Marian Anderson (February 27, 1897April 8, 1993) was an American contralto. She performed a wide range of music, from opera to spirituals. Anderson performed with renowned orchestras in major concert and recital venues throughout the United States and Europe between 1925 and 1965.

Anderson was an important figure in the struggle for African American artists to overcome racial prejudice in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. In 1939, during the era of racial segregation, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to allow Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The incident placed Anderson in the spotlight of the international community on a level unusual for a classical musician. With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the Lincoln Memorial steps in the capital. The event was featured in a documentary film. She sang before an integrated crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions.

On January 7, 1955, Anderson became the first African American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. In addition, she worked as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United States Department of State, giving concerts all over the world. She participated in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, singing at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Anderson was awarded the first Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, the Congressional Gold Medal in 1977, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978, the National Medal of Arts in 1986, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991.

Early life and education
Marian Anderson was born in Philadelphia on February 27, 1897, to John Berkley Anderson and Annie Delilah Rucker. Her father sold ice and coal at the Reading Terminal in downtown Philadelphia and eventually also sold liquor. Before her marriage, Anderson's mother was briefly a student at the Virginia Seminary and College in Lynchburg, and worked as a schoolteacher in Virginia. As she did not obtain a degree, Annie Anderson was unable to teach in Philadelphia under a law that was applied only to black teachers and not white ones. She therefore earned an income caring for small children. Marian was the eldest of the three Anderson children. Her two sisters, Alyse (1899–1965) and Ethel (1902–90), also became singers. Ethel married James DePreist and their son James Anderson DePreist was a noted conductor.

Anderson's parents were both devout Christians and the whole family was active in the Union Baptist Church, which, during her youth, stood in a building constructed by the congregation in 1889 at 709 S. 12th Street in South Philadelphia. Marian's aunt Mary, her father's sister, was particularly active in the church's musical life and convinced her niece to join the junior church choir at the age of six. In that role, she got to perform solos and duets, often with her aunt. Aunt Mary took Marian to concerts at local churches, the YMCA, benefit concerts, and other community music events throughout the city. Anderson credited her aunt's influence as the reason she pursued her singing career. Beginning as young as six, her aunt arranged for Marian to sing for local functions where she was often paid 25 or 50 cents for singing a few songs. As she got into her early teens, Marian began to make as much as four or five dollars for singing, a considerable sum for the early 20th century. At the age of 10, Marian joined the People's Chorus of Philadelphia under the direction of singer Emma Azalia Hackley, where she was often a soloist.

When Anderson was 12, her father received a head injury while working at the Reading Terminal before Christmas 1909. Soon afterwards, her father died following heart failure. He was 37 years old. Marian and her family moved into the home of her father's parents, Benjamin and Isabella Anderson. Her grandfather had been born a slave and was emancipated in the 1860s. He relocated to South Philadelphia, the first person in his family to do so. When Anderson moved into his home, the two became very close, but he died just a year after the family moved there.

Anderson attended Stanton Grammar School, graduating in 1912. Although her family could not pay for any music lessons or high school, Anderson continued to perform wherever she could and learn from anyone willing to teach her. Throughout her teenage years, she remained active in her church's musical activities and was now involved heavily in the adult choir. She became a member of the Baptists' Young People's Union and the Camp Fire Girls, which provided her with some, though limited, musical opportunities. Eventually, the People's Chorus of Philadelphia and the pastor of her church, Reverend Wesley Parks, along with other leaders of the black community, raised the money she needed to get singing lessons with Mary Saunders Patterson and to attend South Philadelphia High School, from which she graduated in 1921.

After high school, Anderson applied to an all-white music school, the Philadelphia Musical Academy (now University of the Arts School of Music), but was turned away because she was black. The woman working the admissions counter replied, "We don't take colored" when she tried to apply. Undaunted, Anderson pursued studies privately in her native city through the continued support of the Philadelphia black community, first with Agnes Reifsnyder, then Giuseppe Boghetti. She met Boghetti through the principal of her high school. Anderson auditioned for him by singing "Deep River"; he was immediately brought to tears. Boghetti scheduled a recital of English, Russian, Italian and German music at The Town Hall in New York City in April 1924; it took place in an almost empty hall and received poor reviews.

In 1923 she made two recordings, "Deep River" and "My Way's Cloudy" for the Victor company.

Early career
In 1925, Anderson got her first big break at a singing competition sponsored by the New York Philharmonic. As the winner, she got to perform in concert with the orchestra on August 26, 1925, a performance that scored immediate success with both the audience and music critics. Anderson continued her studies with Frank La Forge in New York. During this time, Arthur Judson became her manager. They met through the New York Philharmonic. Over the next several years, she made a number of concert appearances in the United States, but racial prejudice prevented her career from gaining momentum. Her first performance at Carnegie Hall was in 1928.

Rosenwald Fund
During her fall 1929 concert schedule, Anderson sang at Orchestra Hall in Chicago, for which she received measured praise. Critic Herman Devries from the Chicago Evening American wrote, "[Anderson] reached near perfection in every requirement of vocal art—the tone was of superb timbre, the phrasing of utmost refinement, the style pure, discreet, musicianly. But after this there was a letdown, and we took away the impression of a talent still unripe, but certainly a talent of potential growth." In the audience were two representatives from Julius Rosenwald's philanthropic organization, the Rosenwald Fund. The organization's representatives, Ray Field and George Arthur, encouraged Anderson to apply for a Rosenwald Fellowship, from which she received $1500 to study in Berlin.

European tours
Anderson went to Europe, where she spent a number of months studying with Sara Charles-Cahier and Geni Sadero before launching a highly successful European singing tour. In the summer of 1930, she went to Scandinavia, where she met the Finnish pianist Kosti Vehanen, who became her regular accompanist and her vocal coach for many years. She also met Jean Sibelius through Vehanen after he had heard her in a concert in Helsinki. Moved by her performance, Sibelius invited them to his home and asked his wife to bring champagne in place of the traditional coffee. Sibelius complimented Anderson on her performance; he felt that she had been able to penetrate the Nordic soul. The two struck up an immediate friendship, which further blossomed into a professional partnership, and for many years Sibelius altered and composed songs for Anderson. He created a new arrangement of the song "Solitude" and dedicated it to Anderson in 1939. Originally The Jewish Girl's Song from his 1906 incidental music to Belshazzar's Feast, it later became the "Solitude" section of the orchestral suite derived from the incidental music.

In 1933, Anderson made her European debut in a concert at Wigmore Hall in London, where she was received enthusiastically. In the first years of the 1930s, she toured Europe, where she did not encounter the prejudices she had experienced in America. Anderson, accompanied by Vehanen, continued to tour throughout Europe during the mid-1930s. Before going back to Scandinavia, where fans had "Marian fever", she performed in Russia and the major cities of Eastern Europe. She became a favorite of many conductors and composers of major European orchestras quickly. During a 1935 tour in Salzburg, the conductor Arturo Toscanini told her she had a voice "heard once in a hundred years."

American tours
In 1934, impresario Sol Hurok offered Anderson a better contract than she had with Arthur Judson previously. He became her manager and persuaded her to return to America to perform. In 1935, Anderson made her second recital appearance at The Town Hall, New York City, which received highly favorable reviews from music critics. She spent the next four years touring throughout the United States and Europe. She was offered opera roles by several European houses, but Anderson declined all of them due to her lack of acting experience. She did, however, record a number of arias in the studio, which became bestsellers.

Anderson's accomplishments as a singer did not make her immune to the Jim Crow laws in the 1930s. Although she gave approximately seventy recitals a year in the United States, Anderson was still turned away by some American hotels and restaurants. In the midst of this discrimination, Albert Einstein, a champion of racial tolerance, hosted Anderson on many occasions, the first being in 1937 when she was denied a hotel room while performing at Princeton University. Einstein's first hosting of Anderson became the subject of a play, "My Lord, What a Night," in 2021. She last stayed with him months before he died in 1955.

1939 Lincoln Memorial concert

In 1939, Sarah Corbin Robert, head of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) denied permission to Anderson for a concert on April 9 at DAR Constitution Hall under a white performers-only policy in effect at the time. In addition to the policy on performers, Washington, DC, was a segregated city, and Black patrons were upset that they would have to sit at the back of Constitution Hall. Furthermore, Constitution Hall did not have the segregated public bathrooms then required by DC law for such events. Other DC venues were not an option: for example, the District of Columbia Board of Education declined a request for the use of the auditorium of a white public high school.

