title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The first Indian Institute of Technology was founded in May 1950 at the site of the Hijli Detention Camp in Kharagpur, West Bengal. The name "Indian Institute of Technology" was adopted before the formal inauguration of the institute on 18 August 1951 by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. On 15 September 1956, the Parliament of India passed the "Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur) Act", declaring it as an Institute of National Importance. Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, in the first convocation address of IIT Kharagpur in 1956, said:


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: On the recommendations of the Sarkar Committee, four campuses were established at Bombay (1958), Madras (1959), Kanpur (1959), and Delhi (1961). The location of these campuses was chosen to be scattered throughout India to prevent regional imbalance. The "Indian Institutes of Technology Act" was amended to reflect the addition of new IITs. Student agitations in the state of Assam made Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi promise the creation of a new IIT in Assam. This led to the establishment of a sixth institution at Guwahati under the Assam Accord in 1994. In 2001, the University of Roorkee was converted into IIT Roorkee.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: Over the past few years, there have been several developments toward establishing new IITs. On 1 October 2003, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced plans to create more IITs "by upgrading existing academic institutions that have the necessary promise and potential". Subsequent developments led to the formation of the S K Joshi Committee, in November 2003, to guide the selection of the five institutions which would be converted into IITs. Based on the initial recommendations of the Sarkar Committee, it was decided that new IITs should be spread throughout the country. When the government expressed its willingness to correct this regional imbalance, 16 states demanded IITs. Since the S K Joshi Committee prescribed strict guidelines for institutions aspiring to be IITs, only seven colleges were selected for final consideration. Plans are also reported to open IITs outside India, although there has not been much progress in this regard. Eventually in the 11th Five year plan, eight states were identified for establishment of new IITs.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: From 2008 to 2009, eight new IITs were set up in Gandhinagar, Jodhpur, Hyderabad, Indore, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Ropar, and Mandi. Following a similar selection process since 1972, in 2012 the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University was made a member of the IITs and renamed as IIT (BHU) Varanasi.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: In 2015 to 2016, six new IITs in Tirupati, Palakkad, Dharwad, Bhilai, Goa, and Jammu, approved through a 2016 bill amendment, were founded, along with the conversion of Indian School of Mines Dhanbad into IIT (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The entire allocation by the central government for 2017-18 budget for all Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) was slightly over . However, the aggregate money spent by Indian students for tertiary education in the United States was about six times more than what the central government spends on all IITs.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The President of India is the ex officio Visitor, and has residual powers. Directly under the President is the IIT Council, comprising minister-in-charge of technical education in the Union Government, the Chairmen of all IITs, the Directors of all IITs, the Chairman of the University Grants Commission, the Director General of CSIR, the Chairman of IISc, the Director of IISc, three members of Parliament, the Joint Council Secretary of Ministry of Education, and three appointees each of the Union Government, AICTE, and the Visitor.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: Under the IIT Council is the "Board of Governors" of each IIT. Under the Board of Governors is the "Director", who is the chief academic and executive officer of the IIT. Under the Director, in the organisational structure, comes the "Deputy Director". Under the Director and the Deputy Director, come the Deans, Heads of Departments, Registrar, President of the Students' Council, and Chairman of the Hall Management Committee. The "Registrar" is the chief administrative officer of the IIT and overviews the day-to-day operations. Below the Heads of Department (HOD) are the faculty members (Professors, Associate Professors, and Assistant Professors). The "Wardens" come under the Chairman of the Hall Management Committee.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The Institute of Technology act (parliamentary legislation) gives legal status, including degree granting powers, to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). It was notified in the gazette as Act number 59 of 1961 on 20 December 1961 and came into effect on 1 April 1962. The Act also declares these institutes as Institutes of National Importance.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The IITs receive comparatively higher grants than other engineering colleges in India. While the total government funding to most other engineering colleges is around 100–200 million ($– million) per year, the amount varies between 900–1300 million ($– million) per year for each IIT. Other sources of funds include student fees and research funding from industry and contributions from the alumni. The faculty-to-student ratio in the IITs is between 1:6 and 1:8. The Standing Committee of IIT Council (SCIC) prescribes the lower limit for faculty-to-student ratio as 1:9, applied department wise. The IITs subsidize undergraduate student fees by approximately 80% and provide scholarships to all "Master of Technology" students and "Research Scholars (PhD)" in order to encourage students for higher studies, per the recommendations of the Thacker Committee (1959–1961). The cost borne by undergraduate students is around per year. Students from the OBC, ST, SC categories, female students as well as physically challenged students are also entitled to scholarships.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The various IITs function autonomously, and their special status as "Institutes of National Importance" facilitates the smooth running of IITs, virtually free from both regional as well as student politics. Such autonomy means that IITs can create their own curricula and adapt rapidly to the changes in educational requirements, free from bureaucratic hurdles. The government has no direct control over internal policy decisions of IITs (like faculty recruitment and curricula) but has representation on the "IIT Council". The medium of instruction in all IITs is English. The electronic libraries allow students to access on-line journals and periodicals. The IITs and IISc, Bengaluru have taken an initiative along with Ministry of Education to provide free online videos of actual lectures of different disciplines under National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning. This initiative is undertaken to make quality education accessible to all students.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The academic policies of each IIT are decided by its "Senate". This comprises all professors of the IIT and student representatives. Unlike many western universities that have an elected senate, the IITs have an academic senate. It controls and approves the curriculum, courses, examinations and results, and appoints committees to look into specific academic matters. The teaching, training and research activities of the institute are periodically reviewed by the senate to maintain educational standards. The "Director" of an IIT is the ex-officio Chairman of the Senate.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: All the IITs follow the credits system of performance evaluation, with proportional weighting of courses based on their importance. The total marks (usually out of 100) form the basis of grades, with a grade value (out of 10) assigned to a range of marks. Sometimes, relative grading is done considering the overall performance of the whole class. For each semester, the students are graded on a scale of 0 to 10 based on their performance, by taking a weighted average of the grade points from all the courses, with their respective credit points. Each semester evaluation is done independently and then the weighted average over all semesters is used to calculate the cumulative Grade Point Average (known as CGPA or CPI—Cumulative Performance Index).


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The Bachelor of Technology (BTech) degree is the most common undergraduate degree in the IITs in terms of student enrollment, although dual degrees integrating Master of Science or Master of Arts are also offered. The BTech course is based on a 4-year program with eight semesters, while the Dual Degree and Integrated courses are 5-year programs with ten semesters. In all IITs, the first year of BTech and Dual Degree courses are marked by a common course structure for all the students, though in some IITs, a single department introduction related course is also included. The common courses include the basics from most of the departments like Computers, Electronics, Mechanics, Chemistry, Electrical and Physics. At the end of first year (the end of first semester at IIT Madras, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Bhilai, IIT Palakkad, and IIT Roorkee), an option to change departments is given to meritorious students on the basis of their performance in the first two semesters. Few such changes ultimately take place as the criteria for them are usually strict, limited to the most meritorious students.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: From the second year onward, the students study subjects exclusively from their respective departments. In addition to these, the students have to take compulsory advanced courses from other departments in order to broaden their education. Separate compulsory courses from humanities and social sciences department, and sometimes management courses are also enforced. In the last year of their studies, most of the students are placed into industries and organisations via the placement process of the respective IIT, though some students opt out of this either when going for higher studies or when they take up jobs by applying to the companies directly.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The IITs offer a number of postgraduate programs including Master of Technology (MTech), Master of Business Administration (MBA), and Master of Science (MSc). Some IITs offer specialised graduate programmes such as Master of Design (M.Des.), the Post Graduate Diploma in Information Technology (PGDIT), Masters in Medical Science and Technology (MMST), Masters in City Planning (MCP), Master of Arts (MA), Postgraduate Diploma in intellectual property Law (PGDIPL), and the Postgraduate Diploma in Maritime Operation & Management (PGDMOM).


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: Some of the IITs offer an M.S. (by research) program; the MTech and M.S. are similar to the US universities' non-thesis (course based) and thesis (research based) masters programs respectively. Admissions to masters programs in engineering are made using scores of the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), while those to masters programs in science are made using scores of the Joint Admission Test for M.Sc. (JAM).


