BERTHA VON SUTTNER

Born: 9 June 1843, Goltz-Kinský Palace, Prague, Czechia

Died: 21 June 1914 (age 71 years), Vienna, Austria

The first woman to be awarded the Peace Prize, wrote one of the nineteenth century’s most influential books

The year 1905 marks the centenary of Bertha von Suttnerís Nobel Peace Prize Award, a welcome opportunity to commemorate this very remarkable Austrian novelist, early peace activist and first woman to receive this prestigious award. With the support of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs a variety of events, ranging from symposia to concerts, lectures and an exhibition, will recall and extensively explore the life and work of Bertha von Suttner. Events will take place in Austria as well as in many countries abroad to commemorate Suttnerís outstanding commitment for peace, exemplified by her groundbreaking novel Die Waffen nieder (Lay Down Your Arms) which became a world success in 1889 and paved the way for her Nobel Prize Award in 1905. Peace and human rights questions are just as urgent today as they were one hundred years ago, when Bertha von Suttner addressed them in her books. These questions will play a prominent role in the commemoratory events of 2005. Books and the commemoration of positive historic role models cannot prevent armed conflicts but the courage and foresight of personalities such as Bertha von Suttner do deserve our attention ñ if we want to make a difference.

For the Austrian Foreign Ministry this anniversary presented a welcome opportunity to ask the distinguished journalist and author Hella Pick, who was born in Austria and fled to London after Hitler take-over, to write an essay on the remarkable life of Baroness von Suttner.

Lay Down Your Arms. That was the superficially simple and yet inherently complex message that Bertha von Suttner battled for decades to translate into an effective movement to end military conflict and secure the peaceful resolution of international disputes. Instead of glorifying war, she demanded of decision-makers, adopt pacifism as a noble cause, settle disputes by negotiation and in international law courts, and in place of soldiers hold up the peacemakers as heroes. She never gave up the struggle. Indeed her confidence in the cause of peace was rarely dented even though wars punctuated much of her life and she knew in the weeks before her death in 1914 that the odds were stacked against her; that a World War had become virtually inevitable.

In 1905 she received the Nobel Peace Prize which had been launched in 1901. She was the first woman to be recognised in this way; indeed there have been only six other women in all the years that followed to be singled out for this treasured award. Bertha von Suttner had certainly earned the prize. Her contribution to the Peace Movement had been enormous.

Much to her disappointment, the Norwegian Committee passed her over until 1905 when some of her admirers shamed its members into recognising her immense contribution to the peace movement. She had turned the annual Congresses of the Peace-Movement into major events on the international calendar and had been the moving spirit behind the creation of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. She had travelled far and wide to plead with world leaders for their support, had made countless speeches and written millions of words.

By the time the Nobel Prize came to her she was 62 years old, widowed and with little money. She could have treated this distinction as a crowning point of her endeavours. But in fact she used it as a mere staging post in an ongoing, ever more passionate crusade to bring the world to its senses and avert a catastrophic war. She died in 1914 a few days before the outbreak of a world war that seemed to deny everything that she had held precious.

Yet had she still been alive this doughty fighter would not have given up. On the contrary true to character she would have reinforced her efforts to create a powerful peace movement and to develop international institutions capable of maintaining peace. Today she would applaud the existence of the United Nations, the European Union, the Council of Europe, the International Court in the Hague and War Crimes Tribunals as fi rm evidence that her ideas are gaining ground.

Every generation produces a handful of visionaries who impose themselves on societies. Bertha von Suttner undoubtedly belonged to this select group of men and women. Like her near contemporary, Theodor Herzl, she had a dream and like him also had the common sense to realise that the movers and shakers of this world had to be enlisted if any of it was to be translated into reality. Also like Herzl, Suttner lacked financial resources and was always in search of money to finance her endeavours.

Often ridiculed in her own time, Suttnerís near-religious commitment to pacifism was rooted in a touching interpretation of Darwinís theory of evolution. Still a relatively new concept, she had convinced herself that the laws of evolution would inexorably steer mankind into a better future. One of the eternal truth she declared in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, is that the future will always be one degree better than the past. The world is not static. Happiness is created and developed in peace and one of the eternal rights is the individual right to

live… It is sanctified by the ancient commandment ‘thou shalt not kill. Even if up to the present time the military organisation of our society has been founded on a denial of the possibility of peace, a contempt for the value of human life and an acceptance of the urge to kill, it would

be utterly wrong to deny the possibility of change. The old system, she asserted, was doomed to failure. Suttner, often caricatured as die Friedens bertha, was utterly convinced that judicial peace between nations would eventually become securely embedded in the conduct of international relations. As she saw it technical inventions, improved

communications, economic interdependence were part of a process of internationalisation and unification that would win out over war and  the destruction of humanity and would be transformed into visible, living and effective forms of peaceful management of international relations. Having come to know the United States and some of its leaders, she became firmly convinced that American idealism was so potent that the country could be counted on to become the leading champion for world-wide change for the better.

It is easy to be cynical about Suttner belief that the forces of good were certain, eventually, to vanquish evil. Indeed in her own time, she was more often ridiculed than followed or admired. Yet few who came into contact with her could fail to recognise that here was an extraordinary human being. Even though she was the product of 19th century Habsburg aristocracy brought up in the conventions of that society, in middle age she had stepped far outside that mould to turn into an indefatigable peace campaigner. As a young woman she would have been the last to think that she would at the age of 46 emerge into public life and become widely known throughout Europe and the United States. Nor did she envisage that she would fight against anti-Semitism and for women emancipation and would write countless articles and a long series of novels, including her bestseller Die Waffen nieder! (LayDown Your Arms!) using her writing gifts and vivid imagination to drive home her message against the use of force and the horrors of war.

The arguments that Suttner used to underpin her ideas were far ahead of her time. She wanted European nations to unite for peace; she argued for free trade associations, for limits to national sovereignty by allowing international law to determine violations of human rights. Above all she understood that extremism in all its manifestations, even in religion, poisons society and must be opposed. Daringly in the context of her background and her times, Bertha also made herself an advocate of women rights, arguing that they deserved full equality in society and in their relationships with men. She thought that women would instinctively make themselves champions of peace.

Curiously for an individual with such progressive ideas, Suttner never displayed much understanding for democratic ideas, and did not see that the old order was collapsing. Her mind-set was such that she clung to monarchs and their power brokers and to the intellectual elites but felt little need to bring her message direct to the grassroots. She never developed into a populist.

Even though she was born Countess Kinsky, she was nevertheless treated as an outsider by the Kinsky family and failed in her many efforts to be accepted by them as an equal. Her father, a Field-Marshall, had died before her birth. Her mother was only a cavalry officers daughter and therefore carried no weight in the family. Moreover she lost in gaming most of the little money she had. Bertha was an attractive young woman, spirited and resourceful and even with limited resources always well dressed. Yet a number of attempts to marry her off to wealthy suitors came to nothing. Indeed there were early signs that Bertha would try to compensate for her lowly state within the Habsburg Empireís aristocratic establishment by a show of independence. She determined to educate herself, learning languages, training her voice in then mistaken – hope of becoming a singer, reading widely and travelling as much as her mother’s limited funds allowed.

Still single at the age of 30, Bertha decided that she had no alternative but to do what was expected of women in her predicament which was to become a governess. Thus in 1883 she accepted a post to look after the four young daughters of the wealthy, well connected Baron Karl Gundaccar Freiherr von Suttner.

Her arrival in the sumptuous Suttner household in Vienna had unforeseen consequences. The Suttners also had three sons, among them Arthur, a young man of 23 years who seems to have charmed all who came into contact with him. Bertha and Arthur fell in love; but tried to keep it secret in part because of their difference in age but mainly because it was clear to both that Baron Suttner would not permit a match with the governess ñ even if that governess was a Countess Kinsky.

For three years, the pair maintained their secret idyll. But then Arthur’s mother divined the relationship between her son and the governess, and made it clear to Bertha that she must find another post, as far away as possible from Vienna. The solution came after Baroness Suttner saw an advertisement for a Secretary/Housekeeper in Paris to a “very wealthy, highly cultivated gentleman.”

Among Arthur’s close friends and collaborators there were several Jews. But this was not the only reason why they linked the eradication of antisemitism with the pursuit of disarmament. Already when the couple were living in the Caucasus, they had been deeply shocked by the wave of pogroms in Russia. When they returned to Austria they saw that anti-Semitism was not only directed against the impoverished Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe but also against the assimilated Jewish intelligentsia. Given their liberal outlook and crusading spirit, they decided that the fight against anti-Semitism required an organisational approach just as much as the campaign to convince the world of the virtues of pacifism. Bertha however left it primarily to her husband to set up in Vienna the so-called “anti association” (Anti-Verein).

Launched in 1891 it had as its sponsors a group of prominent Austrians, both Jews and non-Jews. The same kind of optimism that guided the Suttners in their pacifism also led them to believe that anti-Semitism in Austria was in its death throes and that the “anti-association” would merely speed up a process that had already begun. This assumption was all the more surprising since Vienna’s political scene at that time was dominated by men such as Georg Ritter von Schoenerer and Karl Lueger who coupled their far-right nationalism with calls for racial purity and outspoken anti-Semitism. Bertha thought that publication of a journal devoted to exposing the wrongs of anti-Semitism would prove a useful tool for the “anti-association”. Far and wide, she appealed for money. Finally a sponsor ñ Baron Friedrich Leitenberger ñ was found and in 1892, the weekly “Freies Blatt”

was launched. Theodor Herzl, invited to contribute, refused. He argued that the “anti-association” had arrived on the scene far too late. Though Herzl had not yet formed his ideas for the establishment of a Jewish state he had already concluded that anti-Semitism had to be fought with far more radical measures than the Suttners, with their belief in the persuasiveness of the written word, envisaged. After the publication of Herzl’s “Der Judenstaat” (the Jewish State) in 1896, Herzl was even more discouraging about the Suttners “anti-association.” He qualified the group’s activities as comical, and though he expressed admiration for Bertha, he thought she was utterly mistaken in the way she and her husband were tackling the anti-Semitism issue. Even she recognised that their work might be futile after the Emperor Franz Joseph yielded to pressure and endorsed Karl Lueger’s controversial election as Mayor of Vienna.

The Freies Blatt ceased publication in 1896 and in 1900 the Anti-Verein, having run out of money, was dissolved. Arthur turned into a convinced Zionist. Bertha was far more lukewarm in her reaction to Herzl’s Zionism, though she tried to help him when he sought an audience with the Russian Tsar. She recognised that Herzl was trying to create a better world. But she regarded nationalism as the arch-enemy of peace. Rather than encouraging the creation of a Jewish state, Bertha leaned towards

assimilation as a solution to the Jewish question. This was also a reflection of her confidence that a new breed of Europeans, committed to liberal ideas and peace, were certain to emerge and triumph. She touched on these ideas in a couple of her later novels.

The award seemed to reinvigorate Bertha. She put all her energies into the search for high level support for the peace movement and above all for more money to fund its activities. She complained that the Rothschilds were funding all manner of benevolent activities, but showed no generosity to the pacifists. And she looked to Andrew Carnegie as a replacement for Alfred Nobel to provide financial backing for the peace movement. She toured Europe, giving lectures, attending congresses, writing, talking to the press.

