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Arbor Day

Arbor Day (or Arbour Day in some countries) is a secular day of observance in which individuals and groups are encouraged to plant trees. Today, many countries observe such a holiday. Though usually observed in the spring, the date varies, depending on climate and suitable planting season.

First Arbor Day
The Spanish village of Mondoñedo held the first documented arbor plantation festival in the world organized by its mayor in 1594. The place remains as Alameda de los Remedios and it is still planted with lime and horse-chestnut trees. A humble granite marker and a bronze plate recall the event. Additionally, the small Spanish village of Villanueva de la Sierra held the first modern Arbor Day, an initiative launched in 1805 by the local priest with the enthusiastic support of the entire population.

"While Napoleon was ravaging Europe with his ambition in this village in the Sierra de Gata lived a priest, don Juan Abern Samtrés, which, according to the chronicles, 'convinced of the importance of trees for health, hygiene, decoration, nature, environment and customs, decides to plant trees and give a festive air. The festival began on Carnival Tuesday with the ringing of two bells of the church, and the Middle and the Big. After the Mass, and even coated with church ornaments, don Juan, accompanied by clergies, teachers and a large number of neighbours, planted the first tree, a poplar, in the place known as Valley of the Ejido. Tree plantations continued by Arroyada and Fuente de la Mora. Afterwards, there was a feast, and did not miss the dance. The party and plantations lasted three days. He drafted a manifesto in defence of the trees that was sent to surrounding towns to spread the love and respect for nature, and also he advised to make tree plantations in their localities."

First American Arbor Day
The first American Arbor Day was originated by J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska City, Nebraska, at an annual meeting of the Nebraska State board of agriculture held in Lincoln. On April 10, 1872, an estimated one million trees were planted in Nebraska.

In 1883, the American Forestry Association made Birdsey Northrop of Connecticut the chairman of the committee to campaign for Arbor Day nationwide; Northrop further globalized the idea when he visited Japan in 1895 and delivered his Arbor Day and Village Improvement message. He also brought his enthusiasm for Arbor Day to Australia, Canada, and other countries in Europe.

McCreight and Theodore Roosevelt
Beginning in 1906, Pennsylvania conservationist Major Israel McCreight of DuBois, Pennsylvania, argued that President Theodore Roosevelt's conservation speeches were limited to businessmen in the lumber industry and recommended a campaign of youth education and a national policy on conservation education. McCreight urged Roosevelt to make a public statement to school children about trees and the destruction of American forests. Conservationist Gifford Pinchot, Chief of the United States Forest Service, embraced McCreight's recommendations and asked the President to speak to the public school children of the United States about conservation. On April 15, 1907, Roosevelt issued an "Arbor Day Proclamation to the School Children of the United States" about the importance of trees and that forestry deserves to be taught in U.S. schools. Pinchot wrote McCreight, "we shall all be indebted to you for having made the suggestion."

Australia
Arbour Day has been observed in Australia since 20 June 1889. National Schools Tree Day is held on the last Friday of July for schools and National Tree Day the last Sunday in July throughout Australia. Many states have Arbour Day, although Victoria has an Arbour Week, which was suggested by Premier Rupert (Dick) Hamer in the 1980s.

Belgium
International Day of Treeplanting is celebrated in Flanders on or around 21 March as a theme-day/educational-day/observance, not as a public holiday. Tree planting is sometimes combined with awareness campaigns of the fight against cancer: Kom Op Tegen Kanker.

Brazil
The Arbor Day (Dia da Árvore) is celebrated on September 21. It is not a national holiday. However, schools nationwide celebrate this day with environment-related activities, namely tree planting.

British Virgin Islands
Arbour Day is celebrated on November 22. It is sponsored by the National Parks Trust of the Virgin Islands. Activities include an annual national Arbour Day Poetry Competition and tree planting ceremonies throughout the territory.

Cambodia
Cambodia celebrates Arbor Day on July 9 with a tree planting ceremony attended by the king.

Canada
The day was founded by Sir George William Ross, later the premier of Ontario, when he was minister of education in Ontario (1883–1899). According to the Ontario Teachers' Manuals "History of Education" (1915), Ross established both Arbour Day and Empire Day—"the former to give the school children an interest in making and keeping the school grounds attractive, and the latter to inspire the children with a spirit of patriotism" (p. 222). This predates the claimed founding of the day by Don Clark of Schomberg, Ontario for his wife Margret Clark in 1906. In Canada, National Forest Week is the last full week of September, and National Tree Day (Maple Leaf Day) falls on the Wednesday of that week. Ontario celebrates Arbour Week from the last Friday in April to the first Sunday in May. Prince Edward Island celebrates Arbour Day on the third Friday in May during Arbour Week. Arbour Day is the longest running civic greening project in Calgary and is celebrated on the first Thursday in May. On this day, each grade 1 student in Calgary's schools receives a tree seedling to be taken home to be planted on private property.

Central African Republic
National Tree Planting Day is on July 22.

Chile
"Dia del Arbol" was celebrated on June 28, 2022, as defined by Chile's Environment Ministry

Republic of China (Taiwan)
Arbor Day (植樹節) was founded by the forester Ling Daoyang in 1915 and has been a traditional holiday in the Republic of China since 1916. The Beiyang government's Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce first commemorated Arbor Day in 1915 at the suggestion of forester Ling Daoyang. In 1916, the government announced that all provinces of the Republic of China would celebrate the on the same day as the Qingming Festival, April 5, despite the differences in climate across China, which is on the first day of the fifth solar term of the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar. From 1929, by decree of the Nationalist government, Arbor Day was Arbor Day (March 12), to commemorate the death of Sun Yat-sen, who had been a major advocate of afforestation in his life. Following the retreat of the government of the Republic of China to Taiwan in 1949, the celebration of Arbor Day on March 12 was retained.

People's Republic of China
In People's Republic of China, during the fourth session of the Fifth National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China in 1979 adopted the Resolution on the Unfolding of a Nationwide Voluntary Tree-planting Campaign. This resolution established the Arbor Day (植树节), also March 12, and stipulated that every able-bodied citizen between the ages of 11 and 60 should plant three to five trees per year or do the equivalent amount of work in seedling, cultivation, tree tending, or other services. Supporting documentation instructs all units to report population statistics to the local afforestation committees for workload allocation. Many couples choose to marry the day before the annual celebration, and they plant the tree to mark beginning of their life together and the new life of the tree.

Republic of Congo
National Tree Planting Day is on November 6.

Costa Rica
"Día del Árbol" is on June 15.

Cuba
"Dia del Árbol" (Day of the Tree) was first observed on October 10, 1904, and today is officially observed on June 21 of each year.

Czech Republic
Arbor Day in the Czech Republic is celebrated on October 20.

Egypt
Arbor Day is on January 15.

Germany
Arbor Day ("Tag des Baumes") is on April 25. Its first celebration was in 1952.

India
Van Mahotsav is an annual pan-Indian tree planting festival, occupying a week in the month of July. During this event millions of trees are planted. It was initiated in 1950 by K. M. Munshi, the then Union Minister for Agriculture and Food, to create an enthusiasm in the mind of the populace for the conservation of forests and planting of trees.

The name Van Mahotsava (the festival of trees) originated in July 1947 after a successful tree-planting drive was undertaken in Delhi, in which national leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr Rajendra Prasad and Abul Kalam Azad participated. Paryawaran Sachetak Samiti, a leading environmental organization conducts mass events and activities on this special day celebration each year. The week was simultaneously celebrated in a number of states in the country.

Iran

In Iran, it is known as "National Tree Planting Day". By the Solar Hijri calendar, it is on the fifteenth day of the month Esfand, which usually corresponds with March 5. This day is the first day of the "Natural Recyclable Resources Week" (March 5 to 12).

This is the time when the saplings of the all kinds in terms of different climates of different parts of Iran are shared among the people. They are also taught how to plant trees.

Israel
The Jewish holiday Tu Bishvat, the new year for trees, is on the 15th day of the month of Shvat, which usually falls in January or February. Originally based on the date used to calculate the age of fruit trees for tithing as mandated in Leviticus 19:23–25, the holiday now is most often observed by planting trees or raising money to plant trees, and by eating fruit, specifically grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates. Tu Bishvat is a semi-official holiday in Israel; schools are open but Hebrew-speaking schools often go on tree-planting excursions.

Japan
Japan celebrates a similarly themed Greenery Day, held on May 4.

Kenya
Historically, Kenya celebrated National Tree Planting Day on April 21. Often people plant palm trees and coconut trees along the Indian Ocean that borders the east coast of Kenya. They plant trees to remember Prof. Wangari Maathai, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for planting of trees and caring for them all over Kenya.

With the Kenyan government launching a campaign to plant 15 billion trees by 2032, they launched National Tree Growing Day with very aggressive targets for the number of trees to be planted. The first national public holiday was November 13, 2023. The second was May 10, 2024, with a goal to plant one billion trees in a single day.

Korea
North Korea marks "Tree Planting Day" on March 2, when people across the country plant trees. This day is considered to combine traditional Asian cultural values with the country's dominant Communist ideology.

In South Korea, April 5, Singmogil or Sikmogil (식목일), the Arbor Day, was a public holiday until 2005. Even though Singmogil is no longer an official holiday, the day is still celebrated, with the South Korean public continuing to take part in tree-planting activities.

