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Lord Byron

Lord Byron
He travelled all over Europe especially in Italy where he lived for seven years and then joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero.[1] He died one year later at age 36 from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi in Greece. Often described as the most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs with both sexes, rumours of a scandalous incestuous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile.[2] Early life[edit] Byron's paternal grandparents were Vice-Admiral the Hon. He was christened, at St Marylebone Parish Church, "George Gordon Byron" after his maternal grandfather George Gordon of Gight, a descendant of James I of Scotland, who had committed suicide[2] in 1779. Catherine Gordon, Byron's mother Upon the death of Byron's mother-in-law Judith Noel, the Hon. Education and early loves[edit] Ah! Career[edit]

Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron and now commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. Because of this, she is often described as the world's first computer programmer.[1][2][3] Ada described her approach as "poetical science" and herself as an "Analyst (& Metaphysician)". As a young adult, her mathematical talents led her to an ongoing working relationship and friendship with fellow British mathematician Charles Babbage, and in particular Babbage's work on the Analytical Engine. Biography[edit] Childhood[edit] Ada, aged four On 16 January 1816, Annabella, at George's behest, left for her parents' home at Kirkby Mallory taking one-month-old Ada with her. Adult years[edit]

Stereoscopy Pocket stereoscope with original test image. Used by military to examine stereoscopic pairs of aerial photographs. View of Boston, c. 1860; an early stereoscopic card for viewing a scene from nature Kaiserpanorama consisted of a multi-station viewing apparatus and sets of stereo slides. Company of ladies watching stereoscopic photographs, painting by Jacob Spoel, before 1868. Stereoscopy (also called stereoscopics or 3D imaging) is a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. Background[edit] Stereoscopy creates the illusion of three-dimensional depth from given two-dimensional images. (All the above cues, with the exception of the first two, are present in traditional two-dimensional images such as paintings, photographs, and television.) Most 3D displays use this stereoscopic method to convey images. Wheatstone mirror stereoscope Visual requirements[edit] These functions develop in early childhood. Side-by-side[edit]

Charles Babbage Charles Babbage, FRS (26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath.[1] He was a mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, who is best remembered now for originating the concept of a programmable computer. Considered a "father of the computer",[2] Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs. His varied work in other fields has led him to be described as "pre-eminent" among the many polymaths of his century.[1] Parts of Babbage's uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum. Early life Babbage's birthplace is disputed, but according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography he was most likely born at 44 Crosby Row, Walworth Road, London, England.[3] A blue plaque on the junction of Larcom Street and Walworth Road commemorates the event.[4] The Illustrated London News (4 November 1871).[8] Babbage was one of four children of Benjamin Babbage and Betsy Plumleigh Teape.

General relativity General relativity, or the general theory of relativity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916[1] and the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalizes special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present. Some predictions of general relativity differ significantly from those of classical physics, especially concerning the passage of time, the geometry of space, the motion of bodies in free fall, and the propagation of light. Einstein's theory has important astrophysical implications. History[edit] Albert Einstein developed the theories of special and general relativity. The Einstein field equations are nonlinear and very difficult to solve.

Ada Lovelace: Founder of Scientific Computing Born: London, England, December 10, 1815 Died: London, England, November 27, 1852 Ada Byron was the daughter of a brief marriage between the Romantic poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle Milbanke, who separated from Byron just a month after Ada was born. Lady Byron wished her daughter to be unlike her poetical father, and she saw to it that Ada received tutoring in mathematics and music, as disciplines to counter dangerous poetic tendencies. Lady Byron and Ada moved in an elite London society, one in which gentlemen not members of the clergy or occupied with politics or the affairs of a regiment were quite likely to spend their time and fortunes pursuing botany, geology, or astronomy. One of the gentlemanly scientists of the era was to become Ada's lifelong friend. In 1835, Ada married William King, ten years her senior, and when King inherited a noble title in 1838, they became the Earl and Countess of Lovelace.

Chaos theory A double rod pendulum animation showing chaotic behavior. Starting the pendulum from a slightly different initial condition would result in a completely different trajectory. The double rod pendulum is one of the simplest dynamical systems that has chaotic solutions. Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future. Chaotic behavior can be observed in many natural systems, such as weather and climate.[6][7] This behavior can be studied through analysis of a chaotic mathematical model, or through analytical techniques such as recurrence plots and Poincaré maps. Introduction[edit] Chaos theory concerns deterministic systems whose behavior can in principle be predicted. Chaotic dynamics[edit] The map defined by x → 4 x (1 – x) and y → x + y mod 1 displays sensitivity to initial conditions. In common usage, "chaos" means "a state of disorder".[9] However, in chaos theory, the term is defined more precisely. where , and , is: .

Mary Shelley Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary Godwin's mother died when she was eleven days old; afterwards, she and her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, were raised by her father. When Mary was four, Godwin married his neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont. In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. Biography Early life Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797.

Schrödinger's cat Schrödinger's cat: a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other. Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935.[1] It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. Origin and motivation[edit] Real-size cat figure in the garden of Huttenstrasse 9, Zurich, where Erwin Schrödinger lived 1921 – 1926. Schrödinger wrote:[1][10]

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