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Wilhelm Steinitz

William Steinitz (born Wilhelm Steinitz; May 14, 1836 – August 12, 1900) was a Bohemian-Austrian and, later, American chess player. From 1886 to 1894, he was the first World Chess Champion. He was also a highly influential writer and chess theoretician.

When discussing chess history from the 1850s onwards, commentators have debated whether Steinitz could be effectively considered the champion from an earlier time, perhaps as early as 1866. Steinitz lost his title to Emanuel Lasker in 1894, and lost a rematch in 1896–97.

Statistical rating systems give Steinitz a rather low ranking among world champions, mainly because he took several long breaks from competitive play. However, an analysis based on one of these rating systems shows that he was one of the most dominant players in the history of the game. Steinitz was unbeaten in match play for 32 years, from 1862 to 1894.

Although Steinitz became "world number one" by winning in the all-out attacking style that was common in the 1860s, he unveiled in 1873 a new style of play, and demonstrated that it was superior to the previous style. His new style was controversial and some even branded it as "cowardly", but many of Steinitz's games showed that it could also set up attacks as ferocious as those of the old school.

Steinitz was also a prolific writer on chess, and defended his new ideas vigorously. The debate was so bitter and sometimes abusive that it became known as the "Ink War". By the early 1890s, Steinitz's approach was widely accepted, and the next generation of top players acknowledged their debt to him, most notably his successor as world champion, Emanuel Lasker.

Traditional accounts of Steinitz's character depict him as ill-tempered and aggressive, but more recent research shows that he had long and friendly relationships with some players and chess organizations. Most notably from 1888 to 1889 he co-operated with the American Chess Congress in a project to define rules governing the conduct of future world championships. Steinitz was unskilled at managing money, and lived in poverty all his life.

Early life
Steinitz was born on May 14, 1836, in the Jewish ghetto of Prague (now capital of the Czech Republic; then in Bohemia, a part of the Austrian Empire). The youngest of a tailor's thirteen sons to survive, he learned to play chess at age 12. He began playing serious chess in his twenties, after leaving Prague in 1857 to study mathematics in Vienna, at the Vienna Polytechnic. Steinitz spent two years at the university.

Chess career (through 1881)
Steinitz improved rapidly in chess during the late 1850s, progressing from third place in the 1859 Vienna City championship to first in 1861, with a score of 30/31. During this period he was nicknamed "the Austrian Morphy". This achievement meant that he had become the strongest player in Austria.

International debut
Steinitz was then sent to represent Austria in the London 1862 chess tournament. He placed sixth, but his win over Augustus Mongredien was awarded the tournament's brilliancy prize. He immediately challenged the fifth-placed contestant, the strong veteran Italian Master Serafino Dubois, to a match, which Steinitz won (five wins, one draw, three losses). This encouraged him to turn professional, and he took up residence in London. In 1862–63 Steinitz scored a crushing win in a match with Joseph Henry Blackburne, who went on to be one of the world's top ten for 20 years, but who had only started playing chess two years earlier. Steinitz then beat some leading UK players in matches: Frederick Deacon and the aforementioned Mongredien in 1863 followed by Valentine Green in 1864. This charge up the rankings had a price: in March 1863 Steinitz apologized in a letter to Ignác Kolisch for not repaying a loan, because while Steinitz had been beating Blackburne, Daniel Harrwitz had "taken over" all of Steinitz's clients at the London Chess Club, who had provided Steinitz's main source of income.

Match against Anderssen
These successes established Steinitz as one of the world's top players, and he was able to arrange a match in 1866 in London against Adolf Anderssen, who was regarded as the world's strongest active player because he had won the 1851 and 1862 London International Tournaments and his one superior, Paul Morphy, had retired from competitive chess. Steinitz won with eight wins and six losses (there were no draws), but it was a hard fight; after 12 games the scores were level at 6–6, then Steinitz won the last two games.

As a result of this match victory, Steinitz was generally regarded as the world's best player. The prize money for this match was £100 to the winner (Steinitz) and £20 for the loser (Anderssen). The winner's prize was a large sum by the standards of the times, equivalent to about £57,500 in 2007's money.

Continued match play success
In the years following his victory over Anderssen, Steinitz beat Henry Bird in 1866 (seven wins, five losses, five draws). He also comfortably beat Johannes Zukertort in 1872 (seven wins, four draws, one loss; Zukertort had proved himself one of the elite by beating Anderssen by a large margin in 1871).

Gradually improves tournament results
It took longer for Steinitz to reach the top in tournament play. In the next few years he took: third place at Paris 1867 behind Ignatz Kolisch and Simon Winawer; and second place at Dundee (1867; Gustav Neumann won), and Baden-Baden 1870 chess tournament; behind Anderssen but ahead of Blackburne, Louis Paulsen and other strong players. His first victory in a strong tournament was London 1872, ahead of Blackburne and Zukertort; and the first tournament in which Steinitz finished ahead of Anderssen was the Vienna 1873 chess tournament, when Anderssen was 55 years old.

Changes style, introduces positional school
All of Steinitz's successes up to 1872 were achieved in the attack-at-all-costs "Romantic" style exemplified by Anderssen. But in the Vienna 1873 chess tournament, Steinitz unveiled a new "positional" style of play which was to become the basis of modern chess. He tied for first place with Blackburne, ahead of Anderssen, Samuel Rosenthal, Paulsen and Henry Bird, and won the play-off against Blackburne. Steinitz made a shaky start, but won his last 14 games in the main tournament (including 2–0 results over Paulsen, Anderssen, and Blackburne ) plus the two play-off games – this was the start of a 25-game winning streak in serious competition.

Hiatus from competitive chess
Between 1873 and 1882 Steinitz played no tournaments and only one match (a 7–0 win against Blackburne in 1876). His other games during this period were in simultaneous and blindfold exhibitions, which contributed an important part of a professional chess-player's income in those days (for example in 1887 Blackburne was paid 9 guineas for two simultaneous exhibitions and a blindfold exhibition hosted by the Teesside Chess Association; this was equivalent to about £4,800 at 2007 values ).

Chess journalist
Instead, Steinitz concentrated on his work as a chess journalist, notably for The Field, which was Britain's leading sports magazine. Some of Steinitz's commentaries aroused heated debates, notably from Zukertort and Leopold Hoffer in The Chess Monthly (which they founded in 1879). This "Ink War" escalated sharply in 1881, when Steinitz mercilessly criticized Hoffer's annotations of games in the 1881 Berlin Congress (won by Blackburne ahead of Zukertort). Steinitz was eager to settle the analytical debates by a second match against Zukertort, whose unwillingness to play provoked scornful comments from Steinitz. In mid-1882 James Mason, a consistently strong player, challenged Steinitz to a match, and accused Steinitz of cowardice when Steinitz insisted the issue with Zukertort should be settled first. Steinitz responded by inviting Mason to name a sufficiently high stake for a match, at least £150 per player, but Mason was unwilling to stake more than £100. Mason later agreed to play a match with Zukertort for a stake of £100 per player, but soon "postponed" that match, writing that "circumstances having arisen that make it highly inconvenient for me to proceed ..."

Rivalry with Zukertort

Steinitz's long lay-off caused some commentators to suggest that Zukertort, who had scored some notable tournament victories, should be regarded as the world chess champion. As an example, The Chess Player's Chronicle in July 1883 opined that 'Steinitz was, at one time, fairly entitled to the position of champion...He has just taken an inferior place to Zukertort, in a tournament, and for the time being Zukertort, in the opinion of some, becomes champion'.

Comeback success
Steinitz returned to serious competitive chess in the Vienna 1882 chess tournament, which has been described as the strongest chess tournament of all time at that point. Despite a shaky start he took equal first place with Szymon Winawer, ahead of James Mason, Zukertort, George Henry Mackenzie, Blackburne, Berthold Englisch, Paulsen and Mikhail Chigorin, and drew the play-off match.

Visits US
Steinitz visited the US, mainly the Philadelphia area, from December 1882 to May 1883. He was given an enthusiastic reception. Steinitz played several exhibitions, many casual games, and a match for stakes of £50 with a wealthy amateur. He also won three more serious matches with two New World professionals, Alexander Sellman (Steinitz won both) and the Cuban champion Celso Golmayo Zúpide. The match with Golmayo was abandoned when Steinitz was leading (eight wins, one draw, one loss). His hosts even arranged a visit to New Orleans, where Paul Morphy lived.

Return to London
Later in 1883, Steinitz took second place in the extremely strong London 1883 chess tournament behind Zukertort, who made a brilliant start, faded at the end but finished three points ahead. Steinitz finished 2½ points ahead of the third-placed competitor, Blackburne. Zukertort's victory again led some commentators to suggest that Zukertort should be regarded as the world chess champion, while others said the issue could only be resolved by a match between Steinitz and Zukertort.

Settles in United States
In 1883, shortly after the London tournament, Steinitz decided to leave England and moved to New York City, where he lived for the rest of his life. This did not end the "Ink War": his enemies persuaded some of the American press to publish anti-Steinitz articles, and in 1885 Steinitz founded the International Chess Magazine, which he edited until 1895. In his magazine he chronicled the lengthy negotiations for a match with Zukertort. He also managed to find supporters in other sections of the American press including Turf, Field and Farm and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, both of which reported Steinitz's offer to forgo all fees, expenses or share in the stake and make the match "a benefit performance, solely for Mr Zukertort's pecuniary profit".

World Championship match
Eventually it was agreed that in 1886 Steinitz and Zukertort would play a match in New York, St. Louis and New Orleans, and that the victor would be the player who first won 10 games. At Steinitz's insistence the contract said it would be "for the Championship of the World". After the five games played in New York, Zukertort led by 4–1, but in the end Steinitz won decisively by 12½–7½ (ten wins, five draws, five losses), becoming the first official world champion on March 29. The collapse by Zukertort, who won only one of the last 15 games, has been described as "perhaps the most thoroughgoing reversal of fortune in the history of world championship play."

