Alan Turing was born in Maida Vale, London on June 23, 1912.
Alan's father was part of a family of merchants from Scotland, who was on leave from his position with the Indian Civil Service when his son was born. His mother, Ethel Sara, was the daughter of an engineer.
Alan went to St. Michael's, a school at 20 Charles Road, St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, when he was five years old. The headmistress recognized his talent straight away.
In the midst of Britain's General Strike of 1926, the 13-year-old Alan Turing started at Sherborne School, an independent boarding school in the market town of Sherborne in Dorset. Because of the General Strike there was no transport in Britain, but Alan was so determined to make it to the first day of term, that he rode his bicycle unaccompanied 60 miles (97 km) from Southampton to Sherborne, stopping overnight at an inn.
As a schoolboy at Sherborne, Alan's teachers were slow to recognize his talents: his report cards show that they thought that although he showed "distinct promise" in mathematics, his ideas in physics were "vague" and messily explained.
Alan Turing aged 16
After Sherborne, Turing studied as an undergraduate from 1931 to 1934 at King's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded first-class honors in mathematics.
CAREER
Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science and on November 30, 1936 he published the first details of the Turing machine, a basic abstract symbol-manipulating hypothetical device that could simulate the logic of any computer algorithm.
Turing was interested in artificial intelligence. He proposed the Turing test, which was an attempt to define a standard for when a machine can be called "intelligent". The idea was that a computer could be said to "think" if a human talking with it could not tell it was a machine.
During World War II, the pioneering British mathematician and computer scientist worked to break German ciphers. The initial design of the bombe, an electro-mechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted secret messages during the conflict was produced in 1939 at the UK Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park by Turing.
Using cryptanalysis, Turing helped to break the codes of the Enigma machine. After that, he solved other German codes. Turing's codebreaking work at Bletchley Park saved thousands of lives and became the foundation for modern computing.
A wartime picture of a Bletchley Park Bombe
After the war, Turing worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he designed the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine), among the first designs for a stored-program computer. Turing's paper which he presented on February 19, 1946 has been claimed to be the first detailed design of a stored-program computer.
There were delays in starting the project to build the ACE, so in late 1947 Turing returned to Cambridge for a sabbatical year. While he was at Cambridge, the Pilot ACE was built without him. It ran its first program on May 10, 1950.
In 1948 Turing joined Max Newman's Computing Machine Laboratory at the Victoria University of Manchester, where he helped develop the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology.
Turing developed the first computer program for playing chess in 1951. However, no computer was powerful enough to process it, so Turing tested it by doing the calculations himself and playing according to the results, taking several minutes per move.
Turing's later work showed that the patterns on tortoise shells, despite their apparent complexity (and beauty), can come about from a rather simple set of rules or instructions, i.e. the underlying genetic code.
PERSONAL LIFE
Turing was a gay man at a time when homosexual acts were illegal in England.
Fearing a German invasion, in 1940 Alan Turing converted his assets into silver ingots and buried them in Buckinghamshire. He spent the rest of his life failing to find them.
Turing
Alan Turing was a world class distance athlete with a personal best marathon time of 2:46:03, achieved in 1947. (2:36 won an Olympic gold in 1948). His local running club discovered him when he overtook them repeatedly while out running alone for relaxation.
Turing was famously allergic to pollen and reportedly wore a gas mask while cycling to work each June during hay fever season to block it.
He also rode a bicycle with a faulty chain that would regularly slip off. Instead of repairing it properly (which most people might consider), he allegedly counted the number of pedal rotations it took before the chain would slip and would dismount just before that point to fix it manually. It’s exactly the kind of meticulous, slightly baffling solution you'd expect from a man who helped invent modern computing.
LAST YEARS AND DEATH
Convicted in 1952 of homosexuality acts, Turing opted to receive chemical castration in lieu of prison. As a result of his punishment, he became impotent and also grew breasts.
In 1954, sixteen days before his 42nd birthday, Turing took his own life by means of cyanide poisoning. A half-eaten apple was discovered by Turing's bed when his body was found - though the apple was never tested it was speculated this was the method Turing used to administer the cyanide.
LEGACY
In 2009, after a huge internet campaign, UK Prime MinisterGordon Brown made on official apology to the Turing family and the LGBT community for the British government's treatment of Turing. Four years later, Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a posthumous pardon.
The "Alan Turing law" is an informal term for the law in the United Kingdom, contained in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, which serves as an amnesty law to retroactively pardon men who were cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts. Under the Alan Turing law more than 49,000 men in England and Wales were posthumously pardoned for breaching historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.
Benedict Cumberbatch played Alan Turing in the 2014 movie about his life The Imitation Game. The actor's father, Timothy Carlton was also a student at Alan Turing's old school, Sherborne School, from 1953-1958.
Bertrand Russell was born on May 18, 1872, at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire.
He was the Third Earl Russell but he always liked being called Bertrand even after he inherited his title.
Bertrand Russell portrait.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
The Russells had been prominent for several centuries in Britain, and were one of Britain's leading Whig / Liberal families.
