title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwe maintained positive economic growth throughout the 1980s (5% GDP growth per year) and 1990s (4.3% GDP growth per year). The economy declined from 2000: 5% decline in 2000, 8% in 2001, 12% in 2002 and 18% in 2003. Zimbabwe's involvement from 1998 to 2002 in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo drained hundreds of millions of dollars from the economy. From 1999 to 2009, Zimbabwe saw the lowest ever economic growth with an annual GDP decrease of 6.1%. The downward spiral of the economy has been attributed mainly to mismanagement and corruption by the government and the eviction of more than 4,000 white farmers in the controversial land confiscations of 2000. The Zimbabwean government and its supporters attest that it was Western policies to avenge the expulsion of their kin that sabotaged the economy.


title: Zimbabwe

text: By 2005, the purchasing power of the average Zimbabwean had dropped to the same levels in real terms as 1953. In 2005, the government, led by central bank governor Gideon Gono, started making overtures that white farmers could come back. There were 400 to 500 still left in the country, but much of the land that had been confiscated was no longer productive. By 2016, there remained about 300 of the original 4,500 farms owned by white farmers. The farms that left were either too remote or their owners had paid for protection or collaborated with the regime. In January 2007, the government issued long-term leases to some white farmers. At the same time, however, the government also continued to demand that all remaining white farmers, who were given eviction notices earlier, vacate the land or risk being arrested.<ref name="AP/WP-2007-02-05"></ref> Mugabe pointed to foreign governments and alleged "sabotage" as the cause of the fall of the Zimbabwean economy, as well as the country's 80% formal unemployment rate.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Inflation rose from an annual rate of 32% in 1998, to an estimated high of 11,200,000% in August 2008 according to the Central Statistical Office. This represented a state of hyperinflation, and the central bank introduced a new 100 trillion dollar note. In January 2009, in an effort to counteract runaway inflation, acting Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced that Zimbabweans would be permitted to use other, more stable currencies to do business, alongside the Zimbabwean dollar. In an effort to combat inflation and foster economic growth the Zimbabwean dollar was suspended indefinitely in April 2009. In 2016, Zimbabwe allowed trade in the United States dollar and various other currencies such as the rand (South Africa), the pula (Botswana), the euro, and the pound sterling (UK). In February 2019, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor John Mangudya introduced a new local currency, the Real Time Gross Settlement dollar, in a move to address some of the Zimbabwean economic and financial challenges.


title: Zimbabwe

text: After the formation of the Unity Government and the adoption of several currencies instead of the Zimbabwe dollar in 2009, the Zimbabwean economy rebounded. GDP grew by 8–9% per year between 2009 and 2012. In November 2010, the International Monetary Fund described the Zimbabwean economy as "completing its second year of buoyant economic growth". The pan-African investment bank IMARA released a favourable report in February 2011 on investment prospects in Zimbabwe, citing an improved revenue base and higher tax receipts. In January 2013, the finance ministry reported that they had only $217 in their treasury and would apply for donations to finance the coming elections. By 2014, Zimbabwe had recovered to levels seen in the 1990s but growth faltered between 2012 and 2016. Inflation was 42% in 2018; in June 2019, the inflation rate reached 175%, leading to mass unrest across the country.


title: Zimbabwe

text: The mining sector is lucrative, with some of the world's largest platinum reserves being mined by Anglo American plc, Zimplats, and Impala Platinum. Zimplats, the nation's largest platinum company, has proceeded with US$500 million in expansions, and is also continuing a separate US$2 billion project, despite threats by Mugabe to nationalise the company.


title: Zimbabwe

text: The Marange diamond fields, discovered in 2006, are considered the biggest diamond find in over a century. They have the potential to improve the fiscal situation of the country considerably, but almost all revenues from the field have disappeared into the pockets of army officers and ZANU–PF politicians. In terms of carats produced, the Marange field is one of the largest diamond-producing projects in the world, estimated to have produced 12 million carats in 2014 worth over $350 million.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwe's commercial farming sector was traditionally a source of exports and foreign exchange and provided 400,000 jobs. However, the government's land reform program badly damaged the sector, turning Zimbabwe into a net importer of food products. For example, between 2000 and 2016, annual wheat production fell from 250,000 tons to 60,000 tons, maize was reduced from two million tons to 500,000 tons and cattle slaughtered for beef fell from 605,000 head to 244,000 head. Coffee production, once a prized export commodity, came to a virtual halt after seizure or expropriation of white-owned coffee farms in 2000 and has never recovered.


title: Zimbabwe

text: For the past ten years, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics has been assisting Zimbabwe's farmers to adopt conservation agriculture techniques, a sustainable method of farming that can help increase yields. By applying the three principles of minimum soil disturbance, legume-based cropping and the use of organic mulch, farmers can improve infiltration, reduce evaporation and soil erosion, and build up organic soil content. Between 2005 and 2011, the number of smallholders practicing conservation agriculture in Zimbabwe increased from 5,000 to more than 150,000. Cereal yields rose between 15 and 100 per cent across different regions. The government declared potato a national strategic food security crop in 2012.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Mvurwi, a region in Mashonaland Central Province, once fell in the "breadbasket region" of Zimbabwe, with fertile soils. However, over the past 30 years, this is one of the areas that have been negatively impacted by the land reforms, causing it to be less prosperous than it was in the late 20th century.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Since the land reform programme in 2000, tourism in Zimbabwe has steadily declined. In 2018, tourism peaked with 2.6 million tourists. In 2016, the total contribution of tourism to Zimbabwe was $1.1 billion (USD), or about 8.1% of Zimbabwe's GDP. Employment in travel and tourism, as well as industries travel and tourism indirectly supports, was 5.2% of national employment.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Several airlines pulled out of Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2007. Australia's Qantas, Germany's Lufthansa, and Austrian Airlines were among the first to pull out and in 2007 British Airways suspended all direct flights to Harare. The country's flagship airline Air Zimbabwe, which operated flights throughout Africa and a few destinations in Europe and Asia, ceased operations in February 2012. As of 2017, several major commercial airlines had resumed flights to Zimbabwe.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwe has several major tourist attractions. Victoria Falls on the Zambezi, which are shared with Zambia, are located in the north-west of Zimbabwe. Before the economic changes, much of the tourism for these locations came to the Zimbabwe side, but now Zambia is the main beneficiary. The Victoria Falls National Park is also in this area and is one of the eight main national parks in Zimbabwe, the largest of which is Hwange National Park.


title: Zimbabwe

text: The Eastern Highlands are a series of mountainous areas near the border with Mozambique. The highest peak in Zimbabwe, Mount Nyangani at is located there as well as the Bvumba Mountains and the Nyanga National Park. World's View is in these mountains, and it is from here that places as far away as are visible and, on clear days, the town of Rusape can be seen.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwe is unusual in Africa in that there are a number of ancient and medieval ruined cities built in a unique dry stone style. Among the most famous of these are the Great Zimbabwe ruins in Masvingo. Other ruins include Khami Ruins, Zimbabwe, Dhlo-Dhlo and Naletale. The Matobo Hills are an area of granite kopjes and wooded valleys commencing some south of Bulawayo in southern Zimbabwe. The hills were formed over two billion years ago with granite being forced to the surface, then being eroded to produce smooth "whaleback dwalas" and broken kopjes, strewn with boulders and interspersed with thickets of vegetation. Mzilikazi, founder of the Ndebele nation, gave the area its name, meaning 'Bald Heads'. They have become a tourist attraction because of their ancient shapes and local wildlife. Cecil Rhodes and other early white colonists like Leander Starr Jameson are buried in these hills at World's View.


title: Zimbabwe

text: There are many small-scale successful water supply and sanitation programs, but there is also a general lack of improved water and sanitation systems for the majority of Zimbabwe. According to the World Health Organization in 2012, 80% of Zimbabweans had access to improved, i.e. clean, drinking water sources, and only 40% of Zimbabweans had access to improved sanitation facilities. Access to improved water supply and sanitation is distinctly less in rural areas. There are many factors which continue to determine the nature, for the foreseeable future of water supply and sanitation in Zimbabwe. Three major factors are the severely depressed state of the Zimbabwean economy, the reluctance of foreign aid organisations to build and finance infrastructure projects, and the political instability of the state.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwe has relatively well-developed national infrastructure and a long-standing tradition of promoting research and development, as evidenced by the levy imposed on tobacco-growers since the 1930s to promote market research. The country has a well-developed education system, with one in 11 adults holding a tertiary degree. Given the country's solid knowledge base and abundant natural resources, Zimbabwe has great growth potential. Zimbabwe was ranked 113rd in the Global Innovation Index in 2021, up from 122nd in 2019.


title: Zimbabwe

text: To achieve its growth potential, Zimbabwe will need to correct a number of structural weaknesses. For instance, it lacks the critical mass of researchers needed to trigger innovation. Although the infrastructure is in place to harness research and development to Zimbabwe's socio-economic development, universities and research institutions lack the financial and human resources to conduct research and the regulatory environment hampers the transfer of new technologies to the business sector. The economic crisis has precipitated an exodus of university students and professionals in key areas of expertise (medicine, engineering, etc.) that is of growing concern. More than 22% of Zimbabwean tertiary students were completing their degrees abroad in 2012, compared to a 4% average for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. In 2012, there were 200 researchers (head count) employed in the public sector, one-quarter of whom were women. This is double the continental average (91 in 2013) but only one-quarter the researcher density of South Africa (818 per million inhabitants). The government has created the Zimbabwe Human Capital Website to provide information for the diaspora on job and investment opportunities in Zimbabwe.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Despite the fact that human resources are a pillar of any research and innovation policy, the "Medium Term Plan" "2011–2015" did not discuss any explicit policy for promoting postgraduate studies in science and engineering. The scarcity of new PhDs in science and engineering fields from the University of Zimbabwe in 2013 was symptomatic of this omission.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Nor does the development agenda to 2018, the "Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Economic Transformation," contain any specific targets for increasing the number of scientists and engineers, or the staffing requirements for industry and other productive sectors. In addition, the lack of co-ordination and coherence among governance structures has led to a multiplication of research priorities and poor implementation of existing policies.


