Funerary Chapel in the cemetery was the first Puginian Gothic church in Dublin.
It was designed by William Atkins. In 2000, Mount Jerome Cemetery established its own crematorium on the site. Notable people buried here include: Robert Adams and professor of surgery Maeve Binchy, author Edward Bunting, music-collector Frederick William Burton and director of the National Gallery Peter Caffrey, actor Sir Charles Cameron, for 50 years head of the Public Health Department of Dublin Corporation, along with two of his sons, Charles J. and Ewen Henry James Campbell, 1st Baron Glenavy, lawyer and Lord Chancellor of Ireland William Carleton, writer Thomas Caulfield Irwin, writer, scholar Abraham Colles, professor of medicine John Augustus Conolly VC, soldier Michael Colivet, Irish politician, Commandant of the Irish Volunteers for Limerick City, a founding member of the Irish Republic and, in years, Chairman of the National Housing Board. Paddy Daly, member of the IRA during the War of Independence and Major-General in the Irish Army Achilles Daunt and homilist Derek Davis, broadcaster Thomas Davis, politician, founder of The Nation newspaper Thomas Drummond, Under-Secretary for Ireland Prof George Francis Fitzgerald, physicist James Fitzgerald, American painter Ethel Kathleen French and illustrator, first wife of Percy French.
She died in childbirth with their first child. Edward Gibson, 1st Baron Ashbourne and Lord Chancellor of Ireland Robert Graves, professor of medicine and writer Sir Richard John Griffith, mining engineer, chairman of the Board of Works, author of Griffith's Valuation Thomas Grubb, telescope-maker Benjamin Guinness, brewer and other members of the Guinness family George Halpin, civil engineer and lighthouse builder William Rowan Hamilton and astronomer James Haughton, social reformer John Kells Ingram, scholar, poet John Hewitt Jellett, Provost of Trinity College John Edward Jones, civil engineer and sculptor David Kelly, actor Joseph Robinson Kirk, who executed the figure over the memorial of his father, Thomas Thomas Kirk, who designed the Butler mausoleum in this cemetery John Mitchell Kemble, scholar Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and editor, along with his wife, Susanna Bennett, her father and two brothers, in the same vault. Thomas Hawkesworth Ledwich and anatomist Thomas Langlois Lefroy and judge Jan Lukasiewicz, Polish philosopher and logician David Marcus, Irish Jewish writer, editor Sir Henry Marsh, physician William Ramsay McNab, Scottish physician and botanist William Fetherstone Montgomery, obstetrican Hans Garrett Moore VC, soldier Arthur Thomas Moore VC, soldier Sir Richard Morrison, architect William Vitruvius Morrison, architect.
John Skipton Mulvany, architect who designed a number of monuments in this cemetery, including the Mahony monument and Perry and West vaults Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Irish-language writer Máirtín Ó Direáin, Irish-language poet. Walter Osborne, artist Peter Marshall, prominent member of the Masonic and Orange Orders William McFadden Orr, mathematician George Papworth, architect Jacob Owen and engineer to the Board of Works Edward Arthur Henry Pakenham, 6th Earl of Longford was an Irish peer and littérateur George Petrie, archaeologist, musician William Plunket, 4th Baron Plunket, Archbishop of Dublin Sarah Purser, artist George Russell, artist Cecil Sheridan and actor John Skelton and illustrator. Ellen Smyly founder of the Smyly Homes. Robert William Smith, pathologist Bindon Blood Stoney, engineer. John Millington Synge, playwright Isaac Weld, topographical writer and artist. William Wilde, father of Oscar Wilde, his wife, Jane Francesca Elgee, is commemorated on Sir William's monument, but she was buried in Kensal
Daniel Harrwitz
Daniel Harrwitz was a German chess master. Harrwitz was born in Breslau in the Prussian Province of Silesia, he established his reputation in Paris as a player of blindfold games. He lost a match in England to Howard Staunton in 1846 at odds of a pawn and two moves, drew a match with Adolf Anderssen in Germany in 1848. Harrwitz lived in England from 1849, founded the British Chess Review. In 1856 he moved to Paris. In 1858 he played a match against Paul Morphy in Paris. Harrwitz won the first two games, but lost the match 5½-2½. Harrwitz withdrew from the match on grounds of ill health, he subsequently retired to the Austro-Hungarian county of Tyrol, dying in Bolzano in 1884. Although he had a negative record against Morphy, he was one of a few masters who beat Morphy with the black pieces. Here is one of his wins in Paris in 1858: 1.e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3.d4 exd4 4. Qxd4 Nc6 5. Bb5 Bd7 6. Bxc6 Bxc6 7. Bg5 Nf6 8. Nc3 Be7 9. O-O-O O-O 10. Rhe1 h6 11. Bh4 Ne8 12. Bxe7 Qxe7 13.e5 Bxf3 14.gxf3 Qg5+ 15. Kb1 dxe5 16. Rxe5 Qg2 17.
Nd5 Qxh2 18. Ree1 Qd6 19. Rg1 Kh7 20. Qe3 f5 21. Nf4 Qb6 22. Qe2 Rf7 23. Qc4 Qf6 24. Nh5 Qe7 25. Rde1 Qd7 26.a3 Nd6 27. Qd4 Rg8 28. Rg2 Ne8 29. Qc3 f4 30. Rh1 g6 31. Rhg1 Qd5 32. Qe1 Qxh5 33. Rg5 Qxf3 34. Qe6 Rf6 35. Qe7+ Rg7 36. Qxe8 hxg5 37. Qe1 Qc6 0-1 Singer, Isidore.