Bertrand's paternal grandfather, Lord John Russell introduced the 1832 Reform Bill and started Britain on the road to democracy. He was twice asked by Queen Victoria to form a government, serving her as Prime Minister in the 1840s and 1860s.
His father, Viscount Amberley, was a freethinker who among other things, consented to his wife's affair with their children's tutor, the biologist Douglas Spalding. Amberley ruined his parliamentary career by advocating atheism and birth control for women.
Bertrand's mother, Viscountess Amberley was also from an aristocratic family, and was the sister of Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle.
His godfather was John Stuart Mill. The Utilitarian philosopher was Russell's greatest teenage influence .
CHILDHOOD
In June 1874 Bertrand's mother died of diphtheria. A year and a half later, his father died of bronchitis following a long period of depression.
After his parents' premature deaths, Russell and his older brother, Frank, the future 2nd Earl, were raised by their staunchly Victorian grandparents, Lord Russell, the former Prime Minister, and his second wife, the Countess Russell, nee Lady Frances Elliot.
Bertrand also had a sister Rachel who died when he was an infant.
The Countess Russell was from a Scottish Presbyterian family, and her influence on Bertrand's outlook on social justice and standing up for principle remained with him throughout his life.
Young Bertrand was raised as an aristocrat, he was a silent and shy boy.
Russell as a four-year-old
Russell's childhood was very lonely and he often contemplated suicide. He remarked in his autobiography that only his keen interest in mathematics seemed to keep him interested in living.
EDUCATION
Bertrand was educated at home by a series of governesses, and he spent countless hours in his grandfather's library.
His brother Frank introduced him to Euclid, which transformed Russell's life.
Bertrand was fascinated by figures but his grandmother did not allow the governesses to teach him maths so he had to study it secretly
Russell studied philosophy and logic at Cambridge University, starting in 1890, where he became acquainted with the younger G.E. Moore, and where he later came under the influence of Alfred North Whitehead. He quickly distinguished himself in mathematics and philosophy.
Russell took Mathematics honors in 1893 and graduated in 1894, surprisingly with only a third.
CAREER
For two years after graduation, Russell lectured in the United States before returning home to a lectureship at the London School of Economics.
In 1907 Russell ran for Parliament as a candidate of the Union of Woman's Suffrage Societies. He lost by 7000 votes.
Russell in 1907
Three years later, Russell attempted to be adopted as a Liberal candidate but his constituency association refused him when they discovered he was an agnostic.
Russell took up a job as a Maths Lecturer at Trinity College Cambridge in 1910. Until the outbreak of World War 1, Russell was an academic who was revolutionizing the study of mathematics, but due to his vocal opposition to the war he became an outsider and he lost his job in 1914.
In 1920, Russell traveled to Russia and subsequently lectured in Peking (now Beijing) on philosophy for one year. The Chinese loved the British lecturer as he considered the Chinese problems from a Chinese point of view rather than the imperialistic English. His Peking University students even launched a special Russell magazine.
In 1922-23 Russell ran as Labour candidate for Chelsea. However, it was a safe Tory seat and was easily defeated by the Conservative candidate Sir Samuel Hoare.
Throughout the remainder of the 1920s, Russell supported himself during this time by writing popular books explaining matters of physics, ethics and education to the layman.
Russell set up the experimental Beacon Hill School, near Petersfield, Hampshire on 1927, which allowed children complete freedom in expressing and behaving themselves. In other words, rather than repress their feelings they could swear at their teachers etc. At Russell's school there was mixed naked bathing, no punishment and no religious instruction. The school was a failure as mainly unruly children who had been expelled from other schools were sent there.
Upon the death of his elder brother Frank, in 1931, Russell became 3rd Earl Russell. He once said that his title was primarily useful for securing hotel rooms and the like.
In 1938 Russell moved to the United States where he taught at many universities and wrote his History of Western Philosophy.
Russell in 1938
In the spring of 1939, Russell moved to Santa Barbara to lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was appointed professor at the City College of New York shortly thereafter, but after public outcries, the appointment was annulled by the courts. Russell returned to Britain in 1944 and he rejoined the faculty of Trinity College.
On December 26, 1948, Bertrand Russell delivered the very first BBC Reith Lecture, launching a tradition that continues to this day. His series of six talks, collectively titled "Authority and the Individual," explored the complex relationship between individual freedom and the various forms of authority present in society.
Russell was awarded the Order of Merit, in the King's Birthday Honours of June 9, 1949. George VI was affable but slightly embarrassed at decorating the controversial freethinker saying, "You have sometimes behaved in a manner that would not do if generally adopted".
In 1958 Russell was elected the First President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
WRITINGS
Russell wrote over 40 books.
The three-volume Principia Mathematica, written with AN Whitehead, was published between 1910 and 1913. The work, which explored the relationship between pure maths and logic took them ten years to write. Russell had to pay part of the printing costs himself so convinced was Cambridge University that it had a commercial loser on its hand.
Principia Mathematica became one of the most influential volumes for 20th century intellectuals and along with the earlier The Principles of Mathematics, made Russell world-famous in his field.
Russell included a 360 page proof to show that 1+1=2 in Principia Mathematica. Despite its acknowledged importance in the study of the foundations of math is so complex and obtuse that it is rarely used today.