title: Zimbabwe

text: The country's "Second Science and Technology Policy" was launched in June 2012, after being elaborated with UNESCO assistance. It replaces the earlier policy dating from 2002. The 2012 policy prioritises biotechnology, information and communication technologies (ICTs), space sciences, nanotechnology, indigenous knowledge systems, technologies yet to emerge and scientific solutions to emergent environmental challenges. The "Second Science and Technology Policy" also asserts the government commitment to allocating at least 1% of GDP to research and development, focusing at least 60% of university education on developing skills in science and technology and ensuring that school pupils devote at least 30% of their time to studying science subjects.


title: Zimbabwe

text: In 2014, Zimbabwe counted 21 publications per million inhabitants in internationally catalogued journals, according to Thomson Reuters' Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded). This placed Zimbabwe sixth out of the 15 SADC countries, behind Namibia (59), Mauritius (71), Botswana (103) and, above all, South Africa (175) and the Seychelles (364). The average for sub-Saharan Africa was 20 scientific publications per million inhabitants, compared to a global average of 176 per million.


title: Zimbabwe

text: According to the 2012 census report, 99.7% of the population is of African origin. The majority people, the Shona, comprise 82%, while Ndebele make up 14% of the population. The Ndebele descended from Zulu migrations in the 19th century and the other tribes with which they intermarried. Up to one million Ndebele may have left the country over the last five years, mainly for South Africa. Other ethnic groups include Venda, Tonga, Tsonga, Kalanga, Sotho, Ndau, Nambya, Tswana, Xhosa and Lozi.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Minority ethnic groups include white Zimbabweans, who make up less than 1% of the total population. White Zimbabweans are mostly of British origin, but there are also Afrikaner, Greek, Portuguese, French and Dutch communities. The white population dropped from a peak of around 278,000, or 4.3% of the population, in 1975. The 2012 census lists the total white population at 28,782 (roughly 0.22% of the population), one-twentieth of its peak. Most emigration has been to the United Kingdom (between 200,000 and 500,000 Britons are of Rhodesian or Zimbabwean origin), South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Coloureds form 0.5% of the population, and various Asian ethnic groups, mostly of Indian and Chinese origin, are also 0.5%.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwe has 16 official languages and under the constitution, an Act of Parliament may prescribe other languages as officially recognised languages. English is the main language used in the education and judicial systems. The Bantu languages Shona and Ndebele are the principal indigenous languages of Zimbabwe. Shona is spoken by 78% of the population, Ndebele by 20%. Other minority Bantu languages include Venda, Tsonga, Shangaan, Kalanga, Sotho, Ndau and Nambya. Less than 2.5%, mainly the white and "coloured" (mixed race) minorities, consider English their native language. Shona has a rich oral tradition, which was incorporated into the first Shona novel, "Feso" by Solomon Mutswairo, published in 1956. English is primarily spoken in the cities but less so in rural areas. Radio and television news are broadcast in Shona, Sindebele and English.


title: Zimbabwe

text: There is a large community of Portuguese speakers in Zimbabwe, mainly in the border areas with Mozambique and in major cities. Beginning in 2017, teaching Portuguese was included in secondary education of Zimbabwe.


title: Zimbabwe

text: According to the 2017 Inter Censal Demography Survey by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, 84% of Zimbabweans are Christian; 10% of the population do not belong to any religion, and 0.7% are Muslim.


title: Zimbabwe

text: 62% of the population attend religious services regularly. 69% of Zimbabweans belong to Protestant Christianity, 8% are Roman Catholic. Pentecostal-charismatic forms of Christianity, in particular, have grown rapidly in recent years and are playing a prominent role in public, social and political life. The largest Christian churches are Anglican, Roman Catholic, Seventh-day Adventist and Methodist.


title: Zimbabwe

text: As in other African countries, Christianity may be mixed with enduring traditional beliefs. Indigenous religion, which predates colonialism, has become relatively marginal but continues to be an important part of the Zimbabwean religious field. Ancestral worship is the most practised non-Christian religion, involving spiritual intercession; the mbira dzavadzimu, which means "voice of the ancestors", an instrument related to many lamellophones ubiquitous throughout Africa, is central to many ceremonial proceedings.


title: Zimbabwe

text: At independence, the policies of racial inequality were reflected in the disease patterns of the black majority. The first five years after independence saw rapid gains in areas such as immunisation coverage, access to health care, and contraceptive prevalence rate. Zimbabwe was thus considered internationally to have achieved a good record of health development.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwe suffered occasional outbreaks of acute diseases. The gains on the national health were eroded by structural adjustment in the 1990s, the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the economic crisis since 2000. In 2006, Zimbabwe had one of the lowest life expectancies in the world according to UN figure—44 for men and 43 for women, down from 60 in 1990, but recovered to 60 in 2015. The rapid drop was ascribed mainly to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Infant mortality rose from 6% in the late 1990s to 12.3% by 2004. Official fertility rates over the last decade were 3.6 (2002), 3.8 (2006) and 3.8 (2012). The 2014 maternal mortality rate per 100,000 births for Zimbabwe was 614 compared to 960 in 2010–11 and 232 in 1990. The under five mortality rate, per 1,000 births was 75 in 2014 (94 in 2009). The number of midwives per 1,000 live births was unavailable in 2016 and the lifetime risk of death for pregnant women 1 in 42.


title: Zimbabwe

text: In 2006 an association of doctors in Zimbabwe made calls for Mugabe to make moves to assist the ailing health service. The HIV infection rate in Zimbabwe was estimated to be 14% for people aged 15–49 in 2009. UNESCO reported a decline in HIV prevalence among pregnant women from 26% in 2002 to 21% in 2004. By 2016 HIV/AIDS prevalence had been reduced to 13.5% compared to 40% in 1998.


title: Zimbabwe

text: At the end of November 2008, some operations at three of Zimbabwe's four major referral hospitals had shut down, along with the Zimbabwe Medical School, and the fourth major hospital had two wards and no operating theatres working. Those hospitals still open were not able to obtain basic drugs and medicines. The situation changed drastically after the Unity Government and the introduction of the multi-currency system in February 2009 although the political and economic crisis also contributed to the emigration of the doctors and people with medical knowledge.


title: Zimbabwe

text: In August 2008 large areas of Zimbabwe were struck by the ongoing cholera epidemic. By December 2008 more than 10,000 people had been infected in all but one of Zimbabwe's provinces, and the outbreak had spread to Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia. On 4 December 2008 the Zimbabwe government declared the outbreak to be a national emergency and asked for international aid. By 9 March 2009 The World Health Organization estimated that 4,011 people had succumbed to the waterborne disease since the outbreak began, and the total number of cases recorded had reached 89,018. In Harare, the city council offered free graves to cholera victims.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Large investments in education since independence has resulted in the highest adult literacy rate in Africa which in 2013 was 90.70%. This is lower than the 92% recorded in 2010 by the United Nations Development Programme and the 97.0% recorded in the 2002 census, while still substantially higher than 80.4% recorded in the 1992 census.


title: Zimbabwe

text: The wealthier portion of the population usually send their children to independent schools as opposed to the government-run schools which are attended by the majority as these are subsidised by the government. School education was made free in 1980, but since 1988, the government has steadily increased the charges attached to school enrolment until they now greatly exceed the real value of fees in 1980. The Ministry of Education of Zimbabwe maintains and operates the government schools, but the fees charged by independent schools are regulated by the cabinet of Zimbabwe. The education department has stated that 20,000 teachers have left Zimbabwe since 2007 and that half of Zimbabwe's children have not progressed beyond primary school. Education came under threat since the economic changes in 2000, with teachers going on strike because of low pay, students unable to concentrate because of hunger, and the price of uniforms soaring making this standard a luxury. Teachers were also one of the main targets of Mugabe's attacks because he thought they were not strong supporters.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwe's education system consists of two years of pre-school, seven years of primary and six years of secondary schooling before students can enter university in the country or abroad. The academic year in Zimbabwe runs from January to December, with three terms, separated by one-month breaks, with a total of 40 weeks of school per year. National examinations are written during the third term in November, with "O" level and "A" level subjects also offered in June.


title: Zimbabwe

text: There are seven public (government) universities as well as four church-related universities in Zimbabwe that are internationally accredited. The University of Zimbabwe, the first and largest, was built in 1952 and is located in the Harare suburb of Mount Pleasant. Notable alumni from Zimbabwean universities include Welshman Ncube, Peter Moyo, Tendai Biti, Chenjerai Hove and Arthur Mutambara. Many of the politicians in the government of Zimbabwe have obtained degrees from universities in the United States or other universities abroad.


