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Bell, Daniel

(Encyclopedia)Bell, Daniel, 1919–2011, American sociologist, b. New York City as Daniel Bolotsky, grad. City College (1939), Columbia (Ph.D., 1960). His immigrant parents changed their surname when he was 13. Bel...

Vaillant, George Clapp

(Encyclopedia)Vaillant, George Clapp vălˈyănt [key], 1901–45, American archaeologist, b. Boston; grad. Harvard (B.A., 1922; Ph.D., 1927). At the American Museum of Natural History he became associate curator (...

Becher, Johannes Robert

(Encyclopedia)Becher, Johannes Robert yōhänˈəs rōˈbĕrt bĕkhˈər [key], 1891–1958, German poet and essayist. After an early association with the Expressionist movement, Becher turned to Communism. His ant...

Pratt, Richard Henry

(Encyclopedia)Pratt, Richard Henry, 1840–1924, American soldier and educator, b. Rushford, N.Y. He served in the Union army during the Civil War and then in the Indian wars in the West, where he became interested...

Rabi, Isidor Isaac

(Encyclopedia)Rabi, Isidor Isaac rŏbˈē [key], 1898–1988, American physicist, b. Austria, grad. Cornell, 1919, Ph.D. Columbia, 1927. A teacher at Columbia from 1929, he became professor of physics in 1937. He i...

Ostrom, Elinor Awan

(Encyclopedia)Ostrom, Elinor Awan, 1933–2012, American political economist, b. Los Angeles, Ph.D. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, 1965. She was on the faculty of the Univ. of Indiana, Bloomington, from 1965 unt...

Murakami, Haruki

(Encyclopedia)Murakami, Haruki häro͞oˈkē mo͝orˌäkäˈmē [key], 1949–, Japanese novelist. He lived in Europe and the United States from 1986 to 1995. Widely considered one of Japan's most important contemp...

Beaubourg

(Encyclopedia)Beaubourg zhôrzh pôNpēdo͞oˈ [key], museum in Paris, France; the popular name is derived from the district in which it is located. Proposed by French president Georges Pompidou in 1969, the center...

Salish

(Encyclopedia)Salish, indigenous people of North America, also known as the Flathead, who in the early 19th cent. inhabited the Bitterroot River valley of W Montana. Their language belongs to the Salishan branch of...

folktale

(Encyclopedia)folktale, general term for any of numerous varieties of traditional narrative. The telling of stories appears to be a cultural universal, common to pre-industrial, ancient, and more modern and develop...