"The Mathematician" (detail) by Andrey Zakirzyanov

colored pencil on paper

57x 76 cm

1990

 

My animations & videoart here - www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F07F0FC9A199F76B

 

"The Mathematician" by Andrey Zakirzyanov

colored pencil on paper

57x 76 cm

1990

 

My animations & videoart here - www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F07F0FC9A199F76B

 

St Albans Cathedral, also known as the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban, is a Church of England cathedral church within St Albans, England. At 84 metres (276 ft), its nave is the longest of any cathedral in England. With much of its present architecture dating from Norman times, it was formerly known as St Albans Abbey before it became a cathedral in 1877. It is the second longest cathedral in the United Kingdom (after Winchester). Local residents often call it "the abbey", although the present cathedral represents only the church of the old Benedictine abbey.

 

The abbey church, although legally a cathedral church, differs in certain particulars from most of the other cathedrals in England: it is also used as a parish church, of which the dean is rector. He has the same powers, responsibilities and duties as the rector of any other parish.

 

Alban was a pagan living in the Roman city of Verulamium, now Verulamium Park, in St Albans, in Hertfordshire, England, about 22 miles (35 km) north of London along Watling Street. Before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, local Christians were being persecuted by the Romans. Alban sheltered their priest, Saint Amphibalus, in his home and was converted to the Christian faith by him. When the soldiers came to Alban's house looking for the priest, Alban exchanged cloaks with the priest and let himself be arrested in his place. Alban was taken before the magistrate, where he avowed his new Christian faith and was condemned for it. He was beheaded, according to legend, on the spot where the cathedral named after him now stands. The site is on a steep hill and legend has it that his head rolled down the hill after being cut off and that a well sprang up at the point where it stopped.

A well certainly exists today and the road up to the cathedral is named Holywell Hill. However the current well structure is no older than the late 19th century and it is thought that the name of the street derives from the "Halywell" river and "Halywell Bridge", not from the well.

 

The date of Alban's execution is a matter of some debate and is generally given as "circa 250"—scholars generally suggest dates of 209, 254 or 304.

 

History of the abbey and cathedral

 

A memoria over the execution point and holding the remains of Alban existed at the site from the mid-4th century (possibly earlier); Bedementions a church and Gildas a shrine. Bishop Germanus of Auxerre visited in 429 and took a portion of the apparently still bloody earth away. The style of this structure is unknown; the 13th century chronicler Matthew Paris (see below) claimed that the Saxons destroyed the building in 586.

 

Saxon buildings

Offa II of Mercia, who ruled in the 8th century, is said to have founded the Benedictine abbey and monastery at St Albans. All later religious structures are dated from the foundation of Offa's abbey in 793. The abbey was built on Holmhurst Hill—now Holywell Hill—across the River Ver from the ruins of Verulamium. Again there is no information to the form of the first abbey. The abbey was probably sacked by the Danes around 890 and, despite Paris's claims, the office of abbot remained empty from around 920 until the 970s when the efforts of Dunstanreached the town.

 

There was an intention to rebuild the abbey in 1005 when Abbot Ealdred was licensed to remove building material from Verulamium. With the town resting on clay and chalk the only tough stone is flint. This was used with a lime mortar and then either plastered over or left bare. With the great quantities of brick, tile and other stone in Verulamium the Roman site became a prime source of building material for the abbeys, and other projects in the area, up to the 18th century. Sections demanding worked stone used Lincolnshire limestone (Barnack stone) from Verulamium, later worked stones include Totternhoe freestone from Bedfordshire, Purbeck marble, and different limestones (Ancaster, Chilmark, Clipsham, etc.).

Renewed Viking raids from 1016 stalled the Saxon efforts and very little from the Saxon abbey was incorporated in the later forms.

 

The nave. The north wall (left) features a mix of Norman arches dating back to 1077 and arches in the Early English style of 1200.

 

Norman abbey

Much of the current layout and proportions of the structure date from the first Norman abbot, Paul of Caen (1077–1093). The 14th abbot, he was appointed by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc.

 

Building work started in the year of Abbot Paul's arrival. The design and construction was overseen by the Norman Robert the Mason. The plan has very limited Anglo-Saxon elements and is clearly influenced by the French work at Cluny, Bernay, and Caen and shares a similar floor plan to Saint-Étienne and Lanfranc's Canterbury—although the poorer quality building material was a new challenge for Robert and he clearly borrowed some Roman techniques, learned while gathering material in Verulamium. To take maximum use of the hilltop the abbey was oriented to the south-east. The cruciform abbey was the largest built in England at that time, it had a chancel of four bays, a transept containing seven apses, and a nave of ten bays—fifteen bays long overall. Robert gave particular attention to solid foundations, running a continuous wall of layered bricks, flints and mortar below and pushing the foundations down to twelve feet to hit bedrock. Below the crossing tower special large stones were used.

 

The tower was a particular triumph—it is the only 11th century great crossing tower still standing in England. Robert began with special thick supporting walls and four massive brick piers. The four-level tower tapers at each stage with clasping buttresses on the three lower levels and circular buttresses on the fourth stage. The entire structure masses 5,000 tons and is 144 feet high. The tower was probably topped with a Norman pyramidal roof; the current roof is flat. The original ringing chamber had five bells—two paid for by the Abbot, two by a wealthy townsman, and one donated by the rector of Hoddesdon. None of these bells has survived.

There was a widespread belief that the abbey had two additional, smaller towers at the west end. No remains have been found.

 

The monastic abbey was completed in 1089 but not consecrated until Holy Innocents' Day, 1115, (28 Dec) by the Archbishop of Rouen. King Henry I attended as did many bishops and nobles.

A nunnery (Sopwell Priory) was founded nearby in 1140.

 

Internally the abbey was bare of sculpture, almost stark. The plaster walls were coloured and patterned in parts, with extensive tapestries adding colour. Sculptural decoration was added, mainly ornaments, as it became more fashionable in the 12th century—especially after the Gothic style arrived in England around 1170.

 

In the current structure the original Norman arches survive principally under the central tower and on the north side of the nave. The arches in the rest of the building are Gothic, following medieval rebuilding and extensions, and Victorian era restoration.

 

The abbey was extended in the 1190s by Abbot John de Cella (also known as John of Wallingford) (1195–1214); as the number of monks grew from fifty to over a hundred, the abbey was extended westwards with three bays added to the nave. The severe Norman west front was also rebuilt by Hugh de Goldclif—although how is uncertain, it was very costly but its 'rapid' weathering and later alterations have erased all but fragments. A more prominent shrine and altar to Saint Amphibalus were also added. The work was very slow under de Cella and was not completed until the time of Abbot William de Trumpington (1214–35). The low Norman tower roof was demolished and a new, much higher, broached spire was raised, sheathed in lead.

The St Albans Psalter (ca. 1130–45) is the best known of a number of important Romanesque illuminated manuscripts produced in the Abbey scriptorium. Later, Matthew Paris, a monk at St Albans from 1217 until his death in 1259, was important both as a chronicler and an artist. Eighteen of his manuscripts survive and are a rich source of contemporary information for historians.

Nicholas Breakspear was born near St Albans and applied to be admitted to the abbey as a novice, but he was turned down. He eventually managed to be accepted into an abbey in France. In 1154 he was elected Pope Adrian IV, the only English Pope there has ever been. The head of the abbey was confirmed as the premier abbot in England also in 1154.

 

13th to 15th centuries

 

An earthquake shook the abbey in 1250 and damaged the eastern end of the church. In 1257 the dangerously cracked sections were knocked down—three apses and two bays. The thick Presbytery wall supporting the tower was left. The rebuilding and updating was completed during the rule of Abbot Roger de Norton (1263–90).

 

On 10 October 1323 two piers on the south side of the nave collapsed dragging down much of the roof and wrecking five bays. Mason Henry Wy undertook the rebuilding, matching the Early English style of the rest of the bays but adding distinctly 14th century detailing and ornaments. The shrine to St Amphibalus had also been damaged and was remade.

 

Abbey Gateway, now part of St. Albans School.

Richard of Wallingford, abbot from 1297 to 1336 and a mathematician and astronomer, designed a celebrated clock, which was completed by William of Walsham after his death, but apparently destroyed during the reformation.

 

A new gateway, now called the Abbey Gateway, was built to the abbey grounds in 1365, which was the only part of the monastery buildings (besides the church) to survive the dissolution, later being used as a prison and now part of St Albans School. The other monastic buildings were located to the south of the gateway and church.

 

In the 15th century a large west window of nine main lights and a deep traced head was commissioned by John of Wheathampstead. The spire was reduced to a 'Hertfordshire spike', the roof pitch greatly reduced and battlements liberally added. Further new windows, at £50 each, were put in the transept by Abbot Wallingford (also known as William of Wallingford), who also had a new high altar screen made.

 

Dissolution and after

After the death of Abbot Ramryge in 1521 the abbey fell into debt and slow decay under three weak abbots. At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries and its surrender on 5 December 1539 the income was £2,100 annually. The abbot and remaining forty monks were pensioned off and then the buildings were looted. All gold, silver and gilt objects were carted away with all other valuables; stonework was broken and defaced and graves opened to burn the contents.

 

The abbey became part of the diocese of Lincoln in 1542 and was moved to the diocese of London in 1550. The buildings suffered—neglect, second-rate repairs, even active damage. Richard Lee purchased all the buildings, except the church and chapel and some other Crown premises, in 1550. Lee then began the systematic demolition for building material to improve Lee Hall at Sopwell. In 1551, with the stone removed, Lee returned the land to the abbot. The area was named Abbey Ruins for the next 200 years or so.

 

In 1553 the Lady chapel became a school, the Great Gatehouse a town jail, some other buildings passed to the Crown, and the Abbey Church was sold to the town for £400 in 1553 by King Edward VI to be the church of the parish.

 

The cost of upkeep fell upon the town, although in 1596 and at irregular intervals later the Archdeacon was allowed to collect money for repairs by Brief in the diocese. After James I visited in 1612 he authorised another Brief, which collected around £2,000—most of which went on roof repairs. The English Civil War slashed the monies spent on repairs, while the abbey was used to hold prisoners of war and suffered from their vandalism, as well as that of their guards. Most of the metal objects that had survived the Dissolution were also removed and other ornamental parts were damaged in Puritan sternness. Another round of fund-raising in 1681–84 was again spent on the roof, repairing the Presbytery vault. A royal grant from William and Mary in 1689 went on general maintenance, 'repairs' to conceal some of the unfashionable Gothic features, and on new internal fittings. There was a second royal grant from William in 1698.

By the end of the 17th century the dilapidation was sufficient for a number of writers to comment upon it.

 

In 1703, from 26 November to 1 December, the Great Storm raged across southern England; the abbey lost the south transept window which was replaced in wood at a cost of £40. The window was clear glass with five lights and three transoms in an early Gothic Revival style by John Hawgood. Other windows, although not damaged in the storm, were a constant drain on the abbey budget in the 18th century.

 

A brief in 1723–24, seeking £5,775, notes a great crack in the south wall, that the north wall was eighteen inches from vertical, and that the roof timbers were decayed to the point of danger. The money raised was spent on the nave roof over ten bays.

 

Another brief was not issued until 1764. Again the roof was rotting, as was the south transept window, walls were cracked or shattered in part and the south wall had subsided and now leant outwards. Despite a target of £2,500 a mere £600 was raised.

In the 1770s the abbey came close to demolition; the expense of repairs meant a scheme to destroy the abbey and erect a smaller church almost succeeded.

 

A storm in 1797 caused some subsidence, cracking open graves, scattering pavement tiles, flooding the church interior and leaving a few more arches off-vertical.

 

19th century

 

The Wallingford Screen of c. 1480—the statues are Victorian replacements (1884–89) of the originals, destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when the screen itself was also damaged. Statues of St Alban and St Amphibalus stand on either side of the altar.

 

This century was marked with a number of repair schemes. The abbey received some money from the 1818 "Million Act", and in 1820 £450 was raised to buy an organ—a second-hand example made in 1670.

 

The major efforts to revive the abbey church came under four men—L. N. Cottingham, Rector H. J. B. Nicholson, and, especially, George Gilbert Scott and Edmund Beckett, first Baron Grimthorpe.

 

In February 1832 a portion of the clerestory wall fell through the roof of the south aisle, leaving a hole almost thirty feet long. With the need for serious repair work evident the architect Lewis Nockalls Cottingham was called in to survey the building. His Survey was presented in 1832 and was worrying reading: everywhere mortar was in a wretched condition and wooden beams were rotting and twisting. Cottingham recommended new beams throughout the roof and a new steeper pitch, removal of the spire and new timbers in the tower, new paving, ironwork to hold the west transept wall up, a new stone south transept window, new buttresses, a new drainage system for the roof, new ironwork on almost all the windows, and on and on. He estimated a cost of £14,000. A public subscription of £4,000 was raised, of which £1,700 vanished in expenses. With the limited funds the clerestory wall was rebuilt, the nave roof re-leaded, the tower spike removed, some forty blocked windows reopened and glazed, and the south window remade in stone.

 

Henry Nicholson, rector from 1835 to 1866, was also active in repairing the abbey church—as far as he could, and in uncovering lost or neglected Gothic features.

 

In 1856 repair efforts began again; £4,000 was raised and slow moves started to gain the abbey the status of cathedral. George Gilbert Scottwas appointed the project architect and oversaw a number of works from 1860 until his death in 1878.

Scott began by having the medieval floor restored, necessitating the removal of tons of earth, and fixing the north aisle roof. From 1872–77 the restored floors were re-tiled in matching stone and copies of old tile designs. A further 2,000 tons of earth were shifted in 1863 during work on the foundation and a new drainage system. In 1870 the tower piers were found to be badly weakened with many cracks and cavities. Huge timbers were inserted and the arches filled with brick as an emergency measure. Repair work took until May 1871 and cost over £2,000. The south wall of the nave was now far from straight; Scott reinforced the north wall and put in scaffolding to take the weight of the roof off the wall, then had it jacked straight in under three hours. The wall was then buttressed with five huge new masses and set right. Scott was lauded as "saviour of the Abbey." From 1870–75 around £20,000 was spent on the abbey.

In 1845 St Albans was transferred from the Diocese of Lincoln to the Diocese of Rochester. Then, in 1875, the Bishopric of St Albans Act was passed and on 30 April 1877 the See of St Albans was created, which comprises about 300 churches in the counties of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. The then Bishop of Rochester, the Right Revd Dr Thomas Legh Claughton, elected to take the northern division of his old diocese and on 12 June 1877 was enthroned first Bishop of St Albans, a position he held until 1890. He is buried in the churchyard on the north side of the nave.

George Gilbert Scott was working on the nave roof, vaulting and west bay when he died on 27 March 1878. His plans were partially completed by his son, John Oldrid Scott, but the remaining work fell into the hands of Lord Grimthorpe, whose efforts have attracted much controversy—Nikolaus Pevsner calling him a "pompous, righteous bully." However, he donated much of the immense sum of £130,000 the work cost.

 

Whereas Scott's work had clearly been in sympathy with the existing building, Grimthorpe's plans reflected the Victorian ideal. Indeed, he spent considerable time dismissing and criticising the work of Scott and the efforts of his son.

Grimthorpe first reinstated the original pitch of the roof, although the battlements added for the lower roof were retained. Completed in 1879, the roof was leaded, following on Scott's desires.

 

1805 engraving of the west front of the abbey showing the lost Wheathampstead window.

His second major project was the most controversial. The west front, with the great Wheathampstead window, was cracked and leaning, and Grimthorpe, never more than an amateur architect, designed the new front himself—attacked as dense, misproportioned and unsympathetic: "His impoverishment as a designer ... [is] evident"; "this man, so practical and ingenious, was utterly devoid of taste ... his great qualities were marred by arrogance ... and a lack of historic sense". Counter proposals were deliberately substituted by Grimthorpe for poorly drawn versions and Grimthorpe's design was accepted?. During building it was considerably reworked in order to fit the actual frontage and is not improved by the poor quality sculpture. Work began in 1880 and was completed in April 1883, having cost £20,000.

 

The Lady Chapel at the east end of the cathedral.

Grimthorpe was noted for his aversion to the Perpendicular—to the extent that he would have sections he disliked demolished as "too rotten" rather than remade. In his reconstruction, especially of windows, he commonly mixed architectural styles carelessly (see the south aisle, the south choir screen and vaulting). He spent £50,000 remaking the nave. Elsewhere he completely rebuilt the south wall cloisters, with new heavy buttresses, and removed the arcading of the east cloisters during rebuilding the south transept walls. In the south transept he completely remade the south face, completed in 1885, including the huge lancet window group—his proudest achievement—and the flanking turrets; a weighty new tiled roof was also made. In the north transept Grimthorpe had the Perpendicular window demolished and his design inserted—a rose window of circles, cusped circles and lozenges arrayed in five rings around the central light, sixty-four lights in total, each circle with a different glazing pattern.

 

Grimthorpe continued through the Presbytery in his own style, adapting the antechapel for Consistory Courts, and into the Lady Chapel. After a pointed lawsuit with Henry Hucks Gibbs, first Baron Aldenham over who should direct the restoration, Grimthorpe had the vault remade and reproportioned in stone, made the floor in black and white marble (1893), and had new Victorian arcading and sculpture put below the canopy work. Externally the buttresses were expanded to support the new roof, and the walls were refaced.

