José Echegaray

From Hispanopedia
José Echegaray
Minister of Finance
In office
December 19, 1872 – February 24, 1873
Preceded byServando Ruiz Gómez
Succeeded byJuan Tutau y Verges
Minister of Finance
In office
January 4, 1874 – May 13, 1874
Preceded byPráxedes Mateo Sagasta
Succeeded byJuan Francisco Camacho de Alcorta
Minister of Finance
In office
July 18, 1905 – December 1, 1905
Preceded byÁngel Urzáiz y Cuesta
Succeeded byAmós Salvador Rodrigáñez
President of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences
In office
1901–1916
Preceded byCipriano Segundo Montesino
Succeeded byAmós Salvador Rodrigáñez
Personal details
Born(1832-04-19)April 19, 1832
Madrid (Spain)
DiedSeptember 14, 1916(1916-09-14) (aged 84)
Madrid (Spain)
OccupationDramatist, poet, scientist and politician
Awards
Nobel Prize in Literature (1904)

José María Waldo Echegaray y Eizaguirre (Madrid, April 19, 1832 – Madrid, September 14, 1916) was a Spanish engineer, dramatist, politician and mathematician, brother of the comic playwright Miguel Echegaray.

He was a multifaceted figure of late 19th-century Spain, with excellent results in all the areas in which he became involved. He carried out several projects while holding the ministerial portfolios of Finance and Public Works (Fomento). He won the fourth Nobel Prize in Literature in 1904,[1] making him the first Spaniard to obtain that award.

He made important contributions to mathematics and physics. He introduced into Spain the calculus of variations, the geometry of Chasles, Galois theory and elliptic functions, among other theories that were at the forefront in Europe. Together with figures such as Eduardo Torroja y Miret and Vicente Vázquez Queipo, he is considered one of the most influential Spanish mathematicians of the 19th century. The historian Julio Rey Pastor stated: "for Spanish mathematics, the 19th century begins in 1865, and it begins with Echegaray." In 1911 he founded the Royal Spanish Mathematical Society.

Biography

José Echegaray was born in Madrid on April 19, 1832.[2][note 1] His father, José Echegaray Lacosta, was a physician and secondary-school teacher, a native of Zaragoza, and his mother, Manuela Eizaguirre Charler, was a native of Azcoitia, Guipúzcoa.

When he was 5 years old his family moved to Murcia,[3] for reasons related to his father's work, and there he spent his childhood and completed his primary education. It was there, at the Secondary School of Murcia, that his fondness for mathematics began. "Having obtained the bachiller degree",[4] he moved to Madrid and, after obtaining his diploma at the Instituto San Isidro,[5] he entered the original School of Roads in 1848.[6]

Having turned twenty, he left the Madrid School with the title of Engineer of Roads, Canals and Ports, which he had obtained at the top of his class, and had to travel to Almería and Granada to take up his first job. Together with Gabriel Rodríguez he founded El Economista, a magazine in which he wrote numerous articles, thus beginning a journalistic activity that he would not abandon throughout his entire life.

He also took part in the establishment, in April 1850, of the Association for Tariff Reform, and he was likewise a speaker at the Sunday lectures on the education of women (University of Madrid), with the lecture Influencia del estudio de las ciencias físicas en la educación de la mujer (Madrid, 1869).

In his youth he read Goethe, Homer and Balzac, reading that he alternated with that of mathematicians such as Gauss, Legendre and Lagrange.

José Echegaray remained highly active until his death, which occurred on September 14, 1916, in Madrid.[2][7][note 2] His extensive body of work kept growing in his old age: in the final stage of his life he wrote 25 or 30 volumes on mathematical physics. At 83 he remarked:

I cannot die, because if I am to write my Elementary Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics, I need at least 25 years.

Professor and scientist

Portrait by Kaulak

In 1854 he began teaching at the School of Road Engineers, also taking charge of its secretariat. There he taught mathematics, stereotomy, hydraulics, descriptive geometry, differential calculus and physics from that year until 1868. From 1858 to 1860 he was also a professor at the School of Public Works Assistants.

