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Talk:Owen Chamberlain

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What a pleasure it was to be able to start this article. Dr. Chamberlain was one of my professors at Berkeley, and an intelligent, warm, and wonderful man. I only wish there was a way to say that in an encyclopedia article. --ESP 23:54, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Owen Chamberlain


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Thomas Howard, 5th Duke of Norfolk

Thomas Howard, 5th Duke of Norfolk (9 March 1627 – 13 December 1677) was an English nobleman who from 1645 was deemed a lunatic. Born the eldest son of Henry Howard, 15th Earl of Arundel, Howard left England to study at Utrecht University at the start of the English Civil War. While visiting his paternal grandfather at Padua in 1645 he contracted a fever that damaged his brain. He was declared insane and confined in Padua with a physician caring for his needs. He became Earl of Arundel upon the death of his father in 1652.

Unable to coherently manage his English estates, the running of them was given over to his next eldest brother, Henry Howard, who acted in his place. In 1660 Henry successfully petitioned the House of Lords to have the attaindered title Duke of Norfolk restored. Howard, as eldest son in a line descended from Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, became 5th Duke of Norfolk. He never returned to England, being kept at Padua until his death in 1677.

Howard's younger brothers and uncle, William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford, questioned his lunacy several times. It was suggested that Henry was holding Howard at Padua in bad faith in order to reap the benefits of representing him in England. Parliament unsuccessfully ordered Howard to return in 1659, and two petitions from his brothers in 1675 and 1677 to do the same were turned down. He died childless; his family ensured that he never married so that he could not produce an heir who might inherit his mental disorder.

Early life and inheritance
Thomas Howard was born on 9 March 1627 at Arundel House. He was the eldest son of Henry Frederick Howard, Baron Maltravers, and Lady Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of Esme Stuart, 3rd Duke of Lennox. Howard, like all his brothers, was initially educated at St John's College, Cambridge. In 1641 the English Civil War was brewing and he left the country with his grandfather Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel. Howard continued his learning at Utrecht University while his grandfather lived in Antwerp. Philip Howard, one of Howard's brothers, also went to mainland Europe with his grandfather. Philip went on to go travelling in Italy, where he joined the Dominican Order and eventually became a cardinal.

Howard's grandfather, who was created Earl of Norfolk in 1644, never returned to England, dying at his villa in Padua on 4 October 1646. Howard's father, who had also been elevated, becoming Baron Mowbray in 1640, inherited the earldoms, becoming 15th Earl of Arundel. Howard in turn took on the courtesy title of Baron Maltravers. His father spent the rest of his life refusing to consent to the 14th Earl's will, which left most revenues to his widow Alethea Howard, Countess of Arundel, and attempting to overturn it. His own estates were sequestered twice, in 1646 and 1651. Financial issues and the rift between Howard's father and grandmother continued until he predeceased her on 15 April 1652; Howard's grandmother chose to leave her inheritance to his uncle, William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford, rather than to him and his siblings.

Howard was still living in mainland Europe. Succeeding his father, he became 16th Earl of Arundel, inheriting entailed estates including Arundel Castle and Arundel House, but also debts from his grandfather's time amounting to. His grandmother died on 3 June 1654, leaving him to succeed her in the baronies of Furnivall, Strange of Blackmere, and Talbot.

Insanity
Having travelled from Utrecht to visit his family in Padua in 1645, Howard fell ill there with a fever that caused him brain damage, leaving him "to sink into irredeemable lunacy" according to the biographer John Martin Robinson. There was no specific diagnosis for lunacy at this time, and mental disorders were instead judged by whether the victim could still manage their own affairs. Howard, whose behaviour was similar to that of a toddler, was determined to be a lunatic "by visitation of God". Howard never left Padua, being cared for by Henry Yerbury, an English physician, and his household controlled by a local Italian, Carlo Theobaldi. The man who inherited his father's honours in 1652 was described by a visiting Sir John Reresby as showing:"'all the Symptoms of Lunacy and Distraction'"

Being both abroad and insane, Howard was unable to manage his English estates. This role was taken on by his next eldest brother, Henry Howard. When this situation first came about, rumours were spread that Howard was being kept against his will in Padua so that Henry could take advantage of the powerful position left in his absence. His uncle Stafford was one of these, claiming in 1656 that Howard was being "kept in cruel slavery in Padua". The Venetian Resident in London reported to refute this claim that:"'The Earl is living at Padua to the entire satisfaction of his mother and relations and is maintained there by his brother here with great generosity and splendour'" The Podestà of Padua reported less diplomatically that Howard was:"'unapproachable...an incurable maniac'"

Henry managed Howard's finances and estates for the rest of his life, fully in the expectation that as Howard was unmarried he would eventually inherit them. The family monitored Howard and his condition, ensuring that he had no opportunity to marry whilst insane so that his malady could not be passed on. In the wake of the English Civil War Henry lived at Howard's Albury Park. By 1662 he had compounded Howard's debts and was working to restore the Howard family's power in Norfolk, which had waned considerably in the last century. He worked on vanity projects for the family, including the restoration of the Ducal palace in Norwich. The entailed nature of Howard's properties left Henry unable to access much of the family finances, leading him to bemoan them and his siblings to accuse him of mismanaging the family and withholding money from them.

Dukedom and death
Howard's grandfather had been nicknamed "The Collector Earl" partially for his interest in obtaining peerages for the Howard family. His ultimate goal was to reverse the attainder of the Dukedom of Norfolk, which had not been completed at the time of his death in 1646. When the Stuart Restoration returned the monarchy to England in 1660, Henry recommenced this endeavour and on 30 August introduced a bill to the House of Lords to have the dukedom restored to his family. This was successful and the  (12 Cha. 2. c. 17) received royal assent on 29 December the same year. Of the more than ninety peers who supported the petition, seven of them were members of the Howard family.

Howard, as eldest son and despite his insanity, received the restored dukedom as 5th Duke, succeeding his great-great-grandfather Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, who had forfeited the title for treason in 1572. The act was more precisely defined a year later in a new act,  (13 Cha. 2. St. 2. c. 4) on 20 December 1661. On 27 May 1675 Howard's brother Philip was created a cardinal by Pope Clement X, and while travelling to Rome to take up service there he stopped at Howard's Padua villa. Henry allowed him via letter to take "a good store of silver plate, and some very good moveables" from the guardianship of Yerbury in order to establish himself properly, titling himself Cardinal of Norfolk.

In his later life Howard's younger brothers became concerned that he was not insane and that Henry was acting in bad faith. Parliament had unsuccessfully ordered Howard to return to England in 1659, and in 1674 and 1677 the brothers petitioned the House of Commons for his return. The Commons denied these petitions, choosing to believe the testimony of visitors like Reresby and in fear of what allowing such an important but insane man into the country might result in. One of those who opposed the petition in 1674 was Sir Robert Howard, Howard's cousin. Responding to a petition from Howard's brother Bernard, in the Commons he described Howard as a "sad spectacle", and argued that returning him to England would be "in some measure ignominious to his family".

Howard died at Padua on 13 December 1677, ending worries that he would surprisingly outlive his brother. Henry, who had been created Baron Howard of Castle Rising in 1669 and Earl of Norwich and Earl Marshal in 1672, succeeded him as 6th Duke of Norfolk. Howard's body was brought back to England a year after his death, being buried at Arundel on 11 December 1678.

title: Thomas Howard, 5th Duke of Norfolk


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Beth Anderson (composer)

Beth Anderson is an American neo-romantic composer. She studied with John Cage, Terry Riley, Robert Ashley, and Larry Austin, among others. She studied at the University of Kentucky, UC Davis, New York University and Mills College.

Anderson is best known in her field for her swales, a musical form she invented based on collages and samples of newly composed music rather than existing music. She told a reporter for The New York Times in 1995 she named the form based on this definition of the word: "A swale is a meadow or marsh where a lot of wild things go together."

Early life
Anderson was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1950 and grew up in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky. Her parents, Marjorie and Sidney Anderson, encouraged her to pursue music. She began playing the piano as a child and began composing shortly after. At age 14 she began studying piano with composer Helen Libscomb. Liscomb taught Anderson the rules of counterpoint, enabling her to compose simplistic traditional music. During her last two years of high school she began to compose serial music, learning from books on the topic.

Education
Anderson attended the University of Kentucky after graduating from high school. After two years there she transferred to the University of California at Davis. After completing her undergraduate degree she received her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Piano Performance. Shortly before completing that degree, her piece Peachy Keen-O was performed at Mills College. Bob Ashley, director of the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music, upon hearing the performance, urged her to stay there and study. She completed her M.A. in Composition there.

Later life
In California, Anderson became known as one of the prominent "avant-garde feminist composers, critics, and poets." She married the computer book author Elliotte Rusty Harold on July 28, 1995, one year after they met at a potluck dinner held by the New York Macintosh Users Group. A 1995 The New York Times feature story on Harold's wedding called her both old-fashioned and conventional and observed, "She giggles often, as lightly as wind chimes. And yet she listens to the band Megadeth when cleaning her apartment."

