text:
User talk:Noldoaran/archive

Welcome to Wikipedia
Hello Noldoaran, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Angela 05:02, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks for your friendly welcome. I had already looked at most of the pages you metioned. Out of curiosity(sp?), how did you hear of me? --Noldoaran 00:15, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)
 * I don't think Angela's online at the moment, so I'll take the liberty of responding, in order to give you a prompt answer. At any given moment, there are multiple eyes watching the "Recent changes" listing (it's one of the links on the list to your left, if you're using the standard skin), and new user accounts usually have red links to their "User" and "User talk" pages. Angela probably saw one of your edits on Nov 6 and decided to give you a welcome message. Enjoy Wikipedia! Cheers, Cyan 00:24, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Thanks! That was a very fast responce, Cyan. Everyone is so friendly here, which makes me want to contribute as much as I can. I have a quick question: what should I put in my user page? I always have trouble figuring out what to write about myself..  --Noldoaran 00:49, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)

 * Pretty much anything you like as long as it's not offensive! Perhaps a few lines about what you do/ where you're from etc. Some people like to list the articles they've worked on, others have lists of quotes they like. There are no strict rules on it, although obviously Wikipedia is not a home page provider or vehicle for advertising, so as long as not using it only for that purpose you'll be fine. Have a look at some others to get some ideas. I wonder if I'll get this in before Cyan this time? :) Angela 00:56, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * How did you put the border around your user page? Noldoaran 01:01, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)

 * Click on the edit link and have a look at the html. Here's some of it:

 *

 * Angela 01:09, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * Yep, that's what I was going to say. Have a look at Recent Changes to see for yourself. I saw your name had a red link, which is how I knew you were new and thought I'd come and offer a welcome. By the way, articles that contain only an external link are subject to deletion, so if you're intending on expanding Brigham Young University-Idaho, you might need to recreate it if the link is deleted. It's best to make sure the page has enough content to be at least a stub before you press save. Anyway, keep up the good work! Angela 00:47, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks, I'll keep that in mind! --Noldoaran 00:53, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)

Hello, regarding United Food and Commercial Workers - whether you start in your sandbox or on the real page is up to you. If you do it in a sandbox, it is best to make a brand new sandbox, so have User:Noldoran/United Food and Commercial Workers for example. That way, when it's finished, you can move it to the new title and the page history will be kept. If the article is in very draft form, then starting it off in your user space is a good idea, as things which are really short might get deleted. However, if you'd rather other people started working on it straight away, then go ahead and put it in the main namespace at United Food and Commercial Workers. Either way, good luck with it. Angela 07:44, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi, you said "The Vandal link on your user page is dead." - it in't actually dead, it's just that it is a sysop-only link, which is probably a bit out of order really. It links to a deleted page, which only sysops can see. The entire content of the page was "Se also: Frognerparken, the famous park in this district. User:Angela is vandalising the page, so I cannot link myself." I shall try to find a different link; I've been accused of being a vandal more than once! :) Angela 06:43, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * It was a misunderstanding between me and Heine. He was trying to change titles to their non-English name, which I reverted according to the Naming conventions (use English) policy. He saw this as vandalism! I think he later realised this wasn't the case though. Angela 07:22, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You could create it wherever you like and redirect the others, but you might want to read Redirected user pages considered harmful first! I've redirected mine at Meta, but that was because it kept being vandalised and I wasn't at Meta enough to keep an eye on it. A better solution is to just to have a very short user page at the places you don't visit as often and link them to your main user page. For example, mine on the Romanian Wikipedia (ro:Utilizator:Angela) just says "See en:User:Angela", and in other languages, I've put a note saying that I am mostly at the English Wikipedia (such as fr:Utilisateur:Angela). Angela 07:47, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Sounds a good idea. Remember to format it like en:User:Noldoran for the link to work across all wikis. Angela

Hi Noldoran, I noticed your question about the tables of contents on Angela's talk page. First, a really good place to post these sorts of questions is on the Village Pump, and you can also check the Wikipedia Help. And to answer your question, the Table of Contents automatically kicks in when you have 4 or more headers "== Header ==" -- try it and see! -- Thanks, BCorr ¤ Брайен 19:43, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * I figured that it was created when so many headings(headers) were in the page, but i didn't know what the "magic number" was.
 * Noldoaran 20:10, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not being fast enough with my question answering today. :) Yep, what Brian says about the TOC is true, though I don't mind at all being asked stuff on my talk page. re: WP:FD - of course! Sign up. You just need to know how to help newcomers and revert vandalism. Thanks for answering Sverdrup's question for me. Angela 19:46, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * I don't bite ;-) Thanks so much for your help!
 * Noldoaran 20:10, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the support re Thanksgiving! User:jengod

My message notification is horked, let's see if adding a new message fixes it. Noldoaran 04:32, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

Gardening Club
Hi Noldoaran,

The Gardening Club was 'founded' during a debate about the Militia. The Militia was about housekeeping, fighting the vandals, etc, especially in the case of a news article that might attract large numbers of newbies. The term Militia sounded too militant to some, and so the term gardening was brought up. A gardener is also removing weeds from his garden, but his main target is making his garden thrive and prosper. The Militia has been renamed Volunteer Fire Department, and the Gardening Club was never formally incorporated. -- JeLuF 05:34, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Typo Team
To join the typo team, just add your name to the member list and fix typos. Happy typo hunting! Alexandros

It is probably better to put the welcome remarks on the talk pages rather than the user pages. --snoyes 20:24, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * No problem, I already moved them. --snoyes 20:31, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Signatures
I asked the same question to User:Dori. It is answered at User_talk:Dori. --Jiang (Talk) 23:13, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Table markup
As we now have the new table markup, eventually all the tables should be converted to that markup. For now, it mieght be best to limit edits to small/simple tables; complex tables (like the elements) might get special CSS classes, which would require some planning. That goes for tables which hold floating images as well. Basically, be bold in updating pages :-) --Magnus Manske 22:05, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Mediation
Hi, I saw your comment at User talk:Mediator about mediators being anonymous. They are not anonymous. There's a list of them at Mediation Committee. Much of what is on that user talk page was just 142's views on what mediation ought to involve. You should see Mediation and Arbitration (proposal) for more current information on the process. Angela. 18:39, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Re: boilerplate error
In your new user boilerplate text, you have a semicolon where you should have a colon. I would fix it but I don't like editing other users' (sub)pages without permission. [User:Noldoaran|Noldoaran]] (Talk) 21:04, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC) Oh, I forgot to mention, I've noticed alot of other users using that text.. [User:Noldoaran|Noldoaran]] (Talk) 21:06, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks for telling me. I've fixed it now. Angela. 21:15, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * No problem. [User:Noldoaran|Noldoaran]] (Talk) 21:17, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

 * What do they say: "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"? ;-) --snoyes 21:28, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

In your new user boilerplate text, you have a semicolon where you should have a colon. I would fix it but I don't like editing other users' (sub)pages without permission. You most likely got that boilerplate text from Angela(or vice-versa). She has corrected the problem. Noldoaran (Talk) 21:20, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

 * Yip, thanks for the correction (although I am a fan of the semi-colon the double-colon seems more appropriate here) --snoyes 21:30, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks for telling me. Next time feel free to correct my subpages.  If I dont like the edit, ill revert it!  best wishes. Alexandros 22:01, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * That's what I was going to say! I do it on purpose so I can see who's stealing my messages. ;) (not really) Angela. 21:24, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Acronym Finder
Hi, I've used Acronym Finder to help build up disambig lists for acronyms, but I don't think we should be linking to it to from our articles; AF is full of errors and bogus expansions. I always have to run each one through Google, and many of them turn out to appear only on - other lists of acronyms. I think eventually WP will be a superior resource for acronyms, just because we do more fact-checking on these kinds of things. Stan 01:12, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * I suppose your right. I won't add any more AF links to wikipedia. Noldoaran (Talk) 01:23, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)
 * I removed the links that I added. Noldoaran (Talk) 17:01, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

broken IMDb links
Why are you going around adding to articles IMDb links that don't work? —Paul A 02:12, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * The imdb links work fine, see InterWiki Namespaces. I'll Remove them anyway. Noldoaran (Talk) 05:55, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

 * I think you misunderstood what I meant by "don't work". I can see that the namespace translator successfully expands IMDB:tt0305357 into http://us.imdb.com/Title?tt0305357 - but http://us.imdb.com/Title?tt0305357 doesn't work. It is a broken link. If you click on it, you get a Page Not Found error. (Why don't you know this already? Did you not even check the links when you added them?) —Paul A 06:50, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * I'm sorry, I thought they all worked. I believe they're all fixed now. I never meant to vandalize wikipedia. Can you forgive me? Noldoaran (Talk) 16:56, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

 * Don't worry about it. It was an understandable mistake, and there's no harm done. I'm sorry I was grouchy about it. —Paul A 01:50, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

And why do you remove them when they have been fixed? :)—Eloquence 05:55, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

 * I didn't know that the imdb links were fixed, I'll revert them. I'm sorry. Noldoaran (Talk) 05:58, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

 * It looks like you already reverted Finding Nemo, I reverted The Princess Bride. Again, Sorry. Noldoaran (Talk) 06:01, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

Bio-inspired thanks
Thanks for contributing to Bio-inspired computing! The article is very interesting. Keep up the great work!

If you have any questions, or you would like someone to review an article for you, you can always ask me.

