Branches of Mathematics

Pure mathematics

• Algebra
• Calculus
• Geometry
• Topology
• Trignometry
• Combinatorics
• Logic
• Number theory

Applied mathematics

• Dynamical systems and differential equations
• Mathematical physics
• Computing
• Information theory and signal processing
• Probability and statistics
• Game theory
• Operations research

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• Electromagnetic Spectrum
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• 
  

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  Arithmeum
  The Arithmeum is a mathematics museum owned by the Forschungsinstitut für Diskrete Mathematik (Research Institute for Discrete Mathematics) at the University of Bonn.
  It was founded by the Director of the Institute, Bernhard Korte, who contributed his private collection of calculating machines.
  The building's steel-glass facade - located at Lennéstrasse 2 - is meant to represent the "transparency of science".
  
  
  The permanent exhibit "Calculating in Olden and Modern Times" (German: Rechnen Einst und Heute) shows the progression of mechanical calculating machines through 1,200 pieces.
  There are also exhibits on very-large-scale integrated (VLSI) logic chips, historical arithmetic books dating back to Johannes Gutenberg's times, and the relationship between art and science.
  Coordinates: 50°43′50″N 7°6′18″E / 50.73056°N 7.105°E / 50.73056; 7.105
  
  wn.com/Arithmeum
• Bonn Egyptian Museum
  Bonn Egyptian Museum (German:Ägyptisches Museum Bonn) is an Ancient Egypt museum in Bonn, Germany. It presents a selection of the most important collection of original objects from Ancient Egypt in North Rhine-Westphalia.
  The museum is part of the University of Bonn. Regular special events and children's excursions are held at the museum.
  It was founded in 2001. The collection is dating back to the 19th century and was formerly part of the Akademisches Kunstmuseum. Large parts of the collection were destroyed in World War II. Today the collection comprises about 3,000 objects.
  Coordinates: 50°44′4″N 7°6′20″E / 50.73444°N 7.10556°E / 50.73444; 7.10556
  
  
  
  wn.com/Bonn_Egyptian_Museum
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  Congress of Vienna
  The Congress of Vienna (German: Wiener Kongress) was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Austrian statesman Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.
  This objective resulted in the redrawing of the continent's political map, establishing the boundaries of France, the Duchy of Warsaw, the Netherlands, the states of the Rhine, the German province of Saxony, and various Italian territories, and the creation of spheres of influence through which Austria, Britain, France and Russia brokered local and regional problems. The Congress of Vienna was the first of a series of international meetings that came to be known as the Concert of Europe, which was an attempt to forge a peaceful balance of power in Europe, and served as a model for later organizations such as the League of Nations and United Nations.
  
  wn.com/Congress_of_Vienna
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  Museum Koenig
  The Alexander Koenig Research Museum (German: Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig) is a natural history museum and zoological research institution in Bonn, Germany. The museum is named after Alexander Koenig, who donated his collection of specimens to the institution. The museum was opened in 1934 and is affiliated with the University of Bonn.
  The museum was founded by the private scholar Alexander Koenig (1858-1940) as a private institute for zoological research and public education. Alexander Koenig, who was born in 1858 as the son of the wealthy merchant Leopold Koenig, began to collect birds and mammals as a boy. He later studied zoology and received a doctorate in natural history in 1884. In the following years he organized and funded several expeditions to the Arctic and Africa and greatly expanded his private collection of specimens.
  After his father died in 1903, Alexander Koenig planned a natural history museum to present his private collection to the public. On September 3, 1912, the foundation stone to the new Museum Alexander Koenig was laid. After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the uncompleted building was confiscated and used as a military hospital and later, until 1923, as barracks by the French occupying forces. Alexander Koenig, who had lost most of his fortune in the aftermath of the war, donated the museum and his private collection to the German government in 1929. The museum finally opened its doors to the public on May 13, 1934.
  
