Cossack1483
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Thank You , Pan Sobieski. Great thread.
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Polish Greatness
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SobieskiSavedEurope
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Andrzej Trautman - Polish gravitational wave researcher
13.10.2017 SPACE, PRIZES & AWARDS
Photo: Fotolia
This year's Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to scientists from the US and Germany, who were the first to observe gravitational waves. Their achievements would probably not have been possible without the work of Polish physicist Prof. Trautman - who convinced everyone that these waves actually exist, and their detection is possible.
Andrzej Trautman (born 1933) focused on theoretical physics, including gravity and the general theory of relativity. His work from the 1950s and early 1960s made an important contribution to the theory of gravitational waves, whose existence was confirmed experimentally only in 2015.
Gravitational waves were first mentioned by Albert Einstein in his general relativity theory, published in 1916. He predicted that the waves emitted by accelerating masses spread in space-time, causing its deformation (somewhat like waves on the surface of water). But he was not sure whether these waves actually existed - they could just as well be the effect of mathematical transformations of complex equations. Other physicists also had doubts - there were opinions that gravitational waves do not carry energy, so they are mathematical illusions, undetectable phenomena of purely theoretical meaning.
This view was also represented by the head of the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Warsaw, Prof. Leopold Infeld. Trautman, however, proved that gravitational waves could not be eliminated from equations by means of transformations of equations - therefore they were real and should be detectable. At the invitation of British physicist Felix Pirani, professor of King's College London, in 1958 Trautman gave a three-month lecture series in London.
In 1960, together with American scientist Ivor Robinson, he published a description of gravitational waves, the solution of Einstein's equations. The work "Spherical Gravitational Waves" was published in the "Physical Review Letters".
Later papers by Prof. Trautman concerned, among other things, the Einstein-Cartan theory, dealing with gravity.
When the detection of gravitational waves was officially confirmed on February 11, 2016, dozens of Polish physicists in the official letter thanked Prof. Andrzej Trautman for the fact that he had theoretically proved their existence years ago. In this way, he contributed to the activities that led to their discovery. Hundreds of millions of dollars would not be spent on the LIGO laser interferometer if there were no theoretical grounds for hoping for the success of the experiment. Prof. Trautman's work has also contributed to the development of methods for calculating wave emissions during collisions of black holes and other cosmic events.
"Although gravitational wave detection is primarily an experimental achievement, it would not be possible without defining what gravitational waves are in Einstein's full theory" - wrote Polish physicists in an open letter to Professor Trautman. The letter was published in 2016 by Wyborcza daily. "Your work from the turn of the 1950s and 1960s is at the very heart of the theory of gravitational radiation, and among other things, provide its definition".
"These works show, firstly, how gravitational waves look far from the sources, and secondly, that the gravitational wave system at all times has a well-defined energy that decreases at times (Trautman and Bondi equations), and thirdly, contained the first clear solutions of Einstein's vacuum equations describing gravitational waves from limited sources (Robinson-Trautman's metrics)" - they wrote.
The physicists also reminded in the letter of "an extremely inspirational role" of the series of lectures delivered by Prof. Trautman at King's College, London in 1958 for the whole field: "Your contribution to the fundamentals of gravitational wave theory is of immense value: it was, in fact, the beginning of reflections that only recently led to the numerical and perturbational results needed to compare the measured signals with the theoretical model of the process of black hole merging. We also emphasize that your school of relativistic physics in Warsaw educated a considerable part of the Polish research group in the LIGO/VIRGO team".
Andrzej Trautman was born in Warsaw. When he was 12, his family moved to Paris, but after graduation from high school he returned to Poland. He is a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a retired professor of the University of Warsaw.
In 2016, he was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta for outstanding achievements in scientific research and for achievements in international scientific cooperation. Earlier he was awarded the First Degree State Prize, and the Polish Physical Society honoured him with the Marian Smoluchowski Medal. (PAP)
Author: Paweł Wernicki
Editor: Anna Ślązak
pmw/ zan/ kap/
tr. RL
Tags: nobel , prizes awards
Andrzej Trautman - Polish gravitational wave researcher | News | Science & Scholarship in Poland
13.10.2017 SPACE, PRIZES & AWARDS
Photo: Fotolia
This year's Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to scientists from the US and Germany, who were the first to observe gravitational waves. Their achievements would probably not have been possible without the work of Polish physicist Prof. Trautman - who convinced everyone that these waves actually exist, and their detection is possible.
Andrzej Trautman (born 1933) focused on theoretical physics, including gravity and the general theory of relativity. His work from the 1950s and early 1960s made an important contribution to the theory of gravitational waves, whose existence was confirmed experimentally only in 2015.
Gravitational waves were first mentioned by Albert Einstein in his general relativity theory, published in 1916. He predicted that the waves emitted by accelerating masses spread in space-time, causing its deformation (somewhat like waves on the surface of water). But he was not sure whether these waves actually existed - they could just as well be the effect of mathematical transformations of complex equations. Other physicists also had doubts - there were opinions that gravitational waves do not carry energy, so they are mathematical illusions, undetectable phenomena of purely theoretical meaning.
This view was also represented by the head of the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Warsaw, Prof. Leopold Infeld. Trautman, however, proved that gravitational waves could not be eliminated from equations by means of transformations of equations - therefore they were real and should be detectable. At the invitation of British physicist Felix Pirani, professor of King's College London, in 1958 Trautman gave a three-month lecture series in London.
In 1960, together with American scientist Ivor Robinson, he published a description of gravitational waves, the solution of Einstein's equations. The work "Spherical Gravitational Waves" was published in the "Physical Review Letters".
Later papers by Prof. Trautman concerned, among other things, the Einstein-Cartan theory, dealing with gravity.
When the detection of gravitational waves was officially confirmed on February 11, 2016, dozens of Polish physicists in the official letter thanked Prof. Andrzej Trautman for the fact that he had theoretically proved their existence years ago. In this way, he contributed to the activities that led to their discovery. Hundreds of millions of dollars would not be spent on the LIGO laser interferometer if there were no theoretical grounds for hoping for the success of the experiment. Prof. Trautman's work has also contributed to the development of methods for calculating wave emissions during collisions of black holes and other cosmic events.
"Although gravitational wave detection is primarily an experimental achievement, it would not be possible without defining what gravitational waves are in Einstein's full theory" - wrote Polish physicists in an open letter to Professor Trautman. The letter was published in 2016 by Wyborcza daily. "Your work from the turn of the 1950s and 1960s is at the very heart of the theory of gravitational radiation, and among other things, provide its definition".
"These works show, firstly, how gravitational waves look far from the sources, and secondly, that the gravitational wave system at all times has a well-defined energy that decreases at times (Trautman and Bondi equations), and thirdly, contained the first clear solutions of Einstein's vacuum equations describing gravitational waves from limited sources (Robinson-Trautman's metrics)" - they wrote.
The physicists also reminded in the letter of "an extremely inspirational role" of the series of lectures delivered by Prof. Trautman at King's College, London in 1958 for the whole field: "Your contribution to the fundamentals of gravitational wave theory is of immense value: it was, in fact, the beginning of reflections that only recently led to the numerical and perturbational results needed to compare the measured signals with the theoretical model of the process of black hole merging. We also emphasize that your school of relativistic physics in Warsaw educated a considerable part of the Polish research group in the LIGO/VIRGO team".
Andrzej Trautman was born in Warsaw. When he was 12, his family moved to Paris, but after graduation from high school he returned to Poland. He is a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a retired professor of the University of Warsaw.
In 2016, he was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta for outstanding achievements in scientific research and for achievements in international scientific cooperation. Earlier he was awarded the First Degree State Prize, and the Polish Physical Society honoured him with the Marian Smoluchowski Medal. (PAP)
Author: Paweł Wernicki
Editor: Anna Ślązak
pmw/ zan/ kap/
tr. RL
Tags: nobel , prizes awards
Andrzej Trautman - Polish gravitational wave researcher | News | Science & Scholarship in Poland
SobieskiSavedEurope
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SobieskiSavedEurope
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SobieskiSavedEurope
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Polish Parliament honours poet Zbigniew Herbert
28.10.2017 08:30
Poland's parliament has declared 2018 the Year of Zbigniew Herbert as the 20th anniversary of the poet's death will be marked on 28 July next year.
Zbigniew Herbert. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)
Parliament said Herbert was “one of the most prominent 20th-century Polish and European poets”.
“In his poetry, Herbert expressed a love for freedom as well as faith in the dignity and moral strength of the individual”, parliament added in a resolution.
It also stressed that Herbert introduced into the Polish language many phrases that “build our identity and imagination”.
Sunday, 29 October, marks the 93rd anniversary of Herbert’s birth. He was a poet, essayist, and playwright. His most popular works include Pan Cogito (Mr. Cogito), Raport z oblężonego miasta(Report from a Besieged City), Struna światła (The Chord of Light), Hermes, pies i gwiazda (Hermes, Dog and Star), and Barbarzyńca w ogrodzie (The Barbarian in the Garden).
An anti-communist, Herbert gave his wholehearted support to the Solidarity movement. After the imposition of martial law in December 1981, his poems were recited at clandestine Solidarity meetings. His works have been translated into 38 languages. He was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish state distinction. (mk/vb)
Polish Parliament honours poet Zbigniew Herbert
28.10.2017 08:30
Poland's parliament has declared 2018 the Year of Zbigniew Herbert as the 20th anniversary of the poet's death will be marked on 28 July next year.
Parliament said Herbert was “one of the most prominent 20th-century Polish and European poets”.
“In his poetry, Herbert expressed a love for freedom as well as faith in the dignity and moral strength of the individual”, parliament added in a resolution.
It also stressed that Herbert introduced into the Polish language many phrases that “build our identity and imagination”.
