User:Max

van Baden

Maximiliaan Alexander Frederik Willem (Max) van Baden, Duits Maximilian Alexander Friedrich Wilhelm (Max) Prinz von Baden (Baden-Baden, 10 juli 1867 - Salem bij Konstanz, 6 november 1929), prins van Baden, was erfgroothertog van Baden, generaal en de laatste rijkskanselier van het Duitse Keizerrijk.

Hij was de zoon van de Pruisische generaal prins Willem van Baden (1829-1897), jongere broer van groothertog Frederik I van Baden, en Maria van Leuchtenberg (1841-1914), kleindochter van Eugène de Beauharnais.

Hij bezocht eerst het humanistisch gymnasium, werd vervolgens jurist en ging als officier het Pruisische leger in. Na de dood van Frederik I in 1907 werd hij troonopvolger van de kinderloze nieuwe groothertog Frederik II en voorzitter van de Eerste Kamer van Baden. In 1911 trok hij zich als majoor-generaal terug uit het leger, maar hij nam in 1914 weer voor korte tijd dienst.

Max gold als een liberaal aristocraat en werd steeds meer het middelpunt van het gematigde politieke kamp, dat tegenover de ultra-rechtse vleugel stond die werd vertegenwoordig door de Oberste Heeresleitung. Toen in oktober 1918 de Eerste Wereldoorlog op zijn eind liep en militaire ondergang dreigde, zocht Berlijn haastig een geschikte vredesonderhandelaar die de sympathie van de Amerikaanse president Woodrow Wilson kon winnen. Max leek hiervoor de kandidaat bij uitstek te zijn. De OHL onder Erich Ludendorff en Paul von Hindenburg streefde naar omvorming van de staat tot een parlementaire monarchie, waarbij ook de oppositie (met name de sociaaldemocraten) zou worden betrokken om het verzoek tot wapenstilstand niet zelf te hoeven doen en de verantwoordelijkheid voor de nederlaag niet zelf te hoeven nemen. Ook hier scheen Max als liberaal en lid van een vorstenhuis voor zowel sociaaldemocraten als conservatieven een acceptabele kandidaat.

Prins Max

Rijkskanselier Georg von Hertling droeg Max als opvolger voor en op 3 oktober 1918 benoemde keizer Wilhelm II hem tot nieuwe rijkskanselier. Nog diezelfde dag stelde Max een parlementaire regering samen met sociaaldemocraten (Friedrich Ebert, Philipp Scheidemann), links-liberale en centrum-rechtse ministers en deed op aandringen van de keizer op 5 oktober het verzoek tot wapenstilstand aan Wilson toekomen. Wilson zei echter de wil tot democratisering van het Duitse Rijk niet te vertrouwen aangezien de keizer en de andere Duitse vorsten nog op de troon zaten. Max besefte dat er meer dan slechts cosmetische wijzigingen nodig waren om de Geallieerden te doen bijdraaien. Hij voerde algemene verkiezingen in, beëindigde de U-boot-oorlog en ontsloeg Ludendorff op 26 oktober.

Toen de Novemberrevolutie uitbrak, trachtte Max keizer Wilhelm tot aftreden te bewegen om in ieder geval de monarchie te redden. De keizer weigerde en Max kondigde op 9 november 1918 op eigen initiatief diens troonsafstand aan. Ook hijzelf trok zich terug uit zijn ambt en benoemde (op ongrondwettelijke wijze) de leider van de sterkste partij in de Rijksdag, Friedrich Ebert, tot nieuwe kanselier. Deze riep onmiddellijk de republiek uit.

De rest van zijn leven bracht Max teruggetrokken door. Hij was sinds 1900 getrouwd met Marie Louise van Hannover-Cumberland, prinses van Groot-Brittannië en Ierland, achterkleindochter van koning George V van Hannover. Uit dit huwelijk werden twee kinderen geboren: Berthold en Maria Alexandra. Berthold trouwde in 1924 met prinses Theodora van Griekenland; één van de vier zusters van Philip, hertog van Edinburgh.

Schuchart

Max Schuchart (Rotterdam, 16 augustus 1920 - Den Haag, 25 februari 2005) was een Nederlandse dichter, literatuurcriticus, journalist en vertaler. Ook was hij redacteur van het tijdschrift Proloog en van het Handelsblad.

