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Bush v. Gore

Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court on December 12, 2000, that settled a recount dispute in Florida's 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. On December 8, the Florida Supreme Court had ordered a statewide recount of all undervotes, over 61,000 ballots that the vote tabulation machines had missed. The Bush campaign immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the decision and halt the recount. Justice Antonin Scalia, convinced that all the manual recounts being performed in Florida's counties were illegitimate, urged his colleagues to grant the stay immediately. On December 9, the five conservative justices on the Court granted the stay, with Scalia citing "irreparable harm" that could befall Bush, as the recounts would cast "a needless and unjustified cloud" over Bush's legitimacy. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that "counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm." Oral arguments were scheduled for December 11.

In a 5–4 per curiam decision, the Court ruled, strictly on equal protection grounds, that the recount be stopped. Specifically, it held that the use of different standards of counting in different counties violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution; the case had also been argued on Article II jurisdictional grounds, which found favor with only Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and William Rehnquist. The Court then ruled as to a remedy, deciding against the remedy proposed by Justices Stephen Breyer and David Souter to send the case back to Florida to complete the recount using a uniform statewide standard before the scheduled December 18 meeting of Florida's electors in Tallahassee. Instead, the majority held that no alternative method could be established within the discretionary December 12 "safe harbor" deadline set by Title 3 of the United States Code (3 U.S.C.), § 5, which the Florida Supreme Court had stated that the Florida Legislature intended to meet. The Court, holding that not meeting the "safe harbor" deadline would violate the Florida Election Code, rejected an extension of the deadline to allow the Florida court to finish counting disputed ballots under uniform guidelines requested in a remedy proposed by Breyer and Souter. That deadline arrived two hours after the release of the Court's decision.

The Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore was among the most controversial in U.S. history, overturning a ruling by the Supreme Court of Florida to finish the recount, giving Bush Florida's 25 electoral votes. Florida's votes gave Bush, the Republican nominee, 271 electoral votes, one more than the 270 required to win the Electoral College. This meant the defeat of Democratic candidate Al Gore, who won 267 electoral votes but received 266, as a "faithless elector" from the District of Columbia abstained from voting. Media organizations later analyzed the ballots and found that, under specified criteria, the original, limited recount of undervotes of several large counties would have resulted in a Bush victory, though a statewide recount would have shown that Gore received the most votes. Florida later retired the punch-card voting machines that produced the ballots disputed in the case.

Background
In the United States, each state conducts its own popular vote election for president and vice president. The voters are actually voting for a slate of electors, each of whom pledges to vote for a particular candidate for each office in the Electoral College. Article II, § 1, cl. 2 of the U.S. Constitution provides that each state legislature decides how electors are chosen. Referring to an earlier Supreme Court case, McPherson v. Blacker, the Court noted that early in U.S. history, most state legislatures directly appointed their slates of electors.

Today, state legislatures have enacted laws to provide for the selection of electors by popular vote within each state. While these laws vary, most states, including Florida, award all electoral votes to the candidate for either office who receives a plurality of the state's popular vote. Any candidate who receives an absolute majority of all electoral votes nationally (270 since 1963) wins the presidential or vice-presidential election.

On November 8, 2000, the Florida Division of Elections reported that Bush won with 48.8% of the vote in Florida, a margin of victory of 1,784 votes. The margin of victory was less than 0.5% of the votes cast, so a statutorily mandated automatic machine recount occurred. On November 10, with the machine recount apparently finished in all but one county, Bush's margin of victory had decreased to 327 votes.

According to legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, later analysis showed that 18 counties—accounting for a quarter of all votes cast in Florida—did not carry out the legally mandated machine recount, but "No one from the Gore campaign ever challenged this view" that the machine recount had been completed. Florida's election laws allow a candidate to request a county to conduct a manual recount, and Gore requested manual recounts in four Florida counties—Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade—that generally vote Democratic and would be expected to find more votes for Gore. Gore did not request any recounts in counties that generally vote Republican. The four counties granted the request and began manual recounts. But Florida law also required all counties to certify their election returns to the Florida secretary of state within seven days of the election, and several of the counties conducting manual recounts did not believe they could meet this deadline.

On November 14, the statutory deadline, the Florida Circuit Court ruled that the seven-day deadline was mandatory but that the counties could amend their returns at a later date. The court also ruled that the secretary of state, after "considering all attendant facts and circumstances", had discretion to include any late amended returns in the statewide certification. Before the 5 p.m. deadline on November 14, Volusia County completed its manual recount and certified its results. At 5 p.m. on November 14, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced that she had received the certified returns from all 67 counties, while Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade Counties were still conducting manual recounts.

Harris issued a set of criteria by which she would determine whether to allow late filings, and she required any county seeking to make a late filing to submit to her, by 2 p.m. the following day, a written statement of the facts and circumstances justifying the late filing. Four counties submitted statements, and after reviewing the submissions, Harris determined that none justified an extension of the filing deadline. She further announced that after she received the certified returns of the overseas absentee ballots from each county, she would certify the results of the presidential election on November 18. But on November 17, the Florida Supreme Court enjoined Harris from certifying the election while it heard appeals from the various cases in progress. On November 21, it allowed continuation of the manual recounts and delayed certification until November 26.

Stay of the Florida recount
By December 8, 2000, there had been multiple court decisions about the presidential election in Florida. On that date, the Florida Supreme Court, by a 4–3 vote, ordered a statewide manual recount of undervotes. On December 9, ruling in response to an emergency request from Bush, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the recount. The Court also treated Bush's application for relief as a petition for a writ of certiorari, granted that petition, requested briefing from the parties by 4 p.m. on December 10, and scheduled oral argument for the morning of December 11.

Although opinions are rarely issued in connection with grants of certiorari (a minimum of four of the nine justices must vote in favor of the grant), Scalia filed an opinion concurring in the Court's decision, writing that "a brief response is necessary to [Stevens's] dissent". According to Scalia,

"It suffices to say that the issuance of the stay suggests that a majority of the Court, while not deciding the issues presented, believe that the petitioner has a substantial probability of success. The issue is not, as the dissent puts it, whether 'counting every legally cast vote can constitute irreparable harm.' One of the principal issues in the appeal we have accepted is precisely whether the votes that have been ordered to be counted are, under a reasonable interpretation of Florida law, 'legally cast vote[s].' The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner Bush, and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election. Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires."

Stevens's dissenting opinion was joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. According to Stevens,

"To stop the counting of legal votes, the majority today departs from three venerable rules of judicial restraint that have guided the Court throughout its history. On questions of state law, we have consistently respected the opinions of the highest courts of the States. On questions whose resolution is committed at least in large measure to another branch of the Federal Government, we have construed our own jurisdiction narrowly and exercised it cautiously. On federal constitutional questions that were not fairly presented to the court whose judgment is being reviewed, we have prudently declined to express an opinion. The majority has acted unwisely. … [A] stay should not be granted unless an applicant makes a substantial showing of a likelihood of irreparable harm. In this case, petitioners have failed to carry that heavy burden. Counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm. On the other hand, there is a danger that a stay may cause irreparable harm to respondents–and, more importantly, the public at large …. Preventing the recount from being completed will inevitably cast a cloud on the legitimacy of the election."

A number of legal scholars have agreed with the dissenters' argument that Bush failed to carry the "heavy burden" of demonstrating a "likelihood of irreparable harm".

Rapid developments
The oral argument in Bush v. Gore occurred on December 11. Theodore Olson, a Washington, D.C., lawyer, delivered Bush's oral argument. New York lawyer David Boies argued for Gore.

During the brief period when the U.S. Supreme Court was deliberating on Bush v. Gore, the Florida Supreme Court provided clarifications of its November 21 decision in Palm Beach County Canvassing Board v. Harris (Harris I), which the U.S. Supreme Court had requested on December 4 following arguments in the case of Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board.

Because of the extraordinary nature and argued urgency of the case, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Bush v. Gore on December 12, a day after hearing oral argument.

Relevant law
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is the U.S. Constitutional provision on which the decision in Bush v. Gore was based.

Article II, § 1, cl. 2 of the Constitution specifies the number of electors per state, and, most relevant to this case, specifies the manner in which those electors are selected, stipulating that:

"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors..."

This clause arguably gives power to only one branch of Florida's state government: the state legislature.

Section 2 of the Electoral Count Act, now codified in 3 U.S.C. § 5, regulates the "determination of controversy as to appointment of electors" in presidential elections. Of particular relevance to this case was the so-called "safe harbor" provision, which assures Congress's deference to states in their appointments of electors if done by a specified deadline:

"If any State shall have provided [...] for its final determination of [...] the appointment of all or any of the electors of such State [...] at least six days before the time fixed for the meeting of the electors, such determination [...] shall be conclusive."

Since the electors were set to meet December 18, the discretional "safe harbor" deadline was December 12, just one day after the Court heard oral arguments in this case.

According to :

"Final judgments or decrees rendered by the highest court of a State in which a decision could be had, may be reviewed by the Supreme Court by writ of certiorari where the validity of a treaty or statute of the United States is drawn in question or where the validity of a statute of any State is drawn in question on the ground of its being repugnant to the Constitution, treaties, or laws of the United States..."

Issues considered by the Court
The Court had to resolve two different questions to fully resolve the case:
 * Were the recounts, as they were being conducted, constitutional?
 * If the recounts were unconstitutional, what was the appropriate remedy?

Three days earlier, the five-Justice majority had ordered the recount stopped, and the Court had to decide whether to restart it.

