Wartime work in military analysis ĭuring the Second World War, Bronowski worked in operations research for the UK's Ministry of Home Security, where he developed mathematical approaches to bombing strategy for RAF Bomber Command.Īt the end of the war, Bronowski was part of a British team of scientists and civil engineers that visited Japan to document the effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the purpose of studying the effects of the atomic bomb and its implications for future UK civil defence. Beginning in this period, the British secret service MI5 placed him under surveillance, believing he was a security risk, which may have restricted his access to senior posts in the UK. From 1934 to 1942, he taught mathematics at the University College of Hull. For a time in the 1930s he lived near Laura Riding and Robert Graves in Majorca. He received a PhD in mathematics at Cambridge in 1935, writing a dissertation in algebraic geometry. He was also a strong chess player, earning a half-blue while at Cambridge and composing numerous chess problems for the British Chess Magazine between 19. Bronowski would pursue this sort of dual activity, in both the mathematical and literary worlds, throughout his professional life. Īs a mathematics student at Jesus College, Cambridge, Bronowski co-edited-with William Empson-the literary periodical Experiment, which first appeared in 1928. Although, according to Bronowski, he knew only two English words on arriving in Britain, he gained admission to the Central Foundation Boys' School in London and went on to study at the University of Cambridge, where he graduated as Senior Wrangler. His family moved to Germany during the First World War, and to Britain in 1920, Bronowski's parents having been married in Britain in the London house of his maternal grandfather in 1907. Jacob Bronowski was born to a Polish-Jewish family in Łódź, Congress Poland, in 1908. From 1963 he was a resident fellow of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, until his death in 1974 in East Hampton, New York, just a year after the airing of his Ascent of Man. From 1950 to 1963 he worked for the National Coal Board in the UK. Bronowski wrote poetry and had a deep affinity with William Blake. After the war he headed the projects division of UNESCO. During World War II he led the field of operations research and worked to increase the effectiveness of Allied bombing. He taught mathematics at the University College Hull between 19. His interests have been described as ranging "widely, from biology to poetry and from chess to Humanism". He won a scholarship to study mathematics at the University of Cambridge. īronowski's family moved from Congress Poland to Germany and then to England while he was a child. He is best known for developing a humanistic approach to science, and as the presenter and writer of the thirteen-part 1973 BBC television documentary series, and accompanying book The Ascent of Man, which led to his regard as "one of the world's most celebrated intellectuals". He was known to friends and professional colleagues alike by the nickname Bruno. Jacob Bronowski (18 January 1908 – 22 August 1974) was a Polish-British mathematician and philosopher. Mathematics, operations research, biology, history of science, geometry
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