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Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid

gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) (or γ-hydroxybutyric acid), also known as 4-hydroxybutanoic acid is a naturally occurring neurotransmitter and a depressant drug. It is a precursor to GABA, glutamate, and glycine in certain brain areas. It acts on the GHB receptor and is a weak agonist at the GABAB receptor. GHB has been used in the medical setting as a general anesthetic and as treatment for cataplexy, narcolepsy, and alcoholism. The substance is also used illicitly for various reasons, including as a performance-enhancing drug, date rape drug, and as a recreational drug.

It is commonly used in the form of a salt, such as sodium γ-hydroxybutyrate (NaGHB, sodium oxybate, or Xyrem) or potassium γ-hydroxybutyrate (KGHB, potassium oxybate). GHB is also produced as a result of fermentation, and is found in small quantities in some beers and wines, beef, and small citrus fruits.

Succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase deficiency is a disease that causes GHB to accumulate in the blood.

Medical use
GHB is used for medical purposes in the treatment of narcolepsy and, more rarely, alcohol dependence, although there remains uncertainty about its efficacy relative to other pharmacotherapies for alcohol dependence. The authors of a 2010 Cochrane review concluded that "GHB appears better than NTX and disulfiram in maintaining abstinence and preventing craving in the medium term (3 to 12 months)". It is sometimes used off-label for the treatment of fibromyalgia. GHB is the active ingredient of the prescription medication sodium oxybate (Xyrem). Sodium oxybate is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of cataplexy associated with narcolepsy and excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) associated with narcolepsy.

GHB has been shown to reliably increase slow-wave sleep and decrease the tendency for REM sleep in modified multiple sleep latency tests.

The FDA-approved labeling for sodium oxybate suggests no evidence GHB has teratogenic, carcinogenic or hepatotoxic properties. Its favorable safety profile relative to ethanol may explain why GHB continues to be investigated as a candidate for alcohol substitution.

Recreational use
GHB is a central nervous system depressant used as an intoxicant. It has many street names. Its effects have been described as comparable with ethanol (alcohol) and MDMA use, such as euphoria, disinhibition, enhanced libido and empathogenic states. A review comparing ethanol to GHB concluded that the dangers of the two drugs were similar. At higher doses, GHB may induce nausea, dizziness, drowsiness, agitation, visual disturbances, depressed breathing, amnesia, unconsciousness, and death. One potential cause of death from GHB consumption is polydrug toxicity. Co-administration with other CNS depressants such as alcohol or benzodiazepines can result in an additive effect (potentiation), as they all bind to gamma-aminobutyric acid (or "GABA") receptor sites. The effects of GHB can last from 1.5 to 4 hours, or longer if large doses have been consumed. Consuming GHB with alcohol can cause respiratory arrest and vomiting in combination with unarousable sleep, which can lead to death.

Recreational doses of 1–2 g generally provide a feeling of euphoria, and larger doses create deleterious effects such as reduced motor function and drowsiness. The sodium salt of GHB has a salty taste. Other salt forms such as calcium GHB and magnesium GHB have also been reported, but the sodium salt is by far the most common.

Some prodrugs, such as γ-butyrolactone (GBL), convert to GHB in the stomach and bloodstream. Other prodrugs exist, such as 1,4-butanediol (1,4-B). GBL and 1,4-B are normally found as pure liquids, but they can be mixed with other more harmful solvents when intended for industrial use (e.g. as paint stripper or varnish thinner).

GHB can be manufactured with little knowledge of chemistry, as it involves the mixing of its two precursors, GBL and an alkali hydroxide such as sodium hydroxide, to form the GHB salt. Due to the ease of manufacture and the availability of its precursors, it is not usually produced in illicit laboratories like other synthetic drugs, but in private homes by low-level producers.

GHB is colourless and odourless.

Party use
GHB has been used as a club drug, apparently starting in the 1990s, as small doses of GHB can act as a euphoriant and are believed to be aphrodisiac. Slang terms for GHB include liquid ecstasy, lollipops, liquid X or liquid E due to its tendency to produce euphoria and sociability and its use in the dance party scene.

Sports and athletics
Some athletes have used GHB or its analogs because of being marketed as anabolic agents, although there is no evidence that it builds muscle or improves performance.

Usage as a date-rape drug

GHB became known to the general public as a date-rape drug by the late 1990s. GHB is colourless and odorless and has been described as "very easy to add to drinks". When consumed, the victim will quickly feel groggy and sleepy and may become unconscious. Upon recovery they may have an impaired ability to recall events that have occurred during the period of intoxication. In these situations evidence and the identification of the perpetrator of the rape is often difficult.

It is also difficult to establish how often GHB is used to facilitate rape as it is difficult to detect in a urine sample after a day, and many victims may only recall the rape some time after its occurrence; however, a 2006 study suggested that there was "no evidence to suggest widespread date rape drug use" in the UK, and that less than 2% of cases involved GHB, while 17% involved cocaine, and a survey in the Netherlands published in 2010 found that the proportion of drug-related rapes where GHB was used appeared to be greatly overestimated by the media. More recently, a study in Western Australia reviewed the pre-hospital context given in medical records around emergency department presentations with analytical confirmation of GHB exposure. This study found that most cases reported daily dosing and subsequent accidental overdose rather than their presentation being associated with date-rape.

There have been several high-profile cases of GHB as a date rape drug that received national attention in the United States. In early 1999, a 15-year-old girl, Samantha Reid of Rockwood, Michigan, died from GHB poisoning. Reid's death inspired the legislation titled the "Hillory J. Farias and Samantha Reid Date-Rape Drug Prohibition Act of 2000". This is the law that made GHB a Schedule 1 controlled substance.

The British serial killer Stephen Port administered GHB to his victims.

GHB can be detected in hair. Hair testing can be a useful tool in court cases or for the victim's own information. Most over-the-counter urine test kits test only for date-rape drugs that are benzodiazepines, which GHB is not. To detect GHB in urine, the sample must be taken within four hours of GHB ingestion, and cannot be tested at home.

Combination with alcohol
In humans, GHB has been shown to reduce the elimination rate of alcohol. This may explain the respiratory arrest that has been reported after ingestion of both drugs. A review of the details of 194 deaths attributed to or related to GHB over a ten-year period found that most were from respiratory depression caused by interaction with alcohol or other drugs.

Deaths
One publication has investigated 226 deaths attributed to GHB. Of the 226 deaths included, 213 had a cardiorespiratory arrest and 13 had fatal accidents. 71 deaths (34%) had no co-intoxicants. Postmortem blood GHB was 18–4400 mg/L (median=347) in deaths negative for co-intoxicants.

One report has suggested that sodium oxybate overdose might be fatal, based on deaths of three patients who had been prescribed the drug. However, for two of the three cases, post-mortem GHB concentrations were 141 and 110 mg/L, which is within the expected range of concentrations for GHB after death, and the third case was a patient with a history of intentional drug overdose. The toxicity of GHB has been an issue in criminal trials, as in the death of Felicia Tang, where the defense argued that death was due to GHB, not murder.

GHB is produced in the body in very small amounts, and blood levels may climb after death to levels in the range of 30–50 mg/L. Levels higher than this are found in GHB deaths. Levels lower than this may be due to GHB or to postmortem endogenous elevations.

Neurotoxicity
In multiple studies, GHB has been found to impair spatial memory, working memory, learning and memory in rats with chronic administration. These effects are associated with decreased NMDA receptor expression in the cerebral cortex and possibly other areas as well. In addition, the neurotoxicity appears to be caused by oxidative stress.

Addiction
Addiction occurs when repeated drug use disrupts the normal balance of brain circuits that control rewards, memory and cognition, ultimately leading to compulsive drug taking.

Rats forced to consume massive doses of GHB will intermittently prefer GHB solution to water.

Withdrawal
GHB has also been associated with a withdrawal syndrome of insomnia, anxiety, and tremor that usually resolves within three to twenty-one days. The withdrawal syndrome can be severe producing acute delirium and may require hospitalization in an intensive care unit for management. Management of GHB dependence involves considering the person's age, comorbidity and the pharmacological pathways of GHB. The mainstay of treatment for severe withdrawal is supportive care and benzodiazepines for control of acute delirium, but larger doses are often required compared to acute delirium of other causes (e.g. > 100 mg/d of diazepam). Baclofen has been suggested as an alternative or adjunct to benzodiazepines based on anecdotal evidence and some animal data. However, there is less experience with the use of baclofen for GHB withdrawal, and additional research in humans is needed. Baclofen was first suggested as an adjunct because benzodiazepines do not affect GABAB receptors and therefore have no cross-tolerance with GHB while baclofen, which works via GABAB receptors, is cross-tolerant with GHB and may be more effective in alleviating withdrawal effects of GHB.

GHB withdrawal is not widely discussed in textbooks and some psychiatrists, general practitioners, and even hospital emergency physicians may not be familiar with this withdrawal syndrome.

Overdose
Overdose of GHB can sometimes be difficult to treat because of its multiple effects on the body. GHB tends to cause rapid unconsciousness at doses above 3500 mg, with single doses over 7000 mg often causing life-threatening respiratory depression, and higher doses still inducing bradycardia and cardiac arrest. Other side-effects include convulsions (especially when combined with stimulants), and nausea/vomiting (especially when combined with alcohol).

