1.
University of Minnesota
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The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. The Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses are approximately 3 miles apart, and it is the oldest and largest campus within the University of Minnesota system and has the sixth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 51,147 students in 2013–14. The university is the institution of the University of Minnesota system, and is organized into 19 colleges and schools, with sister campuses in Crookston, Duluth, Morris. Minnesota is one of Americas Public Ivy universities, which refers to top universities in the United States capable of providing a collegiate experience comparable with the Ivy League. Founded in 1851, The University of Minnesota is categorized as an R1 Doctoral University with the highest research activity in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, Minnesota faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 25 Nobel Prizes and three Pulitzer Prizes. Notable University of Minnesota alumni include two Vice Presidents of the United States, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, and Bob Dylan, who received the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. The University of Minnesota Twin Cities is also a member of the Association of American Universities which is an association of the 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada. In its 2017 edition, U. S. News & World Report ranked Minnesota 38th in their Best Global University Rankings, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2015 ranks Minnesota 46th in the world. In 2015, Academic Ranking of World Universities ranked the university 11th in the world for mathematics, the University of Minnesota is ranked 14 over-all among the nations top research universities by the Center for Measuring University Performance. The U. S. News & World Reports 2016 rankings placed the program of the University as the 69th-best National University in the United States. Additionally, nineteen of the Universitys graduate-school departments have been ranked in the nations top-twenty by the U. S. National Research Council, in both 2008 and 2012 U. S. News & World Report ranked the College of Pharmacy 2nd in the nation. 2016 U. S. News & Report now rank the College of Pharmacy 2nd in the nation. In 2011, U. S. News & World Report ranked the School of Public Health 8th in the nation, the University of Minnesota ranked 19th in NIH funding in 2008. Minnesota is listed as a Public Ivy in 2001 Greenes Guides The Public Ivies, the university developed Gopher, a precursor to the World Wide Web which used hyperlinks to connect documents across computers on the internet. However, the produced by CERN was favored by the public since it was freely distributed. The University also houses the Charles Babbage Institute, a research, the department has strong roots in early days of supercomputing with Seymour Cray of Cray supercomputers. Notable faculty of the department are Yousef Saad, Vipin Kumar, Jaideep Srivastava, John Riedl, some notable alumni of the department are Ed Chi, Imrich Chlamtac, Leah Culver, Jeff Dean, Mark P. McCahill, Arvind Mithal, and Calvin Mooers. Puffed rice - Alexander P. Anderson led to the discovery of puffed rice, transistorized cardiac pacemaker - Earl Bakken founded Medtronic, where he developed the first external, battery-operated, transistorized, wearable artificial pacemaker in 1957
2.
Yale University
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Yale University is an American private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 in Saybrook Colony to train Congregationalist ministers, it is the third-oldest institution of education in the United States. The Collegiate School moved to New Haven in 1716, and shortly after was renamed Yale College in recognition of a gift from British East India Company governor Elihu Yale. Originally restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century the school introduced graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first Ph. D. in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools, the undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each schools faculty oversees its curriculum, the universitys assets include an endowment valued at $25.4 billion as of June 2016, the second largest of any U. S. educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States, Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and are organized into a social system of residential colleges. Almost all faculty teach courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually. Students compete intercollegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I – Ivy League, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U. S. Presidents,19 U. S. Supreme Court Justices,20 living billionaires, and many heads of state. In addition, Yale has graduated hundreds of members of Congress,57 Nobel laureates,5 Fields Medalists,247 Rhodes Scholars, and 119 Marshall Scholars have been affiliated with the University. Yale traces its beginnings to An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School, passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9,1701, the Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregationalist ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather, the group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as The Founders. Originally known as the Collegiate School, the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, the school moved to Saybrook, and then Wethersfield. In 1716 the college moved to New Haven, Connecticut, the feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not. Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to Yale College, meanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced some 180 prominent intellectuals that they should donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and it had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Lockes works and developed his original theology known as the new divinity
3.