Equal Protection Clause
Bush argued that recounts in Florida violated the Equal Protection Clause because Florida did not have a statewide vote recount standard. Each county determined on its own whether a given ballot was valid. Two voters could have marked their ballots in an identical manner, but the ballot in one county would be counted while the ballot in a different county would be rejected, because of the conflicting manual recount standards.

Gore argued that there was indeed a statewide standard, the "intent of the voter" standard, and that this standard was sufficient under the Equal Protection Clause. Furthermore, he argued that the consequence of ruling the Florida recount unconstitutional simply because it treated different voters differently would effectively render every state election unconstitutional and that each voting mechanism has a different rate of error in counting votes. Voters in a "punch-card" county have a greater chance of having their votes undercounted than voters in an "optical scanner" county. If Bush prevails, Gore argued, every state would have to have one statewide method of recording votes to be constitutional. This was the most closely decided issue in the case. The arguments presented by counsel did not extensively address what the Court should do if the Court were to find an equal protection violation. But Gore did argue briefly that the appropriate remedy would not be to cancel all recounts, but rather to order a proper recount.

Article II
Bush also argued that the Florida Supreme Court's ruling violated Article II, § 1, cl. 2 of the U.S. Constitution. Essentially, Bush argued that the Florida Supreme Court's interpretation of Florida law was so erroneous that its ruling had the effect of making new law. Since this "new law" had not been enacted by the Florida legislature, it violated Article II. Bush argued that Article II gives the federal judiciary the power to interpret state election law in presidential elections to ensure that the intent of the state legislature is followed.

Gore argued that Article II presupposes judicial review and interpretation of state statutes, and that the Florida Supreme Court did nothing more than exercise the routine principles of statutory construction to reach its decision.

Decision
In brief, the breakdown of the decision was:
 * Five justices agreed that there was an Equal Protection Clause violation in using differing standards of determining a valid vote in different counties, causing an "unequal evaluation of ballots in various respects". The per curiam opinion (representing the views of Justices Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas) specifically cited that:
 * Palm Beach County changed standards for counting dimpled chads several times during the counting process;
 * Broward County used less restrictive standards than Palm Beach County;
 * Miami-Dade County's recount of rejected ballots did not include all precincts;
 * The Florida Supreme Court did not specify who would recount the ballots.
 * The per curiam opinion also identified an inconsistency with the fact that the Florida statewide recount of rejected ballots was limited to undervotes. The opinion implied that a constitutionally valid recount would include Florida's overvotes, not just its undervotes. The opinion expressed concern that the limited scope of Florida's recount would mean that, unlike some undervotes found to be reclaimable, valid votes among the overvotes would not be reclaimed. Furthermore, if a machine had incorrectly read an overvote as a valid vote for one of two marked candidates instead of rejecting it, Florida would wrongly count what should be an invalid vote.
 * Breyer and Souter disagreed with the majority, pointing out that Bush presented no evidence in any court of uncounted legal overvotes and did not see any problem in Florida's decision to limit its recount to undervotes. The dissents of Breyer and Souter were full dissents. Unlike the five-justice majority, each identified an equal protection concern that did not rise to the level of a constitutional violation, and proposed a remedy different from the majority's remedy. A dissenting opinion does not create precedent nor does it become a part of case law. Under the American legal system, dissenting court opinions are not considered valid holdings and are not included in the court's ruling. Nothing in Breyer's or Souter's dissents can be construed as part of any decision by the Court.
 * In dissenting, Ginsburg wrote that, for better or worse, disparities were a part of all elections and that if an equal-protection argument applied in any way, it surely applied more to black voters.
 * Five justices agreed that December 12 (the date of the decision) was the deadline Florida had established for recounts in keeping with 3 U.S.C. §5 (Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas in support; Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer opposed). Souter, joined by Breyer, Ginsburg and Stevens, wrote, "But no State is required to conform to §5 if it cannot do that (for whatever reason); the sanction for failing to satisfy the conditions of §5 is simply loss of what has been called its 'safe harbor.' And even that determination is to be made, if made anywhere, in the Congress." Souter and Breyer would have remanded the case to the Florida Supreme Court to permit that court to establish uniform standards of what constituted a legal vote for a manual recount of all rejected ballots using those standards.
 * Three justices (Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas) argued that the Florida Supreme Court had acted contrary to the intent of the Florida legislature. Four (Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer) specifically disputed this in their dissenting opinions, and the remaining two (O'Connor and Kennedy) declined to join Rehnquist's concurrence on the matter.

Equal Protection Clause
In its per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that the Florida Supreme Court decision calling for a statewide recount violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Kennedy has since been identified as the opinion's primary author. In addition to writing the opinion, he included Souter, Breyer and Stevens as agreeing that there were equal protection "problems" without consulting them. Stevens demanded his name be removed from the draft opinion, which Kennedy agreed to only after Stevens pulled his name from Breyer's dissent. Breyer also objected in private. The New York Times reported that Kennedy's opinion "later caused some confusion by its reference to 'seven justices of the court' who 'agree that there are constitutional problems with the recount.' That was true, but it was also beside the point." Later interviews by Vanity Fair indicated that Breyer and Souter were trying to appeal to Kennedy to join them on the remedy, rather than agreeing that an equal protection violation had occurred. Jack Balkin, writing in Yale Law Journal, considered this a cheap trick to construct the illusion of a larger majority, likening it to "saying that two doctors agree that a patient is sick, but one wants to use leeches, and the other wants to prescribe antibiotics".

The Court held that the Equal Protection Clause guarantees to individuals that their ballots cannot be devalued by "later arbitrary and disparate treatment". Even if the recount was fair in theory, it was unfair in practice. The record, as weighed by the Florida Supreme Court, suggested that different standards were seemingly applied to the recount from ballot to ballot, precinct to precinct, and county to county, even when identical types of ballots and machines were used.

According to the Court, the statewide standard (that a "legal vote" is "one in which there is a 'clear indication of the intent of the voter'" ) could not guarantee that each county would count the votes in a constitutionally permissible fashion. The Court stated that the per curiam opinion's applicability was "limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities." But the Court did not identify those complexities, nor did it explain (or apparently consider) why the absence of a constitutionally acceptable standard for counting votes, which was the basis for the Court's ruling, would not have invalidated the entire presidential election in Florida.

Critics later pointed out that the court had denied certiorari on equal protection grounds when Bush first sought Supreme Court review. Law clerks who worked for Kennedy and O'Connor at the time later said they believed the justices settled on equal protection as grounds for their decision, rather than Article II, because they thought it would seem fairer.

Remedy
The Court ruled 5–4 that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed by a December 12 "safe harbor" deadline. The Court asserted that "the Supreme Court of Florida has said that the legislature intended the State's electors to 'participat[e] fully in the federal electoral process,' as provided in ." The Court therefore effectively ended the proposed recount, because "the Florida Legislature intended to obtain the safe-harbor benefits of 3 U.S.C. §5." Souter said bluntly, "The 3 U.S.C. §5 issue is not serious." Breyer's dissent stated, "By halting the manual recount, and thus ensuring that uncounted legal votes will not be counted under any standard, this Court crafts a remedy out of proportion to the asserted harm. And that remedy harms the very fairness interests the Court is attempting to protect."

Four justices (Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter and Breyer) had dissented from the Court's earlier (December 9) decision, by the same five-justice majority, to grant Bush's emergency request to stop the recount and grant certiorari. In their dissents from the Court's December 12 per curiam opinion, Breyer and Souter acknowledged that the counting up until December 9 had not conformed with equal protection requirements. But Souter and Breyer favored remanding the case to the Florida Supreme Court for the purpose of crafting specific guidelines for how to count disputed ballots, in contrast to the majority's decision to halt the recount altogether. The actual counting had ended with the December 9 ruling, issued three days before any deadline.

The dissenting opinions strongly criticized the majority for involving the Court in state-level affairs. Stevens's dissent (joined by Breyer and Ginsburg) concluded as follows:

"What must underlie petitioners' entire federal assault on the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make the critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed. Otherwise, their position is wholly without merit. The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

The per curiam opinion did not technically dismiss the case and instead "remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion." Gore's attorneys therefore understood that they could fight on and could petition the Florida Supreme Court to repudiate the notion that December 12 was final under Florida law.

Despite this, Gore dropped the case—and conceded the election to Bush shortly afterward—reportedly because he was not optimistic about how the Florida justices would react to further arguments and, as one of his advisers put it, "the best Gore could hope for was a slate of disputed electors". In addition, Gore campaign chairman Bill Daley argued that fighting on was futile because even if the Florida Supreme Court defied the U.S. Supreme Court and ordered a new recount, "the GOP would take them straight back to Washington, where the [U.S.] Supreme Court would repeat: 'You ain't going to count, okay? So quit bothering us.'"

On remand, the Florida Supreme Court issued an opinion on December 22 that did not dispute whether December 12 was the deadline for recounts under state law. This was disputed in a concurring opinion by Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw, who nevertheless expressed deference to the U.S. Supreme Court's view on this issue and also argued that, in any case, the Florida Supreme Court would (in his opinion) be unable to craft a remedy that would satisfy all the U.S. Supreme Court's equal protection, due process, and other concerns.

Article II
Rehnquist's concurring opinion, joined by Scalia and Thomas, began by emphasizing that this was an unusual case in which the Constitution requires federal courts to assess whether a state supreme court has properly interpreted the will of the state legislature. Usually, federal courts do not make that type of assessment, and indeed the per curiam opinion in this case did not do so. After addressing this aspect of the case, Rehnquist examined and agreed with arguments that the dissenting justices of the Florida Supreme Court had made.

