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White Ship

The White Ship (la Blanche-Nef; Medieval Latin: Candida navis) was a vessel transporting many nobles, including the heir to the English throne, that sank in the English Channel near the Normandy coast off Barfleur during a trip from France to England on 25 November 1120. Only one of approximately 300 people aboard, a butcher from Rouen, survived.

Those who drowned included William Adelin, the only legitimate son and heir of Henry I of England, his half-siblings Matilda of Perche and Richard of Lincoln, the earl of Chester Richard d'Avranches, and Geoffrey Ridel. With William Adelin's death, the king had no obvious successor, and his own death 15 years later set off a succession crisis and a period of civil war in England known as the Anarchy (1135–1153).

Shipwreck
The White Ship was a newly refitted vessel captained by Thomas FitzStephen (Thomas filz Estienne), whose father Stephen FitzAirard (Estienne filz Airard) had been captain of the ship Mora for William the Conqueror during the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Thomas offered his ship to Henry I of England to return to England from Barfleur in Normandy. Henry had already made other arrangements, but allowed many in his retinue to take the White Ship, including his heir, William Adelin, his illegitimate children Richard of Lincoln and Matilda FitzRoy, Countess of Perche, and many other nobles.

According to chronicler Orderic Vitalis, the crew asked William Adelin for wine and he supplied it to them in great abundance. By the time the ship was ready to leave there were about 300 people on board, although some, including the future king Stephen of Blois, had disembarked due to the excessive drinking before the ship sailed.

The ship's captain, Thomas FitzStephen, was ordered by the revellers to overtake the king's ship, which had already sailed. The White Ship was fast, of the best construction and had recently been fitted with new materials, which made the captain and crew confident they could reach England first. However, when it set forth in the dark, its port side struck the submerged Quilleboeuf Rock, and the ship quickly capsized.

William Adelin got into a small boat and could have escaped but turned back to try to rescue his half-sister, Matilda, when he heard her cries for help. His boat was swamped by others trying to save themselves, and William drowned along with them. According to Orderic Vitalis, Berold (Beroldus or Berout), a butcher from Rouen, was the sole survivor of the shipwreck by clinging to the rock. The chronicler further wrote that when Thomas FitzStephen came to the surface after the sinking and learned that William Adelin had not survived, he let himself drown rather than face the king.

One legend holds that the ship was doomed because priests were not allowed to board it and bless it with holy water in the customary manner. For a complete list of those who did or did not travel on the White Ship, see Victims of the White Ship disaster.

Repercussions
A direct result of William Adelin's death was the period known as the Anarchy. The White Ship disaster had left Henry I with only one legitimate child, a second daughter named Matilda. Although Henry I had forced his barons to swear an oath to support Matilda as his heir on several occasions, a woman had never ruled in England in her own right. Matilda was also unpopular because she was married to Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou, a traditional enemy of England's Norman nobles. Upon Henry's death in 1135, the English barons were reluctant to accept Matilda as queen regnant.

One of Henry I's male relatives, Stephen of Blois, the king's nephew by his sister Adela, usurped Matilda as well as his older brothers William and Theobald to become king. Stephen had allegedly planned to travel on the White Ship but had disembarked just before it sailed; Orderic Vitalis attributes this to a sudden bout of diarrhoea.

After Henry I's death, Matilda and her husband Geoffrey of Anjou, the founder of the Plantagenet dynasty, launched a long and devastating war against Stephen and his allies for control of the English throne. The Anarchy lasted from 1138 to 1153 with devastating effect, especially in southern England.

Contemporary historian William of Malmesbury wrote: "No ship that ever sailed brought England such disaster, none was so well known the wide world over. There perished then with William the king's other son Richard, born to him before his accession by a woman of the country, a high-spirited youth, whose devotion had earned his father's love; Richard earl of Chester and his brother Othuel, the guardian and tutor of the king's son; the king's daughter the countess of Perche, and his niece, Theobald's sister, the countess of Chester; besides all the choicest knights and chaplains of the court, and the nobles' sons who were candidates for knighthood, for they had hastened from all sides to join him, as I have said, expecting no small gain in reputation if they could show the king's son some sport or do him some service."

Historical fiction

 * Reference to the sinking of the White Ship is made in Ken Follett's novel The Pillars of the Earth (1989) and its later game adaptation. The ship's sinking sets the stage for the entire background of the story, which is based on the subsequent civil war between Matilda (referred to as Maud in the novel) and Stephen. In Follett's novel, it is implied that the ship may have been sabotaged; this implication is seen in the TV adaptation – even going so far as to show William Adelin assassinated whilst on a lifeboat – and the video game adaptation.
 * Ellen Jones, The Fatal Crown (1991)
 * Sharon Kay Penman describes the sinking in detail in her historical novel When Christ and His Saints Slept (1994).
 * The sinking of the White Ship is briefly referenced in Glenn Cooper's novel The Tenth Chamber (2010).
 * The White Ship sets the stage for the 2009 novel  (The Brothers of Job) by the German author Rebecca Gablé, which details the rise of Henry II of England, son of Empress Matilda.
 * The long conflict between Stephen and Matilda is important in the Brother Cadfael series. This 20-book set of mysteries, by Ellis Peters, has a 12th-century Benedictine monk as its protagonist. Depending on the book, the conflict is either very important or serves as a backdrop to the plots. The sinking directly affects the outcome of the short story "A Light on the Road to Woodstock".

Poetry

 * Felicia Hemans, "He Never Smiled Again", c. 1830
 * Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "The White Ship: a ballad"; first published 1881 in his collected Ballads and Sonnets.
 * Edwin Arlington Robinson, "Ballad of a Ship", 1891
 * Geoffrey Hill, "The White Ship". In his first book, For the Unfallen, 1959.
 * Franck K. Lehodey, "White Ship". A graphic novel, 2011.

title: White Ship


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Lindsey Davis

Lindsey Davis (born 1949) is an English historical novelist, best known as the author of the Falco series of historical crime stories set in ancient Rome and its empire. She is a recipient of the Cartier Diamond Dagger award.

Life and career
Davis was born in Birmingham and after taking a degree in English literature at Oxford University (Lady Margaret Hall), she became a civil servant for 13 years. When a romantic novel she had written was runner up for the 1985 Georgette Heyer Historical Novel Prize, she decided to become a writer, at first writing romantic serials for the UK women's magazine Woman's Realm. One of these, The Bride from Bithynia, was published in her 2023 collection Voices of Rome.

Her dedication of the book Rebels and Traitors (2009) reads: "For Richard / dearest and closest of friends / your favourite book / in memory", and the author's website relates: "I am still getting used to life without my dear Richard. For those of you who haven't seen this before, he died in October [2008]." The author says in her publisher's newsletter: "The greatest recommendation I can give is that Richard, its first reader, thought it wonderful. He devoured chunks, demanding ‘Bring more story!’ even when he was in hospital. One of the last things I was ever able to tell him was that Rebels and Traitors was to be published by Random House, so I would be working with dear friends for his favourite book."