Though not yet officially an American citizen, Steinitz wanted the United States flag to be placed next to him during the match. He became a US citizen on November 23, 1888, having resided for five years in New York, and changed his first name from Wilhelm to William.

In 1887 the American Chess Congress started work on drawing up regulations for the future conduct of world championship contests. Steinitz actively supported this endeavor, as he thought he was becoming too old to remain world champion – he wrote in his own magazine "I know I am not fit to be the champion, and I am not likely to bear that title for ever".

Defeats Chigorin
In 1888 the Havana Chess Club offered to sponsor a match between Steinitz and whomever he would select as a worthy opponent. Steinitz nominated the Russian Mikhail Chigorin, on the condition that the invitation should not be presented as a challenge from him. There is some doubt about whether this was intended to be a match for the world championship: both Steinitz's letters and the publicity material just before the match conspicuously avoided the phrase. The proposed match was to have a maximum of 20 games, and Steinitz had said that fixed-length matches were unsuitable for world championship contests because the first player to take the lead could then play for draws; and Steinitz was at the same time supporting the American Chess Congress's world championship project. Whatever the status of the match, it was played in Havana in January to February 1889, and won by Steinitz (ten wins, one draw, six losses).

New York 1889 tournament
The American Chess Congress's final proposal was that the winner of a tournament to be held in New York in 1889 should be regarded as world champion for the time being, but must be prepared to face a challenge from the second or third placed competitor within a month. Steinitz wrote that he would not play in the tournament and would not challenge the winner unless the second and third placed competitors failed to do so. The tournament was duly played, but the outcome was not quite as planned: Mikhail Chigorin and Max Weiss tied for first place; their play-off resulted in four draws, and Weiss then wanted to get back to his work for the Rothschild Bank, conceding the title to Chigorin. However, the third prize-winner Isidor Gunsberg was prepared to play for the title.

A Steinitz-Gunsberg match was played in New York in 1890 and ended in a 10½–8½ victory for Steinitz. The American Chess Congress's experiment was not repeated, and Steinitz's last three matches were private arrangements between the players.

Wins rematch against Chigorin
In 1891 the Saint Petersburg Chess Society and the Havana Chess Club offered to organize another Steinitz–Chigorin match for the world championship. Steinitz played against Chigorin in Havana in 1892, and won narrowly (ten wins, five draws, eight losses).

German Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch turned down an opportunity in 1892 to challenge Steinitz in a world championship match, because of the demands of his medical practice.

Loses title to Lasker
Around this time Steinitz publicly spoke of retiring, but changed his mind when Emanuel Lasker, 32 years younger and comparatively untested at the top level, challenged him. Lasker had been earlier that year refused a non-title challenge by fellow German, Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch, who was at the time the world's most dominant tournament player.

Initially, Lasker wanted to play for $5,000 a side, and a match was agreed at stakes of $3,000 a side, but Steinitz agreed to a series of reductions when Lasker found it difficult to raise the money, and the final figure was $2,000 each, which was less than for some of Steinitz's earlier matches (the final combined stake of $4,000 would be worth about $114,000 at 2016 values ). Although this was publicly praised as an act of sportsmanship on Steinitz's part, Steinitz may have desperately needed the money.

The match was played in 1894, at venues in New York, Philadelphia and Montreal, Canada. The 32-year age difference between the combatants was the largest in the history of world championship play, and remains so today. Steinitz had previously declared he would win without doubt, so it came as a shock when Lasker won the first game. Steinitz responded by winning the second, and was able to maintain the balance until the sixth. However, Lasker won all the games from the seventh to the 11th, and Steinitz asked for a one-week rest. When the match resumed, Steinitz looked in better shape and won the 13th and 14th games. Lasker struck back in the 15th and 16th, and Steinitz was unable to compensate for his losses in the middle of the match. Hence Lasker won with ten wins, five losses and four draws. Some commentators thought Steinitz's habit of playing "experimental" moves in serious competition was a major factor in his downfall.

Increased tournament activity
After losing the title, Steinitz played in tournaments more frequently than he had previously. He won at New York City 1894, and was fifth at Hastings 1895 (winning the first brilliancy prize for his game with Curt von Bardeleben). At Saint Petersburg 1895, a super-strong four player, multi-round-robin event, with Lasker, Chigorin and Pillsbury, he took second place behind Lasker. Later his results began to decline: 6th in Nuremberg 1896, 5th in Cologne 1898, 10th in London 1899.

In early 1896, Steinitz defeated the Russian Emanuel Schiffers in a match (winning 6 games, drawing 1, losing 4).

Rematch with Lasker
In November, 1896 to January, 1897 Steinitz played a return match with Lasker in Moscow, but won only 2 games, drawing 5, and losing 10. This was the last world chess championship match for eleven years. Shortly after the match, Steinitz had a mental breakdown and was confined for 40 days in a Moscow sanatorium, where he played chess with the inmates.

Controversy on the beginning of Steinitz's success
There is a long-running debate among chess writers about whether Steinitz's reign as World Chess Champion began in 1866, when he beat Anderssen, or in 1886, when he beat Zukertort. Dating the start of Steinitz's reign to 1886: Supporting 1866:

Undecided: In April 1894 the British Chess Magazine described Steinitz as holding "the chess championship of the world for 28 years". However, there is no evidence that he claimed the title for himself in 1866, although in the 1880s he claimed to have been the champion since his win over Anderssen. It has been suggested that Steinitz could not make such a claim while Paul Morphy was alive. Morphy had defeated Anderssen by a far wider margin, 8–3, in 1858, but retired from chess competition soon after he returned to the US in 1859, and died in 1884. The 1886 Steinitz vs. Zukertort match was the first that was explicitly described as being for the World Championship, but Howard Staunton and Paul Morphy had been unofficially described as "World Chess Champion" around the middle of the 19th century. In fact one of the organizers of the 1851 London International tournament had said the contest was for "the baton of the World's Chess Champion", and in mid-1840s Ludwig Bledow wrote a letter to Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa suggesting they should organize a world championship tournament in Germany. Some commentators described Steinitz as "the champion" in the years following his 1872 match victory against Zukertort. In the late 1870s and early 1880s some regarded Steinitz as the champion and others supported Johannes Zukertort, and the 1886 match was not regarded as creating the title of World Champion, but as resolving conflicting claims to the title. On the other hand George Alcock MacDonnell hailed Joseph Blackburne as "World Champion" for his win in the 1881 Berlin Tournament, George Henry Mackenzie as having "won the Chess Championship of the World" in 1887, and Isidore Gunsberg as "among the champions of the world" following his win at "Bradford Place" in 1888. However, Steinitz regarded G.A. MacDonnell as "one of my bitterest and most untruthful persecutors".

Personal life
Steinitz lived with Caroline Golder (born 1846) in the 1860s, and their only daughter Flora was born in 1866. Flora died in 1888 at the age of 21, and Caroline died in 1892. He married his second wife a few years later, and had two children by her. In 1897 he dedicated a pamphlet to the memory of his first wife and their daughter.

In February 1897, The New York Times prematurely reported his death in a New York mental asylum. Some authors claim that he contracted syphilis, which may have been a cause of the mental breakdowns he suffered in his last years. In the months prior to his death, he spent some time in institutions as a result of his failing mental health. His chess activities had not yielded any great financial rewards, and he died a pauper in the Manhattan State Hospital (Wards Island) on August 12, 1900, of a heart attack. Steinitz is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn, New York. His second wife and their two young children were still alive at the time of his death.

Assessment
The book of the Hastings 1895 chess tournament, written collectively by the players, described Steinitz as follows: "Mr. Steinitz stands high as a theoretician and as a writer; he has a powerful pen, and when he chooses can use expressive English. He evidently strives to be fair to friends and foes alike, but appears sometimes to fail to see that after all he is much like many others in this respect. Possessed of a fine intellect, and extremely fond of the game, he is apt to lose sight of all other considerations, people and business alike. Chess is his very life and soul, the one thing for which he lives."

Influence on the game
Steinitz's play up to and including 1872 was similar to that of his contemporaries: sharp, aggressive, and full of sacrificial play. This was the style in which he became "world number one" by beating Adolf Anderssen in 1866 and confirmed his position by beating Zukertort in 1872 and winning the 1872 London International tournament (Zukertort had claimed the rank of number two by beating Anderssen in 1871).

In 1873, however, Steinitz's play suddenly changed, giving priority to what is now called the positional elements in chess: pawn structure, space, outposts for knights, the advantage of the two bishops, etc. Although Steinitz often accepted unnecessarily difficult defensive positions in order to demonstrate the superiority of his theories, he also showed that his methods could provide a platform for crushing attacks. Steinitz's successor as world champion, Emanuel Lasker, summed up the new style as: "In the beginning of the game ignore the search for combinations, abstain from violent moves, aim for small advantages, accumulate them, and only after having attained these ends search for the combination – and then with all the power of will and intellect, because then the combination must exist, however deeply hidden."

Although Steinitz's play changed abruptly, he said he had been thinking along such lines for some years: "Some of the games which I saw Paulsen play during the London Congress of 1862 gave a still stronger start to the modification of my own opinions, which has since developed, and I began to recognize that Chess genius is not confined to the more or less deep and brilliant finishing strokes after the original balance of power and position has been overthrown, but that it also requires the exercise of still more extraordinary powers, though perhaps of a different kind to maintain that balance or respectively to disturb it at the proper time in one's own favor."