In 1911, deeply depressed by the threatening situation in the Balkans, she decided on another lecture tour in the United States. The faltering peace movement needed moral and financial help from America. Though restricted, because of her stoutness, in her physical movements

she toured across the United States, and was buoyed by large audiences

and the warm reception she was given. They called her an “angel of peace.” On her return to Europe Bertha could not ignore the signs of impending conflict in the Balkans. Yet she never despaired of her cause. On her 70th birthday her close friends organised a celebration. But there were no official awards in recognition of her work and the Kinsky family maintained its distance. Suttner herself marked the birthday with an optimistic article in the Neue Freie Presse in which she argued that the Balkan war might well be the last war of all. She failed to realise that the Habsburg monarchy was in its death throes. She emphasised what happiness it was to be alive and wrote that she regretted the inevitable approach of death.

Bertha von Suttner ignored sign of ill-health and continued to write and even to travel and attend meetings until shortly before her death on June 21, 1914. In a final letter to Alfred Fried she praised him for the preparations he had made for the next peace congress. I congratulate us and pacifism “it will be a brilliant congress!” Delirious in her last hours, she cried: ‘Lay down your Arms! Tell it to all!’ (Die Waffen nieder! Sagt es Allen!)

The post BERTHA VON SUTTNER-The first woman to be awarded the Peace Prize, wrote one of the nineteenth century’s most influential books appeared first on Narvilnews.

Henry Dunant-Nobel Peace Prize in 1901

Henry Dunant was born on 8 May 1828 in Geneva. From his native town and his solid middle-class family background he acquired breeding, polish, a wide knowledge of the world and a strict Protestant education. His mother, a sister of the celebrated physicist Daniel Colladon, exerted a great influence over him, as he himself acknowledged in his Memoirs.

His father, Jean-Jacques Dunant, was a merchant who was also a magistrate in the Geneva Court of Wards, and from whom he learnt at an early age to do good. On leaving school, Dunant spent some time in a bank, learning the business. Already in 1849, under the influence of a movement known as the “A wakening ” and moved by an ardent personal faith, he joined a group of young people of the Free Church and exchanged letters with similar groups in England, France, Germany, Holland and the United States. He at once perceived the possibility of an international and ecumenical movement, and in 1855, with friends who had come to Paris for the Universal Exhibition, founded the World Alliance of Young Men’s Christian Associations, better known as the YMCA.

As soon as he found a suitable opportunity, he left Geneva to seek his fortune in Algeria, conquered twenty years earlier by Louis-Philippe’s armies. He immediately fell under the fascination of that land, opened up to the spirit of enterprise, and crossed it in all directions observing everything with a singularly discerning eye. Going as far as Tunisia, he wrote about that country in a book to which he modestly gave the title ” Notice sur la Regence de Tunis ”, and in which the vivacity of his style is already apparent.  He devoted much diligence to the study of Islam and, unlike most Christians of his time, approached that religion, considered by some to be a heathen cult, with the utmost respect, not hiding the admiration which he felt for it in many regards. He went so far as to take lessons in Arabic and practised the difficult art of Arabic calligraphy. What is more, he developed a great affection for the people of North Africa, and when he undertook to set up in Algeria, not far from Mons-Djemila, a large agricultural estate, he vowed to himself that, on his property at least, he would see that Algerian workers were happy and well paid.

But Dunant had not taken into account the antagonism of the authorities. The company which he founded in 1858 under the name of Societe Anonyme des Moulins de Mons-Djemila certainly possessed all that was needed to make it a success: the location was judiciously chosen, capital was adequate, and the mill itself was fitted with the most modern equipment. All that remained to be done was to obtain the land on which the wheat was to be grown. But now, to Dunant’s dismay, the authorities turned a deaf ear. In vain he harried them, went from one department to another; everywhere he ran up against blunt opposition. In desperation, with the intention of approaching higher-placed officials, he went to Paris, spending all his time outside the offices of various ministers, but there, too, he was put off with vague answers.

Still higher up, there was only the Emperor himself to turn to. But Napoleon ill was already far from Paris. Taking up the cause of Italian independence, at the head of his French army, he was already fighting the Austrian forces under the command of their youthful Emperor Franz-Josef. Dunant decided that he too would go to Lombardy. When he arrived there, the region was devastated by war; several battles had taken place, at Montebello, Palestro, Magenta, but everyone felt that the clash that was to settle the war was imminent. This decisive battle, the bloodiest carnage in Europe since Waterloo, broke out on 24 June 1859, not far from Solferino. Dunant was not far away and, drawn in his carriage at a fast trot, could distinctly hear the gunfire. A few minutes later, he was to receive the greatest shock of his life. As night fell, he entered Castiglione. The village was jammed, in great confusion, with a large number of the wounded from the neighbouring battlefield. Nine thousand were crowded in the streets, squares and churches. For Dunant, without any warning, it was the first, brutal encounter with the horrors of war.

Overwhelmed by the sight, Dunant alighted from the carriage, went through the town and climbed the road leading to the main church, the Chiesa Maggiore. All down the slope, in a channel dug to collect rainwater, blood flowed without stopping, for days and days.

Dunant entered the church. It was filled with wounded troops, some lying inert, some moaning, others screaming with pain. The nave was alive with clouds of flies and reeked of a nauseous smell compounded of excretion and gangrene.  Although lacking any medical knowledge, Dunant all the same attempted to clean the wounds, to make up dressings and fix up some sort of couch for those wounded who had been flung down unceremoniously on the stony floor. They were all tortured by thirst. He got them some water to drink from the fountain. He listened to the last wishes of the dying, put his arm under their head and spoke a few words of comfort. He managed to persuade a number of the local women to help. They hesitated at first, reluctant to care for French soldiers, for they feared the Austrians would return in force and punish them for having assisted enemy troops. But Dunant persuaded them that suffering was the same for all people, that this was the only thing which mattered. Soon, the women, too, were repeating his words: Tutti fratelli.

In addition to compassion, Dunant felt growing in him another feeling: indignation. For he heard the same phrase crossing the lips of all those wounded men, whom he tended night and day: Ah! Sir, we fought well, and now we have been left to die. Dunant was shocked at the very idea of those men being deserted, forsaken. Only very occasionally would some mules be sent to fetch the wounded, a few at a time, from the battlefield. Those abandoned there were at the mercy of looters who, when darkness fell, would even strip them of their clothing, leaving them to die from exhaustion and thirst. Even the wounded lucky enough to be helped along by a compassionate comrade or those who were able to drag themselves to a spot where they hoped to find someone to care for them were not much better off. Dunant was in a good position to judge the situation. He found that there were only six French army doctors available for the nine thousand wounded in Castiglione, and to his horror he realized that this was no mere stroke of illfortune, but that it had always been so, that this monstruous disproportion between the number of troops and the medical services was due to the fact that the latter were so small and under-staffed that they were practically non-existent. A soldier who was not in a fit state to fight was not worth anything to anyone.

Henry Dunant’s business trip was a failure, for the meeting with Napoleon III he had hoped to arrange did not take place. Back in Paris, he resumed his struggle against the inertia he met with everywhere in government offices. Two years went by in this way, from one antechamber to another. Would the memory of Castiglione recede in the mists of time? Surely not, for he was haunted by the horror he had witnessed; it pursued him with a vague compulsion, as if he felt deep within himself that there was still something he had to do.

Dunant must have felt this loathing of war more than anyone else, and no one can read his book without sharing his feeling. But that was not the purpose he had in mind. His object was to stress all that which was odious in war: mobilizing soldiers, exposing  them to countless hardships and dangers, and then leaving them to die like cattle when enemy fire had rendered them helpless and unable to fight.

The recognized process towards the conclusion of a treaty is a diplomatic conference, and arranging for one to be held is not within the competence of ordinary citizens. It is necessary that the convocations be sent out by a government, and in this case it was the Swiss Government which declared itself willing to convene the conference, and not at Berne, Switzerland’s capital, but at Geneva, where the Red Cross was born. There still remained the business of creating a suitable atmosphere, stimulating the interest of government circles and persuading them to send to Geneva plenipotentiaries qualified to sign this new diplomatic instrument. This Dunant set out to do: the Germans were to a large extent already won over to his views, so it- was to France that he turned his attention. He was so eloquent for the cause that he was able to gain the support of the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, Drouyn de Lhuys. Instructions were sent to the French ambassadors to make known to the governments of the countries to which they were accredited that Napoleon III took a personal interest in the question of the neutrality of the Medical Services. It was sufficient to decide other countries in Europe.

Although Dunant did not take part officially in the international conferences which followed-except for the 1867 Paris Conference where he was rapporteur on the question of prisoners of warhe fought singly, against all obstacles, for the propagation of his ideas and for the protection, by diplomatic conventions or international agreements, of prisoners of war, of wounded and shipwrecked members of armed forces at sea and of certain categories of civilians. Many years were to go by before, without Dunant, all such objectives were achieved.

Dunant exerted so much activity and zeal that the French Government, which appeared at one time to have completely forgotten about the Geneva Convention, decided to publish its text. In particular, he multiplied his efforts to bring relief to the wounded. He actively took part in the despatch of ambulances by the French Society for the Relief of the Wounded towards the battlefields. As at Castiglione a dozen years before, he visited and brought comfort to the wounded transported back to Paris. He introduced the system of identification discs so that the dead might be identified, and busied himself with the question of granting belligerent status to irregular forces and mobile armed volunteers, who, he said, “wore tunics but no uniform, in order that they should not be shot as lawless armed peasants “. He was already seeking the acceptance of the protection of guerrilla troops.

During the Commune, Dunant displayed not only compassion, but also great bravery. With extraordinary courage, he rescued many victims from the claws of the Paris Federes, and risked his life crossing the lines to intercede with Monsieur Thiers, in order to prevent excesses which he feared the Versaillais would commit. Nevertheless, Dunant was the object of suspicion: who was this man? Was he a spy working for Germany, or was he a member of the” International “, one of those men whom all European Governments were seeking to arrest, imprison and execute? There was some confusion between the” International Working Men’s Associations ” and the word .. International ” qualifying the work of the Red Cross organization. The police could hardly be expected to make such subtle distinctions!

Dunant’s intuition was so perfect that he never went wrong. Yes, indeed, a court of arbitration shall be set up; a convention for prisoners of war shall be signed; the Jews shall go back to Palestine; the immortal works of world literature shall be translated into all languages-but what an exhausting struggle has first to be fought!

Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, born in Geneva on 8 May 1828, was the first child of a wealthy, religious, humanitarian and privileged household. (Note that although he was baptised Jean-Henri, the most common way that he wrote his name was « Henry ».) He seemed destined to become a priest, but he was so hopeless at French, mathematics and particularly Latin that this idea had to be abandoned.

As a young man, around 1848, Dunant took part in charitable work visiting the poor, the sick and prisoners in Geneva. To have more impact, the group of religiously committed young men formed themselves into the Union of Geneva. Similar groups were formed in France, Belgium and the United States. Dunant became the dynamic international secretary of this global movement. It was he who wrote the charter of what became, in 1855, the Young Men’s Christian Association, whose headquarters is still located in Geneva today. He caught up with the Emperor in northern Italy on Friday, 24 June 1859- – the day of the Battle of Solferino. On the battlefield the Italo-French army faced the Austrians. The carnage was frightful : it is estimated that there were some 40,000 casualties. Many were left to die of wounds, thirst and neglect in the following days.

