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篇1：新GRE写作名人素材库
亚当斯密 Smith, Adam 1723 -- 1790
Economist and moral philosopher. Born June 5, 1723, in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. Smith抯 father had died two months before his birth, and a strong and lifelong attachment developed between Smith and his mother. As an infant, Smith was kidnapped, but he was soon rescued. At the age of 14, he enrolled in the University of Glasgow, where he remained for three years. The lectures of Francis Hutcheson exerted a strong influence on him. In 1740, he transferred to Balliol College, Oxford, where he remained for almost seven years, receiving a bachelor of arts degree in 1744. Returning then to Kirkcaldy, he devoted himself to his studies and gave a series of lectures on English literature. In 1748, he moved to Edinburgh, where he became a friend of David Hume, whose skepticism he did not share.
Theory of Moral Sentiments
In 1751, Smith started working as a professor of logic at the University of Glasgow; the following year he became a professor of moral philosophy. Eight years later, he published his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith's central notion in this work is that moral principles have social feeling or sympathy as their basis. Sympathy is a common or analogous feeling that an individual may have with the affections or feelings of another person. The source of this feeling is not so much one's observation of the expressed emotion of another person as one's thought of the situation that the other person confronts. Sympathy usually requires knowledge of the cause of the emotion to be shared. If one approves of another's passions as suitable to their objects, he thereby sympathizes with that person. Sympathy is the basis for one's judging of the appropriateness and merit of the feelings and actions issuing from these feelings. If the affections of the person involved in a situation are analogous to the emotions of the spectator, then those affections are appropriate. The merit of a feeling or an action flowing from a feeling is its worthiness of reward. If a feeling or an action is worthy of reward, it has moral merit. One's awareness of merit derives from one's sympathy with the gratitude of the person benefited by the action. One's sense of merit, then, is a derivative of the feeling of gratitude that is manifested in the situation by the person who has been helped.
Smith warns that each person must exercise impartiality of judgment in relation to his own feelings and behavior. Well aware of the human tendency to overlook one's own moral failings and the self-deceit in which individuals often engage, Smith argues that each person must scrutinize his own feelings and behavior with the same strictness he employs when considering those of others. Such an impartial appraisal is possible because a person's conscience enables him to compare his own feelings with those of others. Conscience and sympathy working together, then, provide moral guidance for man so that the individual can control his own feelings and have a sensibility for the affections of others.
The Wealth of Nations
In 1764, Smith resigned his professorship to take up duties as a traveling tutor for the young Duke of Buccleuch and his brother. Carrying out this responsibility, he spent two years on the Continent. In Toulouse, he began writing his best-known work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. While in Paris, he met Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helv閠ius, Baron Paul d'Holbach, Fran鏾is Quesnay, A.R.J. Turgot, and Jacques Necker. These thinkers doubtless had some influence on him. His life abroad came to an abrupt end when one of his charges was killed.
Smith then settled in Kirkcaldy with his mother. He continued to work on The Wealth of Nations, which was finally published in 1776. His mother died at the age of 90, and Smith was grief-stricken. In 1778, he was made customs commissioner, and in 1784 he became a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Smith apparently spent some time in London, where he became a friend of Benjamin Franklin. On his deathbed he demanded that most of his manuscript writings be destroyed. He died on July 17, 1790.
The Wealth of Nations, easily the best known of Smith's writings, is a mixture of descriptions, historical accounts, and recommendations. The wealth of a nation, Smith insists, is to be gauged by the number and variety of consumable goods it can command. Free trade is essential for the maximum development of wealth for any nation because through such trade a variety of goods become possible.
Smith assumes that if each person pursues his own interest, as in a laissez-faire economy, the general welfare of all will be fostered. He objects to governmental control, although he acknowledges that some restrictions are required. The capitalist invariably produces and sells consumable goods in order to meet the greatest needs of the people. In fulfilling his own interest, the capitalist automatically promotes the general welfare. In the economic sphere, says Smith, the individual acts in terms of his own interest rather than in terms of sympathy. Thus, Smith made no attempt to bring into harmony his economic and moral theories, which he set out in The Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments, respectively.
