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Smith, Thomas, Captain

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Thomas, Captain, American painter, active in New England from 1675 to 1690. Smith introduced baroque painting techniques into American art. He made use of chiaroscuro technique to render solid ...

Scribe, Augustin Eugène

(Encyclopedia)Scribe, Augustin Eugène ōgüstăNˈ özhĕnˈ skrēb [key], 1791–1861, French dramatist and librettist. He began his prolific and highly successful writing career with vaudeville sketches. One of ...

Nicholas V, pope

(Encyclopedia)Nicholas V, 1397–1455, pope (1447–55), an Italian named Tommaso Parentucelli, b. probably Sarzana, Liguria; successor of Eugene IV. From Eugene IV he inherited the antipapal enactments of the Coun...

Smith, Michael

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Michael, 1932–2000, British-born Canadian biochemist, Ph.D. Univ. of Manchester, 1956. Smith was a researcher at the Univ. of British Columbia from 1961 until his death in 2000. He shared the...

Smith, Zadie

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Zadie, 1975–, British writer. The biracial daughter of an English father and Jamaican mother, Smith burst on the literary scene in 2000 with her first novel, White Teeth, the award-winning be...

Rhett, Robert Barnwell

(Encyclopedia)Rhett, Robert Barnwell, 1800–1876, American politician, b. Beaufort, S.C. His family changed its name from Smith to Rhett (after a colonial ancestor) in 1837. A lawyer, he was a state legislator, st...

Eyre, Edward John

(Encyclopedia)Eyre, Edward John âr [key], 1815–1901, British colonial administrator. In Australia (1833–45) he was a magistrate, explorer, and writer on Australian geography, and had a reputation for sympathy ...

Mérimée, Prosper

(Encyclopedia)Mérimée, Prosper prôspĕrˈ mārēmāˈ [key], 1803–70, French author. He first wrote a collection of plays in imitation of Spanish drama, The Plays of Clara Gazul (1825, tr. 1825), and a collect...

Helvétius, Claude Adrien

(Encyclopedia)Helvétius, Claude Adrien hĕlvēˈshəs, Fr. klōd ädrēăNˈ ĕlvāsyüsˈ [key], 1715–71, French philosopher, one of the Encyclopedists. He held the post of farmer-general (i.e., tax collector),...
 

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