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Bankes's Horse

Marocco (c. 1586 – c. 1606), widely known as Bankes's Horse (after his trainer William Bankes), was the name of a late 16th- and early 17th-century English performing horse. He is sometimes referred to as the "Dancing Horse", the "Thinking Horse", or the "Politic Horse".

Origin
William Bankes (also spelled Banks or Banckes, and sometimes called Richard Bankes) was born in Staffordshire, probably in the early 1560s, In the 1580s he became a retainer of Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex; his job may have been working in the stables.

The horse that would be named Marocco was born around 1586; most sources agree he was bay, but some record him as white. Soon thereafter he was obtained by Bankes, who named him after the morocco leather from which contemporary saddles were made, and jocularly addressed him as "seignior" (señor). According to modern English physician and writer Jan Bondeson, "Marocco was a small, muscular horse with remarkable litheness and agility; he also proved particularly intelligent and easy to educate."

London
Bankes sold his possessions and used the money to purchase silver horseshoes for Marocco, then moved to London to work at inn-yard theatres. According to Thomas Nashe, Bankes had Marocco's tail bobbed: "Wiser was our Brother Bankes of these latter daies, who made his iugling horse a Cut, for feare if at anie time hee should foyst [defecate], the stinke sticking in his thicke bushie taile might be noysome to his Auditors." Bankes lived at the Cross Keys Inn on Gracechurch Street, where their act performed. A passage from Tarlton's Jests (1611) says:

The[re] was one Banks, in the time of Tarlton, who served the Erle of Essex, and had a horse of strange qualities, and being at the Crosse-keyes, in Gracious streete, getting mony with him, as he was mightily resorted to. Tarlton then, with his fellowes, playing at the Bel by, came into the Cross-keyes, amongst many people, to see fashions, which Banks perceiving, to make the people laugh, saies; seignior, to his horse, go fetch me the veryest foole in the company. The jade comes immediately, and with his mouth drawes Tarlton forth. Tarlton with merry words, said nothing but, "God a mercy, horse." In the end Tarlton, seeing the people laugh so, was angry inwardly, and said: Sir, had I power of your horse as you have, I would doe more than that. What ere it be, said Banks, to please him, I will charge him to do it. Then, said Tarleton: charge him bring me the veriest whore-master in the company. The horse leades his master to him. Then "God a mercy horse indeed," saies Tarlton, The people had much ado to keep peace; but Banks and Tarlton had like to have squar'd, and the horse by to give aime. But ever after it was a by word thorow London, God a mercy horse! and is so to this day.

Exactly when Marocco and Bankes moved to London is unknown, but for Richard Tarlton (a renowned clown) to have seen the act, they must have arrived before Tarlton's death in September 1588. Bondeson has suggested that the entire episode with Tarlton was staged to garner publicity.

Marocco could walk on two and three legs and play dead. He could pull out particular audience members—such as people wearing spectacles—on Bankes's command; he could distinguish between colors, such as green and violet (horses are only partially colorblind). In one stunt, the horse drank a large bucket of water, then urinated on Bankes's command. In another, he was told to pick out the "maids" (virgins) from the "maulkins" (harlots) in the audience. When ordered to bow to the queen, Elizabeth I, Marocco was trained to do so; when ordered to bow to Philip II (King of Spain), the horse was trained to bare its teeth, whinny, and chase Bankes offstage. This stunt was soon thereafter imitated by other animal trainers. By 1593, John Donne had written:

But to a graue man, he doth moue no more Than the wise politique horse would heretofore, Or thou, O Elephant, or Ape, wilt doe, When any names the k[ing] of Spaine to you.

Whether by sleight-of-hand or by the horse's own talent, Marocco was known for his unusual counting abilities. Coins could be collected from the audience, and Marocco would indicate to whom each coin belonged and, with stomps of his hoof, how many coins had come from each. Contemporary poet John Bastard wrote:

Bankes hath a horse of wondrous qualitie For he can fight, and pisse, and daunce, and lie, And finde your purse, and tell what coyne ye haue: But Bankes, who taught your horse to smel a knaue?

By the mid-1590s Marocco and Bankes had become some of London's most popular entertainers; Bankes was now wealthy, living and performing at the Bell Savage Inn, where Marocco was kept in the stables. Eventually Bankes had an arena built on Gracechurch Street just for their act. A musician was employed who played a song called "Bankes's Game" during the act, and who entertained the audience between shows. Although the tune and lyrics have not been preserved, the song "The Praise of a Pretty Lass; or, The Young Man's Dissimulation", published sometime in the early 17th century, follows the same tune. The first verse goes:

Young men and maidens, to you Ile [I'll] declare, I love my love, and she loveth me: Yet to no goddesse will I her compare, And yet she is pretty indifferent faire: Will O, my love, O, there is none doth know How I doe love thee.

In addition, a ballad was published on 14 November 1595 by pamphleteer Edward White called "A ballad shewing the strange qualities of a yong nagg called Morocco", which is now lost.

In 1601, perhaps to fight the growing competition of other animal trainers, Bankes and Marocco ascended over a thousand steps to the rooftop of the then-flat St Paul's Cathedral and performed the act. The show was a success, and even the clergy came out to watch the performance. Then, to the great astonishment of those watching, Marocco walked down the flight of stairs and out onto the street. Writer Thomas Dekker wrote in The Guls Hornebooke (1609):

From hence you may descend to talke about the horse that went up, and striue if you can to know his keeper, take the day of the moneth, and the number of the steppes,—and suffer your selfe to beleeue verily that it was not a horse, but something else in the likeness of one.

Travels and death
As the act's popularity grew, Bankes took it beyond London. A Scottish historian Patrick Anderson wrote, "There came an Englishman to Edinburgh, with a chestain-coloured naig, which he called Marroco. […] He made him to do many rare and uncouth tricks, such as never horse was observed to do the like before in this land". A journal entry from Shrewsbury in 1591 relates:

September 1591, 33 Eliz. This yeare and against the assise tyme on Master Banckes, a Staffordshire gentile, brought into this town of Salop a white horsse whiche wolld doe woonderfull and strange thinges, as thesse,—wold in a company or prese tell howe many peeces of money by hys foote were in a mans purce; also, yf the partie his master wolld name any man beinge hyd never so secret in the company, wold fatche hym owt with his mowthe, either naming hym the veriest knave in the company, or what cullerid coate he hadd; he pronowncid further to his horse and said, Sirha, there be two baylyves in the towne, the one of them bid mee welcom unto this towne and usid me in frindly maner; I wold have the goe to hym and gyve hym thanckes for mee; and he wold goe truly to the right baylyf that did so use hys sayd master as he did in the sight of a number of people, unto Master Baylyffe Sherar, and bowyd unto hym in makinge curchey withe hys foote in sutche maner as he coullde, withe suche strange feates for sutche a beast to doe, that many people judgid that it were impossible to be don except he had a famyliar or don by the arte of magicke.

In March 1601, Bankes, Marocco, and their musician travelled to Paris and moved into the Lion d'Argent Inn on Rue Saint-Jacques. Here Marocco became known as "Monsieur Moraco", and became immensely popular. A Parisian official finally arrested Bankes and charged him with sorcery, forcing Bankes to reveal that many of the tricks were accomplished through subtle hand gestures.

Marocco, Bankes, and the musician moved on to Orléans, where their show was also met with success until Bankes was again arrested and sentenced to burn at the stake. Bankes was given a last show to redeem himself, and during the performance Marocco knelt down before a cross held by one of the priests of the city, "proving" he was not of the devil. When Bankes left Orléans, he was given "money and great commendations" for his troubles.

Marocco's show continued to tour Europe, stopping in Frankfurt, Lisbon, Rome, and Wolfenbüttel as late as 1605. Marocco probably died around 1606. After Marocco's death. Bankes revealed the secrets of his training to Gervase Markham, who published them in his book Cavelarice (1607).

James VI and I mentioned Bankes and his dancing horse during The Masque of Indian and China Knights at Hampton Court on 1 January 1604. In 1608 Bankes was hired to work in James I's stables, and later trained horses for George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. He married and had a daughter, and was known for his wealth and wit in his old age. Late in life he became a well known innkeeper, and died c. 1641.

title: Bankes's Horse


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James Cronin

James Watson Cronin (September 29, 1931 – August 25, 2016 ) was an American particle physicist.

Cronin and co-researcher Val Logsdon Fitch were awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics for a 1964 experiment that proved that certain subatomic reactions do not adhere to fundamental symmetry principles. Specifically, they proved, by examining the decay of kaons, that a reaction run in reverse does not merely retrace the path of the original reaction, which showed that the interactions of subatomic particles are not invariant under time reversal. Thus the phenomenon of CP violation was discovered.

Cronin received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in 1976 for major experimental contributions to particle physics including fundamental work on weak interactions culminating in the discovery of asymmetry under time reversal. In 1999, he was awarded the National Medal of Science.

Cronin was Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago winning the prestigious Quantrell Award and a spokesperson emeritus for the Auger project. He was a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Education and early life
James Cronin was born in Chicago on September 29, 1931. His father, James Farley Cronin, was a graduate student of classical languages at the University of Chicago. After his father had obtained his doctorate the family first moved to Alabama, and later in 1939 to Dallas, Texas, where his father became a professor of Latin and Greek at Southern Methodist University. After high school Cronin stayed in Dallas and obtained an undergraduate degree at SMU in physics and mathematics in 1951. He is of Irish descent, with his Irish ancestors immigrating from County Cork, Ireland.

For graduate school Cronin moved back to Illinois to attend the University of Chicago. His teachers there included Nobel Prize laureates Enrico Fermi, Maria Mayer, Murray Gell-Mann and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. He wrote his thesis on experimental nuclear physics under supervision of Samuel K. Allison.

Research and career
After obtaining his doctorate in 1955, Cronin joined the group of Rodney L. Cool and Oreste Piccioni at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where the new Cosmotron particle accelerator had just been completed. There he started to study parity violation in the decay of hyperon particles. During that time he also met Val Fitch, who brought him to Princeton University in Fall 1958. After Cosmotron underwent magnet failure, Cronin and the Brookhaven group moved to Bevatron at the University of California, Berkeley during the first half of 1958. Cronin and Fitch studied the decays of neutral K mesons, in which they discovered CP violation in 1964. This discovery earned the duo the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics.