It will take some considerable time before the studies currently being made will throw an accurate light on Dunant’s intellectual activity during this period of his life. We shall restrict ourselves, for the moment, to considering the fruits of that activity at Heiden, at the end of his span of life, in the radiance of a capacity of thought brought to full maturity, the thought of a genius transcending the struggles, hopes and vicissitudes of his time, in order to propose to the world the only possible solutions that could ensure its survival when, out of the titanic confrontations of the twentieth century, mankind awakens to the unity and solidarity of human beings and gives birth at last to Peace.

What an extraordinary existence was Dunant’s! First, thirty four years of a life of inner preparation, of study, of meditation, of activities quietly carried out without any external show, followed by five years, from the publication of Un Souvenir de Solferino to the bankruptcy of the Credit Genevois, of celebrity and success; and then twenty-eight years of poverty, wandering and seclusion, ending with fifteen years of renown, during which he never quitted his room in Heiden’s hospital. In 1901 he was awarded the first Nobel Prize for Peace and his work was thus acknowledged for all time. He died at Heiden on 30 October 1910. It would not be correct to speak of his death as an ending. It would seem rather that his spirit has been released to act still more, throughout the whole world. He continues to arouse in men a vocation, to serve as an example, to rescue the suffering. Dunant’s action is every day repeated, in countless places, where men and women tend human beings in distress, caring not where they are from or under whom they serve, but only for the nature of their suffering.

The post Henry Dunant-Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 appeared first on Narvilnews.

Henry Dunant

_born May 8, 1828, Geneva, Switzerland

—died October 30, 1910, Heiden

Henry Dunant was born on 8 May 1828 in Geneva. From his native town and his solid middle-class family background he acquired breeding, polish, a wide knowledge of the world and a strict Protestant education. His mother, a sister of the celebrated physicist Daniel Colladon, exerted a great influence over him, as he himself acknowledged in his Memoirs.

His father, Jean-Jacques Dunant, was a merchant who was also a magistrate in the Geneva Court of Wards, and from whom he learnt at an early age to do good. On leaving school, Dunant spent some time in a bank, learning the business. Already in 1849, under the influence of a movement known as the “A wakening ” and moved by an ardent personal faith, he joined a group of young people of the Free Church and exchanged letters with similar groups in England, France, Germany, Holland and the United States. He at once perceived the possibility of an international and ecumenical movement, and in 1855, with friends who had come to Paris for the Universal Exhibition, founded the World Alliance of Young Men’s Christian Associations, better known as the YMCA.

As soon as he found a suitable opportunity, he left Geneva to seek his fortune in Algeria, conquered twenty years earlier by Louis-Philippe’s armies. He immediately fell under the fascination of that land, opened up to the spirit of enterprise, and crossed it in all directions observing everything with a singularly discerning eye. Going as far as Tunisia, he wrote about that country in a book to which he modestly gave the title ” Notice sur la Regence de Tunis ”, and in which the vivacity of his style is already apparent.  He devoted much diligence to the study of Islam and, unlike most Christians of his time, approached that religion, considered by some to be a heathen cult, with the utmost respect, not hiding the admiration which he felt for it in many regards. He went so far as to take lessons in Arabic and practised the difficult art of Arabic calligraphy. What is more, he developed a great affection for the people of North Africa, and when he undertook to set up in Algeria, not far from Mons-Djemila, a large agricultural estate, he vowed to himself that, on his property at least, he would see that Algerian workers were happy and well paid.

But Dunant had not taken into account the antagonism of the authorities. The company which he founded in 1858 under the name of Societe Anonyme des Moulins de Mons-Djemila certainly possessed all that was needed to make it a success: the location was judiciously chosen, capital was adequate, and the mill itself was fitted with the most modern equipment. All that remained to be done was to obtain the land on which the wheat was to be grown. But now, to Dunant’s dismay, the authorities turned a deaf ear. In vain he harried them, went from one department to another; everywhere he ran up against blunt opposition. In desperation, with the intention of approaching higher-placed officials, he went to Paris, spending all his time outside the offices of various ministers, but there, too, he was put off with vague answers.

Still higher up, there was only the Emperor himself to turn to. But Napoleon ill was already far from Paris. Taking up the cause of Italian independence, at the head of his French army, he was already fighting the Austrian forces under the command of their youthful Emperor Franz-Josef. Dunant decided that he too would go to Lombardy. When he arrived there, the region was devastated by war; several battles had taken place, at Montebello, Palestro, Magenta, but everyone felt that the clash that was to settle the war was imminent. This decisive battle, the bloodiest carnage in Europe since Waterloo, broke out on 24 June 1859, not far from Solferino. Dunant was not far away and, drawn in his carriage at a fast trot, could distinctly hear the gunfire. A few minutes later, he was to receive the greatest shock of his life. As night fell, he entered Castiglione. The village was jammed, in great confusion, with a large number of the wounded from the neighbouring battlefield. Nine thousand were crowded in the streets, squares and churches. For Dunant, without any warning, it was the first, brutal encounter with the horrors of war.

Overwhelmed by the sight, Dunant alighted from the carriage, went through the town and climbed the road leading to the main church, the Chiesa Maggiore. All down the slope, in a channel dug to collect rainwater, blood flowed without stopping, for days and days.

Dunant entered the church. It was filled with wounded troops, some lying inert, some moaning, others screaming with pain. The nave was alive with clouds of flies and reeked of a nauseous smell compounded of excretion and gangrene.  Although lacking any medical knowledge, Dunant all the same attempted to clean the wounds, to make up dressings and fix up some sort of couch for those wounded who had been flung down unceremoniously on the stony floor. They were all tortured by thirst. He got them some water to drink from the fountain. He listened to the last wishes of the dying, put his arm under their head and spoke a few words of comfort. He managed to persuade a number of the local women to help. They hesitated at first, reluctant to care for French soldiers, for they feared the Austrians would return in force and punish them for having assisted enemy troops. But Dunant persuaded them that suffering was the same for all people, that this was the only thing which mattered. Soon, the women, too, were repeating his words: Tutti fratelli.

In addition to compassion, Dunant felt growing in him another feeling: indignation. For he heard the same phrase crossing the lips of all those wounded men, whom he tended night and day: Ah! Sir, we fought well, and now we have been left to die. Dunant was shocked at the very idea of those men being deserted, forsaken. Only very occasionally would some mules be sent to fetch the wounded, a few at a time, from the battlefield. Those abandoned there were at the mercy of looters who, when darkness fell, would even strip them of their clothing, leaving them to die from exhaustion and thirst. Even the wounded lucky enough to be helped along by a compassionate comrade or those who were able to drag themselves to a spot where they hoped to find someone to care for them were not much better off. Dunant was in a good position to judge the situation. He found that there were only six French army doctors available for the nine thousand wounded in Castiglione, and to his horror he realized that this was no mere stroke of illfortune, but that it had always been so, that this monstruous disproportion between the number of troops and the medical services was due to the fact that the latter were so small and under-staffed that they were practically non-existent. A soldier who was not in a fit state to fight was not worth anything to anyone.

Henry Dunant’s business trip was a failure, for the meeting with Napoleon III he had hoped to arrange did not take place. Back in Paris, he resumed his struggle against the inertia he met with everywhere in government offices. Two years went by in this way, from one antechamber to another. Would the memory of Castiglione recede in the mists of time? Surely not, for he was haunted by the horror he had witnessed; it pursued him with a vague compulsion, as if he felt deep within himself that there was still something he had to do.

Dunant must have felt this loathing of war more than anyone else, and no one can read his book without sharing his feeling. But that was not the purpose he had in mind. His object was to stress all that which was odious in war: mobilizing soldiers, exposing  them to countless hardships and dangers, and then leaving them to die like cattle when enemy fire had rendered them helpless and unable to fight.

The recognized process towards the conclusion of a treaty is a diplomatic conference, and arranging for one to be held is not within the competence of ordinary citizens. It is necessary that the convocations be sent out by a government, and in this case it was the Swiss Government which declared itself willing to convene the conference, and not at Berne, Switzerland’s capital, but at Geneva, where the Red Cross was born. There still remained the business of creating a suitable atmosphere, stimulating the interest of government circles and persuading them to send to Geneva plenipotentiaries qualified to sign this new diplomatic instrument. This Dunant set out to do: the Germans were to a large extent already won over to his views, so it- was to France that he turned his attention. He was so eloquent for the cause that he was able to gain the support of the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, Drouyn de Lhuys. Instructions were sent to the French ambassadors to make known to the governments of the countries to which they were accredited that Napoleon III took a personal interest in the question of the neutrality of the Medical Services. It was sufficient to decide other countries in Europe.

Although Dunant did not take part officially in the international conferences which followed-except for the 1867 Paris Conference where he was rapporteur on the question of prisoners of warhe fought singly, against all obstacles, for the propagation of his ideas and for the protection, by diplomatic conventions or international agreements, of prisoners of war, of wounded and shipwrecked members of armed forces at sea and of certain categories of civilians. Many years were to go by before, without Dunant, all such objectives were achieved.

Dunant exerted so much activity and zeal that the French Government, which appeared at one time to have completely forgotten about the Geneva Convention, decided to publish its text. In particular, he multiplied his efforts to bring relief to the wounded. He actively took part in the despatch of ambulances by the French Society for the Relief of the Wounded towards the battlefields. As at Castiglione a dozen years before, he visited and brought comfort to the wounded transported back to Paris. He introduced the system of identification discs so that the dead might be identified, and busied himself with the question of granting belligerent status to irregular forces and mobile armed volunteers, who, he said, “wore tunics but no uniform, in order that they should not be shot as lawless armed peasants “. He was already seeking the acceptance of the protection of guerrilla troops.

During the Commune, Dunant displayed not only compassion, but also great bravery. With extraordinary courage, he rescued many victims from the claws of the Paris Federes, and risked his life crossing the lines to intercede with Monsieur Thiers, in order to prevent excesses which he feared the Versaillais would commit. Nevertheless, Dunant was the object of suspicion: who was this man? Was he a spy working for Germany, or was he a member of the” International “, one of those men whom all European Governments were seeking to arrest, imprison and execute? There was some confusion between the” International Working Men’s Associations ” and the word .. International ” qualifying the work of the Red Cross organization. The police could hardly be expected to make such subtle distinctions!

Dunant’s intuition was so perfect that he never went wrong. Yes, indeed, a court of arbitration shall be set up; a convention for prisoners of war shall be signed; the Jews shall go back to Palestine; the immortal works of world literature shall be translated into all languages-but what an exhausting struggle has first to be fought!

Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, born in Geneva on 8 May 1828, was the first child of a wealthy, religious, humanitarian and privileged household. (Note that although he was baptised Jean-Henri, the most common way that he wrote his name was « Henry ».) He seemed destined to become a priest, but he was so hopeless at French, mathematics and particularly Latin that this idea had to be abandoned.

As a young man, around 1848, Dunant took part in charitable work visiting the poor, the sick and prisoners in Geneva. To have more impact, the group of religiously committed young men formed themselves into the Union of Geneva. Similar groups were formed in France, Belgium and the United States. Dunant became the dynamic international secretary of this global movement. It was he who wrote the charter of what became, in 1855, the Young Men’s Christian Association, whose headquarters is still located in Geneva today. He caught up with the Emperor in northern Italy on Friday, 24 June 1859- – the day of the Battle of Solferino. On the battlefield the Italo-French army faced the Austrians. The carnage was frightful : it is estimated that there were some 40,000 casualties. Many were left to die of wounds, thirst and neglect in the following days.

