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Lewis, C. S.

(Encyclopedia)Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples Lewis), 1898–1963, English author, b. Belfast, Ireland. A fellow and tutor of English at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1954, C. S. Lewis was noted equally for hi...

Mead, Margaret

(Encyclopedia)Mead, Margaret, 1901–78, American anthropologist, b. Philadelphia, grad. Barnard, 1923, Ph.D. Columbia, 1929. In 1926 she became assistant curator, in 1942 associate curator, and from 1964 to 1969 s...

Gould, Stephen Jay

(Encyclopedia)Gould, Stephen Jay, 1941–2002, American paleontologist and science writer, b. Queens, New York; grad. Antioch College (B.S., 1963), Columbia Univ. (Ph.D., 1967). With Niles Eldredge, Gould proposed ...

jackal

(Encyclopedia)jackal, name for several Old World carnivorous mammals of the genus Canis, which also includes the dog and the wolf. Jackals are found in Africa and S Asia, where they inhabit deserts, grasslands, and...

thylacine

(Encyclopedia)thylacine thīˈləsīnˌ [key] or Tasmanian wolf, carnivorous marsupial, or pouched mammal, of New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania, presumed extinct since 1936. The thylacine is often cited as an exa...

ballistics

(Encyclopedia)ballistics bəlĭsˈtĭks [key], science of projectiles. Interior ballistics deals with the propulsion and the motion of a projectile within a gun or firing device. Its problems include the ignition a...

Wolfe, Tom

(Encyclopedia)Wolfe, Tom (Thomas Kennerly Wolfe, Jr.), 1931–2018, American journalist and novelist, b. Richmond, Va., B.A. Washington and Lee Univ., 1951, Ph.D. Yale, 1957. He began his writing career as a newspa...

battleship

(Encyclopedia)battleship, large, armored warship equipped with the heaviest naval guns. The evolution of the battleship, from the ironclad warship of the mid-19th cent., received great impetus from the Civil War. B...

Krylov, Ivan Andreyevich

(Encyclopedia)Krylov, Ivan Andreyevich ēvänˈ əndrāˈəvĭch krĭlôfˈ [key], 1769–1844, Russian fabulist. Some of his more than 200 fables were adapted from Aesop and La Fontaine, but most were original. A ...

levitation

(Encyclopedia)levitation lĕvĭtāˈshən [key], the raising of a human or other body in the air without mechanical aid. The idea is ancient; holy men, both pagan and Christian, were reputed to have had the power o...