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Playfair, Sir Nigel

(Encyclopedia)Playfair, Sir Nigel nīˈjəl plāˈfâr [key], 1874–1934, English actor-manager. He made his acting debut in 1902 and later appeared in major London productions of Shaw and Shakespeare. He took on ...

Playfair, John

(Encyclopedia)Playfair, John, 1748–1819, Scottish mathematician, physicist, and geologist. He was educated at St. Andrews and Edinburgh and taught first mathematics and then physics and astronomy at the latter un...

Kennedy, Nigel

(Encyclopedia)Kennedy, Nigel, 1956–, British violinist. He studied with Dorothy DeLay at Juilliard and debuted as a soloist with the London Philharmonic in 1977. Adept at the classical repertoire, he developed an...

Farage, Nigel Paul

(Encyclopedia)Farage, Nigel Paul fârˈäj [key], 1964–, British political leader. A commodities trader and long a Euroskeptic, he was a member of the Conservative party until 1992, when Prime Minister John Major...

Nicolson, Sir Harold

(Encyclopedia)Nicolson, Sir Harold, 1886–1968, English biographer, historian, and diplomat, b. Tehran, Iran. Educated at Oxford, he entered the foreign office in 1909, and, until his resignation 20 years later, h...

Sackville-West, Vita

(Encyclopedia)Sackville-West, Vita (Victoria Mary Sackville-West), 1892–1962, English writer; wife of Sir Harold Nicolson and granddaughter of the 2d Baron Sackville. Both she and Nicolson were members of the Blo...

Scott, Sir Walter

(Encyclopedia)Scott, Sir Walter, 1771–1832, Scottish novelist and poet, b. Edinburgh. He is considered the father of both the regional and the historical novel. Scott's narrative poems introduced a form of v...

uniformitarianism

(Encyclopedia)uniformitarianism, in geology, doctrine holding that changes in the earth's surface that occurred in past geologic time are referable to the same causes as changes now being produced upon the earth's ...

Hutton, James

(Encyclopedia)Hutton, James, 1726–97, Scottish geologist, chemist, and naturalist. He was initially attracted to chemistry; he entered the legal profession at the Univ. of Edinburgh; turned to medicine, as it clo...

Bruce, James

(Encyclopedia)Bruce, James, 1730–94, Scottish explorer in Africa. He explored Roman ruins in N Africa (1755) from Tunis to Tripoli and visited Crete, Rhodes, and Asia Minor. In 1768 he traveled down the Red Sea a...