Rehnquist also mentioned that he, Scalia, and Thomas joined the Supreme Court's per curiam opinion and agreed with the legal analysis presented there.

The ruling also states: "the state legislature's power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by state legislatures in several States for many years after the framing of our Constitution. ... The State, of course, after granting the franchise in the special context of Article II, can take back the power to appoint electors."

Scholarly analyses
Bush v. Gore prompted many strong reactions from scholars, pundits and others, with a majority of publications in law reviews being critical. A Georgetown Law Journal analysis found that 78 scholarly articles were published about the case between 2001 and 2004, with 35 criticizing the decision and 11 defending it.

The critical remedial issue
The most closely decided aspect of the case was the key question of what remedy the Court should order, in view of an Equal Protection Clause violation. Gore had argued for a new recount that would pass constitutional muster, but the Court instead chose to end the election. Citing two Florida Supreme Court opinions, Gore v. Harris (December 8, seemingly in error) and Palm Beach County Canvassing Board v. Harris (November 21, footnote 55), the U.S. Supreme Court asserted that "the Florida Supreme Court has said that the Florida Legislature intended to obtain the safe-harbor benefits of 3 U.S.C. § 5" and that "any recount seeking to meet the December 12 date will be unconstitutional". This assertion has proven very controversial.

Finding that reasoning unpersuasive, Michael W. McConnell writes that the two Florida court opinions the Supreme Court cited supply no authoritative pronouncement of an absolute deadline. As better support for December 12 as the deadline under state law, McConnell points to two footnotes in the Florida Supreme Court's December 11 response on remand in Palm Beach County Canvassing Board v. Harris (Harris I), which he says must not have come to the justices' attention. Footnotes 17 and 22 called the safe harbor date of December 12 an "outside deadline". Therefore, he writes, although these passages may not justify the U.S. Supreme Court's decision, since the Court did not rely on them, "the Court may have reached the right result for the wrong reason". These footnotes state:

"[17] What is a reasonable time required for completion will, in part, depend on whether the election is for a statewide office, for a federal office or for presidential electors. In the case of the presidential election, the determination of reasonableness must be circumscribed by the provisions of 3 U.S.C. § 5, which sets December 12, 2000, as the date for final determination of any state's dispute concerning its electors for that determination to be given conclusive effect in Congress ... [22] As always, it is necessary to read all provisions of the elections code in pari materia. In this case, that comprehensive reading required that there be time for an elections contest pursuant to section 102.168, which all parties had agreed was a necessary component of the statutory scheme and to accommodate the outside deadline set forth in 3 U.S.C. § 5 of December 12, 2000."

According to Nelson Lund, former law clerk to O'Connor and associate counsel to George H. W. Bush, a dissenter might argue that the Florida Supreme Court on remand in Harris I was discussing the "protest provisions of the Florida Election Code, whereas the issues in Bush v. Gore arose under the contest provisions". In retort to himself, Lund writes that the Florida court's decision in the contest case did not mention any alternative possible deadlines. Peter Berkowitz writes, "Perhaps it would have been more generous for the Court to have asked the Florida court on remand whether 'outside deadline' referred to contest-period as well as protest-period recounts." Abner Greene points to evidence that "the Florida Supreme Court thought all manual recounts—whether protest or contest—must be completed no later than December 12." Nevertheless, Greene concludes "lack of clarity about the Florida Supreme Court's views on the safe-harbor provision should have resulted in a remand to that court for clarification", in addition to the remand of December 4. The Court in Bush v. Gore did remand the case instead of dismissing it, but the remand did not include another request for clarification. Louise Weinberg argues that even giving the U.S. Supreme Court the benefit of the doubt that it acted appropriately in intervening in Florida state law, its actions should be deemed unconstitutional because its intervention was not coupled with any kind of remedy aimed at determining the election's actual outcome.

Arguably, the Florida Supreme Court, after having stated on December 11 that December 12 was an "outside deadline", could have clarified its views on the safe-harbor provision or reinterpreted Florida law to state that December 12 was not a final deadline under Florida law, which the U.S. Supreme Court did not forbid the Florida Supreme Court from doing. Lund states that, as a practical matter, the Florida Supreme Court was unlikely to have actually been capable of conducting and completing a new constitutionally valid recount by the December 18 deadline for the meeting of the Electoral College.

Michael Abramowicz and Maxwell Stearns argue that if the Florida Supreme Court had clarified or reinterpreted Florida state law on remand, then the U.S. Supreme Court might have struck down the Florida Supreme Court's action as a violation of Article II of the Constitution. Abramowicz and Stearns point out that while Kennedy and O'Connor did not join Rehnquist's Article II concurrence, they did not explicitly oppose it either, and thus kept the door open to nullifying a future ruling of the Florida Supreme Court on Article II grounds. Abramowicz and Stearns also argue that if the Bush v. Gore decision genuinely allowed the Florida Supreme Court to clarify or reinterpret Florida state law and thus to order a new manual recount, then Souter and Breyer likely would have joined the opinion—which they did not. Laurence Tribe has a similar view on this issue, arguing that "[e]ven assuming the leeway [in regard to the remedy] the Court theoretically left open was real, the window it had failed to slam shut was hardly the sort of opening through which anyone would dare to crawl."

Limitation "to present circumstances"
Some critics of the decision argue that the majority seemed to seek refuge from their own logic in the following sentence in the majority opinion: "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities." The Court's defenders argued that this was a reasonable precaution against the possibility that the decision might be read too broadly, arguing that in the short time available it would be inappropriate to attempt to craft language spelling out in greater detail how to apply the holding to other cases. But critics interpreted the sentence as stating that the case did not set precedent in any way and could not be used to justify any future court decision, and some suggested that this was evidence the majority realized its holding was untenable. Regardless of whether the majority intended the decision to be precedential, several federal courts have cited it in election cases,    as did a lawyer for a Republican congressional candidate during legal arguments coincident with the 2020 United States presidential election.

Accusation of partisanship or conflict of interest
According to legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, "Bush v. Gore broke David Souter's heart. The day the music died, he called it. It was so political, so transparently political, that it scarred Souter's belief in the Supreme Court as an institution" (italics in original).

Various authors have claimed that conservative Republican-appointed justices ruled against Gore in this case for partisan reasons. Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz writes: "[T]he decision in the Florida election case may be ranked as the single most corrupt decision in Supreme Court history, because it is the only one that I know of where the majority justices decided as they did because of the personal identity and political affiliation of the litigants. This was cheating, and a violation of the judicial oath." Chapman University School of Law professor Ronald Rotunda responded that Democratic-appointed justices of the Florida Supreme Court also ruled against Gore: "[T]hat claim ... is inconsistent with the position of three of the Florida justices who dissented. No Justice on the Florida Supreme Court was a Republican appointee, but three of them concluded that the recount that Vice President Gore wanted was unconstitutional. Three of the seven Florida Supreme Court justices also found an Equal Protection violation when the manual ballot-counters used different procedures to examine identical ballots and count them differently."

There has also been analysis of whether several justices had a conflict of interest that should have forced them to recuse themselves from the decision. On several occasions, Rehnquist had expressed interest in retiring under a Republican administration; one study found that press reports "are equivocal on whether facts existed that would have created a conflict of interest" for him. At an election night party, O'Connor became upset when it was reported that Gore had won Florida, her husband explaining that they would have to wait another four years before retiring to Arizona. Both justices remained on the Court until Bush's second term, with Rehnquist dying in 2005 and O'Connor retiring in 2006. According to Steven Foster of the Manchester Grammar School:

"Clarence Thomas's wife was so intimately involved in the Bush campaign that she was helping to draw up a list of Bush appointees more or less at the same time as her husband was adjudicating on whether the same man would become the next President. Finally, Antonin Scalia's son was working for the firm appointed by Bush to argue his case before the Supreme Court, the head of which was subsequently appointed as Solicitor-General."

The day after Thanksgiving, when the conservative justices agreed to hear Bush's appeal in the case of Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board (excluding Bush's equal protection claim), the opposing justices were convinced that the majority intended to reverse the Florida Supreme Court and shut down the recount. They began drafting a dissent before this case was argued before them, a dissent that was temporarily shelved upon the Court's unanimous remand to the Florida court.

The liberal law clerks noted that Scalia later had begun campaigning for the stay of the Florida court's December 8 recount order before the Court had received Gore's response to Bush's request, and was so incensed at Stevens's dissent in the matter of the stay and grant of certiorari that he requested the release of opinions be delayed so that he could amend his opinion to include a response to Stevens. Kennedy is also reported to have sent out a memo accusing the dissenters of "trashing the court". Later, court personnel, as well as Ron Klain, speculated that there was an unspoken understanding that the judges on the winning side would not retire until after the next election, as a way of preserving some sense of fairness. No justices retired during President Bush's first term.

It has been argued that none of the justices voted in a way that was consistent with their prior jurisprudence, though George Mason University law professor Nelson Lund has challenged this conclusion, arguing that, unlike in suspect classification cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has never actually required a showing of intentional discrimination in fundamental rights cases, such as Bush v. Gore. The five conservative justices decided to involve the federal judiciary in a matter that could have been left to the states, while also expanding previous U.S. Supreme Court interpretations of the Equal Protection Clause. Meanwhile, the liberal justices all supported leaving the matter in the hands of a state and also sometimes advocated in favor of a narrower reading of existing Equal Protection Clause precedents. This bolstered the perception that the justices used their desired result to drive their reasoning. David Cole of Georgetown Law argued that, as a way of trying to rehabilitate the court's image after Bush v. Gore, the Court became more likely to reach a liberal decision in the four years after Bush v. Gore than it had been before the case, and that the conservative justices were more likely to join the liberals rather than the other way around.

