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Central Valley

(Encyclopedia)Central Valley, great trough of central Calif., c.450 mi (720 km) long and c.50 mi (80 km) wide, between the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Ranges. The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers drain much of the...

Baldessari, John

(Encyclopedia)Baldessari, John (John Anthony Baldessari), 1931–2020, American artist, b. National City, Calif., grad. San Diego State College (now Univ.; B.A., 1953; M.F.A., 1957). A founder of conceptual art, he...

Gilman, Daniel Coit

(Encyclopedia)Gilman, Daniel Coit, 1831–1908, American educator, first president of Johns Hopkins Univ., b. Norwich, Conn., grad. Yale, 1852. After serving as attaché (1853–55) of the American legation at St. ...

Davis, Angela Yvonne

(Encyclopedia)Davis, Angela Yvonne, 1944–, African-American political activist, b. Birmingham, Ala. She taught philosophy (1969–70) at the Univ. of California, Los Angeles, until she was finally denied reappoin...

Fontana

(Encyclopedia)Fontana, city (2020 pop. 208,393), San Bernardino co., S Calif., at the foot of the San Bernardino Mts.; inc. 1952. Fabricated metal products, construct...

Mooney, Thomas J.

(Encyclopedia)Mooney, Thomas J., 1883–1942, American labor agitator, b. Chicago. He was an active leader in several violent labor struggles in California before 1916 and was convicted as a participant in the bomb...

Lick Observatory

(Encyclopedia)Lick Observatory, astronomical observatory located on Mt. Hamilton, Calif., near San Jose; the first mountaintop observatory in the world, it was founded through gifts made by James Lick in 1874–75 ...

McMillan, Edwin Mattison

(Encyclopedia)McMillan, Edwin Mattison, 1907–91, American physicist, b. Redondo Beach, Calif., grad. California Institute of Technology, 1928, Ph.D. Princeton, 1932. On the faculty of the Univ. of California from...

Kerr, Clark

(Encyclopedia)Kerr, Clark kûr, kär [key], 1911–2003, American educational reformer, b. Reading, Pa., grad. Swarthmore College (B.A., 1932) and the Univ. of California at Berkeley (Ph.D., 1939). He was a profess...