Ten years later, at the age of thirty-two, he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Exact Sciences.[8] His inaugural address, titled Historia de las matemáticas puras en nuestra España,[9] in which he gave an exaggeratedly negative assessment, with certain gaps, of Spanish mathematics throughout history, and in which he defended "basic science" against "practical science", was the source of great controversy, as the journalists Luis Antón del Olmet and Arturo García Carraffa point out in their book Echegaray:

And since the address turned out to be harsh, crude and even aggressive, it produced, despite the customary congratulations and praise, a very bad effect in certain circles and groups... Many newspapers attacked his address. The revolutionaries attacked his liberal leanings; the liberals accused him of mistreating Spanish Science, and the controversy was rough because Don José answered everyone in the same tone he had used in his address.

José Echegaray died on September 14, 1916, in his native city.

Scientific work

In his career as a scientist and professor he published many works on physics and mathematics. Some of them, published in his early period, are the following (although Echegaray kept writing until the end of his days):

  • Cálculo de variaciones (1858), a subject almost unknown in Spain (Benito Bails had already introduced it at least in the 18th century).
  • Problemas de geometría plana (Madrid, Bailly-Baillere, 1865).
  • Problemas de geometría analítica en dos dimensiones (1865), described as a masterpiece by Zoel García de Galdeano.
  • La historia de las Matemáticas puras en nuestra España (1866)
  • Teorías modernas de la física. Unidad de las fuerzas materiales, 3 vols. (1867, 1883 and 1889), some with more than one edition.
  • Introducción a la geometría superior (1867), setting out the geometry of Michel Chasles and the starting point for the work of Eduardo Torroja.
  • Memoria sobre la teoría de los determinantes (1868), the first work in Spain on the subject, a version of the work of Nicola Trudi (1862).[10][11]
  • "Aplicación de las determinantes" (1869), in Revista de los Progresos de las Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, XVIII. 312–333. It addressed the subject of the "Solution of a system of linear equations", introducing what is today called Cramer's rule.
  • Tratado elemental de termodinámica (1868), a brief essay on a science that was then being born.
  • Teoría matemática de la luz (1871)
  • Resolución de ecuaciones y teoría de Galois: lecciones explicadas en el Ateneo de Madrid (Madrid, J.A. García, 1897–1898 and 1902), 2 vols.
  • Observaciones y teorías sobre la afinidad química (1901).
  • Ciencia popular; Vulgarización científica (1905)
  • Conferencias sobre Física Matemática, 10 vols., 1 for each academic year[12]

On engineering:

In politics

José Echegaray at the end of his days

After the Revolution of 1868 and Prim's entry into Madrid, Ruiz Zorrilla, with whom he had actively participated in founding the Radical Party, appointed Echegaray Director General of Public Works, a post he would hold until 1869, when he was appointed Minister of Public Works (1870[13] and 1872)[14] and Minister of Finance between 1872[15] and 1874.[16] In 1870 he was part of the commission that received King Amadeo of Savoy in Cartagena. As Minister of Public Works he drew up the Railway Framework Law (Ley de Bases de Ferrocarriles).

The abdication of Amadeo of Savoy on February 11, 1873, led to the dismissal of the government of Ruiz Zorrilla and the formation of a new republican cabinet, which would be deposed by the entry of the army into the Congress in January 1874 under the command of Pavía. The coup was followed by the formation of a government of national concentration, which once again called on the services of Echegaray as Minister of Finance, from which post the Bank of Spain would be given the character of a national bank with a monopoly on the issuing of banknotes.[17]

He left the Ministry of Finance to devote himself to literature. In 1905 he returned once again to the Ministry of Finance during the reign of Alfonso XIII, his republican fervor having disappeared.[18] He was also a senator for life[19] and president of the Council of Public Instruction.

In literature

In 1865 he began his literary activity with La hija natural, although he did not get to stage it at that time. Later, in 1874, he wrote El libro talonario, considered the beginning of his output as a dramatist, under the anagrammatic pseudonym "Jorge Hayeseca". He premiered 67 plays, 34 of them in verse, with great success among the audiences of the time, although lacking literary value in the eyes of later critics. In 1896 he was elected a member of the Real Academia Española.[20] In his early period his works were steeped in Romantic melancholy, very typical of the time, but later they acquired a more social tone, with an evident influence of the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen.

I choose a passion, I take an idea,
a problem, a character... and I instill it,
like dense dynamite, in the depths
of a character that my mind creates.
The plot surrounds the character
with a handful of puppets that in the world
either wallow in the filthy mire
or warm themselves in the Phoebean light.
I light the fuse. The fire gets ready,
the cartridge bursts beyond remedy,
and the leading star is the one who pays.
Although at times, too, in this siege
that I lay to art and that flatters instinct,
the explosion catches me full on!