Discography

 * Feminae in Musica (Feminae Records, 2007)
 * Tale One
 * Tale Three
 * Belgian Tango
 * Performed by: Aleksandra Maslovaric (violin), Tania Fleischer (piano)
 * Namely (Other Minds Records, 2020)

Listening

 * NewMusicJukeBox.org: Beth Anderson

title: Beth Anderson (composer)


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Aamulehti

Aamulehti (Finnish for "morning newspaper") is a Finnish-language daily newspaper published in Tampere, Finland. Established in 1881 by Finnish patriots in Tampere, the newspaper aimed to bolster the Finnish language and people's identity during Russia's reign over Finland. Throughout the Cold War, Aamulehti was accused by the Soviet Union of spreading US propaganda, leading to protests from the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki. In the 1980s, the newspaper's parent company acquired and later closed down Uusi Suomi. In 2014, Aamulehti transitioned from broadsheet to tabloid format.

Until 1992, the newspaper aligned with the National Coalition Party, but it is no longer politically affiliated. Ownership shifted from Aamulehti Corporation to Alma Media in 2003. In 2020, Sanoma corporation acquired Alma Media, thereby assuming ownership of Aamulehti. Aamulehti's content includes regular features and supplements like "Moro" for Tampere's culture, "Valo" for entertainment, and "Asiat" and "Ihmiset" for Sunday readers. The newspaper also explores journalism innovation regularly.

Circulation-wise, Aamulehti's growth was notable, peaking in 2008 when it consistently ranked among Finland's top newspapers. However, circulation figures have varied over time. By 2014, it held the second-largest circulation in Finland. The online version also attracts significant traffic, making it one of the most visited websites in the country by 2010.

History and profile
Aamulehti was founded in 1881 to "improve the position of the Finnish people and the Finnish language" during Russia's rule over Finland. The founders were nationalistic Finns in Tampere.

During the Cold War period Aamulehti was among the Finnish newspapers which were accused by the Soviet Union of being the instrument of US propaganda, and the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki frequently protested the editors of the paper.

In the 1980s, Aamulehti Corporation acquired the paper Uusi Suomi, which they shut down in 1991. Aamulehti was published in broadsheet format until April 2014 when the paper switched to tabloid format. Matti Apunen was the editor-in-chief of the paper until 2010. The paper is based in Tampere and serves the Pirkanmaa region.

Until 1992 the paper aligned itself with the National Coalition Party, but it no longer has an official connection to any political party.

Aamulehti Corporation was the owner of Aamulehti until 2003 when the paper was acquired by Alma Media, a large media corporation in Finland, for a reported 460 million euros. In 2020, the Sanoma corporation acquired Alma Media, and thus, also Aamulehti.

Since 2006 Aamulehti has published four weekly supplements — Moro (meaning "Hi", in the dialect of the Tampere region, and devoted to the culture of Tampere), on Thursdays; the entertainment-centred Valo ("Light"), published on Fridays; Asiat ("Matters"), on Sundays; and Ihmiset ("People"), also on Sundays. The paper covers journalism innovation at least once a month.

Circulation
Peaking in 2008, Aamulehti grew steadily, regularly reporting the third-highest newspaper circulation numbers in Finland. The circulation was 135,194 copies in 1993, reaching 135,478 copies in 2001. By 2004 the paper had an average daily circulation of 136,028 copies per day and 140,802 copies on Sundays, with an estimated readership of 329,000. Aamulehti's circulation was 136,743 copies in 2005; 138,258 copies (2006); 139,165 copies (2007) — reaching a high-water mark of 139,130 copies in 2008, then declining to 135,293 copies in 2009; 131,539 copies (2010); 130,081 copies (2011); and 114,231 copies in 2013.

By 2014 Aamulehti had Finland's second-largest circulation and had the fifth-largest estimated readership. In 2010, with 262,947 weekly visitors, the online version of Aamulehti was the twenty-third most visited website in Finland.

Controversies
Aamulehti deleted 551 stories written by a long time reporter Matti Kuusela. The stories were deleted after Kuusela admitted in his memoir that he had made up parts of his writings over the years.

Editors

 * F. V. Jalander (1881–1884)
 * Kaarlo Viljakainen (1884–1905)
 * Aukusti Alhovuori (1905–1912)
 * Eetu A. Alha (1913–1926)
 * Jaakko Tuomikoski (1931–1956)
 * Jaakko Hakala (1956–1964)
 * Raino Vehmas (1971–1979)
 * Pertti Pesonen (1979–1990)
 * Raimo Seppälä (1991–1998)
 * Matti Apunen (1998; 2000–2010)
 * Jouko Jokinen (2010–present)

title: Aamulehti


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Vrije Universiteit Brussel

The Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels; abbreviated VUB) is a Dutch and English-speaking research university located in Brussels, Belgium. It has four campuses: Brussels Humanities, Science and Engineering Campus (in Elsene), Brussels Health Campus (in Jette), Brussels Technology Campus (in Anderlecht) and Brussels Photonics Campus (in Gooik).

The Vrije Universiteit Brussel was formed in 1970 by the splitting of the Free University of Brussels, which was founded in 1834 by the lawyer and liberal politician Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen. The founder aimed to establish a university independent from state and church, where academic freedom would be prevalent. This is today still reflected in the university's motto Scientia vincere tenebras, or "Conquering darkness by science", and in its more recent slogan Redelijk eigenzinnig, or "A reasonable mind of its own". Accordingly, the university is pluralistic – it is open to all students on the basis of equality regardless of their ideological, political, cultural or social background – and it is managed using democratic structures, which means that all members – from students to faculty – participate in the decision-making processes.

The university's research articles are on average more cited than articles by any other Flemish university. The university is organised into 8 faculties that accomplish the three central missions of the university: education, research, and service to the community. The faculties cover a broad range of fields of knowledge including the natural sciences, classics, life sciences, social sciences, humanities, and engineering. The university provides bachelor, master, and doctoral education to about 8,000 undergraduate and 1,000 graduate students.

Establishment of a university in Brussels

The history of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel is closely linked with that of Belgium itself. When the Belgian State was formed in 1830 by nine breakaway provinces from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, three state universities existed in the cities of Ghent, Leuven and Liège, but none in the new capital, Brussels. Since the government was reluctant to fund another state university, a group of leading intellectuals in the fields of arts, science, and education — amongst whom the study prefect of the Royal Athenaeum of Brussels, Auguste Baron, as well as the astronomer and mathematician Adolphe Quetelet — planned to create a private university, which was permitted under the Belgian Constitution.

In 1834, the Belgian episcopate decided to establish a Catholic university in Mechelen with the aim of regaining the influence of the Catholic Church on the academic scene in Belgium, and the government had the intent to close the university at Leuven and donate the buildings to the Catholic institution. The country's liberals strongly opposed to this decision, and furthered their ideas for a university in Brussels as a counterbalance to the Catholic institution. At the same time, Auguste Baron had just become a member of the freemasonic lodge Les Amis Philantropes. Baron was able to convince Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen, the president of the lodge, to support the idea for a new university. On 24 June 1834, Verhaegen presented his plan to establish a free university.

After sufficient funding was collected among advocates, the Université libre de Belgique ("Free University of Belgium") was inaugurated on 20 November 1834, in the Gothic Room of Brussels Town Hall. The date of its establishment is still commemorated annually, by students of its successor institutions, as a holiday called Saint-Verhaegen/Sint-Verhaegen (often shortened to St V) for Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen. In 1836, the university was renamed the Université libre de Bruxelles ("Free University of Brussels").

After its establishment, the Free University faced difficult times, since it received no subsidies or grants from the government; yearly fundraising events and tuition fees provided the only financial means. Verhaegen, who became a professor and later head of the new university, gave it a mission statement which he summarised in a speech to King Leopold I: "the principle of free inquiry and academic freedom uninfluenced by any political or religious authority." In 1858, the Catholic Church established the Saint-Louis Institute in the city, which subsequently expanded into a university in its own right.

Growth, internal tensions and move

The Free University grew significantly over the following decades. In 1842, it moved to the Granvelle Palace, which it occupied until 1928. It expanded the number of subjects taught and, in 1880, became one of the first institutions in Belgium to allow female students to study in some faculties. In 1893, it received large grants from Ernest and Alfred Solvay and Raoul Warocqué to open new faculties in the city. A disagreement over an invite to the anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus to speak at the university in 1893 led to some of the liberal and socialist faculty splitting away from the Free University to form the New University of Brussels (Université nouvelle de Bruxelles) in 1894. The institution failed to displace the Free University, however, and closed definitively in 1919.

In 1900, the Free University's football team won the bronze medal at the Summer Olympics. After Racing Club de Bruxelles declined to participate, a student selection with players from the university was sent by the Federation. The team was enforced with a few non-students. The Institute of Sociology was founded in 1902, then in 1904 the Solvay School of Commerce, which would later become the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management. In 1911, the university obtained its legal personality under the name Université libre de Bruxelles - Vrije Hogeschool te Brussel.

The German occupation during World War I led to the suspension of classes for four years in 1914–1918. In the aftermath of the war, the Free University moved its principle activities to the Solbosch in the southern suburb of Ixelles and a purpose-built university campus was created, funded by the Belgian American Educational Foundation. The university was again closed by the German occupiers during World War II on 25 November 1941. Students from the university were involved in the Belgian Resistance, establishing Groupe G which focused on sabotage.

Splitting of the university
Until the early 20th century, courses at the Free University were taught exclusively in French, the language of the upper class in Belgium at that time, as well as of law and academia. However, with the Dutch-speaking population asking for more rights in Belgium (see Flemish Movement), some courses began being taught in both French and Dutch at the Faculty of Law as early as 1935. Nevertheless, it was not until 1963 that all faculties offered their courses in both languages. Tensions between French- and Dutch-speaking students in the country came to a head in 1968 when the Catholic University of Leuven split along linguistic lines, becoming the first of several national institutions to do so.