title: Zimbabwe

text: National University of Science and Technology is the second largest public research university in Zimbabwe located in Bulawayo. It was established in 1991. The National University of Science and Technology strives to become a flourishing and reputable institution not only in Zimbabwe and in Southern Africa but also among the international fraternity of universities. Africa University is a United Methodist university in Manicaland which attracts students from at least 36 African countries.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Women in Zimbabwe are disadvantaged in many facets including economic, political, and social spheres, and experience sex and gender based violence. A 2014 UN report found that deep rooted cultural issues, patriarchal attitudes, and religious practices negatively impacted women's rights and freedoms in the country. These negative views toward women as well as societal norms impact the incentive for women to participate in the economy and hinder their economic production. Zimbabwe's constitution has provisions in it that provide incentive to achieve greater gender equality, but the data shows that enforcement has been lax and adoption slow. In December 2016 the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies conducted a case study to determine how to best implement effective policy to address issues such as gender violence and implementation of equality laws. It was found that sex and gender based violence against women and girls was increasing in areas that had experienced disasters (floods, drought, disease) but could not quantify the extent of the increase. Some of the obstacles in combating these issues are that there are economic barriers to declaring sex and gender based violence to be unacceptable as well as social barriers. Additionally, governmental services which were installed to help educate the populace about these issues as well as provide services to victims are underfunded and unable to carry out their duties. The UN also provided economic incentive to adopt policies which would discourage these practices which negatively impacted women in Zimbabwe.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Women are often seen as inferior, treated as objects, and viewed in subordinate roles in history and philosophy. Ubuntu, an African philosophy's spiritual aspect, instills the belief that boys should be more valued than girls as boys pass on lineage, and the belief system places high value in respecting one's ancestors. A common expression used in court, ""vakadzi ngavanyarare"", translates to ""women should keep quiet,"" and as a result women are not consulted in decision-making; they must implement the men's wishes. The subordination of women in Zimbabwe, and the cultural forces which dictate what they must be, have led to deaths and the sacrifice of professional advancement in order for them to fulfill their roles as wives, mothers, and subordinates. Women are taught that they must never refuse their husband's sexual advances, even if they know they are infected with HIV from being unfaithful. As a result of this practice, Zimbabwean women aged 15–49 have an HIV prevalence rate of 16.1% and make up 62% of the total population infected with HIV in that age group.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwean women face cultural and social adversity in their professional lives which affects their educational attainment, professional development, and advancement. In 2009 the South African Journal of Education found that although the majority of primary school teachers in their random sample size were qualified for advancement to administrative positions, none of them had applied for administrative openings. The women did not see themselves as equals with their male counterparts and believed their role as a wife and mother superseded all other parts of their lives. The women surveyed in this trial were also found to have low self-esteem, a possible correlation to their societal roles and gender stereotypes. In 2016 the FAO found that only 60% of women participated in the economy in some form compared to 74.3% for their male counterparts. Women also made up the majority of low education jobs, such as 70% of the agriculture work force, yet only made up 16.7% and 21% of local authority and managers in the private sector respectively. In the public sector, women comprised 14% of the Zimbabwean House of Assembly and 33% of the Senate, despite the population ratio being 0.95 males per 1 female. To address gender inequality in the economy, the UN supports policies which help increase the number of women in leadership roles, such as heads of schools, with increased funding in line with #3 of the outlined Millennium Development Goals. Through these policies Zimbabwe has made gains in closing the gender gap in school enrolment: 50.5% of males are enrolled in secondary schools compared to 49.5% in females.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwe experiences high rates of domestic and sexual violence; the Zimbabwe National Statistics Office shows that rates are increasing. 21 rapes are reported per day in Zimbabwe - a rate of 0.12 rapes per day per 100,000 people. As not all rapes are reported, the actual number is likely higher. Reported rape increased 42% between 2010 and 2016. Of all the violence against girls and women reported in Zimbabwe, 78% was inflicted by their spouse, father, or domestic partner. UNICEF reports show that one in three girls that grow up in Zimbabwe experience sexual assault before turning 18; this is further exacerbated by cultural norms such as child marriage. Young girls often run away with older men when their educational opportunities are limited or to escape a violent household. These incidents of domestic violence or young girls running away with older men are usually not investigated by police as men are viewed as superior to women in Zimbabwean culture and their role as the dominant person in the relationship is to discipline their spouse, often violently. There is an ingrained cultural norm that violence can be a show of power and love which makes ending domestic abuse in Zimbabwe difficult. The Zimbabwe Women's Lawyers Association is an organisation that is assisting the implementation of the legal framework, as defined in the 2013 constitution, to help women. The association provides programmes which help educate women on their rights and provides them with opportunities as a way of combating domestic and sexual violence.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwe has many different cultures, with Shona beliefs and ceremonies being prominent. The Shona people have many types of sculptures and carvings.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwe first celebrated its independence on 18 April 1980. Celebrations are held at either the National Sports Stadium or Rufaro Stadium in Harare. The first independence celebrations were held in 1980 at the Zimbabwe Grounds. At these celebrations, doves are released to symbolise peace, fighter jets fly over, and the national anthem is sung. The flame of independence is lit by the president after parades by the presidential family and members of the armed forces of Zimbabwe. The president also gives a speech to the people of Zimbabwe which is televised for those unable to attend the stadium. Zimbabwe also has a national beauty pageant, the Miss Heritage Zimbabwe contest, which has been held annually since 2012.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Traditional arts in Zimbabwe include pottery, basketry, textiles, jewellery and carving. Among the distinctive qualities are symmetrically patterned woven baskets and stools carved out of a single piece of wood. Shona sculpture, which has a long cultural history, began evolving into its modern form in the mid 20th century and gained increasing international popularity. Most subjects of carved figures of stylised birds and human figures among others are made with sedimentary rock such as soapstone, as well as harder igneous rocks such as serpentine and the rare stone verdite. Zimbabwean artefacts can be found in countries like Singapore, China and Canada. e.g. Dominic Benhura's statue in the Singapore Botanic Gardens.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Shona sculpture has survived through the ages, and the modern style is a fusion of African folklore with European influences. World-renowned Zimbabwean sculptors include Nicholas, Nesbert and Anderson Mukomberanwa, Tapfuma Gutsa, Henry Munyaradzi and Locardia Ndandarika. Internationally, Zimbabwean sculptors have managed to influence a new generation of artists, particularly black Americans, through lengthy apprenticeships with master sculptors in Zimbabwe.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Several authors are well known within Zimbabwe and abroad. Charles Mungoshi is renowned in Zimbabwe for writing traditional stories in English and in Shona, and his poems and books have sold well with both the black and white communities. Catherine Buckle has achieved international recognition with her two books "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears" which tell of the ordeal she went through under the 2000 Land Reform. The first Prime Minister of Rhodesia, Ian Smith, wrote two books – "" and "." The book "The House of Hunger" by Dambudzo Marechera won an award in the UK in 1979 and the Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing's first novel "The Grass Is Singing", the first four volumes of "Children of Violence" sequence, as well as the collection of short stories "African Stories" are set in Rhodesia. In 2013 NoViolet Bulawayo's novel "We Need New Names" was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The novel tells the story of the devastation and emigration caused by the brutal suppression of Zimbabwean civilians during the Gukurahundi in the early 1980s.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Notable artists include Henry Mudzengerere and Nicolas Mukomberanwa. A recurring theme in Zimbabwean art is the metamorphosis of man into beast. Zimbabwean musicians like Thomas Mapfumo, Oliver Mtukudzi, the Bhundu Boys; Stella Chiweshe, Alick Macheso and Audius Mtawarira have achieved international recognition. Among members of the white minority community, Theatre has a large following, with numerous theatrical companies performing in Zimbabwe's urban areas.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Like in many African countries, the majority of Zimbabweans depend on a few staple foods. "Mealie meal", also known as cornmeal, is used to prepare "sadza" or "isitshwala", as well as porridge known as "bota" or "ilambazi". "Sadza" is made by mixing the cornmeal with water to produce a thick paste/porridge. After the paste has been cooking for several minutes, more cornmeal is added to thicken the paste. This is usually eaten as lunch or dinner, usually with sides such as gravy, vegetables (spinach, chomolia, or spring greens/collard greens), beans, and meat (stewed, grilled, roasted, or sundried). "Sadza" is also commonly eaten with curdled milk (sour milk), commonly known as "lacto" ("mukaka wakakora"), or dried Tanganyika sardine, known locally as "kapenta" or "matemba". "Bota" is a thinner porridge, cooked without the additional cornmeal and usually flavoured with peanut butter, milk, butter, or jam. "Bota" is usually eaten for breakfast.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Graduations, weddings, and any other family gatherings will usually be celebrated with the killing of a goat or cow, which will be barbecued or roasted by the family.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Even though the Afrikaners are a small group (10%) within the white minority group, Afrikaner recipes are popular. "Biltong", a type of jerky, is a popular snack, prepared by hanging bits of spiced raw meat to dry in the shade. "Boerewors" is served with "sadza". It is a long sausage, often well-spiced, composed of beef rather than pork, and barbecued.


title: Zimbabwe

text: As Zimbabwe was a British colony, some people there have adopted some colonial-era English eating habits. For example, most people will have porridge in the morning, as well as 10 o'clock tea (midday tea). They will have lunch, often leftovers from the night before, freshly cooked "sadza", or sandwiches (which is more common in the cities). After lunch, there is usually 4 o'clock tea (afternoon tea), which is served before dinner. It is not uncommon for tea to be had after dinner.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Rice, pasta, and potato-based foods (French fries and mashed potato) also make up part of Zimbabwean cuisine. A local favourite is rice cooked with peanut butter, which is taken with thick gravy, mixed vegetables and meat. A potpourri of peanuts known as "nzungu", boiled and sundried maize, black-eyed peas known as "nyemba", and Bambara groundnuts known as "nyimo" makes a traditional dish called "mutakura". "Mutakura" can also be the above ingredients cooked individually.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Football "(also known as soccer)" is the most popular sport in Zimbabwe. The Warriors have qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations five times (2004, 2006, 2017, 2019, 2021), and won the Southern Africa championship on six occasions (2000, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2017, 2018) and the Eastern Africa cup once (1985). The team is ranked 68th in 2022. Rugby union is a significant sport in Zimbabwe. The national side have represented the country at 2 Rugby World Cup tournaments in 1987 and 1991. Cricket also has a following among the white minority. It is one of twelve Test cricket playing nations and an ICC full member as well. Notable cricket players from Zimbabwe include Andy Flower, Heath Streak and Brendan Taylor.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwe has won eight Olympic medals, one in field hockey with the women's team at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, and seven by swimmer Kirsty Coventry, three at the 2004 Summer Olympics and four at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Zimbabwe has done well in the Commonwealth Games and All-Africa Games in swimming with Coventry obtaining 11 gold medals in the different competitions. Zimbabwe has competed at Wimbledon and the Davis Cup in tennis, most notably with the Black family, which comprises Wayne Black, Byron Black and Cara Black. The Zimbabwean Nick Price held the official World Number 1 golf status longer than any player from Africa has done.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Other sports played in Zimbabwe are basketball, volleyball, netball, and water polo, as well as squash, motorsport, martial arts, chess, cycling, polocrosse, kayaking and horse racing. However, most of these sports do not have international representatives but instead stay at a junior or national level.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwean professional rugby league players playing overseas are Masimbaashe Motongo and Judah Mazive. Former players include now SANZAAR CEO Andy Marinos who made an appearance for South Africa at the Super League World Nines and featured for the Sydney Bulldogs as well as Zimbabwe-born former Scotland rugby union international Scott Gray, who spent time at the Brisbane Broncos.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Zimbabwe has had success in karate as Zimbabwe's Samson Muripo became Kyokushin world champion in Osaka, Japan in 2009. Muripo is a two-time World Kyokushi Karate Champion and was the first black African to become the World Kyokushin Karate Champion.


