Malevus

Author: Hrothsige Frithowulf

  • Ernest Rutherford: Discoveries, Atomic Theory and Model, Experiments

    Ernest Rutherford: Discoveries, Atomic Theory and Model, Experiments

    Ernest Rutherford was the father of nuclear physics. Although he was best known for his discovery of the atomic nucleus—which is the basis of much of modern physics—he received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements. High-energy particle physics, which investigates the nature of matter and its origins in the Big Bang, and modern nuclear technology—from nuclear power plants and weapons to nuclear medicine—are just a few examples of his legacy. The depth and width of Rutherford’s discoveries in experimental physics are equal to Einstein‘s discoveries in theoretical physics.

    Who Was Ernest Rutherford?

    Born in New Zealand, Ernest Rutherford arrived in England almost unintentionally in 1895. The person who won New Zealand’s international scholarship that year was not able to use it for marriage reasons. Rutherford was the second person in line. Nonetheless, his future could be very different when he arrives in Cambridge. His research in New Zealand was on electrical technology, and for a short time, he held the world record for the distance that electromagnetic waves could be detected.

    At that time, he was ahead of Guglielmo Marconi and planned to continue his work in this field, but that same year, in 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays. It was soon followed by Henri Becquerel’s discovery of radioactivity. Under the leadership of J. J. Thomson in Cambridge, the focus of research shifted to this new mysterious radiation. It is said that Thomson consulted Lord Kelvin, and he replied that there was no future for radio; Rutherford was then directed to radioactivity.

    Becquerel discovered radioactivity in 1896, and the Curries named it in 1899, during the radio discovery process; however, it was Rutherford who turned this discovery into a scientific tool. He used radiation to bombard the atoms and sample their internal structure. In the 1890s, while doing his doctoral studies at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, he worked as a professor at McGill University in Canada and uncovered the secrets of the structure of an atom with his studies conducted in Manchester. In 1919, he returned to Cambridge as the greatest experimental physicist of his time to replace his mentor, Thomson.

    Radioactivity Was Perceived as Alchemy

    A photograph from 1912, where Ernest Rutherford and Hans Geiger are pictured with the apparatus that counts alpha particles.
    A photograph from 1912, where Ernest Rutherford and Hans Geiger are pictured with the apparatus that counts alpha particles.

    Ernest Rutherford first worked with Thomson on the ionizing effects of X-rays in gases. After that, he began to work on his first major contribution, which was to measure how much radiation uranium gives off. To do this, he wrapped the uranium sample in aluminum foil. Radiation was absorbed during this process. He found that, as expected, as its thickness went up, the radiation intensity went down, meaning that the radiation was taken in at a faster rate. However, he saw that the density did not change when the thickness increased even more. Still, after adding a few more layers of aluminum, he was able to finally say that the density had dropped.

    The densities were decreasing at much lower rates than before. From there, he concluded that there should be two types of radiation. The one was quickly absorbed, and he called it alpha; the latter, which he called beta, penetrated the foil. Then he found an emission called gamma that was penetrating more.

    In 1898, he moved to McGill University in Montreal, Canada. The first thing he did here was to measure the amount of energy emitted by uranium. Right there, he would experience a great moment of realization: the amount of energy observed was 100 times larger than produced by any known chemical reaction. With these measurements, he noticed the first sign of hidden power in the depths of the atom.

    The Discovery of the Disintegration of Elements

    Thomson showed in 1897 that atoms contain small electrical particles called electrons. To balance the negative charges, there must also be a positive charge inside the atom; this indicates the complex structure of the atom. Rutherford argued in 1900 that the power of uranium was due to the rearrangement of its atomic content. While the structure of the atom is still waiting to be explained, this was a remarkable theory for its time, especially since other scientists, like the Curies, at least had the opinion that radioactive energy originated from the outside of the atom.

    During this period, Ernest Rutherford began to deal with the unusual behavior of the radioactivity of the thorium element. The amount of radioactivity seemed variable and sensitive to the breeze in the air. After a series of experiments, he decided that thorium releases some kind of radioactive gas. The gas was affected by the flow in the air. He needed the help of a chemist to determine the content of this gas: Frederick Soddy. They found, no doubt, that this was a new element—radon. With this discovery, they found the first evidence that one element—thorium—could transform into another element—radon.

    When Soddy yelled, “Rutherford, this is transmutation,” Rutherford replied: “For Mike’s sake Soddy, don’t call it transmutation. They’ll have our heads off as alchemists.” But that’s exactly what they accomplished; it was really alchemy, but it occurred naturally. Thus, they first showed that thorium was turned into radium. Then, radium was turned into radon, and radiation was emitted at every stage. In addition to drawing attention to the array of values ​​of the elements in the periodic table, they also showed that radiation is formed by such a transformation.

    Ernest Rutherford and the Discovery of the Atomic Nucleus

    The traces of the atomic particle in the bubble chamber. A bubble chamber is a vessel filled with a superheated transparent liquid (usually liquid hydrogen), used to detect electrically charged particles moving through it. About 50 years after Rutherford discovered the scattering of alpha particles, the bubble chamber technique allowed his successors to build on his achievements.
    The traces of the atomic particle in the bubble chamber. A bubble chamber is a vessel filled with a superheated transparent liquid (usually liquid hydrogen), used to detect electrically charged particles moving through it. About 50 years after Rutherford discovered the scattering of alpha particles, the bubble chamber technique allowed his successors to build on his achievements.

    Rutherford moved from McGill University to Manchester in 1907. He used the prototype of the counter with the young German Hans Geiger, now known as the Geiger counter, and showed that the nucleus is made up of particles that are positively charged and have 10,000 times the mass of the electron. Even the nuclei were twice as charged as the helium atom. Rutherford collected a large number of alpha particles in 1908, neutralized these particles with electrons, and examined the spectrum of the resulting gas. It proved that alpha particles are equivalent to a helium nucleus.

    That year, he announced this discovery in his Nobel Prize speech on his collaborative work with Soddy for the disintegration—he received the award in chemistry, not in physics. Rutherford had always seen physics far ahead of chemistry, even likening chemistry to stamp collecting. However, he also knew how to make jokes about his rapid transformation from the field of physics to chemistry.

    It was true that he received this award in chemistry. Rutherford and Soddy used physical methods, but the field they made a revolution in was chemistry. During the Nobel Prize ceremony, Lady Rutherford was told that her husband would also receive the physics award one day. But he never received it, which was surprising as his lifetime series of discoveries had just begun.

    The discovery of alpha particles provided definitive evidence that heavy atoms can decay into lighter atoms by emitting small atomic particles. This begged the question of how negatively charged, lightweight electrons and positively charged conjugates are organized within the atom. The answer to this fundamental question lay in Rutherford’s next discovery.

    Ernest Rutherford and Hans Geiger made a zinc sulfide-coated screen, which allowed electric particles such as alpha particles to scatter slightly when struck. When he worked at McGill, he noticed that alpha particles seemed to diverge from the flight lines as they passed through the thin mica leaf. This was surprising as the alpha particles were moving at a speed of 21% of the speed of light, that is, 9,300 miles (15,000 kilometers) per second. The deviation of alpha particles implied a much greater presence than any known electrical and magnetic force. From that, he came up with the idea that this powerful force exists within the atom.

    He Inspired the Atomic Model and Theory

    Geiger had a young student named Ernest Marsden. Rutherford suggested to Marsden in 1909 that he see if any alpha particles deviated at very large angles. Instead of mica, Marsden used a gold leaf and a glowing screen to detect the scattered alpha particles. Everyone was amazed when Marsden announced that every one of the twenty thousand alpha particles bounced back in the exact direction they had come from. This happened only when they hit a very thin gold leaf that is a few hundred atoms thick. Rutherford yelled and made that well-known quote: “If you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.”

    For a year, he worked on this phenomenon, eventually discovering that the positive charge in the atom was concentrated around the excessively dense mass of the central nucleus. What bounced back the alpha particles, which are relatively lightweight compared to the nucleus of the gold atom, which is about fifty times heavier, were the same charges repelling each other. The size of the nucleus relative to the atom, with the famous quote, was “a fly in the cathedral.“

    Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus and paved the way for his assistant in Manchester, Niels Bohr, to invent the atomic model in 1913. This discovery, which has gained wide popularity with the introduction of the ideas of quantum theory that is in its infancy, has led to the revival of the image of a miniature “solar system” in which “planet-like” lightweight electrons revolve around the “sun-like” heavy nucleus. Although these details were later developed with mature ideas of quantum mechanics and relativity, this simple picture was able to survive for a century.

    Ernest Rutherford and the Split of An Atom

    Rutherford's laboratory in Cambridge in the early 20th century.
    Rutherford’s laboratory in Cambridge in the early 20th century.

    These experiments proved the existence of the atomic nucleus but did not examine the structure of the nucleus. In an electrically charged neutral atom, the positive electric charge of the nucleus is balanced by the negative electric charge of the surrounding electrons. Rutherford discovered that if lighter elements have fewer electrons than heavier atoms, the charge in their nuclei should also be smaller. With this in mind, the resistance to alpha particles should be less, and the alphas should be able to approach closer.

    Hydrogen is the lightest element, so Rutherford and Marsden started sending alpha particles to hydrogen. Alphas are produced by a radioactive source, pass through hydrogen gas, and are detected by luminescence when zinc sulfide hits the screen. If the screen was farther than a certain distance, the glow would go off. Because the alphas lost energy by colliding with many air molecules between hydrogen and the screen, they were about the same distance from the radioactive source that produced them.

    How Did Ernest Rutherford Discover the Proton?

    Rutherford used a magnetic field and proved that this phenomenon was caused by positively charged particles that are lighter than alpha particles. He noticed that these lighter positive particles were dislodged from the hydrogen atoms by the impact of the energetic alpha particles. He called this positively charged nucleus of the hydrogen atom “H-particles,” and today we call them protons.

    This was a far-reaching discovery, but it was not enough to justify the idea that protons are positively charged particles located in the atomic nuclei of all elements. That significant development would happen after Rutherford thought over an anomaly for three years that was found by Marsden: H-particles were also produced when alpha particles passed through the air.

    Marsden discovered this in 1914. Later he set out to go to New Zealand, and many other students also participated in the First World War. Rutherford patiently researched this phenomenon alone and eventually determined what was going on. He sent alpha particles to different lightweight elements and found clues about the H-particles. He noticed that the H-particles emanate from the atoms of these elements; In Marsden’s original experiment, they were originating from nitrogen, an important component of the atmosphere. With this new finding, Rutherford determined that the H-particles are the fundamental particles of the nuclei of all atoms, and in 1919 he called these particles protons.

    The Discovery of the Neutron

    There is a story that shows the magnitude of this discovery. During the war, Rutherford’s expertise was sought, and he invented methods to detect submarines. At the turning point of his experiments on the proton, he asked the government’s scientific committee for permission, saying that if what he thinks is true, it will be more important than winning the war. Considering what happened after Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus and considering his role in the atomic bomb that ended the Second World War, he was very forward-thinking.

    ernest-rutherford
    Rutherford’s instruments were so sensitive that he hung a “Talk Softly Please” warning at the entrance of the lab.

    By the 1920s, the role of the proton in determining the charge of the nucleus was determined, but it was still insufficient to explain the relative weight of the nuclei of different elements. The alpha particle, which had twice the charge of the proton, was still four times heavier than it. Therefore, in 1920, Rutherford proposed the existence of a neutron, that is, a particle similar to that of a proton but with no electric charge. Thus, the reason an alpha particle was four times heavier than a proton was that it contained two protons and two neutrons. Rutherford was now appointed as a Cavendish professor in place of Thomson and moved to Cambridge.

    Here, under the direction of Rutherford, James Chadwick discovered the neutron in 1932.

    Rutherford, now in her fifties, was directing the research of his younger colleagues rather than making experiments on his own. The Cavendish Laboratory had sensitive devices that could easily malfunction or be damaged by an inattentive blow. Even the sound impacted some instruments, and Rutherford’s rumble was a potential risk. In a famous photograph, he is seen standing under a sign that says “Talk Softly Please“.

    The Discovery of the Artificial Transmutation of Elements

    At this point, Rutherford started what he called “great science,”  that is, the use of great devices to study the labyrinths of the atom. He was aware that he defined the basic parts of the atomic nucleus with protons and neutrons. But the real structure of these nuclei was still a mystery. Alpha particles produced by natural radioactivity were limited enough to penetrate the strong electric field surrounding the nucleus. New tools were needed to increase the energy of alpha particles, which would allow for sampling the depth of the nucleus.

    Thus, under Rutherford’s rule, the first “atom smasher” was made. With this tool, John Cockroft and Ernest Walton accelerated the protons, which are easier to work on than alpha particles, and sent these high-energy particle rays to lithium. For the first time, the artificial transmutation of elements among the elements was carried out.

    Nuclear physics Studies With Ernest Rutherford

    Rutherford had a legendary talent for small, improvised instruments. He also supported the development of high-voltage equipment. This equipment enabled new research in high-energy particles at very low temperatures.
    Rutherford had a legendary talent for small, improvised instruments. He also supported the development of high-voltage equipment. This equipment enabled new research in high-energy particles at very low temperatures.

    Until then, radioactivity only involved spontaneous transmutation of the elements. In the Cavendish Laboratory, they succeeded in the transmutation of an element that does not transmute spontaneously. Thus, a new field of science called nuclear physics was born. Natural radioactivity produced significant energy, but this was far from promising for more practical applications. Rutherford strongly opposed anyone who put forward the idea of obtaining utilizable power from the nucleus. He was only right until this artificial transmutation in 1930.