Sunday, 29 October, marks the 93rd anniversary of Herbert’s birth. He was a poet, essayist, and playwright. His most popular works include Pan Cogito (Mr. Cogito), Raport z oblężonego miasta(Report from a Besieged City), Struna światła (The Chord of Light), Hermes, pies i gwiazda (Hermes, Dog and Star), and Barbarzyńca w ogrodzie (The Barbarian in the Garden).
An anti-communist, Herbert gave his wholehearted support to the Solidarity movement. After the imposition of martial law in December 1981, his poems were recited at clandestine Solidarity meetings. His works have been translated into 38 languages. He was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish state distinction. (mk/vb)
Polish Parliament honours poet Zbigniew Herbert
SobieskiSavedEurope
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200th anniversary of the death of Tadeusz Kościuszko
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Tadeusz Kościuszko was a graduate of the Corps of Cadets in Warsaw and the Royal Guard Military Academy for Cavalrymen in Versailles close to Paris. He returned to Poland in 1775, three years after it was partitioned by Russia, Austria and Prussia. In 1776 he arrived in the United States, where he was enlisted as an engineer in the American Army. He took part in the defence of Philadelphia. As an expression of gratitude, George Washington trusted him with the task of building a strong fortification at West Point. On his own request, he was dispatched to the South where his skills helped the Americans win their war of independence. In 1783, Congress promoted him to the rank of brigadier general of the American Army and he was given a substantial amount of land as well as money, which he dedicated to the emancipation and the education of African Americans.
In 1784 he returned to Poland. He was involved in national liberation efforts during the Polish-Russian War of 1792, after which he went into political exile. While in exile he prepared a plan for a national uprising. On 24 March 1794, in Krakow's Main Square, he took a solemn oath confirming him as the Commander in Chief of the Polish Armed Forces during the national uprising. For two years he was the leader of the uprising. Wounded on 10 October 1794 in a battle close to Maciejowice, he was imprisoned in a fortress in Petersburg and later released after tendering his loyalty to Tsar Paul I. Between 1798 - 1815 he lived in France, where he helped set up the Polish Legions.
In acknowledgement of his activity for the cause of independence, peace and equality for all, Kościuszko is a national hero in Poland and the United States, and an honorary citizen of the French Republic. It is worth emphasizing that the views and ideas he advocated still remain relevant and important today.
Kościuszko spent his final years in Solothurn, Switzerland, where he died. His body was first buried in a crypt of a Jesuit church in Solothurn, from where he was moved a year later to St. Leonard's Crypt at Wawel Cathedral in Krakow. UNESCO and the Polish Sejm count among the patrons of the Year of Kościuszko. Polish diplomatic missions abroad and Polish circles all around the world organize events marking Kościuszko’s year. Follow #Kosciuszko200 hashtag in social media and get the latest updates about the events marking the anniversary.
Source: Poland MFA
14.10.2017
200th anniversary of the death of Tadeusz Kościuszko
SobieskiSavedEurope
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Restless soulJoseph Conrad, the first novelist of globalisation
Raised speaking Polish and French, Joseph Conrad didn’t learn English until he was 21. But he became one of the finest of English writers
Print edition | Books and arts
Nov 2nd 2017
https://www.economist.com/node/21730850/comments
The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World. By Maya Jasanoff. Penguin Press; 400 pages; $30. William Collins; £25.
JOSEPH CONRAD was a phenomenon. Born to Polish parents in 1857 in a part of the Russian empire that is now Ukraine, he was christened Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. French was his second language, and he did not come to England (or speak a word of English) until he was 21. Yet such was his eventual mastery of the language that he has come to be regarded as one of the greatest writers in English.
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In 1948 F.R. Leavis, a well-known literary critic at Cambridge University, listed him in “The Great Tradition” as being up there with Jane Austen, George Eliot and Henry James. Eight years later Walter Allen, another critic, wrote that “Nostromo” was arguably “the greatest novel in English of this century”. “Heart of Darkness” gained a new audience through “Apocalypse Now”, Francis Ford Coppola’s epic war film of 1979.
Yet readers today are often deterred by Conrad’s convoluted, prolix style. This is a pity. Many of his novels and short stories richly reward perseverance. As Maya Jasanoff, professor of British and imperial history at Harvard University, argues in a new book that blends history and literary criticism, Conrad wrote “at the turn of the 20th century” of many of the global forces and perils that afflict the world today.
The novelist was orphaned at 11, his parents having succumbed to illness after being exiled for revolutionary activity to “the gates of Siberia”. At 16 he ran away to sea. For nearly 20 years he worked as an ordinary seaman from Marseille where, suffering from debt and despair, he appears to have attempted suicide. Later he became a fully qualified British master mariner, and travelled the world, particularly the archipelagoes and peninsulas of South-East Asia, where many of his tales are set. Conrad, Ms Jasanoff writes, “belonged to the last generation of seafarers who worked primarily on sailing ships”, which he called “the aristocracy”. In his writings he “transformed the British sailing ship into a gold standard for moral conduct”.
Sailing to Australia as first mate on the Torrens, he befriended John Galsworthy, a young lawyer who went on to write “The Forsyte Saga”, which eventually won him a Nobel prize. Then, in 1894, with no command in view, Conrad abandoned the sea and published his first novel, “Almayer’s Folly”. The journey from native-born Pole to sailor to writer was complete. Two years later, after a short, awkward courtship, he married the seemingly unsuitable Jessie George, settled contentedly in Kent, fathered two sons and dedicated the rest of his life to writing.
In “The Dawn Watch” Ms Jasanoff describes her own journeys in search of Conrad—four weeks on a French cargo ship across the Indian Ocean and a complicated trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. She skilfully integrates details of Conrad’s life and accounts of his four greatest works, linking the challenges and forces that lie behind and within the novels to those of the 21st century.
If not as cosmopolitan as today, London in the 1890s contained 50,000 continental Europeans—“more than all the population of Krakow”. (Conrad might be curious to know that Poles are now the largest foreign-born group in Britain.) Russian revolutionaries and militant Irish nationalists inspired “The Secret Agent”, set in a grimy, Dickensian London, an ironic treatment of plotting and terrorism and a bomb that goes off at the wrong moment, killing an innocent simpleton. Then, as now, the threats of anarchism and terrorism fuelled anti-immigrant feeling. As Ms Jasanoff writes: “When you think a foreigner might take your job, you protest. When you think a foreigner might kill you, you panic.”
If “The Secret Agent” is told in an easily readable manner, “Lord Jim”, which had come out seven years earlier, is altogether more exotic and demanding. Captain Marlow, Conrad’s recurrent narrator, describes how in a moment of confusion a “powerfully built” young Englishman abandons a ship loaded with pilgrims that appears to be sinking. Conscience-stricken and haunted, Jim repeatedly tries to make a new start, but just when he appears to be prospering he is destroyed. This meandering narrative, Ms Jasanoff writes, “spoke in a metaphor [that] imperialists could appreciate”, in particular about the moral uprightness of “the right sort” of Englishman. It was recognised as having great originality and inspired many younger writers, though not everyone was convinced. For E.M. Forster, “the secret casket of his genius contained a vapour rather than a jewel.” But Ms Jasanoff states that “for Conrad, the vapour was the jewel.”
“Heart of Darkness”, which came out in 1902, two years after “Lord Jim”, arose from Conrad’s brief and sickening experience of Belgian exploitation of the then Belgian Congo. He was appalled by the treatment of the Africans and the ivory trade, as exemplified in the novel by Kurtz, the agent who came promising civilisation but turned to vile savagery and eventually expired, uttering the words, “The horror! The horror!”
Conrad expressed similar concerns in the more substantial “Nostromo” of 1904. For the first time he wrote about an imaginary place, the South American republic of Costaguana, but it was “a novel about every place he’d been”. It projected all his political cynicism, his nostalgia for a pre-technological age and his fears for a future dominated by “material interests”.
Ms Jasanoff says she set out to explore Conrad’s world “with the compass of a historian, the chart of a biographer, and the navigational sextant of a fiction reader”, and these have served her well. Anthony Powell, a novelist, once described Conrad as “an enigmatic figure. The more we read about him, the less we seem to know him.” This biography may not fully reveal the mystery behind the man, but it is a powerful encouragement to read his books.
This article appeared in the Books and arts section of the print edition under the headline "Restless soul"
Restless soulJoseph Conrad, the first novelist of globalisation
Raised speaking Polish and French, Joseph Conrad didn’t learn English until he was 21. But he became one of the finest of English writers
Print edition | Books and arts
Nov 2nd 2017
https://www.economist.com/node/21730850/comments
The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World. By Maya Jasanoff. Penguin Press; 400 pages; $30. William Collins; £25.
JOSEPH CONRAD was a phenomenon. Born to Polish parents in 1857 in a part of the Russian empire that is now Ukraine, he was christened Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. French was his second language, and he did not come to England (or speak a word of English) until he was 21. Yet such was his eventual mastery of the language that he has come to be regarded as one of the greatest writers in English.
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Latest updates
In 1948 F.R. Leavis, a well-known literary critic at Cambridge University, listed him in “The Great Tradition” as being up there with Jane Austen, George Eliot and Henry James. Eight years later Walter Allen, another critic, wrote that “Nostromo” was arguably “the greatest novel in English of this century”. “Heart of Darkness” gained a new audience through “Apocalypse Now”, Francis Ford Coppola’s epic war film of 1979.
Yet readers today are often deterred by Conrad’s convoluted, prolix style. This is a pity. Many of his novels and short stories richly reward perseverance. As Maya Jasanoff, professor of British and imperial history at Harvard University, argues in a new book that blends history and literary criticism, Conrad wrote “at the turn of the 20th century” of many of the global forces and perils that afflict the world today.
