Miklós Ybl (1814–1891) bicentenary

Carmela Curto: The Story of One Italian Immigrant, the History of Millions

After a two-year stay at the Imperial Court of Maria Theresa and Francis I in Vienna (1763-1765), during which he proved his creative talents in a variety of media, Jean Pillement accepted the invitation of the newly elected King of Poland, Stanislaw August Poniatowski, to come to Warsaw in order to take on the post of court painter. It would prove to be an exacting appointment. The young King well educated and well travelled (he had sojourned at the courts of Dresden, Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, London and St. Petersburg) was a genuine lover of the arts, a discerning collector and strove to create an enlightened court by bringing to Warsaw architects, painters and sculptors, theatre, opera and ballet artists and generally create favourable conditions for learning, the arts and art collecting. This ambitious programme, however, placed on his artists stringent demands dictated by Stanislaw August according to his own vision of what he wished to be done. It was particularly tedious for such a free spirit like Pillement, but he obediently complied with the King's wishes by executing multiple orders not necessarily related to his art and ranging from the project of a royal monogram; a project of gondolas; another of Rococo wall brackets; sketches of paintings of history inspired by texts by Plutarch, Titus Livius and Suetonius presented according to the written descriptions of the King; furthermore, views of antique ruins after Piranesi: the Acqua Julia and the temple of Minerva Medici, both in Rome. And finally - patriotic Polish allegorical compositions. Mercifully, the King's orders included also topics in which Pillement excelled, namely Rococo wall decorations for the King's study and two pairs of large, superb panels for the royal summer residence of Ujazdow, which are now in the collection of the Petit Palais in Paris. Pillement also painted numerous pastoral landscapes for the king's private apartments. Four of them are used today as overdoors at the Royal Castle. Following the example of Stanislaw August, prominent aristocratic families, such as the Czartoryskis, the Branickis, the Potockis, the Sapiehas, the Zamoyskis and the Mniszechs also collected Pillement's drawings and paintings. In appreciation of Pillement's services, the King granted him a royal patent to the title of Premier Peintre du Roy (also appears spelled as Roi) de Pologne.

Global scientific academies have been adapting their role in fostering scientific communication and promoting science since their inception in the 15th century. Despite their prominence, the institutional norms and identities of scientific academies remain underexplored. In the digital age, their websites reflect their evolving roles, organizational priorities, and the balance between conformity and innovation. This study examines how scientific academies structure their online identities through content organization and communication strategies. This study employs web mining techniques to analyze large-scale academy website data. It uncovers structural patterns and behavioral trends in how scientific academies present themselves online. Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is applied to develop a unified taxonomy, enabling systematic comparisons of digital strategies across multiple academies. Using institutional theory, this study uses quantitative method to examine how academies balance conformity with differentiation in their digital presence. The research addresses two core questions: (RQ1) What content and communication patterns are adopted by global scientific academies in their online presence? And (RQ2) How do scientific academies balance imitation and innovation in their digital strategies? The findings identify distinct website content patterns, showing how academies balance tradition and adaptation in their digital presence. Hierarchical clustering reveals three strategic approaches: (1) highly innovative academies that introduce novel digital structures, (2) conservative academies that show fragmented or underdeveloped structures, and (3) hybrid academies that combine imitation with selective innovation. The study also highlights key thematic differences in content emphasis, such as governance, scientific cooperation, and public outreach. These insights contribute to institutional theory and scholarly communication studies, revealing how scientific academies use their online presence to maintain legitimacy, engage the public, and foster international collaboration. This study highlights common features of scientific academies’ online presence, including an emphasis on membership, strategic planning, and scholarly communication to reinforce institutional legitimacy. Additionally, academies adapt their digital strategies to facilitate scientific collaboration in response to evolving societal expectations. Innovative activities include increasing transparency on the academy’s decisions, achievements, budget, yearbooks, and interactive digital engagement strategies. These activities enhance public trust in scientific academies and science itself while improving communication efficiency. These findings offer guidance for scholars, academy leaders, and policymakers seeking to optimize digital engagement strategies and strengthen global scientific networks in the digital era.