The next day, Charles Edward Russell, a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and chair of the DC citywide Inter-Racial Committee, held a meeting of the Marian Anderson Citizens Committee (MACC). This included the National Negro Congress, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the American Federation of Labor, and the Washington Industrial Council-CIO, church leaders and activists in the city, and numerous other organizations. MACC elected Charles Hamilton Houston as its chairman and on February 20, the group picketed the Board of Education, collected signatures on petitions, and planned a mass protest at the next board meeting.

In the ensuing furor, thousands of DAR members, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned from the organization. Roosevelt wrote to the DAR: "I am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist... You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organization has failed."

As the controversy grew, the American press overwhelmingly supported Anderson's right to sing. The Philadelphia Tribune wrote, "A group of tottering old ladies, who don't know the difference between patriotism and putridism, have compelled the gracious First Lady to apologize for their national rudeness." The Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote, "In these days of racial intolerance so crudely expressed in the Third Reich, an action such as the D.A.R.'s ban... seems all the more deplorable."

At Eleanor Roosevelt's instigation, President Roosevelt and Walter White, then-executive secretary of the NAACP, and Anderson's manager, Sol Hurok, persuaded Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to arrange an open-air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The concert was performed on Easter Sunday, April 9. Anderson was accompanied, as usual, by Vehanen. They began the performance with a dignified and stirring rendition of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." The event attracted a crowd of more than 75,000 in addition to a national radio audience of millions.

Two months later, in conjunction with the 30th NAACP conference in Richmond, Virginia, Eleanor Roosevelt gave a speech on national radio (NBC and CBS) and presented Anderson with the 1939 Spingarn Medal for distinguished achievement. In 2001, a documentary film of the concert was chosen for the National Film Registry, and in 2008, NBC radio coverage of the event was selected for the National Recording Registry.

Mid-career

During World War II and the Korean War, Anderson entertained troops in hospitals and at bases. In 1943, she sang at the Constitution Hall, having been invited by the DAR to perform before an integrated audience as part of a benefit for the American Red Cross. She said of the event, "When I finally walked onto the stage of Constitution Hall, I felt no different than I had in other halls. There was no sense of triumph. I felt that it was a beautiful concert hall and I was very happy to sing there." In contrast, the District of Columbia Board of Education continued to bar her from using the high school auditorium in the District of Columbia.

Ford 50th Anniversary Show
On June 15, 1953, Anderson headlined The Ford 50th Anniversary Show, which was broadcast live from New York City on both NBC and CBS. Midway through the program, she sang "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." She returned to close the program with her rendition of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." The program attracted an audience of 60 million viewers. Forty years after the broadcast, television critic Tom Shales recalled the broadcast as both "a landmark in television" and "a milestone in the cultural life of the '50s".

The Metropolitan Opera
On January 7, 1955, Anderson became the first African American to sing with the Metropolitan Opera in New York. At the invitation of director Rudolf Bing, she sang the part of Ulrica in Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera (opposite Zinka Milanov, then Herva Nelli, as Amelia). Anderson later said about the evening, "The curtain rose on the second scene and I was there on stage, mixing the witch's brew. I trembled, and when the audience applauded and applauded before I could sing a note, I felt myself tightening into a knot." Although she never appeared with the company again, Anderson was named a permanent member of the Metropolitan Opera company. The following year, her autobiography, My Lord, What a Morning, was published, and became a bestseller.

Presidential inaugurations and goodwill ambassador tours
In 1957, she sang for President Dwight D. Eisenhower's inauguration, and toured India and the Far East as a goodwill ambassador through the U.S. State Department and the American National Theater and Academy. She traveled  in 12 weeks, giving 24 concerts. After that, President Eisenhower appointed her a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The same year, she was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1958, she was officially designated a delegate to the United Nations, a formalization of her role as "goodwill ambassadress" of the U.S.

On January 20, 1961, she sang for President John F. Kennedy's inauguration, and in 1962 she performed for President Kennedy and other dignitaries in the East Room of the White House and toured Australia. She was active in supporting the civil rights movement during the 1960s. She performed benefit concerts in aid of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Congress of Racial Equality. In 1963, she sang at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. That same year, she received one of the newly reinstituted Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is awarded for "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interest of the United States, World Peace or cultural or other significant public or private endeavors." She also released an album, Snoopycat: The Adventures of Marian Anderson's Cat Snoopy, which included short stories and songs about her beloved black cat. That same year, Anderson concluded her farewell tour, after which she retired from public performance. The international tour began at Constitution Hall on Saturday October 24, 1964, and ended on April 18, 1965, at Carnegie Hall. In 1965, she christened the nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine .

Later life

Although Anderson retired from singing in 1965, she continued to appear publicly. She often narrated Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, with her nephew James DePriest conducting. In 1976, Copland conducted a performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Saratoga. Her achievements were recognized with many honors, including the University of Pennsylvania Glee Club Award of Merit in 1973; the United Nations Peace Prize, New York City's Handel Medallion, and the Congressional Gold Medal, all in 1977; Kennedy Center Honors in 1978; the George Peabody Medal in 1981; the National Medal of Arts in 1986; and a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1991. A half-ounce gold commemorative medal was embossed with her portrait by the United States Treasury Department in 1980. Four years later, she was the first person to be honored with the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award of the City of New York. She was awarded 24 honorary doctoral degrees, by Howard University, Temple University, Smith College and many other colleges and universities.

Personal life

On July 17, 1943, Anderson became the second wife of architect Orpheus H. "King" Fisher in Bethel, Connecticut. Fisher had asked her to marry him when they were teenagers, but she declined at that time because she feared it would have forestalled her music career. The wedding was a private ceremony performed by United Methodist pastor Rev. Jack Grenfell and was the subject of a short story titled "The 'Inside' Story," written by Rev. Grenfell's wife, Dr. Clarine Coffin Grenfell, in her book Women My Husband Married, including Marian Anderson. According to Dr. Grenfell, the wedding was originally supposed to take place in the parsonage, but because of a bake sale on the lawn of the Bethel United Methodist Church, the ceremony was moved at the last minute to the Elmwood Chapel, on the site of the Elmwood Cemetery in Bethel, in order to keep the event private.

By this marriage she gained a stepson, James Fisher, from her husband's previous marriage to Ida Gould, a white woman.

In 1940, seeking a retreat away from the public eye, Anderson and Fisher purchased a three-story Victorian farmhouse on a  farm in Danbury, Connecticut, after an exhaustive search throughout New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Through the years, he built many structures on the property, including an acoustic rehearsal studio he designed for his wife. The property remained Anderson's home for almost 50 years.

From 1943, she resided at the farm that Orpheus had named Marianna Farm. The farm was on Joe's Hill Road, in the Mill Plain section of western Danbury. She constructed a three-bedroom ranch house as a residence, and she used a separate one-room structure as her studio. In 1996, the farm was named one of 60 sites on the Connecticut Freedom Trail. The studio was moved to downtown Danbury as the Marian Anderson studio.

As a town resident, Anderson wished to live as normally as possible, declining offers to be treated in restaurants and stores as a celebrity. She was known to visit the Danbury State Fair and sang at the city hall on the occasion of the lighting of Christmas ornaments. She gave a concert at the Danbury High School,  served on the board of the Danbury Music Center, and supported the Charles Ives Center for the Arts and the Danbury Chapter of the NAACP.

In 1986, Orpheus Fisher died after 43 years of marriage. Anderson remained in residence at Marianna Farm until 1992, one year before her death. Although the property was sold to developers, various preservationists as well as the City of Danbury fought to protect Anderson's studio. Their efforts proved successful, and the Danbury Museum and Historical Society received a grant from the state of Connecticut, relocated and restored the structure, and opened it to the public in 2004. In addition to seeing the studio, visitors can see photographs and memorabilia from milestones in Anderson's career.

In 1992, Anderson relocated to the home of her nephew, conductor James DePreist, in Portland, Oregon. She died there on April 8, 1993, of congestive heart failure, at the age of 96. She is interred at Eden Cemetery, in Collingdale, Pennsylvania.