Recount by media organizations
In 2001, the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, sponsored by a consortium of major United States news organizations, conducted the Florida Ballot Project, a comprehensive review of 175,010 ballots that vote-counting machines had rejected from the entire state, not just the counties that conducted manual recounts. The project's goal was to determine the reliability and accuracy of the systems used in the voting process, including how different systems correlated with voter mistakes. The study was conducted over a period of 10 months. Based on the review, the media group concluded that if the disputes over the validity of all the ballots in question had been consistently resolved and any uniform standard applied, the electoral result would have been reversed and Gore would have won by 60 to 171 votes. On the other hand, under scenarios involving review of limited sets of ballots uncounted by machines, Bush would have kept his lead. In one such scenario—Gore's request for recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties—Bush would have won by 225 votes. In another scenario (if the remaining 64 Florida counties had carried out the hand recount of disputed ballots the Florida Supreme Court ordered on December 8, applying the various standards that county election officials said they would have used), Bush would have emerged the victor by 493 votes.

The scenarios involving limited sets of ballots included the completed uncertified recount by Palm Beach County, which nevertheless had excluded a set-aside cache of dimpled ballots with clear indications of intent, an uncounted net gain of 682 votes for Gore. In contrast, the scenarios involving all uncounted ballots statewide considered all votes from Palm Beach County, subjected to various standards of inclusion. The Washington Post qualified the tallies conducted by the NORC consortium with the statement: "But no study of this type can accurately recreate Election Day 2000 or predict what might have emerged from individual battles over more than 6 million votes in Florida's 67 counties."

Further analysis revealed that black-majority precincts had three times as many rejected ballots as white precincts. "For minorities, the ballot survey found, a recount would not have redressed the inequities because most ballots were beyond retrieving. But a recount could have restored the votes of thousands of older voters whose dimpled and double-voted ballots were indecipherable to machines but would have been clear in a ballot-by-ballot review."

Critiques
Several articles have characterized the decision as damaging the reputation of the court, increasing the view of judges as partisan, and decreasing Americans' trust in the integrity of elections, an outcome Stevens predicted in his dissent. Part of the reason recounts could not be completed was the various stoppages ordered by the various branches and levels of the judiciary, most notably the Supreme Court. Opponents argued that it was improper for the Court (by the same five justices who joined the per curiam opinion) to grant a stay that preliminarily stopped the recounts based on Bush's likelihood of success on the merits and possible irreparable injury to Bush. Although stay orders normally do not include justification, Scalia concurred to express some brief reasoning to justify it, saying that one potential irreparable harm was that an invalid recount might undermine the legitimacy of Bush's election (presumably if, for example, it were to find that Gore should have won). Supporters of the stay, such as Charles Fried, contend that the stay's validity was vindicated by the ultimate decision on the merits and that the only thing the stay prevented was a recount "done in an unconstitutional way".

Some critics argued that the Court's decision was a perversion of the Equal Protection Clause and contrary to the political question doctrine. Scott Lemieux of University of Washington points out that if recounting votes without a uniform statewide standard were truly a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, this should have meant that the initial count, which also lacked a uniform standard, was itself unconstitutional. On the other hand, Geoffrey R. Stone has expressed sympathy with the Court's equal protection reasoning, even though Stone was dismayed by what he saw as the sudden and suspect conversion of Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas to that equal protection principle. According to Stone:

"No one familiar with the jurisprudence of Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas could possibly have imagined that they would vote to invalidate the Florida recount process on the basis of their own well-developed and oft-invoked approach to the Equal Protection Clause."

Stevens's criticism of the Court in his dissent for questioning the impartiality of Florida's judiciary was itself criticized by Lund, a former law clerk for O'Connor. Professor Charles Zelden faults the per curiam opinion in the case for, among other things, not declaring that the nation's electoral system required significant reform, and for not condemning administration of elections by part-time boards of elections dominated by partisan and unprofessional officials. Zelden concludes that the Court's failure to spotlight this critical flaw in American electoral democracy made a replay of Bush v. Gore more likely, not less likely, either in Florida or elsewhere. In 2013, O'Connor, who had voted with the majority, said that the case "gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation". She added, "Maybe the court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, goodbye.' ... And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day."

A Vanity Fair article quotes several of the court's clerks at the time who were critical of the decision. They note that, despite the per curiam opinion's declaration that the case was taken "reluctantly", Kennedy had been rather enthusiastic about taking the case all along. They felt at the time, as had many legal scholars, that the case was unlikely to go to the Supreme Court at all. In fact some of the justices were so certain that the case would never come before them that they had already left for vacations.

Public reaction
Editorials in the country's leading newspapers were overwhelmingly critical of the decision. A review by The Georgetown Law Journal found that the nation's top newspapers, by circulation, had published 18 editorials criticizing the decision and six praising it. They similarly published 26 op-eds criticizing the decision and eight defending it. Polls showed a range of reactions, with 37–65% of respondents believing that personal politics influenced the justices' decisions, depending on the poll. A Princeton Survey poll recorded 46% of respondents saying that the decision made them more likely to suspect partisan bias in judges in general. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed that 53% of respondents believed that the decision to stop the recount was based mostly on politics. A 2010 Slate article listed the case as the first in a series of events that eroded American trust in the results of elections, noting that the number of lawsuits brought over election issues has more than doubled since Bush v. Gore.

title: Bush v. Gore


text:
Talk:Stefan Zweig

Film Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe (2016)
I suggest adding the 2016 film Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe directed by Maria Schrader into either the existing Adaptations section or creating a new In Popular Culture section. Any opinions? - DutchTreat (talk) 14:08, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Isn't that already mentioned, albeit with a wrong year, in the section "Adaptations"? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 01:07, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. I was going to correct the year but then realized that it is not entirely clear (to me, on a very quick look) from the target article and its refs which is the correct year. So I have left it as it was for now, but would be pleased to see it confirmed. But yes, it is that film. I should also maybe add that I often wonder whether "In popular culture" sections are a good idea – I have seen articles where they act as a magnet for ill-advised entries, though of course it is not always the case ... best to all DBaK (talk) 09:16, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't place too much store in Rotten Tomatoes for release date details. The German article gives very specific release details for 2016. IMDb gives 2017 for the US release, which is irrelevant. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:14, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * My mistake! I see it listed in the "Adaptations" section. This usage suits my purposes. From poking around, I agree that release date of "2016" for the correct year for German original release. Note, I do see this on IMDB at the top of the page. Thank you for your follow-up. - DutchTreat (talk) 16:09, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Hangs in the air
The last sentence of the second paragraph under 'biography' hangs unconnected in the air. I have no idea how it is related to what has been stated before or what it adds to Zeig's biography. If considered important, it should be mentioned further down in the article under 'Works', when 'Der Judenstaat' is being elaborated on (which at this point it is not even mentioned). Hskoppek (talk) 18:06, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Stefan Zweig
PhD University of Berlin, not Vienna. Cf The World of Yesterday end of chapter “Universitas Vitae” 2600:1012:B04F:B1FC:7965:3521:EA16:49A5 (talk) 02:30, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Stefan Zweig


text:
Dorothy Hodgkin

Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin (née Crowfoot; 12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994) was a Nobel Prize-winning English chemist who advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of biomolecules, which became essential for structural biology.

Among her most influential discoveries are the confirmation of the structure of penicillin as previously surmised by Edward Abraham and Ernst Boris Chain; and mapping the structure of vitamin B12, for which in 1964 she became the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Hodgkin also elucidated the structure of insulin in 1969 after 35 years of work.

Hodgkin used the name "Dorothy Crowfoot" until twelve years after marrying Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, when she began using "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin". Hodgkin is referred to as "Dorothy Hodgkin" by the Royal Society (when referring to its sponsorship of the Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship), and by Somerville College. The National Archives of the United Kingdom refer to her as "Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin".

Early life
Dorothy Mary Crowfoot was born in Cairo, Egypt, the oldest of the four daughters whose parents worked in North Africa and the middle East in the colonial administration and later as archaeologists. Dorothy came from a distinguished family of archaeologists. Her parents were John Winter Crowfoot (1873–1959), working for the country's Ministry of Education, and his wife Grace Mary (née Hood) (1877–1957), known to friends and family as Molly. The family lived in Cairo during the winter months, returning to England each year to avoid the hotter part of the season in Egypt.

In 1914, Hodgkin's mother left her (age 4) and her two younger sisters Joan (age 2) and Elisabeth (age 7 months) with their Crowfoot grandparents near Worthing, and returned to her husband in Egypt. They spent much of their childhood apart from their parents, yet they were supportive from afar. Her mother would encourage Dorothy to pursue the interest in crystals first displayed at the age of 10. In 1923, Dorothy and her sister would study pebbles that they had found in nearby streams using portable mineral analysis kit. Their parents then moved south to Sudan where, until 1926, her father was in charge of education and archaeology. Her mother's four brothers were killed in World War I and as a result she became an ardent supporter of the new League of Nations.