The greatest life threat due to GHB overdose (with or without other substances) is respiratory arrest. Other relatively common causes of death due to GHB ingestion include aspiration of vomitus, positional asphyxia, and trauma sustained while intoxicated (e.g., motor vehicle accidents while driving under the influence of GHB). The risk of aspiration pneumonia and positional asphyxia risk can be reduced by laying the patient down in the recovery position. People are most likely to vomit as they become unconscious, and as they wake up. It is important to keep the victim awake and moving; the victim must not be left alone due to the risk of death through vomiting. Frequently the victim will be in a good mood but this does not mean the victim is not in danger. GHB overdose is a medical emergency and immediate assessment in an emergency department is needed.

Convulsions from GHB can be treated with the benzodiazepines diazepam or lorazepam. Even though these benzodiazepines are also CNS depressants, they primarily modulate GABAA receptors whereas GHB is primarily a GABAB receptor agonist, and so do not worsen CNS depression as much as might be expected.

Because of the faster and more complete absorption of GBL relative to GHB, its dose-response curve is steeper, and overdoses of GBL tend to be more dangerous and problematic than overdoses involving only GHB or 1,4-B. Any GHB/GBL overdose is a medical emergency and should be cared for by appropriately trained personnel.

A newer synthetic drug, SCH-50911, which acts as a selective GABAB antagonist, quickly reverses GHB overdose in mice. However, this treatment has yet to be tried in humans, and it is unlikely that it will be researched for this purpose in humans due to the illegal nature of clinical trials of GHB and the lack of medical indemnity coverage inherent in using an untested treatment for a life-threatening overdose.

Detection of use
GHB may be quantitated in blood or plasma to confirm a diagnosis of poisoning in hospitalized patients, to provide evidence in an impaired driving, or to assist in a medicolegal death investigation. Blood or plasma GHB concentrations are usually in a range of 50–250 mg/L in persons receiving the drug therapeutically (during general anesthesia), 30–100 mg/L in those arrested for impaired driving, 50–500 mg/L in acutely intoxicated patients and 100–1000 mg/L in victims of fatal overdosage. Urine is often the preferred specimen for routine drug abuse monitoring purposes. Both γ-butyrolactone (GBL) and 1,4-butanediol are converted to GHB in the body.

In January 2016, it was announced scientists had developed a way to detect GHB, among other things, in saliva.

Endogenous production
Cells produce GHB by reduction of succinic semialdehyde via succinic semialdehyde reductase (SSR). This enzyme appears to be induced by cAMP levels, meaning substances that elevate cAMP, such as forskolin and vinpocetine, may increase GHB synthesis and release. Conversely, endogeneous GHB production in those taking valproic acid will be inhibited via inhibition of the conversion from succinic acid semialdehyde to GHB. People with the disorder known as succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase deficiency, also known as γ-hydroxybutyric aciduria, have elevated levels of GHB in their urine, blood plasma and cerebrospinal fluid.

The precise function of GHB in the body is not clear. It is known, however, that the brain expresses a large number of receptors that are activated by GHB. These receptors are excitatory, however, and therefore not responsible for the sedative effects of GHB; they have been shown to elevate the principal excitatory neurotransmitter, glutamate. The benzamide antipsychotics—amisulpride, nemonapride, etc.—have been shown to bind to these GHB-activated receptors in vivo. Other antipsychotics were tested and were not found to have an affinity for this receptor.

GHB is a precursor to GABA, glutamate, and glycine in certain brain areas.

In spite of its demonstrated neurotoxicity, (see relevant section, above), GHB has neuroprotective properties, and has been found to protect cells from hypoxia.

Natural fermentation by-product
GHB is also produced as a result of fermentation and so is found in small quantities in some beers and wines, in particular fruit wines. The amount found in wine is pharmacologically insignificant and not sufficient to produce psychoactive effects.

Pharmacology
GHB has at least two distinct binding sites in the central nervous system. GHB acts as an agonist at the inhibitory GHB receptor and as a weak agonist at the inhibitory GABAB receptor. GHB is a naturally occurring substance that acts in a similar fashion to some neurotransmitters in the mammalian brain. GHB is probably synthesized from GABA in GABAergic neurons, and released when the neurons fire.

GHB has been found to activate oxytocinergic neurons in the supraoptic nucleus.

If taken orally, GABA itself does not effectively cross the blood–brain barrier.

GHB induces the accumulation of either a derivative of tryptophan or tryptophan itself in the extracellular space, possibly by increasing tryptophan transport across the blood–brain barrier. The blood content of certain neutral amino-acids, including tryptophan, is also increased by peripheral GHB administration. GHB-induced stimulation of tissue serotonin turnover may be due to an increase in tryptophan transport to the brain and in its uptake by serotonergic cells. As the serotonergic system may be involved in the regulation of sleep, mood, and anxiety, the stimulation of this system by high doses of GHB may be involved in certain neuropharmacological events induced by GHB administration.

However, at therapeutic doses, GHB reaches much higher concentrations in the brain and activates GABAB receptors, which are primarily responsible for its sedative effects. GHB's sedative effects are blocked by GABAB antagonists.

The role of the GHB receptor in the behavioural effects induced by GHB is more complex. GHB receptors are densely expressed in many areas of the brain, including the cortex and hippocampus, and these are the receptors that GHB displays the highest affinity for. There has been somewhat limited research into the GHB receptor; however, there is evidence that activation of the GHB receptor in some brain areas results in the release of glutamate, the principal excitatory neurotransmitter. Drugs that selectively activate the GHB receptor cause absence seizures in high doses, as do GHB and GABAB agonists.

Activation of both the GHB receptor and GABAB is responsible for the addictive profile of GHB. GHB's effect on dopamine release is biphasic. Low concentrations stimulate dopamine release via the GHB receptor. Higher concentrations inhibit dopamine release via GABAB receptors as do other GABAB agonists such as baclofen and phenibut. After an initial phase of inhibition, dopamine release is then increased via the GHB receptor. Both the inhibition and increase of dopamine release by GHB are inhibited by opioid antagonists such as naloxone and naltrexone. Dynorphin may play a role in the inhibition of dopamine release via kappa opioid receptors.

This explains the paradoxical mix of sedative and stimulatory properties of GHB, as well as the so-called "rebound" effect, experienced by individuals using GHB as a sleeping agent, wherein they awake suddenly after several hours of GHB-induced deep sleep. That is to say that, over time, the concentration of GHB in the system decreases below the threshold for significant GABAB receptor activation and activates predominantly the GHB receptor, leading to wakefulness.

Recently, analogs of GHB, such as 4-hydroxy-4-methylpentanoic acid (UMB68) have been synthesised and tested on animals, in order to gain a better understanding of GHB's mode of action. Analogues of GHB such as 3-methyl-GHB, 4-methyl-GHB, and 4-phenyl-GHB have been shown to produce similar effects to GHB in some animal studies, but these compounds are even less well researched than GHB itself. Of these analogues, only 4-methyl-GHB (γ-hydroxyvaleric acid, GHV) and a prodrug form γ-valerolactone (GVL) have been reported as drugs of abuse in humans, and on the available evidence seem to be less potent but more toxic than GHB, with a particular tendency to cause nausea and vomiting.

Other prodrug ester forms of GHB have also rarely been encountered by law enforcement, including 1,4-butanediol diacetate (BDDA/DABD), methyl-4-acetoxybutanoate (MAB), and ethyl-4-acetoxybutanoate (EAB), but these are, in general, covered by analogue laws in jurisdictions where GHB is illegal, and little is known about them beyond their delayed onset and longer duration of action. The intermediate compound γ-hydroxybutyraldehyde (GHBAL) is also a prodrug for GHB; however, as with all aliphatic aldehydes this compound is caustic and is strong-smelling and foul-tasting; actual use of this compound as an intoxicant is likely to be unpleasant and result in severe nausea and vomiting.

Only a minor portion (1–5%) of the administered GHB dose is excreted unchanged in the urine. Studies have shown that the maximum concentration of GHB in urine appears within 1 hour and rapidly declines thereafter. The vast majority (95–98%) undergoes extensive metabolism in the liver. GHB is broken down through a series of enzymatic pathways. The primary route involves conversion to succinic semialdehyde (SSA) by either GHB dehydrogenase (ADH) or GHB transhydrogenase. SSA is further oxidized by succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase (SSADH) to succinic acid, which enters the Krebs cycle and is ultimately converted into carbon dioxide and water.

Both of the metabolic breakdown pathways shown for GHB can run in either direction, depending on the concentrations of the substances involved, so the body can make its own GHB either from GABA or from succinic semialdehyde. Under normal physiological conditions, the concentration of GHB in the body is rather low, and the pathways would run in the reverse direction to what is shown here to produce endogenous GHB. However, when GHB is consumed for recreational or health promotion purposes, its concentration in the body is much higher than normal, which changes the enzyme kinetics so that these pathways operate to metabolise GHB rather than producing it.

History
Alexander Zaytsev worked on this chemical family and published work on it in 1874. The first extended research into GHB and its use in humans was conducted in the early 1960s by Henri Laborit to use in studying the neurotransmitter GABA. It was studied in a range of uses including obstetric surgery and during childbirth and as an anxiolytic; there were anecdotal reports of it having antidepressant and aphrodisiac effects as well. It was also studied as an intravenous anesthetic agent and was marketed for that purpose starting in 1964 in Europe but it was not widely adopted as it caused seizures; as of 2006 that use was still authorized in France and Italy but not widely used. It was also studied to treat alcohol addiction; while the evidence for this use is weak; however, sodium oxybate is marketed for this use in Italy.

