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  • Bertrand A. W. Russell
    05/07/2024 - Dr A. N. Sergis 0 Comments
    Bertrand A. W. Russell (1872-1970)

    Bertrand A. W. Russell (1872-1970), third Earl Russell, was a Welsh mathematician, logician, philosopher, pacifist and public intellectual. He made substantial contributions in mathematics, logic, set theory and various areas of analytic philosophy. Among his major works was a book he wrote with his former teacher, A. N. Whitehead, entitled Principia Mathematica. This book was a milestone in the development of classical logic and a major attempt to reduce the whole of mathematics to logic.

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  • Engraved copy of an oil painting of Cassini. The newly built Paris Observatory is depicted in the background.
    01/07/2024 - G. G. Pace 0 Comments
    The Contributions of Astronomer, Engineer and Mathematician, Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625-1712)7

    Cassini is one of the most important seventeenth century observational astronomers after Galileo and Kepler. He was born in Perinaldo, now a part of Italy, in 1625. Cassini’s fascination with astrology in his early years later developed into an interest in astronomy. He was employed by a wealthy marquis as an astronomer in Bologna. Here, he was able to use cutting-edge instruments to observe the skies. His work demonstrated his talents for precision and clarity which would later earn him positions in academia.

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  • Baruch Spinoza
    14/12/2023 - Dr A.N. Sergis and G. G. Pace 0 Comments
    Spinoza: An Overlooked Thinker

    Spinoza was born Baruch Spinoza in Amsterdam in 1632. His parents were of Spanish-Jewish decent and fled to Amsterdam to flee the Spanish Inquisition and became part of the Jewish community there. His father Michael was a merchant and was well-liked within the community. Hanna, Spinoza’s mother, would die in 1638, a little while before Spinoza was to turn six. Spinoza was influenced by Greek philosophy, including Platonism, stoicism and by Renaissance and enlightenment thinkers, including Maimonides, Machiavelli, Descartes, and Hobbes.

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  • Apollonius of Perga
    24/11/2023 - Dr A. N. Sergis 0 Comments
    Apollonius of Perga

    Apollonius of Perga was an ancient Greek mathematician and astronomer (c.240 BC- 190 BC) known for his work on solid geometry and mathematical theorems. Perga was a Hellenized city in Pamphylia, Anatolia (modern Turkey), whose ruins still stand, and was a centre of Hellenistic culture. Apollonius derived the four conic sections that modern mathematicians use: the circle, ellipse, parabola and hyperbola. He achieved this using the section obtained from a plane cutting through two inverted cones. Apollonius defined the definitions of the terms of ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola that we still use today, and he derived a number of other mathematical theorems on plane and solid geometry.

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  • Catherine the Great
    31/08/2023 - G. Pace 0 Comments
    Catherine the Great of Russia and Education Reform

    Catherine the Great is one of the most interesting female figures in history. She led an eventful but fruitful life, and she was a strong advocate for Enlightenment thinking. In this blog article, we take a look at her studious character and her influence on the educational reforms of Russia. During her unhappy marriage to Peter III, Catherine passed the time reading. She was particularly interested in works on political philosophy, literature, and history. She devoured the works of thinkers such as Plato and Voltaire, which Is how she became introduced to the French Enlightenment.

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  • 08/08/2023 - Dr A. N. Sergis 0 Comments
    Plato

    Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Athens during the classical period around 428 BC to 348 BC. Plato founded the Academy in Athens, a school of philosophy and research. His teachings and ideas would later become known as Platonism. Plato was a pen name, derived from a nickname given to him by his wrestling coach when he was a young man, which referred to his broad shoulders (as platon means flat in Greek). His actual name was Aristocles.

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  • 25/07/2023 - Dr A. N. Sergis 0 Comments
    Euclid of Alexandria

    Euclid was a Greek Mathematician, born around 300 BC, who taught at Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy I Soter, the Greek king who reigned over Egypt from 323 to 285 BC, after Alexander the Great founded the city named after him. Euclid was Ptolemy’s mathematics tutor, and after Ptolemy asked Euclid whether there was a shorter, easier method of learning geometry, Euclid was quoted as saying ‘oh king, there is no royal road to geometry’; meaning, if you truly wish to learn any subject well, you should study the whole principles of the subject!

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  • Plato's Academy
    18/07/2023 - G. G Pace 0 Comments
    Plato’s Academy

    Founded in 387 BC by Greek philosopher Plato, the Academy was situated just outside the city of Athens, outside of the city walls. Before the actual building was built, intellectual gatherings were held in a garden area surrounded by sculptures, olive trees and lined with temples. This area was often used for recreation and group meetings and activities. When Plato bought the land, he began to hold casual meetings with other thinkers long before the Academy building itself was ever built. Considered the first ever university in the world, it was not exactly like a school or university today as it was not as structured, but its attendees could discuss many subjects including philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, politics, and physics.

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  • 21/06/2023 - Dr A. N Sergis 0 Comments
    Pappus of Alexandria

    Pappus of Alexandria (c290-c350 AD) was one of the last great Greek mathematicians of antiquity. Pappus was the most important mathematical author writing in Greek during the later Roman Empire and is well known for his compendium of mathematics in eight volumes, the bulk of which survives. It covers a wide range of topics, including geometry, recreational mathematics, doubling the cube, areas and volumes of solids, projective geometry and polyhedra. This great voluminous collection is known as the synagogue (“collection” in Greek). 