    With the ability to trigger the transmutation of the elements, there were many new possibilities. One of these was an element such as uranium that is decomposing the atoms around it and exposing their neutrons, thereby causing additional fission. This process has become a source of power in both peaceful and military practices.

    In the 1930s, Ernest Rutherford was widely regarded as the world’s foremost experimental physicist. He was made a knight in 1914 and awarded an Order of Merit in 1925. In 1931, he was declared Lord Rutherford of Nelson. His fame may have indirectly caused his death. Because he was diagnosed with an inguinal hernia in 1937. The British protocol at the time required the members of the House of Lords to be operated on only by a titled surgeon. It is said that the time spent trying to find a doctor with the appropriate qualifications caused his untimely death.

    Two years later, the Second World War began. We can only imagine the contributions he could make to the Manhattan Project where the atomic bomb and the radar were invented from his discoveries in nuclear physics, including his work on electromagnetic radiation. He was buried near Isaac Newton’s tomb in Westminster Abbey.

    Ernest Rutherford Quotes

    “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.”

    “If your experiment needs a statistician, you need a better experiment.”

    “It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.”

    “Gentlemen, we have run out of money. It’s time to start thinking.”

    “The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the ‘social sciences’ is: some do, some don’t.”

    “You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 1012 to 1.”

    Bibliography:

    1.  Nicholas P. Cheremisinoff (20 April 2016). Pollution Control Handbook for Oil and Gas Engineering. Wiley. pp. 886–. ISBN 978-1-119-11788-9.
    2. “The Discovery of Radioactivity”. lbl.gov. 9 August 2000.
    3. “Ernest Rutherford – Biography”. NobelPrize.org. Retrieved 21 February 2013.
    4. “APS Member History”. search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
    5. Campbell, John. “Rutherford – A Brief Biography”. Rutherford.org.nz. Retrieved 4 March 2013.
    6. Rutherford, E.; Royds, T. (1908). “Spectrum of the radium emanation”. Philosophical Magazine. Series 6. 16 (92): 313. doi:10.1080/14786440808636511.
    7. Rutherford, E. (1911). “The scattering of α and β particles by matter and the structure of the atom”. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. Series 6. 21 (125): 669–688. doi:10.1080/14786440508637080.
    8. Rutherford, E. (1919). “Collision of α particles with light atoms. IV. An anomalous effect in nitrogen”. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. Series 6. 37 (222): 581–587. doi:10.1080/14786440608635919.
  • Sigmund Freud: Biography, Theories, and Approach to Psychology

    Sigmund Freud: Biography, Theories, and Approach to Psychology

    Sigmund Freud was born in Freiberg, in Pribor, now in the Czech Republic, in a relatively poor Jewish family. When he was 14, his family immigrated to Vienna. Freud then went to a medical school that was in its golden age at the time. In the school, he specialized in neurology under the supervision of Ernst von Brücke, a leading member of Helmholtz’s experimental medical school of the 1870s. In 1885, he went to Paris to study under the supervision of the first neurology professor and pioneer in clinical observation, Jean-Martin Charcot.

    Although his visit to Charcot was quite brief, it was a turning point for Freud. Because it made Freud realize that some neurological disorders (like hysteria) are best understood through psychology. When he returned to Vienna in 1886, he began to practice clinical applications and specialized in such disorders. He remained in Vienna until he was captured by the Nazis in 1938. He fled to London that year (a year before he died in 1936, he was elected an honorary member of the Royal Society).

    Who Was Sigmund Freud?

    What distinguished Freud from other scientists was the topic he studied. All scientists research a part of nature; such as the stars, mountains, birds, bees, molecules, and atoms. It doesn’t matter how small or large they are. After all, they are objects of investigation. Scientists seek to define them not only in the subjective way they appear to us, but objectively (as they really are). Subjectivity is considered the main source of error in science. Freud, on the other hand, made the observing object the study object—the thing that other scientists have sought to absolutely exclude from their work. It was inevitable that this would get him in trouble.

    It is difficult to deny that subjectivity is part of nature. Subjectivity exists. As Rene Descartes suggested in his famous decree, subjectivity is the most precise part of nature for humans: “I think, therefore I am.” But things like thought (and emotion) do not exist in the objective world and are available only to us. This prompted Descartes to propose another famous decree, stating that nature appears to be made up of two distinct substances: mental substances and physical substances. This provision made it easier for scientists to exclude the mental part of nature from their work, but did not lead to the dismantling of the physical part. Mental elements (e.g. thoughts and emotions) still exist. It exists, but it is outside of science. This would put science in trouble.

    How do mental causes have physical effects? A thought like “I will move my finger,” how does it really move the finger? This is the “body-mind” problem that annoyed the philosophers. According to scientists, Descartes’s conclusion must be wrong; as objects with mass and energy cannot be affected by things without mass and energy. The first law of thermodynamics (the conservation of energy), the basis of our understanding of physics, is in contradiction with this possibility. This led to the general conclusion that Descartes’ philosophy should not be taken into account.

    Sigmund Freud’s Approach to Psychology

    Jean-Martin Charcot demonstrates a fully developed case of hysteria. Charcot believed in the value of clinical observation, and his approach led Freud to suspect neurology theories that exceeded empirical evidence.
    Jean-Martin Charcot demonstrates a fully developed case of hysteria. Charcot believed in the value of clinical observation, and his approach led Freud to suspect neurology theories that exceeded empirical evidence.

    There were two mainstream alternatives to Sigmund Freud’s approach. Freud himself adopted the first alternative theory prior to performing psychoanalysis. This latter theory later came to the fore as an oppositional alternative to psychoanalysis. The first theory was not the mind itself, but rather the attempt to examine the physical “activity scene”—the brain—to infer the laws of the mind from the functions of the brain.

    Sigmund Freud did this until 1895. Although not the majority of scientists, many argued that studying the physical connection of subjectivity is more scientific (objective) than examining subjectivity itself, and that subjectivity does not exist at all. Subjectivity involved only the manifestations that could eventually be reduced to physical things.

    The problem with this cunning theory was that it turned us back to where we started and once again threw subjectivity out of science. Because no one can explain how subjective manifestations can be reduced to physical things, or in other words, how physical things lead to manifestations. Therefore, Freud abandoned this theory, in his own words, “in 1895 or 1900 or somewhere in between” before The Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1899.

    Another mainstream alternative was the “behaviorism” theory. This theory began to be recognized in the 1920s and did not directly study the mind. Instead, it studied the mind’s observable inputs and outputs—its reactions to the stimulus. From these observable events, the laws that formed the responses were created. These were the laws of the mind. Although no methodological assumptions were required, most behaviorists went a step further and claimed that the mind (subjectivity) does not exist. They reduced the laws of the mind to what they called “learning.” It is not difficult to guess why they did this: there was no such thing as an object in the inherent nature of the mind. The mind was not an object. Today’s mainstream approach—cognitive neuroscience (which comes from both neuroscience and behaviorism)—still largely ignores this phenomenon.

    Solving the Mind-Body Separation

    So what was Freud’s theory then? He took the phenomenon of subjectivity (calling it the phenomenon without parallel) as the starting point. He then closely observed thousands of examples of objective experience in the standard-setting. On this basis, he tried to enact laws that support experiences. Sigmund Freud was very aware that he did not do regular science by doing this, and said: “It still strikes me as strange that the case-​histories I write should read like short stories and that, as one might say, they lack the serious stamp of science. I must console myself with the reflection that the nature of the subject is evidently responsible for this, rather than any preference of my own.“

    That is why Freud is largely remembered by his case histories. The first of these was “Anna O” (the case history of his colleague, Josef Breuer), who observed that her symptoms improved instantly when she talked about the psychological traumas that trigger them. This case is the origin of “speech therapy.” Freud continued to report similar observations in many cases of hysteria (such as “Dora”) and other neuroses (“Mouse Man”, “Little Hans”, and “Wolf Man”).

    The main discovery was that the events that triggered neurotic symptoms could only be understood by tracing it back to the first link (the infamous Oedipal complex), which was expressed in the form of strong sexual and aggressive feelings towards people. ultimately reduced to the instinctive nature of our species. Freud concluded that the basic mechanism of neurosis was the unsuccessful suppression of instincts. He then compared this theory with the mechanism of other mental illnesses caused by the unsuccessful attempt to deny disappointing things in the outside world, not by instincts (Judge Schreber case).

    Sigmund Freud and Metapsychology

    Freud founded the Secret Committee,
    Freud founded the Secret Committee, a group of devoted followers, in 1912 and disbanded after 20 years. The six members of the group were pioneers in psychoanalysis in Europe, even though most of them were not psychiatrists but neurologists.

    Sigmund Freud called the laws he obtained through inference as “metapsychology“. With this theory, he tried to solve the mind-body problem (he aimed “to transform metaphysics into metapsychology”). Laws governing subjective spiritual life were supposed to be similar to those governing physical life, according to Freud. This was claimed by his teachers from the Helmholtz school; these teachers used to pledge the following official oath: “No other forces than the common physical-chemical ones are active within the organism; in those cases, which cannot at the time be explained by these forces, one has either to find the specific way or form of their action by means of the physical-mathematical method, or to assume new forces equal in dignity to the chemical-physical forces inherent in matter, reducible to the force of attraction or repulsion.“

    The psychological forces (libidinal impulse, suppression, denial, etc.) assumed by Freud provided him with a language in which he could describe the functional organization of the mind, which he knew was in parallel with the functional organization of the brain. Freud initially attempted to extract the laws of the mind from the function of the brain, then tried to extract the laws of the brain from the functioning of the mind. He did this methodical reversal because there were no scientific tools available at the time to study how the brain worked.

    The laws Freud made from his observations were functional (abstract) laws, not physiological (concrete), like those of modern cognitive psychology. It is often unknown that Freud pioneered this “functionalism” theory. He did this to reconcile the fact that “although the mind and brain have different observational starting point it is, after all, the same ‘thing’ and therefore should have a common arrangement at the bottom.” (He called this abstract thing the “psychic apparatus.”) Therefore, Freud insisted on this strange statement: “The physical process is unconscious in itself.“

    The concept of the unconscious psychic apparatus gave Freud the long-awaited link between the mind and body. Today, Freud’s scientific heirs are reviewing and correcting his results with the tools of modern neuroscience (for example, with functional brain imaging), while at the same time trying to correct the mistakes of neuroscientists who still ignore the inherent properties of the mind and thus miss the basic phenomena of how it works.

    Sigmund Freud Quotes

    “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”

    “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”

    “Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”

    “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”

    “We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.”

    “Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.”

    “Where does a thought go when it’s forgotten?”

    “A woman should soften but not weaken a man.”

    Sigmund Freud

    Bibliography:

    • Cohen, David. The Escape of Sigmund Freud. JR Books, 2009.
    • Cohen, Patricia. “Freud Is Widely Taught at Universities, Except in the Psychology Department”, The New York Times, 25 November 2007.
    • Eissler, K.R. Freud and the Seduction Theory: A Brief Love Affair. Int. Univ. Press, 2005.
    • Eysenck, Hans. J. Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire. Pelican Books, 1986.
    • Ford, Donald H. & Urban, Hugh B. Systems of Psychotherapy: A Comparative Study. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1965.
    • Freud, Sigmund (1896c). The Aetiology of Hysteria. Standard Edition 3.
    • Freud, Sigmund and Bonaparte, Marie (ed.). The Origins of Psychoanalysis. Letters to Wilhelm Fliess: Drafts and Notes 1887–1902. Kessinger Publishing, 2009.
    • Fuller, Andrew R. Psychology and Religion: Eight Points of View, Littlefield Adams, 1994.
  • August Kekulé: Biography and Discoveries

    August Kekulé: Biography and Discoveries

  • Great Wall of China: History, Purpose, Facts, and Shi Huang

    Great Wall of China: History, Purpose, Facts, and Shi Huang

  • Robert Boyle: His Biography and Accomplishments

    Robert Boyle: His Biography and Accomplishments

    For Robert Boyle, the experiments were always at the center of his life. He discovered the potential of scientific research first while living in the mansion inherited from his father, Richard Boyle, the Earl of Cork, in Stalbridge, Dorset, and decided to devote his life to science. He enjoyed the privileged care and education offered to him until that time. He traveled to Europe and wrote on morality. He lived at the house in Pall Mall, London, with his famous sister, Lady Ranelagh, from 1688 until his death in 1691. Boyle continued his experimental essays almost daily, and these experiments had always been at the heart of his life.

    Who Was Robert Boyle?

    But most important of all were the experiments he carried out while living in Oxford between 1655 and 1668.

    He conducted his famous series of experiments at the time, which became the subject of his first scientific book, “New Experiments Physico-Mechanical: Touching the Spring of the Air and Its Effects,” published in 1660.

    Boyle opened up new horizons with this book by determining the characteristics and functions of air, including its role in breathing, using an air pump or an essential part of the apparatus designed by his then-assistant Robert Hooke, the vacuum chamber.

    In the second book, which came out in 1662, he wrote the first version of Boyle’s law, which says that vacuums exist in nature and that the pressure of air is opposite to its volume.

    Robert Boyle continued to publish books until his death and presented his groundbreaking experimental studies about the nature of color, cold, and countless other subjects. Boyle did a lot of chemical experiments that were based on how practical chemists of his time analyzed and worked with chemicals.

    Robert Boyle was an unprecedented pioneer in designing and setting up controlled experiments while carefully recording them. Also, his deep reflection on the nature of experimental investigation led him to create an experimental philosophy.

