title: Varieties of Chinese

text: All varieties of Chinese, like neighbouring languages in the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, have phonemic tones. Each syllable may be pronounced with between three and seven distinct pitch contours, denoting different morphemes. For example, the Beijing dialect distinguishes ' ( "mother"), ' ( "hemp"), ' ( "horse") and ' ( "to scold"). The number of tonal contrasts varies between dialects, with Northern dialects tending to have fewer distinctions than Southern ones. Many dialects have tone sandhi, in which the pitch contour of a syllable is affected by the tones of adjacent syllables in a compound word or phrase. This process is so extensive in Shanghainese that the tone system is reduced to a pitch accent system much like modern Japanese.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: The tonal categories of modern varieties can be related by considering their derivation from the four tones of Middle Chinese, though cognate tonal categories in different dialects are often realized as quite different pitch contours. Middle Chinese had a three-way tonal contrast in syllables with vocalic or nasal endings. The traditional names of the tonal categories are "level"/"even" ( '), "rising" ( ') and "departing"/"going" ( '). Syllables ending in a stop consonant , or (checked syllables) had no tonal contrasts but were traditionally treated as a fourth tone category, "entering" ( '), corresponding to syllables ending in nasals , , or .


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: The tones of Middle Chinese, as well as similar systems in neighbouring languages, experienced a tone split conditioned by syllabic onsets. Syllables with voiced initials tended to be pronounced with a lower pitch, and by the late Tang Dynasty, each of the tones had split into two registers conditioned by the initials, known as "upper" (/ "yīn") and "lower" (/ "yáng"). When voicing was lost in all dialects except the Wu and Old Xiang groups, this distinction became phonemic, yielding eight tonal categories, with a six-way contrast in unchecked syllables and a two-way contrast in checked syllables. Cantonese maintains these eight tonal categories and has developed an additional distinction in checked syllables. (The latter distinction has disappeared again in many varieties.)


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: However, most Chinese varieties have reduced the number of tonal distinctions. For example, in Mandarin, the tones resulting from the split of Middle Chinese rising and departing tones merged, leaving four tones. Furthermore, final stop consonants disappeared in most Mandarin dialects, and such syllables were distributed amongst the four remaining tones, seemingly at random.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: In Wu, voiced obstruents were retained, and the tone split never became phonemic: the higher-pitched allophones occur with initial voiceless consonants, and the lower-pitched allophones occur with initial voiced consonants. (Traditional Chinese classification nonetheless counts these as different tones.) Most Wu dialects retain the tone categories of Middle Chinese, but in Shanghainese several of these have merged.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Many Chinese varieties exhibit tone sandhi, in which the realization of a tone varies depending on the context of the syllable. For example, in Standard Chinese a third tone changes to a second tone when followed by another third tone. Particularly complex sandhi patterns are found in Wu dialects and coastal Min dialects. In Shanghainese, the tone of all syllables in a word is determined by the tone of the first, so that Shanghainese has word rather than syllable tone.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Most morphemes in Chinese varieties are monosyllables descended from Old Chinese words, and have cognates in all varieties:


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Old Chinese had two families of negatives starting with *p- and *m-, respectively. Northern and Central varieties tend to use a word from the first family, cognate with Beijing "pu" , as the ordinary negator. A word from the second family is used as an existential negator 'have not', as in Beijing "mei" and Shanghai "m". In Mandarin varieties this word is also used for 'not yet', whereas in Wu and other groups a different form is typically used. In Southern varieties, negators tend to come from the second family. The ordinary negators in these varieties are all derived from a syllabic nasal *m̩, though it has a level tone in Hakka and Yue and a rising tone in Min. Existential negators derive from a proto-form *mau, though again the tonal category varies between groups.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: First- and second-person pronouns are cognate across all varieties. For third-person pronouns, Jin, Mandarin, and Xiang varieties have cognate forms, but other varieties generally use forms that originally had a velar or glottal initial:


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Southern varieties also include distinctive substrata of vocabulary of non-Chinese origin. Some of these words may have come from Tai–Kadai and Austroasiatic languages.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Chinese as a language has many variations. Specifically there are seven variations of Chinese. These include: Mandarin, Xiang, Gan, Wu, Min, Kejia, and Yue. The seven variations of Chinese are very spread out and contain millions of speakers. The spread of speakers between the seven variations of Chinese are illustrated:


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: All of the seven variations have hundreds of millions of speakers, however Mandarin Chinese is the single most prominent because it is the current native language of China.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: The Min languages are often regarded as furthest removed linguistically from Standard Chinese in phonology, grammar, and vocabulary. Historically, the Min languages were the first to diverge from the rest of the Chinese languages (see the discussion of historical Chinese phonology for more details). The Min languages are also the group with the greatest amount of internal diversity and are often regarded as consisting of at least five separate languages, e.g. Northern Min, Southern Min, Central Min, Eastern Min, and Puxian Min.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: To illustrate, in Taiwanese (a variety of Hokkien, a Min language) to express the idea that one is feeling a little ill ("I am not feeling well."), one might say,


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: In southern China (not including Hong Kong and Macau), where the difference between Standard Chinese and local dialects is particularly pronounced, well-educated Chinese are generally fluent in Standard Chinese, and most people have at least a good passive knowledge of it, in addition to being native speakers of the local dialect. The choice of dialect varies based on the social situation. Standard Chinese is usually considered more formal and is required when speaking to a person who does not understand the local dialect. The local dialect (be it non-Standard Chinese or non-Mandarin altogether) is generally considered more intimate and is used among close family members and friends and in everyday conversation within the local area. Chinese speakers will frequently code switch between Standard Chinese and the local dialect. Parents will generally speak to their children in the local variety, and the relationship between dialect and Mandarin appears to be mostly stable, even a diglossia. Local dialects are valued as symbols of regional cultures.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: People generally are tied to the hometown and therefore the hometown dialect, instead of a broad linguistic classification. For example, a person from Wuxi may claim that he speaks Wuxi dialect, even though it is similar to Shanghainese (another Wu dialect). Likewise, a person from Xiaogan may claim that he speaks Xiaogan dialect. Linguistically, Xiaogan dialect is a dialect of Mandarin, but the pronunciation and diction are quite different from spoken Standard Chinese.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Knowing the local dialect is of considerable social benefit, and most Chinese who permanently move to a new area will attempt to pick up the local dialect. Learning a new dialect is usually done informally through a process of immersion and recognizing sound shifts. Generally the differences are more pronounced lexically than grammatically. Typically, a speaker of one dialect of Chinese will need about a year of immersion to understand the local dialect and about three to five years to become fluent in speaking it. Because of the variety of dialects spoken, there are usually few formal methods for learning a local dialect.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Due to the variety in Chinese speech, Mandarin speakers from each area of China are very often prone to fuse or "translate" words from their local language into their Mandarin conversations. In addition, each area of China has its recognizable accents while speaking Mandarin. Generally, the nationalized standard form of Mandarin pronunciation is only heard on news and radio broadcasts. Even in the streets of Beijing, the flavor of Mandarin varies in pronunciation from the Mandarin heard on the media.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Within mainland China, there has been a persistent drive towards promoting the standard language (); for instance, the education system is entirely Mandarin-medium from the second year onward. However, usage of local dialect is tolerated and socially preferred in many informal situations. In Hong Kong, colloquial Cantonese characters are never used in formal documents other than quoting witnesses' spoken statements during legal trials, and within the PRC a character set closer to Mandarin tends to be used. At the national level, differences in dialect generally do not correspond to political divisions or categories, and this has for the most part prevented dialect from becoming the basis of identity politics.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Historically, many of the people who promoted Chinese nationalism were from southern China and did not natively speak Mandarin, and even leaders from northern China rarely spoke with the standard accent. Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen were also from southern China, and this is reflected in their conventional English names reflecting Cantonese pronunciations for their given names, and differing from their Mandarin pinyin spellings and . One consequence of this is that China does not have a well-developed tradition of spoken political rhetoric, and most Chinese political works are intended primarily as written works rather than spoken works. Another factor that limits the political implications of dialect is that it is very common within an extended family for different people to know and use different dialects.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Before 1945, other than a small Japanese-speaking population, most of the population of Taiwan were Han Chinese, who spoke Taiwanese Hokkien or Hakka, with a minority of Taiwanese aborigines, who spoke Formosan languages. When the Kuomintang retreated to the island after losing the Chinese Civil War in 1949, they brought a substantial influx of speakers of Northern Chinese (and other dialects from across China), and viewed the use of Mandarin as part of their claim to be a legitimate government of the whole of China. Education policy promoted the use of Mandarin over the local languages, and was implemented especially rigidly in elementary schools, with punishments and public humiliation for children using other languages at school.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: From the 1970s, the government promoted adult education in Mandarin, required Mandarin for official purposes, and encouraged its increased use in broadcasting. Over a 40-year period, these policies succeeded in spreading the use and prestige of Mandarin through society at the expense of the other languages. They also aggravated social divisions, as Mandarin speakers found it difficult to find jobs in private companies but were favored for government positions. From the 1990s, were offered in elementary and middle schools, first in Yilan county, then in other areas governed by elected Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) politicians, and finally throughout the island.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: In 1966, the Singaporean government implemented a policy of bilingual education, where Singaporean students learn both English and their designated native language, which was Mandarin for Chinese Singaporeans (even though Singaporean Hokkien had previously been their "lingua franca"). The "Goh Report", an evaluation of Singapore's education system by Goh Keng Swee, showed that less than 40% of the student population managed to attain minimum levels of competency in two languages. It was later determined that the learning of Mandarin among Singaporean Chinese was hindered by home use of other Chinese varieties, such as Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and Hakka. Hence, the government decided to rectify problems facing implementation of the bilingual education policy, by launching a campaign to promote Mandarin as a common language among the Chinese population, and to discourage use of other Chinese varieties.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Launched in 1979 by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the campaign aimed to simplify the language environment for Chinese Singaporeans, improve communication between them, and create a Mandarin-speaking environment conducive to the successful implementation of the bilingual education program. The initial goal of the campaign was for all young Chinese to stop speaking dialects in five years, and to establish Mandarin as the language of choice in public places within 10 years. According to the government, for the bilingual policy to be effective, Mandarin should be spoken at home and should serve as the "lingua franca" among Chinese Singaporeans. They also argued that Mandarin was more economically valuable, and speaking Mandarin would help Chinese Singaporeans retain their heritage, as Mandarin contains a cultural repository of values and traditions that are identifiable to all Chinese, regardless of dialect group.