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贞德 Joan of Arc 1412 -- 1431
Heroine, French resistance leader in the last phase of the Hundred Years War. The life of Joan of Arc must be considered against the background of the later stages of the Hundred Years War (1339-1453). The war, which had begun in 1339 and continued intermittently till the 1380s, had caused severe hardship in France. In 1392 the insanity of the French king, Charles VI, had provided the opportunity for two aristocratic factions to struggle for control of the King and kingdom. The leader of one of these, John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, finally assumed control, and both factions appealed for help to England. Henry V of England invaded France on the Burgundian side in 1415 and inflicted a shattering defeat upon the French at Agincourt in the same year. The English and Burgundians entered Paris in 1418, and the murder of John the Fearless in 1419 strengthened Burgundian hatred for the Armagnac faction.
In 1420 Charles VI, Henry V, and Philip the Good of Burgundy agreed to the Treaty of Troyes, according to which Henry was to act as regent for the mad Charles VI, marry Charles's daughter, and inherit the throne of France on Charles's death. The treaty thus disinherited Charles VI's son, the Dauphin Charles (later Charles VII). Charles VI also implied that the Dauphin was illegitimate. In 1422 both Henry V and Charles VI died, leaving Henry VI, the infant son of Henry, as king of both kingdoms. Henry VI, through his regent, the Duke of Bedford, ruled uncontested in Normandy and the Ile-deFrance. The Duke of Burgundy followed an independent policy in the territories he was assembling to the north and east of France. The Dauphin was reduced to holding the south of France, threatened with Anglo-Burgundian invasion, and taunted with the title “King of Bourges,” from which city he ineffectively ruled what was left of his kingdom. He was in perpetual fear that the key city of Orleans, the gateway to his lands, might be captured by the English. In the autumn of 1428 the English laid siege to Orleans. Charles, dominated by the infamous favorite Georges de la Tremoille, naturally apathetic, and lacking in men and money, could do nothing. By the spring of 1429 the city appeared about to fall and with it the hopes of Charles VII.
Joan was born (some sources say) January 6, 1412 to a peasant family in Domremy, a small town near Vaucouleurs, the last town in the east still loyal to Charles VII. “As long as I lived at home,” she said at her trial in 1431, “I worked at common tasks about the house, going but seldom afield with our sheep and other cattle. I learned to sew and spin: I fear no woman in Rouen at sewing and spinning.”
Some time in 1425 Joan began to have visions: “When I was thirteen, I had a voice from God to help me govern myself.” The voice was that of St. Michael, who, with St. Catherine and St. Margaret, “told me of the pitiful state of France, and told me that I must go to succor the King of France.” Joan twice went to Robert de Baudricourt, the captain of Vaucouleurs, asking for an escort to Charles VII at Chinon. The third time she was granted an escort, and she set out in February 1429, arriving 11 days later at Chinon. She was immediately examined for orthodoxy and two days later was allowed to see the King.
A contemporary described her: “This Maid ... has a virile bearing, speaks little, shows an admirable prudence in all her words. She has a pretty, woman's voice, eats little, drinks very little wine; she enjoys riding a horse and takes pleasure in fine arms, greatly likes the company of noble fighting men, detests numerous assemblies and meetings, readily sheds copious tears, has a cheerful face...” Joan appears to have been robust, with dark brown hair, and, as one historian succinctly remarked, “in the excitement which raised her up from earth to heaven, she retained her solid common sense and a clear sense of reality.” She was also persuasive. In April 1429 Charles VII sent her to Orleans as captain of a troop of men--not as leader of all his forces. With the Duke d'Alencon and Jean, the Bastard of Orleans (later Count of Dunois), Joan relieved the city, thus removing the greatest immediate threat to Charles and for the first time in his reign allowing him a military triumph.