During his nine-year layoff from tournament play (1873–1882) and later in his career, Steinitz used his chess writings to present his theories – while in the UK he wrote for The Field; in 1885 after moving to New York he founded the "International Chess Magazine", of which he was the chief editor; and in 1889 he edited the book of the great New York 1889 tournament (won by Mikhail Chigorin and Max Weiss), in which he did not compete as the tournament was designed to produce his successor as World Champion. Many other writers found his new approach incomprehensible, boring or even cowardly; for example Adolf Anderssen said, "Kolisch is a highwayman and points the pistol at your breast. Steinitz is a pick-pocket, he steals a pawn and wins a game with it."

But when he contested the first World Championship match in 1886 against Johannes Zukertort, it became evident that Steinitz was playing on another level. Although Zukertort was at least Steinitz's equal in spectacular attacking play, Steinitz often outmaneuvered him fairly simply by the use of positional principles.

By the time of his match in 1890–91 against Gunsberg, some commentators showed an understanding of and appreciation for Steinitz's theories. Shortly before the 1894 match with Emanuel Lasker, even the New York Times, which had earlier published attacks on his play and character, paid tribute to his playing record, the importance of his theories, and his sportsmanship in agreeing to the most difficult match of his career despite his previous intention of retiring.

By the end of his career, Steinitz was more highly esteemed as a theoretician than as a player. The comments about him in the book of the Hastings 1895 chess tournament focus on his theories and writings, and Emanuel Lasker was more explicit: "He was a thinker worthy of a seat in the halls of a University. A player, as the world believed he was, he was not; his studious temperament made that impossible; and thus he was conquered by a player ..."

As a result of his play and writings Steinitz, along with Paul Morphy, is considered by many chess commentators to be the founder of modern chess. Lasker, who took the championship from Steinitz, wrote, "I who vanquished him must see to it that his great achievement, his theories should find justice, and I must avenge the wrongs he suffered." Vladimir Kramnik emphasizes Steinitz's importance as a pioneer in the field of chess theory: "Steinitz was the first to realise that chess, despite being a complicated game, obeys some common principles. ... But as often happens the first time is just a try. ... I can't say he was the founder of a chess theory. He was an experimenter and pointed out that chess obeys laws that should be considered."

Writings
Steinitz was the main chess correspondent of The Field (in London) from 1873 to 1882, and used this to present his ideas about chess strategy. In 1885 he founded the International Chess Magazine in New York City and edited it until 1891. In addition to game commentaries and blow-by-blow accounts of the negotiations leading to his 1886 match with Johann Zukertort and of the American Chess Congress's world championship project, he wrote a long series of articles about Paul Morphy, who had died in 1884. He wrote the book of the 1889 New York tournament, in which he annotated all 432 of the games, and in 1889 he published a textbook, The Modern Chess Instructor.

Steinitz also allegedly wrote a pamphlet entitled Capital, Labor, and Charity while confined at River Crest Sanitarium in New York during the final months of his life.

Playing strength and style
Statistical rating systems are unkind to Steinitz. "Warriors of the Mind" gives him a ranking of 47th, below several obscure Soviet grandmasters; Chessmetrics places him only 15th on its all-time list. Chessmetrics penalizes players who play infrequently; opportunities for competitive chess were infrequent in Steinitz's best years, and Steinitz had a few long absences from competitive play (1873–1876, 1876–1882, 1883–1886, 1886–1889). However, in 2005, Chessmetrics' author, Jeff Sonas, wrote an article which examined various ways of comparing the strength of "world number one" players, using data provided by Chessmetrics, and found that: Steinitz was further ahead of his contemporaries in the 1870s than Bobby Fischer was in his peak period (1970–1972); that Steinitz had the third-highest total number of years as the world's top player, behind Emanuel Lasker and Garry Kasparov; and that Steinitz placed 7th in a comparison of how long players were ranked in the world's top three. Between his victory over Anderssen (1866) and his loss to Emanuel Lasker (1894), Steinitz won all his "normal" matches, sometimes by wide margins; and his worst tournament performance in that 28-year period was third place in Paris (1867). (He also lost two handicap matches and a match by telegraph in 1890 against Mikhail Chigorin, where Chigorin was allowed to choose the openings in both games and won both.) The Edo rating system that covers the years from 1821-1937 places Steinitz 3rd in top peak rating; behind Jose Capablanca and Paul Morphy but ahead of Emanuel Lasker and Alexander Alekhine.

Initially Steinitz played in the all-out attacking style of contemporaries like Anderssen, and then changed to the positional style with which he dominated competitive chess in the 1870s and 1880s. Max Euwe wrote, "Steinitz aimed at positions with clear-cut features, to which his theory was best applicable." However, he retained his capacity for brilliant attacks right to the end of his career; for example, in the 1895 Hastings tournament (when he was 59), he beat von Bardeleben in a spectacular game in which in the closing stages Steinitz deliberately exposed all his pieces to attack simultaneously (except his king, of course). His most significant weaknesses were his habits of playing "experimental" moves and getting into unnecessarily difficult defensive positions in top-class competitive games.

Personality
"Traditional" accounts of Steinitz describe him as having a sharp tongue and violent temper, perhaps partly because of his short stature (barely five feet) and congenital lameness. He admitted that "Like the Duke of Parma, I always hold the sword in one hand and the olive branch in the other", and under severe provocation he could become abusive in published articles. He was aware of his own tendencies and said early in his career, "Nothing would induce me to take charge of a chess column ...Because I should be so fair in dispensing blame as well as praise that I should be sure to give offence and make enemies." When he embarked on chess journalism, his brutally frank review of Wormald's The Chess Openings in 1875 proved him right on both counts.

His personal correspondence, his own articles and some third-party articles, however, show that he had long and friendly relationships with many people and groups in the chess world, including Ignác Kolisch (one of his earliest sponsors), Mikhail Chigorin, Harry Nelson Pillsbury, Bernhard Horwitz, Amos Burn and the Cuban and Russian chess communities. He even co-operated with the American Chess Congress in its project to regulate future contests for the world title that he had earned.

Steinitz strove to be objective in his writings about chess competitions and games; for example, he attributed to sheer bad luck a poor tournament score by Henry Edward Bird, whom he considered no friend of his, and was generous in his praise of great play by even his bitter enemies. He could poke fun at some of his own rhetoric; for example: "I remarked that I would rather die in America than live in England. ... I added that I would rather lose a match in America than win one in England. But after having carefully considered the subject in all its bearings, I have come to the conclusion that I neither mean to die yet nor to lose the match." At a joint simultaneous display in Russia around the time of the 1895–96 Saint Petersburg tournament, Emanuel Lasker and Steinitz formed an impromptu comedy double act.

Although he had a strong sense of honour about repaying debts, Steinitz was poor at managing his finances: he let a competitor "poach" many of his clients in 1862–63, offered to play the 1886 world title match against Johannes Zukertort for free, and died in poverty in 1900, leaving his widow to survive by running a small shop.

Tournament results
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Match results
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Notable games

 * Steinitz vs. Augustus Mongredien, London 1862. Awarded the at the 1862 London International Tournament.
 * Adolf Anderssen vs. Steinitz; 13th match game, London 1866. Emanuel Lasker regarded this well-prepared attack as a precursor of the positional approach that Steinitz later advocated.
 * Johannes Zukertort vs. Steinitz, WCH (9th game of the match) 1886, Queen's Gambit Declined: Vienna. Quiet Variation (D37), . Steinitz exchanges his powerful centre to create two weak hanging pawns on White's queenside and creates strong pressure against them. Zukertort eventually tries to slug his way out of trouble, but Steinitz wins with a sharp counterattack.
 * Steinitz vs. Mikhail Chigorin, Havana WCH 1892 (16th game of the match), Ruy Lopez, . Steinitz weakens Chigorin's pawns, gains superior mobility then forces a pawn promotion with the aid of a little combination.
 * Steinitz vs. Mikhail Chigorin, Havana WCH 1892 (4th game of the match), Spanish Game: General (C65), 1–0. Positional preparation creates the opportunity for a swift attack leading to mate on the 29th move.
 * Steinitz vs. Curt von Bardeleben, Hastings 1895, Italian Game: Classical Variation. Greco Gambit Traditional Line (C54), 1–0. A great attacking combination in the old 1860s style. After White's 22nd move, all the white pieces are but Black is lost. The game won the first brilliancy prize of the tournament.

title: Wilhelm Steinitz


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Rebecca Gratz

Rebecca Gratz (March 4, 1781 – August 27, 1869) was a Jewish American educator and philanthropist in 19th-century America. She was a member of the Gratz family, who settled in the United States before the Revolutionary War.

Early life
Rebecca Gratz was born on March 4, 1781, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She was the seventh of twelve children born to Miriam Simon and Michael Gratz. Her mother was the daughter of Joseph Simon, a preeminent Jewish merchant of Lancaster, while her father, whose surname originally was Grätz, immigrated to America in 1752 from Langendorf, in German-speaking Silesia. Michael, who was descended from a long line of respected rabbis, and Miriam were observant Jews and active members of Philadelphia's first synagogue, Mikveh Israel.

Philanthropy
In 1801, at the age of 20, Rebecca Gratz helped establish the Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances, which helped women whose families were suffering after the American Revolutionary War. In 1815, after seeing the need for an institution for orphans in Philadelphia, she was among those instrumental in founding the Philadelphia Orphan Asylum. Four years later, she was elected secretary of its board. She continued to hold this office for forty years. Under Gratz' auspices, a Hebrew Sunday School, the first of its kind in America, was started in 1838. Gratz became both its superintendent and president and assisted in developing its curriculum, resigning in 1864.

Gratz was also one of the founding members of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society of Philadelphia in 1819. The social services organization was created by a group of women from Congregation Mikveh Israel to support Philadelphia's Jewish women who found themselves unexpectedly without a husband (whether by illness, death or greener pastures). Gratz held the secretary position in the group for close to 40 years.

In 1850, she advocated in The Occident, over the signature A Daughter of Israel, the foundation of a Jewish foster home. Her advocacy was largely instrumental in the establishment of such a home in 1855. Other organizations that came about due to her efforts were the Fuel Society and the Sewing Society.

