Colonization (or colonisation) occurs whenever any one or more species populate an area. The term, which is derived from the Latin ''colere'', "to inhabit, cultivate, frequent, practice, tend, guard, respect", originally related to humans. However, 19th century biogeographers dominated the term to describe the activities of birds, bacteria, or plant species. (In the 1990s it became synonymous with the X-Files as a reference to alien colonization). Human colonization is a narrower category than the related concept of colonialism, because whereas colonization refers to settler colonies, trading posts, and plantations, colonialism deals with this and the ruling of new territories' existing peoples.

Historical Colonizations

Classical Period

In ancient times, maritime nations such as the city-states of Greece and Phoenicia often established colonies to farm uninhabited land. In classical times, land suitable for farming was often claimed by migratory "barbarian tribes" who lived by hunting and gathering. To ancient civilized people, the land simply appeared vacant. However this does not mean that conflict did not exist between the colonizers and native peoples.

In Asia, under the Achaemenid Empire, ethnic Persians did some colonizing in their new territory, such as Egypt. After the Rise of Parthia in west of Asia some ethnic Persians settled in India. The Pallava Empire was born in India , made by Persian colonies that had settled there.

Another period of colonization in Ancient times was from the Romans. The Roman Empire conquered a large part of Western Europe, North Africa and West Asia. In North Africa and west Asia they were often conquering civilized peoples, but as they moved north into Europe they mostly encountered rural tribes with very little in the way of cities. In these areas, waves of Roman colonization often followed the conquest of the areas.

Many of the current cities around Europe began as Roman colonies, such as the German city Köln (Cologne), which was originally called ''Colonia Claudia'' by the Romans; and the British capital city of London which the Romans founded as ''Londinium''.

Middle Ages

The decline and collapse of the Roman Empire saw (and was partly caused by) the large scale movement of people in Eastern Europe and Asia. This is largely seen as beginning with nomadic horsemen from Asia (specifically the Huns) moving into the richer pasture land to the west and so forcing the people there to move further west and so on until eventually the Goths were forced to cross into the Roman Empire, resulting in continuous war with Rome which played a major role in the fall of the Roman Empire. It was this period that saw the large scale movement of peoples establishing new colonies all over western Europe, the events of this time saw the development of many of the modern day nations of Europe, the Franks in France and Germany and the Anglo-Saxons in England.

In West Asia, during Sasanid Empires, some Persian people did some colonizing in Yemen and Oman.

The Vikings of Scandinavia also carried out a large scale colonization. The Vikings are best known as raiders, setting out from their original homelands in Denmark, southern Norway and southern Sweden, to pillage the coastlines of northern Europe. In time, the Vikings began trading, rather than raiding, and established colonies. The Vikings discovered Iceland and establishing colonies before moving onto Greenland, where they briefly held some colonies. The Vikings also launched an unsuccessful attempt at colonizing an area they called Vinland, which is probably at a site now known as L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland and Labrador, on the eastern coastline of Canada.

'Colonial era' colonialism

Colonialism in this sense refers to Western European countries' colonization of lands mainly in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania; the main European countries which were active in this form of colonization were Spain, Portugal, France, the Kingdom of England, the Netherlands, and from the 18th century Great Britain. Each of these countries had a period of almost complete power in world trade from roughly 1500 to 1800

Modern Colonization

In some cases, expatriate niches do set up permanently in target countries but whether this can be rightly called colonization is debatable precisely because of the ambiguity of intentions behind the movement and settling of expatriates and in many cases (especially when not gathered into a niche per se) expatriates do not necessarily seek to 'expand their native civilization', but rather to integrate into the population of the new civilization. It must be recognized that expatriates are different from exiles and often there is very little if no relationship between them. Exiles are more often than not diasporic or displaced communities or persons who have fled their native territory or homeland to somewhere else and are usually in this position due to the ramifications of war or other major political upheavals and sometimes this includes the influence of colonization.

Many nations also have large numbers of guest workers who are brought in to do seasonal work such as harvesting or to do low-paid manual labor. Guest workers or contractors have a lower status than workers with visas, because guest workers can be removed at any time for any reason. Many human colonists came to colonies as slaves, so the legal power to leave or remain may not be the issue so much as the actual presence of the people in the new country.

Neo-Colonization

This term, usually pejorative, refers to a sort of "unofficial" colonization, in which a country's government is overthrown by larger country and replaced by a government that coincides with the larger country's interests. In effect, this makes the country a colony, dealing with the problem of a revolutionary uprising by delivering the impression that the colony is still self-governed.

Other ways of using the term

Policy

The theory of Science policy colonization (Weingart and Mouton, 2004) argues that science policy is increasingly being dominated by scientific experts from developed, industrialized democracies. Scientists from poorer, emerging or developing democracies may mainly be given the role of collecting raw data. Experts from developed, industrialized democracies may have biases unchallenged that run counter to the best interests of emerging democracies such as South Africa (Weingart and Mouton (2004)). There are also concerns (UNESCO 1999) that the accountability mechanisms imposed on knowledge experts are inadequate.

Habitat - Botany and Zoology

In botanical and zoological ecoregions and habitats Invasive species can colonize, become the dominant or monotypic species, replacing indigenous or native ones due to lack of natural controls. Conservation biology uses this definition.

Cultural

The term ''Cocacolonization'' is used to describe cases where a country's indigenous culture is eroded by a corporate mass-culture, usually from a powerful, industrialized country such as the United States (see cultural imperialism). This is more metaphorical usage as people need not move to the colonized country; only cultural signals, symbols, forms of entertainment, and values need to move to the colonized country.

Hypothetical or fictional types of Colonization

The hypothetical permanent habitation of locations in Earth's oceans is called ''ocean colonization''. Related ideas such as the floating city are much less hypothetical - funds are presently being sought to build several large ships that would have permanent populations of up to 50,000 people each.

In science fiction, space colonization is sometimes more benign. Humans find an uninhabited planet, and inhabit it. The colonization of Mars is an often-used example of this type of space colonization. In more recent science fiction, humans may create habitable space (by terraforming or constructing a space habitat) and call that a "colony".

On the other hand, if the planet is already inhabited, much less benign consequences ensue: indeed, some science fiction authors have used the colonization of alien planets by humans, or the colonization of Earth by aliens, to explore the real-world issues surrounding the phenomenon. Such works include those of Mary Doria Russell, ''The Sparrow'' and ''Children of God''.

The ultimate form of space colonization is the Kardashev scale which assumes that a single dominant civilisation will take over all energy on one planet, then one star, then a whole galaxy full of stars. However, this would not necessarily be so if other species were to be discovered during a galactic expansion. This may require more than one species to share the galactic space with each other as they both develop.

See also

Colonialism

References

Further reading

Ankerl Guy: Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western. INUPress, Geneva, 2000. ISBN 2-88155-004-5

Category:Colonialism

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name	Milton Friedman
school tradition	Chicago School of Economics
color	maroon
birth date	July 31, 1912
birth place	Brooklyn, New York
death date	November 16, 2006
death place	San Francisco, California
nationality	American
institution	Hoover Institution (1977–2006)University of Chicago (1946–77)Columbia University (1937–41, 1943–45, 1964–65)NBER (1937–40)
field	Economics
alma mater	Columbia University (Ph.D.), 1946, University of Chicago (M.A.), 1933 Rutgers University (B.A.), (1932)| influences Adam Smith, Irving Fisher, Frank Knight, Murray Rothbard, Jacob Viner, Harold Hotelling, Arthur Burns, Friedrich Hayek, Homer Jones, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Simons, George Stigler
opposed	John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith, Murray Rothbard
influenced	David D. Friedman, Anna J. Schwartz, Ben Bernanke, Gary Becker, Thomas Sowell, Harry Markowitz, Chicago Boys, William F. Buckley, Jr., Cato Institute
contributions	Price theory, Monetarism, applied macroeconomics, floating exchange rates, volunteer military, Permanent income hypothesis, Friedman test
awards	John Bates Clark Medal (1951)Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (1976)Presidential Medal of Freedom (1988)National Medal of Science (1988)
signature	}}

Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist, statistician, academic, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades. He was a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Among scholars, he is best known for his theoretical and empirical research, especially consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy. He was an economic advisor to U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Over time, many governments practiced his restatement of a political philosophy that extolled the virtues of a free market economic system with little intervention by government. As a leader of the Chicago school of economics, based at the University of Chicago, he had great influence in determining the research agenda of the entire profession. Milton Friedman's works, which include many monographs, books, scholarly articles, papers, magazine columns, television programs, videos, and lectures, cover a broad range of topics of microeconomics, macroeconomics, economic history, and public policy issues. ''The Economist'' described him as "the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…possibly of all of it."

Friedman was originally a Keynesian, a supporter of the New Deal and an advocate of government intervention in the economy. However, his 1950s reinterpretation of the Keynesian consumption function challenged the standard Keynesian model of that time. At the University of Chicago, Friedman became the main advocate opposing activist Keynesian government policies. During the 1960s he promoted an alternative macroeconomic policy known as "monetarism". He theorized there existed a "natural" rate of unemployment, and argued that governments could not change this natural rate by varying aggregate demand. (Among macroeconomists, the "natural" rate has been increasingly replaced by James Tobin's NAIRU, the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment, which is seen as having fewer normative connotations.) He argued that the Phillips Curve was not stable, and predicted that then-existing Keynesian policies would cause high inflation and minimal growth (later termed stagflation). Friedman's claim that monetary policy could have prevented the Great Depression was an attempt to refute the analysis of Keynes, who argued that monetary policy is ineffective during depression conditions, and that large-scale deficit spending by the government is needed to decrease mass unemployment. Though opposed to the existence of the Federal Reserve, Friedman argued that, given that it does exist, a steady, small expansion of the money supply was the only wise policy, and he warned against efforts by a treasury or central bank to do otherwise.

Influenced by his close friend George Stigler, Friedman opposed government regulation of many types. He once stated that his role in eliminating U.S. conscription was his proudest accomplishment, and his support for school choice led him to found The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Friedman's political philosophy, which he considered classically liberal and libertarian, emphasized the advantages of free market economics and the disadvantages of government intervention and regulation, strongly influencing the opinions of American conservatives and libertarians. In his 1962 book ''Capitalism and Freedom'', Friedman advocated policies such as a volunteer military, freely floating exchange rates, abolition of medical licenses, a negative income tax, and education vouchers. His books and essays were well read and were even circulated illegally in Communist countries.

Most economists during the 1960s rejected Friedman's economic views, but since then they have had an increasing international influence. Some of his laissez-faire ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation were used by governments, especially during the 1980s. A combination of his monetary theory in regard to credit and Keynes's belief in deficit spending to stimulate growth has influenced economists such as Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve's response to the financial crisis of 2007–10.

