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Charles Ponzi

Charles Ponzi (, ; born Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi; March 3, 1882 – January 18, 1949) was an Italian swindler and con artist who operated in the U.S. and Canada. His aliases included Charles Ponci, Carlo, and Charles P. Bianchi.

Born in Lugo, Italy, he became known in the early 1920s as a swindler in North America for his money-making scheme. He promised clients a 50% profit within 45 days or 100% profit within 90 days, by buying discounted postal reply coupons in other countries and redeeming them at face value in the U.S. as a form of arbitrage. In reality, Ponzi was paying earlier investors using the investments of later investors. While this type of fraudulent investment scheme was not invented by Ponzi, it became so identified with him that it now is referred to as a "Ponzi scheme". His scheme ran for over a year before it collapsed, costing his "investors" $20 million.

Ponzi may have been inspired by the scheme of William W. Miller (also known as "520% Miller"), a Brooklyn book-keeper who in 1899 used a similar deception to take in $1 million (approximately $35 million in 2022).

Early life
Charles Ponzi was born in Lugo, Emilia-Romagna, on March 3, 1882. He told The New York Times he had come from a family in Parma. Ponzi's ancestors had been well-to-do, and his mother continued to use the title "donna", but the family had subsequently fallen upon difficult times and had little money. Ponzi took a job as a postal worker early on, but soon was accepted into the University of Rome La Sapienza. His richer friends considered the university a "four-year vacation", and he was inclined to follow them around to bars, cafés, and the opera. This resulted in Ponzi spending all his money, and four years later he was broke and without a degree. During this time, a number of Italian boys were migrating to the U.S. and returning to Italy as wealthy individuals. Ponzi's family encouraged him to do the same, with the intention of returning his family to its former socio-economic status.

Arrival in the United States
On November 15, 1903, Ponzi arrived in Boston aboard the S.S. Vancouver. By his own account, Ponzi had $2.50 in his pocket, having gambled away the rest of his life savings during the voyage. "I landed in this country with $2.50 in cash and $1 million in hopes, and those hopes never left me," he later told a reporter for the New York Times. He quickly learned English and spent the next few years doing odd jobs along the East Coast, eventually taking a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant, where he slept on the floor. Ponzi managed to work his way up to the position of waiter, but was fired for theft and shortchanging customers.

Move to Montreal and Banco Zarossi
In 1907, after several years of failing to establish himself in the U.S., Ponzi moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and became an assistant teller in the newly opened Banco Zarossi, a bank located on Saint Jacques Street started by Luigi "Louis" Zarossi to service the influx of Italian immigrants arriving in the city. By this time, Ponzi had a winning personality and spoke English, Italian, and French, which Zuckoff says helped him get the job at Banco Zarossi.

It was at Banco Zarossi that Ponzi first saw the scheme of "robbing Peter to pay Paul" (which subsequently would be called a Ponzi scheme). Zarossi paid 6% interest on bank deposits—double the going rate at the time—and was growing rapidly as a result. Ponzi eventually rose to bank manager. However, he found out that the bank was in serious financial trouble because of bad real estate loans, and that Zarossi was funding the interest payments not through profit on investments, but by using money deposited in newly opened accounts. The bank eventually failed and Zarossi fled to Mexico with a large portion of the bank's money.

Ponzi stayed in Montreal and, for some time, lived at Zarossi's house helping the man's abandoned family while planning to return to the U.S. and start over. As Ponzi was penniless, this proved to be very difficult. Eventually, he walked into the offices of a former Zarossi customer, Canadian Warehousing, and finding no one there, wrote himself a check for $423.58 in a checkbook he found, forging the signature of Damien Fournier, a director of the company. Confronted by police who had taken note of his large expenditures just after the forged check was cashed, Ponzi held out his wrist and said, "I'm guilty". He ended up spending three years at St. Vincent-de-Paul Federal Penitentiary [Inmate #6660], a bleak facility located on the outskirts of Montreal. Rather than inform his mother of his imprisonment, he posted her a letter stating that he had found a job as a "special assistant" to a prison warden.

After his release in 1911, Ponzi decided to return to the U.S., but became involved in a scheme to smuggle Italian illegal immigrants across the border. He was caught and spent two years in Atlanta Prison. Here he became a translator for the warden, who was intercepting letters from mobster Ignazio "the Wolf" Lupo. Ponzi ended up befriending Lupo. Another prisoner, Charles W. Morse, became a true role model to Ponzi. Morse, a wealthy Wall Street businessman and speculator, fooled doctors during medical exams by eating soap shavings to give the appearance of ill-health. Morse was soon released from prison. Ponzi completed his prison term following Morse's release, having an additional month added to his term due to his inability to pay a $50 fine.

Work in a mining camp and in Boston
After Ponzi's release from prison, he made his way back to Boston. While working at a mining camp as a nurse, he came up with the idea of going to another mining camp, starting a utility there that would supply water and power, and selling its stock. During this time, a fellow nurse called Pearl Gosid had suffered severe burns in an accident. Despite not knowing her, Ponzi volunteered for two major operations to donate 122 sqin of skin from his back and legs to Pearl. This resulted in pleurisy and similar complications, and Ponzi's losing his job.

Thereafter Ponzi continued to travel around looking for work, and in Boston, he met Rose Maria Gnecco, a stenographer, to whom he proposed marriage. Gnecco came from a family of Italian-American immigrants who had a small fruit stall in downtown Boston. Though Ponzi did not tell Gnecco about his years in jail, his mother sent Gnecco a letter telling her of Ponzi's past. Nonetheless, she married him in 1918. For the next few months, Ponzi worked at a number of businesses, including his father-in-law's grocery, and the import-export company JR Poole before hitting upon an idea to sell advertising in a large business listing to be sent to various businesses. He was unable to sell this idea to businesses, and his company failed soon after. Ponzi took over his wife's family's fledgling fruit company for a short time, but to no avail, and it, too, failed shortly thereafter.

An idea to trade IRCs
Ponzi set up a small office at 27 School Street, Boston, in the summer of 1919 attempting to sell business ideas to contacts in Europe. He received a letter from a company in Spain asking about the advertising catalog which included an international reply coupon (IRC), leading Ponzi to find a weakness in the system which, at least in principle, gave him an opportunity to make money.

Postal reply coupons allowed a person in one country to pay for the postage of a reply to a correspondent in another country. IRCs were priced at the cost of postage in the country of purchase, but could be exchanged for stamps to cover the cost of postage in the country where redeemed; if these values were different, there was a potential profit. Inflation after World War I had greatly decreased the cost of postage in Italy expressed in U.S. dollars, so that an IRC could be bought cheaply in Italy and exchanged for U.S. stamps of higher value, which could then be sold. Ponzi claimed that the net profit on these transactions, after expenses and exchange rates, was in excess of 400%. This was a form of arbitrage, or profiting by buying an asset at a lower price in one market and immediately selling it in a market where the price is higher, which is legal.

Seeing an opportunity, Ponzi quit his job as a translator to execute his IRC scheme, but needed a large capital expense to buy IRCs at lower performing European currencies. He first tried to borrow money from several banks, including the Hanover Trust Company, but they were not convinced, and its manager, Chmielinski, refused to lend him money.

Subsequently, Ponzi set up a stock company to raise money from the public. He also went to several of his friends in Boston and promised that he would double their investment in 90 days, in an environment when banks were paying only 5% annual interest. The great returns from postal reply coupons, he explained to them, made such incredible profits easy to accomplish. Some people invested and were paid as promised, receiving $750 in interest on initial investments of $1,250.

Securities Exchange Company
In January 1920, Ponzi started his own company, the "Securities Exchange Company", to promote the scheme. In the first month, 18 people invested in his company with a total of $1,800. He paid them promptly, the very next month, with money obtained from a newer set of investors.

Ponzi set up a larger office, this time in the Niles Building on School Street. Word spread, and investments increased rapidly. Ponzi hired agents and paid them generous commissions. Between February and March 1920, the total amount invested had risen from $5,000 to $25,000 ($ to $ in, respectively). As the scheme grew, Ponzi hired agents to seek out new investors in New England and New Jersey. At that time, investors were being paid impressive rates, which subsequently encouraged others to invest. By May 1920, he had made $420,000. By June 1920, people had invested $2.5 million in Ponzi's scheme. By July, he was approaching a million dollars per day.

Ponzi began depositing the money in the Hanover Trust Bank of Boston (a small bank on Hanover Street in the mostly Italian North End), in the hope that once his account was large enough he could impose his will on the bank or even be made its president; he bought a controlling interest in the bank through himself and several friends after depositing $3 million. By July 1920, Ponzi had made millions. Some of his investors had been mortgaging their homes and investing their life savings. Most did not take their profits but reinvested. Ponzi's company, meanwhile, had set up branches from Maine to New Jersey.

Even though Ponzi's company was bringing in fantastic sums of money each day, the simplest financial analysis would have shown that the operation was running at a large loss. As long as money kept flowing in, existing investors could be paid with the new money. This was the only method Ponzi had to continue providing returns to existing investors, as he made no effort to generate legitimate profits.

