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Albrecht Altdorfer

Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480—12 February 1538) was a German painter, engraver and architect of the Renaissance working in Regensburg, Bavaria. Along with Lucas Cranach the Elder and Wolf Huber he is regarded to be the main representative of the Danube School, setting biblical and historical subjects against landscape backgrounds of expressive colours. He is remarkable as one of the first artists to take an interest in landscape as an independent subject. As an artist also making small intricate engravings he is seen to belong to the Nuremberg Little Masters.

Biography
Altdorfer was born in Regensburg or Altdorf around 1480.

He acquired an interest in art from his father, Ulrich Altdorfer, who was a painter and miniaturist. At the start of his career, he won public attention by creating small, intimate modestly scaled works in unconventional media and with eccentric subject matter. He settled in the free imperial city of Regensburg, a town located on the Danube River in 1505, eventually becoming the town architect and a town councillor. His first signed works date to c. 1506, including engravings and drawings such the Stygmata of St. Francis and St. Jerome. His models were niellos and copper engravings from the workshops of Jacopo de Barbari and Albrecht Dürer.

Around 1511 or earlier, he travelled down the river and south into the Alps, where the scenery moved him so deeply that he became the first landscape painter in the modern sense, making him the leader of the Danube School, a circle that pioneered landscape as an independent genre, in southern Germany. From 1513 he was at the service of Maximilian I in Innsbruck, where he received several commissions from the imperial court. During the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation, he dedicated mostly to architecture; paintings of the period, showing his increasing attention to architecture, include the Nativity of the Virgin.

In 1529, he executed The Battle of Alexander at Issus for Duke William IV of Bavaria. In the 1520s he returned to Regensburg as a wealthy man, and became a member of the city's council. He was also responsible for the fortifications of Regensburg.

In that period his works are influenced by artists such as Giorgione and Lucas Cranach, as shown by his Crucifixion. In 1535, he was in Vienna. He died at Regensburg in 1538.

The remains of Altdorfer's surviving work comprises 55 panels, 120 drawings, 125 woodcuts, 78 engravings, 36 etchings, 24 paintings on parchment, and fragments from a mural for the bathhouse of the Kaiserhof in Regensburg. This production extends at least over the period 1504–1537. He signed and dated each one of his works.

Painting

Altdorfer was the pioneer painter of pure landscape, making them the subject of the painting, as well as compositions dominated by their landscape; these comprise much of his oeuvre. He believed that the human figure should not disrupt nature, but rather participate in it or imitate its natural processes. Taking and developing the landscape style of Lucas Cranach the Elder, he shows the hilly landscape of the Danube valley with thick forests of drooping and crumbling firs and larches hung with moss, and often dramatic colouring from a rising or setting sun. His Landscape with Footbridge (National Gallery, London) of 1518–1520 is claimed to be the first pure landscape in oil. In this painting, Altdorfer places a large tree that is cut off by the margins at the center of the landscape, making it the central axis and focus within the piece. Some viewers perceive anthropomorphic stylisation—the tree supposedly exhibiting human qualities such as the drapery of its limbs. He also made many fine finished drawings, mostly landscapes, in pen and watercolour such as the Landscape with the Woodcutter in 1522. The drawing opens at ground level on a clearing surrounding an enormous tree that is placed in the center, dominating the picture. Some see the tree pose and gesticulate as if it was human, splaying its branches out in every corner. Halfway up the tree trunk, hangs a gabled shrine. At the time, a shrine like this might shelter an image of the Crucifixion or the Virgin Mary, but since it is turned away from the viewer, we are not sure what it truly is. At the bottom of the tree, a tiny figure of a seated man, crossed legged, holds a knife and axe, declaring his status in society/occupation.

Also, he often painted scenes of historical and biblical subjects, set in atmospheric landscapes. His best religious scenes are intense, with their glistening lights and glowing colours sometimes verging on the expressionistic. They often depict moments of intimacy between Christ and his mother, or various saints. His sacral masterpiece and one of the most famous religious works of art of the later Middle Ages is The Legend of St. Sebastian and The Passion of Christ of the so-called Sebastian Altar in St. Florian's Priory (Stift Sankt Florian) near Linz, Upper Austria. When closed  the altarpiece displayed the four panels of the legend of St. Sebastian's Martyrdom, while the opened wings displayed the Stations of the Cross. Today the altarpiece is dismantled and the predellas depicting the two final scenes, Entombment and Resurrection were sold to Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 1923 and 1930. Both these paintings share a similar formal structure that consists of an open landscape that is seen beyond and through the opening of a dark grotto. The date of completion on the resurrection panel is 1518.

Altdorfer often distorts perspective to subtle effect. His donor figures are often painted completely out of scale with the main scene, as in paintings of the previous centuries. He also painted some portraits; overall his painted oeuvre was not large. In his later works, Altdorfer moved more towards mannerism and began to depict the human form to the conformity of the Italian model, as well as dominate the picture with frank colors.

Paintings in Munich

His rather atypical Battle of Issus (or of Alexander) of 1529 was commissioned by William IV, Duke of Bavaria as part of a series of eight historical battle scenes destined to hang in the Residenz in Munich. Albrecht Altdorfer's depiction of the moment in 333 BCE when Alexander the Great routed Darius III for supremacy in Asia Minor is vast in ambition, sweeping in scope, vivid in imagery, rich in symbols, and obviously heroic—the Iliad of painting, as literary critic Friedrich Schlegel suggested In the painting, a swarming cast of thousands of soldiers surround the central action: Alexander on his white steed, leading two rows of charging cavalrymen, dashes after a fleeing Darius, who looks anxiously over his shoulder from a chariot. The opposing armies are distinguished by the colors of their uniforms: Darius' army in red and Alexander's in blue. The upper half of The Battle of Alexander expands with unreal rapidity into an arcing panorama comprehending vast coiling tracts of globe and sky. The victory also lies on the planar surface; The sun outshone the moon just as the Imperial and allied army successfully repel the Turks. By making the mass number of soldiers blend within the landscape/painting, it shows that he believed that the usage and depiction of landscape was just as significant as a historical event, such as a war. He renounced the office of Mayor of Regensburg to accept the commission. Few of his other paintings resemble this apocalyptic scene of two huge armies dominated by an extravagant landscape seen from a very high viewpoint, which looks south over the whole Mediterranean from modern Turkey to include the island of Cyprus and the mouths of the Nile and the Red Sea (behind the isthmus to the left) on the other side. However his style here is a development of that of a number of miniatures of battle-scenes he had done much earlier for Maximilian I in his illuminated manuscript Triumphal Procession in 1512–14. It is thought to be the earliest painting to show the curvature of the Earth from a great height.

The Battle is now in the Alte Pinakothek, which has the best collection of Altdorfer's paintings, including also his small St. George and the Dragon (1510), in oil on parchment, where the two figures are tiny and almost submerged in the lush, dense forest that towers over them. Altdorfer seems to exaggerate the measurements of the forest in comparison to the figures: the leaves appear to be larger than the horse, showing the significance of nature and landscape. He also emphasizes line within the work, by displaying the upward growth of the forest with the vertical and diagonal lines of the trunks. There is a small opening of the forest on the lower right hand corner that provides a rest for your eyes. It serves to create depth within the painting and is the only place you can see the characters. The human form is completely absorbed by the thickness of the forest. Fantastic light effects provide a sense of mystery and dissolve the outline of objects. Without the contrast of light, the figures would blend in with its surrounding environment. Altdorfer's figures are invariably the complement of his romantic landscapes; for them he borrowed Albrecht Dürer's inventive iconography, but the panoramic setting is personal and has nothing to do with the fantasy landscapes of the Netherlands A Susanna in the Bath and the Stoning of the Elders (1526) set outside an Italianate skyscraper of a palace shows his interest in architecture. Another small oil on parchment, Danube Landscape with Castle Wörth (c. 1520) is one of the earliest accurate topographical paintings of a particular building in its setting, of a type that was to become a cliché in later centuries.

Printmaking

Altdorfer was a significant printmaker, with numerous engravings and about ninety-three woodcuts. These included some for the Triumphs of Maximilian, where he followed the overall style presumably set by Hans Burgkmair, although he was able to escape somewhat from this in his depictions of the more disorderly baggage-train, still coming through a mountain landscape. However most of his best prints are etchings, many of landscapes; in these he was able most easily to use his drawing style. He was one of the most successful early etchers, and was unusual for his generation of German printmakers in doing no book illustrations. He often combined etching and engraving techniques in a single plate, and produced about 122 intaglio prints altogether. Many of Altdorfer's prints are quite small in size, and he is considered to be of the main members of the group of artists known as the Little Masters. Arthur Mayger Hind considers his graphical work to be somewhat lacking in technical skill but with an "intimate personal touch", and notes his characteristic feeling for landscape.

Public life
As the superintendent of the municipal buildings Altdorfer had overseen the construction of several commercial structures, such as a slaughterhouse and a building for wine storage, possibly even designing them. He was considered to be an outstanding politician of his day. In 1517 he was a member of the "Ausseren Rates", the council on external affairs, and in this capacity was involved in the expulsion of the Jews, the destruction of the synagogue and in its place the construction of a church and shrine to the Schöne Maria that occurred in 1519. Altdorfer made etchings of the interior of the synagogue and designed a woodcut of the cult image of the Schöne Maria. In 1529–1530 he was also charged with reinforcing certain city fortifications in response to the Turkish threat.

Albrecht's brother, Erhard Altdorfer, was also a painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving, and a pupil of Lucas Cranach the Elder.

title: Albrecht Altdorfer


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House of Ascania

The House of Ascania (Askanier) was a dynasty of German rulers. It is also known as the House of Anhalt, which refers to its longest-held possession, Anhalt.