Princeton University
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Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The institution moved to Newark in 1747, then to the current site nine years later, Princeton provides undergraduate and graduate instruction in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering. The university has ties with the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton has the largest endowment per student in the United States. The university has graduated many notable alumni, two U. S. Presidents,12 U. S. Supreme Court Justices, and numerous living billionaires and foreign heads of state are all counted among Princetons alumni body. New Light Presbyterians founded the College of New Jersey in 1746 in order to train ministers, the college was the educational and religious capital of Scots-Irish America. In 1754, trustees of the College of New Jersey suggested that, in recognition of Governors interest, gov. Jonathan Belcher replied, What a name that would be. In 1756, the moved to Princeton, New Jersey. Its home in Princeton was Nassau Hall, named for the royal House of Orange-Nassau of William III of England, following the untimely deaths of Princetons first five presidents, John Witherspoon became president in 1768 and remained in that office until his death in 1794. During his presidency, Witherspoon shifted the focus from training ministers to preparing a new generation for leadership in the new American nation. To this end, he tightened academic standards and solicited investment in the college, in 1812, the eighth president the College of New Jersey, Ashbel Green, helped establish the Princeton Theological Seminary next door. The plan to extend the theological curriculum met with approval on the part of the authorities at the College of New Jersey. Today, Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary maintain separate institutions with ties that include such as cross-registration. Before the construction of Stanhope Hall in 1803, Nassau Hall was the sole building. The cornerstone of the building was laid on September 17,1754, during the summer of 1783, the Continental Congress met in Nassau Hall, making Princeton the countrys capital for four months. The class of 1879 donated twin lion sculptures that flanked the entrance until 1911, Nassau Halls bell rang after the halls construction, however, the fire of 1802 melted it. The bell was then recast and melted again in the fire of 1855, James McCosh took office as the colleges president in 1868 and lifted the institution out of a low period that had been brought about by the American Civil War. McCosh Hall is named in his honor, in 1879, the first thesis for a Doctor of Philosophy Ph. D. was submitted by James F. Williamson, Class of 1877. In 1896, the officially changed its name from the College of New Jersey to Princeton University to honor the town in which it resides
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Physics
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Physics is the natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion and behavior through space and time, along with related concepts such as energy and force. One of the most fundamental disciplines, the main goal of physics is to understand how the universe behaves. Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, perhaps the oldest through its inclusion of astronomy, Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics often explain the mechanisms of other sciences while opening new avenues of research in areas such as mathematics. Physics also makes significant contributions through advances in new technologies that arise from theoretical breakthroughs, the United Nations named 2005 the World Year of Physics. Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, the stars and planets were often a target of worship, believed to represent their gods. While the explanations for these phenomena were often unscientific and lacking in evidence, according to Asger Aaboe, the origins of Western astronomy can be found in Mesopotamia, and all Western efforts in the exact sciences are descended from late Babylonian astronomy. The most notable innovations were in the field of optics and vision, which came from the works of many scientists like Ibn Sahl, Al-Kindi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Farisi and Avicenna. The most notable work was The Book of Optics, written by Ibn Al-Haitham, in which he was not only the first to disprove the ancient Greek idea about vision, but also came up with a new theory. In the book, he was also the first to study the phenomenon of the pinhole camera, many later European scholars and fellow polymaths, from Robert Grosseteste and Leonardo da Vinci to René Descartes, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, were in his debt. Indeed, the influence of Ibn al-Haythams Optics ranks alongside that of Newtons work of the same title, the translation of The Book of Optics had a huge impact on Europe. From it, later European scholars were able to build the devices as what Ibn al-Haytham did. From this, such important things as eyeglasses, magnifying glasses, telescopes, Physics became a separate science when early modern Europeans used experimental and quantitative methods to discover what are now considered to be the laws of physics. Newton also developed calculus, the study of change, which provided new mathematical methods for solving physical problems. The discovery of new laws in thermodynamics, chemistry, and electromagnetics resulted from greater research efforts during the Industrial Revolution as energy needs increased, however, inaccuracies in classical mechanics for very small objects and very high velocities led to the development of modern physics in the 20th century. Modern physics began in the early 20th century with the work of Max Planck in quantum theory, both of these theories came about due to inaccuracies in classical mechanics in certain situations. Quantum mechanics would come to be pioneered by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, from this early work, and work in related fields, the Standard Model of particle physics was derived. Areas of mathematics in general are important to this field, such as the study of probabilities, in many ways, physics stems from ancient Greek philosophy
5.
