This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2009)

Mathematics portal

1,000,000,000 (one billion, short scale; one thousand million or milliard, long scale) is the natural number following 999,999,999 and preceding 1,000,000,001.

In scientific notation, it is written as 10⁹.

A billion traditionally equated to one million, million, (1,000,000,000,000) though the short scale (American English) billion of merely one thousand million (1,000,000,000) has been adopted in finance and increasingly in other fields. The unambiguous term thousand million has the same meaning in both scales.

In South Asian English, it is known as 100 crore or 1 arab.

The term milliard can also be used to refer to 1,000,000,000; this name very often appears in other languages.

This terminology is rarely used in English outside of British English. The SI prefix giga indicates 1,000,000,000 times the base unit.

See Orders of magnitude (numbers) for larger numbers; and long and short scales.

Selected 10-digit numbers (1,000,000,000–9,999,999,999)[link]

Visualisation of powers of ten from one to 1 billion

• 1023456789 – smallest pandigital number in base 10
• 1026753849 – smallest pandigital square that includes 0
• 1073676287 – 15th Carol number
• 1073741824 = 2³⁰
• 1073807359 – 14th Kynea number
• 1129760415 – 23rd Motzkin number
• 1134903170 – 45th Fibonacci number
• 1162261467 = 3¹⁹
• 1220703125 = 5¹³
• 1234567890 – pandigital number with the digits in order
• 1311738121 – 25th Pell number
• 1382958545 – 15th Bell number
• 1406818759 – 30th Wedderburn–Etherington number
• 1836311903 – 46th Fibonacci number
• 1882341361 – The least prime whose reversal is both square (40391²) and triangular (triangular of 57121).
• 1977326743 = 7¹¹
• 2147483647 – 8th Mersenne prime and the largest signed 32-bit integer
• 2147483648 = 2³¹
• 2214502422 – 6th primary pseudoperfect number
• 2357947691 = 11⁹
• 2971215073 – 11th Fibonacci prime (47th Fibonacci number)
• 3166815962 – 26th Pell number
• 3192727797 – 24th Motzkin number
• 3323236238 – 31st Wedderburn–Etherington number
• 3405691582 – hexadecimal CAFEBABE; used as a placeholder in programming.
• 3405697037 – hexadecimal CAFED00D; used as a placeholder in programming.
• 3486784401 = 3²⁰
• 4294836223 – 16th Carol number
• 4294967291 – Largest prime 32-bit unsigned integer
• 4294967295 – Maximum 32-bit unsigned integer (hexadecimal FFFFFFFF)
• 4294967296 = 2³²
• 4294967297 – the first composite Fermat number
• 4295098367 – 15th Kynea number
• 4807526976 – 48th Fibonacci number
• 5784634181 – 13th alternating factorial
• 6103515625 = 5¹⁴
• 6210001000 – only self-descriptive number in base 10
• 6227020800 = 13!
• 6983776800 – 15th colossally abundant number
• 7645370045 – 27th Pell number
• 7778742049 – 49th Fibonacci number
• 7862958391 – 32nd Wedderburn–Etherington number
• 8589869056 – 6th perfect number
• 8589934592 = 2³³
• 9043402501 – 25th Motzkin number
• 9814072356 – largest square pandigital number, largest pandigital pure power
• 9876543210 – largest pandigital number without redundant digits

Sense of scale[link]

The facts below give a sense of how large 1,000,000,000 (10⁹) is in the context of time according to current scientific evidence:

• 10⁹ seconds is 114 days short of 32 calendar years (≈ 31.7 years).
• About 10⁹ minutes ago, the Roman Empire was flourishing and Christianity was emerging. (10⁹ minutes is roughly 1,900 years.) A billion minutes ago, Trajan was emperor in Rome^[1].
• About 10⁹ hours ago, modern human beings and their ancestors were living in the Stone Age (more precisely, the Middle Paleolithic). (10⁹ hours is roughly 114,000 years.)
• About 10⁹ days ago, Australopithecus, an ape-like creature related to an ancestor of modern humans, roamed the African savannas. (10⁹ days is roughly 2.7 million years.)
• About 10⁹ months ago, dinosaurs walked the Earth during the late Cretaceous. (10⁹ months is roughly 82 million years.)
• About 10⁹ years ago, the first multicellular eukaryotes appeared on Earth.
• The universe is currently thought to be about 13.7 × 10⁹ years old.