Although Charles VII appears to have accepted Joan's mission梐fter having had her examined several times at Chinon and at the University of Poitiers梙is attitude toward her, on the whole, is ambiguous. He followed her pressing advice to use the respite provided by the relief of Orleans to proceed to his coronation at Reims, thereby becoming king in the eyes of all men. After a series of victorious battles and sieges on the way, Charles VII was crowned at Reims on July 18, 1429. Joan was at his side and occupied a prominent place in the ceremonies following the coronation. From the spring of 1429 to the spring of 1430, Charles and his advisers wavered on the course of the war. The choices were those of negotiation, particularly with the Duke of Burgundy, or taking the military offensive against English positions, particularly Paris. Joan favored the second course, but an attack upon Paris in September 1429 failed, and Charles VII entered into a treaty with Burgundy that committed him to virtual inaction. From September 1429 to the early months of 1430, Joan appears to have been kept inactive by the royal court, finally moving to the defense of the town of Compiegne in May 1430. During a skirmish outside the town's walls against the Burgundians, Joan was cut off and captured. She was a rich prize. The Burgundians turned Joan over to the English, who prepared to try her for heresy. Charles VII could do nothing.
Joan's trial was held in three parts. Technically it was an ecclesiastical trial for heresy, and Joan's judges were Pierre Cauchon, the bishop of Beauvais, and Jean Lemaitre, vicar of the inquisitor of France; both were aided by a large number of theologians and lawyers who sat as a kind of consulting and advising jury. From January to the end of March, the court investigated Joan's “case” and interrogated witnesses. The trial itself lasted from April to nearly the end of May and ended with Joan's abjuration. The trial was both an ecclesiastical one and a political one (because Joan was kept in an English prison rather than in that of the archbishop of Rouen and because the English continually intervened in the trial). Joan was charged with witchcraft and fraud, tested by being asked complicated theological questions, and finally condemned on the grounds of persisting in wearing male clothing, a technical offense against the authority of the Church. Joan's answers throughout the trial reveal her presence of mind, humility, wit, and good sense. Apparently Joan and her accusers differed about the nature of her abjuration, and two days after she signed it, she recanted. The third phase of her trial began on May 28. This time she was tried as a relapsed heretic, conviction of which meant “release” to the “secular arm”; that is, she would be turned over to the English to be burned. Joan was convicted of being a relapsed heretic, and she was burned at the stake in the marketplace of Rouen on May 30, 1431.
From 1450 to 1456, first under the impetus of Charles VII, then under that of Joan's mother, and finally under that of the Inquisition, a reinvestigation of Joan's trial and condemnation was undertaken by ecclesiastical lawyers. On July 7, 1456, the commission declared Joan's trial null and void, thereby freeing Joan from the taint of heresy. The Joan of Arc legend, however, did not gather momentum, and then only intermittently, until the 17th century. The 19th and 20th centuries were really, as a historian has called them, “the centuries of the Maid.” In spite of her legend, Joan was not canonized until May 16, 1920.
篇3：新GRE写作名人素材库
Churchill, Sir Winston (Leonard Spencer) 1874 -- 1965
British statesman, prime minister, and author. Born November 30, 1874, in Oxfordshire, England, the eldest son of Randolph Churchill. Winston Churchill is most notable for his parliamentary career, which spanned the reigns of six monarchs, from Queen Victoria to her great-great-granddaughter, Elizabeth II. His early military service included hand-to-hand combat in the Sudan, and he lived to see the use of atomic weapons as a means to end World War II. He was most familiar as a diplomat in his homburg hat and bowtie flashing the V-for-Victory sign with his index and middle fingers; but he was also a weekend artisan, building garden walls at his home at Chartwell, as well as an accomplished painter. His paintings were regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy, which held a one-man retrospective of his work in 1958.
One of the greatest orators of the twentieth century, Churchill used words and phrases條ike “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” or “the iron curtain” hat have assumed a permanent place in the English lexicon. An example of his wit is his frequently quoted retort to Lady Astor who had told him, “If I were to marry you, I'd feed you poison,” to which Churchill responded, “And if I were your husband, I'd take it.”
