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Mather, John Cromwell

(Encyclopedia)Mather, John Cromwell, 1946–, American astrophysicist, b. Roanoke, Va., Ph.D. Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1974. He has been a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., s...

lignum vitae

(Encyclopedia)lignum vitae lĭgˈnəm vīˈtē [key] [Lat.,=wood of life], tropical American evergreen tree of the genus Guaiacum. The hard, dense, and extremely durable wood, obtained chiefly from G. officinale an...

Kelley, Mike

(Encyclopedia)Kelley, Mike (Michael Kelley), 1954–2012, American artist, b. Wayne, Mich., studied Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor (B.F.A., 1976), California Institute of the Arts (M.F.A., 1978). At Michigan he was o...

Lassen Volcanic National Park

(Encyclopedia)Lassen Volcanic National Park, 106,372 acres (43,081 hectares), N Calif., at the southern end of the Cascade Range. Proclaimed as Lassen Peak and Cinder Cone national monuments in 1907, the two were i...

artichoke

(Encyclopedia)artichoke, name for two different plants of the family Asteraceae (aster family), both having edible parts. The French, or globe, artichoke (Cynara scolymus) is a thistlelike plant of which the globul...

kumquat

(Encyclopedia)kumquat kŭmˈkwŏt [key], ornamental shrub of the genus Fortunella of the family Rutaceae (rue family), closely related to the orange and other citrus fruits. It has evergreen leaves, sweet-scented w...

Kleinrock, Leonard

(Encyclopedia)Kleinrock, Leonard, 1934–, American computer scientist, b. New York City, B.E.E. City College of New York (1957), Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1963). Moving to the Univ. of Californi...

Karplus, Martin

(Encyclopedia)Karplus, Martin, 1930–, Austrian-American theoretical chemist, b. Vienna, Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 1953. He has been a professor at Harvard since 1967, studying the electronic struc...

Politzer, Hugh David

(Encyclopedia)Politzer, Hugh David, 1949–, American physicist, b. Mineola, N.Y., Ph.D. Harvard, 1974. Politzer has been a professor at the California Institute of Technology since 1977. He was a co-recipient, wit...

Cerf, Vinton Gray

(Encyclopedia)Cerf, Vinton Gray, 1943–, American computer scientist, b. New Haven, Conn., B.S. Stanford, 1965, Ph.D. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, 1972. With Robert Kahn, he is responsible for the design and ...