Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

0-9

Thomas, Isiah ... Thomson, Joseph

Thomas, Isiah: American basketball player, considered one of the best point guards in the history of the game. He led the Detroit Pistons of the National Basketball Association (NBA) to consecutive world championships in 1989 and 1990. He was named to the ...
Thomas, J.H.: British trade-union leader and politician, a shrewd and successful industrial negotiator who lost his standing in the labour movement when he joined Ramsay MacDonald's coalition government (August 1931). Later (May 1936) he was found responsible for the leakage of details ...
Thomas, Lewis: American physician, researcher, author, and teacher best known for his essays, which contain lucid meditations and reflections on a wide range of topics in biology.
Thomas, Lowell: preeminent American radio commentator, and an explorer, lecturer, author, and journalist. He is especially remembered for his association with T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia).
Thomas, Martha Carey: American educator and feminist and the second president of Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
Thomas, Norman: American socialist, social reformer, and frequent candidate for political office.
Thomas, R.S.: Welsh clergyman and poet whose lucid, austere verse expresses an undeviating affirmation of the values of the common man.
Thomas, Saint: one of the Twelve Apostles. His name in Aramaic (Te'oma) and Greek (Didymos) means "twin"; John 11:16 identifies him as "Thomas, called the Twin." He is called Judas Thomas (i.e., Judas the Twin) by the Syrians.
Thomas, Seth: American clock manufacturer who was one of the pioneers in the mass production of clocks.
Thomas, Sidney Gilchrist: British metallurgist and inventor who discovered (1875) a method for eliminating phosphorus (a major impurity in some iron ores) in the Bessemer converter. The method is now called the Thomas-Gilchrist process, the Thomas process, or the basic process.
Thomas, Theodore: German-born American conductor who was largely responsible for the role of symphony orchestras in many American cities.
Thomas, W I: American sociologist and social psychologist whose fields of study included cultural change and personality development and who made important contributions to methodology.
Thomas, William: clergyman and poet, considered the only successful practitioner of the long Welsh poem in the 19th century. His major work is the uncompleted philosophical poem Y Storm (1856; The Storm).
Thomason, George: English bookseller whose collection of printed books, handbills, pamphlets, ballads, newspapers, and other writings (cataloged and bound from 1640 to 1661) constitute one of the most important historical sources for the English Civil Wars and Commonwealth. The original collection reportedly ...
Thomism: philosophical and theological system developed by Thomas Aquinas, by his later commentators, and by modern revivalists of the system, known as neo-Thomists.
Thompson: city, north-central Manitoba, Canada. It lies along the Burntwood River, in the Mystery-Moak lakes area, 130 miles (210 km) north of Lake Winnipeg. Planned in 1956 by the International Nickel Company of Canada and named for John F. Thompson, the ...
Thompson River: major tributary of the Fraser River, in southern British Columbia, Canada. The North Thompson (210 miles [340 km]) rises in the Cariboo Mountains east of Wells Gray Provincial Park and follows an easterly then southwesterly course to Kamloops; the South ...
Thompson submachine gun: submachine gun patented in 1920 by its American designer, General John T. Thompson. The weapon became famous during the U.S. Prohibition era (1920-33) as the gun used by gangsters. Indeed it became so widely known in that era that it ...
Thompson, Daley: British decathlete who became only the second competitor in history to win the decathlon at two Olympic Games, capturing gold medals in 1980 and 1984.
Thompson, David: English explorer, geographer, and fur trader in the western parts of what are now Canada and the United States. He was the first white man to explore the Columbia River from source to mouth. His maps of western North America ...
Thompson, Dorothy: American newspaperwoman and writer, one of the most famous journalists of the 20th century.
Thompson, E.P.: British social historian and political activist. His The Making of the English Working Class (1963) and other works heavily influenced post-World War II historiography. Thompson participated in the founding of the British New Left in the 1950s, and in the ...
Thompson, Edward Herbert: American archaeologist who revealed much about Mayan civilization from his exploration of the city and religious shrine of Chichen Itza in Yucatan.
Thompson, Francis: English poet of the Aesthetic movement of the 1890s, whose most famous poem, "The Hound of Heaven," describes the pursuit of the human soul by God.
Thompson, Hunter S.: American journalist and author, who created the genre known as gonzo journalism, a highly personal style of reporting that made Thompson a counterculture icon.
