Category Archives: History

Arts, History, Science

Quantum Leaps: Sir Isaac Newton

1642 – 1727

So many extensive books and articles have been written on the life and impact of Sir Isaac Newton over the last three centuries it is impossible to do his achievements justice in a short entry like this. He is quite simply one of the greatest scientists of all time.

. A Slow Beginning

His early years did not necessarily suggest, however, he would end up as such. Born and bred in the quiet village of Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire, England, and schooled in the nearby town of Grantham, he was not particularly noted for academic achievements as a child. Even on entry to Trinity College, Cambridge, he did not stand out until, ironically, the University was forced to close during the period 1665-1666 due to the high risk of plague. Newton returned to Woolsthorpe and began two years of remarkable contemplation on the laws of nature and mathematics which would transform the history of human knowledge. Although he published nothing during this period, he formulated and tested many of the scientific principles which would become the basis for his future achievements.

However, it would often be decades before he returned to his earlier discoveries. For example, his ideas on universal gravitation did not re-emerge until he began a controversial correspondence on the subject with Robert Hooke in around 1680. Furthermore, it was not until Edmond Halley challenged Newton in 1684 to find out how planets could have the elliptical orbits described by Johannes Kepler, and Newton replied he already knew, that he fully articulated his law of gravitation. Yet he had begun work on the subject back in the 1660s in Woolsthorpe after famously seeing an apple fall from a tree and wondering if the force which propelled it towards the earth could be applied elsewhere in the universe.

Following his declaration to Halley, Newton was forced to recalculate his proof having lost his original jottings, and the result was published in Newton’s most famous work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687). This law of gravitation proposed that all matter attracts other matter with a force related to the combination of their masses, but this attraction is weakened with distance, indeed, in inverse proportion to the square of their distances apart. This universal principle applied just as equally to the relationship between two small particles on earth as it did between the sun and the planets, and Newton was able to use it to explain Kepler’s elliptical orbits.

. Newton’s Laws of Motion

In the same work, Newton built on earlier observations made by Galileo and expressed three laws of motion which have been at the heart of modern physics ever since. The ‘law of inertia’, states that an object at rest or in motion in a straight line at a constant speed will carry on in the same state until it meets another force. The second stated that a force could change the motion of an object according to the product of its masses and its acceleration, vital in understanding dynamics. The third declares that the force or action with which an object meets another object is met by an equal force or reaction.

Aside from the wide-ranging uses for the laws Newton outlined in the Principia, the important point is that all historical speculation of different mechanical principles for the earth from the rest of the cosmos were cast aside in favour of a single, universal system. It was clear that simple mathematical laws could explain a huge range of seemingly disconnected physical facts, providing science with the straightforward explanations it had been seeking since the time of the ancients. Newton’s insistence on the use of mathematical expression of physical occurrences also underlined the standard for modern physics to follow.

. Further Achievements

Newton achieved major breakthroughs in other areas too. His proof that white light was made up of all the colours of the spectrum was outlined in his 1672 work New Theory about Light and Colours. In Opticks (1704), he also articulated his influential (if partially inaccurate) particle or corpuscle theory of light.

Another achievement significant to mathematics was his invention of the ‘binomial theorem’.

Newton had a practical side too, inventing the reflecting telescope in the 1660s. This new instrument bypassed the focusing problems caused by chromatic aberration in the refracting telescope of the type Galileo had created.

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Europe, European Union, Germany, Government, History, Poland, Society

The billions that Poland is demanding from Germany in wartime reparations 

ESSAY

Poland

The devastation and destruction of Warsaw in 1945 following the Nazi occupation of Poland.

FOR many in Britain, World War II is a story of unparalleled heroism, and there are many stirring films such as the new blockbuster Dunkirk. For the people of Poland, however, the war was a nightmare so black and so bloodstained, that no film could even remotely capture the depths of its horror.