Davis suffered from the eye condition keratoconus from childhood, and in adulthood had a corneal transplant, about which she has said: "A stranger's generosity freed me from years of pain and anxiety" and urges her readers to carry a donor card.

Writing
Davis's interest in history and archaeology led to her writing a historical novel about Vespasian and his lover Antonia Caenis (The Course of Honour), for which she could not find a publisher. She tried again, and her first novel featuring the Roman "detective", Marcus Didius Falco, The Silver Pigs (1989), set in the same time period, was the start of her runaway success as a writer of historical whodunnits. A further 19 Falco novels have followed, as well as The Course of Honour, which was published in 1997. She published Falco: The Official Companion in June 2010.

Rebels and Traitors, set in the period of the English Civil War, was published in September 2009.

Master and God, published in March 2012, is set in ancient Rome and concerns the emperor Domitian.

In 2012, Davis and her publishers, Hodder & Stoughton in the UK and St. Martin's Press in the US, announced that she was writing a new series of books centred on Flavia Albia, Falco's British-born adopted daughter and "an established female investigator". The first title, The Ides of April was published on 11 April 2013 in the UK, and its sequel, Enemies at Home, was published in 2014, followed by annual additions. In an interview in 2019 Davis discussed her plan to write an Albia novel set on each of the seven hills of Rome, starting with the Aventine Hill in the book The Ides of April and culminating with the Capitoline Hill in the book A Capitol Death. She has since published three more Albia books,, set in particular locations just outside the wall of Rome.

Davis has won many literary awards, including, in 2011, the Cartier Diamond Dagger of the Crime Writers' Association given to authors who have made an outstanding lifetime contribution to the genre. She was honorary president of the Classical Association from 1997 to 1998, and is a life member of the Council of the Society of Authors.

Marcus Didius Falco

 * 1) The Silver Pigs (1989)
 * 2) Shadows in Bronze (1990)
 * 3) Venus in Copper (1991)
 * 4) The Iron Hand of Mars (1992)
 * 5) Poseidon's Gold (1993)
 * 6) Last Act in Palmyra (1994)
 * 7) Time to Depart (1995)
 * 8) A Dying Light in Corduba (1996)
 * 9) Three Hands in the Fountain (1997)
 * 10) Two for the Lions (1998)
 * 11) One Virgin Too Many (1999)
 * 12) Ode to a Banker (2000)
 * 13) A Body in the Bath House (2001)
 * 14) The Jupiter Myth (2002)
 * 15) The Accusers (2003)
 * 16) Scandal Takes a Holiday (2004)
 * 17) See Delphi and Die (2005)
 * 18) Saturnalia (2007)
 * 19) Alexandria (2009)
 * 20) Nemesis (2010)

Omnibus editions
 * Falco on His Metal (1999)
 * Venus in Copper
 * The Iron Hand of Mars
 * Poseidon's Gold
 * Falco on the Loose (2003)
 * Last Act in Palmyra
 * Time to Depart
 * A Dying Light in Corduba

Flavia Albia

 * 1) The Ides of April (2013, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 978-1-4447-5581-7)
 * 2) Enemies at Home (2014, Hodder & Stoughton (ISBN 978-1444766585)
 * 3) Deadly Election (2015, ISBN 9781444794229)
 * 4) The Graveyard of the Hesperides (2016, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 9781473613386)
 * 5) The Third Nero (2017, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 9781473613423)
 * 6) Pandora's Boy (2018, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 9781473658653)
 * 7) A Capitol Death (2019, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 9781473658745)
 * 8) The Grove of the Caesars (2020, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 9781529374247)
 * 9) A Comedy of Terrors (2021) (ISBN 9781529374322)
 * 10) Desperate Undertaking (2022, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 978-1529354683)
 * 11) Fatal Legacy (2023, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 9781529354737)
 * 12) Death on the Tiber (2024, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 978-1399719612)

Other works set in Ancient Rome
Novels
 * The Course of Honour (1997)
 * Master and God (2012)

Novellas
 * The Spook Who Spoke Again (2015, ebook and audio only, ISBN 9781473617001)
 * Vesuvius by Night (2017, ebook and audio only, ISBN 9781473658851)
 * Invitation to Die (2019, ebook and audio only, )

Novella collection
 * Voices of Rome: Four Stories of Ancient Rome (2023, Hodder & Stoughton:ISBN 9781399721332) comprising The Bride from Bithynia, The Spook Who Spoke Again, Vesuvius by Night, and Invitation to Die

Companion
 * Falco: The Official Companion (2010)

English Civil War

 * Rebels and Traitors (2009)
 * A Cruel Fate (3 February 2014, ISBN 9781444763188), (a QuickRead set in the English Civil War)

Short story

 * "'Going Anywhere Nice?'" (2005), published in The Detection Collection, edited by Simon Brett.

Awards and nominations

 * Shortlisted for the Georgette Heyer Prize for two unpublished works (pre-Falco).
 * Winner of the Author's Club Prize for "Best First Novel" in 1989 for The Silver Pigs.
 * Winner of the Crime Writers' Association (CWA): Dagger in the Library for being an author "whose work has given most pleasure" in 1995.
 * Winner of the first Ellis Peters Historical Dagger awarded by the Crime Writers' Association in 1999 for Two for the Lions.
 * Winner of the Sherlock Award for the Best Comic Detective in 2000 for Didius Falco.
 * Awarded the 2010 Premio Colosseo, awarded by the city of Rome to someone who "has enhanced the image of Rome in the world"
 * Winner of the 2011 Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers' Association
 * Winner in 2013 of the first Barcelona Historical Novel Prize (Premi Internacional de Novella Històrica Barcino)

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

title: Lindsey Davis


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Pazyryk burials

The Pazyryk burials are a number of Scythian (Saka)  Iron Age tombs found in the Pazyryk Valley and the Ukok plateau in the Altai Mountains, Siberia, south of the modern city of Novosibirsk, Russia; the site is close to the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.

Numerous comparable burials have been found in neighbouring western Mongolia.

The tombs are Scythian-type kurgans, barrow-like tomb mounds containing wooden chambers covered over by large cairns of boulders and stones, dated to the 4th–3rd centuries BCE. The spectacular burials at Pazyryk are responsible for the introduction of the term kurgan, a Russian word, into general usage to describe these tombs. The region of the Pazyryk kurgans is considered the type site of the wider Pazyryk culture. The site is included in the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The bearers of the Pazyryk culture were horse-riding pastoral nomads of the steppe, and some may have accumulated great wealth through horse trading with merchants in Persia, India and China. This wealth is evident in the wide array of finds from the Pazyryk tombs, which include many rare examples of organic objects such as felt hangings, Chinese silk, the earliest known pile carpet, horses decked out in elaborate trappings, and wooden furniture and other household goods. These finds were preserved when water seeped into the tombs in antiquity and froze, encasing the burial goods in ice, which remained frozen in the permafrost until the time of their excavation.

