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Bowery, the

(Encyclopedia)Bowery, the bouˈərē, –ˈrē [key] [Dutch Bouwerie=farm], section of lower Manhattan, New York City. The Bowery, the street that gives the area its name, was once a road to the farm of New Amsterd...

Kroemer, Herbert

(Encyclopedia)Kroemer, Herbert, 1928–, German physicist, Ph.D. Univ. of Göttingen, 1952. Kroemer was a researcher at RCA Laboratories in Princeton, N.J. (1954–57), and at Varian Associates in Palo Alto, Calif....

Góngora y Argote, Luis de

(Encyclopedia)Góngora y Argote, Luis de lo͞oēsˈ dā gōnˈgōrä ē ärgōˈtā [key], 1561–1627, poet of the Spanish Golden Age, b. Cordova. Of a cultured family, he studied in Salamanca and became a prebend...

bobsledding

(Encyclopedia)bobsledding, winter sport in which a bobsled—a partially enclosed vehicle with steerable sledlike runners, accommodating two or four persons—hurtles down a course of iced, steeply banked, twisting...

Orff, Carl

(Encyclopedia)Orff, Carl ôrf [key], 1895–1982, German composer and educator. After studying at the Academy of Music at Munich, he helped to found the Günter School there in 1924. As a composer Orff wished to si...

Paik, Nam June

(Encyclopedia)Paik, Nam June näm jo͞on pīk [key], 1932–2006, Korean-American artist, widely considered the founder of video art, b. Seoul, studied art and music at Tokyo Univ. and in Germany. A performance and...

Vitruvius

(Encyclopedia)Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio) vĭtro͞oˈvēəs [key], fl. late 1st cent. b.c. and early 1st cent. a.d., Roman writer, engineer, and architect for the Emperor Augustus. In his one extant work, D...

day nursery

(Encyclopedia)day nursery, day-care center, or crèche krĕsh [key], institution for the care of the children of working parents. Originating in Europe in the late 18th and early 19th cent., day nurseries were est...

geologic timescale

(Encyclopedia)CE5 geologic timescale, a chronological scale of earth's history used to measure the relative or absolute age of any part of geologic time. Of the numerous timescales, the most common is based on g...

Sayles, John

(Encyclopedia)Sayles, John (John Thomas Sayles), 1950–, one of America's most influential independent filmmakers as well as a screenwriter, fiction writer, playwright, and actor, b. Schenectady, N.Y., grad. Willi...