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: Several IITs have schools of management offering master's degrees in management or business administration.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: In April 2015, IIT Bombay launched the first U.S.-India joint EMBA program alongside Washington University in St. Louis.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The IITs also offer an unconventional BTech and MTech integrated educational program called "Dual Degree". It integrates undergraduate and postgraduate studies in selected areas of specialisation. It is completed in five years as against six years in conventional BTech (four years) followed by an MTech (two years). Integrated Master of Science programs are also offered at few IITs which integrates the Undergraduate and Postgraduate studies in Science streams in a single degree program against the conventional university system. These programs were started to allow its graduates to complete postgraduate studies from IIT rather than having to go to another institute.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The IITs also offer the Doctor of Philosophy degree (PhD) as part of their doctoral education programme. In it, the candidates are given a topic of academic interest by the ins or have to work on a consultancy project given by the industries. The duration of the program is usually unspecified and depends on the specific discipline. PhD candidates have to submit a dissertation as well as provide an oral defence for their thesis. Teaching Assistantships (TA) and Research Assistantships (RA) are often provided.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The IITs, along with NITs and IISc, account for nearly 80% of all engineering PhDs in India. IITs now allow admission in PhD programs without the mandatory GATE score.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: All the IITs provide on-campus residential facilities to the students, research scholars and faculty. The students live in hostels (sometimes referred to as "halls") throughout their stay in the IIT. Students in all IITs must choose among National Cadet Corps (NCC), National Service Scheme (NSS) and National Sports Organisation (NSO) in their first years. All the IITs have sports grounds for basketball, cricket, football (soccer), hockey, volleyball, lawn tennis, badminton, athletics and swimming pools for aquatic events. Usually the hostels also have their own sports grounds.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: Moreover, an Inter IIT Sports Meet is organised annually where participants from all 23 IITs contest for the General Championship Trophy in 13 different sports.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: All IITs organize annual technical festivals, typically lasting three or four days. The technical festivals are Shaastra (IIT Madras), Kshitij (IIT Kharagpur), Techfest (IIT Bombay), Technex (IIT-BHU Varanasi), Cognizance (IIT Roorkee), Concetto (IIT-ISM Dhanbad), Nvision (IIT Hyderabad), Meraz (IIT Bhilai), Amalthea, (IIT Gandhinagar), Techkriti (IIT Kanpur), Tryst (IIT Delhi), Techniche (IIT Guwahati), Wissenaire (IIT Bhubaneswar), Technunctus (IIT Jammu), Exodia (IIT Mandi), Fluxus (IIT Indore), Celesta (IIT Patna) and IGNUS (IIT Jodhpur). Most of them are organized in the months of January or March. Techfest (IIT Bombay) is also one of the most popular and largest technical festivals in Asia in terms of participants and prize money involved. It has been granted patronage from United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) for providing a platform for students to showcase their talent in science and technology. Shaastra holds the distinction of being the first student-managed event in the world to implement a formal Quality Management System, earning certification. Kshitij, which is branded as a techno-management festival due to its emphasis on both technology and management, is the largest of these festivals by sponsorship money.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: Annual cultural festivals are also organized by the IITs and last three to four days. These include Thomso (IIT Roorkee), Kashiyatra (IIT BHU Varanasi), Alcheringa (IIT Guwahati), Exodia (IIT Mandi), Saarang (IIT Madras, previously Mardi Gras), Spring Fest (IIT Kharagpur, also known as SF), Rendezvous (IIT Delhi), Meraz (IIT Bhilai), Tirutsava (IIT Tirupati), Srijan, (earlier known as Saturnalia, IIT Dhanbad), Tarang (culfest) (previously Rave), Anwesha (IIT Patna), SPANDAN (IIT Jodhpur), Renao (IIT Jammu), Petrichor (IIT Palakkad), Blithchron (IIT Gandhinagar), ELAN (IIT Hyderabad), Alma Fiesta (IIT Bhubaneswar), Mood Indigo (IIT Bombay, also known as Mood-I), Antaragni (IIT Kanpur) and Zeitgeist (IIT Ropar).


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: IITs have generally ranked above other all other engineering colleges in India for Engineering. According to "Outlook India" Top Engineering Colleges of 2017, the top four engineering colleges within India were IITs. In the 2019 QS World University Ranking, IIT Bombay ranked highest at 162, followed by IIT Delhi (172), IIT Madras (264), IIT Kanpur (283), IIT Kharagpur (295), IIT Roorkee (381) and IIT Guwahati (472). In the 2022 NIRF rankings published by Ministry of Education, India, IIT Madras has been ranked 1st for seven consecutive years in the Engineering Category and for four consecutive years in the Overall Category.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The IITs have faced criticism from within and outside academia. Major concerns include allegations that they encourage brain drain and that their stringent entrance examinations encourage coaching colleges and put heavy pressure on the student's body. Recently some prominent IITians have also questioned the quality of teaching and research in IITs.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: With the tripling the number of IITs in recent decades, the newly created institutes have struggled to establish themselves compared to their peers. A 2021 report by Comptroller and Auditor General of India criticized the newer IITs for not meeting targets for research, faculty and student recruitment, students retention, as well as for being beset with infrastructure delays.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: Among the criticisms of the IIT system by the media and academia, a common notion is that it encourages brain drain. This trend has been reversed somewhat (dubbed the reverse brain drain) as hundreds of IIT graduates, who have pursued further studies in the US, started returning to India in the 1990s. Additionally, IIT alumni are giving back generously to their parent institutions. Until liberalisation started in the early 1990s, India experienced large scale emigration of IIT graduates to developed countries, especially to the United States. Since 1953, nearly twenty-five thousand IIT graduates have settled in the US. Since the US benefited from subsidized education in IITs at the cost of Indian taxpayers' money, critics say that subsidising education in IITs is useless. Others support the emigration of graduates, arguing that the capital sent home by the IIT graduates has been a major source of the expansion of foreign exchange reserves for India, which, until the 1990s, had a substantial trade deficit.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The extent of intellectual loss receded substantially over the 1990s and 2000s, with the percentage of students going abroad dropping from as high as 70% at one time to around 30% in 2005. This is largely attributed to the liberalization of the Indian economy and the opening of previously closed markets. Government initiatives are encouraging IIT students into entrepreneurship programs and are increasing foreign investment. Emerging scientific and manufacturing industries, and outsourcing of technical jobs from North America and Western Europe have created opportunities for aspiring graduates in India. Many undergraduates go abroad to pursue further studies, such as MS, MBA, and PhD.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: The highly competitive examination in the form of IIT-JEE has led to the establishment of a large number of coaching institutes throughout the country that provide intensive, and specific preparation for the IIT-JEE for substantial fees. It is argued that this favours students from specific regions and richer backgrounds. Some coaching institutes say that they have individually coached nearly 800 successful candidates year after year. According to some estimates, nearly 95% of all students who clear the IIT-JEE had joined coaching classes. Indeed, this was the case regarding preparation for IIT entrance exams even decades ago. In a January 2010 lecture at the Indian Institute of Science, the 2009 Nobel laureate in Chemistry, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan revealed that he failed to get a seat at any of the Indian engineering and medical colleges. He also said that his parents, being old-fashioned, did not believe in coaching classes to prepare for the IIT entrance exam and considered them to be "nonsense".


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: In a documentary aired by CBS, Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems states, "The IITs probably are the hardest schools in the world to get into, to the best of my knowledge". The documentary further concludes, "Put Harvard, MIT, and Princeton together, and you begin to get an idea of the status of IIT in India" to depict the competition as well as demand for the elite institutes.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: Not all children are of a similar aptitude level and may be skilled in different paradigms and fields. This has led to criticism of the way the examinations are conducted and the way a student is forced in the Indian community. The IIT-JEE format was restructured in 2006 following these complaints.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: After the change to the objective pattern of questioning, even the students who initially considered themselves not fit for subjective pattern of IIT-JEE decided to take the examination. Though the restructuring was meant to reduce the dependence of students on coaching classes, it led to an increase in students registering for coaching classes. Some people (mostly IIT graduates) have criticized the changed pattern of the IIT-JEE. Their reasoning is that while IIT-JEE traditionally used to test students understanding of fundamentals and ability to apply them to solve tough unseen problems, the current pattern does not stress much on the application part and might lead to a reduced quality of students.


title: Indian Institutes of Technology

text: IIT-JEE is conducted only in English and Hindi, making it harder for students with regional languages as their main language. In September 2011, the Gujarat High Court has acted on a Public Interest Litigation by the Gujarati Sahitya Parishad, for conducting the exams in Gujarati. A second petition was made in October by Navsari's Sayaji Vaibhav Sarvajanik Pustakalaya Trust. Another petition was made at the Madras High Court for conducting the exam in Tamil. In the petition it was claimed that not conducting the exam in the regional languages is in violation of article 14 of the Constitution of India. IIT council recommended major changes in entrance examination structure which is effective from 2017 onwards.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Brian Edward Cox (born 3 March 1968) is an English physicist and former musician who is a professor of particle physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester and The Royal Society Professor for Public Engagement in Science. He is best known to the public as the presenter of science programmes, especially the "Wonders of..." series and for popular science books, such as "Why Does E=mc²?" and "The Quantum Universe".


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Cox has been described as the natural successor for the BBC's scientific programming by both David Attenborough and Patrick Moore. Before his academic career, Cox was a keyboard player for the British bands D:Ream and Dare.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Cox was born on 3 March 1968 in the Royal Oldham Hospital, later living in nearby Chadderton from 1971. He has a younger sister. His parents worked for Yorkshire Bank, his mother as a cashier and his father as a middle-manager in the same branch. He recalls a happy childhood in Oldham that included pursuits such as dance, gymnastics, and plane and bus spotting. He attended the private Hulme Grammar School in Oldham from 1979 to 1986.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: He has stated in many interviews and in an episode of "Wonders of the Universe" that when he was 12, the book "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan was a key factor in inspiring him to become a physicist. He said on "The Jonathan Ross Show" that he performed poorly on his maths A-level exam: "I got a D ... I was really not very good ... I found out you need to practise."