  wn.com/Museum_Koenig
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  University of Bonn
  The University of Bonn (German: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number of undergraduate and graduate programs in a range of subjects. Its library holds more than two million volumes. The University of Bonn has 525 professors and 27,800 students. Among its notable alumni and faculty are seven Nobel Laureates, two Fields Medalists, twelve Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners, Pope Benedict XVI, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Nietzsche and Joseph Schumpeter. In the years 2010 and 2011, the Times Higher Education ranked the University of Bonn as one of the 200 best universities in the world.
  The university's forerunner was the Kurkölnische Akademie Bonn (English: Academy of the Prince-elector of Cologne) which was founded in 1777 by Maximilian Frederick of Königsegg-Rothenfels, the prince-elector of Cologne. In the spirit of the Enlightenment the new academy was nonsectarian. The academy had schools for theology, law, pharmacy and general studies. In 1784 Emperor Joseph II granted the academy the right to award academic degrees (Licentiat and Ph.D.), turning the academy into a university. The academy was closed in 1798 after the left bank of the Rhine was occupied by France during the French Revolutionary Wars.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Bonn
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  University of Leiden
  Leiden University (Dutch: Universiteit Leiden), located in the city of Leiden, is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, leader of the Dutch Revolt in the Eighty Years' War. The royal Dutch House of Orange-Nassau and Leiden University still have a close relationship. The Queens Juliana and Beatrix and crown-prince Willem-Alexander studied at Leiden University. In 2005 Queen Beatrix received a rare honorary degree from Leiden University.
  Leiden University has six faculties, over 50 departments and more than 150 undergraduate programmes and enjoys an outstanding international reputation. Shanghai Jiao Tong University's 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities ranks Leiden University as the 65th best university worldwide. Times Higher Education World University Rankings consistently rank Leiden University as the best university in Continental Europe for Arts and Humanities. The University is associated with at least sixteen recipients of the Nobel Prize. The university is a member of the distinguished Coimbra Group, the Europaeum and the League of European Research Universities.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Leiden
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  University of Oxford
  Coordinates: 51°45′40″N 1°15′12″W / 51.7611°N 1.2534°W / 51.7611; -1.2534
  The University of Oxford (informally Oxford University or Oxford) is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096. The University grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. In post-nominals, the University of Oxford was historically abbreviated as Oxon. (from the Latin Oxoniensis), although Oxf is now used in official university publications.
  After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge, where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two ancient English universities have many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In addition to their cultural and practical associations, as a historic part of British society, they have a long history of rivalry with each other.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Oxford

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  Ernst Moritz Arndt
  Ernst Moritz Arndt (26 December 1769 – 29 January 1860) was a German nationalistic and antisemitic author and poet. Early in his life, he fought for the abolition of serfdom, later against Napoleonic dominance over Germany, and had to flee to Sweden for some time due to his anti-French positions. He is one of the main founders of German nationalism and the movement for German unification. After the Carlsbad Decrees, the forces of the restoration counted him as a demagogue and he was only rehabilitated^{[citation needed]} in 1840.
  Arndt played an important role for the early national and liberal Burschenschaft movement and for the unification movement, and his song "Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?" acted as an unofficial German national anthem.
  Long after his death, his anti-French war propaganda was used again by nationalists in both World Wars and also by the National Front of the GDR 1949-1989. This together with some strongly antisemitic statements has led to a rather ambivalent view of Arndt today.
  
  wn.com/Ernst_Moritz_Arndt
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  Felix Hausdorff
  Felix Hausdorff (November 8, 1868 – January 26, 1942) was a German mathematician who is considered to be one of the founders of modern topology and who contributed significantly to set theory, descriptive set theory, measure theory, function theory, and functional analysis.
  Hausdorff studied at the University of Leipzig, obtaining his Ph.D. in 1891. He taught mathematics in Leipzig until 1910, when he became professor of mathematics at the University of Bonn. He was professor at the University of Greifswald from 1913 to 1921. He then returned to Bonn. When the Nazis came to power, Hausdorff, who was Jewish, felt that as a respected university professor he would be spared from persecution. However, his abstract mathematics was denounced as "Jewish", useless, and "un-German"^{[citation needed]} and he lost his position in 1935. Though he could no longer publish in Germany, Hausdorff continued to be an active research mathematician, publishing in the Polish journal Fundamenta Mathematicae. After Kristallnacht in 1938 as persecution of Jews escalated, Hausdorff became more and more isolated. He wrote to George Pólya requesting a research fellowship in the United States, but these efforts came to nothing. Finally, in 1942 when he could no longer avoid being sent to a concentration camp, Hausdorff committed suicide together with his wife, Charlotte Goldschmidt Hausdorff, and sister-in-law, Edith Goldschmidt Pappenheim, on 26 January. They are buried in Bonn, Germany.
  