Churchill's military career began almost immediately upon his graduation with honors from Sandhurst, the West Point of Great Britain. In March 1895, he was appointed to the Fourth (Queen's Own) Hussars as a sub-lieutenant, assigned to duty at the Aldershop camp in Hampshire. After attachment as an “observer” to an anti-insurrectionary Spanish force in Cuba, he served in Bangalore, India. His next assignments included the Tirah Expeditionary Force in 1898 and the Nile Expeditionary Force, where he participated in the famous cavalry charge at Omdurman.
Churchill also saw battle as a journalist. In 1897, as a war correspondent for The London Daily Telegraph, he joined General Sir Benden Blood's expedition against the Pathams in the area of the Malakand Pass. In a similar capacity for The London Morning Post, he went to South Africa after the outbreak of the Boer War. There, on November 15, 1899, he was taken prisoner by Louis Botha, who later became the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa and a close friend of Sir Winston's.
Churchill followed his escape from Botha with a lecture tour of the United States, and thus helped finance the start of his political career. It began with an unsuccessful stand as a Conservative in a by-election in Oldham, Lancashire, in 1898; he ran again for the position, successfully, in 1900. Over the next three years, however, he found himself in disagreement with his party, particularly over the high tariff policy of Joseph Chamberlain. Therefore, in 1904 he “crossed the aisle” in the House of Commons and affiliated himself with the free-trade Liberals. Cabinet positions followed, first under-secretary for the colonies, then privy councillor. Upon the rise of Herbert Henry Asquith to prime minister in 1908, Churchill became president of the board of trade and home secretary. In these last two positions Churchill sponsored such progressive legislation as the establishment of the British Labor Exchanges, old age pensions, and health and unemployment insurance.
In 1911, Churchill became first lord of the admiralty, readying the British fleet for war with Germany. By the start of World War I in 1914, the Royal Navy was so well prepared, having changed over from coal to oil-fueled vessels, that it quickly confined the German fleet to its home ports. The Germans refrained from an all-out naval confrontation, relying instead upon the submarine. Churchill's other major accomplishment at this time was the establishment of the Royal Air Force, first called the Royal Flying Corps. But after encountering loud criticism for the British landings on Gallipoli (the Dardanelles campaign), which resulted in heavy casualties, Churchill was demoted. He resigned his office in 1916 to go to the front as a lieutenant-colonel in command of the Sixth Royal Fusiliers. Nevertheless, he was soon recalled by Prime Minister Lloyd George to become minister of munitions.
After World War I, Churchill introduced a number of military reforms as secretary of state for war and for air (1918-21). As secretary for the colonies (1921-22), he worked toward the establishment of new Arab states, toward a Jewish homeland in the Middle East, and toward an Irish free state. At this time, Churchill was growing increasingly anti-socialist, setting himself at odds with the pro-labor segment of the Liberal party. His use of British troops to suppress the Bolshevist regime in the Soviet Union lost him the favor of Lloyd George, who appointed Sir Robert Horne chancellor of the exchequer over Churchill. But in 1924, Churchill rejoined the Conservatives and was immediately named chancellor of the exchequer.
篇4：新GRE写作名人素材库
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1770 -- 1831
Idealist philosopher, born in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied theology at Tübingen, and in 1801 edited with Schelling the Kritische Journal der Philosophie (1802--3, Critical Journal of Philosophy), in which he outlined his system with its emphasis on reason rather than the Romantic intuitionism of Schelling, which he attacked in his first major work, Ph?nomenologie des Geistes (1807, The Phenomenology of the Mind). While headmaster of a Nuremberg school (1808--16) he wrote his Wissenschaft der Logik (1812--16, Science of Logic). He then published his Enzyklop?die der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1817, trans Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences), in which he set out his tripartite system of logic, philosophy of nature, and mind. He became professor in Heidelberg (1816) and Berlin (1818). His approach, influenced by Kant, rejects the reality of finite and separate objects and minds in space and time, and establishes an underlying, all embracing unity, the Absolute. The quest for greater unity and truth is achieved by the famous dialectic, positing something (thesis), denying it (antithesis), and combining the two half-truths in a synthesis which contains a greater portion of truth in its complexity. His works exerted considerable influence on subsequent European and American philosophy.