In terms of distance:

• 10⁹ inches is 15,783 miles (25,400 km), more than halfway around the world and sufficient to reach any point on the globe from any other point.
• 10⁹ metres is almost three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
• 10⁹ kilometres is over six times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

In terms of finance:

• The possession of assets with total value of 10⁹ United States dollars would place a person among the world's wealthiest individuals.
• As visualized in a work by artist Michael Marcovici, this amount of money in stacks of hundred-dollar bills can fit on twelve wrapped pallets.^[2]

In terms of area:

• A billion square inches would be a square about one half mile on a side.
• A piece of finely woven bed sheet cloth that contained a billion holes would measure about 500 square feet (46 m²), large enough to cover a moderate sized apartment.

In terms of volume:

• There are a billion cubic millimeters in a cubic meter.
• A billion grains of table salt or granulated sugar would occupy a volume of about two and a half cubic feet.
• A billion cubic inches would be a volume comparable to a large commercial building slightly larger than a typical supermarket.

In terms of natural landscape; a small mountain, slightly larger than Stone Mountain Georgia, United States, would weigh (have a mass of) a billion tons.

In terms of count:

A is a cube; B consists of 1000 cubes of type A. C consists of 1000 Bs; and D 1000 Cs. Thus there are 1 million As in C; and 1,000,000,000 As in D.

References[link]

David Woods was an American lawyer and politician, who was a two-time member of the New York State Assembly including a stint as Speaker.

Biography[link]

Woods lived in Salem, NY. He was Sheriff of Washington County from 1806 to 1810.

He was a Democratic-Republican member of the New York State Assembly from Washington County in 1811,^[1] and from Washington and Warren Counties in 1816-17. Then he removed to Madison and practice law there. He was again a member of the Assembly in 1818, this time from Madison County. He was Speaker in 1816-17 and 1818.

In 1821, he lost the election for Congress to Thomas H. Hubbard. From 1825 to 1831, he was a Canal Appraiser. In 1826, he was again a member of the Assembly from Washington County.^[1] Afterwards he was a judge of the Washington County Court.^[2]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• History of Madison County, New York by Luna M. Hammond Whitney (1872)

This article about a member of the New York State Assembly is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Janusz Korczak
Janusz Korczak
Born	July 22, 1879 (1878-07-22) Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire
Died	August 1942 (1942-09) Treblinka extermination camp
Occupation	Children's author, humanitarian, pediatrician and child pedagogue

Janusz Korczak, the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit,^[1] (July 22, 1878 or 1879 – August 1942) was a Polish-Jewish educator, children's author, and pediatrician known as Pan Doktor (Mr. Doctor) or Stary Doktor (Old Doctor). After spending many years working as director of an orphanage in Warsaw, he refused freedom and stayed with his orphans when the institution was sent from the Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp, during the Grossaktion Warsaw of 1942.^[2]

Biography[link]

Under foreign partitions[link]

Korczak was born in Warsaw in 1878 or 1879 (sources vary) into the family of Józef Goldszmit,^[1] a respected lawyer from a family of proponents of the haskalah,^[3] and Cecylia nee Gębicka, daughter of a prominent Kalisz family.^[4] His father fell ill around 1890 and was admitted to mental hospital where he died six years later in April 1896. Spacious apartments – first along Miodowa street, then Świętojerska – had to be given up. Henryk worked as a tutor after school.^[5] In 1898 he used Janusz Korczak as a writing pseudonym in the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Literary Contest. The name originated from the book Janasz Korczak and the Pretty Swordsweeperlady (O Janaszu Korczaku i pięknej Miecznikównie) by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski.^[6] In the 1890s he studied in the Flying University. During the years 1898–1904 Korczak studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and also wrote for several Polish language newspapers. After graduation he became a pediatrician. During the Russo-Japanese War in 1905–1906 he served as a military doctor. Meanwhile his book Child of the Drawing Room (Dziecko salonu) gained him some literary recognition. After the war he continued his practice in Warsaw.

The Krochmalna Street orphanage where Korczak worked. He lived in a room at the attic

In 1907–1908 Korczak went to study in Berlin. While working for the Orphan's Society in 1909 he met Stefania Wilczyńska, his future closest associate.^[7] In 1911–1912 he became a director of Dom Sierot in Warsaw, the orphanage of his own design for Jewish children. He took Wilczyńska as his assistant. There he formed a kind-of-a-republic for children with its own small parliament, court, and a newspaper. He reduced his other duties as a doctor. Some of his descriptions of the summer camp for Jewish children in this period and subsequently, were later published in his Fragmenty Utworów and have been translated into English.