GHB and sodium oxybate were also studied for use in narcolepsy from the 1960s onwards.

In May 1990 GHB was introduced as a dietary supplement and was marketed to body builders, for help with weight control and as a sleep aid, and as a "replacement" for l-tryptophan, which was removed from the market in November 1989 when batches contaminated with trace impurities were found to cause eosinophilia–myalgia syndrome, although eosinophilia–myalgia syndrome is also tied to tryptophan overload. In 2001 tryptophan supplement sales were allowed to resume, and in 2005 the FDA ban on tryptophan supplement importation was lifted. By November 1989 57 cases of illness caused by the GHB supplements had been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with people having taken up to three teaspoons of GHB; there were no deaths but nine people needed care in an intensive care unit. The FDA issued a warning in November 1990 that sale of GHB was illegal. GHB continued to be manufactured and sold illegally and it and analogs were adopted as a club drug and came to be used as a date rape drug, and the DEA made seizures and the FDA reissued warnings several times throughout the 1990s.

At the same time, research on the use of GHB in the form of sodium oxybate had formalized, as a company called Orphan Medical had filed an investigational new drug application and was running clinical trials with the intention of gaining regulatory approval for use to treat narcolepsy.

A popular children's toy, Bindeez (also known as Aqua Dots, in the United States), produced by Melbourne company Moose, was banned in Australia in early November 2007 when it was discovered that 1,4-butanediol (1,4-B), which is metabolized into GHB, had been substituted for the non-toxic plasticiser 1,5-pentanediol in the bead manufacturing process. Three young children were hospitalized as a result of ingesting a large number of the beads, and the toy was recalled.

Legal status

In the United States, GHB was placed on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act in March 2000. However, used in sodium oxybate under an IND or NDA from the US FDA, it is considered a Schedule III substance but with Schedule I trafficking penalties, one of several drugs that are listed in multiple schedules.

On 20 March 2001, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs placed GHB in Schedule IV of the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

In the UK GHB was made a class C drug in June 2003. In October 2013 the ACMD recommended upgrading it from schedule IV to schedule II in line with UN recommendations. Their report concluded that the minimal use of Xyrem in the UK meant that prescribers would be minimally inconvenienced by the rescheduling. This advice was followed and GHB was moved to schedule 2 on 7 January 2015. In April 2022 GHB was changed from class C to class B.

In Hong Kong, GHB is regulated under Schedule 1 of Hong Kong's Chapter 134 Dangerous Drugs Ordinance. It can only be used legally by health professionals and for university research purposes. The substance can be given by pharmacists under a prescription. Anyone who supplies the substance without prescription can be fined HK$10,000. The penalty for trafficking or manufacturing the substance is a HK$150,000 fine and life imprisonment. Possession of the substance for consumption without license from the Department of Health is illegal with a HK$100,000 fine or five years of jail time.

In Canada, GHB has been a Schedule I controlled substance since 6 November 2012 (the same schedule that contains heroin and cocaine). Prior to that date, it was a Schedule III controlled substance (the same schedule that contains amphetamines and LSD).

In New Zealand and Australia, GHB, 1,4-B, and GBL are all Class B illegal drugs, along with any possible esters, ethers, and aldehydes. GABA itself is also listed as an illegal drug in these jurisdictions, which seems unusual given its failure to cross the blood–brain barrier, but there was a perception among legislators that all known analogues should be covered as far as this was possible. Attempts to circumvent the illegal status of GHB have led to the sale of derivatives such as 4-methyl-GHB (γ-hydroxyvaleric acid, GHV) and its prodrug form γ-valerolactone (GVL), but these are also covered under the law by virtue of their being "substantially similar" to GHB or GBL, so importation, sale, possession and use of these compounds is also considered to be illegal.

In Chile, GHB is a controlled drug under the law Ley de substancias psicotrópicas y estupefacientes (psychotropic substances and narcotics).

In Norway and in Switzerland, GHB is considered a narcotic and is only available by prescription under the trade name Xyrem (Union Chimique Belge S.A.).

Sodium oxybate is also used therapeutically in Italy under the brand name Alcover for treatment of alcohol withdrawal and dependence.

title: Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid


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Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno (Iordanus Brunus Nolanus; born Filippo Bruno, January or February 1548 – 17 February 1600) was an Italian philosopher, poet, alchemist, astronomer, cosmological theorist and esotericist. He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended to include the then-novel Copernican model. He practiced Hermeticism and gave a mystical stance to exploring the universe. He proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets (exoplanets), and he raised the possibility that these planets might foster life of their own, a cosmological position known as cosmic pluralism. He also insisted that the universe is infinite and could have no center.

Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges of denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno's pantheism was not taken lightly by the church, nor was his teaching of metempsychosis regarding the reincarnation of the soul. The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned alive at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori in 1600. After his death, he gained considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science. Some historians are of the opinion his heresy trial was not a response to his cosmological views but rather a response to his religious and afterlife views,   while others find the main reason for Bruno's death was indeed his cosmological views. Bruno's case is still considered a landmark in the history of free thought and the emerging sciences.

In addition to cosmology, Bruno also wrote extensively on the art of memory, a loosely organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles. Historian Frances Yates argues that Bruno was deeply influenced by the presocratic Empedocles, Neoplatonism, Renaissance Hermeticism, and Book of Genesis-like legends surrounding the Hellenistic conception of Hermes Trismegistus. Other studies of Bruno have focused on his qualitative approach to mathematics and his application of the spatial concepts of geometry to language.

Early years, 1548–1576
Born Filippo Bruno in Nola (a comune in the modern-day province of Naples, in the Southern Italian region of Campania, then part of the Kingdom of Naples) in 1548, he was the son of Giovanni Bruno (1517- c. 1592), a soldier, and Fraulissa Savolino (1520-?). In his youth he was sent to Naples to be educated. He was tutored privately at the Augustinian monastery there, and attended public lectures at the Studium Generale. At the age of 17, he entered the Dominican Order at the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, taking the name Giordano, after Giordano Crispo, his metaphysics tutor. He continued his studies there, completing his novitiate, and ordained a priest in 1572 at age 24. During his time in Naples, he became known for his skill with the art of memory and on one occasion traveled to Rome to demonstrate his mnemonic system before Pope Pius V and Cardinal Rebiba. In his later years, Bruno claimed that the Pope accepted his dedication to him of the lost work On The Ark of Noah at this time.

While Bruno was distinguished for outstanding ability, his taste for free thinking and forbidden books soon caused him difficulties. Given the controversy he caused in later life, it is surprising that he was able to remain within the monastic system for eleven years. In his testimony to Venetian inquisitors during his trial many years later, he says that proceedings were twice taken against him for having cast away images of the saints, retaining only a crucifix, and for having recommended controversial texts to a novice. Such behavior could perhaps be overlooked, but Bruno's situation became much more serious when he was reported to have defended the Arian heresy, and when a copy of the banned writings of Erasmus, annotated by him, was discovered hidden in the monastery latrine. When he learned that an indictment was being prepared against him in Naples he fled, shedding his religious habit, at least for a time.

First years of wandering, 1576–1583
Bruno first went to the Genoese port of Noli, then to Savona, Turin and finally to Venice, where he published his lost work On the Signs of the Times with the permission (so he claimed at his trial) of the Dominican Remigio Nannini Fiorentino. From Venice he went to Padua, where he met fellow Dominicans who convinced him to wear his religious habit again. From Padua he went to Bergamo and then across the Alps to Chambéry and Lyon. His movements after this time are obscure.

In 1579, Bruno arrived in Geneva. During his Venetian trial, he told inquisitors that while in Geneva he told the Marchese de Vico of Naples, who was notable for helping Italian refugees in Geneva, "I did not intend to adopt the religion of the city. I desired to stay there only that I might live at liberty and in security." Bruno had a pair of breeches made for himself, and the Marchese and others apparently made Bruno a gift of a sword, hat, cape and other necessities for dressing himself; in such clothing Bruno could no longer be recognized as a priest. Things apparently went well for Bruno for a time, as he entered his name in the Rector's Book of the University of Geneva in May 1579. But in keeping with his personality he could not long remain silent. In August he published an attack on the work of, a distinguished professor. Bruno and the printer, Jean Bergeon, were promptly arrested. Rather than apologizing, Bruno insisted on continuing to defend his publication. He was refused the right to take sacrament. Though this right was soon restored, he left Geneva.

He went to France, arriving first in Lyon, and thereafter settling for a time (1580–1581) in Toulouse, where he took his doctorate in theology and was elected by students to lecture in philosophy. He also attempted at this time to return to Catholicism, but was denied absolution by the Jesuit priest he approached. When religious strife broke out in the summer of 1581, he moved to Paris. There he held a cycle of thirty lectures on theological topics and also began to gain fame for his prodigious memory. His talents attracted the benevolent attention of the king Henry III; Bruno subsequently reported: "'I got me such a name that King Henry III summoned me one day to discover from me if the memory which I possessed was natural or acquired by magic art. I satisfied him that it did not come from sorcery but from organized knowledge; and, following this, I got a book on memory printed, entitled The Shadows of Ideas, which I dedicated to His Majesty. Forthwith he gave me an Extraordinary Lectureship with a salary.'"