篇5：新GRE写作名人素材库
拿破仑 Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte) 1769 -- 1821
Emperor of France. Born Napoleon Buonaparte (the spelling change was made after 1796) on August 15, 1769, in the Corsican city of Ajaccio. He was the fourth of 11 children of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Romolino. His father derived from the lesser Corsican nobility. Following the annexation of Corsica by France in 1769, Carlo was granted the same rights and privileges as the French nobility. After an elementary education at a boys' school in Ajaccio, young Napoleon was sent in January 1779 with his older brother Joseph to the College of Autun in the duchy of Burgundy. In May of the same year he was transferred to the more fashionable College of Brienne, another military school, while his brother remained at Autun. Here Napoleon's small stature earned him the nickname of the “Little Corporal.”
At Brienne, Napoleon received an excellent military and academic education, and in October 1784 he earned an appointment to the ole Militaire of Paris. The royal military school of Paris was the finest in Europe in the years before the Revolution, and Napoleon entered the service of Louis XVI in 1785 with a formal education that had prepared him for his future role in French history. Napoleon joined an artillery unit at Valence, where he again received superior training.
First Military Assignments
Now a second lieutenant, Napoleon continued his education on his own, but he was distracted by Corsica. Until 1793 his thoughts, desires, and ambitions centered on the island of his birth. Following the death of his father, in 1786 he received an extended leave to return to Corsica to settle his family's affairs. After rejoining his regiment at Auxonne, he again spent more than a year on his native island (1789-1790), during which time he was influential in introducing the changes brought about by the Revolution. Returning to France, Napoleon was transferred to Valence in June 1791. But by October he had returned to Corsica, where he remained for seven months. He spent the critical summer of 1792 in Paris and then returned to Corsica for one last episode in October. On this visit he took part in the power struggle between the forces supporting Pasquale Paoli and those supported by the French Republic. After Paoli was victorious, Napoleon and the Bonaparte family were forced to flee to the mainland, and the young officer then turned his attention to a career in the French army.
The Revolution of 1789 did not have a major effect upon Bonaparte in its early years. He did not sympathize with the royalists. Nor did he take an active part in French politics, as his thoughts were still taken up with affairs in Corsica. Napoleon was in Paris when the monarchy was overthrown in August 1792, but no evidence indicates that he was a republican. Upon his return from Corsica in the spring of 1793, Capt. Bonaparte was given a command with the republican army that was attempting to regain control of southern France from the proroyalist forces. He took part in the siege of Avignon, and then while on his way to join the French Army of Italy Napoleon was offered command of the artillery besieging the port of Toulon.
National Acclaim
The siege of Toulon provided Napoleon with his first opportunity to display his ability as an artillery officer and brought him national recognition. France had gone to war with Prussia and Austria in 1792. England, having joined the struggle in 1793, had gained control of Toulon. After his distinguished part in dislodging the British, Napoleon was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. He also made the acquaintance of Augustin Robespierre, the younger brother of the powerful Maximilien, and though Napoleon was not politically a Jacobin, he derived benefits from his association with influential party members. The overthrow of the Jacobin regime on 9 Thermidor (July 1794) led to Napoleon's imprisonment in Fort Carr?on August 9. When no evidence could be found linking him to the British, Napoleon was released after 10 days of confinement.
Throughout the winter of 1794-1795 Napoleon was employed in the defense of the Mediterranean coast. Then, in April 1795, he was ordered to Paris, and in June he was assigned to the Army of the West. He refused this position, pleading poor health. This refusal almost brought an end to his military career, and he was assigned to the Bureau of Topography of the Committee of Public Safety. While serving in this capacity, he sought unsuccessfully to have himself transferred to Constantinople. Thus Napoleon was in Paris when the royalists attempted to overthrow the Directory on October 5, 1795.
