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Niépce, Joseph Nicéphore

(Encyclopedia)Niépce, Joseph Nicéphore zhôzĕfˈ nēsāfôrˈ nyĕps [key], 1765–1833, French chemist who originated a process of photography (see photography, still). In 1826 he produced the first known photo...

Victor Emmanuel I

(Encyclopedia)Victor Emmanuel I, 1759–1824, king of Sardinia (1802–21). His brother and predecessor, Charles Emmanuel IV, lost (1798) all his territories except the island of Sardinia to France in the French Re...

Grieg, Edvard Hagerup

(Encyclopedia)Grieg, Edvard Hagerup ĕdˈvär häˈgəro͞op grēg [key], 1843–1907, Norwegian composer. Grieg developed a strongly nationalistic style which made him known as “the Voice of Norway.” He receiv...

Elijah

(Encyclopedia)Elijah ēlīˈəs [key] [both: Heb.,=Yahweh is God], fl. c.875 b.c., Hebrew prophet in the reign of King Ahab. He is one of the outstanding figures of the Bible. Elijah's mission was to destroy the wo...

Ethical Culture movement

(Encyclopedia)Ethical Culture movement, originating in the Society for Ethical Culture, founded in New York City in 1876, by Felix Adler. Its aim is “to assert the supreme importance of the ethical factor in all ...

Purcell, Edward Mills

(Encyclopedia)Purcell, Edward Mills, 1912–97, American physicist, b. Taylorville, Ill., Ph.D. Harvard, 1938. During World War II, Purcell was a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation La...

Gratian, Italian legal scholar

(Encyclopedia)Gratian, fl. 1140, Italian legal scholar, founder of the science of canon law. Almost nothing is known of his life beyond the fact that he was a monk, almost certainly Camaldolite, and that he taught ...

Francis, Dick

(Encyclopedia)Francis, Dick (Richard Stanley Francis), 1920–2010, English novelist. He was a champion steeplechase jockey (1946–57) and a racing writer for a London newspaper (1957–73). Francis parlayed his k...

chamber music

(Encyclopedia)chamber music, ensemble music for small groups of instruments, with only one player to each part. Its essence is individual treatment of parts and the exclusion of virtuosic elements. Originally playe...

Graham, Philip Leslie

(Encyclopedia)Graham, Philip Leslie, 1915–63, American publisher, b. S.Dak. After editing the Harvard Law Review, he served as a law clerk to his mentor, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. In 1940 he marrie...