Gratz is said to have been the model of Rebecca, the daughter of the Jewish merchant Isaac of York, who is the heroine in the novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. Scott's attention had been drawn to Gratz's character by Washington Irving, who was a close friend of the Gratz family. The claim has been disputed, but it has also been well sustained in an article entitled "The Original of Rebecca in Ivanhoe", which appeared in The Century Magazine, 1882, pp. 679–682.

Gratz never married. Among the marriage offers she received was one from a Gentile whom she loved but ultimately chose not to marry on account of her faith.

Her portrait was painted twice by the noted American artist Thomas Sully. One of those portraits (both are owned by the Rosenbach Museum) is on display at the National Museum of American Jewish History.

Death
Gratz died on August 27, 1869, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and was buried at Mikveh Israel Cemetery. Shortly after her death, her brother Hyman founded and financed Gratz College, a teachers’ college in Philadelphia, in her memory.

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title: Rebecca Gratz


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Talk:Rebecca Gratz

Source
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Sorbonne University

Sorbonne University (Sorbonne Université) is a public research university located in Paris, France. The institution's legacy reaches back to the Middle Ages in 1257 when Sorbonne College was established by Robert de Sorbon as one of the first universities in Europe.

Sorbonne University is one of the most sought after universities by students and researchers from France, Europe, and the French speaking countries. Most notably, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, who came from Poland in 1891 and joined the faculty of sciences of the Sorbonne, was also the first woman to become a professor at the Sorbonne. Marie Curie and her husband Pierre Curie are considered the founders of the modern-day Faculty of Science and Engineering of Sorbonne University. As of 2021, its alumni and professors have won 33 Nobel Prizes, six Fields Medals, and one Turing Award. According to the ARWU and THE university rankings, its three main French rivals are PSL University, Saclay University and Université Paris Cité.

College of Sorbonne
Robert de Sorbon (1201–1274), chaplain to King Louis IX (Saint Louis), observed the difficulties experienced by poor "schoolchildren" in achieving the rank of doctor. In February 1257, he had a house (domus) officially established which he intended for a certain number of secular clergy who, living in common and without concern for their material existence, would be entirely occupied with study and teaching. This house was named the college of Sorbonne.

The old slogan of the establishment, "Sorbonne University, creators of futures since 1257", refers to this date. The college of Sorbonne was closed along with all the other colleges of the former University of Paris in 1793.

The college of Sorbonne was located on the site of the current Sorbonne building, shared between Sorbonne University and Panthéon-Sorbonne University.

Following the promulgation of laws on 28 April 1893, giving civil personality to the bodies formed by the union of several faculties of an academy, and 10 July 1896, giving the name of university to the bodies of faculties, the new University of Paris was created in 1896 through the merger of the Faculty of Science, the Faculty of Letters, the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Protestant Theology (created in 1877 and transformed into a free faculty in 1905), and the École supérieure de pharmacie. It was inaugurated on 19 November 1896 by its president, Félix Faure.

Splitting of the University of Paris
The universities of Paris-Sorbonne and Pierre-et-Marie-Curie were created as a result of the university reform prepared by Edgar Faure in 1968.

At that time, the University of Paris, divided into five faculties, was split into several interdisciplinary universities. Some, including the University of Paris-Sorbonne, retained the name "Sorbonne" and premises in the historic centre of the University of Paris, which had until then been mainly devoted to the Faculties of Arts and Sciences.

The University of Paris-VI is created from the majority of the teaching and research units of the Faculty of Sciences of Paris (the others joining the universities of Paris-VII Denis Diderot (now Université Paris Cité), Paris-Saclay University in Orsay, Paris-XII and Paris-XIII in Villetaneuse) and part of the units of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris (the others joining the universities of Paris-V René Descartes (now Université Paris Cité), Paris-VII Denis Diderot and Paris-XIII).

Reunification of the universities of Paris IV and Paris VI
In 2010, some of the direct successors of the faculties of the University of Paris created the Sorbonne Universities Association. The following universities, members of the group, decided to merge into Sorbonne University in 2018:

 * Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris IV) (1971–2017), formerly a constituent part of the faculty of humanities of the University of Paris.
 * Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI) (1971–2017), formerly a constituent part of the faculty of sciences and of the school of medicine of the University of Paris.

At the same time, the Sorbonne Universities Association was renamed the Sorbonne University Association; it includes the following institutions for academic cooperation:

 * University of Technology of Compiègne (1972– )
 * INSEAD
 * National Museum of Natural History
 * Centre international d’études pédagogiques (International Centre for Pedagogical Studies)
 * Pôle supérieur d’enseignement artistique Paris Boulogne-Billancourt
 * Four research institutes

As part of the reforms of French Higher Education, on 19 March 2018, the international jury called by the French Government for the "Initiative d'excellence" (IDEX) confirmed the definite win of Sorbonne University. Consequently, Sorbonne University won an endowment of 900 Million euros with no limit of time. This is the first higher education institution in Paris region to win such an endowment. The university was established by a decree issued 21 April 2017, taking effect 1 January 2018.

Faculties
Sorbonne University has three faculties: Arts and Humanities, Science and Engineering, and Medicine.

Arts and humanities
The Sorbonne University Faculty of Arts and Humanities provides studies in arts, languages, letters, and human and social sciences, and is the largest in France. Fields such as history, geography, languages, linguistics, musicology, philosophy, classical and modern literature, foreign literature and civilisations, and the history of art and archaeology are part of this faculty.

Science and engineering
The Sorbonne University Faculty of Science and Engineering is a major research institution in France. It can be considered the successor in direct line to the Faculty of Science of the University of Paris with the Paris-Saclay Faculty of Sciences.

It has 79 laboratories in the Paris region, most in association with the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). Some of the most notable institutes and laboratories include the Institut Henri Poincaré (Mathematics), Institut d'astrophysique de Paris (Astrophysics), LIP6 (Informatics / Computer Science), Institut des systèmes intelligents et de robotique (Robotics), Institut de mathématiques de Jussieu – Paris Rive Gauche (foundations of Mathematics, shared with University Paris Cité) and the Laboratoire Kastler-Brossel (Quantum Physics, shared with PSL University).

Medicine
The Sorbonne University Faculty of Health is associated with the Assistance Publique–Hôpitaux de Paris, the Sorbonne University Hospital Group (Hôpital Charles-Foix, Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, Hôpital Fondation Rothschild, Hôpital Saint-Antoine, Hôpital Tenon, Hôpital Armand-Trousseau, Hôpital de La Roche-Guyon) and the Quinze-Vingts National Ophthalmology Hospital, promoting multidisciplinary research, and training doctors and other health professionals.

Law (external tuition)
There is no law school as such in Sorbonne University. In 1971, most of the law professors from the Faculty of Law and Economics of the University of Paris decided to restructure it as a university, called Panthéon-Assas University (after the two main campuses of the Paris Law Faculty: place du Panthéon and rue d’Assas campuses). Panthéon-Assas now provides legal studies for Sorbonne University as an independent university.

Sorbonne
Sorbonne University's historical campus is in the historic central Sorbonne building, located at 47 rue des Écoles, in the historic Latin Quarter of Paris. The building is the undivided property of the 13 successor universities of the University of Paris, managed by the Chancellerie des Universités de Paris. Besides the monuments of the Cour d'honneur, the Sorbonne Chapel and the Grand amphitéâtre, the building houses the Sorbonne University Faculty of Arts and Humanities, the Academy of Paris Rectorat, the Chancellerie des Universités de Paris, part of the universities Pantheon-Sorbonne, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Sorbonne University, Paris Cité University and the École Nationale des Chartes as well as the École pratique des hautes études that are constituent schools of PSL University.

Before the 19th century, the Sorbonne occupied several buildings. The chapel was built in 1622 by the then-Provisor of the University of Paris, Cardinal Richelieu, during the reign of Louis XIII. In 1881, politician Jules Ferry decided to convert the Sorbonne into one single building. Under the supervision of Pierre Greard, Chief Officer of the Education Authority of Paris, Henri-Paul Nénot constructed the current building from 1883 to 1901 that reflects a basic architectural uniformity. The integration of the chapel into the whole was also Nénot's work with the construction of a cour d'honneur. The Sorbonne building is generally reserved for undergraduate students in their third year and graduate students in certain academic disciplines. Only students in Semitic studies, regardless of level, take all their classes at the Sorbonne campus.

The Sorbonne Library is an inter-university library of the universities Pantheon-Sorbonne, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Sorbonne University, Université Paris Cité, under the administration of Panthéon-Sorbonne. It is open exclusively to undergraduate students in their third year and graduate students. With the former archives of the now-defunct University of Paris, 2,500,000 books, 400,000 of them ancient, 2,500 historical manuscripts, 18,000 doctoral dissertation papers, 17,750 past and current French and international periodicals and 7,100 historical printing plates, the Sorbonne Library is the largest university library in Paris and was entirely refurbished in 2013.

The Sorbonne University Library's Arts and Humanities Department (French: Pôle Lettres de la Bibliothèque de Sorbonne Université), part of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, offers its students and teaching staff access to 18 libraries and thematic collections. The catalog includes 600,000 books, 350,000 e-books, 60,000 issues of online periodicals and 165 databases.

Jussieu
The largest of Sorbonne University's campuses is Jussieu Campus, officially named "Pierre and Marie Curie campus". It houses the Faculty of Sciences. The first buildings are from 1957. The main part of the campus, the "Gril d'Albert," was built in 1964, and was completely refurbished from 1996 to 2016.

Within the Sorbonne University Library, it houses 6 university libraries, including an important research library in mathematics and computer science.

Maison de la Recherche
The Maison de la Recherche campus is the central building for doctoral studies that hosts the history and geography departments. It houses the Sorbonne University Library Serpente Library that has 55,000 works and 292 past and current French and international periodicals. All doctoral dissertations since 1 January 1986 have been stored at the Serpente Library.