The title page of the shortened Principia Mathematica
A History of Western Philosophy was written during Russell's time in the States in the 1940s. A survey of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratic philosophers to the early 20th century, it was a popular and commercial success, and provided Russell with financial security for the last part of his life.
In 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought". When Russell was awarded the honor, A History of Western Philosophy was cited as one of the books that won him the award.
Front cover art for the book A History of Western Philosophy. Wikipedia
PACIFISM
While never a complete pacifist, Russell called his stance "Relative Pacifism," he held that war was always a great evil, but in some particularly extreme circumstances (such as when Adolf Hitler threatened to take over Europe) it might be a lesser of multiple evils.
Russell opposed British participation in World War I. Bertrand Russell's pacifist refusal to fight in World War 1 made him an object of ridicule in the press. He spent six months in prison in 1917 for an article he wrote for the No Conscription Fellowship in a journal
Russell recommended in the 1930s that Britain gave up its army, navy, air force and empire as then Hitler would have no need to invade us!
In the years leading to World War II, Russell supported the policy of appeasement; but by 1941 he acknowledged that in order to preserve democracy, Hitler had to be defeated.
Russell advocated nuclear disarmament from 1949. Five years later, Russell made a much acclaimed broadcast "Man's Peril," in which he criticized the Bikini A Toll H bomb tests.
CND was launched in February 1958 with Russell as its first President.
Russell made several absurd pronouncements during campaign for nuclear disarmament that Harold Macmillan and John F Kennedy were murderers for supporting the bomb.
Russell (centre) alongside his wife Edith, leading a CND anti-nuclear march
At the height of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, it was in reply to a message from Russell that Nikita Khrushchev revealed the Russian climbdown.
Russell spent a week in Brixton jail in 1961, after persistently obstructing the highway by sitting on it as part of his Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
BELIEFS
As a young man, Russell was a member of the Liberal Party and wrote in favor of free trade and women's suffrage.
In his 1910 pamphlet, Anti-Suffragist Anxieties, Russell wrote that some men opposed suffrage because they "fear that their liberty to act in ways that are injurious to women will be curtailed."
Later a Socialist, Russell coined the famous phrase "better red than dead."
Russell had a genuine interest in religion, in which he grew increasingly skeptical. By 1910 he believed only in things that could be proved by experience.
Russell wrote a booklet, Why I'm not a Christian. When asked what he would say to God if he ever met him, Russell replied "I should tell him, that he had not provided me with the necessary evidence".
He was a member of a hard-core of progressive group of the 1920s intent on challenging the established order and influential in bringing in the permissive age.
Russell was in favour of eugenics, and together with other left-wing British intellectuals endorsed the fashionable idea with rare enthusiasm.
Russell wrote against Victorian notions of morality. His early writings expressed his opinion that sex between a man and woman who are not married to each other is not necessarily immoral if they truly love one another. This might not seem extreme by today's standards, but it was enough to raise vigorous protests and denunciations against him during his first visit to the United States.
APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER
Russell had a slight, lean figure with bright eyes.
He was quiet and retiring but a frightful prig when young and an unprincipled philander when older.
Russell saw everything in black and white, he didn't believe in compromise.
He had a dry, reedy voice.
Russell had a mordant wit.
RELATIONSHIPS
Russell first met the American Quaker, Alyssa Pearsall Smith, when he was seventeen years old. He fell in love with the puritanical, high-minded Alys, who was connected to several educationists and religious activists.
Their marriage began to fall apart in 1901 when it occurred to Russell, while he was cycling, that he no longer loved Alys.
The couple separated a decade later. Alys pined for him for years and continued to love Russell for the rest of her life. During this period, Russell had passionate affairs with, among others, Lady Ottoline Morrell (half-sister of the 6th Duke of Portland) and the actress Lady Constance Malleson.
Russell first met British author, feminist and socialist campaigner Dora Black in 1916 when they both took part on a weekend walking tour. However, the pair did not embark on a relationship for another three years when Russell invited her to join him during his summer holidays.
Dora Black Wikipedia
Meanwhile his first wife Alys hovered outside to observe Russell's family life with Dora. In 1921, he divorced Alys so he could marry his fellow socialist campaigner.
Dora was a fierce left wing activist and a believer in free love. She reluctantly became Russell's second wife as she was pregnant and Russell wanted to legitimize her. They were married on September 25, 1921 at Battersea Town Hall with Eileen Power and Frank Russell acting as witnesses. Dora who was seven months pregnant with the couple's first child, John, wore black during the ceremony.
Their second child Kate was born in 1923 and Dora later had two more by a live in lover. Russell accepted them and gave his name to them for the sake of protecting his own children.
In 1931 Russell went on a bizarre holiday with Dora, his mistress, Dora's lover, his two children and his wife’s illegitimate baby.
John Conrad Russell later briefly succeeded his father as 4th Earl Russell and Lady Katherine Russell became Lady Katherine Tait.
Russell with his children, John and Kate
Russell's marriage to Dora grew increasingly tenuous, and it reached a breaking point over her adultery with an American journalist. They separated and later divorced.
