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#251 2017-10-09 00:34:59

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

218. Schuyler Wheeler

Schuyler Skaats Wheeler (May 17, 1860 - April 20, 1923) was an American electrical engineer and manufacturer who invented the electric fan, the electric elevator, and the electric fire engine. He helped develop and implement a code of ethics for electrical engineers.

Early life and genealogy

Wheeler was born in New York City on May 17, 1860. He was the son of James Edwin and Annie Wood (Skaats) Wheeler. His father, a lawyer in New York city, was the son of Aaron Reed Wheeler, a land speculator of Waterloo, New York, who came originally from Blackstone, Massachusetts. Wheeler's mother was the daughter of David Schuyler Skaats, the president of the First National Bank of Waterloo, New York. Skaats was an eighth generation descendent of Dominie Gideon Skaats, who had settled in Albany, New York, prior to 1650.

Mid life and career

Wheeler was educated at Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School. Leaving college in 1881, upon the death of his father, he became assistant electrician of the Yablochkov Electric Lighting Company. Wheeler then joined the United States Electric Lighting Company in 1883 when Yablochkov went out of business with his electric company. He joined the engineering staff of Thomas A. Edison and was part of the project when the Pearl Street Station debuted the first incandescent light bulbs. He acted as general manager of the underground distribution system at Newburgh, New York. He was afterwards in charge to lay the Edison underground systems in other cities.

Wheeler worked for Herzog Teleseme Company as electrician for a short time between 1884 to 1885. Then in 1886 he was part of developing and organizing the C and C Electric Motor Company with Charles G. Curtis and Francis B. Crocker. They manufactured electric motors and founded the industry. Wheeler became their main technician and plant manager. Wheeler then left the firm as did Crocker in 1888. They organized the electrical engineering firms of Crocker-Wheeler Motor Company of New York state and the Crocker-Wheeler Company of the state of New Jersey. Wheeler was president of both the firms from 1889. During his tenure with Crocker-Wheeler, he was particularly important in development of the electric motors and applying it to machine tool drives. He was for seven years (1888 - 1895) the electrical expert consultant specialist of the Board of Electrical Control of New York.

In 1900, he purchased the library of Josiah Latimer Clark, which contained the "largest collection of rare electrical works in existence." He presented the "Latimer Clark Library" to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and that became the foundation of their library housed in New York's Engineering Societies' Building and Engineers' Club. As the IEEE noted, the gift insured "Doctor Wheeler a permanent place in the role of those who have given outstanding service" to the Institute. In his IEEE presidential address in 1906, he was the progenitor of the Code of Ethics for electrical engineers, which was adopted in 1912 by the Institute's Board of Directors.

Family

Wheeler was married, in 1890, to Ella Adams, daughter of Richard N. Peterson of New York City. She died in 1895 and he married again in 1898 to Miss Amy Sutton, daughter of John Joseph Sutton of Rye, New York.

Later life and death

He died of 'angina pectoris' at his home in Manhattan on April 20, 1923. At the time of his death, he chaired the IEEE committee on "code of principles of professional conduct."

Inventions

Wheeler invented many electrical devices. He specialized in power saving electrical tools. In 1889 Wheeler received the Doctor of Science degree from Hobart College.

Wheeler invented the electric fan in 1882 by placing a two-bladed propeller on the shaft of an electric motor. He was awarded the John Scott Medal for this invention in 1904 by the Franklin Institute.

Wheeler invented the electric elevator.

He invented the electric fire engine. Wheeler's Patent for an Electric Fire-engine System was filed on May 23, 1882. It was issued on February 24, 1885 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

He invented paralleling of dynamos and series multiple motor control.

Societies and clubs

Wheeler was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers; the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (President, 1905–1906; Vice President for three years); the University Club; the Lotus Club; the Lawyers' Club; and the Automobile Club.

Wheeler was one of nine incorporators of the United Engineering Society formed in May 1904 and was one of three representatives of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He was also a member of the Efficiency Society with other millionaires.

Works

Wheeler wrote several technical articles related to electricity in various journals. He wrote articles for Harper's Weekly under the title, "The Cheap John in Electrical Engineering." In 1894 he joint authored a book titled "The Practical Management of Dynamos and Motors" with Professor Francis B. Crocker.

Legacy

Wheeler was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Science by Hobart College (1894); and a Master of Science by Columbia College (1912). His papers are archived primarily with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). His library and collection gift to the IEEE provided a core for their library.

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#252 2017-10-11 01:21:59

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

219. Éleuthère Irénée du Pont

Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours (24 June 1771 - 31 October 1834), known as Irénée du Pont, or E. I. du Pont, was a French-American chemist and industrialist who founded the gunpowder manufacturer E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. His descendants, the Du Pont family, have been one of America's richest and most prominent families since the 19th century, with generations of influential businessmen, politicians and philanthropists.

Early life and family

Du Pont was born 24 June 1771, in Paris, the son of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours and Nicole-Charlotte Marie-Louise le Dée de Rencourt. His father was a political economist who had been elevated to the nobility in 1784 by "letters patent" granted by King Louis XVI, allowing him to carry the honorable de Nemours suffix. Growing up on his father's estate, "Bois des Fossés", near Égreville, young du Pont was enthusiastic about his studies in most subjects, and showed particular interest in explosives. Du Pont married Sophie Dalmas (1775 - 1828) in 1791, and they had eight children.

Du Pont sailed before his family and landed at Rhode Island on 1 January 1800, along with his father and his brother's family. By 1802, he had established both his business and his family home, Eleutherian Mills, on the Brandywine Creek in Delaware. 1 January is the anniversary of the arrival of the du Pont family in America, and this date is still celebrated by its descendants.

Career in France

In the fall of 1785, du Pont entered the Collège Royal in Paris. Two years later, he was accepted by the friend of his father and noted chemist Antoine Lavoisier as a student in the Régie des poudres, the government agency responsible for the manufacture of gunpowder. It was from Lavoisier that he gained his expertise in nitrate extraction and manufacture. He studied "advanced explosives production techniques".

After a brief apprenticeship, he took a position at the government powder works in Essones but quit after Lavoisier left. In 1791, du Pont began to help his father manage their small publishing house in Paris, where they published a republican newspaper in support of governmental reforms in France. Despite being a soft-spoken chemist, he also had a strong sense of social order. Du Pont was a member of the pro-Revolution national guard and supported the Jacobins. However, on 20 August 1792, both du Pont and his father participated in protecting the escape of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette when the Tuileries Palace was stormed. His father riled up fellow revolutionaries by refusing to go along with the guillotine execution of Louis XVI, and the two men's moderate political views proved to be a liability in revolutionary France.

His father was arrested in 1794, only avoiding execution because of the end of the Reign of Terror. In September 1797, du Pont and his father spent a night in La Force prison while their home and presses were ransacked. These events led his father to lose hope in the political situation in France, and so he began making plans to move their family to America and aspired to create a model community of French émigrés. On 2 October 1799, the du Pont family sold their publishing house and set sail for the United States. They reached Rhode Island on 1 January 1800 and began to settle in the home the eldest du Pont had secured in Bergen Point, New Jersey.

They soon set up an office in New York City to decide what their new line of business would be, but ironically mild-mannered and introverted Éleuthère Irénée was not included in much of these plans. However, he would soon begin to realize the possibilities that his childhood apprenticeship with Lavoisier would allow him and his family in America.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company

Du Pont had no thought of becoming involved with gunpowder manufacture again upon his arrival in the United States, but he brought with him an expertise in chemistry and gunpowder making, during a time when the quality of American-made gunpowder was very poor. Delaware legend holds that he decided to go into the gunpowder business during a fateful hunting trip with Major Louis de Tousard, a former French artillery officer then employed by the United States Army to procure gunpowder supplies. Du Pont's gun misfired as he attempted to shoot a bird, which caused him to reflect on his powder-making apprenticeship with Lavoisier as a youth in France. Du Pont commented on the inferior quality of the American-made powder they were using for hunting despite its high price.

At his request, Tousard arranged a tour of an American powder plant. He quickly deduced that the saltpeter being used was of good enough quality, however, the American refining process was poor and inefficient compared with the techniques he had learned in France. He began to think that he could use his experience from France to manufacture gunpowder of a higher quality in the United States and reform the current industry standard for refinery. With his father's blessing, he began to assemble capital for the construction of the first powder mills, and returned to France in the beginning of 1801 to procure the necessary financing and equipment.

The act of association was signed on 21 April 1801, and the company was christened E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company since it was its namesake's ingenuity that had created this venture. His gunpowder company was capitalized at $36,000 with 18 shares at $2,000 each. He purchased a site on Brandywine Creek for $6,740. There were several small buildings and a dam with foundations for a cotton-spinning mill which had been destroyed by fire. The first gunpowder was produced in April 1804.

Death

Du Pont died on 31 October 1834 in Philadelphia. The cause of death was unspecified, due to "conflicting reports of either cholera or a heart attack." He was buried in the Du Pont de Nemours Cemetery on the family property in Wilmington.

Legacy

The company he founded would become one of the largest and most successful American corporations. By the mid-19th century it was the largest supplier of gunpowder to the U.S. military, and supplied as much as 40 percent of the powder used by the Union Army forces during the Civil War. His sons, Alfred V. du Pont (1798 - 1856) and Henry du Pont (1812 - 1889), managed the plant after his death, assisted by his son-in-law, Antoine Bidermann. His grandson Lammot du Pont I (1831 - 1884) was the first president of the United States Gunpowder Trade Association, popularly known as the Powder Trust.

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#253 2017-10-13 01:06:14

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

220) Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs co-founded Apple Computers with Steve Wozniak. Under Jobs' guidance, the company pioneered a series of revolutionary technologies, including the iPhone and iPad.

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world? [Jobs inviting an executive to join Apple]” - Steve Jobs

Synopsis

Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, on February 24, 1955, to two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave him up for adoption. Smart but directionless, Jobs experimented with different pursuits before starting Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak in 1976. Apple's revolutionary products, which include the iPod, iPhone and iPad, are now seen as dictating the evolution of modern technology, with Jobs having left the company in 1985 and returning more than a decade later. He died in 2011, following a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Early Life

Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California, to Joanne Schieble (later Joanne Simpson) and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave their unnamed son up for adoption. His father, Jandali, was a Syrian political science professor, and his mother, Schieble, worked as a speech therapist. Shortly after Steve was placed for adoption, his biological parents married and had another child, Mona Simpson. It was not until Jobs was 27 that he was able to uncover information on his biological parents.

The infant was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs and named Steven Paul Jobs. Clara worked as an accountant and Paul was a Coast Guard veteran and machinist. The family lived in Mountain View, California, within the area that would later become known as Silicon Valley. As a boy, Jobs and his father worked on electronics in the family garage. Paul showed his son how to take apart and reconstruct electronics, a hobby that instilled confidence, tenacity and mechanical prowess in young Jobs.

While Jobs was always an intelligent and innovative thinker, his youth was riddled with frustrations over formal schooling. Jobs was a prankster in elementary school due to boredom, and his fourth-grade teacher needed to bribe him to study. Jobs tested so well, however, that administrators wanted to skip him ahead to high school—a proposal that his parents declined.

A few years later, while Jobs was enrolled at Homestead High School, he was introduced to his future partner Steve Wozniak, who was attending the University of California, Berkeley. In a 2007 interview with PC World, Wozniak spoke about why he and Jobs clicked so well: "We both loved electronics and the way we used to hook up digital chips," Wozniak said. "Very few people, especially back then, had any idea what chips were, how they worked and what they could do. I had designed many computers, so I was way ahead of him in electronics and computer design, but we still had common interests. We both had pretty much sort of an independent attitude about things in the world. ..."

Apple Computer

After high school, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Lacking direction, he dropped out of college after six months and spent the next 18 months dropping in on creative classes at the school. Jobs later recounted how one course in calligraphy developed his love of typography.