    His success in this field is the most significant factor determining his importance in the field of science. His exemplary personality was a more relevant reason for being supported by the newly founded Royal Society, of which he was one of the first members.

    Particle Philosophy and Challenges

    The cover of the second edition of Boyle’s New Experiments, dated 1660.
    The cover of the second edition of Boyle’s New Experiments, dated 1660.

    Boyle’s experiments have also served a purpose beyond the main facts they have brought to light, and have been used to prove the correctness of the mechanical philosophy, which defends the view that everything in the world can be explained by the interaction of matter and motion. In his own words, “Nor can we conceive of any principles more primary than matter and motion.”

    Actually, Boyle did not create this doctrine; his pioneers were thinkers like Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes. However, he has done more than anyone else to transform the idea from a brilliant hypothesis into a doctrine with a plausible experimental basis. One of the most important experiments done by him was the redintegration of saltpetre (a potassium nitrate mineral) from its components, as explained in Certain Physiological Essays in 1661.

    From 1666 to 1667, he published The Origin of Forms and Qualities, which was equally influential. He demonstrated that the explanatory principles of the theory of matter inherited from Aristotle, considered valid for centuries, were at worst meaningless and at best unnecessary. In fact, the mechanical or “particle” hypothesis, as he prefers to call it, could better explain everything. 

    Robert Boyle and Alchemy

    Robert Boyle used this tool to do the experiments mentioned in New Experiments Physico-Mechanical.
    Robert Boyle used this tool to do the experiments mentioned in New Experiments Physico-Mechanical.

    In this way, Robert Boyle offered a more refined version of mechanical philosophy than his predecessors. He did not only evaluate the size, shape, and motion of the particles of matter but also the distinctive features of the objects they created.

    His thoughts on such subjects had a significant impact on both Isaac Newton and John Locke. Robert Boyle was sure that mechanical explanations should be used wherever possible, but his mechanical philosophy was not too simplified.

    He did not see any problem in admitting that there were “subordinate causes,” such as the idea of “flexibility” in the air, under the “most general causes of things.”

    He was also open to the idea that “corpuscles” of matter could have chemical qualities (not purely mechanical), and even the universe could have “cosmic qualities” transcending the purely mechanical laws. He also took up the idea of transforming basic metals into gold and making strong medicines by processing chemicals.

    In his book The Sceptical Chymist from 1661, he clearly expressed his respect for the “true masters,” even though his views were criticized by the inferior alchemists that Boyle found as flawed as Aristotle’s ideas. He tried to learn about the alchemical mysteries for the majority of his life, believing that they could contribute to understanding the functioning of the Earth. He even conducted public alchemy research and published several of its results.

    Robert Boyle’s Philosophy of Nature and Religion

    In addition to his contributions to understanding the nature of matter, Boyle was deeply interested in every aspect of the natural world and crafted a highly effective “systematic science” perspective.

    One of his most popular books, The Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy, published in two parts in 1663 and 1671, follows the influential example of Francis Bacon from the beginning of the century and states that scientific knowledge can be applied to agricultural, industrial, and maritime initiatives, and therefore in every aspect of human life.

    Robert Boyle believed that science may ignore its true potential if it only tries to teach man the flow of nature but not how to rule it. The book particularly emphasized the value of scientific findings in the pharmaceutical field.

    Boyle was closely interested in improving health, and he even wrote a controversial thesis in which he criticized standard treatment practices of his time. However, in the end, he did not publish it because of his desire to avoid provoking the medical profession. His publications in this field were concerned with the use of specific weights to detect tricks in drugs.

    Boyle’s writings on the epistemology of science and the relationship between science and religion are also substantial. In addition to his experiments-related writings, he spent a lot of time thinking about the proper relationship between reason and experience, as well as the degree of relative certainty that can be expected in different forms of information.

    In the second issue, Boyle was trying to show the limits of the human mind in the face of an “all-knowing” God. To understand Boyle, it is necessary to acknowledge that theism had a strong influence on his works throughout his life. 

    Seeking Divine Power

    The cover page of Boyle’s The Sceptical Chymist (1661)
    The front cover of Boyle’s 1661 book The Sceptical Cymist, a collection of dialogues on various topics.

    Boyle criticized many chemists for their practical engagements and called on them to make a “philosophical explanation” of their experiments.

    Boyle’s most popular book is a study of worship rather than scientific work. Today we know more about his spiritual life, which helps a lot to explain his ambitious character.

    He would spend hours studying his conscience. His experimental work can be seen as a reflection of this heart-searching in the natural world. Under his desire to understand nature, there was a conviction that we would be one step closer to understanding God.

    In fact, Boyle’s sense of the divine potential of science explains his transition to experimentation around the 1650s.

    To some extent, Boyle was concerned with the evidence of a supernatural realm that was beyond the mechanical realm and could neutralize the materialist view.

    He gave no credibility to any thought and stated that the Earth was created by the coincidental interaction of matter without an intelligent designer in the image of God.

    He fought against this view in his work, Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature. To understand Robert Boyle, we have to place his science in the context of his ideas as a whole.

    References

    1. Scott, Chris (1999). “The diving “Law-ers”: A brief resume of their lives”. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal. 29 (1).
    2. O’Brien, John J. (1965). “Samuel Hartlib’s influence on Robert Boyle’s scientific development”. Annals of Science.
    3. Newton, Isaac (February 1678). Philosophical tract from Mr Isaac Newton. Cambridge University.
    4. Levine, Ira N. (2008). Physical chemistry (6th ed.). Dubuque, IA: McGraw-Hill.
    5. MacIntosh, J. J.; Anstey, Peter. “Robert Boyle”. In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    6. O’Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., “Robert Boyle”, MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews
    7. Works by Robert Boyle at Project Gutenberg.
  • Isaac Newton: Education, Books, and Inventions

    Isaac Newton: Education, Books, and Inventions

    Isaac Newton, the founder of modern physics, had a difficult and lonely childhood. His father, a small farm owner, died three months before he was born. Sir Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643, in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. When he was two years old, his mother Hannah married the neighborhood pastor, who was far older than herself, and they moved away. As a result, Isaac was raised in Woolsthorpe by his grandmother and a nursemaid. Looking at Newton’s list of sins that he wrote when he was 19, it seems that he was a mad child who “desires the death of many.” At some point, he wanted to burn the house where his mother and stepfather lived.

    Who Was Isaac Newton?

    Newton started King’s School near Grantham around 1655. He stayed with a pharmacist during his education. This environment helped him to flourish; he was extraordinarily creative in making wooden toys, watches, and other mechanical tools, and, as the 18th-century biographer William Stukeley said, also at “playing philosophical games.” However, in 1659, his mother took him out of school to run the farm. However, Isaac was not interested in performing the tasks expected of him. Isaac was fortunate as his outstanding academic success was noticed by people like the school principal, Trinity College, and his uncle, who studied in Cambridge. Although her mother, Hannah, saw academic life as a waste of time, she allowed her to return to high school to prepare for college.

    Newton enrolled at Trinity College in the summer of 1661 and received a traditional education based on Aristotle’s writings. However, in 1664, he attended the lectures of Isaac Brown, the first Lucasian mathematics professor (who holds a special professorship in Cambridge). Brown’s implementation of physics into mathematics had a lasting effect on Newton. He decided to move away from the old-fashioned education methods and concentrate on the “mechanical” philosophies of advanced thinkers such as René Descartes, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Johannes Kepler. During the two years that followed, he made intriguing discoveries in optics, mechanics, and mathematics, mostly in his home in Lincolnshire, as Cambridge was closed because of the plague.

    In late 1666, he was the first to describe the calculus (derivative and integral) technique through the analysis of extremely small units, which he called fluxion. He was also the first to express the binomial theorem, which allows the expansion of the form (a + b)n with a formula that can be used for all n values, including minus and fractions. As far as it is known, he saw an apple falling from the tree during this period and compared the gravity applied to the surface of the Earth with the gravity required to keep the Moon in orbit. He thought that the force exerted by the Earth on other objects was inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects. Both cases were in line with this law. However, the result was not precise enough to announce it to wider circles.

    In the same period, through a series of ingenious experiments, Isaac Newton discovered how white light was composed of different light rays, each with its own color and refractive index. One by-product of this research was the discovery of a reflecting telescope that produces images from a very bright mirror instead of a lens.

    Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke Debate

    Robert Hooke's constant debate with Isaac Newton did not help him much.
    Robert Hooke’s constant debate with Isaac Newton did not help him much.

    Newton returned to Cambridge in 1617 and became a Trinity College lecturer. But his academic success was just the beginning. Over the next few years, he refined his mathematics research and wrote an article called “Of Analysis by Equations of an Infinite Number of Terms.” Soon after, his efforts were rewarded with his election to the Lucasian professor position, which had been vacated by Barrow’s resignation in 1669. Two years later, while Newton was rewriting his lecture notes and studies on optics, Barrow showed the members a reflecting telescope made by Newton and brought him to the attention of the Royal Society. Newton sent them a crucial article. This article demolishes the continuing ancient belief that white light changes as it passes from one environment to another and also introduces the science of colors into mathematics.

    Newton made a definite distinction between absolute mathematical claims and those that could not be proved, describing the latter as mere hypotheses or predictions. His arguments did not have a strong influence on Robert Hooke, the author of the famous Micrographia of 1665 and the dominant personality of the Royal Society. Hooke thought the light was a wave or vibration moving in an invisible medium or ether. He joined Newton in the reality of what he was explaining, but he still believed that the colors were formed by the change of white light in the prism. He said that Newton’s theory was just a hypothesis, which made the Lucasian professor angry.

    In 1675, Isaac Newton was reluctantly convinced to publish his interpretation of his private views on natural philosophy under the title “The Theory of Light.” In this impressive text, he gives a detailed account of his understanding of the various cosmological roles of the ether associated with light, sound, electricity, magnetism, and gravity. His work sparked a second debate with Hooke; Hooke had told many people that most of the text was taken from his own Micrographia. Always quick to sense that he was underestimated, Newton accused Hooke of stealing all his work from Descartes. However, when Hooke stated that his views were misled, Newton calmed down. In his famous reply, Newton tells Hooke that he is doing well and adds, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants“

    Alchemy and Theology

    Newton's replica of the first reflecting telescope shown to the Royal Society in 1668.
    Newton’s replica of the first reflecting telescope shown to the Royal Society in 1668.

    Newton abandoned his plans to publish his optical and mathematical works due to the controversy caused by his entry into the intellectual community known as the Republic of Letters in Europe and America, as well as his extensive communication through letters. He became increasingly devoted to other studies, such as alchemy. In one of his texts, he claimed that metals were “growing” on the Earth like trees, according to the laws governing the development of living things. Behind this was the hidden soul, which energized other processes such as fermentation, nutrition, and chemical processes. Newton was also committed to theology. He developed a sophisticated and profoundly Protestant view of history in the late 1670s. Probably in a draft text he created in the mid-1680s, he argued that ancient people believed in the Newtonian cosmos and worshiped around the central Vesta fire, imitating the solar system. He claimed that this custom was proven by the shape of the ruins at Stonehenge and Avebury, and this was the most rational religion before Christianity.

    Throughout his adult life, his main interest was to explain the mystery of prophecies. Influenced by the Protestant movement, where the Pope was the antichrist and Catholicism was seen as the religion of the devil, Newton’s investigations were in an extraordinarily radical style, highly opposed to the Trinity (he believed the Trinity was deliberately fabricated). According to Newton, shyster politicians like Athanasius of Alexandria were deceived by the devil, who was born in the 4th century AD. According to Newton, they had imposed an incomprehensible and corrupt form of Christianity on the world, and it easily believed it. Isaac Newton lived in a society that would be horrified by these thoughts. If his contemporaries knew his views, he would be, at best, excluded from society.

    Principia Mathematica

    Principia Mathematica, which is Isaac Newton's greatest work, consists of 3 volumes.
    Principia Mathematica, which is Isaac Newton’s greatest work, consists of 3 volumes.

    Hooke wrote to Newton at the end of 1679 about the orbital dynamics of the celestial bodies. During this correspondence, Hooke stated that the motions of the planets and their moons can be determined by adding the linear line of inertial movement to the force that attracts objects. He also brought up that this force would be inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two objects. As we’ve seen, Newton knew about the inverse square law. However, he didn’t understand Hooke’s other point about orbital motion until 1680, when he saw an important event in the sky.

    Later that year, the Great Comet of 1680 appeared in the skies. It disappeared behind the Sun at the end of November, and then another comet appeared at the beginning of the next month. Royal Astronomer John Flamsteed wrote to Newton in January 1681 that he predicted the comet’s return and that these comets were the same, as the comet in November was now in front of the Sun with the magnetic thrust.

    Newton still considered the two comets to be different and responded by saying that the routes of both comets would be inconsistent if they passed in front of the Sun. If the two were the same comet, then they had to go into the back of the Sun, but there was no known physical mechanism for that. In any case, Newton doubted that the force of the Sun was magnetic. because the heated magnet was losing its strength.

    At a time when the physical causes of the philosophy of nature had to be used to properly describe a case, the only possible theory of magnetism was the vague “ether” fluid defined by Descartes in the 1630s and 1640s and the “whirlpool” idea of the period. When Isaac Newton published the Universal Law of Gravitation Theory in his 1687 work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, known as Newton’s masterpiece Principia, he explicitly denied that there is ether or a whirlpool in space.

    Isaac Newton and De Mundi Systemate

    Edmond Halley asks Isaac Newton about the planetary motion.
    Edmond Halley asks Isaac Newton about the planetary motion.