Thompson, Jim: American-born Thai businessman who turned Thai silk making into a major industry selling worldwide and became an authority on Thai art. His mysterious disappearance in 1967 became a sensation in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.
Thompson, Jim: American novelist and screenwriter best known for his paperback pulp novels narrated by seemingly normal men who are revealed to be psychopathic.
Thompson, John Griggs: American mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970 for his work in group theory. See the table of Fields Medalists.
Thompson, Kay: American entertainer and writer who was best known as the author of the highly popular Eloise books, featuring a comically endearing enfant terrible who bedeviled New York City's Plaza Hotel.
Thompson, Lucky: American jazz musician, one of the most distinctive and creative bop-era tenor saxophonists, who in later years played soprano saxophone as well.
Thompson, Randall: composer of great popularity in the United States, notable for his choral music.
Thompson, Richard: English guitarist, singer, and songwriter. His career began in the late 1960s as a member of Fairport Convention, whose intermingling of traditional British folk songs, Bob Dylan obscurities, and haunting original compositions (many by Thompson) inaugurated British folk rock. Along ...
Thompson, Silvanus Phillips: British physicist and historian of science known for contributions in electrical machinery, optics, and X rays.
Thompson, Sir Benjamin, Count Von Rumford: American-born British physicist, government administrator, and a founder of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London. His investigations of heat overturned the theory that heat is a liquid form of matter and established the beginnings of the modern theory that ...
Thompson, Sir D'Arcy Wentworth: Scottish zoologist and classical scholar noted for his influential work On Growth and Form (1917, new ed. 1942).
Thompson, Sir J Eric S: leading English ethnographer of the Mayan people. Thompson devoted his life to the study of Mayan culture and was able to extensively decipher early Mayan glyphs, determining that, contrary to prevailing belief, they contained historical as well as ritualistic and ...
Thompson, Sir John: jurist and statesman who was premier of Canada from 1892 to 1894.
Thompson, Smith: associate justice of the United States Supreme Court (1823-43).
Thompson, William Tappan: American humorist remembered for his character sketches of Georgia-Florida backwoodsmen.
Thomsen, Christian Jurgensen: Danish archaeologist who deserves major credit for developing the three-part system of prehistory, naming the Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages for the successive stages of man's technological development in Europe. His tripartite scheme brought the first semblance of order to ...
Thomsen, Julius: Danish chemist who determined the amount of heat evolved from or absorbed in a large number of chemical reactions.
Thomson: major French multimedia company and electronics manufacturer that sells products and services under its own name and under popular brands such as RCA and Technicolor.
Thomson atomic model: earliest theoretical description of the inner structure of atoms, proposed about 1900 by Lord Kelvin and strongly supported by Sir Joseph John Thomson, who had discovered (1897) the electron, a negatively charged part of every atom. Though several alternative models ...
Thomson Corporation: Canadian publishing and information services company. Its specialty reporting covers the fields of law, business and finance, medicine, taxation, and accounting.
Thomson effect: the evolution or absorption of heat when electric current passes through a circuit composed of a single material that has a temperature difference along its length. This transfer of heat is superimposed on the common production of heat associated with ...
Thomson, Elihu: U.S. electrical engineer and inventor whose discoveries in the field of alternating-current phenomena led to the development of successful alternating-current motors. He was also a founder of the U.S. electrical industry.
Thomson, George: Scottish amateur editor and publisher of Scottish folk songs, which he attempted to provide with semiclassical settings.
Thomson, J Edgar: American civil engineer and president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company who consolidated a network of railroad lines from Philadelphia to various cities in the Midwest and the South, extending as far as Chicago and Norfolk, Va.
Thomson, James: Scottish Victorian poet who is best remembered for his sombre, imaginative poem "The City of Dreadful Night," a symbolic expression of his horror of urban dehumanization.
Thomson, James: Scottish poet whose best verse foreshadowed some of the attitudes of the Romantic movement. His poetry also gave expression to the achievements of Newtonian science and to an England reaching toward great political power based on commercial and maritime expansion.
Thomson, Joseph: Scottish geologist, naturalist, and explorer who was the first European to enter several regions of eastern Africa and whose writings are outstanding contributions to geographical knowledge, exceptional for their careful records and surveys. Thomson's gazelle (Gazella thomsoni), the most common ...