In 1921 Hodgkin's father entered her in the Sir John Leman Grammar School in Beccles, England, where she was one of two girls allowed to study chemistry. Only once, when she was 13, did she make an extended visit to her parents, then living in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, where her father was Principal of Gordon College. When she was 14, her distant cousin, the chemist Charles Harington (later Sir Charles), recommended D. S. Parsons' Fundamentals of Biochemistry. Resuming the pre-war pattern, her parents lived and worked abroad for part of the year, returning to England and their children for several months every summer. In 1926, on his retirement from the Sudan Civil Service, her father took the post of Director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, where he and her mother remained until 1935.

In 1928, Hodgkin joined her parents at the archaeological site of Jerash, in present-day Jordan, where she documented the patterns of mosaics from multiple Byzantine-era Churches dated to the 5th–6th centuries. She spent more than a year finishing the drawings as she started her studies in Oxford, while also conducting chemical analyses of glass tesserae from the same site. Her attention to detail through the creation of precise scale drawings of these mosaics mirrors her subsequent work in recognising and documenting patterns in chemistry. Hodgkin enjoyed the experience of field archaeology so much that she considered giving up chemistry in favour of archaeology. Her drawings are archived by Yale University.

Hodgkin developed a passion for chemistry from a young age, and her mother, a proficient botanist, fostered her interest in the sciences. On her 16th birthday her mother gave her a book by W. H. Bragg on X-ray crystallography, "Concerning the Nature of Things", which helped her decide her future. She was further encouraged by the chemist A.F. Joseph, a family friend who also worked in Sudan.

Her state school education did not include Latin, then required for entrance to Oxbridge. Her Leman School headmaster, George Watson, gave her personal tuition in the subject, enabling her to pass the University of Oxford entrance examination.

When Hodgkin was asked in later life to name her childhood heroes, she named three women: first and foremost, her mother, Molly; the medical missionary Mary Slessor; and Margery Fry, the Principal of Somerville College.

Higher education
In 1928 at age 18 Hodgkin entered Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied chemistry. She graduated in 1932 with a first-class honours degree, the third woman at this institution to achieve this distinction. In the autumn of that year, she began studying for a PhD at Newnham College, Cambridge, under the supervision of John Desmond Bernal. It was then that she became aware of the potential of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of proteins. She was working with Bernal on the technique's first application to the analysis of a biological substance, pepsin. The pepsin experiment is largely credited to Hodgkin, however she always made it clear that it was Bernal who initially took the photographs and gave her additional key insights. Her PhD was awarded in 1937 for research on X-ray crystallography and the chemistry of sterols.

Career and discoveries
In 1933 Hodgkin was awarded a research fellowship by Somerville College, and in 1934, she moved back to Oxford. She started teaching chemistry with her own lab equipment. The college appointed her its first fellow and tutor in chemistry in 1936, a post which she held until 1977. In the 1940s, one of her students was Margaret Roberts (later Margaret Thatcher) who, while Prime Minister, hung a portrait of Hodgkin in her office at Downing Street out of respect for her former teacher. Hodgkin was, however a life-long Labour Party supporter.

In April 1953, together with Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton, Hodgkin was one of the first people to travel from Oxford to Cambridge to see the model of the double helix structure of DNA, constructed by Francis Crick and James Watson, which was based on data and technique acquired by Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin. According to the late Dr Beryl Oughton (married name, Rimmer), they drove to Cambridge in two cars after Hodgkin announced that they were off to see the model of the structure of DNA.

Hodgkin became a reader at Oxford in 1957 and she was given a fully modern laboratory the following year. In 1960, Hodgkin was appointed the Royal Society's Wolfson Research Professor, a position she held until 1970. This provided her salary, research expenses and research assistance to continue her work at the University of Oxford. She was a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, from 1977 to 1983.

Steroid structure
Hodgkin was particularly noted for discovering three-dimensional biomolecular structures. In 1945, working with C.H. (Harry) Carlisle, she published the first such structure of a steroid, cholesteryl iodide (having worked with cholesteryls since the days of her doctoral studies).

Penicillin structure
In 1945, Hodgkin and her colleagues, including biochemist Barbara Low, solved the structure of penicillin, demonstrating, contrary to scientific opinion at the time, that it contains a β-lactam ring. The work was not published until 1949.

Vitamin B12 structure
In 1948, Hodgkin first encountered vitamin B12, one of the most structurally complex vitamins known, and created new crystals. Vitamin B12 had first been discovered at Merck earlier that year. It had a structure at the time that was almost completely unknown, and when Hodgkin discovered it contained cobalt, she realized the structure actualization could be determined by X-ray crystallography analysis. The large size of the molecule, and the fact that the atoms were largely unaccounted for—aside from cobalt—posed a challenge in structure analysis that had not been previously explored.

From these crystals, she deduced the presence of a ring structure because the crystals were pleochroic, a finding which she later confirmed using X-ray crystallography. The B12 study published by Hodgkin was described by Lawrence Bragg as being as significant "as breaking the sound barrier". Scientists from Merck had previously crystallised B12, but had published only refractive indices of the substance. The final structure of B12, for which Hodgkin was later awarded the Nobel Prize, was published in 1955 and 1956.

Insulin structure
Insulin was one of Hodgkin's most extraordinary research projects. It began in 1934 when she was offered a small sample of crystalline insulin by Robert Robinson. The hormone captured her imagination because of the intricate and wide-ranging effect it has in the body. However, at this stage X-ray crystallography had not been developed far enough to cope with the complexity of the insulin molecule. She and others spent many years improving the technique.

It took 35 years after taking her first photograph of an insulin crystal for X-ray crystallography and computing techniques to be able to tackle larger and more complex molecules like insulin. Hodgkin's dream of unlocking the structure of insulin was put on hold until 1969 when she was finally able to work with her team of young, international scientists to uncover the structure for the first time. Hodgkin's work with insulin was instrumental in paving the way for insulin to be mass-produced and used on a large scale for treatment of both type one and type two diabetes. She went on to cooperate with other laboratories active in insulin research, giving advice, and traveling the world giving talks about insulin and its importance for the future of diabetes. Solving the structure of insulin had two important implications for the treatment of diabetes, both making mass production of insulin possible and allowing scientists to alter the structure of insulin to create even better drug options for patients going forward.

Personality
Hodgkin's soft-spoken, gentle and modest demeanor hid a steely determination to achieve her ends, whatever obstacles might stand in her way. She inspired devotion in her students and colleagues, even the most junior of whom knew her simply as Dorothy. Her structural studies of biologically important molecules set standards for a field that was very much in development during her work life. She made fundamental contributions to the understanding of how these molecules carry out their tasks in living system.

Mentor
Hodgkin's mentor Professor John Desmond Bernal greatly influenced her life: scientifically, politically, and personally. Bernal was a key scientific adviser to the UK government during the Second World War. He was also an open and vocal member of the Communist Party and a faithful supporter of the Soviet regime until its invasion of Hungary in 1956. He is a chemist who believed in equal opportunity for women. In his laboratory, Hodgkin extended work that he began on biological molecules including sterols. She helped him to make the first X-ray diffraction studies of pepsin and crystalline protein. Hodgkin always referred to him as "Sage". They were lovers before she met Thomas Hodgkin. The marriages of both Dorothy and Bernal were unconventional by the standards of the present and of those days.

Health
In 1934, at the age of 24, Dorothy began experiencing pain in her hands causing them to become swollen and distorted. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and went to a clinic in Buxton for thermal baths and gold treatments. After some treatment, Hodgkin returned to the lab, where she struggled to use the main switch on the x-ray equipment due to the condition of her hands. She had to create a lever on her own in order to utilize the switch. Her condition would become progressively worse and debilitating over time, with deformities in both her hands and feet, and prolonged periods of pain. While Hodgkin spent a great deal of time in a wheelchair in her later years, she remained scientifically active in her career.

Marriage and family
In 1937, Dorothy Crowfoot married Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, an historian's son, who was then teaching an adult-education class in mining and industrial communities in the north of England after he resigned from the Colonial Office. He was an intermittent member of the Communist Party and later wrote several major works on African politics and history, becoming a well-known lecturer at Balliol College in Oxford. As his health was too poor for active military service, he continued working throughout World War II, returning to Oxford on the weekends, where his wife remained working on penicillin. The couple had three children: Luke (b. 1938. d. Oct. 2020), Elizabeth (b. 1941) and Toby (b. 1946). The oldest son, Luke, became a mathematics instructor at the new University of Warwick. Their daughter, Elizabeth, followed her father's career as a historian. Their younger son, Toby, studied botany and agriculture. Overall, Thomas Hodgkin spent extended periods of time in West Africa, where he was enthusiastic supporter and chronicler of the emerging postcolonial states.

Aliases
Hodgkin published as "Dorothy Crowfoot" until 1949, when she was persuaded by Hans Clarke's secretary to use her married name on a chapter she contributed to The Chemistry of Penicillin. By then she had been married for 12 years, given birth to three children and been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

Thereafter she would publish as "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin", and this was the name used by the Nobel Foundation in its award to her and the biography it included among other Nobel Prize recipients; it is also what the Science History Institute calls her. For simplicity's sake, Hodgkin is referred to as "Dorothy Hodgkin" by the Royal Society, when referring to its sponsorship of the Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship, and by Somerville College, after it inaugurated the annual lectures in her honour.

The National Archives of the United Kingdom refer to her as "Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin"; on a variety of plaques commemorating places where she worked or lived, e.g. 94 Woodstock Road, Oxford, she is "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin". In 2022, the Department of Biochemistry in Oxford renamed its much expanded building after Hodgkin, calling it the "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Building".

