astronomy

M. Crawford Young

M. Crawford Young is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand M. Crawford Young rather than just read about it. In short: Merwin Crawford Young (November 7, 1931 – January 22, 2020) was an American political scientist and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Education He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his PhD from Harvard in 1964, where his advisor was the famed scholar Rupert Emerson, the only person ever to serve as president of both the African Studies Association and the Asian Studies Association.

Key takeaways

M. Crawford Young belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect M. Crawford Young to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of M. Crawford Young from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Merwin Crawford Young (November 7, 1931 – January 22, 2020) was an American political scientist and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Education He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his PhD from Harvard in 1964, where his advisor was the famed scholar Rupert Emerson, the only person ever to serve as president of both the African Studies Association and the Asian Studies Association.

Academic career Young became an assistant professor at Wisconsin in 1963, and published his first major work, Politics in the Congo: Decolonization and Independence. He became prominent as the author in 1976 of the highly influential The Politics of Cultural Pluralism, which was awarded the Herskovits Prize by the African Studies Association. His 1994 book, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective, won the Lubbert Prize from the American Political Science Association as the best book written that year in the field of Comparative Politics. He held chairmanship of the UW–Madison political science department twice (1969–72; 1984–87), and was between 1973 and 1975 Dean of the Faculty of Social Science at the Université Nationale du Zaire. Young served as president of the African Studies Association in 1983. He retired in 2001 as a full professor but remained active in his field, publishing "The End of the Postcolonial State in Africa?" in the journal African Affairs in 2004. Young's primary contributions to political science have come from his work on the Zairian (and later, African) state and on the politics of cultural identity in the third world, which was theoretically innovative and presaged the contemporary "instrumentalist" and "constructivist" approaches to political identity.

Select publications Politics in the Congo: Decolonization and Independence, 1965 Issues of Political Development (with Charles Anderson and Fred von der Mehden), 1967 The Politics of Cultural Pluralism, 1976, University of Wisconsin Press Cooperatives and Development: Agricultural Politics in Ghana and Uganda (with Neal Sherman and Tim Rose), 1981 Ideology and Development in Africa, 1982, Yale University Press The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (with Thomas Turner), 1985, University of Wisconsin Press The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism: The Nation-State at Bay?, 1993, University of Wisconsin Press The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective, 1994, Yale University Press The Postcolonial State in Africa: Fifty Years of Independence, 1960–2010, 2012, University of Wisconsin Press

See also Lewis H. Gann, American political scientist focused on Africa and active in the 1960s and 1970s

References

https://www.polisci.wisc.edu/people/person.aspx?id=1094

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with M. Crawford Young

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what M. Crawford Young claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to M. Crawford Young before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about M. Crawford Young ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of M. Crawford Young

In research: M. Crawford Young appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses M. Crawford Young in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: M. Crawford Young is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1931 births, 2020 deaths, ASA Best Book Prize winners, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for M. Crawford Young outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study M. Crawford Young in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what M. Crawford Young means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain M. Crawford Young out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is M. Crawford Young in simple terms?

Merwin Crawford Young (November 7, 1931 – January 22, 2020) was an American political scientist and professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Education He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his PhD from Harvard in 1964, where his advisor was the famed scholar Rupert Emers…

Why does M. Crawford Young matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study M. Crawford Young?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on M. Crawford Young.