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: In the 1980s and early 1990s, Cox was a keyboard player with the rock band Dare. Dare released two albums with Cox – "Out of the Silence" in 1988 and "Blood from Stone" in 1991. He subsequently joined dance act D:Ream, a group that had several hits in the UK charts, including the number one "", later used as a New Labour election anthem, although he did not play on the track. In 2015, he appeared as a guest keyboardist during a live performance of the song "Your Silent Face" by New Order. Cox wrote the foreword of the official Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) biography, "Pretending to See the Future" (2018), having been an "obsessive" fan of the band in his youth. He said of their songs, "They shaped my character and inspired me to make music."


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Cox studied physics at the University of Manchester during his music career. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree with first-class honours. After D:Ream disbanded in 1997, he completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree in high-energy particle physics at the University of Manchester. His thesis, "Double Diffraction Dissociation at Large Momentum Transfer", was supervised by Robin Marshall and based on research he did on the H1 experiment at the Hadron Elektron Ring Anlage (HERA) particle accelerator at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg, Germany.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Cox is a particle physicist at the University of Manchester. He worked on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. He previously held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and a Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) advanced research fellowship.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Cox has co-written several books on physics including "Why does E=mc?" and "The Quantum Universe", both with Jeff Forshaw. He has supervised or co-supervised several PhD students to completion including Tamsin Edwards.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Cox has appeared in many science programmes for BBC radio and television, including "In Einstein's Shadow," the BBC "Horizon" series, ("The Six Billion Dollar Experiment", "What on Earth is Wrong with Gravity?", "Do You Know What Time It Is?", and "Can we Make a Star on Earth?") and as a voice-over for the BBC's "Bitesize" revision programmes. He presented the five-part BBC Two television series "Wonders of the Solar System" in early 2010 and a follow up four-part series, "Wonders of the Universe", which began on 6 March 2011. "Wonders of Life", which he describes as "a physicist's take on life/natural history", was broadcast in 2013. He co-presents "Space Hoppers" and has also featured in "Dani's House" on CBBC.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Cox also presented a three-part BBC series called "Science Britannica" which sees him explore the contribution of British scientists over the last 350 years, as well as the relationship between British science and the public perception thereof.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: BBC Two commissioned Cox to copresent "Stargazing Live", a three-day live astronomy series in January 2011 – co-presented with physicist-turned-comedian Dara Ó Briain and featuring chat show host Jonathan Ross – linked to events across the United Kingdom. A second and a third series featuring a variety of guests ran in January 2012 and January 2013.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Since November 2009 Cox has co-presented a BBC Radio 4 "comedy science magazine programme", "The Infinite Monkey Cage" with comedian Robin Ince. Guests have included comedians Tim Minchin, Alexei Sayle, Dara Ó Briain, and scientists including Alice Roberts of the BBC show "The Incredible Human Journey", and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Cox also appeared in Ince's "Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People". He was a regular contributor to the BBC 6 Music Breakfast Show (and the Afternoon Show since 2019) with Shaun Keaveny, with a weekly feature, and an annual Christmas special with Keaveny and Brian Eno. He appeared on 24 July 2009 episode of Robert Llewellyn's "CarPool" podcast series.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Cox has also appeared numerous times at TED, giving talks on the LHC and particle physics. In 2009 he appeared in "People" magazine's Sexiest Men Alive. In 2010 he was featured in "The Case for Mars" by Symphony of Science. In November 2010 he made a promotional appearance in the Covent Garden Apple Store, talking about his new e-book set to accompany his new television series as well as answering audience questions.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Cox gave the Royal Television Society's 2010 Huw Wheldon Memorial Lecture on "Science, a Challenge to TV Orthodoxy", in which he examined problems in media coverage of science and news about science. It was subsequently broadcast on BBC Two. On 4 March, a talk entitled "Frankenstein's Science" at the National Theatre featured Cox in discussion with biographer Richard Holmes on Mary Shelley's exploration of humanity's desire to bring life to an inanimate object and whether the notion is possible, in both the 19th century and today.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: On 6 March 2011, Cox appeared as a guest at Patrick Moore's 700th episode anniversary of "The Sky at Night". He has said that he is a lifelong fan of the programme, and that it helped inspire him to become a physicist. On 10 March 2011, he gave the Ninth Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Cox was the science advisor for the science fiction film "Sunshine". On the DVD release, he provides an audio commentary where he discusses scientific accuracies (and inaccuracies) depicted in the film. He also was featured on the Discovery Channel special "Megaworld: Switzerland". In 2013, he presented another series of "Wonders of Life".


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: On 14 November 2013, BBC Two broadcast "The Science of Doctor Who" in celebration of "Doctor Who"s 50th anniversary, in which Cox tackles the mysteries of time travel. The lecture was recorded at the Royal Institution Faraday Lecture Theatre. The BBC subsequently broadcast "Human Universe" and "Forces of Nature" also presented by Cox.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: A longtime fan of the Monty Python comedy troupe, in July 2014 Cox appeared on stage on the final night of their 10-date live show, "Monty Python Live (Mostly)". He also appears on the documentary telefilm "".


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: In 2017, Cox appeared in the children's television programme "Postman Pat", voicing space expert Professor Ryan Farrow.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Cox has received many awards for his efforts to publicise science. In 2002 he was elected an International Fellow of The Explorers Club and in 2006 he received the British Association's Lord Kelvin Award for this work. He held a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship (an early-career Research Fellowship scheme) from 2006 to 2013. A frequent lecturer, he was keynote speaker at the Australian Science Festival in 2006, and in 2010 won the Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal and Prize for his work in communicating the appeal and excitement of physics to the general public.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours for services to science and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to the promotion of science.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: On 15 March 2011, he won Best Presenter and Best Science/Natural History programme by the Royal Television Society for "Wonders of the Universe". On 25 March 2011, he won twice at the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards for 'Best Performer' in a non-acting role, while "Wonders of the Solar System" was named best documentary series of 2010.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: In July 2012, Cox was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Huddersfield, presented by Sir Patrick Stewart. Later that year, he was awarded the Institute of Physics President's medal by Sir Peter Knight, following which he gave a speech on the value of education in science and the need to invest more in future generations of scientists. On 5 October 2012 Cox was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Open University for his "Exceptional contribution to Education and Culture". In 2012 he also was awarded the Michael Faraday Prize of the Royal Society "for his excellent work in science communication." He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Cox has voiced his concerns about Brexit saying he feels it is a "weakening of our interaction with our neighbouring countries" and that "it cannot be the right trajectory." On 23 June 2018, the People's Vote march was held in London to mark the second anniversary of the referendum to leave the European Union. Cox tweeted that, "if [a people's vote were] held on known exit terms and leave commanded majority, I'd back it as settled, informed decision. That's my argument for having one." Cox has called for the term "the British people" to be banned from political discourse, calling it "inflammatory and divisive".


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: In 2003, Cox married U.S. science presenter Gia Milinovich in Duluth, Minnesota. They have a son born in 2009, and Milinovich has a son from a previous relationship. The family currently lives in Battersea.


title: Brian Cox (physicist)

text: Cox has rejected the label atheist and has stated he has "no personal faith". In 2009, he contributed to the charity book "The Atheist's Guide to Christmas". He is a humanist, and is a Distinguished Supporter of Humanists UK. In June 2019, Cox explained that he cannot be sure there is no God and that science cannot answer every question.


title: Judith Barsi

text: Judith Eva Barsi (June 6, 1978 – July 25, 1988) was an American child actress. She began her career in television, making appearances in commercials and television series, as well as the 1987 film "". She also provided the voices of Ducky in "The Land Before Time" and Anne-Marie in "All Dogs Go to Heaven". She and her mother, Maria, were killed in July 1988 in a double murder–suicide committed in their home by her father, József Barsi.


title: Judith Barsi

text: Barsi was born in Los Angeles County, California, on June 6, 1978, the daughter of József Istvan Barsi and Maria Barsi (née Virovacz), both immigrants to the U.S. who fled the Hungarian People's Republic following the 1956 uprising. The two immigrated at different times and met at a restaurant in California, where Maria worked as a waitress. Both had been previously married.


title: Judith Barsi

text: Maria Barsi began preparing her daughter to become an actress when Judith was five. Barsi's first role was in "Fatal Vision", playing Kimberley MacDonald. She went on to appear in more than seventy commercials and guest roles on television. As well as her career in television, she appeared in several films, including "", and provided the voices of Ducky in "The Land Before Time", and Anne-Marie in "All Dogs Go to Heaven".


title: Judith Barsi

text: By the time she started fourth grade, Barsi was earning an estimated $100,000 per year (), which helped her family buy a three-bedroom house in West Hills, Los Angeles. As she was short for her age—she stood at age 10—she began receiving hormone injections at UCLA to encourage her growth. Her petiteness led casting directors to cast her as children that were younger than her actual age. Her agent Ruth Hansen was quoted in the "Los Angeles Times" as saying that when she was ten, "she was still playing 7, 8."


title: Judith Barsi

text: As Barsi's career success increased, her father József, an alcoholic, became increasingly angry and would routinely threaten to kill himself, his wife and daughter. His drinking led to three arrests for drunk driving. In December 1986, Maria reported his threats and physical violence toward her to the police. After the police found no physical signs of abuse, she decided not to press charges against him.