    Such abstract mechanisms were leaving no room for God’s intervention (which keeps the cosmos standing as an absolute reference system) in what he created. Whereas he had to intervene once in a while. Newton was criticized by many contemporary scientists for throwing away the physical mechanisms needed to explain the idea of universal gravity, but he eventually managed to change the way natural phenomena are expressed.

    Edmond Halley’s visit in 1684 served as a stimulus that guided the publication of the Principia. When Halley insisted, Newton claimed that he could demonstrate the relation of the elliptical orbit with the inverse square law but was unable to show it until November of that year. In 12 months, he discovered that all bodies, no matter how small, were attracting other bodies according to the equation F=Gm1m2/R2 (G is the gravity constant, and r is the distance between masses m1 and m2). Thus, Newton presented the modern ideas of force and mass, the laws of motion, as well as universal gravity.

    Principia’s final version consisted of three volumes. The first deals with a variety of “mathematical worlds” about different laws of nature. The second relates to motion in mediums such as liquid, and the third is called the De Mundi Systemate (System of the World), which handles the laws of nature that exist in the cosmos. The first explanations of the tide, comet motions, the shape of the Earth, and the orbit of the Great Comet (which he now knows was a comet) were made by Isaac Newton, and they played an important role in his work. Soon, Newton’s work was seen as the creation of a genius. The brightest natural philosophers and mathematicians tried to grasp the content, and the difficulty of it had become a legend. Many people had great respect for him, but some weren’t too impressed.

    When Principia was about to hit the shelves, Hooke was angry about Newton’s lack of respect for the tips he got on orbital dynamics. Newton became disturbed when he heard Hooke’s complaints. He took out some of the references he made to him in the manuscript of the work and told Halley that Hooke was a braggart thief and a novice mathematician. Similarly, Flamsteed began to see Newton as a pathological tyrant whose followers worshiped him obsessively. 

    Isaac Newton Signs a Death Sentence

    The conflict between Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton is the most famous intellectual mathematics debate in the world of science. Leibniz created the Calculus as a result of these discussions.
    The conflict between Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton is the most famous intellectual mathematics debate in the world of science. Leibniz created the Calculus as a result of these discussions.

    In 1687, Isaac Newton publicly defended Cambridge University against Catholic King James II’s efforts to appoint a Catholic priest at Sydney Sussex College. Two years later, at the dawn of the 1688 Revolution, Newton was elected to Parliament on behalf of Cambridge University. In the following few years, he failed in his attempts to obtain an office in London. But he continued to work intensively on several different topics. For example, he tried to explain how ancient people knew that God was the main cause of gravity but hid that and other facts in public in a mysterious and obscure language. Newton was eventually assigned to the Mint in 1696.

    He turned this job—which his predecessors saw as an opportunity to receive a salary without working—into a mission in which he was devoted to seeking out and finding treacherous counterfeiters who lowered the value of the British coin. Therefore, his job required him to sign the execution warrant for the people who committed this crime. When he became the new director of the mint in 1699, he played a big part in combining the English and Scottish mints. This made it possible for the Acts of Union, which created Great Britain in 1707.

    He was elected president of the Royal Society in 1703 and moved to one of the highest positions in British science; two years later, he was declared a knight. Those who supported and spread his ideas outside of England gained great respect. By the 1720s, the Newtonian system was dominant in British and Dutch universities and cities. The wide acceptance of the doctrine in Italy and France took more than twenty years.

    But the idea of some kind of mysterious force acting between all the objects in the universe since the beginning seemed incredible and unscientific to great European natural philosophers like Gottfried Leibniz and Christiaan Huygens. Newton’s theories led to various debates with his rivals throughout his life. Leibniz visited England in 1673 and 1676. Before the second visit, he had designed a calculus that is different from Newton’s. At this time, he had a good relationship with Newton, which was expressed in Newton’s two letters to Leibniz in 1676. However, this mutual respect would not last. Leibniz wrote the rules of calculus in 1684, but evidence of Newton’s work in this area would appear only 20 years later.

    While the Fight With Leibniz Continues

    In his work Opticks, Newton studied the properties of light in 1704.
    Newton’s 1704-dated Opticks is an important experimental physics work. By breaking the light into a prism, he found that the white light decomposes into the colors that made it. He discovered that if one of these colors was selected and passed through a second prism, neither the color nor the refractive index had changed, and thus the color was primary.

    Meanwhile, some of Newton’s followers suggested that Leibniz’s calculus method was worthless compared to Newton’s and that their “hero” was the one who found it first, and even Leibniz received important clues about Newton’s discovery when he visited London in 1676. In the years 1712–1713, fierce swordplay broke out between Newton and Leibniz supporters. When Queen Anne died in the summer of 1714, Leibniz was the librarian and effective court philosopher of the Hanover regime (under the name of George I) that would continue the Protestant comprehension, and this further complicated the debates.

    According to Leibniz, Newton’s system was stupid not only because of its absurd gravity doctrine but also because it meant God had to intervene again and again perversely in what he created. Isaac Newton thought that Leibniz had designed a perfect system like Descartes that did not require God. He also compared Leibniz’s vague metaphysical ideas to the teachings of people who try to change the simple truths of Christianity.

    Despite these discussions, Newton’s theories continued to dominate much of the intellectual environment. The publication of his new book, “Opticks,” in 1704 enabled a much richer set of doctrines to be discussed and supported. While it mostly encapsulated his previous works, he also added the “Quaestiones” section to the book, where he explained his personal views on active principles governing phenomena such as growth and movement. In subsequent editions, other Quaestiones were added about subjects such as chemistry, electricity, and magnetism. Surprisingly, he tried to explain the ether in his work, Hypothesis, dated 1675.

    Isaac Newton continued his administrative duties perfunctorily in the last years of his life, but his solid interest in theology and chronology continued. When he died in 1727, he had been a scientific legend for decades. He received the greatest respect from the British state and was declared the founder of reasoning. Despite some of the immoralities that have been revealed recently, historians have agreed that he was mentally better equipped than his contemporaries. They agreed with Halley’s quote, saying, “Nor can any mortal come closer to touching the gods.“

    Bibliography:

    1. Ball, W.W. Rouse (1908). A Short Account of the History of Mathematics. New York: Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-20630-1.
    2. Christianson, Gale (1984). In the Presence of the Creator: Isaac Newton & His Times. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-02-905190-0. This well documented work provides, in particular, valuable information regarding Newton’s knowledge of Patristics
    3. Craig, John (1958). “Isaac Newton – Crime Investigator”. Nature. 182 (4629): 149–152. Bibcode:1958Natur.182..149C. doi:10.1038/182149a0. S2CID 4200994.
    4. Manuel, Frank E (1968). A Portrait of Isaac Newton. Belknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
  • Who Were the Famous Explorers That Discovered Africa?

    Who Were the Famous Explorers That Discovered Africa?

    There’s a lot of intrigue around Africa’s discovery. For centuries, Africa had been known as the “Dark Continent.” As the sailors mapped the oceans and the explorers traveled across the continents, Africa’s inner region was always shown empty on world maps, probably because it was known to be an extremely dangerous place. Tropical diseases that would kill a European in a day were too common, the virgin forests were full of lions and crocodiles, and when African tribes thought foreigners were coming to “invade” them, they could become too aggressive.

    The explorers who discovered Africa

    Starting in 1850, this Dark Continent has become “brighter.” The drugs that heal the most dangerous diseases were found, and thanks to the new rifles, there was now an opportunity to kill the dangerous animals and scare the tribal warriors. Some explorers traveled along the tropical rivers of Central Africa to explore the great lakes, especially the source of the Nile River, while others were traveling through the plains of South Africa or exploring the interiors of tropical forests as missionaries.

    David Livingstone

    Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

    Henry Stanley, 1871, November

    As a missionary, the explorer Livingstone set out on a journey to explore Central Africa in 1866 to put an end to the Arab slave trade. However, no news had been received from him for a long time, and he was thought to be dead. American journalist Henry Stanley made the historical statement above when he met David Livingstone in a deserted village near Lake Tanganyika in November 1871.

    henrystanleyhat
    Stanley’s hat.

    When Stanley finally came across Dr. Livingstone, he was wearing this hat. Many of the first travelers in Africa wore such hats to avoid sunstroke.

    livingstonehat
    Livingstone’s hat.

    Livingstone, who was overwhelmed by the illnesses he caught during his discovery of Africa, wore this hat when he saw Stanley. Livingstone, who once said, “The mere animal pleasure of travelling in a wild unexplored country is very great,” continued to explore the surroundings of Lake Tanganyika in Africa and died of the disease there in 1873.

    John Hanning Speke

    Speke was a British explorer who made several trips to Central Africa. Together with Richard Burton, he went to Lake Tanganyika in 1858, then went on his way and found Lake Victoria. In 1862, he returned to prove that the Nile originates from Lake Victoria.

    African rhinoceros johnhanningspeke
    Speke’s drawings were of high quality.

    Speke was also a good naturalist. He noted down the animals and plants he saw everywhere he went. You can see his white rhino drawings above from his book. The last male white rhino went extinct some time ago. Work continues to fertilize the remaining two females.

    Richard Burton

    richard burton
    The easiest way to get around Arab land.

    Explorer Sir Richard Burton was an officer in the English Army. He knew 28 languages other than Arabic. Dressed as an Arab, he went to places in Asia and East Africa where no Europeans had ever set foot. He also discovered much of tropical Africa and parts of South America.

    Pierre Desceliers

    the map of Africa by Pierre Desceliers
    The map of Africa by Pierre Desceliers.

    When Desceliers drew this map in the 16th century, sailors had traveled all over Africa. The map shows the African coasts quite accurately, but the middle is a space filled with imaginary things. That’s why this map is called Map Monster. The origin of the Nile was unknown, and Desceliers’ proposal was only an estimation; the real source of the Nile River would be found only 300 years later.

    The British and then the Americans take the lead in the discovery of the priceless African continent. The main goal of both countries was to find the source of the Nile River, and the winner would take everything.

  • James Clerk Maxwell: Education, Facts, and Inventions

    James Clerk Maxwell: Education, Facts, and Inventions

  • David Livingstone: His Life, Journeys, and Accomplishments

    David Livingstone: His Life, Journeys, and Accomplishments

    Who Dr. David Livingstone was, what was like his early life, and how did he die on the African continent? This famous explorer spent 30 years of his life living in Africa and exploring every point of this “dark continent.” He is perhaps the person who caused today’s Africa to be so doomed by the colonial empires.

    Dr. David Livingstone and the exploration of Africa

    The Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone had been fighting for his life for two weeks in an African village at the tip of Lake Tanganyika. Just when he was about to die of illness, hunger, and thirst, he stumbled upon a village in Ujiji after tramping for 350 miles (563 km).

    However, the stocks of food, medicine, and a small group of servants that had to be there waiting for him were sold by unscrupulous porters. Livingstone was too sick to walk the 780-mile (1255 km) road to the east coast, and since he had nothing to trade with anyone like a cloth or a bracelet, he fell into a pitiful situation and had to beg from Arab natives for food and clothing.

    “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

    In his diary, he described himself as a “beanpole” and admitted that his mood was incredibly bad. Then, suddenly, at noon on November 10, 1871, Livingstone’s English-speaking servant Susi rushed to him and shouted excitedly, “An Englishman,” “I see him!“

    When Livingstone limped off to the village square, he saw the American flag waving in front of a large, rich caravan. Then a stocky, bearded man with a long leather boot, the head of the caravan, came forward solemnly, lifted his hat, and said, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” The New York Herald newspaper asked the English-American journalist Henry Morton Stanley to find Livingstone.

    A few minutes later, Stanley was sitting with Livingstone on the tembe, the veranda of his house, whose walls were made of clay. On Livingstone’s insistence, Stanley quickly listed the news from the outside world, including a description of the Suez Canal, which had recently opened and about which Stanley had written an article.

    The 58-year-old Scot was all ears with his faded red vest and a worn blue cap on his head. Since it had been more than five years since his departure from London, a bag of letters from his family and friends was now standing on his knees, waiting to be read.

    Stanley opened a bottle of champagne and took out two silver cups. He handed the goblet, having filled it to the brim, to Livingstone. “To your health, sir,” he said, raising his goblet. “And to yours too,” Livingstone responded softly.

    Finding the source of the Nile River

    Dr. David Livingstones Arrival At Lake Ngami, Botswana, South Africa In 1849.
    Dr. David Livingstones Arrival At Lake Ngami, Botswana, South Africa In 1849. David Livingstone, 1813.

    David Livingstone was one of the most admired people in the Western world at the time. For 30 years, he spent his energy and talents trying to bring Christianity to Central and East Africa and also end the slave trade that continued in those areas.

    He had traveled on the back of a pedestrian, a mule, or an ox for a million miles (1.6 million km) in Africa without minding the desert, forest, or marshland. He created the maps of the lands and continued his mission by saying he would either find a way inside or he would disappear.

    During his travels, he mapped the Central African river system and traced the Zambezi River to its source. His experience as an explorer led him to an inevitable goal: he had to find the source of the Nile River. He started his research in 1866, but no news was heard from him for a long time. Then, there started an intense public opinion in order for him to be found.

    There had been unfounded reports before that he was killed by African Zulu people, but this time he could have indeed died. Research delegations were sent to locate Dr. David Livingstone, and the delegation led by 30-year-old Stanley was one of them.

