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Vannes

(Encyclopedia)Vannes vän [key], town (1990 pop. 48,454), capital of Morbihan dept., NW France, in Brittany, on the Gulf of Morbihan. It is an important agricultural and tourist center that produces processed food,...

Wright, Willard Huntington

(Encyclopedia)Wright, Willard Huntington, pseud. S. S. Van Dine, 1888–1939, American art critic and mystery story writer, b. Charlottesville, Va. He attended college in California and later studied art in Paris a...

Spingarn, Joel Elias

(Encyclopedia)Spingarn, Joel Elias spĭnˈgärn [key], 1875–1939, American educator and literary critic, b. New York City, grad. Columbia (B.A., 1895; Ph.D., 1899). He was professor (1899–1911) of comparative l...

Bilderdijk, Willem

(Encyclopedia)Bilderdijk, Willem wĭlˈəm bĭlˈdərdīk [key], 1756–1831, Dutch poet. He tutored Louis Bonaparte in Dutch and later conducted a small private college at Leiden, where his pupils included Isaäc ...

Frank, Anne

(Encyclopedia)Frank, Anne, 1929–45, German diarist, b. Frankfurt as Anneliese Marie Frank. In order to escape Nazi persecution, her family emigrated (1933) to Amsterdam, where her father Otto became a business ow...

Pergamum

(Encyclopedia)Pergamum pûrˈgəməm [key], ancient city of NW Asia Minor, in Mysia (modern Turkey), in the fertile valley of the Caicus. It became important c.300 b.c., after the breakup of the Macedonian empire, ...

Monk, Thelonius

(Encyclopedia)Monk, Thelonius (Thelonius Sphere Monk), 1917–82, American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger, b. Rocky Mount, N.C. Monk is considered one of the most important, and eccentric, figures in modern j...

Ararat

(Encyclopedia)Ararat ărˈərăt [key], Turkish Ağri Daği, name of two mountains, Little Ararat (12,877 ft/3,925 m) and Great Ararat (16,945 ft/5,165 m), E Turkey, near the Iranian and Armenian borders. The tradi...

Mott, Sir Nevill

(Encyclopedia)Mott, Sir Nevill, 1905–96, British physicist. A professor at the Univ. of Bristol (1933–54) and the Univ. of Cambridge (1954–71), Mott won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977 for a lifetime of re...

functionalism, in art and architecture

(Encyclopedia)functionalism, in art and architecture, an aesthetic doctrine developed in the early 20th cent. out of Louis Henry Sullivan's aphorism that form ever follows function. Functionalist architects and art...