  wn.com/Felix_Hausdorff
• Franz Joseph Dölger
  Franz Joseph Dölger (October 18, 1879 – October 17, 1940) was a German Catholic theologian and church historian who was a native of Sulzbach am Main.
  He studied theology at the University of Würzburg, and in 1902 was ordained into the priesthood. Afterwards he worked as a chaplain in Amorbach and Würzburg, and in June 1904 earned his doctorate in theology. In the winter and spring of 1904–1905 he took part in a study group to Rome, Sicily and North Africa. Later he worked and studied at the Campo Santo Teutonico in Rome, and in 1912 was appointed an associate professor of religious history at Westphalian Wilhelms-University in Münster. Later in his career he was a professor at the Universities of Breslau (1927–1929) and Bonn (1929–1940).
  Dölger's primary focus involved investigations of the early Christian church and its relationship with non-Christian societies. He also published scholarly works on the sacrament of Confirmation, exorcism, baptism and the Eucharist in ancient Christianity. In 1929 he founded the journal Antike und Christentum (Antiquity and Christianity), of which he contributed a series of detailed studies concerning the early church.
  
  wn.com/Franz_Joseph_Dölger
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  Friedrich Hirzebruch
  Friedrich Ernst Peter Hirzebruch (17 October 1927 – 27 May 2012) was a German mathematician, working in the fields of topology, complex manifolds and algebraic geometry, and a leading figure in his generation. He has been described as "the most important mathematician in the Germany of the postwar period."
  Hirzebruch was born in Hamm, Westphalia. He studied at the University of Münster from 1945–1950, with one year at ETH Zürich.
  He then had a position at Erlangen, followed by the years 1952–54 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. After one year at Princeton University 1955–56, he was made a professor at the University of Bonn, where he remained, becoming director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Mathematik in 1981. More than 300 people gathered in celebration of his 80th birthday in Bonn in 2007.
  The Hirzebruch–Riemann–Roch theorem (1954) for complex manifolds was a major advance and quickly became part of the mainstream developments around the classical Riemann–Roch theorem; it was also a precursor of the Atiyah–Singer index theorem. Hirzebruch's book Neue topologische Methoden in der algebraischen Geometrie (1956) was a basic text for the 'new methods' of sheaf theory, in complex algebraic geometry. He went on to write the foundational papers on topological K-theory with Michael Atiyah, and collaborate with Armand Borel on the theory of characteristic classes. In his later work he provided a detailed theory of Hilbert modular surfaces, working with Don Zagier.
  
  wn.com/Friedrich_Hirzebruch
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  Friedrich Nietzsche
  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ( /ˈniːtʃə/;German pronunciation: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈniːtsʃə]; October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a German philosopher, poet, cultural critic and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism.
  Nietzsche's influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism, nihilism and postmodernism. His style and radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth have resulted in much commentary and interpretation, mostly in the continental tradition. His key ideas include the death of God, the Übermensch, the eternal recurrence, the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy, perspectivism and the will to power. Central to his philosophy is the idea of "life-affirmation", which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's expansive energies, however socially prevalent and radical those views might be.
  
  wn.com/Friedrich_Nietzsche
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  Gerd Faltings
  Gerd Faltings (born July 28, 1954 in Gelsenkirchen-Buer) is a German mathematician known for his work in arithmetic algebraic geometry.
  From 1972 to 1978, he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Münster. In 1978 he received his PhD in mathematics and in 1981 he got the venia legendi (Habilitation) in mathematics, both from the University of Münster. During this time he was an assistant professor at the University of Münster. From 1982 to 1984, he was professor at the University of Wuppertal. After that he was professor at Princeton University (1985–1994).
  He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1986 for proving the Mordell conjecture, which states that any non-singular projective curve of genus g > 1 defined over a number field K contains only finitely many K-rational points.
  Since 1994 he has been a director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn. In 1996, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honour awarded in German research.
  
  wn.com/Gerd_Faltings
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  Harald zur Hausen
  Harald zur Hausen (born March 11, 1936 in Gelsenkirchen, Province of Westphalia) is a German virologist and professor emeritus. He has done research on cancer of the cervix, where he discovered the role of papilloma viruses, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2008.
  Zur Hausen was born in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, went to the Gymnasium in Vechta, and studied medicine at the Universities of Bonn, Hamburg and Düsseldorf and received a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1960 from the University of Düsseldorf, after which he became a medical assistant.
  