In 1974, Jobs took a position as a video game designer with Atari. Several months later he left the company to find spiritual enlightenment in India, traveling further and experimenting with psychedelic drugs. In 1976, when Jobs was just 21, he and Wozniak started Apple Computer. The duo started in the Jobs family garage, funding their entrepreneurial venture by Jobs selling his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak selling his beloved scientific calculator.

Jobs and Wozniak are credited with revolutionizing the computer industry by democratizing the technology and making machines smaller, cheaper, intuitive and accessible to everyday consumers. Wozniak conceived of a series of user-friendly personal computers, and - with Jobs in charge of marketing - Apple initially marketed the computers for $666.66 each. The Apple I earned the corporation around $774,000. Three years after the release of Apple's second model, the Apple II, the company's sales increased by 700 percent to $139 million. In 1980, Apple Computer became a publicly traded company, with a market value of $1.2 billion by the end of its very first day of trading. Jobs looked to marketing expert John Sculley of Pepsi-Cola to take over the role of CEO for Apple.

Departure from Company

However, the next several products from Apple suffered significant design flaws, resulting in recalls and consumer disappointment. IBM suddenly surpassed Apple in sales, and Apple had to compete with an IBM/PC-dominated business world. In 1984, Apple released the Macintosh, marketing the computer as a piece of a counterculture lifestyle: romantic, youthful, creative. But despite positive sales and performance superior to IBM's PCs, the Macintosh was still not IBM-compatible. Sculley believed Jobs was hurting Apple, and the company's executives began to phase him out.

Not actually having had an official title with the company he co-founded, Jobs was pushed into a more marginalized position and thus left Apple in 1985 to begin a new hardware and software enterprise called NeXT, Inc. The following year Jobs purchased an animation company from George Lucas, which later became Pixar Animation Studios. Believing in Pixar's potential, Jobs initially invested $50 million of his own money in the company. The studio went on to produce wildly popular movies such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles; Pixar's films have collectively netted $4 billion. The studio merged with Walt Disney in 2006, making Steve Jobs Disney's largest shareholder.

Reinventing Apple

Despite Pixar's success, NeXT, Inc. floundered in its attempts to sell its specialized operating system to mainstream America. Apple eventually bought the company in 1996 for $429 million. The following year, Jobs returned to his post as Apple's CEO.

Just as Steve Jobs instigated Apple's success in the 1970s, he is credited with revitalizing the company in the 1990s. With a new management team, altered stock options and a self-imposed annual salary of $1 a year, Jobs put Apple back on track. His ingenious products (like the iMac), effective branding campaigns and stylish designs caught the attention of consumers once again.

Pancreatic Cancer

In 2003, Jobs discovered that he had a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare but operable form of pancreatic cancer. Instead of immediately opting for surgery, Jobs chose to alter his pesco-vegetarian diet while weighing Eastern treatment options. For nine months, Jobs postponed surgery, making Apple's board of directors nervous. Executives feared that shareholders would pull their stock if word got out that their CEO was ill. But in the end, Jobs' confidentiality took precedence over shareholder disclosure. In 2004, he had a successful surgery to remove the pancreatic tumor. True to form, in subsequent years Jobs disclosed little about his health.

Later Innovations

Apple introduced such revolutionary products as the Macbook Air, iPod and iPhone, all of which have dictated the evolution of modern technology. Almost immediately after Apple releases a new product, competitors scramble to produce comparable technologies. Apple's quarterly reports improved significantly in 2007: Stocks were worth $199.99 a share - a record-breaking number at that time - and the company boasted a staggering $1.58 billion profit, an $18 billion surplus in the bank and zero debt.

In 2008, iTunes became the second-biggest music retailer in America - second only to Walmart, fueled by iTunes and iPod sales. Apple has also been ranked No. 1 on Fortune magazine's list of "America's Most Admired Companies," as well as No. 1 among Fortune 500 companies for returns to shareholders.

Personal Life

Early in 2009, reports circulated about Jobs' weight loss, some predicting his health issues had returned, which included a liver transplant. Jobs had responded to these concerns by stating he was dealing with a hormone imbalance. After nearly a year out of the spotlight, Steve Jobs delivered a keynote address at an invite-only Apple event September 9, 2009.

In the early 1990s, Jobs met Laurene Powell at Stanford business school, where Powell was an MBA student. They married on March 18, 1991, and lived together in Palo Alto, California, with their three children.

Death

On October 5, 2011, Apple Inc. announced that its co-founder had passed away. After battling pancreatic cancer for nearly a decade, Steve Jobs died in Palo Alto. He was 56 years old.

Books and Biopics

A number of books have been written on Jobs' life and career, including an authorized 2011 general biography by Walter Isaacson, a 2012 young adult biography by Karen Blumenthal, and yet another title, 2015's Becoming Steve Jobs by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. The Isaacson work was critiqued for the depiction of its main subject by Apple's chief executive Tim Cook, who succeeded Jobs.

Biopics inspired by the computer icon's life have been released as well - namely the critically panned Jobs (2013), starring Ashton Kutcher, and Steve Jobs (2015), starring Michael Fassbender and directed by Danny Boyle.

steve-jobs1.jpeg


It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#254 2017-10-14 15:48:29

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

221) Sir George Cayley

Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet (27 December 1773 - 15 December 1857) was a prolific English engineer and is one of the most important people in the history of aeronautics. Many consider him to be the first true scientific aerial investigator and the first person to understand the underlying principles and forces of flight.

In 1799 he set forth the concept of the modern aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control. He was a pioneer of aeronautical engineering and is sometimes referred to as "the father of aviation." He discovered and identified the four forces which act on a heavier-than-air flying vehicle: weight, lift, drag and thrust. Modern aeroplane design is based on those discoveries and on the importance of cambered wings, also identified by Cayley. He constructed the first flying model aeroplane and also diagrammed the elements of vertical flight. He designed the first glider reliably reported to carry a human aloft. He correctly predicted that sustained flight would not occur until a lightweight engine was developed to provide adequate thrust and lift. The Wright brothers acknowledged his importance to the development of aviation.

Cayley represented the Whig party as Member of Parliament for Scarborough from 1832 to 1835, and in 1838 helped found the UK's first Polytechnic Institute, the Royal Polytechnic Institution (now University of Westminster) and served as its chairman for many years. He was a founding member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and was a distant cousin of the mathematician Arthur Cayley.

General engineering projects

Cayley, from Brompton-by-Sawdon, near Scarborough in Yorkshire, inherited Brompton Hall and Wydale Hall and other estates on the death of his father, the 5th baronet. Captured by the optimism of the times, he engaged in a wide variety of engineering projects. Among the many things that he developed are self-righting lifeboats, tension-spoke wheels,  the "Universal Railway" (his term for caterpillar tractors), automatic signals for railway crossings, seat belts, small scale helicopters, and a kind of prototypical internal combustion engine fuelled by gunpowder. He suggested that a more practical engine might be made using gaseous vapours rather than gunpowder, thus foreseeing the modern internal combustion engine. He also contributed in the fields of prosthetics, air engines, electricity, theatre architecture, ballistics, optics and land reclamation, and held the belief that these advancements should be freely available.

Flying machines

He is mainly remembered for his pioneering studies and experiments with flying machines, including the working, piloted glider that he designed and built. He wrote a landmark three-part treatise titled "On Aerial Navigation" (1809 - 1810), which was published in Nicholson's Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts. The 2007 discovery of sketches in Cayley's school notebooks (held in the archive of the Royal Aeronautical Society Library) revealed that even at school Cayley was developing his ideas on the theories of flight. It has been claimed that these images indicate that Cayley identified the principle of a lift-generating inclined plane as early as 1792. To measure the drag on objects at different speeds and angles of attack, he later built a "whirling-arm apparatus", a development of earlier work in ballistics and air resistance. He also experimented with rotating wing sections of various forms in the stairwells at Brompton Hall.

These scientific experiments led him to develop an efficient cambered airfoil and to identify the four vector forces that influence an aircraft: thrust, lift, drag, and gravity. He discovered the importance of the dihedral angle for lateral stability in flight, and deliberately set the centre of gravity of many of his models well below the wings for this reason; these principles influenced the development of hang gliders. As a result of his investigations into many other theoretical aspects of flight, many now acknowledge him as the first aeronautical engineer. His emphasis on lightness led him to invent a new method of constructing lightweight wheels which is in common use today. For his landing wheels, he shifted the spoke's forces from compression to tension by making them from tightly-stretched string, in effect "reinventing the wheel". Wire soon replaced the string in practical applications and over time the wire wheel came into common use on bicycles, cars, aeroplanes and many other vehicles.

The model glider successfully flown by Cayley in 1804 had the layout of a modern aircraft, with a kite-shaped wing towards the front and an adjustable tailplane at the back consisting of horizontal stabilisers and a vertical fin. A movable weight allowed adjustment of the model's centre of gravity. Around 1843 he was the first to suggest the idea for a convertiplane, an idea which was published in a paper written that same year. At some time before 1849 he designed and built a biplane in which an unknown ten-year-old boy flew. Later, with the continued assistance of his grandson George John Cayley and his resident engineer Thomas Vick, he developed a larger scale glider (also probably fitted with "flappers") which flew across Brompton Dale in front of Wydale Hall in 1853. The first adult aviator has been claimed to be either Cayley's coachman, footman or butler: one source (Gibbs-Smith) has suggested that it was John Appleby, a Cayley employee: however there is no definitive evidence to fully identify the pilot. An entry in volume IX of the 8th Encyclopædia Britannica of 1855 is the most contemporaneous authoritative account regarding the event. A 2007 biography of Cayley (Richard Dee's The Man Who Discovered Flight: George Cayley and the First Airplane) claims the first pilot was Cayley's grandson George John Cayley (1826 - 1878).

A replica of the 1853 machine was flown at the original site in Brompton Dale by Derek Piggott in 1973 for TV and in the mid-1980s[20] for the IMAX film On the Wing. The glider is currently on display at the Yorkshire Air Museum. Another replica, piloted by Allan McWhirter, flew in Salina, Kansas just before Steve Fossett landed the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer there in March 2003, and later piloted by Richard Branson at Brompton in summer 2003.

Memorial

Cayley is commemorated in Scarborough at the University of Hull, Scarborough Campus, where a hall of residence and a teaching building are named after him. He is one of many scientists and engineers commemorated by having a hall of residence and a bar at Loughborough University named after him. The University of Westminster also honours Cayley's contribution to the formation of the institution with a gold plaque at the entrance of the Regent Street building.

There are display boards and a video film at the Royal Air Force Museum London in Hendon honouring Cayley's achievements and a modern exhibition and film "Pioneers of Aviation" at the Yorkshire Air Museum, Elvington,York. The Sir George Cayley Sailwing Club is a Yorkshire-based free flight club, affiliated to the British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, which has borne his name since its founding in 1975.

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#255 2017-10-16 01:06:51

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

222) Jan Koum

Biography of Jan Koum

Jan Koum (Ukraine, conceived February 24, 1976) is an American web businessman and PC engineer. He and Brian Acton are the CEO and fellow sponsor of WhatsApp, a versatile informing application which was occupied by Facebook Incorporation in February 2014 for US$19 Billion. In 2014, he entered the Forbes rundown of the 400 wealthiest Americans at position 62, with an expected worth of more than seven billion dollars and a large portion of billion dollars. He was the most astounding positioned newcomer.

Early Life

Koum was conceived in Kyiv, Ukraine. He is Jewish. He experienced childhood in Festive, outside Kyiv, and moved with his mom and grandma to Mountain View, California in 1992, where a social bolster system helped the family to get a little apartment comprised of two-room, at the age of 16. His dad had expected to join the family later, however at long last stayed in Ukraine. At first Koum’s mom acted as a sitter, while he himself filled in as a cleaner at a staple.

Education

By the age of 18 he got to be occupied himself with programming. He was recruited at San Jose State University and at the same time he worked at Ernst & Young as a security analyzer.

Court Case

In February 1996, a limiting request was allowed against Koum in state court in San Jose, California. An ex point by point affairs in which she said Koum verbally and physically debilitated her. In October 2014, Koum said in regards to the controlling request, “I am embarrassed about the way I acted, and embarrassed that my conduct constrained her to make lawful move.”