Institute for Advanced Study
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The IAS is perhaps best known as the academic home of Albert Einstein, John von Neumann and Kurt Gödel, after their immigration to the United States. Although it is close to and collaborates with Princeton University, Rutgers University, Flexners guiding principle in founding the Institute was the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. There are no programs or experimental facilities at the Institute. Research is never contracted or directed, it is left to each individual researcher to pursue their own goals and it is supported entirely by endowments, grants, and gifts, and is one of the eight American mathematics institutes funded by the National Science Foundation. It is the model for the eight members of the consortium Some Institutes for Advanced Study. The institute consists of four schools–Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, in 2016, the Institute has been in the news for a faculty housing project proposal. While the Institute owns the property on which it wants to build these houses, historians and archaeological evidence confirm the site witnessed Gen. George Washingtons arrival and charge on horseback across the battlefield during the January 3,1777 Battle of Princeton. The Institute was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner, together with philanthropists Louis Bamberger, Flexner is generally regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of American medicine and played a major role in the reform of medical education. This led to an interest in education generally and as early as 1890 he had founded a school which had no formal curriculum, exams. It was a success at preparing students for prestigious colleges. The Bamberger siblings wanted to use the proceeds from the sale of their department store in Newark, New Jersey, Flexner convinced them to put their money in the service of more abstract research. In 1932 Veblen resigned from Princeton and became the first professor in the new Institute for Advanced Study and he selected most of the original faculty and also helped the Institute acquire land in Princeton for both the original facility and future expansion. Flexner and Veblen set out to recruit the best mathematicians and physicists they could find, the rise of fascism and the associated anti-semitism forced many prominent mathematicians to flee Europe and some, such as Einstein and Hermann Weyl, found a home at the new institute. Weyl as a condition of accepting insisted that the Institute also appoint the thirty year old Austrian-Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, indeed, the IAS became the key lifeline for scholars fleeing Europe. Einstein was Flexners first coup and shortly after that he was followed by Veblens brilliant student James Alexander, Flexner was fortunate in the luminaries he directly recruited but also in the people that they brought along with them. Thus, by 1934 the fledgeling institute was led by six of the most prominent mathematicians in the world, in 1935 quantum physics pioneer Wolfgang Pauli became a faculty member. With the opening of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton replaced Göttingen as the center for mathematics in the twentieth century. Princeton Universitys science departments are less than two miles away and informal ties and collaboration between the two institutions occurred from the beginning and this helped start an incorrect impression that it was part of the University, one that has never been completely eradicated
6.