Lesotho
National Tree Planting Day is usually on March 21 depending on the lunar cycle.

Luxembourg
National Tree Planting Day is on the second Saturday in November.

Malawi
National Tree Planting Day is on the 2nd Monday of December.

Mexico
The Día del Árbol was established in Mexico in 1959 with President Adolfo López Mateos issuing a decree that it should be observed on the 2nd Thursday of July.

Mongolia
National Tree Planting Day is on the 2nd Saturday of May and October. The first National Tree Planting Day was celebrated May 8, 2010.

Namibia
Namibia's first Arbor Day was celebrated on October 8, 2004. It takes place annually on the second Friday of October.

Netherlands
Since conference and of the Food and Agriculture Organization's publication World Festival of Trees, and a resolution of the United Nations in 1954: "The Conference, recognising the need of arousing mass consciousness of the aesthetic, physical and economic value of trees, recommends a World Festival of Trees to be celebrated annually in each member country on a date suited to local conditions"; it has been adopted by the Netherlands. In 1957, the National Committee Day of Planting Trees/Foundation of National Festival of Trees (Nationale Boomplantdag/Nationale Boomfeestdag) was created.

On the third Wednesday in March each year (near the spring equinox), three quarters of Dutch schoolchildren aged 10/11 and Dutch celebrities plant trees. Stichting Nationale Boomfeestdag organizes all the activities in the Netherlands for this day. Some municipalities however plant the trees around 21 September because of the planting season.

In 2007, the 50th anniversary was celebrated with special golden jubilee activities.

New Zealand
New Zealand's first Arbor Day planting was on 3 July 1890 at Greytown, in the Wairarapa. The first official celebration was scheduled to take place in Wellington in August 2012, with the planting of pōhutukawa and Norfolk pines along Thorndon Esplanade.

Prominent New Zealand botanist Dr Leonard Cockayne worked extensively on native plants throughout New Zealand and wrote many notable botanical texts. As early as the 1920s he held a vision for school students of New Zealand to be involved in planting native trees and plants in their school grounds. This vision bore fruit and schools in New Zealand have long planted native trees on Arbor Day.

Since 1977, New Zealand has celebrated Arbor Day on 5 June, which is also World Environment Day. Prior to then, Arbor Day was celebrated on 4 August, which is rather late in the year for tree planting in New Zealand, hence the date change.

Many of the Department of Conservation's Arbor Day activities focus on ecological restoration projects using native plants to restore habitats that have been damaged or destroyed by humans or invasive pests and weeds. There are great restoration projects underway around New Zealand and many organisations including community groups, landowners, conservation organisations, iwi, volunteers, schools, local businesses, nurseries and councils are involved in them. These projects are part of a vision to protect and restore the indigenous biodiversity.

Niger
Since 1975, Niger has celebrated Arbor Day as part of its Independence Day: 3 August. On this day, aiding the fight against desertification, each Nigerien plants a tree.

North Macedonia
Having in mind the bad condition of the forest fund, and in particular the catastrophic wildfires which occurred in the summer of 2007, a citizens' initiative for afforestation was started in North Macedonia. The campaign by the name 'Tree Day-Plant Your Future' was first organized on 12 March 2008, when an official non-working day was declared and more than 150,000 Macedonians planted 2 million trees in one day (symbolically, one for each citizen). Six million more were planted in November the same year, and another 12,5 million trees in 2009. This has been established as a tradition and takes place every year.

Pakistan
National tree plantation day of Pakistan (قومی شجر کاری دن) is celebrated on 18 August.

Philippines
Since 1947, Arbor Day in the Philippines has been institutionalized to be observed throughout the nation by planting trees and ornamental plants and other forms of relevant activities. Its practice was instituted through Proclamation No. 30. It was subsequently revised by Proclamation No. 41, issued in the same year. In 1955, the commemoration was extended from a day to a week and moved to the last full week of July. Over two decades later, its commemoration was moved to the second week of June. In 2003, the commemorations were reduced from a week to a day and was moved to June 25 per Proclamation No. 396. The same proclamation directed "the active participation of all government agencies, including government-owned and controlled corporations, private sector, schools, civil society groups and the citizenry in tree planting activity". It was subsequently revised by Proclamation 643 in the succeeding year.

In 2012, Republic Act 10176 was passed, which revived tree planting events "as [a] yearly event for local government units" and mandated the planting of at least one tree per year for able-bodied Filipino citizens aged 12 years old and above. Since 2012, many local arbor day celebrations have been commemorated, as in the cases of Natividad and Tayug in Pangasinan and Santa Rita in Pampanga.

Poland
In Poland, Arbor Day has been celebrated since 2002. Each October 10, many Polish people plant trees as well as participate in events organized by ecological foundations. Moreover, Polish Forest Inspectorates and schools give special lectures and lead ecological awareness campaigns.

Portugal
Arbor Day is celebrated on March 21. It is not a national holiday but instead schools nationwide celebrate this day with environment-related activities, namely tree planting.

Russia
All-Russian day of forest plantation was celebrated for the first time on 14 May 2011. Now it is held in April–May (it depends on the weather in different regions).

Samoa
Arbor Day in Samoa is celebrated on the first Friday in November.

Saudi Arabia
Arbor Day in Saudi Arabia is celebrated on April 29.

Singapore
In 1971 a 'Tree Planting Day' was established which in 1990 was replaced by 'Clean and Green Week'.

South Africa
Arbor Day was celebrated from 1945 until 2000 in South Africa. After that, the national government extended it to National Arbor Week, which lasts annually from 1–7 September. Two trees, one common and one rare, are highlighted to increase public awareness of indigenous trees, while various "greening" activities are undertaken by schools, businesses and other organizations. For example, the social enterprise Greenpop, which focusses on sustainable urban greening, forest restoration and environmental awareness in Sub-Saharan Africa, leverages Arbor Day each year to call for tree planting action. During Arbor Month 2019, responding to recent studies that underscore the importance of tree restoration, they launched their new goal of planting 500,000 by 2025.

Spain
In 1896 Mariano Belmás Estrada promoted the first "Festival of Trees" in Madrid. In Spain there was an International Forest Day on 21 March, but a decree in 1915 also brought in an Arbor Day throughout Spain. Each municipality or collective decides the date for its Arbor Day, usually between February and May. In Villanueva de la Sierra (Extremadura), where the first Arbor Day in the world was held in 1805, it is celebrated, as on that occasion, on Tuesday Carnaval. It is a great day in the local festive calendar.

As an example of commitment to nature, the small town of Pescueza, with only 180 inhabitants, organizes every spring a large plantation of holm oaks, which is called the "Festivalino", promoted by city council, several foundations, and citizen participation.

Sri Lanka
National Tree Planting Day is on November 15.

Tanzania
National Tree Planting Day is on April 1.

Turkey
National Tree Planting Day is on November 11.

Uganda
National Tree Planting Day is on March 24.

United Kingdom
First mounted in 1975, National Tree Week is a celebration of the start of the winter tree planting season, usually at the end of November. Around a million trees are planted each year by schools, community organizations and local authorities.

On 6 February 2020, Myerscough College in Lancashire, England, supported by the Arbor Day Foundation, celebrated the UK's first Arbor Day.

United States
Arbor Day was founded in 1872 by J. Sterling Morton in Nebraska City, Nebraska. By the 1920s, each state in the United States had passed public laws that stipulated a certain day to be Arbor Day or Arbor and Bird Day observance.

National Arbor Day is celebrated every year on the last Friday in April; it is a civic holiday in Nebraska. Other states have selected their own dates for Arbor Day.

The customary observance is to plant a tree. On the first Arbor Day, April 10, 1872, an estimated one million trees were planted.

Venezuela
Venezuela recognizes Día del Arbol (Day of the Tree) on the last Sunday of May.

title: Arbor Day


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A. J. Ayer

Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer (29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989) was an English philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956).

Ayer was educated at Eton College and the University of Oxford, after which he studied the philosophy of logical positivism at the University of Vienna. From 1933 to 1940 he lectured on philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford.

During the Second World War Ayer was a Special Operations Executive and MI6 agent.

Ayer was Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London from 1946 until 1959, after which he returned to Oxford to become Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1951 to 1952 and knighted in 1970. He was known for his advocacy of humanism, and was the second president of the British Humanist Association (now known as Humanists UK).

Ayer was president of the Homosexual Law Reform Society for a time; he remarked, "as a notorious heterosexual I could never be accused of feathering my own nest."

Life
Ayer was born in St John's Wood, in north west London, to Jules Louis Cyprien Ayer and Reine (née Citroen), wealthy parents from continental Europe. His mother was from the Dutch-Jewish family that founded the Citroën car company in France; his father was a Swiss Calvinist financier who worked for the Rothschild family, including for their bank and as secretary to Alfred Rothschild.

Ayer was educated at Ascham St Vincent's School, a former boarding preparatory school for boys in the seaside town of Eastbourne in Sussex, where he started boarding at the relatively early age of seven for reasons to do with the First World War, and at Eton College, where he was a King's Scholar. At Eton Ayer first became known for his characteristic bravado and precocity. Though primarily interested in his intellectual pursuits, he was very keen on sports, particularly rugby, and reputedly played the Eton Wall Game very well. In the final examinations at Eton, Ayer came second in his year, and first in classics. In his final year, as a member of Eton's senior council, he unsuccessfully campaigned for the abolition of corporal punishment at the school. He won a classics scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford. He graduated with a BA with first-class honours.

