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Poznań University of Technology

Poznań University of Technology, PUT (Politechnika Poznańska) is a university in Poznań, Poland. Poznań University of Technology is known as one of the best technical universities in Poland. URAP ranked PUT as in top 6% of world universities and Webometrics ranked it at no. 842 in the world by Google citations for the year 2015. In 1995 it became the first Polish university to become a member of the Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research (CESAER), an organization comprising the best technical universities in Europe. The university is also a member of the Socrates-Erasmus programme for exchange students from all over Europe, promoting advanced engineering and a European dimension. The university is home to many organizations and student circles, and the radio station Afera 98.6 MHz. The university has over 21,000 students and over 1100 academic staffs.

Faculties
There are nine faculties (since 2020):
 * Architecture
 * Automatic Control, Robotics and Electrical Engineering
 * Chemical Technology
 * Computing and Telecommunications
 * Civil and Transport Engineering
 * Materials Engineering and Technical Physics
 * Mechanical Engineering
 * Environmental Engineering and Energy
 * Engineering Management

History
PUT was officially founded in 1955 and the first rector was Roman Kozak. But a state school had existed in Poznań since 1919, under name of the Higher State School of Machinery. After adding a second department in 1929, its name was changed to the Higher State School of Machinery and Electrotechnics. It was supposed to become the University of Technology in 1940, but its development was interrupted by World War II. In 1945 the school received the status of Higher Engineering School and in 1955 it became the University of Technology.

In 1999 Poznan University of Technology (PUT) celebrated 80 anniversary of the higher educational technical system in Poznan. It continues traditions of the State Higher School of Mechanical Engineering, which was opened in August 1919. The school remained open at the outbreak of the Second World War, during which time 716 graduates had completed their studies there. It was allocated in a building nowadays situated at Marie Skłodowska-Curie Square, today the Rector's Office. In 1929, the school changed its name to the State Higher School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. As a result of further development, the Higher School was to be given the status of a university in 1940. Unfortunately, this did not occur during the war period. In September 1945, the school received the title High School of Engineering and after ten years became Poznan University of Technology.

PUT is at present autonomous state institution consisting of nine faculties in which institutes and chairs over one thousand academic staff members do research and run educational tasks for over fourteen thousand students of full -time and part-time studies. PUT has been granted the right to confer doctorates in technical science. Moreover, it runs postgraduate studies within different faculties.

In 1995 PUT, as the first Polish University of Technology, became a member of the Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research – CESAER-bringing together the best European Engineering Colleges and Universities of Technology. In 1999 PUT was the host organization of the IX CESAER Conference.

In the academic year 1999 / 2000 European Credit Transfer System –ECTS-was introduced at the PUT.

From the academic year 2006/2007, Poznan University of Technology also conducts its existing doctoral studies as third-cycle studies.

Successes
Students from the Faculty of Computer Science started few times in CSIDC computer systems projecting world championships organised by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society and ImagineCup (Microsoft). Four different teams in 2001–2006 managed by Doctor of Engineering Jan Kniat were three-time world champions. Many graduates from Computer science and Management faculty work in Microsoft corporation in Redmond, Washington, US. PUT is a member of CESAER Association and was the first Polish technical university to receive membership of that organisation.

Notable alumni

 * Paweł Arndt (b. 1954), politician
 * Jacek Błażewicz (b. 1951), computer scientist
 * Janusz Centka (b. 1950), glider pilot, winner of three World Gliding Championships
 * Witold Czarnecki (b. 1953), politician
 * Aleksander Doba (b. 1946), explorer, traveller
 * Waldy Dzikowski (b. 1959), politician
 * Andrzej Jajszczyk (b. 1952), scientist, academic
 * Fiann Paul (b. 1980), ocean rower
 * Roman Słowiński (b. 1952), computer scientist, academic
 * Jan Węglarz (b. 1947), computer scientist

List of rectors

 * Roman Kozak (1955–1962)
 * Zbigniew Jasicki (1962–1969)
 * Wiktor Jankowski (1969–1972)
 * Bolesław Wojciechowicz (1972–1981)
 * Edmund Tuliszka (1981–1982)
 * Czesław Królikowski (1982–1983)
 * Wiktor Jankowski (1983–1984)
 * Tadeusz Puchałka (1984–1985)
 * Andrzej Ryżyński (1985–1990)
 * Jarosław Stefaniak (1990–1993)
 * Eugeniusz Mitkowski (1993–1999)
 * Jerzy Dembczyński (1999–2005)
 * Adam Hamrol (2005–2012)
 * Tomasz Łodygowski (2012–2020)
 * Teofil Jesionowski (2020–)

title: Poznań University of Technology


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CESAER

CESAER is a non-profit association of universities of science and technology in Europe. CESAER was founded on 10 May 1990, seated in the Castle of Arenberg in Leuven, Belgium. The association has 58 universities of science and technology in 28 countries. The name CESAER was formed as an abbreviation for "Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research", but today only the short form CESAER is used.

The combined member institutions of the association have over 1.1 million students enrolled and employ over 96,000 academic staff. The current President until end of 2025 is Orla Feely, Rector of University College Dublin.

Members
The most up-to-date list of Members of CESAER is provided at https://www.cesaer.org/members/

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

title: CESAER


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Arthur Machen

Arthur Machen ( or ; 3 March 1863 – 15 December 1947) was the pen-name of Arthur Llewellyn Jones, a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His novella The Great God Pan (1890; 1894) has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror, with Stephen King describing it as "Maybe the best [horror story] in the English language." He is also well known for "The Bowmen", a short story that was widely read as fact, creating the legend of the Angels of Mons.

Early years
Machen was born Arthur Llewelyn Jones in Caerleon, Monmouthshire. The house of his birth, opposite the Olde Bull Inn in The Square at Caerleon is marked with a commemorative blue plaque. The landscape of Monmouthshire (which he usually referred to by the name of the medieval Welsh kingdom, Gwent), with its associations of Celtic, Roman, and medieval history, made a powerful impression on him, and his love of it is at the heart of many of his works.

Machen was descended from a long line of clergymen, the family having originated in Carmarthenshire. In 1864, when Machen was two, his father John Edward Jones, became vicar of the parish of Llanddewi Fach with Llandegveth, about five miles north of Caerleon, and Machen was brought up at the rectory there. Jones had adopted his wife's maiden name, Machen, to inherit a legacy, legally becoming "Jones-Machen"; his son later used a shortened version, Arthur Machen, as a pen name.

Local historian and folklorist Fred Hando suggests Machen's early interest in the occult came from an article of alchemy in a volume of Household Words in his father's library. Hando recounts Machen's other early reading: He bought De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater at Pontypool Road Railway Station, The Arabian Nights at Hereford Railway Station, and borrowed Don Quixote from Mrs. Gwyn, of Llanfrechfa Rectory. In his father's library he found also the Waverley Novels, a three-volume edition of the Glossary of Gothic Architecture, and an early volume of Tennyson.

At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received a good education. His family could not afford for him to attend university, and Machen went to London, where he sat, but failed, exams for entrance to medical school. He displayed some literary promise and in 1881 published a long poem on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. He attempted to make a living as a journalist, a publisher's clerk, and a children's tutor, devoting his evenings to writing and solitary walks.

In 1884 he published his second work, the pastiche The Anatomy of Tobacco, and secured work with the publisher and bookseller George Redway as a cataloguer and magazine editor. This led to further work as a translator from French, translating the Heptaméron of Marguerite de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir (Fantastic Tales) of Béroalde de Verville, and the Memoirs of Casanova.

In 1887, the year his father died, Machen married Amelia (Amy) Hogg, an unconventional music teacher with a passion for the theatre, who had literary friends in London's bohemian circles. Hogg had introduced Machen to the writer and occultist A. E. Waite, who was to become one of Machen's closest friends. Machen also made the acquaintance of other literary figures, such as M. P. Shiel and Edgar Jepson. Soon after his marriage, Machen began to receive a series of legacies from Scottish relatives that allowed him to gradually devote more time to writing.

Literary decadence in the 1890s
Around 1890 Machen began to publish in literary magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, some of which used gothic or fantastic themes. This led to his first major success, The Great God Pan. It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and consequently sold well, going into a second edition.

Machen next produced The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895. The novel and the stories within it were eventually to be regarded as among Machen's best works. However, following the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde later that year, Machen's association with works of decadent horror made it difficult for him to find a publisher for new works. Thus, though he would write some of his greatest works over the next few years, some were published much later. These included The Hill of Dreams, Hieroglyphics, A Fragment of Life, the story "The White People", and the stories which make up Ornaments in Jade.

Tragedy and acting: 1899–1910
In 1899, Machen's wife Amy died of cancer after a long period of illness. This had a devastating effect on Machen. He only gradually recovered from his loss over the next year, partially through his close friendship with the poet A. E. Waite. It was through Waite's influence that Machen joined at this time the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, though Machen's interest in the organization was not lasting or very deep.

Machen's recovery was further helped by his sudden change of career, becoming an actor in 1901 and a member of Frank Benson's company of travelling players, a profession which took him round the country.

This led in 1903 to a second marriage, to Dorothie Purefoy Hudleston, which brought Machen much happiness. Machen managed to find a publisher in 1902 for his earlier written work Hieroglyphics, an analysis of the nature of literature, which concluded that true literature must convey "ecstasy". In 1906 Machen's literary career began once more to flourish as the book The House of Souls collected his most notable works of the nineties and brought them to a new audience. He also published a satirical work, Dr Stiggins: His Views and Principles, generally considered one of his weakest works.

Machen also was at this time investigating Celtic Christianity, the Holy Grail and King Arthur. Publishing his views in Lord Alfred Douglas's The Academy, for which he wrote regularly, Machen concluded that the legends of the Grail actually were based on dim recollections of the rites of the Celtic Church. These ideas also featured strongly in the novel The Secret Glory which he wrote at this time, marking the first use in fiction of the idea of the Grail's surviving into modern times in some form, an idea much utilised ever since, as by Charles Williams (War in Heaven), Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code) and George Lucas (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). In 1907, The Hill of Dreams, generally considered Machen's masterpiece, was finally published, though it was not recognized much at the time.