On January 18, 1936, Russell married his third wife, a vivacious 25 year old redhead Oxford student named Patricia ("Peter") Spence, at the Midhurst register office. She had been his children's governess since 1930.
Russell and Peter had one son, Conrad.
Patricia acted as secretary to Russell. She left him in 1951 after years of Russell's womanizing. The final straw was during an unhappy holiday, when he declared during a picnic "I am as drunk as a Lord but then I am one." The bad tempered Patricia stormed off taking Conrad whom she forbade having any further contact with his father.
In 1952, Russell divorced Peter and later that year on December 15 he married his fourth wife, American writer and biographer Edith Finch. They had known each other since the 1930s after being introduced through her close friend and housemate Lucy Martin Donnelly, who was a friend of Russell's first wife, Alys. Finch moved to England in 1950 and remained with Russell until his death. By all accounts, their relationship was very close and loving throughout their marriage.
The four times married Russell lived out his belief in free love and became a hero to the sixties generation.
His eldest son John was driven into withdrawal, then open hatred followed by schizophrenia.
At Russell’s death he left behind two embittered ex-wives and a son and two granddaughters with schizophrenia.
PERSONAL LIFE
Russell was bought up at his grandparents home at Pembroke Lodge, a Grade II listed Georgian mansion in Richmond Park in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.
Childhood home, Pembroke Lodge. By steve, Wikipedia
From 1955 Russell had a small house called Plas Penrhyn near Portmeirion in North Wales.
Russell liked to eat at a certain cheap cafe that served poor food. He explained the reason he ate there was "because I am never interrupted".
HEALTH
At the age of 16 Russell strained his eyes (which was a blow as he was an avid reader). He was forbidden to read and write so he spent his time recovering learning poetry by heart.
In 1920 Russell had a serious illness in China due to lecturing in cold halls and as a result he refused to grant interviews. The resentful Japanese press (the Japanese were at the time occupying China) carried the news that he has died. On his way home Russell stopped in Japan and the press sought to interview him again. By way of reprisal he had his secretary hand out printed slips to each reporter "since Mr Russell is dead he cannot be interviewed."
Russell was one of 24 survivors of an airplane crash in Hommelvik in October 1948. Russell swam to safety clutching his briefcase whilst 19 people died. He said he owed his life to smoking since the people who drowned were in the non-smoking part of the plane.
LAST YEARS AND DEATH
At age 89, Bertrand Russell was jailed for "breach of peace" for anti-nuclear demonstration.They offered to exempt him from jail if he pledged himself to "good behaviour", to which Russell replied: "No, I won't."
Russell was still active in international peace drives in his mid 90s.
Russell died of influenza on February 2, 1970 at his home in Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales.
He was cremated without ceremony at Colwyn Bay and his ashes were scattered over the Welsh mountains.
Pythagoras born on the Greek island of Samos, situated in the eastern Aegean around 570 BC.
His father, Mnesarchus, is said to have been a gem-engraver or a wealthy merchant, originally from Tyre or Syria.
A late source gives his mother's name as Pythais.
Pythagoras travelled widely in Egypt and Asia Minor before settling in the Greek colony Croton (today's Crotone, on the southern coast of Magna Graecia (Southern Italy).
Bust of Pythagoras in the Capitoline Museums, Rome. Galilea at German Wikipedia
PYTHAGOREAN SCHOOL
Pythagoras arrived in Croton in around 530BC. He founded there an educational society that was half-religious and half-philosophical. His pupils were trained in gymnastics, mathematics and music.
Pythagoras opened his school to men and women students alike.
According to Iamblichus, the Pythagoreans followed a structured life of religious teaching, common meals, exercise, reading and philosophical study. We may infer from this that participants required some degree of wealth and leisure to join the inner circle.
Pythagoras, the man in the center with the book, teaching music, in Raphael's The School of Athens
Internal discord drove most of the Pythagoreans out of Croton due to mistrust of the society. Pythagoras left the city before the outbreak of civil unrest and moved to Metapontum (today's Metaponto, on the Italian Ionian Coast), where he stayed for the rest of his life.
BELIEF
Both Plato and Isocrates affirm that, above all else, Pythagoras was famous for leaving behind him a way of life. The Samian sage was the first person known to have referred to himself as a philosopher (meaning a "Lover of Wisdom".)
Pythagoras believed in immortality and the transformation into glorification of souls.
He regarded elaborate dress and superfluous possessions as weaknesses to be avoided.
The Pythagorean letter Ypsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. The letter was seen by Pythagoras as an emblem of the path of virtue or vice.
Geoffroy Tory Ypsilon
Pythagoras preached abstention from meat, beans and mallows and he desired a return to the golden age. He believed that a vegetarian diet helped with his clarity of thought.
Pythagoras forbade the eating of broad (fava) beans as it was thought they contain the souls of the dead. He even refused to walk through fields of broad beans. It is probable that he was prone to favism, which is almost entirely confined to genetically susceptible people of Mediterranean origin. Favism occurs when such individuals consume broad beans or inhale the pollen and it leads to the destruction of red blood cells resulting in severe anemia.