Ponzi's initial investors consisted of working-class immigrants like himself. Gradually, news travelled upwards, and many well-to-do Boston Brahmins also invested in his scheme. In its heyday, nearly 75% of Boston's police force had invested in the scheme. Ponzi's investors even included those closest to him, like his chauffeur John Collins and his own brother-in-law. Ponzi was indiscriminate about whom he allowed to invest, from young newspaper boys investing a few dollars to high-net-worth individuals, like a banker from Lawrence, Kansas, who invested $10,000.

Infeasibility of Ponzi's scheme
Though Ponzi was still paying back investors, mostly from money from subsequent investors, he had not yet figured out a way to actually change the IRCs to cash. He also subsequently realized that changing the coupons to money was logistically impossible. For example: for the initial 18 investors of January 1920, for their $1,800 investment, it would have taken 53,000 postal coupons to actually realize the arbitrage profits. For the subsequent 15,000 investors that Ponzi had, he would have had to fill Titanic-sized ships with postal coupons just to ship them to the U.S. from Europe. However, Ponzi found that all the interest payments returned to him, as investors continued to re-invest.

Ponzi's subsequent lifestyle
Ponzi lived luxuriously: he bought a mansion in Lexington, Massachusetts, and maintained accounts in several banks across New England besides Hanover Trust. He bought a Locomobile, the finest car of that time. He had initially purchased two first-class tickets to Italy for a delayed honeymoon with Rose but instead decided to change them to bring his mother from Italy to the U.S. in a first-class stateroom on an ocean liner. She lived with Ponzi and Rose for some time in Lexington, but died soon after. On July 31, 1920, Ponzi told Father Pasquale Di Milla, the director of the Italian Children's Home in Jamaica Plain, that he would donate $100,000 in honor of his mother. Ponzi also bought a macaroni company and part of a wine company in an attempt to gain profits that could be used to repay the investors of his IRC scheme.

Suspicion
Ponzi's rapid rise naturally drew suspicion. When a Boston financial writer suggested there was no way Ponzi could legally deliver such high returns in a short period of time, Ponzi sued for libel and won $500,000 in damages. As libel law at the time placed the burden of proof on the writer and publisher, this effectively neutralized any serious probes into his dealings for some time.

Nonetheless, there were still signs of his eventual ruin. Joseph Daniels, a Boston furniture dealer who had given Ponzi furniture which he could not afford to pay for, sued Ponzi to cash in on the gold rush. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, but it did prompt people to begin asking how Ponzi could have gone from being penniless to being a millionaire in a short span of time. There was a run on the Securities Exchange Company, as some investors decided to pull out. Ponzi paid them and the run stopped.

On July 24, 1920, The Boston Post printed a favorable article on Ponzi and his scheme that brought in investors faster than ever. At that time, Ponzi was making $250,000 a day. Ponzi's good fortune was increased by the fact that just below this favorable article, which seemed to imply that Ponzi was indeed returning 50% return on an investment after only 45 days, was a bank advertisement that stated that the bank was paying 5% returns annually. The next business day after this article was published, Ponzi arrived at his office to find thousands of Bostonians waiting to give him their money.

Despite this reprieve, Post acting publisher Richard Grozier (who was running the paper in the absence of his father Edwin, its owner and publisher) and city editor Eddie Dunn were suspicious and assigned investigative reporters to look into Ponzi. He was also under investigation by Massachusetts authorities, and, on the day the Post printed its article, Ponzi met with state officials. He managed to divert the officials from checking his books by offering to stop taking money during the investigation, a fortunate choice, as proper records were not being kept. Ponzi's offer temporarily calmed the suspicions of the state officials.

Collapse of the scheme
On July 26, the Post started a series of articles that asked hard questions about the operation of Ponzi's money machine. The paper contacted Clarence Barron, the financial journalist who headed Dow Jones & Company, to examine Ponzi's scheme. Barron observed that though Ponzi was offering fantastic returns on investments, Ponzi himself was not investing with his own company.

Barron then noted that to cover the investments made with the Securities Exchange Company, 160 million postal reply coupons would have to be in circulation. However, only about 27,000 actually were in circulation. The United States Post Office stated that postal reply coupons were not being bought in quantity at home or abroad. The gross profit margin in percent on buying and selling each IRC was colossal, but the overhead required to handle the purchase and redemption of these items, which were of extremely low cost and were sold individually, would have exceeded the gross profit (see ). Barron noted that if Ponzi really was doing what he claimed to do, he would effectively be profiting at the expense of a government—either the governments where he bought the coupons or the U.S. government. For this reason, Barron argued that even if Ponzi's operation was legitimate, it was immoral to take advantage of a government in this manner.

The Post articles caused a panic run on the Securities Exchange Company. Ponzi paid out $2 million in three days to a wild crowd outside his office. He canvassed the crowd, passed out coffee and doughnuts, and cheerfully told them they had nothing to worry about. Many changed their minds and left their money with him. However, this attracted the attention of Daniel Gallagher, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. Gallagher commissioned Edwin Pride to audit the Securities Exchange Company's books—an effort made difficult by the fact Ponzi's bookkeeping system consisted merely of index cards with investors' names.

In the meantime, Ponzi had hired a publicist, William McMasters. However, McMasters quickly became suspicious of Ponzi's endless talk of postal reply coupons, as well as the ongoing investigation against him. He later described Ponzi as a "financial idiot" who did not seem to know how to add. The investigation into Ponzi began in late July, when McMasters found several highly incriminating documents that indicated Ponzi was merely "robbing Peter to pay Paul". McMasters went to Grozier, his former employer, with this information. Grozier offered him $5,000 for his story, which was printed in the Post on August 2, 1920. McMaster's article declared Ponzi hopelessly insolvent, reporting that while he claimed $7 million in liquid funds, he was actually at least $2 million in debt. With interest factored in, McMasters wrote, Ponzi was as much as $4.5 million in the red. The story touched off a massive run, and Ponzi paid off in one day. He then sped up plans to build a massive conglomerate that would engage in banking and import/export operations.

Massachusetts Bank Commissioner Joseph Allen became concerned that if major withdrawals exhausted Ponzi's reserves, it would bring Boston's banking system to its knees. Allen's suspicions were further aroused when he found out a large number of Ponzi-controlled accounts had received more than $250,000 in loans from Hanover Trust. This led Allen to speculate that Ponzi was not nearly as well-financed as he claimed, since he was getting large loans from the bank he effectively controlled. He ordered two bank examiners to keep an eye on Ponzi's accounts.

On August 9, the bank examiners reported that enough investors had cashed their checks on Ponzi's main account there that it was almost certainly overdrawn. Allen then ordered Hanover Trust not to pay out any more checks from Ponzi's main account. He also orchestrated an involuntary bankruptcy filing by several small Ponzi investors. The move forced Massachusetts Attorney General J. Weston Allen to release a statement that there was little to support Ponzi's claims of large-scale dealings in postal coupons. State officials then invited Ponzi noteholders to come to the Massachusetts State House to furnish their names and addresses for the purpose of the investigation. On the same day, Ponzi received a preview of Pride's audit, which revealed Ponzi was at least $7 million in debt.

On August 11, the Post published with a front-page story about his criminal activities in Montreal 13 years earlier, including his forgery conviction and his role at Zarossi's scandal-ridden bank. That afternoon, Bank Commissioner Allen seized Hanover Trust due to numerous irregularities. The commissioner thus inadvertently foiled Ponzi's plan to borrow funds from the bank vaults as a last resort in the event all other efforts to obtain funds failed. The following day, Ponzi's certificate of deposit at Hanover Trust, which had been worth $1.5 million, was reduced to $1 million after bank officials tapped into it to cover the overdraft. Even if he had been able to convert it into cash, he would have had only $4 million in assets.

Amid reports that he was about to be arrested any day, Ponzi surrendered to federal authorities and accepted Pride's figures. He was charged with mail fraud for sending letters to his marks telling them their notes had matured. He was originally released on $25,000 bail and was immediately re-arrested on state charges of larceny, for which he posted an additional $10,000 bond. After the Post released the results of the audit, the bail bondsman feared Ponzi might flee the country and withdrew the bail for the federal charges. Attorney General Allen declared that if Ponzi managed to regain his freedom, the state would seek additional charges and seek a bail high enough to ensure Ponzi would stay in custody.

Magnitude of losses
The news brought down five other banks in addition to Hanover Trust. Ponzi's investors were practically wiped out, receiving less than 30 cents to the dollar. They lost about $20 million in 1920 dollars (approximately $ million in dollars). By comparison, Bernie Madoff's similar scheme that collapsed in 2008 cost his investors about $18 billion, 53 times the losses of Ponzi's scheme.