It will take some considerable time before the studies currently being made will throw an accurate light on Dunant’s intellectual activity during this period of his life. We shall restrict ourselves, for the moment, to considering the fruits of that activity at Heiden, at the end of his span of life, in the radiance of a capacity of thought brought to full maturity, the thought of a genius transcending the struggles, hopes and vicissitudes of his time, in order to propose to the world the only possible solutions that could ensure its survival when, out of the titanic confrontations of the twentieth century, mankind awakens to the unity and solidarity of human beings and gives birth at last to Peace.

What an extraordinary existence was Dunant’s! First, thirty four years of a life of inner preparation, of study, of meditation, of activities quietly carried out without any external show, followed by five years, from the publication of Un Souvenir de Solferino to the bankruptcy of the Credit Genevois, of celebrity and success; and then twenty-eight years of poverty, wandering and seclusion, ending with fifteen years of renown, during which he never quitted his room in Heiden’s hospital. In 1901 he was awarded the first Nobel Prize for Peace and his work was thus acknowledged for all time. He died at Heiden on 30 October 1910. It would not be correct to speak of his death as an ending. It would seem rather that his spirit has been released to act still more, throughout the whole world. He continues to arouse in men a vocation, to serve as an example, to rescue the suffering. Dunant’s action is every day repeated, in countless places, where men and women tend human beings in distress, caring not where they are from or under whom they serve, but only for the nature of their suffering.

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Niels Ryberg Finsen (1903) (16)

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1903

Born: 15 December 1860, Thorshavn, Faroe Islands (Denmark).

Died: 24 September 1904, …

Finsen’s own pathological symptoms attracted his interest to the field in which he would make his great contribution to science: the biological question of the importance of light for huma n life and health and for the cure of disease. Already far bac k in time attempts ha d been made, despite the lack of scientific grounds, to attain better healing of skin eruptions in smallpox by protecting the patient from harmful light rays. Finsen found a n item by the Englishman C. Black (1867) to the effect that smallpox passe s mor e easily and leaves no scars if the patient can lie in a dark room.

The turn of the twentieth century welcomed Niels Finsen, an unlikely medical hero. Cursed with an incurable and debilitating disease that ended in an early death, Finsen nonetheless used his keen observations and sheer persistence to discover phototherapy, and in the process, became Denmark’s first Nobel laureate in Medicine.

Niels Ryberg Finsen was born on December 15, 1860 in the Faroe Islands, a Danish – ruled archipelago located about 400 miles off the coast of Norway. His life was a chronicle of setbacks and tragedies, beginning at the age of four when he lost his mother. In high school, he was initially dismissed as a boy “of good heart but low skills and energy”. At the University of Copenhagen, he began to experience marked fatigue and anaemia, which was later diagnosed as manifestations of Friedel Pick’s disease. The condition caused progressive thickening of the connective tissue in his heart, ending in constrictive pericarditis, cardiac cirrhosis and death at age 44.

Finsen noticed as a medical student that he would experience a resurgence of strength and stamina each time he was exposed to sunlight, and therefore, took to sunbathing as often as possible. This observation spurred a desire to explore its physiologic effects as well: “My disease has played a very great role for my whole development… The disease was responsible for my starting investigations on light: I suffered from anaemia and tiredness… I began to believe that I might be helped if I received more sun. I therefore spent as much time as possible in its rays. As an enthusiastic medical man, I was of course interested to know what benefit the sun really gave.

Apart from noting the sun’s effects on his own health, Finsen observed the way animals naturally responded to sunlight. For example, when gazing outside his window, he noticed that a cat perched on a roof would repeatedly move toward the sunny areas, away from the shade. He began to wonder if the sun’s rays had a beneficial effect apart from the warmth they provided. Physicists had already discovered that light and heat are of different wavelengths and occupy separate portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The Swedish scientist Widmark had shown that sunburn is caused not by heat, but by “chemical rays,” or ultraviolet radiation that can cause chemical reactions. One of Finsen’s earliest experiments was to place an insect in a glass box of different colours. The insect would move toward red light, roughly corresponding to infrared or heat wavelengths, and away from blue light, which has a wavelength close to the ultraviolet (UV) spectrum.

Finsen came to recognise that excess UV radiation had a damaging effect on tissues. He chanced upon a wartime report by Picton, an American doctor, who noticed more rapid recovery in smallpox sufferers who were forced by combat -influenced circumstances to remain underground. They also had less scarring compared to patients who had free access to sunlight. Finsen suspected that UV radiation accelerated scar formation, while its absence underground allowed smallpox lesions to heal more efficiently. A smallpox outbreak in Norway gave him the opportunity to prospectively test this hypothesis, and he found that indeed, when he kept patients under a red light that filtered out the harmful UV rays, they recovered more quickly and did not scar.

Importantly, Finsen discovered that UV light was beneficial in treating lupus vulgaris, a devastating skin condition caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Patients with the condition had a hideous visage, “a blank, reddish -white mass, ringed with two pink circles, from which dull eyes glanced staringly; there was no nose, and a ragged hole with everted granular border, served for mouth”. There was no effective therapy, so surgery was often offered, leaving ugly scars. At the Copenhagen Electric Light Station, where Finsen had been granted a small laboratory space, an employee with advanced intractable lupus vulgaris of the face was treated with one of the specialised lights he had been working on – in this case, one that concentrated UV rays rather than filtering them out. Complete cure came after several treatment sessions.

His marriage to Ingeborg Balslev, a bishop’s daughter, in 1892 only served to further his research work. This was exemplified by their joint effort to support Finsen’s wish to build a device that would select out the curative rays and thus, enhance their therapeutic utility: “He told the writer in his own simple way how he talked it over with his wife. They were poor. Finsen’s salary as a teacher at the university was something like $1.200 a year. He was a sick man, and wealth would buy leisure and luxury. Children, who needed care. were growing up about them. They talked it out together. and resolutely turned their backs upon it all. Hand in hand, they faced the world with their sacrifice. What of life remained to him was to be devoted to suffering mankind. This duty done, what might come they would meet together.”

Once built, news of the device spread quickly, followed by widespread application of this treatment at the Medical Light Institute in 1896, with Finsen as its director. The streets of Copenhagen “became filled with men and women whose faces were shrouded in heavy bandages” as patients flocked to the new treatment centre. His institute treated some 1,251 lupus vulgaris patients, about half of whom were cured. There was no remote hamlet in Denmark that did not witness a success story. With the Finsen light, he had given his people “the means whereby so hideous a human being can be restored to a fair semblance of his original self.”

Finsen’s health deteriorated further even as phototherapy cured many more patients. He developed intractable ascites despite a self-imposed diet of salt and fluid restriction, and required repeated paracentesis, reportedly on some eighteen occasions, with removal of up to six litres of fluid each time. By age thirty, he was wheelchair -bound. The seriousness of his health condition prompted the Nobel Prize committee to give early consideration to his achievements, and in 1903, at the age of 42, he became the first Danish Nobel laureate “in recognition of his contribution to the treatment of diseases, especially lupus vulgaris, with concentrated light radiation, whereby he has opened a new avenue for medical science.” Alas, his poor health prevented him from attending the traditional Stockholm festivities. Nine months later, on September 24, 1904, he was dead. His funeral, held in Denmark’s famous Marble Church, was on a scale befitting royalty.

Finsen’s awards and honours were numerous. He was named Knight of the Order of Dannebrog and later further recognised with the Silver Cross. He also won the Cameron Prize from the University of Edinburgh. One of the main streets in the Faroe Islands is named after him, and a monument to his work, entitled Mod lyset (Towards the Light), was installed in Copenhagen in 1909. There is also the Finsen Institute, which still exists today, although its focus has shifted from light radiation to research in cancer. Phototherapy played an important and dramatic role in Finsen’s time, but its impact has diminished with the eradication of smallpox and the discovery of antituberculous chemotherapy. But it remains useful for other dermatological conditions, and has found new uses, e.g. as a treatment for seasonal affective disorder.

Remarkably, Finsen’s own words, a hundred years back, had hinted at this application: “Let [the sunlight] break through suddenly on a cloudy day and see the change, we ourselves feel as if a burden were lifted… all that I have accomplished in my experiments with light, and all that I have learned about its therapeutic value has come because I needed the light so much myself I longed for it so.”

Amon g the Prize winners M. and Mme Curie and Finsen were unable to attend. Finsen donate d 50,000 crown s of the Prize money to the Light Institute, and 60,000 crowns to the Sanatorium for Heart and Liver Diseases. He died as he had lived, quietly, beautifully and with restraint, on a clear September 24, 1904, in Copenhagen.

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JOSEPH JOHN THOMSON 1906 (37)

-Nobel Prize in 1906 and his son’s Nobel Prize in 1937

-Born -18 December 1856 Lancashire, England,

_Died- 30 August 1940 (aged 83) England, UK

JOSEPH JOHN THOMSON was born on December 18, 1856, in a suburb (Cheetham) of Manchester. His father was a bookseller and publisher, specializing in old books, and the family was of Scottish origin. He came to be very well known to the Royal Institution, where he was non-resident professor of physics, and he often gave the Friday evening discourse.

To the student of physics of the present day he is known as the discoverer of the electron. Actually that word was coined before his work on the subject began and he preferred to use another ; but as hope to make clear, he did more than any other single person to prove the objective existence of the entity we call by that name, and to provide the theoretical ideas on the subject with experimental proof. But he was not a man of one discovery, and I wish to bring up in rapid review as many as I can of the departments of physics in which he was interested, and which sometimes were connected by unexpected sequences of ideas.

He started as a mathematician-he was second wrangler when Larmor was senior-and his earliest important work was as a disciple-he was never the pupil-of Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell’s theory of electricity was not well appreciated when it came out in 1873. It was indeed rather obscure, since the physical conceptions underlying Maxwell’s ideas did not appear clearly in the final mathematical form he adopted. ‘J. J.’, as he was always known, developed the consequences of the theory and showed in particular that a moving charged sphere had additional mass as a result of its charge—the first hint of Einstein’s E = mc²– and that the electromagnetic waves carried momentum as well as energy along their rays.

Then he became interested in vortex rings, of which smoke rings are a good example. Vortex rings appealed to nineteenth-century physicists, notably to Kelvin and to Helmholtz, as a possible explanation of atoms, because of their permanence. “It is indestructible and indivisible, the strength of the vortex ring and the volume of liquid comprising it remain for ever unaltered, and if any vortex ring be knotted or if two vortex rings be linked together in any way, they will retain for ever the same kind of be-knottedness or linking.” So when vortex rings were set as a subject for the Adams Prize, ‘J. J.’ took up their theory, and the prize-winning essay published in 1883 contained some interesting suggestions as to the way in which vortex atoms might link together to form molecules. Two, three, four, five or six can be linked together in a special way, but seven or more are unstable.

This early and forgotten theory led ‘J. J.’ to his earliest experiments on gaseous discharges, the subject he was to make peculiarly his own, and which was to occupy his attention into advanced old age. The connexion may not be obvious, but the theory indicated that the electric discharge in a gas would be associated with dissociation of the molecules in

a measurable fashion. The experiments were not in fact, very conclusive, but they led Thomson on to study other properties of the gaseous discharge, and especially the electrodeless discharge, for which he retained a life-long affection. More important than the results obtained was the experience with this kind of experiment, which was so useful to him later on.

The discovery by Rontgen of X-rays in 1895 is a turning point in physics. ‘J. J.’ was quick to take advantage of it and he and Rutherford showed about the same time as some other workers-that the X-rays made a gas conducting, thus providing a manageable method of ionization, a word they used in their paper. We shall see how valuable this was in the discovery of the electron.

