The Biography of History Makers

Thomas Alva Edison Biography

2009-11-15T10:27:00.004+07:00

In his lifetime, Thomas Alva Edison profoundly affected the technology of modern society. The American inventor was born February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Edison, Jr. and Nancy Elliot Edison. When Edison was 7 years old, his family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, after his father hired on as a carpenter at the Fort Gratiot military post.

Edison entered school in Port Huron, but his teachers considered him to be a dull student. Because of hearing problems, Edison had difficulty following the lessons and his school attendance became sporadic. Nevertheless, Edison became a voracious reader and at age 10, he set up a laboratory in his basement.

When his mother could not longer stand the smell of his chemistry lab, Edison took a job as a trainboy on the Grand Trunk Railway and established a new lab in an empty freight car. He was 12 at the time. Edison also began printing a weekly newspaper, which he called the Grand Trunk Herald.

While Edison was working for the railroad, something happened that changed the course of his career. Edison saved the life of a station official's child, who had fallen onto the tracks of an oncoming train. For his bravery, the boy's father taught Edison how to use the telegraph.

From 1862 to 1868, Edison worked as a roving telegrapher in the Midwest, the South, Canada, and New England. During this time, he began developing a telegraphic repeating instrument that made it possible to transmit messages automatically. By 1869, Edison's inventions, including the duplex telegraph and message printer, were progressing so well, he left telegraphy and began a career of full-time inventing and entrepreneurship.

Edison moved to New York City and within a year, he was able to open a workshop in Newark, New Jersey. He produced the Edison Universal Stock Printer, the automatic telegraph, the quadruplex, as well as other printing telegraphs, while working out of Newark. During this same period, Edison married Mary Stilwell.

Edison was a poor financial manager and by 1875, he began to experience financial difficulties. To reduce costs, Edison asked his widowed father to help him build a new laboratory and machine shop in Menlo Park, New Jersey. He moved into the new building in March, 1876 along with two associates, Charles Batchelor and John Kruesi. Edison achieved his greatest successes in this laboratory and he was dubbed the "Wizard of Menlo Park."

In 1877, Edison invented the carbon-button transmitter that is still used in telephone speakers and microphones. In December of the same year, he unveiled the tinfoil phonograph. (It was 10 years before the phonograph was available as a commercial product). In the late 1870s, backed by leading financiers including J.P. Morgan and the Vanderbilts, Edison established the Edison Electric Light Company. In 1879, he publicly demonstrated his incandescent electric light bulb. In 1882, he supervised the installation of the first commercial, central power system in lower Manhattan. In 1883, one of Edison's engineers William J. Hammer, made a discovery which later led to the electron tube. The discovery was patented the "Edison effect."

In 1884, Edison's wife Mary died, leaving him with three young children. He married Mina Miller in 1886, and began construction on a new laboratory and research facility in West Orange, New Jersey. The new lab employed approximately 60 workers and Edison attempted to personally manage this large staff. The story goes that when a new employee once asked about rules, Edison answered, "There ain't no rules around here. We're trying to accomplish something." However, the operation in West Orange lacked the intimacy of Menlo Park, and Edison's time was often consumed by administrative chores.

During his time in West Orange, Edison produced the commercial phonograph, the Kinetoscope, the Edison storage battery, the electric pen, the mimeograph, and the microtasimeter. In 1913, Edison introduced the first talking moving pictures. In 1915, he was appointed president of the U.S. Navy Consulting Board. In all, Edison patented more than 1,000 discoveries. Edison's inventions were often in response to demand for new or improved products. However, others also came about accidentally or serendipitously.

Thomas Alva Edison died in West Orange, New Jersey on October 18,1931. At the time of this death, he was experimenting on rubber from goldenrod. After his death, Edison became a folk hero of legendary status. His inventions had truly and profoundly affected the shaping of modern society./http://www.incwell.com/Biographies/Edison.html

A Renaissance Painter, Michelangelo Biography

2009-06-09T21:13:00.004+07:00

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (March 6, 1475 - February 18, 1564) was a Renaissance painter, sculptor, poet and architect. He is famous for creating the fresco ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, one of the most stupendous works in all of Western art, as well as the Last Judgment over the altar, and "The Martyrdom of St. Peter" and "The Conversion of St. Paul" in the Vatican's Cappella Paolina; among his many sculptures are those of the Pieta and David, again, sublime masterpieces of their field, as well as the Virgin, Bacchus, Moses, Rachel, Leah, and members of the Medici family (see article for more information on them); he also designed the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.

MICHELANGELO'S YOUTH

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born near Arezzo, in Caprese, Tuscany, Italy. His father, Lodovico, was the resident magistrate in Caprese. However, Michelangelo was raised in Florence and later lived with a sculptor and his wife in the town of Settignano where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. Michelangelo once said to the biographer of artists Giorgio Vasari, "What good I have comes from the pure air of your native Arezzo, and also because I sucked in chisels and hammers with my nurse's milk."

Against his father's wishes, Michelangelo chose to be the apprentice of Domenico Ghirlandaio for three years starting in 1488. Impressed, Domenico recommended him to the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici. From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended Lorenzo's school and was influenced by many prominent people who modified and expanded his ideas on art and even his feelings about sexuality. It was during this period that Michelangelo created two reliefs: Battle of the Centaurs and Madonna of the Steps.

MICHELANGELO'S ART

After the death of Lorenzo in 1492, Piero de' Medici (Lorenzo's oldest son and new head of the Medici family), refused to support Michelangelo's artwork. Also at that time, the ideas of Savonarola became popular in Florence. Under those two pressures, Michelangelo decided to leave Florence and stay in Bologna for three years. Soon afterwards, Cardinal San Giorgio purchased Michelangelo's marble Cupid and decided to summon him to Rome in 1496. Influenced by Roman antiquity, he produced the Bacchus and the Pietà.

Four years later, Michelangelo returned to Florence where he produced arguably his most famous work, the marble David. .He also painted the Holy Family of the Tribune.

Michelangelo was summoned back to Rome in 1503 by the newly appointed Pope Julius II and was commissioned to build the Pope's tomb. However, under the patronage of Julius II, Michelangelo had to constantly stop work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks. The most famous of those were the monumental paintings on the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel which took four years (1508 - 1512) to complete. Due to those and later interruptions, Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years without ever finishing it.

In 1513 Pope Julius II died and his successor Pope Leo X, a Medici, commissioned Michelangelo to reconstruct the exterior of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. Michelangelo agreed reluctantly. The three years he spent in creating drawings and models for the facade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta specifically for the project, were among the most frustrating in his career, as work was abruptly cancelled by his financially-strapped patrons before any real progress had been made.

Apparently not the least embarassed by this turnabout, the Medici later came back to Michelangelo with another grand proposal, this time for a family funerary chapel at the church of San Lorenzo. Fortunately for posterity, this project, occupying the artist for much of the 1520s and 1530s, was more fully realized. Though still incomplete, it is the best example we have of the integration of the artist's scuptural and architectural vision, since Michelangleo created both the major sculptures as well as the interior plan. Ironically the most prominent tombs are those of two rather obscure Medici who died young, a son and grandson of Lorenzo. Il Magnifico himself is buried in an obscure corner of the chapel, not given a free-standing monument, as originally intended.

MICHELANGELO'S LAST YEARS

In 1527, the Florentine citizens, encouraged by the sack of Rome, threw out the Medici and restored the republic. A siege of the city ensued, and Michelangelo went to the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528 to 1529. The city fell in 1530 and the Medici were restored to power. Completely out of sympathy with the repressive reign of the ducal Medici, Michelangelo left Florence for good in the mid-1530s, leaving assistants to complete the Medici chapel. Years later his body was brought back from Rome for interment, fufilling the maestro's last request to be buried in his beloved Tuscany.

The fresco of the Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel was commissioned by Pope Paul III, and Michelangelo worked on it from 1534 to 1541. Then in 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.

On February 18th, 1564, Michelangelo died in Rome at the age of 89. His life was described in Giorgio Vasari's "Vite"./artinthepicture.com

The Sixteenth President of the United States, Lincoln Biography

2009-05-17T19:43:00.005+07:00

The sixteenth president of the United States and president during the Civil War (1861–1865), Abraham Lincoln will forever be remembered by his inspirational rise to fame, his efforts to rid the country of slavery, and his ability to hold together a divided nation. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address, and two outstanding inaugural addresses are widely regarded as some of the greatest speeches ever delivered by an American politician.
Starting life in a log cabin

Abraham Lincoln was born to Thomas and Nancy Lincoln on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin on a farm in Hardin County, Kentucky. Two years later the family moved to a farm on Knob Creek. There, when there was no immediate work to be done, Abraham walked two miles to the schoolhouse, where he learned the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

When Abraham was seven, his father sold his lands and moved the family into the rugged wilderness of Indiana across the Ohio River. After spending a winter in a crude shack, the Lincolns began building a better home and clearing the land for planting. They were making progress when, in the summer of 1818, a terrible disease known as milk sickness struck the region. First it took the lives of Mrs. Lincoln's uncle and aunt, and then Nancy Hanks Lincoln herself died. Without Mrs. Lincoln the household began to fall apart, and much of the workload fell to Abraham and his sister.

The next winter Abraham's father returned to Kentucky and brought back a second wife, Sarah Bush Johnson, a widow with three children. As time passed, the region where the Lincolns lived grew in population. Lincoln himself grew tall and strong, and his father often hired him out to work for neighbors. Meanwhile, Lincoln's father had again moved his family to a new home in Illinois, where he built a cabin on the Sangamon River. At the end of the first summer in Illinois, disease swept through the region and put the Lincolns on the move once again. This time it was to Coles County. Abraham, who was now a grown man, did not go along. Instead he moved to the growing town of New Salem, where he was placed in charge of a mill and store.
Entering public life

Life in New Salem was a turning point for Lincoln, and the great man of history began to emerge. To the store came people of all kinds to talk and trade and to enjoy the stories told by this unique and popular man. The members of the New Salem Debating Society welcomed him, and Lincoln began to develop his skills as a passionate and persuasive speaker. When the Black Hawk War (1832) erupted between the United States and hostile Native Americans, the volunteers of the region quickly elected Lincoln to be their captain.

After the war he announced himself as a candidate for the Illinois legislature. He was not elected, but he did receive 277 of the 300 votes cast in the New Salem precinct. In 1834, after another attempt, Lincoln was finally elected to the state legislature. Lincoln's campaign skills greatly impressed John Todd Stuart (1807–1885), a leader of the Whigs, one of two major political parties in the country at the time. Stuart was also an outstanding lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, and soon took Lincoln under his care and inspired him to begin the study of law.

Lincoln served four straight terms in the legislature and soon emerged as a party leader. Meanwhile, he mastered the law books he could buy or borrow. In September 1836 Lincoln began practicing law and played an important part in having the Illinois state capital moved from Vandalia to Springfield. In 1837 Lincoln himself moved to Springfield to become Stuart's law partner. He did not, however, forget politics. In 1846 Lincoln was elected to the U.S. Congress. During these years Lincoln had become engaged to Mary Todd (1818–1882), a cultured and well-educated Kentucky woman. They were married on November 2, 1842.
First failure

When Congress met in December 1847, Lincoln expressed his disapproval with the Mexican War (1846–48), in which American and Mexican forces clashed over land in the Southwest. These views, together with his wish to abolish, or end, slavery in the District of Columbia, brought sharp criticism from the people back in Illinois. They believed Lincoln was "not a patriot" and had not correctly represented his state in Congress.

Although the Whigs won the presidency in 1848, Lincoln could not even control the support in his own district. His political career seemed to be coming to a close just as it was beginning. His only reward for party service was an offer of the governorship of far-off Oregon, which he refused. Lincoln then returned to Illinois and resumed practicing law.
War on the horizon

During the next twelve years, while Lincoln rebuilt his legal career, the nation was becoming divided. While victory in the Mexican War added vast western territory to the United States, then came the issue of slavery in those new territories. To Southerners, the issue involved the security and rights of slavery everywhere. To Northerners, it was a matter of morals and justice. A national crisis soon developed. Only the efforts of Senators Henry Clay (1777–1852) and Daniel Webster (1782–1852) brought about the Compromise of 1850. With the compromise, a temporary truce was reached between the states favoring slavery and those opposed to it. The basic issues, however, were not eliminated. Four years later the struggle was reopened.

Lincoln's passionate opposition to slavery was enough to draw him back into the world of politics. He had always viewed slavery as a "moral, social and political wrong" and looked forward to its eventual abolition. Although willing to let it alone for the present in the states where it existed, he would not see it extended one inch.

At the same time, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) drafted the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would leave the decision of slavery up to the new territories. Lincoln thought the bill ignored the growing Northern determination to rid the nation of slavery. Soon, in opposition to the expansion of slavery, the Republican party was born. When Douglas returned to Illinois to defend his position, Lincoln seized every opportunity to point out the weakness in it.
Republican leader

Lincoln's failure to receive the nomination as senator in 1855 convinced him that the Whig party was dead. By summer 1856 he became a member of the new Republicans. Lincoln quickly emerged as the outstanding leader of the new party. At the party's first national convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he received 110 votes for vice president on the first ballot. Although he was not chosen, he had been recognized as an important national figure.

National attention began turning toward the violence in Kansas and the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case, which debated the issue of slavery in the new territories. Meanwhile, Douglas had returned to Illinois to wage his fight for reelection to the Senate. But unlike in earlier elections, Illinois had grown rapidly and the population majority had shifted from the southern part of the state to the central and northern areas. In these growing areas the Republican party had gained a growing popularity—as had Abraham Lincoln.

As Lincoln challenged Douglas for his seat in the Senate, the two engaged in legendary debates. During the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln delivered his famous "house divided" speech, stating "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe the government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." Lincoln proved his ability to hold his own against the man known as the "Little Giant." In the end Douglas was reelected as senator, but Lincoln had gained national attention and his name was soon mentioned for the presidency.
The sixteenth president

In 1860 the Republican National Convention met and chose Lincoln as their candidate for president of the United States. With a divided Democratic party and the recent formation of the Constitutional Union party, Lincoln's election was certain. After Lincoln's election victory, parts of the country reacted harshly against the new president's stand on slavery. Seven Southern states then seceded, or withdrew, from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America.

In his inaugural address he clarified his position on the national situation. Secession, he said, was wrong, and the Union could not legally be broken apart. He would not interfere with slavery in the states, but he would "hold, occupy, and possess" all property and places owned by the federal government. By now there was no avoiding the outbreak of the Civil War.
The Civil War

From this time on, Lincoln's life was shaped by the problems and fortunes of civil war. As president, he was the head of all agencies in government and also acted as commander in chief, or supreme commander, of the armies. Lincoln was heavily criticized for early failures. Radicals in Congress were soon demanding a reorganization of his cabinet, or official advisors, and a new set of generals to lead his armies. To combat this, Lincoln himself studied military books. He correctly evaluated General Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) and General William T. Sherman (1820–1891) and the importance of the western campaign. Thanks, in part, to Lincoln's reshuffling of his military leaders, the Union forces would soon capture victory over the Confederates.

Afterward, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation called for the freeing of all slaves in territories still at war with the Union. Later, during his Gettysburg Address, he gave the war its universal meaning as a struggle to preserve a nation based on freedoms and dedicated to the idea "that all men are created equal."

Lincoln was reelected in 1864. As the end of the Civil War appeared close, Lincoln urged his people "to bind up the nation's wounds" and create a just and lasting peace. But Lincoln would never be able enjoy the nation he had reunited. Five days after the Confederate army surrendered and ended the Civil War, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1965. The president died the next day.

Although the reasons for Lincoln's assassination would be debated, his prominent place in American history has never been in doubt. His work to free the slaves earned him the honorable reputation as the Great Emancipator. His ability to hold together a country torn apart by civil war would forever secure his place as one of America's greatest presidents./notablebiographies.com

A Greek Philosopher, A Student of Plato and Teacher of Alexander the Great, Aristotle's Biography

2009-05-12T09:58:00.004+07:00

Aristotle was born in Stagira in north Greece, the son of Nichomachus, the court physician to the Macedonian royal family. He was trained first in medicine, and then in 367 he was sent to Athens to study philosophy with Plato. He stayed at Plato's Academy until about 347 -- the picture at the top of this page, taken from Raphael's fresco The School of Athens, shows Aristotle and Plato (Aristotle is on the. right). Though a brilliant pupil, Aristotle opposed some of Plato's teachings, and when Plato died, Aristotle was not appointed head of the Academy. After leaving Athens, Aristotle spent some time traveling, and possibly studying biology, in Asia Minor (now Turkey) and its islands.

He returned to Macedonia in 338 to tutor Alexander the Great; after Alexander conquered Athens, Aristotle returned to Athens and set up a school of his own, known as the Lyceum. After Alexander's death, Athens rebelled against Macedonian rule, and Aristotle's political situation became precarious. To avoid being put to death, he fled to the island of Euboea, where he died soon after.

Aristotle is said to have written 150 philosophical treatises. The 30 that survive touch on an enormous range of philosophical problems, from biology and physics to morals to aesthetics to politics. Many, however, are thought to be "lecture notes" instead of complete, polished treatises, and a few may not be the work of Aristotle but of members of his school.

A full description of Aristotle's contributons to science and philosophy is beyond the scope of this exhibit, but a brief summary can be made: Whereas Aristotle's teacher Plato had located ultimate reality in Ideas or eternal forms, knowable only through reflection and reason, Aristotle saw ultimate reality in physical objects, knowable through experience. Objects, including organisms, were composed of a potential, their matter, and of a reality, their form; thus, a block of marble -- matter -- has the potential to assume whatever form a sculptor gives it, and a seed or embryo has the potential to grow into a living plant or animal form. In living creatures, the form was identified with the soul; plants had the lowest kinds of souls, animals had higher souls which could feel, and humans alone had rational, reasoning souls. In turn, animals could be classified by their way of life, their actions, or, most importantly, by their parts.

Though Aristotle's work in zoology was not without errors, it was the grandest biological synthesis of the time, and remained the ultimate authority for many centuries after his death. His observations on the anatomy of octopus, cuttlefish, crustaceans, and many other marine invertebrates are remarkably accurate, and could only have been made from first-hand experience with dissection. Aristotle described the embryological development of a chick; he distinguished whales and dolphins from fish; he described the chambered stomachs of ruminants and the social organization of bees; he noticed that some sharks give birth to live young -- his books on animals are filled with such observations, some of which were not confirmed until many centuries later.

Aristotle's classification of animals grouped together animals with similar characters into genera (used in a much broader sense than present-day biologists use the term) and then distinguished the species within the genera. He divided the animals into two types: those with blood, and those without blood (or at least without red blood). These distinctions correspond closely to our distinction between vertebrates and invertebrates. The blooded animals, corresponding to the vertebrates, included five genera: viviparous quadrupeds (mammals), birds, oviparous quadrupeds (reptiles and amphibians), fishes, and whales (which Aristotle did not realize were mammals). The bloodless animals were classified as cephalopods (such as the octopus); crustaceans; insects (which included the spiders, scorpions, and centipedes, in addition to what we now define as insects); shelled animals (such as most molluscs and echinoderms); and "zoophytes," or "plant-animals," which supposedly resembled plants in their form -- such as most cnidarians.

Aristotle's thoughts on earth sciences can be found in his treatise Meteorology -- the word today means the study of weather, but Aristotle used the word in a much broader sense, covering, as he put it, "all the affections we may call common to air and water, and the kinds and parts of the earth and the affections of its parts." Here he discusses the nature of the earth and the oceans. He worked out the hydrologic cycle: "Now the sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved into vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth." He discusses winds, earthquakes (which he thought were caused by underground winds), thunder, lightning, rainbows, and meteors, comets, and the Milky Way (which he thought were atmospheric phenomena). His model of Earth history contains some remarkably modern-sounding ideas:

The same parts of the earth are not always moist or dry, but they change according as rivers come into existence and dry up. And so the relation of land to sea changes too and a place does not always remain land or sea throughout all time, but where there was dry land there comes to be sea, and where there is now sea, there one day comes to be dry land. But we must suppose these changes to follow some order and cycle. The principle and cause of these changes is that the interior of the earth grows and decays, like the bodies of plants and animals. . . .