Career

In 1997, Jan Koum was acquired by Yahoo as a framework engineer, not long after he met Brian Acton while working at Ernst & Young as a security analyzer. Throughout these nine years, they worked at Yahoo. In September 2007 Koum and Acton left Yahoo and took a year off, going around South America and playing extreme Frisbee. Both connected, and fizzled, to work at Facebook. In January 2009, he purchased an iPhone and understood that the then-seven-month-old App Store spoke the truth to generate an entire new industry of applications. He went to his companion Alex Fishman and the two spoke for quite a long time about Koum’s thought for an application over tea at Fishman’s kitchen counter. Koum very quickly picked the name WhatsApp in light of the fact that it seemed like “what’s up,” and after a week on his birthday, Feb. 24, 2009, he fused WhatsApp Inc. in California.

Mark Zuckerberg

WhatsApp got to be prominent in only a little measure of time, and this got Face book’s consideration. Facebook’s originator Mark Zuckerberg initially reached Koum in the spring 2012. The two started meeting at a coffeehouse in Los Altos, California, then started a progression of suppers and strolls in the slopes above Silicon Valley.

On February ninth, Zuckerberg invited Koum to dinner at his home, and formally proposed Koum an arrangement to join the Facebook board.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a texting application for cell phones that works under a membership plan of action. The exclusive, cross-stage application utilizes the Internet to send instant messages, pictures, feature, and client area and sound media messages. In January 2015, WhatsApp was the most internationally mainstream informing application with more than 600 million dynamic clients. In April 2015, WhatsApp came to 800 million dynamic users. In September 2015 the client base has grown up to 900 million.

WhatsApp Inc., situated in Mountain View, California, was obtained by Facebook on February 19, 2014, for roughly US$16 billion

Present

Today Jan Koum is 37 years of age, one of the wealthiest men in the online networking industry, yet as thinking back, in a positive light, on the basic life that he had in the Ukraine and how his vision of moment straightforward informing has changed the life of many millions.

Jan-Koum-Founder-of-WhatsApp.jpg


It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#256 2017-10-21 01:51:50

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

223) Sir Edwin Lutyens

Sir Edwin Lutyens, in full Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens (born March 29, 1869, London, England—died January 1, 1944, London), English architect noted for his versatility and range of invention along traditional lines. He is known especially for his planning of New Delhi and his design of the Viceroy’s House there.

After studying at the Royal College of Art, London, he was articled in 1887 to a firm of architects but soon left to set up in practice on his own. In his early works (1888–95) he assimilated the traditional forms of local Surrey buildings. Lutyens’ style changed when he met the landscape gardener Gertrude Jekyll, who taught him the “simplicity of intention and directness of purpose” she had learned from John Ruskin. At Munstead Wood, Godalming, Surrey (1896), Lutyens first showed his personal qualities as a designer. This house, balancing the sweep of the roof with high buttressed chimneys and offsetting small doorways with long strips of windows, made his reputation. A brilliant series of country houses followed in which Lutyens adapted varied styles of the past to the demands of contemporary domestic architecture.

About 1910 Lutyens’ interest shifted to larger, civil projects, and in 1912 he was selected to advise on the planning of the new Indian capital at Delhi. His plan, with a central mall and diagonal avenues, may have owed something to Pierre-Charles L’Enfant’s plan for Washington, D.C., and to Christopher Wren’s plan for London after the Great Fire, but the total result was quite different: a garden-city pattern, based on a series of hexagons separated by broad avenues with double lines of trees. In his single most important building, the Viceroy’s House (1913–30), he combined aspects of classical architecture with features of Indian decoration. Lutyens was knighted in 1918.

After World War I Lutyens became architect to the Imperial War Graves Commission, for which he designed the Cenotaph, London (1919–20); the Great War Stone (1919); and military cemeteries in France. His vast project for the Roman Catholic cathedral at Liverpool was incomplete at his death.

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#257 2017-10-23 00:27:04

Jai Ganesh
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Re: crème de la crème

224) Francis Pettit Smith

Sir Francis Pettit Smith (1808 - 12 February 1874) was an English inventor and, along with John Ericsson, one of the inventors of the screw propeller. He was also the driving force behind the construction of the world's first screw-propelled steamship, SS Archimedes.

Early life

He was born at Hythe, Kent where his father was the postmaster. He was educated at a private school in Ashford run by the Rev. Alexander Power, before working as a grazing Farmer on Romney Marsh, later moving to Hendon in Middlesex where he continued to farm for 37 years.

Career

As a boy he had acquired great skill in the construction of model boats and took special interest in their means of propulsion. This fascination with boats remained with him and in 1834 on a reservoir near his farm, he perfected the propulsion of a model boat by means of a wooden screw driven by a spring. He became utterly convinced that this form of propulsion was greatly superior to the paddle wheel which was in use at the time. The following year he built a superior model with which he performed a number of experiments at Hendon and in 1836 took out a patent for propelling vessels by means of a screw revolving beneath the water at the stern.

After securing the financial backing of several parties, he helped organize the Propeller Steamship Company which in 1839 built the world's first successful screw-propelled steamship, SS Archimedes. A short time later, he was instrumental in persuading Isambard Kingdom Brunel to change the design of the SS Great Britain from paddle to screw propulsion, by lending Brunel the Archimedes for several months. He also helped persuade the British Admiralty to adopt screw propulsion.

Later life

Between 1864 and 1870 he resided in an elegant Victorian house at 17 Sydenham Hill SE26 , near Crystal Palace Park, a fact noted on a Blue Plaque.

In 1860 the government appointed him to the post of curator of the Patent Museum at South Kensington. In 1871 a knighthood was conferred upon him.

Smith died at 15 Thurloe Place, South Kensington in February 1874, and is buried in St Leonards Cemetery, Hythe, Kent.

Personal life

Smith married twice and had children by each marriage.

Legacy

Smith negotiated with the Governors of Dulwich College for the lease of a plot of land on Sydenham Hill where he built his house named Centra House in 1864. The house was designed by Charles Barry, Jr. (the eldest son of Sir Charles Barry). The house still stands today. In the grounds Smith had planted a considerable shrubbery and had use of woodlands down to College Road. A later resident added a Pulhamite fountain and small grotto to the rear of the residence and renamed the house Dilkoosh. It was later renamed to its present title - Fountain House.

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#258 2017-10-24 13:56:15

Jai Ganesh
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Re: crème de la crème

225) Sir Joseph Wilson Swan

Joseph Swan, in full Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (born October 31, 1828, Sunderland, Durham, England - died May 27, 1914, Warlingham, Surrey), English physicist and chemist who produced an early electric lightbulb and invented the dry photographic plate, an important improvement in photography and a step in the development of modern photographic film.

After serving his apprenticeship with a druggist in his native town, Swan became first assistant and later partner in a firm of manufacturing chemists in Newcastle. Working with wet photographic plates, he noticed that heat increased the sensitivity of the silver bromide emulsion. By 1871 he had devised a method of drying the wet plates, initiating the age of convenience in photography. Eight years later he patented bromide paper, the paper commonly used in modern photographic prints.

Some years earlier, in 1860, Swan developed a primitive electric light, one that utilized a filament of carbonized paper in an evacuated glass bulb. Lack of a good vacuum and an adequate electric source, however, resulted in a short lifetime for the bulb and inefficient light. His design was substantially the one used by Thomas A. Edison nearly 20 years later. In 1880, after the improvement of vacuum techniques, both Swan and Edison produced a practical lightbulb. Three years later, while searching for a better carbon filament for his lightbulb, Swan patented a process for squeezing nitrocellulose through holes to form fibres. In 1885 he exhibited his equipment and some articles made from the artificial fibres. The textile industry has utilized his process. Swan was knighted in 1904.

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#259 2017-10-29 00:23:42

Jai Ganesh
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Re: crème de la crème

226) Frederick Walton

Frederick Edward Walton (13 March 1834 – 16 May 1928), was an English manufacturer and inventor whose invention of Linoleum in Staines was patented in 1860. He also invented Lincrusta in 1877.

Walton was born in 1834 near Halifax. In 1864, he formed the Linoleum Manufacturing Company and by 1869 the factory in Staines was exporting to Europe and the United States.

He died in 1928, aged 94.

(Lincrusta is a deeply embossed wallcovering. A British invention, it was the brainchild of inventor Frederick Walton who earlier (1860) patented linoleum floor covering. Lincrusta was launched in 1877 and was used in a host of applications from royal homes to railway carriages. The linseed gel continues to dry for many years, so the surface gets tougher over time. Many examples over a hundred years old can still be found throughout the world.

Lincrusta is made from a paste of gelled linseed oil and wood flour spread onto a paper base. It is then rolled between steel rollers, one of which has a pattern embossed upon it. It was originally manufactured in Sunbury-on-Thames until 1918 when the manufacturing was moved to Darwen, Lancashire).

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#260 2017-10-31 14:50:08

Jai Ganesh
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Re: crème de la crème

227) William Stokes

William Stokes (1 October 1804 - 10 January 1878) was an Irish physician, who was Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Dublin. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh Medical School with an MD in 1825 later returning the practice in Dublin at Meath Hospital. He went on to create two important works on cardiac and pulmonary diseases - A Treatise on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases of the Chest (1837) and The Diseases of the Heart and Aorta (1854) – as well as one of the first treatises on the use of the stethoscope. He emphasised the importance of clinical examination in forming diagnoses, and of ward-based learning for students of medicine.

Both Cheyne–Stokes breathing (the alternation of apnoea with tachypnoea) and Stokes - Adams syndrome are named after him. Stokes' sign is a severe throbbing in the abdomen, at the right of the umbilicus, in acute enteritis. Stokes law is that a muscle situated above an inflamed membrane is often affected with paralysis.

In 1858 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In June 1861 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society as: "The Author of A work on the Diseases of the Lungs, and of a work on the Diseases of the Heart and Aorta – and of other contributions to Pathological Science. Eminent as a Physician". He was elected President of the Royal Irish Academy for 1874 - 76.

His son, Whitley Stokes, was a notable lawyer and Celtic scholar, his daughter Margaret Stokes an archaeologist and writer.

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#261 2017-11-02 01:02:32

Jai Ganesh
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Re: crème de la crème

228) Frederick Kipping

Frederic Stanley Kipping (16 August 1863 - 1 May 1949) was an English chemist.

He was born in Manchester, England, the son of James Kipping, a Bank of England official, and educated at Manchester Grammar School before enrolling in 1879 at Owens College (now Manchester University) for an external degree from the University of London. After working for the local gas company for a short time he went in 1886 to Germany to work under William Henry Perkin, Jr. in the laboratories of Adolf von Baeyer at Munich University.

Back in England, he took a position as demonstrator for Perkin, who had been appointed professor at Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh. In 1890, Kipping was appointed chief demonstrator in chemistry for the City and Guilds of London Institute, where he worked for the chemist Henry Edward Armstrong. In 1897 he moved to University College, Nottingham as professor of the chemistry department, and became the first newly endowed Sir Jesse Boot professor of chemistry at the university in 1928. He remained there until his retirement in 1936.

Kipping undertook much of the pioneering work into the development of silicon polymers (silicones) at Nottingham. He pioneered the study of the organic compounds of silicon (organosilicon) and coined the term silicone. His research formed the basis for the worldwide development of the synthetic rubber and silicone-based lubricant industries. He also co-wrote, with Perkin, a standard textbook in organic chemistry (Organic Chemistry, Perkin and Kipping, 1899).

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June, 1897. He was awarded their Davy Medal in 1918 and delivered their Bakerian Lecture in 1936.

He retired in 1936 and died in Criccieth, Wales. He had married in 1888 Lilian Holland, one of three sisters. Both his brothers-in-law were eminent scientists themselves (Arthur Lapworth and William Henry Perkin, Jr.)

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#262 2017-11-04 01:16:50

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Re: crème de la crème

229) Whitcomb L. Judson

Whitcomb L. Judson (March 7, 1846 - December 7, 1909) was an American machine salesman, mechanical engineer and inventor. Judson invented the zipper in the 1890s.