  wn.com/Harald_zur_Hausen
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  Heinrich Heine
  Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose is distinguished by its satirical wit and irony. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities. Heine spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.
  Heine was born in Düsseldorf, Rhineland, into a Jewish family. He was called "Harry" as a child, but became "Heinrich" after his conversion to Christianity in 1825. Heine's father, Samson Heine (1764–1828), was a textile merchant. His mother Peira (known as "Betty"), née van Geldern (1771–1859), was the daughter of a physician. Heinrich was the eldest of the four children; his siblings were Charlotte, Gustav - who later became Baron Heine-Geldern and publisher of the Viennese newspaper Das Fremdenblatt - and Maximilian, later a physician in Saint Petersburg.
  
  wn.com/Heinrich_Heine
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  Heinrich Hertz
  Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (22 February 1857 – 1 January 1894) was a German physicist who clarified and expanded James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light, which was first demonstrated by David Edward Hughes using non-rigorous trial and error procedures. Hertz is distinguished from Maxwell and Hughes because he was the first to conclusively prove the existence of electromagnetic waves by engineering instruments to transmit and receive radio pulses using experimental procedures that ruled out all other known wireless phenomena. The scientific unit of frequency — cycles per second — was named the "hertz" in his honor.
  Hertz was born in Hamburg, then a sovereign state of the German Confederation, into a prosperous and cultured Hanseatic family. His father, David Gustav Hertz, was a writer and later a senator. His mother was the former Anna Elisabeth Pfefferkorn. His paternal great-grandfather, David Wolff Hertz (1757–1822), fourth son of Benjamin Wolff Hertz, moved to Hamburg in 1793, where he made his living as a jeweller; he and his wife Schöne Hertz (1760–1834) were buried in the former Jewish cemetery in Ottensen. Their first son, Wolff Hertz (1790–1859), was chairman of the Jewish community. Hertz' paternal grandfather, Heinrich David Hertz (1797–1862), was a respected businessman, and his paternal grandmother, Betty Oppenheim, was the daughter of the banker Salomon Oppenheim, from Cologne. Hertz's father and paternal grandparents converted from Judaism to Christianity. His mother's family was Lutheran.
  
  wn.com/Heinrich_Hertz
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  Joseph Schumpeter
  Joseph Alois Schumpeter (8 February 1883 – 8 January 1950) was an Austrian-Hungarian-American economist and political scientist. He popularized the term "creative destruction" in economics.
  Born in Třešť, Habsburg Moravia (now Czech Republic, then part of Austria-Hungary) in 1883 to Catholic ethnic German parents. His father owned a factory, but he died when Joseph was only four years old. In 1893, Joseph and his mother moved to Vienna.
  Schumpeter began his career studying law at the University of Vienna under the Austrian capital theorist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, taking his PhD in 1906. In 1909, after some study trips, he became a professor of economics and government at the University of Czernowitz. In 1911 he joined the University of Graz, where he remained until World War I. In 1919, he served briefly as the Austrian Minister of Finance, with some success, and in 1920–1924, as president of the private Biedermann Bank. That bank, along with a great part of that regional economy, collapsed in 1924 leaving Schumpeter bankrupt.
  
  wn.com/Joseph_Schumpeter
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  Karl Barth
  Karl Barth ((1886-05-10)May 10, 1886 – December 10, 1968(1968-12-10)) (pronounced "Bart") was a Swiss Reformed theologian whom many scholars hold to be among the most important thinkers of the 20th century; Pope Pius XII described him as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas. Beginning with his experience as a pastor, he rejected his training in the predominant liberal theology typical of 19th-century European Protestantism.
  Instead he embarked on a new theological path initially called dialectical theology, due to its stress on the paradoxical nature of divine truth (e.g., God's relationship to humanity embodies both grace and judgment). Other critics have referred to Barth as the father of neo-orthodoxy — a term emphatically rejected by Barth himself. The most accurate description of his work might be "a theology of the Word." Barth's theological thought emphasized the sovereignty of God, particularly through his interpretation of the Calvinistic doctrine of election.
  