The next few years saw Machen continue with acting in various companies and with journalistic work, but he was finding it increasingly hard to earn a living and his legacies were long exhausted. Machen was also attending literary gatherings such as the New Bohemians and the Square Club.

Journalism and the Great War: 1910–1921
Finally Machen accepted a full-time journalist's job at Alfred Harmsworth's Evening News in 1910. In February 1912 his son Hilary was born, followed by a daughter Janet in 1917. The coming of war in 1914 saw Machen return to public prominence for the first time in twenty years due to the publication of "The Bowmen" and the subsequent publicity surrounding the "Angels of Mons" episode. He published a series of stories capitalizing on this success, most of which were morale-boosting propaganda, but the most notable, "The Great Return" (1915) and the novella The Terror (1917), were more accomplished. He also published a series of autobiographical articles during the war, later reprinted in book form as Far Off Things. During the war years Machen also met and championed the work of a fellow Welshman, Caradoc Evans.

In general, though, Machen thoroughly disliked work at the newspaper, and it was only the need to earn money for his family which kept him at it. The money came in useful, allowing him to move in 1919 to a bigger house with a garden, in St John's Wood, which became a noted location for literary gatherings attended by friends such as the painter Augustus John, D. B. Wyndham Lewis, and Jerome K. Jerome. Machen's dismissal from the Evening News in 1921 came as a relief in one sense, though it caused financial problems. Machen, however, was recognized as a great Fleet Street character by his contemporaries, and he remained in demand as an essay writer for much of the twenties.

The Machen boom of the 1920s
The year 1922 saw a revival in Machen's literary fortunes. The Secret Glory, considered by some to be Machen's final masterpiece, was belatedly published, as well as the autobiographical Far Off Things and new editions of his Casanova translation, The House of Souls and The Hill of Dreams. Machen's works had now found a new audience and publishers in the United States, and a series of requests for republications of books started to come in. Vincent Starrett, James Branch Cabell, and Carl Van Vechten were American devotees who helped in this process.

Another sign of his rising fortunes was the publication in 1923 of a collected edition of his works (the "Caerleon Edition") and a bibliography. That year also saw the publication of a recently completed second volume of autobiography, Things Near and Far—the third and final volume, The London Adventure, being published in 1924. Machen's earlier works suddenly started becoming much-sought-after collectors' items at this time, a position they have held ever since. In 1924 he issued a collection of bad reviews of his own work, with very little commentary, under the title Precious Balms. In this period of prosperity Machen's home saw many visitors and social gatherings, and Machen made new friends, such as Oliver Stonor.

Final years: 1926–1947
By 1926 the boom in republication was mostly over, and Machen's income dropped. He continued republishing earlier works in collected editions, as well as writing essays and articles for various magazines and newspapers and contributing forewords and introductions to both his own works and those of other writers—such as the Monmouthshire historian Fred Hando's The Pleasant Land of Gwent (1944)—but produced little new fiction. In 1927, he became a manuscript reader for the publisher Ernest Benn, which brought in a much-needed regular income until 1933.

In 1929, Machen and his family moved away from London to Amersham in Buckinghamshire, but they still faced financial hardship. He received some recognition for his literary work when he received a Civil List pension of £100 per annum in 1932, but the loss of work from Benn's a year later made things difficult once more. A few more collections of Machen's shorter works were published in the thirties, partially as a result of the championing of Machen by John Gawsworth, who also began work on a biography of Machen that was only published in 2005 thanks to the Friends of Arthur Machen.

Machen's financial difficulties were only finally ended by the literary appeal launched in 1943 for his eightieth birthday. The initial names on the appeal show the general recognition of Machen's stature as a distinguished man of letters, as they included Max Beerbohm, T. S. Eliot, Bernard Shaw, Walter de la Mare, Algernon Blackwood, and John Masefield. The success of the appeal allowed Machen to live the last few years of his life, until 1947, in relative comfort.

Spiritual
From the beginning of his literary career, Machen espoused a mystical belief that the humdrum ordinary world hid a more mysterious and strange world beyond. His gothic and decadent works of the 1890s concluded that the lifting of this veil could lead to madness, sex, or death, and usually a combination of all three. Machen's later works became somewhat less obviously full of gothic trappings, but for him investigations into mysteries invariably resulted in life-changing transformation and sacrifice. Machen loved the medieval worldview because he felt it manifested deep spirituality alongside a rambunctious earthiness.

Machen was a great enthusiast for literature that expressed the "rapture, beauty, adoration, wonder, awe, mystery, sense of the unknown, desire for the unknown" that he summed up in the word ecstasy. His main passions were for writers and writing he felt achieved this, an idiosyncratic list which included the Mabinogion and other medieval romances, François Rabelais, Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, Thomas de Quincey, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Those writers who failed to achieve this, or far worse did not even attempt it, received short shrift from Machen.

Machen's strong opposition to a materialistic viewpoint is obvious in many of his works, marking him as part of neo-romanticism. He was deeply suspicious of science, materialism, commerce, and Puritanism, all of which were anathema to Machen's conservative, bohemian, mystical, and ritualistic temperament. Machen's virulent satirical streak against things he disliked has been regarded as a weakness in his work, and rather dating, especially when it comes to the fore in works such as Dr Stiggins. Similarly, some of his propagandistic First World War stories also have little appeal to a modern audience.

Machen, brought up as the son of a Church of England clergyman, always held Christian beliefs, though accompanied by a fascination with sensual mysticism; his interests in paganism and the occult were especially prominent in his earliest works. Machen was well read on such matters as alchemy, the kabbalah, and Hermeticism, and these occult interests formed part of his close friendship with A. E. Waite. Machen, however, was always very down-to-earth, requiring substantial proof that a supernatural event had occurred, and was thus highly sceptical of Spiritualism.

The death of his first wife led him to a spiritual crossroads, and he experienced a series of mystical events. After his experimentation with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the orthodox ritual of the Church became ever more important to him, gradually defining his position as a High Church Anglican who was able to incorporate elements from his own mystical experiences, Celtic Christianity, and readings in literature and legend into his thinking.

In his later years, Machen became a Roman Catholic.

Political
In politics, Machen was reactionary. He stated in response to a 1937 questionnaire on the Spanish Civil War in the Left Review, "Mr. Arthur Machen presents his compliments and begs to inform that he is, and always has been, entirely for General Franco."

Legacy and influence
Machen's literary significance is substantial; his stories have been translated into many languages and reprinted in short story anthologies countless times. In the early 1970s, a paperback reprint of The Three Impostors in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series brought him to the notice of a new generation. More recently, the small press has continued to keep Machen's work in print. In 2010, to mark the 150 years since Machen's birth, two volumes of Machen's work were republished in the prestigious Library of Wales series.

Literary critics such as Wesley D. Sweetser and S. T. Joshi see Machen's works as a significant part of the late Victorian revival of the gothic novel and the decadent movement of the 1890s, bearing direct comparison to the themes found in contemporary works like Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. At the time authors like Wilde, William Butler Yeats, and Arthur Conan Doyle were all admirers of Machen's works. He is also usually noted in the better studies of Anglo-Welsh literature. The French writer Paul-Jean Toulet translated Machen's The Great God Pan into French and visited Machen in London. Charles Williams was also a devotee of Machen's work, which inspired Williams' own fiction.

Genre fiction
Historian of fantastic literature Brian Stableford has suggested that Machen "was the first writer of authentically modern horror stories, and his best works must still be reckoned among the finest products of the genre".

Machen's popularity in 1920s America has been noted, and his work was an influence on the development of the pulp horror found in magazines like Weird Tales and on such notable fantasy writers as James Branch Cabell, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long (who wrote a tribute to Machen in verse, "On Reading Arthur Machen"), Donald Wandrei, David Lindsay and E. Charles Vivian.

His significance was recognized by H. P. Lovecraft, who in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" named Machen as one of the four "modern masters" of supernatural horror (with Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, and M. R. James). Machen's influence on Lovecraft's own work was substantial. Lovecraft's reading of Machen in the early 1920s led him away from his earlier Dunsanian writing towards the development of what became the Cthulhu Mythos. Machen's use of a contemporary Welsh or London background in which sinister ancient horrors lurk and are capable of interbreeding with modern people obviously helped inspire Lovecraft's similar use of a New England background. Machen's story "The White People" includes references to curious unknown rites and beings, an idea Lovecraft uses frequently in the mythos.

Lovecraft pays tribute to the influence by directly incorporating some of Machen's creations and references, such as Nodens and Aklo, into his Cthulhu Mythos and using similar plotlines, most notably seen by a comparison of "The Dunwich Horror" to The Great God Pan and of "The Whisperer in Darkness" to "The Novel of the Black Seal". Other Lovecraft tales with a debt or reference to Machen include "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Festival", "Cool Air", "The Descendant", and "The Colour Out of Space".

His intense, atmospheric stories of horror and the supernatural have been read and enjoyed by many modern horror and fantasy writers, influencing directly Peter Straub, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Karl Edward Wagner, "Sarban" (John William Wall), Joanna Russ, Graham Joyce, Simon Clark, Tim Lebbon, and T. E. D. Klein, to name but a few. Klein's novel The Ceremonies was partly based on Machen's "The White People", and Straub's novel Ghost Story was influenced by The Great God Pan.

Wider literary influence
Machen's influence is not limited to genre fiction, however. Jorge Luis Borges recognized Machen as a great writer, and through him Machen has had an influence on magic realism. He was also a major influence on Paul Bowles and Javier Marías, the latter of whom dedicated a subplot of his 1989 novel All Souls to collecting the works of Machen and his circle of peers. He was one of the most significant figures in the life of the Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman, who attributed to Machen his conversion to High Church Anglicanism, an important part of his philosophy and poetry. Sylvia Townsend Warner (a niece of Machen's second wife, Purefoy) admired Machen and was influenced by him, as is his great-granddaughter, the contemporary artist Tessa Farmer.