Max Schuchart was vooral bekend dankzij zijn vertaling als In de Ban van de Ring van The Lord of the Rings van J.R.R. Tolkien. Deze vertaling, die in 1957 voor het eerst verscheen, was de allereerste vertaling ter wereld van dit boek. Voor deze vertaling kreeg hij de Martinus Nijhoffprijs. In 1996 heeft hij de Nederlandse vertaling herzien, waarna deze in 1997 werd uitgebracht.

Ook verschillende andere werken van Tolkien werden door Schuchart vertaald, zoals De Hobbit (eerste Nederlandse uitgave 1960), De avonturen van Tom Bombadil (1975), Brieven van de Kerstman (1976), Boer Gilles van Ham (1977), Roverandom (2002) en De Silmarillion (1977). Daarnaast vertaalde hij de Brieven van Tolkien en ook diens biografie door Humphrey Carpenter.

In 1978 ontving hij van de Britse koningin een MBE-onderscheiding voor 29 jaar trouwe dienst aan de Britse Ambassade in Den Haag, waar hij als persattaché werkzaam was. Ten tijde van zijn onderscheiding was hij met zijn vrouw Norma reeds verhuisd naar het lieflijke dorpje Alpheton in Sussex, Engeland. Maar Den Haag liet hen beiden niet los.

Andere belangrijke auteurs waarvan hij boeken vertaalde zijn: Richard Adams, Daniel Defoe, D.H. Lawrence, Salman Rushdie, J.D. Salinger, Stephen R. Donaldson, Dylan Thomas, T. H. White en Oscar Wilde.

Ernst

Ernst begint in 1910 met de studies filosofie, kunstgeschiedenis en psychologie aan de Universiteit in Bonn, maar hij stopt hier al snel mee om zijn aandacht volledig op kunst te kunnen richten. In 1914 ontmoet hij Guillaume Apollinaire en Robert Delaunay, en reist hij naar de wijk Montparnasse in Parijs waar verschillende kunstenaars uit de hele wereld samenkomen.

In 1918 trouwt hij de kunsthistorica Luise Straus - met haar heeft hij een stormachtige relatie die niet zou standhouden. Het jaar daarna bezoekt hij de kunstenaar Paul Klee en creëert hij zijn eerste schilderwerken en collages en experimenteert hij met verschillende kunstvormen. Tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog dient hij in het Duitse leger en na de oorlog vormt hij, vol met nieuwe ideeën, de Keulse Dada-groep Zentrale W/3, samen met Hans (Jean) Arp en sociaal activist Alfred Grünwald. Bij deze groep maakt Max Ernst talrijke collages. Twee jaar later, in 1922, keert hij echter terug naar de artistieke commune in Montparnasse.

Al experimenterend vindt hij in 1925 de zogenaamde frottage-techniek uit, een techniek waarbij men, door met een potlood over papier te wrijven, afdrukken maakt van objecten die onder het papier geplaatst worden. Doet men dit bijvoorbeeld met een eikenblad, dan wordt op het papier een afdruk van dat blad gemaakt waardoor de structuur en de nerven duidelijk zichtbaar worden. Deze afdrukken werkt Ernst vervolgens verder uit tot een kunstwerk. In 1926 gaat hij samenwerken met Joan Miró om achtergronden te schilderen voor de balletten van de beroemde Russische impresario Serge Diaghilev. Ernst ontwikkelt samen met Miró vervolgens de grattage-techniek waarbij (meestal opgedroogde) verf van het doek wordt afgeschraapt, wat een bijzonder effect creëert.

In Montparnasse speelt Max Ernst een zeer grote rol in de totstandkoming van het surrealisme, de kunststroming waarbij kunstenaars gebruik maakten van abstracte droombeelden en het onderbewuste om hun (subjectieve) gevoel te uiten op het doek. Na een periode bij de surrealisten, verlaat Ernst de beweging uit woede over de door André Breton gewenste verbanning van Ernsts vriend Paul Éluard.

Habakuk (ca. 1934), Buitencollectie Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten in Marl

In 1934 begint Max Ernst met beeldhouwen, en brengt hij tijd door met de eveneens surrealistische kunstenaar Alberto Giacometti.

In 1938 koopt de rijke kunstverzamelaarster Peggy Guggenheim een aantal werken van Max Ernst die ze tentoonstelt in haar museum in Venetië.