After the discovery, Cronin spent a year in France at the Centre d'Études Nucléaires at Saclay. After returning to Princeton he continued studying the neutral CP violating decay modes of the long-lived neutral K meson. In 1971, he moved back to the University of Chicago to become a full professor. This was attractive for him because of a new 400 GeV particle accelerator being built at nearby Fermilab.

When he moved to Chicago, he began a long series of experiments on particle production at high transverse momentum. With physicist Pierre Piroue and colleagues we learned about many things. These are summarized in Physical Review D, vol 19, page 764 (1977). Following these experiments Cronin took a sabbatical at CERN in 1982–83, where he performed an experiment to measure of the lifetime of the neutral pion (Physics Letters vol 158 B page 81, 1985). He then switched to the study of cosmic rays. The first was a series of measurements looking for point sources of cosmic rays. No sources were found. A summary of the measurements was published in Physical Review D vol 55 page 1714 (1997). In 1998 he joined the faculty at the University of Utah on a half-time basis to work on ultra-high-energy cosmic ray physics and to jumpstart the Pierre Auger Observatory project. His appointment was to last five years, but he left after a year to continue gathering international support for the Observatory with Alan Watson and Murat Boratav.

Cronin is one of the 20 American recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics to sign a letter addressed to President George W. Bush in May 2008, urging him to "reverse the damage done to basic science research in the Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill" by requesting additional emergency funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Publications

 * Banner, M.; Cronin, J. W.; Liu, J. K.; & J. E. Pilcher. "Measurement of the Branching Ratio K{sub L} → γ γ / K{sub L} → 3π{sup 0}", Palmer Physical Laboratory, Princeton University, United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (August 12, 1968).
 * Banner, M.; Cronin, J. W.; Liu, J. K.; & J. E. Pilcher. "Measurement of the Branching Ratio K{sub L} → 2π{sup 0} / K{sub L} → 3π{sup 0}", Palmer Physical Laboratory, Princeton University, United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (August 14, 1968).
 * Cronin, J. W.; Frisch, H. J.; Shochet, M. J.; Boymond, J. P.; Mermod, R.; Piroue, P. A.; & R. L. Sumner. "Atomic Number Dependence of Hadron Production at Large Transverse Momentum in 300 GeV Proton—Nucleus Collisions", Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, Joseph Henry Laboratories, Princeton University, United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), National Science Foundation, (July 15, 1974).
 * Brun, T. O.; Carpenter, J. M.; Krohn, V. E.; Ringo, G. R.; Cronin, J. W.; Dombeck, T. W.; Lynn, J. W.; & S. A. Werner. "Measurement of Ultracold Neutrons Produced by Using Doppler-shifted Bragg Reflection at a Pulsed-neutron Source", Argonne National Laboratory, University of Chicago, University of Maryland, College Park, University of Missouri, United States Department of Energy, (1979).
 * Cronin, J. W.; Deshpande, N. G.; Kane, G. L.; Luth, V. C.; Odian, A. C.; Machacek, M. E.; Paige, F.; Schmidt, M. P.; Slaughter, J.; & G. H. Trilling. "Report of the Working Group on CP Violation and Rare Decays", University of Chicago, University of Oregon, University of Michigan, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Northeastern University, Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), United States Department of Energy, (October 1984).
 * Abraham J., Cronin J. W. et al., Observation of suppression of the Flux of Cosmic Rays above 4x10**19 eV., Phys Rev Letters vol 101, p 061101, (2008).

Personal life
While in graduate school he also met his wife, Annette Martin, whom he married in 1954. She was the Director of Special Events at the University of Chicago. They have three children: two daughters, Cathryn (b. 1955) and Emily (b. 1959), and a son, Daniel (b. 1971). In June 2005 Annette Martin died of complications of Parkinson's disease. She was 71.

In November 2006 he married Carol Champlin.

In May 2011 his daughter Cathryn Cranston died of leukemia at age 54.

Cronin died on August 25, 2016, at the age of 84.

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

title: James Cronin


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Val Logsdon Fitch

Val Logsdon Fitch (March 10, 1923 – February 5, 2015) was an American nuclear physicist who, with co-researcher James Cronin, was awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics for a 1964 experiment using the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory that proved that certain subatomic reactions do not adhere to fundamental symmetry principles. Specifically, they proved, by examining the decay of K-mesons, that a reaction run in reverse does not retrace the path of the original reaction, which showed that the reactions of subatomic particles are not indifferent to time. Thus the phenomenon of CP violation was discovered. This demolished the faith that physicists had that natural laws were governed by symmetry.

Born on a cattle ranch near Merriman, Nebraska, Fitch was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II, and worked on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico. He later graduated from McGill University, and completed his PhD in physics in 1954 at Columbia University. He was a member of the faculty at Princeton University from 1954 until his retirement in 2005.

Early life
Val Logsdon Fitch was born on a cattle ranch near Merriman, Nebraska, on March 10, 1923, the youngest of three children of Fred Fitch, a cattle rancher, and his wife Frances née Logsdon, a school teacher. He had an older brother and sister. The family farm was about 4 sqmi in size. The ranch was small; his father specialized in raising breeding stock. Soon after his birth, his father was badly injured in a horse riding accident and could no longer work on his ranch, so the family moved to the nearby town of Gordon, Nebraska, where his father entered the insurance business. Here he attended school, graduating from Gordon High School in 1940 as valedictorian.

Manhattan Project
Fitch attended Chadron State College for three years, then transferred to Northwestern University. This was during WWII; his studies were interrupted by being drafted into the US Army in 1943. After completing basic training, he was sent to Carnegie Institute of Technology for training under the Army Specialized Training Program. Under this program, some 200,000 soldiers attended colleges for intensive courses. Fitch was in the program for less than a year before the manpower requirements of the war became too great, and the Army terminated the program. Most of the soldiers in the ASTP were posted to combat units, but Fitch was one of a hundred or so ASTP soldiers who joined the Special Engineer Detachment (SED), which provided much-needed technicians to the Manhattan Project.

The Army sent Fitch to the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico. By mid-1944, about a third of the technicians at Los Alamos were from the SED. There he met many of the greats of physics including Niels Bohr, James Chadwick, Enrico Fermi, Isidor Isaac Rabi, Bruno Rossi, Emilio Segrè, Edward Teller and Richard C. Tolman, in some cases attending physics courses taught by them. He worked in the group headed by Ernest Titterton, a member of the British Mission, and became well-acquainted with the techniques of experimental physics. He participated in the drop testing of mock atomic bombs that was conducted at Wendover Army Air Field and the Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea, and worked at the Trinity site, where he witnessed the Trinity nuclear test on July 16, 1945. He was discharged from the Army in 1946. He continued to work at Los Alamos as a civilian for another year to earn money. He briefly returned to Los Alamos in summer 1948.

Academic career
His wartime experiences led Fitch to decide to become a physicist. Robert Bacher, the head of the physics division at Los Alamos, offered him a graduate assistantship at Cornell University, but first he needed to complete his undergraduate degree. Rather than return to Northwestern or Carnegie Mellon, he elected to enter McGill University, which Titterton had recommended. Fitch graduated from McGill with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1948. On the advice of Jerry Kellogg, who had been a student of Rabi's at Columbia University, and was a division head at the Los Alamos, Fitch decided to pursue his doctoral studies at Columbia. Kellogg wrote him a letter of introduction to Rabi. James Rainwater became his academic supervisor. Rainwater gave him a paper by John Wheeler concerning mu-mesic atoms, atoms in which an electron is replaced by a muon. These had never been observed; they were completely theoretical and there was no evidence that they existed, but it made a good thesis topic.

Fitch designed and built an experiment to measure the gamma rays emitted from mu-mesic atoms. As it turned out, this was a good time to search for them. Columbia had recently commissioned a cyclotron at the Nevis Laboratories that could produce muons; Robert Hofstadter had developed the thallium-activated sodium iodide gamma ray detector; and wartime advances in electronics yielded advances in components such as new phototubes needed to bring it all together. Initially nothing was found, but Rainwater suggested expanding the search beyond the energy range predicted by Wheeler on the basis of the then-accepted size of the radius of the atomic nucleus as around 1.4 × 10−15 m. When this was done, they found what they had been looking for, discovering in the process that the nucleus was closer to 1.2 × 10−15 m. He completed his PhD in 1954, writing his thesis on "Studies of X-rays from mu-mesonic atoms". The thesis was published in the Physical Review in November 1953.

In 1949, Fitch married Elise Cunningham, a secretary who worked in the laboratory at Columbia. They had two sons. Elise died in 1972, and in 1976 he married Daisy Harper Sharp, thereby acquiring two stepdaughters and a stepson. After obtaining his doctorate, Fitch's interest shifted to strange particles and K mesons. In 1954, he joined the physics faculty at Princeton University, where he spent the rest of his career. He was the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics from 1969 to 1976, the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics from 1976 to 1982, and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physics from 1982 to 1993, when he retired and took up the position of visiting lecturer with the rank of professor for three years before entering emeritus status. He was chair of the physics department from 1976 to 1981.

Fitch conducted much of his research at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he became acquainted with James Cronin. The two of them played bridge at nights while they waited for the Cosmotron to become available. Cronin had built a new kind of detector, a spark chamber spectrometer, and Fitch realized that it would be perfect for experiments with K mesons (now known as kaons), which Yale University physicist Robert Adair had suggested had interesting properties worth investigating. They could decay into either matter or antimatter. Along with two colleagues, James Christenson and René Turlay, they set up their experiment on the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at Brookhaven. They discovered an unexpected result. The decay of neutral K mesons did not respect CP symmetry. K mesons that decayed into positrons did so faster than those that decayed into electrons. The importance of this result was not immediately appreciated; but as evidence of the Big Bang accumulated, Andrei Sakharov realized in 1967 that it explained why the universe is largely made of matter and not antimatter. Put simply, they had found "the answer to the physicist's 'Why do we exist?'" For this discovery, Fitch and Cronin received the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physics.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Fitch received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in 1968, the John Price Wetherill Medal in 1976 and the National Medal of Science in 1993. He was a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the JASON defense advisory group. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1964 and a Member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1966. In 1981, Fitch became a founding member of the World Cultural Council and received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. He was president of the American Physical Society from 1988 to 1989, and he served on a number of governmental science and science policy committees, including the President's Science Advisory Committee from 1970 to 1973.