Machen was also a pioneer in psychogeography, due to his interest in the interconnection between landscape and the mind. His strange wanderings in Wales and London recorded in his beautiful prose make him of great interest to writers on this subject, especially those focusing on London, such as Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd. Alan Moore wrote an exploration of Machen's mystical experiences in his work Snakes and Ladders. Aleister Crowley loved Machen's works, feeling they contained "Magickal" truth, and put them on the reading list for his students, though Machen, who never met him, detested Crowley. Other occultists, such as Kenneth Grant, also find Machen an inspiration. Far closer to Machen's personal mystical world view was his effect on his friend Evelyn Underhill, who reflected some of Machen's thinking in her highly influential book Mysticism.

One chapter of the French best-seller The Morning of the Magicians, by L. Pauwels and J. Berger (1960), deals extensively with Machen's thought and works. Machen's approach to reality is described as an example of the "fantastic realism" which the book is dedicated to.

Other fields
In music, the composer John Ireland found Machen's works to be a life-changing experience that directly influenced much of his composition. Mark E. Smith of The Fall also found Machen an inspiration. Likewise, Current 93 have drawn on the mystical and occult leanings of Machen, with songs such as "The Inmost Light", which shares its title with Machen's story. Some artists on the Ghost Box Music label like Belbury Poly and The Focus Group draw heavily on Machen. It is an interest also shared by film directors like Mexican Rogelio A. González who made a successful version of "The Islington Mystery" as El Esqueleto de la señora Morales (1960), adapted by Luis Alcoriza, a frequent collaborator in Luis Buñuel's classic films. This interest in Machen's works among filmmakers is also shared by Guillermo del Toro and Richard Stanley. Other notable figures with an enthusiasm for Machen have included Brocard Sewell, Barry Humphries, Stewart Lee and Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Literary societies
An Arthur Machen Society was established in 1948 in the United States and survived until the 1960s. It was followed by the Arthur Machen Society based in the UK, in 1986, which in turn was replaced by the current literary society, The Friends of Arthur Machen.

The Friends of Arthur Machen (FoAM) is a non-profit international literary society founded in 1998 dedicated to supporting interest in Arthur Machen and his work, and to aid research. It publishes two journals: Faunus, which reprints rare Machen articles and criticism of his work, and Machenalia. It fosters interest not only in Machen but in events in which he played a key part, such as the Angels of Mons affair, and organises psychogeographic excursions.

Prominent members include Javier Marías, Stewart Lee and R. B. Russell of Tartarus Press. The society was nominated for a World Fantasy Special Award: Non-Professional in 2006.

Selected works

 * In approximate order of composition, with date of publication:

 * The Chronicle of Clemendy (1888): fantasy tales within a frame story of a rural Welsh drinking fraternity with mystical roots.
 * "The Lost Club" (1890): short story about a secret London society and its ritual disappearances of members.
 * The Great God Pan (written 1890–1894; published 1894): short horror novel. First published together with "The Inmost Light" as Volume V in John Lane's Keynotes Series.
 * "The Inmost Light" (1894): short horror story. A scientist imprisons his wife's soul in a shining jewel, letting something else into her untenanted body, but the jewel is stolen.
 * "The Shining Pyramid" (1895): short horror story. Strange arrangements of stones appear at the edge of a young man's property. He and a friend attempt to decipher their meaning before it is too late.
 * The Three Impostors (1895): horror novel incorporating several short stories, including "The Novel of the White Powder" and "The Novel of the Black Seal", which have often been anthologised separately. Centres on the search for a man with spectacles.
 * "The Novel of the Black Seal": a precursor of H. P. Lovecraft in its subject matter—the protagonist gradually uncovers the secrets of a hidden pre- and non-human race hiding in the Welsh hills, and the true nature of a hybrid, idiot child fathered by one of them.
 * "The Novel of the White Powder": a man's behaviour takes a strange turn after he starts taking a new prescription. His sister does not know if this is a good thing or a bad one.
 * "The Red Hand" (1895): short detective/horror story featuring the main characters from The Three Impostors. It focuses on a murder performed with an ancient stone axe.
 * The Hill of Dreams (written 1895–1897; published 1907): novel delineating the dark, mystical spiralling madness, awe, sensuality, horror and ecstasy of an artist. Generally considered Machen's masterpiece.
 * Ornaments in Jade (written 1897; published 1924): prose poems, some of which hint at dark pagan powers.
 * "The White People" (written 1899; published 1904): short horror story. Presented as a young girl's diary, detailing her increasingly deep delvings into witchcraft. Often described as one of the greatest of all horror short stories.
 * Hieroglyphics: A Note upon Ecstasy in Literature (written 1899; published 1902): literary tract detailing Machen's philosophy of literature and its capacity for "ecstasy".
 * A Fragment of Life (written 1899–1904; published 1904): short novel. A young couple repudiate the banalities of material life in favour of the spiritual.
 * The House of the Hidden Light (Written in 1904 with Arthur Edward Waite. Only three copies were published. Reprinted in an edition of 350 copies by Tartarus Press, 2003): book of coded and mystical correspondence.
 * The Secret Glory (written 1899–1908; published 1922): novel. A public-school boy becomes fascinated by tales of the Holy Grail and escapes from his repressive school in search of a deeper meaning to life.
 * "The Bowmen" (1914): in this story, written and published during World War I, the ghosts of archers from the battle of Agincourt, led by Saint George, come to the aid of British troops. This is cited as the origin of the Angels of Mons legend.
 * "The Great Return" (1915): short story. The Holy Grail returns to a Welsh village.
 * The Terror (1917): short horror novel. Rural supernatural horror set in wartime Britain, where a series of unexplained countryside murders occur with no sign of who or what is responsible.
 * Far Off Things (1922): first volume of autobiography.
 * Things Near and Far (1923): second volume of autobiography.
 * "Out of the Earth" (1923): short horror story regarding the malefic brutality of the mythical "Little People", who are emulating World War I.
 * The London Adventure (1924): third and final volume of autobiography.
 * Dog and Duck (1924): essays.
 * The Glorious Mystery (1924): essays and vignettes.
 * The Canning Wonder (1925): non-fiction study of the eighteenth-century mystery of the disappearance of Elizabeth Canning. Machen concludes that Canning was lying about some or all of her exploits.
 * Dreads and Drolls (1926): essays (expanded edition, Tartarus Press: 2007).
 * Notes and Queries (1926): essays.
 * Tom O'Bedlam and His Song (1930): essays.
 * "Opening the Door" (1931): short story. Tale of a man's mysterious transcendence into some outer faery realm.
 * The Green Round (1933): novel. A man is haunted by a dwarf after visiting the "green round" on a beach.
 * "N" (1934): short story. An encounter in London of a hidden fairyland.
 * The Children of the Pool (1936): short story collection including the late-period horror stories "Change" and "Out of the Picture".
 * Arthur Machen & Montgomery Evans: Letters of a Literary Friendship, 1923–1947 (Kent State University Press, 1994): correspondence.
 * Bridles and Spurs (1951): essays.

Minor works

 * Constance Benson's autobiography Mainly Players (Butterworth, 1926) has an introduction by Machen, who had been a member of the Benson company from 1901 to 1909.

title: Arthur Machen


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Jan Węglarz

Jan Węglarz (born 24 September 1947 in Poznań) is a Polish computer scientist. His current research focuses on operations research. He is the winner of the 2000 Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science.

Life and career
He studied at the University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznań, where he graduated in mathematics in 1969, and later on Poznań University of Technology, when he received title from automatics in 1971. He started work there in 1971. He received a doctorate in 1974, and habilitation in 1977. In 1988 he received the title of professor. Member of Polish Academy of Sciences (Polska Akademia Nauk, PAN), member-co-founder of Polish Information Processing Society ("Polskie Towarzystwo Informatyczne", PTI), member of American Mathematical Society, Operations Research Society of America, member of Poznan Chapter of Agder Academy of Sciences and Letters. Author of 12 monographs in Computer Science, Operation Research, Decision Theory, etc. Author of more than 200 articles. He discovered the so-called two-phase method, but since he published his discovery in a Polish journal, the discovery was largely overlooked abroad. He refused many offers to move to the West and opted for his own research team in Poland.

He participated in the development of Elwro Polish computers.

In 1991, he was awarded the EURO Gold Medal, the highest distinction within Operations Research in Europe. In 2000, he received Poland's top science award, the Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science, for "developing a variety of methods for designing IT systems for production management and control, using discrete-continuous scheduling". In 2018 he received the EURO Distinguished Service Award. He was awarded the decorations of Knight's Cross (1991), Officer (1997) and Commander (2004) in the Order of Polonia Restituta.

Between 1997-1998 he was President of Association of European Operational Research Societies.

He received honorary degrees from several Polish institutions: Szczecin University of Technology (Politechnika Szczecińska) (December 10, 2001), AGH University of Science and Technology (October 16, 2002), Częstochowa University of Technology (Politechnika Częstochowska) (April 22, 2005), Poznań University of Technology (January 14, 2006), Gdańsk University of Technology (Politechnika Gdańska) (April 16, 2008),    University of Silesia (Uniwersytet Śląski) (July 2, 2008), University of Zielona Góra (June 5, 2009).

title: Jan Węglarz


text:
Madonna (disambiguation)

Madonna (born 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress.

