title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The colours of the five regiments of Foot Guards have the pattern of the line infantry reversed, with the king's colour of each of the 1st Battalions being crimson with the regimental insignia, a royal crown and honours and the regimental colour a variation of the Union Flag with the battle honours embroidered. The king's colours of any additional battalions from these regiments (currently held by the four incremental companies from four out of the six regiments) feature a Union Flag canton at the top corner.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: By tradition, rifle regiments do not carry colours; this goes back to their formation, when they were used as skirmishers and sharpshooters. While individual units may have had banners or pennants to distinguish themselves from other units, regiments as a whole never needed a full stand of colours. Today, the two rifle regiments in the British Army, The Rifles and the Royal Gurkha Rifles carry their battle honours on their drums, while the Royal Green Jackets also had theirs inscribed on their cap badge; this tradition is maintained by The Rifles, who wear the Maltese Cross badge of the Royal Green Jackets, inscribed with the regimental honours, as the belt badge. In place of a regimental colour, the Gurkhas carry the King's Truncheon awarded in 1863.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The Sri Lanka Sinha Regiment was the first modern non-British regiment to receive Truncheons when they were awarded to that unit in 2017. Formerly, the Malaysian Army Royal Ranger Regiment was granted a regimental truncheon in 1966.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In India, colours or banners are given instead of truncheons, following Russian practice, to all the rifle and scout infantry regiments by the President of India.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In the British Army's cavalry units, the king's cavalry standard and the regimental standard (for the heavy cavalry) and the king's cavalry guidons and regimental guidons (for the light cavalry) are the equivalents to the line infantry colours. The king's standard is crimson with the royal coat of arms and cypher, plus the regimental honours, while the regimental (squadron/union) standard has an adaptable background colour per unit (the colour is sometimes scarlet) and includes sometimes the Union Badge below the crown and the royal cypher at the sides of the badge, with the unit honours below. The light cavalry guidon is swallow-tailed and includes the regimental coat of arms and honours. Before the 1950s, however, Timpani in the drumhorses (and later snare, bass and tenor drums in the dismounted bands) carried the regimental honours and insignia of the light cavalry regiments. For dragoon guards regiments, the sequence is mixed, since these regiments have a king's cavalry standard and regimental guidons.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Woven onto the colours are battle honours; the king's colour has honours from the First World War and Second World War, while the regimental colour has honours from other campaigns. The regimental colour can also have other distinctions, including antecedent emblems and unique honours; one significant example is the Sphinx emblem carried by regiments who took part in the Egypt campaign of 1801. If the regiment has more than a single battalion, then there are identifying marks on the colours to show which battalion they belong to.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In the UK, 41 Commando, Royal Marines, and the 1st Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, were also awarded the PUC and permitted to display the streamer of their regimental colours.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Because of their importance to the regiment, prior to a new stand of colours being presented, they are consecrated.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The Royal Hospital, Chelsea had neither colours nor other distinctive device during its entire history, until 2002 when Queen Elizabeth II presented the hospital with the Sovereign's Mace. This is now paraded by a party of in-pensioners at all of the Royal Hospital's ceremonial events.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The Corps of Royal Marines has a single pattern king's colour, which is the Union Flag with the foul anchor and the reigning sovereign's cypher interlaced in the centre. Above is a scroll with the single battle honour Gibraltar surmounted by St Edward's Crown. Below is the globe (which represents the many battle honours the Royal Marines had earned) surrounded by a laurel wreath (which represents the Battle of Belle Isle) and below this is a scroll with the corps' motto. Each of the four commandos (the battalion-sized formations that make up the bulk of the corps) has a King’s colour, with the only difference being the colour of the cords and tassels. Each commando also has its own regimental colour. The regimental colour is a dark blue flag (because the corps is classed as a 'royal regiment') with a small Union Flag at the pike head. The colour carries similar central embellishments as the king's colour, with the exception that the cypher of George IV replaces that of the reigning monarch and the unit numeral is below. The royal cypher is at the other corners. The regimental colours also have the coloured cords and tassels, which are gold combined with the following colours:


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The former 41 Commando was awarded the Distinguished Unit Citation for its service in the Korean War, and was thus permitted to carry the streamer on its Regimental Colour.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In addition, each principal command in the Royal Navy also has its own king's colour which is a variation of the White Ensign, with its dimensions altered to mirror those of the colours of infantry regiments. In the centre is the royal cypher of the reigning monarch within the Garter, surmounted by the crown.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Unlike the colours of regiments in the Army, every king's colour of the Royal Navy is identical. The following units hold a king's colour of the Royal Navy:


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The Royal Fleet Auxiliary also holds a king's colour, unique for a civilian organisation. It is a variation of the RFA's Blue Ensign, with the dimensions altered to mirror the Royal Navy King’s Colour. It has the same royal cypher in the centre.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: RAF colours are made of sky blue silk and measure approximately 36" × 36". The following colours have been awarded:


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The king's colour for the Royal Air Force in the United Kingdom is a variation of the RAF Ensign with its dimensions altered. The RAF Roundel is moved to the lower fly, with its place in the centre again taken by the royal cypher surmounted by the crown. Other colours feature the unit's badge in the centre with the royal cypher and crown in the first quarter.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The RAF's squadron standards are its counterpart to the regimental colours. They are in air force blue surrounded by a gold fringe, with the squadron insignia and honours.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The naval and air forces of all three of these countries also have similar colours based on their own ensigns. Rules stipulated by the Canadian Department of Defence state that the First, or Senior Colours symbolizes the unit's loyalty to the Crown; authorization to possess a king's colour may only be granted, and the colour presented, by the monarch or his vice-regal representative. The design based on the flag of Canada reflects the custom established for infantry line regiments in the mid-18th century, when the sovereign's colour was based on the national flag, as was the practice in British and French units in Canada.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: When Sri Lanka declared itself a republic in 1972 the units that had a King’s colour, first using the Union Jack and then the current national flag, retired them. These were replaced by the new President's Colour, which was first awarded in 1972.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Regimental colours follow the British model, and the two light infantry regiments (Sri Lanka Sinha Regiment and Sri Lanka Rifle Corps) do not carry colours at all. Unlike the British Royal Artillery, the Sri Lanka Artillery carries a set of President's and Regimental Colours, the same case for the Sri Lanka Engineers.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Unlike the Air Force which uses a single colour design similar to the RAF, the Navy sports unit and command colours in the same fashion as the Army.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The design of the President's Colours of Navy and Air Force units are the gold fringed versions of their service flags. The Army President's Colour is a gold fringed national flag with the national arms in between the teal and orange stripes on the left.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Given its Commonwealth heritage as a former British possession, the Indian Armed Forces sports colours which are equivalent to those used in the British military.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Only the Navy and Air Force sport President's Service Colours which are their respective naval ensign and air force flag with an elephant at the bottom left end.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: President's Colours (Standard and Guidon for mounted units of the Army and Air Force flying units and Banners for service arms and the light infantry) are awarded to distinguished units of the Armed Forces by the President of India, who is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, these are the equivalents to British regimental colours. In the Army, these colours carry the and any battle honours won by the unit.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The same format of Sovereign's and Regimental Colours also apply in Malaysia. The King's Colours and Regimental Colours of the Malaysian Armed Forces are the flags given by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong in his responsibilities as Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and by the 8 other state monarchs. The colours are given to units recognized as Royal units and to flags of large formations (the King's Colour) and to units receiving their new regimental colours (the Unit Regimental Colour).


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The King's Colour is yellow with the national arms surrounded by paddy on the centre. Thus Malaysia is one of only two Commonwealth countries, the other being Brunei, that does not use its national flag as a senior Colour (the flag is the senior colour of the entire Armed Forces establishment). The sides are emblazoned with the battle honours of the unit. On the canton the service emblem of either service of the Armed Forces (Army, Navy and Air Force) can be seen. The Regimental Colour, however, differs by service arm or branch (the latter case being used in the Army) and unit. Both flags have gold fringes surrounding them. These colours are only present in formal parades.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: During the Independence Day Parade and on Armed Forces Day on 21 September, as the armed services on parade do not wear their dress uniforms, only the 1st Battalion, Royal Malay Regiment, which wears dress uniforms, is present with its King's and Regimental Colours. For the rest of the services on public parade, the following order then applies:


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Singaporean military colours of the Singapore Armed Forces are divided today into Service State Colours and Unit Regimental Colours. Until 1997 there were also Service Regimental Colours and Unit State Colours. The Service State Colours are similar to the Flag of Singapore but differ per service, with the service emblem in the white field. But Regimental Colours are different, and they differ per unit or service arm (save for the flags of the Air Force and Navy that show their respective service colours instead and some SAF service-wide commands like the Military Police). Their common design is that of the regimental or command arms at the centre of the colour, which is in the colour of the unit uniform facings or service branch which it belongs. Both are gold fringed and are brought out on major occasions only. The former Unit State Colours carried the unit emblem or badge in the white field of the national flag.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Infantry units have a "drapeau" / "vaandel", a square vertical tricolour of black, yellow, and red based on the national flag within a 15 mm wide gold fringe, the whole being 90 cm square. The names of battle honours for which the unit was cited are embroidered in gold in French on the obverse and in Dutch on the reverse, in straight lines.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Danish Navy, Army and Air Force units carry a unit colour () and for the Life Guards a battalion colour (), which measures 105 × 140 cm, former horse units a slightly smaller guidon. The flag is a variation of the Dannebrog, with a curvilinear white Dannebrog cross, called the Mantova cross, set with its centre about one-half the width of the hoist from the hoist edge. The royal cypher is embroidered in gold over the centre of the cross, the unit badge in gold in the upper hoist, and the unit number, name or both in gold in the lower hoist. Some regiments have additional marks in the upper fly. The Jyske Dragonregiment, for instance, has Prince Henrik's cipher in the upper fly. The finial is an ornate gold openwork spearhead with the royal cypher in the centre. Attached below the spearhead can be one or more campaign streamers (). The colour is decorated with a gold cord with two tassels and bordered with a thin strip of gold cord. The sleeve holding the colour to the pike is attached with ornamental nails, the first three of which represent the sovereign, the Fatherland, and the Union.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Units of Finnish Defence Forces have a single Colour. The Colours are either active or traditional. An active Colour belongs to a brigade or an equivalent unit in the FDF. A traditional Colour belongs to a battalion or a regiment that has formerly been separate, but is now part of a brigade. The difference between an active and traditional Colour is the way of presenting them. The active Colour always has a guard of two officers, while a traditional Colour is borne without one. The military oath is always given in the presence of the active Colour of the unit.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The Finnish military vexillology is a mixture of Scandinavian and Russian tradition. The Colours are usually modelled after Swedish regimental flags of the 17th century, but some units carry flags modelled after Russian or German colour traditions. The Colour often bears the emblem of the province where the unit is located with an appropriate symbol of the service branch. No battle honours were awarded for units during the Second World War, but some units have battle honours from the Finnish Civil War.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Units and institutions of the Finnish Defence Force which have not been awarded a colour of their own use the unadorned swallow-tailed Flag of Finland as their State Colour, and the oath of service for NCOs and volunteer enlisted personnel assigned to these are given in its presence.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In January 1188, in a meeting between Henry II of England and Philip II of France, it was agreed that both would go on a crusade, and that Henry II would use a white cross and Philip II would use a red cross. Later on, this usage was inverted, and the English took to using a red cross on white, and the French a white cross on red.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: As the use of regimental colours spread in Europe, the habit developed of using a symmetric white cross as the basis of the design of the French regimental flags, and by the 18th century almost every regiment had a white cross. The regiments were distinguished by the colours of the cantons.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: After the French Revolution and the appearance of the new "Tricolore", crosses disappear in 1794 and various arrangements of the tricolour come into use. Napoleon standardizes first in 1804 to a white field chape-chausse of red and blue, and in 1812 to the modern French flag. Atop of the staff of colours of the Napoleonic army the Imperial Eagle (modelled after the Ancient Roman "Aquila") was placed, which actually rose to be more important symbol of the regiment than colours itself.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The modern French Armed Forces are not officially considered to be the successors of the Royal Army and Navy, although many of their individual units trace their histories to before the foundation of the First Republic. Accordingly, battles fought and won by the Royal Army and Navy before the French Revolution (such as Patay, Fontenoy, Chesapeake, Porto Praya and so on) do not appear as battle honours on regimental colours. The names of battles of the old times, however, which are rightly still considered as glorious by the modern French Army, are honoured by being given to ships or armoured vehicles, and remembered by anniversaries.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: As an example, the 1st Infantry Regiment, founded in 1479 during the reign of Louis XI, has fought a number of battles since the 15th century, but its battle honours are only recorded from 1792 onwards:


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Regimental colours are 90 cm × 90 cm "Tricolore" silk square flags – standards are smaller: 64 cm × 64 cm – surrounded by a golden fringe. Both are set on a stave (2.11 m long and 32 mm diameter – staves for standards are slightly shorter) ended by a 38 cm pike-shaped finial with a cartouche bearing the initials "RF" for "République française" on one side, and the name or number of the unit on the other side.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The cravate hanging from the pike is made of two tricolour silk ribbons, 90 cm long and 24 cm wide, ended by an 8 cm gold fringe on which the unit number or monogram is embroidered in gold, encircled by an oak and laurel wreath. French decorations and fourragères awarded to the unit are pinned or tied to the cravate; foreign awards and decorations are borne on a red velvet cushion.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: All writings on the colour are embroidered in gold, as well the unit number (or monogram) encircled in antique oak and laurel wreath in each corner of the colour.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: By tradition, all the Army's rifle battalions (the "bataillons de chasseurs à pied" together with the "chasseurs alpins") share a single collective colour. Individual battalions have pennants ("fanions") and the flag of the Rifles ("Drapeau des chasseurs") is held each year in turn by a different rifle battalion. As a result, the single flag displays all the battle honours earned by every rifle battalion.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The Colours worn by the ships of the National Navy ("Marine nationale") consist of the National Ensign and the jack:


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Currently, only eight individual National Navy units have colours other than the National Ensign or the FNFL jack. Under recommendation 808 EMM/CAB of 5 December 1985, naval units to which colours can be bestowed must be those with manpower equivalent to that of a regiment, which are specialised in combat or services on land (or corps which have inherited their traditions from such units), and naval instruction centres or colleges. The flags are quite similar to those of Land Army units, the difference being the wreaths in corners which encircle anchors instead of the name of unit, except for the Naval Gunners (initials "CM") and the Fleet Engineering Cadets College (initials "EAMF").


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The colours of Air Force ("armée de l'Air") units are by all means similar to those of the Army from which it separated as an independent military arm in 1933. Colours are generally not bestowed to Air Army units smaller than "escadres" (wings), land combat regiments, air force bases, instruction centres or air force colleges.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The units of the National Gendarmerie ("Gendarmerie nationale") have colours which are very similar to those of the Land Army. Each region (formerly "legion"), instruction centre, college or Republican Guard Regiment has its flag or standard, altogether 56 flags and 2 standards. The reverse of colours of the Departmental Gendarmerie units and Gendarmerie instruction centres have the same motto as the Land Army units ("Honneur et Patrie"), but the colours of the Mobile Gendarmerie have their own particular motto: "Valeur et Discipline" (Valour and Discipline). Most subordinate or smaller units use 50 cm large × 40 cm high pennants.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The National Gendarmerie also has a common flag, under the guard of the Director-general, on which five battle honours are registered:


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Many of today's armed forces of independent countries that once were part of the French Empire share customs and traditions closely similar if not identical to those of the French military regarding organisation of military arms, army and navy rank structures and uniform styles. Indeed, in countries where the decolonisation process had been conducted through peaceful political negotiations (chiefly French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa), French colonial units were sometimes directly inherited by the former colonies where they had been raised to form the basis of the new national armies. This legacy not only included colour etiquette (the way colours are respected, taken care of and paraded), but also design, adapted to new national flag designs.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: On the contrary, in countries where independence came as the aftermath of bloody wars of liberation, such as in Vietnam and Algeria, due to the Cold War context, French military culture was strongly rejected often only to be replaced by communist Soviet or Chinese style military culture (colours, ranks, uniforms, parade pace, etc.).


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: As one of the World's great powers together with Great Britain, France did not only exercise its influence by conquest, but also by the prestige of its military. At the height of European colonial expansion in the 19th century, France's army and Britain's navy were each regarded as the most powerful forces ever on land and at sea. This lead many a military to copy both powers' military and naval cultures. As most navies in the World adopted the British naval looks (double-breasted navy blue jacket and peaked cap for officer, blue jean collar for ratings, etc.), numerous land armies adopted French-inspired uniforms during the 1860s and 1870s (both Union and Confederate armies during the American Civil War, the Chilean Army of the War of the Pacific, the Imperial Russian Army, etc.) and even sometimes imported types of French units (e.g. Zouave regiments). France's influence on military fashion dimmed for the time being after the unexpected French defeat ending the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. Many armies then changed to adopt Prussian military style (as a perfect example of this trend, Chilean soldiers traded their kepis for "pickelhauben").