Fitch is one of the 20 American recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics to sign a letter addressed to President George W. Bush in May 2008, urging him to "reverse the damage done to basic science research in the Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill" by requesting additional emergency funding for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

He died at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of 91 on February 5, 2015.

Publications

 * Fitch, V. "Some Notes on Wideband Feedback Amplifiers", Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (March 16, 1949).
 * Fitch, V. "A High Resolution Scale-of-four", Columbia University, United States Department of Energy (through predecessor agency the Atomic Energy Commission), (August 25, 1949).

title: Val Logsdon Fitch


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William Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford

William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, 4th Earl of Rochford, KG, PC (17 September 1717 O.S. – 29 September 1781) was a British courtier, diplomat and statesman of Anglo-Dutch descent. He occupied senior ambassadorial posts at Madrid and Paris, and served as Secretary of State in both the Northern and Southern Departments. He is credited with the earliest-known introduction of the Lombardy poplar to England in 1754.

He was a personal friend of such major cultural figures as the actor David Garrick, the novelist Laurence Sterne, and the French playwright Beaumarchais. George III valued Rochford as his expert advisor on foreign affairs in the early 1770s, and as a loyal and hard-working cabinet minister. Rochford was the only British secretary of state between 1760 and 1778 who had been a career diplomat.

Rochford played key roles in the Manila Ransom negotiation with Spain (1763–66), the French acquisition of Corsica (1768), the Falkland Islands crisis of 1770–1, the crisis following the Swedish Revolution of 1772, and the aftermath of the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. In addition to his work as foreign secretary, he carried a heavy burden of domestic responsibilities in the early 1770s, especially Irish affairs. He was a key member of the North administration in the early phase of the American War of Independence. Illness and a political scandal forced him from office in November 1775.

Early life
William Henry Nassau van Zuylestein was born in 1717, the elder son of Frederick Nassau van Zuylestein, 3rd Earl of Rochford, and his wife Elizabeth ('Bessy') Savage, daughter of the 4th Earl Rivers. His ancestry was Anglo-Dutch, descended in an illegitimate line from William the Silent's son Frederick Henry (1584–1647), Prince of Orange. Rochford's grandfather and great-grandfather both had English wives, ladies-in-waiting at the courts of William II and William III of Orange. His grandfather was a close companion of William III, accompanying him to England in the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9, and later rewarded with the earldom of Rochford.

Educated at Eton College (1725–32) as Viscount Tunbridge, Rochford's school friends included three future secretaries of state, Conway, Halifax and Sandwich. However, he also made a lifelong enemy at Eton of the Prime minister's son, the influential writer Horace Walpole. Instead of going to university, Rochford was sent to the Academy at Geneva, where he lodged with the family of Professor Antoine Maurice. From Geneva he emerged as fluent in French as he was in Dutch and English, and succeeded his father as 4th Earl of Rochford in 1738 at the age of twenty-one.

Courtier
Rochford was appointed a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to George II in 1739 (a mark of special royal favour) and served in this role until 1749. He inherited strong Whig principles and was a loyal supporter of the Hanoverian Protestant succession, but also admired Sir Robert Walpole's peaceful foreign policy. At the time of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion he offered to raise a regiment, but this was not needed. He was active in Essex politics in the government's interest, but he was no orator and made no impression in the House of Lords. He was appointed Vice-Admiral of Essex in 1748. Though ambitious for high political office, he avoided the factions and cultivated the King's son, the Duke of Cumberland, as his patron. Cumberland successfully lobbied for Rochford to be given a diplomatic post at the end of the War of the Austrian Succession, and he was named Envoy to Turin in January 1749.

Envoy at Turin
Rochford arrived at Turin on 9 September 1749. This was still the most important of the Italian courts for British foreign policy at this time, and he started as Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, the highest rank in the British diplomatic service short of ambassador. However, he had agreed to accept an ordinary Envoy's salary for a probationary period, and this gave him a strong incentive to show zeal and become a thoroughly professional diplomat. His first negotiations, on behalf of a company of English miners and the Protestant Vaudois communities of the Piedmont Alps, were entirely successful, and he then obtained his full salary. He ingratiated himself with the king, Carlo-Emmanuele III, by accompanying him on early morning hunting rides. Rochford made useful friends at court, and was highly regarded by the diplomatic corps at Turin. He played a minor but useful role in the complex negotiations for the Treaty of Aranjuez (1752). He made a tour of Italy in 1753 and used a spy to gain intelligence of the Young Pretender's court at Rome. He also made full use of British consuls in the region to obtain information about trade matters and French involvement in Corsica, rewarding them with the removal of the duty on British shipping at Villafranca.

Lord Lieutenant of Essex
Recalled from Turin for the duration of the Seven Years' War (1755–63), Rochford resumed his career as a courtier, appointed by George II as First Lord of the Bedchamber and Groom of the Stole, highly prestigious posts. He was also appointed a member of the Privy Council in 1755. As Lord Lieutenant of Essex from May 1756, Rochford was closely involved in forming the Essex regiment of militia, becoming its Colonel in November 1759. At the death of George II in 1760 Rochford lost his lucrative court posts, but was compensated with a generous pension. He spent the early 1760s involved in local Essex politics and 'improved' the Park at his St Osyth estate, adding a formal Dutch garden and a maze. However, his landed income was small for an earl, and a return to diplomacy became a financial necessity. He was named Ambassador to Spain on 18 June 1763.

Ambassador to Spain
Rochford's secret instructions for his Madrid embassy were mainly concerned with countering French influence over the king, Carlos III, and reporting on Spain's naval reconstruction after her late and disastrous entry into the Seven Years' War. His first major negotiation resulted from Spain's expulsion of British logwood cutters from the Yucatán Peninsula in Honduras. With strong support from Grenville's administration, Rochford's threats of naval force made the Spanish back down, but gave him a reputation as an anti-Bourbon. Less successful were his efforts to compel Spain to pay the disputed Manila Ransom, which the French foreign minister Choiseul suggested should be submitted to arbitration. Rochford's alertness uncovered a French plot to set fire to British naval dockyards, a scheme which was postponed until 1770. His friendship with the British consul-general at Madrid, Stanier Porten (uncle of the historian Edward Gibbon) deepened his interest in trade matters, and he used the consuls as well as paid spies to get accurate information about Spain's naval rebuilding. While at Madrid he befriended the young French playwright Beaumarchais, whose experiences in Spain later formed the basis of his play The Marriage of Figaro. Near the close of his embassy, Rochford was an eyewitness to the Madrid Riots of 1766.

Ambassador to France
Rochford's appointment to Paris was unexpected, and he left Madrid in such haste that he had to pawn his plate to settle his debts. He insisted on taking the exceptionally capable Porten to Paris as his secretary of embassy. Choiseul at once embroiled Rochford in a scheme to trade off Britain's claim to the Manila Ransom for relinquishment of the Falkland Islands, but the misreporting of a previous ambassador, Lord Hertford, and the inexperience of the secretary of state, Lord Shelburne, wrecked this transaction. Choiseul was furious, and unfairly blamed Rochford. Rochford was almost the only member of the diplomatic corps at Paris brave enough to stand up to Choiseul's bullying, and their negotiations over such matters as Dunkirk, the Canada Bills and the East India Company's claim for compensation for wartime expenses in India were often acrimonious. Rochford prepared thoroughly and mastered the details, winning grudging concessions from Choiseul on all three issues.

Choiseul's greatest coup (and Rochford's greatest failure) concerned France's secret acquisition of Corsica from the Republic of Genoa in 1768. Though Rochford gave early warning of the likely terms, and paid a spy to get a copy of the draft treaty, the British cabinet led by Lord Grafton was too preoccupied by rioting in London and failed to support their ambassador in Paris. Rochford also had the misfortune to fall seriously ill for a fortnight at the height of the crisis, enabling Choiseul to clinch the deal with Genoa. Britain's protests thereafter were ineffectual, and an angry Rochford returned to London to resign his embassy. Instead, he was offered a cabinet seat, which he finally accepted on 21 October 1768, on condition that Porten became his under-secretary.

Northern Secretary
Contemporary observers such as Edmund Burke and the anonymous letter-writer 'Junius' thought it odd that Rochford was appointed northern secretary when all of his diplomatic experience had been in southern courts, but Lord Weymouth had insisted on taking the Southern Department as the more important of the secretaryships. British foreign policy, and Britain's reputation in Europe, had sunk to their lowest ebb of the eighteenth century thanks to the 1768 Corsican fiasco, but Rochford's realistic and capable handling of his new portfolio strengthened British foreign policy in several ways. British diplomats abroad were relieved to be dealing with a secretary of state who knew the business of diplomacy, and regularly kept them informed. Hamish Scott has suggested that Rochford 'almost single-handed' averted the impending shipwreck for Britain's reputation in Europe.

Britain's main goal at this time was a treaty of alliance with Russia, but the Empress Catherine II and her foreign minister Panin insisted on a hefty subsidy, which Rochford refused. Instead he persuaded George III to pour secret service money into Swedish politics, to support Russia and undermine French influence. Britain's envoy at Stockholm, Sir John Goodricke, made adroit use of this money, and helped to maintain Sweden's liberal constitution. According to Michael Roberts, Rochford was much more practical and realistic than Choiseul in his handling of Swedish affairs.

Falklands Crisis
Spain's expulsion of a British garrison from the Falkland Islands in May 1770 sparked a major diplomatic crisis that brought Europe to the brink of war. Historians have hitherto attributed the resolution of this crisis to a 'secret promise' by the British Prime Minister Lord North that Britain would quietly evacuate the islands at some future date if the Spanish agreed to disavow their officers and restore the fort to Britain. Recent research in the foreign diplomatic archives suggests an entirely different view of the British side of this crisis. Far from resolving the crisis, North's 'secret promise' nearly wrecked an agreed policy of firm response backed by the threat of naval force. This was Rochford's policy, backed by George III. Though he was Northern Secretary in 1770, Rochford's advice to cabinet as a former ambassador to Madrid and Paris was decisive. Weymouth's laziness and frequent absences left his Southern portfolio for Rochford to manage as well as his own. It was Rochford who ordered the Admiralty to prepare a fleet for war, and sent a simple demand for disavowal and restitution to Madrid. Spain's response crucially depended on French support in the event of war, and France began to prepare a fleet, but the French king's dismissal of Choiseul in December 1770 removed that prospect, and the recall of the British envoy Harris from Madrid showed that Britain was still prepared to go to war. Weymouth also resigned in December 1770, and Rochford replaced him as southern secretary on 19 December 1770.

