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Schimper, Karl Friedric

(Encyclopedia)Schimper, Karl Friedric shĭmˈpər [key], 1803–67, German botanist. He did important work in plant morphology and originated the theory, called phyllotaxis, that there is a fixed order to the arran...

Burritt, Elihu

(Encyclopedia)Burritt, Elihu, 1810–79, American reformer, b. New Britain, Conn. A blacksmith, he studied mathematics, languages, and geography and became known as “the learned blacksmith.” Profoundly idealist...

Harz

(Encyclopedia)Harz härts [key], mountain range, northern Germany, extending c.60 mi (100 km) between the Elbe and Leine rivers. The rugged mountains were once densely forested. They culminate in Brocken peak (3,74...

Brown, Charles Brockden

(Encyclopedia)Brown, Charles Brockden, 1771–1810, American novelist and editor, b. Philadelphia, considered the first professional American novelist. After the publication of Alcuin: A Dialogue (1798), he wrote s...

Ohthere

(Encyclopedia)Ohthere ōthērˈə [key], fl. 880, Norse explorer. His account of his voyage around the North Cape, along Lapland, and into the White Sea was incorporated by Alfred the Great in the introduction to h...

Simpson, George Gaylord

(Encyclopedia)Simpson, George Gaylord, 1902–84, American paleontologist and zoologist, b. Chicago, Ph.D. Yale, 1926. He became assistant curator of vertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural Histor...

Cronquist, Arthur C.

(Encyclopedia)Cronquist, Arthur C. krŏngˈkwĭst, krŏnˈ– [key], 1919–92, American systematic botanist. He was the author of two introductory botanical textbooks, with Henry Allan Gleason: The Natural Geograp...

Moscow State University

(Encyclopedia)Moscow State University, at Moscow, Russia, officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State Univ.; founded 1755 as Moscow Univ. by the Russian scientist M. V. Lomonosov, renamed Moscow State Univ. after the R...

National Defense Education Act

(Encyclopedia)National Defense Education Act (NDEA), federal legislation passed in 1958 providing aid to education in the United States at all levels, public and private. NDEA was instituted primarily to stimulate ...

Barrow, Sir John

(Encyclopedia)Barrow, Sir John, 1764–1848, British geographer, promoter of arctic exploration. His early travels as secretary to Earl Macartney (who was ambassador to China and governor of the Cape of Good Hope c...
 

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