The novelist was orphaned at 11, his parents having succumbed to illness after being exiled for revolutionary activity to “the gates of Siberia”. At 16 he ran away to sea. For nearly 20 years he worked as an ordinary seaman from Marseille where, suffering from debt and despair, he appears to have attempted suicide. Later he became a fully qualified British master mariner, and travelled the world, particularly the archipelagoes and peninsulas of South-East Asia, where many of his tales are set. Conrad, Ms Jasanoff writes, “belonged to the last generation of seafarers who worked primarily on sailing ships”, which he called “the aristocracy”. In his writings he “transformed the British sailing ship into a gold standard for moral conduct”.
Sailing to Australia as first mate on the Torrens, he befriended John Galsworthy, a young lawyer who went on to write “The Forsyte Saga”, which eventually won him a Nobel prize. Then, in 1894, with no command in view, Conrad abandoned the sea and published his first novel, “Almayer’s Folly”. The journey from native-born Pole to sailor to writer was complete. Two years later, after a short, awkward courtship, he married the seemingly unsuitable Jessie George, settled contentedly in Kent, fathered two sons and dedicated the rest of his life to writing.
In “The Dawn Watch” Ms Jasanoff describes her own journeys in search of Conrad—four weeks on a French cargo ship across the Indian Ocean and a complicated trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. She skilfully integrates details of Conrad’s life and accounts of his four greatest works, linking the challenges and forces that lie behind and within the novels to those of the 21st century.
If not as cosmopolitan as today, London in the 1890s contained 50,000 continental Europeans—“more than all the population of Krakow”. (Conrad might be curious to know that Poles are now the largest foreign-born group in Britain.) Russian revolutionaries and militant Irish nationalists inspired “The Secret Agent”, set in a grimy, Dickensian London, an ironic treatment of plotting and terrorism and a bomb that goes off at the wrong moment, killing an innocent simpleton. Then, as now, the threats of anarchism and terrorism fuelled anti-immigrant feeling. As Ms Jasanoff writes: “When you think a foreigner might take your job, you protest. When you think a foreigner might kill you, you panic.”
If “The Secret Agent” is told in an easily readable manner, “Lord Jim”, which had come out seven years earlier, is altogether more exotic and demanding. Captain Marlow, Conrad’s recurrent narrator, describes how in a moment of confusion a “powerfully built” young Englishman abandons a ship loaded with pilgrims that appears to be sinking. Conscience-stricken and haunted, Jim repeatedly tries to make a new start, but just when he appears to be prospering he is destroyed. This meandering narrative, Ms Jasanoff writes, “spoke in a metaphor [that] imperialists could appreciate”, in particular about the moral uprightness of “the right sort” of Englishman. It was recognised as having great originality and inspired many younger writers, though not everyone was convinced. For E.M. Forster, “the secret casket of his genius contained a vapour rather than a jewel.” But Ms Jasanoff states that “for Conrad, the vapour was the jewel.”
“Heart of Darkness”, which came out in 1902, two years after “Lord Jim”, arose from Conrad’s brief and sickening experience of Belgian exploitation of the then Belgian Congo. He was appalled by the treatment of the Africans and the ivory trade, as exemplified in the novel by Kurtz, the agent who came promising civilisation but turned to vile savagery and eventually expired, uttering the words, “The horror! The horror!”
Conrad expressed similar concerns in the more substantial “Nostromo” of 1904. For the first time he wrote about an imaginary place, the South American republic of Costaguana, but it was “a novel about every place he’d been”. It projected all his political cynicism, his nostalgia for a pre-technological age and his fears for a future dominated by “material interests”.
Ms Jasanoff says she set out to explore Conrad’s world “with the compass of a historian, the chart of a biographer, and the navigational sextant of a fiction reader”, and these have served her well. Anthony Powell, a novelist, once described Conrad as “an enigmatic figure. The more we read about him, the less we seem to know him.” This biography may not fully reveal the mystery behind the man, but it is a powerful encouragement to read his books.
This article appeared in the Books and arts section of the print edition under the headline "Restless soul"
https://www.economist.com/news/book...nt-learn-english-until-he-was-21?fsrc=rss|bar
Raised speaking Polish and French, Joseph Conrad didn’t learn English until he was 21. But he became one of the finest of English writers
Print edition | Books and arts
Nov 2nd 2017
https://www.economist.com/node/21730850/comments
The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World. By Maya Jasanoff. Penguin Press; 400 pages; $30. William Collins; £25.
JOSEPH CONRAD was a phenomenon. Born to Polish parents in 1857 in a part of the Russian empire that is now Ukraine, he was christened Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. French was his second language, and he did not come to England (or speak a word of English) until he was 21. Yet such was his eventual mastery of the language that he has come to be regarded as one of the greatest writers in English.
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In 1948 F.R. Leavis, a well-known literary critic at Cambridge University, listed him in “The Great Tradition” as being up there with Jane Austen, George Eliot and Henry James. Eight years later Walter Allen, another critic, wrote that “Nostromo” was arguably “the greatest novel in English of this century”. “Heart of Darkness” gained a new audience through “Apocalypse Now”, Francis Ford Coppola’s epic war film of 1979.
Yet readers today are often deterred by Conrad’s convoluted, prolix style. This is a pity. Many of his novels and short stories richly reward perseverance. As Maya Jasanoff, professor of British and imperial history at Harvard University, argues in a new book that blends history and literary criticism, Conrad wrote “at the turn of the 20th century” of many of the global forces and perils that afflict the world today.
The novelist was orphaned at 11, his parents having succumbed to illness after being exiled for revolutionary activity to “the gates of Siberia”. At 16 he ran away to sea. For nearly 20 years he worked as an ordinary seaman from Marseille where, suffering from debt and despair, he appears to have attempted suicide. Later he became a fully qualified British master mariner, and travelled the world, particularly the archipelagoes and peninsulas of South-East Asia, where many of his tales are set. Conrad, Ms Jasanoff writes, “belonged to the last generation of seafarers who worked primarily on sailing ships”, which he called “the aristocracy”. In his writings he “transformed the British sailing ship into a gold standard for moral conduct”.
Sailing to Australia as first mate on the Torrens, he befriended John Galsworthy, a young lawyer who went on to write “The Forsyte Saga”, which eventually won him a Nobel prize. Then, in 1894, with no command in view, Conrad abandoned the sea and published his first novel, “Almayer’s Folly”. The journey from native-born Pole to sailor to writer was complete. Two years later, after a short, awkward courtship, he married the seemingly unsuitable Jessie George, settled contentedly in Kent, fathered two sons and dedicated the rest of his life to writing.
In “The Dawn Watch” Ms Jasanoff describes her own journeys in search of Conrad—four weeks on a French cargo ship across the Indian Ocean and a complicated trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. She skilfully integrates details of Conrad’s life and accounts of his four greatest works, linking the challenges and forces that lie behind and within the novels to those of the 21st century.
If not as cosmopolitan as today, London in the 1890s contained 50,000 continental Europeans—“more than all the population of Krakow”. (Conrad might be curious to know that Poles are now the largest foreign-born group in Britain.) Russian revolutionaries and militant Irish nationalists inspired “The Secret Agent”, set in a grimy, Dickensian London, an ironic treatment of plotting and terrorism and a bomb that goes off at the wrong moment, killing an innocent simpleton. Then, as now, the threats of anarchism and terrorism fuelled anti-immigrant feeling. As Ms Jasanoff writes: “When you think a foreigner might take your job, you protest. When you think a foreigner might kill you, you panic.”
If “The Secret Agent” is told in an easily readable manner, “Lord Jim”, which had come out seven years earlier, is altogether more exotic and demanding. Captain Marlow, Conrad’s recurrent narrator, describes how in a moment of confusion a “powerfully built” young Englishman abandons a ship loaded with pilgrims that appears to be sinking. Conscience-stricken and haunted, Jim repeatedly tries to make a new start, but just when he appears to be prospering he is destroyed. This meandering narrative, Ms Jasanoff writes, “spoke in a metaphor [that] imperialists could appreciate”, in particular about the moral uprightness of “the right sort” of Englishman. It was recognised as having great originality and inspired many younger writers, though not everyone was convinced. For E.M. Forster, “the secret casket of his genius contained a vapour rather than a jewel.” But Ms Jasanoff states that “for Conrad, the vapour was the jewel.”
“Heart of Darkness”, which came out in 1902, two years after “Lord Jim”, arose from Conrad’s brief and sickening experience of Belgian exploitation of the then Belgian Congo. He was appalled by the treatment of the Africans and the ivory trade, as exemplified in the novel by Kurtz, the agent who came promising civilisation but turned to vile savagery and eventually expired, uttering the words, “The horror! The horror!”
Conrad expressed similar concerns in the more substantial “Nostromo” of 1904. For the first time he wrote about an imaginary place, the South American republic of Costaguana, but it was “a novel about every place he’d been”. It projected all his political cynicism, his nostalgia for a pre-technological age and his fears for a future dominated by “material interests”.
Ms Jasanoff says she set out to explore Conrad’s world “with the compass of a historian, the chart of a biographer, and the navigational sextant of a fiction reader”, and these have served her well. Anthony Powell, a novelist, once described Conrad as “an enigmatic figure. The more we read about him, the less we seem to know him.” This biography may not fully reveal the mystery behind the man, but it is a powerful encouragement to read his books.
This article appeared in the Books and arts section of the print edition under the headline "Restless soul"
Restless soulJoseph Conrad, the first novelist of globalisation
Raised speaking Polish and French, Joseph Conrad didn’t learn English until he was 21. But he became one of the finest of English writers
Print edition | Books and arts
Nov 2nd 2017
https://www.economist.com/node/21730850/comments
The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World. By Maya Jasanoff. Penguin Press; 400 pages; $30. William Collins; £25.