Southern Secretary
Rochford had already taken charge of the Falklands negotiation, and now received the Spanish acceptance of his demands. The disarmament talks over the next few months were often stormy, however, and there was still a risk of war until April 1771, when all sides disarmed simultaneously, as Rochford had proposed. After Sandwich was named as First Lord of the Admiralty, Rochford's successor as northern secretary was Lord Suffolk, who spent a year improving his French so that he could converse with the foreign diplomats in London. In the meantime, Rochford was de facto foreign minister, handling all of Britain's diplomatic correspondence until 1772. Before the creation of separate Home and Foreign offices in 1782, the Southern Secretary carried a heavy burden of domestic responsibilities, including oversight of Ireland. The Irish correspondence almost equalled the rest of Rochford's domestic correspondence across 1771–5.

Rochford's first successes as Southern Secretary were to persuade the new French foreign minister the duc d'Aiguillon to settle the long-standing Canada Bills dispute, and to forestall a French attempt to reinforce their depleted possessions in India. After George III's clumsy intervention in Denmark in 1772 to support his disgraced sister, Queen Caroline, Rochford's first big challenge as southern secretary was the Swedish crisis of 1772–3, following the constitutional coup by Gustavus III in August 1772. This crisis again brought Europe to the brink of war, as Russia threatened to invade Sweden and France threatened to send a fleet to the Baltic to support Gustavus. Rochford played a key role in this crisis, advising caution to the Russians and warning the French that Britain would also send a fleet to the Baltic. Panin finally decided not to invade, and the crisis eased as the French switched their naval armament from Brest to Toulon.

The First Partition of Poland in 1772 had, as Rochford noted, 'changed absolutely the System of Europe', demonstrating the emergence of Russia and Prussia as predatory new powers. With encouragement from George III, Rochford had embarked on a risky new policy of secret friendship with France, with the long-term goal of forming a defensive alliance of the maritime colonial powers as a counterbalance to the 'eastern powers'. The Swedish crisis wrecked this initiative, and Rochford then turned to cultivate friendship with Spain, in an attempt to 'drive a wedge' into the Family Compact. Relations with both Bourbon powers were more cordial by 1775 than they had been since 1763, but France's clandestine support for the American colonies increasingly negated one leg of this policy.

Rochford's most difficult domestic duty as southern secretary was to act on behalf of George III in the painful negotiations of May 1773 with his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, who had secretly married Horace Walpole's niece, Maria Waldegrave, in 1766. She was now pregnant, and Gloucester wanted an assurance of financial support for his family. In view of the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, George III regarded this news as a betrayal by his most trusted sibling, and was deeply hurt, refusing at first to make any reply. Rochford was the only cabinet member willing to act as intermediary. Horace Walpole's dislike for Rochford now turned to bitter hatred. He vilified Rochford because he could not openly vilify the king.

Retirement
Poor health and the bungled arrest of an American banker in London, Stephen Sayre, on suspicion of a plot to kidnap George III, prompted Rochford's retirement on 11 November 1775, with a generous pension and a promise of the 'Blue Ribband' (Knight of the Garter). He was twice offered the lucrative viceroyalty of Ireland in 1776, and would have been an ideal candidate, but he declined on health grounds. On 12 June 1776 Rochford was elected Master of Trinity House, the corporation responsible for lighthouses, pilots and mariners' welfare. On behalf of George III he also undertook secret talks with Beaumarchais, and made a quick trip incognito to Paris to try to persuade the French government to stop sending aid to the American rebels, concluding that France was about to declare open war. He became a Knight of the Garter in 1779. His last years were devoted to the Essex Militia, even after the threat of a French invasion had passed. He died at St Osyth on 29 September 1781. He was succeeded by his bachelor nephew, at whose death in 1830 the Rochford title became extinct.

Personal life
In May 1742 Rochford married Lucy Younge, daughter of Edward Younge of Durnford in Wiltshire, but the marriage produced no children. Rochford and Lucy first lived at Easton in Suffolk, a property inherited from his uncle Henry Nassau, and they only moved to the family seat at St Osyth in Essex after the death of Rochford's mother in 1746. Rochford also bought a town house in London, at 48 Berkeley Square, which he owned until 1777. The Rochfords allowed each considerable freedom in their personal lives, even by the rather relaxed standards of the eighteenth century nobility, and Lucy Rochford was notorious for her numerous lovers, who included the Duke of Cumberland and the Prince of Hesse. Rochford had mistresses at Turin, one of whom, an opera-dancer named Signora Banti, followed him to London, but he never acknowledged her children as his own. Lucy objected to this expensive mistress, and Rochford agreed to give her up if Lucy also gave up her current lover, Lord Thanet. She responded that he was not a drain on their finances, but quite the contrary.

Rochford's next mistress, Martha Harrison, gave him a daughter, Maria Nassau, who was adopted by Lucy as her surrogate daughter. Maria lived with them in Paris, and thereafter at St Osyth. Rochford had affairs in Paris with the wives of two of Choiseul's friends, the marquise de Laborde and Mme Latournelle. Another mistress, Ann Labbee Johnson, followed him to London and bore him a son and daughter. After Lucy's death in 1773 Rochford brought Ann and the children to live with him at St Osyth. His will made her sole executrix of his estate and paid tribute to her 'friendship and affection'.

In his youth Rochford was an accomplished horseman and an expert yachtsman, once racing his yacht from Harwich to London against that of Richard Rigby, and was also involved in early Essex cricket matches. He used his yacht to visit his estates at Zuylestein in Holland's Utrecht province. He was an enthusiast for English country dancing, fostering their popularity at the court of Turin in the 1750s. His greatest loves (apart from his various mistresses) were the theatre, music and opera. (He played the baroque guitar.) Confessing himself 'excessively curious for plants', he collected specimens on a visit to the Swiss Alps in 1751 to send home to St Osyth. Most famously, he is credited with the first known introduction of the Lombardy poplar to southern England, bringing home a sapling strapped to the centre-pole of his carriage in 1754.

Legacy and Significance
With no spectacular triumphs or major treaties to his name, and with his most important secret negotiations unknown at the time, Rochford was soon forgotten after his death. His reputation also suffered at the hands of Horace Walpole, who never missed a chance to belittle Rochford. In his Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, Walpole described Rochford as 'a man of no abilities and of as little knowledge, except in the routine of office'. Yet elsewhere Walpole had recognised Rochford's honesty and flexibility. The disappearance of Rochford's personal papers (until those relating to his Turin appointment were rediscovered in 1971) meant that historians had very little with which to reconstruct his personal life, but many of his letters have survived in their recipients' collections, especially those of Garrick and Denbigh.

Detailed research in British and foreign diplomatic archives has enabled a more accurate assessment of the 4th Earl of Rochford's public career. As a diplomat he was thoroughly professional, in an age of titled amateurs. He was businesslike and methodical, mastering the detail of complex negotiations, and was widely respected as a tough negotiator and an honest broker. His diplomatic experience proved invaluable when he became secretary of state, and it is clear from the foreign archives how well he managed British foreign policy up to the outbreak of the American War of Independence. He was exceptionally well-informed, and his unpublished Plan to Prevent War in Europe (1775) reveals him as a strategic thinker, and one of the most imaginative of Britain's eighteenth century secretaries of state.

George III once remarked on Rochford's 'many amiable qualities', adding that his 'Zeal makes him rather in a hurry'. The king also told Stanier Porten that Rochford was 'more active and had more spirit' than anyone else in the North cabinet of the early 1770s. Hamish Scott has described Rochford as 'the ablest man to control foreign policy in the first decade of peace [after 1763], a statesman of intelligence, perception and considerable application'.

Rochford's major diplomatic legacy was his policy of trying to detach Spain from the Family Compact with France. In his last year in office Rochford had reassured the Spanish ministers that Britain wanted them to remain neutral and would not strike first. He also warned the Spanish that their colonies in Central and South America might be tempted to follow the example of the rebellious North American colonies. These considerations meant that Spain did not automatically join France in open war at sea in 1778, but delayed for another year. That British commanders in America squandered the time thus gained was not Rochford's fault. Historians now agree that the American rebels won the war mainly because Britain's naval resources were too thinly stretched by the involvement of the Bourbon powers.

Chronology

 * 1717 – birth of William Henry Nassau van Zuylestein at St Osyth
 * 1725–38 – educated at Eton College and the academy, Geneva
 * 1738 – succeeds his father as 4th Earl of Rochford
 * 1738–49 – Lord of the Bedchamber to George II
 * 1748 – Vice-Admiral of the coasts of Essex
 * 1749–55 – Envoy Extraordinary at the court of Turin
 * 1755–60 – member of the Privy Council, Groom of the Stole to George II
 * 1756 – Lord Lieutenant of Essex
 * 1759 – Colonel of the Essex Militia
 * 1763–66 – Ambassador to Spain
 * 1766 – witnesses the Madrid Riots
 * 1766–68 – Ambassador to France
 * 1768 – fails to prevent French acquisition of Corsica
 * 1768–70 – Secretary of State, Northern Department
 * 1770–71 – takes charge in Falklands Crisis
 * 1770–75 – Secretary of State, Southern Department
 * 1773 – conducts secret negotiations with France
 * 1773 – helps resolve the Swedish Crisis
 * 1775 – unpublished 'Plan to Prevent War in Europe'
 * 1775–81 – retirement
 * 1776 – Master of Trinity House
 * 1779 – Knight of the Garter
 * 1781 – dies at St Osyth on 29 September

Arms
The earls of Rochford used the arms below, inherited via the founder of their Family Fredrick of Nassau, lord of Zuylestein, illegitimate son of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange.


text:
Nicolaas Bloembergen

Nicolaas Bloembergen (March 11, 1920 – September 5, 2017) was a Dutch-American physicist and Nobel laureate, recognized for his work in developing driving principles behind nonlinear optics for laser spectroscopy. During his career, he was a professor at Harvard University and later at the University of Arizona and at Leiden University in 1973 (as Lorentz Professor).

