The third Pacific voyage of Cook

On his return from his second voyage, Cook found that his fame had spread beyond naval circles. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and awarded its Copley Gold Medal, was painted by Nathaniel Dance, dined with James Boswell, and was described in the House of Lords as 'the first navigator in Europe'. Brief thoughts of retirement were replaced by a determination to return to the Pacific. Cook's third and final voyage (1776-80) had its own logic in that it took him to the North Pacific in an effort to solve a geographical mystery as old as the southern continent - the question of the existence of a navigable north west passage.

As he approached the north west coast of America in 1778, Cook made the major discovery of the Hawaiian Islands, the northernmost outliers of Polynesia. He spent that summer in hazardous exploration along the American coast from Vancouver Island to the Bering Strait, searching in vain for the wide strait leading to an ice-free Arctic Ocean, as indicated on the speculative maps of the period.

Although he found no north west passage, in a single season Cook put the main outline of the coast of north west America on the maps, determined the shape of Alaska well beyond the Bering Strait, and closed the gap between the Spanish coastal probes from the south and those of the Russians from Kamchatka.

Did one of Cook's temper tantrums seal his fate? © It was to be his last achievement, for the following winter he was killed on his return to the Hawaiian Islands. His death at Kealakekua Bay on 14 February 1779 has remained a source of scholarly controversy. During the weeks after his arrival Cook seems to have been regarded by the Hawaiians as the god Lono, bringer of light, peace and plenty, for he had arrived at the time of makahiki, Lono's festival.

Cook continued to conform to the sacred calendar of the islanders by sailing away from Hawaii as makahiki came to an end. However, the Resolution got damaged at sea, so that Cook was forced to return to the bay to repair his ship out of the correct season, thus making himself a violator of sacred customs.

It was noted that there was an eerie atmosphere among the islanders following his return, and Cook's death after an argument on the beach was predictable if not preordained. Not all accept this interpretation. Some scholars see Cook's 'deification' as the product of a Western, imperialist tradition, and they explain his death as being the result of a row caused by one of his uncontrollable outbursts of temper, which had become increasingly noticeable during the voyage.

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Isaac Newton (1643 - 1727)

Newton was an English physicist and mathematician, and the greatest scientist of his era.

Isaac Newton was born on 4 January 1643 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire. His father was a prosperous farmer, who died three months before Newton was born. His mother remarried and Newton was left in the care of his grandparents. In 1661, he went to Cambridge University where he became interested in mathematics, optics, physics and astronomy. In October 1665, a plague epidemic forced the university to close and Newton returned to Woolsthorpe. The two years he spent there were an extremely fruitful time during which he began to think about gravity. He also devoted time to optics and mathematics, working out his ideas about 'fluxions' (calculus).

In 1667, Newton returned to Cambridge, where he became a fellow of Trinity College. Two years later he was appointed second Lucasian professor of mathematics. It was Newton's reflecting telescope, made in 1668, that finally brought him to the attention of the scientific community and in 1672 he was made a fellow of the Royal Society. From the mid-1660s, Newton conducted a series of experiments on the composition of light, discovering that white light is composed of the same system of colours that can be seen in a rainbow and establishing the modern study of optics (or the behaviour of light). In 1704, Newton published 'The Opticks' which dealt with light and colour. He also studied and published works on history, theology and alchemy.

In 1687, with the support of his friend the astronomer Edmond Halley, Newton published his single greatest work, the 'Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica' ('Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'). This showed how a universal force, gravity, applied to all objects in all parts of the universe.

In 1689, Newton was elected member of parliament for Cambridge University (1689 - 1690 and 1701 - 1702). In 1696,Newton was appointed warden of the Royal Mint, settling in London. He took his duties at the Mint very seriously and campaigned against corruption and inefficiency within the organisation. In 1703, he was elected president of the Royal Society, an office he held until his death. He was knighted in 1705.

Newton was a difficult man, prone to depression and often involved in bitter arguments with other scientists, but by the early 1700s he was the dominant figure in British and European science. He died on 31 March 1727 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

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Alfred Nobel (1833-1896)

Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist and the inventor of dynamite, who established the Nobel Prize.

Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden. His father was an engineer and inventor. In 1842, Nobel's family moved to Russia where his father had opened an engineering firm providing equipment for the Tsar's armies. In 1850, Nobel's father sent him abroad to study chemical engineering. During a two-year period Nobel visited Sweden, Germany, France and the United States. He returned to Sweden in 1863 with his father after the family firm went bankrupt.