But the whole vital process of the earth takes place so gradually and in periods of time which are so immense compared with the length of our life, that these changes are not observed, and before their course can be recorded from beginning to end whole nations perish and are destroyed.

Where Aristotle differed most sharply from medieval and modern thinkers was in his belief that the universe had never had a beginning and would never end; it was eternal. Change, to Aristotle, was cyclical: water, for instance, might evaporate from the sea and rain down again, and rivers might come into existence and then perish, but overall conditions would never change.

In the later Middle Ages, Aristotle's work was rediscovered and enthusiastically adopted by medieval scholars. His followers called him Ille Philosophus (The Philosopher), or "the master of them that know," and many accepted every word of his writings -- or at least every word that did not contradict the Bible -- as eternal truth. Fused and reconciled with Christian doctrine into a philosophical system known as Scholasticism, Aristotelian philosophy became the official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church. As a result, some scientific discoveries in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were criticized simply because they were not found in Aristotle. It is one of the ironies of the history of science that Aristotle's writings, which in many cases were based on first-hand observation, were used to impede observational science./ucmp.berkeley.edu

The First As An Independent Inventor, Charles F. Kettering Biography

2009-05-08T21:26:00.002+07:00

Charles F. Kettering, first as an independent inventor and later as head of research for General Motors Corporation, conducted research that established him as one of the most creative Americans of his generation.
Early years

Charles Francis Kettering was born on August 29, 1876, on a farm near Loudonville, Ohio, to Jacob and Martha Hunter Kettering. He was the fourth of five children. He was an excellent student who loved to read, and he also showed an early interest in trying to find better ways of doing things. His brother Adam, in Stuart W. Leslie's Boss Kettering, describes how young Charles tried "half the tools on the farm" to find the best way to pick potatoes. After high school graduation Kettering taught three years in country and small-town schools to make money to pay for college. Entering Ohio State University at age twenty-two, he dropped out in his sophomore year because of poor eyesight. Kettering worked for two years as a telephone lineman and then returned to Ohio State, graduating at age twenty-eight.
The NCR and Delco era

After Kettering received his degree he took a job as an experimental engineer with National Cash Register Company (NCR) in Dayton, Ohio. During his five years there he created a low-cost printing cash register; created an electric cash register, doing away with the hand crank; developed a system that tied charge phones to cash registers; and developed an accounting machine for banks. In 1905 he married Olive Williams of Ashland, Ohio. The couple had one son.

Having developed a better ignition (starting) system for autos while working "on the side" for NCR, Kettering, with the help of NCR's general manager Colonel Edward A. Deeds and others who put up money, organized Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (Delco) in 1909. That year an order from Cadillac for eight thousand ignition systems led to the creation of an electric starter, first offered on Cadillac cars in 1912 and on many other makes the following year. Kettering and Delco also improved auto lighting systems and developed a dependable way to generate electricity on farms. Delco grew into a large manufacturing firm as well as a research site.
The General Motors years

In 1915 Colonel Deeds, a good man with business details, joined Delco, teaming up with Kettering, who preferred to devote himself to research. In 1916 Delco, in exchange for $9 million, became a branch of United Motors Corporation, an automotive parts and accessories (objects adding to the appearance or performance of something) company. In turn, General Motors (GM) acquired United Motors in 1918. Kettering was invited to organize and direct the new General Motors Research Corporation, based in Dayton at the inventor's request. By 1925 the research labs had been transferred to Detroit, Michigan; Kettering and his wife lived in a hotel in the city until Kettering's retirement.

As head of GM research for 27 years, Kettering helped bring about the improvement of many products, acquiring 140 patents in his name. His most notable achievements included the development of "Ethyl" leaded gasoline to correct engine knock; the refrigerant (cooling agent) "Freon"; and faster-drying and longer-lasting finishes for automobiles. He also created the lightweight diesel engine, which helped improve the moving power of railroads.

Helped the public good

Kettering, in addition to his success as a scientist and engineer, was highly regarded as a public speaker and social philosopher (seeker of wisdom). "I am for the double-profit system," he said, "a reasonable profit for the manufacturer and a much greater profit for the customer." "I object to people running down the future," he also remarked. "I am going to live all the rest of my life there, and I would like it to be a nice place, polished, bright, glistening, and glorious." Kettering always regarded himself as a professional amateur. "We are amateurs," he observed, "because we are doing things for the first time."

Kettering retired from GM in 1947 but continued to serve as a director and research adviser until his death in Dayton on November 25, 1958. He received more than three dozen honorary (achieved without meeting the usual requirements) doctor's degrees and dozens of awards, honors, and medals. His name lives on in the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, which he organized for medical research in 1927, and the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, founded by GM chairman Alfred P. Sloan Jr. in 1945./notablebiographies.com

The Foremost Scientific Tntellect, Isaac Newton Biography

2009-05-03T17:59:00.003+07:00

Isaac Newton was born on 4 January, 1643 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire (25 December, 1642, according to the Old Style calendar). His father, also named Isaac, died before he was born. Isaac's mother Hannah remarried when Isaac was only two years old, and he was left in the care of his grandmother.

He was educated at Grantham Free Grammar School, where he showed no aptitude for study. His mother removed him from school and gave him the task of managing her estate, but at this he also proved unfortunately inept.

He was allowed to return to school, and he must have improved his study habits, for his mother was persuaded to allow him to enter university at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Newton intended to study law, but his taste quickly turned to mathematics. He received his bachelor's degree in the spring of 1665, but then an outbreak of the plague forced the university to close, and Newton returned to his Lincolnshire home.

It was during this time of retreat that the famous incident of a falling apple gave Newton the first glimmerings of the ideas he later developed into his study of gravitational forces.

In the two years he spent in inadvertent exile from Cambridge, Newton made extraordinary strides in mathematics, creating the basis of modern calculus. He wrote De Methodis Serierum et Fluxionum in 1671, though it was not published during his lifetime.

When Cambridge reopened, Newton became a Fellow of Trinity College. His fresh ideas began to circulate among the leading mathematicians of the day. He also delved into astronomy and optics.

He was one of the first to argue that white light is actually composed of many different colours, and he constructed one of the first reflecting telescopes. He donated one of his telescopes to the Royal Society in 1672, and was named a full fellow of the society. Unfortunately, Newton quarreled with several of the leading scientists of the time, and was reluctant to publish his experiments and philosophies.

It was only under the urging of astronomer Edmund Halley (he of Halley's Comet fame) that Newton was persuaded to publish his ideas on physics and astronomy, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1687). In this work he first laid out his law of universal gravitation. The book provoked a storm of scientific argument and admiration.

Shortly after this he was elected to Parliament as a representative of the university. In 1693 Newton suffered a nervous breakdown, and a few years later he became Master of the Royal Mint. He was elected president of the Royal Society in 1703, a position he held until his death. In 1705 he became the first scientist to be knighted for his work.

Newton remained suspicious of his fellow scientists, and protective of his ideas and his reputation. His final years were given over to a distasteful conflict with Liebniz, disputing who had invented calculus. He went so far as to appoint supposedly impartial committee of the Royal Society to decide the issue, however, it seems clear that he himself wrote the committee's report in his own favour.

Isaac Newton died on March 31, 1727 (New Style calendar), in London, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey./britainexpress.com

The First Recorded Explorer to discover North America, Columbus Biography

2009-04-30T10:10:00.004+07:00

Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa (located in Italy today) in 1451 to Domenico Colombo, a middle class wool-weaver, and Susanna Fontanarossa. Though little is known about his childhood, it is apparent that he was well-educated because he was able to speak several languages as an adult and had considerable knowledge of classical literature. In addition, he studied the works of Ptolemy and Marinus to name a few.

Columbus first took to the sea when he was 14 years old and this continued throughout his younger life. During the 1470s, he went on numerous trading trips that took him to the Aegean Sea, Northern Europe, and possibly Iceland. In 1479, he met his brother Bartolomeo, a mapmaker, in Lisbon. He later married Filipa Moniz Perestrello and in 1480, his son Diego was born.

The family stayed in Lisbon until 1485, when Columbus' wife Filipa died. From there, Columbus and Diego moved to Spain where he began trying to obtain a grant to explore western trade routes. He believed that because the earth was sphere, a ship could reach the Far East and set up trading routes in Asia by sailing west.

For years, Columbus proposed his plans to the Portuguese and Spanish kings, but he was turned down each time. Finally, after the Moors were expelled from Spain in 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella reconsidered his requests. Columbus promised to bring back gold, spices, and silk from Asia, spread Christianity, and explore China. He then asked to be admiral of the seas and governor of discovered lands.

Columbus' First Voyage
After receiving significant funding from the Spanish monarchs, Columbus set sail on August 3, 1492 with three ships, the Pinta, Nina, and Santa Maria, and 104 men. After a short stop at the Canary Islands to resupply and make minor repairs, the ships set out across the Atlantic. This voyage took five weeks - much longer than Columbus expected, as he thought the world was smaller than it is. During this time, many of the crew members contracted diseases and died, or died from hunger and thirst.

Finally, at 2 a.m. on October 12, 1492, Rodrigo de Triana, sighted land in area of the present-day Bahamas. When Columbus reached the land, he believed it was an Asian island and named it San Salvador. Because he did not find riches, Columbus decided to continue sailing in search of China. Instead, he ended up visiting Cuba and Hispaniola.

On November 21, 1492, the Pinta and its crew left to explore on its own. Then on Christmas Day, Columbus' Santa Maria wrecked off the coast of Hispaniola. Because there was limited space on the lone Nina, Columbus had to leave about 40 men behind at a fort they named Navidad. Soon after, Columbus set sail for Spain, where he arrived on March 15, 1493, completing his first voyage west.

Columbus' Second Voyage
After the success of finding this new land, Columbus set sail west again on September 23, 1493 with 17 ships and 1,200 men. The purpose of this journey was to establish colonies in the name of Spain, check on the crew at Navidad, and continue his search for riches in what he still thought was the Far East.

On November 3, the crew members sighted land and found three more islands, Dominica, Guadeloupe, and Jamaica, which Columbus thought were islands off of Japan. Because there were still no riches there, they went on to Hispaniola, only to discover that the fort of Navidad had been destroyed and his crew killed after they mistreated the indigenous population.

At the site of the fort Columbus established the colony of Santo Domingo and after a battle in 1495, he conquered the entire island of Hispaniola. He then set sail for Spain in March 1496, and arrived in Cadiz on July 31.

Columbus' Third Voyage
Columbus’s third voyage began on May 30, 1498 and took a more southern route than the previous two. Still looking for China, he found Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, and Margarita, on July 31. He also reached the mainland of South America. On August 31, he returned to Hispaniola and found the colony of Santo Domingo there in shambles. After a government representative was sent to investigate the problems in 1500, Columbus was arrested and sent back to Spain. He arrived in October and was able to successfully defend himself against the charges of treating both the locals and Spaniards poorly.

Columbus' Fourth and Final Voyage and Death
Columbus' final voyage began on May 9, 1502 and he arrived in Hispaniola in June. Once there, he was forbidden from entering the colony so he continued to explore further. On July 4, he set sail again and later found Central America. In January 1503, he reached Panama and found a small amount of gold but was forced out of the area by those who lived there. After numerous problems and a year of waiting on Jamaica after his ships had problems, Columbus set sail for Spain on November 7, 1504. When he arrived there, he settled with his son in Seville.

After Queen Isabella died on November 26, 1504, Columbus tried to regain his governorship of Hispaniola. In 1505, the king allowed him to petition but did nothing. One year later, Columbus became ill and died on May 20, 1506.

Columbus' Legacy
Because of his discoveries, Columbus is often venerated in areas around the world, but notably in the Americas with his name on places (such as the District of Columbia) and the celebration of Columbus Day every year on the second Monday in October. Despite this fame however, Columbus was not the first to visit the Americas.* His major contribution to geography is that he was the first to visit, settle, and stay in these new lands, effectively bringing a new area or the world into the forefront of the geographic thought of the time./geography.about.com

Father of Nation, Mahatma Gandhi Biography

2009-04-27T21:05:00.002+07:00

Achievements: Known as Father of Nation; played a key role in winning freedom for India; introduced the concept of Ahimsa and Satyagraha.

Mahatma Gandhi popularly known as Father of Nation played a stellar role in India's freedom struggle. Born in a Bania family in Kathiawar, Gujarat, his real name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (M.K. Gandhi). The title Mahatma came to be associated with his name much later. Before Gandhiji's arrival on the Indian political scene, freedom struggle was limited only to the intelligentsia. Mahatma Gandhi's main contribution lay in the fact that he bridged the gulf between the intelligentsia and the masses and widened the concept of Swaraj to include almost every aspect of social and moral regeneration. Paying tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his death, famous scientist Albert Einstein said, "Generations to come will scarce believe that such a man as this walked the earth in flesh and blood".

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, at Porbandar, a small town on the western coast of India, which was then one of the many tiny states in Kathiawar. Gandhiji was born in middle class family of Vaishya caste. His father, Karamchand Gandhi, was a Dewan or Prime Minister of Porbandar. His mother, Putlibai, was a very religious lady and left a deep impression on Gandhiji's mind. Gandhiji was a mediocre student and was excessively shy and timid.

Gandhiji was truthful in his conduct right from the childhood. There is a very famous incident in this regard. A British school inspector once came to Gandhiji's school and set a spelling test. Gandhiji spelled all the words correctly except kettle. The class teacher noticed the mistake and gestured Gandhiji to copy the correct spelling from the boy sitting next to him. Gandhiji refused to take the hint and was later scolded for his "stupidity".

Gandhiji was married at the age of thirteen to Kasturbai. He was in high school at that time. Later on in his life, Gandhiji denounced the custom of child marriage and termed it as cruel. After matriculating from the high school, Gandhiji joined the Samaldas College in Bhavnagar. After the death of Gandhiji's father in 1885, a family suggested that if Gandhiji hoped to take his father's place in the state service he had better become a barrister which he could do in England in three years. Gandhi welcomed the idea but his mother was objected to the idea of going abroad. To win his mother's approval Gandhiji took a solemn vow not to touch wine, women and meat and remained true to it throughout his stay in England.

Gandhiji sailed for England on September 4, 1888. Initially he had difficulty in adjusting to English customs and weather but soon he overcame it. Gandhiji completed his Law degree in 1891 and returned to India. He decided to set up legal practice in Bombay but couldn't establish himself. Gandhiji returned to Rajkot but here also he could not make much headway. At this time Gandhiji received an offer from Dada Abdulla & Co. to proceed to South Africa on their behalf to instruct their counsel in a lawsuit. Gandhiji jumped at the idea and sailed for South Africa in April 1893.

It was in South Africa that Gandhiji's transformation from Mohandas to Mahatma took place. Gandhiji landed at Durban and soon he realized the oppressive atmosphere of racial snobbishness against Indians who were settled in South Africa in large numbers. After about a week's stay in Durban Gandhiji left for Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal, in connection with a lawsuit. When the train reached Pietermaritzburg, the capital of Natal, at about 9 p.m. a white passenger who boarded the train objected to the presence of a "coloured" man in the compartment and Gandhji was ordered by a railway official to shift to a third class. When he refused to do so, a constable pushed him out and his luggage was taken away by the railway authorities. It was winter and bitterly cold. This incident changed Gandhiji's life forever. He decided to fight for the rights of Indians. Gandhiji organised the Indian community in South Africa and asked them to forget all distinctions of religion and caste. He suggested the formation of an association to look after the Indian settlers and offered his free time and services.

During his stay in South Africa, Gandhiji's life underwent a change and he developed most of his political ideas. Gandhiji decided to dedicate himself completely to the service of humanity. He realized that absolute continence or brahmacharya was indispensable for the purpose as one could not live both after the flesh and the spirit. In 1906, Gandhiji took a vow of absolute continence. In the course of his struggle in South Africa, Gandhiji, developed the concepts of Ahimsa (non-violence) and Satyagraha (holding fast to truth or firmness in a righteous cause). Gandhiji's struggle bore fruit and in 1914 in an agreement between Gandhiji and South African Government, the main Indian demands were conceded.

Gandhiji returned to India in 1915 and on the advice of his political guru Gopal Krishna Gokhale, spent the first year touring throughout the country to know the real India. After an year of wandering, Gandhiji settled down on the bank of the river Sabarmati, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, where he founded an ashram called Satyagraha Ashram. Gandhiji's first satyagraha in India was in Champaran, in Bihar, where he went in 1917 at the request of a poor peasants to inquire into the grievances of the much exploited peasants of that district, who were compelled by British indigo planters to grow indigo on 15 percent of their land and part with the whole crop for rent. Gandhiji's Satyagraha forced British government to set up a inquiry into the condition of tenant farmers. The report of the committee of which Gandhi was a member went in favour of the tenant farmers. The success of his first experiment in satyagraha in India greatly enhanced Gandhiji's reputation in the country.

In 1921, Gandhji gave the call for Non-cooperation movement against the ills of British rule. Gandhiji's call roused the sleeping nation. Many Indians renounced their titles and honours, lawyers gave up their practice, and students left colleges and schools. Non-cooperation movement also brought women into the domain of freedom struggle for the first time. Non-cooperation movement severely jolted the British government. But the movement ended in an anti-climax in February 1922. An outbreak of mob violence in Chauri Chaura so shocked and pained Gandhi that he refused to continue the campaign and undertook a fast for five days to atone for a crime committed by others in a state of mob hysteria.

Gandhiji was sentenced to six years imprisonment but was released in 1924 on medical grounds. For the next five years Gandhi seemingly retired from active agitational politics and devoted himself to the propagation of what he regarded as the basic national needs, namely, Hindu-Muslim unity, removal of untouchability, equality of women, popularization of hand-spinning and the reconstruction of village economy.

On March 12, 1930 Gandhiji started the historic Dandi March to break the law which had deprived the poor man of his right to make his own salt. On April 6, 1930 Gandhiji broke the Salt law at the sea beach at Dandi. This simple act was immediately followed by a nation-wide defiance of the law. This movement galvanized the whole nation and came to be known as "Civil Disobedience Movement". Within a few weeks about a hundred thousand men and women were in jail, throwing mighty machinery of the British Government out of gear. This forced the then Viceroy Lord Irwin to call Gandhiji for talks. On March 5, 1931 Gandhi Irwin Pact was signed. Soon after signing the pact Gandhiji went to England to attend the First Round Table Conference Soon after his return from England Gandhiji was arrested without trial.

After the outbreak of Second World War in 1939, Gandhiji again became active in the political arena. British Government wanted India's help in the war and Congress in return wanted a clear-cut promise of independence from British government. But British government dithered in its response and on August 8, 1942 Gandhiji gave the call for Quit India Movement. Soon the British Government arrested Gandhiji and other top leaders of Congress. Disorders broke out immediately all over India and many violent demonstrations took place. While Gandhiji was in jail his wife Kasturbai passed away. Gandhiji too had a severe attack of Malaria. In view of his deteriorating health he was released from the jail in May 1944.

Second World War ended in 1945 and Britain emerged victorious. In the general elections held in Britain in 1945, Labour Party came to power, and Atlee became the Prime Minister. He promised an early realization of self Government in India. A Cabinet Mission arrived from England to discuss with Indian leaders the future shape of a free and united India, but failed to bring the Congress and Muslims together. India attained independence but Jinnah's intransigence resulted in the partition of the country. Communal riots between Hindus and Muslims broke out in the country in the aftermath of partition. Tales of atrocities on Hindus in Pakistan provoked Hindus in India and they targeted Muslims. Gandhiji worked ceaselessly to promote unity between Hindus and Muslims. This angered some Hindu fundamentalists and on January 30, 1948 Gandhiji was shot dead by one such fundamentalist Nathu Ram Godse while he was going for his evening prayers. The last words on the lips of Gandhiji were Hey Ram./iloveindia.com

The American inventor, Thomas Edison Biography

2009-04-26T21:35:00.004+07:00

The American inventor Thomas Edison held hundreds of patents, mostly for electrical devices and electric light and power. Although the phonograph and the electric light bulb are best known, perhaps his greatest invention was organized research.
Early life

Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847, the youngest of Samuel and Nancy Eliot Edison's seven children. His father worked at different jobs, including as a shopkeeper and shingle maker; his mother was a former teacher. Edison spent short periods of time in school but was mainly tutored by his mother. He also read books from his father's extensive library.