Prison and later life
In two federal indictments, Ponzi was charged with 86 counts of mail fraud and faced life imprisonment. At the urging of his wife, Ponzi pleaded guilty on November 1, 1920, to a single count before Judge Clarence Hale, who declared before sentencing, "Here was a man with all the duties of seeking large money. He concocted a scheme which, on his counsel's admission, did defraud men and women. It will not do to have the world understand that such a scheme as that can be carried out ... without receiving substantial punishment." Ponzi was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Massachusetts
Ponzi was released after three-and-a-half years and was almost immediately indicted on 22 state charges of larceny, which came as a surprise to Ponzi; he thought he had a deal calling for the state to drop any charges against him if he pleaded guilty to the federal charges. He sued, claiming that he would be facing double jeopardy if Massachusetts essentially retried him for the same offenses spelled out in the federal indictment. The case, Ponzi v. Fessenden, made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. On March 27, 1922, the Supreme Court ruled that federal plea bargains have no standing regarding state charges. It also ruled that Ponzi was not facing double jeopardy because Massachusetts was charging him with larceny while the federal government charged him with mail fraud, even though the charges implicated the same criminal operation.

In October 1922, Ponzi was tried on the first 10 larceny counts. Since he was insolvent, Ponzi served as his own attorney and, speaking as persuasively as he had with his duped investors, was acquitted by the jury on all charges. He was tried a second time on five of the remaining charges, and the jury deadlocked. Ponzi was found guilty at a third trial, and was sentenced to an additional seven to nine years in prison as "a common and notorious thief". There were efforts to have him deported as an undesirable alien in 1922.

Florida
In September 1925, Ponzi was released on bail as he appealed the state conviction. He fled to the Springfield neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida, and launched the Charpon Land Syndicate ("Charpon" is an amalgamation of his name), seeking to capitalize on the Florida land boom. He offered investors tiny tracts of land, some underwater, and promised 200% returns in 60 days. In reality, it was a scam that sold swampland in Columbia County. Ponzi was indicted by a Duval County grand jury in February 1926 and charged with violating Florida trust and securities laws. A jury found him guilty on the securities charges, and the judge sentenced him to a year in the Florida State Prison. Ponzi appealed his conviction and was freed after posting a $1,500 bond.

Ponzi traveled to Tampa, where he shaved his head, grew a mustache, and tried to flee the country as a crewman on a merchant ship bound for Italy. However, he revealed his identity to a shipmate. Word spread to a deputy sheriff, who followed the ship to its last American port of call in New Orleans and placed Ponzi under arrest. After Ponzi's pleas to Calvin Coolidge and Benito Mussolini for deportation were ignored, he was sent back to Massachusetts to serve out his prison term. Ponzi served seven more years in prison.

In the meantime, government investigators tried to trace Ponzi's convoluted accounts to figure out how much money he had taken and where it had gone. They never managed to untangle it and could only conclude that millions of dollars had gone through his hands.

Italy
Ponzi was released in 1934. With the release came an immediate order to have him deported to Italy. He asked for a full pardon from Massachusetts Governor Joseph B. Ely. However, on July 13, Ely turned the appeal down. Ponzi's charismatic confidence had faded, and when he left the prison gates, he was met by an angry crowd. He told reporters before he left, "I went looking for trouble, and I found it." On October 7, Ponzi was officially deported.

Rose stayed in the U.S. and divorced Ponzi in 1937. She had not wanted to leave Boston, and Ponzi was in no position to support her in any event.

In Italy, Ponzi jumped from scheme to scheme, but little came of them. He eventually got a job in Brazil as an agent for Ala Littoria, the Italian state airline. During World War II, however, the airline's operation in the country was shut down after the British intelligence services intervened and Brazil sided with the Allies. During that time, Ponzi also wrote his autobiography.

Death
Ponzi spent the last years of his life in poverty, working occasionally as a translator. His health deteriorated and in 1941 a heart attack left him considerably weakened. His eyesight began failing, and by 1948 he was almost completely blind. A brain hemorrhage paralyzed his left leg and arm. Ponzi died in a charity hospital in Rio de Janeiro, the Hospital São Francisco de Assis of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, on January 18, 1949.

Supported by his last and only friend, Francisco Nonato Nunes, a barber who spoke English and had notions of Italian, Ponzi granted one last interview to an American reporter, telling him, "Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought, I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over."

title: Charles Ponzi


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Uffizi

The Uffizi Gallery ( Galleria degli Uffizi, ) is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums and the most visited, it is also one of the largest and best-known in the world and holds a collection of priceless works, particularly from the period of the Italian Renaissance.

After the ruling House of Medici died out, their art collections were given to the city of Florence under the famous Patto di famiglia negotiated by Anna Maria Luisa, the last Medici heiress. The Uffizi is one of the first modern museums. The gallery had been open to visitors by request since the sixteenth century, and in 1769 it was officially opened to the public, formally becoming a museum in 1865.

History
The building of the Uffizi complex was begun by Giorgio Vasari in 1560 for Cosimo I de' Medici as a means to consolidate his administrative control of the various committees, agencies, and guilds established in Florence's Republican past so as to accommodate them all one place, hence the name uffizi, "offices". The construction was later continued by Alfonso Parigi and Bernardo Buontalenti; it was completed in 1581. The top floor was made into a gallery for the family and their guests and included their collection of Roman sculptures.

The cortile (internal courtyard) is so long, narrow, and open to the Arno at its far end through a Doric screen that articulates the space without blocking it, that architectural historians treat it as the first regularized streetscape of Europe. Vasari, a painter, and architect as well, emphasized its perspective length by adorning it with the matching facades' continuous roof cornices, and unbroken cornices between storeys, as well as the three continuous steps on which the museum fronts stand. The niches in the piers that alternate with columns of the Loggiato are filled with sculptures of famous artists in the 19th century.

The Uffizi brought together under one roof the administrative offices and the Archivio di Stato, the state archive. The project was intended to display prime artworks of the Medici collections on the piano nobile; the plan was carried out by his son, Grand Duke Francesco I. He commissioned the architect Buontalenti to design the Tribuna degli Uffizi that would display a series of masterpieces in one room, including jewels; it became a highly influential attraction of a Grand Tour. The octagonal room was completed in 1584.

Over the years, more sections of the building were recruited to exhibit paintings and sculptures collected or commissioned by the Medici. For many years, 45 to 50 rooms were used to display paintings from the 13th to 18th century.

Modern times
Because of its vast collection, some of the Uffizi's works have in the past been transferred to other museums in Florence—for example, some famous statues to the Bargello. A project was finished in 2006 to expand the museum's exhibition space some 6,000 metres2 (64,000 ft2) to almost 13,000 metres2 (139,000 ft2), allowing public viewing of many artworks that had usually been in storage.

The Nuovi Uffizi (New Uffizi) renovation project which started in 1989 was progressing well from 2015 to 2017. It was intended to modernize all of the halls and more than double the display space. A new exit was also planned and the lighting, air conditioning and security systems were updated. During construction, the museum remained open, although rooms were closed as necessary with the artwork temporarily moved to another location. For example, the Botticelli rooms and two others with early Renaissance paintings were closed for 15 months but reopened in October 2016.

Over two million visitors visited the Uffizi in 2016, making it the most visited art gallery in Italy. At peak periods (particularly in July), waiting times for entry can be up to five hours. Advance tickets can be bought online, to significantly reduce the waiting time. In 2018 a revised ticketing system was introduced to reduce queuing times to just minutes.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum was closed for 150 days in 2020, and attendance plunged by 72 percent to 659,043. Nonetheless, the Uffizi was twenty-seventh in the list of most-visited art museums in the world in 2020. Works from the Uffizi gallery collection are now available for remote viewing on Google Arts and Culture. The museum reopened in May 2021 following a renovation that included an addition of 14 new rooms and a display of additional 129 artworks, with the museum attempting to give more voice to historically under-represented groups including women and people of color.

Incidents
On 27 May 1993, the Sicilian Mafia carried out a car bomb explosion in Via dei Georgofili which damaged parts of the palace and killed five people. The blast destroyed five pieces of art and damaged another 30. Some of the paintings were fully protected by bulletproof glass. The most severe damage was to the Niobe room and classical sculptures and neoclassical interior, which have since been restored, although its frescoes were damaged beyond repair.

On 22 July 2022, members of the climate activist group Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) glued themselves to the glass protecting Sandro Botticelli's Primavera demanding an end to fossil fuel usage. The painting was undamaged.

On 13 February 2024, members of Ultima Generazione glued images of flooding in Tuscany in 2023 to the glass protecting Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus in protest over the Italian government's inaction on climate change. The painting was undamaged and the images were removed.