title: Zimbabwe

text: The media of Zimbabwe is now once again diverse, having come under tight restriction between 2002 and 2008 by the government during the economic and political crisis. The Zimbabwean constitution promises freedom of the media and expression. Since the appointment of a new media and information minister in 2013 the media is facing less political interference and the supreme court has ruled some sections of the strict media laws as unconstitutional. In July 2009 the BBC and CNN were able to resume operations and report legally and openly from Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity stated that, "the Zimbabwe government never banned the BBC from carrying out lawful activities inside Zimbabwe". The BBC welcomed the move saying, "we're pleased at being able to operate openly in Zimbabwe once again".


title: Zimbabwe

text: In 2010 the Zimbabwe Media Commission was established by the inclusive, power-sharing government. In May 2010 the commission licensed three privately owned newspapers, including the previously banned "Daily News", for publication. Reporters Without Borders described the decisions as a "major advance". In June 2010 "NewsDay" became the first independent daily newspaper to be published in Zimbabwe in seven years. ZBC's monopoly in the broadcasting sector was ended with the licensing of two private radio stations in 2012.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Since the 2002 Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act was passed, a number of privately owned news outlets were shut down by the government, including "Daily News" whose managing director Wilf Mbanga went on to form the influential "The Zimbabwean". As a result, many press organisations have been set up in both neighbouring and Western countries by exiled Zimbabweans. Because the internet is unrestricted, many Zimbabweans are allowed to access online news sites set up by exiled journalists. Reporters Without Borders claims the media environment in Zimbabwe involves "surveillance, threats, imprisonment, censorship, blackmail, abuse of power and denial of justice are all brought to bear to keep firm control over the news." The main published newspapers are "The Herald" and "The Chronicle" which are printed in Harare and Bulawayo respectively. The heavy-handedness on the media has progressively relaxed since 2009.


title: Zimbabwe

text: In its 2021 report, Reporters Without Borders ranked the Zimbabwean media as 130th out of 180, noting that "access to information has improved and self-censorship has declined, but journalists are still often attacked or arrested". The government also bans many foreign broadcasting stations from Zimbabwe, including the CBC, Sky News, Channel 4, American Broadcasting Company, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Fox News. News agencies and newspapers from other Western countries and South Africa have also been banned from the country.


title: Zimbabwe

text: The stone-carved Zimbabwe Bird appears on the national flags and the coats of arms of both Zimbabwe and Rhodesia, as well as on banknotes and coins (first on Rhodesian pound and then Rhodesian dollar). It probably represents the bateleur eagle or the African fish eagle. The famous soapstone bird carvings stood on walls and monoliths of the ancient city of Great Zimbabwe.


title: Zimbabwe

text: Balancing rocks are geological formations all over Zimbabwe. The rocks are perfectly balanced without other supports. They are created when ancient granite intrusions are exposed to weathering, as softer rocks surrounding them erode away. They are often remarked on and have been depicted on both the banknotes of Zimbabwe and the Rhodesian dollar banknotes. The ones found on the current notes of Zimbabwe, named the Banknote Rocks, are located in Epworth, approximately south east of Harare. There are many different formations of the rocks, incorporating single and paired columns of three or more rocks. These formations are a feature of south and east tropical Africa from northern South Africa northwards to Sudan. The most notable formations in Zimbabwe are located in the Matobo National Park in Matabeleland.


title: Zimbabwe

text: The national anthem of Zimbabwe is "Blessed be the Land of Zimbabwe" (; ). It was introduced in March 1994 after a nationwide competition to replace "" as a distinctly Zimbabwean song. The winning entry was a song written by Professor Solomon Mutswairo and composed by Fred Changundega. It has been translated into all three of the main languages of Zimbabwe.


title: Richard Harris

text: Richard St John Francis Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor and singer. He appeared on stage and in many films, notably as Corrado Zeller in Michelangelo Antonioni's "Red Desert", Frank Machin in "This Sporting Life", for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and as King Arthur in the 1967 film "Camelot", as well as the 1981 revival of the stage musical.


title: Richard Harris

text: He played an English aristocrat captured by the Sioux in "A Man Called Horse" (1970), Oliver Cromwell in "Cromwell" (1970), an embattled Irish farmer in Jim Sheridan's "The Field" (which earned him a second Academy Award nomination for Best Actor), English Bob in Clint Eastwood's revisionist Western "Unforgiven" (1992), Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in "Gladiator" (2000), "The Count of Monte Cristo" (2002) as Abbé Faria, and Albus Dumbledore in the first two "Harry Potter" films: "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (2001) and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (2002), the latter of which was his final film role. Harris had a number-one singing hit in Australia, Jamaica and Canada, and a top-ten hit in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States with his 1968 recording of Jimmy Webb's song "MacArthur Park". In 2020, he was listed at number 3 on "The Irish Times"s list of Ireland's greatest film actors.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris was born on 1 October 1930, at Overdale, 8 Landsdown Villas, Ennis Road, Limerick, son of flour merchant Ivan Harris and Mildred (née Harty). Overdale was "a tall, elegant, early 19th-century redbrick" house with nine bedrooms, in a wealthy part of Limerick, the houses "built at the turn of the 20th century for Limerick's burgeoning middle class... people who could afford properly grand drawing rooms, a bedroom each for the children and one for the pot, plus space for a few servants". He was educated by the Jesuits at Crescent College. A talented rugby player, he appeared on several Munster Junior and Senior Cup teams for Crescent, and played for Garryowen. Harris's athletic career was cut short when he caught tuberculosis in his teens. He remained an ardent fan of the Munster Rugby and Young Munster teams until his death, attending many of their matches, and there are numerous stories of japes at rugby matches with actors and fellow rugby fans Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton.


title: Richard Harris

text: After recovering from tuberculosis, Harris moved to Great Britain, wanting to become a director. He could not find any suitable training courses, and enrolled in the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art to learn acting. He had failed an audition at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and had been rejected by the Central School of Speech and Drama, because they felt he was too old at 24. While still a student, he rented the tiny "off-West End" Irving Theatre, and there directed his own production of Clifford Odets's play "Winter Journey (The Country Girl)".


title: Richard Harris

text: After completing his studies at the academy, he joined Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop. He began getting roles in West End theatre productions, starting with "The Quare Fellow" in 1956, a transfer from the Theatre Workshop. He spent nearly a decade in obscurity, learning his profession on stages throughout the UK.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris made his film debut in 1959 in the film "Alive and Kicking", and played the lead role in "The Ginger Man" in the West End in 1959. In his second film he had a small role as an IRA Volunteer in "Shake Hands with the Devil" (1959), supporting James Cagney. The film was shot in Ireland and directed by Michael Anderson who offered Harris a role in his next movie, "The Wreck of the Mary Deare" (1959), shot in Hollywood.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris played another IRA Volunteer in "A Terrible Beauty" (1960), alongside Robert Mitchum. He had a memorable bit part in the film "The Guns of Navarone" (1961) as a Royal Australian Air Force pilot who reports that blowing up the "bloody guns" of the island of Navarone is impossible by an air raid. He had a larger part in "The Long and the Short and the Tall" (1961), playing a British soldier; Harris clashed with Laurence Harvey and Richard Todd during filming.


title: Richard Harris

text: For his role in the film "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962), despite being virtually unknown to film audiences, Harris reportedly insisted on third billing, behind Trevor Howard and Marlon Brando, an actor he greatly admired. However, Harris fell out with Brando over the latter's behaviour during the film's production.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris's first starring role was in the film "This Sporting Life" (1963), as a bitter young coal miner, Frank Machin, who becomes an acclaimed rugby league football player. It was based on the novel by David Storey and directed by Lindsay Anderson. For his role, Harris won Best Actor in 1963 at the Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris followed this with a leading role in the Italian film, Michelangelo Antonioni's "Il Deserto Rosso" ("Red Desert", 1964). This won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris received an offer to support Kirk Douglas in a British war film, "The Heroes of Telemark" (1965), directed by Anthony Mann, playing a Norwegian resistance leader. He then went to Hollywood to support Charlton Heston in Sam Peckinpah's "Major Dundee" (1965), as an Irish immigrant who became a Confederate cavalryman during the American Civil War.