Madonna may also refer to:

People

 * Mary, mother of Jesus
 * Madonna (name), a given name or surname originally from Italian
 * Madonna (nickname), a moniker of several individuals after the American singer
 * Madonna, a nickname of Joan Baez
 * Madonna, leader of 1990s gang 5T

Art

 * Madonna (art), pictorial or sculptured representations of Mary, mother of Jesus
 * Madonna (Munch), an 1895 painting by Edvard Munch

Film

 * Madonna (1999 film), a Croatian film
 * Madonna (2015 film), a South Korean film

Albums

 * Madonna (album) (1983)
 * Madonna (Alisha Chinai album) (1989)
 * Madonna (...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead album) (1999)
 * Madonna (EP), a 2010 EP by Secret

Songs

 * Lady Madonna, a 1968 single by the Beatles
 * "Madonna", a 1988 song by Sparks from Interior Design
 * "Madonna", a 2004 song by CocoRosie from La maison de mon rêve
 * "Madonna", a 2010 song by Secret from Madonna
 * "Madonna", a 2015 song by Drake from If You're Reading This It's Too Late
 * "Madonna", a 2021 song by Bausa
 * "Madonna", a 2021 song by Luna
 * "Madonna", a 2021 song by Snail Mail from Valentine
 * "Madonna" (Natanael Cano and Óscar Maydon song), 2024

Places

 * Madonna di Campiglio, a village and ski resort in Trento, Italy
 * Madonna di Campagna, a quarter and subway station in Turin, Italy
 * Madonna, Maryland, an unincorporated community in the United States

Education

 * Madonna University, Livonia, Michigan, United States
 * Madonna University, Nigeria
 * Madonna English School, Laheriasarai/Darbhanga, Bihar, India
 * Madonna Catholic Secondary School, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
 * Weirton Madonna High School, Weirton, West Virginia, United States
 * Madonna Academy, predecessor of Chaminade-Madonna College Preparatory School, Hollywood, Florida, United States

Other uses

 * Madonna (book), a 2001 biography of the singer by Andrew Morton
 * Madonna (studio), a Japanese adult video company

title: Madonna (disambiguation)


text:
George Boole

George Boole Jnr (2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher, and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in Ireland. He worked in the fields of differential equations and algebraic logic, and is best known as the author of The Laws of Thought (1854) which contains Boolean algebra. Boolean logic is credited with laying the foundations for the Information Age alongside the work of Claude Shannon.

Boole was the son of a shoemaker. He received a primary school education and learned Latin and modern languages through various means. At 16, he began teaching to support his family. He established his own school at 19 and later ran a boarding school in Lincoln. Boole was an active member of local societies and collaborated with fellow mathematicians.

In 1849, Boole was appointed the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork (now University College Cork) in Ireland, where he met his future wife, Mary Everest. He continued his involvement in social causes and maintained connections with Lincoln. In 1864, Boole died due to fever-induced pleural effusion after developing pneumonia.

Boole published around 50 articles and several separate publications in his lifetime. Some of his key works include a paper on early invariant theory and "The Mathematical Analysis of Logic," which introduced symbolic logic. Boole also wrote two systematic treatises: "Treatise on Differential Equations" and "Treatise on the Calculus of Finite Differences." He contributed to the theory of linear differential equations and the study of the sum of residues of a rational function. In 1847, Boole developed Boolean algebra, a fundamental concept in binary logic, which laid the groundwork for the algebra of logic tradition and forms the foundation of digital circuit design and modern computer science. Boole also attempted to discover a general method in probabilities, focusing on determining the consequent probability of events logically connected to given probabilities. His work was expanded upon by various scholars, such as Charles Sanders Peirce and William Stanley Jevons. Boole's ideas later gained practical applications when Claude Shannon and Victor Shestakov employed Boolean algebra to optimize the design of electromechanical relay systems, leading to the development of modern electronic digital computers. University College Cork celebrated the 200th anniversary of Boole's birth in 2015, highlighting his significant impact on the digital age.

Boole's contributions to mathematics earned him various honors, including the Royal Society's first gold prize for mathematics, the Keith Medal, and honorary degrees from the Universities of Dublin and Oxford.

Early life
Boole was born in 1815 in Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England, the son of John Boole Snr (1779–1848), a shoemaker and Mary Ann Joyce. He had a primary school education, and received lessons from his father, but due to a serious decline in business, he had little further formal and academic teaching. William Brooke, a bookseller in Lincoln, may have helped him with Latin, which he may also have learned at the school of Thomas Bainbridge. He was self-taught in modern languages. In fact, when a local newspaper printed his translation of a Latin poem, a scholar accused him of plagiarism under the pretence that he was not capable of such achievements. At age 16, Boole became the breadwinner for his parents and three younger siblings, taking up a junior teaching position in Doncaster at Heigham's School. He taught briefly in Liverpool.

Boole participated in the Lincoln Mechanics' Institute, in the Greyfriars, Lincoln, which was founded in 1833. Edward Bromhead, who knew John Boole through the institution, helped George Boole with mathematics books and he was given the calculus text of Sylvestre François Lacroix by the Rev. George Stevens Dickson of St Swithin's, Lincoln. Without a teacher, it took him many years to master calculus.

At age 19, Boole successfully established his own school in Lincoln: Free School Lane. Four years later he took over Hall's Academy in Waddington, outside Lincoln, following the death of Robert Hall. In 1840, he moved back to Lincoln, where he ran a boarding school. Boole immediately became involved in the Lincoln Topographical Society, serving as a member of the committee, and presenting a paper entitled "On the origin, progress, and tendencies of polytheism, especially amongst the ancient Egyptians and Persians, and in modern India".

Boole became a prominent local figure, an admirer of John Kaye, the bishop. He took part in the local campaign for early closing. With Edmund Larken and others he set up a building society in 1847. He associated also with the Chartist Thomas Cooper, whose wife was a relation.

From 1838 onwards, Boole was making contacts with sympathetic British academic mathematicians and reading more widely. He studied algebra in the form of symbolic methods, as far as these were understood at the time, and began to publish research papers.

Professorship and life in Cork
Boole's status as a mathematician was recognised by his appointment in 1849 as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork (now University College Cork (UCC)) in Ireland. He met his future wife, Mary Everest, there in 1850 while she was visiting her uncle John Ryall who was professor of Greek. They married in 1855. He maintained his ties with Lincoln, working there with E. R. Larken in a campaign to reduce prostitution.

In 1861, Boole was involved in a Judgement in the Court of Queen's Bench in Ireland against one John Hewitt Wheatley of Craig House, Sligo for the sum of £400, whereby Wheatley's estate and interest in lands of Maghan/Mahon, County Cork became vested in Boole.

In March 1863, Boole leased Litchfield Cottage, Cork, the house in which he would live with his wife Mary until his death in December of the following year. The premises was described in the deeds as "all that and those the dwelling house called Litchfield Cottage with the premises and appurtenances thereunto belonging and the Garden and Walled in field to the rere thereof". Boole's will bequeathed all his 'estate term and interest' in the lease of Litchfield Cottage unto his wife. In August 1865, some 8 months after his death, Mary (by then living at 68 Harley Street, London) passed the house on to Francis Heard of Ballintemple, Cork, Esquire, a captain in her Majesty's 87th Regiment of South Cork.

Honours and awards
In 1844, Boole's paper "On a General Method in Analysis" won the first gold prize for mathematics awarded by the Royal Society. He was awarded the Keith Medal by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1855 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1857. He received honorary degrees of LL.D. from the University of Dublin and the University of Oxford.

Works
Boole's first published paper was "Researches in the theory of analytical transformations, with a special application to the reduction of the general equation of the second order", printed in the Cambridge Mathematical Journal in February 1840 (Volume 2, No. 8, pp. 64–73), and it led to a friendship between Boole and Duncan Farquharson Gregory, the editor of the journal. His works are in about 50 articles and a few separate publications.

In 1841, Boole published an influential paper in early invariant theory. He received a medal from the Royal Society for his memoir of 1844, "On a General Method in Analysis". It was a contribution to the theory of linear differential equations, moving from the case of constant coefficients on which he had already published, to variable coefficients. The innovation in operational methods is to admit that operations may not commute. In 1847, Boole published The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, the first of his works on symbolic logic.

Differential equations
Boole completed two systematic treatises on mathematical subjects during his lifetime. The Treatise on Differential Equations appeared in 1859, and was followed, the next year, by a Treatise on the Calculus of Finite Differences, a sequel to the former work.

Analysis
In 1857, Boole published the treatise "On the Comparison of Transcendent, with Certain Applications to the Theory of Definite Integrals", in which he studied the sum of residues of a rational function. Among other results, he proved what is now called Boole's identity:
 * $$\mathrm{mes} \left\{ x \in \mathbb{R} \, \mid \, \Re \frac{1}{\pi} \sum \frac{a_k}{x - b_k} \geq t \right\} = \frac{\sum a_k}{\pi t} $$

for any real numbers ak > 0, bk, and t > 0. Generalisations of this identity play an important role in the theory of the Hilbert transform.

Binary logic
In 1847, Boole published the pamphlet Mathematical Analysis of Logic. He later regarded it as a flawed exposition of his logical system and wanted An Investigation of the Laws of Thought on Which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities to be seen as the mature statement of his views. Contrary to widespread belief, Boole never intended to criticise or disagree with the main principles of Aristotle's logic. Rather he intended to systematise it, to provide it with a foundation, and to extend its range of applicability. Boole's initial involvement in logic was prompted by a current debate on quantification, between Sir William Hamilton who supported the theory of "quantification of the predicate", and Boole's supporter Augustus De Morgan who advanced a version of De Morgan duality, as it is now called. Boole's approach was ultimately much further reaching than either sides' in the controversy. It founded what was first known as the "algebra of logic" tradition.

Among his many innovations is his principle of wholistic reference, which was later, and probably independently, adopted by Gottlob Frege and by logicians who subscribe to standard first-order logic. A 2003 article provides a systematic comparison and critical evaluation of Aristotelian logic and Boolean logic; it also reveals the centrality of holistic reference in Boole's philosophy of logic.

1854 definition of the universe of discourse
"In every discourse, whether of the mind conversing with its own thoughts, or of the individual in his intercourse with others, there is an assumed or expressed limit within which the subjects of its operation are confined. The most unfettered discourse is that in which the words we use are understood in the widest possible application, and for them, the limits of discourse are co-extensive with those of the universe itself. But more usually we confine ourselves to a less spacious field. Sometimes, in discoursing of men we imply (without expressing the limitation) that it is of men only under certain circumstances and conditions that we speak, as of civilised men, or of men in the vigour of life, or of men under some other condition or relation. Now, whatever may be the extent of the field within which all the objects of our discourse are found, that field may properly be termed the universe of discourse. Furthermore, this universe of discourse is in the strictest sense the ultimate subject of the discourse."