As early as 1897, Grimthorpe was having to return to previously renovated sections to make repairs. His use of over-strong cement led to cracking, while his fondness for ironwork in windows led to corrosion and damage to the surrounding stone.

Grimthorpe died in 1905 and was interred in the churchyard. He left a bequest for continuing work on the buildings.

 

During this century the name St Albans Abbey was given to one of the town's railway stations.

 

20th century

John Oldrid Scott (died 1913) (George Gilbert Scott's son), despite frequent clashes with Grimthorpe, had continued working within the cathedral. Scott was a steadfast supporter of the Gothic revival and designed the tomb of the first bishop; he had a new bishop's throne built (1903), together with commemorative stalls for Bishop Festing and two Archdeacons, and new choir stalls. He also repositioned and rebuilt the organ (1907). Further work was interrupted by the war.

A number of memorials to the war were added to the cathedral, notably the painting The Passing of Eleanor by Frank Salisbury (stolen 1973) and the reglazing of the main west window, dedicated in 1925.

 

Following the Enabling Act of 1919 control of the buildings passed to a Parochial Church Council (replaced by the Cathedral Council in 1968), who appointed the woodwork specialist John Rogers as Architect and Surveyor of the Fabric. He uncovered extensive death watch beetledamage in the presbytery vault and oversaw the repair (1930–31). He had four tons of rubbish removed from the crossing tower and the main timbers reinforced (1931–32), and invested in the extensive use of insecticide throughout the wood structures. In 1934, the eight bells were overhauled and four new bells added to be used in the celebration of George V's jubilee.

 

Cecil Brown was architect and surveyor from 1939 to 1962. At first he merely oversaw the lowering of the bells for the war and established a fire watch, with the pump in the slype. After the war, in the 1950s, the organ was removed, rebuilt and reinstalled and new pews added. His major work was on the crossing tower. Grimthorpe's cement was found to be damaging the Roman bricks: every brick in the tower was replaced as needed and reset in proper mortar by one man, Walter Barrett. The tower ceiling was renovated as were the nave murals. Brown established the Muniments Room to gather and hold all the church documents.

In 1972, to encourage a closer link between celebrant and congregation, the massive nine-ton pulpit along with the choir stalls and permanent pews was dismantled and removed. The altar space was enlarged and improved. New 'lighter' wood (limed oak) choir stalls were put in, and chairs replaced the pews. A new wooden pulpit was acquired from a Norfolk church and installed in 1974. External floodlighting was added in 1975.

A major survey in 1974 revealed new leaks, decay and other deterioration, and a ten-year restoration plan was agreed. Again the roofing required much work. The nave and clerestory roofs were repaired in four stages with new leading. The nave project was completed in 1984 at a total cost of £1.75 million. The clerestory windows were repaired with the corroded iron replaced with delta bronze and other Grimthorpe work on the clerestory was replaced. Seventy-two new heads for the corbel table were made. Grimthorpe's west front was cracking, again due to the use originally of too strong a mortar, and was repaired.

 

A new visitors' centre was proposed in 1970. Planning permission was sought in 1973; there was a public inquiry and approval was granted in 1977. Constructed to the south side of the cathedral close to the site of the original chapter house of the abbey, the new 'Chapter House' cost around £1 million and was officially opened on 8 June 1982 by Queen Elizabeth. The main building material was 500,000 replica Roman bricks.

 

Other late 20th-century works include the restoration of Alban's shrine, with a new embroidered canopy, and the stained glass designed by Alan Younger for Grimthorpe's north transept rose window, unveiled in 1989 by Diana, Princess of Wales.

 

Modern times

The Bishop is the Right Reverend Alan Smith, installed in September 2009. The Venerable Jonathan Smith is Archdeacon of St Albans, installed in October 2008. On 2 July 2004, the Very Reverend Canon Dr Jeffrey John became the ninth Dean of the Cathedral.

 

Robert Runcie, later Archbishop of Canterbury, was bishop of St Albans from 1970 to 1980 and returned to live in the city after his retirement; he is commemorated by a gargoyle on the Cathedral as well as being buried in the graveyard. Colin Slee, former Dean of Southwark Cathedral, was sub-dean at St Albans under Runcie and then Dean, Peter Moore. The bishop's house is in Abbey Mill Lane, St Albans, as is the house of the Bishop of Hertford. The Reverend Canon Eric James, Chaplain Extraordinary to HM the Queen, was Canon at St Albans for many years.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Albans_Cathedral

 

View of the Swiss-German border area from the edge of the Aeussere Baselstraße (in English: "Outer Basel Street") in the municipality of Riehen, Canton of Basel-City, Switzerland

 

Some background information:

 

Riehen is a municipality in the Canton of Basel-City in Switzerland. Together with the city of Basel and Bettingen, Riehen is one of three municipalities in the canton. Riehen hosts the Fondation Beyeler (a privately owned art gallery) as well as a toy museum and several parks. The municipality is located on the right bank of the Rhine on the Swiss-German border between Wiese and the Chrischona Hill. A salient around 2 km in length protrudes from the northeast, over the Herrenwald forest.

 

Riehen has a population of roughly 21,800. The municipality is commonly considered one of the more affluent suburbs of Basel, as evidenced by numerous villas in Riehen’s municipal area. The Basel tram network runs through Riehen. Both the mathematician Leonhard Euler and the tennis player Roger Federer spent their childhood in Riehen.

 

Basel (resp. Basle) is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine in the immediate vicinity of the French and German borders. With about 180,000 inhabitants Basel is Switzerland's third-most-populous city (after Zurich and Geneva).The official language of Basel is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German.

 

Basel is commonly considered to be the cultural capital of Switzerland. The city is famous for its many museums, ranging from the Kunstmuseum, the first collection of art accessible to the public in the world (since 1661) and the largest museum of art in Switzerland, to the Museum of Contemporary Art, the first public museum of this type in Europe. Forty museums are spread throughout the city-canton, making Basel one of the largest cultural centres in Europe in relation to its size and population.

 

The University of Basel, Switzerland's oldest university (founded in 1460), and the city's centuries-long commitment to humanism, have made Basel a safe haven at times of political unrest in other parts of Europe for such notable people as Erasmus of Rotterdam, the Holbein family, Friedrich Nietzsche, and in the 20th century also Hermann Hesse and Karl Jaspers.

 

In the 1st century, the Romans founded a settlement on the site of today’s Basel Minster, which they extended into a castrum (a fortified camp) in the 3rd century. At that time the area was incorporated in the Roman province of Germania Superior. In the 4th century, the settlement was first named Basilia, from which Basel derives its later name.

 

After being repelled from crossing the Rhine several times, the Germanic tribe of the Alemanni succeeded in 406. They conquered what is today Alsace in France and a large part of the Swiss Plateau and founded the Duchy of Alemannia. However, in the 6th century, this duchy fell under Frankish rule.

 

In the 6th and 7th centuries, the Alemannic and Frankish settlement of Basel gradually grew around the old Roman castle and already in the 7th century, Basel began minting its own coins. At that time, Basel was still part of the Archdiocese of Besançon. But in the 8th century, a separate bishopric of Basel was established and at the beginning of the 9th century, a first cathedral was built on the site of the Roman castle.

 

At the partition of the Carolingian Empire, Basel was first given to West Francia, but with the treaty of Meerssen passed to East Francia in 870. In 917, the town was destroyed by the Magyars. After it had been rebuilt, it became part of Upper Burgundy, and as such was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in 1032.

 

From 999 until the Reformation, Basel was ruled by Prince-Bishops. In 1019, the construction of Basel’s cathedral began and around 1100 the first city walls were built. In the 12th century, a city council of nobles and burghers was established and in 1225, the first bridge across the River Rhine was built. The bridge was largely funded by Basel's Jewish community who had settled there a century earlier. Basel’s first city guild were the furriers, established in 1226, but in the course of the 13th century, altogether 15 guilds were founded, reflecting the increasing economic prosperity of the city.

 

Political conflicts between the bishops and the burghers begin in the mid-13th century and continue throughout the 14th century. By the late 14th century, the city was for all practical purposes independent although it continued to nominally pledge fealty to the bishops. The House of Habsburg made an unsuccessful attempt to gain control over the city. However, it caused a political split among the burghers of Basel into a pro-Habsburg faction, known as the Sterner, and an anti-Habsburg faction, known as the Psitticher.

 

In 1348, the Black Death reached Basel. The Jews were blamed and hence, in 1349, an estimated 50 to 70 Jews were executed by burning. This sad event has become known as the Basel massacre. In 1356, an earthquake destroyed much of the city along with a number of castles in the vicinity.

 

A riot on 26th February 1376, known as Boese Fasnacht (in English: "Evil Carnival"), led to the killing of a number of men of Leopold III, Duke of Austria. This was seen as a serious breach of the peace. The city council blamed "foreign ruffians" for this and executed twelve alleged perpetrators. Leopold nevertheless had the city placed under imperial ban. In a treaty Basel was given a heavy fine and was brought under Habsburg control.

 

To free itself from Habsburg hegemony, Basel joined the Swabian League of Cities in 1385. In 1393, in the Battle of Sempach, many knights of the pro-Habsburg faction, along with duke Leopold himself, were killed. Following the battle, a formal treaty with Habsburg was made. Beginning around 1400, Basel had gained its de facto independence from both the bishop and the Habsburgs and hence, was free to pursue its own policy of territorial expansion. During the council of Basel, which took place between 1431 and 1449, the city became the focal point of western Christianity.

 

In the Swabian War of 1499, Basel remained neutral despite being plundered by soldiers of both sides. The Treaty of Basel ended the war and granted the Swiss confederates exemptions from the emperor Maximillian's taxes and jurisdictions, separating Switzerland de facto from the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. In 1501, Basel joined the Swiss Confederation as its eleventh canton. The city was a great win for the Confederation, as it had a strategic location, good relations with Strasbourg and Mulhouse, and control of the corn imports from the Alsace region.

 

In 1529, the city became Protestant and the bishop's seat was moved to Porrentruy. The bishop's crook was however retained as the city's coat of arms. In 1536, the first edition of Christianae religionis institutio, John Calvin's great exposition of the Calvinist doctrine, was published at Basel.

 

In 1792, the Republic of Rauracia, a revolutionary French client republic, was created. It lasted until 1793. After three years of political agitation and a short civil war in 1833, the disadvantaged countryside seceded from the Canton of Basel, forming the half canton of Basel-Landschaft (in English: "Basel-Country").

 

Today, the name of the city is internationally known through institutions like Basel Accords, the art fair Art Basel and the football club FC Basel. The Swiss chemical industry operates largely from Basel, and Basel also has a large pharmaceutical industry. International companies like Novartis, Syngenta, Ciba Specialty Chemicals, Clariant, Hoffmann-La Roche, Basilea Pharmaceutica and Actelion are headquartered there. Finally, it should also be mentioned that in 2019, the American human resources consulting firm Mercer ranked Basel among the ten most liveable cities in the world together with the two other Swiss cities of Zurich and Geneva.

Bulgarian mathematician

Meyer-Optik Görlitz Oreston f/1.8 50mm

1/3200, f/1.8

 

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During World War II, the Bletchley Park estate housed the British Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). The intelligence work that went on at Bletchley Park was so secret that the highest British security classification “Most secret” was not high enough. This codebreaking was “Ultra secret.”

 

The codebreakers regularly intercepted the enemy’s encoded messages and ‘broke’ cipher machines that the enemy used to code their messages. Some of the most important cipher machines they broke were the German Enigma and Lorenz machines. People hired to work for Bletchley included mathematicians, crossword puzzle experts, chess masters, and language experts. Around three-fourths of the workers were women.

 

Experts think that the work done at Bletchley Park shortened the war by two to four years. Also, the work led to the development of Colossus, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer.

 

If you want to learn more, check out the Bletchley Park website. It’s pretty cool! bletchleypark.org.uk/

 

God bless!

-The Historian

French carte-de-visite

mathematician, computer scientist

The Cathedral of Pisa , officially the Primate Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta , in the center of the Piazza del Duomo, also known as Piazza dei Miracoli , is the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Pisa as well as the Primate church .

 

A masterpiece of the Romanesque , in particular of the Pisan Romanesque , it represents the tangible testimony of the prestige and wealth achieved by the maritime republic of Pisa at the moment of its apogee.

 

Its construction began in 1063 ( 1064 according to the Pisan calendar in force at the time) by the architect Buscheto , with the tenth part of the spoils of the Palermo campaign in Sicily against the Muslims ( 1063 ) led by Giovanni Orlandi belonging to the Orlandi family [ 1] . Different stylistic elements blend together: classical, Lombard-Emilian , Byzantine and in particular Islamic, proving the international presence of Pisan merchants in those times. In that same year the reconstruction of the Basilica of San Marco in Venice also began , so it may also be that there was a rivalry between the two maritime republics at the time to create the most beautiful and sumptuous place of worship.

 

The church was built in an area outside the early medieval city walls , to symbolize the power of Pisa which did not require protection. The chosen area was already used in the Lombard era as a necropolis and, already in the early 11th century , an unfinished church was built which was to be dedicated to Santa Maria. The new large church of Buscheto, in fact, was initially called Santa Maria Maggiore until it was finally named after Santa Maria Assunta.

 

In 1092 the church changed from a simple cathedral to being primatial, the title of primate having been conferred on Archbishop Daiberto by Pope Urban II , an honor which today is only formal. The cathedral was consecrated in 1118 by Pope Gelasius II , as recorded by the inscription placed internally on the counter-façade at the top left.

 

In the first half of the 12th century the cathedral was enlarged under the direction of the architect Rainaldo , who lengthened the naves by adding three bays in front of the old facade [2] according to the Buscheto style, widened the transept and designed a new facade, completed by the workers led by the sculptors Guglielmo and Biduino . The date of the start of the works is uncertain: immediately after Buscheto's death around the year 1120 , according to some, around the year 1140 according to others. The end of the works dates back to 1180 , as documented by the date affixed to the bronze doors by Bonanno Pisano on the main door.

 

The current appearance of the complex building is the result of repeated restoration campaigns that took place in different eras. The first radical interventions followed the disastrous fire on the night between 24 and 25 October 1595 [3] , which destroyed many decorative interventions and following which the roof was rebuilt and the three bronze doors of the facade were made, the work of sculptors from the workshop of Giambologna , including Gasparo Mola and Pietro Tacca . Starting from the eighteenth century, the progressive covering of the internal walls began with large paintings on canvas, the "quadroni" with Stories of Pisan blesseds and saints , executed by the main artists of the time thanks to the initiative of some citizens who financed themselves by creating a special business.

 

The Napoleonic spoliations of the Cathedral of Pisa and the Opera del Duomo were significant, many works converged on the Louvre where they are exhibited today, including The Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas among the Doctors of the Church by Benozzo Gozzoli , now in the Louvre, Death of San Bernardo dell'Orcagna and San Benedetto , the work of Andrea del Castagno .

 

Among the various noteworthy interventions, it is worth mentioning the dismantling of Giovanni Pisano's pulpit which was reassembled only in 1926 in a different position and with several parts missing, including the staircase, and the dismantling of the monument to Henry VII created by Lupo di Francesco which was located in front of the door of San Ranieri and subsequently replaced by a simplified and symbolic version.

 

The subsequent interventions took place during the nineteenth century and affected both the internal and external decorations, which in many cases, especially the sculptures on the facade, were replaced by copies (the originals are in the Museo dell'Opera del duomo ).

 

The building has a Latin cross shape with a large dome at the intersection of the arms. The longitudinal body, divided into five naves , extends over ten bays . This plan continues in the choir with two more bays and a final apse crowning the central nave alone. The transept has 4 bays on each side (or six if we include the two in common with the longitudinal body) and has three naves with apses ending on both sides. In the center four large pillars delimit the rectangular cross ending at the top with a large elliptical dome.

 

The building, like the bell tower, has sunk perceptibly into the ground, and some defects in the construction are clearly visible, such as the differences in level between Buscheto's nave and the extension by Rainaldo (the bays towards the west and the facade) .

 

The exterior of the cathedral is mainly in white and gray marble although the older stones placed at the lower levels of the longitudinal body are of other poorer material. There is no shortage of valuable materials, especially on the facade, where there are multicolored marble inlays, mosaics and also bronze objects from war booty, including the Griffin used on the top of the roof at the back (east side), perhaps taken from Palermo in 1061 ( today there is a copy on the roof, the original is in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo ).

 

The longitudinal body, transept and choir have a rich facing punctuated by three orders or floors. On the lower floor, long rows of pilasters supporting blind arches , in turn enclosing lozenges or windows, punctuate the space on all sides of the building with very few interruptions (only the apse of the right transept). The second floor still has pilasters but this time these do not support blind arches and are rather architraved , a motif interrupted only in the apse of the right transept (where blind arches appear again) and in the main apse where two orders of loggias are visible . In addition to the windows and lozenges, inlaid oculi also appear between the pilasters . The third floor has columns or semi-columns which again support blind arches (longitudinal body and choir) or an architrave (transept) with the usual alternation of windows, lozenges and inlaid oculi.

 

The raised round arches on the facade and in the main apse recall elements of Muslim art from Sicily . The blind arches with lozenges recall the similar structures of the churches of Armenia . Even the ellipsoidal dome rebuilt after the fire of 1595, surmounted by a lantern, recalls Islamic architecture.