title: Anne Ramsey

text: Angelina Anne Ramsey-Mobley (March 27, 1929 – August 11, 1988) was an American actress. She is best known for her film roles as Mama Fratelli in "The Goonies" (1985) and as Mrs. Lift in "Throw Momma from the Train" (1987), the latter of which earned her nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.


title: Anne Ramsey

text: Ramsey was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the daughter of Eleanor (née Smith), the former national treasurer of the Girl Scouts of the USA, and Nathan Mobley, an insurance executive. Her mother was a descendant of the Pilgrims (William Brewster), and her uncle was U.S. Ambassador David S. Smith. Ramsey was raised in Great Neck, New York and Greenwich, Connecticut. She attended Bennington College where she became interested in theatre. She performed in several Broadway productions in the 1950s and married actor Logan Ramsey in 1954. They moved to Philadelphia where they formed the Theatre of the Living Arts.


title: Anne Ramsey

text: In the 1970s, Ramsey began a successful Hollywood career in character roles and appeared in such television programs as "Little House on the Prairie", "Wonder Woman", "Three's Company" and "Ironside". She appeared with her husband in seven films, including her first, "The Sporting Club" (1971), and her last, "Meet the Hollowheads" (1989). In 1988, Ramsey was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture for her performance in "Throw Momma from the Train" (1987), with Billy Crystal and Danny DeVito. The film also earned her a second Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress; she had received her first for "The Goonies" (1985). In February 1988, she guest-starred on an episode of "ALF" that aired six months before her death. She also appeared in six films released in the two years after her death.


title: Anne Ramsey

text: Ramsey's somewhat slurred speech, a trademark of her later performances, was caused in part from having had some of her tongue and her jaw removed during surgery for esophageal cancer in 1984. In 1988, Ramsey's cancer returned. She died in August at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. Ramsey is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in North Omaha, Nebraska.


title: Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein

text: Albert Einstein's religious views have been widely studied and often misunderstood. Albert Einstein stated "I believe in ". He did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naive. He clarified however that, "I am not an atheist", preferring to call himself an agnostic, or a "religious nonbeliever." Einstein also stated he did not believe in life after death, adding "one life is enough for me." He was closely involved in his lifetime with several humanist groups.


text: Albert Einstein's religious views have been widely studied and often misunderstood. Albert Einstein himself stated "I’m not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a


text: pantheist... I believe in who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings". Einstein believed the problem of God was the "most difficult in the world"—a question that could not be answered "simply with yes or no". He conceded that "the problem involved is too vast for our limited minds".


text: Einstein explained his view on the relationship between science, philosophy and religion in his lectures of 1939 and 1941:


text: “Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion”, because “knowledge of what "is" does not open the door directly to… what should be the "goal" of our human aspirations.” All the aspirations “exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions” which “come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly. The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition.”


text: Einstein was raised by secular Jewish parents and attended a local Catholic public elementary school in Munich. In his "Autobiographical Notes", Einstein wrote that he had gradually lost his faith early in childhood:


text: ... I came—though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents—to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment—an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections.


text: It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the 'merely personal,' from an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in its pursuit. The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of our capabilities presented itself to my mind, half consciously, half unconsciously, as a supreme goal. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights they had achieved, were the friends who could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.


text: Einstein expressed his skepticism regarding the existence of an anthropomorphic god, such as the God of Abrahamic religions, often describing this view as "naïve" and "childlike". In a 1947 letter he stated that "It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously." In a letter to Beatrice Frohlich on 17 December 1952, Einstein stated, "The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve."


text: Prompted by his colleague L. E. J. Brouwer, Einstein read the philosopher Eric Gutkind's book "Choose Life", a discussion of the relationship between Jewish revelation and the modern world. On January 3, 1954, Einstein sent the following reply to Gutkind: "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions." In 2018 his letter to Gutkind was sold for $2.9 million.


text: On 22 March 1954, Einstein received a letter from Joseph Dispentiere, an Italian immigrant who had worked as an experimental machinist in New Jersey. Dispentiere had declared himself an atheist and was disappointed by a news report which had cast Einstein as conventionally religious. Einstein replied on 24 March 1954:


text: In his book "Ideas and Opinions" (1954) Einstein stated, "In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests." In December 1922 Einstein said the following on the idea of a saviour, "Denominational traditions I can only consider historically and psychologically; they have no other significance for me.


text: Einstein had explored the idea that humans could not understand the nature of God. In an interview published in George Sylvester Viereck's book "Glimpses of the Great" (1930), Einstein responded to a question about whether or not he defined himself as a pantheist. He explained:


text: Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.


text: Einstein stated, "My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems."


text: On 24 April 1929, Einstein cabled Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in German: "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." He expanded on this in answers he gave to the Japanese magazine "Kaizō" in 1923:


text: Scientific research can reduce superstition by encouraging people to think and view things in terms of cause and effect. Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality and intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. [...] This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza).


text: Einstein said people can call him an agnostic rather than an atheist, stating: "I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal god is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being." In an interview published by the German poet George Sylvester Viereck, Einstein stated, "I am not an Atheist." According to Prince Hubertus, Einstein said, "In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."


text: In 1945 Guy Raner, Jr. wrote a letter to Einstein, asking him if it was true that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein to convert from atheism. Einstein replied, "I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist. ... It is always misleading to use anthropomorphical concepts in dealing with things outside the human sphere—childish analogies. We have to admire in humility the beautiful harmony of the structure of this world—as far as we can grasp it, and that is all."


text: In a 1950 letter to M. Berkowitz, Einstein stated that "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment."


text: According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein was more inclined to denigrate atheists than religious people. Einstein said in correspondence, "[T]he fanatical atheists...are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional 'opium of the people'—cannot hear the music of the spheres." Although he did not believe in a personal God, he indicated that he would never seek to combat such belief because "such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook."