Because of a freak climatic freeze, some of the Altai-Sayan burials, notably those of the 5th century BCE at Pazyryk and neighbouring sites, such as Katanda, Shibe, and Tuekta, were isolated from external climatic variations by a protective layer of ice that conserved the organic substances buried in them. Certain geometric designs and sun symbols, such as the circle and rosette, recur at Pazyryk but are completely outnumbered by animal motifs. Such specifically Scythian features as zoomorphic junctures, i.e. the addition of a part of one animal to the body of another, are rarer in the Altaic region than in southern Russia. The stag and its relatives, however, figure as prominently in Altai-Sayan as in Scythian art.

"At Pazyryk too are found bearded mascarons (masks) of well-defined Greco-Roman origin, which were doubtless inspired by the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Cimmerian Bosporus."

Pazyryk culture
Rudenko initially assigned the neutral label Pazyryk culture for these nomads and dated them to the 5th century BCE; the dating has been revised for barrows 1-5 at Pazyryk, which are now considered to date to the 4th–3rd centuries BCE. The Pazyryk culture has since been connected to the Scythians whose similar tombs have been found across the steppes. The Siberian animal style tattooing is characteristic of the Scythians. The artifacts show that these ancient Altai nomads had cultural and trading links to Central Asia, China and the Near East. There is evidence that Pazyryk trade routes were vast and connected with large areas of Asia including India, perhaps Pazyryk merchants largely trading in high quality horses.

Discoveries
The first tomb at Pazyryk, barrow 1, was excavated by the archaeologist M. P. Griaznov in 1929; barrows 2–5 were excavated by Sergei Ivanovich Rudenko in 1947–1949. While many of the tombs had already been looted in earlier times, the excavators unearthed buried horses, and with them immaculately preserved cloth saddles, felt and woven rugs including the world's oldest pile carpet, a 3-metre-high four-wheel funeral chariot from the 5th century BCE and other splendid objects that had escaped the ravages of time. These finds are now exhibited at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.

Cranial measurements from the Pazyryk burials performed in the 1960s suggested that the interred were largely of European ancestry with some admixture of Northeast Asian ancestry. But genetically, the Pazyryk population was actually fairly balanced between western and eastern Eurasian ancestry: it was modeled to derive between c. 50% from the Khövsgöl_LBA source, c. 36% from Western Steppe Herders (Steppe_MLBA), and c. 14% from a BMAC-like source. One outlier specimen (Pazyryk_Berel_50BCE) could be modeled as c. 18% Pazyryk_IA and c. 82% additional Northeast Asian admixture, suggesting that this individual represents a migrant who arrived from further East.

Pazyryk-1
Tomb number 1 at Pazyryk has numerous artifacts, including horses wearing deer antlers masks, or harnesses with human figures. The tomb is dated to the 4th century BCE. Its main content was looted, but the area with horse sacrifices remained intact. It was excavated by Griaznov in the 1930s.

Pazyryk-2 chief
Rudenko's most striking discovery in 1947 was the body of a tattooed Pazyryk chief in burial mound 2: a thick-set, powerfully built man, 176cm tall, who had died when he was between 55 and 60. His tomb was monumental and lavishly equipped. He died violently, and was killed with a Scythian-type battle axe, and scalped. He was carefully embalmed, and his body was covered in animal style tattoos, but not his face. Parts of the body had deteriorated, but much of the tattooing was still clearly visible (see image). Subsequent investigation using reflected infrared photography revealed that all five bodies discovered in the Pazyryk kurgans were tattooed. No instruments specifically designed for tattooing were found, but the Pazyryks had extremely fine needles with which they did miniature embroidery, and these were probably used for tattooing.

The chief was elaborately decorated with an interlocking series of striking designs representing a variety of fantastic beasts. The best preserved tattoos were images of a donkey, a mountain ram, two highly stylized deer with long antlers and an imaginary carnivore on the right arm. Two monsters resembling griffins decorate the chest, and on the left arm are three partially obliterated images which seem to represent two deer and a mountain goat. On the front of the right leg a fish extends from the foot to the knee. A monster crawls over the right foot, and on the inside of the shin is a series of four running rams which touch each other to form a single design. The left leg also bears tattoos, but these designs could not be clearly distinguished. In addition, the chief's back is tattooed with a series of small circles in line with the vertebral column.

His embalmed head, now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, suggests a rather "Mongoloïd type". He was crowned with a gilded copper tiara decorated with six winged, horned and hoofed lions ("lion griffins"). The lion griffins were made of wood, but were originally covered in gold foil before the foils were looted by tomb robbers. A false beard, made of hair, sinew thread and leather, was also discovered next to him in his tomb. Its significance remaining conjectural, as all mummies recovered from Pazyryk were clean-shaven. An extraordinary male headgear, a carved wooden crest representing a bird of prey with a deer head in its beak, was also found at the head of the coffin, and is thought to be the headgear of the chieftain.

Pazyryk-5
Pazyryk barrow 5 also contained the remains of a Saka chief. It was excavated by S.I. Rudenko in 1949.

The grave was formed of an inner and an outer log sarcophagus, covered with five layers of logs and a layer of boulders. The tomb was looted in antiquity, but still contained the enbalmed remains of a man and a women, together with some artifacts, nine horses, either harnessed to chariot or back riding, a disassembled wagon with four large wheels on spokes, and various carpets.

Ice Maiden
The most famous undisturbed Pazyryk burial so far recovered is the Ice Maiden or "Altai Lady" found by archaeologist Natalia Polosmak in 1993 at Ukok, near the Chinese border. The find was a rare example of a single woman given a full ceremonial burial in a wooden chamber tomb in the fifth century BCE, accompanied by six horses. She had been buried over 2,400 years ago in a casket fashioned from the hollowed-out trunk of a Siberian larch tree. On the outside of the casket were stylized images of deer and snow leopards carved in leather. Shortly after burial the grave had apparently been flooded by freezing rain, and the entire contents of the burial chamber had remained frozen in permafrost. Six horses wearing elaborate harnesses had been sacrificed and lay to the north of the chamber.

The maiden's well-preserved body, carefully embalmed with peat and bark, was arranged to lie on her side as if asleep. She was young, and her hair had been shaved off but she was wearing a wig and tall hat; she had been 167 cm tall. Even the animal style tattoos were preserved on her pale skin: creatures with horns that develop into flowered forms. Her coffin was made large enough to accommodate the high felt headdress she was wearing, which was decorated with swans and gold-covered carved cats. She was clad in a long crimson and white striped woolen skirt and white felt stockings. Her yellow blouse was originally thought to be made of wild "tussah" silk but closer examination of the fibers indicate the material is not Chinese but was a wild silk which came from somewhere else, perhaps India. Near her coffin was a vessel made of yak horn, and dishes containing gifts of coriander seeds: all of which suggest that the Pazyryk trade routes stretched across vast areas of Iran. Similar dishes in other tombs were thought to have held Cannabis sativa, confirming a practice described by Herodotus but after tests the mixture was found to be coriander seeds, probably used to disguise the smell of the body.