Early life

Judson was born in Chicago, Illinois. According to the 1860 census, he lived in Illinois, and served in the Union army. He enlisted in 1861 at Oneida, Illinois in the Forty-Second Illinois Cavalry. Judson attended Knox College in his hometown Galesburg, Illinois. He was found in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1886. In 1886 and 1887 the Minneapolis city directory identifies Judson as a "traveling agent" - a traveling salesman working probably for Pitts Agricultural Works. A couple of years later Judson began working for Earle Manufacturing Company with Harry L. Earle as the head of the firm. Judson sold band cutters and grain scales for them along with other items as one of their salesmen.

Street railway

Judson began his efforts of making inventions around 1888 to 1889. His concentration was on inventions for a "pneumatic street railway". His first patented invention was for a "mechanical movement" related to that. In 1889 Judson obtained six patents related to his concept of a street railway running on compressed air. The concept was similar to the cable railway system but with pistons suspended beneath the railcar. Similar systems were tried throughout the nineteenth century, however they all failed because of sealing problems. Judson's similar inventions were also impractical and as a whole not very successful. The street railway concept ultimately went electric. It turned out, however, that Earle was promoter for the Judson Pneumatic Street Railway. They even had a demonstration line in 1890 in Washington, D.C. for about a mile that was at what is today Georgia Avenue. It ran for only a few weeks before they shut it down due to technical problems. A cable streetcar firm bought them out and turned it into an electric streetcar since Judson's system was impractical.

Zipper

Judson was an inventor who was awarded 30 patents over a sixteen-year career. He received fourteen patents on street railway ideas before his most noteworthy invention, a chain-lock fastener. This was the precursor to the modern zipper which he developed and invented in 1890. Judson is recognized as the inventor of the zipper. He also invented a "clasp-locker" automation production machine that made his fastener device inexpensively. There were many technical problems in making the "clasp-lockers" however.

Judson’s metal zipper fastener device was called a "clasp-locker" in his day, not a zipper - which name came into existence many years after his death. The "clasp locker" was a complicated hook-and-eye fastener with an arrangement of hooks and eyes run by a "guide" for closing and opening a clothing item. The first application was as a shoe fastener and there is mention in the patents for possible applications for corsets, gloves, mail bags, and "generally wherever it is desired to detachably connect a pair adjacent flexible parts."  It is also said one of the reasons he invented this device was to relieve the tedium of fastening high button boots that were fashionable in those days.

Judson's first slide fastener patent was applied for in November 1891. At the time the United States Patent Office didn't require a working model of a patent, only that the invention was to be a novel idea. However, his invention was almost rejected by the patent assistant examiner Thomas Hart Anderson because there were several types of shoe fasteners already patented. He applied for a second patent on an improved version for the same item some nine months later before the first was even approved.

The patent examiner was starting to wonder if Judson wasn't on a fishing expedition to ascertain if his idea was actually novel. However, eventually, after the last amendment was filed, the patent was approved in May 1893, along with an improved version. When the two patents were finally issued on August 29 (along with 378 others that day), they received the numbers U.S.P. 504,038 (first) and U.S.P. 504,037 (second). These patents describe several designs of the "clasp-locker". Later design patents of the fastener describe opposite elements on each side that are identical to each other and fit together by the engaging of "pintles" and "sockets." In his patent U.S.P. 557,207 of 1896 is a description mostly like the zipper of today.

... each link of each chain is provided both with a male and female coupling part, and when the chains are coupled together the female part of each link on one chain is engaged by the male part of a link on the other chain.

In 1893 Judson exhibited his new invention at the Chicago World's Fair where it had its debut. Judson launched the Universal Fastener Company to manufacture his new invention, together with Harry L. Earle and Lewis Walker. The Universal Fastener Company started out in Chicago and then moved to Elyria, Ohio. It then moved to Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, and then to Hoboken, New Jersey. The name changed eventually to Automatic Hook and Eye Company.

Judson's "clasp-locker" met with little commercial success at first. He ultimately never saw much success in the "clasp-locker" as a fashion item during his lifetime. Judson made a "C-curity" clasp-locker fastener in 1905 which was an improved version of his previous patents. It tended to break open unexpectedly like the predecessors. Clothing manufacturers showed little interest in Judson's fastener perhaps because of this reason.

An improved version of 1896 came with a cam-action slider which is somewhat similar to the locker and unlocker shown in my prior patents, but which in this combination operates with a somewhat different action involving an automatic movement of the slider backward in the uncoupling action of the chains, and which slider is in this case designed to remain permanently on the shoe.

Judson made his invention to save people the trouble of buttoning and unbuttoning their shoes every day as shows in his wording in the patent application. He describes this in his patent U.S.P. 557,207

...From the foregoing statements it must be obvious that a shoe equipped with my device has all the advantages peculiar to a lace-shoe, while at the same time it is free from the annoyances hitherto incidental to lace-shoes on account of the lacing and unlacing required every time the shoes were put on or taken off the feet and on account of the lacing-strings coming untied. With my device the lacing-strings may be adjusted from time to time to take up the slack in the shoes, and the shoes may be fastened or loosened more quickly than any other form of shoe hitherto devised, so far as I am aware.

In 1913 the zipper was improved by the Swedish-American engineer, Gideon Sundback, and also by Catharina Kuhn-Moos of Europe. Sundback successfully redesigned Judson's fastener into a more streamlined and reliable form called "Talon." Automatic Hook and Eye Company then changed its name to the Hookless Fastener Company. In 1937 the Hookless Fastener Company became Talon, Inc.

In 1918 a textile company manufactured flying suits for the United States Navy with this fastener. Judson's company received an order for thousands of their "clasp-locker" fasteners. Soon thereafter they appeared on gloves and tobacco pouches. The B. F. Goodrich company in 1923 installed these fasteners in their rubber galoshes, calling the new design "Zippers." This then became the name of the fastener itself. The design of the fastener today is much like Sundback's improvement of Judson's "clasp-locker."

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#263 2017-11-09 03:02:55

Jai Ganesh
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Re: crème de la crème

230) David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy, in full David Mackenzie Ogilvy (born June 23, 1911, West Horsley, Surrey, England - died July 21, 1999, near Bonnes, France), British advertising executive known for his emphasis on creative copy and campaign themes, founder of the agency of Ogilvy & Mather.

Ogilvy was the son of a classics scholar and broker, but financial reverses left the family in straitened circumstance when he was a boy. Nonetheless, he earned scholarships to Fettes College, Edinburgh, and to Christ Church, Oxford. After leaving Oxford without a degree, Ogilvy found work as an apprentice chef at an exclusive Parisian hotel and as a stove salesman. Then a brother working in the British advertising agency of Mather & Crowther offered him a job. He soon became an account executive and went to the United States to learn American advertising techniques. While there, Ogilvy worked for the American pollster George Gallup; he later credited much of his success in advertising to this experience.

During World War II Ogilvy served in British Intelligence in Washington, D.C., and for a time was second secretary at the British embassy there. After the war, he tried farming in the Amish area of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but, being unable to make a living at it, he turned again to advertising. In 1948 Ogilvy and Anderson Hewitt formed Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather, with some financial help from his former English employers and another English advertising agency. They started out with British clients, such as the manufacturers of Wedgwood china and Rolls-Royce. Ogilvy’s successful ad campaigns for early clients soon garnered for the agency such major American ad accounts as General Foods and American Express. In 1966, with Ogilvy at the helm, the firm of Ogilvy & Mather became one of the first advertising firms to go public. The company expanded throughout the 1970s and ’80s, and in 1989 it was bought by WPP Group PLC. Ogilvy was then made chairman of WPP, but he stepped down from that position three years later, retiring to a chateau in France.

Ogilvy’s legacy includes the concept of “branding,” a strategy that closely links a product name with a product in the hope of engendering “brand” loyalty in the consumer, and a distinctive style that bore his personal stamp - among his notable ads were those for Hathaway shirts, featuring a distinguished-looking man with an eyepatch, and for Rolls-Royce, which proclaimed “At sixty miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.” He wrote two influential books on advertising - Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963) and Ogilvy on Advertising (1983) -and An Autobiography (1997; a revised edition of a book originally published as Blood, Brains, and Beer, 1978).

Ogilvy insisted that it is better not to advertise than to use poorly designed or poorly written advertisements.

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#264 2017-11-11 00:12:51

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Re: crème de la crème

231) Micheal Phelps

The Most Decorated Olympian Of All Time

By the time he retired at Rio 2106 at the age of 31, Michael Phelps had collected a total of 23 golds, three silvers and two bronzes at the Olympics, a record-breaking haul that looks unlikely to be bettered for many years to come.

The most decorated athlete of all at Rio 2016, where he won five golds and a silver, Phelps suffered attention deficit/hyperactivity ­disorder as a child and was encouraged to take up swimming at the age of seven to control his energy. Over the years he developed into a champion swimmer, beating record after record in every age category in which he competed.

From Sydney to Athens

Phelps began to forge his Olympic legend at the age of 15, when he finished fifth in the 200m butterfly final at Sydney 2000. Reflecting on that achievement, the ever-demanding swimmer said: “It was great, I was fifth, that’s a pretty big accomplishment. But I didn’t want it. I wanted more. I was within half a second of medaling – it was literally, if I would have taken it out a little bit faster, maybe I would have had a chance.”

“There are reasons why I swam every holiday, every Christmas, every birthday,” added Phelps, explaining why he was the most dedicated of swimmers. “I was trying to be as prepared as I could, and I tried to see what I could really do and what my potential was. I just really did kind of whatever it took.”

Phelps had won five world titles by the time he opened his Olympic account at Athens 2004. Competing in eight events in the Greek capital, he took gold in the 100m and 200m butterfly, 200m and 400m individual medley and the 4x100m and 4x200m freestyle relays with his USA team-mates. He also won bronze in the 200m freestyle and the 4x100m freestyle relay.

His eight-medal haul matched the single Summer Games record set by Soviet gymnast Aleksandr Ditatyn, at Moscow 1980, while his tally of golds was only one fewer than the record seven won by his fellow countryman Mark Spitz, in the pool at Munich 1972.

“Everyone was comparing me to Mark Spitz. But for me – I still say this a lot – it was never about beating Mark Spitz,” Phelps later said. “It never was. It was about becoming the first Michael Phelps, not the second Mark Spitz. And that’s truly what I always dreamed of as a kid. I dreamed of doing something that no one had ever done before.”

Beijing Eight

Another 12 titles came his way at the 2005 and 2007 FINA World Aquatics Championships, held in Montreal and Melbourne respectively, a sign of things to come at Beijing 2008, where he took gold in all eight events he contested. It was a feat unprecedented in any sport in the history of the Games.

In topping the podium in the 100m and 200m butterfly, 200m freestyle, 200m and 400m individual medleys and the 4x100m and 4x200m freestyle relays and the 4x100m medley relay, the voracious Phelps posted seven world records and an Olympic record in the 100m butterfly. His exploits in the Chinese capital made him the most decorated of all Olympians with 14 gold medals.

In the years that followed, the Bob Bowman prodigy became the most decorated swimmer in the history of the world championships, winning five more titles in Rome in 2009 and a further four in Shanghai two years later to take his Worlds medal collection to 33, 26 of them golds.

Four Games And Out?

In making his fourth Olympic appearance at London 2012, where he announced his impending retirement, Phelps became the first male swimmer to win the 100m butterfly and 200m individual medley titles at three consecutive Games. As well as landing the 4x200m freestyle relay title, he took silver in the 200m butterfly and the 4x100m freestyle relay before claiming an 18th Olympic gold in the 4x100m medley.

Speaking after that final success, an emotional Phelps said: “It’s tough to put into words right now, but I finished my career how I wanted to. Through the ups and downs of my career I’ve still been able to do everything that I’ve ever wanted to accomplish. I’ve been able to do things that no-one else has ever been able to do and this is one of the funniest ways to finish it, in a relay.”

Phelps’ London exploits took his career tally of Olympic medals to a record 23, moving him past the previous best of 18, amassed by Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina in the 1950s and 60s.