At the age of twelve Edison sold fruit, candy, and newspapers on the Grand Trunk Railroad between Port Huron and Detroit, Michigan. In 1862, using a small printing press in a baggage car, he wrote and printed the Grand Trunk Herald, which was circulated to four hundred railroad employees. That year he became a telegraph operator, taught by the father of a child whose life Edison had saved. Excused from military service because of deafness, he worked at different places before joining Western Union Telegraph Company in Boston in 1868. He also continued to read, becoming especially fond of the writings of British scientist Michael Faraday (1791–1867) on the subject of electricity.
First inventions

Edison's first invention was probably an automatic telegraph repeater (1864), which enabled telegraph signals to travel greater distances. His first patent was for an electric vote counter. In 1869, as a partner in a New York electrical firm, he perfected a machine for telegraphing stock market quotations and sold it. This money, in addition to that from his share of the partnership, provided funds for his own factory in Newark, New Jersey. Edison hired as many as eighty workers, including chemists and mathematicians, to help him with inventions; he wanted an "invention factory."

From 1870 to 1875 Edison invented many telegraphic improvements, including transmitters, receivers, and automatic printers and tape. He worked with Christopher Sholes, "father of the typewriter," in 1871 to improve the typing machine. Edison claimed he made twelve typewriters at Newark about 1870. The Remington Company bought his interests. In 1876 Edison's carbon telegraph transmitter for Western Union marked a real advance toward making the Bell telephone successful. With the money Edison received from Western Union for his transmitter, he established a factory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Within six years he had more than three hundred patents. The electric pen (1877) produced stencils to make copies. The A. B. Dick Company licensed Edison's patent and manufactured the first copy machine.

Edison's most original and successful invention, the phonograph, was patented in 1877. From an instrument operated by hand that made impressions on metal foil and replayed sounds, it became a motor-driven machine playing soda can–shaped wax records by 1887. By 1890 he had more than eighty patents on it. The Victor Company developed from his patents. Edison's later dictating machine, the Ediphone, used disks.
Electric light

To research incandescent light (glowing with intense heat without burning), Edison and others organized the Edison Electric Light Company in 1878. (It later became the General Electric Company.) Edison made the first practical electric light bulb in 1879, and it was patented the following year. Edison and his staff examined six thousand organic fibers from around the world, searching for a material that would glow, but not burn, when electric current passed through it. He found that Japanese bamboo was best. Mass production soon made the lamps, while low-priced, profitable.

Prior to Edison's central power station, each user of electricity needed a generator, which was inconvenient and expensive. Edison opened the first commercial electric station in London in 1882. In September the Pearl Street Station in New York City marked the beginning of America's electrical age. Within four months the station was providing power to light more than five thousand lamps, and the demand for lamps exceeded supply. By 1890 it supplied current to twenty thousand lamps, mainly in office buildings, and to motors, fans, printing presses, and heating appliances. Many towns and cities installed central stations based on this model. Increased use of electricity led to numerous improvements in the system.

In 1883 Edison made a significant discovery in pure science, the Edison effect—electrons (particles of an atom with a negative electrical charge) flowed from incandescent conducting threads. With a metal plate inserted next to the thread, the lamp could serve as a valve, admitting only negative electricity. Although "etheric force" had been recognized in 1875 and the Edison effect was patented in 1883, the discovery was little known outside the Edison laboratory. (At this time existence of electrons was not generally accepted.) This "force" underlies radio broadcasting, long-distance telephone systems, sound pictures, television, X rays, high-frequency surgery, and electronic musical instruments. In 1885 Edison patented a method to transmit telegraphic "aerial" signals, which worked over short distances. He later sold this "wireless" patent to Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937).
Creating the modern research laboratory

In 1887 Edison moved his operations to West Orange, New Jersey. This factory, which Edison directed from 1887 to 1931, was the world's most complete research laboratory, with teams of workers investigating problems. Various inventions included a method to make plate glass, a magnetic ore separator, a cement process, an all-concrete house, an electric locomotive (patented in 1893), a nickel-iron battery, and motion pictures. Edison also developed the fluoroscope (an instrument used to study the inside of the living body by X rays), but he refused to patent it, which allowed doctors to use it freely. The Edison battery was perfected in 1910. After eight thousand trials Edison remarked, "Well, at least we know eight thousand things that don't work."

Edison's motion picture camera, the kinetograph, could photograph action on fifty-foot strips of film, sixteen images per foot. In 1893 a young assistant, in order to make the first Edison movies, built a small laboratory called the "Black Maria"—a shed, painted black inside and out, that revolved on a base to follow the sun and keep the actors visible. The kinetoscope projector of 1893 showed the films. The first commercial movie theater, a peepshow, opened in New York in 1884. A coin put into a slot activated the kinetoscope inside the box. In 1895 Edison acquired and improved Thomas Armat's projector, marketing it as the Vitascope. The Edison Company produced over seventeen hundred movies. Combining movies with the phonograph in 1904, Edison laid the basis for talking pictures. In 1908 his cinema-phone appeared, adjusting film speed to phonograph speed. In 1913 his kinetophone projected talking pictures: the phonograph, behind the screen, ran in time with the projector through a series of ropes and pulleys. Edison produced several "talkies."
Work for the government

During World War I (1914–18) Edison headed the U.S. Navy Consulting Board and contributed forty-five inventions, including substitutes for previously imported chemicals, defensive instruments against U-boats, a ship telephone system, an underwater searchlight, smoke screen machines, antitorpedo nets, navigating equipment, and methods of aiming and firing naval guns. After the war he established the Naval Research Laboratory, the only American organized weapons research institution until World War II (1939–45).
Synthetic rubber

With Henry Ford (1863–1947) and the Firestone Company, Edison organized the Edison Botanic Research Company in 1927 to discover or develop a domestic source of rubber. Some seventeen thousand different plant specimens were examined over four years—an indication of how thorough Edison's research was. He eventually was able to develop a strain yielding twelve percent latex, and in 1930 he received his last patent for this process.
The man himself

To help raise money, Edison called attention to himself by dressing carelessly, clowning for reporters, and making statements such as "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration," and "Discovery is not invention." He scoffed at formal education, thought four hours of sleep a night was enough, and often worked forty or fifty hours straight, sleeping on a laboratory floor. As a world symbol of American inventiveness, he looked and acted the part. Edison had thousands of books at home and masses of printed materials at the laboratory. When launching a new project, he wished to avoid others' mistakes and tried to learn everything about a subject. Some twenty-five thousand notebooks contained his research records, ideas, hunches, and mistakes.

Edison died in West Orange on October 18, 1931. The laboratory buildings and equipment associated with his career are preserved in Greenfield Village, Detroit, Michigan, thanks to Henry Ford's interest and friendship./notablebiographies.com

The Most Successful Investor, Warren Buffet Biography

2009-04-25T19:54:00.003+07:00

Warren Buffett was born in Nebraska, Omaha USA on the 30th of August in 1930. He is one of the worlds richest men, with a fortune that is only surpassed by Bill Gates of Microsoft fame. He is considered one of the most successful investors of all time and has picked up the nickname of the "Oracle of Omaha".

Buffett was born to Leila and Howard Buffett and was the second of three children, he being the only boy. Buffett's father, Howard was a stockbroker and also became a member of congress. Warren Buffett showed early signs of being entrepreneurial through being involved in various business dealings as a child, including purchasing bottles of cola cheaply and selling them for a profit. He also made his first investment in the stock market when he was just 11 years old.

Buffett began studying at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, but transferred to the University of Nebraska where he graduated. He then went on to the Columbia University to do a Masters in economics. This was where he met the influential value investor Benjamin Graham.

The young investor was very influenced by Benjamin Graham and went to work for him in his company "Graham-Newman". It was here that Warren Buffett developed many of his stock market investing skills that have now become legendary. Graham developed a method where investors could work out the intrinsic value of a company and make intelligent investing decisions by comparing the stock price to the intrinsic value.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Berkshire Hathaway
After Graham's retirement, Buffett returned to Omaha and began a limited investing fund partnership with a group of friends, family and associates. The "Buffett Partnerships Ltd" fund racked up amazing returns for its investors over a ten year period, with returns 10 times higher than the Dow Jones Industrial average for the same time. Buffett liquidated the fund and took control of the textile company Berkshire Hathaway.

It was a difficult time for the textile industry and Buffett eventually wound up Berkshire Hathaway's textile activities, but kept the name for Buffett's portfolio of companies and investments. The insurance industry was the first major area of success that Berkshire Hathaway had, with the funds used to acquire carefully selected investments each year. Major undervalued companies that Buffett took advantage of included "American Express", "Coca-Cola" "The Washington Post" and "Gillette". Berkshire Hathaway owns large holdings of each of the above major brand companies (more than 5% each).
Selected Berkshire subsidiary companies include:

Borsheim's Fine Jewelry
Acme Brick Company
Buffalo NEWS, Buffalo NY
Clayton Homes
Fruit of the Loom
GEICO Direct Auto Insurance
General Re
Helzberg Diamonds
Nebraska Furniture Mart
The Pampered Chef
See's Candies
United States Liability Insurance Group

Warren Buffett lives with his long time partner Astrid Menks in Omaha, USA. He was married to Susan Thompson up until her death from stroke in July 2004, but the couple were separated in 1977. They chose not to divorce and remained good friends and business associates. Buffett's late wife was set to inherit much of his fortune upon his death.

Warren Buffet Gives Away his Billions to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Buffett is a generous philanthropist and was giving more than $USD12 million each year to the Buffett Foundation (no called the "Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation"). His largest charitable donation was to be upon his death when he had planned to give 99% of his massive fortune to the foundation.

In June 2006 Buffett announced plans to give much of his wealth away while he is still living. The majority of the Buffett billions will go to the foundation of his Bridge partner and friend of fifteen years, Bill Gates.
Read more about the Warren Buffett philanthropy plans.

Warren Buffett becomes the Richest Man in the World in 2008
Warren Buffett finally knocked Bill Gates out of first position to become the richest man in the world in 2008 on the world rich list according to the Forbes business magazine.

Lunch with Warren Buffett
Find out more about the Warren Buffett power lunch auction for charity, where the billionaire spends time with the winning bidder and seven friends at a Smith and Wollensky steakhouse restaurant in New York. The winning bid for lunch with Warren Buffett in 2008 was an impressive $2.1 million paid by Zhao Danyang of the Pureheart China Growth Investment Fund./woopidoo.com

The First Pure Mathematician, Pythagoras Biography

2009-04-24T19:50:00.005+07:00

Pythagoras is often referred to as the first pure mathematician. He was born on the island of Samos, Greece in 569 BC. Various writings place his death between 500 BC and 475 BC in Metapontum, Lucania, Italy. His father, Mnesarchus, was a gem merchant. His mother's name was Pythais. Pythagoras had two or three brothers.

Some historians say that Pythagoras was married to a woman named Theano and had a daughter Damo, and a son named Telauges, who succeeded Pythagoras as a teacher and possibly taught Empedocles. Others say that Theano was one of his students, not his wife, and say that Pythagoras never married and had no children.

Pythagoras was well educated, and he played the lyre throughout his lifetime, knew poetry and recited Homer. He was interested in mathematics, philosophy, astronomy and music, and was greatly influenced by Pherekydes (philosophy), Thales (mathematics and astronomy) and Anaximander (philosophy, geometry).

Pythagoras left Samos for Egypt in about 535 B.C. to study with the priests in the temples. Many of the practices of the society he created later in Italy can be traced to the beliefs of Egyptian priests, such as the codes of secrecy, striving for purity, and refusal to eat beans or to wear animal skins as clothing.

Ten years later, when Persia invaded Egypt, Pythagoras was taken prisoner and sent to Babylon (in what is now Iraq), where he met the Magoi, priests who taught him sacred rites. Iamblichus (250-330 AD), a Syrian philosopher, wrote about Pythagoras, "He also reached the acme of perfection in arithmetic and music and the other mathematical sciences taught by the Babylonians..."

In 520 BC, Pythagoras, now a free man, left Babylon and returned to Samos, and sometime later began a school called The Semicircle. His methods of teaching were not popular with the leaders of Samos, and their desire for him to become involved in politics did not appeal to him, so he left.

Pythagoras settled in Crotona, a Greek colony in southern Italy, about 518 BC, and founded a philosophical and religious school where his many followers lived and worked. The Pythagoreans lived by rules of behavior, including when they spoke, what they wore and what they ate. Pythagoras was the Master of the society, and the followers, both men and women, who also lived there, were known as mathematikoi. They had no personal possessions and were vegetarians. Another group of followers who lived apart from the school were allowed to have personal possessions and were not expected to be vegetarians. They all worked communally on discoveries and theories. Pythagoras believed:

All things are numbers. Mathematics is the basis for everything, and geometry is the highest form of mathematical studies. The physical world can understood through mathematics.
The soul resides in the brain, and is immortal. It moves from one being to another, sometimes from a human into an animal, through a series of reincarnations called transmigration until it becomes pure. Pythagoras believed that both mathematics and music could purify.
Numbers have personalities, characteristics, strengths and weaknesses.
The world depends upon the interaction of opposites, such as male and female, lightness and darkness, warm and cold, dry and moist, light and heavy, fast and slow.
Certain symbols have a mystical significance.
All members of the society should observe strict loyalty and secrecy.

Because of the strict secrecy among the members of Pythagoras' society, and the fact that they shared ideas and intellectual discoveries within the group and did not give individuals credit, it is difficult to be certain whether all the theorems attributed to Pythagoras were originally his, or whether they came from the communal society of the Pythagoreans. Some of the students of Pythagoras eventually wrote down the theories, teachings and discoveries of the group, but the Pythagoreans always gave credit to Pythagoras as the Master for:

The sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles.
The theorem of Pythagoras - for a right-angled triangle the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. The Babylonians understood this 1000 years earlier, but Pythagoras proved it.
Constructing figures of a given area and geometrical algebra. For example they solved various equations by geometrical means.
The discovery of irrational numbers is attributed to the Pythagoreans, but seems unlikely to have been the idea of Pythagoras because it does not align with his philosophy the all things are numbers, since number to him meant the ratio of two whole numbers.
The five regular solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron). It is believed that Pythagoras knew how to construct the first three but not last two.
Pythagoras taught that Earth was a sphere in the center of the Kosmos (Universe), that the planets, stars, and the universe were spherical because the sphere was the most perfect solid figure. He also taught that the paths of the planets were circular. Pythagoras recognized that the morning star was the same as the evening star, Venus.

Pythagoras studied odd and even numbers, triangular numbers, and perfect numbers. Pythagoreans contributed to our understanding of angles, triangles, areas, proportion, polygons, and polyhedra.

Pythagoras also related music to mathematics. He had long played the seven string lyre, and learned how harmonious the vibrating strings sounded when the lengths of the strings were proportional to whole numbers, such as 2:1, 3:2, 4:3. Pythagoreans also realized that this knowledge could be applied to other musical instruments.

The reports of Pythagoras' death are varied. He is said to have been killed by an angry mob, to have been caught up in a war between the Agrigentum and the Syracusans and killed by the Syracusans, or been burned out of his school in Crotona and then went to Metapontum where he starved himself to death. At least two of the stories include a scene where Pythagoras refuses to trample a crop of bean plants in order to escape, and because of this, he is caught.

The Pythagorean Theorem is a cornerstone of mathematics, and continues to be so interesting to mathematicians that there are more than 400 different proofs of the theorem, including an original proof by President Garfield.

Originally taken from: mathopenref.com/Charlene Douglass, California, 2005

A Masterful Soldier, Napoleon Bonaparte Biography

2009-04-23T14:51:00.004+07:00

The most famous Frenchman in history was born at Ajaccio, Corsica on 15 August, 1769. Consequently Napoleon Bonaparte was not, in fact French. He was, though, a French subject as a result of the ceding of Corsica to France by the Genoese in 1768. His family was upper-middle class. His father Carlo was a political opportunist who gained acceptance into the French aristocracy.

At the age of 10 Napoleon entered the military academy at Brienne, France. His first few months there were a nightmare with the other children teasing him for his strange name, his foreign accent and his small size. Napoleon coped by concentrating on his studies. In 1784 he won a place at the prestigious Ecole Militaire in Paris. A year later he graduated and was commissioned a second lieutenant of artillery. He was garrisoned at Valence. He spent the next six years as a struggling soldier in an isolated outpost.

Napoleon’s regiment was stationed in Auxonne when the French Revolution broke out. Napoleon approved of the Revolution in principal but he deplored the violence of the common people. On 10, 1792 August he witnessed the second storming of the Tuileries and the arrest of King Louis XVI . He also saw the slaughter of the Swiss Guards that followed. From this point on Napoleon both hated and feared the common people of France.

Between 1790 and 1791 Napoleon spent 18 months in his homeland of Corsica, helping to consolidate French rule. In 1793, he rejoined his regiment who were stationed in Italy. He was here given his first military command at the siege of Toulon. In 3 days Napoleon bombarded the city into submission, gaining control of this important harbor city . He was rewarded by a speedy promotion to brigadier-general and an appointment as commander of planning for the army of Italy.

In 1795 he was recalled to Paris to help quell mobs under royalist leadership that were preparing to storm the Tuileries. Napoleon was placed as second in command of the defense. He ordered the storming crowds to be annihilated with forty cannon. This act established Napoleon as a hero of the Revolution and gained him entrance into Parisian society. Through such connections he met Josephine de Beauharnias. On March 9, 1796 the two were married. His bride’s connections were evident two days later when Napoleon became commander of the Army of Italy.

In quick succession Napoleon achieved victories over the Italians, Austrians and Sardinians at Matenotte, Dego, Millesimo, Mondovi and Lodi, Milan, Castiglione and Arcola. In February 1797 he marched across the Alps toward Vienna. The Austrians sued for an Armistice before a single shot was fired.

His return to France was triumphant. At just 28 years of age Napoleon had established himself as the greatest French general of all time. In honor of his achievements he was elected to the prestigious Institut. He set his sights on achieving total power.

First though there was the ongoing sea war with Britain. He decided on a rearguard action to attack Britain’s resources by occupying Egypt and cutting off her trade routes with India and the Far East. On June 10, 1798 his forces took the island fortress of Malta. Three weeks later they seized Alexandria. Within days the entire Nile Delta was in French hands. Napoleon’s first defeat, however, came on August 1 when his entire naval fleet was destroyed by the British navy. In February, 1799 the French were again defeated, this time on land at the battle of Acre. Napoleon retreated to Egypt. Here he handed his command over to General Jean Baptiste Kleber and sailed for France.

When he arrived back in Paris, Napoleon was dismayed to find that France had lost control of most of the territories he had won in Italy. The Directory was, in fact, in a state of chaos. The young General was seen as the last hope for the country. Two of the directors approached him with a plan to overthrow the Directory. A coup d’etat was executed on 10 November 1799. The directors were forced to resign and the Directory was abolished. A new Government was established consisting of three consuls. Napoleon Bonaparte was meant to be one of the three equal members of this consul but it didn’t take long for him to assert himself as de facto dictator of France.

Napoleon set about reforming local and national government, education and legislature, proving himself a brilliant statesman and administrator. In 1802 Napoleon was voted consul for life. This, however, was not enough for him, and he set about paving the way for himself to be crowned Emperor of the French. In May, 1804 he got his wish.