Key works
• Cimabue: Santa Trinita Maestà

• Duccio: Rucellai Madonna

• Giotto: Ognissanti Madonna, Badia Polyptych

• Simone Martini: Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus

• Ambrogio Lorenzetti: Presentation at the Temple

• Gentile da Fabriano, Adoration of the Magi

• Paolo Uccello: The Battle of San Romano

• Rogier van der Weyden: Lamentation of Christ

• Fra Filippo Lippi: Madonna and Child, Coronation of the Virgin

• Piero della Francesca: Diptych of Duke Federico da Montefeltro and Duchess Battista Sforza of Urbino

• Andrea del Verrocchio: The Baptism of Christ

• Hugo van der Goes: Portinari Triptych

• Sandro Botticelli: Primavera, The Birth of Venus, Adoration of the Magi of 1475 and others

• Michelangelo: The Holy Family (Doni Tondo)

• Leonardo da Vinci: The Annunciation, Adoration of the Magi

• Piero di Cosimo: Perseus Freeing Andromeda

• Albrecht Dürer: Adoration of the Magi

• Raphael: Madonna of the Goldfinch, Portrait of Leo X

• Titian: Flora, Venus of Urbino

• Parmigianino: Madonna with the Long Neck

• Caravaggio: Bacchus, Sacrifice of Isaac, Medusa

• Artemisia Gentileschi: Judith and Holofernes

• Rembrandt: Self-portrait as a Young Man (attribution doubtful), Self-portrait as an Old Man, Portrait of an Old Man

The collection also contains some ancient sculptures, such as the Arrotino, the Two Wrestlers, Venus de' Medici, and the Bust of Severus Giovanni.

Films

 * Inside the Uffizi. It, De, USA, 2021, 97 min. (documentary by Corinna Belz and Enrique Sánchez Lansch)

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

title: Uffizi


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Monastery

A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which may be a chapel, church, or temple, and may also serve as an oratory, or in the case of communities anything from a single building housing only one senior and two or three junior monks or nuns, to vast complexes and estates housing tens or hundreds. A monastery complex typically comprises a number of buildings which include a church, dormitory, cloister, refectory, library, balneary and infirmary, and outlying granges. Depending on the location, the monastic order and the occupation of its inhabitants, the complex may also include a wide range of buildings that facilitate self-sufficiency and service to the community. These may include a hospice, a school, and a range of agricultural and manufacturing buildings such as a barn, a forge, or a brewery.

In English usage, the term monastery is generally used to denote the buildings of a community of monks. In modern usage, convent tends to be applied only to institutions of female monastics (nuns), particularly communities of teaching or nursing religious sisters. Historically, a convent denoted a house of friars (reflecting the Latin), now more commonly called a friary. Various religions may apply these terms in more specific ways.

Etymology

The word monastery comes from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος – monasterios from μονάζειν – monazein "to live alone" from the root μόνος – monos "alone" (originally all Christian monks were hermits); the suffix "-terion" denotes a "place for doing something". The earliest extant use of the term monastērion is by the 1st century AD Jewish philosopher Philo in On The Contemplative Life, ch. III.

In England, the word monastery was also applied to the habitation of a bishop and the cathedral clergy who lived apart from the lay community. Most cathedrals were not monasteries, and were served by canons secular, which were communal but not monastic. However, some were run by monasteries orders, such as York Minster. Westminster Abbey was for a short time a cathedral, and was a Benedictine monastery until the Reformation, and its Chapter preserves elements of the Benedictine tradition. See the entry cathedral. They are also to be distinguished from collegiate churches, such as St George's Chapel, Windsor.

Terms
The term monastery is used generically to refer to any of a number of types of religious community. In the Roman Catholic religion and to some extent in certain branches of Buddhism, there is a somewhat more specific definition of the term and many related terms.

Buddhist monasteries are generally called vihara (Pali language el). Viharas may be occupied by men or women, and in keeping with common English usage, a vihara populated by females may often be called a nunnery or a convent. However, vihara can also refer to a temple. In Tibetan Buddhism, monasteries are often called gompa. In Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, a monastery is called a wat. In Burma, a monastery is called a kyaung.

A Christian monastery may be an abbey (i.e., under the rule of an abbot), or a priory (under the rule of a prior), or conceivably a hermitage (the dwelling of a hermit). It may be a community of men (monks) or of women (nuns). A charterhouse is any monastery belonging to the Carthusian order. In Eastern Christianity, a very small monastic community can be called a skete, and a very large or important monastery can be given the dignity of a lavra.

The great communal life of a Christian monastery is called cenobitic, as opposed to the anchoretic (or anchoritic) life of an anchorite and the eremitic life of a hermit. There has also been, mostly under the Osmanli occupation of Greece and Cyprus, an "idiorrhythmic" lifestyle where monks come together but being able to own things individually and not being obliged to work for the common good.

In Hinduism monasteries are called matha, mandir, koil, or most commonly an ashram.

Jains use the Buddhist term vihara.

Monastic life
In most religions, life inside monasteries is governed by community rules that stipulate the gender of the inhabitants and require them to remain celibate and own little or no personal property. The degree to which life inside a particular monastery is socially separate from the surrounding populace can also vary widely; some religious traditions mandate isolation for purposes of contemplation removed from the everyday world, in which case members of the monastic community may spend most of their time isolated even from each other. Others focus on interacting with the local communities to provide services, such as teaching, medical care, or evangelism. Some monastic communities are only occupied seasonally, depending both on the traditions involved and the local climate, and people may be part of a monastic community for periods ranging from a few days at a time to almost an entire lifetime.

Life within the walls of a monastery may be supported in several ways: by manufacturing and selling goods, often agricultural products; by donations or alms; by rental or investment incomes; and by funds from other organizations within the religion, which in the past formed the traditional support of monasteries. There has been a long tradition of Christian monasteries providing hospitable, charitable and hospital services. Monasteries have often been associated with the provision of education and the encouragement of scholarship and research, which has led to the establishment of schools and colleges and the association with universities. Monastic life has adapted to modern society by offering computer services, accounting services and management as well as modern hospital and educational administration.

Buddhism

Buddhist monasteries, known as vihāra in Pali and in Sanskrit, emerged sometime around the fourth century BCE from the practice of vassa, a retreat undertaken by Buddhist monastics during the South Asian wet season. To prevent wandering monks and nuns from disturbing new plant-growth or becoming stranded in inclement weather, they were instructed to remain in a fixed location for the roughly three-month period typically beginning in mid-July.

These early fixed vassa retreats took place in pavilions and parks that wealthy supporters had donated to the sangha. Over the years, the custom of staying on property held in common by the sangha as a whole during the vassa retreat evolved into cenobitic monasticism, in which monks and nuns resided year-round in monasteries.

In India, Buddhist monasteries gradually developed into centres of learning where philosophical principles were developed and debated; this tradition continues in the monastic universities of Vajrayana Buddhists, as well as in religious schools and universities founded by religious orders across the Buddhist world. In modern times, living a settled life in a monastery setting has become the most common lifestyle for Buddhist monks and nuns across the globe.

Whereas early monasteries are considered to have been held in common by the entire sangha, in later years this tradition diverged in a number of countries. Despite vinaya prohibitions on possessing wealth, many monasteries became large landowners, much like monasteries in medieval Christian Europe. In Chinese Buddhism, peasant families worked monastic-owned land in exchange for paying a portion of their yearly crop to the resident monks in the monastery, just as they would to a feudal landlord. In Sri Lanka and in Tibetan Buddhism, the ownership of a monastery often became vested in a single monk, who would often keep the property within the family by passing it on to a nephew ordained as a monk. In Japan, where civil authorities permitted Buddhist monks to marry, the position of head of a temple or monastery sometimes became hereditary, passed from father to son over many generations.

Forest monasteries – most commonly found in the Theravada traditions of Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka – are monasteries dedicated primarily to the study and cultivation of Buddhist meditation, rather than to scholarship or ceremonial duties. Forest monasteries often function like early Christian monasteries, with small groups of monks living an essentially hermit-like life gathered loosely around a respected elder teacher. While the wandering lifestyle practised by the Buddha and by his disciples continues to be the ideal model for forest-tradition monks in Thailand, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, practical concerns - including shrinking wilderness areas, lack of access to lay supporters, dangerous wildlife, and dangerous border conflicts - dictate that increasing numbers of "meditation" monks live in monasteries, rather than wandering.

Tibetan Buddhist monasteries or gompas are sometimes known as lamaseries, with their monks sometimes (mistakenly) known as lamas. Helena Blavatsky's Theosophical Society named its initial New York City meeting-place "the Lamasery".

Famous Buddhist monasteries include: For a further list of Buddhist monasteries see list of Buddhist temples.
 * Donglin Temple, Jiangxi, China
 * Jetavana, Shravasti (India)
 * Nalanda, India
 * Shaolin Monastery, China
 * Tengboche, Nepal

Trends
Buddhist monasteries include some of the largest in the world. Drepung Monastery in Tibet housed around 10,000 monks prior to the Chinese invasion in 1950–1951. the relocated monastery in India houses around 8,000.

Christianity

According to tradition, Christian monasticism began in Egypt with Anthony the Great. Originally, all Christian monks were hermits seldom encountering other people.

A transitional form of monasticism was later created by Ammonas in which "solitary" monks lived close enough to one another to offer mutual support as well as gathering together on Sundays for common services.