 

The gray and white marble façade , decorated with colored marble inserts, was built by master Rainaldo in the 12th century and finished by 1180. On the lower floor, the seven blind arches which enclose lozenges, one every two, echo the same motif which spreads over the remaining three sides of the Cathedral. On the façade, however, the ornamentation becomes richer: semi-columns placed against semi-rectangular pillars replace the slender pilaster strips on the sides and are surmounted by Corinthian or figurative capitals. The arches are embellished with a rich texture of vegetal motifs and the lozenges are also larger and inlaid with multicolored marble. The empty spaces between the three portals have marble slabs forming square or rectangular motifs and are embellished with horizontal ornamental bands with plant motifs. The empty spaces between the arches are also filled with marble tablets inlaid with geometric or animal motifs. Noteworthy is the one at the top right of the main portal which depicts a Christian brandishing the cross between two beasts and the writing of Psalm 21 : Salva me ex ore leonis et a cornibus unicornium humilitatem meam (Save me from the mouth of the lion Lord and my humility from the unicorn's horns), the original of which is preserved in the nearby Museo dell'Opera del Duomo .

 

Of the three portals , the central one has larger dimensions and is enclosed by two columns decorated with vegetal motifs which support, above the capitals, two lions to symbolize the two "faces" of Christ the Judge , the one who condemns on the left and the one who rewards and is merciful on the right (note the saved and protected lamb between the legs). All three portals have eighteenth-century mosaics by Giuseppe Modena da Lucca in their lunettes depicting the Assumption of the Virgin (centre), Santa Reparata (left) and Saint John the Baptist (right). The bronze doors were made by various artists of the caliber of Giambologna , after the fire of 1595, replacing the two wooden side doors and the bronze-covered wooden royal door by Bonanno Pisano which bore the date of 1180 (seen and described before the fire) to testify to the completion of the façade in that year. To the left of the north left portal, there is Buscheto's tomb.

 

The four upper floors are characterized by four orders of superimposed loggias, divided by finely sculpted frames, behind which there are single , double and triple lancet windows . Many of the friezes on the arches and frames were redone in the 17th century after the fire of 1595, while the polychrome marble inlays between the arches are original. Even higher up, to crown it, the Madonna and Child by Andrea Pisano and, in the corners, the four evangelists by Giovanni Pisano (early 14th century).

 

Contrary to what one might think, since ancient times the faithful have entered the Cathedral through the door of San Ranieri , located at the back in the transept of the same name, in front of the bell tower. This is because the nobles of the city went to the cathedral coming from via Santa Maria which leads to that transept. This door was cast around 1180 by Bonanno Pisano , and is the only door to escape the fire of 1595 which heavily damaged the church. The door is decorated with twenty-four panels depicting stories from the New Testament. This door is one of the first produced in Italy in the Middle Ages, after the importation of numerous examples from Constantinople , (in Amalfi , in Salerno , in Rome , in Montecassino , in Venice ...) and one admires an entirely Western sensitivity, which breaks away from the Byzantine tradition.

 

The original gràdule of the Duomo, designed by Giovanni Pisano and dating back to the end of the 13th century, were removed in 1865 and replaced by the current churchyard . These gràdule consisted of small walls, decorated with squares carved with figures of animals and heads, close to the external perimeter of the cathedral and served as a base for the numerous sarcophagi of the Roman era which, during the medieval era, were reused for the burials of nobles (among whom Beatrice of Canossa stands out ) and heroes. Currently some fragments are visible in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, while the sarcophagi were all moved within the enclosure of the monumental cemetery .

 

The lower register of the facade is not very rich in figurative sculptural decorations unlike other contemporary Romanesque cathedrals, but it still gives a rich meaning both to its unitary components and a complex allegory in its overall vision. To read the latter you need to start from the left where the outermost capital of the left side portal shows two ferocious lions devouring weak prey and two human figures further behind. The former represent the struggle between good and evil where evil dominates [6] , but behind them the figure of the old man stacking wood and the young man towering over a ram perhaps represent Abraham and Isaac and the sacrificial ram (or two peasants virtuous at work) which show preparation for God's plan of salvation. The arch that starts from the same capital shows a row of dragons that two virtuous human figures in the center are forced to face in the continuous struggle between good and evil. [6]

 

At the level of the central portal we enter the New Testament which concretizes the plan of salvation brought about by God starting from Abraham . It is the portal dedicated to the Virgin of the Assumption and her Son , whose divine judgment is represented by the two lions of justice, the one that condemns on the left and the one that protects and saves on the right with the little lamb protected between its legs, for Divine Mercy or Justice whatever it is. [6] The 42 stylized human figurines present on the decorated arch show the 42 generations that separate, according to the Gospel of Matthew , Abraham from Jesus Christ (the figurines are actually 43 but perhaps due to renovation needs or other reasons for filling the frieze ). This transition from the old to the new is strengthened by the two marble inlays in the intrados of the main arch where a ferocious dragon and a lion facing each other depicting the perennial struggle between the evil forces (left inlay) [6] become two equally ferocious unicorns but in the middle to whom a Christian appears brandishing a cross to defend himself from them (inlay on the right) and where we read in Latin:

 

de ore leonis libera me domine et a cornibus unicorni humilitatem mea ("Save me from the lion's mouth, Lord, and my humility from the unicorn's horns", psalm 21 ).

The last element of this complex narrative is the outermost capital of the right portal, which acts as a pendant to that of the left portal from which we started. We are well beyond the coming of Jesus where the evil lions, previously in the foreground, are relegated to a backward and out of the way position, always ready to strike as shown by the heads turned back and the tongue out, but in a contorted position due to the continuous escapes to which the Savior and the Church forces them to do. [6] In a prominent position there are now two naked human figurines, the souls of those saved by the Savior through the intercession of the Church , which are composed and serene figures with large eyes, well anchored with their arms to the garland of the capital and the feet resting well on the acanthus leaves, symbol of men of faith, victorious over sin and blessed by faith rather than merit.

 

The five- nave interior is covered in black and white marble, with monolithic columns of gray marble and capitals of the Corinthian order . The arches of the ten bays are round arches (those of the central nave) or raised arches in the Moorish style of the time (those of the side naves).

 

The central nave has a seventeenth-century gilded coffered ceiling, in gilded and painted wood, by the Florentines Domenico and Bartolomeo Atticciati ; it bears the Medici coat of arms in gold . Presumably the ancient ceiling had a structure with exposed wooden trusses. The four side naves have a cross-shaped plastered roof. The coffered roof is also present in the choir and in the central nave of the transept, while a plastered barrel roof is present in the side naves of the transept. The coverage of the lateral naves of the transept at the level of the two bays shared with the lateral naves of the longitudinal body is curious: these are cross-shaped (as in the lateral naves of the longitudinal body), but are higher (as in the lateral naves of the transept) . There is also a women's gallery of Byzantine origin that runs along the entire church, including the choir and transept and which has a coffered roof (central body) or wooden beams (transept). Even higher up, thin and deep windows allow the church to be lit.

 

The interior suggests a spatial effect that has some analogy with that of mosques , for the use of raised arches, for the alternation of white and green marble bands, for the unusual elliptical dome , of oriental inspiration, and for the presence of women's galleries with solid monolithic granite columns in the mullioned windows , a clear sign of Byzantine influence. The architect Buscheto had welcomed stimuli from the Islamic Levant and Armenia . [7]

 

Only part of the medieval decorative interventions survived the fire of 1595. Among these is the fresco with the Madonna and Child by the Pisan Master of San Torpè in the triumphal arch (late 13th-early 14th century), and below it the Cosmatesque flooring , of a certain rarity outside the borders of Lazio . It was made of marble inlays with geometric "opus alexandrinum" motifs (mid- 12th century ). Other late medieval fresco fragments have survived, among them Saint Jerome on one of the four central pillars and Saint John the Baptist , a Crucifix and Saint Cosimo and Damian on the pillar near the entrance door, partially hidden by the compass .

 

At the meeting point between the transept and the central body the dome rises, the decoration of which represented one of the last interventions carried out after the fire mentioned. Painted with the rare encaustic painting technique [8] (or wax on wall) [9] , the dome represents the Virgin in glory and saints ( 1627 - 1631 ), a masterpiece by the Pisan Orazio Riminaldi , completed after his death. which occurred in 1630 due to the plague, by his brother Girolamo . The decoration underwent a careful restoration which returned it to its original splendor in 2018.

 

The presbytery, ending in a curved apse, presents a great variety of ornaments. Above, in the basin, the large mosaic of Christ enthroned between the Virgin and Saint John is made famous by the face of Saint John, a work by Cimabue from 1302 which miraculously survived the fire of 1595. Precisely that Saint John the Evangelist was the The last work created by Cimabue before his death and the only one for which certified documentation exists. It evokes the mosaics of Byzantine churches and also Norman ones, such as Cefalù and Monreale , in Sicily . The mosaic, largely created by Francesco da Pisa, was finished by Vincino da Pistoia with the depiction of the Madonna on the left side ( 1320 ).

 

The main altar, from the beginning of the twentieth century, features six Angels contemporary with Ludovico Poliaghi , and in the center the bronze Crucifix by Giambologna , of which there are also the two candle-holder Angels at the end of the rich marble transenna, while the third Angel on the column to the left of the altar is by Stoldo Lorenzi .

 

Below, behind the main altar, there is the large decorative complex of the Tribune, composed of 27 paintings depicting episodes from the Old Testament and Christological stories. Begun before the fire with the works of Andrea del Sarto (three canvases, Saint Agnes , Saints Catherine and Margaret and Saints Peter and John the Baptist ) del Sodoma and Domenico Beccafumi ( Stories of Moses and the Evangelists ), it was completed after this calamity with the works of several Tuscan painters, including Orazio Riminaldi .

 

The pulpit , a masterpiece by Giovanni Pisano (1302-1310), survived the fire, but was dismantled during the restoration work and was not reassembled until 1926 . With its articulated architectural structure and complex sculptural decoration, the work is one of the largest narratives in fourteenth-century images that reflects the renewal and religious fervor of the era. The episodes from the Life of Christ are carved in an expressive language on the slightly curved panels . The structure is polygonal, as in the similar previous examples, in the baptistery of Pisa , in the cathedral of Siena and in the church of Sant'Andrea in Pistoia , but for the first time the panels are slightly curved, giving a new idea of ​​circularity in its type. Equally original are: the presence of caryatids , sculpted figures in place of simple columns, which symbolize the Virtues ; the adoption of spiral brackets instead of arches to support the mezzanine floor; the sense of movement, given by the numerous figures that fill every empty space.

 

For these qualities combined with the skilful narrative art of the nine scenes it is generally considered Giovanni's masterpiece and more generally of Italian Gothic sculpture. The pulpit commissioned from Giovanni replaced a previous one , created by Guglielmo ( 1157 - 1162 ), which was sent to the cathedral of Cagliari . Since there is no documentation of what the pulpit looked like before its dismantling, it was rebuilt in a different position from the original one and, certainly, with the parts not in the same order and orientation as had been thought. It is not known whether or not he had a marble staircase.

 

The right transept is occupied by the Chapel of San Ranieri , patron saint of the city, whose relics are preserved in the magnificent shrine on the altar. Also in the chapel, on the left, is preserved part of the fragmentary tomb of Henry VII of Luxembourg , Holy Roman Emperor , who died in 1313 in Buonconvento while besieging Florence in vain . The tomb, also dismantled and reassembled, (it was sculpted by Tino di Camaino in 1313 - 1315 ) and was originally placed in the center of the apse, as a sign of the Ghibelline faith of the city. It was also a much more complex sculptural monument, featuring various statues. Moved several times for political reasons, it was also separated into several parts (some inside the church, some on the facade, some in the Campo Santo). Today we find the sarcophagus in the church with the deceased depicted lying on it, according to the fashion in vogue at that time, and the twelve apostles sculpted in bas-relief. The lunette painted with curtain-holding angels is instead a later addition from the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio (end of the 15th century ). The other remains of the monument have been reassembled in the nearby Museo dell'Opera del Duomo . The left transept is occupied by the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, in the center of which is the large silver tabernacle designed by Giovan Battista Foggini (1678-86).

 

On the numerous side altars there are sixteenth-seventeenth century paintings. Among the paintings housed on the minor altars, we remember the Madonna delle Grazie with saints, by the Florentine mannerist Andrea del Sarto, and the Madonna enthroned with saints in the right transept, by Perin del Vaga , a pupil of Raphael , both finished by Giovanni Antonio Sogliani . The canvas with the Dispute of the Sacrament is in Baroque style, by the Sienese Francesco Vanni , and the Cross with saints by the Genoese Giovanni Battista Paggi . Particularly venerated is the image of the thirteenth-century Madonna and Child , known as the Madonna di sotto gli organi , attributed to the Volterra native Berlinghiero Berlinghieri .

 

Pisa is a city and comune in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the city contains more than twenty other historic churches, several medieval palaces, and bridges across the Arno. Much of the city's architecture was financed from its history as one of the Italian maritime republics.

 

The city is also home to the University of Pisa, which has a history going back to the 12th century, the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, founded by Napoleon in 1810, and its offshoot, the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies.

 

History

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Pisa.

Ancient times

The most believed hypothesis is that the origin of the name Pisa comes from Etruscan and means 'mouth', as Pisa is at the mouth of the Arno river.

 

Although throughout history there have been several uncertainties about the origin of the city of Pisa, excavations made in the 1980s and 1990s found numerous archaeological remains, including the fifth century BC tomb of an Etruscan prince, proving the Etruscan origin of the city, and its role as a maritime city, showing that it also maintained trade relations with other Mediterranean civilizations.

 

Ancient Roman authors referred to Pisa as an old city. Virgil, in his Aeneid, states that Pisa was already a great center by the times described; and gives the epithet of Alphēae to the city because it was said to have been founded by colonists from Pisa in Elis, near which the Alpheius river flowed. The Virgilian commentator Servius wrote that the Teuti founded the town 13 centuries before the start of the common era.

 

The maritime role of Pisa should have been already prominent if the ancient authorities ascribed to it the invention of the naval ram. Pisa took advantage of being the only port along the western coast between Genoa (then a small village) and Ostia. Pisa served as a base for Roman naval expeditions against Ligurians and Gauls. In 180 BC, it became a Roman colony under Roman law, as Portus Pisanus. In 89 BC, Portus Pisanus became a municipium. Emperor Augustus fortified the colony into an important port and changed the name to Colonia Iulia obsequens.

 

Pisa supposedly was founded on the shore, but due to the alluvial sediments from the Arno and the Serchio, whose mouth lies about 11 km (7 mi) north of the Arno's, the shore moved west. Strabo states that the city was 4.0 km (2.5 mi) away from the coast. Currently, it is located 9.7 km (6 mi) from the coast. However, it was a maritime city, with ships sailing up the Arno. In the 90s AD, a baths complex was built in the city.

 

Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages

During the last years of the Western Roman Empire, Pisa did not decline as much as the other cities of Italy, probably due to the complexity of its river system and its consequent ease of defence. In the seventh century, Pisa helped Pope Gregory I by supplying numerous ships in his military expedition against the Byzantines of Ravenna: Pisa was the sole Byzantine centre of Tuscia to fall peacefully in Lombard hands, through assimilation with the neighbouring region where their trading interests were prevalent. Pisa began in this way its rise to the role of main port of the Upper Tyrrhenian Sea and became the main trading centre between Tuscany and Corsica, Sardinia, and the southern coasts of France and Spain.

 

After Charlemagne had defeated the Lombards under the command of Desiderius in 774, Pisa went through a crisis, but soon recovered. Politically, it became part of the duchy of Lucca. In 860, Pisa was captured by vikings led by Björn Ironside. In 930, Pisa became the county centre (status it maintained until the arrival of Otto I) within the mark of Tuscia. Lucca was the capital but Pisa was the most important city, as in the middle of tenth century Liutprand of Cremona, bishop of Cremona, called Pisa Tusciae provinciae caput ("capital of the province of Tuscia"), and a century later, the marquis of Tuscia was commonly referred to as "marquis of Pisa". In 1003, Pisa was the protagonist of the first communal war in Italy, against Lucca. From the naval point of view, since the ninth century, the emergence of the Saracen pirates urged the city to expand its fleet; in the following years, this fleet gave the town an opportunity for more expansion. In 828, Pisan ships assaulted the coast of North Africa. In 871, they took part in the defence of Salerno from the Saracens. In 970, they gave also strong support to Otto I's expedition, defeating a Byzantine fleet in front of Calabrese coasts.

 

11th century

The power of Pisa as a maritime nation began to grow and reached its apex in the 11th century, when it acquired traditional fame as one of the four main historical maritime republics of Italy (Repubbliche Marinare).

 

At that time, the city was a very important commercial centre and controlled a significant Mediterranean merchant fleet and navy. It expanded its powers in 1005 through the sack of Reggio Calabria in the south of Italy. Pisa was in continuous conflict with some 'Saracens' - a medieval term to refer to Arab Muslims - who had their bases in Corsica, for control of the Mediterranean. In 1017, Sardinian Giudicati were militarily supported by Pisa, in alliance with Genoa, to defeat the Saracen King Mugahid, who had settled a logistic base in the north of Sardinia the year before. This victory gave Pisa supremacy in the Tyrrhenian Sea. When the Pisans subsequently ousted the Genoese from Sardinia, a new conflict and rivalry was born between these major marine republics. Between 1030 and 1035, Pisa went on to defeat several rival towns in Sicily and conquer Carthage in North Africa. In 1051–1052, the admiral Jacopo Ciurini conquered Corsica, provoking more resentment from the Genoese. In 1063, Admiral Giovanni Orlandi, coming to the aid of the Norman Roger I, took Palermo from the Saracen pirates. The gold treasure taken from the Saracens in Palermo allowed the Pisans to start the building of their cathedral and the other monuments which constitute the famous Piazza del Duomo.

