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Pynchon, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Pynchon, Thomas pĭnˈchən [key], 1937–, American novelist, b. Glen Cove, N.Y., grad. Cornell, 1958. Pynchon is noted for his amazingly fertile imagination, his wild sense of humor, and the teeming...

Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley

(Encyclopedia)Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley, 1882–1944, British astronomer and physicist. He was chief assistant (1906–13) at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and was from 1913 Plumian professor of astronomy a...

MacLeod, Alistair

(Encyclopedia)MacLeod, Alistair məkloudˈ [key], 1936–2014, Canadian fiction writer, b. John Alexander Joseph MacLeod, Ph.D. Notre Dame, 1968. He taught at the Univ. of Windsor from the late 1960s until his reti...

Brant, Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Brant, Joseph, 1742–1807, chief of the Mohawk. His Mohawk name is usually rendered as Thayendanegea. He served under Sir William Johnson in the French and Indian War, and Johnson sent him (1761) to ...

Barton, Clara

(Encyclopedia)Barton, Clara, 1821–1912, American humanitarian, organizer of the American Red Cross, b. North Oxford (now Oxford), Mass. She taught school (1839–54) and clerked in the U.S. Patent Office before t...

Campion, Jane

(Encyclopedia)Campion, Jane, 1954–, New Zealand film director, b. Wellington; grad. Victoria Univ., Wellington (1975), Sydney College of the Arts, Australia (1979), Australian School of Film and Television, Sydne...

Chinese examination system

(Encyclopedia)Chinese examination system, civil service recruitment method and educational system employed from the Han dynasty (206 b.c.–a.d. 220) until it was abolished by the Ch'ing dowager empress Tz'u Hsi in...

Aleut

(Encyclopedia)Aleut əlo͞otˈ, ălˈēo͞otˌ [key], native inhabitant of the Aleutian Islands and W Alaska. Like the Eskimo, the Aleuts are racially similar to Siberian peoples. Their language is a member of the ...

Amos

(Encyclopedia)Amos āˈməs [key], prophetic book of the Bible. The majority of its oracles are chronologically earlier than those of the Bible's other prophetic books. His activity is dated c.760 b.c. The prophet ...

Liebknecht, Karl

(Encyclopedia)Liebknecht, Karl kärl lēpˈkənĕkht [key], 1871–1919, German socialist, leader of the Spartacus party; son of Wilhelm Liebknecht. His antimilitaristic writings caused his conviction (1907) for hi...