Pythagoras and fava beans, French, 1512/1514
Pythagoras favored a cucumber salad with raisin-coriander vinaigrette.
MATHEMATICS
Pythagoras has commonly been given credit for discovering the Pythagorean theorem, which states that in a right-angled triangle the area of the square on the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares of the other two sides—that is, a 2 + b 2 = c 2. In doing so he founded a new branch of mathematics - geometry.
His Pythagorean theorem was actually discovered by the Babylonians 1000 years earlier. However while the theorem that now bears Pythagoras' name was known and previously utilized by the Babylonians, he, or his students, are often said to have constructed the first proof.
Pythagoras and his students believed that everything was related to mathematics, and felt that everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic cycles.
He discovered the first two amicable numbers - 284 and 220 (two numbers that each is the sum of all the divisors of the other.) The divisors of 284 are 1,2,4,71, 142 whose sum is 220. The divisors of 284 are 1,2,4,5,10,11,20,22,44,55,110 whose sum is 284.
MUSIC
Pythagoras had a revelation when he discovered the relationship between the principal interviews of the musical score. Music, he realized, operates according to the same mathematical laws which govern the rest of the world including the cosmos. The philosopher posited that the stars and planets were part of a celestial refrain, a divine symphony. "There is geometry in the humming of the strings," he is quoted by Aristotle as saying. "There is music in the spacings of the spheres."
Pythagoras' eureka moment arrived when listening to the sounds made by a blacksmith striking his anvil. He noticed that a heavy hammer produced a frequency twice as long as that produced by one half its weight, an octave lower; that the musical scale correlated with simple mathematical ratios.
Medieval woodcut showing Pythagoras with bells and other instruments in Pythagorean tuning
Music featured as an essential organizing factor in his Pythagoran society. The disciples would sing hymns to Apollo together regularly; they used the lyre to cure illness of the soul or body; poetry recitations occurred before and after sleep to aid the memory.
Later, the Samian sage applied science to in boxing knocking out men with upper cuts. He philosophized that a sharp blow delivered from the hip was the most effective method.
Throughout his life Pythagoras carried out yoga-like physical exercises.
Pythagoras claimed that life resembled the Olympic Games. A few men strain their muscles to carry off a prize: others bring trinkets to sell to the crowd for a profit: and some there are those who seek no further advantage than to look at the show and see how everything is done.
PRIVATE LIFE
According to some accounts, Pythagoras married Theano, a lady of Croton. (Others state she was the wife of Brontinus). Theano was also a philosopher, and said to have first been Pythagoras' pupil.
The children variously ascribed to Pythagoras and Theano included three daughters, Damo, Myia, and Arignote, and a son, Telauges.
Pythagoras was one of the first Greeks to start wearing trousers instead of the usual skirt.
Pythagoras invented a practical joke cup that would spill wine all over a person if they filled their cup too much.
DEATH
Pythagoras met his death in around 495BC at the hands of the people of Crotonia in Italy. Pursued by them, he came to the edge of a bean field and, rather than set foot in it, was caught and killed.
Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623 in Clermont-Ferrand, which is in France's Auvergne region.
Blaise Pascal Versailles. By unknown; a copy of the painture of François II Quesnel, Wikipedia Commons
He lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three.
His father, Étienne Pascal (1588–1651), was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe," who also had an interest in science and mathematics.
Blaise Pascal had one older sister Gilberte, and two younger sisters, only one of whom, Jacqueline, survived past childhood.
Beginning in 1631, his father devoted himself entirely to the education of his son, who showed extraordinary mental and intellectual abilities, occasionally taking him along to the Academy of Science meetings.
CAREER
At the age of 16, Blaise Pascal produced a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", and sent it to Père Mersenne in Paris, which included some of the great mathematical thinkers of the time The hypothesis, which is known today as Pascal's theorem, states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
In December 1639 the Pascal family left Paris to live in Rouen where Étienne had been appointed as a tax collector for Upper Normandy.
In 1641, while helping his father collect taxes in central France, young Pascal built a calculating machine, the Pascaline, operated by gears and wheels. Though it could only count, not multiply or divide and was not a commercial success, the Pascaline is considered a pioneering forerunner to the later development of mechanical methods of calculation, as well as the modern field of computer engineering.
In 1646, Pascal learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. The French scientist built an early form of a barometer, which instead of mercury, used red wine. As wine is less dense than mercury he had to build a tube 46 feet to accommodate the pressure rises and falls.
Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury. Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal proved to his satisfaction that a vacuum existed above the column of liquid in a barometer tube.
The philosopher Rene Descartes visited Pascal on September 23, 1647. During his stay, the pair argued about the vacuum which Descartes did not believe in. Afterwards, Descartes wrote a letter to Huygens in which he said that Pascal"...has too much vacuum in his head."
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about 50 metres. The mercury dropped about two lines. The fact-finding mission was vital to Pascal's theory concerning the cause of barometrical variations and paved the way for further studies in hydrodynamics and hydrostatics.
Pascal also paved the way for the invention of the hydraulic press by Joseph Bramah in 1795. The instrument was based upon the principle that became known as Pascal’s law which stated that the pressure in a fluid contained in a vessel remains the same in all directions regardless of the area to which the pressure is applied.