 

In 1060, Pisa had to engage in their first battle with Genoa. The Pisan victory helped to consolidate its position in the Mediterranean. Pope Gregory VII recognised in 1077 the new "Laws and customs of the sea" instituted by the Pisans, and emperor Henry IV granted them the right to name their own consuls, advised by a council of elders. This was simply a confirmation of the present situation, because in those years, the marquis had already been excluded from power. In 1092, Pope Urban II awarded Pisa the supremacy over Corsica and Sardinia, and at the same time raising the town to the rank of archbishopric.

 

Pisa sacked the Tunisian city of Mahdia in 1088. Four years later, Pisan and Genoese ships helped Alfonso VI of Castilla to push El Cid out of Valencia. A Pisan fleet of 120 ships also took part in the First Crusade, and the Pisans were instrumental in the taking of Jerusalem in 1099. On their way to the Holy Land, the ships did not miss the occasion to sack some Byzantine islands; the Pisan crusaders were led by their archbishop Daibert, the future patriarch of Jerusalem. Pisa and the other Repubbliche Marinare took advantage of the crusade to establish trading posts and colonies in the Eastern coastal cities of the Levant. In particular, the Pisans founded colonies in Antiochia, Acre, Jaffa, Tripoli, Tyre, Latakia, and Accone. They also had other possessions in Jerusalem and Caesarea, plus smaller colonies (with lesser autonomy) in Cairo, Alexandria, and of course Constantinople, where the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus granted them special mooring and trading rights. In all these cities, the Pisans were granted privileges and immunity from taxation, but had to contribute to the defence in case of attack. In the 12th century, the Pisan quarter in the eastern part of Constantinople had grown to 1,000 people. For some years of that century, Pisa was the most prominent commercial and military ally of the Byzantine Empire, overcoming Venice itself.

 

12th century

In 1113, Pisa and Pope Paschal II set up, together with the count of Barcelona and other contingents from Provence and Italy (Genoese excluded), a war to free the Balearic Islands from the Moors; the queen and the king of Majorca were brought in chains to Tuscany. Though the Almoravides soon reconquered the island, the booty taken helped the Pisans in their magnificent programme of buildings, especially the cathedral, and Pisa gained a role of pre-eminence in the Western Mediterranean.

 

In the following years, the powerful Pisan fleet, led by archbishop Pietro Moriconi, drove away the Saracens after ferocious battles. Though short-lived, this Pisan success in Spain increased the rivalry with Genoa. Pisa's trade with Languedoc, Provence (Noli, Savona, Fréjus, and Montpellier) were an obstacle to Genoese interests in cities such as Hyères, Fos, Antibes, and Marseille.

 

The war began in 1119 when the Genoese attacked several galleys on their way home to the motherland, and lasted until 1133. The two cities fought each other on land and at sea, but hostilities were limited to raids and pirate-like assaults.

 

In June 1135, Bernard of Clairvaux took a leading part in the Council of Pisa, asserting the claims of Pope Innocent II against those of Pope Anacletus II, who had been elected pope in 1130 with Norman support, but was not recognised outside Rome. Innocent II resolved the conflict with Genoa, establishing Pisan and Genoese spheres of influence. Pisa could then, unhindered by Genoa, participate in the conflict of Innocent II against king Roger II of Sicily. Amalfi, one of the maritime republics (though already declining under Norman rule), was conquered on August 6, 1136; the Pisans destroyed the ships in the port, assaulted the castles in the surrounding areas, and drove back an army sent by Roger from Aversa. This victory brought Pisa to the peak of its power and to a standing equal to Venice. Two years later, its soldiers sacked Salerno.

 

New city walls, erected in 1156 by Consul Cocco Griffi

In the following years, Pisa was one of the staunchest supporters of the Ghibelline party. This was much appreciated by Frederick I. He issued in 1162 and 1165 two important documents, with these grants: Apart from the jurisdiction over the Pisan countryside, the Pisans were granted freedom of trade in the whole empire, the coast from Civitavecchia to Portovenere, a half of Palermo, Messina, Salerno and Naples, the whole of Gaeta, Mazara, and Trapani, and a street with houses for its merchants in every city of the Kingdom of Sicily. Some of these grants were later confirmed by Henry VI, Otto IV, and Frederick II. They marked the apex of Pisa's power, but also spurred the resentment of other cities such as Lucca, Massa, Volterra, and Florence, thwarting their aim to expand towards the sea. The clash with Lucca also concerned the possession of the castle of Montignoso and mainly the control of the Via Francigena, the main trade route between Rome and France. Last, but not least, such a sudden and large increase of power by Pisa could only lead to another war with Genoa.

 

Genoa had acquired a dominant position in the markets of southern France. The war began in 1165 on the Rhône, when an attack on a convoy, directed to some Pisan trade centres on the river, by the Genoese and their ally, the count of Toulouse, failed. Pisa, though, was allied to Provence. The war continued until 1175 without significant victories. Another point of attrition was Sicily, where both the cities had privileges granted by Henry VI. In 1192, Pisa managed to conquer Messina. This episode was followed by a series of battles culminating in the Genoese conquest of Syracuse in 1204. Later, the trading posts in Sicily were lost when the new Pope Innocent III, though removing the excommunication cast over Pisa by his predecessor Celestine III, allied himself with the Guelph League of Tuscany, led by Florence. Soon, he stipulated[clarification needed] a pact with Genoa, too, further weakening the Pisan presence in southern Italy.

 

To counter the Genoese predominance in the southern Tyrrhenian Sea, Pisa strengthened its relationship with its traditional Spanish and French bases (Marseille, Narbonne, Barcelona, etc.) and tried to defy the Venetian rule of the Adriatic Sea. In 1180, the two cities agreed to a nonaggression treaty in the Tyrrhenian and the Adriatic, but the death of Emperor Manuel Comnenus in Constantinople changed the situation. Soon, attacks on Venetian convoys were made. Pisa signed trade and political pacts with Ancona, Pula, Zara, Split, and Brindisi; in 1195, a Pisan fleet reached Pola to defend its independence from Venice, but the Serenissima soon reconquered the rebel sea town.

 

One year later, the two cities signed a peace treaty, which resulted in favourable conditions for Pisa, but in 1199, the Pisans violated it by blockading the port of Brindisi in Apulia. In the following naval battle, they were defeated by the Venetians. The war that followed ended in 1206 with a treaty in which Pisa gave up all its hopes to expand in the Adriatic, though it maintained the trading posts it had established in the area. From that point on, the two cities were united against the rising power of Genoa and sometimes collaborated to increase the trading benefits in Constantinople.

 

13th century

In 1209 in Lerici, two councils for a final resolution of the rivalry with Genoa were held. A 20-year peace treaty was signed, but when in 1220, the emperor Frederick II confirmed his supremacy over the Tyrrhenian coast from Civitavecchia to Portovenere, the Genoese and Tuscan resentment against Pisa grew again. In the following years, Pisa clashed with Lucca in Garfagnana and was defeated by the Florentines at Castel del Bosco. The strong Ghibelline position of Pisa brought this town diametrically against the Pope, who was in a dispute with the Holy Roman Empire, and indeed the pope tried to deprive Pisa of its dominions in northern Sardinia.

 

In 1238, Pope Gregory IX formed an alliance between Genoa and Venice against the empire, and consequently against Pisa, too. One year later, he excommunicated Frederick II and called for an anti-Empire council to be held in Rome in 1241. On May 3, 1241, a combined fleet of Pisan and Sicilian ships, led by the emperor's son Enzo, attacked a Genoese convoy carrying prelates from northern Italy and France, next to the isle of Giglio (Battle of Giglio), in front of Tuscany; the Genoese lost 25 ships, while about a thousand sailors, two cardinals, and one bishop were taken prisoner. After this major victory, the council in Rome failed, but Pisa was excommunicated. This extreme measure was only removed in 1257. Anyway, the Tuscan city tried to take advantage of the favourable situation to conquer the Corsican city of Aleria and even lay siege to Genoa itself in 1243.

 

The Ligurian republic of Genoa, however, recovered fast from this blow and won back Lerici, conquered by the Pisans some years earlier, in 1256.

 

The great expansion in the Mediterranean and the prominence of the merchant class urged a modification in the city's institutes. The system with consuls was abandoned, and in 1230, the new city rulers named a capitano del popolo ("people's chieftain") as civil and military leader. Despite these reforms, the conquered lands and the city itself were harassed by the rivalry between the two families of Della Gherardesca and Visconti. In 1237 the archbishop and the Emperor Frederick II intervened to reconcile the two rivals, but the strains continued. In 1254, the people rebelled and imposed 12 Anziani del Popolo ("People's Elders") as their political representatives in the commune. They also supplemented the legislative councils, formed of noblemen, with new People's Councils, composed by the main guilds and by the chiefs of the People's Companies. These had the power to ratify the laws of the Major General Council and the Senate.

 

Decline

The decline is said to have begun on August 6, 1284, when the numerically superior fleet of Pisa, under the command of Albertino Morosini, was defeated by the brilliant tactics of the Genoese fleet, under the command of Benedetto Zaccaria and Oberto Doria, in the dramatic naval Battle of Meloria. This defeat ended the maritime power of Pisa and the town never fully recovered; in 1290, the Genoese destroyed forever the Porto Pisano (Pisa's port), and covered the land with salt. The region around Pisa did not permit the city to recover from the loss of thousands of sailors from the Meloria, while Liguria guaranteed enough sailors to Genoa. Goods, however, continued to be traded, albeit in reduced quantity, but the end came when the Arno started to change course, preventing the galleys from reaching the city's port up the river. The nearby area also likely became infested with malaria. The true end came in 1324, when Sardinia was entirely lost to the Aragonese.

 

Always Ghibelline, Pisa tried to build up its power in the course of the 14th century, and even managed to defeat Florence in the Battle of Montecatini (1315), under the command of Uguccione della Faggiuola. Eventually, however, after a long siege, Pisa was occupied by Florentines in 1405.[9] Florentines corrupted the capitano del popolo ("people's chieftain"), Giovanni Gambacorta, who at night opened the city gate of San Marco. Pisa was never conquered by an army. In 1409, Pisa was the seat of a council trying to set the question of the Great Schism. In the 15th century, access to the sea became more difficult, as the port was silting up and was cut off from the sea. When in 1494, Charles VIII of France invaded the Italian states to claim the Kingdom of Naples, Pisa reclaimed its independence as the Second Pisan Republic.

 

The new freedom did not last long; 15 years of battles and sieges by the Florentine troops led by Antonio da Filicaja, Averardo Salviati and Niccolò Capponi were made, but they failed to conquer the city. Vitellozzo Vitelli with his brother Paolo were the only ones who actually managed to break the strong defences of Pisa and make a breach in the Stampace bastion in the southern west part of the walls, but he did not enter the city. For that, they were suspected of treachery and Paolo was put to death. However, the resources of Pisa were getting low, and at the end, the city was sold to the Visconti family from Milan and eventually to Florence again. Livorno took over the role of the main port of Tuscany. Pisa acquired a mainly cultural role spurred by the presence of the University of Pisa, created in 1343, and later reinforced by the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (1810) and Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies (1987).

 

Pisa was the birthplace of the important early physicist Galileo Galilei. It is still the seat of an archbishopric. Besides its educational institutions, it has become a light industrial centre and a railway hub. It suffered repeated destruction during World War II.

 

Since the early 1950s, the US Army has maintained Camp Darby just outside Pisa, which is used by many US military personnel as a base for vacations in the area.

 

Geography

Climate

Pisa has a borderline humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfa) and Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification: Csa). The city is characterized by cool to mild winters and hot summers. This transitional climate allows Pisa to have summers with moderate rainfall. Rainfall peaks in autumn. Snow is rare. The highest officially recorded temperature was 39.5 °C (103.1 °F) on 22 August 2011 and the lowest was −13.8 °C (7.2 °F) on 12 January 1985.

 

Culture

Gioco del Ponte

In Pisa there was a festival and game fr:Gioco del Ponte (Game of the Bridge) which was celebrated (in some form) in Pisa from perhaps the 1200s down to 1807. From the end of the 1400s the game took the form of a mock battle fought upon Pisa's central bridge (Ponte di Mezzo). The participants wore quilted armor and the only offensive weapon allowed was the targone, a shield-shaped, stout board with precisely specified dimensions. Hitting below the belt was not allowed. Two opposing teams started at opposite ends of the bridge. The object of the two opposing teams was to penetrate, drive back, and disperse the opponents' ranks and to thereby drive them backwards off the bridge. The struggle was limited to forty-five minutes. Victory or defeat was immensely important to the team players and their partisans, but sometimes the game was fought to a draw and both sides celebrated.

 

In 1677 the battle was witnessed by Dutch travelling artist Cornelis de Bruijn. He wrote:

 

"While I stayed in Livorno, I went to Pisa to witness the bridge fight there. The fighters arrived fully armored, wearing helmets, each carrying their banner, which was planted at both ends of the bridge, which is quite wide and long. The battle is fought with certain wooden implements made for this purpose, which they wear over their arms and are attached to them, with which they pummel each other so intensely that I saw several of them carried away with bloody and crushed heads. Victory consists of capturing the bridge, in the same way as the fistfights in Venice between the it:Castellani and the Nicolotti."

 

In 1927 the tradition was revived by college students as an elaborate costume parade. In 1935 Vittorio Emanuele III with the royal family witnessed the first revival of a modern version of the game, which has been pursued in the 20th and 21st centuries with some interruptions and varying degrees of enthusiasm by Pisans and their civic institutions.

 

Festivals and cultural events

Capodanno pisano (folklore, March 25)

Gioco del Ponte (folklore)

Luminara di San Ranieri (folklore, June 16)

Maritime republics regata (folklore)

Premio Nazionale Letterario Pisa

Pisa Book Festival

Metarock (rock music festival)

Internet Festival San Ranieri regata (folklore)

Turn Off Festival (house music festival)

Nessiáh (Jewish cultural Festival, November)

Main sights

 

The Leaning Tower of Pisa.

While the bell tower of the cathedral, known as "the leaning Tower of Pisa", is the most famous image of the city, it is one of many works of art and architecture in the city's Piazza del Duomo, also known, since the 20th century, as Piazza dei Miracoli (Square of Miracles), to the north of the old town center. The Piazza del Duomo also houses the Duomo (the Cathedral), the Baptistry and the Campo Santo (the monumental cemetery). The medieval complex includes the above-mentioned four sacred buildings, the hospital and few palaces. All the complex is kept by the Opera (fabrica ecclesiae) della Primaziale Pisana, an old non profit foundation that has operated since the building of the Cathedral in 1063 to maintain the sacred buildings. The area is framed by medieval walls kept by the municipal administration.

 

Other sights include:

Santo Stefano dei Cavalieri, church sited on Piazza dei Cavalieri, and also designed by Vasari. It had originally a single nave; two more were added in the 17th century. It houses a bust by Donatello, and paintings by Vasari, Jacopo Ligozzi, Alessandro Fei, and Pontormo. It also contains spoils from the many naval battles between the Cavalieri (Knights of St. Stephan) and the Turks between the 16th and 18th centuries, including the Turkish battle pennant hoisted from Ali Pacha's flagship at the 1571 Battle of Lepanto.

St. Sixtus. This small church, consecrated in 1133, is also close to the Piazza dei Cavalieri. It was used as a seat of the most important notarial deeds of the town, also hosting the Council of Elders. It is today one of the best preserved early Romanesque buildings in town.

St. Francis. The church of San Francesco may have been designed by Giovanni di Simone, built after 1276. In 1343 new chapels were added and the church was elevated. It has a single nave and a notable belfry, as well as a 15th-century cloister. It houses works by Jacopo da Empoli, Taddeo Gaddi and Santi di Tito. In the Gherardesca Chapel are buried Ugolino della Gherardesca and his sons.

San Frediano. This church, built by 1061, has a basilica interior with three aisles, with a crucifix from the 12th century. Paintings from the 16th century were added during a restoration, including works by Ventura Salimbeni, Domenico Passignano, Aurelio Lomi, and Rutilio Manetti.

San Nicola. This medieval church built by 1097, was enlarged between 1297 and 1313 by the Augustinians, perhaps by the design of Giovanni Pisano. The octagonal belfry is from the second half of the 13th century. The paintings include the Madonna with Child by Francesco Traini (14th century) and St. Nicholas Saving Pisa from the Plague (15th century). Noteworthy are also the wood sculptures by Giovanni and Nino Pisano, and the Annunciation by Francesco di Valdambrino.

Santa Maria della Spina. A small white marble church alongside the Arno, is attributed to Lupo di Francesco (1230), is another excellent Gothic building.

San Paolo a Ripa d'Arno. The church was founded around 952 and enlarged in the mid-12th century along lines similar to those of the cathedral. It is annexed to the Romanesque Chapel of St. Agatha, with an unusual pyramidal cusp or peak.

