1.
Helsinki
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Helsinki is the capital and largest city of Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. Helsinki has a population of 629,512, a population of 1,231,595. Helsinki is located some 80 kilometres north of Tallinn, Estonia,400 km east of Stockholm, Sweden, Helsinki has close historical connections with these three cities. The Helsinki metropolitan area includes the core of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen. It is the worlds northernmost metro area of one million people. The Helsinki metropolitan area is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the Nordic countries, Helsinki is Finlands major political, educational, financial, cultural, and research center as well as one of northern Europes major cities. Approximately 75% of foreign companies operating in Finland have settled in the Helsinki region, the nearby municipality of Vantaa is the location of Helsinki Airport, with frequent service to various destinations in Europe and Asia. In 2009, Helsinki was chosen to be the World Design Capital for 2012 by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, the city was the venue for the 1952 Summer Olympics and the 52nd Eurovision Song Contest 2007. In 2011, the Monocle magazine ranked Helsinki the most liveable city in the world in its Liveable Cities Index 2011, in the Economist Intelligence Units August 2015 Liveability survey, assessing the best and worst cities to live in globally, Helsinki placed among the worlds top ten cities. Helsinki is used to refer to the city in most languages, the Swedish name Helsingfors is the original official name of the city. The Finnish name probably comes from Helsinga and similar names used for the river that is known as the Vantaa River. Helsingfors comes from the name of the parish, Helsinge and the rapids, which flowed through the original village. As part of the Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire, one suggestion for the origin of the name Helsinge is that it originated with medieval Swedish settlers who came from Hälsingland in Sweden. Others have proposed that the name derives from the Swedish word helsing, other Scandinavian cities located at similar geographic locations were given similar names at the time, for example Helsingør and Helsingborg. The name Helsinki has been used in Finnish official documents and in Finnish language newspapers since 1819, the decrees issued in Helsinki were dated with Helsinki as the place of issue. This is how the form Helsinki came to be used in written Finnish, in Helsinki slang the city is called Stadi. Hesa, is not used by natives to the city, helsset is the Northern Sami name of Helsinki
2.
Grand Duchy of Finland
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The Grand Duchy of Finland was the predecessor state of modern Finland. It existed between 1809 and 1917 as an part of the Russian Empire and was ruled by the Russian Emperor as Grand Duke. The new title Grand Duke of Finland did not result in any Finnish autonomy, during the next two centuries, the title was used by some of Johns successors on the throne, but not all. Usually it was just a title of the king, used only on very formal occasions. The title Grand Duke of Finland was added to the long list of titles of the Russian Tsar, after his return to Finland in 1812, the Finnish-born Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt became counsellor to the Russian emperor. The formation of the Grand Duchy stems from the Treaty of Tilsit between Czar Alexander I of Russia and Napoleon Bonaparte of France, the treaty mediated peace between Russia and France and allied the two countries against Napoleons remaining threats, Great Britain and Sweden. Russia invaded Finland in February of 1808, claimed as an effort to impose sanctions against Sweden, but not a war of conquest. The oath also dubbed anyone person who gave aid to the Swedish or Finnish armies a rebel, the Finns complied, bitter over Sweden abandoning the country for their war against Denmark and France, and begrudgingly embraced Russian conquest. The Diet of Finland was now to only meet whenever requested, further on, Alexander I requested a deputation of the four Finnish estates, as he expressed concern over continued Finnish resistance. The deputation refused to act without the Diet, to which Alexander agreed with, by 1809, all of Finland had been conquered and The Diet was summoned in March. Finland was then united through Russia via crown, and Finland was able to keep the majority of its own laws, the earlier years of the Grand Duchy can be seen as uneventful. In 1812, the area of Old Finland, known as the Viipuri Province was returned to Finland after being annexed by Russia in the Great Northern War, despite the outcry, the borders remained set until 1940. Moreover, Alexander moved the capital from Turku to Helsinki, a fortified town protected by Suomenlinna. Finlands main university also transferred to Helsinki after a fire out in Turku. Alexander went a step further to demand a Finnish House of Nobles, the house was designed to register all noble families in Finland, so that the highest Finnish estate would be representative of the next Finnish diet. As for Sweden, the majority did not think too much about Finlands conquest, as Sweden itself annexed Norway from Denmark in 1814, despite this, Alexander I ceased to give in to Finnish affairs and returned to governing Russia. In 1823, Arseny Zakrevsky was made general of Finland and quickly became unpopular by the Finns. Zakrevsky abolished the Committee for Finnish Affairs and managed to obtain the right to submit Finnish affairs to the Czar, bypassing the Finnish Secretary of State
3.
