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...

RAMABAI, PANDITA. Ramabai (1858–1922) was an extraordinary woman of her time—an educator, scholar, feminist, and social reformer, whose life was an example of how womanhood and religious identity were negotiated against the b...

Sri Ramakrishna (1833-1886) was an Indian mystic, reformer, and saint who, in his own lifetime, came to be revered by people of all classes as a spiritual incarnation of God. Born in a rural Bengal village, Ramakrishna was the fourth of fi...

(1312–1369), founder of Ayutthaya. In 1350 CE Rama Tibodi I (U Thong) founded the kingdom of Ayutthaya in central Siam (present-day Thailand), which dominated Siamese power and culture for four centuries. The adventurous Rama Tibodi...

One of the best known and most popular fictional characters of the 1980s, Rambo was introduced in David Morrell's 1972 novel First Blood with the words, "His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody kn...

Ramon Magsaysay (1907-1957) was the third Philippine president. Credited with restoring peace, law, and order during the Philippine crisis of the 1950s and the Hukbalahap rebellion, he was the first Philippine president from the landless l...

Generally regarded as the forefathers of the punk rock movement, the Ramones—Joey, Dee Dee, Johnny, and Tommy—formed in Forest Hills, New York, in 1974. Their influence was felt overseas after several future members of Britai...

Theologians are often marginalized in public discussions about contemporary social, political, scientific, and technological issues in the United States. (Robert) Paul Ramsey (1913–1988) reminds us of an earlier era when particularl...

Randai is a form of traditional theater originating in what is now West Sumatra, Indonesia, home of the Minangkabau people. Randai consists of a number of actors who act their roles in full costume in the center of a ring of chorus members...

A computer has two kinds of memory. The first is called primary storage, and is used to hold program instructions and data while the computer is running. The other kind, called secondary storage, is used for storage of data even while the ...

Roll a die and write down the number on the top face. This will be a random number because it was generated by a random process whose outcome could not be predicted in advance. Mathematicians, scientists, and even gamblers often want to si...

A randomized algorithm is one which is able to take one or more steps in a non-deterministic fashion, on purpose. Such algorithms are used in many cases. The correctness, or the worst-case or average performance of many deterministic algor...

Randy Savage (Randy Poffo) entered the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1985. Although other wrestlers had been accompanied to the ring by a female valet, the pairing of Savage and his real-life wife Miss Elizabeth, pushed Savage to the...

Range is a term used in different branches of mathematics including algebra, set theory and probability theory. It is usually first encountered in algebra in the study of functions, and is typically defined as the set of all values attaine...

Lakshmi Bai (c. 1835-1858), the Rani of Jhansi, is a national hero in India for her fight against the injustices of the British Raj. As the reigning queen (Rani) of the Jhansi province of India, Bai was killed in a battle during the Indian...

Ransom E. Olds (1864-1950) was an automotive industry pioneer whose company developed, manufactured, and sold one of the first affordable cars in mass production in the United States. His $650 "runabout," popular in the early 1900s, came a...

Randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) is a technique that is useful as a rapid means of comparing and discriminating the DNA from different individuals. RAPD is based on random priming--the use of short pieces of DNA that bind to many ...

In Pope's day, literary art was at the province of the upper class society and so he wrote this poem taking in mind the limited and specialized audience that would be reading and studying it. Allusions would have, and still do, exclude many...

RAPPAPORT, ROY A. (1926–1997). The American anthropologist Roy A. Rappaport's writings, which span ecology, systems theory, and religion, address the large issues of ritual and religious logos in human survival and evolution....

Rasa, the final outcome of the various constituents of an artistic or theatrical performance, has been a central concept in Indian art and aesthetics from ancient times. It is enshrined in the Indian theory of aesthetic pleasure the same w...

RASHĪD RIḌĀ, MUḤAMMAD. (1865–1935), Arab Muslim theologian and journalist. Born in a village near Tripoli, Lebanon, Riḍā had a traditional religious education. The writings of the pan-Islami...

1625-1698 Danish physician and mathematician remembered for discovering double refraction (1669). Bartholin noticed that the transparent crystal Iceland spar (calcite) produced double images of objects viewed through it. He assumed light t...

Rat-bite fever refers to an infection which develops after having been bitten or scratched by an infected animal. Rat-bite fever occurs most often among laboratory workers who handle lab rats in their jobs, and among people who live in poo...

Rational Choice theory is typically seen as the use of economic reasoning in contexts that were traditionally the concern of disciplines other than economics, especially of political science, sociology, and anthropology. If we take a more ...