— Celebrated sonnet in which he set out his theatrical poetics

In 1904 Echegaray shared the Nobel Prize in Literature with the Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral,[21] thus becoming the first Spaniard to receive a Nobel Prize. The prize was presented to him in Madrid on March 18, 1905, by the King and the Swedish organizing committee. The award of the Nobel Prize in Literature scandalized the Spanish literary avant-garde and, in particular, the writers of the Generation of '98.[6] At that time Echegaray was not considered an exceptional dramatist, and his work was very harshly criticized by writers of such stature as Clarín and Emilia Pardo Bazán, although not always consistently. In Clarín himself one can read praising reviews. Echegaray himself always kept a detached attitude toward his works; nevertheless, he enjoyed the admiration of authors such as Bernard Shaw and Pirandello. But Echegaray had great prestige in early 20th-century Spain, a prestige that extended to the fields of literature, science and politics, and an established fame in the Europe of his time. His works triumphed in cities such as London, Paris, Berlin and Stockholm.[22]

He was president of the Ateneo de Madrid (1898–1899);[23] president of the Association of Spanish Writers and Artists during the period 1903 to 1908; member of the Real Academia Española, where he held seat lowercase "e" between 1894 and 1916;[24] senator for life (1900) and twice president of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences (1894–1896 and 1901–1916); first president of the Spanish Society of Physics and Chemistry, created in 1903; professor of Mathematical Physics at the Central University of Madrid (1905); president of the Mathematics section of the Spanish Association for the Advancement of Sciences (1908); and first president of the Spanish Mathematical Society (1911). In 1907, at the proposal of Ramón y Cajal, the Academy of Sciences created the Echegaray Medal, and José Echegaray was awarded the first of them.

Literary work

Theater

Other works

  • Recuerdos de mi vida, Pamplona: Analecta, 2016, edited by José Manuel Sánchez Ron. This is the complete edition: it was published in installments in the magazine La España Moderna of José Lázaro Galdiano between 1895 and 1911, and from there it was reprinted, always partially, in other periodicals such as Madrid Científico or the Revista de Obras Públicas. In 1917 the memoirs appeared, incomplete, in three volumes, printed by Ruiz Hermanos in Madrid.
  • "La fotografía de la palabra". Ilustración Artística, 1, 7, 1882.
  • "Estudio sobre el realismo en la ciencia, en el arte en general y en la literatura". Anales del Teatro y de la Música. Madrid, VII–XIV. 1884
  • "El determinismo mecánico y la libertad moral". Revista de los Progresos de las Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, XXI (1), 1–21. 1886
  • "Febrero". In Pedro Antonio de Alarcón et al. Los meses (pp. 45–59). Barcelona: Henrich y Cía. 1889
  • "María-Rosa", written in Catalan by Ángel Guimerá. Translated into Castilian by José Echegaray. 1895.
  • "La locomoción". Los Lunes de El Imparcial (January 21, 1895).
  • "Los tres elementos del drama". La Ilustración Artística, XV, 755, 422. 1896.
  • Lances entre caballeros, a publication in which José Echegaray collaborated by providing annotations (Madrid, Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, n.d.) (1900)
  • "La vejez militante". Gente Vieja, 3–5, January 30, 1904.
  • Ciencia popular. Madrid. 1905.
  • "La crítica en matemáticas". Revista de Obras Públicas, 53, 148. 1905.[25]
  • MONÓLOGOS: Entre dolora y cuento; El moderno Endymión; El canto de la Sirena (1906)
  • Theatrical pieces of the género chico: "Gigantes y Cabezudos", "El duo de la Africana" and "Los Hugontes".