It was Pachomius the Great who developed the idea of cenobitic monasticism: having renunciates live together and worship together under the same roof. Some attribute his mode of communal living to the barracks of the Roman Army in which Pachomios served as a young man. Soon the Egyptian desert blossomed with monasteries, especially around Nitria (Wadi El Natrun), which was called the "Holy City". Estimates are that upwards of 50,000 monks lived in this area at any one time. Hermitism never died out though, but was reserved only for those advanced monks who had worked out their problems within a cenobitic monastery.

The idea caught on, and other places followed:
 * Upon his return from the Council of Serdica, Athanasius of Alexandria established the first Christian monastery in Europe circa 344 near modern-day Chirpan in Bulgaria.
 * Mar Awgin founded a monastery on Mount Izla above Nusaybin in Mesopotamia (~350), and from this monastery the cenobitic tradition spread in Mesopotamia, Persia, Armenia, Georgia and even India and China.
 * Mar Saba organized the monks of the Judaean Desert in a monastery close to Bethlehem (483), and this is considered the mother of all monasteries of Eastern Orthodoxy.
 * Benedict of Nursia founded the monastery of Monte Cassino in Italy (529), which was the seed of Roman Catholic monasticism in general, and of the Order of Saint Benedict in particular.
 * The Carthusians were founded by Bruno of Cologne at the Grande Chartreuse, from which the religious Order takes its name, in the eleventh century as an eremitical community, and remains the motherhouse of the Order.
 * Jerome and Paula of Rome decided to go and live a hermit's life in Bethlehem and founded several monasteries in the Holy Land. This way of life inspired the foundation of the Hieronymites in Spain and Portugal. The Monastery of Santa María del Parral in Segovia is the motherhouse of the Order.

Western Medieval Europe
The life of prayer and communal living was one of rigorous schedules and self-sacrifice. Prayer was their work, and the Office prayers took up much of a monk's waking hours – Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, daily Mass, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. In between prayers, monks were allowed to sit in the cloister and work on their projects of writing, copying, or decorating books. These would have been assigned based on a monk's abilities and interests. The non-scholastic types were assigned to physical labour of varying degrees.

The main meal of the day took place around noon, often taken at a refectory table, and consisted of the most simple and bland foods e.g., poached fish, boiled oats. While they ate, scripture would be read from a pulpit above them. Since no other words were allowed to be spoken, monks developed communicative gestures. Abbots and notable guests were honoured with a seat at the high table, while everyone else sat perpendicular to that in the order of seniority. This practice remained when some monasteries became universities after the first millennium, and can still be seen at Oxford University and Cambridge University.

Monasteries were important contributors to the surrounding community. They were centres of intellectual progression and education. They welcomed aspiring priests to come and study and learn, allowing them even to challenge doctrine in dialogue with superiors. The earliest forms of musical notation are attributed to a monk named Notker of St Gall, and was spread to musicians throughout Europe by way of the interconnected monasteries. Since monasteries offered respite for weary pilgrim travellers, monks were obligated also to care for their injuries or emotional needs. Over time, lay people started to make pilgrimages to monasteries instead of just using them as a stopover. By this time, they had sizeable libraries that attracted learned tourists. Families would donate a son in return for blessings. During the plagues, monks helped to till the fields and provide food for the sick.

A Warming House is a common part of a medieval monastery, where monks went to warm themselves. It was often the only room in the monastery where a fire was lit.

Catholic

A number of distinct monastic orders developed within Roman Catholicism:

 * Camaldolese monks
 * Canons Regular of the Order of the Holy Cross, priests and brothers, all of whom live together like monks according to the Rule of St. Augustine;
 * Carmelite hermits and Carmelite nuns (from the Ancient Observance and Discalced branch);
 * Cistercian Order, with monks and nuns (both of the Original Observance and of the Trappist reform);
 * Monks and Sisters of Bethlehem
 * Order of Minims, founded by Francis of Paola
 * Order of Saint Benedict, known as the Benedictine monks and nuns, founded by Benedict of Nursia with Scholastica, stresses manual labour in self-subsistent monasteries. See also: Cluniac Reforms;
 * Order of Saint Claire, best known as the Poor Clares (of all the observances);
 * Order of Saint Jerome, inspired by Jerome and Paula of Rome, known as the Hieronymite monks and nuns;
 * Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit, known as the Pauline Fathers;
 * Order of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also known as Sisters of the Annunciation or Annociades, founded by Joan of France;
 * Order of the Carthusians, a hermitical religious order founded by Bruno of Cologne;
 * Order of the Immaculate Conception, also known as the Conceptionists, founded by Beatrice of Silva;
 * Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, also known as Turchine Nuns or Blue Nuns, founded by Maria Vittoria De Fornari Strata;
 * Order of the Most Holy Savior, known as Bridgettine nuns and monks, founded by Bridget of Sweden;
 * Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, known as the Visitandine nuns, founded by Francis de Sales and Jane Frances de Chantal;
 * Passionists
 * Premonstratensian canons ("The White Canons")
 * Tironensian monks ("The Grey Monks")
 * Valliscaulian monks

While in English most mendicant Orders use the monastic terms of monastery or priory, in the Latin languages, the term used by the friars for their houses is convent, from the Latin conventus, e.g., (convento) or (couvent), meaning "gathering place". The Franciscans rarely use the term "monastery" at present, preferring to call their house a "friary".

Eastern Orthodox

In the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Church, both monks and nuns follow a similar ascetic discipline, and even their religious habit is the same (though nuns wear an extra veil, called the apostolnik). Unlike Roman Catholic monasticism, the Eastern Orthodox do not have distinct religious orders, but a single monastic form throughout the Eastern Orthodox Church. Monastics, male or female, live away from the world, in order to pray for the world.

Monasteries vary from the very large to the very small. There are three types of monastic houses in the Eastern Orthodox Church:
 * A cenobium is a monastic community where monks live together, work together, and pray together, following the directions of an abbot and the elder monks. The concept of the cenobitic life is that when many men (or women) live together in a monastic context, like rocks with sharp edges, their "sharpness" becomes worn away and they become smooth and polished. The largest monasteries can hold many thousands of monks and are called lavras. In the cenobium the daily office, work and meals are all done in common.
 * A skete is a small monastic establishment that usually consist of one elder and two or three disciples. In the skete most prayer and work are done in private, coming together on Sundays and feast days. Thus, skete life has elements of both solitude and community, and for this reason is called the "middle way".
 * A hermit is a monk who practises asceticism but lives in solitude rather than in a monastic community.

One of the great centres of Eastern Orthodox monasticism is Mount Athos in Greece, which, like Vatican City, is self-governing. It is located on an isolated peninsula approximately 20 mi long and 5 mi wide, and is administered by the heads of the 20 monasteries. Today the population of the Holy Mountain is around 2,200 men only and can only be visited by men with special permission granted by both the Greek government and the government of the Holy Mountain itself.

Oriental Orthodox

The Oriental Orthodox churches, distinguished by their Miaphysite beliefs, consist of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria (whose Patriarch is considered first among equals for the following churches), Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Indian Orthodox Church, and Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch.

The monasteries of St. Macarius (Deir Abu Makaria) and St. Anthony (Deir Mar Antonios) are the oldest monasteries in the world and under the patronage of the Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

Others
The last years of the 18th century marked in the Christian Church the beginnings of growth of monasticism among Protestant denominations. The center of this movement was in the United States and Canada beginning with the Shaker Church, which was founded in England and then moved to the United States. In the 19th century many of these monastic societies were founded as Utopian communities based on the monastic model in many cases. Aside from the Shakers, there were the Amanna, the Anabaptists, and others. Many did allow marriage but most had a policy of celibacy and communal life in which members shared all things communally and disavowed personal ownership.

In the 19th-century monasticism was revived in the Church of England, leading to the foundation of such institutions as the House of the Resurrection, Mirfield (Community of the Resurrection), Nashdom Abbey (Benedictine), Cleeve Priory (Community of the Glorious Ascension) and Ewell Monastery (Cistercian), Benedictine orders, Franciscan orders and the Orders of the Holy Cross, Order of St. Helena. Other Protestant Christian denominations also engage in monasticism, particularly Lutherans in Europe and North America. For example, the Benedictine order of the Holy Cross at St Augustine's House in Michigan is a Lutheran order of monks and there are Lutheran religious communities in Sweden and Germany. In the 1960s, experimental monastic groups were formed in which both men and women were members of the same house and also were permitted to be married and have children—these were operated on a communal form.

Trends
There is a growing Christian neo-monasticism, particularly among evangelical Christians.

Advaita Vedanta

From the times of the Vedas (from c. 1500–1000 BC), people following monastic ways of life have existed in the Indian subcontinent. In what is now called Hinduism, monks have existed for a long time, and with them, their respective monasteries, called mathas. Important among them are the chatur-amnaya mathas established by Adi Shankara which formed the nodal centres of under whose guidance the ancient Order of Advaitin monks were re-organised under ten names of the Dashanami Sampradaya.