San Pietro in Vinculis. Known as San Pierino, it is an 11th-century church with a crypt and a cosmatesque mosaic on the floor of the main nave.

 

Borgo Stretto. This medieval borgo or neighborhood contains strolling arcades and the Lungarno, the avenues along the river Arno. It includes the Gothic-Romanesque church of San Michele in Borgo (990). There are at least two other leaning towers in the city, one at the southern end of central Via Santa Maria, the other halfway through the Piagge riverside promenade.

Medici Palace. The palace was once a possession of the Appiano family, who ruled Pisa in 1392–1398. In 1400 the Medici acquired it, and Lorenzo de' Medici sojourned here.

Orto botanico di Pisa. The botanical garden of the University of Pisa is Europe's oldest university botanical garden.

Palazzo Reale. The ("Royal Palace"), once belonged to the Caetani patrician family. Here Galileo Galilei showed to Grand Duke of Tuscany the planets he had discovered with his telescope. The edifice was erected in 1559 by Baccio Bandinelli for Cosimo I de Medici, and was later enlarged including other palaces. The palace is now a museum.

Palazzo Gambacorti. This palace is a 14th-century Gothic building, and now houses the offices of the municipality. The interior shows frescoes boasting Pisa's sea victories.

Palazzo Agostini. The palace is a Gothic building also known as Palazzo dell'Ussero, with its 15th-century façade and remains of the ancient city walls dating back to before 1155. The name of the building comes from the coffee rooms of Caffè dell'Ussero, historic meeting place founded on September 1, 1775.

Mural Tuttomondo. A modern mural, the last public work by Keith Haring, on the rear wall of the convent of the Church of Sant'Antonio, painted in June 1989.

Museums

Museo dell'Opera del Duomo: exhibiting among others the original sculptures of Nicola Pisano and Giovanni Pisano, the Islamic Pisa Griffin, and the treasures of the cathedral.

Museo delle Sinopie: showing the sinopias from the camposanto, the monumental cemetery. These are red ocher underdrawings for frescoes, made with reddish, greenish or brownish earth colour with water.

Museo Nazionale di San Matteo: exhibiting sculptures and paintings from the 12th to 15th centuries, among them the masterworks of Giovanni and Andrea Pisano, the Master of San Martino, Simone Martini, Nino Pisano and Masaccio.

Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Reale: exhibiting the belongings of the families that lived in the palace: paintings, statues, armors, etc.

Museo Nazionale degli Strumenti per il Calcolo: exhibiting a collection of instruments used in science, between a pneumatic machine of Van Musschenbroek and a compass which probably belonged to Galileo Galilei.

Museo di storia naturale dell'Università di Pisa (Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa), located in the Certosa di Calci, outside the city. It houses one of the largest cetacean skeletons collection in Europe.

Palazzo Blu: temporary exhibitions and cultural activities center, located in the Lungarno, in the heart of the old town, the palace is easy recognizable because it is the only blue building.

Cantiere delle Navi di Pisa - The Pisa's Ancient Ships Archaeological Area: A museum of 10,650 square meters – 3,500 archaeological excavation, 1,700 laboratories and one restoration center – that visitors can visit with a guided tour.[19] The Museum opened in June 2019 and has been located inside to the 16th-century Medicean Arsenals in Lungarno Ranieri Simonelli, restored under the supervision of the Tuscany Soprintendenza. It hosts a remarkable collection of ceramics and amphoras dated back from the 8th century BCE to the 2nd century BC, and also 32 ships dated back from the second century BCE and the seventh century BC. Four of them are integrally preserved and the best one is the so-called Barca C, also named Alkedo (written in the ancient Greek characters). The first boat was accidentally discovered in 1998 near the Pisa San Rossore railway station and the archeological excavations were completed 20 years later.

 

Churches

St. Francis' Church

San Francesco

San Frediano

San Giorgio ai Tedeschi

San Michele in Borgo

San Nicola

San Paolo a Ripa d'Arno

San Paolo all'Orto

San Piero a Grado

San Pietro in Vinculis

San Sisto

San Tommaso delle Convertite

San Zeno

Santa Caterina

Santa Cristina

Santa Maria della Spina

Santo Sepolcro

 

Palaces, towers and villas

Palazzo della Carovana or dei Cavalieri.

Pisa by Oldypak lp photo

Pisa

Palazzo del Collegio Puteano

Palazzo della Carovana

Palazzo delle Vedove

Torre dei Gualandi

Villa di Corliano

Leaning Tower of Pisa

 

Sports

Football is the main sport in Pisa; the local team, A.C. Pisa, currently plays in the Serie B (the second highest football division in Italy), and has had a top flight history throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, featuring several world-class players such as Diego Simeone, Christian Vieri and Dunga during this time. The club play at the Arena Garibaldi – Stadio Romeo Anconetani, opened in 1919 and with a capacity of 25,000.

 

Notable people

For people born in Pisa, see People from the Province of Pisa; among notable non-natives long resident in the city:

 

Giuliano Amato (born 1938), politician, former Premier and Minister of Interior Affairs

Alessandro d'Ancona (1835–1914), critic and writer.

Silvano Arieti (1914–1981), psychiatrist

Gaetano Bardini (1926–2017), tenor

Andrea Bocelli (born 1958), tenor and multi-instrumentalist.

Giosuè Carducci (1835–1907), poet and 1906 Nobel Prize in Literature winner.

Massimo Carmassi (born 1943), architect

Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (1920–2016), politician, former President of the Republic of Italy

Maria Luisa Cicci (1760–1794), poet

Giovanni Carlo Maria Clari (1677–1754), a musical composer and maestro di cappella at Pistoia.

Alessio Corti (born 1965), mathematician

Rustichello da Pisa (born 13th century), writer

Giovanni Battista Donati (1826–1873), an Italian astronomer.

Leonardo Fibonacci (1170–1250), mathematician.

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), physicist.

Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944), philosopher and politician

Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639), painter.

Count Ugolino della Gherardesca (1214–1289), noble (see also Dante Alighieri).

Giovanni Gronchi (1887–1978), politician, former President of the Republic of Italy

Giacomo Leopardi [1798–1837), poet and philosopher.

Enrico Letta (born 1966), politician, former Prime Minister of Italy

Marco Malvaldi (born 1974), mystery novelist

Leonardo Ortolani (born 1967), comic writer

Antonio Pacinotti (1841–1912), physicist, inventor of the dynamo

Andrea Pisano (1290–1348), a sculptor and architect.

Afro Poli (1902–1988), an operatic baritone

Bruno Pontecorvo (1913–1993), nuclear physicist

Gillo Pontecorvo (1919–2006), filmmaker

Ippolito Rosellini (1800–1843), an Egyptologist.

Paolo Savi (1798–1871), geologist and ornithologist.

Antonio Tabucchi (1943–2012), writer and academic

Sport

Jason Acuña (born 1973), Stunt performer

Sergio Bertoni (1915–1995), footballer

Giorgio Chiellini (born 1984), footballer

Camila Giorgi (born 1991), tennis player

Ph.D. student John Mitry working his magic.

 

Shot for The University of Sydney in 2010.

The ARCH is a word and a structure that features prominently over the millennia……

 

ARCHES are used extensively in building powerful word constructs and social control structures as well as being used extensively in ARCHitecture and civil engineering.

 

These power structures are always hierARCHical, often with a single entity at the top known as a monARCH.

 

The MASONIC control structure has certainly adopted this ARCHitecture and even pretends to be borne out of the stone mason fraternities.

 

In Gnosticism, ARCHons are the builders of the physical universe. Among the ARCHontics, Ophites, Sethians and in the writings of Nag Hammadi library, the ARCHons are rulers, each related to one of seven planets; they prevent souls from leaving the material realm.

 

The ARCHers – a long running program through history – not just the BBC….

 

'SOVEREIGN' - literally means to reign from above.

This is why the MonARCH of a country is referred to as 'Your HIGHNESS'

Then we have

MatriARCHs - a system of society or government ruled by a woman or women

PatriARCHs - a system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family and descent is reckoned through the male line.

OligARCHs - government by the few, especially despotic power exercised by a small and privileged group for corrupt or selfish purposes.

In these long-running and ARCHaic societal control structures we also have:

ARCH dukes and ARCH duchesses

ARCH bishops

ARCH deacons

ARCH druids

ARCHangels

ARCHitects

SquireARCHies - landowners collectively, especially when considered as a class having political or social influence

mARCHioness - a noblewoman with the rank of marquess, or the wife of a marquess.

mARCHer lords - A Marcher Lord was a noble appointed by the King of England to guard the border between England and Wales. A Marcher Lord was the English equivalent of a margrave or a marquis before the introduction of the title of "marquess" in Britain

ARCHimandrite - the superior of a large monastery or group of monasteries in the Orthodox Church

ARCHaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. Archaeology is often considered a branch of socio-cultural anthropology, but archaeologists also draw from biological, geological, and environmental systems through their study of the past

 

TrierARCH - the title of officers who commanded a trireme in the classical Greek world. In Classical Athens, the title was associated with the trierarchy, one of the public offices or liturgies, which were filled by wealthy citizens for a year

 

HagiARCHy - government by saints, holy men, or men in holy orders

 

AutARCHic - having and exercising complete political power and control: absolute, absolutistic, arbitrary, autarchical, autocratic, autocratical, despotic, dictatorial, monocratic, totalitarian, tyrannic, tyrannical, tyrannous

HeptARCHy - a collective name applied to the seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century until the 8th century consolidation into the four kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria, Wessex and East Anglia.

TetrARCHy - term adopted to describe the system of government of the ancient Roman Empire instituted by Roman Emperor Diocletian in 293, marking the end of the Crisis of the Third Century and the recovery of the Roman Empire

TheARCHy - rule by a god or gods

GynARCHy - rule by women or a woman.

ExARCHate - a Byzantine province governed by an exARCH

 

All this history was documented by ARCHivists – with old records being kept on pARCHment

 

At school we are not taught the true meaning of the ARCHway….

By passing through the ARCHway we may be unaware that we are entering into an agreement or contract where we are to be ruled over.

The ‘CONTRACT of the ARCH’ perhaps……

 

ARCANUM and ARCANA - mysterious or specialized knowledge, language, or information accessible or possessed only by the initiate.

 

ARCHES in Modern Culture….

The ARCHERS - a British BBC radio soap opera broadcast since 1951. Having aired over 19,300 episodes, it is the world's longest-running drama.

The ARCHERS is set in the fictional village of AmBRIDGE

ARCHing over us - the first ever flighted birds….

ARCHaeopteryx – a genus of bird-like feathered dinosaurs.

 

More famous ARCHes…

ARCHimedes (c. 287 – c. 212 BC)

Considered to be the greatest mathematician of ancient history, and one of the greatest of all time.

The Fields Medal for outstanding achievement in mathematics carries a portrait of ARCHimedes, along with a carving illustrating his proof on the sphere and the cylinder.

The inscription around the head of ARCHimedes is a quote attributed to him which reads in Latin: Transire suum pectus mundoque potiri.

'RISE ABOVE ONESELF AND GRASP THE WORLD’.

ARCHimedes, Freemasonry and the Moderns Grand Lodge Constitutions

Frontispiece to the 1723 Edition:

The 1723 edition is well-known for its elaborate frontispiece engraved by John Pine in 1723. It features a classical arcade of John Montagu, the Second Duke of Montagu (Knight of the Garter #532), and the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England (1721-1723), passing the scroll of the "Constitutions" to his 1723 successor, Philip Warton, First Duke of Wharton. Both are attended by their officers. Apollo, god of the sun, charges above in his chariot, symbolizing the meridian height. Behind the gathering is a passageway framed by walls of water - evocative of the parting of the Red Sea.

The 47th proposition of Euclid, the traditional symbol of a past masters of a Masonic lodge, appears in the foreground. Below it, in Greek, is ARCHhimedes' famous exclamation: “Eureka!” (“I have found it!”)

eureka (English) - εύρηκα (Greek)

 

For more hidden knowledge see

pubastrology.com

 

In Abrahamic Religions, NOAH features as the tenth and last of the pre-Flood patriARCHs.

The story is all about the signs of the Zodiac - the Royal ARCH or ARK….

 

‘NOAH’S ARK of the COVENANT’ PDF Document Download Link:

 

pubastrology.files.wordpress.com/2021/12/noahs-ark-of-the...

 

_https://pubastrology.files.wordpress.com/2021/12/noahs-ark-of-the-covenant-revision-7-1.pdf

I've been tagged by bookwormbethie, so here are 16 random things about me. I'll be out tagging 16 people (or less...I don't know if I know 16 flickr folks) so you better be watchin' out for your own tags soon....

 

1. My favorite way to eat a peanut butter sandwich is by smooshing it flat, then dunking it in orange juice.

 

2. I hate wearing sneakers/running shoes. Even if they are comfortable, I feel like a dork.

 

3. I have 4 tattoos, though they are mostly hidden.

 

4. My favorite TV show is Ugly Betty.

 

5. My first job was slinging hot dogs at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

 

6. With my first paycheck from said job, I bought a Bauhaus T-shirt, red glitter tights, and a red glitter purse (which I still have).

 

7. I used to sword-fight in a guild that would travel to Ren Faires. I loved the combat, but hated the Faires.

 

8. I have dual citizenship with the US and Mexico.

 

9. My favorite films are made by Pixar.

 

10. I turn 30 this year, and I still don't have a driver's license.

 

11. I have an uncanny knack for making headshots when playing video games such as "Halo" and "Gears of War."

 

12. In school, I hated Math with a passion. Ironically, I ended up marrying a Mathematician.

 

13. My hair naturally forms two ringlets at my temples. The rest of my hair is wavy, but I have those two stupid curls framing my face.

 

14. I picked up embroidery so my hands would have something to do while my husband read the "Harry Potter" books out loud to me.

 

15. I used to have a pair of white birthmarks on my back that looked like clouds (which have mostly faded now), one in the shape of a bunny and one in the shape of a train.

 

16. As a kid, I used to go into the horror movie aisle of the video store to scare myself with the backs of the films. Now that I'm old enough to watch horror films, I've learned that the fear of the unknown is often more terrifying than the film itself.

 

PS: Picture is not mine...I found it off the web somewhere.

A random mathematician. I have no idea what it means.

Raymond Lewis, son-in-law of Mary W. Jackson, takes a picture of the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters sign following a ceremony officially naming the building, Friday, Feb. 26, 2021, at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Mary W. Jackson, the first African American female engineer at NASA, began her career with the agency in the segregated West Area Computing Unit of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The mathematician and aerospace engineer went on to lead programs influencing the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. In 2019, she posthumously received the Congressional Gold Medal. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)

New York City

Much Better Large On Black

Fluidr View

 

This is dedicated to Clayton Wells and Jeff Engelhard, my lemma headed math geek buddies. Great versatile photographers who like me have a fondness for "Real Numbers" and find the properties of "Primes" ridiculously fascinating.

 

Clayton and Jeff have supported my street photography from the very beginning when none of us including myself knew what the heck I was doing! They will never know how much that meant to me. Well, I guess now they'll know. :) Thanks guys!

Polaroid / The Impossible Project (expired) / Bronze statue of Giordano Bruno by Ettore Ferrari (1845-1929), Campo de' Fiori, Rome.

 

(taken from Wikipedia)

Giordano Bruno (Italian pronunciation: [dʒorˈdano ˈbruno]; 1548 – February 17, 1600), (Latin: Iordanus Brunus Nolanus) born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in proposing that the Sun was essentially a star, and moreover, that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited worlds populated by other intelligent beings.[1] After the Roman Inquisition found him guilty of heresy, he was burned at the stake.[2] After his death he gained considerable fame, particularly among 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who, focusing on his astronomical beliefs, regarded him as a martyr for free thought and modern scientific ideas.

About Ada Lovelace

 

Note: this is not one of my works, but I like her a lot!

Using the UWA here was probably a little overzealous with the D90's high ISO capabilities, but I thought, 'what the heck', and went for it. It took a couple of tries, but after I timed this scene (the teacher completely freezes for a moment as the scene resets while he raises his arm), I nailed it as best as I could.

Seaham is a seaside town in County Durham, England. Located on the Durham Coast, Seaham is situated 6 miles (10 kilometres) south of Sunderland and 13 miles (21 km) east of Durham. The town grew from the late 19th century onwards as a result of investments in its harbour and coal mines. The town is twinned with the German town of Gerlingen.

 

The original village of Seaham has all but vanished; it lay between St Mary's Church and Seaham Hall (i.e. somewhat to the north of the current town centre). The parish church, St Mary the Virgin, has a late 7th century. The Anglian nave resembling the church at Escomb in many respects, and is one of the 20 oldest surviving churches in the UK.

 

Until the early years of the 19th century, Seaham was a small rural agricultural farming community whose only claim to fame was that the local landowner's daughter, Anne Isabella Milbanke, was married at Seaham Hall to Lord Byron, on 2 January 1815. Byron began writing his Hebrew Melodies at Seaham and they were published in April 1815. It would seem that Byron was bored in wintry Seaham, though the sea enthralled him. As he wrote in a letter to a friend:

 

Upon this dreary coast we have nothing but county meetings and shipwrecks; and I have this day dined upon fish, which probably dined upon the crews of several colliers lost in the late gales. But I saw the sea once more in all the glories of surf and foam.