text: Einstein, in a one-and-a-half-page hand-written German-language letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, dated Princeton, New Jersey, 3 January 1954, a year and three and a half months before his death, wrote: "The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this. [...] For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. [...] I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them [the Jewish people]."


text: On 17 July 1953 a woman who was a licensed Baptist pastor sent Einstein a letter asking if he had felt assured about attaining everlasting life with the Creator. Einstein replied, "I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it." This sentiment was also expressed in Einstein's book "The World as I See It" (1935), "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature."


text: Einstein was averse to the Abrahamic conception of Heaven and Hell, particularly as it pertained to a system of everlasting reward and punishment. In a 1915 letter to the Swiss physicist Edgar Meyer, Einstein wrote, "I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him." He also stated, "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."


text: Part of Einstein's tension with the Abrahamic afterlife was his belief in determinism and his rejection of free will. Einstein stated, "The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events — that is, if he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it goes through."


text: In 1930 Einstein published a widely discussed essay in "The New York Times Magazine" about his beliefs. With the title "Religion and Science," Einstein distinguished three human impulses which develop religious belief: fear, social or moral concerns, and a cosmic religious feeling. A primitive understanding of causality causes fear, and the fearful invent supernatural beings analogous to themselves. The desire for love and support create a social and moral need for a supreme being; both these styles have an anthropomorphic concept of God. The third style, which Einstein deemed most mature, originates in a deep sense of awe and mystery. He said, the individual feels "the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves in nature ... and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole." Einstein saw science as an antagonist of the first two styles of religious belief, but as a partner in the third. He maintained, "even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies" as aspirations for truth derive from the religious sphere. He continued:


text: A person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value. It seems to me that what is important is the force of this superpersonal content ... regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a Divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation ... In this sense religion is the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals and constantly to strengthen and extend their effect. If one conceives of religion and science according to these definitions then a conflict between them appears impossible. For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be...


text: An understanding of causality was fundamental to Einstein's ethical beliefs. In Einstein's view, "the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science," for religion can always take refuge in areas that science can not yet explain. It was Einstein's belief that in the "struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope" and cultivate the "Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself."


text: In his 1934 book "The World as I See It", Einstein expanded on his religiosity, "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms — it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."


text: In 1936 Einstein received a letter from a young girl in the sixth grade. She had asked him, with the encouragement of her teacher, if scientists pray. Einstein replied in the most elementary way he could:


text: Einstein characterized himself as "devoutly religious" in the following sense, "The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men."


text: In December 1952, he commented on what inspires his religiosity, "My feeling is religious insofar as I am imbued with the insufficiency of the human mind to understand more deeply the harmony of the universe which we try to formulate as 'laws of nature.'" In a letter to Maurice Solovine Einstein spoke about his reasons for using the word "religious" to describe his spiritual feelings, "I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza. (But) I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason."


text: Einstein frequently referred to his belief system as "cosmic religion" and authored an eponymous article on the subject in 1954, which later became his book "Ideas and Opinions" in 1955. The belief system recognized a "miraculous order which manifests itself in all of nature as well as in the world of ideas," devoid of a personal God who rewards and punishes individuals based on their behavior. It rejected a conflict between science and religion, and held that cosmic religion was necessary for science. For Einstein, "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." He told William Hermanns in an interview that "God is a mystery. But a comprehensible mystery. I have nothing but awe when I observe the laws of nature. There are not laws without a lawgiver, but how does this lawgiver look? Certainly not like a man magnified." He added with a smile "some centuries ago I would have been burned or hanged. Nonetheless, I would have been in good company." Einstein devised a theology for the cosmic religion, wherein the rational discovery of the secrets of nature is a religious act. His religion and his philosophy were integral parts of the same package as his scientific discoveries.


text: In a letter to Eric Gutkind dated 3 January 1954, Einstein wrote in German, "For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."


text: In 1938, Einstein discussed “the hatred of the Jews by those who shun popular enlightenment. More than anything else in the world, they fear the influence of men of intellectual independence. I see in this the essential cause for the savage hatred of Jews raging in present-day Germany. To the Nazi group the Jews are not merely a means for turning the resentment of the people away from themselves, the oppressors; they see the Jews as a nonassimilable element that cannot be driven into uncritical acceptance of dogma, and that, therefore as long as it exists at all—threatens their authority because of its insistence on popular enlightenment of the masses.”


text: In an interview published by "Time" magazine with George Sylvester Viereck, Einstein spoke of his feelings about Christianity. Born in Germany, Viereck supported National Socialism but he was not anti-semitic. And like Einstein he was a pacifist. At the time of the interview Einstein was informed that Viereck was not Jewish, but stated that Viereck had "the psychic adaptability of the Jew," making it possible for Einstein to talk to him "without barrier." Viereck began by asking Einstein if he considered himself a German or a Jew, to which Einstein responded, "It's possible to be both." Viereck moved along in the interview to ask Einstein if Jews should try to assimilate, to which Einstein replied "We Jews have been too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies in order to conform." Einstein was then asked to what extent he was influenced by Christianity. "As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene." Einstein was then asked if he accepted the historical existence of Jesus, to which he replied, "Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."


text: In a conversation with the Dutch poet Willem Frederik Hermans Einstein stressed that, "I seriously doubt that Jesus himself said that he was God, for he was too much a Jew to violate that great commandment: Hear O Israel, the Eternal is our God and He is one!' and not two or three." Einstein lamented, "Sometimes I think it would have been better if Jesus had never lived. No name was so abused for the sake of power!" In his 1934 book "The World as I See It" he expressed his belief that "if one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity." Later in a 1943 interview Einstein added, "It is quite possible that we can do greater things than Jesus, for what is written in the Bible about him is poetically embellished."


text: Einstein interpreted the concept of a Kingdom of God as referring to the best people. "I have always believed that Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God the small group scattered all through time of intellectually and ethically valuable people."


text: The only Jewish school in Munich had been closed in 1872 for want of students, and in the absence of an alternative Einstein attended a Catholic elementary school. He also received Jewish religious education at home, but he did not see a division between the two faiths, as he perceived the "sameness of all religions". Einstein was equally impressed by the stories of the Hebrew Bible and the Passion of Jesus. According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein immensely enjoyed the Catholic religion courses which he received at the school. The teachers at his school were liberal and generally made no distinction among students' religions, though some harbored an innate but mild antisemitism. Einstein later recalled an incident involving a teacher who particularly liked him, "One day that teacher brought a long nail to the lesson and told the students that with such nails Christ had been nailed to the Cross by the Jews" and that "Among the children at the elementary school anti-Semitism was prevalent...Physical attacks and insults on the way home from school were frequent, but for the most part not too vicious." Einstein noted, "That was at a Catholic school; how much worse the antisemitism must be in other Prussian schools, one can only imagine." He would later in life recall that "The religion of the fathers, as I encountered it in Munich during religious instruction and in the synagogue, repelled rather than attracted me."


text: Einstein met several times and collaborated with the Belgian priest scientist Georges Lemaître, of the Catholic University of Leuven. Fr Lemaitre is known as the first proponent of the big bang theory of the origins of the cosmos and pioneer in applying Einstein's theory of general relativity to cosmology. Einstein proposed Lemaitre for the 1934 Francqui Prize, which he received from the Belgian King.


text: In 1940 "Time" magazine quoted Einstein lauding the Catholic Church for its role in opposing the Nazis:


text: Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.


text: The quotation has since been repeatedly cited by defenders of Pope Pius XII. An investigation of the quotation by mathematician William C. Waterhouse and Barbara Wolff of the Einstein Archives in Jerusalem found that the statement was mentioned in an unpublished letter from 1947. In the letter to Count Montgelas, Einstein explained that the original comment was a casual one made to a journalist regarding the support of "a few churchmen" for individual rights and intellectual freedom during the early rule of Hitler and that, according to Einstein, the comment had been drastically exaggerated.


text: On 11 November 1950 the Rev. Cornelius Greenway of Brooklyn wrote a letter to Einstein which had also quoted his alleged remarks about the Church. Einstein responded, "I am, however, a little embarrassed. The wording of the statement you have quoted is not my own. Shortly after Hitler came to power in Germany I had an oral conversation with a newspaper man about these matters. Since then my remarks have been elaborated and exaggerated nearly beyond recognition. I cannot in good conscience write down the statement you sent me as my own. The matter is all the more embarrassing to me because I, like yourself, I am predominantly critical concerning the activities, and especially the political activities, through history of the official clergy. Thus, my former statement, even if reduced to my actual words (which I do not remember in detail) gives a wrong impression of my general attitude."