The Ascanians are named after Ascania (or Ascaria) Castle, known as Schloss Askanien in German, which was located near and named after Aschersleben. The castle was the seat of the County of Ascania, a title that was later subsumed into the titles of the princes of Anhalt.

History
The earliest known member of the house, Esiko, Count of Ballenstedt, first appears in a document of 1036. He is assumed to have been a grandson (through his mother) of Odo I, Margrave of the Saxon Ostmark. From Odo, the Ascanians inherited large properties in the Saxon Eastern March.

Esiko's grandson was Otto, Count of Ballenstedt, who died in 1123. By Otto's marriage to Eilika, daughter of Magnus, Duke of Saxony, the Ascanians became heirs to half of the property of the House of Billung, former dukes of Saxony.

Otto's son, Albert the Bear, became, with the help of his mother's inheritance, the first Ascanian duke of Saxony in 1139. However, he soon lost control of Saxony to the rival House of Guelph.

Albert inherited the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1157 from its last Wendish ruler, Pribislav, and he became the first Ascanian margrave. Albert, and his descendants of the House of Ascania, then made considerable progress in Christianizing and Germanizing the lands. As a borderland between German and Slavic cultures, the country was known as a march.

In 1237 and 1244, two towns, Cölln and Berlin, were founded during the rule of Otto and Johann, grandsons of Margrave Albert the Bear. Later, they were united into one city, Berlin. The emblem of the House of Ascania, a red eagle and bear, became the heraldic emblems of Berlin. In 1320, the Brandenburg Ascanian line came to an end.

After the Emperor had deposed the Guelph rulers of Saxony in 1180, Ascanians returned to rule the Duchy of Saxony, which had been reduced to its eastern half by the Emperor. However, even in eastern Saxony, the Ascanians could establish control only in limited areas, mostly near the River Elbe.

In the 13th century, the Principality of Anhalt was split off from the Duchy of Saxony. Later, the remaining state was split into Saxe-Lauenburg and Saxe-Wittenberg. The Ascanian dynasties in the two Saxon states became extinct in 1689 and in 1422, respectively, but Ascanians continued to rule in the smaller state of Anhalt and its various subdivisions until the monarchy was abolished in 1918.

Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796, was a member of the House of Ascania, herself the daughter of Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst.

Heads of the House of Ascania since 1918

 * Duke Joachim Ernest II 1918–1947
 * Prince Frederick 1947–1963
 * Prince Edward 1963–present

Family trees
(genealogical list of the dynasty in German)

Armorial
The original arms of the house of Ascania, from their ancestors the Saxon counts of Ballenstedt, were "Barry of ten sable and or".

The Ascanian margrave Albert the Bear was invested with the Saxon ducal title in 1138; when he succeeded the Welf's Henry the Lion, who was deposed by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. In 1180, Albert's son Bernhard, Count of Anhalt received the remaining Saxon territories around Wittenberg and Lauenburg, and the ducal title. Legend, so unlikely to be true, goes that when he rode in front of the emperor, at the occasion of his investiture, he carried a shield with his escutcheon of the Ballenstedt coat of arms (barry sable and or). Barbarossa took the rue wreath he wore against the heat of the sun from his head, hanging it over Bernhard's shield and thus creating the Saxonian crancelin vert ("Barry of ten sable and or, a crancelin vert"). A more likely explanation is that it probably symbolized the waiver of the Lauenburg lands.

From about 1260, the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg emerged under the Ascanian duke Albert II, who adopted the tradition of the Saxon stem duchy and was granted the Saxon electoral dignity, against the fierce protest of his Ascanian Saxe-Lauenburg cousins. This was confirmed by the Golden Bull of 1356. As the Ascanian Electors of Saxony also held the High office of an Arch-Marshal of the Holy Roman Empire, they added the ensign Per fess sable and argent two swords in saltire gules (the swords later featuring as the trademark of the Meissen china factory) to their coat of arms. When the line became extinct in 1422, the arms and electoral dignity were adopted by the Wettin by margrave Frederick IV of Meissen as it had become synonymous with the Saxon ducal title.

When upon German reunification the Free State of Saxony was re-established, the coat of arms was formally confirmed in 1991.

List of states ruled by the House of Ascania

 * County, Principality, and Duchy of Anhalt: c. 1100–1918
 * Duchy and Electorate of Saxony: 1112, 1139–1142, 1180–1422
 * County of Weimar-Orlamünde: 1112–1486
 * Margravate of Brandenburg: 1157–1320
 * Duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg: 1269–1689
 * Principality of Lüneburg: 1369–1388
 * Principality and Duchy of Anhalt-Bernburg: 1252–1468 and 1603–1863
 * Principality of Anhalt-Zerbst: 1252–1396 and 1544–1796
 * Principality of Anhalt-Aschersleben: 1252–1315
 * Principality and Duchy of Anhalt-Köthen: 1396–1561 and 1603–1847
 * Principality and Duchy of Anhalt-Dessau 1396–1561 and 1603–1863
 * Principality of Anhalt-Plötzkau 1544–1553 and 1603–1665
 * Principality of Anhalt-Harzgerode 1635–1709
 * Principality of Anhalt-Mühlingen: 1667–1714
 * Principality of Anhalt-Dornburg: 1667–1742
 * Lordship of Jever: 1667–1796
 * Principality of Anhalt-Bernburg-Schaumburg-Hoym: 1718–1812
 * Russian Empire: 1762–1796

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: House of Ascania


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Acceleration

In mechanics, acceleration is the rate of change of the velocity of an object with respect to time. Acceleration is one of several components of kinematics, the study of motion. Accelerations are vector quantities (in that they have magnitude and direction). The orientation of an object's acceleration is given by the orientation of the net force acting on that object. The magnitude of an object's acceleration, as described by Newton's Second Law, is the combined effect of two causes:
 * the net balance of all external forces acting onto that object — magnitude is directly proportional to this net resulting force;
 * that object's mass, depending on the materials out of which it is made — magnitude is inversely proportional to the object's mass.

The SI unit for acceleration is metre per second squared (m⋅s−2, $$\mathrm{\tfrac{m}{s^2}}$$).

For example, when a vehicle starts from a standstill (zero velocity, in an inertial frame of reference) and travels in a straight line at increasing speeds, it is accelerating in the direction of travel. If the vehicle turns, an acceleration occurs toward the new direction and changes its motion vector. The acceleration of the vehicle in its current direction of motion is called a linear (or tangential during circular motions) acceleration, the reaction to which the passengers on board experience as a force pushing them back into their seats. When changing direction, the effecting acceleration is called radial (or centripetal during circular motions) acceleration, the reaction to which the passengers experience as a centrifugal force. If the speed of the vehicle decreases, this is an acceleration in the opposite direction of the velocity vector (mathematically a negative, if the movement is unidimensional and the velocity is positive), sometimes called deceleration or retardation, and passengers experience the reaction to deceleration as an inertial force pushing them forward. Such negative accelerations are often achieved by retrorocket burning in spacecraft. Both acceleration and deceleration are treated the same, as they are both changes in velocity. Each of these accelerations (tangential, radial, deceleration) is felt by passengers until their relative (differential) velocity are neutralized in reference to the acceleration due to change in speed.

Average acceleration

An object's average acceleration over a period of time is its change in velocity, $$\Delta \mathbf{v}$$, divided by the duration of the period, $$\Delta t$$. Mathematically, $$\bar{\mathbf{a}} = \frac{\Delta \mathbf{v}}{\Delta t}.$$

Instantaneous acceleration
[[File:1-D kinematics.svg|thumb|right|From bottom to top: • an acceleration function $r$;

• the integral of the acceleration is the velocity function $v$;

• and the integral of the velocity is the distance function $a$.]] Instantaneous acceleration, meanwhile, is the limit of the average acceleration over an infinitesimal interval of time. In the terms of calculus, instantaneous acceleration is the derivative of the velocity vector with respect to time: $$\mathbf{a} = \lim_{{\Delta t} \to 0} \frac{\Delta \mathbf{v}}{\Delta t} = \frac{d\mathbf{v}}{dt}.$$ As acceleration is defined as the derivative of velocity, $Δt → 0$, with respect to time $2$ and velocity is defined as the derivative of position, $Δv/Δt$, with respect to time, acceleration can be thought of as the second derivative of $a(t)$ with respect to $−2$: $$\mathbf{a} = \frac{d\mathbf{v}}{dt} = \frac{d^2\mathbf{x}}{dt^2}.$$

(Here and elsewhere, if motion is in a straight line, vector quantities can be substituted by scalars in the equations.)

By the fundamental theorem of calculus, it can be seen that the integral of the acceleration function $v(t)$ is the velocity function $s(t)$; that is, the area under the curve of an acceleration vs. time ($−2$ vs. $m$) graph corresponds to the change of velocity.

Likewise, the integral of the jerk function $v$, the derivative of the acceleration function, can be used to find the change of acceleration at a certain time: $$\mathbf{\Delta a} = \int \mathbf{j} \, dt.$$

Units
Acceleration has the dimensions of velocity (L/T) divided by time, i.e. L T−2. The SI unit of acceleration is the metre per second squared (m s−2); or "metre per second per second", as the velocity in metres per second changes by the acceleration value, every second.

Other forms
An object moving in a circular motion—such as a satellite orbiting the Earth—is accelerating due to the change of direction of motion, although its speed may be constant. In this case it is said to be undergoing centripetal (directed towards the center) acceleration.

Proper acceleration, the acceleration of a body relative to a free-fall condition, is measured by an instrument called an accelerometer.

In classical mechanics, for a body with constant mass, the (vector) acceleration of the body's center of mass is proportional to the net force vector (i.e. sum of all forces) acting on it (Newton's second law):

where $x$ is the net force acting on the body, $t$ is the mass of the body, and $x$ is the center-of-mass acceleration. As speeds approach the speed of light, relativistic effects become increasingly large.