Awards and honors

 1939: NAACP Spingarn Medal
 1963: Presidential Medal of Freedom
 1973: University of Pennsylvania Glee Club Award of Merit
 1973: National Women's Hall of Fame
 1977: United Nations Peace Prize
 1977: New York City – Handel Medallion
 1977: Congressional Gold Medal
 1978: Kennedy Center Honors
 1980: United States Treasury Department gold commemorative medal
 1984: Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award of the City of New York
 1986: National Medal of Arts
 1991: Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
 Honorary doctorate from Howard University, Temple University, Smith College

Legacy

The life and art of Anderson has been commemorated by writers, artists, and city, state, and national organizations. The following is a selected list:

 She was an example and an inspiration to both Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman.
 1948: The anthology radio drama Destination Freedom recapped her earlier life in the episode "Choir Girl from Philadelphia".
 1976: Among the historical figures featured in the artwork Our Nation's 200th Birthday, The Telephone's 100th Birthday by Stanley Meltzoff for Bell System.
 1999: A one-act musical play entitled My Lord, What a Morning: The Marian Anderson Story was produced by the Kennedy Center. The musical took its title from Anderson's memoir, published by Viking in 1956.
 2001: The 1939 documentary film, Marian Anderson: The Lincoln Memorial Concert was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
 2002: Molefi Kete Asante included Anderson in his book,100 Greatest African Americans.
 2005: U.S. postage stamp honored Anderson as part of the Black Heritage series. Anderson is also pictured on the US$5,000 Series I United States Savings Bond.
 2008: A BBC Radio 4 documentary, Freedom Song produced by Ekene Akalawu, was first broadcast on January 24, 2008.
 2011: The Marian Anderson House, in Philadelphia, was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
 2016: The Union Baptist Church (Built 1915–16), 1910 Fitzwater Street, Philadelphia, PA, was added to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, under Criteria A and J, the former being for its association with Marian Anderson, providing regulatory protection to the building from alteration and demolition.
 2016: Jack Lew announced that Anderson would appear along with Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. on the back of the redesigned US$5 bill scheduled to be unveiled in the year 2020, the 100th anniversary of 19th Amendment of the Constitution that granted women in America the right to vote.
 2021: Anderson's life and the 1939 Constitution Hall controversy and her subsequent concert at the Lincoln Memorial were the subject of a documentary, Voice of Freedom, that aired as an episode of American Experience on PBS.
 London, United Kingdom, has a pub called The Marian Anderson, on Bowling Green Lane, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 0BJ.

Marian Anderson Award
The Marian Anderson Award was established in 1943 by Anderson after she was awarded the $25,000 from The Philadelphia Award in 1940 by the city of Philadelphia. Anderson used the award money to establish a singing competition to help support young singers. The prize fund was exhausted in due course and disbanded in 1976. In 1990, the award was re-established and has dispensed $25,000 annually. In 1998, the Marian Anderson Award prize money was restructured to be given to an established artist, not necessarily a singer, who exhibits leadership in a humanitarian area.

See also

 List of African American firsts
 List of rallies and protest marches in Washington, D.C.
 Marian Anderson House

References

Sources

Bibliography
 Arsenault, Raymond, The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert that Awakened America. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009. .
 Freedman, Russell, The Voice that Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights. New York: Clarion Books, 2004. .
 Sims-Wood, Janet L, Marian Anderson: An Annotated Bibliography and Discography. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1981. .

  Forgotten Books, 2018, .

Biographical entries
 FemBio, "Marian Anderson"
 Hamilton, David. (1987). The Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia: A Comprehensive Guide to the World of Opera. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Tokyo: Simon and Schuster, p. 22. .
 Hamilton, Mary. (1990). A–Z of Opera. New York, Oxford, Sydney: Facts On File, p. 17. .
 Carlton Higginbotham, "Biography of Marian Anderson"
 Kennedy Center, "Biography of Marian Anderson"
 Rosenthal, Harold and John Warrack (1979, 2nd ed.). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera. London, New York and Melbourne: Oxford University Press, p. 11. .
 Sadie, Stanley and Christina Bashford (1992). The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Vol. 1, p. 123. .
 Sadie, Stanley and John Tyrrell. (2001).The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Vol. 1, p. 615. .
 Virtual Museum of History, "Marian Anderson"
 Warrack, John and Ewan West (1996). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, p. 13. .

Selected discography

 Marian Anderson on Discography of American Historical Recordings
 Marian Anderson: Biography and Bach Cantatas Recordings on Bach Cantatas

External links

 Marian Anderson Historical Society
 The singer's former practice studio, now the Marian Anderson Studio, relocated to the Danbury Museum and Historical Society
 Metropolitan Opera performances (MetOpera database)

 PBS American Masters "Marian Anderson: The Whole World in Her Hands"
 Marian Anderson Papers in the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Special Collection
 University of Pennsylvania exhibitions and collections:
 Online exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania Library, largest online collection of images, includes Anderson's papers, audio and film archives.
 Marian Anderson papers, supplementary records, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania
 Diaries and Notebooks of Marian Anderson, From the Page, University of Pennsylvania
 Marian Anderson, FBI file

 Voice of America segment on Marian Anderson (click on mp3 link)

1897 births
1993 deaths
20th-century African-American women singers
20th-century American women opera singers
African-American women opera singers
American contraltos
Burials at Eden Cemetery (Collingdale, Pennsylvania)
Classical musicians from Pennsylvania
Congressional Gold Medal recipients
EMI Classics and Virgin Classics artists
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
George Peabody Medal winners
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Kennedy Center honorees
Litteris et Artibus recipients
Musicians from Philadelphia
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
RCA Records artists
Singers from Pennsylvania
South Philadelphia High School alumni
Spingarn Medal winners
Victor Records artists

Marian Anderson


Port Louis (, ;  or , ) is the capital city of Mauritius. It is mainly located in the Port Louis District, with a small western part in the Black River District. Port Louis is the country's financial and political centre, and most populous city. It is administered by the Municipal City Council of Port Louis. According to the 2018 census conducted by Statistics Mauritius, the population was 147,066.

History

Port Louis was used as a harbour by the Dutch settlers from 1606, when they started to refer to the area as Harbour of Tortoises. In 1736, under French government, it became the administrative centre of Mauritius and a major reprovisioning halt for French ships during their passage between Asia and Europe, around the Cape of Good Hope.
The Port is named in honour of King Louis XV. During this period of French colonization, Mauritius was known as Ile de France. The French governor at that time, Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais, contributed to the development of the city. Since Port Louis was relatively well-protected from strong winds during cyclones by the Moka Mountain Range, Port Louis was selected to house both the main harbor and fort for the island. The value of the port continued during the British occupation of the island during the Napoleonic Wars (1800–15), and helped Britain control the Indian Ocean. However, port calls of ships fell drastically following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Activity in the port increased during the seven-year closure of the Suez Canal (starting in 1967). Modernization of the port in the late 1970s has helped it maintain its role as the central point for all imports and exports from Mauritius. While Port Louis continues to be the business and administrative capital of Mauritius, expansion of the tourism industry in the late 1990s led to considerable development in Port Louis, with many shops, hotels, and restaurants being built in the Caudan Waterfront area.

Raouf Oderuth, the Mauritian Artist provides a 1930s scene depicting the waterfront when motorised transportation hardly existed. Place D'Armes is still recognisable despite high-rise buildings, heavy traffic jams, and crowds of pedestrians.

Government

The local governance of Port Louis is overseen by a municipal council. The City Council of Port Louis was first established in 1830 and is currently one of five municipal councils responsible for the urban areas in Mauritius, as organized under Local Government Act 2011. Twenty-four councillors are elected democratically to administer the council. Councillors then elect a Lord Mayor and a Deputy Lord Mayor. Functions of the council are performed through Departments of Administration, Finance, Land Use and Planning, Public Infrastructure, Public Health, Welfare, Parks and Gardens, and the City Library. Services delivered by the local government include preschool, kindergarten, and vocational schools, health protection, housing regulation, road services, refuse collection, cemeteries, some environmental and consumer protection services, and economic promotion activities. Other services are provided to the city by the central government. These include police services through the Mauritius Police Force, which maintains two divisions responsible for the Port Louis area (Metropolitan Divisions North and South).  There is also a specific Port Police, composed of the Harbour Police and Bulk Sugar Terminal Police. Their roles include providing security to cargo and facilities in the port area and enforcing laws related to harbour regulations, customs, quarantine, immigration, and drug trafficking.