During World War One, in 1917 Korczak became a military doctor with the rank of Lieutenant. He served again as a military doctor in the Polish Army with the rank of Major during the Polish-Soviet War, but after a brief stint in Łódź was assigned to Warsaw.

Sovereign Poland[link]

In 1926 Korczak arranged for the children of the Dom Sierot to begin their own newspaper, the Mały Przegląd (Little Review), as a weekly attachment to the daily Polish-Jewish Newspaper Nasz Przegląd (Our Review). In these years, his secretary was the noted Polish novelist Igor Newerly.

During the 1930s he had his own radio program where he promoted and popularized the rightes of children. In 1933 he was awarded the Silver Cross of the Polonia Restituta. Between 1934–1936 Korczak traveled every year to Mandate Palestine and visited its kibbutzim, which led to some anti-semitic commentaries in the Polish press. It additionally spurred his estrangement with the non-Jewish orphanage he had also been working for. Still, he refused to move to Palestine even when Stefania Wilczyńska went to live there in 1938.

The Holocaust[link]

In 1939, when World War II erupted, Korczak volunteered for duty in the Polish Army but was refused due to his age. He witnessed the Wehrmacht takeover of Warsaw. When the Germans created the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, his orphanage was forced to move from its building, Dom Sierot at Krochmalna 92 to the Ghetto (first to Chłodna 33 and later to Sienna 16 / Śliska 9).^[8] Korczak moved in with them. In July, Janusz Korczak decided that the children in the orphanage should put on Rabindranath Tagore’s play, The Post Office.

Janusz Korczak and the children, memorial at Yad Vashem

Monument of Korczak at Warsaw

On August 5 or 6, 1942, German soldiers came to collect the 192 orphans (there is some debate about the actual number: it may have been 196), and about one dozen staff members, to transport them to Treblinka extermination camp. Korczak had been offered sanctuary on the “Aryan side” by Żegota but turned it down repeatedly, saying that he could not abandon his children. On August 5, he again refused offers of sanctuary, insisting that he would go with the children.

The children were dressed in their best clothes, and each carried a blue knapsack and a favorite book or toy. Joshua Perle, an eyewitness, described the procession of Korczak and the children through the ghetto to the Umschlagplatz (deportation point to the death camps):

... Two hundred pure souls, condemned to death, did not weep. Not one of them ran away. None tried to hide. Like stricken swallows they clung to their teacher and mentor, to their father and brother, Janusz Korczak, so that he might protect and preserve them. Janusz Korczak was marching, his head bent forward, holding the hand of a child, without a hat, a leather belt around his waist, and wearing high boots. A few nurses were followed by two hundred children, dressed in clean and meticulously cared for clothes, as they were being carried to the altar.

— Joshua Perle,  Holocaust cronicles ^[9]

According to a popular legend, when the group of orphans finally reached the Umschlagplatz, an SS officer recognized Korczak as the author of one of his favorite children's books and offered to help him escape. By another version, the officer was acting officially, as the Nazi authorities had in mind some kind of "special treatment" for Korczak (some prominent Jews with international reputations got sent to Theresienstadt). Whatever the offer, Korczak once again refused. He boarded the trains with the children and was never heard from again.

Korczak's evacuation from the Ghetto is also mentioned in Władysław Szpilman's book The Pianist:

I happened to see Janusz Korczak and his orphans leaving the ghetto. The evacuation of the Jewish orphanage run by Janusz Korczak had been ordered for that morning. The children were to have been taken away alone. He had the chance to save himself, and it was only with difficulty that he persuaded the Germans to take him too. He had spent long years of his life with children and now, on this last journey, he could not leave them alone. He wanted to ease things for them. He told the orphans they were going out in to the country, so they ought to be cheerful. At last they would be able to exchange the horrible suffocating city walls for meadows of flowers, streams where they could bathe, woods full of berries and mushrooms. He told them to wear their best clothes, and so they came out into the yard, two by two, nicely dressed and in a happy mood. The little column was led by an SS man..."

— Władysław Szpilman,  The Pianist ^[10]

Some time after, there were rumors that the trains had been diverted and that Korczak and the children had survived. There was, however, no basis to these stories. Most likely, Korczak, along with Wilczyńska and most of the children, was killed in a gas chamber upon their arrival at Treblinka.