A Rousing Return

Despite having announced his retirement, Phelps could not resist the lure of the pool, and was back in training in April 2014, his sights set on Rio 2016. Turning in a typically brilliant performance at the U.S. Trials in Omaha in late June 2016, he qualified for three individual and three relay events.

Still the world-record holder for the 100m butterfly (49.82 seconds), 200m butterfly (1:51.51), 400m individual medley (4:03.84) and the 4x100m (3:08.24) and 4x200m freestyle (6:58.55) relays, the greatest swimmer of them all was in determined mood ahead of Rio 2016.

“I’m 31 years old and swimming faster than I ever have before,” he warned, letting everyone know that he was still hungry to add to his record tally of Olympic titles and medals.

Phelps began his Rio campaign by swimming a decisive second leg in the 4x100m freestyle relay, helping the USA win gold ahead of France and Australia, the 19th of his storied career. The 20th and 21st came within an hour of each other two days later, as he won the 200m butterfly title for the third time and the 4x200m freestyle for a fourth.

After the second of those victories, and having secured his status as one of the heroes of the Rio Games, he emerged from the water and sat on his starting block, soaking up the adulation of the crowd.

Two days later, he won the 200m medley for the fourth time in a row, joining compatriots Al Oerter (discus) and Carl Lewis (long jump) as the only athletes to have won the same individual event at four consecutive Games.

“This all started and began with one little dream as a kid to change the sport of swimming, try to do something nobody has ever done,” he said after making it gold number 22.

The following day he shared silver with close friends and rivals Chad Le Clos and Laszlo Cseh behind Singaporean youngster Joseph Schooling in the 100m butterfly.

“Chad and I have raced each other quite a few times in the last four years, and as for Laszlo and me, I can’t even remember the first time we competed against each other,” he said after securing a 27th Olympic medal. “So it’s kind of special, and a great way for me to finish my last individual race.”

Phelps’ last race of all came on 13 August, when he made a typically brilliant contribution to the USA’s victory in the 4x100m medley, swimming a superb butterfly leg en route to collecting his 23rd Olympic gold and 28th medal overall.

“Being able to close the door on this sport how I wanted to – that’s why I’m happy now,” Phelps said after completing his six-medal haul in Rio. “I was a little kid with a dream, which turned into a couple of medals. Just being able to finish this way is special because now I’m able to start the next chapter in my life.”

In December 2016, Phelps posed with every one of his Olympic medals for the magazine Sports Illustrated. In total they weighed eight kilograms, a staggering haul that will take some matching.

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#265 2017-11-13 00:49:25

Jai Ganesh
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Re: crème de la crème

232) Satya Nadella

Satya Narayana Nadella (born 19 August 1967) is an Indian American business executive. He is the current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Microsoft, succeeding Steve Ballmer in 2014. Before becoming CEO, he was Executive Vice President of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise group, responsible for building and running the company's computing platforms, developer tools and cloud computing services.

Early life

Nadella was born in Hyderabad (now in the state of Telangana). His father, Bukkapuram Nadella Yugandher, was a civil servant of the Indian Administrative Service.

Nadella attended the Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet before attaining Bachelor of Engineering degree in electrical engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology (then part of Mangalore University) in 1988.

Nadella subsequently traveled to the U.S. to study for a Master of Science in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, receiving his degree in 1990. Later he received his MBA degree from University of Chicago

Nadella said he "always wanted to build things" and that "electrical engineering was a great way for me to go discover what turned out to become a passion."

Career

Sun Microsystems

Nadella worked at Sun Microsystems as a member of its technology staff prior to joining Microsoft in 1992.

Microsoft

At Microsoft, Nadella has led major projects that included the company's move to cloud computing and the development of one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world.

Nadella worked as the senior vice-president of Research and Development (R&D) for the Online Services Division and vice-president of the Microsoft Business Division. Later, he was made the president of Microsoft's $19 billion Server and Tools Business and led a transformation of the company's business and technology culture from client services to cloud infrastructure and services. He has been credited for helping bring Microsoft's database, Windows Server and developer tools to its Azure cloud. The revenue from Cloud Services grew to $20.3 billion in June 2013 from $16.6 billion when he took over in 2011. He received $18 million in 2016 pay.

Nadella's 2013 base salary was nearly $700,000, for a total compensation, with stock bonuses, of $7.6 million.

Previous positions held by Nadella include:

President of the Server & Tools Division (9 February 2011 – February 2014)
Senior Vice-President of Research and Development for the Online Services Division (March 2007 – February 2011)
Vice-President of the Business Division
Corporate Vice-President of Business Solutions and Search & Advertising Platform Group
Executive Vice-President of Cloud and Enterprise group

On 4 February 2014, Nadella was announced as the new CEO of Microsoft, the third chief executive in the company's history, following Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

In October 2014, Nadella courted controversy when he made a statement that women should not ask for a raise and should trust the system. The statement was made while he was attending an event on Women in Computing in Phoenix, AZ. Nadella was roundly criticised for the statement and he apologised later on Twitter. He later sent an email to Microsoft employees admitting he was "Completely wrong".

Nadella changed the company’s direction after becoming CEO. His tenure has emphasized openness to working with companies and technologies with which Microsoft also competes, including Apple Inc., Salesforce, IBM, and Dropbox. In contrast to previous Microsoft campaigns against the Linux operating system, Nadella proclaimed that "Microsoft ♥ Linux", and in 2016, Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member.

Under Nadella, Microsoft revised its mission statement to "empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more". In comparison to founder Bill Gates's "a PC on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software", Nadella says that it is an enduring mission, rather than a temporal goal. His key goal has been transforming Microsoft’s corporate culture into one that values continual learning and growth. He has cited the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck as inspiration for this philosophy around a "growth mindset".

Nadella's leadership of Microsoft included a series of high profile acquisitions of other companies, to redirect Microsoft's focus. His first major acquisition was of Mojang, a Swedish game company best known for the popular freeform computer building game Minecraft, in late 2014, for $2.5 billion. Minecraft was notably a cross-platform game, with versions running on Apple's iOS mobile devices, and the Sony PlayStation dedicated gaming console, as well as Microsoft's Xbox. He followed that in 2016 by purchasing Xamarin and LinkedIn.

In the years since becoming CEO, Nadella is viewed as having done well, with Microsoft stock having risen more than 60% since he took over, and achieving an all-time high.

Personal life

In 1992, Nadella married Anupama, daughter of his father's Indian Administrative Service (IAS) batchmate, K.R. Venugopal. The couple has three children, a son and two daughters, and live in Bellevue, Washington.

Nadella is an avid reader of American and Indian poetry. He also has an interest in cricket (his passion growing up), having played on his school team. He has mentioned having learned something about leadership and teamwork from cricket. He has a cricket bat signed by Sachin Tendulkar as his favorite personal possession.

In June 2016, it was announced Nadella would publish his first book, with a publish date planned for fall 2017. Titled 'Hit Refresh', the book will explore his life, Microsoft and how technology will shape the future. The profits from the book will be put towards Microsoft Philanthropies where it will go on to help nonprofits.

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#266 2017-11-15 02:39:29

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

233) Jacques E. Brandenberger

Jacques Edwin Brandenberger (19 October 1872 – 13 July 1954) was a Swiss chemist and textile engineer who in 1908 invented cellophane. He was awarded the Franklin Institute's Elliott Cresson Medal in 1937.

Brandenberger was born in Zurich in 1872. He graduated from the University of Bern in 1895. In 1908 Brandenberger invented cellophane. Made from wood cellulose, cellophane was intended as a coating to make cloth more resistant to staining. After several years of further research and refinements he began production of cellophane in 1920 marketing it for industrial purposes. He sold the US rights to DuPont in 1923.


It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#267 2017-11-18 01:41:19

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

234) Harry Brearley

Harry Brearley (18 February 1871 – 14 July 1948) was an English metallurgist, usually credited with the invention of "rustless steel" (later to be called "stainless steel" in the anglophone world).

Life

Brearley was born on 18 February 1871 in Sheffield, England, the son of John Brearley, a steelworker, and his wife, Jane Brearley née Senior. He left Woodside school at the age of twelve to enter his first employment as a labourer in his father's steelworks, later getting the post of general assistant in the company's chemical laboratory. He married Helen Theresa Crank (1874–1955) on 23 October 1895. For several years, in addition to his laboratory work, he studied at home and later in formal evening classes, to specialize in steel production techniques and associated chemical analysis methods.

By his early thirties, Brearley had earned a reputation as an experienced professional and for being very astute in the resolution of practical, industrial, metallurgical problems. It was in 1908, when two of Sheffield's principal steelmaking companies innovatively agreed to jointly finance a common research laboratory (Brown Firth Laboratories) that Harry Brearley was asked to lead the project.

After leaving Brown Firth, Brearley joined Brown Bayley's Steel Works, also in Sheffield; he became a director of the firm in 1925.

In 1941 Brearley created a charitable trust The Freshgate Trust Foundation, a grantmaking charity operating in Sheffield and South Yorkshire. His aim was to provide a "Fresh Gate" or new opportunity to people like him born into modest circumstances so that they may experience the finer things in life such as travel, education, the arts and music. The foundation is still operating as a registered charity awarding grants for charitable purposes in South Yorkshire.

Brearley died on 14 July 1948, at Torquay, a coastal resort town in Devon, south west England. He was cremated at Efford Crematorium, Efford, near Plymouth on 16 July 1948 and his ashes were scattered in the Efford Crematorium Garden of Remembrance.

In 2013, in the Sheffield University Varsity Brewing Challenge, Sheffield University named their beer – brewed by Thornbridge – Brearleys, to commemorate 100 years since Harry Brearley invented stainless steel.

Stainless steel

In the troubled years immediately before World War I, arms manufacturing increased significantly in the UK, but practical problems were encountered due to erosion (excessive wear) of the internal surfaces of gun barrels. Brearley began to research new steels which could better resist the erosion caused by high temperatures (rather than corrosion, as is often mentioned in this regard). He began to examine the addition of chromium to steel, which was known to raise the material’s melting point, as compared to the standard carbon steels.

The research concentrated on quantifying the effects of varying the levels of carbon (C, at concentrations around 0.2 weight %) and chromium (Cr, in the range of 6 to 15 weight %).

The accidental discovery

In order to undertake metallography to study the microstructure of the experimental alloys (the main factor responsible for a steel's mechanical properties) it was necessary to polish and etch the metallic samples produced. For a carbon steel, a dilute solution of nitric acid in alcohol is sufficient to produce the required etching, but Brearley found that the new chromium steels were very resistant to chemical attack.

Development

It was probably Harry Brearley’s upbringing in Sheffield, a city famous for the manufacture of cutlery since the 16th century, which led him to appreciate the potential of these new steels for applications not only in high-temperature service, as originally envisioned, but also in the mass-production of food-related applications such as cutlery, saucepans and processing equipment etc. Up to that time carbon-steel knives were prone to unhygienic rusting if they were not frequently polished and only expensive sterling silver or EPNS cutlery was generally available to avoid such problems. With this in mind Brearley extended his examinations to include tests with food acids such as vinegar and lemon juice, with very promising results.

Brearley initially called the new alloy "rustless steel"; the more euphonic "stainless steel" was suggested by Ernest Stuart of R.F. Mosley's, a local cutlery manufacturer at Portland Works, and eventually prevailed although Mosley's used the "Rusnorstain" trademark for many years. It is reported that the first true stainless steel, a 0.24wt% C, 12.8wt% Cr ferrous alloy, was produced by Brearley in an electric furnace on 13 August 1913. He was subsequently awarded the Iron and Steel Institute's Bessemer Gold Medal in 1920. The American Society for Metals gives the date for Brearley's creation of casting number 1008 (12.8% chromium, 0.44% manganese, 0.2% silicon, 0.24% carbon and 85.32% iron) as 20 August 1913.