Gen. Paul Barras had been placed in command of the defense of Paris by the government, and he called upon Gen. Bonaparte to defend the Tuileries. Napoleon put down the uprising of 13 Vendiaire by unhesitatingly turning his artillery on the attackers, dispersing the mob with what he called “a whiff of grapeshot.” In gratitude he was appointed commander of the Army of the Interior and instructed to disarm Paris.
篇6：新GRE写作名人素材库
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 1749 -- 1832
Poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist. Born in Frankfurt-on-Main, Germany on August 28, 1749. He was the eldest son of Johann Kaspar Goethe and Katharina Elisabeth Textor Goethe. His father was a lawyer of some eminence. At an early age the boy showed a persistent fondness for drawing and learned with surprising ease. In 1759 a French nobleman of aesthetic tastes came to stay with the Goethes, and a warm friendship developed between him and the future author. The friendship accelerated young Goethe's intellectual development.
Shortly after this, a French theater was founded at Frankfurt, and there Goethe became conversant with the plays of Racine; he also made some early attempts at original writing and began to learn Italian, Latin, Greek, English, and Hebrew.
He soon moved from his native town to Leipzig, where he entered the university, intending to become a lawyer. At Leipzig, Goethe showed little affection for the actual curriculum; instead he continued in essay writing and drawing and even took lessons in etching. He also found time for a love affair, but this was cut short in 1768 when he developed a serious illness. On his recovery he decided to leave Leipzig and go to Strasbourg.
There he became friendly with Jung-Stilling (see Johann Heinrich Jung), and his taste for letters was strengthened, Homer and Ossian being his favorites among the masters. Although he continued to appear indifferent to the study of law, he succeeded in becoming an advocate in 1771 and returned to Frankfurt.
Goethe had already written a quantity of verse and prose, and he began to write critiques for some of the newspapers in Frankfurt. At the same time he started writing Goetz von Berlichingen and Werther. These works were soon followed by Prometheus, and in 1774 the author began working on Faust.
The following year saw the production of some of Goethe's best love poems, written for Lilli Schemann, daughter of a Frankfurt banker. Nothing more than poetry, however, resulted from this new devotion. Scarcely had it come and gone before Goethe's whole life was changed, for his writings had become famous. As a result the young duke Carl August of Weimar, anxious for a trusty page, invited the rising author to his court. The invitation was accepted. Goethe became a member of the privy council; subsequently he was raised to the rank of Geheimrat (privy counselor) and then ennobled.
Goethe's life at Weimar was a very busy one. Trusted implicitly by the duke, he directed the construction of public roads and buildings, attended to military and academic affairs, and founded a court theater. As occupied as he was, he continued to write voluminously. Among the most important works he produced during his first years at the duke's court were Iphigenie and Wilhelm Meister.
In 1787 he had a lengthy stay in Italy, visiting Naples, Pompeii, Rome, and Milan. Returning to Weimar, he began writing Egmont. In 1795 he made the acquaintance of poet and dramatist Friedrich von Schiller, with whom he quickly became friendly and with whom he worked on the Horen, a journal designed to elevate the literary tastes of the masses.
About this period, too, Goethe wrote his play Hermann und Dorothea and also began translating Voltaire, Diderot, and Benvenuto Cellini.
The year 1806 was a significant one in Goethe's life, marked by his marriage and also by the entry of Napoleon into Weimar. The conquering general and the German poet found much in each other to admire, and Napoleon decorated Goethe with the cross of the Legion of Honour.
In 1811 Goethe wrote Dichtung und Wahrheit, Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre; in 1821 he began working at a second part of Faust. During this time he had two famous visitors--Beethoven from Vienna and Thackeray from London. Although the composer thought himself coldly received, the novelist spoke with enthusiasm of the welcome accorded him. Goethe was then well advanced in years, however, and his health was beginning to fail. He died March 22, 1832.