On 1 October 1969, the French and Dutch entities of the Free University separated into two distinct sister universities. This splitting became official with the act of 28 May 1970, of the Belgian Parliament, by which the Dutch-speaking Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and the French-speaking Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) officially became two separate legal, administrative and scientific entities.

Organisation
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel is an independent institution. The members of all its governing entities are elected by the entire academic community – including faculty staff, researchers, personnel, and students. This system guarantees the democratic process of decision-making and the independence from state and outside organisations. Nevertheless, the university receives significant funding from the Flemish government, although less than other Flemish universities. Other important funding sources are grants for research projects (mostly from Belgian and European funding agencies), scholarships of academic members, revenues from cooperation with industry, and tuition fees to a lesser extent.

The main organisational structure of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel is its division into faculties: These faculties benefit a wide autonomy over how they structure their educational programmes and research efforts, although their decisions need to comply with the university's statutes and must be approved by the central administration.
 * Faculty of Law and Criminology
 * Faculty of Social Sciences & Solvay Business School
 * Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences
 * Faculty of Sciences and Bio-engineering Sciences
 * Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy
 * Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
 * Faculty of Engineering
 * Faculty of Physical Education and Physiotherapy

The central administration is formed by the Governing Board, which is currently presided by Eddy Van Gelder. It decides the university's long-term vision and must approve all decisions made by the faculties. The Governing Board is supported by three advising bodies: the Research Council, the Education Council, and the Senate. These bodies provide advice to the Governing Board on all issues regarding research, education, and the academic excellence of faculty staff, and may also propose changes to the university's strategy. The daily management of the university is the responsibility of the Rector and three Vice-Rectors.

As of 2022 the rector of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel is Jan Danckaert, who succeeded Caroline Pauwels (1964-2022), who resigned in 2022 for health reasons.

Education
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel offers courses in a large variety of modern disciplines: law, economics, social sciences, management, psychology, physical sciences, life sciences, medical sciences, pharmaceutical sciences, humanities, engineering, physical education. About 22,000 students follow one of its 128 educational programmes. All programmes are taught in Dutch, but 59 are also taught in English. In agreement with the Bologna process, the university has implemented the so-called bachelor-master system. It therefore issues four types of degrees: bachelor's, master's, master after master's, and doctoral degrees.

Admission to the programmes is generally not restricted; anyone can subscribe to the programme of his/her choice. However, prerequisite degrees may be mandatory for advanced programmes, e.g., a bachelor's degree is required to subscribe to a master's programme, and a master's degree is required to subscribe to a master after master's or doctoral programme. An exception to this is the admission exam to the bachelor in medicine, which is required following ruling of the Flemish government. Tuition fees are low, and even decreased or eliminated for some students with less financial means.

The academic year is divided into two semesters, each spanning thirteen course weeks: the first semester lasts from October to January, the second semester from February to June. Students take exams in January and June. Apart from the Christmas and Easter holidays (both lasting two weeks) that are normally used to prepare for the exams, students are free the week between both semesters and during the summer vacations from July to September.

The university has implemented several quality control schemes in order to preserve the high quality of its educational programmes. Each semester, all students evaluate the courses they have followed. All programmes are also regularly assessed by internal panels and by external international visitation committees. Furthermore, all programmes are accredited by the Nederlands-Vlaamse Accreditatie Organisatie, an independent accreditation organisation charged with the accreditation of higher education programmes in both Flanders and the Netherlands.

Research
Notable faculty:
 * Diederik Aerts
 * Kris Deschouwer
 * Paul Devroey
 * Mark Elchardus
 * Francis Heylighen
 * Jonathan Holslag
 * Dave Sinardet
 * Hugo Soly
 * Luc Steels
 * Jean-Paul Van Bendegem
 * Willy van Ryckeghem
 * Andre Van Steirteghem
 * Irina Veretennicoff
 * Els Witte
 * Lode Wyns

Basic principles
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel considers itself an open-minded and tolerant university. Its central principles are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in particular the principle of free inquiry for the progress of humanity. The latter includes the dismissal of any argument of authority and the right of free opinion. The Vrije Universiteit Brussel is the only Flemish university that has incorporated such principle in its statutes. The principle of free inquiry is often described by a quotation of the French mathematician and philosopher Henri Poincaré: "Thinking must never submit itself,

neither to a dogma,

nor to a party,

nor to a passion,

nor to an interest,

nor to a preconceived idea,

nor to anything whatsoever,

except to the facts themselves,

because for it to submit to anything else would be the end of its existence." This principle is also reflected in the university's motto Scientia vincere tenebras, or Conquering darkness by science, and in its seal. The seal of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel displays a beggar's wallet and joined hands on the orange-white-blue (the colours of the Prince of Orange) escutcheon in the emblem, referring to the struggle of the Protestant Geuzen and the Prince of Orange against the oppressive Spanish rule and the Inquisition in the sixteenth century.

Another basic principle of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel – also incorporated in the university's statutes – is that the institution must be managed according to the model of democracy. Practically, this means that all members of the academic community — faculty staff, researchers, personnel, and students – are represented in all governing bodies. In this way, the university ensures that everyone has a voice in its decision-making processes and participates in its management. This principle must also guarantee the independence of the university and the academic freedom.

Campus and facilities
Brussels Humanities, Sciences & Engineering Campus

Most of the faculties are located on the Etterbeek campus (which is actually located on the territory of the neighbouring borough of Elsene). It is the livelier of the two campuses and consists almost entirely of concrete structures, most built in the 1970s. Some are decaying rapidly but at least one, the Rectoraat designed by Renaat Braem, is heritage-listed. Activities take place in numerous auditoriums and labs. In addition, there is a modern sports centre, a football pitch encircled by a running track, and a swimming pool. For eating out, there is a restaurant with subsidies for students and staff, and the bars/cafes 't Complex, Opinio, Pilar and KultuurKaffee. The was a full-fledged concert venue during the evening/night, offering the university a cultural scene and organising free concerts and events. It was demolished to make space for the new XY construction project in 2015.

Brussels Health Campus

The campus in Jette is also a fully-fledged campus. The University Hospital is in the vicinity. All courses and research in the life sciences (medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, the biomedical and paramedical sciences) are located here.

Brussels Technology Campus

The campus Kaai in Anderlecht was established in 2013 and shared with the Erasmushogeschool Brussel. It houses the Industrial Engineering section of the Faculty of Engineering. Among extensive industrial laboratory facilities, the Brussels fablab has grown to the centre of activity on the campus in recent years.

Brussels Photonics Campus in Gooik.

Faculties

 * Languages and Humanities
 * Social Sciences and Solvay Business School
 * Engineering
 * Medicine and Pharmacy
 * Psychology and Educational Sciences
 * Sciences and Biomedical Sciences
 * Law and Criminology
 * Physical Education and Physiotherapy

Institutional cooperation
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel cooperates with several institutions of higher education. They are:
 * Brussels Chamber of Commerce
 * Erasmushogeschool Brussel (together with the Vrije Universiteit Brussel they make up the Brussels University Association)
 * UCLouvain Higher Institute for Re-adaptation Sciences
 * Top Industrial Managers for Europe
 * UCOS, the University Development Cooperation Centre
 * UNICA, the Institutional Network of the UNIversities from the CApitals of Europe
 * Université libre de Bruxelles
 * University of Kent (Brussels School of International Studies)
 * Vesalius College, an anglophone institution sharing the VUB campus
 * XIOS Hogeschool Limburg and Provinciale Hogeschool Limburg
 * Royal Military Academy
 * Worldwide, on the international level the Vrije Universiteit Brussel has concluded institutional collaboration agreements with 38 universities all over the world, and student exchange agreements with 160 universities.

Academic profiles
The university is included in major world university rankings such as Times Higher Education World University Rankings, QS World University Rankings and Academic Ranking of World Universities.

Student life

The BSG is the umbrella organisation for all other student organizations and acts as the defender of the moral interests of the students. Together with their French-speaking counterparts ACE at the ULB, they organise the annual St V memorial.

These are some of the student organizations at the VUB:
 * Studiekring vrij onderzoek: a collective of students from various faculties, promoting free inquiry through the organisation of debates, lectures and more
 * Letteren-en Wijsbegeertekring (LWK): for students studying at the Arts and Philosophy faculty
 * Geneeskundige Kring (GK) and Farmaceutische Kring (FK): for students studying at the Medicine and Pharmacy faculty
 * Polytechnische Kring (PK) for students studying at the Engineering faculty
 * Psycho-Ped'Agogische Kring (PPK): for students studying at the Psychology and Educational Sciences faculty
 * Kring der Politieke Economische en Sociale Wetenschappen (KEPS) and Solvay ($); for students studying at the Economics and Political faculty
 * for students studying at the faculty of Sciences and Bio-engineering Sciences
 * Mens Sana in Corpore Sano (Mesacosa or MC): for students studying at the Physical Education and Physiotherapy faculty
 * Vlaams Rechtsgenootschap (VRG): for students studying at the Law and Criminology faculty
 * Vrije Universiteit Brussel Model United Nations (VUBMUN): for all students of the VUB.
 * We Decolonize VUB: for ethnic minority students at the VUB.

Members of these organizations (except VUBMUN) wear a klak (Dutch) or penne (French).