 

The marriage was short-lived, producing as its only child the mathematician Ada Lovelace, but it was long enough to have been a drain on the Milbanke estate. The area's fortunes changed when the Milbankes sold out in 1821 to the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, who built a harbour, in 1828, to facilitate transport of goods from locally encouraged industries (the first coal mine was begun in 1845). However, this harbour later proved inadequate to deal with the millions of tonnes of coal and the 6th Marquess commissioned engineers Patrick Meik and Charles Meik to reclaim land and extend and deepen the dock. It was officially opened in 1905. The harbour is of particular interest because it consists of a series of interconnecting locks, rather than the more typical two wall construction.

 

As early as 1823, the 3rd Marquess had approached the architect John Dobson with a view to his drawing up plans for a town to be built around the harbour. Dobson did so, but the planned approach foundered for lack of funds, and the town instead grew in a more piecemeal fashion. To begin with, the town was itself called Seaham Harbour (to differentiate it from the ancient village); in time, though, the settlement as a whole came to be known as Seaham.

 

In 1853 John Candlish built the Londonderry Bottleworks in the town. It was the largest glass bottle works in Britain and survived until 1921. Candlish went on to become mayor and, in 1868, Liberal MP for Sunderland. Waste glass from the bottleworks was dumped at sea and is now washed up as glass pebbles, known as sea glass, on local beaches.

 

In 1928, production started at the last town colliery to be opened, Vane Tempest. By 1992, however, all three pits (Dawdon Colliery, Vane Tempest Colliery and Seaham Colliery – known locally as "the Knack") had closed, a process accelerated by the British miners' strike. The pit closures hit the local economy extremely hard.

 

Seaham Colliery suffered an underground explosion in 1880 which resulted in the loss of over 160 lives, including surface workers and rescuers.

 

Many local families were affected by the tragic loss of eight men and one boy in the 'Seaham Lifeboat Disaster', when the RNLI lifeboat, the George Elmy, foundered on 17 November 1962. To commemorate the event, the new coast road was named George Elmy Lifeboat Way.

 

To the south, beside the road to Dalton-le-Dale, are the remains of Dalden Tower, comprising the ruins of a 16th-century tower and fragments of later buildings.

 

The harbour itself may be said to be the principal landmark of the nineteenth-century town; though the Londonderry Institute in Tempest Road (1853-5 by Thomas Oliver) with its monumental Greek-style portico provides something of a glimpse of the Marquess's original vision for the town. Of a slightly later date, the former Londonderry Offices on the sea front once served as headquarters for the mining and other businesses of the Londonderry family. A statue of the 6th Marquess stands in the forecourt. Also dating from an early stage in the town's development is the town-centre church of St John, Seaham Harbour (1835–40). For the very much older St Mary's, Seaham, and its neighbour Seaham Hall, see above.

 

For just over a hundred years the harbour was towered over by a 58 ft (18 m) lighthouse on Red Acre Point, immediately to the north, designed by William Chapman. Erected in 1835, it displayed a fixed white light above a revolving red light (an unusual configuration, provided so as to distinguish it from the north pier light at Sunderland); both lights were displayed from the same tower, the upper being 100 feet (30 m) and the lower 54 feet (16 m) above mean sea level. The lighthouse was gas-lit, with an arrangement of third-order catadioptric lenses provided by Chance Brothers & Co. It was decommissioned in 1905, when the harbour was expanded and the current black-and-white striped pier-head light was constructed. Red Acre lighthouse was left standing, however, to serve as a daymark, until 1940 when the whole structure was swiftly demolished in case it should serve to assist enemy navigators.

 

A steel statue, 1101 (locally also known as Tommy) by local artist Ray Lonsdale, commemorating World War One and initially erected temporarily for three months, was the subject of a local fund-raising drive in 2014 to retain it on the town's seafront.

A hyperbolic transformation applied to a Rep-Tile IFS fractal formed from a set of Affine transformations.

 

Created with the Fractal Science Kit fractal generator. See www.fractalsciencekit.com/ for details.

 

The method used to produce this image is based on Rep-N Tile attractors. The term Rep-Tile (replicating figures on the plane) was coined by mathematician Solomon W. Golomb in 1962. See the Rep-Tile page at mathworld.wolfram.com/Rep-Tile.html for a brief description.

Mathematician's Delight

W W Sayer

A 121

1963

Pelican

 

Pythagoras promoted the idea of a rational universe where number was the foundation for all existence

  

A sign marking where Mathematician George Boole lived and is said to have founded a School. At 3 Pottergate, in Lincoln, Lincolnshire.

 

Although he was recognised as a genius in his own lifetime, it was not until almost a century later that the far-reaching implications of Boole’s work would become apparent. An American electronics engineer named Claude Shannon realised Boole’s logic could be applied in producing electrical circuits: a discovery that started the digital revolution. Today even the most advanced computers and smart devices still depend on Boolean logic.

 

Boole, the son of John Boole Sr, a shoemaker and Mary Ann Joyce, was born on November 2nd 1815, at 34 Silver Street, Lincoln - his home no longer exists but was near the former The Constitution Club.

 

He was christened at St Swithins Church and attended the church in his early life; the minister there encouraged him in his mathematics, lending him a book on differential calculus. A plaque stands in Boole's memory on the site where the church stood when he attended, further along St Swithins Square than the current church building.

 

He had a primary school education, and received lessons from his father, but had little further formal and academic teaching. William Brooke, a bookseller in Lincoln, may have helped him with Latin, which he may also have learned at the school of Thomas Bainbridge. He was self-taught in modern languages.

 

Boole opened his own school in 1834 very close to St Swithins Church, on Free School Lane when he was just aged 19. Also nearby was Lincoln Mechanics Institute of which Boole's father was a founding member and where Boole lectured - in the old Grammar School, the Greyfriars.

 

Boole later founded a school on Pottergate near Lincoln Cathedral which is also where his home is said to have been. It was at this school that Boole conducted his last teaching in Lincoln and where he won the Gold Medal from the Royal Society, in 1844. A plaque is found at 3 Pottergate in Boole's memory.

 

Boole was keen to further his skills in higher mathematics and, with limited opportunities in Lincoln, took up a professorship at Queen's College Cork, Ireland, moving there in 1849. It was in Cork that he met his wife and started a family, eventually having five daughters. Boole ended his days here on December 8th 1864, dying prematurely aged only 49.

 

Friends of Boole still in Lincoln raised funds to create a memorial for the mathematician in Lincoln Cathedral: The Teaching Window. The stained glass window, found in the fourth window of the north wall of the cathedral, depicts the calling of Samuel, his favourite Bible passage, at the request of his widow.

 

Information mostly gained from www.visitlincoln.com/about-lincoln/history-heritage/boole/

 

aaaand...I did it!!!! It was hard, but it's already over!!! :) Thank you very much for your though and kind words, I'm sure they helped!!! :D

And I have to tell u, that my biggest help was certainly Tamás...I love you, 22-year-old guy!! :P

 

/

 

Éééés...megcsináltam!!! Okleveles matematikus lettem!!! Ja és négyes lett a diplomám:) Voltak necces pillanatok, de csak összejött...apumnak végig bőgtem a telefonba, szerintem totál zakkantnak nézett...:D Még mindig hihetetlen, de hátha a ma esti buli segít feldolgozni a sokkot...:D Köszönöm mindannyiótoknak a drukkolást, nagyon jól esett és segített!!! Puszi Nektek!!

Ja és hozzá kell tennem, hogy Tamás az álompasi!! :) Tegnap a viharban rohant nekem nyomtatni...ma virrasztott éjjel, hogy felkeltsen, és nehogy elaludjak, szegény:) Úgyhogy lehet irigykedni, csajok!! :P

 

JA ÉS MA 22 ÉVES!! BIZONY!!! :D

 

...oké...befejeztem, indulok bulizni!!! :D

Corbel, St Mary's, Beverley, Yorkshire

Maker: David Brewster (1781-1868) & M.P. Vergnaud

Born: UK

Active: UK

Medium: book

Size: 3 1/2" x 5 3/4"

Location: France

 

Object No. 2016.608

Shelf: MAN-1833

 

Publication: A la Librairie Encyclopédique de Roret, Paris 1833

 

Other Collections:

 

Provenance: Encheres Oceanes, June 18, 2016, lot 285

Rank: 46

 

Notes: Sir David Brewster (11 December 1781 – 10 February 1868) was a Scottish physicist, mathematician, astronomer, inventor, writer, historian of science and university principal. Most noted for his contributions to the field of optics, he studied the double refraction by compression and discovered the photoelastic effect, which gave birth to the field of optical mineralogy. For his work, William Whewell dubbed him the "Father of modern experimental optics" and "the Johannes Kepler of Optics." He is well-recognized for being the inventor of the kaleidoscope and an improved version of the stereoscope applied to photography. He called it the "lenticular stereoscope", which was the first portable, 3D viewing device. He also invented the binocular camera, two types of polarimeters, the polyzonal lens and the lighthouse illuminator. A prominent figure in the popularization of science, he is considered one of the founders of the British Association, of which he would be elected President in 1849. In addition, he was the editor of the 18-volume Edinburgh Encyclopædia.

 

To view our archive organized by themes and subjects, visit: OUR COLLECTIONS

 

For information about reproducing this image, visit: THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE

Great mathematicians of all time. Download the whole set for FREE at:

 

www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/The-Great-Mathematicians-...

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Indian mathematician

 

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Written and fact-checked by

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: May 27, 2024 • Article History

 

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Top Questions

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Srinivasa Ramanujan (born December 22, 1887, Erode, India—died April 26, 1920, Kumbakonam) was an Indian mathematician whose contributions to the theory of numbers include pioneering discoveries of the properties of the partition function.

 

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Srinivasa Ramanujan

  

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Born: December 22, 1887, Erode, India

Died: April 26, 1920, Kumbakonam (aged 32)

See all related content →

 

When he was 15 years old, he obtained a copy of George Shoobridge Carr’s Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics, 2 vol. (1880–86). This collection of thousands of theorems, many presented with only the briefest of proofs and with no material newer than 1860, aroused his genius. Having verified the results in Carr’s book, Ramanujan went beyond it, developing his own theorems and ideas. In 1903 he secured a scholarship to the University of Madras but lost it the following year because he neglected all other studies in pursuit of mathematics.

 

Ramanujan continued his work, without employment and living in the poorest circumstances. After marrying in 1909 he began a search for permanent employment that culminated in an interview with a government official, Ramachandra Rao. Impressed by Ramanujan’s mathematical prowess, Rao supported his research for a time, but Ramanujan, unwilling to exist on charity, obtained a clerical post with the Madras Port Trust.

 

In 1911 Ramanujan published the first of his papers in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society. His genius slowly gained recognition, and in 1913 he began a correspondence with the British mathematician Godfrey H. Hardy that led to a special scholarship from the University of Madras and a grant from Trinity College, Cambridge. Overcoming his religious objections, Ramanujan traveled to England in 1914, where Hardy tutored him and collaborated with him in some research.

 

Ramanujan’s knowledge of mathematics (most of which he had worked out for himself) was startling. Although he was almost completely unaware of modern developments in mathematics, his mastery of continued fractions was unequaled by any living mathematician. He worked out the Riemann series, the elliptic integrals, hypergeometric series, the functional equations of the zeta function, and his own theory of divergent series, in which he found a value for the sum of such series using a technique he invented that came to be called Ramanujan summation. On the other hand, he knew nothing of doubly periodic functions, the classical theory of quadratic forms, or Cauchy’s theorem, and he had only the most nebulous idea of what constitutes a mathematical proof. Though brilliant, many of his theorems on the theory of prime numbers were wrong.

 

In England Ramanujan made further advances, especially in the partition of numbers (the number of ways that a positive integer can be expressed as the sum of positive integers; e.g., 4 can be expressed as 4, 3 + 1, 2 + 2, 2 + 1 + 1, and 1 + 1 + 1 + 1).

 

His papers were published in English and European journals, and in 1918 he was elected to the Royal Society of London. In 1917 Ramanujan had contracted tuberculosis, but his condition improved sufficiently for him to return to India in 1919. He died the following year, generally unknown to the world at large but recognized by mathematicians as a phenomenal genius, without peer since Leonhard Euler (1707–83) and Carl Jacobi (1804–51).

 

Ramanujan left behind three notebooks and a sheaf of pages (also called the “lost notebook”) containing many unpublished results that mathematicians continued to verify long after his death.

Tour de Suisse par l'Extérieur

 

Maison d'Ampère

 

André-Marie Ampère

 

André-Marie Ampère (/ˈæmpɪər/;[1] French: [ɑ̃pɛʁ]; 20 January 1775 – 10 June 1836)[2] was a French physicist and mathematician who is generally regarded as one of the main founders of the science of classical electromagnetism, which he referred to as "electrodynamics". The SI unit of measurement of electric current, the ampere, is named after him.

 

Biography[edit]

 

Andre-Marie Ampère was born on 20 January 1775 to Jean-Jacques Ampère, a prosperous businessman, and Jeanne Antoinette Desutières-Sarcey Ampère during the height of the French Enlightenment. He spent his childhood and adolescence at the family property at Poleymieux-au-Mont-d'Or near Lyon.[3] Jean-Jacques Ampère, a successful merchant, was an admirer of the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose theories of education (as outlined in his treatise Émile) were the basis of Ampère’s education. Rousseau believed that young boys should avoid formal schooling and pursue instead an “education direct from nature.” Ampère’s father actualized this ideal by allowing his son to educate himself within the walls of his well-stocked library. French Enlightenment masterpieces such as Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière (begun in 1749) and Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert’s Encyclopédie (volumes added between 1751 and 1772) thus became Ampère’s schoolmasters. The young Ampère, however, soon resumed his Latin lessons, which enabled him to master the works of Leonhard Euler and Daniel Bernoulli.

 

Work in electromagnetism[edit]

 

In September 1820, Ampère’s friend and eventual eulogist François Arago showed the members of the French Academy of Sciences the surprising discovery of Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted that a magnetic needle is deflected by an adjacent electric current. Ampère began developing a mathematical and physical theory to understand the relationship between electricity and magnetism. Furthering Ørsted’s experimental work, Ampère showed that two parallel wires carrying electric currents attract or repel each other, depending on whether the currents flow in the same or opposite directions, respectively - this laid the foundation of electrodynamics. He also applied mathematics in generalizing physical laws from these experimental results. The most important of these was the principle that came to be called Ampère’s law, which states that the mutual action of two lengths of current-carrying wire is proportional to their lengths and to the intensities of their currents. Ampère also applied this same principle to magnetism, showing the harmony between his law and French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb’s law of magnetic action. Ampère’s devotion to, and skill with, experimental techniques anchored his science within the emerging fields of experimental physics.

 

Ampère also provided a physical understanding of the electromagnetic relationship, theorizing the existence of an “electrodynamic molecule” (the forerunner of the idea of the electron) that served as the component element of both electricity and magnetism. Using this physical explanation of electromagnetic motion, Ampère developed a physical account of electromagnetic phenomena that was both empirically demonstrable and mathematically predictive. In 1827 Ampère published his magnum opus, Mémoire sur la théorie mathématique des phénomènes électrodynamiques uniquement déduite de l’experience (Memoir on the Mathematical Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena, Uniquely Deduced from Experience), the work that coined the name of his new science, electrodynamics, and became known ever after as its founding treatise.

 

In 1827 Ampère was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society and in 1828, a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science.[5] In recognition of his contribution to the creation of modern electrical science, an international convention signed in 1881 established the ampere as a standard unit of electrical measurement, along with the coulomb, volt, ohm, and watt, which are named, respectively, after Ampère’s contemporaries Charles-Augustin de Coulomb of France, Alessandro Volta of Italy, Georg Ohm of Germany, and James Watt of Scotland. His name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9-Marie_Amp%C3%A8re

Public School Foundation Theresianische Academy

Founded in 1746

♁ coordinates 48 ° 11 ' 35.2 " N, 16 ° 22' 15.5" OKoordinaten : 48 ° 11 ' 35.2 " N, 16 ° 22' 15.5 " E | |

831 students status: 2013

Teachers about 130

www.theresianum.ac.at site

The Theresianum called state facility with buildings dating back several centuries in Vienna, 4th district, Favoritenstrasse 15, serves as the seat of the public high school of the Foundation Theresianische Academy, as the building for short Theresianum, and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. Both institutions have a tradition spanning centuries. Since 2011, the Foundation also offers a kindergarten and an elementary school.

The New Favorita seen from the favorite street, it houses today the Theresianum

View to the pediment with the coat of arms of the Empire of Austria under Francis I

The Theresianum, seen from the park

The school park

Nazi era: Library stamp of "NPEA Vienna Theresianumgasse"

(National Political Institutes of Education (German: Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten; officially abbreviated NPEA, commonly abbreviated Napola for Nationalpolitische Lehranstalt meaning National Political Institution of Teaching) were secondary boarding schools in Nazi Germany. They were founded as "community education sites" after the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933.), Wikipedia

History

1288 an estate was detectable in this area. 1614 the estate with fields, meadows and vineyards was acquired by the Habsburg monarchy, was first described as a Favoritenhof 1623 and served as the widow's home for the Empresses Anna of Austria-Tyrol, Eleonora Gonzaga and Eleonora Magdalena Gonzaga of Mantua-Nevers. For this, the estate was remodeled in 1642 according to plans of Giovanni Battista Carlone to pleasure palace with pleasure garden called Favorita.

