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Register a new userEuropean Longitude Prizes. III. The Unsolved Mystery of an Alleged Venetian Longitude Prize
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Richard de Grijs
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Despite frequent references in modern reviews to a seventeenth-century Venetian longitude prize, only a single, circumstantial reference to the alleged prize is known from contemporary sources. Edward Harrisons scathing assessment of the conditions governing the award of an alleged Venetian longitude prize simultaneously disparages the rewards offered by the Dutch States General. However, the latter had long run its course by 1696, the year of the citation, thus rendering Harrisons reference unreliable. Whereas other longitude awards offered by the leading European maritime nations attracted applicants from far and wide, often accompanied by extensive, self-published pamphlets, the alleged Venetian prize does not seem to have been subject to similar hype. The alleged existence of seventeenth-century Venetian award is particularly curious, because the citys fortune was clearly in decline, and longitude determination on the open seas does not appear to have been a priority; the citys mariners already had access to excellent portolan charts. It is therefore recommended that authors refrain from referring to a potentially phantom Venetian longitude prize in the same context as the major sixteenth- to eighteenth-century European awards offered by the dominant sea-faring nations.
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Although governments across Europe had realised the need to incentivise the development of practically viable longitude solutions as early as the late-sixteenth century, the English government was late to the party. An sense of urgency among the scientific community and maritime navigators led to the establishment of a number of longitude awards by private donors. The first private British award was bequeathed in 1691 by Thomas Axe, parish clerk of Ottery St. Mary (Devon). Despite the absence of an expenses component and the onerous and costly nature of its terms and conditions, the Axe prize attracted a number of optimistic claimants. Although the award was never disbursed, it may have contributed to the instigation of the government-supported monetary reward associated with the British Longitude Act of 1714. It is likely that the conditions governing the British Longitude Prize, specifically the required accuracy and the need for sea trials and of disclosure of a successful methods theoretical principles, can be traced back at least in part to the Axe Prize requirements.
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It is known that the number of biquandle colorings of a long virtual knot diagram, with a fixed color of the initial arc, is a knot invariant. In this paper we describe a more subtle invariant: a family of biquandle endomorphisms obtained from the set of colorings and longitudinal information.
Work of Lev Landau had a profound impact on the physics in 20th century. Landau had created the paradigms that had framed the conversations on the outstanding problems in physics for decades. He has laid the foundations for our understanding of quantum matter such as superfluidity, superconductivity and the theory of Fermi Liquid. Here we present sampled Nobel Archive data on the winning nomination that led to the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1962.
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