In 1803 the British declared war on France once more. In December of that year the Grand Armee assembled in preparation of an invasion of Britain. The destruction of his fleet, combined with the Spanish, by the British off Cape Trafalgar, however, ended any plans of a British invasion. In August, 1805 Napoleon invaded Germany. French victories followed at Ulm, and Austerlitz. Napoleon was crowned king of Italy. His relations were made kings of Naples and Holland. In 1806 Prussia declared war on France and was soundly defeated. Napoleon now introduced ‘The Continental System’ which forbade all European nations trading with his age old enemy, Britain. In June, 1807 he gained victory over the Russians at the Battle of Friedland. A year later Charles IV ceded his rights in Spain to Napoleon. Napoleon’s brother Joseph took the throne of Spain.

The beginning of the end came in December, 1810 when the Russians announced that they would no longer observe the Continental System. Napoleon’s response was to invade Russia. Making it to Moscow the French forces were decimated by a massive fire. The Russian winter then took its toll on the French. More than half a million men had been reduced to less than 10,000. Napoleon retreated to Paris.

Europe now believed that France could be beaten. In 1813 the Prussians joined forces with Russia in an alliance against France. When Austria joined the alliance, Napoleon knowing he couldn’t prevail, sued for an armistice. He soon reneged on the conditions, however and an allied invasion of France was put in motion. By January, 1814 France was under attack from all sides. In March, 1814 Paris fell to the allies. Napoleon had moved his army east. The Parisian authorities had, however, abandoned him and they came to terms with the allies.

Napoleon was determined to hold out to the bitter end. But after his General defected he finally faced the inevitable. On 6 April, 1814 Napoleon Bonaparte announced his abdication. Under the Treaty of Fontainebleau he was exiled to the island of Elba. Just a year later, however, he returned to Paris and, with the masses rallying around him, was reinstated as head of state. The allies, of course, retaliated by marching once more on France. Initially Napoleon’s forces gained the victory but the final defeat came when the British forces, reinforced by the Prussians, met the French at Waterloo. Napoleon had fought his last battle.

For a second time the Emperor abdicated. Deciding what to do with him, the allies finally decided on exile to the rocky island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic. Situated a thousand miles off the African Coast Napoleon was now well and truly out of the way. On 5 May, 1821 Napoleon Bonaparte died on his island prison. He was just fifty one years of age./essortment.com

The Ford Motor Company Founder, Henry Ford Biography

2009-04-22T23:05:00.002+07:00

After founding the Ford Motor Company, the American industrialist Henry Ford developed a system of mass production based on the assembly line and the conveyor belt which produced low-priced cars that were affordable to middleclass Americans.
Ford's early years

The oldest of six children, Henry Ford was born on July 30, 1863, on a prosperous farm near Dearborn, Michigan. He attended school until the age of fifteen, at which time he developed a dislike of farm life and a fascination for machinery. He had little interest in school and was a poor student. He never learned to spell or to read well. Ford would write using only the simplest of sentences. He instead preferred to work with mechanical objects, particularly watches. He repaired his first watch when he was thirteen years old, and would continue to repair watches for enjoyment throughout his life. Although he did not like working on the farm, he did learn that there was great value in working hard and being responsible.

In 1879 Ford left for Detroit, Michigan, to become an apprentice (a person who works for another to learn a specific skill or trade) at a machine shop. He then moved to the Detroit Drydock Company. During his apprenticeship he received $2.50 a week, but room and board cost $3.50 so he labored nights repairing clocks and watches. He later worked for Westinghouse, locating and repairing road engines.

Ford's father wanted him to be a farmer and offered him forty acres of timberland, provided he give up machinery. Ford accepted the proposal, then built a first-class machinist's workshop on the property. His father was disappointed, but Ford did use the two years on the farm to win a bride, Clara Bryant.
Ford's first car

Ford began to spend more and more time in Detroit working for the Edison Illuminating Company, which later became the Detroit Edison Company. By 1891 he had left the farm permanently. Four years later he became chief engineer. While at the Edison Illuminating Company he met Thomas A. Edison (1847–1931), who eventually became one of his closest friends.

Ford devoted his spare time to building an automobile with an internal combustion engine, a type of engine in which a combination of fuel and air is burned inside of the engine to produce mechanical energy to perform useful work. His first car, finished in 1896, followed the attempts, some successful, of many other innovators. His was a small car driven by a two-cylinder, four-cycle motor and by far the lightest (500 pounds) of the early American vehicles. The car was mounted on bicycle wheels and had no reverse gear.

In 1899 the Detroit Edison Company forced Ford to choose between automobiles and his job. Ford chose cars and that year formed the Detroit Automobile Company, which collapsed after he disagreed with his financial backers. His next venture was the unsuccessful Henry Ford Automobile Company. Ford did gain some status through the building of racing cars, which resulted in the "999," driven by the famous Barney Oldfield (1878–1946).
Ford Motor Company

By this time Ford had conceived the idea of a low-priced car for the masses, but this notion flew in the face of popular thought, which considered cars as only for the rich. After the "999" victories, Alex Y. Malcomson, a Detroit coal dealer, offered to aid Ford in a new company. The result was the Ford Motor Company, founded in 1903, with its small, $28,000 financing supplied mostly by Malcomson. However, exchanges of stock were made to obtain a small plant, motors, and transmissions. Ford's stock was in return for his services. Much of the firm's success can be credited to Ford's assistants—James S. Couzens, C. H. Wills, and John and Horace Dodge.

By 1903 over fifteen hundred firms had attempted to enter the new and struggling automobile industry, but only a few, such as Ransom Eli Olds (1864–1950), had become firmly established. Ford began production of a Model A, which imitated the Oldsmobile, and followed with other models, to the letter S. The public responded, and the company flourished. By 1907 profits exceeded $1,100,000, and the net worth of the company stood at $1,038,822.

Ford also defeated the Selden patent (the legal rights given to a company or person for the sole use, sale, or production of an item for a limited period of time), which had been granted on a "road engine" in 1895. Rather than challenge the patent's legal soundness, manufacturers secured a license to produce engines. When Ford was denied such a license, he fought back; after eight years of legal action, the courts decided the patent was valid but not violated. The case gave the Ford Company valuable publicity, with Ford cast as the underdog, but by the time the issue was settled, the situation had been reversed.
New principles

In 1909 Ford made the important decision to manufacture only one type of car—the Model T, or the "Tin Lizzie." By now he firmly controlled the company, having bought out Malcomson. The Model T was durable, easy to operate, and economical; it sold for $850 and came in one color—black. Within four years Ford was producing over forty thousand cars per year.

During this rapid expansion Ford held firmly to two principles: cutting costs by increasing productivity and paying high wages to his employees. In production methods Ford believed the work should be brought by a conveyor belt to the worker at waist-high level. This assembly-line technique required seven years to perfect. In 1914 he startled the industrial world by raising the minimum wage to five dollars a day, almost double the company's average wage. In addition, the "Tin Lizzie" had dropped in price to $600; it later went down to $360.
World War I

Ford was now an internationally known figure, but his public activities were less successful than his industrial ones. In 1915 his peace ship, the Oskar II, sailed to Europe to seek an end to World War I (1914–18; a war fought between the German-led Central powers and the Allies: England, the United States, Italy, and other nations). His suit against the Chicago Tribune for calling him an anarchist (a person who desires to change the existing government) received unfortunate publicity. In 1918 his race for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat met a narrow defeat. Ford's worst mistake was his approval of an anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) campaign waged by the Ford-owned newspaper, the Dearborn Independent.

When the United States entered World War I, Ford's output of military equipment and his promise to give back all profits on war production (which he never did) silenced the critics. By the end of the conflict his giant River Rouge plant, the world's largest industrial facility, was near completion. Ford gained total control of the company by buying the outstanding stock.

In the early 1920s the company continued its rapid growth, at one point producing 60 percent of the total United States output. But problems began to arise. Ford was an inflexible man and continued to rely on the Model T, even as public tastes shifted. By the middle of the decade Ford had lost his dominant position to the General Motors (GM) company. He finally saw his error and in 1927 stopped production of the Model T. However, since the new Model A was not produced for eighteen months, there was a good deal of unemployment among Ford workers. The new car still did not permanently overtake the GM competition, Chevrolet, and Ford remained second.
Final years

Ford's last years were frustrating. He never accepted the changes brought about by the Great Depression (a period in the 1930s marked by severe economic hardship) and the 1930s New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's (1882–1945) plan to help the United States recover from the Great Depression. He fell under the spell of Harry Bennett, a notorious figure with connections to organized crime, who, as head of Ford's security department, influenced every phase of company operations and created friction between Ford and his son Edsel. For various reasons Ford, alone in his industry, refused to cooperate with the National Recovery Administration, a 1930s government agency that prepared and oversaw codes of fair competition for businesses and industries. He did not like labor unions, refused to recognize the United Automobile Workers (UAW), and brutally restricted their attempts to organize the workers of his company.

Ford engaged in some philanthropic or charitable activity, such as the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The original purpose of the Ford Foundation, established in 1936 and now one of the world's largest foundations, was to avoid estate taxes. Ford's greatest philanthropic accomplishment was the Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.

A stroke in 1938 slowed Ford, but he did not trust Edsel and so continued to exercise control of his company. During World War II (1939–45; a war fought between the Axis: Germany, Italy, and Japan—and the Allies: England, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States), Ford at first made pacifist, or peace-minded, statements, but changed his mind and contributed greatly to the war effort. Ford's grandson, Henry Ford II, took over the company after the war. Henry Ford died on April 7, 1947, in Dearborn./notablebiographies.com

The Greatest Mathematicians, ARCHIMEDES Biography

2009-04-21T12:21:00.002+07:00

Archimedes is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. He is also famed for his inventions and for the colorful—though unproven—ways he is believed to have made them.
Early life

Little is known about Archimedes's life. He probably was born in the seaport city of Syracuse, a Greek settlement on the island of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea. He was the son of an astronomer (someone who studies outer space, such as the stars) named Phidias. He may also have been related to Hieron, King of Syracuse, and his son Gelon. Archimedes studied in the learning capital of Alexandria, Egypt, at the school that had been established by the Greek mathematician Euclid (third century B.C.E.). He later returned to live in his native city of Syracuse.

There are many stories about how Archimedes made his discoveries. A famous one tells how he uncovered an attempt to cheat King Hieron. The king ordered a golden crown and gave the crown's maker the exact amount of gold needed. The maker delivered a crown of the required weight, but Hieron suspected that some silver had been used instead of gold. He asked Archimedes to think about the matter.

One day Archimedes was considering it while he was getting into a bathtub. He noticed that the amount of water overflowing the tub was proportional (related consistently) to the amount of his body that was being immersed (covered by water). This gave him an idea for solving the problem of the crown. He was so thrilled that he ran naked through the streets shouting, "Eureka!" (Greek for "I have discovered it!").

There are several ways Archimedes may have determined the amount of silver in the crown. One likely method relies on an idea that is now called Archimedes's principle. It states that a body immersed in a fluid is buoyed up (pushed up) by a force that is equal to the weight of fluid that is displaced (pushed out of place) by the body. Using this method, he would have first taken two equal weights of gold and silver and compared their weights when immersed in water. Next he would have compared the weight of the crown and an equal weight of pure silver in water in the same way. The difference between these two comparisons would indicate that the crown was not pure gold.

Archimedes also studied aspects of the lever and pulley. A lever is a kind of basic machine in which a bar is used to raise or move a weight, while a pulley uses a wheel and a rope or chain to lift loads. Such mechanical investigations would help Archimedes assist in defending Syracuse when it came under attack.
Wartime and other inventions

According to the Greek biographer Plutarch (c. C.E. 46–c. C.E. 120), Archimedes's military inventions helped defend his home city when it was attacked by Roman forces. Plutarch wrote that after Hieron died, the Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus (c. 268 B.C.E.–208 B.C.E.) attacked Syracuse by both land and sea. According to Plutarch Archimedes's catapults (machines that could hurl objects such as heavy stones) forced back the Roman forces on land. Later writers claimed that Archimedes also set the Roman ships on fire by focusing an arrangement of mirrors on them. Nevertheless, despite Archimedes's efforts, Syracuse eventually surrendered to the Romans. Archimedes was killed after the city was taken, although it is not known exactly how this occurred.

Perhaps while in Egypt, Archimedes invented the water screw, a machine for raising water to bring it to fields. Another invention was a miniature planetarium, a sphere whose motion imitated that of the earth, sun, moon, and the five planets that were then known to exist.
Contributions to mathematics

Euclid's book Elements had included practically all the results of Greek geometry up to Archimedes's time. But Archimedes continued Euclid's work more than anyone before him. One way he did this was to extend what is known as the "method of exhaustion." This method is used to determine the areas and volumes of figures with curved lines and surfaces, such as circles, spheres, pyramids, and cones. Archimedes's investigation of the method of exhaustion helped lead to the current form of mathematics called integral calculus. Although his method is now outdated, the advances that finally outdated it did not occur until about two thousand years after Archimedes lived.

Archimedes also came closer than anyone had before him to determining the value of pi, or the number that gives the ratio (relation) of a circle's circumference (its boundary line) to its diameter (the length of a line passing through its center). In addition, in his work The Sand Reckoner, he created a new way to show very large numbers. Before this, numbers had been represented by letters of the alphabet, a method that had been very limited./notablebiographies.com

A Florentine artist, Leonardo da Vinci Biography

2009-04-20T13:06:00.003+07:00

Leonardo da Vinci was a Florentine artist, one of the great masters of the High Renaissance, who was also celebrated as a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. His profound love of knowledge and research was the keynote of both his artistic and scientific endeavors.

His innovations in the field of painting influenced the course of Italian art for more than a century after his death, and his scientific studies—particularly in the fields of anatomy, optics, and hydraulics—anticipated many of the developments of modern science.
Life

Leonardo was born on April 15, 1452, in the small Tuscan town of Vinci, near Florence. He was the son of a wealthy Florentine notary and a peasant woman. In the mid-1460s the family settled in Florence, where Leonardo was given the best education that Florence, the intellectual and artistic center of Italy, could offer. He rapidly advanced socially and intellectually. He was handsome, persuasive in conversation, and a fine musician and improviser. About 1466 he was apprenticed as a garzone (studio boy) to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his day. In Verrocchio's workshop Leonardo was introduced to many activities, from the painting of altarpieces and panel pictures to the creation of large sculptural projects in marble and bronze. In 1472 he was entered in the painter's guild of Florence, and in 1476 he is still mentioned as Verrocchio's assistant. In Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ (circa 1470, Uffizi, Florence), the kneeling angel at the left of the painting is by Leonardo.

In 1478 Leonardo became an independent master. His first commission, to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine town hall, was never executed. His first large painting, The Adoration of the Magi (begun 1481, Uffizi), left unfinished, was ordered in 1481 for the Monastery of San Donato a Scopeto, Florence. Other works ascribed to his youth are the so-called Benois Madonna (c. 1478, Hermitage, Saint Petersburg), the portrait Ginerva de' Benci (c. 1474, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.), and the unfinished Saint Jerome (c. 1481, Pinacoteca, Vatican).

About 1482 Leonardo entered the service of the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, having written the duke an astonishing letter in which he stated that he could build portable bridges; that he knew the techniques of constructing bombardments and of making cannons; that he could build ships as well as armored vehicles, catapults, and other war machines; and that he could execute sculpture in marble, bronze, and clay. He served as principal engineer in the duke's numerous military enterprises and was active also as an architect. In addition, he assisted the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli in the celebrated work Divina Proportione (1509).

Evidence indicates that Leonardo had apprentices and pupils in Milan, for whom he probably wrote the various texts later compiled as Treatise on Painting (1651; trans. 1956). The most important of his own paintings during the early Milan period was The Virgin of the Rocks, two versions of which exist (1483-85, Louvre, Paris; 1490s to 1506-08, National Gallery, London); he worked on the compositions for a long time, as was his custom, seemingly unwilling to finish what he had begun. From 1495 to 1497 Leonardo labored on his masterpiece, The Last Supper, a mural in the refectory of the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. Unfortunately, his experimental use of oil on dry plaster (on what was the thin outer wall of a space designed for serving food) was technically unsound, and by 1500 its deterioration had begun. Since 1726 attempts have been made, unsuccessfully, to restore it; a concerted restoration and conservation program, making use of the latest technology, was begun in 1977 and is reversing some of the damage. Although much of the original surface is gone, the majesty of the composition and the penetrating characterization of the figures give a fleeting vision of its vanished splendor. During his long stay in Milan, Leonardo also produced other paintings and drawings (most of which have been lost), theater designs, architectural drawings, and models for the dome of Milan Cathedral. His largest commission was for a colossal bronze monument to Francesco Sforza, father of Ludovico, in the courtyard of Castello Sforzesco. In December 1499, however, the Sforza family was driven from Milan by French forces; Leonardo left the statue unfinished (it was destroyed by French archers, who used it as a target) and he returned to Florence in 1500.

In 1502 Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, duke of Romagna and son and chief general of Pope Alexander VI; in his capacity as the duke's chief architect and engineer, Leonardo supervised work on the fortresses of the papal territories in central Italy. In 1503 he was a member of a commission of artists who were to decide on the proper location for the David (1501-04, Accademia, Florence), the famous colossal marble statue by the Italian sculptor Michelangelo, and he also served as an engineer in the war against Pisa. Toward the end of the year Leonardo began to design a decoration for the great hall of the Palazzo Vecchio. The subject was the Battle of Anghiari, a Florentine victory in its war with Pisa. He made many drawings for it and completed a full-size cartoon, or sketch, in 1505, but he never finished the wall painting. The cartoon itself was destroyed in the 17th century, and the composition survives only in copies, of which the most famous is the one by the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1615, Louvre). During this second Florentine period, Leonardo painted several portraits, but the only one that survives is the famous Mona Lisa (1503-06, Louvre). One of the most celebrated portraits ever painted, it is also known as La Gioconda, after the presumed name of the woman's husband. Leonardo seems to have had a special affection for the picture, for he took it with him on all of his subsequent travels.

In 1506 Leonardo went again to Milan, at the summons of its French governor, Charles d'Amboise. The following year he was named court painter to King Louis XII of France, who was then residing in Milan. For the next six years Leonardo divided his time between Milan and Florence, where he often visited his half brothers and half sisters and looked after his inheritance. In Milan he continued his engineering projects and worked on an equestrian figure for a monument to Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, commander of the French forces in the city; although the project was not completed, drawings and studies have been preserved. From 1514 to 1516 Leonardo lived in Rome under the patronage of Pope Leo X: he was housed in the Palazzo Belvedere in the Vatican and seems to have been occupied principally with scientific experimentation. In 1516 he traveled to France to enter the service of King Francis I. He spent his last years at the Château de Cloux (later called Clos-Lucé), near the King's summer palace at Amboise on the Loire, where he died on May 2, 1519.

Works

Although Leonardo produced a relatively small number of paintings, many of which remained unfinished, he was nevertheless an extraordinarily innovative and influential artist. During his early years, his style closely paralleled that of Verrocchio, but he gradually moved away from his teacher's stiff, tight, and somewhat rigid treatment of figures to develop a more evocative and atmospheric handling of composition. The early The Adoration of the Magi introduced a new approach to composition, in which the main figures are grouped in the foreground, while the background consists of distant views of imaginary ruins and battle scenes.

Leonardo's stylistic innovations are even more apparent in The Last Supper, in which he re-created a traditional theme in an entirely new way. Instead of showing the 12 apostles as individual figures, he grouped them in dynamic compositional units of three, framing the figure of Christ, who is isolated in the center of the picture. Seated before a pale distant landscape seen through a rectangular opening in the wall, Christ—who is about to announce that one of those present will betray him—represents a calm nucleus while the others respond with animated gestures. In the monumentality of the scene and the weightiness of the figures, Leonardo reintroduced a style pioneered more than a generation earlier by Masaccio, the father of Florentine painting.