title: Richard Harris

text: He played Cain in John Huston's film "" (1966). More successful at the box office was "Hawaii" (1966), in which Harris starred alongside Julie Andrews and Max von Sydow. As a change of pace, he was the romantic lead in a Doris Day spy spoof comedy, "Caprice" (1967), directed by Frank Tashlin.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris next performed the role of King Arthur in the film adaptation of the musical play "Camelot" (1967). Critic Roger Ebert described the casting of Harris and Vanessa Redgrave as "about the best King Arthur and Queen Guenevere I can imagine". Harris revived the role in a Broadway revival at the Winter Garden Theatre from 15 November 1981, to 2 January 1982, and broadcast on HBO a year later. Starring Meg Bussert as Guenevere, Richard Muenz as Lancelot and Thor Fields as Tom of Warwick. Harris, who had starred in the film, and Muenz also took the show on tour nationwide.


title: Richard Harris

text: In "The Molly Maguires" (1970), he played James McParland, the detective who infiltrates the title organisation, headed by Sean Connery. It was a box office flop. However "A Man Called Horse" (1970), with Harris in the title role, an 1825 English aristocrat who is captured by Native Americans, was a major success.


title: Richard Harris

text: He played the title role in the film "Cromwell" in 1970 opposite Alec Guinness as King Charles I of England. That year British exhibitors voted him the 9th-most popular star at the UK box office.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris recorded several albums of music, one of which, "A Tramp Shining", included the seven-minute hit song "MacArthur Park" (Harris insisted on singing the lyric as "MacArthur's Park"). This song was written by Jimmy Webb, and it reached number 2 on the American "Billboard" Hot 100 chart. It also topped several music sales charts in Europe during the summer of 1968. "MacArthur Park" sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. A second album, also consisting entirely of music composed by Webb, "The Yard Went on Forever", was released in 1969. In the 1973 TV special "Burt Bacharach in Shangri-La", after singing Webb's "Didn't We", Harris tells Bacharach that since he was not a trained singer he approached songs as an actor concerned with words and emotions, acting the song with the sort of honesty the song is trying to convey. Then he proceeds to sing "If I Could Go Back", from the "Lost Horizon" soundtrack.


title: Richard Harris

text: In 1971 Harris starred in a BBC TV film adaptation "The Snow Goose", from a screenplay by Paul Gallico. It won a Golden Globe for Best Movie made for TV and was nominated for both a BAFTA and an Emmy. and was shown in the U.S. as part of the "Hallmark Hall of Fame".


title: Richard Harris

text: He made his directorial debut with "Bloomfield" (1971) and starred in "Man in the Wilderness" (1971), a revisionist Western based on the Hugh Glass story.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris starred in a Western for Samuel Fuller, "Riata", which stopped production several weeks into filming. The project was re-assembled with a new director and cast, except for Harris, who returned: "The Deadly Trackers" (1973).


title: Richard Harris

text: In 1973, Harris published a book of poetry, "I, In the Membership of My Days", which was later reissued in part in an audio LP format, augmented by self-penned songs such as "I Don't Know".


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris starred in two thrillers: "99 and 44/100% Dead" (1974), for John Frankenheimer, and "Juggernaut" (1974), for Richard Lester. In "Echoes of a Summer" (1976) he played the father of a young girl with a terminal illness. He had a cameo as Richard the Lionheart in "Robin and Marian" (1976), for Lester, then was in "The Return of a Man Called Horse" (1976).


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris led the all-star cast in the train disaster film "The Cassandra Crossing" (1976). He played Gulliver in the part-animated "Gulliver's Travels" (1977) and was reunited with Michael Anderson in "Orca" (1977), battling a killer whale.


title: Richard Harris

text: He appeared in another action film, "Golden Rendezvous" (1977), based on a novel by Alistair Maclean, shot in South Africa. Harris was sued by the film's producer for his drinking; Harris counter-sued for defamation and the matter was settled out of court.


title: Richard Harris

text: "Golden Rendezvous" was a flop but "The Wild Geese" (1978), where Harris played one of several mercenaries, was a big success outside America. "Ravagers" (1979) was more action, set in a post-apocalyptic world. "Game for Vultures" (1979) was set in Rhodesia and shot in South Africa.


title: Richard Harris

text: In Hollywood he appeared in a comedy, "The Last Word" (1979), then supported Bo Derek in "Tarzan, the Ape Man" (1981).


title: Richard Harris

text: He made a film in Canada, "Your Ticket Is No Longer Valid" (1981), a drama about impotence. He followed it with another Canadian film, "Highpoint", a movie so bad it was not released for several years.


title: Richard Harris

text: For a while in the 1980s, Harris went into semi-retirement on Paradise Island, in the Bahamas, where he kicked his drinking habit and embraced a healthier lifestyle. It had a beneficial effect. Harris's career was revived by his success on stage in "Camelot", and powerful performance in the West End run of Pirandello's "Henry IV".


title: Richard Harris

text: He was the subject of "This Is Your Life" in 1990, when he was surprised by Michael Aspel during the curtain call of the Pirandello's play "Henry IV" at the Wyndham's Theatre in London.


title: Richard Harris

text: His film work during this period included: "Triumphs of a Man Called Horse" (1983), "Martin's Day" (1985), "Strike Commando 2" (1988), "King of the Wind" (1990) and "Mack the Knife" (1990) (a film version of "The Threepenny Opera" in which he played J.J. Peachum ) plus the TV film version of Maigret, opposite Barbara Shelley. This indicated declining popularity which Harris told his biographer, Michael Feeney Callan, he was "utterly reconciled to".


title: Richard Harris

text: In June 1989, director Jim Sheridan cast Harris in the lead role in "The Field", written by the esteemed Irish playwright John B. Keane. The lead role of "Bull" McCabe was to be played by former Abbey Theatre actor Ray McAnally. When McAnally died suddenly on 15 June 1989, Harris was offered the McCabe role. "The Field" was released in 1990 and earned Harris his second Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He lost to Jeremy Irons for "Reversal of Fortune".


title: Richard Harris

text: In 1992, Harris had a supporting role in the film "Patriot Games". He had good roles in "Unforgiven" (1992), "Wrestling Ernest Hemingway" (1993) and "Silent Tongue" (1994). He played the title role in "Abraham" (1994) and had the lead in "Cry, the Beloved Country" (1995).


title: Richard Harris

text: A lifelong supporter of Jesuit education principles, Harris established a friendship with University of Scranton President Rev. J. A. Panuska and raised funds for a scholarship for Irish students established in honour of his brother and manager, Dermot, who had died the previous year of a heart attack. He chaired acting workshops and cast the university's production of "Julius Caesar" in November 1987.


title: Richard Harris

text: Over several years in the late 1980s, Harris worked with Irish author Michael Feeney Callan on his biography, which was published by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1990.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris appeared in two films which won the Academy Award for Best Picture: firstly as the gunfighter "English Bob" in the revisionist Western "Unforgiven" (1992); secondly as the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Ridley Scott's "Gladiator" (2000). He also played a lead role alongside James Earl Jones in the Darrell Roodt film adaptation of "Cry, the Beloved Country" (1995). In 1999, Harris starred in the film "To Walk with Lions". After "Gladiator", Harris played the supporting role of Albus Dumbledore in the first two of the "Harry Potter" films, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone" (2001) and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (2002), the latter of which was his final film role. Harris portrayed Abbé Faria in Kevin Reynolds' film adaptation of "The Count of Monte Cristo" (2002). The film "" (2003) was dedicated to him posthumously as he had voiced the character Opaz before his death.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris hesitated to take the role of Dumbledore in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (2001) at first due to his declining health, but ultimately accepted because his 11-year-old granddaughter threatened never to speak to him again if he did not take it. In an interview with the "Toronto Star" in 2001, Harris expressed his concern that his association with the "Harry Potter" films would outshine the rest of his career. He explained, "Because, you see, I don't just want to be remembered for being in those bloody films, and I'm afraid that's what's going to happen to me."


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris also made part of the Bible TV movie project filmed as a cinema production for the TV, a project produced by Lux Vide Italy with the collaboration of Radio Televisione Italiana RAI and Channel 5 of France, and premiered in the United States in the channel TNT in the 1990s. He portrayed the main and title character in the production "Abraham" (1993) as well as Saint John of Patmos in the 2000 TV film production "Apocalypse".


title: Richard Harris

text: In 1957, Harris married Elizabeth Rees-Williams, daughter of David Rees-Williams, 1st Baron Ogmore. They had three children: actor Jared Harris, actor Jamie Harris, and director Damian Harris. Harris and Rees-Williams divorced in 1969, after which Elizabeth married Rex Harrison. Harris's second marriage was to the American actress Ann Turkel. In 1982, they divorced.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris was a member of the Roman Catholic Knights of Malta, and was also dubbed a knight by the Queen of Denmark in 1985.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris paid £75,000 for William Burges' Tower House in Holland Park in 1968, after discovering that the American entertainer Liberace had arranged to buy the house but had not yet put down a deposit. Harris employed the original decorators, Campbell Smith & Company Ltd., to carry out extensive restoration work on the interior.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris was a vocal supporter of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) from 1973 until 1984. In January 1984 remarks he made on the previous month's Harrods bombing caused great controversy, after which he discontinued his support for the PIRA.


title: Richard Harris

text: At the height of his stardom in the 1960s and early 1970s Harris was almost as well known for his hellraiser lifestyle and heavy drinking as he was for his acting career. He was a longtime alcoholic until he became a teetotaller in 1981. Nevertheless, he did resume drinking Guinness a decade later. He gave up drugs after almost dying from a cocaine overdose in 1978.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in August 2002, reportedly after being hospitalised with pneumonia. He died at University College Hospital in Bloomsbury, London, on 25 October 2002, aged 72. Harris had quipped that "It was the food!" as he was wheeled out of the Savoy Hotel for the last time. He was survived by his three sons, Damian, Jared and Jamie, having spent his final three days in a coma. Harris's body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the Bahamas, where he owned a home.