    Although Stanley was venturous and assertive and Livingstone was sullen and thoughtful, these two people, who are very different from each other in terms of age and creation, soon became the closest friends.

    “You gave me a new life,” said Livingstone, who wanted to express his heartfelt debt while his friend was making him eat nutritious soups and meat dishes. But most of his teeth were rotten and shed, so he had difficulty eating.

    Thanks to the food and the medicines Stanley brought, David Livingstone soon regained his former health and strength. The two then took with them as many as twenty locals and went out to explore the northern stretches of Africa’s Tanganyika Lake. But when they realized that the water did not flow out of the lake, it was fairly disappointing.

    On the way back, Stanley got a fever and dysentery. This time, it was Livingstone who played the doctor and nurse. When they returned to Ujiji, the fully recovered Stanley begged Livingstone to give up the Nile obsession and return. But Livingstone refused the proposal.

    David Livingstone is dying

    After spending an unforgettable four months together, the two companions said goodbye to each other in tears on March 14, 1872, near Tabora, the largest city in Central Africa. Stanley pledged to send supplies to Livingstone, such as carriers, food, and medicine, to help him continue his research.

    Livingstone stubbornly hit the road again in August and searched for lakes and mountains to the south of Lake Tanganyika for eighteen months. He became increasingly weak, sick, and sluggish from dysentery and loss of blood due to hemorrhoids. Since he was too sick to get on the mule, he had to walk in swamps while the rain bucketed down.

    Sometimes he found himself in black mud to his knees; ants, mosquitoes, and venomous spiders never left him alone. When he could no longer eat or walk, his men carried him on logs. “Knocked up quite and remained—recovered—sent to buy milch goats,” Livingstone wrote in his diary on April 27, 1873. “We are on the banks of the Molilamo.” The next day, they moved Livingstone to Chitambo, in the southeast part of Lake Bangweulu.

    In a hut made of mud, he was laid on a bed of grass and wands. He drank some chamomile tea and told his servant, Susi, to leave him alone. Just before dawn on May 1, David Livingstone’s death was noticed by an African boy sleeping at the door of the lodge. Kneeling next to the bed, Livingstone’s gray-haired head had fallen into his hands as if he were praying.

    Who was Dr. Livingstone?

    David Livingstone, the son of a poor Scottish family, was born on March 19, 1813, in the industrial town of Blantyre in the Lanarkshire region. When he was ten years old, he started working in a cricket workshop and spent 14 years there. At the same time, he went to evening school, learned Latin and Greek, and decided to become a missionary physician in China.

    Livingstone became a doctor after studying medicine in Glasgow in 1840, and he was accepted into the priesthood by the London Missionary Association. When the Opium War prevented him from going to China, he set out for South Africa and arrived in Cape Town in March 1841. The search for people to adopt Christianity led him to the dangerous Kalahari region, and by the summer of 1842, he had gone further north than any white person before him.

    Two years later, Livingstone was attacked by a lion when he was about to set up a mission center on the border of the Kalahari Desert; he would never be able to lift his left arm higher than the shoulder.

    In 1845, he married Mary Moffat, the daughter of a missionary, who participated in many research trips with him. Livingstone also launched a campaign against the slave trade, which was mostly directed by the Arabs on the east coast.

    In 1852, he went on a four-year expedition. During this trip, he tried to determine the trade routes and place indigenous missionaries in the Transvaal region. He acquired a wealth of information on Central Africa and was welcomed as a hero when he returned to England in 1856.

    The British government made a monetary contribution to his next research trip; thus, from 1858 to 1864, he would continue exploring the Zambezi River. During this time, his wife died and was buried in Africa. Livingstone’s last expedition to search for the source of the Nile River began in January 1866.

    How did Stanley become an explorer?

    Born on January 29, 1841, in the town of Denbigh in the Wales Region, Stanley fled to Liverpool in his youth, boarded a ship as a crew, and went to New Orleans. There, he became friends with a cotton broker named Henry Stanley, who gave him his name. After serving as a Confederate soldier in the American Civil War, Stanley turned to journalism. In 1868, he joined a British force sent to save British diplomats and their families imprisoned in the capital city of Magdala, in Abyssinia.

    It was Stanley who first wrote in the New York Herald newspaper how the sent force captured Magdala, freed the British, and then looted the city. This scoop made the 27-year-old reporter, who later used the name “Morton” to be more effective, one of the leading journalists in the world. In 1869, the owner of The Herald, James Gordon Bennett’s son, called Stanley to Paris and told him to “find Livingstone.”

    After Livingstone died in 1873, Stanley took over the African expeditions from where the Scottish left off. He traveled all around Victoria and Tanganyika lakes. He went down from the Congo to the lake he called Stanley Lake, and from there to the waterfalls he called Livingstone Falls.

    In 1879, he helped establish the Congo Free State with the support of Belgian King Leopold II. When he returned to London in the 1890s, he was elected deputy for the North Lambeth area and was given the title “Sir.” He died in May 1904 and was buried near his home in Pirbright, Surrey, England, his hometown.

    Why were Livingstone and Stanley criticized?

    Despite all the praise and reward for Livingstone and Stanley, some people did not find these two researchers admirable. The Royal Geographical Society did not see Livingstone being discovered in the middle of the African forest as an exciting newspaper article. Sir Henry Rawlinson, the president of the association, said that “it was not Stanley who had discovered Livingstone, but Livingstone who had discovered Stanley.”

    Stanley was accused of treating African workers as “savages” and using unnecessary violence against the indigenous people who came his way. Although Livingstone generally got along well with the carriers, he had a fight with them on his last trip, causing several of them to escape. Scot was also chastised for failing to complete many of the tasks he set out to do.

    For example, he was not able to establish a single mission center in all his time as a missionary. He had also lost his way in researching the source of the Nile River. More specifically, he had not done anything for the illness that resulted in his wife’s death, and he had also left his children alone at home for years.

    More importantly, Livingstone and Stanley whipped up the enthusiasm of people and states for the discovery of Africa. This effort implied a desire to acquire new lands. At the beginning of the 20th century, the five countries participating in this race—England, Belgium, France, Germany, and Portugal—shared most of the African continent among themselves.

    References

    1. “David Livingstone (1813–1873)”. BBC – History – Historic Figures. 2014.
    2. Bayly, Paul (2013). David Livingstone, Africa’s greatest explorer : the man, the missionary and the myth.
    3. Mackenzie, John M. (1990). “David Livingstone: The Construction of the Myth”.
    4. “David Livingstone Centre: Birthplace Of Famous Scot”.
    5. Blaikie, William Garden (1880). The Personal Life of David Livingstone… Chiefly from His Unpublished Journals and Correspondence in the Possession of His Family.
    6. “The University of Glasgow Story : David Livingstone”. University of Glasgow. n.d.
  • Antoine Lavoisier: Discoveries, Experiments, and Death

    Antoine Lavoisier: Discoveries, Experiments, and Death

    When Antoine Lavoisier or Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier started his chemistry studies in the 1760s, Aristotle’s four-element theory (earth, water, air, and fire) still dominated the discipline. At the time of Lavoisier’s death thirty years later, this discipline had been transformed into a science that was practiced in modern chemistry experiments.

    Who Was Antoine Lavoisier?

    Antoine Lavoisier was the son of a wealthy attorney and received formal training at the College des Quatre-Nations in the city, usually known as the College Mazarin. He studied mathematics under the supervision of astronomer Abbe Nicolas Louis de Lacaille after finishing his humanities education in 1760. On another occasion, he would explain his mathematician-like attention to detail and care when conducting scientific studies. “They never prove a proposition before the previous step becomes clear. “Everything is linked, everything is connected, from the definition of the point to the definition of the line and the supreme realities of transcendental geometry.“

    He left the college in 1761 and studied law to please his father, but his interest in science continued. He studied meteorology with Lacaille and continued to work in this field even after his teacher died in 1762. After observing the northern lights (Aurora borealis), he published his first scientific paper in 1763. He attended chemistry courses given by pharmacist Charles Louis La Planche at the Pharmacists Association, public classes on electricity by Guillaume-François Rouelle, and Bernard de Jussieu’s lectures on the plant kingdom.

    He studied mineralogy, geology, and chemistry with Jean-Etienne Guettard, a member of the French Academy of Sciences. He received a law degree in 1764 and was accepted as a lawyer. But he never worked as a lawyer. In fact, he was already planning for the transition to the Republic of Science.

    The following year, in 1765, he presented his first paper on “the analysis of gypsum” to the Academy of Sciences, where he went as a guest scientist. He showed how solid gypsum turns into powder when heated and creates steam during the process. He gathered the steam and found that it was pure water. This was crystallization water, with a quarter of its solid weight being heated. When he mixed the water with powdered gypsum, it turned into a solid mass again.

    So, the source of the stiffness of gypsum was water. By weighing and measuring ingredients and products during synthesis and analysis, Lavoisier proposed the “double demonstration” method that he would use throughout his science career. His paper was published in the proceedings of the Academy. About a year later, he published a second paper on gypsum, showing that it consists of chalk and sulfuric acid and that its solubility depends on acid concentration. Lavoisier insisted that the analysis of mineral substances is important to shed light on Earth’s past.

    Academician and Tax Collector

    One of Lavoisier's human respiration experiments done with his colleague Armand Seguin.
    One of Lavoisier’s human respiration experiments was done with his colleague Armand Seguin. In the drawing, Madam Lavoisier is depicted taking notes on a nearby table.

    In 1776, the Academy announced a public competition for the best method to illuminate the city streets. The participants were required to present a theory adapted to calculations, physical and chemical experiments, and practice. Lavoisier studied all kinds of lighting meticulously, looked at lamps of different sizes and types, and tested them with oil and wax. In his report, he concluded that olive oil was the best fuel. The paper was awarded a gold medal. Antoine Lavoisier said with great energy that he wanted to put his energy, intelligence, and knowledge to work for the state.

    In 1767, with a long field trip to the Vosges Mountains with Guettard, he collected data for his extraordinary work, “The Mineralogical Atlas of France.” For more than four months, they roamed the land, analyzing the soil, minerals, and water and taking samples from agricultural products. There were 26 maps, eight of which belonged to Lavoisier. He was elected to the academy in 1768.

    Lavoisier joined the private company Ferme Generale (General Farm) by purchasing shares, which also collected tax revenues on behalf of the King of France. The company was collecting tax on goods entering Paris, such as salt, tobacco, and alcohol, as well as the customs money, with a six-year revenue rental agreement with the king’s Controller-General of Finances. They were paying a certain sum to the royal treasury in cash, which was close to 150 million libres in 1770.

    Lavoisier was particularly responsible for the Tobacco Commission, where he was tasked with preventing fugitives and cheating at retailers. Then he had much more important tasks to complete. Jacques Paulze de Chastenolles was a strong and wealthy manager. In 1771, her 14-year-old daughter, Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, married the 28-year-old Lavoisier. Maria brought lots of dowries with her and became Lavoisier’s assistant. She learned chemistry and took notes while Lavoisier conducted experiments. She also translated English chemistry books for him and hosted many scientists who came to visit Lavoisier. They had no children.

    Antoine Lavoisier and the Four Elements

    Antoine Lavoisier spent most of his life in this laboratory setting. It is currently stored in the Paris Musee des Arts et Metiers.
    Antoine Lavoisier spent most of his life in this laboratory setting. It is currently stored in the Paris Musee des Arts et Metiers.

    Lavoisier installed a well-equipped laboratory in his first house in Paris, the Rue des Bons-Enfants. The distinctive feature of his work was the quantitative approach based on the constant use of chemical balance. The law of conservation of mass has long been the basic principle. He would later say in his textbook: “The whole art of experimenting in chemistry rests on this principle; in all experiments, one is obliged to assume an actual equality between the principles (that is, elements) of substances examined and those obtained by the analysis of these substances.“

    He applied the axiom for the first time in his paper “Nature of Water,” dated 1770. At that time, many chemists believed that water could be turned into soil. Because it was known that when the distilled water was evaporated in the glass container, there was always a soil residue. Lavoisier weighed the glass container called a “pelican” and poured in water that he had distilled eight times, then measured its weight.

    He kept the container at 70 degrees Reaumur (80 degrees Reaumur is the boiling temperature of water). After 101 days, he began to identify dust particles in the container, but there was no change in the temperature of the water. Also, the weight of the container had decreased, and the weight loss was equivalent to the weight of the powder particles. It was clear that the powder on the surface of the glass container was dissolved in water. Moreover, Antoine Lavoisier found that water did not turn into soil.

    Lavoisier has moved on from Aristotle’s Four Elements and is now experimenting with air and fire. He decided to find out what happened to the air during combustion. By using air and water, he would also examine a second process called calcination. When metals are heated, a lime-like substance forms on the surface of the metal; chemists thought this type of calcination was kind of slow-burning.

    Both calcination and burning were thought to be caused by fire, or more specifically by its main component, phlogiston—the enigmatic substance named by German chemist Georg Ernst Stahl. Nobody had detected phlogiston, but it was thought to be present in everything that was burning, at different rates. Oil and coal were said to be almost pure phlogiston.

    When substances burned, phlogiston was released from the substance, producing fire. The same process was thought to produce calx during the calcination. But Lavoisier wasn’t too happy with this statement as the final weight of the burned metal was more than the weight of the initial metal when its weight and calx’s weight were added together.

    If phlogiston was thrown out of the metal, then how could the burned metal be heavier? Antoine Lavoisier suspected that something was added to the metal to form calx and it could be the air.