After graduating from Oxford, Ayer spent a year in Vienna, returned to England and published his first book, Language, Truth and Logic, in 1936. The first exposition in English of logical positivism as newly developed by the Vienna Circle, this made Ayer at age 26 the enfant terrible of British philosophy. As a newly famous intellectual, he played a prominent role in the Oxford by-election campaign of 1938. Ayer campaigned first for the Labour candidate Patrick Gordon Walker, and then for the joint Labour-Liberal "Independent Progressive" candidate Sandie Lindsay, who ran on an anti-appeasement platform against the Conservative candidate, Quintin Hogg, who ran as the appeasement candidate. The by-election, held on 27 October 1938, was quite close, with Hogg winning narrowly.

In the Second World War, Ayer served as an officer in the Welsh Guards, chiefly in intelligence (Special Operations Executive (SOE) and MI6 ). He was commissioned second lieutenant into the Welsh Guards from Officer Cadet Training Unit on 21 September 1940.

After the war, Ayer briefly returned to the University of Oxford where he became a fellow and Dean of Wadham College. He then taught philosophy at University College London from 1946 until 1959, when he also started to appear on radio and television. He was an extrovert and social mixer who liked dancing and attending clubs in London and New York. He was also obsessed with sport: he had played rugby for Eton, and was a noted cricketer and a keen supporter of Tottenham Hotspur football team, where he was for many years a season ticket holder. For an academic, Ayer was an unusually well-connected figure in his time, with close links to 'high society' and the establishment. Presiding over Oxford high-tables, he is often described as charming, but could also be intimidating.

Ayer was married four times to three women. His first marriage was from 1932 to 1941, to (Grace Isabel) Renée, with whom he had a son—allegedly the son of Ayer's friend and colleague Stuart Hampshire —and a daughter. Renée subsequently married Hampshire. In 1960, Ayer married Alberta Constance (Dee) Wells, with whom he had one son. That marriage was dissolved in 1983, and the same year, Ayer married Vanessa Salmon, the former wife of politician Nigel Lawson. She died in 1985, and in 1989 Ayer remarried Wells, who survived him. He also had a daughter with Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham Westbrook. In 1950, Ayer attended the founding meeting of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in West Berlin, though he later said he went only because of the offer of a "free trip". He gave a speech on why John Stuart Mill's conceptions of liberty and freedom were still valid in the 20th century. Together with the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, Ayer fought against Arthur Koestler and Franz Borkenau, arguing that they were far too dogmatic and extreme in their anti-communism, in fact proposing illiberal measures in the defense of liberty. Adding to the tension was the location in West Berlin, together with the fact that the Korean War began on 25 June 1950, the fourth day of the congress, giving a feeling that the world was on the brink of war.

From 1959 to his retirement in 1978, Ayer held the Wykeham Chair, Professor of Logic at Oxford. He was knighted in 1970. After his retirement, Ayer taught or lectured several times in the United States, including as a visiting professor at Bard College in 1987. At a party that same year held by fashion designer Fernando Sanchez, Ayer confronted Mike Tyson, who was forcing himself upon the then little-known model Naomi Campbell. When Ayer demanded that Tyson stop, Tyson reportedly asked, "Do you know who the fuck I am? I'm the heavyweight champion of the world", to which Ayer replied, "And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both preeminent in our field. I suggest that we talk about this like rational men". Ayer and Tyson then began to talk, allowing Campbell to slip out. Ayer was also involved in politics, including anti-Vietnam War activism, supporting the Labour Party (and later the Social Democratic Party), chairing the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination in Sport, and serving as president of the Homosexual Law Reform Society.

In 1988, a year before his death, Ayer wrote an article titled "What I saw when I was dead", describing an unusual near-death experience after his heart stopped for four minutes as he choked on smoked salmon. Of the experience, he first said that it "slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death ... will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be." A few weeks later, he revised this, saying, "what I should have said is that my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief".

Ayer died on 27 June 1989. From 1980 to 1989 he lived at 51 York Street, Marylebone, where a memorial plaque was unveiled on 19 November 1995.

Philosophical ideas
In Language, Truth and Logic (1936), Ayer presents the verification principle as the only valid basis for philosophy. Unless logical or empirical verification is possible, statements like "God exists" or "charity is good" are not true or untrue but meaningless, and may thus be excluded or ignored. Religious language in particular is unverifiable and as such literally nonsense. He also criticises C. A. Mace's opinion that metaphysics is a form of intellectual poetry. The stance that a belief in God denotes no verifiable hypothesis is sometimes referred to as igtheism (for example, by Paul Kurtz). In later years, Ayer reiterated that he did not believe in God and began to call himself an atheist. He followed in the footsteps of Bertrand Russell by debating religion with the Jesuit scholar Frederick Copleston.

Ayer's version of emotivism divides "the ordinary system of ethics" into four classes: He focuses on propositions of the first class—moral judgments—saying that those of the second class belong to science, those of the third are mere commands, and those of the fourth (which are considered normative ethics as opposed to meta-ethics) are too concrete for ethical philosophy.
 * 1) "Propositions that express definitions of ethical terms, or judgements about the legitimacy or possibility of certain definitions"
 * 2) "Propositions describing the phenomena of moral experience, and their causes"
 * 3) "Exhortations to moral virtue"
 * 4) "Actual ethical judgments"

Ayer argues that moral judgments cannot be translated into non-ethical, empirical terms and thus cannot be verified; in this he agrees with ethical intuitionists. But he differs from intuitionists by discarding appeals to intuition of non-empirical moral truths as "worthless" since the intuition of one person often contradicts that of another. Instead, Ayer concludes that ethical concepts are "mere pseudo-concepts":

"The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content. Thus if I say to someone, 'You acted wrongly in stealing that money,' I am not stating anything more than if I had simply said, 'You stole that money.' In adding that this action is wrong I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval of it. It is as if I had said, 'You stole that money,' in a peculiar tone of horror, or written it with the addition of some special exclamation marks. … If now I generalise my previous statement and say, 'Stealing money is wrong,' I produce a sentence that has no factual meaning—that is, expresses no proposition that can be either true or false. … I am merely expressing certain moral sentiments."

Between 1945 and 1947, together with Russell and George Orwell, Ayer contributed a series of articles to Polemic, a short-lived British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics" edited by the ex-Communist Humphrey Slater.

Ayer was closely associated with the British humanist movement. He was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association from 1947 until his death. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963. In 1965, he became the first president of the Agnostics' Adoption Society and in the same year succeeded Julian Huxley as president of the British Humanist Association, a post he held until 1970. In 1968 he edited The Humanist Outlook, a collection of essays on the meaning of humanism. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.

Works
Ayer is best known for popularising the verification principle, in particular through his presentation of it in Language, Truth, and Logic. The principle was at the time at the heart of the debates of the so-called Vienna Circle, which Ayer had visited as a young guest. Others, including the circle's leading light, Moritz Schlick, were already writing papers on the issue. Ayer's formulation was that a sentence can be meaningful only if it has verifiable empirical import; otherwise, it is either "analytical" if tautologous or "metaphysical" (i.e. meaningless, or "literally senseless"). He started to work on the book at the age of 23 and it was published when he was 26. Ayer's philosophical ideas were deeply influenced by those of the Vienna Circle and David Hume. His clear, vibrant and polemical exposition of them makes Language, Truth and Logic essential reading on the tenets of logical empiricism; the book is regarded as a classic of 20th-century analytic philosophy and is widely read in philosophy courses around the world. In it, Ayer also proposes that the distinction between a conscious man and an unconscious machine resolves itself into a distinction between "different types of perceptible behaviour", an argument that anticipates the Turing test published in 1950 to test a machine's capability to demonstrate intelligence.

Ayer wrote two books on the philosopher Bertrand Russell, Russell and Moore: The Analytic Heritage (1971) and Russell (1972). He also wrote an introductory book on the philosophy of David Hume and a short biography of Voltaire.

Ayer was a strong critic of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. As a logical positivist, Ayer was in conflict with Heidegger's vast, overarching theories of existence. Ayer considered them completely unverifiable through empirical demonstration and logical analysis, and this sort of philosophy an unfortunate strain in modern thought. He considered Heidegger the worst example of such philosophy, which Ayer believed entirely useless. In Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, Ayer accuses Heidegger of "surprising ignorance" or "unscrupulous distortion" and "what can fairly be described as charlatanism."

In 1972–73, Ayer gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews, later published as The Central Questions of Philosophy. In the book's preface, he defends his selection to hold the lectureship on the basis that Lord Gifford wished to promote "natural theology, in the widest sense of that term", and that non-believers are allowed to give the lectures if they are "able reverent men, true thinkers, sincere lovers of and earnest inquirers after truth". He still believed in the viewpoint he shared with the logical positivists: that large parts of what was traditionally called philosophy—including metaphysics, theology and aesthetics—were not matters that could be judged true or false, and that it was thus meaningless to discuss them.

In The Concept of a Person and Other Essays (1963), Ayer heavily criticized Wittgenstein's private language argument.

Ayer's sense-data theory in Foundations of Empirical Knowledge was famously criticised by fellow Oxonian J. L. Austin in Sense and Sensibilia, a landmark 1950s work of ordinary language philosophy. Ayer responded in the essay "Has Austin Refuted the Sense-datum Theory?", which can be found in his Metaphysics and Common Sense (1969).