JOSEPH CONRAD was a phenomenon. Born to Polish parents in 1857 in a part of the Russian empire that is now Ukraine, he was christened Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. French was his second language, and he did not come to England (or speak a word of English) until he was 21. Yet such was his eventual mastery of the language that he has come to be regarded as one of the greatest writers in English.
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In 1948 F.R. Leavis, a well-known literary critic at Cambridge University, listed him in “The Great Tradition” as being up there with Jane Austen, George Eliot and Henry James. Eight years later Walter Allen, another critic, wrote that “Nostromo” was arguably “the greatest novel in English of this century”. “Heart of Darkness” gained a new audience through “Apocalypse Now”, Francis Ford Coppola’s epic war film of 1979.
Yet readers today are often deterred by Conrad’s convoluted, prolix style. This is a pity. Many of his novels and short stories richly reward perseverance. As Maya Jasanoff, professor of British and imperial history at Harvard University, argues in a new book that blends history and literary criticism, Conrad wrote “at the turn of the 20th century” of many of the global forces and perils that afflict the world today.
The novelist was orphaned at 11, his parents having succumbed to illness after being exiled for revolutionary activity to “the gates of Siberia”. At 16 he ran away to sea. For nearly 20 years he worked as an ordinary seaman from Marseille where, suffering from debt and despair, he appears to have attempted suicide. Later he became a fully qualified British master mariner, and travelled the world, particularly the archipelagoes and peninsulas of South-East Asia, where many of his tales are set. Conrad, Ms Jasanoff writes, “belonged to the last generation of seafarers who worked primarily on sailing ships”, which he called “the aristocracy”. In his writings he “transformed the British sailing ship into a gold standard for moral conduct”.
Sailing to Australia as first mate on the Torrens, he befriended John Galsworthy, a young lawyer who went on to write “The Forsyte Saga”, which eventually won him a Nobel prize. Then, in 1894, with no command in view, Conrad abandoned the sea and published his first novel, “Almayer’s Folly”. The journey from native-born Pole to sailor to writer was complete. Two years later, after a short, awkward courtship, he married the seemingly unsuitable Jessie George, settled contentedly in Kent, fathered two sons and dedicated the rest of his life to writing.
In “The Dawn Watch” Ms Jasanoff describes her own journeys in search of Conrad—four weeks on a French cargo ship across the Indian Ocean and a complicated trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. She skilfully integrates details of Conrad’s life and accounts of his four greatest works, linking the challenges and forces that lie behind and within the novels to those of the 21st century.
If not as cosmopolitan as today, London in the 1890s contained 50,000 continental Europeans—“more than all the population of Krakow”. (Conrad might be curious to know that Poles are now the largest foreign-born group in Britain.) Russian revolutionaries and militant Irish nationalists inspired “The Secret Agent”, set in a grimy, Dickensian London, an ironic treatment of plotting and terrorism and a bomb that goes off at the wrong moment, killing an innocent simpleton. Then, as now, the threats of anarchism and terrorism fuelled anti-immigrant feeling. As Ms Jasanoff writes: “When you think a foreigner might take your job, you protest. When you think a foreigner might kill you, you panic.”
If “The Secret Agent” is told in an easily readable manner, “Lord Jim”, which had come out seven years earlier, is altogether more exotic and demanding. Captain Marlow, Conrad’s recurrent narrator, describes how in a moment of confusion a “powerfully built” young Englishman abandons a ship loaded with pilgrims that appears to be sinking. Conscience-stricken and haunted, Jim repeatedly tries to make a new start, but just when he appears to be prospering he is destroyed. This meandering narrative, Ms Jasanoff writes, “spoke in a metaphor [that] imperialists could appreciate”, in particular about the moral uprightness of “the right sort” of Englishman. It was recognised as having great originality and inspired many younger writers, though not everyone was convinced. For E.M. Forster, “the secret casket of his genius contained a vapour rather than a jewel.” But Ms Jasanoff states that “for Conrad, the vapour was the jewel.”
“Heart of Darkness”, which came out in 1902, two years after “Lord Jim”, arose from Conrad’s brief and sickening experience of Belgian exploitation of the then Belgian Congo. He was appalled by the treatment of the Africans and the ivory trade, as exemplified in the novel by Kurtz, the agent who came promising civilisation but turned to vile savagery and eventually expired, uttering the words, “The horror! The horror!”
Conrad expressed similar concerns in the more substantial “Nostromo” of 1904. For the first time he wrote about an imaginary place, the South American republic of Costaguana, but it was “a novel about every place he’d been”. It projected all his political cynicism, his nostalgia for a pre-technological age and his fears for a future dominated by “material interests”.
Ms Jasanoff says she set out to explore Conrad’s world “with the compass of a historian, the chart of a biographer, and the navigational sextant of a fiction reader”, and these have served her well. Anthony Powell, a novelist, once described Conrad as “an enigmatic figure. The more we read about him, the less we seem to know him.” This biography may not fully reveal the mystery behind the man, but it is a powerful encouragement to read his books.
This article appeared in the Books and arts section of the print edition under the headline "Restless soul"
https://www.economist.com/news/book...nt-learn-english-until-he-was-21?fsrc=rss|bar
SobieskiSavedEurope
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13.12.2017 change 13.12.2017
Scientists from Łódź have developed a method of thermal destruction of metastatic cancer cells with nanoparticles. The beauty of this method lies in the fact that only degenerated cells are destroyed - said co-author of the solution Prof. Zbigniew Kołaciński from the Institute of Mechatronics and Information Systems at Lodz University of Technology.
When using this method, the nanotubes that flow in the bloodstream find a tumour containing degenerated cells and attach to them. Irradiation of the tissue with an electromagnetic wave causes the heating of cancer cells above the temperature of their apoptosis, causing necrosis, or cell death - told PAP co-author of the solution Prof. Zbigniew Kołaciński from the Institute of Mechatronics and Information Systems at Lodz University of Technology.
The development of the method of destroying metastatic colon cancer cells with the use of nanoparticles is the result of a project sponsored by the National Centre for Research and Development, carried out at Lodz University of Technology with the participation of the Medical University of Lodz and the company AMEPOX.
Professor Kołaciński emhasised that scientists specialising in nanotechnology address the imperfections of current methods of cancer treatment - surgical treatment, in the case of which patients report to the doctor too late, which is why it is often only palliative and analgesic treatment, as well as chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which is unfortunately also destroy healthy cells.
"Scientists who deal with nanotechnology want to introduce nanoparticles as a method to eliminate cancer cells. These nanoparticles must be containers that carry drugs or other elements that can destroy cancer cells" - explained Prof. Kołaciński.
Researchers at Lodz University of Technology have developed a method for obtaining such nanocontainers by means of carbon nanotubes synthesis with various methods: arc, microwave plasma and chemical vapour deposition. The nanotubes contain a ferromagnetic such as iron, which can then be heated with an electromagnetic wave.
"If we introduce such a container into the body and attach it to cancer cells, it will act as a micro-heating source that will destroy these cells. It is a total destruction, because if the temperature of the cancer cell exceeds 42 degrees C, its necrosis occurs" - emphasised Prof. Kołaciński.
Dead cancer cells are excreted from the body, and healthy cells remain alive. "The beauty of this method is that we only destroy degenerated cells" - said the scientist.
The researchers from Łódź have developed a method of addressing carbon nanotubes as containers to cancer cells by means of specific ligands attached to folic acid that have the ability to locate cancer cells. Such containers can be injected into the body, administered through the skin or in the form of a tablet. Researchers also developed a device for hyperthermia, or cell heating with an electromagnetic wave.
Nanocontainers run in the bloodstream and find diseased cells. The thermoablation process is initiated, i.e. heating with an electromagnetic field. "Affected cells are irradiated with a high-frequency electromagnetic wave that heats iron in the process of hyperthermia that destroys cancer cells" - the researcher added.
For this purpose, the researchers use radio frequency generators in the range from a few hundred kHz to several dozen mHz. "We have developed a device for hyperthermia, or cell heating with an electromagnetic wave, which together with the solution that addresses containers to cancer cells form a system that only eliminates degenerated cells" - emphasised Prof. Kołaciński.
The method of researchers from Lodz University of Technology has been tested on colon cancer cells. Animal tests and clinical tests are also required. In the final phase of the clinical implementation of the project scientists plan to place a person in a device emitting controlled doses of radio frequency electromagnetic field.
Professor Kołaciński hopes that in 10 years this method will be effectively used in specific types of cancer. "Certainly not for all types, but for certain types of cancer it will be verified and approved for use" - said the scientist. (PAP)
szu/ ksk/ zan/ kap/
Cancer cells destroyed with nanoparticles - a project of scientists from Łódź
- ©
Scientists from Łódź have developed a method of thermal destruction of metastatic cancer cells with nanoparticles. The beauty of this method lies in the fact that only degenerated cells are destroyed - said co-author of the solution Prof. Zbigniew Kołaciński from the Institute of Mechatronics and Information Systems at Lodz University of Technology.
When using this method, the nanotubes that flow in the bloodstream find a tumour containing degenerated cells and attach to them. Irradiation of the tissue with an electromagnetic wave causes the heating of cancer cells above the temperature of their apoptosis, causing necrosis, or cell death - told PAP co-author of the solution Prof. Zbigniew Kołaciński from the Institute of Mechatronics and Information Systems at Lodz University of Technology.
The development of the method of destroying metastatic colon cancer cells with the use of nanoparticles is the result of a project sponsored by the National Centre for Research and Development, carried out at Lodz University of Technology with the participation of the Medical University of Lodz and the company AMEPOX.
Professor Kołaciński emhasised that scientists specialising in nanotechnology address the imperfections of current methods of cancer treatment - surgical treatment, in the case of which patients report to the doctor too late, which is why it is often only palliative and analgesic treatment, as well as chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which is unfortunately also destroy healthy cells.