Furthermore, the VUB has student organizations for students with a specific regional background. They are: Antverpia (Antwerp), Westland (Westhoek), WUK (West Flanders), KBS (Brussels and Flemish Brabant), Campina (Campine), Kinneke Baba (East Flanders), Limburgia (Limburg), VSKM (Mechelen), Hesbania (Haspengouw) and Ibérica (Latin America and Iberian peninsula). There are also several organizations for specific majors within a faculty, such as Infogroep (computer science), Biotecho (bio-engineering), bru:tecture (previously Pantheon) (architecture) and Promeco, Inisol and Business Club (economics). Last but not least there are organizations centered around a common interest, such as the Society of Weird And Mad People (SWAMP, for all kinds of games), BierKultuur (based on the rich beer culture in Belgium) and Liberaal Vlaams Studentenverbond (LVSV, students interested in classic liberalism).

Scientists and academics

 * Antoon Van den Braembussche (1946-).
 * Patrick Baert (1961–)
 * Willy Gepts (1922–1991)
 * Leo Apostel (1925–1995)
 * Clement Hiel (1952–)
 * Christine Van Den Wyngaert (1952–), former Judge of the International Criminal Court.
 * Jean Bourgain (1954–2018)
 * Ingrid Daubechies (1954–), Belgian physicist and mathematician and Professor at Duke University.
 * Peter Rousseeuw (1956-), Belgian statistician and professor at KU Leuven.
 * Sophie de Schaepdrijver (1961–)
 * Pattie Maes (1961-), Professor of Media Technology at Media Lab MIT
 * Sathyabhama Das Biju (1963-), Indian amphibian biologist and wildlife conservationist.
 * Frank Pattyn (1966-), Belgian glaciologist and professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles.
 * Bob Coecke (1968-), Belgian theoretical physicist and logician and professor of Quantum Foundations, Logics and Structures at Oxford University.
 * Kris Deschouwer
 * Raymond Hamers, Discoverer of 'single-chain antibodies' or nanobodies.
 * Steven Laureys
 * Francis Heylighen
 * Wim Leemans
 * Helena Van Swygenhoven
 * Els Witte
 * Guido Geerts
 * Johan Schoukens
 * Ram Lakhan Ray (1968-)
 * Kieran Moore, Chief Medical Officer of Health of Ontario Canada.

Artists

 * André Delvaux (1926–2002), Belgian film director.
 * Jef Geeraerts (1930–), Belgian writer.
 * Claude Coppens (1936-), Belgian pianist and composer.
 * Erik Pevernagie (1939), Belgian painter and writer.
 * Marcel Vanthilt (1957-), Belgian singer and television presenter.
 * Fabienne Demal (Axelle Red) (1968–), Belgian singer and songwriter.
 * Stéphane Ginsburgh (1969-), Belgian pianist.
 * Sapiyossi, singer, composer, dancer, fashion designer, and choreographer.

Businesspeople

 * Pieter De Leenheer
 * Tony Mary (1950–)
 * Felix Van de Maele

Politicians

 * Amir-Abbas Hoveyda (1919 -1979), former Prime Minister - Iran.
 * Marco Formentini (1930-2021), Italian Politician & former mayor of Milan.
 * Willy Claes (1938–), former Minister of Foreign Affair and former Secretary General of NATO.
 * Louis Tobback (1938–), former mayor of Leuven and former Minister of the Interior - Belgium.
 * Annemie Neyts-Uyttebroeck (1944-)
 * Norbert De Batselier (1947–),
 * Marc Verwilghen (1952-), former Minister of Justice - Belgium.
 * Karel De Gucht (1954–), former Minister of Foreign Affair - Belgium.
 * Christian Leysen (1954–)
 * Patrick Dewael (1955–), former Minister of the interior - Belgium.
 * Frank Vanhecke (1959–)
 * Bert Anciaux (1959–)
 * Gunther Sleeuwagen (1958–)
 * Jan Jambon (1960–)
 * Maggie De Block (1962–), former Minister of Health - Belgium.
 * Hans Bonte (1962-)
 * Florika Fink-Hooijer (1962-)
 * Zoran Milanović (1966–), President of Croatia.
 * Bruno Tobback (1969-)
 * Wouter Beke (1974-)
 * Alexander De Croo (1975–), Prime Minister of Belgium
 * Tinne Van der Straeten (1978-), Minister of Energy - Belgium.
 * Zuhal Demir (1980-)
 * Nadia Sminate (1981-)
 * Sammy Mahdi (1988-)

Athletes

 * Sébastien Godefroid (1971–), Olympic sailor.
 * Emma Meesseman, Belgian professional basketball player.
 * Dirk Van Tichelt, Olympic judoka.
 * Jürgen Roelandts, Belgian professional road bicycle racer.
 * Kathleen Smet, Olympic triathlon.

Journalists

 * Yves Desmet
 * Jean Mentens
 * Danira Boukhriss, Flemish television presenter and newscaster.
 * Tim Trachet, Belgian writer, publicist and journalist.

Honorary doctorates
Notable recipients of honorary doctorates (doctor honoris causa) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel include:
 * Nelson Mandela
 * Václav Havel
 * Jacques Cousteau
 * Hans Blix
 * Julia Gillard
 * Noam Chomsky
 * Dario Fo, Sonia Gandhi
 * Natan Ramet
 * Richard Stallman
 * Johann Olav Koss
 * Herman van Veen
 * Richard Dawkins
 * Kim Clijsters
 * Rom Harré
 * Daniel Barenboim

title: Vrije Universiteit Brussel


text:
Luc Steels

Luc Steels (born in 1952) is a Belgian scientist and artist. Steels is considered a pioneer of Artificial Intelligence in Europe who has made contributions to expert systems, behavior-based robotics, artificial life and evolutionary computational linguistics. He was a fellow of the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies ICREA associated as a research professor with the Institute for Evolutionary Biology (UPF/CSIC) in Barcelona. He was formerly founding Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and founding director of the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris. Steels has also been active in the arts collaborating with visual artists and theater makers and composing music for opera.

Biography
Steels obtained a master's degree in Computer Science at MIT, specializing in AI under the supervision of Marvin Minsky and Carl Hewitt. He obtained a Ph.D. at the University of Antwerp with a thesis in computational linguistics on a parallel model of parsing. In 1980, he joined the Schlumberger-Doll Research Laboratory in Ridgefield (US) to work on knowledge-based approaches to the interpretation of oil well logging data and became leader of the group who developed the Dipmeter Advisor which he transferred into industrial use while at Schlumberger Engineering, Clamart (Paris). In 1983, he was appointed tenured professor in Computer Science with a chair in AI at the Free University of Brussels (VUB). The same year he founded the VUB Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and became the first chairman of the VUB Computer Science Department from 1990 to 1995. The VUB AI Lab focused initially on knowledge-based systems for various industrial applications (equipment diagnosis, transport scheduling, design) but gradually focused more on basic research in AI, moving at the cutting edge of the field.

In 1996 Steels founded the Sony Computer Science Laboratory (CSL) in Paris and became its acting director. This laboratory was a spin-off from the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Tokyo directed by Mario Tokoro and Toshi Doi. The laboratory targeted cutting-edge research in AI, particularly on the emergence and evolution of grounded language and ontologies on robots, the use of AI in music, and contributions to sustainability. The CSL music group was directed by Francois Pachet and the sustainability group by Peter Hanappe.

In 2011 Steels became fellow at the Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) and research professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona, embedded in the Evolutionary Biology Laboratory (IBE). There he pursued further his fundamental research in the origins and evolution of language through experiments with robotic agents.

From 2018 he started to work in Venice within the context of various European projects, first at Ca'Foscari University within the Odycceus and AI4EU projects and then at Venice International University within the MUHAI project.

Throughout his career Steels spent many research and educational visits to other institutions. He was a regular lecturer at the Theseus International Management Institute in Sophia Antipolis, developed courses for the Open University in the Netherlands, was Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin during the years 2015-16 and 2009–10, Fellow at Goldsmiths College London (computer science department) from 2010, visiting scholar or lecturer at La Sapienza University Rome, Politecnico di Milano, the universities of Ghana and Beijing (Jiaotong University) among others.

Steels was member of the New York Academy of Sciences, and is elected member of the Academia Europaea, and the Royal Belgian Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten),  where he serves as chairman of the Natural Science section.

He received several awards including the best paper award at the European Conference in AI (in 1982), the prestigious Franqui chair at the University of Leuven (Belgium) (2018) and the Calewaert chair at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) (2024) and the EurAI Distinguished Service Award, presented every two years to an individual who has made exceptional contributions to the AI community in Europe.

Contributions to science
The scientific work of Steels has always been highly trans-disciplinary, focusing on (i) forging conceptual breakthroughs in AI, (ii) building the technical tools to work out and develop these breakthroughs, and (iii) developing concrete experiments to turn the breakthroughs into viable new AI paradigms. Since the early 1980s and using this approach, Steels has played a significant role in four profound conceptual shifts: (1) from heuristic rule-based systems to model-based knowledge systems, (2) from model-based to behaviour-based, Artificial Life inspired robots, (3) from static, engineered language systems to dynamic, evolving emergent communication systems with key features of human languages, and (4) most recently from data-driven AI to meaningful AI capable of understanding and forms of awareness.