Back in Sweden, Nobel devoted himself to the study of explosives. He was particularly interested in the safe manufacture and use of nitro-glycerine, a highly unstable explosive. Nobel's brother Emil had been killed in a nitro-glycerine explosion in 1864. Nobel incorporated nitro-glycerine into silica, an inert substance, which made it safer and easier to manipulate. This he patented in 1867 under the name of 'dynamite'. Dynamite established Nobel's fame and was soon used in blasting tunnels, cutting canals and building railways and roads all over the world. Nobel went on to invent a number of other explosives.

In the 1870s and 1880s, Nobel built up a network of factories all over Europe to manufacture explosives. In 1894, he bought an ironworks at Bofors in Sweden that became the nucleus of the well-known Bofors arms factory. Although he lived in Paris, Nobel travelled widely. He continued to work in his laboratory, inventing a number of synthetic materials and by the time of his death he had registered 355 patents.

In November 1895, Nobel signed his will providing for the establishment of the Nobel Prizes. He set aside the bulk of his huge fortune to establish annual prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace. An Economics Prize was added later.

Nobel died at his home in Italy on 10 December 1896. He is buried in Stockholm.

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Nelson Mandela (1918 -)

Mandela led the struggle to replace the apartheid regime of South Africa with a multi-racial democracy. He was imprisoned for 27 years and went on to become his country's first black president.

Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Transkei, South Africa on 18 July 1918 and was given the name of Nelson by one of his teachers. His father Henry was a respected advisor to the Thembu royal family.

Mandela was educated at the University of Fort Hare and later at the University of Witwatersrand, qualifying in law in 1942. He became increasingly involved with the African National Congress (ANC), a multi-racial nationalist movement trying to bring about political change in South Africa.

In 1948, the National Party came to power and began to implement a policy of 'apartheid', or forced segregation on the basis of race. The ANC staged a campaign of passive resistance against apartheid laws. In 1952, Mandela became one of the ANC's deputy presidents. By the late 1950s, faced with increasing government discrimination, Mandela, his friend Oliver Tambo, and others began to move the ANC in a more radical direction. Mandela was tried for treason in 1956, but acquitted after a five-year trial.

In March 1960, sixty-nine black anti-apartheid demonstrators were killed by police at Sharpeville. The government declared a state of emergency and banned the ANC. In response, the organisation abandoned its policy of non-violence and Mandela helped establish the ANC's military wing 'Umkhonto we Sizwe' or 'The Spear of the Nation'. He was appointed its commander-in-chief and travelled abroad to receive military training and to find support for the ANC.

On his return he was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. In 1963, Mandela and other ANC leaders were tried for plotting to overthrow the government by violence. The following year Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was held in Robben Island prison, off the coast of Cape Town, and later in Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland. During his years in prison he became an international symbol of resistance to apartheid.

In 1990, the South African government responded to internal and international pressure and released Mandela, at the same time lifting the ban against the ANC. In 1991 Mandela became the ANC's leader.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with FW de Klerk, then president of South Africa, in 1993. The following year South Africa held its first multi-racial election and Mandela was elected its first black president. In 1998, he was married for the third time to Graça Machel, the widow of the president of Mozambique. Mandela's second wife, Winnie, whom he married in 1958 and divorced in 1996, remains a controversial anti-apartheid activist. In 1997 he stepped down as ANC leader and in 1999 his presidency of South Africa came to an end.

Mandela continues to support a variety of causes, particularly the fight against HIV-Aids. In 2004, Mandela announced he would be retiring from public life and his public appearances have become less and less frequent. On 29 August 2007, a permanent statue to Nelson Mandela was unveiled in Parliament Square, London.

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Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788)

Gainsborough was one of the great masters of 18th century painting in Britain, best known for his portraits.

Thomas Gainsborough was born in May 1727 in Sudbury, Suffolk, the son of a cloth merchant. He showed artistic skills at an early age. When he was 13 he was sent to London to study drawing and etching with the French engraver Hubert Gravelot.

Gravelot had been a pupil of the great French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau, whose influence on Gainsborough was strong. In London, Gainsborough also associated with English painters William Hogarth and Francis Hayman.

Around 1749, Gainsborough returned to Suffolk, where he lived and worked for a decade. His portraits were mainly of local gentry and merchants. In 1746, he married Margaret Burr and they had two daughters.

In 1759, ambitious to win more commissions, Gainsborough moved to the fashionable spa town of Bath. His sitters were now authors, actors and members of high society. In 1768, he was elected a founder member of the Royal Academy of Arts.