text: In 2008 the "Antiques Roadshow" television program aired a manuscript expert, Catherine Williamson, authenticating a 1943 letter from Einstein in which he confirms that he "made a statement which corresponds approximately" to "Time" magazine's quotation of him. However, Einstein continued, "I made this statement during the first years of the Nazi regime—much earlier than 1940—and my expressions were a little more moderate."


text: Einstein's conversations with William Hermanns were recorded over a 34-year correspondence. In the conversations Einstein makes various statements about the Christian Churches in general and the Catholic Church in particular: "When you learn the history of the Catholic Church, you wouldn't trust the Center Party. Hasn't Hitler promised to smash the Bolsheviks in Russia? The Church will bless its Catholic soldiers to march alongside the Nazis" (March 1930). "I predict that the Vatican will support Hitler if he comes to power. The Church since Constantine has always favoured the authoritarian State, as long as the State allows the Church to baptize and instruct the masses" (March 1930). "So often in history the Jews have been the instigators of justice and reform whether in Spain, Germany or Russia. But no sooner have they done their job than their 'friends', often blessed by the Church, spit in their faces" (August 1943).


text: "But what makes me shudder is that the Catholic Church is silent. One doesn't need to be a prophet to say, 'The Catholic Church will pay for this silence...I do not say that the unspeakable crimes of the Church for 2,000 years had always the blessing of the Vatican, but it vaccinated its believers with the idea: We have the true God, and the Jews have crucified Him.' The Church sowed hate instead of love, though the ten commandments state: Thou shalt not kill" (August 1943). "With a few exceptions, the Roman Catholic Church has stressed the value of dogma and ritual, conveying the idea theirs is the only way to reach heaven. I don't need to go to Church to hear if I'm good or bad; my heart tells me this" (August 1943). "I don't like to implant in youth the Church's doctrine of a personal God, because that Church has behaved so inhumanly in the past 2,000 years... Consider the hate the Church manifested against the Jews and then against the Muslims, the Crusades with their crimes, the burning stakes of the inquisition, the tacit consent of Hitler's actions while the Jews and the Poles dug their own graves and were slaughtered. And Hitler is said to have been an altar boy!" (August 1943).


text: "Yes" Einstein replied vehemently, "It is indeed human, as proved by Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII), who was behind the Concordat with Hitler. Since when can one make a pact with Christ and Satan at the same time?" (August 1943). "The Church has always sold itself to those in power, and agreed to any bargain in return for immunity." (August 1943) "If I were allowed to give advice to the Churches," Einstein continued, "I would tell them to begin with a conversion among themselves, and to stop playing power politics. Consider what mass misery they have produced in Spain, South America and Russia." (September 1948).


text: In response to a Catholic convert who asked "Didn't you state that the Church was the only opponent of Communism?" Einstein replied, "I don't have to emphasise that the Church ["sic"] at last became a strong opponent of National Socialism, as well." Einstein's secretary Helen Dukas added, "Dr. Einstein didn't mean only the Catholic church, but all churches." When the convert mentioned that family members had been gassed by the Nazis, Einstein replied that "he also felt guilty—adding that the whole Church, beginning with the Vatican, should feel guilt." (September 1948)


text: When asked for more precise responses in 1954, Einstein replied: "About God, I cannot accept any concept based on the authority of the Church. [...] As long as I can remember, I have resented mass indoctrination. I do not believe in the fear of life, in the fear of death, in blind faith. I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking but by immutable laws." William Miller of "Life Magazine" who was present at this meeting described Einstein as looking like a "living saint" and speaking with "angelic indifference."


text: From a young age he had an interest in philosophy. Einstein said about himself: "As a young man I preferred books whose content concerned a whole world view and, in particular, philosophical ones. Schopenhauer, David Hume, Mach, to some extent Kant, Plato, Aristotle."


text: Einstein believed that when trying to understand nature one should engage in both philosophical enquiry and enquiry through the natural sciences.


text: Einstein believed that epistemology and science "are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled."


text: Like Spinoza, Einstein was a strict determinist who believed that human behavior was completely determined by causal laws. For that reason, he refused the chance aspect of quantum theory, famously telling Niels Bohr: "God does not play dice with the universe." In letters sent to physicist Max Born, Einstein revealed his belief in causal relationships:


text: You believe in a God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively exists, and which I in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. I firmly "believe", but I hope that someone will discover a more realistic way, or rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to find. Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice game, although I am well aware that some of our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility.


text: Einstein's emphasis on 'belief' and how it connected with determinism was illustrated in a letter of condolence responding to news of the death of Michele Besso, one of his lifelong friends. Einstein wrote to the family: "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."


text: Einstein had admitted to a fascination with philosopher Spinoza's deterministic version of pantheism. American philosopher Charles Hartshorne, in seeking to distinguish deterministic views with his own belief of free will panentheism, coined the distinct typology "Classical pantheism" to distinguish the views of those who hold similar positions to Spinoza's deterministic version of pantheism.


text: I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.


text: And yet, Einstein maintains that whether or not a particular human life is meaningful depends on how the individual conceives of his or her own life with respect to the lives of fellow human beings. A primitive human being in this regard is one whose life is entirely devoted to the gratification of instinctual needs. Whereas Einstein accepts that the gratification of basic needs is a legitimate and indispensable goal, he regards it nevertheless as an elementary goal. The transition of the human mind from its initial and infantile state of disconnectedness (selfishness) to a state of unity with the universe, according to Einstein, requires the exercise of four types of freedoms: freedom from self, freedom of expression, freedom from time, and freedom of independence.


text: Einstein was a secular humanist and a supporter of the Ethical Culture movement. He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York. For the seventy-fifth anniversary of the "New York Society for Ethical Culture", he stated that the idea of Ethical Culture embodied his personal conception of what is most valuable and enduring in religious idealism. He observed, "Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity." He was an honorary associate of the British humanist organization the Rationalist Press Association.


text: With regard to punishment by God, Einstein stated, "I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms." "A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death. It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees."


text: On the importance of ethics he wrote, "The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action." "I do not believe that a man should be restrained in his daily actions by being afraid of punishment after death or that he should do things only because in this way he will be rewarded after he dies. This does not make sense. The proper guidance during the life of a man should be the weight that he puts upon ethics and the amount of consideration that he has for others." "I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance—but for us, not for God."


text: In a conversation with Ugo Onufri in 1955, with regards to nature's purpose he said, "I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic." In a 1947 letter he stated, "I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere."


text: Einstein believed naïve realism was "relatively simple" to disprove. He agreed with Bertrand Russell that humans observe the effects objects have on them (greenness, coldness, hardness, etc.) and not the actual objects themselves.


text: Einstein declared that he was no positivist, and maintained that we use with a certain right concepts to which there is no access from the materials of sensory experience. However, in his early years, Einstein acknowledged that positivist thinkers, such as Ernst Mach, had a deep influence on him. Regarding relativity theory, he writes: "the whole direction of thought of this theory conforms with Mach's..." After Mach's positivism proved itself unfruitful in theory development, he considered that positivism was still useful, commenting that: "It [positivistic philosophy] cannot give birth to anything living, it can only exterminate harmful vermin."


text: Einstein considered that Kant’s "denial of the objectivity of space can (...) hardly be taken seriously". He also believed that "if Kant had known what is known to us today of the natural order, I am certain that he would have fundamentally revised his philosophical conclusions. Kant built his structure upon the foundations of the world outlook of Kepler and Newton. Now that the foundation has been undermined, the structure no longer stands."


text: Einstein was an admirer of the philosophy of David Hume; in 1944 he said "If one reads Hume’s books, one is amazed that many and sometimes even highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best philosophers who came after him."


text: Some sources maintain that Einstein read the three Critiques at the age of 16 and studied Kant as a teenager. However Philip Stamp states that this is contradicted by some of his own claims. In 1949, Einstein said that he "did not grow up in the Kantian tradition, but came to understand the truly valuable which is to be found in his doctrine, alongside of errors which today are quite obvious, only quite late."


