1960-1966

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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After graduating MB and BS from Adelaide University in 1921, he went to Oxford University, England, as a Rhodes Scholar in 1922. Following a period at Cambridge and as a Rockefeller Fellow in the USA, he returned to Cambridge as Lecturer in Pathology. He was appointed to the Chair of Pathology at Sheffield at the age of 33, and to the Sir William Dunne Chair of Pathology at Oxford in 1935.

Although historically his name is inseparable from that of penicillin, his experimental interests and achievements covered practically the whole range of general pathology. He was a determined advocate of the benefits to research of maintaining close contact between different disciplines. He was an early believer in the need to study functional changes in cells as much as the morphological changes that these brought about.

With E. Chain, Florey perceived the potential of Fleming's 1929 note on the bacteria-inhibiting qualities of Penicillium mould. His forthright and dynamic character played a vital part in developing what was perceived to be not just a scientific and medical discovery of unparalleled importance, but a matter of the greatest significance in a war of survival. Between them, Florey and Chain were able to establish the technique of antibiotic isolation and made their findings available to those implementing large-scale fermentation production processes in the USA.

Despite being domiciled in England, he played an active role in Australian medical and educational affairs and was installed as Chancellor of the Australian National University in 1966.

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SUBJECT AREA: Photography, film and optics

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Gabor became interested in physics at an early age. Called up for military service in 1918, he was soon released when the First World War came to an end. He then began a mechanical engineering course at the Budapest Technical University, but a further order to register for military service prompted him to flee in 1920 to Germany, where he completed his studies at Berlin Technical University. He was awarded a Diploma in Engineering in 1924 and a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering in 1927. He then went on to work in the physics laboratory of Siemens \& Halske. He returned to Hungary in 1933 and developed a new kind of fluorescent lamp called the plasma lamp. Failing to find a market for this device, Gabor made the decision to abandon his homeland and emigrate to England. There he joined British Thompson-Houston (BTH) in 1934 and married a colleague from the company in 1936. Gabor was also unsuccessful in his attempts to develop the plasma lamp in England, and by 1937 he had begun to work in the field of electron optics. His work was interrupted by the outbreak of war in 1939, although as he was not yet a British subject he was barred from making any significant contribution to the British war effort. It was only when the war was near its end that he was able to return to electron optics and begin the work that led to the invention of holography. The theory was developed during 1947 and 1948; Gabor went on to demonstrate that the theories worked, although it was not until the invention of the laser in 1960 that the full potential of his invention could be appreciated. He coined the term "hologram" from the Greek holos, meaning complete, and gram, meaning written. The three-dimensional images have since found many applications in various fields, including map making, medical imaging, computing, information technology, art and advertising. Gabor left BTH to become an associate professor at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1949, a position he held until his retirement in 1967. In 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on holography.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Early drawing and spinning processes failed to give linen yarn the requisite fineness and homogeneity. In 1810 Napoleon offered a prize of a million francs for a successful flax-spinning machine as part of his policy of stimulating the French textile industries. Spurred on by this offer, Girard suggested three improvements. He was too late to win the prize, but his ideas were patented in England in 1814, although not under his own name. He proposed that the fibres should be soaked in a very hot alkaline solution both before drawing and immediately before they went to the spindles. The actual drawing was to be done by passing the dried material through combs or gills that moved alternately; gill drawing was taken up in England in 1816. His method of wet spinning was never a commercial success, but his processes were adopted in part and developed in Britain and spread to Austria, Poland and France, for his ideas were essentially good and produced a superior product. The successful power-spinning of linen thread from flax depended primarily upon the initial processes of heckling and drawing. The heckling of the bundles or stricks of flax, so as to separate the long fibres of "line" from the shorter ones of "tow", was extremely difficult to mechanize, for each strick had to be combed on both sides in turn and then in the reverse direction. It was to this problem that Girard next turned his attention, inventing a successful machine in 1832 that subsequently was improved in England. The strick was placed between two vertical sheets of combs that moved opposite to each other, depositing the tow upon a revolving cylinder covered with a brush at the bottom of the machine, while the holder from which the strick was suspended moved up and down so as to help the teeth to penetrate deeper into the flax. The tow was removed from the cylinder at the bottom of the machine and taken away to be spun like cotton. The long line fibres were removed from the top of the machine and required further processing if the yarn was to be uniform.

When N.L.Sadi Carnot's book Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu, was published in 1824, Girard made a favourable report on it.