Ernst heeft altijd een fascinatie voor vogels gehad, een thema wat men keer op keer terugziet in zijn werk. Zijn alter-ego in zijn schilderijen, genaamd Loplop, was een vogel waarvan Ernst suggereerde dat het een extensie van hemzelf was, voortkomend uit een vroegere verwarring van vogels met mensen. In zijn jeugd had Ernst namelijk een vogel, die stierf op dezelfde dag dat Ernsts zusje geboren werd. Loplop duikt ook geregeld op in collages van andere kunstenaars, en is dan altijd een soort kruising tussen een vogel en een voet, over het werk van een andere kunstenaar heengeplakt. Vogels blijven terugkomen in Ernsts werk zoals de post-WOII werken Angel of Heart and Home en Robing of the Bride.

Door de inval van de nazi's in Frankrijk werd Ernst gezien als staatsvijand en createur van Entartete Kunst, maar hij wist Frankrijk samen met Peggy Guggenheim te ontvluchten. In 1941 arriveerden zij in de Verenigde Staten en het jaar daarop trouwden ze. Samen met andere kunstenaars en vrienden (zoals Marc Chagall en Marcel Duchamp) die eveneens waren gevlucht voor de oorlog en nu in New York leefden, werkte Ernst mee aan de ontwikkeling van het abstract expressionisme.

Zijn huwelijk met Guggenheim hield geen stand en Ernst trouwde in 1946 opnieuw, dit keer met Dorothea Tanning, in een dubbele ceremonie met de kunstenaar Man Ray en Juliet Browser.

In de daaropvolgende jaren bleef Ernst voornamelijk in de VS, wonend in de kleine stad Sedona (Arizona), en in 1948 schreef hij de verhandeling Beyond Painting voordat hij Europa weer bezocht in 1950. Hij keerde voorgoed terug naar Parijs en stond in 1953 op de Biënnale van Venetië. Als gevolg van de publiciteit werd hij financieel succesvol.

In 1963 verhuisden Tanning en hij naar een klein stadje in Zuid-Frankrijk waar Ernst verderging met zijn werk. Hij bouwde het huis waarin zij woonden zelf en versierde het met uit zijn schilderwerk bekende fantasie-figuren. Bovendien ontwierp hij decors, en een fontein voor de stad Ambois. In 1975 werden in retrospectief zijn werken tentoongesteld in het Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, en de "Galeries Nationales du Grand-Palais" in Parijs publiceerden een complete catalogus van zijn werk.

Ernst stierf op 1 april 1976, in de nacht van zijn 85ste verjaardag, in Parijs, Frankrijk en werd begraven op de begraafplaats Père-Lachaise aldaar.

Max Fernandez-Alonso

Max Fernandez-Alonso is een gastprofessor uit het Afrikamuseum in Tervuren. Ondanks zijn exotische naam spreekt hij met een gewoon Vlaams accent. Hij weet goed waarover hij het heeft bij het lesgeven. Het nadeel hiervan is echter dat hij wel is tot in minder interessante details gaat.

Max Planck

Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck, better known as Max Planck[1] (April 23, 1858 – October 4, 1947) was a German physicist. He is considered to be the founder of quantum theory, and one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century.

Biography

Planck came from a traditional, intellectual family. His paternal great-grandfather and grandfather were both theology professors in Göttingen, his father was a law professor in Kiel and Munich, and his paternal uncle was a judge.

Max Planck's signature at ten years of age.

Planck was born in Kiel, Holstein, to Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck and his second wife, Emma Patzig. He was baptised with the name of Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck; of his given names, Marx was indicated as the primary name.[1] However, already by the age of ten he signed with the name Max, which he used for the rest of his life[2].

He was the sixth child in the family, though two of his siblings were from his father's first marriage. Among his earliest memories was the marching of Prussian and Austrian troops into Kiel during the Danish-Prussian war of 1864. In 1867 the family moved to Munich, and Planck enrolled in the Maximilians gymnasium school, where he came under the tutelage of Hermann Müller, a mathematician who took an interest in the youth, and taught him astronomy and mechanics as well as mathematics. It was from Müller that Planck first learned the principle of conservation of energy. Planck graduated early, at age 17.[3] This is how Planck first came in contact with the field of physics.

Planck was gifted when it came to music. He took singing lessons and played piano, organ and cello, and composed songs and operas. However, instead of music he chose to study physics.

The Munich physics professor Philipp von Jolly advised Planck against going into physics, saying, "in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few holes." Planck replied that he did not wish to discover new things, only to understand the known fundamentals of the field, and began his studies in 1874 at the University of Munich. Under Jolly's supervision, Planck performed the only experiments of his scientific career, studying the diffusion of hydrogen through heated platinum, but transferred to theoretical physics.