Clignancourt and Malesherbes
Two other campuses are the Clignancourt and Malesherbes centers. Undergraduate students in their first and second years of study in Philosophy, History, Geography, Musicology, English and Spanish take their classes at the Clignancourt center. The Clignancourt Library contains 78,000 works, 210 French and international periodicals and 800 educational DVDs.

Undergraduate students in their first and second years of study in French literature, French language, Latin, and Ancient Greek take their classes at the Malesherbes center. All undergraduate students in these academic disciplines study in the central Sorbonne building in their third year. Undergraduate and graduate students in German studies, Slavic studies, Italic studies and Romanian studies, regardless of level, take all of their classes at the Malesherbes center. The Malesherbes center also hosts three research centers in Italian culture, the cultures and literature of central Europe and the Balkans and the Germanic, Nordic and Dutch centers. The Malesherbes Library contains 200,000 works specializing in the study of foreign languages and cultures and 1,200 past and current French and international periodicals. More than 50,000 doctoral dissertations are available for public viewing.

Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie
Undergraduate Art History and Archeology students take their classes at the Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie, located at the main entrance of the Jardin du Luxembourg. Constructed by architect Paul Bigot between 1925 and 1930, the Mesopotamian-style building was classified as a national historic building in 1996. It hosts the Michelet Library that contains 100,000 volumes of work on art history and archeology with 100 French and international periodicals. Only 10,000 of the art history and archeology works are open to students, the others requiring special authorization of usage. Graduate Art History and Archeology students take their courses at the Institut National de l'Histoire de l'Art in the Galerie Colbert, a partnered national institution of the university.

Other campuses in Paris
Both the Institut d'Urbanisme et d'Aménagement and the Institut d'Etudes hispaniques in the Latin Quarter host third year and graduate students of Geography and Iberian and Latin American studies. The Marcel Bataillon Library houses the Institut d'Etudes Hispaniques' collection of 25,000 works on Iberian and Latin-American culture. Catalan studies take place at the Centre d'Etudes catalanes in the Marais.

The Sorbonne University also includes Campus Pitié and Campus Saint-Antoine for the study of medicine ; Campus Les Cordeliers, Campus Curie and Campus Raspail for sciences studies.

Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi
An exclusive international agreement between Sorbonne and the government of Abu Dhabi was signed on 19 February 2006, starting plans to bring Sorbonne University to Abu Dhabi. Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi (SUAD) was established on 30 May 2008 on Reem Island by a decree of the ruler of Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates. All programs are taught in the French language except for the Bachelor of Physics and most of the masters programmes, that are taught in English. An intensive French language programme is offered for one or two year(s) to students who do not meet the French language requirement for registration. The establishment of the university demonstrates the keenness of Abu Dhabi to create an international hub in culture and education, having also signed a contract with the Louvre in 2007 to create the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and with New York University in 2007 to create New York University Abu Dhabi. SUAD is jointly governed by the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) and by SUAD's board of trustees, with six members, three of whom are appointed by the home Sorbonne University and the other three appointed by the Abu Dhabi Executive Council. The president of SUAD is the president of Sorbonne University in Paris, currently Prof Nathalie Drach-Temam. Academic programmes are offered at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the social sciences, humanities, law and sciences.

Rankings and reputation
Sorbonne University is consistently ranked in the top universities in Europe and the world. The first recognition of its existence as an integrated university came in 2018, when it appeared on the CWUR World University Rankings 2018–2019 in 29th place globally and 1st place in France.

In the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2020, Sorbonne University is ranked in range 39 globally and 3rd in France.

In the Times Higher Education European Teaching Rankings 2024, Sorbonne University was ranked in fourth place in France.

In the Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings 2019, Sorbonne University was ranked in range 51–60 globally and 2nd in France.

The 2021 QS World University Rankings ranked Sorbonne University 83rd overall in the world and 3rd in France. Individual faculties at Sorbonne University also featured in the rankings.

Before the merger of Paris-Sorbonne University and Pierre and Marie Curie University, both had their own rankings in the world.

Its founding predecessor Paris-Sorbonne University was ranked 222 in the world by the QS World University Rankings 2015. By faculty, it was ranked 9 in modern languages, 36 in arts and humanities (1st in France), and 127 in social sciences and management (5th in France). By academic reputation, it was ranked 80 (2nd in France), according to the QS World University Rankings, and 2nd in overall highest international reputation of all academic institutions in France, according to the Times Higher Education 2015. In 2014 Paris-Sorbonne ranked 227 in the world, according to the QS World University Rankings, 115 for Social Sciences and Management, 33 for Arts and Humanities.

Pierre and Marie Curie University was often ranked as the best university in France. In 2014 UPMC was ranked 35th in the world, 6th in Europe and 1st in France by the Academic Ranking of World Universities. It was ranked 4th in the world in the field of mathematics by the same study. The 2013 QS World University Rankings ranked the university 112th overall in the world and 3rd in France. In 2013, according to University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP), Université Pierre et Marie Curie is ranked first university in France, and 44th in the world. UPMC is a member of Sorbonne University Association.

International partnerships
Sorbonne students can study abroad for a semester or a year at partner institutions such as McGill University, University of Toronto, King's College London, and University of Warwick.

Organization
Members have worked on several projects in order to strengthen the relations between them and potentially create a new international institution. The most famous projects are :

 * the "Sorbonne College" (Collège des Licences de la Sorbonne) for bachelor's degrees,
 * the "Sorbonne Faculty of Arts and Humanities", "Sorbonne Faculty of Health" and the "Sorbonne Faculty of Sciences" for graduate students,
 * and the "Sorbonne Doctoral College" (Collège doctoral de la Sorbonne) for PhD students.

The Sorbonne College
Since 2014, the Sorbonne College for bachelor's degrees ("Collège des Licences de la Sorbonne") has been coordinating the academic projects of Sorbonne University with Panthéon-Assas University, the law school of the Sorbonne University Group which has not merged into the Sorbonne University and remained independent. It also offers cross-institutional academic courses in many fields, allowing students to graduate from both institutions. For example, some cross-institutional bachelor's degrees ("double licences") are proposed to students in :
 * Science and History (Sorbonne)
 * Science and Musicology (Sorbonne)
 * Science and Philosophy (Sorbonne)
 * Science and Chinese (Sorbonne)
 * Science and German (Sorbonne)
 * Law and History (Panthéon-Assas / Sorbonne)
 * Law and Art History (Panthéon-Assas / Sorbonne)
 * Law and Science (Panthéon-Assas / Sorbonne)
 * History and Media (Sorbonne / Panthéon-Assas)

As it is the case in the Anglo-American university system, Sorbonne University proposes a major-minor system, that is currently being deployed at the university.

Sorbonne University, in partnership with INSEAD, also offers all of its alumni and PhD students a professionalizing course in business management to complete their curriculum.

The Doctoral College
Since 2010, every PhD student is being delivered an honorary diploma labeled Sorbonne University. This diploma highlights and gathers the skills of the doctors and researchers from the institutions that form Sorbonne University.

The Sorbonne Doctoral College, created in 2013, coordinates the activities of the 26 doctoral schools. Since 2014, it has developed cross-disciplinary Ph.Ds between the different members of the Sorbonne University Association.

Since 2011, Sorbonne University celebrates its graduates in a formal ceremony where every Ph.D. graduate wears a scholar uniform.

Research
To strengthen the influence of its research infrastructures at the international level, Sorbonne University has developed several research programs aiming at reinforcing or exploring new fields of study. This innovative cross-disciplinary approach was embodied with the creation of four new academic positions gathering several establishments of the group:
 * A Department of Digital Humanities, exploring the use of digital technologies in the social science
 * A Department of Polychromatic Studies of Societies, associating architecture, anthropology, chemical physics, literature and art history
 * A Department of Digital Health, exploring biomedical tools
 * A Department of 3D Craniofacial Reconstruction

Sorbonne University has formed several partnerships enabling bilateral research programswith academic institutions such as the China Scholarship Council or the Brazilian foundation FAPERJ.

Sorbonne University is a member of the League of European Research Universities, which gathers 23 European universities such as Cambridge and Oxford.

Scientific collections
The Sorbonne University houses eight notable scientific collections that are open to researchers. Some collections are open to the public as noted.

 * Minerals – over 1500 minerals on display in 24 cases, open to the public
 * Physics experiments models – models built by professors from the Sorbonne and UPMC in order to demonstrate different principles of physics
 * Zoology – teaching collection of stuffed specimens, skeletal mounts, fluid parts, anatomical casts and insect boxes
 * Paleontology – research collection of fossil invertebrates
 * G. Lippmann collection – Research collection of 46 photographic plates created by Gabriel Lippmann in his studies of photography and the physics of light
 * Charcot Library – Research collection of the personal library of neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot
 * Paleobotany – Research collection of Fossil plants
 * Musée Dupuytren – moved from Cordeliers, will be open to the public occasionally, features wax anatomical items and preserved specimens illustrating diseases and malformations.