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: As far as regimental colours are concerned, French influence was mainly to be seen in armies of smaller European powers with strong cultural, economical or political ties to France, notably in such countries whose national flag itself was patterned after the French national flag, such as Belgium or Romania.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Units of the Bundeswehr have only a single Colour. The "Truppenfahne" is a square version of the national flag with the Bundesadler (national shield) overall in the centre. The flag is surrounded by a black, red, and gold lacework border and edged on three sides by gold fringe. The finial is a gilt bronze openwork spearhead surrounding a black and silver Iron Cross. Below the finial, a streamer is attached with the unit badge at the top and its designation embroidered in gold at the end. These streamers are red for army (Heer) units, blue for the navy (Marine), and white for the air force (Luftwaffe). The streamer is the same length as the hoist of the flag.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The tradition was also observed by the National People's Army of East Germany, whose unit colours mirrored the national flag.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Until the Second World War German military units maintained colours of the Prussian pattern regardless of service branch, while the Waffen-SS followed the national flag pattern.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Traditionally, Army infantry and tank/cavalry regiments have a single colour/standard or war flag (). This is blue, with a white cross and features St George and the Dragon in the centre. The flag has no distinguishing features for individual regiments, although battle honours are sometimes added to the flag; the regiment's identity is inscribed on the flagstaff. The pattern has been in use since the 1830s, with no changes between the periods of monarchy or republic. The Hellenic Army Academy has also been awarded a war flag, its cadets having participated in the Battle of Crete in 1941. Similar flags exist also for the Air Force, featuring the archangel Michael. Recently war flags were assigned to the Army NCO Academy and the Police Academy.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Unlike the Army, Police and Air Force, the Hellenic Navy uses the Flag of Greece as both the naval ensign and national colour. The Hellenic Coast Guard uses the Army pattern.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The flag of the Swiss Guard, the army of the Vatican City, consists of four-quarters. The Coat of Arms of the current pope is in the first quarter, while the arms of Pope Julius II are in the fourth quarter. In the second and third quarters are horizontal stripes of red, yellow and blue, the colours of the unit's uniforms.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The flag also has the coat of arms of the commander within a wreath, on a background of the colour of his canton. The design of the flag changes with the election of a new pope and the appointment of a new commander.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The 120 cm × 140 cm Unit colour of the Hungarian Defence Force is the current regulation colour of all Hungarian Defence Forces units since 15 March 1991. The flag is made of white fibres-satin. The height of the coat of arms with the crown is 57, and the width is 58 cm along with the crown. The coat of arms is made of silk with gold and silver embroidery. The edges of the flagship are surrounded by 11–11, and 9–9, 10 cm, red and green flames on the longer sides, extending 15 centimetres. The flames of the flames start and end on each side with a red colour, with the flaming tongues separated by a green circle in the four corners of the flag. The flagpole has a 5 mmm national-colour silk ribbon on its 3 free edges that do not fit the rod, with 10–10 centimetres national colour silk ribs on two free tips. The white part of the flagpole outside the party is twisted once on the pole, fixed with 3 equally spaced brass nails - 25-25-25 mm equally spaced. The flagpole is a 21-centimeter long, stylized leaf-shaped sandblasted brass, on both sides with a baroque, bronze Coat of arms of Hungary, without shield holders. The rod is 238 centimetres long, cylindrical, scarlet-lacquered, bottom-foldable in the lower third. Brass rings at the pole separation lines and a brass cap at the bottom end.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The Colour (bandiera di guerra) for army units (other than cavalry) is a square version of the national tricolour in silk, 99 cm × 99 cm. It is mounted on a pike 2.2 m long, made of wood covered with green velvet and decorated with ornate brass nails arranged in a spiral. The pike is topped by a 35 cm high finial consisting of an ornate gilt brass spearhead chased with a five pointed star and the monogram RI (for "Repubblica Italiana"), which is in turn mounted atop a gilt brass ball on which is the name and date of establishment of the unit. The pike is adorned with two silver cords 67 cm long, each with a 10 cm long silver tassel and a blue silk cravat 8 cm × 66 cm with an 8 cm silver fringe at each end, to which the unit's decorations are pinned, the ribbons of the decorations overlapping so that the medals hang down the cravat.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Lithuania's military colours under the Lithuanian Armed Forces tend to follow a mix of the Russian and British practice, as well as of US tradition, with the national flag being designated as a National Colour, but only flown by guards of honour in ceremonies. Unit colours of the Land Forces follow the Imperial Russian pattern, with the fringe in gold or bi-colour of red/green and bearing Vytis (obverse) and unit emblem (reverse) in the centre. The Naval Forces uses a ceremonial form of the naval ensign as a overall branch colour with gold fringe following British precedence.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In the Dutch armed forces, the colour (or standard in case of the mounted (i.e. cavalry and field and horse artillery) regiments) is orange (except for the colour of the midshipman corps, which is red).


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: On the obverse is the royal cypher of the monarch that gave the regiment its (original) colour, with the unit's name underneath (including the year the regiment or corps was established), both in gold; around the four edges is a laurel branch. Battle honours are added in the corners of the obverse and sometimes also on the left and right of the royal cypher; if additional honours are awarded, they are placed on streamers that are attached to the pike until the presentation of a new colour. Battle honours refer to places (e.g. Waterloo or Rotterdam), areas (West-Java or Afghanistan) (seas included, for example Java-zee), or to a military campaign (Tiendaagse Veldtocht or Veldtocht van 1815); the year or years of engagement are always added, except on the colours of the Netherlands Marine Corps.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: On the reverse is the arms of the Kingdom of the Netherlands without the mantle. The shield is blue and is strewn with small upright rectangles; the main device is a crowned rampant lion, holding a sword in its upper paw and a bundle of seven arrows in its lower paw. The lion and rectangles are gold, whilst the blade of the sword is silver. Supporting the shield on either side is a gold rampant lion, facing outwards towards the viewer. There is a gold crown above the shield; whilst below it is a blue scroll with the motto in gold. The shield and lions are surrounded by a wreath of green palm and oak leaves tied together with an orange and blue ribbon, and there is another wavy gold laurel wreath around the four edges.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The Military Order of William or other decorations are attached to the pike when awarded. The pike has a finial of a lion on a plinth holding a sword and a bunch of seven arrows. Traditionally a colour is 87 cm × 87 cm (with a pike 2.50 m long). Guards regiments carry the same colour, with some differing details. The same applies to the colours carried by the Royal Military Academy and the Royal Military School. Standards measure 50 cm × 50 cm with a pike 2 m long.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Norwegian infantry units have a stand of colours – the first (King's Colour) is the national flag, while the second (Regimental Colour) is unique to each unit:


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The standard military colours of the Polish Armed Forces are in red and white, with the design tracing back to the Polish Second Republic, a standardized form based on earlier colours. The motto of the Armed Forces, "God, Honour, Fatherland" () are at the reverse while the Polish military eagle (which differs per service) surrounded by a gold wreath is at the centre of the obverse. The unit's name is inscribed on the obverse. The eagle is also featured as the finial in all colours.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Each of the commands, units, forces and establishments of the Portuguese Armed Forces has a , which is considered the parade version of the Flag of Portugal. The National Republican Guard, the Public Security Police and some fire departments also have national colours.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The traditional distinction between colours (, literally "flags") - carried by foot units - and standards ("estandartes") - carried by mounted units - was abolished in the 1960s, with all of them being uniformly reclassified as "national standards" ("estandartes nacionais"). At the same time, another type of standard was introduced, this being the heraldic standard, each of which reflects the particular heraldic symbology of the corresponding unit.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The official model for the military colours was established in 1911 and states that they should measure 120 cm in the hoist by 130 cm in the fly, the field being vertically divided in green and red, with the National coat of arms in the centre, surrounded by two golden olive branches tied by a white scroll containing the motto "Esta é a Ditosa Pátria Minha Amada" (This is my Beloved Blissful Motherland). Despite the existence of this official model, the various branches of the Armed Forces adopted different models of colours over the years, with various designs and dimensions.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In March 2020, a uniform model of national colours was adopted for all the branches. This is based in the 1911 official model, but measuring 120 cm both in the hoist and in the fly. The name of the unit, its heraldic symbol and their battle honours are embroidered in a gravat attached to the base of the finial, the colour of the gravate varying accordingly with the branch of service. Naval units were allowed to keep the traditional Order of Christ Cross embroidered in the canton of the cloth of their national colours. The several commands, units, forces and establishments of the Armed Forces will have to replace their old national colours by the new model within 10 years.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The national colours of the National Republican Guard and of the Public Security Police follow the 1911 model and continue to keep the traditional practice of having the names of the units inside white scrolls which are inserted on the field of the flag itself.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: According to the Romanian General Staff, "The military colours ("drapel de luptă") are the symbol of military honour, bravery and glory. They evoke the past struggle of the Romanian people for national liberty and the traditions of unity, reminding each soldier of his sacred duty to serve the Fatherland with trust, and to defend at all costs the unity, sovereignty and independence of Romania".