Bloembergen shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Arthur Schawlow and Kai Siegbahn because their work "has had a profound effect on our present knowledge of the constitution of matter" through the use of laser spectroscopy. In particular, Bloembergen was singled out because he "founded a new field of science we now call non-linear optics" by mixing "two or more beams of laser light... in order to produce laser light of a different wave length" and thus significantly broaden the laser spectroscopy frequency band.

Early life
Bloembergen was born in Dordrecht on March 11, 1920, where his father was a chemical engineer and executive. He had five siblings, with his brother Auke later becoming a legal scholar. In 1938, Bloembergen entered the University of Utrecht to study physics. However, during World War II, the German authorities closed the university and Bloembergen spent two years in hiding.

Graduate studies
Bloembergen left the war-ravaged Netherlands in 1945 to pursue graduate studies at Harvard University under Professor Edward Mills Purcell. Through Purcell, Bloembergen was part of the prolific academic lineage tree of J. J. Thomson, which includes many other Nobel Laureates, beginning with Thomson himself (Physics Nobel, 1906) and Lord Rayleigh (Physics Nobel, 1904), Ernest Rutherford (Chemistry Nobel 1908), Owen Richardson (Physics Nobel, 1928), and finally Purcell (Physics, Nobel 1952). Bloembergen's other influences include John Van Vleck (Physics Nobel, 1977) and Percy Bridgman (Physics Nobel, 1946).

Six weeks before his arrival, Purcell and his graduate students Torrey and Pound discovered nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Bloembergen was hired to develop the first NMR machine. At Harvard he attended lectures by Schwinger, Van Vleck, and Kemble. Bloembergen's NMR systems are the predecessors of modern-day MRI machines, which are used to examine internal organs and tissues. Bloembergen's research on NMR led to an interest in masers, which were introduced in 1953 and are the predecessors of lasers.

Bloembergen returned to the Netherlands in 1947, and submitted his thesis Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation at the University of Leiden. This was because he had completed all the preliminary examinations in the Netherlands, and Cor Gorter of Leiden offered him a postdoctoral appointment there. He received his Ph.D. degree from Leiden in 1948, and then was a postdoc at Leiden for about a year.

Professorship
In 1949, he returned to Harvard as a junior fellow of the Society of Fellows. In 1951, he became an associate professor; he then became Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics in 1957; Rumford Professor of Physics in 1974; and Gerhard Gade University Professor in 1980. In 1990 he retired from Harvard.

In addition, Bloembergen served as a visiting professor. From 1964 to 1965, Bloembergen was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1996–1997, he was a visiting scientist at the college of optical sciences of the University of Arizona; he became a professor at Arizona in 2001.

Bloembergen was a member of the board of sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and honorary editor of the Journal of Nonlinear Optical Physics & Materials.

Laser spectroscopy
By 1960 while at Harvard, he experimented with microwave spectroscopy. Bloembergen had modified the maser of Charles Townes, and in 1956, Bloembergen developed a crystal maser, which was more powerful than the standard gaseous version.

With the advent of the laser, he participated in the development of the field of laser spectroscopy, which allows precise observations of atomic structure using lasers. Following the development of second-harmonic generation by Peter Franken and others in 1961, Bloembergen studied how a new structure of matter is revealed, when one bombards matter with a focused and high-intensity beam of photons. This he termed the study of nonlinear optics. In reflection to his work in a Dutch newspaper in 1990, Bloembergen said: "We took a standard textbook on optics and for each section we asked ourselves what would happen if the intensity was to become very high. We were almost certain that we were bound to encounter an entirely new type of physics within that domain".

From this theoretical work, Bloembergen found ways to combine two or more laser sources consisting of photons in the visible light frequency range to generate a single laser source with photons of different frequencies in the infrared and ultraviolet ranges, which extends the amount of atomic detail that can be gathered from laser spectroscopy.

Personal life and death
Bloembergen met Huberta Deliana Brink (Deli) in 1948 while on vacation with his university's Physics Club. She was able to travel with him to the United States in 1949 on a student hospitality exchange program; he proposed to her when they arrived in the States, and were married by 1950 on return to Amsterdam. They were both naturalized as citizens of the United States in 1958. They had three children.

Bloembergen died on September 5, 2017, at an assisted living facility in his hometown Tucson, Arizona, of cardiorespiratory failure, at the age of 97.

Biography
In 2016 a Dutch biography was published, and in 2019 an English one.

Awards and Honors
Bloembergen shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Arthur Schawlow, along with Kai Siegbahn. The Nobel Foundation awarded Bloembergen and Schawlow "for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy".

 * Corresponding member, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam, 1956
 * Fellow of the American Physical Society, 1955
 * Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1956
 * Guggenheim Fellow, 1957
 * Oliver Buckley Prize, American Physical Society, 1958
 * IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award, Institute of Radio Engineers, 1959
 * Member, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., 1960
 * Stuart Ballantine Medal, Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, 1961
 * National Medal of Science, President of the United States of America, 1974
 * Lorentz Medal, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam, 1978
 * Foreign Honorary Member, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, 1978
 * Frederic Ives Medal, Optical Society of America, 1979
 * Von Humboldt Senior Scientist, 1980
 * Associé Étranger, Académie des Sciences, Paris, 1981
 * Member, American Philosophical Society, 1982
 * Member, German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, 1983
 * Dirac Medal for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 1983
 * Member Emeritus, United States National Academy of Engineering, 1984
 * Honorary Member, The Optical Society, 1984
 * Honorary Doctor of Science from Harvard University, 2000
 * Bijvoet Medal of the Bijvoet Center for Biomolecular Research of Utrecht University, 2001

Legacy
On March 11, 2020, the day of Bloembergen's 100th birthday, a team of researchers at the University of New South Wales published an article in Nature, demonstrating for the first time the successful coherent control of the nucleus of a single atom using only electric fields, an idea first proposed by Bloembergen back in 1961.

title: Nicolaas Bloembergen


text:
Elst

Elst may refer to:

 * Elst, Belgium, a village in the province of East Flanders, Belgium
 * Elst, Gelderland, a town in the municipality of Overbetuwe, Netherlands
 * Elst, North Brabant, a village in the municipality of Maasdonk, Netherlands
 * Elst, Utrecht, a town in the municipality of Rhenen, Netherlands
 * Elista, capital city of the Republic of Kalmykia, Russia (Kalmyk: Элст, Elst)
 * MV Elst, a Dutch coastal tanker
 * Eric Walter Elst (1936–2022), Belgian astronomer
 * Koenraad Elst (born 1959), Belgian writer and orientalist
 * Endolymphatic sac tumor, a benign neoplasm arising from the endolymphatic sac

title: Elst


text:
Arthur Leonard Schawlow

Arthur Leonard Schawlow (May 5, 1921 – April 28, 1999) was an American physicist who, along with Charles Townes, developed the theoretical basis for laser science. His central insight was the use of two mirrors as the resonant cavity to take maser action from microwaves to visible wavelengths. He shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn for his work using lasers to determine atomic energy levels with great precision.

Biography
Schawlow was born in Mount Vernon, New York. His mother, Helen (Mason), was from Canada, and his father, Arthur Schawlow, was a Jewish immigrant from Riga (then in the Russian Empire, now in Latvia). Schawlow was raised in his mother's Protestant religion. When Arthur was three years old, they moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

At the age of 16, he completed high school at Vaughan Road Academy (then Vaughan Collegiate Institute), and received a scholarship in science at the University of Toronto (Victoria College). After earning his undergraduate degree, Schawlow continued in graduate school at the University of Toronto which was interrupted due to World War II. At the end of the war, he began work on his Ph.D at the university with Professor Malcolm Crawford. He then took a postdoctoral position with Charles H. Townes at the physics department of Columbia University in the fall of 1949.

He went on to accept a position at Bell Labs in late 1951. He left in 1961 to join the faculty at Stanford University as a professor. He remained at Stanford until he retired to emeritus status in 1996.

Although his research focused on optics, in particular, lasers and their use in spectroscopy, he also pursued investigations in the areas of superconductivity and nuclear resonance. Schawlow shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn for their contributions to the development of laser spectroscopy.

Schawlow coauthored the widely used text Microwave Spectroscopy (1955) with Charles Townes. Schawlow and Townes were the first to publish the theory of laser design and operation in their seminal 1958 paper on "optical masers", although Gordon Gould is often credited with the "invention" of the laser, due to his unpublished work that predated Schawlow and Townes by a few months. The first working laser was made in 1960 by Theodore Maiman.

In 1991, the NEC Corporation and the American Physical Society established a prize: the Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science. The prize is awarded annually to "candidates who have made outstanding contributions to basic research using lasers."

Science and religion
He participated in science and religion discussions. Regarding God, he stated, "I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life."

Personal life
In 1951, he married Aurelia Townes, younger sister of his postdoctoral advisor, Charles Townes. They had three children: Arthur Jr., Helen, and Edith. Arthur Jr. is autistic, with very little speech ability.

Schawlow and Professor Robert Hofstadter at Stanford, who also had an autistic child, teamed up to help each other find solutions to the condition. Arthur Jr. was put in a special center for autistic individuals, and later, Schawlow put together an institution to care for people with autism in Paradise, California. It was later named the Arthur Schawlow Center in 1999, shortly before his death. Schawlow was a promoter of the controversial method of facilitated communication with patients of autism.

He considered himself to be an orthodox Protestant Christian, and attended a Methodist church. Arthur Schawlow was an intense fan and collector of traditional American jazz recordings, as well as a supporter of instrumental groups performing this type of music.

Schawlow died of leukemia in Palo Alto, California, on April 28, 1999, at the age 77.

Awards and honors

 * 1962 - Stuart Ballantine Medal
 * 1963 - Young Medal and Prize, for distinguished research in the field of optics presented by the Institute of physics
 * 1970 - elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
 * 1970 - elected to the National Academy of Sciences
 * 1976 - awarded the Frederic Ives Medal by OSA
 * 1981 - Nobel Prize for Physics
 * 1983 - Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
 * 1984 - elected to the American Philosophical Society

title: Arthur Leonard Schawlow


text:
Kai Siegbahn

Kai Manne Börje Siegbahn (20 April 1918 – 20 July 2007) was a Swedish physicist who shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Biography
Siegbahn was born in Lund, Sweden, son of Manne Siegbahn the 1924 physics Nobel Prize winner. Siegbahn earned his doctorate at the University of Stockholm in 1944. He was professor at the Royal Institute of Technology 1951–1954, and then professor of experimental physics at Uppsala University 1954–1984, which was the same chair his father had held. He shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Arthur Schawlow. Siegbahn received half the prize "for his contribution to the development of high-resolution electron spectroscopy" while Bloembergen and Schawlow received one quarter each "for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy".

