Glimpses of a Scientific Style

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subrata Dasgupta
Keyword(s):  
Computer Software ◽  
Doctoral Degree ◽  
Personal Communication ◽  
The United States ◽  
Computer Hardware ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Computer Scientists ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Manchester

In august 1951, David Wheeler submitted a PhD dissertation titled Automatic Computing with the EDSAC to the faculty of mathematics (D. F. Hartley, personal communication, September 7, 2011) at the University of Cambridge. The year after, in November 1952, another of Maurice Wilkes’s students, Stanley Gill, submitted a thesis titled The Application of an Electronic Digital Computer to Problems in Mathematics and Physics. Wheeler’s was not the first doctoral degree awarded on the subject of computing. That honor must surely go to Herman Hollerith for his thesis submitted to Columbia University in 1890 on his invention of an electrical tabulating system (see Chapter 3, Section IV). Nor was Wheeler’s the first doctoral degree on a subject devoted to electronic computing. In December 1947, Tom Kilburn (codesigner with Frederic C. Williams of the Manchester Mark I [see Chapter 8, Section XIII]) had written a report on the CRT-based memory system he and Williams had developed (but called the Williams tube). This report was widely distributed in both Britain and the United States (and even found its way to Russia), and it became the basis for Kilburn’s PhD dissertation awarded in 1948 by the University of Manchester (S. H. Lavington, personal communication, August 31, 2011). Wheeler’s doctoral dissertation, however, was almost certainly the first on the subject of programming. And one might say that the award of these first doctoral degrees in the realm of computer “hardware” (in Kilburn’s case) and computer “software” (in Wheeler’s case) made the invention and design of computers and computing systems an academically respectable university discipline. As we have witnessed before in this story, establishing priority in the realm of computing is a murky business, especially at the birth of this new discipline. Thus, if by “computer science” we mean the study of computers and the phenomena surrounding computers (as three eminent computer scientists Allan Newell, Alan Perlis (1922–1990), and Herbert Simon suggested in 1967), then—assuming we agree on what “computers” are—the boundary between hardware and soft ware, between the physical computer and the activity of computing, dissolves.

An Explosion of Subparadigms

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subrata Dasgupta
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Computing Services ◽  
Computer Scientists ◽  
University Communities ◽  
Computer Centers ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Manchester

In 1962, purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, in the United States opened a department of computer science with the mandate to offer master’s and doctoral degrees in computer science. Two years later, the University of Manchester in England and the University of Toronto in Canada also established departments of computer science. These were the first universities in America, Britain, and Canada, respectively, to recognize a new academic reality formally—that there was a distinct discipline with a domain that was the computer and the phenomenon of automatic computation. There after, by the late 1960s—much as universities had sprung up all over Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries after the founding of the University of Bologna (circa 1150) and the University of Paris (circa 1200)—independent departments of computer science sprouted across the academic maps on North America, Britain, and Europe. Not all the departments used computer science in their names; some preferred computing, some computing science, some computation. In Europe non-English terms such as informatique and informatik were used. But what was recognized was that the time had come to wean the phenomenon of computing away from mathematics and electrical engineering, the two most common academic “parents” of the field; and also from computer centers, which were in the business of offering computing services to university communities. A scientific identity of its very own was thus established. Practitioners of the field could call themselves computer scientists. This identity was shaped around a paradigm. As we have seen, the epicenter of this paradigm was the concept of the stored-program computer as theorized originally in von Neumann’s EDVAC report of 1945 and realized physically in 1949 by the EDSAC and the Manchester Mark I machines (see Chapter 8 ). We have also seen the directions in which this paradigm radiated out in the next decade. Most prominent among the refinements were the emergence of the historically and utterly original, Janus-faced, liminal artifacts called computer programs, and the languages—themselves abstract artifacts—invented to describe and communicate programs to both computers and other human beings.

