Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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R Monocerotis ... Racine, Jean

R Monocerotis: (catalog number NGC 2261), stellar infrared source and nebula in the constellation Monoceros (Greek: Unicorn). The star, one of the class of dwarf stars called T Tauri variables, is immersed in a cloud of matter that changes in brightness erratically, ...
R.E.M.: American rock group, the quintessential band of the 1980s. The members were Michael Stipe (b. January 4, 1960, Decatur, Georgia, U.S., ), Peter Buck (b. December 6, 1956, Berkeley, California, ), Mike Mills (b. December 17, 1958, Orange, California, ...
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings: American manufacturer of tobacco products. The origins of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company date to the post-Civil War era, when Richard Joshua Reynolds (1850-1918) began trading in tobacco, first in his native Virginia and then in Winston, North Carolina, where ...
Ra: either of two papyrus boats with which the Norwegian scientist-explorer Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Atlantic in 1969-70 to demonstrate the possibility of cultural contact between early peoples of Africa and Central and South America. The first was built in Egypt ...
Ra's al-Khaymah: constituent emirate of the United Arab Emirates (formerly Trucial States, or Trucial Oman). It consists of two irregularly shaped tracts on the Oman Promontory, oriented north-south. The northern section shares the Ru'us al-Jibal peninsula with the sultanate of Oman and ...
Ra's Nasrani: small inlet and cape on the southeastern coast of the Sinai Peninsula. Located in Janub Sina' muhafazah (governorate), Egypt, Ra's Nasrani was occupied by the Israelis from 1967 to 1982. The Hebrew name is an allusion to King Solomon's fleets, ...
Ra-Shalom: asteroid whose orbit is the smallest of any such object so far discovered; it takes only 278 days to circle the Sun. Ra-Shalom was detected in 1978 by Eleanor Helin, a U.S. planetary scientist, at a distance of 29,000,000 kilometres ...
Raabe, Wilhelm: German writer best known for realistic novels of middle-class life.
Raaff, Anton: German operatic tenor, one of the foremost of his day.
Rab: island in the Adriatic Sea forming the northernmost part of Dalmatia in Croatia. With an area of 35 sq mi (91 sq km), it reaches a maximum altitude of 1,339 ft (408 m) at Mt. Kamenjak and comprises three ridges ...
rabab: Arab fiddle, the earliest known bowed instrument and the parent of the medieval European rebec. It was first mentioned in the 10th century and was prominent in medieval and later Arab art music. In medieval times the word rabab was ...
Rabanus Maurus: archbishop, Benedictine abbot, theologian, and scholar whose work so contributed to the development of German language and literature that he received the title Praeceptor Germaniae ("Teacher of Germany").
Rabassa, Gregory: American translator who was largely responsible for bringing the fiction of contemporary Latin America to the English-speaking public. Of his more than 30 translations from the Spanish and the Portuguese, perhaps the best known is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred ...
Rabat: town, west-central Malta, adjoining Mdina, west of Valletta. In Roman times the site of Mdina and Rabat was occupied by Melita, the island's capital. The modern names date from the Arab occupation of Malta, when Mdina was fortified and what ...
Rabat: national capital and one of Morocco's four imperial cities, on the Atlantic coast at the mouth of the Bou Regreg River, opposite the town of Sale.
rabato: wide, often lace-edged collar wired to stand up at the back of the head, worn by both men and women in the 16th and early 17th centuries. An example may be found in some of the portraits of Queen Elizabeth ...
Rabaul: chief town of the island of New Britain, Papua New Guinea, in the southwestern Pacific. It is situated on Simpson Harbour, part of Blanche Bay, on the Gazelle Peninsula.
Rabaut, Paul: Protestant minister and Reformer who succeeded Antoine Court (1696-1760) as the leader of the Huguenots (French Protestants).
rabbi: (Hebrew: "my teacher," or "my master"), in Judaism, a person qualified by academic studies of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud to act as spiritual leader and religious teacher of a Jewish community or congregation. Ordination (certification as a rabbi) ...
Rabbinic Judaism: the normative form of Judaism that developed after the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem (AD 70). Originating in the work of the Pharisaic rabbis, it was based on the legal and commentative literature in the Talmud, and it set ...
Rabbinical Assembly, The: organization of Conservative rabbis in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, and Israel. It was founded in 1900 as the Alumni Association of the Jewish Theological Seminary and was reorganized in 1940 as the Rabbinical Assembly of America; in ...
Rabbinical Council of America: organization of Orthodox rabbis, almost all of whom have received their rabbinical training in the United States. The council's chief aims have been to promote the study and practice of Orthodox Judaism, to defend the basic rights of Jews in ...
rabbit: any of 28 species of long-eared mammals belonging to the family Leporidae, excluding hares (genus Lepus). Frequently the terms rabbit and hare are used interchangeably, a practice that can cause confusion- jackrabbits, for instance, are actually hares, ...
rabbit hair: animal fibre obtained from the Angora rabbit and the various species of the common rabbit. Rabbits have coats consisting of both long, protective guard hairs and a fine insulating undercoat.
Rabbula: reforming bishop of Edessa and theologian who was a leading figure in the Christian church in Syria. He advocated the orthodox Alexandrian (Egypt) position in the 5th-century controversy with the Antiochian (Syria) school of Nestorianism, a heretical teaching that denied ...