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The military colours are granted to military units by presidential decree, on the advice of the Minister of National Defence, the Minister of Internal Affairs or the director of the Romanian Intelligence Service. According to the Ministry of National Defence, the complete description of this military insignia is as follows:


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The military colours of Romania are made of double silk cloth and have dimensions of 100 × 66 cm (2:3 ratio). The canvas has the colours of the Romanian flag and its obverse is identical with the reverse. The national coat of arms, measuring 29 × 21.5 cm, is applied in the middle of the yellow stripe, 18 cm above its base. In each corner, 5 cm from the edge of the canvas, is sewed a wreath of oak leaves, which surrounds the weapon signs, all of golden thread:


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The three sides of the flag not attached to the pole are decorated with fringes of golden thread (5–7 cm long) and tassels of the same material (10–12 cm long) hang from the corners of the fly. The flag is attached to the pole by an antioxidant metal rod 70 cm long.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The pole, of brown wood, is 240 cm high and 3.5 cm in diameter. A brass cylinder is at the base, 4 cm long and closed on the bottom. The rod is attached to the pole by a brass ring, gilt on its lower part, and a 6 cm high cylindrical protective tube of the same material and gilt on its upper part. The ring (3.2 cm high) is inscribed with the name of the unit. Another brass cylinder is placed on the tip of the pole, 6 cm long and of brass. The eagle, of gilt copper, sheet, 15 cm high and 11.5 cm wide, is placed over this. Looking rightward, the eagle's wings are pointed downward and it holds the thunderbolts of Jupiter in its talons. It is placed on a parallelepipedal support of the same metal (10 × 3.5 × 2 cm), which has a 3.4 cm high ornament on its lower part. The support is screwed onto the brass cylinder and has inscribed into the front the motto "Onoare şi Patrie" ("honour and Fatherland"). The name of the respective unit is engraved into the reverse.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Other features of the military colours are a tie for attaching decorations, six sashes for the troops in the flag's guard and a protective cover of impermeable fabric.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The military colours of navy vessels are identical to their ensign. The ensign is in turn identical to the national flag, being made of ordinary canvas in various dimensions, according to the ship's rank, size and place of hoisting.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Until Peter the Great assumed the office and throne of Tsar in 1685, various flag designs were used by land and naval units of Imperial Russia.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In the 18th century the Imperial Russian Army started to have colours of its own. Starting from the 1730s, Cross style flags in the colours of the various military units appeared in various units: large flags for the infantry and the other arms and small flags for the cavalry and horse artillery. These flags mirrored the Commonwealth military colours of today, with one colour set as the state colour and the rest as the regimental and battalion or squadron colours. 1797 regulations introduced new designs for the infantry—for regular units, the state colour being white with the state emblem and the company, battalion and/or regimental colours using the assigned colours of their units, for the Imperial Guard a different emblem was used, and the design was identical. New colours were issued in 1800, but only Guards units used them.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Regulations set in 1813 unified infantry unit colours into one. Guards units used the orange and black of the Order of Saint George with the facing colours and unit emblem at the centre.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Naval flags, until 1861–62 (with a brief break in the late 1790s) whilst using the St. Andrew's cross in blue on white, mirrored the British Royal Navy.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: From 1942 onwards, each regiment in the armed forces of the Soviet Union (especially the Army and Air Force) had its own colour, which was produced to a standard design:


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The former designs had a red star on the reverse with the name of the Central Executive Committee and later, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR surrounding it, and the obverse had the unit inscription below the coat of arms of the Soviet Union, which had the Soviet Union state motto ("Workers of the world, unite!") and the red star with the hammer and sickle inside (both were on the flag of the Soviet Union) above it (the latter was near the hoist). Naval flags until 1935 sported different designs. (Distinguished units would be given a second colour, the Revolutionary Red Banner of Honour, by the all-Union CEC (before 1924 by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee).)


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The Soviet Navy colours had the 1935 official design with them (it was later revised in 1950), with additions for units honoured with the Order of the Red Banner, but in 1964 the Supreme Commander's and Defence Minister's own naval colour and the colours of the Navy Commander-in-Chief (formerly the Minister for the Navy) and Chief of Naval Operations were issued with different designs used, with the addition of the Armed Forces General Staff's own naval colour. The first colour was red with the USSR state arms, the next two had the arms with blue stripes indicating office rank, and the final two were adaptations of the naval ensign (with a different ensign with the rank) plus the stripes. The 1935 design (that of a white field with a blue lower stripe and the red star plus the hammer and sickle above the blue stripe) replaced a much earlier, post-revolutionary naval colours design adopted in 1925. In 1944 a different flag was issued to the Navy for its land based units – the same design used by the Army with a different obverse having the unit name below the naval ensign.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Early flags even had the RKKA and RKKF insignia (the Army General Staff, represented by crossed blue rifles and later became the General Staff's naval colour until 1964, the Naval General Staff and the Army Naval Operations Staff, later the flag of the People's Comissariat for the Navy on its 1938 creation and was issued with two new colours for the Navy Commissar and Deputy Commissar) beside the hammer and sickle, even the flags of the People's Commissar for National Defence and that of the Navy General Staff and the various flags of naval officers which had the ensign on a canton surrounded by a red field, derived from the Navy Commissar's. The cruiser "Aurora" since 1968 has had a different version of the ensign, flanked by the Order of the Red Banner and of the Order of the October Revolution on the top sides of the star, as the "Aurora" was the only naval recipient of the latter order in 1967 while in 1918, the Order of the Red Banner was conferred to the ship.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The colours of those regiments that were classed as "Guards" was slightly different as per 1942 regulations. These had the portrait of Lenin, the "Za nashu" motto and the abbreviation "USSR" ("СССР", "SSSR") on the obverse and the small star with hammer and sickle in its centre, unit's name and a motto on the reverse of the colour. The mottoes were different for every regiment (for example, those regiments made Guards in the Great Patriotic War bore the motto "Death to the German invaders", "Смерть Немецким захватчикам", "Smyert' Nyemyetskim zahvatchikam"). In some Guards Armies and Corps, different designs on the obverse and reverse were used. Even the Lenin portrait was different in these colours. All of them were gold fringed.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The Navy's Guards units still had the 1935 design, with the addition of the Guards ribbon below, except for units which were honoured with the Order of the Red Banner and became Guard units later. The difference is in the red five-pointed star, in which Red Banner Guard unit flags had applied the Guards ribbon below aside from the Order of the Red Banner on the star for units that had the order bestowed on their colours earlier. Units which used the 1944 regimental colour design but adapted for the navy's guards units included air and marine units which still had the obverse of Army and Air Force guards units standards.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Since the birth of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the old Soviet unit colours were retained. Starting in 1998, the traditional Imperial Russian Armed Forces flag designs were reinstated; however, the new designs began to appear in the early years of the 21st century in the Army and Air Force. But the Russian Navy's old naval colour (St. Andrew's cross in blue on a white field) began to be used again in 1992. It has several variations, and the old jack colour of the Soviet Navy (pre-1935) soon became its jack colour, with the red star with the hammer and sickle removed. The unit colours (especially those of the Navy honour guards) have the same design with the unit insignia at the centre of it while Guards units and bemerited and decorated units apply a different version of the colour.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The new Army and Air Force unit colours are square shaped, have a St. Andrew's cross in the colours of the Ribbon of Saint George, and with the unit insignia in the middle of the observe and the national arms at the reverse, with the service branch emblem on the corners. These colours are the basis for similar ones used today in the various Russian uniformed services.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The design of the colours of the Swedish Armed Forces of today dates back to several separate regulations from early 19th century up to the first united regulations of the three fighting services in 1972. The majority of the army colours are dated back to the summarized regulations of 1950. The colours of the Swedish Amphibious Corps (former Swedish Coastal Artillery) were decided in model 1944. The colours of the Swedish Air Force were modelled in 1938. Most older colours are embroidered by hand while younger ones can be both machine and handmade. When a military unit, as regards traditions, is amalgamated with another, both colours will be carried together. In principle this will go on as long as both colours are usable. When one of the two (or more) no longer can be repaired, the unit will be granted a new colour. This new colour will reflect the traditions of both units without altering the prescribed model.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: A colour is normally granted to the following by the King, by the Prime Minister or the Commander of the Armed Forces:


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The Flag of Turkey is used by the Turkish Armed Forces as a National Colour, and thus has distinguishing features:


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Maroon and gold are the colours used in the military colours used in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, with origins in the Imperial Russian Army's Cossacks and Ukrainian units. In the observe the Coat of arms of Ukraine, surrounded by a gold wreath, is at the centre of an Orthodox Cross – both symbols form the emblem of the Armed Forces – with a St. Andrew's Cross under it with the same emblem in the sides, with the Armed Forces Motto ("For Ukraine, For its glory") surrounding the emblem and crosses. The unit's name is in the reverse. The colour is gold fringed and is mounted on a pole with a trident finial modeled on the national arms. The same design is used in the National Guard of Ukraine but in blue and with the 2015 grenade badge. Active duty NG units sport dark blue colours with the Orthodox Cross, grenade and the coat of arms at the corners.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Only the 93rd Mechanized Brigade (Ground Forces), the Ukrainian Air Assault Forces and the Ukrainian Naval Infantry have been granted additional colours so far in addition to the official maroon unit colours.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine shares a similar colour design to the Armed Forces but with the green colour added to distinguish its units.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The first Yugoslav military colours came about when the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was established in 1918. These were the square versions of the Flag of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with the state coat of arms and the motto of the Yugoslav Royal Army. The unit names were attached to a ribbon at the pole. The colours were inspired by the military colours of Serbia and of the Croat, Slovene and Bosnian military units of resistance against Austria-Hungary during the First World War.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: With the birth of the communist Partisans in 1941 in time for the Second World War, their flags showed the same Pan-Slavic colours on them (arranged according to nationality) but this time a red star was added in the middle. The naval units had a different ensign used and these flags became the basis for the military colours of Democratic Federal Yugoslavia at the time of its 1943 proclamation.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: By the time, these flags had the unit name on the pole pennants and were gold fringed. The Partisan General Staff had their own version of it.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Post-war colours (from 1947, when the nation became a Federal People's Republic) used various flag design with the Yugoslav People's Army motto in Serbo-Croatian ("For the freedom and independence of the socialist fatherland") both in Cyrillic and Latin and differed per unit or service arm of the YPA, but was longer and were gold fringed. Just as before, the unit name stayed on the attached ribbon. Both the Flag of Yugoslavia and the flag of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia were used as National Colours in parades. Unique colours were issued to the Navy, to YPA reserve units and the Territorial Defence Forces of the republics.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Today all the nations comprising the former Yugoslavia have separate colour traditions per armed forces, but keep their unique appearance.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The Serbian Armed Forces colour design is very much unique, while gold fringe can be seen in these colours. At the observe is the national flag design, a tricolour with the national coat of arms, while the emblem and facing colour of the unit represented is in the reverse.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The standard is the colours-equivalent for the heavy cavalry (e.g., horse guards and dragoon guards). At 27 in × 30 in, on an 8 ft 6 in long pole, it is much smaller than infantry colours, so that it can be carried by a soldier on horseback. The guidon is the equivalent for the light cavalry (e.g., dragoons, light dragoons, hussars and lancers). It is swallow-tailed, 27 in × 41 in, with an 8 ft 6 in long pole.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The word "guidon" is a corruption of the French "guyde homme" – 'the guide man'. Originally each troop had its own, but this was quickly reduced to a single, regimental one. With the increased dispersion of troops required in the light cavalry role, their operational function had ceased by the 1830s and they were discontinued. The regiment's kettledrums, with the battle honours woven onto the drum banners (with the exception of 3rd The King's Own Hussars and its successors, where they are uncovered, with the battle honours engraved onto the kettledrums themselves) became the focal point of the regiment's loyalty. In 1952 King George VI reintroduced the guidons of the light cavalry for ceremonial purposes.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Both the standard and the guidon are usually of crimson trimmed in gold and with the regiment's insignia in the centre. The regiment's battle honours are emblazoned on both the obverse and reverse, up to a maximum of 22 on each side.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Cavalry (armour) units carry a standard (), of similar design to the infantry colour, but smaller and square, with the cross centred on the field. The royal cypher is in the upper hoist and the initials of the regiment in the lower hoist. The Guard Hussar Regiment's standard is unique, as it has two monograms – with King Frederick VI's monogram in top right corner.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In the French Army, mounted units carry (standards). Mounted units include armoured corps and cavalry, artillery, transportation, army aviation, and supplies. The is a 64 × 64 cm square flag similar to the carried by the units of foot, with the same design: the regimental name at the observe and the battle honours at the reserve.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In the Italian Army, cavalry units carry a "stendardo" (standard) of the same pattern as the "bandiera di guerra", but which measures 60 cm × 60 cm.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The five hussar regiments of the Royal Netherlands Army carry a (standard), of similar design to the infantry colour, but smaller (50 cm × 50 cm).


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Until the 1960s, the Portuguese Military followed the traditions of its foot units having colours (, literally "flags"), while mounted units had standards ("estandartes"), the latter being smaller versions of the colours. Standards were also carried by naval and aviation units. In the 1960s, the traditional separation between colours and standards was abolished, with all being reclassified as "national standards" ("estandartes nacionais"). At the same time, a new type of standard, the heraldic standard, was introduced. Presently, the military units, commands, forces and establishments have both a national standard and an heraldic standard. While the design of the national standards reflects the National Flag, the designs of the heraldic standards reflect the individual heraldic symbology of each of the units.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In the Portuguese military parlance, a guidon ("guião") is a small square flag of a battalion sized unit. Guidons of a very simple design were introduced in the 19th century, as the tactical field signs of the foot units that didn't carry colours, namely the second battalions of the infantry regiments and the independent "caçadores" (light infantry) battalions. In the early 20th century, the tactical role of the guidons was discontinued. The guidons assumed then a ceremonial role, coming to have a more elaborate design which incorporated the symbology of their respective units. Guidelines for the design of guidons accordingly with heraldic rules were introduced in the 1950s, these becoming mandatory and standardized in the 1960s. The present guidon design - similar in all branches of the Military - consists in the quadrature of the coat of arms of the corresponding unit or of its parent unit, framed by a bordure. The colours of the bordure can be used to identify a sub-unit inside its parent unit.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Besides heraldic standards and guidons, the Portuguese military units also use heraldic pennants ("flâmulas"). These are small swallow-tailed or triangular flags used to identify company sized units.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Some of the Portuguese uniformed security forces and civil emergency organizations also make use of heraldic standards, guidons and pennants, usually modelled after the military ones.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In the United States armed forces, guidons are much more prevalent, with units below battalion size being authorized to use them. In the US Army, these are swallow tailed flags that are 20 in × 27 in, and are in the colour of the branch of the service the unit is from, with the branch's insignia the most prominent device. Also on the guidon is included the unit's identifying letter, and the number(s) of its parent unit. War service and campaign streamers are not attached to these guidons, but unit citation streamers can be.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In regiments of the (British) Royal Artillery, and artillery regiments of other Commonwealth countries, the guns are afforded the status of colours. This is due to the difficulty of artillery regiments being able to carry flags onto the battlefield, and the fact that the guns themselves were the rallying points for the soldiers manning them. As a consequence, whenever artillery regiments parade, the etiquette that would normally be applied to the colours is applied to the guns. During the Battle of Balaclava gunners abandoned their guns, in effect abandoning their colours, causing disgrace.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Because the guns have the status of colours, gunners of commonwealth countries will attempt to prevent their guns falling intact into enemy hands both for practical reasons (so that the guns can not be turned and used against their own side) and for the honour of the regiment. For example, the last action of gunners of the Royal Artillery during the fall of Singapore was to destroy their guns.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest regiment in the British Army, and not part of the Royal Artillery, is the only artillery regiment to have both colours and guns, which are treated with equal respect.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: In Singapore, however, since its independence the Singapore Army's artillery arm (the Singapore Artillery) uses colours instead of guns; this is also the case for the Malaysian Army, Pakistan Army, Royal Cambodian Army and the Royal Thai Army, whose artillery units use colours and not guns on parade. This has been the same case for the Indian Regiment of Artillery, which presents colours in dismounted parades, and the Sri Lanka Artillery, which has a strand of colours similar to the HAC.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The British Royal Navy and other navies of the Commonwealth of Nations call the flag-raising ceremony that happens every morning when a ship is in harbour "colours". In British home waters, colours is conducted at 0800 (eight bells in the morning watch) from 15 February to 31 October inclusive, and at 0900 (two bells in the forenoon watch) during the winter.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: When sunset is at or before 2100, flags are lowered at sunset at the ceremony of "sunset". When sunset is after 2100, the evening flag lowering ceremony is called "evening colours" and carried out at 2100.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: The United States Navy performs the same ceremonies, called "Morning Colors" and "Evening Colors", at 0800 and sunset each day. When "Colors" is played aboard Navy and Marine Corps bases, those outdoors must stop to render proper courtesies by saluting if in uniform or, if out of uniform, by standing at attention, until "Carry On" is sounded. Marines and sailors driving on base during this time are expected to stop their vehicles and stand at attention until the ceremony is over.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Many traditional yacht clubs worldwide also conduct morning and evening colour ceremonies. At 0800 each morning and at sunset during the club's active sailing season the ceremony is performed by the launchmen or harbourmaster.


title: Military colours, standards and guidons

text: Capturing an enemy's flag was formerly a major goal in war, and it is still practised today, and so capturing the enemy flag also appears in several games:


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Paul Matthew Gambaccini (born April 2, 1949) is an American-British radio and television presenter and author in the United Kingdom. He has dual United States and British nationality, having become a British citizen in 2005.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Known as "The Great Gambo" and "The Professor of Pop", Gambaccini was a BBC Radio 1 presenter for 16 years, including 11 years on a weekly show counting down the "Billboard" Top 30 songs. A regular contributor to BBC Radio 4's long-running arts programme "Kaleidoscope", Gambaccini was a long-time TV morning show correspondent for British television, and makes regular appearances on other British TV magazine shows.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: He was the host of the 12-part Classic FM series "Paul Gambaccini's Hall of Heroes", and chairs the Radio 4 music quiz "Counterpoint". He has been the presenter of "Pick of the Pops" on BBC Radio 2 since July 2016 and "America's Greatest Hits" on Greatest Hits Radio on Saturday afternoons since February 2020. Inducted into the Radio Academy Hall of Fame in 2005, Gambaccini is the author of more than 15 books.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Born in the Bronx, New York City, Gambaccini studied at Dartmouth College, where he obtained a degree in history in 1970.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: He then migrated to the United Kingdom and attended University College, Oxford, where he read for a degree in politics, philosophy and economics. He has since returned to Oxford, where he delivered a series of lectures in January and February 2009, as the News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media. In February 2010 he was invited by the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, Andrew Hamilton to deliver the inaugural LGBT lecture "Out on Monday" to the university's LGBT staff, students and faculty.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Gambaccini's broadcasting career began at Dartmouth College, where he was music director of the now-defunct WDCR, a college-owned-and-operated Top 40 radio station. Gambaccini may have first achieved wider prominence when his tips for playlisted songs likely to see greater chart action were published in the May 11, 1968 issue of the international trade publication "Billboard", alongside similar tips from radio programming talent at major commercial stations across the United States.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Having left Oxford, Gambaccini considered further study in law at Harvard or Yale, but had the opportunity of writing for "Rolling Stone" magazine, as British correspondent. He attributes his broadcasting career to this post—especially an interview in 1973 with Elton John which brought him to the attention of BBC Radio producer John Walters who arranged for him to host on BBC Radio 1.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Gambaccini then started broadcasting in the UK, on BBC Radio 1, September 1974, which he did for 13 years, first as a music reporter on the John Peel Saturday show "Rockspeak". He presented the series "All American Heroes" from 1974, a series showcasing US talent. In September 1975 he began the show he was to front for the next 11 years, highlighting the weeks' music in the US chart. The show was broadcast every Saturday afternoon until his last show on February 8, 1986. Thereafter, he moved to independent radio to host "American Countdown". In 1990, he returned to Radio 1, but left during the tenure of controller Matthew Bannister in 1993.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: In 1992 Gambaccini became a founding personality on the UK's classical music station Classic FM, where he hosted the weekly Classical CD Chart show. He left for BBC Radio 3 in 1995, where he broadcast an hour-long morning show, in a slot formerly used for "Composer of the Week". He returned to Classic FM in 1997.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Alongside his work in music radio, he contributed regularly to BBC Radio 4's long-running arts programme "Kaleidoscope" between 1975 and 1998.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: For 13 years Gambaccini reviewed films for breakfast television, first on TV-am and then GMTV. In the early 1980s he presented "The Other Side of the Tracks" on Channel 4, which ran for three series. His other television appearances include "Pebble Mill at One", "Call My Bluff", "Music for the Millennium", and "The South Bank Show".


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: In 1998, he joined BBC Radio 2. His first show was on April 18, 1998, once again opening the first of his weekly shows "America's Greatest Hits" with "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen. In 2002, he quit his role at Classic FM, to present a weekly chart show on London's Jazz FM until 2004. He was also a contributor to the London station LBC when it was taken over by Chrysalis.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: He has worked widely across the BBC and the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) as well as contributing to many television shows, mostly related to music, film, and the arts. He narrated the BBC Radio adaptation of "Espedair Street", the Iain Banks novel.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Gambaccini has presented the annual Ivor Novello Awards since 1990, the Parliamentary Jazz Awards since 2005, the Music Industry Trust's Man of the Year Dinner since 1999, and the Radio Academy Awards for a ten-year stretch from 1998 to 2008.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: In August 2008, Gambaccini returned to Classic FM, to present a 12-part series "Paul Gambaccini's Hall of Heroes" on Sunday evenings between 9:00 and 10:00. In March 2008, he took over as chairman of the Radio 4 music quiz "Counterpoint" from Edward Seckerson; he was temporarily replaced in 2013 by Russell Davies and returned to the show in November 2014 after being cleared of allegations of historical sexual offences made against him. He returned to Radio 2 with "America's Greatest Hits" on November 15, 2014, and hosted it until July 2, 2016, when he took over Pick of the Pops from Tony Blackburn, the following week.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: He started his final America's Greatest Hits on the BBC with "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, and ended it with Justin Timberlake's "Can't Stop The Feeling!". Trevor Nelson took over the Saturday timeslot with his "Rhythm Nation" programme, that was allocated to Gambaccini's "America's Greatest Hits" programme for seven years. The show was revived on Greatest Hits Radio from February 2020 airing 5-7pm on Saturdays, with the first show starting off with "Born to Run", just like the final BBC Radio episode, and ending with "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" by Stevie Wonder. Gambaccini has also presented special shows on Greatest Hits Radio on bank holidays and over the Christmas holidays. On Boxing Day 2021, he co-presented a special show on Greatest Hits Radio paying tribute to Janice Long, whom he had discovered in 1982.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Gambaccini was co-author of "The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles" and related titles, with Tim and Jo Rice, alongside Radio 1 colleague at that time, Mike Read, between 1977 and 1996. Gambaccini's own books include "Love Letters", "Radio Boy", "Top 100 Albums" and "Track Records". "The Ultimate Man", a musical about a comic book superhero, was co-written with Alastair King and Jane Edith Wilson, and produced at the Bridewell Theatre in London in 2000.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Gambaccini was active in the realm of comic book fandom. As an American teenager in the 1960s his missives were regularly published in the letter columns of titles such as "Justice League of America" and "The Amazing Spider-Man". Gambaccini claims to have invented the term "Brand Echh", which later became widely used by Stan Lee.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: While still in high school, Gambaccini began contributing to comics fanzines, including the publication "Rocket's Blast Comicollector". In 1964 he succeeded Jerry Bails (the so-called "father of comic book fandom") as executive secretary of the Academy of Comic-Book Fans and Collectors, an umbrella organization for the burgeoning world of comics fandom. As part of his involvement with the academy, Gambaccini helped organize the comics industry's first awards, the Alley Awards.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Gambaccini and television presenter Jonathan Ross co-owned Top 10 Comics, a comic shop in London which opened in 1989 and closed in 1995. Gambaccini has been an official guest at many British comic conventions, including the United Kingdom Comic Art Convention (where he co-presented the 1990 Eagle Awards and the 1997 National Comics Awards), and Comics Festival UK.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: A character introduced in "The Flash" #141 named Paul Gambi, a tailor specializing in super-villain outfits, is an homage to Paul Gambaccini, who had written a letter to the Flash editor, later published in the letter column, asking the question, "Where do all these super-villains get their costumes?".


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: On 1 November 2013, it was reported that Gambaccini had been arrested on suspicion of historical sexual offences as part of an investigation by Operation Yewtree in the United Kingdom. He was released on bail and his spokesman said that he denied the allegations.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: It was announced on 10 October 2014 that no charges would be brought. Giving evidence to the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee on 3 March 2015, Gambaccini said he believed he was used as human "fly paper" to encourage other people to come forward and make allegations against him.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: The BBC reported that he also "said he suspected his bail was repeatedly extended until the end of high-profile cases involving other celebrities because police did not want juries to hear a former Radio 1 DJ had been cleared of sexual wrongdoing". Gambaccini also argued in favour of a 28-day bail limit; Home Secretary Theresa May had announced in December 2014 that she was consulting on such a limit in all but exceptional cases. However, Gambaccini's allegations of a "witch-hunt" were denied by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). The 28-day limit came into effect in April 2017.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Gambaccini wrote an account of his experience in his book "Love, Paul Gambaccini: My Year Under the Yewtree", which was published in 2015. In February 2016, the Irish Supreme Court Judge Adrian Hardiman used a review of this book to criticize what he described as the radical undermining of the presumption of innocence, especially in sex cases, including Gambaccini's case, by the methods used in Operation Yewtree (among other instances).


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: In February 2017, Gambaccini sued the Metropolitan Police, citing a loss of £200,000 during his time under investigation. In November 2018, he settled a claim against the Crown Prosecution Service, who agreed to pay him damages; the amount paid to Gambaccini by the CPS was not disclosed due to confidentiality clauses in the settlement agreement.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Gambaccini has been a supporter of gay-related charities. In 1995, he was named Philanthropist of the Year by the National Charity Fundraisers for his work on behalf of the Terrence Higgins Trust. He is a patron of the London Gay Symphony Orchestra. In 2010, he won an episode of celebrity "Mastermind," with his chosen beneficiary charity being Stonewall.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: Gambaccini has been openly homosexual for many years, claiming in 2013: "I was never 'in'." In June 2012, he entered into a civil partnership with Christopher Sherwood. One week later, they married in New York Botanical Garden.


title: Paul Gambaccini

text: In 2013, Gambaccini claimed that he had been highlighted as a potential security risk by the BBC earlier in his career due to his sexuality, with a symbol resembling a Christmas tree on the cover of his personnel file: "It meant you were 'as camp as Christmas' and thus a potential security risk." In fact, the symbol was a general indication that the subject should not be "promoted or transferred" without reference to the department responsible for security vetting, due to left-leaning sympathies (see: "Christmas tree" files).