The fundamental importance of the electron, as was fully realized at the time, is the proof that all matter contains at least this one common constituent, and that the atoms of nineteenth-century chemistry are not separate independent entities, as was then generally supposed.

The actual approach to the electron, the first of the common constituents, came from two different directions, neither of which seemed at the time to have much to do with the structure of the atoms of ordinary matter. Faraday’s laws of electrolysis early in the century had produced very strong evidence, which one now feels that the men of the time were very dense in ignoring, that electricity is somehow done up into units of which one, two or three, rarely more, may be attached to each individual atom.

Towards the end of the century people woke up to this, and Johnstone Stoney coined the word ‘electron’ for this hypothetical unit ; but as yet it had no other properties. Its magnitude could be estimated, though only very crudely. There was no evidence that it existed alone, apart from electrified matter. It might just have been a unit of exchange in Nature’s bank, like the ‘money of account’ in those countries where the unit of accountancy corresponds to no actual coin.

There were electron theories of a kind in the nineteenth century, but the first that led to anything of importance was that of Lorentz in the early 90’s, which immediately explained the discovery of Zeeman in 1896 that the spectrum of the light from a sodium flame was modified by a magnetic field.

Thomson’s early interest in atomic structure was reflected in his 1884 Adams Prize-winning paper on vortex motion. He published the application of kinetics in physics and chemistry in 1886 and 1892 and published a note on recent research on electric and magnetic fields. The second book deals with the results obtained after the publication of James Clark Maxwell’s famous “Thesis”, and is often referred to as “Maxwell Volume Three”. Thomson and Professor JH Poynting collaborated on the Four-Mass Physics textbook Properties of Matter and published Elements of the Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism in 1895. The fifth edition was published in 1921.

In this JJ Thomson biography we study about JJ Thomson’s early life, who is JJ Thomson, education, what experiment did JJ Thomson do, what did joseph john Thomson discover, etc.

Who is JJ Thomson?

Sir J.J. Thomson studied at Trinity College, Cambridge University, where he will continue to lead the Cavendish Laboratory. His research on cathode rays led to the discovery of electrons, and he sought further innovations in the exploration of atomic structure. Thomson scientist won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics among many honours.

It is interesting to recall, here in the Royal Institution, that Faraday’s last recorded experiment was an unsuccessful attempt to detect this, and that Zeeman, who had read Faraday’s work, was deliberately repeating it with more modern equipment. The other line of approach, in which ‘J. J.’ was tho leader, was given by cathode rays. These can be observed when an electric current goes through a very rarefied gas. They are more familiar to-day, in a slightly modified form, as the working medium of a television tube. They had been known from the middle of the century and their nature hotly disputed. The question became international ; on the whole the British and the French held the view that they were some sort of particle, whereas the Germans thought that they were waves and more akin to light. Of course, both were right, but the reconciliation was to come much later.

Cathode rays are deflected by a magnet as a stream of electrified particles would be, and Perrin showed that if shot into a box they gave it a negative electric charge. ‘J. J.’ combined these two experiments and showed that the magnetically deflected rays took their charge with them. More important, he showed that the deflexion was the same for all rays produced by a discharge of the same voltage whatever the gas and the material of the cathode. This experiment, which was published in February 1897, convinced him, I think, that they were not just ‘electricity’, whatever that mysterious entity might be, but part, and a fundamental part, of matter as well.

But more was needed, for there were serious difficulties. Hertz had found that they were not deflected by an electric field as charged particles ought to be, and Lenard at Heidelberg had found that they would go right through a thin metal window into the air outside. This seemed impossible if they were charged atoms~and no one had thought of any smaller particle.

The dramatic occasion was a discourse in the lecture room of the Royal Institution, given on April 30, 1897. After showing the modified Perrin experiment and photographs of the deflected cathode rays, he passed to the matter of the missing electric deflexion. The observation, though right in itself, was misleading. When the field was applied (as the experimenters thought) nearly all of it was neutralized by charges produced by the rays themselves in tho rarefied gas, so that the region where the rays actually went was devoid of field. The charges do not neutralize magnetic fields, hence the curious discrepancy. ‘J. J.’ managed to get the vacuum better and found a deflexion by electric fields. Later on he used this deflexion balanced against a magnetic field to find the ratio of the charge to the mass of the particles and their velocities in a way described in every text-book of electricity ; but actually on that evening he described another way of measuring the same quantity in some ways more direct. He measured in fact for certain rays their magnetic defiexion, and the heating effect that eorresponds to the transport of a unit of charge. In terms of symbols, the first gives e/mv and the second e/mv², from which e/m and v can be found. Now e/m is a critical quantity.

The Faraday experiments had found it for ordinary atoms. It varies with the kind of matter, but even for the lightest atoms (hydrogen) the charge per unit mass, written e/m, was more than 1,000 times too small. Either each cathode ray had a charge 1,000 times the unit, or a cathode ray is more than 1,000 times lighter than the lightest chemical atom. But, all the cathode rays had the same e/m, no matter what the gas or what the metal used for the cathode from which they came. Since in Faraday’s experiments the charges seldom exceed 3 units, a constant value of more than 1,000 seemed most improbable, so the particles of cathode rays must have a subatomic mass which is the same whatever material they came from.

Determining the structure of the atom was the next logical question to address following the discovery of the electron by J. J. Thomson. It was already established the number of electrons within an atom was essentially half of the atom’s mass number (i.e., the ratio of the atom’s mass to that of hydrogen).

Hence the corpuscle was at least 1,000 times lighter than the lightest atom. It was established as a universal constituent of all matter; not the only one obviously, since ordinary matter is electrically neutral and ‘J. J.’s’ corpuscles were charged, but a true universal entity, more nearly recalling the philosophies of the Greeks than nineteenth-century chemistry_ In the very paper which described the now classic e/m experiment on cathode rays ‘J. J.’ turned to the next stage. Granted that electrons arc universal constituents of matter, how do they fit in ? Lenard’s experimental result that the distance a cathode ray could go through matter was inversely as the density over a wide range and independent of its chemical nature or physical state, seemed to ‘J. J.’ to give strong support, for the view that atoms contained electrons in number proportional to the mass of the atom. He considered, correctly, that the collisions of the rays in going through an atom would be rather with the individual constituent electrons than with the atom as a whole, so Lenard’s relation implied that the number of electrons per gram is the same for all substances. Ever on the look-out for a model, he adopted an experiment of the American physicist Mayer, which seemed to him to suggest very strongly something like the periodic table.

Now if this has any validity, even in an order-ofmagnitudc fashion, there will not be many thousands of electrons in an atom, probably only a few. Therefore, tho main mass of atoms cannot be due to electrons ; presumably it is supplied by the positively electrified component. Both these questions had to wait while knowledge accumulated on the behaviour of electricity in gases, on the action of X-rays, and on the behaviour of radioactivity, of which Rutherford made himself the master, using, in each case, the electron as a master key.

But what then of the positives, which must therefore somehow contribute the lion’s share of the mass of all atoms ? ‘J. J.’ supposed tkat the atom was like a gooseberry with corpuscles as the pips and the neutralizing positive charge spread out continuously rather like the edible part of the gooseberry. It was left for Rutherford to discover the nucleus.

‘J. J.’s’ reason for his choice was a rational one in the days when no one questioned Maxwellian electrodynamics. While on the inverse square law a solar system can be stable if the planets attract one another, it is inherently unstable-for more than one planet– if they repel, as electrons must. The sphere of distributed electricity gets over this objection. The Mayer experiment which gives much the same field as a distributed electric charge only works in two dimensions ; in three dimensions these rings would be unstable, but stability can be restored by making them spin.

A year before, in 1905, ‘J. J .’ had made his first experiments on positive rays or canalstrahlen. These had been studied by Wien, who had shown that they have values of e/m, and so probably masses, of the order of those of ions in electrolysis. However, Wien’s experiment did not allow him to measure e/m with any accuracy, and indeed seemed to indicate that it varied continuously. This was due to bad vacua. By improving the technique, ‘.T. J.’ was able to show that the rays consist of atoms and molecules which have lost electrons in the discharge and been accelerated towards the cathode by the strong electric field in the Crookes’ dark space.

The positive rays were thus no new revolutionary particles, but the gaseous ions which the Caendish had been studying now for a decade. As so often happens when a better technique is applied to something crudely known, the unexpected turned up in the end ; but the first result was to produce for the first time experimental evidence for what everyone had believed for no good reason, namely, that all the atoms of an element had the same mass, and that atomic weight was definite and was not merely a statistical property of large numbers, a mere average. The parabolre, which appeared on the plates which his assistant Everett, and later Aston, exposed, and which he measured in a little frame sitting perched up on an office stool, each correspond to one value of e/m and so to one mass, the charge being that on an electron, with sign reversed, or a small integral multiple of it.

‘J. J.’ always believed that the method of positiveray analysis had great possibilities for chemists because of the small quantities of material required. It would have pleased him greatly to see its application nowadays to a variety of technical problems. Though I fear this lecture has been crowded, .I have had to omit much. I have only touched on his theoretical work, and said nothing of his suggestion of the ‘spotted wave front’, which anticipated Einstein’s treatment of light quanta, nor of his important work on the electron theory of metallic conduction. Though his experimental work is better known, he started and finished as a theoretician. His fellowship thesis on the relation of dynamics to physics and chemistry helped to clarify ideas on energy. His theory of the recombination of ions is still valid. The “Conduction of Electricity through Gases”, for many years a Bible of physics, contains many pieces of his own theory.

His attitude to theory is interesting. Though a first-rate mathematician, he liked something he could visualize or draw in a diagram on the back of an envelope with a halo of equations around it. Hence his life-long attraction to the concrete ‘tubes of force ‘ of Faraday and Maxwell, and truly even now there are problems for which these are the most useful picture.

The research, so he told me once, that he most enjoyed doing was one on conformal representation in electrostatics. The trouble with experiments, he said, was that you had infinite labour in getting the apparatus to work, and when it did work the experiment was over too quickly. For him the apparatus existed for the experiment, never the experiment to justify the apparatus.

Though he was a man of unusually wide interests and sympathies, physics was his life. He believed that it was bad for a man to do research continuously and that interruptions were sometimes helpful, especially the interruptions of teaching, in sending a man back to his problems with a fresh mind and perhaps with fresh ideas. This made him perhaps more tolerant than he would otherwise have been of his teaching and administrative work, which he took very seriously ; but his strong sense of duty did not always extend to answering letters.

He enjoyed lecturing-but perhaps not preparing lectures—especially in the Royal Institution, and would, I think, have been glad that his centenary is honoured here.

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Ronald Ross (1902)

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1902.

Born: 13 May 1857, Almora, India.

Died: 16 September 1932, Putney Heath, United Kingdom.

Sir Ronald Ross was born in India on May 13, 1857, to a Scottish Army Officer and his spouse . When he was eight years old, he was relocated to reside on the Isle of Wight in England. Ross went to elementary schools in the Ryde and, in 1869, he was enrolled in a boarding school at Springhill, close to Southampton, for high school education. Since the early years of his life, he harbored a love for poetry, songs, literature, and mathematics. When he was 14 years old, Ross received an award for his mathematics skills. At age 16, in 1873, he achieved the top position in a local examination of drawing at Oxford and Cambridge. Following his studies in England, he matriculated at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College in 1874 . After a few years, Ross joined the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and ultimately became a professor of Tropical Medicine at the University of Liverpool. In 1912, Ross was appointed physician for tropical illnesses at the King’s College and Hospital in London, and later Director of the Ross Institute for Tropical Diseases, which was named in his honor . Ross survived his wife’s death in 1931 and died a year later on September 16, 1932, at the Ross Institute in London, following a long illness. Ross also developed mathematical models for the transmission of malaria.