Two years after the discovery of the "Ice Maiden" Dr. Polosmak's husband, Vyacheslav Molodin, found a frozen man, elaborately tattooed with an elk, with two long braids that reached to his waist, buried with his weapons.

Dr Anicua also noted that her blouse was a bit stained, indicating that the material was not a new garment, made for the burial.

Pazyryk rug
One of the most famous finds at Pazyryk is the Pazyryk rug, which is probably the oldest surviving pile carpet in the world. According to some sources, it was manufactured in Ancient Armenia, using the Armenian double knot and Armenian cochineal for the red color. According to another source, it is an imported Persian work because of its decoration. It measures 183 × and has a knot density of approximately 360,000 knots per square meter, which is higher than most modern carpets. The middle of the rug consists of a ribbon motif, while in the border there is a procession with elk or deer, and in another border warriors on horses. When it was found it had been deeply frozen in a block of ice, which is why it is so well-preserved. The rug can be seen at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Other findings
In a corner of one grave chamber of the Pazyryk cemetery was a fur bag containing cannabis seed, a censer filled with stones, and the hexapod frame of an inhalation tent – these are believed to have been utilized at the end of the funerary ritual for purification.

Other undisturbed kurgans have been found to contain remarkably well-preserved remains, comparable to the earlier Tarim mummies of Xinjiang. Bodies were preserved using mummification techniques and were also naturally frozen in solid ice from water seeping into the tombs. They were encased in coffins made from hollowed trunks of larch (which may have had sacral significance) and sometimes accompanied by sacrificed concubines and horses. The clustering of tombs in a single area implies that it had particular ritual significance for these people, who were likely to have been willing to transport their deceased leaders great distances for burial.

As recently as the summer of 2012, tombs have been discovered at various locations. In January 2007 a timber tomb of a blond chieftain warrior was unearthed in the permafrost of the Altai mountains region close to the Mongolian border. The body of the presumed Pazyryk chieftain is tattooed; his sable coat is well preserved, as are some other objects, including what looks like scissors. A local archaeologist, Aleksei Tishkin, complained that the indigenous population of the region strongly disapproves of archaeological digs, prompting the scientists to move their activities across the border to Mongolia.

title: Pazyryk burials


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Cell theory

In biology, cell theory is a scientific theory first formulated in the mid-nineteenth century, that living organisms are made up of cells, that they are the basic structural/organizational unit of all organisms, and that all cells come from pre-existing cells. Cells are the basic unit of structure in all living organisms and also the basic unit of reproduction.

Cell theory has traditionally been accepted as the governing theory of all life, but some biologists consider non-cellular entities such as viruses living organisms and thus disagree with the universal application of cell theory to all forms of life.

History
With continual improvements made to microscopes over time, magnification technology became advanced enough to discover cells. This discovery is largely attributed to Robert Hooke, and began the scientific study of cells, known as cell biology. When observing a piece of cork under the scope, he was able to see pores. This was shocking at the time as it was believed no one else had seen these. To further support his theory, Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann both also studied cells of both animal and plants. What they discovered were significant differences between the two types of cells. This put forth the idea that cells were not only fundamental to plants, but animals as well.

Microscopes
The discovery of the cell was made possible through the invention of the microscope. In the first century BC, Romans were able to make glass. They discovered that objects appeared to be larger under the glass. The expanded use of lenses in eyeglasses in the 13th century probably led to wider spread use of simple microscopes (magnifying glasses) with limited magnification. Compound microscopes, which combine an objective lens with an eyepiece to view a real image achieving much higher magnification, first appeared in Europe around 1620. In 1665, Robert Hooke used a microscope about six inches long with two convex lenses inside and examined specimens under reflected light for the observations in his book Micrographia. Hooke also used a simpler microscope with a single lens for examining specimens with directly transmitted light, because this allowed for a clearer image.

An extensive microscopic study was done by Anton van Leeuwenhoek, a draper who took the interest in microscopes after seeing one while on an apprenticeship in Amsterdam in 1648. At some point in his life before 1668, he was able to learn how to grind lenses. This eventually led to Leeuwenhoek making his own unique microscope. He made one with a single lens. He was able to use a single lens that was a small glass sphere but allowed for a magnification of 270x. This was a large progression since the magnification before was only a maximum of 50x. After Leeuwenhoek, there was not much progress in microscope technology until the 1850s, two hundred years later. Carl Zeiss, a German engineer who manufactured microscopes, began to make changes to the lenses used. But the optical quality did not improve until the 1880s when he hired Otto Schott and eventually Ernst Abbe.

Optical microscopes can focus on objects the size of a wavelength or larger, giving restrictions still to advancement in discoveries with objects smaller than the wavelengths of visible light. The development of the electron microscope in the 1920s made it possible to view objects that are smaller than optical wavelengths, once again opening up new possibilities in science.

Discovery of cells

The cell was first discovered by Robert Hooke in 1665, which can be found to be described in his book Micrographia. In this book, he gave 60 observations in detail of various objects under a coarse, compound microscope. One observation was from very thin slices of bottle cork. Hooke discovered a multitude of tiny pores that he named "cells". This came from the Latin word Cella, meaning ‘a small room’ like monks lived in, and also Cellulae, which meant the six-sided cell of a honeycomb. However, Hooke did not know their real structure or function. What Hooke had thought were cells, were actually empty cell walls of plant tissues. With microscopes during this time having a low magnification, Hooke was unable to see that there were other internal components to the cells he was observing. Therefore, he did not think the "cellulae" were alive. His cell observations gave no indication of the nucleus and other organelles found in most living cells. In Micrographia, Hooke also observed mould, bluish in color, found on leather. After studying it under his microscope, he was unable to observe "seeds" that would have indicated how the mould was multiplying in quantity. This led to Hooke suggesting that spontaneous generation, from either natural or artificial heat, was the cause. Since this was an old Aristotelian theory still accepted at the time, others did not reject it and was not disproved until Leeuwenhoek later discovered that generation was achieved otherwise.

Anton van Leeuwenhoek is another scientist who saw these cells soon after Hooke did. He made use of a microscope containing improved lenses that could magnify objects 270-fold. Under these microscopes, Leeuwenhoek found motile objects. In a letter to The Royal Society on October 9, 1676, he states that motility is a quality of life therefore these were living organisms. Over time, he wrote many more papers which described many specific forms of microorganisms. Leeuwenhoek named these "animalcules," which included protozoa and other unicellular organisms, like bacteria. Though he did not have much formal education, he was able to identify the first accurate description of red blood cells and discovered bacteria after gaining interest in the sense of taste that resulted in Leeuwenhoek to observe the tongue of an ox, then leading him to study "pepper water" in 1676. He also found for the first time the sperm cells of animals and humans. Once discovering these types of cells, Leeuwenhoek saw that the fertilization process requires the sperm cell to enter the egg cell. This put an end to the previous theory of spontaneous generation. After reading letters by Leeuwenhoek, Hooke was the first to confirm his observations that were thought to be unlikely by other contemporaries.