Damtschach Castle is located on the eastern edge of the village bearing the same name near Wernberg in Carinthia. It was built after 1511 by Maximilian Augustin von Khevenhüller as an aristocratic residence, and was acquired by the Jöchlinger von Jochenstein family at the beginning of the 18th century following a period of chan-ging ownership. The castle was not only furnished by the last male representative of the Felix family (1786–1846) in a manner typical for the period, but was also given a castle garden that combined elements of the Baroque garden with those of an English landscape garden, and which is now listed under monument protection. In ad-dition to a greenhouse for exotic plants, an artificial, medieval-looking ruin was built to the south of the castle, along with other structural elements – such as the “Baadhaus” at other locations in the garden – in keeping with the romanticising spirit of the times. Archaeological excavations were carried out in the 2010s both in the greenhouse – which was demolished in the 20th century – and in the grotto of the ruins.

While working on the correspondence of Milutin Milanković (Dalj, 1879 – Belgrade, 1958) at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA) in Belgrade, I came across a letter sent by Milanković to the Royal Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. In it, Milanković thanks the Academy for allowing him to spend his years of internment during the First World War in its library and enabling him to engage in scientific work. In those years, the text of his book “Mathematical theory of thermal phenomena caused by solar radiation” was written, and as a sign of gratitude he sent them its original typescript, which he wrote at the time under the title “Mathematische Grundlagen der kosmischen Strahlungslehre”. The letter is dated April 2, 1941. Given that Belgrade was bombed just a few days later, on April 6, 1941, I was interested in whether the manuscript reached the Hungarian Academy. To my inquiry, they replied that they had received it and that it was in the archive.The path of the manuscript did not go as Milutin Milanković planned. After the First World War, it was desirable that the book be printed in French. Given that Milanković did not speak French well enough, the translation from German to French was entrusted to Ivan Djaja (Le Havre, 1884 – Belgrade, 1957) and Mihailo Petrović Alas (Belgrade, 1868 – Belgrade, 1943). Milanković duly copied his original manuscript in German and handed it over to Djaja and Petrović. After completing their translation, Milanković also copied the translation. Both manuscripts are in SASA. The book was published in Paris in 1920 under the title “Théorie mathématique des phénomènes thermiques produits par la radiation solaire”. The results published in this book have attracted the attention of many scientists. Wladimir Ko¨ppen and Alfred Wegener invited Milutin Milanković to collaborate in their book “The climates of the geological past”.On April 20, 2017, in the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences a memorial plaque in memory of Milutin Milanković was unveiled.

Collections of Peter the Great’s Museum for Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) represent unique combination of ethnic collections from dif erent countries of the world and historical monuments of Russian science, early period of St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Expositions and funds of the museum permanently attract the attention of specialists in dif erent f elds. One of topics that can be learned on the basis of our museum is history of optics. The collections provide opportunities to study the simplest optical devices in Eastern traditional cultures. Collections provide the opportunity to study usage of mirrors, clear
 crystals (which were believed to possess magic power) in traditional cultures as well as the process of transformation of stored for ages celestial observations into a basis for further forming of scientif c knowledge. The interest of European scholars to Oriental countries in the 18th century was not just interest to exotic, but also interest to the stored experience of observations.
 The expositions «М.V. Lomonosov and Academy of Sciences in the 18th century» and «First Astronomical Observatory of the Academy of Sciences», as well as the funds of the department of the history of the Kunstlkamera and Russian sciences in the 18th century present scientif c instruments, which have become monuments of Russian and European optics — lenses, mirrors, spyglasses, telescopes, transit instruments and others. They are just f ne material both for enlightening work with visitors and for historical researches. One can see there instruments made by famous masters of the 18-19th centuries — E.W. Tschirnhaus, E. Nairne, J. Bird, J. Ramsden, J. Fraunhofer.
 There collections are also interesting from the cultural point of view. The period of forming Russian science is the same time as the process of refusing to perceive optical instruments as attributes of “elegant leisure”, devices for entertaining rich and enlighten public$ process of af rmance microscopes, telescopes, lenses etc. as scientif c instruments to be used by specialists at their observatories, laboratories and also for teaching purposes. Today we can see the revival of this fashion and high public interest to scientif c observations.