Eugene Wigner
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Eugene Paul E. P. Wigner, was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist, engineer and mathematician. Wigner and Hermann Weyl were responsible for introducing group theory into physics, along the way he performed ground-breaking work in pure mathematics, in which he authored a number of mathematical theorems. In particular, Wigners theorem is a cornerstone in the formulation of quantum mechanics. He is also known for his research into the structure of the atomic nucleus, in 1930, Princeton University recruited Wigner, along with John von Neumann, and he moved to the United States. Wigner was afraid that the German nuclear weapon project would develop an atomic bomb first, during the Manhattan Project, he led a team whose task was to design nuclear reactors to convert uranium into weapons grade plutonium. At the time, reactors existed only on paper, and no reactor had yet gone critical, Wigner was disappointed that DuPont was given responsibility for the detailed design of the reactors, not just their construction. In later life, he became more philosophical, and published The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, Wigner Jenő Pál was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary on November 17,1902, to middle class Jewish parents, Elisabeth and Anthony Wigner, a leather tanner. He had a sister, Bertha, known as Biri, and a younger sister Margit, known as Manci. He was home schooled by a teacher until the age of 9. During this period, Wigner developed an interest in mathematical problems, at the age of 11, Wigner contracted what his doctors believed to be tuberculosis. His parents sent him to live for six weeks in a sanatorium in the Austrian mountains, Wigners family was Jewish, but not religiously observant, and his Bar Mitzvah was a secular one. From 1915 through 1919, he studied at the grammar school called Fasori Evangélikus Gimnázium. Religious education was compulsory, and he attended classes in Judaism taught by a rabbi, a fellow student was János von Neumann, who was a year behind Wigner. They both benefited from the instruction of the mathematics teacher László Rátz. In 1919, to escape the Béla Kun communist regime, the Wigner family briefly fled to Austria, partly as a reaction to the prominence of Jews in the Kun regime, the family converted to Lutheranism. Wigner explained later in his life that his decision to convert to Lutheranism was not at heart a religious decision. On religious views, Wigner was an atheist, after graduating from the secondary school in 1920, Wigner enrolled at the Budapest University of Technical Sciences, known as the Műegyetem. He was not happy with the courses on offer, and in 1921 enrolled at the Technische Hochschule Berlin and he also attended the Wednesday afternoon colloquia of the German Physical Society
7.
Manhattan Project
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The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom, from 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the actual bombs, the Army component of the project was designated the Manhattan District, Manhattan gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. Along the way, the project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, the Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US $2 billion. Over 90% of the cost was for building factories and to produce material, with less than 10% for development. Research and production took place at more than 30 sites across the United States, the United Kingdom, two types of atomic bombs were developed concurrently during the war, a relatively simple gun-type fission weapon and a more complex implosion-type nuclear weapon. Chemically identical to the most common isotope, uranium-238, and with almost the same mass, three methods were employed for uranium enrichment, electromagnetic, gaseous and thermal. Most of this work was performed at the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, in parallel with the work on uranium was an effort to produce plutonium. The plutonium was then separated from the uranium. The Fat Man implosion-type weapon was developed in a concerted design, the project was also charged with gathering intelligence on the German nuclear weapon project. Through Operation Alsos, Manhattan Project personnel served in Europe, sometimes behind enemy lines, where they gathered nuclear materials and documents, despite the Manhattan Projects tight security, Soviet atomic spies still penetrated the program. The first nuclear device ever detonated was a bomb at the Trinity test, conducted at New Mexicos Alamogordo Bombing. Little Boy and Fat Man bombs were used a later in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It maintained control over American atomic weapons research and production until the formation of the United States Atomic Energy Commission in January 1947, there were fears that a German atomic bomb project would develop one first, especially among scientists who were refugees from Nazi Germany and other fascist countries. In August 1939, Hungarian-born physicists Leó Szilárd and Eugene Wigner drafted the Einstein–Szilárd letter and it urged the United States to take steps to acquire stockpiles of uranium ore and accelerate the research of Enrico Fermi and others into nuclear chain reactions. They had it signed by Albert Einstein and delivered to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Roosevelt called on Lyman Briggs of the National Bureau of Standards to head the Advisory Committee on Uranium to investigate the issues raised by the letter. Briggs held a meeting on 21 October 1939, which was attended by Szilárd, Wigner, the committee reported back to Roosevelt in November that uranium would provide a possible source of bombs with a destructiveness vastly greater than anything now known. The Advisory Committee on Uranium became the National Defense Research Committee Committee on Uranium when that organization was formed on 27 June 1940, Briggs proposed that the spend $167,000 on research into uranium, particularly the uranium-235 isotope, and the recently discovered plutonium