—Noldoaran (Talk) 04:06, Dec 10, 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks for your kind words about the bio-inspired computing article. It's a fascinating field, and I aim to add as much as I know to related topics--I'm still learning though, so it may be a slow process! Thanks again, it's nice to know people are reading.  --Chopchopwhitey 09:43, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

More bio-inspiration
Hi Noldoaran... I've just done a major rewrite of the Lindenmayer systems page, maybe if you get a chance you could give it a quick look over? I think you'll find it quite interesting, if you haven't already read about them. Thanks! --Chopchopwhitey 10:24, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Sorry for the delayed responce, I've been sick. The article looks very good.
 * Your revision is much more organized. —Noldoaran (Talk) 03:10, Dec 17, 2003 (UTC)

Why should all dates be links?
Why do you think that all dates in an article should be links? Other people agree, but I have yet to see any reasoning. See also: Wikipedia talk:Make only links relevant to the context —Noldoaran (Talk) 23:19, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)

 * Because it makes the date pages much more useful if you can click "what links here" and see a list of pages containing events for that date. Example. Angela. 23:22, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * I never thought about the "what links here" page. That makes sence, thanks. —Noldoaran (Talk) 23:32, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)

 * In addition the preferences give the option of showing dates in the international dd/mm/yy or the US mm/dd/yy format. If people express a preference, all linked dates will be shown in their preferred form. For that to work all dates must be linked, and all years are linked as Angela says to allow people to link with a page containing events from that year. So it is crucial for all dates to be linked, preferable if all years are also. FearÉIREANN 23:31, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * I prefer the yyyy-mm-dd format because this way dates can be easily sorted, because the least significant part is on the right, like normal numbers. Thanks for your quick responce. —Noldoaran (Talk) 23:38, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)

 * One more thing. Should only the first occurance of a date be linked, or every occurence? —Noldoaran (Talk) 23:43, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)

 * For years, I'd say only the first occurence, but for dates, there is the advantage that Jtdirl explains above to linking every occurence. Angela. 23:49, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * I agree. I only do the first mention of a year but all dates. It avoids, for example, someone who chose the mm/dd/yy format having the first date in an article come up as that, and all others as an unformatted dd/mm/yy or a mix of everything. And it means that if you choose to see everything as yy/mm/dd every date in every article should appear as that, with the same dates appearing to me as my preferred dd/mm/yy, and User:Eloquence seeing dates in his preferred mm/dd/yy form. FearÉIREANN 00:26, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

WikiProject Programming languages
Would you be willing to join WikiProject Programming languages, we could really use your help. —Noldoaran (Talk) Dec 17, 2003

 * I could help, though I don't have that much knowledge about it... Evil saltine 08:52, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * ...I would have knowledge, but I am working in 4 Wikipedias, so my time is really limited... sorry Fantasy 15:07, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * I didn't realize you were so busy. Thanks, anyway. —Noldoaran (Talk) 00:27, Dec 18, 2003 (UTC)

Hello, thank for your offer, but these days I'm really busy with the Italian wikipedia (my native language) that was just moved from the old to the new software and needs a lot of work... but I'm known to change interests quickly, so I will surely check from time to time and see if I can help. Alfio 19:49, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I am interested in helping, although I was not detecting any specific problems with the current system, so more information is desired. Brent Gulanowski 21:43, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Just saw your request over on my talk page - must have overlooked it when you first put it up. I'm not really too sure what I can do to contribute to this project; I've got a modest degree in computer science but lots of other folks around Wikipedia go way over my head on this subject. :) I guess once a format has been settled on I can volunteer to help with the brute force part where the existing articles get put in order, at least. I'll watchlist it and see what else I can do. Bryan 10:50, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

thanks for the compliment :-) PomPom

programming languages wikiproject
I haven't got much time for wikipedia these days, but I'll sign onto the programming languages wikiproject just to keep a hand in. Thanks for the heads-up. k.lee 02:27, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Weird Hello world programs 67.123.41.26 03:29, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Comments on captions project
Hi, Noldoaran, thanks for your welcome some months back - the links have been useful. I thought I might ask you for feedback on WikiProject Writing Captions before I link to it from the usual places. I'd certainly appreciate your comments, and I'd be honored to have you as a participant if you're willing. Thanks for looking! -- ke4roh 05:26, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Username
Cool username! [Though I think it actually means King of the Ñoldor, compare Finwe's title Ñoldóran. Not that it matters :) ] Cheers,  →Iñgōlemo←   talk 22:23, 2005 Mar 25 (UTC)

Chicago
Because of your work with the WikiProject Cities I'd like you to take a look at the Chicago article if you have the time & desire. It is currently up for Peer Review (see Chicago Talk) and I would enjoy hearing your feedback to help guide the growth of this article. Jasenlee 01:09, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Wiki Computing Newbie
My primary motivation in joining Wiki (officially) was the general lack of entries on CD formatting. I believe this falls under the Computing Wikiproject. What can I do to help get started on those without stepping on anyone toes? Particularly, being a wiki newbie, I could use the help of a mentor/moderator to make sure that any new entries I may add conform to Wiki standards. Do you have any recommendations on where to begin?

Thanks Kail Ceannai 00:38, 2005 May 5 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales to Attend San Diego Meetup on October 18 2005
Hello, Jimbo Wales will be in San Diego to attend OOPSLA and has agreed to come by and visit with the San Diego wikipedians. If you are interested, you will find more info on my talk page. Johntex\talk 00:54, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Ventura County
I noticed that you were also from Ventura county thought I would just say hi whast up hows life? where are you in the county and all that good jazz --Kylehamilton 12:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Date links
Since you have taken an interest in links. Please be kind enough to vote for my new bot application to reduce overlinking of dates where they are not part of date preferences. bobblewik 20:29, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
SuggestBot predicts that you will enjoy editing some of these articles. Have fun!

SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. Your contributions make Wikipedia better -- thanks for helping.

If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please tell me on SuggestBot's talk page. Thanks from ForteTuba, SuggestBot's caretaker.

P.S. You received these suggestions because your name was listed on the SuggestBot request page. If this was in error, sorry about the confusion. -- SuggestBot 16:16, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

A late thank you.
Hi Noldoaran,

You welcomed me to Wikipedia all the way back on Nov 21, 2003. So, thanks. Hope this makes you feel warm and fuzzy for the rest of today. = )

Cheers,  Netsnipe  (Talk)  18:31, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Welcome!
 Welcome!

Hi, and welcome to the Countries WikiProject! As you may have guessed, we're a group of editors working to improve Wikipedia's coverage of counties.

There are a variety of interesting things to do within the project; you're free to participate however much—or little—you like:

 * Starting some new articles? See some model pages such as Cambodia!
 * Want to know how good our articles are? The assessment department is working on rating the quality of every country article in Wikipedia.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask another fellow member, and we'll be happy to help you. Again, welcome! We look forward to seeing you around! Shy1520 10:26, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Image:Defending-freedom-comic.jpg listed for deletion
An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:Defending-freedom-comic.jpg, has been listed at. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. BigDT 11:19, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Taichung City
I am new on WikiProject Cities. I have added considerable content to the first city I am working on, which happens to be the city of my residence, Taichung City. Would you mind taking a few minutes to look it over and leave comments on how you think I can make it better to bring it up to WikiProject Cities standards in a section of the discussion page for the city’s article page that I have set up.

Thank you. Ludahai 03:39, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Graphics Lab
I saw your name listed on Wikiproject Illustration or  the list of graphic artists, and I thought I'd let you know that a Graphics Lab has been created on EN. Based on the highly successful French and German graphics labs, it seeks to better organise and coordinate our graphic design and photo-editing efforts. Up until now, there has been no common space on EN where users could ask for maps, charts and other SVG files to be created. What's more, the Graphics Lab has discussion boards, tips, tools and links; in sum, a good common workspace. Come help us out! The infrastucture is already in place, and now we need participants. :) -- Zantastik  talk  00:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Image:OlympicRings.png listed for deletion
An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:OlympicRings.png, has been listed at. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Sherool (talk) 16:37, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Noldoaran/archive


text:
User talk:Pillsbur

Hello Pillsbur, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Angela 05:04, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Madlife (band)
A tag has been placed on Madlife (band) requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a band or musician, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such articles may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, as well as our subject-specific notability guideline for musical topics.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding  to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the page does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that they userfy the page or have a copy emailed to you. Porturology (talk) 22:11, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

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

title: User talk:Pillsbur


text:
Joseba Beloki

Joseba Beloki Dorronsoro (born 12 August 1973) is a Spanish former professional road bicycle racer.

Tour successes
Beloki turned professional in 1998 with, joined in 2000, and then  in 2001. A strong climber in the high mountains and a top performer in individual time trials, he made it to the podium in each of his first three rides in the Tour de France: in 2000 (3rd place), 2001 (3rd place) and 2002 (2nd place). He is the only runner-up during Lance Armstrong's run of seven consecutive Tour wins to have not been found guilty of doping, though he was not retroactively awarded the victory in the general classification of 2002 after Armstrong's wins were stripped. In 2001, Beloki also finished first overall in the Volta a Catalunya.

Crash and recovery
On 14 July 2003, during the 9th stage of the 2003 Tour de France, Beloki was in second place overall (just 40 seconds behind Armstrong) and negotiating a turn at speed while descending from Cote de La Rochette, shortly after passing the Col de Manse, just 4 km from the stage finish at Gap. He lost control of his bicycle after he locked his rear brake and the rear tire came off the wheel on a patch of tarmac that was softened by the sun, sending his rear wheel skidding first in one direction and then the other. Beloki suffered a hard fall that broke his right femur in two places along with his elbow and his wrist. Armstrong was following immediately behind Beloki and, to avoid the fallen rider, headed off the road to go down the hill through the underbrush and across a small field. The crash effectively ended Beloki's career as a premier bicycle racer.

For the 2004 season, Beloki opted to sign for the French team Brioches La Boulangère in preparation for the 2004 Tour de France. He was reported as being fully recovered from his injuries by early 2004, but it later transpired that those injuries were taking longer to heal than initially anticipated. By mid-April 2004, Beloki had yet to begin serious competition for the season. He started his home race, the Tour of the Basque Country, but failed to even complete the first stage before retiring in pain from his injuries. Citing incompatibility with the French team, he switched to the Spanish Saunier Duval–Prodir team for the remainder of the 2004 season. Beloki switched back to Manolo Saiz's team (now called Liberty Seguros–Würth) for 2005. Beloki completed the 2005 Tour de France and finished in 75th place. In the Vuelta a España, he also completed the race without being recognized, since he was only 39th overall.