"Scientists who deal with nanotechnology want to introduce nanoparticles as a method to eliminate cancer cells. These nanoparticles must be containers that carry drugs or other elements that can destroy cancer cells" - explained Prof. Kołaciński.
Researchers at Lodz University of Technology have developed a method for obtaining such nanocontainers by means of carbon nanotubes synthesis with various methods: arc, microwave plasma and chemical vapour deposition. The nanotubes contain a ferromagnetic such as iron, which can then be heated with an electromagnetic wave.
"If we introduce such a container into the body and attach it to cancer cells, it will act as a micro-heating source that will destroy these cells. It is a total destruction, because if the temperature of the cancer cell exceeds 42 degrees C, its necrosis occurs" - emphasised Prof. Kołaciński.
Dead cancer cells are excreted from the body, and healthy cells remain alive. "The beauty of this method is that we only destroy degenerated cells" - said the scientist.
The researchers from Łódź have developed a method of addressing carbon nanotubes as containers to cancer cells by means of specific ligands attached to folic acid that have the ability to locate cancer cells. Such containers can be injected into the body, administered through the skin or in the form of a tablet. Researchers also developed a device for hyperthermia, or cell heating with an electromagnetic wave.
Nanocontainers run in the bloodstream and find diseased cells. The thermoablation process is initiated, i.e. heating with an electromagnetic field. "Affected cells are irradiated with a high-frequency electromagnetic wave that heats iron in the process of hyperthermia that destroys cancer cells" - the researcher added.
For this purpose, the researchers use radio frequency generators in the range from a few hundred kHz to several dozen mHz. "We have developed a device for hyperthermia, or cell heating with an electromagnetic wave, which together with the solution that addresses containers to cancer cells form a system that only eliminates degenerated cells" - emphasised Prof. Kołaciński.
The method of researchers from Lodz University of Technology has been tested on colon cancer cells. Animal tests and clinical tests are also required. In the final phase of the clinical implementation of the project scientists plan to place a person in a device emitting controlled doses of radio frequency electromagnetic field.
Professor Kołaciński hopes that in 10 years this method will be effectively used in specific types of cancer. "Certainly not for all types, but for certain types of cancer it will be verified and approved for use" - said the scientist. (PAP)
szu/ ksk/ zan/ kap/
Cancer cells destroyed with nanoparticles - a project of scientists from Łódź
SobieskiSavedEurope
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- Thread starter
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The Holy Grail of physics found? A new theory of what happened after the Big Bang
Photo: Fotolia
The Great Unification Theory explains what followed the Big Bang. To confirm one of its versions, one must observe proton decay (not yet discovered). Two scholars, including a Polish scientist, proposed a version of the theory without proton decay.
Everything that moves particles in our Universe and keeps them in check comes down to four interactions. These are: gravitational, electromagnetic, strong and weak interactions. It is believed that once - just after the Big Bang - these interactions were one. As the Universe cooled down, they began to separate from each other.
And so now: electromagnetic interaction (between particles with an electric charge) is carried by photons. Strong interaction - which occurs, for example, between quarks - is carried by gluons. And weak interaction - for example, radioactivity exists because of it - is carried by W+ and W- bosons and the Z boson. Gravitational interaction - as it is supposed - could be carried by gravitons (such particles have not been observed yet).
BINDING THEORIES
If we could find a common denominator of all these four interactions and combine their action into a coherent theory, we would get Theory of Everything. That would be something! The problem is gravity, which does not fits in with the other three interactions.
For now, physicists have set a slightly easier task: to describe what happened right after the Big Bang, when three of the four interactions (electromagnetic, strong and weak) were one. The theory that would show the common origin of these forces is called the Great Unification Theory (GUT). (A step lower is the Standard Model, which combines electromagnetic and weak interactions).
STUBBORN PROTONS
Researchers are considering different versions of the Great Unification Theory, but they all have a serious problem - they predict the existence of a specific phenomenon: proton decay.
Proton - component of the atomic nucleus - consists of three quarks and the system may be immutable. Proton decay could be observed experimentally, for example in a pool full of ultrapure water. So scientists around the world, in well-planned experiments, have been staring at such pools for years and looking for signals. But they have not yet recorded traces of decay of even a single proton. So either protons do not decay at all, or decay very rarely - less than once in 10,000 quintile years (a quintile is one followed by 30 zeros).
Researchers were looking for a version of the Great Unification Theory that would predict that the proton might never decay. And that\'s what two scholars - Dr. Bartosz Fornal and Prof. Benjamin Grinstein - have managed to achieve. Research of the scientists from the University of California, San Diego, appeared on Wednesday in the prestigious "Physical Review Letters".
SYMMETRY IS THE AESTHETICS OF FOOLS: BROKEN 5, 10-, 40- AND 50-GONS
In this theory, called four-dimensional Great Unification Theory based on the SU(5) group - particles are present in sets - multiplets. "To describe all the particles of the Standard Model, we need two multiplets: 5 and 10. You can imagine them as a regular pentagon and decagon, their edges are various quarks and leptons. The symmetry of this system can be understood as invariance due to the rotation of such a figure a certain angle "- said Dr. Fornal.
He explained that if the symmetry is broken - imagine as if as the Universe is cooling down, the pentagon and decagon hit the ground and break into pieces - the multiplets break into particles of the Standard Model. "We added a tetracontagon and a pentacontagon to this model. We selected the values of parameters so that when the symmetry is broken, the elements of pentagons and decagons connect to tetracontagons and a pentacontagons and all particles of the Standard Model receive the right masses And at the same time we avoid interactions that cause proton decay" - said Dr. Fornal.
SEARCH FOR THE COLOUR SEXTET
That\'s the theory, but how to check if it is real? For this, one would have to experimentally observe certain characteristic particles predicted by the Polish and American researchers. "One of them is the colour sextet. Its properties are known. The Large Hadron Collider has been looking for these particles for a few years" - said Dr. Fornal. He added that the existence of the colour sextet had already been assumed in some earlier theories. However, both the colour sextet and other particles, the existence of which is proposed in the new version of GUT, are particles with very large masses and may prove to be experimentally inaccessible for the time being. However, it would be possible to register them in accelerators with very high collision energies.
Collision energy in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is less than 14 teraelectronvolts (thousands of billions of electron volts), and according to Dr. Fornal an accelerator with several times higher collision energy (about 100 teraelectronovolts) would be needed to confirm the new theory. However, to design, finance and build such a powerful accelerator, humanity must make a gigantic effort, and that takes time.
Author: Ludwika Tomala
PAP - Science in Poland
lt/ ekr/ kap/
tr. RL
MORE
The Holy Grail of physics found? A new theory of what happened after the Big Bang
The Great Unification Theory explains what followed the Big Bang. To confirm one of its versions, one must observe proton decay (not yet discovered). Two scholars, including a Polish scientist, proposed a version of the theory without proton decay.
Everything that moves particles in our Universe and keeps them in check comes down to four interactions. These are: gravitational, electromagnetic, strong and weak interactions. It is believed that once - just after the Big Bang - these interactions were one. As the Universe cooled down, they began to separate from each other.
And so now: electromagnetic interaction (between particles with an electric charge) is carried by photons. Strong interaction - which occurs, for example, between quarks - is carried by gluons. And weak interaction - for example, radioactivity exists because of it - is carried by W+ and W- bosons and the Z boson. Gravitational interaction - as it is supposed - could be carried by gravitons (such particles have not been observed yet).
BINDING THEORIES
If we could find a common denominator of all these four interactions and combine their action into a coherent theory, we would get Theory of Everything. That would be something! The problem is gravity, which does not fits in with the other three interactions.
For now, physicists have set a slightly easier task: to describe what happened right after the Big Bang, when three of the four interactions (electromagnetic, strong and weak) were one. The theory that would show the common origin of these forces is called the Great Unification Theory (GUT). (A step lower is the Standard Model, which combines electromagnetic and weak interactions).
STUBBORN PROTONS
Researchers are considering different versions of the Great Unification Theory, but they all have a serious problem - they predict the existence of a specific phenomenon: proton decay.
Proton - component of the atomic nucleus - consists of three quarks and the system may be immutable. Proton decay could be observed experimentally, for example in a pool full of ultrapure water. So scientists around the world, in well-planned experiments, have been staring at such pools for years and looking for signals. But they have not yet recorded traces of decay of even a single proton. So either protons do not decay at all, or decay very rarely - less than once in 10,000 quintile years (a quintile is one followed by 30 zeros).
Researchers were looking for a version of the Great Unification Theory that would predict that the proton might never decay. And that\'s what two scholars - Dr. Bartosz Fornal and Prof. Benjamin Grinstein - have managed to achieve. Research of the scientists from the University of California, San Diego, appeared on Wednesday in the prestigious "Physical Review Letters".
SYMMETRY IS THE AESTHETICS OF FOOLS: BROKEN 5, 10-, 40- AND 50-GONS
In this theory, called four-dimensional Great Unification Theory based on the SU(5) group - particles are present in sets - multiplets. "To describe all the particles of the Standard Model, we need two multiplets: 5 and 10. You can imagine them as a regular pentagon and decagon, their edges are various quarks and leptons. The symmetry of this system can be understood as invariance due to the rotation of such a figure a certain angle "- said Dr. Fornal.
He explained that if the symmetry is broken - imagine as if as the Universe is cooling down, the pentagon and decagon hit the ground and break into pieces - the multiplets break into particles of the Standard Model. "We added a tetracontagon and a pentacontagon to this model. We selected the values of parameters so that when the symmetry is broken, the elements of pentagons and decagons connect to tetracontagons and a pentacontagons and all particles of the Standard Model receive the right masses And at the same time we avoid interactions that cause proton decay" - said Dr. Fornal.
