Necker, Suzanne

Née  Curchod   Swiss wife of the French finance minister under Louis XVI, Jacques Necker; mother of Madame de Staël; and mistress of a brilliant Parisian salon. At first she was engaged to the English historian Edward Gibbon, but his father broke off the match. In 1764 she married Necker, then a banker, and encouraged him in his political career.

Earth Exploration, Excavation, boring, and sampling

Direct sampling, usually by means of boreholes, is required to make positive identification of ores, fuels, and other materials. It is also necessary for determining their quantity and for selecting methods of recovery. Most deep boreholes are drilled by the rotary method, in which a drill bit is rotated while fluid (“drilling mud”) is circulated through the bit to lubricate

Jeune Belgique, La

(“Young Belgium”), influential review (1881–97), edited by poet and novelist Max Waller; it gave its name to a literary movement (though never a formal “school”) that aimed to express a genuinely Belgian consciousness and to free the literature of Belgium from outworn Romanticism. Among writers associated with the movement were Maurice Maeterlinck, Émile Verhaeren, and Max

Komisarjevsky, Theodore

Komisarjevsky studied architecture in Russia

Feng Yü-hsiang

A soldier at the age of 11, Feng was largely self-educated. He rose through the ranks, gathering under his command a highly disciplined body of troops. He urged his men to become Protestants, to engage in social reform, to acquire

Benedetto Da Majano

He was greatly influenced by the Florentine sculptors Desiderio da Settignano and Antonio Rossellino. His earliest surviving work is the shrine of S. Savino (1468–72) in the Faenza cathedral. Between 1470 and 1475 he was engaged on the

Alcoholism

The conception of inveterate drunkenness as a disease appears to be rooted in antiquity. The Roman philosopher Seneca classified it as a form of insanity. The term alcoholism, however, appeared first in the classical essay “Alcoholismus

Heimlich Maneuver

Emergency procedure that is used to dislodge foreign bodies from the throats of choking victims. In the early 1970s, the American surgeon Henry J. Heimlich observed that food and other objects causing choking were not freed by the recommended technique of delivering sharp blows to the back. As an alternative, he devised a method of using air expelled from the victim's

Carter, Maybelle

By the time she was 12, Maybelle Addington was well versed in the traditional hill-country songs of the region and had become a skilled and original guitarist and autoharpist. When she was 17 she

Suchet, Louis-gabriel, Duke (duc) D'albufera Da Valencia

The son of a Lyon silk manufacturer, Suchet originally had intended to follow his father's business; but, having in 1792 served as a volunteer in the cavalry of the national guard, he manifested military

Igneous Rock, Classification of volcanic and hypabyssal rocks

Owing to the aphanitic texture of volcanic and hypabyssal rocks, their modes cannot be readily determined; consequently, a chemical classification is widely accepted and employed by most petrologists. One popular scheme is based on the use of both chemical components and normative mineralogy. Because most lay people have little access to analytic facilities

Lemur

Generally, any of the more primitive primates except the tree shrews. In this sense, the term covers not only the typical lemurs (family Lemuridae) but also the avahi, indri, sifaka, aye-aye, loris, potto, and galago (qq.v.). All these animals are characterized by a naked, moist tip to the muzzle; comblike, forward-directed lower front teeth; and a clawlike nail on the second toe of

Performing Arts

Owing to the aphanitic texture of volcanic and hypabyssal rocks, their modes cannot be readily determined; consequently, a chemical classification is widely accepted and employed by most petrologists. One popular scheme is based on the use of both chemical components and normative mineralogy. Because most lay people have little access to analytic facilities

Sucking Louse

Any small, wingless, flat insect of the suborder Anoplura, with more than 400 described species and worldwide distribution. The sucking louse has piercing and sucking mouthparts and lives on blood and tissue fluids of mammals as an ectoparasite (external parasite). The adult sucking louse, or true louse, glues her eggs, or nits, to the host's hair. The young, which resemble

Display Behaviour

Ritualized behaviour by which an animal provides specific information to others, usually members of its own species. Virtually all higher animals use displays to some extent. The best-known displays are visual ones—and some biologists restrict the term display to visual signals or gestures—but many also incorporate sound, smell, or even touch. Displays evolve

Ramanuja

Also called  Ramanujacarya, or Ilaiya Perumal (Tamil: Ageless Perumal [God])   South Indian Brahman theologian and philosopher, the single most influential thinker of devotional Hinduism. After a long pilgrimage, Ramanuja settled in Srirangam, where he organized temple worship and founded centres to disseminate his doctrine of devotion to the god Vishnu and his consort Sri. He provided an intellectual basis for the practice

Sanidinite Facies

One of the major divisions of the mineral facies classification of metamorphic rocks, the rocks of which form under the most intense conditions of contact metamorphism—either at the contacts of igneous intrusions with the surrounding rocks or in inclusions of other rocks in intrusions. Temperatures approaching the melting point of the rock may be reached; the

Acheampong, Ignatius Kutu

Ghanaian army officer, who, after leading a military revolt that overthrew the government of Kofi Busia, became Ghana's chief of state in 1972. In July 1978 he was forced to resign, and the following June he and his successor, Lieut. Gen. F.W.K. Akuffo, were executed after a coup led by young officers, whose Armed Forces Revolutionary Council returned

Kikuyu

The Kikuyu moved into their modern territory from the northeast in the 17th–19th

Cavalcanti, Guido

Born into an influential Florentine family of the Guelf (papal) party, Cavalcanti studied under the philosopher and scholar

Smith, Samuel

Smith fought in the American

Gyangu

Also called  Yakuza,   Japanese gangster or mobster, a member of a boryokudan (q.v.), or gang of racketeers.

Rocky Mountains, Mineral resources

Minerals have been of economic significance since the mid-19th century, although worldwide market fluctuations often have caused mine closures. Copper, easily the most valuable of the many metallic resources of the Rocky Mountains, has been extracted from large mines in British Columbia, Montana, Utah, and Arizona. The Rockies are more noted for their many underground

Babergh

District, administrative and historic county of Suffolk, England. Babergh extends across the southern part of Suffolk. Babergh includes much of the area made familiar by the paintings of John Constable (1776–1837), who was born within the district at East Bergholt and whose family owned mills there and at Flatford. It also includes a group of small towns—Lavenham, Lindsey, and

Adobe Systems Incorporated

The company was founded in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke. While employed at Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto (California) Research Center (PARC), the two computer scientists had developed a programming language specially designed to describe the precise position, shape, and size of objects on a computer-generated page. This page description language, later known

Razi, Ar-

One tradition holds that ar-Razi was already an alchemist before he gained his medical knowledge. After serving as chief physician in a Rayy hospital, he held a similar position in Baghdad for some time. Like many

Spotswood, Alexander

After service under the 1st duke of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), he was appointed lieutenant governor of Virginia (1710). In this post he recommended the establishment of a Virginia company to carry

Turkey Work

Form of knotted embroidery practiced in England from the 16th century to the mid-18th century, but especially in the 17th century. Used for upholstery and table covers, it was worked in imitation of Turkish carpets, which are known from paintings to have been imported to England from the 16th century. The designs were usually of geometrically stylized flowers. A document from

Krypton

 (Kr),   chemical element, rare gas of Group 0 (noble gases) of the periodic table, forming very few chemical compounds. About three times heavier than air, krypton gas is colourless, odourless, and tasteless. Although traces are present in meteorites and minerals, krypton is more plentiful in the Earth's atmosphere, which contains 1 part krypton in about 900,000. The element was discovered