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Bruce, William Speirs

(Encyclopedia)Bruce, William Speirs spĭrz [key], 1867–1921, Scottish explorer and authority on the polar regions. He first went to the Antarctic as ship's surgeon in 1892 and later did survey work in Franz Josef...

Barents Sea

(Encyclopedia)Barents Sea, arm of the Arctic Ocean, N of Norway and European Russia, partially enclosed by Franz Josef Land on the north, Novaya Zemlya on the east, and Svalbard on the west. Its waters are warmed b...

Mečiar, Vladimír

(Encyclopedia)Mečiar, Vladimír, 1942–, Slovakian political leader. A member of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia, Mečiar was ousted in 1970 after having supported party reforms following the Warsaw Pact in...

Slovak literature

(Encyclopedia)Slovak literature. The earliest documents written in the Slovak language date from the 15th cent. Following the Czech Hussite movement, many Czech cultural leaders emigrated to Slovakia (16th cent.); ...

Hall effect

(Encyclopedia)Hall effect, experiment that shows the sign of the charge carriers in a conductor. In 1879 E. H. Hall discovered that when he placed a metal strip carrying a current in a magnetic field, a voltage dif...

San Francisco Symphony

(Encyclopedia)San Francisco Symphony, orchestra founded 1911. It has performed at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall since 1980. Henry Hadley, the original music director, was followed by Alfred Hertz (1915–30), ...

Ponta, Victor

(Encyclopedia)Ponta, Victor vēkˈtôr pônˈtä [key], 1972–, Romanian lawyer and politician, Ph.D. Univ. of Bucharest Law School, 2003. Ponta has taught at the Romanian-American Univ. of Bucharest (1996–98, 2...

Zumthor, Peter

(Encyclopedia)Zumthor, Peter, 1943–, Swiss architect. He apprenticed with his cabinetmaker father as a teenager, and wood is a recurring material in his work, e.g., his small, shingled St. Benedict Chapel, Sumvit...

Ellsworth, Lincoln

(Encyclopedia)Ellsworth, Lincoln, 1880–1951, American explorer, b. Chicago, Ill. He was a surveyor and engineer in railroad building and later a prospector and mining engineer in NW Canada. He became the financia...

Black Mountain College

(Encyclopedia)Black Mountain College, former coeducational liberal arts college at Black Mountain, N.C., near Asheville. Founded (1933) by John Rice, also the school's first rector (1933–40), on the progressive e...

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