The Mona Lisa, Leonardo's most famous work, is as well known for its mastery of technical innovations as for the mysteriousness of its legendary smiling subject. This work is a consummate example of two techniques—sfumato and chiaroscuro—of which Leonardo was one of the first great masters. Sfumato is characterized by subtle, almost infinitesimal transitions between color areas, creating a delicately atmospheric haze or smoky effect; it is especially evident in the delicate gauzy robes worn by the sitter and in her enigmatic smile. Chiaroscuro is the technique of modeling and defining forms through contrasts of light and shadow; the sensitive hands of the sitter are portrayed with a luminous modulation of light and shade, while color contrast is used only sparingly.

An especially notable characteristic of Leonardo's paintings is his landscape backgrounds, into which he was among the first to introduce atmospheric perspective. The chief masters of the High Renaissance in Florence, including Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, and Fra Bartolommeo, all learned from Leonardo; he completely transformed the school of Milan; and at Parma, Correggio's artistic development was given direction by Leonardo's work.

Leonardo's many extant drawings, which reveal his brilliant draftsmanship and his mastery of the anatomy of humans, animals, and plant life, may be found in the principal European collections; the largest group is at Windsor Castle in England. Probably his most famous drawing is the magnificent Self-Portrait (c. 1510-13, Biblioteca Reale, Turin).

Because none of Leonardo's sculptural projects was brought to completion, his approach to three-dimensional art can only be judged from his drawings. The same strictures apply to his architecture; none of his building projects was actually carried out as he devised them. In his architectural drawings, however, he demonstrates mastery in the use of massive forms, a clarity of expression, and especially a deep understanding of ancient Roman sources.

As a scientist Leonardo towered above all his contemporaries. His scientific theories, like his artistic innovations, were based on careful observation and precise documentation. He understood, better than anyone of his century or the next, the importance of precise scientific observation. Unfortunately, just as he frequently failed to bring to conclusion artistic projects, he never completed his planned treatises on a variety of scientific subjects. His theories are contained in numerous notebooks, most of which were written in mirror script. Because they were not easily decipherable, Leonardo's findings were not disseminated in his own lifetime; had they been published, they would have revolutionized the science of the 16th century. Leonardo actually anticipated many discoveries of modern times. In anatomy he studied the circulation of the blood and the action of the eye. He made discoveries in meteorology and geology, learned the effect of the moon on the tides, foreshadowed modern conceptions of continent formation, and surmised the nature of fossil shells. He was among the originators of the science of hydraulics and probably devised the hydrometer; his scheme for the canalization of rivers still has practical value. He invented a large number of ingenious machines, many potentially useful, among them an underwater diving suit. His flying devices, although not practicable, embodied sound principles of aerodynamics.

A creator in all branches of art, a discoverer in most branches of science, and an inventor in branches of technology, Leonardo deserves, perhaps more than anyone, the title of Homo Universalis, Universal Man./wga.hu

An English novelist, Charles Dickens Biography

2009-04-20T10:47:00.005+07:00

DICKENS, CHARLES JOHN HUFFAM (1812—1870), English novelist, was born on the 7th of February 1812 at a house in the Mile End Terrace, Commercial Road, Landport (Portsea)—a house which was opened as a Dickens Museum on 22nd July 2904.

His father John Dickens (d. 1851), a clerk in the navy-pay office on a salary of £80 a year, and stationed for the time being at Portsmouth, had married in 1809 Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Barrow, and she bore him a family of eight children, Charles being the second. In the winter of 1814 the family moved from Portsea in the snow, as he remembered, to London, and lodged for a time near the Middlesex hospital. The country of the novelist’s childhood, however, was the kingdom of Kent, where the family was established in proximity to the dockyard at Chatham from 1816 to 1821.

He looked upon himself in later years as a man of Kent, and his capital abode as that in Ordnance Terrace, or 18 St Mary’s Place, Chatham, amid surroundings classified in Mr Pickwick’s notes as “ appearing “to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers and dockyard men. He fell into a family the general tendency of which was to go down in the world, during one of its easier periods (John Dickens was now fifth clerk on £250 a year), and he always regarded himself as belonging by right to a comfortable, genteel, lower middleclass stratum of society. His mother taught him to read; to his father he appeared very early in the light of a young prodigy, and by him Charles was made to sit on a tall chair and warble popular ballads, or even to tell stories and anecdotes for the benefit of fellow-clerks in the office.

John Dickens, however, had a small collection of books which were kept in a little room upstairs that led out of Charles’s own, and in this attic the boy found his true literary instructors in Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphry Clinker, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, and Robinson Crusoe. The story of how he played at the characters in these books and sustained his idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch is picturesquely told in David Copperfield. Here as well as in his first and last books and in what many regard as his best, Great Expectations, Dickens returns with unabated fondness and mastery to the surroundings of his childhood. From seven to nine years he was at a school kept in Clover Lane, Chatham, by a Baptist minister named William Giles, who gave him Goldsmith’s Bee as a keepsake when the call to Somerset House necessitated the removal of the family from Rochester to a shabby house in Bayham Street, Camden Town. At the very moment when a consciousness of capacity was beginning to plump his youthful ambitions, the whole flattering dream vanished and left not a rack behind. Happiness and Chatham had been left behind together, and Charles was about to enter a school far sterner and also far more instructive than that in Clover Lane.

The family income had been first decreased and then mortgaged; the creditors of the “prodigal father” would not give him time; John Dickens was consigned to the Marshalsea; Mrs Dickens started an “Educational Establishment “ as a forlorn hope in Upper Gower Street; and Charles, who had helped his mother with the children, blacked the boots, carried things to the pawnshop and done other menial work, was now sent out to earn his owfi living as a young hand in a blacking warehouse, at Old Hungerford Stairs, on a salary of six shillings a week. He tied, trimmed and labelled blacking pots for over a year, dining off a saveloy and a slice of pudding, consorting with two very rough boys, Bob Fagin and P01 Green, and sleeping in an attic in Little College Street, Camden Town, in the house of Mrs Roylance (Pipchin), while on Sunday he spent the day with his parents in their comfortable prison, where they had the services of a” marchioness “imported from the Chatham workhouse.

Already consumed by ambition, proud, sensitive and on his dignity to an extent not uncommon among boys of talent, he felt his position keenly, and in later years worked himself up into a passion of self-pity in connexion with the “degradation” and “humiliation” of this episode. The two years of childish hardship which ate like iron into his soul were obviously of supreme importance in the growth of the novelist. Recollections of the streets and the prison and its purlieus supplied him with a store of literary material upon which he drew through all the years of his best activity. And the bitterness of such an experience was not prolonged sufficiently to become sour. From 1824 to 1826, having been rescued by a family quarrel and by a windfall in the shape of a legacy to his father, from the warehouse, he spent two years at an academy known as Wellington House, at the corner of Granby Street and the Hampstead Road (the lighter traits of which are reproduced in Salem House), and was there known as a merry and rather mischievous boy. Fortunately he learned nothing there to compromise the results of previous instruction. His father had now emerged from the Marshalsea and was seeking employment as a parliamentary reporter. A Gray’s Inn solicitor with whom he had had dealings was attracted by the bright, clever look of Charles, and took him into his office as a boy at a salary of thirteen and sixpence (rising to fifteen shillings) a week. He remained in Mr Blackmore’s office from May 1827 to November 1828, but he had lost none of his eager thirst for distinction, and spent all his spare time mastering Gurney’s short~hand and reading early and late at the British Museum.

A more industrious apprentice in the lower grades of the literary profession has never been known, and the consciousness of opportunities used to the most splendid advantage can hardly have been ahient from the man. who was shortly to take his place at the head of it as if to the manner born. Lowten and Guppy, and Swiveller had been observed from this office lad’s stool; he was now greatly to widen his area of study as a reporter in Doctors’ Commons and various police courts, including Bow Street, working all day at law and much of the night at shorthand. Some one asked John Dickens, during the first eager period of curiosity as to the man behind “Pickwick,” where his son Charles was educated. “ Well really,” said the prodigal father, “he may be said—haw—haw—to have educated himself.”

He was one of the most rapid and accurate reporters in London when, at nineteen years of age, in 1831, he realized his immediate ambition and “entered the gallery” as parliamentary reporter to the True Sun. Later he was reporter to the Mirror of Parliament and then to the Morning Chronicle. Several of his earliest letters are concerned with his exploits as a reporter, and allude to the experiences he had, travelling fifteen miles an hour and being upset in almost every description of known vehicle in various parts of Britain between 1831 and 1836. The family was now living in Bentwick Street, Manchester Square, but John Dickens was still no infrequent inmate of the sponging-houses. With all the accessories of these places of entertainment his son had grown to be excessively familiar. Writing about 1832 to his school friend Tom Mitton, Dickens tells him that his father has been arrested at the suit of a wine firm, and begs him go over to Cursitor Street and see what can be done. On another occasion of a paternal disappearance he observes: “I own that his absence does not give me any great uneasiness, knowing how apt he is to get out of the way when anything goes wrong.” In yet another letter he asks for a loan of four shillings.

in the meanwhile, however, he had commenced author in a more creative sense by penning some sketches of contemporary London life, such as he had attempted in his school days in imitation of the sketches published in the London and other magazines of that day. The first of these appeared in the December number of the Old Monthly Magazine for 1833. By the following August, when the signature “Boz” was first given, five of these sketches had appeared. By the end of 1834 we find him settled in rooms in Furnival’s Inn, and a little later his salary on the Morning Chronicle was raised, owing to the intervention of one of its chiefs, George Hogarth, the father of (in addition to six sons) eight charming daughters, to one of whom, Catherine, Charles was engaged to be married before the year was out. Clearly as his career now seemed designated, he was at this time or a little before it coquetting very seriously with the stage: but circumstances were rapidly to determine another stage in his career. A year before Queen Victoria’s accession appeared in two volumes Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Everyday Life and Everyday People. The book came from a prentice hand, but like the little tract on the Puritan abuse of the Sabbath entitled “ Sunday under three Heads” which appeared a few months later, it contains in germ all, or almost all, the future Dickens. Glance at the headings of the pages. Here we have the Beadle and all connected with him, London streets, theatres, shows, the pawnshop, Doctors’ Commons, Christmas, Newgate, coaching, the river. Here comes a satirical picture of parliament, fun made of cheap snobbery, a rap on the knuckles of sectarianism. And what could be more prophetic than the title of the opening chapter— Our Parish? With the Parish—a large one indeed—Dickens to the end concerned himself; he began with a rapid survey of his whole field, hinting at all he might accomp]ish, indicating the limits he was not to pass. This year was to be still more momentous to Dickens, for, on the 2nd of April 1836, he was mairied to George Hogarth’s eldest daughter Catherine. He seems to have fallen in love with the daughters collectively, and, judging by subsequent events, it has been suggested that perhaps he married the wrong one. His wife’s sister Mary was the romance of his early married life, and another sister, Georgina, was the dearest friend of his last ten years.

A few days before the marriage, just two months after the appearance of the Sketches, the first part of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club was announced. One of the chief vogues of the day was the issue of humorous, sporting or anecdotal novels in parts, with plates, and some of the best talent of the day, represented by Ainsworth, Bulwer, Marryat, Maxwell, Egan, Hook and Surtees, had been pressed into this kind of enterprise. The publishers of the day had not been slow to perceive Dickens’s aptitude for this species of “letterpress.” A member of the firm of Chapman & Hall called upon him at Furnival’s Inn in December 1835 with a proposal that he should write about a Nimrod Club of amateur sportsmen, foredoomed to perpetual ignominies, while the comic illustrations were to be etched by Seymour, a well-known rival of Cruikshank (the illustrator of Boz). The offer was too tempting for Dickens to r~use, but he changed the idea from a club of Cockney sportsmen to that of a club of eccentric peripatetics, on the sensible grounds, first that sporting sketches were stale, and, secondly, that he knew nothing worth speaking of about sport. The first seven pictures appeared with the signature of Seymour and the letterpress of Dickens. Before the eighth picture appeared Seymour had blown his brains Out. After a brief interval of Buss, Dickens obtained the services of Hablot K. Browne, known to all as “Phiz.” Author and illustrator were as well suited to one another and to the common creation of a unique thing as Gilbert and Sullivan. Having early got rid of the sporting element, Dickens found himself at once. The subject exactly suited his knowledge, his skill in arranging incidents—nay, his very limitations too. No modern book is so incalculable. We ccmmence laughing heartily at Pickwick and his troupe. The laugh becomes kindlier. We are led on through a tangle of adventure, never dreaming what is before us. The landscape changes: Pickwick becomes the symbol of kindheartedness, simplicity and innocent levity. Suddenly in the Fleet Prison a deeper note is struck. The medley of human relationships, the loneliness, the mystery and sadness of human destinies are fathomed. The tragedy of human life is revealed to us amid its most farcical elements. The droll and laughable figure of the hero is transfigured by the kindliness of human sympathy into a beneficent and bespectacled angel in shorts and gaiters. By defying accepted rules, Dickens had transcended the limited sphere hitherto allotted to his art: he had produced a book to be enshrined henceforth in the inmost hearts of all sorts and conditions of his countrymen, and had definitely enlarged the boundaries of English humour and English fiction. As for Mr Pickwick, he is a fairy like Puck or Santa Claus, while his creator is “the last of the mythologists and perhaps the greatest.”

When The Pickwick Papers appeared in book form at the close of 1837 Dickens’s popular reputation was made. From the appearance of Sam Weller in part v. the universal hunger for the monthly parts had risen to a furore. The book was promptly translated into French and German. The author bad received little assistance from press or critics, he had no influential connexions, his class of subjects was such as to “expose him’ at the outset to the fatal objections of vulgarity,” yet in less than six months from the appearance of the first number, as the Quarterly Review almost ruefully admits, the whole reading world was talking about the Pickwickians. The names of Winkle, Wardle, Weller, Jingle, Snodgrass, Dodson & Fogg, were as familiar as household words. Pickwick chintzes figured in the linendrapers’ windows, and Pickwick cigars in every tobacconist’s; Weller corduroys became the stock-in-trade of every breeches-maker; Boz cabs might be seen rattling through the streets, and the portrait of the author of Pelham and Crichton was scraped down to make way for that of the new popular favourite on the omnibuses. A new and original genius had suddenly sprung up, there was no denying it, even though, as the Quarterly concluded, “it required no gift of prophecy to foretell his fate—he has risen like a rocket and he will come down. like the stick.” It would have needed a very emphatic gift of prophecy indeed to foretell that Dickens’s reputation would have gone on rising until at the present day (after one sharp fall, which reached an extreme about 1887) it stands higher than it has ever stood before.

Dickens’s assumption of the literary purple was as amazing as anything else about him. Accepting the homage of the luminaries of the literary, artistic and polite worlds as if it had been his natural due, he arranges for the settlement of his family, decrees, like another Edmund Kean, that his son is to go to Eton, carries on the most complicated negotiations with his publishers and editors, presides and orates with incomparable force at innumerable banquets, public and private, arranges elaborate villegiatures in the country, at the seaside, in France or in Italy, arbitrates in public on every topic, political, ethical, artistic, social or literary, entertains and legislates for an increasingly large domestic circle, both juvenile and adult, rules himself and his time-table with a rod of iron. In his letter-writing alone, Dickens did a life’s literary work. Nowadays no one thinks of writing such letters; that is to say, letters of such length and detail, for the quality is Dickens’s own. He evidently enjoyed this use of the pen. Page after page of Forster’s Life (750 pages in the Letters edited by his daughter and sister-in-law) is occupied with transcription from private correspondence, and never a line of this but is thoroughly worthy of print and preservation. If he makes a tour in any part of the British Isles, he writes a full description of all he sees, of everything that happens, and writes it with such gusto, such mirth, such strokes of fine picturing, as appear in no other private letters ever given to the public. Naturally buoyant in all circumstances, a holiday gave him the exhilaration of a schoolboy. See how he writes from Cornwall, when on a trip with two or three friends, in 1843. “Heavens! if you could have seen the necks of bottles, distracting in their immense variety of shape, peering out of the carriage pockets! If you could have witnessed the deep devotion of the post-boys, the maniac glee of the waiters! If you could have followed us into the earthy old churches we visited, and into the strange caverns on the gloomy seashore, and down into the depths of mines, and up to the tops of giddy heights, where the unspeakably green water was roaring, I don’t know how many hundred feet below. . . . I never laughed in my life as I did on this journey. It would have done you good to hear me. I was choking and gasping and bursting the buckles off the back of my stock, all the way. And Stanfield “—the painter— “got into such apoplectic entanglements that we were obliged to beat him on the back with portmanteaus before we could recover him.”

The animation of Dickens’s look would attract the attention of any one, anywhere. His figure was not that of an Adonis, but his brightness made him the centre and pivot of every society he was in. The keenness and vivacity of his eye combined with his inordinate appetite for life to give the unique quality to all that he wrote. His instrument is that of the direct, sinewy English of Smollett, combined with much of the humorous grace of Goldsmith (his two favourite authors), but modernized to a certain extent under the influence of Washington Irving, Sydney Smith, Jeffrey, Lamb, and other writers of the London Magazine. He taught himself to speak French and Italian, but he could have read little in any language. His ideas were those of the inchoate and insular liberalism of the ‘thirties. His unique force in literature he was to owe to no supreme artistic or intellectual quality, but almost entirely to his inordinate gift of observation, his sympathy with the humble, his power over the emotions and his incomparable endowment of unalloyed human fun.

To contemporaries he was not so much a man as an institution, at the very mention of whose name faces were puckered with grins or wreathed in smiles. To many his work was a revelation, the revelation of a new world and one far better than their own. And his influence went further than this in the direction of revolution or revival. It gave what were then universally referred to as “ the lower orders “ a new sense of self-respect, a new feeling of citizenship. Like the defiance of another Luther, or the Declaration of a new Independence, it emitted a fresh ray of hope across the firmament. He did for the whole English-speaking race what Burns had done for Scotland—he gave it a new conceit of itself. He knew what a people wanted and he told what he knew. He could do this better than anybody else because his mind was theirs. He shared many of their “ great useless virtues,” among which generosity ranks before justice, and sympathy before truth, even though, true to his middle-class vein, he exalts piety, chastity and honesty in a manner somewhat alien to the mind of the low-bred man. This is what makes Dickens such a demigod and his public success such a marvel, and this also is why any exclusively literary criticism of his work is bound to be so inadequate. It should also help us to make the necessary allowances for the man. Dickens, even the Dickens of legend that we know, is far from perfect.

The Dickens of reality to which Time may furnish a nearer approximation is far less perfect. But when we consider the corroding influence of adulation, and the intoxication of unbridled success, we cannot but wonder at the relatively high level of moderation and self-control that Dickens almost invariably observed. Mr G. K. Chesterton remarks suggestively that Dickens had all his life the faults of the little boy who is kept up too late at night. He is overwrought by happiness to the verge of exasperation, and yet as a matter of fact he does keep on the right side of the breaking point. The specific and curative in his case was the work in which he took such anxiou~ pride, and such unmitigated delight. He revelled in punctual and regular work; at his desk he was often in the highest spirits. Behold how he pictured himself, one day at Broadstairs, where he was writing Chuzzlewit. “In a baywindow in a one-pair sits, from nine o’clock to one, a gentleman with rather long hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins, as if he thought he was very funny indeed. At one he disappears, presently emerges from a bathing-machine, and may be seen, a kind of salmon-colour porpoise, splashing about in the ocean. After that, he may be viewed in another bay-window on the’ ground-floor eating a strong lunch; and after that, walking a dozen miles or so, or lying on his back on the sand reading a book. Nobody bothers him, unless they know he is disposed to be talked to, and I am told he is very comfortable indeed. He’s as brown as a berry, and they do say he is as good as a small fortune to the innkeeper, who sells beer and cold punch.” Here is the secret of such work as that of Dickens; it is done with delight— done (in a sense) easily, done with the mechanism of mind and body in splendid order. Even so did Scott write; though more rapidly and with less conscious care: his chapter finished before the world had got up to breakfast. Later, Dickens produced novels less excellent with much more of mental strain. The effects of age could not have shown themselves so soon, but for the unfortunate loss of energy involved in his non-literary labours.