Contacts with scientists abroad
Between the 1950s and the 1970s, Hodgkin established and maintained lasting contacts with scientists in her field abroad—at the Institute of Crystallography in Moscow; in India; and with the Chinese group working in Beijing and Shanghai on the structure of insulin.

Her first visit to China was in 1959. Over the next quarter century, she travelled there seven more times, the last visit a year before her death. Particularly memorable was the visit in 1971 after the Chinese group themselves independently solved the structure of insulin, later than Hodgkin's team but to a higher resolution. During the subsequent three years, 1972–1975, when she was President of the International Union of Crystallography she was unable to persuade the Chinese authorities, however, to permit the country's scientists to become members of the Union and attend its meetings.

Her relations with a supposed scientist in another "People's Democracy" had less happy results. At the age of 73, Hodgkin wrote a foreword to the English edition of Stereospecific Polymerization of Isoprene, published by Robert Maxwell as the work of Elena Ceaușescu, wife of Romania's communist dictator. Hodgkin wrote of the author's "outstanding achievements" and "impressive" career. Following the overthrow of Ceausescu during the Romanian Revolution of 1989, it was revealed that Elena Ceausescu had neither finished secondary school nor attended university. Her scientific credentials were a hoax, and the publication in question was written for her by a team of scientists to obtain a fraudulent doctorate.

Political views and activities
Because of Hodgkin's political activities, and her husband's association with the Communist Party, she was banned from entering the US in 1953 and subsequently not allowed to visit the country except by CIA waiver.

In 1961 Thomas became an advisor to Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana, a country he visited for extended periods before Nkrumah's ouster in 1966. Hodgkin was in Ghana with her husband when they received the news that she had been awarded the Nobel Prize.

She acquired from her mother, Molly, a concern about social inequalities and a determination to do what she could to prevent armed conflict. Dorothy became particularly concerned about the threat of nuclear war. In 1976, she became president of the Pugwash Conference and served longer than any who preceded or succeeded her in this post. She stepped down in 1988, the year after the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty imposed "a global ban on short- and long-range nuclear weapons systems, as well as an intrusive verification regime". She accepted the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government in 1987 in recognition of her work for peace and disarmament.

Disability and death
Due to distance, Hodgkin decided not to attend the 1987 Congress of the International Union of Crystallography in Australia. However, despite increasing frailty, she astounded close friends and family by going to Beijing for the 1993 Congress, where she was welcomed by all.

She died in July 1994 after a stroke, at her husband's home in the village of Ilmington, near Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire.

Portraits
The National Portrait Gallery, London lists 17 portraits of Dorothy Hodgkin including an oil painting of her at her desk by Maggi Hambling and a photograph portrait by David Montgomery.

Graham Sutherland made preliminary sketches for a portrait of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin in 1978. One sketch is in the collection of the Science History Institute and another at the Royal Society in London. The portrait was never finished.

A portrait of Dorothy Hodgkin by Bryan Organ was commissioned by private subscription to become part of the collection of the Royal Society. Accepted by the president of the society on 25 March 1982, it was the first portrait of a woman Fellow to be included in the Society's collection.

While living

 * By 1945 she had succeeded in identifying the structure of vitamin B12, describing the arrangement of its atoms in three dimensions.
 * Hodgkin won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and is the only British woman scientist to have been awarded a Nobel Prize in any of the three sciences it recognizes.
 * In 1965 she was appointed to the Order of Merit. She was the to receive the Order.
 * In 1976, she was the first woman to receive the prestigious Copley Medal.
 * In 1947, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1947 and EMBO Membership in 1970., Hodgkin was Chancellor of the University of Bristol from 1970 to 1988 which she was given an honorary Degree of Science from University of Bath in 1978.
 * In 1958, she was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
 * In 1966, she was awarded the Iota Sigma Pi National Honorary Member for her significant contribution.
 * She became a foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the 1970s.
 * In 1982 she received the Lomonosov Medal of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
 * In 1987 she accepted the Lenin Peace Prize from the government of Mikhail Gorbachev and the first woman to receive the copley medal from winning from Lenin Peace Prize.
 * An asteroid (5422) discovered on 23 December 1982 by L.G. Karachkina (at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, M.P.C. 22509, in the USSR) in 1993 was named "Hodgkin" in her honour.
 * In 1983, Hodgkin received the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art.

Legacy

 * British commemorative stamps – Hodgkin was one of five 'Women of Achievement' selected for a set issued in August 1996. The others were Marea Hartman (sports administrator), Margot Fonteyn (ballerina/choreographer), Elisabeth Frink (sculptor) & Daphne du Maurier (writer). All except Hodgkin were Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBEs). In 2010, during the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society, Hodgkin was the only woman in a set of stamps celebrating ten of the Society's most illustrious members, taking her place alongside Isaac Newton, Edward Jenner, Joseph Lister, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Babbage, Robert Boyle, Ernest Rutherford, Nicholas Shackleton and Alfred Russel Wallace.
 * The Royal Society awards the Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship (named in her honour) "for outstanding scientists at an early stage of their research career who require a flexible working pattern due to personal circumstances, such as parenting or caring responsibilities or health-related reasons."
 * The Council offices in the London Borough of Hackney and buildings at University of York, Bristol University and Keele University are named after her, as is the science block at Sir John Leman High School, her former school.
 * In 2012, Hodgkin was featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. In this series a panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named her among the group of people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and given the age its character".
 * In 2015 Hodgkin's 1949 paper The X-ray Crystallographic Investigation of the Structure of Penicillin was honoured by a Citation for Chemical Breakthrough Award from the Division of History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society presented to the University of Oxford (England). This research is notable for its groundbreaking use of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of complex natural products, in this instance, of penicillin.
 * Since 1999, the Oxford International Women's Festival has presented the annual Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lecture, usually in March, in honour of Hodgkin's work. The Lecture is a collaboration between Oxford AWiSE (Association for Women in Science & Engineering), Somerville College and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

title: Dorothy Hodgkin


text:
Buckfast Abbey

Buckfast Abbey forms part of an active Benedictine monastery at Buckfast, near Buckfastleigh, Devon, England. Buckfast first became home to an abbey in 1018. The first Benedictine abbey was followed by a Savignac, later Cistercian, abbey constructed on the site of the current abbey in 1134. The monastery was surrendered for dissolution in 1539, with the monastic buildings stripped and left as ruins, before being largely demolished. The former abbey site was used as a quarry, and later became home to a Gothic mansion house.

In 1882 the site was purchased by a group of French Benedictine monks, who refounded a monastery on the site, dedicated to Saint Mary. New monastic buildings and a temporary church were constructed incorporating the existing Gothic house. Buckfast was formally reinstated as an Abbey in 1902. The first abbot of the new institution, Boniface Natter, was blessed in 1903. Work on a new abbey church, which was constructed mostly on the footprint of the former Cistercian abbey, started in 1907. The church was consecrated in 1932 but not completed until 1938. The abbey continues to operate as a Benedictine foundation today, and is a registered charity under English law. As of 2020, the abbey has 13 monks.

Early history
The first abbey at Buckfast was founded as a Benedictine monastery in 1018. The abbey was believed to be founded by either Aethelweard (Aylward), Earldorman of Devon, or King Cnut. This first monastery was "small and unprosperous", and the exact site is uncertain. Archeaological evidence suggests the monastery may have been located nearby at what is now Holy Trinity church in Buckfastleigh.

In 1134 or 1136, the abbey was established in its current position, King Stephen having granted Buckfast to the French Abbot of Savigny. This second abbey was home to Savignac monks. In 1147 the Savignac congregation merged with the Cistercian, and the abbey thereby became a Cistercian monastery. Following the conversion to the Cistercian Congregation, the abbey was rebuilt in stone. Limited excavation work undertaken in 1882 revealed that the monastery was built to the standard plan for Cistercian monasteries. At an uncertain point in the late 12th or 13th centuries the church was extended with aisles added to the presbytery. The buttressed chapel at the east end was probably a 14th century addition, and may have been a Lady Chapel. This would be unusual in a Cistercian abbey, as normally the entire church was dedicated to St Mary.

In medieval times the abbey became rich through fishing and trading in sheep wool. By the 14th century Buckfast was one of the wealthiest abbeys in the south-west of England. It had come to own "extensive sheep runs on Dartmoor, seventeen manors in central and south Devon, town houses in Exeter, fisheries on the Dart and the Avon, and a country house for the abbot at Kingsbridge". At Kingsbridge the abbey had the rights to a weekly market and an annual fair, leading to the growth of the town. The Black Death killed two abbots and many monks. By the mid 1300s, there were few left to maintain the buildings, some of which collapsed. By the mid 1400s, the abbey again flourished. The 19th century excavations suggested that there was major rebuilding work at this time, of which the tower attached to the abbot's house is the sole upstanding survival.

By the 16th century, the abbey was in decline. Only 22 new monks were tonsured between 1500 and 1539, and at the time of the abbey's dissolution in 1539, there were only 10 monks in residence. However, it was still one of the richer abbeys in the country, being assessed at £466 in the Valor Ecclesiasticus survey of 1535.

Dissolution
The last Abbot, Gabriel Donne (d.1558), surrendered the abbey on 25 February 1539 to Sir William Petre, acting as agent for King Henry VIII. At the time of dissolution there were nine other monks in residence. On 26 April 1539 Gabriel was granted an annual pension of £120. The other monks, who all co-signed the deed of surrender, received smaller pensions.