Early life

Friedman was born in Brooklyn, New York, to recent Jewish immigrants Jenő Friedman and Sára Landau from Beregszász in Hungary (now Berehove, part of Ukraine), both of whom worked as dry goods merchants. Shortly after Milton's birth, the family relocated to Rahway, New Jersey. A talented student, Friedman graduated from Rahway High School in 1928, just before his 16th birthday.

Friedman graduated from Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he specialized in mathematics and initially intended to become an actuary. During his time at Rutgers, Friedman became influenced by two economics professors, Arthur F. Burns and Homer Jones, who convinced him that modern economics could help end the Great Depression. Friedman did graduate work at the University of Chicago, earning an M.A. in 1933. He was strongly influenced by Jacob Viner, Frank Knight, and Henry Simons. It was at Chicago that Friedman met his future wife, economist Rose Director. During 1933–34 he had a fellowship at Columbia University, where he studied statistics with renowned statistician and economist Harold Hotelling. He was back in Chicago for 1934–35, spending the year working as a research assistant for Henry Schultz, who was then working on ''Theory and Measurement of Demand''. That year, Friedman formed what would prove to be lifelong friendships with George Stigler and W. Allen Wallis.

Public service

Friedman was initially unable to find academic employment, so during 1935, he followed his friend W. Allen Wallis to Washington, where Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal was "a lifesaver" for many young economists. At this stage, Friedman said that he and his wife "regarded the job-creation programs such as the WPA, CCC, and PWA appropriate responses to the critical situation," but not "the price- and wage-fixing measures of the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration." Foreshadowing his later ideas, he believed price controls interfered with an essential signaling mechanism to help resources be used where they were most valued. Indeed, Friedman later concluded that all government intervention associated with the New Deal was "the wrong cure for the wrong disease," arguing that the money supply should simply have been expanded, instead of contracted. In the publication ''Monetary History of the United States'' by Friedman and Anna Schwartz, they argue that the Great Depression was caused by monetary contraction, which was the consequence of poor policymaking by the Federal reserve and the continuous crises of the banking system.

During 1935, he began work for the National Resources Committee, which was then working on a large consumer budget survey. Ideas from this project later became a part of his ''Theory of the Consumption Function''. Friedman began employment with the National Bureau of Economic Research during autumn 1937 to assist Simon Kuznets in his work on professional income. This work resulted in their jointly authored publication ''Incomes from Independent Professional Practice'', which introduced the concepts of permanent and transitory income, a major component of the Permanent Income Hypothesis that Friedman worked out in greater detail in the 1950s. The book hypothesizes that professional licensing artificially restricts the supply of services and raises prices.

During 1940, Friedman was appointed an assistant professor teaching Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but encountered antisemitism in the Economics department and decided to return to government service. Friedman spent 1941–43 working on wartime tax policy for the Federal Government, as an advisor to senior officials of the United States Department of the Treasury. As a Treasury spokesman during 1942 he advocated a Keynesian policy of taxation, and during this time he helped to invent the payroll withholding tax system. He later said in an interview, "I have no apologies for it, but I really wish we hadn't found it necessary and I wish there were some way of abolishing withholding now." As Friedman grew older he reversed himself; during 2006 he observed, "You know, it's a mystery as to why people think Roosevelt's policies pulled us out of the Depression. The problem was that you had unemployed machines and unemployed people. How do you get them together by forming industrial cartels and keeping prices and wages up?"

Academic career

Early years

During 1943, Friedman joined the Division of War Research at Columbia University (headed by W. Allen Wallis and Harold Hotelling), where he spent the rest of the war years working as a mathematical statistician, focusing on problems of weapons design, military tactics, and metallurgical experiments. Then during 1945, Friedman submitted ''Incomes from Independent Professional Practice'' (co-authored with Kuznets and completed during 1940) to Columbia as his doctoral dissertation. The university awarded him a Ph.D. during 1946. Friedman spent the 1945–46 academic year teaching at the University of Minnesota (where his friend George Stigler was employed). On February 12, 1945, his son, David D. Friedman was born.

University of Chicago

During 1946, Friedman accepted an offer to teach economic theory at the University of Chicago (a position opened by departure of his former professor Jacob Viner to Princeton University). Friedman would work for the University of Chicago for the next 30 years. There he helped build an intellectual community that produced a number of Nobel Prize winners, known collectively as the Chicago School of Economics.

At that time, Arthur Burns, who was then the head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, asked Friedman to rejoin the Bureau's staff. He accepted the invitation, and assumed responsibility for the Bureau's inquiry into the role of money in the business cycle. As a result, he initiated the "Workshop in Money and Banking" (the "Chicago Workshop"), which promoted a revival of monetary studies. During the latter half of the 1940s, Friedman began a collaboration with Anna Schwartz, an economic historian at the Bureau, that would ultimately result in the 1963 publication of a book co-authored by Friedman and Schwartz, ''A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960''.

Friedman spent the 1954–55 academic year as a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. At the time, the Cambridge economics faculty was divided into a Keynesian majority (including Joan Robinson and Richard Kahn) and an anti-Keynesian minority (headed by Dennis Robertson). Friedman speculates that he was invited to the fellowship because his views were unacceptable to both of the Cambridge factions. Later his weekly columns for ''Newsweek'' magazine (1966–84) were well read and increasingly influential among political and business people.

Friedman was an economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater during 1964.

Nobel memorial prize and retirement

In 1976 Friedman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy." During the banquet speech he made a reference to “the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”. In that he was the first recipient to do so, and it wasn’t until 2006 that a recipient of the prize called it by its proper name. During 1977, at age 65, Friedman retired from the University of Chicago after teaching there for 30 years. He and his wife moved to San Francisco. From 1977 on, he was affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. During the same year, Friedman was approached by the Free To Choose Network and asked to create a television program presenting his economic and social philosophy. The Friedmans worked on this project for the next three years, and during 1980, the ten-part series, titled ''Free to Choose'', was broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The companion book to the series (co-authored by Milton and his wife, Rose Friedman), also titled ''Free To Choose'', was the bestselling nonfiction book of 1980 and has since been translated into 14 foreign languages.

Friedman served as an unofficial adviser to Ronald Reagan during his 1980 presidential campaign, and then served on the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board for the rest of the Reagan Administration. During 1988, he received the National Medal of Science and Reagan honored him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Milton Friedman is known now as one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Friedman continued to write editorials and appear on television. He made several visits to Eastern Europe and to China, where he also advised governments.

Scholarly contributions

Economics

Friedman was best known for reviving interest in the money supply as a determinant of the nominal value of output, that is, the quantity theory of money. Monetarism is the set of views associated with modern quantity theory. Its origins can be traced back to the 16th-century School of Salamanca or even further but Friedman's contribution is largely responsible for its modern popularization. He co-authored, with Anna Schwartz, ''A Monetary History of the United States'' (1963), which was an examination of the role of the money supply and economic activity in U.S. history. A striking conclusion of their research was one regarding the role of money supply fluctuations as contributing to economic fluctuations. Several regression studies with David Meiselman during the 1960s suggested the primacy of the money supply over investment and government spending in determining consumption and output. These challenged a prevailing but largely untested view on their relative importance. Friedman's empirical research and some theory supported the conclusion that the short-run effect of a change of the money supply was primarily on output but that the longer-run effect was primarily on the price level.

Friedman was the main proponent of the monetarist school of economics. He maintained that there is a close and stable association between price inflation and the money supply, mainly that price inflation should be regulated with monetary deflation and price deflation with monetary inflation. He famously quipped that price deflation can be fought by "dropping money out of a helicopter."

Friedman's arguments were designed to counter popular claims that price inflation at the time was the result of increases in the price of oil, or increases in wages: as he wrote,

Friedman rejected the use of fiscal policy as a tool of demand management; and he held that the government's role in the guidance of the economy should be restricted severely. Friedman wrote extensively on the Great Depression, which he termed the Great Contraction, arguing that it had been caused by an ordinary financial shock whose duration and seriousness were greatly increased by the subsequent contraction of the money supply caused by the misguided policies of the directors of the Federal Reserve.

Friedman also argued for the cessation of government intervention in currency markets, thereby spawning an enormous literature on the subject, as well as promoting the practice of freely floating exchange rates. His close friend George Stigler explained, "As is customary in science, he did not win a full victory, in part because research was directed along different lines by the theory of rational expectations, a newer approach developed by Robert Lucas, also at the University of Chicago."

Friedman was also known for his work on the consumption function, the permanent income hypothesis (1957), which Friedman himself referred to as his best scientific work. This work contended that rational consumers would spend a proportional amount of what they perceived to be their permanent income. Windfall gains would mostly be saved. Tax reductions likewise, as rational consumers would predict that taxes would have to increase later to balance public finances. Other important contributions include his critique of the Phillips curve and the concept of the natural rate of unemployment (1968). This critique associated his name, together with that of Edmund Phelps, with the insight that a government that brings about greater inflation cannot permanently reduce unemployment by doing so. Unemployment may be temporarily lower, if the inflation is a surprise, but in the long run unemployment will be determined by the frictions and imperfections of the labor market.

Friedman's essay "The Methodology of Positive Economics" (1953) provided the epistemological pattern for his own subsequent research and to a degree that of the Chicago School of Economics. There he argued that economics as ''science'' should be free of value judgments for it to be objective. Moreover, a useful economic theory should be judged not by its descriptive realism but by its simplicity and fruitfulness as an engine of prediction.

Statistics

One of his most famous contributions to statistics is sequential sampling. "Friedman did statistical work at the Division of War Research at Columbia. He and his colleagues came up with a sampling technique, known as sequential sampling, which became, in the words of ''The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics'', 'the standard analysis of quality control inspection.' The dictionary adds: 'Like many of Friedman’s contributions, in retrospect it seems remarkably simple and obvious to apply basic economic ideas to quality control; that however is a measure of his genius.'"

Other work

Friedman was an important member of the team during World War II that developed a new proximity fuse for anti-aircraft projectiles, which prevented shells from exploding unless they were near the object they are meant to destroy.

Public policy positions

Friedman believed that if the money supply was to be centrally controlled (as by the Federal Reserve) that the preferable way to do it would be with a mechanical system that would keep the quantity of money increasing at a steady rate. However, instead of government involvement at all, he was open to a "real," non-government, gold standard where money is produced by the private market: "A real gold standard is thoroughly consistent with [classical] liberal principles and I, for one, am entirely in favor of measures promoting its development." He did however add this caveat, "Let me emphasize that this note is not a plea for a return to a gold standard.... I regard a return to a gold standard as neither desirable nor feasible—with the one exception that it might become feasible if the doomsday predictions of hyperinflation under our present system should prove correct." He said the reason that it was not feasible was because "there is essentially no government in the world that is willing to surrender control over its domestic monetary policy," however it could be done if "you could re-establish a world in which government's budget accounted for 10 percent of the national income, in which laissez-faire reigned, in which governments did not interfere with economic activities and in which full employment policies had been relegated to the dustbin..."