text: In one of Einstein's letters in 1918 to Max Born, Einstein said that he was starting to discover this "truly valuable" in Kant: "I am reading Kant's "Prolegomena" here, among other things, and I am beginning to comprehend the enormous suggestive power that emanated from the fellow, and still does. Once you concede to him merely the existence of synthetic "a priori" judgements, you are trapped. Anyway it is nice to read him, even if it is not as good as his predecessor Hume's work. Hume also had a far sounder instinct."


text: Schopenhauer's views on the independence of spatially separated systems influenced Einstein, who called him a genius. In their view it was a necessary assumption that the mere difference in location suffices to make two systems different, with each having its own real physical state, independent of the state of the other.


text: In Einstein's Berlin study three figures hung on the wall: Faraday, Maxwell and Schopenhauer. Einstein described, concerning the personal importance of Schopenhauer for him, Schopenhauer's words as "a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance." Although Schopenhauer's works are known for their pessimism, Konrad Wachsmann remembered, "He often sat with one of the well-worn Schopenhauer volumes, and as he sat there, he seemed so pleased, as if he were engaged with a serene and cheerful work."


text: Einstein liked Ernst Mach's scientific work, though not his philosophical work. He said "Mach was as good a scholar of mechanics as he was a deplorable philosopher". However, Einstein's early epistemological views were deeply influenced by Mach. In his "Autobiographical Notes," he writes: "I see Mach's greatness in his incorruptible skepticism and independence; in my younger years, however, Mach's epistemological position also influenced me very greatly, a position which today appears to me to be essentially untenable."


text: Einstein expressed his admiration for the Ancient Greek philosophers, pointing out that he has been far more interested in them than in science. He also noted; "The more I read the Greeks, the more I realize that nothing like them has ever appeared in the world since.”


title: 4:44

text: 4:44 is the thirteenth studio album by American rapper Jay-Z. It was released on June 30, 2017, through Roc Nation as an exclusive to Sprint and Tidal customers. The album is the first in a planned series of music exclusives from the Sprint–Tidal partnership. On July 2, the album was made available for free digital download on Tidal's site for a limited time. A physical edition was released on July 7, including three additional tracks. On the same day, the album was made available to other streaming platforms, such as Apple Music, Google Play Music and Amazon Music.


title: 4:44

text: Like Jay-Z's previous album, "Magna Carta Holy Grail" (2013), "4:44" was not preceded by any singles. The album was recorded from December 2016 to June 2017, and produced by No I.D., with additional contributions by Jay-Z himself. James Blake and Dominic Maker also contributed production to the album's bonus tracks. It features guest appearances from Frank Ocean, Damian Marley, Jay-Z's wife Beyoncé, and his mother, Gloria Carter. It also has additional vocal contributions from his daughter Blue Ivy Carter, James Fauntleroy, Kim Burrell and The-Dream.


title: 4:44

text: The album was widely acclaimed by critics, who praised its emotional and personal content. It debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 with 262,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, making it Jay-Z's 14th album to top the chart. The album spawned three singles, the title track "", "Bam" and "Family Feud", as well as several music videos, directed by a variety of high-profile collaborators. On July 5, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in recognition of one million copies purchased by Sprint and offered to consumers as free downloads. At the 60th Annual Grammy Awards, the album received a Grammy Award nomination for Album of the Year, while the title track was nominated for Song of the Year and "The Story of O.J." was nominated for Record of the Year.


title: 4:44

text: In June 2017, "4:44" posters in New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami, as well as internet banner ads, teased the release of the album. A one-minute teaser ad was aired during the NBA Finals on June 7 featuring actors Mahershala Ali, Lupita Nyong'o, and Danny Glover, ending with "4:44 – 6.30.17, Exclusively on Tidal".


title: 4:44

text: On June 18, Father's Day, a clip titled "Adnis" was posted on Sprint's YouTube page. Adnis was Jay-Z's father's name. A second teaser trailer was released on June 27 titled "Kill Jay Z", which featured a young man with a "Stay Black" T-shirt. A third teaser followed on June 28 titled "ManyFacedGod", featuring Lupita Nyong'o crying "hysterically" on the floor.


title: 4:44

text: No I.D. says Jay-Z approached him about working together, and initially declined. He cited feeling "uninspired" and "didn't think [he] had anything at the time". However, he researched Quincy Jones as inspiration to begin work with Jay-Z. No I.D. states he "began to play the samples like I would play an instrument." To get inspiration for "4:44", No I.D. pointed to albums such as "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye, "Confessions" by Usher, "The Blueprint" by Jay-Z, "Illmatic" by Nas, and "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" by Kanye West, saying he "analyzed the mistakes and tried not to make those mistakes."


title: 4:44

text: The album was largely recorded in No I.D.'s home studio in Hollywood. Its recording began in late December 2016, according to No I.D. It was finished shortly before the album's release. "4:44" was written when Jay-Z woke up one morning at 4:44 am, and recorded at his house using Beyoncé's microphone.


title: 4:44

text: "4:44" is a hip hop and conscious hip hop album. It contains samples from many genres, like funk, progressive rock, reggae, hip hop and soul. These include Stevie Wonder's "Love's in Need of Love Today", The Clark Sisters's "Ha Ya (Eternal Life)", Donny Hathaway's "Someday We'll All Be Free", Fugees's "Fu-Gee-La", and Nina Simone's "Four Women" and "Baltimore". While most of the samples span previous decades, the title track to 4.44 is sampled from the 2016 record 'Late Nights and Heartbreaks' from independent British group Hannah Williams and The Affirmations. Complex Networks premiered the official music video to the original record, directed by British Hip-Hop video director Nick Donnelly


title: 4:44

text: Elia Leight of "Rolling Stone" notes "4:44" is "sample-heavy at a time when so much of rap has moved away from that sound". Jay-Z and No I.D. created a playlist based on Jay-Z's taste, and sampled some songs of it in the album. Later, Jay-Z posted the playlist, titled "4:44 Inspired By", on Tidal.


title: 4:44

text: On the album, Jay-Z touches on a wide array of topics, such as the ongoing hip hop culture, his family life, his relationships, stereotypes and racism. Many critics have noted that "4:44" is a response to "Lemonade", with Jay-Z referencing lines from the album. For example, the "You better call Becky with the good hair" line on Beyoncé's "Sorry", with Jay-Z retorting, "Leave me alone, Becky" in "Family Feud". However, No I.D. said that to make the entire album a response to "Lemonade" was not the intention. Instead, Jay-Z wanted to focus on an album "where I talk about the things that I've never talked about".


title: 4:44

text: "Kill Jay Z" is about "killing" his ego Jay Z (without hyphen), featured in his previous album "Magna Carta Holy Grail". The song references his friendship with Kanye West, as well as an incident in which he shot his brother. He also references his rumored extramarital relationships. "The Story of O.J." references racism, stereotypes and the experience of being a black person in America. "Smile" discusses his mother being a lesbian, while featuring a poem from her. "Caught Their Eyes" references Prince; before his death, Prince befriended Jay-Z, giving exclusive streaming rights for his catalog to Tidal. "4:44", the album's title track, is "one long, tearful, soul-ripped-open apology" dedicated to Beyoncé.


title: 4:44

text: "Family Feud" is about a "separation within the culture" and "tensions in the black community and at home". The track also references his infidelity. The "reggae-tinged" song "Bam" features Damian Marley's vocals, with a four-piece horn section and guitar. Jay-Z said about the track: "it's just jammin', it's just like the song. But it's secretly Shawn Carter saying, 'Man, you need a bit of ego.'" "Moonlight" references two films nominated to the 2017 Oscars for Best Picture, "Moonlight" and "La La Land", as a "commentary on the culture and where we're going".


title: 4:44

text: Jay-Z held listening parties for the album at participating Sprint stores on June 29, 2017. "4:44" was released as an exclusive to Tidal and Sprint subscribers on June 30, the first in a planned series of music exclusives from the Sprint–Tidal partnership. Through an iHeartRadio and Roc Nation partnership, "4:44" was played on a loop on various rap stations until July 1. Jay-Z provided song commentary via iHeartRadio upon the album's release. On July 7, a physical version of the album featuring three additional tracks was released, and the album was made available to other streaming platforms, such as Apple Music, Google Play Music and Amazon Music.