The boundaries of Little Italy are not precise, and have shifted over time. In the 19th century, the district extended south of Canal Street into the area identified by Jacob Riis as the “Mulberry Bend,” and described as “the foul core of New York’s slums.”3 By the 1960s, Little Italy had retreated across Canal Street, as the Italian population began to leave the neighborhood for other areas in the city. For the purposes of this paper, Little Italy shall be understood as comprising three census tracts in New York City’s Manhattan county, numbers 41, 43, and 45. This area, lying within a short walking distance of City Hall, is roughly bounded by Canal Street on the south, Bowery on the East, Broadway on the west, and East Houston street to the north. Nicknamed the Mulberry District, it became the first and largest Italian enclave in the United States between 1870s and 1924. While there had been an Italian community in New York for generations, historian George Pozetta has argued that the winter of 1872–1873 was pivotal in the development of this community, when more than 2000 poor Italian immigrants, arrived at Castle Garden, the immigrant reception center, unable to care for themselves.4 These immigrants were quickly fitted in to the preexisting Italian community, taking advantage of the contacts provided by the bossi, typically northern Italian men who had arrived earlier, to find jobs in such local enterprises as groceries and saloons, and with American employers. Once the new comers settled, a process of chain-migration began. By the later 1870s, the bossi were acting as agents for gangs of labor sent out from New York to work in other areas across North American. As a result, the Mulberry district became a sort of transshipment point for Italian labor.

Around 1500, the capitals of the Polish, Bohemian and Hungarian kingdoms - Cracow, Prague and Buda (Ofen) - were among the largest towns in Eastern Central Europe. They formed urban agglomerations consisting of three to five towns, several suburbs and the royal castle. At that time, the total population of the three capitals was nearly the same - about 25000 inhabitants. During the 13th and 14th centuries, all Settlements with German charters in these conurbations were founded by Germans, who formed the largest group among the town residents and first occupied the most prominent Offices. In the course of the 14th Century, however, they lost their leading position, especially in smaller towns and suburbs. In the Old Town of Prague as well as in the town centres of Buda and Cracow, namely those parts of highest political and economic importance, the Germans retained the greatest influence. The upper strata of society in these towns, wealthy merchants and entrepreneurs, adhered to the German culture and language for a long time, as did numerous artisans, mainly goldsmiths, armourers, furriers, tailors, tanners, cloth weavers and butchers. In the Old Town of Prague, the Czech party came to power in 1408 with the Support of the king. This national conflict was characterized by denominational discrepancies. After the outbreak of the Hussite revolution, almost all Germans left Prague, whose national structure remained virtually homogeneous up to the middle of the 16th Century. In Buda, the Hungarian party managed to attain equality of Status in municipal Offices in 1439. From then to 1529 the highest offices were continually held by Germans and Hungarians in equal numbers. In 1529, during the war between John Zapolya and Ferdinand I, the Germans had to leave the Hungarian capital. In Cracow, on the other hand, by 1500 the German oligarchy still reigned unchallenged. The Germans could also maintain their position in half of Cracow's guilds. In the suburb of Garbary, they were in the majority. A national breakthrough in the upper classes of the Polish capital was not achieved until 1536/37. Since the middle of the 16th Century, the Germans in Cracow gradually lost their influence, too. The general tendency observed with all three metropolises in the period from the 14th to the 16th Century is the constant penetration of Czechs, Hungarians and Poles into guilds and municipal offices. There are only differences concerning the chronology of this process and the details of how the leadership was taken over. The political rise of non-German Citizens was generally preceded by their economic and cultural advancement.