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  • 06/01/2023 - G.G Pace 0 Comments
    Owls in the Ancient World

    Ever wondered why we picked an owl to be our mascot? Well, in the ancient Greek world, owls were a symbol of wisdom. The owl became the favoured animal of Athena, goddess of wisdom and became her symbol. Athena’s ‘little owl’ symbol was often used to protect finance and is often represented on coinage.

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  • Aristarchus of Samos
    22/12/2022 - Dr A. N. Sergis 0 Comments
    Aristarchus of Samos

    Aristarchus of Samos (310BC-230BC) was a Greek astronomer who maintained that the Earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun. Aristarchus’s work on the motion of the Earth has not survived but his ideas are known from references by the Greek mathematician Archimedes, the Greek biographer Plutarch, and the Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus. Archimedes said in his Sand-Reckoner that Aristarchus had proposed a new theory which, if true, would make the universe vastly larger than was believed (this is because a moving Earth should produce a parallex, or annual shift, in the apparent positions of the fixed stars, unless the stars are very far away indeed).

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  • Marguerite de Navarre 1492-1549
    16/09/2022 - G. G Pace 0 Comments
    Marguerite de Navarre 1492-1549

    In this blog, we take a look at the life and works of another queen, this time from across the pond in France. Marguerite de Navarre was born on 11th April 1492 to learned parents, who were known to keep large libraries. Although from a privileged background, Marguerite did much for the poor and underprivileged as well as being a religious mediator and later, a respected Renaissance writer and philosopher. Her work, Heptameron, a collection of short stories written in 1558, being the most memorable of her works.

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  • 26/08/2022 - Dr A. N. Sergis 0 Comments
    Hypatia

    Hypatia, born around 355 AD in Alexandria, Egypt, and died in March 415 AD, was a Greek mathematician, astronomer and philosopher who lived in a very turbulent era in Alexandria’s history. She is the earliest female mathematician of whose life and work is known in reasonable detail. Hypatia was the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, himself a mathematician and astronomer and the last attested member of the Alexandrian Museum, which was a great library, teaching and research centre, rather like a modern university. Theon is best remembered for the part he played in the preservation of Euclid’s ‘Elements’, but he also wrote extensively and commented on Ptolemy’s great astronomical work, ‘Almagest’ and ‘Handy Astronomical Tables’.

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  • Aristotle
    10/08/2022 - Dr A. N. Sergis 0 Comments
    Aristotle

    Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist, born 384 BC in Stagira in a Northern Greek province of Macedonia, and died alone in 322 BC in Chalkis, in the Greek island of Euboea. He is now regarded as the Father of Modern Science and the Scientific Method, Logic and Biology. He was 62 when he died and at the height of his powers: a scholar whose scientific explorations were as wide ranging as his philosophical speculations were profound; he was a teacher who enchanted and inspired the brightest youth of Greece; a public figure who lived a turbulent life in a turbulent world.

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  • Elizabeth I in Parliment Robes
    02/08/2022 - G.G Pace 0 Comments
    Elizabeth I and her Illustrious Education

    Elizabeth I is often thought of as one of the greatest monarchs in British history and she  demonstrated considerable show of strength and courage that would guide her through the darkest periods of her reign. Perhaps much of the success of her reign was also due in part to her great intelligence and education that was luckily offered to her from a young age.

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  • 11/03/2022 - G.G Pace 0 Comments
    What can we learn from the animal kingdom?

    I have recently come across this great and inspiring article and have noted down some of the traits I believe that are important and that we can really learn from. I thought this would be great to share with our readers.

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  • 20/12/2021 0 Comments
    Democritus: The Laughing Philosopher

    As the philosopher Nietzsche famously said: “He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and ran and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying”. This is certainly true when it comes to humanity’s understanding of the universe, something which has evolved over more than 2000 years and is the subject of ongoing discovery.

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  • Mary McLeod Bethune
    05/05/2021 - G.G. Pace 0 Comments
    Mary McLeod Bethune 1875-1955

    An extraordinary and influential figure in the fight for the education and rights of black Americans.

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  • 16/04/2021 - Dr A N Sergis 0 Comments
    Pythagoras

    Pythagoras of Samos left his native Aegean island in about 530BC and settled in the Greek colonial city of Croton, on the southern coast of modern Italy. Although the date of his birth is not certain, he was probably by that time about forty years old and a widely experienced, charismatic figure.

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  • 17/12/2020 - G.G Pace 0 Comments
    Perestroika and the Soviet Education- ‘the winds of change’

    The president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, when addressing the audience at a speech in Leningrad in May 1985, was the first man to openly criticise the poor economic situation in Russia. Later in February 1986, he was to make another speech to the Communist Party Congress, stressing again and elaborating on the need for political and economic reform. He called it a restructuring orperestroika. He was also to push for greater openness and transparency or glasnost.

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Dr. Andrew N. Sergis, BSc(Hons), PhD, CSci, CChem, MRSC, Cert. Ed(FE), ATP

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— Dr. A. N. Sergis

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