Chapbooks, containing prose versions of medieval romances, folk songs, and rederijkers ("rhetoricians") verse; Reformation propaganda; marching songs of the Calvinist revolt against Spain; these and the first sonnets, the first dissertations in the vernacular, and the first grammars of the Dutch language displayed the restlessness of an age of change.
Having taken his doctorate in 1919, he enrolled at the University of Frankfurt to write his Habilitationsschrift, the second dissertation required for teaching in a German university.
The third dissertation, by William Thomas Brande, professor of chemistry in the Royal Institution of Great Britain, was "Exhibiting a General View of the progress of Chemical philosophy from the early ages to the end of the eighteenth century".
This became the second dissertation, Playfair's took third place, and the fourth was newly written by Sir John Leslie, professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, titled "Exhibiting a General View of the Progress of Mathematical and Physical Science Chiefly During the Eighteenth century".
The second dissertation, "Exhibiting a General View of the Progress of Mathematical and Physical Science Since the Revival of Letters in Europe," was also left incomplete, after treating Newton, because of the death of the author, John Playfair, professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.
He published his first research article, on the radiating potentials of nitrogen gas, in 1919; this became the basis of his first dissertation.
It has been nearly half a century since the first Ph.D. dissertation on the game was written at Cornell by Harold Seymour in 1956.
The culture around Adventure, groups of people meeting late at night in campus computer labs, even inspired the first doctoral dissertation about a video game, "Interactive Fiction: The Computer Storygame Adventure" by Mary Ann Buckles.
From 1963-69, he worked with fellow academics to complete the first modern PhD dissertation in Romany linguistics.