Tangential and centripetal acceleration

The velocity of a particle moving on a curved path as a function of time can be written as: $$\mathbf{v}(t) = v(t) \frac{\mathbf{v}(t)}{v(t)} = v(t) \mathbf{u}_\mathrm{t}(t), $$ with $a(t)$ equal to the speed of travel along the path, and $$\mathbf{u}_\mathrm{t} = \frac{\mathbf{v}(t)}{v(t)} \,, $$ a unit vector tangent to the path pointing in the direction of motion at the chosen moment in time. Taking into account both the changing speed $v(t)$ and the changing direction of $j(t)$, the acceleration of a particle moving on a curved path can be written using the chain rule of differentiation for the product of two functions of time as:

$$\begin{alignat}{3} \mathbf{a} & = \frac{d \mathbf{v}}{dt} \\ & = \frac{dv}{dt} \mathbf{u}_\mathrm{t} +v(t)\frac{d \mathbf{u}_\mathrm{t}}{dt} \\ & = \frac{dv }{dt} \mathbf{u}_\mathrm{t} + \frac{v^2}{r}\mathbf{u}_\mathrm{n}\ , \end{alignat}$$

where $F$ is the unit (inward) normal vector to the particle's trajectory (also called the principal normal), and $a$ is its instantaneous radius of curvature based upon the osculating circle at time $t$. The components
 * $$\mathbf{a}_\mathrm{t} = \frac{dv }{dt} \mathbf{u}_\mathrm{t} \quad\text{and}\quad \mathbf{a}_\mathrm{c} = \frac{v^2}{r}\mathbf{u}_\mathrm{n}$$

are called the tangential acceleration and the normal or radial acceleration (or centripetal acceleration in circular motion, see also circular motion and centripetal force), respectively.

Geometrical analysis of three-dimensional space curves, which explains tangent, (principal) normal and binormal, is described by the Frenet–Serret formulas.

Uniform acceleration
Uniform or constant acceleration is a type of motion in which the velocity of an object changes by an equal amount in every equal time period.

A frequently cited example of uniform acceleration is that of an object in free fall in a uniform gravitational field. The acceleration of a falling body in the absence of resistances to motion is dependent only on the gravitational field strength $a_{t}$ (also called acceleration due to gravity). By Newton's Second Law the force $$ \mathbf{F_g}$$ acting on a body is given by: $$ \mathbf{F_g} = m \mathbf{g}.$$

Because of the simple analytic properties of the case of constant acceleration, there are simple formulas relating the displacement, initial and time-dependent velocities, and acceleration to the time elapsed: $$\begin{align} \mathbf{s}(t) &= \mathbf{s}_0 + \mathbf{v}_0 t + \tfrac{1}{2} \mathbf{a}t^2 = \mathbf{s}_0 + \tfrac{1}{2} \left(\mathbf{v}_0 + \mathbf{v}(t)\right) t \\ \mathbf{v}(t) &= \mathbf{v}_0 + \mathbf{a} t \\ {v^2}(t) &= {v_0}^2 + 2\mathbf{a \cdot}[\mathbf{s}(t)-\mathbf{s}_0], \end{align}$$

where
 * $$t$$ is the elapsed time,
 * $$\mathbf{s}_0$$ is the initial displacement from the origin,
 * $$\mathbf{s}(t)$$ is the displacement from the origin at time $$t$$,
 * $$\mathbf{v}_0$$ is the initial velocity,
 * $$\mathbf{v}(t)$$ is the velocity at time $$t$$, and
 * $$\mathbf{a}$$ is the uniform rate of acceleration.

In particular, the motion can be resolved into two orthogonal parts, one of constant velocity and the other according to the above equations. As Galileo showed, the net result is parabolic motion, which describes, e.g., the trajectory of a projectile in vacuum near the surface of Earth.

Circular motion
In uniform circular motion, that is moving with constant speed along a circular path, a particle experiences an acceleration resulting from the change of the direction of the velocity vector, while its magnitude remains constant. The derivative of the location of a point on a curve with respect to time, i.e. its velocity, turns out to be always exactly tangential to the curve, respectively orthogonal to the radius in this point. Since in uniform motion the velocity in the tangential direction does not change, the acceleration must be in radial direction, pointing to the center of the circle. This acceleration constantly changes the direction of the velocity to be tangent in the neighboring point, thereby rotating the velocity vector along the circle.

Expressing centripetal acceleration vector in polar components, where $$\mathbf{r} $$ is a vector from the centre of the circle to the particle with magnitude equal to this distance, and considering the orientation of the acceleration towards the center, yields $$ \mathbf {a_c}= -\frac{v^2}{|\mathbf {r}|}\cdot \frac{\mathbf {r}}{|\mathbf {r}|}\,. $$
 * For a given speed $$v$$, the magnitude of this geometrically caused acceleration (centripetal acceleration) is inversely proportional to the radius $$r$$ of the circle, and increases as the square of this speed:
 * For a given angular velocity $$\omega$$, the centripetal acceleration is directly proportional to radius $$r$$. This is due to the dependence of velocity $$v$$ on the radius $$r$$. $$ v = \omega r.$$

As usual in rotations, the speed $$v$$ of a particle may be expressed as an angular speed with respect to a point at the distance $$r$$ as

Thus $$ \mathbf {a_c}= -\omega^2 \mathbf {r}\,. $$

This acceleration and the mass of the particle determine the necessary centripetal force, directed toward the centre of the circle, as the net force acting on this particle to keep it in this uniform circular motion. The so-called 'centrifugal force', appearing to act outward on the body, is a so-called pseudo force experienced in the frame of reference of the body in circular motion, due to the body's linear momentum, a vector tangent to the circle of motion.

In a nonuniform circular motion, i.e., the speed along the curved path is changing, the acceleration has a non-zero component tangential to the curve, and is not confined to the principal normal, which directs to the center of the osculating circle, that determines the radius $$r$$ for the centripetal acceleration. The tangential component is given by the angular acceleration $$\alpha$$, i.e., the rate of change $$\alpha = \dot\omega$$ of the angular speed $$\omega$$ times the radius $$r$$. That is, $$ a_t = r \alpha.$$

The sign of the tangential component of the acceleration is determined by the sign of the angular acceleration ($$\alpha$$), and the tangent is always directed at right angles to the radius vector.

Coordinate systems
In multi-dimensional Cartesian coordinate systems, acceleration is broken up into components that correspond with each dimensional axis of the coordinate system. In a two-dimensional system, where there is an x-axis and a y-axis, corresponding acceleration components are defined as $$a_x=dv_x/dt=d^2x/dt^2,$$ $$a_y=dv_y/dt=d^2y/dt^2.$$The two-dimensional acceleration vector is then defined as $$\textbf{a}=$$. The magnitude of this vector is found by the distance formula as$$|a|=\sqrt{a_x^2+a_y^2}.$$In three-dimensional systems where there is an additional z-axis, the corresponding acceleration component is defined as$$a_z=dv_z/dt=d^2z/dt^2.$$The three-dimensional acceleration vector is defined as $$\textbf{a}=$$ with its magnitude being determined by$$|a|=\sqrt{a_x^2+a_y^2+a_z^2}.$$

Special relativity
The special theory of relativity describes the behavior of objects traveling relative to other objects at speeds approaching that of light in vacuum. Newtonian mechanics is exactly revealed to be an approximation to reality, valid to great accuracy at lower speeds. As the relevant speeds increase toward the speed of light, acceleration no longer follows classical equations.

As speeds approach that of light, the acceleration produced by a given force decreases, becoming infinitesimally small as light speed is approached; an object with mass can approach this speed asymptotically, but never reach it.

General relativity
Unless the state of motion of an object is known, it is impossible to distinguish whether an observed force is due to gravity or to acceleration—gravity and inertial acceleration have identical effects. Albert Einstein called this the equivalence principle, and said that only observers who feel no force at all—including the force of gravity—are justified in concluding that they are not accelerating.

title: Acceleration


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Conservation and restoration of cultural property

The conservation and restoration of cultural property focuses on protection and care of cultural property (tangible cultural heritage), including artworks, architecture, archaeology, and museum collections. Conservation activities include preventive conservation, examination, documentation, research, treatment, and education. This field is closely allied with conservation science, curators and registrars.

Definition
Conservation of cultural property involves protection and restoration using "any methods that prove effective in keeping that property in as close to its original condition as possible for as long as possible." Conservation of cultural heritage is often associated with art collections and museums and involves collection care and management through tracking, examination, documentation, exhibition, storage, preventive conservation, and restoration.

The scope has widened from art conservation, involving protection and care of artwork and architecture, to conservation of cultural heritage, also including protection and care of a broad set of other cultural and historical works. Conservation of cultural heritage can be described as a type of ethical stewardship.

It may broadly be divided into:
 * Conservation and restoration of movable cultural property
 * Conservation and restoration of immovable cultural property

Conservation of cultural property applies simple ethical guidelines:
 * Minimal intervention;
 * Appropriate materials and reversible methods;
 * Full documentation of all work undertaken.

Often there are compromises between preserving appearance, maintaining original design and material properties, and ability to reverse changes. Reversibility is now emphasized so as to reduce problems with future treatment, investigation, and use.

In order for conservators to decide upon an appropriate conservation strategy and apply their professional expertise accordingly, they must take into account views of the stakeholder, the values, artist's intent, meaning of the work, and the physical needs of the material.

Cesare Brandi in his Theory of Restoration, describes restoration as "the methodological moment in which the work of art is appreciated in its material form and in its historical and aesthetic duality, with a view to transmitting it to the future".

Key dates
Some consider the tradition of conservation of cultural heritage in Europe to have begun in 1565 with the restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes, but more ancient examples include the work of Cassiodorus.