In 2006 he was among those implicated in Operación Puerto and was withdrawn from the Tour de France. However, on 26 July he was cleared by Spanish officials of any wrongdoing. Payment records from Beloki as well as his race schedule were found in Eufemiano Fuentes' possession in his office; however, Beloki denies any claim he doped with Fuentes.

Personal life
His son Markel Beloki is also a professional cyclist.

Major results

 * 1997
 * 1st Jersey yellow.svg Overall Vuelta a Alava
 * 1st Stage 1
 * 2nd Time trial, National Road Championships

 * 1998
 * 5th Overall Tour de l'Avenir
 * 1st Jersey polkadot.svg Mountains classification

 * 1999
 * 3rd Road race, National Road Championships
 * 4th Overall Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré
 * 4th Overall Volta a Catalunya

 * 2000
 * 1st Jersey blue.svg Overall Vuelta a Asturias
 * 1st Stage 5
 * 2nd Overall Tour de Romandie
 * 1st Stage 3b (ITT)
 * 3rd Overall Tour de France
 * 6th Overall Vuelta a Aragón

 * 2001
 * 1st MaillotVolta.png Overall Volta a Catalunya
 * 1st Jersey green.svg Points classification
 * 1st Stages 1 (TTT), 4 & 8 (ITT)
 * 2nd Overall Euskal Bizikleta
 * 2nd Overall Escalada a Montjuïc
 * 3rd Overall Tour de France
 * 4th Circuito de Getxo

 * 2002
 * 2nd Overall Tour de France
 * 2nd Overall Escalada a Montjuïc
 * 1st Stage 1a (ITT)
 * 3rd Overall Vuelta a España
 * 1st Stage 1 (TTT)
 * Held Jersey gold.svg after Stages 1–4
 * 3rd Overall Vuelta a Asturias
 * 3rd LuK Challenge Chrono (with Igor González de Galdeano)
 * 8th Overall Euskal Bizikleta
 * 1st Stage 5
 * 8th Giro di Lombardia

 * 2003
 * 1st Jersey red.svg Overall Clasica Alcobendas
 * 1st Jersey green.svg Points classification
 * 1st Stage 2b (ITT)
 * 2nd Overall Euskal Bizikleta
 * 1st Stage 5

title: Joseba Beloki


text:
Joseph Needham

Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (9 December 1900 – 24 March 1995) was a British biochemist, historian of science and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science and technology, initiating publication of the multivolume Science and Civilisation in China. A focus of his was what has come to be called the Needham Question of why and how China had ceded its leadership in Science and Technology to Western countries.

He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1941 and a fellow of the British Academy in 1971. In 1992, Queen Elizabeth II conferred on him the Order of the Companions of Honour, and the Royal Society noted he was the only living person to hold these three titles.

Early life
Needham's father, Joseph, was a doctor, and his mother, Alicia Adelaïde, née Montgomery (1863–1945), was a music composer from Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland. His father, born in East London, then a poor section of town, rose to become a Harley Street physician, but frequently battled with Needham's mother. The young Needham often mediated. In his early teens, he was taken to hear the Sunday lectures of Ernest Barnes, a professional mathematician who became Master of the Temple, a royal church in London. Barnes inspired an interest in the philosophers and medieval scholastics that Needham pursued in his father's library. Needham later attributed his strong Christian faith to Barnes' philosophical theology, which was founded on rational argument, and attributed his openness to the religions of other cultures to Barnes as well.

In 1914, with the outbreak of World War I, Needham was sent to Oundle School, founded in 1556 in Northamptonshire. He did not enjoy leaving home, but he later described the headmaster Frederick William Sanderson as a "man of genius" and said that without that influence on him at a tender age, he might not have attempted his largest work. Sanderson had been charged by the school's governors with developing a science and technology programme, which included a metal shop that gave the young Needham a grounding in engineering. Sanderson also emphasised to the boys of the school that co-operation led to higher human achievement than competition and that knowledge of history was necessary to build a better future. The Bible, in Sanderson's teaching, supplied archaeological knowledge to compare with the present. During school holidays, Needham assisted his father in the operating rooms of several wartime hospitals, an experience that convinced him that he was not interested in becoming a surgeon. The Royal Navy, however, appointed him a surgeon sub-lieutenant, a position that he held for only a few months.

Education
In 1921, Needham graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. In January 1925, Needham earned an MA. In October 1925, Needham earned a PhD. He had intended to study medicine, but came under the influence of Frederick Hopkins, resulting in his switch to biochemistry.

Career
After graduation, Needham was elected to a fellowship at Gonville and Caius College and worked in Hopkins' laboratory at the University Department of Biochemistry, specialising in embryology and morphogenesis. His three-volume work Chemical Embryology, published in 1931, includes a history of embryology from Egyptian times up to the early 19th century, including quotations in most European languages. Including this history reflected Needham's fear that overspecialization would hold back scientific progress and that social and historical forces shaped science. In 1936, he and several other Cambridge scientists founded the History of Science Committee. The Committee included conservatives but also Marxists like J.D. Bernal, whose views on the social and economic frameworks of science influence Needham.

Needham's Terry Lecture of 1936 was published by Cambridge University Press in association with Yale University Press under the title of Order and Life. In 1939 he produced a massive work on morphogenesis that a Harvard reviewer claimed "will go down in the history of science as Joseph Needham's magnum opus," little knowing what would come later.

Although his career as biochemist and an academic was well established, his career developed in unanticipated directions during and after World War II.

Three Chinese scientists came to Cambridge for graduate study in 1937: Lu Gwei-djen, Wang Ying-lai, and Shen Shih-Chang (, the only one under Needham's tutelage). Lu, daughter of a Nanjing pharmacist, taught Needham Chinese, igniting his interest in China's ancient technological and scientific past. He then pursued, and mastered, the study of Classical Chinese privately with Gustav Haloun. Under the Royal Society's direction, Needham was the director of the Sino-British Science Co-operation Office in Chongqing from 1942 to 1946. During this time he made several long journeys through war-torn China and many smaller ones, visiting scientific and educational establishments and obtaining for them much needed supplies. His longest trip in late 1943 ended in far west in Gansu at the caves in Dunhuang at the end of the Great Wall where the earliest dated printed book - a copy of the Diamond Sutra - was found. The other long trip reached Fuzhou on the east coast, returning across the Xiang River just two days before the Japanese blew up the bridge at Hengyang and cut off that part of China. In 1944 he visited Yunnan in an attempt to reach the Burmese border. Everywhere he went he purchased and was given old historical and scientific books which he shipped back to Britain through diplomatic channels. They were to form the foundation of his later research. He got to know Zhou Enlai, first Premier of the People's Republic of China) and met numerous Chinese scholars, including the painter Wu Zuoren, and the meteorologist Zhu Kezhen, who later sent crates of books to him in Cambridge, including 2,000 volumes of the Gujin Tushu Jicheng encyclopaedia, a comprehensive record of China's past.

On his return to Europe, he was asked by Julian Huxley to become the first head of the Natural Sciences Section of UNESCO in Paris, France. In fact it was Needham who insisted that science should be included in the organisation's mandate at an earlier planning meeting.

After two years in which the suspicions of the Americans over scientific co-operation with communists intensified, Needham resigned in 1948 and returned to Gonville and Caius College, where he resumed his fellowship and his rooms, which were soon filled with his books.

He devoted his energy to the history of Chinese science until his retirement in 1990, even though he continued to teach some biochemistry until 1993. Needham's reputation recovered from the Korean affair (see below) such that by 1959 he was elected as president of the fellows of Caius College and in 1965 he became Master (head) of the college, a post which he held until he was 76.

Science and Civilisation in China
In 1948, Needham proposed a project to the Cambridge University Press for a book on Science and Civilisation in China. Within weeks of being accepted, the project had grown to seven volumes, and it has expanded ever since. His initial collaborator was the historian Wang Ling, whom he had met in Lizhuang and obtained a position for at Trinity. The first years were devoted to compiling a list of every mechanical invention and abstract idea that had been made and conceived in China. These included cast iron, the ploughshare, the stirrup, gunpowder, printing, the magnetic compass and clockwork escapements, most of which were thought at the time to be western inventions. The first volume eventually appeared in 1954.

The publication received widespread acclaim, which intensified to lyricism as the further volumes appeared. He wrote fifteen volumes himself, and the regular production of further volumes continued after his death in 1995. Later, Volume III was divided, so that 27 volumes have now been published. Successive volumes are published as they are completed, which means that they do not appear in the order originally contemplated in the project's prospectus.

Needham's final organizing schema was: See Science and Civilisation in China for a full list.
 * Vol. I. Introductory Orientations
 * Vol. II. History of Scientific Thought
 * Vol. III. Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and Earth
 * Vol. IV. Physics and Physical Technology
 * Vol. V. Chemistry and Chemical Technology
 * Vol. VI. Biology and Biological Technology
 * Vol. VII. The Social Background

The project is still proceeding under the guidance of the Publications Board of the Needham Research Institute, directed by Professor Mei Jianjun.

UNESCO
Needham, along with colleague Julian Huxley, was one of the founders of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Developed in 1945 with the help of Allied governments, UNESCO is an international organization that aims to bring education to regions that had been affected by Nazi occupation. Needham and Huxley advocated the growth of scientific education as a means to overcome political conflict and hence founded UNESCO in an effort to expand its influence. Composed of representatives from various Allied countries, UNESCO operated on the principle that ideas and information should spread freely among nations. However, Needham disagreed with this initial mode of exchange because of its failure to include nations outside of Europe and America.