Treatment of addition in logic
Boole conceived of "elective symbols" of his kind as an algebraic structure. But this general concept was not available to him: he did not have the segregation standard in abstract algebra of postulated (axiomatic) properties of operations, and deduced properties. His work was a beginning to the algebra of sets, again not a concept available to Boole as a familiar model. His pioneering efforts encountered specific difficulties, and the treatment of addition was an obvious difficulty in the early days.

Boole replaced the operation of multiplication by the word "and" and addition by the word "or". But in Boole's original system, + was a partial operation: in the language of set theory it would correspond only to disjoint union of subsets. Later authors changed the interpretation, commonly reading it as exclusive or, or in set theory terms symmetric difference; this step means that addition is always defined.

In fact, there is the other possibility, that + should be read as disjunction. This other possibility extends from the disjoint union case, where exclusive or and non-exclusive or both give the same answer. Handling this ambiguity was an early problem of the theory, reflecting the modern use of both Boolean rings and Boolean algebras (which are simply different aspects of one type of structure). Boole and Jevons struggled over just this issue in 1863, in the form of the correct evaluation of x + x. Jevons argued for the result x, which is correct for + as disjunction. Boole kept the result as something undefined. He argued against the result 0, which is correct for exclusive or, because he saw the equation x + x = 0 as implying x = 0, a false analogy with ordinary algebra.

Probability theory
The second part of the Laws of Thought contained a corresponding attempt to discover a general method in probabilities. Here the goal was algorithmic: from the given probabilities of any system of events, to determine the consequent probability of any other event logically connected with those events.

Death
In late November 1864, Boole walked, in heavy rain, from his home at Lichfield Cottage in Ballintemple to the university, a distance of three miles, and lectured wearing his wet clothes. He soon became ill, developing pneumonia. As his wife believed that remedies should resemble their cause, she wrapped him in wet blankets – the wet having brought on his illness. Boole's condition worsened and on 8 December 1864, he died of fever-induced pleural effusion.

He was buried in the Church of Ireland cemetery of St Michael's, Church Road, Blackrock (a suburb of Cork). There is a commemorative plaque inside the adjoining church.

Legacy
Boole is the namesake of the branch of algebra known as Boolean algebra, as well as the namesake of the lunar crater Boole. The keyword Bool represents a Boolean datatype in many programming languages, though Pascal and Java, among others, both use the full name Boolean. The library, underground lecture theatre complex and the Boole Centre for Research in Informatics at University College Cork are named in his honour. A road called Boole Heights in Bracknell, Berkshire is named after him.

19th-century development
Boole's work was extended and refined by a number of writers, beginning with William Stanley Jevons, who also authored the article about Boole in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Augustus De Morgan had worked on the logic of relations, and Charles Sanders Peirce integrated his work with Boole's during the 1870s. Other significant figures were Platon Sergeevich Poretskii, and William Ernest Johnson. The conception of a Boolean algebra structure on equivalent statements of a propositional calculus is credited to Hugh MacColl (1877), in work surveyed 15 years later by Johnson. Surveys of these developments were published by Ernst Schröder, Louis Couturat, and Clarence Irving Lewis.

20th-century development

In 1921, the economist John Maynard Keynes published a book on probability theory, A Treatise of Probability. Keynes believed that Boole had made a fundamental error in his definition of independence which vitiated much of his analysis. In his book The Last Challenge Problem, David Miller provides a general method in accord with Boole's system and attempts to solve the problems recognised earlier by Keynes and others. Theodore Hailperin showed much earlier that Boole had used the correct mathematical definition of independence in his worked out problems.

Boole's work and that of later logicians initially appeared to have no engineering uses. Claude Shannon attended a philosophy class at the University of Michigan which introduced him to Boole's studies. Shannon recognised that Boole's work could form the basis of mechanisms and processes in the real world and that it was therefore highly relevant. In 1937 Shannon went on to write a master's thesis, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in which he showed how Boolean algebra could optimise the design of systems of electromechanical relays then used in telephone routing switches. He also proved that circuits with relays could solve Boolean algebra problems. Employing the properties of electrical switches to process logic is the basic concept that underlies all modern electronic digital computers. Victor Shestakov at Moscow State University (1907–1987) proposed a theory of electric switches based on Boolean logic even earlier than Claude Shannon in 1935 on the testimony of Soviet logicians and mathematicians Sofya Yanovskaya, Gaaze-Rapoport, Roland Dobrushin, Lupanov, Medvedev and Uspensky. But the first publication of Shestakov's result took place only in 1941 (in Russian). Hence, Boolean algebra became the foundation of practical digital circuit design; and Boole, via Shannon and Shestakov, provided the theoretical grounding for the Information Age.

21st-century celebration
The year 2015 saw the 200th anniversary of Boole's birth. To mark the bicentenary year, University College Cork joined admirers of Boole around the world to celebrate his life and legacy.

UCC's George Boole 200 project, featured events, student outreach activities and academic conferences on Boole's legacy in the digital age, including a new edition of Desmond MacHale's 1985 biography  The Life and Work of George Boole: A Prelude to the Digital Age, 2014.

The search engine Google marked the 200th anniversary of his birth on 2 November 2015 with an algebraic reimaging of its Google Doodle.

In September 2022, a statue of George Boole in his role as a teacher was unveiled at Lincoln Central Train Station, in Boole's home town of Lincoln.

Views
Boole's views were given in four published addresses: The Genius of Sir Isaac Newton; The Right Use of Leisure; The Claims of Science; and The Social Aspect of Intellectual Culture. The first of these was from 1835 when Charles Anderson-Pelham, 1st Earl of Yarborough gave a bust of Newton to the Mechanics' Institute in Lincoln. The second justified and celebrated in 1847 the outcome of the successful campaign for early closing in Lincoln, headed by Alexander Leslie-Melville, of Branston Hall. The Claims of Science was given in 1851 at Queen's College, Cork. The Social Aspect of Intellectual Culture was also given in Cork, in 1855 to the Cuvierian Society.

Though his biographer Des MacHale describes Boole as an "agnostic deist", Boole read a wide variety of Christian theology. Combining his interests in mathematics and theology, he compared the Christian trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost with the three dimensions of space, and was attracted to the Hebrew conception of God as an absolute unity. Boole considered converting to Judaism but in the end was said to have chosen Unitarianism.[reference?] Boole came to speak against what he saw as "prideful" scepticism, and instead favoured the belief in a "Supreme Intelligent Cause". He also declared "I firmly believe, for the accomplishment of a purpose of the Divine Mind." In addition, he stated "To infer the existence of an intelligent cause from the teeming evidence of surrounding design, to rise to the conception of a moral Governor of the World, from the study of the constitution and the moral provisions of our own nature;--these, though but the feeble steps of an understanding limited in its faculties and its materials of knowledge, are of more avail than the ambitious attempt to arrive at a certainty unattainable on the ground of natural religion. And as these were the most ancient, so are they still the most solid foundations, Revelation being set apart, of the belief that the course of this world is not abandoned to chance and inexorable fate."

Two influences on Boole were later claimed by his wife, Mary Everest Boole: a universal mysticism tempered by Jewish thought, and Indian logic. Mary Boole stated that an adolescent mystical experience provided for his life's work: "My husband told me that when he was a lad of seventeen a thought struck him suddenly, which became the foundation of all his future discoveries. It was a flash of psychological insight into the conditions under which a mind most readily accumulates knowledge [...] For a few years he supposed himself to be convinced of the truth of 'the Bible' as a whole, and even intended to take orders as a clergyman of the English Church. But by the help of a learned Jew in Lincoln he found out the true nature of the discovery which had dawned on him. This was that man's mind works by means of some mechanism which 'functions normally towards Monism.'"

In Ch. 13 of Laws of Thought Boole used examples of propositions from Baruch Spinoza and Samuel Clarke. The work contains some remarks on the relationship of logic to religion, but they are slight and cryptic. Boole was apparently disconcerted at the book's reception just as a mathematical toolset: "George afterwards learned, to his great joy, that the same conception of the basis of Logic was held by Leibniz, the contemporary of Newton. De Morgan, of course, understood the formula in its true sense; he was Boole's collaborator all along. Herbert Spencer, Jowett, and Robert Leslie Ellis understood, I feel sure; and a few others, but nearly all the logicians and mathematicians ignored [953] the statement that the book was meant to throw light on the nature of the human mind; and treated the formula entirely as a wonderful new method of reducing to logical order masses of evidence about external fact."

Mary Boole claimed that there was profound influence – via her uncle George Everest – of Indian thought in general and Indian logic, in particular, on George Boole, as well as on Augustus De Morgan and Charles Babbage: "Think what must have been the effect of the intense Hinduizing of three such men as Babbage, De Morgan, and George Boole on the mathematical atmosphere of 1830–65. What share had it in generating the Vector Analysis and the mathematics by which investigations in physical science are now conducted?"

Boole maintained that:"No general method for the solution of questions in the theory of probabilities can be established which does not explicitly recognise, not only the special numerical bases of the science, but also those universal laws of thought which are the basis of all reasoning, and which, whatever they may be as to their essence, are at least mathematical as to their form."

Family
In 1855, Boole married Mary Everest (niece of George Everest), who later wrote several educational works on her husband's principles.