Rethinking the Ph.D. dissertation in botany: Widening the circle.

204 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE and for the 19th century, contains much new and detailed information. So too do the catalog entries proper. These are models of their kind, providing a complete technical description of the instrument in ques­ tion, details of the life of its maker, and careful consideration of dating problems, which are always present since few chronometers carry dates. In some cases this has led Anthony Randall to go well beyond the existing literature to provide, as in the cases of Thomas Earnshaw and Josiah Emery, numbering sequences plotted against date for their entire output. Only detailed use of the book can allow the reader to appreciate the wealth of detailed knowledge and authorial skills and acumen that are here displayed. Although the catalog is demandingly technical, assuming a good knowledge of horology on the part of its reader, help for the uninformed and the forgetful is provided by the long and detailed glossary, the dozens of impeccably clear diagrams by David Penney, and the generally excellent and occasionally outstanding photographs by Steven Pitkin. An extensive, though not complete, bibliography and a generally reliable index (which, however, excludes anything and everybody mentioned in the glossary) complete the book, which is clearly printed and pleasant to use, despite an unfortunate choice of background for the diagrams on the endpapers and the quite hideous blue used for the half-titles to the different sections of the book. The binding, although probably stain-resistant, is perhaps rather weak for a book of this size and weight. In combination with R. T. Gould’s classic work on the technical evolution of the chronometer of 1921 and with a number of more recent, detailed studies of individual makers such as the three volumes by Vaudrey Mercer devoted to the Arnolds, the Frodshams, and Dent, ample, if still incomplete, materials are now available for more interpre­ tative analyses to be undertaken not only of the technical development of the chronometer, but also of the socioeconomic context in which this development took place. Apart from the massive quantity of new material that this excellent book makes available, thus revitalizing the subject, it challenges exploitation of it in a manner worthy of the way in which it is here presented. A. J. Turner Mr. Turner writes on the history of precision technology in Europe from antiquity to the 19th century. Knoiuledge, Culture, and Science in the Metropolis: The New York Academy of Sciences, 1817-1970. By Simon Baatz. NewYork: NewYork Academy of Sciences, 1990. Pp. ix+269; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $55.00 (cloth or paper). This well-written history of a major urban scientific institution is much broader in scope than one usually expects from a sponsored study. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 205 Simon Baatz, who has previously studied scientific organizations in Phila­ delphia, uses the academy as a focus for an account of the institutions and individuals that have shaped science in New York City over the 150 years following the founding in 1817 of the Lyceum ofNatural History, the name by which the New York Academy of Sciences was first known. Founded as an organization that was to be “democratic, egalitarian, and non-exclusive” (p. 9), the lyceum had dreams of serving as a multipurpose scientific institution for the city—at once museum, re­ source for scientific research, and disseminator of scientific knowledge. As Baatz pursues its history, especially as he details its relationships with other city institutions, one sees each of these roles being assumed by some other entity more attuned to changes in the world of science—the American Museum of Natural History, Columbia University, specialist societies. In 1876, the lyceum responded by changing its name to the NewYork Academy of Sciences and began its evolution into a modern umbrellatype organization, or federation of societies. This process was basically complete by 1907, when an earlier “alliance” died and the academy became an official “parent” society with specialist societies serving as “sections” while maintaining their own individuality. In recent years the academy has carved out a new role for itself which takes account of key features of modern science—its ubiquity, its huge size, and its tendency to be...