 * Ramakrishna Math

Sri Vaishnava

Ramanuja heralded a new era in the world of Hinduism by reviving the lost faith in it and gave a firm doctrinal basis to the Vishishtadvaita philosophy which had existed since time immemorial. He ensured the establishment of a number of mathas of his Sri Vaishnava creed at different important centres of pilgrimage.

Later on, other famous Sri Vaishnava theologians and religious heads established various important mathas such as
 * Emar Matha at Puri
 * Sriranga Narayana Jeeyar Mutt at Srirangam
 * Tirumala Pedda Jeeyangar Mutt at Tirupati
 * Vanamamalai Mutt
 * Parakala Mutt
 * Ahobila Mutt

Nimbarka Vaishnava

Nimbarka Sampradaya of Nimbarkacharya is popular in North, West and East India and has several important Mathas.
 * Nimbarakacharya Peeth at Salemabad, Rajasthan
 * Kathia Baba ka Sthaan at Vrindavan
 * Ukhra Mahanta Asthal at Ukhra in West Bengal
 * Howrah Nimbarka Ashram at Howrah

Dvaita Vedanta
Ashta matha (eight monasteries) of Udupi were founded by Madhvacharya (Madhwa acharya), a dwaitha philosopher.
 * Gaud Saraswat Math
 * Kashi Math at Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh
 * Gokarna Math at Canacona, Goa

Jainism
Jainism, founded by Mahavira c. 570 BC, had its own monasteries since 5th century BC.

Sufism
Islam discourages monasticism, which is referred to in the Quran as "an invention". However, the term "Sufi" is applied to Muslim mystics who, as a means of achieving union with Allah, adopted ascetic practices including wearing a garment made of coarse wool called "sf". The term "Sufism" comes from "sf" meaning the person, who wears "sf". But in the course of time, Sufi has come to designate all Muslim believers in mystic union.

Monasteries in Literature
Matthew Lewis' 1796 Gothic Novel The Monk has as parts of its setting both a fictional monastery and nunnery in Spain at the time of the Inquisition. Many have interpreted Lewis' novel as a critique of Catholicism. Jane Austen sets the latter half of her 1818 novel Northanger Abbey in an out of use monastery, reflecting on Henry VIII's abolition of monasticism in England and the contemporary abolition of monasticism in France in the wake of the French Revolution. Convents for female monastics, or nunneries, were often portrayed as punishments for women unable or unwilling to marry.

In the 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was heavily inspired by real-life accounts of Orthodox monasticism. Parts of the novel focus in particular on the controversy surrounding the institution of "elderhood" in Orthodox Monasticism. Dostoyevsky's understanding of the tradition of elderhood is taken largely from Life of Elder Leonid of Optina by Father Kliment Zeder-gol'm, from which he quotes directly in chapter 5, book 1 of the Brother's Karamazov.

title: Monastery


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Hurwitz polynomial

In mathematics, a Hurwitz polynomial, named after Adolf Hurwitz, is a polynomial whose roots (zeros) are located in the left half-plane of the complex plane or on the imaginary axis, that is, the real part of every root is zero or negative. Such a polynomial must have coefficients that are positive real numbers. The term is sometimes restricted to polynomials whose roots have real parts that are strictly negative, excluding the imaginary axis (i.e., a Hurwitz stable polynomial).

A polynomial function P(s) of a complex variable s is said to be Hurwitz if the following conditions are satisfied:

 * 1. P(s) is real when s is real.

 * 2. The roots of P(s) have real parts which are zero or negative.

Hurwitz polynomials are important in control systems theory, because they represent the characteristic equations of stable linear systems. Whether a polynomial is Hurwitz can be determined by solving the equation to find the roots, or from the coefficients without solving the equation by the Routh–Hurwitz stability criterion.

Examples
A simple example of a Hurwitz polynomial is:

 * $$x^2 + 2x + 1.$$

The only real solution is −1, because it factors as

 * $$(x+1)^2.$$

In general, all quadratic polynomials with positive coefficients are Hurwitz. This follows directly from the quadratic formula:
 * $$x=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac\ }}{2a}.$$

where, if the discriminant b2−4ac is less than zero, then the polynomial will have two complex-conjugate solutions with real part −b/2a, which is negative for positive a and b. If the discriminant is equal to zero, there will be two coinciding real solutions at −b/2a. Finally, if the discriminant is greater than zero, there will be two real negative solutions, because $$\sqrt{b^2-4ac} < b$$ for positive a, b and c.

Properties
For a polynomial to be Hurwitz, it is necessary but not sufficient that all of its coefficients be positive (except for quadratic polynomials, which also imply sufficiency). A necessary and sufficient condition that a polynomial is Hurwitz is that it passes the Routh–Hurwitz stability criterion. A given polynomial can be efficiently tested to be Hurwitz or not by using the Routh continued fraction expansion technique.

title: Hurwitz polynomial


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Intellectual capital

Intellectual capital is the result of mental processes that form a set of intangible objects that can be used in economic activity and bring income to its owner (organization), covering the competencies of its people (human capital), the value relating to its relationships (relational capital), and everything that is left when the employees go home (structural capital), of which intellectual property (IP) is but one component. It is the sum of everything everybody in a company knows that gives it a competitive edge. The term is used in academia in an attempt to account for the value of intangible assets not listed explicitly on a company's balance sheets. On a national level, intellectual capital refers to national intangible capital (NIC).

A second meaning that is used in academia and was adopted in large corporations is focused on the recycling of knowledge via knowledge management and intellectual capital management (ICM). Creating, shaping and updating the stock of intellectual capital requires the formulation of a strategic vision, which blends together all three dimensions of intellectual capital within the organisational context through exploration, exploitation, measurement, and disclosure. Intellectual capital is used in assessing the wealth of organizations. A metric for the value of intellectual capital is the amount by which the enterprise value of a firm exceeds the value of its tangible (physical and financial) assets. Directly visible on corporate books is capital embodied in its physical assets and financial capital; however all three make up the value of an enterprise. Measuring the real value and the total performance of intellectual capital's components is a critical part of running a company in the knowledge economy and Information Age. Understanding the intellectual capital in an enterprise allows leveraging of its intellectual assets. For a corporation, the result will optimize its stock price.

The IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) committee developed the International Accounting System 38 with the purpose of prescribing the accounting treatment for intangible assets. IAS 38.8 defines an intangible asset as an identifiable non-monetary asset without physical substance. An asset is a resource that is controlled by the entity as the result of past events (for example purchase or self-creation) and from which future economic benefits (inflows of cash or other benefits) are expected.

Classification
Intellectual capital is normally classified as follows:

 * Human capital, the value that the employees of a business provide through the application of skills, know-how and expertise –  Human capital is an organization's combined human capability for solving business problems and exploiting its intellectual property. Human capital is inherent in people and cannot be owned by an organization. Therefore, human capital can leave an organization when people leave, and if the management has failed to provide a setting where others can pick up their know-how. Human capital also encompasses how effectively an organization uses its people resources as measured by creativity and Innovation.
 * Structural capital, the supportive non-physical infrastructure, processes and databases of the organisation that enable human capital to function –  Structural capital includes processes, patents, and trademarks, as well as the organization's image, organization, information system, and proprietary software and databases. Because of its diverse components, structural capital can be classified further into organization, process and innovation capital. Organizational capital includes the organization philosophy and systems for leveraging the organization's capability. Process capital includes the techniques, procedures, and programs that implement and enhance the delivery of goods and services. Innovation capital includes intellectual property such as patents, trademarks and copyrights, and intangible assets. Intellectual properties are protected commercial rights such as patents, trade secrets, copyrights and trademarks. Intangible assets are all of the other talents and theory by which an organization is run.
 * Relational capital, consisting of such elements as customer relationships, supplier relationships, trademarks and trade names (which have value only by virtue of customer relationships), licences, and franchises – The notion that customer capital is separate from human and structural capital indicates its central importance to an organization's worth. The value of the relationships a business maintains with its customers and suppliers is also referred as goodwill, but often poorly booked in corporate accounts, because of accounting rules.

Management
The intangible nature of many knowledge products and processes, in combination with the increasing importance of their value in corporate balance sheets leads to a growing interest in management of intellectual capital. Creating, shaping and updating the stock of intellectual capital requires the formulation of a strategic vision, which blends together all three dimensions of intellectual capital (human, structural and relational capital) within the organisational context through exploration and exploitation, measurement and disclosure. Therefore, the organisational value of intellectual capital is developed via an ongoing and emergent process focused on the capability to leverage, develop and change the dimensions. The management of intellectual capital is conceptualised as occurring via a multiple stage process, governed by an evolutionary logic. Intellectual capital management is defined as a cycle of four inter-related sets of practices: strategic alignment, exploration and exploitation, measurement, and reporting of intellectual capital.

The recognizing and managing of intellectual capital within organizations is not always evident and straightforward; for example, what IC means differ from organization to organization; thus requiring a contextual understanding.