Speeches

  • Speech in Diario de Sesiones de las Cortes (session of May 5, 1869), pp. 1633–39.
  • Discursos leídos ante la Real Academia de ciencias Exactas, en la recepción de D. Eduardo Saavedra el 27 de junio de 1869. Madrid. 1869.
  • Speech in Diario de Sesiones de las Cortes (session of January 24, 1870), pp. 5133–44. 1870.
  • Speech in Diario de Sesiones de las Cortes (session of November 18, 1872), pp. 1456–62.
  • Discurso y rectificación del Señor Don José Echegaray pronunciados en las sesiones de los días 7, 9 y 11 de julio de 1877, con motivo del dictamen de la comisión de información parlamentaria referente a las operaciones del Tesoro. Madrid.
  • Discurso del señor Echegaray. In El Ateneo de Madrid en el centenario de Calderón (pp. 205–213). Madrid. 1881.
  • Discursos leídos ante la Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales en la recepción pública del Excmo. Sr. D. Alberto Bosch y Fustegueras el día 28 de marzo de 1890. Madrid. 1890
  • Discursos leídos ante la Real Academia de Ciencias exactas, físicas y naturales en la recepción. del. Sr. D. Amós Salvador y Rodrigáñez., [reply by D. José Echegaray] Madrid. 1893.
  • Discursos leídos ante la Real Academia Española en la recepción pública del Excmo. Sr. D. José Echegaray el día 20 de mayo de 1894. Madrid. 1894.
  • Discursos leídos antes la real Academia Española en la recepción pública de don Eugenio Sellés el día 2 de junio de 1895. Madrid. 1895.
  • Discurso leído por el Excmo. Sr. D. José Echegaray el día 10 de noviembre de 1898 en el Ateneo Científico, Literario y Artístico de Madrid con motivo de la apertura de sus cátedras ¿Qué es lo que constituye la fuerza de las naciones?. Madrid. 1898.
  • Discursos leídos ante la Real Academia Española en la recepción pública de D. Emilio Ferrari, el día 30 de abril de 1905. Madrid. 1905
  • Discurso leído en la Universidad Central en la solemne inauguración del curso académico de 1905 a 1906. Madrid. 1905.
  • Discurso leído ante la Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales en su recepción pública por el Sr. D. Augusto Krahe y García, y contestación del Excmo. Sr. D. José Echegaray, el día 13 de diciembre de 1914. Madrid. 1914.

Prologues to works by other authors

Film adaptations

Of his enormous theatrical output, El gran galeoto has drawn the attention of world cinema with six adaptations, while three other works by Echegaray also received their film counterpart (De mala raza, A fuerza de arrastrarse and Mancha que limpia) in the era of Spanish silent film. Of this set of adaptations, only El gran Galeoto by Rafael Gil can be viewed; the rest are lost films of which we can only form an approximate idea from press reports and archives.

Spanish silent film and Echegaray

In the silent era, Spanish cinema focused on only three of them: Mala raza, before his death; the following two, Mancha que limpia by José Buchs in 1924 and A fuerza de arrastrarse, were posthumous adaptations.[26]

Mala raza

Mala raza was the first film adaptation made of a work by José Echegaray, De mala raza (1904). However, putting it on screen without the relevant rights, together with the notable success the film achieved, led the Society of Authors, on behalf of the dramatist, to sue Gelabert for plagiarism; Gelabert, thanks to the clever work of his lawyer, won the lawsuit – Echegaray obtained a Pyrrhic victory in seeing the original title changed to Mala raza – (Pozo, 1984: 23; Porter, 1985: 49). Although the film cannot be viewed, it seems that the similarities between the play and the film adaptation were more than evident.

In the literary source, Echegaray dissociates suprahuman values such as dignity and honor from upper-class citizens on the mere grounds of belonging to that class by birth. Through the mouth of the character Prudencio, emphasis is placed on the transmission of the laws of heredity from parents to children, such that all the bad or good done by the forebear will irrevocably redound upon his descendants, the "organic fatality" used to characterize Adelina, so that, at the critical moment, no proof to the contrary will serve to cancel her fatality, and the suspicions of adultery that fall upon her are synonymous with bitter reality.

Two adaptations by José Buchs: Mancha que limpia and A fuerza de arrastrarse

Eight years after the death of José Echegaray, Spanish cinema would again adapt his work. In 1924 Film Española, a newly created production company that would specialize in zarzuelas and melodramas, commissioned two new projects from its star director, the Cantabrian José Buchs – who the previous year had filmed the company's first titles: Rosario la Cortijera, Curro Vargas and El pobre Valbuena – to adapt for the screen two of the Madrilenian dramatist's most successful works: Mancha que limpia and A fuerza de arrastrarse.

With these films, Film Española sought to continue the tradition begun by the French Film d'Art of transposing a prestigious work into film language, while still retaining many of the elements that characterize theater, such as the staging, the sets or celebrated stage actors, with the aim of broadening the segment of the population that could gain knowledge of the work and that could not afford the luxury of going to the theater, while at the same time lending prestige to the cinematic medium, which needed the vehicle that theater provided in order to give renown to its own products.