The emperors Leopold I, Joseph I and Charles VI. served the Favorita as a preferred summer residence. During this time, extensions were built, the in the second Turkish siege in 1683 originated ravages repaired and sold some of the fields.

Charles' VI. daughter, Maria Theresa, heiress to the throne in the Austrian dominions, in the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Kingdom of Hungary and since 1745, when her husband became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, as Empress was dubbed, preferred as summer residence the Schönbrunn Palace and had it expanded. To this decision may have contributed that the Favorita, concerning location and architecture, with Belvedere Castle could not compete, which the for Habsburg victorious commander Eugene of Savoy, of Charles VI. richly endowed, had built about 800 meters to the east form here using a prominent hillside.

The baroque Favorita (it was by now called New Favorita, the Old Favorita had been in the Augarten) in the suburb of Wieden handed Maria Theresia to the Jesuits - with the condition in it to establish an educational institution, a knight's academy for the benefit of the universal essence, but especially the noble youth. Main task should be the raising of educated and loyal government officials and diplomats. In the 18th and 19th Century followed various extensions and increases in the building.

1783 dissolved the reformer Joseph II in the Austrian hereditary lands all knights academies, as well as the Theresianum. In 1797 Emperor Franz II as sovereign approved the reopening under the management of the Piarists. The facade was rebuilt in the classical style. After the revolution of 1848, Emperor Franz Joseph I. disposed the admission of sons of the middle class as students.

The Oriental Academy, founded by Maria Theresa in 1754, was since the 19th Century in the Theresianum. In 1900 renamed, moved the Consular Academy in 1904 in its newly constructed own building (9, Boltzmanngasse 16, since 1947 Embassy of the United States). It was in 1938 by the Nazi regime canceled. Its role was in 1964 by the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna (see below) resumed.

After the "Anschluss" of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, the Nazis dissolved the Theresianische Academy and established on 13 March 1939, exactly one year after the "Anschluss", in the buildings a National Political Education Institute (Napola). 1944/1945, the plant was badly damaged by bombs and grenades. 1945, the buildings in the occupied postwar Austria were by the Soviet occupying power monopolised, in the four-sector city of Vienna the 4th district controlling. It handed the Theresianum over to the USIA, the administration of Soviet Property in Austria.

After the State Treaty of 1955, the Austrian State resp. the Foundation Theresianum got the property on 20 September 1955 refunded, and in September 1957, the school system of the private school with public status could be resumed. The re-establishment of the in the war damaged buildings was carried out by the State from 1956 to 1964. In 1964 in a part of the buildings the by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs established Diplomatic Academy of Vienna started operations, with which the Viennese educational establishement for this topic after 60 years returned into the Theresianum .

Since 1989, in the high school female students are accepted, too.

The gymnasium in the presence

In addition to general education, the focus of the school is placed on language education - the compulsory subjects include other than German, English, French, Latin, Russian and mathematics - and in the education to internationality. Special emphasis is placed on politeness and good appearance. An additional service is available in the areas of sport, art, creativity, information and communication technology and music, and economic projects. The school is run as half-and full boarding.

The school campus is 50,000 square meters and includes a soccer field, and a fun court, two other soccer fields, a swimming pool, a tennis court, a running track, two beach volleyball courts, a basketball court, a large, divisible gymnasium and a smaller, older hall, in both of the are climbing walls as well as other sporting items available.

Currently nearly 800 students attend the Theresianische Academy. Many come from more distant states or from abroad and have the opportunity to live in a boarding school in this case.

The selection of professors is made by the respective school management in cooperation with the Vienna Board of Education. The boarding school, as well as some activities are shared with the Lycée Français de Vienne.

Known graduates

Josef Franz de Paula Hieronymus von Colloredo-Waldsee- Mels, 1732-1812, Bishop of Gurk and Prince Archbishop of Salzburg

Vincent Joseph of Schrattenbach, 1744-1816, Prince-Bishop of Lavant and Bishop of Brno

Wilhelm Florentin von Salm-Salm, 1745-1810, Bishop of Tournai and Archbishop of Prague

Johann Prokop Schaffgotsch, 1748-1813, Auxiliary Bishop of Prague and Bishop of Budweis

Franz Xaver II Altgraf of Salm-Reifferscheidt-Krautheim, 1749-1822, Prince-Bishop of Gurk, Cardinal and organizer of the first ascent of the Grossglockner

Franz von Spaun, 1753-1826, Austrian jurist, mathematician, and nonconformist writer

Ferenc Széchenyi, 1754-1820, Hungarian scholar and founder of the Hungarian National Library

Josef Wenzel Radetzky von Radetz, 1766-1858, Austrian field marshal, knight of the Golden Fleece

Ignaz Edler von Mitis, 1771-1842, Austrian engineer and chemist, inventor of the Schweinfurt green

Ignacy Hilary Count Ledochowski, 1789-1870, Austrian and Polish general

Joseph Jelacic of Bužim, 1801-1859, k.k. officer

Moritz Freiherr Ebner von Eschenbach, 1815-1898, Austrian engineer, inventor and writer, husband and supporter of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Tivadar Puskás, 1844-1893, Hungarian engineer and inventor

Karl Lueger, politician and mayor of Vienna, graduation year of 1862

Olivier Marquis de Bacquehem, Minister of Trade and Minister of the Interior 1847-1917

Ernest von Koerber, 1850-1919, bourgeois-liberal politician of Austria-Hungary

Wilhelm Carl Gustav Ritter von Doderer 1854-1932, Austrian architect, engineer and contractor

Alfonso XII., 1857-1885, King of Spain

Konstantin Jirecek, Swedish politician, diplomat, historian and Slawist

Peter Altenberg, letters, graduation year of 1876

Wladimir Ledochowski, General of the Society of Jesus, graduation year of 1884

Count István Bethlen von Bethlen, 1874-1946 (?), Hungarian politician and Prime Minister

Clemens Peter Freiherr von Pirquet, pediatrician, bacteriologist and immunologist, graduation year of 1892

Baron Franz Nopcsa of Felsöszilvás, founder of palaeophysiology and Albania researcher, graduation year of 1892

Friedrich Hasenohrl, physicists, graduation year of 1892

Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando, writer and artist, graduation year of 1896

Edgar Leon Calle Ernst, 1879-1955, Austrian composer and pianist

Rudolf Sieczynski, 1879-1952, Austrian Viennese song-composer, writer and official

Ernst August von Hoffmansthal, 1829-1915, German Wiener Song Composer

Joseph Schumpeter, 1883-1950, economist

Odo Neustädter-Stürmer, politician, graduation year of 1905

Richard Nikolaus Graf Coudenhove-Kalergi, writer, politician and founder of the Pan-movement

Teddy Kern, 1900-1949, actor

Egon Brunswik, 1903-1955, American psychologist

Godfrey Edward Arnold, 1914-1989, physician, phoniatrist, explorer of speech defects and disorders of the vocal cords

Ertuğrul Osman, 1912-2009, head of the House Osman

Hans Jaray, actor, writer and director

Ernst Gombrich, an art historian, graduation year of 1927

Max Ferdinand Perutz, chemist and Nobel Prize winner in 1962, year of graduation 1932

Herbert Hinterleithner, poet and painter, graduation year of 1934

Rolf Olsen, actor, director and screenwriter, 1919-1998

Hans Hass, biologist, underwater pioneer and documentary filmmaker, graduation year of 1937

Peter Zinner, editor and Oscar winner, graduation year of 1937

Kurt Schubert, Judaic scholar, graduation year of 1941

Werner Fasslabend, politician and jurist, graduation year of 1963

Hans Winkler, Austrian diplomat and Secretary of State, graduation year of 1963

Alexander Wächter, actor, director and theater manager, graduation year of 1966

Thomas Angyan, director of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna, graduation year of 1971

Rudolf Striedinger, Officer, graduation year of 1979

Dimitris Droutsas, Greek politician, graduation year of 1986

Nicholas Scherak, Member of Parliament, Matura group 2004

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96ffentliches_Gymnasium_der_Sti...

So that is taken during a math class ;) Me and Irinka :)

Isn't it obvious how much she "loves" maths and how much I am "not" crazy about it? xaxaxa :D

 

so here you can see how would your notebook look like if you are a mathematician and you are absent-minded!!! :D xaxa

Artistic chaos :p

 

Well... gotta say I have an exam in math tomorrow ;) hehe wish me luck! ;) Though I am good at it ;) I still need little drops of luck! ;)

One of the most popular and unusual sculptures in Krakow old town, is that of two gesticulating men seated on the wooden bench. These are the Polish mathematicians Stefan Banach and Otto M. Nikodym, who in 1916 were joined by mathematician Hugo Steinhaus, in a discussion of complex mathematical problems.

Sandia researcher Pavel Bochev, a computational mathematician, has received an Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for his pioneering theoretical and practical advances in numerical methods for partial differential equations.

 

Learn more at bit.ly/2OWmFzV.

 

Photo by Randy Montoya.

Brittany Pittman hails from Corner Brook. She is a theoretical mathematician, a drum carrier and a member of Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation Band. This is an episode of 70/70 project.

Public School Foundation Theresianische Academy

Founded in 1746

831 students status: 2013

Teachers about 130

www.theresianum.ac.at site

The Theresianum called state facility with buildings dating back several centuries in Vienna, 4th district, Favoritenstrasse 15, serves as the seat of the public high school of the Foundation Theresianische Academy, as the building for short Theresianum, and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. Both institutions have a tradition spanning centuries. Since 2011, the Foundation also offers a kindergarten and an elementary school.

The New Favorita seen from the favorite street, it houses today the Theresianum

View to the pediment with the coat of arms of the Empire of Austria under Francis I

The Theresianum, seen from the park

The school park

Nazi era: Library stamp of "NPEA Vienna Theresianumgasse"

(National Political Institutes of Education (German: Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten; officially abbreviated NPEA, commonly abbreviated Napola for Nationalpolitische Lehranstalt meaning National Political Institution of Teaching) were secondary boarding schools in Nazi Germany. They were founded as "community education sites" after the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933.), Wikipedia

History

1288 an estate was detectable in this area. 1614 the estate with fields, meadows and vineyards was acquired by the Habsburg monarchy, was first described as a Favoritenhof 1623 and served as the widow's home for the Empresses Anna of Austria-Tyrol, Eleonora Gonzaga and Eleonora Magdalena Gonzaga of Mantua-Nevers. For this, the estate was remodeled in 1642 according to plans of Giovanni Battista Carlone to pleasure palace with pleasure garden called Favorita.

The emperors Leopold I, Joseph I and Charles VI. served the Favorita as a preferred summer residence. During this time, extensions were built, the in the second Turkish siege in 1683 originated ravages repaired and sold some of the fields.

Charles' VI. daughter, Maria Theresa, heiress to the throne in the Austrian dominions, in the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Kingdom of Hungary and since 1745, when her husband became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, as Empress was dubbed, preferred as summer residence the Schönbrunn Palace and had it expanded. To this decision may have contributed that the Favorita, concerning location and architecture, with Belvedere Castle could not compete, which the for Habsburg victorious commander Eugene of Savoy, of Charles VI. richly endowed, had built about 800 meters to the east form here using a prominent hillside.

The baroque Favorita (it was by now called New Favorita, the Old Favorita had been in the Augarten) in the suburb of Wieden handed Maria Theresia to the Jesuits - with the condition in it to establish an educational institution, a knight's academy for the benefit of the universal essence, but especially the noble youth. Main task should be the raising of educated and loyal government officials and diplomats. In the 18th and 19th Century followed various extensions and increases in the building.

1783 dissolved the reformer Joseph II in the Austrian hereditary lands all knights academies, as well as the Theresianum. In 1797 Emperor Franz II as sovereign approved the reopening under the management of the Piarists. The facade was rebuilt in the classical style. After the revolution of 1848, Emperor Franz Joseph I. disposed the admission of sons of the middle class as students.

The Oriental Academy, founded by Maria Theresa in 1754, was since the 19th Century in the Theresianum. In 1900 renamed, moved the Consular Academy in 1904 in its newly constructed own building (9, Boltzmanngasse 16, since 1947 Embassy of the United States). It was in 1938 by the Nazi regime canceled. Its role was in 1964 by the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna (see below) resumed.

After the "Anschluss" of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, the Nazis dissolved the Theresianische Academy and established on 13 March 1939, exactly one year after the "Anschluss", in the buildings a National Political Education Institute (Napola). 1944/1945, the plant was badly damaged by bombs and grenades. 1945, the buildings in the occupied postwar Austria were by the Soviet occupying power monopolised, in the four-sector city of Vienna the 4th district controlling. It handed the Theresianum over to the USIA, the administration of Soviet Property in Austria.

After the State Treaty of 1955, the Austrian State resp. the Foundation Theresianum got the property on 20 September 1955 refunded, and in September 1957, the school system of the private school with public status could be resumed. The re-establishment of the in the war damaged buildings was carried out by the State from 1956 to 1964. In 1964 in a part of the buildings the by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs established Diplomatic Academy of Vienna started operations, with which the Viennese educational establishement for this topic after 60 years returned into the Theresianum .

Since 1989, in the high school female students are accepted, too.

The gymnasium in the presence

In addition to general education, the focus of the school is placed on language education - the compulsory subjects include other than German, English, French, Latin, Russian and mathematics - and in the education to internationality. Special emphasis is placed on politeness and good appearance. An additional service is available in the areas of sport, art, creativity, information and communication technology and music, and economic projects. The school is run as half-and full boarding.

The school campus is 50,000 square meters and includes a soccer field, and a fun court, two other soccer fields, a swimming pool, a tennis court, a running track, two beach volleyball courts, a basketball court, a large, divisible gymnasium and a smaller, older hall, in both of the are climbing walls as well as other sporting items available.

Currently nearly 800 students attend the Theresianische Academy. Many come from more distant states or from abroad and have the opportunity to live in a boarding school in this case.

The selection of professors is made by the respective school management in cooperation with the Vienna Board of Education. The boarding school, as well as some activities are shared with the Lycée Français de Vienne.

Known graduates

Josef Franz de Paula Hieronymus von Colloredo-Waldsee- Mels, 1732-1812, Bishop of Gurk and Prince Archbishop of Salzburg

Vincent Joseph of Schrattenbach, 1744-1816, Prince-Bishop of Lavant and Bishop of Brno

Wilhelm Florentin von Salm-Salm, 1745-1810, Bishop of Tournai and Archbishop of Prague

Johann Prokop Schaffgotsch, 1748-1813, Auxiliary Bishop of Prague and Bishop of Budweis

Franz Xaver II Altgraf of Salm-Reifferscheidt-Krautheim, 1749-1822, Prince-Bishop of Gurk, Cardinal and organizer of the first ascent of the Grossglockner

Franz von Spaun, 1753-1826, Austrian jurist, mathematician, and nonconformist writer

Ferenc Széchenyi, 1754-1820, Hungarian scholar and founder of the Hungarian National Library

Josef Wenzel Radetzky von Radetz, 1766-1858, Austrian field marshal, knight of the Golden Fleece

Ignaz Edler von Mitis, 1771-1842, Austrian engineer and chemist, inventor of the Schweinfurt green

Ignacy Hilary Count Ledochowski, 1789-1870, Austrian and Polish general

Joseph Jelacic of Bužim, 1801-1859, k.k. officer

Moritz Freiherr Ebner von Eschenbach, 1815-1898, Austrian engineer, inventor and writer, husband and supporter of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Tivadar Puskás, 1844-1893, Hungarian engineer and inventor

Karl Lueger, politician and mayor of Vienna, graduation year of 1862

Olivier Marquis de Bacquehem, Minister of Trade and Minister of the Interior 1847-1917

Ernest von Koerber, 1850-1919, bourgeois-liberal politician of Austria-Hungary

Wilhelm Carl Gustav Ritter von Doderer 1854-1932, Austrian architect, engineer and contractor

Alfonso XII., 1857-1885, King of Spain

Konstantin Jirecek, Swedish politician, diplomat, historian and Slawist

Peter Altenberg, letters, graduation year of 1876

Wladimir Ledochowski, General of the Society of Jesus, graduation year of 1884

Count István Bethlen von Bethlen, 1874-1946 (?), Hungarian politician and Prime Minister

Clemens Peter Freiherr von Pirquet, pediatrician, bacteriologist and immunologist, graduation year of 1892

Baron Franz Nopcsa of Felsöszilvás, founder of palaeophysiology and Albania researcher, graduation year of 1892

Friedrich Hasenohrl, physicists, graduation year of 1892

Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando, writer and artist, graduation year of 1896

Edgar Leon Calle Ernst, 1879-1955, Austrian composer and pianist

Rudolf Sieczynski, 1879-1952, Austrian Viennese song-composer, writer and official

Ernst August von Hoffmansthal, 1829-1915, German Wiener Song Composer

Joseph Schumpeter, 1883-1950, economist

Odo Neustädter-Stürmer, politician, graduation year of 1905

Richard Nikolaus Graf Coudenhove-Kalergi, writer, politician and founder of the Pan-movement

Teddy Kern, 1900-1949, actor

Egon Brunswik, 1903-1955, American psychologist

Godfrey Edward Arnold, 1914-1989, physician, phoniatrist, explorer of speech defects and disorders of the vocal cords

Ertuğrul Osman, 1912-2009, head of the House Osman

Hans Jaray, actor, writer and director

Ernst Gombrich, an art historian, graduation year of 1927

Max Ferdinand Perutz, chemist and Nobel Prize winner in 1962, year of graduation 1932

Herbert Hinterleithner, poet and painter, graduation year of 1934

Rolf Olsen, actor, director and screenwriter, 1919-1998

Hans Hass, biologist, underwater pioneer and documentary filmmaker, graduation year of 1937

Peter Zinner, editor and Oscar winner, graduation year of 1937

Kurt Schubert, Judaic scholar, graduation year of 1941

Werner Fasslabend, politician and jurist, graduation year of 1963

Hans Winkler, Austrian diplomat and Secretary of State, graduation year of 1963

Alexander Wächter, actor, director and theater manager, graduation year of 1966

Thomas Angyan, director of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna, graduation year of 1971

Rudolf Striedinger, Officer, graduation year of 1979

Dimitris Droutsas, Greek politician, graduation year of 1986

Nicholas Scherak, Member of Parliament, Matura group 2004

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96ffentliches_Gymnasium_der_Sti...