SEARCH FOR THE COLOUR SEXTET
That\'s the theory, but how to check if it is real? For this, one would have to experimentally observe certain characteristic particles predicted by the Polish and American researchers. "One of them is the colour sextet. Its properties are known. The Large Hadron Collider has been looking for these particles for a few years" - said Dr. Fornal. He added that the existence of the colour sextet had already been assumed in some earlier theories. However, both the colour sextet and other particles, the existence of which is proposed in the new version of GUT, are particles with very large masses and may prove to be experimentally inaccessible for the time being. However, it would be possible to register them in accelerators with very high collision energies.
Collision energy in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is less than 14 teraelectronvolts (thousands of billions of electron volts), and according to Dr. Fornal an accelerator with several times higher collision energy (about 100 teraelectronovolts) would be needed to confirm the new theory. However, to design, finance and build such a powerful accelerator, humanity must make a gigantic effort, and that takes time.
Author: Ludwika Tomala
PAP - Science in Poland
lt/ ekr/ kap/
tr. RL
MORE
The Holy Grail of physics found? A new theory of what happened after the Big Bang
SobieskiSavedEurope
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SobieskiSavedEurope
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TroglocratsRdumb
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The Left Wing Wackos is outraged that the Poles are rejecting the Islamic invasion
SobieskiSavedEurope
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20.12.2017 change 20.12.2017
Photo: press materials
Małgorzata Lewińska from the University of Warsaw won the Gold Medal of Chemistry competition on Tuesday. In the awarded BA thesis she focused on the so-called molecular capsules, compounds in which other substances can be stored.
The aim of the Gold Medal of Chemistry competition, organized this year for the seventh time by the Institute of Physical Chemistry PAS in Warsaw and the company DuPont, is to select the authors of the best BA or engineering theses in chemistry and related to chemistry. This year, a total of 46 projects from 18 universities were submitted, and the top 15 were qualified for the final session, during which the participants presented the results of their research in front of the competition jury.
The author of the winning project is Małgorzata Lewińska from the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Warsaw. On Tuesday she received a symbolic gold medal and a financial prize of PLN 10,000. In her BA thesis, the winner deals with modifications of the so-called molecular capsules.
"Molecular capsules are usually compounds with a rigid structure, which have an hollow in the centre, separated from the external environment - explained Małgorzata Lewińska in an interview with PAP. - Things from outside cannot enter this hollow. But we can introduce various things into it using a different method, for example during a synthesis reaction".
One of the problems with molecular capsules is that they could only be obtained in one type of solvent: they disintegrated the moment they were introduced into the so-called polar solvent (such as water). "In my work, however, I managed to conduct the synthesis of a molecular capsule in a polar solvent" - said Lewińska. As she added, although at this stage it was impossible to store anything yet in the capsules she had created, she planned to continue her research.
Molecular capsules are currently used to store substances such as highly explosive compounds, for example white phosphorus. The laureate does not rule out the possibility that in the future she might be able to find a way to store drugs in molecular capsules.
Silver Medal of Chemistry and PLN 5,000 prize went to Nina Tarnowicz from the Faculty of Chemistry of Wrocław University of Technology her work on a new liquid crystal matrix that could potentially be used for data storage. The silver medallist was also the winner of the audience award, awarded by the competition finalists for the best presentation during the final session.
Third prize - Bronze Medal of Chemistry - was awarded to two graduates of the Faculty of Chemistry of Warsaw University of Technology: Paulina Marek for studying structures of selected forms of vitamin B6 and Michał Wrzecionek for his work on the synthesis of nanopowders for use in photovoltaic cells. Each of them will receive a PLN 2.5 thousand prize.
In addition, special awards with cash prizes of PLN 1 thousand went to: Małgorzata Bołt from the Faculty of Chemistry, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Martyna Charyton from the Faculty of Chemistry, Warsaw University of Technology, Monika Topa from the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Cracow University of Technology, and Mateusz Witkowski from the Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń.
In addition to the main prizes, three special DuPont prizes worth PLN 2,000 were awarded. They went to: Monika Topa, Michał Wrzecionek and Grzegorz Matyszczak from the Faculty of Chemistry of Warsaw University of Technology.
The competition\'s finalists will also have the opportunity to complete a scientific internship with the possibility of carrying our their proposed research free of charge in the Institute of Physical Chemistry PAS laboratories in the form of short-term or long-term projects.
Gold Medal of Chemistry for the creator of miniature containers
- ©
Małgorzata Lewińska from the University of Warsaw won the Gold Medal of Chemistry competition on Tuesday. In the awarded BA thesis she focused on the so-called molecular capsules, compounds in which other substances can be stored.
The aim of the Gold Medal of Chemistry competition, organized this year for the seventh time by the Institute of Physical Chemistry PAS in Warsaw and the company DuPont, is to select the authors of the best BA or engineering theses in chemistry and related to chemistry. This year, a total of 46 projects from 18 universities were submitted, and the top 15 were qualified for the final session, during which the participants presented the results of their research in front of the competition jury.
The author of the winning project is Małgorzata Lewińska from the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Warsaw. On Tuesday she received a symbolic gold medal and a financial prize of PLN 10,000. In her BA thesis, the winner deals with modifications of the so-called molecular capsules.
"Molecular capsules are usually compounds with a rigid structure, which have an hollow in the centre, separated from the external environment - explained Małgorzata Lewińska in an interview with PAP. - Things from outside cannot enter this hollow. But we can introduce various things into it using a different method, for example during a synthesis reaction".
One of the problems with molecular capsules is that they could only be obtained in one type of solvent: they disintegrated the moment they were introduced into the so-called polar solvent (such as water). "In my work, however, I managed to conduct the synthesis of a molecular capsule in a polar solvent" - said Lewińska. As she added, although at this stage it was impossible to store anything yet in the capsules she had created, she planned to continue her research.
Molecular capsules are currently used to store substances such as highly explosive compounds, for example white phosphorus. The laureate does not rule out the possibility that in the future she might be able to find a way to store drugs in molecular capsules.
Silver Medal of Chemistry and PLN 5,000 prize went to Nina Tarnowicz from the Faculty of Chemistry of Wrocław University of Technology her work on a new liquid crystal matrix that could potentially be used for data storage. The silver medallist was also the winner of the audience award, awarded by the competition finalists for the best presentation during the final session.
Third prize - Bronze Medal of Chemistry - was awarded to two graduates of the Faculty of Chemistry of Warsaw University of Technology: Paulina Marek for studying structures of selected forms of vitamin B6 and Michał Wrzecionek for his work on the synthesis of nanopowders for use in photovoltaic cells. Each of them will receive a PLN 2.5 thousand prize.
In addition, special awards with cash prizes of PLN 1 thousand went to: Małgorzata Bołt from the Faculty of Chemistry, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Martyna Charyton from the Faculty of Chemistry, Warsaw University of Technology, Monika Topa from the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Cracow University of Technology, and Mateusz Witkowski from the Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń.
In addition to the main prizes, three special DuPont prizes worth PLN 2,000 were awarded. They went to: Monika Topa, Michał Wrzecionek and Grzegorz Matyszczak from the Faculty of Chemistry of Warsaw University of Technology.
The competition\'s finalists will also have the opportunity to complete a scientific internship with the possibility of carrying our their proposed research free of charge in the Institute of Physical Chemistry PAS laboratories in the form of short-term or long-term projects.
Gold Medal of Chemistry for the creator of miniature containers
SobieskiSavedEurope
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06.12.2017 change 06.12.2017
Photo: Fotolia
Polish specialists are the first in the world to develop cheap genomic sequencing-based tests that detect higher susceptibility to malignant tumours - researchers announced Monday at a press conference in Warsaw.
The new generation of genetic tests in oncology is a joint achievement of the specialists of the Centre of New Technologies of the University of Warsaw and the Department of Genomic Medicine of the Medical University of Warsaw. They were developed by a team led by Prof. Krystian Jażdżewski (from the Centre of New Technologies of the University of Warsaw) and Dr. Anna Wójcicka, head of Warsaw Genomics, a company that uses the tests in practice.
Initiator of the program BadamyGeny.pl Prof. Jażdżewski said that the test is 20 times cheaper than similar tests abroad. It costs PLN 399 and allows to test 70 genes that increase the risk of cancer, including such as breast, ovarian, prostate, colon, uterus, stomach, pancreas, kidney, skin , thyroid cancer and endocrine tumours.
Each of the 70 genes responsible for cancer can be damaged in several thousand places. "Our method allows to assess whether any of them has a defect increasing the risk of cancer. In total, over 100,000 potential damages are tested" - emphasised Prof. Jażdżewski.
Each detected change is confirmed by another method. According to specialists, this gives almost complete certainty that the genetic variant found in the patient is correct and there can be no mistake.
20 thousand people have already registered in the program BadamyGeny.pl and 6 thousand have been tested. Rector of the Medical University of Warsaw Prof. Mirosław Wielgoś told PAP that all students of the Medical University of Warsaw will be tested. Testing began with the beginning of the academic year.
There are probably over 1 million people in Poland with greater genetic predisposition to malignant tumours. "The tests we have conducted so far show that in 18% people the risk of cancer is increased in 5% people the risk is high" - said Anna Wójcicka.
The specialist explained that an increased risk of cancer means that a person should undergo a preventive exam such as mammography (breast cancer), cytology (colorectal cancer), or colonoscopy (colorectal cancer) earlier, for example 10 years earlier.
A separate group - said Wójcicka - are people with a high risk of cancer, in whom the disease may appear at an early age, even before the age of 50. "In these people, cancer also has a more aggressive course and is more difficult to treat, so it is crucial to detect it early" - she added.
According to data presented at the conference, in a person without genetic predisposition the risk of breast cancer does not exceed 13%, but in those who have inherited a genetic mutation it increases to 50 to 84%. In colorectal cancer, it is respectively 6% and 52-82%, and in the case of ovarian cancer 2% and 11-40 %.