Siegbahn referred to his technique as Electron Spectroscopy for Chemical Analysis (ESCA); it is now usually known as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). In 1967 he published a book, ESCA; atomic, molecular and solid state structure studied by means of electron spectroscopy.

He was a member of several academies and societies, including the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and was president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics from 1981 to 1984.

Siegbahn married Anna Brita Rhedin in 1944. The couple had three sons (two physicists and a biochemist).

Siegbahn died on 20 July 2007 at the age of 89. At the time of his death he was still active as a scientist at the Ångström Laboratory at Uppsala University.

Awards
As well as a share of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics, Siegbahn won the following awards:
 * 1945 Lindblom Prize
 * 1955, 1977 Björkén Prize
 * 1962 Celsius Medal
 * 1971 Sixten Heyman Award, University of Gothenburg
 * 1973 Harrison Howe Award, Rochester
 * 1975 Maurice F. Hasler Award, Cleveland
 * 1976 Charles Frederick Chandler Medal, Columbia University, New York
 * 1977 Torbern Bergman Medal
 * 1982 Pittsburgh Award of Spectroscopy

title: Kai Siegbahn


text:
Kenneth G. Wilson

Kenneth Geddes "Ken" Wilson (June 8, 1936 – June 15, 2013) was an American theoretical physicist and a pioneer in leveraging computers for studying particle physics. He was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on phase transitions—illuminating the subtle essence of phenomena like melting ice and emerging magnetism. It was embodied in his fundamental work on the renormalization group.

Life
Wilson was born on June 8, 1936, in Waltham, Massachusetts, the oldest child of Emily Buckingham Wilson and E. Bright Wilson, a prominent chemist at Harvard University, who did important work on microwave emissions. His mother also trained as a physicist. He attended several schools, including Magdalen College School, Oxford, England, ending up at the George School in eastern Pennsylvania.

He went on to Harvard College at age 16, majoring in Mathematics and, on two occasions, in 1954 and 1956, ranked among the top five in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. He was also a star on the athletics track, representing Harvard in the Mile. During his summer holidays he worked at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He earned his PhD from Caltech in 1961, studying under Murray Gell-Mann. He did post-doc work at Harvard and CERN.

He joined Cornell University in 1963 in the Department of Physics as a junior faculty member, becoming a full professor in 1970. He also did research at SLAC during this period. In 1974, he became the James A. Weeks Professor of Physics at Cornell.

In 1982 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on critical phenomena using the renormalization group.

He was a co-winner of the Wolf Prize in physics in 1980, together with Michael E. Fisher and Leo Kadanoff. His other awards include the A.C. Eringen Medal, the Franklin Medal, the Boltzmann Medal, and the Dannie Heinemann Prize. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Science and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science, both in 1975, and also was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1984.

In 1985, he was appointed as Cornell's Director of the Center for Theory and Simulation in Science and Engineering (now known as the Cornell Theory Center), one of five national supercomputer centers created by the National Science Foundation. In 1988, Wilson joined the faculty at Ohio State University. Wilson moved to Gray, Maine in 1995. He continued his association with Ohio State University until he retired in 2008. Prior to his death, he was actively involved in research on physics education and was an early proponent of "active involvement" (i.e. Science by Inquiry) of K-12 students in science and math.

Some of his PhD students include H. R. Krishnamurthy, Roman Jackiw, Michael Peskin, Serge Rudaz, Paul Ginsparg, and Steven R. White.

Wilson's brother David was also a professor at Cornell in the department of Molecular Biology and Genetics until his death, and his wife since 1982, Alison Brown, is a prominent computer scientist.

He died in Saco, Maine, on June 15, 2013, at the age of 77. He was respectfully remembered by his colleagues.

Work
Wilson's work in physics involved formulation of a comprehensive theory of scaling: how fundamental properties and forces of a system vary depending on the scale over which they are measured. He devised a universal "divide-and-conquer" strategy for calculating how phase transitions occur, by considering each scale separately and then abstracting the connection between contiguous ones, in a novel appreciation of renormalization group theory. This provided profound insights into the field of critical phenomena and phase transitions in statistical physics enabling precise calculations. One example of an important problem in solid-state physics he solved using renormalization is in quantitatively describing the Kondo effect.

He extended these insights on scaling to answer fundamental questions on the nature of quantum field theory and the operator product expansion and the physical meaning of the renormalization group.

He also pioneered the understanding of the confinement of quarks inside hadrons, utilizing lattice gauge theory, and initiating an approach permitting formerly foreboding strong-coupling calculations on computers. On such a lattice, he further shed light on chiral symmetry, a crucial feature of elementary particle interactions.

Awards and honors

 * Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, 1973
 * Boltzmann Medal, 1975
 * Wolf Prize, 1980
 * Harvard University, D.Sc (Hon.), 1981
 * Caltech, Distinguished Alumni Award, 1981
 * Franklin Medal, 1982
 * Nobel Prize for Physics, 1982
 * Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, 1983
 * A. C. Eringen Medal, 1984
 * Aneesur Rahman Prize, 1993
 * American Physical Society Fellow, 1998
 * Australian National University, Distinguished Anniversary Fellow, 1996

title: Kenneth G. Wilson


text:
Wills Hill, 1st Marquess of Downshire

Wills Hill, 1st Marquess of Downshire, (30 May 1718 – 7 October 1793), known as the 2nd Viscount Hillsborough from 1742 to 1751 and as the 1st Earl of Hillsborough from 1751 to 1789, was a British politician of the Georgian era.

Best known in North America as the Earl of Hillsborough, he served as Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1768 to 1772, a critical period leading toward the American War of Independence.

Background
Born in Fairford, Gloucestershire, Wills Hill was the son of Trevor Hill, 1st Viscount Hillsborough, and Mary, daughter of Anthony Rowe. He was named after General Sir Charles Wills, his godfather.

Political career
Hill, known retrospectively as Downshire, was returned to Parliament for Warwick in 1741, a seat he held until 1756. He succeeded his father as The 2nd Viscount Hillsborough in May 1742 (as this was an Irish peerage he was able to continue to sit in the British House of Commons). Lord Hillsborough, as he now was, was the same year appointed Lord Lieutenant of County Down and Custos Rotulorum of County Down.

In 1751, he was created Earl of Hillsborough in the Peerage of Ireland. In 1754, he was made Comptroller of the Household, a post he held until 1756, and appointed a Privy Counsellor. In 1756, he was created Baron Harwich, of Harwich in the County of Essex, in the Peerage of Great Britain, which entitled him to a seat in the House of Lords.

For nearly two years, between 1763 and 1765, Lord Hillsborough was President of the Board of Trade and Plantations under George Grenville, and after a brief period of retirement he filled the same position in 1766, and then that of joint Postmaster General, under the Earl of Chatham. From 1768 to 1772, Hillsborough was Secretary of State for the Colonies and also President of the Board of Trade. Both in and out of office, Hillsborough opposed all concessions to the American colonists, but he favoured the project for a union between England and the Kingdom of Ireland. On his retirement in 1772, he was created Earl of Hillsborough in the Peerage of Great Britain.

In 1779 he served as Secretary of State for the Southern Department, remaining until 1782. He was the last person to serve in this position, because the Secretaries of State were reorganized.

In 1789, he was made Marquess of Downshire in the Irish peerage.

Family and legacy
Lord Downshire married firstly Lady Margaretta, daughter of The 19th Earl of Kildare, in 1747. His second daughter and last child by his first marriage was Lady Charlotte Hill, wife of The 1st Earl Talbot. Lady Talbot was the subject of a notable portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

After her death in 1766, he married secondly Mary Bilson-Legge, 1st Baroness Stawell, daughter of Edward, 4th Baron Stawell, and widow of Henry Bilson-Legge, in 1768. She died in 1780.

Lord Downshire died on 7 October 1793, aged 75, and was succeeded by his son from his first marriage, Arthur.

In the United States, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, Hillsborough Township, New Jersey, the town of Hillsborough, New Hampshire, within the county, the town of Hillsborough, North Carolina, and Hillsborough County, Florida, Hillsboro, Highland, Ohio were named after the Marquess. Hillsborough, California, named for Hillsborough, New Hampshire, is an indirect namesake.

In Canada, Hillsborough Bay, on Prince Edward Island, and the village of Hillsborough, New Brunswick, were named in Downshire's honour.

title: Wills Hill, 1st Marquess of Downshire


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Truckee–Carson Irrigation District

 * TCID may also stand for "Tissue Culture Infectious Dose." or "4,5,6,7-Tetrachloro-1H-indene-1,3(2H)-dione"

The Truckee–Carson Irrigation District (TCID) is a public enterprise organized in the State of Nevada, which operates dams at Lake Tahoe, diversion dams on the Truckee River in Washoe County, and the Lake Lahontan reservoir.

TCD also operates 380 mi of canals, and 340 mi of drains, in support of agriculture in Lyon County and Churchill County, western Nevada. The excess irrigation water eventually drains into the endorheic Lake Lahontan Basin.

Endangered species
Diversion of water by the TCID from the Truckee River has caused a reduction in the level of natural Pyramid Lake, resulting in the endemic species of fish that live in it becoming endangered species.

In the mid-1980s the United States Environmental Protection Agency initiated development of the DSSAM Model to analyze effects of variable Truckee River flow rates and water quality upon these endangered fish species.

title: Truckee–Carson Irrigation District


text: User talk:152.163.252.8

title: User talk:152.163.252.8


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John Hampden-Trevor, 3rd Viscount Hampden

John Hampden-Trevor, 3rd Viscount Hampden PC (24 February 1748 – 9 September 1824), was a British diplomat.

Biography
He was the younger son of Robert Hampden, 1st Viscount Hampden and was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He followed in his father's career by becoming a diplomat. He was Minister to Munich (1780 – 1783) and to Turin (1783 – 1798).