Awards
Ayer was awarded a knighthood as Knight Bachelor in the London Gazette on 1 January 1970.

Collections
Ayer's biographer, Ben Rogers, deposited 7 boxes of research material accumulated through the writing process at University College London in 2007. The material was donated in collaboration with Ayer's family.

Selected publications
* For more complete publication details see "The Philosophical Works of A. J. Ayer" (1979) and "Bibliography of the writings of A.J. Ayer" (1992).
 * 1936, Language, Truth, and Logic, London: Gollancz., 2nd ed., with new introduction (1946)  ISBN 978-0-14-118604-7
 * 1936, "Causation and free will", The Aryan Path.
 * 1940, The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, London: Macmillan.
 * 1954, Philosophical Essays, London: Macmillan. (Essays on freedom, phenomenalism, basic propositions, utilitarianism, other minds, the past, ontology.)
 * 1957, "The conception of probability as a logical relation", in S. Korner, ed., Observation and Interpretation in the Philosophy of Physics, New York, N.Y.: Dover Publications.
 * 1956, The Problem of Knowledge, London: Macmillan.
 * 1957, "Logical Positivism - A Debate" (with F. C. Copleston) in: Edwards, Paul, Pap, Arthur (eds.), A Modern Introduction to Philosophy; readings from classical and contemporary sources
 * 1963, The Concept of a Person and Other Essays, London: Macmillan. (Essays on truth, privacy and private languages, laws of nature, the concept of a person, probability.)
 * 1967, "Has Austin Refuted the Sense-Datum Theory?" Synthese vol. XVIII, pp. 117–140. (Reprinted in Ayer 1969).
 * 1968, The Origins of Pragmatism, London: Macmillan.
 * 1969, Metaphysics and Common Sense, London: Macmillan. (Essays on knowledge, man as a subject for science, chance, philosophy and politics, existentialism, metaphysics, and a reply to Austin on sense-data theory [Ayer 1967].) ISBN 978-0-333-10517-7
 * 1971, Russell and Moore: The Analytical Heritage, London: Macmillan.
 * 1972, Probability and Evidence, London: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-12756-8
 * 1972, Russell, London: Fontana Modern Masters.
 * 1973, The Central Questions of Philosophy, London: Weidenfeld. ISBN 978-0-297-76634-6
 * 1977, Part of My Life, London: Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-216017-9
 * 1979, "Replies", in G. F. Macdonald, ed., Perception and Identity: Essays Presented to A. J. Ayer, With His Replies, London: Macmillan; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
 * 1980, Hume, Oxford: Oxford University Press
 * 1982, Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, London: Weidenfeld.
 * 1984, Freedom and Morality and Other Essays, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
 * 1984, More of My Life, London: Collins.
 * 1986, Ludwig Wittgenstein, London: Penguin.
 * 1986, Voltaire, New York: Random House.
 * 1988, Thomas Paine, London: Secker & Warburg.
 * 1990, The Meaning of Life and Other Essays, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
 * 1991, "A Defense of Empiricism" in: Griffiths, A. Phillips (ed.), A. J. Ayer: Memorial Essays (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements). Cambridge University Press.
 * 1992, "Intellectual Autobiography" and Replies in: Lewis Edwin Hahn (ed.), The Philosophy of A.J. Ayer (The Library of Living Philosophers Volume XXI), Open Court Publishing Co.

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

title: A. J. Ayer


text:
André Weil

André Weil (6 May 1906 – 6 August 1998) was a French mathematician, known for his foundational work in number theory and algebraic geometry. He was one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. His influence is due both to his original contributions to a remarkably broad spectrum of mathematical theories, and to the mark he left on mathematical practice and style, through some of his own works as well as through the Bourbaki group, of which he was one of the principal founders.

Life
André Weil was born in Paris to agnostic Alsatian Jewish parents who fled the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by the German Empire after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–71. Simone Weil, who would later become a famous philosopher, was Weil's younger sister and only sibling. He studied in Paris, Rome and Göttingen and received his doctorate in 1928. While in Germany, Weil befriended Carl Ludwig Siegel. Starting in 1930, he spent two academic years at Aligarh Muslim University in India. Aside from mathematics, Weil held lifelong interests in classical Greek and Latin literature, Hinduism and Sanskrit literature: he had taught himself Sanskrit in 1920. After teaching for one year at Aix-Marseille University, he taught for six years at University of Strasbourg. He married Éveline de Possel (née Éveline Gillet) in 1937.

Weil was in Finland when World War II broke out; he had been traveling in Scandinavia since April 1939. His wife Éveline returned to France without him. Weil was arrested in Finland at the outbreak of the Winter War on suspicion of spying; however, accounts of his life having been in danger were shown to be exaggerated. Weil returned to France via Sweden and the United Kingdom, and was detained at Le Havre in January 1940. He was charged with failure to report for duty, and was imprisoned in Le Havre and then Rouen. It was in the military prison in Bonne-Nouvelle, a district of Rouen, from February to May, that Weil completed the work that made his reputation. He was tried on 3 May 1940. Sentenced to five years, he requested to be attached to a military unit instead, and was given the chance to join a regiment in Cherbourg. After the fall of France in June 1940, he met up with his family in Marseille, where he arrived by sea. He then went to Clermont-Ferrand, where he managed to join his wife, Éveline, who had been living in German-occupied France.

In January 1941, Weil and his family sailed from Marseille to New York. He spent the remainder of the war in the United States, where he was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation. For two years, he taught undergraduate mathematics at Lehigh University, where he was unappreciated, overworked and poorly paid, although he did not have to worry about being drafted, unlike his American students. He quit the job at Lehigh and moved to Brazil, where he taught at the Universidade de São Paulo from 1945 to 1947, working with Oscar Zariski. Weil and his wife had two daughters, Sylvie (born in 1942) and Nicolette (born in 1946).

He then returned to the United States and taught at the University of Chicago from 1947 to 1958, before moving to the Institute for Advanced Study, where he would spend the remainder of his career. He was a Plenary Speaker at the ICM in 1950 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1954 in Amsterdam, and in 1978 in Helsinki. Weil was elected Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1966. In 1979, he shared the second Wolf Prize in Mathematics with Jean Leray.

Work
Weil made substantial contributions in a number of areas, the most important being his discovery of profound connections between algebraic geometry and number theory. This began in his doctoral work leading to the Mordell–Weil theorem (1928, and shortly applied in Siegel's theorem on integral points). Mordell's theorem had an ad hoc proof; Weil began the separation of the infinite descent argument into two types of structural approach, by means of height functions for sizing rational points, and by means of Galois cohomology, which would not be categorized as such for another two decades. Both aspects of Weil's work have steadily developed into substantial theories.

Among his major accomplishments were the 1940s proof of the Riemann hypothesis for zeta-functions of curves over finite fields, and his subsequent laying of proper foundations for algebraic geometry to support that result (from 1942 to 1946, most intensively). The so-called Weil conjectures were hugely influential from around 1950; these statements were later proved by Bernard Dwork, Alexander Grothendieck,  Michael Artin, and finally by Pierre Deligne, who completed the most difficult step in 1973.

Weil introduced the adele ring in the late 1930s, following Claude Chevalley's lead with the ideles, and gave a proof of the Riemann–Roch theorem with them (a version appeared in his Basic Number Theory in 1967). His 'matrix divisor' (vector bundle avant la lettre) Riemann–Roch theorem from 1938 was a very early anticipation of later ideas such as moduli spaces of bundles. The Weil conjecture on Tamagawa numbers proved resistant for many years. Eventually the adelic approach became basic in automorphic representation theory. He picked up another credited Weil conjecture, around 1967, which later under pressure from Serge Lang (resp. of Serre) became known as the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture (resp. Taniyama–Weil conjecture) based on a roughly formulated question of Taniyama at the 1955 Nikkō conference. His attitude towards conjectures was that one should not dignify a guess as a conjecture lightly, and in the Taniyama case, the evidence was only there after extensive computational work carried out from the late 1960s.

Other significant results were on Pontryagin duality and differential geometry. He introduced the concept of a uniform space in general topology, as a by-product of his collaboration with Nicolas Bourbaki (of which he was a Founding Father). His work on sheaf theory hardly appears in his published papers, but correspondence with Henri Cartan in the late 1940s, and reprinted in his collected papers, proved most influential. He also chose the symbol ∅, derived from the letter Ø in the Norwegian alphabet (which he alone among the Bourbaki group was familiar with), to represent the empty set.

Weil also made a well-known contribution in Riemannian geometry in his very first paper in 1926, when he showed that the classical isoperimetric inequality holds on non-positively curved surfaces. This established the 2-dimensional case of what later became known as the Cartan–Hadamard conjecture.

He discovered that the so-called Weil representation, previously introduced in quantum mechanics by Irving Segal and David Shale, gave a contemporary framework for understanding the classical theory of quadratic forms. This was also a beginning of a substantial development by others, connecting representation theory and theta functions.

Weil was a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

As expositor
Weil's ideas made an important contribution to the writings and seminars of Bourbaki, before and after World War II. He also wrote several books on the history of number theory.

Beliefs
Hindu thought had great influence on Weil. He was an agnostic, and he respected religions.