Port Louis is divided into different suburbs including but not limited to:

 Bell-Village
 Borstal
 Camp Yoloff
 Cassis
 Champ-de-Mars
 Cité La Cure
 Cité Vallijee
 Grande-Rivière-Nord-Ouest
 La Tour Koënig
 Pailles
 Plaine Lauzun
 Plaine-Verte
 Pointe-aux-Sables
 Roche-Bois
 Sainte-Croix
 Tranquebar
 Vallée-des-Prêtres
 Vallée-Pitot

Port Louis is electorally divided into 8 Wards each with 3 Councillors.

Climate
Owing to its location in the rain shadow of the southeast trade winds, Port Louis features a tropical savanna climate (Aw) under Köppen's climate classification. Its wettest months are from December through April where on average  (or more) of rainfall. The remaining months form Port Louis' dry season. The city also shows a noticeable but small range of average temperatures. Port Louis' coolest temperatures are seen mid-year where average high temperatures are around . During the height of the wet season, the city sees its highest temperatures where average high temperatures are usually around .

Economy

The economy of the city is mostly dominated by its financial centre, port facilities, tourism, and the manufacturing sector which includes textiles, chemicals, plastics and pharmaceuticals. Port Louis is home to the biggest port facility in the Indian Ocean region and one of Africa's major financial centres.

Finance industry

Port Louis is the financial centre of Mauritius, which has established itself as safe and trusted location for conducting business due to its strong democracy, political stability, and multilingual population. Located in Port Louis is the Stock Exchange of Mauritius. Also in Port Louis are over ten commercial banks that serve both domestic and offshore clients, insurance companies, pension funds, mutual funds, leasing companies, and foreign exchange dealers. The oldest bank based in Port Louis is the Mauritius Commercial Bank, which was founded in 1838.  The Bank of Mauritius is the central bank of the country. Measuring  from ground level to its pinnacle, the Bank of Mauritius Tower is the tallest building in the country.

Transportation
Port Louis is served by two major bus stations. Victoria Station is used by buses to and from the eastern and southern areas and the Plaines Wilhems district. Immigration Square, also known as Gare du Nord, is a terminus for buses coming from the northern districts of Pamplemousses and Rivière du Rempart. A number of inter-city buses carry passengers to and from nearby suburbs such as Plaine Verte, Vallée-des-Prêtres, Pailles, Plaine Lauzun, and Cite Vallijee.
Most streets in Port Louis are laid out in rectangular grids, and many are one-way. Although most roads are in good shape, many streets are fairly narrow as would be expected for a historic colonial town.  Due to the daily influx of workers to business and government offices in Port Louis, day-time traffic can be quite heavy and finding parking spaces a challenge. To cope with increasing traffic congestion, the government has proposed a light rail transit system. Other suggestions have included moving some of the 24 government ministries currently located in Port Louis to surrounding regions or introducing flexible work schedules. An effort to move workers from the city centre has already started with the construction of the Ebène office tower complex south of Port Louis.  A ring road passing on the east side of Port Louis is also expected to reduce congestion.  Phase 1 of that project was completed in 2013, but in February 2014 the road needed to be closed due to the appearance of a major crack, apparently due to faulty design. Another project initiated to reduce congestion is the construction of a bridge (commonly referred to as the "Dream Bridge") from Les Salines to Roche-Bois, which will span the Port Louis harbour.

Light rail transit system
In 2012, the government decided to construct an approximately 25 km rail system between Curepipe and Port Louis, which had been under consideration for nearly three decades. The project was initiated by a government-to-government agreement with the Singapore Cooperation Enterprise (SCE), along with private partners Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (SMRT) Corporation and the South African/Australian engineering firm Aurecon Ltd.  The goal was to develop a preliminary plan of the system, and then solicit expressions of interest for a design-build-operate-finance scheme, with a concession period of 33 years.

Construction for the light rail transit transport system began in the Fall of 2017, with the government of Mauritius awarding the contract to the Mumbai-based design and construction firm Larsen & Toubro. The first stage of Mauritius Metro Express, from Port Louis to Rose Hill Central, was opened in January 2020, the second stage, an extension to Curepipe, in October 2022.

Port

Port Louis is home to the nation's main harbour, which is the only official port of entry and exit for sea vessels in Mauritius. Ships must be cleared in the port before visiting any other anchorage in the island nation.

The Mauritius Ports Authority (MPA), established by law in 1998, is the port authority responsible for Port Louis. The MPA provides port infrastructure, enters into contracts with private providers for port and cargo-handling services, promotes the use and development of the ports, and licenses and regulates port and marine services. The harbour adjoins the main city, with the port currently comprising three terminals. Terminal I contains a total of 1180 meters of quay, with six berthing positions for cargo, passengers, and fishing boats.  Terminal II contains 986 meters of quays with six berthing positions and includes specialized facilities for handling and storing sugar, fish, tallow, and caustic soda.  In particular, the Bulk Sugar Terminal (operated by the Mauritius Sugar Terminal Corporation) can handle vessels with up to 11 meters of draft, can load sugar at a rate of 1450 tons per hour, and can store 175,000 tons of cargo.  Also present in Terminal II is a dedicated 124-meter cruise ship jetty, with a dredged depth of 10.8 metres.  Terminal III has two 280-meter quays with a depth of 14 meters, and is specialized for handling container ships, having three super-post-Panamax and five post-Panamax gantry cranes. Also present are storage facilities for bulk ethanol and tie-in points for reefer containers. Vessels too large to dock at the quays can anchor at the Outer Anchorage, which is still within the official boundaries of the port.
The number of ships visiting the port numbered over 2,200 annually in 2010. In 2019, cargo container capacity was 1 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units). Overall, the port contributes 2% to the country's GDP.

The cruise ship terminal, opened in 2010 and named after Christian Decotter (past chairman of the Mauritius Tourism Advisory Board), illustrates the increasing role of tourism in the economy of Mauritius. Cruise ships of up to 300 metres can be accommodated at the facility, which includes two access bridges for passengers and vehicles.  The facility was the first in the Indian Ocean to be capable of handling the largest cruise ships in the world.  In 2012, passenger arrivals by sea included 11,510 tourists and 6,450 excursionists who arrived aboard 23 cruise ships.

Berthing facilities are available at the Caudan Waterfront.  Available are 20 berths with electrical and water connections, showers and toilets, laundry, and vehicle parking.  Also available are dry dock and hull and sail repair facilities. Depths of the berths range from 2 to 4 meters, depending on the tide, and up to 30-metre ships can be accommodated.

Also based in the port is the National Coast Guard facility, at Quay A of Terminal I.

Airport
Port Louis is served by Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport, the hub of Air Mauritius, which is also served, among others, by Air France, Emirates, Saudia and Turkish Airlines.

Education

Primary and secondary schools in Port Louis include state-run and private institutions. Most private schools receive much of their support from the government, based on a formula where the government pays staff wages and operating expenses based on a grant formula.  Other costs are covered by students and their families, such as books and uniforms. The government also provides private schools with loans at preferential interest rates to help upgrade facilities. The state-affiliated schools include those operated by MEDCO (Mauritius Educational Development Company), which is a partnership between the Government of Mauritius and the State Investment Corporation.

Port-Louis houses several secondary schools which include Alpha College, Bhujoharry College, Labourdonnais College, Port Louis Academy, Loreto College, Madad Ul Islam Girls College, Muslim Girls College, City College, Full Day School, Institute of Islamic and Secular Studies, London College, Ocep The Open College, and Port Louis High School, MEDCO Trinity Secondary School, MEDCO Trinity Secondary School, Port Louis North SSS, and Sir Abdool Razack Mohammed SSS, Goolam Mohammed Dawjee Atchia State College, MEDCO Cassis Secondary School, Renganaden Seeneevassen SSS, Port Louis SSS and Royal College Port Louis. The state also operates a vocational school for boys, Immaculee Conception SSV.

The major institute of tertiary education in Port Louis is the University of Technology, Mauritius, a public university with a technology focus. The École de Medecine Louis Pasteur prepares students for medical studies at Universite de Lille in France. Several technical schools also have locations in the city, including the Jhurry Rya School which specializes in information technology, Appavoo Business School, Apollo Bramwell Nursing School, BSP School of Accountancy & Management, and the London College of Accountancy.