Brief history
The care of cultural heritage has a long history, one that was primarily aimed at fixing and mending objects for their continued use and aesthetic enjoyment. Until the early 20th century, artists were normally the ones called upon to repair damaged artworks. During the 19th century, however, the fields of science and art became increasingly intertwined as scientists such as Michael Faraday began to study the damaging effects of the environment to works of art. Louis Pasteur carried out scientific analysis on paint as well. However, perhaps the first organized attempt to apply a theoretical framework to the conservation of cultural heritage came with the founding in the United Kingdom of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877. The society was founded by William Morris and Philip Webb, both of whom were deeply influenced by the writings of John Ruskin. During the same period, a French movement with similar aims was being developed under the direction of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, an architect and theorist, famous for his restorations of medieval buildings.

Conservation of cultural heritage as a distinct field of study initially developed in Germany, where in 1888 Friedrich Rathgen became the first chemist to be employed by a Museum, the Koniglichen Museen, Berlin (Royal Museums of Berlin). He not only developed a scientific approach to the care of objects in the collections, but disseminated this approach by publishing a Handbook of Conservation in 1898. The early development of conservation of cultural heritage in any area of the world is usually linked to the creation of positions for chemists within museums. In British archaeology, key research and technical experimentation in conservation was undertaken by women such as Ione Gedye both in the field and in archaeological collections, particularly those of the Institute of Archaeology, London.

In the United Kingdom, pioneering research into painting materials and conservation, ceramics, and stone conservation was conducted by Arthur Pillans Laurie, academic chemist and Principal of Heriot-Watt University from 1900. Laurie's interests were fostered by William Holman Hunt. In 1924 the chemist Harold Plenderleith began to work at the British Museum with Alexander Scott in the recently created Research Laboratory, although he was actually employed by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in the early years. Plenderleith's appointment may be said to have given birth to the conservation profession in the UK, although there had been craftsmen in many museums and in the commercial art world for generations. This department was created by the museum to address the deteriorating condition of objects in the collection, damages which were a result of their being stored in the London Underground tunnels during the First World War. The creation of this department moved the focus for the development of conservation theory and practice from Germany to Britain, and made the latter a prime force in this fledgling field. In 1956 Plenderleith wrote a significant handbook called The Conservation of Antiquities and Works of Art, which supplanted Rathgen's earlier tome and set new standards for the development of art and conservation science.

In the United States, the development of conservation of cultural heritage can be traced to the Fogg Art Museum, and Edward Waldo Forbes, its director from 1909 to 1944. He encouraged technical investigation, and was Chairman of the Advisory Committee for the first technical journal, Technical Studies in the Field of the Fine Arts, published by the Fogg from 1932 to 1942. Importantly he also brought onto the museum staff chemists. Rutherford John Gettens was the first of such in the US to be permanently employed by an art museum. He worked with George L. Stout, the founder and first editor of Technical Studies. Gettens and Stout co-authored Painting Materials: A Short Encyclopaedia in 1942, reprinted in 1966. This compendium is still cited regularly. Only a few dates and descriptions in Gettens' and Stout's book are now outdated.

George T. Oliver, of Oliver Brothers Art Restoration and Art Conservation-Boston (Est. 1850 in New York City) invented the vacuum hot table for relining paintings in 1920s; he filed a patent for the table in 1937. Taylor's prototype table, which he designed and constructed, is still in operation. Oliver Brothers is believed to be the first and the oldest continuously operating art restoration company in the United States.

The focus of conservation development then accelerated in Britain and America, and it was in Britain that the first International Conservation Organisations developed. The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC) was incorporated under British law in 1950 as "a permanent organization to co-ordinate and improve the knowledge, methods, and working standards needed to protect and preserve precious materials of all kinds." The rapid growth of conservation professional organizations, publications, journals, newsletters, both internationally and in localities, has spearheaded the development of the conservation profession, both practically and theoretically. Art historians and theorists such as Cesare Brandi have also played a significant role in developing conservation science theory. In recent years ethical concerns have been at the forefront of developments in conservation. Most significantly has been the idea of preventive conservation. This concept is based in part on the pioneering work by Garry Thomson CBE, and his book Museum Environment, first published in 1978. Thomson was associated with the National Gallery in London; it was here that he established a set of guidelines or environmental controls for the best conditions in which objects could be stored and displayed within the museum environment. Although his exact guidelines are no longer rigidly followed, they did inspire this field of conservation.

Conservation laboratories
Conservators routinely use chemical and scientific analysis for the examination and treatment of cultural works. The modern conservation laboratory uses equipment such as microscopes, spectrometers, and various x-ray regime instruments to better understand objects and their components. The data thus collected helps in deciding the conservation treatments to be provided to the object.

Ethics
The conservator's work is guided by ethical standards. These take the form of applied ethics. Ethical standards have been established across the world, and national and international ethical guidelines have been written. One such example is:

 * American Institute for Conservation Code of Ethics and Guidelines for Practice

Conservation OnLine provides resources on ethical issues in conservation, including examples of codes of ethics and guidelines for professional conduct in conservation and allied fields; and charters and treaties pertaining to ethical issues involving the preservation of cultural property.

As well as standards of practice conservators deal with wider ethical concerns, such as the debates as to whether all art is worth preserving.

Keeping up with the international contemporary scenario, recent concerns with sustainability in conservation have emerged. The common understanding that "the care of an artifact should not come at the undue expense of the environment" is generally well accepted within the community and is already contemplated in guidelines of diverse institutions related to the field.

Preventive conservation
Many cultural works are sensitive to environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity and exposure to visible light and ultraviolet radiation. These works must be protected in controlled environments where such variables are maintained within a range of damage-limiting levels. For example, watercolour paintings usually require shielding from sunlight to prevent fading of pigments.

Collections care is an important element of museum policy. It is an essential responsibility of members of the museum profession to create and maintain a protective environment for the collections in their care, whether in store, on display, or in transit. A museum should carefully monitor the condition of collections to determine when an artifact requires conservation work and the services of a qualified conservator.

Interventive conservation and restoration
A teaching programme of interventive conservation was established in the UK at the Institute of Archaeology by Ione Gedye, which is still teaching interventive conservators today.

A principal aim of a cultural conservator is to reduce the rate of deterioration of an object. Both non-interventive and interventive methodologies may be employed in pursuit of this goal. Interventive conservation refers to any direct interaction between the conservator and the material fabric of the object. Interventive actions are carried out for a variety of reasons, including aesthetic choices, stabilization needs for structural integrity, or cultural requirements for intangible continuity. Examples of interventive treatments include the removal of discolored varnish from a painting, the application of wax to a sculpture, and the washing and rebinding of a book. Ethical standards within the field require that the conservator fully justify interventive actions and carry out documentation before, during, and after the treatment.

One of the guiding principles of conservation of cultural heritage has traditionally been the idea of reversibility, that all interventions with the object should be fully reversible and that the object should be able to be returned to the state in which it was prior to the conservator's intervention. Although this concept remains a guiding principle of the profession, it has been widely critiqued within the conservation profession and is now considered by many to be "a fuzzy concept." Another important principle of conservation is that all alterations should be well documented and should be clearly distinguishable from the original object.

An example of a highly publicized interventive conservation effort would be the conservation work conducted on the Sistine Chapel.

Sustainable conservation
Recognising that conservation practices should not harm the environment, harm people, or contribute to global warming, the conservation-restoration profession has more recently focused on practices that reduce waste, reduce energy costs, and minimise the use of toxic or harmful solvents. A number of research projects, working groups, and other initiatives have explored how conservation can become a more environmentally sustainable profession. Sustainable conservation practices apply both to work within cultural institutions (e.g. museums, art galleries, archives, libraries, research centres and historic sites) as well as to businesses and private studios.

Choice of materials
Conservators and restorers use a wide variety of materials - in conservation treatments, and those used to safely transport, display and store cultural heritage items. These materials can include solvents, papers and boards, fabrics, adhesives and consolidants, plastics and foams, wood products, and many others. Stability and longevity are two important factors conservators consider when selecting materials; sustainability is becoming an increasingly important third. Examples of sustainable material choices and practices include:

These decisions are not always straightforward - for example, installing deionised or distilled water filters in laboratories reduces waste associated with purchasing bottled products, but increases energy consumption. Similarly, locally-made papers and boards may reduce inherent carbon miles but they may be made with pulp sourced from old growth forests.
 * Using biodegradable products or those with less environmental impact where possible;
 * Using 'green solvents' instead of more toxic alternatives, or treatment strategies that use much smaller amounts of solvents - for example, semi-rigid aqueous gels, emulsions or nano materials;
 * Preparing smaller amounts of material (e.g. adhesives) to avoid waste;
 * Observing recommended disposal protocols for chemicals, recyclable materials and compostable materials, particularly to avoid contamination of waterways;
 * Choosing protective work wear that can be washed or cleaned and reused, rather than disposable options;
 * Tracking stock quantities to avoid over-buying, especially for materials with expiration dates;
 * Using durable materials for packing that may be washed and re-used, such as Tyvek or Mylar;
 * Repurposing consumables such as blotting paper, non-woven fabrics, and polyester film when they are no longer fit for their original purpose;
 * Using locally produced products whenever possible, to reduce carbon footprints;
 * Reusing packaging materials such as cardboard boxes, plastic wrap and wooden crates;
 * Using standard sizes of packaging and package designs that reduce waste;

Another dilemma is that many conservation-grade materials are chosen because they do not biodegrade. For example, when selecting a plastic with which to make storage enclosures, conservators prefer to use relatively long-lived plastics because they have better ageing properties - they are less likely to become yellow, leach plasticisers, or lose structural integrity and crumble (examples include polyethylene, polypropylene, and polyester). These plastics will also take longer to degrade in landfill.

Energy use
Many conservators and cultural organisations have sought to reduce the energy costs associated with controlling indoor storage and display environments (temperature, relative humidity, air filtration, and lighting levels) as well as those associated with the transport of cultural heritage items for exhibitions and loans.