Consider the incident in a German town called Gleiwitz close to the Polish border. On the night of August 31, 1939, a small group of Nazi intelligence agents, dressed in Polish uniforms, burst into a radio station. They then broadcast anti-German messages in Polish before dumping the bodies of prisoners they had just hauled out of the Dachau concentration camp, who had been made to resemble Polish saboteurs then shot and mutilated to make identification impossible.

A few hours later, Adolf Hitler rose in the Reichstag and proclaimed that the Gleiwitz incident was the final straw. He deceitfully blamed the incident on anti-German saboteurs.

By the summer of 1945, some six million Polish citizens, one in five of the pre-war population, had been killed. The great cities of Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin were in smoking ruins. Millions of books had been ruined; hundreds of libraries, schools, museums and laboratories had been destroyed.

In effect, the Germans had done their best to eradicate an entire nation, erasing its culture, murdering its middle-classes and reducing the rest to slavery. And though the Nazis were defeated, the Polish people’s ordeal was far from over. Following Hitler’s tyranny, Poland was then occupied by Stalin’s Red Army, who turned it into a brutalised Soviet satellite.

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Germany, Government, History, Poland, Second World War

Poland set to demand billions in reparations from Germany over World War Two

WARTIME REPARATIONS

Poland-reparations

POLAND is demanding millions of pounds in reparations from Germany for its treatment of Poles during the Second World War in an “historic counteroffensive”.

POLAND is preparing to demand billions of euros in wartime reparations from Germany.

Government officials in Poland are looking into a “historical counteroffensive” to claim compensation for atrocities and looting.

Arkadiusz Mularczyk, an MP with the ruling Law and Justice party, has revealed that parliamentary researchers will have an analysis of the issues ready by Friday, 11 August 2017.

Germany’s 1939-1945 occupation of Poland cost the lives of up to six million civilians, around a fifth of the pre-war population. Half the dead were Jewish Holocaust victims. Churches, cultural treasures and entire cities were plundered and destroyed.

The Soviets also carried out looting and committed atrocities such as the Katyn massacre of Polish officers in 1940. Under pressure from Moscow, Poland’s former communist government agreed in 1953 to make no further reparation claims.

But Antoni Macierewicz, Poland’s defence minister, has said that the decisions of a Soviet puppet state were not necessarily valid today.

He insisted the Germans needed to “pay back the terrible debt they owe to the Polish people”.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the country’s most powerful politician, said in a recent interview the “Polish government was preparing itself for a historical counteroffensive”.

“We are talking here about huge sums, and also about the fact that Germany for many years refused to take responsibility for World War II,” said Kaczynski, who leads Right-wing Law and Justice.

He called for reparations when he was prime minister more than a decade ago, creating tensions between two important trading partners and allies in NATO and the European Union. Ulrike Demmer, a spokesman for German chancellor Angela Merkel, responded to Mr Macierewicz by saying “the question of reparation for Poland was dealt with conclusively in the past, legally and politically”.

She added: “Of course Germany stands by its responsibility in World War II, politically, morally and financially. It has made significant reparations for general war damage, including to Poland, and is still paying significant compensation for Nazi wrongdoing.”

Poland’s wartime suffering has been highlighted this week by the anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Uprising. The revolt in 1944 claimed 200,000 Polish lives and saw the near total destruction of the capital city.

A year earlier the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto also saw heroic resistance. Underground fighters held out for almost a month against heavily-armed German units; 13,000 Jews were killed.

Poland has spent decades trying to regain its looted treasures. Its ministry of culture still keeps a watch for any works that may turn up on the international art circuit.

It often finds itself having to buy the works at auction – sometimes from the descendants of those who stole them.

Berlin has paid billions of euros over the years in compensation for Nazi crimes, primarily to Jewish survivors, and acknowledges the country’s responsibility for keeping alive the memory of Nazi atrocities and atoning for them.

It took until 2010 for Germany to finally clear its First World War debt. The £22billion reparations were set by the Allied victors – chiefly Britain, France and the United States – as compensation and punishment for the conflict.

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