He was critical of the Federal Reserve's influence on the economics profession. In a 1993 letter to University of Texas economics professor and former House Banking Committee investigator Robert Auerbach, Friedman wrote:

I cannot disagree with you that having something like 500 economists is extremely unhealthy. As you say, it is not conducive to independent, objective research. You and I know there has been censorship of the material published. Equally important, the location of the economists in the Federal Reserve has had a significant influence on the kind of research they do, biasing that research toward noncontroversial technical papers on method as opposed to substantive papers on policy and results.

In his 1955 article "The Role of Government in Education" Friedman proposed supplementing publicly operated schools with privately run but publicly funded schools through a system of school vouchers. Reforms similar to those proposed in the article were implemented in, for example, Chile in 1981 and Sweden in 1992. In 1996 Friedman, together with his wife, founded the The Foundation for Educational Choice to advocate school choice and vouchers. Friedman also supported libertarian policies such as legalization of drugs and prostitution. Milton Friedman was a major proponent of a volunteer military, stating that the draft was "inconsistent with a free society." In ''Capitalism and Freedom'', he argued that conscription is inequitable and arbitrary, preventing young men to shape their lives as they see fit. During the Nixon administration he headed the committee to research a conversion to paid/volunteer armed force. He would later state that his role in eliminating the conscription in the United States was his proudest accomplishment. Friedman did, however, believe a nation could compel military ''training'' as a reserve in case of war time.

He served as a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board during 1981. During 1988, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science. He said that he was a libertarian philosophically, but a member of the U.S. Republican Party for the sake of "expediency" ("I am a libertarian with a small 'l' and a Republican with a capital 'R.' And I am a Republican with a capital 'R' on grounds of expediency, not on principle.") But, he said, "I think the term classical liberal is also equally applicable. I don't really care very much what I'm called. I'm much more interested in having people thinking about the ideas, rather than the person."

Friedman was supportive of the state provision of some public goods that private businesses are not considered as being able to provide. However, he argued that many of the services performed by government could be performed better by the private sector. Above all, if some public goods are provided by the state, he believed that they should not be a legal monopoly where private competition is prohibited. For, example, in response to the United States Post Office's legal monopoly of mail, he said

Friedman made newspaper headlines by proposing a negative income tax to replace the existing welfare system, and then opposing a bill to implement it because the bill merely proposed to supplement the existing system rather than replace it.

During 2005, Friedman and more than 500 other economists advocated discussions regarding the economic benefits of the legalization of marijuana.

Michael Walker of the Fraser Institute and Friedman hosted a series of conferences from 1986 to 1994. The goal was to create a clear definition of economic freedom and a method for measuring it. Eventually this resulted in the first report on worldwide economic freedom, ''Economic Freedom in the World''. This annual report has since provided data for numerous peer-reviewed studies and has influenced policy in several nations.

Along with sixteen other distinguished economists he opposed the Copyright Term Extension Act and filed an amicus brief in ''Eldred v. Ashcroft''. He supported the inclusion of the word "no-brainer" in the brief.

Friedman argued for stronger basic legal (constitutional) protection of economic rights and freedoms in order to further promote industrial-commercial growth and prosperity and buttress democracy and freedom and the rule of law generally in society.

Honors, recognition, and influence

Friedman allowed the Cato Institute to use his name for its biannual Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty beginning in 2001. A Friedman Prize was given to the late British economist Peter Bauer during 2002, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto during 2004, Mart Laar, former Estonian Prime Minister during 2006 and a young Venezuelan student Yon Goicoechea during 2008. His wife Rose, sister of Aaron Director, with whom he initiated the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, served on the international selection committee. Friedman was also a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Hong Kong

Friedman once said, "If you want to see capitalism in action, go to Hong Kong." He wrote in 1990 that the Hong Kong economy was perhaps the best example of a free market economy.

One month before his death, he wrote the article "Hong Kong Wrong – What would Cowperthwaite say?" in the ''Wall Street Journal'', criticizing Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of Hong Kong, for abandoning "positive noninterventionism." Tsang later said he was merely changing the slogan to "big market, small government," where small government is defined as less than 20% of GDP. In a debate between Tsang and Alan Leong, rivals for the job of Chief Executive, Leong introduced the topic and jokingly accused Tsang of angering Friedman to death.

Chile

During 1975, two years after the military coup that ended the government of Salvador Allende, the economy of Chile experienced a crisis. Friedman accepted the invitation of a private foundation to visit Chile and speak on principles of economic freedom. He spent seven days in Chile giving a series of lectures. One of the lectures was entitled "The Fragility of Freedom," and according to Friedman, "dealt with precisely the threat to freedom from a centralized military government." Friedman encapsulated his philosophy in a lecture at Universidad Católica de Chile, saying: "free markets would undermine political centralization and political control."

Friedman also met with military dictator President Augusto Pinochet during his visit. He never served as an adviser to the Chilean government, but did write a letter to Pinochet outlining what Friedman considered the two key economic problems of Chile. The letter listed a series of monetary and fiscal measures deemed a "shock program" to end hyperinflation and promote a market economy. His letter suggested (among other, more specific prescriptions) that a brief period of cutting government spending would reduce its fiscal deficit and thus reduce the rate of increase of the quantity of money in the country that was driving inflation. The economist did however admit his knowledge of Chile was "too limited to enable [him] to be precise or comprehensive" and that the measures he outlined were "to be taken as illustrative." Friedman felt that there might be a brief period ("measured in months") of higher unemployment, followed by recovery once inflation was tamed. His letter also suggested that cutting spending to reduce the fiscal deficit would result in less transitional unemployment than raising taxes to do so. Later, Friedman said he believed that market reforms would undermine Pinochet. Chilean graduates of the Chicago School of Economics and its new local chapters had been appointed to important positions in the new government soon after the coup, which allowed them to advise Pinochet on economic policies in accord with the School's economic doctrine.

According to his critics, Friedman did not criticize Pinochet's dictatorship at the time, nor the assassinations, illegal imprisonments, torture, or other atrocities that were well known by then. In his 1980 documentary ''Free to Choose'', he said the following: "Chile is not a politically free system, and I do not condone the system. But the people there are freer than the people in Communist societies because government plays a smaller role. ... The conditions of the people in the past few years has been getting better and not worse. They would be still better to get rid of the junta and to be able to have a free democratic system." In 1984 Friedman proclaimed he has "never refrained from criticizing the political system in Chile."

Friedman defended his activity in Chile on the grounds that, in his opinion, the adoption of free market policies not only improved the economic situation of Chile but also contributed to the amelioration of Pinochet's rule and to the eventual transition to a democratic government during 1990. That idea is included in ''Capitalism and Freedom'', in which he declared that economic freedom is not only desirable in itself but is also a necessary condition for political freedom. He stressed that the lectures he gave in Chile were the same lectures he later gave in China and other socialist states. During the 2000 PBS documentary ''The Commanding Heights'', Friedman continued to argue that criticism over his role in Chile missed his main contention that freer markets resulted in freer people, and that Chile's unfree economy had caused the military government. Friedman suggested that the economic liberalization he advocated caused the end of military rule and a free Chile.

Iceland

Friedman visited Iceland during the autumn of 1984, met with important Icelanders and gave a lecture at the University of Iceland on the "tyranny of the ''status quo''." He participated in a lively television debate on August 31, 1984 with socialist intellectuals, including Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, who later became the president of Iceland. When they complained that a fee was charged for attending his lecture at the University and that hitherto, lectures by visiting scholars had been free-of-charge, Friedman replied that previous lectures had not been free-of-charge in a meaningful sense: Lectures always have related costs. What mattered was whether attendees or non-attendees covered those costs. Friedman thought that it was fairer that only those who attended paid. In this discussion Friedman also stated that he did not receive any money for delivering that lecture.

Estonia

Although Friedman never visited Estonia, his book ''Free to Choose'' exercised a great influence on that nation's then 32-year-old prime minister, Mart Laar, who has claimed that it was the only book on economics he had read before taking office. Laar's reforms are often credited with responsibility for transforming Estonia from an impoverished Soviet Republic to the "Baltic Tiger." A prime element of Laar's program was introduction of the flat tax. Laar won the 2006 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, awarded by the Cato Institute.

United Kingdom

Milton Friedman influenced the thinking of Alan Walters and Patrick Minford, two of Margaret Thatcher's main macroeconomic advisers. See the book ''Margaret Thatcher's Revolution: How it Happened and What it Meant'', edited by Subroto Roy & John Clarke, Continuum 2005

Criticism

Keynesian criticism

During the financial crisis of 2007–2010, several Keynesian economists such as James Galbraith and Joseph Stiglitz blamed the free market philosophy of Friedman and the Chicago school for the economic turmoil. In response to these criticisms, University of Chicago Magazine noted that Chicago's Rajan, Thaler, and Vishney warned the US government that regulations are needed and, “The Chicago School never said we wanted blind deregulation ... We should really ask who were the people in 2000 who decided markets don’t need regulating. Those were not Chicago economists. Some of them were Clinton officials, and some of them are now advising Obama” and noted other examples to claim that their economists are often mischaracterized regarding their views on deregulation.

After Friedman's death, Keynesian Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, while regarding Friedman as a "great economist and a great man," criticized him during 2007 by writing that "he slipped all too easily into claiming both that markets always work and that only markets work. It's extremely hard to find cases in which Friedman acknowledged the possibility that markets could go wrong, or that government intervention could serve a useful purpose." National Bureau of Economic Research economist and Friedman's long-time colleague and co-author Anna Schwartz, and Edward Nelson of the Centre for Economic Policy Research responded that Krugman "doubletalks throughout his essay," and asked "How can he say Friedman was a great economist and a great man, if he believes Friedman to have been intellectually dishonest?"

Austrian school criticism

During 1971, libertarian economist Murray Rothbard criticized Friedman's efforts to make the government more efficient as detrimental to individual liberty. He concluded that "And so, as we examine Milton Friedman’s credentials to be the leader of free-market economics, we arrive at the chilling conclusion that it is difficult to consider him a free-market economist at all." Friedman's position on governmental control of money changed since 1971 when this criticism was made. In a 1995 interview in ''Reason'' magazine he said the "difference between me and people like Murray Rothbard is that, though I want to know what my ideal is, I think I also have to be willing to discuss changes that are less than ideal so long as they point me in that direction." He said he actually would "like to abolish the Fed," and points out that when he has written about the Fed it is simply his recommendations of how it should be run given that it exists.

Other criticism

In her book ''The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism'', journalist and author Naomi Klein critiqued Friedman's ideology and the principles that guided the economic restructuring that followed the military coups in countries such as Chile and Indonesia, drawing analogies between the way that Friedman proposed using the social "shock" of the coups to create an economic "blank slate" with Ewen Cameron's controversial medical experiments that used electroshock therapy to create a mental "blank slate" in patients with mental disorders. Based on the extent to which the application of neoliberal policies has contributed to income disparities and inequality, both Klein and Noam Chomsky have suggested that the primary role of neoliberalism was as an ideological cover for capital accumulation by multinational corporations. Chilean economist Orlando Letelier asserted that Pinochet's dictatorship resorted to repression because of popular opposition to Chicago School policies in Chile.