title: Richard Harris

text: Harris was a lifelong friend of actor Peter O'Toole, and his family reportedly hoped that O'Toole would replace Harris as Dumbledore in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (2004). There were, however, concerns about insuring O'Toole for the six remaining films in the series. Harris was ultimately succeeded as Dumbledore by Michael Gambon. Chris Columbus, director of "Philosopher's Stone" and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (2002), had visited Harris during his last days and had promised him to not recast him as Dumbledore, confident of his eventual recovery. In a 2021 interview with "The Hollywood Reporter", Columbus revealed that Harris was writing an autobiography during his stay at the hospital, but the autobiography has never been published.


title: Richard Harris

text: On 30 September 2006, Manuel Di Lucia, of Kilkee, County Clare, a longtime friend, organised the placement in Kilkee of a bronze life-size statue of Richard Harris. It shows Harris at the age of eighteen playing the sport of squash. The sculptor was Seamus Connolly and the work was unveiled by Russell Crowe. Harris was an accomplished squash racquets player, winning the Tivoli Cup in Kilkee four years in a row from 1948 to 1951, a record unsurpassed to this day.


title: Richard Harris

text: Another life-size statue of Richard Harris, as King Arthur from his film "Camelot", has been erected in Bedford Row, in the centre of his home town of Limerick. The sculptor of this statue was the Irish sculptor Jim Connolly, a graduate of the Limerick School of Art and Design.


title: Richard Harris

text: At the 2009 BAFTAs, Mickey Rourke dedicated his Best Actor award to Harris, calling him a "good friend and great actor".


title: Richard Harris

text: The Richard Harris Film Festival is one of Ireland's fastest-growing film festivals, growing from just ten films in 2013 to over 115 films in 2017. Each year, one of Harris's sons attends the festival in Limerick.


title: Richard Harris

text: In 2015 the Limerick Writers' Centre unveiled a commemorative plaque outside Charlie St George's pub on Parnell Street. The pub was a favourite drinking place of Harris on his visits to Limerick. The plaque, celebrating Harris's literary output is part of a Literary Walking Tour of Limerick, was unveiled by his son Jared Harris.


title: Richard Harris

text: In 1996 Harris was honoured with a commemorative Irish postage stamp for the "Centenary of Irish Cinema", a four-stamp set featuring twelve Irish actors in four Irish films.


title: Mathematics

text: Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics with the major subdisciplines of number theory, algebra, geometry, and analysis, respectively. There is no general consensus among mathematicians about a common definition for their academic discipline.


title: Mathematics

text: Most mathematical activity involves the discovery of properties of abstract objects and the use of pure reason to prove them. These objects consist of either abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicsentities that are stipulated with certain properties, called axioms. A "proof" consists of a succession of applications of deductive rules to already established results. These results include previously proved theorems, axioms, andin case of abstraction from naturesome basic properties that are considered as true starting points of the theory under consideration.


title: Mathematics

text: Mathematics is essential in the natural sciences, engineering, medicine, finance, computer science and the social sciences. The fundamental truths of mathematics are independent from any scientific experimentation, although mathematics is extensively used for modeling phenomena. Some areas of mathematics, such as statistics and game theory, are developed in close correlation with their applications and are often grouped under applied mathematics. Other mathematical areas are developed independently from any application (and are therefore called pure mathematics), but practical applications are often discovered later. A fitting example is the problem of integer factorization, which goes back to Euclid, but which had no practical application before its use in the RSA cryptosystem (for the security of computer networks).


title: Mathematics

text: Historically, the concept of a proof and its associated mathematical rigour first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclid's "Elements". Since its beginning, mathematics was essentially divided into geometry and arithmetic (the manipulation of natural numbers and fractions), until the 16th and 17th centuries, when algebra and infinitesimal calculus were introduced as new areas of the subject. Since then, the interaction between mathematical innovations and scientific discoveries has led to a rapid lockstep increase in the development of both. At the end of the 19th century, the foundational crisis of mathematics led to the systematization of the axiomatic method. This gave rise to a dramatic increase in the number of mathematics areas and their fields of applications. This can be seen, for example, in the contemporary Mathematics Subject Classification, which lists more than 60 first-level areas of mathematics.


title: Mathematics

text: The word "mathematics" comes from Ancient Greek "máthēma" (""), meaning "that which is learnt," "what one gets to know," hence also "study" and "science". The word for "mathematics" came to have the narrower and more technical meaning "mathematical study" even in Classical times. Its adjective is "mathēmatikós" (), meaning "related to learning" or "studious," which likewise further came to mean "mathematical." In particular, "mathēmatikḗ tékhnē" (; ) meant "the mathematical art."


title: Mathematics

text: Similarly, one of the two main schools of thought in Pythagoreanism was known as the "mathēmatikoi" (μαθηματικοί)which at the time meant "learners" rather than "mathematicians" in the modern sense. The Pythagoreans were likely the first to constrain the use of the word to just the study of arithmetic and geometry. By the time of Aristotle (384–322 BC) this meaning was fully established.


title: Mathematics

text: In Latin, and in English until around 1700, the term "mathematics" more commonly meant "astrology" (or sometimes "astronomy") rather than "mathematics"; the meaning gradually changed to its present one from about 1500 to 1800. This has resulted in several mistranslations. For example, Saint Augustine's warning that Christians should beware of "mathematici", meaning astrologers, is sometimes mistranslated as a condemnation of mathematicians.


title: Mathematics

text: The apparent plural form in English goes back to the Latin neuter plural (Cicero), based on the Greek plural "ta mathēmatiká" () and means roughly "all things mathematical", although it is plausible that English borrowed only the adjective "mathematic(al)" and formed the noun "mathematics" anew, after the pattern of "physics" and "metaphysics", which were inherited from Greek. In English, the noun "mathematics" takes a singular verb. It is often shortened to "maths" or, in North America, "math".


title: Mathematics

text: Before the Renaissance, mathematics was divided into two main areas: arithmeticregarding the manipulation of numbers, and geometryregarding the study of shapes. Some types of pseudoscience, such as numerology and astrology, were not then clearly distinguished from mathematics.


title: Mathematics

text: During the Renaissance, two more areas appeared. Mathematical notation led to algebra, which, roughly speaking, consists of the study and the manipulation of formulas. Calculus, consisting of the two subfields "differential calculus" and "integral calculus", is the study of continuous functions, which model the typically nonlinear relationships between varying quantities, as represented by variables. This division into four main areasarithmetic, geometry, algebra, calculusendured until the end of the 19th century. Areas such as celestial mechanics and solid mechanics were then studied by mathematicians, but now are considered as belonging to physics. The subject of combinatorics has been studied for much of recorded history, yet it did not become a separate branch of mathematics until the seventeenth century.


title: Mathematics

text: At the end of the 19th century, the foundational crisis in mathematics and the resulting systematization of the axiomatic method led to an explosion of new areas of mathematics. The 2020 Mathematics Subject Classification contains no less than first-level areas. Some of these areas correspond to the older division, as is true regarding number theory (the modern name for higher arithmetic) and geometry. Several other first-level areas have "geometry" in their names or are otherwise commonly considered part of geometry. Algebra and calculus do not appear as first-level areas but are respectively split into several first-level areas. Other first-level areas emerged during the 20th century or had not previously been considered as mathematics, such as mathematical logic and foundations.


title: Mathematics

text: Number theory began with the manipulation of numbers, that is, natural numbers formula_1 and later expanded to integers formula_2 and rational numbers formula_3 Formerly, number theory was called arithmetic, but nowadays this term is mostly used for numerical calculations. The origin of number theory dates back to ancient Babylon and probably China. Two prominent early number theorists were Euclid and Diophantus. The modern study of number theory in its abstract form is largely attributed to Pierre de Fermat and Leonhard Euler. The field came to full fruition with the contributions of Adrien-Marie Legendre and Carl Friedrich Gauss.


title: Mathematics

text: Many easily-stated number problems have solutions that require sophisticated methods from across mathematics. One prominent example is Fermat's last theorem. This conjecture was stated in 1637 by Pierre de Fermat, but it was proved only in 1994 by Andrew Wiles, who used tools including scheme theory from algebraic geometry, category theory, and homological algebra. Another example is Goldbach's conjecture, which asserts that every even integer greater than 2 is the sum of two prime numbers. Stated in 1742 by Christian Goldbach, it remains unproven to this day despite considerable effort.


title: Mathematics

text: Number theory includes several subareas, including analytic number theory, algebraic number theory, geometry of numbers (method oriented), diophantine equations, and transcendence theory (problem oriented).


title: Mathematics

text: Geometry is one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It started with empirical recipes concerning shapes, such as lines, angles and circles, which were developed mainly for the needs of surveying and architecture, but has since blossomed out into many other subfields.


title: Mathematics

text: A fundamental innovation was the introduction of the concept of proofs by ancient Greeks, with the requirement that every assertion must be "proved". For example, it is not sufficient to verify by measurement that, say, two lengths are equal; their equality must be proven via reasoning from previously accepted results (theorems) and a few basic statements. The basic statements are not subject to proof because they are self-evident (postulates), or they are a part of the definition of the subject of study (axioms). This principle, which is foundational for all mathematics, was first elaborated for geometry, and was systematized by Euclid around 300 BC in his book "Elements".


title: Mathematics

text: The resulting Euclidean geometry is the study of shapes and their arrangements constructed from lines, planes and circles in the Euclidean plane (plane geometry) and the (three-dimensional) Euclidean space.


title: Mathematics

text: Euclidean geometry was developed without change of methods or scope until the 17th century, when René Descartes introduced what is now called Cartesian coordinates. This was a major change of paradigm, since instead of defining real numbers as lengths of line segments (see number line), it allowed the representation of points using their "coordinates" (which are numbers). This allows one to use algebra (and later, calculus) to solve geometrical problems. This split geometry into two new subfields: synthetic geometry, which uses purely geometrical methods, and analytic geometry, which uses coordinates systemically.