  wn.com/Karl_Barth
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  Karl Ludwig Sand
  Karl Ludwig Sand (Wunsiedel, then in Prussia, 5 October 1795 - Mannheim, 20 May 1820) was a German university student and member of a liberal Burschenschaft (student association). He was executed in 1820 for the murder of the conservative dramatist August von Kotzebue the previous year in Mannheim. As a result of his execution, Sand became a martyr in the eyes of many German nationalists seeking the creation of a united German national state.
  Karl Ludwig Sand was born to Godfrey Christopher Sand and Dorthea Jane Wilheltmina Schapf on October 5, 1795. His siblings were George, Fritz, Caroline and Julia.
  In 1804 he attended the Lateinschule (Latin school) in Wunsiedel and in 1810 he moved on to the grammar school (Gymnasium) in Hof, living with the school's rector, Georg Heinrich Saalfrank, a friend of Sand's Enlightened Protestant family. Following the closure of the Hof Gymnasium on the institution of Montgelas's Reforms, Sand followed his teacher to the Neues Gymnasium (New Grammar School) in Regensburg, completing his studies in September 1814. In November 1814 Sand matriculated at the University of Tũbingen.
  
  wn.com/Karl_Ludwig_Sand
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  Karl Weierstrass
  Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (German: Weierstraß; 31 October 1815 – 19 February 1897) was a German mathematician who is often cited as the "father of modern analysis".
  Weierstrass was born in Ostenfelde, part of Ennigerloh, Province of Westphalia.
  Weierstrass was the son of Wilhelm Weierstrass, a government official, and Theodora Vonderforst. His interest in mathematics began while he was a Gymnasium student at Theodorianum in Paderborn. He was sent to the University of Bonn upon graduation to prepare for a government position. Because his studies were to be in the fields of law, economics, and finance, he was immediately in conflict with his hopes to study mathematics. He resolved the conflict by paying little heed to his planned course of study, but continued private study in mathematics. The outcome was to leave the university without a degree. After that he studied mathematics at the University of Münster (which was even at this time very famous for mathematics) and his father was able to obtain a place for him in a teacher training school in Münster. Later he was certified as a teacher in that city. During this period of study, Weierstrass attended the lectures of Christoph Gudermann and became interested in elliptic functions. In 1843 he taught in Deutsch-Krone in Westprussia and since 1848 he taught at the Lyceum Hosianum in Braunsberg. Besides mathematics he also taught physics, botanics and gymnastics.
  
  wn.com/Karl_Weierstrass
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  Konrad Adenauer
  Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (German pronunciation: [ˈkɔnʁaːt ˈhɛɐman ˈjoːzɛf ˈaːdənaʊɐ]; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman. As Chancellor of Germany (West Germany) from 1949 to 1963, he led his country from the ruins of World War II to a powerful and prosperous nation that forged close relations with old enemies France and the United States. In his years in power Germany achieved prosperity, democracy, stability and respect. He was the first chancellor (head of government) of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, called West Germany), 1949–63. He was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a coalition of Catholics and Protestants that under his leadership became and has since remained the most dominant in Germany.
  Adenauer, dubbed "Der Alte" ("the old one"), belied his age as the oldest elected leader in world history by his intense work habits and his uncanny political instinct. He displayed a strong dedication to a broad vision of democracy, capitalism, and anti-Communism. A shrewd politician, Adenauer was deeply committed to a Western-oriented foreign policy and restoring the position of West Germany on the world stage. He worked to restore the West German economy from the destruction in World War II to a central position in Europe, rebuilt its army and came to terms with France, helped make possible Western European unification, opposed rival East Germany, and made his nation a member of NATO and a firm ally of the United States.
  
  wn.com/Konrad_Adenauer
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  Luigi Pirandello
  Luigi Pirandello (Italian pronunciation: [luˈiːdʒi piranˈdɛllo]; 28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage". Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners for Theatre of the Absurd.
  Pirandello was born into an upper-class family in a village with the curious name of Kaos (Chaos), a poor suburb of Girgenti (Agrigento, a town in southern Sicily). His father, Stefano, belonged to a wealthy family involved in the sulphur industry and his mother, Caterina Ricci Gramitto, was also of a well-to-do background, descending from a family of the bourgeois professional class of Agrigento. Both families, the Pirandellos and the Ricci Gramittos, were ferociously anti-Bourbon and actively participated in the struggle for unification and democracy ("Il Risorgimento"). Stefano participated in the famous Expedition of the Thousand, later following Garibaldi all the way to the battle of Aspromonte and Caterina, who had hardly reached the age of thirteen, was forced to accompany her father to Malta, where he had been sent into exile by the Bourbon monarchy. But the open participation in the Garibaldian cause and the strong sense of idealism of those early years were quickly transformed, above all in Caterina, into an angry and bitter disappointment with the new reality created by the unification. Pirandello would eventually assimilate this sense of betrayal and resentment and express it in several of his poems and in his novel The Old and the Young. It is also probable that this climate of disillusion inculcated in the young Luigi the sense of disproportion between ideals and reality which is recognizable in his essay on humorism (L'Umorismo).
  