title: Judith Barsi

text: After the incident with the police, József reportedly stopped drinking, but continued to threaten Maria and Judith. His various threats included cutting their throats as well as burning down the house. He also reportedly hid a telegram informing Maria that a relative in Hungary had died, in an attempt to prevent her from leaving the United States with Judith. The physical violence continued, with Barsi telling a friend that her father threw pots and pans at her, resulting in a nosebleed. As a result of her abuse, Barsi began gaining weight and developed compulsive behaviors, such as plucking out her eyelashes, and pulling out her cat's whiskers (see trichotillomania). In May 1988, after breaking down in front of her agent, Ruth Hansen, Barsi was taken by Maria to a child psychologist, who identified severe physical and emotional abuse and reported her findings to child protective services.


title: Judith Barsi

text: The investigation was dropped after Maria assured the case worker that she intended to begin divorce proceedings against József and that she and Judith were going to move into a Panorama City apartment she had recently rented as a daytime haven from him. Maria's friends urged her to follow through with the plan, but she hesitated due to her fear of losing the family home and belongings.


title: Judith Barsi

text: On July 28, 1988, the "Los Angeles Times" reported that three people were found dead in an apparent murder–suicide and that the bodies were believed to be those of Barsi, her mother Maria, and her father József. The article quoted Police Lt. Warren Knowles as saying a flammable liquid, likely gasoline, had been poured on the bodies of Maria and Judith by József. József's body was found in the garage, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Neighbor Eunice Daly stated she heard a gunshot around 8:30a.m. on July 27, prompting her to call the police. Barsi and her mother were buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in adjoining plots.


title: Judith Barsi

text: Barsi's final film, "All Dogs Go to Heaven", in which she provided the speaking voice of Anne-Marie, was released posthumously in November 1989. In an interview, Don Bluth, the director of both "The Land Before Time" and "All Dogs Go To Heaven", praised her as being "absolutely astonishing. She understood verbal direction, even for the most sophisticated situations". Bluth stated he intended to feature her extensively in his future productions. The closing credits song "Love Survives" was dedicated in her memory.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Alexander I (; – ) was Emperor of Russia from 1801, the first King of Congress Poland from 1815, and the Grand Duke of Finland from 1809 to his death. He was the eldest son of Emperor Paul I and Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: The son of Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later Paul I, Alexander succeeded to the throne after his father was murdered. He ruled Russia during the chaotic period of the Napoleonic Wars. As prince and during the early years of his reign, Alexander often used liberal rhetoric, but continued Russia's absolutist policies in practice. In the first years of his reign, he initiated some minor social reforms and (in 1803–04) major liberal educational reforms, such as building more universities. Alexander appointed Mikhail Speransky, the son of a village priest, as one of his closest advisors. The Collegia were abolished and replaced by the State Council, which was created to improve legislation. Plans were also made to set up a parliament and sign a constitution.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: In foreign policy, he changed Russia's position towards France four times between 1804 and 1812 among neutrality, opposition, and alliance. In 1805 he joined Britain in the War of the Third Coalition against Napoleon, but after suffering massive defeats at the battles of Austerlitz and Friedland, he switched sides and formed an alliance with Napoleon by the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and joined Napoleon's Continental System. He fought a small-scale naval war against Britain between 1807 and 1812 as well as a short war against Sweden (1808–09) after Sweden's refusal to join the Continental System. Alexander and Napoleon hardly agreed, especially regarding Poland, and the alliance collapsed by 1810. Alexander's greatest triumph came in 1812 when Napoleon's invasion of Russia proved to be a catastrophic disaster for the French. As part of the winning coalition against Napoleon, he gained territory in Finland and Poland. He formed the Holy Alliance to suppress revolutionary movements in Europe which he saw as immoral threats to legitimate Christian monarchs. He also helped Austria's Klemens von Metternich in suppressing all national and liberal movements.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: During the second half of his reign, Alexander became increasingly arbitrary, reactionary, and fearful of plots against him; as a result he ended many of the reforms he made earlier. He purged schools of foreign teachers, as education became more religiously driven as well as politically conservative. Speransky was replaced as advisor with the strict artillery inspector Aleksey Arakcheyev, who oversaw the creation of military settlements. Alexander died of typhus in December 1825 while on a trip to southern Russia. He left no legitimate children, as his two daughters died in childhood. Neither of his brothers wanted to become emperor. After a period of great confusion (that presaged the failed Decembrist revolt of liberal army officers in the weeks after his death), he was succeeded by his younger brother, Nicholas I.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Alexander was born at 10:45, on 23 December 1777 in Saint Petersburg, and he and his younger brother Constantine were raised by their grandmother, Catherine. He was baptized on 31 December in Grand Church of the Winter Palace by mitred archpriest Ioann Ioannovich Panfilov (confessor of Empress Catherine II), his godmother was Catherine the Great and his godfathers were Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor and Frederick the Great. He was named after Saint Petersburg patron saint - Alexander Nevsky. Some sources allege that she planned to remove her son (Alexander's father) Paul I from the succession altogether. From the free-thinking atmosphere of the court of Catherine and his Swiss tutor, Frédéric-César de La Harpe, he imbibed the principles of Rousseau's gospel of humanity. But from his military governor, Nikolay Saltykov, he imbibed the traditions of Russian autocracy. Andrey Afanasyevich Samborsky, whom his grandmother chose for his religious instruction, was an atypical, unbearded Orthodox priest. Samborsky had long lived in England and taught Alexander (and Constantine) excellent English, very uncommon for potential Russian autocrats at the time.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: On 9 October 1793, when Alexander was still 15 years old, he married 14-year-old Princess Louise of Baden, who took the name Elizabeth Alexeievna. His grandmother was the one who presided over his marriage to the young princess. Until his grandmother's death, he was constantly walking the line of allegiance between his grandmother and his father. His steward Nikolai Saltykov helped him navigate the political landscape, engendering dislike for his grandmother and dread in dealing with his father.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Catherine had the Alexander Palace built for the couple. This did nothing to help his relationship with her, as Catherine would go out of her way to amuse them with dancing and parties, which annoyed his wife. Living at the palace also put pressure on him to perform as a husband, though he felt only a brother's love for the Grand Duchess. He began to sympathize more with his father, as he saw visiting his father's fiefdom at Gatchina as a relief from the ostentatious court of the empress. There, they wore simple Prussian military uniforms, instead of the gaudy clothing popular at the French court they had to wear when visiting Catherine. Even so, visiting the tsarevich did not come without a bit of travail. Paul liked to have his guests perform military drills, which he also pushed upon his sons Alexander and Constantine. He was also prone to fits of temper, and he often went into fits of rage when events did not go his way.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Catherine's death in November 1796, before she could appoint Alexander as her successor, brought his father, Paul, to the throne. Alexander disliked him as emperor even more than he did his grandmother. He wrote that Russia had become a "plaything for the insane" and that "absolute power disrupts everything". It is likely that seeing two previous rulers abuse their autocratic powers in such a way pushed him to be one of the more progressive Romanov tsars of the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the rest of the country, Paul was widely unpopular. He accused his wife of conspiring to become another Catherine and seize power from him as his mother did from his father. He also suspected Alexander of conspiring against him, despite his son's earlier refusal to seize power from Paul.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Alexander became Emperor of Russia when his father was assassinated 23 March 1801. Alexander, then 23 years old, was in the palace at the moment of the assassination and his accession to the throne was announced by General Nicholas Zubov, one of the assassins. Historians still debate Alexander's role in his father's murder. The most common theory is that he was let into the conspirators' secret and was willing to take the throne but insisted that his father should not be killed. Becoming emperor through a crime that cost his father's life would give Alexander a strong sense of remorse and shame.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Alexander I succeeded to the throne on 23 March 1801 and was crowned in the Kremlin on 15 September of that year.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: The Orthodox Church initially exercised little influence on Alexander's life. The young emperor was determined to reform the inefficient, highly centralised systems of government that Russia relied upon. While retaining for a time the old ministers, one of the first acts of his reign was to appoint the Private Committee, comprising young and enthusiastic friends of his own—Viktor Kochubey, Nikolay Novosiltsev, Pavel Stroganov and Adam Jerzy Czartoryski—to draw up a plan of domestic reform, which was supposed to result in the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in accordance with the teachings of the Age of Enlightenment.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: A few years into his reign the liberal Mikhail Speransky became one of the emperor's closest advisors, and he drew up many plans for elaborate reforms. In the Government reform of Alexander I the old Collegia were abolished and new Ministries were created in their place, led by ministers responsible to the Crown. A Council of Ministers under the chairmanship of the Sovereign dealt with all interdepartmental matters. The State Council was created to improve the technique of legislation. It was intended to become the Second Chamber of representative legislature. The Governing Senate was reorganized as the Supreme Court of the Empire. The codification of the laws initiated in 1801 was never carried out during his reign.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Alexander wanted to resolve another crucial issue in Russia, the status of the serfs, although this was not achieved until 1861 (during the reign of his nephew Alexander II). His advisors quietly discussed the options at length. Cautiously, he extended the right to own land to most classes of subjects, including state-owned peasants, in 1801 and created a new social category of "free agriculturalist," for peasants voluntarily emancipated by their masters, in 1803. The great majority of serfs were not affected.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: When Alexander's reign began, there were three universities in Russia, at Moscow, Vilna (Vilnius), and Dorpat (Tartu). These were strengthened, and three others were founded at St. Petersburg, Kharkiv, and Kazan. Literary and scientific bodies were established or encouraged, and his reign became noted for the aid lent to the sciences and arts by the Emperor and the wealthy nobility. Alexander later expelled foreign scholars.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: After 1815 the military settlements (farms worked by soldiers and their families under military control) were introduced, with the idea of making the army, or part of it, self-supporting economically and for providing it with recruits.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Called an autocrat and "Jacobin", a man of the world and a mystic, Alexander appeared to his contemporaries as a riddle which each read according to his own temperament. Napoleon Bonaparte thought him a "shifty Byzantine", and called him the Talma of the North, as ready to play any conspicuous part. To Metternich he was a madman to be humoured. Castlereagh, writing of him to Lord Liverpool, gave him credit for "grand qualities", but added that he is "suspicious and undecided"; and to Jefferson he was a man of estimable character, disposed to do good, and expected to diffuse through the mass of the Russian people "a sense of their natural rights". In 1803, Beethoven dedicated his Opus 30 Violin Sonatas to Alexander who in response gave him a diamond at the Congress of Vienna where they met in 1814.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Upon his accession, Alexander reversed many of the unpopular policies of his father, Paul, denounced the League of Armed Neutrality, and made peace with Britain (April 1801). At the same time he opened negotiations with Francis II of the Holy Roman Empire. Soon afterwards at Memel he entered into a close alliance with Prussia, not as he boasted from motives of policy, but in the spirit of true chivalry, out of friendship for the young King Frederick William III and his beautiful wife Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: The development of this alliance was interrupted by the short-lived peace of October 1801, and for a while it seemed as though France and Russia might come to an understanding. Carried away by the enthusiasm of Frédéric-César de La Harpe, who had returned to Russia from Paris, Alexander began openly to proclaim his admiration for French institutions and for the person of Napoleon Bonaparte. Soon, however, came a change. La Harpe, after a new visit to Paris, presented to Alexander his "Reflections on the True Nature of the Consul for Life", which, as Alexander said, tore the veil from his eyes and revealed Bonaparte "as not a true patriot", but only as "the most famous tyrant the world has produced". Later on, La Harpe and his friend Henri Monod lobbied Alexander, who persuaded the other Allied powers opposing Napoleon to recognise Vaudois and Argovian independence, in spite of Bern's attempts to reclaim them as "subject lands". Alexander's disillusionment was completed by the execution of the duc d'Enghien on trumped up charges. The Russian court went into mourning for the last member of the House of Condé, and diplomatic relations with France were broken off. Alexander was especially alarmed and decided he had to somehow curb Napoleon's power.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: In opposing Napoleon I, "the oppressor of Europe and the disturber of the world's peace," Alexander in fact already believed himself to be fulfilling a divine mission. In his instructions to Niklolay Novosiltsov, his special envoy in London, the emperor elaborated the motives of his policy in language that appealed little to the prime minister, William Pitt the Younger. Yet the document is of great interest, as it formulates for the first time in an official dispatch the ideals of international policy that were to play a conspicuous part in world affairs at the close of the revolutionary epoch. Alexander argued that the outcome of the war was not only to be the liberation of France, but the universal triumph of "the sacred rights of humanity". To attain this it would be necessary "after having attached the nations to their government by making these incapable of acting save in the greatest interests of their subjects, to fix the relations of the states amongst each other on more precise rules, and such as it is to their interest to respect".