Recent Nobel, Fields and Turing laureates

 * Anne L'Huillier – PhD – Nobel in Physics – 2023
 * Emmanuelle Charpentier – BA, Master and PhD – Nobel in Chemistry – 2020
 * Gérard Mourou – PhD – Nobel in Physics – 2018
 * Serge Haroche – PhD and Professor – Nobel in Physics – 2012
 * Claude Cohen-Tannoudji – Professor – Nobel in Physics – 1997
 * Françoise Barré-Sinoussi – Grad Attendee – Nobel in Physiology or Medicine – 2008
 * Cédric Villani – Grad Attendee (DEA) and former director of the Institut Henri Poincaré – Fields Medal – 2010
 * Ngô Bảo Châu – BA – Fields Medal – 2010
 * Wendelin Werner – PhD – Fields Medal – 2006
 * Pierre-Louis Lions – PhD – Fields Medal – 1994
 * Alain Connes – PhD and Professor – Fields Medal – 1982
 * Yann LeCun – PhD – Turing Award – 2018

Notable alumni

 * Raphael Armattoe, Ghanaian medical doctor, author, poet and politician.
 * Marie Curie, Professor at the Sorbonne, first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two scientific fields.
 * Annik Houel, psychologist and feminist
 * Taha Hussein, was one of the most influential 20th-century Middle-Eastern writers and intellectuals, he was nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature fourteen times. Minister of education in 1950.
 * Mona Khazinder, Saudi art curator and historian
 * Jacqueline Ki-Zerbo, Malian women's rights  activist, pro-democracy activist and participant in the endogenous development of Africa
 * Yann LeCun, Professor at New York University and Head of AI at Facebook, "founding father of convolutional nets"
 * Yvonne Rokseth, composer and musicologist
 * Hossein Towfigh, pioneer of Iranian press freedom & Editor-in-Chief of Towfigh Magazine, the most popular satirical weekly magazine in Iran.
 * Charlotte and Laura Tremble, French synchronized swimmers
 * Simone de Beauvoir, French philosopher and notable feminist.
 * Iza Zielińska, Polish anarchist and feminist activist.

title: Sorbonne University


text:
Screw-pile lighthouse

A screw-pile lighthouse is a lighthouse which stands on piles that are screwed into sandy or muddy sea or river bottoms. The first screw-pile lighthouse to begin construction was built by the blind Irish engineer Alexander Mitchell. Construction began in 1838 at the mouth of the Thames and was known as the Maplin Sands lighthouse, and first lit in 1841. However, though its construction began later, the Wyre Light in Fleetwood, Lancashire, was the first to be lit (in 1840).

In the United States, several screw-pile lighthouses were constructed in the Chesapeake Bay due to its estuarial soft bottom. North Carolina's sounds and river entrances also once had many screw-pile lights. The characteristic design is a $1 1/2$-storey hexagonal wooden building with dormers and a cupola light room.

History
Non-screwpile (straightpile) tubular skeletal tower lighthouses were built, usually of cast-iron but also of wrought-iron piles, both onshore and offshore, typically on soft bottoms such as mud, sand, and swamp. Alexander Mitchell invented the screwpile, a major improvement over the standard straightpile construction type. With his son, he patented his wrought-iron screwpile design in England in 1833. The Walde Lighthouse in northern France (Pas-de-Calais), established in 1859, was based on Mitchell's design. Although discontinued in 1998 and shorn of its lantern, it is the only remaining screwpile lighthouse in France.

Screw-pile lighthouses in the United States
The first screwpile lighthouse type built in the United States was at Brandywine Shoal, Delaware Bay, an area served by a lightship since 1823 and an ordinary straightpile lighthouse which stood briefly there in 1828 but was destroyed by ice. Major Hartman Bache, a distinguished engineer of the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, began work in 1848 and completed the task in 1850, at a construction cost of $53,317. Alexander Mitchell served as consultant. The screwpiles were turned by a 4-foot capstan worked by 30 men. To protect the structure from ice floes an ice-breaker consisting of a pier of 30 iron screwpiles 23 feet long and five inches in diameter was screwed down into the bottom and interconnected at their heads above the water reinforcing them together. Subsequently, though, the use of caisson lighthouses proved more durable in locations subject to ice. Screwpile lighthouses were relatively inexpensive, easy to construct, and comparatively quick to build. They became especially popular after the Civil War when the Lighthouse Board adopted a policy to replace inside (bays, sounds, and rivers) light vessels with screwpile lighthouses. Most screwpile lighthouses were made with iron piles, though a few were made with wooden piles covered with metal screw sleeves (these sleeves were probably adopted because they were less expensive and easier to insert into the bottom, plus the sleeve protected the wood from marine-boring invertebrates). The typical screwpile lighthouse was hexagonal or octagonal in plan consisting of a central pile which was set first and then the six or eight perimeter piles were screwed in place around it.

Metal screwpiles were used to form the foundation of many lighthouses built on sandy or muddy bottoms. The helicoidal or screw-like cast-iron flange at the end of the metal pile was augured into the bottom increasing the bearing capacity of the pile as well as its anchoring properties. Yet lighthouses built with these foundations were found to be vulnerable to ice floes. In areas such as the Florida Keys, where the bottom is soft coral rock, diskpile foundation lighthouses were built. Wrought iron piles were driven through a cast-iron or semi-steel disk which rested on the sea floor until a shoulder on the pile prevented further penetration. The disk distributes the weight of the tower more evenly over the bottom. In coral reef areas where sand is also prevalent, a cast-steel screw was fitted to the end of the pile to give it more anchoring ability. Cofferdams were used generally in shallow waters where it was not necessary to deeply penetrate the natural bottom. The cofferdam enabled the water inside the dam to be pumped out and the foundation built "in the dry".

Perhaps as many as 100 spider-like, cottage-type (1½-storey wooden dwelling) screwpile lighthouses were built throughout the Carolina sounds, Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, along the Gulf of Mexico, at least two in Long Island Sound and one even at Maumee Bay (1855), Lake Erie, Ohio. Few survive to this day; many were replaced with caisson-type lighthouses. The tall offshore skeletal tower type was built in exposed open water at major coastal sites where visibility over ten miles was required. Six offshore skeletal towers were built in Florida; three before and three after the American Civil War, as well as one in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana prior to the Civil War.

Surviving examples

 * Spit Bank Lighthouse, in Cork Harbour, Ireland was built by Alexander Mitchell between 1851 and 1853 and is still in use.
 * Carysfort Reef Light, four miles east of Key Largo, Florida, was built in 1852 and was the oldest screw-pile (with disk) lighthouse still in service in the United States, until it was deactivated in 2014. Screw-pile lighthouses on the reefs in Florida are tall skeletal towers, with living and working quarters set high above the reach of storm waves.
 * The Seven Foot Knoll Light was built in 1856 and is the oldest screwpile lighthouse in Maryland. It was initially installed on a shallow shoal, Seven Foot Knoll, at the mouth of the Patapsco River. The northern reach of this river is the Baltimore Inner Harbor, where the now-decommissioned lighthouse has been placed as a museum.
 * The Thomas Point Shoal Light is a historic lighthouse in the Chesapeake Bay and the most recognized lighthouse in Maryland.
 * The Drum Point Light originally located off Drum Point at the mouth of the Patuxent River, it is now an exhibit at the Calvert Marine Museum.
 * The Hooper Strait Light originally located at the entrance to Tangier Sound, it is now an exhibit at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.
 * The Roanoke River Light was built in 1886, and has been moved twice. It is the only surviving screw-pile lighthouse in North Carolina.
 * Fowey Rocks Light, built in 1878, is seven miles south of Key Biscayne, Florida., it is the last screw-pile lighthouse still in operation on the Florida Reef.
 * American Shoal Light, completed in 1880 (deactivated in 2015), is located east of the Saddlebunch Keys, in the Florida Keys.
 * Built in 1885, the Middle Bay Light in Alabama's Mobile Bay is an example of a common screw-pile lighthouse.
 * Gunfleet Lighthouse off Frinton-on-Sea in Essex was constructed in 1850 but abandoned in 1921.

Replicas

 * Full size replica of the Stingray Point Light that once stood off Stingray Point near the mouth of the Rappahannock River, located at Stingray Point Marina in Deltaville, Virginia
 * A replica of the Roanoke Marshes Light overlooks Roanoke Sound in the village of Manteo, North Carolina on Roanoke Island
 * A replica of the original Roanoke River Light was built in Plymouth, North Carolina.
 * A faithful replica of The Choptank River Light stands on the waterfront in Cambridge, Maryland - the seat of Dorchester County on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

title: Screw-pile lighthouse


text:
Jacques Plante

Joseph Jacques Omer Plante (January 17, 1929 – February 27, 1986) was a Canadian professional ice hockey goaltender. During a career lasting from 1947 to 1975, he was considered to be one of the most important innovators in hockey. He played for the Montreal Canadiens from 1953 to 1963; during his tenure, the team won the Stanley Cup six times, including five consecutive wins. In 2017 Plante was named one of the "100 Greatest NHL Players" in history.

Plante retired in 1965 but was persuaded to return to the National Hockey League to play for the expansion St. Louis Blues in 1968. He was later traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1970 and to the Boston Bruins in 1973. He joined the World Hockey Association as a coach and general manager for the Quebec Nordiques in 1973–74. He then played goal for the Edmonton Oilers in 1974–75, ending his professional career with that team.

Plante was the first NHL goaltender to wear a goaltender mask in regulation play on a regular basis. He developed and tested many versions of the mask (including the forerunner of today's mask/helmet combination) with the assistance of other experts. Plante was the first NHL goaltender to regularly play the puck outside his crease in support of his team's defencemen, and he often instructed his teammates from behind the play. Plante was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1978, was chosen as the goaltender of the Canadiens' "dream team" in 1985, and was inducted into the Quebec Sports Pantheon in 1994. The Montreal Canadiens retired Plante's jersey, #1, the following year. Plante ranks seventh among NHL goalies for all-time career wins with 437.

Early life

Plante was born on a farm near Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel, in Mauricie, Quebec, the first of 11 children born to Palma and Xavier Plante. The family moved to Shawinigan Falls, where his father worked in one of the local factories. In 1932, Plante began to play hockey, skateless and with a tennis ball, using a goaltender's hockey stick his father had carved from a tree root. When he was five years old, Plante fell off a ladder and broke his hand. The fracture failed to heal properly and affected his playing style during his early hockey career; he underwent successful corrective surgery as an adult. Plante suffered from asthma starting in early childhood. This prevented him from skating for extended periods, so he gravitated to playing goaltender. As his playing progressed, Jacques received his first regulation goaltender's stick for Christmas of 1936. His father made Plante's first pads by stuffing potato sacks and reinforcing them with wooden panels. As a child, Plante played hockey outdoors in the bitterly cold Quebec winters. His mother taught him how to knit his own tuques to protect him from the cold. Plante continued knitting and embroidering throughout his life and wore his hand-knitted tuques while playing and practicing until entering the National Hockey League (NHL).

