10th astronomer royal of England (1933-55), who organized a program that led to a more accurate determination of the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun.
New Zealand mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1990 for his study of functional analysis and knot theory. See the table of Fields Medalists.
city, Craighead county, northeastern Arkansas, U.S. It lies on Crowley's Ridge, bordering the Mississippi River valley, about 68 miles (109 km) northwest of Memphis, Tennessee. Founded as the county seat in 1859 and laid out by J.N. Burk on land ...
town, seat of Washington county, northeastern Tennessee, U.S. It lies just west of the northern portion of Cherokee National Forest, near Johnson City. Founded in 1779 as a planned community and named for Willie Jones, a North Carolina politician, it ...
former site of the People's Temple commune in northwestern Guyana, near the Venezuelan border. A religious cult group, the commune ended in 1978 when the cult's founder and leader, Jim Jones (q.v.), initiated a mass suicide in which 913 people ...
painter and printmaker whose small, informal landscapes continued the tradition of the Dutch landscapists while also stimulating the development of Impressionism.
professional storyteller or public entertainer in medieval France, often indistinguishable from the trouvere. The role of the jongleur included that of musician, juggler, and acrobat, as well as reciter of such literary works as the fabliaux, chansons de geste, lays, ...
city and capital of the lan (county) of Jonkoping, southern Sweden. It lies at the southern end of Lake Vatter and on the shores of Munk Lake and Rock Lake. In 1283 Franciscan monks built a monastery on this site, ...
lan (county) of southern Sweden, in Gotaland region. It extends southward from Lake Vatter through part of the traditional landskap (province) of Smaland. Jonkoping is the highest county of southern Sweden, with heights rising above 1,300 feet (400 m). Its ...
city, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, southern Quebec province, Canada. It lies along the Riviere aux Sables, a tributary of the Saguenay. Named after the Marquis de La Jonquiere, who was governor of New France (1749-52), it originated as an agricultural settlement in ...
English Stuart dramatist, lyric poet, and literary critic. He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I. Among his major plays are the comedies Every Man in His Humour ...
American corporate executive under whose management Texas Instruments Inc. became a leading electronics manufacturer. He also served as mayor of Dallas, Texas, from 1964 to 1971.
Flemish painter known for his portraits of royalty and his religious paintings. He is now often identified with the "Master of the Death of the Virgin."
city, Jasper and Newton counties, in the Ozark region of southwestern Missouri, U.S. It lies adjacent to Webb City, near the Kansas and Oklahoma borders. It was settled about 1840 by Tennesseean John Cox, who named it for his friend ...
in Norse mythology, a giantess, mother of the deity Thor and mistress of the god Odin. In the late pre-Christian era she was believed to have had a husband of the same name, perhaps indicating her transformation into a masculine ...
Arab country of Southwest Asia. It is a young state that occupies an ancient land associated with the Middle Eastern civilizations of antiquity. It is bounded to the north by Syria, to the east by Iraq, to the southeast and ...
river with the lowest elevation in the world. It rises on the slopes of Mount Hermon, on the Syrian-Lebanese border, flows southward through northern Israel to the Sea of Galilee, and then divides Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank on ...
Xhosa novelist and educator who belonged to the second generation of South African black writers (of which Es'kia Mphahlele and Peter Abrahams are the best known).
American lawyer, educator, and politician who served as U.S. congressional representative from Texas (1972-78). She was the first African American congresswoman to come from the Deep South.
French mathematician whose work on substitution groups (permutation groups) and the theory of equations first brought full understanding of the importance of the theories of the eminent mathematician Evariste Galois, who had died in 1832.
American saxophonist-singer prominent in the 1940s and '50s who was a seminal figure in the development of both rhythm and blues and rock and roll. The bouncing, rhythmic vitality of his music, coupled with clever lyrics and an engaging stage ...
American collegiate and professional basketball player, widely considered to be the greatest all-around player in the history of the game. He led the National Basketball Association (NBA) Chicago Bulls to six championships (1991-93, 1996-98).
German physicist who in the late 1920s founded (with Max Born and Werner Heisenberg) quantum mechanics and (with Wolfgang Pauli and Eugene Wigner) quantum electrodynamics. He also originated (concurrently with Robert Dicke) a theory of cosmology that proposed to make ...
American attorney, civil rights leader, business consultant, and influential power broker. Although he never held political office, Jordan served as a key adviser in the 1990s to U.S. President Bill Clinton, having befriended him and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, ...
writer known in Denmark mainly for his poetry (Digte 1894-98, 1898, and Udvalte Digte, 1944) but best known in other countries for his biographies of St. Francis of Assisi (1907) and St. Catherine of Siena (1915).
city, northeastern Assam state, northeastern India. Jorhat lies along a tributary of the Brahmaputra River. A road and rail junction, it is the commercial centre of a productive agricultural area. Jorhat is noted for jewelry manufacture and is the site ...
religious Reformer, a controversial and eccentric member of the Anabaptist movement. He founded the Davidists, or Jorists, who viewed Joris as a prophet and whose internal dissension led-three years after his death-to the sensational cremation of his body after his ...
Danish painter whose style, influenced by the Expressionist painters James Ensor of Belgium and Paul Klee of Switzerland, creates an emotional impact through the use of strong colours and distorted forms.
in Japanese literature and music, a type of chanted recitative; often the script for a bunraku (q.v.) puppet drama. Its name derives from the Jorurihime monogatari, a 15th-century romantic ballad, the leading character of which is Lady Joruri. At first ...
town, capital of Plateau state, on the Jos Plateau (altitude 4,250 feet [1,295 metres]) of central Nigeria, on the Delimi River and near the source of the Jamaari River (called the Bunga farther downstream). Formerly the site of Geash, a ...
tableland in Plateau State, central Nigeria, distinguished by its high bounding scarp and by bare grassland and embracing Africa's chief tin-mining region. Its central area covers about 3,000 sq mi (8,000 sq km) and has an average elevation of 4,200 ...
Hungarian pianist and teacher and one of the great performers of his day, admired for his subtlety of poetic expression and finely nuanced dynamic control.
also called Joselmann, or Joselin, Of Rosheim, or Joseph Ben Gershon Loans famous shtadlan (advocate who protected the interests and pled the cause of the Jewish people); through persistent legal exertions, he aborted many incipient acts of persecution.
Spanish matador, considered one of the greatest of all time. With Juan Belmonte he revolutionized the art of bullfighting in the second decade of the 20th century.