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: A general treaty was to become the main basis of the relations of the states forming "the European Confederation". While he believed the effort would not attain universal peace, it would be worthwhile if it established clear principles for the prescriptions of the rights of nations. The body would assure "the positive rights of nations" and "the privilege of neutrality," while asserting the obligation to exhaust all resources of mediation to retain peace, and would form "a new code of the law of nations".


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Meanwhile, Napoleon, a little deterred by the Russian autocrat's youthful ideology, never gave up hope of detaching him from the coalition. He had no sooner entered Vienna in triumph than he opened negotiations with Alexander; he resumed them after the Battle of Austerlitz (2 December). Russia and France, he urged, were "geographical allies"; there was, and could be, between them no true conflict of interests; together they might rule the world. But Alexander was still determined "to persist in the system of disinterestedness in respect of all the states of Europe which he had thus far followed", and he again allied himself with the Kingdom of Prussia. The campaign of Jena and the battle of Eylau followed; and Napoleon, though still intent on the Russian alliance, stirred up Poles, Turks and Persians to break the obstinacy of the Tsar. A party too in Russia itself, headed by the Tsar's brother Constantine Pavlovich, was clamorous for peace; but Alexander, after a vain attempt to form a new coalition, summoned the Russian nation to a holy war against Napoleon as the enemy of the Orthodox faith. The outcome was the rout of Friedland (13/14 June 1807). Napoleon saw his chance and seized it. Instead of making heavy terms, he offered to the chastened autocrat his alliance, and a partnership in his glory.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: The two Emperors met at Tilsit on 25 June 1807. Napoleon knew well how to appeal to the exuberant imagination of his new-found friend. He would divide with Alexander the Empire of the world; as a first step he would leave him in possession of the Danubian principalities and give him a free hand to deal with Finland; and, afterwards, the Emperors of the East and West, when the time should be ripe, would drive the Turks from Europe and march across Asia to the conquest of India, a realization of which was finally achieved by the British a few years later, and would change the course of modern history. Nevertheless, a thought awoke in Alexander's impressionable mind an ambition to which he had hitherto been a stranger. The interests of Europe as a whole were utterly forgotten.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: The brilliance of these new visions did not, however, blind Alexander to the obligations of friendship, and he refused to retain the Danubian principalities as the price for suffering a further dismemberment of Prussia. "We have made loyal war", he said, "we must make a loyal peace". It was not long before the first enthusiasm of Tilsit began to wane. The French remained in Prussia, the Russians on the Danube, and each accused the other of breach of faith. Meanwhile, however, the personal relations of Alexander and Napoleon were of the most cordial character, and it was hoped that a fresh meeting might adjust all differences between them. The meeting took place at Erfurt in October 1808 and resulted in a treaty that defined the common policy of the two Emperors. But Alexander's relations with Napoleon nonetheless suffered a change. He realised that in Napoleon sentiment never got the better of reason, that as a matter of fact he had never intended his proposed "grand enterprise" seriously, and had only used it to preoccupy the mind of the Tsar while he consolidated his own power in Central Europe. From this moment the French alliance was for Alexander also not a fraternal agreement to rule the world, but an affair of pure policy. He used it initially to remove "the geographical enemy" from the gates of Saint Petersburg by wresting Finland from Sweden (1809), and he hoped further to make the Danube the southern frontier of Russia.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Events were rapidly heading towards the rupture of the Franco-Russian alliance. While Alexander assisted Napoleon in the war of 1809, he declared plainly that he would not allow the Austrian Empire to be crushed out of existence. Napoleon subsequently complained bitterly of the inactivity of the Russian troops during the campaign. The tsar in turn protested against Napoleon's encouragement of the Poles. In the matter of the French alliance he knew himself to be practically isolated in Russia, and he declared that he could not sacrifice the interest of his people and empire to his affection for Napoleon. "I don't want anything for myself", he said to the French ambassador, "therefore the world is not large enough to come to an understanding on the affairs of Poland, if it is a question of its restoration".