Klein's critique of Friedman is disputed by economists, including Tyler Cowen and Don Boudreaux. Johan Norberg, a senior fellow at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, accused Klein of distorting quotations from Friedman's writings and of "link[ing] him to Augusto Pinochet's brutal military dictatorship in Chile in the 1970s."

Personal life

According to a 2007 article in ''Commentary'' magazine, his "parents were moderately observant [Jews], but Friedman, after an intense burst of childhood piety, rejected religion altogether." He described himself as an agnostic.

Friedman wrote extensively of his life and experiences, especially in 1998 in his memoirs with his wife Rose, titled ''Two Lucky People''. He died of heart failure at the age of 94 years in San Francisco on November 16, 2006. He was survived by his wife (who died on August 18, 2009) and their two children, David, who is a philosopher and anarcho-capitalist economist, and Janet. David's son, Patri Friedman, is the executive director of the Seasteading Institute.

See also

Works of Milton Friedman

Friedman–Savage utility function

Friedman rule

Friedman's k-percent rule

Friedman test

List of economists

List of Jewish Nobel laureates

List of notable Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients

History of economic thought

Notes

Bibliography

References

Wood, John Cunningham, and Ronald N. Wood, ed. (1990) ''Milton Friedman: Critical Assessments'', v. 3. Scroll to chapter-preview links. Routledge.

Further reading

Friedman, Milton (1948). "A Monetary and Fiscal Framework for Economic Stability," '' American Economic Review'', 38(3), pp. 245-264. Also in Friedman (1953), pp. 133–56.

Friedman, Milton (1953). ''Essays in Positive Economics'', University of Chicago Press. Chapter- preview links.

Friedman, Milton (1959). ''A Program for Monetary Stability''. Fordham University Press. New York. TOC chapter-preview links.

External links

The Milton Friedman papers at the Hoover Institution Archives

Selected Bibliography for Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago Library

Inflation and Unemployment 1976 lecture at NobelPrize.org

Profile and Papers at Research Papers in Economics/RePEc

Milton Friedman, ''Commanding Heights'', PBS, October 1, 2000, interview, profile and video

Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago

Milton Friedman at the Cato Institute

Free to Choose Network

The Foundation for Educational Choice

Milton Fridman at Scarlett

Milton Friedman:Why Not a Volunteer Army?, ''New Individualist Review'', Spring 1967

The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits, Milton Friedman, ''The New York Times Magazine'', September 13, 1970

Interview with Milton Friedman, Dominic Streatfeild, May 25, 2000, source material for ''Cocaine: An Unauthorised Biography''

Milton Friedman vs. The Fed Bailout by Michael Hirsh, ''Newsweek'', July 17, 2009

Four Deformations of the Apocalypse, David Stockman, ''The New York Times'', July 31, 2010

The Case for Free Trade by Milton and Rose Friedman

How to Cure Inflation : Milton Friedman

Category:1912 births Category:2006 deaths Category:American agnostics Category:American economics writers Category:American economists Category:American Jews Category:American Nobel laureates Category:American libertarians Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in California Category:Classical liberals Category:Columbia University alumni Category:Drug policy reform activists Category:Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Category:Fellows of the American Statistical Association Category:Fellows of the Econometric Society Category:Friedman family Category:Jewish agnostics Category:Jewish American scientists Category:Jewish American writers Category:Libertarian economists Category:Libertarian theorists Category:Macroeconomists Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Category:Monetarists Category:Monetary economists Category:Mont Pelerin Society members Category:National Medal of Science laureates Category:Nobel laureates in Economics Category:People from New York City Category:People from Union County, New Jersey Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Rahway High School alumni Category:Rutgers University alumni Category:University of Chicago alumni Category:University of Chicago faculty

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name	Sid Meier
birth date	February 24, 1954
birth place	Sarnia, Ontario, Canada
occupation	Game designer
years active	1982—present
employer	Firaxis Games
known for	''Civilization'' series
spouse	Susan Meier
children	Ryan Meier }}

Sidney K. "Sid" Meier (born February 24, 1954) is a Canadian programmer and designer of several popular computer strategy games, most notably ''Civilization''. He has won accolades for his contributions to the computer games industry. Meier is a Director of Creative Development for computer game developer Firaxis Games, which he co-founded with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds in 1996.

Biography

Meier was born in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Meier founded MicroProse together with Bill Stealey in 1982. MicroProse initially developed flight simulator video games, such as ''F-15 Strike Eagle'' and ''F-19 Stealth Fighter''. In 1987, the company released ''Sid Meier's Pirates!'', which also began a trend of placing Meier's name in the titles of his games. Meier later explained that the inclusion of his name was because of the dramatic departure in the design of ''Pirates!'' compared to the company's earlier games. Stealey decided that it would improve the company's branding, believing that it would make those who purchased the flight simulators more likely to play ''Pirates!''. After the release of ''F-19 Stealth Fighter'', Meier decided to focus on developing strategy games. He later said, "Everything I thought was cool about a flight simulator had gone into that game." Inspired by ''SimCity'' and ''Empire!'', Meier created ''Railroad Tycoon'' and later the game series for which he is most widely recognized, ''Civilization'', although he designed only the first installment. Meier eventually left MicroProse and in 1996 founded Firaxis Games along with veteran designer and gaming executive Jeff Briggs. Today Firaxis makes strategy games, many of which are follow-ups to Meier titles, such as ''Civilization V'' and ''Pirates!''. In 1996 he was awarded US Patent 5,496,962 for a "System for Real-Time Music Composition and Synthesis" used in a product called "CPU Bach".

In 1999, Meier became the second person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame. The first to receive that honor was Shigeru Miyamoto from Nintendo.

Meier is not always the main designer on titles that carry his name. For instance, Brian Reynolds has been credited as the primary designer behind ''Sid Meier's Civilization II'', ''Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'', and ''Sid Meier's Colonization'', while Jeff Briggs designed ''Sid Meier's Civilization III'', Soren Johnson led ''Sid Meier's Civilization IV'' and Jon Shafer ''Sid Meier's Civilization V''. Currently Meier's role appears to be that of a creative director, simultaneously contributing to multiple projects.

Meier worked with a team on a dinosaur themed game starting early 2000, but announced in an online development diary on January 24, 2001 that the game had been shelved. Despite trying various approaches, including turn-based and real-time gameplay, he said he found no way to make the concept fun enough. In August 2005, Meier said, "We've been nonstop busy making other games over the past several years, so the dinosaur game remains on the shelf. However, I do love the idea of a dinosaur game and would like to revisit it when I have some time."

In January 2008, CMP Game Group announced that Meier would receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2008 Game Developer's Conference.

Meier has been ranked 2nd in IGN's list of Top 100 Game Creators of All Time.

Meier currently lives in Hunt Valley, Maryland with his wife, Susan, and son, Ryan. He met his wife at Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church in Cockeysville, where they both sing in the choir.

Games

1980s

''Spitfire Ace'' (1982) — The first project in which Sid played a major role in the game creation stage.

''HellCat Ace'' (1982)

''Floyd of the Jungle'' (1982)

''NATO Commander'' (1984)

''Solo Flight'' (1984)

''Kennedy Approach'' (1985)

''F-15 Strike Eagle'' (1985) — one of the first combat flight simulators

''Silent Service'' (1985), a World War II submarine simulation game, and Meier's first foray out of flight sims.

''Crusade in Europe'' (1985)

''Decision in the Desert'' (1985)

''Conflict in Vietnam'' (1986)

''Gunship'' (1986)

''Sid Meier's Pirates!'' (1987)

''F-19 Stealth Fighter'' (1988)

''F-15 Strike Eagle II'' (1989)

''Sword of the Samurai'' (1989)

1990s

''Covert Action'' (1990)

''Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon'' (1990), a business simulation game that paints the early development of railroads in the United States and Europe, a time when competition between railroad companies was very fierce. With the release of ''Sid Meier's Railroads!'', this series now has four installments.

''Sid Meier's Civilization'' (1991), Meier's most successful game franchise to date. It has lived through several versions (see below) and sold over 6 million copies. This game is a turn-based strategy game.

''Pirates! Gold'' (1993)

C.P.U. Bach (1993), 3DO Console exclusive interactive music-generating program.

''Sid Meier's Colonization'' (1994), a turn-based strategy game themed on the early European colonization of the New World, starting in 1492 and lasting until the age of independence in 1850. To achieve victory in this game, the player must declare independence, and win in a revolutionary war against their mother country in Europe (France, England, Netherlands, or Spain).

''Sid Meier's Civilization II'' (1996) Follow-up to Sid Meier's successful ''Civilization''; Brian Reynolds was lead designer on the game.

''Magic: The Gathering'' (1997) This would be the last game that Sid Meier worked on for MicroProse.

''Sid Meier's Gettysburg!'' (1997) Sid Meier's first real-time tactical game.

''Sid Meier's Antietam!'' (1998) ''Sid Meier's Gettysburg'' and ''Antietam'' are part of his Civil War set.

''Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'' (1999) Brian Reynolds was lead designer on this adaptation of ''Civilization'' to an outer space theme. ''Alpha Centauri'' is set in a futuristic setting on an alien world, with ideological factions substituting for civilizations. This is a much more versatile version of ''Civilization'', featuring economics and unique military customization, as well as diplomacy.

2000s

''Sid Meier's Civilization III'' (2001), Jeff Briggs designed the third installment of the series, with more complex rules, graphics and gameplay. New features include expanded diplomacy (much like ''Alpha Centauri''); the introduction of "culture" as a tool for domination; and "strategic resources" required for trade and to produce certain units. Sales of this installment made the ''Civilization'' series the best selling PC series to date.

''Sid Meier's SimGolf'' (2002) A golfing simulation in which the player built their own golf course and played it, against computer players, co-created by Maxis. Not to be confused with Maxis' 1996 title ''SimGolf''.

''Sid Meier's Pirates!'' (2004), follow-up to the acclaimed ''Pirates!'' game from 1987, updating the graphics and featuring some entirely new gameplay elements and an all new ballroom dancing segment.

''Sid Meier's Civilization IV'', Designed by Soren Johnson and released October 25, 2005. A full 3D engine replaces the isometric maps of ''Civilization II'' and ''III''. This installment makes "Religion" (present in earlier versions only as a means of population pacification and control) a tool of domination, alongside the Culture and Diplomacy elements from previous incarnations.

''Sid Meier's Railroads!'', released October 17, 2006. When Take 2 shut down PopTop Software and folded it into Firaxis, Meier once again became responsible for the ''Railroad Tycoon'' series, and this is billed as the sequel to ''Railroad Tycoon 3''.

''Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution'', announced on June 28, 2007 and released on June 13, 2008. A seventh generation console edition of ''Civilization''. This is the only Civilization title available for seventh generation consoles.

''Sid Meier's Civilization IV: War of Two Cities''. One of three Sid Meier properties to be launched by Oasys Mobile, this Sid Meier property takes the major civilizations and pits them against one another in a real time one on one battle to take over the opponent's major city. The game was developed by Floodgate Entertainment.

''Sid Meier's Pirates! Mobile''. The game was developed and published by Oasys Mobile and was led by one of the original programmers for Pirates! Gold.

''Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon Mobile''. Developed by Blue Heat and published by Oasys Mobile. This version is based on the Sid Meier classic game series; the mobile version allows players to build their own transportation empire.

''Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization'', is a 2008 remake of the 1994 ''Colonization'', and is a standalone game based on the ''Civilization IV'' engine.

2010s

''Sid Meier's Civilization V'', released on September 21, 2010 for North America and on September 24, 2010 for the rest of the world. Jon Shafer was the lead designer of the game. New features include Social Policy (which replaces "Civics" system), unit stacking change, City-States and fully animated leaders.

See Also

Civilization (series)

External links

Sid Meier's biography and his games history at Firaxis.com

"The Sid Meier Legacy" from ''GameSpot''

References

Category:1954 births Category:Canadian Lutherans Category:Canadian video game designers Category:Canadian expatriates in the United States Category:Living people Category:MicroProse Category:People from Detroit, Michigan Category:People from Sarnia, Ontario Category:University of Michigan alumni Category:Video game producers Category:Video game programmers

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The start of the European colonization of the Americas is typically dated to 1492, although there was at least one earlier colonization effort. The first known Europeans to reach the Americas were the Vikings (Norse) during the 11th century, who established several colonies in Greenland and one short-lived settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows (51°N) in the area the Norse called Vinland, present day Newfoundland and to the south. Settlements in Greenland survived for several centuries, during which time the Greenland Norse and the Inuit people experienced mostly hostile contact. By the end of the 15th century, the Norse Greenland settlements had collapsed.

In 1492, a Spanish expedition headed by Christopher Columbus sailed to the Americas and introduced the New World to the Western world of the time; after this, European conquest, exploration, and colonization soon followed and expanded. This first occurred along the Caribbean coasts on the islands of Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Cuba, and since the early 16th century, extended into the interiors of both North and South America. In 1497, sailing from the north, John Cabot landed on the North American coast, and a year later, Columbus's third voyage reached the South American coast. Eventually, the entire Western Hemisphere would come under the control of European nations, leading to profound changes to its landscape, population, and plant and animal life. In the 19th century alone over 50 million people left Europe for the Americas. The post-1492 era is known as the period of the Columbian Exchange.

Early conquests, claims, and colonies

[[Image:Colonization of the Americas 1750.PNG|right|300px|thumb|Territories in the Americas colonized or claimed by a European great power in 1750. ---- Animated Maps: North America territorial sovereignty 1750-present Central America & Caribbean sovereignty 1700-present. South America territorial sovereignty 1700-present. ]] The first explorations and conquests were made by the Spanish and the Portuguese, immediately following their own final reconquest of Iberian lands in 1492. In the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, ratified by the Pope, these two kingdoms divided the entire non-European world between themselves, with a line drawn through South America. Based on this Treaty, and the claims by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa to all lands touching the Pacific Ocean. With help from their powerful Indian allies, the Spanish rapidly conquered territory with Hernan Cortes overthrowing the Aztec and Francisco Pizarro conquering the Inca Empire. As a result, they gained control of much of western South America, Central America and Mexico by the mid-16th century, in addition to its earlier Caribbean conquests. Over this same timeframe, Portugal colonized much of eastern South America, naming it Brazil.

Other European nations soon disputed the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas, which they had not negotiated. England and France attempted to plant colonies in the Americas in the 16th century, but these met with failure. However, in the following century, the two kingdoms, along with the Dutch Republic, succeeded in establishing permanent colonies. Some of these were on Caribbean islands, which had often already been conquered by the Spanish or depopulated by disease, while others were in eastern North America, which had not been colonized by Spain north of Florida.

Early European possessions in North America included Spanish Florida, Spanish New Mexico, the English colonies of Virginia (with its North Atlantic off-shoot, The Somers Isles) and New England, the French colonies of Acadia and Canada, the Swedish colony of New Sweden, and the Dutch New Netherland. In the 18th century, Denmark–Norway revived its former colonies in Greenland, while the Russian Empire gained a foothold in Alaska.

As more nations gained an interest in the colonization of the Americas, competition for territory became increasingly fierce. Colonists often faced the threat of attacks from neighboring colonies, as well as from indigenous tribes and pirates.

Early state-sponsored colonists

The first phase of European activity in the Americas began with the Atlantic Ocean crossings of Christopher Columbus (1492–1504), sponsored by Spain, whose original attempt was to find a new route to India and China, known as "the Indies". He was followed by other explorers such as John Cabot, who reached Newfoundland and was sponsored by England. Pedro Álvares Cabral reached Brazil and claimed it for Portugal. Amerigo Vespucci, working for Portugal in voyages from 1497 to 1513, established that Columbus had reached a new set of continents. Cartographers still use a Latinized version of his first name, '' America'', for the two continents. Other explorers included Giovanni da Verrazzano, sponsored by France; the Portuguese João Vaz Corte-Real in Newfoundland; and Samuel de Champlain (1567–1635) who explored Canada. In 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and led the first European expedition to see the Pacific Ocean from the west coast of the New World. In an action with enduring historical import, Balboa claimed the Pacific Ocean and all the lands adjoining it for the Spanish Crown. It was 1517 before another expedition from Cuba visited Central America, landing on the coast of Yucatán in search of slaves.

These explorations were followed, notably in the case of Spain, by a phase of conquest: The Spaniards, having just finished the ''Reconquista'' of Spain from Muslim rule, were the first to colonize the Americas, applying the same model of governing to the former ''Al-Andalus'' as to their territories of the New World. Ten years after Columbus's discovery, the administration of Hispaniola was given to Nicolás de Ovando of the Order of Alcántara, founded during the ''Reconquista''. As in the Iberian Peninsula, the inhabitants of Hispaniola were given new landmasters, while religious orders handled the local administration. Progressively the ''encomienda'' system, which granted tribute (access to indigneous labor and taxation) to European settlers, was set in place.

A relatively large misconception is that a small number of ''conquistadores'' conquered vast territories, aided only by disease epidemics and their powerful caballeros. Recent archaeological excavations have induced the notion of a vast Spanish-Indian alliance numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Along with cavalry and the use of cannons as a siege weapon, the Spanish ''conquistadores'' were able to utilize the divisions among native ethnic groups and implement them with their own forces. Even with these reserves, the Europeans still had great difficulties in establishing colonies or even initiating peace treaties as seen in the Arauco War, Chichimeca War, Red Cloud's War, the Second Seminole War, and Pontiac's Rebellion. Hernán Cortés eventually conquered Mexico and the Tlaxcala in 1519-1521, while the conquest of the Inca was carried out by some 40,000 Incan renegades led by Francisco Pizarro in between 1532 and 1535.

Over the first century and a half after Columbus's voyages, the native population of the Americas plummeted by an estimated 80% (from around 50 million in 1492 to eight million in 1650), mostly by outbreaks of Old World diseases but also by several massacres and forced labour (the ''mita'' was re-established in the old Inca Empire, and the ''tequitl'' equivalent of the ''mita'' in the Aztec Empire). The ''conquistadores'' replaced the native American oligarchies, in part through miscegenation with the local elites. In 1532, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor imposed a vice-king to Mexico, Antonio de Mendoza, in order to prevent Cortes' independantist drives, who definitively returned to Spain in 1540. Two years later, Charles V signed the New Laws (which replaced the Laws of Burgos of 1512) prohibiting slavery and the ''repartimientos'', but also claiming as his own all the American lands and all of the autochthonous people as his own subjects.

When in May 1493, the Pope Alexander VI enacted the ''Inter caetera'' bull granting the new lands to the Kingdom of Spain, he requested in exchange an evangelization of the people. Thus, during Columbus's second voyage, Benedictine friars accompanied him, along with twelve other priests. As slavery was prohibited between Christians, and could only be imposed in non-Christian prisoners of war or on men already sold as slaves, the debate on Christianization was particularly acute during the 16th century. In 1537, the papal bull ''Sublimis Deus'' recognized that Native Americans possessed souls, thus prohibiting their enslavement, without putting an end to the debate. Some claimed that a native who had rebelled and then been captured could be enslaved nonetheless. Later, the Valladolid controversy opposed the Dominican priest Bartolomé de Las Casas to another Dominican philosopher Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, the first one arguing that Native Americans were beings doted with souls, as all other human beings, while the latter argued to the contrary and justified their enslavement. The process of Christianization was at first violent: when the first Franciscans arrived in Mexico in 1524, they burned the places dedicated to pagan cult, alienating much of the local population. In the 1530s, they began to adapt Christian practices to local customs, including the building of new churches on the sites of ancient places of worship, leading to a mix of Old World Christianity with local religions. The Spanish Roman Catholic Church, needing the natives' labor and cooperation, evangelized in Quechua, Nahuatl, Guarani and other Native American languages, contributing to the expansion of these indigenous languages and equipping some of them with writing systems. One of the first primitive schools for Native Americans was founded by Fray Pedro de Gante in 1523.

To reward their troops, the ''Conquistadores'' often allotted Indian towns to their troops and officers. Black African slaves were introduced to substitute for Native American labor in some locations - most notably the West Indies, where the indigenous population was nearing extinction on many islands.

During this time, the Portuguese gradually switched from an initial plan of establishing trading posts to extensive colonization of what is now Brazil. They imported millions of slaves to run their plantations. The Portuguese and Spanish royal governments expected to rule these settlements and collect at least 20% of all treasure found (the ''Quinto Real'' collected by the ''Casa de Contratación''), in addition to collecting all the taxes they could. By the late 16th century American silver accounted for one-fifth of Spain's total budget. In the 16th century perhaps 240,000 Europeans entered American ports.

Economic immigrants

Inspired by the Spanish riches from colonies founded upon the conquest of the Aztecs, Incas, and other large Native American populations in the sixteenth century, the first Englishmen to settle permanently in America hoped for some of the same rich discoveries when they established their first permanent settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. They were sponsored by common stock companies such as the chartered Virginia Company (and its off-shoot, the Somers Isles Company) financed by wealthy Englishmen who understood the economic potential of this new land. The main purpose of this colony was the hope of finding gold or the possibility (or impossibility) of finding a passage through the Americas to the Indies. It took strong leaders, like John Smith, to convince the colonists of Jamestown that searching for gold was not taking care of their immediate needs for food and shelter and that "he who shall not work shall not eat." (A direction based on text from the New Testament.) The extremely high mortality rate was quite distressing and cause for despair among the colonists. Tobacco later became a cash crop, with the work of John Rolfe and others, for export and the sustaining economic driver of Virginia and nearby colonies like Maryland.