Cells in animal tissues were observed later than those in plants because their tissues are fragile and difficult to study. Biologists believed that there was a fundamental unit to life, but until Henri Dutrochet were unclear what it was. Besides stating “the cell is the fundamental element of organization”, Dutrochet claimed that cells were also a physiological unit.

In 1804, Karl Rudolphi and J. H. F. Link were awarded the prize for "solving the problem of the nature of cells", meaning they were the first to prove that cells had independent cell walls by the Königliche Societät der Wissenschaft (Royal Society of Science), Göttingen. Before, it had been thought that cells shared walls and the fluid passed between them this way.

Cell theory

Credit for developing cell theory is usually given to two scientists: Theodor Schwann and Matthias Jakob Schleiden. While Rudolf Virchow contributed to the theory, he is not as credited for his attributions toward it. In 1839, Schleiden suggested that every structural part of a plant was made up of cells or the result of cells. He also suggested that cells were made by a crystallization process either within other cells or from the outside. However, this was not an original idea of Schleiden. He claimed this theory as his own, though Barthelemy Dumortier had stated it years before him. This crystallization process is no longer accepted with modern cell theory. In 1839, Theodor Schwann states that along with plants, animals are composed of cells or the product of cells in their structures. This was a major advance in the field of biology since little was known about animal structure up to this point compared to plants. From these conclusions about plants and animals, two of the three tenets of cell theory were postulated.

 * 1. All living organisms are composed of one or more cells
 * 2. The cell is the most basic unit of life

Schleiden's theory of free cell formation through crystallization was refuted in the 1850s by Robert Remak, Rudolf Virchow, and Albert Kolliker. In 1855, Rudolf Virchow added the third tenet to cell theory. In Latin, this tenet states Omnis cellula e cellula. This translated to:

 * 3. All cells arise only from pre-existing cells

However, the idea that all cells come from pre-existing cells had already been proposed by Robert Remak; it has been suggested that Virchow plagiarized Remak. Remak published observations in 1852 on cell division, claiming Schleiden and Schawnn were incorrect about generation schemes. He instead said that binary fission, which was first introduced by Dumortier, was how reproduction of new animal cells were made. Once this tenet was added, classical cell theory was complete.

Modern interpretation
The generally accepted parts of modern cell theory include:

 * 1) All known living things are made up of one or more cells
 * 2) All living cells arise from pre-existing cells by division.
 * 3) The cell is the fundamental unit of structure and function in all living organisms.
 * 4) The activity of an organism depends on the total activity of independent cells.
 * 5) Energy flow (metabolism and biochemistry) occurs within cells.
 * 6) Cells contain DNA which is found specifically in the chromosome and RNA found in the cell nucleus and cytoplasm.
 * 7) All cells are basically the same in chemical composition in organisms of similar species.

Opposing concepts
The cell was first discovered by Robert Hooke in 1665 using a microscope. The first cell theory is credited to the work of Theodor Schwann and Matthias Jakob Schleiden in the 1830s. In this theory the internal contents of cells were called protoplasm and described as a jelly-like substance, sometimes called living jelly. At about the same time, colloidal chemistry began its development, and the concepts of bound water emerged. A colloid being something between a solution and a suspension, where Brownian motion is sufficient to prevent sedimentation. The idea of a semipermeable membrane, a barrier that is permeable to solvent but impermeable to solute molecules was developed at about the same time. The term osmosis originated in 1827 and its importance to physiological phenomena realized, but it wasn’t until 1877, when the botanist Pfeffer proposed the membrane theory of cell physiology. In this view, the cell was seen to be enclosed by a thin surface, the plasma membrane, and cell water and solutes such as a potassium ion existed in a physical state like that of a dilute solution. In 1889 Hamburger used hemolysis of erythrocytes to determine the permeability of various solutes. By measuring the time required for the cells to swell past their elastic limit, the rate at which solutes entered the cells could be estimated by the accompanying change in cell volume. He also found that there was an apparent nonsolvent volume of about 50% in red blood cells and later showed that this includes water of hydration in addition to the protein and other nonsolvent components of the cells.

Membrane and bulk phase theories
Two opposing concepts developed within the context of studies on osmosis, permeability, and electrical properties of cells. The first held that these properties all belonged to the plasma membrane whereas the other predominant view was that the protoplasm was responsible for these properties. The membrane theory developed as a succession of ad-hoc additions and changes to the theory to overcome experimental hurdles. Overton (a distant cousin of Charles Darwin) first proposed the concept of a lipid (oil) plasma membrane in 1899. The major weakness of the lipid membrane was the lack of an explanation of the high permeability to water, so Nathansohn (1904) proposed the mosaic theory. In this view, the membrane is not a pure lipid layer, but a mosaic of areas with lipid and areas with semipermeable gel. Ruhland refined the mosaic theory to include pores to allow additional passage of small molecules. Since membranes are generally less permeable to anions, Leonor Michaelis concluded that ions are adsorbed to the walls of the pores, changing the permeability of the pores to ions by electrostatic repulsion. Michaelis demonstrated the membrane potential (1926) and proposed that it was related to the distribution of ions across the membrane.

Harvey and Danielli (1939) proposed a lipid bilayer membrane covered on each side with a layer of protein to account for measurements of surface tension. In 1941 Boyle and Conway showed that the membrane of frog muscle was permeable to both and, but apparently not to , so the idea of electrical charges in the pores was unnecessary since a single critical pore size would explain the permeability to , , and  as well as the impermeability to , , and. Over the same time period, it was shown (Procter and Wilson, 1916) that gels, which do not have a semipermeable membrane, would swell in dilute solutions.

Jacques Loeb (1920) also studied gelatin extensively, with and without a membrane, showing that more of the properties attributed to the plasma membrane could be duplicated in gels without a membrane. In particular, he found that an electrical potential difference between the gelatin and the outside medium could be developed, based on the concentration. Some criticisms of the membrane theory developed in the 1930s, based on observations such as the ability of some cells to swell and increase their surface area by a factor of 1000. A lipid layer cannot stretch to that extent without becoming a patchwork (thereby losing its barrier properties). Such criticisms stimulated continued studies on protoplasm as the principal agent determining cell permeability properties.

In 1938, Fischer and Suer proposed that water in the protoplasm is not free but in a chemically combined form—the protoplasm represents a combination of protein, salt and water—and demonstrated the basic similarity between swelling in living tissues and the swelling of gelatin and fibrin gels. Dimitri Nasonov (1944) viewed proteins as the central components responsible for many properties of the cell, including electrical properties. By the 1940s, the bulk phase theories were not as well developed as the membrane theories. In 1941, Brooks and Brooks published a monograph, "The Permeability of Living Cells", which rejects the bulk phase theories.