KARST IN URBAN AREAS

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
PHILIP VAN BEYNE ◽  
VANDA CLAUDINO-SALES ◽  
SAULO ROBERTO DE OLIVEIRA VITAL ◽  
DIEGO NUNES VALADARES
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Graduate Program ◽  
The United States ◽  
South Florida ◽  
State University ◽  
William Morris ◽  
Important Data ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University

In its third edition, the “William Morris Davis – Journal of Geomorphology” presents its second interview with geographers, to head the “Interviews” section, which opens each published issue. This time, it is the first international interview, carried out with Professor Philip van Beynen, from the University of South Florida, in the United States. Professor Philip van Beynen was interviewed on the topic “Karst in Urban Areas”, and brings important data on the subject, with beautiful illustrations and with examples from all over the world. The interview took place on September 17, 2020, with the participation of Vanda de Claudino-Sales (Professor of the Academic Master in Geography at the State University of Vale do Acarau-UVA) and Saulo Roberto Oliveira Vital (Professor of the Department of Geography and the Post-Graduate Program in Geography at the Federal University of Paraiba - UFPB), and was transcribed by Diego Nunes Valadares, master's student on Geography at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. Professor van Beynen was born in New Zealand, where he received his degree in Geography at the University of Auckland. He earned a master's degree from the same university, and a doctorate and post-doctorate from McMaster University, Canada. He has been a professor at the School of Geoscience at the University of South Florida since 2009, where he   has been developing research related to different components of karst environments. The interview shows his great expertise on the subject, and is very much worth to be read and seen even for those who are not specialists in karst.

University of East Africa Conferences on Public Policy: II. East African Federation

1964 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-122
Author(s):  
Ronald Watts
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
The United States ◽  
London School ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Public Issues ◽  
Southern Rhodesia ◽  
London School Of Economics ◽  
The University

This was the second in a series of three conferences on public policy, organised by the University of East Africa and financed by the Ford Foundation, whose aim is to bring together policy-makers and academics for discussions on major public issues.In attendance were delegations, of at least a dozen each, from Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika, consisting mainly of Cabinet Ministers, parliamentary secretaries, other M.P.s, and civil servants, as well as representatives of public corporations, political parties, and trade unions. Small delegations from Ethiopia, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Southern Rhodesia, and Zanzibar were also invited. A group of 10 ‘visiting specialists’ from overseas with experience of federal systems and problems elsewhere were invited to take part. Among these were six economists: Ursula Hicks and Arthur Hazlewood from Oxford, Pitamber Pant of the Indian Planning Commission, Vladimir Kollontai from Moscow, Jan Auerhan from Prague, and Benton Massell (who was unable to attend but contributed a paper) from the United States. The others were a lawyer, S. A. de Smith from the London School of Economics, and three political scientists, Arthur MacMahon of Columbia University, A. H. Birch from Hull University, and myself. A group of a dozen ‘local specialists’ drawn mainly from E.A.C.S.O. and from the economists, lawyers, and political scientists at the University Colleges in East Africa also presented papers and played a significant role in the discussions. The total number of participants, including 22 observers, amounted to over 90.

Colm Tóibín

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liam Harte
Keyword(s):  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Secondary School Education ◽  
Achievement Award ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Lifetime Achievement ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Manchester

Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford in 1955, the fourth of five children. His childhood was disrupted by the illness of his father Micheál, a teacher, when he was eight. His father’s death four years later in the summer of 1967 occurred just before Tóibín began his secondary school education, after which he entered University College Dublin in 1972 to study English and history. On graduation in 1975 he moved to Barcelona, where he taught English for three years, learned Catalan, and witnessed Spain’s transition to democracy in the aftermath of General Francisco Franco’s death. Following his return to Dublin in 1978, Tóibín embarked on a career in journalism, which culminated in his editorship of Magill magazine between 1982 and 1985. He spent much of the late 1980s abroad, traveling in South America, Africa, and eastern Europe, and returning to Catalonia in 1988 to write Homage to Barcelona (1990), one of three travelogues he published between 1987 and 1994. His novelistic career began in 1990 with The South, set in Ireland and Catalonia, which won the 1991 Irish Times/Aer Lingus First Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. With his next three novels— The Heather Blazing (cited under Novels), The Story of the Night (cited under Novels), and The Blackwater Lightship (cited under Novels)—Tóibín established himself as a highly distinctive voice in contemporary fiction, lauded for the spareness and lucidity of his prose, the delicacy of his psychological realism, and the acuity of his insights into states of exile, silence, loneliness, and grief. The presence of complexly drawn gay protagonists in the last two of these novels also marked Tóibín out as a bold prospector of homosexual identities and intimacies, whose public disclosure of his own gay sexuality in 1993 coincided with the decriminalization of homosexuality in the Republic of Ireland. Within Irish critical circles, the early reception of his work was complicated by Tóibín’s association with historical revisionism and his espousal of a pluralist, post-nationalist society. His fifth novel, The Master (cited under Novels), garnered extensive praise and won the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His 2009 novel, Brooklyn (cited under Novels), won the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His novella, The Testament of Mary (cited under Novels), was also shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2013. In addition to his nine novels, Tóibín has authored two volumes of short stories, three plays, a short memoir, and an impressive body of nonfiction that encompasses historical, biographical, and literary-critical studies. He taught at Princeton University from 2009 to 2011 and was Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester in 2011. He is currently Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and Chancellor of the University of Liverpool. Recent honors include the 2017 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award and the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award, presented at the Irish Book Awards in November 2019.

Film Theory in the United States and Europe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warren Buckland
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Reality Effect ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The University

Since the 1960s, film theory has undergone rapid development as an academic discipline—to such an extent that students new to the subject are quickly overwhelmed by the extensive and complex research published under its rubric. “Film Theory in the United States and Europe” presents a broad overview of guides to and anthologies of film theory, followed by a longer section that presents an historical account of film theory’s development—from classical film theory of the 1930s–1950s (focused around film as an art), the modern (or contemporary) film theory of the 1960s–1970s (premised on semiotics, Marxism, feminism, and psychoanalysis), to current developments, including the New Lacanians and cognitive film theory. The second section ends with a very brief overview of film and/as philosophy. The article covers the key figures and fundamental concepts that have contributed to film theory as an autonomous discipline within the university. These concepts include ontology of film, realism/the reality effect, formalism, adaptation, signification, voyeurism, patriarchy, ideology, mainstream cinema, the avant-garde, suture, the cinematic apparatus, auteur-structuralism, the imaginary, the symbolic, the real, film and emotion, and embodied cognition.

Between Europe and America

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-285
Author(s):  
Arvind Rajagopal
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Amiri Baraka ◽  
Postwar Germany ◽  
University Of Berlin ◽  
Guggenheim Fellowship ◽  
The University ◽  
Intellectual Formation

Werner Sollors is one of the first scholars of American literature to focus on African American literature before it was thought to constitute a canon in the academy. Unlike many other scholars who shared his focus, he completed his education in postwar Germany. The title of his doctoral dissertation on LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), completed at the Free University of Berlin in 1975, has a still-contemporary ring: “The Quest for a ‘Populist Modernism.’” He taught at Columbia University, received a Guggenheim fellowship, and spent the bulk of his career in the United States. In this interview he discusses his intellectual formation and offers reflections on the development of his field, the evolving institutional culture of the university, and 1970s-era multiculturalism.

scholarly journals John Edward Lennard-Jones, 1894-1954

1955 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 174-184 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
National Physical Laboratory ◽  
Grammar School ◽  
Atoms And Molecules ◽  
Lennard Jones ◽  
Physical Laboratory ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Manchester

John Lennard-Jones was born on 27 October 1894 in Leigh, Lancashire and was educated at Leigh Grammar School, where he specialized in classics. In 1912 he entered Manchester University, changed his subject to mathematics in which he took an honours degree and then an M.Sc. under Professor Lamb, carrying out some research on the theory of sound. In 1915 he joined the Royal Flying Corps, obtained his Wings in 1917 and saw service in France; he also took part in some investigations on aerodynamics with Messrs Boulton and Paul and at the National Physical Laboratory. In 1919 he returned to the University of Manchester as lecturer in mathematics, took the degree of D.Sc. of that university and continued to work on vibrations in gases, becoming more and more interested in the gas-kinetic aspects of the subject as his paper of 1922 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society shows. In 1922, on the advice of Professor Sydney Chapman, he applied for and was elected to a Senior 1851 Exhibition to enable him to work in Cambridge, where he became a research student at Trinity College and was awarded the degree of Ph.D. in 1924. At Cambridge under the influence of R. H. Fowler he became more and more interested in the forces between atoms and molecules and in the possibility of deducing them from the behaviour of gases.