Legacy
Asteroid 289085 Andreweil, discovered by astronomers at the Saint-Sulpice Observatory in 2004, was named in his memory. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on 14 February 2014 (M.P.C. 87143).

Books
Mathematical works:
 * Arithmétique et géométrie sur les variétés algébriques (1935)
 * Sur les espaces à structure uniforme et sur la topologie générale (1937)
 * L'intégration dans les groupes topologiques et ses applications (1940)
 * Sur les courbes algébriques et les variétés qui s'en déduisent (1948)
 * Variétés abéliennes et courbes algébriques (1948)
 * Introduction à l'étude des variétés kählériennes (1958)
 * Discontinuous subgroups of classical groups (1958) Chicago lecture notes
 * Dirichlet Series and Automorphic Forms, Lezioni Fermiane (1971) Lecture Notes in Mathematics, vol. 189
 * Essais historiques sur la théorie des nombres (1975)
 * Elliptic Functions According to Eisenstein and Kronecker (1976)
 * Number Theory for Beginners (1979) with Maxwell Rosenlicht
 * Adeles and Algebraic Groups (1982)
 * Number Theory: An Approach Through History From Hammurapi to Legendre (1984)
 * Adeles and Algebraic Groups (1982)
 * Number Theory: An Approach Through History From Hammurapi to Legendre (1984)

Collected papers:
 * Œuvres Scientifiques, Collected Works, three volumes (1979)

Autobiography:
 * French: Souvenirs d'Apprentissage (1991) ISBN 3-7643-2500-3. Review in English by J. E. Cremona.
 * English translation: The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician (1992), ISBN 0-8176-2650-6 Review by Veeravalli S. Varadarajan; Review by Saunders Mac Lane

Memoir by his daughter:
 * At Home with André and Simone Weil by Sylvie Weil, translated by Benjamin Ivry; ISBN 978-0-8101-2704-3, Northwestern University Press, 2010.

title: André Weil


text:
Achaeans (Homer)

The Achaeans or Akhaians (Ἀχαιοί, "the Achaeans" or "of Achaea") is one of the names in Homer which is used to refer to the Greeks collectively.

The term "Achaean" is believed to be related to the Hittite term Ahhiyawa and the Egyptian term Ekwesh which appear in texts from the Late Bronze Age and are believed to refer to the Mycenaean civilization or some part of it.

In the historical period, the term fell into disuse as a general term for Greek people, and was generally reserved for inhabitants of the region of Achaea, a region in the north-central part of the Peloponnese. The city-states of this region later formed a confederation known as the Achaean League, which was influential during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.

Etymology
According to Margalit Finkelberg the name Ἀχαιοί (earlier Ἀχαιϝοί) is possibly derived, via an intermediate form *Ἀχαϝyοί, from a hypothetical older Greek form reflected in the Hittite form Aḫḫiyawā; the latter is attested in the Hittite archives, e.g. in the Tawagalawa letter. However, Robert S. P. Beekes doubted its validity and suggested a Pre-Greek *Akaywa-.

Homeric versus later use
In Homer, the term Achaeans is one of the primary terms used to refer to the Greeks as a whole. It is used 598 times in the Iliad, often accompanied by the epithet "long-haired". Other common names used in Homer are Danaans (Δαναοί Danaoi; used 138 times in the Iliad) and Argives (Ἀργεῖοι Argeioi; used 182 times in the Iliad) while Panhellenes (Πανέλληνες Panhellenes, "All of the Greeks") and Hellenes (Ἕλληνες Hellenes) both appear only once; All of the aforementioned terms were used synonymously to denote a common Greek identity. In some English translations of the Iliad, the Achaeans are simply called the Greeks throughout.

Later, by the Archaic and Classical periods, the term "Achaeans" referred to inhabitants of the much smaller region of Achaea. Herodotus identified the Achaeans of the northern Peloponnese as descendants of the earlier, Homeric Achaeans. According to Pausanias, writing in the 2nd century AD, the term "Achaean" was originally given to those Greeks inhabiting the Argolis and Laconia.

Pausanias and Herodotus both recount the legend that the Achaeans were forced from their homelands by the Dorians, during the legendary Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese. They then moved into the region later called Achaea.

A scholarly consensus has not yet been reached on the origin of the historic Achaeans relative to the Homeric Achaeans and is still hotly debated. Former emphasis on presumed race, such as John A. Scott's article about the blond locks of the Achaeans as compared to the dark locks of "Mediterranean" Poseidon, on the basis of hints in Homer, has been rejected by some. The contrasting belief that "Achaeans", as understood through Homer, is "a name without a country", an ethnos created in the Epic tradition, has modern supporters among those who conclude that "Achaeans" were redefined in the 5th century BC, as contemporary speakers of Aeolic Greek.

Karl Beloch suggested there was no Dorian invasion, but rather that the Peloponnesian Dorians were the Achaeans. Eduard Meyer, disagreeing with Beloch, instead put forth the suggestion that the real-life Achaeans were mainland pre-Dorian Greeks. His conclusion is based on his research on the similarity between the languages of the Achaeans and pre-historic Arcadians. William Prentice disagreed with both, noting archeological evidence suggests the Achaeans instead migrated from "southern Asia Minor to Greece, probably settling first in lower Thessaly" probably prior to 2000 BC.

Hittite documents

Some Hittite texts mention a nation to the west called Ahhiyawa ( Aḫḫiyawa). In the earliest reference to this land, a letter outlining the treaty violations of the Hittite vassal Madduwatta, it is called Ahhiya. Another important example is the Tawagalawa Letter written by an unnamed Hittite king (most probably Hattusili III) of the empire period (14th–13th century BC) to the king of Ahhiyawa, treating him as an equal and implying Miletus (Millawanda) was under his control. It also refers to an earlier "Wilusa episode" involving hostility on the part of Ahhiyawa. Ahhiya(wa) has been identified with the Achaeans of the Trojan War and the city of Wilusa with the legendary city of Troy (note the similarity with early Greek Ϝίλιον Wilion, later Ἴλιον Ilion, the name of the acropolis of Troy).

Emil Forrer, a Swiss Hittitologist who worked on the Boghazköy tablets in Berlin, said the Achaeans of pre-Homeric Greece were directly associated with the term "Land of Ahhiyawa" mentioned in the Hittite texts. His conclusions at the time were challenged by other Hittitologists (i.e. Johannes Friedrich in 1927 and Albrecht Götze in 1930), as well as by Ferdinand Sommer, who published his Die Ahhijava-Urkunden (The Ahhiyawa Documents) in 1932. The exact relationship of the term Ahhiyawa to the Achaeans beyond a similarity in pronunciation was hotly debated by scholars, even following the discovery that Mycenaean Linear B is an early form of Greek; the earlier debate was summed up in 1984 by Hans G. Güterbock of the Oriental Institute. More recent research based on new readings and interpretations of the Hittite texts, as well as of the material evidence for Mycenaean contacts with the Anatolian mainland, came to the conclusion that Ahhiyawa referred to the Mycenaean world, or at least to a part of it.

Scholarship up to 2011 was reviewed by Gary M. Beckman et al. In this review, the increasing acceptance of the Ahhiyawa-Mycenaeans hypothesis was noted. As to the exact location of Ahhiyawa:

"It now seems most reasonable to identify Ahhiyawa primarily with the Greek mainland, although in some contexts the term 'Ahhiyawa' may have had broader connotations, perhaps covering all regions that were settled by Mycenaeans or came under Mycenaean control."

In fact, the authors state that "there is now little doubt that Ahhiyawa was a reference by the Hittites to some or all of the Bronze Age Mycenaean world", and that Forrer was "largely correct after all".

Egyptian sources
It has been proposed that Ekwesh of the Egyptian records may relate to Achaea (compared to Hittite Ahhiyawa), whereas Denyen and Tanaju may relate to Classical Greek Danaoi. The earliest textual reference to the Mycenaean world is in the Annals of Thutmosis III (c. 1479–1425 BC), which refers to messengers from the king of the Tanaju, c. 1437 BC, offering greeting gifts to the Egyptian king, in order to initiate diplomatic relations, when the latter campaigned in Syria. Tanaju is also listed in an inscription at the Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III. The latter ruled Egypt in c. 1382–1344 BC. Moreover, a list of the cities and regions of the Tanaju is also mentioned in this inscription; among the cities listed are Mycenae, Nauplion, Kythera, Messenia and the Thebaid (region of Thebes).

During the 5th year of Pharaoh Merneptah, a confederation of Libyan and northern peoples is supposed to have attacked the western delta. Included amongst the ethnic names of the repulsed invaders is the Ekwesh or Eqwesh, whom some have seen as Achaeans, although Egyptian texts specifically mention these Ekwesh to be circumcised. Homer mentions an Achaean attack upon the delta, and Menelaus speaks of the same in Book IV of the Odyssey to Telemachus when he recounts his own return home from the Trojan War. Some ancient Greek authors also say that Helen had spent the time of the Trojan War in Egypt, and not at Troy, and that after Troy the Greeks went there to recover her.

Greek mythology
In Greek mythology, the perceived cultural divisions among the Hellenes were represented as legendary lines of descent that identified kinship groups, with each line being derived from an eponymous ancestor. Each of the Greek ethne were said to be named in honor of their respective ancestors: Achaeus of the Achaeans, Danaus of the Danaans, Cadmus of the Cadmeans (the Thebans), Hellen of the Hellenes (not to be confused with Helen of Troy), Aeolus of the Aeolians, Ion of the Ionians, and Dorus of the Dorians.