The knowledge-level in expert systems
The early 1980s saw a period of high interest in the application of the rule-based paradigm for building expert systems. Expert systems are intended to assist human experts in tackling challenging problems, such as medical diagnosis (e.g. MYCIN) or the configuration of complex technical equipment (e.g. R1). By the mid-1980s these techniques became widely used in industry and integrated in software engineering practice, but it also became clear that the exclusive focus on heuristic rules was limiting, primarily because of the efforts involved in finding an adequate set of rules (the so-called knowledge acquisition bottleneck) and because of brittleness seen when cases appeared that fell outside the scope of predefined rules.

From 1985 a trend among AI researchers, including Balakrishnan Chandrasekaran, William Clancey, Doug Lenat, John McDermott, Tom Mitchell, Bob Wielinga, a.o., arose to capture human expertise in more depth. Triggered by Allen Newell's paper on the need to adopt a `knowledge-level' analysis and design strategy,  the new generation of knowledge systems used models of the problem domain based on an explicitly represented ontology and employing problem solving strategies to compose tasks into subtasks and solving them. Heuristic rules were still relevant but they would now be learned by first solving a problem using models and inference strategies and by then storing the solution, after some degree of abstraction. The key advantages of this knowledge level approach are more robustness, because the system can fall back on deeper reasoning when heuristic rules are missing, a richer explanation facility because of the use of deeper models, and a more methodical design process including techniques for verification and validation.

Steels played a significant role in establishing this new paradigm in the 1980s, organising a number of key workshops and tutorials, helping to develop knowledge level design methodologies, particularly in collaboration with Bob Wielinga and the CommonKADS approach developed at the University of Amsterdam, and publishing influential papers outlining the knowledge level approach.

With his team at the AI Lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, he developed various tools, most importantly the knowledge representation system KRS, which was a frame-based object-oriented extension of LISP with facilities for truth maintenance, meta-level inference and computational reflection. The team applied the approach for building challenging operational expert systems in various technical domains (electronic circuit design for digital telephone, scheduling of Belgian railway traffic, monitoring of subway and diagnosis of nuclear power stations). These systems became used in real operation and ran on the innovative Symbolics LISP machines. It all lead to the creation of a spin-off company Knowledge Technologies (with Kris Van Marcke as CEO) to further channel these developments into practical industrial use. The company was active from 1986 to 1995.

Artificial Life and Behavior-based Robotics.
Around 1986, after an encounter with Ilya Prigogine from the Free University of Brussels (ULB), Steels opened in his VUB laboratory a second research line to develop a new paradigm for AI inspired by living systems. Because this paradigm rose as a part of the movement towards `Artificial Life', it became known as the Artificial Life approach to AI or also, because of the emphasis on behavior, as the behavior-based approach to AI and robotics, as well as the animat approach. The behavior-based paradigm was intended to be complementary to the knowledge-based paradigm, which targets deliberative intelligence, in that it tackles reactive intelligence for real time adaptive behavior of autonomous robotic agents embodied in real world environments. This new research line was at the confluence of several emerging trends happening in the late nineteen-eighties and nineteen-nineties: A revival of cybernetic reactive robots spearheaded by Rodney Brooks, the establishment of Artificial Life shaped as a new discipline by Chris Langton, a renewed focus on emergent computation through self-organisation using cellular automata, models from chaos theory, and genetic algorithms, and the rise of multi-layered neural networks initiated by David Rumelhart and James McClelland.

As in the case of knowledge based systems, Steels was very active in establishing the new paradigm by organising a series of key workshops, conferences and summer and spring schools and by writing some influential papers to define the new paradigm. With his team in Brussels, he worked out hardware platforms (using self-designed processing boards, Lego and simple electronics parts, with Tim Smithers taking the lead) and software platforms including PDL (Process Description Language). He also set up various robotic experiments, the most important one being the self-sufficiency experiment, initiated with ethologist David McFarland.

The self-sufficiency experiment was based on Walter Grey's electric tortoise experiment from the 1950s. This experiment featured simple automatons (animats) capable of wall following, phototaxis and finding and using a charging station. The McFarland-Steels experiment added the additional challenge of having multiple competing robots and competition for the energy in the charging station so that the robots had to do work. The experimental setup functioned for a decade as a framework for experiments in adaptive behavior, genetic algorithms and reinforcement learning by several generations of students at the VUB AI Lab with Andreas Birk taking the lead.

Fluid Construction Grammar and the evolution of language in artificial systems
In 1995, after a visit to the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Tokyo at the invitation of Mario Tokoro, Steels opened a new chapter in his research endeavours, bringing the evolutionary thinking from Artificial Life and the advances in behavior-based robotics to bear on the question how it could be possible for a population of agents to autonomously self-organise an evolving adaptive language to communicate about the world as perceived through their sensory-motor apparatus. A new team of collaborators was set up at the VUB AI lab and at the newly founded Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris and worked for two decades (from 1995 to 2015) on this topic.

The first breakthroughs were reached around 1996 in the domain of phonetics and phonology. Steels proposed a self-organisation approach to the origins of speech sounds and phonetic structures. Experiments were set up in which a population of agents, equipped with a basic vocal apparatus and auditory system, developed a shared inventory of speech sounds by playing imitation games, introducing variations generating new sounds and adapting to the sounds of others. These experiments were worked out in the ph.D dissertations of Bart de Boer, and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer.

In parallel, Steels proposed in 1995 the Naming Game to study the origins of linguistic conventions in general and the formation of lexicons in particular. The Naming Game is a language game played by a population of agents. In each interaction the speaker chooses a topic and uses one or more words to draw attention of the listener to the topic. The game is a success if the reader pays attention to the topic chosen by the listener and both agents reinforce their existing inventory. Otherwise, speakers may invent new words, listeners adopt new words, and both change the associative scores between words and meanings in their respective inventories. In a concrete experiment, agents start without an initial vocabulary and gradually invent new words and coordinate their usage of words in local interactions. Nevertheless, a coherent vocabulary gradually emerges and gets maintained when the population changes or new topics come up.

In 1996 Steels introduced the Discrimination Game as a way to study the origins of meanings and later on (in 2014) the Syntax Game for studying the emergence of syntax. The Language Game paradigm has been productive to study a wide range of issues in the emergence and evolution of language, first in theoretical work, with mathematical proofs that populations can indeed reach coherence (achieved in 2005 by Bart de Vylder and Karl Tuyls ) and with the discovery of scaling laws in relation to the growth of populations and the growth of possible topics (achieved in 2007 by Andrea Baronchelli  and Vittorio Loreto ).

Progressively the complexity of the emergent languages increased to include the emergence of morphology and syntax and more and more conceptual domains were tackled. Thus Steels has done in-depth research on color languages (with Tony Belpaeme and Joris Bleys ), case systems (with Remi van Trijp and Pieter Wellens ), spatial language (with Martin Loetzsch and Michael Spranger ), agreement systems (with Katrien Beuls ), determiners (with Simon Pauw ) and action languages (with Martin Loetzsch, Michael Spranger and Sebastian Höfer. Many of these achievements were shown to work in robotic experiments, first on simple lego-vehicles, then with vision-based agents in the 'Talking Heads Experiment' and later on with the 4-legged Sony AIBO robot and the Sony humanoid robot QRIO.

In addition to the scientific research, Steels pushed the language game paradigm by the organisation of various summer schools (Erice 2004 & 2006, Cortona 2009 & 2013 and Como 2016), the founding of the Evolution of communication journal, the publication of key papers and collections of research works on language evolution. Steels also pushed forward the development and spreading of tools, in particular a software platform for doing experiments in language emergence called BABEL and a formalism for representing emergent grammars called Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG). Starting from 2000, Fluid Construction Grammar has gone through many design iterations to become the main operational paradigm for implementing computational construction grammar today.

Understanding and Awareness
From around 2018 at the peak of advancements and applications in data-driven neural network style AI, Steels began to participate in efforts to create a more balanced human-centric (also called human-centered) form of AI. Together with Ramon Lopez de Mantaras he launched in 2018 the 'Barcelona declaration for the proper development and usage of artificial intelligence in Europe.' that influenced the European Ethical Guidelines for Trustworthy AI published in 2019. He also initiated the ethical AI workpackage in the large-scale AI4EU coordination project of the EU commission.

Arguing that we need more than regulations to make AI more human-centered Steels launched a number of projects to combine reactive intelligence (captured through neural network style systems) with the deliberative intelligence that was the focal point of earlier symbolic AI research. Concretely, the EU project MUHAI focuses on how the level of understanding in AI systems could be increased by building rich models of problem domains and problem situations and integrating a variety of knowledge sources (ontologies, language, vision and action, mental simulation, episodic memory and context models), and the EU project VALAWAI focuses on how AI systems can be made 'value-aware' by introducing attention mechanisms to deal with highly complex, uncertain fragmented inputs, and a component implementing `moral intelligence'.

Contributions to the arts
The artistic work of Luc Steels has been trans-disciplinary as well, with interests, realisations and writings about the arts, music and theatre.

Avant-garde performance and electro-acoustic music
In the early 1970s Luc Steels became active in Performance art, and in avant-garde electro-acoustic music. In 1972 he founded the collective 'Dr. Buttock's players pool', participated in the Welfare State theatre in 1977 and with performance artist Hugo Roelandt. In the music domain, he was part of the 1970s Antwerp Free Music scene, playing guitar in a style pioneered by Derek Bailey. In 1971 he co-founded the ensemble Mishalle-Geladi-Steels (MGS) with saxophonist Luc Mishalle and electronic musician Paul Mishalle. The ensemble frequently performed with the Studio for New Music set up by Joris De Laet, particularly at the ICC in Antwerp. Lifelong interactions originated from this period with artist Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, who Steels had invited as artist in residence at the University of Antwerp and later at the VUB AI laboratory in Brussels, and Peter Beyls, who was also artist in residence at the VUB AI Lab.