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
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Pittsfield is the largest city and the county seat of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the city of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Berkshire County. The population was 44,737 at the 2010 census, although the population has declined in recent decades, Pittsfield remains the third largest municipality in western Massachusetts, behind only Springfield and Chicopee. In 2005, Farmers Insurance ranked Pittsfield 20th in the United States as Most Secure Place To Live among small towns with fewer than 150,000 residents, in 2006, Forbes ranked Pittsfield as number 61 in its list of Best Small Places for Business. In 2008, Country Home magazine ranked Pittsfield as #24 in a listing of cities east of the Mississippi. In 2009, the City of Pittsfield was chosen to receive a 2009 Commonwealth Award, Massachusetts highest award in the arts, humanities, in 2010, the Financial Times proclaimed Pittsfield the Brooklyn of the Berkshires, in an article covering its recent renaissance. In 1738, a wealthy Bostonian named Col. Jacob Wendell bought 24,000 acres of lands known originally as Pontoosuck and he planned to subdivide and resell to others who would settle there. He formed a partnership with Philip Livingston, a kinsman from Albany, New York, and Col. John Stoddard of Northampton. Mrs. Deming was the first and the last of the original settlers, solomon Deming died in 1815 at the age of 96. Royal Governor Sir Francis Bernard named Pittsfield after British nobleman and politician William Pitt, by 1761 there were 200 residents, and the plantation became the Township of Pittsfield. Brown wrote in his winter 1776-77 handbill, Money is this mans God, Pittsfield was primarily an agricultural area, because of the many brooks that flowed into the Housatonic River, the landscape was dotted with mills that produced lumber, grist, paper, and textiles. The town was a metropolis by the late 19th century. Stanleys enterprise was the forerunner of the internationally known corporate giant, thanks to the success of GE, Pittsfields population in 1930 had grown to more than 50,000. On October 8,2015, SABIC announced it would relocate its headquarters from Pittsfield to Houston, General Dynamics occupies many of the old GE buildings, and its workforce is expanding. Much of General Dynamics local success is based on the awarding of government contracts related to its information systems. Roosevelt, Massachusetts Governor Winthrop Murray Crane, secretary to the president George Bruce Cortelyou, Craig was killed, he was the first Secret Service agent killed while on a presidential protection detail. Roosevelt, whose face and left shin were badly bruised, nearly came to blows with the trolley motorman, Madden was later charged with manslaughter, to which he pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to six months in jail and a heavy fine, in 2004, historian John Thorn discovered a reference to a 1791 by-law prohibiting anyone from playing baseball within 80 yards of the new meeting house in Pittsfield
4.
University of Helsinki
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The University of Helsinki is a university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but was founded in the city of Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo, at that time part of the Swedish Empire. It is the oldest and largest university in Finland with the widest range of disciplines available, around 36,500 students are currently enrolled in the degree programs of the university spread across 11 faculties and 11 research institutes. As of August 1,2005, the University complies with the structure of the Europe-wide Bologna Process and offers Bachelor, Master, Licenciate. Admission to degree programmes is determined by entrance examinations, in the case of bachelors degrees. It has been ranked a top 100 university in the according to the 2016 ARWU, QS. The university is bilingual, with teaching officially provided both in Finnish and Swedish, generally speaking, however, the university is monolingual Finnish, as courses taught in Swedish are very few and far apart. Teaching in English is extensive throughout the university at Master, Licentiate, remaining true to its traditionally strong Humboldtian ethos, the University of Helsinki places heavy emphasis on high-quality teaching and research of a top international standard. It is a member of various prominent international university networks, such as Europaeum, UNICA, the Utrecht Network, the first predecessor of the university, The Cathedral School of Åbo, was presumably founded in 1276 for education of boys to become servants of the Church. It was the university founded in the Swedish Empire, following Uppsala University. The second period of the Universitys history covers the period when Finland was a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, as Finland became part of the Russian Empire in 1809, Emperor Alexander I expanded the University and allocated substantial funds to it. In the capital the primary task of the University was to educate the Grand Duchy’s civil servants, the University became a community subscribing to the new Humboldtian ideals of science and culture, studying humanity and its living environment by means of scientific methods. The Alexander University was a centre of life that promoted the birth of an independent Finnish State. The great men of 19th century Finland, Johan Vilhelm Snellman, Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Elias Lönnrot, in the 19th century university research changed from being collection-centred to being experimental, empirical, and analytical. The more scientific approach of the university led to specialisation and created new disciplines, as the scientific disciplines developed, Finland received ever more scholarly knowledge and highly educated people, some of whom entered rapidly evolving industry or the government. The third period of the universitys history began with the creation of the independent Republic of Finland in 1917, once Finland gained her independence in 1917 the University was given a crucial role in building the nation state and, after World War II, the welfare state. Members of the community promoted the international relations of the new state. Furthermore, they were involved in national politics and the struggle for equality. In the 20th century, scholarly research at the University of Helsinki reached the level of the European elite in many disciplines. I, virtanen and the Nobel Prize in Medicine shared by Professor Ragnar Granit
5.