Anatoly Vershik

The monument is dedicated to Spiru Haret (1851-1912), scientist and mathematician, who held several mandates as Minister of Public Instruction and was a member of the Romanian Academy. As a minister, he laid the foundations for modern Romanian education by introducing a series of measures, including: setting up kindergardens and schools for children, but also for adults, editing school books or setting up funds for children from poor backgrounds

Public School Foundation Theresianische Academy

Founded in 1746

♁ coordinates 48 ° 11 ' 35.2 " N, 16 ° 22' 15.5" OKoordinaten : 48 ° 11 ' 35.2 " N, 16 ° 22' 15.5 " E | |

831 students status: 2013

Teachers about 130

www.theresianum.ac.at site

The Theresianum called state facility with buildings dating back several centuries in Vienna, 4th district, Favoritenstrasse 15, serves as the seat of the public high school of the Foundation Theresianische Academy, as the building for short Theresianum, and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. Both institutions have a tradition spanning centuries. Since 2011, the Foundation also offers a kindergarten and an elementary school.

The New Favorita seen from the favorite street, it houses today the Theresianum

View to the pediment with the coat of arms of the Empire of Austria under Francis I

The Theresianum, seen from the park

The school park

Nazi era: Library stamp of "NPEA Vienna Theresianumgasse"

(National Political Institutes of Education (German: Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten; officially abbreviated NPEA, commonly abbreviated Napola for Nationalpolitische Lehranstalt meaning National Political Institution of Teaching) were secondary boarding schools in Nazi Germany. They were founded as "community education sites" after the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933.), Wikipedia

History

1288 an estate was detectable in this area. 1614 the estate with fields, meadows and vineyards was acquired by the Habsburg monarchy, was first described as a Favoritenhof 1623 and served as the widow's home for the Empresses Anna of Austria-Tyrol, Eleonora Gonzaga and Eleonora Magdalena Gonzaga of Mantua-Nevers. For this, the estate was remodeled in 1642 according to plans of Giovanni Battista Carlone to pleasure palace with pleasure garden called Favorita.

The emperors Leopold I, Joseph I and Charles VI. served the Favorita as a preferred summer residence. During this time, extensions were built, the in the second Turkish siege in 1683 originated ravages repaired and sold some of the fields.

Charles' VI. daughter, Maria Theresa, heiress to the throne in the Austrian dominions, in the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Kingdom of Hungary and since 1745, when her husband became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, as Empress was dubbed, preferred as summer residence the Schönbrunn Palace and had it expanded. To this decision may have contributed that the Favorita, concerning location and architecture, with Belvedere Castle could not compete, which the for Habsburg victorious commander Eugene of Savoy, of Charles VI. richly endowed, had built about 800 meters to the east form here using a prominent hillside.

The baroque Favorita (it was by now called New Favorita, the Old Favorita had been in the Augarten) in the suburb of Wieden handed Maria Theresia to the Jesuits - with the condition in it to establish an educational institution, a knight's academy for the benefit of the universal essence, but especially the noble youth. Main task should be the raising of educated and loyal government officials and diplomats. In the 18th and 19th Century followed various extensions and increases in the building.

1783 dissolved the reformer Joseph II in the Austrian hereditary lands all knights academies, as well as the Theresianum. In 1797 Emperor Franz II as sovereign approved the reopening under the management of the Piarists. The facade was rebuilt in the classical style. After the revolution of 1848, Emperor Franz Joseph I. disposed the admission of sons of the middle class as students.

The Oriental Academy, founded by Maria Theresa in 1754, was since the 19th Century in the Theresianum. In 1900 renamed, moved the Consular Academy in 1904 in its newly constructed own building (9, Boltzmanngasse 16, since 1947 Embassy of the United States). It was in 1938 by the Nazi regime canceled. Its role was in 1964 by the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna (see below) resumed.

After the "Anschluss" of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, the Nazis dissolved the Theresianische Academy and established on 13 March 1939, exactly one year after the "Anschluss", in the buildings a National Political Education Institute (Napola). 1944/1945, the plant was badly damaged by bombs and grenades. 1945, the buildings in the occupied postwar Austria were by the Soviet occupying power monopolised, in the four-sector city of Vienna the 4th district controlling. It handed the Theresianum over to the USIA, the administration of Soviet Property in Austria.

After the State Treaty of 1955, the Austrian State resp. the Foundation Theresianum got the property on 20 September 1955 refunded, and in September 1957, the school system of the private school with public status could be resumed. The re-establishment of the in the war damaged buildings was carried out by the State from 1956 to 1964. In 1964 in a part of the buildings the by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs established Diplomatic Academy of Vienna started operations, with which the Viennese educational establishement for this topic after 60 years returned into the Theresianum .

Since 1989, in the high school female students are accepted, too.

The gymnasium in the presence

In addition to general education, the focus of the school is placed on language education - the compulsory subjects include other than German, English, French, Latin, Russian and mathematics - and in the education to internationality. Special emphasis is placed on politeness and good appearance. An additional service is available in the areas of sport, art, creativity, information and communication technology and music, and economic projects. The school is run as half-and full boarding.

The school campus is 50,000 square meters and includes a soccer field, and a fun court, two other soccer fields, a swimming pool, a tennis court, a running track, two beach volleyball courts, a basketball court, a large, divisible gymnasium and a smaller, older hall, in both of the are climbing walls as well as other sporting items available.

Currently nearly 800 students attend the Theresianische Academy. Many come from more distant states or from abroad and have the opportunity to live in a boarding school in this case.

The selection of professors is made by the respective school management in cooperation with the Vienna Board of Education. The boarding school, as well as some activities are shared with the Lycée Français de Vienne.

Known graduates

Josef Franz de Paula Hieronymus von Colloredo-Waldsee- Mels, 1732-1812, Bishop of Gurk and Prince Archbishop of Salzburg

Vincent Joseph of Schrattenbach, 1744-1816, Prince-Bishop of Lavant and Bishop of Brno

Wilhelm Florentin von Salm-Salm, 1745-1810, Bishop of Tournai and Archbishop of Prague

Johann Prokop Schaffgotsch, 1748-1813, Auxiliary Bishop of Prague and Bishop of Budweis

Franz Xaver II Altgraf of Salm-Reifferscheidt-Krautheim, 1749-1822, Prince-Bishop of Gurk, Cardinal and organizer of the first ascent of the Grossglockner

Franz von Spaun, 1753-1826, Austrian jurist, mathematician, and nonconformist writer

Ferenc Széchenyi, 1754-1820, Hungarian scholar and founder of the Hungarian National Library

Josef Wenzel Radetzky von Radetz, 1766-1858, Austrian field marshal, knight of the Golden Fleece

Ignaz Edler von Mitis, 1771-1842, Austrian engineer and chemist, inventor of the Schweinfurt green

Ignacy Hilary Count Ledochowski, 1789-1870, Austrian and Polish general

Joseph Jelacic of Bužim, 1801-1859, k.k. officer

Moritz Freiherr Ebner von Eschenbach, 1815-1898, Austrian engineer, inventor and writer, husband and supporter of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Tivadar Puskás, 1844-1893, Hungarian engineer and inventor

Karl Lueger, politician and mayor of Vienna, graduation year of 1862

Olivier Marquis de Bacquehem, Minister of Trade and Minister of the Interior 1847-1917

Ernest von Koerber, 1850-1919, bourgeois-liberal politician of Austria-Hungary

Wilhelm Carl Gustav Ritter von Doderer 1854-1932, Austrian architect, engineer and contractor

Alfonso XII., 1857-1885, King of Spain

Konstantin Jirecek, Swedish politician, diplomat, historian and Slawist

Peter Altenberg, letters, graduation year of 1876

Wladimir Ledochowski, General of the Society of Jesus, graduation year of 1884

Count István Bethlen von Bethlen, 1874-1946 (?), Hungarian politician and Prime Minister

Clemens Peter Freiherr von Pirquet, pediatrician, bacteriologist and immunologist, graduation year of 1892

Baron Franz Nopcsa of Felsöszilvás, founder of palaeophysiology and Albania researcher, graduation year of 1892

Friedrich Hasenohrl, physicists, graduation year of 1892

Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando, writer and artist, graduation year of 1896

Edgar Leon Calle Ernst, 1879-1955, Austrian composer and pianist

Rudolf Sieczynski, 1879-1952, Austrian Viennese song-composer, writer and official

Ernst August von Hoffmansthal, 1829-1915, German Wiener Song Composer

Joseph Schumpeter, 1883-1950, economist

Odo Neustädter-Stürmer, politician, graduation year of 1905

Richard Nikolaus Graf Coudenhove-Kalergi, writer, politician and founder of the Pan-movement

Teddy Kern, 1900-1949, actor

Egon Brunswik, 1903-1955, American psychologist

Godfrey Edward Arnold, 1914-1989, physician, phoniatrist, explorer of speech defects and disorders of the vocal cords

Ertuğrul Osman, 1912-2009, head of the House Osman

Hans Jaray, actor, writer and director

Ernst Gombrich, an art historian, graduation year of 1927

Max Ferdinand Perutz, chemist and Nobel Prize winner in 1962, year of graduation 1932

Herbert Hinterleithner, poet and painter, graduation year of 1934

Rolf Olsen, actor, director and screenwriter, 1919-1998

Hans Hass, biologist, underwater pioneer and documentary filmmaker, graduation year of 1937

Peter Zinner, editor and Oscar winner, graduation year of 1937

Kurt Schubert, Judaic scholar, graduation year of 1941

Werner Fasslabend, politician and jurist, graduation year of 1963

Hans Winkler, Austrian diplomat and Secretary of State, graduation year of 1963

Alexander Wächter, actor, director and theater manager, graduation year of 1966

Thomas Angyan, director of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna, graduation year of 1971

Rudolf Striedinger, Officer, graduation year of 1979

Dimitris Droutsas, Greek politician, graduation year of 1986

Nicholas Scherak, Member of Parliament, Matura group 2004

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96ffentliches_Gymnasium_der_Sti...

Mathematicians live in another world , the planet of Mathematics!!

From a recent trip to Kyoto. An offensively red building surrounded an earthy, raked-gravel garden. Like much of Japan, the former Imperial Palace was an exercise in emphasis through use of contrast.

 

Going away to Vietnam for two weeks, so I am bucking my usual 1-photo-per-(4)-days style. Thanks for looking - please comment if you have time, and most of all Happy Christmas.

New Zealand – Under CONTRACT with the (mon)ARCH – British Royal Visit June 1901

 

At least 22 Triumphal Royal Arches were built for the visit of HRH Prince George, Duke of Cornwall & York and his wife, HRH Princess Mary, Duchess of Cornwall & York (later King George V and Queen Mary) in June 1901.

 

Six years later (1907), at the ‘REQUEST’ of the New Zealand Parliament, King Edward VII would proclaim New Zealand a Dominion within the British Empire.

  

The ARK of the COVENANT (CONTRACT of the ARCH……)

 

The ARCH is a word and a structure that features prominently over the millennia……

 

ARCHES are used in building powerful word constructs and social control structures as well as being used extensively in ARCHitecture and civil engineering.

 

These power structures are always hierARCHical, often with a single entity at the top known as a monARCH.

 

The MASONIC control structure has certainly adopted this ARCHitecture and even pretends to be borne out of the stone mason fraternities.

 

In Gnosticism, ARCHons are the builders of the physical universe. Among the ARCHontics, Ophites, Sethians and in the writings of Nag Hammadi library, the ARCHons are rulers, each related to one of seven planets; they prevent souls from leaving the material realm.

 

The ARCHers – a long running program through history – not just the BBC….

 

'SOVEREIGN' - literally means to reign from above.

This is why the MonARCH of a country is referred to as 'Your HIGHNESS'

Then we have

MatriARCHs - a system of society or government ruled by a woman or women

PatriARCHs - a system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family and descent is reckoned through the male line.

OligARCHs - government by the few, especially despotic power exercised by a small and privileged group for corrupt or selfish purposes.

In these long-running and ARCHaic societal control structures we also have:

ARCH dukes and ARCH duchesses

ARCH bishops

ARCH deacons

ARCH druids

ARCHangels

ARCHitects

SquireARCHies - landowners collectively, especially when considered as a class having political or social influence

mARCHioness - a noblewoman with the rank of marquess, or the wife of a marquess.

mARCHer lords - A Marcher Lord was a noble appointed by the King of England to guard the border between England and Wales. A Marcher Lord was the English equivalent of a margrave or a marquis before the introduction of the title of "marquess" in Britain

ARCHimandrite - the superior of a large monastery or group of monasteries in the Orthodox Church

ARCHaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. Archaeology is often considered a branch of socio-cultural anthropology, but archaeologists also draw from biological, geological, and environmental systems through their study of the past

 

TrierARCH - the title of officers who commanded a trireme in the classical Greek world. In Classical Athens, the title was associated with the trierarchy, one of the public offices or liturgies, which were filled by wealthy citizens for a year

 

HagiARCHy - government by saints, holy men, or men in holy orders

 

AutARCHic - having and exercising complete political power and control: absolute, absolutistic, arbitrary, autarchical, autocratic, autocratical, despotic, dictatorial, monocratic, totalitarian, tyrannic, tyrannical, tyrannous

HeptARCHy - a collective name applied to the seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century until the 8th century consolidation into the four kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria, Wessex and East Anglia.

TetrARCHy - term adopted to describe the system of government of the ancient Roman Empire instituted by Roman Emperor Diocletian in 293, marking the end of the Crisis of the Third Century and the recovery of the Roman Empire

TheARCHy - rule by a god or gods

GynARCHy - rule by women or a woman.

ExARCHate - a Byzantine province governed by an exARCH

AnARCHy - a state of disorder due to lack of social structure

 

All this history was documented by ARCHivists – with old records being kept on pARCHment

 

At school we are not taught the true meaning of the ARCHway….

By passing through the ARCHway we may be unaware that we are entering into an agreement or contract where we are to be ruled over.

The ‘CONTRACT of the ARCH’ perhaps……

 

ARCANUM and ARCANA - mysterious or specialized knowledge, language, or information accessible or possessed only by the initiate.

 

ARCHES in Modern Culture….

The ARCHERS - a British BBC radio soap opera broadcast since 1951. Having aired over 19,300 episodes, it is the world's longest-running drama.

The ARCHERS is set in the fictional village of AmBRIDGE

 

The POPE – PONTIFEX MAXIMUS – The GREATEST BRIDGE BUILDER

A pontiff (bridge builder from Latin pontifex) was, in Roman antiquity, a member of the most illustrious of the colleges of priests of the Roman religion, the College of Pontiffs.

Pope Francis (@Pontifex) • Twitter

  

More famous ARCHes…

ARCHimedes (c. 287 – c. 212 BC)

Considered to be the greatest mathematician of ancient history, and one of the greatest of all time.

The Fields Medal for outstanding achievement in mathematics carries a portrait of ARCHimedes, along with a carving illustrating his proof on the sphere and the cylinder.

The inscription around the head of ARCHimedes is a quote attributed to him which reads in Latin: Transire suum pectus mundoque potiri.

'RISE ABOVE ONESELF AND GRASP THE WORLD’.

ARCHimedes, Freemasonry and the Moderns Grand Lodge Constitutions

Frontispiece to the 1723 Edition:

The 1723 edition is well-known for its elaborate frontispiece engraved by John Pine in 1723. It features a classical arcade of John Montagu, the Second Duke of Montagu (Knight of the Garter #532), and the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England (1721-1723), passing the scroll of the "Constitutions" to his 1723 successor, Philip Warton, First Duke of Wharton. Both are attended by their officers. Apollo, god of the sun, charges above in his chariot, symbolizing the meridian height. Behind the gathering is a passageway framed by walls of water - evocative of the parting of the Red Sea.

The 47th proposition of Euclid, the traditional symbol of a past masters of a Masonic lodge, appears in the foreground. Below it, in Greek, is ARCHhimedes' famous exclamation: “Eureka!” (“I have found it!”)

eureka (English) - εύρηκα (Greek)

 

Download the following PDF for more ARCANE mysteries:

 

pubastrology.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/noahs-ark-of-the...

 

_https://pubastrology.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/noahs-ark-of-the-covenant-revision-6.pdf

 

pubastrology.com

  

Please do not erase the board!