Architecture

The city is full of numerous buildings and monuments that reflect its rich and diverse colonial history. Near the city centre, there are several French colonial buildings that date to the 18th century, including the Government House.  Other prominent traditional elements include the Jummah Mosque, the majestic English Saint James Cathedral, the Indian Tamil Temple, the elegant five-tier colonial Port Louis Theatre (Théâtre de Port-Louis), the Champ de Mars Racecourse, and the nearby Chinese Pagoda.  Also present are some typical houses from past eras, which are mostly wooden structures with shuttered windows and large porches. However, many historic buildings are in a poor state of repair and are being quickly replaced with homes and commercial structures constructed from more durable but less sustainable materials such as concrete, and the city now includes many glass/concrete high-rises.

Chinatown

The Pagoda is a central feature of the Port Louis Chinatown, which is one of several Chinatowns in Africa.  Its entrance is marked by a large "friendship" gate, just east of the Central Market.  The site was the traditional location of homes and shops of the Chinese community, which was dominated by descendants of the Hakka Chinese, who first came to Mauritius in 1826.

Chinatown is now home to a more diverse community, but preserves its original appearance and contains many small shops and restaurants.  Its old buildings and Chinese pagodas face the modern buildings of the city's business centre.  The Chinese Chamber of Commerce (founded in 1908 and second only to Singapore as the world's oldest) hosts a popular food and cultural festival each April or May.  The Chamber also runs a funeral parlour for the Chinese Community called 'Kit Lok', to provide vigil facilities for bereaved families.

Culture

Port Louis has been an active cultural city attracting painters, poets, sculptors, and writers for centuries. Marie-Thérèse Humbert wrote her famous novel, La Montagne des Signaux, with Port-Louis in mind. Malcolm de Chazal was a common Mauritian visionary writer and painter who was often seen in the capital, mostly at the central market, Champ de Mars and l'hôtel National. Robert Edouard-Hart, a great poet found in this very active city a source of inspiration. Port-Louis-born poet and semiologist Khal Torabully, the foremost poet of indenture and coolitude, recently designed Travellers' Lane at the Jardin de la Compagnie, inaugurated by Navin Ramgoolam, the Mauritian Prime Minister and the Parcours Culturel with aphorisms of Malcolm de Chazal, just facing the famous Port Louis Theatre. That theater, still in use and catering mostly to presentations of classical music, jazz, and local drama, has a distinguished history that includes the first presentation of opera on the island in the 19th century by travelling European troupes.

More modern entertainment facilities in Port Louis include several cinemas, in which most films are presented in French and English. Recently opened in Paille, a suburb of Port Louis, is the ultra-modern Swami Vivekananda International Convention Centre. It is the first such facility in Mauritius and is used to house conventions, concerts, trade shows, and exhibitions.
English is currently the official language of Port Louis and Mauritius.

Museums

The Blue Penny Museum is located at the Caudan Waterfront, and is dedicated to the history and art of the island.  Its collection includes antique marine maps, paintings, sculptures, engravings, and stamps, including examples of the famous orange-red one penny and deep blue two-pence stamps. The Natural History Museum of Port Louis houses exhibits of the impressive fauna of Mauritius, with a gallery devoted to birds and terrestrial animals, a second focusing on marine species, and a third focused on the dodo, the famous Mauritian bird which became extinct during the Dutch occupation. The Mauritius Postal Museum is housed in an old stone building that dates to the 18th century, and houses displays of stamps and postal paraphernalia from Mauritius and around the world.  The Mauritius Photography Museum, located in a small 18th-century white-washed French colonial building, is a private museum that displays artifacts and documents about Mauritian photography and the early days of cinematography. The Aapravasi Ghat is the remains of the immigration depot that was built by the British Government to import labourers from India, Eastern Africa, Madagascar, China, and Southeast Asia to work on the island's sugar estates.  Although not a museum in a traditional sense, the National Library of Mauritius houses a rich and comprehensive collection of material related to Mauritius history, including manuscripts, books, newspapers, periodicals, music scores, photographs, maps, drawings, and other graphic art forms and audiovisual materials, in addition to providing the traditional services of a library to residents of the city and nation.

Places of worship
The most common places of worship are Hindu temples. There are also Christian churches and temples : Roman Catholic Diocese of Port-Louis (Catholic Church), Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean (Anglican Communion), Assemblies of God and Muslim mosques.

Sports

Sports are popular among the inhabitants of Port Louis, as in the rest of Mauritius.  Over 35 sports federations are organized under the aegis of the Mauritius Sports Council. Popular activities include football, volleyball, a range of martial arts (Karate, Taekwon Do, Wushu), table tennis, badminton, and pétanque, which is a form of boules.  The Mauritius National Olympic committee is also based in Port Louis.  Public sports facilities in Port Louis include St. François Xavier stadium, which is used for football.  There is however a general dearth of public facilities in Port Louis proper, with most being built in the surrounding less-densely inhabited suburbs and districts.

Football clubs are organized nationwide by the Mauritius Football Association, which currently has ten teams in its Premier League. This includes the Port Louis team, named the Association Sportive Port-Louis 2000 (AS Port-Louis 2000), which won the national championship in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2011.

Another popular sports activity in Port Louis is the Thoroughbred horse races held at the Champ de Mars Racecourse, which is the second oldest horse race track in the world.  Gambling on the horse races can be done both with bookies and the tote, available at multiple locations inside the grandstand.

Gambling, in general, is a popular "sport" in Port Louis. Besides the racecourse, within Port Louis gambling can be done in four casinos that offer table games plus gaming, slot, and video poker machines. Port Louis includes the largest casino in the entire country of Mauritius, the Caudan Waterfront Casino at Labourdonnais Waterfront Hotel. Other casinos are the Le Grand Casino du Domaine, L'Amicale Casino, and the Senator Club.

Twin towns – sister cities

Port Louis is twinned with:

 Alexandria, Egypt
 Antsiranana, Madagascar
 Dakar, Senegal
 Doha, Qatar
 Foshan, China
 Karachi, Pakistan
 La Possession, Réunion, France
 Lamentin, Guadeloupe, France
 Maputo, Mozambique
 Port Mathurin, Mauritius
 Pretoria, South Africa
 Saint-Malo, France

Notable people

 Eugénie Poujade (1814-1881), writer and poet

See also

 List of places in Mauritius
 Port Louis District
 World Hindi Secretariat

References

External links

Ports and harbours of the Indian Ocean
Populated places established in the 1730s
1730s establishments in Africa
Capitals in Africa
Populated coastal places in Mauritius

Port Louis


Mineral wool is any fibrous material made by spinning or drawing molten mineral or rock materials such as slag and ceramics. Mineral wool was first made in 1840 in Wales by Edward Parry. Mineral wool has an average diameter of 2 to 6 micrometers.

How mineral wool is made
Stone wool which is a type of mineral wool is made by spinning molten rock in very fast spinning heads which is a bit like the way cotton candy is made. Mineral wool may contain a binder, often a terpolymer, and an oil to reduce dusting.

Uses
Mineral wool is used as insulators and sound absorbers. It is used in resin bonded panels, as filler in compounds for gaskets, in brake pads, in plastics in the automotive industry, as a filtering medium, and as a growth medium in hydroponics.

References

Synthetic materials
Fibers

Mineral wool


A banyan (or 'banian') is a kind of fig. It usually starts life by growing on another plant as an epiphyte. Its seeds germinate in the cracks and crevices on a host tree, or on other structures like buildings and bridges.

"Banyan" usually means the Indian banyan or Ficus benghalensis. It is the National tree of the Republic of India. and of Bangladesh. However, the term actually includes all figs which share their epiphytic life cycle. They are put in the subgenus Urostigma.  The seeds of banyans are dispersed by fruit-eating birds. The seeds germinate and send down roots towards the ground. These roots may envelop (cover) part of the host tree or building structure, from which they get the casual name of strangler fig.

A number of tropical forest species grow by strangling. There are other examples in the genus Ficus that competes for light. Any Ficus species showing this habit may be termed a strangler fig.

The leaves of the banyan tree are large, leathery, glossy green and elliptical in shape. Like most of the fig-trees, the leaf bud is covered by two large scales. As the leaf develops the scales fall. Young leaves have an attractive reddish tinge.

Older banyan trees have aerial prop roots that grow into thick woody trunks which, with age, can become indistinguishable from the main trunk. Old trees can spread out laterally using these prop roots to cover a wide area.

Like other Fig species (including the common edible fig Ficus carica), banyans have unique fruit structures and are dependent on fig wasps for reproduction.