Honors

  • His name appears on many streets across Spain. Calle Echegaray in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: the City Council of this city named the streets of the Altavista neighborhood after people who have been awarded the Nobel Prize.[1]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Some publications give the year 1833.
  2. ↑ Some publications give the 4th as the day.

References

  1. ↑ The Nobel Prize in Literature 1904
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Sánchez Ron 2004, pp. 601–689.
  3. ↑ Murcia y José Echegaray. Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes.
  4. ↑ Fornieles Alcaraz, Javier. "José de Echegaray y Eizaguirre". Biografía en la Real Academia de la Historia (in español). Retrieved January 22, 2019.
  5. ↑ "Archivo de Echegaray". pares.mcu.es (in español). Retrieved January 28, 2019.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Delibes 1999, pp. 115–119.
  7. ↑ E.O. (September 16, 1916). "Echegaray". La Vanguardia (in español): 6.
  8. ↑ "José Echegaray". Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales (in español).
  9. ↑ "Real Academia de Ciencias exactas, físicas y naturales.- Discurso leído por el Sr. D. José Echegaray" (PDF). Gaceta de Madrid (in español) (228). Madrid: 4. August 16, 1866. Retrieved October 12, 2017.
  10. ↑ Nicola Trudi, professor of Infinitesimal Calculus at the University of Naples, Teoria de' determinanti e loro aplicacion (1862).
  11. ↑ However, he left aside, for example, the results on elementary divisors that James Sylvester had obtained in 1851, and which connected directly with invariant theory (in this case of quadratic forms), which would be one of the preferred areas of mathematical research at the end of the last century and the beginning of the present one.
  12. ↑ Sánchez Ron, José Manuel (2003). "José echegaray, matemático". La Gaceta de la RSME, vol. VI.3 (in español).
  13. ↑ "Decreto nombrando Ministro de Fomento á D. José Echegaray, Diputado á Córtes" (PDF). Gaceta de Madrid (in español) (12). Madrid: 1. January 12, 1870. Retrieved October 12, 2017.
  14. ↑ "Reales decretos nombrando Ministro de Fomento á D. José de Echegaray, y de Ultramar á D. Eduardo Gasset y Artime" (PDF). Gaceta de Madrid (in español) (167). Madrid: 787. June 15, 1872. Retrieved October 12, 2017.
  15. ↑ "Decreto nombrando Ministro de Hacienda á D. José Echegaray" (PDF). Gaceta de Madrid (in español) (356). Madrid: 913. December 21, 1872. Retrieved October 12, 2017.
  16. ↑ "Decreto nombrando Ministro de Hacienda á D. José Echegaray" (PDF). Gaceta de Madrid (in español) (5). Madrid: 37. January 5, 1874.
  17. ↑ Salvador Armendáriz, María Amparo (2000). Banca pública y mercado: implicaciones jurídico-públicas de la paridad de trato (in español). INAP. p. 62. ISBN 978-84-7088-698-0.
  18. ↑ "Real decreto nombrando Ministro de Hacienda á D. José Echegaray y Eizaguirre" (PDF). Gaceta de Madrid (in español) (201). Madrid: 245. July 20, 1905. Retrieved October 12, 2017.
  19. ↑ Senado de España, Expediente Personal del Senador (May 3, 1900). "Reales decretos nombrando Senadores vitalicios á los Sres. D. José Suárez Guanes, Don Eduardo Martínez del Campo, D. Mariano Donoso de la Campa, D. Juan Pacheco y Rodrigo, D. Marcos Castrillo y de Medina, D. Manuel Allendesalazar, D. Juan Muguiro, D. José Echegaray, D. Mariano Agrela, D. José María Riestra, D. Francisco de los Santos Guzmán, D José Gómez Imaz y D. Federico Arrazola y Guerrero" (PDF). Gaceta de Madrid (in español) (123). Madrid: 569–570. Retrieved October 12, 2017.
  20. ↑ José Echegaray en la Real Academia Española
  21. ↑ "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1904". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB. 2014.
  22. ↑ Pérez-Galdós & Pérez-Galdós 2007, pp. 4–11.
  23. ↑ José Echegaray en el Ateneo de Madrid
  24. ↑ José Echegaray en la RAE
  25. ↑ "La crítica en matemáticas". Revista De Obras Públicas (in español) (1538). 1905.
  26. ↑ "Mancha que limpia (1924)". imdb. Retrieved August 15, 2020.

Bibliography

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