To communicate his discordance with the model, Needham wrote and distributed a formal message to others in the organization explaining its flaws. He stated that nations outside of the European-American "bright zone", or primary location of scientific advancement, needed the help of international education the most. He also argued that the lack of familiarity between other nations and those in the bright zone made ideological exchange difficult. Finally, he expressed the notion that other countries had issues disseminating knowledge because they lacked the capital necessary for distribution. Due to these constraints, Needham suggested that most of the organization's support should be given to the "periphery" nations that lie outside of the bright zone.

In addition to supporting periphery nations, Needham incorporated his desire for a non-Eurocentric record of science in UNESCO's mission. To this end, Huxley and Needham devised an ambitious scholarly project they called The History of Scientific and Cultural Development of Mankind (shortened to History of Mankind). The goal of this project was to write a non-ethnocentric account of scientific and cultural history; it aimed to synthesize the contributions, perspectives, and development of oriental nations in the East in a way that was complementary to the Western scientific tradition. This vision was partly influenced by the political climate of the time of its planning in the late 1940s - the "East" and "West" were seen as cultural and political opposites. Working from the belief that science was the universal experience that bound humanity, Huxley and Needham hoped that their project would help ease some of the animosity between the two spheres. The project involved hundreds of scholars from around the globe and took over a decade to reach fruition in 1966. The work is still continued today with new volumes published periodically.

The Needham Question
"Needham's Grand Question", also known as "The Needham Question", is this: why had China been overtaken by the West in science and technology, despite their earlier successes? In Needham's words,

“Why did modern science, the mathematization of hypotheses about Nature, with all its implications for advanced technology, take its meteoric rise only in the West at the time of Galileo?”, and why it “had not developed in Chinese civilization” which in the previous many centuries “was much more efficient than occidental in applying” natural knowledge to practical needs?

In October 1988, Needham wrote: “Francis Bacon had selected four inventions, paper and printing, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass, which had done more than (anything else), he thought, to transform completely the modern world and mark it off from the antiquity of the Middle Ages. He regarded the origins of these inventions as ‘obscure and inglorious’ and he died without ever knowing that all of them were Chinese. We have done our best to put this record straight”.

Needham's works attribute significant weight to the impact of Confucianism and Taoism on the pace of Chinese scientific discovery, and emphasises the "diffusionist" approach of Chinese science as opposed to a perceived independent inventiveness in the western world. Needham thought the notion that the Chinese script had inhibited scientific thought was "grossly overrated".

His own research revealed a steady accumulation of scientific results throughout Chinese history. In the final volume he suggests "A continuing general and scientific progress manifested itself in traditional Chinese society but this was violently overtaken by the exponential growth of modern science after the Renaissance in Europe. China was homeostatic, but never stagnant."

Nathan Sivin, one of Needham's collaborators, while agreeing that Needham's achievement was monumental, suggested that the "Needham question", as a counterfactual hypothesis, was not conducive to a useful answer: "It is striking that this question – Why didn't the Chinese beat Europeans to the Scientific Revolution? – happens to be one of the few questions that people often ask in public places about why something didn't happen in history. It is analogous to the question of why your name did not appear on page 3 of today's newspaper."

There are several hypotheses attempting to explain the Needham Question. Yingqiu Liu and Chunjiang Liu argued that the issue rested on the lack of property rights and that those rights were only obtainable through favour of the emperor. Protection was incomplete as the emperor could rescind those rights at any time. Science and technology were subjugated to the needs of the feudal royal family, and any new discoveries were sequestered by the government for its use. The government took steps to control and interfere with private enterprises by manipulating prices and engaging in bribery. Each revolution in China redistributed property rights under the same feudal system. Land and property were reallocated first and foremost to the royal family of the new dynasty up until the late Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) when fiefdom land was taken over by warlords and merchants. These limited property rights constrained potential scientific innovations.

The Chinese Empire enacted totalitarian control and was able to do so because of its great size. There were smaller independent states that had no choice but to comply with this control. They could not afford to isolate themselves. The Chinese believed in the well-being of the state as their primary motive for economic activity, and individual initiatives were shunned. There were regulations on the press, clothing, construction, music, birth rates, and trade. The Chinese state controlled all aspects of life, severely limiting any incentives to innovate and to better one's self. "The ingenuity and inventiveness of the Chinese would no doubt have enriched China further and probably brought it to the threshold of modern industry, had it not been for this stifling state control. It is the State that kills technological progress in China". Meanwhile, the lack of a free market in China escalated to a new affair whereby the Chinese were restricted from carrying trade with foreigners. Foreign trade is a great source of foreign knowledge as well as the capability of acquisition of new products. Foreign trade promotes innovation as well as the expansion of a countries market. As Landes (2006) further puts it, in 1368 when the new emperor Hongwu was inaugurated, his main objective was war. (p. 6). A lot of revenue that can otherwise be used for innovative procedures are as a result lost in wars. Heavy participation in war significantly hindered the Chinese to have the capability of focusing on the industrial revolution. Landes (2006) further explains that Chinese were advised to stay put and never to move without permission from the Chinese state. As illustrated, “The Ming code of core laws also sought to block social mobility" (Landes, 2006, p. 7). How can you expect the industrial revolution to a country that prohibited its people from performing social mobility? From the above, you will come to find that it is clear that the Chinese would not be able to achieve industrial revolution since they were heavily tamed by their state government who were naïve about the aspect of innovation.

According to Justin Lin, China did not make the shift from an experience-based technological invention process to an experiment-based innovation process. The experience-based process depended on the size of a population, and while new technologies have come about through the trials and errors of the peasants and artisans, experiment-based processes surpasses experience-based processes in yielding new technology. Progress from experimentation following the logic of a scientific method can occur at a much faster rate because the inventor can perform many trials during the same production period under a controlled environment. Results from experimentation is dependent on the stock of scientific knowledge while results from experience-based processes is tied directly to the size of a population; hence, experiment-based innovation processes have a higher likelihood of producing better technology as human capital grows. China had about twice the population of Europe until the 13th century and so had a higher probability of creating new technologies. After the 14th century, China's population grew exponentially, but progress in innovation saw diminishing returns. Europe had a smaller population but began to integrate science and technology that arose from the scientific revolution in the 17th century. This scientific revolution gave Europe a comparative advantage in developing technology in modern times.

Lin blamed the institutions in China for preventing the adoption of the experiment-based methodology. Its sociopolitical institution inhibited intellectual creativity, but more importantly, it diverted this creativity away from scientific endeavours. Totalitarian control by the state in the Chinese Empire inhibited public dispute, competition, and the growth of modern science, while the clusters of independent European nations were more favourable to competition and scientific development. In addition, the Chinese did not have the incentives to acquire human capital necessary for modern scientific experimentation. Civil service was deemed the most rewarding and honourable work in pre-modern China. The gifted had more incentives to pursue this route to move up the social status ladder as opposed to pursuing scientific endeavours. Further the laxity and lack of innovation exhibited by China made her to be surpassed by the growing European levels of technological advancement and innovation. As Landes (2006) puts forward, the Chinese lived as they wanted. They were ruled by an emperor "Son of Heaven" who they termed to be unique, and he was godlike. As he further adds, this emperor had arrogant representatives who were chosen in terms of "competitive examinations in Confucian letters and morals.” As explained, these representatives were submissive to their subordinates as they possessed a high degree of self-esteem. Just as put forward by Landes (2006), the downward tyranny combined with the cultural triumphalism had made China as a state to become a bad learner. (p. 11). It is clear China could not be able to accept any information from their inferiors.

The High-Level Equilibrium Trap. High population, although sometimes it can be a cheap source of labor which is necessary for economic development, sometimes the high population can be a great setback when it comes to development. The land which a factor of production can be negatively affected by high population. The ratio of person-to-land-area will eventually decrease as the population of a community grows. During the thirteenth century, China was significantly affected by this population factor when it came to the point of ignition of an industrial revolution. As Lin (1995) puts forward, initially, the culture of the Chinese has valued the males in the society; as a result, early marriages were experienced which boosted the fertility rates leading to the rapid increase in the China population. (p. 271). An increase in population with no equivalent increase in economic and technological development will ultimately suppress the available resources causing laxity to the general economic development. The high population experienced in China significantly raised the man to land ratio. The China population was massive. Just as Lin (1995) elaborates, the raising man-land-ratio in the Chinese meant that there was a diminishing surplus per capita. Due to this, China were not able to have surplus resources which can be tapped and used to ignite the industrial revolution. Just as Lin (1995) puts forward, Europeans were enjoying an optimum man to land ratio with no land strain. The Europeans also had vast unexploited technologies as well as economics possibilities. All these advantages were possible because of the feudal system that the European had embraced, (p. 272). The availability of unexploited ventures made European have significant potential in the execution of a fully-fledged industrial revolution. Lin (1995) further adds that although Europe was lagging behind China during the pre-modern era in terms of economic and technological advancements, the right time finally came for Europe to use the accumulated sufficient knowledge. A strong need to save labor was finally felt in Europe. The agrarian revolution experienced before also provided agricultural surplus that ultimately served as the core assets towards financing the industrial revolution. (p. 272). The accumulation of adequate labor and knowledge to their threshold was a significant step that the European embraced to ignite an industrial revolution. It is also clear that the agrarian revolution experienced in Europe was a tangible asset towards industrialization. The issue of the abundance of land was also at the forefront in ensuring that industrial revolution was realized in Europe contrary to what was experienced in China whereby the large populations put a lot of strain to the available resources as a result making industrial revolution unattainable in China during the early fourteenth century.

Evaluations and critiques
Needham's work has been criticised by most scholars who assert that it has a strong inclination to exaggerate Chinese technological achievements and has an excessive propensity to assume a Chinese origin for the wide range of objects his work covered. Pierre-Yves Manguin writes, for instance: J Needham's (1971) monumental work on Chinese nautics offers by far the most scholarly synthesis on the subjects of Chinese shipbuilding and navigation. His propensity to view the Chinese as the initiators of all things and his constant references to the superiority of Chinese over the rest of the world's techniques does at times detract from his argument.

