American astronomer and archaeologist Andrew E. Douglass invented and named dendrochronology, the technique of counting and studying the rings in tree trunks to determine not only the ages of trees, but also the past climatological, geolog...

Swiss Botanist1778-1841 Augustin de Candolle was a Swiss botanist who advanced significant ideas concerning the classification of plants and developed a taxonomic scheme that provided the foundation for much work in taxonomy up to the pres...

(b. 1966), Indian film-music composer. Allah Rakha Rahman is considered to be the most innovative Indian film-music composer of his generation. He was born A. S. Dileep Kumar in Madras, India, to a musically talented family. Rahman'...

Aage Bohr followed his father, the eminent physicist Niels Bohr, into the field of theoretical physics. Bohr's father was director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen and instrumental in the development of the Manhattan ...

American lawyer and politician Aaron Burr (1756-1836) was vice president under Thomas Jefferson. After his term of office he conspired to invade Spanish territory in the Southwest and to separate certain western areas from the United State...

Born May 26, 1899 Topeka, Kansas Died February 22, 1979 Nashville, Tennessee American painter, illustrator, and educator Aaron Douglas's distinctive artistic style brought the Harlem Renaissance to life on magazine covers, book ja...

ABŪ AL-HUDHAYL AL-ʿALLᾹF (d. between AH 227 and 235, 842 and 850 CE), more fully Abū al-Hudhayl Muḥammad ibn al-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf al-ʿAbdī; Muslim theologian of the Muʿt...

(1997 est. pop. 308,000). The Iranian city of Abadan is located in the southeast corner of the country along the east bank of the Shatt al Arab River, 55 kilometers from the Persian Gulf. Its population is mainly Persian, though with a con...

Abangan (Javanese "red") is a term popularized by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz (b. 1926) to describe the rural Javanese Muslims whose Islam is blended syncretistically with older animist and Hindu-Buddhist beliefs. The ...

The Jewish scholar Abba Arika (ca. 175-ca. 247), also known as Rav, founded a yeshiva, or academy, in Sura, Babylonia. The school remained an important center of Jewish learning until the 11th century. Abba Arika was born to an aristocrati...

d. 873 Arab Spanish inventor who devised and demonstrated a glider. A native of Cordoba, Ibn Firnas experimented with the manufacture of glass and developed a chain of rings to depict the motions of the stars and planets. Eventually, howev...

Writer and activist Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989) was best known for his anti-war protests as a leader of the Youth International Party in the 1960s. Abbie Hoffman was born November 30, 1936, in Worcester, Massachusetts, and educated at Brande...

1081?-1151 French Architect, Politician, and Church Administrator Suger, through his promotion of the redesign and reconstruction of the Abbey Church of St. Denis, near Paris, France, is regarded as the originator of gothic architecture. H...

The following abbreviations are used in the entries: AU African Union, formerly Organization of African Unity (OAU) CARICOM Caribbean Community EC European Communities EU European Union GNP Gross National Product GDP Gross Domestic Produc...

abbr. abbreviated; abbreviation abr. abridged; abridgment AD anno Domini, in the year of the (our) Lord Afrik. Afrikaans AH anno Hegirae, in the year of the Hijrah Akk. Akkadian Ala. Alabama Alb. Albanian Am. Amos AM...

ʿABD AL-JABBĀR. Beginning his discussion of the eleventh generation of the Mu'tazilah, the biographer of al-Jushamī al-Bayhaqī (d. 494/1100) states: Belonging to this generation, and in fact the foremost...

fl. 1100s Arab astronomer who compiled a set of astronomic tables for the years 1115-16, called the Sanjaric Tables (1115). He also wrote on the specific weights of objects and studied the principles of balance established by Archimedes....

(1886–1938), Bukharan writer, educator, social activist. Abdalrauf Fitrat was born in 1886 in the emirate of Bukhara to a merchant family, and little is known of his early years. As a young student he attended the Mir-I Arab madrasa...

The abdomen refers to the cavity in the mid-portion of the body bounded superiorly by the diaphragm that separates it from the thorax. The abdomen contains a number of organs including the pancreas, stomach, intestines, liver, spleen, blad...

The Heimlich maneuver is an emergency procedure for removing a foreign object lodged in the airway that is preventing a person from breathing. Every year about 3,000 adults die because they accidentally inhale rather than swallow food. The...

Bedil is a Malay term meaning a man-made weapon. Technically the term means "small cannon"; it is commonly used in Brunei and Indonesia. In the Malay Peninsula, the term bedil is less common than meriam, which means the same ...

(b. 1939), Malaysian politician. Abdullah Ahmed Badawi is Malaysia's deputy prime minister and minister of home affairs and the vice president of the ruling United Malay National Organization (UMNO) party. Born on 26 November 1939 i...

Abdullah II (born 1962)succeeded his father, the late King Hussein, as king of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on February 7, 1999. Little known outside Jordan before becoming king, Abdullah has surprised many observers by displaying a nat...

(b. 1940), president of Indonesia. Born in East Java in 1940, educated (although without formal degrees) in the Middle East and Europe, and heir to Muslim elite, Abdurrahman Wahid became the head of Nahdatul Ulama, Indonesia's larg...

(1865–1949), Father of Japanese socialism. A native of Fukuoka Prefecture and graduate of Japan's first important Christian university, Doshisha, Abe Iso spent his career advocating pacifism, Christianity, and labor rights. F...