The fatal embrace
Once the roots get to the ground, they suck up nutrients and grow faster and thicker. They cover the trunk of the host tree, and their leaves and branches in the canopy block the light from the host. Lacking enough nutrition and light, the host tree eventually dies. Its wood is destroyed by beetles, termites and fungi. Only the hollow space inside the banyan remains. The banyan roots make a huge cylinder, and it stands up perfectly well.

Often the banyan tree is formed from several different fruits which germinated on the same host tree. This has been proved by genome analysis.p170

References

Trees
Moraceae
Epiphytes
National symbols of India
National symbols of Bangladesh

Banyan


The bunny hop is typically one of the first jumps learned by beginning figure skaters. It is a non-rotational jump performed while skating forward in a straight line.

The skater approaches the jump by stroking forward in a straight line, steps onto the left foot, then jumps up off the ice with the right leg scissoring forward and up past the left leg. The landing is on the toe picks of the right foot, immediately pushing onto the left foot. It is possible to do bunny hops in series on the same foot, or to alternate feet.

In addition to being used to introduce beginners to jumping, bunny hops are sometimes used by advanced skaters as a connecting move or as a small leap for choreographic effect.

Figure skating elements

Bunny hop jump


Brady bonds are dollar-denominated bonds, issued mostly by Latin American countries in the late 1980s. The bonds were named after  U.S. Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, who proposed a novel debt-reduction agreement for developing countries.

History
Brady bonds were created in March 1989 to convert bank loans, mostly in Latin America, into a variety or "menu" of new bonds after many countries defaulted on their debt in the 1980s. At the time, the market for emerging markets'  sovereign debt was small and illiquid, and the standardization of emerging-market debt facilitated risk-spreading and trading. In exchange for commercial bank loans, the countries issued new bonds for the principal sum and, in some cases, unpaid interest. Because they were tradable and came with some guarantees, they were sometimes more valuable to the creditors than the original bonds.

The key innovation behind the introduction of Brady Bonds was to allow the commercial banks to exchange their claims on developing countries into tradable instruments, allowing them to get the debt off their balance sheets. This reduced the concentration risk to those banks.

In the second round, creditors converted their existing claims into their choice among the "menu" of options agreed upon in the first round. The penalties for creditors failing to comply with the terms of the deal were never made explicit. Nevertheless, compliance was not an important problem under the Brady Plan. Banks wishing to cease their foreign lending activities tended to choose the exit option under the auspices of the deal.

By offering a "menu" of options, the Brady Plan permitted credit restructurings to be tailored to the heterogeneous preferences of creditors. The terms achieved under the deals indicate that debtors used the menu approach to reduce the cost of debt reduction. Furthermore, it reduced the holdout problem in which certain shareholders have an incentive not to participate in the restructuring in the hope of getting a better deal.

The principal amount was usually collateralized by specially issued US Treasury 30-year zero-coupon bonds purchased by the debtor country using a combination of International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the country's own foreign currency reserves. Interest payments on Brady bonds, in some cases, are guaranteed by securities of at least double-A-rated credit quality held with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Countries that participated in the initial round of issuing Brady bonds were Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

Participating countries were to liberalize their economies in order to qualify for Brady Bonds.

The Brady Bonds were credited for resolving the Latin American debt crisis, but did not prevent future looming debt crises.

Types
There were two main types of Brady bonds:
Par bonds were issued to the same value as the original loan, but the coupon on the bonds is below market rate; principal and interest payments are usually guaranteed.
Discount bonds were issued at a discount to the original value of the loan, but the coupon is at market rate; principal and interest payments are usually guaranteed.

Other, less common, types include front-loaded interest-reduction bonds (FLIRB), new-money bonds, debt-conversion bonds (DCB), and past-due interest bonds (PDI). Brady Bond negotiations generally involved some form of "haircut." In other words, the value of the bonds resulting from the restructurings was less than the face value of the claims before the restructurings.

Guarantees attached to Brady bonds included collateral to guarantee the principal, rolling interest guarantees, and value recovery rights. Not all Brady bonds would necessarily have all those forms of guarantee, and the specifics would vary from issuance to issuance.

Current status
Although the Brady bond process ended during the 1990s, many of the innovations introduced in these restructurings (call options embedded in the bonds, "stepped" coupons, pars and discounts) were retained in the later sovereign restructurings in, for example, Russia and Ecuador. The latter country, in 1999, became the first country to default on its Brady bonds. In 2003, Mexico became the first country to retire its Brady debt. The Philippines bought back all of its Brady bonds in May 2007, joining Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico as countries that have retired the bonds.

See also
 Debt
 Debt relief
 Sovereign default

References

External links
 Treasury press release on Mexico retiring its Brady bonds
 IMF press release on Mexico retiring its Brady bonds
 BBC story on Ecuadorean default
 Collective Action Difficulties in Foreign Lending: Banks and Bonds (FRBSF)

1989 in international relations
Bonds in foreign currencies
Economic history of the United States
Government bonds
History of the foreign relations of the United States

Brady Bonds


Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) is the synthetic polymer derived from methyl methacrylate. It is used as an engineering plastic, and it is a transparent thermoplastic. PMMA is also known as acrylic, acrylic glass, as well as by the trade names and brands Crylux, Hesalite, Plexiglas, Acrylite, Lucite, and Perspex, among several others (see below). This plastic is often used in sheet form as a lightweight or shatter-resistant alternative to glass. It can also be used as a casting resin, in inks and coatings, and for many other purposes.

It is often technically classified as a type of glass, in that it is a non-crystalline vitreous substance—hence its occasional historic designation as acrylic glass.

History

The first acrylic acid was created in 1843. Methacrylic acid, derived from acrylic acid, was formulated in 1865. The reaction between methacrylic acid and methanol results in the ester methyl methacrylate.

It was developed in 1928 in several different laboratories by many chemists, such as William R. Conn, Otto Röhm, and Walter Bauer, and first brought to market in 1933 by German Röhm & Haas AG (as of January 2019, part of Evonik Industries) and its partner and former U.S. affiliate Rohm and Haas Company under the trademark Plexiglas.

Polymethyl methacrylate was discovered in the early 1930s by British chemists Rowland Hill and John Crawford at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in the United Kingdom.  ICI registered the product under the trademark Perspex. About the same time, chemist and industrialist Otto Röhm of Röhm and Haas AG in Germany attempted to produce safety glass by polymerizing methyl methacrylate between two layers of glass. The polymer separated from the glass as a clear plastic sheet, which Röhm gave the trademarked name Plexiglas in 1933. Both Perspex and Plexiglas were commercialized in the late 1930s. In the United States, E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company (now DuPont Company) subsequently introduced its own product under the trademark Lucite. In 1936 ICI Acrylics (now Lucite International) began the first commercially viable production of acrylic safety glass. During World War II both Allied and Axis forces used acrylic glass for submarine periscopes and aircraft windscreen, canopies, and gun turrets. Civilian applications followed after the war.

Names

Common orthographic stylings include polymethyl methacrylate and polymethylmethacrylate. The full IUPAC chemical name is poly(methyl 2-methylpropenoate). (It is a common mistake to use "an" instead of "en".)

Although PMMA is often called simply "acrylic", acrylic can also refer to other polymers or copolymers containing polyacrylonitrile. Notable trade names and brands include Hesalite (when used in Omega watches), Acrylite, Lucite, PerClax, R-Cast, Plexiglas, Optix, Perspex, Oroglas, Altuglas, Cyrolite, Astariglas, Cho Chen, Sumipex, and Crystallite.

PMMA is an economical alternative to polycarbonate (PC) when tensile strength, flexural strength, transparency, polishability, and UV tolerance are more important than impact strength, chemical resistance, and heat resistance. Additionally, PMMA does not contain the potentially harmful bisphenol-A subunits found in polycarbonate and is a far better choice for laser cutting. It is often preferred because of its moderate properties, easy handling and processing, and low cost. Non-modified PMMA behaves in a brittle manner when under load, especially under an impact force, and is more prone to scratching than conventional inorganic glass, but modified PMMA is sometimes able to achieve high scratch and impact resistance.

Properties

PMMA is a strong, tough, and lightweight material. It has a density of 1.17–1.20 g/cm3, which is less than half that of glass. It also has good impact strength, higher than both glass and polystyrene, but significantly lower than polycarbonate and some engineered polymers. PMMA ignites at  and burns, forming carbon dioxide, water, carbon monoxide, and low-molecular-weight compounds, including formaldehyde.