In Paris, Bruno enjoyed the protection of his powerful French patrons. During this period, he published several works on mnemonics, including De umbris idearum (On the Shadows of Ideas, 1582), Ars memoriae (Giordano Bruno) (The Art of Memory, 1582), and Cantus circaeus (Circe's Song, 1582; described at ). All of these were based on his mnemonic models of organized knowledge and experience, as opposed to the simplistic logic-based mnemonic techniques of Petrus Ramus then becoming popular. Bruno also published a comedy summarizing some of his philosophical positions, titled Il Candelaio (The Candlemaker, 1582). In the 16th century dedications were, as a rule, approved beforehand, and hence were a way of placing a work under the protection of an individual. Given that Bruno dedicated various works to the likes of King Henry III, Sir Philip Sidney, Michel de Castelnau (French Ambassador to England), and possibly Pope Pius V, it is apparent that this wanderer had risen sharply in status and moved in powerful circles.

England, 1583–1585
In April 1583, Bruno went to England with letters of recommendation from Henry III as a guest of the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau. Bruno lived at the French embassy with the lexicographer John Florio. There he became acquainted with the poet Philip Sidney (to whom he dedicated two books) and other members of the Hermetic circle around John Dee, though there is no evidence that Bruno ever met Dee himself. He also lectured at Oxford, and unsuccessfully sought a teaching position there. His views were controversial, notably with John Underhill, Rector of Lincoln College and subsequently bishop of Oxford, and George Abbot, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. Abbot mocked Bruno for supporting "the opinion of Copernicus that the earth did go round, and the heavens did stand still; whereas in truth it was his own head which rather did run round, and his brains did not stand still", and found Bruno had both plagiarized and misrepresented Ficino's work, leading Bruno to return to the continent.

Nevertheless, his stay in England was fruitful. During that time Bruno completed and published some of his most important works, the six "Italian Dialogues", including the cosmological tracts La cena de le ceneri (The Ash Wednesday Supper, 1584), De la causa, principio et uno (On Cause, Principle and Unity, 1584), De l'infinito, universo et mondi (On the Infinite, Universe and Worlds, 1584) as well as Lo spaccio de la bestia trionfante (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, 1584) and De gli eroici furori (On the Heroic Frenzies, 1585). Some of these were printed by John Charlewood. Some of the works that Bruno published in London, notably The Ash Wednesday Supper, appear to have given offense. Once again, Bruno's controversial views and tactless language lost him the support of his friends. John Bossy has advanced the theory that, while staying in the French Embassy in London, Bruno was also spying on Catholic conspirators, under the pseudonym "Henry Fagot", for Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State.

Bruno is sometimes cited as being the first to propose that the universe is infinite, which he did during his time in England, but an English scientist, Thomas Digges, put forth this idea in a published work in 1576, some eight years earlier than Bruno. An infinite universe and the possibility of alien life had also been earlier suggested by German Catholic Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa in "On Learned Ignorance" published in 1440 and Bruno attributed his understanding of multiple worlds to this earlier scholar, who he called "the divine Cusanus".

Last years of wandering, 1585–1592
In October 1585, Castelnau was recalled to France, and Bruno went with him. In Paris, Bruno found a tense political situation. Moreover, his 120 theses against Aristotelian natural science soon put him in ill favor. In 1586, following a violent quarrel over these theses, he left France for Germany.

In Germany he failed to obtain a teaching position at Marburg, but was granted permission to teach at Wittenberg, where he lectured on Aristotle for two years. However, with a change of intellectual climate there, he was no longer welcome, and went in 1588 to Prague, where he obtained 300 taler from Rudolf II, but no teaching position. He went on to serve briefly as a professor in Helmstedt, but had to flee again in 1590 when he was excommunicated by the Lutherans.

During this period he produced several Latin works, dictated to his friend and secretary Girolamo Besler, including De Magia (On Magic), Theses De Magia (Theses on Magic) and De Vinculis in Genere (A General Account of Bonding). All these were apparently transcribed or recorded by Besler (or Bisler) between 1589 and 1590. He also published De Imaginum, Signorum, Et Idearum Compositione (On the Composition of Images, Signs and Ideas, 1591).

In 1591 he was in Frankfurt, where he received an invitation from the Venetian patrician Giovanni Mocenigo, who wished to be instructed in the art of memory, and also heard of a vacant chair in mathematics at the University of Padua. At the time the Inquisition seemed to be losing some of its strictness, and because the Republic of Venice was the most liberal state in the Italian Peninsula, Bruno was lulled into making the fatal mistake of returning to Italy.

He went first to Padua, where he taught briefly, and applied unsuccessfully for the chair of mathematics, which was given instead to Galileo Galilei one year later. Bruno accepted Mocenigo's invitation and moved to Venice in March 1592. For about two months he served as an in-house tutor to Mocenigo, to whom he let slip some of his heterodox ideas. Mocenigo denounced him to the Venetian Inquisition, which had Bruno arrested on 22 May 1592. Among the numerous charges of blasphemy and heresy brought against him in Venice, based on Mocenigo's denunciation, was his belief in the plurality of worlds, as well as accusations of personal misconduct. Bruno defended himself skillfully, stressing the philosophical character of some of his positions, denying others and admitting that he had had doubts on some matters of dogma. The Roman Inquisition, however, asked for his transfer to Rome. After several months of argument, the Venetian authorities reluctantly consented and Bruno was sent to Rome in January 1593.

Imprisonment, trial and execution, 1593–1600
During the seven years of his trial in Rome, Bruno was held in confinement, lastly in the Tower of Nona. Some important documents about the trial are lost, but others have been preserved, among them a summary of the proceedings that was rediscovered in 1940. The numerous charges against Bruno, based on some of his books as well as on witness accounts, included blasphemy, immoral conduct, and heresy in matters of dogmatic theology, and involved some of the basic doctrines of his philosophy and cosmology. Luigi Firpo speculates the charges made against Bruno by the Roman Inquisition were:

 * holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith and speaking against it and its ministers;
 * holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and the Incarnation;
 * holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith pertaining to Jesus as the Christ;
 * holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith regarding the virginity of Mary, mother of Jesus;
 * holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about both Transubstantiation and the Mass;
 * claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity;
 * believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes;
 * dealing in magics and divination.

Bruno defended himself as he had in Venice, insisting that he accepted the Church's dogmatic teachings, but trying to preserve the basis of his cosmological views. In particular, he held firm to his belief in the plurality of worlds, although he was admonished to abandon it. His trial was overseen by the Inquisitor Cardinal Bellarmine, who demanded a full recantation, which Bruno eventually refused. On 20 January 1600, Pope Clement VIII declared Bruno a heretic, and the Inquisition issued a sentence of death. According to the correspondence of Gaspar Schopp of Breslau, he is said to have made a threatening gesture towards his judges and to have replied: Maiori forsan cum timore sententiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam ("Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it").

He was turned over to the secular authorities. On 17 February 1600, in the Campo de' Fiori (a central Roman market square), naked, with his "tongue imprisoned because of his wicked words", he was burned alive at the stake. His ashes were thrown into the Tiber river.

All of Bruno's works were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1603. The inquisition cardinals who judged Giordano Bruno were Cardinal Bellarmino (Bellarmine), Cardinal Madruzzo (Madruzzi), Camillo Cardinal Borghese (later Pope Paul V), Domenico Cardinal Pinelli, Pompeio Cardinal Arrigoni, Cardinal Sfondrati, Pedro Cardinal De Deza Manuel and Cardinal Santorio (Archbishop of Santa Severina, Cardinal-Bishop of Palestrina).

The measures taken to prevent Bruno continuing to speak have resulted in his becoming a symbol for free thought and speech in present-day Rome, where an annual memorial service takes place close to the spot where he was executed.

Physical appearance
The earliest likeness of Bruno is an engraving published in 1715 and cited by Salvestrini as "the only known portrait of Bruno". Salvestrini suggests that it is a re-engraving made from a now lost original. This engraving has provided the source for later images.

The records of Bruno's imprisonment by the Venetian inquisition in May 1592 describe him as a man "of average height, with a hazel-coloured beard and the appearance of being about forty years of age". Alternately, a passage in a work by George Abbot indicates that Bruno was of diminutive stature: "When that Italian Didapper, who intituled himselfe Philotheus Iordanus Brunus Nolanus, magis elaboratae Theologiae Doctor, &c. with a name longer than his body...".

Contemporary cosmological beliefs
In the first half of the 15th century, Nicholas of Cusa challenged the then widely accepted philosophies of Aristotelianism, envisioning instead an infinite universe whose center was everywhere and circumference nowhere, and moreover teeming with countless stars. He also predicted that neither were the rotational orbits circular nor were their movements uniform.

In the second half of the 16th century, the theories of Copernicus (1473–1543) began diffusing through Europe. Copernicus conserved the idea of planets fixed to solid spheres, but considered the apparent motion of the stars to be an illusion caused by the rotation of the Earth on its axis; he also preserved the notion of an immobile center, but it was the Sun rather than the Earth. Copernicus also argued the Earth was a planet orbiting the Sun once every year. However he maintained the Ptolemaic hypothesis that the orbits of the planets were composed of perfect circles—deferents and epicycles—and that the stars were fixed on a stationary outer sphere.