    The Birth of Modern Chemistry

    "Planche XIII. Des fourneaux" written by Madam Lavoisier for the Traite elementaire de chimie (Elementary Treatise on Chemistry), shows various furnace and distillation apparatus.
    “Planche XIII. Des fourneaux” written by Madam Lavoisier for the Traite elementaire de chimie (Elementary Treatise on Chemistry), shows various furnaces and distillation apparatus.

    Antoine Lavoisier delivered a sealed envelope to the Academy of Sciences on November 1, 1772, to be opened in 1773. He found that when sulfur and phosphorus were burned with air, their weight would never decrease, in fact, it would actually increase. Moreover, when the lead calx, called litharge, was treated with charcoal, it lost weight and released a large amount of air.

    Early in the next year, he wrote the memorandum of a long series of experiments that he intended to begin to clarify the role of gases in chemical combustion. One of his aims was to discover whether the air involved in combustion and calcination was atmospheric air or a special kind of air, then known as “fixed air,” that was named by Scottish chemist Joseph Black (we know it as carbon dioxide today). The answer to this question would revolutionize chemistry.

    British scientist Joseph Priestley assisted Lavoisier in starting this revolution. In 1774, he went to Lavoisier’s house in Paris for dinner and told him that he had discovered a new kind of air. While working on the mercury calx, he had found that air was extracted from the calx as it turned back into metal, and this air had completely different properties than Black’s “fixed air.” Priestley called it “air without phlogiston.” But Lavoisier did not resort to phlogiston, as he understood the meaning of this phenomenon better than Priestley. Unlike other calxes, this new gas could not come from charcoal, as mercury calx did not require charcoal to return to metal; it should have come from the calx itself.

    On April 26, 1775, Lavoisier proudly reported to the Academy of Sciences that “the principle [substance] that combines with metals during their calcination is the purest part of the air.” That “fixed air” results from the combination of the highly respirable part of the air with charcoal. He later called this “purest part” “oxygen,” which means “acid producer” in Greek, because he (wrongly) thought that all acids contain oxygen.

    In 1783, British scientist Henry Cavendish burned hydrogen in a closed container to obtain water. He accurately concluded that water was created from the burning. But since he still believed that oxygen does not contain phlogiston, he thought the missing substance was supplied by hydrogen. In the presence of many members of the Academy, Lavoisier repeated Cavendish’s experiment and showed that hydrogen and oxygen form water when burned together.

    He argued that water is a combination of two gases, not one element. In 1785, he carried out a major experiment on the analysis and synthesis of water; the experiment both validated his discovery and enabled the development of hydrogen as a large-scale production method. (Soon after, Lavoisier would realize how hydrogen was a better lifting gas while refereeing a hot air balloon competition between the Montgolfier brothers and another inventor.)

    There was nothing left of Aristotle’s theory of the four elements of earth, water, fire, and air, and there was no such thing as phlogiston. In 1787, Lavoisier, Claude Berthollet, Antoine Francois de Fourcroy, and Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau published the new Chemical Nomenclature, which would change the way we think about chemistry. Two years later, in his book Traite elementaire de chimie, Lavoisier summed up his ideas and gave a list of the known elements.

    The Chemistry of Life: Oxygen

    During the French Revolution, Jacobean Terror led to the execution of intellectuals such as Antoine Lavoisier.
    During the French Revolution, Jacobean Terror led to the execution of intellectuals such as Antoine Lavoisier.

    Antoine Lavoisier was now exploring the physiology of the human respiratory tract. He concluded that breathing was kind of slow-burning. Therefore, the oxygen in the air must be essential for the chemistry of life. Lavoisier and Pierre Simon-Laplace invented the calorimeter to measure the heat emitted from an animal.

    He compared this to the heat released during coal combustion and calculated the animal’s energy consumption. He then compared animal and human oxygen consumption while inactive and also on the move. Lavoisier created two papers on the physiology of animal respiration.

    Lavoisier was one of the first to predict the value of the chemical approach to the physiology of nutrition and the mechanisms of tissue anabolism. In the 1790s, he was ready to start a second scientific revolution in biology. He sensed the vital role of the liver in synthesis. In fact, he had created a conceptual study program, and it would take almost 100 years for science to develop it.

    Why Was Antoine Lavoisier Executed?

    The French Revolution began in 1789, and Lavoisier was drawn into the process of demolishing the General Farm, which was thought to represent the worst excesses of the regime and was hated by revolutionaries. All his contributions in other areas had been forgotten, including:

    • Significant progress was made in gunpowder production under his management.
    • Agricultural reform began thanks to his model farm in France, the first scientific farm.
    • Efforts to enforce the metric system.
    • Participation in the Art and Trade Advisory Board.
    • Deep thoughts on public education.
    • Efforts to save France from bankruptcy.
    • His collection of memories, Regional Welfare of the French Kingdom, is a touchstone in the history of economics.

    During the worst days of the Reign of Terror, on May 28, 1794, the Jacobins, thinking that all officers of the tax farm were against the revolution, caught 28 government representatives of the national treasury and tried them in the Revolutionary Tribunal.

    All were found guilty and executed by guillotine at the Place de Revolution. Antoine Lavoisier was the fourth. The great mathematician Joseph Lagrange commented on this event: “It took only a moment to cause this head to fall, and a hundred years will not suffice to produce its like.“

    Bibliography:

    1.  “Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent”. Lexico UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press.
    2. “Lavoisier”. Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
    3. (in French) Lavoisier, le parcours d’un scientifique révolutionnaire CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)
    4. Schwinger, Julian (1986). Einstein’s Legacy. New York: Scientific American Library. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-7167-5011-6.
  • Codes of the Cold War on Intelligence, Security, and Agency

    Codes of the Cold War on Intelligence, Security, and Agency

    The codes of the Cold War are still valid today. When the relationship between the US and USSR superpowers—both of which rose from the ruins of the Second World War—broke down, there was an increase in nuclear weapons storage activities, as well as an increase in suspicion and secrecy. Mutual trust turned into almost noticeable aggression.

    While secret service activities on all fronts cost a lot of lives, the spying stories of writers such as Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, Richard Condon, and John Le Carre started to attract greater attention. This period was the era of countless real and imaginary acronyms: CIA, FBI, MI6, 007, SMERSH, and SPECTRE. But the real code that terrified everyone was MAD. The explication was “mutually assured destruction”: No matter which party pressed the red button, it was going to light the fuse of a global nuclear attack.

    Security Codes of the Cold War

    The codes used at various levels between the US presidents and their allies and enemies, from daily espionage activities to military security and high-level communications, were the most confidential. Most of them are still in use today, or an improved version of the codes was available at that time.

    However, as digital technology and computers advanced, contracted commercial companies such as IBM took their place in the field. These companies provided industrial solutions. For example, the B-52s produced by Boeing could be controlled with computers manufactured by IBM with commercially sourced codes. If this sounds like a nightmare scenario, it is true.

    The Rosenberg couple were put on trial for "espionage" and executed.
    The Rosenberg couple were put on trial for “espionage” and executed.

    Counter-Intelligence Program, Venona Project

    In the early stages of the Second World War, the Western Allies began to monitor Soviet communications. The Soviets had a single-use encryption key system that was almost impossible to decipher. However, Soviet communication was finally captured and the information was distributed to a limited number of US code breakers. The messages were deciphered in 1946 because Russians sometimes reused their disposable keys.

    With this successful deciphering, a great deal of intelligence and valuable information about the Soviet army and intelligence system were obtained. This included Western Soviet collaborators. Due to it being a very sensitive topic, only partial information was given to the CIA and the White House by the FBI.

    As a result of the intelligence study, the names of 349 Americans were determined. It turned out that the Soviets had infiltrated the Manhattan Project; based on this, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested. The Cambridge spies Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess were unmasked as they were about to escape. They contributed to the Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White cases. The Venona Project was terminated in 1980.

    sigsaly
    SIGSALY

    High-level telephone calls must be kept safe. Although digital telephone signal encryption is a readily available technology today, the first example of this system was based on SIGSALY, developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories and used during the Second World War. According to this speech encipherment system, the voicemail first went through a vocoder (audio encoder).

    By synthesizing the sound and tone, the device was digitizing the voice. The resulting file was divided into 12 bands, encrypted on a 0–5 scale according to the tone, and sent over six bandwidth zones in random order. General Douglas MacArthur made use of the SIGSALY system for much of the Pacific operation, and more than 3,000 of his phone calls were successfully hidden.

    The aide-de-camp is always near the president and does not leave the “nuclear football.”

    Nuclear Football

    This is one of the most interesting topics about the codes of the Cold War. The metallic black briefcase that was attached to the US President’s aide-de-camp by a cable and carried in a black bag was able to determine the fate of the world. This bag is also known as a “nuclear football.” The briefcase has a portable part of the US strategic defense system, a SATCOM radio system, several attack scenarios (called “playbooks”), and temporary plans for a national nuclear emergency.

    Nuclear Football always accompanies the US president, but the Gold Code—the key for the nuclear attack that changes every day—is not included in the briefcase. The president always carries over the code. In the event of an emergency or assault, the aide-de-camp and the president open the briefcase to review the plans and, if necessary, may request a nuclear response by radio using the Gold Code. The Russian President has a similar briefcase.

    Body Language Codes of the Agents

    Surveillance of possible spies turned into an almost obsessive activity during the Cold War. While methods such as wiretapping and stealth photography provided a lot of evidence against suspects, tracking the suspect’s activity directly often provided useful results too. A code system based on body signs was developed for agents who secretly followed a suspect on city streets. The system was first used by the police and the FBI, and then it was modified and adopted by the CIA:

    • Attention! The suspect is approaching: The nose is touched by a hand or handkerchief.
    • The suspect is on the move, advancing or leading: The hair is straightened by hand, or the hat is raised slightly.
    • The suspect stands where s/he is: One hand is put in the back or on the stomach.
    • The disguise is under threat; the surveillance agent wants to end surveillance: He bends over to tie the shoes.
    • The suspect is coming back. The surveillance agent wants to talk to the team leader or other surveillance agents: The bag is opened and looked inside.
  • John von Neumann: Early life, Discoveries, and Accomplishments

    John von Neumann: Early life, Discoveries, and Accomplishments

    John von Neumann was born in Budapest. He was the eldest of the three sons of a wealthy and cultured Jewish banking family. He took lessons from a private teacher until he was 10 years old, and then he started studying at the Lutheran High School in the capital of Hungary. His remarkable ability was evident from an early age; he had an almost photographic memory and the ability to quickly perform arithmetic calculations in his mind.

    Who Was John von Neumann?

    At the age of 18, he enrolled in the mathematics department of the University of Budapest but spent most of his time in Berlin getting to know the European scientific elite. He then started his doctorate at the University of Budapest, but also studied chemical engineering at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich, due to the insistence of his father, who wanted his son to have a professional education. In 1925, ETH gave him a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. In 1926, the University of Budapest gave him a Ph.D. in mathematics.

    John von Neumann received the Rockefeller Scholarship from the University of Göttingen in Germany in 1926. The following year, he was appointed as a Privatdozent (faculty member) at the University of Berlin, making him the university’s youngest Privatdozent in its history. He conducted extensive research in the 1920s on mathematical logic, set theory, operator theory, and quantum mechanics. In the 1930s, he became a guest professor at Princeton University, dividing his time between Berlin and Princeton for several years. However, he wanted a permanent position in the United States due to the deteriorating political situation in Europe.

    This opportunity came from the newly established Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1933, which appointed me as a founding professor (the other professor was Albert Einstein). He became an American citizen in 1937. Von Neumann achieved fundamental results in institutional and applied mathematics at the Institute and also developed his game theory. Together with Oskar Morganstern, he wrote “The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior” in 1944. This book was a major step forward in the field of mathematical economics.

    Wartime calculations and the first electronic computer

    John von Neumann and J. Robert Oppenheimer, former director of the Manhattan Project, in front of the IAS machine in 1952.
    John von Neumann and J. Robert Oppenheimer, former director of the Manhattan Project, in front of the IAS machine in 1952.

    John von Neumann had a pleasant personality, great social skills, and brilliant political intelligence. When the United States entered World War II after the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, there was a huge increase in demand for consulting services. John von Neumann served in this field thanks to his adaptability, legendary mental abilities, and talent to solve complex math problems easily. In 1943, he turned his attention to war-related work, especially numerical computational problems.

    Most importantly, he was a consultant to the Manhattan Project in Las Alamos. There, he consulted on implosion techniques to detonate the nuclear material in the center of the atomic bomb. Complex math system equations had to be solved numerically as part of this process, so he looked for the most advanced calculators he could find.

    John von Neumann was also a consultant to the US Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. One of the lab’s main tasks was the production of ballistic charts and the founding of the first electronic computer, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), which was developed by the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Due to technical and design limitations, Neumann’s calculations for the atomic bomb couldn’t be done on the ENIAC. Neumann and the group at Moore worked together to design EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), which replaced ENIAC.

    In June 1945, he summarized the group’s findings in his report, First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. The report provided the logical definition of what is known as a “stored-program computer” that all subsequent computer developments would be based on. The computer was called by this name because both the program and the numbers were using the same electronic memory. This made the computer much more powerful and flexible because now a program could run its instructions without having to use cumbersome ways to program like plugboards, punched cards, or paper.

    John von Neumann and the hydrogen bomb

    In 1946, von Neumann returned to the Institute for Advanced Study, leading the construction of one of the first practical computers. With the advent of general-purpose computers, he began to be concerned less with numerical weather forecasting and more with philosophy, cybernetics, and automata. At the same time, he kept giving advice in Los Alamos about how to make the hydrogen bomb.