Art installations and cooperations
After a period of total focus on scientific work while in the United States, Luc Steels returned to artistic activities from the 1980s onwards. Thanks to an encounter with H-U Obrist at the Burda Akademie symposium in Munich in 1995, he came into contact with a new generation of artists, resulting in public presentations in art contexts such as at the Bridge the Gap encounters (2001 Kitakyushu), the Memory Marathon (Serpentine Gallery, London, 2007 & 2012), and the Experiment Marathon (Reykjavik 2008). Within this artistic network Steels collaborated with several artists for the co-creation of new works, including with Carsten Holler (for the CapC Musee in Bordeaux and the Koelnerische Kunstverein); with Olafur Eliasson for a piece 'Look into the box' for the Musee d'art moderne in Paris in 2002 and later shown at the Festival dei 2 Mondi (Spoleto, 2003), the ExploraScience Museum (Tokyo, 2006),  ), and other locations; with Sissel Tolaas for work shown at the Berlin Biennale; with Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven at the NeuerAachenerKunstverein; and with Armin Linke and Giuliana Bruno for the New Alphabeth (Stop Making Sense) exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin);  Steels participated with his own installations in various art-science exhibitions, the most important ones being Laboratorium curated by H-U Obrist and B. Vanderlinden in Antwerp in 1999, and N01SE in Cambridge (Kettle's Yard) and London (Wellcome Gallery) in 2000, curated by Adam Lowe and Simon Schaffer.

Theatre and opera
The life-long interest of Luc Steels in performance and theatre was rekindled in 2004 by a collaboration with theatre director Jean-Francois Peyret on a commissioned play about the Russian mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya for the Avignon Theatre Festival 2005 and performed in 2006 at the French National Theatre (Chaillot) in Paris. From 2010, music and theatre came together in two opera projects with neuroscientist Oscar Vilarroya as libretist and Luc Steels as composer. The first opera entitled Casparo premiered at the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona in 2011 and was later performed in Brussels (Theatre Moliere) 2013, Tokyo (Sony Concert Hall) in 2013, Leuven BE (Iers College) in 2014 and Paris (Jussieu Theatre) in 2014. The second opera, entitled Fausto had avant-premiere performances in La Gaite Lyrique (Paris) in 2016 and the Monnaie Opera House (Brussels in 2017) with full performances at the And&MindGate Festival (Leuven BE, 2018) and at the Homo Roboticus event at the Brussels Monnaie Opera House in 2019. Most of these performances were conducted by Kris Stroobants with the Frascati Symphonic Orchestra, the choir La Folia, and various solists, including Reinoud van Mechelen and Pablo Lopez Martin (Mallorca opera). The operas are written in a neo-classical, post modern musical style and elaborate societal and trans-humanistic issues raised by the use of Artificial Intelligence, including the occurrence of a singularity and the possibility of immortality through virtual agents.

Essays and art curation
Luc Steels curated a number of international exhibitions, including Intensive Science at La Maison Rouge in Paris (in 2006 and 2008), artes@ijcai at the Centro Borges in Buenos Aires (Argentina) in 2015 and the 'Aqua Granda. Una Memoria Digitale' exhibition at the Science Gallery Venice in 2021.

He contributed with essays on art and music for journals such as KunstForum and Janus Magazine (Issue 20), and for exhibition catalogs,  He also wrote academic papers on computer music and art interpretation.

In 2020, Steels was S+T+ARTS 'scientist in residence' at the Luc Tuymans art studio, 'Studio Tuymans' in Antwerp, which resulted in an exhibition at the BOZAR museum in Brussels based on the use of AI methods to interpret a single art work by painter Luc Tuymans called 'Secrets'.

In 2023, Luc Steels curated an exhibition 'Science on the Edge of Chaos' at the Royal Library in Brussels, focused on research during the 1980s and 1990s about chaos theory and its application in different sciences.

title: Luc Steels


text:
Magneto-optical drive

A magneto-optical drive is a kind of optical disc drive capable of writing and rewriting data upon a magneto-optical disc. 130 mm (5.25 in) and 90 mm (3.5 in) discs were the most common sizes. In 1983, just a year after the introduction of the compact disc, Kees Schouhamer Immink and Joseph Braat presented the first experiments with erasable magneto-optical compact discs during the 73rd AES Convention in Eindhoven. The technology was introduced commercially in 1985. Although optical, they normally appear as hard disk drives to an operating system and can be formatted with any file system. Magneto-optical drives were common in some countries, such as Japan, but have fallen into disuse.

Overview
Early drives are 130 mm and have the size of full-height 130 mm hard-drives (like in the IBM PC XT). 130 mm media looks similar to a CD-ROM enclosed in an old-style caddy, while 90 mm media is about the size of a regular 3$1/2$-inch floppy disk, but twice the thickness. The cases provide dust resistance, and the drives themselves have slots constructed in such a way that they always appear to be closed. Original MO systems were WORM (write once, read many), and later systems were read/write.

The disc consists of a ferromagnetic material sealed beneath a plastic coating. The only physical contact is during recording when a magnetic head is brought into contact with the side of the disc opposite to the laser, similar to Floptical drives, but not the same. During reading, a laser projects a beam on the disk and, according to the magnetic state of the surface, the reflected light varies due to the magneto-optic Kerr effect. During recording, laser power is increased to heat the material to the Curie point in a single spot. This enables an electromagnet positioned on the opposite side of the disc to change the local magnetic polarization. The polarization is retained after the temperature drops.

Each write cycle requires both a pass to erase a region and another pass to write information. Both passes use the laser to heat the recording layer; the magnetic field is used to change the magnetic orientation of the recording layer. The electromagnet reverses polarity for writing, and the laser is pulsed to record spots of "1" over the erased region of "0". As a result of this two-pass process, it takes twice as long to write data as it does to read it.

In 1990, a 300 mm disc with 7 GB capacity was made available.

In 1996, Direct Overwrite technology was introduced for 90 mm discs eliminating the initial erase pass when writing. This requires special media.

By default, magneto-optical drives verify information after writing it to the disc, and are able to immediately report any problems to the operating system. This means writing can actually take three times longer than reading, but it makes the media extremely reliable, unlike the CD-R or DVD-R media upon which data is written without any concurrent data integrity checking. Using a magneto-optical disc is much more like using a diskette drive than a CD-RW drive.

During a read cycle, the laser is operated at a lower power setting, emitting polarized light. The reflected light has a change in Kerr rotation and Kerr ellipticity which is measured by an analyzer and corresponds to either a logical 0 or 1.

The 130 mm drives have been available in capacities from 650 MB to 9.2 GB. However, this is split in half over both sides of the disk. The 2.6 GB disks, for example, have a formatted capacity of 1.2 GB per side. The 130 mm drives were always SCSI. The 90 mm discs had their entire capacity on one side, with no capability to flip them over. The 90 mm drives were produced in SCSI, IDE, and USB formats. Capacities range from 128 MB to 2.3 GB.

While they were never particularly popular with consumers (the main consumer market was the 90 mm drives), the 130 mm drives had some lasting service in corporate storage and retrieval. Optical libraries, such as the Hewlett Packard 40XT, were created to automate loading and storing of the disks. A self-contained unit holding 16 or more disks and connected by SCSI to a host computer, the library required specialized archival software to store indices of data, and select disks. Popular uses were for legal document storage and medical imaging, where high reliability, long life, and (at the time) high storage capacity were required. The optical libraries could also manually be used on a Windows 2000/XP machine by selecting and ejecting discs under the Computer Management icon's Removable Storage Service, but this is cumbersome in practice.

LIMDOW
Light Intensity Modulated Direct OverWrite (LIMDOW) technology used a different write technology, which improved on the performance levels of earlier magneto-optical devices.

LIMDOW disks and drives worked on the same basic principle as a standard magneto-optical drive: the write surface is heated up and took on a magnetic force applied from outside. But instead of using a magnetic head in the drive to make the changes, the magnets were built into the disk itself.

The LIMDOW disk has two magnetic layers just behind the reflective writing surface. This write surface can take magnetism from one of those magnetic layers when it is heated up to one temperature; but if it is heated up further, it will take its polarity from the other magnetic layer. To write the data onto the disk, the magneto-optical drive's laser pulses between two powers.

At high power, the surface heats up more and takes its magnetic charge from the north pole magnetic layer. At the lower power, it heats up less and takes its magnetic charge from the south pole layer. Thus, with LIMDOW the magneto-optical write process has a single stage, improving write times.

Because the magnetic surface is adjacent to the writing surface, rather than somewhere outside the disk itself, the magnetic writing can be done at a higher resolution, including that of the resolution of the laser spot doing the heating up.

In the spring of 1997 Plasmon launched its DW260 drive, which used LIMDOW technology for a higher level of performance than previous magneto-optical drives. LIMDOW drives that shipped in the second half of 1997 has search speeds of less than 15 ms and data transfer rates in excess of 4 Mbit/s, which are fast enough for storing audio and streaming MPEG-2 video.