On 8 May 1773, he married Harriet Burton (1751–1829), daughter of the Rev. Daniel Burton. Trevor was appointed to the Privy Council in 1797. He succeeded to the Viscountcy of Hampden on 20 August 1824, just three weeks before his death. He had no heirs, and the title became extinct at that time.


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Montego Bay

Montego Bay is the capital of the parish of St. James in Jamaica. The city is the fourth-largest urban area in the country by population, after Kingston, Spanish Town, and Portmore, all of which form the Greater Kingston Metropolitan Area, home to over half a million people. As a result, Montego Bay is the second-largest anglophone city in the Caribbean, after Kingston.

Montego Bay is a popular tourist destination featuring duty-free shopping, a cruise line terminal and several beaches and resorts. The city is served by the Donald Sangster International Airport, the busiest airport in the Anglophone Caribbean, which is located within the official city limits. The city is enclosed in a watershed, drained by several rivers such as the Montego River. Montego Bay is referred to as "The Second City", "MoBay" or "Bay".

Toponymy
Christopher Columbus named the bay of Montego, Golfo de Buen Tiempo ("Fair Weather Gulf"). The name "Montego Bay" is believed to have originated as a corruption of the Spanish word manteca ("lard"), allegedly because during the Spanish period it was the port where lard, leather and beef were exported.

History
The Arawak tribe of South America are Jamaica's first known inhabitants and were there to greet Columbus when he ventured to the island in 1494. Jamaica was a colony of Spain from 1511 until 1655, when Oliver Cromwell's Caribbean expedition, the Western Design, drove the Spanish from the island. After the British removed the Spanish rule, along with the majority of all buildings and infrastructure, the colonials established the Parish of St. James which directly influenced the area in becoming a huge contributor of sugar cane. In fact, during this period of British governing, Montego Bay was the largest producer of sugar cane on the island of Jamaica, giving the region more value than originally anticipated.

Throughout the duration of slavery, from the mid-17th century until 1834, and well into the 20th century, the town of Montego Bay functioned primarily as a sugarcane port. The island's last major slave revolt, the Christmas Rebellion or Baptist War (1831–1832) took place in and around the area of Montego Bay. The rebellion set estates and plantations to flame and was the start of a broader political push toward emancipation. Retribution was quickly sought by British leaders and many were hanged for their attempts at revolt; the leader of the revolt, Samuel Sharpe, was hanged there in 1832. Recognition was later given, and Sharpe was proclaimed a national hero of Jamaica in 1975, and the main square of the town was renamed in his honor. Eventually, Jamaica was emancipated on August 1, 1834 which granted all new children born or children under the age of six "free", but held individuals outside of that parameter to be apprentices and work forty hours a week in compensation to their previous or original owners. It was not until four years after these restrictions were put in place that all slave and apprentices were given the status of full freedom. After the half decade emancipation process, Montego Bay and its sugar cane industry took a hit. Therefore, it branched out and took root in expanding into exporting bananas and coffee as well.

Montego Bay's city status prior to British rule was debated; however, it had its city status revoked during Jamaica's British colonial period. It was re-proclaimed a city by act of parliament in 1980, but this has not meant that it has acquired any form of autonomy, for it continues to be an integral part of the parish of St. James.

Today, Montego Bay is known for Cornwall Regional Hospital, port facilities, second homes for numerous upper-class Jamaicans from Kingston as well as North Americans and Europeans, fine restaurants, vibrant night life and shopping. The coastland near Montego Bay is occupied by numerous tourist resorts, most newly built, some occupying the grounds of old sugarcane plantations with some of the original buildings and mill-works still standing. The most famous is the White Witch's Rose Hall which features a world-class golf course.

The infrastructure of the city is going through a series of modernizations which once completed, aims to keep Montego Bay as a top destination in the region. The Montego Bay Convention Centre, built on a large site near to the Rose Hall estate, was opened by Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding on 7 January 2011.

Demographics
The majority of the city's population is of African descent. The city is also home to sizeable minority ethnic groups such as the East Indians and Chinese, who came to the country as indentured servants in the mid-to-late 19th century. The Chinese especially occupy important roles in the city's economy especially in retail where Downtown Montego Bay is home to many shops and supermarkets owned by Chinese immigrants. The city's East Indian population also play a key role as they operate many gift and jewelry shops in the city which are mostly geared to tourists.

There is a minority of Europeans, some descending from immigrants from Germany (the city is a 90-minute drive from German settlements such as German Town in Westmoreland) and Great Britain (who own most of the land in the city from as far back as the days of the slave trade).

The city is home to many immigrants from Hispanic countries such as Mexico, Cuba and Spain as well as many French, Russians and Italians (who mostly own homes or beachfront properties in the area).

The city also is home to many Americans and Canadians, who work the tourism or business process outsourcing (BPO) industries.

Religion
There are a wide variety of Christian churches in the city. Most are Protestant, a legacy of British colonisation of the island. The chief denominations are Church of God, Baptist, Anglican, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Seventh-day Adventist and Pentecostal. Afro-Christian syncretic religions such as the Rastafari movement also have a significant following. The city also has a unit of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The city also has communities of Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims.

Economy
Montego Bay is pivotal to Jamaica's economy. The city holds most of the weight of the country's tourism sector. Most of the country's visitors arrive and depart from Montego Bay's airport or port. Many international companies have resorts in the city including Hyatt, Hilton Hotels, Holiday Inn, RIU Hotels, Royalton and Iberostar. The city is the home to the headquarters of international resort chain Sandals. The Government of Jamaica, through the Ministry of Tourism, has begun to focus on bolstering the city's entertainment and gastronomic offerings. Though the city's airport hosts a number international chains, the city itself does not have access to these restaurants. By virtue of this new focus, the city has become home to a newly established Hard Rock Café and became home to Starbucks' first Jamaican location, at Doctor's Cave Beach, in November 2017. The city also serves as the Head Office for Starbucks' operations in Jamaica.

Institutions
The city hosts many financial institutions such as Scotiabank, FCIB, National Commercial Bank, Jamaica National Commercial Bank (JN Bank) and many others. The city also has offices for many auditing firms such as KPMG and PwC.

The city is home to many health institutions such as the Cornwall Regional Hospital as well as the recently opened, Hospiten, a Spanish-owned, private hospital located in Rose Hall.

Education in the city can be found from Pre-K up to Tertiary. The city has many Pre-K and Basic Schools. Beyond this, the city has many Primary and Preparatory Schools. Secondary Education is also provided in the city most notable of which are the Montego Bay High School for Girls, Mount Alvernia High School—a Roman Catholic High School for Girls which shares the same crest, motto and wears a uniform similar to that of sister school of Immaculate Conception High School in Kingston, Herbert Morrison Technical High School and the oldest school in the city, Cornwall College, an all-boys' school.

Tertiary Institutions in the city are namely the University of West Indies (UWI) – Western Jamaica Campus, The University of Technology (UTECH) Montego Bay Campus, Sam Sharpe Teachers' College (SSTC) and the Montego Bay Community College (MBCC). Most tertiary institutions in the city are accredited.

Roads
The North Coast Highway runs through the city of Montego Bay, with 2 lanes in each direction within the city, terminating at the Queen's Drive and resuming at the intersection of the Alice Eldemire Drive and Barnett Street. The North Coast Highway connects Montego Bay with the North-South section of Highway 2000 (called T3), which begins at Mammee Bay in Ocho Rios, St. Ann and terminates at an interchange which leads onto the Mandela Highway in St. Catherine and into the nation's capital, Kingston.

Another major road within the city is the B15 (Montego Bay to Falmouth) road. The city is also well served by buses, mini-busses and taxis, which operate from the Montego Bay Transport Centre.

The Government of Jamaica announced that a tolled bypass to the city has been planned to be built in order to reduce traffic congestion and travel times. The bypass is to begin at Westgate and end at Ironshore. The bypass is expected to cost around USD $200 Million.

Rail
The now disused Montego Bay railway station served the Kingston to Montego Bay main line. The railway station opened c. 1894, and closed in October 1992 when all passenger traffic on Jamaica's railways abruptly ceased.

Air
Montego Bay is served by Jamaica's largest airport, the Sangster International Airport. The airport has the distinction of being the busiest airport in the English-speaking Caribbean, serving 4.3 million passengers in 2017.

The airport was the hub of Jamaica's former national airline Air Jamaica. The airline also had its reservations, Western Jamaica sales & ticketing office, as well as its vacations division in the city until its purchase by Caribbean Airlines in 2011, when they moved their offices to Kingston. The site is now the headquarters for Island Routes, a company owned by the Sandals-ATL Group, which in the past was affiliated with the airline.

The airport is served by several North American and European airlines, connecting the island with the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and South America. The southern U.S. city of Miami can be reached within 70 minutes. The southern U.S. cities of Charlotte, Houston, Atlanta and Tampa can be reached by non-stop flights in less than three hours. Other locations like Philadelphia, New York City, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and Montreal can be reached in under four hours. The airport is also one of two airports in the Caribbean (other being Havana), that has a non-stop flight to Los Angeles, allowing passengers the ability to connect to flights to Asia, Australia and Oceania. The airport has undergone major expansion since 2003, and has won awards including the coveted World Travel Award for being the Caribbean's Leading Airport, beating airports like Punta Cana International Airport and Grantley Adams International Airport.

Port
There is a free port and cruise line terminal on a man-made peninsula jutting into the bay.

Fixed voice and broadband
Fixed voice and broadband services in Montego Bay is provided by FLOW. FLOW uses a Hybrid Fibre and Coaxial network to provide IPTV, VoIP & POTS and cable broadband capable of speeds up to 100 Mbit/s. FLOW also uses a Copper network to provide POTS and ADSL capable of speeds up to 12 Mbit/s. This copper network is currently being upgraded to VDSL2, which may allow speeds of over 50 Mbit/s over existing copper lines as well as provide a migration path for the provider to Fibre to the Home. FLOW also has a fibre-optic network in the neighbourhood of Rhyne Park which provides up to 100 Mbit/s as well. There are several other small cable companies such as Cornwall Communications, that provides cable broadband and voice over its cable network; however, they are vastly incomparable in subscriber numbers to FLOW.

Mobile voice and broadband
Mobile voice and broadband services in Montego Bay is dominated by both incumbents, FLOW & Digicel. Both carriers provide GSM, EDGE, 3G HSPA & HSPA+ connectivity in and around the city.