While the public were still rejoicing in the first sprightly runnings of the “new humour,” the humorist set to work desperately on the grim scenes of Oliver Twist, the story of a parish orphan, the nucleus of which had already seen the light in his Sketches. The early scenes are of a harrowing reality, despite the germ of forced pathos which the observant reader may detect in the pitiful parting between Oliver and little Dick; but what will strike every reader at once in this book is the directness and power of the English style, so nervous and unadorned from its unmistakable clearness and vigour Dickens was to travel far as time went on. But the full effect of the old simplicity is felt in such masterpieces of descriptidn as the drive of Oliver and Sikes to Chertsey, the condemned-cell ecstasy of Fagin, or the unforgettable first encounter between Oliver and the Artful Dodger. Before November 1837 had ended, Charles Dickens entered on an engagement to write a successor to Pickwick on similar lines of publication. Oliver Twist was then in mid-career; a Life of Grimaldi and Barnaby Rudge were already covenanted for. Dickens forged ahead with the new tale of Nicholas Nickleby and was justified by the results, for its sale far surpassed even that of Pickwick. As a conception it is one of his weakest. An unmistakably 18th-century character pervades it. Some of the vignettes are among the most piquant and besetting ever written. Large parts of it are totally unobserved conventional melodrama; but the Portsmouth Theatre and Dotheboys Hall and Mrs Nickleby (based to some extent, it is thought, upon Miss Bates in Emma, but also upon the author’s Mamma) live for ever as Dickens conceived them in the pages of Nicholas Nickleby.

Having got rid of Nicholas Nickleby and resigned his editorship of Bentley’s Miscellany, in which Oliver Twist originally appeared, Dickens conceived the idea of a weekly periodical to be issued as Master Humphrey’s Clock, to comprise short stories, essays and miscellaneous papers, after the model of Addison’s Spectator. To make the weekly numbers “go,” he introduced Mr Pickwick, Sam Weller and his father in friendly intercourse. But the public requisitioned “a story,” and in No. ~ he had to brace himself up to give them one. Thus was commenced The Old Curiosity Shop, which was continued with slight interruptions, and followed by Barnaby Rudge. For the first time we find Dickens obsessed by a highly complicated plot. The tonality achieved in The Old Curiosity Shop surpassed anything he had attempted in this difficult vein, while the rich humour of Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness, and the vivid portraiture of the wandering Bohemians, attain the very highest level of Dickensian drollery; but in the lamentable tale of Little Nell (though Landor and Jeffrey thought the character-drawing of this infant comparable with that of Cordelia), it is generally admitted that he committed an indecent assault upon the emotions by exhibiting a veritable monster of piety and longsuffering in a child of tender years. In Barnaby Rudge he was manifestly affected by the influence of Scott, whose achievements he always regarded with a touching veneration. The plot, again, is of the utmost complexity, and Edgar Allan Poe (who predicted the conclusion) must be one of the few persons who ever really mastered it. But few of Dickens’s books are written in a more admirable style.

Master Humphrey’s Clock concluded, Dickens started in 1842 on his first visit to America—an episode hitherto without parallel in English literary history, for he was received everywhere with popular acclamation as the representative of a grand triumph of the English language and imagination, without regard to distinctions of nationality. He offended the American public grievously by a few words of frank description and a few quotations of the advertisement columns of American papers illustrating the essential barbarity of the old slave system (American Notes). Dickens was soon pining for home—no English writer is more essentially and insularly English in inspiration and aspiration than he is. He still brooded over the perverseness of America on the copyright question, and in his next book he took the opportunity of uttering a few of his impressions about the objectionable sides of American democracy, the result being that “all Yankee-doodle-dom blazed up like one universal soda bottle,” as Carlyle said. Martin Clzuzzlewit (1843—1844) is important as closing his great character period. His sève originale, as the French would say, was by this time to a considerable extent exhausted, and he had to depend more upon artistic elaboration, upon satires, upon tours de force of description, upon romantic and ingenious contrivances. But all these resources combined proved unequal to his powers as an original observer of popular types, until he reinforced himself by autobiographic reminiscence, as in David Copperfield and Great Expectations, the two great books remaining to his later career.

After these two masterpieces and the three wonderful books with which he made his debut, we are inclined to rank Chuzzlewil. Nothing in Dickens is more admirably seen and presented than Todgers’s, a bit of London particular cut out with a knife. Mr Pecksniff and Mrs Gamp, Betsy Prig and “Mrs Harris” have passed into the national language and life. The coach journey, the windy autumn night, the stealthy trail of Jonas, the undertone of tragedy in the Charity and Mercy and Chuffey episodes suggest a blending of imaginative vision and physical penetration hardly seen elsewhere. Two things are specially notable about this novel—the exceptional care taken over it (as shown by the interlineations in the MS.) and the caprice or nonchalance of the purchasing public, its sales being far lower than those of any of its monthly predecessors.

At the dose of 1843, to pay outstanding debts of his now lavish housekeeping, he wrote that pioneer of Christmas numbers, that national benefit as Thackeray called it, A Christmas Carol. It failed to realize his pecuniary anticipations, and Dickens resolved upon a drastic policy of retrenchment and reform. He would save expense by living abroad and would punish his publishers by withdrawing his custom from them, at least for a time. Like everything else upon which he ever determined, this resolution was carried out with the greatest possible precision and despatch. In June 1844 he set out for Marseilles with his now rapidly increasing family (the journey cost him £200). In a villa on the outskirts of Genoa he wrote The Chimes, which, during a brief excursion to London before Christmas, he read to a select circle of friends (the germ of his subsequent lecture-audiences), including Forster, Carlyle, Stanfield, Dyce, Maclise and Jerrold. He was again in London in 1845, enjoying his favourite diversion of private theatricals; and in January 1846 he experimented briefly as the editor of a London morning paper—the Daily News. By early spring he was back at Lausanne, writing his customary vivid letters to his friends, craving as usual for London streets, commencing Dombey and Son, and walking his fourteen miles daily. The success of Dombey and Son completely rehabilitated the master’s finances, enabled him to return to England, send his son to Eton and to begin to save money. Artistically it is less satisfactory; it contains some of Dickens’s prime curios, such as Cuttle, Bunsby, Toots, Bliniber, Pipchin, Mrs MacStinger and young Biler; it contains also that masterpiece of sentimentality which trembles upon the borderland of the sublime and the ridiculous, the death of Paul Dombey (“ that sweet Paul,” as Jeffrey, the” critic laureate,” called him), and some grievous and unquestionable blemishes. As a narrative, moreover, it tails off into a highly complicated and exacting plot. It was followed by a long rest at Broadstairs before Dickens returned to the native home of his genius, and early in 1849 “began to prepare for David Copperfield.”

Of all my books,” Dickens wrote, “I like this the best; like many fond parents I have my favourite child, and his name is David Copperfield.” In some respects it stands to Dickens in something of the same relation in which the contemporary Pendennis stands to Thackeray. As in that book, too, the earlier portions are the best. They gained in intensity by the autobiographical form into which they are thrown; as Thackeray observed, there was no writing against such power. The tragedy of Emily and the character of Rosa Dartle are stagey and unreal; TJ’riah Heep is bad art; Agnes, again, is far less convincing as a consolation than Dickens would have us believe; but these are more than compensated by the wonderful realization of early boyhood in the book, by the picture of Mr Creakie’s school, the Peggottys, the inimitable Mr Micawber, Betsy Trotwood and that monument of selfish misery, Mrs Gummidge.

At the end of March 1850 commenced the new twopenny weekly called Household Words, which Dickens planned to form a direct means of communication between himself and his readers, and as a means of collecting around him and encouraging the talents of the younger generation. No one was better qualified than he for this work, whether we consider his complete freedom from literary jealousy or his magical gift of inspiring young authors. Following the somewhat dreary and incoherent Bleak House of 1852, Hard Times (1854)—an anti-Manchester School tract, which Ruskin regarded as’Dickens’s best work—was the first long story written for Household Words. About this time Dickens made his final home at Gad’s Hill, near Rochester, and put the finishing touch to another long novel published upon the old plan, Little Dorrit (1855’—1857). In spite of the exquisite comedy of the master of the Marshalsea and the final tragedy of the central figure, Little Dorrit is sadly deficient in the old vitality, the humour is often a mock reality, and the repetition of comic catch-words and overstrung similes and metaphors is such as to affect the reader with nervous irritation. The plot and characters ruin each other in this amorphous production. The Tale of Two Cities, commenced in All the Year Round (the successor of Household Words) in 1859, is much better: the main characters are powerful, the story genuinely tragic, and the atmosphere lurid; but enormous labour was everywhere expended upon the construction of stylistic ornament.

The Tale of Two Cities was followed by two finer efforts at atmospheric delineation, the best things he ever did of this kind: Great Expectations (186I), over which there broods the mournful impression of the foggy marshes of the Lower Thames; and Our Mutual Friend (1864—1865), in which the ooze and mud and slime of Rotherhithe, its boatmen and loafers, are made to pervade the whole book with cumulative effect. The general effect produced by the stories is, however, very different. In the first case, the foreground was supplied by autobiographical material of the most vivid interest, and the lucidity of the creative impulse impelled ~him to write upon this occasion with the old simplicity, though with an added power. Nothing therefore, in the whole range of Dickens surpassed the early chapters of Great Expectations in perfection of technique or in mastery of all the resources of the novelist’s art. To have created Abel Magwitch alone is to be a god indeed, says Mr Swinburne, among the creators of deathless men. Pumblechook is actually better and droller and truer to imaginative life than Pecksniff; Joe Gargery is worthy to have been praised and loved at once by Fielding and by Sterne: Mr Jaggers and his clients, Mr Wemmick and his parent and his bride, are such figures as Shakespeare, when dr~pping out of poetry, might have created, if his lot had been cast in a later century. “Can as much be said,” Mr Swinburne boldly asks, “for the creatures of any other man or god?”

In November 1867 Dickens made a second expedition to America, leaving all the writing that he was ever to complete behind him. He was to make a round sum of money, enough to free him from all embarrassments, by a long series of exhausting readings, commencing at the Tremont Temple, Boston, on the 2nd of December. The strain of Dickens’s ordinary life was so tense and so continuous that it is, perhaps, rash to assume that he broke down eventually under this particular stress; for other reasons, however, his persistence in these readings, subsequent to his return, was strongly deprecated by his literary friends, led by the arbitrary and relentless Forster. It is a long testimony to Dickens’s self-restraint, even in his most capricious and despotic moments, that he never broke the cord of obligation which bound him to his literary mentor, though sparring matches between them were latterly of frequent occurrence. His farewell reading was given on the 15th of March 1870, at St James’s Hall. He then vanished from “those garish lights,” as he called them, “for evermore.” Of the three brief months that remained to him, his last book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was the chief occupation. It hardly promised to become a masterpiece (Longfellow’s opinion) as did Thackeray’s Denis Duval, but contained much fine descriptive technique, grouped round a scene of which Dickens had an unrivalled sympathetic knowledge.

In March and April 1870 Dickens, as was his wont, was mixing in the best society; he dined with the prince at Lord Houghton’s and was twice at court, once at a long deferred private interview with the queen, who had given him a presentation copy of her Leaves from a Journal of our Life in the Highlands with the inscription “From one of the humblest of authors to one of the greatest “; and who now begged him on his persistent refusal of any other title to accept the nominal distinction of a privy councillor. He took for four months the Milner Gibsons’ house at 5 Hyde Park Place, opposite the Marble Arch, where he gave a brilliant reception on the 7th of April. His last public appearance was made at the Royal Academy banq’uet early in May.

He returned to his regular methodical routine of work at Gad’s Hill on the 3oth of May, and one of the last instalments he wrote of Edwin Drood contained an ominous speculation as to the next two people to die at Cloisterham: “Curious to make a guess at the two, or say at one of the two.” Two letters bearing the wellknown superscription” Gad’s Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent “are dated the 8th of June, and, on the same Thursday, after a long spell of writing in the Chalet where he habitually wrote, he collapsed suddenly at dinner. Startled by the sudden change in the colour and expression of his face, his sister-in-law (Miss Hogarth) asked him if he was ill; he said “ Yes, very ill,” but added that he would finish dinner and go on afterwards to London. “ Come and lie down,” she entreated; “Yes, on the ground,” he said, very distinctly; these were the last words he spoke, and he slid from her arms and fell upon the floor. He died at 6-jo P.M. on Friday, the 9th of June, and was buried privately in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, in the early morning of the I4th of June. One of the most appealing memorials was the drawing by his “new illustrator” Luke Fildes in the Graphic of “The Empty Chair; Gad’s Hill: ninth of June, 1870.” “Statesmen, men of science, philanthropists, the acknowledged benefactors of their race, might pass away, and yet not leave the void which will be caused by the death of Charles Dickens “(The Times). In his will he enjoined his friends to erect no monument in his honour, and directed his name and dates only to be inscribed on his tomb, adding this proud provision, “I rest my claim to the remembrance of my country on my published works.”

Dickens had no artistic ideals worth speaking about. The sympathy of his readers was the one thing he cared about and, like Cobbett, he went straight for it through the avenue of the emotions. In. personality, intensity and range of creative genius he can hardly be said to have any modern rival. His creations live, move and have their being about us constantly, like those of Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Bunyan, Moliere and Sir Walter Scott. As to the books themselves, the backgrounds on which these mighty figures are projected, they are manifestly too vast, too chaotic and too unequal ever to become classics. Like most of the novels constructed upon the unreformed model of Smollett and Fielding, those of Dickens are enormous stock-pots into which the author casts every kind of autobiographical experience, emotion, pleasantry, anecdote, adage or apophthegm. The fusion is necessarily very incomplete and the hotch-potch is bound to fall to pieces with time. Dickens’s plots, it must be admitted, are strangely unintelligible, the repetitions and stylistic decorations of his work exceed all bounds, the form is unmanageable and insignificant. The diffuseness of the English novel, in short, and its extravagant didacticism cannot fail to be most prejudicial to its perpetuation. In these circumstances there is very little fiction that will stand concentration and condensation so well as that of Dickens.

For these reasons among others our interest in Dickens’s novels as integers has diminished and is diminishing. But, on the other hand, our interest and pride in him as a man and as a representative author of his age and nation has been steadily augmented and is still mounting. Much of the old criticism of his work, that it was not up to a sufficiently high level of art, scholarship or gentility, that as an author he is given to caricature, redundancy and a shameless subservience to popular caprice, must now be discarded as irrelevant.

As regards formal excellence it is plain that Dickens labours under the double disadvantage of writing in the least disciplined of all literary genres in the most lawless literary milieu of the modern world, that of Victorian England. In spite of these defects, which are those of masters such as Rabelais, Hugo and Tolstoy, the work of Dickens is more and more instinctively felt to be true, original and ennobling. It is already beginning to undergo a process of automatic sifting, segregation and crystallization, at the conclusion of which it will probably occupy a larger segment in the literary consciousness of the English-spoken race than ever before.

Portraits of Dickens, from the gay and alert “ Boz “of Samuel Lawrence, and the self-conscious, rather foppish portrait by Maclise which served as frontispiece to Nicholas Nickleby, to the sketch of him as Bobadil by C. R. Leslie, the Drummond and Ary Scheffer portraits of middle age and the haggard and drawn representations of him from- photographs after his shattering experiences as a public entertainer from 1856 (the year of his separation from his wife) onwards, are reproduced in Kitton, in Forster and Gissing and in the other biographies. Sketches are also given in niost of the books of his successive dwelling places at Ordnance Terrace and 18 St Mary’s Place, Chatham; Bayham Street, Camden Town; 15 Furnival’s Inn; 48 Doughty Street; I Devonshire Terrace, Regent’s Park; Tavistock House, Tavistock Square; and Gad’s Hill Place. The manuscripts of all the novels, with the exception of the Tale of Two Cities and Edwin Drood, were given to Forster, and are now preserved in the Dyce and Forster Museum at South Kensington. The work of Dickens was a prize for which publishers naturally contended both before and after his death. The first collective edition of his works was begun in April 1847, and their number is now very great. The most complete is still that of Messrs Chapman & Hall, the original publishers of Pickwick; others of special interest are the Harrap edition, originally edited by F. G. Kitton; Macmillan’s edition with original illustrations and introduction by Charles Dickens the younger; and the edition in the World’s Classics with introductions by G. K. Chesterton. Of the translations the best known is that done into French by Lorain, Pichot and others, with B. H. Gausseron’s excellent Pages Choisies (1903)./dickens-literature.com

The greatest sculptors of the Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo

2009-04-19T22:48:00.004+07:00

Michelangelo was one of the greatest sculptors of the Italian Renaissance and one of its greatest painters and architects.
Early life

Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on March 6, 1475, in Caprese, Italy, a village where his father, Lodovico Buonarroti, was briefly serving as a Florentine government agent. The family moved back to Florence before Michelangelo was one month old. Michelangelo's mother died when he was six. From his childhood Michelangelo was drawn to the arts, but his father considered this pursuit below the family's social status and tried to discourage him. However, Michelangelo prevailed and was apprenticed (worked to learn a trade) at the age of thirteen to Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494), the most fashionable painter in Florence at the time.

After a year Michelangelo's apprenticeship was broken off. The boy was given access to the collection of ancient Roman sculpture of the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492). He dined with the family and was looked after by the retired sculptor who was in charge of the collection. This arrangement was quite unusual at the time.
Early works

Michelangelo's earliest sculpture, the Battle of the Centaurs (mythological creatures that are part man and part horse), a stone work created when he was about seventeen, is regarded as remarkable for the simple, solid forms and squarish proportions of the figures, which add intensity to their violent interaction.

Soon after Lorenzo died in 1492, the Medici family fell from power and Michelangelo fled to Bologna. In 1494 he carved three saints for the church of San Domenico. They show dense forms, in contrast to the linear forms which were then dominant in sculpture.
Rome

After returning to Florence briefly, Michelangelo moved to Rome. There he carved a Bacchus for a banker's garden of ancient sculpture. This is Michelangelo's earliest surviving large-scale work, and his only sculpture meant to be viewed from all sides.

In 1498 the same banker commissioned Michelangelo to carve the Pietà now in St. Peter's. The term pietà refers to a type of image in which Mary supports the dead Christ across her knees. Larger than life size, the Pietà contains elements which contrast and reinforce each other: vertical and horizontal, cloth and skin, alive and dead, female and male.
Florence

On Michelangelo's return to Florence in 1501 he was recognized as the most talented sculptor of central Italy. He was commissioned to carve the David for the Florence Cathedral.

Michelangelo's Battle of Cascina was commissioned in 1504; several sketches still exist. The central scene shows a group of muscular soldiers climbing from a river where they had been swimming to answer a military alarm. This fusion of life with colossal grandeur henceforth was the special quality of Michelangelo's art.

From this time on, Michelangelo's work consisted mainly of very large projects that he never finished. He was unable to turn down the vast commissions of his great clients which appealed to his preference for the grand scale.

Pope Julius II (1443–1513) called Michelangelo to Rome in 1505 to design his tomb, which was to include about forty life-size statues. Michelangelo worked on the project off and on for the next forty years.
Sistine Chapel

In 1508 Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to decorate the ceiling of the chief Vatican chapel, the Sistine. The traditional format of ceiling painting contained only single figures. Michelangelo introduced dramatic scenes and an original framing system, which was his earliest architectural design. The chief elements are twelve male and female prophets (the latter known as sibyls) and nine stories from Genesis.

Michelangelo stopped for some months halfway along. When he returned to the ceiling, his style underwent a shift toward a more forceful grandeur and a richer emotional tension than in any previous work. The images of the Separation of Light and Darkness, and Ezekiel illustrate this greater freedom and mobility.