title: Mathematics

text: Analytic geometry allows the study of curves that are not related to circles and lines. Such curves can be defined as graph of functions (whose study led to differential geometry). They can also be defined as implicit equations, often polynomial equations (which spawned algebraic geometry). Analytic geometry also makes it possible to consider Euclidean spaces of higher than three dimensions.


title: Mathematics

text: In the 19th century, mathematicians discovered non-Euclidean geometries, which do not follow the parallel postulate. By questioning the truth of that postulate, this discovery has been viewed as joining Russel's paradox in revealing the foundational crisis of mathematics.This aspect of the crisis was solved by systematizing the axiomatic method, and adopting that the truth of the chosen axioms is not a mathematical problem. In turn, the axiomatic method allows for the study of various geometries obtained either by changing the axioms or by considering properties that are invariant under specific transformations of the space.


title: Mathematics

text: Algebra is the art of manipulating equations and formulas. Diophantus (3rd century) and al-Khwarizmi (9th century) were the two main precursors of algebra. The first one solved some equations involving unknown natural numbers by deducing new relations until he obtained the solution. The second one introduced systematic methods for transforming equations (such as moving a term from a side of an equation into the other side). The term "algebra" is derived from the Arabic word "al-jabr" meaning "the reunion of broken parts" that he used for naming one of these methods in the title of his main treatise.


title: Mathematics

text: Algebra became an area in its own right only with François Viète (1540–1603), who introduced the use of variables for representing unknown or unspecified numbers. This allows mathematicians to describe the operations that have to be done on the numbers represented using mathematical formulas.


title: Mathematics

text: Until the 19th century, algebra consisted mainly of the study of linear equations (presently "linear algebra"), and polynomial equations in a single unknown, which were called "algebraic equations" (a term that is still in use, although it may be ambiguous). During the 19th century, mathematicians began to use variables to represent things other than numbers (such as matrices, modular integers, and geometric transformations), on which generalizations of arithmetic operations are often valid. The concept of algebraic structure addresses this, consisting of a set whose elements are unspecified, of operations acting on the elements of the set, and rules that these operations must follow. Due to this change, the scope of algebra grew to include the study of algebraic structures. This object of algebra was called "modern algebra" or abstract algebra, as established by the influence and works of Emmy Noether. (The latter term appears mainly in an educational context, in opposition to elementary algebra, which is concerned with the older way of manipulating formulas.)


title: Mathematics

text: Some types of algebraic structures have useful and often fundamental properties, in many areas of mathematics. Their study became autonomous parts of algebra, and include:


title: Mathematics

text: The study of types of algebraic structures as mathematical objects is the purpose of universal algebra and category theory. The latter applies to every mathematical structure (not only algebraic ones). At its origin, it was introduced, together with homological algebra for allowing the algebraic study of non-algebraic objects such as topological spaces; this particular area of application is called algebraic topology.


title: Mathematics

text: Calculus, formerly called infinitesimal calculus, was introduced independently and simultaneously by 17th-century mathematicians Newton and Leibniz. It is fundamentally the study of the relationship of variables that depend on each other. Calculus was expanded in the 18th century by Euler with the introduction of the concept of a function and many other results. Presently, "calculus" refers mainly to the elementary part of this theory, and "analysis" is commonly used for advanced parts.


title: Mathematics

text: Analysis is further subdivided into real analysis, where variables represent real numbers, and complex analysis, where variables represent complex numbers. Analysis includes many subareas shared by other areas of mathematics which include:


title: Mathematics

text: Discrete mathematics, broadly speaking, is the study of individual, countable mathematical objects. An example is the set of all integers. Because the objects of study here are discrete, the methods of calculus and mathematical analysis do not directly apply. Algorithmsespecially their implementation and computational complexityplay a major role in discrete mathematics.


title: Mathematics

text: The four color theorem and optimal sphere packing were two major problems of discrete mathematics solved in the second half of the 20th century. The P versus NP problem, which remains open to this day, is also important for discrete mathematics, since its solution would potentially impact a large number of computationally difficult problems.


title: Mathematics

text: The two subjects of mathematical logic and set theory have belonged to mathematics since the end of the 19th century. Before this period, sets were not considered to be mathematical objects, and logic, although used for mathematical proofs, belonged to philosophy and was not specifically studied by mathematicians.


title: Mathematics

text: Before Cantor's study of infinite sets, mathematicians were reluctant to consider actually infinite collections, and considered infinity to be the result of endless enumeration. Cantor's work offended many mathematicians not only by considering actually infinite sets but by showing that this implies different sizes of infinity, per Cantor's diagonal argument. This led to the controversy over Cantor's set theory.


title: Mathematics

text: In the same period, various areas of mathematics concluded the former intuitive definitions of the basic mathematical objects were insufficient for ensuring mathematical rigour. Examples of such intuitive definitions are "a set is a collection of objects", "natural number is what is used for counting", "a point is a shape with a zero length in every direction", "a curve is a trace left by a moving point", etc.


title: Mathematics

text: This became the foundational crisis of mathematics. It was eventually solved in mainstream mathematics by systematizing the axiomatic method inside a formalized set theory. Roughly speaking, each mathematical object is defined by the set of all similar objects and the properties that these objects must have. For example, in Peano arithmetic, the natural numbers are defined by "zero is a number", "each number has a unique successor", "each number but zero has a unique predecessor", and some rules of reasoning. This mathematical abstraction from reality is embodied in the modern philosophy of formalism, as founded by David Hilbert around 1910.


title: Mathematics

text: The "nature" of the objects defined this way is a philosophical problem that mathematicians leave to philosophers, even if many mathematicians have opinions on this nature, and use their opinionsometimes called "intuition"to guide their study and proofs. The approach allows considering "logics" (that is, sets of allowed deducing rules), theorems, proofs, etc. as mathematical objects, and to prove theorems about them. For example, Gödel's incompleteness theorems assert, roughly speaking that, in every consistent formal system that contains the natural numbers, there are theorems that are true (that is provable in a stronger system), but not provable inside the system. This approach to the foundations of mathematics was challenged during the first half of the 20th century by mathematicians led by Brouwer, who promoted intuitionistic logic, which explicitly lacks the law of excluded middle.


title: Mathematics

text: These problems and debates led to a wide expansion of mathematical logic, with subareas such as model theory (modeling some logical theories inside other theories), proof theory, type theory, computability theory and computational complexity theory. Although these aspects of mathematical logic were introduced before the rise of computers, their use in compiler design, program certification, proof assistants and other aspects of computer science, contributed in turn to the expansion of these logical theories.


title: Mathematics

text: The field of statistics is a mathematical application that is employed for the collection and processing of data samples, using procedures based on mathematical methods especially probability theory. Statisticians generate data with random sampling or randomized experiments. The design of a statistical sample or experiment determines the analytical methods that will be used. Analysis of data from observational studies is done using statistical models and the theory of inference, using model selection and estimation. The models and consequential predictions should then be tested against new data.


title: Mathematics

text: Statistical theory studies decision problems such as minimizing the risk (expected loss) of a statistical action, such as using a procedure in, for example, parameter estimation, hypothesis testing, and selecting the best. In these traditional areas of mathematical statistics, a statistical-decision problem is formulated by minimizing an objective function, like expected loss or cost, under specific constraints. For example, designing a survey often involves minimizing the cost of estimating a population mean with a given level of confidence. Because of its use of optimization, the mathematical theory of statistics overlaps with other decision sciences, such as operations research, control theory, and mathematical economics.


title: Mathematics

text: Computational mathematics is the study of mathematical problems that are typically too large for human, numerical capacity. Numerical analysis studies methods for problems in analysis using functional analysis and approximation theory; numerical analysis broadly includes the study of approximation and discretization with special focus on rounding errors. Numerical analysis and, more broadly, scientific computing also study non-analytic topics of mathematical science, especially algorithmic-matrix-and-graph theory. Other areas of computational mathematics include computer algebra and symbolic computation.


title: Mathematics

text: The history of mathematics is an ever-growing series of abstractions. Evolutionarily speaking, the first abstraction to ever be discovered, one shared by many animals, was probably that of numbers: the realization that, for example, a collection of two apples and a collection of two oranges (say) have something in common, namely that there are of them. As evidenced by tallies found on bone, in addition to recognizing how to count physical objects, prehistoric peoples may have also known how to count abstract quantities, like timedays, seasons, or years.


title: Mathematics

text: Evidence for more complex mathematics does not appear until around 3000 , when the Babylonians and Egyptians began using arithmetic, algebra, and geometry for taxation and other financial calculations, for building and construction, and for astronomy. The oldest mathematical texts from Mesopotamia and Egypt are from 2000 to 1800 BC. Many early texts mention Pythagorean triples and so, by inference, the Pythagorean theorem seems to be the most ancient and widespread mathematical concept after basic arithmetic and geometry. It is in Babylonian mathematics that elementary arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) first appear in the archaeological record. The Babylonians also possessed a place-value system and used a sexagesimal numeral system which is still in use today for measuring angles and time.


title: Mathematics

text: In the 6th century BC, Greek mathematics began to emerge as a distinct discipline and some Ancient Greeks such as the Pythagoreans appeared to have considered it a subject in its own right. Around 300 BC, Euclid organized mathematical knowledge by way of postulates and first principles, which evolved into the axiomatic method that is used in mathematics today, consisting of definition, axiom, theorem, and proof. His book, "Elements", is widely considered the most successful and influential textbook of all time. The greatest mathematician of antiquity is often held to be Archimedes (c. 287–212 BC) of Syracuse. He developed formulas for calculating the surface area and volume of solids of revolution and used the method of exhaustion to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola with the summation of an infinite series, in a manner not too dissimilar from modern calculus. Other notable achievements of Greek mathematics are conic sections (Apollonius of Perga, 3rd century BC), trigonometry (Hipparchus of Nicaea, 2nd century BC), and the beginnings of algebra (Diophantus, 3rd century AD).


