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Channing, William Ellery

(Encyclopedia)Channing, William Ellery, 1780–1842, American Unitarian minister and author, b. Newport, R.I. At 23 he was ordained minister of the Federal St. Congregational Church in Boston, where he served until...

Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer

(Encyclopedia)Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer pēˈbädē, –bədē [key], 1804–94, American educator, lecturer, and reformer, b. Billerica, Mass. The Peabody family moved (c.1809) to Salem, where the father began pra...

Hecker, Isaac Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Hecker, Isaac Thomas, 1819–88, American Roman Catholic priest, founder of the Paulist Fathers; son of Prussian immigrants. Feeling the general discontent of his day in the dying Puritanism of New En...

azalea

(Encyclopedia)azalea əzālˈyə [key] [Gr.,=dry], any species of the genus Rhododendron, North American and Asian shrubs of the family Ericaceae (heath family) that are distinguished by the usually deciduous leave...

Maeterlinck, Maurice

(Encyclopedia)Maeterlinck, Maurice môrēsˈ mätĕrlăNkˈ [key], 1862–1949, Belgian author who wrote in French. After practicing law unsuccessfully for several years, he went to Paris in 1897. He had already be...

Beutler, Bruce Alan

(Encyclopedia)Beutler, Bruce Alan, 1957–, American immunologist and geneticist, b. Chicago, Ill., M.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1981. Beutler has been a professor and physician at Rockefeller Univ. (1984–86), a facult...

Brooks, Van Wyck

(Encyclopedia)Brooks, Van Wyck văn wĭkˈ [key], 1886–1963, American critic, b. Plainfield, N.J., grad. Harvard, 1908. His first book, The Wine of the Puritans (1909), presented the thesis that American culture ...

Earnhardt, Dale

(Encyclopedia)Earnhardt, Dale (Ralph Dale Earnhardt, Sr.) ûrnˈhärt [key], 1951–2001, American auto racing driver widely regarded as stock car racing's greatest star, b. Kannapolis, N.C. The 1979 National Assoc...

Cambridge Platonists

(Encyclopedia)Cambridge Platonists, group of English philosophers, centered at Cambridge in the latter half of the 17th cent. In reaction to the mechanical philosophy of Thomas Hobbes this school revived certain Pl...

Dollier de Casson, François

(Encyclopedia)Dollier de Casson, François fräNswäˈ dôlyāˈ də käsôNˈ [key], 1636–1701, priest and explorer in Canada, b. near Nantes, France. In 1657 he entered the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, and...