Plante's first foray into organized hockey came at age 12. He was watching his school's team practice when the coach ordered the goaltender off the ice after a heated argument over his play, and Plante asked to replace him. The coach permitted him to play since there was no other available goaltender; it was quickly apparent that Plante could hold his own, despite the other players being many years older than he was. He impressed the coach and stayed on as the team's number-one goaltender.

Two years later, Plante was playing for five different teams — the local factory team, and teams in the midget, juvenile, junior, and intermediate categories. Plante demanded a salary from the factory team's coach after his father told him that the other players were being paid because they were company employees. The coach paid Plante 50 cents per game to retain him and maintain the team's popularity. Afterwards, Plante began to receive various offers from other teams; he was offered $80 per week — a considerable sum in those days — to play for a team in England, and a similar offer to play for the Providence Reds of the American Hockey League. Plante passed them up because his parents wanted him to finish high school. He graduated with top honours in 1947. Upon graduation, he took a job as a clerk in a Shawinigan factory. A few weeks later, the Quebec Citadels offered Plante $85 per week to play for them; he accepted, marking the beginning of his professional career.

In 1949, he married Jacqueline Gagné; they had two sons, Michel and Richard.

Minor leagues
Jacques joined the Quebec Citadelles in 1947. While playing for Quebec, Plante started to play the puck outside his crease, a technique he developed when he recognized that the team's defense was performing poorly. Fans found Plante's unconventional playing style to be exciting, but it angered his managers, who believed that a goaltender should stay in the net and let his players recover the puck. Plante had concluded that as long as he was in control of the puck, the opponents could not shoot it at him – this is now standard practice for goaltenders. The same season, the Citadelles beat the Montreal Junior Canadiens in the league finals, with Plante being named the most valuable player on his team. The Montreal Canadiens' general manager, Frank J. Selke, became interested in acquiring Plante as a member of the team. In 1948, Plante received an invitation to the Canadiens' training camp. On August 17, 1949, Selke offered Plante a contract. Plante played for Montreal's affiliate Royal Montreal Hockey Club, earning $4,500 for the season, and an extra $500 for practicing with the Canadiens.

In January 1953, Plante was called up to play for the Canadiens. Bill Durnan, the goaltender who played for Montreal when Plante first began, had retired, and Gerry McNeil, their top goaltender, had fractured his jaw. Plante played three games, but in that short time, he generated controversy. Coach Dick Irvin, Sr. did not wish his players to stand out by any addition to their regular uniforms. Plante always wore one of his tuques while playing hockey, and after an argument with Irvin, all of Plante's tuques had vanished from the Montreal locker room. Even without his good luck charm, Plante gave up only four goals in the three games he played, all of them wins.

Later during the 1952–53 NHL season, Plante played in the playoffs against the Chicago Black Hawks. He won his first playoff game with a shutout. Montreal won that series and eventually, the Stanley Cup, and Plante's name was engraved on the Cup for the first time.

At the beginning of 1953, McNeil was still the starting goaltender for the Canadiens. Selke assigned Plante to the Buffalo Bisons of the American Hockey League so fans in the United States would get to know him. Plante was instantly successful; Fred Hunt, the general manager of the Bisons, told Kenny Reardon, Montreal's recruiting manager, "he's [Plante] the biggest attraction since the good old days of Terry Sawchuk."

Montreal Canadiens
By the end of the 1953–54 season, Plante was well-entrenched within the NHL. In the spring of 1954, he underwent surgery to correct his left hand, which he had broken in his childhood. He could not move his hand well enough to catch high shots and compensated by using the rest of his body. The operation was successful.

On February 12, 1954, Plante was called up to the Canadiens and established himself as their starting goaltender – he did not return to the minor leagues for many years. Plante was the Canadiens' number one goaltender at the beginning of the 1954–55 NHL season. On March 13, 1955, with only four games left in the season, an on-ice brawl resulted in the suspension of Montreal's leading scorer, Maurice Richard, for the rest of the season and the playoffs. Four nights later, playing in Montreal in front of an angry crowd, Plante was witness to the riot that followed. The Canadiens subsequently lost to the Detroit Red Wings in the finals.

For the 1955–56 season, Plante was the unchallenged starting goaltender of the Canadiens; Gerry McNeil had not played the previous season and was sent to the Montreal Royals. Charlie Hodge, Plante's backup the previous season, was sent to the Seattle Americans, a Canadiens' farm team. Later that season, Montreal won the Stanley Cup, the first of what would be five consecutive Stanley Cup championship seasons. For his part, Plante won the first of five consecutive Vezina Trophies. The next season, Plante missed most of November because of chronic bronchitis, a consequence of asthma that had affected him since childhood. During the 1957–58 NHL season, the Canadiens won their third straight Stanley Cup despite injuries to Plante and other members of the team. Plante's asthma was getting worse. He sustained a concussion with just a few weeks left in the season and missed three games of the playoffs. In the sixth game of the Stanley Cup finals, Plante's asthma was making him dizzy, and he was having difficulty concentrating; he collapsed at the end of the game after teammate Doug Harvey scored the series-winning goal. The Canadiens went on to win the Stanley Cup again at the close of the 1958–59 season.

Goalie mask
During the 1959–60 season, Plante wore a goaltender mask for the first time in a regular season game. Although Plante had used his mask in practice since 1956 after missing 13 games because of a sinusitis operation, head coach Toe Blake was afraid it would impair his vision and would not permit him to wear it during regulation play. However, on November 1, 1959, Plante's nose was broken when he was hit by a shot fired by Andy Bathgate three minutes into a game against the New York Rangers, and he was taken to the dressing room for stitches. When he returned, he was wearing the crude homemade goaltender mask that he had been using in practices. Blake was livid, but he had no other goaltender to call upon and Plante refused to return to the goal unless he wore the mask. Blake agreed on the condition that Plante discard the mask when the cut healed. The Canadiens won the game 3–1. During the following days, Plante refused to discard the mask, and as the Canadiens continued to win, Blake was less vocal about it. The unbeaten streak stretched to 18 games. Plante did not wear the mask, at Blake's request, against Detroit on March 8, 1960; the Canadiens lost 3–0, and the mask returned for good the next night. That year, the Canadiens won their fifth straight Stanley Cup, which was Plante's last.

Plante subsequently designed his own and other goaltenders' masks. He was not the first NHL goaltender known to wear a face mask. Montreal Maroons' Clint Benedict wore a crude leather version in 1930 to protect a broken nose, but Plante introduced the mask as everyday equipment, and it is now mandatory equipment for goaltenders.

Trade to New York and first retirement
Hampered by terrible pain in his left knee during the 1960–61 NHL season, Plante was sent down to the minor league Montreal Royals. Torn cartilage was found in his knee, and the knee was surgically repaired during the summer of 1961. The next season, Plante became the fourth goaltender to win the Hart Memorial Trophy, while winning the Vezina Trophy for the sixth time. The 1962–63 season was unsettling for Plante. His asthma had worsened, and he missed most of the early season. His relationship with his coach, Toe Blake, continued to deteriorate because of Plante's persistent health problems. Later, Plante was at the center of a major controversy when he claimed that net sizes in the NHL were not uniform, thus giving a statistical advantage to goaltenders playing for the Chicago Black Hawks, Boston Bruins, and New York Rangers. His claim was later confirmed as the result of a manufacturing error.

After the Canadiens were eliminated for the third straight year in the first playoff round during the spring of 1963, there was mounting pressure for change from their fans and media. Growing tension between Plante and Blake because of Plante's inconsistent work ethic and demeanor caused Blake to declare that for the 1963–64 season either he or Plante must go. On June 4, 1963, Plante was traded to the New York Rangers, with Phil Goyette and Don Marshall in exchange for Gump Worsley, Dave Balon, Leon Rochefort, and Len Ronson. Plante played for the Rangers for one full season and part of a second. He retired in 1965 while playing for the Rangers' AHL affiliate, the Baltimore Clippers. His wife was ill at the time, and he required surgery on his right knee.

Upon retirement, Plante took a job with Molson as a sales representative but remained active in the NHL. In 1965, Scotty Bowman asked Plante to play for the Montreal Jr. Canadiens in a game against the Soviet National Team. Honoured to represent his country, Plante agreed, and after receiving permission from both the Rangers (who owned his rights) and Molson, he began practicing. The Canadiens won 2–1, and Plante was named first star of the game.

Comeback to professional hockey
At the beginning of the 1967–68 NHL season, Plante received a call from his ex-teammate Bert Olmstead seeking some help coaching the expansion Oakland Seals. Plante coached mainly by example, and after the three-week training camp, he returned home to Montreal. Plante also played an exhibition game with the Seals. Rumours swirled that Plante was planning a comeback.

In June 1968, Plante was selected in an intraleague draft by the St. Louis Blues and signed for $35,000 for the 1968–69 season. In his first season with the Blues, Plante split the goaltending duties with Glenn Hall. He won the Vezina Trophy that season for the seventh time, surpassing Bill Durnan's record. While playing for the Blues in the 1969–70 playoffs against the Boston Bruins, a shot fired by Fred Stanfield and redirected by Phil Esposito hit Plante in the forehead, knocking him out and breaking his fibreglass mask. The first thing Plante said after he regained consciousness at the hospital was that the mask saved his life. That game proved to be his last for the Blues, and he was traded in the summer of 1970 to the Toronto Maple Leafs. He led the NHL with the lowest goals against average (GAA) during his first season with the Maple Leafs. That season, he also tied a Leafs franchise record, winning 9 straight games. At season's end, he was named to the NHL's second All-Star team, his seventh such honour. Late in the 1972–73 season, Plante was traded to the Boston Bruins. While he had two shutouts in eight regular season games, Plante struggled in the playoffs, and after conceding 10 goals in two games, he was replaced as the starter.

