Richard Bedford Bennett (1870-1947) was a leader of the Conservative party of Canada and prime minister during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Richard Bedford Bennett was born at Hopewell, New Brunswick, on July 3, 1870, a descendant of...

The English historian and philosopher Robin George Collingwood (1889-1943) did important historical research on Roman Britain and made original contributions to esthetics, the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of mind. Born at Coni...

The British economic historian and social philosopher Richard Henry Tawney (1880-1962) was an influential Fabian socialist and an adviser to governments. Richard Tawney was born in Calcutta, India, on Nov. 30, 1880, the son of a distinguis...

The Palestinian rabbi Akiba ben Joseph (ca. 50-ca. 135) was a founder of rabbinic Judaism. He developed a method of Hebrew scriptural interpretation. The early life of Akiba ben Joseph is enshrouded in legends, anecdotes, sayings, and nume...

With Elizabeth Lee Hazen, Brown (1898-1980) developed the first effective antibiotic against fungal disease in humans--the most important biomedical breakthrough since the discovery of penicillin two decades earlier. Rachel Fuller Brown, w...

Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943) is best known as the author of the controversial lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness. Court cases led to the book being banned in both the United Kingdom and the United States. The American verdict was overturn...

After Antoine Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity in 1896, there was much speculation as to the nature of the phenomenon. For one thing, it was unclear whether this was an effect produced only by uranium (and, as later discovered by Pie...

Rae Carruth was born on January 20, 1974. After his mother and step-father divorced when Carruth was fourteen, Rae and his only sibling, sister Samel, were raised by their mother alone in the suburbs of Sacramento, California. Carruth part...

Rafello Bombelli was the last of a long line of Italian algebraists who contributed to the theory of equations during the Renaissance. He was the first to develop a consistent theory of imaginary numbers which included the rules for the fo...

Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina (1891-1961) presided for 31 years over what was probably the most absolute and ruthless dictatorship in Latin America at that time. Coming to power in 1930, he controlled the government of the Dominican Repu...

Rafael Calderón Fournier (born 1949) was elected president of Costa Rica in 1990, succeeding the popular Oscar Arias Sánchez, who had spearheaded the Central American peace plan. Calderón, who served until 1994, was pr...

Rainer Maria Rilke is one of the major poets of twentieth-century literature. In the collections with which his early verse culminates, Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Pictures, 1902; enlarged, 1906) and Das Stunden-Buch (1905; translated...

Rajaraja I (reigned 985-1014) was possibly the greatest of the Cola kings of southern India. He made the Colas the paramount power in southern India, Sri Lanka, and the southern seas. A political and organizational genius, he was also a gr...

Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991) entered Indian politics after the death of his younger brother Sanjay in 1980, serving as adviser to his mother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and as an elected member of Parliament. He became prime minister shortl...

Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín (born 1927) was an Argentine politician who opposed the ruling military junta from 1976 to 1982. In 1983 Alfonsín was elected president of Argentina. Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín was born i...

The son of Gustav and Lina Witt Dahrendorf, Ralf Gustav Dahrendorf was born in Hamburg, Germany, May 1, 1929, became a British citizen in 1988, and was knighted in 1993. A noted social and political thinker and writer, he is regarded as an...

Civil rights leader Ralph David Abernathy (1926-1990) was the best friend and trusted assistant of Martin Luther King, Jr., whom he succeeded as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a nonviolent civil rights organizat...

The American philosopher Ralph Barton Perry (1876-1957) was a leader of the New Realist movement and the originator of the interest theory of value. Ralph Barton Perry was born on July 3, 1876, in Poultney, Vt. He received his bachelor of ...

The English philosopher and theologian Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688) was the most important of the Cambridge Platonists, a 17th-century circle which expounded rationalistic theology and ethics. Ralph Cudworth was born in Aller, Somerset, wher...

Though his reputation rests on a single novel, many critics consider Ralph Ellison to be the preeminent Afro-American writer, and others have argued that Invisible Man ranks with the most significant American literary works of this century...

The American anthropologist Ralph Linton (1893-1953) developed theoretical positions that helped to unify cultural anthropology. Ralph Linton was born on Feb. 27, 1893, in Philadelphia, Pa., into an old Quaker family. While attending Swart...

The American social crusader and lawyer Ralph Nader (born 1934) became a symbol of the public's concern over corporate ethics and consumer interests. He inspired investigations that were intended to improve the operations of industries and...

Ram Mohun Roy (1772-1833) was a Bengali social and religious reformer thoroughly identified with the cultural self-image of the people. He has been called the father of modern India. Ram Mohun Roy was born to a Kulin Brahmin family at Radh...

Nearly a millennium has past since Ramanuja (ca. 1017-1137) wandered the roads of southern India, yet his legacy as theologian, teacher and philosopher remains alive. His many followers consider him to be a saint and one of the greatest te...

Following the death of Enver Hoxha, Albania's longtime (1945-1985) dictator in April 1985, Ramiz Alia (born 1925) became the dominant political personality in the country. Ramiz Alia was born on October 18, 1925, into a poor working-class ...