Riemann surface
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In mathematics, particularly in complex analysis, a Riemann surface, first studied by and named after Bernhard Riemann, is a one-dimensional complex manifold. Riemann surfaces can be thought of as deformed versions of the plane, locally near every point they look like patches of the complex plane. For example, they can look like a sphere or a torus or several sheets glued together, the main point of Riemann surfaces is that holomorphic functions may be defined between them. Every Riemann surface is a real analytic manifold, but it contains more structure which is needed for the unambiguous definition of holomorphic functions. A two-dimensional real manifold can be turned into a Riemann surface if, so the sphere and torus admit complex structures, but the Möbius strip, Klein bottle and projective plane do not. Geometrical facts about Riemann surfaces are as nice as possible, and they provide the intuition and motivation for generalizations to other curves. The Riemann–Roch theorem is an example of this influence. There are several equivalent definitions of a Riemann surface, a Riemann surface X is a complex manifold of complex dimension one. This means that X is a Hausdorff topological space endowed with an atlas, the map carrying the structure of the complex plane to the Riemann surface is called a chart. Additionally, the maps between two overlapping charts are required to be holomorphic. A Riemann surface is a manifold of dimension two – a two-sided surface – together with a conformal structure. Again, manifold means that locally at any point x of X, the supplement Riemann signifies that X is endowed with an additional structure which allows angle measurement on the manifold, namely an equivalence class of so-called Riemannian metrics. Two such metrics are considered equivalent if the angles they measure are the same, choosing an equivalence class of metrics on X is the additional datum of the conformal structure. A complex structure gives rise to a structure by choosing the standard Euclidean metric given on the complex plane. Showing that a structure determines a complex structure is more difficult. The complex plane C is the most basic Riemann surface, the map f = z defines a chart for C, and is an atlas for C. The map g = z* also defines a chart on C and is an atlas for C, the charts f and g are not compatible, so this endows C with two distinct Riemann surface structures. In fact, given a Riemann surface X and its atlas A, the conjugate atlas B = is never compatible with A, in an analogous fashion, every non-empty open subset of the complex plane can be viewed as a Riemann surface in a natural way
6.
Fields Medal
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The Fields Medal is sometimes viewed as the highest honor a mathematician can receive. The Fields Medal and the Abel Prize have often described as the mathematicians Nobel Prize. The Fields Medal differs from the Abel in view of the age restriction mentioned above, the prize comes with a monetary award, which since 2006 has been C$15,000. The colloquial name is in honour of Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields, Fields was instrumental in establishing the award, designing the medal itself, and funding the monetary component. The medal was first awarded in 1936 to Finnish mathematician Lars Ahlfors and American mathematician Jesse Douglas and its purpose is to give recognition and support to younger mathematical researchers who have made major contributions. The Fields Medal is often described as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics, however, in contrast to the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal is awarded only every four years. The Fields Medal also has an age limit, a recipient must be under age 40 on 1 January of the year in which the medal is awarded and this is similar to restrictions applicable to the Clark Medal in economics. The monetary award is lower than the 8,000,000 Swedish kronor given with each Nobel prize as of 2014. Other major awards in mathematics, such as the Abel Prize, in 1954, Jean-Pierre Serre became the youngest winner of the Fields Medal, at 27. In 1966, Alexander Grothendieck boycotted the ICM, held in Moscow, léon Motchane, founder and director of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques attended and accepted Grothendiecks Fields Medal on his behalf. In 1970, Sergei Novikov, because of restrictions placed on him by the Soviet government, was unable to travel to the congress in Nice to receive his medal. In 1978, Grigory Margulis, because of restrictions placed on him by the Soviet government, was unable to travel to the congress in Helsinki to receive his medal. In 1982, the congress was due to be held in Warsaw but had to be rescheduled to the next year, the awards were announced at the ninth General Assembly of the IMU earlier in the year and awarded at the 1983 Warsaw congress. In 1990, Edward Witten became the first physicist to win this award, in 1998, at the ICM, Andrew Wiles was presented by the chair of the Fields Medal Committee, Yuri I. Manin, with the first-ever IMU silver plaque in recognition of his proof of Fermats Last Theorem, don Zagier referred to the plaque as a quantized Fields Medal. Accounts of this award frequently make reference that at the time of the award Wiles was over the age limit for the Fields medal. Although Wiles was slightly over the age limit in 1994, he was thought to be a favorite to win the medal, however, in 2006, Grigori Perelman, who proved the Poincaré conjecture, refused his Fields Medal and did not attend the congress. In 2014, Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman as well as the first Iranian, Artur Avila the first South American and this is a list of the universities that have graduated Fields medalists
7.