The Pascal, a SI unit of pressure, was named after Blaise Pascal in honor of his contributions to science in 1971. The Pascal is used to quantify internal pressure, stress. Young's modulus and ultimate tensile strength. It is defined as one newton per square meter.
In 1654, Pascal was approached by a friend, an aggravated gambler called the Chevalier de Mere, who couldn't understand why he always lost when betting on the appearance of certain combinations in the fall of dice. Prompted by his friend, Pascal corresponded with the mathematician Pierre de Fermat on the subject of gambling problems. Their collaboration led to the development of the mathematical theory of probabilities, which helped de Mere calculate the odds on dice throws and win some money.
The important groundwork laid by Pascal and de Fermat proved to be instrumental in Gottfried Leibniz's formulation of calculus.
In 1661 Pascal proposed a public bus system in Paris and its suburbs. The eight seater coaches went into service the following year. They ran every eight minutes, but were not a success, finding it hard to negotiate the crowded medieval streets. The vehicles were also too small to arouse the public interest after an initial attraction. The company went into liquidation in 1676.
Roulette was invented by Pascal. It was a by-product of his experiments with perpetual motion.
BELIEFS
In 1646, Pascal and his sister Jacqueline started identifying with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. Initiated by Cornelius Jansen, the former Bishop of Ypres, the Jansenism movement aimed at reforming the French Roman Catholic Church from within.
Portrait of Pascal
Pascal's interest in Jansenism was prompted by an incident one icy January day in 1646, when his father rushed out to prevent a duel from taking place. He slipped on the frozen ground, fell hard and dislocated his hip. Two devout Jansenists treated Étienne Pascal, curing him. As a result Blaise Pascal and his sister were drawn to the Scriptures and devoted many hours to the study of God's word.
Despite living in a fine mansion and mixing with high society, Pascal was unhappy and unsatisfied. In desperation he turned to his Bible and in the late hours of November 23, 1654, after reading the 17th chapter of the Gospel of John he had a profound mystical vision.
After his conversion experience, Pascal inscribed his testimony on a piece of parchment which he sewed onto his coat. For eight years Pascal hid this story of his salvation sewing and unsewing as he had need. After he died a servant found it. The parchment in his jacket read:
"The year of Grace 1654, Monday Nov 23rd... from about half past ten in the evening until half past 12, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the Philosophers and Scholars. Certainty, feeling, joy and peace God of Jesus Christ... I have separated myself from him, I have fled from him, renounced him, crucified him, may I never be separated from him... renunciation total and sweet. "
Pascal used to drive around Paris in a magnificent four horse drawn coach. In 1654 he was involved in an accident at the Neuilly bridge where the horses plunged over the parapet but the carriage survived. This near death experience is thought to have influenced his conversion.
After his mystical experience, Pascal took refuge in the Jansenist Catholic Monastery of Port Royal under the influence of his sister.
Blaise Pascal wrote Lettres Provincales under the pseudonym of Louis de Montalte –The first of the lettres was published on January 23, 1656.
Lettres Provincales is made up of 18 letters and pamphlets that were written in an ironic and humorous style in which he attempted to bring deep theological matters to the attention of the masses. In his 18-letter series Pascal criticized the Jesuits, promoted Jansenist teaching and put forward the argument that whilst true faith only belongs to the morally upright God's grace is sufficient for all. "There is a God shaped vacuum in every heart," he wrote.
The traditionally Catholic Louis XIV was incensed about this pro-Jansensist work. The French king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660.
Pascal had poor health, especially after the age of 18, and by the 1650s he was becoming ill from overwork.
In June 1662, Pascal was seized with a violent illness, probably stomach cancer, and after two months of agony, he realized he didn't have much longer to live and requested he could die with the poor in the hospital for incurables. His last words were "My God, Forsake me not.”
Pascal died on August 19, 1662 just two months after his 39th birthday. He was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.
Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, where he was buried
In 1972 a biopic titled Blaise Pascal was shown on French TV, The seemingly uninspired director Roberto Rossellini said it was about, "A very boring man."
Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820 into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia, near the Porta Romana, in Florence, Italy. She was named after the city of her birth.
Her elder sister, Frances Parthenope Nightingale, was born in Parthenopolis, a region of Naples.
In 1821 The Nightingale family returned to England and tried to settle down in Florence's father's inherited property in Derbyshire. The Derby county property had an active lead smelter (1760-1935) which her father managed and owned.
William Nightingale had a new house built for the family in the village of Lea near Cromford, Derbyshire and the family lived there until 1823. The home was called Lea Hurst and served as a summer home to the Nightingales for the rest of Florence's life.
In 1825 The Nightingales moved to a 14 bedroomed mansion named Embley Park in the parish of Wellow, in Hampshire. It came in a 3,700-acre estate. This became the family's main home with Lea Hurst as a summer home.
Florence was educated largely by her father. She had exhibited a gift for mathematics from an early age, and excelled in the subject under the tutorship of her father.
EARLY NURSING CAREER
Florence had a strong desire to devote her life to the service of others from her late teens but at first she was respectful of her family's opposition to her working as a nurse, only announcing her decision to enter the field in 1844.