title: Mathematics

text: The Hindu–Arabic numeral system and the rules for the use of its operations, in use throughout the world today, evolved over the course of the first millennium AD in India and were transmitted to the Western world via Islamic mathematics. Other notable developments of Indian mathematics include the modern definition and approximation of sine and cosine, and an early form of infinite series.


title: Mathematics

text: During the Golden Age of Islam, especially during the 9th and 10th centuries, mathematics saw many important innovations building on Greek mathematics. The most notable achievement of Islamic mathematics was the development of algebra. Other achievements of the Islamic period include advances in spherical trigonometry and the addition of the decimal point to the Arabic numeral system. Many notable mathematicians from this period were Persian, such as Al-Khwarismi, Omar Khayyam and Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī. The Greek and Arabic mathematical texts were in turn translated to Latin during the Middle Ages and made available in Europe.


title: Mathematics

text: During the early modern period, mathematics began to develop at an accelerating pace in Western Europe, with innovations that revolutionized mathematics, such as the introduction of variables and symbolic notation by François Viète (1540–1603), the introduction of coordinates by René Descartes (1596–1650) for reducing geometry to algebra, and the development of calculus by Isaac Newton (1642–1726/27) and Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) in the 17th century. Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), the most notable mathematician of the 18th century, unified these innovations into a single corpus with a standardized terminology, and completed them with the discovery and the proof of numerous theorems. Perhaps the foremost mathematician of the 19th century was the German mathematician Carl Gauss, who made numerous contributions to fields such as algebra, analysis, differential geometry, matrix theory, number theory, and statistics. In the early 20th century, Kurt Gödel transformed mathematics by publishing his incompleteness theorems, which show in part that any consistent axiomatic systemif powerful enough to describe arithmeticwill contain true propositions that cannot be proved.


title: Mathematics

text: Mathematics has since been greatly extended, and there has been a fruitful interaction between mathematics and science, to the benefit of both. Mathematical discoveries continue to be made to this very day. According to Mikhail B. Sevryuk, in the January 2006 issue of the "Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society", "The number of papers and books included in the "Mathematical Reviews" database since 1940 (the first year of operation of MR) is now more than 1.9 million, and more than 75 thousand items are added to the database each year. The overwhelming majority of works in this ocean contain new mathematical theorems and their proofs."


title: Mathematics

text: Mathematical notation is widely used in science and engineering for representing complex concepts and properties in a concise, unambiguous, and accurate way. This notation consists of symbols used for representing operations, unspecified numbers, relations and any other mathematical objects, and then assembling them into expressions and formulas. More precisely, numbers and other mathematical objects are represented by symbols called variables, which are generally Latin or Greek letters, and often include subscripts. Operation and relations are generally represented by specific symbols or glyphs, such as (plus), (multiplication), formula_4 (integral), (equal), and (less than). All these symbols are generally grouped according to specific rules to form expressions and formulas. Normally, expressions and formulas do not appear alone, but are included in sentences of the current language, where expressions play the role of noun phrases and formulas play the role of clauses.


title: Mathematics

text: Mathematics has developed a rich terminology covering a broad range of fields that study the properties of various abstract, idealized objects and how they interact. It is based on rigorous definitions that provide a standard foundation for communication. An axiom or postulate is a mathematical statement that is taken to be true without need of proof. If a mathematical statement has yet to be proven (or disproven), it is termed a conjecture. Through a series of rigorous arguments employing deductive reasoning, a statement that is proven to be true becomes a theorem. A specialized theorem that is mainly used to prove another theorem is called a lemma. A proven instance that forms part of a more general finding is termed a corallary.


title: Mathematics

text: Numerous technical terms used in mathematics are neologisms, such as "polynomial" and "homeomorphism". Other technical terms are words of the common language that are used in an accurate meaning that may differs slightly from their common meaning. For example, in mathematics, "or" means "one, the other or both", while, in common language, it is either amiguous or means "one or the other but not both" (in mathematics, the latter is called "exclusive or"). Finally, many mathematical terms are common words that are used with a completely different meaning. This may lead to sentences that are correct and true mathematical assertions, but appear to be nonsense to people who do not have the required background. For example, "every free module is flat" and "a field is always a ring".


title: Mathematics

text: Mathematics is used in most sciences for modeling phenomena, which then allows predictions to be made from experimental laws. The independence of mathematical truth from any experimentation implies that the accuracy of such predictions depends only on the adequacy of the model. Inaccurate predictions, rather than being caused by invalid mathematical concepts, imply the need to change the mathematical model used. For example, the perihelion precession of Mercury could only be explained after the emergence of Einstein's general relativity, which replaced Newton's law of gravitation as a better mathematical model.


title: Mathematics

text: There is still a philosophical debate whether mathematics is a science. However, in practice, mathematicians are typically grouped with scientists, and mathematics shares much in common with the physical sciences. Like them, it is falsifiable, which means in mathematics that, if a result or a theory is wrong, this can be proved by providing a counterexample. Similarly as in science, theories and results (theorems) are often obtained from experimentation. In mathematics, the experimentation may consist of computation on selected examples or of the study of figures or other representations of mathematical objects (often mind representations without physical support). For example, when asked how he came about his theorems, Gauss once replied "durch planmässiges Tattonieren" (through systematic experimentation). However, some authors emphasize that mathematics differs from the modern notion of science by not on empirical evidence.


title: Mathematics

text: Until the 19th century, the development of mathematics in the West was mainly motivated by the needs of technology and science, and there was no clear distinction between pure and applied mathematics. For example, the natural numbers and arithmetic were introduced for the need of counting, and geometry was motivated by surveying, architecture and astronomy. Later, Isaac Newton introduced infinitesimal calculus for explaining the movement of the planets with his law of gravitation. Moreover, most mathematicians were also scientists, and many scientists were also mathematicians. However, a notable exception occurred with the tradition of pure mathematics in Ancient Greece.


title: Mathematics

text: In the 19th century, mathematicians such as Karl Weierstrass and Richard Dedekind increasingly focused their research on internal problems, that is, "pure mathematics". This led to split mathematics into "pure mathematics" and "applied mathematics", the latter being often considered as having a lower value among mathematical purists. However, the lines between the two are frequently blurred.


title: Mathematics

text: The aftermath of World War II led to a surge in the development of applied mathematics in the US and elsewhere. Many of the theories developed for applications were found interesting from the point of view of pure mathematics, and many results of pure mathematics were shown to have applications outside mathematics; in turn, the study of these applications may give new insights on the "pure theory".


title: Mathematics

text: An example of the first case is the theory of distributions, introduced by Laurent Schwartz for validating computations done in quantum mechanics, which became immediately an important tool of (pure) mathematical analysis. An example of the second case is the decidability of the first-order theory of the real numbers, a problem of pure mathematics that was proved true by Alfred Tarski, with an algorithm that is impossible to implement because of a computational complexity that is much too high. For getting an algorithm that can be implemented and can solve systems of polynomial equations and inequalities, George Collins introduced the cylindrical algebraic decomposition that became a fundamental tool in real algebraic geometry.


title: Mathematics

text: In the present day, the distinction between pure and applied mathematics is more a question of personal research aim of mathematicians than a division of mathematics into broad areas. The Mathematics Subject Classification has a section for "general applied mathematics" but does not mention "pure mathematics". However, these terms are still used in names of some university departments, such as at the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.


title: Mathematics

text: The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is a phenomenon that was named and first made explicit by physicist Eugene Wigner. It is the fact that many mathematical theories, even the "purest" have applications outside their initial object. These applications may be completely outside their initial area of mathematics, and may concern physical phenomena that were completely unknown when the mathematical theory was introduced. Examples of unexpected applications of mathematical theories can be found in many areas of mathematics.


title: Mathematics

text: A notable example is the prime factorization of natural numbers that was discovered more than 2,000 years before its common use for secure internet communications through the RSA cryptosystem. A second historical example is the theory of ellipses. They were studied by the ancient Greek mathematicians as conic sections (that is, intersections of cones with planes). It is almost 2,000 years later that Johannes Kepler discovered that the trajectories of the planets are ellipses.


title: Mathematics

text: In the 19th century, the internal development of geometry (pure mathematics) lead to define and study non-Euclidean geometries, spaces of dimension higher than three and manifolds. At this time, these concepts seemed totally disconnected from the physical reality, but at the beginning of the 20th century, Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity that uses fundamentally these concepts. In particular, spacetime of the special relativity is a non-Euclidean space of dimension four, and spacetime of the general relativity is a (curved) manifold of dimension four.


title: Mathematics

text: A striking aspect of the interaction between mathematics and physics is when mathematics drives research in physics. This is illustrated by the discoveries of the positron and the baryon formula_5 In both cases, the equations of the theories had unexplained solutions, which led to conjecture the existence of a unknown particle, and to search these particles. In both cases, these particles were discovered a few years later by specific experiments.


title: Mathematics

text: The connection between mathematics and material reality has led to philosophical debates since at least the time of Pythagoras. The ancient philosopher Plato argued that abstractions that reflect material reality have themselves a reality that exists outside space and time. As a result, the philosophical view that mathematical objects somehow exist on their own in abstraction is often referred to as Platonism. Independently of their possible philosophical opinions, modern mathematicians may be generally considered as Platonists, since they think of and talk of their objects of study as real objects.


title: Mathematics

text: Armand Borel summarized this view of mathematics reality as follows, and provided quotations of G. H. Hardy, Charles Hermite, Henri Poincaré and Albert Einstein that support his views.


title: Mathematics

text: Nevertheless, Platonism and the concurrent views on abstraction do not explain the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.