In 1877 he went to Berlin for a year of study with physicists Hermann von Helmholtz and Gustav Kirchhoff and the mathematician Karl Weierstrass. He wrote that Helmholtz was never quite prepared, spoke slowly, miscalculated endlessly, and bored his listeners, while Kirchhoff spoke in carefully prepared lectures which were dry and monotonous. He soon became close friends with Helmholtz. While there he undertook a program of mostly self-study of Clausius's writings, which led him to choose heat theory as his field.

In October 1878 Planck passed his qualifying exams and in February 1879 defended his dissertation, Über den zweiten Hauptsatz der mechanischen Wärmetheorie (On the second fundamental theorem of the mechanical theory of heat). He briefly taught mathematics and physics at his former school in Munich.

In June 1880 he presented his habilitation thesis, Gleichgewichtszustände isotroper Körper in verschiedenen Temperaturen (Equilibrium states of isotropic bodies at different temperatures).

Academic career

With the completion of his habilitation thesis, Planck became an unpaid private lecturer in Munich, waiting until he was offered an academic position. Although he was initially ignored by the academic community, he furthered his work on the field of heat theory and discovered one after another the same thermodynamical formalism as Gibbs without realizing it. Clausius's ideas on entropy occupied a central role in his work.

In April 1885 the University of Kiel appointed Planck as associate professor of theoretical physics. Further work on entropy and its treatment, especially as applied in physical chemistry, followed. He proposed a thermodynamic basis for Svante Arrhenius's theory of electrolytic dissociation.

Within four years he was named the successor to Kirchhoff's position at the University of Berlin — presumably thanks to Helmholtz's intercession — and by 1892 became a full professor. In 1907 Planck was offered Boltzmann's position in Vienna, but turned it down to stay in Berlin. During 1909 he was the Ernest Kempton Adams Lecturer in Theoretical Physics at Columbia University in New York City. He retired from Berlin on January 10, 1926, and was succeeded by Erwin Schrödinger.

Family

In March 1887 Planck married Marie Merck (1861-1909), sister of a school fellow, and moved with her into a sublet apartment in Kiel. They had four children: Karl (1888-1916), the twins Emma (1889-1919) and Grete (1889-1917), and Erwin (1893-1945).

After the appointment to Berlin, the Planck family lived in a villa in Berlin-Grunewald, Wangenheimstraße 21. Several other professors of Berlin University lived nearby, among them theologian Adolf von Harnack, who became a close friend of Planck. Soon the Planck home became a social and cultural centre. Numerous well-known scientists, such as Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner were frequent visitors. The tradition of jointly performing music had already been established in the home of Helmholtz.

After several happy years the Planck family was struck by a series of disasters. In July 1909 Marie Planck died, possibly from tuberculosis. In March 1911 Planck married his second wife, Marga von Hoesslin (1882-1948); in December his third son Hermann was born.

During the First World War Planck's second son Erwin was taken prisoner by the French in 1914, while his oldest son Karl was killed in action at Verdun. Grete died in 1917 while giving birth to her first child. Her sister died the same way two years later, after having married Grete's widower. Both granddaughters survived and were named after their mothers. Planck endured these losses stoically.

In January 1945, Erwin, to whom he had been particularly close, was sentenced to death by the Nazi Volksgerichtshof because of his participation in the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944. Erwin was hanged on 23 January 1945. Wives: Marie Merck (m. 1887), Marga von Hoesslin (m. 1910) Children: Karl (1888-1916), twins Emma (1889-1919) and Grete (1889-1917), Erwin (1893-1945), Hermann (b. 1911)

Professor at Berlin University

In Berlin, Planck joined the local Physical Society. He later wrote about this time: "In those days I was essentially the only theoretical physicist there, whence things were not so easy for me, because I started mentioning entropy, but this was not quite fashionable, since it was regarded as a mathematical spook".[citation needed] Thanks to his initiative, the various local Physical Societies of Germany merged in 1898 to form the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, DPG); from 1905 to 1909 Planck was the president.