A differing account of Korczak's death is given in Mary Berg's Warsaw Ghetto diary:

Dr. Janusz Korczak’s children’s home is empty now. A few days ago we all stood at the window and watched the Germans surround the houses. Rows of children, holding each other by their little hands, began to walk out of the doorway. There were tiny tots of two or three years among them, while the oldest ones were perhaps thirteen. Each child carried the little bundle in his hand. All of them wore white aprons. They walked in ranks of two, calm, and even smiling. They had not the slightest foreboding of their fate. At the end of the procession marched Dr. Korczak, who saw to it that the children did not walk on the sidewalk.”

— Mary Berg,  The Diary ^[11]

There is a cenotaph for him at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.

Writings[link]

Korczak's best known writing is his fiction and pedagogy, and his most popular works have been widely translated. His main pedagogical texts have been translated into English, but of his fiction, as of 2011 only King Matt the First has been translated into English, though Kaytek the Wizard is scheduled for a June, 2012 release in English.

The copyright to all works by Korczak was acquired by The Polish Book Institute as of January 8, 2010.^[12] As of late 2011, they have embarked on an initiative to publish or re-publish many of Korczak's books, both in Polish and in other languages.^[13] As Korczak died in 1942, it is likely that his works will be available in the public domain as of January 1, 2013.^[14]

Korczak's overall literary oeuvre covers the period 1896 to August 8, 1942. It comprises works for both children and adults, and includes literary pieces, social journalism, articles and pedagogical essays, together with some scrappy unpublished work, in all totaling over twenty books, over 1,400 texts published in around 100 publications, and around 300 texts in manuscript or typescript form. A complete edition of his works is planned for 2012.^[15]

Children's books[link]

Korczak often employed the form of the fairy tale in order to actually prepare his young readers for the dilemmas and difficulties of real adult life, and the need to take responsible decisions.

In the 1923 King Matt the First (Król Maciuś Pierwszy) and its sequel King Matt on the Desert Island (Król Maciuś na wyspie bezludnej) Korczak depicted a child prince who is catapulted to the throne by the sudden death of his father, and who must learn from various mistakes.

He tries to read and answer all his mail by himself and finds that the volume is too much and he needs to rely on secretaries; he is exasperated with his ministers and has them arrested, but soon realises that he does not know enough to govern by himself, and is forced to release the ministers and institute constitutional monarchy; when a war breaks out he does not accept being shut up in his palace, but slips away and joins up, pretending to be a peasant boy - and narrowly avoids becoming a POW; he takes the offer of a friendly journalist to publish for him a "royal paper" -and finds much later that he gets carefully edited news and that the journalist is covering up the gross corruption of the young king's best friend; he tries to organise the children of all the world to hold processions and demand their rights - and ends up antagonising other kings; he falls in love with a black African princess and outrages racist opinion (by modern standards, however, Korczak's depiction of blacks is itself not completely free of stereotypes which were current at the time of writing); finally, he is overthrown by the invasion of three foreign armies and exiled to a desert island, where he must come to terms with reality - and finally does.

The later Kajtuś the Wizard (Kajtuś czarodziej) (1935) anticipated Harry Potter in depicting a schoolboy who gains magic powers, and it was very popular during the 1930s, both in Polish and in translation to several other languages. Kajtuś has, however, a far more difficult path than Harry Potter: he has no Hogwarts-type School of Magic where he could be taught by expert mages, but must learn to use and control his powers all by himself - and most importantly, to learn his limitations.

Pedagogical books[link]

In his pedagogical works, Korczak shares much of his experience dealing with difficult children. Korczak's ideas were further developed by many other pedagogues such as Simon Soloveychik and Erich Dauzenroth.