Ronald Ross did not conform to conventional standards or typical normative ideas within academic naturalism. He developed a fresh concept for parasitology and endorsed a theory centered around the principle that every illness must be linked to a specific biological agent (pathogen). Ross’s interest in malaria began in the early 1890s when he was stationed in India. At that time, malaria was a major health issue, but its transmission mechanism was not understood. Influenced by the work of Sir Patrick Manson, who hypothesized that mosquitos contributed to the transmission of malaria, Ross embarked on research that would eventually validate this theory. On August 16, 1897, Ross allowed 10 Anopheles mosquitoes to feed on a malaria patient who had volunteered, named Abdul Kadir. Since Ross was not an entomologist, the only entomology book he owned was intended for anglers. He classified the mosquitoes he was researching as grey or barred-back (A), brindled (B), and dappled-winged (C). Over the following days, he dissected the mosquitoes but found no malarial parasites until August 20, when he examined the stomach tissue of one and found cells with clusters of black granules resembling Laveran’s parasites. The next day, he found even larger parasites in another mosquito’s gut, confirming the link between mosquitoes and malaria. Ross named August 20 “Mosquito Day.” Although his transfer prevented further work with humans, he demonstrated the transmission of avian malaria via mosquitoes. In 1898, Giovanni Grassi confirmed the same process with Anopheles mosquitoes and humans Ross became constantly incensed by the government’s lack of support, which he referred to as

“administrative barbarism” for scientists working on medical research. Not every step of his journey was easy sailing. At times, he suspected that some of the responsibilities assigned to him were just to show him his place. He was once assigned to work for the Rajputana Medical Service in a little town called Kherwara. In another event, Ross asked permission from the Surgeon General to continue work on malaria but was denied due to a lack of approval from higher authorities. Because of this and considering that he had invested a significant amount of money into his research, he decided to step down from the Indian Medical Services. On 22 February 1899, Ronald Ross eventually departed from India. From Sir Ronald Ross’s diary entry describing the moment he discovered the malaria vector.

After completing his early education in two small schools at Ryde, he was sent to a boarding school at Springhill, near Southampton in 1869. When he was 14 years old, he won a prize for mathematics. The prize was a book titled Orbs of Heaven. It was later that this book inspired Ronald to study mathematics in depth. At the age of 16, Ronald was bracketed first in England in the Oxford and Cambridge local examination in drawing. He had made a pencil copy of Raphael’s painting titled Torchbearer, and that too in just a few minutes! At age 17, Ross declared his ambition to become a writer. But his father would have none of it. He was told in no uncertain terms what career to pursue. In Ross’s own words later: “I wished to be an artist, but my father was opposed to this. I wished also to enter the Army or Navy; but my father had set his heart upon my joining the medical profession and, finally, the Indian Medical Service, which was then well paid and possessed many good appointments; and, as I was a dreamy boy not too well inclined towards uninteresting mental exertion, I resigned myself to this scheme….” Forced by his father, he joined the St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London in 1875. Most of his time in medical school was spent composing music or writing poems and plays. During the course of his medical school, Ross came across a woman from the Essex marshes who was complaining of headaches, pains in her muscles and feeling very hot and then very cold. Essex marshes who was complaining of headaches, pains in her muscles and feeling very hot and then very cold. Ross questioned her exhaustively and diagnosed her as suffering from malaria, which was unusual, as it was only found in hot tropical countries such as South America and India. His detailed diagnosis however, frightened the woman away and she never returned, so Ross was unable to prove his diagnosis. Not surprisingly, he completed his medical studies “without distinction” and flunked the qualifying examinations for the Indian Medical Service. When his father threatened to cancel his allowance, he took a job as ship’s surgeon on a vessel sailing between London and New York. In 1881 he repeated the qualifying examinations and this time ranked seventeenth of twenty-two successful candidates. After four months’ indoctrination at the Army Medical School, Ronald Ross finally fulfilled his father’s wish by entering the Indian Medical Service in 1881.

With his not-so-impressive result, Ross was commissioned for the Madras service, the least prestigious of the three Indian Presidencies (Bengal and Bombay were the more desirable appointments) and worked in many places like Mysore and Madras and also served in the Burma War and in the Andaman Islands. While in Madras, a large part of his work was treating soldiers ill with malaria. The treatment with quinine was successful, but many died because they failed to get treatment. He also studied mathematics which he applied to the study of malaria later. From the early days of his work in India, mosquitoes engaged Ross one way or the other. In 1883, Ross obtained the post of Acting Garrison Surgeon at Bangalore. Although Ross found the bungalow that was provided for his accommodation pleasant to live in, he was irritated by the large number of mosquitoes which constantly buzzed around the rooms. He also noticed that there seemed to be more mosquitoes in his bungalow than in others and that there was a particularly large swarm around a barrel with water that was kept outside the window. When Ross looked in to the barrel he saw lots of “wriggling” grubs breeding in the water, which he identified as mosquito larvae. Ross tipped the barrel to empty the water and found that the number of mosquitoes reduced. This started him thinking that if the places where mosquito bred were removed it might be possible to eliminate them completely. But everyone did not approve of this solution. “When I told the adjutant of this miracle,” Ross wrote, “and pointed out that the mess house could be rid of mosquitoes in the same way (they were breeding in the garden tubs, in the tins under the dining table and even in the flower vases) much to my surprise he was very scornful and refused to allow men to deal with them, for he said it would be upsetting to the order of nature, and as mosquitoes were created for some purpose it was our duty to bear with them! I argued in vain that the same thesis would apply to bugs and fleas, and that according to him it was our duty to go about in a verminous condition.” Ross held these views on mosquito control till the very end and found the same apathy from governments!

But even with all this, he was not at all enthused. He spent his free time concocting equations he hoped would revolutionize mathematics and writing poetry, music, plays, and bad novels that he published at his own expense. However, he did develop some interest in tropical diseases, like all his peers would have during the period when these were rampant in most parts of India, particularly malaria that killed more than a million in India each year. His experience with malaria as a student also probably stirred Ross’s interest in malaria. True to his style, Ross composed this verse about his first impressions of malaria that killed millions:

After working for 7 years in India from 1881, he got bored and returned to England on a furlough in 1888. But he was aware that his literary career was not promising, being unable to establish a readership beyond his family and friends. So he took a course of Diploma in public health in London and acquainted himself with microscopic skills and laboratory techniques. In between he found time to write another bad novel, invented a new shorthand system, devised a phonetic spelling for the writing of verse, and was elected secretary of a local golf club. During the same period, he courted and married Rosa Bessie Bloxam in April 1889 and returned to India with her. Their first daughter was born in 1891 and the second one in 1903.

Awards and recognition came behind Ross. In 1901 Ross was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and also a Fellow of the Royal Society, of which he became Vice-President from 1911 to 1913. In 1902 he was appointed a Companion of the Most Honourable Order of Bath by His Majesty the King of Great Britain.

In 1902 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine “for his work on malaria, by which he has shown how it enters the organism and thereby has laid the foundation for successful research on this disease and methods of combating it”. (Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine has never been awarded for work in biostatistics or epidemiology. The “exception who proves the rule” is Ronald Ross, who won the second medical Nobel; but Ross himself considered the mathematics of epidemic theory as his most important scientific contribution).

That Sir Patrick Manson missed the Nobel Prize also did not go down well with those who knew of his contribution to Ross’s work. The 100 or so letters that they wrote to each other in the two decades afterward poignantly document the gradual cooling of a creative friendship and the difficulty of a teacher-pupil relationship evolving naturally into one of equals.

On the 15th August, 1897, one of his assistants brought a bottle of larvae, many of which hatched out next day and among them he found several “dappled-winged mosquitoes”. Delighted with this capture, on August 16th, he fed them on his malaria patient, Husein Khan,with crescents in his blood. (Husein Khan was paid 1 anna per mosquito he was bitten by; he came away with 10 annas.) That evening he wrote to his wife: “I have found another kind of mosquito with which I am now experimenting, and hope for more satisfactory results with it.” On the 17th he dissected two of these mosquitoes but found nothing unusual. On the 19th he killed another and found “some peculiar vacuolated cells in the stomach about 10 microns in diameter.” On August 20th, a dull, hot day, Ross went to the hospital at 7 a.m., examined his patients, dealt with his correspondence and had a hurried breakfast in the mess. One of his mosquitoes had died and this he dissected without noting anything significant. He had two mosquitoes left of the batch fed on Husein Khan on the 16th and at about 1 p.m. he began to sacrifice one. Dissecting it he scrutinized the tissues micron by micron, when suddenly, in the stomach wall he “saw a clear and almost perfectly circular outline.. of about 12 microns in diameter. The outline was much too sharp, the cell too small to be an ordinary stomach-cell of a mosquito..” On looking a little further, there “was another and another exactly similar cell “. He changed the focus of his microscope and there within each of these new cells was a cluster of black pigment. He made rough drawings in his notebook, sealed his specimen, went home to tea and slept for an hour.  Died 16 September 1932.

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Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk 2018

Nobel Prize in Literature 2018

Born: 29 January 1962, Sulechów, Poland

Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk, a prominent figure in the world of literature and a beacon of progressive thought, has left an indelible mark on the literary landscape. Born on January 29, 1962, in Sulechow, Poland, Tokarczuk has not only achieved critical acclaim as a writer but has also played a significant role as an activist and public intellectual.

Olga Tokarczuk’s literary journey began with her collection of poems, “Miasta w lustrach” (Cities in Mirrors), published in 1989. Her debut novel, “Podroz ludzi księgi” (Journey of the Book-People), was published in 1993 and was a parable about the quest for the “secret of the Book.”

This work set the stage for a prolific career marked by novels that challenged traditional genres and pushed the boundaries of narrative storytelling. Her 1996 novel, “Prawiek i inne czasy” (Primeval and Other Times), captivated readers with its mythical narrative set in the fictitious village of Primeval in the heart of Poland. The book, guarded by four archangels, chronicled the lives of its eccentric inhabitants over eight decades, showcasing Tokarczuk’s ability to create rich, immersive worlds.

Olga Tokarczuk’s writing often explores themes of psychology, spirituality, and mysticism. Her novel “E.E.” (1995) delves into the world of a young woman with psychic abilities, drawing inspiration from Carl Jung’s work in psychology. Her unique blend of psychological realism and spiritualism challenges readers to consider the boundaries between reality and the supernatural.

Tokarczuk’s Nobel award cites her “narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life”. It feels apt, in terms of the wanderings of her characters, her use of myth, and her evident delight in toying with form and genre. She beams when I mention the citation. “I really like it, especially ‘as a form of life’. It sounds kind of biological, as if this is our deep, innate need.”

Tokarczuk puts the shift down to uncertainty and fear. But she does not think it is permanent. “Maybe for 10 years or so [this nostalgia for nation states] will go back and forth, populists will make use of it. But it’s an anachronistic project. We simply no longer understand our identity this way. We cannot live with only one identity. We all have many identities, they are liquid.”

One of Tokarczuk’s most celebrated works is “Bieguni” (Flights), published in 2007. This novel is an exploration of modern-day nomadism, both in terms of physical travel and psychological exploration.

