We review the history of the road to a manifestly covariant perturbative calculus within quantum electrodynamics from the early semi-classical results of the mid-twenties to the complete formalism of Stueckelberg in 1934. We choose as our case study the calculation of the cross-section of the Compton effect. We analyse Stueckelberg's paper extensively. This is our first contribution to a study of his fundamental contributions to the theoretical physics of the twentieth century.

INTRODUCTION: THE NAME MADHYAMAKA The Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism goes back to Nagarjuna, the great Indian Buddhist philosopher who is placed ...

Last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of Brazil’s capital Brasilia. Designed by architects Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, it has since become one of the most famous and widely studied urban planning projects. Niemeyer’s cathedral, Catedral Metropolitana Nossa Senhora Aparecida; his building for the national parliament, the Congresso Nacional; and the city’s 707-foot television tower have become icons of twentieth-century architecture. The entire city, marked by its cross-shaped layout and vast open spaces, was named a UNESO World (...) Heritage site in 1987. René Burri, an internationally celebrated Swiss-born photographer and member of the legendary Magnum agency, visited the city for the first time on a long journey around South America in 1958, when most of Brasilia was a vast building site. He returned many times over more than thirty years, documenting the growth and development of this urban utopia. Besides documenting the buildings in various stages of completion, Burri took portraits of Niemeyer and his workers and photographed Brasilia’s street scenes and people: workers with their tools, machinery and building materials, pedestrians on the newly finished streets and squares, and aerial views from the air of the city’s first slums abutting brand-new blocks of residential buildings. His images capture the strong sense of a new era and a vibrant atmosphere of hard work and strain; they reflect the huge dimensions of the landscape and the great scale of this project and its ambition to design and build a new capital—and fill it with life. Complete with an essay by eminent architect and scholar of architectural history Arthur Rüegg, René Burri. Brasilia marks the city’s fiftieth anniversary and allows readers to look at an extraordinary city through the eyes of an exceptional photographer. (shrink)

The paper addresses the scarcity of research on the new rich in urban anthropology. It argues that sumptuary spending is meant to establish and display an honourable ascendancy, and stems from a need for public recognition. This is particularly visible in the palaces of the nouveau riche in Eastern Europe. Too often, these buildings are unduly ethnicized; the paper claims that this ideological approach aims at denying Easter European Roma the possibility of taking part in the urban competition of the (...) new rich and at excluding them from the wider urban context of the new rich in the post-Socialist territories, from Bucharest to Batumi and Astana. From Roma businessmen to a parvenu doctor in Cluj, the identity strategies of the new rich resemble each other. They draw on universal artistic heritage to create an image of ancient virtue for their owners. (shrink)

Die Ratnavalitika des Ajitamitra. Edited and explained by Yukihiro Okada. Indica et Tibetica Verlag, Bonn 1990. xxxv, 198 pp. No price given.

Hundert Strophen von der Lebensklugheit: Nagarjunas Prajnasataka Tibetisch und Deutsch, Eingeleitet, herausgegeben und übersetzt. Michael Hahn. Indica et Tibetica Verlag, Bonn 1990. 124 pp. No price given.

Madhyamakahrdayam [sic] Bhavyakrtam: Madhyamakahrdayam of Bhavya. Edited by Chr. Lindtner. The Adyar Library and Research Centre, Adyar 2001. liii, 169 pp. $75.00. ISBN 81-85141-40-1.

Madhyamaka Schools in India. Peter Della Santina. Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1986. xxii, 242pp. Rs 100.

Nagarjuna's Sutrasamuccaya: A Critical edition of the mDo kun las btus pa. Bhikkhu Pasadika. Akademisk Forlag i Kommission, Copenhagen 1989. xix, 252 pp. ISBN 87-500-2889-8.