Despite the widespread publication of Copernicus' work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, during Bruno's time most educated Catholics subscribed to the Aristotelian geocentric view that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that all heavenly bodies revolved around it. The ultimate limit of the universe was the primum mobile, whose diurnal rotation was conferred upon it by a transcendental God, not part of the universe (although, as the kingdom of heaven, adjacent to it ), a motionless prime mover and first cause. The fixed stars were part of this celestial sphere, all at the same fixed distance from the immobile Earth at the center of the sphere. Ptolemy had numbered these at 1,022, grouped into 48 constellations. The planets were each fixed to a transparent sphere.

Few astronomers of Bruno's time accepted Copernicus's heliocentric model. Among those who did were the Germans Michael Maestlin (1550–1631), Christoph Rothmann, Johannes Kepler (1571–1630); the Englishman Thomas Digges (c. 1546–1595), author of A Perfit Description of the Caelestial Orbes; and the Italian Galileo Galilei (1564–1642).

Cosmological claims
In 1584, Bruno published two important philosophical dialogues (La Cena de le Ceneri and De l'infinito universo et mondi) in which he argued against the planetary spheres (Christoph Rothmann did the same in 1586 as did Tycho Brahe in 1587) and affirmed the Copernican principle.

In particular, to support the Copernican view and oppose the objection according to which the motion of the Earth would be perceived by means of the motion of winds, clouds etc., in La Cena de le Ceneri Bruno anticipates some of the arguments of Galilei on the relativity principle. Note that he also uses the example now known as Galileo's ship.

"Theophilus – [...] air through which the clouds and winds move are parts of the Earth, [...] to mean under the name of Earth the whole machinery and the entire animated part, which consists of dissimilar parts; so that the rivers, the rocks, the seas, the whole vaporous and turbulent air, which is enclosed within the highest mountains, should belong to the Earth as its members, just as the air [does] in the lungs and in other cavities of animals by which they breathe, widen their arteries, and other similar effects necessary for life are performed. The clouds, too, move through accidents in the body of the Earth and are in its bowels as are the waters. [...] With the Earth move [...] all things that are on the Earth. If, therefore, from a point outside the Earth something were thrown upon the Earth, it would lose, because of the latter's motion, its straightness as would be seen on the ship [...] moving along a river, if someone on point C of the riverbank were to throw a stone along a straight line, and would see the stone miss its target by the amount of the velocity of the ship's motion. But if someone were placed high on the mast of that ship, move as it may however fast, he would not miss his target at all, so that the stone or some other heavy thing thrown downward would not come along a straight line from the point E which is at the top of the mast, or cage, to the point D which is at the bottom of the mast, or at some point in the bowels and body of the ship. Thus, if from the point D to the point E someone who is inside the ship would throw a stone straight up, it would return to the bottom along the same line however far the ship moved, provided it was not subject to any pitch and roll.'"

Bruno's infinite universe was filled with a substance—a "pure air", aether, or spiritus—that offered no resistance to the heavenly bodies which, in Bruno's view, rather than being fixed, moved under their own impetus (momentum). Most dramatically, he completely abandoned the idea of a hierarchical universe.

"The universe is then one, infinite, immobile... It is not capable of comprehension and therefore is endless and limitless, and to that extent infinite and indeterminable, and consequently immobile."

Bruno's cosmology distinguishes between "suns" which produce their own light and heat, and have other bodies moving around them; and "earths" which move around suns and receive light and heat from them. Bruno suggested that some, if not all, of the objects classically known as fixed stars are in fact suns. According to astrophysicist Steven Soter, he was the first person to grasp that "stars are other suns with their own planets."

Bruno wrote that other worlds "have no less virtue nor a nature different from that of our Earth" and, like Earth, "contain animals and inhabitants".

During the late 16th century, and throughout the 17th century, Bruno's ideas were held up for ridicule, debate, or inspiration. Margaret Cavendish, for example, wrote an entire series of poems against "atoms" and "infinite worlds" in Poems and Fancies in 1664. Bruno's true, if partial, vindication would have to wait for the implications and impact of Newtonian cosmology.

Bruno's overall contribution to the birth of modern science is still controversial. Some scholars follow Frances Yates in stressing the importance of Bruno's ideas about the universe being infinite and lacking geocentric structure as a crucial crossing point between the old and the new. Others see in Bruno's idea of multiple worlds instantiating the infinite possibilities of a pristine, indivisible One, a forerunner of Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

While many academics note Bruno's theological position as pantheism, several have described it as pandeism, and some also as panentheism. Physicist and philosopher Max Bernhard Weinstein in his Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Nature"), wrote that the theological model of pandeism was strongly expressed in the teachings of Bruno, especially with respect to the vision of a deity for which "the concept of God is not separated from that of the universe." However, Otto Kern takes exception to what he considers Weinstein's overbroad assertions that Bruno, as well as other historical philosophers such as John Scotus Eriugena, Nicholas of Cusa, Mendelssohn, and Lessing, were pandeists or leaned towards pandeism. Review of Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") in Emil Schürer, Adolf von Harnack, editors, Theologische Literaturzeitung ("Theological Literature Journal"), Volume 35, column 827 (1910): "Dem Verfasser hat anscheinend die Einteilung: religiöse, rationale und naturwissenschaftlich fundierte Weltanschauungen vorgeschwebt; er hat sie dann aber seinem Material gegenüber schwer durchführbar gefunden und durch die mitgeteilte ersetzt, die das Prinzip der Einteilung nur noch dunkel durchschimmern läßt. Damit hängt wohl auch das vom Verfasser gebildete unschöne griechisch-lateinische Mischwort des 'Pandeismus' zusammen. Nach S. 228 versteht er darunter im Unterschied von dem mehr metaphysisch gearteten Pantheismus einen 'gesteigerten und vereinheitlichten Animismus', also eine populäre Art religiöser Weltdeutung. Prhagt man lieh dies ein, so erstaunt man über die weite Ausdehnung, die dem Begriff in der Folge gegeben wird. Nach S. 284 ist Scotus Erigena ein ganzer, nach S. 300 Anselm von Canterbury ein 'halber Pandeist'; aber auch bei Nikolaus Cusanus und Giordano Bruno, ja selbst bei Mendelssohn und Lessing wird eine Art von Pandeismus gefunden (S. 306. 321. 346.)." Translation: "The author apparently intended to divide up religious, rational and scientifically based philosophies, but found his material overwhelming, resulting in an effort that can shine through the principle of classification only darkly. This probably is also the source of the unsightly Greek-Latin compound word, 'Pandeism.' At page 228, he understands the difference from the more metaphysical kind of pantheism, an enhanced unified animism that is a popular religious worldview. In remembering this borrowing, we were struck by the vast expanse given the term. According to page 284, Scotus Erigena is one entirely, at p. 300 Anselm of Canterbury is 'half Pandeist'; but also Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno, and even in Mendelssohn and Lessing a kind of Pandeism is found (p. 306 321 346.)". Discover editor Corey S. Powell also described Bruno's cosmology as pandeistic, writing that it was "a tool for advancing an animist or Pandeist theology", and this assessment of Bruno as a pandeist was agreed with by science writer Michael Newton Keas, and The Daily Beast writer David Sessions.

Late Vatican position
The Vatican has published few official statements about Bruno's trial and execution. In 1942, Cardinal Giovanni Mercati, who discovered a number of lost documents relating to Bruno's trial, stated that the Church was perfectly justified in condemning him. On the 400th anniversary of Bruno's death, in 2000, Cardinal Angelo Sodano declared Bruno's death to be a "sad episode" but, despite his regret, he defended Bruno's prosecutors, maintaining that the Inquisitors "had the desire to serve freedom and promote the common good and did everything possible to save his life". In the same year, Pope John Paul II made a general apology for "the use of violence that some have committed in the service of truth".

A martyr of science
Some authors have characterized Bruno as a "martyr of science", suggesting parallels with the Galileo affair which began around 1610. "It should not be supposed," writes A. M. Paterson of Bruno and his "heliocentric solar system", that he "reached his conclusions via some mystical revelation....His work is an essential part of the scientific and philosophical developments that he initiated." Paterson echoes Hegel in writing that Bruno "ushers in a modern theory of knowledge that understands all natural things in the universe to be known by the human mind through the mind's dialectical structure".

Ingegno writes that Bruno embraced the philosophy of Lucretius, "aimed at liberating man from the fear of death and the gods." Characters in Bruno's Cause, Principle and Unity desire "to improve speculative science and knowledge of natural things," and to achieve a philosophy "which brings about the perfection of the human intellect most easily and eminently, and most closely corresponds to the truth of nature."

Other scholars oppose such views, and claim Bruno's martyrdom to science to be exaggerated, or outright false. For Yates, while "nineteenth century liberals" were thrown "into ecstasies" over Bruno's Copernicanism, "Bruno pushes Copernicus' scientific work back into a prescientific stage, back into Hermeticism, interpreting the Copernican diagram as a hieroglyph of divine mysteries."

According to historian Mordechai Feingold, "Both admirers and critics of Giordano Bruno basically agree that he was pompous and arrogant, highly valuing his opinions and showing little patience with anyone who even mildly disagreed with him." Discussing Bruno's experience of rejection when he visited Oxford University, Feingold suggests that "it might have been Bruno's manner, his language and his self-assertiveness, rather than his ideas" that caused offence.