After the ceiling was completed in 1512, Michelangelo returned to the tomb of Julius and carved a Moses and two Slaves. His models were the same physical types he used for the prophets and their attendants in the Sistine ceiling. Julius's death in 1513 halted the work on his tomb.

Pope Leo X, son of Lorenzo de' Medici, proposed a marble facade for the family parish church of San Lorenzo in Florence to be decorated with statues by Michelangelo. After four years of quarrying and designing the project was canceled.
Medici Chapel

In 1520 Michelangelo was commissioned to execute the Medici Chapel for two young Medici dukes. It contains two tombs, each with an image of the deceased and two allegorical (symbolic) figures: Day and Night on one tomb, and Morning and Evening on the other.

A library, the Biblioteca Laurenziana, was built at the same time on the opposite side of San Lorenzo to house Pope Leo X's books. The entrance hall and staircase are some of Michelangelo's most astonishing architecture, with recessed columns resting on scroll brackets set halfway up the wall and corners stretched open rather than sealed.
Poetry

Michelangelo wrote many poems in the 1530s and 1540s. Approximately three hundred survive. The earlier poems are on the theme of Neoplatonic love (belief that the soul comes from a single undivided source to which it can unite again) and are full of logical contradictions and intricate images. The later poems are Christian. Their mood is penitent (being sorrow and regretful); and they are written in a simple, direct style.
Last Judgment

In 1534 Michelangelo left Florence for the last time, settling in Rome. The next ten years were mainly given over to painting for Pope Paul III (1468–1549). In 1536 Michelangelo began the Last Judgment, for Pope Paul III, on the end wall of the Sistine Chapel. The design shows some angels pushing the damned down to hell on one side and some pulling up the saved on the other side. Both groups are directed by Christ. The flow of movement in the Last Judgment is slower than in Michelangelo's earlier work. During this time, Michelangelo also painted frescoes in the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican (1541–1545).

Works after 1545

Michelangelo devoted himself almost entirely to architecture and poetry after 1545, including rebuilding of the Capitol area, the Piazza del Campidoglio, for Pope Paul III. The pope also appointed Michelangelo to direct the work at St. Peter's in 1546. The enormous church was planned to be an equal-armed cross, with a huge central space beneath the dome. Secondary spaces and structures would produce a very active rhythm. By the time Michelangelo died, a considerable part of St. Peter's had been built in the form in which we know it.

Michelangelo's sculpture after 1545 was limited to two Pietàs that he executed for himself. The first one, begun in 1550 and left unfinished, was meant for his own tomb. He began the Rondanini Pietà in Milan in 1555, and he was working on it on February 12, 1564 when he took ill. He died six days later in Rome and was buried in Florence.

Michelangelo excelled in poetry, sculpture, painting, and architecture. He was the supreme master of representing the human body. His idealized and expressive works have been a major influence from his own time to ours./notablebiographies.com

The Greatest Philosopher, Plato

2009-04-09T13:24:00.005+07:00

Plato (circa 428-c. 347 BC)

Plato was born around the year 428 BCE in Athens. His father died while Plato was young, and his mother remarried to Pyrilampes, in whose house Plato would grow up. Plato's birth name was Aristocles, and he gained the nickname Platon, meaning broad, because of his broad build. His family had a history in politics, and Plato was destined to a life in keeping with this history. He studied at a gymnasium owned by Dionysios, and at the palaistra of Ariston of Argos. When he was young he studied music and poetry. According to Aristotle, Plato developed the foundations of his metaphysics and epistemology by studying the doctrines of Cratylus, and the work of Pythagoras and Parmenides. When Plato met Socrates, however, he had met his definitive teacher. As Socrates' disciple, Plato adopted his philosophy and style of debate, and directed his studies toward the question of virtue and the formation of a noble character.

Plato was in military service from 409 BC to 404 BC. When the Peloponnesian War ended in 404 BC he joined the Athenian oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants, one of whose leaders was his uncle Charmides. The violence of this group quickly prompted Plato to leave it. In 403 BC, when democracy was restored in Athens, he had hopes of pursuing his original goal of a political career. Socrates' execution in 399 BC had a profound effect on Plato, and was perhaps the final event that would convince him to leave Athenian politics forever.

Plato left Attica along with other friends of Socrates and traveled for the next twelve years. To all accounts it appears that he left Athens with Euclides for Megara, then went to visit Theodorus in Cyrene, moved on to study with the Pythagoreans in Italy, and finally to Egypt. During this period he studied the philosophy of his contemporaries, geometry, geology, astronomy and religion.

After 399 BC Plato began to write extensively. It is still up for debate whether he was writing before Socrates' death, and the order in which he wrote his major texts is also uncertain. However, most scholars agree to divide Plato's major work into three distinct groups. The first of these is known as the Socratic Dialogues because of how close he stays within the text to Socrates' teachings. They were probably written during the years of his travels between 399 and 387 BC. One of the texts in this group called the Apology seems to have been written shortly after Socrates' death. Other texts relegated to this group include the Crito, Laches, Lysis, Charmides, Euthyphro, and Hippias Minor and Major.

Plato returned to Athens in 387 BC and, on land that had once belonged to Academos, he founded a school of learning which he called the Academy. Plato's school is often described at the first European university. Its curriculum offered subjects including astronomy, biology, mathematics, political theory, and philosophy. Plato hoped the Academy would provide a place where thinkers could work toward better government in the Grecian cities. He would preside over the Academy until his death.

The period from 387 to 361 BC is often called Plato's "middle" or transitional period. It is thought that he may have written the Meno, Euthydemus, Menexenus, Cratylus, Repuglic, Phaedrus, Syposium and Phaedo during this time. The major difference between these texts and his earlier works is that he tends toward grander metaphysical themes and begins to establish his own voice in philosophy. Socrates still has a presence, however, sometimes as a fictional character. In the Meno for example Plato writes of the Socratic idea that no one knowingly does wrong, and adds the new doctrine of recollection questioning whether virtue can be taught. In the Phaedo we are introduced to the Platonic doctrine of the Forms, in which Plato makes claims as to the immortality of the human soul. The middle dialogues also reveal Plato's method of hypothesis.

Plato's most influential work, The Republic, is also a part of his middle dialogues. It is a discussion of the virtues of justice, courage, wisdom, and moderation, of the individual and in society. It works with the central question of how to live a good life, asking what an ideal State would be like, and what defines a just individual. These lead to more questions regarding the education of citizens, how government should be formed, the nature of the soul, and the afterlife. The dialogue finishes by reviewing various forms of government and describing the ideal state, where only philosophers are fit to rule. The Republic covers almost every aspect of Plato's thought.

In 367 BC Plato was invited to be the personal tutor to Dionysus II, the new ruler of Syracuse. Plato accepted the invitation, but found on his arrival that the situation was not conducive for philosophy. He continued to teach the young ruler until 365 BC when Syracuse entered into war. Plato returned to Athens, and it was around this time that Plato's famous pupil Aristotle began to study at the Academy. In 361 BC Plato returned to Syracuse in response to a letter from Dion, the uncle and guardian of Dionysus II, begging him to come back. However, finding the situation even more unpleasant than his first visit, he returned to Athens almost as fast as he had come.

Back at the Academy, Plato probably spent the rest of his life writing and conversing. The way he ran the Academy and his ideas of what constitutes an educated individual have been a major influence to education theory. His work has also been influential in the areas of logic and legal philosophy. His beliefs on the importance of mathematics in education has had a lasting influence on the subject, and his insistence on accurate definitions and clear hypotheses formed the foundations for Euclid's system of mathematics.

His final years at the Academy may be the years when he wrote the "Later" dialogues, including the Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist,Statesmas,Timaeus,Critias,Philebus, and Laws. Socrates has been delegated a minor role in these texts. Plato uses these dialogues to take a closer look at his earlier metaphysical speculations. He discusses art, including dance, music, poetry, architecture and drama, and ethics in regards to immortality, the mind, and Realism. He also works with the philosophy of mathematics, politics and religion, covering such specifics as censorship, atheism, and pantheism. In the area of epistemology he discusses a priori knowledge and Rationalism. In his theory of Forms, Plato suggests that the world of ideas is constant and true, opposing it to the world we perceive through our senses, which is deceptive and changeable.

In 347 Plato died, leaving the Academy to his sister's son Speusippus. The Academy remained a model for institutions of higher learning until it was closed, in 529 CE, by the Emperor Justinian./egs.edu

Microsoft Founder, Bill Gates

2009-03-25T02:37:00.006+07:00

Bill Gates is one of the most influential people in the world. He is cofounder of one of the most recognized brands in the computer industry with nearly every desk top computer using at least one software program from Microsoft. According to the Forbes magazine, Bill Gates is the richest man in the world and has held the number one position for many years.

Gates was born and grew up in Seattle, Washington USA. His father, William H. Gates II was a Seattle attorney and his mother, Mary Maxwell Gates was a school teacher and chairperson of the United Way charity. Gates and his two sisters had a comfortable upbringing, with Gates being able to attend the exclusive secondary "Lakeside School".

Bill Gates started studying at Harvard University in 1973 where he met up with Paul Allen. Gates and Allen worked on a version of the programming language BASIC, that was the basis for the MITS Altair (the first microcomputer available). He did not go on to graduate from Harvard University as he left in his junior year to start what was to become the largest computer software company in the world; Microsoft Corporation.

Bill Gates and the Microsoft Corporation
"To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential." Microsoft Mission Statement
After dropping out of Harvard Bill Gates and his partner Paul Allen set about revolutionizing the computer industry. Gates believed there should be a computer on every office desk and in every home.

In 1975 the company Micro-soft was formed, which was an abbreviation of microcomputer software. It soon became simply "Microsoft"® and went on to completely change the way people use computers.

Microsoft helped to make the computer easier to use with its developed and purchased software, and made it a commercial success. The success of Microsoft began with the MS-DOS computer operating system that Gates licensed to IBM. Gates also set about protecting the royalties that he could acquire from computer software by aggressively fighting against all forms of software piracy, effectively creating the retail software market that now exists today. This move was quite controversial at the time as it was the freedom of sharing that produced much innovation and advances in the newly forming software industry. But it was this stand against software piracy, that was to be central in the great commercial success that Microsoft went on to achieve.

Bill Gates retired as Microsoft CEO in 2008.

Bill Gates Criticism
With his great success in the computer software industry also came many criticisms. With his ambitious and aggressive business philosophy, Gates or his Microsoft lawyers have been in and out of courtrooms fighting legal battles almost since Microsoft began.

The Microsoft monopoly sets about completely dominating every market it enters through either acquisition, aggressive business tactics or a combination of them. Many of the largest technology companies have fought legally against the actions of Microsoft, including Apple Computer, Netscape, Opera, WordPerfect, and sun Microsystems.

Bill Gates Net Worth
With an estimated wealth of $53 billion in 2006, Bill Gates is the richest man in the world and he should be starting to get used to the number spot as he has been there from the mid-ninties up until now. The famous investor Warren Buffett is gaining on Gates though with an estimated $46 billion in 2006.

Microsoft hasn't just made Bill Gates very wealthy though. According to the Forbes business magazine in 2004 Paul Allen, Microsoft cofounder was the 5th richest man in the world with an estimated $21 billion. While Bill Gates' long time friend and Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer was the 19th richest man in the world at $12.4 billion.

See more information the Bill Gates Net Worth page.

Bill Gates Philanthropy
Being the richest man in the world has also enabled Gates to create one of the world's largest charitable foundations. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment of more than $28 billion, with donations totaling more than $1 billion every year. The foundation was formed in 2000 after merging the "Gates Learning Foundation" and "William H. Gates Foundation". Their aim is to "bring innovations in health and learning to the global community".

Bill Gates continues to play a very active role in the workings of the Microsoft Company, but has handed the position of CEO over to Steve Ballmer. Gates now holds the positions of "Chairman" and "Chief Software Architect". He has started that he plans to take on fewer responsibilities at Microsoft and will eventually devote all his time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2006, the second richest man in the world, Warren Buffett pledged to give much of his vast fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates Receives a KBE
In March 2005 William H. Gates received an "honorary" knighthood from the queen of England. Gates was bestowed with the KBE Order (Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for his services in reducing poverty and improving health in the developing countries of the world.
After the privately held ceremony in Buckingham Palace with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Gates commented on the recognition..
"I am humbled and delighted. I am particularly pleased that this honor helps recognize the real heroes our foundation (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) supports to improve health in poor countries. Their incredible work is helping ensure that one day all people, no matter where they are born, will have the same opportunity for a healthy life, and I'm grateful to share this honor with them."

The KBE Order of the British Empire is the second highest Order given out, but it is only an honorary knighthood as only citizens that are British or a part of the Commonwealth receive the full Order. This means that Gates does not become Sir Bill Gates.

Bill Gates lives near Lake Washington with his wife Melinda French Gates and their three children. Interests of Gates include reading, golf and playing bridge.

Bill Gates Biography (William Henry Gates III): Microsoft Founder
Famous for : Being the richest man in the world, a cofounder of the software company Microsoft, and for being one of the world's most generous philanthropists.
Gates details : Born - USA October 28, 1955 Lives - United States of America
More Gates : Buffett Gives to Gates Foundation - Person of the Year 2005 - Melinda Gates - Richest Man in the World/woopidoo.com

Einstein, like most brilliant minds

2009-03-18T15:08:00.006+07:00

Albert Einstein was one of the greatest minds in world history. Einstein is known as a brilliant physicist who contributed more to the scientific world than any other person. His theories on relativity paved the way for how science currently views time, space, energy, and gravity. Einstein was so advanced in his thinking that his studies and work set the standards for the control of scientific energy and space explorations currently being studied in the field of astrophysics.

Einstein, like most brilliant minds, was also an eccentric who set himself apart from people and family to research in solitude while being a public figure supporting issues that he believed in. As history would be written, his humanitarian work would also provide the basis to one of the most destructive forces ever known to man, the atomic bomb.

Albert Einstein is also famous for his many quotes. One quote is, "One cannot help but be in awe [one] contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structures of reality." Another quote is "The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our action, Our inner balances and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life."

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. His parents were Pauline and Hermann Einstein. It is interesting to note that neither of his parents had any knowledge in the areas of math or science. Even Albert, in his early years, was a very shy but curious kid that showed very little aptitude for anything. In elementary school, Albert was such an under achiever in all subjects other than math and science that his parents suspected that he might be retarded. As it turned out, Albert preferred to learn on his own and had taught himself advanced mathematics and science by the time he was a teenager.

Another interesting fact is that between the ages of six to thirteen, he studied the violin. After a failed attempt to skip high school and attend the Swiss Polytechnic University in 1895, Albert went to Aarau, Switzerland to finish high school. He graduated from high school at the age of 17 and enrolled at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich. Albert graduated in 1900 with a degree in physics.

Albert Einstein's most noted contribution to the world is his theory of relativity. By 1902, Einstein was working on combining time and space, matter and energy. In 1905 when he was only 26 years old, he published a paper on relativity. This paper showed mathematically that the speed of light is constant and not relative to its source or to the viewer. Einstein had actually written an essay when he was only 16 years old on relativity, which became the basis for his published paper. The greatest result of relativistic physics was Einstein's famous relation, E=mc2 . In this, he was able to prove that any increase in the energy, E, of a body must lead to a corresponding increase in its mass, m, these increases being related by a factor c2 , where c represents the velocity of light squared.

Albert Einstein published several other papers this same year. They were quantum law and the emission and absorption of light, Brownian motion, the inertia of energy, and the electrodynamics of moving bodies. The research on quantum law and the emission and absorption of light won him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921. Incidentally, he was not present at the award ceremony due to his trip to Japan.

At the time of the publication on the theory of relativity, the people that read the papers met them with skepticism and ridicule. As the other papers were published, they were viewed the same way. Since these papers were so advanced, only a few physicists even understood them, and they slowly started to realize what a true genius Einstein actually was.

In 1914, Einstein found himself in demand all over Europe. He went to Berlin as a professor and latter accepted a prestigious appointment as the head of Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute, special professor at the University of Berlin. There he was a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and had all the research time he wanted.

In 1933 Albert Einstein came to the United States. He had accepted a position with the Advanced study in Princeton, New Jersey. At the University, he was again allowed to follow his own ideas and do research as he sought. At the University, he also aided Jewish scientists and students who were forced to leave Germany.

Possibly, Albert Einstein's most famous writing was a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 2, 1939. In his letter, he warned of the possibility of Germany building an atomic bomb and urged the President to do nuclear research and complete the bomb before the Germans did. Albert wrote the letter as a result of a request from a friend, Leo Szilard. Szilard had become alarmed after the discovery of uranium fission. Szilard also asked Einstein to warn the Belgian Queen Mother. At the time of this request in 1939, most American physicists doubted that atomic energy or atomic bombs were a possibility. Although not a well-known fact, there was two letters written and signed by Einstein to send to President Roosevelt . There was a short version and a long version. Einstein preferred the long version and so that was the one that was finally delivered to the President. The letter did not have much impact and World War II began on September 1, 1939.

It was not until December 6, 1941, that the United States would start a large-scale atomic project. This project would be known as the "Manhatten" Project. Speaking of war, Albert was able to avoid being inducted into the war due to the fact that he had flat feet and bulging veins. A little known third letter was written by Albert to President Rossevelt stating that atomic research should not be used against people. As a further note, Albert was appalled when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.

Albert Einstein's character shows up where, like the famous relation, E=mc2, his imaginative daring came into play. Besides his equation, E=mc2, he immediately went further. Albert was so sure that his equation could not be refuted, he presumed without any further proof that his theory was correct and that mass was a form of energy. It would be many years before this would actually prove to be true. Another side of Albert Einstein shows up with the letter he sent to President Roosevelt. He opposed the use of force and the building weapons, but he could not stand silently by while another country had sole possession of destructive powers.

Albert Einstein, like so many, had a dark side to him also. His first daughter was born a year before he and Mileva were married, and they gave up their baby daughter for adoption shortly after her birth. Albert and Mileva also had two sons that they kept. In 1919, his first marriage to Mileva Maric ended in divorce. The same year, Albert married his cousin Elsa Einstein.

The death of Albert Einstein came on April 18, 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey. After a long illness, he died peacefully in his sleep. The listed cause of death is a ruptured artery in his heart. Upon his request in his will, there was no funeral, no grave, and no marker. His brain was donated to science and his body was cremated and his ashes were spread over a near-by river.

In conclusion, Albert Einstein ranks as one of the greatest people for his contributions towards physics and his part as a philosopher of science and as a humanitarian. And like so many other great people in history, he was criticized and even threatened with death for his beliefs and convictions. Even up to his final days, the genius continued his search for laws that would explain more of the universe. To this day, his ideas and theories are still being followed through on.

As a final insight to the personality and humor this genius possessed, he had been lecturing for over an hour on his theory time. Suddenly he stopped and with a pained look on his face, said, "I fear it is getting late. Does anyone know the time?" This great person was more at home in old clothes which included a sweater and his slippers and his long white hair than in any other way. It was also in the above attire that he often greeted his guests in and served them tea despite their reputation. So normal yet so brilliant!
Source: http://home.pacbell.net/kidwell5/aebio.html

Benjamin Franklin's Biography

2009-03-10T13:32:00.006+07:00

B enjamin Franklin was a leader of America's revolutionary generation. His character and thought were shaped by his religious upbringing, the philosophy of the historical era known as the Enlightenment, and the environment of colonial America.
Youthful character

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, Massachusetts, into a devoted Puritan household. (The Puritans were a religious group that stood against the practices of the Church of England.) In 1683 his family had left England and moved to New England in search of religious freedom. Franklin's father was a candlemaker and a mechanic, but, his son said, his "great Excellence lay in a sound Understanding, and solid Judgment." Franklin also praised his mother, who raised a family of thirteen children.