"Primarily young and middle-aged people should have these tests, preferably before the age of 60" - emphasised Prof. Jażdżewski. If a genetic mutations that increases the risk of cancer is detected, a different plan of preventive examinations is presented to detect the disease as early as possible.
The expert emphasised that for this reason the examination does not end with genetic testing. "If a mutation is detected, medical advice is given on what should be done next" - declared Prof. Jażdżewski.
Blood sample needed for the test should be collected and delivered in person or by courier (within 48 hours of collection). Such samples can be stored for up to 7 days in a refrigerator at 4 °C. Those willing to have the test must first complete the registration form at www.warsawgenomics.pl
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the incidence of cancer will increase by 70% in 20 years. However, inherited genetic mutations are responsible for only a small proportion of cancer cases. In case of breast cancer, 80% cases are not connected with inherited genetic mutations. It can also be caused by changes in DNA that appear later in life, for example due to an unfavourable lifestyle or exposure to harmful substances. (PAP)
author: Zbigniew Wojtasiński
zbw/ agt/ kap/
tr. RL
Cheap Polish test detects 70 genes responsible for cancer
- ©
Polish specialists are the first in the world to develop cheap genomic sequencing-based tests that detect higher susceptibility to malignant tumours - researchers announced Monday at a press conference in Warsaw.
The new generation of genetic tests in oncology is a joint achievement of the specialists of the Centre of New Technologies of the University of Warsaw and the Department of Genomic Medicine of the Medical University of Warsaw. They were developed by a team led by Prof. Krystian Jażdżewski (from the Centre of New Technologies of the University of Warsaw) and Dr. Anna Wójcicka, head of Warsaw Genomics, a company that uses the tests in practice.
Initiator of the program BadamyGeny.pl Prof. Jażdżewski said that the test is 20 times cheaper than similar tests abroad. It costs PLN 399 and allows to test 70 genes that increase the risk of cancer, including such as breast, ovarian, prostate, colon, uterus, stomach, pancreas, kidney, skin , thyroid cancer and endocrine tumours.
Each of the 70 genes responsible for cancer can be damaged in several thousand places. "Our method allows to assess whether any of them has a defect increasing the risk of cancer. In total, over 100,000 potential damages are tested" - emphasised Prof. Jażdżewski.
Each detected change is confirmed by another method. According to specialists, this gives almost complete certainty that the genetic variant found in the patient is correct and there can be no mistake.
20 thousand people have already registered in the program BadamyGeny.pl and 6 thousand have been tested. Rector of the Medical University of Warsaw Prof. Mirosław Wielgoś told PAP that all students of the Medical University of Warsaw will be tested. Testing began with the beginning of the academic year.
There are probably over 1 million people in Poland with greater genetic predisposition to malignant tumours. "The tests we have conducted so far show that in 18% people the risk of cancer is increased in 5% people the risk is high" - said Anna Wójcicka.
The specialist explained that an increased risk of cancer means that a person should undergo a preventive exam such as mammography (breast cancer), cytology (colorectal cancer), or colonoscopy (colorectal cancer) earlier, for example 10 years earlier.
A separate group - said Wójcicka - are people with a high risk of cancer, in whom the disease may appear at an early age, even before the age of 50. "In these people, cancer also has a more aggressive course and is more difficult to treat, so it is crucial to detect it early" - she added.
According to data presented at the conference, in a person without genetic predisposition the risk of breast cancer does not exceed 13%, but in those who have inherited a genetic mutation it increases to 50 to 84%. In colorectal cancer, it is respectively 6% and 52-82%, and in the case of ovarian cancer 2% and 11-40 %.
"Primarily young and middle-aged people should have these tests, preferably before the age of 60" - emphasised Prof. Jażdżewski. If a genetic mutations that increases the risk of cancer is detected, a different plan of preventive examinations is presented to detect the disease as early as possible.
The expert emphasised that for this reason the examination does not end with genetic testing. "If a mutation is detected, medical advice is given on what should be done next" - declared Prof. Jażdżewski.
Blood sample needed for the test should be collected and delivered in person or by courier (within 48 hours of collection). Such samples can be stored for up to 7 days in a refrigerator at 4 °C. Those willing to have the test must first complete the registration form at www.warsawgenomics.pl
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the incidence of cancer will increase by 70% in 20 years. However, inherited genetic mutations are responsible for only a small proportion of cancer cases. In case of breast cancer, 80% cases are not connected with inherited genetic mutations. It can also be caused by changes in DNA that appear later in life, for example due to an unfavourable lifestyle or exposure to harmful substances. (PAP)
author: Zbigniew Wojtasiński
zbw/ agt/ kap/
tr. RL
Cheap Polish test detects 70 genes responsible for cancer
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Christmas in old Polish tradition
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Herring were bought at street markets: the better, Dutch ones by the rich, and the worse, called Scottish herring, by the poor. The nobility, and later landowners hunted for game for Christmas.
Apart from material preparations, Advent, the time of expectant waiting, also required proper spiritual preparations to celebrate the Nativity of Jesus. The rorate mass was celebrated every morning at dusk. It is a votive mass to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The name comes from the opening line of the introit: rorate cæli desuper ("Drop down ye heavens from above"). A characteristic feature of the rorate mass is the lightening of a special candle decorated with a white ribbon, symbolising the Mother of God. According to popular religiosity, advent started with the feast of Saint Martin. In old Poland, 11 November was the date of financial settlements and payment of taxes and levies, so it was in a way the end of an old year. On 25 November, on the feast of saint Catherine, merrymaking was still allowed, but all parties definitely stopped after the feast of Saint Andrew (on 30 November). It is reflected in a proverb: Saint Catherine lost the keys, Saint Andrew found them and locked the violin.
Coming back to the Christmas Eve - preparations started early in the morning. One had to be watchful from the very dusk, because if the first guest to enter the house was a man, then the coming year would be affluent. Also, it was a good sign, if the first person one saw on this day was a man rather than a woman. Women were even obliged to spend the morning at home so as not to expose their neighbours to ill fate. I will say no more of these traditional beliefs, as I just want to show them and do not propagate them. Another thing was that pregnant women were not allowed to do the washing or weave on Christmas Eve.
There was plenty of housework for everyone. The first thing that comes to our mind today is dressing the Christmas tree, however, the Christmas tree was not dressed in Poland for ages, not until the turn of the 18th century. The dining room was decorated using completely different objects. Zygmunt Gloger writes in his invaluable Encyklopedia Staropolska (Encyclopaedia of Old Poland):
In popular piety, it was believed that at the turn of a year, the spirits of the dead returned to their homes and sat down at the Christmas Eve supper table. In order to see them, one had to secretly go to the hall and look through the keyhole at an empty chair. Also, no proper man would sit at the table without first blowing on the seat to make a spirit move to another place. On the Christmas Eve, it was forbidden to work with flax, twist ropes or chop wood, so as not to hurt spirits that were in the house. Christmas wafer was also symbolically shared with the spirits of the dead by putting it on the spare plate standing on the table.
In order to ensure welfare for the house, there should be an even number of persons sitting at the table. If there were not enough people, in rich houses, domestics were invited to join. The worst option was if there were 13 feasters - it was a sign of inevitable ill fortune. It was a good idea to put an iron object under the table, such as a sickle, axe or even a plough, and put one's legs on it for a moment: to make one's legs tough like iron so that they would not be hurt by thorns.
Dishes always had to consist of all the products of the generous nature: from fields (flour dishes), orchard (dried fruit, nuts), garden (cabbage, peas, poppy seeds), forest (mushrooms) and of course water (fish). Finally, let me quote after reverend Eugeniusz Janota several rules of the Old Polish table manners. At the table, one had to: remain solemnly quiet; only the host could speak aloud, or only the elderly could talk and the rest should communicate what they needed by gestures. The reason was to avoid quarrels in the house in the coming year or not to be a prattler in the next year... Avoid eating greedily. Make sure not to drop one's spoon, as that was the omen of death within a year.
Only after such supper could one go to church for the midnight mass and start Christmas feasts accompanied by signing Christmas songs.
Source: Passage to Knowledge, Museum of King Jan III's Palace at Wilanow
20.12.2017
Christmas in old Polish tradition
SobieskiSavedEurope
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Why wasn't Christ born in Poland? Because they couldn't find three wisemen and a virgin.
Poland's age of loss of virginity is among the oldest in Europe....
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A Polish Reunion in Normandy, Part III
By Carlo D'Este
The Corridor of Death. Scenes like these were common in the final days of the Normandy campaign.
In August 1944 Major General Stanislaw Maczek’s Polish 1st Armored Division was assigned to the Canadian First Army in its drive to clear the Caen-Falaise plan, and as the Germans began frantically attempting to escape the trap of the Falaise gap, they joined with the Canadians to help close it.
Pleas click here to read Part I and Part II.
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Situated a few kilometers northeast of the town of Chambois, it became occupied on August 19 by a Polish task force consisting of two tank battalions, two infantry battalions, and an anti-tank unit – in all some 1,500 infantrymen and eighty tanks. [See You Command, November 2013 and You Command Solution, March 2014 issues]
Also on Mount Ormel that day was my friend, Zbigniew Mieczkowski, and members of the tank unit that had taken a wrong turn at the road junction near the farm with the white horse early that morning.
By that date what has been called the Argentan – Falaise Gap, but which in reality could now have been called the Trun-Chambois gap, had been reduced to six miles and was rapidly closing on the fleeing Germans of the 7th Army and the 5th Panzer Army.
Gen. Maczek had noted the importance of Mount Ormel and had ordered its capture as a means of cutting off the retreating Germans.