    In 1954, President Eisenhower took over the Atomic Energy Commission. Here, he made an impact on science and military policy with an inclination toward war. Neumann was diagnosed with bone cancer in 1955, and he eventually died of this disease.

    His last major competence was the preparation of the Silliman Conferences for Yale University, which were published in 1958 after his death under the title The Computer and the Brain. He died in 1957 at the age of 53.

    Bibliography:

  • Adolf Hitler: Early Life, Nazi Party, and Death

    Adolf Hitler: Early Life, Nazi Party, and Death

    • Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 in Braunau, Austria.
    • Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933.
    • Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, as Russian troops approached Berlin.

    Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 in the village of Braunau, near the Austrian border with Bavaria, the son of a low-ranking customs officer. For the first 25 years of his life, he drifted from place to place on his own. Twice rejected from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, he broke down and made a living doing odd jobs, such as beating carpets. Just before World War I, he joined a prejudice shared by many in Vienna and began to see Jews as the scourge of Europe.

    The Life of Adolf Hitler

    Hitler joined the war as a corporal. He was a loyal soldier in the army and earned a medal twice. In 1918, his vision was damaged in Ypres, and during the treatment, he decided to become a politician. In 1920, Hitler was enrolled in the small German Workers’ Party and soon became the leader. By 1923, he had given the party a new name: the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi for short.

    He created the SA, a bandit group of former soldiers, and gave the party’s message with a kick and baton in Munich for the first time. The plan to overthrow the Bavarian government as a way to get ready for an attack on Berlin failed, and Hitler spent all of 1924 in prison for his part in the failed uprising.

    There he wrote his first book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), with the help of a friend, Rudolf Hess, who would later become the vice president of the Nazi Party. Hitler underestimated democracy in his book through the theories he made with prejudices collected from various sources. He expressed his hatred for Jews and Slavs and shared his intention to create a Lebensraum (habitat) in Eastern Europe based on his idea of a superior race. However, Hitler had learned from the Munich fiasco and decided to use parliamentary means to eradicate democracy. He put together a group of people who were loyal to him. Some of them were self-taught, like Goebbels, Goring, Ernst Rohm, and Heinrich Himmler, who were in charge of propaganda events like the Nuremberg Rallies.

    Even Hitler's most loyal fans hadn't read My Struggle.
    Even Hitler’s most loyal fans hadn’t read My Struggle, which is full of long, self-centered ramblings and half-grown racist assumptions.

    By using his oratory skills, Hitler washed the nation’s brain in a short time on a series of trips, with the promise of a new and powerful Germany that would rise from the ashes of old Germany.

    Nazi Election Tactics

    During the campaign, Hitler always focused on two strong themes that deeply affected the hearts of most Germans. The first is the tale of the German Army being stabbed in the back in 1918. According to the theory, if the weak politicians had not surrendered by then, Germany would have won the world war. The second was the argument that the provisions of the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty turned Germany into a second-class nation by seizing German territory, requiring very high compensation, and forbidding the rearmament of Germany.

    According to Hitler, the Weimar Republic, founded in 1919, ruled Germany in the interests of Jewish-capitalist cooperation. Big business saw Hitler as a defense against Communism, and his hatred of Jews gave the unemployed and poor a scapegoat to take the blame for their problems.

    The 1929 Great Depression helped the Nazis become the second-biggest party in the Reichstag in 1930. In the 1932 elections, the number of unemployed reached almost 6 million, while the Nazis became the largest party in the state. It was two months before Hitler achieved his political goal.

    Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) resulted in thousands of Jewish shops being destroyed in 1938.
    The Nazis asked the Germans to boycott a Jewish store in Berlin. Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) resulted in thousands of Jewish shops being destroyed in 1938.

    What Was the Night of the Long Knives?

    In the spring of 1934, Hitler began receiving reports from the SS and the Gestapo that SA leaders were preparing a conspiracy for him. The reports were fake, but Hitler believed them. SA was now a force of 2.5 million people, and many leaders like Röhm were proposing a pure socialist revolution. Furthermore, the Regular Army should have been led by a single defense minister, with the SS and SA led by Röhm. It was time for SA to be brought into line.

    Early on the morning of June 30th, SS officers took Röhm from his bed. He was sleeping in a hotel outside Munich. He was thrown into prison and was offered suicide. Röhm said, “If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself.” Instead of Hitler, two SS officers performed the task. During that night and weekend, many other SA leaders and Hitler’s political opponents were assassinated. This is known as the “Night of the Long Knives“.

    Ernst Röhm.
    Ernst Röhm.

    Some officials say hundreds of them were killed; others say it was thousands. Despite the fact that these events were widely publicized, no one objected, including the press, the church, soldiers, or the party itself, demonstrating how Hitler enslaved the German people.

    Hitler advocated cleaning up the SA in the Reichstag on the grounds that Röhm was homosexual. Hitler was able to persuade army officers that SA was no longer a threat, and it was at this point that Hitler benefited from the slaughter because he needed the army’s support. On his deathbed, Hindenburg wrote a telegram to Hitler saying, “You have saved the German nation from serious danger,” and continued, “He who would make history must also be able to shed blood.“

    Hitler’s Enormous Power

    Hitler stole a large number of artworks for Germany during World War II or hid them elsewhere.
    Hitler stole a large number of artworks for Germany during World War II or hid them elsewhere.

    Hitler took on the chancellor’s post in 1933 after receiving the support of almost one of every two Germans in the election held three months ago. For the next five years, he established his own administration without knowing any rules, crushed all possible sources of opposition, and eventually boasted that “It is my ambition not to know a single statesman in the world who has a better right than I to say that he is a representative of his people.“

    By 1937, the unemployed had fallen from 6 million to 1 million. Hitler had created an extensive public service program, with particular emphasis on road construction. He also created a program for the armament industry, which had made great strides. Previously, a 100,000-person army with no modern weapons was transformed into a formidable fighting force.

    It was a slap in the face for England and France because it simply violated the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler struck blow after blow, retaking the Rhineland in 1936 and swallowing Austria and the Czech Sudetenland in 1938, but the Western powers responded with shaky protests.

    On the other hand, the Nazis’ obsessive campaign against Jews was gaining momentum, and the horrible days of the “Final Solution” were getting closer.

    Who Were the Gestapo, SA, and Ss?

    Hitler’s names and uniforms were those of fearful organizations.

    • Gestapo: Geheime Staatspolizei, or Secret State Police, was founded in 1933 by Hermann Göring to arrest and interrogate political criminals.
    • Sturmabteilung: Also known as Brown Shirts, the Nazi militia power was founded by Hitler in 1923 and eliminated in 1934.
    • Schutzstaffel: The arm of the Nazi Party in black uniform, passionately bound to Hitler. It was first established as the Führer’s bodyguard, then expanded and became an army. Although the difference between the two is not clear, it had two branches: the Totenkopf or “Skull” SS, charged with concentration camps, and the Waffen or “Warrior” SS, which claims to be an elite military unit. The difference between the two is often incomprehensible.

    Neville Chamberlain and His Crucial Mistake

    Chamberlain and Hitler 1938
    Chamberlain and Hitler 1938.

    When British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned home from his meeting with Hitler in Munich in September 1938 where he received the promise of not getting attacked, he said, “I believe it is peace for our time.” Of course, this has its place in history as a big lie.

    The Rise of the Nazis and Hitler

    Let’s evaluate how Adolf Hitler and the Nazis conquered the country step by step. This is a significant example of how economic issues in countries can damage people’s decision-making abilities.

    The troops endlessly flowed through the Brandenburg Gate in front of the imposing Chancellery building from the lush Unter den Linden boulevard. The torches held high by the soldiers created a river of fire. It was the evening of January 30, 1933, and Berlin was witnessing the most magnificent scenery in its history. That afternoon, the president of the nation, 85-year-old WWI hero Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg, appointed Adolf Hitler as the German chancellor.

    The Nazi propaganda machine had transformed Hitler into the “Führer (leader) of future Germany“—the man who would wipe out the shame of the peace treaty signed in Versailles after World War I. Hitler was once dubbed the “little Bohemian corporal,” but the time had come for National Socialism. As the “Heil Hitler” shouts surrounded the Chancellor building, the marching SS guards and SA troops in brown shirts lifted their arms bearing the swastika and gave a Nazi salute.

    Once a simple worker in Vienna, Adolf Hitler never concealed his disdain for democracy and the Weimar Republic that rose from the ashes of the German Empire, which was defeated after Kaiser Wilhelm retreated from the throne. Making Hitler prime minister meant some kind of gambling. However, his National Socialists were the largest party in the German Parliament (Reichstag). The conservative politicians who agreed to form a coalition government with him believed that Hitler would inevitably settle down due to the responsibilities of his duty.

    The Planned Reichstag Fire

    The Reichstag fire and mentally handicapped Dutchman.
    The Reichstag fire and mentally handicapped Dutchman.

    The Reichstag elections in the first week of March provided an opportunity to see whether the German nation approved the new government. However, just before the day of voting, the Nazis gained the upper hand: On the evening of February 27, Hindenburg had dinner with people working with him in Herrenklub, just around the corner from the Reichstag. He suddenly saw something shining outside on the street. Everyone ran to the windows. They saw the Reichstag’s huge, gilded dome sparkling.

    Adolf Hitler had dinner at the house of Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, and was listening to the record on the gramophone. A phone rang to report that the Reichstag was on fire. Hitler and Goebbels were on the scene within minutes. They immediately declared the fire an arson act and that the communists were attempting to start the “red revolution“.

    As Hitler watched the Reichstag collapse, his right-hand man, World War I air hero and current Reichstag President Hermann Göring, shouted, “Every Communist official must be shot.” The next morning, while the smoke was still rising from the remnants of the Reichstag, Hitler convinced Hindenburg to declare a “state of emergency.” The right to liberty was suspended, and the police were given the authority to arrest and detain anyone without a trial.

    Thousands of communists and liberals, including the Reichstag members, were gathered and imprisoned. A young man was arrested and convicted of setting the Reichstag on fire. However, there was an overriding belief that the explosion that led to the fire was actually the job of a Nazi detachment that took action upon the open orders of Goebbels and Göring.

    Shortly after the Reichstag fire, Marinus van der Lubbe, a former communist and mentally disabled Dutchman, was arrested and put to death for setting the fire. Although he admitted his guilt and was known as the arsonist, Lubbe has been proven to be ruled by the Nazis.

    Nazis Undid Democracy

    The new chancellor, Adolf Hitler, passes by the people of Berlin next to President Paul von Hindenburg.
    The new chancellor, Adolf Hitler, passes by the people of Berlin next to President Paul von Hindenburg.

    The Nazis tried to impress and convince the mass of voters, sometimes by frightening them and sometimes by flattering them. However, they still did not achieve the majority in the March 5 elections. Still, 44% of the votes, which was more than any other party, gave Hitler the power to get rid of democracy and set up a dictatorship in Germany.

    Hitler decided to open the new Reichstag with a stage show at the old Garrison Church in Potsdam, where the great emperor Frederick the Great was buried. Again with cunning symbolism, March 21 was chosen as the date of the ceremony, and this date was when Bismarck opened the first Reichstag in 1871. Everything was prepared to emphasize that the old Germany is integrated with this new Germany.

    The houses in the old capital were completely decorated with Swastika flags and red-black-white imperial flags. Elderly army officers in imperial uniforms at the church were next to the Nazis in black and brown clothing.

    While Hindenburg prayed for Hitler, saying, “to save the old soul of this famous temple from selfishness and party fights, thus bringing the nation together as a proud and free Germany,” Hitler kneeled and thanked the president for restoring the pride and honor of the motherland.

    Two days later, the Reichstag gathered at the Potsdam opera house and approved an Enabling Act, which gave Hitler unlimited authority, with an overwhelming majority of 441 against 94. German democracy took its last breath.

    By the summer of 1933, all political parties except the National Socialist Party were closed. The state’s and the party’s solidarity were officially confirmed by law in December. To emphasize this point, the “Hitler salute” was made mandatory while the national anthem played.

    In June 1934, the German nation accepted the dictation of Hitler by displaying no reaction to the sinister “Night of the Long Knives.” During the bloody weekend, many former comrades, including the ones who helped Hitler come to power, were also among the killed.

    Important Dates About Adolf Hitler

    April 20, 1889: Birth of Adolf Hitler

    Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in the remote Austrian hamlet of Braunau. At the age of fourteen, he lost his parents: a customs officer and a lady of peasant stock.

    February 24, 1920: Hitler presents the Nazi doctrine

    Adolf Hitler gave his first public presentation of Nazi doctrine to an audience of around 2,000 people at the Hofbräuhaus in Munich. It was his idea to form a Nazi party in order to establish a “racist national socialist state.” Five years later, in 1925, Hitler released his book program “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle or My Battle).

    January 30, 1933: Hitler becomes German Chancellor

    Hitler was named Reich Chancellor by the President of the German Republic, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, despite his weak credentials for the position. He had a bad attitude toward the Nazi party’s top dog, whom he called a “Bohemian corporal.” A new administration of “national concentration” was ordered into place by Hindenburg and given to Adolf Hitler to lead. Hitler became Chancellor, Göring became Prussia’s Interior Commissioner, and Frick became the Minister of the Interior, all key posts held by members of the Nazi party in the new administration. After Hindenburg passed away on August 2, 1934, Hitler took over as head of the German Reich.