Mathematics
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Mathematics is the study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. There is a range of views among mathematicians and philosophers as to the exact scope, Mathematicians seek out patterns and use them to formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proof, when mathematical structures are good models of real phenomena, then mathematical reasoning can provide insight or predictions about nature. Through the use of abstraction and logic, mathematics developed from counting, calculation, measurement, practical mathematics has been a human activity from as far back as written records exist. The research required to solve mathematical problems can take years or even centuries of sustained inquiry, rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclids Elements. Galileo Galilei said, The universe cannot be read until we have learned the language and it is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth, carl Friedrich Gauss referred to mathematics as the Queen of the Sciences. Benjamin Peirce called mathematics the science that draws necessary conclusions, David Hilbert said of mathematics, We are not speaking here of arbitrariness in any sense. Mathematics is not like a game whose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules, rather, it is a conceptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means otherwise. Albert Einstein stated that as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, Mathematics is essential in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, finance and the social sciences. Applied mathematics has led to entirely new mathematical disciplines, such as statistics, Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind. There is no clear line separating pure and applied mathematics, the history of mathematics can be seen as an ever-increasing series of abstractions. The earliest uses of mathematics were in trading, land measurement, painting and weaving patterns, in Babylonian mathematics elementary arithmetic first appears in the archaeological record. Numeracy pre-dated writing and numeral systems have many and diverse. Between 600 and 300 BC the Ancient Greeks began a study of mathematics in its own right with Greek mathematics. Mathematics has since been extended, and there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to the benefit of both. Mathematical discoveries continue to be made today, the overwhelming majority of works in this ocean contain new mathematical theorems and their proofs. The word máthēma is derived from μανθάνω, while the modern Greek equivalent is μαθαίνω, in Greece, the word for mathematics came to have the narrower and more technical meaning mathematical study even in Classical times
8.
ETH Zurich
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ETH Zurich is a science, technology, engineering and mathematics university in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. ETH Zurich is consistently ranked among the top universities in the world, twenty-one Nobel Prizes have been awarded to students or professors of the Institute in the past, the most famous of whom was Albert Einstein. It is a member of the IDEA League and the International Alliance of Research Universities. ETH was founded in 1854 by the Swiss Confederation and began giving its first lectures in 1855 as a polytechnic institute and it is locally still known as Poly, derived from the original name Eidgenössische polytechnische Schule, which translates to Federal Polytechnic School. ETH is an institute, whereas the University of Zürich is a cantonal institution. In the beginning, both universities were co-located in the buildings of the University of Zürich, from 1905 to 1908, under the presidency of Jérôme Franel, the course program of ETH was restructured to that of a real university and ETH was granted the right to award doctorates. In 1909 the first doctorates were awarded, in 1911, it was given its current name, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule. In 1924, another reorganization structured the university in 12 departments, however, it now has 16 departments. ETH Zurich, the EPFL, and four associated research institutes form the ETH Domain with the aim of collaborating on scientific projects, ETH Zurich is ranked among the top universities in the world. Historically, ETH Zurich has achieved its reputation particularly in the fields of chemistry, there are 21 Nobel Laureates who are associated with ETH. The most recent Nobel Laureate is Richard F, heck who was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2010. Albert Einstein is perhaps its most famous alumnus, in 2016, the QS World University Rankings placed ETH Zurich at 8th overall in the world. In 2015, ETH also ranked 6th in the world in Natural Sciences, ETH Zurich had an budget of 1.712 billion CHF in the year 2015 to support its cutting-edge research. For Swiss students, ETH is not selective in its admission procedures. Like every public university in Switzerland, ETH is obliged to grant admission to every Swiss resident who took the Matura, an applicant can be admitted to ETH even without any verifiable educational records by passing the comprehensive entrance exam. As at all universities in Switzerland, the year is divided into two semesters. Examinations are often held during examination sessions which are immediately before the beginning of the next semester, after the first year of study, bachelor students must pass a block examination of all courses taken in the first year, called the Basisprüfung. If the weighted average score is not sufficient, a student is required to retake the entire Basisprüfung which usually means having to re-sit the whole first year
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