The Polish task force was in possession of a commanding strip of land along the northern part of Mount Ormel. Long and rather narrow, it ended in a bulbous head that dominated the valley of the Dives River, as well as one of the only highways from the pocket still open, the D-16 road from Chambois to Vimoutiers, which ran across Mount Ormel. The Poles quickly nicknamed it Maczuga, the Polish word for Mace, for its resemblance to the bludgeon-like, two-headed weapon of ancient times. The area they occupied encompassed approximately two square kilometers.
The Poles promptly attacked a German column massed on the ground in the valley of the Dives below – the last escape route to the east. As they fled, the Germans were relentlessly harassed from the air and on the ground. They came in a seemingly endless mass of what had once been a strong, cohesive force. Now, they were simply fleeing east anyway they could: on foot, riding on vehicles, using any means possible to escape the rapidly closing Allied trap between the once peaceful villages of Trun and Chambois, both of which now lay in ruins. As they did so, the Poles relentlessly fired upon them from the heights of Mount Ormel.
There were unrivaled scenes of death and carnage from the gauntlet of fire from the Mace and from Allied air and artillery bombardments. These attacks left vehicles burning and clouds of billowing black smoke. There were hundreds of dead Germans strewn everywhere in the valley, many horribly mangled. Cut down in droves, their corpses drifted in the Dives and choked country lanes in what would forever be known as “the Corridor of Death.”
In an effort to keep their escape route open, the Germans struck back with a succession of furious counterattacks. Some desperately clawed their way up the steep slopes of Mount Ormel with fixed bayonets in suicidal assaults into the teeth of the Polish fire. Others attacked from the area of the D-16 highway. Eventually the Poles were surrounded.
A Sherman tank and a German Panther tank are part of the carnage seen on Mount Ormel after the battle.
Violent battles for the Mace raged until August 21, as elements of the 1st SS Panzer Corps launched one counterattack after another to disrupt the Polish attacks on the valley of the Dives, and capture Mount Ormel. No description of hell could have exceeded what took place over that period on and below Hill 262.
The 2d SS Panzer Division, which had already escaped the pocket, was rushed back to attack the Poles from the rear. Many were captured and herded into makeshift POW compounds.
The Poles were unable to evacuate their wounded and the savagery of the fighting prevented the Canadians, who had occupied Chambois, from driving up the D-16 and relieving them.
By the night of August 20, the depleted Poles had been pressed back to the top of the Mace and were in desperate straits. Not only had they suffered heavy losses but they were nearly out of water, food, and ammunition. As they braced for yet another suicide attack on August 21 the commander of the 1st Armored Regiment, Lt. Col. Aleksander Stefanowicz, one of hundreds of Polish wounded, grimly addressed his men, saying:
Gentlemen, everything is lost. I do not believe the Canadians will manage to help us. We have only 110 men left, with 50 rounds per gun and 5 rounds per tank … Fight to the end! To surrender to the SS is senseless, you know it well. Gentlemen! Good luck – tonight we will die for Poland and civilization. We will fight to the last platoon, to the last tank, then to the last man.
Among the survivors of the battle for Mount Ormel was Zbigniew Mieczkowski
The following morning the Germans resumed their attacks from two directions and succeeded in penetrating the Polish positions. A suicidal attack was rebuffed by the remnants of an infantry battalion supported by Stefanowicz’s tanks that used tracer ammunition in their machine guns to set fire to the grass that killed some of the wounded attackers. It turned out to be the final German effort as gradually the attacks diminished, and then stopped.
As this was taking place, at noon a Polish reconnaissance regiment made contact with Mount Ormel’s defenders, only to have to withdraw after being mistakenly fired upon. About an hour later Canadian grenadiers that had fought for five hours along the D-16 highway from Chambois made contact with the Poles.
The astonished Canadians could only marvel at how the Poles had held so valiantly against elements of thirteen German divisions – six panzer, one parachute, and six infantry. Polish losses were 325 killed and an estimated 1,000 wounded. German losses were enormous.
The amazing stand by the Poles on Mount Ormel prevented an untold number of Germans from fleeing the pocket. The carnage was everywhere: dead Germans and Poles, and a scrap heap of burning and destroyed tanks and armored cars that were scattered across the Mace.
In a touching tribute, Canadian engineers erected a sign on the pinnacle of Mount Ormel, which read simply: “A Polish Battlefield.”
A Polish Reunion in Normandy, Part III
In the final installment next month, the story of the Polish reunion on the bloody Mace forty years later.
By Carlo D'Este
The Corridor of Death. Scenes like these were common in the final days of the Normandy campaign.
In August 1944 Major General Stanislaw Maczek’s Polish 1st Armored Division was assigned to the Canadian First Army in its drive to clear the Caen-Falaise plan, and as the Germans began frantically attempting to escape the trap of the Falaise gap, they joined with the Canadians to help close it.
Pleas click here to read Part I and Part II.
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Situated a few kilometers northeast of the town of Chambois, it became occupied on August 19 by a Polish task force consisting of two tank battalions, two infantry battalions, and an anti-tank unit – in all some 1,500 infantrymen and eighty tanks. [See You Command, November 2013 and You Command Solution, March 2014 issues]
Also on Mount Ormel that day was my friend, Zbigniew Mieczkowski, and members of the tank unit that had taken a wrong turn at the road junction near the farm with the white horse early that morning.
By that date what has been called the Argentan – Falaise Gap, but which in reality could now have been called the Trun-Chambois gap, had been reduced to six miles and was rapidly closing on the fleeing Germans of the 7th Army and the 5th Panzer Army.
Gen. Maczek had noted the importance of Mount Ormel and had ordered its capture as a means of cutting off the retreating Germans.
The Polish task force was in possession of a commanding strip of land along the northern part of Mount Ormel. Long and rather narrow, it ended in a bulbous head that dominated the valley of the Dives River, as well as one of the only highways from the pocket still open, the D-16 road from Chambois to Vimoutiers, which ran across Mount Ormel. The Poles quickly nicknamed it Maczuga, the Polish word for Mace, for its resemblance to the bludgeon-like, two-headed weapon of ancient times. The area they occupied encompassed approximately two square kilometers.
The Poles promptly attacked a German column massed on the ground in the valley of the Dives below – the last escape route to the east. As they fled, the Germans were relentlessly harassed from the air and on the ground. They came in a seemingly endless mass of what had once been a strong, cohesive force. Now, they were simply fleeing east anyway they could: on foot, riding on vehicles, using any means possible to escape the rapidly closing Allied trap between the once peaceful villages of Trun and Chambois, both of which now lay in ruins. As they did so, the Poles relentlessly fired upon them from the heights of Mount Ormel.
There were unrivaled scenes of death and carnage from the gauntlet of fire from the Mace and from Allied air and artillery bombardments. These attacks left vehicles burning and clouds of billowing black smoke. There were hundreds of dead Germans strewn everywhere in the valley, many horribly mangled. Cut down in droves, their corpses drifted in the Dives and choked country lanes in what would forever be known as “the Corridor of Death.”
In an effort to keep their escape route open, the Germans struck back with a succession of furious counterattacks. Some desperately clawed their way up the steep slopes of Mount Ormel with fixed bayonets in suicidal assaults into the teeth of the Polish fire. Others attacked from the area of the D-16 highway. Eventually the Poles were surrounded.
A Sherman tank and a German Panther tank are part of the carnage seen on Mount Ormel after the battle.
Violent battles for the Mace raged until August 21, as elements of the 1st SS Panzer Corps launched one counterattack after another to disrupt the Polish attacks on the valley of the Dives, and capture Mount Ormel. No description of hell could have exceeded what took place over that period on and below Hill 262.
The 2d SS Panzer Division, which had already escaped the pocket, was rushed back to attack the Poles from the rear. Many were captured and herded into makeshift POW compounds.
The Poles were unable to evacuate their wounded and the savagery of the fighting prevented the Canadians, who had occupied Chambois, from driving up the D-16 and relieving them.
By the night of August 20, the depleted Poles had been pressed back to the top of the Mace and were in desperate straits. Not only had they suffered heavy losses but they were nearly out of water, food, and ammunition. As they braced for yet another suicide attack on August 21 the commander of the 1st Armored Regiment, Lt. Col. Aleksander Stefanowicz, one of hundreds of Polish wounded, grimly addressed his men, saying:
Gentlemen, everything is lost. I do not believe the Canadians will manage to help us. We have only 110 men left, with 50 rounds per gun and 5 rounds per tank … Fight to the end! To surrender to the SS is senseless, you know it well. Gentlemen! Good luck – tonight we will die for Poland and civilization. We will fight to the last platoon, to the last tank, then to the last man.
Among the survivors of the battle for Mount Ormel was Zbigniew Mieczkowski
The following morning the Germans resumed their attacks from two directions and succeeded in penetrating the Polish positions. A suicidal attack was rebuffed by the remnants of an infantry battalion supported by Stefanowicz’s tanks that used tracer ammunition in their machine guns to set fire to the grass that killed some of the wounded attackers. It turned out to be the final German effort as gradually the attacks diminished, and then stopped.
As this was taking place, at noon a Polish reconnaissance regiment made contact with Mount Ormel’s defenders, only to have to withdraw after being mistakenly fired upon. About an hour later Canadian grenadiers that had fought for five hours along the D-16 highway from Chambois made contact with the Poles.
The astonished Canadians could only marvel at how the Poles had held so valiantly against elements of thirteen German divisions – six panzer, one parachute, and six infantry. Polish losses were 325 killed and an estimated 1,000 wounded. German losses were enormous.
The amazing stand by the Poles on Mount Ormel prevented an untold number of Germans from fleeing the pocket. The carnage was everywhere: dead Germans and Poles, and a scrap heap of burning and destroyed tanks and armored cars that were scattered across the Mace.
In a touching tribute, Canadian engineers erected a sign on the pinnacle of Mount Ormel, which read simply: “A Polish Battlefield.”
A Polish Reunion in Normandy, Part III
In the final installment next month, the story of the Polish reunion on the bloody Mace forty years later.
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