Theological heresy
In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel writes that Bruno's life represented "a bold rejection of all Catholic beliefs resting on mere authority."

Alfonso Ingegno states that Bruno's philosophy "challenges the developments of the Reformation, calls into question the truth-value of the whole of Christianity, and claims that Christ perpetrated a deceit on mankind... Bruno suggests that we can now recognize the universal law which controls the perpetual becoming of all things in an infinite universe." A. M. Paterson says that, while we no longer have a copy of the official papal condemnation of Bruno, his heresies included "the doctrine of the infinite universe and the innumerable worlds" and his beliefs "on the movement of the earth".

Michael White notes that the Inquisition may have pursued Bruno early in his life on the basis of his opposition to Aristotle, interest in Arianism, reading of Erasmus, and possession of banned texts. White considers that Bruno's later heresy was "multifaceted" and may have rested on his conception of infinite worlds. "This was perhaps the most dangerous notion of all... If other worlds existed with intelligent beings living there, did they too have their visitations? The idea was quite unthinkable."

Frances Yates rejects what she describes as the "legend that Bruno was prosecuted as a philosophical thinker, was burned for his daring views on innumerable worlds or on the movement of the earth." Yates however writes that "the Church was... perfectly within its rights if it included philosophical points in its condemnation of Bruno's heresies" because "the philosophical points were quite inseparable from the heresies."

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "in 1600 there was no official Catholic position on the Copernican system, and it was certainly not a heresy. When [...] Bruno [...] was burned at the stake as a heretic, it had nothing to do with his writings in support of Copernican cosmology."

The website of the Vatican Apostolic Archive, discussing a summary of legal proceedings against Bruno in Rome, states:

"In the same rooms where Giordano Bruno was questioned, for the same important reasons of the relationship between science and faith, at the dawning of the new astronomy and at the decline of Aristotle's philosophy, sixteen years later, Cardinal Bellarmino, who then contested Bruno's heretical theses, summoned Galileo Galilei, who also faced a famous inquisitorial trial, which, luckily for him, ended with a simple abjuration."

Artistic depictions
Following the 1870 Capture of Rome by the newly created Kingdom of Italy and the end of the Church's temporal power over the city, the erection of a monument to Bruno on the site of his execution became feasible. The monument was sharply opposed by the clerical party, but was finally erected by the Rome Municipality and inaugurated in 1889.

A statue of a stretched human figure standing on its head, designed by Alexander Polzin and depicting Bruno's death at the stake, was placed in Potsdamer Platz station in Berlin on 2 March 2008.

Retrospective iconography of Bruno shows him with a Dominican cowl but not tonsured. Edward Gosselin has suggested that it is likely Bruno kept his tonsure at least until 1579, and it is possible that he wore it again thereafter.

An idealized animated version of Bruno appears in the first episode of the 2014 television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. In this depiction, Bruno is shown with a more modern look, without tonsure and wearing clerical robes and without his hood. Cosmos presents Bruno as an impoverished philosopher who was ultimately executed due to his refusal to recant his belief in other worlds, a portrayal that was criticized by some as simplistic or historically inaccurate. Corey S. Powell, of Discover magazine, says of Bruno, "A major reason he moved around so much is that he was argumentative, sarcastic, and drawn to controversy...He was a brilliant, complicated, difficult man.

References in poetry
Poems that refer to Bruno include:
 * "The Monument of Giordano Bruno" (1889) by Algernon Charles Swinburne, written when the statue of Bruno was constructed in Rome.
 * "Campo Dei Fiori" (1943) by Czesław Miłosz, which draws parallels between indifference to the fate of Bruno and indifference to the victims of the then-ongoing Occupation of Poland.
 * "The Emancipators" (1958) by Randall Jarrell, which addresses Bruno, along with Galileo and Newton, as an originator of the modern scientific-industrial world.
 * "What He Thought" (1994) by Heather McHugh, a (possibly autobiographical) poem about a group of American poets who visit Italy and are lectured about Bruno and the nature of poetry by a local arts administrator. The poem was published in the collection Hinge & Sign, a nominee for the National Book Award.

Appearances in fiction
Bruno and his theory of "the coincidence of contraries" (coincidentia oppositorum) play an important role in James Joyce's 1939 novel Finnegans Wake. Joyce wrote in a letter to his patroness, Harriet Shaw Weaver, "His philosophy is a kind of dualism – every power in nature must evolve an opposite in order to realise itself and opposition brings reunion". Amongst his numerous allusions to Bruno in his novel, including his trial and torture, Joyce plays upon Bruno's notion of coincidentia oppositorum through applying his name to word puns such as "Browne and Nolan" (the name of Dublin printers) and '"brownesberrow in nolandsland".

In 1973 the biographical drama Giordano Bruno was released, an Italian/French movie directed by Giuliano Montaldo, starring Gian Maria Volonté as Bruno.

Bruno is a major character in the four-novel Aegypt sequence (1987–2007) by John Crowley. Historical episodes from Bruno’s life are fictionalized in the novels, and his philosophical ideas are key to the novels’ themes.

The Last Confession (2000) by Morris West is an unfinished, posthumously published fictional autobiography of Bruno, ostensibly written shortly before Bruno's execution.

Bruno features as the hero of the Giordano Bruno series (2010–2023) of historical crime novels by S. J. Parris (a pseudonym of Stephanie Merritt).

Appearances in music
Hans Werner Henze set his large scale cantata for orchestra, choir and four soloists, Novae de infinito laudes to Italian texts by Bruno, recorded in 1972 at the Salzburg Festival reissued on CD Orfeo C609 031B.

The Italian composer Francesco Filidei wrote an opera, based on a libretto by Stefano Busellato, titled Giordano Bruno. The premiere took place on 12 September 2015 at the Casa da Música in Porto, Portugal.

The 2016 song "Roman Sky" by heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold focuses on the death of Bruno.

Bruno is the central character in Roger Doyle’s Heresy - an electronic opera (2017).

Giordano Bruno Foundation
The Giordano Bruno Foundation (German: Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung) is a non-profit foundation based in Germany that pursues the "Support of Evolutionary Humanism". It was founded by entrepreneur Herbert Steffen in 2004. The Giordano Bruno Foundation is critical of religious fundamentalism and nationalism.

Giordano Bruno Memorial Award
The SETI League makes an annual award honoring the memory of Giordano Bruno to a deserving person or persons who have made a significant contribution to the practice of SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence). The award was proposed by sociologist Donald Tarter in 1995 on the 395th anniversary of Bruno's death. The trophy presented is called a Bruno.

Astronomical objects named after Bruno
The 22 km impact crater Giordano Bruno on the far side of the Moon is named in his honor, as are the main belt Asteroids 5148 Giordano and 13223 Cenaceneri; the latter is named after his philosophical dialogue La Cena de le Ceneri ("The Ash Wednesday Supper") (see above).

Works

 * De umbris idearum (On the Shadows of Ideas, Paris, 1582)
 * Cantus circaeus (The Incantation of Circe or Circe's Song, Paris, 1582)
 * Ars memoriae (Giordano Bruno) (The Art of Memory, Paris, 1582)
 * De compendiosa architectura et complento artis Lulli (A Compendium of Architecture and Lulli's Art, 1582)
 * Candelaio (The Torchbearer or The Candle Bearer, 1582; play)
 * Ars reminiscendi (The Art of Memory, 1583)
 * Explicatio triginta sigillorum (Explanation of Thirty Seals, 1583)
 * Sigillus sigillorum (The Seal of Seals, 1583)
 * La cena de le ceneri (The Ash Wednesday Supper, 1584)
 * De la causa, principio, et uno (Concerning Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1584)
 * On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (De l'infinito universo et mondi, 1584)
 * Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, London, 1584)
 * Cabala del cavallo Pegaseo (Cabal of the Horse Pegasus, 1585)
 * De gli eroici furori (The Heroic Frenzies, 1585)
 * Figuratio Aristotelici Physici auditus (Figures From Aristotle's Physics, 1585)
 * Dialogi duo de Fabricii Mordentis Salernitani (Two Dialogues of Fabricii Mordentis Salernitani, 1586)
 * Idiota triumphans (The Triumphant Idiot, 1586)
 * De somni interpretatione (Dream Interpretation, 1586)
 * Animadversiones circa lampadem lullianam (Amendments regarding Lull's Lantern, 1586)
 * Lampas triginta statuarum (The Lantern of Thirty Statues, 1586)
 * Centum et viginti articuli de natura et mundo adversus peripateticos (One Hundred and Twenty Articles on Nature and the World Against the Peripatetics, 1586)
 * De Lampade combinatoria Lulliana (The Lamp of Combinations according to Lull, 1587)
 * De progressu et lampade venatoria logicorum (Progress and the Hunter's Lamp of Logical Methods, 1587)
 * Oratio valedictoria (Valedictory Oration, 1588)
 * Camoeracensis Acrotismus (The Pleasure of Dispute, 1588)
 * De specierum scrutinio (1588)
 * Articuli centum et sexaginta adversus huius tempestatis mathematicos atque Philosophos (One Hundred and Sixty Theses Against Mathematicians and Philosophers, 1588)
 * Oratio consolatoria (Consolation Oration, 1589)
 * De vinculis in genere (Of Bonds in General, 1591)
 * De triplici minimo et mensura (On the Threefold Minimum and Measure, 1591)
 * De monade numero et figura (On the Monad, Number, and Figure, Frankfurt, 1591)
 * De innumerabilibus, immenso, et infigurabili (Of Innumerable Things, Vastness and the Unrepresentable, 1591)
 * De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione (On the Composition of Images, Signs and Ideas, 1591)
 * Summa terminorum metaphysicorum (Handbook of Metaphysical Terms, 1595)
 * Artificium perorandi (The Art of Communicating, 1612)

Collections

 * Jordani Bruni Nolani opera latine conscripta (Giordano Bruno the Nolan's Works Written in Latin), Dritter Band (1962) / curantibus F. Tocco et H. Vitelli

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

title: Giordano Bruno


text:
Geddy Lee

Geddy Lee Weinrib (born Gary Lee Weinrib, July 29, 1953; known professionally as Geddy Lee) is a Canadian musician, best known as the lead vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the rock group Rush. Lee joined the band in September 1968 at the request of his childhood friend Alex Lifeson, replacing original bassist and frontman Jeff Jones. Lee's solo effort, My Favourite Headache, was released in 2000.