Virtually all research projects into the further development of stainless steels were interrupted by the 1914–18 War, but efforts were renewed in the 1920s. Brearley had left the Brown Firth Laboratories in 1915, following disagreements regarding patent rights, but the research continued under the direction of his successor, Dr. W. H. Hatfield. It is Hatfield who is credited with the development, in 1924, of a stainless steel which even today is probably the widest-used alloy of this type, the so-called "18/8", which in addition to chromium, includes nickel (Ni) in its composition (18wt% Cr, 8wt% Ni).

harrybrearly.jpg


It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#268 2017-11-20 00:39:27

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

235) Alexander Parkes

Alexander Parkes, (born Dec. 29, 1813, Birmingham, Warwickshire, Eng. - died June 29, 1890, West Dulwich, London), British chemist and inventor noted for his development of various industrial processes and materials.

Much of Parkes’s work was related to metallurgy. He was one of the first to propose introducing small amounts of phosphorus into metal alloys to enhance their strength. One of his most significant inventions was a method of extracting silver from lead ore. This procedure, commonly called the Parkes process (patented in 1850), involves adding zinc to lead and melting the two together. When stirred, the molten zinc reacts and forms compounds with any silver and gold present in the lead. These zinc compounds are lighter than the lead and, on cooling, form a crust that can be readily removed.

Another of Parkes’s important contributions was the discovery of the cold vulcanization process (1841), a method of waterproofing fabrics by means of a solution of rubber and carbon disulfide. Parkes also produced a flexible material called Parkesine (1856) from various mixtures of nitrocellulose, alcohols, camphor, and oils that predated the development of the first plastic, celluloid.

parkes_portrait.jpg


It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#269 2017-11-21 15:12:41

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

236) Manushi Chhillar

From CBSE topper to Miss World 2017, here's Manushi Chhillar's advice to youngsters

Little did we know that Miss World 2017 Manushi Chhillar was a CBSE topper in English.

"When you cease to dream you cease to live," quoted Miss World 2017 and added: "Courage to give flight to your dreams and the ability to believe in yourself  makes life worth living."  The 20-year-old Indian, Manushi Chhillar made the country proud by winning the prestigious title Miss World 2017 on Saturday.

Little did we know that Miss World 2017 was a CBSE topper in English. Chhillar did her schooling from St. Thomas School in New Delhi. According to a report in Tribune, "She was the CBSE topper in English and is associated with Shakti project on menstrual hygiene."

Moreover, she is pursuing Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) from Bhagat Phool Singh Government Medical College for Women in Sonepat.

Family background:

Her father, Dr. Mitra Basu Chhillar, is a scientist at the Defence Research and Development Organisation, while her mother, Dr. Neelam Chhillar, is an associate professor and the department head of neurochemistry at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences.

Advice to youngsters:

According to the official website of Miss World, Manushi Chhillar's advice to youngsters is: "Believe in yourself and never shy away from hard work. It does not matter what others think, 'beauty' is just perception. Get up every morning, tell yourself you are beautiful and gear up to win!"

(Miss World 2017, the 67th edition of the Miss World pageant, was held on 18 November 2017 at the Sanya City Arena in Sanya, China. 118 contestants from all over the world competed for the crown. Stephanie Del Valle of Puerto Rico crowned her successor Manushi Chhillar of India at the end of the event. This is the sixth time that India has won the Miss World, tying it for the most title wins with Venezuela.)

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#270 2017-11-24 15:13:22

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

237) Ferdinand von Zeppelin

Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin (8 July 1838 – 8 March 1917) was a German general and later aircraft manufacturer, who founded the Zeppelin airship company.

Family and personal life

Ferdinand was the son of Württemberg Minister and Hofmarschall Friedrich Jerôme Wilhelm Karl Graf von Zeppelin (1807–1886) and his wife Amélie Françoise Pauline (born Macaire d'Hogguer) (1816–1852). Ferdinand spent his childhood with his sister and brother at their Girsberg manor near Constance, where he was educated by private tutors and lived there until his death. On 7 August 1869 Ferdinand married Isabella Freiin von Wolff in Berlin. She was from the house of Alt-Schwanenburg (present day — Gulbene town in Latvia, then part of Livonia). They had a daughter, Helene (Hella) von Zeppelin (1879–1967) who in 1909 married Alexander Graf von Brandenstein-Zeppelin (1881–1949).

Ferdinand had a nephew Baron Max von Gemmingen who was to later volunteer at the start of World War I, after he was past military age, to become general staff officer assigned to the military airship LZ 12 Sachsen.

Army career

In 1853 Count Zeppelin left to attend the polytechnic at Stuttgart, and in 1855 he became a cadet of the military school at Ludwigsburg and then started his career as an army officer in the army of Württemberg.

By 1858, Zeppelin had been promoted to Lieutenant, and that year he was given leave to study science, engineering and chemistry at Tübingen. The Prussians mobilising for the Austro-Sardinian War interrupted this study in 1859 when he was called up to the Ingenieurkorps (Prussian engineering corps) at Ulm.

In 1863 Zeppelin took leave to act as an observer for the Union's Army of the Potomac in the American Civil War in Virginia. Later, Zeppelin traveled to the Upper Midwest with a party that probably included two Russians. Led by Native American (probably Ojibwe) guides, they canoed and portaged from the western end of Lake Superior up the St. Louis River and across to Crow Wing, Minnesota on the Upper Mississippi River. On reaching St. Paul (via stagecoach and hired carriage), Zeppelin encountered German-born itinerant balloonist John Steiner and made his first aerial ascent with him from a site near the International Hotel in downtown St. Paul on 19 August. Many years later he attributed the beginning of his thinking about dirigible lighter-than-air craft to this experience.

In 1865 Zeppelin was appointed adjutant of the King of Württemberg and as general staff officer participated in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. He was awarded the Ritterkreuz (Knight's Cross) of the Order of Distinguished Service of Württemberg. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1871 a reconnaissance mission behind enemy lines, during which he narrowly avoided capture, made him famous among Germans.

From 1882 until 1885 Zeppelin was commander of the 19th Uhlans in Ulm, and was then appointed to be the envoy of Württemberg in Berlin. In 1890 he gave up this post to return to army service, being given command of a Prussian cavalry brigade. His handling of this at the 1890 autumn manouevres was severely criticised and he was forced to retire from the Army, albeit with the rank of Generalleutnant.

Airships

Ferdinand von Zeppelin served as an official observer with the Union Army during the American Civil War. During the Peninsular Campaign, he visited the balloon camp of Thaddeus S. C. Lowe shortly after Lowe's services were terminated by the Army. Von Zeppelin then travelled to St. Paul, MN where the German-born former Army balloonist John Steiner offered tethered flights. His first ascent in a balloon, made at Saint Paul, Minnesota during this visit, is said to have been the inspiration of his later interest in aeronautics.

Zeppelin's ideas for large airships were first expressed in a diary entry dated 25 March 1874. Inspired by a recent lecture given by Heinrich von Stephan on the subject of "World Postal Services and Air Travel", he outlined the basic principle of his later craft: a large rigidly-framed outer envelope containing a number of separate gasbags. In 1887 the success of Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs' airship La France prompted him to send a letter to the King of Württemberg about the military necessity for dirigibles and the lack of German development in this field.

After his resignation from the army in 1891 at age 52, Zeppelin devoted his full attention to airships. He hired the engineer Theodor Gross to make tests of possible materials and to assess available engines for both fuel efficiency and power-to-weight ratio. He also had air propellers tested and strove to obtain higher purity hydrogen gas from suppliers. Zeppelin was so confident of his concept that in June 1891 he wrote to the King of Württemberg's secretary, announcing he was to start building, and shortly after requested a review from the Prussian Army's Chief of General Staff. The next day Zeppelin almost gave up as he realized he had underestimated air resistance, but resumed work on hearing that Rudolf Hans Bartsch von Sigsfeld made light but powerful engines, information soon shown to be overoptimistic. Whereupon Zeppelin urged his supporter Max von Duttenhofer to press Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft for more efficient engines so as not to fall behind the French. Duttenhofer wrote to Gross threatening to withdraw support, and Zeppelin shortly afterwards sacked Gross, citing Gross' lack of support and writing that he was "an obstacle in my path".

Despite these setbacks Zeppelin's organization had refined his idea: a rigid aluminium framework covered in a fabric envelope; separate multiple internal gas cells, each free to expand and contract thus obviating the need for ballonets; modular frame allowing addition of sections and gas cells; controls, engines and gondola rigidly attached. After publishing the idea in March 1892 he hired the engineer Theodor Kober who started work testing and further refining the design. Zeppelin submitted Kober's 1893 detailed designs to the Prussian Airship Service, whose committee reviewed it in 1894. In June 1895 this committee recommended minimum funds be granted, but withdrew this offer and rejected the design in July.

One month later, in August 1895, Zeppelin received a patent for Kober's design, described as an "airship-train" (Lenkbarer Luftfahrzug mit mehreren hintereinanderen angeordneten Tragkörpern [Steerable airship-train with several carrier structures arranged one behind another].) The patent describes an airship consisting of three rigid sections flexibly connected. The front section, intended to contain the crew and engines, was 117.35 m (385.0 ft) long with a gas capacity of 9514 cu m (336,000 cu ft): the middle section was 16 m (52 ft 6 in) long with an intended useful load of 599 kg (1,321 lb) and the rear section 39.93 m (131.0 ft) long with an intended load of 1,996 kg (4,400 lb)

In early 1896, Zeppelin's lecture on steerable airship designs given to the Association of German Engineers (VDI) so impressed them that the VDI launched a public appeal for financial support for him. This led to a first contact with Carl Berg who supplied aluminium alloys which Zeppelin had tested, and by May 1898 they, together with Philipp Holzmann, Daimler, Max von Eyth, Carl von Linde, and Friedrich Voith, had formed the joint stock company Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Luftschiffart. Zeppelin invested 441,000 Marks, over half the total capital. Actual construction then started of what was to be the first successful rigid airship, the Zeppelin LZ1.

Berg's involvement with the project would later be the cause of allegations that Zeppelin had used the patent and designs of David Schwarz's airship of 1897. Berg had signed a contract with Schwartz under the terms of which he undertook not to supply aluminium to any other airship manufacturer. He later made a payment to Schwartz's widow as compensation for dissolving this arrangement. Claims that Zeppelin had been influenced by Schwartz were denied by Eckener in 1938 and also rejected by later historians. Zeppelin's design was "radically different" in both its scale and its framework from that of Schwarz.

On 2 July 1900, Zeppelin made the first flight with the LZ 1 over Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen in southern Germany. The airship rose from the ground and remained in the air for 20 minutes, but was damaged on landing. After repairs and some modifications two further flights were made by LZ 1 in October 1900, However the airship was not considered successful enough to justify investment by the government, and since the experiments had exhausted Count Zeppelins funds, he was forced to suspend his work.

Zeppelin still enjoyed the support of the King of Württemberg, who authorised a state lottery which raised 124,000 marks. A contribution of 50,000 marks was received from Prussia, and Zeppelin raised the remainder of the necessary money by mortgaging his wife's estates. Still supported by Daimler and Carl Berg, construction of his second airship, the LZ 2, was started in April 1905. It was completed by 30 November, when it was first taken out of its hangar, but a ground-handling mishap caused the bows to be pulled into the water, damaging the forward control surfaces. Repairs were completed by 17 January 1906, when LZ 2 made its only flight. Too much ballast was jettisoned on takeoff, causing the airship to rise to an altitude of 427 m (1,401 ft). Here a stiff breeze was encountered, and although the airship was at first able to overcome this, the failure of the forward engine due to cooling problems followed by the failure of the other due to a broken clutch-spring left the airship at the mercy of the wind. It was brought down near Kisslegg in the Allgäu mountains, with some damage caused by the stern's striking some trees during mooring, but was more severely damaged by high winds the following night, and had to be dismantled.