Geographical issues on the Czech territory have been traditionally researched at universities and since 1950s also at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and Czech Academy of Sciences. In 1962 four geography departments fused and the Institute of Geography (Czechoslovak Academy of Science) became the focus of Czechoslovak academic geography. Apart from organizational activities the Institute has extensively researched problems of regionalism and environmental issues. As a result of academic transformation in early 1990s the Institute of Geography ceased to exist. Since then its research activities passed partly at universities in Praha and Brno and at the Centre for Environment, Institute of Geonics, Czech Academy of Sciences in Brno. Thus, fifty years of geographical research on academic grounds has brought a number of research reports, publications, maps and atlases - a significant portion of Czech geography in the 20th century.

The history of the Russian Magneto-Meteorological Observatory (RMMO) in Beijing has not been extensively researched. Sources for this information are Russian (the Russian State Historical Archive, Saint Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Academy of Sciences, Russian National Library) and Chinese (the First Historical Archive of Beijing, the Library of the Shanghai Zikavey Observatory) archives. These archival materials can be scientifically and methodologically analyzed. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Russian Orthodox Mission (ROM) was founded in the territory of Beijing. Existing until 1955, the ROM performed an important role in the development of Russian–Chinese relations. Russian scientists could only work in Beijing through the ROM due to China’s policy of fierce self-isolation. The ROM became the center of Chinese academic studies and the first training school for Russian sinologists. From its very beginning, it was considered not only a church or diplomatic mission but a research center in close cooperation with the Russian Academy of Sciences. In this context, the RMMO made important weather investigations in China and the Far East in the 19th century. The RMMO, as well as its branch stations in China and Mongolia, part of a scientific network, represented an important link between Europe and Asia and was probably the largest geographical scientific network in the world at that time.

Tartu Ülikooli kunstiajalooõpetuse moderniseerimisest ja kollektsioonide rollist kunstiajaloo professori valimistel aastatel 1919–1921

Introduction. Russian science has historically functioned in conditions of the need to adapt and respond to the challenges of national development and restructuring the system of organizing scientific research and development, which manifested itself both in the era of the Russian Empire and the USSR, and in modern conditions of Western sanctions pressure. Despite the constraints, the years 2022—2023 are characterized by significant achievements in mathematics, biology, physics, and genetics, which is due, among other things, to the rich scientific heritage accumulated at various stages of the formation of Russian science. Methods. As part of the preparation of the article, the authors conducted a historical analysis of regulatory legal documentation, scientific and methodological literature, and statistical reports. Results and discussion. Modern institutions and approaches to the organization of the science management system have historically developed since the time of the Russian Empire. In particular, the prototype of the Russian Academy of Sciences was the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Empire, created for the centralized management of the development of fundamental science. The structure of the organization and management of science in the USSR began to be sectoral in nature and largely coincided with the departmental (sectoral) structure of the national economy. During the same period, program-oriented methods of solving scientific, technical and economic problems have been introduced. After the collapse of the USSR, the scientific industry faced a number of structural problems, including a reduction in the number of young scientific personnel, a decrease in the prestige of a scientific career, a decrease in the social security of scientific and pedagogical workers, and the rupture of most scientific cooperation ties. Conclusion. When forming an effective management system in the field of science, technology and innovation, Russia used the experience of building a science organization system in the USSR, including a state-programmatic approach to planning scientific activities, the implementation of comprehensive scientific and technical programs of a full cycle, the structuring of elements of scientific infrastructure.

This article is devoted to the history of Russian hypsometric and geographic investigations of the northern part of China, Mongolia, Manchuria, the Amur and the Ussuri region in the 19th century. The article is based on the analysis of numerous sources from the Russian State Historical Archive, St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Academy of Sciences, Russian National Library, the Library of the Shanghai Zikawei Observatory. The article’s methodological framework is objectivity concept, systematically of scientific analysis of archival materials. The considerable attention is paid to H. Fritsche’s, Palladius’s, N.M. Przhevalsky’s and other expeditions. The detailed analysis of a new systematic mapping of the northern part of China, made by the Russian scientists is given. The role of the Beijing Magneto-meteorological observatory in Beijing, as the part of the Russian Academy of sciences, is specially noted. The author considers in details the political and socio-economic conditions of expeditions.