Planck started a six-semester course of lectures on theoretical physics, "dry, somewhat impersonal" according to Lise Meitner, "using no notes, never making mistakes, never faltering; the best lecturer I ever heard" according to an English participant, James R. Partington, who continues: "There were always many standing around the room. As the lecture-room was well heated and rather close, some of the listeners would from time to time drop to the floor, but this did not disturb the lecture". Planck did not establish an actual "school", the number of his graduate students was only about 20, among them: Max Abraham 1897 (1875 - 1922) Moritz Schlick 1904 (1882 - 1936) Walther Meißner 1906 (1882 - 1974) Max von Laue 1906 (1879 - 1960) Fritz Reiche 1907 (1883 - 1960) Walter Schottky 1912 (1886 - 1976) Walther Bothe 1914 (1891 - 1957)

Black-body radiation

In 1894 Planck turned his attention to the problem of black-body radiation. He had been commissioned by electric companies to create maximum light from lightbulbs with minimum energy. The problem had been stated by Kirchhoff in 1859: how does the intensity of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body (a perfect absorber, also known as a cavity radiator) depend on the frequency of the radiation (e.g., the color of the light) and the temperature of the body? The question had been explored experimentally, but no theoretical treatment agreed with experimental values. Wilhelm Wien proposed Wien's law, which correctly predicted the behaviour at high frequencies, but failed at low frequencies. The Rayleigh-Jeans law, another approach to the problem, created what was later known as the "ultraviolet catastrophe", but contrary to many textbooks this was not a motivation for Planck.[4]

Planck's first proposed solution to the problem in 1899 followed from what Planck called the "principle of elementary disorder", which allowed him to derive Wien's law from a number of assumptions about the entropy of an ideal oscillator, creating what was referred-to as the Wien-Planck law. Soon it was found that experimental evidence did not confirm the new law at all, to Planck's frustration. Planck revised his approach, deriving the first version of the famous Planck black-body radiation law, which described the experimentally observed black-body spectrum well. It was first proposed in a meeting of the DPG on October 19, 1900 and published in 1901. This first derivation did not include energy quantisation, and did not use statistical mechanics, to which he held an aversion. In November 1900, Planck revised this first approach, relying on Boltzmann's statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics as a way of gaining a more fundamental understanding of the principles behind his radiation law. As Planck was deeply suspicious of the philosophical and physical implications of such an interpretation of Boltzmann's approach, his recourse to them was, as he later put it, "an act of despair ... I was ready to sacrifice any of my previous convictions about physics."[4]

The central assumption behind his new derivation, presented to the DPG on 14 December 1900, was the supposition that electromagnetic energy could be emitted only in quantized form, in other words, the energy could only be a multiple of an elementary unit E = hν, where h is Planck's constant, also known as Planck's action quantum (introduced already in 1899), and ν is the frequency of the radiation.

Planck in 1918, the year he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum theory

At first Planck considered that quantisation was only "a purely formal assumption ... actually I did not think much about it..."; nowadays this assumption, incompatible with classical physics, is regarded as the birth of quantum physics and the greatest intellectual accomplishment of Planck's career (Ludwig Boltzmann had been discussing in a theoretical paper in 1877 the possibility that the energy states of a physical system could be discrete). The full interpretation of the radical implications of Planck's work was advanced by Albert Einstein in 1905—for this reason, the philosopher and historian of science Thomas Kuhn argued that Einstein should be given credit for quantum theory more so than Planck, since Planck did not understand in a deep sense that he was "introducing the quantum" as a real physical entity.[5] Be that as it may, it was in recognition of Planck's monumental accomplishment that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.

The discovery of Planck's constant enabled him to define a new universal set of physical units (such as the Planck length and the Planck mass), all based on fundamental physical constants.

Subsequently, Planck tried to grasp the meaning of energy quanta, but to no avail. "My unavailing attempts to somehow reintegrate the action quantum into classical theory extended over several years and caused me much trouble." Even several years later, other physicists like Rayleigh, Jeans, and Lorentz set Planck's constant to zero in order to align with classical physics, but Planck knew well that this constant had a precise nonzero value. "I am unable to understand Jeans' stubbornness — he is an example of a theoretician as should never be existing, the same as Hegel was for philosophy. So much the worse for the facts, if they are wrong."[citation needed]

Max Born wrote about Planck: "He was by nature and by the tradition of his family conservative, averse to revolutionary novelties and skeptical towards speculations. But his belief in the imperative power of logical thinking based on facts was so strong that he did not hesitate to express a claim contradicting to all tradition, because he had convinced himself that no other resort was possible."[citation needed]

Einstein and the theory of relativity

In 1905 the three epochal papers of the hitherto completely unknown Albert Einstein were published in the journal Annalen der Physik. Planck was among the few who immediately recognized the significance of the special theory of relativity. Thanks to his influence this theory was soon widely accepted in Germany. Planck also contributed considerably to extend the special theory of relativity.