Rabe, David: American playwright whose experiences as a draftee assigned to a hospital-support unit in Vietnam were the basis for several acclaimed dramas. His work is known for its use of grotesque humour, satire, and surreal fantasy.
Rabearivelo, Jean-Joseph: Malagasy writer, one of the most important of African poets writing in French, considered to be the father of modern literature in his native land.
Rabelais, Francois: French writer and priest who for his contemporaries was an eminent physician and humanist and for posterity is the author of the comic masterpiece Gargantua and Pantagruel. The four novels composing this work are outstanding for their rich use of ...
Rabemananjara, Jacques: Malagasy politician, playwright, and poet.
Rabi, Isidor Isaac: American physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944 for his invention (in 1937) of the atomic and molecular beam magnetic resonance method of observing atomic spectra.
Rabida Island: one of the Galapagos Islands, in the eastern Pacific Ocean, about 600 miles (965 km) west of Ecuador. The island has an area of about 1 square mile (3 square km) and is studded with several small volcanic craters. Originally ...
rabies: acute, ordinarily fatal, viral disease of the central nervous system that is usually spread among domestic dogs and wild carnivorous animals by a bite. All warm-blooded animals, including humans, are susceptible to rabies infection. The virus, a rhabdovirus, is often ...
Rabih az-Zubayr: Muslim military leader who established a military hegemony in the districts immediately east of Lake Chad.
Rabin, Yitzhak: Israeli statesman and soldier who, as prime minister of Israel (1974-77, 1992-95), led his country toward peace with its Palestinian and Arab neighbours. He was chief of staff of Israel's armed forces during the Six-Day War (June 1967). Along with ...
Rabulist riots: (1838), in Swedish history, wave of popular demonstrations in Stockholm that led to a loosening of Swedish government press censorship and furthered the fortunes of parliamentary government.
Raby, Al: African American civil rights activist, cochair of the Chicago Freedom Movement in the 1960s and campaign manager for Harold Washington, who became Chicago's first black mayor in 1983.
Racan, Honorat de Bueil, Seigneur de: French poet, one of the earliest members (1635) of the French Academy.
raccoon: any of seven species of nocturnal mammals characterized by bushy, ringed tails. The most common and well-known is the North American raccoon (Procyon lotor), which ranges from northern Canada and most of the United States southward into South America. It ...
raccoon dog: (Nyctereutes procyonoides), member of the dog family (Canidae) native to eastern Asia and introduced into Europe. Some authorities place it in the raccoon family, Procyonidae. It resembles the raccoon in having dark facial markings that contrast with its yellowish brown ...
race: the idea that the human species is divided into distinct groups on the basis of inherited physical and behavioral differences. Genetic studies in the late 20th century denied the existence of biogenetically distinct races, and scholars now argue that "races" ...
race, milieu, and moment: according to the French critic Hippolyte Taine, the three principal motives or conditioning factors behind any work of art. Taine sought to establish a scientific approach to literature through the investigation of what created the individual who created the work ...
racemate: a mixture of equal quantities of two enantiomorphs, or substances that have dissymmetric molecular structures that are mirror images of one another. Each enantiomorph rotates the plane of polarization of plane-polarized light through a characteristic angle, but, because the rotatory ...
racer: any of several large, swift snakes belonging to the family Colubridae. Blue racers are central and western North American subspecies of Coluber constrictor; they are plain bluish, greenish blue, gray, or brownish, sometimes with yellow bellies. The eastern subspecies is ...
racerunner: any of about 50 species of lizards that constitute the genus Cnemidophorus of the family Teiidae. They are the only genus of the family occurring in the United States, where they are common; their range extends southward to Argentina. Their ...
Rach Gia: port city, northern Ca Mau Peninsula, southern Vietnam. It lies at the head of Rach Gia Bay on the Gulf of Thailand, at the north bank of the Cai Lon estuary, 120 miles (195 km) southwest of Ho Chi Minh ...
Rachel, Mademoiselle: original name Elisa Felix French classical tragedienne who dominated the Comedie-Francaise for 17 years.
Rachidia, Er-: town, east-central Morocco. It is situated on the Saharan side of the Atlas Mountains near the frontier with Algeria. The town, which was occupied by the French from 1916 until the mid-1950s, is an irrigated oasis of date, olive, and ...
Rachmaninoff, Sergey: composer who was the last great figure of the tradition of Russian Romanticism and a leading piano virtuoso of his time. He is especially known for his piano concerti and the piece for piano and orchestra entitled
Raciborz: city, southwestern Slaskie wojewodztwo (province), south-central Poland, on the upper Oder River.
Racine: city, seat (1836) of Racine county, southeastern Wisconsin, U.S. It lies along Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Root River, about 25 miles (40 km) south of Milwaukee. Miami and Potawatomi Indians were early inhabitants of the region. Founded ...
Racine, Jean: French dramatic poet and historiographer renowned for his mastery of French classical tragedy. His reputation rests on the plays he wrote between 1664 and 1677, notably Andromaque (1667), Britannicus (1669), Berenice (1670), Bajazet (1672), and Phedre (1677).