Exploitation
The management of intellectual capital is conceptualised as occurring via a multiple stage process, governed by an evolutionary logic. For a business, translating the potential of its intellectual capital is crucial. Works that focus on the subset, namely the patents, copyrights, and trade secrets, ignore the benefits of their use with the business. Other terms include "intangible assets". While corporate reports often stress the value and the know-how of its staff, this crucial asset cannot be considered property. The term "workforce-in-place" can be used as a category when companies with their staff are purchased. Without that category, most of the excess purchase price over the tangible book value would just appear as goodwill. In order to profit from intellectual capital, knowledge management has become a task for management. Often, intellectual capital, or at least rights to it, are moved off-shore for exploitation, which entails risks that are hard to value. The transfer of rights to intellectual capital to offshore subsidiaries is a major enabler of corporate tax avoidance.

Measurement
An intellectual capital audit is an audit of a company's intellectual capital to monitor and oversee the intellectual capital of a firm in order to capitalize on intellectual capital already within the company, and to identify opportunities to increase the intellectual capital of the company.

Early methods of intellectual capital measurement include the balanced scorecard (BSC) framework, the Skandia Navigator, and the Intangible Asset Monitor. Additionally, the Value-Added Intellectual Coefficient method (VAIC) was introduced in 1993 to measure the value created by intellectual capital.

Intellectual capital and stock returns growth
Changes in stock returns are primarily determined by external factors such as inflation, exchange rates, and socioeconomic conditions. Intellectual capital does not affect a company stock's current earnings. Intellectual capital contributes to a stock's return growth.

title: Intellectual capital


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Corte, Haute-Corse

Corte (, ; ; ; Corti, ) is a commune in the Haute-Corse department, on the island of Corsica, France.

It is the fourth-largest commune in Corsica after Ajaccio, Bastia, and Porto-Vecchio.

Administration
Corte is a subprefecture of the Haute-Corse department.

History
Corte was the capital of the Corsican independent state during the period of Pasquale Paoli.

During World War I, German prisoners of war were kept in the Citadel.

Sights
Sites of interest include the Fortress (A citadella), the Museum of Corsica (Museu di a Corsica), and the University of Corsica (Università di Corsica).

 * Pieve Santa Mariona di Tàlcini, a ruined medieval pieve (church)

Transport
National roads lead to Ajaccio and Bastia.

Corte is also linked to Ajaccio, Bastia and Calvi by the Chemin de fer de la Corse (Corsican Railway), and is served by trains running between Ajaccio and Calvi, and Ajaccio and Bastia.

Climate
Corte has a hot-summer mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification: Csa), sometimes presenting alpine conditions during the winter, with 52 summer days and 56 frost days.

Education
Corte has become a major university town in Corsica since the Pasquale Paoli University opened up again in 1980s.

Notable people
Corte was the birthplace of Joseph Bonaparte (1768–1844), the eldest brother of the French Emperor Napoleon I, who made him King of Naples (1806–1808) and Spain (1808–1813). Corte was also the birthplace of Theophilus of Corte (1676 - 1740), an Italian Roman Catholic priest and a professed member from the Order of Friars Minor.

title: Corte, Haute-Corse


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Talk:Intellectual capital

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Arwaaliriani.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:35, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Relational capital vs goodwill
Under relational capital (which has no page yet) also customer base is mentioned. In my view, that does not belong to intellectual capital. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.212.223.190 (talk) 18:28, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

I think you missed
I think you missed the liberal economist view, von Hayek, Schumpeter, Pirole ecc. that is very sceptical of Intellectual Capital.

It seems like there was a gap between industrial economy and business lobbyists.

Who wants to bet
Who wants to bet that this gets hacked with a Stallmanic rant? A Rand rant?

Tolerance is appreciated - these critiques are welcome but please try to remember that outside fringe circles economics don't see Stallman or Rand as major contributors.

One way to approach those issues is that Stallman is big on the instructional value, and subordinating individual contribution to that, whereas Rand is the other way around, seeing all instructional value coming from the individual... but these are extreme views.

Ultimately, those views belong here - and *NOT* in the instructional capital or individual capital entries which are much less controversial notions than this.

Keeping this entry separate is one way to keep the rants away from the economics.

---

OK, this is as objective
OK, this is as objective as I can possibly make it. If someone wants to define "political economy" in a way that can take the heat off this entry, good, but there remains a distinct literature of intellectual capital - not wise to ignore it.

I mentioned most of the major theorists in this area. not clear if Lev's idea of "brand capital" deserves a separate article. An article outlining both Baruch Lev and Naomi Klein as "pro-brand" and "anti-brand" is probably worth writing. But their distinctions are critical to explaining how or why "intellectual" could exclude "social", as in this article, so it may become somewhat redundant. Klein objects to brand capital but not to intellectual capital - Shiva is more fundamental so she's covered here.

Gabora is very fundamental and actually making an argument relative to political economy itself - but is worth mentioning here only because the whole issue of "intellectual capital" existing or not is one of whether individuals and instructions can actually be traded off by any process of management, or always play quantitatively different roles...

Badly needs a good article on intellectual property law to explain just where this whole idea of a unified "intellectual capital" came from.

Human and structural capital as parts of intellectual capital
I'm curious why this article doesn't talk about the underpinnings of the intellectual capital concept. There is a link to the web site of Dr. Nick Bontis but there doesn't seem to be anything in the Wikipedia article about the research work that Bontis and others have done.

I'm also surprise that there is nothing about Skandia insurance and their efforts to pull together measurements of intellectual capital. The Skandia Navigator is an interesting tool.

There should at least be something about the two major components of intellectual capital, human capital or the knowledge and skills of the human beings in the organization which are theirs to take with them and structural capital or the infrastructure (facilities and business processes) which are owned by the organization.

See Intellectual Capital by Leif Edvinsson and Michael S. Malone

<-- I totally agree with you. The orginal authors seemed to be unaware of this important literature. I added some relevant references in, but haven't had the time to modify the page. Go ahead and make the changes!  LMackinnon 11:58, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Question
link title Does anyone know whether the website publishing Baruch Lev's book has proper permission to post his book online? If it does not, this link should be removed and reported to Wikipedia. --MrMMattson

Rethinking of microeconomics
"Baruch Lev documents "brand" as a new (seventh) form of capital. This seems to violate classical microeconomics basic model of the factors of production - and likely require major rethinking of microeconomics and political economy." - The claim that a major field of study which has garnered multiple Nobel Prizes ought to be torn down to its roots ought to have a citation. Wikipedia is not a soapbox.  Plasticup  T / C  13:47, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Editorial or Article
Much of this article in its current form seems more like a series of editorials on various topics rather than an encyclopaedic entry. There is quite a large body of academic work in this area that could be used to construct a less opinionated article. I am working on some related subjects and may be able to offer an alternative proposal for this article. This is not to claim that the current article does not contain some interesting discussion. Any thoughts? MikeHeffner (talk) 13:32, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

 * Anything of value (if anything) in this article is hidden within a mountain of Original Research. From structure to content this article does not communicate anything that makes sense. Karbinski (talk) 21:00, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

 * Given the prospect of a re-write, I'm going to promote this article from *blatant OR that should be deleted* to a stub. Karbinski (talk) 21:05, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

not a copyright infringement
During the European Conference on Intellectual Capital in April of 2009 I volunteerd to put some text on the Wikipedia site about the phenomenon IC. I took this from an EU project we worked on called SPICE (Sustainable Programme on Intellectual Capital). This is an EU text and so is free of any copyrights. I hope this clears things up. Don Ropes (talk) 15:41, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * According to, European Communities material is copyrighted. While they authorize reproduction with acknowledgment, license is not compatible that I can see with GFDL, which also requires allowance of modification. We need to verify either that this material is public domain or that it is released under a license that is fully compatible with GFDL and CC-BY-SA, that is allowing modification as well as reproduction. Can you help clarify this? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:25, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Lacking verification that this material is free for use, it has been removed. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:35, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
One or more portions of this article duplicated other source(s). Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a license compatible with GFDL. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:35, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

"Intellectual Capital" addition.
Good day,

I read the Intellectual capital article and I noticed that it defines Intellectual Capital as all intangible assets of an enterprise. However, revising the intangible assets of a typical enterprise I noted that there is one that is very important and it is not mentioned in this article. I am talking about information. While the article mentions "information systems", information alone is not considered. I am talking about:

1. Business information (e.g. management information, efficiency or productivity indicators)

2. Administrative information (e.g. accounting information, human resources information, transactions information)

3. Technical information (i.e. information not categorized as intellectual property but that still is part of the enterprise's systems operation; e.g. machinery’s operation manuals)

4. Regulatory information (i.e. laws and regulations information; while these are not generated by the enterprise they still are necessary for its correct operation)

Therefore, in my opinion, the Intellectual capital article should include, somewhere, somehow, these informational elements because they are intangible assets, too.