title: 4:44

text: Music videos were released for every song on the album except "Caught Their Eyes". An animated music video for "The Story of O.J." was uploaded on Tidal soon after the album's release. The video was directed by Mark Romanek and Jay-Z and shows a character named Jaybo, based on "The Story of Little Black Sambo". This was followed weekly by "4:44" directed by TNEG, "Bam" directed by Rohan Blair-Mangat, "Kill Jay Z" directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, "Adnis" directed by Romanek, "Moonlight" directed by Alan Yang, and "ManyFacedGod" directed by Francesco Carrozzini. On November 24, three further videos were released: "Legacy" directed by Jeymes Samuel, "Smile" directed by Miles Jay and "Marcy Me" directed by Ben and Joshua Safdie. On December 29, an all-star video for "Family Feud" was released (featuring actors Jessica Chastain, Michael B. Jordan, Janet Mock, and David Oyelowo among many others), directed by Ava DuVernay and scored by Flying Lotus, followed on January 7, 2018, by "Blue's Freestyle", directed by Maurice Taylor of Artlife Studios.


title: 4:44

text: The album's title track, "", was released as the lead single to rhythmic contemporary radio on July 11, 2017.


title: 4:44

text: The song "Bam", was released as the second single to rhythmic contemporary radio on September 26, 2017.


title: 4:44

text: The song "Family Feud" was released to British contemporary hit radio on January 26, 2018, as the album's third single.


title: 4:44

text: On July 10, Jay-Z announced the 32-date North American beginning on October 27 at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. The tour concluded on December 21 at The Forum in Inglewood.


title: 4:44

text: "4:44" was released to universal acclaim from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 82, based on 29 reviews. Many critics praised its emotional and personal content. Neil McCormick of "The Daily Telegraph" gave the album a perfect score, stating "It's a highly personal work bravely opening up the artist's very human flaws as an example to others, locating in his own suffering a path towards forgiveness, redemption and, ultimately, a better world. There is little braver than admitting your mistakes and trying to change your ways. By embracing vulnerability, Jay Z has taken a step towards genuine wisdom."


title: 4:44

text: Brittany Spanos of "Rolling Stone" called the album "a stunning, raw and mature apology that's as much an ode to partnership and family as it is an example of how vulnerability can make for truly excellent art." Spanos states "4:44" is "the most specific and touching" song on the album. "4:44" was named "Best New Music" by "Pitchfork", with reviewer Sheldon Pearce writing, "The most crafty and evasive MC lays bare his complicated life. This late-career gem is personal and diamond-sharp, confronting the failings and legacy of Shawn Carter and America." He also calls the album a "historical artifact".


title: 4:44

text: "4:44" debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 with 262,000 album-equivalent units, (of which 174,000 copies were pure album sales) in its first week, according to Nielsen Soundscan. This became Jay-Z's 14th number one album. The album was a Tidal exclusive for the first week and the streaming numbers on Tidal were not reported. On July 5, 2017, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of over a million units. The album was certified only a week after its release. During this period, it was reported that mobile company Sprint, a major share-holder in Tidal, had bought a million copies of "4:44" and provided subscribers free downloads of the album. In its second week, the album remained at number one on the chart, earning an additional 87,000 units. In its third week, the album dropped to number seven on the chart, earning 45,000 more units. In its fourth week, the album climbed to number five on the chart, earning 33,000 units. By the end of 2017, the album had accumulated 639,000 album-equivalent units in the United States, with 399,000 as pure sales, not including the one million copies given away. In 2017, "4:44" was ranked as the 36th most popular album of the year on the "Billboard" 200.


title: Antifreeze

text: An antifreeze is an additive which lowers the freezing point of a water-based liquid. An antifreeze mixture is used to achieve freezing-point depression for cold environments. Common antifreezes also increase the boiling point of the liquid, allowing higher coolant temperature. However, all common antifreeze additives also have lower heat capacities than water, and do reduce water's ability to act as a coolant when added to it.


title: Antifreeze

text: Because water has good properties as a coolant, water plus antifreeze is used in internal combustion engines and other heat transfer applications, such as HVAC chillers and solar water heaters. The purpose of antifreeze is to prevent a rigid enclosure from bursting due to expansion when water freezes. Commercially, both the "additive" (pure concentrate) and the "mixture" (diluted solution) are called antifreeze, depending on the context. Careful selection of an antifreeze can enable a wide temperature range in which the mixture remains in the liquid phase, which is critical to efficient heat transfer and the proper functioning of heat exchangers. Also important to note is most if not all commercial antifreeze formulations intended for use in heat transfer applications include different kinds of anti-corrosion and anti-cavitation agents that protect the hydraulic circuit from progressive wear.


title: Antifreeze

text: Water was the original coolant for internal combustion engines. It is cheap, nontoxic, and has a high heat capacity. It however has only a 100 °C liquid range, and it expands upon freezing. These problems are addressed by the development of alternative coolants with improved properties.


title: Antifreeze

text: Freezing and boiling points are colligative properties of a solution, which depend on the concentration of dissolved substances. Hence salts lower the melting points of aqueous solutions. Salts are frequently used for de-icing, but salt solutions are not used for cooling systems because they induce corrosion of metals. Low molecular weight organic compounds tend to have melting points lower than water, which makes them suitable for use as antifreeze agents. Solutions of organic compounds, especially alcohols, in water are effective. Alcohols such as methanol, ethanol, ethylene glycol, etc. have been the basis of all antifreezes since they were commercialized in the 1920s.


title: Antifreeze

text: Most automotive engines are "water"-cooled to remove waste heat, though the "water" used is actually a mixture of water and antifreeze. The term engine coolant is widely used in the automotive industry, which covers its primary function of convective heat transfer for internal combustion engines. When used in an automotive context, corrosion inhibitors are added to help protect vehicles' radiators, which often contain a range of electrochemically incompatible metals (aluminum, cast iron, copper, brass, solder, etc.). Water pump seal lubricant is also added.


title: Antifreeze

text: On the other hand, if the engine coolant gets too hot, it might boil while inside the engine, causing voids (pockets of steam), leading to localized hot spots and the catastrophic failure of the engine. If plain water were to be used as an engine coolant in northern climates freezing would occur, causing significant internal engine damage. Also, plain water would increase the prevalence of galvanic corrosion. Proper engine coolant and a pressurized coolant system obviate these shortcomings of water. With proper antifreeze, a wide temperature range can be tolerated by the engine coolant, such as to for 50% (by volume) propylene glycol diluted with distilled water and a 15 psi pressurized coolant system.


title: Antifreeze

text: Early engine coolant antifreeze was methanol (methyl alcohol). Ethylene glycol was developed because its higher boiling point was more compatible with heating systems.


title: Antifreeze

text: The most common water-based antifreeze solutions used in electronics cooling are mixtures of water and either ethylene glycol (EGW) or propylene glycol (PGW). The use of ethylene glycol has a longer history, especially in the automotive industry. However, EGW solutions formulated for the automotive industry often have silicate based rust inhibitors that can coat and/or clog heat exchanger surfaces. Ethylene glycol is listed as a toxic chemical requiring care in handling and disposal.


title: Antifreeze

text: Ethylene glycol has desirable thermal properties, including a high boiling point, low freezing point, stability over a wide range of temperatures, and high specific heat and thermal conductivity. It also has a low viscosity and, therefore, reduced pumping requirements. Although EGW has more desirable physical properties than PGW, the latter coolant is used in applications where toxicity might be a concern. PGW is generally recognized as safe for use in food or food processing applications, and can also be used in enclosed spaces.


title: Antifreeze

text: Similar mixtures are commonly used in HVAC and industrial heating or cooling systems as a high-capacity heat transfer medium. Many formulations have corrosion inhibitors, and it is expected that these chemicals will be replenished (manually or under automatic control) to keep expensive piping and equipment from corroding.


title: Antifreeze

text: Antifreeze proteins refer to chemical compounds produced by certain animals, plants, and other organisms that prevent the formation of ice. In this way, these compounds allow their host organism to operate at temperatures well below the freezing point of water. Antifreeze proteins bind to small ice crystals to inhibit growth and recrystallization of ice that would otherwise be fatal.