In general, lowering the temperature reduces the rate at which damaging chemical reactions occur within materials. For example, storing cellulose acetate film at 10 °C instead of 21 °C is estimated to increase its usable life by over 100 years. Controlling the relative humidity of air helps to reduce hydrolysis reactions and minimises cracking, distortion and other physical changes in hygroscopic materials. Changes in temperature will also bring about changes in relative humidity. Therefore, the conservation profession has placed great importance on controlling indoor environments. Temperature and humidity can be controlled through passive means (e.g. insulation, building design) or active means (air conditioning). Active controls typically require much higher energy use. Energy use increases with specificity - e.g. in will require more energy to maintain a quantity of air to a narrow temperature range (20-22 °C) than to a broad range (18-25 °C). In the past, conservation recommendations have often called for very tight, inflexible temperature and relative humidity set points. In other cases, conservators have recommended strict environmental conditions for buildings that could not reasonably be expected to achieve them, due to the quality of build, local environmental conditions (e.g. recommending temperate conditions for a building located in the tropics) or the financial circumstances of the organisation. This has been an area of particular debate for cultural heritage organisations who lend and borrow cultural items to each other - often, the lender will specify strict environmental conditions as part of the loan agreement, which may be very expensive for the borrowing organisation to achieve, or impossible.

The energy costs associated with cold storage and digital storage are also gaining more attention. Cold storage is a very effective strategy to preserve at-risk collections such as cellulose nitrate and cellulose acetate film, which can deteriorate beyond use within decades at ambient conditions. Digital storage costs are rising for both born-digital cultural heritage (photographs, audiovisual, time-based media) and to store digital preservation and access copies of cultural heritage. Digital storage capacity is a major factor in the complexity of preserving digital heritage such as video games, social media, messaging services, and email.

Other areas where energy use can be reduced within conservation and restoration include:

 * Exhibition lighting - e.g. using lower-energy LED lighting systems and light sensors that switch lights on only when visitors are present;
 * Installation of green energy capture systems in cultural organisations, such as solar photovoltaic plates, wind energy systems, and heat pumps;
 * Improving the energy performance of cultural buildings by installing insulation, sealing gaps, reducing the number of windows and installing double-glazing:
 * Using microclimates to house small groups of climate-sensitive objects instead of seeking to control the environmental conditions of the whole building.

United States
Heritage Preservation, in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a U.S. federal agency, produced The Heritage Health Index. The results of this work was the report A Public Trust at Risk: The Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America's Collections, which was published in December 2005 and concluded that immediate action is needed to prevent the loss of 190 million artifacts that are in need of conservation treatment. The report made four recommendations:
 * Institutions must give priority to providing safe conditions for the collections they hold in trust.
 * Every collecting institution must develop an emergency plan to protect its collections and train staff to carry it out.
 * Every institution must assign responsibility for caring for collections to members of its staff.
 * Individuals at all levels of government and in the private sector must assume responsibility for providing the support that will allow these collections to survive.

United Kingdom
In October 2006, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, a governmental department, authored a document: "Understanding the Future: Priorities for England's Museums". This document was based on several years of consultation aimed to lay out the government's priorities for museums in the 21st century.

The document listed the following as priorities for the next decade:

 * 1) Museums will fulfil their potential as learning resources (pp 7–10).
 * 2) * Museums will be embedded into the delivery of education in every school in the country.
 * 3) * Understanding of the effectiveness of museum education will be improved further and best practice built into education programmes.
 * 4) * The value of museums' collections as a research resource will be well understood and better links built between the academic community and museums.
 * 5) Museums will embrace their role in fostering, exploring, celebrating and questioning the identities of diverse communities (pp 11–14).
 * 6) * The sector needs to work with partners in academia and beyond to create an intellectual framework supporting museums' capacity to tackle issues of identity.
 * 7) * The museum sector must continue to develop improved practical techniques for engaging communities of all sorts.
 * 8) Museums' collections will be more dynamic and better used (pp 15–18).
 * 9) * Government and the sector will find new ways to encourage museums to collect actively and strategically, especially the record of contemporary society.
 * 10) * The sector will develop new collaborative approaches to sharing and developing collections and related expertise.
 * 11) Museums' workforce will be dynamic, highly skilled and representative (pp 17–22).
 * 12) * Museums' governing bodies and workforce will be representative of the communities they serve.
 * 13) * Find more varied ways for a broader range of skills to come into museums.
 * 14) * Improve continuing professional development.
 * 15) Museums will work more closely with each other and partners outside the sector (pp 23–26).
 * 16) * A consistent evidence base of the contribution of all kinds of museums to the full range of public service agendas will be developed.
 * 17) * There will be deeper and longer lasting partnerships between the national museums and a broader range of regional partners.
 * 18) * Museums' international roles will be strengthened to improve museum programmes in this country and Britain's image, reputation and relationships abroad.

The conservation profession response to this report was on the whole less than favourable, the Institute of Conservation (ICON) published their response under the title "A Failure of Vision". It had the following to say:

"No sector can look with confidence to the future if its key asset is worked harder and harder across an ever broadening range of objectives while the inputs required to sustain it are neglected."

"It is of major concern to us that the only part of this section which makes any acknowledgement of the need for greater resourcing is the part which refers to acquisitions. The original consultation paper made quite extensive reference to the importance of collections, the role of new technologies, and cultural property issues, but this appears to have been whittled away in the present document."

Concluding: "When asked by the Commons Culture Media and Sport elect Committee CMS committee what he would like to see as a priority in the DCMS document arising from the 'Understanding the Future' consultation, Mr MacGregor responded 'I would like to see added there the need to conserve and research the collections, so that the collections can really play the role across the whole of the United Kingdom that they should.' So would we."

Further to this the ICON website summary report lists the following specific recommendations:

 * A national survey to find out what the public want from museums, what motivates them to visit them and what makes for a rewarding visit.
 * A review of survey results and prioritisation of the various intrinsic, instrumental and institutional values to provide a clear basis for a 10-year strategy
 * HR consultants to be brought in from the commercial sector to review recruitment, career development and working practices in the national and regional museums.
 * A commitment to examine the potential for using Museum Accreditation as a more effective driver for improving recruitment, diversity, and career development across the sector.
 * DCMS to take full account of the eventual findings of the current Commons Select Committee enquiry into Care of Collections in the final version of this document
 * The adoption of those recommendations of the recent House of Lords inquiry into Science and Heritage which might affect the future of museums.

In November 2008, the UK-based think tank Demos published an influential pamphlet entitled It's a material world: caring for the public realm, in which they argue for integrating the public directly into efforts to conserve material culture, particularly that which is in the public, their argument, as stated on page 16, demonstrates their belief that society can benefit from conservation as a paradigm as well as a profession:

"conservators provide a paradigm not just for fixing things when they are broken, but for a wider social ethos of care, where we individually and collectively take responsibility and action."

Training
Training in conservation of cultural heritage for many years took the form of an apprenticeship, whereby an apprentice slowly developed the necessary skills to undertake their job. For some specializations within conservation this is still the case. However, it is more common in the field of conservation today that the training required to become a practicing conservator comes from a recognized university course in conservation of cultural heritage.

The university can rarely provide all the necessary training in first hand experience that an apprenticeship can, and therefore in addition to graduate level training the profession also tends towards encouraging conservation students to spend time as an intern.

Conservation of cultural heritage is an interdisciplinary field as conservators have backgrounds in the fine arts, sciences (including chemistry, biology, and materials science), and closely related disciplines, such as art history, archaeology, and anthropology. They also have design, fabrication, artistic, and other special skills necessary for the practical application of that knowledge.

Within the various schools that teach conservation of cultural heritage, the approach differs according to the educational and vocational system within the country, and the focus of the school itself. This is acknowledged by the American Institute for Conservation who advise "Specific admission requirements differ and potential candidates are encouraged to contact the programs directly for details on prerequisites, application procedures, and program curriculum".

In France, training for heritage conservation is taught by four schools : École supérieure d'art d'Avignon, L'École supérieure des Beaux-Arts Tours, Angers, Le Mans, L'Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Institut national du patrimoine.

Associations and professional organizations
Societies devoted to the care of cultural heritage have been in existence around the world for many years. One early example is the founding in 1877 of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in Britain to protect the built heritage, this society continues to be active today. The 14th Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people work to preserve their cultural heritage with organizations including the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts and an international network of eight Tibet Houses.

The built heritage was at the forefront of the growth of member based organizations in the United States. Preservation Virginia, founded in Richmond in 1889 as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, was the United States' first statewide historic preservation group.

Today, professional conservators join and take part in the activities of numerous conservation associations and professional organizations with the wider field, and within their area of specialization. In Europe, E.C.C.O. European Confederation of Conservator-Restorers Organisations was established in 1991 by 14 European Conservator-Restorers' Organisations. Currently representing close to 6.000 professionals within 23 countries and 26 members organisations, including one international body (IADA), E.C.C.O. embodies the field of preservation of cultural heritage, both movable and immovable.

These organizations exist to "support the conservation professionals who preserve our cultural heritage".

This involves upholding professional standards, promoting research and publications, providing educational opportunities, and fostering the exchange of knowledge among cultural conservators, allied professionals, and the public.


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Anton Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Антон Павлович Чехов; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress."

Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text." The plays that Chekhov wrote were not complex, but easy to follow, and created a somewhat haunting atmosphere for the audience.

Chekhov at first wrote stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations that influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.