PMMA transmits up to 92% of visible light (3 mm thickness), and gives a reflection of about 4% from each of its surfaces due to its refractive index (1.4905 at 589.3 nm). It filters ultraviolet (UV) light at wavelengths below about 300 nm (similar to ordinary window glass). Some manufacturers add coatings or additives to PMMA to improve absorption in the 300–400 nm range. PMMA passes infrared light of up to 2,800 nm and blocks IR of longer wavelengths up to 25,000 nm. Colored PMMA varieties allow specific IR wavelengths to pass while blocking visible light (for remote control or heat sensor applications, for example).

PMMA swells and dissolves in many organic solvents; it also has poor resistance to many other chemicals due to its easily hydrolyzed ester groups. Nevertheless, its environmental stability is superior to most other plastics such as polystyrene and polyethylene, and therefore it is often the material of choice for outdoor applications.

PMMA has a maximum water absorption ratio of 0.3–0.4% by weight. Tensile strength decreases with increased water absorption. Its coefficient of thermal expansion is relatively high at (5–10)×10−5 °C−1.

The Futuro house was made of fibreglass-reinforced polyester plastic, polyester-polyurethane, and poly(methylmethacrylate); one of them was found to be degrading by cyanobacteria and Archaea.

PMMA can be joined using cyanoacrylate cement (commonly known as superglue), with heat (welding), or by using chlorinated solvents such as dichloromethane or trichloromethane (chloroform) to dissolve the plastic at the joint, which then fuses and sets, forming an almost invisible weld. Scratches may easily be removed by polishing or by heating the surface of the material. Laser cutting may be used to form intricate designs from PMMA sheets. PMMA vaporizes to gaseous compounds (including its monomers) upon laser cutting, so a very clean cut is made, and cutting is performed very easily. However, the pulsed lasercutting introduces high internal stresses, which on exposure to solvents produce undesirable "stress-crazing" at the cut edge and several millimetres deep. Even ammonium-based glass-cleaner and almost everything short of soap-and-water produces similar undesirable crazing, sometimes over the entire surface of the cut parts, at great distances from the stressed edge. Annealing the PMMA sheet/parts is therefore an obligatory post-processing step when intending to chemically bond lasercut parts together.

In the majority of applications, it will not shatter. Rather, it breaks into large dull pieces. Since PMMA is softer and more easily scratched than glass, scratch-resistant coatings are often added to PMMA sheets to protect it (as well as possible other functions).

Pure poly(methyl methacrylate) homopolymer is rarely sold as an end product, since it is not optimized for most applications. Rather, modified formulations with varying amounts of other comonomers, additives, and fillers are created for uses where specific properties are required. For example,

 A small amount of acrylate comonomers are routinely used in PMMA grades destined for heat processing, since this stabilizes the polymer to depolymerization ("unzipping") during processing.
 Comonomers such as butyl acrylate are often added to improve impact strength.
 Comonomers such as methacrylic acid can be added to increase the glass transition temperature of the polymer for higher temperature use such as in lighting applications.
 Plasticizers may be added to improve processing properties, lower the glass transition temperature, improve impact properties, and improve mechanical properties such as elastic modulus
 Dyes may be added to give color for decorative applications, or to protect against (or filter) UV light.
 Fillers may be substituted to reduce cost.

Synthesis and processing

PMMA is routinely produced by emulsion polymerization, solution polymerization, and bulk polymerization. Generally, radical initiation is used (including living polymerization methods), but anionic polymerization of PMMA can also be performed.

The glass transition temperature (Tg) of atactic PMMA is .  The Tg values of commercial grades of PMMA range from ; the range is so wide because of the vast number of commercial compositions that are copolymers with co-monomers other than methyl methacrylate.  PMMA is thus an organic glass at room temperature; i.e., it is below its Tg.  The forming temperature starts at the glass transition temperature and goes up from there.  All common molding processes may be used, including injection molding, compression molding, and extrusion.  The highest quality PMMA sheets are produced by cell casting, but in this case, the polymerization and molding steps occur concurrently.  The strength of the material is higher than molding grades owing to its extremely high molecular mass. Rubber toughening has been used to increase the toughness of PMMA to overcome its brittle behavior in response to applied loads.

Applications

Being transparent and durable, PMMA is a versatile material and has been used in a wide range of fields and applications such as rear-lights and instrument clusters for vehicles, appliances, and lenses for glasses. PMMA in the form of sheets affords to shatter resistant panels for building windows, skylights, bulletproof security barriers, signs & displays, sanitary ware (bathtubs), LCD screens, furniture and many other applications.  It is also used for coating polymers based on MMA provides outstanding stability against environmental conditions with reduced emission of VOC.  Methacrylate polymers are used extensively in medical and dental applications where purity and stability are critical to performance.

Glass substitute

 PMMA is commonly used for constructing residential and commercial aquariums. Designers started building large aquariums when poly(methyl methacrylate) could be used. It is less often used in other building types due to incidents such as the Summerland disaster.
 PMMA is used for viewing ports and even complete pressure hulls of submersibles, such as the Alicia submarine's viewing sphere and the window of the bathyscaphe Trieste.
 PMMA is used in the lenses of exterior lights of automobiles.
 Spectator protection in ice hockey rinks is made from PMMA.
 Historically, PMMA was an important improvement in the design of aircraft windows, making possible such designs as the bombardier's transparent nose compartment in the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.  Modern aircraft transparencies often use stretched acrylic plies.
 Police vehicles for riot control often have the regular glass replaced with PMMA to protect the occupants from thrown objects.
 PMMA is an important material in the making of certain lighthouse lenses.
 PMMA was used for the roofing of the compound in the Olympic Park for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. It enabled a light and translucent construction of the structure.
 PMMA (under the brand name "Lucite") was used for the ceiling of the Houston Astrodome.

Daylight redirection

 Laser cut acrylic panels have been used to redirect sunlight into a light pipe or tubular skylight and, from there, to spread it into a room. Their developers Veronica Garcia Hansen, Ken Yeang, and Ian Edmonds were awarded the Far East Economic Review Innovation Award in bronze for this technology in 2003.
 Attenuation being quite strong for distances over one meter (more than 90% intensity loss for a 3000 K source), acrylic broadband light guides are then dedicated mostly to decorative uses.
 Pairs of acrylic sheets with a layer of microreplicated prisms between the sheets can have reflective and refractive properties that let them redirect part of incoming sunlight in dependence on its angle of incidence. Such panels act as miniature light shelves. Such panels have been commercialized for purposes of daylighting, to be used as a window or a canopy such that sunlight descending from the sky is directed to the ceiling or into the room rather than to the floor. This can lead to a higher illumination of the back part of a room, in particular when combined with a white ceiling, while having a slight impact on the view to the outside compared to normal glazing.

Medicine

 PMMA has a good degree of compatibility with human tissue, and it is used in the manufacture of rigid intraocular lenses which are implanted in the eye when the original lens has been removed in the treatment of cataracts. This compatibility was discovered by the English ophthalmologist Harold Ridley in WWII RAF pilots, whose eyes had been riddled with PMMA splinters coming from the side windows of their Supermarine Spitfire fighters – the plastic scarcely caused any rejection, compared to glass splinters coming from aircraft such as the Hawker Hurricane. Ridley had a lens manufactured by the Rayner company (Brighton & Hove, East Sussex) made from Perspex polymerised by ICI. On 29 November 1949 at St Thomas' Hospital, London, Ridley implanted the first intraocular lens at St Thomas's Hospital in London.
In particular, acrylic-type lenses are useful for cataract surgery in patients that have recurrent ocular inflammation (uveitis), as acrylic material induces less inflammation.
 Eyeglass lenses are commonly made from PMMA.
 Historically, hard contact lenses were frequently made of this material. Soft contact lenses are often made of a related polymer, where acrylate monomers containing one or more hydroxyl groups make them hydrophilic.
 In orthopedic surgery, PMMA bone cement is used to affix implants and to remodel lost bone. It is supplied as a powder with liquid methyl methacrylate (MMA). Although PMMA is biologically compatible, MMA is considered to be an irritant and a possible carcinogen. PMMA has also been linked to cardiopulmonary events in the operating room due to hypotension. Bone cement acts like a grout and not so much like a glue in arthroplasty. Although sticky, it does not bond to either the bone or the implant; rather, it primarily fills the spaces between the prosthesis and the bone preventing motion. A disadvantage of this bone cement is that it heats up to  while setting that may cause thermal necrosis of neighboring tissue. A careful balance of initiators and monomers is needed to reduce the rate of polymerization, and thus the heat generated.
 In cosmetic surgery, tiny PMMA microspheres suspended in some biological fluid are injected as a soft-tissue filler under the skin to reduce wrinkles or scars permanently. PMMA as a soft-tissue filler was widely used in the beginning of the century to restore volume in patients with HIV-related facial wasting. PMMA is used illegally to shape muscles by some bodybuilders.
 Plombage is an outdated treatment of tuberculosis where the pleural space around an infected lung was filled with PMMA balls, in order to compress and collapse the affected lung.
 Emerging biotechnology and biomedical research use PMMA to create microfluidic lab-on-a-chip devices, which require 100 micrometre-wide geometries for routing liquids. These small geometries are amenable to using PMMA in a biochip fabrication process and offers moderate biocompatibility.
 Bioprocess chromatography columns use cast acrylic tubes as an alternative to glass and stainless steel. These are pressure rated and satisfy stringent requirements of materials for biocompatibility, toxicity, and extractables.