Young Florence Nightingale
When Florence announced that she wanted to work and train at nearby Salisbury Infirmary her parents were horrified, as a respectable lady did not enter in hospital work. However Florence was determined, she felt she was called by God to serve him in this manner.
After her parents refused her request to study nursing at a hospital, Florence was persuaded to study parliamentary reports. Within three years she was an expert on public health and hospitals.
In 1847 Florence helped to nurse victims of a cholera epidemic at a Middlesex hospital.
At the age of 30 she went first to Paris, then to the Kaiserwerth Institute, near Dusseldorf, a hospital in Germany to learn nursing.
In 1853 Florence went into residence in her first "situation" as superintendent of An Establishment for Gentlewomen During Illness at no. 1 Upper Harley Street, London.
That same year, Florence's father gives her a yearly allowance of £500 ($40,000-50,000 by today's standards.)
CRIMEAN WAR
In 1854 Florence Nightingale took a team of nurses to Scutari in the Crimea, as a result of Times' War Correspondent, William Russell's scaving reports of the conditions. There she worked up to twenty hours a day; and succeeded, despite the opposition of the military leadership, in radically improving the hospital's condition. She brought the death rate down twenty times within a space of a few months.
Florence spent £30,000 raised by the Times in the Constantinople bazaars on clothes and food for the British army.
When she first arrived in the Crimea, Florence traveled on horseback to make her inspections, she then transferred to a mule cart, and was reported to have escaped serious injury when it was toppled in an accident. Following this episode she used a solid Russian-built carriage, with waterproof hood and curtains.
Her nurses, in addition to their pay of 12 shillings, get a pint of port for dinner and a glass of sherry for supper.
Florence Nightingale's own trademark "look" was a simple black bodice and matching skirt with non-matching cuffs and collar of white lace.
Florence walked around with a linen Turkish army lantern, which was a candle inside a collapsible shade, crinkled like a Chinese lantern.
The Lady with the Lamp. Reproduction of a painting of Nightingale by Henrietta Rae, 1891.
By 1856 The Crimean War had ended and 19,600 Britons had died of which 15,700 were due to disease. The British Army lost ten times more troops to dysentery than to battle wounds. However by the end of the war, Florence Nightingale had succeeded in reducing the Crimean War Hospital death rate from 42% to 2%.
Florence was a heroine to the troops and public back home. She was the subject of songs and poems including the famous poem in which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow coined the term "lady with the lamp".
LATER CAREER
On returning home Florence threw herself into a campaign to improve British army health and living conditions.
Florence was fascinated by statistics, mortality rates and other data relevant to her works. She included a lot of statistical input in her reports and was a pioneer in the visual presentation of information.
"Diagram of the causes of mortality in the army in the East" by Florence Nightingale.
The nursing pioneer invented a graph that she called the coxcomb or polar area chart to depict changing patient outcomes in the military field hospital she managed. Florence made extensive use of this predecessor to the pie chart to present reports on the nature and magnitude of the conditions of medical care in the Crimean War to MPs and civil servants who would have been unlikely to read or understand traditional statistical reports. This had never been done before and is common practice now. As such, she was a pioneer in the visual presentation of information.
Florence eventually became a member of the Institute of Statisticians.
By 1859, Florence had £45,000 at her disposal from the Nightingale Fund to set up the Nightingale Training School (now called the Nightingale School of Nursing) at St Thomas' Hospital.
Nightingale Training School for Nurses opened at St. Thomas Infirmary on July 9, 1860 with Mrs. Wardroper as its head. Florence paid very close attention to every detail
Florence Nightingale (middle) in 1886 with her graduating class of nurses from St Thomas'
Three years after Crimea, her Notes on Nursing was published in 1859. A slim 136-page book that served as the cornerstone of the curriculum at the Nightingale School and other nursing schools established, Notes on Nursing also sold well to the general reading public and is considered as a classic introduction to nursing.
Notes on Nursing was expanded and published again in 1860 and in 1861.
The only "wage" she ever earned in her life was the many royalties she received from her Notes on Nursing.
In her life time Florence never kept within her budget and relied on her father and others helped pay for her very expensive projects and good works.
Florence disliked the fame her work bought her. She never made a public statement and was never seen in public.
"Once or twice a year perhaps but nobody could be quite certain, in deadly secrecy, she went out for a drive in the park, unrecognised, the living legend flitted for a moment before the public gaze." (Lytton Strachey Eminent Victorians)
APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER
Florence was tall, with chestnut colored hair. As a young woman, Nightingale was described as attractive, slender and graceful.
Three Quarter length portrait of Florence Nightingale
She gave her name to a flannel scarf with sleeves for the benefit of invalids sitting up in bed, known as a Nightingale.
Florence was rousing, warm and private .While her demeanor was often severe, she was said to be very charming and possess a radiant smile.
The Times said in her 1910 obituary: “Her zeal, her devotion and her perseverance would yield to no rebuff and to no difficulty”.
BELIEFS
Florence was raised as a Unitarian and was a devout Christian. On February 7, 1837 the 16-year-old heard the voice of God telling her that she had a mission. Quite what that mission entailed at that stage she didn't know.