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Nuclear weapon
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A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from small amounts of matter. The first test of a bomb released the same amount of energy as approximately 20,000 tons of TNT. The first thermonuclear bomb test released the same amount of energy as approximately 10 million tons of TNT, a thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than 2,400 pounds can produce an explosive force comparable to the detonation of more than 1.2 million tons of TNT. A nuclear device no larger than traditional bombs can devastate a city by blast, fire. Nuclear weapons are considered weapons of destruction, and their use. Nuclear weapons have been used twice in nuclear warfare, both times by the United States against Japan near the end of World War II, the bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 civilians and military personnel from acute injuries sustained from the explosions. The ethics of the bombings and their role in Japans surrender remain the subject of scholarly, since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have been detonated on over two thousand occasions for the purposes of testing and demonstration. Only a few nations possess such weapons or are suspected of seeking them, israel is also believed to possess nuclear weapons, though in a policy of deliberate ambiguity, it does not acknowledge having them. Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands are nuclear weapons sharing states, south Africa is the only country to have independently developed and then renounced and dismantled its nuclear weapons. Modernisation of weapons continues to occur, all existing nuclear weapons derive some of their explosive energy from nuclear fission reactions. Weapons whose explosive output is exclusively from fission reactions are commonly referred to as bombs or atom bombs. This has long noted as something of a misnomer, as their energy comes from the nucleus of the atom. The latter approach is considered more sophisticated than the former and only the approach can be used if the fissile material is plutonium. A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is to ensure that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself. The amount of energy released by fission bombs can range from the equivalent of just under a ton to upwards of 500,000 tons of TNT, all fission reactions necessarily generate fission products, the radioactive remains of the atomic nuclei split by the fission reactions. Many fission products are highly radioactive or moderately radioactive. Fission products are the radioactive component of nuclear fallout
9.
William Sterling Parsons
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Rear Admiral William Sterling Deak Parsons was an American naval officer who worked as an ordnance expert on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He is best known for being the weaponeer on the Enola Gay, to avoid the possibility of a nuclear explosion if the aircraft crashed and burned on takeoff, he decided to arm the bomb in flight. While the aircraft was en route to Hiroshima, Parsons climbed into the cramped and dark bomb bay and he was awarded the Silver Star for his part in the mission. A1922 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Parsons served on a variety of warships beginning with the battleship USS Idaho and he was trained in ordnance and studied ballistics under L. T. E. Thompson at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia, in July 1933, Parsons became liaison officer between the Bureau of Ordnance and the Naval Research Laboratory. He became interested in radar and was one of the first to recognize its potential to locate ships and aircraft, the fuze, eventually known as the VT fuze, Mark 32, went into production in 1942. Parsons was on hand to watch the cruiser USS Helena shoot down the first enemy aircraft with a VT fuze in the Solomon Islands in January 1943. In June 1943, Parsons joined the Manhattan Project as Associate Director at the laboratory at Los Alamos. Parsons became responsible for the aspects of the project, including the design. He was also responsible for the program, codenamed Project Alberta. He watched the Trinity nuclear test from a B-29, after the war, Parsons was promoted to the rank of rear admiral without ever having commanded a ship. He participated in Operation Crossroads, the weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946. In 1947, he became deputy commander of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project and he died of a heart attack on 5 December 1953. William Sterling Parsons was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 26 November 1901, in 1909, the family moved to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where William learned to speak fluent Spanish. He attended the schools in Fort Sumner and was home schooled by his mother for a time. He commenced at Santa Rosa High School, where his mother taught English and Spanish, in 1917 he attended Fort Sumner High School, from which he graduated in 1918. In 1917 Parsons travelled to Roswell, New Mexico to take the United States Naval Academy exam for one of the appointments by Senator Andrieus A. Jones and he was only an alternate, but passed the exam while more favored candidates did not, and received the appointment. As he was only 16, two younger than most candidates, he was shorter and lighter than the physical standards called for