Vendors
Magneto-optical drives were first offered in NeXT computers. They were later also offered in Canon products.

Sony MiniDiscs are magneto-optical, and Sony produces many other formats of magneto-optical media. , Sony continues to manufacture one type of MiniDisc available in Japan; the rest of the world only has access to dwindling new stock from vendors on sites such as eBay or Amazon. TEAC & TASCAM continued to manufacture MiniDisc decks up until 2020 while Sony ceased production of hardware in 2013.

Pinnacle Micro was a major manufacturer of magneto-optical drives. 3.5" drives were 128 MB and 230 MB. 5.25" drives produced were 650 MB and 1.3 GB (Sierra), 2.6 GB (Vertex) and 4.6 GB (Apex). The Vertex and Apex were non-ISO standard drives and used proprietary media. Pinnacle Micro has ceased production of these products.

LMSI produced 5.25" magneto-optical drives as well.

Maxoptix, a spin-off of Maxtor Corp., was a major manufacturer of 130 mm or 5.25" magneto-optical drives. A current model is the T7-9100 drive, which has a maximum capacity of 9.1 GB and is downward read and write compatible with 5.2 GB, 4.8 GB, 4.1 GB, 2.6 GB, and 2.3 GB magneto-optical disks, and read compatible with 1.3 GB, 1.2 GB, 650 MB, and 600 MB magneto-optical disks. Popular older models of 5.25" Maxoptix MO drives are the T6 Star, T6-5200 and T5-2600 MO drives. Maxoptix was acquired by Techware Distribution in 2008.

Fujitsu was a major manufacturer of 90 mm magneto-optical drives, exceeding 2 GB in capacity, but they have discontinued production and sale of this product category.

PDO Konica Minolta was the last manufacturer of 90 mm 3.5" magneto-optical drives. They had a 3.5" 1.3 GB USB external pocket drive available for sale in the United States and Europe.

Floptical drives
Magneto-optical drives are not Floptical drives, which likewise combine ferromagnetic and optical technologies, albeit in a different manner. Flopticals are 21 megabyte 3.5" magnetic diskettes using optical tracks to increase the tracking precision of the magnetic head, from the usual 135 tracks per inch to 1,250 tracks per inch. No laser or heating is involved; a simple infrared LED is used to follow the optical tracks, while a magnetic head touches the recording surface. The drives can also read and write traditional 3.5" diskettes, although not the 2.88 megabyte variety. Flopticals were manufactured by Insite Peripherals, a company founded by Jim Burke.

Progress
At the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2004, Sony revealed a 1 gigabyte capacity MiniDisc called Hi-MD. Its recorders can also double the capacity of regular MiniDiscs with special formatting that renders the disc incompatible with other recorders.

As with all removable storage media, the advent of cheap CD and DVD drives and flash memory has made them largely obsolete. Magneto-optical disks in particular were expensive when new, with high reliability but slow writing. Magnetic tape formats like LTO have far surpassed MO media for high capacity enterprise-grade backup storage.

In 2016 a new phenomenon, magnetization melting by photoinduced photoconductors, was discovered in magnetic photoconductors. It was demonstrated that extremely low light intensities in the range of 1 μWcm−2 can be used to read/write magnetic information in femtosecond (10−15 s timescales) allowing high-speed, high-density data storage in principle.

title: Magneto-optical drive


text:
Christopher Hogwood

Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood (10 September 1941 – 24 September 2014) was an English conductor, harpsichordist, writer, and musicologist. Founder of the early music ensemble the Academy of Ancient Music, he was an authority on historically informed performance and a leading figure in the early music revival of the late 20th century.

Early life and education
Born in Nottingham, Hogwood went to The Skinners' School, Royal Tunbridge Wells, and then studied Music and Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge, graduating in 1964. Contemporaries at Cambridge included David Munrow and John Turner. He went on to study performance and conducting under Raymond Leppard, Mary Potts and Thurston Dart, and later with Rafael Puyana and Gustav Leonhardt. He also studied in Prague with Zuzana Ruzickova for a year, under a British Council scholarship.

Career
In 1967, Hogwood co-founded the Early Music Consort with David Munrow. In 1973 he founded the Academy of Ancient Music, which specializes in performances of Baroque and Classical music using period instruments. The Early Music Consort was disbanded following Munrow's death in 1976, but Hogwood continued to perform and record with the Academy of Ancient Music.

Since 1979, Hogwood and the Academy recorded the first cycle of Mozart's symphonies to be performed on period instruments, with Hogwood in the role of continuist. In 1985, Hogwood's recording of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons on L'Oiseau-Lyre, which rubbed shoulders in the pop charts with Prince's Purple Rain; the latter was named best film soundtrack at the Brit awards, while Hogwood's disc was best classical recording.

From 1981, Hogwood conducted regularly in the United States. He was Artistic Director of Boston's Handel and Haydn Society from 1986 to 2001, and for the remainder of his life held the title of Conductor Laureate. From 1983 to 1985 he was artistic director of the Mostly Mozart Festival in the Barbican Centre in London. From 1988 to 1992, he was musical director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota.

In 1994 he conducted the Handel and Haydn Society in a recreation of the concert that premiered Beethoven's Sixth and Fifth symphonies for the Historic Keyboard Society of Milwaukee.

Hogwood conducted a considerable amount of opera. He made his operatic debut in 1983, conducting Mozart's Don Giovanni in St. Louis, Missouri. He worked with Berlin State Opera; La Scala, Milan; Royal Swedish Opera; the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, Chorégies d'Orange and Houston Grand Opera. With Opera Australia, he performed Mozart operas, Idomeneo in 1994 and La Clemenza di Tito in 1997. In 2009, he returned to the Royal Opera House to conduct the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, and Handel's Acis and Galatea. 2009 also saw him conducting Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress at the Teatro Real in Madrid, in a production directed by Robert Lepage. In late 2010 and early 2011, he conducted a series of performances of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Zürich Opera House.

On 1 September 2006, harpsichordist Richard Egarr succeeded Hogwood as Music Director of the Academy of Ancient Music and Hogwood assumed the title of Emeritus Director. Hogwood said he expected to conduct 'at least one major project' with the Academy each year. He conducted them in a series of concert performances of Handel operas which began in 2007 with Amadigi. 2008 saw performances of Flavio, and the series concluded in May 2009, the Handel anniversary, with Arianna in Creta. In 2013 he conducted Imeneo.

Although Hogwood was best known for the baroque and classical repertoire, he also performed romantic and contemporary music, with a particular affinity for the neobaroque and neoclassical schools including many works by Stravinsky, Martinů and Hindemith.

He made many solo recordings of harpsichord works (including Louis Couperin, J. S. Bach, Thomas Arne, William Byrd's My Lady Nevells Booke), and did much to promote the clavichord in the Secret Bach/Handel/Mozart series of recordings, which puts in historical context the most common domestic instrument of that epoch. He owned a collection of historical keyboard instruments.

In July 2010, he was appointed Professor of Music at Gresham College, London, a position originally held by John Bull. In this role he delivered four series of free public lectures on Aspects of Authenticity (2010–11), The Making of a Masterpiece (2011–12), European Capitals of Music (2012–13) and Music in Context (2013–14). He was unable to deliver all of his lectures during his final year of appointment due to illness and it was only seven months after his final lecture at the College that he died.

In 2011, Hogwood was a juror for the Westfield International Fortepiano Competition hosted at Cornell University. This was the first fortepiano competition in the United States and only the second competition of its kind in the world.

In 2012, he was appointed Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University, for a six-year term of office. He was a member of Lowell House Senior Common Room in Harvard University.

Editing
Hogwood's editing work included music by composers as diverse as John Dowland and Felix Mendelssohn. After John Walsh's collection The Harpsichord Master Book I was rediscovered in New Zealand in 1977 (containing two otherwise new/unknown works by Purcell), Hogwood edited the re-issue on Oxford University Press reissue in 1980. He was the chairman of the new edition Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works, which aimed to publish a complete edition of C.P.E. Bach's music in 2014.

He was involved with The Wranitzky Project, dedicated to the study and publishing of the music of Moravian composer Paul Wranitzky (1756–1808). His last editing project was a complete critical edition of piano sonatas by the Czech composer Leopold Koželuh.

Brahms "discovery"
In 2012 Hogwood's musicological activities came to the attention of a wider public when the BBC and the Guardian newspaper announced his discovery of a "previously unknown" piano piece by Johannes Brahms. However, it emerged that the work in question, Albumblatt, was already known. The manuscript had been sold at public auction in April 2011, where it was described as "unpublished" and "of great importance," and the manuscript was reproduced in full in the catalogue. The work had been given its premiere by Craig Sheppard on 28 April 2011. Sheppard reportedly described the newspaper claim as "fatuous". Hogwood's edition of the piece was published by Bärenreiter in February 2012 along with the Horn Trio in E-flat major, Op. 40, which is thematically related.

Death
Hogwood died in Cambridge on 24 September 2014, fourteen days after his 73rd birthday, from a brain tumour. Shortly before his death, he had separated from his civil partner, the film director Anthony Fabian.

Honours
At the time of his death, Hogwood was Honorary Professor of Music in the University of Cambridge, Consultant Visiting Professor of historical performance in the Royal Academy of Music and visiting professor at King's College London. He was Honorary Fellow of both Jesus College, Cambridge and Pembroke College, Cambridge.

In 1989 Hogwood was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He was a recipient of the Halle Handel Prize in 2008. In 2011, he was awarded the IRC Harrison Medal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland.