Florence came to realize that God was calling her to devote her life to the service of others. She came to realize it was to be in the form of nursing, but acknowledged the difficulties this entailed in the climate of her era where the respectable lady's place was thought to be at home.
Painting of Nightingale by Augustus Egg, c. 1840s
In 1850, she visited the Lutheran religious community at Kaiserswerth-am-Rhein in Germany, where she observed Pastor Theodor Fliedner and the deaconesses working for the sick and the deprived.
RELATIONSHIPS
In 1837, the 17-year-old Florence Nightingale met and fell in love with her first cousin, John Smithurst. However, their parents forbid them to marry due to their family connection. The heartbroken Smithurst, (a devout Christian) mooched off to Canada to be a missionary to the Indians.
12 years later Smithurst returned and proposed but both sets of parents again refused so he returned to Canada frustrated.
Her most persistent suitor was the politician and poet Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, but after a nine-year courtship she rejected him against her mother's wishes. Florence concluded that she could not have "work" of her own if she chose to follow her heart into this society marriage. Marriage would destroy her chance of serving God's call.
Baron Houghton
Milnes remained one of Florence's staunchest supporters throughout her career.
By 1847, Florence was approaching a mental breakdown precipitated by a continuing crisis of her relationship with Milnes. Her friends, the Bracebridges took her to Rome with them.
While in Rome, Florence met Sidney Herbert, a brilliant politician who had been Secretary at War (1845-46), a position he would hold again (1852-1854) during the Crimean War. Herbert was already married but he and Nightingale were immediately attracted to each other and they became life-long close friends. Herbert was instrumental in facilitating her pioneering work in Crimea and in the field of nursing, and Nightingale became a key adviser to Herbert in his political career.
In 1857 Sir Harry Verney 2nd Baronet, an MP for Buckingham, proposed to Florence, but she declined. He then proposed to Parthenope, who accepted, and they married on June 24, 1858.
HOBBIES AND INTERESTS
Florence Nightingale advised nurses that a little light music soothed the sick and restored the soul. In her Notes On Nursing Florence wrote that the human voice can be therapeutic on its own, but when a patient is unable to speak, frightened, or injured, music can make an immediate connection with the emotions they cannot put into words.
Florence Nightingale made a recording on July 30, 1890 to raise money for the impoverished veterans of the Charge of the Light Brigade. The recording was made on a wax cylinder by Colonel Gouraud, Thomas Edison's representative in Britain. The recording is now very difficult to hear, but the transcript of the recording says:
"When I am no longer even a memory, just a name, I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life. God bless my dear old comrades of Balaclava and bring them safe to shore. Florence Nightingale."
The recording was released commercially as a 78rpm disc in 1935, twenty five years after Nightingale's death. It is the only known recording of Nightingale's voice.
During the early 1850s Florence had a pet owl called "Athena" who she carried in her apron pocket. She had to leave her feathered friend behind to reside in her attic when she departed for the Crimea.
Athena, can be seen today at London’s Florence Nightingale Museum.
In her life time Florence owned around 60 cats including large Persian moggies called Bismarck, Disraeli and Gladstone, and she refused to travel without taking them.
HOMES
On her return from the Crimea Florence took an hotel room in London which became the centre for her campaigning.
At the time of the 1861 census she was living at the Burlington hotel in Piccadilly, London.
In 1865 Florence Nightingale moved to 10 South Street, Park Lane where she lived for the rest of her life.
HEALTH
In the Crimea, Florence suffered from Crimean fever which she possibly contacted from drinking contaminated goat's milk. She nearly died, but refused to return to England.
On returning home the "lady of the lamp" was convinced that she had terminal heart disease. Prostate and apparently helpless on a couch in her London home, she conducted a huge correspondence and received many dignities, ambassadors and politicians. In reality she probably had been weakened by the Crimean fever she'd contacted.
By 1896 Florence was confined to her bedroom permanently.
DEATH AND LEGACY
Florence died of heart failure on August 13, 1910. The offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was declined by her relatives, and she is buried in the graveyard at St. Margaret Church in East Wellow, England, next to her parents.
The grave of Florence Nightingale in the churchyard of St Margaret's Church. By Dmartin@ukonline.co.uk,
Six British army sergeants bore her coffin to the family group grave in St Margaret's churchyard.
The "Florence Nightingale Effect" is a term used to describe the phenomenon of caregivers falling in love with their patients. It is thought that this can happen because caregivers spend a lot of time with their patients, and they develop a close bond with them. Additionally, caregivers may feel protective of their patients, and they may see them as being vulnerable and in need of care.
While there is no evidence that Florence Nightingale herself ever experienced the "Florence Nightingale Effect," her work as a nurse has inspired countless others to care for the sick and injured. Her legacy is one of compassion and service, and she is remembered as one of the greatest nurses who ever lived.
A 1915 biographical film about Florence Nightingale was criticised for not mentioning her pet parrot.
'Florence Nightingale' is an anagram of 'Flit on, cheering angel' or 'Going? Then clean rifle.' or ‘Reflecting on healing’ or ‘No lice, filth, gangrene’.