  wn.com/Luigi_Pirandello
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  Max Ernst
  Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.
  Ernst was born on April 2, 1891, in Brühl, near Cologne, the third of nine children of a middle-class Catholic family. His father Philipp Ernst was a teacher of the deaf and an amateur painter. A devout Christian and a strict disciplinarian, he inspired in his son a penchant for defying authority, while his interest in painting and sketching in nature influenced Max Ernst to take up painting himself. In 1909 Ernst enrolled in the University of Bonn, studying philosophy, art history, literature, psychology and psychiatry. He visited asylums and became fascinated with the art of the mentally ill patients; he also started painting this year, producing sketches in the garden of the Brühl castle and portraits of his sister and himself. In 1911 Ernst befriended August Macke and joined his Die Rheinischen Expressionisten group of artists, deciding to become an artist. In 1912 he visited the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, where works by Pablo Picasso and post-Impressionists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin profoundly influenced his approach to art. His own work was exhibited the same year together with that of the Das Junge Rheinland group, at Galerie Feldman in Cologne, and then in several group exhibitions in 1913.
  
  wn.com/Max_Ernst
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  Maxim Kontsevich
  Maxim Lvovich Kontsevich (Russian: Макси́м Льво́вич Конце́вич; born 25 August 1964) is a Russian mathematician. He is a professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques and a distinguished professor at the University of Miami. He received the Henri Poincaré Prize in 1997, the Fields Medal in 1998, the Crafoord Prize in 2008 and the Shaw Prize in 2012.
  Born into the family of Lev Rafailovich Kontsevich – Soviet orientalist and author of the Kontsevich system. After ranking second in the All-Union Mathematics Olympiads, he attended Moscow State University but left without a degree in 1985 to become a researcher at the Institute for Problems of Information Transmission in Moscow [1]. In 1992 he received his Ph.D. at the University of Bonn under Don Bernard Zagier. His thesis proves a conjecture by Edward Witten that two quantum gravitational models are equivalent.
  His work concentrates on geometric aspects of mathematical physics, most notably on knot theory, quantization, and mirror symmetry. His most famous result is a formal deformation quantization that holds for any Poisson manifold. He also introduced knot invariants defined by complicated integrals analogous to Feynman integrals. In topological field theory, he introduced the moduli space of stable maps, which may be considered a mathematically rigorous formulation of the Feynman integral for topological string theory. These results are a part of his "contributions to four problems of geometry" for which he was awarded the Fields Medal in 1998.
  
  wn.com/Maxim_Kontsevich
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  Otto Jahn
  Otto Jahn (June 16, 1813 – September 9, 1869), was a German archaeologist, philologist, and writer on art and music.
  He was born at Kiel. After the completion of his university studies at Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel, the University of Leipzig and Humboldt University, Berlin, he travelled for three years in France and Italy; in 1839 he became Privatdozent at Kiel, and in 1842 professor-extraordinary of archaeology and philology at the University of Greifswald (ordinary professor 1845).
  In 1847 he accepted the chair of archaeology at Leipzig, but was deprived in it in 1851 for having taken part in the political movements of 1848-1849. In 1855 he was appointed professor of the science of antiquity, and director of the academic art museum at Bonn, and in 1865 he was called to succeed Eduard Gerhard at Berlin. He died at Göttingen.
  His biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart appeared in 1856, the centenary of Mozart's birth. The work is admired for its scholarly approach (at the time, novel in Mozart biography), and in versions revised by Hermann Abert and Cliff Eisen, continues in use today.
  