Cadmus from Phoenicia, Danaus from Egypt, and Pelops from Anatolia each gained a foothold in mainland Greece and were assimilated and Hellenized. Hellen, Graikos, Magnes, and Macedon were sons of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the only people who survived the Great Flood; the ethne were said to have originally been named Graikoi after the elder son but later renamed Hellenes after Hellen who was proved to be the strongest. Sons of Hellen and the nymph Orseis were Dorus, Xuthos, and Aeolus. Sons of Xuthos and Kreousa, daughter of Erechthea, were Ion and Achaeus.

According to Hyginus, 22 Achaeans killed 362 Trojans during their ten years at Troy.

title: Achaeans (Homer)


text:
Atle Selberg

Atle Selberg (14 June 1917 – 6 August 2007) was a Norwegian mathematician known for his work in analytic number theory and the theory of automorphic forms, and in particular for bringing them into relation with spectral theory. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1950 and an honorary Abel Prize in 2002.

Early years
Selberg was born in Langesund, Norway, the son of teacher Anna Kristina Selberg and mathematician Ole Michael Ludvigsen Selberg. Two of his three brothers, Sigmund and Henrik, were also mathematicians. His other brother, Arne, was a professor of engineering.

While he was still at school he was influenced by the work of Srinivasa Ramanujan and he found an exact analytical formula for the partition function as suggested by the works of Ramanujan; however, this result was first published by Hans Rademacher.

He studied at the University of Oslo and completed his PhD in 1943.

World War II
During World War II, Selberg worked in isolation due to the German occupation of Norway. After the war, his accomplishments became known, including a proof that a positive proportion of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function lie on the line $$\Re(s)=\tfrac{1}{2}$$.

During the war, he fought against the German invasion of Norway, and was imprisoned several times.

Post-war in Norway
After the war, he turned to sieve theory, a previously neglected topic which Selberg's work brought into prominence. In a 1947 paper he introduced the Selberg sieve, a method well adapted in particular to providing auxiliary upper bounds, and which contributed to Chen's theorem, among other important results.

In 1948 Selberg submitted two papers in Annals of Mathematics in which he proved by elementary means the theorems for primes in arithmetic progression and the density of primes. This challenged the widely held view of his time that certain theorems are only obtainable with the advanced methods of complex analysis. Both results were based on his work on the asymptotic formula
 * $$\vartheta \left( x \right)\log \left( x \right) + \sum\limits_{p \le x} {\log \left( p \right)} \vartheta \left( {\frac{x}{p}} \right) = 2x\log \left( x \right) + O\left( x \right)$$

where
 * $$\vartheta \left( x \right) = \sum\limits_{p \le x} {\log \left( p \right)}$$

for primes $$p$$. He established this result by elementary means in March 1948, and by July of that year, Selberg and Paul Erdős each obtained elementary proofs of the prime number theorem, both using the asymptotic formula above as a starting point. Circumstances leading up to the proofs, as well as publication disagreements, led to a bitter dispute between the two mathematicians.

For his fundamental accomplishments during the 1940s, Selberg received the 1950 Fields Medal.

Institute for Advanced Study
Selberg moved to the United States and worked as an associate professor at Syracuse University and later settled at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey in the 1950s, where he remained until his death. During the 1950s he worked on introducing spectral theory into number theory, culminating in his development of the Selberg trace formula, the most famous and influential of his results. In its simplest form, this establishes a duality between the lengths of closed geodesics on a compact Riemann surface and the eigenvalues of the Laplacian, which is analogous to the duality between the prime numbers and the zeros of the zeta function.

He generally worked alone. His only coauthor was Sarvadaman Chowla.

Selberg was awarded the 1986 Wolf Prize in Mathematics. He was also awarded an honorary Abel Prize in 2002, its founding year, before the awarding of the regular prizes began.

Selberg received many distinctions for his work, in addition to the Fields Medal, the Wolf Prize and the Gunnerus Medal. He was elected to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 1972, he was awarded an honorary degree, doctor philos. honoris causa, at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, later part of Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

His first wife, Hedvig, died in 1995. With her, Selberg had two children: Ingrid Selberg (married to playwright Mustapha Matura) and Lars Selberg. In 2003 Atle Selberg married Betty Frances ("Mickey") Compton (born in 1929).

He died at home in Princeton, New Jersey on 6 August 2007 of heart failure. Upon his death he was survived by his widow, daughter, son, and four grandchildren.

Selected publications

Selberg's collected works were published in two volumes. The first volume contains 41 articles, and the second volume contains three additional articles, in addition to Selberg's lectures on sieves.
 * Description at M.I.T. Press Bookstore
 * Description at M.I.T. Press Bookstore

title: Atle Selberg


text:
Talk:Achaeans (Homer)

Misc.
Dear Hmmmmm: I agree. If you know what is good for Wikipedia you do not jostle with Achaeans. Thucydides 1.3.1 says that Homer knew no general term for the Greek people but called them by their various tribes, Danaans, Argives, Achaians, and so forth. There ought to be a separate article for Danaans, not rice pudding them in with some other tribe. And since the texts of Homer survive, we know that in this case Thucydides was correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ismark (talk • contribs) 22:41, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Hmmmmm. "The Achaeans were the people of ancient Greece." the people is too narrow when you have Mycenaeans and Dorians, both of whom were Greek-speakers, jostling the Achaeans on either chronological side. --MichaelTinkler.

 * Everything I have seen equates the Mycenaeans and Achaeans as one and the same people. We sure the Achaeans were late invaders?  Btw, Greek civilization had already fallen apart by the time the Dorians showed up.

Well, something happened to the Mycenaeans, and some people still believe in invaders. I don't particularly, myself. --MichaelTinkler.

 * Right, but those people who believe in invaders believe in Dorian invaders, not Achaean invaders. The usual date for the Achaean migration is around 1600-1500 BC, before the Mycenaean city centres formed.  I really think the page is wrong to draw the distinction it does, and will change it with your approval.

This is wikipedia! Just change it. I agree, anyway. --MichaelTinkler

Using the otherwise unknown form "Achae" over "Achaeans" is just plain silly. Reverting. -- llywrch 05:35 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * why not read all the wiki about Dorians, Ionians, Aeolians, and Achaeans instead of arguing? Ancient greece was divided into 3 groups; Dorians, Ionians, Aeolians.  Achaeans were an earlier group that split into Ionians, Aeolians.  The Ionians bought peace with the dorians (dorians being so into Sparta) by selling them all their land, and the aeolians just packed up and disappeared from history when the dorians showed up.

 * it all reminds me vaguely of Freud: Id, Ego, Superego - what else can history teach?66.150.46.254 (talk) 12:46, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

18th century Achaeans
"Achaeans" is not the name given to any archaeologically identifyable culture. The recent info added about "18th century Achaeans" belongs either under "Mycenaean Civilization" or under "Proto-Greeks" (the latter are estimated to have reached Greece between 2500 and 2000 BC). Before the discovery of the "Ahhiyawa" texts, Achaeans was the collective name for the Greeks in Homer. If we identify them with the Ahhiyawa, they become a historical people, the mycenaean Greeks of the 13th century. This article should exclusively deal with (a) the homeric Achaeans and (b) the Ahhiyawa references. We have no way to determine whether the Achaeans already were a separate tribe among the immigrating proto-greeks. There are a series of good articles at Aegean Civilization. We just need to link to these, and History of Mycenaean Greece, no need to summarize that information here. dab 10:40, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Etymological links for term Danaans?
Is there any source which might link the term Danaans to the Irish Tuatha De Danann or the Danua tribe of Sea Peoples? The names are strikingly similar and the mythology of the Danua/Sea People would certainly fit the Dorian invasion period. User:FeanorStar7

It may also be worth researching if the Dananns can be linked to the Biblical Danites, one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Dryley —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 63.253.71.68 (talk • contribs).

Taking into account the myth of "Danaides" (Daughters of Danaus),which is connected with flowing water,the name Danaus is propably linked with the PIE root *danu=river. Denyen or Danuna who are identified as inhabitants of Adana of Anatolia were one group of the sea-peoples.Mycenean Pylos was destroyed by sea peoples.It's also possible that the Danites were Aegean.The probleme is with the chronology.(see Greeks-namesAxosman (talk) 13:23, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Ahhiyawa
Is it correct to state that Ahhiyawa is a place in Asia Minor? This seems to be saying outright that the Ahhiyawa are not the Achaeans, which strikes me as POV. Clearly they have connections to Asia Minor, but I didn't think it was clear where Ahhiyawa was supposed to be. Anybody know? john k 21:18, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
 * This is still disputed, but I think most people place Ahhiyawa on the mainland now. --Akhilleus (talk) 03:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Ahhiyawa and Ogygia
I believe that Ahhiyawans and Achaeans were the same people.

But perhaps, the word Ahhiyawa is derived from the word "Ogygia" (or preciously, Ôgygia or Ωγυγια), the original name of Attica and Boeotia.

Plus, it is possible that the "Aegean sea" may derived from "Ogygia".

The people of Ogygia are Ogyges (i.e. Ogy-ges) and the suffix "-ges" was usual in ante-Greek and proto-Greek tribes.

