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Taussig, Helen Brooke

(Encyclopedia)Taussig, Helen Brooke, 1898–1986, American physician, b. Cambridge, Mass., M.D. Johns Hopkins Univ., 1927. She spent her entire career at Johns Hopkins, where she founded the field of pediatric card...

Blobel, Günter

(Encyclopedia)Blobel, Günter günˈtər blōˈbəl [key], 1936–2018, German cell and molecular biologist, M.D. Univ. of Tübingen, 1960, Ph.D. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, 1967. Blobel was on the faculty at the ...

bacteriophage

(Encyclopedia)bacteriophage băktērˈēəfājˌ [key], virus that infects bacteria and sometimes destroys them by lysis, or dissolution of the cell. Bacteriophages, or phages, have a head composed of protein, an i...

streptococcus

(Encyclopedia)streptococcus strĕpˌtəkŏkˈəs [key], any of a group of gram-positive bacteria, genus Streptococcus, some of which cause disease. Streptococci are spherical and divide by fission, but they remain ...

antibiotic

(Encyclopedia)antibiotic, any of a variety of substances, usually obtained from microorganisms, that inhibit the growth of or destroy certain other microorganisms. Although for centuries preparations derived from ...

Heck, Richard Fred

(Encyclopedia)Heck, Richard Fred, 1931–2015, American chemist, b. Springfield, Mass., Ph.D. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, 1954. Heck was a researcher at the Hercules Corporation in Wilmington, Del., from 1957...

Gunn, Thom

(Encyclopedia)Gunn, Thom (Thomson William Gunn), 1929–2004, Anglo-American poet, b. Gravesend, Kent, England, grad. Trinity College, Cambridge (1953). Gunn published his first volume of poems, the critically accl...

Scott-Heron, Gil

(Encyclopedia)Scott-Heron, Gil, 1949–2011, American poet, musician, and songwriter, b. Chicago. Often considered “the godfather of rap music,” he rejected that ...

Prince

(Encyclopedia)Prince, 1958–2016, American singer and songwriter, b. Minneapolis, Minn., as Prince Rogers Nelson. Biracial, slim, and sexily androgynous, he was an electrifying performer who composed hundreds of s...

rotavirus

(Encyclopedia)rotavirus, double-stranded RNA virus, genus Rotavirus, with a wheellike appearance that can cause severe watery diarrhea and vomiting, sometimes leading to severe dehydration and death. The virus is t...