Childhood

Anton Chekhov was born into a Russian family on the feast day of St. Anthony the Great (17 January Old Style) 29 January 1860 in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov – on Politseyskaya (Police) street, later renamed Chekhova street – in southern Russia. He was the third of six surviving children. His father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, the son of a former serf and his wife, was from the village Olkhovatka (Voronezh Governorate) and ran a grocery store. He was a director of the parish choir, a devout Orthodox Christian, and a physically abusive father. Pavel Chekhov has been seen by some historians as the model for his son's many portraits of hypocrisy. Chekhov's paternal grandmother was Ukrainian, and according to Chekhov, the Ukrainian language was spoken in his household. Chekhov's mother, Yevgeniya (Morozova), was an excellent storyteller who entertained the children with tales of her travels all over Russia with her cloth-merchant father. "Our talents we got from our father," Chekhov remembered, "but our soul from our mother."

In adulthood, Chekhov criticised his brother Alexander's treatment of his wife and children by reminding him of Pavel's tyranny: "Let me ask you to recall that it was despotism and lying that ruined your mother's youth. Despotism and lying so mutilated our childhood that it's sickening and frightening to think about it. Remember the horror and disgust we felt in those times when Father threw a tantrum at dinner over too much salt in the soup and called Mother a fool."

Chekhov attended the Greek School in Taganrog and the Taganrog Gymnasium (since renamed the Chekhov Gymnasium), where he was held back for a year at fifteen for failing an examination in Ancient Greek. He sang at the Greek Orthodox monastery in Taganrog and in his father's choirs. In a letter of 1892, he used the word "suffering" to describe his childhood and recalled:

"When my brothers and I used to stand in the middle of the church and sing the trio 'May my prayer be exalted', or 'The Archangel's Voice', everyone looked at us with emotion and envied our parents, but we at that moment felt like little convicts."

In 1876, Chekhov's father was declared bankrupt after overextending his finances building a new house, having been cheated by a contractor named Mironov. To avoid debtor's prison he fled to Moscow, where his two eldest sons, Alexander and Nikolai, were attending university. The family lived in poverty in Moscow. Chekhov's mother was physically and emotionally broken by the experience.

Chekhov was left behind to sell the family's possessions and finish his education. He remained in Taganrog for three more years, boarding with a man by the name of Selivanov who, like Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, had bailed out the family for the price of their house. Chekhov had to pay for his own education, which he managed by private tutoring, catching and selling goldfinches, and selling short sketches to the newspapers, among other jobs. He sent every ruble he could spare to his family in Moscow, along with humorous letters to cheer them up.

During this time, he read widely and analytically, including the works of Cervantes, Turgenev, Goncharov, and Schopenhauer, and wrote a full-length comic drama, Fatherless, which his brother Alexander dismissed as "an inexcusable though innocent fabrication." Chekhov also experienced a series of love affairs, one with the wife of a teacher. In 1879, Chekhov completed his schooling and joined his family in Moscow, having gained admission to the medical school at I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University.

Early writings
Chekhov then assumed responsibility for the whole family. To support them and to pay his tuition fees, he wrote daily short, humorous sketches and vignettes of contemporary Russian life, many under pseudonyms such as "Antosha Chekhonte" (Антоша Чехонте) and "Man Without Spleen" (Человек без селезенки). His prodigious output gradually earned him a reputation as a satirical chronicler of Russian street life, and by 1882 he was writing for Oskolki (Fragments), owned by Nikolai Leykin, one of the leading publishers of the time. Chekhov's tone at this stage was harsher than that familiar from his mature fiction.

In 1884, Chekhov qualified as a physician, which he considered his principal profession though he made little money from it and treated the poor free of charge.

In 1884 and 1885, Chekhov found himself coughing blood, and in 1886 the attacks worsened, but he would not admit his tuberculosis to his family or his friends. He confessed to Leykin, "I am afraid to submit myself to be sounded by my colleagues." He continued writing for weekly periodicals, earning enough money to move the family into progressively better accommodations.

Early in 1886 he was invited to write for one of the most popular papers in St. Petersburg, Novoye Vremya (New Times), owned and edited by the millionaire magnate Alexey Suvorin, who paid a rate per line double Leykin's and allowed Chekhov three times the space. Suvorin was to become a lifelong friend, perhaps Chekhov's closest.

Before long, Chekhov was attracting literary as well as popular attention. The sixty-four-year-old Dmitry Grigorovich, a celebrated Russian writer of the day, wrote to Chekhov after reading his short story "The Huntsman" that "You have real talent, a talent that places you in the front rank among writers in the new generation." He went on to advise Chekhov to slow down, write less, and concentrate on literary quality.

Chekhov replied that the letter had struck him "like a thunderbolt" and confessed, "I have written my stories the way reporters write up their notes about fires—mechanically, half-consciously, caring nothing about either the reader or myself." The admission may have done Chekhov a disservice, since early manuscripts reveal that he often wrote with extreme care, continually revising. Grigorovich's advice nevertheless inspired a more serious, artistic ambition in the twenty-six-year-old. In 1888, with a little string-pulling by Grigorovich, the short story collection At Dusk (V Sumerkakh) won Chekhov the coveted Pushkin Prize "for the best literary production distinguished by high artistic worth."

Turning points
In 1887, exhausted from overwork and ill health, Chekhov took a trip to Ukraine, which reawakened him to the beauty of the steppe. On his return, he began the novella-length short story "The Steppe", which he called "something rather odd and much too original", and which was eventually published in Severny Vestnik (The Northern Herald). In a narrative that drifts with the thought processes of the characters, Chekhov evokes a chaise journey across the steppe through the eyes of a young boy sent to live away from home, and his companions, a priest and a merchant. "The Steppe" has been called a "dictionary of Chekhov's poetics", and it represented a significant advance for Chekhov, exhibiting much of the quality of his mature fiction and winning him publication in a literary journal rather than a newspaper.

In autumn 1887, a theatre manager named Korsh commissioned Chekhov to write a play, the result being Ivanov, written in a fortnight and produced that November. Though Chekhov found the experience "sickening" and painted a comic portrait of the chaotic production in a letter to his brother Alexander, the play was a hit and was praised, to Chekhov's bemusement, as a work of originality.

Although Chekhov did not fully realise it at the time, Chekhov's plays, such as The Seagull (written in 1895), Uncle Vanya (written in 1897), The Three Sisters (written in 1900), and The Cherry Orchard (written in 1903) served as a revolutionary backbone to what is common sense to the medium of acting to this day: an effort to recreate and express the realism of how people truly act and speak with each other. This realistic manifestation of the human condition may engender in audiences reflection upon what it means to be human.

This philosophy of approaching the art of acting has stood not only steadfast, but as the cornerstone of acting for much of the 20th century to this day. Mikhail Chekhov considered Ivanov a key moment in his brother's intellectual development and literary career. From this period comes an observation of Chekhov's that has become known as Chekhov's gun, a dramatic principle that requires that every element in a narrative be necessary and irreplaceable, and that everything else be removed.

"Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

The death of Chekhov's brother Nikolai from tuberculosis in 1889 influenced A Dreary Story, finished that September, about a man who confronts the end of a life that he realises has been without purpose. Mikhail Chekhov recorded his brother's depression and restlessness after Nikolai's death. Mikhail was researching prisons at that time as part of his law studies. Anton Chekhov, in a search for purpose in his own life, himself soon became obsessed with the issue of prison reform.

Sakhalin
In 1890, Chekhov undertook an arduous journey by train, horse-drawn carriage, and river steamer to the Russian Far East and the katorga, or penal colony, on Sakhalin Island, north of Japan. He spent three months there interviewing thousands of convicts and settlers for a census. The letters Chekhov wrote during the two-and-a-half-month journey to Sakhalin are considered to be among his best. His remarks to his sister about Tomsk were to become notorious.

"Tomsk is a very dull town. To judge from the drunkards whose acquaintance I have made, and from the intellectual people who have come to the hotel to pay their respects to me, the inhabitants are very dull, too."

Chekhov witnessed much on Sakhalin that shocked and angered him, including floggings, embezzlement of supplies, and forced prostitution of women. He wrote, "There were times I felt that I saw before me the extreme limits of man's degradation." He was particularly moved by the plight of the children living in the penal colony with their parents. For example:

"On the Amur steamer going to Sakhalin, there was a convict who had murdered his wife and wore fetters on his legs. His daughter, a little girl of six, was with him. I noticed wherever the convict moved the little girl scrambled after him, holding on to his fetters. At night the child slept with the convicts and soldiers all in a heap together."

Chekhov later concluded that charity was not the answer, but that the government had a duty to finance humane treatment of the convicts. His findings were published in 1893 and 1894 as Ostrov Sakhalin (The Island of Sakhalin), a work of social science, not literature. Chekhov found literary expression for the "Hell of Sakhalin" in his long short story "The Murder", the last section of which is set on Sakhalin, where the murderer Yakov loads coal in the night while longing for home. Chekhov's writing on Sakhalin, especially the traditions and habits of the Gilyak people, is the subject of a sustained meditation and analysis in Haruki Murakami's novel 1Q84. It is also the subject of a poem by the Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney, "Chekhov on Sakhalin" (collected in the volume Station Island). Rebecca Gould has compared Chekhov's book on Sakhalin to Katherine Mansfield's Urewera Notebook (1907). In 2013, the Wellcome Trust-funded play 'A Russian Doctor', performed by Andrew Dawson and researched by Professor Jonathan Cole, explored Chekhov's experiences on Sakhalin Island.

Melikhovo
Mikhail Chekhov, a member of the household at Melikhovo, described the extent of his brother's medical commitments:

"From the first day that Chekhov moved to Melikhovo, the sick began flocking to him from twenty miles around. They came on foot or were brought in carts, and often he was fetched to patients at a distance. Sometimes from early in the morning peasant women and children were standing before his door waiting."