From the beginning of Virginia's settlements in 1587 until the 1680s, the main source of labour and a large portion of the immigrants were indentured servants looking for new life in the overseas colonies. During the 17th century, indentured servants constituted three-quarters of all European immigrants to the Chesapeake region. Most of the indentured servants were English farmers who had been pushed off their lands due to the expansion of livestock raising, the enclosure of land, and overcrowding in the countryside. This unfortunate turn of events served as a push for thousands of people (mostly single men) away from their situation in England. There was hope, however, as American landowners were in need of labourers and were willing to pay for a labourer’s passage to America if they served them for several years. By selling passage for five to seven years worth of work they could hope to start out on their own in America.

In the French colonial regions, the focus of economy was the fur trade with the natives. Farming was set up primarily to provide subsistence only, although cod and other fish of the Grand Banks were a major export and source of income for the French and many other European nations. The fur trade was also practiced by the Russians on the northwest coast of North America. After the French and Indian War, the British were ceded all French possessions in North America east of the Mississippi River, aside from the tiny islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.

Religious immigration

Roman Catholics were the first major religious group to immigrate to the New World, as settlers in the colonies of Portugal and Spain (and later, France) were required to belong to that faith. English and Dutch colonies, on the other hand, tended to be more religiously diverse. Settlers to these colonies included Anglicans, Dutch Calvinists, English Puritans, English Catholics, Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots, German and Swedish Lutherans, as well as Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, Moravians and Jews of various nationalities.

Many groups of colonists came to the Americas searching for the right to practice their religion without persecution. The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century broke the unity of Western Christendom and led to the formation of numerous new religious sects, which often faced persecution by governmental authorities. In England, many people came to question the organization of the Church of England by the end of the sixteenth century. One of the primary manifestations of this was the Puritan movement, which sought to "purify" the existing Church of England of its many residual Catholic rites that they believed had no mention in the Bible.

A strong believer in the notion of rule by divine right, England's Charles I persecuted religious dissenters. Waves of repression led to the migration of about 20,000 Puritans to New England between 1629 and 1642, where they founded multiple colonies. Later in the century, the new Pennsylvania colony was given to William Penn in settlement of a debt the king owed his father. Its government was set up by William Penn in about 1682 to become primarily a refuge for persecuted English Quakers; but others were welcomed. Baptists, Quakers and German and Swiss Protestants flocked to Pennsylvania.

The lure of cheap land, religious freedom and the right to improve themselves with their own hand was very attractive to those who wished to escape from persecution and poverty.

Forced immigration

Slavery existed in the Americas, prior to the presence of Europeans, as the Natives often captured and held other tribes' members as captives. Some of these captives were even forced to undergo human sacrifice under some tribes, such as the Aztecs. The Spanish followed with the enslavement of local aborigines in the Caribbean. As the native populations declined (mostly from European diseases, but also and significantly from forced exploitation and careless murder), they were often replaced by Africans imported through a large commercial slave trade. By the 18th century, the overwhelming number of black slaves was such that Native American slavery was less commonly used. Africans, who were taken aboard slave ships to the Americas, were primarily obtained from their African homelands by coastal tribes who captured and sold them. The high incidence of disease nearly always fatal to Europeans kept nearly all the slave capture activities confined to native African tribes. Rum, guns and gun powder were some of the major trade items exchanged for slaves. In all, approximately three to four hundred thousand black slaves streamed into the ports of Charleston, South Carolina and Newport, Rhode Island until about 1810. The total slave trade to islands in the Caribbean, Brazil, Mexico and to the United States is estimated to have involved 12 million Africans. Of these, 5.4% (645,000) were brought to what is now the United States. In addition to African slaves, poor Europeans were brought over in substantial numbers as indentured servants, particularly in the British Thirteen colonies.

Disease and indigenous population loss

The European and Asian lifestyle included a long history of sharing close quarters with domesticated animals such as cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, and various domesticated fowl, which had resulted in epidemic diseases unknown in the Americas. Thus the large-scale contact with Europeans after 1492 introduced novel germs to the indigenous people of the Americas. Epidemics of smallpox (1518, 1521, 1525, 1558, 1589), typhus (1546), influenza (1558), diphtheria (1614) and measles (1618) swept ahead of initial European contact, killing between 10 million and 20 million people, up to 95% of the indigenous population of the Americas. The cultural and political instability attending these losses appears to have been of substantial aid in the efforts of various colonists to seize the great wealth in land and resources of which indigenous societies had customarily made use.

Such diseases yielded human mortality of an unquestionably enormous gravity and scale – and this has profoundly confused efforts to determine its full extent with any true precision. Estimates of the pre-Columbian population of the Americas vary tremendously.

Others have argued that significant variations in population size over pre-Columbian history are reason to view higher-end estimates with caution. Such estimates may reflect historical population maxima, while indigenous populations may have been at a level somewhat below these maxima or in a moment of decline in the period just prior to contact with Europeans. Indigenous populations hit their ultimate lows in most areas of the Americas in the early twentieth century; in a number of cases, growth has returned.

The Requerimiento: The proclamation sent by Spain to the Native Americans:

"We ask and require you to acknowledge the church as the ruler and superior of the whole world and the high priest called pope and in his name the king of Spain as lords of this land. If you submit we shall receive you in all love and charity and shall leave you, your wives and children and your lands free without servitude, but if you do not submit we shall powerfully enter into your country and shall make war against you, we shall take you and your wives and your children and shall make slaves of them and we shall take away your goods and shall do you all the harm and damage we can."

List of European colonies in the Americas

;British:

British America (1607– 1783)

*Thirteen Colonies

*British North America (1783 – 1907)

*Indian Reserve (1763–1783)

British West Indies

;Courland:

New Courland (Tobago) (1654–1689)

;Danish:

Danish West Indies (1754–1917)

Greenland (1814 - today)

;Dutch:

Dutch Brazil (1630–1654)

Dutch Guiana (now Guyana and Suriname)

New Netherland (1609–1667)

Dutch West Indies and Tobago

Virgin Islands

;French:

New France (1534–1763)

*Acadia (1604–1713)

*Canada (1608–1763)

*Louisiana (1699–1763, 1800–1803)

*Newfoundland (1662–1713)

*Île Royale (1713–1763)

French Guiana (1763-today)

French West Indies

Saint-Domingue (1659–1804, now Haiti)

Tobago

Virgin Islands

France Antarctique (1555–1567)

Equinoctial France (1612–1615)

;Portuguese

Colonial Brazil (1500–1822)

Cisplatina (1808–1822, today Uruguay)

Barbados (1536–1620)

French Guiana (1809–1817)

;Russian:

Russian America (now Alaska, 1799–1867)

;Spanish

New Granada (1717–1819)

*Captaincy General of Venezuela

New Spain (1535–1821)

*Nueva Extremadura

*Nueva Galicia

*Nuevo Reino de León

*Nuevo Santander

*Nueva Vizcaya

*Las Californias

*Santa Fe de Nuevo México

Peru (1542–1824)

Rio de la Plata (1776–1814)

;Swedish

New Sweden (1638–1655)

Saint Barthélemy (1785–1878)

Guadeloupe (1813–1814)

See also

Martín de Argüelles

Atlantic world

Bandeirantes

Chronology of the colonization of North America

Colonialism

Columbian Exchange

Conquistador

Hernán Cortés

European colonization of the Southern United States

Former colonies and territories in Canada

History of the west coast of North America

History of Western civilization

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

Influx of disease in the Caribbean

List of North American cities founded in chronological order

Norse colonization of the Americas

Francisco Pizarro

Population history of American indigenous peoples

Portuguese Empire

Romanus Pontifex and Inter caetera

Settler colonialism

Spanish conquest of Yucatán

Spanish Empire

Treaty of Alcáçovas

Treaty of Tordesillas

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado

Notes

Bibliography

Bailyn, Bernard, ed. ''Atlantic History: Concept and Contours'' (Harvard UP, 2005)

Bannon, John Francis. ''History of the Americas'' (2 vols. 1952), older textbook

Bolton, Herbert E. "The Epic of Greater America," ''American Historical Review'' 38, no. 3 (April 1933): 448–74 in JSTOR

Davis, Harold E. ''The Americas in History'' (1953), older textbook

Egerton, Douglas R. et al. ''The Atlantic World: A History, 1400-1888'' (2007)

Eltis, David. ''The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas'' (2000).

Hinderaker, Eric; Horn, Rebecca. "Territorial Crossings: Histories and Historiographies of the Early Americas," ''William and Mary Quarterly,'' July 2010, Vol. 67 Issue 3, pp 395–432

Lockhart, James, and Stuart B. Schwartz. ''Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil'' (1983).

Morrison, Samuel Eliot. ''The European Discovery of America: The northern voyages, A.D. 500-1600'' (1971)

Morrison, Samuel Eliot. ''The European Discovery of America: The southern voyages, 1492-1616'' (1971)

Parry, J. H. ''The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement, 1450-1650'' (1982)

Sarson, Steven, and Jack P. Greene, eds. ''The American Colonies and the British Empire, 1607-1783'' (8 vol, 2010); primary sources

Starkey, Armstrong (1998). ''European-Native American Warfare, 1675-1815''. University of Oklahoma Press ISBN 978-0806130750

Vickers, Daniel, ed. ''A Companion to Colonial America'' (2003),

---- }}

+ - Category:History of the Americas Category:History of the Caribbean Category:History of indigenous peoples of the Americas Category:Native American genocide Category:History of colonialism Category:History of the Thirteen Colonies Category:Colonialism

ar:الاستعمار الأوروبي للأمريكيتين an:Colonización europeya d'America bs:Kolonizacija Amerike ca:Colonització europea d'Amèrica da:Koloniseringen af Amerika de:Europäische Kolonisierung Amerikas es:Colonización europea de América eo:Eŭropa koloniado de Ameriko eu:Ameriketako europar kolonizazioa fr:Colonisation européenne des Amériques fur:Scuvierte des Americhis ko:아메리카의 유럽 식민지화 hr:Kolonizacija Amerike id:Kolonisasi Eropa di Amerika is:Landnám Ameríku it:Colonizzazione europea delle Americhe la:Colonizatio Europaea Americarum lt:Amerikos kolonizacija hu:Amerika gyarmatosítása mwl:Stória de la quelonizaçon de las Américas ja:ヨーロッパ諸国によるアメリカ大陸の植民地化 no:Europeisk kolonisering av Amerika nn:Europeisk kolonisering av Amerika pl:Europejska kolonizacja Ameryki pt:História da colonização da América ru:Колонизация Америки scn:Scuperta di la Mérica simple:European colonization of the Americas sr:Колонизација Северне Америке sv:Den europeiska koloniseringen av Amerika tl:Europeong pananakop ng Kaamerikahan uk:Європейська колонізація Америки fiu-vro:Ameeriga kolonisiirmine õuruuplaisi puult war:Kolonisasyon han mga Europeo ha mga Amerika zh:美洲殖民