In another vein of criticism, Andre Gunder Frank's Re-Orient argues that despite Needham's contributions in the field of Chinese technological history, he still struggled to break free from his preconceived notions of European exceptionalism. Re-Orient criticizes Needham for his Eurocentric assumptions borrowed from Marx and the presupposition of Needham's famous Grand Question that science was a uniquely Western phenomenon. Frank observes:

Alas, it was also originally Needham's Marxist and Weberian point of departure. As Needham found more and more evidence about science and technology in China, he struggled to liberate himself from his Eurocentric original sin, which he had inherited directly from Marx, as Cohen also observes. But Needham never quite succeeded, perhaps because his concentration on China prevented him from sufficiently revising his still ethnocentric view of Europe itself.

T. H. Barrett asserts in The Woman Who Discovered Printing that Needham was unduly critical of Buddhism, describing it as having 'tragically played a part in strangling the growth of Chinese science,' to which Needham readily conceded in a conversation a few years later. Barrett also criticizes Needham's favoritism and uncritical evaluation of Taoism in Chinese technological history:

He had a tendency — not entirely justified in the light of more recent research — to think well of Taoism, because he saw it as playing a part that could not be found elsewhere in Chinese civilization. The mainstream school of thinking of the bureaucratic Chinese elite, or 'Confucianism' (another problematic term) in his vocabulary, seemed to him to be less interested in science and technology, and to have 'turned its face away from Nature.' Ironically, the dynasty that apparently turned away from printing from 706 till its demise in 907 was as Taoist as any in Chinese history, though perhaps its 'state Taoism' would have seemed a corrupt and inauthentic business to Needham.

Daiwie Fu, in the essay "On Mengxi bitan's World of Marginalities and 'South-pointing Needles': Fragment Translation vs. Contextual Tradition", criticises Needham, among other Western scholars, for translations that select fragments deemed “scientific,” usually without appreciating the unity of the text, the context of the quotation, and taxonomy in which those fragments are embedded, then reorganize and reinterpret them in a new, Western taxonomy and narrative. Needham used this process of selection and re-assembly to argue for a Chinese tradition of science that did not exist as such.

Justin Lin argues against Needham's premise that China's early adoption of modern socioeconomic institutions contributed heavily to its technological advancement. Lin contends that technological advancements at this time were largely separate from economic circumstance, and that the effects of these institutions on technological advancement were indirect.

Political involvement
Needham's political views were unorthodox and his lifestyle controversial. His left-wing stance was based in a form of Christian socialism. However he was influenced by Louis Rapkine and Liliana Lubińska, both Marxists brought up with a Jewish anti-clerical outlook. He never joined any Communist Party. After 1949 his sympathy with Chinese culture was extended to the new government. During his stay in China, Needham was asked to analyse some cattle cakes that had been scattered by American aircraft in the south of China at the end of World War II, and found they were impregnated with anthrax. During the Korean War he made further accusations that the Americans had used biological warfare. Zhou Enlai coordinated an international campaign to enlist Needham for a study commission, tacitly offering access to materials and contacts in China needed for his then early research. Needham agreed to be an inspector in North Korea and his report supported the allegations (it is debated to this very day whether the evidence had been planted as a part of a complicated disinformation campaign). Needham's biographer Simon Winchester claimed that "Needham was intellectually in love with communism; and yet communist spymasters and agents, it turned out, had pitilessly duped him." Needham was blacklisted by the US government until well into the 1970s.

In 1965, with Derek Bryan, a retired diplomat whom he first met in China, Needham established the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, which for some years provided the only way for British subjects to visit the People's Republic of China. On a visit to China in 1964 he was met by Zhou Enlai, and in 1965 stated that "China has a better government now than for centuries", but on a visit in 1972 he was deeply depressed by the changes under the Cultural Revolution.

Personal life
Needham married the biochemist Dorothy Moyle (1896–1987) in 1924 and they became the first husband and wife both to be elected as Fellows of the Royal Society. Simon Winchester notes that, in his younger days, Needham was an avid gymnosophist and he was always attracted by pretty women. When he and Lu Gwei-djen met in 1937, they fell deeply in love, which Dorothy accepted. The three of them eventually lived contentedly on the same road in Cambridge for many years. In 1989, two years after Dorothy's death, Needham married Lu, who died two years later. He suffered from Parkinson's disease from 1982, and died at the age of 94 at his Cambridge home. In 2008, the Chair of Chinese in the University of Cambridge, a post never awarded to Needham, was endowed in his honour as the Joseph Needham Professorship of Chinese History, Science and Civilisation. Since 2016, an annual Needham Memorial Lecture is held at Clare College.

Needham was a high church Anglo-Catholic who worshipped regularly at Ely Cathedral and in the college chapel, but he also described himself as an "honorary Taoist".

Honours and awards
In 1961, Needham was awarded the George Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society and in 1966 he became Master of Gonville and Caius College. In 1979, Joseph Needham received the Dexter Award for Outstanding Achievement in the History of Chemistry from the American Chemical Society. In 1984, Needham became the fourth recipient of the J.D. Bernal Award, awarded by the Society for Social Studies of Science. In 1990, he was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize by Fukuoka City.

The Needham Research Institute in Robinson College in Cambridge, devoted to the study of China's scientific history, was opened in 1985 by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and Chancellor of Cambridge University.

 * Order of the Companions of Honour, 1992.
 * British Academy, 1971.
 * Royal Society, 1941.

Works

 * Science, Religion and Reality (1925)
 * Man a Machine (1927) Kegan Paul
 * Chemical Embryology (1931) C.U.P.
 * The Great Amphibium: Four Lectures on the Position of Religion in a World Dominated by Science (1931)
 * A History of Embryology (1934, 1959)  C.U.P.
 * Order and Life The Terry Lectures (1936)
 * Biochemistry and Morphogenesis (1942)
 * Time: The Refreshing River (Essays and Addresses, 1932–1942) (1943)
 * Chinese Science (1945) Pilot Press
 * History Is On Our Side (1947)
 * Science Outpost; Papers of the Sino-British Science Co-Operation Office (British Council Scientific Office in China) 1942–1946 (1948) Pilot Press
 * Science and Civilisation in China (1954–2008...) C.U.P. – 27 volumes to date
 * The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West (1969) Allen & Unwin
 * Within the Four Seas: The Dialogue of East and West (1969)
 * Clerks and Craftsmen in China and the West: Lectures and Addresses on the History of Science and Technology (1970) C.U.P.
 * Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition (1973) Ed. Shigeru Nakayama, Nathan Sivin. Cambridge : MIT Press
 * Moulds of Understanding: A Pattern of Natural Philosophy (1976) Allen & Unwin
 * The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China (5 volumes) (1980–95) – an abridgement by Colin Ronan
 * Science in Traditional China : A Comparative Perspective (1982)
 * The Genius of China (1986) A one-volume distillation by Robert Temple Simon & Schuster
 * Heavenly Clockwork : The Great Astronomical Clocks of Medieval China (1986) C.U.P.
 * The Hall of Heavenly Records : Korean Astronomical Instruments and Clocks, 1380–1780 (1986) C.U.P.
 * A Selection from the Writings of Joseph Needham ed Mansel Davies, The Book Guild 1990

title: Joseph Needham


text:
Gap, Hautes-Alpes

Gap is the prefecture of the department of Hautes-Alpes, in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Southeastern France. In 2019, the commune had a population of 40,631, making it the most populated city in Hautes-Alpes. At a height of 750 metres above sea level, to the south of the Écrins Massif, it is also France's highest prefecture.

Together with other Alpine towns, Gap engages in the Alpine Town of the Year Association for the implementation of the Alpine Convention to achieve sustainable development in the Alpine Arc. Gap was awarded Alpine Town of the Year in 2002. In 2013 Gap was named the sportiest city in France by the national sports newspaper L'Équipe.

Toponymy
The first attestation of the name of the city is located in the ancient texts as Vappincum, later reduced to Vappum, the form of Gap is found in the 13th century.

The toponym Vappincum is analyzed on the basis of a radical Vapp- unknown meaning, and the suffix -incu of Ligurian origin found in Provence and the Massif central to the Alps (cf. Arlanc, Nonenque, Moirans and Morencum in the 10th century and Lemenc, a district of Chambéry, formerly Lemencum). The Gap form actually began as the short form Vappum, well attested, by the final drop.

The v- has been radically treated as a w- Germanic, where *Wap, then Gap (see for this type of evolution the wasp, Latin vespa, treats words as *wespa; mistletoe, Latin viscum, treated as *wiscum, etc., depending on the phonetic path [w] > [gw] > [g]). This phonetic evolution would be more specifically made under the influence of the Gothic language.

The name in Provençal (Alpine) is also Gap.

Prehistory
The first settlement of Gap dates back to the Neolithic. The culture of these first inhabitants belonged to the southern Chasséen.

Very rare testimonies of the pre-Roman era are formed by the remains of an oppidum located at the summit of the hill of Saint-Mens with few visible traces of a dolmen uncovered in 1866 and an ancient cemetery in the hamlet of Pré Camargue; but no remains were kept of these last two findings. Gallic money was also found. Gap was the capital of the Celto-Ligurian tribe. These peoples, probably belonging to the Caturiges tribe, spoke the Celtic language.

The Roman period
The was then part of the territory of the Tricorii, a Gallic people who were Romanised during the conquest of Gallia Narbonensis in 125-124 BC, and whose capitals were Luc-en-Diois and Vaison.

Around 20 BC, Cottius, a leader of tribes of the Valley of Suze, allied to Rome, and urged by Augustus, undertook the building of a route of communication in the Valley of the Durance. He had get the submission of the peoples of the area who were eager to maintain their independence. This route, built between 14 and 6 BC, and which received the name of Via Cottia per Alpem, linked Turin to Sisteron and consisted of six stations. Then known as Vapincum, the town of Gap was founded from one of these stations. In 22 AD, Gap became the start of a Roman road to Valence.