The root "Ogy-" there is in both words Achae-ans and Ahhi-ya-wa.

So, perhaps Hittites, originally, knew the Achaeans/Ogygians of Athens of Attica and later, the Achaeans of Argos of Peloponnesos.

--IonnKorr 19:38, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Homeric "Achaea" and other problems
I don't think Homer ever refers to a geographic entity called "Achaea". He certainly doesn't make Argos its capital, nor is Agamemnon's kingdom (which doesn't include Argos) equated with Achaea. The article seems to confuse Homeric political geography with historical Greek political geography; not really a good idea.

This bit of the article seems questionable: "Danaans is the name attributed to the tribe first dominating the Peloponnese and the area near Argos. Achaeans is the name of the tribe that, reinforced by the Aeolians, first dominated Greek territories, centering itself around its capital in Mycenae." Where does this information come from? --Akhilleus (talk) 03:54, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Serious revision needed
This article requires a complete revamp. Firstly, it talks about the words 'Danaans' and 'Argives' in addition to the word 'Achaeans' within the article. This is not suitable considering the title of the article. Their seems to be two options either incorporate this material within a larger article perhaps called something along the line of 'Homeric names for the Greeks' or they should be split off into single articles.

Most of this article is also highly suspect with regards to facts. It presents the Iliad as depicting some sort of unified army of Achaeans, lead by Agamemnon, coming from a unified political entity know n as Achaea. This is a mistake. The Iliad clearly depicts some sort of loose confederation of chieftains all from a single ethnic background. Each chieftain, whilst acknowledging Agamemnon's superiority, is clearly independent. Agamemnon is only a first among equals if you will.

It also calls Argos the original capital of the Achaeans. This is incorrect. The Achaeans never had a capital and was never in any way a unified political force. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.104.32.207 (talk • contribs).

 * I largely agree with this comment, except that I don't really have a problem with mentioning that Danaans and Argives are other collective names for the Achaeans in Homer. It's probably a good idea to mention that Achaea was a region of the Peloponnese in historical times, and that its residents were called Achaeans. (This region did not include Argos, however.) --Akhilleus (talk) 01:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

 * In addition it would be useful I think to mention the Achaean League which existed during the Hellenistic period. In fact I wonder if the author(s) of this article have conflated the Hellenistic Achaean League (and indeed the Aetolian League) with the Homeric Achaeans. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.104.94.41 (talk • contribs).

 * The Achaean League has its own article, so we just need to link to that. You might be right about the conflation, which would be a very strange error to make. --Akhilleus (talk) 02:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Egyptian sources
Can someone please provide a reference to substantiate the "Egyptian sources" section? So far, I had to remove an entire paragraph that seemed to contain a mish-mash of facts and unsubstantive interpretations. Deucalionite (talk) 14:35, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Rather a stale debate
"scholarly consensus has not yet been reached on the origin of the historic Achaeans, and is still hotly debated." If this "origin" (a creaky formula itself) is "still hotly debated", how is it that all the references date to the 1920s? The "hot" debate might be dealt with summarily as a sideline on historiography of the Achaeans.--Wetman (talk) 10:39, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Deleted text
I have deleted the text
 * Homer never used the word "Greeks"

from the introduction. Homer uses the word Hellenes now translated as Greeks for the followers of Achilles and those in the area around Thessaly. --5telios (talk) 16:05, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
 * More precisely, Homer said that Achilles ruled over both Achaeans and Hellenes: Those again who held Pelasgian Argos, Alos, Alope, and Trachis; and those of Phthia and Hellas the land of fair women, who were called Myrmidons, Hellenes, and Achaeans. This is dubious and the Iliad is not history, but the statement can be read as if the Hellenes were one tribe or ethnic group that were possibly not Achaean, the very opposite of the term having a panhellenic meaning. Hellas here seems to refer to a land ruled by Achilles along with Phthia, not to all of Greece. The article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Greeks covers this topic better and should be perhaps linked here. There is a claim that Homer uses the term panhellenic in the Iliad, but checking the link, it refers to a line saying that Ajax the Lesser excelled all other Hellenes and Achaeans in the use of the spear (http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=GreekTexts&getid=1&query=Hom.%20Il.%202.530). The word panhellenic is not to be found in Homer! Skamnelis (talk) 10:51, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Recent movement
I think that this movement made by MinisterForBadTimes is rather arbitrary and confusing. The excuse "In order to make 'Achaeans' a disambiguation page, since this article is far from the only meaning" really makes no sense. This movement has caused major problems in articles where the tribe of the Achaeans are (or should be) mentioned. The disambiguation page doesn't really help. A single article about the Achaeans, with references to them as a major Greek tribe that formed the Mycenaean civilization and a name that later came to be used collectively for all the Greeks in the Iliad was just fine, I cannot see the reason of splitting it in two articles, Achaeans (Homer) and Achaeans (tribe) (note that the latter doesn't exist but redirects to the irrelevant article of Achaea (ancient region)). In this way we could split Ionians in three articles, one for the tribe, one for the Ionians of mainland Greece and another for those of Asia Minor, but we talk about the same people of the Ionic language and culture, and their process. Here we talk about a people (the Achaeans) who dominated Mycenaean Greece, thus giving their name to all the Greeks in the era of the Trojan War, something like the small tribes of Graecoi and Hellenes who lent their names to the whole nation, so what's it all about? - Sthenel (talk) 02:39, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

 * I agree that it might not be immediately apparent what I intended (my move summary wasn't particular well written, for sure). I am also uncertain that moving the article about homeric Achaeans to this location was necessary. BUT, I definitely think that splitting the article up was the right move. The article that was at "Achaeans" was almost entirely about the Homeric use of the word, with some rather confusing references to the historic Achaeans and the Achaean league. I felt it was simpler just to split the article up; that way, people can always be linked to the relevant page, and not have to read the whole article just to work out which set of Achaeans were being referred to. The equation Mycenaean Achaeans = Ancient Achaeans = Modern Achaeans might be true, but I have not seen any evidence to prove it.

 * Personally, I think that splitting "Ionians" up wouldn't be a terrible idea, but the case is less pressing. All Ionians were still Ionians. But not all Achaeans (Homer) were Achaeans (tribe) or members of the Achaean League (most of whom were not even Achaeans (tribe)); don't get me started on inhabitants of Achaea (Roman province), or even modern day Achaea. Note that "Ionians", "Aeolians" and "Dorians" have no modern meaning: Achaean does, so the more reason to disambiguate it.

 * Secondly, I corrected the vast majority of links, so that they direct to exactly the right article (so, in articles referring to the Achaean League, "Achaeans" now links to Achaean League, and not here). The only ones I haven't corrected yet are those linking to Achaean, which is a redirect page anyway. But I will. I think "has caused major problems" is rather a large exaggeration. In my opinion, it is better to have to go through a disambiguation page than to end at the wrong article entirely.

 * Thirdly, I'm not sure why you say that Achaea (ancient region) is irrelevant to Achaeans (tribe)? Where did they live then? At any rate, the reason that it currently redirects is that I have yet written the Achaeans (tribe) page yet; I am not yet able to do everything at once. The idea is that Achaeans (tribe) should match the articles Ionians, Dorians and Aeolians.

 * Ultimately, I just don't see the need to describe all meanings of "Achaean" in the same article. To me, that is confusing. It's not like Wikipedia is going to run out of pages, so I don't really see there's a problem - as long as I finish tidying the links up. M.F.B.T.  Yes, Minister? 12:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The fact that an article (in this case the general article of Achaeans) is incomplete, it doesn't cover all the issues and primarily deals with one of the multiple issues, isn't enough to split this article. Moreover, the reference to the homeric Achaeans is done with a parallel reference to the historic Achaeans. Achaea (ancient region) is irrelevant to Achaeans (tribe); 1. the first article in its current form doesn't refer to any classical region of Achaea, obviously you have done there exactly the opposite of what you've done in the article of Achaeans, you have united different articles in one with a large part of it referring to (again) homeric and historical Achaeans and with a brilliant absence of any information about classic Achaea (what kind of info could someone add in that section?); 2. furthermore, what does this article about ancient Achaea (which deals with the Achaean League and Roman Achaea, but even if we had a section about classic Achaea) have to do with the tribe of Achaeans who formed the Mycenaean civilization some 1000 years ago? It's like we redirect the article Dorians to the article of Doris (Greece). You said that there is no need to describe all meanings of "Achaean" in the same article. What do you mean? Having an article about the historic tribe that emerged in an early stage, with a section talking about the use of their name in the Iliad doesn't seem confusing. By the way, nobody asked to include Roman, medieval or modern Achaeans in such an article (I wonder who could write anything about them), so where did you see the equation you mentioned above? - Sthenel (talk) 13:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

 * Taking your last point first: no-one did include roman, medieval, modern Achaeans in the Achaeans article; that was the problem. There were formerly lots of links made to Achaeans which were should have directed to e.g. Achaean League; instead, those links ended up at an article about Homeric Achaeans. This is how I first became aware of the problem. So either the article needed to start with a proper explanation of who all these Achaeans were or it needed a disambiguation and split. I decided (rightly or wrongly) to try the latter option. You are, or course, entitled to think I am wrong.