Name	Stephen Hawking
Birth name	Stephen William Hawking
Birth date	January 08, 1942
Birth place	Oxford, England, United Kingdom
Residence	United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Fields	Applied mathematicsTheoretical physicsCosmology
Workplaces	Cambridge UniversityCalifornia Institute of TechnologyPerimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Alma mater	Oxford UniversityCambridge University
Doctoral advisor	Dennis Sciama
Academic advisors	Robert Berman
Doctoral students	Bruce AllenRaphael BoussoFay DowkerMalcolm PerryBernard CarrGary GibbonsHarvey ReallDon PageTim PrestidgeRaymond LaflammeJulian Luttrell
Known for	Black holesTheoretical cosmologyQuantum gravityHawking radiation
Influences	Dikran TahtaAlbert Einstein
Awards
Spouse	Jane Hawking(m. 1965–1991, divorced)Elaine Mason(m. 1995–2006, divorced)
Signature	Hawkingsig.svg }}

Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA (born 8 January 1942) is a British theoretical physicist and cosmologist, whose scientific books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for 30 years, taking up the post in 1979 and retiring on 1 October 2009. He is now Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and a Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes. He has also achieved success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; these include the runaway best seller ''A Brief History of Time'', which stayed on the British ''Sunday Times'' best-sellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

Hawking's key scientific works to date have included providing, with Roger Penrose, theorems regarding gravitational singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known as Hawking radiation (or sometimes as Bekenstein–Hawking radiation).

Hawking has a motor neurone disease that is related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a condition that has progressed over the years and has left him almost completely paralysed.

Early life

Stephen Hawking was born on 8 January 1942 to Dr. Frank Hawking, a research biologist, and Isobel Hawking. He had two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward. Though Hawking's parents were living in North London, they moved to Oxford while his mother was pregnant with Stephen, desiring a safer location for the birth of their first child. (London was under attack at the time by the Luftwaffe.) According to Hawking, a German V-2 missile struck only a few streets away.

After Hawking was born, the family moved back to London, where his father headed the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research. In 1950, Hawking and his family moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire, where he attended St Albans High School for Girls from 1950 to 1953. (At that time, boys could attend the Girls' school until the age of ten.) From the age of eleven, he attended St Albans School, where he was a good, but not exceptional, student. When asked later to name a teacher who had inspired him, Hawking named his mathematics teacher Dikran Tahta. He maintains his connection with the school, giving his name to one of the four houses and to an extracurricular science lecture series. He has visited it to deliver one of the lectures and has also granted a lengthy interview to pupils working on the school magazine, ''The Albanian''.

Hawking was always interested in science. Inspired by his mathematics teacher, he originally wanted to study the subject at university. However, Hawking's father wanted him to apply to University College, Oxford, where his father had attended. As University College did not have a mathematics fellow at that time, it would not accept applications from students who wished to read that discipline. Hawking therefore applied to read natural sciences, in which he gained a scholarship. Once at University College, Hawking specialised in physics. His interests during this time were in thermodynamics, relativity, and quantum mechanics. His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said in ''The New York Times Magazine'':

Hawking was passing, but his unimpressive study habits resulted in a final examination score on the borderline between first and second class honours, making an "oral examination" necessary. Berman said of the oral examination:

After receiving his B.A. degree at Oxford in 1962, he stayed to study astronomy. He decided to leave when he found that studying sunspots, which was all the observatory was equipped for, did not appeal to him and that he was more interested in theory than in observation. He left Oxford for Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he engaged in the study of theoretical astronomy and cosmology.

Career

Almost as soon as he arrived at Cambridge, he started developing symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, known colloquially in the United States as Lou Gehrig's disease), a type of motor neurone disease which would cost him almost all neuromuscular control. During his first two years at Cambridge, he did not distinguish himself, but, after the disease had stabilised and with the help of his doctoral tutor, Dennis William Sciama, he returned to working on his PhD.

Hawking was elected as one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society in 1974, was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1982, and became a Companion of Honour in 1989. Hawking is a member of the Board of Sponsors of the ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists''.

In 1974, he accepted the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to work with his friend, Kip Thorne, who was a faculty member there. He continues to have ties with Caltech, spending a month each year there since 1992.

Hawking's achievements were made despite the increasing paralysis caused by the ALS. By 1974, he was unable to feed himself or get out of bed. His speech became slurred so that he could be understood only by people who knew him well. In 1985, he caught pneumonia and had to have a tracheotomy, which made him unable to speak at all. A Cambridge scientist built a device that enables Hawking to write onto a computer with small movements of his body, and then have a voice synthesiser speak what he has typed.

Research fields

Hawking's principal fields of research are theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity.

In the late 1960s, he and his Cambridge friend and colleague, Roger Penrose, applied a new, complex mathematical model they had created from Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. This led, in 1970, to Hawking proving the first of many singularity theorems; such theorems provide a set of sufficient conditions for the existence of a gravitational singularity in space-time. This work showed that, far from being mathematical curiosities which appear only in special cases, singularities are a fairly generic feature of general relativity.

He supplied a mathematical proof, along with Brandon Carter, Werner Israel and D. Robinson, of John Wheeler's no-hair theorem – namely, that any black hole is fully described by the three properties of mass, angular momentum, and electric charge.

Hawking also suggested upon analysis of gamma ray emissions that after the Big Bang, primordial mini black holes were formed. With Bardeen and Carter, he proposed the four laws of black hole mechanics, drawing an analogy with thermodynamics. In 1974, he calculated that black holes should thermally create and emit subatomic particles, known today as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation, until they exhaust their energy and evaporate.

In collaboration with Jim Hartle, Hawking developed a model in which the universe had no boundary in space-time, replacing the initial singularity of the classical Big Bang models with a region akin to the North Pole: one cannot travel north of the North Pole, as there is no boundary. While originally the no-boundary proposal predicted a closed universe, discussions with Neil Turok led to the realisation that the no-boundary proposal is also consistent with a universe which is not closed.

Along with Thomas Hertog at CERN, in 2006 Hawking proposed a theory of "top-down cosmology," which says that the universe had no unique initial state, and therefore it is inappropriate for physicists to attempt to formulate a theory that predicts the universe's current configuration from one particular initial state. Top-down cosmology posits that in some sense, the present "selects" the past from a superposition of many possible histories. In doing so, the theory suggests a possible resolution of the fine-tuning question: It is inevitable that we find our universe's present physical constants, as the current universe "selects" only those past histories that led to the present conditions. In this way, top-down cosmology provides an anthropic explanation for why we find ourselves in a universe that allows matter and life, without invoking an ensemble of multiple universes.

Hawking's many other scientific investigations have included the study of quantum cosmology, cosmic inflation, helium production in anisotropic Big Bang universes, large N cosmology, the density matrix of the universe, topology and structure of the universe, baby universes, Yang-Mills instantons and the S matrix, anti de Sitter space, quantum entanglement and entropy, the nature of space and time, including the arrow of time, spacetime foam, string theory, supergravity, Euclidean quantum gravity, the gravitational Hamiltonian, Brans-Dicke and Hoyle-Narlikar theories of gravitation, gravitational radiation, and wormholes.

At a George Washington University lecture in honour of NASA's fiftieth anniversary, Hawking theorised on the existence of extraterrestrial life, believing that "primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare."

Losing an old bet

Hawking was in the news in July 2004 for presenting a new theory about black holes which goes against his own long-held belief about their behaviour, thus losing a bet he made with Kip Thorne and John Preskill of Caltech. Classically, it can be shown that information crossing the event horizon of a black hole is lost to our universe, and that thus all black holes are identical beyond their mass, electrical charge and angular velocity (the "no hair theorem"). The problem with this theorem is that it implies the black hole will emit the same radiation regardless of what goes into it, and as a consequence that if a pure quantum state is thrown into a black hole, an "ordinary" mixed state will be returned. This runs counter to the rules of quantum mechanics and is known as the black hole information paradox.

Human spaceflight

At the fiftieth anniversary of NASA in 2008, Hawking gave a keynote speech on the final frontier exhorting and inspiring the space technology community on why we (the human race) explore space.

At the celebration of his sixty-fifth birthday on 8 January 2007, Hawking announced his plan to take a zero-gravity flight in 2007 to prepare for a sub-orbital spaceflight in 2009 on Virgin Galactic's space service. Billionaire Richard Branson pledged to pay all expenses for the latter, costing an estimated £100,000. Stephen Hawking's zero-gravity flight in a "''Vomit Comet''" of Zero Gravity Corporation, during which he experienced weightlessness eight times, took place on 26 April 2007. He became the first quadriplegic to float in zero-gravity. This was the first time in forty years that he moved freely, without his wheelchair. The fee is normally US$3,750 for 10–15 plunges, but Hawking was not required to pay the fee. A bit of a futurist, Hawking was quoted before the flight saying: }} In an interview with ''The Daily Telegraph'', he suggested that space was the Earth's long term hope. He continued this theme at a 2008 Charlie Rose interview.

Existence and nature of extraterrestrial life

Hawking has indicated that he is almost certain that alien life exists in other parts of the universe and uses a mathematical basis for his assumptions. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like." He believes alien life not only certainly exists on planets but perhaps even in other places, like within stars or even floating in outer space. He also warns that a few of these species might be intelligent and threaten Earth. Contact with such species might be devastating for humanity. "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said. He advocated that, rather than try to establish contact, humans should try to avoid contact with alien life forms.

Illness

Stephen Hawking is severely disabled by a motor neurone disease known as Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), sometimes known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Hawking's illness is markedly different from typical ALS because if confirmed, Hawking's case would make for the most protracted case ever documented. A survival for more than ten years after diagnosis is uncommon for ALS; the longest documented durations, other than Hawking's, are 32 and 39 years and these cases were termed benign because of the lack of the typical progressive course.

When he was young, he enjoyed riding horses. At Oxford, he coxed a rowing team, which, he stated, helped relieve his immense boredom at the university. Symptoms of the disorder first appeared while he was enrolled at University of Cambridge; he lost his balance and fell down a flight of stairs, hitting his head. Worried that he would lose his genius, he took the Mensa test to verify that his intellectual abilities were intact. The diagnosis of motor neurone disease came when Hawking was 21, shortly before his first marriage, and doctors said he would not survive more than two or three years. Hawking gradually lost the use of his arms, legs, and voice, and as of 2009 has been almost completely paralysed.