The main character, Janina Duszejko, embarks on an investigation into a series of deaths attributed to wild animals taking revenge on hunters. Tokarczuk’s unique storytelling style and unconventional narratives set her apart from traditional crime writers. One of Tokarczuk’s magnum opuses, “The Books of Jacob,” was published in 2014 and became a monumental literary work spanning seven borders, five languages, and three major religions. The novel revolves around the controversial 18th-century Polish-Jewish religious leader and mystic Jacob Frank and touches on various aspects of history, religion, and culture. The book’s thematic richness and dazzling narrative earned Tokarczuk international acclaim and the Jan Michalski Prize in 2016.

A Legacy of Progressive Thought

Olga Tokarczuk’s literary journey has been characterised by an unrelenting pursuit of narrative innovation and a commitment to exploring the boundaries of storytelling. Her works challenge conventional genres and transport readers to imaginative and thought-provoking worlds.

In addition to her literary contributions, Tokarczuk has been a champion of progressive causes, defending human rights, equality, and cultural diversity. Her role as an activist and public intellectual has left a lasting impact on the world beyond literature.

As her works continue to be translated into multiple languages and her influence spreads globally, Olga Tokarczuk’s legacy stands as a testament to the power of literature to shape minds, challenge boundaries, and inspire change.

Tokarczuk’s writing style evolved over the years, incorporating elements of essays and shorter prose texts alongside traditional novels. Her work “Dom dzienny, dom nocny” (House of Day, House of Night) in 1998 was a constellation novel, a patchwork of loosely connected stories and essays about life in her adopted home in Krajanow.

On 10th October 2019, Polish author Olga Tokarczuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2018 by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. This is the second year in a row that Tokarczuk has won a major literary award – in 2018, she and her translator Jennifer Croft won the Man Booker International Prize for ‘Flights’.

Olga Tokarczuk is one of the most critically acclaimed and most translated Polish writers, with House of Day, House of Night and Primeval and Other Tales being her greatest commercial and critical successes. She lives and works in Wałbrzych in Lower Silesia. An outstanding writer, essayist and a devotee of Jung, she is considered an authority on philosophy and arcane knowledge.

Tokarczuk has won numerous awards for her work, including the prestigious Polish awards the Polityka Passport and the Nike Literary Award, as well as the Vilenica International Literary Prize. Her book Drive Your Plough Through the Bones of the Dead was the basis of Agnieszka Holland’s award-winning movie Spoor.

Tokarczuk is not the first person to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for writing in the Polish language. Famed for his historical epics, Henryk Sienkiewicz was awarded the prize in 1905, while Władysław Reymont won the prize in 1924, most often recognised for his huge four-part saga The Peasants. Czesław Miłosz won the prize in 1980, while most recently was Wisława Szymborska, who won in 1996.

The Nobel Prize for Literature will be awarded to Olga Tokarczuk in person at Stockholm Concert Hall in Sweden during the Nobel Prize award ceremony on 10th December 2019.

PRH audio producer Sarah Jaffe says, “Olga Tokarczuk’s brilliant, genre-bending works are driven by a voice that is not only a gift to readers, but a gift to any actor lucky enough to portray it. FLIGHTS, with its many thoughtful threads and forking paths, is deftly navigated by Julia Whelan’s sensitive, surefooted, and infinitely versatile narration. Narrator Beata Pozniak’s natural slight Polish accent and careful, skillful narration of DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD lend texture and authenticity to the audio edition, channeling the singular voice of Janina Duszejko with nuance and depth.”

“Sometimes I wonder how my life would have worked out if my books had been translated into English sooner,” mused the 57-year-old author earlier this year, “because English is the language that’s spoken worldwide, and when a book appears in English it is made universal, it becomes a global publication.” This might not be a desirable state of affairs but for writers from many parts of the world it is a fact of life. Her Booker win, as Antonia Lloyd-Jones – one of her two English language translators – remarked, was not just a triumph for her but for the whole of Polish literature.

Tokarczuk is no stranger to such run-ins with self-styled Polish patriots. A flamboyantly dreadlocked vegetarian feminist, she lives with her translator partner and their dogs in a rural area of Lower Silesia that only became part of Poland after the second world war. Her most recent novel, The Books of Jacob, tells the story of an 18th-century religious leader Jakub Frank, who led the forcible conversion of his Jewish followers to both Islam and Catholicism at various points. When it was published in 2014, she was denounced as a traitor for daring to suggest in an interview that Poland wasn’t just a brave survivor of centuries of oppression but had been a pretty appalling oppressor itself at times in its history. For a while her publisher had to hire bodyguards for her – though the pill was considerably sweetened by the success of what many consider her masterpiece. It sold 170,000 copies in hardback and won its author the country’s biggest literary prize, the Nike, for the second time.

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Alfred Werner 1913 (75)-Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1913

Born: 12 December 1866, Mulhouse, France.

Died: 15 November 1919, Zurich, Switzerland.

Alfred Werner was born on December 12, 1866, in Mulhouse in Alsace, France. His father, Jean-Adam Werner, was a factory foreman, while his mother, Jeanne Tesche, was from a low-income family background. Werner was the youngest in the family of four children in a family that was very poor but encouraged the children to be intellectual. His school-based experiments in his early years led to his initial fascination with chemistry. Already at 18, Werner was engaged in chemical research on his own, which was a reasonable basis for his future academic career.

Werner’s primary education was in Alsace, and for his further studies, he went to the Federal Technical High School in Zurich, Switzerland. He performed well in chemistry there, especially under the tutelage of professors such as Arthur Hantzsch. His aptitude for understanding chemical ideas advanced rapidly, and in 1889, he passed the diploma in Technical Chemistry. Werner went to the University of Zurich to complete his doctorate, which he did in 1890. His thesis was on the spatial organization of atoms in nitrogen compounds, which is the work that formed the basis of his future research in coordination chemistry.

Werner was interested in breaking limitations in his early years of education. In 1891, he went to Paris to work under the famous chemist Marcellin Berthelot at the Collège de France to develop himself more. During these formative years, Werner had already developed an interest in the geometrical arrangement of molecules to transform the study of inorganic chemistry.

Alfred Werner’s contribution to chemistry can be summed up as the shift of focus to coordination theory. This described how metal atoms formed bonds with ligands, altering the way chemists viewed chemical compounds and introducing new concepts into chemistry.

Before Werner’s work, the bonding of transition metals needed to be better explained, and there was no way to describe the behavior of the metals in compounds. Werner’s contribution that the metal atom is at the center of the ligands, and the ligands are arranged geometrically around the metal atom, introduced order into a somewhat disorganized study area.

Werner’s theory of coordination, which he put forward in 1893, described how metal atoms could coordinate with other molecules to form stable complexes. His finding of the coordination numbers, including the number six as a typical number for the transition metals, paved the way for determining the geometric arrangements of these compounds. This was a significant leap in inorganic chemistry and paved the way for synthesizing and analyzing synthetic and natural products.

Werner did not limit himself to theoretical work; he synthesized many compounds he investigated, thereby supporting his theories with practice. His research included the discovery of optically active coordination compounds. He demonstrated that even metal complexes could exhibit properties previously believed to be characteristic of organic compounds only, such as chirality. This breakthrough was significant in fields such as pharmacology and material science.

Werner’s influence did not end with his death. His coordination theory became a significant part of chemistry education in modern schools. The ideas he introduced have been developed further in fields such as bioinorganic chemistry. Other areas of Werner’s accomplishments include several awards, such as the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1913. Today, his name is associated with coordination chemistry, and his work remains a source of knowledge in modern chemistry regarding molecular structures.

Alfred Werner was a chemist from Switzerland who contributed to the field of coordination chemistry and revolutionized the way chemists think about molecules. Werner was born in Mulhouse, Alsace, and grew up in a family of four children as the last born. Ever since he was young, he had a passion for chemistry, and when he was 18, he conducted his first independent project.

He later went to the Federal Technical High School in Zurich to further his education and graduated with a diploma in Technical Chemistry in 1889. Some of his early academic heroes were chemists, including Professor Arthur Hantzsch. In 1890, he received his Ph.D. at the University of Zurich, where he published original work on the geometry of nitrogen-containing molecules.

Werner’s most significant contribution was made in 1893 when he developed the coordination compounds theory. He stated a theory on how some metal atoms interact with other ions or molecules, which went against the established chemical theories. He gave an idea of ‘coordination number,’ the number of ligands bonded to the central metal atom, and provided better insight into molecular shape. This theory provided the basis for the development of modern inorganic chemistry. In 1893, Werner was the first to propose correct structures for coordination compounds containing complex ions, in which a central transition metal atom is surrounded by neutral or anionic ligands.

For example, it was known that cobalt forms a “complex” hexamine cobalt (III) chloride, with formula CoCl₃•6NH₃, but the nature of the association indicated by the dot was mysterious. Werner proposed the structure [Co(NH₃)6]Cl₃, with the Co₃+ ion surrounded by six NH₃ at the vertices of an octahedron. The three Cl− are dissociated as free ions, which Werner confirmed by measuring the conductivity of the compound in an aqueous solution, and also by chloride anion analysis using precipitation with silver nitrate. Later, magnetic susceptibility analysis was also used to confirm Werner’s proposal for the chemical nature of CoCl₃•6NH₃.

He introduced the more fully-realized Coordination theory of chemistry in 1901, and published an influential book on the subject in 1904. Though widely rejected by scientists for several years, his theory led to better explanations of the properties of observed compounds, and it gained acceptance as Warner and his students were able to identify dozens of previously unknown compounds and synthesize dozens more. In 1905 he offered a reorganization of the periodic table, moving the lanthanide elements (“rare earths” with atomic numbers 58-71) to a separate place in the table, where they remain today.

Werner’s work was instrumental in changing the chemist’s perception of bonding in transition metals. His ideas were rewarded with the 1913 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and he became the first inorganic chemist to do so.

While Werner succeeded in the scientific field, he had problems in his personal life, especially with his health. By 1915, arteriosclerosis was already interfering with his capacity to lecture and research. He worsened, and in 1919, he was compelled to give up his professorship at the University of Zurich. Werner died later that year at the age of 52. His work lives on in chemistry, especially in ions and the coordination of transition metals.

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Allvar Gullstrand 1911 (65)

(5 June 1862 – 28 July 1930)

He was born on 5 June 1862, in Landskrona, Sweden. He received his early education in Lund and Uppsala, where he developed a keen interest in the sciences. After completing his medical degree at Uppsala University in 1888, Gullstrand focused his research on ophthalmology. He continued his studies in Vienna and Berlin, where he worked with prominent scientists and further honed his expertise in the field.

work primarily focused on the field of ophthalmology, specifically in the areas of optics and eye physiology. He conducted extensive research to understand the mechanisms of vision and made significant contributions to the understanding of how light is refracted and focused by the eye.

One of Gullstrand’s most notable works was the development of the Gullstrand slit lamp biomicroscope. This device allowed for precise measurement of the curvature of the cornea and the observation of the eye’s anterior segment. The slit-lamp biomicroscope revolutionized the field of ophthalmology by providing ophthalmologists with a powerful tool for diagnosing various eye conditions and evaluating the eye’s refractive properties.

Between 1885 and 1888, Allvar Gullstrand studied medicine, following the career of his father and it seemed appropriate to select the speciality of ophthalmology since this could utilise specifics of mathematics that he had previously acquired.