 * Taking your second point: As I already said, I haven't finished writing everything. The Achaea (ancient region) will eventually primarily deal with Classical Achaea. So far I have written a section about where the name comes from, and what other uses it has. There will be an Achaeans (tribe) article, about the historic tribe of the Achaeans, who lived in Achaea. In that article, it will be discussed whether those Achaeans were the descendents of the people who founded the Mycenaean culture.

 * The problem as I see it is this: the only tribal group who definitely called themselves the Achaeans were the Classical Achaeans. There is a (reasonable) assumption that there was a Mycenaean era tribe called the Achaeans, but where is the proof? That is what Homer calls them, but Homer was probably writing much later. There is also the reference to the Ahhiyawa in Hittite texts, but that is far from proven to refer to the Achaeans. Unless there is firm evidence that there was an tribal group in the Mycenaean era that called themselves Achaeans, then the article Achaeans (tribe) (or whatever title it eventually ends at) should be refer firstly to the historic Achaeans. We can discuss whether they were the same people as the Mycenaean greeks, or the Homeric Achaeans, but all we can definitely say is that they historically lived in Achaea.

 * Similarly, for the article here to claim that Achaeans was the name of an ancient tribe who eventually gave their name to all Greeks would be original research; all we can say is that Homer uses it as an collective term for Greeks - the Iliad is not a historical document.

 * I should add that if there is firm evidence that there were Mycenaean era Greeks who called themselves Achaeans, then I am clearly wrong, and should be ignored. As far as I am aware, there isn't, but... M.F.B.T.  Yes, Minister? 16:00ish, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

 * In the meantime, I have started the article on the Achaeans (tribe), since it seemed to worry you so much that it re-directed to the ancient region. I've also moved the discussion of the names of the Achaeans to this article from the ancient region - I agree that it makes more sense in the context of the tribe. Obviously it isn't a great article yet, but it's no worse than Aeolians, Dorians etc. M.F.B.T.  Yes, Minister? 16:46, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

1. If some links wrongly lead to Achaeans while they should direct to Achaean League, we just change the links instead of splitting the article in minor issues. 2. The Achaean tribe of Mycenaean Greece was not a people of any specific Achaean region. Don't confuse the tribe with the people who lived in Achaea much later, who were probably the Achaeans of the whole Peloponnese who were driven in Achaea after the Dorian invasion. 3. The problem here is that homeric Achaeans and the tribe of Achaeans can coexist in one article; Achaeans was a tribe and the way that classical sources mention them (including the homeric Achaeans) can be a section in this article (see Dorians). I have to repeat that Achaeans (Homer) is very close to what I've already described, a synthesis of the two main issues, I don't see any specifications on the homeric Achaeans, the only change was the name of the article which seems inappropriate to its content, so the move is completely useless according to me. Besides, an article about the homeric Achaeans cannot stand on its own (can you write a whole article talking all the time about how Homer call Achaeans all the Greeks?), neither there is so much information about the tribe of Achaeans to have another article. Splitting an article means that there is so much information about each one of its sections that they can exist as separate articles. - Sthenel (talk) 17:54, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

 * Look, let's agree to disagree. Ultimately, if you want to re-write this article so that:

 * a) it disambiguates all the meaning of Achaeans,
 * b) describes the historic Achaeans first
 * c) discusses the possibility that there was a Mycenaean tribe also called Achaeans, who may or may not have been the same as the historic Achaeans
 * and then move it back to Achaeans, then I won't try to stop you. My only concern here is that people (myself included) understand the different meanings of Achaeans, and why there are those differences. I'm not pursuing any random agenda here - I just found the whole issue confusing, and the former Achaeans page wasn't helpful. But if so, don't forget to change all the links I changed back to Achaeans. M.F.B.T.  Yes, Minister? 21:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

 * Let me offer a suggestion/compromise: make the current Achaeans not a disambiguation page, technically; these are strictly limited as to what you can say on them. (Trust me, it isn't fun to put in a lot of effort to make such a page reader-friendly, and then have all your work "edited" away by someone blindly following the rules for disambiguation pages even if the changes make the page less useful.) You should instead make it an introductory article on the usage of the term, because all the meanings are in fact related; it isn't as if (as is the case with true disambiguation) you're talking about a Greek people, an Amazonian butterfly, and a town in Illinois. An introductory article could give more of an overview of the history of the various usages of the term (who uses it when). Each section could consist of a succinct paragraph, and under the subhead you could direct the reader to the main article.
 * Seriously, if you call it a disambiguation page, one day the disambiguation police are likely to come along and delete a lot of the highly useful text you've already provided and tell you that all the page can have is one unpiped link per line, and that the introduction can say only Achaeans may refer to … . Your current "disambiguation" page is a good and clear effort to let the average reader understand that all these different meanings exist; developing it into an introduction to the term may also resolve the issues in the dispute here, as there would be one central article and a series of specialized articles. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:45, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

MFBT the point here isn't who is gonna be the winner of this dispute. We have to reach a compromise. I totally agree with Cynowolfe, there should be an article "Achaeans" instead of the disambiguation page, and what I'm trying to make clear is that we talk about meanings that are related and can coexist in the same article under the name Achaeans in chronological line, the Greek tribe of Mycenaean Greece that has later given its name to the whole nation in an epic poem, and finally were driven out from their homelands and moved to Achaea (don't get confused by this simplified presentation of the facts, I know that the point is more complicated, but I just gave a general plan of the article). On the other hand, it will not prevent you from keeping this article about the homeric Achaeans separated if you find enough information. But I'll say one more time that even now this article doesn't talk about the homeric Achaeans. Actually, it has mixed stuff about the tribe, the Achaeans in Homer and the classical Achaeans. It's obvious that only all these together can complete the puzzle "Achaeans" and they are inevitably related. - Sthenel (talk) 02:29, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

incomplete
A search on Ekwesh leads to this article, but the article doesn't give any basis for that redirection. Add it. 71.163.117.143 (talk) 20:07, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
 * ~ I apologize, I did a page search with ekwesh spelled wrong, that's why I didn't find it. 71.163.117.143 (talk) 20:35, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

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Circular link in "In Hittite Documents"
Ahhiyawa just links back to the same section of the same article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Viciouspiggy (talk • contribs) 17:08, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Greeks
I think that the name Achaeans refer to Mycenean Greeks and not general to Greeks. So maybe somebody has to add the term Mycenean before Greeks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.55.71.125 (talk) 09:12, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
 * "Mycenean Greeks" means Greeks during the Mycenean time period, which is the time period of Homer, so there is no need to further qualify "Greeks" with "Mycenean". Paul August ☎ 15:09, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Not exactly. Mycenean culture was the most powerful of the area and it was the main culture at Greece that era. At this area existed big walled cities and large armies. But the Greeks inhabited a larger area. Mycenean Greeks inhabited only the south parts of nowdays Greece. Greeks inhabited the whole of nowadays Greece, some parts of Albania, North Macedonia and parts of Asia Minor (even Trojans were possibly Greeks). For example the oracle of Zeus in Dodona, the most ancient oracle in Greece, is located in Epirus (the Epirotes had no relationship with the Homeric Achaeans). This is actualy the reason why Homer describes the Myceneans as Achaeans, if he wanted to mention all the Greeks he would simply refered to them as Hellenes, a name that was used at the time of Homer.
 * Can you please provide supporting sources for the assertions above? Paul August ☎ 17:50, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Paul, "Mycenaean" is just a relatively recent designation to describe a certain Bronze Age civilization (language included) of Greece following the discoveries made at the site of Mycenae by Heinrich Schliemann in the 19th century (although he was not the first to work at the site). "Mycenaean Greeks" certainly is not a collective term for all of the Bronze Age Greeks when it comes to the fields of archaeology, linguistics, and genetics. For example, Dorians were not part of that material culture and even linguistically, Doric doesn't stem from Mycenaean Greek (nor do Aeolic and Attic/Ionic by the way). Mycenaean Greek can be described as an early form of Arcadocypriot or Achaean (proper). Unfortunately many people who are unfamiliar with Greek dialectogenesis make the mistake of equating Mycenaeans with all of the Bronze Age Greeks just because their language was the first attested form of Greek (through the Linear B script). Worse, along the same lines, some make the mistake of equating Mycenaean Greek with proto-Greek, even though the former is a branch of the latter, and even less conservative than Doric for example. Personally i don't find it necessary for the "Mycenaean" to be added prior of the term "Greeks", since this article doesn't pertain to the actual Mycenaeans/Achaeans (proper) from a scientific perspective. It only pertains to a Homeric designation which is indeed used as a collective ethnonym for all of the relevant Greeks in his poem. Though that doesn't mean other Greeks didn't exist. We actually do have Homer mentioning the Dorians a single time in his Odyssey, and the passage even happens to differentiate them from Achaeans. Specifically, "". Though it must be noted that this is likely an anachronism of Homer; regardless it stands as a clear differentiation of two major Greek ethne by the author, and could thus justify the addition of "Mycenaean" prior of the term "Greeks"; but again i believe it is trivial. Furthermore, the "Dorians of three-fold race" reference which in the original Greek is given as "Δωριέες τε τριχάϊκες", probably relates to the three Dorian tribes mentioned by Tyrtaeus (some decades after Homer). Demetrios1993 (talk) 02:01, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clarification. My expertise here (such as it is) covers Homer and the Iliad, and does not extend much farther. So again thanks. Paul August ☎ 12:10, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Achaeans (Homer)