Currently, FLOW offers HSPA+ of up to 21 Mbit/s on 850 MHz and 1900 MHz with speeds of up to 21 Mbit/s. FLOW also offers LTE data in Montego Bay. The company is the currently the only carrier to provide comprehensive LTE coverage within the city itself. Coverage also extends out towards to the adjoining rural areas surrounding Montego Bay such as Liliput to east and Hopewell (in the parish of Hanover) to the west. FLOW's LTE network uses LTE Band 4, commonly known as AWS. Users can avail themselves of speeds of up to 150 Mbit/s down and 50 Mbit/s up. In some areas in the city, FLOW subscribers are able to access LTE Advanced with speeds up to 225 Mbit/s; making Montego Bay the only city in Jamaica to have access to such.

Digicel, Jamaica's larger mobile network, also offers 21 Mbit/s HSPA+; however, they also offer DC-HSDPA (commonly known as DC-HSPA+) allowing capable devices speeds of up to 42 Mbit/s on paired 850 MHz spectrum. Digicel's LTE network is also available in Montego Bay, owing to its commitment to provide an islandwide LTE network, offering LTE in the city for its subscribers. The network is theoretically capable of speeds up to 75 Mbit/s on 10 MHz of Band 17 spectrum.

In popular culture
The city was the subject of a namesake song by Bobby Bloom in 1970, which became a Top Ten hit in the United States for Bloom. It was covered by Jon Stevens in 1980 and by Amazulu in 1986, becoming minor hits for both.

Several scenes from the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die (in which Roger Moore appeared as Bond for the first time) were filmed around Montego Bay.

Montego Bay was featured in the song Santechnikas iš Ukmergės by Lithuanian singer Vytautas Kernagis.

Climate
Montego Bay has a tropical monsoon climate (Köppen climate classification Am), with a wet season and a drier season and the temperature being warm or hot year-round. The average annual high temperature is 29.8 C, while the average annual low temperature is 23.7 C. The hottest time of year is from June to September. August has the highest average high at 31.4 C. July and August have the highest average low at 24.8 C. January and February have the lowest average high at 27.9 C. February has the lowest average low at 22.1 C.

Montego Bay receives 1140 mm of rain over 127 precipitation days, with wetter and drier months. The dry season is fairly short, lasting from January to April. July also sees a dip in precipitation. October, the wettest month, receives 164 mm of rainfall over 14 precipitation days on average. Humidity remains consistently high year-round. Montego Bay receives 2788 hours of sunshine annually (7.6 hours per day) on average, with the sunshine being distributed fairly evenly across the year.

Notable people

 * Corey Ballentine, football cornerback and kick returner for the Atlanta Falcons
 * Steve Bucknor, Test cricket umpire
 * Violet Brown, Jamaican supercentenarian
 * Ian Goodison, Jamaican footballer
 * Richard Hart, Jamaican politician
 * Richard Hill, lawyer and abolitionist
 * Donovan Ricketts, Jamaican footballer
 * Musashi Suzuki, Japanese footballer
 * Ruby Turner, singer and actress
 * Nicholas Walters, professional boxer

title: Montego Bay


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Joseph Williamson (English politician)

Sir Joseph Williamson, PRS (25 July 1633 – 3 October 1701) was an English civil servant, diplomat and politician who sat in the House of Commons of England variously between 1665 and 1701 and in the Irish House of Commons between 1692 and 1699. He was Secretary of State for the Northern Department from 1674 to 1679.

Early life
Williamson was born at Bridekirk, near Cockermouth in Cumberland, where his father, also called Joseph, was vicar. His father died when he was very young, and his mother remarried the Reverend John Ardery. His relatively humble origins were often referred to unkindly in later life by his enemies, especially after he married into the aristocracy. He was educated at St. Bees School, Westminster School and Queen's College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow.

Early career
In 1660 he entered the service of the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, Sir Edward Nicholas, retaining his position under the succeeding secretary, Sir Henry Bennet, afterwards Earl of Arlington. He made himself indispensable to Arlington, due to his enormous capacity for hard work, which resulted in his employer delegating most of the routine work of the department to him. He was involved with the foundation of the London Gazette in 1665.

Williamson was elected Member of Parliament for Thetford in 1669 and held the seat until 1685. No less than three previous attempts to enter Parliament had been unsuccessful, due to an increasing "backlash" against Government candidates. Samuel Pepys in his celebrated Diary records that when Williamson appeared at the hustings in 1666, he was shouted down by cries of "No courtiers!" In 1672 he was made one of the clerks of the council and was knighted.

During the Third Anglo-Dutch War, he drew up plans for the Zealand Expedition which was intended to land a newly formed English Army in the Netherlands. The strategy was abandoned after the naval defeat at the Battle of Texel and the Treaty of Westminster which ended the war.

In 1673 and 1674 he represented his country at the Congress of Cologne, and in the latter year he became Secretary of State for the Northern Department, having practically purchased this position from Arlington for £6,000, a sum that he required from his successor when he left office in 1679. He served as Master of The Clothworkers' Company from 1676 to 1677. In 1677, he became the second President of the Royal Society, but his main interests, after politics, were in antiquarian rather than in scientific matters.

As Secretary of State, he largely continued Arlington's policy of friendship towards France, and hostility towards the Netherlands. Sir Joseph represented England at the Congress of Nijmegen (1678–79). William III of Orange developed a deep aversion to Williamson: quite apart from their opposing policies, he is said to have found the tone of Williamson's dispatches unbearably patronising ("as though I was a child to be fed on whipped cream" William grumbled).

Popish Plot
Just before his removal from the post of Secretary of State, he was arrested on a charge of being implicated in the Popish Plot, but he was at once released by order of Charles II. Williamson was a particular target of the informers because he was one of the few Ministers who openly disbelieved in the Plot: when Israel Tonge first approached him with "information", Williamson, who believed, with some reason, that Tonge was insane, gave him a "rude repulse". As for the other informers, several of whom were members of London's criminal underworld, his efficient intelligence service no doubt told him everything necessary about their characters. For this reason, the King, who was equally sceptical about the Plot's reality, wished to retain his services, at least in the short term. The actual charge made against Williamson, of commissioning Roman Catholic army officers, was entirely spurious since these officers were intended for foreign service.

Williamson's nerve began to give way under the strain of the Plot, and he became a political liability. Charles finally dismissed him after he gave orders to search Somerset House, the Queen's official residence, without the King's permission; the King, "in great anger" told him that "I marvel at your effrontery in searching my house... your head is turning.....I do not wish to be served by a man who fears anyone more than me". Danby was suspected by many of having a part in Williamson's downfall, as he was said to have taken offence at Williamson's recent marriage to Lady Clifton, a wealthy widow and cousin of the King.

Marriage
His marriage, at the beginning of the Popish Plot, should on the face of it have strengthened him politically: his wife was Katherine Stewart, Baroness Clifton, daughter of George Stewart, 9th Seigneur d'Aubigny, and sister of Charles Stewart, 3rd Duke of Richmond, and thus a member of a junior branch of the Stuart dynasty. Her first husband, by whom she had several children, was Henry O'Brien, Lord Ibrackan(c. 1642 – 1 September 1678), an old friend of Williamson; she and Williamson had no children.

Despite the obvious advantages of the match to Williamson himself, John Evelyn reported that it was very unpopular, and it probably weakened Williamson politically. Since Katherine as well as her first husband was an old friend of Williamson she was not a surprising choice as a bride; but the fact that O'Brien had been dead for only three months when she remarried gave rise to ill-natured gossip that Williamson and Katherine had been lovers during her first marriage: "'Tis said they live together less happily than before they married" ran one gibe. More seriously in an age of marked class distinctions, it was considered improper that the sister of a Royal Duke should marry a country clergyman's son, and even her children are said to have objected to the marriage. Danby, who reportedly thought that Katherine would be a good match for his own son, was suspected of having had a hand in Williamson's downfall.

Later career
After a period of comparative inactivity, in 1698 he signed the Treaty of The Hague (1698), the first treaty for the partition of the Spanish Monarchy. It was characteristic of William III that despite his personal dislike of Williamson, so evident in the 1670s, he did not hesitate to make use of his diplomatic skills. The negotiations had been kept a strict secret, and news of the Treaty caused uproar in England, but Williamson himself escaped any serious censure.

In 1690, Williamson was elected Member of Parliament for Rochester and held the seat until 1701. He was also elected MP for Thetford in three separate elections, but each time chose to sit for Rochester instead.

Between 1692 and 1695, Williamson was also MP in the Irish House of Commons for County Clare. In 1695 he represented Portarlington for a few months and subsequently Limerick City until 1699. He was awarded the Freedom of the City of Dublin in 1696, as a tribute to his interest in civic improvements in Dublin. In return, he presented the city fathers with a silver cup.

Death and reputation
Williamson died at Cobham, Kent, on 3 October 1701, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where his widow joined him a year later. He had become very rich by taking advantage of the many opportunities of making money which his official position gave him; and despite the heavy debts left by her brother, his wife is also said to have brought him a fortune. He left £6,000 and his library to Queen's College, Oxford; £5,000 to found a school at Rochester, Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School; and £2,000 to Thetford. A great number of Williamson's letters, dispatches, memoranda, etc., are among the English state papers.

He has been described as one of the greatest English civil servants of his time, and is credited with building up an intelligence service as efficient as that which John Thurloe had operated under Oliver Cromwell. His detailed notes of Privy Council meetings are an invaluable source of information about its operation, especially in the political crisis of 1678–79. On the other hand, he was a poor public speaker: even Charles II, himself a very hesitant speaker, complained of his "droning".

Despite his gifts, he was not popular, being described as dry, formal and arrogant, an uncertain friend and a harsh employer. Many of his colleagues, like Sir Leoline Jenkins, felt the lash of his sharp tongue. On the other hand, his will, in which he remembered all those who had a claim on him, suggests that he did not lack a certain generosity of character; and he was capable of forming lifelong friendships, notably with Samuel Pepys.

In fiction
He is a recurring character in the Thomas Chaloner series of mystery novels by Susanna Gregory, in which he plays a somewhat villainous role: his wife and her first husband appear in the seventh book in the series, The Piccadilly Plot. Williamson also appears regularly in Andrew Taylor's series of novels about the adventures of Whitehall clerk James Marwood and architect Cat Lovett.

title: Joseph Williamson (English politician)