title: Antifreeze

text: Cryoprotectants are commonly used in cryobiology to prevent or inhibit freezing in sperm, blood, stem cells, plant seeds, etc. Ethylene glycol, propylene glycol, and glycerol (all used in automotive antifreeze) are commonly used as biological cryoprotectants.


title: Antifreeze

text: Most antifreeze is made by mixing distilled water with additives and a base product, usually MEG (mono ethylene glycol) or MPG (mono propylene glycol). Ethylene glycol solutions first became available in 1926 and were marketed as "permanent antifreeze" since the higher boiling points provided advantages for summertime use as well as during cold weather. They are used today for a variety of applications, including automobiles, but there are lower-toxicity alternatives made with propylene glycol available.


title: Antifreeze

text: When ethylene glycol is used in a system, it may become oxidized to five organic acids (formic, oxalic, glycolic, glyoxalic and acetic acid). Inhibited ethylene glycol antifreeze mixes are available, with additives that buffer the pH and reserve alkalinity of the solution to prevent oxidation of ethylene glycol and formation of these acids. Nitrites, silicates, borates and azoles may also be used to prevent corrosive attack on metal.


title: Antifreeze

text: Ethylene glycol has a bitter, sweet taste and causes inebriation. The toxic effects of ingesting ethylene glycol occur because it is converted by the liver into 4 other chemicals that are much more toxic. The lethal dose of pure ethylene glycol is 1.4 ml/kg ( is lethal to a person) but is much less lethal if treated within an hour. (see Ethylene glycol poisoning).


title: Antifreeze

text: Propylene glycol is considerably less toxic than ethylene glycol and may be labeled as "non-toxic antifreeze". It is used as antifreeze where ethylene glycol would be inappropriate, such as in food-processing systems or in water pipes in homes where incidental ingestion may be possible. For example, the U.S. FDA allows propylene glycol to be added to a large number of processed foods, including ice cream, frozen custard, salad dressings, and baked goods, and it is commonly used as the main ingredient in the "e-liquid" used in electronic cigarettes.


title: Antifreeze

text: Besides cooling system corrosion, biological fouling also occurs. Once bacterial slime starts to grow, the corrosion rate of the system increases. Maintenance of systems using glycol solution includes regular monitoring of freeze protection, pH, specific gravity, inhibitor level, color, and biological contamination.


title: Antifreeze

text: Propylene glycol should be replaced when it turns a reddish color. When an aqueous solution of propylene glycol in a cooling or heating system develops a reddish or black color, this indicates that iron in the system is corroding significantly. In the absence of inhibitors, propylene glycol can react with oxygen and metal ions, generating various compounds including organic acids (e.g., formic, oxalic, acetic). These acids accelerate the corrosion of metals in the system.


title: Antifreeze

text: Propylene glycol methyl ether is used as an antifreeze in diesel engines. It is more volatile than glycol.


title: Antifreeze

text: Once used for automotive antifreeze, glycerol has the advantage of being non-toxic, withstands relatively high temperatures, and is noncorrosive. It is not however used widely.


title: Antifreeze

text: Glycerol was historically used as an antifreeze for automotive applications before being replaced by ethylene glycol. Volkswagen introduced "G13" (TL 774-G) antifreezes containing glycerol in 2008, marketed as better for the environment due to its low toxicity and reduced emissions. However, since 2018, they have moved on to "G12EVO" (TL 774-L) which no longer contains glycerol.


title: Antifreeze

text: Once antifreeze has been mixed with water and put into use, it periodically needs to be maintained. If engine coolant leaks, boils, or if the cooling system needs to be drained and refilled, the antifreeze's freeze protection will need to be considered. In other cases a vehicle may need to be operated in a colder environment, requiring more antifreeze and less water. Three methods are commonly employed to determine the freeze point of the solution by measuring the concentration:


title: Antifreeze

text: Both specific gravity and refractive index are affected by temperature, although the former is affected much less catastrophically. Temperature compensation is nevertheless recommended for RI measurement. Propylene glycol solutions cannot be tested using specific gravity because of ambiguous results (40% and 100% solutions have the same specific gravity), although typical uses rarely exceed 60% concentration.


title: Antifreeze

text: The boiling point can be similarly determined by a concentration given from one of the three methods. Datasheets for glycol/water coolant mixtures are commonly available from chemical vendors.


title: Antifreeze

text: Most commercial antifreeze formulations include corrosion inhibiting compounds, and a colored dye (commonly a fluorescent green, red, orange, yellow, or blue) to aid in identification. A 1:1 dilution with water is usually used, resulting in a freezing point of about , depending on the formulation. In warmer or colder areas, weaker or stronger dilutions are used, respectively, but a range of 40%/60% to 60%/40% is frequently specified to ensure corrosion protection, and 70%/30% for maximum freeze prevention down to .


title: Antifreeze

text: In the absence of leaks, antifreeze chemicals such as ethylene glycol or propylene glycol may retain their basic properties indefinitely. By contrast, corrosion inhibitors are gradually used up, and must be replenished from time to time. Larger systems (such as HVAC systems) are often monitored by specialist firms which take responsibility for adding corrosion inhibitors and regulating coolant composition. For simplicity, most automotive manufacturers recommend periodic complete replacement of engine coolant, to simultaneously renew corrosion inhibitors and remove accumulated contaminants.


title: Antifreeze

text: Traditionally, there were two major corrosion inhibitors used in vehicles: silicates and phosphates. American-made vehicles traditionally used both silicates and phosphates. European makes contain silicates and other inhibitors, but no phosphates. Japanese makes traditionally use phosphates and other inhibitors, but no silicates.


title: Antifreeze

text: Most modern cars are built with organic acid technology (OAT) antifreeze (e.g., DEX-COOL), or with a hybrid organic acid technology (HOAT) formulation (e.g., Zerex G-05), both of which are claimed to have an extended service life of five years or .


title: Antifreeze

text: DEX-COOL specifically has caused controversy. Litigation has linked it with intake manifold gasket failures in General Motors' (GM's) 3.1L and 3.4L engines, and with other failures in 3.8L and 4.3L engines. One of the anti-corrosion components presented as sodium or potassium 2-ethylhexanoate and ethylhexanoic acid is incompatible with nylon 6,6 and silicone rubber, and is a known plasticizer. Class action lawsuits were registered in several states of the US, and in Canada, to address some of these claims. The first of these to reach a decision was in Missouri, where a settlement was announced early in December 2007. Late in March 2008, GM agreed to compensate complainants in the remaining 49 states. GM (Motors Liquidation Company) filed for bankruptcy in 2009, which tied up the outstanding claims until a court determines who gets paid.


title: Antifreeze

text: According to the DEX-COOL manufacturer, "mixing a 'green' [non-OAT] coolant with DEX-COOL reduces the batch's change interval to 2 years or 30,000 miles, but will otherwise cause no damage to the engine". DEX-COOL antifreeze uses two inhibitors: sebacate and 2-EHA (2-ethylhexanoic acid), the latter which works well with the hard water found in the United States, but is a plasticizer that can cause gaskets to leak.


title: Antifreeze

text: According to internal GM documents, the ultimate culprit appears to be operating vehicles for long periods of time with low coolant levels. The low coolant is caused by pressure caps that fail in the open position. (The new caps and recovery bottles were introduced at the same time as DEX-COOL). This exposes hot engine components to air and vapors, causing corrosion and contamination of the coolant with iron oxide particles, which in turn can aggravate the pressure cap problem as contamination holds the caps open permanently.


title: Antifreeze

text: Honda and Toyota's new extended life coolant use OAT with sebacate, but without the 2-EHA. Some added phosphates provide protection while the OAT builds up. Honda specifically excludes 2-EHA from their formulas.


title: Antifreeze

text: Typically, OAT antifreeze contains an orange dye to differentiate it from the conventional glycol-based coolants (green or yellow), though some OAT products may contain a red or mauve dye. Some of the newer OAT coolants claim to be compatible with "all" types of OAT and glycol-based coolants; these are typically green or yellow in color.


title: Antifreeze

text: An example is Zerex G05, which is a low-silicate, phosphate free formula that includes the benzoate inhibitor.


title: Antifreeze

text: P-HOAT coolants mix phosphates with HOAT. This technology is typically used in Asian makes and is often dyed red or blue.