After the dissolution 1.5 tons of gold, gilt and silver was taken from the abbey to the Tower of London. The site was granted to the King who later granted it to others, including William Petre, the Secretary of State, and Sir Thomas Denys (c.1477–1561) of Holcombe Burnell in Devon. Denys had married Donne's sister Elizabeth and was Chamberlain of the Household to Cardinal Wolsey.

After dissolution
Following dissolution, the abbey site and its lands were granted by the crown to Sir Thomas Denys (c.1477–1561) of Holcombe Burnell, near Exeter, who stripped the buildings and "reduced them to ruins". The abbey site was subsequently used as a stone quarry.

In 1800, the site was purchased by local mill owner, Samuel Berry. Berry had the ruins demolished, constructing a Gothic style "castellated Tudor" mansion house, and a wool mill on the site in 1806. The Gothic house was constructed on the site of the abbey's former west cloister. The only pieces of the former abbey to escape demolition were some of the outer buildings – which were retained as farm buildings – and the tower from the former abbot's lodgings.

Over the next eighty years, the Buckfast site changed hands four times, finally falling into the hands of Dr. James Gale in 1872. Ten years later, Dr. Gale decided to sell the property, but was keen to offer it to a religious community. An advert was placed in The Tablet, describing the Abbey as "a grand acquisition could it be restored to its original purpose." Within six weeks of the sale, monks were again living at the abbey.

Reconstruction
In 1880 the was suppressed under a new French law and some of the monks went to St. Augustine's Priory in Ramsgate. The community of Ramsgate gave the French monks use of a property it owned in Leopardstown, Ireland. Learning that the property at Ramsgate was for sale, in 1882 "the whole site was purchased" by the French Benedictine monks for £4,700. On 28 October 1882, six Benedictine monks arrived at Buckfast.

Most of Samuel Berry's house was remodelled and incorporated into new claustral ranges which were begun in 1882. A temporary church was constructed to the south of these new buildings, with the current abbey church constructed between 1906 and 1938, mostly on the footprint of the Cistercian Abbey. The east-end does not follow the original plan. The new abbey church was built in the "Norman Transitional and Early English" styles, to the designs of architect Frederick Arthur Walters. There were never more than six monks working on the project at any one time, although the whole community had repaired the ancient foundations up to ground level.

Construction methods were primitive: wooden scaffolding was held together by ropes and no safety protection was worn by the monks. One monk fell 50 feet but survived. Three monks fell off a hoist without serious injury in 1931. Construction continued throughout World War I: some of the monks were of German nationality, but were not sent to an internment camp on condition that they remained confined to the Abbey grounds.

Buckfast was formally reinstated as an Abbey in 1902. Boniface Natter was blessed as the new abbot on 24 February 1903. Boniface Natter died at sea in 1906, when the SS Sirio was shipwrecked. His travelling companion Anscar Vonier became the next abbot and pledged to fulfill Natter's dying wish, to rebuild the abbey.

The only portion of the medieval claustral buildings which survives is the "much restored", former abbot's tower, which dates from 14th or 15th century. This was incorporated into the abbey's guesthouse, which was constructed between 1982 and 1994, when the abbey's precinct was rebuilt. The abbey's former well, which was located in the crypt of the former abbey and which may have dated from Saxon times, was destroyed when the new abbey was built.

The final phase
The Abbey Church was consecrated on 25 August 1932, after most of the building had been completed. Construction of the tower was completed in July 1937, with painting completed in December. In 1968, Dom Charles Norris completed the east window in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, using the dalle de verre technique where coloured-glass tiles are shaped and formed into mosaics bound with resin. Buckfast receives many visitors. Men are lodged in the guest house belonging to the monastery, and men and women in a restored building. Various tours are offered at the site. The hair shirt of Roman Catholic Saint Thomas More is now preserved at a side altar in the Abbey. In 2017, pipe organs were installed inside the Abbey church.

The grounds
There is a conference and seminar centre, and a restaurant, the Grange. On the west side of the Abbey are two gardens, with plants ranging from herbs used in cooking or medicine to poisonous plants. Behind the public area is an enclosed garden for the monks. A bridge leads over the river to the abbey farm.

Buildings
The main building is the large cruciform church of 1906-38, dedicated to St Mary. Its style largely revives that of the late 12th century. This would be similar to the style of the original abbey, as depicted in the Buck Brothers' 1734 engraving. However, some features, like the tower, the use of vaulting throughout and the triforium, are more elaborate than the original church. Furthermore, the Blessed Sacrament chapel added to the east of the church in 1968 is in a more modern style. To the south of the church are the domestic buildings. These are arrayed around a central cloister, with the refectory in the south range and the monks' cells on the upper floors in the traditional manner. However, there are some discrepancies from the usual plan due to the incorporation of the medieval abbot's tower and the 19th century country house. For example, the chapter house is in a wing in the south-west corner, instead of in its usual position in the east range. The monastic buildings are in a similar style to the church.

The core of the abbey still sits within a walled precinct, with medieval gates to the north and south, and a modern one to the west (built in 1984). To the west of the church is a large 14th century range which now houses the bookshop, but was originally the guest hall. It was twice its present height and width, but was reduced in size following the Dissolution. At right angles to it is a smaller 16th century range, which is better preserved, with an original roof. Next door is a small Methodist chapel, an unlikely bedfellow with the Catholic abbey, which was built in 1881, the year before the monks returned. Adjoining the Northgate is the Grange, built in 1990 as a restaurant and tearooms.

Self sufficiency
The Abbey is self-supporting, with a farm where vegetables are grown and bees, pigs and cattle are kept, a shop which sells wine, honey beeswax, fudge and other items made by religious communities throughout the world, and a gift shop, book shop, and restaurant.

Buckfast Tonic Wine
The monastery's most successful product is Buckfast Tonic Wine, a fortified wine which the monks began making in the 1890s. In 1927, the Abbey lost its licence to sell wine and as a result, the Abbot allowed wine merchants to distribute on behalf of the Abbey. At the same time, the recipe was changed to be less of a patent medicine and more of a medicated wine.

Its perceived links to violent anti-social behaviour – especially in Scotland – have been a controversial issue for the abbey which has employed a youth worker in one area affected.

Following a decision by Police Scotland to attach anti-crime labels to bottles in some areas, the distributor for Great Britain, J Chandler and Co. announced its intention to pursue legal action.

Beekeeping
Brother Adam, born Karl Kehrle in 1898 in Germany, died in 1996, was put in charge of the Abbey's beekeeping in 1919, and began extensive breeding work creating the honeybee now known as the Buckfast bee. Brother Adam had to replenish the bee colonies, as 30 of the monastery's 46 colonies had been wiped out by a disease known at the time as the Isle of Wight Disease, but later called Acarine. All the bees that died were of the Old British Black bee, a now extinct British strain of the A. m. mellifera.

The 16 hives that survived were descended from A. m. ligustica queens from the Ligurian Alps region of Italy. At the request of the government, Brother Adam helped in restocking the British Isles with his disease resistant Buckfast bees. Today the breeding of pedigree Buckfast bees is regulated by the Federation of European Buckfast Beekeepers (G.D.E.B.) in over twenty-six countries with numerous breeders.

Buckfast bees are no longer kept at the Abbey. Instead of commercial beekeeping with nearly 400 hives, today the focus at the Abbey's apiary is educational such as beekeeping courses, workshops, and honeybee experience days with their 4 hives.

Buckfast Abbey Preparatory School
From 1967 until 1994, the abbey ran a prep school for boys and girls aged 7 to 13, but was obliged to close it as the school became financially non-viable due to dwindling numbers of boarders. Two former monks were later convicted and imprisoned for sexually abusing boys during this period.

St Boniface's Catholic College
With the outbreak of World War II, Plymouth-based St Boniface's Catholic College evacuated its pupils to Buckfast Abbey between 1941 and 1945. The school later named one of its Houses "Abbey" in memory of this period in their history.

School of the Annunciation
The School of the Annunciation was a place of learning for adults and was a charitable company based in the grounds of Buckfast Abbey. It was founded in 2014 by Dr Petroc Willey, Dr Andrew Beards, and Dr Caroline Farey, who had left the Maryvale Institute, with the Abbot of Buckfast. It offered distance learning, part-time programmes, summer schools and short courses in theology, philosophy, catechetics, sacred beauty, liturgy and other associated subjects to support the New Evangelisation. The School closed in August 2019 due to a lack of funding.

Music
The current Master of the Music is Matthew Searles.

Choirs
The present incarnation of the Abbey Choir was founded in 2009. The choir sings Solemn Mass and Vespers on Sundays, and Mass on Holy Days of Obligation during the week. The choir sings a broad liturgical repertoire, ranging from polyphonic music of the sixteenth century and Masses of the Viennese school, through to music of the French Romantic tradition and contemporary music by James MacMillian, Matthew Martin and Dom Sebastian Wolff OSB. In 2018 the choir sang Christmas Midnight Mass, which was televised live on BBC One. The choir gives several concert performances each year, and in 2024 this includes the premiere of a new Mass for Corpus Christi composed by Martin Baker.

Alongside the Abbey Choir, there is also a line of trebles mainly recruited from the school in Buckfast, St Mary's Catholic Primary School. Established in 2018, the Abbey Choristers sing alongside members of the Abbey Choir at the Conventual Mass on Thursdays during school term time.

Organ
The Abbey has an organ by the Italian organ builder, Fratelli Ruffati, the first to be constructed in the UK. The organ was installed in 2017 and given its inaugural recital in 2018. The instrument consists of a substantial Quire Organ (four divisions and pedal) located on both sides of the Quire and the upper triforium, and a Grand-Orgue in the West Gallery (two divisions and pedal). The two spatially-separated instruments can by played antiphonally or together from one or both of the two consoles in the church. The organ contains 5,537 pipes and features a striking Pontifical Trumpet en chamade, which protrudes horizontally from the West Gallery casework.