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science. Outside philosophy, Putnam contributed to mathematics and computer science. Together with Martin Davis he developed the Davis–Putnam algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problem and he helped demonstrate the unsolvability of Hilbert's tenth problem.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Putnam was known for his willingness to apply equal scrutiny to his own philosophical positions as to those of others, subjecting each position to rigorous analysis until he exposed its flaws. As a result, he acquired a reputation for frequently changing his positions. In philosophy of mind, Putnam is known for his argument against the type-identity of mental and physical states based on his hypothesis of the multiple realizability of the mental, and for the concept of functionalism, an influential theory regarding the mind–body problem. In philosophy of language, along with Saul Kripke and others, he developed the causal theory of reference, and formulated an original theory of meaning, introducing the notion of semantic externalism based on a thought experiment called Twin Earth.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: In philosophy of mathematics, Putnam and W. V. O. Quine developed the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument, an argument for the reality of mathematical entities, later espousing the view that mathematics is not purely logical, but "quasi-empirical". In epistemology, Putnam is known for his critique of the well-known "brain in a vat" thought experiment. This thought experiment appears to provide a powerful argument for epistemological skepticism, but Putnam challenges its coherence. In metaphysics, he originally espoused a position called metaphysical realism, but eventually became one of its most outspoken critics, first adopting a view he called "internal realism", which he later abandoned. Despite these changes of view, throughout his career Putnam remained committed to scientific realism, roughly the view that mature scientific theories are approximately true descriptions of ways things are.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: In his later work, Putnam became increasingly interested in American pragmatism, Jewish philosophy, and ethics, engaging with a wider array of philosophical traditions. He also displayed an interest in metaphilosophy, seeking to "renew philosophy" from what he identified as narrow and inflated concerns. He was at times a politically controversial figure, especially for his involvement with the Progressive Labor Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s.<ref name="Auxier"</


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Hilary Whitehall Putnam was born on July 31, 1926, in Chicago, Illinois. His father, Samuel Putnam, was a scholar of Romance languages, columnist, and translator who wrote for the "Daily Worker", a publication of the American Communist Party, from 1936 to 1946. Because of his father's commitment to communism, Putnam had a secular upbringing, although his mother, Riva, was Jewish. In early 1927, six months after Hilary's birth, the family moved to France, where Samuel was under contract to translate the surviving works of François Rabelais. In a 2015 autobiographical essay, Putnam said that his first childhood memories were from his life in France, and his first language was French.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Putnam completed the first two years of his primary education in France before he and his parents returned to the U.S. in 1933, settling in Philadelphia. There, he attended Central High School, where he met Noam Chomsky, who was a year behind him. The two remained friends—and often intellectual opponents—for the rest of Putnam's life. Putnam studied philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his B.A. degree and becoming a member of the Philomathean Society, the country's oldest continually existing collegiate literary society. He did graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University and later at UCLA's philosophy department, where he received his Ph.D. in 1951 for his dissertation, "The Meaning of the Concept of Probability in Application to Finite Sequences". Putnam's dissertation supervisor Hans Reichenbach was a leading figure in logical positivism, the dominant school of philosophy of the day; one of Putnam's most consistent positions was his rejection of logical positivism as self-defeating. Over the course of his life, Putnam was his own philosophical adversary, changing his positions on philosophical questions and critiquing his previous views.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: After obtaining his PhD, Putnam taught at Northwestern University (1951–52), Princeton University (1953–61), and MIT (1961–65). In 1962, he married fellow philosopher Ruth Anna Putnam (born Ruth Anna Jacobs), who took a teaching position in philosophy at Wellesley College. Rebelling against the antisemitism they experienced during their youth, the Putnams decided to establish a traditional Jewish home for their children. Since they had no experience with the rituals of Judaism, they sought out invitations to other Jewish homes for Seder. They began to study Jewish rituals and Hebrew, became more interested in Judaism, self-identified as Jews, and actively practiced Judaism. In 1994, Hilary celebrated a belated bar mitzvah service; Ruth Anna's bat mitzvah was celebrated four years later.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: In the 1960s and early 1970s, Putnam was an active supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement and he was also an active opponent of the Vietnam War. In 1963, he organized one of MIT's first faculty and student anti-war committees. After moving to Harvard in 1965, he organized campus protests and began teaching courses on Marxism. Putnam became an official faculty advisor to the Students for a Democratic Society and in 1968 a member of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965. After 1968, his political activities centered on the PLP. The Harvard administration considered these activities disruptive and attempted to censure Putnam. Putnam permanently severed his relationship with the PLP in 1972. In 1997, at a meeting of former draft resistance activists at Boston's Arlington Street Church, he called his involvement with the PLP a mistake. He said he had been impressed at first with the PLP's commitment to alliance-building and its willingness to attempt to organize from within the armed forces.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: In 1976, Putnam was elected president of the American Philosophical Association. The next year, he was selected as Walter Beverly Pearson Professor of Mathematical Logic in recognition of his contributions to the philosophy of logic and mathematics. While breaking with his radical past, Putnam never abandoned his belief that academics have a particular social and ethical responsibility toward society. He continued to be forthright and progressive in his political views, as expressed in the articles "How Not to Solve Ethical Problems" (1983) and "Education for Democracy" (1993).


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Putnam was a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1999. He retired from teaching in June 2000, becoming Cogan University Professor Emeritus, but as of 2009 continued to give a seminar almost yearly at Tel Aviv University. He also held the Spinoza Chair of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam in 2001. His corpus includes five volumes of collected works, seven books, and more than 200 articles. Putnam's renewed interest in Judaism inspired him to publish several books and essays on the topic. With his wife, he co-authored several essays and a book on the late-19th-century American pragmatist movement.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: For his contributions in philosophy and logic, Putnam was awarded the Rolf Schock Prize in 2011 and the Nicholas Rescher Prize for Systematic Philosophy in 2015. Putnam died at his home in Arlington, Massachusetts, on March 13, 2016. At the time of his death, Putnam was Cogan University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Putnam's best-known work concerns philosophy of mind. His most noted original contributions to that field came in several key papers published in the late 1960s that set out the hypothesis of multiple realizability. In these papers, Putnam argues that, contrary to the famous claim of the type-identity theory, pain may correspond to utterly different physical states of the nervous system in different organisms even if they all experience the same mental state of "being in pain". Putnam cited examples from the animal kingdom to illustrate his thesis. He asked whether it was likely that the brain structures of diverse types of animals realize pain, or other mental states, the same way. If they do not share the same brain structures, they cannot share the same mental states and properties, in which case mental states must be realized by different physical states in different species. Putnam then took his argument a step further, asking about such things as the nervous systems of alien beings, artificially intelligent robots and other silicon-based life forms. These hypothetical entities, he contended, should not be considered incapable of experiencing pain just because they lack human neurochemistry. Putnam concluded that type-identity theorists had been making an "ambitious" and "highly implausible" conjecture that could be disproved by one example of multiple realizability. This is sometimes called the "likelihood argument", as it focuses on the claim that multiple realizability is more likely than type-identity theory.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Putnam also formulated an "a priori" argument in favor of multiple realizability based on what he called "functional isomorphism". He defined the concept in these terms: "Two systems are functionally isomorphic if 'there is a correspondence between the states of one and the states of the other that preserves functional relations'." In the case of computers, two machines are functionally isomorphic if and only if the sequential relations among states in the first exactly mirror the sequential relations among states in the other. Therefore, a computer made of silicon chips and one made of cogs and wheels can be functionally isomorphic but constitutionally diverse. Functional isomorphism implies multiple realizability.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Putnam, Jerry Fodor, and others argued that along with being an effective argument against type-identity theories, multiple realizability implies that any low-level explanation of higher-level mental phenomena is insufficiently abstract and general. Functionalism, which identifies mental kinds with functional kinds that are characterized exclusively in terms of causes and effects, abstracts from the level of microphysics, and therefore seemed to be a better explanation of the relation between mind and body. In fact, there are many functional kinds, including mousetraps and eyes, that are multiply realized at the physical level.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Multiple realizability has been criticized on the grounds that, if it were true, research and experimentation in the neurosciences would be impossible. According to William Bechtel and Jennifer Mundale, to be able to conduct such research in the neurosciences, universal consistencies must either exist or be assumed to exist in brain structures. It is the similarity (or homology) of brain structures that allows us to generalize across species. If multiple realizability were an empirical fact, results from experiments conducted on one species of animal (or one organism) would not be meaningful when generalized to explain the behavior of another species (or organism of the same species). Jaegwon Kim, David Lewis, Robert Richardson and Patricia Churchland have also criticized metaphysical realism.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Putnam himself put forth the first formulation of such a functionalist theory. This formulation, now called "machine-state functionalism", was inspired by analogies Putnam and others made between the mind and Turing machines. The point for functionalism is the nature of the states of the Turing machine. Each state can be defined in terms of its relations to the other states and to the inputs and outputs, and the details of how it accomplishes what it accomplishes and of its material constitution are completely irrelevant. According to machine-state functionalism, the nature of a mental state is just like the nature of a Turing machine state. Just as "state one" simply is the state in which, given a particular input, such-and-such happens, so being in pain is the state which disposes one to cry "ouch", become distracted, wonder what the cause is, and so forth.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: In the late 1980s, Putnam abandoned his adherence to functionalism and other computational theories of mind. His change of mind was primarily due to the difficulties computational theories have in explaining certain intuitions with respect to the externalism of mental content. This is illustrated by Putnam's own Twin Earth thought experiment (see "Philosophy of language"). In 1988 he also developed a separate argument against functionalism based on Fodor's generalized version of multiple realizability. Asserting that functionalism is really a watered-down identity theory in which mental kinds are identified with functional kinds, Putnam argued that mental kinds may be multiply realizable over functional kinds. The argument for functionalism is that the same mental state could be implemented by the different states of a universal Turing machine.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Despite Putnam's rejection of functionalism, it has continued to flourish and been developed into numerous versions by Fodor, David Marr, Daniel Dennett, and David Lewis, among others. Functionalism helped lay the foundations for modern cognitive science and is the dominant theory of mind in philosophy today.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: By 2012 Putnam accepted a modification of functionalism called "liberal functionalism". The view holds that "what matters for consciousness and for mental properties generally is the right sort of functional capacities and not the particular matter that subserves those capacities". The specification of these capacities may refer to what goes on outside the organism's "brain", may include intentional idioms, and need not describe a capacity to compute something or other.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Putnam himself formulated one of the main arguments against functionalism: the Twin Earth thought experiment. But there have been other criticisms. John Searle's Chinese room argument (1980) is a direct attack on the claim that thought can be represented as a set of functions. The thought experiment is designed to show that it is possible to mimic intelligent action with a purely functional system, without any interpretation or understanding. Searle describes a situation in which a person who speaks only English is locked in a room with Chinese symbols in baskets and a rule book in English for moving the symbols around. The person is instructed, by people outside the room, to follow the rule book for sending certain symbols out of the room when given certain symbols. The people outside the room speak Chinese and are communicating with the person inside via the Chinese symbols. According to Searle, it would be absurd to claim that the English speaker inside "knows" Chinese based on these syntactic processes alone. This argument attempts to show that systems that operate merely on syntactic processes cannot realize any semantics (meaning) or intentionality (aboutness). Searle thus attacks the idea that thought can be equated with following a set of syntactic rules and concludes that functionalism is an inadequate theory of the mind. Ned Block has advanced several other arguments against functionalism.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: One of Putnam's contributions to philosophy of language is his semantic externalism, the claim that terms' meanings are determined by factors outside the mind, encapsulated in his slogan that "meaning just ain't in the head". His views on meaning, first laid out in "Meaning and Reference" (1973), then in" The Meaning of "Meaning"" (1975), use his "Twin Earth" thought experiment to defend this thesis.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Twin Earth shows this, according to Putnam, since on Twin Earth everything is identical to Earth, except that its lakes, rivers and oceans are filled with XYZ rather than HO. Consequently, when an earthling, Fredrick, uses the Earth-English word "water", it has a different meaning from the Twin Earth-English word "water" when used by his physically identical twin, Frodrick, on Twin Earth. Since Fredrick and Frodrick are physically indistinguishable when they utter their respective words, and since their words have different meanings, meaning cannot be determined solely by what is in their heads. This led Putnam to adopt a version of semantic externalism with regard to meaning and mental content. The philosopher of mind and language Donald Davidson, despite his many differences of opinion with Putnam, wrote that semantic externalism constituted an "anti-subjectivist revolution" in philosophers' way of seeing the world. Since Descartes's time, philosophers had been concerned with proving knowledge from the basis of subjective experience. Thanks to Putnam, Saul Kripke, Tyler Burge and others, Davidson said, philosophy could now take the objective realm for granted and start questioning the alleged "truths" of subjective experience.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Along with Kripke, Keith Donnellan, and others, Putnam contributed to what is known as the causal theory of reference. In particular, he maintained in "The Meaning of "Meaning"" that the objects referred to by natural kind terms—such as "tiger", "water", and "tree"—are the principal elements of the meaning of such terms. There is a linguistic division of labor, analogous to Adam Smith's economic division of labor, according to which such terms have their references fixed by the "experts" in the particular field of science to which the terms belong. So, for example, the reference of the term "lion" is fixed by the community of zoologists, the reference of the term "elm tree" is fixed by the community of botanists, and chemists fix the reference of the term "table salt" as sodium chloride. These referents are considered rigid designators in the Kripkean sense and are disseminated outward to the linguistic community.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Putnam specifies a finite sequence of elements (a vector) for the description of the meaning of every term in the language. Such a vector consists of four components:


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Such a "meaning-vector" provides a description of the reference and use of an expression within a particular linguistic community. It provides the conditions for its correct usage and makes it possible to judge whether a single speaker attributes the appropriate meaning to it or whether its use has changed enough to cause a difference in its meaning. According to Putnam, it is legitimate to speak of a change in the meaning of an expression only if the reference of the term, and not its stereotype, has changed. But since no possible algorithm can determine which aspect—the stereotype or the reference—has changed in a particular case, it is necessary to consider the usage of other expressions of the language. Since there is no limit to the number of such expressions to be considered, Putnam embraced a form of semantic holism.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Despite the many changes in his other positions, Putnam consistently adhered to semantic holism. Michael Dummett, Jerry Fodor, Ernest Lepore, and others have identified problems with this position. In the first place, they suggest that, if semantic holism is true, it is impossible to understand how a speaker of a language can learn the meaning of an expression in the language. Given the limits of our cognitive abilities, we will never be able to master the whole of the English (or any other) language, even based on the (false) assumption that languages are static and immutable entities. Thus, if one must understand all of a natural language to understand a single word or expression, language learning is simply impossible. Semantic holism also fails to explain how two speakers can mean the same thing when using the same expression, and therefore how any communication is possible between them. Given a sentence "P", since Fred and Mary have each mastered different parts of the English language and "P" is related in different ways to the sentences in each part, "P" means one thing to Fred and something else to Mary. Moreover, if "P" derives its meaning from its relations with all the sentences of a language, as soon as the vocabulary of an individual changes by the addition or elimination of a sentence, the totality of relations changes, and therefore also the meaning of "P". As this is a common phenomenon, the result is that "P" has two different meanings in two different moments in the life of the same person. Consequently, if one accepts the truth of a sentence and then rejects it later on, the meaning of what one rejected and what one accepted are completely different and therefore one cannot change opinions with regard to the same sentences.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: In the philosophy of mathematics, Putnam has utilized indispensability arguments to argue for a realist interpretation of mathematics. In his 1971 book "Philosophy of Logic", he presented what has since been called the "locus classicus" of the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument. The argument, which he attributed to Willard Van Orman Quine, is presented in the book as "quantification over mathematical entities is indispensable for science, both formal and physical; therefore we should accept such quantification; but this commits us to accepting the existence of the mathematical entities in question." According to Charles Parsons, Putnam "very likely" endorsed this version of the argument in his early work, but later came to deny some of the views present in it.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: In 1975, Putnam formulated his own indispensability argument based on the no miracles argument in the philosophy of science, saying, "I believe that the positive argument for realism [in science] has an analogue in the case of mathematical realism. Here too, I believe, realism is the only philosophy that doesn't make the success of the science a miracle". According to Putnam, Quine's version of the argument was an argument for the existence of abstract mathematical objects, while Putnam's own argument was simply for a realist interpretation of mathematics, which he believed could be provided by a "mathematics as modal logic" interpretation that need not imply the existence of abstract objects.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Putnam also held the view that mathematics, like physics and other empirical sciences, uses both strict logical proofs and "quasi-empirical" methods. For example, Fermat's Last Theorem states that for no integer formula_1 are there positive integer values of "x", "y", and "z" such that formula_2. Before Andrew Wiles proved this for all formula_1 in 1995, it had been proved for many values of "n". These proofs inspired further research in the area, and formed a quasi-empirical consensus for the theorem. Even though such knowledge is more conjectural than a strictly proved theorem, it was still used in developing other mathematical ideas.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument has been extremely influential in the philosophy of mathematics, inspiring continued debate and development of the argument in contemporary philosophy of mathematics. According to the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", many in the field consider it the best argument for mathematical realism. Prominent counterarguments come from Hartry Field, who argues that mathematics is not indispensable to science, and Penelope Maddy and Elliott Sober, who dispute whether we are committed to mathematical realism even if it is indispensable to science.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: Putnam has contributed to scientific fields not directly related to his work in philosophy. As a mathematician, he contributed to the resolution of Hilbert's tenth problem in mathematics. This problem (now known as Matiyasevich's theorem or the MRDP theorem) was settled by Yuri Matiyasevich in 1970, with a proof that relied heavily on previous research by Putnam, Julia Robinson and Martin Davis.


title: Hilary Putnam

text: In computability theory, Putnam investigated the structure of the ramified analytical hierarchy, its connection with the constructible hierarchy and its Turing degrees. He showed that there are many levels of the constructible hierarchy that add no subsets of the integers. Later, with his student George Boolos, he showed that the first such "non-index" is the ordinal formula_4 of ramified analysis (this is the smallest formula_5 such that formula_6 is a model of full second-order comprehension). Also, together with a separate paper with his student Richard Boyd and Gustav Hensel, he demonstrated how the Davis–Mostowski–Kleene hyperarithmetical hierarchy of arithmetical degrees can be naturally extended up to formula_4.