title: Antifreeze

text: Si-OAT coolants mix silicates with HOAT. This technology is typically used in European makes and is often dyed pink.


title: Antifreeze

text: All automotive antifreeze formulations, including the newer organic acid (OAT antifreeze) formulations, are environmentally hazardous because of the blend of additives (around 5%), including lubricants, buffers, and corrosion inhibitors. Because the additives in antifreeze are proprietary, the safety data sheets (SDS) provided by the manufacturer list only those compounds which are considered to be significant safety hazards when used in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations. Common additives include sodium silicate, disodium phosphate, sodium molybdate, sodium borate, denatonium benzoate, and dextrin (hydroxyethyl starch).


title: Antifreeze

text: Disodium fluorescein dye is added to conventional ethylene glycol formulas to visually distinguish leaked amounts from other vehicle fluids, and as a marker of type to distinguish it from incompatible types. This dye fluoresces bright green when illuminated by blue or UV light from daylight or testing lamps.


title: Antifreeze

text: Automotive antifreeze has a characteristic odor due to the additive tolyltriazole, a corrosion inhibitor. The unpleasant odor in industrial-use tolyltriazole comes from impurities in the product that are formed from the toluidine isomers (ortho-, meta-, and para-toluidine) and meta-diamino toluene which are side-products in the manufacture of tolyltriazole. These side-products are highly reactive and produce volatile aromatic amines which are responsible for the unpleasant odor.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: The Soviet atomic bomb project was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Although the Soviet scientific community discussed the possibility of an atomic bomb throughout the 1930s, going as far as making a concrete proposal to develop such a weapon in 1940, the full-scale program was not initiated and prioritized until Operation Barbarossa.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Because of the conspicuous silence of the scientific publications on the subject of nuclear fission by German, American, and British scientists, Russian physicist Georgy Flyorov suspected that the Allied powers had secretly been developing a "superweapon" since 1939. Flyorov wrote a letter to Stalin urging him to start this program in 1942. Initial efforts were slowed due to the German invasion of the Soviet Union and remained largely composed of the intelligence gathering from the Soviet spy rings working in the U.S. Manhattan Project.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: After Stalin learned of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the program was pursued aggressively and accelerated through effective intelligence gathering about the German nuclear weapon project and the American Manhattan Project. The Soviet efforts also rounded up captured German scientists to join their program, and relied on knowledge passed by spies to Soviet intelligence agencies.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: On 29 August 1949, the Soviet Union secretly conducted its first successful weapon test ("First Lightning", based on the American "Fat Man" design) at the Semipalatinsk-21 in Kazakhstan. Stalin alongside Soviet political officials and scientists were elated at the successful test. A nuclear armed Soviet Union sent its rival Western neighbors, and particularly the United States into a state of unprecedented trepidation. From 1949 onwards the Soviet Union manufactured and tested nuclear weapons on a large scale. Its nuclear capabilities served as an important role on its global status. A nuclear armed Soviet Union escalated the Cold War with the United States to the possibility of nuclear war and ushered in the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: As early as 1910 in Russia, independent research was being conducted on radioactive elements by several Russian scientists. Despite the hardship faced by the Russian academy of sciences during the national revolution in 1917, followed by the violent civil war in 1922, Russian scientists had made remarkable efforts toward the advancement of physics research in the Soviet Union by the 1930s. Before the first revolution in 1905, the mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky had made a number of public calls for a survey of Russia's uranium deposits but none were heeded. Such early efforts were independently and privately funded by various organizations until 1922 when the Radium Institute in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) opened and industrialized the research.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: From the 1920s until the late 1930s, Russian physicists had been conducting joint research with their European counterparts on the advancement of atomic physics at the Cavendish Laboratory run by a New Zealand physicist, Ernest Rutherford, where Georgi Gamov and Pyotr Kapitsa had studied and researched.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Influential research towards the advancement of nuclear physics was guided by Abram Ioffe, who was the director at the Leningrad Physical-Technical Institute (LPTI), having sponsored various research programs at various technical schools in the Soviet Union. The discovery of the neutron by the British physicist James Chadwick further provided promising expansion of the LPTI's program, with the operation of the first cyclotron to energies of over 1 MeV, and the first "splitting" of the atomic nucleus by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton. Russian physicists began pushing the government, lobbying in the interest of the development of science in the Soviet Union, which had received little interest due to the upheavals created during the Russian revolution and the February Revolution. Earlier research was directed towards the medical and scientific exploration of radium; a supply of it was available as it could be retrieved from borehole water from the Ukhta oilfields.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: In 1939, German chemist Otto Hahn reported his discovery of fission, achieved by the splitting of uranium with neutrons that produced the much lighter element barium. This eventually led to the realization among Russian scientists, and their American counterparts, that such reaction could have military significance. The discovery excited the Russian physicists, and they began conducting their independent investigations on nuclear fission, mainly aiming towards power generation, as many were skeptical of possibility of creating an atomic bomb anytime soon. Early efforts were led by Yakov Frenkel (a physicist specialised on condensed matter), who did the first theoretical calculations on continuum mechanics directly relating the kinematics of binding energy in fission process in 1940. Georgy Flyorov's and Lev Rusinov's collaborative work on thermal reactions concluded that 3-1 neutrons were emitted per fission only days after similar conclusions had been reached by the team of Frédéric Joliot-Curie.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: After a strong lobbying of Russian scientists, the Soviet government initially set up a commission that was to address the "uranium problem" and investigate the possibility of chain reaction and isotope separation. The Uranium Problem Commission was ineffective because the German invasion of Soviet Union eventually limited the focus on research, as Russia became engaged in a bloody conflict along the Eastern Front for the next four years. The Soviet atomic weapons program had no significance, and most work was unclassified as the papers were continuously published as public domain in academic journals.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, had mostly disregarded the atomic knowledge possessed by the Russian scientists as had most of the scientists working in the metallurgy and mining industry or serving in the Soviet Armed Forces technical branches during the World War II's eastern front in 1940–42.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: In 1940–42, Georgy Flyorov, a Russian physicist serving as an officer in the Soviet Air Force, noted that despite progress in other areas of physics, the German, British, and American scientists had ceased publishing papers on nuclear science. Clearly, they each had active secret research programs. The dispersal of Soviet scientists had sent Abram Ioffe’s Radium Institute from Leningrad to Kazan; and the wartime research program put the "uranium bomb" programme third, after radar and anti-mine protection for ships. Kurchatov had moved from Kazan to Murmansk to work on mines for the Soviet Navy.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: In April 1942, Flyorov directed two classified letters to Stalin, warning him of the consequences of the development of atomic weapons: "the results will be so overriding [that] it won't be necessary to determine who is to blame for the fact that this work has been neglected in our country." The second letter, by Flyorov and Konstantin Petrzhak, highly emphasized the importance of a "uranium bomb": "it is essential to manufacture a uranium bomb without a delay."


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Upon reading the Flyorov letters, Stalin immediately pulled Russian physicists from their respective military services and authorized an atomic bomb project, under engineering physicist Anatoly Alexandrov and nuclear physicist Igor V. Kurchatov. For this purpose, the Laboratory No. 2 near Moscow was established under Kurchatov. Kurchatov was chosen in late 1942 as the technical director of the Soviet bomb program; he was awed by the magnitude of the task but was by no means convinced of its utility against the demands of the front. Abram Ioffe had refused the post as he was "too old", and recommended the young Kurchatov.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: At the same time, Flyorov was moved to Dubna, where he established the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, focusing on synthetic elements and thermal reactions. In late 1942, the State Defense Committee officially delegated the program to the Soviet Army, with major wartime logistical efforts later being supervised by Lavrentiy Beria, the head of NKVD.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: In 1945, the Arzamas 16 site, near Moscow, was established under Yakov Zel'dovich and Yuli Khariton who performed calculations on nuclear combustion theory, alongside Isaak Pomeranchuk. Despite early and accelerated efforts, it was reported by historians that efforts on building a bomb using weapon-grade uranium seemed hopeless to Russian scientists. Igor Kurchatov had harboured doubts working towards the uranium bomb, but made progress on a bomb using weapon-grade plutonium after British data was provided by the NKVD.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: The situation dramatically changed when the Soviet Union learned of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.