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Alexander complained that the Treaty of Vienna, which added largely to the Duchy of Warsaw, had "ill requited him for his loyalty", and he was only mollified for the time being by Napoleon's public declaration that he had no intention of restoring Poland, and by a convention, signed on 4 January 1810, but not ratified, abolishing the Polish name and orders of chivalry.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: But if Alexander suspected Napoleon's intentions, Napoleon was no less suspicious of Alexander. Partly to test his sincerity, Napoleon sent an almost peremptory request for the hand of the grand-duchess Anna Pavlovna, the tsar's youngest sister. After some little delay Alexander returned a polite refusal, pleading the princess's tender age and the objection of the dowager empress to the marriage. Napoleon's answer was to refuse to ratify the 4 January convention, and to announce his engagement to the archduchess Marie Louise in such a way as to lead Alexander to suppose that the two marriage treaties had been negotiated simultaneously. From this time on, the relationship between the two emperors gradually became more and more strained.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Another personal grievance for Alexander towards Napoleon was the annexation of Oldenburg by France in December 1810, as the Duke of Oldenburg (3 January 17542 July 1823) was the uncle of the tsar. Furthermore, the disastrous impact of the Continental System on Russian trade made it impossible for the emperor to maintain a policy that was Napoleon's chief motive for the alliance.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Alexander kept Russia as neutral as possible in the ongoing French war with Britain. He did, however, allow trade to continue secretly with Britain and did not enforce the blockade required by the Continental System. In 1810, he withdrew Russia from the Continental System and trade between Britain and Russia grew.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Relations between France and Russia worsened progressively after 1810. By 1811, it became clear that Napoleon was not adhering to his side of the terms of the Treaty of Tilsit. He had promised assistance to Russia in its war against the Ottoman Empire, but as the campaign went on, France offered no support at all.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: With war imminent between France and Russia, Alexander started to prepare the ground diplomatically. In April 1812, Russia and Sweden signed an agreement for mutual defence. A month later, Alexander secured his southern flank through the Treaty of Bucharest (1812), which ended the war against the Ottomans formally. His diplomats managed to extract promises from Prussia and Austria that should Napoleon invade Russia, the former would help Napoleon as little as possible and that the latter would give no aid at all.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: The minister of war, Barclay de Tolly, had managed the reform and improvement of the Russian land forces before the start of the 1812 campaign. Primarily on the advice of his sister and Count Aleksey Arakcheyev, Alexander did not take operational control as he had done during the 1805 campaign, instead delegating control to his generals, Michael Barclay de Tolly, Prince Pyotr Bagration and Mikhail Kutuzov.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Despite brief hostilities in the Persian Expedition of 1796, eight years of peace passed before a new conflict erupted between the two empires. After the Russian annexation of Georgia in 1801, a subject of Persia for centuries, and the incorporation of the Derbent khanate as well quickly thereafter, Alexander was determined to increase and maintain Russian influence in the strategically valuable Caucasus region. In 1801, Alexander appointed Pavel Tsitsianov, a die-hard Russian imperialist of Georgian origin, as Russian commander in chief of the Caucasus. Between 1802 and 1804 he proceeded to impose Russian rule on Western Georgia and some of the Persian controlled khanates around Georgia. Some of these khanates submitted without a fight, but the Ganja Khanate resisted, prompting an attack. Ganja was ruthlessly sacked during the siege of Ganja, with some 3,000


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: On 23 May 1804, Persia demanded withdrawal from the regions Russia had occupied, comprising what is now Georgia, Dagestan, and parts of Azerbaijan. Russia refused, stormed Ganja, and declared war. Following an almost ten-year stalemate centred around what is now Dagestan, east Georgia, Azerbaijan, northern Armenia, with neither party being able to gain the clear upper hand, Russia eventually managed to turn the tide. After a series of successful offensives led by General Pyotr Kotlyarevsky, including a decisive victory in the storming of Lankaran, Persia was forced to sue for peace. In October 1813, the Treaty of Gulistan, negotiated with British mediation and signed at Gulistan, made the Persian Shah Fath Ali Shah cede all Persian territories in the North Caucasus and most of its territories in the South Caucasus to Russia. This included what is now Dagestan, Georgia, and most of Azerbaijan. It also began a large demographic shift in the Caucasus, as many Muslim families emigrated to Persia


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: In the summer of 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia. It was the occupation of Moscow and the desecration of the Kremlin, considered to be the sacred centre of Holy Russia, that changed Alexander's sentiment for Napoleon into passionate hatred. The campaign of 1812 was the turning point for Alexander's life; after the burning of Moscow, he declared that his own soul had found illumination, and that he had realized once and for all the divine revelation to him of his mission as the peacemaker of Europe.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: While the Russian army retreated deep into Russia for almost three months, the nobility pressured Alexander to relieve the commander of the Russian army, Field Marshal Barclay de Tolly. Alexander complied and appointed Prince Mikhail Kutuzov to take over command of the army. On 7 September, the Grande Armée faced the Russian army at a small village called Borodino, west of Moscow. The battle that followed was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars, involving more than 250,000 soldiers and resulting in 70,000 casualties. The outcome of the battle was inconclusive. The Russian army, undefeated in spite of heavy losses, was able to withdraw the following day, leaving the French without the decisive victory Napoleon sought.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: A week later Napoleon entered Moscow, but there was no delegation to meet the Emperor. The Russians had evacuated the city, and the city's governor, Count Fyodor Rostopchin, ordered several strategic points in Moscow to be set ablaze. The loss of Moscow did not compel Alexander to sue for peace. After staying in the city for a month, Napoleon moved his army out southwest toward Kaluga, where Kutuzov was encamped with the Russian army. The French advance toward Kaluga was checked by the Russian army, and Napoleon was forced to retreat to the areas already devastated by the invasion. In the weeks that followed the starved and suffered from the onset of the Russian Winter. Lack of food and fodder for the horses and persistent attacks upon isolated troops from Russian peasants and Cossacks led to great losses. When the remnants of the French army eventually crossed the Berezina River in November, only 27,000 soldiers remained; the had lost some 380,000 men dead and 100,000 captured. Following the crossing of the Berezina, Napoleon left the army and returned to Paris to protect his position as Emperor and to raise more forces to resist the advancing Russians. The campaign ended on 14 December 1812, with the last French troops finally leaving Russian soil.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: The campaign was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon's reputation was severely shaken, and French hegemony in Europe was weakened. The , made up of French and allied forces, was reduced to a fraction of its initial strength. These events triggered a major shift in European politics. France's ally Prussia, soon followed by Austria, broke their imposed alliance with Napoleon and switched sides, triggering the War of the Sixth Coalition.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: With the Russian army following up victory over Napoleon in 1812, the Sixth Coalition was formed with Russia, Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Sweden, Spain, and other nations. Although the French were victorious in the initial battles during the campaign in Germany, they were eventually defeated at the Battle of Leipzig in the autumn of 1813, which proved to be a decisive victory. Following the battle, the Pro-French Confederation of the Rhine collapsed, thereby losing Napoleon's hold on territory east of the Rhine. Alexander, being the supreme commander of the Coalition forces in the theatre and the paramount monarch among the three main Coalition monarchs, ordered all Coalition forces in Germany to cross the Rhine and invade France.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: The Coalition forces, divided into three groups, entered northeastern France in January 1814. Facing them in the theatre were the French forces numbering only about 70,000 men. In spite of being heavily outnumbered, Napoleon defeated the divided Coalition forces in the battles at Brienne and La Rothière, but could not stop the Coalition's advance. Austrian emperor Francis I and King Frederick William III of Prussia felt demoralized upon hearing about Napoleon's victories since the start of the campaign. They even considered ordering a general retreat. But Alexander was far more determined than ever to victoriously enter Paris whatever the cost, imposing his will upon Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg, and the wavering monarchs. On 28 March, Coalition forces advanced towards Paris, and the city surrendered on 31 March. Until this battle it had been nearly 400 years since a foreign army had entered Paris, during the Hundred Years' War.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Camping outside the city on 29 March, the Coalition armies were to assault the city from its northern and eastern sides the next morning on 30 March. The battle started that same morning with intense artillery bombardment from the Coalition positions. Early in the morning the Coalition attack began when the Russians attacked and drove back the French skirmishers near Belleville before being driven back themselves by French cavalry from the city's eastern suburbs. By 7:00 a.m. the Russians attacked the Young Guard near Romainville in the centre of the French lines and after some time and hard fighting, pushed them back. A few hours later the Prussians, under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, attacked north of the city and carried the French position around Aubervilliers, but did not press their attack. The Württemberg troops seized the positions at Saint-Maur to the southwest, with Austrian troops in support. The Russian forces then assailed the heights of Montmartre in the city's northeast. Control of the heights was severely contested, until the French forces surrendered.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Alexander sent an envoy to meet with the French to hasten the surrender. He offered generous terms to the French and although having intended to avenge Moscow, he declared himself to be bringing peace to France rather than its destruction. On 31 March Talleyrand gave the key of the city to the tsar. Later that day the Coalition armies triumphantly entered the city with Alexander at the head of the army followed by the King of Prussia and Prince Schwarzenberg. On 2 April, the Senate passed the "Acte de déchéance de l'Empereur", which declared Napoleon deposed. Napoleon was in Fontainebleau when he heard that Paris had surrendered. Outraged, he wanted to march on the capital, but his marshals refused to fight for him and repeatedly urged him to surrender. He abdicated in favour of his son on 4 April, but the Allies rejected this out of hand, forcing Napoleon to abdicate unconditionally on 6 April. The terms of his abdication, which included his exile to the Isle of Elba, were settled in the Treaty of Fontainebleau on 11 April. A reluctant Napoleon ratified it two days later, marking the end of the War of the Sixth Coalition.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Alexander tried to calm the unrest of his conscience by correspondence with the leaders of the evangelical revival on the continent, and sought for omens and supernatural guidance in texts and passages of scripture. It was not, however, according to his own account, until he met the Baroness de Krüdener—a religious adventuress who made the conversion of princes her special mission—at Basel, in the autumn of 1813, that his soul found peace. From this time a mystic pietism became the avowed force of his political, as of his private actions. Madame de Krüdener, and her colleague, the evangelist Henri-Louis Empaytaz, became the confidants of the emperor's most secret thoughts; and during the campaign that ended in the occupation of Paris the imperial prayer-meetings were the oracle on whose revelations hung the fate of the world.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Such was Alexander's mood when the downfall of Napoleon left him one of the most powerful sovereigns in Europe. With the memory of the treaty of Tilsit still fresh in men's minds, it was not unnatural that to cynical men of the world like Klemens Wenzel von Metternich he merely seemed to be disguising "under the language of evangelical abnegation" vast and perilous schemes of ambition. The puzzled powers were, in fact, the more inclined to be suspicious in view of other, and seemingly inconsistent, tendencies of the emperor, which yet seemed all to point to a like disquieting conclusion. For Madame de Krüdener was not the only influence behind the throne; and, though Alexander had declared war against the Revolution, La Harpe (his erstwhile tutor) was once more at his elbow, and the catchwords of the gospel of humanity were still on his lips. The very proclamations which denounced Napoleon as "the genius of evil", denounced him in the name of "liberty," and of "enlightenment". Conservatives suspected Alexander of a monstrous intrigue by which the eastern autocrat would ally with the Jacobinism of all Europe, aiming at an all-powerful Russia in place of an all-powerful France. At the Congress of Vienna Alexander's attitude accentuated this distrust. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, whose single-minded aim was the restoration of "a just equilibrium" in Europe, reproached the Tsar to his face for a "conscience" which led him to imperil the concert of the powers by keeping his hold on Poland in violation of his treaty obligation.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Once a supporter of limited liberalism, as seen in his approval of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland in 1815, from the end of the year 1818 Alexander's views began to change. A revolutionary conspiracy among the officers of the guard, and a plot to kidnap him on his way to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, are said to have shaken his liberal beliefs. At Aix he came for the first time into intimate contact with Metternich. From this time dates the ascendancy of Metternich over the mind of the Russian Emperor and in the councils of Europe. It was, however, no case of sudden conversion. Though alarmed by the revolutionary agitation in Germany, which culminated in the murder of his agent, the dramatist August von Kotzebue (23 March 1819), Alexander approved of Castlereagh's protest against Metternich's policy of "the governments contracting an alliance against the peoples", as formulated in the Carlsbad Decrees of July 1819, and deprecated any intervention of Europe to support "a league of which the sole object is the absurd pretensions of "absolute power".