Einstein's hypothesis of light quanta (photons), based on Philipp Lenard's 1902 discovery of the photoelectric effect, was initially rejected by Planck. He was unwilling to discard completely Maxwell's theory of electrodynamics. "The theory of light would be thrown back not by decades, but by centuries, into the age when Christian Huygens dared to fight against the mighty emission theory of Isaac Newton ..."

In 1910 Einstein pointed out the anomalous behavior of specific heat at low temperatures as another example of a phenomenon which defies explanation by classical physics. Planck and Nernst, seeking to clarify the increasing number of contradictions, organized the First Solvay Conference (Brussels 1911). At this meeting Einstein was able to convince Planck.

Meanwhile Planck had been appointed dean of Berlin University, whereby it was possible for him to call Einstein to Berlin and establish a new professorship for him (1914). Soon the two scientists became close friends and met frequently to play music together.

World War and Weimar Republic

At the onset of the First World War Planck was not immune to the general excitement of the public: "... besides of much horrible also much unexpectedly great and beautiful: the swift solution of the most difficult issues of domestic policy through arrangement of all parties... the higher esteem for all that is brave and truthful..." Admittedly, he refrained from the extremes of nationalism. He voted successfully for a scientific paper from Italy receiving a prize from the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1915 (Planck was one of its four permanent presidents), although at that time Italy was about to join the Allies. The infamous "Manifesto of the 93 intellectuals", a polemic pamphlet of war propaganda, was also signed by Planck, while Einstein retained a strictly pacifistic attitude which almost led to his imprisonment (he was saved by his Swiss citizenship). But already in 1915 Planck revoked (after several meetings with Dutch physicist Lorentz) parts of the Manifesto, and in 1916 he signed a declaration against German annexationism.

In the turbulent post-war years, Planck, now the highest authority of German physics, issued the slogan "persevere and continue working" to his colleagues. In October 1920 he and Fritz Haber established the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (Emergency Organization of German Science), aimed at providing support for destitute scientific research. A considerable portion of the monies they distributed were raised abroad. In this time Planck held leading positions also at Berlin University, the Prussian Academy of Sciences, the German Physical Society and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (which in 1948 became the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft). Under such conditions he was hardly able to conduct research.

He became a member of the Deutsche Volks-Partei (German People's Party), the party of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Gustav Stresemann, which aspired to liberal aims for domestic policy and rather revisionistic aims for international politics. He disagreed with the introduction of universal suffrage and later expressed the view that the Nazi dictatorship resulted from "the ascent of the rule of the crowds".

Quantum mechanics

At the end of the 1920s Bohr, Heisenberg and Pauli had worked out the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, but it was rejected by Planck, as well as Schrödinger, Laue, and Einstein. Planck expected that wave mechanics would soon render quantum theory—his own child—unnecessary. This was not to be the case, however. Further work only cemented quantum theory, even against his and Einstein's philosophical revulsions. Planck experienced the truth of his own earlier observation from his struggle with the older views in his younger years: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."[6]

Nazi dictatorship and The Second World War

When the Nazis seized power in 1933, Planck was 74. He witnessed many Jewish friends and colleagues expelled from their positions and humiliated, and hundreds of scientists emigrated from Germany. Again he tried the "persevere and continue working" slogan and asked scientists who were considering emigration to remain in Germany. He hoped the crisis would abate soon and the political situation would improve. There was also a deeper argument against emigration. Emigrating German non-Jewish scientists would need to look for academic positions abroad, but these positions better served Jewish scientists, who had no chance of continuing to work in Germany.

Hahn asked Planck to gather well-known German professors in order to issue a public proclamation against the treatment of Jewish professors, but Planck replied, "If you are able to gather today 30 such gentlemen, then tomorrow 150 others will come and speak against it, because they are eager to take over the positions of the others."[7] Under Planck's leadership, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (KWG) avoided open conflict with the Nazi regime, except concerning Fritz Haber. Planck tried to discuss the issue with Adolf Hitler but was unsuccessful. In the following year, 1934, Haber died in exile.

One year later, Planck, having been the president of the KWG since 1930, organized in a somewhat provocative style an official commemorative meeting for Haber. He also succeeded in secretly enabling a number of Jewish scientists to continue working in institutes of the KWG for several years. In 1936, his term as president of the KWG ended, and the Nazi government pressured him to refrain from seeking another term.