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SUBJECT AREA: Horology, Ports and shipping

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John Harrison was the son of a carpenter and was brought up to that trade. He was largely self-taught and learned mechanics from a copy of Nicholas Saunderson's lectures that had been lent to him. With the assistance of his younger brother, James, he built a series of unconventional clocks, mainly of wood. He was always concerned to reduce friction, without using oil, and this influenced the design of his "grasshopper" escapement. He also invented the "gridiron" compensation pendulum, which depended on the differential expansion of brass and steel. The excellent performance of his regulator clocks, which incorporated these devices, convinced him that they could also be used in a sea dock to compete for the longitude prize. In 1714 the Government had offered a prize of £20,000 for a method of determining longitude at sea to within half a degree after a voyage to the West Indies. In theory the longitude could be found by carrying an accurate timepiece that would indicate the time at a known longitude, but the requirements of the Act were very exacting. The timepiece would have to have a cumulative error of no more than two minutes after a voyage lasting six weeks.

In 1730 Harrison went to London with his proposal for a sea clock, supported by examples of his grasshopper escapement and his gridiron pendulum. His proposal received sufficient encouragement and financial support, from George Graham and others, to enable him to return to Barrow and construct his first sea clock, which he completed five years later. This was a large and complicated machine that was made out of brass but retained the wooden wheelwork and the grasshopper escapement of the regulator clocks. The two balances were interlinked to counteract the rolling of the vessel and were controlled by helical springs operating in tension. It was the first timepiece with a balance to have temperature compensation. The effect of temperature change on the timekeeping of a balance is more pronounced than it is for a pendulum, as two effects are involved: the change in the size of the balance; and the change in the elasticity of the balance spring. Harrison compensated for both effects by using a gridiron arrangement to alter the tension in the springs. This timekeeper performed creditably when it was tested on a voyage to Lisbon, and the Board of Longitude agreed to finance improved models. Harrison's second timekeeper dispensed with the use of wood and had the added refinement of a remontoire, but even before it was tested he had embarked on a third machine. The balance of this machine was controlled by a spiral spring whose effective length was altered by a bimetallic strip to compensate for changes in temperature. In 1753 Harrison commissioned a London watchmaker, John Jefferys, to make a watch for his own personal use, with a similar form of temperature compensation and a modified verge escapement that was intended to compensate for the lack of isochronism of the balance spring. The time-keeping of this watch was surprisingly good and Harrison proceeded to build a larger and more sophisticated version, with a remontoire. This timekeeper was completed in 1759 and its performance was so remarkable that Harrison decided to enter it for the longitude prize in place of his third machine. It was tested on two voyages to the West Indies and on both occasions it met the requirements of the Act, but the Board of Longitude withheld half the prize money until they had proof that the timekeeper could be duplicated. Copies were made by Harrison and by Larcum Kendall, but the Board still continued to prevaricate and Harrison received the full amount of the prize in 1773 only after George III had intervened on his behalf.

Although Harrison had shown that it was possible to construct a timepiece of sufficient accuracy to determine longitude at sea, his solution was too complex and costly to be produced in quantity. It had, for example, taken Larcum Kendall two years to produce his copy of Harrison's fourth timekeeper, but Harrison had overcome the psychological barrier and opened the door for others to produce chronometers in quantity at an affordable price. This was achieved before the end of the century by Arnold and Earnshaw, but they used an entirely different design that owed more to Le Roy than it did to Harrison and which only retained Harrison's maintaining power.

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See also: Burgi, Jost; Huygens, Christiaan

SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology, Telecommunications

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After the Second World War, Kao moved with his family to Hong Kong, where he went to St Joseph's College. To further his education he then moved to England, taking his "A" Levels at Woolwich Polytechnic. In 1957 he gained a BSc in electrical engineering and then joined Standard Telephones and Cables Laboratory (STL) at Harlow. Following the discovery by others in 1960 of the semiconductor laser, from 1963 Kao worked on the problems of optical communications, in particular that of achieving attenuation in optical cables low enough to make this potentially very high channel capacity form of communication a practical proposition; this problem was solved by suitable cladding of the fibres. In the process he obtained his PhD from University College, London, in 1965. From 1970 until 1974, whilst on leave from STL, he was Professor of Electronics and Department Chairman at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, then in 1982–7 he was Chief Scientist and Director of Engineering with the parent company ITT in the USA. Since 1988 he has been Vice-Chancellor of Hong Kong University.

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SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building

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Nash's name is synonymous with the great scheme carried out for his patron, the Prince Regent, in the early nineteenth century: the development of Marylebone Park from 1811 constituted a "garden city" for the wealthy in the centre of London. Although only a part of Nash's great scheme was actually achieved, an immense amount was carried out, comprising the Regent's Park and its surrounding terraces, the Regent's Street, including All Souls' Church, and the Regent's Palace in the Mall. Not least was Nash's exotic Royal Pavilion at Brighton.

