Biographical

Henry Solomon Wellcome was born half a world away from the Sudan in the American Midwest in 1853. His personal qualities and attitudes to life have been shaped in his early years. The Wellcome family was deeply religious , his father and two uncles were ministers of the Adventist sect. When Henry was eight, his family moved to Garden City, Minnesota where his other uncle, Jacob Wellcome was in medical practice.
In the 1860ies the Midwest was still frontier country. Shortly after the family settled in Garden City there was an Indian uprising in the area. Over 2000 settlers were killed and the towns were transformed to small fortresses defended by volunteers and troops. The young Henry helped his uncle in caring for the wounded and he was also appointed captain to a group of children casting rifle bullets for the settlers. The uprising ended in an Indian defeat and the public hanging of 38 Sioux Indian chiefs. This event created in Wellcome a life-long awareness of the suffering of the dispossessed peoples in whom he saw the suffering of mankind. Later in his life, for many years he supported missionary work among a group of American Indians.

It is offered here as an historical and cultural appreciation of nursing somewhat after the Nightingale era of reform (approximately forty years after the Crimean War, during a prosperous phase of an ongoing Industrial Revolution with its attendant urbanization, rise of the middle class, smug self-, class-, and national-consciousness), but distinctly before the development of more modern attitudes regarding Woman's "Place" and Woman's Work, and the more fulsome professionalisation and empowerment of Nursing. The views expressed herein are in my opinion are transitional and as generally supportive of nursing as it was probably possible to be in its own era, however amusing or outrageous we might personally find some of the quaint and dated comments to be. We can be pleased, but I hope also inspired, by realisation of how far we have come as we try to continue our progress, or but maintain it in this era of "restructuring." We should spare some kindly and proud thoughts also at how nurses in the pre-modern era had themselves come so far from the truly hideous conditions of a past still within memory when this was written.

Pellagra was first identified among Spanish peasants by Don Gaspar Casal in 1735. A loathsome skin disease, it was called mal de la rosa and often mistaken for leprosy. Although it was not conclusively identified in the United States until 1907, there are reports of illness that could be pellagra as far back as the 1820s. In the United States, pellagra has often been called the disease of the four D's -- dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia, and death. National data is sketchy, but by 1912, the state of South Carolina alone reported 30,000 cases and a mortality rate of 40 percent. While hardly confined to Southern states, the disease seemed especially rampant there. A worried Congress asked the Surgeon General to investigate the disease. In 1914, Joseph Goldberger was asked to head that investigation.

Andrew Balfour was a native of Edinburgh, born on March 21st 1873, the son of Dr T A G Balfour, a well known practitioner in that city. At an early age Balfour established a reputation for being a man of many talents. During his student days he was a 6-foot-tall,14 stone boxer and rugby player who appeared for Scotland against England on many occasions. He was also a novelist. His first novel By Stroke of Sword , published in 1897, was a story of romance and adventure in the high seas and Spanish America. He also wrote To Arms (1898), Vengeance is Mine (1899), Cashiered and Other War Stories (1902) and The Golden Kingdom (1903). The last novel was founded upon his scientific knowledge of sleeping sickness. After graduating MB.,C.M. at Edinburgh in 1894, he joined his father's medical practice, but soon he realized that he had more inclination towards public health than to clinical practice. Thus he entered Cambridge University in 1885 and obtained the D.P.H. degree in 1887, followed by a M.D. degree for which he was awarded a gold medal for outstanding research work. Then he obtained a BSc in public health. The first tropical experience of Balfour was a typhoid camp in Pretoria during the period 1900-1901.

Mathematicians
Adams, John Frank (1930-1989)
Davenport, Harold (1901-1969)
Eddington, Arthur Stanley (1882-1944)
Forsyth, Andrew Russell (1858-1942)
Hardy, Godfrey Harold (1877-1974)
Herman, Robert Alfred (1861-1927)
Jourdain, Philip Edward Bertrand (1879-1919)
Littlewood, John Edensor (1885-1977)
Neville, Eric Harold (1889-1961)
Peacock, George (1791-1858)
Ramanujan, Srinivasa (1887-1920)

At the 1924 International Congress of Mathematicians in Toronto, a resolution was adopted that at each ICM, two gold medals should be awarded to recognize outstanding mathematical achievement. Professor J. C. Fields, a Canadian mathematician who was Secretary of the 1924 Congress, later donated funds establishing the medals which were named in his honor. Consistent with Fields's wish that the awards recognize both existing work and the promise of future achievement, it was agreed to restrict the medals to mathematicians not over forty at the year of the Congress. In 1966 it was agreed that, in light of the great expansion of mathematical research, up to four medals could be awarded at each Congress.

I still remember very clearly the first time that I met Professor Iwasawa. It was in 1967 when he had just become a faculty member at Princeton University. I was a second year graduate student and had decided that I was ready to take the General Examination. Students were not told in advance which faculty members were to be on their examining committee. I had hoped that Professor Iwasawa would be on my committee and, on the day of the examination, when I was told that the committee was waiting for me in his office, I knew that my hope would be fulfilled. It was at that time that I first met him.

V.G Sprindzuk was a famous authority on the theory of Diophantine equations, Diophantine approximation and transcendental Number Theory. An alumnus of the Belorussian State University (1954-1959, where he was an undergraduate) and of the State University of Vilnius (1959-1962, where he undertook his postgraduate studies), he obtained his PhD in 1963, and his DSc degree in 1965. In 1969 he was made a full professor and a member of the Editorial Board of the Vesti of the Akademija Nauk BSSR (Mathematics). The following year he joined the Editorial Board of Acta Arithmetica, and in 1986 Prof. Sprindzuk became an Academician of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences.

This brief history of the European Mathematical Society covers a period of slightly more than eight years, from the founding of the Society in 1990 to the end of 1998. The history was commissioned by the Society in order that an account could be composed before memories had faded, leaving only written records. Inevitably the many and changing participants in the activities to be described will have different views of these activities and their significance. The author has aimed to write an objective account - 'history' is really too grandiose a title - from the perspective of one who was present at, and involved in, all of the Council and Executive Committee meetings of the Society, with the exception of one meeting in Cracow. As is well known, proximity to events does not necessarily ensure freedom from prejudice in reporting - and so others must judge the degree of objectivity here achieved; notwithstanding the aim of impartiality, the author has allowed himself the liberty of an occasional subjective comment where it seemed to be particularly apposite.

In 1980 the American Society of Post Anesthesia Nurses (ASPAN) was born of the need for education specific to perianesthesia care. ASPAN has continued to prosper with membership over 5,600 in 1989. Through ASPAN other avenues of growth have occurred which include a bimonthly journal devoted to perianesthesia nursing, a bimonthly newsletter, annual conferences, and an opportunity to become certified in this specialty of nursing.