On This Day
1831 – November uprising: The Battle of Warsaw effectively ends the Polish insurrection.
The Battle of Warsaw was fought in September 1831 between Imperial Russia and Poland. After a two-day assault on the city’s western fortifications, the Polish defences collapsed and the city was evacuated. It was the largest battle and the final episode of the Polish–Russian War of 1830–31, a conflict that became better known as the November Uprising.
After almost a year of heavy fighting, a large Russian force crossed the Vistula and besieged the capital of Poland on 20 August. Although the siege was partially lifted soon afterwards and a successful sortie allowed a communication route between the city and the rest of Poland, a large Russian force remained on the left bank of the Vistula and continued to threaten the city. Russian commander Ivan Paskevich counted on Polish surrender as his Polish counterpart, Jan Krukowiecki, was known to be a member of the moderate political forces, willing to negotiate with Russian tsar Nicholas I, who had been deposed from the Polish throne in January 1831 by the Sejm (Polish parliament). When a less conciliatory faction gained power in Warsaw and the Russian offer of surrender was refused, Paskevich ordered his forces to launch an assault against Warsaw’s western defences.
The assault started on 6 September 1831. Russian forces surprised the Poles by attacking the strongest Polish position in the suburb of Wola. Despite staunch defence of some of the ramparts, especially Fort 54 and Fort 56, after the first day the outer line of Polish defences had been breached by Russian infantry and artillery. The following day fights resumed, but this time Russian artillery was close enough to shell the western boroughs of the city itself. Although losses were similar on both sides, Polish authorities decided not to risk another Massacre of Praga and ordered the evacuation of the city. On 8 September 1831 Warsaw lay in Russian hands, and the remainder of the Polish Army retreated to Modlin. The November Uprising ended soon afterwards, with the remnants of the Polish Army crossing the borders of Prussia and Austria, to avoid being captured by the Russians.
In the 19th century the fight for Warsaw became one of the icons of Polish culture, described by, among others, Polish romantic poets Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki. It was also the main inspiration behind Chopin’s Revolutionary Étude, initially called the Étude on the Bombardment of Warsaw.[1] The fall of Warsaw also garnered sympathy for the Poles and their quest for independence.
Born On This Day
1927 – Marguerite Frank, American-French mathematician
Marguerite Straus Frank (born September 8, 1927) is a French-American mathematician who is a pioneer in convex optimization theory and mathematical programming.
Education
After attending secondary schooling in Paris and Toronto,[1] Frank contributed largely to the fields of transportation theory and Lie algebras, which later became the topic of her PhD thesis, New Simple Lie Algebras.[2] She was one of the first female PhD students in mathematics at Harvard University,[3] completing her dissertation in 1956, with Abraham Adrian Albert as her advisor.[2]
Contributions
Together with Philip Wolfe in 1956 at Princeton, she invented the Frank–Wolfe algorithm,[4] an iterative optimization method for general constrained non-linear problems. While linear programming was popular at that time, the paper marked an important change of paradigm to more general non-linear convex optimization.
This algorithm is used widely in traffic models to assign routes to strategic models such as those using Saturn (software).
Career
Frank was part of the Princeton logistics project led by Harold W. Kuhn and Albert W. Tucker.
In 1977, she became an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University, before moving to Rider University. Marguerite Frank was a visiting professor to Stanford (1985–1990), and ESSEC Business School in Paris (1991).
Recognition
She was elected a member of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1981.
Personal life
Marguerite Frank was born in France and migrated to U.S. during the war in 1939.[1] She was married to Joseph Frank from 1953 until his death in 2013. He was a Professor of literature at Stanford and an author of widely acclaimed critical biography of Dostoevsky.[5]
FYI
Jeffrey was wearing a faded black hoodie with an incomprehensible (to me) mathematical equation and the phrase escape velocity. I asked what it means. “The speed at which you have to shoot something directly up, or at least perpendicular to the surface, in
order to get it to escape the gravitational field of an object,” he said. Like an orbit? “No, because orbit is described as you’re falling towards an object, but you’re going so fast that you always miss it.” He helps me understand. “Say I was talking about you. If I shot you up at escape velocity, you’d escape Earth’s gravitational field, which means you wouldn’t fall back down.” While he explained, I inadvertently looked up to the sky and imagined moving beyond the blue and into the black, getting very cold very fast and then dead.
There’s more to the hoodie than a space joke. He wants to be an astrophysicist, but it’s not just that, either. “My mom always talks about her father, and how he sort of spiraled down after they came from South Dakota to Oakland,” he said. “It’s happened to all the men in the family. My dad and all his brothers have passed away. There’s this theme of the men falling out, mainly because of the historical trauma that has trickled down. Being able to overcome that mentally is very important. My mom always talks about breaking the chain, breaking that cycle, that downward trend.” He understands the gravity of his situation, and he’s still figuring out the speed he’ll need to escape the field. He knows that to succeed will be the exception.
Kathryn’s Report: Desiree Horton: Citing Sex Discrimination, First Female Orange County Fire Authority Pilot Sues to Get Job Back
Excellent!
Just A Car Guy: After graduating high school, Rick Corman rented a backhoe and dump truck, developed a revolutionary method of unloading ties, thereby saving time and reducing injury to railroad employees. Then he built his backhoe business into a multimillion-dollar railroad and construction company
Richard Jay Corman (July 22, 1955 – August 23, 2013)[1] was the founder and owner of R. J. Corman Railroad Group, a Nicholasville, Kentucky-based railroad services and short line operating company.
Early life
Corman was born and died in Nicholasville, Kentucky. The son of a state highway worker, he grew up in a home not far from his company’s future headquarters in Nicholasville.[1] He first went into business at age 11, when his paternal grandfather made him a 25% partner in a business hauling cattle, goods, and junk.[1] According to a 2011 profile in Fortune, “high school utterly bored him”; he missed 105 of 173 possible school days during his senior year but still graduated in 1973.[2]
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Funny!
Vector’s World: Butt Drugs
Corydon, Indiana is about a half hour’s drive west of Louisville, Kentucky. Corydon was the capital of the Indiana Territory from 1813 until 1816. It is the proud home of Butt Drugs.
By Mike McGroarty: How to Control Creeping Charlie in Your Lawn.
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wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for September 22 September 22, 2023Picture of the day Skyline of Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for September 21 September 21, 2023Picture of the day Issued 100 years ago: 100 Million Mark "Notgeld" banknote (21 September 1923), Trier, Germany, design: Fritz Quant, RV: Roman Bridge in Trier.
AV Club Wiki Wormhole
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