As the political climate in Germany gradually became more hostile, Johannes Stark, prominent exponent of Deutsche Physik ("German Physics", also called "Aryan Physics") attacked Planck, Sommerfeld and Heisenberg for continuing to teach the theories of Einstein, calling them "white Jews." The "Hauptamt Wissenschaft" (Nazi government office for science) started an investigation of Planck's ancestry, but all they could find out was that he was "1/16 Jewish."[citation needed]

In 1938 Planck celebrated his 80th birthday. The DPG held a celebration, during which the Max-Planck medal (founded as the highest medal by the DPG in 1928) was awarded to French physicist Louis de Broglie. At the end of 1938 the Prussian Academy lost its remaining independence and was taken over by Nazis (Gleichschaltung). Planck protested by resigning his presidency. He continued to travel frequently, giving numerous public talks, such as his talk on Religion and Science, and five years later he was sufficiently fit to climb 3,000-meter peaks in the Alps.

During the Second World War, the increasing number of Allied bombing campaigns against Berlin forced Planck and his wife to leave the city temporarily and live in the countryside. In 1942 he wrote: "In me an ardent desire has grown to persevere this crisis and live long enough to be able to witness the turning point, the beginning of a new rise." In February 1944 his home in Berlin was completely destroyed by an air raid, annihilating all his scientific records and correspondence. Finally, he got into a dangerous situation in his rural retreat due to the rapid advance of the Allied armies from both sides. After the end of the war he was brought to a relative in Göttingen.

Planck endured many personal tragedies after the age of 50. In 1909, his first wife died after 22 years of marriage, leaving him with two sons and twin daughters. Planck's oldest son, Karl, was killed in action in 1916. His daughter Margarete died in childbirth in 1917, and another daughter, Emma, married her late sister's husband and then also died in childbirth, in 1919. During World War II, Planck's house in Berlin was completely destroyed by bombs in 1944 and his youngest son, Erwin, was implicated in the attempt made on Hitler's life in the July 20 plot. Consequently, Erwin died a horrible death at the hands of the Gestapo in 1945. Although it is said that Erwin could have been spared had Planck joined the Nazi Party Planck took a stand and refused to join, as a consequence Erwin was hanged. Erwin's death destroyed Planck's will to live[citation needed]. By the end of the war, Planck, his second wife and his son by her, moved to Göttingen where he died on October 4, 1947.

Religious view

Planck was a devoted and persistent adherent of Christianity from early life to death, but he was very tolerant towards alternative views and religions, and so was discontented with the church organizations' demands for unquestioning belief.

The God in which Planck believed was an almighty, all-knowing, benevolent but unintelligible God that permeated everything, manifest by symbols, including physical laws. His view may have been motivated by an opposition like Einstein's and Schrödinger's against the positivist, statistical subjective quantum mechanics universe of Bohr, Heisenberg and others. Planck was interested in truth and Universe beyond observation, and objected to atheism as an obsession with symbols.

Planck regarded the scientist as a man of imagination and faith, "faith" interpreted as being similar to "having a working hypothesis". For example the causality principle isn't true or false, it is an act of faith. Thereby Planck may have indicated a view that points toward Imre Lakatos' research programs process descriptions, where falsification is mostly tolerable, in faith of its future removal.

Honours and awards

• "Pour le Mérite" for Science and Arts 1915 (in 1930 he became chancellor of this order)
• Nobel Prize in Physics 1918 (awarded 1919)
• Lorentz Medal 1927
• Adlerschild des Deutschen Reiches (1928), an award from the German President of Germany (Weimar Republic)
• Max Planck medal (1929, together with Albert Einstein)
• Copley Medal (1929)
• Planck received honorary doctorates from the universities of Frankfurt, Munich (Technische Hochschule), Rostock, Berlin (TH), Graz, Athens, Cambridge, London, and Glasgow.
• The 1069 Planckia|asteroid 1069 was named "Stella Planckia" by the International Astronomical Union (1938)

Claudius Maximus

Claudius Maximus was a stoic philosopher and a teacher of Marcus Aurelius who lived in the 2nd century AD.

Marcus describes him as the perfect sage:

From Maximus I learned self-government, and not to be led aside by anything; and cheerfulness in all circumstances, as well as in illness; and a just admixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity, and to do what was set before me without complaining. I observed that everybody believed that he thought as he spoke, and that in all that he did he never had any bad intention; and he never showed amazement and surprise, and was never in a hurry, and never put off doing a thing, nor was perplexed nor dejected, nor did he ever laugh to disguise his vexation, nor, on the other hand, was he ever passionate or suspicious. He was accustomed to do acts of beneficence, and was ready to forgive, and was free from all falsehood; and he presented the appearance of a man who could not be diverted from right, rather than of a man who had been improved. I observed, too, that no man could ever think that he was despised by Maximus, or ever venture to think himself a better man. He had also the art of being humorous in an agreeable way.