In May 1906, work as started on a third airship, LZ 3. This was the same size and configuration as LZ 2, but had a greater gas capacity. Finished by the end of the year, it made two successful flights at a speed of 30 miles per hour (48 km/h), and in 1907 attained a speed of 36 miles per hour (58 km/h). The success of LZ 3 produced a change in the official attitude to his work, and the Reichstag voted that he should be awarded 500,000 marks to continue his work. However the purchase by the Government of an airship was made conditional on the successful completion of a 24‑hour trial flight. Knowing that this was beyond the capabilities of LZ 3, work was started on a larger airship, the LZ 4. This first flew on 20 June 1908. The final financial breakthrough only came after the Zeppelin LZ 4 was destroyed by fire at Echterdingen after breaking free of its moorings during a storm. The airship's earlier flights had excited public interest in the development of the airships, and a subsequent collection campaign raised over 6 million German marks. The money was used to create the 'Luftschiffbau-Zeppelin GmbH' and the Zeppelin foundation (Zeppelin Stiftung).

Following the destruction of LZ 4, LZ 3, which had been damaged when the floating hangar broke free of its mooring during a storm, was repaired: at the same time it was lengthened by 8 m. It was re-inflated on 21 October 1908 and after a series of short test flights a flight lasting 5 hours 55 minutes took place on 27 October with the Kaiser's brother, Admiral Prince Heinrich, on board. On 7 November, with Crown Prince William as a passenger, it flew 80 km (50 mi) to Donaueschingen, where the Kaiser was then staying. In spite of poor weather conditions, the flight succeeded: two days later LZ 3 was officially accepted by the Government and on 10 November Zeppelin was rewarded with an official visit to Friedrichshafen by the Kaiser, during which a short demonstration flight over Lake Constance was made and Zeppelin awarded the Order of the Black Eagle.

Although a replacement for LZ 4, the LZ 5 was built and accepted into Army service as L II, Zeppelin's relationship with the military authorities continued to be poor, and deteriorated considerably due to his criticism of the Army following the loss of L II, which was carried away from its moorings and wrecked on 25 April 1910. However, the business director of Luftschiffbau-Zeppelin, Alfred Colsman, came up with a scheme to capitalise on the public enthusiasm for Zeppelin's airships by establishing a passenger-carrying business.

Up until 1914 the German Aviation Association (Deutsche Luftschiffahrtsgesellschaft or DELAG) transported 37,250 people on over 1,600 flights without an incident. Within a few years the zeppelin revolution began creating the age of air transportation.

Other aircraft

1899 unrealised plans for a paddlewheel aeroplane
1912 financial support of Flugzeugbau Friedrichshafen which was to supply 850 aeroplanes 1917/1918;
1914 commissions Claude Dornier to develop flying boats
1914 founds Versuchsbau Gotha-Ost with Robert Bosch which built a number of Riesenflugzeug (giant aircraft) such as the Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI

Family

Count Everhard von Zeppelin, Second Lieutenant in the German Lancers, married November 1895, Mamie McGarvey, daughter of William H. McGarvey, owner of the oil wells of Galicia and his wife, Helena J. Wesolowska. A former Count von Zeppelin married a granddaughter of the 1st Earl of Ranfurly.

Legacy

Count Zeppelin died in 1917, before the end of World War I, therefore he did not witness either the provisional shutdown of the Zeppelin project due to the Treaty of Versailles or the second resurgence of the Zeppelins under his successor Hugo Eckener. The unfinished World War II German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin, and two rigid airships, the world-circling LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, and LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II, twin to the Hindenburg, were named after him.

ferdinand-graf-von-zeppelin_klein.jpg


It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#271 2017-11-26 03:03:46

Jai Ganesh
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Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

238) Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot

Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot (26 February 1725 – 2 October 1804) was a French inventor who built the first working self-propelled land-based mechanical vehicle, the world's first automobile.

Background

Cugnot was born in Void-Vacon, Lorraine, (now departement of Meuse), France. He trained as a military engineer. In 1765 he began experimenting with working models of steam-engine-powered vehicles for the French Army, intended for transporting cannons.

The first self-propelled vehicle

French Army Captain Cugnot was one of the first to successfully employ a device for converting the reciprocating motion of a steam piston into a rotary motion by means of a ratchet arrangement. A small version of his three-wheeled fardier à vapeur ("steam dray") was made and used in 1769 (a fardier was a massively built two-wheeled horse-drawn cart for transporting very heavy equipment, such as cannon barrels).

In 1770, a full-size version of the fardier à vapeur was built, specified to be able to carry four tons and cover two lieues (7.8 km or 4.8 miles) in one hour, a performance it never achieved in practice. The vehicle weighed about 2.5 tonnes tare, and had two wheels at the rear and one in the front where the horses would normally have been. The front wheel supported a steam boiler and driving mechanism. The power unit was articulated to the "trailer", and was steered from there by means of a double handle arrangement. One source states that it seated four passengers and moved at a speed of 2.25 miles per hour (3.6 km/h).

The vehicle was reported to have been very unstable due to poor weight distribution. This would have been a serious disadvantage since the fardier was intended to be able to traverse rough terrain and climb steep hills. In 1771 the second vehicle is said to have gone out of control and knocked down part of the math walls, reported to be the first known automobile accident.[by whom?] However, according to Georges Ageon, the earliest mention of this occurrence was thirty years later, in 1801, and it does not feature in contemporary accounts. In addition to the weight distribution problem, boiler performance was also particularly poor, even by the standards of the day. The vehicle's fire needed to be relit, and its steam raised again, every quarter of an hour or so, which considerably reduced its overall speed and distance.

After running a small number of trials, variously described as being between Paris and Vincennes and at Meudon, the project was abandoned. This ended the French Army's first experiment with mechanical vehicles. Even so, in 1772, King Louis XV granted Cugnot a pension of 600 livres a year for his innovative work, and the experiment was judged interesting enough for the fardier to be kept at the math. In 1800 it was transferred to the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, where it can still be seen today.

241 years later, in 2010, a copy of the "fardier de Cugnot" was built by pupils at the Arts et Métiers ParisTech, a French Grande école, and the city of Void-Vacon. This replica worked perfectly, proving that the concept was viable and verifying the truth and results of the 1769 tests.

This replica was exhibited at the 2010 Paris Motor Show. It is now exhibited by a local organization in the native village of Cugnot, at Void-Vacon, Meuse.

Later life

With the French Revolution, Cugnot's pension was withdrawn in 1789, and the inventor went into exile in Brussels, where he lived in poverty. Shortly before his death, Cugnot's pension was restored by Napoleon Bonaparte, and he eventually returned to Paris, where he died on 2 October 1804.

Dispute

This 1769 claim of earliest self-powered vehicle is disputed by some sources which suggest that around 1672 Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China, designed the first "steam-powered vehicle", but that it was too small to carry a driver and may have never been built.

N_J_Cugnot.jpg


It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#272 2017-11-28 01:01:52

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

239) Vladimir Zworykin

Vladimir Zworykin, in full Vladimir Kosma Zworykin (born July 30, 1889, Murom, Russia - died July 29, 1982, Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.), Russian-born American electronic engineer and inventor of the iconoscope and kinescope television systems.

Zworykin studied at the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, where from 1910 to 1912 he assisted physicist Boris Rosing in his experiments with a television system that consisted of a rotating mirror drum to scan an image and a cathode-ray tube to display it. He then studied at the Collège de France, in Paris and served during World War I in the Russian Signal Corps. He emigrated to the United States in 1919 and became a naturalized citizen in 1924. In 1920 he joined the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Pittsburgh, but he left after a year to work in Kansas City for C&C Development Company, which had a patent for using high-frequency currents in oil refining. Zworykin was hired to test the invention but found that it was useless.

Zworykin returned to Westinghouse in 1923, and that year he filed a patent for an all-electronic television system, which had cathode-ray tubes for both transmitting and receiving images. (Other television systems such as that of Rosing relied on mechanical devices such as spinning disks and mirrored drums to capture and reproduce an image.) In 1924 he began building a television system based (with modifications to the camera tube) on his patent, and in 1925 he demonstrated an almost entirely electronic system for several Westinghouse executives, who were not impressed.

Westinghouse reassigned Zworykin to work on photoelectric cells. In late 1928 he was sent to Europe to examine television research being done in partnership with Westinghouse and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). He was particularly impressed by the cathode-ray tube designed by Fernand Holweck and Pierre Chevallier at the Paris laboratory of French inventor Édouard Belin. The Holweck-Chevallier tube used electrostatic fields to focus the beam of electrons. Zworykin’s reenergized enthusiasm for the new tube and electronic television was not shared by most Westinghouse executives, but vice president Sam Kintner suggested that he meet with RCA vice president David Sarnoff. At their meeting in January 1929 Sarnoff asked Zworykin how much it would take to bring electronic television to market. Zworykin said two years and $100,000 (as it turned out, a gross underestimate), and Sarnoff persuaded Westinghouse to give Zworykin the necessary resources. By the end of the year, he had perfected his cathode-ray receiver, the kinescope, which had a picture large enough and bright enough for home viewing; however, his television system still used a mechanical device, a spinning mirror, as part of the transmission apparatus. Six kinescopes were built; Zworykin had one at his home, where late at night it received experimental television signals from Westinghouse’s radio station, KDKA, in Pittsburgh. In 1930 Westinghouse’s television research was transferred to RCA, and Zworykin became head of the television division at RCA’s Camden, New Jersey, laboratory.

In April 1930 Zworykin visited the San Francisco laboratory of inventor Philo Farnsworth at the behest of Farnsworth’s backers, who wanted to make a deal with RCA. Three years earlier Farnsworth had done the first successful demonstration of an entirely electronic television system. Zworykin was particularly impressed by Farnsworth’s transmission tube, the image dissector, and was inspired by its innovations to develop an improved camera tube, the iconoscope, for which he filed a patent in 1931. RCA kept Zworykin’s developments a secret, and only in 1933 was Zworykin able to announce the existence of the iconoscope. In 1939 RCA introduced regular electronic television broadcasting at the New York World’s Fair.

Zworykin’s other developments in electronics included innovations in the electron microscope. His electron image tube, sensitive to infrared light, was the basis for the sniperscope and snooperscope, devices first used in World War II for seeing in the dark. His secondary-emission multiplier was used in the scintillation counter. In later life Zworykin lamented the way that television had been abused to titillate and trivialize subjects rather than for the educational and cultural enrichment of audiences.

Named an honorary vice president of RCA in 1954, from then until 1962 Zworykin also served as director of the medical electronics centre of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University) in New York City. In 1966 the National Academy of Sciences awarded him the National Medal of Science for his contributions to the instruments of science, engineering, and television and for his stimulation of the application of engineering to medicine. He was also founder-president of the International Federation for Medical Electronics and Biological Engineering, a recipient of the Faraday Medal from Great Britain (1965), and a member of the U.S. National Hall of Fame from 1977.

Zworykin wrote Photocells and Their Application (1934; with E.D. Wilson), Television: The Electronics of Image Transmission (1940; with G.A. Morton), Electron Optics and the Electron Microscope (1945; with G.A. Morton, E.G. Ramberg, J. Hillier, and A.W. Vance), Photoelectricity and Its Application (1949; with E.G. Ramberg), and Television in Science and Industry (1958; with E.G. Ramberg and L.E. Flory).

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#273 2017-11-29 22:26:17

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

240) Lars Valerian Ahlfors and Jesse Douglas

a) Lars Valerian Ahlfors, (born April 18, 1907, Helsinki, Fin.—died Oct. 11, 1996, Pittsfield, Mass., U.S.), Finnish mathematician who was awarded one of the first two Fields Medals in 1936 for his work with Riemann surfaces. He also won the Wolf Prize in 1981.

Ahlfors received his Ph.D. from the University of Helsinki in 1932. He held an appointment there from 1938 to 1944, then went to the University of Zürich, Switz. He joined the faculty at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., U.S., in 1946, remaining there until his retirement.

Ahlfors was awarded the Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo, Nor., in 1936. He was cited for methods he had developed to analyze Riemann surfaces of inverse functions in terms of covering surfaces. His principal contributions were in the theory of Riemann surfaces, but his theorems (the Ahlfors finiteness theorem, the Ahlfors five-disk theorem, the Ahlfors principal theorem, etc.) touch on other areas as well, such as the theory of finitely generated Kleinian groups. In 1929 he resolved a conjecture of Arnaud Denjoy on entire functions. Later Ahlfors worked on quasi-conformal mappings and, with Arne Beurling, on conformal invariants.