    February 27, 1933: Reichstag fire

    There was a fire at the German parliament building during the night. A Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested near the inferno’s epicenter. As the new chancellor, Adolf Hitler promptly found him guilty, labeling the crime a communist conspiracy. The NSDAP used the incident as an excuse to wipe out communists in Germany. The next day saw the arrest of four thousand CP leaders.

    March 16, 1935: Hitler reinstated military service

    Adolf Hitler, the Chancellor of Germany, declared the reinstatement of mandatory military duty. Also, he wanted to double the strength of the army from 100,000 to 500,000. The Allies, including France, England, and the United States, watched helplessly as the Treaty of Versailles was broken for the first time. Hitler was now very open about his plans to build an aggressive and formidable army.

    September 15, 1935: Creation of the Nuremberg Laws

    Hitler’s first anti-Semitic measures were enacted at the Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. Among other things, Hitler stripped Jews of their German citizenship and outlawed their relationships with, and even friendships with, “Aryans.” These regulations were the first step in a process of exclusion that would ultimately lead to the “Final Solution” and the Nazis’ 30 months in power.

    March 7, 1936: Germany violates the Treaty of Versailles

    The Ruhr Neutral Zone was occupied by the Wehrmacht. German Chancellor Adolf Hitler proclaimed the Treaty of Versailles’s clauses null and unenforceable, including those that required Germany to demilitarize the Ruhr. Despite widespread indignation, Western nations did little to stop Germany from breaking international law. It had been a year since the unauthorized reinstatement of mandatory military duty. In 1938, when the Führer authorized an invasion of Austria, the agreements on the boundaries were once again disregarded.

    March 13, 1938: Hitler carried out the Anschluss

    Hitler authorized an early morning invasion of Austria after the forced resignation of the Austrian government. The Austrians applauded the Reich’s troops, who quickly and easily took control of the land. The German chancellor marched through his hometown, Braunau am Inn. In the guise of the “Anschluss,” the “attachment,” Hitler announced the reunification of Austria and Germany.

    This reunion between the two nations, outlawed under the treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain, was attempted as early as 1934 but failed under the threat of Italy, and still the Western democracies did not respond. In a referendum that Hitler orchestrated, the people of Germany and Austria overwhelmingly voted in favor of the annexation. As the Nazis moved Austria to the eastern side of the board, it became known as the “Ostmark,” or eastern march of the Reich.

    September 30, 1938: Signing of the Munich Agreement

    At midnight, in Munich, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and the British and French prime ministers, Chamberlain and Daladier, signed an agreement settling the status of Czechoslovakia. France and Britain caved in to German demands after twelve hours of discussions in order to prevent a new war in Europe. Despite its reluctance, the Czechoslovak government ultimately caved in to the demands of the major nations and admitted that their country had violated the Treaty of Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

    The gathering was a huge success for Germany. The following day, Hitler invaded the Sudetenland, starting the process of demolishing Central Europe’s lone democracy. Over time, the Munich Agreement came to represent the inability of European democracy to effectively counter Nazism.

    August 23, 1939: The German-Soviet Pact

    In Moscow, the Soviet Union and Germany signed a 10-year no-aggression deal. Their sphere of influence over Eastern Europe was allocated according to a covert system. Hitler declared war on Poland on September 1, having secured the Soviet Union’s neutrality in the process. Stalin then proceeded to conquer Romania, the Baltic States, and Finland as a result. When Hitler attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, he violated this treaty.

    September 1, 1939: The Wehrmacht invades Poland

    Hitler invaded Poland 20 years after the conclusion of World War I, a conflict that many survivors hoped would be the “la der des ders” (the final one). The next day, both Britain and France declared war on Germany. World War II had officially begun, and before it ended in 1945, it had claimed the lives of almost fifty million people. Poland’s antiquated military would be quickly defeated. During the Nazi occupation, Poland’s situation was especially grim.

    May 10, 1940: Hitler invades Belgium

    After France and England declared war on Germany, it took Germany 7 months to break the western front. In this way, the Führer ended the “phony war” by unleashing his army against the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. 8 to 10 million Belgians and Frenchmen took to the highways in a matter of days. On May 15 and May 27, respectively, the Dutch and Belgian armies capitulated. On June 14, the Germans invaded Paris, prompting Marshal Pétain to request an armistice, which was agreed on June 22.

    June 22, 1941: Operation Barbarossa in the USSR

    The Soviet Union was invaded by German forces. Barbarossa was the codename for this military mission. Even after being warned by his secret agencies, Stalin did not believe Hitler would violate the non-aggression agreement they had struck two years previously. Winston Churchill, the British prime minister and an outspoken opponent of Bolshevism, quickly declared his support for the Soviet Union. Despite early success against a weakened Red Army, the Wehrmacht was unable to advance on Moscow due to the onset of winter.

    The Nazis conducted a considerably bloodier war in the Soviet Union than they did in the West because they saw the Slavs as subhuman and communism as their major opponent. Inciting more national pride among all Russians was exactly the wrong move.

    July 20, 1944: Assassination attempt against Hitler

    The “Führer” was spared a murder attempt by the German military aristocracy while attending a conference at the headquarters in Rastenburg. The Home Army’s Chief of Staff, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, plotted the offensive to either reinstate the monarchy or establish a conservative dictatorship. He detonates the device himself by sliding a suitcase full of explosives beneath the conference table. However, the lucky break came when someone shifted the luggage. It exploded around noon, far from Hitler. His wounds were minor. Himmler took over after Stauffenberg’s execution that same night.

    30 April 1945: Hitler commits suicide

    Hitler and his lover Eva Braun killed themselves in their bunker on April 30, 1945, as Russian troops were getting close to Berlin.

    References

    1. Aigner, Dietrich (1985). “Hitler’s ultimate aims – a programme of world dominion?”. In Koch, H. W. (ed.). Aspects of the Third Reich. London: MacMillan. ISBN 978-0-312-05726-8.
    2. Doyle, D (February 2005). “Adolf Hitler’s medical care”. Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. 35 (1): 75–82. PMID 15825245.
    3. Bauer, Yehuda (2000). Rethinking the Holocaust. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-300-08256-2.
    4. Beevor, Antony (2002). Berlin: The Downfall 1945. London: Viking-Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-670-03041-5.
  • Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman: Early Life, Discoveries and Inventions

    Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman: Early Life, Discoveries and Inventions

  • Enrico Fermi: Biography, Discoveries, and Awards

    Enrico Fermi: Biography, Discoveries, and Awards

    Among the 20th century physicists, there were people more creative than Enrico Fermi; one or two of them thought more deeply, and a few were more skilled in mathematics. But Enrico Fermi was the best problem solver of them, with his amazing ability to see the essence of any physics problem. He was also the last person to reach the highest level in both theoretical and experimental fields.

    The invention of the atomic bomb

    His reaction to the explosion test of the first atomic bomb shows these qualities. Fermi was the scientist in charge of the physical concepts developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which served as the research and design center for the nuclear weapon development program known as the “Manhattan Project“. He played an important role both in these concepts that led to the making of the atomic bomb and also in the construction of the actual bomb. Many of those at Los Alamos saw him as a prophet to be consulted in any difficult problem of theory, experiment, or computation. Nevertheless, he never made an engraved quote to honor the memories of the test explosion of the atomic bomb on July 16, 1945. However, there is an interesting story.

    J. Robert Oppenheimer’s immediate response to this event as director of the Manhattan Project is the most well-known. When he saw the explosion light up the sky, he remembered a line from the Hindu inscription Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu said to the Princess: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” On the other hand, the head of the test, Kenneth Bainbridge, summarized the same event differently: “Now, we are all sons of bitches.” While those present on the test side were feeling emotions ranging from fear to pride, the always pragmatic Fermi was seen breaking down a sheet of paper to find a quick and simple way to measure the impact of the explosion.

    When the shock wave reached his location after 40 seconds, it blew the pieces around. He calmly observed how far the pieces flew, then referred to a simple chart he had previously prepared, took out the spreadsheet, and made his prediction about the size of the atomic explosion. Fermi’s ability to calculate the dimensions of any physical phenomenon was legendary, and as the detailed measurements show later, this was no exception.

    Who was Enrico Fermi?

    The first nuclear explosion happened on July 16, 1945,
    The first nuclear explosion happened on July 16, 1945, at 05:30:45 am was the beginning of the Atomic Age. Enrico Fermi and J. Oppenheimer observed the explosion in a bunker 16 km away from the event. The only known monochrome image of the incident was taken by civil mechanical engineer Jack Aeby.

    Enrico Fermi was born on September 29, 1901, in Rome and grew up in an ordinary family. His father worked on the state railways; his mother was a teacher. Fermi’s extraordinary abilities were quickly noticed, and he was awarded a scholarship to study at the Scuola Normale Superiore at the elite university of Italy, Pisa. Here, he quickly overshadowed not only other students but also teachers. At that time, Italy was relatively weak in physics. This means that Fermi was a self-taught student. He has made it his style to try to find a simple solution to a problem by figuring out what the main points are.

    This approach was opposed to the dominant German school of that time, which was based heavily on mathematics. After graduation, Fermi quickly solved many important problems in theoretical physics, one of which was the subject of statistical mechanics, which incorporated the approaches of the new quantum mechanics. This success attracted the attention of physics professor Orso Corbino in Rome. He was a much older man than Fermi, who was looking for the person of his dreams to run the world-class physics institute.

    Corbino, a politically strong man, saw his dreams come true in Fermi. In an unprecedented fashion in Italy, Fermi helped him join the theoretical physics chair in Rome when he was 26 years old.

    Enrico Fermi went far beyond Corbino’s dreams by attracting visitors from all over Europe and developing young Italian talents. Fermi’s best-known contribution to theoretical physics was made in 1934, when he introduced the theory of weak interactions in particle physics. It has been known for several years that nuclear decays that release electrons do not seem to comply with the energy conservation law. This principle was an important enigma as it was the cornerstone of physics at the time. Niels Bohr argued that conservation might not be so absolute. On the other hand, Wolfgang Pauli thought that it was absolute, and the lost energy was carried by a new particle called the neutrino. But how?

    Theory and experiments

    Enrico Fermi, Werner Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli are on a boat in Lake Como
    Three young physics geniuses Enrico Fermi, Werner Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli are on a boat in Lake Como during the physics session held in 1927. Pauli, turned 27, was the oldest among them.

    In 1934, Fermi showed how this phenomenon could occur. He called Pauli’s unknown particle the neutrino and suggested the existence of a new kind of interaction in which a neutron decays and dissociates into protons, electrons, and neutrinos. He showed the possible paths the interaction could take, calculated its size, and explained the results. At a time when the only two known forces were gravity and electromagnetism, this was a revolutionary concept; it is still seen as a milestone in physics.

    While continuing to work as a theorist, he formed a tightly connected group of experiments, most of whom will continue on their way to distinguished careers. The original group of Edoardo Amaldi, Bruno Pontecorvo, Franco Rasetti, and Emilio Segre took part in the most important experimental initiative of Fermi. Until the early 1930s, scattering from nuclear targets was done by bombarding the rays of alpha particles (i.e., helium nuclei) from radioactive decay using a technique led by Ernest Rutherford.

    But in 1932, James Chadwick’s discovery of the neutron in Cambridge offered a new opportunity for bombardment. Focusing on the neutron beam was more difficult, but the fact that the electrical charges were neutral meant that neutrons would not be pushed away in the nuclear bombardment. Therefore, they were more likely to reach the target. Fermi now had an important insight.

    The possibility of a nuclear transformation was expected to increase with the increasing energy of the bombarding neutron, but he realized that the opposite was true. The slower the incoming neutrons are, the more time it takes for them to pass through the target nucleus, and the greater the chances of a reaction. This new system has led to several important discoveries, some by his group and some by other scientists. One of them was the invention of nuclear fission in 1938.

    Enrico Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work in 1938 and went directly from Sweden to the USA. The decision to migrate was wise, as his wife was Jewish and brutal race laws were introduced in Italy under Mussolini. The departure of Fermi determined the end of an era in Italian physics, but now this area has taken its place in the mainstream of the country, even though it lost its biggest practitioner.

    Enrico Fermi and the world’s first nuclear reactor

    Chicago Pile-1 is the world's first nuclear reactor.
    Chicago Pile-1 is the world’s first nuclear reactor. It was founded in 1942 on the indoor tennis court beneath the out-of-service west open tribune of Stagg Field Stadium at the University of Chicago. It consists of uranium pallets separated from each other with graphite blocks and intended to produce neutrons.

    Enrico Fermi’s neutrino research was increasingly turning toward military purposes, but he continued it in his new homeland. He oversaw the construction of the first nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago in 1942, and he was still working when criticality — the point at which a reactor can sustain a fission chain reaction on its own — was achieved. He then transferred his work to Los Alamos, but at the end of the war, he returned to the University of Chicago and performed activities in other fields, such as astrophysics. He also became the leading name in emerging high-energy physics.

    He continued his legendary career as both a theorist and an experimental worker. He attracted many talented young American physicists to Chicago. In 1954, Fermi was diagnosed with stomach cancer while he was at the summit of his power and died shortly after the exploratory surgery, which showed how the cancer had spread. His death caused sadness all over the world. The largest high-energy facility in the USA was named Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). More importantly, all the particles with a half-odd integer spin (neutron, proton, electron, and neutrino) are now called fermion particles.

    Bibliography:

    1. Hewlett, Richard G.; Anderson, Oscar E. (1962). The New World, 1939–1946 (PDF). University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-520-07186-5. OCLC 637004643.
    2. Hewlett, Richard G.; Duncan, Francis (1969). Atomic Shield, 1947–1952. A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-520-07187-2. OCLC 3717478.