Plante accepted a $1 million, 10-year contract to become coach and general manager of the Quebec Nordiques of the World Hockey Association in 1973. He was highly dissatisfied with his and the team's performance and resigned at the end of the 1973–74 season. Coming out of retirement once more, Plante played 31 games for the Edmonton Oilers of the WHA in the 1974–75 season. Plante retired during the Oilers' training camp in 1975–76 after receiving news that his youngest son had died.

Hockey analysis and coaching
Plante had a well-earned reputation for his ability to analyse the game of hockey. He began shouting directions to his teammates during games in his first stint in the minor leagues (the goaltender usually has the best view of the game). He kept extensive notes on opposing players and teams throughout his career. He made his debut in the broadcasting booth during his first retirement in the 1960s as a colour commentator for broadcasts of Quebec Junior League games alongside Danny Gallivan of Hockey Night in Canada fame. Radio Canada, the French language branch of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, brought Plante aboard as an on-air analyst for its television broadcasts of the 1972 Summit Series between the national team of the Soviet Union and a Canadian team made up of professional players from the NHL. Plante was one of the few North American analysts who dissented from the widely held belief in the superiority of the Canadian team.

Plante also wrote extensively on hockey. He wrote hockey columns starting early in his career and was published in La Voix de Shawinigan, Le Samedi, and Sport Magazine. He alienated local reporters by writing a column for the local paper during his time as coach of the Quebec Nordiques. His seminal work, On Goaltending, was published in 1972 in English, with the French edition (entitled Devant le filet) published in 1973. In his book, Plante outlined a program of goaltender development that included off-ice exercises, choice of equipment, styles of play, and game-day preparation. He also advised on best coaching methods for both young and advanced goaltenders. His book remained popular with coaches and players and was reprinted in both French and English in 1997, 25 years after it was first published.

Starting in 1967, Plante was one of the instructors at École moderne de hockey, a summer hockey school for young players. His reputation as a teacher spread, and he traveled to Sweden in 1972 at the invitation of the Swedish Hockey Federation, teaching the top goaltenders in the country and their coaches and trainers. During his first and second retirements, Plante also coached goaltenders and consulted for several NHL teams, including the Oakland Seals, Philadelphia Flyers, Montreal Canadiens and St. Louis Blues.

Retirement and death
Plante finally retired from hockey in 1975, after the death of his youngest son. He moved to Switzerland with his second wife, Raymonde Udrisard, but remained active on the North American hockey scene as an analyst, adviser, and goaltender trainer. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1978. In the fall of 1985, Plante was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. He died in a Geneva hospital in February 1986 and was buried in Sierre, Switzerland. When his coffin was carried from the church following the funeral mass, it passed under an arch of hockey sticks held high by a team of young hockey players from Quebec, visiting Switzerland for a tournament.

Legacy
Plante was one of the first goaltenders to skate behind the net to stop the puck. He also was one of the first to raise his arm on an icing call to let his defencemen know what was happening. He perfected a stand-up, positional style, cutting down the angles; he became one of the first goaltenders to write a how-to book about the position. He was a pioneer of stickhandling the puck; before that time, goaltenders passively stood in the net and simply deflected pucks to defencemen or backchecking forwards.

Plante was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1978, Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1981, and into the Quebec Sports Pantheon in 1994. His no. 1 jersey was retired in 1995 by the Montreal Canadiens. The Jacques Plante Memorial Trophy was established in his honour as an award to the top goaltender in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. The Jacques Plante Trophy was established in Switzerland after Plante's death; it is given out annually to the top Swiss goaltender. The former arena in Shawinigan, where Plante grew up and played his first organized games, was renamed to Aréna Jacques Plante.

His injury and subsequent donning of a mask were depicted in an installment of Canada's Heritage Minute series.

Awards and honours

 * NHL

†Shared with Glenn Hall.

 * Other

title: Jacques Plante


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Zal Yanovsky

Zalman Yanovsky (December 19, 1944 – December 13, 2002) was a Canadian folk-rock musician. Born in Toronto, he was the son of political cartoonist Avrom Yanovsky and teacher Nechama Yanovsky (née Gemeril), who died in 1958. He played lead guitar and sang for the Lovin' Spoonful, a rock band which he founded with John Sebastian in 1964. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1996. He was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 as a member of the Lovin’ Spoonful. He was married to actress Jackie Burroughs, with whom he had one daughter, Zoe.

Musical career
One of the early rock and roll performers to wear a cowboy hat, and fringed "Davy Crockett" style clothing, Zal helped set the trend followed by such 1960s performers as Sonny Bono, Johnny Rivers, and David Crosby.

Mostly self-taught, he began his musical career playing folk music coffee houses in Toronto. He lived on a kibbutz in Israel for a short time before returning to Canada. He teamed with fellow Canadian Denny Doherty in the Halifax Three. The two joined Cass Elliot in the Mugwumps, a group mentioned by Doherty's and Cass's later group the Mamas & the Papas in the song "Creeque Alley".

It was at this time that he met John Sebastian, and they formed the Lovin' Spoonful with Steve Boone and Joe Butler. According to Sebastian: "He could play like Elmore James, he could play like Floyd Cramer, he could play like Chuck Berry. He could play like all these people, yet he still had his own overpowering personality. Out of this we could, I thought, craft something with real flexibility." The Lovin' Spoonful had hits such as "Do You Believe in Magic", "Summer in the City", "Daydream", "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?", "Darling Be Home Soon", and "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice". The group's only number one was Summer In The City (which stayed there for 3 weeks in August 1966).

In 1966, he was arrested in the United States on a marijuana-related charge. Returning to his native Canada, he recorded the solo album Alive and Well in Argentina (and Loving Every Minute of It). Buddah Records released the album in the U.S. in 1968, along with "As Long as You're Here", a single that did not appear on the album. The single (on which the B-side was the same track without vocals and with playback backwards) just missed the Billboard Hot 100, but fared a little better in Cashbox, peaking at No. 73, and reaching No. 57 in the Canadian RPM Magazine charts. Kama Sutra Records reissued the album in 1971 with a completely different cover, and the inclusion of "As Long as You're Here".

While a member of Kris Kristofferson's backing band at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970, he had a brief reunion with John Sebastian; Sebastian had been (apparently) unaware of Yanovsky's presence, and was made aware by a message passed through the crowd, written on a toilet roll.

He also appeared in the Off-Broadway show National Lampoon's Lemmings at New York's Village Gate. Although not an original cast member, he contributed a musical number "Nirvana Banana", a Donovan parody.

Restaurateur
After retiring from the music business, Yanovsky became a chef and restaurateur, establishing, alongside his second wife Rose Richardson, Chez Piggy restaurant in 1979 and Pan Chancho Bakery in 1994, both in Kingston, Ontario. He had worked as a chef at The Golden Apple (in Gananoque, Ontario) and, in the mid-1970s, at Dr. Bull's (in Kingston). The success of Chez Piggy prompted the publication of a companion cookbook (The Chez Piggy Cookbook, Firefly Books, 1998) that was collected by fans. After Yanovsky's death of an apparent heart attack in December 2002, and Richardson's death in 2005, his daughter Zoe Yanovsky (with actress Jackie Burroughs) took over the ownership of both eateries. Zoe also completed and launched another cookbook that Zal was working on, titled The Pan Chancho Cookbook (Bookmakers Press, 2006).

Personal life
Yanovsky met Canadian actress Jackie Burroughs in a laundromat in Toronto, where he was sleeping in a dryer while homeless. They were married in 1961 and had one daughter, Zoe, before separating in 1968. He subsequently married Rose Richardson. His step-mother was Anna Yanovsky (née Atanas), who died in 2022.

Death
Yanovsky died on December 13, 2002, in Kingston, Ontario, from a heart attack, at the age of 57. A funeral service was held in Kingston, Ontario on December 16, 2002.

Singles
Notes

title: Zal Yanovsky


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Alexander Mitchell (engineer)

Alexander Mitchell MICE  (13 April 1780 – 25 June 1868) was an Irish engineer who from 1802 was blind. He is known as the inventor of the screw-pile lighthouse.

Early life
Born in Dublin, his family moved to Belfast while he was a child, and he received his formal education at Belfast Royal Academy, where he excelled in mathematics.

Career
Originally working in brickmaking in Belfast, he invented machines used in that trade, before patenting the screw-pile in 1833, for which he would later gain some fame. The screw-pile was used for the erection of lighthouses and other structures on mudbanks and shifting sands, including bridges and piers. Mitchell's designs and methods were employed all over the world from Portland breakwater to Bombay bridges. Initially it was used for the construction of lighthouses on Maplin Sands in the Thames Estuary (the first light application, in 1838), at Fleetwood Lancashire (UK) Morecambe Bay (the first Ever Beacon Lit ) completed, in 1839), and at Belfast Lough where his lighthouse was finished in July 1844.

In May 1851 he moved to Cobh to lay the foundation for a lighthouse on the Spit Bank; the success of these undertakings led to the use of his invention on the breakwater at Portland, the viaduct and bridges on the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway and a broad system of Indian telegraphs.

While in Cork, Mitchell became friendly with astronomer John Thomas Romney Robinson, and mathematician George Boole.

Awards and honours
In 1848, he was elected a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and received the Telford Medal the same year for a paper on his invention.

Death
Mitchell died at Glen Devis near Belfast on 25 June 1868. His wife and daughter had predeceased him.

title: Alexander Mitchell (engineer)