Lee's style, technique, and skill on the bass have inspired many rock musicians such as Cliff Burton of Metallica, Steve Harris of Iron Maiden, John Myung of Dream Theater, Les Claypool of Primus, Steve Di Giorgio of Sadus, Death and Testament, and Tim Commerford of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. Along with his Rush bandmates – guitarist Alex Lifeson and drummer Neil Peart – Lee was made an Officer of the Order of Canada on May 9, 1996. The trio was the first rock band to be so honoured as a group. In 2013, the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after 14 years of eligibility. In 2006, Lee was ranked 13th by Hit Parader on their list of the 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Vocalists of All Time.

Early life
Lee was born Gary Lee Weinrib on July 29, 1953, in the North York neighbourhood of Willowdale, Toronto, to Morris Weinrib (born Moshe Meir Weinrib; 1920–1965), from Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, and Mary "Manya" Rubinstein (born Malka Rubinstein; 1925–2021), who was born in Warsaw and later grew up in Wierzbnik. His parents were Jewish Holocaust survivors from Poland who had survived the ghetto in Starachowice (where they met), followed by their imprisonments at Auschwitz and later Dachau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps during the Holocaust and World War II. They were in their teens when they were initially imprisoned at Auschwitz. "It was kind of surreal pre-teen shit", says Lee, describing how his father bribed guards to bring his mother shoes. After a period, his mother was transferred to Bergen-Belsen and his father to Dachau. When the war ended four years later, and the Allies liberated the camps, Morris set out in search of Manya and found her at a Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp. They married there and eventually emigrated to Canada.

When Lee started school, his name was incorrectly registered. As a result, Lee grew up thinking his middle name was "Lorne". As a teenager, he saw a copy of his birth certificate and discovered that his middle name was "Lee".

Lee's father died young, which forced Lee's mother to work to support their three children by running the Newmarket, Ontario, variety store that her husband had owned and managed. Lee has suggested that his father's death was probably a factor in his becoming a musician: "It was a terrible blow that I lost him, but the course of my life changed because my mother couldn't control us." He has said that losing his father at such an early age made him aware of how "quickly life can disappear", which inspired him from then on to get the most out of his life and music.

Lee turned his basement into practice space for a band he formed with high-school friends. After the band began earning income from small performances at high-school shows or other events, he decided to drop out of high school and play rock and roll professionally. His mother was devastated when he gave her the news. "All the shit I put her through", he says, "on top of the fact that she just lost her husband. I felt like I had to make sure that it was worth it. I wanted to show her that I was a professional, that I was working hard, and wasn't just a fuckin' lunatic."

Jweekly featured Lee's reflections on his mother's experiences as a refugee and on his own Jewish heritage. Lee's name, Geddy, was derived from his mother's Polish-accented pronunciation of his given first name, Gary. This was picked up by his friends in school, leading Lee to adopt it as his stage name and later his legal name, Geddy Lee Weinrib.

After Rush had become a widely recognized rock group, Lee told the group's drummer and lyricist, Neil Peart, about his mother's early life. Peart then wrote the lyrics to "Red Sector A", which was inspired by her ordeal. The song, for which Lee wrote the music, was released on the band's 1984 album Grace Under Pressure. The lyrics include the following verse:

Early years
Lee began playing music in school when he was 10 or 11 and got his first acoustic guitar at 14. In school, he first played drums, trumpet and clarinet. However, learning to play instruments in school was not satisfying to Lee, and he took basic piano lessons independently. His interest increased dramatically after listening to some of the popular rock groups at the time. His early influences included Jack Bruce of Cream, John Entwistle of The Who, Jeff Beck, and Procol Harum. "I was mainly interested in early British progressive rock", said Lee. "That's how I learned to play bass, emulating Jack Bruce and people like that." Bruce's style of music was also noticed by Lee, who liked that "his sound was distinctive – it wasn't boring." Lee has also been influenced by Paul McCartney, Chris Squire, and James Jamerson.

In 1969, Rush began playing professionally in coffeehouses, high school dances and at various outdoor recreational events. By 1971, they were now playing primarily original songs in small clubs and bars, including Toronto's Gasworks and Abbey Road Pub. Lee describes the group during these early years as being "weekend warriors". They were holding down jobs during the weekdays and playing music on weekends: "We longed to break out of the boring surrounding of the suburbs and the endless similarities . . . the shopping plazas and all that stuff. . . the music was a vehicle for us to speak out." He claims that in the beginning, they were simply "a straightforward rock band."

Short of money, they began opening concerts at venues such as Toronto's Victory Burlesque Theatre for the glam rock band New York Dolls. By 1972, Rush began performing full-length concerts, mainly consisting of original songs, in cities including Toronto and Detroit. As they gained more recognition, they began performing as an opening act for groups such as Aerosmith, Kiss, and Blue Öyster Cult.

Style
Like Cream, Rush followed the model of a "power trio", with Lee playing bass and singing. Lee's vocals produced a distinctive, "countertenor" falsetto and resonant sound. Lee possessed a three-octave vocal range spanning from baritone through tenor, alto, and mezzo-soprano pitch ranges; however, his range significantly decreased with age. Lee's playing style is widely regarded for his use of high treble and very hard playing of the strings and for utilizing the bass as a lead instrument, often contrapuntal to Lifeson's guitar. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Lee mostly used a Rickenbacker 4001 bass, with a very noticeable grit in his tone. According to Lee, during the band's "synth era" in the mid-1980s, Lee used Steinberger and later Wal basses, with the latter having more of a "jazzy" tone. From 1993's Counterparts onward, Lee began using the Fender Jazz Bass almost exclusively, returning to his trademark high treble sound. Lee had first used the Jazz Bass to record  Moving Pictures on songs such as "Tom Sawyer."

Rising popularity
After several early albums and increasing popularity, Rush's status as a rock group soared over the following five years as they consistently toured worldwide and produced successful albums, including 2112 (1976), A Farewell to Kings (1977), Hemispheres (1978), Permanent Waves (1980), and Moving Pictures (1981). Lee began adding synthesizers in 1977, with the release of A Farewell to Kings. Keyboard critic Greg Armbruster says the additional sounds from synthesizers expanded the group's "textural capabilities" and allowed the trio to produce an orchestrated and more complex progressive rock music style. It also gave Lee the ability to play bass simultaneously, as he could control the synthesizer with foot pedals. In 1981, he won Keyboard magazine's poll as "Best New Talent." By the 1984 album Grace Under Pressure, Lee was surrounding himself with stacks of keyboards on stage.

By the 1980s, Rush had become one of the "biggest rock bands on the planet", selling out arena seats when touring. Lee was known for his dynamic stage movements. According to music critic Tom Mulhern, writing in 1980, "it's dazzling to see so much sheer energy expended without a nervous breakdown." By 1996, their Test for Echo Tour began performing without an opening act, their shows lasting nearly three hours.

Music industry writer Christopher Buttner, who interviewed Lee in 1996, described him as a prodigy and "role model" for what every musician wants to be, noting his proficiency on stage. Buttner cited Lee's ability to vary time signatures, play multiple keyboards, use bass pedal controllers and control sequencers, all while singing lead vocals into as many as three microphones. Buttner adds that few musicians of any instrument "can juggle half of what Geddy can do without literally falling on their ass." As a result, notes Mulhern, Lee's instrumentation was the "pulse" of the group and created a "one-man rhythm section", which complemented guitarist Alex Lifeson and percussionist Neil Peart. Bass instructor Allan Slutsky, or "Dr Licks", credits Lee's "biting, high-end bass lines and creative synthesizer work" for helping the group become "one of the most innovative" of all the groups that play arena rock. By 1989, Guitar Player magazine had designated Lee the "Best Rock Bass" player from their reader's poll for the previous five years.

Greg Prato of AllMusic wrote that "few hard rock bassists have been as influential as Rush's Geddy Lee." Bass players who have cited Lee as an influence include Cliff Burton of Metallica, Steve Harris of Iron Maiden, John Myung of Dream Theater, Les Claypool of Primus, and Steve Di Giorgio of Sadus, Death and Testament.