Ahlfors’ publications include Complex Analysis (1953); with Leo Sario, Riemann Surfaces (1960); Lectures on Quasi-Conformal Mappings (1966); and Conformal Invariants (1973). His Collected Papers was published in 1982.

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b) Jesse Douglas, (born July 3, 1897, New York, New York, U.S.—died October 7, 1965, New York), American mathematician who was awarded one of the first two Fields Medals in 1936 for solving the Plateau problem.

Douglas attended City College of New York and Columbia University (Ph.D., 1920). He remained at Columbia until 1926, when he was awarded a National Research Fellowship. He subsequently held appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1930–36) and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. In 1942 he returned to New York, where he taught at Columbia (1942–54) and City College (1955–65).

Douglas was awarded one of the first two Fields Medals at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo, Norway, in 1936 for work on the celebrated Plateau problem, which had first been posed by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler and the French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange in 1760. The Plateau problem is one of finding the surface with minimal area determined by a fixed boundary. Experiments (1849) by the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau demonstrated that the minimal surface can be obtained by immersing a wire frame, representing the boundaries, into soapy water. Although mathematical solutions for specific boundaries had been obtained through the years, it was not until 1931 that Douglas (and independently the Hungarian American mathematician Tibor Radó) first proved the existence of a minimal solution for any given “simple” boundary. Furthermore, Douglas showed that the general problem of mathematically finding the surfaces could be solved by refining the classical calculus of variations. He also contributed to the study of surfaces formed by several distinct boundary curves and to more complicated types of topological surfaces.

Douglas later developed an interest in group theory, where in 1951 he made important contributions to the determination of finite groups based on two generators, a and b, with the property that every element in the group can be expressed as a combination of the generators in the form

, where k and l are integers. Douglas’s publications include Modern Theories of Integration (1941).

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#274 2017-12-01 09:10:59

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

241) J. Robert Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer, in full Julius Robert Oppenheimer (born April 22, 1904, New York, New York, U.S.—died February 18, 1967, Princeton, New Jersey), American theoretical physicist and science administrator, noted as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory (1943–45) during development of the atomic bomb and as director of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1947–66). Accusations of disloyalty led to a government hearing that resulted in the loss of his security clearance and of his position as adviser to the highest echelons of the U.S. government. The case became a cause célèbre in the world of science because of its implications concerning political and moral issues relating to the role of scientists in government.

Oppenheimer was the son of a German immigrant who had made his fortune by importing textiles in New York City. During his undergraduate studies at Harvard University, Oppenheimer excelled in Latin, Greek, physics, and chemistry, published poetry, and studied Eastern philosophy. After graduating in 1925, he sailed for England to do research at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, which, under the leadership of Lord Ernest Rutherford, had an international reputation for its pioneering studies on atomic structure. At the Cavendish, Oppenheimer had the opportunity to collaborate with the British scientific community in its efforts to advance the cause of atomic research.

Max Born invited Oppenheimer to University of Göttingen, where he met other prominent physicists, such as Niels Bohr and P.A.M. Dirac, and where, in 1927, he received his doctorate. After short visits at science centres in Leiden and Zürich, he returned to the United States to teach physics at the University of California at Berkeley and the California Institute of Technology.

In the 1920s the new quantum and relativity theories were engaging the attention of science. That mass was equivalent to energy and that matter could be both wavelike and corpuscular carried implications seen only dimly at that time. Oppenheimer’s early research was devoted in particular to energy processes of subatomic particles, including electrons, positrons, and cosmic rays. He also did groundbreaking work on neutron stars and black holes. Since quantum theory had been proposed only a few years before, the university post provided him an excellent opportunity to devote his entire career to the exploration and development of its full significance. In addition, he trained a whole generation of U.S. physicists, who were greatly affected by his qualities of leadership and intellectual independence.

The rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany stirred his first interest in politics. In 1936 he sided with the republic during the Civil War in Spain, where he became acquainted with Communist students. Although his father’s death in 1937 left Oppenheimer a fortune that allowed him to subsidize anti-Fascist organizations, the tragic suffering inflicted by Joseph Stalin on Russian scientists led him to withdraw his associations with the Communist Party—in fact, he never joined the party—and at the same time reinforced in him a liberal democratic philosophy.

After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in 1939, the physicists Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, and Eugene Wigner warned the U.S. government of the danger threatening all of humanity if the Nazis should be the first to make a nuclear bomb. Oppenheimer then began to seek a process for the separation of uranium-235 from natural uranium and to determine the critical mass of uranium required to make such a bomb. In August 1942 the U.S. Army was given the responsibility of organizing the efforts of British and U.S. physicists to seek a way to harness nuclear energy for military purposes, an effort that became known as the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer was instructed to establish and administer a laboratory to carry out this assignment. In 1943 he chose the plateau of Los Alamos, near Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he had spent part of his childhood in a boarding school.

The rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany stirred his first interest in politics. In 1936 he sided with the republic during the Civil War in Spain, where he became acquainted with Communist students. Although his father’s death in 1937 left Oppenheimer a fortune that allowed him to subsidize anti-Fascist organizations, the tragic suffering inflicted by Joseph Stalin on Russian scientists led him to withdraw his associations with the Communist Party—in fact, he never joined the party—and at the same time reinforced in him a liberal democratic philosophy.

After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in 1939, the physicists Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, and Eugene Wigner warned the U.S. government of the danger threatening all of humanity if the Nazis should be the first to make a nuclear bomb. Oppenheimer then began to seek a process for the separation of uranium-235 from natural uranium and to determine the critical mass of uranium required to make such a bomb. In August 1942 the U.S. Army was given the responsibility of organizing the efforts of British and U.S. physicists to seek a way to harness nuclear energy for military purposes, an effort that became known as the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer was instructed to establish and administer a laboratory to carry out this assignment. In 1943 he chose the plateau of Los Alamos, near Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he had spent part of his childhood in a boarding school.

For reasons that have not been made clear, Oppenheimer in 1942 initiated discussions with military security agents that culminated with the implication that some of his friends and acquaintances were agents of the Soviet government. This led to the dismissal of a personal friend on the faculty at the University of California. In a 1954 security hearing he described his contribution to those discussions as “a tissue of lies.”

The joint effort of outstanding scientists at Los Alamos culminated in the first nuclear explosion on July 16, 1945, at the Trinity Site near Alamogordo, New Mexico, after the surrender of Germany. In October of the same year, Oppenheimer resigned his post. In 1947 he became head of the Institute for Advanced Study and served from 1947 until 1952 as chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, which in October 1949 opposed development of the hydrogen bomb.

On December 21, 1953, he was notified of a military security report unfavourable to him and was accused of having associated with Communists in the past, of delaying the naming of Soviet agents, and of opposing the building of the hydrogen bomb. A security hearing declared him not guilty of treason but ruled that he should not have access to military secrets. As a result, his contract as adviser to the Atomic Energy Commission was cancelled. The Federation of American Scientists immediately came to his defense with a protest against the trial. Oppenheimer was made the worldwide symbol of the scientist, who, while trying to resolve the moral problems that arise from scientific discovery, becomes the victim of a witch-hunt. He spent the last years of his life working out ideas on the relationship between science and society.

In 1963 President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Oppenheimer with the Enrico Fermi Award of the Atomic Energy Commission. Oppenheimer retired from the Institute for Advanced Study in 1966 and died of throat cancer the following year.

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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#275 2017-12-04 00:38:01

Jai Ganesh
Administrator
Registered: 2005-06-28
Posts: 45,956

Re: crème de la crème

242) Jacobus Henricus van ’t Hoff

Jacobus Henricus van ’t Hoff, (born Aug. 30, 1852, Rotterdam, Neth.—died March 1, 1911, Berlin, Ger.), Dutch physical chemist and first winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1901), for work on rates of chemical reaction, chemical equilibrium, and osmotic pressure.

Education And Early Career

Van ’t Hoff was the son of a physician and among the first generation to benefit from the extensive Dutch education reforms of the 1860s. He attended the newly formed Hoogere Burgerschool (High School) in Rotterdam. These new schools emphasized the study of mathematics and science to prepare students for a career in the growing industrial economy of the Netherlands. Beginning in 1869, van ’t Hoff studied chemistry at the Technical University in Delft and mathematics and physics at the University of Leiden before traveling to Germany to study chemistry with August Kekule at the University of Bonn and then France to study chemistry with Charles-Adolphe Wurtz at the École de Medicine. He finally returned to the University of Utrecht to complete his doctoral dissertation in 1874.

Before he completed his dissertation, van ’t Hoff published an 11-page pamphlet in which he proposed that if the four bonds (or valence electrons) of the carbon atom pointed toward the corners of a tetrahedron, it would explain some puzzling cases of isomerism and also explain why solutions of certain chemical compounds would rotate a plane of polarized light. His theory is today one of the fundamental concepts in organic chemistry and the foundation of stereochemistry, or the study of the three-dimensional properties of molecules. This idea was also published independently, in a slightly different form, by the French chemist Joseph Achilles Le Bel, whom van ’t Hoff had met during his stay in Wurtz’s laboratory earlier in the year.

Despite this innovative pamphlet, van ’t Hoff’s future in science was uncertain until he was appointed in 1876 to a new position lecturing chemistry and physics at the Imperial Veterinary College in Utrecht. In 1878 he was appointed professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology at the newly created University of Amsterdam.

Birth Of Physical Chemistry

In the late 1870s, van ’t Hoff turned away from organic chemistry and became interested in explaining why various chemical reactions occur at widely different rates. In 1884 he published the innovative book Études de dynamique chimique (“Studies in Chemical Dynamics”), in which he used the principles of thermodynamics to provide a mathematical model for the rates of chemical reactions based on the changes in the concentration of reactants with time. In the Études, van ’t Hoff showed how the previously independently developed concepts of dynamic equilibrium (that chemical equilibrium results when the rates of forward and reverse reactions are equal), the law of mass action (that the concentration of substances affects the rate of reaction), and the equilibrium constant (the ratio of the concentrations of starting materials to products at equilibrium) together formed a coherent model for understanding the nature of chemical reactions. Finally, he showed mathematically how temperature, pressure, and mass affected the rate of chemical reactions and how the heat generated by a reaction could be calculated from the mathematical equation governing the final equilibrium state. This relationship between heats of reaction and equilibrium allowed van ’t Hoff to define chemical “affinity,” an old concept in the history of chemistry that had been difficult to define in terms of its effects, specifically the amount of work that a reversible chemical reaction could perform.

One of the central assumptions van ’t Hoff made in the Études was that the behaviours of gases and solutions were analogous, and in a series of papers published in 1886 and 1887 he set out to justify that assumption by modeling the behaviour of dilute solutions, using the principles of thermodynamics. He showed that osmotic pressure, the tendency of a pure solvent to cross a semipermeable membrane to dilute a solution on the opposite side, was directly proportional to the concentration of the solution and could be modeled by the same equation (the perfect gas law) that governed the behaviour of ideal gases.

In 1887 van ’t Hoff and the German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald founded the Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie (“Journal of Physical Chemistry”) as a forum for the new physical chemistry based on thermodynamics that he, Ostwald, and the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius had created during the 1880s. On the basis of his innovative and successful treatment of chemical affinity, van ’t Hoff was awarded the first Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1901.

Van ’t Hoff accepted an appointment in 1896 to the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, where he turned to another problem in chemical equilibrium—the conditions under which salt deposits are formed in the ocean, specifically the salt deposits at Stassfurt, Ger. In order to understand the conditions behind the precipitation of salts, van ’t Hoff modeled the deposition process as an equilibrium between the solution and solid phases of the components in water at a constant temperature. This work was published in 1905 and 1909 as the two-volume Zur Bildung der ozeanischen Salzablagerungen (“On the Formation of Oceanic Salt Deposits”). Van ’t Hoff died in 1911 of pulmonary tuberculosis shortly after completing this work.

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It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.

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