The Booles had five daughters:
 * Mary Ellen (1856–1908) who married the mathematician and author Charles Howard Hinton and had four children. After the sudden death of her husband, Mary Ellen committed suicide in Washington, D.C., in May 1908.
 * George Hinton (1882–1943), mining engineer and botanist
 * H. E. Hinton (1912–1977), entomologist
 * Geoff Hinton (born 1947), cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, noted for work on artificial neural networks.
 * Eric Hinton (born 1884)
 * William Hinton (1886–1909)
 * Sebastian Hinton (1887–1923), lawyer, inventor of the jungle gym
 * Jean Hinton (married name Rosner) (1917–2002), a peace activist.
 * William H. Hinton (1919–2004) visited China in the 1930s and 40s and wrote an influential account of the Communist land reform.
 * Joan Hinton (1921–2010) worked for the Manhattan Project and lived in China from 1948 until her death on 8 June 2010; she was married to Sid Engst.
 * Margaret (1858–1935), married Edward Ingram Taylor, an artist.
 * Their elder son Geoffrey Ingram Taylor became a mathematician and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
 * Their younger son Julian Taylor was a professor of surgery.
 * Alicia (1860–1940), who made important contributions to four-dimensional geometry.
 * Her son Leonard Stott, a medical doctor and tuberculosis pioneer, invented a portable X-ray machine, a pneumothorax apparatus, and system of navigation based on spherical coordinates.
 * Lucy Everest (1862–1904), who was the first female professor of chemistry in England.
 * Ethel Lilian (1864–1960), who married the Polish scientist and revolutionary Wilfrid Michael Voynich and was the author of the novel The Gadfly.

Concepts

 * Boolean algebra, a logical calculus of truth values or set membership
 * Boolean algebra (structure), a set with operations resembling logical ones
 * Boolean circuit, a mathematical model for digital logical circuits.
 * Boolean data type is a data type, having two values (usually denoted true and false)
 * Boolean expression, an expression in a programming language that produces a Boolean value when evaluated
 * Boolean function, a function that determines Boolean values or operators
 * Boolean model (probability theory), a model in stochastic geometry
 * Boolean network, a certain network consisting of a set of Boolean variables whose state is determined by other variables in the network
 * Boolean processor, a 1-bit variables computing unit
 * Boolean ring, a ring consisting of idempotent elements
 * Boolean satisfiability problem
 * Boole's syllogistic is a logic invented by 19th-century British mathematician George Boole, which attempts to incorporate the "empty set".
 * Laws of thought
 * Principle of wholistic reference

Other

 * List of Boolean algebra topics
 * List of pioneers in computer science

title: George Boole


text:
Activision

Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016.

The company was founded as Activision, Inc. on October 1, 1979, in Sunnyvale, California, by former Atari game developers upset at their treatment by Atari in order to develop their own games for the popular Atari 2600 home video game console. Activision was the first independent, third-party, console video game developer. The video game crash of 1983, in part created by too many new companies trying to follow in Activision's footsteps without the experience of Activision's founders, hurt Activision's position in console games and forced the company to diversify into games for home computers, including the acquisition of Infocom. After a management shift, with CEO Jim Levy replaced by Bruce Davis, the company renamed itself to Mediagenic and branched out into business software applications. Mediagenic quickly fell into debt, and the company was bought for around US$500,000 by Bobby Kotick and a small group of investors around 1991.

Kotick drastically revamped and restructured the company to get it out of debt: dismissing most of its staff, moving the company to Los Angeles, and reverting to the Activision name. Building on existing assets, the Kotick-led Activision pursued more publishing opportunities and, after recovering from its former financial troubles, started acquiring numerous studios and various types of intellectual property over the 1990s and 2000s, among these being the Call of Duty and Guitar Hero series. A holding company was formed as Activision's parent company to manage both its internal and acquired studios. In 2008, this holding company merged with Vivendi Games (the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment) and formed Activision Blizzard, with Kotick as its CEO. Within this structure, Activision manages numerous third-party studios and publishes all games besides those created by Blizzard. In October 2023, Microsoft acquired parent company Activision Blizzard, maintaining that the company will continue to operate as a separate business. While part of the larger Microsoft Gaming division, Activision retains its function as the publisher of games developed by their studios.

Founding (1979)
In 1976, Warner Communications bought Atari, Inc. from Nolan Bushnell to help accelerate the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS or later the Atari 2600) to market by 1977. That same year, Atari began hiring programmers to create games for the system. Prior to Warner's acquisition, the company did not award bonus pay to programmers who worked on profitable games, nor credit the programmers publicly, to prevent them from being recruited by rival game companies. Warner Communication's management style was also different from Bushnell's. According to developer John Dunn, Warner management treated developers as engineers rather than creative staff, creating conflicts with staff. Atari's CEO Ray Kassar, named to that position following Warner's acquisition in 1978, was committed to keeping production costs minimal for Warner, according to David Crane, one of Atari's programmers.

In early 1979, Atari's marketing department circulated a memo listing the best-selling cartridges from the previous year to help guide game ideas. Crane noted that the games he was fully responsible for had brought in over US$20 million for the company but he was still only receiving a US$20,000 salary. Out of a development staff of thirty-five, four programmers (Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead), had produced games that had accounted for 60% of Atari's sales.

Crane, Kaplan, Miller, and Whitehead became vocal about the lack of recognition within the company and became known as the "Gang of Four". The group met with Kassar in May 1979 to demand that the company treat developers as record labels treated musicians, with royalties and their names on game boxes. Kaplan, who called the others "the best designers for the [2600] in the world", recalled that Kassar called the four men "towel designers" and claimed that "anybody can do a cartridge".

The four made the decision to soon leave Atari and start their own business, but were not sure how to go about it. In 1979, the concept of third-party developers did not exist, as software for video game consoles were published exclusively by makers of the systems for which the games were designed; thus the common thinking was that to make console games, one needed to make a console first. The four decided to create their own independent game development company. They were directed by their attorney to Jim Levy, who was at the time raising venture capital to get into the software business for early home computers. Levy listened to their plans, agreed with its direction, and helped the four to secure about US$1 million in capital from Sutter Hill Ventures. They also checked with legal counsel on their plans to develop games for the Atari VCS, and included litigation fees in their capital investment.

By August, Crane and Miller had left Atari, with Whitehead joining them shortly after. Kaplan had also quit Atari in August, but initially decided not to join as he did not like the starting business plan; he came back later to join Activision that December. Activision was formally founded on October 1, 1979, with Levy serving as CEO. The company was initially named "Computer Arts, Inc." while they considered a better title. The founders had thought of the name VSync, Inc., but feared that the public would not understand or know how to say it. Levy suggested combining "active" and "television" to come up with Activision.

Early years (1980–1982)
Activision began working out of Crane's garage in the latter half of 1979, each programmer developing their own game that was planned for release in mid-1980: Dragster, Fishing Derby, Checkers, and Boxing. The four's knowledge of the Atari 2600, as well as software tricks for the system, helped them make their own games visually distinct from Atari-produced games. To further distinguish themselves, Activision's boxes were brightly colored and featured an in-game screenshot on the back cover. Instruction manuals for games devoted at least one page to credit the developer. Additionally, for nearly all of Activision's games through 1983, the instruction manuals included instructions for sending the company a photograph of a player's high scores to receive a patch in return.

Ahead of the release of the first four games, Activision obtained space at the mid-year 1980 Consumer Electronics Show to showcase their titles, and quickly obtained favorable press. The attention afforded to Activision worried Atari, as the four's departure had already created a major dent in their development staff. Atari initially tried to tarnish Activision's reputation by using industry press at CES to label those that took trade secrets as "evil, terrible people", according to Crane, and then later threatened to refuse to sell Atari games to retailers that also carried these Activision titles. By the end of 1980, Atari filed a formal lawsuit against Activision to try to stop the company, claiming the four had stolen trade secrets and violated non-disclosure agreements. The lawsuit was settled by 1982, with Activision agreeing to pay royalties to Atari but otherwise legitimizing the third-party development model. In 2003, Activision's founders were given the Game Developers Choice "First Penguin" award, reflecting their being the first successful third-party developer in the video game industry.

Following the first round of releases, each of the founders developed their own titles, about once a year, over the first few years of the company. While their 1980 games were modest hits, one of the company's first successful games was Kaboom!, released in 1981, which was Activision's first game to sell over a million units. Activision's breakout title was 1982's Pitfall!, created by Crane. More than four million copies of the game were sold. Near the end of 1982, Kaplan left Activision to work on the development of the Amiga personal computer as he wanted to be more involved in hardware development.

Total sales for Activision were estimated at US$157 million and revenues at US$60 million ahead of its June 1983 initial public offering; at this point Activision had around 60 employees. Danny Goodman stated in Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games in 1983, "I doubt that there is an active [Atari 2600] owner who doesn't have at least one Activision cartridge in his library". The company completed its public offering in June 1983 on NASDAQ under the stock ticker AVSN.

The video game market crash (1983–1988)
The success of Activision, alongside the popularity of the Atari 2600, led to many more home consoles third-party developers as well as other home consoles. Activision produced some of its Atari games for the Intellivision and ColecoVision consoles, among other platforms. However, several new third-party developers also arose, attempting to follow the approach Activision had used but without the experience they had; according to Crane, several of these companies were founded with venture capital and hired programmers with little game design experience off the street, mass-publishing whatever product the developers had made. This was a contributing factor to the video game crash of 1983.

For Activision, while they survived the crash, they felt its effects in the following years. These third-party developers folded, leaving warehouses full of unsold games, which savvy retailers purchased and sold at a mass discount (US$5 compared to Activision's US$40 manufacturer's suggested retail price). While there was still a demand for Activision games, uneducated consumers were more drawn to the heavily discounted titles instead, reducing their income. Their quarterly revenue dropped from US$50 million in mid-1983 to about US$6–7 million by the end of 1984, according to Levy, and they were forced to lay off staff, going from about 400 employees to 95 in that period. Because of this, Activision decided that they needed to diversify their games onto home computers such as the Commodore 64, Apple, and Atari 8-bit computers to avoid completely going out of business like other third-party developers. There still was a drain of talent through 1985 from the crash. Miller and Whitehead left in 1984 due to the large devaluation of their stock and went on to form Accolade.

With the video game crash making console game development a risky proposition, the company focused on developing for home computers with games like Little Computer People and Hacker, while Levy tried to keep expenditures in check as they recovered. Looking to expand further, Activision acquired, through a corporate merger, the struggling text adventure pioneer Infocom in June 1986. This acquisition was spearheaded by Levy, who was a big fan of Infocom's titles and felt the company was in a similar position as Activision. About six months after the "Infocom Wedding", Activision's board decided to replace Levy with Bruce Davis. Davis was against the purchase of Infocom from the start and was heavy-handed in its management, and even attempted to seek a lawsuit to recover their purchase from Infocom's shareholders. Crane also found Davis difficult to work with and was concerned with how Davis managed the closure of Imagic, one of the third-party development studios formed after Activision's success in 1981. Crane left Activision in 1986 and helped Garry Kitchen found Absolute Entertainment. In late 1986, Activision adopted the Electric Dreams brand, usually used for British software, for titles outside of English for the American market.