Few great writers--not even Disraeli or Sir Walter Scott--had fuller lives than Goethe. His love affairs were many, and his early taste for the graphic arts continued to the end of his days, resulting in a vast collection of treasures. He also expressed an interest in mysticism, which manifested itself in various forms besides the writing of Faust. With a temperament aspiring to the unattainable, Goethe's mind was essentially a speculative one. During his childhood at Frankfurt he did symbolic drawings of the soul's aspirations to the deity, and he later became immersed in the study of the Christian religion. Eventually he grew skeptical on this subject, his ideas being altered not only by his own ruminations but by reading various iconoclastic philosophers, especially Rousseau. Later his intellect was seemingly less engaged by Christianity than by ancient Eastern faiths, as demonstrated by some of his works, notably Westtliche Divan.
篇7：新GRE写作名人素材库
Archimedes c. 287BC -- 212BC
Greek mathematician, born in Syracuse. He probably visited Egypt and studied at Alexandria. In popular tradition he is remembered for the construction of siege-engines against the Romans, the Archimedes' screw still used for raising water, and his cry of eureka (“I have found it') when he discovered the principle of the upthrust on a floating body. His real importance in mathematics, however, lies in his discovery of formulae for the areas and volumes of spheres, cylinders, parabolas, and other plane and solid figures. He founded the science of hydrostatics, but his astronomical work is lost. He was killed at the siege of Syracuse by a Roman soldier whose challenge he ignored while immersed in a mathematical problem.
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Dante (Alighieri) 1265 -- 1321
The Italian poet Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy, the greatest poetic composition of the Christian Middle Ages and the first masterpiece of world literature written in a modern European vernacular.
Dante lived in a restless age of political conflict between popes and emperors and of strife within the Italian city-states, particularly Florence, which was torn between rival factions. Spiritually and culturally too, there were signs of change. With the diffusion of Aristotle's physical and metaphysical works, there came the need for harmonizing his philosophy with the truth of Christianity, and Dante's mind was attracted to philosophical speculation. In Italy, Giotto, who had freed himself from the Byzantine tradition, was reshaping the art of painting, while the Tuscan poets were beginning to experiment with new forms of expression. Dante may be considered the greatest and last medieval poet, at least in Italy, where barely a generation later the first humanists were to emerge.
Dante was born in Florence, the son of Bellincione d'Alighiero. His family descended, he tells us, from ”the noble seed“ of the Roman founders of Florence and was noble also by virtue of honors bestowed on it later. His great-grandfather Cacciaguida had been knighted by Emperor Conrad III and died about 1147 while fighting in the Second Crusade. As was usual for the minor nobility, Dante's family was Guelph, in opposition to the Ghibelline party of the feudal nobility which strove to dominate the communes under the protection of the emperor.
Although his family was reduced to modest circumstances, Dante was able to live as a gentleman and to pursue his studies. It is probable that he attended the Franciscan school of Sta Croce and the Dominican school of S. Maria Novella in Florence, where he gained the knowledge of Thomistic doctrine and of the mysticism that was to become the foundation of his philosophical culture. It is known from his own testimony that in order to perfect his literary style he also studied with Brunetto Latini, the Florentine poet and master of rhetoric. Perhaps encouraged by Brunetto in his pursuit of learning, Dante traveled to Bologna, where he probably attended the well-known schools of rhetoric.
A famous portrait of the young Dante done by Giotto hangs in the Palazzo del Podest?in Florence. We also have the following description of him left us by the author Giovanni Boccaccio: ”Our poet was of medium height, and his face was long and his nose aquiline and his jaws were big, and his lower lip stood out in such a way that it somewhat protruded beyond the upper one; his shoulders were somewhat curved, and his eyes large rather than small and of brown color, and his hair and beard were curled and black, and he was always melancholy and pensive." Dante does not write of his family or marriage, but before 1283 his father died, and soon afterward, in accordance with his father's previous arrangements, he married the gentlewoman Gemma di Manetto Donati. They had several children, of whom two sons, Jacopo and Pietro, and a daughter, Antonia, are known