Young Franklin was not content at home. He received little formal schooling and by age eleven went to work making candles and soap at his father's shop. However, he hated this trade—especially the smell. Franklin eventually left his father's shop and went to work for his brother James, who was the printer of a Boston newspaper. While learning the business Franklin read every word that came into the shop and was soon writing clever pieces that criticized the Boston establishment. He loved to read and even became a vegetarian in order to save money to buy books. When authorities imprisoned James for his own critical articles, Benjamin continued the paper himself. In 1723 at age seventeen Franklin left home and moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

By this time Franklin had begun to embrace the ideas of such Enlightenment thinkers as the physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) and the philosopher John Locke (1632–1727). The Enlightenment, which began in the sixteenth century and lasted until the late seventeenth century, was a movement that promoted the use of reason to learn truth. During this time period, many important scientific advances and discoveries were made through the use of observation and experimentation.
Civil and scientific interests

In Philadelphia, Franklin began working as a printer. In 1724 he went to England, where he quickly became a master printer and lived among the writers of London. He returned to Philadelphia and started his own press, publishing a newspaper called the Pennsylvania Gazette and a publication called Poor Richard's Almanack, which contained advice and sayings that are still popular in America today. He then became clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly and postmaster of Philadelphia. At the same time he operated a bookshop and developed partnerships with other printers. Franklin also became involved in community improvement in 1727. He organized the Junto, a club of tradesmen whose activities included sponsoring a library, a fire company, a college, an insurance company, and a hospital.

Next, Franklin turned to science. Having already invented what became known as the Franklin stove (a metal stove used for heating a room), he now became fascinated with electricity. In a famous experiment he used a kite to prove that lightning is a form of electricity. The mysterious and terrifying natural occurrence now had an explanation. Franklin's letters concerning his discoveries and theories about electricity brought him fame. His invention of the lightning rod (a metal rod that is set on top of a building to protect it from being damaged if it is struck by lightning) added to his reputation.
Political career

Franklin's 1751 election to the Pennsylvania Assembly began his nearly forty years as a public official. He became a leader in the long-dominant Quaker political party, which opposed the Proprietary party (a political party made up of people who sought to preserve the power of the Penn family, the founding family of Pennsylvania). In the Assembly, Franklin created lawmaking strategies and wrote powerful statements defending the right of the people's elected representatives to regulate the government of Pennsylvania.

As a representative in the Assembly, Franklin was initially loyal to the British empire. He was on the side of the empire during the French and Indian War (1754–63; a war fought between France and Great Britain, which resulted in British control of land in North America east of the Mississippi River). In order to defend the British empire, he persuaded the Assembly to pass Pennsylvania's first militia law, set aside budget money for defense, and appoint government representatives to carry on a full-scale war. For three decades or more Franklin had considered Britain a vital, freedom-extending country as dear and useful to its people in America as to those in England. Nevertheless, he was occasionally alarmed by British indifference toward the desires of people living in the colonies.

Franklin lived in England from 1757 to 1762, seeking aid in restraining the power of the Penn family in Pennsylvania. Returning to America for nearly two years, he traveled through the American colonies as deputy postmaster general for North America. In this position, which he held for twenty years, Franklin greatly improved the postal service. He also continued his aid to poorer members of his family and to the family of his wife, Deborah. They had two children, Frankie, who died at four, and Sally. Deborah Franklin also raised her husband's illegitimate son, William.

In 1764 Franklin lost his seat in the Pennsylvania Assembly. However, he returned to England as Pennsylvania's agent, with a special assignment to request that Pennsylvania be taken over as a royal colony. When the dangers of royal government began to increase, Franklin decided not to make the request.
More radical position

Franklin played a central role in the great crises that led to the Declaration of Independence in 1776. In 1765 the Stamp Act placed a tax on all business and law papers and printed materials in the American colonies. Many colonists opposed the tax as taxation without representation. After learning of the

Benjamin Franklin.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

violent protest against the Stamp Act, Franklin stiffened his own stand against the measure. In a dramatic appearance before Parliament in 1766, he outlined American insistence on self-government. Nevertheless, when the tax was removed Franklin again expressed his faith in America's prospects within the British empire.

Franklin was the foremost American spokesman in Britain for the next nine years. However, in 1775 his service in England came to an unhappy end. Against his instructions, his friends in Massachusetts published letters by Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson (1711–1780) that Franklin had obtained on a confidential basis. Exposed as a dishonest schemer, Franklin was reprimanded (scolded) by the British in 1774 and removed from his position as postmaster general. Although he was in danger of being jailed as a traitor, Franklin continued to work for better relations. Radical protests in America and the buildup of British troops there doomed such efforts.
The revolutionary

Franklin left England in March 1775. The American Revolution (1775–83; a war in which American colonies fought for independence from Great Britain) had begun on April 19, 1775, with the battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. During the next several months in America, Franklin enjoyed the surge for independence. In 1776 he helped draft the Declaration of Independence and was among those who readily signed his name to it. At the age of seventy he had become a passionate revolutionary.

Franklin's skill was most in demand as a diplomat (someone who is skilled at handling difficult affairs) to secure desperately needed aid in the American war for independence. In 1776 he was appointed as a representative to France. There he gained astonishing personal success, winning the admiration of French intellectuals and the Parisian society. However, Franklin's diplomatic tasks proved more difficult. Though France was anxious for England to be defeated, it could not afford openly to aid the American rebels unless success seemed likely.

In 1777 Franklin worked behind the scenes to speed war supplies across the Atlantic and win support from French political leaders who might help the United States. In December 1777 his efforts were rewarded when France's King Louis XVI (1754–1793) entered into an alliance with the United States. As the leading American representative in Europe, Franklin helped get French armies and navies on their way to North America, continued his efforts to supply American armies, and secured almost all of the outside aid that came to the American rebels.
Peace commissioner

After the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, Franklin made the first contact with representatives of the British government. During the summer of 1782 as the other peace commissioners, John Adams (1735–1826) and John Jay (1745–1829), made their way toward peace negotiations in Paris, Franklin set the main terms of the final agreement. These included independence, guaranteed fishing rights, removal of all British forces, and a western boundary on the Mississippi River. Franklin, Adams, and Jay made an ideal team, winning for the United States a peace treaty of genuine national independence in 1783.

Franklin returned to Philadelphia from France in 1785. He accepted election for three years as president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania and was active in various projects and causes. Although ill, he also finished his autobiography.
Framing a new government

Franklin's most notable service at this time was his attendance at the Constitutional Convention during the summer of 1787. At the convention's close he asked each member, who like himself might not entirely approve of the Constitution, to sign the document to give it a chance as the best frame of government that could be produced at the time. His last public service was to urge ratification (approval) of the Constitution and to approve the inauguration (swearing into office) of the new government under his old friend George Washington (1732–1799). Franklin died peacefully in Philadelphia on April 17, 1790./Notablebiographies.com

Born: January 17, 1706
Boston, Massachusetts
Died: April 17, 1790
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
American scholar, diplomat, author, scientist, and inventor

Anthony Robbins's Biography

2009-03-10T13:05:00.003+07:00

Anthony Robbins (Tony Robbins) is a best selling self help author, motivational speaker, and advisor to many world leaders, sports professionals and business people. He is an internationally recognized personality and has appeared on countless infomercials, television interviews, talk shows, radio programs, and has even appeared as himself in the romantic comedy "Shallow Hal" starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Jack Black.

Tony Robbins was born on the 29th of February 1960 (leap year), California, USA. He became determined to change his life after a particularly low period in his life where he was struggling to pay his bills, over weight and without direction.

Robbins transformed his life and developed systems to change the lives of thousands more. Neuro-linguistic programming or NLP became an integral part of Robbins' current philosophy and teachings. His popular motivational technique "neuroassociative conditioning" was developed from the teachings of NLP.

Anthony Robbins gets his message out to an international audience of millions through his best selling motivational books, audio programs, motivational seminars, motivational coaching and the philanthropic work that he and his companies do with the less privileged members of society. Some of his popular motivational products include:

Awaken the Giant Within: Book & Audio Program
How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical, and Financial
Best selling self help book where Tony Robbins sets out to teach the reader strategies to achieve success in life, overcome phobias, improve relationships, and to make lasting change by eliminating destructive habits.

Unlimited Power: Book & Audio Program
The New Science Of Personal Achievement
Robbins shares some of his Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) techniques to learn how to eliminate phobias in minutes, create rapport with strangers, and to duplicate the success of others.

Anthony Robbins has created an almost fanatical group of followers worldwide with people prepared to pay thousands of dollars to attend his motivational seminars and workshops, but he also has his critics. One area critics talk of is his firewalking workshops where participants are encouraged to walk barefooted across hot coals. Critics say it is simple logic and not the power of the mind that gets people across the coals without burning their feet.

Robbins is also an active and generous philanthropist. The "Anthony Robbins Foundation" had its beginnings in Robbins giving out bags of groceries anonymously to impoverished families at Thanks Giving each year. The organization now feeds more than 500,000 people each year worldwide during Thanksgiving, Easter and December holidays. Inspiration, education and training are also delivered to disadvantaged people in society.

Bob Proctor's Biography

2009-03-10T12:55:00.002+07:00

For 40 years, Bob Proctor has focused his entire agenda around helping people create lush lives of prosperity, rewarding relationships and spiritual awareness.

Imagine landing on just one solution that catapults you to the life you've always wished you'd have, one that's abundantly rich and rewarding in every facet.

That solution exists. In fact, it exists today, this very moment – in your own mind! Every person walking this planet carries this key, but few know how to plumb their mind's depths to excavate a more rewarding life for themselves. That's where Bob Proctor comes in.

Bob Proctor knows how to help you because he comes from a life of want and limitation himself. In 1960, he was a high-school dropout with a resume of dead-end jobs and a future clouded in debt. One book was placed in his hands - Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich - that planted the seed of hope in Bob's mind.

In just months, and with further support from the works of Earl Nightingale, Bob's life literally spun on a dime. In a year, he was making more than $100,000, and soon topped the $1 million mark.

Bob then moved to Chicago to work for his real-life mentors, Earl Nightingale and Lloyd Conant. After a successful tenure at Nightingale-Conant and having risen to the position of Vice President of Sales, Bob went on to establish his own seminar company.

Bob Proctor now travels the globe, teaching thousands of people how to believe in and act upon the greatness of their own mind.

Proctor's wide-ranging work with business and industries around the world extends far beyond the pep rally syndrome. Instead, it encompasses working with business entities and individuals to develop strategies that will assist employees at all levels to grow and improve and adapt to the ever-changing nature of all commercial enterprises in today's business atmosphere. As featured in the internationally acclaimed "The Secret," Proctor is widely regarded as one of the living masters and teachers of the Law of Attraction.

It doesn't matter how you grew up, or what you've struggled with in life - your mind is unscathed by any circumstance you may have encountered… and it's phenomenally powerful! Let Bob Proctor's live seminars, coaching programs, best-selling books and recordings show you how to excavate the wonderful gem of your own mind.
An Outrageous Suggestion Established His Reputation

In the early 1970s, Proctor established his own seminar company and secured a contract to work with a few hundred agents of the Prudential Life Insurance Co. of America in Chicago.

During the first seminar, Bob made the suggestion that any agent present could write $5 million in business that year if the agent made a decision to do so. The facts that the seminar took place in July with the year half over and that no agent had ever written so much business in the 100-year history of the company made Bob's suggestion appear to be outrageous.

However, when the performance level of the entire division increased substantially with more than one agent actually accomplishing the deed, Bob's reputation as a corporate speaker and educator who gets results was established.

Over the ensuing years, Proctor has shared his special message and expertise with countless business entities worldwide through his live seminars and many published programs. The experience of hearing and seeing Bob Proctor lecture is a memorable one, packed with the information, inspiration and wisdom to transform the lives of everyone in his audience.

Unlike many programs that convince you that you can do anything you set out to do, Bob Proctor's programs complete the creative cycle by explaining what you must do, why you must do it and, more importantly, how you must do it. Hearing Bob Proctor is an opportunity that can redirect your life.
Endorsements

"We've both had the pleasure of sharing many stages with Bob Proctor. It is a privilege because we believe he possesses a rare and rich knowledge of how the mind can be programmed to operate at its fullest potential. No other teacher alive teaches these concepts as clearly and accurately."

- Mark Victor Hansen & Jack Canfield, Co-authors,
#1 Best-seller Chicken Soup for the Soul

"I have shared many hours with Bob Proctor in my home. I am fascinated by his depth of knowledge and understanding of the mind and why we do what we do. Listen to him. He communicates so clearly and effectively. If you want to make a major shift in your life, this man will definitely show you how."

- Jay Abraham, Master Marketer, Fortune 500 Consultant

"I spent four years in medical school and five year in psychiatric training that included a two year fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. I have learned more through Bob Proctor and his teachings about the unconscious or subconscious mind than in all my years of training.

Bob is truly a genius at clarifying these incredible principles and presents them in a very compassionate and caring manor."

- John M. Mike, M.D., Clearwater, Florida

Mission Statement - LifeSuccess Productions

"We are building a global organization dedicated to improving the quality of life worldwide. We create products and services at a profit which is in harmony with the law of compensation.

These products and services are created and marketed with like-minded people who share in our purpose: to live and work in a prosperous environment that encourages productivity, so that we may improve the service we render to our family, our company, our community, our nation and, ultimately, the world."

- Bob Proctor, Founder and Chairman/BobProctor.com

The Biography of Napoleon Hill

2009-03-10T11:57:00.003+07:00

Napoleon Hill was one of the original founders of the personal-success literature movement and the author of the best-selling book Think and Grow Rich. Hill considered all his works part of his "Philosophy of Achievement" and his mantra, "what the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve" became the foundation for his works.

Napoleon Hill was born on October 26, 1883 in the rural town of Pound in Wise County, Virginia. By the age of twelve, both his parents were dead and by the time Hill was thirteen he was writing for local mountain newspapers to help save money for school. Although he entered law school for a short time, Hill eventually had to drop out due to lack of funds.

Hill returned to writing and, as part of a series of articles assigned to him, he went to interview Andrew Carnegie, a very wealthy and powerful man. During the interview, Carnegie disclosed his belief that any man could achieve great success by following a simple formula. Carnegie then commissioned Hill to interview 500 successful people in order to discover this formula and publish it. There was no money paid to Hill for this project, just the challenge of finding the secret to success.

During his research, Hill interviewed numerous influential people including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. It took him over twenty years to interview all of the people on his list. As a result of his research, however, Hill became an advisor to Carnegie and they published The Law of Success by means of the Philosophy of Achievement in 1928. Originally published as a study course, it eventually became a lengthy home-study course that included seventeen volumes of the "Mental Dynamite" series.

During his time with Carnegie, Napoleon Hill became the editor and publisher of the Hill's Golden Rule magazine, published a book called The Ladder to Success and also served as an unpaid advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt from 1933 to 1936.

In 1937 Hill broke down the basics of the Philosophy of Achievement and published his work in the book Think and Grow Rich. This became Hill's most famous work and has sold over 30 million copies. Two years later, in 1939, Hill published How to Sell Your Way through Life, another best-selling book on personal achievement.

By 1953 Napoleon Hill was working closely with W. Clement Stone teaching Stone's own "Philosophy of Personal Achievement". Hill began focusing more on the idea that "thoughts are things" and that an individual can manifest his or her success simply by sharing ideas and finding like-minded individuals. Hill also wrote about the importance of the "Golden Rule" of giving and the understanding the difference between giving and exchanging with the community.

Throughout his life, Hill was open about his Christian faith and believed that his religion played a very important supporting role in his beliefs about success. Faith, in fact, always played a major role in Hill's philosophies of achievement. Napoleon Hill died on November 8, 1970. His last book, You Can Work Your Own Miracles, was published after his death./Woopidoo.com

Founder of The Science Of Success

2009-03-10T11:47:00.003+07:00

"Whatever your mind can conceive and believe it can achieve." - Napoleon Hill

American born Napoleon Hill is considered to have influenced more people into success than any other person in history. He has been perhaps the most influential man in the area of personal success technique development, primarily through his classic book Think and Grow Rich which has helped million of the people and has been important in the life of many successful people such as W. Clement Stone and Og Mandino.

Napoleon Hill was born into poverty in 1883 in a one-room cabin on the Pound River in Wise County, Virginia. At the age of 10 his mother died, and two years later his father remarried. He became a very rebellious boy, but grew up to be an incredible man. He began his writing career at age 13 as a "mountain reporter" for small town newspapers and went on to become America's most beloved motivational author. Fighting against all class of great disadvantages and pressures, he dedicated more than 25 years of his life to define the reasons by which so many people fail to achieve true financial success and happiness in their life.

During this time he achieved great success as an attorney and journalist. His early career as a reporter helped finance his way through law school. He was given an assignment to write a series of success stories of famous men, and his big break came when he was asked to interview steel-magnate Andrew Carnegie. Mr. Carnegie commissioned Hill to interview over 500 millionaires to find a success formula that could be used by the average person. These included Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Elmer Gates, Charles M. Schwab, Theodore Roosevelt, William Wrigley Jr, John Wanamaker, WIlliam Jennings Bryan, George Eastman, Woodrow Wilson, William H. Taft, John D. Rockefeller, F. W. Woolworth, Jennings Randolph, among others.

He became an advisor to Andrew Carnegie, and with Carnegie's help he formulated a philosophy of success, drawing on the thoughts and experience of a multitude of rags-to-riches tycoons. It took Hill over 20 years to produce his book, a classic in the Personal Development field called Think and Grow Rich. This book has sold over 7 million copies and has helped thousands achieve success. The secret to success is very simple but you'll have to read the book to find out what it is!

Napoleon Hill passed away in November 1970 after a long and successful career writing, teaching, and lecturing about the principles of success. His work stands as a monument to individual achievement and is the cornerstone of modern motivation. His book, Think and Grow Rich, is the all time best-seller in the field.

In recent years The Napoleon Hill Foundation has published his bestselling writings worldwide, giving him immense influence around the globe.

* * * * * * *

Here are some interesting observations by one of the greatest gurus on achieving success, Napoleon Hill:

"Before us lie two paths -- honesty and dishonesty. The shortsighted embark on the dishonest path; the wise on the honest. For the wise know the truth; in helping others we help ourselves; and in hurting others we hurt ourselves. Character overshadows money, and trust rises above fame. Honesty is still the best policy.

"Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge."

"Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements."

"Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit."

"Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit."

"Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye, and you will be drawn toward it."

"If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self."

"One must marry one's feelings to one's beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one's life."

"The ladder of success is never crowded at the top."

"The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail."

"Until you have learned to be tolerant with those who do not always agree with you; until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire; until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy."

"War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man."

"When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal."

"You must get involved to have an impact. No one is impressed with the won-lost record of the referee."

"I have proved, times too numerous to enumerate, to my own satisfaction at least, that every human brain is both a broadcasting and a receiving station for vibrations of thought frequency.

"If this theory should turn out to be a fact, and methods of reasonable control should be established, imagine the part it would play in the gathering, classifying and organising of knowledge. The possibility, much less the probability, of such a reality, staggers the mind of man!"

"The sixth sense is that portion of the subconscious mind which has been referred to as the creative imagination. It has also been referred to as the 'receiving set' through which ideas, plans and thoughts flash into the mind. The flashes are sometimes called hunches or inspirations.

"The sixth sense defies description! It cannot be described to a person who has not mastered the other principles of this philosophy, because such a person has no knowledge and no experience with which the sixth sense may be compared. Understanding the sixth sense comes only by meditation through mind development from within.

"After you have mastered the principles described in this book, you will be prepared to accept as truth a statement which may, otherwise, be incredible to you, namely:

"Through the aid of the sixth sense, you will be warned of impending dangers in time to avoid them and notified of opportunities in time to embrace them.

"There comes to your aid and to do your bidding, with the development of the sixth sense, a 'guardian angel' who will open to you at all times the door to the temple of wisdom."

-- Napoleon Hill, Source: http://napoleonhill.wwwhubs.com/

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