Mediagenic (1988–1991)
In 1988, Activision began involvement in software besides video games, such as business applications. As a result, Activision changed its corporate name to Mediagenic to better represent all of its activities.

Mediagenic consisted of four groups:
 * Activision: video game publisher for various platforms, notably the Nintendo Entertainment System, Master System, Atari 7800, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and Amiga
 * Infocom: developer of interactive fiction games
 * Gamestar: initially an independent company but purchased by Activision in 1986. Specialized in sports video games
 * Ten Point O: business application software

In 1989, after several years of losses, Activision closed down the Infocom studios, extending to only 11 of the 26 employees an offer to relocate to Activision's Silicon Valley headquarters. Five of them accepted this offer.

Notably during this time, Mediagenic was known to have worked on the early version of a football game that would be the basis for Joe Montana Football. Sega of America's Michael Katz had been able to get Sega to pay Mediagenic around early 1990 to develop this into the branded version after securing the rights to Joe Montana's name, but was unaware of internal troubles that had been going on within the company, which had left the state of the game mostly unfinished. Katz and Sega were forced to take the incomplete game to Electronic Arts, which had been developing its own John Madden Football series for personal computers, to complete the game.

During this period Mediagenic, via Activision, secured the rights to distribute games from Cyan Worlds. The first game published by Activision from Cyan was The Manhole, on CD-ROM for personal computers, the first major game distributed in this format.

Purchase by Bobby Kotick (1991–1997)
Davis' management of Mediagenic failed to produce a profitable company; in 1991, Mediagenic reported a loss of US$26.8 million on only US$28.8 million of revenue and had over US$60 million in debt. Cyan severed their contract with Activision, and turned to Broderbund for publishing, including what would become one of the most significant computer games of the 1990s, Myst.

Bobby Kotick had become interested in the value of the video game industry following the crash, and he and three other investors worked to buy Commodore International in an effort to gain access to the Amiga line of personal computers. After failing to complete purchase, the group bought a company that licensed Nintendo characters, and through Nintendo was directed to the failing Mediagenic. Kotick was drawn to buy out Mediagenic not for its current offerings but for the Activision name, given its past successes with Pitfall!, with hopes to restore Activision to its former glory. Crane said that Kotick has recognized the Activision brand name could be valued around US$50 million and rather than start a new company and spend that amount to obtain the same reputation, he saw the opportunity to buy the failing Mediagenic at a bargain price and gain Activision's reputation with minimal cost. Kotick and additional investors bought Mediagenic for approximately US$500,000 in 1991. This group of investors included real estate businessman Steve Wynn and Philips Electronics.

Kotick became CEO of Mediagenic on its purchase and made several immediate changes: He let go of all but 8 of the companies' 150 employees, performed a full restructuring of the company, developed a bankruptcy restructuring plan, and reincorporated the company in Los Angeles, California. In the bankruptcy plan, Kotick recognized that Mediagenic still had valuable assets, which included the Infocom library as well as its authoring tools to make games, Activision's distribution network, and licenses to develop on Nintendo and Sega home consoles. Kotick offset some debt by giving stock in the company to its distributors as to keep them vested in the company's success. Kotick also had the company reissue several of its past console and Infocom titles as compilations for personal computers. Kotick had also recognized the value of the Zork property from Infocom, and had the company develop a sequel, Return to Zork. Combined, these steps allowed Mediagenic to fulfill on the bankruptcy plan, and by the end of 1992, Kotick renamed Mediagenic to the original Activision name. The new Activision went public in October 1993, raising about US$40 million, and was listed on NASDAQ under its new ticker symbol ATVI.

By 1995, Kotick's approach had met one promise he made to investors: that he would give them four years of 50% growth in revenues while remaining break-even. Reaching this goal, Kotick then set Activision on his second promise to investors, to develop high-demand games and make the company profitable by 1997.

Activision published the first-person perspective MechWarrior in 1989, based on FASA's pen-and-paper game BattleTech. A sequel, MechWarrior 2, was released in 1995 after two years of delays and internal struggles, prompting FASA not to renew their licensing deal with Activision. To counter, Activision released several more games bearing the MechWarrior 2 name, which did not violate their licensing agreement. These included NetMech, MechWarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy, and MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries. The entire MechWarrior 2 game series accounted for more than US$70 million in sales.

Activision procured the license to another pen-and-paper-based war game, Heavy Gear, in 1997. The video game version was well received by critics, with an 81.46% average rating on GameRankings and being considered the best game of the genre at the time by GameSpot. The Mechwarrior 2 engine was also used in other Activision games, including 1997's Interstate '76 and 1998's Battlezone.

Growth and acquisitions (1997–2008)
With several of its own successfully developed games helping to turn a profit, Kotick led Activision to start seeking acquisitions of video game development studios, guided by market surveys to determine what areas of content to focus on. It is estimated that between 1997 and 2008, Activision made 25 acquisitions, several for undisclosed amounts. Several of these came prior to 2001, in the midst of the Dot-com bubble, enabling the company to acquire studios at a lower valuation. On June 16, 2000, Activision reorganized as a holding company, Activision Holdings, to manage Activision and its subsidiaries more effectively. Activision changed its corporate name from "Activision, Inc." to "Activision Publishing, Inc.", while Activision Holdings took Activision's former "Activision, Inc." name. Activision Publishing became a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision, which in turn became the publicly traded company, with all outstanding shares of capital stock converted.

Some of the key acquisitions and investments made by Activision in this period include:
 * Raven Software: Raven was founded in 1990; because of their close proximity, Raven frequently collaborated with id Software, and one of the studio's early successes was the Heretic series using id's Doom engine. Around 1997, Raven's founders Brian and Steve Raffel felt the need to seek a parent company. They arranged a publishing deal with Activision in 1997, which not only served to provide Raven additional financial support, but also gave Activision the opportunity to work closely with id Software and gain business relationships with them. By the end of 1997, Activision acquired Raven as one of its first subsidiaries under Kotick. The acquisition price was $12 million.
 * Neversoft: Prior to its acquisition in 2000, Activision had arranged a development deal with Neversoft to re-develop Apocalypse, a title that failed to be completed within Activision. Subsequently, Activision had Neversoft work on a prototype for a skateboarding game, which would end up becoming the first in the Tony Hawk's series of skateboarding video games. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was a critical success, leading Activision to acquire Neversoft in April 2000. After eight games, the series has brought in US$1.6 billion.
 * Infinity Ward: After Electronic Arts released Medal of Honor: Allied Assault in 2002, several of the developers from 2015, Inc., disenchanted with their current contracts, left to form a new studio, Infinity Ward. Kotick himself provided the group with startup funding, as they were seeking to develop a similar title to Medal of Honor. Activision acquired the studio for US$5 million in January 2003, and later publish their first title, Call of Duty, directly competing with Electronic Arts. The Call of Duty series has since seen nearly yearly releases and as of 2016 had sold more than 250 million units and brought in more than US$12 billion in revenue.
 * Treyarch: The Santa Monica, California studio was founded in 1996. With the success of the first Tony Hawk game from Neversoft, Activision used Treyarch to assist in further Tony Hawk games as well as to develop titles using Activision's license of Marvel's Spider-Man. Activision acquired the studio in 2001 for about US$20 million. Following the success of Call of Duty from Infinity Ward, Activision moved Treyarch to assist in the series' development, trading off each year' major release between the two studios.
 * Gray Matter Studios: While Gray Matter was originally founded in 1993 as Xatrix Entertainment, it was rebranded to Gray Matter in 1999 as they began work on Return to Castle Wolfenstein, in conjunction with Nerve Software and oversight by id Software who owned the Castle Wolfenstein IP. Activision, the game's publisher, acquired a portion of Gray Matter's stock during this time. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was a critical and financial success, and led Activision to acquire the remaining shares of Gray Matter in 2002 for about US$3.2 million, with the intent to help Infinity Ward expand out the Call of Duty franchise. In 2005, Activision made the decision to merge the smaller Gray Matter into the larger Treyarch to put their combined talents towards Call of Duty 3.
 * RedOctane: Around 2005, Red Octane was co-developing Guitar Hero, a console game based on the arcade game GuitarFreaks, with Harmonix; Harmonix was developing the software while RedOctane developed the instrument controllers. Guitar Hero was a major success. Activision purchased RedOctane for nearly US$100 million in June 2006. The series has since earned more than US$2 billion in revenues.
 * Toys for Bob: Toys for Bob was founded by Paul Reiche III, Fred Ford, and Terry Falls in 1989 and gained success in developing the first two Star Control games, and later made film-to-video game adaptions. Activision purchased the studio in 2005, and had given them work on some of the Tony Hawk's games as well as other licensed properties. Following Activision's merger with Vivendi, Activision gained the Spyro intellectual property and assigned Toys for Bob to develop the series in a new direction, leading to the toys-to-life Skylanders series.

Merger with Vivendi Games (2008)
While Activision was highly successful with its range of developers and successful series, Kotick was concerned that they did not have a title for the growing massively multiplayer online market, which presented the opportunity for continued revenues from subscription models and microtransactions instead of the revenue from a single sale. Around 2006, Kotick contacted Jean-Bernard Lévy, the new CEO of Vivendi, a French media conglomerate. Vivendi had a games division, Vivendi Games, that was struggling to be viable at the time, but its principal feature was that it owned Blizzard Entertainment and its highly successful World of Warcraft game, which was drawing in US$1.1 billion a year in subscription fees. Vivendi Games also owned Sierra Entertainment.