Partial Bibliography[link]

Fiction[link]

• Children of the Streets (Dzieci ulicy, Warsaw 1901)
• Fiddle-Faddle (Koszałki opałki, Warsaw 1905)
• Child of the Drawing Room (Dziecko salonu, Warsaw 1906, 2nd edition 1927) – partially autobiographical
• Mośki, Joski i Srule (Warsaw 1910)
• Józki, Jaśki i Franki (Warsaw 1911)
• Fame (Sława, Warsaw 1913, corrected 1935 and 1937)
• Bobo (Warsaw 1914)
• King Matt the First (Król Maciuś Pierwszy, Warsaw 1923) ISBN 1-56512-442-1
• King Matt on a Deserted Island (Król Maciuś na wyspie bezludnej, Warsaw 1923)
• Bankruptcy of Little Jack (Bankructwo małego Dżeka, Warsaw 1924)
• When I Am Little Again (Kiedy znów będę mały, Warsaw 1925)
• Senat szaleńców, humoreska ponura (a screenplay for the Ateneum theatre in Warsaw 1931)
• Kaytek the Wizard (Kajtuś czarodziej, Warsaw 1935)

Pedagogical books[link]

• Momenty wychowawcze (Warsaw, 1919, 2nd edition 1924)
• How to Love a Child (Jak kochać dziecko, Warsaw 1919, 2nd edition 1920 as Jak kochać dzieci)
• The Child's Right to Respect (Prawo dziecka do szacunku, Warsaw, 1929)
• Playful pedagogy (Pedagogika żartobliwa, Warsaw, 1939)

Other books[link]

• Diary (Pamiętnik, Warsaw, 1958)
• Fragmenty Utworów (Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Nasza Księgarnia, 1978). Excerpts translated by Adele L. Milch were published in Moment Magazine, November 1979.
• The Stubborn Boy: The Life of Pasteur (Warsaw, 1935)

In popular culture[link]

In addition to theater, opera, TV, and film adaptations of his works, such as King Matt the First and Kaytek the Wizard, there have been a number of works about Korczak, inspired by him, or featuring him as a character.

Books:

• Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli (2003) – Doctor Korczak runs an orphanage in Warsaw where the main character often visits him
• Moshe en Reizele (Mosje and Reizele) by Karlijn Stoffels (2004) – Mosje is sent to live in Korczak's orphanage, where he falls in love with Reizele. Set in the period 1939-1942. Original Dutch, German translation available. No English version as of 2009^[update].
• Once by Morris Gleitzman (2005), partly inspired by Korczak, featuring a character modeled after him
• Kindling by Alberto Valis (Felici Editori, 2011), Italian thriller novel. The life of Korczak through the voice of a Warsaw ghetto's orphan. As of 2011^[update], no English translation.
• The Time Tunnel - Kingdom of the Children by Galila Ron-Feder-Amit (2007) is an Israeli children's book in the Time Tunnel series that takes place in Korczak's orphanage.

Stage plays:

• Dr Korczak and the Children by Erwin Sylvanus (1957)
• Korczak's Children by Jeffrey Hatcher (2003)
• Dr Korczak's Example by David Greig (2001)^[16]
• The Children's Republic by Hannah Moscovitch (2009)

Musicals:

• Korczak by Nick Stimson and Chris Williams (2011) presented by Youth Music Theatre: UK at the Rose Theatre, Kingston in August 2011.

Film:

• Korczak, written by Agnieszka Holland, directed by Andrzej Wajda (1990)

Television:

• Studio 4: Dr Korczak and the Children - BBC adaptation of Sylvanus's play, written and directed by Rudolph Cartier (13 March 1962)

Music:

• Korczak's Orphans – opera, music by Adam Silverman, libretto by Susan Gubernat (2003)
• Kaddish – long poem/song by Aleksandr Galich (1970)

Astronomy:

• Asteroid 2163 Korczak is named in his honor.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Bystrzycka, Anna (July 2007). "Dzieci z sierocińca". Zwrot: 30–31. 
• Joseph, Sandra (1999). A Voice for the Child: The inspirational words of Janusz Korczak. Collins Publishers.
• Lifton, Betty Jean (1988). The King of Children: The Life and Death of Janusz Korczak Collins Publishers.
• Mortkowicz-Olczakowa, Hanna (1961). Bunt wspomnień. Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.
• Parenting Advice from a Polish Holocaust Hero from National Public Radio
• Lawrence Kohlberg (1981). The Philosophy of Moral Development: Education for Justice pp. 401–408. Harper & Row, Publishers, San Francisco.

External links[link]

	Poland portal
	Biography portal
	Judaism portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Janusz Korczak

• Janusz Korczak Living Heritage Association
• Ojemba Productions presents 'KORCZAK' at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2005!
• Korczak's Orphans opera by Adam Silverman and Susan Gubernat
• I'm small, but important, German Documentary by Walther Petri and Konrad Weiss
• Wiersz Kazimierza Dąbrowskiego "Wątek X - Janusz Korczak" Heksis 1/2010