Chekhov's expenditure on drugs was considerable, but the greatest cost was making journeys of several hours to visit the sick, which reduced his time for writing. However, Chekhov's work as a doctor enriched his writing by bringing him into intimate contact with all sections of Russian society: for example, he witnessed at first hand the peasants' unhealthy and cramped living conditions, which he recalled in his short story "Peasants". Chekhov visited the upper classes as well, recording in his notebook: "Aristocrats? The same ugly bodies and physical uncleanliness, the same toothless old age and disgusting death, as with market-women." In 1893/1894 he worked as a Zemstvo doctor in Zvenigorod, which has numerous sanatoriums and rest homes. A local hospital is named after him.

In 1894, Chekhov began writing his play The Seagull in a lodge he had built in the orchard at Melikhovo. In the two years since he had moved to the estate, he had refurbished the house, taken up agriculture and horticulture, tended the orchard and the pond, and planted many trees, which, according to Mikhail, he "looked after ... as though they were his children. Like Colonel Vershinin in his Three Sisters, as he looked at them he dreamed of what they would be like in three or four hundred years."

The first night of The Seagull, at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on 17 October 1896, was a fiasco, as the play was booed by the audience, stinging Chekhov into renouncing the theatre. But the play so impressed the theatre director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko that he convinced his colleague Konstantin Stanislavski to direct a new production for the innovative Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. Stanislavski's attention to psychological realism and ensemble playing coaxed the buried subtleties from the text, and restored Chekhov's interest in playwriting. The Art Theatre commissioned more plays from Chekhov and the following year staged Uncle Vanya, which Chekhov had completed in 1896. In the last decades of his life he became an atheist.

Yalta
In March 1897, Chekhov suffered a major haemorrhage of the lungs while on a visit to Moscow. With great difficulty he was persuaded to enter a clinic, where doctors diagnosed tuberculosis on the upper part of his lungs and ordered a change in his manner of life.

After his father's death in 1898, Chekhov bought a plot of land on the outskirts of Yalta and built a villa (The White Dacha), into which he moved with his mother and sister the following year. Though he planted trees and flowers, kept dogs and tame cranes, and received guests such as Leo Tolstoy and Maxim Gorky, Chekhov was always relieved to leave his "hot Siberia" for Moscow or travels abroad. He vowed to move to Taganrog as soon as a water supply was installed there. In Yalta he completed two more plays for the Art Theatre, composing with greater difficulty than in the days when he "wrote serenely, the way I eat pancakes now". He took a year each over Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.

On 25 May 1901, Chekhov married Olga Knipper quietly, owing to his horror of weddings. She was a former protégée and sometime lover of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko whom he had first met at rehearsals for The Seagull. Up to that point, Chekhov, known as "Russia's most elusive literary bachelor", had preferred passing liaisons and visits to brothels over commitment. He had once written to Suvorin:

"By all means I will be married if you wish it. But on these conditions: everything must be as it has been hitherto—that is, she must live in Moscow while I live in the country, and I will come and see her.... I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, won't appear in my sky every day."

The letter proved prophetic of Chekhov's marital arrangements with Olga: he lived largely at Yalta, she in Moscow, pursuing her acting career. In 1902, Olga suffered a miscarriage; and Donald Rayfield has offered evidence, based on the couple's letters, that conception occurred when Chekhov and Olga were apart, although other Russian scholars have rejected that claim. The literary legacy of this long-distance marriage is a correspondence that preserves gems of theatre history, including shared complaints about Stanislavski's directing methods and Chekhov's advice to Olga about performing in his plays.

In Yalta, Chekhov wrote one of his most famous stories, "The Lady with the Dog" (also translated from the Russian as "Lady with Lapdog"), which depicts what at first seems a casual liaison between a cynical married man and an unhappy married woman who meet while holidaying in Yalta. Neither expects anything lasting from the encounter. Unexpectedly though, they gradually fall deeply in love and end up risking scandal and the security of their family lives. The story masterfully captures their feelings for each other, the inner transformation undergone by the disillusioned male protagonist as a result of falling deeply in love, and their inability to resolve the matter by either letting go of their families or of each other.

Death
In May 1903, Chekhov visited Moscow; the prominent lawyer Vasily Maklakov visited him almost every day. Maklakov signed Chekhov's will. By May 1904, Chekhov was terminally ill with tuberculosis. Mikhail Chekhov recalled that "everyone who saw him secretly thought the end was not far off, but the nearer [he] was to the end, the less he seemed to realise it". On 3 June, he set off with Olga for the German spa town of Badenweiler in the Black Forest in Germany, from where he wrote outwardly jovial letters to his sister Masha, describing the food and surroundings, and assuring her and his mother that he was getting better. In his last letter, he complained about the way German women dressed. Chekhov died on 15 July 1904 at the age of 44 after a long fight with tuberculosis, the same disease that killed his brother.

Chekhov's death has become one of "the great set pieces of literary history"—retold, embroidered, and fictionalized many times since, notably in the 1987 short story "Errand" by Raymond Carver. In 1908, Olga wrote this account of her husband's last moments:

"Anton sat up unusually straight and said loudly and clearly (although he knew almost no German): Ich sterbe ('I'm dying'). The doctor calmed him, took a syringe, gave him an injection of camphor, and ordered champagne. Anton took a full glass, examined it, smiled at me and said: 'It's a long time since I drank champagne.' He drained it and lay quietly on his left side, and I just had time to run to him and lean across the bed and call to him, but he had stopped breathing and was sleeping peacefully as a child ..."

Chekhov's body was transported to Moscow in a refrigerated railway-car meant for oysters, a detail that offended Gorky. Some of the thousands of mourners followed the funeral procession of a General Keller by mistake, to the accompaniment of a military band. Chekhov was buried next to his father at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Legacy

A few months before he died, Chekhov told the writer Ivan Bunin that he thought people might go on reading his writings for seven years. "Why seven?", asked Bunin. "Well, seven and a half", Chekhov replied. "That's not bad. I've got six years to live." Chekhov's posthumous reputation greatly exceeded his expectations. The ovations for the play The Cherry Orchard in the year of his death served to demonstrate the Russian public's acclaim for the writer, which placed him second in literary celebrity only to Tolstoy, who outlived him by six years. Tolstoy was an early admirer of Chekhov's short stories and had a series that he deemed "first quality" and "second quality" bound into a book. In the first category were: Children, The Chorus Girl, A Play, Home, Misery, The Runaway, In Court, Vanka, Ladies, A Malefactor, The Boys, Darkness, Sleepy, The Helpmate, and The Darling; in the second: A Transgression, Sorrow, The Witch, Verochka, In a Strange Land, The Cook's Wedding, A Tedious Business, An Upheaval, ''Oh! The Public!, The Mask, A Woman's Luck, Nerves, The Wedding, A Defenceless Creature, and Peasant Wives.''

Chekhov's work also found praise from several of Russia's most influential radical political thinkers. If anyone doubted the gloom and miserable poverty of Russia in the 1880s, the anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin responded, "read only Chekhov's novels!" Raymond Tallis further recounts that Vladimir Lenin believed his reading of the short story Ward No. 6 "made him a revolutionary". Upon finishing the story, Lenin is said to have remarked: "I absolutely had the feeling that I was shut up in Ward 6 myself!"

In Chekhov's lifetime, British and Irish critics generally did not find his work pleasing; E. J. Dillon thought "the effect on the reader of Chekhov's tales was repulsion at the gallery of human waste represented by his fickle, spineless, drifting people" and R. E. C. Long said "Chekhov's characters were repugnant, and that Chekhov revelled in stripping the last rags of dignity from the human soul". After his death, Chekhov was reappraised. Constance Garnett's translations won him an English-language readership and the admiration of writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Katherine Mansfield, whose story "The Child Who Was Tired" is similar to Chekhov's "Sleepy". The Russian critic D. S. Mirsky, who lived in England, explained Chekhov's popularity in that country by his "unusually complete rejection of what we may call the heroic values". In Russia itself, Chekhov's drama fell out of fashion after the revolution, but it was later incorporated into the Soviet canon. The character of Lopakhin, for example, was reinvented as a hero of the new order, rising from a modest background so as eventually to possess the gentry's estates.

Despite Chekhov's reputation as a playwright, William Boyd asserts that his short stories represent the greater achievement. Raymond Carver, who wrote the short story "Errand" about Chekhov's death, believed that Chekhov was the greatest of all short story writers:

"Chekhov's stories are as wonderful (and necessary) now as when they first appeared. It is not only the immense number of stories he wrote—for few, if any, writers have ever done more—it is the awesome frequency with which he produced masterpieces, stories that shrive us as well as delight and move us, that lay bare our emotions in ways only true art can accomplish."

According to literary critic Daniel S. Burt, Chekhov was one of the greatest and most influential writers of all time.

Style
One of the first non-Russians to praise Chekhov's plays was George Bernard Shaw, who subtitled his Heartbreak House "A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes", and pointed out similarities between the predicament of the British landed class and that of their Russian counterparts as depicted by Chekhov: "the same nice people, the same utter futility".

Ernest Hemingway, another writer influenced by Chekhov, was more grudging: "Chekhov wrote about six good stories. But he was an amateur writer." And Vladimir Nabokov criticised Chekhov's "medley of dreadful prosaisms, ready-made epithets, repetitions". But he also declared "yet it is his works which I would take on a trip to another planet" and called "The Lady with the Dog" "one of the greatest stories ever written" in its depiction of a problematic relationship, and described Chekhov as writing "the way one person relates to another the most important things in his life, slowly and yet without a break, in a slightly subdued voice".

For the writer William Boyd, Chekhov's historical accomplishment was to abandon what William Gerhardie called the "event plot" for something more "blurred, interrupted, mauled or otherwise tampered with by life".