Lévy recognized Kotick wanted control of World of Warcraft, and offered to allow the companies to merge, but only if Lévy held the majority shares in the merged group, forcing Kotick to cede control. Kotick fretted about this decision for a while, according to friends and investors. During this time in 2006–2007, some of Activision's former successful properties began to wane, such as Tony Hawk's, so Activision bought RedOctane, the publisher of the Guitar Hero franchise. Kotick met with Blizzard's president Mike Morhaime, and learned that Blizzard also had a successful inroad into getting their games into China, a potentially lucrative market. Given this potential opportunity, Kotick agreed to the merger.

Activision's board signed on to the merger by December 2007. The merger was completed in July 2008. The new company was called Activision Blizzard and was headed by Kotick, while Vivendi maintained a 52% share in the company. The new company was estimated to be worth US$18.9 billion, ahead of Electronic Arts, which was valued at US$14.1 billion.

Post-merger developments (2009–present)
Activision Publishing remains a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard following the merger, and is responsible for developing, producing, and distributing games from its internal and subsidiary studios. Eric Hirshberg was announced as Activision Publishing's CEO in 2010.

Activision Publishing established Sledgehammer Games in November 2009. Formed earlier in 2009 by Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey, former Visceral Games leads that had worked on Dead Space, Sledgehammer intended to develop a Call of Duty spin-off title fashioned after the gameplay in Dead Space. However, in early 2010, legal issues between Infinity Ward and Activision Blizzard led to several members of Infinity Ward leaving, and Activision assigned Sledgehammer to assist Infinity Ward in the next major Call of Duty title, Modern Warfare 3. Since then, Sledgehammer, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch share development duties for the flagship series, with support from Raven and other studios as necessary.

In February 2010, Activision Blizzard reported significant losses in revenue stemming from a slow down in Guitar Hero sales and from its more casual games. Subsequently, Activision Publishing shuttered Red Octane, Luxoflux and Underground Development as well as laid off about 25% of the staff at Neversoft. Within the same year, Activision shuttered Budcat Creations in November 2010, and Bizarre Creations in February 2011.

Hirshberg left the CEO position in March 2018.

Into the 2020s, Activision put more focus on the Call of Duty franchise, including the release of the free-to-play Call of Duty: Warzone in 2020. By April 2021, the company had assigned all of its internal studios to work on some part of the Call of Duty franchise. This includes a new studio, Activision Mobile, devoted to the Call of Duty Mobile title as reported in August 2021.

In 2021, while all their employees were working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, Activision and its parent Activision Blizzard vacated their longtime headquarters building in Santa Monica and ended their lease with Boston Properties. In September 2021, they subleased a much smaller office space in Santa Monica at the Pen Factory (a former Paper Mate factory) from Kite Pharma, which had leased the space from Lincoln Property Company.

With the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft in October 2023, Activision Blizzard as a whole, including the Activision Publishing subdivision, became a separate division under the Microsoft Gaming arm of Microsoft.

On March 8, 2024, 600 Activision QA workers in Texas, Minnesota and California unionized under the Communication Workers of America (CWA), marking it as the largest union in the United States video game industry.

On May 16, 2024, Activision announced the establishment of Warsaw-based studio Elsewhere Entertainment, assembled for the development of a new narrative-based AAA IP not associated with other Activision series like Call of Duty. The studio comprises various developers associated with other narrative-driven gaming franchises such as The Last of Us, Uncharted, The Witcher and Far Cry among others; at the time of announcement they were recruiting more staff to create a "state-of-the-art and next-generation gaming experience", as well as a franchise with "an enduring legacy that goes far beyond games."

Studios

 * Activision Shanghai Studio in Shanghai, China; founded in 2009.
 * Beenox in Québec City, Canada; founded in May 2000, acquired on May 25, 2005.
 * Demonware in Dublin, Ireland; founded in 2003, acquired in May 2007.
 * Digital Legends Entertainment in Barcelona, Spain; founded in May 2001, acquired on October 28, 2021.

 * Elsewhere Entertainment in Warsaw, Poland; founded on May 16, 2024.

 * High Moon Studios in Carlsbad, California, US; founded as Sammy Entertainment in April 2001, acquired by Vivendi Games in January 2006.
 * Infinity Ward in Woodland Hills, California, US; founded in 2002, acquired in October 2003.
 * Raven Software in Madison, Wisconsin, US; founded in 1990, acquired in 1997.
 * Sledgehammer Games in Foster City, California, US; founded on July 21, 2009.
 * Solid State Studios in Santa Monica, California, US; founded in 2021.
 * Treyarch in Santa Monica, California, US; founded in 1996, acquired in 2001.

Former studios

 * 7 Studios in Los Angeles, US; founded in 1999, acquired in April 2009, closed in February 2011.
 * Activision Value Publishing in Minneapolis, US; founded in 2000 as a merger of Activision subsidiaries Head Games Publishing, Expert Software and Elsinore Studio. Closed in 2016.
 * Beachhead Studio in Santa Monica, California, US; founded in February 2011.
 * Bizarre Creations, Liverpool, England; founded as Raising Hell Productions in 1987 and changed name in 1994, acquired on September 26, 2007, closed on February 18, 2011.
 * Budcat Creations in Iowa City, Iowa, US; founded in September 2000, acquired on November 10, 2008, closed in November 2010.
 * FreeStyleGames in Leamington Spa, England; founded in 2002, acquired on September 12, 2008, sold to Ubisoft on January 18, 2017, subsequently renamed Ubisoft Leamington.
 * Gray Matter Studios in Los Angeles, US; founded in the 1990s as Xatrix Entertainment, acquired in January 2002, merged into Treyarch in 2005.
 * Infocom in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US; founded on June 22, 1979, acquired in 1986, closed in 1989.
 * Luxoflux in Santa Monica, California, US; founded in January 1997, acquired in October 2002, closed on February 11, 2010.
 * Massive Entertainment in Malmö, Sweden; founded in 1997, acquired by Vivendi Universal Games in 2002, sold to Ubisoft on November 10, 2008.
 * Neversoft in Woodland Hills, California, US; founded in July 1994, acquired in October 1999, merged into Infinity Ward on May 3, 2014 and was officially made defunct on July 10, 2014.
 * Radical Entertainment in Vancouver, Canada; founded in 1991, acquired by Vivendi Games in 2005, laid off most staff in 2012.
 * RedOctane in Mountain View, California, US; founded in November 2005, acquired in 2006, closed on February 11, 2010.
 * Shaba Games in San Francisco, US; founded in September 1997, acquired in 2002, and closed on October 8, 2009.
 * Swordfish Studios in Birmingham, England; founded in September 2002, acquired by Vivendi Universal Games in June 2005, sold to Codemasters on November 14, 2008.
 * The Blast Furnace in Leeds, England; founded in November 2011 as Activision Leeds, renamed in August 2012, closed in March 2014.
 * Toys for Bob in Novato, California, US; founded in 1989, acquired on May 3, 2005, spun off from Activision in May 2024.
 * Underground Development in Foster City, California, US; founded as Z-Axis in 1994, acquired in May 2002, closed on February 11, 2010.
 * Vicarious Visions in Albany, New York, US; founded in 1991, acquired in January 2005, moved to Blizzard Entertainment in January 2021. It was renamed to Blizzard Albany on April 12, 2022.
 * Wanako Games in Santiago, Chile; founded in 2002, acquired by Vivendi Games on February 20, 2007, sold to Artificial Mind and Movement on November 20, 2008.

1980s

 * Fishing Derby (1980)
 * Boxing (1980)
 * Skiing (1980)
 * Freeway (1981)
 * Ice Hockey (1981)
 * Kaboom! (1981)
 * Stampede (1981)
 * Laser Blast (1981)
 * Tennis (1981)
 * Megamania (1982)
 * Barnstorming (1982)
 * Enduro (1982)
 * Chopper Command (1982)
 * Starmaster (1982)
 * Pitfall! series (1982–2004)
 * River Raid series (1982–1988)
 * Oink! (1983)
 * Beamrider (1983)
 * Robot Tank (1983)
 * H.E.R.O. (1984)
 * Little Computer People (1985)
 * Portal (1986)
 * Hacker series (1985–1986)
 * Shanghai series (1986–1990)
 * Transformers series (1986, 2007–2017)
 * The Last Ninja series (1987–1988)
 * Deathtrack (1989)
 * Tongue of the Fatman (1989)
 * MechWarrior series (1989–1996)

1990s

 * Hunter (1991)
 * Zork series (1993–1997)
 * Dark Reign series (1997–2000)
 * Heavy Gear series (1997–1999)
 * Quake series (1997–2007)
 * Interstate series (1997–1999)
 * Battlezone series (1998–1999)
 * SiN (1998)
 * Heretic II (1998)
 * Vigilante 8 series (1998–2008)
 * Tenchu series (1998–2004)
 * Call to Power series (1999–2000)
 * Star Trek series (1999–2003)
 * Tony Hawk's series (1999–2015, 2020)

2000s

 * Soldier of Fortune series (2000–2007)
 * X-Men series (2000–2011)
 * Spider-Man series (2000–2014)
 * Lost Kingdoms series (2002–2003)
 * Total War series (2002–2004)
 * Call of Duty series (2003–present)
 * True Crime series (2003–2005)
 * Wolfenstein series (2003–2009)
 * Shrek series (2004-2011)
 * Doom 3 (2004)
 * Madagascar series (2005-2011)
 * The Movies (2005)
 * Gun (2005)
 * Guitar Hero series (2006–2015)
 * Marvel: Ultimate Alliance series (2006–2009)
 * Barbie series (2006-2009)
 * Little League World Series Baseball series (2008-2010)
 * James Bond series (2008–2012)
 * Crash Bandicoot series (2008–present)
 * Spyro the Dragon series (2008–2018)
 * Prototype series (2009–2015)
 * Ice Age series (2009-2012)

2010s

 * Blur (2010)
 * Singularity (2010)
 * NASCAR The Game series (2011–2013)
 * Skylanders series (2011–2018)
 * SpongeBob SquarePants series (2013–2015)
 * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series (2013–2016)
 * Destiny series (2014–2018)
 * Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019)

title: Activision