At this time, the location of the future city was a Roman camp. The camp was protected by a terraced wall surrounded by a ditch. It was the largest between Montgenèvre and Sisteron. The garrison that occupied it could be estimated at 360 men. They came from the surrounding peoples. They were assigned to protect users of the Roman roads against brigands. Later, an axis towards the was created. The Gap site took importance by becoming a hub of communications.

The economy was mainly pastoral and the first crops grew on the slopes of Puymaure. Some houses were built on stilts as shown by excavations.

During the first centuries, the population increased significantly. Towards the end of the 3rd century and 4th century, fortifications were built to protect the central core of the town. These completely surrounded the enclosure with walls and eleven towers. With an enclosed area of 2 ha the center of the town formed a big village.

Middle Ages
From 28 December 986, the Bishop of Gap had sovereign rights over the city due to concerns about future Muslim invasions. The bishops kept this power until Revolutionary reforms in 1801 despite Gap being annexed by the French crown in 1512.

Gap and its area became part of the County of Provence which was established at the end of the 10th century. The County of Forcalquier was separated in the 12th century. Although the bishops of Gap were the temporal lords of the city their control was long disputed by officers of the Counts of Forcalquier notably during the episcopacy of Arnoux who later became the bishop of the city. On the death of the last Count of Forcalquier in 1209, the Embrun and Gap areas were passed to the Dauphiné while those of Forcalquier and Sisteron returned to the County of Provence. It is for this reason that the current coat of arms of the Region Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur is the coat of arms of the Dauphiné. In 1349 the Dauphin of Viennois Humbert II passed on his Principality to the eldest son of Philippe VI of France, the future King of France Charles V. From 1349 to 1457 Dauphiné remained a Principality separated from France, whose prince was the eldest son of the King of France. In 1457, Charles VII put an end to this status and joined the province to the Kingdom of France.

The Knights Templar owned a house at Gap, a secondary establishment which depended on a. The creation of the, which ruled the city, dated back to before 1209.

In the 14th century, the city took advantage of the benefits of the installation of the Popes in Avignon, which brought a more frequent passage of travellers to develop a craft of wool and skins, which made it thrive. Avignon linkages were strengthened by the presence of many clerics of the entourage of the Pope, within the chapter of the canons of Gap.

Renaissance and early modern era
The 16th and 17th centuries were particularly dark times for the city. The Wars of Religion were lethal in the region. Gap was a Catholic stronghold, while the switched to Protestantism. After various skirmishes, François de Bonne, leader of the Protestants, decided to attack Gap, nevertheless protected by 20 towers. On the night of 3 January 1577, François Philibert, known as Cadet de Charance, opened the Saint-Arey gate, and allowed him to attack the city by surprise. To cries of "Kill! Kill!" his men proceeded in veritable butchery. De Bonne burned the cathedral, plundered the monasteries, appropriated the property of the inhabitants, and built a proud citadel on the Colline de Puymaure [Puymaure Hill] where it dominated over Gap. Returned to Catholicism in 1622, he abandoned all claims to the city.

In 1692, the troops of the ruler Victor Amadeus II, committed with the League of Augsburg, against France of Louis XIV, captured the city, abandoned by its inhabitants, on 29 August. Gap was looted and burned, of the 953 houses in the commune, 798 were destroyed. This was part of the.

In 1790, during the French Revolution, the province of Dauphiné was divided into three departments: Drôme, Isère and Hautes-Alpes which Gap became the prefecture. Hautes-Alpes then became the highest Department of France and Gap, the highest prefecture of the country. It remains prefecture of Haute-Alpes to this day.

19th century
In 1802, the baron was appointed. Under his administration, the city of Gap and the Department of the Hautes-Alpes experienced some growth. It built roads linking Gap to Italy and the Drôme Valley and created a departmental nursery. His statue, carved by the Gap sculptor Jean Marcellin, was erected in 1866 at the square which bears his name.

Napoleon I left Elba in February 1815 and stopped at Gap on 5 March 1815 with 40 horsemen and 10 grenadiers, where he had thousands of copies of his Proclamations printed. The whole population of the city accompanied Napoleon when he left Gap. Acknowledging the reception of the population of these regions, he left the Haut-Alpins with the following message:

The inhabitants of the departments of the high and low Alps, citizens,

I was deeply touched by all the feelings that you have shown me, your wishes are granted. The cause of the Nation will triumph again. You're right to call me your father; I live for the honour and happiness of France. My return banishes all your concerns; it ensures the conservation of all properties, equality among all classes and the rights you have enjoyed for the last 25 years, and after which our fathers have so yearned, forming today a part of your existence.

In all circumstances where I find myself, I will always remember with great interest all that I've seen through your country.

Gap experienced a new era from 1875 with the arrival of the railway.

The commune of Chaudun was joined with Gap, by the prefectoral Decree of 22 October 1895.

Second World War
During World War II, the city was part of the free zone. But after November 1942 and the Case Anton, it was integrated into the occupied area. After Operation Overlord on 6 June 1944, the Germans placed some 1,000 men to hold the cuvette de Gap [Gap Basin], a key point of the Cannes-Lyon axis. , 37 years old, an original Gaullist resistant and accomplished soldier (he had trained more than 4000 resistance fighters in combat and about a hundred in sabotage) was sent by the GPRF of General de Gaulle to liberate the city on behalf of the Resistance. Aided by local guerrillas and resistance, he has however no way to take the city by force. He then started with his men in a campaign of sabotage and bombings that lasted more than a month. After having isolated the city by destroying the infrastructure surrounding it (overpasses, railway lines, bridges, etc.), the FFI had managed to rally the population and give the occupiers an impression of encirclement.

A mid-August 1944, Drouot-L'Hermine, who lost his right-hand man,, a few days earlier, sent two emissaries to negotiate the surrender of the Germans. The Germans were convinced of facing a large-scale uprising, and agreed to lay down their weapons provided that it was to regular troops (they refused, therefore, to surrender to the Resistance). While the Americans were more than 50 km away, time was pressing for Drouot-L'Hermine. Indeed, he received an order from De Gaulle to liberate the city before the arrival of the Allies, to support the position of France as a victorious nation, liberated through the active participation of the Resistance. Drouot-L'Ermine then developed a new ploy. He managed to convince the Allies to advance one of their tanks into enemy terrain, and shoot a few rounds close to Gap. Shots echoed in the valley, and the Germans immediately identified the characteristic sound of a tank, a weapon that the guerrillas did not hold. Thinking they were then dealing with the Allies, the troops of the Reich surrendered to the Resistance. Therefore, a few hundred resistance fighters were able to capture 1,200 German soldiers, including 40 officers. The city was liberated on the evening of 19 August 1944.

Fifth Republic
The commune of Romette was associated with that of Gap, by decree dated 25 November 1974.

Gap ran a bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics, but lost out as France's candidate to nearby Annecy. The games were eventually awarded to Pyeongchang in South Korea.

Location
An Alpine crossroads at the intersection of D994 and the Route nationale 85, or Route Napoléon, which crosses the Col Bayard north of the city, Gap is located between the historic Dauphiné and the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur administrative region. With its 40,559 inhabitants (2018), it is the main town of an urban area of 80,555 inhabitants (2018), and the main town of the Southern French Alps. 745 m above sea level, at the right bank of the river, close to where it joins the Durance to the north, Gap is in the midst of a rich and preserved natural environment, south-west of the Écrins National Park, south-east of the Dévoluy massif and west of the Lac de Serre-Ponçon. The region around Gap is known as.

Geology and terrain
The commune of Gap is almost entirely located in the Sillon de Gap [Gap trench], a wide valley bottom located about 735 m above sea level and including the western slopes almost 2000 m (Charance mountain and pic de Gleize).

The highest point of the municipality is however outside this great valley, on another watershed slope, the Raz de Bec, at 2385 m, is within the limits of the commune, and was in the former commune of Chaudun, which merged with Gap in the 19th century.

This valley was shaped by the Glacier de la Durance during the last ice age, known as the Würm glaciation.

Thus, soils are very often formed by moraine deposits. No less than five levels of lateral and frontal moraines are observable. These are clearly visible, especially on the southern slopes of the Col Bayard, where they were formed in places of the terraces used by agriculture.

In retreating, the glacier also left erratics of several metres high. Examples include, among others, the erratic boulders of Peyre-Ossel and Justice.

The glacier, which in the Quaternary has shaped the Sillon de Gap, presented several : one to the glacier of the Drac from the cols of Manse and Bayard and one towards the Buëch Valley by the La Freissinouse border.

The cover of morainic debris is omnipresent in the Sillon de Gap but is not the only vestige of the Quaternary glaciation. There is also the typical topography of glacial valleys. The location of the town of Gap corresponds to an Ombilic glaciaire, where large quantities of clay were deposited. Upstream lies the [glacial lock] of Pont-Sarrazin and downstream of Tourronde.

The mechanical action of the glacier de la Durance was facilitated by the presence of relatively friable layers. The part which is central and south-east of the town consists mainly of soft rocks (Callovo-Oxfordian black marl). They consist of soft schist of bluish or brown colors. In the northwestern part are the harder rocks of lighter colours, Tithonian limestone, formed in places of rocky bars or cornices.

Hydrography
The town of Gap is crossed by the, a tributary of the Durance which has a total course of 22.6 km. During its passage through the commune, the Luye receives several torrents. It merges on the right bank with the 5.1 km long Buzon, the Bonne (9.4 km) and the torrent du Cristaye (2.4 km); and on the left bank, the La Magdeleine Canal (5.3 km), the Riotord (4.8 km) and the torrent du Partiment, (6.7 km) long.

Even if the Luye hydrographic basin represents the largest share of the commune, waters at the southwest of the commune (the Saint-Jean quarter) drain into the torrent of Malecombe, a tributary of the Rousine, which flows into the Durance south of Tallard.