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: He still declared his belief in "free institutions, though not in such as age forced from feebleness, nor contracts ordered by popular leaders from their sovereigns, nor constitutions granted in difficult circumstances to tide over a crisis." "Liberty", he maintained, "should be confined within just limits. And the limits of liberty are the principles of order".


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: It was the apparent triumph of the principles of disorder in the revolutions of Naples and Piedmont, combined with increasingly disquieting symptoms of discontent in France, Germany, and among his own people, that completed Alexander's conversion. In the seclusion of the little town of Troppau, where in October 1820 the powers met in conference, Metternich found an opportunity for cementing his influence over Alexander, which had been wanting amid the turmoil and intrigues of Vienna and Aix. Here, in confidence begotten of friendly chats over afternoon tea, the disillusioned autocrat confessed his mistake. "You have nothing to regret," he said sadly to the exultant chancellor, "but I have!".


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: The issue was momentous. In January Alexander had still upheld the ideal of a free confederation of the European states, symbolised by the Holy Alliance, against the policy of a dictatorship of the great powers, symbolised by the Quadruple Treaty; he had still protested against the claims of collective Europe to interfere in the internal concerns of the sovereign states. On 19 November he signed the Troppau Protocol, which consecrated the principle of intervention and wrecked the harmony of the concert.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: At the Congress of Laibach, which had been adjourned in the spring of 1821, Alexander received news of the Greek revolt against the Ottoman Empire. From this time until his death, Alexander's mind was conflicted between his dreams of a stable confederation of Europe and his traditional mission as leader of the Orthodox crusade against the Ottomans. At first, under the careful advice of Metternich, Alexander chose the former.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Siding against the Greek revolt for the sake of stability in the region, Alexander expelled its leader Alexander Ypsilantis from the Russian Imperial Cavalry, and directed his foreign minister, Ioannis Kapodistrias (known as Giovanni, Count Capo d'Istria), himself a Greek, to disavow any Russian sympathy with Ypsilantis; and in 1822, he issued orders to turn back a deputation from the Greek Morea province to the Congress of Verona on the road.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: He made some effort to reconcile the principles at conflict in his mind. The Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II had been excluded from the Holy Alliance under the principle that the affairs of the East were the "domestic concerns of Russia" rather than of the concert of Europe; but Alexander now offered to surrender this claim and act "as the mandatory of Europe," as Austria had acted in Naples, but still to march as a Christian liberator into the Ottoman Empire.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Metternich's opposition to this assertion of Russian power, putting the Austrian-led balance of power above the interests of Christendom, first opened Alexander's eyes to the true character of Austria's attitude towards his ideals. Once more in Russia, far from the fascination of Metternich's personality, he was once again moved by the aspirations of his people.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: In 1823 the 1817–1824 cholera pandemic reached Astrakhan and the Tsar ordered an anti-cholera campaign that was imitated in other countries.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: On 9 October 1793, Alexander married Louise of Baden, known as Elizabeth Alexeievna after her conversion to the Orthodox Church. He later told his friend Frederick William III that the marriage, a political match devised by his grandmother, Catherine the Great, regrettably proved to be a misfortune for him and his spouse. Their two children died young, though their common sorrow drew the spouses closer together. Towards the end of Alexander's life their reconciliation was completed by the wise charity of the Empress in sympathising deeply with him over the death of his beloved daughter Sophia Naryshkina, the daughter of his mistress Maria Naryshkina, with whom he had a relationship from 1799 until 1818. In 1809, Alexander I was widely and famously rumoured to have had an affair with the Finnish noblewoman Ulla Möllersvärd and to have had a child by her, but this is not confirmed.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: With his mental health deteriorating, Alexander grew increasingly suspicious of those around him, more withdrawn, more religious, and more passive. Some historians conclude his profile "coincides precisely with the schizophrenic prototype: a withdrawn, seclusive, rather shy, introvertive, unaggressive, and somewhat apathetic individual". In the autumn of 1825 the Emperor undertook a voyage to the south of Russia due to the increasing illness of his wife. During his trip he himself caught typhus, from which he died in the southern city of Taganrog on 19 November (O.S.)/1 December 1825. His two brothers disputed who would become tsar—each wanted the other to do so. His wife died a few months later as the emperor's body was transported to Saint Petersburg for the funeral. He was interred at the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg on 13 March 1826. There are many rumours and legends, of which the most often told claimed that he did not die but rather became a Siberian hermit named Feodor Kuzmich. Historians reject the legends, but popular writers resurrect them often.


title: Alexander I of Russia

text: Alexander's letters to his grandfather, Frederick II Eugene, Duke of Württemberg, (together with letters from his siblings) written between 1795 and 1797, are preserved in the State Archive of Stuttgart (Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart) in Stuttgart, Germany.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: A race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 1500s, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close kinship relations. By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits, and then later to national affiliations. Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning. The concept of race is foundational to racism, the belief that humans can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: Social conceptions and groupings of races have varied over time, often involving folk taxonomies that define of individuals based on perceived traits. Today, scientists consider such biological essentialism obsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: Even though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptions of race are untenable, scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways. While some researchers continue to use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits or observable differences in behavior, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race is inherently naive or simplistic. Still others argue that, among humans, race has no taxonomic significance because all living humans belong to the same subspecies, "Homo sapiens sapiens".


title: Race (human categorization)

text: Since the second half of the 20th century, race has been associated with discredited theories of scientific racism, and has become increasingly seen as a largely pseudoscientific system of classification. Although still used in general contexts, race has often been replaced by less ambiguous and/or loaded terms: "populations", "people(s)", "ethnic groups", or "communities", depending on context.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: Modern scholarship views racial categories as socially constructed, that is, race is not intrinsic to human beings but rather an identity created, often by socially dominant groups, to establish meaning in a social context. Different cultures define different racial groups, often focused on the largest groups of social relevance, and these definitions can change over time.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: The establishment of racial boundaries often involves the subjugation of groups defined as racially inferior, as in the one-drop rule used in the 19th-century United States to exclude those with any amount of African ancestry from the dominant racial grouping, defined as "white". Such racial identities reflect the cultural attitudes of imperial powers dominant during the age of European colonial expansion. This view rejects the notion that race is biologically defined.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: According to geneticist David Reich, "while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today's racial constructs are real." In response to Reich, a group of 67 scientists from a broad range of disciplines wrote that his concept of race was "flawed" as "the "meaning and significance" of the groups is produced through social interventions".