  wn.com/Otto_Jahn
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  Philipp Lenard
  Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard (June 7, 1862 – May 20, 1947), -German physicist and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 for his research on cathode rays and the discovery of many of their properties. He was also an active proponent of Nazi ideology.
  Philipp Lénárd was born in Bratislava, Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian-Hungarian Empire (since 1993 in Slovakia) on July 7, 1862, as the son of a wine merchant. Lenard's parents were German-speakers, and the Lenard family had originally come from Tyrol in the 17th century. His father Philipp von Lenardis (1812-1896) was a wine-merchant in Bratislava. His mother was Antoine Baumann (1831-1865). The young Lenard learned in Hungarian in the Royal Hungarian Gymnasium, and as he writes it in his autobiography this made a big impression on him (especially the personality of his teacher, Virgil Klatt). In 1880 he studied physics and chemistry in Vienna and in Budapest. In 1882 he left Budapest and returned to Bratislava but in 1883 Lenard moved to Heidelberg after his tender for an assistant job in the University of Budapest was refused. In Heidelberg he studied under the illustrious Robert Bunsen, interrupted by one semester in Berlin with Hermann von Helmholtz, and obtained his doctoral degree in 1886. In 1887 he worked again in Budapest under Loránd Eötvös as a demonstrator. After posts at Aachen, Bonn, Breslau, Heidelberg (1896–1898), and Kiel (1898–1907), he returned finally to the University of Heidelberg in 1907 as the head of the Philipp Lenard Institute. In 1905 Philip Lénárd became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1907 of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
  
  wn.com/Philipp_Lenard
• Pierre Vago
  Pierre Vago (August 30, 1910 in Budapest – February 1, 2002 in Noisy-sur-École) was a notable French architect who worked on the Hansaviertel in Berlin. Known Internationally as the publisher of L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui and General Secretary of the UIA. Vago remained honorary president of the UIA until his death.
  The young Frenchman, Vago, born in Budapest in 1910, studied at the École Spéciale d'Architecture (ESA) in Paris. Because of his housing projects, factories, and the Central Banks of the French provinces of Tunisia and Algeria, as well as his controversial Basilica of St. Pius X in Lourdes, he received much attention in the postwar years.
  As publisher of the influential magazine, L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui (Today's Architecture) Pierre Vago became an internationally important architecture critic. In 1948, Pierre Vago founded the International Union of Architects (UIA), and also served as its General Secretary for many years. His goal was to unite all the architects of the world in an umbrella organization of all the national architects associations. In 2005, the UIA is recognized in 95 countries and thus represents ca. 1.5 million architects. Under the direction of the UIA, East and West German architects were brought together at the end of the 1950s. Vago was a proponent of Franco-German reconciliation politics.
  
  wn.com/Pierre_Vago
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  Pope Benedict XVI
  Benedict XVI (Latin: Benedictus PP. XVI; Italian: Benedetto XVI; German: Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger on 16 April 1927) is the 265th Pope, a position in which he serves dual roles as Sovereign of the Vatican City State and leader of the Catholic Church. As pope he is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter. Benedict XVI was elected on 19 April 2005 in a papal conclave, celebrated his Papal Inauguration Mass on 24 April 2005, and took possession of his cathedral, the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, on 7 May 2005. A native of Bavaria, Pope Benedict XVI has both German and Vatican citizenship.
  After a long career as an academic, serving as a professor of theology at various German universities—the last being the University of Regensburg—he was appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising and cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1977. In 1981, he settled in Rome when he became Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one of the most important dicasteries of the Roman Curia. From 2002 until his election as Pope, he was also Dean of the College of Cardinals, and as such the primus inter pares among the cardinals. Prior to becoming Pope, he was "a major figure on the Vatican stage for a quarter of a century" as "one of the most respected, influential and controversial members of the College of Cardinals"; he had an influence "second to none when it came to setting church priorities and directions" as one of Pope John Paul II's closest confidants.
  
  wn.com/Pope_Benedict_XVI
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  Reinhard Selten
  Reinhard Selten (born 5 October 1930) is a German economist.
  Selten was born in Breslau (Wrocław) in Lower Silesia, now in Poland, to a Jewish father, Adolf Selten, and Protestant mother, Käthe Luther. For his work in game theory, Selten won the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with John Harsanyi and John Nash). He is also well known for his work in bounded rationality, and can be considered as one of the founding fathers of experimental economics. He developed an example of a game called Selten's Horse because of its extensive form representation. He is noted for his publishing in non-refereed journals to avoid being forced to make unwanted changes to his work.
  Selten is professor emeritus at the University of Bonn, Germany, and holds several honorary doctoral degrees. He has been an Esperantist since 1959., and met his wife through the Esperanto movement. He is a member and co-founder of the International Academy of Sciences San Marino.
  For the European Parliament election, 2009, he was the top candidate for the German wing of Europe – Democracy – Esperanto.
  