In the Northwest of the commune (located on the other side of the col de Gleize) lie the sources. Around 1700 m above sea level, they are formed by several streams which converge at the old village of.

Finally, an important channel feeds Gap with drinking water and water for irrigation: The, or Canal du Drac, about 30 km long, leads the water captured in the Drac via a tunnel under the Col de Manse to the Jaussauds reservoir (altitude 1141 m) where it divides into two branches, including the main branch which bypasses Gap west to Correo through Charance.

Climate
Gap features an oceanic climate (Cfb), according to the Köppen system, with continental (Dfb) influence due to its elevation. Very influenced by its interior position, the city experiences cold, snowy winters and warm summers. Therefore, the climate is more or less alpine.

Thus the main feature of the local climate is the importance of the sunshine enjoyed by the city. Furthermore, snowfall underscores the mountain character of the city. Thunderstorms are frequent in summer, fog is rather rare.

The tables below represent averages of monthly temperatures.

They also show the maximum and minimum mean temperatures over the period from 1951 to 1970.

Comparisons with surveys of the period from 1878 to 1940 showed lower maximum averages over the period from 1950 to 1970 for the winter and summer months. Over the same period, again for the winter and summer months, there was an increase in the average minimum. Thus the evolution of the climate tends towards a slight reduction of differences in winter temperatures on the one hand, and summer on the other.

Extreme temperatures also highlight the mountain and Mediterranean components of the climate. Indeed, over the decade 1951-1960 the absolute minimum recorded was -18 °C on 3 February 1956. While the absolute maximum was of 36.5 °C observed 8 July 1952.

The evolution of the average monthly temperatures (in red) and an average monthly rainfall (in blue) are summarized in the chart below.

Outside of the valley breezes, the prevailing wind is from the north, locally named the bise wind. In fact, it is a component of the mistral. Up the Drac Valley, this wind crosses the Bayard plateau down to Gap. When it carries clouds, there is the phenomenon of "the bar of Bayard": a compact pile of clouds covering the Bayard plateau. Pushed by the wind, they descend into the valley. Under the effect of the increase in pressure and temperature, these clouds disappear immediately a few hundred metres further down. Even in perpetual motion, cloud cover appears motionless. If these conditions are synonymous with freshness in autumn and spring, and bright cold in the winter, they are always accompanied by a perfectly sunny and clear atmosphere above the city.

Road network
The town of Gap lies at a crossroads. The route nationale RN 85 heads towards the north and the south, the to the east and the departmental RD 994 road to the west.

The RN 85 travels 103 km north to Grenoble. Sisteron is located 48 km in the opposite direction, and eventually also to the Mediterranean. The RN 94 travels 87 km to reach Briançon and towards Italy via the Col de Montgenèvre. Meanwhile, the RD 994 joins with Pont-Saint-Esprit in Gard, more than 150 km distant.

15 km separates Gap from La Saulce on the A51 motorway. This highway provides fast travel to Aix-en-Provence and Marseille 170 km away, via the Durance Valley. A planned extension of this highway to the north, to the seems definitively buried. Although it has been desired by elected officials for the voters and the State, in order to divert trucks from the A7, the absence of this highway has not created the announced decline. On the contrary, the city ceased to grow (see demographics) without being absorbed by its relatively distant neighbours thanks precisely to its relative isolation from the main road network, including Grenoble (in no effect a dormitory community).

Taking into account the increase in road traffic, the creation of an urban boulevard became a prospect of improvement. This one 9 km long and comprising several structures, could bypass the city from the west. Concerning also the transit of traffic serving the city itself, it would act as a bypass, leaving the RN 85, close to the area of Micropolis to the southwest and lead to the RN 94, north-east towards the Romette intersection.

Rail
The city is served by SNCF. Gap station is connected directly to Paris daily by a night train, but also by regional trains to Briançon, Grenoble, Valence (Gare de Valence-Ville and Gare de Valence TGV), as well as to Aix-en-Provence and Marseille.

In the 1930s, work aimed at the establishment of a metric line between Gap and Corps by the Col de Manse was undertaken. These were never finished and the was never born. Portions were reused for the basis of the route nationale.

The was also begun in the east, but never completed. A double curve viaduct remains beneath the waters of the Lac de Serre-Ponçon.

Air transport
Located 13 km from Gap, the Gap–Tallard Airport can handle passenger traffic.

The company Air Alpes operated a DHC-6 Twin otter, with a regular service between Paris-Le Bourget and Gap from 1973 to 1977, since abandoned. The vast majority of air movements are sports-oriented.

Urban transport
Public transport in the city is provided by the Linea network. In 2016, the network is comprised 12 lines. There is also a school transport service, a shuttle between /Centre-ville/Gap-Bayard runs in July and August, a shuttle to the hyper-Centre and a taxibus is available on demand. Aside from the taxibus, all of these are totally free services for users.

Cycling facilities
Several cycle paths traverse the city. Some are separate from the road network, others are cycle lanes alongside roads.

Housing
Of the 21,479 houses in Gap in 2011, 88% were principal residences (against 89.20% of 19,043 houses in 2006), and 8.50% were vacant (compared with 7% of the 19,043 in 2006). Two-thirds of them are apartments (almost 65%). A majority of these houses consist of 4 rooms (30%) or 5 rooms (28%). Overall, the buildings date from the period between 1946 and 1990 (65%). Half of the inhabitants of principal residences are owners (51%), the share of social rental housing (HLM) represents only 15%.

Amenity projects

 * A ring road, now called boulevard urbain [urban boulevard]
 * The Bernard-Givaudan park and garden
 * Renovation of the Rue Jean Eymard [Jean Eymard Road]
 * Renovation of the Carré de l'Imprimerie [Printing House Square] in the town centre with a number of facilities (housing, commercial space, underground parking, medical home, etc.)

Political trends and outcomes
The outgoing mayor, Roger Didier, was a representative in the municipal elections of 2014 and was re-elected at the end of the second round with 53.37% of votes. The turnout was 57.41%.

Municipal administration
The City Council consists of 43 members, including 20 who are elected by the community council.

Intercommunality
Since 1 January 2017, Gap is part of the Communauté d'agglomération Gap-Tallard-Durance, covering 17 municipalities.

Administrative divisions
Until the departmental elections of March 2015, Gap was divided into six cantons: Gap-Campagne (including five communes: La Freissinouse, Manteyer, Pelleautier, Rabou and La Roche-des-Arnauds), Gap-Centre, Gap-Nord-Est, Gap-Nord-Ouest, Gap-Sud-Est and Gap-Sud-Ouest.

Since the of the Hautes-Alpes Department, Gap is divided into four cantons.

Judicial and administrative proceedings
Gap has the presence of a high court.

Environmental policy
Gap is classified as three flowers in the competition of flowery cities and villages.

Twinning
Gap is twinned with a couple of European cities. It is in this framework that socio-cultural, educational and sports exchanges are made.

 * 🇮🇹 Pinerolo, Italy, since 1966
 * 🇩🇪 Traunstein, Germany, since 1976

Decentralised cooperation
In addition, decentralised cooperation agreements have been signed with a couple of cities in Africa and Asia.

 * 🇨🇲 Bangou, Cameroon, since 2003
 * Kathmandu, Nepal, since 2004

Demographic change
In 2017, the commune had 40,895 inhabitants.

Age structure
The distribution of age groups in the commune of Gap is shown below, in comparison with the Hautes-Alpes department.

Education
Gap is situated in the.

Schools
The city administers 12 nursery schools, 13 and 6 rural schools. There are also several private kindergartens and elementary schools.

The Department manages five and four lycées of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, the Lycée professionnel Paul-Hariharan, the school of general and farm technology education "Les Emeyères", the Dominique-Villars Lycée and the Aristide-Briand Lycée.

There are also two private schools, the Lycée professionnel Sévigné and Lycée Saint-Joseph. That said, the Lycée professionnel Sévigné is now public.

Higher education
Higher education in Gap is represented by the Pôle University of Gap, an annex of the former University of the Mediterranean Aix-Marseille II, today the Aix-Marseille University, created from the merger of three universities. It includes a centre, a Business Administration and Management IUT (GEA), a "Mountain crafts"  (professional master) which is unique in France, as well as being able to give an aircraft maintenance licence (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region is a  in Aeronautics, and the Department has established the Centre of Rural Excellence Excell'Air.

Several BTS chains and preparatory classes exist in the lycées, in particular a Computer Services in Organisations BTS and a Negotiations and Customer Service BTS at the Lycée Dominique Villars as well as an Assistant Manager BTS at the Lycée Aristide Briand.

Cultural events and festivities
During the summer months, the association of merchants of the town centre Les Vitrines de Gap organises Nocturnes. These are musical and festive events accompanied by the opening of stores downtown from 7pm until 11pm. Each year an Expo Fair also takes place at the Parc de la Pépinnière during May.

The Quattro, a theatre with retractable tiered seating, organises all kinds of events, namely concerts, performances, business seminars, etc.

Gap is home to the European University of Saxophone, a classical saxophone summer school and festival held annually.

Health
The city has a hospital, the Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal of Alpes du Sud (CHICAS) which is divided into three entities. The first and most important site is Gap, which is the largest hospital of the Southern Alps. Gap is also equipped with a site specialising in geriatrics. As a result of a merger, the CHICAS manages the site of Sisteron. The Polyclinic of the Southern Alps is the only clinic present in the city and other centres of rehabilitation.

There is also a Maison Médicale du Gapençais with extended opening hours.