After qualifying, he took up a post in the Seraphim Hospital in Stockholm. Being ambitious within the sphere of academic achievement his doctorate thesis, entitled Contribution to the theory of astigmatism, re-examined the prevailing models of astigmatism and was well received when published in 1890.

His appointment in 1891 as a lecturer at the Karolinska Institute would largely be due to his postgraduate studies. The subsequent award in 1895 of a specially created Chair of Professor of Ophthalmology at Uppsala University eventually allowed more time for researches into the structure of the eye where the publication in 1900 (in German), entitled General Theory of Monochromatic Aberrations and Its Implications for Ophthalmology, introduced him to the wider community of the science of optics.

The style of presentation used by Gullstrand in his mathematical models of visual functions is difficult to follow. In a specific work,1 for example, a chapter of 28 pages has over 150 equations all of which are unnumbered and without any diagrams.

This, however, appears to have been the conventional style for presentation of work of this kind. In addition, the bulk of his subsequent publications are in either German or Swedish, with only one major work available as an English translation.

Gullstrand’s research also focused on the dioptric system of the eye, which involves the study of the eye’s refractive elements, including the cornea, lens, and other structures. He made significant advancements in understanding how these elements contribute to the formation of images on the retina and how the eye adapts to different distances, a process known as accommodation. He died on 28 July 1930, in Stockholm, Sweden.

Allvar Gullstrand (1862–1930) was a Swedish ophthalmologist whose study of the physiological and geometric optics of the eye challenged existing theories by discovering new ways of examining the structures of the eye. His key invention was the slit lamp but he is also known for the development of the reflex-free ophthalmoscope and the schematic eye. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology in 1911.

Though he had no formal training in physics, Gullstrand was appointed to the Nobel Committee for Physics, where he maneuvered behind the scenes to ensure that Albert Einstein never received a Nobel Prize for his theory of relativity. Gullstrand seemed to have not quite understood Einstein’s theory, doubted its accuracy, and described it as being “of little significance”. Einstein was honored with a Nobel Prize in 1921, but it was for his study of photoelectric effects.

While Gullstrand is sometimes credited with the first use of the ‘photo-keratotomer’ for determining the corneal profile, there is in fact an earlier trail of investigation and discovery, which Levene3 describes in some detail. A device for detection of abnormalities of the corneal topography had been developed by Henry Goode, a Cambridge physician in 1847, where the reflection of a square object from the cornea provided an indication of the corneal profile.

A more convenient device was developed by Antonio Plácido in 1880, where the reflection of a disk with concentric black and white rings could be viewed through a central aperture. The rings were typically illuminated by means of light situated behind and adjacent to the patient’s head.

Such devices are still available for screening applications. It is an observation that many of the early researchers into details of the corneal profile suffered from astigmatism. While this technique could confirm the presence of degrees of astigmatism and other corneal issues visual inspection alone could not provide confirmation of precise values of corneal topography or accurately record changes over time.  Levene also indicates that Plácido went on to develop the ‘photo-keratoscope’ in 1880 as a technique for recording the pattern of observed rings on the cornea and was a method independently developed by Emil Javal in France.

Later Gullstrand, in 1896, would use the technique to derive accurate measurements of the optical power of the anterior eye surface. Such measurements would identify key elements of his standard eye model.

Gullstrand took considerable care to make his measurements of the reflected Plácido ring profile – coating the photographic plate with a layer with the exact same refractive index as the glass plate to avoid double images. The measurement accuracy he achieved for measuring the location of points on the captured corneal image plate was of the order of 2.5 microns.  The high levels of illumination required was provided by a pair of 25 amp Siemens arc lamps. This level of direct exact observation explained many of the aspects of astigmatism related to aspects of the corneal profile.

Gullstrand endeavoured to simplify such observations for everyday practical use, but little notice of his efforts was taken in the wider world of ophthalmology. While the ophthalmoscope developed by Hemholtz was in itself a significant advancement for routine examination of the retina, a major drawback to image quality was the reflection of illumination light from the corneal and lens surfaces. This led Gullstrand to develop various versions11, 12 of ‘reflex free’ ophthalmoscopes – one handheld and another stationary.  The first versions of these were developed by him in Sweden and were well received at the spring meeting in 1911 of the Swedish Ophthalmological Society. In one version developed subsequently by Carl Zeiss (Jena), the ‘large Gullstrand’ ophthalmoscope, with binocular option was identified as allowing observation of surface topography of the retina.  A more ‘basic’ model was also available as the ‘large simplified Gullstrand Ophthalmoscope’ in which there remained slight element of reflection from the optical lens elements.  In a Bausch + Lomb version of the large Gullstrand Ophthalmoscope there is described a ‘drawing apparatus in position’ to allow the observer to sketch the observed retinal profile. Gullstrand passed away in July 1930 in Stockholm, Sweden, from a cerebral hemorrhage.

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Henri La Fontaine 1913 (78)

born on April 22, 1854, and passed away on May 14, 1943

Although he was a Nobel Prize winner, the name of Henri La Fontaine has somewhat fallen into obscurity. At the time of his Nobel Peace Prize award in 1913, however, he was a fundamental figure in the pacifist movement. The prize was a reward for his activities at the International Peace Bureau (IPB), of which he had been president since 1907, as well as his major contribution to various associations working to promote peace.

Henri La Fontaine (1854-1943) was born in Brussels in 1854, to a wealthy and progressive family. Whilst studying law at the Free University of Brussels, he developed a passion for international law, which he saw as the best way to ensure peace in the world. After graduating in 1877, he began a career as a lawyer in parallel to numerous other activities centred around peace, equality and democracy. Over the course of his career, he was able to promote these ideas within the Belgian senate, where he held a seat between 1895 and 1935; the League of Nations, where he represented Belgium in 1920 and 1921; and the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB), or the Mundaneum, which he founded along with Paul Otlet (1868-1944) in 1895, as well as in Masonic lodges. In these circles, Henri La Fontaine vigorously defended the emancipation of women, the expansion of democracy and access to knowledge for all, because he believed that peace could only be achieved in a democratic, egalitarian society.

Henri La Fontaine ascribed to a pacifist orientation that upheld an approach based on law. He believed that peace could only be guaranteed through the codification of international law, obligatory recourse to international arbitration, the creation of a League of Nations and the establishment of an International Court of Justice.

He became an active member of the pacifist movement in the early 1880s. At the time, he was working to create a Belgian section of the International Arbitration and Peace Association, which would be founded in 1889 under the name “Société Belge de l’Arbitrage et de la Paix”. He subsequently became an important figure in Belgian and international pacifism, in particular within the International Peace Bureau (IPB), where he served as president from 1907 until his death in 1943, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, whose conferences he actively participated in after joining the Belgian senate in 1895.

On the home front, he worked to bring together Belgium’s pacifist societies, and in 1913, he was able to organise the first National Peace Congress in Brussels as well as set up a Permanent Delegation of Belgian Peace Societies.

Henri La Fontaine was in regular contact with the Belgian Labour Party (BWP/POB) from the time of its creation in 1885. His official affiliation, however, only dates back to 1894. Prior to this, his position oscillated between progressive liberal, as expressed through his becoming a member of the Liberal Association of Brussels in 1877, and socialist. The friendship he formed with Émile Vandervelde (1866-1938), the socialist leader, was a determining factor in his final orientation towards socialism.

Henri La Fontaine’s political career began in earnest in 1895 when he was elected to the senate, where he would continue to hold a seat until 1935, with the exception of two absences: one in 1898-1899, and the other in 1932-1935. He went on to serve as secretary and first vice president of the senate, and took part in the debates regarding the fight for universal suffrage, education, working conditions and international issues. On his arrival, he became a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and later served as its vice president and then president. As a prominent figure in the pacifist movement who was aware of the internationalist dimension of the socialist movement, he also encouraged the Workers’ Party of Belgium to open up to pacifist movements despite their differences.

He was active in the International Socialist Bureau, established at the headquarters of the POB. Before the First World War, he took part in the extraordinary meetings on the international situation, which studied a possible agreement to prevent the war. Henri La Fontaine wrote the resolution decreeing that in the case of the outbreak of war, the duty of the working class is to use all means to stop it quickly. As a delegate of the International Socialist Bureau, he also represented Belgium, with Émile Vandervelde, at the first Allied conference held in London in February 1915.

His idea of socialism is set out in a brochure entitled Le Collectivisme, which he published in 1897. He believed that the means of production belonged to everyone and expressed support for removing the intermediaries between producers and consumers. He also favoured close collaboration between manual and intellectual workers. His convictions would lead him to take an active role in the developments of the Maison du Peuple in Brussels and the operation of several cooperatives.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Henri La Fontaine did not give up the struggle for peace, and went into exile, first in London in September 1914, then in the United States of America in April 1915, in order to continue his propaganda work and attempt to unite pacifists. Until the end of 1918, he worked on plans for the post-war period and the reconstruction of Belgium. He was convinced that Belgium should play a bigger role in international politics, because of the damage caused by the war and the violation of its neutrality. He further developed his ideas on the world after the war and insisted that all nations should be represented at the peace congress that would end the conflict and determine the conditions of peace.

It was in the United States in 1916 that he published his major work, The Great Solution. Magnissima Charta. The Existing Elements of a Constitution of the United States of the World – a constitutional text intended to form the basis for the establishment of a global state responsible for ensuring peace around the world. In that book, Henri La Fontaine explained the need for a federal organization of the nations and for international courts that could use armed force to avoid the use of violence in case of international disagreements or to enforce their judgments.

At the end of the war, Henri La Fontaine was chosen as a technical advisor for the Peace Conference held in Paris in 1919. The conference resolved to create the League of Nations, at the assembly of which he was a Belgian representative in 1920 and 1921. During his time at the League of Nations, Henri La Fontaine focused mainly on two issues: the status of the International Court of Justice and international intellectual cooperation.

Although the League of Nations was the realization of the hopes of many pacifists, Henri La Fontaine was soon warning of the risk that continuing international tensions and the economic and financial crisis would culminate in a new conflict. He stressed the need to establish a new world order and advocated the introduction of an international jurisdiction to which states would be obliged to turn in case of conflict, with order assured by an international public force. In the 1930s, disappointed by the League of Nations’ inability to guarantee peace and by the rise of nationalism, Henri La Fontaine directed his message at the masses, whom he saw as the sole remaining hope. He continued to campaign until the end of his life for the establishment of an international code of law that would guarantee human rights and maintain world peace. His dreams were destroyed once again by the outbreak of the Second World War, the end of which he would not live to see.

Henri La Fontaine thought that different peoples’ ignorance of each other was an obstacle to sustainable peace. This idea underpinned the projects he developed with Paul Otlet in the spheres of bibliography, documentation and access to information. In 1895, the two men created the IIB, whose activities and developments gave rise to the Mundaneum. The IIB’s first mission was to establish the Universal Bibliographic Repertory, which was intended to bring together the bibliographical details of every publication in the world.

Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine later expanded their scope to cover not just books, but also other sources of information. Within the IIB, they created specialised sections that worked on a particular medium (e.g. the press, or posters) and collected countless documents. This expansion also resulted in the creation of the Union of International Associations in 1907 and the International Museum in 1910. These institutions were brought together at the Palais du Cinquantenaire in Brussels under the name of the “Palais Mondial” or “Mundaneum”, which was destined to be an international centre dedicated to sharing knowledge.

In 1934, the Belgian government decided to close the Mundaneum. However, it survived and, after moving several times within Brussels, was moved to Mons, where it has been housed since 1993.

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