The organ by Ruffati replaced a previous Hele/Walker instrument, the basis of which was installed in 1922 and later added to in successive changes. Important changes to the stop list were made by Ralph Downes, who also rescaled and revoiced the existing pipework in the 1940s and 1950s.

Ad Fontes
Ad Fontes is a record label founded by Buckfast Abbey dedicated to presenting recordings of sacred music. As well as featuring the Abbey's own choirs and organists, the label collaborates with external soloists and choirs to produce recordings of music from the Catholic tradition, a notable example of this being The Choir of Westminster Cathedral.

Bells
The tower contains fifteen bells. There is a ring of twelve bells, with a tenor weighing 41 long hundredweight (with two extra semi tone bells) surrounding the 7.5 ton bourdon bell called Hosanna. In August 2018, the Abbey hosted the Millennium Bell Ringing Festival in celebration of its 1000th year since the foundation of the monastery.

The bells were cast in 1935 by John Taylor and Co. and were donated by a local benefactor, Sir Robert Harvey. They are hung in the traditional change ringing style, and have an Ellacombe chiming apparatus for single-handed ringing, though this is currently out of use.

Benedictine abbots

 * Alwin (Aelwinus), first mentioned as having attended Shire-mote in Exeter in about 1040. Known from the Domesday Book of 1086 to have been Abbot in 1066.
 * Eustace, first mentioned in 1143 in a Totnes Deed. He was Abbot when Buckfast was affiliated to the Abbey of Cîteaux (Cistercian).

Cistercian abbots
Buckfast still followed the Rule of St. Benedict, as the Cistercians also live by that Rule.
 * William acted as Papal Legate in 1190.
 * Nicholas elected in 1205.
 * Michael mentioned in the Cartulary of Buckfast Abbey (C.B.A.) in 1223.
 * Peter (I) mentioned in the C.B.A. 1242.
 * William (II) mentioned in the C.B.A. 1249.
 * Howell mentioned in the Leger Book (L.B.) of Buckfast (Brit. Mus.) – no dates.
 * Henry mentioned in C.B.A. 1264 and 1269.
 * Simon mentioned in C.B.A. and Petre Archives (P.A.) between 1273 and 1280.
 * Robert mentioned in L.B. and Exeter Episcopal Registers (Ep. Reg.) between 1280 and 1283.
 * Peter de Colepitte mentioned in the P.A. between 1291 and 1313
 * Robert II mentioned in the Ep. Reg. 1316.
 * William Atte Slade mentioned in the Banco Rolls 1327.
 * Stephen I mentioned in the Ep. Reg. 1328.
 * John of Churchstowe mentioned in the Ep. Reg. 1332.
 * William Gifford mentioned in the Ep. Reg. 1333.
 * Stephen of Cornwall mentioned in the Ep. Reg. 1348.
 * Philip (Beaumont) mentioned in the Ep. Reg. 1349.
 * Robert Symons mentioned in the Ep. Reg. and P.A. between 1355 and 1390.
 * William Paderstow mentioned in the Ep. Reg and P.A. 1395.
 * William Slade mentioned in the Ep. Reg 1401 and 1415.
 * William Beaghe mentioned in the Ep. Reg. and P.A. between 1415 and 1432.
 * Thomas Roger mentioned in Ep. Reg. and P.A. He was Prior Administrator c. 1422 – 1432, and blessed as Abbot in 1432.
 * John Ffytchett mentioned in the Ep. Reg. 1440.
 * John Matthu (Matthew) mentioned in the Ep. Reg. 1449.
 * John King mentioned in the Statuta Cap. Gen. Ord. Cist. from 1464 to 1498.
 * John Rede (I) mentioned in the Ep. Reg. 1498.
 * John Bleworthy mentioned in 1505 – Cal. of Early Chancery Proceedings, also in Powderham MSS.
 * Alfred Gyll mentioned in the Ep. Reg. 1512.
 * John Rede (II) mentioned in the Ep. Reg. 1525. There is no record of death or resignation from his office.
 * Gabriel Donne (died 1558) (alias Dunne), who was appointed by the Bishop of Exeter with the encouragement of Thomas Cromwell in 1535. He surrendered the Abbey to the king on 25 February 1539.

Benedictine abbots
Monastic life was restored at Buckfast in 1882; it became an abbey, under the direction of an abbot, in 1902.
 * Very Rev Dom Thomas Duperou – Superior: 1882 – 1884 (became Abbot of Sacred Heart, USA)
 * Very Rev Dom Leander Lemoine – Superior: 1884 – 1885
 * Very Rev Dom Benedict Gariador – Prior: August 1885 – February 1899
 * Very Rev Dom Leander Lemoine – Superior: March 1899
 * Very Rev Dom Ignatius Jean – Superior: April 1899 – March 1900 (not a Monk of Buckfast)
 * Very Rev Dom Leander Lemoine – Superior: March 1900 – July 1902 (was also Abbot Visitor)
 * Very Rev Dom Savinian Louismet – Superior: July 1902 – November 1902
 * Right Rev Dom Boniface Natter – Abbot: elected 19 November 1902. Died 4 August 1906.
 * Right Rev Dom Anscar Vonier – Elected 14 September 1906. Died 26 December 1938.
 * Right Rev Dom Bruno Fehrenbacher elected 10 January 1939. Resigned 1956. Titular Abbot of Tavistock till his death on 18 July 1965.
 * Right Rev Dom Placid Hooper elected 5 January 1957. Ruling Abbot till 1976. Titular Abbot of Tavistock till his death on 11 December 1995
 * Right Rev Dom Leo Smith elected 30 January 1976. Ruling Abbot till 1992. Titular Abbot of Colchester till his death on 10 July 1998
 * Right Rev Dom David Charlesworth elected 3 January 1992. Ruling Abbot till 1999. Titular Abbot of Malmesbury.
 * Very Rev Dom Sebastian Wolff appointed Prior Administrator in January 2000
 * Right Rev Dom William Philip William Manahan elected Abbot 10 December 2003. Resigned December 2006 and was convicted and imprisoned for child sex abuse.
 * Right Rev Dom Richard Yeo appointed Abbot Administrator February 2007 until January 2009
 * Right Rev Dom David Charlesworth re-elected Abbot 27 January 2009. January 2018 appointed Abbot Administrator after the community failed to elect an Abbot.
 * Very Rev Dom Gavin Francis Straw appointed Prior Administrator March 2019.
 * Right Rev Dom David Charlesworth re-elected Abbot 9 April 2021.

General sources

 * Clutterbuck, Robin Buckfast Abbey – A History ISBN 0-9511806-1-4
 * Heald, Claire "Binge drinking — the Benedictine connection", BBC News, 26 September 2006, retrieved 8 October 2006.
 * St Boniface's Catholic College Historical Archives – 1951
 * St Boniface's Catholic College Historical Archives – 1951

title: Buckfast Abbey


text:
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (2 October 1878 – 26 May 1962) was a British Georgian poet, who was associated with World War I but continued publishing poetry into the 1940s and 1950s.

Early work
Gibson was born in Hexham, Northumberland. His parents were Elizabeth Judith Frances (born Walton) and John Pattison Gibson. Her father was a chemist who was interested in photography and antiquarianism. His elder sister Elizabeth, who became his teacher and mentor, also became a published poet. He left the north for London in 1914 after his mother died. He had been publishing poems in magazines since 1895, and his first collections in book form were published by Elkin Mathews in 1902. His collections of verse plays and dramatic poems The Stonefolds and On The Threshold were published by the Samurai Press (of Cranleigh) in 1907, followed next year by the book of poems, The Web of Life.

Despite his residence in London, and later in Gloucestershire, many of Gibson's poems both then and later, have Northumberland settings: Hexham's Market Cross; Hareshaw; and The Kielder Stone. Others deal with poverty and passion amid wild Northumbrian landscapes. Still others are devoted to fishermen, industrial workers and miners, often alluding to local ballads and the rich folk-song heritage of the North East.

In London, he met both Edward Marsh and Rupert Brooke, becoming a close friend and later Brooke's literary executor (with Lascelles Abercrombie and Walter de la Mare). This was at the period when the first Georgian Poetry anthology was being hatched. Gibson was one of the insiders.

During the early part of his writing life, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson wrote poems that featured the "macabre". One such poem is "Flannan Isle", based on a real-life mystery.

Gibson was one of the founders of the Dymock poets, a group of writers who lived in and around the village of Dymock, on the Gloucestershire/Herefordshire border, in the years immediately before the outbreak of the First World War. Gibson also published plays, as well as several prose works. For instance, he wrote and argued beautifully about the merit of verse at the time of World War II. He wrote a piece of criticism on Italian Nationalism and English Letters by Harry W. Rudman regarding the contributions made by Italian exiles in England to English literature, which were in the form of poetry by and large. He also wrote criticism on The Burning Oracle: Studies in the Poetry of Action by G. Wilson Knight, wherein he commends the fact that Knight sees the creative energy of living writers not only in the creation of artworks, but also in the creation of life itself.

Death and reputation
Gibson died on 26 May 1962, in Virginia Water, Surrey.

His reputation was eclipsed somewhat by the Ezra Pound-T. S. Eliot school of Modernist poetry, though  his work remained popular.

title: Wilfrid Wilson Gibson