title: Race (human categorization)

text: Although commonalities in physical traits such as facial features, skin color, and hair texture comprise part of the race concept, this linkage is a social distinction rather than an inherently biological one. Other dimensions of racial groupings include shared history, traditions, and language. For instance, African-American English is a language spoken by many African Americans, especially in areas of the United States where racial segregation exists. Furthermore, people often self-identify as members of a race for political reasons.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: When people define and talk about a particular conception of race, they create a social reality through which social categorization is achieved. In this sense, races are said to be social constructs. These constructs develop within various legal, economic, and sociopolitical contexts, and may be the effect, rather than the cause, of While race is understood to be a social construct by many, most scholars agree that race has real material effects in the lives of people through institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: Socioeconomic factors, in combination with early but enduring views of race, have led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. Racial discrimination often coincides with racist mindsets, whereby the individuals and ideologies of one group come to perceive the members of an outgroup as both racially defined and morally inferior. As a result, racial groups possessing relatively little power often find themselves excluded or oppressed, while hegemonic individuals and institutions are charged with holding racist attitudes. Racism has led to many instances of tragedy, including slavery and genocide.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: In some countries, law enforcement uses race to profile suspects. This use of racial categories is frequently criticized for perpetuating an outmoded understanding of human biological variation, and promoting stereotypes. Because in some societies racial groupings correspond closely with patterns of social stratification, for social scientists studying social inequality, race can be a significant variable. As sociological factors, racial categories may in part reflect subjective attributions, self-identities, and social institutions.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: Scholars continue to debate the degrees to which racial categories are biologically warranted and socially constructed. For example, in 2008, John Hartigan, Jr. argued for a view of race that focused primarily on culture, but which does not ignore the potential relevance of biology or genetics. Accordingly, the racial paradigms employed in different disciplines vary in their emphasis on biological reduction as contrasted with societal construction.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: In the social sciences, theoretical frameworks such as racial formation theory and critical race theory investigate implications of race as social construction by exploring how the images, ideas and assumptions of race are expressed in everyday life. A large body of scholarship has traced the relationships between the historical, social production of race in legal and criminal language, and their effects on the policing and disproportionate incarceration of certain groups.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: Groups of humans have always identified themselves as distinct from neighboring groups, but such differences have not always been understood to be natural, immutable and global. These features are the distinguishing features of how the concept of race is used today. In this way the idea of race as we understand it today came about during the historical process of exploration and conquest which brought Europeans into contact with groups from different continents, and of the ideology of classification and typology found in the natural sciences. The term "race" was often used in a general biological taxonomic sense, starting from the 19th century, to denote genetically differentiated human populations defined by phenotype.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: The modern concept of race emerged as a product of the colonial enterprises of European powers from the 16th to 18th centuries which identified race in terms of skin color and physical differences. Author Rebecca F. Kennedy argues that the Greeks and Romans would have found such concepts confusing in relation to their own systems of classification. According to Bancel et al., the epistemological moment where the modern concept of race was invented and rationalized lies somewhere between 1730 and 1790.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: According to Smedley and Marks the European concept of "race", along with many of the ideas now associated with the term, arose at the time of the scientific revolution, which introduced and privileged the study of natural kinds, and the age of European imperialism and colonization which established political relations between Europeans and peoples with distinct cultural and political traditions. As Europeans encountered people from different parts of the world, they speculated about the physical, social, and cultural differences among various human groups. The rise of the Atlantic slave trade, which gradually displaced an earlier trade in slaves from throughout the world, created a further incentive to categorize human groups in order to justify the subordination of African slaves.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: Drawing on sources from classical antiquity and upon their own internal interactions – for example, the hostility between the English and Irish powerfully influenced early European thinking about the differences between people – Europeans began to sort themselves and others into groups based on physical appearance, and to attribute to individuals belonging to these groups behaviors and capacities which were claimed to be deeply ingrained. A set of folk beliefs took hold that linked inherited physical differences between groups to inherited intellectual, behavioral, and moral qualities. Similar ideas can be found in other cultures, for example in China, where a concept often translated as "race" was associated with supposed common descent from the Yellow Emperor, and used to stress the unity of ethnic groups in China. Brutal conflicts between ethnic groups have existed throughout history and across the world.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: The first post-Graeco-Roman published classification of humans into distinct races seems to be François Bernier's "Nouvelle division de la terre par les différents espèces ou races qui l'habitent" ("New division of Earth by the different species or races which inhabit it"), published in 1684. In the 18th century the differences among human groups became a focus of scientific investigation. But the scientific classification of phenotypic variation was frequently coupled with racist ideas about innate predispositions of different groups, always attributing the most desirable features to the White, European race and arranging the other races along a continuum of progressively undesirable attributes. The 1735 classification of Carl Linnaeus, inventor of zoological taxonomy, divided the human species "Homo sapiens" into continental varieties of "europaeus", "asiaticus", "americanus", and "afer", each associated with a different humour: sanguine, melancholic, choleric, and phlegmatic, respectively. "Homo sapiens europaeus" was described as active, acute, and adventurous, whereas "Homo sapiens afer" was said to be crafty, lazy, and careless.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: The 1775 treatise "The Natural Varieties of Mankind", by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach proposed five major divisions: the Caucasoid race, the Mongoloid race, the Ethiopian race (later termed "Negroid"), the American Indian race, and the Malayan race, but he did not propose any hierarchy among the races. Blumenbach also noted the graded transition in appearances from one group to adjacent groups and suggested that "one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them".


title: Race (human categorization)

text: From the 17th through 19th centuries, the merging of folk beliefs about group differences with scientific explanations of those differences produced what Smedley has called an "ideology of race". According to this ideology, races are primordial, natural, enduring and distinct. It was further argued that some groups may be the result of mixture between formerly distinct populations, but that careful study could distinguish the ancestral races that had combined to produce admixed groups. Subsequent influential classifications by Georges Buffon, Petrus Camper and Christoph Meiners all classified "Negros" as inferior to Europeans. In the United States the racial theories of Thomas Jefferson were influential. He saw Africans as inferior to Whites especially in regards to their intellect, and imbued with unnatural sexual appetites, but described Native Americans as equals to whites.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: In the last two decades of the 18th century, the theory of polygenism, the belief that different races had evolved separately in each continent and shared no common ancestor, was advocated in England by historian Edward Long and anatomist Charles White, in Germany by ethnographers Christoph Meiners and Georg Forster, and in France by Julien-Joseph Virey. In the US, Samuel George Morton, Josiah Nott and Louis Agassiz promoted this theory in the mid-19th century. Polygenism was popular and most widespread in the 19th century, culminating in the founding of the Anthropological Society of London (1863), which, during the period of the American Civil War, broke away from the Ethnological Society of London and its monogenic stance, their underlined difference lying, relevantly, in the so-called "Negro question": a substantial racist view by the former, and a more liberal view on race by the latter.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: Today, all humans are classified as belonging to the species "Homo sapiens". However, this is not the first species of homininae: the first species of genus "Homo", "Homo habilis", evolved in East Africa at least 2 million years ago, and members of this species populated different parts of Africa in a relatively short time. "Homo erectus" evolved more than 1.8 million years ago, and by 1.5 million years ago had spread throughout Europe and Asia. Virtually all physical anthropologists agree that "Archaic Homo sapiens" (A group including the possible species "H. heidelbergensis", "H. rhodesiensis" and "H. neanderthalensis") evolved out of African "Homo erectus" ("sensu lato") or "Homo ergaster." Anthropologists support the idea that anatomically modern humans ("Homo sapiens") evolved in North or East Africa from an archaic human species such as "H. heidelbergensis" and then migrated out of Africa, mixing with and replacing "H. heidelbergensis" and "H. neanderthalensis" populations throughout Europe and Asia, and "H. rhodesiensis" populations in Sub-Saharan Africa (a combination of the Out of Africa and Multiregional models).


title: Race (human categorization)

text: In the early 20th century, many anthropologists taught that race was an entirely biological phenomenon and that this was core to a person's behavior and identity, a position commonly called racial essentialism. This, coupled with a belief that linguistic, cultural, and social groups fundamentally existed along racial lines, formed the basis of what is now called scientific racism. After the Nazi eugenics program, along with the rise of anti-colonial movements, racial essentialism lost widespread popularity. New studies of culture and the fledgling field of population genetics undermined the scientific standing of racial essentialism, leading race anthropologists to revise their conclusions about the sources of phenotypic variation. A significant number of modern anthropologists and biologists in the West came to view race as an invalid genetic or biological designation.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: The first to challenge the concept of race on empirical grounds were the anthropologists Franz Boas, who provided evidence of phenotypic plasticity due to environmental factors, and Ashley Montagu, who relied on evidence from genetics. E. O. Wilson then challenged the concept from the perspective of general animal systematics, and further rejected the claim that "races" were equivalent to "subspecies".


title: Race (human categorization)

text: Human genetic variation is predominantly within races, continuous, and complex in structure, which is inconsistent with the concept of genetic human races. According to the biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks,


title: Race (human categorization)

text: The term "race" in biology is used with caution because it can be ambiguous. Generally, when it is used it is effectively a synonym of "subspecies". (For animals, the only taxonomic unit below the species level is usually the subspecies; there are narrower infraspecific ranks in botany, and "race" does not correspond directly with any of them.) Traditionally, subspecies are seen as geographically isolated and genetically differentiated populations. Studies of human genetic variation show that human populations are not geographically isolated, and their genetic differences are far smaller than those among comparable subspecies.


title: Race (human categorization)

text: In 1978, Sewall Wright suggested that human populations that have long inhabited separated parts of the world should, in general, be considered different subspecies by the criterion that most individuals of such populations can be allocated correctly by inspection. Wright argued that, "It does not require a trained anthropologist to classify an array of Englishmen, West Africans, and Chinese with 100% accuracy by features, skin color, and type of hair despite so much variability within each of these groups that every individual can easily be distinguished from every other." While in practice subspecies are often defined by easily observable physical appearance, there is not necessarily any evolutionary significance to these observed differences, so this form of classification has become less acceptable to evolutionary biologists. Likewise this typological approach to race is generally regarded as discredited by biologists and anthropologists.