Steady-state membrane pump concept
With the development of radioactive tracers, it was shown that cells are not impermeable to. This was difficult to explain with the membrane barrier theory, so the sodium pump was proposed to continually remove as it permeates cells. This drove the concept that cells are in a state of dynamic equilibrium, constantly using energy to maintain ion gradients. In 1935, Karl Lohmann (chemist) discovered ATP and its role as a source of energy for cells, so the concept of a metabolically-driven sodium pump was proposed. The success of Hodgkin, Huxley, and Katz in the development of the membrane theory of cellular membrane potentials, with differential equations that modeled the phenomena correctly, provided further support for the membrane pump hypothesis. The modern view of the plasma membrane is of a fluid lipid bilayer that has protein components embedded within it. The structure of the membrane is now known in great detail, including 3D models of many of the hundreds of different proteins that are bound to the membrane. These major developments in cell physiology placed the membrane theory in a position of dominance and stimulated the imagination of most physiologists, who now apparently accept the theory as fact—there are, however, a few dissenters.

Reemergence of bulk phase theories
In 1956, Afanasy S. Troshin published a book, The Problems of Cell Permeability, in Russian, in which he showed that permeability was of secondary importance in determining the patterns of equilibrium between the cell and its environment. Troshin showed that cell water decreased in solutions of galactose or urea although these compounds did slowly permeate cells. Since the membrane theory requires an impermanent solute to sustain cell shrinkage, these experiments cast doubt on the theory. Others questioned whether the cell has enough energy to sustain the sodium/potassium pump. Such questions became even more urgent as dozens of new metabolic pumps were added as new chemical gradients were discovered.

In 1962, Gilbert Ling became the champion of the bulk phase theories and proposed his association-induction hypothesis of living cells.

title: Cell theory


text:
Talk:Miami/Archive 0

Article name
Shouldn't this page be under "Miami (city)" or "Miami, Florida" and the disambiguation page be here? It just makes more sense to me that way

 * When somebody makes a link pointing to "Miami" they are more times than not going to mean the city, so the idea is that it makes sense to take them there. There are other cases where this has been done, see Paris and Ontario for example. Not everybody agree with the practice (nobody agrees completely on anything, fortunately), but it makes sense to do it this way to me: all those people meaning the city when they link to Miami, will be able to type Miami, Florida in an article where otherwise they would have to type Miami, Florida , if you see what I mean. When one use of a word is so much more common than another, I think this way of doing things is sensible.--Camembert

 * Perhaps, but let me state for the record that the practice of linking a US city article as Miami, Florida is just plain silly. Why provide a link to the US state unless the context warrants it?  Taken to its logical conclusion, one might have to construct a series of links looking something like Miami, Dade County, Florida, United States, North America, Earth.  Besides, the idea is to make things easier for the reader, not necessarily the editor.  Thus if extra keystrokes are needed to avoid ambiguity, such is our burden as editors.  -- JeffBillman (talk) 04:04, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Per Naming conventions (settlements), this should not have been moved without prior discussion. -- Donald Albury 10:04, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Not only that, but the talk page didn't get moved either. Miami should be a redirect to Miami, Florida, with a link to the disambig page at the top, and the talk page should be reunited with the article page. I'll let the editor who created this mess fix it.  Horologium  (talk) 19:39, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

 * I think we might need to get an admin involved to rectify the "bad move", because since the two pages actually exist, they can't easily be moved without deleting one of the articles and then moving them. That's how I've seen it done. El Greco(talk) 00:42, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

 * I am an admin, Donald Albury is an admin, and SmthManly (the editor who moved it) is an admin. We have plenty of admins looking at this article... :)  Horologium  (talk) 01:30, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Wonderful. So would one of you admins care to stop congratulating yourselves long enough to fix this bad page move?  Even if it was the right thing to do, y'all stranded a talk page. -- JeffBillman (talk) 03:55, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

 * My apologies, Horologium. I failed to note that you were also the editor who first noted the stranded talk page above.  I just get frustrated when I see people claiming that something was done correctly simply because an admin did it. -- JeffBillman (talk) 04:08, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Neither Donald Albury nor I supported the move; both of us are criticizing the move, not saying it was done correctly. I'm hoping that SmthManly will read this and self-revert, because I don't want to get into an edit war over the move, which was very wrong and out-of-process.  Horologium  (talk) 04:18, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

 * I think the move is a good one. What's the purpose of having "Miami" automatically redirect to "Miami, Florida". When people are searching for "Miami" they're looking for this Miami, the largest Miami with this name. It's a global city and it doesn't need to list what state it's in, it's unnecessary. --Comayagua99 (talk) 04:27, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Move if you want or disapprove or whatever, i don't mind, still think it's dumb to have Miami redirect to Miami, Florida, but if it's going to cause some dumb bureaucratic smear campaign that will last 2 weeks and go nowhere, then move it back, please. It's not worth the server space. Also, it's not Smith, it's Smth.  Thanks. --  SmthManly  / ManlyTalk  / ManlyContribs  06:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Seriously, I think it's a logical move. Why have it listed as "Miami, Florida" if it redirects to Miami. Plus, when one searches for Miami they're looking for this Miami, not another insignificant population 3 Miami town in the Midwest. --Comayagua99 (talk) 02:47, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

 * The redirect ensures that someone typing in "Miami" will get the article about Miami, Florida. Naming conventions (settlements) states that articles about U.S. cities will use the City, State format, with the exception of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Even Los Angeles, California follows that convention. I am not outright opposed to the move (Miami shows up on the list of AP cities which don't require the state disambiguation), but it needs to be discussed first, and if it is moved, the talk page needs to be moved with it. That didn't happen last time, and that is a problem.  Horologium  (talk) 16:40, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

 * I would add that the naming convention for U.S. cities, towns and other 'settlements' has been debated and established by consensus. Your arguments have all been made before, but were not adopted in the consensus. New York City has always had that name in Wikipedia, and there were cogent arguments for leaving it there. Chicago was moved to a bare city name before the consensus was established (I don't remember just when Philadelphia was converted). If you want to try to find a new consensus, you can raise the issue at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements). -- Donald Albury 17:50, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I have moved Miami back to Miami, Florida, reuniting the article with its talk page and archives. This page will remain in place, along with this discussion. If you wish to move it, start a discussion at Requested moves, as per Naming conventions (settlements). The redirect from Miami will still get people to Miami, Florida, with the disambiguation at the top of the page, but the article should be at City, State, as all but three cities in the United States.  Horologium  (talk) 11:15, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Urbanized Area
I think the references I carefully added a while back have been bunged up good, but there is a difference between Metropolitan Statistical Area and Urbanized Area as defined by the Census Bureau. Miami was the fourth most populous Urbanized Area in the U.S. in 2000, after N.Y., L.A. and Chicago. See the table at. -- Donald Albury 23:20, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Well, the ref prior to when I changed it to the metro area was to a university and use to say fifth for the longest time, until some IP user changed it to forth. So I looked up the table for metro population, changed it to the 7th largest and added a ref. El Greco(talk) 00:39, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Looking at the reference Donald Albury provided, it appears that Miami is the fifth largest urban area, after New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Dallas and Houston, which have larger metro populations, have smaller urban populations than Miami. I have updated the article accordingly.  Horologium  (talk) 03:22, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I have copied this thread over to Talk:Miami, Florida, to continue discussion there.  Horologium  (talk) 11:25, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