Virginia Woolf mused on the unique quality of a Chekhov story in The Common Reader (1925):

"But is it the end, we ask? We have rather the feeling that we have overrun our signals; or it is as if a tune had stopped short without the expected chords to close it. These stories are inconclusive, we say, and proceed to frame a criticism based upon the assumption that stories ought to conclude in a way that we recognise. In so doing we raise the question of our own fitness as readers. Where the tune is familiar and the end emphatic—lovers united, villains discomfited, intrigues exposed—as it is in most Victorian fiction, we can scarcely go wrong, but where the tune is unfamiliar and the end a note of interrogation or merely the information that they went on talking, as it is in Tchekov, we need a very daring and alert sense of literature to make us hear the tune, and in particular those last notes which complete the harmony."

Michael Goldman has said of the elusive quality of Chekhov's comedies: "Having learned that Chekhov is comic ... Chekhov is comic in a very special, paradoxical way. His plays depend, as comedy does, on the vitality of the actors to make pleasurable what would otherwise be painfully awkward—inappropriate speeches, missed connections, faux pas, stumbles, childishness—but as part of a deeper pathos; the stumbles are not pratfalls but an energized, graceful dissolution of purpose."

Influence on dramatic arts
In the United States, Chekhov's reputation began its rise slightly later, partly through the influence of Stanislavski's system of acting, with its notion of subtext: "Chekhov often expressed his thought not in speeches", wrote Stanislavski, "but in pauses or between the lines or in replies consisting of a single word ... the characters often feel and think things not expressed in the lines they speak." The Group Theatre, in particular, developed the subtextual approach to drama, influencing generations of American playwrights, screenwriters, and actors, including Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan and, in particular, Lee Strasberg. In turn, Strasberg's Actors Studio and the "Method" acting approach influenced many actors, including Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, though by then the Chekhov tradition may have been distorted by a preoccupation with realism. In 1981, the playwright Tennessee Williams adapted The Seagull as The Notebook of Trigorin. One of Anton's nephews, Michael Chekhov, would also contribute heavily to modern theatre, particularly through his unique acting methods which developed Stanislavski's ideas further.

Alan Twigg, the chief editor and publisher of the Canadian book review magazine B.C. BookWorld wrote:

"One can argue Anton Chekhov is the second-most popular writer on the planet. Only Shakespeare outranks Chekhov in terms of movie adaptations of their work, according to the movie database IMDb. ... We generally know less about Chekhov than we know about mysterious Shakespeare."

Chekhov has also influenced the work of Japanese playwrights including Shimizu Kunio, Yōji Sakate, and Ai Nagai. Critics have noted similarities in how Chekhov and Shimizu use a mixture of light humour as well as an intense depictions of longing. Sakate adapted several of Chekhov's plays and transformed them in the general style of nō. Nagai also adapted Chekhov's plays, including Three Sisters, and transformed his dramatic style into Nagai's style of satirical realism while emphasising the social issues depicted in the play.

Chekhov's works have been adapted for the screen, including Sidney Lumet's Sea Gull and Louis Malle's Vanya on 42nd Street. Laurence Olivier's final effort as a film director was a 1970 adaptation of Three Sisters in which he also played a supporting role. His work has also served as inspiration or been referenced in numerous films. In Andrei Tarkovsky's 1975 film The Mirror, characters discuss his short story "Ward No. 6". Woody Allen has been influenced by Chekhov and references to his works are present in many of his films including Love and Death (1975), Interiors (1978) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). Plays by Chekhov are also referenced in François Truffaut's 1980 drama film The Last Metro, which is set in a theatre. The Cherry Orchard has a role in the comedy film Henry's Crime (2011). A portion of a stage production of Three Sisters appears in the 2014 drama film Still Alice. The 2022 Foreign Language Oscar winner, Drive My Car, is centered on a production of Uncle Vanya. Several of Chekhov's short stories were adapted as episodes of the 1986 Indian anthology television series Katha Sagar. Another Indian television series titled Chekhov Ki Duniya aired on DD National in the 1990s, adapting different works of Chekhov.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Palme d'Or winner Winter Sleep was adapted from the short story "The Wife" by Anton Chekhov.

title: Anton Chekhov


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Action Against Hunger

Action Against Hunger (Action Contre La Faim - ACF) is a global humanitarian organization which originated in France and is committed to ending world hunger. The organization helps malnourished children and provides communities with access to safe water and sustainable solutions to hunger.

Pakistan's situation has significant ramifications for food security, particularly with the ongoing high levels of inflation. The added impact of climate change intensifies security concerns, leaving an increasing number of individuals without viable means to provide food and shelter for themselves and their families.

In 2022, Action Against Hunger worked in 56 countries around the world with more than 8,990 employees helping 28 million people in need.

Action Against Hunger was established in 1979 by a group of French doctors, scientists, and writers. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Alfred Kastler served as the organization's first chairman. Currently, Mumbai-based businessman and philanthropist Ashwini Kakkar serves as International President of Action Against Hunger network.

The group initially provided assistance to Afghan refugees in Pakistan, famine-stricken Ugandan communities, and Cambodian refugees in Thailand. It expanded to address additional humanitarian concerns in Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the Balkans, and elsewhere during the 1980s and 1990s. Action Against Hunger's Scientific Committee pioneered the therapeutic milk formula (F100), now used by all major humanitarian aid organizations to treat acute malnutrition. Early results showed that treatment with F100 has the capacity to reduce the mortality rate of severely malnourished children to below 5%, with a median hospital fatality rate quoted of 23.5% A few years later, the therapeutic milk was repackaged as ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTFs), a peanut-based paste packaged like a power bar. These bars allow for the treatment of malnutrition at home and do not require any preparation or refrigeration.

The international network currently has headquarters in eight countries – France, Germany, Spain, the United States, Canada, Italy, India, and the UK. Its four main areas of work include nutrition, food security, water and sanitation, and advocacy.

The integrated approaches with various sectors of intervention are:
 * Nutrition and Health
 * Water, Sanitation and Hygiene
 * Food Security & Livelihoods
 * Emergency Response

In 2022, Action Against Hunger USA is leading a USAID-funded project to address health and nutrition challenges associated with policy, advocacy, financing, and governance in communities around the world, and will work in partnership with leading organizations such as Pathfinder International, Amref Health Africa, Global Communities, Humanity & Inclusion, Kupenda for the Children, and Results for Development.

Restaurants against hunger
Action Against Hunger partners with leaders from the food and beverage industry to bring attention to global hunger. Each year, several campaigns are run by the network to raise funds and support the organisation's programs : Restaurants Against Hunger and Love Food Give Food.

Countries of intervention
In 2022, Action Against Hunger International Network is present in 56 countries:

Africa
Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Chad, Zimbabwe, Zambia

Asia
Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, South Caucasus

Caribbean
Haïti

Europe
Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Poland

Middle East
Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestinian Occupied Territories, Yemen, Jordan, Iraq

Latin America
Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Honduras

Action Against Hunger international network
Since 1995 Action Against Hunger developed an international network to have a bigger global impact.

The Network has headquarters around the world: France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, India, and Italy.

Action Against Hunger has also a West Africa Regional Office (WARO) located in Dakar, a Horn and Eastern Africa Regional Office in Nairobi, and five logistic platforms (Lyon, Paris, Barcelona, Dubai, Panama).

This network increases the human and financial capacities and enables specialisation per headquarter.
 * Action Against Hunger in France, Spain and the USA are the operational headquarters. They manage the interventions directly on the field. In order to maximize efficiency and coherence, these three operational headquarters work under the principle of one headquarter per country of intervention.
 * Action Against Hunger UK focuses on research, monitoring and evaluation, notably with Hunger Watch. The UK headquarters also plays an intermediary role with DFID.
 * Action Against Hunger Canada raises public and private funds in North America and plays an increasing role on the national level.
 * Action Against Hunger / Azione contro la Fame Italia raises private funds and promotes important campaigns in order to sensitize the Italian public opinion on hunger and malnutrition.

title: Action Against Hunger


text:
Talk:Audio signal processing

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 January 2020 and 14 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Wintersfire.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:59, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

'Audio'
Audio signal processing is not quite the same thing as just 'audio' (see for example Vinyl record), but the old page of Audio described it like it was exactly the same thing Audio signal processing. If you have some real content for Audio, please remove the redirect and do a new page :) --Tbackstr

 * Actually, I think 'audio' is an adjective and shouldn't be used without a substantive, like 'audio equipment'. In that case, audio really shouldn't have a separate page. --Tbackstr

x — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.19.70.83 (talk) 07:10, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

nice one
i'd just like to say, what a great page. s'all. rog

Applications
Under the Applications tab, it is mentioned as "Processing methods and application areas include storage, level compression, data compression, transmission, enhancement (e.g., equalization, filtering, noise cancellation, echo or reverb removal or addition, etc.)" One important field of voice to Text conversions and other such related fields has been missed here. shouldn't we add them ???

Ap aravind (talk) 06:19, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

 * This is, of course, already comprehensively covered in Speech recognition. Since there's no audio signal output, this is more closely related to Audio analysis. I have added a See also link there. ~Kvng (talk) 15:59, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Extraneous and erroneous material
The entire "History" section is unnecessary and misleading. All it does is explain what an audio signal is, in a simplistic and incorrect way at that, before tagging a random sentence about how the entire concept was important in early radio broadcasting. I propose its deletion; the single relevant sentence can be moved to the introduction paragraph if it is considered useful.

Further, the section on analog signals is mismatched with that for digital signals. An article already exists for both analog signal processing and analog signals themselves: why is this not linked? The syntactical structure of the description is also very confusing and disjointed, e.g. "is usually a continuous, non-discrete, electrical." An electrical what?

I note that in both of these sections an editor has also placed a link to their userpage as some form of signature. This will be removed immediately. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.72.148.123 (talk) 04:11, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

 * This critique is not particularly specific and likely now pertains to content that is no longer in the article. ~Kvng (talk) 16:02, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

India Education Program course assignment
This article was the subject of an educational assignment supported by Wikipedia Ambassadors through the India Education Program.

The above message was substituted from by PrimeBOT (talk) on 19:50, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Audio signal processing