What the War is Doing to Us

1943 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25
Author(s):  
Edwin E. Witte
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Economy ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
The University ◽  
First World

There is by this time quite a literature on the war economy. With the one exception of the recent symposium by Professor Steiner and his associates, most of whom are connected with the University of Indiana, all of the longer treatises on the subject discuss the war economy in abstract terms or on the basis of the experience of the First World War. These treatises served a useful purpose and were the only books on the economies of war which could be written at the time; but they now seem unreal, because this war differs so greatly from the prior struggle. The University of Indiana book, dealing as it does with concrete problems of present war, is up-to-the-minute and excellently done in all respects. It does not attempt, however, to do what I am venturing: a brief, overall picture of what the war has been doing to the United States.

The Master Synthesizer

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 11-18
Author(s):  
Seifudein Adem
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Makerere University ◽  
Secondary School Education ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
Organization Of African Unity ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Manchester

Ali Mazrui was born in 1933 in Mombasa, Kenya. Sent to England in 1955 for his secondary school education, he remained there until he earned hisB.A. (1960, politics and philosophy) with distinction from the University of Manchester. He received his M.A. (1961, government and politics) and Ph.D. (1966, philosophy) from Columbia and Oxford universities, respectively. In Africa, he taught political science at Uganda’s Makerere University College (1963-73), and then returned to the United States to teach at the University of Michigan (1974-91) and New York’s Binghamton University (1991-2014). An avatar of controversy, Mazrui was also legendary for the fertility of his mind. Nelson Mandela viewed him as “an outstanding educationist” 1 and Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations, referred to him as “Africa’s gift to the world.”2 Salim Ahmed Salim, former secretary-general of the Organization of African Unity and prime minister of Tanzania wrote: Ali Mazrui provided [many of us] with the illuminating light to understand the reality we have been confronting. He armed us with the tools of engagement and inspired us with his eloquence, clarity of ideas while all the time maintaining the highest degree of humility, respect for fellow human beings, and an unflagging commitment to justice.

Soil and the City

Earth Matters ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bardgett
Keyword(s):  
Human Population ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
The United States ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Railway Line ◽  
The Many ◽  
Playing Fields ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Manchester ◽  
The City

I have spent most of my living and working life in the countryside, surrounded by open fields, woodlands and hills, and in close contact with the soil. I recently changed my job and moved to the University of Manchester, which is in the centre of one of the largest cities in England. Because of this move my contact with soil is much less; in fact, as I walk each morning to my office, there is hardly a handful of soil to be seen. But is this really true of the whole city? Concrete, asphalt, and bricks certainly seal much of the ground in Manchester, as in most cities and towns. But soil is in abundance: it lies beneath the many small gardens, flower beds, road and railway verges, parks, sports grounds, school playing fields, and allotments of the city. In fact, it has been estimated that almost a quarter of the land in English cities is covered by gardens, and in the United States, lawns cover three times as much area as does corn. As I write, I am on a train leaving central London from Waterloo Station, and despite the overwhelming dominance of concrete and bricks, I can see scattered around many small gardens, trees, flowerpots and window boxes, overgrown verges on the railway line, small parks and playing fields for children, football pitches, grassy plots and flower beds alongside roadways and pavements, and small green spaces with growing shrubs outside office blocks and apartments. The city is surprisingly green and beneath this green is soil. Throughout the world, more and more people are moving to cities: in 1800 only 2 per cent of the world’s population was urbanized, whereas now more than half of the global human population live in towns and cities, and this number grows by about 180,000 people every day. This expansion has been especially rapid in recent years.

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