During a visit to the research centre CERN in Geneva in 1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia, which in his condition was life-threatening as it further restricted his already limited respiratory capacity. He had an emergency tracheotomy, and as a result lost what remained of his ability to speak. He has since used an electronic voice synthesiser to communicate.

The DECtalk DTC01 voice synthesiser he uses, which has an American English accent, is no longer being produced. Asked why he has still kept it after so many years, Hawking mentioned that he has not heard a voice he likes better and that he identifies with it. Hawking is said to be looking for a replacement since, aside from being obsolete, the synthesiser is both large and fragile by current standards. As of mid 2009, he was said to be using NeoSpeech's VoiceText speech synthesiser.

In Hawking's many media appearances, he appears to speak fluently through his synthesiser, but in reality, it is a tedious drawn-out process. Hawking's setup uses a predictive text entry system, which requires only the first few characters in order to auto-complete the word, but as he is only able to use his cheek for data entry, constructing complete sentences takes time. His speeches are prepared in advance, but having a live conversation with him provides insight as to the complexity and work involved. During a TED Conference talk, it took him seven minutes to answer a question.

He describes himself as lucky, despite his disease. Its slow progression has allowed him time to make influential discoveries and has not hindered him from having, in his own words, "a very attractive family." When his wife, Jane, was asked why she decided to marry a man with a three-year life expectancy, she responded, "Those were the days of atomic gloom and doom, so we all had a rather short life expectancy." On 20 April 2009, Cambridge University released a statement saying that Hawking was "very ill" with a chest infection, and was admitted to Addenbrooke's Hospital. The following day, it was reported that his new condition was "comfortable" and he would make a full recovery from the infection.

As popular science advocate

Hawking has played himself on numerous television shows and has been portrayed in many more. He has played himself on a ''Red Dwarf'' anniversary special, played a hologram of himself on the episode "Descent" of ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'', appeared in a skit on ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'', and appeared on the Discovery Channel special ''Alien Planet''. He has also played himself in several episodes of ''The Simpsons'' and ''Futurama'', and has had an action figure made of his ''Simpsons'' likeness. In 2008, Hawking was the subject of and featured in the documentary series ''Stephen Hawking, Master of the Universe'' for Channel 4. In September 2008, Hawking presided over the unveiling of the 'Chronophage' (time-eating) Corpus Clock at Corpus Christi College Cambridge. His actual synthesiser voice was used on parts of the Pink Floyd song "Keep Talking" from the 1994 album ''The Division Bell'', as well as on Turbonegro's "Intro: The Party Zone" on their 2005 album ''Party Animals'', Wolfsheim's "Kein Zurück (Oliver Pinelli Mix)".

Recognition

Acclaim

On 19 December 2007, a statue of Hawking by renowned late artist Ian Walters was unveiled at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, University of Cambridge. In May 2008, the statue of Hawking was unveiled at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town. The Stephen W. Hawking Science Museum in San Salvador, El Salvador is named in honour of Stephen Hawking, citing his scientific distinction and perseverance in dealing with adversity. Stephen Hawking Building in Cambridge opened on 17 April 2007. The building belongs to Gonville and Caius College and is used as an undergraduate accommodation and conference facility.

Distinctions

Hawking's belief that the lay person should have access to his work led him to write a series of popular science books in addition to his academic work. The first of these, ''A Brief History of Time'', was published on 1 April 1988 by Hawking, his family and friends, and some leading physicists. It surprisingly became a best-seller and was followed by ''The Universe in a Nutshell'' (2001). Both books have remained highly popular all over the world. A collection of essays titled ''Black Holes and Baby Universes'' (1993) was also popular. His book, ''A Briefer History of Time'' (2005), co-written by Leonard Mlodinow, aims to update his earlier works and make them accessible to an even wider audience. In 2007 Hawking and his daughter, Lucy Hawking, published ''George's Secret Key to the Universe'', a children's book focusing on science that has been described as "like ''Harry Potter'', but without the magic." The book includes information on Hawking radiation.

Hawking supports the children's charity SOS Children's Villages UK.

Awards and honours

1975 Eddington Medal

1976 Hughes Medal of the Royal Society

1979 Albert Einstein Medal

1981 Franklin Medal

1982 Order of the British Empire (Commander)

1985 Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society

1986 Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences

1988 Wolf Prize in Physics

1989 Prince of Asturias Awards in Concord

1989 Companion of Honour

1999 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society

2003 Michelson Morley Award of Case Western Reserve University

2006 Copley Medal of the Royal Society 2008 Fonseca Prize of the University of Santiago de Compostela 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States

Personal life

Hawking revealed that he did not see much point in obtaining a doctorate if he were to die soon. Hawking later said that the real turning point was his 1965 marriage to Jane Wilde, a language student. After gaining his PhD at Trinity Hall, he became first a Research Fellow, and later on a Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. Jane Hawking (née Wilde), Hawking's first wife, cared for him until 1991 when the couple separated, reportedly because of the pressures of fame and his increasing disability. They had three children: Robert, Lucy, and Timothy. Hawking then married his nurse, Elaine Mason (who was previously married to David Mason, the designer of the first version of Hawking's talking computer), in 1995. In October 2006, Hawking filed for divorce from his second wife amid claims by former nurses that she had abused him.

In 1999, Jane Hawking published a memoir, ''Music to Move the Stars'', detailing the marriage and his breakdown; in 2010 she published a revised version, ''Travelling to Infinity, My Life with Stephen''. Hawking's daughter, Lucy, is a novelist. Their oldest son, Robert, emigrated to the United States, married, and has a son. After a period of estrangement, Hawking and his first family were reconciled in 2007.

His view on how to live life is to "seek the greatest value of our action".

Hawking was asked about his IQ in a 2004 newspaper interview, and replied, "I have no idea. People who boast about their I.Q. are losers." Yet when asked "Are you saying you are not a genius?", Hawking replied "I hope I'm near the upper end of the range."

Hawking strongly opposed the US-led Iraq War, calling it "a war crime" and "based on lies". In 2004, he personally attended a demonstration against the war in Trafalgar Square, and participated in a public reading of the names of Iraqi war victims.

Religious views

In his early work, Hawking spoke of "God" in a metaphorical sense, such as in ''A Brief History of Time'': "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we should know the mind of God." In the same book he suggested the existence of God was unnecessary to explain the origin of the universe. His 2010 book ''The Grand Design'' and interviews with the ''Telegraph'' and the Channel 4 documentary ''Genius of Britain'', clarify that he does "not believe in a personal God". Hawking writes, "The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can't understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second." He adds, "Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing."

His ex-wife, Jane, said during their divorce proceedings that he was an atheist. Hawking has stated that he is "not religious in the normal sense" and he believes that "the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws." In an interview published in ''The Guardian'' newspaper, Hawking regarded the concept of Heaven as a myth, stating that there is "no heaven or afterlife" and that such a notion was a "fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

Hawking contrasted religion and science in 2010, saying: "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."

Selected publications

Technical

''Singularities in Collapsing Stars and Expanding Universes'' with Dennis William Sciama, 1969 Comments on Astrophysics and Space Physics Vol 1 No.1

''The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time'' with George Ellis, 1973, ISBN 0-521-09906-4

''The Nature of Space and Time'' with Roger Penrose, foreword by Michael Atiyah, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-691-05084-8

''The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind'', (with Abner Shimony, Nancy Cartwright, and Roger Penrose), Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-521-56330-5 (hardback), ISBN 0-521-65538-2 (paperback), Canto edition: ISBN 0-521-78572-3

''Information Loss in Black Holes'', Cambridge University Press, 2005

''God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History'', Running Press, 2005 ISBN 0762419229

Popular

''A Brief History of Time'', (Bantam Press 1988) ISBN 055305340X

''Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays'', (Bantam Books 1993) ISBN 0553374117

''The Universe in a Nutshell'', (Bantam Press 2001) ISBN 055380202X

''On The Shoulders of Giants. The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy'', (Running Press 2002) ISBN 076241698X

''A Briefer History of Time'', coauthored with Leonard Mlodinow, (Bantam Books 2005) ISBN 0553804367

''The Grand Design'', coauthored with Leonard Mlodinow, (Bantam Press 2010) ISBN 0553805371

Children's fiction

These are co-written with his daughter Lucy.

''George's Secret Key to the Universe'', (Random House, 2007) ISBN 9780385612708

''George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt'', (Simon & Schuster, 2009) ISBN 9781416986713

Films and series

''A Brief History of Time'' (1991)

''Stephen Hawking's Universe'' (1997)

''Horizon: The Hawking Paradox'' (2005)

''Masters of Science Fiction'' (2007)

''Stephen Hawking: Master of the Universe'' (2008) ''Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking'' (2010) A list of Hawking's publications through the year 2002 is available on his website.

See also

Basic concepts of quantum mechanics

Many-worlds interpretation, or flexiverse

Susskind–Hawking battle – see Black hole information paradox

References

Further reading

A layman's guide to Stephen Hawking

Ferguson, Kitty (1991). ''Stephen Hawking: Quest For A Theory of Everything''. Franklin Watts. ISBN 0-553-29895-X

Highly influential in the field. A much cited centennial survey.

Pickover, Clifford, ''Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them'', Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0195336115

External links

Stephen Hawking's web site

Stephen Hawking's page on Academia.edu

The Life of Stephen Hawking – slideshow by ''The First Post''

Video: Stephen Hawking – discussion of two views of the universe

Videos: Stephen Hawking's concept of God, The role of God within the no boundary cosmology and Imaginary time

;Dated

Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God

Public Lectures, including debate with Roger Penrose 1996–2006

''Hawking celebrates own brief history'', 7 January 2002, BBC

"Leaping the Abyss", interview in ''Reason'' by Gregory Benford 2002-04-01

2002-03-24

''Black holes turned "inside out"'', 22 July 2004, BBC

''Return of the time lord'', Interview about "A Brief History of Time", 27 September 2005, The Guardian.

Stephen Hawking touches on God and science – Physicist says Pope John Paul told scientists not to study universe's origins msnbc June 2006

Press Release from the Catholic League on misquote of Pope by Hawking 2006-06-16

BBC interview 2008-12-05

Category:1942 births Category:Academics of the University of Cambridge Category:Adams Prize recipients Category:Albert Einstein Medal recipients Category:Alumni of Trinity Hall, Cambridge Category:Alumni of University College, Oxford Category:Calculating prodigies Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:Cosmologists Category:English astronomers Category:English theoretical physicists Category:English science writers Category:Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:People educated at St Albans School, Hertfordshire Category:Honorary Fellows of University College, Oxford Category:Living people Category:Lucasian Professors of Mathematics Category:Members of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Category:Members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences Category:People from Oxford Category:People from St Albans Category:People with motor neurone disease Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Recipients of the Copley Medal Category:Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society Category:Religious skeptics Category:Wolf Prize in Physics laureates Category:20th-century philosophers Category:21st-century philosophers Category:People educated at St Albans High School for Girls

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