Marcus also mentions his death and that of his wife Secunda.

He may be the Claudius Maximus who was the proconsul of Africa before whom Apuleius delivered a defence against a charge of magic (c. 158 AD) in which he calls him a most religious man.

Max Payne

Max Payne is a BAFTA award winning third-person shooter video game developed by the Finnish company Remedy Entertainment, produced by 3D Realms and published by Gathering of Developers in July, 2001 for Windows. Ports later in the year for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 were published by Rockstar Games. A Macintosh port was published in July 2002 by MacSoft in North America and Feral Interactive in the rest of the World. There were plans for a Dreamcast version of Max Payne, but they were cancelled due to the discontinuation of the console.

A sequel called Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne was released in 2003. As of March 12, 2008, the Max Payne franchise has sold over 7 million copies according to Take-Two Interactive.

Overview

The Max Payne series is influenced by Mad Max, directed by George Miller, and the Hong Kong action cinema genre, particularly the work of director John Woo.[citation needed] It was one of the first video games to incorporate the "bullet time" effect into gameplay, made famous by The Matrix trilogy. The game contains many allusions to Norse mythology, particularly Ragnarok, and several of the names used in the game (Alfred Woden, Alex Balder, Aesir Corporation, Asgard Building, Valkyr) are those of the Norse gods and mythos. The game script has a notable gritty noir spirit and bares strong resemblance to hard-boiled detective novels by authors like Mickey Spillane

Gameplay

The prime emphasis of the series is on shooting. Almost all of the gameplay involves using bullettime to gun down foe after foe. Levels are generally straightforward, with almost no key-hunting. However, some levels do incorporate platforming elements and puzzle solving. Ammo is in virtually constant supply, as all enemies drop some ammo when killed.

The game's A.I. is heavily dependent on pre-scripted commands. Most of the apparently intelligent behavior exhibited by enemies, such as taking cover behind obstacles, retreating from the player, or throwing grenades, is pre-scripted. Thus, when replaying a level, enemies perform exactly the same behaviors each time. Enemies who dodge and roll are typically the Mercenaries (operatives in black ski-masks), Aesir Security Guards, and Killer Suits (henchmen wearing business suits and sunglasses).

Higher difficulty levels are extremely challenging; the "Dead on Arrival" level limits the player to 7 saves per chapter, and the "New York Minute" level forces the player to complete each chapter before the allotted time — replenished by killing enemies — is exhausted. Upon completing the game on "Dead on Arrival", Max is transported to the "Final Battle", where the player then fights in perpetual bulletime against 20 Killer Suits — each armed with the Pancor Jackhammer automatic shotgun. Upon completion of this task, the player can view a secret room with various photographs of New York locations used by the developer, Remedy, as well as a picture of the development team.

On the highest difficulty setting, Max is (from a game perspective) extremely fragile and dies after suffering only 5 pistol bullets, 3 assault rifle bullets, or 1 accurate shotgun blast. Most enemies have more endurance than the player character, with later enemies being able to survive 2 or 3 times as much damage as Max. The player can heal Max by consuming "painkillers", which the player collects and carries, until he/she decides to use them.

Bullet time

The game play of Max Payne revolves heavily around bullet time. When triggered, bullet time slows down the passage of time to such an extent that the movements of bullets can be seen by the naked eye — it is a form of slow motion. The player, although his movement is also slowed, is still able to aim and react in real time, providing a unique advantage over enemies. This makes avoiding being shot easier and enables Max to perform special moves, such as shoot dodges where Max leaps sideways through the air while continuing to fire his weapon.

Occasionally, when the last character of a group is killed, the viewpoint switches to a third-person view of his falling body with the camera circling around it.

Max Payne the character

For Max Payne, the title character was modeled after Sam Lake, the writer of Max Payne. It is often joked that Max had a constipated expression with his uncomfortable half grin/sneer; this joke is even mentioned in the sequel. For Max Payne 2, however, Lake declined the honor, and after extensive casting, Remedy chose the actor Timothy Gibbs to be the model for Max Payne. Actor James McCaffrey provided the voice of Max Payne in both games.