Jacob Bronowski

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Jacob Bronowski's grave in Highgate Cemetery , London

Jacob Bronowski (born January 18, 1908 in Łódź , Russian Empire , † August 22, 1974 in East Hampton , New York ) was a British mathematician and biologist of Polish descent. It is especially as an author and presenter of the BBC documentation The ascent of man ( The Ascent of Man become) known.

life and work

Bronowski was born in Łódź in 1908 . His family moved to Germany during the First World War and from there to England in 1920. Although he said he spoke only two words in English, he was admitted to the Central Foundation Boys' School and later studied at the University of Cambridge .

As a math student at Jesus College , Cambridge , Bronowski and William Empson had published the literary magazine Experiment since 1928 . For the rest of his life he pursued activities in both the mathematical-scientific and the literary fields. He was a successful chess player , receiving a half-blue award from Cambridge University. Between 1926 and 1970 he wrote numerous chess compositions for the British Chess Magazine . In 1930 he was a Senior Wrangler in the Tripos exams . He successfully completed his studies in 1935 with a Ph.D. in mathematics, in his dissertation he dealt with algebraic geometry . From 1934 to 1942 he taught mathematics at the University of Hull .

During World War II he worked in Operations Research and after the war he became Head of Research for the National Coal Board in the United Kingdom . After his experience as an official observer after the atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima , he turned to biology like his friend Leó Szilárd in order to better understand the fundamentals of violence. In 1960 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . From 1964 he was deputy director of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies . He was denied an academic career in Great Britain because MI5 persecuted Bronowski's communist sisters and also suspected him.

Jacob Bronowski had been married to Rita Coblentz since 1941, the couple had four daughters, the oldest being the academic Lisa Jardine .

In 1967 Bronowski held the six Silliman Memorial Lectures at Yale University , choosing the role of the imagination and symbolic languages ​​for scientific progress as the topic. A transcript of the lectures was published in 1978, after his death, under the title The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination .

He first became known to the public in the late 1950s through the BBC version of The Brains Trust . However, Bronowski is better known for his 13-part series The Rise of Man , in which he explores the history of science and technology. This was the BBC's second "personal observation" documentary and inspired Carl Sagan to create his series Our Cosmos in the 1980s. While working on The Rise of Man , Bronowski was interviewed by Michael Parkinson . Bronowski's description of his visit to Auschwitz - he lost many family members during the Nazi era - was described by Parkinson as one of his most memorable interviews.

Jacob Bronowski died of a heart attack in 1974 , a year after The Rise of Man was complete. He was buried in London's Highgate Cemetery .

Web links

Commons : Jacob Bronowski  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bronowski, J .: The Common Sense of Science . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1967, p. 8.
  2. ↑ Edward Winter: Chess Notes . Retrieved March 23, 2008.
  3. ↑ Erica Wagner : The last renaissance man , in: Financial Times , November 22, 2014, p. 20
  4. ^ Sue Garson: Rita Bronowski - San Diego Jewish Journal . Retrieved March 23, 2008.
personal data
SURNAME Bronowski, Jacob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician and biologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Łódź , Poland
DATE OF DEATH 22nd August 1974
Place of death East Hampton (New York)