In 1774, he moved to London, settling in Schomberg House on Pall Mall where he built a studio in the garden. In 1780, he was commissioned to paint portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte. Gainsborough became a royal favourite, fuelling his rivalry with the official court painter Sir Joshua Reynolds.

In 1784, Gainsborough quarrelled violently with the Royal Academy over the hanging of his pictures. He withdrew them and from then on exhibited his pictures in his own studio. Gainsborough claimed to prefer painting landscapes to portraits, but the latter were much more lucrative and it is for portraits such as 'Mr and Mrs Andrews', 'The Blue Boy' and 'The Morning Walk' that he is most famous.

Gainsborough died of cancer on 2 August 1788.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/cromwell_oliver.shtml

Oliver Cromwell (1599 - 1658)

English soldier and statesman who helped make England a republic and then ruled as lord protector from 1653 to 1658.

Oliver Cromwell was born on 25 April 1599 in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire into a family of minor gentry and studied at Cambridge University. He became member of parliament for Huntingdon in the parliament of 1628 - 1629. In the 1630s Cromwell experienced a religious crisis and became convinced that he would be guided to carry out God's purpose. He began to make his name as a radical Puritan when, in 1640, he was elected to represent Cambridge, first in the Short Parliament and then in the Long Parliament.

Civil war broke out between Charles I and parliament in 1642. Although Cromwell lacked military experience, he created and led a superb force of cavalry, the 'Ironsides', and rose from the rank of captain to that of lieutenant-general in three years. He convinced parliament to establish a professional army - the New Model Army - which won the decisive victory over the king's forces at Naseby (1645). The king's alliance with the Scots and his subsequent defeat in the Second Civil War convinced Cromwell that the king must be brought to justice. He was a prime mover in the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649 and subsequently sought to win conservative support for the new republic by suppressing radial elements in the army. Cromwell became army commander and lord lieutenant of Ireland, where he crushed resistance with the massacres of the garrisons at Drogheda and Wexford (1649).

Cromwell then defeated the supporters of the king's son Charles II at Dunbar (1650) and Worcester (1651), effectively ending the civil war. In 1653, frustrated with lack of progress, he dissolved the rump of the Long Parliament and, after the failure of his Puritan convention (popularly known as Barebones Parliament) made himself lord protector. In 1657, he refused the offer of the crown. At home Lord Protector Cromwell reorganised the national church, established Puritanism, readmitted Jews into Britain and presided over a certain degree of religious tolerance. Abroad, he ended the war with Portugal (1653) and Holland (1654) and allied with France against Spain, defeating the Spanish at the Battle of the Dunes (1658). Cromwell died on 3 September 1658 in London. After the Restoration his body was dug up and hanged.

Cromwell's son Richard was named as his successor and was lord protector of England from September 1658 to May 1659. He could not reconcile various political, military and religious factions and soon lost the support of the army on which his power depended. He was forced to abdicate and after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 he fled to Paris. He returned to England in 1680 and lived quietly under an assumed name until his death in 1712.

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Marie Curie (1867 - 1934)

Marie Curie was a Polish-born physicist and chemist and one of the most famous scientists of her time. Together with her husband Pierre, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1903, and she went on to win another in 1911.

Marie Sklodowska was born in Warsaw on 7 November 1867, the daughter of a teacher. In 1891, she went to Paris to study physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne where she met Pierre Curie, professor of the School of Physics. They were married in 1895.

The Curies worked together investigating radioactivity, building on the work of the German physicist Roentgen and the French physicist Becquerel. In July 1898, the Curies announced the discovery of a new chemical element, polonium. At the end of the year, they announced the discovery of another, radium. The Curies, along with Becquerel, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.

Pierre's life was cut short in 1906 when he was knocked down and killed by a carriage. Marie took over his teaching post, becoming the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne, and devoted herself to continuing the work that they had begun together. She received a second Nobel Prize, for Chemistry, in 1911.

The Curie's research was crucial in the development of x-rays in surgery. During World War One Curie helped to equip ambulances with x-ray equipment, which she herself drove to the front lines. The International Red Cross made her head of its radiological service and she held training courses for medical orderlies and doctors in the new techniques.

Despite her success, Marie continued to face great opposition from male scientists in France, and she never received significant financial benefits from her work. By the late 1920s her health was beginning to deteriorate. She died on 4 July 1934 from leukaemia, caused by exposure to high-energy radiation from her research. The Curies' eldest daughter Irene was herself a scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

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