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Ngouabi, Marien

(Encyclopedia)Ngouabi, Marien, 1938–77, Congolese army officer and political leader. After military training in France, he served in the Congo Republic's army and started the country's first paratrooper battalion...

Lwoff, André

(Encyclopedia)Lwoff, André äNdrāˈ ləwôfˈ [key], 1902–94, French microbiologist, b. Ainay-le-Château, Allier dept., central France, of Russian-Polish origin. He was educated in France and in 1925 began a l...

Vionnet, Madeleine

(Encyclopedia)Vionnet, Madeleine, 1876–1975, French fashion designer. She worked for Parisian and London dressmakers and designed for the Callot Soeurs and Jacques Doucet houses before opening her own studio in 1...

Blondel, François

(Encyclopedia)Blondel, François fräNswäˈ blôNdĕlˈ [key], 1617–86, French architect. In 1672 he became director of the Academy of Architecture. Blondel's writings, which exerted great influence, include Cou...

Quapaw

(Encyclopedia)Quapaw kwôˈpô [key], Native North Americans, also called the Arkansas, whose language belongs to the Siouan branch of the Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). The Quapaw w...

scholasticism

(Encyclopedia)scholasticism skōlăsˈtĭsĭzəm [key], philosophy and theology of Western Christendom in the Middle Ages. Virtually all medieval philosophers of any significance were theologians, and their philoso...

diminishing returns, law of

(Encyclopedia)diminishing returns, law of, in economics, law stating that if one factor of production is increased while the others remain constant, the overall returns will relatively decrease after a certain poin...

Edgerton, Harold

(Encyclopedia)Edgerton, Harold, 1903–90, American inventor and educator, b. Fremont, Nebr. He was educated at the Univ. of Nebraska and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (D.Sc., 1931), and taught at the l...

Frank, Joachim

(Encyclopedia)Frank, Joachim, 1940–, German-American physicist and biochemist, b. Siegen, Germany, Ph.D., Technical Univ. of Munich 1970. He became a U.S. citizen in 1997. Following several postdoctoral appointme...

Carpentier, Alejo

(Encyclopedia)Carpentier, Alejo älāˈhō kärpĕntyārˈ [key], 1904–80, Cuban novelist and musicologist. As a political exile in Paris between 1928 and 1939, Carpentier was strongly influenced by Antonin Artau...