Best regards,

Luis R. Villegas H. Mexico.

LuisVillegas (talk) 03:12, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Publications list
I removed the huge list of publications. It seems to me that there is not much point in including a list of every publication on the subject in this article. If anything, I would suggest a very short list of works to be put in a "Further Reading" section. Although reading the other comments, improving the article would seem to come first. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 17:18, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Self-contradictory on scope of title term
Currently the lead says

 * Intellectual capital is the difference in value between tangible assets (physical and financial) and market value.[1][2] This contrasts with physical and financial forms of capital....

while the section "Classification" says

 * Intellectual capital is normally classified as follows: ... Structural capital includes such traditional things as buildings, ....

Two problems:

1. This is self-contradictory because it says first that physical assets are excluded and then that things such as buildings are included. The latter seems extremely implausible for something called intellectual capital.

2. In the first quoted passage above, liabilities are missing.

I'm going to correct point #2 right now. I'll make changes regarding point #1 soon, unless someone else familiar with the sources can fix it better first. The problem here concerns the concept of structural capital: if it really includes physical assets, then it's not a subset of intellectual capital but rather overlaps with it; on the other hand, maybe structural capital does not really include physical assets, in which case this assertion should be stripped from the last-quoted passage. Duoduoduo (talk) 16:49, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Actually I'm going to fix the other item right now too -- I can't find any source that includes physical capital in structural capital. Duoduoduo (talk) 17:18, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Measurements
I think the measurement section needs more information about the variety of methods out there that can be used to measure IC. I've added a brief sentence of a couple and hope to expand the section a little more. --Arwaaliriani (talk) 22:28, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

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

The above message was substituted from by PrimeBOT (talk) on 19:53, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Intellectual capital


text:
Raster image processor

A raster image processor (RIP) is a component used in a printing system which produces a raster image also known as a bitmap. Such a bitmap is used by a later stage of the printing system to produce the printed output. The input may be a page description in a high-level page description language such as PostScript, PDF, or XPS. The input can also be or include bitmaps of higher or lower resolution than the output device, which the RIP resizes using an image scaling algorithm.

Originally a RIP was a rack of electronic hardware which received the page description via some interface (e.g. RS-232) and generated a "hardware bitmap output" which was used to enable or disable each pixel on a real-time output device such as an optical film recorder, computer to film, or computer to plate.

A RIP can be implemented as a software module on a general-purpose computer, or as a firmware program executed on a microprocessor inside a printer. For high-end typesetting, standalone hardware RIPs are sometimes used. Ghostscript, GhostPCL, and ColorBurst's Overdrive (for macOS) are examples of software RIPs. Every PostScript printer contains a RIP in its firmware. The RIP chip in a laser printer sends its raster image output to the laser.

Earlier RIPs retained backward compatibility with phototypesetters/photosetters, so they supported the older languages. So, for example, Linotype RIPs supported CORA (RIP30).

Stages of RIP

 * 1) Interpretation: This is the stage where the supported PDLs (page description languages) are translated into a private internal representation of each page. Most RIPs process pages serially, one page at a time, so the current machine state is only for the current page. After a page has been output, the page state is discarded to prepare for the next page.
 * 2) Rendering: A process through which the private internal representation is turned into a continuous-tone bitmap. In practical RIPs, interpretation and rendering are frequently done together. Simple languages were designed to work on minimal hardware, so tend to "directly drive" the renderer.
 * 3) Screening: In order to print, the continuous-tone image is converted into a halftone (pattern of dots). Two screening methods or types are amplitude modulation (AM) screening and stochastic or frequency modulation (FM) screening. In AM screening, dot size varies depending on object density—tonal values; dots are placed in a fixed grid. In FM screening, dot size remains constant and dots are placed in random order to create darker or lighter areas of the image; dot placement is precisely controlled by sophisticated mathematical algorithms.

title: Raster image processor


text:
User talk:Dch

Hi Dch, I hope we will agree that we must not add controversial contents. If you can kindly take a look at the talk:Sardinian language page, you will see why your text was deleted. I am not fascinated by the idea that corsican is not spoken in Sardinia. Besides, I am not fascinated by the idea it could be spoken in Sardinia. I would instead be very glad to see why some people is recently adding some statements that I simply cannot find anywhere in my sources. Since I had a deep interest in the matter some years ago, personally getting acknowledged with this splendid island and this extraordinary language, I have to admit I would be quite surprised, however I am open to apologise if someone can proof I am wrong. By the way, it is not a matter of being right or wrong, the important thing is the correct information. So, do you have any proof of what you are declaring? Can you indicate me please any source I could check? Thank you for your kind cooperation. Ciao :-) -- Gianfranco

Elezioni in corso - Elections in progress
Ciao Dch, come stai? Sono Sarvaturi, lavoro nella Wikipedia siciliana (scn.wikipedia, dove sono un burocrata ed un amministratore) e lavoro nel Wikizionario siciliano (scn.wiktionary, dove sono un burocrata ed un amministratore) e per favore ho bisogno del tuo aiuto: nel wikzionario corso (dove hai contribuito più volte) ci sono attualmente elezioni in corso per eleggere un secondo amministratore (io), e per favore vorrei che voti (per o contro):

http://co.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wikizziunariu:Amministratori

Informazione: L'amministratore italiano Ale Mister che lavora nella Wikipedia corsa ha votato "sì" per me. Un'altra informazione: ho fatto più di 112 edizioni in questo piccolo wikizionario corso.

Grazie in anticipo

Saluti cordiali

--Sarvaturi (talk) 00:21, 9 February 2008 (UTC) :-)

Hello Dch, how are you? I'm Sarvaturi, I work on the Sicilian Wikipedia (scn.wikipedia, where I'm a bureaucrat and an administrator) and I work on the Sicilian Wiktionary (scn.wiktionary, where I'm a bureaucrat and an administrator) and please I would need your help: on the Corsican wiktionary (where you contributed various times and where you are an administrator) there are some elections in progress to elect a second administrator (me), and please I would like you to vote (for or against):

http://co.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wikizziunariu:Amministratori

As information: The Italian administrator Ale Mister who works in the Corsican wikipedia has voted "yes" for me. Other information: I have more than 112 edits in this little Corsican wiktionary.

Thanks in advance

Best regards

--Sarvaturi (talk) 00:21, 9 February 2008 (UTC) :-)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:51, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Dch


text:
Giulio Racah

Giulio (Yoel) Racah (ג'וליו (יואל) רקח;  February 9, 1909 – August 28, 1965) was an Italian–Israeli physicist and mathematician. He was Acting President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1961 to 1962.

The crater Racah on the Moon is named after him.

Biography
Giulio (Yoel) Racah was born in Florence, Italy. On his mother's side, Racah's family claimed to trace its ancestry in Italy back to the destruction of the Second Temple. He earned his Doctorate from the University of Florence in 1930, and continued his studies at Rome with Enrico Fermi.

In 1939, due to application of Anti-Jewish laws in Italy, Racah emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine. In the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Racah served as deputy commander of the Israeli forces defending Mount Scopus.

Racah died at the age of 56, apparently asphyxiated by gas from a faulty heater while visiting Florence.

Academic and scientific career
In 1937 Racah was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of Pisa. In 1939, after his move to Palestine, he was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, He later became Dean of the Faculty of Sciences and finally Rector and acting president from 1961 to 1962, following Benjamin Mazar and succeeded by Eliahu Eilat. The physics institute at the Hebrew University is named "The Racah Institute of Physics".

Racah's research was mainly in the fields of quantum physics and atomic spectroscopy. He first devised a systematic general procedure for classifying the energy levels of open shell atoms, which remains to this day the accepted technique for practical calculations of atomic structure. This formalism was described in a monograph coauthored by his cousin Ugo Fano (Irreducible Tensorial Sets, 1959).

Awards and recognition
In 1958, Racah was awarded the Israel Prize in exact sciences.

title: Giulio Racah


text:
Amaya

Amaya may refer to:

People

 * Amaya (Spanish-language name) lists people with the Spanish given name, Amaya
 * Amaya (surname) lists people with the Japanese and Spanish surname, Amaya
 * Maja Keuc (born 1992), Slovenian singer known as Amaya

Places

 * Amaya (Burgos), a small village in Spain
 * Amaya Creek, Santa Cruz County, California
 * Amaya Station, Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan
 * Amaya (woreda), a district in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia

The arts

 * Amaya o los vascos en el siglo VIII, a novel by Francisco Navarro-Villoslada
 * Amaya (TV series), a period drama set in pre-Hispanic Philippines
 * Hong Kong Confidential (2010 film), also known as Amaya

Other uses

 * Amaya (orca) (born 2014), a captive killer whale at SeaWorld San Diego
 * Amaya (web editor), a WYSIWYG web authoring tool by the W3C
 * Amaya Inc., an online gaming company
 * Amaya Resorts & Spas, a Sri Lankan hospitality brand

title: Amaya


text:
User talk:Ik1tzo~enwiki

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Renamed
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