From the early years of the nineteenth century, Nash and a number of other architects took advantage of the use of structural materials developed as a result of the Industrial Revolution; these included wrought and cast iron and various cements. Nash utilized iron widely in the Regent Street Quadrant, Carlton House Terrace and at the Brighton Pavilion. In the first two of these his iron columns were masonry clad, but at Brighton he unashamedly constructed iron column supports, as in the Royal Kitchen, and his ground floor to first floor cast-iron staircase, in which he took advantage of the malleability of the material to create a "Chinese" bamboo design, was particularly notable. The great eighteenth-century terrace architecture of Bath and much of the later work in London was constructed in stone, but as nineteenth-century needs demanded that more buildings needed to be erected at lower cost and greater speed, brick was used more widely for construction; this was rendered with a cement that could be painted to imitate stone. Nash, in particular, employed this method at Regent's Park and used a stucco made from sand, brickdust, powdered limestone and lead oxide that was suited for exterior work.

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Луман, Ніклас (1927, Люнебург - 1998) - нім. соціальний філософ, соціолог, представник системної теорії суспільства. Вивчав право у Фрайбурзькому ун-ті (1946 - 1949), стажувався в Гарвардському ун-ті у Парсонса (1960 - 1961), габілітація в 1966 р. за працю "Право та автоматизація в державному управлінні" у Шельскі та Клаессенса. Од 1968 р. - проф. новоутвореного ун-ту в Білефельді. На основі теорії еволюції Л. розглядає соціальні явища крізь призму посилення системної комплексності суспільства, обумовленого диференціацією таких систем, як політика, економіка, церква, наука, мораль тощо. Дистанціюючись від традиційного розгляду системи в термінах частини й цілого, Л. застосовує такі поняття, як система та довкілля. Посилення комплексності довкілля обумовлює також посилення складності системи і навпаки. Така кореляція, за Л., не онтологічна, а функціонально-семантична: кожна система утворює власне довкілля, здійснюючи редукцію комплексності на основі смислу, або коду. Напр., наука конституюється кодами істина/хиба, політика - влада/відсутність влади, господарство - прибутки/збитки, мораль - добро/зло тощо. Спростовуючи концепт єдності розуму класичного раціоналізму, Л. вважає соціальні системи самореферентними, кожна з яких утворює незалежну від суспільства в цілому раціональність. На цій основі заперечується і моральноетична легітимація політичної системи, господарства, науки, а зворотним боком такого підходу є заперечення застосування кодів істина/хиба до моральної системи, а відтак - граничного обґрунтування моральних належностей. Л. піддає критиці й такі класичні поняття, як "автономія", "суб'єкт", "розум", "рефлексія" тощо, стверджуючи, що людина як окрема система отримує смисли своєї діяльності від соціальних систем, не рефлексуючи щодо їхньої істинності. Системна теорія Л. багато в чому дотична до постмодернізму, англо-американського комунітаризму, неоконсерватизму та ін., постаючи також опонентом комунікативної теорії.

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Осн. тв.: "Соціологічне просвітництво". У 5 т. (1970 - 1990); "Теорія суспільства чи соціальна технологія - що дає системний аналіз?", у співавт. (1971); "Соціальні системи" (1984); "Структура суспільства та семантика". У 3 т. (1980 - 1989); "Екологічна комунікація" (1986).

   1) The Nature of Theory- Building

   Neurath has likened science to a boat which, if we are to rebuild it, we must rebuild plank by plank while staying afloat in it. The philosopher and the scientist are in the same boat....

   Analyze theory-building how we will, we all must start in the middle. Our conceptual firsts are middle-sized, middle-distanced objects, and our introduction to them and to everything comes midway in the cultural evolution of the race. In assimilating this cultural fare we are little more aware of a distinction between report and invention, substance and style, cues and conceptualization, than we are of a distinction between the proteins and the carbohydrates of our material intake. Retrospectively we may distinguish the components of theory-building, as we distinguish the proteins and carbohydrates while subsisting on them. (Quine, 1960, pp. 4-6)

   2) The Functions of Theory in Science

   Theories are usually introduced when previous study of a class of phenomena has revealed a system of uniformities.... Theories then seek to explain those regularities and, generally, to afford a deeper and more accurate understanding of the phenomena in question. To this end, a theory construes those phenomena as manifestations of entities and processes that lie behind or beneath them, as it were. (Hempel, 1966, p. 70)

   3) The Nature of Construct Validity

   A strong approach [to construct validation] looks on construct validation as tough-minded testing of specific hypotheses:

   heoretical concepts are defined conceptually or implicitly by their role in a network of nomological or statistical "laws." The meaning is partially given by the theoretical network, however tentative and as yet impoverished that network may be. Crudely put, you know what you mean by an entity to the extent that statements about it in the theoretical language are linked to statements in the observational language. These statements are about where it's found, what it does, what it's made of. Only a few of those properties are directly tied to observables [p. 136]. In [an early] theory sketch, based upon some experience and data, everything said is conjectural. We have tentative notions about some indicators of the construct with unknown validities [p. 144]. [When we check up empirically on predictions from the model] we are testing the crude theory sketch, we are tightening the network psychometrically, and we are validating the indicators. All of these are done simultaneously [p. 149]. [Extracted with elisions and some paraphrase from Meehl & Golden, 1982.] (Cronbach, 1990, p. 183)