This page's history
Just a heads up: I've history merged this page to fix *two* cut-and-paste moves back in the early days. If the page is ever moved again from "Miami, Florida" to "Miami", undelete the residual edits at "Miami" because they show records of some old page moves in 2002. Thanks, Graham 87 09:05, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

 * this edit probably makes the most sense here, not just because of the edit summary, but because it shows one part of a cut-and-paste move while the other part is in the history of Miami, Florida. No content was changed in the cut-and-paste move so there is no problem with attribution. All the edits that actually changed content are now all in one place though. Graham 87 09:19, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Actually I've just thought of something ... what's needed is that one page should contain *all* the content revisions. The easiest way to achieve this is to take the content edit from Miami to Miami, Florida, so I'll do that now. Therefore there won't be as much need to keep around the revisions at Miami if the page does get moved. Graham 87 00:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

title: Talk:Miami/Archive 0


text:
The Evolution Control Committee

The Evolution Control Committee (The ECC) is an experimental music band based in Columbus, Ohio. The ECC was founded by Mark Gunderson (a.k.a. TradeMark G.) in Columbus in 1986. They create music that falls within the borders of the sound collage genre, typically using uncleared and illegal samples from various sources as a form of protest against copyright law. The ECC also produces numerous audio experiments that goes outside regular composition methods, including the disfiguring of compact discs in a live performance known as "CDestruction". They have produced a few video works as well, ranging from re-edited 50's corporate shorts to Teddy Ruxpin reciting the works of William S. Burroughs. Other activities include culture jamming.

They are one of the pioneers of the mash-up or bootleg, where two or more songs are mixed together into a new track. According to Neil Strauss in The New York Times, "...many musical observers trace the official beginnings of the British bootleg scene to The Evolution Control Committee, which in 1993 mixed a Public Enemy a cappella with music by Herb Alpert." These are the now-classic "Public Enemy/Whipped Cream Mixes" containing Public Enemy's inflammatory raps titled "By the Time I Get To Arizona" and "Rebel Without a Pause" overdubbed onto instrumentals by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

The ECC wrote "Rocked by Rape," consisting of samples of Dan Rather's deadpan delivery describing various atrocities over looped riffs from AC/DC's "Back in Black." This work brought legal threats against The ECC by CBS, but by 2003, CBS appeared to have dropped the issue. "Rocked by Rape" was nationally broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered in 2000. It was even played at a roast for Rather, later broadcast on C-SPAN.

Since 2000, Gunderson has performed his works on stage through an electronic instrument of his own invention: "The Thimbletron." It is made of a pair of gloves with ten thimbles attached at the ends of the fingers that are then wired to a laptop computer. As the thimbles are touched together, the laptop in turn plays a different sound sample. Gunderson claims that the device uses "thimbletronium energy" and warns that "thimbletronic radiation can leak unexpectedly due to a mishap during a live performance. The audience is advised to attend Thimbletron performances at their own risk." Gunderson has also modified a bread toaster in a similar fashion, with each depression of a lever playing a sample.

The Thimbletron has been largely retired in public performances in favor of the Wheel of Mashup in which audience members come up on stage and spin a wheel to randomly select the music and vocals to be combined. These are then mashed together in real time using the VidiMasher 3000, a large rear-projected touch screen used to control Ableton Live. VidiMasher 3000 (Video Mashup Screen) Demo

Discography

 * Jesu Boy of Man's Desiring (Self Release)
 * Audio cassette featuring early cut-ups.
 * Buddha Bleach (Self Release on Def Clam Tapes, Dec. 1990)
 * Audio cassette featuring early cut-ups.
 * The Last Mall (Self Release)
 * Audio cassette featuring loops and crank phone calls. Packaged in a "Lazarusears" shopping bag.
 * Big Wyoming (Self Release)
 * Audio cassette featuring travelogue of a Gunderson family ski vacation accompanied by Casio. Packaged in postcards.
 * Gunderphonic (Self Release, 1994 ECC -=- The Virtual Gunderphone)
 * Audio cassette inspired by John Oswald's Plunderphonics. Features cut-ups, including the well known Whipped Cream mixes and two "corrected" Gulf War speeches by George H. W. Bush. The audio cassette is packaged inside of an old 8-track cassette.
 * Double the Phat and Still Tasteless (Released on Eerie Materials)
 * CD featuring cut-ups and electronica, as well as absurdist humor skits and guest performances. A 5.25 inch floppy disc is slit along one side and the CD is slipped inside.
 * Plagiarhythm Nation (Released on Seeland Records)
 * CD featuring cut-ups and electronica.
 * The Whipped Cream Mixes (Released on Eerie Materials/Pickled Egg)
 * Vinyl 45. Side A - Rebel Without A Pause. Side B - By The Time I Get to Arizona.
 * Unreleased Ambient Works (Self Released)
 * CD featuring dark atmospheric/illbient works.
 * Rocked by Rape (Released on Eerie Materials)
 * Vinyl 45.
 * The Television Will Not Be Revolutionized (Self Released)
 * VHS video cassette.
 * Compact Discstructions (Self Released)
 * A manual packaged with a random CD. The manual describes various ways to make a CD play incorrectly, and is intended ultimately to destroy the CD.
 * Subliminal (self-released)
 * Cassette featuring many layered subliminal self-help recordings. The website claims that side one "will increase your creativity, improve your employment, develop your ESP, help you stop smoking, and so on." While side two, being a reverse recording of the same, "will help you gain weight, get demoted, become stupid, etc." link
 * Weapons of Ass Destruction (self-released)
 * Full length album released online, available for download from the Sounds section of the ECC web site.
 * All Rights Reserved (self-released)
 * Full-length album released online Discography: ECC Media of the Past, Present, and Future; also available in LP and CD format.

Related artists
Mark Gunderson also records as DJ Pantshead and performs with Cheese & Pants Theater, a comedy/performance art duo consisting of a giant pair of pants and a giant Parmesan cheese shaker who pantomime to bizarrely edited vintage audio and as DJ John Philip Suicide with Dub Assault. Past projects have included the experimental performance troupe Gaga, several ECC performances at the Columbus Avant Garage film festival, and a release with the Weird Love Makers. A present project is his webcast 'The Sound of Plaid' as Trademark G. at the Amsterdam-based international radio-art webstation DFM RTV INT, which airs two times each week.

Other related artists include The Bran Flakes, Emergency Broadcast Network, Escape Mechanism, Negativland, John Oswald, People Like Us and The Tape-beatles.