My Favourite Headache
My Favourite Headache, Lee's first and to-date only solo album, was released on November 14, 2000, while Rush was on a hiatus following the deaths of Neil Peart's daughter and wife. Musicians associated with the project included friend and Rush collaborator Ben Mink, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron, and others.

Side projects
The bulk of Lee's work in music has been with Rush (see Rush discography). However, Lee has also contributed to a body of work outside of his involvement with the band through guest appearances and album production. In 1980, Lee was brought in to produce Toronto-based band Wireless who had previously opened up for Rush and were on the verge of breaking up. With Lee at the helm, the group recorded their third and final album, No Static, released on Rush's label, Anthem Records.

In 1981, Lee was the featured guest for the hit song "Take Off" and its included comedic commentary with Bob and Doug McKenzie (played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, respectively) for the McKenzie Brothers' comedy album Great White North, which was released on Rush's Anthem label. While Rush has had great success selling albums, "Take Off" is the highest-charting single on the Billboard Hot 100 of Lee's career.

In 1982, Lee produced the first (and only) album from Toronto's new wave band Boys Brigade. On the 1985 album We Are the World, by humanitarian consortium USA for Africa, Lee recorded guest vocals for the song "Tears Are Not Enough". Lee sang "O Canada", the Canadian national anthem, at Baltimore's Camden Yards for the 1993 Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

Another version of "O Canada", with a rock arrangement, was recorded by Lee and Lifeson for the 1999 film soundtrack South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.

Lee also plays bass on Canadian rock band I Mother Earth's track "Good for Sule", which is featured on the group's 1999 album Blue Green Orange.

Along with his bandmates, Lee was a guest musician on the Max Webster song "Battle Scar", from the 1980 album Universal Juveniles.

Lee appeared in Broken Social Scene's music video for their 2006 single "Fire Eye'd Boy", judging the band while performing various musical tasks. In 2006, Lee joined Lifeson's supergroup, the Big Dirty Band, to provide songs accompanying Trailer Park Boys: The Movie.

In 2017, Lee performed in place of late bassist Chris Squire with Yes during the band's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, playing bass for the song "Roundabout."

In 2018, Lee published Geddy Lee's Big Beautiful Book of Bass, which highlights his collection of over 250 basses along with interviews with some of the leading bass players and bass technicians.

In 2020, Lee provided guest vocals to an all-star Canadian rendition of the late Bill Withers song "Lean on Me" during the TV special Stronger Together, Tous Ensemble, a Canadian benefit performance simulcast by every major television network in Canada as a benefit for Food Banks Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked him as the 24th-greatest bassist of all time.

In September 2021, Barenaked Ladies frontman Ed Robertson revealed that he was working on a "secret project" with Lee, which turned out to be callouts for a subsequent Rush pinball machine.

In 2022, he appeared as a guest star playing Thomas Sawyer on the acclaimed long-running CBC period drama Murdoch Mysteries.

In November 2023, Lee published an autobiography titled My Effin' Life. The book was promoted with a 19-date tour of the UK and North America.

On December 5, 2023, Paramount+ released a video series, "Geddy Lee Asks: Are Bass Players Human Too?" Four episodes were aired on Les Claypool, Robert Trujillo, Melissa Auf Der Maur, and Krist Novoselic. Each episode features Lee visiting with and talking to the guest bassist.

Collections
Lee is a collector, and has collected baseball ephemera, vintage bass guitars, and wines, with a collection of 5,000 bottles. As a child he claims to have collected stamps, and vinyl records. He went on to collect first edition books. He then also began collecting 6-string guitars. Lee is also an avid watch collector.

Baseball
Lee is also a longtime baseball fan. His favourite team while growing up was the Detroit Tigers, and he later became a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays after they were established. In the 1980s, Lee began reading the works of Bill James, particularly The Bill James Baseball Abstracts, which led to an interest in sabermetrics and participation in a fantasy baseball keeper league. He collects baseball memorabilia, once donating part of his collection to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and threw the ceremonial first pitch to inaugurate the 2013 Toronto Blue Jays season. Lee sang the Canadian national anthem before the 1993 MLB All-Star Game. In 2016, Lee planned to produce an independent film about baseball in Italy. Lee is regularly seen in his seat behind home plate at the Toronto Blue Jays stadium Rogers Centre with his scorecard. When the team was forced to move to Buffalo during the 2020 season, a cardboard cutout of Lee was placed in a seat behind home plate.

Guitars and basses
Lee also collects guitars and basses. He has a collection of over 250 vintage basses. He owns a 1961 Fender Precision Bass previously owned by John Entwistle of The Who. He also owns two 1964 Fender Jazz Basses in the rare Dakota Red color.

In 2019, Lee sent several of his guitars to Mecum Auctions, including a 1959 Les Paul Standard, a 1960 Gibson ES-345, a 1955 Fender Stratocaster, a 1960 Gibson ES-335, a 1965 Gibson ES-335 and a 1967 Gibson Flying V.

Basses
In the early days of Rush, Lee used a Fender Precision Bass, which eventually had its body modified and refinished to a blue "teardrop"-shape. Inspired by the distinctive sound of Yes bassist Chris Squire, Lee then acquired a black Rickenbacker 4001 bass, which remained his main instrument from the 1970s up until the early 1980s.

In 1998, Fender released the Geddy Lee Jazz Bass, available in Black and 3-Color Sunburst (as of 2009). This signature model is a recreation of Lee's favourite bass, a 1972 Fender Jazz that he bought in a pawn shop in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1978. In 2015, Fender released a revised USA model of his signature bass, with most of the changes reflecting those Lee had made to his own instrument over the years.

Lee has been a longtime user of RotoSound strings. He uses Swing Bass RS66LD (.45-.105) on a majority of his basses, but used Funkmaster FM66 (.30-.90) on his Wal basses from 1985 to 1992.

Bass amplification
For Rush's 2010 tour, Lee used two Orange AD200 bass heads together with two OBC410 4x10 bass cabinets.

Keyboards and synthesizers

Over the years, Lee has used synthesizers from Oberheim (8-voice, OB-1, OB-X, OB-Xa), PPG (Wave 2.2 and 2.3), Roland (Jupiter 8, D-50, XV-5080, and Fantom X7), Moog (Minimoog, Taurus pedals, Little Phatty ), and Yamaha (DX7, KX76).

Recreating unique sounds
Newer advances in synthesizer and sampler technology have allowed Lee to store familiar sounds from his old synthesizers alongside new ones in combination synthesizer/samplers, such as the Roland XV-5080. For live shows in 2002 and 2004, Lee and his keyboard technician used the playback capabilities of the XV-5080 to generate virtually all of Rush's keyboard sounds to date and additional complex sound passages that previously required several machines at once to produce.

To trigger these sounds in real-time, Lee uses MIDI controllers, placed at the locations on the stage where he has a microphone stand. Lee uses two types of MIDI controllers: one type resembles a traditional synthesizer keyboard on a stand (Yamaha KX76). The second type is a large foot-pedal keyboard placed on the stage floor (Korg MPK-130, Roland PK-5). Combined, they enable Lee to use his free hands and feet to trigger sounds in electronic equipment that has been placed off-stage. With this technology Lee and his bandmates can present their arrangements in a live setting with the level of complexity and fidelity that fans have come to expect and without the need to resort to the use of backing tracks or employing an additional band member. During the Clockwork Angels Tour, a notable exception was when a string ensemble played string parts, originally arranged and conducted by David Campbell on Clockwork Angels.

Unique stage equipment

In 1996, Lee stopped using traditional bass amplifiers on stage, opting to have the bass guitar signals input directly to the touring front-of-house console to improve control and sound definition. He began using Tech 21 SansAmp units after experimenting with one in the studio intended for Alex Lifeson's guitar and eventually received signature models from the company, most notably the GED-2112 rackmount.

Faced with the dilemma of what to do with the empty space left behind by the lack of large amplifier cabinets, Lee chose to decorate his side of the stage with unusual items. The Snakes & Arrows Tour prominently featured three Henhouse brand rotisserie chicken ovens on stage complete with an attendant in a chef's hat and apron to "tend" the chickens during shows.

Awards

 * 1990: The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada named Asteroid (12272) Geddylee
 * 1994: With Rush, inducted into the Juno Hall of Fame
 * 1996: Officer of the Order of Canada, along with bandmates Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart
 * 2007: Best Album for Bass (Snakes & Arrows) – Bass Player magazine
 * 2010: With Rush, Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
 * 2012: Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal
 * 2013: With Rush, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee
 * 2021: Lifetime Achievement Award for his philanthropic work at the Artists for Peace and Justice (APJ) annual gala

Personal life
Lee married Nancy Young in 1976. They have a son and a daughter. He takes annual trips to France, where he indulges in cheese and wine. In 2011, a charitable foundation he supports, Grapes for Humanity, created the Geddy Lee Scholarship for winemaking students at Niagara College. Lee has described himself as a Jewish atheist, explaining to an interviewer, "I consider myself a Jew as a race, but not so much as a religion. I'm not down with religion at all. I'm a Jewish atheist, if that's possible."

title: Geddy Lee


text:
Talk:Gianfrancesco Poggio Bracciolini

John XXIII is not correct, I suppose. -- HJH

Yep, but it's antipope John XXIII - I was typing fast. And in fact Alexander V is an antipope, too, but the wikipedia link is ambiguous. --MichaelTinkler

title: Talk:Gianfrancesco Poggio Bracciolini