Sports
Clubs:
 * Ice hockey club, the Rapaces de Gap [Gap Raptors], which plays in Ligue Magnus and has more than 30 titles of champion of France in all categories.
 * The Gap FC football team, which plays in the 1st division of the Alps District.
 * The athletic club, the Gap Hautes-Alpes athletics (GH2A).
 * Cross-country ski club, Ski club Gap-Bayard.
 * Road cycling and mountain biking club, the UCPG.
 * Mountain biking club, the PJPC.
 * Gap Hautes Alpes Rugby club plays in Fédérale 3.
 * Gap basketball for Pre-nationale.
 * Gap Handball playing in.
 * Gap volleyball which plays in the Regional Championship.
 * The Gapencais Sasquatches, club allowing the discovery or the practice of American Football.

The town of Gap regularly hosts stages of the Tour de France and the Critérium du Dauphiné in cycling, as well as the Monte Carlo Rally in motorsport.

The town of Gap is known for its mountain bike trek the Paths of the Sun, between Saillans and Gap.

The sports facilities in Gap include stadiums, gymnasiums, swimming pools, ice rink, multi-purpose room (bowling), and tennis courts.

The fitness centre Gap-Bayard, located on the Bayard plateau, has an 18-hole golf course that operates in summer and is a base for cross-country skiing in winter.

In October 2004, the association Objective JO 2018 worked for a French candidacy of the, at the 2018 Winter Olympics. The town of Gap was approached to run in the race. Gap withdrew in October 2008 and was replaced by the municipality of Pelvoux and the.

In 2009, the town of Gap won the competition of the Intervilles sports show during the final against Dax.

The town of Gap hosted the final of the amateurs during the autumn of 2012.

In 2013, the town of Gap was elected the sportiest city of more of 20,000 inhabitants in France by L'Équipe newspaper.

Media

 * Alpes 1 (local information radio station, leader in the Hautes-Alpes, present also in the Alpes de Haute-Provence)
 * The Dauphiné Libéré (daily)
 * Alpes et Midi (weekly)
 * Anima Gap
 * D!CI

Cathedral and churches

 * The Cathedral of Notre-Dame and Saint-Arnoux, built in the 19th century according to the plans of.
 * The, rebuilt in the 18th century and used to worship according to the extraordinary rite of the Catholic Church.
 * The, built in the 20th century.
 * The, built in the 20th century.
 * St. Peter's Church

Chapels

 * The Chapel of Saint-Grégoire in the hamlet of Les Fareaux
 * The Chapel of Saint-Louis, district of Charance
 * The Chapel of Saint-Pierre, hamlet of Treschatel
 * The Chapel of Saint-Jacques-le-Mineur, district of La Tourronde

Protestant

 * The Evangelical Church, Assembly of God of Gap
 * The Protestant Evangelical Church Le Rocher (CAEF)
 * The Protestant Temple, dependent of the Reformed Church of France
 * The Adventist Church

Millenarian Christian

 * Jehovah's witnesses
 * Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints

Muslim

 * The Al Salam Mosque, inaugurated on 7 July 2013

Revenues
The median pay in Gap in 2011 is 18,944 euros. The majority of revenues are derived from wage work (55%), compared to a third of retirees (30%).

Taxation
In 2011, 18,345 households existed in Gap, 60% of them were taxable.

Industry
The construction sector (Bâtiment et travaux publics (BTP)) has grown through the inclusion of winter sports.

Tertiary sector
The tertiary sector is the sector which dominates the local economy:

 * Garrison town ( and since January 2011) and administrative (prefecture, department hall)
 * Tourism

Gap is the seat of the. It manages the centre for regional and European tourism (CRET) of Briançon, the of Gap and the Centre Européen Médical Bioclimatique de Recherche et d'Enseignement Universitaire [European medical bioclimatic research and university teaching Center] (CEMBREU) of Briançon.

Places and monuments

 * The houses the mausoleum of François de Bonne (Duke of Lesdiguières, Constable of the Haut-Alpin) carved in the black marble of the  by Jacob Richier.
 * The pedestrian centre made of small passages and pleasant terraces revolves around place Jean-Marcellin.
 * Bronze by, "The Light", by order of Mayor Pierre Bernard-Reymond in 2006.
 * The Parc de la Pépinière
 * The clock tower
 * The town hall
 * The
 * The Cathedral of Notre-Dame and Saint-Arnoux was built from 1866 to 1904 according to the plans of . This Neo-Gothic building replaces a medieval construction.
 * The Conservatoire botanique national alpin de Gap-Charance, situated north-west of Gap

The Charance Estate
The Château de Charance was built in the 16th century. It includes a main building, which today is the headquarters of the Écrins National Park, and several annexes, one of which houses the Park Museum.

The Charance Estate also features the Conservatoire botanique national alpin [Alpine National Botanical Conservatory], a terraced garden and an area of 220 ha around the château and in the middle of which lies a small lake: Charance Lake. All overlooks the city.

See also:

Cultural heritage

 * The theatre of La Passerelle, Scène nationale [national stage] of the Southern Alps.
 * The Quattro, a versatile new cultural space initially called the "Cube", inaugurated on 27 May 2008
 * The Conservatoire, of departmental influence
 * The Municipal Centre of Culture and Leisure (CMCL)
 * The municipal library
 * The international Folkdance festival, which takes place every year in July
 * 3 cinemas exist in Gap (of which two have been saved by the city hall, when the building housing their screens was sold)

Military life
Military units have been stationed at Gap:

 * 17th infantry regiment, before 1914
 * 96th infantry regiment, 1906
 * 7th Demi-brigade of Mountain Infantry, 1939–1940, consisting of:

4th Mountain Infantry Battalion (4th Rch) since 1983.

Notable people
Below is a non-exhaustive list of people born in Gap or having a particular attachment to the city:

 * Féraud de Nice (c. 970 - 1044) - Bishop of Gap at the beginning of the 11th century.
 * Albertet of Sisteron (1194-1221) - native troubadour of the town.
 * Guillaume Farel (1489-1565) - Protestant reformer, he participated in the expansion of the Protestant Reformation in French-speaking Switzerland and was a translator of the Bible to French and Occitan.
 * (1516-1586) - Marseille grammarian, born in Gap.
 * or Honoré Pela (1641-1718) - baroque sculptor, pupil of Pierre Puget, his career took place mainly in Genoa.
 * (1745-1810) - parish priest of Le Caire in 1789, Deputy to the Estates-General of 1789 and the constituent Assembly (1789-1791).
 * Dominique Villars (1745-1814) - botanist, he is the author of several manuscripts of Histoire des plantes du Dauphiné resulting from over twenty years of observations of plants.
 * (1754-1821) - born in Gap, former National Assembly member for Hautes-Alpes
 * (1760-1833) – died in Gap, former National Assembly member for Hautes-Alpes and imperial attorney
 * Baron (1772-1848) - prefect of Hautes-Alpes under Napoleon. He founded the Société d'émulation des Hautes-Alpes [Society of Emulation of Haute-Alpes] (now the ) and Gap Museum.
 * (1762-1844), died in Gap, from 1820 to 1827 National Assembly member for Hautes-Alpes.
 * Joseph-Bruno Guigues (1805-1874) - first bishop of Ottawa.
 * Paul Colomb de Batines (1811–1855), Librarian and bibliographer
 * (1821-1884) - sculptor, pupil of François Rude. Gap owes him for the Baron of Ladoucette statue at the end of the course Ladoucette.
 * was born in Gap (Hautes-Alpes) in 1830 and died in New York (United States) in 1905, was a personality of the Paris Commune.
 * (1834-1889) and (1835-1875) were botanists, specialists of the flora in the vicinity of Gap, they donated their Herbarium at the.
 * (1850-1924) - Director of the, and as historian, he published several brochures on cities, villages and the families of his departement.
 * Hippolyte Müller (1865-1933) - originally an apprentice jeweller, a self-taught archaeologist, he was the founder of the Musée dauphinois at Grenoble.
 * (1867-1948) - historian, Chief Archivist of the Hautes-Alpes, his bust was erected in the Parc de la Pépinière, in the centre of Gap.
 * Louise Germain (1874-1939) - painter who often worked alongside Paul Cézanne.
 * Achille Mauzan (1883-1952) - artist from Gaumont cinema at the beginning of the 20th century. He was also a painter and sculptor and was part of the Art Deco art movement.
 * (1889-1966) - geographer, former Rector of the University of Lyon and former Director of the.
 * (1909-1976) - born in Gap, politician.
 * Robert Thomas (1927-1989) - born in Gap, playwright, director and producer.
 * (1947-) - born in Gap, composer.
 * Henri Bréchu (1947-) - born in Gap, skier.
 * Francis Masse (1948-) - born in Gap, screenwriter and comic illustrator.
 * Marie-Anne Chazel (1951-) - born in Gap, actress, Member of Le Splendid.
 * Raymond Durand (1952-) - born in Gap, rally driver, champion of the world FIA Alternative Energies Cup in 2009 and 2010.
 * Chantal Lauby (1953-) - born in Gap, comedian, film director, actress, Member of Les Nuls.
 * (1955-2001) - born in Gap, French cartoonist.
 * Christian Audigier (1958-), designer
 * Pierre Granoux (1963-) - artist, organizer of exhibitions and art publisher. Currently lives in Berlin, Germany.
 * Jean-Christophe Lafaille (1965-2006)-born in Gap, mountaineer.
 * Fabienne Berthaud (1966–), writer, actress and director, was born in Gap
 * Christian Pouget (1966-) - born in Gap, hockey player.
 * Gilles Grimandi (1970-) - born in Gap, footballer.
 * Rébecca Dautremer (1971-) - born in Gap, graphic designer, illustrator and author of children's books.
 * Laurence Manfredi (1974-) - born in Gap, athlete.
 * (1976-) - born in Gap, journalist and writer.
 * Camille Combal (1981-) - born in Gap, comedian, radio and television host.
 * Sébastien Ogier (1983-) - born in Gap, rally driver, seven time World Rally Champion.
 * Laëtitia Roux (1985-) - born in Gap, specialist ski mountaineer and trail.
 * Stéphane Tempier (1986-) - born in Gap, competed in the 2012 Olympics in mountain biking.

title: Gap, Hautes-Alpes