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Coffin, William Sloane, Jr.

(Encyclopedia)Coffin, William Sloane, Jr., 1924–2006, American Protestant social activist, b. New York City, nephew of Henry Sloane Coffin. Strongly influenced by the social philosophy of Reinhold Niebuhr, Coffin...

Fitch, Val Logsdon

(Encyclopedia)Fitch, Val Logsdon, 1923–2015, American nuclear physicist, b. Merriman, Neb., Ph.D. Columbia, 1954. During World War II Fitch was drafted into the army and worked on the detonator for the atomic bom...

Saint-Étienne

(Encyclopedia)Saint-Étienne săNtātyĕnˈ [key], city (1990 pop. 201,569), capital of Loire dept., SE France, in the Massif Central. The metropolitan region occupies much of what was once a major coal-mining and ...

tritium

(Encyclopedia)tritium trĭtˈēəm [key], radioactive isotope of hydrogen with mass number 3. The tritium nucleus, called a triton, contains one proton and two neutrons. It has a half-life of 12.5 years and decays ...

Purcell, Edward Mills

(Encyclopedia)Purcell, Edward Mills, 1912–97, American physicist, b. Taylorville, Ill., Ph.D. Harvard, 1938. During World War II, Purcell was a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation La...

Noda, Yoshihiko

(Encyclopedia)Noda, Yoshihiko, 1957–, Japanese political leader, prime minister of Japan, (2011–12), b. Funabashi, studied Waseda Univ. (grad. 1980) and Matsushita Institute of Government and Management. Noda b...

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

(Encyclopedia)Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), international organization that came into being in 1961. It superseded the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, which had been ...

cataract

(Encyclopedia)cataract, in medicine, opacity of the lens of the eye, which impairs vision. In the young, cataracts are generally congenital or hereditary; later they are usually the result of degenerative changes b...

Yang, Chen-ning

(Encyclopedia)Yang, Chen-ning chĕn-nĭng yäng [key], 1922–, American physicist, b. China, Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1948. Yang was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N.J. from 1949 to 1955...

Bevan, Aneurin

(Encyclopedia)Bevan, Aneurin ənīˈrĭn bĕˈvən [key], 1897–1960, British political leader. A coal miner and trade unionist, he served (1929–60) in Parliament as a member of the Labour party. As minister of ...