Dentistry
Due to its aforementioned biocompatibility, poly(methyl methacrylate) is a commonly used material in modern dentistry, particularly in the fabrication of dental prosthetics, artificial teeth, and orthodontic appliances.

 Acrylic prosthetic construction Pre-polymerized, powdered PMMA spheres are mixed with a Methyl Methacrylate liquid monomer, Benzoyl Peroxide (initiator), and NN-Dimethyl-P-Toluidine (accelerator), and placed under heat and pressure to produce a hardened polymerized PMMA structure. Through the use of injection molding techniques, wax based designs with artificial teeth set in predetermined positions built on gypsum stone models of patients' mouths can be converted into functional prosthetics used to replace missing dentition. PMMA polymer and methyl methacrylate monomer mix is then injected into a flask containing a gypsum mold of the previously designed prosthesis, and placed under heat to initiate polymerization process. Pressure is used during the curing process to minimize polymerization shrinkage, ensuring an accurate fit of the prosthesis. Though other methods of polymerizing PMMA for prosthetic fabrication exist, such as chemical and microwave resin activation, the previously described heat-activated resin polymerization technique is the most commonly used due to its cost effectiveness and minimal polymerization shrinkage.
 Artificial teeth While denture teeth can be made of several different materials, PMMA is a material of choice for the manufacturing of artificial teeth used in dental prosthetics. Mechanical properties of the material allow for heightened control of aesthetics, easy surface adjustments, decreased risk of fracture when in function in the oral cavity, and minimal wear against opposing teeth. Additionally, since the bases of dental prosthetics are often constructed using PMMA, adherence of PMMA denture teeth to PMMA denture bases is unparalleled, leading to the construction of a strong and durable prosthetic.

Art and aesthetics

 Acrylic paint essentially consists of PMMA suspended in water; however since PMMA is hydrophobic, a substance with both hydrophobic and hydrophilic groups needs to be added to facilitate the suspension.
 Modern furniture makers, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, seeking to give their products a space age aesthetic, incorporated Lucite and other PMMA products into their designs, especially office chairs. Many other products (for example, guitars) are sometimes made with acrylic glass to make the commonly opaque objects translucent.
 Perspex has been used as a surface to paint on, for example by Salvador Dalí.
 Diasec is a process which uses acrylic glass as a substitute for normal glass in picture frames. This is done for its relatively low cost, light weight, shatter-resistance, aesthetics and because it can be ordered in larger sizes than standard picture framing glass.
 As early as 1939, Los Angeles-based Dutch sculptor Jan De Swart experimented with samples of Lucite sent to him by DuPont; De Swart created tools to work the Lucite for sculpture and mixed chemicals to bring about certain effects of color and refraction.
 From approximately the 1960s onward, sculptors and glass artists such as Jan Kubíček, Leroy Lamis, and Frederick Hart began using acrylics, especially taking advantage of the material's flexibility, light weight, cost and its capacity to refract and filter light.
 In the 1950s and 1960s, Lucite was an extremely popular material for jewelry, with several companies specialized in creating high-quality pieces from this material. Lucite beads and ornaments are still sold by jewelry suppliers.
 Acrylic Sheets are produced in dozens of standard colors, most commonly sold using color numbers developed by Rohm & Haas in the 1950s.

Methyl methacrylate "synthetic resin" for casting (simply the bulk liquid chemical) may be used in conjunction with a polymerization catalyst such as methyl ethyl ketone peroxide (MEKP), to produce hardened transparent PMMA in any shape, from a mold. Objects like insects or coins, or even dangerous chemicals in breakable quartz ampules, may be embedded in such "cast" blocks, for display and safe handling.

Other uses

 PMMA, in the commercial form Technovit 7200 is used vastly in the medical field. It is used for plastic histology, electron microscopy, as well as many more uses.
 PMMA has been used to create ultra-white opaque membranes that are flexible and switch appearance to transparent when wet.
 Acrylic is used in tanning beds as the transparent surface that separates the occupant from the tanning bulbs while tanning. The type of acrylic used in tanning beds is most often formulated from a special type of polymethyl methacrylate, a compound that allows the passage of ultraviolet rays.
 Sheets of PMMA are commonly used in the sign industry to make flat cut out letters in thicknesses typically varying from . These letters may be used alone to represent a company's name and/or logo, or they may be a component of illuminated channel letters.  Acrylic is also used extensively throughout the sign industry as a component of wall signs where it may be a backplate, painted on the surface or the backside, a faceplate with additional raised lettering or even photographic images printed directly to it, or a spacer to separate sign components.
 PMMA was used in Laserdisc optical media. (CDs and DVDs use both acrylic and polycarbonate for impact resistance).
 It is used as a light guide for the backlights in TFT-LCDs.
 Plastic optical fiber used for short-distance communication is made from PMMA, and perfluorinated PMMA, clad with fluorinated PMMA, in situations where its flexibility and cheaper installation costs outweigh its poor heat tolerance and higher attenuation versus glass fiber.
 PMMA, in a purified form, is used as the matrix in laser dye-doped organic solid-state gain media for tunable solid state dye lasers.
 In semiconductor research and industry, PMMA aids as a resist in the electron beam lithography process. A solution consisting of the polymer in a solvent is used to spin coat silicon and other semiconducting and semi-insulating wafers with a thin film. Patterns on this can be made by an electron beam (using an electron microscope), deep UV light (shorter wavelength than the standard photolithography process), or X-rays. Exposure to these creates chain scission or (de-cross-linking) within the PMMA, allowing for the selective removal of exposed areas by a chemical developer, making it a positive photoresist. PMMA's advantage is that it allows for extremely high resolution patterns to be made. Smooth PMMA surface can be easily nanostructured by treatment in oxygen radio-frequency plasma and nanostructured PMMA surface can be easily smoothed by vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) irradiation.
 PMMA is used as a shield to stop beta radiation emitted from radioisotopes.
 Small strips of PMMA are used as dosimeter devices during the Gamma Irradiation process. The optical properties of PMMA change as the gamma dose increases, and can be measured with a spectrophotometer.
 A blacklight-reactive tattoo ink using PMMA microcapsules has been developed.
 In the 1960s, luthier Dan Armstrong developed a line of electric guitars and basses whose bodies were made completely of acrylic. These instruments were marketed under the Ampeg brand. Ibanez and B.C. Rich have also made acrylic guitars.
 Ludwig-Musser makes a line of acrylic drums called Vistalites, well known as being used by Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham.
 Artificial nails in the "acrylic" type often include PMMA powder.
 Some modern briar, and occasionally meerschaum, tobacco pipes sport stems made of Lucite.
 PMMA technology is utilized in roofing and waterproofing applications. By incorporating a polyester fleece sandwiched between two layers of catalyst-activated PMMA resin, a fully reinforced liquid membrane is created in situ.
 PMMA is a widely used material to create deal toys and financial tombstones.
 PMMA is used by the Sailor Pen Company of Kure, Japan, in their standard models of gold-nib fountain pens, specifically as the cap and body material.

See also

 Cast acrylic
 Organic laser
 Organic photonics
 Polycarbonate

References

External links

 Perspex Technical Properties
 Perspex Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS)

Acrylate polymers
Amorphous solids
Biomaterials
Commodity chemicals
Dental materials
Dielectrics
Engineering plastic
German inventions
Optical materials
Plastics
Thermoplastics
Transparent materials

Poly(methyl methacrylate)