Greg Gillis, in interview outtakes for the movie RIP: A Remix Manifesto, admits that Evolution Control Committee was a major influence and inspiration to create the mashups for his artistic persona Girl Talk. Gillis even explains that the best description of Girl Talk's music is "Plunderphonics."

title: The Evolution Control Committee


text:
University of Wisconsin System

The Universities of Wisconsin (officially the University of Wisconsin System and sometimes referred to as the UW System) is a university system of public universities in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. It is one of the largest public higher-education systems in the country, enrolling more than 160,000 students each year and employing approximately 41,000 faculty and staff statewide. The system is headquartered in the state capital of Madison.

The UW System comprises two major doctoral research universities, eleven other comprehensive universities, and twelve two-year branch campuses.

History
The present-day University of Wisconsin System was created on October 11, 1971, by Chapter 100, Laws of 1971, which combined the former University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin State Universities systems into an enlarged University of Wisconsin System. The final legislation passed in May 1974, combining two chapters of the Wisconsin statutes. The merger took effect July 9, 1974.

Former University of Wisconsin
The University of Wisconsin was created by the state constitution in 1848, and held its first classes in Madison in 1849.

In 1956, pressed by the growing demand for a large public university that offered graduate programs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin's largest city, Wisconsin lawmakers merged Wisconsin State College of Milwaukee (WSCM) and the University of Wisconsin–Extension's Milwaukee division as the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. The new campus comprised the WSCM campus near the lakefront and the UW extension in downtown Milwaukee.

Starting in the 1940s, freshman-sophomore centers were opened across the state. In 1968, the Green Bay center was upgraded to a full-fledged four-year institution as the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, while the Kenosha and Racine centers were merged as the University of Wisconsin–Parkside. By 1971, the University of Wisconsin system had campuses at Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay and Kenosha/Somers, together with 10 freshman-sophomore centers and the statewide University of Wisconsin–Extension. The total enrollment of the University of Wisconsin system at that time was 69,554. The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin system comprise ten members, nine of whom were appointed by the governor and confirmed by the senate for nine-year terms. The tenth was the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, who served ex officio on both the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin State University boards.

Former Wisconsin State Universities
In 1866, the state legislature established a normal school at Platteville—the first of eight teacher-training schools across the state. In 1911, the legislature permitted the normal schools to offer two years of post-high school work in art, liberal arts and sciences, pre-law, and pre-medicine. The broadened curriculum proved popular and soon accounted for over one-third of the normal schools' enrollment. In 1920, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching issued a report on "The Professional Education of Teachers of American Public Schools", which attacked such programs, arguing that normal schools should not deviate from their purpose as trainers of teachers. When the Milwaukee Normal School (MNS) persisted with its popular enhanced curriculum, the regents of the Normal School system, the legislature, and the governor all became involved. MNS President Carroll G. Pearse was forced to resign in 1923, and the regents ordered the discontinuation of non-teacher-education programs. The issue was not settled, though; public pressure for expanded offerings at normal schools continued to grow, and education professionals asserted that traditional two-year curricula in teacher training were inadequate.

In 1926, the regents repurposed the Normal Schools as "State Teachers Colleges", offering a four-year course of study leading to a Bachelor of Education degree that incorporated significant general education at all levels. The thousands of returning World War II veterans in Wisconsin needed more college choices for their studies under the G.I. Bill, and popular demand pushed the State Teachers College system Regents to once again allow the teacher training institutions to offer bachelor's degrees in liberal arts and fine arts. In 1951 the state teachers colleges were redesignated as "Wisconsin State Colleges," offering a full four-year liberal arts curriculum. In 1955, the Stout Institute in Menomonie, which had been founded as a private engineering school in 1891 and was sold to the state in 1911, was merged into the Wisconsin State Colleges system; it had previously been governed by a separate state board of regents.

The state colleges were all granted university status as "Wisconsin State Universities" in 1964 (with the exception of Wisconsin State College-Milwaukee, which had become part of the University of Wisconsin in 1956).

As of 1971, the Wisconsin State Universities comprised nine public universities (Platteville, Whitewater, Oshkosh, River Falls, Stout (in Menomonie), Superior, Stevens Point, La Crosse, and Eau Claire) and four freshman-sophomore branch campuses, with a total enrollment of 64,148. The board was made up of 14 members, 13 of whom were appointed by the governor and confirmed by the senate for five-year terms. The 14th was the State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Merger
The University of Wisconsin system merged with the Wisconsin State University system in 1971 to create today's University of Wisconsin System. The 1971 merger law approved by the State Senate combined the two higher education systems in Wisconsin under a single Board of Regents, creating a system with 13 universities, 14 freshman-sophomore centers (as University of Wisconsin Colleges), and a statewide extension with offices in all 72 counties. Each university is named "University of Wisconsin–" followed by the location or name. Each two-year college was named "University of Wisconsin–" followed by the city and/or county in which it is located. The move, intended to enhance the University of Wisconsin's prestige and influence, was resisted by some parties concerned with a possible brand dilution.

The Board of the University of Wisconsin System includes 18 members, 16 of whom are appointed by the Governor and approved by the Senate. Of these 16 members, 14 serve staggered, seven-year terms. The remaining two are two-year positions filled by current UW System students. The two ex officio members are the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the president or a designee of the Wisconsin Technical College System Board.

2018 restructuring
In October 2017, UW System president Ray Cross publicly proposed restructuring the University of Wisconsin System to bring the UW Colleges under the control of their nearest comprehensive university, creating regional two-year campuses within the system. The proposal also included splitting UW-Extension between UW-Madison and UW System administration. UW Colleges Online, which was operating as an additional campus of UW Colleges, would be relocated under UW System administration. Cross announced this proposal without consulting shared governance groups or administrators. System administration argued that the merger would save money. Critics said the merger was being rushed without input from the campuses and that the system was buckling to political pressure from the state. The proposal was approved by the UW Board of Regents in their November 2017 meeting, and implementation began July 1, 2018.

Current
Set to close

Branding
Since the 1971 union of the universities and colleges under the University of Wisconsin System name, there has been a controversy over the arrangement. The name "University of Wisconsin" is often used to refer to the Madison campus, which has made it difficult for other institutions to make names for themselves. Conversely, many who are connected to UW–Madison have claimed that having so many institutions share the "University of Wisconsin" title has caused a form of brand dilution.

In 2006 and 2009, the students at UW–Milwaukee (UWM) voted on whether the school should change its name to something that did not carry the UW name (such as Wisconsin State University or University of Milwaukee). In both cases, a plurality of students voted to retain the name "University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee," but over 50% were in favor of a different name. Since 2004, the UWM athletic department has simply referred to the school's athletic teams as the Milwaukee Panthers. UW–Green Bay has since done the same and are officially the Green Bay Phoenix. Most other UW system programs are commonly referred to by just the city name as they all play in the same conference, the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC), making the "UW" redundant. The exceptions are UW–Parkside, who plays in the Division II Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and is most often referred to as simply "Parkside", and UW-Superior, who plays most athletics in the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference, who go by UWS or Wisconsin–Superior.

In October 2023, system president Jay Rothman announced that the system would be rebranded as "Universities of Wisconsin", adopting a new logo and color scheme. The legal name of the system would remain unchanged.

title: University of Wisconsin System