Awards
Hogwood's Mozart recordings were widely acclaimed, and his interpretations of Mozart's symphonies, Requiem and La clemenza di Tito were all nominated for Grammy Awards, from 1982 to 1996.
 * Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) 1982
 * Walter Willson Cobbett Medal from the Worshipful Company of Musicians 1986
 * Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge 1989
 * Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians 1989
 * Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) 1989
 * Honorary Doctor of Music Keele University 1991
 * Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge 1992
 * Finalist Giovanni Comisso Prize for Biographies 1992
 * Hon RAM Royal Academy of Music 1995
 * Scotland on Sunday Music Prize Edinburgh International Festival 1996
 * Award for Artistic Excellence University of California 1996
 * Distinguished Musician Award Incorporated Society of Musicians 1997
 * Martinů Medal Bohuslav Martinů Foundation, Prague 1999
 * Honorary Doctorate University of Zurich 2007
 * Honorary Doctor of Music University of Cambridge 2008
 * Handel Prize, Halle 2008
 * Irish Research Council Harrison Medal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland 2011
 * Honorary Doctor of Music Royal College of Music 2013

title: Christopher Hogwood


text:
Talk:Absolute majority

Definition
If an absolute majority doesn't include abstentions/absences, then what is it called when there is a majority of the entire voting body? (This was the case when Turkey's parliament voted to help the U.S./U.K. "coalition" in Iraq, and the majority voted in favor, but if failed because their rules required a majority of every member, including ones who didn't vote.)  –radiojon 00:13, 2003 Dec 3 (UTC)
 * A late answer... this would be a "majority of all the members" rather than "a majority of those members present and voting".138.67.12.23 21:56, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * An absolute majority is a majority of the entire body. A majority of just those voting is a simple majority.  Check Robert's Rules. Pmadrid 01:29, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Cite your sources
Can someone please independently cite the use of this term? I attempted to verify some of the information in this article and was unable to do so. A google search returned only Wikipedia and its mirrors or use of the phrase in a more general sense, not in ways consistent with the definition in this article. It did not turn up in any of my old textbooks, either. Thanks. Rossami (talk) 01:12, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ambiguous term
"Absolute majority" is, by its nature, ambiguous. Some people use it to refer to a majority, as opposed to a plurality. It can mean:

 * A majority (two definitions).
 * A majority of the voters that are present or participate, including those voters that abstain.
 * A majority of the entire membership.
 * A majority of the fixed membership.

I really think this one needs a major rewrite.

--J. J. in PA 19:42, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Should majority of the entire membership go in its own separate article, do you think? I hesitate to keep this article within the purview of WikiProject Parliamentary Procedure since the term "absolute majority" does not appear in RONR. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 21:36, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

RfC on merge/redirect to supermajority
''Please place comments within your own headed section and avoid threaded discussions within others' sections.
 * Should this unreferenced article be redirected to its parent topic, which already contains a sizeable section covering precisely the same ground, supermajority?

Comments

 * Comments from (involved) TreasuryTag - This article is an exceptionally uselss content fork. Textbook case, in fact. There is absolutely nothing to suggest the notability of the 'absolute majority' as a topic in itself. The article is very short and completely unreferenced. I have yet to hear a good reason for not simply merging the useful material into our already existing article which covers precisely the same topic, supermajority. I would also like to take this opportunity to condemn for blind revert-warring without the slightest attempt at explanation or discussion. ╟─ Treasury  Tag ► secretariat ─╢ 19:33, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

 * Merge - While "absolute majority" is a valid topic, it is a clear subset of "supermajority", and since the Supermajority article is rather small (as is this Absolute majority article), it makes most sense to combine them into a single article. If there were a significant number of sources devoted to "absolute majority", that would  argue against a merger, but Im not seeing such sources.  If a time comes when that merged article becomes large, a WP:Content fork can happen.  --Noleander (talk) 00:45, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

 * Comment - If you want to delete an article you have to go for wp:prod or wp:afd. An editor are not entitled to simply blank an article just because you don't like it and I was fully entitled to revert for this. I did not blindly revert. TreasuryTag blindly reverted and wrongly accused me of failed to enter an edit summary when I had. You can of course boldly merge an article if you want to, although it is normal to propose mergers in this manner. It is obvious that the article is sourced. I can't see how you could conclude otherwise. Absolute majority is a sub-article not a content fork. — Blue-Haired Lawyer t 17:03, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes an editor "are" entitled to redirect content-forks. I don't know why you keep mentioning WP:AFD despite me repeating that that's not appropriate for redirects. Perhaps it's because you're not listening. ╟─ Treasury Tag ► tortfeasor ─╢ 17:06, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Support Redirect It doesn't look like it is a distinct enough topic to justify a fork from the super majority article. Monty  845  06:11, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I was invited here by the RFC bot but have just now had a chance to comment. I realize that TT has already merged and redirected as proposed, but the prior version of this article was a content fork and a redirect to supermajority makes much more sense, therefore I support the proposed (and completed) resolution. —DoRD (talk) 17:28, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Merge into supermajority. Jonathunder (talk) 19:14, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Absolute majority - redirect
The most common meaning of Absolute majority is "more than half", that is a majority. (Relative majority = plurality) I propose this page should redirect to Majority, not supermajority as now there are a lot of redirects going to the wrong article Rankedchoicevoter (talk) 09:45, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Absolute majority


text:
Random ballot

The term random ballot or random dictatorship refers to a randomized electoral system where the election is decided on the basis of a single randomly-selected ballot. A closely-related variant is called random serial (or sequential) dictatorship, which repeats the procedure and draws another ballot if multiple candidates are tied on the first ballot.

Random dictatorship was first described in 1977 by Allan Gibbard, who showed it to be the unique social choice rule that treats all voters equally while still being strategyproof in all situations. Its application to elections was first described in 1984 by Akhil Reed Amar.

While rarely, if ever, suggested as a serious electoral system, the rule is often used as a tiebreaker.

Single-winner
Satisfied criteria include:

 * Decisive: there is no possibility of a tied vote, assuming some selected voter has expressed a preference.
 * Strategyproof: there is never any advantage to tactical voting.

Failed criteria include:

 * Determinism: the results depend on chance.
 * Majority-rule: even if a single candidate has support from a majority in every subelection, that candidate may lose.

For multimember bodies
If the random ballot is used to select the members of a multi-constituency body, it can serve to retain the attractive features of both first past the post and proportional representation.

As the winner of each ballot is chosen randomly, the party with the largest vote share is most likely to get the greatest number of candidates. In fact, as the number of ballots grows, the percentage representation of each party in the elected body will get closer and closer to their actual proportion of the vote across the entire electorate. At the same time, the chance of a randomly selected highly unrepresentative body diminishes.

For example, a minority party with 1% of the vote might have a 1/100 chance of getting a seat in each ballot. In a 50-person assembly, the probability of a majority for this party being chosen by random ballot is approximately (using the binomial distribution CDF)

 * $$ \sum_{k=0}^{24} {50 \choose k} \left(\frac{99}{100}\right)^k\left(\frac{1}{100}\right)^{50-k} = I_{1/100}(26, 25) \approx 10^{-38}, $$

This is a vanishingly small chance, which negates the possibility of small parties winning majorities due to random chance.

At same time, the random ballot preserves a local representative for each constituency, although this individual may not have received a majority of votes of their constituents.

Prevalence
There are no examples of the random ballot in use in practice, but it has been used as a thought experiment, and it is occasionally used in real life as a tiebreaker for other methods.

Randomness in other electoral systems
There are various other elements of randomness (other than tie-breaking) in existing electoral systems:

1. Randomly ordering candidates on a list. It is often observed that candidates who are placed in a high position on the ballot-paper will receive extra votes as a result, from voters who are apathetic (especially in elections with compulsory voting) or who have a strong preference for a party but are indifferent among individual candidates representing that party (when there are two or more). For this reason, many societies have abandoned traditional alphabetical listing of candidates on the ballot in favour of either ranking by the parties (e.g., the Australian Senate), placement by lot, or rotation (e.g., Hare-Clark STV-PR system used in Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory). When candidates are ordered by lot on the ballot, the advantage of donkey voting can be decisive in a close race.

2. Randomly selecting votes for transfer. In some single transferable vote (STV) systems of proportional representation, an elected candidate's surplus of votes over and above the quota is transferred by selecting the required number of ballot papers at random. Thus, if the quota is 1,000 votes, a candidate who polls 1,200 first preference votes has a surplus of 200 votes that s/he does not need. In some STV systems (Ireland since 1922, and Australia from 1918 to 1984), electoral officials select 200 ballot-papers randomly from the 1,200. However, this has been criticised since it is not replicable if a recount is required. As a result, Australia has adopted a variant of fractional transfer, a.k.a. the "Gregory method", by which all 1,200 ballot-papers are transferred but are marked down in value to 0.1666 (one-sixth) of a vote each. This means that 1,000 votes "stay with" the elected candidate, while the value of the 1,200 ballot-papers transferred equals only 200 votes.

3. Randomly selecting winners. This method is called sortition: rather than choosing ballots, it chooses candidates directly by lot, with no input from the voters (except perhaps a nominating or screening process). This is not the same as random ballot, since random ballot is weighted in favor of candidates who receive more votes. Random ballot would behave identically to random winner only if all candidates received the same number of votes.

title: Random ballot