  wn.com/Reinhard_Selten
• 
  Robert de Cotte
  Robert de Cotte (1656 – 15 July 1735) was a French architect-administrator, under whose design control of the royal buildings of France from 1699, the earliest notes presaging the Rococo style were introduced. First a pupil of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, he later became his brother-in-law and his collaborator. After Hardouin-Mansart's death, de Cotte completed his unfinished projects, notably the royal chapel at Versailles and the Grand Trianon.
  Born in Paris, Robert de Cotte began his career as a contractor for masonry, working on important royal projects between 1682 and 1685, when he was made a member of the Académie royale d'architecture and architect of the Court, ranking third in importance after Mansart's seldom-credited assistant François Dorbay (Kimball, p 36f). On his return to France after a six-month sojourn in Italy (1689–1690), in the company of Jacques Gabriel, he became the director of the Manufacture des Gobelins, where not only the famous tapestries, but also royal furnishings were produced; even designs made under his direction for wrought iron balustrading are to be found among the eight volumes of drawings for the Gobelins, and for other public and private commissions, conserved at the Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale. In 1699, when Mansart was made Surintendant des Bâtiments, a position otherwise invariably reserved for a noble layman, de Cotte became his second-in-command in an executive function, charged with overseeing all the files of drawings, the stocks of marble and other materials including those for the royal manufactures of the Gobelins and Savonnerie, with overseeing the bidding process with contractors and with liaison with the Académie, of which he was made a member that same year. Fiske Kimball, the chronicler of the Rococo, notes that there are no surviving drawings by de Cotte from this period, nor from the period after Mansart's death in May 1708 (Kimball pp 61, 78).
  
  wn.com/Robert_de_Cotte
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  Thomas Mann
  Thomas Mann (6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann, and three of his six children, Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann, also became important German writers. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he emigrated to the United States, from where he returned to Switzerland in 1952. Thomas Mann is one of the best-known exponents of the so-called Exilliteratur.
  Mann was born Paul Thomas Mann in Lübeck, Germany, and was the second son of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann (a senator and a grain merchant), and his wife Júlia da Silva Bruhns (a Brazilian of partial German ancestry who emigrated to Germany when seven years old). His mother was Roman Catholic, but Mann was baptised into his father's Lutheran faith. Mann's father died in 1891, and his trading firm was liquidated. The family subsequently moved to Munich. Mann attended the science division of a Lübeck Gymnasium (school), then spent time at the Ludwig Maximillians University of Munich and Technical University of Munich where, in preparation for a journalism career, he studied history, economics, art history and literature.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Mann
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  Wilhelm von Humboldt
  Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt (22 June 1767 – 8 April 1835) was a Prussian philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin, which was named after him (and his brother, naturalist Alexander von Humboldt) in 1949. He is especially remembered as a linguist who made important contributions to the philosophy of language and to the theory and practice of education. In particular, he is widely recognized as having been the architect of the Prussian education system which was used as a model for education systems in countries such as the United States and Japan.
  Humboldt was born in Potsdam, Margraviate of Brandenburg, and died in Tegel, Province of Brandenburg. His younger brother, Alexander von Humboldt, was equally famous, as a geographer.
  Humboldt was a philosopher and wrote On the Limits of State Action in 1791-2 (though it was not published until 1850, after Humboldt's death), one of the boldest defences of the liberties of the Enlightenment. It influenced John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty through which von Humboldt's ideas became known in the English-speaking world. Humboldt outlined an early version of what Mill would later call the "harm principle".
  
  wn.com/Wilhelm_von_Humboldt
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  World War I
  World War I (WWI), which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939 (World War II), and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; but, as Austria–Hungary had taken the offensive against the agreement, Italy did not enter into the war). These alliances both reorganised (Italy fought for the Allies), and expanded as more nations entered the war. Ultimately more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of enormous increases in lethality of weapons, thanks to new technology, without corresponding improvements in protection or mobility. It was the sixth-deadliest conflict in world history, subsequently paving the way for various political changes such as revolutions in the nations involved.
  
  wn.com/World_War_I

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